Problems with social media, marketing are usually the result of a lack of knowledge and understanding of this modern medium. Business owners believe that simply setting up an account or profile and posting updates will generate the views and business they’re looking for. They overlook the fact that social media is a marketing tool, and should be treated as such. As with anything else you might use to market your business, you need to be creative and come up with a unique strategy for it.
Choosing Facebook for Social Media Marketing
Part of this strategy should be focusing on one outlet that will best meet your needs. Unless you are one of the many social media gurus (or have the extra cash to pay one), you shouldn’t spread yourself too thin by trying to keep up with multiple sites. If you’re unsure of where to start, take a look at what other businesses have done. In all likelihood, you’ll find that the majority of them have chosen to focus on Facebook.
For many small businesses, a Facebook page makes the most sense. Facebook allows you to create custom pages, have conversations with your customers, and easily post photos and videos. It is also very user-friendly, and reaches a wide audience. Even if you don’t have a personal Facebook account, it is more than likely you know someone who does. When used properly, Facebook can be an amazing tool for generating business.
Here are five ways to boost sales by taking your Facebook page to the next level.
Tips for Using Facebook for Business
1. Promote your page with contests and giveaways.
You may have already done this, but how well did you do it? And, did you follow Facebook’s guidelines? Run contest or giveaway, and encourage the contest to go viral. Offer something great for prizes. Ask yourself, “Would I want to enter this contest or giveaway?” The better the prize, the more people you’ll get to like your page.
2. Promote your page at your business.
I think this is one of the most overlooked tips for small business owners. There’s nothing at their place of business telling people to connect with them. In the age of smart phones, people can “like” your page anytime, anywhere. Instead of just putting a sign up on your door or front desk, create a reason for people to “like” you right then and there. For example, offer an instant discount if they show you on their phone that they connected with your Facebook page.
3. Post content that encourages people to interact with you.
Your Facebook page should not look like a billboard. Post content that makes people want to interact with you. Facebook just came out with a great feature called “Facebook Questions,” which allows you to create a status update that acts as a poll. People love polls, and they are more likely to interact with your question than to post a comment about your new special or promo. Posting interesting photos and videos are also great ways to get people to interact with you. Users are more inclined to look at photos than to read a five sentence paragraph about how great your new product is.
4. Pay for graphic design.
If you want your Facebook page to get to the next level, then it needs to have a custom look. A welcome tab is the first step. When someone lands on your Facebook page and they haven’t “liked” it yet, a welcome tab not only prompts them to do so, but it also tells themwhythey should. Keep in mind that it needs to look really good. Don’t try making one yourself in MS Paint. There are plenty of freelance graphic designers out there that’ll charge $25 to $50 an hour to create the custom tab on your Facebook page, and install the graphic for you.
5. Reward your most faithful social media followers.
If you want people to start talking about your Facebook page, you’ve got to start making the faithful followers feel special. Have a “Facebook Fans Only” night. Choose a particular person that always comments on your page and do something special for them. This kind of stuff goes a long way, and it will really beef up your word-of-mouth marketing.
Being on Facebook, or other social media outlets, is all about two things: connecting with as many people as possible and getting them to interact with you on a daily basis. Everything you do on your Facebook page should have those goals in mind.
In order to get the most out of your social media marketing, you need a robust plan and strategy. Accumulating a ton of “likes” is nice, but if all you do is push out marketing copy to people, they’ll soon get bored of your page and your business, and they’ll end up hiding you in their Facebook news feed. Along the same line, having 500 Facebook fans is great, but hitting 5,000 will mean a marked increase in business as a direct result of your Facebook page. Do the five things I’ve suggested here, and you’ll start seeing results over the next few months.
Does your business have a Facebook page? What tips and strategies have worked for you? Please share in the comments!
What they want to know is what the end result will be.
Which is why productising a service makes a lot of sense for WordPress consultants and services. To break it down:
You stop wasting time trying to explain how you build a WordPress website or how your SEO work gets their website to the first page of search results.
You also stop wasting time trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades, constantly forcing your brain and body to go in a million directions at once.
Your complex service becomes easier to sell as it’s more clearly and succinctly labelled, prioritising the value of the product and not the work behind the service.
You package up your service into a neat little box, put a bow on it and sell it at a flat rate to clients en masse. Your earning potential is no longer capped.
You can charge more for it, too, since you can deliver results in a much shorter time frame than if you took on work piecemeal.
With repeatable systems and products ready to go out-of-the-box, you can teach and delegate this work to other team members.
It becomes easier toretain a base of good clientsover the long term.
