Jim Carrillo

I have to say, I’m a big fan of WordPress.  Primarily because they don’t pigeon hole you into a site with ads (at least the self hosted version).  As I noted through a previous blog post, I was even able to make a very solid membership site with Wordpress, where each member:

1. could write posts
2. had member profile page
3. could create private pages
4. be identified in the “list of members”

It took me a good month to find all the right plugins for wordpress to make it humm just like I wanted it to.  I was so confident in the setup, I offered to create a site for a friend of mine for her group.  Oh how the cocky fall hard!

Two days after my offer, she writes me a note saying, “Don’t worry Jim, I have it all figured out.”  Now I know she couldn’t pull the WordPress stuff together that quickly!  She also wrote in her note, “Check out Ning.com”

There you go.  This company Ning is to Social Networking what WordPress is to Blogs/Websites (almost).  Now they do have advertising on the site, and you have to live with the “ning” branding, but then 99% of all social networking sites have ads on them, so I don’t think that matters.  In fact, for $29 per month, you can take control of the ads (or get rid of them).

So let’s do a cost benefit analysis.  It took me a month to figure out how to tweak WordPress (let’s say 20 hours), and maintaining it is about an hour a month.  Even if I only value my time around $20 an hour, that’s $400 to setup, and $240 for maintenance.

Ning - 15 minutes to setup, and maintenance is seemless.  Even if I paid to remove the ads, we’re talking $360 per year.  While it’s a little cheaper for Wordpress, there are 1000 more features on Ning that I could Never code!

As for my opinion on the ads – who cares, leave them.  What about the domain name?  Who cares again.  For instance, look at the following:

Company A has a website:
www.companya.com

Their Blog is at
www.blog.companya.com

Their Social Network/Member site would be
www.companya.ning.com

Ning, Blog, blah blah blah – people aren’t so worried abou that stuff anymore.  I definitely dont’ think you should have ads on your website, but the rules on a social network site are much more relaxed.

Go find your passion, get your members, and go ning!

The internet is an extension of our lives – everyone should be represented.

In this 60 minute online presentation you’ll learn how to:

• Take the Fear out of the Internet – Learn about websites, blogs, podcasts, and why you should have one.
• Create your own website in the time it takes you to read this flyer, for your company, community project, or family for Free
• Avoid the common mistakes that will waste your money.

I used to think that only companies with a large budget could have nice looking websites.  I used to tell my customers to plan on budgeting between $700 to $1,500 for a simple website, and that was on the inexpensive side.  When I realized this was out of reach for most people, I new there had to be a better way.

I looked at all the free hosted sites online, including Google Pages, Yahoo’s GeoCities, and even the paid version of Vista Web, but they all screamed “CHEEZY”.  To top it all off, you’ll most likely have somebody’s advertisement on top of your site, and you’re limited to a few poor attempts at templates.

During my research, I came across Content Management Systems, many of them Open Source – or in simple terms – FREE.  A Content Management System is a program that lets you easily update your website with new pages, articles, and images, without having to know any programming.  This put me on the right track, and pointed me to what I’ve now determined as the number one resource for anyone that wants a website:  WordPress.

WordPress is a Free system that in a nutshell, generates websites instantaneously.  It’s not an application you load on your computer, it’s kind of like a website that spits out websites.  OK, I know this sounds funny, but give me 60 minutes of your time, and I’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know.

This seminar is for Beginners, Novices, and Advanced developers too.

• Beginners – I taught my mother how to use this, and if you know my mother’s ability to use a computer, that will sell you right there.
• Novices – A customer of mine used to fiddle around with HTML, just enough to keep their site updated.  He became familiar with the concepts of “FTP and HTTP”, and flirted with being called a geek.  By switching to WordPress, he’s now able to maintain his site in a fraction of the time, and can add advanced formatting with his current programming knowledge.
• Advanced – Once a person becomes an expert in web development, they tend to focuss on one particular platform (like Front Page).  WordPress is a shift in development concept, that takes the advanced web designer out of updating words on a website, and lets them focus their talents where they really matter; on the design and functionality.

Today we held a Webinar to demonstrate how to create a social media account, and what to do when you create one.

We took a look at the following sites:
Face Book
Linked In
Twitter
Wordpress
NSA ProTrack

To watch this recorded session, simply click on this link.

 

 Using Social Networks: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I decided to create a website for the members of my organization, a speakers association. I wanted the site to be for the members, not just a site that the members would join.

Why would this be necessary? What I’ve found is that even though it’s extremely easy to create a WordPress site, there are some intrinsic problems that every techno-phobe faces.

First, the mere installation process, no matter how simple, is enough to cause paralysis. The second is the pressure of maintaining (and updating) an entire site by oneself. And finally, adding advanced features, like podcasting, is too daunting for many.

I thought WordPress could be reduced to the extreme basics for the members, and they can all contribute to the site, and leverage off it’s success. I describe how I did this, and the features I included in this post.

Many speakers are drawn towards computer applications to enhance their presentations, with the most popular application being Microsoft PowerPoint.  When it comes to computer presentations, Less is More.

Stay away from the design templates!  Most of the templates are way too graphic intensive, and while they look impressive on your computer screen, they can be distracting to audiences.  The simplest presentation can actually put the attention on your content, not your PowerPoint skills.

