Are you looking to hire a WordPress developer? Maybe you’re building a website or starting a business online and realized you need help to accomplish specific features or functionality for your website. Sure, you could probably figure things out on your own with enough patience and research. But is it truly the best use of your time?

If so, an investment in a professional WordPress developer might just be the right choice for you. But what are the things you need to know before hiring a WordPress developer for your project?

The article provides a guide for you to succeed in hiring a WordPress developer for your next WordPress project. Let’s get started.

• What Is a WordPress Developer?
• Why do You Need a WordPress Developer?
• How Much Does it Cost to Hire a WordPress Developer?
• How to Write a WordPress Developer Job Post
• Where is The Best Place to Look for WordPress Developers?
• Who Are The Best Freelance WordPress Developers
• Are WordPress Developers in Demand?
• When Should You Pay a WordPress Developer?
• What to Look For in a WordPress Developer
• How Should You Hire a WordPress Developer?
• How do I Find a WordPress Developer?
• How Much Does a WordPress Developer Charge Per Hour?
• How Can I Increase my Earnings as a WordPress Developer?
• How do I Interview a WordPress Developer?
• What Should You Look For on a WordPress Developer Resume And Application?
• What Makes a Good WordPress Developer?
• What Are The Types of WordPress Developers?
• How Do I Become a WordPress Developer?
• Is WordPress Easy For Developers?

What Is a WordPress Developer?

A WordPress developer is responsible for the frontend and backend website development of a WordPress website. WordPress developers may also build custom plugins or WordPress themes. A WordPress developer is responsible for the frontend and backend website development of a WordPress website. WordPress developers may also build custom plugins or WordPress themes.

Professional WordPress developers are skilled in programming languages such as HTML5, PHP, JavaScript, and CSS3. They also have a good understanding of overall website aesthetics, including on-screen element arrangements, font selections, colors, and so forth.

Read Also: 20 Best Consulting WordPress Themes (Free And Paid) For 2022

A WordPress developer should also have a solid understanding of the latest trends in the industry, and be well-versed on current content management systems.

Beyond those things, the WordPress developer you’re looking for needs to be an expert at designing and implementing new website features and functionalities, while establishing and guiding your website’s overall architecture.

They know how to manage all of the technical aspects of the content management system, while ensuring high-level performance and user availability.

Your developer should know how to formulate a responsive, effective design and turn it into a working theme or plugin.

Why do You Need a WordPress Developer?

The internet is full of resources, courses, even forums that you can use to learn WordPress and WordPress web development so you can have the skills to build your website yourself. But there still is a whole lot of benefit with hiring someone who is experienced in the field. 

If you’re looking at hiring a WordPress Developer, you either fall into one of these three categories:

• You have the budget, but not enough time to learn new skills or do the actual work
• You have basic web development skills but needs help with more complicated development work or standby support
• You need to delegate a specific task that needs a particular skillset.

If you are the person managing the business, a professional who just doesn’t have the time to do it, just wants someone to help you out with the more technical side of WordPress, or are limited to a particular skill set, it makes sense to hire someone else instead. 

For example, you may already know the ins and outs of WordPress but are lacking a particular taste in design and the user interface experience, in that case it’s best that you outsource the work to someone who has the experience to do it.

But you have to do it with caution. You will essentially be trusting this person with your website and potentially a whole host of information about you or your customers and clients. 

How Much Does it Cost to Hire a WordPress Developer?

Before you hire a developer, it’s important to know how much it’s going to cost. And while there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, you can get a good ballpark idea of what you’ll need to invest for your job or project.

To properly cover the costs of hiring your developer, let’s break this down into two parts.

To get started, we are going to look at data from freelancing platforms and popular job sites to determine:

• The average salary for a full-time job
• The average freelance rates

But there is a caveat. The reality is that accurately calculating the cost of a WordPress developer, or what their salary is, is not a simple task. There are several factors that can skew the numbers one way or the other.

First, WordPress is wildly popular. In fact, it is currently powering over 37% of the entire web. Because it is so popular, there are tons of people who could easily fall under the category of “WordPress developer.”

There is a major distinction between genuine developers and what are referred to as “implementers.”

The developers are the individuals who work directly with the website code and building solutions. An implementer spends their time and energy on taking those solutions and transforming them into functional client websites.

However, to many hirers, both implementers and developers fit into the category of “WordPress developers,” especially in the freelance world.

Beyond this, and to further complicate things, WordPress is used worldwide. There are freelancers and developers all thought the world. This means that geography will play a huge role in cost and salary averages, especially when it comes to the rates that each freelancer charges.

For the purposes of this article, the focus will be on data from popular job sites for developers within the United States.

Here is what they report on what WordPress developers earn:

• Glassdoor $76,526/yr
• Indeed $3,340/mo
• ZipRecruiter $77,179/yr
• SimplyHired $47,564/yr

This averages out to a yearly salary of $60,337.25 for US-based WordPress developers.

If you’re looking to hire a WordPress developer as a long-term employee within the US, that number is a good place to start the salary negotiations.

But as previously discussed, a good percentage of WordPress developers work on a freelance, per-project basis. And unlike the long-term employment salaries referenced above, there’s not really a single average here on what you should expect to invest for your development project.

To give a baseline, it’s important to look at the rate range of the freelance WordPress developers on each of the popular freelance platforms.

Keep in mind that these numbers and averages are based on the entire worldwide market, and are for what are referred to as “general marketplaces.”

These include freelance marketplaces such as:

• Freelancer
• UpWork
• People Per Hour

These general marketplaces allow pretty much anyone to sign up as a freelancer without much vetting by the platform. This makes it quite easy to sign up and call yourself a WordPress developer.

According to UpWork’s WordPress Developers, WordPress developers on UpWork tend to charge anywhere from $20-100/hour, depending on experience, location, knowledge and expertise.

People Per Hour gives a more helpful breakdown of their available freelancers by the rates that each one chooses to charge their clients.

Of the more than 3,800 freelancers on People Per Hour that are filtered under the search term “WordPress developer,” the rate breakdown goes like this:

• 2% charge more than $60 per hour
• 7% charge between $35-60 per hour
• 24% charge between $15-35 per hour
• 67% charge less than $15 per hour

While these rates might sound more appealing to you, remember that on many occasions, higher rates will result in a higher quality of work. And the last costs that you want to skimp on are the costs of doing business online.

