Welcome back to the 40th edition of The Lab Report!
We got lots to cover in this one.
How to get that monthly recurring revenue flowing so that you’re not building websites until you’re dead 💀.
A new browser that’s now freely available for download.
Some AI prompts that can help you build more personal, higher-converting websites.
And an interview that you should definitely watch on your downtime this weekend.
Let’s dive in!
This Week’s Sponsor
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💰 13 Recurring Revenue Streams for Web Designers
🚨 New NewPulse Labs resource alert. 🚨
You know the drill.
Find a client. Spend a couple hours drafting a proposal. Work tirelessly on a beautiful website that took longer than you estimated because of one weird bug. Send the final invoice. Start all over again.
You enjoy the work, but sometimes it feels like you’re caught in the hamster wheel.
When you stop building sites, your bank account stops spinning.
And the feeling of making $14k one month and $2.1k the next has you feeling a lil’ on edge at all times.
(And you’re not even a smoker 🚬!)
The flat-fee nature of web design has challenged us web developers for years.
But guess what? There is good news.
With a little bit of creativity, it’s not difficult to add a few recurring revenue streams to your web design business.
I want to emphasize on that last part.
“To your web design business.”
I’ve seen a lot of articles that suggest just packing on a whole bunch of services to your agency.
“Offer graphic design! Run their social media accounts! Edit videos!”
Those are all great recurring revenue models, but they’re not why you signed up to be a web designer.
Instead, I want to offer recurring income stream ideas that are relevant to you as a web designer.
After all, you want to stay in your zone of genius as much as possible.
So, wanna add a more steady, reliable flow of income to your freelance biz or agency?
I just put together a guide of 13 recurring revenue streams that can give you a little more stability.
You can download it for free here!
P.S. These aren’t one-size-fits-all. They’re meant to help your creative juices flowing. Play with each idea and think about how it fits into your skill set or the types of clients you work with.
🏄♂️ Arc browser available for public download
Yay, another browser to design for!
Luckily Arc is based on Chromium, so it’ll mostly behave the same way Chrome/Edge/Brave do.
Other than with their Boosts feature of course, where users can literally style your pages any way they want.
I know some people are big fans of Arc.
Even though I waste 7 hours a day trying every tool on the internet, I actually haven’t given Arc a go yet.
I’m part of the 4.3% of the internet that’s very happy with Firefox.
If you want to give it a try though, you can now download Arc without sitting on a waitlist.
*It’s only available for Mac Desktop for now.
🤖 Use these AI prompts to build more personal websites
From a web designer’s perspective, building a high-converting website is more than just good design and high page speed scores.
There’s a reason that roofing company websites look a lot different than high-tech SaaS sites.
A big factor in that is understanding WHO the actual users of the site are.
What are the problems they’re facing? How do they buy things?
Sometimes we have personal experience in a niche – and those sites are easier for us to build – but other times we’re just hoping something looks good.
Back in the olden days of 2022, understanding a website’s audience meant talking to actual customers.
But now in 2023, of course we have AI that can help us with the heavy lifting.
Chris Castillo from the Supercharge Your Agency Facebook group (who I’ve had coffee with!) just put together a pretty great list of prompts you can use to start your market research.
You can check out the list of prompts and an example output in his blog post here.
(P.S. You don’t need to use GPT Boss. You can run them with any AI tool).
💬 Closing Comments
That’s all for this week.
If you ever want to discuss any of the topics in this newsletter, I usually post a dedicated thread each week inside of the NewPulse Labs Facebook group.
You can also find previous issues of The Lab Report over at https://newpulselabs.com/newsletter.
BY THE WAY.
If you missed it from a couple weeks ago, Jonathan Jernigan and I did a live stream looking at Cwicly’s new game-changing components feature.
ALSO.
This podcast where Bobbi Althoff interviews Drake is one of the funniest things I’ve watched in a while. You should watch it.
Talk soon!
