Mark Bennett – How WordPress Tutoring Transformed My Business

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION

Tap into the DIY movement in WordPress by adding tutoring services to your offerings. WordPress powers 43% of the web, creating an influx of new users eager to learn how to build websites. With over 55,000 plugins and themes in the .org repository alone, hundreds of hosting providers, CDNs, security configurations, and email setups, things can quickly become overwhelming for many DIYers. In this presentation, we’ll learn how to turn tutoring sessions into repeat business, up-sell clients into full site builds, and leverage affiliate marketing. We’ll also discuss using recorded sessions and client testimonials as powerful social media content to grow a brand and build long-term client relationships. Discover how adding tutoring to your services can help your business grow alongside your clients’ success.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Mark Bennett is a WordPress Developer at the University of Central Florida, where he works with the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, and campus-wide initiatives. He transformed the campus-wide email system by using WordPress to build emails. He is the owner of LearnerBuilt, where he specializes in WordPress tutoring. He has conducted more than 200 sessions of individual and group WordPress tutoring. Mark has been a part of the WordPress community for over 8 years.

RESOURCES

Websites:

• https://markbennett.tech/
• https://learnerbuilt.com/

Follow:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markbennettms
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@_mark_bennett

SUMMARY

In a recent illuminating webinar, Mark Bennett shared how he turned his WordPress expertise into a thriving tutoring business that’s revolutionizing how clients learn to manage their websites. As the owner of LearnerBuilt.com and a faculty member at the University of Central Florida, Bennett has uniquely positioned himself at the intersection of education and digital entrepreneurship.

The Expanding WordPress Universe

The numbers tell a compelling story: WordPress now powers an astounding 43% of all websites globally, with an ecosystem that includes over 66,000 plugins. This massive footprint has created unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs and freelancers, particularly evident in the constant stream of WordPress-related projects flooding platforms like Freelance.com.

Reimagining Website Education

Bennett’s approach to WordPress tutoring goes far beyond traditional website development services. Rather than simply building sites for clients, he empowers them to take control of their digital presence through personalized, hands-on instruction. His services span from fundamental site setup to advanced topics like speed optimization and SEO practices, but the core philosophy remains consistent: teaching clients to fish rather than merely serving them the catch of the day.

The Power of Personal Guidance

What sets Bennett’s methodology apart is his commitment to interactive learning. Using tools like Zoom’s annotation feature, he guides clients through real-time problem-solving sessions, creating an engaging and effective learning environment. This approach has proven particularly powerful for clients who have struggled with traditional website-building methods.

“The moment when a client finally understands how to manage their own website – that’s what drives me,” Bennett explained during the webinar. “It’s about building confidence as much as building websites.”

Beyond Basic Tutoring

The brilliance of Bennett’s business model lies in its multifaceted nature. While the primary focus remains on education, each tutoring session serves as a potential gateway to additional services. Clients who gain confidence in basic website management often return for advanced training, maintenance services, or marketing support. This organic growth in client relationships has proven more valuable than traditional sales approaches.

Building a Sustainable Practice

Perhaps most importantly, Bennett has discovered that successful tutoring sessions naturally generate both content and referrals. Each client interaction becomes an opportunity to collect testimonials, create educational content, and strengthen his personal brand. This virtuous cycle has helped establish him as a trusted authority in the WordPress community while ensuring a steady stream of new clients.

The Future of WordPress Education

As the webinar concluded, Bennett emphasized that the WordPress tutoring model represents more than just a business opportunity – it’s a chance to improve how people interact with their websites fundamentally. By combining technical expertise with educational skills, WordPress professionals can create deeper, more meaningful client relationships while building sustainable businesses.

The success of Bennett’s approach suggests a shifting paradigm in web development services. As websites become increasingly central to business operations, the demand for knowledgeable guides who can empower rather than simply serve clients continues to grow. For those willing to embrace this educational role, the opportunities appear boundless.

