by purplelime

Web Developers have advanced skills which are put to great use building and developing websites, blogs, forums and e-commerce platforms for clients. However with the growth of the industry sometimes orders are slow to come in, or the competitive nature of the market can mean that fees have to stay low. One option for web developers is to look at alternative revenue streams that still utilise their skill set or compliment their business model. Fortunately there are numerous options available which are perfectly suited to the talents and knowledge of web designers and developers.

Passive income streams are a very appropriate option for web developers and, once set up, they can create regular extra cash with little to no work needed from the point of view of the developer. So even if business picks up and you are overrun with orders, these schemes will be running quietly in the background, producing ongoing income.

Affiliate sales
Affiliate income is earned when a webmaster earns a commission by recommending a particular product or service. When anybody clicks and buys through the developer’s referral link, a percentage of the cost of their purchase will be paid back to the developer.

Traditionally this might mean creating a website that fits with a particular niche. Many web developers who have entered the world of affiliate marketing have seen success creating websites that sell a manner of different products – from car hire & airport parking to luxury headphones. However affiliate sales do not necessarily have to stray from he web dev field. Choosing products which are relevant to the existing business can be appropriate if the web developer has a blog outlet focusing on tutorial based output. For example, designers make affiliate income from things like recommending others’ ebooks, copywriter services, paid plugins and themes, and home study courses.

Some of the most popular affiliate sales programmes are Clickbank, E-junkie, Amazon Associates and Commission Junction.

Web Hosting Reselling
Related to affiliate marketing is selling web hosting. Many web hosts offer developers the opportunity to use low cost reseller hosting packages to their clients. When a web design client then buys their hosting through the web developer’s link, the developer earns a set fee, or a percentage, for the entirety of the contract.

However there are also other more controlled options. Web developer looks after the hosted account can earn a discount on their overall hosting bill when selling additional hosting resources to their clients. This is known as reseller marketing. To scale this further, web developers can also set up new websites and services offering web hosting using “white labels”, where they can apply their own branding to the service. One example of a web host which offers this opportunity is Elastic Hosts’ cloud reseller packages and another popular non-cloud version includes Heart Internet’s reseller plans. The key benefit of reseller programs is the fact that services that are sold are intrinsically linked to services already provided to clients – afterall web developers and designers can not run sites without hosting and either can their clients..!

WordPress Themes
Nearly all web developers will be very familiar with the WordPress platform. They may regularly build websites using it as a CMS code base, and might well even use it to run their own business portfolio sites. As such it may not come as much of a surprise that wordpress theme development is a relatively profitable method especially considering wordpress’ relatively large fan base.

For those slightly uninitiated, every self-hosted WordPress blog or site needs a theme, which is a kind of ‘skin’ that gives it a particular look or style. While there are many free themes that webmasters can choose from, there are lots of advantages for a webmaster to actually use a paid-for theme on their website:

1) Free themes can look unprofessional

2) Free themes are not always regularly updated, so can stop working when WordPress updates its code regularly

3) Paid themes often come with more customisation options, making it much less likely that the website will resemble lots of other sites

4) Free themes do not come with support: webmasters often appreciate the extra support that comes with paid themes.

Web developers are in an ideal position to spend some time creating a WordPress theme which they can then sell again and again. The initial investment may be small, but if the theme is attractive and full of features, the income which comes from it will be regular, with minimum extra involvement from the developer.

Most web developers will already have the skills needed to build WordPress themes, but information about how, and where, to sell them can be found on websites like Orphic Pixel and Graphics.com.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins, much like theme development, is another revenue stream related to wordpress. WordPress Plugins are a way for WordPress users to add extra functionality to their site. Whether it is a way to automatically post new updates to Twitter, or a tool that helps a webmaster with their SEO, there are seemingly Plugins for everything. Some are free, but those with more specialist functions can be offered in a paid marketplace.

In a similar way to WordPress Themes, web developers are in a perfect position to not only create Plugins, but also to understand where there is an existing gap in the market, and build the Plugins that their clients, and others, really need. These can then be sold on platforms such as Code Canyon, Buy Sell WordPress and WP Plugins.

Using their existing skills, web developers can set up a series of extra ways to increase the revenue coming into their business. With a bit of creativity and an initial investment of time, the income can be grown over time with little to no extra effort.

This post was created by cloud server company ElasticHosts – visit ElasticHosts for more information on bringing your business to the cloud.