You’ve probably read all about the joys of drop servicing by now, and you’re itching to try out what you’ve learned. But, the problem is that you’re not too sure how to start the business.
You can begin offering your services on several platforms. However, my purpose today is to teach how to start drop servicing on WordPress.
I will walk you through how to create a drop servicing website on WordPress and also how to get clients for your new business.
I understand that not everyone reading this has an in-depth understanding of what drop servicing is and what it entails. So we’ll start with a simple definition.
What is Drop Servicing?
Drop servicing, also known as service arbitrage, is selling services purchased from a freelancer to a customer. In other words, a customer orders a service from you, and you pass on their request to a freelancer.
The freelancer does the work, passes it on to you, and you send it to the customer. The customer pays you; you pay the freelancer his fee, and the rest of the money is your gain.
Drop servicers act as middlemen for services. They’re exactly like drop servicers, except the manufacturers are the freelancers and the products are digital services.
We could talk about the intricacies of drop servicing all day, but we’ve already done that in this article.
Now, let’s move on to the platform you’ll be using for your business: WordPress.
What’s WordPress?
If you’ve written content before or planned to be a blogger or even researched blogging at all, then you’ve probably come across WordPress before.
WordPress is the most popular content management software in the world. In simpler terms, WordPress is a platform that makes it easy for individuals and companies to build and manage their websites and online stores.
Around 38% of all sites run on the internet use WordPress, including famous websites like Forbes.com and Mashanle.com.
Drop servicing on WordPress isn’t difficult to do as long as you follow the steps involved. But before we get into that, I’d like to clarify a relatively common source of confusion.
WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
When researching WordPress, most people usually get these two different platforms mixed up. Well, I wouldn’t say that they’re entirely different platforms seeding as they use the same open-source software.
But they do operate in entirely different ways. So what makes them so different, apart from their domain suffixes?
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a platform where you can create websites that are hosted on the platform itself, which saves you the cost of buying a hosting plan. However, it also limits your choice of domain names, and you have to sacrifice a lot of flexibility.
The sacrifice becomes very obvious when you’re running an eCommerce website. Although you can get a free plan with WordPress.com, you have to sacrifice your domain name and choose from a very limited selection of themes.
You’ll also have to deal with ads unless you can afford to pay a few extra bucks and make them go away.
Your choice of plugins is also limited, and you cannot monetize your website any way you like if you have a free account.
WordPress.org
I’ll tell it to you straight: You have to pay for your hosting and domain name.
I know that it might sound expensive, but hosting can be purchased for $3 to $5 a month, depending on your provider. Domain names are also Uber cheap, with .coms only costing $10 a year.
With WordPress, you can download and apply any themes and plugins. This means that you can make your website function differently. You have complete control over your website.
This also includes monetization. WordPress.org allows options for monetization. This can be in the form of checkout pages, advertising, and creating affiliate programs and affiliate links.
If you want to start drop servicing on WordPress, then you should use WordPress.org.
WordPress.org is the site most serious businesses use, including drop servicing websites. This is the platform we’ll be working with for this guide.
From here on out, keep in mind that when I say WordPress, I mean WordPress.org. Note that you can’t create an eCommerce website on WordPress.com for free. It’s just not realistic.
Okay, that’s it for our crash course on drop servicing and the wonderful world of WordPress. Now let’s get what you’ve been waiting for: how to start a drop servicing business on WordPress.
How to Build a Drop Servicing Website on WordPress
Starting a drop servicing business on the WordPress platform is easy and will only take you a few hours to build your website if you’ve made the necessary preparations.
Here’s what you need:
- Money to pay for your subscription and other fees.
- A domain name.
- A hosting provider.
To make this process as comprehensive as possible, I’ve simplified this guide into eight easy steps. Some of these steps will have equally essential sub-steps, though.
Follow my lead, and you’ll have your site up and running in a few hours.
Step#1: Picking a Niche
Before building anything, you need to know what services you wish to offer. This is called selecting a niche. There are many digital services in different niches, so you have a lot of options.
