WordPress Websites for Small Business Owners: It’s never been this easy to maintain your own website
December 30, 2009 by mainemediapros · Leave a Comment
Everytime I create a new website for a small business owner I get the same question asked about 9 out of 10 times: “Will I be able to update and add things to my site myself?”
In other words, they are asking how easy will it be for them make changes to the website themselves. They don't want to buy an expensive web editing program and spend hours learning that program just so they can occasionally update their menu, add specials, announce new events or whatever the case may be.
They also don't want to pay a large annual fee to a web design firm just to get “Free updates” to their website. Some web design companies charge upwards of $400 or more per year just to do basic updates to your website, as you need them.
As a small business owner, what can you do?
The answer is undoubtedly: WordPress websites.
Whether you've heard of WordPress or not, you may not know that WordPress has become one of the most popular and effective ways to build a website nowadays. In fact, did you know that some of the largest companies and brands in the world are currently using WordPress?
Here is a list of just a few:
Yahoo: www.ycorpblog.com
Rolling Stone magazine: www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily
CNN News: www.politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
Southwest Airlines: www.blogsouthwest.com
Sony PlayStation: www.blog.us.playstation.com
Flickr: www.blog.flickr.net
The New York Times publishes over 50 WordPress powered website
What is WordPress?
WordPress came about back in 2003 and became popular when the blogging revolution started worldwide. Initially is was known as a blogging platform, but has evolved into a one of the most widely used Content Management Systems (CMS) that over 202 million websites worldwide are currently using to build and manage their websites.
What Can a WordPress based website do for my business? Web Designers worldwide, including Maine Media Pros, recommend WordPress based websites to the small businesses of the world for their website because of these reasons:
- Once the website design is done, it is very easy for the owner of the website to log into the administration dashboard from anywhere in the world with an internet connection and update, change or add content to their website without any programming experience or expensive software.
- WordPress comes with several built in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features so that people actually find your website in the search engines. WordPress' ability to create SEO friendly permalinks, blogrolling and pinging are just to name a few.
- There are thousands of add ons (plugins) that can be added to each WordPress website to increase search engine visibility, build and manage company newsletters, track website performance and statistics, add flash animation, slideshows, background music, display interactive slideshows and portfolios of your work….you name it, it is possible. We can go on all day here.
- Each WordPress website also comes with a built in blog that you can write to and manage within the WordPress administration dashboard.
I hope I've convinced you that WordPress is the the best CMS to get your website designed and built upon.
Later Fellow Mainah!
Peter Beattie
Maine Internet Marketing & Web Design by Maine Media Pros
Maine Halloween Store
October 23, 2009 by mainemediapros · Leave a Comment
MaineHalloweenStore.com is an affiliate website that earns it's owner commissions on every sale made through it's parent webstore: SpiritHalloween.com.
When we created this website we wanted it to look identical to the Spririt Halloween website without violating any copyrights. So we captured the front page of www.SpiritHalloween.com and replicated a website that looks almost identical to that, while tweaking a few small things like the logo and some links in the sidebars.
When a visitor clicks on ANY of the images on the homepage of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com they are automatically redirected to www.SpiritHalloween.com. The transition from the first site to the other is pretty much seamless. It is very difficult to tell you are on another website after clicking through.
Get this: Whenever a visitor clicks on anything on the homepage of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com and is redirected to www.SpiritHalloween.com, that click is automatically tracked. Anything that visitor buys from www.SpiritHalloween.com in the next 30 days will earn the owner of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com a 15% commission. We accomplished this by incorporating some affiliate tracking with one of the largest affiliate networks on the web.
Another thing we added to this website as a way for the owner to earn more revenue are paid advertising spots for local businesses. Take a look at the banners at top of the page and the 4 running along both sides of the page. Those are sold for $200 a pop to local businesses as chance to be in front of 100% of www.MaineHalloweenStore.com's visitors.
Packages Used in This Website:
Custom Designed Website
