While WordPress is built on open source technologies and philosophies it’s also a proven tool for generating income with your design and/or programming skills.

Web designers offering to create custom WordPress themes is something everyone is probably familiar with. I’ve noticed that you don’t see a lot of WordPress plugin creators getting much recognition in the “WordPress marketplace” for their creations and I’m not entirely sure why that is. My hunch is that it has something to do, once again, with WordPress and its strong connection to the open source movement.

Let’s put that debate aside for now and focus on what capable programmers can do to earn a few dollars using their skills. While I know of a few people selling copies of plugins they’ve written to users I think there’s probably another large market for programmers interested in writing plugins for private clients. With the incredible explosion of WordPress powered blogs and sites these days there has to be a large need for custom-built plugin solutions.

I’m sure site owners have problems that can’t be handled by the current crop of freely available plugins. If you’re a good programmer with WordPress experience it can’t hurt to put yourself out there and offer your services to see if there are any opportunities available to you.