Our fall courses are now scheduled! Please mark your calendars:
WordPress 101: Web Design has been scheduled for four Mondays starting Sept. 13, 7-9:30pm EST, plus four Thursdays 3-5pm EST. This is the internet’s premier training for WordPress website development, oriented towards beginner and intermediate users, not to mention one of the most affordable at just $250. It consists of 6 lecture/presentation hours and 12 practice hours. Look at it as an expert-training where you do the work, learning as you go, as I watch over your shoulder answering all your questions – then you go out and create as many sites as you want for each small business you run, in about an hour each. See below what students have to say about this training.
WordPress 102: Web Marketing is an all-new course. It runs four Mondays starting Oct. 11, 7-9:30pm, plus four Thursdays 3-5pm EST. It covers some of the same material as before (newsletter management systems, keyword analysis and optimization, online video etc) but we’ll be taking a much deeper dive into social media and blog marketing. This is the course to learn how to get exposure for your products or services online. Cost is also $250, or $450 for both courses.
I am not ready to take registrations yet – in fact I am at Burning Man next week (for the second time!) so please be patient with email inquiries – but keep your eye out for another email coming the week of Sept. 7. There will also be the usual free intro call on Thursday Sept. 9 at 3pm EST.
Here is what some of our students are saying:
“I wanted to thank you for your webinar and your help and assistance during the course. I find it quite amazing I now have a website since just a couple months ago I didn’t have any idea how I was going to accomplish that. Especially since I wanted to do it myself, not hire someone to take it over.” –Leigh Pobst, http://www.reflectionshealingstudio.com/
“Marc is such a delight to work with. With his expertise and instruction, I now have a beautiful and adaptable website for my business “In The Garden, Design, Care & Workshops.” Quite amazing – workable pages up within 2 weeks; looking good in 6 weeks! After many years of procrastination…. I’m enjoying learning “how to” and so excited to finally say “YES, I have a website – www.inthegardendesign.us.”” — Charlotte Kidd
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to work with you on Sam’s site. He is so happy with it and full of expansive ideas. And this was my real goal, so thanks. You have a special place in my heart and prayers.” – Sister Michaela, www.samkeen.com
“I’m really pleased with the support I received from Marc Beneteau in putting together a web page for a client. I have some limited experience in web design, but nothing in WordPress, and Marc was there every step of the way, not only with the knowledge only a pro has at his fingertips, but with the tenacity of a bulldog in resolving some of the issues and challenges we faced. I think we broke some WordPress ground here, and I would not hesitate to recommend Marc and his services.” – Harry Krause, www.freetradeunionism.org
I have known David for years, have watched him build an internet empire, which has culminated in this program in which he has condensed his entire business experience into 6 easy-to-follow modules.
The cost? $97. Unbelievable.
This program is not just about making money. It’s about living your purpose and monetizing your passion, some of the same material that I teach in the webinars, and very affordable and well-presented. You will however need to act soon, as it expires Thursday night Aug. 26 at midnight.
By the way I don’t make any money on this (I could probably find my affiliate link somewhere, but I don’t have time and I need you to see this right away before I can talk to David due to the short offer expiration)
I just returned from 4 days at the Integral Theory in Action Conference in Pleasant Hill, California. This is one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary conferences for consciousness development and for business development from an integral or holistic perspective.
It blew my mind.
And it brought home something that I have been aware of for a while: that in my classes and program I address the technology of success – which is important to master of course – but the far greater issue for most of us is the psychology of success.
Have you ever:
Wondered why is it so difficult for many of us heart-centered (service-oriented) professionals to make a good living through our passion?
Felt like you had to either sacrifice happiness in your pursuit of success, or pursue your happiness (mission or calling) but had difficulty achieving the level of success (income and contribution) that you deeply want?
Well, finally, there is hope. A lot of people are asking these questions. There is actually a mass-movement happening right now away from traditional, competitive, dog-eat-dog style of business and towards business as a calling, a mission, that serves both our happiness / fulfillment, and does God’s work in the world. A way of uniting our passion and our livelihood.
Over the coming weeks and months I am going to be introducing you to people who have some ideas on this most thorny problem – who can you help you develop great content, spread your message and gain visibility on the internet.
Melissa Galt is the first. Come to a free conference call tomorrow (Tuesday Aug. 3 at 3pm EST) to find out more:
Melissa is a mentor of mine, and according to Forbes one of the top 20 women entrepreneurs to follow. I have been extremely impressed by the quality of her programs, her hard-nosed let’s-get-real style of coaching, her passion for serving, and her authenticity.
