Author: brianjohnson

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Initial Results of Internal Ad

Results are in! I’ve had the new ad running for something like 6 days and I can see how it performed.

So how did it do?

It did… Okay. For a 4-day period Monday-Thursday, we got about 20 unique hits to the page, vs. a historical average of about 8 during a similar time period.

So that’s 12 unique visitors. Not bad, not great. That was out of 3,466 visitors. Conversion is certainly bad, but these are people who came here for very specific problems.

Theoretically, all 12 of those people are actually interested in improving their hosting. The current ad copy reads:

Tired of dealing with your slow WordPress website? Click here to learn how to fix it.

It’s in bold but just regular font.

So we know they have a WordPress site, and we know they want to make it faster. That’s fairly targeted, and a great start.

Obviously I didn’t get any new business, but I’m not sure how optimized my “WordPress Hosting” page really is.

So what’s the plan now?

I want to run a handful more tests and see if we can maximize traffic to that page. See how we can tweak the copy and ad to get more people through the door.

Once I feel confident we can’t do a whole lot better, then it’s time to revise that page (or build a new one?) to gear it towards conversion. We’ll need testimonials, maybe a nice-looking video (I can put that together by recruiting BNI people to be in it), and an enticing offer. But that’s later!

For now, I want to brainstorm some ideas for what I can try in this ad. So here are ideas:

  1. Instead of just linking them, ask them to enter in an email address to receive the secret to a faster WordPress site.
  2. Ask them to enter in their site and email, and we’ll check why their site is slow for free.
  3. Include an offer right there. “Tired of dealing with your slow WordPress site? Click here for 3 free months of lightning-fast WordPress hosting.”
  4. Wish your WordPress site loaded as fast as this one? Click here to learn how to make it happen.
  5. $25/month is all it takes to make your WordPress site this fast. Click here to find out how.
  6. Many WordPress sites can load twice as fast overnight. Enter your URL and email to see if yours is one of them.
  7. Include an image with one of these popular variations to see if it helps.

That’s all I have for now! I think all are worth testing out, so I think that’s what I’ll be doing the next couple months. It will be fun to compare results.

I think I’ll start with #1 and see how that goes. Stay tuned for results!

 

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Closing Eyes Probably Accelerates Brain Recovery

It’s actually kind of hard to name this post without the reader’s initial thought simply being: “Duh…”

My initial title was, “Resting is More Effective with Eyes Closed”. Which… Yeah. Of course.

But my actual thought is that if you’re going to have any downtime with the aim of restoring attentiveness, willpower, etc., then you should close your eyes and try not to think about anything complicated.

Here’s why. As mentioned in recent posts, when you exercise willpower or do anything cognitively demanding, you tend to exhaust your mental resources. Blood sugar drops, though I think that may be a symptom rather than the cause. And then you don’t have any more willpower and give in to temptation more.

The brain takes a ton of power just to operate. In particular, the visual part of the brain is massive, and takes more than its fair share. And it makes sense! Think about a computer. Graphics cards are known power hogs, and even they are not nearly as complicated as our visual cortex, which needs to make sense of everything it sees.

The higher logic parts of our brain are also pretty power-intensive.

So if you wanted to rest your brain, what should you do? Close your eyes to turn off all visual processing, and either focus on nothing (like when meditating), or just think of simple things like memories. Things that aren’t very visual and don’t require intense thought or concentration.

So to go along with my post about how phone use it probably preventing actual restorative downtime, I think one of the reasons this might be the case is because it’s usually all visual. You have text and info flying by, you’re reading, there are photos and video, and just in general your brain is in high usage.

How are you supposed to recover with that? It would be like jogging after a marathon in order to let your legs recover. it doesn’t make any sense.

You have to totally unplug, close your eyes, and try not to use your brain much. I suspect that even if you aren’t sleeping, the brain will recover much more quickly that way.

Try it out!

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Need to Focus Blogging on Reaching Potential Clients

I really need to start focus on blogging about topics that will attract good potential clients for my business, particularly for website hosting.

