Category: Business

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I Should Establish a YouTube Presence Targeting Small Website Hosts

This is a very preliminary idea, but one that could actually turn into something.

I could establish a YouTube presence where I’m creating content aimed at helping small business owners who provide website hosting services to their clients.

The general idea would be that I’m posting content related to operations and marketing for these businesses to help them. But then I would occasionally mention that I’m also looking to buy companies like theirs.

If I can help people grow their businesses: great! But at the same time I’d be establishing myself as an expert in the industry. And if they already knew that I was interested in buying, then if the day ever comes where they are thinking about selling their business, I’d be the first one they’d go to. I’d be top-of-mind.

It would be a fairly big commitment, of course. And I’d need to put some work into producing some quality content. But if I started getting the right kind of traffic it could be extremely beneficial.

And worst case: it still increases the size of my online footprint and would likely still improve my search engine rankings for relevant keywords.

I’m working on some other things right now but I’m interested in picking this back up and pursuing it when I finish them.

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My Photos Website is Ranking for its First Keyword

After having allowed search engine crawlers and also adding more photos to my photo website, I’m pleased to discover that I am ranking for my first keyword!

It’s “bond falls haight township mi”. One of my photos is of this location (one of my first, actually), and I specifically targeted keywords like that.

And it worked! I’m like the 80th result for both web search and image search.

That’s not great, but that’s not the point. I’m already seeing results from optimizing to these search terms. All I have to do is keep it up and hopefully I’ll start ranking for tons of keywords, and then I’ll really start getting the traffic I’m looking for.

The whole site is sort of built on the belief that I can start ranking for local keywords like that and that soon, people will start actually buying my photos.

And it has already started.

I expect to see results improve over time as I add more photos and continue optimizing the website.

I’m pretty excited!

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There is Tremendous Value in Managing Complicated but Inexpensive Tasks

I had a bit of an epiphany today that most of the recurring profit (and probably profit of any kind) generated by my company comes from the management of relatively inexpensive services.

So in our case, that’s mostly website hosting but also applies to things like ongoing services for WordPress and even domain name registration.

I just re-read one of my old blog posts and I mentioned how, when presented with the option for even faster hosting, virtually all of my clients have declined. And I found that fascinating.

Over time, I’ve realized that the technical specs of my hosting don’t matter a whole lot to any of my clients.

What they value is that I’m managing everything. They know I’m handling it all, configuring it will, and they inherently trust that what I’m offering is high-quality. Beyond that, they don’t understand and don’t care to understand how it works.

And that’s all great, and something I have already written about.

But today I thought… What other services fit a similar description? I think anything that meets the following criteria would fit the bill for a great opportunity:

  1. More or less a commodity service but with premium options available
  2. Relatively complex behind the scenes and poorly-understood by most
  3. Recurring service with minimal maintenance required once set up properly
  4. Tech or software related and possible to perform entirely online
  5. Ideally a service used by businesses and not just by consumers

Anything that meets all four of these criteria could potentially be a great opportunity for me. In addition to the website hosting and domain name registrations we’re already providing, here are some that I can think of now:

  • Cloud-based email hosting – particularly services that will not be interacting with third-party clients, such as Google Workspace
  • Cloudflare services / DNS hosting
  • Zapier Integrations
  • Managed Google Analytics and similar tools
  • Merchant services accounts/integrations, like with Authorize.net

Of these, the last one interests me the most. I could basically just resell Authorize.net services and get it set up and maintain it, and people would love it because I would handle everything for them. I could just have a form that people sign up on that gets all of the information needed to get set up and do it all for them.

I’m sure there are lots of others, but these were just the ones I thought of now.

I just definitely keep thinking about this and try to find more examples.

A possible 6th category may very well be: “is able to be managed entirely by me without the need for a client account”.

That would be a major drawback of the merchant services stuff, because they wouldn’t see the need for me if they had their own account that would keep working without me. Ideally it would all be behind the scenes.

The value is there regardless, it’s just that if they have their own account, they would be inclined to question the value without understanding the full picture.

 

 

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I Could Reach out to Cities and Localities and Offer my Photos in Exchange for Links

I had a great idea recently relating to my fine art photography website, and that is that I could reach out to cities and other localities and offer to let them use my photos in any capacity as long as they provided me with a backlink.

These backlinks would obviously be very valuable, because they would make my photos rank highly for the locations which I’m targeting. Then, people would end up on my site and hopefully buy prints.

It would be a great way to raise the profile of my website, get more traffic, and improve rankings for specific locations.

It may be a bit labor-intensive unless I outsource it. But I think that once I’ve built up a decent library of photos, it will be a great investment of my time to really get the project off the ground.

Nothing is needed now because I’m still working hard to fill it out and finalize some things, but perhaps later in the summer I should really start doing that.

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I Should Really Market Occasionally to my Existing Clients

Anyone who’s in marketing would say “duh” to this… But I’m starting to think I really do need to do it.

I hate doing most traditional forms of marketing, and email-newsletters are certainly on that list.

But I realized today that, for many of my newer clients (especially via acquisition), they have no idea what my business stands for, what we’re about, or even that we’re looking to grow.

I think sending a couple emails per year would probably be quite beneficial. If nothing else, I could share news about myself and the company and they would feel closer and more connected with me, which would improve retention.

It would also make them more comfortable to reach out to me for anything they need.

And then, one of the most important parts, would be that it might increase organic growth via referrals. If they are happy with my services and know that I’m looking to grow, they will refer their friends and family to me and potentially ask to sign up their other projects as well.

You could argue that this is very low-hanging fruit. I already have a huge list of clients that are mostly pleased with my services and would be happy to share my name with some if I were top-of-mind.

I’ve added it to my list for next week to be my marketing project. Hopefully by next Friday, I’ll send out my first email in years.

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General Plan for Photos Site

It’s time I finally made progress on my fine art photos site.

Today, I reviewed it and tried to see if there were any search results for the one photo I have uploaded to this point.

I was disappointed to find that I’m an idiot and had been discouraging search engines from indexing it all this time. Great.

So I fixed that and got Google Analytics 4 added, so I’ll be able to track it better and get some traffic to it.

I’m not really pleased with how it looks and, at some point, I think I’ll need to fix that.

However, there’s really no point if it’s not getting traffic yet.

So here’s a general outline of what I’d like to do with it in the coming future:

  • Start uploading my best photos with an emphasis on going deep with each one, optimizing the page, content, and description
  • Develop a regular schedule of uploading – perhaps one photo each day
  • Put together a schedule for developing content on the home page and an “About” page
  • Develop a strategy for occasional blog posts and articles discussing my photography
  • Figure out a strategy to get some backlinks

Once I feel like all of these things are in line, I’d like to simply wait and see if I start getting search engine traffic. Based on that traffic, I can decide how to start proceeding.

Without search engine traffic, the plan doesn’t work. I need it in order to actually make sales and have my plan work.

Let’s do it.

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Brainstorm: Where Could I Post Articles About Selling a WordPress Host?

I think that in order to be really successful at coming up in search results for selling a WordPress hosting company, I’ll need to go out and get some relevant backlinks.

The most effective of these, of course, would be from articles about this very topic, posted elsewhere.

But where exactly can I post these?

I just asked ChatGPT, and the answer was… Excellent. I’m just going to go ahead and paste what it said:

  1. Medium – Medium is a popular platform for publishing articles, with a wide range of topics and a large readership. You can create a free account and start publishing your articles.
  2. LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that allows you to post articles about your industry. It’s a great place to showcase your expertise and connect with other professionals.
  3. Quora – Quora is a question-and-answer website that allows you to post articles and answers to questions related to your industry. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
  4. HubPages – HubPages is a website that allows you to create articles on a wide range of topics, including WordPress website hosting. You can earn money from your articles through advertising revenue and affiliate links.
  5. Reddit – Reddit is a popular social news aggregation and discussion website that allows you to post articles and participate in discussions related to your industry.
  6. EzineArticles – EzineArticles is a popular article directory that allows you to submit articles for free. Your articles will be published on the site and may be picked up by other websites and blogs.
  7. AllTop – AllTop is a content aggregator that collects articles from a wide range of sources. You can submit your articles for consideration and if they are selected, they will be featured on the site.

 

Honestly, I’m not sure I need any more than this. These mostly all look like great places for me to post articles for free.

I’m hoping to start posting one article each week, whether on my own website or on others.

At this point, it would probably be best to focus on getting backlinks from other websites.

I have a great idea for a new post about optimizing your business to get the best sale price, and I think it would be a good one to get on a high-profile website like Medium.

I’ll post back here with results.

 

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Thoughts About a Potential Improvement System

I just happened to read my post about how a weight training system helped me quite a bit and then mused that I should have something similar for improvements in my business and personally. Then I read the following post which had more ideas about what I could put together.

And those were both way back in 2020 and I haven’t done anything yet.

Well, while I was reading I had some ideas. What if I put together some sort of end-of-day (or maybe start-of-day?) ranking system that lists all of my current initiatives and then I rate myself on how I’m doing on them.

Perhaps weekly, I could remove things that are no longer important initiatives.

And that’s it, that would be the system.

Why would this work?

First, it would keep things very simple. I don’t like the idea of a clumsy, complicated system that’s a lot of work to manage.

