Web Design Business with Josh Hall

Ever wondered how to have time to market your business while still having time to get design projects done? Well, there’s no magic formula and striking the balance between the two is tricky. But a great example of someone doing this well is my dude from down under, word-class logo designer James Barnard. James follows a simple 50/50 approach. Meaning 50% of his work is dedicated to marketing (soci...

Building landing pages or sales pages that convert isn’t rocket science. But there is some science to it. Most of which is proven and can be learned from (and implemented) into your own sales pages very quickly. So, let’s cut right to the chase on how to create high-converting landing/sales pages with an expert who’s been around the block MANY times over. This is a chat with Alisha Conlin-Hurd who...

An unexpected topic of conversation I’ve consistently had over the last couple years when coaching members of my community Web Designer Pro privately is around managing ADHD and running a web design business. When thinking about ADHD, I’m probably not alone in immediately jumping to the visual of the wild 7 year old kid who can’t sit down in class. But since the conversation around this has become...

Many web designers don’t want to scale. I get it - because I had that mindset too. I never wanted to be an agency with overhead, payroll, extra stress from managing people, etc. But the good news is, especially nowadays, you can scale a web design business your way. In a low-stress, low-pressure way that works for you no matter where your business is in revenue and profitability. Sandy Burns, a fo...

Let’s talk about money. How’d that make you feel? Nervous? Icky? Excited? Opportunistic? Weird? The very thought of money brings a variety of emotions depending on how you feel about it. And I firmly believe how you feel about money today all goes back to your money story – and every one of us has a money story largely based on how we were raised. When you build a web design business, you probably...

No better way to kick off the year than to plan some new marketing strategies to get more leads and convert more clients, right? I honestly believe email marketing – along with some focused forms of content marketing – will be a HUGE differentiator for web designers who choose to go this route. Which is why I’m a big proponent and supporter of it. After all…as Abe Lincoln once wisely said “He who...

Happy New Year friends! I wanted to kick off 2025 with a special episode of the podcast to share what I learned from having two down revenue years (125k down from 2022-2023) to having the best revenue year yet in 2024! This episode is broken down into 2 main parts: What caused my business to have two down revenue years How I rebounded to having the best year yet in 2024 As I and many other entrepr...

For the last episode of the year, I think it’s only fitting to look ahead and share some goal setting tips for 2025! In this episode, I’m sharing a lesson from my Web Design Business Course on my 5 step, annual goal setting framework. We’ll dive into: Setting an achievable revenue goal  Separating Net vs Gross  Rocks, Stones & Boulders goals Pricing that aligns with goals  How and when to meas...

Since this is Christmas week, we’re going to take a break from talking about business and dive into a much more important subject…Christmas movies. I’ll break down my top 10, what I love about them, why some have remained in the top 10 and why some newer ones have made it and I’ll even give you a bonus which has an incredible business lesson that I’ve held strong to even today. In short, my top 10...

I’m in a bit of an SEO pickle… Since 2017 I’ve built up all my resources - including this podcast - on my personal brand site joshhhall.co but now that my main product (my web designer membership Web Designer Pro™) is on webdesignerpro.com I feel I’m entering new SEO territory. In short, what content should stay at my personal brand at joshhall.co and since all roads are leading to webdesignerpro....

At some point, most web designers dream of moving from lengthy, time-intensive, custom web design projects to a more “productized” or “templatized” web design service. Something that clients can purchase, that has clear boundaries, constraints and limitations. There are a lot of ways to go about productizing your offers - and one way - is to frame it as a program or course. Especially if you’re em...

If you’re on the shallow or deep end of the “introvert spectrum” spectrum, I’m guessing the sales part of web design is your least favorite part of the job, right? For some, going to in person networking, business meetups, chamber of commerce events or even calls can be energizing but for others, it’s draining. It is, however, part of being a web biz owner if you’re the one doing the selling… Ther...

