Category Archives: working from home
Why you should be using WordPress.com for creating a Web Presence
and the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
The Yoga Factor
The quick version:
People need to Find You and Talk To You.
Finding you is called Marketing and talking to you is called Sales.
I have now just saved you 3 years of study at University.
Yes, it is that simple.
A WordPress.com website is the perfect tool for marketing and sales without breaking the bank, especially if you are passionate about your business and would like to get involved with your own online promotion.
I love WordPress.com because you can have a website where ordinary people can update their content without paying for web hosting, graphic design and web development.
Not that those things are wrong, of course, but you can always build up towards having them as your business and brand grows.
Some examples in action:
- The Yoga Factor
- The Lyzyrd Kyngs
- Blk Sonshine
- Crimson Chrysalis
- RockFest Radio
- Billy Forrest
- 1001 South African Songs
- Rhythm Records (The Label)
Some of my pending projects that will be using WordPress.com:
- Triple M Entertainment
- Stars Of Africa Football Academy
- Masauko Chipembere (from Blk Sonshine)
- The Production Person
The long version:
WordPress.com is a hosting platform that utilizes the same WordPress software that anyone can download from WordPress.org.
With WordPress.com, the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of for you.
With the freestanding WordPress.org software, you need to install it on your own server or a 3rd party hosting provider.
WordPress.com Benefits
- It’s free and much easier to set up
- Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.
- Your website / blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
- Your content is backed up automatically
- You get extra traffic from the WordPress.com community
- Your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks
WordPress.com Cons
- Provides 170+ themes (and adding more every day), but you cannot upload a custom theme
- You can’t modify the PHP code behind your blog
- You can’t upload plugins
If you are a web developer, or you are happy to pay a web developer for their time, here are the benefits of WordPress.org:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Benefits
- Ability to upload themes
- Ability to upload plugins
- Great community
- Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
However, for me, the Cons far out-weigh the Benefits:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Cons
- You need a good web host, which can get expensive.
- Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
- You’re responsible for stopping spam
- You have to handle backups
- You must upgrade the software when a new version comes out
- If you get a huge spike in traffic your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup
Why I love WordPress.com
For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, real-time traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else. These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com.
WordPress.com offers paid upgrades as a way to provide premium features without forcing people to host their website / blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are optional.
- Currently over 170 themes to choose from, some are Premium, but most are Free.
- Integrated Statistics on where your visitors are coming from, and a whole lot more.
- Excellent support available from fellow users (on Forums) and WordPress staff.
- Robust server back ups.
- Multiple users, great for clubs, communities, bands and so on.
- Mobile-friendly
Resources for this article:
WordPress.com, WordPress, and WordPress.org
Like this:
Social Media in a nutshell
- Twitter is for minute-by-minute news.
- Paper.li creates daily news from the people you follow on Twitter.
- Facebook profiles are for day-by-day news and conversations.
- Facebook pages are for promoting your brand and business.
- Blogs are for important information that gets archived and can be found by search engines.
A blog can also be your website. - Youtube is for watching videos.
- All of the above are also great ways to drive traffic to your website.
Like this:
The Art of Non-Conformity » How to Get Paid for What You Love
The greatest benefit of a lifestyle business is freedom. But usually we find that freedom does not just appear out of nowhere; it requires a shift in mindset and the corresponding action. – Chris Guillebeau
via The Art of Non-Conformity » How to Get Paid for What You Love.
How to build a cost effective web presence, part 1
This is the first in a series of articles on how to build a cost effective web presence, or how to get your name out there without spending too much money, if any at all.
This series has been expanded from the talks that I present on this topic.
I focus on helping people in the South African music business establish a presence on the internet, and market and sell their music to the world, but a lot of what I discuss can apply to almost any business or organisation. I have clients in various industries including Fashion, Tourism, Travel, Leisure Boating, Event Staffing and more.
What you don’t need
Here is a list of things that are not required for building a web presence.
Remember you are trying to save money, so some of these things are nice-to-haves, that can be added later.
- Web Developer
- Graphic Designer
- Domain Name
- Web Hosting
- Computer
- Understanding of web coding
OK, I hope I have your attention now.
Part 2 to follow soon, but while you wait, please go and create a Facebook profile for yourself, if you don’t already have one. To have a Facebook profile you need to have an email address, so go to Gmail and create one there. If you already have Facebook, but don’t have a Gmail account, please set up a Gmail address any way.
Then we can talk.
Please subscribe to my blog (using the easy form on the right-hand sidebar) so you will know when I next update.
Like this:
Finally, a customizable Gmail signature | DVICE
Only just recently discovered this upgrade, but I find it really useful, especially as I often need to email using different sending addresses. Now each one can have it’s own unique signature.
via Finally, a customizable Gmail signature | DVICE.
How to simplify your life, part 1 – cellphones are not in control
The cellphone was supposed to improve and simplify our lives, and yes, it did this, but it also seems to cause a lot of undue stress and time-wasting.