For the first time ever, she has gathered her wisdom into a program that will fast-track you to success and happiness through your internet business. Here is what you will learn on this call:
Rapidly identify and claim your REAL customer benefits (not what you think)
Get laser-focused on your ideal client and stop chasing a population
Easily create great content that attracts your perfect client/customer
Set up your roadmap for endless customer engagement to keep them hot and buying
Eliminate writer’s block (and how to get it written for pennies when you hate writing)
Harness internet power to repurpose your content multiple times automatically
And more…
The call once again is tomorrow, Tuesday Aug. 3, at 3pm EST, but you must register for it first:
Because I am out of town over the weekend I am extending the registration deadline for the shorter summer session of the WordPress 101 webinar to today (Monday), 5pm EST. You can choose a package and register from here. The price allows you to repeat the webinar as many times as you want, including the next full session in September.
If you are interested but have questions, feel free to call Monday afternoon.
Barbara Hofmeister’s just released a new book, "To Be or Not to Be. The Choice is YOURS!".
Barbara’s family fled East Germany in search of freedom to succeed. Then Barbara found out there was more… and chose to grab more success, and share it.
Pick up GIFTS from 47 authors who have joined Barbara to give you more success today.
The registration deadline for the WordPress 101 course is approaching, since the course starts Monday July 26 (see the class schedule for the exact dates). You can immediately register from this link (and remember, with the September session the price increases to the regular $500-600 – heck, you can even register now and take the course in September for half-price, since you can repeat as many times as you want).
A reminder that the first free intro to the WordPress 101 webinar is tonight (Monday 7pm EST) at the following url:
http://wordpressacademy.biz/c (Signin as “guest”, enter your name, turn on your speakers and you’re in) If you wish to ask questions or interact via voice also dial-in: 712 432 1601, Code 252959#
The second call is Thursday 3pm EST at the same url.
We’ll spend about half an hour covering the course material (including why you want to become your own webmaster and internet marketer), then we’ll spend half an hour creating an attractive site for one of the participants. Then there will be an open Q&A.
The next WordPress 101 webinar (a shortened summer session as at a very special price) starts Monday night July 26. If you are curious what is going to be covered, and you want to see a demonstration of building an attractive WordPress site in half an hour, there will be two free, hour-long intro calls next week:
Call 1: Monday July 19, 7-8:00pm EST
Call 2: Thursday July 22, 3-4:00pm EST
Webconference info below: just point your browser, sign-in as guest and enter your name, and turn on your speakers. If you can’t make it I will be publishing the recording.
These calls are not commercials. As I do throughout the course, I promise to either give you the information you need to get started putting your business on the web and getting clients, OR I tell you where to go to get the information. Also, I will develop an actual website of a class participant in the last half-hour (please reply to this mail if you would like to be guinea-pig for the class). Complete course curriculum here.
Webonference info
Web: http://wordpressacademy.biz/c (Sign-in as Guest and enter your name) Phone: 712 432 1601, code 252959#. (Optional – only if you want to ask questions by voice. You can ask questions by chat on the call as well).
The summer schedule is now set (and a very beautiful summer we are having here in Philadelphia – I wish you all the same).
The free monthly call for July is on WordPress membership sites and will be this coming Tuesday July 6 at 7pm EST. There is no charge to attend, and I will publish the replay afterwards for 48 hours (but better to attend live and have all your questions answered!). See below for webconference information.
There will be a shorter (4 week) summer session of the WordPress 101 webinar starting Monday July 26. Complete schedule info (including two free intro calls) on our home page.
The shorter summer program will be at a (very special) discounted price of $250 (half the normal rate), since it’s only 4 sessions as compared to the usual 8, however, you can repeat the full 8-session webinar in September if you register for this one (and of course, you can access the videos at any time).
I struggle with the pricing issue and here is my thinking (if you will bear with me for a moment). I feel very passionately about training prospective entrepreneurs, self-employed people and world-changers to monetize their passion and spread their message; and I feel strongly that internet marketing information should not be only the property of the already-wealthy (which would be too sad), and also that it should be delivered in a simple, no-pressure, matter-of-fact way. So I want to keep your costs low, and remember also that my competitors charge between $800 and $1700 for 8-10 week WordPress webinars with content identical to mine (and even, perhaps, not as good ;). Even so, I need to raise the prices a bit to keep doing what I love, and so I want to eventually stabilize the price of the 8-week webinar around the $500-600 range. This is still close to $10 per training hour.
