Build a simple, locally optimized website for a business in minutes, show the completed site to the owner, and charge a setup fee or recurring monthly fee for hosting and access. Use the website relationship as an entry point for higher-value services such as AI receptionists, advertising, content, booking, lead generation, and customer-service automation.
Searchable transcript of No Money? Start This AI Website Side Hustle — Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast (18:01). Search for a phrase, then click its timestamp to jump straight to that moment in the video.
Captions sourced from the original video on YouTube, published by Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast. The video, its captions and all related intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners; AINotes claims no ownership. Provided for research, accessibility and search — see the Transcript Notice and Copyright Policy.
00:00 Okay, so this email slides into my inbox and this guy says, "Hey, I think your followers need to know about this." What I do is I build free websites for people and then I ask them, "Hey, I built a website for you. Do you want to see it?" They usually say yes. I show it to them. Then I say, "Hey, if you want this website, pay me 75 bucks a month.
00:13 What's his monthly cost to maintain it?" Almost zero. What's his upfront cost and time to build it? Almost zero. So then he gets dozens and hundreds of business owners to pay him 50 to 100 bucks a month for their website. He's making tens of thousands a month and in addition, he's got his foot in the door to upsell them on more expensive things. And the magical thing is that with each new client he adds, his costs go up by $0 a month.
00:38 So I said, Tyler, show me exactly what you're doing, how you're doing it, how you find customers, cuz I I'm going to record my screen and show my followers the exact same thing. You're going to love this. And I'm going to go ahead and find some customers while I'm filming this video. No audience plans. It's not my mom. It's not a second phone. I'm going to use my actual iPhone to text local business owners here in the Dallas Fort Worth area and say, "Hey, I built you a free website."
00:59 Show it to them and then offer them the privilege of getting charged by me to use the website. Let's go. Okay, first of all, the platform that all this happens in is Go High Level. Okay, I'm going to log in right here. You can use it for 30 days for free only with my link right down below. Everyone else's link is 14 days free. With mine, it's 30.
01:20 Cool. Then you're going to click this big yellow button, enable free AI. They'll give you 30 days to use all of their AI tools for free. And after that, I think it's like 50 bucks a month or something. So we're going to click that. We're going to enable it. Boom. Then we're going to go to this tab over here, ask AI. So you're familiar with Claude Croc, Chad GPT, maybe Replet, Lovable, Vibe Coding tools, and AI tools.
01:38 That's basically what this is. But the magic of this is that it's fully integrated with your CRM, customer relationship management software, okay? or your customer CRM. That's what GoH High Level does. It's a like a CRM for your business or b a platform where you can resell hundreds of different software tools without knowing how to build software yourself.
02:02 It's magical. Okay. So, what we're going to ask it to do right here is to build a home service website for us, but we want to prompt it just right. and Claude or Chad GPT, either one are amazing at generating prompts that can generate even better prompts for other tools like go high level in this case. So, I'm going to give you this prompt for free.
02:23 I don't need your email address in the description below. You can copy paste it, swap out your location, swap out your service, and you're good to go or you can just generate your own and and make it custom to you. Okay, here's my prompt to claude. You can use Gro, whatever you want. I'm going to use GoHigh Level's new vibe coding tool to make a home service website, but I need a really good prompt for it that knows how to talk to GHL.
02:41 It'll be a handyman website based in Dallas, Texas. I'm going to use Opus 4.8. And let's see. Okay, look at this. It tells High Level to integrate everything to the CRM, calendar, workflows, everything. SEO, metadescriptions, design, name your suburbs. This is really, really good. I never would have thought to mention all this stuff. And it even gives me a couple tips.
03:02 Drop in a reference URL. Okay, very cool. Name your suburbs. Okay, so I found this random handyman website just by googling handyman website. This is going to be my reference so Claude knows what to work with. And then I'm going to include suburbs. So I told Claude, "Hey, smith handhandymanservice.com is my reference website. Work that into the prompt as well as all the DFW suburbs of over 50k people.
03:32 List them all all out for GHL to include. Make sure it's all SEO and AEO friendly. AI SEO. Oh, and you're going to love my text message hack to make sure that you get noticed cuz we all get so much text message spam nowadays. It's hard to stand out. You're going to love it. And here's the beautiful thing about creating this handyman website. How many handymen are there in America?
03:52 Over 100,000. You can copy and paste this website for every single one of them. Swap out the name of the business and the location and you are good to go. Okay, done. Two prompts. And I have my master prompt for go high level. We're going to switch back over here. Ask AI. Boom. There it is. That's it. Now, let's see. You can see it cooking here on the right.
