Hi There, soon to be financially free doctors!
If you are thinking of creating a blog or website, perhaps you will find the following information useful.
I thought I would add some information on the approaches I have taken to website design.
I first set up a blog in Feb 2007 with www.Typepad.com. The advantage of this blogging software is its ease of use. It can easily be converted into a blogsite or simple blog, and once you have become used to the structure there is much you can do. My blogsite has now had 4500 people look at it (not necessarily independent users, probably includes people who look each week, but helps you keep blogging anyway). It is on www.holisticdoctor.com . You will notice that the URL showing at the top of the page is not the above, but a sub - version of typepad - http://holisticdoctor.typepad.com/holistic_doctor_on_line/ .
More & more internet marketeers are now switching to wordpress, as with wordpress it faciliates that ability to have the URL showing at the top, "www.yoursite/blog" - this is felt to be even better for SEO (search engine optimisation) but I will leave that for now. It is apparently more difficult to use for non techi people (a friend with a big site has just switched over to it) so I am staying with Typepad for now.
To focus back on this post:
1. My first site (I am excluding the very old site www.alisongrimston.co.uk) is a blog - as above, done myself, with some later tweaking by an excellent Typepad specialist, Claire Raikes (http://www.businessblogangel.com/)
2. My second site is a standard website. I did not have the time to learn to use frontpage (which I note is now obsolete, has stopped having new versions produced by Microsoft). I farmed the job out to Elance (www.Elance.com) (see my post under Logos to see how to do this) and a company in Canada took it up (although I suspect work was done in India, due to certain small spelling & grammer misunderstandings). The site www.VaneCottage.co.uk is very much how I wanted it, with a site type that I decided on after looking at other websites. This was created in July-August 2007. However, the pictures did not originally cycle through properly, so I had to get theses sorted, and found that my web tech person in the UK did not feel comfortable with adjusting this site as it was not set up in the way he would have done. I have later had further tweaks done my my outstanding web tech person in Canada (she is more expensive than I would have found through Elance but she knows exactly how to do what I want quickly).
3. My next site is a membership site. My Internet mentor, Nicola Cairncross, (The Moneygym club) feels that membership sites are the way forward in internet marketing. She has examined various options for software for membership sites, and feels that Subhub cannot be bettered. My idea for www.TheNaturallyHealthyPet.com seemed to lend itself to a membership site, so I created this through subhub, again from my own vision. This is a much more expensive way to create a website - but you must admit it looks wonderful! It is easy to upload the articles to, the blog is automatically updated, and there is a shopping cart that takes paymetns through paypal automatically as part of the site. The subscriptions can be collecteed in £, $ or euros. I have created it with 3 types of membership, basic (which is free), pet owner and therapist. There is a forum as part of the software. In order to create a community, I decided to make the first 100 members free (currently at 87). It is easy to look at the stats for this site - I am having approx 50 unique visitors per day, 600 per month. Trouble is, I haven't yet created the Ebook that should make it pay...... But it is easy to add downloads, which people can pay for or you can link to from other pages. Downside is cost - £2500 or so for setting up & first year's maintenance.
Hence my need to join this fantastic course and community!
4. My next site is www.financialfreedomfordoctors.com - This is a blog site (ie a blog made up to look like a website). I made it on typepad again as I know I can edit this whenever I wish, and I am frustrated by the process ofaltering my vane cottage site - in fact I never alter this, although I update the blog regularly. Regularly altering site contents (as with my monthly articles on thenaturallyhealthypet.com) is important in SEO (how well your site is picked up by Google). Although I would have been able to create this site myself, I have learned that things happen much more quickly in life if we delegate - levering other peoples' time and experience, as Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad (an inspirational book)) would say.
So this is my current baby. I think you might agree it looks less professional than the subhub site, but only cost £800 to get someone else to create (would have been cheaper in Elance but I don't think they would have integrated the Autoresponders correctly). I am able to edit it completely myself. The content needs improving +++, and I will be posting on this when time allows (but I have taken 2 weeks to get on & do this).
Now to create E-products & make them all pay!!!!! Also I am aware that videos & podcasts are the next big thing....
KR (& more later),
Alison
Dr Alison Grimston
Outsourcing has become backbone of many SMBs. Small businesses don't have a big budget to fill functions like marketing and IT. They would much prefer hiring the talent they need when they need it.
The service called LimeExchange (www.limeexchange.com) is designed to help buyers by posting their job requirements and specifying what they are willing to pay. Service providers bid on the jobs, and LimeExchange provides a rating system to help buyers evaluate providers. Buyers also can browse freelancers' profiles on LimeExchange.
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Posted by: Geek | March 03, 2008 at 05:30 PM