Founder & Creative Director @ The Making Moves Agency
There are plenty of solutions for starting an eCommerce site with WordPress. However, the best solution for you will depend on what exactly you are selling.
If you are selling physical goods that will be shipped, it's hard to beat WooCommerce. If it is overkill for your needs, you can customize it and reduce it to only the features you want.
If you are looking for something much simpler, take a look at WP Simple Pay Pro. Easy way to integrate Stripe checkout with your site.
Another simple plugin I would recommend is Plasso, https://plasso.com/wordpress. Although Plasso is new to the WordPress game, their payment solutions have been around for a couple of years. They offer hosted pages for your products or services which look awesome.
If you are going to have subscription-based billing, I would recommend Zoho Subscriptions or Chargebee. They both offer hosted payment/checkout pages.
If you have any questions regarding these or other eCommerce solutions, or need help implementing them into your site, give me a call and I would be glad to help :)
-Matt Maker
There are many opportunities such as hosting WordPress sites, consulting on WordPress, offering security services, starting your own theme and/or plugin marketplace, etc.
You can even niche it down further. For example, managing WordPress sites for doctors or lawyers.
Pick a niche, then pick an aspect of WordPress you'd like to specialize in (hosting, security, plugins, consulting) and go from there.
When it comes to unique strategies, you should think way outside the box and not be afraid of "risk." Working with other local small businesses can help with cross-promotion, but sometimes that's not enough.
Here are some examples I just thought of off the top of my head:
1) Get in touch with any personal injury attorneys and ask for referrals. Give them 10-15% of each client they send your way.
2) Find any outdoor events in your area (ex. marathons, triathlons, mud runs, etc...) and set up a booth at the event. Give free massages and offer info to your potential clients.
3) Take advantage of social media. Search Twitter for people near you who are complaining about back pain. Tweet them and offer your services with a 10-20% discount for their first appointment.
If you're interested we can set up a call and I can give you more strategic ideas once I learn more about your business and efforts up to this point.
Hope this helped!
-Matt