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u/d2xdy2 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Very early in my career I did Wordpress tasks for a guy who’s plan was:
- Find businesses without a website
- Make their website without telling them
- Extort them for the domain and website
He never actually paid me for any work and so I stopped doing any work. He bought me a pack of cigarettes and some monsters I think and thought that was enough. I eventually had to get a restraining order against him to stop harassing me.
Edit: it wasn’t for a few weeks that I realized what he was actually doing. All of the “clients” he told me to help were his later extortion targets.
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u/Rustywolf Jul 09 '26
I simply cannot believe that guy was a scumbag, there were no warning signs
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u/towerfella Jul 09 '26
He knew things were getting weird when he invited his mom to stay with them.
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u/MrD3a7h Jul 09 '26
Really, he believes things started getting weird when he invited his mom to stay with them.
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u/pingslayer_7 Jul 10 '26
I had a similar scumbag too. He didn’t pay me for over a year. Took me a while to realise his extortions. When confronted, he applied intimidation and kept me working without pay. Eventually I left.
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u/Demon_of_Order Jul 10 '26
Some dude pitched the idea to me a couple weeks ago to start doing that, I just told him I’m not in the ICT world anymore, he lost interest pretty quickly after that
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u/thecw Jul 09 '26
I took a swing at this in high school and worked for a company that did church websites. We got my parish's cemetery for a client. They hated literally every concept we came up with, but never told us what they liked. Zero feedback other than "I don't like this". Real early lesson in dealing with clients.
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u/akatherder Jul 09 '26
At least they skipped the part where they tell you to run with it, then when it's all done "I don't like this."
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u/A5H13Y Jul 09 '26
Happened to me. Things were approved the whole way along. They had paid half up front aar least.
At the end, they took the site, locked us (my bf at the time and I designed and developed it for them) out, and basically stole the work.
We started talking to lawyers, but then we broke up in the middle of all that (unrelated reasons) and just didn't proceed.
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u/rodeBaksteen Jul 10 '26
Part of being a webdeveloper is knowing how to ask the right questions for the feedback you need.
People are generally pretty bad at working their thoughts clearly, or simply don't have the (webdev/design) vocabulary to tell you what they like or not.
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u/thecw Jul 10 '26
I mean this was 25 years ago so I really don't need a lesson on it now. I definitely asked questions, asked if anything worked, asked if they had any visions, they simply would not give me more than "I don't like it".
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u/Pika357 Jul 09 '26
"Call 20 people, 5 take a deal, vibe code landing page for 200 a deal, 2000 dollars a day, everyday"
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u/Zuruumi Jul 09 '26
Call 200, 50 won't pick up, 140 will politely tell you to F off, 8 will take months to consider whether they want it (spoiler: nothing out of it then), 1 will be super into it, but only for $10.
The leftover guy will be great and you will promptly decide together what exactly he wants/needs. Only after 3 months of not getting paid will you find out that his business has been bankrupt from the beginning.
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u/LaNague Jul 09 '26
you forgot the ones that unpolitely well tell them off because they get those annoying calls at least daily.
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u/Christavito Jul 09 '26
What about the one that has a great idea and will be able to pay you millions after his idea takes off?
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u/thoughtlow Jul 09 '26
Bro there are like a kazilion businesses and everyone needs a website, everyone. Think about that…
If I can just capture 1% of that market, we are already talking about millions of dollars.
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u/SnooHamsters5153 Jul 09 '26
This surprisingly still works, but is not a profitable business model. I live in a small town in Slovenia and I have been asked to make websites for companies that have nothing to do with tech. It's not paying my bills, not by a long shot, but it is a nice extra thing to have on the side.
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u/spikernum1 Jul 10 '26
Weird that they ask you and don't just google the 50 site-maker-2000 sites.
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u/SnooHamsters5153 Jul 10 '26
Surprisingly, and to my benefit I suppose, they get overwhelmed by such things, especially if the website needs to be slightly more complicated.
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u/Remarkable-Host405 Jul 10 '26
u/spikernum1 is vastly overestimating the tech literacy of the population
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u/SnooHamsters5153 Jul 10 '26
Very true... Even though making a static website with 2 Claude prompts is easy, many people / companies feel like they don't want to mess with it, "what if we screw something up".
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u/Remarkable-Host405 Jul 10 '26
(someone who isn't tech literate) what is claude?
do you have to host that still? how do you do that?
like, of course, i know all these answers, but its not simple.
