Worpress Sites & Clients

Wordpress basic install is 150, goes up rapidly from there. They pay for you to know what your doing. I also charge for hosting, they get backups, updates everything they need -- except seo services. I do onsite seo when they get the site, anything else is extra.

Getwhatchuwant said:

Have you done Seo for them too? Like "city name, 401 K" "city name, Financial Services" ?

If so I may have to pick your brain a bit, if you dont mind.

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No I have not. These guys want a site so they can have a presence on the internet... so they can have on their card - xyzfinancecompany.com and look legitimate. They don't care about organic traffic for the most part.

For all:

Don't go in cheap...you undermine your own credibility. Negotiate like any business and you will come out ahead.

When you up-sell show the VALUE of what you have to offer and they will buy everything you've got.

JQ

This thread is somewhat related to the current disscussion and may help some of you make some cash building WP sites:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...how-i-made-extra-2-thousand-dollars-week.html

If you are doing it from scratch charge $500 and if you are using a premium theme charge at least $250 for a 5 page site.

I was going to ask the same exact question but I decided to do a little searching first and I'm glad I found this thread. My idea was the same, target local businesses like lawn guys, plumbers, locksmiths etc.

I have some specific questions that haven't been answered in this thread and I would love to have some insight on from other members actively doing this sort of thing.
First of all i'm not talking about creating super high quality custom sites. I am talking about making inexpensive yet professional looking sites for people who are not tech savy and are mostly in the manual labor business. You know the sort of people that the extent of their company advertising is CL ads. So I'm not talking about creating super crazy websites.. something simple yet effective.

A site that has photos of their employees, products or services, client recommendations etc. Something that they can put on a business card or a work truck. Simple..


So Here goes some specific questions I have..

Wordpress or simple HTML sites? and why

Charge Annually, monthly or one time fee?

Is $250 for a simple 5-10 pg Wordpress site with free theme too much? Not Enough for this type of clientele?

I currently have shared hosting with 1and1 and can have 25 databases which will be for the WP sites. Is this something that would be sufficient? I don't expect these pages to eat up too much bandwidth... i hope!

Upsells will include google places, facebook fan pages, email list management, Twitter etc.

I plan this little side hustle to generate some cash to go on small road trips on my days off so I don't plan to get rich or work crazy hours doing this but It will be nice to make some extra dough. For my day job i'm actually an award winning photojournalist and I work for a national publication. As you know the newspaper biz is crap right now so every extra dollar helps!

I was hoping to offer some premium services to higher end clients such as photojournalist style photos of their employees in action, corporate portraits, slideshows, product photography and other photography related services.

Am I on the right track?

Thanks in advance as this site has been a huge help.

The H5N1 said:

So Here goes some specific questions I have..

Wordpress or simple HTML sites? and why

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I do simple HTML just because it's what I'm used to and I find it easier to amend to fit with any specific colour requirements etc but WP would be fine too if they aren't too fussy.

The H5N1 said:

Charge Annually, monthly or one time fee?

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I charge one time fee plus annual fee for hosting and rough hourly charges for updates.

The H5N1 said:

Is $250 for a simple 5-10 pg Wordpress site with free theme too much? Not Enough for this type of clientele?

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I guess it depends on how much you value your time and how much your client is willing to pay.

For a 5 page WP site $250 is reasonable, if they want more pages work on a $50 per page scale. 5 should be adequate for most small businesses...Home Page...Gallery...Services...Contact Us...Links

The H5N1 said:

I currently have shared hosting with 1and1 and can have 25 databases which will be for the WP sites. Is this something that would be sufficient? I don't expect these pages to eat up too much bandwidth... i hope!

Click to expand...

Should be. I have 20+ on my 160GB a month b/w hosting and I'm nowhere near exceeding that. Just keep an eye on it through your control panel. I did host a forum for someone once which was getting spammed to death and that was using a fair bit of b/w. Also make sure you optimise any images.

The H5N1 said:

Upsells will include google places, facebook fan pages, email list management, Twitter etc.

Click to expand...

Don't forget SEO. I do the VERY basic for free, ie if they google "Dan's Gardening Services" they find their page. Anything else such as ranking higher for "Gardening Services Boston" costs them. I work on a rough multiplier of 1.5 so if it costs me $10 it costs them $15.

You could also manage their google ads (if they go in that direction) etc for a similar mark-up.

Thanks everyone! That's why I love BHW!!!!