That said, there are also specialized freelance marketplaces that you can look at when hiring a freelance WordPress developer.

Unlike the very open nature of People Per Hour and UpWork, these specialized marketplaces demand and require testing for all freelancers before they’re allowed to begin searching for work.

Because of this, they’re more difficult to get into for many freelancers who lack the full spectrum of WordPress development skills. This causes the rates, and the overall quality of work, to go up for those looking to hire off of specialized freelance marketplaces.

Codeable is one of these specialized marketplaces. When you hire a freelance WordPress Developer on Codeable, the minimum you’ll pay is $60 per hour.

Overall, the rates will range between $60-90 per hour.

CodementorX is another specialized marketplace, where the average hourly rate for WordPress development work ranges between $61-80 per hour worldwide.

If your search is limited to North America only, the average increases to between $81-100 per hour.

How to Write a WordPress Developer Job Post

If you’re on the part where you’re thinking about putting up a Job Post for potential WordPress developer candidates, here’s the most effective set of information to include. 

• Job Title – You can put WordPress Developer or WordPress Designer, etc. 
• Job Availability – Full-time, Part-time, Long-Term, Project-Based
• Salary – You don’t have to put the specific amount, you can indicate using symbols like, $, $$, $$$ or put a range based on their expertise. 
• Job Description – Be very specific about the type of work that you want them to perform. Don’t just put in “Development Work”. The more specific you are, the easier it is to filter out people who can handle the work.
• About You or the Organization or the Project – It’s best that you give an introduction about your company or the project that you want them to work on so that you can further filter out those that are not interested or versed in the subject, or maybe can’t handle the job for personal reasons. 
• Terms – Optionally, you can indicate the scope and terms of the job. The schedule, expected availability, the tools that are going to be used, and anything else that’s relevant.
• How to Apply – Most importantly, give specific instructions on how to apply. Most people looking for developers already use this as a test by hiding secret instructions like “Write Hamburger on the Subject Line on your application to make sure you read this.” Things like that can easily help you get those with a keen eye to detail. 

And that’s it. Having those pieces of information in there can effectively already help you filter your applicant pool for your web developer position. If you’re not actively searching for a company or agency, but are looking for applicants, putting up a job post is the best way to do it. 

Where is The Best Place to Look for WordPress Developers?

In case you don’t want to put up a job post and are looking into hiring an agency or actively look for ones yourself, here are a few places that you can look at:

1. Codeable

Codeable is a great place to look for WordPress Developers and is among the most trustworthy platforms out there.

Each freelancer is carefully vetted to make sure that they are capable and experienced. You can find help with overall web design, plugin and customizations, and so much more. 

2. WPRiders

WPRiders is a WordPress development agency. Unlike the other platforms on this list, they don’t let you hire specific freelancers but instead take you on as one of their clients. 

With years of experience behind their back, it might be worth considering hiring them to take care of your overall WordPress needs. Be sure to check their service offering since they don’t necessarily just let you send in jobs that you need to get done.

3. UpWork

You might have already heard of this platform. UpWork is one of the largest freelance platforms out there. They have freelancers for anything. Literally, anything that you need. Most notably, WordPress developers. 

You have a gigantic pool of freelancers with their portfolio at the ready and you can communicate in-platform. The only thing that you have to take note of is that Upwork serves as an intermediary between all communications and payments. 

Who Are The Best Freelance WordPress Developers

To kick off your search, we found the top WordPress developers so you can see what professional sites look like and get a baseline understanding of the skills available.

What makes these professionals different from regular WordPress developers is their extensive and impressive background in the WordPress community.

Bill Erickson

Bill Erickson is an incredibly talented freelance WordPress developer who has worked for large clients like the University of Cambridge, Pearson, Sotheby’s, Honda, and Yoast to create dynamic and completely custom websites.

He focuses on the whole site-building process, and is able to see a project from discovery to design and through to development.

Bill is also incredibly active in the community and has created 20 plugins with combined downloads exceeding 560,000. Beyond this, Bill is also a leading WordPress teacher, and has created 92 web tutorials, and 221 code snippets.

He has a $5,000 minimum spend requirement, and you can find out more about him on his personal website.

Kristin Falkner

Kristin has over 16 years of experience working in website development. She developed her first website at age 16.

She is a talented developer and is able to convert PSD files into WordPress sites, and also design custom WordPress themes.

She has worked on custom sites for AT&T, Sony Music, Toms, and Toyota.

Kristin’s portfolio, skills, and contact details can be viewed on her personal website.

Yaron Guez

Yaron is an incredibly talented WordPress developer who lists MedAdaptics, “an algorithmic, response-guided, cloud-based medication therapy system for cancer patients,” as his most impressive project.

With seven years of WordPress experience, and a Computer Science degree from Yale University, Yaron is a skilled developer who is able to work on a variety of complex projects.

Beyond his freelance skills, he has co-founded an enterprise cloud application and organizes community WordPress meetups.

Based in San Diego, you can learn more about Yaron on his website.

Keith Devon

Based in London, England, Keith is a talented developer who is able to work on both design and development projects, and handle a project from idea to completion.

With a network of designers and developers at his disposal, Keith is able to assemble teams for more advanced projects that require multiple contractors.

He has experience working with large companies like Addison Lee and Cycling Weekly, as well as other small and independent businesses.

You can learn more about Keith, or get in touch with him to discuss a project, from his personal website.

Amber Weinberg

Amber is a WordPress developer who specializes in taking sites from pure designs and coding them into beautiful websites. With an in-depth knowledge of the latest technologies, including HTML5, CSS3, and the newest versions of WordPress, Amber is able to tackle a wide range of projects.

Unlike other freelance developers who work with large organizations, Amber typically works with design agencies or other freelancers to provide websites for clients and independent businesses.

Learn more about Amber by visiting her website.

Jay Hafling

Both a WordPress developer and designer, Jay specializes in creating custom sites for small- to medium-sized businesses. He runs a small agency based in Poland and is able to draw on the talents of other programmers and designers to help facilitate larger projects.

His independent agency has delivered over 270 websites for clients, and you can discover more at his website.

Tom Hirst

Tom specializes in WordPress and Shopify themes, and is a talented front- and backend developer.

