A problem you’ll face as you grow your business

Posted on Feb 25, 2010

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If you run a business, and if you expect it to grow, one of the challenges you will face as you work on business growth is running a website that is easy to manage as your site needs increase.

Let’s say you have a small business and only need 3 or 4 pages, you can easily create them in many different website building programs. No problem.

But as your business grows, it’s easy to lose control of your site. Let’s say that next month you need 8 pages. And the month after that you need a total of 12. With other website building techniques, this can become more complicated and messy and sometimes you might drop a page here or there accidentally. Or, more often, you might end up with a link pointing nowhere.

But with WordPress, that is carefully managed for you. If you need 8 or 12 pages, you can easily build them really fast. If your business has a sudden boom and you need another 50 pages, you can build them really fast, too. And someday, when your business has grown to become an international conglomerate, and you need 1000 pages, you can do it. Still just as fast and still just as stable.

Scalability is the ability for your website to grow appropriately with your business while remaining stable for your users and easy for you to manage.

It’s not easy to find scalable solutions that can grow with your business from the earliest stages to your universal domination. But WordPress is such a option. If you run a business and if you expect it to grow, WordPress is the scalable tool you need.

Understanding the pieces of the website puzzle

Posted on Feb 23, 2010

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From time to time people ask us about how they can “put a website online”. For us, it’s a piece of cake because we’ve done it a million times. But for someone who has never created a website before and put it online, it can be confusing. What does it mean to “put a website online” anyway?

Consider this to be a primer on moving a site online. Sort of a “website basics for Dummies” kind of blog post.

You basically need 3 things:
•    Hosting
•    Code
•    A URL (or “domain name” or “website address”)

Think of it like a neighborhood: Hosting is the property that you will build your house on and the code is the house itself. But how do you get people to find you? You get an address from the post office and you put your address near your front door or on the mailbox so people can see it.
In a really basic way, it’s the same for websites. You buy hosting, which is basically a big empty piece of virtual land that you can do something with. Then you add files of code (html, php, css, etc.), very much like the framework of a house. And, you buy a URL from a domain seller. Then, you put them all together.

Usually you’ll get the domain and point it to the hosting (how you do that is for another lesson). Then, you gather the code (how you build that code is for another lesson, too) and you upload it to the hosting.

The result? When someone types your domain into their browser, their browser takes them to your host and it interprets your code and shows them your website. Easy!

Of course, if this were a real life example, they’d just be looking at an empty house. Once you have those hosting/code/URL elements in place, you need to add content (text, graphics, video, etc.) to your website so that people have something to look at when they get there.

And how does WordPress and WordPressInASecond fit in?

WordPress itself is the code you can upload to some hosting. Add a domain and voila, you have a website!

And WordPressInASecond shows you how to get the hosting, WordPress code, and domain name all working together really, really fast. (Oh, and we even have some hosting solutions to make it even more convenient for you!)

Why WordPress is perfect for… Business owners

Posted on Feb 11, 2010

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We’re running a series of blogs this month called “Why WordPress is perfect for…” and we’ll be looking at various professions or business models and talking about how WordPress solves challenges and enhances opportunities for that group.

Today’s highlighted business model: Business owners

Businesses need to turn a profit. To do that, they need to reduce expenses and increase income. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. There is a lot to consider. Reducing expenses can mean cut-backs or diminished resources. Increasing income sometimes necessitates higher expenses in order to provide greater value.

But there is one place where business owners can reduce expenses and even provide greater value at a lower cost and that is through a WordPress website. A regular website can take months of development time and can cost thousands of dollars as the business owner and the developer go back and forth with tweaks. And any bug in the code (accidentally left there by the developer) may cost the owner extra in order to have it repaired!

On the other hand, a WordPress website is free. It only costs money to host (but that’s an expense that would have been paid even with a site developed in the method described above). And WordPress is extremely stable because it’s an open source system with a passionate ecosystem of developers. And, WordPress requires no design or knowledge of code or a web development team on speed dial. That’s because WordPress has thousands of available themes for users to choose from so they can configure their site the way they want.

For business owners who want to get a site up fast, at a low cost, and entrust it to be stable, WordPress is the best and most profitable choice.

Why WordPress is perfect for… Coaches

Posted on Feb 10, 2010

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We’re running a series of blogs this month called “Why WordPress is perfect for…” and we’ll be looking at various professions or business models and talking about how WordPress solves challenges and enhances opportunities for that group.

