Essay 03 · WordPress Operators
Stop selling websites.
How I went from a $250 first project to selling outcomes instead of websites.
My first paid WordPress project was $250. It was a website for a digital marketing agency, and my dad referred them after I built his site in 2019.
Since then I’ve shipped 100+ projects for agencies and founders in the US, Canada, Australia, Germany and Romania, and my prices went up many times over. The sites didn’t get that much harder to build. What changed was what I was selling.
A website is a commodity. An outcome isn’t.
When you sell “a website”, the client compares you to every other freelancer and every template. Price is the only thing left to compare.
When you sell what the website does for them, such as more booked calls, a launch that goes out on time, or an agency that can say yes to a bigger client, you stop competing on price. You’re now compared with the cost of the problem.
Three things that moved my prices
- Scope in writing before anything starts. Clients pay more for certainty than for speed.
- Fixed prices, not hourly. The client buys a result, and you keep the upside of working efficiently.
- Reliability as the selling point. Agencies don’t need the cheapest developer. They need the one they don’t have to chase.
Who this is for
If you’re a freelancer stuck at $500 builds, the jump isn’t a better portfolio. It’s a better conversation: about the client’s business, the risk of getting it wrong, and what it’s worth to get it right.
Stop selling websites. Sell the thing the website is for.
Ibrahim Tariq · The WP King
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