As somebody who has been in the Web development industry for seven years, self employed for five of those, I’ve seen many Web development companies succeed and fail. For those companies that succeed, there are two glaring things they do different from those that fail.

- They outsource 85% of the work they receive
- 50% of their profit comes from monthly, subscription based payments

I’ve previously spoken about outsourcing so I won’t do that again. Today, I want to talk about recurring payments that are highly profitable, useful for both you and the customer, and can, if you let them, ‘make’ your business.

First, I want to identify three types of recurring payments your Web development business could be bringing in each month.

Web Site Maintenance

This is the obvious starting point. Customers always need changes to their Web site. They always need pages adding, news and events changing or photos adding. Sure, there comes a point where a full content management system is needed so customers can make changes themselves, but until they get to that point you’re going to be their frontline man.

In my previous company, monthly payments from maintenance contracts were vital to our operation. We had a 50% conversion, so for every 10 customers we brought in, five would signup to a maintenance contract.

How Do Maintenance Contracts Work?

There are any number of ways you can design the contract. The best way I found was to have several maintenance packages, all giving a specific amount of work hours per month and all with a discounted hourly rate for work that goes over the allocated amount of hours.

Your packages may range from a basic two hours work per month and a $10 reduction in your hourly rate on everything over the two hours to 10 hours work and a $20 reduction in hourly rate.

How Do You Sell Maintenance Contracts?

The difference between Web sites and traditional media is Web sites don’t stand still. They’re mobile and constantly evolving and changing. At least they should be in order to take full advantage of your human audience and search engine rankings. Sell your clients on the importance of regular updates and maintenance. Maybe within your contracts you’ll include a monthly ‘Link Audit’ to check for broken links.

Sell the benefits of a Web site that is updated and maintained on a regular basis.

Web Hosting

The next obvious monthly contract is Web hosting. Reseller Web hosting accounts are dirt cheap these days, even with a reputable company. Get a reseller and sell Web hosting to your Web development clients.

As somebody who, for four years, managed a separate Web hosting company with multiple dedicated servers that was open to everyone and anyone (Not just Web development clients), I strongly advise you don’t mix the two any further than a basic reseller for your Web development clients. Web hosting is incredibly time intensive with very little return, compared to Web development. While Web hosting for the general public is a good place to be if that’s the only place you are, I strongly advise staying away if you’re also running a Web development company.

If You Say Stay Away, Why Offer Web Hosting to Your Development Clients?

- Your Web development clients will require far less support than the general public.
- You won’t have the hassle of having to deal with dedicated servers.
- Assuming your customers are within 50 miles of you, you won’t have to provide 24 hour support like you would if serving the general public
- It’s one more Internet service your customer is giving you. The more services they have with you, the longer that client will stay
- You can charge your development customers more for Web hosting than you can the general public. Whereas much of the Web hosting market cares little about quality and a lot about price, your local Web development customers are more in touch with reality and care more about quality and control as opposed to price.

By serving Web hosting to your Web development clients only, hosting becomes a very profitable, low-maintenance, low-support task.

How Do You Sell Web Hosting?

I’ve secured Web hosting contracts from my development clients for several reasons. Sometimes I tell them they have the option of launching their Web site within the next five minutes after I setup their hosting account in our system, or they can wait 48 hours and endure the hassle of ordering Web hosting for themselves via a 3rd party company. Unless they have some sort of personal attachment to the 3rd party, they’ll almost always choose the “Launch in five minutes” option.

Of course, the other sell point is the fact it’s so much easier to maintain and setup their site when it’s hosted and developed by the same company. Some Web sites require certain technology on the server. You can guarantee your server will have everything needed to get the Web site launched. And should there ever be a problem, you’ll be just a short drive down the road if the client wants face to face support.

Analytics Report

This is my own little baby. An idea I came up with at the back end of 2008, and as yet, one I’m still to test. However, judging by the requests from past customers, it should sell like wild fire.

Give your customers the option to pay a small monthly fee to have you send them a monthly report of their Web site stats.

