Geno Quiroz: How I Built a Successful Divi White Label Business

Last Updated on March 20, 2023 by 28 Comments

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Geno Quiroz: How I Built a Successful Divi White Label Business
Blog / Divi Resources / Geno Quiroz: How I Built a Successful Divi White Label Business

I have been building websites for years and have been using Divi exclusively since its release. Back in 2015 I even joined Nathan Weller for an episode of Divi Nation, and the topic was on Building a Divi Consultancy.

Like most Divi users, I worked mostly with clients that needed help with their single website. Unfortunately, most of those clients rarely provide an opportunity for long-term ongoing work.

So, like most website design freelancers, I found myself always on the search for new customers and new projects. That all changed when I decided to stop looking for clients and started looking for Divi White Label Partners.

What Is a Divi White Label Partner

Divi continues to thrive because it is a great product and has one of the largest WordPress-related online support communities. With larger and larger companies and agencies embracing Divi, the need for experienced Divi designers and developers continues to grow.

Many of these agencies do more than build websites, and they need someone who can tackle the website design and development piece so that they can provide their services. They choose Divi because it is easy for their team to maintain, update, and add new content after the initial build. Here is a sampling of some of the Divi White Label Partners we work with.

  • Marketing Agencies
  • Social Media Managers
  • Hubspot Partners
  • IT Service Providers
  • Life Coaches
  • Business Coaches
  • Content Providers
  • SEO Consultants
  • Other Website Design Agencies

So while website design may not be their core offering, most of their services will revolve around a well-built website. And that’s where your Divi expertise comes in.

The Benefits of Partnering

These are just a few of the benefits of Divi White Label Partnerships as a freelancer and/or small agency.

Ongoing Work

One of the benefits of partnering with agencies like this is the potential for ongoing work regularly. By partnering with a handful of large agencies and a more significant number of small agencies, we now have a steady stream of new projects scheduled several months in advance.

Partnering has allowed us to budget and forecast much easier. The goal is to avoid the infamous “feast or famine” that is typical in the world of freelance.

Decrease Sales/Marketing Time & Expense

Another benefit to White Label Partnering is not having to spend so much time on sales and marketing calls. Before making this change, I had to spend hours and hours each week on non-billable calls, emails, and proposals.

Since our partners know who we are and what our capabilities are, we do not have to spend all that extra time trying to explain who we are and what we are capable of before each new project. With all this extra time saved each week, it allows us to focus more time on doing what we do best which is building awesome websites using Divi.

Specialize in One Platform

Partnering has also allowed us to expand our Divi skillset. Our partners are always throwing us new challenges and unique requirements. This allows us more time to think outside of the box, create new Divi features exclusive to our client’s needs, and learn new tricks within the Divi inner workings.

How To Be a Successful Divi White Label Service Provider

There are already many people who offer this type of service, and it is not something new. But I also know many Divi users would like to start providing this service and would like a few tips that helped me.

Change Your Mindset From Clients To Partners

When I decided to market this service, I created a separate landing page on our Monterey Premier website. We immediately started receiving incoming leads for this service, and after many phone calls with these leads, I learned several things.

One of these things was that many of them have tried outsourcing to large “White Label” services in various parts of the world and got burned in one way or another. Most service providers have the mindset that these are merely customers.

The difference between a customer and a partner is that as a partner, we have the best interest of the partner in mind.

  • We want them to succeed
  • We want them to have a great reputation
  • We want them to trust the source
  • We want them to have consistent work
  • We want them to feel like we work right there by their side as if we were employees
  • We want their clients to be stoked with the end result

Help Manage Projects and Client Expectations

Another pain point was that many of our smaller partners struggled with project management and scoping. So now we often get involved at the beginning of the project to help them scope it out, recognize potential challenges, and make recommendations early on.

We will even get on a client call with them as a representative of their company. Many of my partners trust me to work directly with their clients. We do several weekly screen-sharing progress reports with their clients. They love that we treat their clients the way they want their clients treated.

Communicate Frequently

One more common pain point was communication. If you are a designer or developer, then you understand how hard it is to switch gears from coding to project management throughout the day. But lack of communication can be a real frustration for agencies who outsource.

Nathan Ingram has a great rule on communication that I try to adhere to.

“One way to vastly improve your communication is to send a three-sentence email every Friday. Send a short, simple email to your clients each week that explains where the project is at: ‘This is what we did this week (past). This is where things are (present). This is what’s next (future).’ ” – Nathan Ingram

Be Diverse in Who You Choose to Partner With

One of my biggest mishaps was getting comfortable with having only one or two big agency partners. While it was great getting three to four new website builds each month from those two partners, we took a big hit when things slowed down.

