I was catching up on Carrie Dils’ Office Hours FM podcast today and learned that Nick Davis, creator of GenesisWP Guide (a.k.a. This Week in Genesis) and Lean Themes, also has a service called ThemeValet.
ThemeValet provides packaged WordPress services based around setting up the theme of your choice to look like the demo by importing demo content and configuring the theme. With the basic service, that’s all you get: you need to have WordPress installed and ready to go, and you will need to replace the demo content with your own content. But it’s only $99, and for some people, it’s all they need.
I wanted to mention this because I pretty much can’t get out of bed in the morning for less than $2,000, and my prices are too high for some of the people I talk to. Custom work isn’t cheap no matter where you go–I checked on a couple of my colleagues from the WordPress Meetup and found they’d raised their rates considerably since the days when I could send people to them for reliable but inexpensive service. (They still charge less than I do, but they are no longer offering bargain-basement prices.)
Immediately on returning home (I do most of my podcast listening in the car), I sent the link to ThemeValet to two prospects I’d talked to recently, neither of whom could afford me. One already had WordPress installed and mainly needed help configuring her home page; the other has less WP experience but might still do well with one of the other packages.
Note that these services are focused around theme setup. Not plugins, not design (though one package will add your branding), not installation or migration or security or any of the rest of that. But if theme setup is all you need, the price is definitely right.
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