Frequently Asked Questions

For now, it’s just my wife and I. As a creative, I genuinely enjoy my craft and don’t want to become someone who spends his days managing employees. I do have a network of folks I refer out to as needed – experts at their crafts (professional copywriters, photographers, videographers, graphic designers, ads managers, etc.). In these cases, I make introductions and act as project manager.

“Scaling up” usually means increasing overhead and complexity which increases costs and reduces quality for everyone. I’m very intentional about staying small and keeping things personal.

And if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I have a succession plan that will ensure our clients remain in great hands and that everything transitions smoothly. I insist clients have access to and retain ownership of everything website-related.

A book that influence my thinking here: “Company of One” by Chase Jarvis.

Side note: With the amazing advances in AI, I’m now able to accomplish even more in less time. So despite serving more clients than ever, I’m actually producing more, faster than ever. You might say my team now includes Claude, Grok, and Midjourney – among others. But please read my AI Philosophy note below.

Like many things in life, AI is a brick – it can be used to build a church or smash a car window. There’s a beneficial and morally right way to use it, and a harmful and morally wrong way to use it.

I think AI is amazing for assisting you with tasks. But I do not think people should be outsourcing their critical thinking to AI. Studies are already showing that overusing AI is causing people’s “creative muscles” to atrophy.

I also don’t believe we should be using AI for client communication. I will never use AI to compose or respond to an email. That goes against everything I believe about being human and having a personal relationship with my clients.

AI is one of those things (like smartphones and social media) that will make life more amazing in many ways, but has the potential to ruin life in many ways.

All that being said, I use AI every single day for all sorts of use-cases. It has saved me countless hours batch processing, debugging, editing, etc. Learning how to craft a prompt to get the desired outcome has been a lot of fun. Let me know if you have any AI-related questions.

PS. I highly recommend Claude and Grok over ChatGPT.

I refuse to charge by the hour. Hourly billing incentivizes waste – you’re actually rewarded for working slower. The client pays more for less.

Project-based billing incentivizes speed and efficiency. It forces you to create better systems and refine your processes. So I always bill by the project. You pay for results and I work as quickly as possible.

Whatever you need, we’ll discuss it and you’ll get a fixed quote up-front or you can refer to our pricing guide. If it’s not possible to give an exact quote for a complicated request, you’ll at least get a price range before I get started.

Of course! You’ll get complete access to your site and I can teach you how to make necessary edits. Some clients prefer this, others prefer to just email me a punch list because they know I can handle it faster than they can.

Absolutely! Most clients have someone on their staff who can handle the routine edits (new staff members, new photos, new blog posts, etc.). Then they’ll typically reach out to me when it’s something more complicated. I’m always happy to help.

Yes. There are a handful of clients that keep me on retainer for recurring monthly edits. These are negotiated and adjusted based on the volume of work to keep everyone happy. I also limit the number of these to keep turnaround times reasonable for all clients.

Yes. I offer enterprise-grade web hosting via Digital Ocean. I resisted getting into hosting for years, but most hosting providers have become so unreliable that I now offer it as an option for clients who want better performance and security.

Our hosting requires a Managed Web Services plan because maintaining enterprise infrastructure involves ongoing server management, security updates, performance optimization, and monitoring.

Pricing is customized based on your site’s traffic, storage needs, and security requirements – high-profile clients or sensitive industries often need additional protections beyond standard configurations.

I have been building websites on WordPress since 2007. I’ve also built the occasional Squarespace or Shopify website. But yeah, I recommend WordPress for most situations. I use modern, custom frameworks rather than pre-built themes.

Again for emphasis: I do not use pre-built WordPress themes or consumer-grade page builders. The vast majority of web designers and agencies use these, so you’re basically paying thousands of dollars for them to click “install” and then swap out the logo, colors, images, and text. It’s borderline criminal.

Every WordPress site I build is handcrafted using enterprise-grade frameworks. They’re difficult to build but easy for the user to edit. And most importantly, they’re scalable.

