Ask HN: How can one make money with Wordpress and the like | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can one make money with Wordpress and the like

5 pointsquietthrow5 comments

I see a lot of people in this community indicating Wordpress as one of the sources of making some amount of passive side income (1K+). My question is word press is a relatively mature platform what are the gaps that people can make plugins for to make money.

Can you identify some specific items/tasks that one can do to generate some passive income.

If your answer is tied to a different 'ecosystem' besides wordpress please indicate that too.

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I see it as a divide between either having a client / designer relationship and making a custom theme or website, alternatively you could make a theme and sell it on something like Theme Forest(http://themeforest.net/).

There's huge demand for packaged themes and code. You can go with Envato or one of the smaller stores like CreativeMarket or Binpress.

I've had a lot of luck setting up a Wordpress installation for clients and putting a modified relatively inexpensive theme on it. I make it very clear to clients that they're getting a (slightly) modified theme and not a custom design.

How do you find these clients ? Also do you do this on the side or is this kind of work your full time job ?

I do this on the side. I currently work full-time at Run Games, a small indie game studio.

I started out doing freelance web development for people I knew personally. I'd set a price, usually ~$300 because I'd feel guilty if I took any more, and spend the time to make a custom website for them. They'd recommend me to a friend and I'd do the same thing over again.

I quickly realized this wasn't sustainable, so I experimented with raising my rate substantially and doing Wordpress sites with a theme for people. As it turns out, my clients didn't notice a different in the quality of my work and liked having a CMS they could use (over a Jekyll-esque thing I had set up for myself).

So, to sum it up, I recommend starting small with doing themed Wordpress sites for local businesses and offering low rates. You're going for recommendations at this stage. Once you have clients approaching you, you can start to raise your rate.

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