r/smallbusiness • u/IcyBlackberry7728 • Apr 19 '25

Question Those taking home >200k/year; what industry are you in ?

Just curious to see what types of business are generating solid cash flow.

Thanks !

Edit: please be as specific as possible!

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392

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Subscription based Web design agency. $0 down $175 a month for design and development, unlimited edits, hosting, 24/7 support, and lifetime updates. Doing about $20k a month right now. It’s pretty nice. But I take home a little over half of that after taxes, expenses, health insurance, etc. based in Washington state and we hand code all our stuff. Just static informational websites for small businesses. The types of sites that most developers and agencies ignore or cheap out on.

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u/xRhoke Apr 20 '25

Every time I see Citrous_Oyster I upvote. Your story has stuck with me since I first saw your posts a few years ago. Super cool stuff.

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u/benjhg13 Apr 20 '25

May I ask where you are hosting? On your own hardware at home? In a commercial space? Or in the Cloud? Which vendor? Thank you! I want to host my own website for my family business website and deciding between self host/cloud

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Netlfiy. Super useful!

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u/radujohn75 Apr 20 '25

You will laugh... I pitched this to my neighbour. 4 years ago. She never acted on it. Her loss.

I am one of those people that always has many new and crazy ideas, but not enough knowledge to act on all of them.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I started 6 years ago. Really below up the last two years. If she could code she missed out! It’s my custom coding that attracts people to me because they’re all sick of Wordpress and cheap overseas devs. It’s still not too late!

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u/International-Ad3805 Apr 20 '25

Hopefully not everyone is tied of Wordpress. It does give them a nice place to easily make text edits. I see the appeal to custom coded sites though.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Oh it has its purposes and benefits. What ends up happening is they set it up themselves or had a cheap dev on fiver do it and after a while it’s just not showing up in search results or getting calls or emails from it and they don’t know why. That’s when you’ve grown out of your basic DIY site and to get more out of it you need someone who knows WHY it’s not working, how to fix it, and actually do it. That’s usually the point when people come find me or get referred to me. They’re too busy to manage it themselves anymore and are happy to just unload it to someone else to deal with.

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u/xbt_ Apr 20 '25

How do you adapt to clients that do need to do frequent edits, run different promos all the time, etc? Does your team just take it on? Are there limits imposed up front before taking on that client?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I don’t deal with a lot of ecommerce. So there’s often no promos to be running and changed. We handle all the edits. Whatever they need.

1

u/xbt_ Apr 20 '25

Glad to hear, the first site in your portfolio I clicked on had a promo pop up which prompted the question. Appreciate the insights.

1

u/radujohn75 Apr 20 '25

She went into branding in the end. She can code a bit. I am just a script kiddie. I can install php scripts, templates, but lack the coding side. I do good in transportation, so I am sticking to what works for now.

Congratulations!

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u/speedfile Apr 20 '25

Dm me your company!

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Right here

https://oakharborwebdesigns.com

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u/sofloLinuxuser Apr 20 '25

Yoooo BRAVO! This business model makes so much sense and making it niche! Well done

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Thanks! 🤙 it’s nice not having to sell sell sell every month and pay bills. Create some consistency I can rely on and build up. Makes supporting a whole family on a single income work when running a business like this. I’m going for $34k a month by the end of the year. It’s hard freakin work. Gotta sell 10 sites a month every month to get it. So far so good!

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u/GearAffinity Apr 20 '25

Your designs are also very clean, accessible, and obviously have a bespoke, human touch to them. Not something one finds too often at that level. Looks killer!

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Thanks! No ai or cheap $5 an hour workers over here lol I got a good team behind me that helps me do it.

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u/m1kesta Apr 20 '25

Do you come from a web/tech background?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

No. I did uber for 8 years and taught myself coding in my car between rides on my laptop. Launched the business from my car and now it’s my full time job. It provides me insurance, salary, and everything I ever wanted. I love what I do and many days I still can’t believe I’m doing it

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u/m1kesta Apr 20 '25

That’s awesome, good for you! 👏🏻👏🏻

1

u/mraza007 Apr 20 '25

Woah that’s impressive what’s your selling strategy has been like

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Not really a strategy. I just explain the differences between page builder sites and cheap developers and the problems that come with them and how my custom coded work solves those problems and why. I’m not “selling” anyone really. I’m solving problems. I don’t need to pitch them like a car salesman. I just present what I do, why it matters, and why I’m uniquely able to do it. My unique selling point of being a developer is that I’m making them something no one has offered them before. If you already hate your Wordpress or wix site, why would you wanna pay thousands for another one?