If a web designer pitches you a website built with WPBakery, Divi, Beaver Builder, or Elementor – run for the hills. These are not modern, professional frameworks following current best practices in web design. You will have a bloated mess of a website that’s impossible to maintain or to scale with professional consistency.

For websites hosted by third parties, I obviously can’t guarantee security. Your typical shared hosting environment is not recommended because your website is sharing a server with thousands of other websites. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. But pairing best security practices with professional frameworks, your website should be safe – even on a shared hosting environment.

Over 12 years and 200+ clients, only two have been infected with malware – and both times were because the client insisted on going it alone, they were on bottom-of-the-barrel shared hosting, and they failed to keep their plugins updated.

For websites that we host, we have systems in place that basically guarantee your website will be safe from malicious code or bad actors. This obviously requires that members of your team who access the website keep their devices up to date and use security best-practices (strong passwords, 2FA, safe browsing, etc.). A compromised computer can lead to a compromised website.

Feel free to send me your Google Analytics or Tag Manager tracking scripts. This will require a Cookie Consent banner – especially if your website serves an EU audience or anyone in California. I recommend using Termly (not an affiliate link) for these. They offer Privacy Policy, Cookie Consent, and Terms of Use generators. Otherwise, you should contact a lawyer to draft these documents.

You’ll notice I don’t have these on my website. This is for two reasons:

1. I think these cookie banners are ugly and annoying. It’s sad we live in a world where we have to click these popups on almost every website we visit. How many collective hours are wasted here?

2. More importantly – I refuse to track people using this kind of technology. I am against Big Data and believe strongly in digital privacy rights. I simply base success based on the number of people I help, not the number of visits to my website.

A privacy-friendly alternative is Fathom Analytics, which provides worry-free, GDPR-compliant analytics that protects your visitors’ digital privacy. This tells you how many people visit your website and what pages they view, without tracking them everywhere else they go or data harvesting.

Obviously this is a philosophical choice. The way I view things doesn’t have to be the way you view things. 🙂

Every site I build is built with SEO in mind throughout the development process as well as after launch. I stay current with best practices and bake them into every website I build. If you want to talk about specific strategies and campaigns for your unique industry or market, I’m happy to chat about it.

Keep in mind, SEO is an ever-evolving beast. What works today may not work twelve months from now, so it’s important to review things together from time to time. This is especially true in the AI-era, where LLMs are making some search traffic irrelevant.

There are companies that can justify spending thousands of dollars per month on professional SEO services. But those cases are few and far between and most companies should not be paying for SEO on a monthly basis. More than that, there are some extremely bad-acting “SEO companies” out there that will prey on your ignorance and gladly take your money to do nothing.

PS. I can also help your site get indexed by AI crawlers so it will potentially show up in AI search results. This is a rapidly evolving game (similar to SEO), but I’ve had some success with certain clients here.

I’m not convinced that every business should be wasting time and resources on social media marketing. For some businesses, social media marketing (and social ads) are absolutely crucial. I’m not the best guy to manage this for you as this is an art unto itself. But I know some experts in this space I can refer you to.

When it comes to things like email newsletters, we can talk shop here and figure out the best solution for you. For some people, this will be as simple as adding a Flodesk form to their site, and for others, I might recommend a platform like Substack instead.

Marketing is 100% context-dependent. What works for one business or industry could make zero sense for another. What worked 18 months ago might not be worth spending money on today. But don’t hesitate to schedule a call so we can chat about it.

Managing ad campaigns, generating paid traffic, and monitoring attribution so you can accurately gauge ROI is a full-time job and an art form, best handled by a seasoned professional whose 100% focus is in this space. I know people I can confidently recommend.

Rule of thumb: Never spend money on a “Google Ads expert” (feel free to substitute “Google” for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.) who does anything other than manage ads full-time. You want the person managing your money (ad spend) to be laser-focused on ad performance and ROI. You cannot afford to hire a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to ad spend. Would you hire a financial advisor who was a barber on the side? Same principle.