Now we go after a combination of large and small businesses to partner with. So while the large agencies throw us some large projects now and then, we get to fill in the gaps with the occasional smaller websites that have a quicker turnaround and payment cycle.

While most of our partners are billed at the end of each month, the smaller projects allow us to receive payments throughout the month.

What to Look for in a Divi White Label Service Provider

I know that many people reading this article might be on the search for a great Divi White Label Service provider so this section is for you. In addition to the qualities listed above, these additional tips should help you find the right fit.

Look for Solid Experience With Divi

It does not mean they cannot use a variety of Page Builders & Themes, but the more experienced they are with Divi, the more they will be able to offer best practice solutions and best use of the core functions and tools.

We choose to only work with Divi because it keeps us proficient and efficient when building a custom website and website-specific plugins. If you can find someone who only uses Divi, you will more than likely get a better bang for your buck and prevent future problems with the website.

Design and Development

You are going to want to make sure that your Divi White Label service provider has both design and development experience. While there are many things you can do with just the visual builder alone, there are always things that require a little CSS, PHP or Javascript tweaks.

We have built many custom plugins for unique WooCommerce/Divi integrations, LifterLMS/Divi integrations, and GoogleTracking/Divi integrations (to name just a few). It will be more convenient and efficient for you if both design and development is coming from the same team.

Consider Time Zone Differences

Most of our clients love to be able to hop on a call or video chat during regular business hours. That does not mean your service providers have to live in the same time zone as you. It just means they can make themselves available during your business hours.

Although we have team members in Texas, England, and Portugal, all of us operate on standard US business days and are available for scheduled conference calls throughout the day Monday – Friday. Fortunately, there are many amazing Divi power users all over the world so finding someone who works in your timezone should not be a problem.

Look for Divi Community Involvement and Authority

One of the things about finding someone who is very involved and trusted in the Divi Community is going to help you with the vetting process. Although there are dozens of Divi Community Facebook groups, some with over 10,000 members each, it is pretty easy to see who is active, trusted, helpful, and experienced.

It also helps to see if they are contributing to the Divi Community via tutorials, blogs, layout kits, and plugins. This will give you an idea as to whether or not they are going to be a good fit design/development-wise.

In Closing

With so many people embracing Divi these days, there is plenty of room for everyone. I believe one of the reasons the Divi community has grown into one of the largest WordPress product communities is because of how much Divi users give away, including successful business strategies.

Hopefully, the strategies listed in this article will help some Divi users start a business, help some Divi users grow their business, and help some Divi users find the right partners to help their business succeed.

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28 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing a great article, already we are doing the same for couple of Agencies, after reading your article we got ensured that we can continue to add more agencies as our working partners for more consistent projects and flow of income.

  2. A great article. We have a few creative agencies that we partner with – they do the design and we use Divi to build it. Definitely want to scale that service offering after reading this. Thanks Geno 🙂

  3. Geno, I love reading your blog and always find something new I can apply to my site, I also love the story you share in your video on your about page, your very inspirational. All I need to do now is just get the 101 other ideas out of my head so I can focus on making things more simple. Thanks a bunch for sharing your strategies they always give me something to look forward to.

  4. Great article, Geno! Your strategies can be applied to other white label services like logo and print design, which is what I’m strongest in right now and gave me something to think about. Thanks for the inspiration and for sharing your expertise and insight! 🙂

  5. We’ve always followed Gino and what he has done since we formed close relations with using Divi ourselves. We are just about to hit our 100th Divi based website and could not agree more with Gino’s recommendations above.

  6. Great stuff as always Geno, thank you for behind the scenes tips to helps us all thrive. I currently habe some of these in place to a degree. Would love your thoughts on all the logistics of this such as communication and systems and how that works into offering a full White Label service. Do you have your own email account with those organisations? If their client needs to call tou, do they get your businesses’ phone number and if yes what if they get your messagebank with your business name? What about internal systems and software used, e.g. if using reminder software with follow up sequences, and your software account only enables one type of branding amd send from email address? Do they send you the content and they’re stuck in the middle when direct contact would be easiesr but branding and followup isyour own? And what about IP for followup systems and content, if you implement your own awesome systems in their business can it not create a risk of them taking it back in-house and using all of your refined processes and content to achieve better results? Or do you just wait on them handing over all the content and being the go-between for edits/tweaks? Some of the ones I work with delay the process so much because they do not have good systems and follow-up methodologies in place to get what is required for a site build from a client, hence the reason they are handing it over in the first place.
    I encourage direct contact which has always helped us get what we need and makes their client halppy, but I have to do that outside my normal systems due to branding. Therefore it takes me longer and costs me more, on work I’m earning even less on. How do you handle the potential causes of disconnect from the while whitelabel concept?

