Where web design leads actually come from
Seven sources of web design leads, ranked by what they cost and what they convert, and an honest account of why the cheapest ones are cheap.
Last updated
Every web designer eventually discovers that building websites is not the job. Finding people who will pay for websites is the job, and it is a completely different skill that nobody teaches alongside the first one.
What follows is a comparison of the seven places web design work actually comes from, with an honest account of what each costs. There is no best one. There is a best one for the stage you are at, and the usual mistake is reaching for a slow compounding channel when you need money this month, or grinding a manual channel forever when you should have started compounding two years ago.
1. Referrals
Converts best. Cannot be turned on.
A referred lead arrives pre-trusted, rarely price-shops, and closes in one conversation. Everyone knows this. The problem is that referrals are an output of having done good work for people who talk to each other, which means they are unavailable precisely when you need leads most: at the start, and after a quiet quarter.
The one lever worth pulling: ask, explicitly, at the moment the client is happiest, which is the week after launch and not three months later. “Who else do you know running something like this?” asked once, at the right moment, produces more than any amount of hoping.
2. Cold outreach to businesses with no website
Slowest per lead. Fastest to first money.
This is the channel available on day one with no audience, no portfolio and no budget, and it is the reason this site exists. A business with no website has a problem you can describe in one sentence, no incumbent to displace, and no committee.
The work is finding them, and doing it accurately, because most lists of “businesses with no website” are wrong in three specific ways, which is a subject of its own. Once you have a real list, the constraint is entirely your willingness to keep going. Nearly everyone who fails here fails by stopping, not by having the wrong script.
3. Local SEO for yourself
Free, compounding, and slow enough to be useless right now.
Ranking for web designer in [town] produces leads who are already looking, which is a completely different conversation from cold outreach. It also takes months to years, and the term is contested by every agency in your area.
Worth starting early precisely because it is slow, and worth being realistic that it will not pay for anything this quarter. The version that works fastest is narrow: not web designer in Leeds but websites for plumbers in Leeds, which almost nobody is competing for and which describes exactly one kind of buyer.
4. Paid ads
Works next week. Costs money and rewards patience you may not have.
Search ads for high-intent terms reach people actively looking. The economics are unforgiving for a freelancer: clicks on commercial terms are expensive, the learning period costs real money before it tells you anything, and a small budget spread across broad terms buys noise.
If you use them, go narrow and local. A tightly geo-fenced campaign on one specific service for one specific trade will outperform a general one at a fraction of the spend, because you are no longer bidding against agencies with a budget you cannot match.
5. Marketplaces and lead-gen platforms
Immediate volume. Structurally bad economics.
Upwork, Fiverr, Bark, PeoplePerHour and similar have buyers on them today. They also sell the same lead to several of you, put you in a bidding war by design, and attract buyers selecting on price, which is the one dimension you cannot win on and should not want to.
There is one genuinely good use for them: if you have never had a sales conversation, they will give you twenty of them in a fortnight. That is a real education, cheaply bought. Just do not mistake the education for a business.
6. Partnerships with adjacent trades
Underrated, and almost nobody does it properly.
Accountants, bookkeepers, printers, sign-writers, photographers, VAs and business coaches all talk to small business owners weekly, and none of them build websites. Every one of them has a client who has just said “I suppose I need a website” and been met with a shrug.
One reliable referral partner is worth more than a hundred cold calls a month, and costs one coffee to establish. The reason it is underrated is that it feels like nothing is happening for the first few months, so people abandon it just before it starts working.
7. Content and audience
The best long game. Not a lead source for at least a year.
Writing publicly, posting the work, building an audience in a niche. This eventually produces inbound leads who arrive already convinced, which is the most pleasant version of this business. It also produces essentially nothing for a long time, and the people who recommend it loudest are usually describing the top of a curve they climbed years ago.
Start it. Do not fund this quarter on it.
Putting them in order
The channels differ mainly on two axes: how fast they pay, and whether the effort compounds.
- Pays fast, does not compound: cold outreach, marketplaces, ads. Every pound and hour buys one result and then stops.
- Pays slowly, compounds: SEO, content, partnerships, referrals. The work you did last year is still working.
The only sane strategy is to run one from each column at once, funding the present with the first and the future with the second. The failure mode is picking exclusively from one. All fast channels means you are still cold-calling in year five. All slow channels means you run out of money in month four.
Where to start if you are starting today
Pick one trade you can plausibly claim to understand. Screen your own town for businesses in that trade with no website. Call thirty of them this week, and thirty next week, and note what people say rather than what you said. Somewhere around the fortieth call you will stop sounding like someone reading, and that is the point at which the numbers become real.
Meanwhile, buy the coffee for one accountant.
Screen your area to see what is actually there, or read what to say when you call.
Common questions
How many leads do I need to get one client?
For cold outreach to local businesses with no website, a workable planning figure is 100 contacts to 20 conversations to 2 or 3 jobs, and it will be worse than that while you are learning. The number that actually matters is not the ratio but the volume you can sustain weekly without stopping. Almost everybody who fails at cold outreach fails by stopping in week three, not by having a bad script.
Are paid lead marketplaces worth it?
Occasionally, for a specific reason: they teach you what a buying conversation sounds like, quickly, which is worth something when you have never had one. As a business model they are poor: you pay per lead, the same lead is sold to several competitors, and the buyer is price-shopping by design. Use them to learn, not to build on.
Should I niche down?
Yes, and sooner than feels comfortable. A generalist has to re-earn credibility on every call. Someone who has built eleven sites for barbers can open with what the other ten did about online booking, name the objection before it is raised, and reuse most of the build. The narrower you go the less competition you have and the more you can charge, which is the opposite of what it feels like it should be.
Is cold email or cold calling better for local businesses?
For a local business with no website, calling. The owner is often the person answering the phone, they are used to being called by customers, and you can tell in twenty seconds whether it is worth continuing. Email to a small local business tends to reach an address nobody reads, or a contact form that goes to the same place. Where email wins is volume and record-keeping, so use it to follow up a call, not to replace it.
How much should I charge a business that has never had a website?
More than you are about to. The common mistake is pricing against what the build costs you rather than what the absence costs them. A trade business losing two jobs a month to a competitor who is findable is losing far more annually than any reasonable build price. Price the outcome, quote one number, and stop talking.
B2Website, at B2Web.site, screens any area for local businesses that have no website and returns them with rating, review count and phone number. More about B2Website.