Get big or go home!  I’m calling bullshit on that idea right now.  What is our western culture’s obsession with large business?

Here’s a great little recipe for starting a business in three hours or less.

Ingredients

• 1 laptop or other suitable computer
• 1 paypal account
• 1 domain name
• 1 budget hosting
• Expertise (your thing)
• 1 skype account
• 3 hours of your time

Method

Map your domain name (it should match your great idea in some way) to your budget hosting account, connect to that domain name using a browser and you should be presented with a default page (time 15 minutes).

On your budget hosting, install WordPress the easy website creation software.  If you have a one click installer on your hosting even better.  Name your site, give it a tag line and go with the default theme. (time 45 minutes).

Using WordPress create four pages; a home page, a contact page, an about page and a consulting page.

On the home page write copy to tell the world what your great thing is. (30 minutes).

On the about page tell the world why you are so great at your thing (30 minutes).

On the contact page add a contact form plugin so people can contact you (30 minutes).

On the consulting page, tell people that they can buy your time by the hour at rate X, that you will get on a skype call with them and solve their problems related to your thing.  Add a paypal button to collect rate X from them (30 minutes).

Tell everyone you know about your new site and make sales.

Minimum Viable Business

This is the recipe for a minimal viable business.  It’s not fancy I know, but that’s all that is really needed to start an online business.  Experience in a subject and the ability to help other people doing your thing.

Selling your time as a coach or consultant is the easiest business to start.  All you need is expertise, a website and a skype account.

It’s not the best business model, I know from personal experience, but it gets you in the game, once  you are there you can begin to build a bigger and better business.

This proves your idea is a good one and that you can make sales.  Forget about the custom look and feel for your site, business cards, incorporation and all that jazz, just go out and try to sell your thing.

If you can do that ,you are in business.  Don’t sweat the scaling models or write a business plan, just sell something.  Once you are past the initial hurdle of selling something, and fulfilling that sale to your clients,  your confidence builds and you can perfect your business as an iterative thing.

The overwhelm of the huge number of things a business needs often creates a flich and that great idea is never baked into a beautiful business cake.

What’s Stopping You?

You can be in business in the time it takes to watch a movie.  Go and do it now.

“what a wonderful and dangerous thing it is to walk out of your own front door.  You step out on the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Bilbo Baggins – The Hobbit

Image by dorkomatic

I’m providing a new service to WordPress site owners to review and make their sites mobile ready.

Why You Need To Be Mobile Ready

The rise of the tablet and mobile phones that provide internet access has changed the way many people consume content from WordPress sites.   The idea of the the “lean back” device where people can comfortably read and enjoy content from a hand held device

A quick review of your analytics data will show you the type of devices that people are using to connect to your site with. The problem is that that standard WordPress theme is not appropriate for the cut down screens of these devices.

All the hard work and design you put into your theme is wasted for people on these device, they want a fat -free easy to use version of your site that is optimised for a 3-4 inch screen.

Don’t believe me, go to this site and type in your domain name http://iphone4simulator.com/ to see the experience you are giving mobile device users.

My Mobile Ready Service

Many other site owners are providing a poor mobile experience to their site visitors so I decided to create a packaged deal to make people’s WordPress sites mobile ready.

Deliverables

If you sign up for my mobile ready review you will get the following

• Mobile ready theme that detects users device and shows a reduced version of your site
• Customisation of the theme to match your site and highlight your call to action
• Review of your content to ensure it is mobile ready; video, images, text etc
• Review of plugins in use to ensure they are mobile ready

At the end of the project you will have a mobile ready site and a report on my findings and fixes.

My Example

I review my own analytics data and saw that a lot of people were reading my content from tablets and mobile devices.  A review of my site from my iPhone showed it was very difficult to navigate and find things.

I immediately made changes to my site and implemented a mobile theme.  This detects the device people are using and shows a cut down view to people on mobile phones or tablets.

I’ve made a short video to show you what my site looks like on mobile devices.

[leadplayer_vid id=”509CE4518AE60″]

What It Costs

My mobile ready review costs $99.00.  For that price you get a mobile ready site and a complete review of your content and plugins.

Book Your Review Now

To book a mobile review complete the form below and I will be in touch to start the project.

