Comments on: Building Your Freelance Business Around WordPress

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:36:31 +0000

Brian, great overview of the many uses of WordPress!!

I have been using WordPress for a little over 3 years now for work & personal use, but lately have been thinking about the idea of doing freelance work for personal WordPress sites. For those of you who have done this in the past, can anyone offer advice for pricing as well as how you handle registering domains and hosting? Do you host sites yourself, have the client sign-up and then send you the hosting information, etc??

Any advice for setting up your own freelance business would be helpful! Thanks!

By: Toma

Toma — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:16:04 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. I too have taken on WordPress as the foundation of my design business. It allows me to quickly and affordably build beautiful websites. This is great for clients because it’s cost effective and the upkeep is transferrable, but it’s also great for the web because it really does beautify it. It’s damn near impossible to build an ugly website from a beautiful premium template.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 13 May 2011 11:21:02 +0000

I have been aware of WordPress for about 2 years now (my own authored WP theme -anIMass- in WP theme directory). There is quite a difference between a blogging and corporate/business WP theme and there is a lack (imho) of decent articles/tutorials on using WP as a business CMS. Static front pages/custom page templates/css styles etc etc- a lot to be given in depth consideration. Historically of course WP was originally developed as a blogging CMS and has expanded considerably.

Goodluck to all WordPress users and I shall continue to keep learning WP across all capabilities (inc.. business themes).
Best wishes

By: Kevin Leary

Kevin Leary — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:18:46 +0000

Thanks for the great article Brian! I thought I would share a few thoughts on my personal experience as a WordPress freelance specialist. For over 3 years I've been a web design and development freelancer specializing in customized WordPress CMS design and development. I highly recommend building a business around WordPress, provided that you understand the benefits and drawbacks of doing so. There is definitely a benefit to experimenting with other systems like Drupal and Silverstripe as it helps keep an open mind. It's important to understand the technology behind WordPress to build a skill-set that is bulletproof for the future. If WordPress goes belly up I'm confident that I'll be able to find other work BECAUSE of what I've learned from using WordPress. During my experience developing plugins and custom themes I've become incredibly skilled with Photoshop, CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery and OOP PHP programming. All of these skills will translate into other areas in the future if things change. For that reason, I'm not worried about specializing in a single platform.

By: TheKoolDots

TheKoolDots — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:09:13 +0000

Using WordPress is a ‘slick’ way to obtain work from potential clients that don’t what to spent much on a full blown Website design and the cost for maintaining it. Also, the fact that it is ideal for promoting interaction with their targeted audience is a great marketing (for the freelancer) approach to obtain clients for a WordPress site design!

By: Young Busbee

Young Busbee — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:44:03 +0000

I was studying something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective on it is diametrically contradicted to what I have read earlier. I am still reflecting over the various points of view, but I’m tipped heavily toward your point of view. And no matter, that’s what is so great about modern-day democracy and the marketplace of ideas on-line.

By: Brett Widmann

Brett Widmann — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:03:02 +0000

This has been a big help! Thanks for sharing.

By: web design hubli

web design hubli — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:06:08 +0000

Thanks, Now i know how to install wordpress…

By: AJ Morris

AJ Morris — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:24:17 +0000

I’m kind of surprised that under the ‘WordPress for Freelance Designer’ frameworks list you did not include Thesis, or even better Headway. Both are great frameworks and have recently went with a split GPL license.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:06:24 +0000

I started using WordPress a couple of years ago and never looked back! WordPress is a really amazing piece of software and the community around it is awesome. With WP you can do literally everything thanks also to the endless number of plugins most of them freely available.

I am converting all my portfolio sites to WP and planning another website that will be offering WordPress services like backup, plugins setup and so on.

So I truly believe that it is possible to build a freelance business around WordPress.

Roberto