Ultimately, the goal here is to spend less time providing a service, but still increase your profits. Now, it’s up to you to figure out how to turn your service into a product that sells.
Here are 18 ideas for ways to turn your service into a product:
1. Website Development.
If you think about it, the development of WordPress websites is already a productised service… if you’ve built your process the right way.
In other words, with most of the administrative work, communication and project management streamlined by automation or delegated to someone else – this isn’t a job that requires your manual labour or input every step of the way. It’s also not one you have to think much about since your tools, processes and checklists seamlessly guide you through the workflow each time.
2. Consulting.
WordPress consulting is another type of service you provide that could easily be productised. There are three ways in which you canoffer WordPress consulting:
1. DIY (do-it-yourself)
2. One-on-one
3. Group
Each of these methods allows you to put a price tag on your service as a whole. Clients won’t be counting the hours spent with you or on their own, nor will they get caught up in individual lesson plans. You’ve promised a clear outcome and that’s what they’re working towards.
3. Maintenance Plans.
Think about how appealing the idea of aWordPress care planwould be for your web development clients. They’ve just sent their final payment for the kickass website you built for them… and now they’re wondering what the heck they’re going to do.
Here you come with an answer:
“For just $____ a year (or month), I’ll handle all of your WordPress maintenance needs.”
Even if you’re not a trained WordPress developer or you have no interest in managing website security and performance post-deployment, you can always just resell this as your own product! You could sign up for a white labelled WordPress maintenance service such as WP Buffsand charge a markup on the cost of it.
This is a great way to get thatrecurring revenuestream flowing through your business.
4. Website Audit.
On a similar note, you can sell website audits on an annual or semi-annual basis. These probably wouldn’t be for WordPress maintenance clients who understand the value of keeping security and performance in check. These audits would be for the clients who need a little more persuasion.
What you do is simple:
You dig into their website and their web hosting account and look for opportunities to optimise. It doesn’t take too much time on your part since you have tools like website scanners and optimisation plugins to offload most of the work to. However, you’re providing a truly valuable tune-up service, so you can charge well for it andthenconvince those clients to sign up for the year-long maintenance support product.
5. Website Edits and Support.
For those of you who enjoy providing other types of support to WordPress clients, you might consider developing a product package for website edits – content, development or other.
Basically, you allocate a set number of hours to support tasks every month. You never exceed that amount of support, but you might have clients who don’t find they need much of it, especially as time goes on. (Kind of like how fitness clubs make a ton of money off of customers who know they need to work out, but just don’t take advantage of the service they’re paying for.)
You can take a more niche approach likeAlpineWebthat offers a number of security-related support tasks for a flat fee every year
6. Educational Materials.
If you’re like me, then you enjoy passing knowledge onto others, so they can take the ball and run with it. In that case, the development of an educational program such as our Blueprint Program could be a good choice for you.
If you’d rather tackle something a little less robust, something you can package up into tiny pieces and sell on an individual basis, that’s doable, too. It just depends on how much time you want to spend on crafting educational material, who your target audience is and what you’re most comfortable doing.
Here are some other ideas:
Record yourself performing a task or working through a process in WordPress. Sell the video tutorial.
Develop a short WordPress training course. It could be an add-on to web development services or you could offer it to new developers wanting to learn best practices on their way up.
Film exclusive webinar training sessions. Sell the copies afterwards to those who missed it the first time around.
7. Develop Your Own Plugin.
Have you found a solution for something that irks you in WordPress and that no one has done anything about (at least not well)? That’s actually the story behindVideo User Manuals.
Early on, I recognised a need for WordPress help videosinsideof WordPress. The Codex is a decent resource, but WordPress really does nothing to help users get started once they’re inside the CMS.
As such, I wrote a manual and was giving it to my web consultant clients. But I found that no one was using it. So, I thought:
“Why not put this inside of the WordPress backend?”
So that’s how the plugin came to be. I converted the physical manual into videos and now use the plugin to embed those help videos into the backend of customers’ WordPress installations.
Pretty cool, huh? It was something I created once and now I sell it 24/7 without an iota of input from me. If you have an idea for a plugin that would revolutionise the way your audience works in WordPress, give it a shot. It’s a worthwhile venture.
8. Themes and Templates.
For those of you who are more design-savvy, a WordPress theme would be the obvious choice in terms of productising a service. Sure, you can still design WordPress websites for clients if you want. But why not create an awesome WordPress theme built specifically for their niche?
This isn’t just a chance to create a theme that gets licensed and renewed once a year either. TakeThe Blog Spa, for instance.
