If you build WordPress websites, you’re familiar with the cycle: finish a project, launch, and then the hunt begins for the next client. This project-based model often means inconsistent income and constant client acquisition.
What if every one-time client could become a source of predictable, stable income instead? In this article, we’ll explore how you can implement a strategy that leads to recurring revenue. We’ll look at the services you can offer, how to position them, services, package them effectively, and integrate them into your workflow.
The Foundation: Building for Long-Term Relationships
Shifting to recurring revenue isn’t just about adding new services. It begins with a fundamental change in how you approach client relationships. From your very first interaction, aim to be an ongoing partner, not just a project vendor. This means rethinking your role. Instead of viewing the website launch as the finish line, see it as the starting point for a long-term collaboration. Your objective becomes not just delivering a site, but ensuring its continued success and evolution. This proactive approach cultivates trust and demonstrates your commitment beyond the initial build.
This could be you.
Onboarding & Education
The groundwork for recurring revenue is laid during the initial sales and onboarding process. Start by setting expectations for post-launch needs. Don’t wait until the project is done to discuss ongoing support. From your very first proposal, introduce the necessity of maintenance, security, updates, and potential future enhancements. A website is like any other asset. It requires consistent care to perform optimally and remain secure. Frame this as a standard requirement, not an optional add-on.
The discovery phase is already focused on identifying the client’s pain points, so be on the lookout for problems that could be solved with r recurring services.
Handoff Document as Sales Tool
A comprehensive handoff document can serve as a technical guide and a subtle marketing tool at the same time. Detailing critical aspects like hosting, backups, update schedules, and plugin licenses underscores the complexity and ongoing care required. This is a natural lead-in to discussing managed services, by demonstrating exactly what needs consistent attention if the client chooses to handle it themselves. It also helps manage expectations and prevent future scope creep by clearly showing what counts as part of the initial build, and what falls outside of it.
Emphasize Value Over Cost
Clients often focus on the cost of a website. This is understandable, but to sell recurring services you need to shift their perspective to see value instead. Explain the tangible ROI of maintenance, security, and performance. Illustrate how neglecting these aspects can lead to downtime, security breaches, lost leads, or a poor user experience. Position your recurring services as an investment in their business’s long-term health and growth, saving them time, money, and headaches in the future.
Core Recurring Revenue Streams for WordPress Developers
Once the foundation is laid for a long-term partnership, you can introduce a range of services designed to provide ongoing value and generate predictable income. For WordPress developers, some recurring revenue streams are more fundamental and universally applicable than others. A. Website Care & Maintenance Plans Ongoing care and maintenance are critical for the security, performance, and long-term stability of any WordPress site. This makes website care plans the most natural, essential, and often the first recurring service you should offer. They secure the foundation of your client’s digital presence and establish you as their indispensable partner.
Essential Components
A robust website care plan should comprehensively cover the key areas required to keep a WordPress site healthy and functional. Clearly define what’s included in each tier:
- Core, Theme, and Plugin Updates: This is paramount. Regular updates are crucial for security patches, bug fixes, performance improvements, and compatibility. Emphasize the risks of outdated software such as vulnerabilities and broken functionality). Implement a staging environment for major updates to ensure no breaking changes occur before pushing live.
- Regular Backups (Local & Off-site): Automated, scheduled backups are non-negotiable. Ensure both website files and databases are backed up, stored securely, and ideally, replicated off-site. Stress the recovery capabilities and peace of mind this provides.
- Security Monitoring & Malware Removal: Proactive security is vital. This includes implementing a firewall, scanning for malware and suspicious activity, and promptly addressing any detected threats. If a breach occurs, outline your malware cleanup and site recovery process.
- Performance Optimization: A fast website is good for SEO and user experience. This involves ongoing tasks like database optimization, image compression, and setting up caching. Additionally, leveraging tools like WP Offload Media to store media files directly on cloud storage can significantly reduce server load and improve media delivery speed, contributing to overall performance.
Packaging & Pricing Strategies
Don’t offer a single, one-size-fits-all plan. Tiered packages (e.g., “Basic,” “Standard,” “Premium,” or “Grow,” “Pro,” “Enterprise”) allow clients to choose based on their needs and budget, making the service more accessible. Price based on value (peace of mind, saved time, avoided disaster), not just your hourly cost. Consider factors like website complexity, traffic, and business criticality when setting tiers. Offer incentives for annual payments.