Sure, it feels good to “give back” by writing about all of the solutions I’ve come up with for difficult problems. And I’ve been rewarded with lots of backlinks and a fair amount of traffic to my site.

But that doesn’t pay the bills. If I want to grow my business, I really need to get more targeted search engine traffic.

I’m already being found for a lot of my niche keywords like “minnesota wordpress hosting” (in which I’m the first two organic results), but as I’m discovering, nobody really searches for terms like that. I don’t think they search locally for hosting at all. You know, because it doesn’t really matter where it’s located.

But what I’m good at is blogging about particular problems well, and getting a bunch of traffic for those problems. My posts about what to do if your WordPress site goes offline have been very successful at driving tons of traffic. And that traffic maybe isn’t terrible in terms of targeting, but it doesn’t convert well.

I need to really focus on things that will get my exact target client.

One opportunity is to revise and update some good performers that are already targeted. For example, my post diagnosing and explaining why your WordPress site is slow is a great example of an opportunity.

It’s already getting some good traffic, and there are money opportunities. Keywords like “Godaddy hosting wordpress slow” are extremely popular, and I have yet to capitalize on that. I could talk about each cheap host and have a little section in there. Instant traffic!

I can use SEMrush to find other similar opportunities as well.

And of course, I need some sort of great CTA in there so that I actually convert the traffic there into paying visitors, as mentioned in previous posts.

I think a great thing to do is focus on the problems and symptoms had by people using cheap hosts. Think about their pain points and what they might search, and cater to those. Think keywords like:

  • Why is wordpress (cheap host) slow?
  • host where I don’t have to sit on the phone
  • better wordpress hosting support
  • pages take forever to load
  • plugins running out of memory
  • 100% cpu wordpress

Those are just some ideas. I think SEMrush will actually be invaluable for really narrowing this down. But I can write smaller, targeted articles that really hone in on some of these and then link them to my main pages, thus improving their rankings.

In conclusion, it’s great that I’m getting traffic and that I’ve got some nice blog posts that are truly helpful to people. But now it’s time to get the right people through the door and sell to them.

 

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Resting Instead of Phone Use

I have a bit of a theory. What if our constant viewing of entertainment was actually robbing us of all our willpower?

In reading ‘The ONE Thing’ again, I’ve been thinking about the chapter on willpower. He basically calls it a finite resource that needs to be managed.

Studies have shown that taking a break and having a snack or meal or resting tends to restore blood sugar and also seems to increase levels of willpower.

But what do I (and everyone?) tend to do when I don’t feel like doing anything? Sit on my phone immediately, and find some entertainment. No, we’re not using up any willpower to do that, but what if we’re preventing it from replenishing and starting an endless loop?

I think I need to try literally just taking 20 minute breaks where I maybe have a quick snack and lay down to rest my eyes for a bit. Often times my phone binges last way longer than that anyway, and if I had new willpower, I could get back to doing whatever needed to be done!

For the moment, I think it’s at least worth a shot. So I plan on doing that, and reporting back results.

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Choosing the Top Ways to Get More Hosting Clients

Last week I brainstormed a list of things I could do to get more hosting clients. Now that the brainstorming is done, I want to try and actually things down and pick the top options.

I feel like it’s key to balance the difficulty of implementing something vs. the potential it has. For me, I think it’s somewhat inextricably linked. For example, it’s possible (and likely) that cracking how to optimize Google Adwords would by one of the most scalable and effective options available to me.

But it would take an extremely long amount of time and I may not even have the resources to ever succeed at that. So it won’t rank highly.

So something that won’t be that hard to implement and is likely to start working quickly is something I’m going to put at the top of my list.

Last week I came up with a list of 12 ideas. now I’m going to rank them in order of best to worst. The top ideas are the ones I’m going to work on implementing.