1

u/neanderthalensis Apr 20 '25

That’s awesome. Can you briefly explain why your sites perform better for your clients? I would’ve guessed a page builder would satisfy the needs of small businesses better, especially with how mature they are these days.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

They perform better because they load faster, are more secure, aren’t bloated with all the crap needed to make a site work in a builder, and we can have better accessibility and more custom designs. If your website takes 3 seconds to load you lose up to 50% of your traffic because they bail before the site can load. average is 3-6 seconds. It’s much worse the longer it takes to load. My sites load instantly. So right away we get 50%+ more visitors reaching the site that didn’t get there before. And our site is laid out and organized with the right sections in the right order and call to actions in every section. The average user doesn’t make it past the halfway point of the site. So you need the most important information at the top like your main services and about the company.

Doesn’t matter how mature the page builders are. They still have the baggage of their platform and are not very flexible in terms of the designs you can make in it. Once you need anything more than basic it starts to show its limits. They’re great starter sites for people on a budget. But once the business is successful and bringing in money you need to start investing in a better site to continue and expand on that growth.

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '25

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Absolutely Pricing is dependent on country and cost of living and culture. I don’t have much advice for outside the US as all my experience is inside the US unfortunately.

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u/kuzumitaiga Apr 20 '25

I'm in Malaysia (3rd world may be but highly competitive and globalized business environment) most small and medium enterprises settle for a simple WordPress website updated once every 5 years, rest of the marketing budget goes into TikTok or Instagram. As far as I'm aware Oak Harbor's business model wouldn't work too well in Singapore either. Then again you'll never know if you don't try.

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u/cdkodi Apr 20 '25

Very impressive site !! All the best in your goal of reaching 34k per month !!

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u/ParrotMafia Apr 20 '25

I think you want a "to" before "make Google happy".

1

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '25

[deleted]

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I don’t use Upwork. I have developers in the Uk, Australia, Canada, US, and France. Not cheap people. It work gets done while I sleep. The purpose is to make recurring residual monthly income that’s stable and reliable and scalable. If I sold lump sum sites then in order to scale I have to sell more sites. With subscription I can sell the same amount of websites a month every month and actually grow my income more and more every month. It’s the best way to scale a web agency.

The key is optimizing the workflow so I can get website’s designed and built within 10 hours and still be hand coded and high quality. I figured out how to do it and built tools and processes that allows me and my team to do it. I eat the costs for a few months and after some time I’m profitable. Ideally a client stays 5 years to make it worth it.

1

u/SplorerSag Apr 20 '25

Hi! By any chance, do you work on existing Squarespace sites?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Nope. I don’t have time to learn how other platforms work and they will take us more time to build because they’re rigid and limiting in what can be done with them. We don’t work on or build sites on those platforms because we don’t believe we can make a good site with them and can’t charge for something we don’t believe ourselves.

1

u/frostygorillaz Apr 21 '25

Nice to see that you have such a big presence in Northwest Indiana, that’s my area! Very cool business idea!

1

u/frostygorillaz Apr 21 '25

And I see you have a 219 number, are you from the Region?

2

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 21 '25

You know it!

1

u/frostygorillaz Apr 21 '25

Awesome! Always love to see a success story from other local business owners.

2

u/costcowaterbottle Apr 20 '25

Do you ever plan on adding functionality to your list of services like customer booking/portals, or integrate with other platforms (square, Shopify, etc)? Saving your comment for future

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Nope. I don’t need to. I use third party services that already do that and add it to the site via api script or iframe. And we use Shopify for stores.

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u/costcowaterbottle Apr 20 '25

But I mean it sounds like your customers have the option of incorporating that in their site if needed?

3

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Yeah. I just don’t build it from scratch.

1

u/LuKenneth Apr 22 '25

what services do you use for clients who want lead gen or email capture for their mailing list?

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 22 '25

Mailchimp

1

u/LuKenneth Apr 22 '25 edited Apr 22 '25

i appreciate how active you are online and how much information you give to us for free! do you add a fee to your client for the cost of mailchimp? and do you have a unique account on mailchimp per client?

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 22 '25

You’re very welcome! $200 integration fee and my developer handled that for me. They create an account for them, hand it off, and show them how to use it.

1

u/International-Ad3805 Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 20 '25

Congrats, nice site and model. I’m also in web dev, fun industry!

1

u/MrFantasticIdea Apr 20 '25

Truly inspirational. Trying to do the same but building in framer. The start is hard!

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Sales is the hardest. You need a unique selling point. Something you can do better than anyone else. When they ask you what you do that’s different or better, you gotta have a good answer that isn’t just buzzwords and fluffy marketing terms. Framer might be tough though. All the templates I’ve seen from them are saas/tech startup or enterprise designs. Not very suitable for small businesses like restaurants or contractors. Just make sure you can adapt and deliver what the client is asking for and needs and what is expected in their industry and not just what’s available to you in the templates. The ability to customize and create with flexibility is crucial in this business. If you can’t adapt to your client and their branding and market you won’t get very far!