But here is the good news.
If you register for the short summer session at the discounted price, I will allow you (as I do for all webinar participants) to repeat the full course in September. You don’t even have to come to the July/August sessions. Just show up in September, if you want.
If you have any questions, simply reply to this email. And if you already know that you want to do this, why not purchase the package right away. There will never again be another opportunity to get in at this price.
And remember of course, our 100% money-back guarantee until the beginning of session #2.
Webconference info for the WordPress Membership Sites free webinar
Date: Tuesday July 6 at 7pm EST. Web: http://wordpressacademy.biz/c Phone: 712-432-1601, Code 252959# (or else just listen on your speakers).
I will demonstrate building a membership site using the very powerful Wishlist Member software, and also discuss design issues with membership sites in general.
I apologize for the late notice, but a shortened (3-session) WordPress 101 is being offered at the leBow School of Business of Drexel University starting this Wedneday June 9. Details and registration information here:
Very complex field – I am just starting out myself
My story: how I started two businesses with social media
What you can do that won’t take too much time
Major sites to know: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Meetup.com
Know your audience and where they hangout: professional associations (post to their forums), and special-interest groups
Putting it all together: Facebook tour
Linkedin tour
Twitter tour
Introduction to Social Media
Social media use in business is exploding
Social media is different from other marketing techniques (direct mail, email) in that it is a conversation. It’s free but it does take some time.
There are people who make 6 figures and more just by blogging, either about personal productivity and lifestyle (ZenHabits, Steve Pavlina) or business topics (Problogger, Copyblogger). And there are many others with online businesses that are primarily driven by social media.
Traditional ways of online marketing:
Newsletters & Affiliate marketing
Organic traffic
Pay-per-click
And now, social media
Most experts agree that you need a blog and to try and drive traffic to your blog
All blogs offer RSS feed but always offer an email subscription to your blog as well (this costs nothing – see Feedburner)
Facebook
The leading personal networking site – 200 members
Legitimate privacy concerns – if you use it for business, ‘”don’t put anything there you don’t want on the front page of the New York Times”.
You must approve friend requests
You can get a home page under your name ie http://facebook.com/marcbeneteau
You can create an event and email people (max 100 at a time)
Linkedin
The leading business networking site. Great way to find someone through the “6 degrees of separation” theory
Many people build their business on it
You can recommend other people or solicit recommendations
You can also create events and email people (max 50 at a time)
Twitter
The leading “micro-blogging” site (posts limited to 140 characters, typically containing a link to longer content – i.e. to the blog post)
You do not need to approve “friend requests” (that are called “follows”). Follows are unidirectional, but it is considered a courtesy (and good business) to follow those who follow you
The “tweets” of the people you follow come up in your Twitter home page
You can “Direct Message” any of your followers (sends an email)
There are a number of desktop and online applications (Tweetdeck, Tweetlater, that bring tweets to your desktop and provide additional services, such as searches, keyword alerts etc.
Tweets have an optional “Hashtag” that pertains to a content area – for example you can easily find and segregate tweets by all attendees at a conference that you are at – mixes online and in-person networking (especially interesting)
You need to have a website to use Twitter effectively
I have greatly expanded the WordPress 101 Quick Start eBook (version 1.00!) and added three, 10-minute video tutorials in HD on styling the Atahualpa theme.
The eBook is available by subscribing to our mailing list.
I love the free image editing software Paint.Net. It’s a serious competitor for Photoshop CS4 ($799!) in the do-it-yourself market. Another (reputedly) more powerful, but harder to use free software is Gimp. But Paint.Net does the job for me. Here is a typical application: making a banner for a website. Below is a step-by-step guide.
This is useful not just for capturing screen elements, but also for measuring the pixel-width of items on websites.
Note: you don’t need to use screen-capture to capture images on websites. Just right-click > Copy. You can also get the image dimension through right-click > Properties.
This is so easy it will knock your socks off. It took me 10 minutes, but that was because I wasn’t clear on mySQL security – it should take 3 minutes, so this article could save you 7 minutes. I did it because I was doing a lot of development with short testing cycles and was tired of the server lag-time of my remote server.
We covered an introduction to the course (what you can expect to learn), WordPress installation and configuration for a business website, the user interface, and theme installation.
The course registration deadline is Tuesday 2/16 (for the Tuesday evening session) or Thursday 2/18 (for the Thursday afternoon session). For pricing and registration click here.