Here are some ideas on what I have done to simplify my life so that the cellphone is not in control. Maybe not all these things can work for you, but hopefully it will spark some ideas you can implement into your lifestyle.
- No voicemail
So now I have no messages to check, and no false promises made by my voice-mail message to live up to. If I miss your call and your name (not just your number) came up in my caller ID I will probably phone you back. - No private numbers answered
I just ignore hidden numbers, so no more phone spam. Yeah, maybe I miss a few legitimate calls, but not having to deal with spammers and scammers far outweighs this. - Encourage email communication
I have encouraged most of my clients to connect with me via email rather than cellphone. This has cut down dramatically on calls and time. This also allows me to respond properly with the correctly researched information. - Pay As You Go
I reduced my contract from over R500 a month to a much smaller one (just over R120) with a pay-as-you-go top up option and 200 free SMSs. - SMS
I use SMS rather than phoning to keep costs down. 200 free SMSs is about 6 a day. I never manage to use them all up every month. - Please call me back
If I make a phone call and my friend and/or client needs to have a long (and costly to me) conversation, I ask them to call me back, or rather send an email. Can be a bit uncomfortable to do this the first few times, but it soon becomes a habit that cuts down on my costs and my time.
Stop blaming an inanimate object for your stress. Take control.
Facebook Brand Pages are really important for online marketing
Facebook Business or Brand pages (previously known as Fan pages) are one of the most important weapons in your online marketing arsenal.
Ignore the Facebook community at your peril.
Advantages:
- No limit on number of fans (i.e. people who “Like” your page)
- Statistics and demographics available
- Unique Landing Tabs are possible.
- Search Engine Friendly
Examples:
http://facebook.com/RhythmMusicStore
http://facebook.com/BrianCurrinOnlineMarketing
http://facebook.com/JackHammerBand
http://facebook.com/SpaceHymns
http://facebook.com/PietBothaMusic
http://facebook.com/RockNTjank
Like this:
Influence: The new currency of Web 3.0 | memeburn
The sooner you start measuring your social graph’s influence and optimising your online engagement, the more prepared you will be for this shift and the more value you will be able to extract. Your online influence will become an actual currency. – Rob Dickens
via Influence: The new currency of Web 3.0 | memeburn.
Like this:
How to manage your money when you are self-employed
My Bank Account - Image courtesy of Brainz.org
I celebrate 5 years of self-employment today … and there are a number of tips and hints that I can supply that I have picked up over the last 5 years.
I was corporate for almost 25 years and we don’t realise how much the corporate world protects us from the daily grind of keeping tabs of our cash flow.
Some lessons learnt:
- A quote is not guaranteed income.
- An order is not guaranteed income until a deposit is paid (I ask 50% before I spend any time on a project)
- Final payment is not guaranteed until payment is actually received.
I have received a 50% deposit, done between 75% and 100% of the project and then never received final payment.
At one stage I was spending money and time based on my quotes … a path to disaster if ever there was one.
So the secret to managing your money is knowing that there is no secret.
Sound business principles of not spending money you don’t have, or money that isn’t yours, will go a long way to improving your cash flow.
I spent ages trying to figure out how to make more money and then finally realised that spending less and managing my money are actually solutions too.
A great and cost effective online money management resource is Billy the Billing Engine.
I use http://billy.co.za for my quotes and invoices and it works like a dream. On a recent trip to Gauteng I was able to go into an internet cafe and do all my month end invoicing.
No bucks, no Buck Rogers – quote from The Right Stuff movie
Like this:
The Power of Two
In business there are two ways to increase sales: sell new products to existing clients or find new clients for your existing products.
In business there are two ways to manage your cash flow: increase your income or reduce your expenses
In business there are two ways to market on the internet: spend time where your potential clients are, or wait for them to find you.
None of the above are either / or choices, but getting the balance right is extremely important.
Like this:
The secret of getting permission to share your ideas.
Think of marketing on the internet like attending a conference.
Firstly you could choose not to attend and hope that people will track you down by traditional methods.
Or you could stand in the corner with your business cards and really flashy (and expensive) brochures and wait for people to come up to you and speak to you.
That’s like having a website.
No matter how beautiful it is, you are still waiting, wishing and hoping that people will find you. Of course your graphic designers and web developers are happy because they’ve been paid to create this masterpiece.
Or you can move around the conference and talk to people and hand out your brochures.
Now you are starting to actually keep your website up-to-date and search engine optimized.
Or you can stand up on the stage and talk with passion about your business to a captive audience, people who want to be there and hear your opinions.
You now have permission to share your ideas. And you can engage with people.
But how do you get invited onto that stage? And how do you get invited back?
That’s social media marketing, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
It requires passion and perseverance.
But it is so worth it.
Like this:
Seth’s Blog: A car is not merely a faster horse
A car is not merely a faster horse
And email is not a faster fax. And online project management is not a bigger whiteboard. And Facebook is not an electronic rolodex.
Play a new game, not the older game but faster – Seth Godin.
