WordPress is a very popular blogging platform that provides a lot of ways for people to make money on the internet. There are presently more than 70 million websites on this platform. If you have some programming knowledge, you can create and sell WordPress themes and plugins to make money.

The demand for themes and plugins is very great as this service continues to grow extensively every year. You can make a lot of money by creating products for a variety of niches and topics.

• How Can I Get Started With Making Money From WordPress Themes?
• Can You Make Money Creating WordPress Plugins?
• How do I Create a WordPress Theme And Sell it?
• How Much Can You Make From WordPress Themes?
• Where Can I Sell my WordPress Themes?
• How Much do WordPress Plugin Developers Make?
• Can You Make Money Selling WordPress Themes?
• How do WordPress Developers Make Money?
• Can You Make Money Selling Website Themes?
• Can I Earn Money From my WordPress Blog?
• Does WordPress Pay You For Blogging?
• Do Free WordPress Blogs Make Money?
• How do You Make Money From Plugins?
• How Much Does a WordPress Developer Charge Per Hour?
• Is WordPress Developer a Good Career?
• How Can I Create my Own WordPress Theme?
• How do Bloggers Receive Their Money?

How Can I Get Started With Making Money From WordPress Themes?

The WordPress plugins and themes market

The great growth of this blogging platform has created a lot of opportunities for enterprising individuals. There are a variety of services and products that can be provided to webmasters on this platform but this article will focus on themes and plugins. Making money with WordPress plugins and themes can be done in two ways. You can either create your own products or sell those that are created by other people.

Weigh the pros and cons

Each of these options has its pros and cons. If you are a programmer or designer, you may prefer to create and sell your own WordPress plugins and themes. On the other hand, internet marketers will lean towards the promotion of other people’s products.

Read Also: Top 10 Best WordPress SEO Plugin 2022

Although there are thousands of free themes and plugins on the internet, a large number of webmasters are willing to pay for those that offer them premium functionality, features as well as support. No matter the choice that you make, you still have the ability to generate a sizeable income.

Creating plugins and themes

If you have programming or designing skills, you can make money either by creating themes and plugins that you will sell or provide custom services for other people.

There are several companies that have built successful businesses by creating and selling thousands of WordPress plugins or themes. Your aim should be to create as many designs as possible. Start promoting them once you have a sizeable collection.

When you make your own products, you have the opportunity to make more money because you have a larger profit margin. You can also get more sales through a team of affiliate marketers. You should choose prices that will enable you to be competitive in the market and still give your affiliates a sizeable profit margin.

Make sure you set up an effective payment and delivery system. It should be easy for buyers to make payment from different parts of the world. You should also offer a money-back guarantee.

Customer support

Customer support is a very important aspect of creating and selling WordPress themes and plugins. You have to make it easy for buyers to get their money back when they ask for refunds. You should also be ready to answer any questions that your customers have.

Some of them will have problems with the installation while others may have problems with configuration. You can reduce the customer service workload by ensuring that your products are properly tested to remove all bugs and conflicts.

Can You Make Money Creating WordPress Plugins?

Plugin development is one of many ways to make money with WordPress, but if you’re just starting out as a plugin developer, figuring out the path to success isn’t easy. That’s why I put together this in-depth guide on how you can make money using your coding skills as a plugin developer!

The main ways to make money as a plugin developer include:

1. Selling commercial WordPress plugins
2. Offering customization of your plugin
3. Custom plugin development
4. Educating others about plugin development

While some of these might sound similar, they are very unique, so let’s go through each one and help you get started with a few suggestions about the best approaches to making money (or developing a long-term career or business) in each area.

How do I Create a WordPress Theme And Sell it?

If you are trying to decide whether to focus on developing themes or plugins, there is some research that points to the theme market being larger. With that in mind, let’s look at the eight steps you’ll need to take to get your themes ready for the market.

Step 1: Choose a Niche and Design Your Theme

One of the best ways to stand out in the crowded theme marketplace is to focus on a particular niche. Niche themes are designed to serve a very specific need. After all, the needs of a podcaster are likely to be quite different than those of a ‘mompreneur’ selling handmade soaps.

One way to find a niche that may have room for new themes is to use a tool like Google Trends to understand what people are searching for.

Once you identify a likely niche, you can outline your theme design based on the needs of that audience.

Step 2: Develop Your Theme Using Responsive Design Principles

Designing primarily for mobile devices is an important trend, for many reasons. One significant advantage of this approach is that you only have to design one version of a project that will work on many platforms.

