Ep. 109 – Subscription based services are all around us now. Personally, I can think of dozens my family and I have including Disney+, Netflix, DollarShaveClub, HomeChef, etc and that’s outside of all of our monthly bills which are also technically, subscription based services. Heck, even my auto mechanic now offers a member plan subscription service for his regular clients.
That begs the question, is there a market and an opportunity for a web design subscription business?? Well yes, yes there is. In this episode, we chat with Steve Schramm who built his entire web design business from day one as a subscription model and discovered that through recurring income, one client at a time, he was able to build a solid bottom line and take his web design business full time early in 2021 without the fear of the typical “feast and famine” that most all project based web designers go through.
One big idea to note is that, with any subscription based service, it’s a long game. You won’t make nearly as much in the early days than if you were to charge 3, 4, 5k + for a project. However, the recurring income you can build is the key and in the long run, the lifetime value of clients can be thousands or tens of thousands over what they would normally be if you just do a one and done project.
This conversation was fascinating as it’s a model I’ve always been curious about. A big thanks to Steve for being so transparent and being an open book about pricing, numbers, lessons learned, etc!
In This Episode
00:00 – Introduction
04:28 – Greeting to Steve
07:48 – How recurring started
11:06 – Keeping owners active
13:36 – A recording session
16:30 – Musicians to websites
18:15 – Evolution and lessons
21:03 – Pricing breakdown
24:36 – Playing the long game
27:12 – Devil’s advocate
29:44 – Getting content on time
32:44 – Grandfathering
35:38 – Automation tools
37:52 – The four phases
41:33 – Guiding the relationship
42:01 – The key to success
45:09 – Renewing vows
48:13 – Five year goal
51:33 – Living on a prayer
53:16 – Financial discipline
55:30 – Growth
58:53 – Josh does math
1:01:18 – Steve’s Info
1:02:46 – Finally thoughts
1:04:18 – Spreadsheet budget
Connect with Steve and get all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at:
https://joshhall.co/109
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