25 Additional Services You Can Offer to Your Web Agency Clients

While an argument can be made for keeping your offerings small and charging a premium, that’s not the only way to grow your revenue as a web agency. Most agencies already have …

Kyle Van Deusen

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Product, Sales, Strategy

Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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While an argument can be made for keeping your offerings small and charging a premium, that’s not the only way to grow your revenue as a web agency.

Most agencies already have customers they work with on an ongoing basis (thank you care plans!), and it’s possible that by not offering at least some of these services you’re leaving easy money on the table.

This article is going to cover many of the web-adjacent services you could consider offering in your agency to boost your customer lifetime value. Not only do these services have the potential to increase your income, but clients are always thrilled when they don’t have to find yet another vendor — making you more indispensable. 

Of course, this isn’t a complete list — I’m sure there are plenty of additional services not included (if so, I’d love to hear about them!).

Note: I will not be covering website design and development since that’s likely already a core service of your web agency — right?

Chances are you’re not going to want to take everything on this list and add it to your offerings — and it’s probably best you don’t. You’ll likely find that some of these add-on services will make more sense for you than others depending on you and your team’s experience and skills — and those should be the ones you key in on.

Of course, there’s always an opportunity for outsourcing — so I’ll be sure to note where you’ll have an easier time finding an outsourcing partner to help you offer these services. 

Lastly, any additional service you can offer through your agency is even more valuable if it comes as a subscription or recurring revenue source. Items that work well as an ongoing subscription or recurring billing will be denoted.

With that — let’s dive in!

Accessibility

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

Over the last few years there has been more and more light shined on website accessibility. Partly due to the fact that business owners and agencies want to provide the best experience possible for all users, but most of the attention has come from high-dollar lawsuits being handed down to companies who are failing basic accessibility standards.

If you’ve never spent much time studying accessibility, this might not be a great service for you to jump into and provide yourself right away. Standards, laws, & regulations are still a bit all over the place — making it a hard thing to wrap your head around (especially if you want to offer any kind of guarantee). 

But there is money to be made in this field.  Because most websites are not built to accessibility standards, talking about accessibility with your customers and prospects is an easy way to stand out from the crowd.

My buddy and co-founder of The Admin Bar, Matt Sebert, has had a lot of success bringing up accessibility in sales calls — especially when customers are shopping around for a developer. Typically he’s the only one that brings this up, and because of the legal implications, it makes him a more credible candidate.

Accessibility Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Accessibility Audits: One great way to include accessibility into your business is to offer accessibility audits. An audit will help a business with a website understand how their website stacks up against accessibility standards and provides them with a list of changes that need to be made to the website in order to meet the criteria. 

Accessibility Remediation: When a company is aware that they are not meeting accessibility standards, a specialist is needed to come in and correct accessibility issues. Because this is a specialized service, prices for providing accessibility remediation often come at a premium.

Training and Strategy: If you’re an accessibility expert, then you have knowledge that a lot of people will find valuable. You could consider turning that knowledge into training or strategy for both companies that want to maintain their website’s accessibility into the future as well as other agencies who want to improve their builds.

Outsourcing Accessibility Services

Because accessibility is a specialized skill, most agencies don’t have the knowledge or experience to carry out any of the services listed above — which makes this a great service to outsource.

We have several accessibility experts listed in our Directory that can work with your clients directly or through a while-label partnership. 

Even if you aren’t able to mark these services up by large increments, it’s a highly-valuable service that is only going to get more important over time. 

Analytics

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Chances are you’re already pretty familiar with Google Analytics, which has been the standard for many years.

That means you also understand how difficult it can be to understand — especially for business owners who aren’t web experts.

But the value that can be extracted from Analytics on most websites could be worth giant sums of money. 

Analytics also piggyback on several other services we’ll talk about later in this article (like Conversion Rate Optimization, SEO, PPC, and more).

You likely already have the skills and knowledge through your own experience with analytics in order to turn that into services you can offer your clients.

Analytics Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Analytics Setup: I’m amazed at how many prospects have come to me having a website, but never having any kind of analytics software installed. Offering a simple setup service is an easy task to complete and can provide tremendous value to your clients. Setup doesn’t have to be a flat-fee, you could also offer advanced setups that would include setting up goals and tracking for conversions at a premium.

Analytics Reporting: Though there are more simplified alternatives, Google Analytics is not easy for a novice to navigate. There’s not much in your clients having analytics installed if they never look at the data — this is where a reporting service comes in handy.  Using products like Google Data Studio (free) or Agency Analytics (paid) gives you the ability to create customized reporting that only contains relevant information in an easy to digest format. Analytics reporting makes for a great recurring revenue source that you can bill for monthly or annually. 

Data Analysis: If you have a customer that could benefit from a deeper dive into their analytics (ecommerce stores are a great example of this) then you could provide more comprehensive analysis services to not only report on what’s happening, but consult your client on what that means, and offer solutions to improve their metrics.

Outsourcing Analytics Services

For more advanced setups, you might want to consider partnering with a white-label partner that specializes in analytics

However, keep in mind that you can also outsource a lot of the heavy lifting to software.

I’ve been using Agency Analytics with my customers for a couple of years now, and beyond the initial setup, I rarely have to touch anything. By paying the monthly subscription, I’m essentially outsourcing analytics services without having to deal with people on the other end!

Audits

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Throughout this article, you’ll see the word “audit” pop up quite a bit — almost anything web-related can be audited, making it a great add on service no matter what your specialties are. 

Audits are a great way to leverage your knowledge and experience and help out businesses who need help with your area of expertise.

Another huge benefit to offering audits is they are not only a great lead generation tool (as a foot-in-the-door type service), but they often lead to additional work depending on what the audit uncovers.

Auditing Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Since we’ll be covering specific audits in several of these services, here we’ll just talk about the most generic option; a website audit.

Website Audits: Website audits are a great way to get your foot in the door with a client who is unhappy with their website or just isn’t sure if it’s performing like it should. There are plenty of tools on the market that can assist you in performing audits, and as a web agency you’ll likely already have the ability to understand and translate these audits to your clients.

Typical audits include technical errors, user experience, best practices, performance, accessibility, and search engine optimization.

Audit reports are not only a valuable deliverable for your client, but can help them better understand all the ways you can help their business succeed online.

Funnel Packs, which provides plug-n-play funnels for your agency, has a great Website Audit Funnel Pack and Sales-Addon that can help you get up and running with a system for selling audits in under an hour. They even provide resources and software suggestions to help you carry out your audits. It’s worth every penny! 