  1. Developing some code that inserts some kind of hosting-related ad directly into all of my blog posts, for instance right after the first h4 element
  2. The same thing but manually adding CTAs on all of my popular blog posts
  3. Increase conversion by making compelling offers on the site – free month of hosting or something like that.
  4. Start trying out Facebook and LinkedIn ads
  5. Carrying through with the plan I had to offer services just to them and have it all be automated
  6. Post hosting articles on Facebook or LinkedIn
  7. Visiting other BNI groups and promoting hosting, especially with great CTAs or offers
  8. Buying more businesses
  9. Generally promoting services to IT companies
  10. Try some Google ads for highly targeted things and see if I can get clients that way
  11. Going to other types of networking events, such as chambers
  12. Reaching out manually to IT companies

Well, this feels pretty conclusive! The first one was an idea I’ve had for a while, and I feel like it won’t be hard to implement and will potentially be quite effective.

Since I get about 4000 visits to the site each week, I’m genuinely hoping to get something like 0.025% conversion, which would be one single client.

That could be optimistic, though, since they aren’t on my site to look for better hosting. The rates might be more similar to random impressions on other sites.

I’m going to need a really compelling offer, and I think I need it to not look like an ad. It should stand out against everything else.

Optionally, if it doesn’t work, I could try a different CTA, such as having some sort of free site speed analysis or something, and then we could market to them directly.

I just really need to make the website start working for me, and I need to actually convert some of this abundant traffic that I have.

So let’s get moving! This should really be my “One Thing” for the week. Make it happen.

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Need to be Laser Focused on Business-Improving Activities

I started reading the book “The ONE Thing” again (which is something I really need to do every single year), and it really has me thinking. I’m currently spending little to no time on activities that improve my business, and all of my time on things that simply operate the business.

The book goes into detail about how most people are simply putting out fires and just going through the motions, when really they should be focusing all of their time on the select few activities which make everything better.

I need to spend a lot of time thinking about what those activities are. To start, analyzing what I’ve done that has worked would be good. Then brainstorming how to improve.

I’m not sure exactly what I need to be doing yet, but I know that right now I’m spending very little time on the most important things. I’m spending a lot of time simply operating the business and it feels a little bit like I’m going through the motions.

I should be done doing any work on my house soon, and when that happens, I’ll have a lot more time to commit to these types of things.

Although even that is a bit of a cop-out. I should be doing them now. I need to be constantly improving and always focused on the most important items. Otherwise I’m never going to improve.

So right now, the most important thing for me is to start constantly thinking about what the most important thing is.

That’s a start.

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Maximizing Value Creation is the Only Effective Long-Term Strategy

I realized recently that creating value for clients is really the only way to be successful long-term.

This might seem like an obvious conclusion, but I don’t think it is sufficiently emphasized. Obviously people talk about creating value but I think the point that bears repeating is that if you don’t create sufficient value: you will never be successful.

Long-term, you’ll fail to retain clients or attract new ones because they will realize that you aren’t providing them with a positive return. Whereas if you are generating enough value, your clients will see the returns they are making and will come back and tell their friends.

So I think it’s important to focus on value above all else.

And, of course, value basically means benefits minus costs. It doesn’t always mean having the highest quality, simply that the benefits or returns that you can offer are lower than your prices. If you can do something adequately at a very low price, that’s valuable.

I think with straightforward, commodity-like services, it’s easy to see the connection between value and success. Graphic designers trade their skills and time for direct payment. The amount they get paid is relatively stable from designer to designer, and if they work more, they then get paid more.

So what if you do want to get paid more?

You have to become more valuable. And that’s a very tricky thing to do.

If you can find a way to scale your services while retaining quality and maintaining low prices, then you can multiply the value you can provide.

Of course there are near-endless ways to increase value, but if you plan on simply trading your commoditized services for payment all alone, you are basically limited to just how many hours you can put towards it, which obviously has a cap.

You could become the very best in your field. If you’re fortunate enough to have that as a legitimate option, it works!

Or of course you could specialize or find a way to combine multiple disciplines, fields, or industries in some way to provide additional value to people in a niche and charge premium prices for those services.

However, I would personally rather choose to focus on a few services that I can do really well, build up the infrastructure and processes to scale those services, and then build a team as I grow to keep it running.