The website includes a number of upgrades and add-on packages that make this an even more valuable theme purchase for users. So, rather than put the focus on building custom websites from-scratch, The Blog Spa offers custom add-ons that really help make a customers’ website stand out.
9. Design Marketplace.
There are other design products you can sell as well. It depends on what your speciality is.
You could license:
Photography
Illustrations
Logos
Videography
Iconography
Typography
Audio
And more
10. Marketing Audits.
Now, we’re getting intothe content marketing side of productisation. This first one is similar to a website audit. The key difference is that you would conduct a discovery session and analysis for a very specific part of their content or social media marketing strategy.
Just keep in mind that your focus needs to be on key areas of marketing that drive great value for your clients.
For instance, if you target local businesses, an audit of Google Places and other local SEO strategies would make sense. Or, if you target e-commerce companies, an audit of the checkout would be the logical choice. Then, you can sell the setup or optimisation solution, based on the assessment they received.
11. Content Creation.
There is a difference between selling your content creation services at an hourly or per-word rate and offering them as a product with a predictable monthly fee attached. Rather than get stuck quantifying your value and running the risk of clients counting every single word you deliver, provide a recurring “product” they can depend on.
There are so many ways to do this – and you don’t even have to be the one to create the content either. You can:
Create acontent creation care plan.
Provide proofreading as a service with a monthly retainer (it’s basically like website support, but focused strictly on blog content).
Sell your production team’s services asMatt Johnsondoes.
12. eBooks, White Papers and Other Research.
As the Video User Manuals plugin story demonstrates, a digital or paper guide isn’t always the best way to get a product into your customers’ hands. That said, what worked for me might not be the solution for you – especially if you have plans to create a lengthy guide that targets people who don’t work inside a dedicated software platform like WordPress.
If you enjoy the process of crafting guides for your users,andyou don’t really like the process of providing information in person or over video, eBooks and white papers could be a good choice.
What’s nice about this is it gives you the chance to sell add-ons, too. That’s the beauty of creating content. There’s always some offshoot idea you can explore in another book or offer as a companion piece (such as worksheets or checklists to help them through the guide).
13. SEO.
SEO is a big one for WordPress consultants. It’s probably because a lot of what works well in Google’s search algorithm boils down to how a website is configured. As such, you don’t have to be a trained copywriter or SEO in order to know how to compress images, cache a web page or add header tags to a post.
But the trick in productising this is to turn it into something your clients are willing to pay for on a monthly basis.
As you can see, the first part of their SEO packages revolves around traditional WordPress care services: uptime and security monitoring, edit requests, etc. While a WordPress consultant understands that these contribute to the whole SEO picture, your clients might not understand the value in that… which is why providing more explicit SEO services like these is a brilliant move: You can also sell this product separately. However, if you find it hard to convince clients to pay a monthly SEO retainer, this is a good way to get your foot in the door.
14. Social Media Management.
Whether you understand the constantly changing social media landscape well or you have a team member or partner you can outsource to, social media management is another way to turn a service into a product.
The Digital Mavenhas carved out a number of social media management plans for clients.
Each plan offers the same services. The difference between each, however, is in how much time The Digital Maven dedicates to the clients’ accounts. That’s one way to handle it.
Another would be to develop monthly plans based on the kind of social media management offered. For instance, if an entrepreneur is attempting to move into influencer marketing, you might have a social media management plan carved out specifically for that.
Again, just think about your target audience and how to communicate the most value in terms of how you define your plans.
15. Email Marketing Management.
Email marketing is another avenue to consider pursuing.
What’s nice about this one is it integrates so well with WordPress and there’s also a significant design piece to it, too. So it’s not too far of a stretch for a web designer to offer something like email templates (productised the way you would a theme, of course) or to manage the lead generation funnel through a client’s plugin and email marketing tool.
16. Google AdWords Management.
Let’s not forget about pay-per-click marketing. Even if you do the most outstanding job in building a client’s WordPress website or optimising it for organic search results each month, at some point, they need to pay-to-play.
Google AdWords can be a complicated tool to navigate – especially if your clients don’t have an understanding of audience development or don’t want to take the time to – so this could be a lucrative product offering.
As you can see, this is a nice companion product to other website and search optimisation solutions.
17. Competitor Analysis.
Something your clients spend a lot of time thinking about is the competition. Practically speaking, though, they probably don’t know what to do with that focus.
Acompetitor analysisis similar to other auditing services. Essentially, you survey the landscape of competitors and learn everything you can about what works and what doesn’t for them. This will be even easier if you specialise in one niche and are already familiar with the competition.