Outsourcing Audits

While I personally think you’ll be able to find a tool (like My Web Audit) that will do most of the work for you (thus not needing to outsource the work) if you just don’t want to be bothered, you won’t have a hard time finding an agency that offers audits as service.

Outsourcing your audits makes offering this service as easy as sending off an email to your audit provider and providing your client with the results. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

Automation

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

As nerds that sit behind a computer screen all day, automation is old news… but I am willing to bet many of your clients would think it was some sort of space-aged voodoo!

I’ve found automation services hard to market, but if you listen to your customers with automation in mind, it’s not hard to find ways you could help them streamline some of their processes.

Zapier and ITTT both make it really easy to connect different apps and make seamless automations possible, even for a non-technical user.

While it might not be as easy to market (because everyone’s needs are different and they might not even know a better way exists), they are an easy sell when you can extrapolate how much time they can save by automating time consuming parts of their day.

Automation Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Process Audits: As I mentioned, most businesses simply don’t know that there’s a better (and more automated!) way. By offering an audit, you can uncover opportunities to help streamline their processes and connect different applications and software. 

Building Automations:  If you see an opportunity to help your client automate some of their routine tasks, offering a one-off charge to create the automation for them can be a highly valuable service. While finding recurring services with automations is difficult, once clients get a taste of the automated life, they’re going to want more!

Outsourcing Automation Services

Most basic automations don’t require finding a specialist, however if you don’t want to be bothered with it, there are plenty of services and other agencies who offer automation services you can partner with. 

The challenge with outsourcing automation services is that you can run into a lot of back-and-forth if you are working with a white label partner. This is one case where it might be easier to put your client in direct contact with your outsourcing partner so they can work out all the kinks without you having to play middleman.

Branding

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Branding is less of an “addon” than many of the other services on your list — it’s an industry of its very own.

However, if you’ve done client web work for any length of time, then you already know how many businesses just don’t have much in the way of branding in place.

Having solid branding in place is a big part of marketing, and a good set of brand standards sure makes it easier to design and build a website.

While not every web agency will have the skills required to offer branding services, with the right partner in place, it’s a service you could at least pitch to a large percentage of your existing and future clients.

Branding Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Branding is a broad term that encompasses a lot of different things. You may find you’re able to offer all, or just some of these services.

Logo Design: Logo design is probably the first thing most people think of when they think of branding. You’ll likely find that many startup businesses that reach out to you might be looking for a logo at the same time.

Brand Standards: Beyond the logo itself, creating brand standards is a great way for a company to have consistency in their marketing. Working with a client to develop brand standards is a great way to add value beyond the logo.

Style guides: A style guide is a handy document that will outline the way a brand needs to be portrayed anywhere they are visible. This includes not only the visuals, but the ton of voice, messaging, and more.

Outsourcing Branding

Unless you have someone on your staff that has plenty of experience with branding, then finding an outsource partner is probably the way to go — and there’s no shortage of them out there!

Partnering up with a branding expert is a mutually beneficial relationship. Many of your clients will need help with branding, and many branding clients need help with websites. If you can find an outsource partner that doesn’t offer websites then this could be an extremely valuable relationship.

Branding services range quite a bit in cost, and quality and cost aren’t always directly linked. Many agencies are doubling or tripling the price they are paying for branding services they outsource. 

Care / Maintenance Plans

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

If you’re not offering care or maintenance plans for the WordPress websites you’re building for clients — then you’re really missing out.

Not only is this one of the easiest sales to make (even easier with The WOM), it provides agencies with stable recurring revenue that can help them make it through the lean months.

Keeping a WordPress website alive doesn’t take an extreme amount of talent — but it does require a warm body to actually do it. Leave a WordPress site unattended for too long and bad things can happen — it’s the nature of the beast.

Of course clients don’t want to flush their big investment down the drain, and (most) are intimidated by performing website maintenance.

So you do it for them.

Care / Maintenance Plans You Can Offer Your Clients

Care plan offers can vary quite a bit from agency to agency, but generally speaking a care plan includes:

  • Software updates (plugins, themes, WordPress core)
  • Website backups
  • Security monitoring
  • Uptime monitoring
  • Dedicated support time
  • Reporting

You can offer multiple different tiers of your support plan (some with more or less features), or customize it to suit your clients needs.

However, the more “automated” you can make your care plan, the more profitable it will be.

If you want help crafting your care plan offering, WP Care Market offers the best care plan training on the market.

Outsourcing Your Care / Maintenance Plans

I’ve always found care plans easy to maintain on my own (with about 40 on my roster), but there are plenty of people out there who simply don’t want to fool with it.

Thankfully, there are plenty of services who’ve got you covered!

GoWP & MaintainPress are both fantastic companies who exclusively offer website maintenance plans for web agencies, giving you the ability to white-label their services and have your clients taken care of without ever having to lift a finger! 

Consulting / Coaching / Training

Recurring: ★★☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★☆☆☆☆

No matter what your skillset is as an agency, there are others out there looking for the knowledge you have — and plenty of them are willing to pay for it.

Not long after I started my agency, I had someone ask for an hour of my time (thankfully they offered to pay!).  I ended up setting up a “consulting” page on my agency website where I offered one-on-one coaching for everything I know about WordPress.

Though I don’t promote or market the service, I continue to get regular bookings (even at $225/hr) for consulting.

Oftentimes people’s questions are simple, and could easily be found on YouTube — but people want to work with someone one-on-one to get the answers they need, not to try and piece everything together from multiple sources.

It might not be a big part of your revenue, but offering coaching, consulting, or training services can be a nice way to supplement your income and make a little side money.

Consulting / Coaching / Training Services You Can Offer Your Clients

There are really no limits to this one! Whatever relevant skills you’ve picked up along the way, you could offer as consulting or training.

Of course, you need to legitimately have experience and be able to provide value — but you don’t have to be the world’s foremost expert on the subject. Even if you are only a few steps ahead of the person you’re training, those few steps might be all they need.

Besides offering one-off calls, training also provides you with a great recurring service to offer your clients in the form of a membership that would give them regularly scheduled training sessions.

As an in-between option, you could package up 2 or 3 calls at a discounted rate. 

