Prebuilt Sites was Featured on the RN2Writer Podcast

In a recent episode of the RN2Writer Show with Elizabeth Hanes, our founder Vincent Wondra was featured.

The topic of the podcast was a discussion of …

Why Your Website is Important as a Freelance Writer

Host Elizabeth Hanes BSN RN built a six-figure writing business in her spare time. Today, she coaches other nurses how to become freelance writers through the RN2writer project. She also shares freelance writing news for nurses at Daily.RN2Writer.com

Topics discussed in this episode:

1. 1:55 When starting out, is a website essential?
2. 7:25 Are DIY websites worth your time?
3. 12:40 Updating your website
4. 16:00 Why your business goals matter when building your website
5. 26:32 Website costs
6. 631:00 Why your website host is important

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The BBS Agency: https://thebbsagency.com/
• Prebuilt Sites: https://prebuiltsites.com/
• RN2writer: https://www.rn2writer.com/

Next steps

• – Check out the BBS Agency! https://thebbsagency.com/
• Download and listen to the podcast of this episode at RN2writer
• Start your journey from nursing to writing with the ebook Design Your Dream Career as a Nurse Writer
• Follow RN2writer on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Where to listen

1. YouTube: https://youtu.be/qJT_Rp0E9jk
2. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1C6hO9dQUf1xZ8gVwzasJM?si=469e1d0b943743b3
3. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-your-website-is-important-as-a-freelance-writer/id1581442377?i=1000547735326
4. RN2writer website: https://www.rn2writer.com/podcasts/the-rn2writer-show/episodes/2147667229

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Vincent Wondra, Elizabeth Hanes

Elizabeth Hanes: 00:07

Welcome to the RN2writer Show. I’m your host, Elizabeth Hanes, RN, and I built a pretty successful freelance writing business, and now I help other nurses do the same thing. And today, I am delighted to welcome my friend, Vincent Wondra, of the BBS agency and prebuilt sites. Vincent is a web developer extraordinaire. He has an I.T background, and he has been involved in creating and maintaining websites since the mid-90s. I didn’t get my first actual computer until 1994. Welcome, Vincent.

Vincent Wondra:  00:57

Hello, everybody. I’m Vincent. I’ve been working with you now for several years.

Elizabeth Hanes: 01:02

Gosh, I was trying to think last night when we first worked together and I could not remember.

Vincent Wondra:  01:11

Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Hanes: 01:14

I bet it’s been eight or nine years at least,

Vincent Wondra:  01:17

It could be.

Elizabeth Hanes: 01:19

Vincent’s company has done every website I’ve had except the current one, which had to go to a different platform because of the coaching thing. But he is responsible for the forthcoming RN2writer Daily website?

Vincent Wondra:  01:34

Well, I’m looking forward to that launch. It’s looking really good.

Elizabeth Hanes: 01:38

You guys still maintain my freelance site, which I leave up because people often say to me, what do you nurse writers do? And I’m like, go over here and check this site out. So, thank you. Our theme for this, (I don’t normally do a theme so this is new for our audience too) is new year, new website. Because, first of all, I’m always a little surprised at how much pushback I get from nurses who are starting out who really don’t think that a website is essential. And I’m like, no, it is the one essential component of your marketing period. You must launch with a website, right?

Vincent Wondra:  02:21

Yeah, absolutely. If you are an online entity, so you’re an online business, or if you’re just a freelance person, your website is your store. It’s your store, it’s your office, it’s where people can learn about you, and figure out if they want to work with you. And if they like what they see on your website, when they reach out to you, half of the sales process is already done. They’ve already gone through and gone this person has the skills to solve whatever problem I have. So, in your case, for your listeners, they need a medical writer, they need someone to write these medical articles, which requires a very specific skill set. So, they come out and they learn about you, they learn about your background, they can see some of your writing. When they fill out that form or call you, if you have your phone number on your website, they’re 75% of the way ready to hire you already. If you don’t have that piece, all they can do is Google you. see what comes up on your Facebook page or your LinkedIn page. And let’s be honest, your LinkedIn page is just an online resume. They’re kind of boring, and they don’t showcase any of your personality, or really, your work that you’ve done.

