Hi there, I am looking for some advice about running a very small wordpress site design/development business.
I am a college CS student, and have been using wordpress to design websites for years. Recently in the last year I started to accept client projects as a little side money while in college. Its grown quite a bit, but I am looking for some advice on how to manage myself and the websites, and the clients.
I also run maintenance packages where I charge people yearly a fixed cost for me to maintain their sites, and they have unlimited revisions etc, its a fair price for what they get.
ALSO LET ME BE CLEAR: I am not accepting enterprise level projects, just simply small businesses, or portfolios, weddings, etc. Stuff that is easier to manage and less stressful, as I have a full 18 credit/semester workload on top of the side job I’ve created for myself.
That being said:
I have never worked for a development company before, so I am looking for specific softwares that might be able to ease some of my pains.
Something to help me manage not just having multiple clients sites under my management, something like ManageWP, but also things like payment, and communication.
Also should I be using contracts that way I protect myself more? Or is 10<x<20 clients still ok to not be using contracts.
Just generally any advice in what might make my life easier in running this type of business is greatly appreciated! Thank you!
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how much do you charge for 1 year of maintenance?
* ManageWP – for running mass updates
* Backup: UpdraftPlus – automatic, offsite backup (I send backup to AWS S3)
* Security: Wordfency
* If you’re technically inclined, learn how to host/manage servers yourself (I use Linode, Vultr, AWS Lightsail servers, all managed with RunCloud). Learn how to manage a server purely with SSH/CLI. Don’t attempt this if you aren’t technically minded – use managed WP hosting.
* Xero for monthly or annually hosting/maintenance renewal invoicing
I host some sites on a Plesk VPS. Costs $5 per month.
It takes a small amount of time to learn but makes it extremely easy to host and manage multiple WordPress sites. Update and plugin management, backups, staging, etc. are all built in.
Easier than learning to manage a server via SSH, although you have access to the command line if you like that sort of thing.
Plus if you’re charging clients for monthly maintenance without contracts, you can easily just deactivate their sites until they pay. Pretty crude way to avoid having to deal with contracts but it works.
For payments: Invoice Ninja. For communications: email. For a host: Cloudways. For managing WP: There are a few out there that do the job.
* 1. Hosting = use some managed WP; for simple sites I recommend SiteGround for its free backups, staging, SSL and PHP management across all site, and mail server. Even SG caching and security is not bad at all. If you have time and are not afraid to make your hands dirty (read linux skills) Cloudways is a valid contender.
* 2. ManageWP – for updates
* 3. Billing – I use Paypal.
* 4. Contracts – it will not hurt to have. Do it.
It’s nice to have personal ‘agency’ site with portfolio, describing your services etc. If your clients are like mine, word of mouth, you can omit this.
I host at Hetzner dedicated and LinodeVPS, CloudPanel and ManageWP, off backup to clients’ GDrive or AWS.
Success.
Whoa, forward contracts to cheap labor, outsource them. You don’t realize how big of a share you could make just not doing anything. This works best with Small – Mid level businesses. I did this, just in case DM Me I’ll let you know more.