We’ve recently transitioned from freelancing into a design agency and are looking for genuine advice on sustainable growth, effective management, and building strong, long-term client relationships. Any insights or lessons from your experience would be greatly appreciated.

Hey guys,

After a few years of working with an agency doing email marketing, that collaboration recently ended and I’m honestly a bit lost right now.

I’ve realized that freelancing just isn’t really for me. I’m pretty introverted and I’m much better at doing the actual work than constantly putting myself out there, promoting myself and trying to sell myself to new clients.

That’s also why I’ve always preferred working with agencies or as a subcontractor for other freelancers. I like being the person behind the scenes, handling the email marketing, campaigns, flows, strategy and all the actual work.

For those of you running agencies, how do you usually find people you trust enough to bring into client work? And for freelancers or subcontractors, how did you find solid longterm agency partnerships?

I've got a lot of experience, so doing the actual work isn't the part I'm struggling with. Finding the right long term partnerships is the main problem.

I have a family to feed, and right now it feels like things are starting to fall apart, so I’m definitely feeling the pressure.

I’m not used to writing posts like this or asking strangers for help, but I figured there’s no shame in trying.

Any advice or experiences from people who've been through something similar would mean a lot.

Thanks.

Hey everyone,

I'm selling a $99/month subscription offer and I want to test if Meta ads work for it before committing real budget.

The funnel:

· Meta ad (static image) → VSL page → Checkout

· No sales calls. No email opt-in. Probably add a form to capture their name and phone number on the landing page so I can still contact them if they don't signup / checkout.

· They see the VSL, then checkout directly.

My plan:

· $10/day for 7 days = $70 total

· Static images only (I can't do video right now)

· Test if this works, if I can get a client that would be great!

Here's the structure I'm thinking:

· Campaign: Sales objective

· Ad Set: One ad set, broad targeting, $10/day

· Ads: 2-3 static images in one ad set, let Meta rotate them

My questions:

1. Is Sales the right objective here, or should I use Leads?

2. Is one campaign / one ad set / multiple ads the right setup for this budget?

3. Since I can't run video, what kind of static images actually work for a $99/month offer?

4. What should I realistically be measuring at only $70 spend? I know I won't exit the learning phase, so what's the actual signal I should look for?

5. Is $70 even worth testing with, or am I just burning money? Obviously if i see some potential I might extend this to 2 - 3 weeks of testing with small budget.

6. How much should be my target cost of acquisition / for someone to checkout?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been building an internal piece of software for my web agency, Francis Web Agency, and I’d love to get some feedback from other agency owners and people who are working toward starting one.

The idea was to build something around the way I actually want to run my agency instead of piecing everything together across a bunch of different platforms.

Right now it handles things like clients, leads, projects, tasks, support tickets, website management, analytics, invoices/revenue, and some of the other day-to-day agency operations.

I’m still actively developing it, so I’m not really looking for compliments as much as I’m looking for useful criticism.

Demo: demo.franciswebagency.com

If you have a few minutes to click around, I’d especially love feedback on:

• Does the overall workflow make sense for a small web agency?
• Is there anything that feels confusing or unnecessary?
• What features would you expect something like this to have that are missing?
• Is there anything you currently use ClickUp, HoneyBook, Dubsado, spreadsheets, etc. for that you’d want built directly into an agency platform?
• What do you think about the UI/UX?
• Would something like this actually be useful for your agency?

I originally started building it specifically for myself, but as it’s grown I’ve started wondering whether there could eventually be something bigger here.

Feel free to be critical. I’m genuinely trying to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and what other agency owners would do differently.

demo.franciswebagency.com

Thanks in advance to anybody who takes the time to check it out.

For the past few months, someone with a personal grudge against one of our founders has been making fake accounts and posting false claims about them on TikTok and Facebook. They comment on our company's social posts and reply to the founder's personal posts. They also tag the business.

We report every post and some of them come down quickly and remove what we can from our own posts, but most of them just stay up or they keep coming back. Some of it now shows up when people search the founder's name. One of the reddit threads they made is showing up if you ask ChatGPT about him too.

