6 Steps to Building a WordPress Maintenance Business

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Recurring revenue is the Shangri-La for business owners. Rather than scrapping and fighting and hunting for new clients, you have the same clients coming to you again, providing you with a steady stream of income. It takes away the stress of having to dig up new streams of revenue and allows you to start planning ahead.

But if you're a WordPress designer or developer, you may be a bit perplexed about this whole "recurring revenue" thing. You make your money when clients need something new, like a website refresh for a site that looks like it was designed when MySpace was hot. You essentially have to wait for them to decide they want to change things. The whole idea of regular income feels like a mystery.

We've got some good news. Using the WordPress skills you already have, you can add WordPress maintenance to your business model. Building a WordPress maintenance business gives you the steady income you need while also allowing you to continue the development or design you're already doing (if you desire).

In this article, we're going to take a deep dive into the what, why, and how of building your own WordPress maintenance business. Buy the end, you'll have a firm grasp on how to launch yours.

Step #1: Choose Which Services You'll Offer

First, you'll want to choose which services you're going to offer clients. Before you can offer maintenance services to your clients, you need to know what you're going to offer. The options here are numerous, including:

• Website registration and hosting: They need to have this anyway, so why not incorporate this into the services you offer?
• Security: You know what can happen when a site gets hacked. This is a huge problem that's only going to get bigger.
• Backups: Every site should be backed up on a regular basis. If something goes terribly wrong, the only way to restore it is from a backup.
• Ongoing design and development tweaks to the site: Your clients will want things to be changed. You can offer these changes as part of a monthly package rather than needing to start a new project every time.
• Content changes and creation. Some of your clients won't be comfortable creating and uploading their own content. You can charge them to do so.
• Social media management. Your clients probably know they need a social media presence but some may not know now to do it.

There are numerous other options you can offer, such as analytics, email marketing, online advertising, and consultation. Choose the services that will generate the most revenue while requiring the least additional work to what you're already doing.

If you choose to offer only maintenance services, you have the option of partnering up with other designers and developers who aren't interested in the maintenance side of things.

Step #2: Determine Your Pricing Model

The next step is to determine how much you'll charge for your maintenance services. Before you can do this, there are several factors you need to take into consideration.

What are your monthly expenses? You must be able to cover your monthly and annual expenses, allow space for slow periods and client acquisition, as well as take into account your own margin. Don't underestimate this or you'll end up charging too little, which is difficult to back out of once you've offered it to clients.

How much does your competition charge? Evaluate your competition and then determine how you'll stack up. Don't necessarily try to offer the lowest price, especially if you're offering superior services.

What service tiers will you offer? Creating several tiers of services at different price points allows you to take advantage of higher paying customers who want superior services while also offering a less expensive option to those with budget restrictions. Additionally, if you start a client at a lower tier you can slowly nudge them toward choosing more services.

As you negotiate with your clients, don't let them determine the price. They probably don't have a true understanding both of what you offer and what services like yours normally cost. Plus, there is always someone will to offer bad service at a lower price. Don't engage in a race to the bottom.

Also, always ensure you plan for things going bad. You will encounter problems that take an inordinate amount of time, so factor those events into your price.

Step #3: Promote Your Services

Now that you've established what you're going to offer and how much you're going to charge, it's time to start telling the world. The first step is to create a detailed "Services" page on your website. This is going to be the primary place you send potential clients who are interested in hiring you.

Here are some key things to consider when crafting your services page:

It's all about the benefits. While you certainly want to describe the specific services you offer, you should spend far more time focusing on how your services will massively improve the lives of your customers. Remember, ultimately you're selling peace of mind. Your backup, security, optimization, and other services allow the customer to know that everything will keep working smoothly. Paint a picture of the good life when discussing services you offer.

Set yourself apart. You need to be able to set yourself apart from your competitors, either through price, number of services, quality of service, attention to detail, or some other factor. Don't be afraid to explicitly say why you're a better choice.

Press in on the pain. Acknowledging specific customer pain points allows you to offer the solution to the pain. It shows customers that you have very pointed solutions to their difficult issues.

Make it easy to contact you. This should be obvious, but it's neglected far too often. You want new clients, so don't make it difficult to contact you. Put your contact form front and center.

Another simple way to advertise your services is to begin promoting them to your circles on social media. There's a significant chance that at least one of your contacts will want or know someone who wants WordPress maintenance services.

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by Stephen Altrogge via SitePoint