To do this, you’ll need to pay attention to responsive design principles when designing your theme. This means considering elements such as fonts, image sizes, menus, and more, opting for styles that will serve mobile users more effectively. There are many resources available for information on responsive design, and you can even get some help by installing a dedicated plugin.

Step 3: Follow the WordPress Coding Best Practices

As a theme developer, you are more likely to encounter success and repeat customers if you know and understand WordPress’ Coding Best Practices.

WordPress’ developers go to great lengths to keep everyone on the same page in this regard. The code handbook covers CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and HTML as they apply to the WordPress framework. 

Following best practices in your development process will also go a long way towards ensuring that your new theme is well-documented and functional. This is a win for everyone involved, and helps you build loyalty and trust as a developer trying to sell themes. 

Step 4: Include Appropriate Theme Templates

WordPress subscribes to a specific theme template hierarchy, which structures how templates are named and applied to posts and pages. You’ll want to make sure you have the right templates included in your theme, so that users have some level of customization and control. 

This means users will be able to choose what theme templates to apply to different types of posts or pages. If your theme has some special bells and whistles, you’ll want to make sure to include them in your custom templates where relevant, but tread lightly and beware of theme bloat.

Step 5: Create a User-Friendly Theme Options Page

The Theme Options page is where users will get to dig in and customize parts of your theme. Without it, users would have to delve into the CSS or PHP coding themselves. Therefore, it’s important to make this page clean, organized, and easy to use.

Being able to click through settings without having to understand CSS is a major reason people pay for a premium theme. Therefore, making sure they can navigate the Theme Options page is key to building a strong reputation.

Step 6: Create Clear Theme Documentation

WordPress has specific recommendations and requirements when it comes to theme documentation. Familiarizing yourself with these will help when it comes time to submit your theme to WordPress. Having your theme available through the WordPress theme finder can be a significant benefit.

Your documentation should outline the limitations of the theme, and explain any out-of-the-ordinary installation or setup considerations. It should also document your theme’s code, in case another developer wants to make customizations.

Step 7: Choose a Theme Marketplace

You’ve made it through the gauntlet of the previous six steps – now it’s time to pick the theme marketplace that best suits your needs. For many developers, the WordPress.org directory remains the best free marketplace choice out there.

If you decide to go with another option, just keep in mind what goals you have for your theme, what marketing will work for you, and how much you’re willing to pay in fees. We’ll cover many of the marketplace options in further detail below.

Step 8: Price Your Theme and Start Selling

Finally, it’s time to put a price tag on your work of art and (hopefully) watch the money roll in. Market data suggests there’s a sweet spot around $59 for premium themes. There is, however, flexibility to put niche themes at a higher price point.

If you’re planning to be prolific with your theme and plugin creation, you could investigate marketing a theme club or subscription service. Regardless of how and where you sell your products, though, it’s wise to understand the theme market and how consumers will be shopping.

How Much Can You Make From WordPress Themes?

Plugin and theme development has really kicked into high gear over the past 4-5 years, says Vivek Nanda, creator of PaySketch, an analytics application that helps PayPal merchants keep tabs on sales, payment, and product analysis.

According to Nanda, there have been numerous development teams making money selling WordPress themes that “make close to $500K/year with around $200-$250K” in HR and technology costs.

The amount of money you can bring in as a WordPress developer will vary depending on what you offer, your competition, and how effective you are at getting the word out about your products. That being said, there are a few things you absolutely must have if you want to make a go of this as a career:

• A good product. Be it plugin or theme, it needs to offer a feature no one else has (or at the very least, perform that function better than your competition) or provide a unique look with true functionality. It also needs to be well-tested and perform exactly as you want it to before you launch.
• A good price point. Your plugin or theme won’t stand a chance if it’s not set at the right price. Nanda suggests setting themes at “somewhere around $25-30 to start with.” This will make it more likely for customers to take a chance on a developer they’ve never heard of.
• A good marketing plan. You can’t just create a product and expect people to come and find it. You need to do the legwork for them and make your plugin or theme as accessible as possible. To do this, you can create an engaging website, maintain a regular blog, offer your plugin or theme up for review, and establish yourself on social media.
• A good support plan. If you take a gander at the reviews for popular WordPress products, you’ll notice they share one thing in common: people really love products that offer excellent support and updates. And since the best of the best are already doing this, you need to do it too if you want to be competitive.

Where Can I Sell my WordPress Themes?

Now that you’re ready to sell your themes, let’s take a look at the options for marketing your work. Here are seven top WordPress theme marketplaces, and a rundown on what each has to offer.

