Do you offer Website Maintenance to your web clients? [sc name="pod_ad"]Offering Website maintenance is a great way to make extra money while putting in minimal effort. It’s right up there with print brokering as a way to supplement your design income. Way back in episode 9 of the podcast, I shared 12 ways designers can earn extra income. On that episode, I mentioned making extra income by offering to host your client’s websites. Since then, I’ve made a few changes to the way I operate. I no longer provide web hosting on its own. Instead, I offer website maintenance, and I make a lot more money doing so. And so can you. The typical lifecycle of a web design project. A client approaches you to design and build their new website. You agree on a price, get the contracts signed and receive your deposit. You get to work on their site. When it’s ready, you present your client with their new website. You make any requested adjustments until they’re thrilled with what you did for them. They pay the balance owing to the project, and you launch their site. The client is happy with their new website. You’re pleased with the money you earned—end of the story. Once this process is over, you may or may not hear from that client again until they need a new website in a few years. That’s providing they don’t meet another web designer between now and then. If they do, then all bets are off. But it doesn’t have to be that way. By offering a website maintenance plan as part of your web design services, you retain that client on the books, and chances are when they need new web work in the future, they’ll turn to you because of your ongoing relationship. Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to earn a recurring monthly income that gives your clients piece of mind while costing you very little in return? If you are not offering a website maintenance plan as part of your services, you’re leaving easy money on the table. Offering a website maintenance plan doesn’t require much tech knowledge. The best part of a website maintenance plan is if done right, you don’t need much tech knowledge. I didn’t know much when I started. And to be honest, there’s still a lot I don’t know. But I don’t have to know much for my plan to work. What a website maintenance plan looks like. Website maintenance plans differ from designer to designer. However, let me break down what my website maintenance plan looks like. When I started offering website hosting in 2005, I charged my clients $12/month. When I switched from hosting static HTML sites to hosting WordPress websites, I raised my hosting fee to $35/month. Then I attended WordCamp Ottawa and met a fellow designer whose business was very similar to my own. However, instead of just hosting his client’s websites, he was offering a website maintenance plan. After hearing about his success, I immediately implemented it in my business. I raised my price to $69/month and expanded my offering from simple hosting to a full-fledged website maintenance service. Some web designers may find $69 per month expensive. But it’s not. I know designers who charge much more than I do for their website maintenance plans. Look at it this way, if you’re building $500 or $800 websites for clients. Then yes, they’ll find $69/month expensive. However, a client who pays several thousand dollars for a website, won’t hesitate to pay $69 or more each month to keep their investment safe. That’s what a web maintenance plan offers, safety and peace of mind. My website maintenance plan consists of: Managed WordPress hosting (I have a shared hosting plan that I divide and resell to my clients.) Premium licence fees for themes and plugins. Unlimited email accounts for the client’s domain name. An SSL Certificate for their site. Malware Scans. Weekly WordPress Core, Theme and Plugin updates. Daily website backups to an offsite storage location. Enhanced Website Security. Uptime Monitoring. In return for these monthly services, my clients get a stress-free web