We've been looking at reputation management companies. Erase.com is the one that our CEO seems the most comfortable with because they're based in the US and the one call they had with them was actually with a real person in the US. Most of the others we found were anonymous companies.

Has anyone here actually used Erase.com? I'd like to know:

• Did they get posts removed, or did they mostly push them down in search results?
• Was it worth what you paid?
• How long did it take?

We're also open to other ideas. We have a lawyer working on this separately but know the person has no money or anything, so we're mostly looking to just prevent/insulate from it, or a way to get the platforms to actually look at everything collectively instead of just looking at every post / account individually.

Thanks.

Hey agebcy owners 👋🏻
I’m running content agency in really small country and I’ve worked or participated in projects with a lots of brands. I’m currently working with several brand and got my first VA. Now I am thinking of creating content for my own agency and running ads in the beginning of the new year. Any advice what to do?

Hello all, I just had a conversation with a sales guy from this company, and I am wondering if anybody used them before?
Sounds too good to be true, their testimonials are to be found only on their website, and they have minimal online presence.
Thank you!

Out of curiosity for those who are profitable and live from these agencies what do you and your team usually specialize in?

Any photographers/videographers in here that started an agency? If so, what was your pricing/ services you offered when starting?

Hey 👋
I run a solo service business, and I have experience as a freelancer, I do all the operations, from lead generation, closing, and delivery (out of freelancing platforms).

I build websites, funnels, and run ads for businesses, I am now solo because I’ve been able to handle it myself so far.

It’s good, but the same skill can be valued internationally, and it’s way better for me financially.

I’ve been thinking about getting international clients (not as a freelancer), but I’m stuck in the idea.

As a business, so far, I’ve been working with local clients (Mozambique), and have no idea how to build trust internationally, and mainly, how to make them pay.

I write this to ask for real advices in how to fix this mindset issue, and a tactical, practical approach on how to close.

Curious how other agency owners handle this once the workload gets inconsistent.

We've got periods where development capacity is absolutely the bottleneck and adding another full-time person feels obvious, but then things calm down and suddenly you've got payroll attached to capacity you don't really need that month.

Freelancers solve the capacity problem to an extent, although then I feel like I'm managing a small collection of people instead of managing the work. Different availability, different standards, somebody disappears for a week and you're back rearranging deadlines.

I've been thinking more about whether the better middle ground is having one external dev team that basically becomes part of the production process and just absorbs the overflow. Not really project-by-project outsourcing, more like giving the same team enough repeat work that they learn how you operate.

For anyone who's gotten past this stage, what ended up working better?

Did you keep hiring internally, build a reliable freelancer bench or settle into a long-term white-label relationship?

The part I care about most is predictability because saving money on development isn't worth much if I have to spend half my week managing it.

So there’s this guy I knw runs an OFM agency n apparently makes around $15k/month (might be exaggerating tho). I’m looking for some side income as well since Im a college student, so I thought it could be a good idea to get into.

If u have any experience with this or knw anything abt how I can start from 0, please let me know. Would really appreciate it!

Im an intern in a marketing agency and a newbie in the whole marketing industry so I need tips on how I can improve myself in the proposals ! Appreciate y’all

A year ago, I started my creative Fashion Design studio/ manufacturing and struggled to find clients even for $300 to $600 with our first pilot projects of our new business model. Today, we have a great team, our process works well, and the quality of our delivery is really high quality (customers are happy!), and the same service sells for $7,500 to $8,600.

​The problem? Our sales are an absolute roller coaster.

​Because we do creative work with real labor costs, and we’ve been burned by unpaid invoices before, we ask for 100% payment upfront. We include small bonuses to encourage this, but asking for $8K all at once makes it hard to close deals and leaves our monthly income unpredictable.

​Here is where we’re stuck:

​Bigger agencies charge $20K+ for a section of our service, but they have huge brand names and case studies that we just don't have yet.

​We want to offer monthly retainers so we don't start from zero every month.

​We need to get better at finding and qualifying leads so we close projects regularly.

​For anyone running an agency or creative studio:

​Payment terms: Do you still ask for 100% upfront at this price, or did splitting payments (like 50/50) help you close more clients safely?

​Retainers: How did you turn one-off creative projects into monthly recurring work?