1. Creative Market

Creative Market focuses on providing people of all skill levels with a place to sell their work. This includes not only WordPress themes but also photos, fonts, graphic design, and more. It boasts a network of six million members, which is a huge potential audience for your themes.

One of the perks of Creative Market is its flexibility. You won’t be locked into just this one marketplace, since you’ll retain the rights to sell your product on your own site or elsewhere. You’ll also see 70% of your themes’ profits, and are free to price them as you choose.

2. ThemeForest

ThemeForest also offers some choices in terms of exclusivity and profit. This marketplace is powered by Envato and draws a lot of traffic, which is a good thing. However, you’ll have to decide if you want to give over-exclusive sale rights to ThemeForest for a smaller fee.

The difference is significant. Non-exclusive sales fees can be upwards of 55%. If you choose to be an exclusive seller with Envato, the more you sell, the smaller the fees become. This marketplace does have some wild success stories, and can be a good place to get your first big win.

3. Codester

Codester is a straightforward marketplace that might be better for plugins, but also offers a home for themes and other digital products. The best part about Codester is the standard, across-the-board 70% profit share for everyone.

There are no exclusivity requirements, and you don’t have to be a veteran seller to reap that reward. Codester does have a review process for submissions, but it boasts a very simple and less intimidating ‘get started’ page than most marketplaces.

4. TemplateMonster

When you choose TemplateMonster as an exclusive seller, you will take in 70% of your sales. If you decide to play the odds and keep your options open by selling your products on more than one platform, on the other hand, you’ll take in 40%.

While their non-exclusive profit percentage is similar to most marketplaces, TemplateMonster offers a lot of support for both customers and designers. Programmers can also choose their pricing within a suggested range.

5. MOJO Marketplace

MOJO Marketplace boasts a whopping 5.8 billion users. And while Mojo Marketplace does set its own pricing on themes, you can bring in a flat 50% of sales for non-exclusive items, or take advantage of an increasing scale on exclusive items. As an exclusive seller on MOJO Marketplace, the more you sell the more you make.

The other advantage to MOJO is the access you get to its partners. This marketplace is connected to several hosting services, and provides customers with immediate access to their themes during host setup.

6. CSSIgniter

CSSIgniter offers a lot of options for its customers, including theme clubs. This translates into some great payouts for theme developers. As a developer, you can take home 50% of each sale, but you also have some other perks.

If theme users (you refer) decide to renew a subscription, for example, you get a commission. It’s worth noting, however, that you need to bank a minimum of $100 a month in order for them to release payment to you via PayPal. 

7. WordPress Theme Directory

Placing a theme in the WordPress Theme Directory offers great value. It gives you access to a huge audience and can be a great way to get started. Many users choose this as their first location when searching for a new theme.

As this is a free directory, you’ll need to include a ‘lite’ version of your theme here. Then you can direct customers to the full premium version, which you’ll need to host elsewhere. This may be a little more complicated, but it lets potential customers try out your theme with no risk.

How Much do WordPress Plugin Developers Make?

The average annual pay for a WordPress Plugin Developer in the United States is $70,047 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $33.68 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,347/week or $5,837/month.

While ZipRecruiter is seeing annual salaries as high as $120,500 and as low as $32,500, the majority of WordPress Plugin Developer salaries currently range between $55,000 to $72,000 with top earners making $109,500 annually across the United States.

The average pay range for a WordPress Plugin Developer varies greatly (by as much as $17,000), which suggests there may be many opportunities for advancement and increased pay based on skill level, location and years of experience.

Can You Make Money Selling WordPress Themes?

However, due to the fact that there are so many WordPress themes on ThemeForest, this makes the competition tough. You can no longer just list your theme and watch the sales start rolling in. ThemeForest authors and developers have to make certain changes in their strategies in order to succeed.

If you want to reach the top of the selling lists it isn’t recommended to place your entire business solely on ThemeForest, as this can be risky. It’s also recommended that you run additional marketing campaigns for your brand, even if you’re a power elite author.

The number one selling theme on the marketplace, Avada, has sold over 300,000 copies! And if you do the math on $60 a license, that is over $20 million in sales on just one multipurpose theme. However, they also have the advantage of time on their hands, as they have a very well-established brand and theme. It can be a lot harder now with all the competition.

How do WordPress Developers Make Money?

Many WordPress based business has launched and succeeded in recent years. Here we will explore various WordPress business ideas for developers that have been tested and proven to be successful. We’ll discuss in detail the process, mode of operation and challenges of each business idea.

1. WordPress Design and Development

If you are good at something, then you can probably make money by offering your services. In this case, you can make money by offering your skills to set up WordPress websites. Whether you’re a WordPress designer or code developer, you will always find a client willing to pay for your services.

