How Web Design Became The New Dropshipping
The morning sun hits your face gently, you slide into your slippers and get out of bed.
You walk down to make your first cup of coffee, the kids are off on their way to school.
You log into your email, you see 3 new leads for website projects estimating a sweet $30k income for the month.
Well, snap out now.
It’s 2025 and you can’t sell your designs for over $1000 despite the insane rise in cost of living.
But what the hell just happened ?
- Every third guy is a self-taught web designer, but doesn’t have any work to show for it
- Average prices for a project have been slashed by 50%
- All websites look the same and use the same Relume component library
- Everyone is flexing about their $3k MRR but it’s just one client with no guarantee of future work
- Too much over-promising and constant failures to meet expectations
- And just the overall lack of any quality in modern website designs
I like to call this the “Dropshippi-fication of Web Design”.
It’s not a real phenomenon, I made it up but it refers to the devaluation of web design into a get-rich-quick scheme by online gurus promising you $10k MRR in just two months of starting.
Everyone is doing it, with below-average skills mostly failing to find success but claiming that it is working and creating a hype cycle around it in hopes of not damaging their online ‘persona’.
That’s exactly what happened to dropshipping in 2016–20 until the pandemic ended the supply chain.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Oversaturation
I’ll be the first to bite the bullet.
Yes, there are way too many web designers compared to the amount of work available in the market.
And yes, the low barrier to entry and chance to make thousands of dollars without leaving your bedroom is tempting more naive people into the field.
Because let’s be real, just because there’s an ugly business website doesn’t mean they are looking for a redesign.
Supply-demand and a failing economy play a huge role, but that’s not all.
Templatization of skills
Almost all designers are selling their templates for a slice of their original charges (including me) and some designers are misusing this.
Why work 100 hours to produce just 1 final website when you can spend 10 hours editing a template and selling it to 10 clients for the same price ?
That’s what is happening nowadays, and it is happening very frequently.
The result is that the client is receiving unoriginal work with a few elements and sections changed and the designer is dirty-bulking his stats.
Get-rich-quick scheme
You may have seen videos like these already on Youtube. They are everywhere.
These ‘influencers’ show their agency websites, talk about their streamlined outreach strategy of cold dms x sales funnels — and BOOM, client closed for $5k, easy peasy.
If that’s still too complicated, worry not, you can always join their ‘free masterclass’ to learn more in detail, post which you can always join the paid one.
But they forget to mention that you need to be insanely well skilled in not just design, but marketing as well, because most websites are marketing landing pages focused on conversions.
Unless you know the business and how to sell, your pretty designs mean shit here.
And figuring the above out isn’t enough, you also need to be a fun human to work with.
Tons of variables play a role in this, it’s not as simple as they make it seem.
It’s the same old repetitive bits of advice, very few people show something of value.
The rule of thumb here is, that if someone is making content about it; then it’s already saturated.
Race to the bottom
A friend of mine recently asked me to help him with a gig, the brief was to design a desktop app with 20+ screens.
I asked how much he was charging and he responded with $1k; I did a similar project for $2500 back in 2022.
It’s not looking good
Too many designers are fighting for a limited pool of clients, and because of this, everyone is undercutting each other massively.
It isn’t just hurting the said designer, but the industry as a whole — why sign someone for $10k when someone else promises the same for just $2k.
This isn’t even market correction but a shitshow altogether.
But hey, gotta show everyone on Twitter that you closed 4 deals this month, right ?
Light at the end of the tunnel
One good thing about businesses is that they all die out if they fail to meet market needs.
And exactly that will happen to many of these web design agencies spawning like little bunnies.
Just designing a website is not enough, you need to…
- analyze the performance and make changes post-launch
- provide extra services like copywriting and development
- train the client on how to manage the website
- setup SEO, marketing channels etc
Most importantly, you are a business partner providing a service, not a Shopify website where pressing a button will deliver instant results.
These are some basic things none of the influencers are going to mention, otherwise lazy people will get intimidated and not enroll in their course.
My two cents — despite me calling it dropshipping, web design will easily outlive it.
Because building a website is a real skill, it takes multiple years to master.
To successfully monetize it, you need tons of other co-related skills namely…
- sales
- employee management
- client relationship management
- development (sometimes)
Dropshipping is way too easy and fully depends on the unique product you’re selling and your source of traffic.
Running a functional and successful agency takes blood, sweat and tears.
Hi there 👋🏻 I’m Sharanya — an independent UI & Web designer writing about design and documenting his journey.
Open to new projects — let’s chat.
Check my design templates over here.