Elizabeth Hanes: 03:46

And you know, another thing is in our industry because the barrier to entry is so low in freelance writing, there’s a lot of people, not nurses necessarily, just people in general, who think to themselves, “Oh, you know what? I’m going to try this. I’m going to test this out.” But they’re not serious about it, and so they don’t make any investment in their business. And what happens is because they’re what I call hobbyists, and are not taking it seriously they end up burning the clients. They blow their deadlines; they don’t produce quality work. And our potential clients, as writers, professional writers, have been burned by these people. And so, if you have a website, a prospective client, or an editor goes, “Oh, okay, they’re probably legit then. They’re probably not one of these hobbyists.”

Vincent Wondra:  04:44

Absolutely. It adds a lot of legitimacy to it. Because they could go on a freelance site and hire a freelancer. And we worked with a lot of freelancers. We need people for specific projects with specific skills, and we’re always testing out new freelancers for different art projects or anything else, but out of every eight you try, maybe one is good and you can get burned very quickly and easily. But the reality is when we’re looking for these types of people, those who have the website, it shows dedication, it shows professionalism, and inevitably they’re going to have links to their portfolio. So, you can spend this time vetting them and it adds that professionalism to them, where you are no longer a voice in a crowd. You might be in a crowd, but you’re standing there with a big flag waving over your head, and you get the attention that you’re looking for.

Elizabeth Hanes: 05:43

Exactly. And by the way, if anyone in the audience has doubts about what we were just saying, they should go back. And listen to episode four with Marina Palmer. She’s with Studio ID, a huge Content Agency. She said, when people approach her to write for her, the first thing she looks for is a website and a professional LinkedIn presence. So, don’t skimp on the website. But I think there are two issues that nurses have. First of all, like nurses in our clinical practice, we don’t use a lot of general software as an office worker. We don’t use Microsoft Word necessarily, or we might use Excel if a nurse is in a management position, for example. We use proprietary technology in healthcare, and so the idea of how do I do a website is daunting. And I tell people, and I’ve had this conversation with you Vincent… when I started out, I did self-hosted WordPress because WordPress was easy, and you could get $5 A month hosting, and set it up yourself and design it, and it looks passable. But everything evolves. And to me, WordPress got very complicated over the years. I actually had my site taken offline a couple of times by the host because I hadn’t done critical security updates because I didn’t know how to do that. And so, this is why now, I recommend specifically the BBS agency, or prebuilt sites because you guys do all the backend stuff, you do the maintenance too.

Vincent Wondra:  07:37

Absolutely. We’ve worked on a lot of websites over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of people who maybe worked with other professionals before, or they went the do it yourself route. Now, everybody should have a website. If you have a business coach, almost every business coach who’s worth their salt will tell you, “You need a website, regardless of what niche you’re in because it does add that professionalism.” But the reality is, not everybody is a web designer or web developer. In your case, your writer should be focused on the writing, getting new clients, and doing the deliverables for them. They shouldn’t be worried about the tech. Now, there are solutions on the market like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, and other ones. They have amazing commercials. If you’re on YouTube, you’ve seen the commercials for Wix and the like, “I’m a social media influencer. I built this site.” And they tap a few keys and this magical site appears, but that’s not reality. They had somebody get those pictures for them, coach them on how to put that together, create the layout, and they’re just following the script. The reality is WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, all these other things are just tools. Some of them are better tools than other tools, but they’re just tools, and they’re only as good as the person who wields them. We’ve seen a million websites over the years. Some of them are built on WordPress, some are on Squarespace, some of them are on Wix, of people who have tried the do it yourself route, and that final website that they create for themselves looks nothing like they wanted it to. And it doesn’t look like that template because again, it’s just the tool, and they’re left to their own devices to set it up. For a lot of people, it’s incredibly frustrating. They didn’t want to be doing that.

Elizabeth Hanes: 09:45

It’s very frustrating. I hear this from nurses all the time, and I think you hit on it too about the design aspect. If all of us were designers, all of our homes would look like they just came out of Architectural Digest. Like color theory is a big one, and typography is a big one.

Vincent Wondra:  10:03

Absolutely. Understanding contrast and hues, and readability, and then trying to figure out why things that look good on desktop look horrible on a mobile device, and vice versa.