This evolution in website development services points to a future where success lies not just in technical expertise, but in the ability to effectively share that knowledge with others. As Bennett’s experience demonstrates, the role of WordPress tutor might just be the next big thing in digital entrepreneurship.

TRANSCRIPT

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All right, so how WordPress tutoring transformed my business – expanding services, finding new clients, and building a personal brand. So Rob went over… I’m Mark Bennett, my day job is working at UCF for the Office of the President and Office of the Provost, and I own a company called Learner Build where we do a lot of one-on-one WordPress tutoring. I also work sometimes on corporate tutoring as well.

First thing is WordPress is big, right? So WordPress powers 43% of the web. There’s over 66,000 plugins just in wordpress.org, which means there’s a whole bunch of private plugins and themes in marketplaces. There’s over 30,000 WordPress sites launched daily, and there’s 16.5 million or there have been 16.5 million plus jobs posted on freelance.com. So what I’m getting across is WordPress is a big old ecosystem with a lot of moving parts, and you know, these figures don’t even include like hosting companies and CDNs and all the other stuff. And these numbers came from WP Beginner.

What is a WordPress tutor? A WordPress tutor is someone who is knowledgeable in WordPress that can guide others on building and other topics pertaining to running the website. So how can WordPress tutoring benefit your business? WordPress tutoring can be viewed as a paid lead generation machine for your business to bring in new clients, upsell them on other services, or record sessions to use on social media.

As a tutor, here are some of the services I offer. I offer getting started – so this is where we learn the backend, we learn how to create a menu, how to create a page. We learn about the block builder, and if they want to use another page builder like Elementor or something like that, we go over the basics and just teach them the introduction to WordPress and the dashboard in the backend.

I get a lot of troubleshooting clients where they ran into an issue and they need help, or they’re getting an error on their page, and so we work together on diagnosing the issue and I kind of explain the issue to them and then we work on fixing the issue. Speed optimization – so we work on speeding up their site whether it’s through image optimization, adding the CDN, adding caching, or whatever, or even changing hosts that would speed up their site.

Also do email marketing, as far as helping them kind of set up their email marketing and maybe integrating a form or something to send users to their email marketing platform. Maintenance – so maintenance we go over security, backups, and so we look at security best practices or maybe security plugins. We go over backups and how to keep their site up to date, updating plugins and all that. SEO – we go over some SEO best practices for on-page SEO and we install the SEO plugin, and sometimes we’ll set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console too as well. Those are my biggest services.

My typical client – I have individuals, a lot of them come to me frustrated, you know, they’ve been working on their site a while and they just need help. A lot also come to me, they need troubleshooting, they’re having issues or they want to fix something or add something to their site. I get a lot of clients from GoDaddy. I have a love-hate relationship with GoDaddy – I love GoDaddy because they send me clients, I hate GoDaddy because I have to use them.

And then I also get clients from who bought a theme from Theme Force, right? And you know, they think “okay I’m going to buy this theme, put it on my hosting plan and website and change the content and that’s it,” and it’s usually a lot more involved in there. So I usually have to step them through the theme force or we may even switch themes depending on their needs.

Also marketplaces like, you know, people buy themes or a service from Fiverr or Upwork or somewhere else, and they don’t know how to use their site, so either teaching them how to use their site or stuff like that. And then I have corporate clients, usually these are somebody who has multiple hats – so it’s a graphic designer who now has to handle the website, so they want some training on WordPress on how to make updates and create pages.

A second opinion – a lot of clients in this area also want to seek a second opinion on how their site was designed, is it correct, the pros and cons of the way their site was built. So I give a lot of my opinions on other developers’ work I guess. And so ways that I get clients is Fiverr – Fiverr is my big one, but there’s tons of ways. LinkedIn as well, you can go in some of these groups and stuff and you’ll see people who need help. Upwork as well, and you can go on Reddit too and you’ll be able to see people who are looking for support and help in maintaining their website.