Outsourcing Consulting / Coaching / Training

This isn’t one of the services that’s going to be easy to outsource. Typically people are paying you for your knowledge — so farming that out doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

However, there are services like Video User Manuals that provide WordPress-specific training that you could provide to your clients for a small fee. 

Conversion Rate Optimization

Recurring: ★★☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

When you think about conversion rate optimization (CRO), you probably think about eCommerce stores. Obviously, websites that are cashing in on sales have the most to gain from getting more conversions — but you can perform CRO on just about any site out there.

Any website where there’s an action (or actions) you want the visitor to take, then you can work to optimize the chance of them converting.

This could be filling in a form, downloading a resource, or simply visiting a specific page.

Of course, you’re going to make more money in CRO if the conversion equals cash in the website owner’s pocket — but don’t discard CRO simply because a site isn’t eCommerce.

Conversion rate optimization is a science, and like any good science, it requires experimentation. Most CRO services aren’t going to be done in one sitting, and will require weeks, months, or even years of testing and refining — making it a great candidate for recurring revenue.

CRO Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Research: Before you do any kind of CRO, you need to get some benchmarks. This will help you understand traffic patterns and user behavior. 

Implementation: Once your research is complete, you can make the recommended changes to help improve conversions.

Testing: When you make changes to try and improve conversion rate, at best your making educated guesses (and hopefully not just guesses). Testing is the most critical aspect of CRO — and one that takes time. Most often, you’ll repeat the implementation and testing phase over and over again as you continue to make improvements.

Reporting: CRO reporting ties in a bit with Analytics reporting, but you can get more granular with CRO reporting and report on only the conversion aspects of the website.

Outsourcing CRO Services

CRO is a discipline on its own — and not something every agency has the knowledge and skills to pull off alone. 

If it’s something you’re interested in, you could offer this to your existing clients on a trial basis so you can start working on your processes and gain more experience — but unless you plan on this being part of your core offerings, you might be better off outsourcing it to an agency who specializes in conversion rate optimization.

I haven’t used any third parties for this myself, but a quick Google search provides plenty of results. 

Copywriting

Recurring: ★★☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

I’d be shocked (or call you a liar) if you weren’t waiting on content from a client right — amiright?

In fact, waiting on content from a client is, without question, one of the biggest complaints agencies owners have — so why not offer to do it for them?

You can solve the problem and increase the overall project invoice — win, win!

Sure, most of us are web designers/developers — not copywriters (and those are very different skills)… But with so many projects delayed, never completed, or not living up to their potential due to copy, perhaps it’s something worth growing the team for?

Every website needs copy, and you’re already building the website — so it’s a natural fit.

And even if you don’t want to hire a copywriter to be on staff, there are plenty of ways to go about outsourcing your copywriting (which we’ll talk about in a minute).

Copywriting Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Strategy: Having words to put on the page is important, but unless there’s some strategy behind it, it’s not much better than Lorem Ipsum. Strategy isn’t always an easy sell, but it’s extremely valuable and can make the actual copywriting much easier to accomplish. 

Consulting: I’ve had a lot of luck offering content consulting to my clients who insist on writing the copy themselves. This includes helping them strategize what content needs to be written, and editing what they provide to polish it up for the website. It’s a good inbetween for clients who can’t quite do it themselves, but aren’t prepared to hire a copywriter.

Website Copy: Any new project is going to need quite a bit of copy — and even at $100 or so per page in markup, this can add up to a significant chunk of change. Whether you hire someone on staff, or outsource the copywriting, this can end up being a significant percentage of the overall website build.

Blogging: If you’re down with MRR (I know you are), then offering ongoing copywriting in the form of blogs or articles is a fantastic way to offer copywriting as a recurring service. This ties in nicely if you’re offering SEO services, but doesn’t have to be specifically done for search optimization reasons. 

Beyond those core services, consider other things you clients could need copywriting for, like; press releases, ad copy, brochures/flyers, case studies, and more.

Outsourcing Copywriting Services

For most agencies, outsourcing copywriting is the way to go. I started outsourcing a huge chunk of my copywriting to The Content Lab for both my own websites as well as my clients — and it’s been a game-changer! 

Not only is the copywriting much better than I could produce on my own, but it’s one less thing to worry about.

Besides hiring a copywriter (either agency or freelance), there are copywriting services like Content Recyclers (who I’ve used with mixed results), marketplaces like iWriter (who I’ve not had good luck with myself), or even artificial intelligence tools (which I’ve never found useful).

There are also some great copywriting groups on Facebook full of freelance copywriters you could partner up with. 

CSS

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★☆☆

To the new website creator, CSS is literally a foreign language. 

You might be many years removed from entering the field — hell, you might even pre-date CSS itself — but for those just dipping their toes into our industry, having to write CSS to make the changes you want seems like an impossible hill to climb.

And you can lose a lot of time trying to Google a solution.

If you already have a traffic source, or audience, offering CSS edits or fixes could be a nice little side income for pretty easy work.

Putting together a simple landing page for CSS fixes and a price list could end up landing you a few inquiries and a little extra change never hurt anyone!

CSS Writing Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Your customers aren’t likely going to need a lot of CSS help, but this actually might be a good way to acquire new customers.

Your quick and helpful response to a CSS need could easily turn into more (and more profitable) work.

For a period of time I was offering one-on-one WordPress consultations. Oftentimes I was just explaining how plugins and themes worked to complete newbs. While that kind of work didn’t make me rich (and one-off CSS fixes probably won’t either), it gave me an opportunity to build a relationship with someone and resulted in additional work on several occasions. 

Outsourcing CSS Services

Chances are the margins won’t be great in outsourcing and marking up CSS work — and in most cases you’ll probably just want to do it yourself.

However, if the situation arises where it makes sense (or if you get stuck or in over your head), you won’t have a hard time finding someone who can do it. Sites like Fiverr or Upwork will have plenty of people that you can outsource the work to, and there are even tools like Microthemer or CSS hero that can aid you in your efforts. 

If you’re outsourcing to a developing nation, you might be able to still make a decent margin (but I always recommend paying a fair wage for the area of the world you live in).

Directory Listings

Recurring: ★★★★☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

If I’m honest, I’ve not heard of half of the directory websites out there — and chances are not many people are relying on them as a source of information… However directory listings serve as a great citation and backlink to any business. 

Since most of these websites have decent authority, and literally ask you to publish your website address on their website (for free!), it’s one of the easiest ways to start building some backlinks and authority (especially for a new website).

This can be a great addon for a project, or even a recurring service you can offer your clients. 