Elizabeth Hanes: 10:17

Exactly. I personally love design, but I’m not a professional. I know what I like, and I can envision it. It’s great to just give those marching orders to you guys and say, “Here’s what I want it to look like, make it happen.” Like Picard, make it so.

Vincent Wondra:  10:42

Absolutely. Our belief is, and you’re seeing more and more companies adopt this, which I’m happy for from an end-user perspective, it’s that business owners don’t want to worry about the tech, they want something that just works for them and they can go in and update the text or update the images easily whenever they want, but the rest of the site is set up. They want peace of mind that they know everything’s working the way it should, the websites always running, it’s always patched, you’re getting visits to your site, you have analytics set up, you have all these pieces in place, and trying to set that up yourself is very intimidating. And a lot of people maybe they do setup, but there’s still this little voice in the back of their head going, “I don’t know if I did it right.” And it’s very unnerving and it makes people anxious, and they’re worrying about things in their business that they shouldn’t be. I’ve told you this before, that one of the reasons why we started prebuilt sites is we wanted writers, small business owners who are just starting out, entrepreneurs, to focus on what they’re good at, and what they want to do. And so, what we’ve done with prebuilt sites is we take existing proven designs, and we set them up for you. All you have to do is basically provide the written content for it. We’ll ask you a bunch of questions so we can understand who your target market is, and we will create the solution for you so you can go to sleep at night not worrying about your website. You can worry about other aspects of your business, like how you’re going to hit the deliverable deadline to write that article for USA Today, webmd.com, or whatever. That’s what we want you to worry about. We don’t want you to worry about any of that other stuff.

Elizabeth Hanes: 12:43

I wanted to come back too for a second to one thing you said because it helps me dispel a belief or a myth that some nurses seem to have about setting up a WordPress site, investing in that. I’ve heard this from multiple people, I don’t know where it comes from, that they think if they hire someone to design the site, that means that every time they want to, for example, update their work samples, then they have to pay someone to do that. And I’m like, no, no, no, this is the beauty of WordPress, you can learn to do that part. You can learn to update the content of your site, it’s just the overall design structure. Although, particularly with you Vincent, if somebody does need help you guys have stellar support.

Vincent Wondra:  13:33

Well, thank you. I’ve always taken the approach that nobody contacts support, be it your phone support, your cable TV, support your website guy for help, in a good mood. They’re frustrated. They’re like, “Oh, fine, I’ve got to contact support.” So, as support personnel, and I’ve worked a lot of years and IT support, you have to have the Superman mentality, that you’re going to put on your cape, and you’re going to fly it and save the day, and make that person’s day, and take care of it very fast, very efficiently so again, they can have peace of mind. Now, some people don’t want to… and we have all sorts of clients, a lot of people don’t want to spend any time dealing with their website. They just want to fire off a request to us, we’ll take care of it and we’ll update it for them. Other people want to do it all themselves, which is fine. Number one, the tools that were used to build their website need to be easy and intuitive. They should have some kind of documentation or in our case, we provide video tutorials on how to do the basic functionality, so they can update it whenever they want. And it needs to be easy. It’s the KIS principle, keep it simple. If it’s simple, people will do it. Ever since we started BBS, I have never wanted my clients to feel like they’re being held hostage and they have to rely on us to update things on their website. If you can write an email online, you can update a website that we’ve built for you, and you can do it as often or as little as you want. And it’s often as simple as signing into the site, going to edit the page, pick what you want to do, put in new text and hit save, and your change everywhere.

Elizabeth Hanes: 15:25

And if you do that and something goes horribly wrong and you’re like oh no, (which I know I’ve never done that) Then you can email support and say, “Oh, no, I broke it.” And it’s like, “Okay, we’ll take care of it.” One of the first things that impressed me about the BBS agency was when I did email support, I got a human being. I got a human being who understood what I was saying. Nothing makes me blow a gasket faster than when I send in a note to support that says specifically what the problem is, and they send me back something that they have copy-pasted out of a FAQ that has nothing or little to do with my issue, and I’m like, okay, you’re not listening to me. And that has never happened to me with you guys, so kudos.

Vincent Wondra:  16:22

Well, thank you.

