Business of taking care of client & agency websites with Ed Ellingham – SWC 23

Smart Web Creators - Podcast for WordPress Agency Entrepreneurs

There is a big recurring revenue opportunity in managing client websites. One needs proper tools, workflow processes in managing a lot of client websites for updates, changes, and security.

Ed Ellingham from Cloud Care WP provide insights on infrastructure, tools, and services needed for care plans business. Also, how white labeling this service for other agencies offer an additional revenue stream.

01. Why focus on website care

• Like many of us, I understand you started as one man agency building client websites. Why put more focus on managing websites rather than creating websites?
• So, now you focus more on website care -- has the agency building client websites taken a back seat?

02. Web Hosting in Care Plans

• Web hosting is included in your monthly care plans. For new clients, do you migrate websites of a new client on your hosting or still give the option to keep their existing hosting?
• Which web hosting infrastructure do you use for hosting care plan websites?

03. Technical side of website care

• Which your preferred solution for websites management on care plans, like mainwp, managewp and so on?
• Which storage services do you use for storing website backups?
• Do you manage things on your own or have more people on the team?

04. On-boarding website check

• Do you perform any on-boarding analysis like check for heavy plugins like WooCommerce, LMS setup or just make sense of plugins jungle created over a period of time?
• What about the traffic figures? So, a website with 5K visits per month and a website with 3 times more traffic can get the entry on the same care plan?

05. Getting clients for care plans

• Majority of agencies have care plans somewhere hidden in their offering but most are not able to scale up that part of the business. Is the diversion of energy between building websites and taking care of websites behind this?
• Now, this is a classic question, how you get new clients interested in your care plans offering?
• You also offer white label care plans for other agencies. What is that percentage of your care business dedicated to agency clients?
• How much “white label” is communication with clients of other agencies?

06. Challenges of care business

• What have been the biggest challenges in setting this website care business?
• What all the things you have changed recently that has improved overall service delivery?
• How do you handle client push back, especially in emergency situations like website hacked, I want website fixed “now” means “now”?
• A lot of people advice on regular client communication, how often do you communicate with clients on care plans?
• What all upsell opportunities you have explored successfully with clients on a regular website care plan?

Ed Ellingham’s ToolBox

• Beaver Builder at the top for building website layouts.
• Use Infinite WP for managing client websites on care plans.
• Prefer using All in One Migration plugin for website transfers.
• Started using updraft because of the incremental backups feature.
• Use Dubsado as preferred CRM solution for business management.
• For hosting use Cloudways for web hosting of client websites.
• Use Mailer Lite for email marketing routines.

About Ed Ellingham

I actually have more of an IT background, managing a Wireless Internet Service Provider for many years.

I handled their marketing design and when I left they hired a graphic designer and a manager to replace me. My ‘online world’ really started after I left to work for myself.

I had a couple of friends who were business owners request web design, which I took on like a hungry entrepreneur with some minor experience in WordPress.

I really enjoyed it and turned the business around to focus on it, learning everything I could about WordPress and Web Design.

More: CloudCareWP website