He has worked with clients from across the world, from Stockholm to Sydney, and offers WordPress development, consultancy, front-end development, and website design services.

Learn more about Tom on his website.

Andy White

Andy has a wide range of technical expertise, including WordPress Theme Development, WordPress Plugins, Object Oriented PHP (on the CodeIgniter Framework), Javascript, jQuery, HTML and CSS (LESS / Sass).

He has worked on a variety of projects for different companies, from individuals and small businesses to large companies like Ticketmaster and Penguin Books.

Andy is based in the UK, at the heart of London’s startup scene, Shoreditch. You can learn more about Andy on his website.

James Kemp

With plugin creation as his specialty, James is a skilled WooCommerce and WordPress developer who has created community plugins with over 23,000 downloads.

He is able to create custom plugins for independent businesses, and you can learn more on his website.

Brett Glassett

Developing websites since 2004, Brett has delivered over 114 custom sites to clients and has a 92% client return rate.

Specializing in WordPress development, hosting, design, and plugin development, Brett runs a small WordPress agency in Colorado where he works primarily with small- to medium-sized businesses.

Nicholas Burge

A freelance designer and developer based in Brisbane, Australia, Nicholas specializes in creating responsive WP sites that are search engine optimized.

Nicholas works to build sites for his clients around his full-time job as a growth marketer at an Australian startup.

Luke Seall

Luke is a freelance WordPress designer and developer who also works with HTML, CSS, Photoshop, jQuery, PHP, and Adobe Illustrator.

He typically creates custom WordPress sites for small businesses and has a range of clients from across the world, many of whom rate him highly.

With the ability to create tailored, responsive sites with custom post types, and work with WooCommerce, Luke is a developer suited to creating business sites and blogs.

Are WordPress Developers in Demand?

Developers of WordPress have a good work perspective, based on WordPress’ market share on the website hosting. Although the Labor Statistics Bureau explicitly doesn’t track the growth of the WP developer employment opportunities, its statistics for web developers can be used to estimate people’s job outlook in that area.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates that by 2028 the number of workers for the production of the web will rise 13 percent. “Much faster than normal,” the Bureau describes this development.

When Should You Pay a WordPress Developer?

This is a tricky question that can become even trickier if you haven’t partaken in a Client Contracts and Proposals Workshop. The last thing you want to do is leave the all-important payment details up in the air after the freelance project has already begun.

If you’re working directly with a freelancer (without going through a third-party marketplace), make sure that you’ve contractually agreed upon the terms of when payments are made to the freelancer throughout the progression of the project.

For example, maybe you’ve agreed that 25% of the total cost will be paid to the freelancer up-front, followed up by another 25% to be paid at an agreed-upon milestone, with the remaining 50% to be paid when the project is completed.

If you’ve found your chosen freelancer through one of the many marketplaces detailed in this article, it’s important that you use that platform’s payment tools to compensate your freelancer for their work.

Many of these sites will require that your full payment for the project be deposited before the work begins. They will then hold your payment in escrow and release it to the freelancer at the milestone markers that you’ve agreed upon with the freelancer before the project begins.

Keep in mind that these freelance marketplaces make their profits by keeping a percentage of the overall cost that you pay for the project.

For example, if the total rate a freelancer charges you for the work they do is $1,000, you’ll need to pay that amount in full, while the freelancer will only receive, say, $940. The remaining $60 goes to the “house,” with the marketplace keeping it for services rendered.

To avoid this added fee, many freelancers and people looking to hire developers will try to work outside of the marketplace that first connected them. Doing so and getting caught, in most cases, will get you permanently banned from these marketplaces.

It’s always best to work within their rules in terms of best business practices, as well as your personal protection from the dangers of potential online scams.

What to Look For in a WordPress Developer

As the world increasingly moves its presence online, so does the workforce. Thousands of developers post their profiles online along with hundreds of agencies, platforms, and companies that offer to be your dedicated WordPress developer. 

But the question remains as to how you sort these people out. What are the actual skills, credentials, and background that you’d need to consider to not regret the decision of hiring one in the first place? 

Before we dive into answering those questions, keep in mind that you’d still need to be a very large part of the website building process just as much as your chosen developer. As much as you just want to give them your idea and let them make it happen, ultimately, you will have to spend a little bit of your time checking and making the decisions. It is your website, after all. 

With that said, let’s check out what to look for in a WordPress developer. Let’s break them down. 

1. Soft Skills

As important as any technical know-how is, soft skills are equally as important. You don’t want to end up hiring someone who you can’t talk to or who doesn’t match your passion and creative style. 

There are many horror stories online about people hiring developers who technically got the job done, but wasn’t the way the original idea flowed. 

You would want to hire people you can actually work with, understand, have a productive and creative discussion, ideally share your creative style, and most of all can deliver what is asked. 

Here are a few things to consider: 

• Communication Skills – You need to be able to communicate to this person productively. Preferably via phone call or video conference where you can share your screen or show them what you want to achieve. In the absence of these, you at least want someone who is reachable via chat or email. And is responsive. Take note, there is a big difference between being able to talk and being able to communicate effectively. You’d want to pick the latter.
• Attention to Detail – This is another skill that’s worth noting for obvious reasons. Whether you’re a carefree person, or someone who can spot a pixel off from a mile away, your developer needs to be someone who is attentive to detail and potentially catches mistakes that you may miss yourself. 
• Ability to Meet Reasonable Deadlines – This is very important. You’d want someone who can meet reasonable deadlines set, barring any complications or errors in the process. Ideally you’d want someone who can anticipate these problems as much as possible and set the right expectations for you. As the employer, it’s also a reminder to be considerate when it comes to deadlines, especially if you don’t know first-hand what’s going on behind the scenes. They might make it look easy, but could spend hours on the back end trying to make it work.
• Confidence and Independence – Someone who is confident with their skills and experience would know what to do in case anything goes wrong. Of course communication is still key, but in the instance that you’re not available, they’d need to be able to make decisions based on their experience as to what’s the best thing to do in that situation. On the other hand, you’d need someone who can confidently tell you if your requests on the website are doable or not, instead of being a “Yes” man and then not being able to deliver. But be cautious about giving too much trust in people unless they have a proven track record. 