04:10 Now, first of all, why did I choose handyman of all the businesses out there? Okay, let me show you my data points. First of all, how many handyman are there in the US? 150,000. That's a lot. Cool. Now, what does Google Trends say? How many people are searching for handyman near me? And is that growing or shrinking over time? Boom. handyman near me.
04:29 It grew and then it peaked uh in 2021 when money printing was going crazy and everyone was remodeling their houses and then it dropped, bottomed out in late 2024, but it was still higher than it was in 2019 and now it is climbing back up again. So, what does that mean? It means that the handymen out there are probably busier than they ever have been.
04:50 Except for, of course, you know, mid 2021, as we see here, which means they're busy, which means they're doing well, which means they have money. They have a budget. They have time to finally check the box of either a getting a website. You'd be surprised how many handymen don't even have a website, and b getting a better website, cuz if they have one, it probably sucks.
05:07 So, perfect timing. That's why I chose Handyman. The biggest reason of all is that of all the thousands of home service niches out there, handyman are probably one of the most likely to have the owner's personal cell phone number listed right there on Google Maps for the whole world to see. We call a dentist, no chance. Maybe 5% chance. We're going to have to go through their receptionist orever.
05:28 Lawyer, 50/50. Real estate, probably cell phone number, but they get hit up a lot. And then you get someone like a landscaping business. Well, some of those are really big, some are small. 50/50 as well, but most handyman businesses are solo operators and we're going to get their cell phone number, aka the decision maker, but it's still a business that has a budget presumably for $50 to $75 a month for a simple website.
05:53 And before you go and think, "Oh, I need to find people that don't have a website cuz they're the ones more likely to buy." No, you need to find people that have a website because they realize the value of a website. You're going to have a much harder time convincing someone without a website that it's valuable. They're already set in their ways.
06:06 All right, let's check in on GoHigh Level. It's building the homepage. It's got the HTML written. Now, please note, I am not logged into my sub account right now. That is a noob mistake. That's how GoHigh Level works. You've got a master account and then a sub account. So, if I wanted to start a business just like this and I want a bunch of sub accounts under me, then this customer would be one sub account.
06:28 And for one of Gohigh Level's higher pricing tiers, you can have unlimited sub accounts under you. Which is why I said that for every customer you add, you're able to only charge 50 bucks a month because it's virtually pure profit. There's no marginal cost increase for every sub account, aka customer that you add. Okay, you can see that it's working on adding all 27 DFW cities to the service areas page.
06:49 Okay, boom. Everything's done. It just is telling me to switch into my sub account so it can fully integrate everything. So, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Going to go here, click switch, go back to ask AI. Okay, so we've got like a dynamic thing going on and it shows a checklist of everything it's going to build as it builds. It looks like it's done.
07:11 Okay, now I need some inspiration. What am I going to even call the name of this business that represents this website? So, we're just going to go Google Maps, Dallas, Texas Handyman. I see uh Hank's handyman service. 1,500 reviews. That's probably too many for a single operator. That's probably a bigger business. So, what I want to do is I want to go find something a little more rural, less likely to be a big business out in Farmersville.
07:35 So, Farmersville has like, I don't know, 20 40,000 people, not too far from me. Hey, there's basically no one out there. So, we'll look at Princeton. Handyman Castillo's handyman. Okay, six reviews. Phone number right there. I'm going to go to this random website called phone validator. You can see if a phone is cell phone or landline. We're going to put that in there.
07:57 And we're not going to talk about scraping or mass texting or doing stuff at scale. Number one, there's a lot of regulations around that stuff. So, we want to do this the oldfashioned way so we don't get in hot water. Number two, there's friction there. There's a learn a learning curve there. Even if it's a little, we just want to use our our our iPhone or heaven forbid Android to text people the oldfashioned way.
08:14 Okay. Mobile phone, cell phone. Cool. This is perfect. We're going to call it Castillo's handyman. So, what am I saying? It's called Castillo's Handyman in Princeton, Texas. Use whatever booking schedule seems appropriate. Build it in high level, please. Fully integrate it into this sub account. Boom. Okay. Boom. Yes. Build it. Amazing. Okay. And boom.
08:35 There it is. There's what the website actually looks like. I'll show you the real dynamic version here in a second. There's what the mobile version looks like. And side note, I'm an idiot. I clicked the wrong tab to build this thing in. But no fear. I'm going to click copy right here on the actual HTML. I'm going to go here, AI Studio. It should look pretty colorful, right?
