Should I start a website maintenance business

I currently do website design but honestly I don't like working with clients and designing. I like coding. I was thinking maybe switching it over to website maintenance only. I saw a few sites out there dedicated to maintenance but I'm not sure if there's any potential.

Any thoughts?

 

Are you talking about just updating existing pages? Add and or remove pages? That idea.
Is there a business for that? I would assume that the people who made the site would also maintain it.

But I like the idea as well. I stopped developing sites long ago because it could challenging working with the client at time. But strictly, updating sites only seems like an interesting idea.

 

Unfortunately, you would still have to deal with clients. Unless you can just provide coding as a sub for a designer.

 

If you get the right client it could work. We work with developers who are constantly kept busy by clients but they have big sites. You couldn't get enough work from smaller clients I don't think, they don't change their site enough.

 

I agree, I would still need to communicate with the client but it would be so much simpler and I think most of the time I would just receive the instructions by email and proceed to do the changes. I currently have 1 client I support and I've never talked to them.

I think GoodRankings123 is right. My clients would be larger websites or websites built on a framework. How many websites fall in these categories? Lots! I'm a one man team looking to get 10-20h a week of work. I thinks that could be achieved easily. The hard part is getting your name out there.

 

I do web design as well and you're right that some clients can be the worst! I do have a few maintenance clients and it's a great way to go if you can get enough of them under contract. Allows for a steadier income as well. My best one is a massage school and I allow 3 or so updates every month, all minor things like calendar changes, etc... along with one big request (a new page) every 6 months which is the length of our contract. They pay $125/mth and usually pay the whole thing at the start of each 6 month period. Anyway, if you could get enough clients like that it'd be a great business. I'm in Hawaii so the local market for that isn't as big as it may be in other mainland.

The hard part is finding clients. Definitely different ways to go about it but I just started playing with the usps eddm option which delivers to every door in a given zip-code/sub zip-code for 17.5 cents a piece. Add in printing costs (which I've been able to get to 16 cents) and target business districts and your to the door for under 40 cents per which isn't bad at all. Might be a decent way to go about getting your name out. I've had some success with it so far.

 

Thanks for you input Jeremy. Your marketing idea sounds interesting and cheap!

I'm not exactly sure on how I want it to work but I've seen systems where you buy a request/month package sort of 5 requests/month for $100 then 10 requests/month, 20... It's not perfect. I could always charge per request but I prefer a stable per month billing. I could always have time packages 30 mins, 1h, 5h, 10h...

 

No problem. And definitely something to think about as when you do a request/month you need to take into account that some requests are larger than others which is where billing by the hour makes sense. However, setting some guidelines on how much a "request" constitutes could also be an effective way to do it. Just so long as you're not obligated to fulfill any "request" that comes your way.

 

Whatever you decide to do, you are going to have to deal with clients. I'm not sure how much potential there is out there for just maintenance. Most people that can't maintain a website already had someone design/code it and host it, and they usually use that person to perform the maintenance. I charge a maintenance/hosting fee each month for my clients and I perform basic maintenance under that fee which is great for passive income.

 

If you want to start a business, whether it is website design or maintenance, just go for it.
Start doing it. Because more you thinking more you get confused.
Whatever you do, ultimately you have to deal with client, so there is no reason to fear.
Have positive attitude