Managed Hosting for WordPress
Beyond maintaining the software, managing the environment where a WordPress site lives presents another significant recurring revenue opportunity. By offering managed hosting services, you consolidate your clients’ digital needs under one roof, providing a seamless experience and ensuring optimal site performance and security.
Reselling is often the most practical approach for agencies. You partner with a reputable hosting provider, such as WP Engine, and then resell their services to your clients. This offloads the infrastructure management, server maintenance, and advanced technical support to the upstream provider, allowing you to focus on client relationships and site-specific development.
SEO Retainers
Building a beautiful, functional WordPress website won’t have much impact if the target audience never sees it. This makes ongoing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a natural and highly valuable recurring service to offer your clients. Most businesses understand the critical role of search engines in driving traffic and leads, but few have the in-house expertise or time to manage their SEO effectively.
As the website developer, you have an intimate understanding of the site’s technical structure, content, and potential areas for optimization. This foundational knowledge makes you uniquely positioned to manage or oversee its SEO, or at least that’s how you can sell it to clients. However, SEO is an entirely different ball of wax from WordPress development and site design. Effective SEO often requires deep, specialized expertise, and the bandwidth to stay current with its constantly evolving landscape.
Don’t let this lack deter you from offering it as a service, as long as you put the right resources in place first. You might not know SEO, but you almost certainly know someone who does. Seek agreements with trusted SEO freelancers or boutique agencies, and you can expand your offerings without significant investment of time or money. While you might only retain a small percentage of the recurring revenue in these cases, the ability to offer a complete solution strengthens your client relationships, increases stickiness, and prevents clients from seeking these vital services elsewhere.
Content & Marketing Support
Many businesses, particularly small and medium-sized, struggle with consistently creating and managing fresh, engaging content for their websites. This presents another prime opportunity for recurring revenue, positioning you as their content partner.
Similar to SEO, you might not have in-house writers, graphic designers, or email marketing specialists. Again, this is not a roadblock as long as you forge relationships with skilled freelancers or agencies specializing in content creation, copywriting, or digital marketing. By acting as the project manager and quality controller, you can offer a comprehensive content solution to your clients, adding another valuable recurring service to your portfolio. Even if your cut of the revenue is a percentage, the value lies in offering a more complete service ecosystem, enhancing client loyalty, and ensuring their WordPress investment continues to drive business results.
Marketing requires expertise. Innovative ideas alone aren’t enough.
Advanced & Niche Recurring Revenue Opportunities
Website care and general marketing support form the backbone of recurring revenue, and that’s definitely where you should start. However, looking beyond these core services opens doors to higher-value retainers and deeper client integration.
Custom Development Retainers
As businesses grow and their digital strategies evolve, their WordPress websites often need to adapt and expand beyond the initial build. This creates an opportunity for ongoing custom development.
Instead of handling custom requests as one-off projects, offer a retainer that allocates a set number of development hours each month or quarter. This allows clients to continuously innovate and adapt their site, whether it’s building new, bespoke functionalities, integrating with specific third-party APIs , or developing custom plugins and themes.
If you’re going to go down this route, make sure to be crystal clear as to what falls under the retainer hours versus what constitutes a new project. Retainers are typically for ongoing enhancements, optimizations, and smaller-to-medium feature additions, providing flexibility and predictability. Larger, transformative changes or entirely new modules would still be quoted as separate projects.
Optimizing and Supporting eCommerce
An online store built with WordPress is a direct revenue generator. This naturally leads to a demand for ongoing, specialized support focused on maximizing sales and maintaining a robust eCommerce platform.
Beyond general maintenance, recurring eCommerce services can include product updates and management, troubleshooting transaction failures, optimizing conversion rates, and integrations with third-party tools.
Beyond day-to-day operations, make sure your clients know that eCommerce sites are prime targets for cyber threats. Ongoing security audits, PCI compliance assistance, and continuous performance tuning (e.g., optimizing product image loading, efficient database queries for large catalogs) are critical services that clients are willing to pay for on an ongoing basis.
This is one area where the right host can really make a difference. WP Engine’s eCommerce Suite has features to help you optimize your client’s store.
Strategic Consulting & Training
WordPress developers possess both technical knowledge and insight into how a website impacts a client’s business goals. You can leverage this by offering strategic consulting and training services.
