Winning new business can be challenging, which is one of many reasons why we love helping WordPress web design agencies generate recurring revenue.
Website design projects are great, but they come with a fundamental problem. They have a set beginning and an end. At some point, you finish the website and collect the final payment.
Unless you have another project ready to go, you’re stuck footing the bill for your team while you secure the next client. Recurring revenue streams help even out your income, so you have cash coming in between website builds.
And as a bonus, most of the ways a web agency can generate recurring revenue keep you in contact with your clients. It’s easy to pick up referral business or new projects while maintaining an ongoing business relationship with existing clients.
6 Ways You Can Generate Ongoing Income
If “a series of one-and-done projects” accurately describes your current business model, you are leaving lots of money on the table. Here are six examples of recurring revenue opportunities where you should consider expanding:
1. Website Hosting
Offering managed WordPress hosting is a great way to build recurring revenue for your business. It makes you a one-stop shop for your clients, and they’ll rest easy knowing you’re always there to help.
Offering hosting lets you purchase a bulk package from companies like Pressable, and then extend fair pricing for hosting to your clients. Many WordPress hosting providers now offer plans specific for web design agencies and provide tools to help them easily manage their client’s websites.
Pro Tip: Pressable offers hosting solutions specific to web design agencies. Our team would be happy to walk you through pricing, support options, and the tools we offer to help you make your agency a success.
2. Website Maintenance
WordPress maintenance may seem simple to you, but it can be overwhelming to the average small business owner.
If the client fails to update their site’s WordPress version, plugins, or themes, their site performance could suffer, or worse yet, completely crash. It also makes the site more vulnerable to attack. Most clients won’t want to take the risk and will welcome help maintaining their site.
The best way to sell website maintenance is to plant the seed at the time of creating the proposal for website design. Have this package as an option within the proposal and explain why this is important. You’ll be surprised at how many clients will opt-in from the start. And if they don’t and they need help later, you can always redirect them back to the option in the proposal and demonstrate you’re ready and able to help them.
If you didn’t offer maintenance packages for older client projects, it’s never too late to start. Check in with your clients to see how their site is performing. Run a site audit and illustrate how maintenance could improve their site’s loading speed.
Every major WordPress release is a chance to check in with clients and let them know about your maintenance packages to help them navigate the latest changes.
Pro Tip: The best way to keep sane in ongoing maintenance contracts is to have a robust ticket system to log, manage, and track client requests. These systems will also help you track time, so you can know which clients are profitable and which ones might need overages applied or a different package.
3. Website Support
Offering a monthly subscription for support is good customer service. You can create different tiers based on the client’s needs. If the client doesn’t make many changes to their site, they might need a simple package that only includes an hour or two a month. Clients who frequently update their site might want a plan that includes a larger number of development hours each month.
Regardless of the number of hours purchased, there is always a large list of ways you can help your clients update and improve their online presence.
Common support requirements include:
- Plugin selection, installation, and configuration
- Theme customizations
- Content edits
- New content and landing page entry
- Integration to third-party software like Google Merchant Center, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Technical audits
- Reporting
Pro Tip: Support isn’t a one-size-fits-all offering. Make sure you get to know your client and what they need so you can tailor a package that fits their marketing goals and budget.
4. Website Themes and Plugins
If you are a mix of creative and builder, a theme store or premium plugin offering might speak to you. Not only does this approach offer a product that could bring in custom design work, but it can also provide recurring revenue each year in subscription renewals.
While a $100 sale might not feel like a lot, when you add up hundreds of buyers that renew each year, it can quickly amount to a lot of revenue.
The other critical element of having a product offering is it gives your team something to work on while your custom design and development work is slow. That way your full-time graphic designers and WordPress developers have something to focus on and create while the custom projects are working their way through the sales process.
Pro Tip: Create and nurture a product offering that complements your custom work. For example, if you’re heavy into custom WooCommerce development create a plugin that solves a common WooCommerce problem your customers struggle with. This will bring in revenue and help you be a hero at the same time.
5. Search Engine Optimization
Clients build websites so customers can find them. Clients don’t want a site that is invisible in search, which means they need a solid SEO strategy and plan of execution. Offering search engine optimization helps your clients get more value from their website investment and it keeps them tightly aligned with your agency.
Today’s world of SEO is a bit different than it was years ago. Google offers lots of information for developers to learn SEO, there are a lot of great websites to source invaluable SEO education, and you’ll find amazing software tools to help you execute SEO tasks and create reports.
Sign up for a trial of Semrush or Ahrefs to discover all the tools available to assist in creating SEO plans, optimizing content, and providing ongoing reporting.
Pro Tip: While AI is all the craze right now, be very careful relying on AI for SEO and content creation. AI doesn’t sound very human and it doesn’t always connect with readers. Because of this, AI written content doesn’t do a stellar job of converting website visitors. If you’re offering content writing, make sure you use real writers so your client and you have the best opportunity for success.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Some agencies prefer to join affiliate programs in lieu of ongoing engagements with clients. In this scenario, the agency is paid a commission for referring the affiliate program’s product or service.
Depending on the affiliate program used, it can offer a single payment or ongoing payments. While most of these are one-time payouts, they can bring in big bucks!
There are a variety of affiliate programs available to help both your client and your revenue stream.
Popular affiliate programs web agencies can participate in include:
- WordPress Hosting – Pressable, WordPress.com
- WordPress Plugins – WooCommerce, Jetpack
- SEO Software – Semrush, Mangools
- Email Marketing Software – MailChimp, GetResponse
- Landing Pages – Leadpages, ClickFunnels
- CRM Software – HubSpot, Agile CRM
- Design software – Adobe, 99Designs
Pro Tip: Select affiliate programs you believe in and use yourself. This will allow you to honestly promote the offering and help your customers. Never promote an affiliate program you wouldn’t use yourself. That will only lead to mistrust and degrade your reputation with your customer base.
Pressable Is Here to Help Your Agency Grow
Agencies love Pressable because we offer solutions and support to help make growing monthly recurring revenue easy.
Here are a few of the ways we can help you each and every month:
- We offer seamless white glove migrations
- We offer a 100% uptime guarantee
- We have an intuitive dashboard for managing multiple sites
- We offer free CDNs
- We proactively monitor websites for performance and usage
- We handle WordPress updates
- We have automated backups ready to go
- We deploy the best security monitoring available
- We offer malware removal services
- We offer 24/7 expert support to make sure you and your customers are covered
Your team will spend less time managing websites hosted on Pressable, which means your margins for hosting and maintenance packages will be higher.
Let us help you grow! Learn more about our agency solutions or join our affiliate program!
Amanda Tsourakis
With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, Amanda's experience demonstrates her sales expertise. Her commitment to building, training, and guiding high-performing teams has been instrumental in driving Pressable's success. Amanda's extensive background in sales and marketing, coupled with her sharp business acumen, has made her an invaluable asset to the tech community. Her ability to identify and foster talent, combined with her passion for developing winning sales strategies, has propelled her to the forefront of the industry. When she's not expertly navigating the tech sales landscape, she loves spending quality time with her family, loves travel and adventure, lounging pool/beach-side, playing tennis, working out, and meeting people/making friends all along the way!