There are two parallel sessions (come to either one or both, plus access the video recording):
7 Tuesdays starting Feb. 16, 7:30-9:30pm EST (the last hour is a practice and group coaching session – optional but highly recommended)
7 Thursdays starting Feb. 18, 3-5pm EST.
If you would like to discuss the various packages with reference to your needs, please reply to this email or call (215) 376-4345.
The course curriculum is below. This is going to be the best course ever, with expanded practice and coaching time, a more interactive web conference system, and new theme frameworks getting demonstrated (some of which are included in the Platinum package).
Warm Regards,
Marc Beneteau – Everyman Marketing
Websites, blogging, video, social media for ordinary people http://WordpressAcademy.biz
W: (215) 376-4345
WordPress 101 Curriculum
Note: Session 1 already complete – see above for the recording link
Session 1 – Course introduction and WordPress installation, configuration, and basic content creation
Opening a hosting account
Installing WordPress
Configuring WordPress for a business website
Understanding the difference between Posts and Pages
Image and text alignment are a very frequent source of frustration for website owners. Unfortunately, mixing text and images in HTML isn’t quite so simple as in Microsoft Word.
A common problem is horizontal alignment of images and / or positioning new paragraphs after a left- or right-floating image. See for example:
Sometimes you want to spice-up your WordPress pages (especially sales-letter pages) to replace the standard list-bullet dot or square with a custom images, for example compare:
There is a superior visual editor for WordPress that you can install and configure to your site in 2 minutes. It’s called TinyMCE Advanced. It offers a rich expansion over the default editor, particularly:
Imports all CSS classes from the main theme stylesheet and add them to a drop-down list.
Support for making and editing tables (with a very cool context sensitive menu to add, delete and merge columns and rows, set table properties etc).
In-line CSS styles.
Advanced link and image dialogs that offer a lot of options.
Search and Replace while editing.
Support for XHTML specific tags
Add/remove (div based) layers, with relative or absolute positioning via drag-and-drop etc.
Get clients, make sales, build your platform, or spread your message via the internet
Teach you the ins and outs of the WordPress platform for developing your own website(s)
Teach you basic internet marketing and social media concepts and practices
Expect to come out with an attractive website that converts to leads, clients, sales
How the course works
About an hour lecture / presentation each week followed by a practice period
A fast-paced, beginner to intermediate course on website development with WordPress (first 4 weeks)…
…plus internet marketing for small business (last 4 weeks)
Condenses hundreds of hours of research and experimentation on best practices
You can make yourself an attractive and effective internet presence (in fact, you can do just as good a job as most “professionals”. Why?)
Will teach you “everything you need to know” and show you where to find “everything that you want to know”
My Story
How I got started
Up until quite recently (last 2 years), you needed a web designer to make an attractive website
Problems and limitations of traditional web design methods
What is WordPress
WordPress is an open-source web-based software, written in PHP / MySQL, that runs on Linux-based hosting platforms
WordPress is, by far, the most popular Content Management System (200 million sites hosted) — other open-source CMS’s include Joomla, Drupal and DotNetNuke
Difference between self-hosted WordPress install and WordPress.com
WordPress is an excellent platform for small business websites
WordPress is an excellent platform for (paid) membership sites
Why WordPress
Can be configured as a blog (shows posts on home page) or as a static website
Simple to use yet infinitely customizable
Huge adoption guarantees availability of excellent themes (many free) and plugins
Publishes content to RSS for true “Web 2.0” compatibility
Optimized for search-engines out-of-the-box
Perfect for membership sites
Domains and Hosting
You need a Domain Name Registrar company (i.e. Godaddy) and a Hosting Company (i.e. BlueHost). Sometimes they are the same company.
Go to your Domain name registrar control panel, and from there set the Name Servers of your domain as instructed by your hosting company (i.e., NS1.BLUEHOST.COM, NS2.BLUEHOST.COM)
Go to your Hosting control panel, and from there:
Host your domain (if primary domain of the account, this is automatic), OR:
Create an “add-on” domain (if its an additional domain)
Then run the WordPress auto-installer
Hosting platforms
Your web server (or hosting platform) holds or “serves” your content to users over the internet
Hosting platforms are optimized for different purposes: online stores, selling on eBay, complex applications, simple websites, membership sites, etc.