Building these listings isn’t much fun, but thankfully there are services that will take care of it for you — making it a quick and easy way to bring in a little extra revenue. 

Directory Listing Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Over the years, I’ve found this a pretty easy sell to both new clients (during a project build) as well as clients who ask me about rankings and SEO.

I’ve sold these services as both a one-time option (20 listings for $X), and as a recurring service (X listings per month for $X). 

For clients that might not see the value in it, I explain that having these directory listings is like getting “online recommendations”. Google sees these backlinks as an indicator that your business is important (because someone who isn’t serious wouldn’t go to this trouble, right?).

Of course, directory listings aren’t going to skyrocket your client from page 10 to page 1 overnight (or probably ever), but it sure doesn’t hurt.

And what’s nice about this service (unlike a lot of SEO-related things) is that you can clearly show them the deliverables as you complete your work by sending them links to all of the directory listings you generate. 

Outsourcing Directory Listings

Listen, ain’t nobody got time to sign up for 100 different directories and input this information in one at a time — I know that.

But there are plenty of services that will do this for you.

I’ve always used Bright Local. Not because I’ve tested them all and it reigned supreme, but because it was the first one I’ve tried and I’ve not had a reason to switch.

Once you create an account and set up a business inside the Bright Local dashboard (where you fill in the details about the business one time!), you can buy credits for around $3 per listing and they will go out and build the citations for you.

You get the option to select the directories you want to be listed in, hit “go”, and they get to work. Within a week or so you get a report with all the completed listings (sometimes it doesn’t get them all) and links to each directory listing.

If necessary, you can also update listings in bulk as well (say if a phone number or address to a business changes).  Keeping all your listings consistent (especially with Name, Address, Phone Number (or NAP)) is extremely important.

Subbing out these services takes little time and is extremely affordable — making it a perfect candidate for outsourcing.

eCommerce

Recurring: ★★★★☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

If you’re going to meet today’s customers where they are — then you’re going to have to meet them online. 

I think we were headed there anyway, but a global pandemic with forced lockdowns really accelerated the process of people getting used to doing business online. 

The businesses who were hurt the most were the ones with no way to generate revenue without face-to-face interactions.

Even if you start small & simple, having something to offer online is a smart move for just about every business — and post-pandemic, your clients have likely now realized that.

From as simple as a payment forms (Fluent Forms payments work great!), or as complex as a full-fledged WooCommerce store, there’s a wide range of eCommerce options for your clients inside WordPress.

But chances are, if it’s ever going to happen, they are going to need you to do it. 

eCommerce Services You Can Offer Your Clients

We’ll start with the obvious — setting up some kind of eCommerce option for your client.

If they are selling one-off items, then something simple like a payment form might do the trick. I set up a Fluent Forms form for one of my restaurant clients during the pandemic where he could sell his signature BBQ sauce right through his website. It was a simple solution (that didn’t break the bank) and generated thousands of dollars in revenue for his business that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

 Beyond setting up the initial infrastructure, you can also offer additional services like:

Store Management – When you rise to the level of complexity that WooCommerce brings, it’s not something that every business owner wants to (or can) handle themselves. This makes it a great candidate for recurring services where you help ensure the store is running smoothly, orders are being processed correctly and both the customer and their clients are happy.

Upgraded Hosting & Security – It’s a whole new ballgame when you start having transactions directly on your website. Your customer might now have everything in place to ensure secure transitions, or the demands of concurrent users doing heavy processing on the website (like adding and changing things in a cart) might slow things down. You can upsell them to a better care plan package specifically designed for eCommerce stores. 

Outsourcing eCommerce Services

If you’re not familiar with running software like WooCommerce — it can be a beast of its own. Though it’s not extremely complicated, there are a lot of moving parts that take time and practice to get comfortable with.

Our Job Board Directory has about a dozen eCommerce specialists that offer white label services that may be worth reaching out to.

Playing middleman in these scenarios isn’t always easy (exactly the reason I gave outsourcing 4 stars instead of 5 in this category) as there are a lot of questions that will need to be answered and playing a game of telephone can not only slow things down but possibly lead to mistakes.

It’s not that it can’t be done — but it’s worth talking to your outsourcing partner about their white label experience and processes to ensure a smooth project. 

Email Marketing

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

I would have never imagined that email marketing would become such a huge part of my business. Not only has it turned into something I truly enjoy, but I’ve seen fantastic results in both my agency and with side projects. 

It seems to continue getting harder and harder to get people’s attention online, but email remains a constant way to sneak right into the pocket of your customers and prospects.

What I’ve come to learn over the years is that just about any business could benefit from email marketing. 

The obvious might be a newsletter or sending out deals — but email marketing can go much deeper than that, and give you a way to start developing a relationship with your list. 

For any business, being top of mind for your customers is paramount, and a consistent email marketing strategy might just be the best way to do that (sorry social media!).

Email Marketing Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Setup, Training & Strategy – If your client can handle pumping out emails themselves, then you can offer to set up their email marketing platform, train them on how to use it, and even help with some strategy on what they should be doing as part of their campaigns. Most of this is pretty simple to do, but provides a lot of value (especially to non-techie clients).

Writing Services – I don’t know about you, but it’s hard enough to get website content (one time!) from a client — let alone new content constantly. If you have the copywriting chops (or have a good copywriter handy) then offering to write the emails for your clients is a great way to add another recurring revenue stream to your business.

Ongoing Strategy & Data Analysis – One problem with email marketing is that clients might not see results right away, or the results might not come in the exact form or fashion they are looking for. Another ongoing service you could provide is an ongoing strategy based on the data you see in their account. What emails are working? Which aren’t? What can you do differently? What metrics are important and how are they performing?

These are all valuable insights to businesses who want to get a return on investment for their email marketing dollar — this might even save them money in the long run.

Outsourcing Email Marketing Services

Like eCommerce, I gave email marketing a 4 out of 5 stars for outsourcing. While it’s entirely possible (you’ll likely want to find a copywriter), there is quite a bit of consulting with your client that will need to take place.

Some white label partners will talk directly with clients on your behalf, while you might have to act as the middleman for others.

Think about the role you want to play in this service (and how much time you can afford to devote to it) before deciding what kind of outsourcing partner is right for you.

Personally, I’ve recruited help with the copywriting and opted to handle planning, strategizing, inputting and scheduling the emails myself. 

Graphic Design

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Just about every business needs graphic design services regularly. 