However, if you’ve read my other drop servicing articles or seen a few drop servicing examples, you’ll understand that choosing your niche can make or break your business.
Here are a few standards a niche must meet before you can select it.
- Low Competition: Now that practically everything in the business world has been digitalized, it can sometimes feel like the internet is too crowded, and everyone is doing what you’re doing. However, that’s not true. The majority of people haven’t yet discovered some niches. Those niches should be the ones you shortlist.
This is because the less competition you have, the more clients you get.
- High Demand: Many websites and services are posted online each day, so you need a niche where the competition is relatively low, but the demand is comparatively high. If your niche is high income, that is, it’s a skill with a generally high price, demand will probably not be all that high. Here, demand should at least be stable. A good niche has the ability to generate a steady level of interest and demand in the long term.
- Upselling and Cross-selling: Upselling is a marketing strategy that involves getting the customer to purchase a complementary service in addition to the offer he/she came for. This complementary service is usually an add-on or upgrade promised to produce more significant effects.
Cross-selling is also a marketing strategy, but this is used to get customers to buy other services related to the one he/she wants. Cross-selling is the offering of services that can be used to complement another—for example, purchasing a sound system along with your TV.
It doesn’t mean that the TV can’t make sounds by itself, but the speakers can make your viewing experience better, so why not?
Upselling and cross-selling can add a consistent amount of revenue to your business because they usually increase customers’ final bills. Check out what these statistics say about it.
This is excellent news for you. So, you need to check if the niche you’ve chosen has opportunities for upselling.
Are there any related services you can also offer? An upsell doesn’t have to be a service. It could mean shorter deadlines, more work, more revisions, etc.
There are several ways to upsell or cross-sell most services. Just make sure the option is there in the first place.
- A Consistent Pay Day: If you want to start drop servicing on WordPress, we dare say that you’re probably looking for another, steady source of income. While there are meant many services that can fetch you a quick buck, it’s best to have a niche that can consistently make a profit. Because you’re offering digital services, earning a consistent income is mostly dependent on your niche and your customers.
If your niche is a service that your customers require several times a month, it’s a more consistent and stable income. Therefore, you should aim for a niche with services that are needed periodically. This way, you’ll have your customers coming back for more.
Step #2: Purchase a Domain Name and a Hosting Plan
The second step on your journey to creating a top drop servicing website is getting a domain name and a web hosting plan. Your domain name is the text that appears in the address bar at the top of your browser. It usually goes something like this: https://yourdreambusinessname.com.
Every website needs a domain name and web hosting. Because we’re using WordPress.org, you’ll need to purchase a web hosting plan from a provider.
I personally recommend Bluehost because it’s cheap, fast, and reliable – perfect for both beginners and people experienced in site creation. Plus, Bluehost integrates seamlessly with WordPress.
We’ll be using Bluehost as our web hosting service to learn how to start drop servicing on WordPress. We’ll be using the Basic plan, which is $3.95 per month and gives you access to one domain.
Disclosure: I’m an affiliate and may earn a commission from Bluehost if you make a purchase through my link. Thank you.
However, every other Bluehost plan gives you unlimited domains, which means you can host as many websites as you want.
Once you’ve signed up to Bluehost, you can now install WordPress. An easy way to do this is by logging in to your Bluehost account will send to you and using a wizard that’ll guide you through the process. Now that you have your website, it’s time to start setting it up.
Step #3: Preliminary Settings
There are lots of things you’ll need to do to make your website look professional.
1. Set Up Your Permalinks
Permalinks define how individual web page addresses are structured. That is, it determines how the URL for each page looks like. The best structure is to have the page’s title in the URL.
Let’s take your Privacy Policy page as an example. An optimized format will have the URL for that page looking like this: https://yourbusinessname.com/privacy-policy.
To set up your Permalinks, head to Settings within the sidebar on your dashboard. Then click Permalinks. You’ll have five options. Click the last one called Post Name if you want a permalink like the example above.
2. Make Your Website Public
This setting makes sure that Google can find and index your website. Go to Settings >Reading. Now make sure that the box beside Discourage search engines from indexing this site is unchecked.