[gravityform id=”87″ name=”WordPress Helpdesk Request – mobile ready” title=”false” description=”false”]

I like the way marketing your business through blogging can be a gentle, almost under the radars approach to marketing.

I want to talk about my thoughts on “one gentle touch point at a time”.

One Gentle Touch Point

When you are blogging regularly you get to reach out to your people and gently push them some content.  You get to gently touch base with them weekly, bi-weekly or whatever your blogging schedule is.

This gentle touch to their RSS reader or inbox via email is one of the winning components of blogging as a business marketing strategy.

Non-Pushy Marketing

The reach of your blog post is determined by people who have signed up for your RSS or email list, the people on your social media followings or people who find you through a search they generate.  People give permission to read your content.

Your blog post is not telemarketing, it’s not unwanted direct mail.  It’s not ads between your favourite show or house to house cold calling.  It is something you create release and allow people to consume in a way that is appealing to them.

So all marketing via blogging is by default non-pushy.  If the people on the other end of your content are not happy with you any more  they can simply unsubscribe and move on. Once the permission element of a subscription is removed you are not forced to consume more content like the interrupting phone calls of junk mail that is forced upon us.

Slowly Building Authority

As you gently touch people over time you are growing your authority on an incremental basis.

If what you blog about resonates with people they stay and read more. The more they read, the more they are convinced you know what you are talking about.

Being In People Forethought

If you are making these regular gentle touches, you are constantly in the forethought of people’s minds.  Do it often enough and when the timing is right for “your people”  to hire someone that sells or does “your thing” you will be the go to person.

I see this on a regular basis.  When I send out my weekly email there is nearly always a reply along hte lines of

“Neil, just seen you post really enjoyed it, can you give me a quote for WordPress technical support for XYZ”

 Add Value Not Ads

When you ad value to people rather than simply dumping ads on them you build a level of trust that cannot be bought. Helping people solve their problems, educating them and, at the same time , highlighting your paid offerings is a great way to do business.

I’m in the very weird position of being a techie in the UK running a small computer consultancy who also has an audience of people who consume what I write!  That is the beauty of blogging.

What Do You Think?

Is the slow drip feed of quality content and the constant gentle touches a good way to run a business or are the brutal in your face methods best?  Let’s talk about it in the comments.

It’s not a fast way to market your business, but once you have the traction and audience it’s an exceptional free way to build a brand.

Image by calamity_photography

The most import piece of business advice I have received to date is:

“Work On Your Business, not in it” The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It(aff)

In the past I have been guilty of building a job instead of a business, so in this post I want to give you some warning signs that you are building a job instead of a businesss, or to go with the quote, you are working in your business not on it.

What’s Wrong With Building  A Job?

Nothing, but it is probably a better idea to build a job using corporate money so you get all the benefits associated with employment, but since you are here as a solopreneur building a digital persona I will not go down that route.

What do I mean by a job?  I mean that you are tied to your business in the same way you are tied to a job, if you don’t work in your businesss, you are not earning income.  I belive deeply that we, as solopreneurs, should be building true businesses that deliver to us with some slack so we can have a life outside our micro business to take a couple of weeks holiday/vacation or to spend time on other areas of our life.

The Job I Built

I write from personal experience, In the past I have built a job instead of a business.  Here is my story:

I built a computer technical support services business.  At first it was just me working away doing 100% of the business and delivering the services.  No passive income when I was not working, just by the hour work.  I quickly reached 100% capacity and the stress built up.

I decided to bring onboard some contractors, I though this was the way to build a business out of a job, but that was even worse, I had to prepare job specs for the contactors, manage their work., check the quality of their work and report back to the  clients. I was stil l tied to the business, If I was not preparing quotes, and detailed task specs, no income was coming my way.  What made it worse, I don’t like project management, I find it dull, feel ill at ease delegating.  I had built a job I didn’t even like!

Warning Signs You’ve Got a Job

Here are the warning signs that you are building a job.

1) You cannot take time off and earn money

When you take time away from your business to take a well deserved break, or due to forced absence due to illness of you or your family you do not make any income?

I want to help you to build a business that still has cashflow when you are not actively working in your business.  Your business is more job like if you cannot earn passive income.