Then, you provide an analysis that shows how your client stacks up against them. This is a good way to establish a reputation as an authority in the space and, later, sell these clients on web development or SEO services.
18. Reputation Management.
This last idea is one many people don’t think about, though it’s becoming ever more important as Google reviews litter search results pages.
As you can see in thisReviewTrackers online reviews survey, Google is the primary platform people turn to before they visit a business (or website).
Pay attention to what ReviewTrackers’ analysis says:
“Seeing as how most website traffic comes through Google, Google effectively preempts other review sites by showing its own star ratings to users before they can click through to their search result. Sneaky, huh? Google has effectively cut in line, jumping ahead of the major players in the review industry.”
As for what you can do with this, your goal is to develop a product that targets Google’s review-friendly property (Google Places), tools (schema markup) and then monitor and manage the reviews that come through. Once you’ve gained your clients’ trust in providing other services and products, then reputation management will be a breeze.
Profit is not a dirty word. And, yet, when you’re in the business of consulting and working with an intuitive system like WordPress, guilt can seep in and make you feel bad about doing what you do, or charging what you charge. There is absolutely nothing wrong with building and sustaining profitability in WordPress consulting.
The fact of the matter is, you sell a highly valuable service that’s in high demand right now.
If you don’t charge what your consulting services are worth, you’ll soon find you won’t have the ability to offer that service to anyone. In order to stay in this game, your WordPress consulting business needs to be profitable. Not only that, you owe it to your clients and their businesses to be profitable, so you can continue to provide them (and others) with premium services.
The following guide will cover everything you need to know about building and sustaining profitability in WordPress consulting.
Genuinely enjoy what you do, be a master at it, and work smart.
1. Find the Right Niche
Notice how I didn’t say “pick a niche”. When you work as a WordPress consultant, it’s not realistic to be all things to everyone. Instead, you should identify a particular niche or speciality that interests you and that you know you’ll be good at. Also, it should be one you can make a real profit in.
I would suggest listening to Nate Wright where he talks about the importance of understanding your clients. If it’s not realistic to think that you could make a connection with restaurant owners or SaaS marketers, then it’s likely not going to be a good choice for you. A good pick for you might have something to do with your side passion or a previous industry that you have worked in. You will, therefore, “speak their language”.
2. Offer Something of Value
Does it make sense to offer consulting services to someone who is just blogging for fun and has no future plans to make revenue from it? Most definitely not. Someone like that would find no value in your services as a WordPress consultant – and not just because they would have very little money to pay you.
If you waste your time on irrelevant projects or with clients who don’t see your expertise and service as valuable, you’ll lessen your chances in making your business profitable.
3. Develop Strong Branding
Your WordPress consultancy might not ever reach the level of success or profitability of a monster like Automatic, but that doesn’t mean your branding shouldn’t be strong or unique. It’s like how they say you should dress for the job you want. Your business’s logo, colour palette, and overall style need to be “dressed” for the level of success you want.
There’s no correlation between the two companies or the services offered. However, the subconscious connection their clients might make with a large and trustworthy brand like AT&T could be of some help in boosting the brand’s reputation and awareness.
4. Let Your Website Sell for You
The website you use for your consultancy should be representative of everything you advise your clients on. By demonstrating the same values and features on your WordPress site, you can appeal to the kinds of clients you want to work with. It will also serve as proof that you’re an expert that does more than just talk the talk; you also know how to walk the walk.
Beyond that, your WordPress site should clearly explain what you offer. Images should be relevant and relatable and the copy should be written in a clear language the client understands. If they walk away having no idea what a WordPress consultant does or why they need you, it’s time to revise.
5. Develop a Strong Marketing Strategy
Marketing and sales are two aspects of running a business that will never stop. Eventually, you will get to a point where you can outsource these tasks to a marketing manager and a team of salespeople. For now, though, you need to be smart about how you handle them.
To start: your website should be the lynchpin for your marketing and sales strategy. Prospective clients have questions on social media? Point them to your FAQs. You meet a business owner at a networking event who’s doesn’t like her website? Show her your portfolio from your phone. Customers want to upgrade their services? Send them to the customer support portal.
Also, make sure you’re reaching your audience in the right places. Don’t waste your time on social media platforms, forums, or at local events that won’t benefit you. The same goes for paid ad opportunities. If you are placing ads without much research or understanding of how to get in front of the right audience, then this is a waste of your money. First, invest in a course such as our Facebook Ads Accelerator or hire an expert.
Your time is valuable and if you want to keep costs low and profits high, you have to be wise in how you use it.
