On hiring people to build your website, or just start with a blog

I attended a training course a couple of days ago. While I took a lot of value from it, I will not recommend it to others.

We received a lot of 'advice' on the course that did not gel with my experience.

One piece of advice was to hire someone to build your website.

While that advice will prove useful long term. It does not help you get started.

When you are starting and building your profile you should try and build content rather than gloss.

And to get started with content you can:

1. buy a domain name
2. sign up to a blogging tool
3. associated the blogging tool with your domain
4. create content

This way you build up your intellectual capital, and your profile, instantly.

You can 'gloss' it up later, if you need/want to.

On this particular course we were introduced to a web company that designs websites for small buisness to help them improve their profile. I had a look through their portfolio and lo and behold, many of the sites were simply Wordpress sites that had a custom theme and design.

Had those businesses been given the above advice, with point two replaced with 'sign up to Wordpress.com' then they could have started building their profile on a default theme. And later, hired a design team to 'skin' the website on a custom host and migrate the content.

I have one site that is entirely custom built, because I can program, and I started that site prior to the existence of blogging tools.

I also have:

1. one site on a custom hosted Wordpress instance, where I have extra 'functionality' on the server in folders under the top level domain. But I could have hosted my main site on Wordpress.com and used subdomains to point to 'other' functionality hosted on other sites
2. two sites with a front page hosted on a custom host, and the main content in blogger under a subdomain. This gives me flexibility to change the front page to whatever I want, but is a tad more hassle than it needs to be.
3. several sites as 'anonymous' blogger sites, without a custom domain, just for building content.

I've seen businesses build their brand, and indeed host their entire websites on blogger.com, and on wordpress.com.

Essentially hosted blogging platforms that allow posts, and pages.

Use these tools to:

• build content
• refine your message
• create your products and packages

Add gloss later. 

Do not start by paying people for gloss, when you have no content to glossify.


Bonus

I had a quick look online for 'how to make a professional site/blog on blogger', and found a bunch of links for templates and information:

• http://designscrazed.org/category/website-templates/blogger/
• http://www.cssauthor.com/blogger/
• http://www.templateism.com/
• http://www.blogcrowds.com/resources/blogger-templates/
• http://www.oddthemes.com/

Keep a firm grip on your business

I read Richardson's "The Power of Advertising" recently. Written in 1910, it still stands up as a valid guide to advertising and marketing.

Pages 30 and 31 particularly stood out for me, since this is a lesson that I've had to deal with several times, but only now think I have a handle on it.

These pages are an appeal to businesses to keep the control of their product in their hands for as much as possible, and only give the retailer the ability to sell on your behalf. They can add additional value through advertising, marketing and service on top, but the core has to come from you, and the core reward has to go to you.

"To achieve this result calls for hard fighting... Weak-kneed methods are not very much good when the retailer has to be dealt with; on the contrary they usually result in making him master of the situation. He demands and gets, his own name on your goods, the trade becomes his trade, the public recognizes him, and then he starts cutting down profits."

"The goods may be yours, but so long as the brand is his, he can get them made up where he likes - he controls the price, the quality, the sales."

"Put your own brand on everything you manufacture and use the modern method of advertising to make the public acquainted with that brand and what it stands for."

"Every time the manufacturer yields to the retailer's demand for private brands he gives birth to a competitor for his own business."

"Keep a firm grip on your business; show confidence in your goods by trade-marking them with your own brands; keep the trade in your own hands in such a way that you will derive the full benefit of the demand you create."

Now, obviously I have to interpret this for the year 2016.

When I sell online courses, I am now:

• Using the platforms as sale platforms only
• I do not attempt to white label the pages:
• that puts my url in the retailer's hands
• that makes me reliant on their html and page layouts
• that means I rely on their landing pages
• I want to use them as final sales page and checkout process 
• I build landing pages on my own sites
• I build FAQ pages on my own sites
• I have multiple retailers - as long as I rely on a single retailer I am at their mercy, I maintain my courses on multiple sites so that I can switch between them if T&Cs change in ways I don't like.
• I have a single 'preferred' retailer that I link to for the check out process, and that is behind a short url that I can edit quickly to switch between vendors

I'm breaking my rules slightly by blogging on blogger. This is clearly not my own platform, and I am to some extent at Google's mercy.

I have my books on multiple sites and link to them as necessary.

I opt out of 'platforms' sales and special offers, e.g. Udemy discount every course down to $9 every week as a 'quick act now sale', I do not take part in those sales, and I use them only as an 'organic' sales source rather than my main retail channel.

I've spent the last few days, pulling more content and landing pages on to my sites and moving away from vendor sites as much as possible to give me more control over the messaging and allow me to switch between retailers more easily.

There were many other lessons in this advertising book from 1910. I recommend it.

• A. Richardson's "The Power of Advertising" on Archive.org