In a dream world, my business would be a well-oiled machine that basically runs itself with little input from me. If I can provide great value to clients and scale it, I can continue being successful.

I really need to think, then, about how I can provide the most value to clients, particularly in the managed hosting space which is where I think we currently do the best job and where I can best scale the business.

Another random thought: I initially wanted to suggest here that value is relative, but I decided that it actually isn’t. The services you provide have absolute value. Either they can make your clients more money than they cost, or they can’t. With some services, the ROI might be very difficult to calculate because it is very indirect to their revenue, but ultimately there is still an absolute value associated with it. And it is worth it for your clients to work with you if you have good value.

With that being said, you might be in an industry where there are others with much greater value than yourself, which makes them more competitive. But I would argue that, long-term, being competitive is way less relevant than being valuable. In an industry where everybody is valuable, prices are bound to go up. If you were valuable at low prices, you’ll get business. If you’re valuable at high prices, you’ll get business. Nothing else really matters.

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How to Stay Motivated without Pain and Struggle

When I first started my business, I had a free one-hour consultation with a business coach. He asked me what the minimum amount of money I need to make each month is in order for me to sustain my life, and I told him, “$500”.

I’ll never forget what he said next. He told me, “If you want to make more money in your business, you’re going to have to raise that number way up”.

His advice was literally that if I wanted to make more money, I would need to increase my daily expenditure so that it would be a struggle if I didn’t make enough to cover it.

They say that pain and struggle are incredibly powerful motivators. When your next meal depends on making more, you tend to do it.

I don’t know that I agree fully with what he told me, but I think people absolutely get complacent. When you’re making plenty to get by how you’re living, you don’t feel the need to make more.

I think that’s actually why it’s such good advice to automate your finances and investments. Even buying a house makes sense, because it forces you to build that equity. You don’t have a choice not to make enough to cover it.

Without those things, people just tend to inflate their lifestyle. Nobody accumulates cash. Either they find a way to make sure that extra money gets invested (which is rare), or they just spend more every month. Usually in the form of costlier housing or a car.

In my case, I tend to just travel more but I have the luxury of that as an option.

But I don’t want to struggle. And I want to continue improving my business and making more. So how do I proceed?

The one option, as mentioned, is to automated investments, and force myself to always be struggling to have enough for everything. But again, I still have that struggle.

I guess my question to myself is whether the struggle is actually necessary. Is the human nature of complacency too strong for me to overcome?

I tend to be an idealist, and I think, “absolutely not!” But what if it is? What’s the pragmatic approach here?

What if I set rigid goals for myself? Are goals, in general, the key? Because I could say something like, “I want to cap my yearly spending at X, and I want to grow my business by Y each year” and then stick to that.

But is it really doable when I am otherwise comfortable?

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that “motivation” is fleeting, and is more or less a myth. Struggle is only supposed to be temporary. If it goes on too long you get worn out, and the motivation fades.

The solution, I think, lies in habits and an attitude where you just do things and don’t wait around for motivation. Set goals, develop a rigid plan to achieve them, and then implement.

Even if you’re comfortable financially, that time-tested course of action should work.

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Need to Focus on Things that Scale

It’s been a while since I’ve posted! Despite being “the most important thing” to do, this has fallen by the wayside behind more urgent matters like renovating my house and getting renters. Hopefully, once that is out of the way, I’ll be able to post much more regularly.

I’ve realized recently that I absolutely need to focus almost all of my time and energy on things that I can scale and efforts that tend to multiply. And the reason isn’t just because I believe those will lead to more success (though they will), but because I get bored and disinterested otherwise.

When I’m doing 1-for-1 client work, speaking directly with clients, or doing any kind of networking, I tend to get very bored. Because those things are very much even exchanges. I put in effort, I get something back. A little more time and effort means I’ll make a little more.

And when I do it, it’s just hard for to care. It feels like a slow march towards death. It doesn’t make me excited.

Instead, I really need to focus on things that can actually scale and multiply. Where my efforts may not only lead to immediate returns, but continue getting returns for me down the road without additional effort.