08:54 I don't know how else to describe it. I gave it all the code and said, "Here it is. Here's the website. Show it to me." What I've been using this whole time is basically like Chad GBT, a chatbot, not a vibe coding tool. This is the actual vibe coding tool. So, listen, if I screw up in real time, I'm going to leave it in. We're not going to edit that crap out.
09:14 I'm human. Whatever. Thankfully, Gohigh Level made it easy and I can just copy and paste my HTML into the Vibe coding tool. So, while we wait for this to rebuild, let's text Mr. Castillo and a few other handymen as well because we'd be pretty naive to think that we're just going to text one person to get a paying customer. But hey, maybe we'll get lucky today.
09:34 Okay, Castillo's handyman. I'm going to copy his number. Oh, look at this. It's already done. Oh, that only took like a minute or two. There's the actual website. Okay, I hope you saw this in time. Do it in the AI studio. Okay, not in the chatbot. There it is. Boom. Beautiful. And how do I connect it to my go high level account? I click a purple button and it connects with my calendar.
09:57 Beautiful. Remember this was my inspiration site, Smith handyman service. How accurate did we get? Close enough. Cool. All right, let's text Mr. Castillo. I'm just going to send him this screenshot right here. Paste his number. This is my personal cell phone. Now, I was going to see if he had a website, but he doesn't even have a website. No, look, he just has a picture of his business card, which is fine.
10:17 It's working. But this city right here, Princeton, look it up, is like either the fastest growing or one of the in the top three fastest growing cities in the country. This about to be really competitive for Mr. Castillo. He's going to need a website. Okay, everything's integrated over here. I'm going to say, not trying to pat my own back, but this is a master class in text messaging.
10:35 Okay, screenshot to prove that I actually did what I said I did because I get DMs every single day from these guys saying, "Chris, I made a video about how you can improve your social presence. Can I send it to you?" And then if I say yes, which I never would, then they go ahead and make it. It's fine. Don't hate the game. It's cool. I get it. We're all out there hustling.
10:54 But I know I know they hadn't already made me a video, right? It's a lie. So, I don't want to lie to him. I'm going to send him a screenshot of what I actually did so he can know that I stand out. My name is first name, last name. I want him to know that I'm a real person. I'm not from some call center overseas. I'm not AI. I live 20 minutes from you.
11:07 That is the most critical sentence of this entire message. I am nearby. I am a real person. Then I said, I can't believe you have a business in the nation's fastest growing city and you don't have a website. I built one for you just now. Can I send you the link? Okay. No, really. I just built a website for any handyman. I just need to swap out the name and that'll take a fraction of a second.
11:28 Swap out the name and the city. That's fine. And the number once we have it. So, I'm just going to go back to here. Hey, this guy does have a website. Jim's Honeydew Heroes. I'm just going to assume it's a mobile phone. I might be wrong, but I'm going to assume. Okay. Go here. Paste it in. I'm going to assume his name is Jim. Now, he already does have a website, so I have to change my pitch up.
11:48 Hello, Jim. My name is Chris Ker. I live about 20 minutes from you. I can't believe you have a business in the nation's fastest growing city, and you don't have a very good website. No offense. Now, I'm kind of on the fence about that one cuz I'm offending him, but we'll see. I test everything except drugs. That's what I like to say. So, this is just a test.
12:05 I just built one for you. Mind if I send the link? Okay. Go over here. Now, I'm going to send him a screenshot, but I'm not going to include Mr. E or Castillo's handyman in it. I'm just going to include that. Okay. Boom. Let's do it again. Okay. That's a welder. He just has a Facebook page and a phone number. So, I'm going to redo the pitch about not having a website.
12:28 And I'm going to include this picture. I'm going to take this one a step further. And I should have done this on the other text. I'm going to put the name of the city I live in. It's fairly small and they'll know what it is. So, it just adds a little more legitimacy to my pitch. All right. TB Home Improvement. Let's look at his website. All right.
12:49 Not terrible. Actually, that website's pretty good, which means he probably values a good website, so he's worth texting. But I would not be surprised if that is a landline because he has a lot of reviews. So he seems a little more established. Oh, cell phone. Cool. All right. I'm actually shocked there are more handymen out here. Diego's home repairs.