Over the last six years I’ve seen lots of my customers ask about stats. Sometimes they’re asking if they can see their stats. Sometimes they’re confused about what certain features in the stats program are saying. And other times they’re complaining that it’s so time consuming and complicated to see how many visitors they’re getting and what those visitors are doing.

So late last month I came up with the idea of a basic report that would be emailed to customers monthly as a PDF. Probably ten pages in length outlining the previous months visitors, page views, most popular pages, most popular exit pages, search engine rankings etc. The report itself is based on a pre-written template that is setup to allow the customers figures to be easily dropped in via a database or spreadsheet.

How Do You Sell Analytics Reports?

You sell the reports on the basis of making your customers life easier and how valuable your expert opinion is. You’ve had six or seven years experience reading these reports. You know what every little detail means and you can spot the bad, the good and the ugly. But best of all, your experience allows you to make informed suggestions about ways to improve their Web site during next months maintenance contract. They *do* have a maintenance period, right?

It’s as much about making your customers lives easier as it is about giving you a regular monthly income and extra business.

How Much Money Can I Make?

I ran the math on all this last week. Here is what I found.

Let’s assume you get two new customers each month. Or 24 each year. At the absolute bare minimum, you’re going to be bringing in $1,000 from each of these projects. You’ll likely bring in much more, but let’s start small. So that’s a turnover of $2,000 per month, or $24,000 per year from basic projects.

Now, let’s set some rough prices for each of the monthly contracts.

Maintenance - Although you’ll have several different packages, we can reckon on an average of $100 per month per contract
Web Hosting - Again, you’ll have many packages, but let’s say an average of $50 per month per contract
Analytics Report - I reckon most customers will happily pay $50 per month for this

Let’s determine how many customers will use a monthly service. After all, not all customers will use all services. Here are some rough but very achievable figures.

Maintenance - 10 per year out of 24 customers
Web Hosting - You’ll probably have a high conversion with Web hosting, so let’s say 18 out of 24
Analytics Report - I’m yet to take this to the market, but I think it will have a conversion between maintenance and Web hosting. Let’s say 13 out of 24.

Assuming we get those numbers, that means after 12 months we’ll be bringing in $2,550 per month from monthly contracts alone. Add your two monthly projects and you’re looking at a monthly turnover of $4,550 after 12 months.

Let’s try and figure out how much that will equate to after one year of offering the monthly contracts. Of course, as the months go on you’ll make more money each month as more customers signup. For the sake of these calculations, let’s assume we get all the monthly contracts as early in the year as possible.

I won’t go through the math because it was long and boring, but in an ideal world where you got all the contracts as early in the year as possible, in theory you could make $23,200 in the first 12 months just from monthly contracts. Add your $24,000 in typical project fees and you come out with a turnover of $47,200! Not bad for a freelancer’s initial 12 months.

If you’re not making use of monthly contracts and not treating them as an integral part of your business, you need to start doing so today! They’re a goldmine waiting to be tapped, and best of all, just as useful for your clients as they are for you.

Do you make use of monthly contracts such as the ones mentioned here? How much of your profit comes from these contracts? Let us know in the comments!

Others You May Enjoy

• Stepping in to Your Perfect Day
• When is the best time to publish on BloggingZoom?
• What Writing Interface Do You Use? - Poll!
• Blog Competitions
• Sneak Peak of Upcoming Posts & Link Love

I’m often fascinated by the amount of growth that blogging is seeing, and I’m even more fascinated when I think of the amount of people I’ve met during my years in the blogosphere.

Maybe it’s just me, but every six months or so I seem to find new waves of blogging friends. Back when I first started taking blogging seriously, I was a part of a bunch of close blogging friends who would often link to each others posts and chat on social networks. I’ve mentioned them before, but I’ll do so again because that first group was close to my heart. Jane May. Jeff Kee and Steven Welton, just to name a few. Then that group broke up. Some people sold their blogs. Others had a change in niche. And others quit blogging for no other reason than “they weren’t succeeding”.

But then a new group came along. And once again, that group fell apart as some bloggers grew in to other groups, quit or changed direction.