3. Comments
Do you want comments on your website? Comments can act like reviews on your services, and if you plan to add a blog or FAQ, they can give your customers a voice.
To allow or disable comments, go to Settings > Discussion. Check the box next to Allow people to post comments on new articles to enable comments and uncheck it to disable them.
Step #4: Get an E-commerce Plugin
You can’t start drop servicing on WordPress without an e-commerce plugin. So you need to install an e-commerce plugin, so you’ll be able to run your store and receive payments.
WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress e-commerce plugins and it has a free version, so we’ll use it for this tutorial.
The first step is installing the WooCommerce plugin. You can easily do this. Just head to the WordPress dashboard and select Plugins > Add New.
When the page loads, type WooCommerce into the search bar and then Install Now when the plugin comes up.
When it’s done, click Activate. Once it’s done activating, WooCommerce will launch it’s configuration wizard to help you set up your store. You’ll have to answer some simple questions about your store. Click Let’s go! when you’re finished.
Next, select the payment processor you want to use. With WooCommerce, you have the option of PayPal, Stripe, for online payments. Both are good options, so choose whichever one is more convenient.
You’ll need a PayPal business account to set up PayPal as a payment option. If you don’t want to use either of these payment methods, WooCommerce also allows direct bank transfers, Braintree, and Klarna Payments for online payments.
Check out these guides that WooCommerce put out for their installation.
There are other steps involved when installing WooCommerce, like shipping. But since you’re drop servicing on WordPress, you can bypass them.
Step #5: Picking a Theme
WordPress has over ten thousand themes. You need to pick the best one to show your service off. A good theme should look professional but inviting, have all the necessary pages but is easily navigated and organized.
You don’t necessarily have to pay for a WordPress theme. There are loads of beautiful themes for free. However, if you do have the cash, having a premium theme can give your website a significant edge.
Some popular premium themes are Thrive, Divi, Exponent, Kallyas, and Kalium.
Remember that your theme should have a mobile version. This is important because mobile device traffic accounts for over half of all website traffic. It’s also vital that your theme can integrate with WooCommerce.
If you’re not sure whether it’s possible, simply choose a WooCommerce theme.
Install your theme by clicking Appearance > Themes > Add New. Then enter the name of the theme you want and click Install.
Step #6: Customization
Your theme may already be quite pretty, but you still need to customize a few things so it’ll look like a proper online store.
Your drop servicing website design needs to fit your personal style but still look sleek and professional to make your business look capable to your customers because first impressions do matter.
To start customizing, go to Appearance and then click Customizer. You’ll be taken to the WordPress Customizer interface. From here, you can control the look of your website.
For a drop servicing website, you can use some of the templates WordPress offers, but customization usually births something better and more you.
- Set Up Your Homepage: You should start setting up your homepage first by selecting Homepage Settings from the sidebar. Under homepage display settings, select A static page. Click Add New to add a new page as your page and then name the page before clicking Add. Now you’ve created a custom homepage.
You should further edit this homepage by clicking the pencil icon near the title text at the beginning of the page. Here you can change the title, text underneath the title, background image, and button text.
Customizing your homepage also means editing the front page sections. These sections include the text that’s on your homepage.
It includes the title, the features, about us, the team, testimonials, subscribe, contact, etc. You can customize all of these by selecting Frontpage sections from the sidebar.
- You can also customize typography – the font used on your website. Colors, layout, button shape, background images, item listings can all be changed within the Customizer interface.
Step #7: Create Your Pages
Page creation is super important if you want to start drop servicing on WordPress the right way.
You need to create some pages, so your website won’t look like a scam. You need an About Us, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Contact, and a Store. You can, of course, add, remove, or rename any pages.
To create a page, head back to your WordPress dashboard and click Pages > Add New. A new screen will pop up, and you’ll have to fill in the page’s details like the headline, content, discussion (whether you want comments or not), and images. When you’re done, click the blue button that says Publish.