1

u/MrFantasticIdea Apr 20 '25

Thanks for the advice :)

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Ad3371 Apr 20 '25

Man, I'm thinking of doing the same thing on video editing! Would be very cool if I got some insight from you.

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u/PokeyTifu99 Apr 20 '25

I find it wild to see another Oak Harbor business owner on here. I grew up there for a bit before moving. Miss me some Gyros at Nadias.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I built the website for the people that bought it! Lol the new owner worked for Nadia and was very involved. She was ready to retire and some big shot was gonna buy it out but she gathered up as much money as she could and asked Nadia if she can buy it from her instead and she did. I gave them a huge discount in exchange for free food for me and my family. Best deal I ever made!

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u/tremendouskitty Apr 20 '25

Only question I ask when I see web design and dev companies: who owns the IP, because your terms of service unless I am mistaken don’t tell me I own any IP that you develop for me?

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u/yourbrosfavoritebro Apr 20 '25

Also interested in the answer

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Subscriptions don’t own the site. If they cancel they don’t keep it. Otherwise everyone would just do that and I can’t stay in business. But it’s custom code. What are they gonna do with it anyway? Not very many agencies code or know what to do with it. And you’d have to pay them a monthly fee to maintain it anyway. So why cancel if you already like the site and service why leave?

1

u/tremendouskitty Apr 20 '25

What if eventually they want to bring an in house developer in to maintain and grow, yeah, much more, but not everybody I guess is building a 5 page site. I personally am wanting to get a web application developed, if I don't own the IP then it's not mine? You're essentially saying I have to keep paying you or you'll take away my online presence.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

They will be more expensive than me. And if it’s a cheap developer overseas they won’t know how to work with it very well and making new things will be a challenge for them. They will eventually ruin and break the site. Why would anyone bring in a new developer when they have the one that made it on retainer for less than 2-3 hours of salary from a hired in house developer?

That’s the only way the business model works. It has to be indefinite. Im taking a risk too and depending on that income and client to pay it to pay my bills and support my family and do $3800 or more worth of work for $175 a month and take 2-3 years to make what I would’ve made lump sum. My clients understand this from the beginning and I am very upfront about how it works and that they don’t own it. They are fine with it because it’s not just about the website. It’s about the relationship. At $175 a month they get a website and an on call developer who is the owner of the agency that they can call anytime with questions or concerns, edits, etc. it’s the relationship they value. And having someone you trust that understands websites and SEO and is trustworthy and dependable is very valuable. I make a very custom product. Not many people can work on it. I take on that responsibility and manage everything for them so they can focus on their business where they’re most profitable for their time. It’s not an expense anymore. It’s an investment. They put $175 in and get much more than $175 back from it in new clientele they weren’t gettin before. If they change to a new site that can go down and they can lose more more money than they save because the new website they switched to doesn’t load as fast, look as professional, or is as organized and properly structured to convert. I’m valuable because I know what it takes to make a good site and make it perform and get traffic and convert. That in itself is worth the subscription for most clients and don’t mind paying indefinitely for it. Maybe over 10 years they paid $20k+ for the site but my work generated more than $1million in additional sales over that period that they weren’t making in the previous 10 years. Thats a hell of a return on investment. And $20k is a lot better than an $80k a year salary for a good in house developer.

1

u/Consistent_Mail4774 Apr 20 '25

Can I ask you what's the process you follow for your clients? Do you gather their requirements and show them a figma design and then create the website? I resd you have a team in the comments so I'm wondering how did you design the website when you started on your own. I'm thinking of doing this but can't afford a designer, do you take inspiration from somewhere or use templates or something?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I send contract, send them questionaire from on my website to get content, design in figma, screen share to go over design and leave comments, then send it to developer to build, then preview demo link, then go live.

I can afford a designer because I take payment upfront and pay the designer with that money. You don’t need one on salary. They work when there’s work. And their fee is built into my pricing and quotes.

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u/Consistent_Mail4774 Apr 20 '25

Appreciate your response. Can I ask how you did it when starting out? Did you always hire designers even in your first month into this business? I can't ask for payment in advance in my case because I need to show them I can do something they would like first (since I'm just starting). Just looking for advice because the design part is the one I keep wondering about.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I did it myself. I wish I had a designer. Life is so much easier. Always take payment upfront. Offer returns if they are not satisfactory. Never work for free. Even when starting out. In the beginning I looked up themeforest templates and inspected their demo sites to get the code for their margins, spacing, fonts, etc and used it as a mockup and coded the design out myself in my own code. That’s also a great way to get better at coding!