  7. Great article. Im inspired!

  8. Great article Geno! Thanks for sharing knowledge!

  9. Terrific information here. White label design as a service is an excellent avenue to garner a more consistent stream of work. On point, as always Geno!

  10. I don’t want to sound rude, but is white labeling basically some form of “ghost-writing”. You do the work and they get the credit? Doesn’t that feel wrong for you? I’m very curious! 🙂

    • @Thomas
      Perhaps think of it in terms of running a business (which it is).

      Do you want credit and the warm feeling of praise?
      Or, do you want money and food on the table?
      😉

  11. Excellent information

  12. Geno, I have followed you from the beginning and you have grown so much. I am glad to see that as developers we can achieve some level of success in the Divi eco-system. Continue to create and inspire.

  13. Thanks Geno for such an inspiring and helpful Article. Just what I needed to read today!

    Kindest regards

    Barry

  14. Thanks Geno for such an inspiring and helpful Article. Just what I needed to read today!

    Kindest regards

    Barry

  15. Sr Quiroz;
    Great Information.

    I have been using Elegant Themes and DIVi as a side job gig.
    After years of working In the IT area (developing etc…) I’m ready to take the route as a DIVI freelancer.
    What educational path do you recommend to follow to expand my Divi skillset?

  16. Thank you for this article Geno, you are one of the big names in the Divi community – not only for your great knowledge but also for the fact that you are so willing to share and help the community. I truly appreciate it.

  17. Gino, you’re a prized asset to the Divi community. I have used tips from your blog dozens of times. Thank you so much for sharing your talents.

  18. Awesome article! I love your logo 🙂

  19. Thanks Geno,

    I’ve chugged through many of your tutorials and used many of the snippets you provide (all for free) daily. To me, you represent what’s best about Divi… the community behind it. The product is amazing too don’t get me wrong but being a solopreneur I often fall short when faced with the task of scaling or creating recurring revenue, this read is perfect & timely! Thanks for giving back!

  20. Gino is my teacher even though I do not know him personally.
    Whenever I have a doubt I will direct search your site.
    Thanks for so many tips and ready css codes.

  21. Thanks 4 this inspiring article Geno! 🙂

  22. Hi Geno,

    Great article that gives me food for thought as I start planning advertising etc for the second half of the year.

    One question: How do you manage pricing?

    Do you quote per project, per hour or another method?

    Thanks again for all of your great online content, tips and tricks.

  23. Geno, so nice to see you on the ET blog! I was just over on your blog to snatch some -as always- great CSS. You’re always my go-to guy for Divi CSS. Just wanted to say thank you. And thanks for taking the time to share your partnering experience! Great read.

  24. Mr. Quiroz,

    Great article. I am in the process of talking with a radio station group to offer white label service to them.
    They want to have their sales people sell their advertising clients websites and use my business to do them.
    Your article explaining the benefits will make it easier to explain to my staff, so they understand why I am going this route. I never thought of adding it to my website as another service either. So I will have to look into this.

    Thanks again for a great article.
    Russ

  25. Thanks for the great article!

    Like you, I’ve been working almost exclusively with Divi since it was introduced. (And I was a member of Elegant Themes years before that!) Nowadays I’m working a full-time job but continue to do Divi projects for a few clients. I’d love to expand with partnerships and I’ve been thinking about this for years. This article helps me clarify my thinking.

  26. Thanks for sharing these details Geno 🙂 You are the original inventor of using Divi as a business.

    • Many of us have been using Divi as a Marketing Agency solution. That said there are tons of issues I have with the platform.

      1. It is truly not a white label brand. Divi is labeled everywhere. You can make child themes, but no matter what it is not a white label tool.
      2. WooCommerce, Header, Footer, builds, and Theme builders are not complete yet in the program. And lastly, mobile workarounds for flipping columns are something that people are left to do on their own with ordering CSS tools.

      ALL of these points should be built within the platform, and if it costs extra to be fully white label A LOT of us will.

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