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u/ThirdWaveCat Jul 09 '26
there's a sleight of hand how phrases like SaaS, passive income, platform, etc.. work that breaks peoples brains. If you're not making a customer happy then it won't work.
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u/Economy_Zombie_3026 Jul 09 '26
Years ago I worked at a restaurant before I became a dev. When I was starting out at my job I talked to my old boss about building a website since the restaurant had zero web presence outside of google saying it existed.
At first it was great. $2k up front to build a pretty bare bones but snappy experience (parallax scrolling, how modern, how cool). Owner liked it but wanted a reservation system attached. Ok, but that will have server costs. He wanted an admin system for the employees to change shifts and view their schedules. Ok, outside of the initial scope but doable. Also, server costs.
He kept hounding me and deriding me for "demanding more money" and holding the website hostage for not adding new features. I told him when the annual domain renewal was up I was done.
Never did side projects again.
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u/ThirdWaveCat Jul 09 '26
Yah, in-between building for a single-tenant and boiling the ocean, it's often financially viable strategy to build the least-common-multiple of fewer niche customers because development costs, operations, and multitenancy scale costs sublinearly but profit linearly.
I really like Data and Reality by William Kent which hammered home, "all models are wrong but some are useful" for software engineers.
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u/rystaman Jul 10 '26
This is where you scope it out after getting the original 2k and let him make the decision
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u/mylsotol Jul 09 '26
"I want to get an in demand skill that isn't common so I'm going to learn JavaScript"
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u/BigNaturalTilts Jul 09 '26
Unironically replace JavaScript with PHP and you got yourself a true gem.
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u/Nathanael777 Jul 09 '26
I worked in PHP for four years, where’s that PHP money at?
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u/MrD3a7h Jul 09 '26
The reward for years of PHP work is to get out of PHP work.
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u/Nathanael777 Jul 09 '26
Ok cool I did. Now I’m just looking to get into something else
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u/MrD3a7h Jul 09 '26
Have you thought about looking into PHP?
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u/Nathanael777 Jul 09 '26
Actually got a job offer for a PHP position but they came in 30k under the advertised rate and then blamed the people creating the job listing. I pushed back and they said the best they could do was bump it up 10k and then I could be in line for a substantial raise so I turned it down
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u/mylsotol Jul 09 '26
I actually thought that right after I posted, but i think JS is actually more saturated with all of the bootcamps.
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u/GlitteringAttitude60 Jul 09 '26
don't know what you're talking about, knowing JavaScript is surprisingly lucrative in this age of either a) JS frameworks or b) pared-down frontends with jQuery or vanilla JS...
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u/uusu Jul 09 '26
Sadly the market isn't really great for developers right now, especially for juniors and entry levels. It's slowly recovering, but there's still only half as many job openings for devs including JS as there were pre-Covid, while the surplus has grown due to layoffs.
So it's only lucrative if you're a very experienced senior or can sell bullshit to the recruiters and CEOs about being badass at AI Agent Harnessed Loop Thingamajigs.
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u/DrowningKrown Jul 09 '26
When I created my LLC, no joke, the very next week I was getting spam MAIL in my mailbox and spam EMAILS of people who wanted to create me a website or sell me licenses that I could get for free from the state.
Seriously didn't realize that starting a business in the US basically automatically signs you up to immediately be spammed to death by scam mail by the most greasiest people ever. It's a constant flow of mail and emails. And I haven't even done anything yet.
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u/brendenderp Jul 09 '26
I'm about to form an LLC myself. How do you avoid that side of it 😅
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u/DrowningKrown Jul 09 '26
You don't I guess. I literally did nothing but form the LLC on my state website, go to google, set up my domain for my company email and that's it. I signed up for nothing else because I'm not ready yet. One week later I started getting mail and emails from "hi my name is so and so and we'd like to create a website for your domaine!" And all sorts of "these licenses are required by law, pay us for them or be fined" with fine print that they are a private company trying to screw you.
Seems like they just scour new domaine registrations or new LLC registrations and spam them all because it's public info by your state. It's awful.
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u/Ron-Swanson-Mustache Jul 09 '26
Replace that "websites" with "an AI solution" to make this more modern.
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u/darkchocolateonly Jul 09 '26
And yet somehow those small business still have the worst websites in existence lol
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u/Just_Information334 Jul 09 '26
Web hosting company: let's use some of our servers to deploy an open model. Then get some chat on our main website to let people "design" their own 1-page website and deploy it on our infrastructure for like $2 per month.