Elizabeth Hanes: 16:23

I wanted to also talk about another thing that really impressed me when I first explored working with you. I had other WordPress sites in the past before I came to the BBS agency, and I worked with designers. Typically, I would reach out to a designer, and they would say, “Well, here’s a template that I like to use. What do you think of that? What colors do you want? What font do you want? Are you going to have an image?” And I did this design back and forth. But the first thing that you said to me was to fill out this online form. And it was an extensive questionnaire that really made me think about the purpose of the site, how I market myself, who my target audience is. No one had ever asked me about that before.

Vincent Wondra:  17:28

That’s something we’ve learned throughout the years. I learned it from a very wise business coach back when I was starting BBS agency. Our process is very different than a lot of other agencies. With a lot of agencies, it’s like I want a new website, and they immediately dive into the design without understanding your business or your goals. And they might build a website, and you might be great, but then six months later, you’re like, “Nothing’s really changed. I’m not getting more clients. I still don’t like my website. It’s hard to update. I’m not accomplishing my goals. I just feel like I spent a lot of money and wasted a lot of time.” And so, the approach and process that we use is kind of different. We kind of flip things on their ear. The first thing you mentioned, regardless of whether it’s a prebuilt site or BBS Agency’s, we have a questionnaire. And if you want to work with us, you have to fill out this questionnaire. And in this questionnaire, we are going to ask you some very thoughtful questions about who you are as a person and more specifically who you are as a business. If we can understand who you are, what you do, what problems you solve, who’s your competition, what goals do you have, what do you want to accomplish… If we can understand all those things, we can create a site that you can leverage to accomplish those goals. At the end of the day, maybe you want more sales, you want more leads, you want more people to opt into your eBook, or buy more widgets that you sell, or maybe want to increase sales by 50% or 200%, or whatever. But if we understand that about your business, we can put together a project plan that is going to create a website that will accomplish those goals, or at least have the tools in place for you to use them to accomplish those goals. And you only get that if you take that time to understand the business. Once we get that questionnaire from you, I guarantee, particularly if it’s on the BBS site, where you have an established company, I’m going to send you another set of questions based upon your answers so I can get some more in-depth clarity as to what do you mean by things? Can you elaborate on this? Again, it’s all with the intent of getting to know you and your business and your goals better. I’ve told people for years, a website I just a tool. At the end of the day, my job is to help people succeed online using their website. And if I can help you succeed online with your website, we’ve done our job. The design of it is a very small piece of it. And once we understand that process, we don’t focus on the design right away, which is very different than a lot of companies. We focus on the functionality of your site because everything has to work. It goes back to the KIS principle. If it’s easy, people will do it. Your navigation needs to be easy to follow. Your page structure needs to be easy to understand so people can find what they’re looking for. Whatever you want them to do, be it a checkout, or contact you, or anything like that, it needs to be easy. If it’s easy, people will do it. We’ve worked for a lot of bigger companies over the years, and we do what’s called Conversion Optimization. It’s the art of getting people to do what you want them to do on your website. And you run tests going if I make this button blue, is it going to get more people to click on it, then green, or if I change the wording on the button, which one works better? And so, we apply all these concepts that we’ve learned over the years into the websites we build. And so, when we’re building out a site from scratch from you on the BBS side of things, we will create a black and white site with all the functionality in place because we want you to go through the can you find what you’re looking for? Does the process work? Is it easy? If we can make it easy, then we make the design on top of it. Because if it works really good and is easy to follow without design, once you add the design elements to it and use the design to even further help guide the people through the process you want them to go through, you will get a highly converting website that gets people to do what you want them to do and help you accomplish your goals. Because that’s what your website is for. It’s not there to look pretty. That’s part of what it’s there for, but overall, its primary function is to help you grow your business and your company or your freelance business. That’s what your website is.

Elizabeth Hanes: 22:21

Absolutely. And I do want to reassure the audience that this is not a complicated process. I think some members of the audience may be thinking, I don’t know what my goal for my website is. But that’s why going through this exercise is so useful because it makes you think about that. And it doesn’t have to be something lofty. It’s not about saying, “My goal for my website is to convert 10 people a month from prospects or customers. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about, “My goal for my website is for prospective clients to fill out the contact form.” It can be that simple. That’s a starting goal for a website. I think this is another advantage of having a great company behind your website, is that as you grow and your goals become more sophisticated, then you have the right partner to help you implement these new goals on your website. And sometimes the design doesn’t even have to change to do that.

Vincent Wondra:  23:38

Yeah. And more often than not, it doesn’t. And that’s one of the reasons why, as you mentioned before, your first site was WordPress. WordPress itself powers almost 50% of the web today. It’s the number one content management system in the world, and we specialize in it because as your company grows, everybody always wants their website to do more. Because WordPress has been around for a while, it’s such a major player on the web. There are all kinds of solutions and tools that will work with it. So, if as you’re writing your freelancing business you go, “Man that’s doing really good. I want to teach other people how to do this,” you can build in an E-learning system, or you can sell an e-book on your website to teach people how to do it, or easily embed YouTube or Vimeo videos to share your knowledge with people and grow. And it can expand and do more. You might want your site to integrate with a CRM system like Keap or any of those types of things. It can do all that. It should be able to be modular and grow with you. Your website needs to be scalable. Because if you’re doing well, you’re going to want your site to do more. You might want to add more links to articles you’ve written or maybe run a webinar yourself or do things like that, and your website can be a very valuable tool to accomplish all those goals.

Elizabeth Hanes: 25:08

Well, let me tell you, and I have said this before, not really in any coaching sessions that I can think of, but I’ve said this to other people. That first website that you built for me when I was still elizabethhanes.com, and I had to go through that process of what are your goals and so on, so forth… and I decided my goal for that was going to be inbound leads, I wanted to generate inbound leads. That site turned into an inbound machine. Before I stupidly converted it over into the other site, I was getting a minimum of one lead per week through my website, me doing nothing. So, in case the audience doesn’t understand what I mean by inbound leads, this is people searching on the web, finding my site, filling out my contact form, which had a creative brief that they had to also fill out.

Vincent Wondra:  26:07

Yes, very similar to our onboarding form.

Elizabeth Hanes: 26:09

Exactly. I had a minimum of one of those a week. So, people just looked me up and said, “Oh, we’d like to work with you.” And of those, let’s say four or five per month, one of them was always a highly qualified lead. So, I was getting one excellent lead per month, which is outrageous for a freelance website, in a way. Most freelancers, I don’t think get that many good leads. And this brings me to my next discussion, which is money. Because that’s the other thing that I find nurses balk at. They’re like, “It might cost me a couple of thousand dollars to create a website.” And I’m like, “Yes.” Because personally, in my eBook I say, “You can launch a freelance business with no investment whatsoever.” I don’t recommend that. I personally invested $2,000 in my business to start. That was back in I think, 2011. I can never remember exactly when I went full time, it might have been even 2010. That was when you could get a semi-custom WordPress site for 500 bucks off a designer. But I always recommend people invest some money in this, and I think probably the biggest chunk of that should go to a website. But with that said, I don’t think it’s that expensive either. And if you have it done right, it’s going to ultimately generate revenue if you’re doing it correctly.

Vincent Wondra:  27:54

Absolutely. So, with websites, the cost varies. If you want to do it as cheap as possible, which I don’t recommend because you do get what you pay for, you will either sign up for service be it WordPress.com, Wix, Squarespace, you just get the tools, you are left your own devices to set it up without any guidance whatsoever. You can go to the other end of the spectrum and completely build a site from the ground up. Which if you’re just starting out, I don’t recommend either.

Elizabeth Hanes: 28:30

We’ve done that too together.

Vincent Wondra:  28:32

That is more expensive because there are all kinds of things to solve. The best solution is to work with somebody, and that’s where pre-built sites come into play, where you’re starting with a proven solution. Now, a prebuilt site, for example, they’re 1500 bucks and it $50 a month hosting. People go, “Oh my god, 50 hours a month hosting.” But we’ve had other people tell us our hosting is the best deal in the business. And it’s because you get what you pay for. To me, in this day and age, a modern website host needs to have several things. And for those who are listening and don’t know what a website host is. A website host is a company that is hosting your website, they provide the server space that your website is on. Now, you can go with $10 a month or $5 a month if you get from  GoDaddy or HostGator or something else. The problem with those, and this is from my IT background, they’re cramming 1000s of sites on the exact same server and they don’t really care what’s installed on those sites. One of those sites on your server might be filled with malware, another one has been hacked and it’s a spammer site, another one is a very busy news site… and all those things going on that server actually affect your site as well. And because you’re crammed on these huge servers and it’s running multiple technologies, the servers are not very secure because they’ve got to work for everything, and so they have problems. And if you have a problem with your own site, they can’t help you with it. They will tell you, “It’s not in our terms and conditions. We will not help you.” This comes as a shock to a lot of people who are trying to build it and do it themselves. You’re like, “I thought you would help me with everything,” and they’re like, “Nope”. Their standard response is to go talk to your webmaster. And for most do-it-yourselfers, they’re like, “I don’t have one. That’s me. What do I do now?”

