Your website might already be built. You just haven't seen it yet.
I build finished websites for Richmond home-service businesses — then I
show the owner. Not a mockup. Not a meeting. The actual site, live on a
real address, before you've spent a dollar or made a decision.
Your ad is doing its job. Then it hands the customer a phone number and hopes.
You already market. The VanPeople ad, the truck lettering, the
Facebook page, the guy who put you in a directory. You're paying for
all of it.
Then someone sees it, gets interested, and hits the end of the road:
a ten-digit number and nothing to look at. So they do what everyone
does now — they search your name to see if you're real. And whatever
comes up in that ten seconds decides whether they call you or the
next guy.
For most of the best trades in Richmond, what comes up is: nothing. A
directory listing you didn't write. A page from 2014 with a Yahoo
email on it.
You didn't lose that job because someone was better. You lost it
because they couldn't check.
And that number only works if your hands are free. Half the time
they aren't. You're under a sink, you're on a roof, you're in
somebody's crawlspace with the water off. The phone rings, you
can't take it, and by the time you call back they've booked the
next guy.
A website doesn't answer your phone. What it does is give that
person a second way in — one that waits. Their name and what they
wanted sits in your inbox until you're out from under the sink.
Right now a missed call leaves you nothing at all.
The other half of it: some of the calls you do take are a
waste of the morning. Somebody who wants a number over the phone.
Somebody outside your area. Somebody who was always going to hire
the cheapest guy and just wanted a third quote to wave at him. You
drive out, you look at it, you write it up, you never hear back.
When they can see what you do, where you work, and what your
finished jobs look like before they dial, a chunk of those people
don't dial. That isn't fewer calls. That's fewer wasted mornings.
Ads get you found. A site gets you trusted.广告帮人找到你，网站帮人相信你。
What happens nowEither you pick it up, or you don't — and whoever answers first gets the job. A missed call leaves you nothing: no name, no number, no idea what they wanted.
What a site addsEvery enquiry lands in your inbox and stays yours. Miss one and you can still call them back, because you have their name and what they asked for. After a year that list is your own customer base, not somebody's directory.
Same ad, same money. The difference is whether there is anything at the end of it — and whether you still have it tomorrow.
02信任成本/ The trust tax
The referral chain has a trust problem now, and it's costing the honest guys.
Half the work in this city moves through WeChat groups and word of
mouth. That's been fine for twenty years. It isn't fine anymore —
Richmond residents have been burned badly enough by fake renovation
contractors that the groups have gotten suspicious of everybody.
Including you.
When someone can't tell the difference between a real tradesman
with fifteen years of five-star work and somebody with a burner
phone, they protect themselves by hesitating. That hesitation
doesn't cost the scammer anything. It costs you.
They hesitate犹豫
A real tradesman with fifteen years of five-star work and a guy with
a burner phone look identical in a group chat. So they wait, and ask
two more people.
They compare on price比价
With nothing to go on but two numbers, a homeowner picks the smaller
number. That isn't them being cheap. It's them having nothing else
to judge by.
Half a city can't read you半座城
If all you've got is a WeChat post and a Chinese ad, the
English-speaking half of Richmond can't check you either — and
they're buying the same furnaces. The other way round, same problem.
There's one clean way out of all three: be checkable. A Google
profile that's correct. Reviews people can read. A website on your own
domain with your name, your face, your number on it.
Findable查得到
Your Google profile says what you actually do, in the right
category, at the right address.
Reviewed有评价
Your existing reviews, in your customers' own words, on your own
page — not rented from a directory.
Real有网站
Your own domain. Not a Facebook page. Not somebody else's listing.
And both versions get written properly — not run through a translator,
but written, in each language, the way people in that language expect to
be sold to. It isn't an add-on and it isn't extra.
03回头客/ Keeping them
You paid for every customer you've ever had. Then you let them walk.
Think about what one customer actually cost you. The ad they saw.
The drive out. The hour you spent looking at it and writing it up.
Maybe two more calls before they said yes.
Then the job's done, you get paid, and they're gone. A year later
that same house needs the same trade. They can't remember your name
— so they search, and we're back at the top of this page, except now
you're paying to win back somebody you already had.
A site with a form on it does one unglamorous thing: it writes them
down. Every enquiry lands in your inbox with a name, a number and
what they wanted, and it stays there. After a year that's not a
website, it's your customer list — and it's yours, not Google's, not
a directory's, not mine.
Which means you can go back to them. That's the part nobody in
this trade does, and it isn't laziness — you can't follow up on
a list you never had.
04机制/ How this works
Here's the part nobody else does: I build it first.
Every other web person in this city asks you for a deposit, a
meeting, a content questionnaire, and six weeks — and then you find
out what you bought.