WordPress (with additional Third-party apps) is so powerful it renders most specialized hosting platforms obsolete for creating small business websites (i.e. Site Built It or SBI)
One of the most popular general-purpose hosting platforms is called cPanel – it’s a Linux-based server
You want your hosting company to support multiple websites
Changing hosting when you already have a site can be a pain – best to choose right in the first place
Demonstrations
Installing WordPress on cPanel hosting
Configuring WordPress for a “normal” website
Sidebar Widgets
Installing and configuring plugins: PageMash, My Link Order, SI Captcha, Subscribe to Comments, TweetMeme, WordPress DB Backup
Installing and configuring Themes
Uploading files via FTP: changing your banner images
Content of the series
Week 2-5: Theme selection and customization. Work with Atahualpa, Thesis, Headway, and iThemes Builder. Making banners with Paint.Net. Publishing content with Windows Live Writer. Introduction to HTML and CSS.
Week 6: Keyword research and search-engine optimization. Market Samurai
Week 7: Newsletter management systems, autoresponders, shopping carts. Work with Constant Contact and Aweber. Paypal and WP-Ecommerce.
Week 8: Social media: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin
Purchase options
Just get the videos ($99)
Attend the webinar ($299)
Attend the webinar and have me work on your site + get premium themes ($449)
Site subscription is $10/mth and kicks in after 3 months (cancel any time), gives you access to a growing library of bimonthly session recordings on topics such as membership sites, blogging for profit, advanced site SEO, etc.
The Thesis theme for WordPress truly is a great theme for a business website, for the following reasons and more:
It installs “out of the box” with a clean, professional look
Wide range of configuration options
Easily customizable through custom CSS and with a large support community
Add content anywhere with the Thesis open hook system, which plays very well with OpenHook plugin.
Thesis does, however, cost $87, and so several people have attempted to create a theme similar to Thesis (emulate the Thesis look-and-feel). The limitation of these is, of course, the lack of customizability — Thesis is much more than “just a pretty face”, there is a tremendous amount of thinking that has gone “under the hood” as well for changing the layout to your needs. For more on themes vs. theme frameworks, see Choosing a good WordPress theme for your business or corporate website
Short of buying the real thing, however, you now have a better solution. There is another excellent theme framework that offers an overlapping (and in some ways superior) feature set called Atahualpa. What’s more, it’s free, and it can be downloaded directly through your WordPress site’s dashboard. Only problem is, the default styling of Atahualpa is a bit clunky.
No problem — CSS to the rescue. After procrastinating on this for some weeks I finally “bit the bullet” and styled Atahualpa to a Thesis look-alike. Here is the result:
I left the default Atahualpa banner image (which is not provided by default in Thesis) since I find the need to write custom CSS to put a banner image in Thesis a bit tacky (Atahualpa comes with a dashboard option to display a rotating banner).
Update: I have now got the styling of the page menu bar right as well and, thanks to the brilliant contribution of Larry Wilcox, a top right widget area that can be used for rotating image, video etc.
As always, the first session of WordPress 101 is free. Hope you can join us – just choose one of the times below. If you can’t make it, I will send out the video link afterwards. This is going to be the best course ever – see below what participants of the previous class had to say (this is enough to make me blush, but hey, I didn’t pay them to say this, I swear…)
If you are already registered for the course, you can get a jump-start by signing up for hosting from Bluehost and replying to this email – I may be able to install WordPress and a basic plugin set on your site during the webinar as part of the demonstration.
“Excellent course to get started with building a website and web presence. The course was well paced, full of great information, and easy to follow. Marc has a knack for hitting the key points necessary to get a quick start across the wide spectrum of relevant topics.”
“Marc is such a delight to work with. With his expertise and instruction, I now have a beautiful and adaptable website for my business “In The Garden, Design, Care & Workshops.” Quite amazing – workable pages up within 2 weeks; looking good in 6 weeks! After many years of procrastination….