2) You have to be present to deliver your product or service

Similar to the first point, if you have to show up somewhere to execute your business this should be a red warning light to you.

This may be client sites, a bricks and motar establishment such as a store.  Having to be somewhere rather than be where you want to be is another job sign.  Try to re-engineer your micro business so you can work from where ever (and whenever) you want.  You are the only one in your business and you have competing priorities on your time.  If you have to be in your office 9-5 to meet clients you are stuck to your business.  It may be on the way to a job situation.

3) You sell your time on a one to one ratio

Alarm bells should be ringing if you sell your time on a one to one ratio to a single client or customer.  Big legal firms and consulting firms do this very successfully by selling the time of their employees on a one ot one ratio and taking a cut of the fees as profit.

I used to work for a big 6 (as it was then) accountancy firm as a computer auditor, and the rule of thumb for your hourly billing rate was 1/3 for you salary, 1/3 for your costs; estate costs, pension, etc and one third for the partners.  The partners take profit for every hour yoru work.

As a solopreneur, you don’t have the benefit of large teams working for you, making profit per hour, you only have your own profit per hour, and this does not scale.  I recommend creating additional income steams which do not require one to one time selling, so you can get off the time as money treadmill job and build a business.

You Don’t Have A Product

If you business is a service only business with no products that can be repeatedly sold once  you have made a one off time investment, you may have ajob on your hands.

The type of products I recommend for solopreners are

• Information products – package your expertise as an e-book, audio program or video download
• Books – write an old school book and publish (or self publish it)
• Physical items that can be easily sold and dispatched (I recommend outsourcing your fulfillment)
• Events you can sell multiple seats to – seminars, webinars, conferences, concerts.

A product is an excellent way to grow your business, they are fixed prices, build once items,  that can be repeatedly sold.  Your time has been invested and sold many times over.

The tools and techniques to deliver products will be covered in detail on this blog.

There Is No Way To Scale

You are currently at 100% capacity, you cannot take on more business, because there are simply not enough hours in the day.  This is a sure sign you have a job not a scalable business.

You Have A Bespoke Services Only Business

You may think I have a bit of an issue with service business (and I do) but running a services only business such as consulting/coaching, copy writing or design work means you trade time for money.  You are tied to your business for those hours, and it can become a chore to have to do the work, search for work rinse and repeat as necessary.

I will write in detail about hybrid product/service business in the coming weeks.

Have You Built A Job?

Are any of the warning above made you sit up and think?  Your online service business should be a true business with assets that can generate incoem 24/7 if it cannot it’s time to review your portfolio and see where you can make some changes.

Image by 4yas

I’m running  another of my experiments to lure site visitors into my sales funnel.  I though I would share the details with you.

I’m using a premium plugin called In Post Ads to position references to my WordPress technical support links automatically into every post I write.

In Post Ads places an ad automatically inside of your posts.

I have it setup to display an ad every four paragraphs, so hopefully it’s going to drop in right below this line.

 How It Works

You setup a custom post type of an in post ad, you can have one or many, and make them dispaly randomly throughout your posts.

You can rotate multiple ads to see which one works the best.

You can also limit ads to only display in certain categories of posts.

There are various themes you can use on your ads to change the look and feel.

Lastly you can disable in post ads on a per post basis.  I found this very useful on certain video posts I have in place.

How I Use It

I’ve got an in post ad every four paragraphs in a contrasting colour and outline to highlight my services page.

Other Uses

You could of course use it to link offsite to affiliate ads, to your products or even as an email sign-up form, I think that would be very effective if you set it a long way down the post.

Premium Plugin

This is a premium plugin from the wpmudev people and it costs $19 for a single purchase, or you can take out their membership and get this (and all their other plugins) for a recurring fee of $79.  I went for the one off purchase.

Testing Performance With Google

I’m testing the performance of individual ads with Google  Analytics and their events system, I wrote a post all about this here Monitoring Banner Ad Performance.

I’m creating new ads and testing various aspects of the plugin, but I’m finding that a subtle contrast makes for better results.

What Do You Think?

Do you find this type of in post ad annoying, or is it just another ad you will grow blind to in due course.

The internet marketing community is rushing ahead of itself to find the next new device to snag attention, popups, gateways, the list goes on.  Do we need to slow down and start building in a methodical manner rather than grabbing at the latest new trick?  Let me know in the comments.

