In looking for critical help, maintenance and improvement on your website you've likely stumbled across sites like WP Curve, Maintainn, WP Site Care (or any of the many one-size-fits-all maintenance shops) and were greeted with a checkout button.
Something may have stopped you, or you gave it a try, and realized you simply wanted something more; a relationship, an actual person…
Don't get me wrong, mass-market website maintenance fits a need for a specific segment of website owners, but for small businesses where their website generates revenue and sales, it simply doesn't cut it.
Which is why I was persuaded against building a large website maintenance shop by one of the most influential business gurus Seth Godin.
[QUOTE: I was persuaded against building a large website maintenance shop by one of the most influential business gurus Seth Godin.]
In the summer of 2015 I was doing really well with website care and development. I had great relationships with my clients, I loved updating WordPress, and I was finding regular website care allowed me the focus to offer my clients suggestions to further grow their website. I quickly saw I wanted more clients like this. I wanted more website care plans.
And then, I had a chance encounter with Seth Godin. In speaking to grow a larger company with website maintenance, he discouraged me. Seth pointed out that my strength with my clients was my personal connection to them and that wasn't something I could scale.
He was right. To achieve what I had in mind, I would have to hire more staff, invest profit into lead generation and ultimately decrease the quality of my services to my clients to achieve that mass scale.
The Drawback of Mass-Market Website Care
In the two years since that critical insight, the idea to scale website care never left me. In fact, I watched the WordPress market boom with website maintenance companies who offered fixed one-size-fits-all plans, impersonal connections, and a strict menu of deliverables despite their "all inclusive promises."
These maintenance shops provide a great service for a certain level of businesses but that's not 80% of the SMB market. It doesn't work for three simple reasons:
- One size fits all plans: You see, they have to do this. Because as they invest in lead generation marketing and scaling their support team, the only way to be profitable is to have a fixed process - generic and broad - and one that's automated so it can be run by anyone. They need to make it "plug and play."
- No one to call, no solution outside of small fixes. What's also lost is no way for you to contract extra services to add more functionality on your website. Let alone, the ability to just get someone on the phone to get feedback on what's not working, or what can be improved.
- Inability to capture low-hanging fruit. Finally, there's no personal connection with the website professional - the ability for the website owner to look to that person who's performing care on their website as a consultant who can help them grow. You could have low-hanging fruit, ripe and ready, but no one there to show you how to grab it.
Every business owner that's come my way wants the personal connection with the website professional who will not only perform work on their website but act as a consultant when they need one.
How WP Care Market is Different
In the past years since my conversation with Seth Godin, I have trained over 2,000 website professionals in providing quality website care. I showed them what works, I show them what processes they need to have, I showed them how to properly price their plans so they can be profitable and stay in business for their clients. I have accidentally scaled quality website care by training others like me to properly serve the small business website owner.
[QUOTE: I have accidentally scaled quality website care by training other like me to properly serve the small business website owner.]
Each of the website professionals I have trained have their own specialties, their own unique plans and serve their own specific niche.
WP Care Market brings together a select group of those that have truly nailed it and deemed them Authorized Partners.
You won't find these partners in a public facing mass-database.
The type of web professionals that most business owners want to work on their website are not going to be found on a mass-marketplace like Codeable because:
- They've been in business for years and have an established referral network
- They know their value, are priced accordingly, and see public facing marketplace are often a race to the bottom with price competition
- They run a tight ship and wrong leads waste their time as well as the website owner's. Public facing mass-marketplaces leave the match-making up to the website owner and it's often recipe for disaster
WP Care Market is made up of these web professionals because we keep our marketplace private and we take the time on our end to match website owners with the right web professional for them.
[QUOTE: WP Care Market is made up of these web professionals because we keep our marketplace private and we take the time on our end to match website owners with the right web professional for them. ]
We match small business owners with existing websites to website professionals after a phone call and website review so nothing is left to chance, no AI, no auto-matching algorithm.
It saves everybody time and frustration. You're only getting matched with someone that we feel confident will be able to deliver on needs specific to your business.
Our Authorized Partners don't have monthly website care plans that look alike, each one is different because each one has specialties and levels of experience. That's the beauty of WP Care Market.
Why should I trust the Care Plan Queen?
My process for website care has been shared across all the major web hosting blogs. I've run webinars for GoDaddy, ManageWP, Beaver Builder and other major players in the WordPress space, spoken at WordCamps, podcasts, and held in-person workshops. I've been working as a coach in the top WordPress business coaching program WP Elevation where I've earned the affectionate title "The Care Plan Queen."
With WP Care Market, I get an opportunity to educate business owners about what's possible with their website, why they need website care, how to protect their investment, and match them with a website professional.
This isn't done off of a mass-market database, it's not in a one-size-fits-all maintenance shop, you are matched with someone who has a manageable list of clients who can offer you the personalized attention that you need, with the special skill set that fits your website and your business.
We are different. And not many people can do what we do. It's an alternative to the current market and a pretty darn good one.
So if what Seth Godin said to me was true, that "personal connection is not something you can scale," well Seth, I think we found a way.