As someone who wants to start a lucrative drop servicing business, you should create a landing page for your customers. Your homepage can also serve this purpose.
You should also create a Pricing page so that you can list your prices for different services. A Services page won’t be a bad idea, either, so that you can list all your services. As your business expands, you may want to sell more services instead of the one or few that you have now.
Step #8: Find Freelancers
Your website is ready. Your pages, content, and payment options are all set up and ready for customers’ orders, except for one thing. You don’t have a freelancer to give those orders. You still lack an essential link in your chain.
Thankfully, this can be easily fixed. This might be the easiest step in this guide. There are millions of freelancers all over the world, and many of them are in your niche.
It doesn’t matter what niche it is. There are many platforms where you can contact freelancers. There’s Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Freelancer, FreeeUp, to name just a few.
However, for beginners, I recommend Fiverr. This is because Fiverr has lots of talented sellers with quite a low minimum service price – just $5.
This is great news as you can make large profits from little upfront capital. However, this does not apply to all Fiverr categories and sellers. Some accept nothing less than $100 for a starting service. But, these prices are usually still under market prices, so it’s still affordable.
Although it’s a little cheaper to hire a freelancer without any experience, I don’t recommend it. You want to offer your customers the best service they can get so that they keep coming back.
This is why it’s not advisable to use freelancers without reviews. Use freelancers with at least 50 reviews but not above 200 with a high rating. These people usually do excellent work but are not too costly.
But because your choice of freelancers can make or break your work, you should test the ones selected. Order a service from them before you give them a customer’s order to assess their capability.
You should have criteria set up so you can compare one person’s results with another. When you’re certain of who’s good and who isn’t, then you can select the ones you’ll be working with.
Choose more than one freelancer because it’s best to have a backup if one fails to deliver. You could also tell them that you plan to resell services and maybe they’ll give you a discount.
Step #9: Promotion!
Just setting up a website won’t actual allow you to —-start a profitable drop servicing Business on WordPress. To do that, you need clients. And to gain clients, you need traffic. And for traffic, you need exposure. And what’s the best way to get exposure? Marketing!
You need to build your online presence, and you can only do that with advertising.
The good news is that while running your business on WordPress, you can create an affiliate program and allow affiliates to help you with the marketing. And in turn, you pay them either a fixed amount or percentage as commission for the customers they bring.
You can learn more about how to create an affiliate program for your drop service website on WordPress and where to find affiliates to promote your business for you by taking this drop servicing course.
The course also walks you through the practical aspect of everything you need to build and manage a successful drop servicing business on WordPress.
Social media paid advertising is another great strategy, and you can also buy Google Ads.
How Quickly Can You Build a Drop Servicing Website on WordPress?
The amount of time needed to build a drop servicing website on WordPress depends on how well you’ve prepared. Some steps like finding a niche and getting freelancers can be skipped if you’ve already made the necessary preparations.
If you are prepared, you can build a WordPress drop servicing on WordPress within two or three hours. If you’re not, it could take much longer.
You can also use the service of a freelancer on Fiverr to build an awesome-looking drop service website on WordPress and there’s a seller I know that does a great job for only a small fee.
All you need to do is get your domain name and hosting from Bluehost, head over to this Fiverr gig and discuss your project with the seller.
An Alternative Way to Building a Drop Servicing Store
If this process sounds a bit too difficult, I get it. Alternatively, you can choose to build your drop servicing store on a platform made specifically for e-commerce.
Shopify is a great option, but you may need to spend a bit more on your store hosting when compared with a WordPress website. If you want to see how it’s done, I have a guide on it.
And if you can’t afford the costs of drop servicing on WordPress or Shopify, you can still make money drop servicing with no money.
Conclusion
These nine steps are completely actionable and guaranteed to get you a functioning online store. And you can outsource the creation of your drop service website to a professional if you don’t wish to do it yourself.
If you’ve been wanting to start your drop servicing business on WordPress, you have a foolproof plan.
Why haven’t you started yet?
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you penning this write-up and the rest of the website is very good.
Im obliged for the post. Much thanks again. Much obliged.
Thank you.