Check it out In Post Ads

Image by erratic0101

Many people are more than happy to squirrel away tens of thousands in investments for their kids education, but are you also thinking about digital investments for their futures?

I own jenny-matthews.com (live) and faye-matthews.com (currently parked).   I bought and host these domains for my daughters as a digital investment for their future.

In this post I want to talk about my thinking behind this investment.

Why I Think Personal Domains Will Be Important

The ability to own you own digital identity and use it to further your personal goals will be huge in the future.  I call it a digital persona.

If you can build a platform to support your work and life goals that you control and that can move with you through life regardless of which company you work for, or if you are self employed will be huge in the future.

You can use it as a digital resume to build authority and show you have expert knowledge in a field.  This in turn can help you to get postions or clients.

I think more and more people will move away from the broken corporate model and work for themselves.  If you can use this platform to sell you wares you are ahead of the comptetion.

If you can do all this and associate yourself and your personal brand through yourname.com you will be seen as a thought leader.

An Example In Personal Authority Building

Say my daughters love fashion design and they go to university to study in that arena.

At the same time they are running a personal site where they discuss current trends  upload videos or images of their work in progress and generally build a multi media profile showing that they understand the fashion business.

When t0 comes time to look for work, their personal site jenny-matthews.com or faye-matthews.com is indelibly linked to fashion.  They show their love for the work, their knowledge and their competence.

But They Are On Facebook/YouTube/New Site Yadda Yadda

I rant till I’m blue in the face about people claiming they are on-line because they have a Facebook page or twitter profile.  Here it comes in bold capitals.

<rant>YOU DON’T OWN ANY OF THE CONTENT, PAGES, PROPERTIES,. USERS OR ANY DIGITAL ASSET ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES </rant>

You need to have a home base and outpost mindset,. Create your digital home base on joe-bloggs.com and then distribute your work on outpost sites such as Facebook, twitter et al.  Own you homebase and make forays into other peoples sites in an effort to attract them back to your homebase.

Imagine you are using Facebook to build an online persona, and bam! They disable your account for some spurious reason, all your hard work is gone, you have no recourse, they own the game and can kick you off at will.

Domain Scarcity

As I’m sure you know domains are scarce, if you can get a high quality domain for your children they will thank you (perhaps 🙂 )

Registering and keeping hold of your children’s name on a dot com is a great investment.  I’m offered versions of my name.com on a regular basis and people are asking thousands of dollars, get it now for ten dollars.

The scarcity is only going to get worse do you really want your kids to be using [email protected].

Good domain names are a luxury item not a commodity.

Educational Aspect

I think it’s great to teach your kids about the technical side of the internet.  My kids have taken to online life with ease.  They browse the net, use my iPhone and are pretty savvy tech users.

They can use the internet but have no concept of the underlying technologies.  I hope building their own sites will give them an understanding of these technologies.

I’m 100% sure that sites such as Facebook will obfuscate all technology from people in the future, making them tech illiterate and at the mercy of internet giants instead of having the skills to make their own little online paradise. They will be stuck in the online eqivalent of the projects with no way out.

I’m slowly but surely showing them things like linking to other sites, uploading YouTube videos and embedding them and swapping out themes.  I’m not the pushy parent type but if they show interest in something I will show them how to do it.

Remember the Geeks shall inherit the earth and the Jocks will be hacked into silence.

Online Security

My daughters are young, so I want to protect them from the darker side of the internet, so I have put a number of security controls.

disabled comments – there are no comments on Jenny’s site, I have used this plugin to disable them site wide http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-comments/

All emails come to me – all domain emails are setup to redirect to me so I can monitor all activity.

No contact forms or other inbound communication – this is very much a push website for Jenny, there is no two way traffic until she is a little older and understands trolling, grooming and other insidious acts that go in in the dark corners of the net.

I review the content – I make sure she is not sending out personal information to the www.

I’m pretty low key about all this, I have put theses controls in place, but I let my daughter do what she likes on her site.  I’ll talk about the darker side when she is older, but for now exposure to cialis comment spam, trolls and other nastys is something she can do without while writing cute stories about Hansel and Gretel.