The key here is to find the right clients and agencies who are in need of your help. Various freelancing sites like Freelancer.com and Upwork can be a good place for mining clients. Based on your skill level, you can charge an hourly rate or a flat project fee to your clients.

A lot of the work for your clients will be for setting up WordPress sites and installing a premium theme. A good approach to is sign up for a WordPress Theme Package from one of many premium theme developers that gives you developer access to their entire bundle of premium themes, usually at the cost of 1-2 themes.

For that you get an unlimited license to access and install these premium themes on as many domains as you want without paying each time, increasing your revenue dramatically.

2. WordPress Themes Sales

Selling WordPress themes is another potentially very profitable route. The good thing about this business is you can resell the same theme again and again and thus generate recurring income. You will need to maintain a very high standard of quality in your theme to compete in the market. You should be able to deliver pixel perfect design, well-written code, full documentation, support and maintenance to your clients.

You can either open your independent theme shop or submit your theme to well-known theme marketplaces like Theme Forest. Owning your own shop comes with the extra responsibility of building an eCommerce site and generating traffic to it. The good thing about it is that you can keep all the money you make with sales.

The upside with selling on popular theme marketplaces is the massive amount of free exposure you’ll automatically get. They do the work of marketing and advertising for you.

A good strategy is to start by selling on theme marketplaces, then transition to your own eCommerce site as you gain traction and brand awareness.

3. Plugin Development and support

Like themes, you can sell plugins too. The competition in the plugin development is lesser and the opportunities are just as big as themes. You can sell your premium plugins independently with your own e-commerce sites like Gravity Forms, Plugin Buddy, and Cart66 and many more do. The other option for selling plugins is to submit your plugin to WordPress plugin marketplaces like CodeCanyon.

A word of caution- developing a successful premium plugin is not as easy as it looks. You need in-depth knowledge of WordPress and you’ll be responsible for updates and maintenance. Solving customer support requests could be challenging too. But with the right team and the right product, you can overcome all the challenges and create a successful premium plugin.

4. WordPress Web Hosting

Every self-hosted WordPress site requires some kind of hosting space. If you have knowledge of server technology and scaling issues then you can generate recurring revenue by providing WordPress Web hosting services. You can offer specialized WordPress hosting with extra WordPress services. Page.ly and WP Engine are few examples of successful WordPress hosting providers.

Like every other business, hosting business is not free from challenges. You need significant investment in infrastructure, customer support staff, and marketing.

5. WordPress Related Blog

Everyday massive amount of google searches related to WordPress are being made. You can create a WordPress-related blog and provide useful content to a growing audience. If you can provide focus content in a sub-niche within the WordPress field then you can build a genuine audience and brand for your blog. The primary source of income is direct advertising and google aids. Referrals and partnerships with other companies can be hugely beneficial.

Since the WordPress community is already filled with an abundance of helpful information, the initial challenge will be to get viewers to your blog. An enormous amount of time and effort is required to get good traffic. It may take months of posting before you actually get results.

Can You Make Money Selling Website Themes?

The “web design template” industry hasn’t even been around for a decade yet, but hundreds (if not thousands) of other web designers are making anywhere from $500 to $30,000 a month by selling their designs online.

That’s some serious cash, and the industry continues to get stronger, even though there are more people jumping into the bandwagon each month.

Assuming you’ve never really considered selling your designs as “templates” online, here’s the basic idea: You’re an uber-talented designer. Your pores are practically oozing innovative layouts, typography, and visual styles.

There are countless other designers and wanna-be designers out there that could use your designs to save themselves a little bit of time on their own projects. Rather than hiring you to create a custom design for them, they’re willing to pay anywhere from $15 to $100 for a pre-designed, pre-coded template that they can use royalty-free.

Sounds easy right? The truthful answer is that making any serious money from selling your web designs actually requires a fair amount of legwork.

Are there piles of money to be made? Yes, so much so that you might also need to buy a wheelbarrow and a shovel to move it to the bank. But like anything in life, it takes work and lots of it.

Can I Earn Money From my WordPress Blog?

In order to make money blogging with WordPress, you need a basic business strategy. Making money with WordPress is not some kind of magic. It just takes a little discipline and some Google searches to gain knowledge of how it can be done.

Although there are many ways to create a business using the WordPress platform, the easiest way for most people to get started in earning money online with a WordPress blog is to:

1. Create Valuable Content

Valuable content is content that people like to read. It needs to be original or curated well. Valuable content will answer somebody’s question (like this article answers the question of “How to Make Money with WordPress?”).

