How ManageWP Changed My Life
In early 2015, I was at my wits’ end. My business had been growing by leaps and bounds. I was constantly working on projects and client maintenance requests and was overwhelmed with the back-end updates that needed to happen. I would wake up in the middle of the night and think, “I wonder if (insert client name) has updated his WordPress files .” That answer was always no, and I’d get up and do it at 3 am. Yes, I was nuts. I also was so busy working that I had my lowest income month in years. I didn’t have time to invoice for work completed. Finally, I had to admit to myself that I needed an intervention. I was never saying no, and I had 44 websites in progress. That’s not a misprint. I was working on 44 new websites or redesigns at one time.
Since I’m in BNI, I was able to ask a friend for help. Erin MacCoy is a marketing coach and someone I’m happy to call a dear friend. So we sat down, and she announced that marketing was not my issue but a lack of systems. She nailed it.
The first order of business was to get organized. Erin connected me with Andrea Shirey of Sigh of Relief Organizing. She gave me a sigh of relief. We went through piles in my office, cleaned out all my client files, and she gave me some beautiful worksheets and digital tips to organize my thoughts and to-dos. Slowly, I started to gain control of my environment.
Once that was completed, I was back to work with Erin. First, she suggested I start offering a monthly retainer to do the back-end updates that every website needed, so I would stop doing it for free and in the middle of the night. Next, she gave me homework to do some online research. I quickly found a webinar from Troy Dean at WP Elevation about client care plans. This instruction led me to look for a tool to implement a care plan, and I discovered ManageWP.com. It completely changed my life as a web designer.
ManageWP is a service that allows you to monitor and maintain your WordPress websites from one dashboard. You can perform WordPress, theme, and plugin updates, do light security scans, daily backups (stored on the cloud), uptime monitoring, SEO reporting, performance reporting, and the list goes on and on. I had found what I needed, but I didn’t just start offering the service without a complete system and plan.
I spent nearly a month developing my packages, emails to pitch the service, follow-up emails, new website pages, and PayPal recurring payments. I decided early on only to offer a basic package and hold back on all their options. I did this because
1) I wanted to give myself time to learn the system, and
2) to figure out how much work it was to manage.
I also decided to roll it out slowly and offered it to only ten clients a month. Seven out of 10 signed up the first month. In the first four months, I had 25 subscribers. As I near my third anniversary of offering WordPress care, I am nearing 100 subscribers (many with multiple websites). I have revamped both my pitch and the services several times. I’ve learned a lot about selling my value in the process.
Updated 2022: I now have over 200 websites in ManageWP.
ManageWP is the start and finish of my day. After WordPress, it’s the single most important tool I use. I have plans to share exactly how I set up my care plans in a later post.
If you aren’t offering care plan services, you’ve got to check out ManageWP. They have a completely free level of service. Do you use ManageWP or something similar?
RESOURCES: ZDNet.com – GoDaddy buys WordPress management tool ManageWP
