Forgive me if this sort of content is frowned upon, but I'm sure I've seen posts like these before in here.

About me:

Spent the past six years freelancing, mainly as a copywriter but also building WordPress websites for small businesses, setting up social media profiles, doing all the usual stuff that freelancers can offer to small businesses with less tech/marketing savvy owners.

At some point, I got really worn down with this career and opted for a change. I went back to school and started studying to become a counsellor/therapist.

The problem I found:
As I began training and immersing myself in this world, I actually found two problems:

1. Poor quality websites
   In doing research for assignments and for my future career, I found that a lot of therapists, particularly here in the UK, don't have very good websites. My tutor's website, for example, looks like it was built on Microsoft Frontpage about thirty years ago and hasn't been updated since.
   Sadly, this is the norm rather than the exception.

A lot of counsellor's sites are clunky, don't work well on mobile and look/function awful.

1. High cost of starting a private practice
   I've been involved in several online communities in which trainee and recently graduated counsellors come together. Often, one of the biggest complaints I see is how expensive it is to start a private practice. After renting a room and getting insurance, there's hardly anything left over for websites and marketing materials.

​

I suspect that part of the reason that there are so many poor-quality websites out there is that newly-qualified therapists are trying to build their own websites to save money and are sacrificing quality in the process.

​

The solution I came up with:
Simple, right? High-quality/low-cost websites, sold as a package which helps counsellors establish a web presence quickly and easily.

However, I don't just want to be another 'guy who does bespoke WordPress websites,' albeit one targetting a very specific niche.

Here's my plan:
1. Using premium, paid-for themes, build four high-quality WordPress demo sites that will act as templates. These templates must be better than the usual free WordPress themes and must be much better than what someone with no experience could make on Wix/Squarespace etc.

1. Have customers pick a template and send me their content. Offer an upsell that I can also create content for them if they need it.

2. On receipt of content, drop it into template, turn the whole thing around in 24 hours.

3. Charge a monthly fee with no minimum contract and multi-tier options, so say for £8.99 per month you get a three-page website with a contact form, for £14.99 per month you get five pages and a blog you can update yourself, for £24.99 you get all of the above plus some kind of online booking/eCommerce tool.

4. Offer upgrades, add-ons and upsells, so I can also set-up your social media, write blogs, even create a bespoke website.

​

What I hope to achieve:

This isn't going to be my main job/business, it's more of a side-gig in which I hope to use my existing skills to solve a problem in an industry that I've become very passionate about.
By offering no minimum contract, I hope to remove the barrier that lots of recently-graduated therapists have that setting up a web presence needs to be expensive. They pay £8.99 for their first month (plus money for a domain name) and get a website set-up quickly. They then have a full month to land a client and come up with another £8.99 etc. It just makes it very affordable to get set-up.

By populating pre-designed templates, I'm able to get people online much faster than if I had to do a bespoke design for every new customer. Like if you have your content ready, you can literally get a new website up and running within 24 hours.

By making sure these templates are of exceptional quality and function well on all devices, I offer those with no experience a better option than going the DIY route w/ Wix/WordPress etc.

Costs etc.

I've used discount codes to get two .com domain names for £1.99 each for 12 months. That'll give me 12 months to see if I can get this project off the ground.

Currently paying £4.99 per month for web hosting on which I'll be hosting my main site/landing pages.

Looking into VPS options to host clients websites. I've found deals for £9.99 per month.

I'm still yet to factor in marketing costs, but with those prices I figure I can at least break-even pretty quickly with just a few clients.

​

Your thoughts/feedback

Admittedly, I've gone straight into this with only minimal feedback (my counselling tutor and others I've spoken to admit that there are problems with establishing a website and that they'd welcome a better option), so I'd appreciate if anyone with an entrepreneurial head on their shoulders could offer brutal feedback.

Many thanks.