Valuable content is usually either entertaining, educational, or both. Two formats that work extremely well online are listicles and how-to articles.

I’m sure you’ve seen and read many listicles. They can take the form of articles like “10 Tips to Apply a Gorgeous Cat Eye” or “Seven Ways to Get Your Infant to Sleep at Night”. Even this article is in a semi-listicle format because it’s giving you three steps to make money with WordPress.

How-to articles are a little more self-explanatory. Any question that starts with a “how to” can be answered in a how-to article. This can be something like “How to Save Money on Your Heating Bills” or “How to Sleep 100% Better Every Night”.

Once you’ve created some content, then you need to get traffic to your website.

2. Get Traffic to Your Content

Traffic just refers to the people visiting your website. There are dozens of ways to get traffic to a WordPress-powered website. See five methods listed below.

5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your WordPress Site

1. Search engine optimization: Otherwise known as SEO – this is where search engines will list your article in their search result pages. Usually, you get most traffic when you achieve a first page listing on the search engines. SEO isn’t terribly difficult, but it does require that you learn a few basic SEO skill sets.
2. Commenting in forums: If you comment in forums that are related to your topic and d so in a helpful manner, you can often put a link back to relevant content in your signature. This can really work well and you’ll be surprised how much traffic you can get with forum marketing.
3. Paid traffic from Facebook: All those sponsored posts you see on Facebook are businesses paying to get traffic to their websites. Facebook is a great platform because it’s very inexpensive to start on. You can run campaigns on Facebook for as little as two dollars a day, and if your content is even semi-viral, the clicks to your website can be fairly cheap.
4. Reddit: Arguably, there isn’t any more opinionated place on the web than Reddit, but where passions run high, clicks to your website can be had. Use the same techniques as you do when commenting in forums, you’ll often see traffic coming back to your site.
5. Guest posting: This is where you write for free for other people sites. It seems like a lot of work, but if you can get on a site with a lot of traffic, it can lead to an influx of traffic when the guest post goes live and the steady amount of traffic over time.

Now that you have some content and have people visiting your site – it’s time to monetize.

3. Monetizing Your WordPress Site

There are hundreds of different ways to monetize a WordPress site and make money from it. But the easiest for most people starting out are AdSense ads and the Amazon affiliate programs. AdSense, which is run by Google, allows you to place ads on your website and get paid when people click on the ads.

Amazon’s affiliate program lets you link to any product that Amazon carries and gives you a commission when people buy.

Making money from a WordPress site is completely possible. It usually takes people a little bit of time and effort to get the hang of it, but there is almost no better feeling than making that first bit of money from a site that you own.

Does WordPress Pay You For Blogging?

WordPress is an open-source platform that’s free for everyone to use. It’s ideal for creating unique websites, and is enjoyed by millions – but you can do more than just enjoy using WordPress. You can make money from it, too.

you don’t have to be a coder, developer, or even a WordPress whiz to get a little something back. But you do need to play to your strengths. Look out for strategies that build on skills you already have, or skills you’re willing to grow.

With 34% of the internet using WordPress, competition is fierce, and you need to stand out from the crowd!

1. Sell Your Own Physical Products

Maybe you’ve created your own or found a physical product you’d like to sell to the world from your blog.  Or, maybe you already have a storefront and you want to take your products global.

Online shopping is exploding in popularity and there’s a ton of room to make money in the industry, just check out these amazing eCommerce statistics.

You can easily start your own eCommerce store on your WordPress blog by using a plugin like WooCommerce. It’s easy to use and helps you completely customize your shop with tons of WooCommerce plugins and WooCommerce themes. Plus, you can skyrocket revenue by adding live sales notifications for WooCommerce.

2. Display Ads

Another popular way to make money blogging is by placing ads on your website for your visitors to see. There are several ad networks around, but the biggest is by far Google Adsense.

You make money when users see or click on ads that Google displays automatically on your site.

AdSense requires you apply in order to run their ads on your website. It usually takes about 8 hours for Google to review your application and determine if you qualify for AdSense.

3. Sell an eCourse

If someone loves your products or services enough, they’re pretty likely to want to learn more about you and your methods. If you’ve got some great tips and tricks to share about whatever you blog about, your audience could be willing to buy an eCourse from you.

Online courses are insanely easy to set up with LMS plugins. We recommended using MemberPress, it’s a membership plugin and an online course builder, all-in-one! And the coolest part is that you can work on your course upfront, then release it and get recurring passive income whenever someone buys the course.