After reading through that, you might think that you’re ready to get started? But actually, there’s a whole lot more than just soft skills.

2. Technical & Coding Skills

When it comes time to hire a WordPress developer, they must have a specific technical skillset. Many WordPress developers began their learning curve by working on their own projects, then sharpened their skills throughout the years by taking courses and learning new programming languages and techniques from the variety of development jobs they’ve taken on.

Qualifications and requirements to look for in an experienced WordPress developer include:

• Solid understanding of technologies such as CSS3, HTML5, jQuery and Javascript
• Verifiable experience building website user interfaces and/or applications
• Experience developing and designing fully responsive websites
• Familiar with debugging tools such as Chrome Inspector and Firebug
• Be able to understand changes in CSS and how they impact your site, in order to ensure a consistent style and usability across all browsers and platforms
• The ability to convert layouts and wireframes into functional HTML pages
• Knowledge of RESTful APIs and formats like JSON and XML
• Thorough understanding of code versioning tools, like SVN, Mercurial and Git
• Thorough understanding of all back-end development in PHP
• Knowledge of various WordPress page builder themes or plugins
• Knowledge of WordPress plugins to use to accomplish certain features
• Familiarity with basic WordPress security best practices and WordPress maintenance, including WordPress backups and updates.

The truth it that no two WordPress developers are exactly alike. The WordPress CMS platform is extremely flexible and supports a lot of different styles, functionalities and industries. But this section has given you the basics of what a WordPress developer is and does.

3. Expertise, Background, Portfolio and References

You can’t just hire anybody who claims they know WordPress. You have to consider their background too. 

Since web development can literally be learned from top to bottom online, educational background is often not a factor when looking for a WordPress developer, but it’s still a good box to check for extra points. 

Aside from that, you’d want to check your developer’s specific area of expertise. Even though web development, in general, is a combination of different areas, you might need someone who has a particular eye for design rather than just development. 

Or you might need someone who can manage and troubleshoot your databases on the server-side instead of just being on the WordPress end. You have to be specific enough to list down what you need help with and if their expertise matches your requirements. 

It is also in your best interest to ask for a portfolio or at least a list of websites that they’ve managed or designed in the past. Especially for big projects where the budget is both huge and tight, you want to make sure that they have the experience and not using your site as a testing ground. 

Lastly, references. You need to have a way to vet or verify their portfolio. Either ask for names and emails of their previous employers or do your own quick background check. Be prudent enough to verify all the information that you are given. It will pay off in the long run.

4. Cost, Budget, Pay Expectations and Availability

Money will never be out of the equation. Whether you’re a big organization or just an individual looking for help, it’s always wise to communicate with your candidates about their pay expectations. 

Aim for the middle ground, at least, if your project isn’t as high-end as giant corporations. But also don’t hesitate to be a little bit more generous when you get someone with a specific advanced skill set and years of experience behind their backs. 

You may get a lot of offers that would seem to be good to be true, i.e., cheap and experienced, but think about the end result. Careful vetting, trusting your instincts, and open communication is the key especially when talking about money. 

Don’t forget to agree on a schedule when the work must be done. If you’re looking at hiring an individual overseas, make sure to communicate your expected availability and working hours. Time zones are a thing and are often the cause for most confusion.

Don’t forget to do your research about the budget that you’d potentially need for the project to make sure you have enough ready.

How Should You Hire a WordPress Developer?

Now that you know most of the basics on what to look for in a WordPress developer, the next question is how exactly do you hire one?

The first question you need to answer is if you need a WordPress developer as a full or part-time employee, or if your need is for a temporary project.

If you’re looking to hire a WordPress developer to have on-staff, reference section one for many of the qualifications you’ll be looking for in your new employee. When you write up your job description, include much of what was covered in section one.

Be careful about requiring that a WordPress developer have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, however. The reality is that WordPress development is mostly learned through real world experience.

A developer’s WordPress development portfolio is much more important than a piece of paper showing you what school they attended. You’ll be able to learn about their many projects and skills during the interview phase of the hiring process, and by diving into their existing portfolio.

Much of these same principles hold true if you’re hiring a WordPress developer for a temporary project. You’ll still want to write up a complete job description using many of the details mentioned in section one, and you’ll want to conduct interviews with each candidate that meets your criteria.

The difference with hiring for a temporary project verses hiring a long-term employee is that you probably won’t need to be as intense during the interview process. In fact, you’ll typically want to conduct just one round of interviews for temporary hires, then make your hiring decision based on the information you’ve gathered in that single interview round.

Hiring a WordPress Developer For a Temporary Project

When you’re hiring a WordPress developer for a temporary project, some of the best places to list your job include sites like:

• Freelancer
• Fiverr
• AccessAlly Certified Partners
• Toptal
• Codeable.io
• 99Designs
• People Per Hour

On these sites, you’ll find mostly freelancers that are seeking temporary development jobs and enjoy working on their own schedules. The sites are very diverse, and you will receive applicants from all around the world, unless you specify otherwise.

You’ll typically find that developers outside of the United States will charge significantly lower rates than those in the States. Sometimes higher quality development work should, in fact, demand a higher fee. However, as you hone your freelance hiring skills, you’ll also uncover some hidden gems that provide top-level development for bargain-basement rates.

Another way to save some money on your development work is to hire freelancers that don’t have very established profiles on these sites, but that do have an established track record on their personal websites’ portfolio section.

Because most freelance websites like to promote freelancers who have already done a lot of work through their platforms, the newer freelance members tend to get overlooked by a lot of organizations looking to hire a WordPress developer.

Newer freelancers on these sites will try to start landing development jobs by charging lower rates than the more established profiles.

Hiring a WordPress Developer as Long-Term Employee

If you’re hiring a WordPress developer as a long-term employee, start posting your listing on these sites:

• Simply Hired
• MOGUL
• Recruiter
• Dice
• ZipRecruiter
• Glassdoor
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest (yes, many recruiters report that they get the most qualified candidates from Pinterest)

This hiring process will be longer and more intense than hiring a temporary developer. Take your time narrowing down candidates until it becomes obvious which one perfectly fits your organization and development requirements.

How do I Find a WordPress Developer?

There are many ways to find a developer, and there are myriad strategies to vet them by quality, price, and availability. Unfortunately, this abundance of choice is precisely what makes the process so complex, difficult, and confusing. It’s hard to know where to get started and how.

