Do It Yourself (DIY) has been a decades long thing, and now we have Do It For Me (DIFM), which I swear sounds like something that’s been going on since, um, around 6000 years ago. But we need that catchy new thing for the word service. Jamie Johnson at Business Insider, Do It for Me: The Next Evolution of the On-Demand Economy, writes:

Entrepreneurs in almost every sector and location can capitalize on the DIFM trend. It is an emerging market space, so there’s plenty of time to test this on-demand economy to see what works. If you get in early enough, you may be able to carve out a long-lasting niche for yourself.

Ok, so to be fair, this is really directed at all the software, hosting, and SaaS firms which think that service means having a chatbot (or nothing at all if you are Google). WordPress agencies have been doing this for 20 years, and it’s one of the reasons the WordPress ecosystem has been so successful – a strong entrepreneurial service oriented foundation.

DIFM is the cool thing for tech companies to start implementing, we used to call it Professional Services, and you can see this growing at all the bigger players in WordPress:

• WordPress VIP has been doing this since day one but you won’t see it explicitly advertised, trust me it’s there with Agency and Technology partners.
• GoDaddy has Expert Services
• bluehost runs with Full Service

The list can go on but it’s important to note that this is definitely not a passing fad, nor is it non-destructive (sorry for the double negative). WordPress Agencies of all shapes and sizes need to evaluate how professional services at enterprise organization can be a pro or con. What’s the niche that can be filled today and what new space will be opened up?