Today’s highlighted business model: Coaches

While some coaching services can be sold online, a majority of a coach’s work is based on the time they spend with their client. That could be over the phone, it could be in person, it could be one-on-one, it could be in groups. The bottom line is, most coaching is person-to-person.

So what’s their website for? A coaches’ website needs to start out as a place to demonstrate their skill-set in order to show potential clients their thought leadership and how they might help them. An organizational coach might want to blog about organizational tips; a productivity coach might want to blog about how to improve efficiency; a career coach might want to blog about how to get that next promotion.

From this blog, new clients will call coaches and book appointments and a coach’s schedule will fill up.

And that will work for many coaches as the primary way to earn their living. But there will come a point in many coaches’ careers when they realize that they are only working for the short-term and every client brings in a temporary cash flow but doesn’t do much for the long term health of the business.

At this point, the coach then looks at their site and how they might be able to develop more sales out of it. And two distinct ways they can do that include:

  • Selling information
    Offering a password-protected “membership” site

Offering these necessitates some basic rearranging of the coach’s site, perhaps bringing in a home page (instead of using the blog as a home page). Perhaps adding more resources and making their site a destination site.

These changes require flexibility. And a coach who buys a website that is designed and maintained by a web developer is at the mercy of the high priced web developer to transform the site and turn it from a blog into a website.

This is why WordPress is ideal: The coach whose practice is growing no longer has to rely on a web development team to do the job. The coach can do it themselves in an evening! With just some simple clicks on an easy-to-navigate dashboard, the coach can go from “small time” to “big time”!

Series: Why WordPress is perfect for… Entrepreneurs

Posted on Feb 04, 2010

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We’re starting a series of blogs this month called “Why WordPress is perfect for…” and we’ll be looking at various professions or business models and talking about how WordPress solves challenges and enhances opportunities for that group.

Today’s highlighted business model: Entrepreneurs

Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you that starting a business is like traveling on a journey to an new place: You know what your destination is, and you might even have a map (a business plan) but you’ve never actually BEEN there until now. There could be wrong terms, the map might not always be right, or detours may force you off of your planned route. Being an entrepreneur is about more than just having a good idea; it’s about flexibility and scalability.

That’s why entrepreneurs love WordPress. WordPress is so flexible. If you’re selling blue widgets today but realize that your market demands red gadgets instead, you can switch easily without the help of a high priced web development team.

And, WordPress is scalable. You can start a small business in your spare time today and grow it into a massive enterprise over the years without needing anything other than a WordPress website. It grows with you, all while helping you maintain tight control over your site’s pages and posts. And, should you need to scale back, it’s easy to do: The edit function in the dashboard gives you power over every single page on your site.

Let’s not forget budgets! Entrepreneurs need to watch their expenses closely and WordPress – which is free – is a low-cost-but-incredibly-powerful way to create a web presence.

If you’re an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur, or an aspiring entrepreneur, a WordPress website is the perfect tool to grow your business.

Series: Why WordPress is perfect for… Freelancers

Posted on Feb 02, 2010

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We’re starting a series of blogs this month called “Why WordPress is perfect for…” and we’ll be looking at various professions or business models and talking about how WordPress solves challenges and enhances opportunities for that group.

Today’s highlighted business model: Freelancers

Freelancing is a great business model because it often costs relatively little to get into business and the longer you’re in business, the better. (Compare this to a manufacturer who has a high up-front cost to build a factory and prototypes and then has to continually innovate in order to stay competitive). As well, all you need to get started is usually the right software and a double-serving of talent. (Some courage and sales ability don’t hurt, either).

Freelancers don’t need a lot to get started, but the do need some kind of web presence. And, depending on their business, they may need a blog or a more conventional website, or both. And likely, they need to start with one and grow. One common way for freelancers to become more successful is to start with a blog, expand into a website, and then slowly grow passive income with the addition of products or commoditized services. This could take months. This could take years. This could be just one additional product. This could be hundreds of additional products.

While a flexible web presence is important, freelancers need to keep costs down; and since so much of freelancing is time-dependent, they also need to keep their non-revenue-generating time

For this continual scaling up of a web presence, WordPress is the perfect solution. It offers freelancers the opportunity to build whatever kind of web presence they need to start effectively, and then it gives them the ability to add to their web presence as their business grows.

And WordPress is fast. You can get a site online in no time and make changes as often as necessary with just a few clicks and absolutely no coding.

Not only that, but the variety of WordPress themes and plug-ins give freelancers an automatic credibility-building look with plenty of automated business-building tools. If you’re looking at getting into freelancing, or if you’re thinking about improving your web presence, WordPress is a choice to consider.

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