Tag Archive for: Value For Money

It’s true, code is poetry. Well, that’s what WordPress would like.

Unfortunately, if something bad happens to your website, the only poem you’ll be reciting is something like ‘oh WordPress, you’ve made me depressed….’.

It doesn’t though, have to be this way.

I’ve had clients in the past, that I had told to take their business elsewhere, simply for the fact that they considered their website was really just a part-time thing, that would look after itself.

To give you an example, I was contacted by a client who’s website had been out of action (it was broken) for approximately 8 months. That is eight months that people could have thought they were out of business, or considered that their business was ‘that bad’, that is wasn’t ‘worth’ the time of day.

Websites break. That is the reality. It could be that a vulnerability was found in your contact form (for example), and a fix may have been issued. Hackers can ‘easily’ locate websites that are not updated regularly, and exploit them through a ‘back door’ vulnerability, such as my example of the contact form. Simple updates can resolve problems, and prevent data breaches and theft of customer, or business information, such as credit card details, addresses, etc.

What price though, do you put on this information?

Website management should be an integral part of your online presence. You service your car regularly right? You mow your lawn? Go to the doctor? Well then, you should be vigilant regarding your website’s health, and ensure it’s functioning properly.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be introducing a monitoring service, that shall compliment my Auditing and Security services.

There may be figures that I’ve splashed around, but I believe the number I’m going to settle on, is $99 per month. This amount will include in it, a basic audit and security check, as well as plugin updates and general website health checks.

If you’re new to my site, there is one thing you may notice. I don’t hide from the fact that I’m not cheap, and am not concerned about people leaving when they see the price. The one thing I’m proud of, is the fact that I’ve managed to do this work as a freelancer for so long, without the need of looking for work – in fact, I turn more potential work away, than what I actually do.

I made a choice a few years back, to work on my own terms, and the reality is, at the end of the day, you are the one that decides whether to use my services, or not. I have no intention of competing with anyone on price, or comparing my skills to anyone else.

The decision to offer monitoring services was simply to allow me to focus more on the Auditing and Security aspect of my business. I’m currently engaging with several developers to come on board and help grow my business to the next level. Judging by the amount of work on offer at the moment, I believe people are now accepting (and embracing) WordPress is the future of personal, small business and e-commerce websites.

For your sake, I hope you choose to ensure the security of your website. Obviously, I am not the only person that can help you – there are a few people out there. Be sure to choose a WordPress Professional, someone that understands code, not someone who ‘just’ stumbled upon WordPress and decided ‘I can do this’. They’ll take your money and run.

You have a choice, choose wisely.

If you are interested in having your website monitored, or need to ask something, please contact me.

When you do this kind of work, which is so obviously web-related, and especially work from home, people often snicker behind your back about the ‘fact’ that you don’t leave home – so HOW on earth do you find the work that you ‘claim’ to do?

Interesting question. Kind of.

The first couple of years, after you decide to go down the freelancing / independent / self-employed route, it’s tough. Real tough.

Nobody has your back. You’re left out in the wilderness, with not many people wanting to pass on any work (for fear that you’re no good).

I guess that like everything in life, people have their own ways of finding ‘a way’ to succeed in their chosen path.

Personally, the way I succeeded was simple. I built my own websites and signed up as an affiliate to a lot of companies. Some websites I built were niche (adult), but they all did alright – they did what I wanted them to do, they made money.

Suddenly, I would get emails from people, asking if I could help build them a website, and THAT is how it started.

When I moved onto WordPress, and eventually eCommerce sites, I began to join forums, and I would purchase WordPress themes to test them out, see what they could do. If I came across an error, or even a ‘better’ way for something to be implemented, I’d reach out to the developer – free of charge.

Now, some developers reach out to me. But now, I charge. Not only do I ‘find’ work in this manner, but every now and then I login to a theme support page and look at problems people are having – you have to remember, a lot of people try and work out this whole WordPress thing themselves, until they can’t. Generally, I’ll help them – for free, but they know where to find me if they need more help. This is where my paid service begins.

Over the past decade, I’ve helped thousands of people in this way – and found repeat clients as a result, and they also refer people to me. They are happy to pay what I ask, because I helped and respected them early on, without charge. And, they know I can help them. Providing free support for work you’ve done is also an added bonus that people like. Mind you, it is built into the price, and my clients know that.

I know this post is short, but the experience gained over the years, and the work that’s gone into helping people build and maintain their websites, is massive. I definitely didn’t get to this point overnight.

People in general, I believe, just don’t understand the amount of work available using this platform – if you’re good. So far this month, I’ve completed (about) 120 hours of work, with no shortage of work to do. Actually, I didn’t want to do anything this month at all – November was a 200 hour month, and I need a break. I’ll stick it out though, you never know what’s around the corner.