First, while many clients have Google Analytics installed, they don’t truly understand the data or how to act on it. You can offer recurring sessions to interpret website traffic, user behavior, conversion funnels, and provide actionable recommendations for digital strategy. This elevates you from a technician to a trusted business advisor.
Beyond this, training on WordPress itself can act as a source of recurring revenue. While initial training is standard, ongoing sessions can cover more advanced topics like using specific custom fields, optimizing content for new marketing campaigns, or leveraging new plugin features. This empowers clients to get more value from their site while solidifying your role as their expert resource.
Specialized Niche Services
Do you have expertise in specific industries?Tailoring recurring services to these niches can be highly lucrative. Start by writing out a list of common pain points in your target industries. Once you have the list, set about solving those issues. Solve them once, and you can probably adapt the same solution to other clients.
For example, if you primarily work with online educators, then offering Learning Management System (LMS) management and support is a clear fit. For event organizers, managing booking systems on an ongoing basis is valuable. For content creators, offering membership site management can be a core service.
Implementing Your Recurring Revenue Strategy
Deciding to sell recurring services is one thing. Effectively packaging, pricing, selling, and managing them is another. This section outlines the practical steps to integrate these offerings into your business.
Crafting Irresistible Packages
Don’t just list services; present them as clear, valuable solutions to your clients’ ongoing needs.
Define clear deliverables for each tier. Ambiguity is the enemy of recurring revenue. Explicitly list what’s included for each service package, how frequently it occurs, and any limitations. Tiered pricing (e.g., Basic, Standard, Premium) allows clients to choose the level of support that best fits their budget and requirements.
Above all, highlight the benefits of these plans, not just the features they include. Clients buy solutions, not services. Instead of saying “WordPress core updates,” emphasize “Ensuring your website remains secure and compatible with the latest web standards.” For “Monthly SEO report,” highlight “Gaining insights into traffic trends and search ranking improvements.” Frame every feature in terms of how it saves the client money, time, reduces risk, or drives business growth.
Pricing Your Services
Pricing recurring services effectively is crucial. You may already use a “cost-plus” method for WordPress development. In this method, you add up your costs and then add a profit margin. However, a “value-based” pricing method may be superior for recurring services. Price your offerings based on the perceived value they provide to the client. This allows for higher margins and better aligns with client benefits.
Be meticulous in calculating the true cost of delivering each service. Factor in the time for actual tasks, client communication, reporting, and any software subscriptions (e.g., uptime monitors, backup solutions, SEO tools).
Offer discounts for long-term commitments. You’ve probably noticed that a year’s worth of hosting or a premium plugin license is almost always cheaper than buying it from month to month. This is because the assurance of ongoing revenue makes it worthwhile for the business to give you a discount. You can do the same thing.
Encouraging clients to sign up for longer terms can significantly improve your cash flow predictability and reduce administrative overhead.
Sales & Communication Strategies
Selling recurring services requires a distinct approach compared to one-off project sales.
Presenting recurring services during the initial proposal is arguably the most effective strategy. Integrate your relevant recurring services (directly into the initial website build proposal. Frame it as the “next logical step” after launch, essential for protecting their investment. This makes it part of the natural conversation rather than an upsell later on.
It’s easier to sell services as part of the initial project, but don’t neglect your existing or past client base. They already know and trust you. Reach out with a compelling offer for maintenance, SEO, or other services, explaining how these would benefit their currently live website. Acknowledge their existing site and tailor your pitch to its specific needs.
Make sure to clearly outline your recurring service packages on your own website. Make them easy to find and understand, detailing features, benefits, and pricing.
Finally, you will need to educate clients on the “why” behind ongoing costs. Clients may balk at ongoing fees, viewing a website as a one-time purchase. Explain the risks of neglect, such as security vulnerabilities, slow performance, and broken features, and the proactive benefits of your services.
Wrapping Up
The traditional project-based model for WordPress developers, while providing immediate income, often leads to a constant cycle of client acquisition and financial unpredictability. By shifting your focus from one-time builds to long-term digital partnerships, you unlock a powerful antidote: recurring revenue.
The long-term benefits extend far beyond just financial stability. You’ll cultivate stronger, deeper relationships with your clients, becoming their trusted digital advisor. This often leads to more interesting work, better work-life balance, and ultimately, a business that is more valuable and resilient.
What has your experience been like when it comes to unlocking recurring revenue? Let us know in the comments!