So, this week Samara and I decided to do a call together but not record it. The primary reason for not recording the call was that most of the stuff was review and we were primarily on Samara’s site tweaking things and we are not ready to reveal her domain quite yet.
So, hopefully you are cool with that!
Overall, it was good to take a “breather” week and just review some of the things we had talked about, give Samara a chance to catch up on things, and answer some basic WordPress questions. To be honest, sometimes I forget how hard it is to set up a site on WordPress and get your theme, sidebar, menus, links, and everything to look the way you want it.
These “little things” have been pretty time consuming for Samara this week. Even though she has been using Thrive Themes, which is a huge time saver in itself, there is still a learning curve when it comes to using WordPress and setting up everything exactly how you want it.
So, even though we don’t have anything ground breaking to report, I think it is important to share that Samara is busy at work…and this is totally normal! So, if you find that it takes you a few weeks wrestling with WordPress and your themes, just know that you are not alone. It takes some time…but once its done, its done for a REALLY long time (in some cases forever).
Here’s is Samara’s take on the call…
Samara’s Report on Call #8
What’s up everyone?
Last week we did something a bit different: I had a private call with Spencer just to go over lots of little things that are specific to my site. We covered a wide range of topics though, so I definitely want to share what we discussed.
First we spoke about my homework assignments from the previous week, which included brainstorming things I can sell to my niche. I came up with a few ideas of physical and information products, and even an idea of a service I could maybe sell (pending additional research), and I will be thinking about other potential items as I continue to build my site out. As I said before, the prospect of having my own product is very exciting, and as Spencer says, that’s the most profitable way to monetize.
Other assignments included adding affiliate links to my existing content (which I am in the process of doing), signing up for an email provider (I went with MailChimp, as per Spencer’s recommendation), and getting an opt-in form on my site. I used Thrive Leads to create a very simple opt-in, and the process was relatively straightforward. However, I think that as my site continues to take shape, I will look into creating a more complex form to better segment subscribers.
We also spoke about outsourcing. I would really love to write all of the content for my site, but at the same time I’m eager (or, more accurately, moderately hysterical) to get it up and running already.
With that in mind, Spencer told me I could spend part of the budget to outsource, which I did on Upwork. I’ve received about half of the articles I sent out, and I have to say they are pretty mediocre. They absolutely need to be spruced up; however, it does feel like progress as now I have more content to work with.
I’ve also been trying to sort out my logo. I organized a contest on Freelancer.com where designers could submit their ideas, but that was mildly disastrous, so I cancelled it and hired someone directly. In the end he created a logo which I absolutely love, so that had a happy ending.
For the rest of our call, Spencer mainly helped me tweak my site in WordPress which, if I may be honest for a second, is the bane of my existence. As I mentioned in a previous post, just hearing the name “WordPress” makes me shudder. I am getting the hang of it, but it’s an uphill battle. It takes an eternity (not an exaggeration) to do the smallest things! Changing the size of the font in the header and adding a privacy policy are all-day long affairs. This is because I’m a newbie, I get that, and I know that one day I will be a WordPress Master and I’ll be able to resize my logo blindfolded with both hands tied behind my back.
Anyway, on my site we looked at what plugins I might need and we discussed shortening permalinks, organizing the menus on the homepage, setting up Google Analytics, submitting a sitemap, creating a landing page, and designing my own images in Canva.
All in all it was a super useful call as Spencer was able to guide me and give me some advice about setting up my niche site. It’s finally starting to look like something and it feels good great ridiculously awesome! I can’t wait to move on to the next step: linkbuilding!
The post Tweaking WordPress Settings and Other Tasks: Spencer and Samara Call #8 appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
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