Whether it be for posts on social media, signs or posters for their store, or even product labels — graphic design plays a major role in running a business.

If you’re not providing this as a service for your clients, then chances are they are paying someone else or doing it themselves.

The link between graphic design and web design is pretty strong, so it’s an easy service to expand into — and you don’t have to be a graphic designer to do it (we’ll talk about the outsourcing opportunities that really make this a great addon service in a moment)!

Graphic Design Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Honestly, the sky’s the limit with services you can offer… Social media graphics, website graphics, package design, signage, brochures, stationary (business cards, letterhead, etc.), logos — and a whole lot more.

These projects can bring in quite a bit of money (depending on what’s needed) as a one-off sale, but where you might find this most intriguing is as a recurring revenue source where you provide ongoing graphic design services for a flat fee (a model that’s become increasingly popular over the past few years). 

Though I’ve removed the services from my own agency website, many of my clients routinely order things like flyers, business cards, stationary, social media graphics, and more. I don’t break the bank on these as individual sales, but they do add up overtime to an amount that is significant enough to not cut out of my offerings completely. 

Outsourcing Graphic Design Services

If you’re not a graphic designer, that’s okay! Most graphic designers are used to working white label with all kinds of different businesses — and you can find plenty of them online.

But what a lot of agencies are doing now is hiring monthly graphic design services, like Deer Designer, to handle multiple client requests for a flat monthly fee.

When you spread the cost out across multiple clients, you can make some pretty good profit off of these services. And if you don’t have the client base to keep a monthly service busy yet, you can always have them work on some of your own stuff you’ve been “meaning to get to” for ages. 

Many agencies have even turned to these services to help them produce website mockups for their projects, which is a great way to outsource more of your work and get even more mileage out of your monthly design services package. 

Google My Business Setup / Management

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★☆☆

Local businesses really undervalue what Google My Business brings to the table. Even as a web developer myself, when I’m looking for something local I typically start with the Google listings even though I’m interested in what these companies’ websites look like (and that’s usually the only reason I go to the website).

However, it seems many businesses are oblivious to the listings altogether, or don’t keep them updated — something that could be costing them serious money.

Client education plays an important role with this service, and you have to be prepared to thread the needle. You need to help your clients understand just how important it is to have their GMB listing setup, optimized, and regularly updated — but not cannibalize the importance of their website as a result. 

Google My Business Services You Can Offer Your Clients

There are 3 main services you can offer when it comes to Google My Business.

Setup – If a business isn’t yet listed on GMB, you can help them get their listing up and running. It’s not a hard thing to do, and doesn’t take much time — but for non-techie clients, they’d probably rather pay someone than to mess with it themselves.

Optimization – For businesses that have a listing, there is almost always room for improvement. This could be making sure their NAP is consistent, their categories are correct, there are plenty of images in the gallery (one of the most important parts!) and that all the information is filled out in full. 

Management – If you can show your client just how valuable GMB is, then keeping it up to date should make sense to them. Monthly audits to make sure any suggested changes are correct, replying to reviews, and creating weekly posts are great ways to keep a listing up to date and fresh (and should also help it perform better).

Outsourcing Google My Business Services

There’s not a lack of places to outsource your GMB services too, but in my experience those places fall under two categories; untrustworthy or expensive. 

This isn’t an extremely high-dollar service in most cases, so when you outsource this there’s not going to be much of a cut for you. Outsourcing it to someone you can’t fully trust means you’ll still have plenty of work to do following up, checking on things, managing the account, and fixing any mistakes.

If you go with someone you trust, you’re probably not going to be able to make much of a profit. If you’re playing a numbers game, and can get enough clients signed up, that might be okay — but for one or two clients the small profit margins might not make it worth the hassle.

Thankfully setup, optimization, and management are all pretty quick and easy tasks. If you have the time, these things can be done profitably in-house (a VA would be great for this!).

Hosting

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Agencies usually fall in one of two diametric camps on this one…

Some would never touch hosting, afraid of the 24/7 nature of ensuring a website is up and running around the clock.

While others see this as an easy addon service to their website builds that bring in reliable recurring revenue.

It’s not a service that’s for everyone, but if you can put the right expectations and processes in place, then it’s one of the easiest things to sell for your agency.

Clients have you build their website, and they will have to have it hosted somewhere, right? Well, why not with you — the person they just spent time building a relationship with?

One mistake many agencies (especially young ones) make, is reselling cheap or unreliable hosting. If you’re going to offer hosting as part of your services, it’s worth it to spend the extra few dollars a top-notch hosting provider costs to eliminate many of the headaches that come with hosting websites. 

Hosting Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Hosting is typically just one kind of service, but you can think of this in tiers…

Perhaps offering premium or standard hosts, or offering different support packages or response times.

Hosting is often packed up with other website management or care services like plugin updates, security, and content updates. Hosting has always been the pillar of my maintenance services and likely what makes them most attractive.

An argument can be made for either monthly or annual billing for hosting services.

I tend to prefer monthly hosting since it’s an easier decision for clients to make (without feeling “locked in”), renewals each month are low enough clients typically don’t think twice, and the consistency of monthly payments (vs annual ones) makes it easier for you to project your monthly earnings (watch my video on the 7 reasons I only invoice care plans monthly, which are the same reasons I bill hosting monthly)

Outsourcing Hosting Services

Just about everyone is going to be outsourcing their hosting services to a hosting company, and I’ve run into very few agencies who physically host websites on their own basement server (not for the faint of heart). 

There’s no shortage of hosting companies to outsource to — in fact, just about any of them allow it. 

Some offer WHMCS which provides you with an all-in-one solution for management, billing, and support — but in most cases you can handle these things with systems you already have in place for running your agency.

I feel like I have to stress this point again — hosting is not a place to cheap out. Even expensive WordPress hosting (for most sites) is not very expensive. Choosing bargain dealers in this space might save you a buck or two here or there, but it’s going to eventually lead to massive headaches and migrations. 

Javascript, PHP, or Other Coding

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

If you have the necessary skills, these kinds of tasks can be in high demand as our industry has been flooded by people with little to know coding skills.

The rise of WordPress (which can be done in a no-code way) and tools like Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, and Shopfiy have made it easy for anyone to get into the website building game.

However, those tools all have their limitations when it comes to advanced or custom functionality — for that, people need someone with skills. 

Unfortunately, many of these services get farmed out to the lowest bidder, but like with anything, you get what you pay for. 