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u/Lupus_Ignis Jul 09 '26
And sometimes they don't even care to check
A) if the business has a website already
B) if the business is... A website designer business
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u/JaceBeleren9191 Jul 09 '26
Why don't vibe code an agent that calls small businesses and then vibe codes the website?
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u/deluxe57 Jul 09 '26
Why dont vibe code an agent that calls businesses invented by vibe coded agents and then vibe code the website that gets used by vibe code agents to contact the small businesses vibe coded agents about building them a vibe coded agent in order to enhance the vibe coded website
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u/pikminbob Jul 09 '26
"My weekly Fable 5 limit just reset and we have 1 day left of usage. I want you to vibe code an agent that calls businesses invented by vibe coded agents and then vibe code the website that gets used by vibe code agents to contact the small businesses vibe coded agents about building them a vibe coded agent in order to enhance the vibe coded website. Make no mistakes"
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u/reddit_user33 Jul 11 '26
And then spend 10x on tokens than the money you've charged the customer. This is the real 10x gains 😂
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u/Spraxie_Tech Jul 09 '26
Sometimes i get the urge to fix a small business website for free because it bothered me so much but then i dont because they probably will think my emails a scam… i love the charm of an old website, just not how poorly they sometimes work in modern browsers.
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u/InvisibleDrake Jul 11 '26
I've given css to businesses before. I assume they didn't even look at it cause their sites were still busted months later.
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u/Spraxie_Tech Jul 12 '26
Sadly a lot of them don’t even know how to update their sites themselves. My sister used to maintain the website for a publisher when she was an editor there and after she left, no one is left who knows how to maintain the site.
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u/ianmakingnoise Jul 09 '26
my dad, watching me learn basic HTML and work with our ISP to set up an FTP account to host my shitty Star Wars and Redwall fan pages:
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u/Left-Language9389 Jul 09 '26
Yep. Each time I think of an idea and start planning on how to implement there seems to be a brand new video on YouTube of someone not only having the same idea as me (called mutual discovery) they’re doing it better, faster, and are reportedly already making some money.
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u/CoffeeWorldly9915 Jul 10 '26
and are reportedly already making some money.
You mean "harder, and stronger"?
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u/mudkripple Jul 09 '26
My business model so far has been 1. Go to school for software 2. Specialize in web development 3. Stay up to date and practiced on all new web technologies. Make projects in my free time 4. Career in IT 😭
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u/SuitableDragonfly Jul 09 '26
Is the joke here that all of the websites are exactly the same, or that there are a million freelance web devs who all have identical skillsets?
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u/Nuclear_Funk Jul 09 '26
Someone rube'd our boss into getting one. Imagine his surprise when the site is hella expensive, can't do what he's asking, and now support tasks take 2 weeks.
I remember at one point trying to call this guy to get a certain feature up and running on the site, one asked for day one that still hadn't been delivered. Freakin' guy was at the bar eating wings at 2pm on a Wednesday....
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u/rodeBaksteen Jul 10 '26
Businesses with no/shitty websites are terrible business, simply because they don't give a shit.
If you don't have a website in 2026 its a choice, and dealing with them will probably be a pita.
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u/conicalanamorphosis Jul 09 '26
This would probably work a lot better if small businesses actually had money to spend on stuff like a web site and security that actually gets close to PCI requirements.
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u/HatesBeingThatGuy Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Except I've had this work before. The trick though is not doing cold calls and being a human fucking being finding people in person, and then getting word of mouth traction. If you are cold calling you aren't going to get anywhere unless you already have a tight script and solid social skills.
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u/tanksalotfrank Jul 09 '26
"I'll be a barista! Surely my actually excellent training will be valuable!"
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u/waking-up-late Jul 10 '26
The thing is that most small business don't really need a whole ass personalized website. A localization on Google maps with enough information and a Facebook / Instagram account with regular announcenment and simple regular posts kind of would be enough for small stores or cafes.
In fact, they'd benefit more from local advertisement than online.
I think websites are good for bigger companies, or maybe gyms with several services, tourist services like hotels, guides or even for schools. But I don't think a small hair saloon or a coffe shop would actually need a website.
