How To Make Money From a Simple WordPress Website

Have you ever wondered how people make money online? Running a profitable business online sounds like a great idea, but if that’s your goal, you’ll need to do some work to make it a reality. Creating a financially successful online business is no different from creating a successful brick-and-mortar business; it takes time, money, and effort. However, unlike a physical location, it’s much easier (and cheaper) to create the foundation for an online business. The key is to build your online business using WordPress.

What is WordPress?

WordPress

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that will help you build a successful online business. It was first used to build blogs, but has evolved into the perfect platform to build an online business. Although WordPress is associated with blogging, you can build a site that doesn’t look anything like a blog. There are countless professional themes available that can be used to build a beautiful website in any industry.

Why is WordPress ideal for building an online business?

There are plenty of website platforms you can choose from to build your business, but WordPress is ideal if you want simplicity, customizations, affordability, and ease of use. For instance, Shopify is an excellent platform for ecommerce shops, but if you’re not selling goods directly to consumers, Shopify isn’t the best solution. If you need to make design customizations, use custom plugins, add custom features, and run an SEO-friendly blog, WordPress is the best choice.

There are many benefits to using WordPress for your business’ website.

1. Themes are affordable

themeforest

WordPress themes usually range from $30-$100, with some exceptions. One of the best resources for themes is themeforest, although you can find some on TemplateMonster as well, but themes are easier to preview on themeforest.

Some free themes are decent, but they usually require some customizations to look professional and/or function beyond a basic blog. There are some WordPress themes that sell for more than $100, but they’re rare, and usually they’re more than just themes.

For instance, some themes are actually designed to make your website function in a specific way, like as a membership website. Some specialized themes are designed for digital marketers and come loaded with various landing page templates, while others are built as appointment booking sites. Specialized themes are built for specific functions, which is why they cost more.

2. Custom themes are easy to get

If you can’t find pre-made themes that you like, it’s easy to get a custom theme made for your WordPress website. Custom WordPress development is affordable and theme developers can build you just about any feature you need. If your needs can’t be met with the core theme, it can most likely be accomplished through plugins. For most popular features, you can find existing plugins, but custom plugins are just as easy to have made by a developer.

When you build a custom theme for your business’ website, you can make sure it’s pixel-perfect for your needs. Everything from the layout to the menu design, typography, and more can be fully customized to match your brand image and meet your unique business needs.

3. WordPress is easy to customize

Since WordPress has been around for a long time, there are thousands of experienced developers who specialize in customizing themes, plugins, and core functions. You never have to worry about not being able to find someone to customize your website when you build it on the WordPress platform.

Since it’s written in PHP, WordPress is easy for just about any programmer to customize, even if they’ve never worked with it before. PHP is a popular programming language that most developers end up learning throughout their career. Even if you can’t find someone experienced with WordPress directly, anyone who knows PHP should be able to help. However, you don’t have to worry about that because WordPress developers are easy to find and hire.

4. WordPress development is affordable

The other big benefit to using WordPress is that development is affordable. Since there are so many WordPress developers in the world, the high competition keeps rates low compared to obscure platforms where it’s hard to find a developer.

Depending on what you need, you could pay a few hundred dollars to get your website up or you could pay thousands – it all depends on your specific needs. However, the cost will usually be far less than developing a website on another platform simply because basic WordPress development is fast and easy to complete. Where you’ll pay more is with the customizations.

How WordPress makes it easier to generate income

How WordPress makes it easier to generate income

Now that we’ve discussed what WordPress is and how it’s perfect for building your business’ website, here are some of the ways WordPress makes it easier for you to generate income.

1. Plugins make it easy to sell goods and services

If you’re going to generate income, you’ll need to sell things on your website. With WordPress, you don’t have to figure out how to install a complicated shopping cart application. Whether you’re selling physical goods, digital goods, or services, there are numerous WordPress plugins that will make it easy to set up your store. There are also plugins that will help you market your products efficiently to generate more sales.