So my process – I utilize my website, LinkedIn and Fiverr to get leads. From there I have a questionnaire, or we chat to pinpoint their issues or what services they need. I use Zoom – Zoom has an annotate tool which allows you to draw on the screen, and so when I’m talking to them I’m usually drawing on the screen or making a circle trying to show them where they need to click or what all they need to do. And I usually my sessions are usually recorded so they can go back and view them.

The way I do it, I let the client do the work, and I walk them through it. So I’m not doing the work, I’m making them do the work. And if we go several sessions, I usually ask them can I use the recording for like social media and other stuff, and I always ask for a testimonial.

So we’re gonna do like a case study – this is Charl Anne Brew. She’s a beginner, she had been working on her website for four years. She wanted an e-commerce website, she’s a creative artist, she does a lot of like stickers and stuff like that. So we did eight sessions between one and two hours. Some of them we use Kadence blocks, we use SureCart for the e-commerce side, we use Fluent SMTP and Bravo for the email marketing. We did security and performance optimization, we did some SEO and we signed up for Google Analytics, and we also made a custom post type with Advanced Custom Fields, so we did a lot in our eight sessions.

What I first like to do is I like to find the client’s pain point. For Charl, hers was she’s been working on her site for four years and she couldn’t build the site that she wanted. And so we’re going to show a video of her talking about it: “No, no, I just thought maybe I look… I have been trying everything known to man and not just for this weekend, for four years, and I cannot build the website that I want.”

So I get a lot of clients like this, right? They’re trying for a while now to build their site and they can’t get it how they want it. And this is big in the DIY movement, right? They hear the word WordPress, everybody’s telling them it’s easy. It’s easy to get started, which it really is not because there’s a lot of moving pieces in WordPress.

And so it was finding her pain point, and so this is where I talk about the client does the work, and I use the annotate tool in Zoom. And so in this video we’re going over creating a menu in WordPress: “So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna… contact, about, projects, illustrations, all those and click add to menu.” That’s just a demo showing me how I make them do the work and I use the annotate tool to draw on the screen, so they know where to click and what things to click on because my goal is to kind of build like a muscle memory, right? Where they know where things are and where they know where to click.

And so after sessions I give them homework. I want them to test their skills, I want them to test their knowledge, and that’s why I record the video too, right? So they can always go back and look at what we’ve done too. And so this is her talking about her homework: “Did you look at my homework? I’m just so excited, that’s all because my website is finally starting to look like something that I wanted it to look like.”

So in this one, you know, she was excited, she was able to complete the homework, and her site is starting to look the way she wanted to. And so I tell them, right, if you get stuck on something just send me a message. A lot of times I can find like a quick video from YouTube or an article, or sometimes I might send them like a two-minute Loom or something depending on the issue to help them get over that hump and continue doing the homework. Homework usually consists of “okay we made the homepage” or “we made the about page, how about you try creating a contact page by yourself?” or something like that.

And we are going to always celebrate the accomplishments, especially when we have multiple sessions. We want to celebrate those accomplishments: “I sold my first deck, my first pack of cards!” “On your website?” “Yes!” “Oh, oh yes!” “I know, one pack!” So we’re going to celebrate, you know, when we hit milestones. You know, her selling her first deck of cards was an amazing accomplishment for her and for me. You know, we use SureCart – I’m a big fan of SureCart, especially over WooCommerce and stuff. So a lot of my clients, especially e-commerce, I get them to use SureCart. It’s a little bit easier than WooCommerce and doesn’t have all the weight as well.

And lastly, you know, after you get them excited and after you get the accomplishments, you have to get the testimonials. And what I like about doing video tutoring is they’re already on video, right? So it’s easier to ask them “hey can you give me a video tutorial?” You know, we already on Zoom and we have that personal connection. And so here’s Charl giving a testimonial: “I have been working with Mark Bennett for about a month now and he’s been tutoring me on my website. He helped me not only with my website but also answered questions about marketing and he answered questions about the aesthetics of my website as well, and he is so versatile that he doesn’t just help set it up, he explains how the backend works and how once you set that up and you create your templates, all you need to do is just plug in the information and just go and enjoy your website.”