White labeling work with agencies who have a reputation and deadlines to uphold makes having a reliable, trustworthy, and communicative partner (like you!) highly valuable. 

If you have these skills, it’s worth your time to develop relationships with other agencies who could send you work on a semi-regular basis.

Coding Services You Can Offer Your Clients

It’s hard to know exactly what services you can offer, because this topic is wide-ranging. However, one-off (project based) or hourly services are likely your best bet. 

Much of the value you will bring to the table will be in your ability to problem solve and come up with a reliable solution to a problem as much as it will the code you produce. 

Getting end-user clients to see the difference between you and installing their 70th plugin might be a hard sell, but other agencies and freelancers are more likely to value your services.

Because the solutions you can provide with coding skills are so wide, it might be worth putting together a portfolio of case studies featuring problems you’ve solved and unique challenges you’ve faced. 

The coding world isn’t something non-coders easily understand, so using stories to market your services comes in handy because they are more easily digestible and relatable. 

Outsourcing Coding Services

As I mentioned, those with coding skills are likely to have more luck working as white label partners with other agencies, which means your agency could likely form a mutually beneficial relationship with a great coder if you don’t have that skill set.

If it hasn’t happened already, you’ll eventually find yourself with a client request you just don’t know how to tackle. Having someone you know and can reach out to for help is extremely valuable in keeping your customers happy and being able to provide the solutions they need to keep coming back to you.

Groups like The Admin Bar are filled with people of all kinds of skill sets, and finding community with your fellow developer is a great way to form business relationships that can help you earn extra revenue or get you out of a jam!

Performance Optimization

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

If you haven’t noticed, website performance is an important topic in our industry — especially this year as Google rolls out Web Core Vitals as part of their ranking algorithm.

What led us here has been a slew of D-I-Y tools that sacrifice performance in exchange for an easy drag-and-drop system. Poor performance has become a huge issue, enough that Google is now incentivizing people to clean up their act.

Web Core Vitals are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future — yet most websites don’t pass the tests.

Not only can optimizing a website for faster loading times now improve your rankings, it also has an effect on your visitors’ experience. What website doesn’t want better rankings and happier users? 

Most businesses have yet to fully realize the importance of a high-performance website (or even know that’s a “thing”), so there’s still an uphill battle with client education. But if you can connect the dots between your clients goals and better performance, then it’s a service you can offer that produces a measurable deliverable (in the form of speed tests) — which clients love. 

Performance Optimization You Can Offer Your Clients

In most cases, performance optimization is going to be one-off jobs — taking a poor performing website, applying magic (ha!), and producing positive results.

A good workflow for this is to sell a performance audit first. This will help you benchmark where the website is at currently, and set goals for what performance improvements would have the biggest impact on achieving the client’s desired results.

Audits are a great sales tool because they allow clients to come into your ecosystem at a lower price point and get a clearly defined deliverable (the audit report), but more importantly, it allows you to get paid for your investigative and consulting work while providing you with everything you need to scope out the optimizations that need to be done (which you can quote and sell separately).

One-off optimization services are hard to put in a one-size-fits-all box — because poor performance could be due to many different factors. Solutions could be anywhere from optimizing some out of control images all the way to completely rebuilding the website.

The solutions obviously have a wide range of costs.

Outsourcing Performance Optimization Services

If you haven’t gone deep in the weeds of web core vitals, then performing the optimization services yourself might not be a good fit. However, there are plenty of white label agencies and freelancers that specialize in performance that would be glad to help you out.

If you plan on outsourcing, it’s important to find a reliable partner and work out a good system. Ask questions about how prices are determined, what kinds of optimizations they can perform, etc.

Together you can build out a system and package that helps streamline this process (like the example above of a paid audit and then a quote for the optimizations). 

With the right partner in place this can be a pretty hands-off experience for you while still providing tons of (measureable) value to your existing and new clients. 

PPC / Paid Ads

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

Paid advertisement is a good way for just about any business to get leads immediately (especially for those who don’t have time to wait on SEO) — and there are all kinds of ways to get your message out there today.

From Google PPC ads, to social media ads on just about any of the platforms, and more. 

But just because you’re good with computers doesn’t mean you should be managing an ad budget for a client.

Being effective at running paid ad campaigns takes time and experience and is probably not something you should just jump into and figure out as you go (especially with client’s money). It’s easy to waste hundreds or even thousands of dollars figuring out a good setup — and what makes a good setup for one client could be completely different for another.

However, paid ads also lend themselves to other work (like email marketing setups, landing page designs & builds, etc.) that may be more up your alley. 

I’ve been shocked at how many of my customers are running Google Ads or hitting the “boost post” button on Facebook with absolutely no clue what they are doing. 

If PPC/Paid Ads aren’t something you’ve considered before, I think you’ll find that there are big opportunities there even with your existing client base — but it’s not for everyone. 

PPC / Paid Ad Services You Can Offer Your Clients

One of the big benefits of offering a PPC or Paid Ads service to your client is that it’s almost always going to be a recurring fee. Reliable income is almost always more valuable than one-off or project based things in the long run. 

As I mentioned briefly in the intro to this section, there’s not only the campaign itself (which most people bill a percentage fee on top of their client’s ad spend budget), but there are other services that are going to be needed to run a successful campaign.

This could include setting up email marketing for autoresponders or funnels, creating landing pages to send the paid traffic to, running split tests, and even conversion rate optimization.

All of these things add up, and paid ads are the doorway to a lot of additional revenue for your agency — so I think you have to look at this more holistically. 

If you’re going to offer paid ad services, you likely need to be prepared to offer a lot of things that come with the territory. Does that sound like something you want to take on? 

This might make you even more excited or scare you right away from it!

Outsourcing PPC / Paid Ad Services

Unless you already have the experience, or plan to make paid ads a focus of your agency, I would recommend outsourcing it.

While it might be okay to learn on the job when you’re trying out a new page builder or setting up an email autoresponder — playing with people’s money (and usually a lot of it) is a risky proposition and an easy way to throw money down the drain.

The more an ad specialist knows about the industry, the better results they are going to be able to produce — so I would suggest looking for an ad specialist that focuses on some sort of niche or industry.

Their experience in the space will help your ads become profitable quicker and keep you from using ad budgets just to figure out what works in your market and what doesn’t. 