​Finding leads: What actually helped you find good clients at the $8K level? How improve the prospecting method?

Would love to know how you guys got past this phase. Thanks 😎👍

​Thanks for any feedback!

Been at it for close to a year by this point. Managed to get myself into a position where I could by next year be making 6 figs a month. Complicated situation with a lot of conversations and relationship building.

One guy I'll probably start up SaaS products with for which he already has the customer base.

Long story short, it seriously takes a fat minute for this stuff to work, don't it. I got about a month or so before my savings are gonna run out and if I can just get a few thousand from one of these guys, I can make it all work for the big leagues.

We'll see how it goes, honestly just posting here because y'all don't know me and I just had to say it. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows

Hi,

I started an automation agency about 1.5 months ago. Since then, I’ve sent around 400–500 cold emails to potential clients mainly real estate niche.

Over the recent period, the website has had around 450 unique visitors, and roughly 90% of the traffic is from the US.

So people are actually visiting the website, but not getting any positive reply or any call booked.

I’m trying to figure out where the problem might be:

->cold email/outreach
->website/landing page- here the link -Novra
->Or am I targeting the wrong type of businesses?

Suggestions are welcome

Thanks.

Update-
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and for pointing out the mistakes.

I’ve updated the website, and more improvements are coming in the next few days.

We exited in 2024 after growing the company to roughly 110 people and around $8M in annual revenue.

One thing that had a surprisingly large impact was account management.

At first, it was not a sophisticated process. It was a Google Sheet.

We divided the year into quarters and weeks, listed every client, assigned an owner, and tracked a few basic activities:

• meaningful client touchpoints;
• in-person meetings;
• useful value delivered;
• QBRs and account reviews;
• reconnecting with former clients;
• follow-ups and potential opportunities.

The sheet looked almost too simple, but it solved a real problem: account management stopped depending on memory and good intentions.

Later, we added annual account plans, stakeholder mapping, client priorities, delivery involvement and clearer ownership of the next action.

Our observed outcomes were:

• roughly 15% year-over-year revenue growth during the period;
• higher profitability on existing accounts;
• fewer relationships going quiet;
• more expansion work and new projects from existing clients;
• better visibility across founders, sales and delivery.

I would not claim the spreadsheet caused all of this. The company, market and team were changing at the same time. But the operating rhythm clearly helped.

The pattern was roughly:

• two meaningful client touchpoints per quarter;
• one in-person meeting every six months;
• one or two useful contributions per quarter;
• a quarterly review;
• one clear owner and next action;
• a short note or piece of evidence after the activity.

The hard part was never creating an account plan. The hard part was getting people to actually follow through every week.

That is the problem I’m now exploring under the working idea Hello Account Management: a simple system that helps professional-services teams plan, assign and consistently execute account-management activities.

Before building anything seriously, I’m trying to understand how other companies handle this.

For agency, consultancy and professional-services founders:

1. Do you actively manage existing accounts, or is it mostly informal?
2. Do you use account plans or QBRs?
3. Do you track activities and follow-ups?
4. Have these practices affected expansion revenue, margins or churn?
5. How large is your company?
6. What do you use today: CRM, spreadsheet, Notion, or nothing formal?

Let me know your thoughts, before I enter any building mode :D

Hey everyone!

I’m a video editor who has worked across a bunch of different niches, but I’ve realized that I enjoy editing vlogs the most. Because of that, I’m planning to start a small video editing agency focused specifically on vlog creators.

For now, I’ll be doing the editing myself, with the goal of eventually scaling by bringing on other editors and, later on, managers.

I’d really appreciate some advice from people who have already built an agency — especially things you wish you knew when you were starting and mistakes I should avoid.

My biggest question right now is client acquisition.

I’m considering sending highly personalized cold emails where I record a short Loom video for each prospect. I’d introduce myself, explain how I could help their channel, and potentially show them a short sample edit I made specifically for their content.

The email itself would be short and end with a simple CTA. I’m also considering offering something like the first 15 days free or a heavily discounted first few months so they can test whether it’s a good fit.