Elizabeth Hanes: 30:40

I’m just going to interject and say, I have been through that so many times.

Vincent Wondra:  30:44

We hear that story, time and time again, from people who are coming on board as new customers, and they’ve gone through this process. And frankly, it saddens me. It makes me feel like these companies are taking advantage of new businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers who don’t know better. So, our hosting part, we want to make sure your site needs to be fast, and a lot of that is your website host because they provide the horsepower. It needs to be secure. It needs to include an SSL certificate. It needs to have automatic backups. It needs to have enhanced security. It needs to have some malware protection or free malware cleaning. It also needs to have a built-in staging site. And for those who don’t know what a staging site is, if you’re working with a professional webmaster or developer like us, a staging site is at a click of a button, we can duplicate your site and test things on the staging site, like a new design, new functionality, new templates, whatever you want, without affecting your production site because that’s your store, that’s your office, it should be running all the time. And the final piece, which is the most important is those people who are hosting your website should be keeping it patched and up to date. A lot of people get somebody that builds their website and it’s hosted at GoDaddy, they find out six months later their site’s been hacked and they’re going, “How did my site get hacked?” Well, because nobody’s maintaining your site and running updates. It’s like your smartphone, you get updates on your smartphone all the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re an Android, it doesn’t matter if you’re an Apple or one of the small remaining Windows ones, they all get updated. Your computer gets updates. Your smart TVs get updates these days. And because your website is such a complicated thing using all sorts of different plugins and tools, there are proper ways to run backups, and there are wrong ways. The worst thing you can do is not run backups. There are also tools and services that will run updates automatically for you. Now, that’s a decent alternative, but the way those tools work is they will run the updates and they have an algorithm that looks to see if the front of your site is broken. And if it is they roll them back, and they’ll send you an email saying, “Hey, these updates didn’t run the way they should.” But what they don’t check is if the backend stuff is working. So, for example, those updates could automatically run and it looks like your forms are all working on your website. And your forms are among the most important part because that’s how people contact you. But maybe one of those updates broke with that form on the back end and those emails that people are trying to hire you aren’t getting to you anymore. That’s a critical failure of a website. So, I would recommend that if you have a webmaster out there and you’re listening to this podcast, check other webmasters and see if they’re doing updates and how they’re doing it. The way an I.T company handles updates… I’m a former IBMer, they always test all their updates first, always, and then they get published because things need to run. When I was at IBM, I worked at a hospital. In their IT department, those software updates that you pushed out which powered computers, for example, in the surgery room where they’re looking at medical records, that is life and death. Those doctors need to be able to see before they put somebody under, “, you’re allergic to penicillin. We can’t give that to you or whatever this anesthetic is.” It’s critical, and so that type of stuff needs to be tested and handled in an orderly fashion. So, be it us, your existing webmaster, or anybody else, those updates are such a critical component of your website. I cannot stress that enough. That needs to be handled.

Elizabeth Hanes: 34:50

Let me tell you I have been through all of those nightmare scenarios you have talked about because I built my first own site in I think 99, and for a long time, I had hosting through Lunar Pages, which I think is still around. And it’s exactly like you said, still to this day, I’ve had my site hacked one time and their response to me was, “We don’t help with that. Go find somebody to fix that.” And in those days, you couldn’t go find somebody to fix that. There was nobody to hire on a freelance basis to go help with that. I’ve had my email blacklisted because there were spammers on my shit server.

Vincent Wondra:  35:33

You didn’t do anything wrong?

Elizabeth Hanes: 35:34

No.