1. Utilizing freelancer websites and job boards

You can find a lot of WordPress developers on all of the regular online jobs marketplaces, such as Hubstaff Talent. But because WordPress is such a popular platform, you can find more focused job boards.

Below, we have listed some specific marketplaces and job boards to look for WordPress developers.

Smashing Jobs is one of the best known web development publications. It is read by a lot of expert web developers, especially those who are focused on WordPress. It costs $75 to post a 60-day job posting for a WordPress freelancer for short term work, or $225 for a 60-day ad if you wish to hire a longer term developer.

What about visiting the official WordPress job board? Every WordPress development expert knows about this website, which means that you can easily find someone who will complete your project for you.

If you’re interested in a platform that specializes in WordPress developers, you will love WP Hired. This website features every kind of job-related to WordPress, including development and design. The best part about this website is that you can hire a WordPress developer without having to pay a fee.

2. Asking for recommendations and references

Finding a web developer for the first time can be difficult because you might not know where to start.

Why not cut the trial and error by just asking people to recommend the right person? It’s best if you have friends who have hired out a lot of WordPress work, as they will feel obliged to give you good recommendations.

In a sense, the person making a recommendation is taking a risk with their reputation, so they have a stake in making sure to recommend someone you’ll be happy with.

If you don’t have a friend who’s had to hire a WordPress developer or two, the second best option is to browse around the web and find websites you like. Make a good list of websites that you admire, either for their functionality or design aesthetic.

If you want to know which websites use WordPress, just install the chrome extension called “Page X-Ray.” When you visit websites online, your toolbar will flash a WordPress logo if the site being viewed is a WordPress site.

Next, go through the list and feel free to dig around the footers to find out who developed the website for them. If the website in question is not a competitor, you might even contact the owners and ask them who did their WordPress development for them.

Consider developers who are respected in your local community

If you prefer being able to meet up with your developer, you might consider asking around your local community. Find out who the most respected people in your area are.

You will probably get a lower price than if you deal with international WordPress superstars, but you are also likely to get someone who has a lower amount of WordPress-specific experience.

3. Development agencies

Another good option is to look into WordPress design agencies. While this option is more expensive, it’s also the most straightforward. If you happen to have a budget for it, consider hiring one of these highly acclaimed WordPress development agencies:

• Candid Software
• Web Full Circle
• Kraupp Inc.
• Dotlogics
• Perfect Search Design
• Askgraphics
• Red Evolution
• NorthStudio
• Studio 7 Designs Inc.
• HexaDesigners

4. Special staffing sites: The best of all worlds

All of the traditional strategies for hiring a WordPress developer have their flaws. Agencies can require significant investment and have long timelines. Using recommendations might produce a few leads. And using freelancer websites might just lead to an overwhelming amount of applicants, and prove more trouble than it’s worth.

As it turns out, this is possible with special staffing sites. These special places connect contractors and organizations through a process of strict referral. A random freelancer cannot simply register by him or herself, they have to be personally vouched for or proven to the organization.

How Much Does a WordPress Developer Charge Per Hour?

A lot of WordPress developers are freelancers, not full-time employees.

Here, we’ll collect data from some popular freelance marketplaces.

Unlike the full-time salaries, there’s not necessarily one single average here. Instead, we’ll find the range of most freelance WordPress developers on each platform.

Also, these numbers are global, as most freelance sites have tons of freelancers from all around the world.

WordPress Developer Freelance Rates at General Marketplaces

By “general”, we mean large freelance marketplaces like:

• Upwork
• Freelancer
• People Per Hour
• Etc.

Anyone can sign up and there’s not really any vetting process for who is able to call themselves a WordPress developer.

We have two data points here…

First, according to an article from Upwork, the average freelance WordPress developer on their platform charges anywhere from $20-$100.

Second, we took a look at People Per Hour, which offers a helpful breakdown of freelancers by the rates that they charge:

WordPress developer salary at People Per Hour

Of the 3,768 freelancers who show up for a “WordPress developer” keyword search, here’s the rate breakdown:

• 67% charge under $15 per hour.
• 24% charge $15 to $35 per hour.
• 7% charge $35 to $60 per hour.
• 2% charge over $60 per hour.

Specialized Freelance Marketplaces

The above numbers don’t look too hot in the general freelance marketplaces. In fact, we would have to agree with Bridget, they are pretty appalling! ? However, they get a little bit better if you look at specialized freelance marketplaces.

Unlike the open nature of Upwork or People Per Hour, these marketplaces require testing before freelancers are allowed to start looking for work.

As a result, they’re harder to get into. But if you make it through the tests, the rates look a lot better.

First, there’s Codeable. The absolute minimum rate that you’ll get on Codeable is $60 per hour. And Codeable says that their rates usually run $60 to $90 per hour.

Second, there’s CodementorX, where the average and median WordPress developer hourly rate is $61 to $80 per hour globally:

CodementorX freelance rates globally

Or, if you limit the search to just North America, the mean becomes $81 to $100 per hour (you can see an uptick in people charging $141+ which brings the average up):

How Can I Increase my Earnings as a WordPress Developer?

Whether you’re below the average or already doing well for yourself, here are some tips to increase how much you earn as a WordPress developer.

Note – these tips are focused mainly on freelancing, as your options are a little more limited with full-time employment.

1. Increase Your Prices

Yes, this seems like kind of a no-brainer. But it’s good to have a reminder because sometimes it’s easy to get set in your ways or feel like you’ll lose all of your clients if you raise your rates.

Here are some funny things about raising your rates, though:

First, you’d be surprised by what people are willing to pay (you just have to ask!).

Second, clients who are willing to pay more are usually easier to work with.

It seems a little counter-intuitive, right? You’d think someone paying more would be more demanding, while someone paying less would be a little more forgiving.

But, as anyone who’s moved up the pay scale can tell you, higher-paying clients are usually much easier to work with.

You can do this systematically:

• For each new client request that comes in, raise your rates a little bit.
• Keep raising your rates until you find the “sweet spot”.
• If needed, raise your rates for existing clients once you’ve found the sweet spot.

To make your prices easier for clients to swallow, focus on the value you bring, not the price. That’s always a good rule for marketing yourself in any type of freelance business.