I do it backwards. I pick a business I think deserves better than
what Google is showing, I read every review their customers left,
and I build the whole site. Bilingual, mobile-first, done. Then I
show up — or I call — and hand you the phone.
You look at a finished website with your name on it before there's
any money on the table, before there's a contract, before you've
committed to anything at all. If you like it, we talk. If you don't,
you've spent sixty seconds and I go rebuild it for another Richmond
trade.
It isn't generosity. I just can't describe a website well enough for
anyone to buy one.
Everyone else
Pay
Wait
See
Me
See
Decide
Pay
What it costs you to look: nothing.
No deposit before you've seen it. No contract. No meeting required — I
can text you the link while we're on the phone.
05起因/ Why I started
Why I started doing this
Last year I needed a heat pump guy.
I did what everybody does: searched, scrolled, compared. The companies
that came up first were fine. Nothing special. Then a friend gave me a
name — a guy with better reviews than any of them, doing better work
than any of them. I couldn't find him online at all. No site. No
proper Google profile. Nothing to check.
So the jobs were going to the companies with worse work and better
marketing. Not because anyone decided that. Just because that's what
the screen showed.
That bugged me more than it should have. I build websites for a
living. I could fix that in an evening.
So I stopped waiting for those guys to call an agency — they never
will, and honestly they shouldn't have to. I started building the
sites first and showing them what already exists.
The ones who say yes end up as the guy whose customers wrote his
website. Everything on their page is something a real person already
said about their work. I just put it where Google can see it.
This is a complete sample build — a fictional business, so nothing here
is anyone's private demo. It's the exact template, the exact speed, the
exact bilingual switch your site would have.
While you're there, do this: paste the address into Google's own
PageSpeed Insights and watch the score come back. Then paste in the
site of any agency in Vancouver that quotes you $5,000.
Speed isn't a vanity metric on a phone in a driveway with two bars of
signal. It's whether the customer waits or hits back.
What it costs, and what it would cost anywhere else.
This isn't really a website. It's got four jobs: get you found, get you
trusted, get you called — and get the wrong people to not bother
calling.
Before the numbers, one worth doing in your head: what do you pay right
now for a lead that four other guys also got sent, on a platform where
the customer never learns your name? Whatever that is a month, multiply
it by twelve. That's rent. This is the other thing.
What's in it
If you bought it piece by piece
5-page custom site — mobile-first, English + 简体中文
$3,500
Google Business Profile overhaul + AI-search setup (so you turn up when someone asks ChatGPT for a Richmond plumber)
$750
Review-generation system — QR card + follow-up text template
$500
Google Ads build + a call-tracking number of your own
$1,500
Total, piece by piece
$6,250
That's what the pieces cost if you go and buy them.
I'm not charging $6,000.Not $5,000.Not $4,000.
$2,000the site
Everything you need to be checkable. It waits to be found.
5-page custom site — mobile-first, English + 简体中文
Google Business Profile overhaul + AI-search setup
Review-generation system — QR card + follow-up text
Google Ads build + a call-tracking number of your own
What it means: when somebody looks you up — after a referral,
after your ad, after your truck — they find you and they can check
you. You're waiting to be looked for. Nothing expires and there's
nothing to pay again.
The one I'd pick for you
$3,000the site plus Google Ads and a tracking number
The same four things — but it goes and gets found instead of waiting.
5-page custom site — mobile-first, English + 简体中文
Google Business Profile overhaul + AI-search setup
Review-generation system — QR card + follow-up text
Google Ads build + a call-tracking number of your own
What it means: the day the ads switch on, you're in front of
somebody typing "plumber near me" in Richmond — not waiting for them
to hear your name first. You can be taking calls this week. And
because they come through a number of your own, in 30 days you don't
have a feeling about whether it worked, you have a call log.
The extra $1,000 is the ads build and the tracking
number — $1,500 of it if you bought that piece on its own.
Live within 7 days of you handing me your content
and photos — or it's free.
50% e-transfer deposit to start, balance at launch.
You own the domain and the site. Both stay yours if we never
speak again.
No contract. No monthly anything required.
5 pages, 2 rounds of revisions. Anything
past that, I quote you before I touch it.
If you take the ads option: the ad budget goes on your card in
your Google Ads account. I never hold your ad money.
One thing worth knowing before you decide: from the day it's live, every
person who fills in that form is on a list that belongs to you. Not to
Google, not to a directory, not to me. Right now every customer you've
already worked for exists as a name in your phone and nowhere else — and
every one of them will need you again, and will hire whoever they happen
to remember.
If you take the ads, there's one optional monthly thing.
