I’m not special, but I provide something most agencies do not offer, and that is special. I offer consulting to anyone wanting to start or revamp a business. However, I take design jobs from clients who have ideas I believe in. I don’t just try to get you to sign on the line for a quick buck. I’m open and honest from the start because clear communication is the key to success. Each project I work on is handcrafted to reflect the client’s specific needs. Clients return to me time and time again because they know that we’re going to have a discussion that delivers the results they need.

Every situation is unique. However, some fairly common steps include the following:

• Initial discussion to understand your basic needs.
• Review your existing materials (draft business plans, financials, market research, competitor research, etc.).
• Follow-up discussion to clarify details and agree upon the scope and fees for the project.
• Several in-depth discussions to better understand the details, develop strategies, and agree on all of the major elements
• Conduct additional research, as needed.
• Draft a Research Presentation and review it with you to ensure that all parties are on the same page.
• Draft the Executive Summary and review it with you to ensure that we all agree on the next level of detail.
• Prepare a draft outline of the business plan for your review.
• Begin filling in the details on the draft. Obtain and incorporate your feedback.
• Incorporate your expense models, and explain how it works so that you can take “ownership.”
• Finalize all deliverables.
• Provide education on using the deliverables for various future projects, hiring employees to manage it, outsourcing freelancers, or having me manage the project in perpetuity.
• Provide ongoing support, including making minor updates to the deliverables.

For a typical engagement, consisting of planning, research, design, and revisions, the typical time to completion is 6-8 weeks. The actual time can be influenced by the quality of your existing materials, the level of your participation, the complexity of your market and business model, and my current workload.

I only accept one new project at a time in order to guarantee that my monthly clients always get the attention they pay for and deserve. I do not jeopardize the quality of their service to speed up a new project.

If the time is imperative I can charge a “rush” fee for an additional 50% of your project’s total. This fee would cover the cost of outsourcing to other freelancers. I prefer to not become an intermediary between a client and other designers. My focus is clear communication. Adding other people adds obstacles to that, and can lead to additional revisions that add more time, reflect poorly on me, and weaken our relationship.

Never! One of my jobs is to help you avoid mistakes. Even if you’re always right I’ll play devil’s advocate just to expose another point of view.

Building an identity to your liking doesn’t work if customers don’t like it. Your image isn’t decided by you. You have to earn it. Find what people like. Build your presence based on those principles, and maintain it by staying relevant.

I run a large educational website that requires high-end hosting. By adding my clients to those servers you can piggy back on my resources. You will not find a faster service with the guaranteed up time that I offer.

My price starts at $49/month for managed hosting. This is truly managed, unlike many other hosts that provide management. This means you never need to access the server directly. You can just access your site and let me handle the rest.

There are cheaper hosts, but none that offer the management that I do. I run the software updates and manage daily backups. Included in the price, I provide a domain name, an SSL (security), a CDN (super fast), and more that all cost extra with most hosting providers.

When you contact your hosting company you are one of many customers talking to one of many employees. I am the host. Contact me and I answer directly.

With your site hosted on my servers, I do not need to monitor your bandwidth or storage space. I personally design the sites on those servers and optimize them to prevent them from hogging resources.

I’ve never needed to upgrade a client beyond the introductory hosting plan before. However, if you run a popular membership site with too many concurrent users, we will discuss the need for it to be moved to its own space.

No! I build your site to fit your needs and you control your own shop.

You can list as many items as you like, add as many user accounts as you want, add plugins that fit what you want to do, and select your transaction fees by choosing the merchant company that you want — with no added fees.

You also are in full control over how your site looks and can tie your shop in with the rest of you site seamlessly.

Going with my hosting also gives you access to me when you need help.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Essentially, your website can be optimized to be listed in search engines like Google. There are many things that these companies look for on your site to decide where you should be ranked in comparison to other sites.

SEO requires research regularly. To stay relevant in your industry you have to know what people are searching for, where they are doing it, and why. You have to know how your competitors are adapting to that information, and what they are missing. You have to recognize the weakness others have and exploit it. Then you have to do it again… all the time.

That’s just the search engine aspect. Today’s internet requires social media activity as well. Facebook is huge, but focusing on it narrows your audience. Kids don’t use it, but many like TikTok or Snapchat. Twitter is popular in America, but not as much in many countries. And each of these have their own little specialty. You need to post pictures to Instagram, videos to YouTube, and links to other sites on Pinterest. Some try to be everything to everyone. You have to analyze what your company does and which of these networks lend themselves to your products or services. You have to know your audience and find a way to engage them in your posts. And most importantly, you have to do it ALL THE TIME.

Frankly, all of this is exhausting. Eight hours a day staring at social media is enough to make anyone crazy. That’s why it has become a job on its own today.

My highest package takes all of this out of your hands. I should raise the price on it.