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Business

Darren Walker
Darren Walker
4,877 Points
Posted by Darren Walker
Darren Walker
4,877 Points

Reoccurring Income

As I get set to open up my own business I've been back and forth with trying to find as much reoccurring income on a month to month basis. As I know from my experiences that customers at some point always request a change Im wondering if anyone out there offers up maintenance/support/hosting packages (to update, troubleshoot) with their business to generate month to month revenue. Say $50-$100.

Im sure it's one way of generating a steady (somewhat) income month to month but I worry you'll spend to much time fixing things.

What are some solutions or ideas to generate a steady income in this business and does anyone have any suggestions on some month to month income.

4 Answers

Jeremy Germenis
Jeremy Germenis
29,854 Points
Jeremy Germenis
Jeremy Germenis
29,854 Points

Platform and module updates If you are using a CMS platform such as wordpress or drupal

Monitoring SEO is always an ongoing process with finding better relevant keywords and modifying page structure based on information provided by google analytics

Pay-per-click campaigns requiring modifying and creating new ads based on ad performance

Email marketing campaigns with a service such as myemma can provide weekly or monthly reoccurring work

Helping clients with "spreading the word" doing social media management

Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points
Tom Lawrence
Tom Lawrence
8,685 Points

before here I make things in blender, I make an item once and sell them multiple times.

Same principle could be used with wordpress themes maybe, website templates? or an app?

Christopher Hall
Christopher Hall
9,052 Points
Christopher Hall
Christopher Hall
9,052 Points

For maintenance or support packages, make sure that you're not spending more time fulfilling them than you're charging for them. This will vary per customer and you will have the rare customer that will cost you time/money, but as long as your average is below what you're charging you're doing good. A good way to do this is to set a limit on the amount of time you spend, or number of support requests per month, beyond which you charge more. Unfortunately your resources or expenses with this style of income will go up as you get more clients. If you have 1000 clients for example, you might need some full time employees handing support requests.

Darren Walker
Darren Walker
4,877 Points
Darren Walker
Darren Walker
4,877 Points

Thanks for the input all.

I think what I've been reading and the approach one would take is into regards of not only designing the site...more so marketing the business. I dont expect landing jobs to be that easy in a market where there are tons of options available.

I definitely dont want to get caught up as Christopher mentioned in spending more time then I'm getting paid making changes or solving problems. retainers are definitely a good option, but do you think I should offer them for specific purposes. For example does one pay a retainer for support, bugs, changes and then a separate package for SEO and social marketing?