Monetizing your blog long-term is easier to do with passive income like this. Especially because eCourses sell at a much higher price than other premium digital content like ebooks.

4. Sell Ebooks

You still shouldn’t shy away from publishing an ebook to make money blogging with digital products.

For one, it’s really easy to do. You can use a plugin like Easy Digital Downloads to make selling your ebook super simple.

And, ebooks are a smart way to make money blogging because they’re insanely easy to create. If you already have some popular posts on your blog, you can repurpose that content into an ebook. This is a common way bloggers make ebooks fast.

Plus, you can also self-publish your ebook on Kindle Direct Publishing so people can find it on Amazon. This can help bring visitors to your blog and build your brand.

If you decide to sell your ebook on your own website, consider tracking your CTA button clicks. That way, you can see which pages are most effective in driving sales.

5. Grow Your Email List with Pop-Ups

If you’re asking yourself can you make money blogging on WordPress, this is the tip for you. The money’s in the email list.

But, at least 70% of people who visit your website, never return. So getting their email address should be a top priority in your email marketing plan. OptinMonster has mastered the art of high-converting pop ups that aren’t annoying.

One of their wildly popular and effective tools is the Exit-Intent pop-up. It’s a pop-up that appears just as a visitor is about close your website.

A great place to add these pop-ups is on the pages your users leave your site completely most often, called exit pages. To find your exit pages, we recommend installing MonsterInsights, the best plugin for Google Analytics.

6. Accept Guest Posts

While most bloggers accept guest posts for free to help them come up with user-generated content, you can charge for guest blog posts if you’d like. Keep in mind, your site has to be large enough and have enough traffic for it to be worth paying for a guest post.

But accepting guest posts can save you time, get you fresh content for your blog, and make you some money. That could make WPForms worth it if you need more income streams.

And the WPForms Post Submissions addon makes it easy to collect user-submitted content in WordPress without users ever having to log in to your website’s admin area.

You can easily add custom fields to your guest post forms. This makes it easy to collect information from your guest bloggers and display it on your website.

Plus, you can add a Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.Net payment form so you can collect funds when a user submits their guest post. 

Don’t forget to let your visitors know each time you publish a new guest post on your site. The PushEngage plugin lets you easily send a browser notification to subscribers every time a new post goes live. That can help to build a loyal audience who keep coming back to your site to read new content.

7. Affiliate Sales

Successful bloggers usually have an income stream that comes from affiliate marketing.

As an affiliate marketer, you simply use your blog to promote a product and recommend others to buy it. It’s another great way to make money blogging with passive income because once your special link is in place, you automatically earn a commission on sales of that product through that link.

Affiliate links are awesome because they work everywhere, not just on your website. So you can share the link in other places like your brand’s social media platforms and still make money.

You can use a tool like Pretty Links Pro to help organize your affiliate links and affiliate marketing plan. Once you’re set-up, you can install MonsterInsights to track clicks in WordPress and see how your affiliate links are performing.

There are lots of affiliate programs out there, but ShareASale is a huge player that is popular with successful bloggers who make money online.

Do Free WordPress Blogs Make Money?

WordPress.com displays advertisements on free WordPress blogs which provides them revenue to pay for the free blogs. You don’t have control on what kind of ads appear on your website.

You can pay an upgrade to turn off ads, but that would cost you money.

You are not allowed to run advertisements on your free WordPress.com blogs using third party advertising programs like Google Adsense, BuySellAds, Lijit, Vibrant Media, etc.

You can add affiliate links, publish sponsored posts, or participate in an advertising program called WordAds. However, entry into WordAds program is limited to WordPress.com users with high traffic and appropriate content. There are even restrictions on what kind of affiliate links you can add.

On a self-hosted WordPress site, you decide whether to run ads or not. You control what kind of ads would display on your website. You can add affiliate links to your blogs or join any advertising program you want and display ads on your website.

You may even manage your own ads using some of the best advertising plugins. Most importantly, you will be the one making money from those ads.

How do You Make Money From Plugins?

Just visit Codecanyon, and you’ll see that each week, tens of brand new WordPress plugins make their debut there. And it’s a marketplace known to be very difficult to publish assets into it.

The same applies to the official WordPress repository. We’ve seen more and more freemium landing there.

If there was no money to make in that market, nobody will bother adding and pushing their plugins on it 😉

As long as you find the right problem to fix, you build a stunning plugin, well documented, preferably extensible, and you play your marketing cards right, you can get a good profit out of making a plugin.