If you’re interested in Website Design / Development, stay motivated. Read up, stay focused and even watch (and subscribe) to some experts, like Stefan Mischook on YouTube, see below.

Are you a WordPress Professional, looking for some extra work? If so, I could use some extra hands. Contact me using the link at the top of this page.

As always, if you have a question, contact me.

All that hard work, and you’ve just given it away, for free. Or have you?

One thing that any developer faces constantly, is plagiarism. We spend countless hours building websites for clients, just to have some (or all) of the content we create, stolen by some low life, looking at benefiting from our hard work.

When someone is paying (well really costing, YOU) $88 an hour (going up to $100 per hour on January 1,2019), for me to create not only a decent website, but provide a ‘story’ for their site – that is, to word their ‘about us’, ‘services’ (etc) pages to create a unique website that encompasses their business and services to the public, to then have that information stolen, is theft, plain and simple.

People think (about themselves), oh wow, “I’m really stupid (obviously), and cannot think of what to write, I’ll copy it from another website that describes what I want people to think I do”, that is, content that was created by a professional, and PAID for by someone else.

We could just end it there, but it doesn’t end there.

If for example, I create a website for a plumber, and the site looks good, content is great, it’s fast loading and the client is happy and they have some SEO (search engine optimization) work done to boost it’s presence in search engines like Google, all that hard work could come undone after search engines like Google, send its’ bots to the new website and find out that ‘identical content’ (re plagiarism) is all over the website, all because someone copy and pasted (stole) the content from another website.

If Google, for example, deems that the original work is the plagiarized content, that website gets punished, through lower ranking – if it ranks at all!

If you have a website built by another developer, and THEY are responsible for ALL of your content, and THEY copy and paste content from other websites, YOU have wasted your money. On the flip side, if you’ve provided content that YOU stole from other websites, and tell the developer to use it, once again, YOU have wasted your money.

Google, is a pretty smart company. They employ fantastic techs, that develop great, innovative code that picks up on work that is so obviously plagiarized. There are tools available online to not only find out if your content was copied from another website, but there are also tools to report this to most search engines.

What do I do to combat the possibility of someone copying my content? Well, the moment I build a site, I submit that sites’ content to Google (being the major and superior search engine), and Googles’ bot take a snapshot of my work. If Google discovers that my content is copied TO another website, it won’t rank THAT website (punished). Simple. That’s just one way to protect your content.

Knowing that a website will suffer in rankings due to copied content (plagiarism), if your developer OR you decide to go down that ‘I’m not creative, nor professional enough to care’ route, well, you’ve wasted your money.

The only time you wouldn’t have wasted money, is if EVERYONE knows your website, and they just go to www…….

Well, we all know that not everyone knows you and your website, and if they did, why have the website built WITH the copied content?

There are no shortcuts to building websites. Paying a company good money, to NOT be ranked – and by being ranked, I’m not talking about being on page 100, is just crazy. Well, if you’re willing to do it, I guess YOU are crazy?

The upside to people plagiarizing content, is that if, for example, site A is copied by site B, C, D, E, F, G H etc, Google (for example) will automatically know and rank higher ‘site A’, because they automatically know that site A is the most authoritative site, BECAUSE it is the one everyone is copying!

So then, what is the point of doing it? Well, some people just have websites built to make themselves look good, to try and fool others into believing they ‘actually’ do something. These people, are considered con-artists.

If, on the other hand, you are legit and believe it will give you a short term (matter of days) boost to rank your site, so be it. Websites are a long term, on-going investment.

This is why I don’t need to advertise, it’s why I don’t need to worry about ranking high, although I do for certain things. Google understands that my content is unique. I build fast websites, that look good, function well, and most of all, work for my clients.

At Crain, our motto is simple;

Think. Be Different.

This is why I can afford to be selective, choosing to work only with clients that allow me the freedom to do my thing, and they are more than happy to pay me for my services. I’m not in this ‘game’ to make a quick buck, at the expense of others.

As I stated earlier in this post, there are tools to combat plagiarism. You may find the article below on Shout Me Loud interesting – they have some very interesting posts. There, you”ll find out how and where to report the websites that are stealing content from you.

If you are reading this out of pure interest, thanks for reading, and I hope it was useful in some way.

If you are reading this and are wondering ‘how do I know if a website is copying content?’, simply highlight a sentence and right click with your mouse (I use Chrome), and simply click onto ‘Search Google for…..’ and if it’s copied, Google will provide the results.

Perhaps, it’s even good to highlight some of your own content occasionally, if you notice a drop in rankings – it may be that someone copied your content, and ‘you’ are being punished in rankings.

As always, if you need to contact me regarding any WordPress issues, contact me using the contact link at the top of the page.