Learned This Skill In His Car, Now Earns $100,000+

A question on Reddit…

Web developers that often build websites for more than $5,000 a piece, what does your business look like?

💬 Which prompted a response from Ryan Postell…

I started out by teaching myself web development in my car while I did Uber.

In between rides I was coding and watching tutorials and doing online self paced bootcamps.

After about a year and a half of that I got good enough at it to start freelancing.

And here I am 5 years later with a full time front end developer job and I run my agency that makes 6 figures a year working it part time.

Looks like Ryan’s agency is Oak Harbor Web Design.

How he gets clients…

In the beginning I just cold called from google and yelp. Then after about 30-40 clients the referrals started to come in and my website was ranking well locally. Now I get all my work from my website and referrals.

Btw, Oak Harbor is a small city in Washington, USA. Population ~25,000 🇺🇸

By naming his business the way he did and building up a bit of a reputation, Ryan now ranks #1 for keywords like web design oak harbor.

He also has this article ranking #1 for hand coded website 😎

Yes, Ryan hand-codes client websites rather than using something like WordPress. He says the appeal of a hand-coded site is the speed and security.

He adds…

I made my own templates in HTML and CSS that I reused for clients whose business suited the design. This cut my work dramatically. Why reinvent the wheel?

Regarding pricing, Ryan reveals…

I sell static brochure sites for $3500. 5 pages. Every page after that is $100 per page. $500 fee to add a blog. Shopify e-commerce sites start at $8k…

Here’s an example of an $8k site: madscientistbbq.com

An example of a $6k site: striveptwellness.com

And a $3500 site: realdealpainting.net

Really impressive how Ryan went from driving an Uber to now having a thriving web design business, all thanks to those skills he learned between rides 💪

What skill could you start building in your spare time?

Even if it’s only 30 minutes a day, that adds up to 182 hours in a year. Enough time to go through a few courses and get good enough to start taking on simple client projects.