I made this post on r/IndianEntrepreneur, posting on my site for permanence.

This subreddit is full of people trying to sell their websites for 3-5K. Every day I see a bunch of people offering the same service.

This is such a high competition and low barrier to entry thing, that I don’t see you folks making money once you factor in the customer acquisition cost (which most people think is 0 if they post on reddit, but trust me it’s not).

Your websites making skills aren’t differentiated enough to command a premium or enough margin. The price point you are posting at here, even at 10 customers, which is probably hard to find by posting, you will make 30K, entry level software job salary, with much higher risk.

Plus, the ROI on website in India is not high, so most people just think of it as a checkbox, get it done for the cheapest amount possible, something that is put together so they have something to point people to. Websites that get you ROI require constant effort, which is probably a better segment to target to.

If this is you, try to get into a niche with a better ROI. That way you can charge more, and the client will be more than happy to pay.

Some things off the top of my head that are higher ROI:

  • End-to-end landing-page + funnel optimisation for performance marketing
  • Setting up automated payment reminders
  • Provide 10 ad creatives to test a week
  • Building self service portals for clients to give to customers (like gyms giving their clients ability to book sessions, therapist giving their customers to have a portal, etc.)
  • Implement lead qualification systems, most businesses don’t do this in India, and it’s a huge deal.
  • Run customer interviews, also called market research. Provide the research with your summary every month/week/quarter, for clients to find gaps in service
  • Set up chatbots on client website, connect their websites to CRM
  • Help them get customers online, rather than just giving a website
  • Be the person that uses SaaS for them. Yes. Businesses in India are not tech savvy. You can provide a service that is essentially using a SaaS on their behalf. I have done this multiple times, we just provide the client with outcomes (like leads, reports, etc.)

Hope you get the gist. I see you folks making the same mistakes I have made earlier, I hope this post makes you think of doing more differentiated work, rather than the same thing that everyone else does.