2. Become a Specialist in a Specific Area of WordPress

One of the best ways to raise your rates is to become a specialist in some specific area of WordPress. Instead of being a “WordPress developer”, be a “WooCommerce developer” or a “membership site expert”. Struggling with downtime and WordPress problems? Kinsta is the hosting solution designed to save you time!

Yes – you shrink your pool of potential clients by doing this. But you also make it a lot easier to market yourself and command higher rates.

Plus, WordPress is popular enough that there’s still plenty of work to go around even if you “niche down”.

3. Get Paid for What You’re Already Doing via Affiliate Partnerships

If you’re building WordPress sites for clients, you need a place to host those sites. And that choice opens up another income opportunity in the form of affiliate partnerships.

For example, if you refer a client to Kinsta, Kinsta’s affiliate program will give you an up-front commission plus recurring commission for as long as that client is a Kinsta customer.

That helps you build long-term recurring revenue without adding any work. Not a bad way to up the average hourly rate, right?

Of course, you always want to do right by your client and be transparent about your recommendations. To make sure you can do that, we’ve built Kinsta to be a hosting product that you can be proud to recommend to your clients.

4. Offer Value-Added Services, Like Ongoing Maintenance

Beyond affiliate income, another way to generate recurring revenue is to offer long-term maintenance plans to your clients.

Again, once you build a site for a client, someone needs to maintain that site going forward. Why not you?

That gives you monthly revenue coming in. And thanks to tools like ManageWP, maintaining a fleet of client sites doesn’t have to be a major time sink.

Or, if you don’t like the idea of doing the maintenance yourself, there are WordPress maintenance services out there that you can either:

• Earn an affiliate commission from
• White-label for your clients

5. Choose a Quality Marketplace (and Avoid a Race to the Bottom)

You already saw some data from some of the biggest freelance marketplaces. Hopefully, you noticed the huge disparity between general freelance marketplaces and specialized freelance marketplaces.

The general freelance marketplaces are often a race to the bottom when it comes to price. That’s made worse because many of the people posting jobs there are looking for rock-bottom prices. Basically, the quality of the client leads just isn’t good most of the time.

Instead, skip the general marketplaces and either go solo or use a specialized marketplace like Codeable.

While you will need to prove your chops to get into Codeable, the upshot is that Codeable is basically pre-vetting all of your leads for you.

So if someone is looking for a WordPress freelancer on Codeable, you already know they’re happy to pay at least $60 per hour. And that means you can compete on quality and service, which is a much more sustainable way to run your business.

6. Work On Your Communication

You could be the best WordPress developer on the planet, but if you can’t communicate effectively, you’re going to fall short. Developers need to be able to clearly explain projects to clients in a simplified way that they can understand. Remember, most clients aren’t that tech savvy, and is why they’re hiring a developer in the first place.

A developer should also take the time to learn the language. Whether this is English, Spanish, etc. Language barriers can cause delays, frustration, and leave the client unsatisfied. And yes, this means proofreading and double-checking your emails before sending them out. Typos and bad grammar are simply unprofessional.

7. Learn How Taxes Impact Your Take-Home Earnings

The secret killer of every freelance business that nobody talks about… and that is taxes. In the United States, if you’re a salaried WordPress developer, then most likely your employer is withholding a bulk of your taxes behind the scenes. But if you’re doing WordPress freelance gigs, as a sole proprietorship, this means you have to pay self-employment taxes.

Self-employed individuals have to pay both Social Security and Medicare for the employer and for the business. Here is a rough breakdown of self-employment tax in 2018, which is around 15.3% :

• 6.2% that would typically get withheld from employee pay for Social Security.
• 1.45% that would typically get withheld from employee pay for Medicare.
• 6.2% for the required employer contribution to Social Security.
• 1.45% for the required employer contribution to Medicare.

As you can see, it’s almost like getting double taxed, because as a freelancer you are both the employee and the business. While this doesn’t seem fair, it’s how the system is set up.

How do I Interview a WordPress Developer?

After narrowing down your candidates to a select few, it’s time to explore each candidate’s suitability in more depth. 

To test a potential hire’s technical skills, ask them a series of questions that dive deeper into what they claim they can do. Asking a range of open questions will help you to gain insights into their approach and attitude to different technical scenarios. Here are some questions you may like to ask: 

1. How many years of experience do you have in developing WordPress solutions?

Experience is one thing that matters even more than knowledge and skills. As they say, practice makes perfect. Make sure that your potential developer has practiced enough with different WordPress solutions, especially the kind you need to be developed.

If you are planning to hire a WordPress development company, make sure to ask about the experience of the developer/s who will be working on your project.

Ideally, you should hire a WordPress developer or company having a minimum of 3 to 4 years of experience in a variety of WordPress solutions.

2. What do you expect me to provide?

You, as the owner, are as much a part of website development as the developer himself. If you think your job ends with finding a good web developer, you should think again.

Your web developer will need many things from you including your time. So, you should definitely ask this question when interviewing him. The answer will usually include the following points.

The basic and detailed idea of the website, your requirements, and your vision or goal with the website.

• Advance payment
• Website content, images, and other data.
• Domain and web hosting details
• Terms & conditions (or signing the contract agreement)

3. What is the cost of development?

After explaining your project to the developer, you should ask them about the estimated cost of development.

The cost of a WordPress website depends on a number of things, such as theme creation/purchase, requirements, plugins, and integrations, etc.

The developer will analyze all these things and give you an estimate or exact cost of the project accordingly.

You can then decide to continue with them or go with someone else as per your budget.

4. Will you create a new theme or use an existing one for my website development?

This normally depends on your choice. Most WordPress firms and/or developers would be willing to create a new WordPress theme for your project from scratch.

There are usually three options for this,

• You can use an existing theme
• Get one created from scratch
• Customize an existing theme according to your needs

The developer can also suggest to you the best option. Remember, the cost of the project may vary depending on your choice of theme.

5. What procedure do you follow to develop a WordPress site?

It will be more or less the same for all developers. They first analyze your requirements, then build a development plan, show it to you, choose a theme, and get the development process started.

Make sure that they also have a testing phase to analyze the quality of the final product.

6. What about Web Design and other things?

The development of a complete site is a multi-step process and requires multiple persons including a designer, developer, tester, content creator, and others.