I’m enjoying learning “how to” and so excited to finally say “YES, I have a website – www.inthegardendesign.us.”” — Charlotte Kidd
“I started Marc’s training program with little knowledge of Wordpress and within a few weeks had a functional, clean site up and running. Anyone with an average knowledge of tech and the willingness to put in a few hours will find the rich underbelly of Wordpress much more accessible. Mark tells you all you need to know to avoid the big mistakes saving hours of time, and pre-screens all the “ingredients” you need for a successful Wordpress site, such as Themes, Plug-ins, and the like, so you don’t have to”. – James Moche, www.premiumeldercare.com
“Marc’s enthusiasm for and understanding of Wordpress is infectious, and helped navigate my own confusion, fears and frustrations. I’m so proud of my new website, and it’s comforting and empowering to know that I now have the skills and confidence to design, build, and maintain as many websites as my little heart desires… look out world!” — Amy Childs, www.unschoolingsupport.com, www.whateveramen.com, and www.amychilds.com“(not yet a WordPress site… but it’s ONLY a matter of time…)”
“This course is amazing. It’s gotten me started in all the topics I’ve always wanted to know more about –creating web sites using WordPress (including themes, plugins, widgets, sidebars, pages, and posts), RSS feeds (and FeedBurner and FeedBlitz), newsletters and contact management programs like Constant Contact, auto-responders, shopping carts, keyword research and SEO, creating video content and YouTube, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. We covered so much material. Marc has the knowledge and experience to make any and all of these technologies make sense.
I had thought about improving my small business’s web site for years, but this course actually had me do it. Marc is patient and able to explain complex subjects in ways that are easy to understand. With Marc’s help, I see how each tool can benefit me and my site. I recommend this course to anyone who wants to create their own web site but has been afraid to attempt it, or to anyone who simply wants to gain a better appreciation of what’s out there so they can tell a web site developer what they want.” – David Horowitz, www.soundsidesoftware.com
“Marc’s extensive knowledge of web development and marketing helped me to see that there is really no need to spend thousands of dollars on a fantastic website. Hiring a web developer to design a single site would have cost much more than the class and now I have the knowledge to do it myself. I highly recommend this class for anyone who wants to have a web presence” — Geoff Young, www.goorganics.com
“Until I retired seven years ago, I was developing websites professionally. I’ve been “out of the loop” for many years now, and Marc has brought me up-to-date in a short time on the latest methods and strategies. Marc has done his homework. His course is thorough, well-rounded, and full of helpful tips. And Marc is a great teacher! Highly recommended.” –- Stephen S.
“I’m very happy with my website so far, and I really appreciate the time Marc spent working on it. It’s just what I need and wanted. I learned sooo much from his class! I was kind of a ludite about things like hosting accounts, using templates, and choosing and installing the various necessary software. I dragged my feet a little at first, but as I watched Marc build classmates’ websites from week to week, I gradually felt inspired to learn. My website isn’t finished yet, but his class gave me the information and inspiration I need to continue building a fabulous website for my freelance editing business!” –- Linda Huff-Paul
The rest of this article is available to WordPress 101 Club members only. Registration is free, it takes 15 seconds, and we’ll send you (if you opt-in) the eBook WordPress 101 Quick Start: Your first site in 2 hours. Login now or Register for free
This coming Tuesday February 2nd at noon EST, I will be interviewed by David Steele with the company Building Your Ideal Practice on the topics of WordPress website development. There will also be a 30 minute webcast / demonstration in which we’ll build an attractive website in half an hour! See below for call-in information and the full announcement.
David has been a prominent relationship coach and “coach for coaches” in the Bay Area for more than a decade. His sites are a rich resource for private-practice marketing on a budget, conscious dating, relationship coach training, and relationship building for coaches and entrepreneurs, and contain a bunch of free downloads. Click on the links to the right for more information.
Also mark your calendars for two important upcoming events:
On Tuesday Feb. 9th at 7:30pm (and also Thu. Feb. 11 at 3pm EST) begins the next 8-week series for the WordPress 101 course. With new content, a new web conferencing system that doubles the screen resolution and makes the presentation much easier to follow, and professional WordPress theme giveaways, this is going to be the best course ever. Click here for information about our affordable training packages starting at $99.
Starting Monday March 15th WordPress 101 will be offered at Drexel’s Baiada Center for entrepreneurship! This will be a 6-week x 3 hour course, perfect for those who live in the Philadelphia area and prefer a face-to-face classroom. There will be lots of time for individual assistance / tutoring. Expect to come out of this course with a nice site and an internet marketing plan.
Warm regards,
Marc Beneteau
215-376-4345
______________________
Learn how to create your own website easily and affordably. Your invitation to a private webinar.
On Tuesday February 2, at 9:00am pacific/Noon eastern I will host an interview and webcast (live demonstration) of how you can use WordPress to create your own professional website. You will learn how easy it is to create an attractive, effective and affordable website using this technology.
I’ve invited Marc Beneteau, who runs a training company called WordPress Academy to give us a presentation and an actual demonstration (via webinar) of how to create your own website in WordPress. We will create a simple but functional website before your eyes in real-time in this demonstration.