Today, the group of bloggers I tend to mix with are the likes of Sid Savara, Rowell Dionicio, Davina Haisell, Barbara Swafford, Hunter Nuttall and Cath Lawson. There are many other bloggers who I interact with daily and whose blogs I comment on, and indeed who comment on my blog, but those six bloggers and me all tend to comment on each others blogs. As much as I hate to imagine it, I’m sure this group will eventually go their own ways. (Sorry to the guys I just mentioned up there, I don’t want to imagine a blogosphere without you but past experience has shown me one of you will quit, two of you will become so successful you sell up and live on an island, and well… you get the idea).

So as I stop to consider all that blogging has brought me, I ask a simple question: How long have you been blogging? Please vote in the poll and also let us know your thoughts regarding the friendships you’ve built. Do you have a group you tend to feel closest to? Is there a person you see writing comments on all the blogs you comment on? Let us know in the comments! Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Others You May Enjoy

• Week 18 Round-Up & Comment Awards
• 6 Tips For Better About Pages
• Week 19 Round-Up & Comment Awards
• 6 Ways to Make Contact with a Blogger (Relationship Building)
• The Big Bad List of Motivational Speeches

This is a guest post by my recent Twitter friend and blog subscriber, Mike of Mike’s Life. Mike is a forty-something, married, father of two. He lives in the hot part of central Europe, and has been running a conventional business for the last eight years. He started his blog in December 2008 in the hope of staving off impending bankruptcy during 2009, and to start a new career writing for a living - something he has always enjoyed. For reasons which are apparent on the blog, he cannot reveal his real identity, but has promised to do so before the end of 2009!

Within reason, you can achieve almost anything, as long as you have sufficient desire to do so. We can talk about self motivation techniques; we can receive motivation from other people, but ultimately the overriding factor in whether or not we achieve our objective, boils down to how much we desire it.

The Lightbulb

Let me give you an example: Let’s take a product that’s simple and cheap - the light bulb. Everybody needs them and nobody desires them, so it’s a good one to use. You can sell my light bulbs for the same price as your local supermarket, and for each one you sell I will pay you a commission of ten cents. How many can you sell over the next 4 weeks? A thousand? Five thousand? If you’re an entrepreneur, I bet your mind is already buzzing with ways to maximize your sales! You’re also working out how many you need to sell to make it worth the time you’re going to have to invest in doing so. Even if you can sell ten thousand bulbs (and that would really be going some) you’re still ‘only’ going to earn a thousand dollars.

Now let me add a new dimension to this - your target for the 4 week period is 25,000 bulbs. But, I’m going to pay you a bonus of 20,000 dollars, on top of your normal commission, if you hit or exceed the objective. Already your mind is going into overdrive - you’re thinking about how many your family will buy, how many your friends will buy, hell, you’re probably thinking of buying a good number yourself! Confident you can do it? I bet you are!

Now the only thing that’s changed is the incentive, and because of that your desire has also changed. Your ability to sell light bulbs has not changed at all in the time it took you to read from one paragraph to the other.

What Does This Mean?

It means that in order to have a realistic chance of achieving your objectives, you need to create the necessary desire in yourself, and only you can judge what will create that desire. For some of you it will be money, for some it will be self respect and for others it will be the respect of your peers.

One of my objectives at the start of 2008 was to replace my car - it was four years old and was overdue to be replaced. But the truth is I’m kind of comfortable with it, it feels like an old friend, and every time I was in a position to do something about replacing it, I found a reason not to. I failed to achieve that objective, but I should have taken it off my list even as I thought about it.

So analyze each of your objectives now, and ask yourself how deep your desire to achieve it is. If the desire, and I mean the real, deep desire isn’t there, then ditch the objective, or seriously revise it.

What is it that motivates you? What is your desire? Is it money? A reputation? A good life for your family? Let Mike and the rest of us know in the comments!

Others You May Enjoy

• Vlog - And the winner is…
• Odiogo - Convert Your Posts to Audio
• 2008 - The Best Year Of My Life!
• Invigorating Yourself After a Stressful Day
• Round-Up & Comment Awards - 1st December

Happy Saturday friends! I hope you’re all doing fantastic, sticking to your goals and resolutions, and recovering well from the holiday season. It is a stressful time, isn’t it? All the buying presents, wrapping presents, cooking, party hosting, beer drinking, wine tasting and game playing. Wow. Sure sounds stressful. Or not. I wonder why we get so stressed at this time of year then?

