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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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!

The Future? Managed WordPress Hosting & Updates for IT Companies & Web Designers

I had an epiphany today. I asked myself the question, “what part of  my business is the most consistently profitable and also easiest to manage?”

The answer? WordPress hosting and updates.

And where does probably half of that business come from? IT companies and other web designers / marketing companies.

We can solve a problem. Particularly with IT companies, they have a ton of clients and all of them ask about website hosting or basic maintenance for their websites. Often these companies know little about it, and don’t want to deal with it at all.

That’s where we come in! We provide fully managed hosting where we deal with everything for them. We migrate sites, we deal with hosting issues, we install SSLs, everything. And we even provide updates to WordPress sites to keep them secure.

We take all of the headache out of it. And our prices aren’t crazy so they can still make money on top of that.

And you know how I know it will work? I already have a bunch of these clients! My IT partners have been hosting their sites with me for years and they seem to love it. They value there is incredibly great.

I already have some traction on my website in terms of SEO in these areas, and I could use that to start funneling people to a new landing page to test how well it will work. If I have some luck, I could even create some targeted Facebook ads try to really try and scale it and get immediate feedback on how well it will work.

This is also an area where I could really create processes that make every single step very simple and I could have a staff that knows exactly how to handle everything in a fairly automated fashion. Ideally I would only need to manage business operations down the road and wouldn’t need to interact with clients or handle issues myself, ever.

I’m really just starting to think through this now, so there are still some questions to be answered but so far this seems very promising.

Success in School (and Life) Probably has Almost Nothing to do with Intelligence

To properly explain my thoughts here, I have to explain the series of thoughts that came to that conclusion.

I’m currently in Colombia, trying very hard to learn Spanish. I took it in high school (and earlier) and even in college, but never really progressed. My first thought was to question why that was.

My immediate answer was that we didn’t utilize our time that efficiently. I remember just pounding away trying to learn grammar rules and would spend an entire class period (or week?) learning how to conjugate one verb in one tense, or learning some other concept that really shouldn’t take that long.

Part of it, too, is that they are teaching at the rate of the kids who need the most time to pick it up. Which, as I’ll get more into in a moment, probably isn’t the dumbest kids, it’s the kids who don’t care and aren’t paying attention.

So I thought: I’m doing about an hour of flashcards per day, which allows me to learn and retain about 40 new cards every single day. In my  case, that’s usually about 8 new verbs, with examples. It’s a fairly rapid rate.

And then, of course, any time spent actually speaking is extremely valuable in getting better.

But then my next thought was, “Well… You learn concepts and whatnot in class, and then you’re expected to actually study and review vocabulary and concepts at home, right?”

Which is fine, but let’s think about this now. Is everybody going to actually study at home? Absolutely not. The kids who consider themselves smart, and who think they are “good” at it probably will, because they feel good about it and believe they can succeed.

And who is not going to study? The kids who think they are dumb, and the kids who don’t care. And, as a side note, I would bet the kids who “don’t care” actually think they aren’t smart or are bad at the subject, and just “don’t care” as a defense mechanism. That’s a separate topic though.

So in a class where it’s expected that you need to study in order to succeed, what happens if one group actually does study, and the other doesn’t? Even if they are just as intelligent, the group that studied is clearly going to do much, much better.

So now the grades come out. The ones who studied scored highly, and they feel good about themselves. They think, “I’m smart, that’s why I succeeded.” Their parents praise them and tell them how smart they are and they truly start to believe it. They continue to take interest in their studies and continue to succeed, creating a virtuous cycle.

But what about the other kids? They get a bad grade. They know they didn’t study, but still… This must be evidence that they are dumb! Their parents punish them. In some households maybe they even call them stupid or had already been doing that.

It wouldn’t take too long before they would feel stupid. The next time, they might put in even less effort, because what’s the point? They believe they won’t succeed anyway so they aren’t going to bother doing everything the ‘smart’ kids are doing.

And in this way, it’s a cycle. The ‘smart’ get ‘smarter’ and the ‘dumb’ get ‘dumber’. And if you’ve been paying attention — to the extent that intelligence is, in any way an actual, quantifiable trait — the so-called ‘dumb’ kids are very likely the exact same intelligence as the rest.

And now they’re going to go through life thinking they are too dumb to succeed. And that seems like a tragedy.

Additionally, in a school-setting, concepts absolutely build off of one another. It’s much easier to grasp something new when you have all of the underlying concepts memorized. Someone who just “instantly gets” something may only do so because they understood all of the preceding material, not because they are “smarter”.