Make sure to consider this before you begin hiring. You can hire a web development company if you are looking for a complete team and resources in one place.

7. Will you build my website with the responsive feature?

This is one of the most important questions to ask your WordPress developer. It is crucial that your website is mobile-responsive if you wish to utilize the traffic coming from mobile devices.

More and more users are moving to the mobile platform for performing basic searches and browsing tasks.

Even though many WordPress themes are responsive, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your website will also be responsive. So, make sure to ask.

8. Do I get complete ownership of my website?

Before hiring a developer or a company for the website development task, you must make sure that you get 100% ownership of the website once it is completed and you’ve paid for it. You need to ask for the following accesses:

• FTP access
• WP Admin access
• Database access
• Domain and DNS settings access

Even if you may not need any of this information, later on, you should have the right to own it.

9. Can do develop or add custom plugins to my WordPress site?

A professional WordPress developer should be able to create custom plugins and integrations for WordPress.

If you need any custom features for your website, you must ask your developer whether it will do with an existing plugin or will require developing one from scratch. The cost of the same must also be conveyed to you.

10. What kind of security will my website have?

It is important for all online websites to have some kind of security mechanism to protect them against the hack, errors, bugs, content protection, etc.

Although WordPress has its own security mechanism that will enable security for your site, you still need to ask your developer about the advanced security measures he/she can implement to ensure the added security of your website data and applications.

What Should You Look For on a WordPress Developer Resume And Application?

When hiring a WordPress developer, you may be curious about what to look for on a resume and application. 

First, look for a diverse set of technical skills, including a range of languages, database management tools, and SEO knowledge. A WordPress developer should show proficiency in PHP, CSS, Javascript, and HTML to ensure they have the capabilities required to create, style, and optimize a WordPress site. SEO knowledge is an added plus, as you can rely on your future WordPress developer hire to optimize your WordPress website. 

Each candidate should be able to back up any assertions of technical skills with work experience and project experience that showcase their results, as well as relevant education and qualifications. 

Next up, make sure your applicant has the necessary soft skills to manage projects and work well with the rest of your team. Look for evidence of them working well with teams and managing projects with confidence. Good examples to look for may include:

• times they’ve resolved conflicts,
• details of successful team-based projects, and
• discussions of how they’ve approached managing others in the past.

You can assess how well a candidate works with others by the time they’ve spent in past roles or how long they’ve worked for individual clients, as well as in each candidate’s references. 

To further guarantee each candidate has the technical skills and personality strengths you need, be sure to undertake a series of skills tests before you hire

What Makes a Good WordPress Developer?

WordPress is an imperious tool that takes minutes to learn and ages to master. It powers millions of blogs and websites around the world. The capability to extend WordPress to meet just about any need is a dominant motivator for choosing WordPress over other alternatives.

A top WordPress professional should know some of the ins and outs about developing a WordPress website.

1. How to use action and filter hooks

Hooks refer to the places where a developer can add his own code or change what  WordPress is doing by default. These hooks are available in two forms: Action and filter.

An action is a hook initiated while WordPress is running and helps you cause a new action to occur. Actions can do things such as create a widget when WordPress initializes or Tweet when a new post is published.

Filter hooks help you modify data in WordPress before it is sent to the database. It customizes how excerpts get displayed or the addition of some custom code at the end of your post.

The significant difference between action and filter hooks is that when you are working with a filter you can receive some piece of data, however, at the end of your function you will have to return back that data. With action hooks, you cannot receive or modify data but you get a place where you can execute your code.

2. The WordPress template hierarchy

In WordPress, pages are sewed together from diverse template files. Each template file portrays a different part of the page, and together they make up all the content of your individual pages from the WordPress admin. This is probably best demonstrated by an example.

Suppose a user visits the page “http://yoursite.com/author/John.” First, WordPress will search for the template labeled author-John.php. If that file doesn’t exist, then it looks for author.php. It next looks for archive.php.

Finally, if that is not found it uses index.php to render the page. Each time a user visits your page, WordPress moves up the template hierarchy until it finds a template file that matches. And this has everything to do with how these files are named.

3. Know your .Gitattributes

If you use Git in your WordPress flow, you have to be aware of the special configuration file .gitattributes, which can radically clean up your themes and plugins for end users. .gitattributes is a Git configuration file that lets you configure path-specific settings, ie. for specific directories and files.

These settings include cutting-edge features such as filtering the content of files before committing changes and configuring path-specific merge strategies. Every WordPress developer should know how to use these attributes accordingly.

4. Don’t edit the core

One of the basic guidelines of WordPress is that you should never set out to alter core files. When the WordPress core gets updated, the core installation is overwritten with new upgrades included in the discharge. The immense segments of the installation will simply quit working and even keep the overhauls from working, which will spoil the establishment if the core has been modified or chopped up.

5. Keep your site secure

A WordPress developer has to be aware of potential security threats, such as malware and SQL injections. There are lots of different methods for protecting your site against these attacks, but a good rule of thumb is to keep your plugins and themes consistently upgraded to the latest version.

6. Learn to create site-specific plugins

Site-specific plugins are useful when you want to make a change on your site that should persist if you were to ever switch themes. They are also useful when you want to edit or extend an existing plugin. So next time you want to make customizations, rather than just dropping code in your theme’s functions.php file, create a site specific plugin.

7. Enqueue scripts and styles

A WordPress site may have different plugins by different developers. If plugins are hooking script and linking HTML tags to include JS and CSS files, there arises a chance of having duplicates. Enqueueing refers to the CMS-friendly way of adding scripts to WordPress sites.

Instead of using scripts and linking HTML tags to include script and CSS files, it is recommended to use enqueueing scripts and styles.

If all of your plugins use the wp_enqueue_script() WordPress Function to hook the files, the duplication issue can be resolved. You should use the enqueue script function for WordPress themes also.

8. Don’t develop without debugging

The primary thing you ought to do when developing a WordPress plugin is to enable debugging, and we recommend leaving it on until you complete writing the plugin code. If something isn’t right WordPress will notice and send an error message to you.

9. Choose the right hosting provider

Often overlooked, web hosting is one of the most important components of a successful site. It can enhance your SEO, increase sales, keep your site secure and keep your site running fast. Make sure that the hosting provider you choose has an excellent customer support with an uptime track record.