Future Google Juice

The online land grab will continue for years to come, there will be more sites, more people and more noise. It will be increasingly difficult to sort the wheat from the online chaff. This is the real reason I’ve made the digital investment for my kids.

If they can start to build a site, gather some low key links and make inroads now,  into the beast that is Google, when they really need it in the future it will be a platform for their life’s work.

Some of things that are thought to help SEO are:

• Age of domain – their domains will be 10+ years old by the time they are in their late teens
• Amount of content & regularity of updates – if they slowly build up a series of posts this will contribute to their archive
• Links – a link is a link, even if it’s their school chums linking to party photos or story this helps to build momentum
• Social links – this will become huge in the future, if someone is liking a post on social this will become part of the algorithm and this is something kids will do naturally.

Neil-Matthew.com & ^Daughters

I have a little dream of my own, and that is for one day to take down the digital shingle at neil-matthews.com and upload a new banner neil-matthews.com & ^Daughters.

If we can bring together three digital properries in one e-family business that will make me a happy man.  Cross promotion and building onlne businesses as a familyrather than having them start from a blank canvas.

This is probably content for a future post, but it is something I am thinking about.  Why make your kids struggle in the corporate world when they can become online entrpreneurs.   If you can give them a leg up by giving them access to your digital audience I think that is eNepotism in the best fashion.

This is all new territory, there has always been a route to bring kids into bricks and mortar businesses, but how do you bring them into an online business.  Time will tell.

Wrap Up

WordPress may not be around when my kids eventually start ploughing their digital furrow, but I’m pretty sure some other product will be that does a similar things.  Digital ownership of their name where they can show authority will be a huge thing in the future employment marketplace, be it self employed or as a candidate at corporations.

Are you planning for your kids digital future?

Image by r80

I’m not a problogger by any stretch of the imagination, I blog to support the WordPress Technical Support business I run here at WPDude.

After four years of blogging I’ve been able to switch off all paid advertising and support a team of two (soon to be three techies) in more work than they can handle, all because of blogging.  This post talks about how I’ve done this.

It’s Sure As Hell Not Get Rich Quick

Flip back to the previous paragraph.  Four years of blogging to get where I am.

If you think blogging is going to generate a ton of leads overnight, I’m sorry to upset you, blogging is a slow but sure marketing method. Once you get traction, and the search engines have a body of work for you, it’s a very low impact, always on and free form of marketing.

Blogging is passive (except the actual writing part) so I can market to people without actively being engaged, I can prove the expertise of me and my teams in WordPress through my posts and hopefully be in that persons mind when they need to engage a team to help with their site.

You need to be into blogging for the long haul, if you are still with me then please read on.

Blogging And SEO

As I write this I have 299 posts published on WPDude, that’s 299 chances to lure people into my site with a bite sized piece of my knowledge and a chance for me to expose them to my sales page.

I’ve written about a broad spectrum of WordPress topics so I can bring people into my sphere of influence and hopefully help them with my free content, and if they need it, help them on a paid basis too.

The large number of posts match to a large number of search queries and a wider range of people’s WordPress problems.

I have a couple of posts that bring me a lot of traffic, but I also have many many posts that bring a small trickle of traffic.  I’m pretty sure that the large body of work I have has contributed to my sucess with the search engines.

As I have blogged for such a long time, I’ve established authority with Google (I think – who really knows what they think) and it looks like I get good rankings for most things WordPress I talk about.

I’m not going in depth about seo in this post other than to say I use WordPress SEO by Yoast.  I write for people first then tweak slightly for search engine happiness.  Which leads me nicely to …

Who I Write For

Whenever I write a new blog posts I’m always thinking “Will this benefit the type of people who buy my services?”.  So for this posts for example I’m thinking, my clients have blogs, but they also have businesses, so they are using blogging as a lead generation strategy, bingo a match I can provide you free useful information and keep my name at the front of your mind.

I made the mistake in the early stages of this site of writing technical articles about WordPress, I was getting great traction with the WordPress development community, but they are not the type of people who want to do business with me, they can fix their own sites.

If you have one take away from this post, always think about your client when you post a blog.

What I Write

I write about things that will keep my clients informed about WordPress, show them what can be done with their sites and keep them abreast of the latest developments.

