How To Become A WordPress Freelancer [Based On Experience]

I’ve been working with WordPress for more than 10 years, and I’ve followed their journey of becoming the most popular CMS in the world.

WordPress powers more than 40% of the websites on the world wide web. Incredible, right?

This means there is a massive market for WordPress freelancers, and I’ll share with you how you can get started with your WordPress freelancing career.

Key Takeaways

• Build WordPress websites, and show you know your stuff.
• Slowly build a portfolio of WordPress websites you’ve built for yourself and your clients.
• Build a following on social media where you share your knowledge and obtain clients.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source content management system where you can use WordPress to create your website. The programming language WordPress is built in is PHP.

Open-source just means that it’s free to use for everyone who wishes to do so.

As you can see in the image, it’s Startlancer’s website, and I’ve built Startlancer with WordPress, just like my many other websites. It’s my go-to CMS.

WordPress is a super flexible system that allows you to create portfolio websites, personal websites, e-commerce stores, community websites, and more.

This flexibility is a big reason why WordPress is such a popular choice today, and I’m sure you’ll love it once you start your journey to becoming a Freelance Developer.

WordPress consists of many elements such as themes, plugins, posts, pages and a core of settings. All this is what makes it possible to create flexible websites.

With plugins, you can turn a WordPress website into anything you want, and you don’t need to be an experienced developer to do this.

Once you start playing around with WordPress, you’ll quickly learn it doesn’t require super advanced technical skills, it just requires some patience in the beginning, and then I’m sure you’ll fall in love.

What Does A Freelance WordPress Developer Do?

As a WordPress developer, you have the option to do so much more than just being a WordPress developer for clients, you have multiple options to create an income, and that’s just another bonus.

I have clients I support with WordPress development, and that’s my favourite type of work, but I’ve also developed plugins previously and developed premium themes in the past, but today I stick to WordPress clients.

Here is a list of how you can make money as a WordPress Developer:

• Develop premium themes and sell them on marketplaces like ThemeForest.
• Become a plugin developer and develop free and premium plugins to sell.
• Serve clients who need simple WordPress help.
• Become a Full-stack developer and develop customised solutions for clients.
• Become a WordPress SEO expert and give advice on how your clients can improve their WordPress websites.

These are just some of the many options with WordPress, so you can see you can divide your income to grow your income and secure yourself a bit more.

You can easily serve WordPress clients while being a theme developer. Or develop your own plugin and premium themes at the same time.

There are endless options for what you can do with WordPress for your potential clients.

Pros And Cons Of Being A Freelance WordPress Developer

I’ve been working with WordPress for many years, so I’ve chosen to create a list of the pros and cons of being a WordPress developer. This is based on if you’re purely a WordPress Developer.

If you want some general pros and cons of being a freelancer, then read these 12 pros and cons.

So just to sum up, it’s so essential to learn WordPress and become an expert. But be careful of being platform-dependent. Always pursue new skills to add to your library of skillsets, but don’t strive too far out from WordPress.

Step-By-Step To Become A Freelance WordPress Developer

Now I’ve made a guide on how I would do if I had to start over on becoming a WordPress developer.

So here you get the golden guide, but without all the mistakes I’ve made throughout the years.

1. Build Your First Website With WordPress

Before you start pursuing your first client, it’s important you build your first WordPress website for multiple reasons.

Your first WordPress website can easily be your portfolio website or personal website. Just get it built so you have it ready to show.

When you create your first WordPress website, you acquire knowledge, and you show your potential clients you know your stuff both as part of non-coding WordPress developers, but if you customise it, then you’ll also show you’re part of professional web developers.

That’s why your first WordPress website is so important, and it’s a showcase for your skillset.

From there, you can start to pursue your first client.

2. Find Your First WordPress Client

Many will tell you to build a portfolio of WordPress websites, but what better way to do that than with actual clients?

To kickstart your freelance career within WordPress, you need to find your first client, and I recommend you do this through a freelance platform.

I used Worksome to get some of my clients, but you can easily use Upwork and Freelancer.com as well.

It doesn’t matter so much if your first client will become a regular basis client or if it’s a project basis client. You just need to land your first client, and it’s the most challenging thing.

The reason why it’s so difficult is that you have no track record within WordPress, you only have your first WordPress website to show, and that’s why it’s important to build that first website.

Don’t stop until you’re proud of it, and then pursue clients.

But once you land that first client, you’ll be in heaven, and it’s such a good feeling. And you’ll notice the next couple of clients will come much easier if your first client is satisfied.

3. Build A Portfolio Of WordPress Clients

With the first client in-house, it’s time to grow your portfolio and increase your presence on these freelancing platforms.

The more clients you’ll get, the more times you’ll notice client requirements vary a lot, and some clients have none.

It’s important that you always deliver and stay true to your own brand. If you don’t have a place for more clients, pause on pursuing more clients for now, but always ensure you have a pipeline of clients should one of your clients end the contract.

For each client, it’s important you negotiate a deal both you and the client is satisfied with. If you can’t agree, don’t budge. Just walk away, as it’ll never be a successful collaboration.

It’s important to remember that collaboration goes both ways, you deliver what your client wants, but you need to be able to understand what your client wants and feel fairly treated.

Another thing to remember is a contract. A contract protects both you as a freelancer and your client. It’s not difficult to make, and as soon as you’ve made your first one, you have a template for your type of work.

4. Start Your Social Media Presence

Now you’re starting to grow, but now it’s time to automate your pursuit of clients, and this you do with social media.

Sign up for Twitter, LinkedIn and wherever your potential clients are, and then start to share your knowledge.

Not only share your knowledge but participate in discussions from other people’s tweets and posts to show your knowledge.

Not only will clients notice you know your stuff, you’ll also build a following of WordPress lovers who’ll buy your plugin from you if you choose to go into plugin development or a theme, for that matter, within theme development.

And no, the biggest misunderstanding here is that people are afraid of sharing because then the clients don’t need you.

This is not true. Just because a client gets the how-to on a specific issue doesn’t mean they have the time or resources to do it. But they use it as assurance that you know how to solve it, and then they hire you.

So by sharing your knowledge and participating on social media, you get clients on autopilot, and then it’s super fun at the same time. I personally enjoy my time on Twitter a lot.

5. Write Client Cases From Your WordPress Clients

Lastly, to make your website a lead generator, it’s important to write client cases.

It’s so often, I see a portfolio website just showcasing what the freelancer has done for a client. Yes, it’s a decent start, but you get so much more from actually describing the client’s case.

Potential clients want to know where you started with a client, where you took the client and what the end result was. How did the client benefit from this?

The more client cases you have described in this way, the bigger the chance potential clients will relate to these cases and become your client.

So take the extra time to write your client cases. It showcases your know-how and turns your website into a lead generator on autopilot.

Wrap-Up: What’s Next For Your Freelance WordPress Journey?

As a WordPress developer, it’s super important to always stay on top of what is happening.

You can subscribe to the WordPress podcast to ensure you know what’s coming next for WordPress.

And then start to look into popular areas within WordPress. This could be managed WordPress hosting or maybe even Elementor. It’s important you keep learning and improving yourself.

If you want more tips on how to get started with freelancing in general, then I’ve collected 9 tips throughout my experience with freelancing.

FAQ