5 Responses

1. all is not what it seems

   Hi Andrew

   Congratulations on getting a good clean design of site up.

   The easiest type of site to get up in the current world is a wordpress based site, but it is not just the software that is important.

   Many people are glad just to have a site – but its critical that if we want a site to work for us that it does a number of things.

   1) pay for good design – people will make a purchasing/ trust decision on it

   2 use a content management based platform so you can do 99% of the updates yourself (wordpress is great for this)

   3) make sure the site is what it says it is – i.e. hover over the links and make sure that they stay on the same domain and don’t point somewhere else

   4) that it is search engine friendly (seo in the jargon – search engine optimisation) – easier said than done often BUT essential if you want the site to work for you

   5) that you have a marketing plan that includes not just the site, how and when it is updated, blogs and other e-marketing methods

    

   To do all of this sounds expensive – but its not – its a legitimate cost of doing business – its called marketing and several surveys have suggested that increasingly people are buying services from the web – so we must be found.

   Remember a website is just useless code unless it sells for you!

    

   – Andrew – you may want to have a good look at your site – much of the key "meta" data is missing – description etc – and it looks like you have lots of links to your host rather than your own site! good for them – not so good for you

2. Still sorting my new look

   I have had the new look up five days Mike so I am still loading my free resources and meta tags.

   My experience is a little different to you, I have never forked out for search engine optimisation and so on. and have enjoyed a very healthy web-prompted flow of work and site visits.

3. pay for seo… no

   Hi Andrew – just to clarify I have never paid for SEO or adclicks or any other type of paid for traffic – its all in the format and text.

   As I said the look of your site is good – I’m sure its going to take a little while to get all your resources up – that is the downside of some forms of upgrade – with wordpress you can keep your existing content and change the look easily.

4. for what it’s worth….

   Hi Andrew

   I use a Mr Site website.  It costs me £35 a year and is generally a doddle to build and update.

   I set it up solely to give myself a presence online and it has grown a bit from there.  I too have a free resources section which seems to give away quite a lot and certainly I get some feedback from folk who take stuff from there.

   Though there is a shop it doesn’t generate much by way of income for me which is a bit sad, especially as I’m now in a situation where I need to earn without travelling around the country all the time (maybe I need to look at the way you do things and copy you!

   I’ve now personally set up 5 Mr Site websites and they offer an affiliate programme where I get a small payment for anyone who clicks the "get a website like this" link from my website.

   My wife set up her boss’s website on Joomla which she says is also very good and has more features but not as "idiot-proof" as Mr Site

   Rus

   http://www.coach-and-courses.com

   http://www.forheavenscake.co.uk

    

5. website providers

   Hi Andrew,

   I have used a variety of paid for "DIY" website companies as well as creating a website from scratch using proprietary software. In the end I opted for 1&1 for ease of use and cost. I pay something in the region of £5 a month for my coaching website and the whole thing took me an afternoon to build. The graphics I made myself using PaintShopPro but you can always improvise.

   Although this is only a "hobby" site it has given me some extra business over the last few years. This is the basic package and I know there are more design gadgets available but I don’t think I needed them.

   Have a look and see what you think:

   http://my-newleaf.net

   Regards

   Sam