Questions about making WordPress sites for clients

1. WP comes pre-installed in most any hosting account/plan. Any that you want to deal with anyway.

2. ENTIRELY you. How involved do you want to get?

Ah, so when I direct the client to register at Hostgator, for example, all I need is access to that account so I can set up WP, correct? That would be awesome.

I wouldn't mind getting involved more than a basic install, but I'm not a content provider. So I'd rather build the house and the client can furnish it. Of course if he provides the content I'd be happy to put it in.

Joel,

What do fiver gigs involve in terms of finished product?

I've only had one gig there so far, and it was writing a couple reviews about pets I've owned. But my assumption is the seller can dictate what he's willing to do for the buyer. So yes, I could very well say I'll only do basic WP installs, but I think there are others who would do more. So I want to be sure my offerings are competitive in that respect.

It's not too difficult to do the whole magilla, but am not sure I'd want to for $5.00.

Do you know what others are offering in this respect?

I know of one person who's offering this:

• 5-page simple WordPress site
• Custom banners and slider
• Text Content Required for Each Page.
• Modern, HTML 5, great looking industry patterns

1. With client furnishing hosting and URL, giving you access to host, knowing what theme he wants, and furnishing content (including images) and theme (if not a WP free item) , would probably take from 3 to 4 to hours to set things up. There's a lot of details to consider colors, logos, menus etc. Seems like it would be difficult to agree on a starting and ending point.

2. Custom banner and slider. Lots of plugins could do the slider and custom banners would require an upfront agreement on color and content...Maybe some creative graphic skills...
Again, agreement on what constitutes client satisfaction seems to make timing difficult to judge.

3. Text content for each page. Anyone offering that is probably checking out competitive sites and spinning the content. I've never been able to get away with that. Any profession or business you talk about is going to have its own lingo and terminology....a one ton air conditioner does not weigh 2000#.

Sorry to be so negative ...maybe I'm wearing the wrong hat.

Not negative at all. I appreciate your feedback on this, as it helps me decide the best course of action. The last thing I want to do is screw up a Fiverr gig idea that could quickly dig me out of the hole I'm in.

1. It is NOT really a "design issue" because you are not asking for help with your design... you are contemplating ways of making money online (which, accidentally, would involve some stuff that are distantly connected with design...)

2. What you are asking is really this: what should be my business model if I am going to offer services on fiverr? (and that has nothing to do with web design)

3. Why would you want to go into a business (=offering WP install an/or customization) if you know nothing about how WP works?
Any third world kid will beat you at it, and for them $5 is a considerable amount while for you is less than the minimum wage in Canada - even if you can do it in an hour...

A while back, John Chow was offering some basic WP installations, of course the catch (if you could call it that) was that you'd be buying hostgator hosting using his affilliate link, so he would be getting paid commissions off the hosting package. He was offering to do this for free as a condition of using his affiliate link, but since you'd already be charging $5, you could simply suggest the use of your link, since they'd be paying the same amount regardless.

He also included the installation of a handful of highly useful plugins, and you could include the installation of the theme of their choice (which they would email to you). Hostgator has a 1-click WP install where you just have to fill in some basic info on the site and select the domain to use, and BAM! it installs it in like 10 seconds. You would then proceed to upload the extracted plugins and theme (faster than installing each individually through the admin interface).

Of course, you might even be able to script your own auto install that included more settings like the best permalink settings and plugin settings, so the whole shebang might take you less than 5 minutes to complete.

I certainly wouldn't get into any design work there other than maybe recommending a theme which was easily configurable, such as one from Woothemes, and then referring them to it using an affiliate link.

... damn, I think I might do this as well.

If the buyer has cpanel hosting, it literally takes 2 minutes using Fantastico to install Wordpress. Installing a decent header, ads and plugins is considerably more effort required than $5. I'm not sure why anyone would pay someone $5 to do what takes 2 minutes to do on your own.

LOL... well.... if I was a small thinker, yes.

I am gonna agree with Istvan and fedor50 a bit here. I am NOT a small thinker, just wonder what value you are offering to clients that pay $5 - and how you plan to up-sell them into a sustainable business?

IMHO, Clients that buy a $5 site don't up-sell very well.

I had a similar website (html or joomla or drupal or wordpress) service for a few years.
Though I charged a lot more than $5 - it was still a great value.

So, I automated my side - made several pre-configured site packages - and cloned them so the install was a few minutes. I included a simple manual with each.

Additional add-on services included things like setting up/configuring domains, additional functionality (plugins) installed/configured, logos, basic content packages, SEO, etc...

Tech support is the issue - will you charge for each question? Newbies have lots of questions. Providing good service takes up a lot of time. The more you sell, the more time is spent on service.

The business model that worked best ended up being one where I was developing/maintaining sites for a few clients that were willing and able to pay for quality service on an on-going basis.

I am not saying it can't be done..everything is possible..I just think that low-end volume often leads to lots of headaches.

Good luck!

Actually, it was explained in basic terms earlier in this thread (leveraging affiliate hosting is the major point). And it's really only a stepping stone venture to generate enough cash to reinvest into bigger & better things.

Hello i am new to this forum how do i start a new thread or whateever to post i have some questions and need help please

I dabbled in Fiverr for a while and you have to watch out for the expectations of the clients. Be very specific on what you are offering. If you can get to the higher tiers you can offer up sells at higher rates, so keep that in mind as you plan your offering so that you have something to add on when you hit that level.

(leveraging affiliate hosting is the major point)

You can do that without 'touching' a client's site.
The minute you 'touch' a site, you incur other responsibilities.

I appreciate that you want to raise money for other ventures. I am advising (based on almost 20 years of direct experience with this specific topic) that you work your model in a way that is profitable in both money and time.

I don't believe that the $50 or $100 per site hosting will not be enough to sustain you.