In this program you will learn:
* What is WordPress?
* Benefits of WordPress as a web development platform
* Blogs vs. static websites
* WordPress as an ideal SEO (search-engine optimization) platform
* Demonstration: installing WordPress on your web hosting account
* Creating pages and posts
* Selecting and and configuring a theme
* Configuring side-bars, adding newsletter subscriptions and social media links, etc
* and more…
In this session, Rob will teach you all the why’s, how’s and where-to’s of professional web video for self-employed people. Inlcudes topics such as:
Why web video
Effective uses of video, with samples
Production
Editing
Distribution
Using with Wordpress
Equipment
And much more.
Introduction to Rob: “For nearly 20 years Kates Media has produced videos for everything from national TV shows to local commercials. We are experts in web video. Let us apply that experience to make you a video that will increase your revenues and get you more exposure”.
Windows Live Writer is a marvelous tool for putting rich content (images and video) into a blog post and pasting / cropping / resizing images mixed-in with text. It only suffers from one limitation that I can see: when pasting an image from the clipboard it always generates a .png image which tends to be at least 5 to 10 times larger than its .jpg equivalent.
Of course for small images this is not so much a problem. I have a problem though when it creates 300-400kb images that ought to be 50 or 70kb.
Here is a solution: save the file to .jpg in your image editing software. Then in Windows Explorer just Right-click > Copy the file name. Now when you paste it into Live Writer, it creates it as a jpg!
Bringing it all together: WordPress meta-tag optimization (SEO): Using “All in one SEO” plugin
Link-building strategies & Affiliate programs
Marc’s simplified Keyword Analysis
Research competition – jot-down keywords and descriptions that they are using
Find popular keywords using Market Samurai
Restrict geographically (if necessary)
Look at SEO competition, and restrict yourself to “viable” keywords (not necessary if you have geographic restrictions). A “viable” keyword is one where you have a shot at getting on the first 3 search-result pages.
Set site meta-tags to a mix of “viable” keywords and brand-names (your company or product name)
Always be mindful of Title and Tags as you write new content, especially new posts. The Title is the most important meta-tag and adding “Tags” to your posts creates very highly-indexable content.
I run a website development and internet marketing service company with an international provider (outsourcing) network, mostly recruited from ODesk. I need a way to effectively manage multiple concurrent projects and assure semi-automated billing to my customers, many of who pay for services on an hourly basis.
The solution
For 3 years I ran a website development firm using Basecamp project management. Basecamp is the leader hands-down in online project management tools. However, at $50-$150/mth for a company my size (35 to 100 open projects) it can get pricey.
Then I found the open-source ProjectPier. Basically a clone of Basecamp, it has all of the key functionality except for time-tracking and the ability to respond to a message by email. It’s easy and intuitive to use for my customers, which is key. So – I wouldn’t switch to ProjectPier if I was already running an active business with Basecamp (Basecamp kicks ass) however, if starting fresh I would use ProjectPier.
Note also that there are dozens of free or open-source project management software apps, but none of them comes close to ProjectPier (IMHO) in terms of effectiveness and ease-of-use in the case of a distributed team that includes clients (non-technical users that can’t invest time in learning the system). This is the Basecamp project management methodology, described below.
Time tracking and invoicing
Ability to have my contractors book time on projects and then automate the invoicing was also a key requirement.
Basecamp has an API for which leading vendors have provided affordable tools and add-ons. Basecamp add-ons for automated time-tracking and invoicing include (among many others) Freshbooks ($20/mth and up), that has very powerful invoicing features including the ability to automatically charge clients credit cards through your merchant account. Freshbooks in turn integrates with numerous time-tracking tools such as Tick ($19/mth and up).
Avoid the monthly fees however with two very affordable time-tracking and billing applications for your desktop: Xpert Timer ($100 for PRO version) and Easy Time Tracking ($50). These are both single-user licenses which allow you to track unlimited projects and clients, and generate professional invoices.
I chose Easy Time Tracking because it synchronizes to Easy Project.Net project management system ($500 for 5-user license + Windows hosting on Godaddy $5/mth). I can import my sub-contractor hours from Easy Project.Net into Easy Time Tracking and invoice from there. The software is very simple and intuitive to use and generates professional-looking invoices.
While I am saving up for Easy Projects.Net however ($500 is not small change), I can still manually bill my clients with Easy Time Tracking and the time-sheet information in ProjectPier. Total cost: $50.