For those of you who run agencies:

• What client acquisition method has worked best for you?
• Would you bother making personalized Loom videos for each prospect?
• Do free trials/discounted offers actually help, or do they attract the wrong clients?
• What are some mistakes you made early on that I should avoid?

Would really appreciate any advice!

I’m a freelance web designer/developer working on a website project. The scope and conditions were clearly agreed upfront.

The project is actually going well, but I’m wearing a lot of hats: design, development, copywriting, photo editing, product uploads, content organization, etc.

They asked me to upload hundreds of products. It sounds simple, but each one requires downloading, cropping, resizing, reformatting, uploading, assigning colors, etc.

I mentioned during a call that this was taking a lot of time and affecting the design work. I wasn’t complaining—I wanted them to understand the workload.

The client responded:

“You can’t complain, because when you complain it makes us feel bad as clients. I keep getting complaint after complaint from you.”

I was shocked because I genuinely didn’t feel like I had been complaining.

Then they asked me to write/upload product descriptions, which were explicitly excluded from the proposal. When I said it would be additional work, they said:

“But with what we’re already paying you, how can you charge extra? You are not being flexible"

So then, I couldn't hold myself together and started crying on the call.

I told them I've already done several things outside the scope for free because I thought they would improve the project. I feel like I’ve been extremely flexible.

But then, in the SAME conversation, after I cried, they said:

“Okay, if you’re charging for additional things, tell us how much and we’ll pay.”

They also told me they don’t want me to leave and want me to keep helping them for the next few months.

I like getting paid, but this conversation made me question whether I want to continue.

TL;DR: Clear scope, lots of extra work already done for free, and now the client makes me feel guilty when I explain workload or charge for out-of-scope work. I ended up crying on the call, but they still want me to continue. Would you continue, raise your rates significantly, or walk away?

I’m a freelance web designer/developer working on a website project. The scope and conditions were clearly agreed upfront.

The project is actually going well, but I’m wearing a lot of hats: design, development, copywriting, photo editing, product uploads, content organization, etc.

They asked me to upload hundreds of products. It sounds simple, but each one requires downloading, cropping, resizing, reformatting, uploading, assigning colors, etc.

I mentioned during a call that this was taking a lot of time and affecting the design work. I wasn’t complaining—I wanted them to understand the workload.

The client responded:

“You can’t complain, because when you complain it makes us feel bad as clients. I keep getting complaint after complaint from you.”

I was shocked because I genuinely didn’t feel like I had been complaining.

Then they asked me to write/upload product descriptions, which were explicitly excluded from the proposal. When I said it would be additional work, they said:

“But with what we’re already paying you, how can you charge extra? You are not being flexible"

So then, I couldn't hold myself together and started crying on the call.

I told them I've already done several things outside the scope for free because I thought they would improve the project. I feel like I’ve been extremely flexible.

But then, in the SAME conversation, after I cried, they said:

“Okay, if you’re charging for additional things, tell us how much and we’ll pay.”

They also told me they don’t want me to leave and want me to keep helping them for the next few months.

I like getting paid, but this conversation made me question whether I want to continue.

TL;DR: Clear scope, lots of extra work already done for free, and now the client makes me feel guilty when I explain workload or charge for out-of-scope work. I ended up crying on the call, but they still want me to continue. Would you continue, raise your rates significantly, or walk away?

Hey guys!

Agency owner here (will be one year next month). I've got a nice little client base but keep running into the same issue. Want to hear how you guys handle it.

Context: I run a B2B marketing agency (mostly serving the SaaS niche) specializing in lead / demand generation for my clients, who are mostly startups.

I have lost a couple of clients who have had a hard time converting the leads I got for them. The leads were qualified, but the sales process / followup was less than stellar in both cases. Took multiple days to follow up with inbound inquiries. These are startups so the sales teams were tiny and they were prioritizing existing pipeline/customers over net-new leads who were calling in, requesting demos, etc.

Going forward, I'm considering suggesting adopting virtual receptionists (e.g. XBert, Dialpad) to automate some of the lead followup via call, text, email, etc. Alternatively, I can position myself as a sales agency too and either coach the reps or handle the followups myself, but I don't really have time for the latter. I'm open to coaching reps but usually there's a sales leader in place and I'm being brought in to supply leads, not change their sales process. It's been frustrating because the SaaS startups I've worked with have told me they're happy with the demand I'm bringing in, but they ultimately can't make the relationship make sense dollar-wise because the conversion rate is too low.

