A Career In WordPress?

Have you ever considered becoming a Freelance WordPress Professional?

Maybe you’ve been thinking about a change of pace, wanting to work hours outside of ‘the norm’, with the intent of creating a better work/ life balance?

A few years ago, one could be forgiven for thinking that the likes of SquareSpace would be the end of WordPress, but like me, you’d be wrong.

There was a period, after a massive push on YouTube [ sponsoring creators ] to try and grow their market share, and one could argue it hasn’t worked how they hoped.

Depending upon a few factors, you can enter a certain niche [ within WordPress ] and if you’re good, and if you can build up your Brand Reputation, you can do extremely well – remember, your Brand, is YOU.

For some, working from home is a non-starter, they just cannot handle working from the same place they eat and sleep, or because of children running around etc. But, if you have an old shed, make it your space – convert it into your work office and ONLY enter it DURING your work hours. I mean, even cleaning – that’s work, so incorporate that into your work cycle. Don’t think to yourself that for every minute on the computer, is a paying minute. You need to stay ahead of updates, learn new things and generally stay on top of trends.

I’ve set myself a target of 25% of my working day into performing everything else that isn’t work, but work related. For example, 40 hours of a working week consist of 10 hours of non-billing work. Thirty hours at my hourly rate, isn’t bad, but the tax…..in a nutshell, set up a Trust. Make YOUR money work for you. I’m quite content only pulling $18K PA in a salary.

At my current pace, now, remembering that I really only wanted to come back as a ‘casual’, if I currently wanted to, I could be working 70 hours per week, the work is there. I’m turning away quite a lot of work, for several reasons, but mainly because I want a life. I’m at that age where balance is more important, and we don’t need anything.

Your Reputation Is Key To Your Brand

If you’re interested in becoming a Freelancer, do your research and be sure it’s what you really want. I have friends that own ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses where they employ people, have huge debt, but take home less than me. They have massive burdens and stress in their lives, whereby I don’t – and I earn more than them.

Options are there, it’s a matter of whether or not you prefer to be a slave and live week to week, or decide to make your own way, at your pace.

My biggest decision today, is whether I want pasta or grilled fish for lunch. What’s yours?

Your future is yours to make. Decide well.

Feel free to give this post a share or seven, it would be appreciated :)

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STOP Spam Email Today

Are you tired of getting spam email from your WordPress website? I’m pretty sure you are.

Chances are, the majority of the spam emails you are getting, go directly into the spam folder. That can’t be helped, because most email providers such as Microsoft and Google have their own methods to try and combat spam email reaching your inbox.

The problem with emails being marked as spam, is that legitimate emails get marked as spam, and if you’re like most people, you’ll just ignore emails that have gone into your spam folder, which in turn means that you may be missing out on job opportunities [ if your website is for business ] meaning less income.

Going so far as providing a CAPTCHA on your contact form, will not really prevent spammers sending you messages through your contact form, they’ll simply enter the CAPTCHA and hit send.

We need to put up some speed bumps to slow these spammers down. If you put up some speed bumps, the spammers won’t worry about you because you are too much hard work, and know you won’t respond anyway.

Email spammers base their ‘efforts’ on the law of average. According to a report from Sitepoint.com in 2008, spammers get a response just once for every 12.5 million emails they send — a response rate of 0.000008%. Despite that, though, spammers are still able to turn a profit. This is the reason why you get so much spam – it’s a numbers game.

Step One; I have always suggested [ and swear by it ], that the email you use for your Contact Form on your WordPress website, should contain a mix of words and numbers, such as arnie34by20sky7@…. for example. Nobody is going to think of an email like this, and nobody needs to know about it – it’s just an email address to forward emails to you from your WordPress website.

Step Two; Set up an email verification function. In doing this, the person attempting to contact you is required to enter all their information on the form, then enter their email address and click ‘confirm email’, then they need to go to their email client and retrieve the code and enter the code on your contact form – the code may be sent straight away, or they might have to wait a few minutes. For spammers, it’s a non-starter. Your website will be ignored, saving you from getting spam, therefore saving you time and money.

The total number of spam emails I’ve received since implementing this function is – 0. Prior to setting up this function, spam wasn’t really out of control by any means, but I would still get a dozen or so spam emails each day, even though I used a CAPTCHA!

If you are concerned that people will not contact you because of this ‘extra’ requirement on your contact form, don’t worry – if someone needs to contact you, they will. In a world where people try taking advantage of others, we all understand that these functions are now required.

If you would like me to set this up for you, please contact me.

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A Life Audit

Here at CrainWP, I specialize in WordPress Security, and WordPress Website Auditing.

Recently, I’ve been ‘auditing’ my life. I made a point 53 weeks ago today, to stop using social media and become more private.

Over the past week, I began deleting most of my websites, email addresses, iPhone apps, stored photographs and videos, I’ve marked furniture, clothing and tools for disposal, and basically anything else I no longer need, that I can throw away.

We all have things in our life we don’t need. They hold us back. They give us too much choice. They ruin our lives. We don’t need so much.

In most part, I originally began winding back from ‘showing’ too much, because I want a more private life. In doing this, I found that I have too much in my life that I don’t really need. It kind of begs the question, why did I bother in the first place? It’s a question that I simply cannot answer.

As part of my winding down / back, I disposed of my ABN and my .com.au domain names. I don’t want or really need them. I registered a few .com domains, this being one of them.

With regards to email addresses, I had more than a dozen and I’ve wound that down to 3 now. When building websites for people, I’ve always recommended they use a free email address and stick with it, because domain names come and go, and if you use an email address from your domain name, then end up not renewing it, you cannot be certain that someone else will not register the domain, and all your dirty little secrets and private information will be viewed by strangers. There’s a function in cPanel, that allows all unrouted emails to be discarded (it’s called a black hole).

My ‘personal website’ is now deleted, so there’s absolutely no pressure to add content, update it or worry about putting something up that I may later regret, for privacy reasons.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the best things you can do, is have a personal website – you can post what you like without worrying about being banned, or people posting stupid comments. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve decided that there’s no requirement for me to have a personal website, if you catch my drift.

I think I’ll keep this domain name, until such time that I want to also walk away from it as well. I’m pretty sure[?] I’ll have it for another 10 years, we’ll see.

Scrolling through my phone contacts and messages last night, I kept coming across names of people that haven’t actually called me in years. I have ‘bumped into’ these people whilst out and about, and they all say the same thing – ‘you haven’t called for ages’!!. Seeing it takes two to tango, I saw no point in having their number, so I deleted them. Wasn’t only friends though, family were included in the mass deletion.

When I look at everything, all I see is clutter, and I want to clear it.

We now live in a world where we must have something due to FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. Trust me, you’re not missing out on anything.

In fact, Vicki and I sat down at Lake Alexandra Reserve in Mittagong the other week and had a coffee. Near us was a mother and her four children, and on the table was about $10 of hot chips. The mother pulled out her phone and began taking photos. I looked at Vicki and said ‘those were the days’, she grinned, then we started a conversation of when we were kids. I miss the ‘old days’.

Everybody needs to take a step back and go back to basics, so they can really enjoy what is important.

I’m probably just getting old, or it may very well be that I’ve now discovered what is most important in life, and I can tell you, it’s not ‘things’.

I’ll try to not put up much [ on this website ] that is not related to WordPress, but this is the only place I have now to voice my opinions, and let people know what I’m doing – well, those that are interested anyway.

Do you need A Life Audit? 

Perhaps your WordPress Website does, contact me.

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