Why won't I build you a blog?

You are reading a blog post on the site of a business that says it does not do blogs. Fair. A blog is a job with no customer attached. It needs a useful post every few weeks, forever, and that person is you at nine at night after a full day on the tools. Most tradie blogs have three posts, the last one two years old. That makes the whole site look abandoned.

I keep one because writing about this is part of my work. I get the same questions in my inbox every week, and I would rather answer them properly once. For most trades that does not apply.

What else will I not build?

Online shops. They need stock, shipping, payments, GST and returns, on a platform with a monthly fee. Worth it if you sell online. Most tradies want the phone to ring. Online booking. Good software, and if you are a mobile mechanic or a groomer with a full calendar, get one. But it needs a subscription and upkeep. I would have to charge monthly for the site, and no monthly fee for the site is the point. I put a tap-to-call and a quote form on every page, and if you want bookings I will tell you which tool to link. Email hosting. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 does it well for about $10 a month. I will not build you a worse version.

Why is a small scope the whole product?

Every feature on a site needs maintaining, and maintenance is what monthly fees pay for. A $150-a-month site is not $150 because hosting costs that. Hosting a five-page site is free. It is $150 because the platform does forty things and you pay for all of them.

I kept the ones a tradie needs: five pages, your photos, tap to call, a quote form, fast on a phone, findable on Google, hosted free on your own account. All of that is done once. Nothing to renew, nothing breaking at midnight. That is how I can charge $990 once. Add a shop and it stops being true.

The cost side of this is in what a website should cost a tradie.

What if I need a shop or bookings later?

Get it later from someone who does it well, and link to it. A booking link on your Contact page costs nothing to add, and a shop on a separate subdomain does not touch your five pages.

What do I say when someone needs something I do not build?

I say so in the first reply and name a couple of platforms that will do it properly. A tradie who needs bookings and gets a quote form is unhappy in a month, and I would rather they went somewhere better on day one. If you just need people to ring you, that is the site I build.