6. Wear Two Hats
Profitability in WordPress consulting hinges on your ability to be both a kickass WordPress professional and a savvy businessperson.
Speaking from personal experience, I know that it’s possible to run a successful WordPress business even if you’ve only worn the WordPress developer/designer/writer hat until now. However, if you’re not willing to wear the businessperson hat at least once a day, then profitability will be hard to come by.
My suggestion to you is to subscribe to freelancer blogs and WordPress podcasts or anything you can get your hands on that will give you tips on how to run a business. If you lose focus of things such as sales, finance management and partnerships then you will severely limit how far you can go.
7. Create High-Profit Margins through Pricing
You’re really lucky to be able to work in this field. Take, for instance, business owners in the restaurant industry. On average, those businesses only net themselves a profit of about three to five percent. This is because food and labour costs are insanely high and it’s just not feasible to charge too much to customers unless you’re running a fine dining establishment.
With WordPress consulting, it’s a totally different story. Aside from the cost of your website and a few pieces of software to run your business, there isn’t much coming out of pocket, right? Then, look at how much most WordPress consultants charge clients for their services. That seems like an insanely high markup, doesn’t it? Well, this goes back to my original point about feeling guilty.
Here’s the thing: clients are paying you for value, not for how much time you spend. If you can relieve them of the burden of managing a WordPress site or you can provide them with game-changing guidance that, in turn, makes them a huge profit, why sell yourself short and charge too little? To sustain profitability, don’t be afraid of charging what your services are actually worth.
“WordPress is a means to an end. As WordPress reaches a larger and larger number of people — because it does a really good job doing most of what people want — even the very niche users like, ‘I want to use WordPress to sell houses,’ become valuable niches. If you can help people do that and you generate a lot of value for them, they will be willing to pay you back some of that.”
8. Raise Your Rates Regularly
Even though you may feel indebted to that very first client who took a chance and signed up for your consulting services years ago, if you want to sustain this business, you must raise your rates. On everyone.
You’re going to be onboarding new clients all year long, so set a reminder for yourself – or, better yet, make it a task or event on your calendar that lets you know when to adjust rates across the board.
You owe it to your clients and their businesses to be profitable, so you can continue to provide them (and others) with premium services.
9. Ensure You Get Paid
Any time that you take on a new project, you need to let the client know that you require a deposit prior to even starting the work. It’ll keep your revenue stream at least somewhat intact in case that a client flakes out or disappears. So be clear about your payment structure and be sure to write it into your contract.
I tell my clients that I require 50% up front, 20% on the prototype, 20% on delivery and the final 10% when it goes live. Check out this blog where Simon Kelly delves into this topic more deeply.
10. Create Recurring Revenue Opportunities
In an interview that The Independent did with photographer David Bailey, he offered these words of wisdom:
“To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep.”
He’s right. You can toil away every day: finding new clients, consulting, maintaining client websites, and managing your business. You will eventually get to a point where that’s no longer sustainable. In order to grow and to make more money, you need to give up some of those things. Sure, you could do that by hiring a team to assist you. But how about creating a leveraged revenue stream, too?
One of the best ways to do this is to set up your clients on “care plans”. Here is something we prepared earlier on this topic!
Some other ways to build recurring revenue are:
Build a plugin — Build a theme — Write an ebook — Monetise your site — Film video tutorials — And more
Take your strength and your expertise, and put it into creating a one-time creative endeavour. Then, release it into the world and let it sell (without much effort from you). Not only will this boost your profitability, but it’ll save you from feast-or-famine. Check out these awesome tips.
11. Add Pricing Plans to Your Site
There’s no need to be squeamish about publishing your rates to your website. If you’re offering a competitive and fair rate, and you have proof that clients are seeing results, there’s absolutely no reason to hide it.
Be sure to include all of the services you offer. As a consultant, that might include WordPress care plans, plugins you’ve developed, or ad hoc design services. Whatever it is you want to offer, have a place for it on your pricing page, so prospective clients can view the full “menu” of services at once. This is also a great way to passively upsell and cross-sell your services.
If you missed this tutorial on how to add pricing plan tables to your website, be sure to watch it now:
12. Create a Contract
Although we live in a world where digital communications rule the roost, you still have to worry about clients reneging on originally agreed-upon terms, failing to pay for work, or providing feedback contradictive of the original scope. To protect your profit on each project, use a professional and legally binding contract. Here’s one we prepared for you earlier! Your take and tweak Proposal Template with Mutual Agreement included.
13. Be Frugal
This isn’t the most exciting tip or even one that will be well-received, but, yes, you do need to be a little cheap. At least to start.
