Part time business planning

Recently saw an old friend and neighbour start to post photos of houses that he had renovated and had got lots of favourable comments for his work but when asked for business / website details he had none so contacted him to try to tell him how easy it could be to get himself online and found that he is actually in a perfect position to start thinking about builiding a business for the future as he is currently only doing his business part time while employed.
[Delicious Webdesign] Hi I see you posting pics of your work on Facebook – if you ever want a website we specialise in buiders websites and be good to help you get started in business.
[Essex Builder] Hi  how’s things? Yeah I may be interested in the future as its my dream to own an Essex Building Company, it sound great but need to get myself a bit of a bigger portfolio together however could also advertise for the work and designs done by myself?? What does it cost to have websites designed??
[Delicious Webdesign] All good thanks and its good to see your doing some good impressive building work – regarding the site you have loads of options – search for ‘essex builders; in google.co.uk and we have 5 in the top 10 of the ‘natural / organic’ rankings as they have got us to build their website and promote it and they have continued to update it over the months years. Basically for a standard business brochure website like you need being a building company you have 4 main options on website ‘flavour’ (size and inclusions) and then there are other options like webcopy (text for the website) that you will need to think about. Like most things once you have found a good business (us) the more you pay the more you get but you can pay as little as £400 for a 4 page website but normally you need to have a bigger / better website to stand a change of ranking highly in your sector in the search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo)
[Essex Builder] Ok well it sounds good but will have to wait until the near future. I would not feel confident starting up a business incase I fail. I have done fairly well to get where I have and would not like to jeopardise what I have built just yet. I work on my own buying repo properties and renovating to a high standard, but also paying people i know for electrical work, plastering, and plumbing. the rest i do myself. i then rent them out at top market value. I have 4 at the moment and hopefully the 5th in July?
[Delicious Webdesign] Thats impressive – you needed worry about jepordising anything though as you dont need to be a limited company to start a website and the older the website the better for it in the search engines, so perhaps your in a great position to think about starting a website now.
[Essex Builder] l will have a think. I could always advertise the work and price it up paying the people to do the jobs I can’t. You reckon around £400-500? Because I do this work in my spare time. I hold down a full time job working 4days on/off. On my off days I do this. And it’s tiring!
[Delicious Webdesign] You should also be aware that just by having a website you dont instantly get lots of emails / calls for work and its good advice to get a website up and running 1-2 years before you think about having a business yourself as you can always pass on the work if you get calls and cant take it on, a lot of businesses start with a new website and expect to be innundated with work from day one and that never happens so perhaps you are in a great position now to plan and build a website with us while you are not in need of immediate work.
[Essex Builder] Oh right, that’s an interesting point. So it’s maybe a good idea to understand exactly what I want to achieve and what i want to offer, create a website now aiming to peak in a couple of years. I don’t have the money at the minute because as you are aware I have just finished a renovation but would be something of interest in the future. If I have the guts to do it I will do it.
[Delicious Webdesign] Ok lets get together at some time and let me understand your situation fully then let me show you what you can do for the budget you have available