This question seems to come up every single year because people want to know if WordPress is here to stay. The basis of this article, is whether or not a person should consider becoming a WordPress designer, developer or consultant.
As a freelance WordPress developer, I spend a significant amount of time looking at trends, the latest news pertaining to WordPress, and the potential competition that might exist.
All the Data shows that WordPress is consistently growing in usage and currently powers just over 30% of the modern web. This translates to millions of websites that use WordPress as their primary platform. These are websites that are for everyday bloggers, small businesses and even Fortune 500 companies.
This is why I consider it to be a great idea to choose a career as a freelance WordPress designer or developer or even a consultant.
The WordPress Theme or Plugin Developer Route
As a designer or developer, you have options like whether to be theme developer or plugin developer. You could be a freelancer working from home or you can be a remote worker working for a large agency that supports a distributed workforce.
It goes without saying that to be an effective theme or plug-in developer will require that you know at least some of the languages used by WordPress like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP and having experience with the MySQL database will be beneficial.
Since WordPress has been around for such a long time, it also has its library of functions, classes and code that you would also need to be familiar with.
What about being a WordPress consultant?
While WordPress is such a well documented piece of software and there’s ton of information that you can get for free on how to get started with WordPress, if a person or business is busy they may not have the time to do the research on how to get started with a WordPress powered website.
This is where a WordPress consultant comes in. As a consultant you don’t necessarily have to know how to code since your primary focus will often be on how to set up a WordPress website.
Some things you should know are:
- how to choose a domain name
- how to choose web hosting
- how to install WordPress manually
- how to install WordPress with the one click install
- how to choose a WordPress theme for specific niche
- how to choose and configure the right mix of plugins that will be needed for the website
- how to make sure that a website is SEO optimized
- how to properly connect and configure social media options
- how to secure a WordPress
- how to automate the process of WordPress backups
- how to optimize a WordPress powered website
- how to make sure that a WordPress website meets its goals of converting website visitors to subscribers or clients
- how to conduct lead generation on the website
Those are just a few of the key things you would need to know as a WordPress consultant.
How hard is it to become a WordPress designer or developer or consultant?
Well as I mentioned previously, if you want to be a theme developer or plugin developer then you will have to know some of the coding languages that’s used by WordPress.
If you choose to go the freelance route, then you will have to be able to market your services to ensure that you have a healthy pipeline of potential clients and drive traffic to your website where you can sell your themes and plugins.
You could also choose, as I mentioned before, to be a remote worker working for a large agency. This gives you the benefit of working from home just like a freelancer, but you also get a salary and often, benefits.
How hard is it to become a WordPress consultant?
This is an easier type of business to get started with since there’s so much documentation and information online on how to use WordPress.
All you have to do is dedicate some serious time to learning how WordPress works and identify a few key themes and theme frameworks that you can potentially specialize in. The same for plugins, identify the Top 10 WordPress Plugins and how to properly configure them.
Once you have sufficient knowledge on how to work with WordPress, then your primary focus is going to be all about marketing.
My recommendation
Choosing to become a WordPress designer or developer or even a consultant shouldn’t be a decision made lightly. You will have to do a significant amount of research and learn how to do things properly if you want this to be your primary source of income or even a side business.
Being a freelancer or remote worker also requires a significant amount of discipline. Working from the comfort of your own home is something a lot of us want to do but you have to remember that that means, you’re working out of the comfort of your distraction filled home.
You have to treat your business like a business. In the video above, I go over more of my thoughts on the prospects of making WordPress, your business. Take a few minutes, watch the video and see if this is something that you should consider.
As always, thanks for reading and don’t forget to subscribe.