According to Hubspot, here are some of the most popular ecommerce WordPress plugins:

  • WooCommerce. Most ecommerce websites use WooCommerce because it’s the easiest and most straightforward plugin on the market. It’s also supported by a large number of WordPress themes and even comes bundled with some themes. If you need even more features, you can use HubSpot’s plugin for WooCommerce that integrates a CRM, abandoned cart tracking, and marketing automation right into your online store. The best part about WooCommerce is the support. Where many plugins lack support, WooCommerce is fully supported with an official online support community.
  • WooCommerce B2B.
  • SellKit. This is a plugin that extends the checkout process to include upsells, discounts, and special offers. If you’re serious about generating massive income from your website, you’ll want to use upsells. According to the data, the majority of upsells have a 20% success rate. That’s huge. That means that 20 out of every 100 customers will purchase something you offer as an upsell.
  • Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart. If you just sell on your own website, WooCommerce is probably your best plugin option. However, if you also sell on Facebook and/or Instagram, Ecwid will sync your available products between all of your storefronts.
  • SendPulse Web Push. This is a retargeting plugin. Retargeting is a marketing strategy where you deliver ads and marketing messages to people who have already interacted with your brand, whether or not they’ve made a purchase. SendPulse allows you to send push notifications to your customers through Firefox and Chrome browsers. It’s a great way to let people know about your special offers and other deals to get them to come back to your store.
  • ShopWP. If you already have a Shopify ecommerce store, but you’d like to sell the same products on WordPress, this is your plugin. This way, you can sell all of your products through your WordPress site without having to build a separate ecommerce store.
  • Easy Digital Downloads. For anyone who sells digital downloads, you’ll need a special plugin. This plugin works the same way as others, but it’s specifically designed to facilitate secure digital downloads so that only authorized purchases have access to your files.
  • ShopEngine. This plugin lets you expand the elements in your WooCommerce store. For example, it offers product quick views, wish lists, comparison tables, breadcrumbs, coupon forms, and displays related products.

These are just some of the plugins available that will turn your WordPress website into a powerful ecommerce site. There are hundreds of plugins designed to expand the functionality of WordPress ecommerce stores that are built by individual developers and not all of them get featured in popular blogs.

If you need ecommerce features and can’t find what you’re looking for in a pre-existing plugin, you can always hire a WordPress developer to create a custom plugin to meet your needs.

2. WordPress is SEO-friendly

Generating income from your website requires getting your website visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). To make your website come up in search results, you’ll need to run a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. This is easy with WordPress, although you’ll need to make some adjustments first.

When setting up your WordPress site, you’ll want to make the following adjustments to the default settings:

Define your permalink structure in one of two ways:

  • yoursite.com/category/post-name or
  • yoursite.com/post-name

This is accomplished by logging into your administrative area and clicking on “Settings” and then “Permalinks.” From there, you’ll be able to set your permalink structure.

Uncheck the box that organizes your uploaded media into folders organized by the year and month. This will place all of your uploads into the same media folder. This is accomplished by logging into your administrative area and clicking on “Settings” and then “Media.” From there, uncheck the box that reads “Organize my uploads into month-and-year-based folders.”

There are some exceptions to this advice, and whether it applies to you depends on your industry. For example, if you’re a photographer, you might benefit from a media library plugin that organizes your files and folders in great detail.

Manage 404 errors with a WordPress plugin

Manage 404 errors with a WordPress plugin

When it comes to SEO, 404 errors are a nightmare. It’s not that Google will start de-ranking your web pages (Google doesn’t mind 404 errors), but the more missing page people encounter on your site, the higher your bounce rate will get. You don’t want to spend time, money, and effort getting your pages to rank, only to have those pages deleted and end up as 404 errors.

Plugins make it easy to avoid 404 errors. With a redirect plugin, you can list the former URLs for all the pages you’ve had to delete and set them to be redirected using a 301 or 302 redirect. This will help you avoid the negative impact of 404 errors that can drop those pages from ranking in the SERPs.

3. WordPress is unlikely to become unsupported

Plenty of software eventually becomes unsupported. For example, on January 12, 2021, Adobe Flash was officially laid to rest and won’t run at all. Adobe Flash was launched in November 1996 and had a good run, but that run is over. WordPress isn’t likely to see this same fate.

The reason Adobe Flash was terminated is because it was a major security risk. While WordPress does come with security risks, most of those risks are the user’s responsibility to secure. With a simple checklist, you can secure your WordPress site easily. As long as there’s a team of developers fixing security issues and releasing new versions, WordPress doesn’t present the same risks as Flash.

It’s unlikely that WordPress will become an abandoned project. Even if the original developers decide to retire, dedicated developers will likely step in and take over without a second thought. About 34% of all websites online are powered by WordPress; there is too much at stake to allow WordPress to fall apart.

Need a WordPress website? We’ll build it for you!

If you’re looking at WordPress as a possible CMS for your business website, we can help. At Website.design, our team of professional developers and designers can craft you a custom site that embodies your brand and will help you maximize your sales. If you’re ready to get your online business off the ground, contact us right now and tell us about your project. We’d love to work with you!

Timothy Carter
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