Can You Really Make Money With WordPress Skills?

Marketing and SEO

Is it possible to make money with WordPress skills? Not only is it possible, it’s also not as “out there” as you may think.

WordPress has always been a laughing stock among the enterprise world. We have always found this amusing as there are several big enterprises who use WordPress and are happy to do so.

If that wasn’t enough there are limiting beliefs with other business sizes. People think that WordPress services can’t be charged at a premium rate.

Who can blame them though with nuggets of wisdom like these:

Don’t pay more than $500 for a WordPress website. If you do you’re getting ripped off.

WordPress is easy to setup so you can’t earn a living by working with WordPress.

So what can you do?

Shattering Myths

Would it surprise you that people are making 10’s and 100’s of dollars a month by managing WordPress websites with easy to use plugins?

What about people who are selling WordPress website packages, with 5-15 pages for $25,000?

Yes, there are no shortage of people who can work with WordPress.

But with an adoption rate at nearly a third of the entire web, we think there is still plenty of work to go around.

So how do you get started? What is the difference between a $500 WordPress website and a $1,000, $5,000, or higher?

We can think of one major thing.

The client!

Sounds good right? Here’s how to get started. By starting slowly.

Getting Started

Do some free work that’s easy and won’t take much time to do. Then work your way to a $500 website and build up from there.

If you want to get started in your city instead of the online marketplace. No problem.

You can see if an expert is needed in your city by doing a quick search in Google. Search for wordpress [your city] and see how many sites still have the tagline “Just another WordPress site!”

This default tagline is terrible for SEO so it’s a great conversation starter. Just by helping them with that, you’ll be doing a great service to their business.

Work Agreements

If you’ve convinced them to move forward it’s time to set a scope. Do an agreement for project deliverables and end date.

In your agreement, have messaging that allows for expansion and customization for extra money. You don’t want creep on the original scope that allow unplanned changes to the original cost and time to complete.

Include things like date of payment, reduction of payment in case it’s made in advance, define late fees, and the amount to start with (down payment details). Each deliverable triggers an invoice. The final invoice can be sent once customer has agreed to term.

Work Tips

If you’ve made it this far, here are few tips to keep you going.

  • You’re helping to grow their business, not just making a website for them.
  • Treat your work as a real business, even if it’s not… yet.
  • Do work with a contract or formalized agreement, that way there are no surprises.
  • Don’t only do business communication over the phone, use emails and chats as well.
  • Explain and layout reasons for cost.
  • When a client increases scope of project, update that invoice.
  • Change orders cost extra if it’s outside expected changes.
  • If a change order is beyond what was initially instructed, communicate this and charge accordingly.
  • If they don’t feel great about the purchase then you either didn’t do a good enough job on the website or didn’t do a good enough job representing the scope of the project.
  • Learn from hiccups and make things right.
  • Give them a pleasant experience.

You may wish to look at something like the 4 agreements at miguelruiz.com.

Make Money With WordPress Skills Wrap Up

Yes, it’s possible to make money from WordPress. It will be difficult in the beginning. People will reject you and you’ll have to work hard just to build credibility, let alone WordPress websites.

As you go through, you’ll notice that users will require training. Make WordPress user training, like what it can do and what to expect while using it. You can also outsource this by partnering with training websites.

Charge $500 to $2500 for your beginning websites. Seriously, you can do it.

Bill Erickson charges a $5,000 minimum at billerickson.net. He’s very clear with whom he works with and what he offers.

He is just one WP professional online. There are several successful people out there making a living working with WordPress. We may do a meta analysis of WP design and development rates in the future but this should be enough to get you going for now.

Just know this, not only is WordPress popular, it’s also profitable.

Reach out and let us know what reservations you have about performing this type of work? If you already do this type of work, how’s it going for you?