# WordPress Maintenance Mistakes That Cost Web Designers $1000's

Channel: Jeffrey @ Lytbox
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVeDu0jI0eE
Duration: 9 min
Language: English
Words: 1624
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/AVeDu0jI0eE

---

[0:00] Web designers and devs are making very big mistakes with WordPress maintenance plans that are costing them thousands of dollars. I see the same mistakes happening over and over and I know it because I have done them myself. Here's not to make three very costly mistakes with your WordPress maintenance plans with the most costly at the end. Mistake number one is waiting too long to start offering WordPress maintenance plans to your clients. And this was the first mistake that I made because I thought I had to create all these perfect systems in order to get started. I just didn't feel ready or confident quite yet. And the truth is once you start building

[0:35] enough sites for clients, you actually start to get the hang of the hosting of being able to update things. And you could start with your very first clients, building maintenance plans for them, and then evolving and growing your processes and systems as you are offering them to clients. Because here's the thing, we need to start collecting MRR or monthly recurring revenue from the very beginning. This is essential for web design businesses. Just think about this. If you had enough monthly recurring revenue to cover your rent, your expenses, your bills, how much pressure will that take off of you when it comes to finding clients, bidding for

[1:15] projects, pricing your projects? How much easier will it be to say no to a client who clearly does not have the right budget for you or is not the right fit? It's okay if your plans are not perfect at first. Just focus on the fundamentals. That's going to be your hosting, your backups, your updates, the bug fixes, making sure everything is secure, running optimally, and then also providing support to your client. And all of this could be covered in just two platforms which I'm about to share with you. So start there. Don't wait years to start offering plans. Start getting that MR rolling in. Mistake number two, not

[1:54] streamlining and automating enough. The goal is to spend as little time as possible relying on systems and automations in order to keep all of your websites secure, running optimally and healthy and fast. You're supposed to set all that up and keep optimizing your automations. But I see many designers and devs getting way too technical,

[2:15] geeking out way too much. And I get it. I also love to geek out on tools. I like to set new things up. But this is where we go wrong. This is a big mistake because a maintenance plan needs to just focus on a stack of tools, not changing constantly with every new flashy tool that comes out. Instead, focusing on the automations and the systems. They are not supposed to be complex. They're

[2:40] supposed to be organized and minimal. This way, you can spend your time working on the current projects that you have, as well as working on support and updates and new work from your clients on your WordPress maintenance plans. To get started with this, there are two foundational tools. First one is hosting. And hosting is super important. You can't go cheap with hosting. You need to get the type of hosting that has all the things that you need and try to centralize all of them. For example,

[3:10] I've been using Cloudways for years now. Inside of Cloudways, I'm able to set up my Cloudflare Enterprise. So, I got all of the security taken care of. I'm able to set up SMTPs for all the transactional emails. I'm able to set up emails for some clients that need it. I'm able to create multiple servers very easily inside of different locations for my clients whose businesses are in different parts of the world. Then I'm able to monitor my servers just to make sure everything is good in case if anything is looking off. And the support, the support has gotten me out of a whole lot of jams throughout the

[3:47] years. And if you're paying more than a hundred a month, then you get the agency level support. It is super important to have that when we are starting to manage a high number of websites for our clients. Now, I do want to be always transparent and honest with you all. I do have a partnership with Cloudways to make a few videos and that's only because I have used them for so many years and they have been very instrumental in my agency's WordPress maintenance plans. And the next foundational tool would be a WordPress site manager. And my go-to now is WP Umbrella. It's super affordable. It does

[4:21] everything that I need. It has all the backups, the uptime monitoring, the client reports, doing all the updates. So just with those two tools alone, really good hosting and a really good WordPress site manager, you have everything that you need to build your systems and to start automating this process and then continue working on those automations. Now, here is the biggest mistake that I see web designers and developers and agencies making with their WordPress maintenance plans, and that is offering free work included with their plans. And this looks like, you know, this much a month includes x amount of hours of changes to your website. And this by far is the biggest

[5:04] mistake that's costing web designers, freelancers, and agencies thousands of dollars. Like you are literally taking money out of your pocket and just throwing it away. And I think the reason why this happens so much in our industry is because there isn't a clear understanding of the value of a WordPress maintenance plan. Now WordPress maintenance plan is there to make sure that website is running optimally. It is safe. It is healthy and that the client does not have to worry about anything. They don't have to worry that their site is going to get hacked, that is going to go down, that is going to break on them. They have somebody

[5:43] that they could count on. The number one value is the support. It is letting your client know and feel that they do not have to worry about their website. They have their web person. They have their team member that is there to help them. Because look at a lot of businesses, especially smaller businesses, they cannot afford an in-house developer or designer. That would cost them way too much. So, being able to have somebody provide that service for $1, $200 a month, that is a deal. Do you know how hard and stressful it is to find a new designer or new developer? Clients don't want that. They want to stick with

[6:26] somebody. They want to know that that person is going to be there for them. They want to know that when it is time to make changes and add new features and do something different on their site, they could call their web person. And you're giving it away for free. Don't do that anymore. Instead, create a system where you can start to charge your clients. It could be with retainers. You could create something that is more hourly based or something more projectbased. You got to think out the box here. But don't take away the greatest value that you are offering your clients and start giving away free

[6:58] work. And if you are doing it right now, then it's time for you to take a step back, go to chat GPT, have it help you craft up a response, and then let the client know with, you know, carefully craft a response that we have made changes to our WordPress maintenance plans. We're no longer going to be able to do x amount of hours because it just wasn't sustainable. Instead, we are going to be offering, you know, a good rate to our current clients for ongoing work. And I guarantee you this, most of your clients are going to come back and tell you, "I was waiting for you to do

[7:34] this because I knew that that would be the right move to do." Good clients will tell you honestly, "Hey, that was a bad business mistake you were doing, but actually charging for the extra work, this is a good move for you, and I'm happy to pay for it." That's what a good client will tell you. Now, as the economy gets tougher globally, it's up to us to focus more on our businesses and think about how can we maximize our earnings. We have to we don't have a choice. We have to really think businessminded. It's not about how much can we take from our clients, but it's

[8:07] about how much can we give to our clients and how can we charge for that. Start to look at the value you are providing and how you could give more. And then start to look at how can you maximize your earnings. If you have any questions about this. If you need help navigating this area of your web design business, let me know inside of the comments. This is what I live for. I love helping other creatives to do better for themselves, to earn better for themselves, and we all need to be working on this because, well, we are creatives and a lot of us didn't come

[8:39] with MBAs and, you know, business training background. So, yeah, drop your questions and comments below. I'm happy to answer all of them. And well, that is it for this video. I'll see you in the next one. Thank you for watching.

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt