Category: Update

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

The “Managed” Part of Our Hosting Really Is the Selling Point

It’s become abundantly clear to me within the last 6 months or so that what people value most about our website hosting is that it is “managed”.

Sure, they are happy to know that it’s fast and has all these features, but at the end of the day, they don’t really care about that. They just want someone to take care of it for them.

Maybe that doesn’t seem like a great insight to others, but right now it’s a big deal.

I have been a bit shocked to hear that, when offered a faster service for a bit more money, almost none of my clients have been interested at all.

They just don’t care.

What they want is for someone to handle all of this for them.

And I do! I do a good job, too, so they tend to stick around.

And while some are price-conscious, most are not. As long as it’s reasonable and we are doing a good job, they are happy to pay it.

Because they see the value.

Most have been in business a while and probably remember what it was like to work with non-managed hosting. That fear of being totally lost and having to sit on the phone with support drives them to work with us.

And I’m only just this moment realizing that I probably should try to control people’s domains, too. I’ve had some clients lately whose sites went down due to things within their hosting account that I could have easily dealt with.

So going forward, I should recommend that they transfer their domains to me.

I could even charge a premium for “managed domain registration”.

I don’t think much more needs to happen right now. I just need to always keep in mind why people work with me.

It’s not the speed. It’s not the features.

It’s our service.

Posted on

How I Work Best: Setting Goals and Making them Happen

I just read one of my very first blog posts I ever shared here. It’s private so only I can see it.

In it, I lament that I didn’t feel like a top performer, and then talk at length about my younger days and how I maybe did feel that way.

But the example was how I managed to end up ranked #1 in my high school class. Long story short, I had that goal, and I essentially took advantage of all the loopholes I could while doing the bare minimum to accomplish it.

In short, I got it done.

In that blog post, I think I maybe missed the point entirely.

I discussed how maybe I didn’t even deserve it and how it really wasn’t just brute intelligence or ability that allowed me to succeed.

Which is true… But largely irrelevant.

At the end of the day, I did it. I had a goal, and I did what was necessary to accomplish it.

I think to my more recent life. Sure, there’s nothing that makes me feel like I’m an elite performer at anything. There’s no specific talent or ability that I have that’s world-class.

But it wasn’t too long ago when I set out after a goal. I wanted to be able to travel the world. I wanted such complete freedom that I could totally set my own schedule and live abroad for half of the year while still running a successful business.

Ideally while still putting away for an early retirement and generally keeping my other goals and priorities in mind.

And you know what? I completely accomplished that goal within about a year.

It didn’t take any stroke of genius, unbelievable talent, or any other world-class ability to do.

What it did require was a great deal of self-sufficiency, problem solving, self-awareness, growth, determination, and goal-orientation.

Those are what I have.

Perhaps I even have those things to a quietly world-class extent.

Maybe not, but it’s possible!

At the end of the day, I’m making great progress and achieving my goals. I think the key from here is to really break things down into smaller, achievable goals that all build up to much larger goals.

I could start by saying that I’d like to do something I’ve never done yet: add 100 website hosting clients in 2023. I already know how to do it, I just have to work at that.

If I am constantly focusing on my goals and how I can achieve them, I honestly think I will.

Posted on

I Used to Be Excited

It occurred to me the other day that I used to be really excited about my business, and now I’m not.

The thought came during a brief moment of excitement, and I realized it wasn’t something I had felt for a while.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am happy with my business and certainly with the flexibility it gives me in my life.

But there was a time in the past where the possibilities seemed endless and when it felt like I would achieve exponential growth forever.

After a few years of that failing to happen, I no longer feel that way. While I’m just as confident that growth is possible, it just hasn’t been exciting like it was at one point. I no longer have much hope that the growth will be extreme.

So the question is: what can I do about that?

First, I need to start growing again. I need to make a concerted effort to identify ways to grow, and possible more important: identify the obstacles I have to accomplishing it.

For instance, it’s likely that I will need to change how I’m managing many aspects of my business now, because they aren’t scalable. But I also simply need to actually do some of the growth initiatives I’ve been talking about doing for ages.

I like to think that once some of that growth happens, the excitement will come back and I’ll start feeling like anything is possible again. And that, in turn, while encourage me to do even more things to improve.

I just have to get the ball rolling now.

Posted on

I Know How to Grow, I just Haven’t Done It

As I’m reading through old posts and considering my current position, I’m realizing that I probably know exactly how to grow my business and am just not doing it.

Case in point: working with one of my partner companies, they have a variety of websites they’d like us to host. Once they are over to us, we can begin billing for that hosting.

It’s up to me to make sure those sites get migrated. And I just haven’t been doing it.

This is the proverbial “low hanging fruit” and I just haven’t been pursuing it at all, despite the fact that I absolutely have.

Yes: it’s more exciting to talk to a new client and make a new sale. In this case, the sale is already done, and all that remains is the boring logistics of actually migrating the websites and setting up billing.

What this might be reflective of is the fact that I love the conceptual, the novel, and the big-picture. I don’t love details and implementation. But in this case, they are absolutely critical.

Reading through my posts, I also have countless ideas of how to expand my hosting operations. But I’ve barely implemented any of them.

Networking with owners of other website hosting companies would be a great start! So I think it’s time to finally get to that and other ideas.