I always write from experience.  This is important, everything I write about I’ve used or done for real in my business of for my clients.  There is not theory, it’s all experienced based.

I like to write plugin reviews of new and interesting plugins I find that may be useful to my audience.

I also write articles on fixing the types of problems I see in the field, I call these case studies and they are great. They showcase my expertise while informing the reader, an under the radar marketing technique.

I write how to articles which will step you through fixing a problem.  These are good for showing your expertise and also showing your reader what can be done on their site.  If it is slightly technical it also shows your reader their knowledge gap, a gap they might like to plugin with expertise for hire,

I write direct sales articles when I’ve got a course or a special offer on.  This is where investing in you blog pays off, you have an audience willing to read your stuff, then when you have a sales or offer to give, your people will be engaged.  For example every year I run a holiday sale.  I’m based in the UK and we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so I run a sale to plug that gap when I usually don’t get any work.

I also go off topic sometimes and write about online business, something I’m passionate about.

Blogging And Email Marketing

My blog feeds my email list too.  It makes being on my list a worthwhile thing.  I send out free updates to inform and educate then once in a while I send out a marketing offer.

Another thing with email and blogging is that it keeps your name and business in the fore front of peoples minds, Whenever I send out an email broadcast about a new posts I usually get a reply asking for a quote or two to fix a problem on someone’s site.

Guest Posting

I blog not only on my own site,  but I guest posts on other people sites too in an effort to increase my profile.  If you guest posts for someone with a bigger audience it’s a great way to expand your reach.  Busy bloggers or business owners are always happy to accept a high quality guest post.

This is something I’ve picked up again with a passion, tapping into someone else’s already established audience is a great way to boost your own profile.

I also accept guest posts here if you are interested.

Exposing Your Sales Funnel Through Blogging

This is where I’m spending a lot of my time at the moment, I’m analysing my traffic and finding ways to introduce people new to my blog to my sales page (It’s up at the top right in big red letters Hire Me, just in case you were wondering.)

It’s no good having a ton of traffic if people are completely missing the fact this is a business blog not a hobby blog or a pro-blog looking for advertising clicks.

Here are some of the techniques I use.

• Constant reference, in a subtle way to my service.  I’ve done this in the first paragraph.
• Differentiated menu items.
• In posts ads.  I’m testing a plugin at the minute that inserts ads after x paragraphs.
• Banner ad at the bottom of my posts.
• Sidebar banner ads.
• Reference to my services in the email update I send out about posts.  I have image banners.
• RSS footer links to my sales page.
• Hello bar, popups and welcome gates oh my (these may or may not be active when you visit due to split testing)

Frequency Of Blogging

I post once per week, and a little more if I’ve got some sort of launch on.  That’s all I need.  I’m not running a magazine style site where I need constant eyes on my sites for advertisers, I need a constant trickle of people into my sales funnel to keep me and my team busy.

I like to write longish posts so it takes me a couple of hours to write up, check and send out an email alert about a new posts.  Not a bad time to results ratio in my opinion.

Blogging Mistakes

I made a couple of blogging mistakes in my early days, here are a few:

RSS over Email – I just presumed that because I like RSS over email that everyone else will too, and I put off starting an email list for about 18 months (fool of a wpdude).  Get your email list up and running now.

Losing momentum – as the work starts to come, blogging gets dropped off, I had too much work for clients and my blogging efforts dropped off, big mistake. When the projects are done I had to turn back to paid advertising rather than have a steady stream of leads ready to turn into projects.

Blog on home page – I know I’m still making this mistake but your home page should advertise your business not your blog.  I’m working on this at the minute.

Giving a damn about non-clients trolls – I used to get caught up in criticism about my blog posts from people who would never buy my services (other techies for example) or from out and out trolls.  You need to spend your time on clients, not these type of people. Actively direct them away from your blog, these are not paying your way they are wasting your time.

I would love to hear you blogging mistakes in the comments.

Wrap Up

All of my business comes from new clients finding me via my blog or from referrals from people who have used my services,  this is a great place to be in.  It takes a long time and perseverance, but it’s well worth the blogging journey.

Can I leave you with a tongue in cheek quote

Advertising is Like Sex: Only Losers Pay for it. – Chris Guillibeau $100 Startup

 

Image by 66356408@N07