Right, these testimonials, you know, they’re helping me – what we talk about later – helping me build up my personal brand as well. Nothing beats a video testimonial. You know, you can have all the text testimonials you want but my one video testimonial will beat all of them because you can see those emotions and like the happiness of people in those testimonials.

All right, so we’re going to talk about the benefits, you know, ’cause some people, tutoring may not be your thing but there are some benefits in adding it. One is lead generation, upsell, branding, social media content, affiliate marketing, and the long-term relationships. So for the lead generation upsell, I tell people think of it as a paid discovery, right? If you’re getting a new client, you’re going to do a discovery anyway, so if you think of tutoring that first session as a paid discovery, I think you’ll do great.

You have the opportunity to upsell. You can upsell services, premium plugins, hosting and maintenance plans, right? ‘Cause some people, you might have 8 to 10 sessions and y’all build a website and then they’re like “this is a lot of work, I don’t want to maintain it” and then you can possibly get them on a maintenance plan. Or if you have SEO services or content writing services, you can upsell those services as well.

And like I said, you’re developing a personal connection with them, and it expands your network through the word of mouth from these tutoring sessions. I get more and more people that get referred to me because I’ve helped somebody with the website. And find the right client – this is big. So with this part, it determines if I want to work with them in the future, because sometimes I may want to upsell a client to a full build or something like that, but if they don’t listen when I’m doing a tutoring session or if they can’t follow directions, they’re not my type of client. And so I’d rather just take this hour and you know, get through the hour and just be done with them and find somebody else.

Build your personal brand – tutoring can help you position yourself as an expert and authority, can help increase your online visibility. You’ll be able to get a whole bunch of testimonials and success stories, you know, quick testimonials and success stories, and your business grows when your client business grows. They’ll always come back to you when they need help.

Social media content – every session can inspire content, right? You can blog post, how-to videos, tutorials, social media tips, and so use clients’ questions and pain points as content ideas because I’m pretty sure when you’re working with this client, there’s probably somebody else in the world that has these same questions and pain points. Ask your clients if you can use video clips of these sessions to post on social media. Video testimonials – they’re the best social proof.

Monetized through affiliate programs – so join affiliate programs for WordPress related products, recommend tools, things, plugins, and hosting servers you trust, and it creates additional income stream while helping your clients too. So I’m a part of a lot of affiliate programs, one is Termageddon, which is a privacy policy type service, and so I had one client, we only did one session, I gave him my affiliate link, and he bought it and he shared it with a whole bunch of other people. So I got money through that affiliate link just by him sharing the link.

I also have clients that may be on GoDaddy and they only have one site and they like Elementor and they want Elementor Pro. I was like, “well, let’s cut out GoDaddy and use the Elementor hosting.” So we cut their cost there, I get affiliate money from signing them up for Elementor hosting with Elementor Pro there and also other plugins and things and hosting services I use. So I would say take the tools that you use daily and see if they have affiliate programs, and while you’re doing your tutoring sessions if people need a service or something, you can share your link with them.

So building long-term client relationships – so I have a lot of clients that even after we finish our core block of sessions, they come back. So they might come back every 3 to 6 months and say “hey Mark, I want to update my site.” So we’ll spend an hour just updating their sites and chitchatting, and you know, they might have additional content they want to add or they might want to pick my brain about certain topics.

Like I said, they’re going to rely on you in the future for ongoing support and they’re going to spread your name in their circle as well. I think one of the biggest things with this was one of my clients was in taxes, and she referred a lot of people to me. So always try to find your tax person as a client because they know people’s budgets.

And so there’s that and here are my social links. You can find me on LinkedIn and Threads.

“Thank you Mark, this was amazing. I didn’t even think about doing tutorials as something that I could sell to my clients. It was always something that I just did and now I’m thinking about you know, doing exactly what you’re doing just to add more revenue and help people out even better.”

“Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome, you’re welcome.”

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