Developers, are you considering offering maintenance services to your clients? Good, it could help you out financially in quite a big way! Don’t worry, you don’t have to burden yourself with plenty of extra work that will take up your free time. You just have to be careful when deciding which maintenance services to provide.
The advantages can be quite substantial, so read on and see how your bottom line can grow with minimal effort!
How to provide maintenance?
Well, if you’re going to be doing this, you first have to decide how much you want to get involved with your clients and their website, i.e., what kind of maintenance you want to offer. There are basically two main ways to go about this – you can provide assistance with the more technical side of things, such as plugins, backups, and stuff like that, or you can work on your client’s website’s content, working towards improving its SEO rank. Of course, you can cover both of those areas, too.
The first approach may be quite appealing because you can automate a lot of things, especially if you’re dealing with a WordPress website. There’s a plugin for almost everything these days, so just get the right one and fix what needs to be fixed. That way, you can earn more without having to spend a lot of energy. However, do keep in mind that the more services you offer, the more competitive on the market you’ll be, so it may just be worth it, in the long run, to invest some extra time into making sure the content is fully optimized, too.
Why should I provide maintenance?
Now we get to the main part of the article – the most important reasons/biggest advantages for providing maintenance to your customers. Sure, you will probably be able to think of a few others, but these are the ones you really don’t want to forget when deliberating and making your final decision.
Extra income
This doesn’t need much clarification, now does it? Surely, if you’re a professional developer, you’re doing all of this for money. As previously said, if you can automate all the maintenance with the help of plugins, this becomes an extremely efficient way to make some money on the side. Besides, if you work as a developer for someone AND you offer them maintenance services after the job is done, you could very well establish a long-term business relationship with your client. This can prove to be immensely valuable if you hit a period where there aren’t too many business opportunities on the horizon.
You’ll be more attractive
Not in a physical sense, mind you, but if you can provide a complete service, many people, especially those who are not that versed in this sort of thing, will be much more likely to hire you. Not many people want to go through the hassle of getting one person to be their developer only to have to find another one to perform maintenance tasks. They often just have a good idea and need someone who can make sure the website they’re basing that idea on functions perfectly. If you can offer everything they need, things become so much less complicated. In short, the more you offer, the more people will consider hiring you.
Building firm relationships can get you more jobs more easily
If you’re already in a long-term business relationship with a client, it probably means they are satisfied with the way you work and your results. Therefore, should they ever decide to go into another website-creating venture, or even if they just want a major overhaul of their current website, the chances are you will be the one they talk to first. Not only that, but if they have a friend who is looking for a developer or just some maintenance, it becomes really easy to say, “You know, I have someone who’s been doing just that kind of thing for me for a while. Here’s their e-mail.”
Peace and quiet
Sounds kind of unusual, huh? The thing is, if you commit to doing maintenance, you won’t be getting any messages saying how a certain client needs help or how they don’t know what to do next. These can actually be quite annoying and drain a lot of your energy because it’s not always simple to explain something you consider to be simple to someone who is not a developer. Besides, people often think they can bother you with just one more question after you’ve finished the agreed-upon work. Instead all of that, by performing maintenance, you completely avoid this kind of question and can always fully focus on the task ahead.
Conclusion
As you can see, providing maintenance services can have some serious upsides. It can be extremely efficient in terms of effort invested and money earned, especially when it comes to WordPress websites. On top of that, it can also open plenty of new business opportunities to you, depending on the services you offer and the commitment you’re willing to make, of course. Not to mention that your clients won’t be nagging you to check this and fix that – they will know everything is under control because they have the right person for the job.
Ultimately, though, the decision is up to you. If you’re looking for some extra work as a developer, in particular, if you’re going through a period where you don’t really have any new jobs, this could be a great solution. But first, determine what kind of services you’re willing to offer and how much of you’re time you’re willing to spend doing this. Once you have that figured out, provided that you have realistic expectations concerning the earning this could get you, things will gradually fall into place.
