300,000 Years’ Experience?

Um. OK. Parts of this post are meant to be kind of ‘sarcastic’ in nature. You’ll understand.

Several days ago, I received an email from, whom I believe was just a ‘competitor’, or someone trying to ‘belittle’ me? Not sure. Their IP is located in Queensland, but I haven’t bothered looking into it. BUT, it led me to think about writing about the seriousness of ‘con-artists’ trying to tell people that they should be ‘THE’ go-to for WordPress assistance.

I’m not going to publish the email, the persons ‘name’, or provide their Outlook email address. It’s probably fake anyway.

In the email, I was asked about my ’10 + Years’ working with WordPress. It went on to say, that there are businesses out there that have dozens of years’ of experience, then questioned my rate, saying that (business name provided) charges a ‘LOT’ less than I do.

For full disclosure, I actually say quite a lot here, on this website and elsewhere, that I’m not cheap.

I don’t particularly care what other people charge. My rate is my rate. I get so much work, that I actually outsource two thirds of it (and earn 25% of the work passively, btw), to other WordPress Professionals. Even after posting a couple of months ago, that I was winding down for 6 months, the requests keep coming, and I’m still doing 6-8 hours per night – 6 to 7 days per week.

If you are the owner of a business that provides professional WordPress services, and are the person that sent the email I discussed above, just contact me directly and if you’re genuine, and can handle some more work, I’ll pass some on to you.

I’m still trying to get my head around the ‘motive’ of the email. Childish behavior comes to mind. I mean, if you want to make me feel bad (or try to) go to a very busy city, get on your soap box and tell people how bad and expensive I am. Actually, I’ll join you and talk about the ridiculous ‘idea’ that you somehow have dozens of years in collective experience.

This is the purpose of the Post – 300,000 years’ experience.

I’ve never come to the ‘understanding’ that a business has x-multiple-amount of years’ experience. I can understand if you learnt an old traditional way of doing something – for example, lopping trees in a way that was done 200 years ago.

Imagine this. Bunnings, the hardware shop, has hundreds of warehouses scattered around Australia, and employs more than 30,000 people. For the sake of this exercise, lets round it down to 30,000.

Again, for the sake of this exercise, imagine if each employee has worked in hardware for 10 years. Does this then mean that Bunnings has 300,000 years’ of experience? No. Because there were no retail shops, or hardware to sell. I mean, the wheel was only invented around 5,500 years ago. You will never see Bunnings or any other business making such claims.

OK, another example. iPhone X, came out November 2017, but for arguments sake, we’ll say 2 years to round it up. I have no idea how many people worked on the development, but lets say 1000. Would Apple then suggest that there was 2,000 years’ of experience put into the iPhone X? Bloody hell, no.

Right, back to WordPress. WordPress was released in 2003. So, Nobody can claim to have more than 16 years experience with it. No matter how many people work for a business, the years’ of experience can NEVER be greater than its’ creation date.

Me? I became involved in WordPress late – roughly 3 years after it was initially released. I have followed its’ development closely ever since, and need no gimmicks to sell myself to clients.

Bottom line, is that I have 13 years’ experience to date. Even if I was to include those of whom I collaborate with, my experience will still be 13 years. If we all had 13 years experience, I would not be running around saying that my business has 39 years of experience. It’s wrong. It’s misleading, and with all honesty, it does you no favors by saying it.

My sister has traced our family back to somewhere around the year 1200. Should I add up all of my ancestors, and start saying something like ‘I have 40,000 years’ experience breathing’?

Today’s topic was meant to be a little relaxed.

Question or comment on today’s Post? You know what to do. I’d appreciate a share or three, using the links below – that would be great.

Backing up your WordPress website is one of the most important procedures that you, as a website owner, can perform.

I was contacted by a new client during the week that was extremely desperate to get their eCommerce website back up and running, after being hacked. They had no backup. After spending 14 hours sorting out the damage done, securing and providing a safe backup, it cost the owner almost $1700, when all it should have cost, was the price of a plugin (about $50).

Whilst I enjoy getting paid, I feel sorry for people that become complacent (or ignorant) to the dangers that we, as business website owners face, on an almost daily basis.

About a third of my emails are from desperate website owners whose websites have either been hacked – or are self managed (WordPress) sites, that have been broken, because they didn’t know what they were doing, and had NO backup.

Backing Up is a simple routine that EVERY website owner should do manually, or given the right plugin, set-up scheduled back-ups – at least once a month, or preferably on a weekly basis.

The downside of Scheduled Backups – in my opinion

Imagine you’ve set up scheduled backups to be performed each month.

Now, the problem you MAY face, is a hacked or ‘broken’ website that is backed up, that becomes your ‘go-to’ backup in an ’emergency’. Think about the consequences of having a backup of your broken or hacked website.

Best Time To Backup Your Website – in my opinion

As a WordPress Website owner (personal OR business), you should have your website periodically Updated, Audited and Secured by a WordPress Professional.

If the WordPress Professional is any good at their job, they’ll backup your website for you, after they perform the required work. This way, you will have the most up-to-date Plugins, Themes and Security settings (including an optimized database) backed-up and ready to go, just in case something were to happen.

Remember, there’s a lot of bad people on the World Wide Web, that are out to do you harm. Be prepared.

The BEST Backup solution available – in my opinion

Now, I’m not being paid by BACKUP BUDDY – Let’s make this clear. I’m not getting paid any commissions, nor is this a paid advertisement.

Put simply, I believe that as of the date I posted this, it’s the best Backup Plugin you can buy.

There are FREE Backup Plugins in the WordPress Repository, but many, if not all, have restrictions.

WordPress, as a platform to build your website is FREE. Many thousands of Themes and Plugins are FREE as well.

Consider this. What price do you place on your website, especially if you operate a Business / eCommerce website;

Stolen Client Data – hacked website
Completely unusable website – broken
$50 Plugin
or….
Spend $1700 to get your website secured and back in working condition

Stop being cheap bastards, and spend money where you need to, especially when the security of your data, and that of your clients, is at risk.

Conclusion….

Most people don’t think of backups, until it’s too late. Don’t be one of them. Invest in a good plugin to backup your WordPress website.

Take action today, using one of the options I’ve given you;

Please Note; I don’t like handing out FREE how-to instructions on my website. Past experience has shown that people get in touch when their websites break. But, feel free to try things yourself. There is an abundance of websites that can help you (most are outdated though), if you prefer to do things on your own. One such website is WPBeginner.com, who just happens to provide help with your Backup Buddy Plugin.

You can find instructional videos on YouTube, again though, most are outdated, and WordPress is constantly updating, and things change, so just beware. I’m always here if you have trouble.

Every couple of months at a bare minimum, have your website Updated, Audited and Secured by a WordPress Professional. You don’t need to use me, I’m not cheap (but I’m pretty good at what I do, and guarantee my work)

As always, feel free to contact me about this subject or any other WordPress issue you may have.

I’d appreciate it if you shared this post to someone who may be interested. Simply use the share options below this post.