13:10 Oh, website doesn't work. Call them by name. Tedious, yes, but I'd rather do something tedious than not own my own business. And this is what it takes. No website. Look, it is shocking how many business owners don't have a website and we had internet for what, freaking 40 years? 30 now. I'm going to test not sending the screenshot because there's a chance that that screenshot is sending my message to spam and I want to avoid that.
13:38 Now, this right here is a go highle website. This guy probably does not need my help. Now, still could be worth texting, but if I'm doing this manually one by one, then I'm not going to take the time to text him. Staircontractor. Okay. Now, what do they say? The harder way is the better way. If I want to be even more effective, then I'm going to go do this in person.
13:57 I'm going to go to a retail store. I'm going to go to the addresses listed on these businesses. Even though most of them list their own home address, I would go to their home and knock their door and literally show them an iPad or a laptop and say, "I built this website for you. Do you want to buy it from me?" Or again, remember, we can give these away for free.
14:14 free hosting, free support, everything for free just to get our foot in the door and to earn their trust as an AI expert, an internet expert, someone who knows what they're doing. And someone who bought some goodwill on the front end by giving them a free website free for life. I know people that are doing that as well successfully. It's just a different model.
14:32 Remember, if you sell them something upfront, it's easier to upsell them because they've already given you their credit card number. You already broke that trust barrier. So free is good. Free is easier than paid, but it's going to be harder to upsell them. So, it's easier to get your foot in the door, but it's harder to move in permanently. Okay.
14:45 Now, why do I love this business model? Well, this is the Costco approach. Okay. Start with a free sample and the chance of getting a yes or a close is so so much higher, right? This website is the free sample. And but I do feel strongly that you need to charge for it. It's not actually free, but it's close to free. Cuz if you can get them to pay for a little bit something, a free website, then it's much much much easier to get them to pay for something that costs 10 to 100 times more than that.
15:10 Okay? Build the site in 5 to 15 minutes using go highle AI labs. Copy and paste it, right? It'd be really nice if you could only do this for handymen. That way, instead of spending 15 minutes each time, you could spend 5 minutes each time. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Try to acquire whatever customer you can. It's just kind of nice to stay in the same lane.
15:28 Then you show up in person, deliver it in person. It makes the clothes so much easier. And then show it to them. Bring a little laptop with you. Hey, I built this website for you. It's literally done. I did it for you right now. I want to give it to you for a fee. If you don't want it, no harm, no foul. I'll, you know, give it to someone else. I'll sell it to someone else.
15:46 But in general, potential customers are not creative. They have a hard time imagining what you're trying to sell them. So, this is removing that need for creativity or that friction for them in real time. You're showing them what you've literally already built. and they don't know about high level or vibe coding and they don't know what any of that means.
16:03 They're assuming you put much more work into this website than you actually did, which is fine. Let them assume that. Here's what you should charge for something like this. Okay? You can do a $400 setup fee with 50 bucks a month and work around with these numbers however you want. It doesn't need to be 400 upfront. It could be 100, 500, whatever you want, but they don't get any monthly edits.
16:20 They don't get a custom domain. Okay? So, you're pushing them towards the middle plan. You're anchoring them with that huge $400 setup fee. And then you're saying for only 75 a month you don't have any setup fee and you get a custom domain and I'll host it for you. Okay, as included and it cost you nothing, literally nothing to host it because you pay one flat fee to go high level every month and then the premium option yada yada yada.
16:39 Few people will choose this but that's fine. You're trying to get them to choose the $75 option anyway. And then you got your foot in the door. Okay, this will cover your overhead. This will cover your cost. This in and of itself, the 75 bucks a month could be a big business, right? 100 customers is $7,500 a month, almost $100,000 a year, almost pure profit, right?
16:58 But you're going to be able to convert a double- digit percentage of these people to buy an AI voice receptionist or do paid ads or content creation or content posting, a booking system, lead generation, customer service. All of these things you can automate with go high level email marketing like converting old stale email addresses to new jobs, new bookings, new leads, etc.
17:21 There are hundreds of ways and I cover a lot of them in my go high level playlist which I link in the description below. But this is where the real real money will be made is on the upsell packages. So I wish I got a response or a sale by the time I had to finish this video. But it is almost dinner time and I'm going to go eat. So thanks for hanging out on the Kerner office.
17:40 Please use my GoHigh Lee affiliate link. You will get 30 days free instead of the standard 14. I get a little kickback. You don't have to pay anything extra. It's a great win-win. We use go high level across almost all of my businesses every day. Me and my entire team are truly believe in it. It's a great piece of software.