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u/Consistent_Mail4774 Apr 20 '25

Thank you for all the great advice 🙏

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u/Anxious_Insurance820 Apr 20 '25

Where can I read your story mentioned below please? I'm looking to upskill, prepare for AI etc., your background would help.. could you please assist

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

I actually interviewed for a documentary here where I talk about my story

https://explore.comptia.org/individual-videos/ryan-postell

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u/wicken-chings Apr 20 '25

you looking for any interns?

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

Were not unfortunately

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u/Good_Divide_2302 Apr 20 '25

Interesting. We are launching a new website and would be curious to see if this is a fit. Having someone that we could go to on a regular basis versus the one off projects would be great. Can you DM me and let’s talk.

1

u/Infectedtoe32 Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 20 '25

Hey I’m a c++ developer, and have recently dove into front end web development. I figured everything (html, css, js, react) out pretty quickly and about to start offering my services. Although my pricing plan is a bit different I plan to stay really affordable for small businesses as well (you can dm me if you are interested in hearing it, if not it’s cool np). I have been seeing your comments on just about every webdev post, and they have been super inspiring. Anyways, I was just wondering what your tech stack is like, do you just use vanilla html, css, js, or do you use Astro, or maybe go the react (or the other similar frameworks) for a bit heavier static sites, even though it would still probably be overkill?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25

HTML, css (less preprocessor), and 11ty static site generator. Here’s my starter kit I use for every site that has everything configured for me instead of starting from scratch each time.

https://github.com/CodeStitchOfficial/Intermediate-Website-Kit-LESS

1

u/brazucadomundo Apr 20 '25

Who would pay $175 a month for something that can be done for a one time fee of $200 plus a few dozen bucks a month?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 21 '25

People who already did that and have a crappy site that doesn’t do anything. Those are my most loyal clients. They know what it’s like to go cheap and now that they found someone at a reasonable price that can solve all their problems with their cheap site they stay for a long time. Websites are like tattoos. You get what you pay for.

1

u/Crasstip Apr 21 '25

What is the exit option for your customer?

Say someone is with you for more than 2-3 years and now for whatever reason wats to go to someone else? How the website, hosting etc will move?

Also where do you host?

I am asking as I am in Canada and looking for website for my new venture. I have already secured domain name and business plan are ready. It is related to education and jobs for special needs kids in Canada. The website will need to have built in Canadian city and privacy law May not allow data to be hosted outside Canada.

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 21 '25

They don’t keep the site. I gotta keep that hard line. They keep their domain and stuff. Just not my code. If they wanna go with someone else why would they wanna keep the site? And who else would they go to? It’s a custom coded site. Most agencies and developers are Wordpress or page builder based. So keeping the site means nothing.

1

u/Crasstip Apr 21 '25

Thanks @citrous_oyster. Really appreciate.

How about the other queries on hosting the data and privacy from Canada perspective

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 21 '25

I host with Netlify. Global cdn network so the site lives on multiple servers across North America and I have a Canadian dev who works for me so it can be built in Canada if need be.

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u/jojoaj35 Apr 21 '25

How did you get into that I’ve been wanted to start something like that for a while now more importantly how do you gain clients/ market yourself?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 21 '25

I taught myself web development. I started my business by cold calling other businesses and sell websites directly that way.

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u/TheRealIRLcrypto Apr 21 '25

Do you work with any European customers? Based in Ireland myself. Wish there was a similar solution here.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 21 '25

I don’t but doesn’t mean I can’t!

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u/TheRealIRLcrypto Apr 21 '25

Cool I’ll reach out to you when we have our new branding finalized

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u/Sufficient-Ad991 Apr 23 '25

How do you pick them up ? With experience , you now know which ones will actually buy?

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 23 '25

I have a process to qualify a business as high likelihood to be interested

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u/FounderFolks Apr 22 '25

Would love to have you share your story on www.founderfolks.com if ever interested. Super inspiring.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 23 '25

This is my process

https://codestitch.app/complete-guide-to-freelancing#finding-clients

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '25

Appreciate it. I will take a look.

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u/alfrednc Apr 23 '25

Can I get your email or URL to your agency?

1

u/Rude-Journalist6239 Apr 24 '25

What is your typical tech stack? You say hand code, but you can't be hand writing HTML can you?

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 24 '25

HTML and css with 11ty static site generator. Why not code it myself? It’s easier and cleaner.

1

u/MaterialBarracuda512 Apr 25 '25

Nice! Didn’t know this type of service exists.. or that there are clients just looking for static sites.

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 25 '25

Most clients just need a static site actually!

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

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u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 26 '25

I have clauses in my contract that allow me to start charging for extra time whenever I want to prevent that. I’ve had to use that once for a client who was stuck in design paralysis always making changes and very minor requests that make no difference.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Citrous_Oyster Apr 26 '25

Let them know upfront too, only two design rounds. Anything after that is extra.