Tag Archive for: Creativity

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.

/by

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.

/by

Time Management – Website Vs Social Media

So many people. So many products to sell, so many services to offer.

I’ve written about Brand Awareness previously, please check it out.

The purpose of this post IS about Branding, but more to point, your Brand – YOU.

Facebook is a Brand. Twitter is a Brand. Instagram is a Brand. Understand?

By directing people to your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, what you’re actually doing, is sending their attention away from YOU.

Build You. Promote You. BRAND YOU.

It’ important that you build your own Brand. Spending time / WASTING time on social media, is not building your Brand.

Where do you start? By building your website.

EDIT – March 3, 2019.

Wow, time goes so fast, doesn’t it? I started writing this post on January 2nd.

Sorry for the delay in finishing this post, I’ve been just a little busy, but I’ve got enough time at the moment to finish this post!

OK, I’ve written about Brand Awareness Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Depending on your commitment, experience and whether you are serious enough, or not, will determine if you even have a ‘Brand’.

My commitment  for the past dozen or so years to the WordPress Platform, for example, has allowed me to take on as much (or little) work as I like, because I’ve built up a reputation with a lot of theme developers, and I’ve made a name for myself on many online (theme) forums, assisting people with their WordPress installations, whether it be paid or free assistance. I did the work to build up my name, therefore, Crain is a Brand – for WordPress Development, Customization and Security.

So, what does this have to do with Social Media?

Several years ago, I was working with another guy on a project. His emphasis was placed on promoting via Facebook. Engagement through the Facebook page was terrible. He resorted to buying followers which is a total waste of time, money, AND effort. And it’s not a good look – people can see through it.

Think about this for a moment;

You spend money buying, let’s say, 25,000 followers. These followers usually aren’t ‘real people’ interested in what you have to say or offer. ‘They’ don’t plan on engaging with you – at all. Chances are, some con-artist has paid groups of extremely poor people from third world countries a few cents to set up fake Facebook accounts, and set up a business selling followers at highly inflated prices – and making a killing, financially.

So; You have all these 25,000 ‘followers’ that aren’t real, following you. You put up a post, that gets seen by a complete stranger that likes your post – but doesn’t follow you, and most likely will never visit your page again.

Let me get this straight. I’m not here to bash Facebook, I’m merely using it as an example. If you like posting about your personal life and keeping up with family and friends, Facebook is not that bad. Buying followers also happens on other social media, such as Twitter and Instagram, and other, less known social media apps / websites.

Now, This is interesting. There are some very big businesses, like Envato, a digital assets business (that for one part, provides a platform for WordPress Theme Developers to sell their themes online), well they have a Facebook page which currently has about 215,000 followers. On February 26th, they put up a post that gave them 16 likes, 2 comments and 5 shares.

Then we have the globally known airline, Qantas, that has more than 1.4 million followers, yet only pulls in a few likes per post – well, compared to the number of followers, the number of likes are really insignificant.

It has been suggested that social media engagement with your posts should be no less 5% of your followers. What happened here? I don’t know. But what it DOES show, is that you DON’T need social media to be successful, and they didn’t use social media to boost their brand. Remember that.

My Opinion; There is nothing more ugly than a social media account with hundreds / thousands of followers, that has little to no content / or lots of content – but no likes / comments on posts.

Just think about the time it takes to build up the followers via lots of money from your pocket, then the time you are wasting through posting, with extremely little or no engagement whatsoever.

You really are wasting your time and money. The ONLY people that will disagree with me on this, are the con-artists that are making money off it, and the ‘believers’ that are holding on for some kind of miracle to happen.

Yoast uploaded a post June 7, 2018, titled “Is Facebook getting less important?“. Have a read, you may find it interesting.

I have commented on this website, that having a social media presence is important – you need to be found. It’s also important to have that ‘Brand Name’ across all platforms, but in saying that, it doesn’t ‘have’ to be your actual business name, but you need to associate it ‘as part of your brand’ ON social media, if your actual business name has been taken. For example, I’ve chosen RobertCrainWP as my social media name.

Whatever you do – DON’T register different usernames. Keep them all the same – it makes it so much easier for people to find you, and it doesn’t look ‘messy’.

Remember – social media is not your business. It is a way for people to connect to you. The best way for people to connect with you is via ONE place – your website. Spend your time, and resources, on building a great website that showcases your business, displaying your products and services in a way that social media cannot.

This website is really quite basic. There’s no bells and whistles. It puts my message across, and that’s my only aim. Best thing is, it works! You’ve been to Amazon right? It’s not the best looking website – and in my opinion, it’s almost ugly. BUT, it works – REALLY WELL. That’s all you need, but you can spice it up a little. Images work wonders.

And be careful of dodgy developers that build you a website, using plagiarized content. I won’t name any, but there’s plenty out there. Any developer that copies content from other websites, then expects payment for work completed, is a con-artist, and it’s not good for your Brand.. I wrote a post about this here > Creativity v Plagiarism.

Be unique. Be you. Be your own Brand

And please – Stop wasting your time on social media. Spend time where it really counts. An hour wasted on social media, is an hour wasted from building YOU.

Brand building doesn’t have to cost much money. If you have a great product or service, if you’re great at what you do, you’re half way there already.

If you’re not serious about what you do, or are out there to make a quick buck, feel free to waste your time and money on social media.

When building a Brand, only serious people need apply. Loyalty and Respect will follow you, if you treat customers / clients with the respect they deserve. Remember, they are deciding whether or not to give you money. If they refer people to you, you’re on your way to building your Brand.

As always, feel free to contact me if you like. There are plenty of ways to share my content to your friends on social media, if they’re interested. I’d appreciate you spending a few seconds clicking that share button.

Until next time, have fun!

 

/by