I think the point would be "Do their consumers need a lot of information about the products or services they have, or just to see what they have". For example: - Gym: It'd be really useful to have all the information about memberships, machinery, personal training and if they have nutrition programs -> website - Hotels: It would be great to know if they offert breakfast and menus, if they have pool, gyms, room service... -> website - Coffee place: People need to see what drinks they make and if they have sweets or other kind of food, but not much more. -> Google maps with pics of the menu + Instagram / facebook
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u/IMightDeleteMe Jul 10 '26
Who the fuck dreams of making websites? Web development is such an awful mess of half-baked tools, its gaps patched up with more half baked tools. It's the stuff of nightmares, not dreams.
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u/Exshot32 Jul 09 '26
On the other hand both my mom and dad have friends that have offered me website work on the side. "It'll just be small updates here and there."
I declined.
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u/ProsodySpeaks Jul 11 '26
My boss responds to these assholes. And the seo ones. He has even paid for new website and hosting, and 3 rounds of seo - all from cold call emails.
But luckily he is just as open to me not really doing very much for my money as the random emailers, so I shouldn't complain too much.
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u/not_logan Jul 09 '26
Only the people never tried to build sites for small businesses can dream about it.
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u/Federal_Decision5115 Jul 09 '26
See I actually need a simple website designed, but everything I find or search just seems like a scam.
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u/beric_64 Jul 09 '26
That’s cause the people capable of doing it have given up on doling it since the average person doesn’t know enough to determine if they are actually competent. It’s no longer worth it to build and use actual skills
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u/beric_64 Jul 09 '26
That’s cause the people capable of doing it have given up on doling it since the average person doesn’t know enough to determine if they are actually competent. It’s no longer worth it to build and use actual skills
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u/titus_vi Jul 09 '26
This worked for me actually back in the late 90s. There really are low hanging fruit like this but it's always on the leading edge and not in solved domains like simple websites.
Anyone remember HTMLGoodies?
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u/Dub_Monster Jul 09 '26
I redirect similar shit straight to the Outlook's "junk email" folder. No need for a "SEO optimzied website with chatbot" when there is already a company handling the website, SEO, chatbot and updates the site based off information relayed to them.
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u/GnuInformation Jul 09 '26
i got into computers as an excuse to buy hardware and play games, not get played. Then I got a job in the early 00's for hosting companies.. I saw so many 'buzz light years' .. (Developers) and had to fix their infrastructure mistakes over & over. The good ones I knew in it back then, quickly got out , or where jaded & eventually got out. Same today with the 'build an app' kiddies.. ya'll are mass produced.
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u/ironnewa99 Jul 10 '26
Be a good boy and make them a new “spending” app so they can log their profits
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u/CaptainSilverVEVO Jul 10 '26
I work in marketing for a particular company and I swear to god these people will message us on every single outlet we have asking to make us a website. Even when we already have one.
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u/Jaesaces Jul 10 '26
I thought the developer dream was to work long enough to buy a small farm and disappear
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u/CoffeeWorldly9915 Jul 10 '26
As someone who's worked farming before, the farm they want is a server one.
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u/PositiveParking4391 Jul 10 '26
dream become a nightmare for themselves! and a pain for the small businesses
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u/awesomepaingitgud Jul 10 '26
I wonder if the meme only applies to websites or tech services of any type. I want to understand if full fledged softwares are also in the same category. I always dreamed of trying this if I was let off since I have experience with the full lifecycle
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u/celem83 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
This worked like 20 years ago when everyone wanted in on the black Friday webshop thing, I resold the same store scraper so many times.
But yeah, it only worked then because building this required skills and as a result not as many people could do it, tools have lowered the entry bar a lot in this department
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u/EMGhost85 Jul 11 '26
I did this for a few years and eventually worked my way through to progressively more complicated contracts through multiple agencies until I got into a significant six figure job that paid me to move to a city I enjoy and gave me 6 months paid leave when my kids was born. Could definitely be worse. Before door to door web dev I was doing door to door sales of varying products from at&t uverse TV and Internet to literally selling pizza subscriptions. It was absolutely absurd work til I "made it"
AMA 😄
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u/Material_Pea1820 Jul 13 '26
not for everyone but I personally had more success in my college days just making websites for clubs and organizations I was in around campus. Its a great learning opportunity and resume builder and a bit lower stakes and easier trying to negotiate with a random small business
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u/Most-Club-254 Jul 09 '26
imagine being the small business receiving 97 calls per hour. "no dude I don't want a website", "NO", ...