Vincent Wondra:  35:36

They have the same IP address, and you got blacklisted too. You didn’t do anything wrong.

Elizabeth Hanes: 35:41

Exactly. I’ve had the busted form that you were just talking about where I would get enraged. Well, actually, what happened was after literally several months, I somehow saw that there were all these messages on the server that had never come to me, where people were trying to hire me. They were still sitting on the server because they got that far. It’s just not worth that. And I one time looked into hiring a person to maintain my site for me, and I only found two, and they were both close to $100 a month. So, 50 bucks a month for hosting. You can believe me dear listeners; it is so worth it. I got so sick of having to run my own, trying to update all of my plugins constantly and all that stuff. And then if something didn’t go right, I didn’t know what to do. I was screwed. It’s worth every penny,

Vincent Wondra:  36:47

You’re better served running your business, writing to your clients. You shouldn’t be worried about the tech.

Elizabeth Hanes: 36:55

Exactly. Well, this has been fascinating. We’re running out of time, but I wanted to say, I want to have you back because we haven’t really… I started to geek out when you were talking about testing button colors.

Vincent Wondra:  37:10

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth Hanes: 37:11

And we haven’t even talked about stuff like that and copywriting. I want to have you back to talk about… because this is another thing I tell people; you don’t understand how much SEO for your site occurs in the back end. And so, if you’re trying to build your own site, or you’re using one of these services, you don’t necessarily know that it’s correct for your search engine optimization.

Vincent Wondra:  37:41

A lot of people don’t even realize their site, which may have been live for months, if not years, might not even be in Google’s index.

Elizabeth Hanes: 37:51

Exactly. 

Vincent Wondra:  37:52

There are steps that you have to take to make sure you’re even getting into Google’s index. And we’ve audited sites for people in the past when taking on new clients, and it’s one of the first things we look at. And for some, it’s so disheartening for them  they’re like, “What do you mean, Google doesn’t know I exist?” I’m like, “Well, that’s why your site’s not working.” We worked on one site where it was a simple toggle from the previous webmaster to unhide the site from search engines. It was never turned off, and so they’d had a site for two years. And every time Googlebot came to crawl their site, Googlebot got the message saying don’t crawl the site, so the bot went and crawled somebody else’s site. And they were just disheartened.

Elizabeth Hanes: 38:45

Now that would feel like a huge waste of money. This is what I’m saying, getting somebody good is not a waste of money.

Vincent Wondra:  38:55

No, it’s just not. People up to think that their website is an investment. Now, your website is not going to make your business succeed, but it’s a big part of helping us succeed. It’s just a tool, but it can be an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal to separate you from the competitors and make sure you are a success. And that’s the thing, don’t think of it as an expense, it’s an investment.

Elizabeth Hanes: 39:31

I could not agree more. So, let’s wrap up on that note for this time. And by the way, I can’t believe that I did not remember to mention until the end that you are Jennifer L. W. Fink’s brother, my ever podcast guest. My goal is to get the entire Wondra family on. That’s pretty much it.

Vincent Wondra:  39:56

I did not know that. She is my older sister. We hated each other growing up. And then we got older, we both have kids, and she and I are very tight these days. I do love my sister. We just got done with Christmas at her house. I love talking to my sister and spending time with her. She’s awesome.

Elizabeth Hanes: 40:16

She is just one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met. And yes, she was my first-ever guest. I felt very honored about

Vincent Wondra:  40:28

I did not know that. It’s a small world. That’s awesome.

Elizabeth Hanes: 40:31

Anyway, everyone in the audience, you can find a link to prebuilt sites in the show notes or the description pop over there. Talk to Vincent and his team about getting a website if you’re at that stage. Vincent, we’ll have you back again.

Vincent Wondra:  40:48

I would love to come back. We can talk about pretty much anything related to a website.

Elizabeth Hanes: 40:55

We will because I just love this topic. Anyway, I’m going to sign off now. Thank you, Vincent, for being here. Thank you to everyone who’s listening and watching on YouTube. You can find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you’re listening on Apple, please do leave us a rating for the RN2writer show. Don’t forget you can be on the podcast. You can get a mini-coaching session, just email me  “Hello” @rn2writer.com. We will see you next time and in the meantime, keep pitching.