WordPress is a huge industry with every growing customer. What you need to do is create something unique. There are already a lot of plugins in the market and if you create the same as others then you won’t be able to make more money. Do some research, find out some pain points of users that hasn’t been resolved yet, and create a plugin to solve it.

How Much Does a WordPress Developer Charge Per Hour?

As of 2018, WordPress is used by more than 29.4% of the top 10 million websites and supports more than 60 million websites, making it the most popular website management or blogging system on the internet. In Stack Overflow’s 2018 Developer Survey, 16.1% of developers have worked with WordPress in the last year. The average hourly rate for WordPress developers is about $61-80.

Keep in mind that the above rates may also fluctuate depending on your hiring needs, whether you’re looking for a full-time, part-time, contract, or freelance WordPress developer. The cost of hiring an on-site versus a remote developer may differ as well.

Is WordPress Developer a Good Career?

Although it is a technical platform but doesn’t require the users to be complete tech whiz. It is one of those platforms where not only the developers and technical professionals but also the content creators and bloggers are making names for themselves. Simply said, WordPress has become a good career path for many individuals.

Anyone can make a breakthrough in their career using WordPress, without any professional degree or formal training. Whether you are a blogger, developer, designer, marketer, content creator, or even an educator, you can find career opportunities with WordPress.

Becoming a WordPress developer and pursuing it as a career path will require time, patience, energy, as well as a good amount of determination and hard work.

Just learning how to install WordPress or modify the themes doesn’t make you a WordPress developer. To pursue a career in a WordPress developer requires more than the basics. You should be skilled in analytical thinking, coding with PHP and MySQL, and the ability to develop custom plugins, themes, and modules for WordPress.

For a long-lasting career in WordPress, you need to become one of the best in the business of WordPress development.

What you need to do to become a full-time WordPress developer is to dedicate at least one hour a day to get yourself familiar with the platform. WordPress releases new features and tools on a regular basis. Hence it is important that you spend the time to become good at it. There are no shortcuts; you will have to stick with the routine to learn WordPress.

Find quality reading materials about WordPress that contain excellent tips and suggestions. A few good resources for WordPress learning are WordPress Codex, WordPress blogs, and WordPress books. The WordPress Codex is a repository of WordPress information.

Read books and find quality blogs on the internet that post about WordPress. Learn the PHP and MySQL coding, and practice them as much as you can. Practice developing the custom themes and plugins for WordPress. This is good to start with.

Spend time with people who are experts at WordPress development. Follow them on social media sites like LinkedIn and attend their webinars.

Once you become good at it, approach the clients for small projects. Try your best and keep patience to get everything correct.

WordPress is a leading platform for building websites, hence jobs for WordPress developers are on the rise. Most of the e-commerce and revenue-generating websites are powered by WordPress, and when these sites face some errors, they look for a WordPress developer.

If you are a good WordPress developer, the client will be happy to pay higher rates. Another option for a WordPress development career is to start your own business of plugins and themes.

How Can I Create my Own WordPress Theme?

Step 1: Make a folder to hold the files you’ll be adding

We need to know where the files that make up a WordPress theme sit in a WordPress installation if we’re going to construct themes. This is a simple task. We know that a WordPress installation usually contains a WordPress directory as its root directory. Here is how our root directory appears.

Files:

• composer.json
• index.php
• license.txt
• readme.html
• wp-activate.php
• wp-blog-header.php
• wp-comments-post.php
• wp-config.php
• wp-config-sample.php
• wp-cron.php
• wp-links-opml.php
• wp-load.php
• wp-login.php
• wp-mail.php
• wp-settings.php
• wp-signup.php
• wp-trackback.php
• xmlrpc.php

Folders

• wp-admin
• wp-content
• wp-includes

Step 2: Create the index.php and style.css files

You must additionally create two necessary files index.php and style.css when you finish constructing your theme folder.

• style.css

Only the Theme Name is required in style.css so that WordPress can locate and list your theme so that you may activate it.

• /*
• Theme Name: customtheme
• Author: WPlift
• Author URI: https://wplift.com
• Version: 1.0
•  */

We just assign a Theme Name, Author, Author URI, and Version number to our theme in the example.

Theme Name – A theme name should always be provided. If you don’t, the folder name will be used, which in this case is my-custom-theme.

Theme URI – it should direct users to a website where they may learn more about the theme. 

Author – This is where you put your name. 

Author URI – Here you may add a link to your personal or business website.

Description – is displayed in both the wp-admin theme modal and the WordPress theme listing. 

Version – Version numbers help developers keep track of changes and ensure that customers are using the most up-to-date version. To indicate the severity of changes in an update, we use the SemVer numbering system. 

