To Website or Not to Website

8 Reasons Why You Need a Website

So you are thinking about building a website.  It’s a daunting prospect with many choices and technological challenges.  It can be rather expensive.  It’s enough to scare a person away.

“Can’t I Just Use Social Media?”

There ARE some business models using social media.  LuLaRoe is an example of a Facebook sales model, using online “events” to sell.  Many of us do something needing more than a Facebook page.

Some writers only use LinkedIn, and do decently.  Others struggle to make it work as the only web presence for their business.   

 What About Fiverr or Similar?

Whatever you do, don’t look to places like Fiverr to do your marketing for you.  The extremely low pay isn’t worth it.  You’ll never receive the respect or pay you deserve doing those kinds of jobs.

What you really need is your own “storefront.”  It gives your ideal prospect all of the reasons they need to select you for the work they need done.

My Eight Reasons Why You Need a Website

1. It says “professional.”  Someone who has invested the time and/or money into building a website is serious.  Your business is not a temporary operation.
2. It gives you a “professional” email.  I know I already said professional, but I’ve heard so many people say this, including the guy that sold me my computer.  They don’t take a “business” seriously, considering it a hobby at best, if they can’t be bothered to get a professional email.
3. It gives you a space to reach professionals who lack patience for LinkedIn.  Some people agree that social media is great for connections, yet mostly avoid it as a time-waster.
4. It gives your prospects your information, allowing them to qualify themselves for your services based on what they learn.  This saves both of you time.
5. It gives you a platform to display samples of your work.
6. It gives you a place to create an online schedule so they can set up appointments without the wrangling back and forth by email over when they are available.
7. It gives your prospects a fast and easy payment solution, particularly if you expect partial pre-payment to get started.
8. It’s available 24/7.  Did you take a holiday?  Maybe your prospect is trying to get ahead of the ball (or play catch-up) and is looking for someone like you.  You don’t have to miss the opportunity because your website is open for business any time of day or night.

There are more reasons, but you get the idea.        

Get Taken Seriously

Give your prospect ample reasons to take you seriously.  Show them why you are the best solution for their problem with a simple website. 

Next week, I’ll talk about what sort of things you need on your website to show off your freelance business.

Weekly Challenge

I spent the past week working with a non-work related project, doing work around the edges as I could.  I see God’s hand in it and the project is out of my hands. 

I’m making progress through the 80/20 Sales and Marketing Book as well as the Information Marketing Book.  Both are very interesting.

This week, I’ll be working through American Writers & Artists Inc’s Build Your Freelance Website in 4 Days.  (I don't have any affiliate marketing agreements right now.  I'm just sharing this because I find it incredibly helpful - more on that next week!) I’m working on the writing portions this week and I’ll play with the techy stuff next week.

School of Freelance Hard Knocks: Email

The Email Mistake You Don’t Need to Make

Funny thing happened today.  

I was researching to see how a process worked.  One thing led to another, then another.  I found myself in a quagmire and I hadn’t even started writing.  So let me tell you what happened.  Hopefully it won’t happen to you.

The topic of today’s post is about your email address.  It can hurt if you don’t take this seriously.  I dislike that it’s a thing.  Ignore at your own risk.  

So, I learned I had a problem.  When I started to take steps to correct is, I discovered I had a bigger problem.

Where It All Started

Last fall, I opened up my business entity, a sole proprietorship.  I wanted to have some business cards to hand out at the conference I was attending in Florida in October.

I remember getting overwhelmed and not understanding business entities very well.  What I did understand was that it was easier to start a sole proprietorship.  Cheaper too, which was a plus.  I could always change it later, right?

So I was still finishing my coursework.  Time got away from me.  More classes to take.  More ways to put off the big scary thing:  asking for pay in exchange for services.  But I digress.

The more I talk to other business owners, the more I’m convinced I need to form an LLC.

A Small Detail

Why is that an issue today?  I'm dealing with email, right?  

Well, I need a domain name to deal with the email issue.  Looking into the domain issue, I discovered someone else has my business name as an LLC.  

If I stay as a sole proprietorship, I’m fine.  However, I’d rather avoid the confusion, where possible.  

I haven’t done a lot of marketing yet aside from networking on LinkedIn.  If I’m going to change my name, now is the time to do it before I have stationery printed.   I need move forward meaningfully with my workshop in a couple of weeks.  

I would have been wise to consider this last fall, but here I am.   Moving forward, feeling farther behind.

Progress Killer

So … to get my email, I need my domain.  To get my domain, I need my new business entity set up.  Instead of simply getting a domain and getting my email set up this morning, I’ve been researching business names.  

Choosing Email Wisely

Like anyone pursuing a new career, I’m busy.  Focused on important details of skills growth, forming a business entity, bank accounts, etc. - who cares what my email address is!  It’s the quality of what I produce that counts, right?

People I’m currently working with don’t seem to be bothered in the least by my email address.  Then again, it’s a labor of love (otherwise known as pro-bono.)   

Why should I worry about what my email looks like?  Turns out it could be costing me clients.

Email as a Statement

Quite a few business owners and people with hiring power talk about this.   They don’t take someone seriously without a “professional” email address.

Late last week, my new computer guru echoed the sentiment.  He added that it’s cheap to get a domain.  You don’t even have to set up the website.  Just use it to create your email.  You can even use Gmail to do it. 

But his bottom line?  People aren’t serious about their work if they don’t have a professional email address.  An email address makes a statement about a business before opening the email.  That statement could cause it to be deleted - unread.