Personally and professionally, when it comes time to pull out that credit card, ask yourself: is this something I really need? If not, add it to a wishlist and save it for the next holiday or as a reward when your business hits its next milestone.
If you want to get profitability up, you need to keep those profit margins as wide as possible and getting into the habit of being frugal is a good way to do that.
14. Track Finances with Software
I recently had a business owner friend ask me how to calculate his taxes. I’m not going to lie, I was a bit shocked. For one, I couldn’t believe he had gone an entire year without researching any of these critical tips for running a business and remaining fiscally responsible. And two, I don’t know why he hadn’t invested in accounting software yet. QuickBooks was one of the first tools I paid for my business.
There are a number of benefits to using accounting software to track finances:
You can connect all of your professional (and even personal) spending accounts to it.
The software automates the categorization of recurring costs and revenue (for better organisation as well as tax preparation).
It reminds you to look at your income and expenses regularly.
It also reminds you to account for expenses you might not have thought about.
Reports help you plan for any predictable lulls or surges in business ahead of time.
Some accounting software merges with tax software to simplify the amount of work you do come tax time.
Some also allow you to issue invoices.
I would say that if you’re not good with numbers or you dread having to dig into your finances, automating a good majority of those tasks with software is a good choice.
15. Automate Invoicing
Invoice management is another task that can be quite tedious.
For some of you, automation of invoicing won’t be an option as you offer hourly or per-project services. In that case, find other ways to reduce the work you have to do. If you can save all pertinent details in invoice templates for each client, it’ll simply be a matter of recording that timeframe’s costs before sending it out.
For the rest of you who offer a recurring service like selling WordPress care plans, set those invoices to automatically go out. Conversely, you could add a payment gateway to your website with something like PayPal. You can then remind clients to submit their payments by email or text a few days before the deadline.
16. Automate Reporting
While it would be nice to put your head down and focus on your work day in and day out, you still need to stop and get a sense for what all that hard work is doing for you and your clients. However, try not to poke around in various analytics tools. Instead, set up reports and have them automatically delivered to your inbox every week. Then, schedule time to review them.
These reports should cover all relevant matters, including:
Your business’s profit and loss
Invoice status (to follow up on late payments)
Employee productivity (when applicable)
Project statuses (depending on what services you offer)
Basically, if someone were to ask about the health of your business or about where your clients’ WordPress sites currently stand, you should already have an answer to it. These automated reports will be your Clif’s Notes.
17. Work Only for the Best
If you’re not picky about the clients you work with, it’s time to change that. High-paying clients are obviously the first place to start, though you also need to make sure they’re a good fit for your style and goals. This means they respect the work you do, they don’t quibble over price, and they have invested in you as a partner.
This also means you need to stop accepting bad clients. If a job puts your reputation or the prosperity of your business at risk, just say “no”. You have no time to waste.
Joost de Valk (the person behind the Yoast plugin) has a similar approach to his business:
“My business is really ‘me’. I do what I like doing: blogging, reviewing sites, developing plugins for myself or for companies, optimizing sites. I just do what I like and what people approach me with. If I don’t like a project, or don’t believe in it, I turn it down.”
18. Have a Client Retention Plan
If you’ve noticed a high turnover rate in your client base and it’s cutting into your profits (since it costs money to look for replacement revenue), create a client retention plan. The more trust there is between you and your clients, and the greater the results you can produce for them, the longer and more prosperous your relationships will be.
19. Leverage Social Proof
One of the most effective forms of marketing we have today is social proof. It’s the theory that consumers are more likely to buy something if they have confirmation from other consumers that it’s a worthy purchase. Obviously, it would be great if your WordPress site and impressive portfolio were enough to sell them… but it’s not. Prospective clients need to hear it from others before they can believe what you say.
Start reaching out to customers new and old and ask them for a testimonial. For the clients that say, “Well, I’m so happy with your service, but I don’t have time to write anything”, do it for them. You’ve worked with them for months or years now, so you know what they’ve gained from working with you. Offer to write the testimonial, send it to them for customisation or approval, and then publish it to your site!
20. Create Repeatable Systems
Pretty much any part of the WordPress consulting process as well as your business processes offer the opportunity to create repeatable systems (and document them). Templates are an important part of this as they streamline the repetitive tasks that would otherwise cause costs to rise.
By removing the unnecessary time wasters, you can give your profit even more room to grow.
21. Invest in High-Quality Tools
Working in WordPress, you understand the benefits of using high-quality tools. Even when access to them comes at a price, the tradeoff of efficiency, accuracy, and automation are worth it.
