š·ļø Category: Offers & Services
Iāve spent years selling website maintenance.
Recently, I realised I may have been explaining the wrong thing.
I was reviewing the homepage for WP Wingman, my WordPress maintenance and support service.
Nothing particularly dramatic was happening.
There was no emergency board meeting.
Nobody had burst into the room carrying a burning server.
I was simply reading through the page and asking whether it still explained why someone should buy the service.
The homepage described all the work I performed.
- WordPress updates.
- Plugin updates.
- Backups.
- Security monitoring.
- Uptime checks.
- Reports.
- Support time.
All the sensible, responsible things you would expect from a WordPress maintenance plan.
There was just one small problem.
I was describing the tasks I completed.
I wasnāt clearly describing the responsibility I accepted.
That distinction gave me one of those uncomfortable little business moments where you stare at your own website and think:
āOh, bugger.ā
Because from my side of the screen, the value of maintenance seems obvious.
I know what happens when plugins are ignored, backups are assumed to exist, and nobody notices that the contact form stopped working three weeks ago.
Iāve seen updates go sideways.
Iāve seen licences expire quietly.
Iāve seen clients log into WordPress with the confidence of someone pressing buttons on a submarine control panel.
To a WordPress freelancer, ongoing maintenance feels like common sense.
To a client, however, it can look like a monthly collection of technical chores they do not understand and cannot see.
- Updates happen invisibly.
- Backups sit somewhere in the mist.
- Monitoring produces a report they may never read.
When everything is working, the maintenance plan can appear to be doing remarkably little.
Thatās the trap.
The Common Freelancer Challenge
When clients decline the offer, we often assume it needs more value.
So we add another scan. Another premium plugin. Another report. A few content edits.
Perhaps three increasingly complicated packages with names that sound like levels of spacecraft.
But adding more features doesnāt necessarily make the offer clearer.
Sometimes it just creates a larger pile of things the client doesnāt fully understand.
A Better Way to Frame It
The more useful question is:
Who is responsible for this website after launch?
Not who hosts it.
Not who has the administrator password stored in an email from 2022.
Not who receives the automated plugin notifications and immediately deletes them.
Who has actually accepted responsibility for keeping the website stable, supported and recoverable?
1. If the client owns the responsibility, they need to understand what that involves.
2. If an internal team owns it, there needs to be a clear person and process.
3. If you own it, your maintenance offer needs to make that visible.
That is the reframe Iām now working through with WP Wingman.
Iām not simply selling software updates and backups.
Iām accepting ongoing responsibility for a website the clientās business relies on.
The technical tasks are how I carry out that responsibility.
They are not the offer itself.
The real offer is continuity.
- Someone knows how the website was built.
- Someone is paying attention.
- Someone can investigate when the booking system suddenly develops a personality.
- Someone knows whether the backups are usable before the website falls into a digital hole.
- Someone remains responsible after the project glow has faded and the launch-day cake crumbs have been brushed off the desk.
That feels quite different from selling āmonthly updatesā.
It also explains why simply lowering the price may not fix a maintenance offer that clients keep rejecting.
A cheaper collection of unclear tasks is still a collection of unclear tasks.
Try This With Your Own Offer
The practical exercise this week is deliberately small.
Open the page, proposal or PDF where you describe your maintenance plan.
Then ask:
Does this explain the work I perform, or the responsibility I accept?
You still need the feature list.
Clients should know what is included, where the boundaries are and what happens when they need support.
But the features should support the promise.
They shouldnāt become the promise.
Iāve explored the wider commercial thinking behind this in my new article, Maintenance Plans Are Dead. Or Are They?
It explores why maintenance plans can feel low-value to clients, and how clearer ownership changes the offer.
But for today, Iād keep it simpler.
A Quick Reflection
Pause for a moment and describe your current maintenance offer using one word:
Tasks or responsibility?
No judgement.
Mine was definitely ātasksā, possibly with a light sprinkling of āmore tasksā.
Your Thoughts
Hit reply with just one word:
Tasks or responsibility.
You donāt need to explain, although stories involving strange maintenance requests are always welcome.
Wil