But what would make it effective would be the following:

  1. It would keep all important initiatives top-of-mind
  2. It would help me track how they are going over time
  3. It would motivate me to actually make progress so that I can put good numbers down

The last one is probably the most important. This has worked with my daily survey I fill out personally, because every time I put down bad numbers I feel guilty or ashamed, and every time I put down good numbers I feel accomplished.

It motivates me to get those good numbers.

So what would I put on this list?

It would be things like new habits I’m trying to develop, long-term efforts like trying to find and purchase other website hosting companies or setting up my fine art photography website, and possibly short-term projects as well.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the perfect time to respond to this daily questionnaire would be when I’m putting together my to-do list for the day. This happens almost every single day, usually late in the morning.

I think I would phrase the question like, “How do you think you performed  yesterday with regard to the following projects:” and then it would list each of them on a 1-10 scale.

If I didn’t do any work at all on a project, that’s a 1. If I did minimal, maybe higher.

Or for a habit, if I failed at it completely, that’s a 1. I suppose if I did it but it wasn’t great, that’s a… 5 or 6. If it was fully engrained and went perfectly, that’s a 10.

I think this could actually work quite nicely. I just need to decide how I want to do it. I use Google forms for my other questionnaire but I don’t love it. It could get a little weird over time as I’m adding and removing initiatives, too.

But, I think it’s worth a shot at least to start. I’ll make a note to start it up in a couple weeks when I’m back from Mendoza and we’ll see how it goes.

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Interesting Business Model – hostadvice.com

I use the site hostadvice.com quite a bit to quickly determine where a website is being hosted. It’s not perfect but it’s a nice thing to have in your back pocket.

(Side note: I just submitted my own business to their site in the hopes of getting a backlink which would be extremely useful – might need to look up other lists of hosts and submit myself)

I was using it today and I realized how brilliant of a business strategy it is.

Basically they provide a simple, free tool (the ability to check who hosts a website) and then over additional information and affiliate links off of that.

They get tons of traffic and links with their tool, which helps them also rank highly for other hosting-related keywords.

They don’t really have customers at all. They just sell other people’s products and profit from that.

It’s brilliant!

I would love to do something like that. Build some kind of basic tool that does something people really want, and then build a whole affiliate marketing site off of it.

It checks all of the boxes of my dream job: no sales, no clients, no boss, no employees (potentially), no schedule, and fully remote.

The site is basically a glorified online directory, but with this tool it becomes quite legitimate.

I don’t currently have any ideas of what I could do along those lines but I should keep my eyes peeled for anything like that, and certainly start thinking about what I might be able to put together along those same lines.

 

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BNI Made me Complacent

Perhaps I’m not accepting enough responsibility on this topic given the title, but I feel that I became fairly complacent with my business in BNI.

There was this sense that I could simply be in BNI and that my business would grow. And it sort of felt like that was actually the case for many years.

Granted, I was fairly active in the chapter and more or less did the things I was supposed to do.

But I was still coasting. I didn’t really do anything else in my business at all. I just went to BNI, got clients, and did the client work.

That’s basically it.

I’m really not blaming BNI here because it wasn’t really their fault. In fact, it was the early success of that system that made me feel like I could just coast.

And coast I did, for quite a while. Granted, things did generally improve year-over-year. I started with nothing and grew slowly to where I was making a real living. I bought a house, paid off my debts, and slowly started transitioning to where I am now where I can travel the world, go wherever I want, and hopefully retire early.

But there’s so much more that I could and should have been doing.

What’s most frustrating to me now is that I didn’t even notice when BNI stopped working for me. It had probably been at least 3 solid years with virtually no new outside business. And it’s a huge time commitment.

I was a part of a lesser group for a short time (which will remain nameless), but at least in that one, I realized that I wasn’t actually getting any business and it was demanding a lot from me, so I quit.

Why didn’t I do that with BNI?

I guess it’s because it had been such a crucial part of my business for so long and can be credited with the early growth of my company. For the longest time, it would be sacrilege to suggest that I leave.

So much like some of my romantic relationships, I just didn’t question it and it went on far too long.

And actually, just like my relationships, things have become so much clearer after leaving.

Even up to the moment I quit, I was still second-guessing myself. I didn’t know if I was making the right choice.

But it didn’t take long after I left before I was much more confident in my decision. Having my Tuesday mornings free and not having to worry about all of the duties that come along with being in a chapter were immediately liberating.

And it didn’t affect my business coming in at all, since there really hadn’t been any for a long time.

I’m not sure every post really needs to have a lesson, but I guess in this case, I just think it’s important to take a step back from things and really analyze whether they are benefiting me.

That could apply to literally anything. Relationships, memberships, service offerings, hobbies, and more.

Just because I’ve been doing something a long time doesn’t mean they serve my interests anymore.