How To Make Money Building Websites For Local Businesses

It’s not 2005 anymore. I don’t need to convince you that websites are important, and businesses know this too.

Whether you want to build a website for your business – or;

You want to learn how to make money building “basic” websites for local business as a new side-hustle, today; I’m going to show you exactly how you can do that, and how you can make money doing it.

In this guide, I will be showing you how to use a simple one-stop-shop theme which you can use to build “basic” websites for any & all types of businesses and;

Just in case you’re looking at this as a potential new side-hustle;

• I’m also going to show you how to find clients/business to build websites for – and;
• How to easily build-up beautiful websites without any coding-knowledge whatsoever.

Sounds good?

Let’s get started…

How To Find Businesses In Your Area That Are In Desperate Need of a Website

To make money building websites for local businesses, you first have to get the local businesses to agree to work with you. Which means;

You have to find them, you have to make sure they need/want a website and you have to “pitch” them your ideas on how getting a website from you will positively affect their business.

Here’s how you do that…

Visit Local Directories

For this experiment, I am using the Yellow Pages website (but you can use any local business directory you want).

Here, you want to find local businesses in your area and then see if they already a website.

With the method I’m about to show you, you can be making money from any type of business you’d like, but you can also choose to go niche and go with a more “niche-focused” approach.

On the Yellow Page website, you can see all the business-categories so either pick one of them, or pick them all. I’m going with “Pest Control Services” for this example.

Here’s how that would look:

Find An Outdated/Broken Website

There are 3 types of websites which you’ll find here, these are:

• Good-looking websites (in which case you may or may not want to get in touch)
• Mediocre-looking website (which are the sites you have to take note of for the next step)
• Ugly-looking or even “broken websites” (which is where I would personally start)

Taken from the example-businesses mentioned above, here some examples of what you will encounter:

A Broken Website:

A Mediocre Website:

An “Ugly” website:

SN: What makes a website “ugly”?

I get this is a matter of taste, I’m just bringing you examples here.

The best way to pick these sites by “ugliness” is by seeing which sites you can do better – and I will show you how to do that with a very simple WordPress theme for local businesses down below.

Find The Contact Information For Business Owner

So you’ve made your list of websites which you think “can be better” – now what?

Your next step is to find the contact information of the business owner, and you can do this by:

• Email (usually listed on YellowPages or the website)
• Facebook Page (not ideal, but if it’s the only option, it’ll do)
• Calling in person (if you’re up for it)

To keep things simple and easy, let’s say you go with the best option; email.

Here’s how you go about that.

Email Them Your Pitch

Getting the customer to say, is obviously the whole game here, so you need to work on this to get it as “optimized” as possible.

The first idea I had was to start emailing business owners asking them if they would like a new website all the while flexing my “copywriting muscles” trying to convince them they need it, but then I figured there’s a better way.

Hear me out!

Down below, I am going to share with you a WordPress theme that will have you creating great-looking websites in a heartbeat.

The idea here is that you create the homepage, fill out the “filler text” such as the business name and what they’re about and make it look like it’s already been developed.

You will need to have your own website where you can create individual pages so you can load up theme templates on each page, edit it, publish and send it to yor target customer – with an already-live link to their soon-to-be new website.

When you send this to your potential clients, they will see it live and working and I am sure that will help land more clients that just emailing them cold.

If they say they’re “not interested”, it’s their loss. Simply delete the page, and go after a new potential-client.

The only downfall with this is the time you need to create the homepage, but you’d be able to “load up” a homepage in a matter of minutes once you see the theme.

As with any other “sales” tactic, it all comes down to the numbers.

• You may send 100 cold emails and get 1 sale.
• You may send 10 cold emails (with a live link to a half-developed) and also get one sale.

It depends on how much time, patience and willingness you have to see this through but to help you understand the potential of this business idea, let’s take a look at…

How Much Money You Can Make Building Websites For Local Businesses?

What I failed to mention above, is there are 1000s of local businesses in need of “modern” websites.

The “pest control” example I’ve used above has over 261 local businesses, and that’s just one category:

There are literally tens of thousands of opportunities in your area:

Now – the question is;

How much should you charge to build websites?

The going rate for the type of websites I will show you how to build below is $500.

It’s cheap enough that any business can afford, and – using the theme I will share with you – these “basic” websites can be built in a day or two (even just a few hours once you’ve got the hang of it).

So – with thousands of local businesses in need of websites, do you think it will be possible to get one new client a day?

It won’t happen quickly, and there’s a lot of work involved to achieve this, but eventually – through your continuous outreach and word of mouth – getting one client a day does seem achievable.

How’s that for a side-hustle?

Now that I’ve got you all excited about making $15,000 a month building websites for local business;

Let me now show you how you can build irresistibly-attractive “simple” websites, in a very quick manner that local businesses would happily pay you $500 for.

Introducing: The Astra WordPress Theme (How To Build A Quick & Simple Websites For Local Businesses)

I came across this theme after I had a chance encounter with a friend who wanted me to build her a website.

I don’t usually work with clients, but I decided to go for it and work on something different “for a change”, which is when I discovered Astra & to put it frankly;

This WordPress theme is absolute gold.

It comes with ready-made templates in a variety of different “local businesses” categories which you can load up, quickly edit to meet your client’s wants and needs, and that’s it – you are done!

All you have to do to “load up the theme” is:

• Install the Astra WP theme.
• Visit the “Starter Pages”.
• Import the template.
• Make your necessary edits.
• Send it to your customer for review.

Of course, it comes with some “moving parts” but overall; it’s very easy to use and set up.

It took me a day to get familiar and experiment with it a little bit but once I got the hang of it; I was able to pretty much “whip up” a website in a few hours.

The only kicker to this, is that you need the “Agency” upgrade to have access to ALL Astra starter sites.

While there are free ones you can use, it’s best if you get the agency-one to have all categories covered.

The agency membership costs $249 a year, or – $699 for a lifetime subscription.

Given how you can make $15,000+ with this business model, a  699-lifetime fee is reasonable enough, but of course; to get your feet wet, I suggest you try the $249 one first.

That’s the secret to making this side-hustle work…

You need something you can create quickly but looks good enough to be able to charge a decent, yet affordable; $500 per website.

As I said, with some practice, I’m sure you’d be able to create a fully functioning website in one day or less.

If you’d like to know more about Astra and how you can use it to create simple yet beautiful websites for local businesses, check out this great video walkthrough here: