FAQ
Questions people ask before hiring me
Including the awkward ones. If your question is not here, ask it — I would rather answer it now than have it become the reason you did not get in touch.
Working together
- Where are you based, and does that matter?
- I am based in Islamabad, Pakistan, and I work with clients in the UK, Canada and Ireland. My working day overlaps the UK morning and afternoon. Everything is done in English, quoted in your currency, invoiced properly, and covered by a signed contract and data processing agreement. The distance is a timezone question, not a quality one.
- How do I pay someone in another country?
- Bank transfer or Wise, against a numbered invoice you can put through your accounts. Payment is split 40% to start and 60% on completion. Nothing is due until we have agreed the scope in writing.
- What if I am not happy with the work?
- Two revision rounds are included in every project, and you see the work weekly on a staging URL rather than at the end. If we are fundamentally misaligned after the first milestone, we stop there and you owe only what has been delivered.
- Who owns the website when it is finished?
- You do — completely. Source code, database, domain, hosting and every third-party account are in your name. You get written handover documentation. There is no lock-in.
- How quickly do you reply?
- Within one business day, every time. If a project is live, you get my direct WhatsApp too.
Scope and pricing
- How much does a website cost?
- A business website starts from $80, an e-commerce build from $150, and a custom application from $200. Those are starting prices, not fixed quotes — the number is confirmed in writing once the scope is agreed, and it does not move after that. The final number depends on page count, integrations and how much content needs producing. You get a fixed quote before anything starts — never an hourly rate that drifts.
- Why do you publish prices when most agencies do not?
- Because hiding the price wastes both our time. If the floor is above your budget you find out in ten seconds instead of after two calls, and if it is within budget you already trust me more than the agency that would not say.
- What is not included?
- Content writing and photography unless quoted, paid advertising management, ongoing hosting fees (paid directly to your host in your name), and third-party licences. All of it is listed explicitly in the scope document before you commit.
- Do you do maintenance after launch?
- Yes. 30 days of snag fixes are included with every project. After that, maintenance retainers start from $50/month and SEO retainers from $80/month.
Technical
- What technologies do you build with?
- PHP and MySQL for applications and custom stores, WordPress and WooCommerce where a CMS is the right answer, and React or Astro for front-ends that need it. Tailwind CSS for styling, Stripe for payments. I pick the stack that suits your budget and your hosting, not the one that is fashionable.
- Can you take over a site someone else built?
- Usually yes. I review the codebase first and give you an honest assessment — sometimes inheriting a bad build costs more than replacing it, and I will tell you that rather than take the easier invoice.
- Do you handle hosting?
- I deploy to whatever you use, and I can set up hosting in your name if you do not have it. The account stays yours and you pay the host directly — I never resell hosting, because that is a lock-in I do not want and you do not need.
- Will my site be fast?
- Yes, and it is measured rather than asserted. Every build targets Core Web Vitals thresholds, and I show you the before/after numbers from PageSpeed Insights at handover.
- Can AI assistants like ChatGPT find my site?
- That is part of every build and every technical SEO engagement. A lot of hosts silently return 403 to AI crawlers — I test each user-agent directly and show you the response codes.
SEO
- Do you guarantee rankings?
- No, and you should not hire anyone who does. Search engines do not sell positions, so a guarantee means either paid links — which risks a penalty on your domain — or ranking for a phrase nobody searches. What I guarantee is that technical barriers get found and removed, and that you get the measurements to judge it yourself.
- How long does SEO take to work?
- Technical fixes can show in Search Console within two to four weeks. Real ranking movement takes three to six months, and longer on a brand-new domain. Anyone promising faster is selling something.
- Is SEO included when you build a site?
- The technical baseline is: schema, sitemap, meta structure, heading hierarchy, Core Web Vitals and Search Console setup. Ongoing keyword and content work is a separate retainer.
Question not answered here?
Ask it directly — I reply within one business day, and there is no obligation attached to a question.
- Response
- Replies within 1 business day
- Hours
- Mon–Fri, 09:00–18:00 PKT — overlaps 05:00–14:00 UK, 00:00–09:00 US Eastern
- Booking
- Booking projects from October 2026