Keegan 0:01
In this episode, we’re going to share the top three things to do when starting your WordPress freelance business.
Keegan 0:24
So if I could jump back into time machine and go back to the year 2014, I would have a ton of knowledge bombs to drop on the 2014 version of me. So whether it is more realistic timeframe of how things would progress, to what will actually to what the work will actually look like, I would tell myself that there will be some rough clients, there will be some tough projects that stretch you because you’re unorganized. I tell myself that the money that you hope to make will be hindered by your lack of confidence, and a major case of imposter syndrome. But regardless, I could open the eyes of 2014 me to a few things that would have made the journey a little bit easier. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do in today’s episode.
Keegan 1:07
So you know, the very first thing that I would go back and tell myself is quit wasting your time on BS hosting, go out there and find a great host for your website. And for your client websites and pass that cost along. You know, regardless of what it looks like, make sure that you’re using the best foundation for your house, you’re not building a house on top of crappy, uneven and unsettled foundation. And you know just throwing it out there the company that we use, and what we’ve ultimately settled on, is Flywheel. Flywheel offers that managed hosting, it’s just it’s killer hosting. And I love it. The Not to mention you know, the hosting is one part the tech is is what it is.
Keegan 1:46
But one thing that Flywheel does leaps and bounds above anybody else support and not everyone else. You know, there’s some other great supported hosts out there. But flywheel does an amazing job. So in the show notes, we’re going to make sure that you get a link to their websites, you can check them out, learn a little bit about flywheel, I would have gone with them from day one, had I known and just been a little bit exposed to it. So take it from somebody who’s tried many hosts. Flywheel has fallen away been the best one that I’ve used.
Keegan 2:15
The second thing is to productize my services. productizing services is one of those things where I really should have done it from the get go. Instead, I was trying to say I’m going to charge you by the hour or you know, all those different things that people do whenever you’re just getting started. I’m going to undersell, I’m going to say well, you know, it really depends when somebody asked me what a project is going to cost. For me, I turn that right around on them when they ask how much is a website? Well, it depends. What do you want to do with your website, because not all websites are the same. They’re all very, very differently depending on the goal of the client. And that’s something I just didn’t realize, when I got started, you know, saying Oh, it’ll be you know, 1200 bucks, it’ll be 1000 bucks, it’ll be 2000 bucks, whatever, whatever the price was, I would throw it out there.
Keegan 3:00
And, and then I was just really, I just go and do the project and wouldn’t track my time. And when do a lot of those things. So I would go back I would productize my service, I would put them in tears. And I would I would organize them based on an assumption for how long the project was going to take. But I would put very strong parameters around what that what is included in that project. You know, if it’s five to seven pages, if it’s, you know, contact forms, it’s a blog layout, it is whatever and then maybe another tears for E commerce or memberships, or whatever, you know, I would go through and depending on what I was trying to do, I would productized services.
Keegan 3:36
And then the third thing is that I would have implemented from day one, a very strict project management system, how I’m going to onboard what the what the copy is going to look like, on the emails that go out to them, what the invoice templates are going to look like, what the products are going to be called, what the services are going to be called, how much it’s going to cost, how the invoicing is going to go, how I’m collecting information from the client, just all of those different things that go along with actually project managing. And that’s one of those things where freelancers don’t usually do a great job of it’s feast or famine because they don’t project manage very well. So go out and get something like Asana, we actually will link up in the in the show notes to one of our posts that has an Asana template for project management in it which is a lifesaver. Asana is an amazing, amazing platform that’s free, so why not use it.
Keegan 4:28
Personally, I use 17 Hats now I have built up. I used it for a few months and then I bought a year and saved a little bit on the monthly and then I found some of their Black Friday deals which were amazing. One year I got a super great deal on the next year. And then this past year, they gave a lifetime option. So I dropped the $1,000 and purchased lifetime, never to have to pay for it again get all the updates, which was amazing. I really really loved that but it does workflows, project management, CRM. You name it invoicing and payments. All those good things are all tied into this one thing that I no longer have a monthly payment or an annual payment on. So if you get a chance to look at some of those things, take advantage of a discount like that, I would definitely stash some money aside for a great project management system.
Keegan 5:15
Asana really is a great project management system that can really be free unless you have some very specific needs. So go out there and definitely put into place a project management system that outlines the entire flow and lifecycle of a client. And it can be different, you can have different templates, depending on the different projects. So definitely get organized, study up on how to be a great project manager because that’s going to pay dividends down the line. And those you know, those are really the top three things that that we wanted to get out there. And if we could go back and talk to 2014 versions of us, we would absolutely drop those knowledge bombs on ourselves. That would have saved us a ton of time. So yeah, that’s, that’s the top three.
Keegan 6:04
So as we introduced in a previous episode, you know, we’re doing this resource of the week and we’re bringing in a new segment to the podcast. It’s all about you. It’s all about our guests. So it’s all about the people who are listening to the podcast, that would be you. So our goal is to bring you some unique resources to help drive your Divi development ahead. This week is all about managed hosting we talked about earlier in the episode we love flywheel and flywheel is actually dropped an article with 11 reasons managed WordPress hosting is the best choice for your site, and we’ve linked it in the show notes below.
Keegan 6:36
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it. That’s another episode of the Divi Addicts podcast. We can’t thank you enough for being here. And if you love what we’re doing, we’d appreciate it very much if you’d head over to the brand new Keegan Lanier media.com, we streamlined our menus or pages. We’ve added the ability to purchase individual layouts in addition to the Divi Builder layout memberships that we already have in place. So take a look around. Let us know if you love to see anything specific added to the layout options and or that you’d like us to cover in the blog. You are the driving force behind our content. We’re always listening, and you can chat with us on our Facebook page@facebook.com forward slash Keegan Lanier media. We hope you have an amazing day. And we’ll see you next week with another episode of The Divi addicts podcast.
