Fellow Panhandle Professional Writers,
Thanks allowing me to speak to our group at Amarillo Senior Citizens Association on Saturday, October 18th. I always enjoy meeting other writers and I drove home to Lubbock with some great ideas that you all shared. Here are the links and additional resources we discussed. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. My contact information is below.
Tracy's Information
Website Articles & Book
- Weekly Blog for Small Business Websites: www.15MinuteMondays.com/blog
- Tracy's Book: www.15MinuteMondays.com/the-book
Action Guides
- Long-tail Keyword Development Guide (MS Word or PDF here)
- Domain Name Brainstorming Guide (PDF)
- Website Planning Guide (PDF)
Blog Articles We Discussed
- Authors - Planning Your Website
- Getting Started with Blogger
- Planning Your First Five Pages
- Choose the Long-Tail Keywords You Use
- SEO Isn't Magic
Photos and Images
- www.Flickr.com (be sure to use the License "Creative Commons Only" and give proper photo credit ... see the next link for more on that)
- Give Photo Credit Where Credit Is Due
- www.DollarPhotoClub.com - Donice shared this resource with the group
Domain Registrations & Website Hosting
- Domain Registration & WordPress hosting
- Free WordPress Hosting
- Free Blogger Hosting
- Bluehost (inexpensive WordPress hosting)
Contact Me
Email: Tracy@15MinuteMondays.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/15MinuteMondays
Phone: 806-535-3827
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Any link marked with an asterisk (*) is an affiliate link. See more about why I use affiliate links here.
Topics from the Group
Social Media
- Tumblr - www.tumblr.com
- 51% male
- 66% of users under age 35
- 39% under age 25
- Among 13 to 25 year olds, Tumblr is more popular than Facebook
- Pinterest - www.pinterest.com
- Shopping oriented
- Generates 400% more revenue per click than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook
- 93% of users a female
- The third most popular social newtwork (behind Facebook and Twitter)
MailChimp - For managing your collection of emails
Whois (Who Is) ... Finding out who owns a domain
Exercises
- Here are the notes I took during our three exercises: PPW Exercises
Reviewing Each Others' Books
- Jo mentioned reviewing Marianne's book on her blog because Marianne's humorous poetry can be a stress reliever and that could reduce acid reflux (Jo's topic.)
Things to Watch Out For
- Registration phishing - when someone tries to trick you into moving your domain to their registrar service
- The example we used was "What if Farmers Insurance sent you, a State Farm customer, a very official State Farm-looking email telling you it was time to renew. Once you signed the form and returned it with your check, they'd move your insurance policy to Farmers."
- WIX.com - Wix is a website builder with features similar to WordPress
- Wix is a fine tool, but it can get very expensive very quickly and suddenly its low entry price is left far, far behind you. A Wix website with a custom domain (www.YourCoolDomainName.com) starts at $50 but it includes ads for Wix. To clear the ads, you have to bump up to $120 per year. To sell anything on your website, you have to move up to about $200 per year. With you Wix site, you get one email address. Additional ones are $48 per year. As a comparison, a WordPress site at 1and1, GoDaddy, or Bluehost will cost you about $60 per year and you can have lots of email addresses (I think it's a couple hundred, but I'm not certain ... I've never hit the limit and I use a LOT of them.)
Cool Tools
Just a few cool tools that we didn't get a chance to discuss but that I thought you all might find useful.
- Social Media Managers
- Payments & eCommerce
- Automation
- www.IFTTT.com See my article about it here: Automate Yourself with IFTTT.com ... this can get just a little complicated but it's a fantastic tool to help automate your online work
- Website Themes