Printing

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Confession: Before wandering into the wide world of web, I was a print guy. I spent 15+ years of my life in print shops (mostly in the sign industry). So while I might be a little biased as to how this works, I also have a lot of first hand experience.

And printing is profitable.

The world has gone more and more digital, but printing is far from dead, even if you haven’t been having things printed for your business (we’re mostly digital due to the nature of our work, but not all businesses operate that way).

Business cards, flyers, posters, packaging, signs, billboards — you name it. These things are everywhere and someone has to do it.

Best part is, it might not cost you a dime to get started — there are wholesalers everywhere!

Printing Services You Can Offer Your Clients

For the better part of 4 years I’ve been offering printing services to my existing web clients. While I could offer printing services to the general public, I’ve found that the smaller margins keep me busy, but not as profitable as I’d like.

By limiting it to my web customers, I don’t have to do any new client onboarding, gathering assets, etc. Overall the process is a bit more streamlined.

And a lot of your customers are probably having things printed already… So you already have a client base to offer this service to.

Small format printing (like business cards and brochures) can easily command a 2.5X markup, while large format printing might be slightly lower (due to their higher costs). But it doesn’t stop there — there’s also apparel and promotional products. 

If you can think it, you can ink it! There’s people out there that will put a logo on anything!

Outsourcing Printing Services

Getting into the printing industry is expensive (and why I moved to web when I wanted to leave employment and go out on my own), but nearly any printing business offers wholesale pricing (meaning you could even strike up a great relationship with a local printer).

But if you want the best prices, it’s worth looking into the big online wholesalers. I currently use Zoo Printing for small format things, Signs 365 for large format stuff, Printful for short-run apparel, and 4imprint for promotional items. None of these services require any upfront costs, which means you can offer printing services without ever having to spend a dime out of pocket (not bad, eh?).

Do keep in mind that while some clients can provide you with print-ready files, most customers are going to need design services along with their printing. If you have graphic design experience and access to tools like Adobe Illustrator, then that won’t be a problem. However, if that’s not in your skillset, you might also have to outsource the graphic design (which we already discussed in this article).

Search Engine Optimization

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★☆

Out of all the services listed on here, SEO is one of the ones most offered by web design agencies and freelancers. Naturally, most people who have someone build a website also want that website to be found via search.

SEO is a wide-ranging topic, with dozens of strategies and techniques that can produce results — and no two websites need the exact same work done.

That’s both an opportunity and a challenge. 

Thankfully you can tailor an SEO offering that aligns with your skills or the partners you have in place using a mixture of one-off and recurring services that can produce additional income for your agency. 

Search Engine Optimization You Can Offer Your Clients

Audits – A great place to start with any kind of SEO campaign is to audit the existing position of your client. There are both manual and automated ways to perform this and clients appreciate the flat-rate to help them better understand where they are at and what avenues they could explore for growth.

Content Creation – Content is king — and content creation services are a great way to provide SEO for your clients. This could be through blog posts, articles, or even copywriting services for their web pages that are tailored to help them get found for the appropriate terms. 

On-Page Optimization – Not all websites are built equally. It’s rare I audit a website and don’t find issues from missing page titles to broken links and un-optimized images. Getting websites set on a solid foundation is great for SEO (and something most web developers can handle).

Link Building – Not my favorite exercise, but there is value to collecting high value links. 

Citations & Directory Listings (Local SEO) – For local businesses, getting directory listings setup can be a great way to get found in more places while simultaneously building backlinks. 

Outsourcing Search Engine Optimization Services

There’s no shortage of companies you can outsource your SEO services to (including SEOHive who is run by two members of our community). 

If you don’t have the skills (or time!) to offer SEO services in-house, there’s no shame in outsourcing these duties. Agencies are doing this regularly.

However, it doesn’t come without its challenges. SEO can be a hard service to communicate, especially when showing results to clients. Sure, you can see rankings moving, but those things don’t happen instantly and your client needs to be educated about the process and have realistic expectations.

Playing middleman between your client and an SEO company (all of whom likely have a completely different level of understanding of SEO) can be challenging at times. 

If you decide to outsource your SEO services, productizing them can help to cut down on the administration work and is a great avenue for having clear expectations with your clients.

Security

Recurring: ★☆☆☆☆ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Outside of connecting up a plugin and wishing for the best, WordPress implementers aren’t usually well-versed in the complicated world of internet security.

But so long as you are dealing in WordPress, security is something that needs to be taken into consideration.

Between the popularity of the platform and its open source nature, WordPress can be vulnerable — even if you’re using premium software from developers with a great pedigree.

However poorly-versed in this arena you are, you can bet your clients are a lot worse off. Not only are they unaware of the threats that exist, but websites can live for years infected with malware, grotesque ads, and redirects that can ruin the reputation of a website.

Offering security is protection for a brand, and something that you can help implement — even if it’s fully outsourced. 

Security Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Most agencies are offering some level of security through maintenance/care plans — and for a lot of websites, that may be enough.

But for the sake of this article, we’re looking at standalone services. 

Security as a service is most often going to be in hack repairs and malware removal services — which isn’t for any novice to tackle alone.

However, with the right partner in place, there’s money to be made. When a website gets hacked or goes down, that can end up costing a business thousands of dollars (in both sales and reputation).

Outsourcing Security Services

If you haven’t got this phone call yet — you probably will at some point; a business with a hacked website.

If you’re not a security expert, then your first inclination might be to turn this kind of work away… but due to the frequency of vulnerabilities in WordPress, it’s a good idea to have a security expert on speed dial!

We have several security experts in our community, most of which are happy to partner with agencies that can feed them work and willing to white label their services.

Even if you don’t foresee these services being a major part of your agency, having systems and people in place to take care of these problems when they happen (and they will happen!) is good business — not only for the extra revenue it can generate, but for the heartache it can save!

Social Media Management

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★★★★

Every business knows about social media, and has heard the stories of how it can work wonders for your business — but very few have a plan in place to make that happen (and rarely take consistent action even if they do!).

Because business owners can login and post on social media, they think they should. But without a plan in place, and understanding of what will work, and consistent action — it’s unlikely to ever yield positive results.

Social Media Management services pair very well with web agencies — and many agencies offer this to their clients as a way to increase their recurring revenue and even to symbiotically make the websites they build more valuable.  

There are plenty of great tools on the market to help you manage multiple social media platforms, for multiple brands, all from one dashboard (drastically cutting down the amount of time needed to run these campaigns), but if that still seems like more than you can take on there are white label and outsourcing services available to you. 

