With millions of websites using WordPress, WordPress is by far the world’s most popular CMS with an entire industry springing up to support it, and profit from it. You can take advantage of the increasing demand for WordPress related services by targeting WordPress users with specialist “WordPress hosting” services.Here is how.

Last year we covered the idea of targeting a web hosting niche in some detail, so I won’t be going over that ground again e.g. why target a niche, how to choose a niche etc. Instead I will presume you want to focus on WordPress and you are ready to dive straight in.

Existing competitors

A great place to start is always by looking at what you competitors have done and making a note of what they do well. Equally, you should also be looking for gaps in their products or services you can fill. Areas to look at include:

•  The products they offer

•  Pricing structure

•  Extras they include

•  Added value services

•  Promotions they are running

•  The keywords they use (title, H1, anchor text, main body etc.)

•  Partnerships they have in place with other companies

•  How they support their customers (phone, ticket, forum, guides…)

Creating the product

Everything from the product features to the product name must make it clear you are a WordPress hosting expert, and you can be trusted to host their website. Additionally, features such as one click installation, free themes etc. will help to differentiate your product from other web hosts and position your brand.

Not every WordPress user has the same technical needs. Some will use WordPress to run a low traffic personal blog, and others will use it to power a high traffic ecommerce website. You can create different sized packages within your Reseller Control Centre, and could consider a suite of products along the lines of:

Name: WPstarter

Customer:New to WordPress/ low traffic site

Specifications: 5GB web space, 30GB bandwidth, 1 MySQL, 10 email boxes…

Price: £2.99 per month

Features: One click install WordPress, using WP guides.

Name: WPadvanced

Customer:Regular traffic to site, small to mid-sized site, maybe using WP as a CMS as well

Specifications: 20GB web space, 60GB bandwidth, 10 MySQL, 50 email boxes…

Price: £4.99 per month

Features: One click install WordPress, using WP guides, free themes.

Name: WPpro

Customer:Advanced WP user, high traffic, ecommerce, multisite feature maybe enabled

Specifications: Unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited MySQL, unlimited email boxes…

Price: £8.99 per month

Features: One click install WordPress, using WP guides, more free themes, free domain name.

(Note: These are just examples to illustrate the point of creating distinct products for different customers)

Added value

You could stop there and offer your customers a bare bones set of products. However, in today’s competitive web hosting market, you should consider offering some added value services. These can help you stand out from your competitors and differentiate your brand.Examples of added value services and features you could offer include:

•  In depth “How to…” guides for customising a WordPress website, increasing security, speeding up page load times etc.

•  Video guides on how to use your services

•  WordPress support forum

•  Free WordPress themes

•  Custom made plug-ins

•  Discounts on premium themes (partner with a premium theme club)

•  Site and database back ups

Promoting your services

The toughest part of any new service is getting people to the website to buy from you. Here are some ideas you can use to drive traffic to your WordPress hosting website.

SEO

Thanks to some great tools from Google, keyword research should be a quick and easy job for you. Simply go to https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal and research ‘WordPress hosting’ related searches. By setting the results to show me exact match keywords only, I can see the top keywords I am going to target, in order, are:

•  WordPress hosting

•  WordPress hosting UK

•  Best WordPress hosting

•  Cheap WordPress hosting

These will be used in my title tag, meta description, H tags, anchor text, file paths (URLs), main body of content and any external links I have control over.

Paid search

If you are thinking about advertising on the search engines through the likes of Google AdWords it is worth noting that web hosting is a very expensive category. The average CPC for “web hosting” is currently approx £5.22 for the top slot, and £3.76 per click for “WordPress hosting” (source: Google traffic estimator tool). If you have a good sized budget, then this is a great way of getting instant traffic, but don’t expect it to be cheap. An example advert you could run with…

WordPress Web Hosting

WordPress web hosting specialists

One Click install & free set-up

WPhostingcompany.com

Banners/ Display

Banners have a much lower click through rate than paid search text ads. However, the trick of running a successful display campaign is in choosing the sites you advertise on. As discussed in an earlier blog post “Because I am targeting WordPress users I can focus my marketing efforts on other sites that deal with WordPress such as WordPress galleries, tutorial sites, forums etc. This keeps costs down and my ROI will be much higher than if I put an advert in a generic PC magazine. I would choose either www.buysellads.com which has a massive collection of this type of website or target sites through Google’s content network.” I’d also use the re-marketing feature in AdWords as well (click here for more on how to set up Google AdWords re-marketing).

Web hosting directories/ review sites

There are hundreds of directories and review sites focused on web hosting, and there are also a handful that specialise in WordPress web hosting. The quality (and validity) of the sites vary quite a lot, but you’ll soon get a good idea of which to approach and which ones you can ignore. A few of the directories worth getting listed on include:

•  https://uk.webhostdir.com

•  https://uk.tophosts.com

•  www.hostratings.co.uk

•  www.hostfinder.co.uk

•  www.reviewcentre.com/products100.html

Affiliate program

A lot of web hosts run affiliate programs to spread the word and generate sales at a controlled CPA. You could choose to offer the commission as a percentage of the basket or as a set value per product bought. Regular communication with your affiliates is key to build up a strong sales base though this channel along with good creative and competitive commission rates. Your own customers are a great place to get the ball rolling, especially if they enjoy your services and are happy to spread the word.

Competitions

There are a lot of websites out there covering the topic of WordPress and they are all hungry for some form of content. A lot of them will respond positively if you approach them with the idea of running a competition on their site to win hosting with you. As well as raising your profile, you’ll also benefit from branding through association with the website you are running the competition on.

Content writing

A great way to start building incoming links, a strong reputation within the market and of course, traffic is to approach large web design websites about writing a WordPress tutorial for them. There are so many web design and dev blogs around at the moment and they need regular fresh content, often supplied by other writers. List style articles are still very popular and don’t take long to write at all e.g. “17 features WordPress 4 must include”.