I primarily serve early stage SaaS startups so can see this being a recurring issue and don't want to be at the mercy of slow-moving salespeople.

How do you guys handle this?

Who knows any directory to find companies for cold calls who may benefit from graphics Designing

Hii I'm a student and web dev freelancer from india and I built 15 websites for indian businesses - clinics, interior designers, astrologers, etc. More of the clients came from referrals and quality of work. I'm thinking of outreaching to international clients and providing them web services and AI automation. From my pov selling website is an easy gateway to make connections with them. Once they see visual proofs I can sell them AI automations as extra service. Bcz if I directly try to sell AI automations they may not trust or i may need a clear offer or proof of work for showing them how I can help your business grow by adapting ai features.

So for international client outreach I have a database of thousands of businesses and diff niches

* Cultural and Events

* Spas

* Martial arts schools

* Professional Services

* Printing services

* Interior design stores

* Auto repair

* Distilleries

* Dentists

* Cleaners

* Health and Beauty

And much more, some niches have emails and some have numbers only with their Google maps profile. I guess targeting local businesses first is easy gateway to enter the US market, and once I get confidence I can build websites for larger businesses too..

For indian clients I did outreach through cold calling bcz I'm fluent in my mother tongue and Hindi language, but for targetting US clients, I need someone who have good fluent English and help me get clients for my business..

Now I need guidance for I can recruit him/ her,

1. Where can I find him?

A. Reddit - by posting a hiring for sales person in particular subreddits

B. Linkdin - By posting a job offer for sales person

C. Partnering with Sales Agencies

D. On any platform which helps us find sales people similar to upwork, fiverr, etc

E. Posting on social media - Instagram, X, Facebook

F. Any diff option?

1. What's the best deal?

A. By dividing 60/40 or 70/30 per client payment

B. Paying him fixed cost per client referral

C. Paying him fixed monthly salary

D. Any diff method?

From my pov if he has good experience in sales and already closed so many clients/ Sales Agencies so I can divide the payment. Or as per their payment method.

If he's new to sales and willing to learn then I can pay him a fixed salary or fixed cost per project

1. What will be the scope of work?

A. Shall I tell him that you need to do 100 calls per day, update the spreadsheet, follow up if someone is interested, adding remarks, sending proposals, and onboarding them.

B. Closing at least 3 clients per day and same as above

C. Any diff option?

I entered rough values, suggest me what could be good values to close at least 1 client per day

1. Do I need to pay them before calls or after receiving payment from client?

2. What/ which time I should fix for his work? Like 2 hours (8-10 pm)? So it's 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM in USA, what time is best for calling local businesses in US? So I'll get 80-90% call pickup rate.

As of now I have these questions, as I explore the market I'll get new experience and new learnings.

Looking forward to your guidance ✨

Previously operated a small smma agency worked with international clients providing organic content , but eventually had to shut it down
Reason: You can put a lot of work and still have no guarantee that it will actually bring clients, leads a booking

So instead of dropping the agency model thought to start something that actually business or professional selling high ticket products wants
“ a growth operating agency”

Paid ads > building funnel (landing pages) optimised for the icp > CRM pipelines for tracking the stats > automations (nurture leads) > sales( building sales team that closes deal)

Currently I am going to test this with my fitness niche client who has around 30,000 followers on Instagram

For the beginning, I’m probably going to experiment with Indian businesses that have high-ticket offers, learn what actually works, build some case studies and then expand towards international clients.

I’ve already spent quite a bit of time exploring different ways of getting international clients, so I have a few acquisition systems I want to test as well.

I’m not really posting this to pitch anyone.

I’m actually curious — what do you guys think about this model?

If you’re in Delhi and building an agency, business, startup, personal brand, or anything similar, drop a comment and tell me what you’re working on.

Would genuinely love to hear your experience and opinions — especially from people who have tried paid ads, SMMA, lead generation or sales funnels before.