Ah…the tug and pull between wanting to avoid being a burned out agency owner but also not being a stressed out, overwhelmed freelancer… Surely there’s a happy medium between the two? Good news, there is. My whole web business education model is focused around this hybrid approach to having a business that runs like a true business/agency but having the freedom and flexibility of a freelancer. Thou...

Copy, written by a human, with its flaws, oddities, and personally lived experience beats out corporate, stale, or AI-generated content every time. From home pages to service pages, to lead generators, blog posts, email sequences, and sales posts…the more personal and genuine you come across, the more it’ll stand out in today’s AI slop world. To help us get practical and tactical with writing pers...

Josh here with big news! Web Designer Pro™ 2.0 (tiered model) is live now!! 🎉 Up to this point, Pro has been one membership tier which gave full access to all of my web design courses, the amazing community and coaching with me directly with a member cap of 250 active members. We're closing in on capacity but the exciting news is...we now have two lower tiers available! Available in Web Desi...

The Web Design Business Podcast turns 5 today!!! 🎉 What a ride it’s been so far (and I have no plans on slowing down.) For this special milestone, I polled my community Web Designer Pro™ for questions and they delivered, asking some GREAT conversation starters. So in this special, 5 year anniversary podcast episode, I’m dishing out the longest AMA session I’ve done to date at 2 hours! The questio...

I don’t know about you…but I didn’t officially “launch” my web design business when I got started. I just kind of fumbled through starting my freelance journey. But if I were starting today, I would put much more effort and emphasis on creating an official “business launch.” Now to the big question…how do you launch a web business successfully? i.e. Get clients fast? Well, my guest in this podcast...

Let’s get real and share exactly how it is…WordPress is not the tool of choice for most web designers getting into the game today. It may be where most end up, because WordPress is the most popular, customizable, and only open-source platform online but as a starting point, it’s not where most new web designers are starting. Drag and drop platforms like Framer, SquareSpace, and ShowIt and even mor...

Clients don’t really want a pretty website…they want a 24/7 sales machine. You work hard creating beautiful designs that are built solid and have intentional messaging and copy…but how do you know all that work is paying off for your client? How do you measure results? How do you keep your clients coming back for ongoing work over and over again? Well, at the end of the day…one of the best ways is...

I recently published a newsletter sharing 5 ways I would get clients if I were starting out in web design today in 2024. It got a lot of great feedback from both early-stage web designers and established web designers looking for a revenue boost alike - so I decided to expand on these 5 strategies as a full podcast! We’ll dive into each of these strategies, how I would go about them and how I woul...

If you’re an established web designer, think back to your first year in business. What was your highest paid project? Aside from some exceptions, I’m guessing it was in the low-thousands…or hundreds. Well, Ben Forred, a web designer who’s still in his first year of business, building it as a side hustle alongside full-time corporate employment recently landed a $7,500 website package and in this p...

It’s been a little while since we’ve talked about accessibility on the podcast and one area we haven’t covered at all to this point is specifically how to make accessible eCommerce websites. Everything is more complex with eCommerce sites and accessibility, while complex even at the basic level, gets even trickier.  So, to help understand all of this, accessibility expert Bet Hannon (CEO of access...

You’ve heard of work/life balance…but what about life/work balance? What if, instead of prioritizing our work and living life around that, we set our calendars, schedules, and weekly routines to have our work revolve around our ideal week? As freedom based lifestyle web designers, that’s exactly the option we have available to us But it takes a proactive approach to make this happen, otherwise cal...

I’ve noticed a common thread among web designers who always seem to have no trouble getting clients - they’re easily ‘referable’ 🤝 It might be a niche, it might be a skillset, it might be something they're known for but in all cases, they’re easily referred to.  For example, here are some Web Designer Pro members who fit the “easily referred” bill: Want a web designer who also helps you with...

Web designers often ask me “how long will it take to get to 6-figures in my web design business?” And it's a tough question to answer. There are a lot of variables to how fast you can build your web design business. Your background, your time availability, your area of focus or expertise, your aversion to risk, work ethic, etc are all factors. But I can tell you, there are folks who go from z...