I would just stress not to go overboard. It’s easy to think, “Oooh! This software will do X, Y, and Z!”, and then realise six months later you never needed to do X or Z. When your business is new or even when you’re in the process of scaling, be careful about these purchases. Start with good quality and basic tools. Then, once you’re earning steady revenue and have high-profit margins to play with, make those upgrades.
I think your best bet would be to start with these indispensable tools (many of which are free):
A task management system such as Asana
A client management system such as Trello
Cloud storage such as Google Drive
Online meeting software such as Zoom
Email marketing software such as MailChimp
Accounting software such as QuickBooks
Contract management software such as AND CO
A password management tool such as LastPass
22. Organise Your Workspace
Before I started my own business, I read a lot of blogs about how to remain productive even when you work from home. One of the tips I found most valuable was to create a dedicated workspace. I think it’s similar to the effect that getting dressed for work has on you: it puts you in the mindset that you are now at your job. This is when and where you put your game face on and all distractions need to be left at the door.
But I want to push this just a little bit further. I’d like to suggest that you organise and optimise your workspace for focus, creativity, and efficiency. This includes both your digital workspace as well as the physical one.
23. Keep Improving
Want to be able to charge higher rates, add more expensive plans to your pricing structure, and open completely new revenue paths? Then you’re going to have to grow your capabilities and knowledge.
One way to do this is to get certified. There are different ways you could approach this. For instance, you could become a certified Google Partner.
In that case, not only would you be your clients’ trusted WordPress expert, but you’d also be able to handle all their search marketing needs as well.
You could also take classes online or at a local school to enhance your skills. While you might not need training in WordPress, you might want to brush up on your business and communication skills. You should seize any chance you have to improve your relationship with clients and the quality of work you do for them.
24. Don’t Overdo It
Business burnout. It’s either a sign that you’ve taken on way too much for too long… or that something’s not right within your business.
So, before you even get to that point of burnout, take better care of yourself.
— Say “no” to bad clients.
— Say “no” to jobs that invade your personal time.
— Schedule vacations.
— Create firm boundaries between your personal and professional lives.
— Create firm boundaries between you and your clients.
— Disconnect from work when you’re not there.
— Start outsourcing and delegating as your business prepares to scale.
— Make time for working out, eating right, and spending time with loved ones.
— Take control over your life, so you can take control of your profits.
At the end of the day, your primary focus needs to be on your clients’ success. If their business is successful, you’ll find that your ability to sustain profitability in WordPress consulting will naturally come along with it. This means you need to be in a position where you know what you’re doing, you’re fully trusted to do what you do, and you’re being paid well for it.
Finally, remember why you’re doing all of this. Ask yourself – “What does success look like for me”? and “What’s it all for?” Is it to have more time with family and friends? Is it to travel? Impact the world? It’s really up to you. But you need to be profitable to continue and you are doing the world a disservice if you’re not profitable.
While it may seem that most entrepreneurs become successful without any help, this is not usually the case. You can learn a lot from a mentor, but it may take a while to find just the right person. For now, here are some tips from top business gurus that will help steer you in the right direction.
1. Get Over Your Fears
Every entrepreneur is scared, but if none of them got over their fears, there would be no small businesses in the world. Arianna Huffington has been quoted as saying that she finds fearlessness to be a muscle, and the more it is exercised, the stronger it is. The more you face your fears, the stronger you will be.
2. Give Yourself Challenges
Richard Branson may have never finished university, but he lives his education, and considers his life to be an extended university education. He learns something every day, and so can you. Even the little things you learn can be extremely valuable, both in your everyday life and for your small business.
3. Love what You Do
You need to enjoy running your business, and to do that, you need to love what you do. Steve Jobs says that if you don’t truly believe in what you are doing, you are never going to be completely satisfied in your life. For instance, you may want to write novels, or sell digital products online that you have created. Do what you love, and you will love what you do.
4. Plan Your Financing
Getting financing for a small business isn’t always the easiest task in the world, so you need to create a plan for raising capital. Richard Harroch said, “It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer. So plan for that.”
5. Be Willing to Take Risks
You never know if something is going to work unless you try. If it doesn’t work, learn from it and try something else. Never stop taking risks, because you will never know what you could actually be doing. Jeff Bezos says that he wouldn’t regret failure, but he would regret not trying, because that is an even bigger failure.
6. Know what You Want
You need to have a vision, and know exactly what you want. That way, you have something important to work towards. David Karp, founder and CEO of Tumblr, says that an entrepreneur is a person who has a vision and who wants to see that vision come to life. The clearer your vision is, the better able you will be to see it and see what you have to do to make it happen.