This might be more fit for a totally different conversation, but I think our emphasis on “intelligence” is also way off-base. It’s a terrible predictor of success (at least as measured by IQ), and I think our very focus on it actually leads to poorer results.

If people think that being “smart” leads to success, then they’ll start thinking that their successes are due to their intelligence, and their failures due to their lack thereof.

This is a terrible outcome for two reasons. Firstly, you can’t (really) do anything about your intelligence. It’s more or less inherent and unchanging. So focusing on it cannot possibly improve your life.

Secondly, it completely takes hard work and sacrifice out of the equation. Literally anything that someone has done to get where they are is overwritten by saying that they are just ‘smart’, or even ‘naturally talented’. Research says that ‘natural talent’ is almost entirely a myth, and I don’t think ‘intelligence’ is that far off in the context of explaining success.

So when it comes to school-age children, I think it’s much more important to tell them, “good job, you studied hard and earned that grade!” instead of saying, “you’re so smart!”

One of those things will help them deeply to understand how to succeed, and the other is only helpful as a confidence booster. If people think their success is due to one, inherent and unchanging metric, then they will not take any responsibility for their successes or failures. They won’t truly understand that the actions that they take lead to their outcomes.

Thinking back to when I was in school, I remember always being in the “honors” or “gifted” classes. I think we all genuinely believed that we were much smarter than the kids in the “regular” classes.

My two thoughts on that now are:

  1. We were foolish and wrong for thinking that.
  2. What does it matter? You can’t pay the mortgage with ‘intelligence’.

 

What’s the Point of Traveling?

This is a question that I guess I’ve never really taken the time to think through. What is the point of traveling?

If you don’t put much thought into it, you may think you have the obvious answers. It’s fun. It exposes you to new things, new ideas, new people.

But if you think about it, you can get all of those same things without ever leaving your home state. You can certainly have fun, there are always new things to try and people to meet. And with the internet and books, there is never a shortage of new ideas.

So what exactly is it?

An obvious part of it is that it’s more likely to do well in those categories. You’re more likely to have fun, you’re more likely to meet new people, etc. But I don’t think that’s anywhere near the whole picture, and in fact, I don’t think it’s the right answer at all.

While I don’t claim to know the correct answer for sure (or even that there is one), I have an idea.

I believe it’s the depth and impact of the experiences that makes traveling so worthwhile.

Basically, I think you are very likely to have a variety of experience that are likely to have a lasting impact on you. When you think back to your favorite trips, you think of the ones that changed you. You probably had some incredible experiences, did fun things, saw something beautiful, met amazing people, and potentially faced some serious hardships. But after it all, you came out feeling like you bettered yourself, or at the very least, you’ve learned more about yourself.

And that’s hard to come by. You can’t just hand someone cash and have them improve your self-worth or understanding. It comes from genuine experiences and, usually, effort and hardship.

The right trip definitely changes you, and might even become part of your identity. There’s tremendous value in that.

So with that in mind, how can I improve my traveling?

A focus on depth of experiences is definitely critical. Try new things, get out there!

Generally going outside of my comfort zone I think is also necessary. I’ve talked about that quite a bit in the last couple posts but it really is true. If you aren’t a little scared, you probably aren’t growing.

I think I tend to do this naturally, but seeking out genuine experiences and human connection I think is way better than going for cheap thrills. I’m not a big fan of really touristy things (or places) and I think now I know why. They just aren’t that meaningful to me and don’t lead to life-altering experiences.

Those are my thoughts for the night. With almost the entire two months to go here in Colombia, I think it’s good to think about this ahead of time.

Leaving My Comfort Zone (And the Country)

I’m uncomfortable. I’m traveling abroad alone for the first time, and my plans are virtually non-existent. But you know what’s really interesting to me right now? I feel like this is the first time I’ve really left my comfort zone in a long time.

They say that growth happens completely outside of your comfort zone. That all the best experiences and moments generally happen when you’re doing something that scares you. And I believe it!

Until now, I didn’t realize that I haven’t been doing that. Almost ever. And I’m thinking that’s a problem.

Every time I’ve gone on trips, I’ve gone with friends or family. It’s always been safe; it’s always been easy. Safe and easy…

Safe and easy is comfortable. But I’m not sure it truly allows for growth. I think the vast majority of people cling to “safe and easy” constantly, and I’m only just now realizing that I’m one of those people.

And that’s almost more scary to me.