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WordPress

Jason Nelson
Jason Nelson
9,127 Points
Posted by Jason Nelson
Jason Nelson
9,127 Points

Freelancing with Wordpress?

I have been on and off Treehouse for awhile now. I would like to start selling my services via odesk, fiverr, word of mouth, etc.

My question is if I'm building my clients websites via Wordpress premium themes, how unique from the demo page do I need to make the site? If I'm just adding minor tweaks is that considered wrong? I ask because as I'm starting to get better at customizing themes, I'm realizing it still takes a good amount of time. It's almost like I'm asking myself is it worth it to keep messing around with this theme vs making a site from scratch?

For you guys/gals in the Wordpress business, do you have a couple go to themes that you use for most of your clients work? It seems every theme is going to be slightly different and thus there will be a new learning curve.

I'm still improving my overall Javascript/CSS skills, but feel I'm at a point I need to get actual projects done. It's fun trying out all the new technology that comes out, but I feel without solid completed projects I'm just using up time.

Nathaniel Nasarow
Nathaniel Nasarow
10,291 Points
Nathaniel Nasarow
Nathaniel Nasarow
10,291 Points

Tough one. I want to do the same thing (become freelance by the end of this year). All I can suggest is market yourself. Don't just rely on wordpress; add some other skills. Bootstrap and so on.

And yes, do projects. My first project is currently my photo website, which I'm rebuilding form the ground up as I go through Treehouse classes.

I also have a few other projects in mind, which I cannot do until I gain some more skill sets, mostly in the Javascript language, Angular, and so on.

Let me know how it goes!

2 Answers

Wally Soukoroff
Wally Soukoroff
6,649 Points
Wally Soukoroff
Wally Soukoroff
6,649 Points

Hey Jason, I have been doing web design and development since 2004, started my current company ProCreative Design Lab in 2009 and have steadily grown my portfolio all along the way. I've been building websites exclusively with WordPress for my clients since late 2010 and have gone through all those issues one way or another. When I started with WordPress I did design and develop custom themes for my clients but then "Responsive Design" came into the picture which boosted the dev time for custom themes considerably.

Then I decided to just buy premium themes and customize them to suit my clients needs instead of doing it all from scratch every time which has worked awesome and has saved me a bunch of time on projects. I also chose to do this because a lot of the premium themes now have tonnes of functionality that I didn't know how to create myself in the custom themes I was building.

I have a lifetime membership to Elegant Themes which was the first theme club I started to use when I went this direction and their themes and plugins rock. I also purchase premium themes through Themeforest but you have to be more thorough in your research into themes on there because there are a lot of devs and some of them aren't that great.

Selling projects is a totally different story though as to potential clients, it doesn't matter what you're using to create websites what matters is that you have the ability to solve their online problems.

Anyway that's my 2 cents... Cheers!!!

Joe Rizza
Joe Rizza
8,513 Points
Joe Rizza
Joe Rizza
8,513 Points

If you are building your work portfolio, it might be great start to make quick modification to premium themes. This will quickly build your portfolio and you can use these as examples to get better clients who may eventually want more functionality.

Working with clients and completing projects may lead to future engagements with that client, too.