Ongoing ads management is $1,000/month: budget tuning, negative
keywords, monthly call-log review, and a plain-language report of what
came in and what it cost. Your ad budget is separate and stays on your
own card — $800 a month is where I'd start you. It's only
worth it if you took the ads option, and I'd rather talk about it at
the 30-day review when there's a real number to look at.
08上线之后/ After launch
After it's live you don't owe me anything. Here's what else I'm working on.
Neither of these is built. Neither has a price. I'd rather you know
where this is going than be surprised by it at month two.
Never Miss a Call
You can't answer a phone with your hands in a drain. So the job goes to whoever picked up, and you never even learn what it was.
The plan: your line texts back the second you miss it. It takes the name, the job, the address and how urgent it is, and sends you the whole thing in one message — English or Mandarin — and it tells them up front that it's an assistant, because I'm not going to build something that pretends to be you.
It isn't built yet. There's no price on it and nothing to sign up for. I'm telling you because it's what I'm building next, not because I want a deposit for it.
Comeback Engine
Think of someone you did a good job for three years ago. They paid, they liked you, they haven't heard your name since. Their furnace is three years older now, and they'll call whoever they happen to remember.
The plan: a seasonal reminder in your own words, to the list you already have. Not a newsletter. One message before the cold hits.
Also not built. Also nothing to buy today.
09产能/ Capacity
Why I can only do a few of these
Every one of these is built by hand before anyone has agreed to buy
it. Reading a business's reviews, pulling their photos, writing the
copy, building it, checking the Chinese — that's a real evening's
work, and I've only got so many evenings.
Realistically that's about three new builds a week. When they're
spoken for, they're spoken for, and the next one waits.
And if a build goes unclaimed I don't throw it away — I rebuild it
for someone else in your trade. That's the only clock there is. Not
a marketing clock. I just need the hours back.
10常见问题/ What people ask
The things people actually ask me
What's the catch? Nobody builds something before they get paid.
There isn't one, and I get why that's suspicious. The catch, if you want to call it that, is that I'm betting my time. I think if you see a finished site with your name and your customers' words on it, some of you will buy it. Enough of you that it works out. The ones who say no cost me an evening — that's the whole risk I'm taking, and it's mine, not yours.
I'm already busy. I don't need more calls.
Good — you shouldn't buy a site that just makes the phone ring more. The useful part is which calls stop coming. Right now anyone with your number can phone you, including the guy shopping four quotes and the guy in Langley. When your service area, the work you actually do and your photos are sitting there before he dials, some of those calls don't happen — and the ones that do already know what you do. Same phone, fewer wasted mornings.
All my work comes from referrals. Why would I need this?
That's exactly why I picked you — referrals prove you're good. This doesn't replace them. It lets you choose better jobs instead of taking whatever comes. And when someone gets your name from a friend, the first thing they do is look you up. Right now they find nothing. That's the gap this fills.
$2,000 is a lot.
One water-heater job covers it. After that it’s yours forever, free, no monthly. A website you rent and that never rings is a liability. One you own that brings work is an asset. That’s a different thing entirely.
My nephew can build me a site.
Then you already agree it needs doing — that's the hard part. His starts from a blank page today. Mine is already finished and can be live this week. And there's no contract, so if his turns out better in six months, you've lost nothing.
I had a website. It did nothing.
Almost certainly true, and here's why: a site with no Google profile fix and no tracking number is a brochure in a drawer. Nobody was ever sent to it. That's what the $3,000 version is for — in 30 days you don't have a feeling about whether it worked, you have a call log.
I need to think about it / ask my wife.
Of course. That's what this page is for — send them the link and put the sample on the TV tonight. I'd rather you decide with your family than decide standing in a parking lot.
I don't have time for this.
You've already done your part. Your customers wrote the copy — I take it from your reviews. I need about ten minutes of your time and your favourite photos of your own work. That's the entire ask.
Do you actually do Chinese, or is it Google Translate?
Every site is built in English and 简体中文, written for each, not run through a translator. I speak Mandarin. If your customers are Mandarin-first, the Chinese version isn't a copy of the English one — it's built the way Chinese-speaking homeowners actually expect to be sold to.
What if I say no? Do I owe you anything?
No. Nothing. Not for the build, not for looking, not for saying no. A fast clear no is genuinely fine — I'll leave you my card and go build the next one.
Who owns it?
You do. The domain goes in your name, the site is yours, and if you ever want to move it somewhere else, you take it with you. I don't hold anything hostage.
11联系/ One phone call
If you want to see yours, it's one phone call.
Tell me your business name. If I haven't already built it, I'll build
it, and I'll send you the link when it's done. You'll know inside a
minute whether you want it.
You don't have to describe anything or fill anything in. Your name and
your trade is enough — your customers already wrote the rest of it.