7. Listen to Complaints
You aren’t always going to do things right, and your customers will let you know when you aren’t doing things right. Listen to them, and learn from their complaints. Bill Gates has said that your “most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” They can teach you what you are doing wrong and help you to succeed.
8. Learn from Your Mistakes
You can learn a lot from your mistakes, as well as from the mistakes of others. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs will tell you that your mistakes are your best teacher, as long as you are learning from your mistakes.
9. Take Action
If you don’t do anything with your ideas, you aren’t going to be as successful as you want to be. Walt Disney said that the “easiest way to get started is to quit talking and start doing”. These are wise words that you should include in your mantra.
10. Put In Your Time
Your business isn’t going to be a success overnight. You need to work hard, and put in a lot of hours to be successful. Steve Jobs once said, “If you look closely, most overnight successes took a long time”. Truer words were never spoken.
11.Set Goals
You need to know the goals you want to achieve, and set them. Remind yourself every day about your goals, and each time you do so, jot down a way that you can reach those goals. Ryan Allis said that when you have the end in mind, you are sure to be working toward it daily.
12. Understand Your Customers
When you know what your customers want, you can give them what they want, and that is going to help you to succeed. Dave Thomas said that knowing your customer was one of his three keys to success.
Unfortunately, there is still no magic cure-all for the elusive ‘passive income’, but these tips will make it easier for you to set up processes to enable reliable cash flow each month…
1. Offer a Productized Service
A productized service is a service you offer, which is standardized in some way to allow you to provide it on a larger scale, to more clients.
A common service that many WordPress freelancers offer as a productized service is a maintenance or care plan. A maintenance plan requires very little effort to implement but can yield a solid, recurring monthly revenue – which explains its popularity.
The service usually involves offering the basics you’d expect for WordPress maintenance, such as plugin updates, backups and security monitoring.
Many freelancers will offer these plans at a flat, monthly rate, and use some maintenance software to help (such as ManageWP or iThemes Sync).
2. Create a Product
The upside to building a product (such as a plugin, theme, or training course) is that it is not only recurring revenue, but also almost entirely passive. Once you create a product, no matter if you sell 1 or 100,000 units, you put the same amount of work in each month.
A major downside to this model is that it requires a lot of work up front. And without a crystal ball, you never really know if your product will be a success.
That being said, many WordPress freelancers have found much success building products as an additional offering or even small business.
Nathan Tyler of Tyler Digital has built a remarkable development agency. But if you take a look at his site, you will see that he has also built some excellent WordPress plugins.
If you’re not confident about building and selling your own product, join forces with a trusted associate or someone in your WordPress networking circles. Sometimes, two heads are better than one. You can split the time, investment cost and profits.
3. Re-sell a Product or Service
You don’t always have to create a new product or service. Instead, you can resell someone else’s product or service.
Many companies offer solutions such as white labelling that will allow you to resell their product or service.
One of the most popular options here is hosting. Freelancers will purchase a large hosting package and charge their clients a fee to host their website (and you can even introduce a maintenance plan here). Do a simple search on any hosting website and see what they offer in the way of packages for developers. Shop around until you find a package that suits your budget, technical requirements and number of potential client sites.
Example of Developer Packages from the GoDaddy Website
Another example of white labelling is Video User Manuals plugin. VUM offers the ability to white label our WordPress training videos and sell it to your clients at a small additional fee, or include in your package of offerings to make you look totally professional and caring!
Want to know how to start selling WordPress Maintenance Plans to current clients? Check out The Great Migration: Transitioning Clients to Recurring Revenue for a step-by-step guide.
4. Recurring Billing
Maybe creating and selling a product or service just isn’t for you. Maybe you just like offering your one service and want to stick to that.
That’s fine. Fear not, there is still a way to introduce recurring revenue into your business.
Many freelancers receive some small requests from current and past clients for their site. For instance, they may need a new plugin installed.
Most freelancers might charge a little bit for this one-off job. However, these one-time, small jobs provide an excellent way for you to make recurring revenue – and also will allow you to serve your clients faster.
Instead of billing for each job, you can have your clients sign up for a monthly support plan. You charge them a certain amount each month that includes a certain number of hours of work.
For the client, this is useful as well because they no longer have to worry about paying each small invoice. For you, you gain an additional revenue you can count on each month.
So there you have it! There are so many ways you can maximize your earnings with minimal output. If you want to truly start a business where you aren’t relying on new clients coming in each month, setting up some form of recurring revenue is a must. We find that the most popular of these four options with our members is the WordPress maintenance plans.
Tobefied Tips 