It’s at this time of year when I just like to stop, look and think. I like to remind myself that we’re stood on something 4.54 billion years old, that is spinning at a rate of 30km per second (that’s 107 thousand kilometres per hour, by the way), orbiting something that is 96 million miles away that provides this thing called light, which, by the way, is over eight minutes old by the time it reaches us and comes from something that is 5,500 degrees C. Pretty unremarkable. Not. But we wake up each day and don’t seem to think anything of it. I often wonder how much we’d take care of it if the universe was in a bottle. Imagine that… It would be like The Simpsons episode where Lisa creates life. Or a crazy Christmas Coke commercial.

Anyway, as we go in to January I gathered it was time to set some new goals and take some time to remind myself of the lessons I’ve learnt in the final month of 2008.

What I Learnt in December

A lot of YouTube Videos Get Removed

My most popular post, thanks to the wonders of Google and some sexy search engine optimisation (I call it Bog Standard Good Web Design), is my 58 Motivational Songs which accounts for around 25% of my daily traffic. One of the things I pride myself on most with these songs is not just having a list, but having YouTube videos of the songs directly on my blog. There’s not a site out there with so many motivational songs in one list that has the videos included. However, this month I’ve found out far more videos get removed from YouTube than I initially thought. In December alone, I’ve had to replace approximately 25 of the 58 videos because they have been taken down for copyright reasons. As I type this, I’m going through the list and replacing the broken videos.

Unfortunately, I’m yet to find a WordPress plugin that can check for broken videos for me. If you’re a plugin developer, add this idea to your list.

If you use video from external sources on your blog, remember to check them each month or at the very least add a link under each video to your contact page so people can easily report broken videos.

The Best Time to Tweet

I tend to Tweet at a variety of times during the day. I’ll usually have a quick flow of Tweets in the morning when I get in the office, a few sparsely thrown in during the work day, and then a bunch at night as I relax.

During the holiday period, I’ve been awake later in to the evening than usual. Each time I’ve sent more than two or three Tweets between 12am-2am GMT (7pm - 9pm EST) I’ve seen a bunch of new followers get added to my ever growing list of friends. During one particular late night Twitter binge last week, 20 new people followed me in just 30 minutes.

If you’re at all concerned with that tiny piece of text that is labelled as “Followers”, Tweet between 12am-2am GMT (7pm - 9pm EST) and your Twitter ego will be rocking.

If you’re not already following me on Twitter, please do so. I like to think I post a lot of useful tidbits that simply can’t be made in to a full blog post.

I Lost Touch With the Community

Yes, that’s right. I’m admitting to not being a good friend and not repaying favours (although doing favours for the sole hope of getting a favour in return is not a good idea!).

I’m talking about blog comments. When I first turned to blogging as a semi-serious outlet for my musings, I would comment on blogs and try to build new relationships like there was no tomorrow. I’d often set my RSS reader to check my feeds every five minutes so I could be the first one to write a comment. But as my blog has grown and my post quality has gone up, I’ve slowly lost touch with the community.

An hour ago, I set myself a goal to write a comment on every blog post I read over the next week. I’m hoping I’ll slowly get back in to the routine of reading and commenting.

Just after setting my goal, a new post from ProBlogger popped in to my reader. So off I went to comment. Within five minutes of doing so, I had two new visitors come through to my blog and read my content and about page. Writing comments pays both in relationship building and blog promoting. Don’t forgot to do it, and don’t lose touch with the community.

It’s Impossible for me to Write 10 Guest Posts in a Month

Back at the start of December, I set two goals. The first was to reach 200 subscribers, which I did by reaching a high of 226. The second was to write 10 guest posts. I failed. I think I wrote four in total. However, it’s a lesson learnt which I’ll take with me in to January and beyond.

Posts About My Decking are Useless and Crap

Hey, if in the New Year you can’t have a dig at yourself, then what’s the point in living? I really should have put more thought in to my last post rather than rushing it before I started my New Year celebrations. Had I done so, it may have got a little more than “Zero Comments”. Live and learn. I shall never write about my decking again.