Unfair?  Sure.  Facing a full inbox, it’s not surprising someone looks for  dis-qualifiers to tame the monster.  You don't want it to be yours, right?

Getting Out of Email Purgatory

By now, you’ve already figured out your Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail address isn’t going to cut it.  You need to buy their business services to use the email client you are familiar with, while presenting your best professional persona to your business contacts.  

There are some freebies out there, but user complaints suggest non-existent customer service and terrible spam filtering make paying worthwhile. The technology might not be as helpful as you are used to.  Definitely worth the time to do the research if you want to use a free option.

Oh, and choosing your business name now might be better than changing it down the road. 

Weekly Challenge

I ended up getting a used laptop last week.  I was determined to buy new.  However, my husband asked me to give a local company a call.  Listening to the owner on the phone, I was convinced a used one he had was worth a look. 

Servicing local businesses for the past twenty years, it made sense to buy from him.  Next time, I’ll probably buy new from him.

Now I need to get it set up and start working tutorials.  I get to learn programs I’ve never worked with before.  That can only help me move forward more effectively.

I chickened out of my weekly challenge this past week.  I worked on other parts of the assignment but not the calls.  I decided I’d better get a professional email address first.  What I didn’t realize was I needed to call a lawyer first.  Isn’t starting a business fun?

My weekly challenge is to get the ball rolling for my new business entity so I can get a domain, email address …. logo, business card, etc.

The Stress of Technological Ignorance

When the Computer Steals Your Day

If you are tech savvy, this isn’t the post for you … unless you would enjoy laughing at my mishaps.  In which case … enjoy.  Ha!  Maybe you can even tell me what happened!

Yesterday, I had things I needed to get done.  Playing with my computer wasn’t on the list.  Has this ever happened to you?  Your day stolen by a wayward computer?  

It's like my computer has a cold: 

·         Slowly doing tasks

·         Sometimes won’t stream

·         Sometimes didn't do things

Yesterday, it had a coughing fit.  It restarted itself every 10 minutes.  There was little time to do anything else.  My day was stolen because I chose to be ignorant.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

If you've been with me for a while, you know this about me.  I know how to do things that get the job done and haven’t cared much about the rest.  I’ve tolerated it’s poor behavior for quite a while.

 “It’s too complicated to figure out right now,” I would tell myself.  If I didn’t need it, it wasn’t going to get my attention.  Well, it got my FULL attention yesterday.  I couldn’t do anything with it until I fixed it.

I had lots of choices:

·         Get overwhelmed and stressed out.  (Easy default position.) 

·         Take the credit card to the store and get the laptop I looked at a few months ago.

·         Try to figure this thing out.  (“Yeah right!” and “Save money” vied for the upper hand.)

I tried to figure it out, but felt lost.  I started to get overwhelmed and stressed, but took a step back. It was easy to see this wasn’t going to matter a year from now, much less on my deathbed.   

I relaxed and let it go.  I didn’t need to generate unnecessary stress with the wrong mindset. This helped tremendously.  Otherwise I might have rendered myself  nearly incapable in frustration and I still needed my wits about me for the meeting yesterday evening.

Counting it as lost, I developed a back-up plan.  Any effort to salvage this machine would be a bonus. I'd be able to limp along a few more weeks, if successful.  

I tried to use my phone to search for answers, but I was shooting in the dark.  Then I got the bright idea to try a scan for malware.  That produced results and I quarantined them.  The problem continued more frequently.  Now I got barely 3-5 minutes.  I wasn't amused by it's apparent love affair with boots.

The thing I was trying to research, ntkrpamp, was adequately answered.  My eyes glazed over at the very long page of links to read about it.  Which one to pick?  How to understand this semi-foreign language? 

And then it rebooted – yet again.  Saved by the reboot.  Never managed to find my way back there. 

My browser did an update, and after a couple more restart cycles, it magically stopped.

The bottom line?  I still don’t know what the problem was or why it’s not still mal-functioning.  However, I’m not going to poke a lion to see why it’s not biting!

Here’s what I got out of yesterday:

Back-up planning is crucial. 

·         Having a second computer available is a wise idea.  Tai Lopez talks about building forgiveness into the system.  That means having another option when the first one breaks down.

·         Having data backed up is smart too.  Last week, I missed on an opportunity to have some writing critiqued.  I even missed on my morning stuff because I was late, just so I wouldn’t be late on the submission deadline.  I typed the email address incorrectly (by one letter.)  I was away when I found out.  If I’d had a cloud account and backed up to it, I could have resubmitted.

A good maintenance routine may save some time.

·         I will develop a list of things to make sure happen weekly.  I don’t like to set things to happen automatically because I might be working strange hours and can be disruptive.  I need to deal with it myself so junk files don’t build up and slow my computer.

·         Defragmenting once a month might not be a bad idea either.

Plan is in place for my new computer.

·         If it’s an emergency, I’ll get a Lenovo.  I can run right out and get it. 

·         If it’s not an emergency, I’ll get an Apple MacBook.  I don’t know that I’ll make my second computer an Apple, just because of the higher expense.  I still need to decide how I’ll go about the back-up computer.  But using a cloud-based back up will give some assurance that I can jump right back into things.

Last week, I promised I’d do something to put myself out there more.  So I shared one of these posts on Facebook.  It increased the views 350%. Since this is new, that’s not hard.    But I did it.

My challenge this week will be to do something toward marketing myself AND develop my maintenance plan.  I’ll need to research what is needed for my machine and for my phone.  I’m sure maintenance is good for both.

What is your maintenance plan?  Did you buy software and have everything automated?  Please share.   And if you have a clue what might have happened, please do tell!