So I've been meaning to post this for a while because a few people DM'd me asking how I'm managing uni and still running my agency.
Quick background: I'm 20, based in France, and I've been building websites for local businesses on the side since I was 17 mostly Shopify and Wix stuff for restaurants, small shops, that kind of thing. Nothing glamorous, but it paid for my rent.
The problem I kept running into was after the build. Clients would hand over the site, then I'd get a flood of messages "can you update this price," "a customer asked X, what do I say" stuff that ate my evenings for free.
I started looking for a way to hand that off without hiring anyone.
I ended up trying an AI tool kind of by accident. You paste in a client's URL, it crawls the whole site, and within a few minutes it actually knows the business products, prices, policies, all of it.
The part that genuinely surprised me was the phone feature. I set up a demo for one client, a local shop owner, called the number in front of him, and the AI just... answered. Normal conversation, knew his stock, offered to book a callback. He was quiet for a second and then said "wait, that's not a real person?"
That's when I realised I could package this properly.
Now I offer it as an add-on to every site I build an AI that handles enquiries and calls 24/7. I charge €100/month per client for "ongoing support and call handling." I've got 32 clients on it right now.
It's not life-changing money but it's consistent, it runs while I'm in lectures, and honestly the clients love it more than the websites I built them.
Just wanted to share in case anyone else is doing the agency thing and looking for a way to add recurring income without adding hours.
Quick background: I'm 20, based in France, and I've been building websites for local businesses on the side since I was 17 mostly Shopify and Wix stuff for restaurants, small shops, that kind of thing. Nothing glamorous, but it paid for my rent.
The problem I kept running into was after the build. Clients would hand over the site, then I'd get a flood of messages "can you update this price," "a customer asked X, what do I say" stuff that ate my evenings for free.
I started looking for a way to hand that off without hiring anyone.
I ended up trying an AI tool kind of by accident. You paste in a client's URL, it crawls the whole site, and within a few minutes it actually knows the business products, prices, policies, all of it.
The part that genuinely surprised me was the phone feature. I set up a demo for one client, a local shop owner, called the number in front of him, and the AI just... answered. Normal conversation, knew his stock, offered to book a callback. He was quiet for a second and then said "wait, that's not a real person?"
That's when I realised I could package this properly.
Now I offer it as an add-on to every site I build an AI that handles enquiries and calls 24/7. I charge €100/month per client for "ongoing support and call handling." I've got 32 clients on it right now.
It's not life-changing money but it's consistent, it runs while I'm in lectures, and honestly the clients love it more than the websites I built them.
Just wanted to share in case anyone else is doing the agency thing and looking for a way to add recurring income without adding hours.
