How I make $20k/month redesigning business websites

Running a web design agency is way less about design than people think. Most agencies fail because their process is terrible, not because they can’t build good websites. I’ve been on both sides. I used to manually DM businesses with no websites, explain why they needed one, build the whole thing in WordPress, send previews, follow up for days and hope they would eventually say yes. I was working nonstop and barely making consistent money. Then I changed the strategy completely. Now I only focus on 2 things: taking meetings and closing clients. Everything else is automated. I get leads from Apollo, Google Maps, basically anywhere I can find businesses with websites. As long as they already have a site, they’re a potential client. Then I run those websites through a tool for analysis that checks design quality, layout, SEO, mobile responsiveness, speed, branding etc. The flaws automatically get turned into personalized outreach. The important part is the campaign setup. I choose the quality threshold inside the tool so it automatically skips websites that are already too good. I also choose the email angle beforehand and almost always use “free redesign draft” as the offer. That one thing gets replies way easier than trying to sell immediately. Once someone replies interested, I book a meeting. Before the meeting I spend around 3 minutes generating a redesign draft with AI so I can show them what their business could actually look like. That changed everything for me because now I’m not wasting hours building websites before knowing if the client is serious. If they don’t close, I only lost a few minutes. If they do close, the draft makes the value instantly obvious and the sale becomes way easier. So now my role is basically just meetings and closing deals while AI handles most of the heavy lifting in the background. Sounds fake when I type it out but this strategy genuinely changed my life. Stack I use: Apollo for lead sourcing Swokei for website analysis + personalized outreach Claude Code for building websites Cloudflare for hosting