Things like blogging and other SEO efforts are great examples of this. If I build up my SEO profile enough, I can effortlessly get new clients without having to lift a finger. Then I can focus solely on running the business.

And I should focus on services that I can actually scale well. Managed WordPress website hosting is one of those services. We do a great job at it so there is very little headache, and every piece of that service, from migration to maintenance, can be made into a process that an employee could easily handle.

But I think it’s just key that I keep all of this in mind all of the time. All of my efforts need to be focused on moving towards this goal. Every day, I need to prioritize activities that have long-term consequences and promote scalable business practices.

Otherwise, I’m just going to burn out.

 

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The New Product Offerings

I wanted to basically collect my thoughts on paper (hard drive?) regarding the changes I plan on making in my business. I’ve gone back and forth on a lot of things and I’d like to just have some clarity here about what we’re going to offer.

Originally, I thought that we would just provide one, single service that couldn’t be customized at all to our clients. However, I no longer thing that’s the best choice. We don’t need to be that simple.

As long as I don’t personally need to be involved in the day-to-day services for our clients, I’ll still be able to scale everything properly.

I’m thinking we’ll reel people in with our core product: managed WordPress hosting. We’ll offer it at fairly reasonable prices to try to get them hooked in. Since the “managed” portion constitutes the bulk of the costs, this will be an incredibly attractive offer.

Then, we’ll offer upgrades. These would be offered when they are signing up, and would include:

  • Basic Email Hosting (up to 5 inboxes, but upgradable for more)
  • WordPress updates (Plugins and Core)
  • Theme Updates (for those with premium themes that need to be manually updated)
  • SSL Certificates (With options for all the ones my host offers)
  • Compute Boosters
  • Malware and Hacking Protection (Basically we install Wordfence and monitor it regularly (weekly?), and if a hack appears, we take care of it. Requires the updates service)

Additionally, I think we’ll provide the following hourly services as requested:

  • Breakfixes (If the site goes down, we bill hourly to fix it)
  • Hack fixes (if they didn’t already have the protection)

I’ve considered allowing for content changes and other additions, but at least for now I want to avoid that. We don’t want to compete with web developers, since some of them might actually be our clients. Additionally, the entire purpose is to avoid all of the quoting and subjective nature of that entire field. We want our services to be extremely rigid so that we can replicate and scale them.

At the moment, I think it makes most sense to target IT companies. Since that’s what’s already working with our similar, existing services, I have reason to believe it will keep working. They are the ones who have little knowledge of web services but are asked to deal with it anyway. We can relieve that headache.

I haven’t yet figured out exactly how to market to them yet, but that will come. Honestly, Facebook and Linkedin ads are looking pretty attractive, but I need to figure that out. I might reach out to a bunch directly to begin with.

I intend to speak with a couple IT company owners to get their feedback before I start. I think this will help me figure some things out ahead of time and smooth over potential issues.

I plan to build a series of online forms as the on-boarding process. They’ll be able to select their options, set up payments, and then submit relevant information to help us migrate them.

Once I’ve got that set up, I need to get a few clients to actually go there and sign up. If I’m sure it’s working, I can then go full-speed ahead on marketing.

The goal is to find some kind of marketing system that is totally automated but still has a positive ROI. Once we have clients, they are likely to stay. So getting clients will be the hard part. If I can get clients in an automated fashion and still have a first-year ROI that is positive, I absolutely need to aggressively pursue that option.

In addition to pursuing regular marketing means, I should probably also be focusing on my SEO. Consistently writing articles I think has the possibility of really benefiting me. Since I already have decent rankings and a large SEO presence with this site, it shouldn’t be too hard to start funneling traffic to the right places.

The other thing to consider is that a large chunk of my traffic might actually be hapless IT providers googling how to solve their client’s problems when they don’t really know how and don’t want to. In other words: our ideal client.

So there’s a few steps to go, but I think I need to try and organize my thoughts and the steps involved a bit more, and then power through them!