10. Understand the WordPress database

As a WordPress developer, you should have an understanding of the core WordPress database tables. WordPress currently has 11 default core tables. Each table includes data for different sections and functionality of WordPress. By utilizing the tables, you can easily make changes in your passwords, disable plugins, and select themes directly from the database without having access to your admin panel.

What Are The Types of WordPress Developers?

The term WordPress developer is actually very broad. There are different types of WordPress developers since WordPress is a content management system will a lot of different moving parts and pieces working together

Core Developer – A core developer is someone who actually works on the WordPress core software itself. These developers go into the code and make or recommend sets of changes to the WordPress core, which affects WordPress as a whole.

Theme Developer – Theme developers create WordPress themes for WordPress websites. This allows users to customize their WordPress sites with a specific look and feel, and choose the colors, layout, and style of all of their WordPress posts and pages.

Plugin Developer – Plugin developers create WordPress plugins for your website. Plugins are applications that can enhance and add functionality to your WordPress website.

WordPress developers are essential to WordPress success, as there would be no plugins or themes without WordPress developers. In addition to WordPress developers being important to the WordPress process, you need to love WordPress. Work only feels like work if you don’t love what you do, and if you love WordPress, you should make a living creating for it.

There are many technical aspects of WordPress, and developers take the time and overcome the challenges to create aesthetically pleasing and functional WordPress websites. As WordPress currently occupies tens of millions of webpages, there is plenty of money to be made and exchanged through WordPress.

From e-commerce stores to service based websites, there is a need for WordPress websites, and salaries for WordPress developers are also competitive as well.

A large number of WordPress developers tend to be freelancers. You can teach yourself how to develop for WordPress, and then work for yourself, set your own schedule, be your own boss, and work from anywhere. There is a lot of freedom in becoming a WordPress developer.

How Do I Become a WordPress Developer?

So you want to be a WordPress developer. Where do you start? WordPress occupies nearly eighty million websites and that number is growing all the time. Also, website owners are always looking for WordPress developers to customize their webpages.

There are six simple steps to becoming a WordPress developer. It all starts with learning the fundamentals of WordPress and applying these skills. Also, choosing a developer specialty to focus on, understand you will run into problems, and join a WordPress community.

1. Understand the Required Skills

You need to master the fundamentals of WordPress, and then your potential on the content management platform will be unlimited. WordPress developers can accomplish this by learning HTML, CSS, PHP, MYSQL and more. Knowing at least one of these languages will be very beneficial.

2. Learn Everything You Can About WordPress

There are nearly an endless amount of WordPress courses you can take online, which include things like how to upload and customize plugins and themes, as well as the different types of plugins and how all the parts of a WordPress website work together.

3. Choose the Development Area You Want to Focus On

There are different types of WordPress developers, so it’s important to pick the one you want to focus on and become a specialist in that. People tend to want the best, and if you are the best at building plugins or themes, then you will always have work to do.

WordPress is a versatile platform, which requires lots of technical knowledge. The key to success is to become a specialist in one part of WordPress, instead of being okay at all of the parts of WordPress. WordPress developers work hard and have lots of challenges to overcome, so picking one area and conquering it will lead to WordPress success.

4. Prepare For Challenges

Working with software is always tricky. You will run into problems that will cause issues with the display and functionality of webpages. This can lead to website downtime, bugs in the code and even major system crashes. There are skills to learn to try to prevent bugs or more easily resolve issues, but security issues are also a concern.

Security and having webpages hacked or information compromised is a major part of owning a website in the digital age. There are measures you can take to prevent this and make your website as safe as possible. Also, backing up all your data is important, so you don’t lose hours and hours of work.

5. Create A Plugin Development Environment

Practice by doing. Once you’ve learned plugin or theme development, you should use what you’ve learned by testing and troubleshooting to find the most success. Working on live websites can have bad results, so it’s best to test in a more controlled environment to avoid creating new problems.

When you want to get some experience developing on a live site, do expect to pay for web-hosting. It’s not too expensive and there are many hosting reviews and advisor sites where you can grab customer-approved, discounted hosting for $5-$8 per month.

6. Connect With A WordPress Community

Making connections with other WordPress users is super important to success. WordPress has millions of websites, so millions of people are behind those websites. A community of WordPress users can provide development and support on projects, as well as create a forum for WordPress trends and networking opportunities.

These skills and steps of things to learn for WordPress are essential for becoming a WordPress developer. There is also no definitive time limit of when someone becomes a WordPress developer. It is always a learning experience.

Is WordPress Easy For Developers?

Small business owners all have one thing in common: They’re all on a budget, trying to do the best they can to build their businesses with a limited amount of financial resources.

One of the ways business owners attempt to save money is to take on the job of editing and updating their websites themselves, after having the initial site built for them by a development team. It’s a smart strategy, but it’s not always a successful one.

Adding and managing the content on your website can be a challenging task – particularly if your web developer makes it harder than it needs to be.

Read Also: Top 10 Best WordPress SEO Plugin 2022

If you only know one thing about website development, it’s likely to be WordPress. WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in use on the Web today, controlling nearly 60% of the marketplace. That’s 4 times more than the market share enjoyed by their nearest competitor, Joomla.

There’s a reason for WordPress’ popularity. When WordPress is used properly, it can result in wonderful websites. The keywords here are “used properly.”

WordPress is, in many ways, similar to a kit-car or a modular home. All of the pieces are there, but some assembly is definitely required. Building even a basic website using WordPress requires a certain level of expertise. To accomplish the job in a time effective manner, you have to know the nuances and tricks to putting the site together.

It’s important to understand that a basic assembly approach generally isn’t enough to make the small business owner happy with their website. To make it easy for the everyday user to update and edit it – customization is required.

Out of the box WordPress, like any open source content management system, does not always make managing and editing a site simple and easy. It’s up to your design and development team to customize the WordPress back-end to give you and your team what they need to manage the site with little knowledge about coding.

Making websites easy to use, edit and update is what separates one WordPress team from another. When you’re deciding who you want to have work on your website, don’t just look at the front of a website. You want to see samples – or even tour – the back-end of sites they’ve built for their clients. You want to know what kind of experience you can expect from your own website.