Basecamp (and ProjectPier) project management and time-tracking methodology
A quick review of Basecamp for project teams here.
Work is organized into projects, which have team members (developers) and clients (client companies with multiple client users per company).
Each project has one or more ongoing message threads, in which team members and/or clients ask questions, make requests or share progress (including uploading files and artifacts). Usually messages have a distribution list that includes everyone assigned to the project (everyone gets an email when a new message or reply is posted). Messages can be public (includes the client) or private (includes only team members).
It’s also possible to assign “ToDo’s” (tasks) to team members, log completion of them, and record hours against them.
ProjectPier doesn’t currently support logging hours, but it is possible to log hours in a private message thread, so not a big issue.
The main issue with both Basecamp and ProjectPier where clients are concerned is getting them to post in the correct message thread (that has the ongoing dialogue) rather than in new threads. This is easier in Basecamp since they can just respond to the system email which will post the reply to the thread (and send everyone else notification). ProjectPier doesn’t support this.
Summary: This articles discusses the benefits of using a Content Mangement System (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, etc, for creating your website; and compares the new technology to the old way of creating a website, that involved using a web designer and a static html site that went through various stages (mockup, conversion to html or “slicing”, feedback / review, and publication). In particular, it discusses the benefits of the WordPress platform for creating a small business or professional website; and the basic procedure for getting a WordPress professional or corporate website up and running.
This is an important decision for several reasons:
Your site’s appearance (“look and feel”) is determined by your theme. A good theme will make the difference between a professional-looking site and one that isn’t.
You should choose your theme fairly soon after you begin your site, since it does have an impact on how you create your content (i.e., two or three-column layouts, screen width, etc). In WordPress, content is mostly separate from presentation, so you can always change your theme later. If you do this however you will lose most of the work that you have put into customizing your theme, so it is better to start right away with the theme that you will be ultimately using.
Themes are customizable to differing degrees. All themes can be customized by modifying the PHP theme files directly, but this can be technical and time-consuming. You are better off choosing a theme that already has the functionality and the look that you want. You are also typically better off choosing a Theme framework over a regular theme. This is described further below. A theme framework allows you to customize options such as the presence or absence of side-bars directly through the theme options page.
Theme selection is more of an art than a science, but here is how I get my clients started:
Summary: Windows Live Writer is a marvelous tool for creating rich content on WordPress offline. It is much more powerful than the built-in web-based WordPress editor and is particularly useful when publishing text with a lot of images or video. With Live Writer, you create your content offline and publish it using WordPress’s built-in XML-RPC protocol (this must be enabled for your blog – see your Settings menu). This articles discusses how this can be done, step-by-step,and the advantages.
Summary: This article discusses using the Feedburner or Feedblitz services, in conjunction with your WordPress blog, to publish / manage your company newsletter (mailing list management system). It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this system, compared to competitive newsletter management systems such as Constant Contact, Emma, Aweber, Vertical Response, etc.
“I started Marc’s training program with little knowledge of Wordpress and within a few weeks had a functional, clean site up and running. Anyone with an average knowledge of tech and the willingness to put in a few hours will find the rich underbelly of Wordpress much more accessible. Mark tells you all you need to know to avoid the big mistakes saving hours of time, and pre-screens all the “ingredients” you need for a successful Wordpress site, such as Themes, Plug-ins, and the like, so you don’t have to”. – James Moche, 
“Marc’s enthusiasm for and understanding of Wordpress is infectious, and helped navigate my own confusion, fears and frustrations. I’m so proud of my new website, and it’s comforting and empowering to know that I now have the skills and confidence to design, build, and maintain as many websites as my little heart desires… look out world!” — Amy Childs, 
“This course is amazing. It’s gotten me started in all the topics I’ve always wanted to know more about –creating web sites using WordPress (including themes, plugins, widgets, sidebars, pages, and posts), RSS feeds (and FeedBurner and FeedBlitz), newsletters and contact management programs like Constant Contact, auto-responders, shopping carts, keyword research and SEO, creating video content and YouTube, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. We covered so much material. Marc has the knowledge and experience to make any and all of these technologies make sense.
“Marc’s extensive knowledge of web development and marketing helped me to see that there is really no need to spend thousands of dollars on a fantastic website. Hiring a web developer to design a single site would have cost much more than the class and now I have the knowledge to do it myself. I highly recommend this class for anyone who wants to have a web presence” — Geoff Young, 