To see some great examples of how others implement Less to create More, take a look at Prezi. This company has created an alternate to PowerPoint that will blow your mind with the  simple-ness. CommonCraft has made a complete business by eliminating the bells and whistles from their presentations.  Don’t be tempted by your applications special features. Spinning text never sold anything!

One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is that you have to be willing to receive advice like, “what you need to do is …”  For some reason, everyone seems to think they have the answer to your business problems.  I’ve been told that all I need to do is:

1. create a website – once you have a website, customers will find you on Google, and buy everything you have
2. purchase advertising – you just need to accept that a cost of business is advertising, and when you accept this – people will buy your products
3. create a remarkable product – make your product something people will remark on, and you will have the Midas touch

I call BS on these and the numerous things that “I need to do…”  Many of them are rooted in solid truth, but the problem comes from the implication that the one suggestion is “all you need to do.”

Now to prove my point, I’d like to test the third one above – a remarkable product.  This one would seem so painfully obvious, that if you can create a remarkable product, truly you’d be succesfful in business, right?  I don’t think so – I actually think the formula (if one exists) is far more complicated then that.

So what is a remarkable product?  It’s fair to say, one that people would remark to others about.  That the value of the product is so great, people will be better off buying this product, then they would be if they didn’t.

How do you create a remarkable product then?  My suggestion is to sell a twenty dollar bill for $10.  This may sound ridiculous, but you can’t argue the value customers would get for this purchase.  Besides, I’ve spent more money on web design, advertising, and product development in my businesses that I wish I could have limited my losses to only $10 per item in some cases.

So where’s the buy button you say?  When I can afford to pay my web developer to build it, I’ll start selling my first remarkable product.

Have you ever been in a position that needed to collect volunteers for an event?  If you have, you probably either emailed a spreadsheet around, printed one out, and passed it to friends, or tried to use your email as a way to corral everyone’s responses.

YUCK!

I found a better way!, and it’s easy and free (two of my favorite words).

.
A company called “MySignUp.com” created an online signup form system that works like a charm.  Not too many bells and whistles to confuse things, but just a simple clickity click sign up form.

Take a look at www.mysignup.com.

I also recorded a 15 minute training video on exactly how to use it if your interested (just press the play button).

UPDATE – As noted in one of the comments below, I completely blew the section about the URL (it was off screen).  All I was talking about is the shaded area in the image below – use that URL (the one you create).  I made the mistake of looking at the browsers address bar and copying the url once I went to the signup page (which is a much more complicated URL).  Just use the URL you create in the shaded area of the picture below, and you’ll be fine.  Click the picture to make it larger.

jim

I created some tips on getting your website ranked High on Google for my seminar. When I was doing my research, I found that most of the suggestions out there were too techy to implement for the common person. I took all the information I found, and selected what I thought was not only the best way to get your site noticed by Google, but also the things that anyone can implement.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips -

1. No Tricks – Google punishes sites that try and trick it!
2. META is for People – Meta tags are yesterday’s news. Now they just provide a description.
3. SiteMaps are a Must – This is the only thing I’d pay for, although I get mine for free!
4. Submit to Search Engines – First step everyone needs to do for new sites.
5. Give Images Descriptions – Google can’t see, it can only read.
6. Simple Site Navigation – Have a list of pages people can easily find.
7. Links – Linking to other sites, and having them link to you will get you noticed.
8. Content is Key – Google looks for key words in your content, not your tags.
9. Static Pages Die – Sites that don’t get updated get ignored (by everyone).
10. The Egg Comes First – You have the most power in getting people to your site, spread the word.

 

 Standard Podcast [7:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I presented a 90 minute seminar on Nov 20, at the Morgan Hill Community Center.  I enjoy helping anyone in creating their first website, or even transitioning to a new company website.  The old days of programming in html, or using FrontPage, are gone.  Today we have OpenSource – a concept that allows the techy developers to show off their stuff, and give it away for free to folks like us.  The new trend in websites is ease of creation and management, and I’m astonished at how far the technology has come.

I’ve been helping people for the past year with this system.  I was a speaker at BizTech Day last weekend, and during one of the breaks, a lady asked me if I was serious about building a website easily.  I sat her down, opened my laptop, and in 10 minutes, we created a brand new website for her.  She’s had one of those “under construction” pages up for over a year, and in 10 minutes, we changed her situation.

I feel empowered when I help people achieve something they thought was out of their reach.  Watch a recorded version of this event, and learn how you can apply this new system to your family, community, or business.

Click to Watch a Recorded version of the Seminar

I posted a question to some colleagues in the National Speakers Association (NSA) Northern California Chapter regarding credit card processing.  I’ve been processing credit cards for over 9 years, using two companies – Nova and PayPal, but I didn’t have a clear understanding of everything that was involved.  Some of the responses I received from my colleagues made me realize that many of us don’t know what’s truly going on, and we just stick with whatever solution we started with.

I conducted some research on this subject, and created a presentation to explain it all.  Hopefully it will help you with the question of how to process credit cards.  By the way, now that I understand what’s going on, I’m going to change my provider and save some money!

Here’s a couple of articles I found with some good information at:

Taming the Beast

Payment Gateway Primer

Enjoy.

 

 Process Credit Cards: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download