License URI – just a link. 

Text Domain – The text-domain is utilized when translating your theme into other languages. Don’t worry, we’ll get into more information about this later. For now, knowing that the theme folder and text-domain should be the theme name separated by hyphens rather than spaces is sufficient.

Tags – Only when uploading a theme to the WordPress.org theme directory are these variables utilized. The ‘Feature Filter’ process is built around them.

Although none of the fields are technically essential, they are strongly recommended if you want your theme to appear decent in wp-admin. They’re also essential if you’re going to use WordPress to distribute your theme.

• index.php

WP loads the posts that will be shown on the screen using this file. In addition, if a WP base file is missing, wp will use it.

• <h1>Custom Theme!</h1>

Step 3: In the WordPress dashboard, activate the theme

Go to the WordPress Dashboard, choose “Appearance,” then “Themes,” and see if the newly built theme is shown among the possibilities. 

The CSS file is right. 

On WordPress, go to the Themes page and manage your themes. 

Click “ Activate” to activate your new them in WP, then see if the website whether the changes have been applied.

Step 4: Change the settings in the index.php file

To test if your theme works, return to the index.php command line and erase the content you just typed. 

After, create a command line for WP in order to retrieve from the database the posts and show them on the page. You must restore the post’s title and content so that all of the files can be seen on the home page.

The “have posts” command instructs WP to look for blog posts in the database. The page will be updated if there are any new listings. If not, the message for the negative response condition that we set in the code will be shown (false).

There is a function named “the post” that must be added to the while doing loop “have posts” in order for WP to show that file whenever the “have posts” condition is true. WordPress looks for new entries in this loop and shows them on the page as needed. 

In reality, if the database includes posts, all actions within the loop will be executed for all post files identified while they are being discovered. Otherwise, WP will inform the user that there are no posts accessible. Look at the code below:

<?php
 if ( have_posts() ) :
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
     <h2><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>”><?php the_title() ?></a></h2>
 <?php the_content() ?>
 <?php endwhile;
 else :
echo ‘<p>There are no posts!</p>’;
 endif;
 ?>

In this loop, two functions, “have posts” and “the post,” are utilized in their most basic form. If any postings in the database need to be repeated, use the “have posts” method. True or false will be returned by this function, with true signifying that there are posts to display. There are none if it returns false. 

The “the post” method fetches the most recent post and makes the required adjustments to show it chronologically on the theme page. Because this is a loop, if the function returns true, every time a new post is made, it will be instantly appended.

The content is attached to the file title put on the page using the “the content” function. The “the permalink” function creates a link to each individual post, allowing users to view the information without having to scroll through the entire text on the main page.

Simply use the “the excerpt” method instead of the “the content” method to add a quick summary under the file title with the first 200 characters of the content. As a result, when the user clicks on the link, they only get the whole text.

In this instance, you’ll need to create a new file in your theme’s folder that looks similar to “index.php” (simply copy and paste the index.php loop and replace the “the excerpt” function with “the content”).

Step 5: Add header and footer

Create new files in the same folder as your theme like the following step, where style.css and index.php are already present. Header.php and footer.php are their names.

It’s best to include wp head in all of your themes since it’s a specific function that wraps up the output in the header.php file’s head> section. It should be placed before the closing /head> tag to make it easier to add plugins to the site, since this hook may be used to add styles, scripts, or meta components to the head> region.

• Footer

The footer.php file can close the tags used in the functions.

Step 6: Create the functions.php folder

At this stage, the custom theme has four file folders: index.php, style.css, header.php, and footer.php. The next file you should write is functions.php, which gives WordPress personality by allowing the command-line to change the CMS’s default behavior. The following are its characteristics: 

• does not require a unique header text; only works when the theme is active; 
• applies only to the current theme; 

This code will include or activate the stylesheet for your custom theme:

How do Bloggers Receive Their Money?

Nowadays, there are four key ways to make money blogging: PPC and CPC advertising, writing sponsored content, sharing affiliate links, and branching into other projects. You can also save money by attracting freebies.

Read Also: Top 10 Must-Have Plugins For WordPress Blog in 2022

We must stress, however, that before you can start generating money, your blog will need to be attracting a large number of readers first. This means you’ll need to create a steady flow of high-quality content before you can think about the flowing cash.

Building your blog initially doesn’t have to be too difficult, either, especially if you use a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace.

Finally

You don’t have to be a WordPress genius to make a living. If you can do any of the above and know how to sell yourself or your product you will have plenty of chances to make really good money using WordPress. Also, figure out what your targeted audience truly wants; this way you will be on the right track.