That’s what I learnt in December. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me. What did you learn, besides the fact that your Mother-In-Law is still a wolf and Turkey still tastes wonderful?

Goals for January

Many of you will have set New Years resolutions. I haven’t, because I don’t see January as being different from any other month. It’s just another month to me. Fortunately, “just another month” doesn’t mean I don’t set goals like it would for most people. It means I continue to set goals, like I do all year around.

Don’t take that the wrong way. Resolutions and goals are great, but New Years resolutions tend to be far too lengthy. “I vow to stop smoking for life”. “I vow to get fit”. There’s a reason 90% of people fail when setting New Years resolutions. Because the time frames are too long. And that’s why I only set myself monthly goals, and why you should too.

If you’ve set yourself a lengthy New Years resolution, break it down in to goals for this month. “I’ll ride a bike twice a week this January”. Then in February, “I’ll ride a bike three times a week”. By breaking those resolutions down in to manageable, measurable, bite-size chunks, you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

Another good idea when setting goals is to tell people and ask them to keep you accountable. To be kept accountable, you need to tell people who aren’t afraid to kick you up the ass or slap you around the head if you lose track. Like me. And that’s why I’m telling you my goals, because I just know many of you would love to slap me around the head. Possibly with a big fish. Or a knuckle-duster. I guess it depends how much I’ve annoyed you in the past.

Goal 1 - Reach 230 Subscribers by the end of January

Despite the high of 226 subscribers midway through December, I’ve been averaging 215 since then. Once again, I’m setting my subscriber goals low. Goals are as much about the excitement of achieving as they are about providing direction. The last thing I want to do is set a goal that is so high I don’t reach it until the last day of the month. I think a lot of the buzz and achievement from last month came about because of the low goals. While they were high enough to result in substantial growth, they were low enough to be achievable, exciting and motivating.

Goal 2 - Write 4 Guest Posts by the end of January

Taking a lesson from last months failure of writing 10 guest posts, I’ve decided to drop the amount down to one guest post per week. I also intend to try writing for a different blog or more than one blog so I can compare results. The results from writing for John Chow were good, but I suspect I can get better results by writing elsewhere.

Goal 3 - For Every Post I read, I shall Comment

This one was difficult to write because it was so hard to make the goal measurable. I was just going to say “I will write more comments on other blogs”, but there’s no measurement to keep me accountable. So I went for “every post”. I may not manage it, but at least I’ll give it a try. I’m looking forward to getting back to grips with the community outside of my own blog.

So there you have it. The results of my goals from December. The lessons I learnt in December. And my goals for January. Here’s to another cracking month!

What new things did you learn in December? What are your goals for January? Did you set any New Years resolutions? Let us know in the comments!

Others You May Enjoy

• How Long Have You Been Blogging? - Poll!
• Perth to Paradise - Support Young Jack!
• The ‘Best Comment Awards’
• We Shouldn’t Aspire to Work from Home
• The First Step in the Design Process

Stiff from the days frost, I struggled to slide open the door. But as I did, I felt the cold, frigid air hit me. And then a smell. A smell of a burning stove.

As I looked down the valley from my garden decking, I could see nothing but fog. Visibility down to less than a quarter mile.

The night was still. I could see a Christmas tree in the house over my garden fence, and the faint flashing glow of the lights in the window upstairs.

In the distance, a siren. That’s the only noise that penatrates this foggy, still night.

As I stand on my decking, I suddenly realise Winter isn’t so bad afterall. It’s just different. Much calmer. Much quieter. Much different.

So as we struggle to wake each dark morning, it’s time we take a moment to watch the day. Days are shorter, so you don’t have long to appreciate this calm, relaxation before once more long Summer days are on the horizon.

As you celebrate the incoming year this evening, take the time to stop and experience the moment. You’ll be thankful for doing so, I promise!

Others You May Enjoy

• Readers and Subscribers. Prospects and Customers?
• Quick Tip - Use Absolute URL’s
• Market Research Saved me $5,000!
• One Killer Interview With 10 Killer Bloggers - Analysis & Free ebook
• Blogging for Money Displaces Your Focus