I absolutely love AMAs - so if there's anything I can provide of value to those of you out there interested in running your own web development agency, or just interested in the industry then I hope this may be a way of giving that. As well as a place to chat to others who may already run their own agencies. I've set up a new handle just for this thread, not that I'm a prolific poster elsewhere on 2p2, very few posts over the last eight years!

I own and run a UK based design, content, and development agency (not in one of the big cities.) We're not big by any stretch, around the same size as the majority of these type of companies. Bounce between 5 - 8 full time employees at any given time. The business has been around for coming up to ten years and has grown each year, turnover will be around the £300k ($415k) mark this year and been profitable each year. I do the sales, managing the workflow and the milestones of the projects. As well as all the normal 'running a business' things like the HR, finance, invoicing, etc.

Boring, I know, but I won't disclose the company here.

The bulk of our income comes from the web/software development, and that's an even greater bulk when lumping in associated services with a web development project. A very small percentage comes from clients who have not had their website(s) built by us. Generally if a client does come to us with a pre-existing website to manage, it is because they are going to have it rebuilt soon, allowing us time to understand their business before we do.

We work with some well known brands in the UK, some much smaller companies, some businesses in mainland Europe and a couple further afield. The sites we've built for them turnover £10m+/year. We've watched one-man-bands grow from their shed to a warehouse, watched other companies go from selling 50 holidays to 5000, and we've seen businesses come and go in that time.

As it's always the first question I get asked by anyone. A website from us will start out around £5000, we can build them for less, but we're busy and the project is more valuable to us (obviously) if the price is higher. Then they work their way up from there depending on the size, complexity, content work needed, etc.

Within our region we're one of the top three agencies who are always competing on the nice jobs. Lots of things are good with the agency, but that's not to gloss over the issues which anyone who's seen this kind of company before will understand. How to protect against under quoting, tricky clients, staffing, deadline management, providing a service of value to clients, staying ahead of others. All sorts of fun things!

All of our websites are WordPress based. Some are big ecommerce sites and others are simple brochure sites. It's what our developers are good at and it's what our clients want. No, we don't use off-the-shelf themes. I'm not a developer, so I can't go into any significant detail on that side of things, although I've picked up some bits and pieces along the way. Nor am I a designer, or copywriter, I'm someone who manages that whole process and (aims to) get clients what they want, and in turn create those valuable relationships between us and them.

I'm passionate about the value we can bring to other businesses, and thoroughly enjoy the process when that relationship can be built. Overall, I love what I do, there are frustrating days and weeks, the same as any other job. But it's an industry that interests me and I genuinely enjoy seeing a project go well for us and a client. Although we'll have wanted to kill each other a few times throughout the process I'm sure!

Anyway, I could keep typing for a long time, but if it's of interest to anyone, just ask away and I'll help if I can. If you're another agency owner or employed in one, say hi, it's always interesting to chat!

Isnt WP putting guys like you out of business? I mean, one can do some much with it, not only with the themes but also with plugins and etc. I mean, what is the typical age of your clients? Are they old and took lazy to learn how to client around the WP admin page?

On the contrary, WP is only creating more work for us at the moment. In the long term I can see our industry being eroded, as DIY builders become better and better. But that's not happening at the moment, unless you are at the very low end of website building.

In general what we see happening right now is that those people who are savvy enough to set up their own site, tend to do so while they're at a certain level. I'm thinking mainly about the one-man-bands, people either just starting out or their business needs nothing other than a three pager. Some of these people do this very well. Those that don't do it so well tend to be the ones who STILL don't see the value of online.

Once the complexity of the project increases, so does their need for developers as their knowledge (or time) is exhausted. The cost for them to hire in-house becomes prohibitive versus hiring a team like us.

They all love and want WordPress, because their ability to manage content, and to some extent play around with themes and plugins if they want to is there. Our clients are the type of people who recognise that they *could* do something themselves, but their time is more valuable than the cost of employing us to do something good for them, with all our experience, etc etc.

There are of course lots of examples of people doing good work themselves, but these people are outside of the norm in my experience.

Age doesn't come in to it, we've worked with some incredibly technically minded older people, and some great young people. But if there is one age group more likely to ring us because they've broken their website it's the young. Because they believe it to be easy without enough knowledge or understanding of how it all works.

You're paying 5-8 full time people on $400k in revenue? Are they local devs or managed from overseas?

All local.

The region we're in doesn't have the high salaries of London or some of the other big cities. And they are a mix of a couple of senior, working down to junior/graduates in their first roles and the odd sales person predominantly based on commissions. Sorry, it's not clear in OP, I don't think we've had a single year of eight employees for the full 12 months, maybe a couple of six month stretches then someone leaves or is moved on if they are not working out. So wage bill typically sits around the $220k a year mark. On a $400k turnover this leaves $180k, the other running costs come to about $70k per year.

It's taken me longer than I'd have liked to have got to grips with the staffing levels. So I would imagine that each time we've been to 8 people it's likely to have been that 4 of those roles would have been better served by 2 higher skilled people. But the flip side of being in a low wage region is there are far fewer skilled people around, so sometimes the gap just needs to be filled. It's something I'm working to try to sort out because the wrong hire is infinitely worse than no hire.

Actual 'open the door' costs for this type of business are great, rent an office, pay some bills, put some computers in it and you're set.