The case for doing small website projects

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Written By Brian Krogsgard

16 thoughts on “The case for doing small website projects”

  1. Great post, as usual. Most people assume that the bigger projects are better. But revenue (or profit) doesn’t matter as much as your effective hourly rate.

    On larger projects, there’s typically more people involved, more unique features required, and more rounds of change requests. These are all project aspects that are difficult to optimize.

    On smaller projects, a larger portion of the project is initial development and client communication (pre-project, scoping, initial review…). These aspects can be optimized and refined through repetition.

    This isn’t to say large projects can’t be profitable, of course they can. But creating an estimate for a $10k project isn’t as simple as 10x-ing your typical project breakdown for a $1k project.

    The best tool I’ve found for quoting is past project data. In my CRM I keep track of project revenue, time spent on initial dev, and time spent on changes (I’ll usually lump communication in there as well with whichever part of the project we’re in).

    Use these data to find trends based on project size, to see how similar projects break down. With even more information you could break it down by industry or type of project (ecommerce, membership…).

    Review the least profitable projects to try and find factors you can identify before quoting to either adjust price upward or pass on the project altogether.

  2. Excellent article, with solid business advice. Just a heads up, the link to Dan Mall is wrong. If you hover over it you’ll see the problem. 🙂

  3. This is a great post Brian. I couldn’t agree more. I spent years going after bigger and bigger projects, but I found that I made less profit and had mountains of increased headaches and stress.

    During the last year, I refocused my company (Bottlerocket) to focus on the smaller projects (sub $5k). The turnarounds are much faster, and I actually make a lot more money in the process.

    The problem is ego. A lot of designers and developers want the fame that comes from having a client like Nike or name-your-famous-client. But you pay for that in time and stress and red-tape.

    I’m not saying the big projects are bad. And if that’s who you’re best suited to serve, then do that.

    I just love that you’re bringing attention to the fact that there’s a lot of value to be delivered with small clients (and a lot of money to be made).

    Like you, I would take 10 $2k projects over one $20k project. That philosophy was a big part of the idea behind wptheory.

    I can say, for me, that the smaller projects afford me a more flexible and stress-fee lifestyle.

  4. Hi Brain: Great articles recently, and I appreciate your take on project size and pricing. The onboarding outline is a great way to set expectations for smaller projects.

    Though larger projects can garner more publicity, there are probably more potential clients in that $1-5K range that need the value a well-planned website provides than those that need $20-100K websites.

    With smaller projects, the complexity of project management and implementation is usually much less. This allows quicker turnaround. When projects get larger, the time needed multiplies more quickly, hurting the morale of both developer and client if expectations are not made clear at the onset.

    Smaller projects have another caveat: the price the client pays is equal to the value you are providing.

  5. Great post Brian – this post along with last weeks one on pricing tell me we’ve both been down very similar roads in the past in terms of experiences with clients 🙂

    I found myself nodding my head to basically everything you said. I do have one caveat though about taking smaller, more profitable projects. Your sales pipe. When you’re turning over these smaller, more profitable projects it puts more pressure on you to build a steady stream of these kind of projects which can lead to spending more time and sales and marketing. Never mind onboarding the client to set expectations at the start of the project, you have to really focus on producing laser like sales and marketing content to set expectations at the buying phase to ensure clients know what they’re signing up for before you onboard them. It makes it much easier to “lay down the law” once the project starts if everybody knows what’s in the constitution before they say yes 🙂

    It’s something we’re very conscious of as we build our new business which has a narrow focus on producing eCommerce website based on WordPress and WooCommerce.

    Keep these posts coming!

    Colm

  6. Great advise. I can see that you have a lot of experience. I especially like those red flag examples. I made the same experiences and I will take those red flags more serious in the future. Thanks for the reminder.

  7. The issue that I have with this is that many small projects/clients refuse to allow reasonable expectations to be set for smaller budgets. This is especially true in the nonprofit world. Have worked mostly in nonprofits with budgets less than $5000 for a web presence, we found that they want a website worth $10,000+. When we tried to set expectations and scope in the contract, they were often disheartened or downright frustrated with us. Since moving to an agency that works with clients almost entirely above $100k per year in web projects, I have found that clients’ expectations are far more reasonable and willing to be educated.

    However, small clients and projects can indeed be a profit center if you find the right one. The key is education and setting expectations which is really the key in any freelance or client situation. 🙂

  8. Fascinating.

    So in these types of projects, would you essentially be choosing the theme design, colour scheme, with little in put from the client?

    In that first call are you running potential designs past them or just finding out their requirements?

    Great post.
    Thanks,
    Joe

    • Depending on just how small the project is, it may be a theme implementation for some people or a custom (but not complicated) custom design.

      I would essentially just make sure the design is conservative and within their branding guidelines, and build it off that.

      The first call is just kickoff. I wouldn’t pass designs by them in that, but I would definitely try to understand their concept of a great design in that meeting.

  9. Excellent article. You have just made my day by confirming the exact strategies I need to take with future prospects. I’m sick and tired of waiting for clients to provide the information I need to finish their sites. It’s a real time waster calling them all the time.

    It’s because of these types of delays, that I’ve decided to change my client acquisition strategy. You see, I’ve been in the electrical industry all my life, so have just decided that I will only take on electrical type businesses from now on. Now, because I know their products and services so well, I can create content without having to wait on them to provide the information and specifications for the products they want to promote. I can finish projects using my interpretation of their products. It will be a “like it or lump it” scenario, but at least I’ll be able to push the projects off the books.

  10. So true, and I’ve experienced similar results . 90% of our projects are “smaller” pro-bono projects as that is the mission of our nonprofit, OrgSpring, but early on we got into trouble not correctly estimating our time in support. We went through a similar hourly calculation as you have listed here, which we’ve honed over the years, now offered for clients who use us for continued hosting and support. That’s made all the difference.

    I encourage anyone reading this post to heed the warnings of relating time and energy into a design, and not look so closely at top-end price.

  11. I’m surprised the issue of past client support hasn’t come up here. One of my biggest time wasters is emails and phone calls from past clients, which range from “How do I update that slider again?” to “Hey, why doesn’t my listing in Google look right?”
    When you’re consistently turning out smaller projects, you end up with HUNDREDS of past clients with requests that can really add up. How do you deal with supporting so many past clients?

    • I’ve got nearly 200 sites on a multisite network and another 40+ sites on several dedicated servers. All nonprofit clients, with little to no technical experience. They ALL have questions that range from easy to mildly easy.
      I find good training mitigates 70% of those easy questions. I do a 3 part training session, 1 hour each for 3 sessions. First, I cover wordpress basics, core stuff, posts, dashboard, etc. Second I cover editing, media, menus, updates, third I cover special stuff like ecommerce, video embeds, etc.

      Then I hook them up with access to tutorial videos that I license for my clients. There are several companies out there that do this for devs and make a 1 time payment per year and you can use the videos for all your clients. They update the videos with each new version of wordpress.

      I also setup a knowledge base and give my clients access to that.

      Between those three things I get much fewer requests for the easy stuff.

      Good luck!

      • Thanks for the reply, Craig. Great tips to implement to save time in the future. After all that, I bet you hope your clients pass that knowledge on — my nonprofit clients always seem to be changing leadership.
        Thanks again.

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