Social Media Management Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Account Creation, Graphics & Setup – I’ll tip my hat to a long-time customer of mine for giving me this idea — because I’m not sure if I would have thought of it on my own… But even as easy as social media accounts are to set up, some clients just don’t want to bother.

And even if they’ve set up their account, it may not look great or match their brand.

If you’re building a website for a new business, a great addon could be to setup their social media accounts and ensure their profile pictures and graphics all match with their website.

It’s a quick and easy job that helps your client look even more polished — a great way to increase your project invoice.

Ongoing Management – The biggest problem most companies have with social media is no direction and no follow through. Ongoing management can give them both (by first working on strategy, then executing on that strategy) on a monthly basis.

This is a great way to improve your recurring revenue and provide your clients with a deliverable they can easily see (whereas something like SEO is a lot harder for clients to grasp).

Consulting – I don’t claim to be a social media expert (shit, I spend enough time on it — I should be!), but I do feel like I have experience and knowledge my clients could benefit from.

If your clients aren’t quite ready to have their social media accounts completely managed, then consulting services might still be an opportunity.

I’ve helped clients plan out their strategy, give them tips on creating content, and help them set up a schedule for posting consistently. A little push in the right direction can be valuable to clients and if they are unable to follow through on your advice, they may come back for fully managed services.

Outsourcing Social Media Management Services

You can find all kinds of social media management services that offer white label work. Some will be dedicated social media management agencies, some that are other web agencies that already have the systems and processes in place for social media management.

Like outsourcing SEO services, having a productized service in place helps make your offer more compelling and easier to manage (from a project management perspective).

The project management you’ll be responsible for will be minimal once the campaign is up and running and all the processes are ironed out which makes this a great addon service that you can scale easily as your agency grows. 

Virtual Assistant (VA)

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ☆☆☆☆☆

When you hear VA, you might automatically think about “cheap labor”, but that’s not always the case. I’ve talked with agency owners recently who are hiring “VA’s” with some technical experience and teaching them to run their care plans and even build out web pages. 

Any of the technical skills you possess could be valuable for businesses all across the world. Marketing yourself as a specific kind of VA (think about your skill set) is a great opportunity for those just getting started and that are looking to pick up work and build out a client base. 

Businesses today are straying away from the traditional model of filling up a physical office with humans punching the clock — and this more agile system of the modern workplace makes being a specialized VA a valuable asset.

Perhaps the services you offer as a VA aren’t that different than the services you offer as an agency or freelancer — but the marketing could be (and there might be some money and opportunity in that!).

Virtual Assistant Services You Can Offer Your Clients

It’s hard to say exactly what kind of VA services you could offer — because that greatly depends on your talents… but have no doubt — you have plenty of them!

A great way to figure out how you might fit into the VA world is to think about all of the experience and technical skills you have and see what kinds of businesses and industries that align with.

There are, no doubt, thousands of businesses out there that could use someone with digital marketing, website, social media, SEO, or technical skills — but not wanting to hire a full time employee.

The better you can define the value you bring, the better price you’ll be able to command. Businesses can still be saving money by paying you a higher rate than they would an employee since they don’t have to pay out the same benefits and taxes.

Outsourcing VA Services

Yeah, you could probably outsource this if you wanted to… I’m sure you can find some VA’s willing — but would it be worth the hassle? Unlikely.

VA services are probably best performed by you.  Playing the middleman is more work than it would ever be worth. 

Workspace (Google) or Office 365 (Microsoft) Email

Recurring: ★★★★★ | Outsourceable: ★★☆☆☆

There will be a large segment of the audience reading this (holy shit, you made it this far? You’re like 11,000 words into this post — kudos!) that are going to revolt at this idea — and that’s okay, it’s not for everyone.

Nor would I recommend offering email services using any platform (or without some experience), but the simple truth is — companies need branded email accounts and very few know how to set it up or troubleshoot any issues. 

Google Workspace and Office 365 are both solid systems that don’t tend to cause a lot of problems once they are set up. 

It’s unlikely that you’ll make a killing off of each account, but considering that most of your clients will need email, offering this service could add up quickly.  

Email Services You Can Offer Your Clients

Account Creation & Setup – The initial setup of branded email addresses is by far the hardest part (I doubt many of my clients know what a MX record is or where to shove it!). But once you’ve done it a couple times, the process is a breeze.

Since clients need it and are unlikely to know how to do it, it can be a valuable service they are willing to pay for.

A one-time setup could run as much as a few hundred dollars and only take an hour or so of work.

Ongoing Management & Support – Ongoing management might be something bigger companies need — especially those that hire and fire often. Your services might include adding and removing members, setting up aliases or even email forwarding.

Support might be a little more difficult if you aren’t well-versed in email (and often a nightmare even if you are!) so tread lightly on what you promise here. Email systems going down can be a crisis for a company, and having your day (or even worse, your night!) Interrupted to figure out why emails aren’t going through isn’t a fun way to spend your day. 

Outsourcing Email Services

Instead of thinking about outsourcing in white-label terms here, you might have better luck looking into affiliate programs.

Both Google and Microsoft offer referral / partner programs that you can earn commission from even if you don’t want to do any of the work yourself.

At the bare minimum, think about writing a blog post or small guide on the email services you offer (with your referral link), and some simple setup tips.  That kind of content is handy for your customers to have and something that could continue to put a little change in your pocket.

So, what did I miss?

Obviously this blog post is in no way a complete list. Having spent years interacting with agencies across the globe inside The Admin Bar community has opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities when it comes to finding revenue streams for their agencies.

But I had to stop somewhere, right?

If you have an addon service that’s been working well in your agency, then we’d love to hear about it!

Tell us all about it inside The Admin Bar community and let’s all prosper together!

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Kyle Van Deusen

Kyle Van Deusen

The Admin Bar

After spending 15 years as a graphic designer and earning a business degree, I launched my agency, OGAL Web Design, in 2017. A year later, after finding the amazing community around WordPress, I co-found The Admin Bar, which has grown to become the #1 community for WordPress professionals. I'm a husband and proud father of three, and a new resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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No More Headaches: Streamline Your Business Processes in 7 Simple Steps

Are your internal business processes a source of too many headaches in an already busy schedule? Learn how to streamline your processes right here.

Cookie

Google Tightens Privacy Rules: Preparing Your Website for Consent Mode V2

What web agencies need to know about Google’s Consent Mode V2