The ever increasing popularity of WordPress as a reliable content management system for bloggers and businesses has made it a reliable source of income for both professionals as well as entrepreneurs. A large number of institutes offer WordPress courses at affordable fees and there are several online courses to learn professional WordPress development courses. Besides, there are many books available in the market if you are looking for detailed course that you can learn at your convenience. Having said that, if you have entrepreneurial skills and sufficient resources, then you can also think about starting a WordPress designing business as WordPress has emerged as a reliable platform to design several local as well as international websites.
In this blog, we are going to present the practical tips on how to run your own WordPress designing business and overcoming the initial challenges by taking some wise decisions. By following these actionable tips you should be able to turn your WordPress designing and development business into a decent and sustainable venture within reasonable time:
Build a strategic business planning
Plan a well designed strategy before you start the entrepreneurial career. Start with the well-defined business goals and then select your targeted audiences accordingly with a focus on easy conversion. Determine the services you can comfortably provide to your audiences.
Make sure to avoid over commitment and be honest while deciding the scope of services you are capable of providing to the consumers.
Also avoid acquiring more consumers than you can handle. Being a service sector, the after-sales experience is extremely important to win the loyalty of your customers which will help you in business continuity. The rule of thumb is: value over the volume.
Have a well-defined plan to manage financial aspects
Set up a reliable finance management strategy to avoid mismanagement of your financial transactions which can eventually hurt your business’ profitability. Remember, if you wish to turn your designing business into a profitable venture then you first need to have a complete control over your financial management.
The challenge is to balance web designing tasks and the accounting management. Along with timely completion of your web designing tasks you also need to maintain accounts regularly and assess the profitability of your business.
The solution is to automate the accounting management so that it should not cost you significant efforts. It will enable you to focus well on your primary website designing tasks to ensure quality and timely services to your clients.
One such automation accounting management tool is Freshbooks that can seamlessly be integrated with your site or system and allows you to easily create well-designed invoices and send to your clients. It also enables you to accept online payments quickly and facilitates financial transaction tracking for diverse transactions. However, you are free to choose any other option for automanagement of your accounts and financial transactions.
Choose the ideal WP theme framework
Theme framework plays a vital role in accelerating the development process through work load reduction. With WordPress you get several friendly theme frameworks like Genesis so that you can instantly replace the themes while retaining all the present aspects and without disturbing the functionality profile of your website.
Modifying your site settings and options become quick and easy with theme framework which helps you to update your site’s appeal to meet with changing trends and design objectives.
Wise customization of your website can help you a great way in keeping your visitors happy and also making it search engine friendly. Thankfully the WordPress websites help you to quickly modify or upgrade your site functionality sans coding/scripting hassles. All you have to do is to pick the right WP plug-in for your purpose- either paid or free version- and integrate it with site. It allows you to exercise extended customization using intuitive interface and simple processes. With the help of this plug-in you can fine-tune your site’s appeal by modifying colours, sidebar, and background images, header and footer, typography, layout structure etc- quickly ad without any coding.
Offer domain & web hosting plan as a secondary source of income
Your clients may also seek your suggestions on buying ideal WordPress hosting packages. You can use this opportunity to help your customers enjoy the best services and also earn some extra revenue in the process.
One of the best ways to do it is to join the reseller program of your web hosting provider. As you are already using the company’s hosting services you and be sure about their service quality. By becoming their reseller, you can buy their packages at lower rates in bulk and resell them to your end clients at the retail prices.
The best thing about this business model is that you don’t have to engage directly in providing technical service soar support services for your end clients as all such services are managed by the parent host.
Hire best industry talent with right attitude
Carefully build a reliable team of workers who possess right blend of knowledge, passion and professional wisdom. It will allows you to comfortably delegate different tasks to the talented workers which will help you noncomplex the projects within stipulated period.
Depending upon your requirements and business model you may recruit permanent workers, hire freelancers or recruit people on per project/contract basis. You should first hire the people on probationary basis and make them permanent only if you are satisfied with their average working style and project delivery/quality. You can offer some commercial/non-commercial perks to the workers once they have become permanent worked. These can include better package, 5-day working, PF etc. You may also offer them performance based bonus every quarter
Create long lasting bond with your clients
It is equally important to establish loyal relationship with clients by analyzing and anticipating the needs of your clients, offering them better value for their prices and keep the commercials reasonably affordable for all.
Two things that help you earn a distinct reputation and respect in the industry are providing personalized solution to individual clients tailored to meet their specific business requirements and secondly periodical follow up with the clients to know their feedback, suggestions and any further requirements. It may also help you expand your service scope and accelerate your revenue opportunities.
Conclusion
Running WordPress designing and development business needs commitment, dedication, expertise and above all right decisions at right time. In this blog, we have presented some tips on how to start and run your WordPress business to earn sustainable revenue and a decent reputation in the industry. The readers are advised to follow these tips and also use their discretion to discover other ideas/solutions to overcome various challenges they encounter during the entrepreneurial journey.