Your own site has been on the list since last spring and still shows work from clients you no longer have. Meanwhile you are turning down builds because there is nobody free to run them. This page covers both: the site, rebuilt, and a build lane you put your name on and sell as yours. Some agencies want one. Plenty want both.
Client work bills. Your site does not. So it sits at the bottom of every week until a prospect mentions it on a call, and then it is a fire.
Two of those logos left. One of those sites has since been redesigned by somebody else. The prospect clicks through anyway and judges you on it.
The same scope gets built two different ways depending on who picked it up. The swing is invisible on your side and obvious on the client's.
Three lanes. Your agency in front, us behind, the client at the end. Step through the touchpoints and watch which lane does the work and which name the client is looking at. The work splits. The name does not.
01Proposal
You write it and send it on your paper, at your pricing.Your name
We hand you the build scope and the timeline to drop into it.No name
A proposal from your agency.Your name
02Kickoff
You run the call and you set the expectations.Your name
We give you the intake questions and stay off the invite.No name
Your team on the call and nobody else.Your name
03Build
You approve the direction and stay the only point of contact.Your name
We build it on staging, on a subdomain you choose.No name
Progress updates from you, at an address that is yours.Your name
04Revisions
You collect the notes into one list and send it over.Your name
We work the list and turn it back to you, not to them.No name
Notes go to you. Changes come back from you.Your name
05Handoff
You deliver it, walk them through it, hand over the logins.Your name
We prep the credentials and an unbranded walkthrough recording.No name
A launch from your agency.Your name
06Support
The support address is yours. You decide what comes back to us.Your name
We fix what you send down, on your ticket, to your deadline.No name
They email you. They always email you.Your name
07Care
You bill the care plan on your own terms and your own cycle.Your name
We patch it, back it up and watch it stay online.No name
One invoice a month, with your agency on it.Your name
At the proposal the client reads your name on the cover and your pricing on the page. Our half of the work never reaches them.
Seven touchpoints. One name on every client facing one.
Who you work with, what you take on, what you turn down. Written so a prospect can tell in one screen whether they are your kind of client, and so your team stops explaining it on every discovery call.
Each piece of work is an entry, not a hand built page. Swap a logo, retire a client, add the one you closed last month.
An intake form that asks the right questions the first time, a scope template you can quote from, staging on a subdomain you pick, and a turnaround you can put in a proposal without hedging.
Scope one pager, kickoff question set, launch checklist, and a walkthrough recording with no branding on it so you can send it as is or record your own over the top.
The client writes to you. You decide what routes down to us and what your team handles. Nothing reaches us with the client copied in, so there is no thread where the two of us are visible together.
The recurring piece most agencies sell and few want to staff. It runs on our side and bills on yours, so month two of a retainer is not a new problem to solve.
Fair worry, so here is the specific answer instead of a reassurance. Over the life of a build a client is shown four things: a proposal, a staging link, a walkthrough, and an address to write to when something breaks. The proposal is yours, on your paper, at your pricing. The staging link sits on a subdomain you choose and carries no mark of ours. The walkthrough recording ships unbranded, and if you would rather be the voice on it, record your own. The support address is yours, and we answer to you, never to them. We do not contact your client, we are not on the calls unless you put us there, and we do not take a build we delivered for you into our own portfolio without asking you first. Support is the touchpoint that gives most arrangements away, because a client who emails a stranger learns something. Yours emails you. What you should hold us to is the part the client cannot see: whether the work comes back on time and good enough that nobody has a reason to ask who did it.
Selling retainers changes the shape of the problem. A one off build ends, and a retainer has to be serviced this month and the month after that. So the bottleneck moves off sales and onto fulfilment, because every account you sign is an account somebody has to do the work for. The usual fix is hiring, which turns a marketing business into a staffing business with a payroll that does not care how the month went. A white label build partner takes the build and the maintenance off the board without adding headcount, so the thing you sell and the thing you deliver stop competing for the same hours.
One page: what is in the build, what is out, and how long it takes. Written so you can paste it into your own proposal without rewriting it or softening the dates.
You get the link the day it goes up so you can share progress in your own words. We work in your project tool if you have one, or ours if you would rather not open another account.
Revisions come to you in whatever form the client sends them, and to us as one list. Nothing round trips through the client, so there is no thread where both of us appear.
Credentials, the unbranded walkthrough and the launch checklist come to you. After launch the client writes to your address, and you decide what comes down to us.
You set your own pricing, your own scope language and your own terms. We do not publish a rate card you have to work around and we do not tell you what to charge. The build is delivered to you, and what happens to it after that is your business.
On work we deliver direct, we sign the footer, because it is our work and we stand behind it in public. On a build that goes out under your name, that line does not ship. Worth asking any partner this before you sign, because a credit line in the footer is the fastest way for a client to find out something you did not choose to tell them.
Plenty of agencies say they have a build team, which is true. Some say every line is written in house, and we would rather you did not, because a client who works it out later has a reason to doubt other things you told them. What we control is our side: nothing we send surfaces the answer for you, and nobody here will answer it for you either.
Slack, Basecamp, ClickUp, Notion, Asana, Trello, or email if that is honestly how your shop runs. Adding one more login for your project manager is a bad trade. If you do not have a tool you like, we will run the build in ours and give you access.
It is in writing before the first build starts. We do not market to them, we do not pitch them a direct relationship, and if one of them contacts us cold we tell you. This is the part most agencies want answered before anything else, and answering it vaguely would be a bad sign.
Your own site, a build lane you resell, or both. The first conversation is the same either way, and it starts with what you are already turning down.
Most projects start with a conversation.