Hello,

I have run my own web business since 2014, and it might be my imagination, but it feels harder and harder to generate new sales or genuine enquiries.

Just wondered if any of you good folks have advise, tips or links to articles regarding generating sales you found useful.

Thanks in advance…

Edited September 5, 20242 yr by grantsmith

I noticed it getting harder since about 2010 (I've been web dev'ing since 1998), before that finding new work was pretty easy and I was turning down more work than I took on. I put it down to there being more competition and the rise of hosted services such as Squarepsace and Shopify. Fortunately my speciality area meant I still had enough work even if I was a bit less picky with clients!

So I'd suggest:

1. Advertise your services locally in local periodicals, village magazines and the like to get your name out there

2. If you have a speciality get in touch with local dev agencies to see if they can offer overflow work

3, Get some business cards made and give to anyone you meet

Or change what you do.

I stopped building websites years ago and started building wordpress plugins. Find your niche and it is very lucrative.

As an example, the are over 7 million active installs of woocommerce. 0.001% of this is 700. If you built a premium plugin that sold for £50/year that would earn you £35,000/year. It's almost free money.

Never thought of it like that @fisicx

I always thought the WordPress plugin market was just too saturated to be worth bothering with. But you make a good point.

Just need a good idea now 💡

Find something that really annoys you when buying online and create a fix.

I've got a number of plugins I give away for free on wordpress. You can upgrade to premium for a fee or get your own custom version created. Today I'm doing one for a Swedish business it will pay my bills for about a week.

I know one developer who built a plugin for people to ask for prayers on their church website. He has sold it to thousands of churches in the USA.