Why Do WordPress Developers Always Get Paid Less?

Ever since I started working with WordPress over 10 years ago I noticed something weird. Take any kind of web design or development job and add the word WordPress to it and you instantly take a pay cut.

For example:

  • Web Designer >> WordPress Designer
  • Web Developer >> WordPress Developer
  • PHP Developer >> PHP Developer For WordPress
  • Website >> WordPress Website

Why WordPress Is Messy

WordPress lowers the barrier to entry so there are a lot of beginners. WordPress gives beginners a lot of power to do powerful stuff – even stuff like setting up ecommerce sites. Naturally, giving beginners a lot of power can lead to a big mess.

It's common for beginners to get in over their heads leaving their clients with half-baked, buggy websites. Those clients then contact more experienced web designers who then have to unscramble the egg.

This results in WordPress being one of the most dreaded platforms almost every year in StackOverflow surveys like this one.

The Beauty of WordPress

On the other hand, WordPress is clearly dominating the marketing representing almost half of all websites on the internet.

WordPress is used by 65.1% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 43.3% of all websites.

W3Techs.com Statistics as of March 2022

In addition, I regularly talk with extremely successful business owners who power their entire online coaching and consulting businesses with WordPress. In fact, the most successful coaches and consultants I know all use WordPress – some of whom are making multiple millions of dollars per year. They could afford anything they want but they choose WordPress.

The point is, WordPress is crazy powerful and is used to make millions of dollars for all different kinds of businesses.

Why Talented People Burn Out

The real problem I see in the WordPress community is that there are plenty of people with the ability to build beautiful, professional websites but they lump themselves with the beginners in terms of how they market themselves.

If you have professional WordPress skills (i.e. you're not a beginner) and I go to your website, how can I tell the difference between you and someone who is just getting started?

Most of the time it is impossible. Both pros and beginners have the same website and it goes like this:

  1. List the same skills (web design, hosting, maintenance, etc.)
  2. Show your portfolio
  3. Share some testimonials
  4. Ask people to call you

The pros are hoping that their portfolios and testimonials outshine the competition. But, the truth is, they get lost in all the noise with everybody else.

Portfolios Don't Win Clients

Portfolios aren't going to win you clients. The best you can hope for is a little bit of a boost in your authority if you have some big names among your client list.

The reason portfolios don't win clients is that clients don't actually want a website. They want the results that come from successful online marketing.

Portfolios don't show results.

Results Win Clients

As we just talked about, WordPress is capable of powering multi-million dollar businesses. There's nothing wrong with WordPress. If you want high-ticket clients tell people how you will create high-ticket results for them.

Upgrade From Services To Solutions

Upgrade the way you talk about yourself. Bump your offer up a level. Don't just offer the same generic services everyone else is offering. Figure out how to create a result with your skills and offer that solution to your clients.

An Example Solution

Here's a really quick example of how you can take a bland, boring, low-budget skill like sending emails and turn that into a Five-Figure – $10,000+ client.

Car Dealerships Stink At Email Marketing

Car dealerships tend to get a lot of leads because they are often franchises of big-name brands like Toyota or something. They also have a bunch of ways to collect people's email addresses with little email opt-ins for stuff like:

  • What is our trade-in worth?
  • How much will your payment be?
  • Do you qualify for special financing?
  • etc.

I know this because I recently bought a new truck. OK… so I submitted my email address to see what my trade-in was worth. So now they've got my email address.

The next day I get an email with like a dozen different cars in a grid display. No matter what car you click, you just go to a page that lists their currently available inventory.

I clicked on the truck.

Now, I'm looking at a page with all of their currently available inventory. I had to dig to get to the truck. Not a good experience. I didn't go in for a test drive.

A few days later I get the exact same stupid email.

A Much Better Solution

Instead of wasting everybody's time why not set up their email campaign like this.

They Are Already Doing Two Things Right

  1. Collect the email address
  2. Send an email with your availble inventory

Here's Where It Gets Good

  1. When I click on the Tacoma take me to a landing page for the Tacoma
  2. Tomorrow, send me a link to the Car and Driver review of the Tocama I clicked with an invitation to come in for a test drive.
  3. A day later, send me a link to a YouTube walk-around review of the Tacoma
  4. A day later, let me know that you still have this truck on your lot and let me schedule a test drive.

You get the idea…

If you set up this targeted drip campaign based on the vehicle you already know I am interested in, I guarantee you'll get far more test drives scheduled compared to just randomly blasting out a grid of cars to me every other day and hoping I dig through your crappy search tool to actually find the truck I want.

Marketing Your Solution

Now, instead of generically offering “email marketing” as a service on your website you can spin up a landing page specifically for this solution.

At the top of the landing page create a headline that has three components:

  1. Who the offer is for
  2. What the result is
  3. Your curiosity hook (the thing that captures people's interest)

For example, create a headline like this:

Discover how car dealerships can double their test drives without needing any more leads.

If you want to talk about how to implement a solution similar to this but based on your skills and for your clients, I'm here to help.