Even in the days of YouTube, TikTok and all the other examples of new media, blogging and content based websites are still enormous and it is estimated that between 4.4 and 7 million new blog posts are posted online every single day.

The traditional income generation strategies for blogs have centred around traffic redirection. It works as follows: bloggers publish contextual ads on their websites and, when readers click them, they are redirected to the advertiser’s website. The most popular such program is Google Adsense but there are others, though the best ones have minimum traffic thresholds just to let a website join. To make a respectable income using this strategy requires a huge amount of web traffic.

So what should you do if your blog isn’t receiving massive amounts of traffic?

A good strategy to focus on is to leverage the digital property itself – ie. the web page – rather than the reader. The web page exists as soon as it is published and will continue to exist until you take it off the Internet. If the content is of good solid quality and the blog is generally well maintained, the web page itself has a value and this can be leveraged via programs like the Smart & Slick Content Partners Program.

Here’s how it works:

You publish content on your blog (either provided by Smart & Slick, or written by you to the specifications of a provided brief), and you get paid just for posting it. How much you get paid depends on lots of factors about your blog itself, relating to how long it’s been online, how well established it is etc. But the pay can range from a few pounds up to hundreds of pounds per blog post.

Of course ideally, you should be using multiple strategies to generate an income from your blog, but having been essentially paid to publish a page is definitely one of the better methods because it’s entirely front-loaded.

And of course, even if publishing content isn’t your main line of business, we recommend every website to have a blog because Google loves frequently updated websites. So this becomes a legitimate additional revenue stream for almost any business in existence today.

I’m about to put across a controversial and probably unpopular viewpoint.

I surf the same Internet as everybody else. And there are few ideas more actively embraced on the Internet than the idea that passion is the most important ingredient in any entrepreneurial venture.

First of all, it depends what one means by passion. And definitions may differ. But I think we can all agree it has something to do with liking the thing that we’re doing. We could go even bigger and say that it has to do with being part of an industry that we feel is important and a force for good in the world.

I had a mentor a number of years ago who defined passion as something that feeds your soul. It’s something you have an almost spiritual relationship with. It most certainly is not just something you do for money.

For example, am I, as the owner and manager of a digital marketing agency, passionate about web development and marketing? I’d say yes, I am. However there are other things I’m passionate about too. So why is it that I’m running a digital agency instead of pursuing one of my other passions?

Because I have come to believe that there is one element of any entrepreneurial venture that is considerably more important and deterministic of success than whether you’re passionate about the industry or field.

There is one factor that must be considered that will make or break a business venture and no amount of passion can compensate for a lack of this thing.

Do you know what it is?

There has to be a market for what you’re selling. That is non-negotiable. What do I mean by “a market”? There has to be demand. There have to be thousands and thousands of people – with money – who are willing to pay for whatever products or services you are offering.

If I can elaborate on that slightly and qualify it further, if you’re a solo entrepreneur and you’re looking to start your first business, the mere existence of a market may not be enough. Let’s look at 3 situations.

Passion + No Market = Fail

You could tattoo “I love hairdressing” across your forehead. But if you happen to live in a community of bald people, it isn’t going to make any difference. There isn’t going to be any hair to cut.

Do not overlook this. Do not be seduced into believing that you can make any business venture succeed if you are prepared to work hard enough on it. The Internet is brimming with so-called gurus who want you to believe that so that you’ll buy their ‘How To Start A Business’ courses.

Hard work is very important, but if there isn’t a considerable demand for what you’re selling, you won’t sell much of it. And that has nothing directly to do with your skills, traits or character.

Passion + Mature Market = Fail

The other common situation is when there clearly is a market but it’s already well serviced by very well established competitors.

Once upon a time, I tried to start an entertainment blog because I’ve always been interested in movies and TV. Guess what? It didn’t work. It’s a huge market. But it’s quite well services by several huge and very well established (and very deep pocketed) competitors. Plus, the work load was enormous and impractical for a single entrepreneur.

Passion + New and/or Growing Market = Potential Win

Companies like Google and Amazon started out in new markets that were forecasted to grow.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was working on Wall Street in the early 90s when he read an analyst report that said internet use had increased 2300% in the last 12 months. It was enough to make him quit his job at the hedge fund and move his family across the country to California to start a little company called Amazon.

Amazon’s growth has since largely mirrored the increase in Internet use throughout America and across the world.

Passion + Dynamic Market = Potential Win

If your market is growing, or constantly turning over, this ensures a few things: there will always be new clients. The ultimate need is unquenchable. For example, estate agents.

On average, British citizens move house 8 times over the course of their lives. That equates to roughly once every 10 years.

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I made the decision to start a digital agency because the demand for web design and development, for PR services, for SEO and copywriting is huge. These are also all fields that I’ve got considerable experience of.

Notice – there is no set of circumstances where the win is guaranteed.

WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS’s available today and it is believed that 45% of the websites on the Internet are now, “proudly powered by WordPress“. We build LOTS of WordPress themes for all kinds of websites. It’s probably the most common type of project we work on. WordPress is very, very popular.

The downside of this popularity is that it becomes a massive target to hackers – and they regularly succeed because webmasters don’t always maintain good cyber security practises. In this article, I want to talk about how to keep your WordPress powered website secure.

Plugins You Need

One of the best things about WordPress is the plugin library that allows you to add additional functionality to the WordPress core. They have plugins for everything. And you should definitely use some of them to keep your WordPress website secure.

WordFence

WordFence is a very good security plugin. It will do things like check your install for injected code, compare plugins to the repository versions and much more to prevent any devious people trying to infiltrate your website. It’s well worth using.

Delete Unused Themes

Delete any themes you are not using. Even though this code is not in use by your website, theme code can still be used by hackers to get into your website.

Keep Your Username A Secret

This is not as easy as you think. Unfortunately, when you set up a WordPress blog, your author archive is located at a URL which contains your username. Because of this, even if you don’t go with the obvious ‘admin’ as your username, it’s pretty easy for anybody to see what your username is just by clicking the link to your author archive that usually hyperlinks from the by line of every blog article.

Make Your Display Name Different To Your Username

In the users tab, you can set your public display name. This is the name to whom blog articles will be credited in the by line. Make this different to your username. Never use admin.

Delete The Link To Your Author Archive

This is an option that makes sense if you are the only author on your blog. If you are the only person who writes articles on your blog, you don’t even need an author archive because it’s the same as the post loop. By deleting the link, it’s not so easy for people to find your username, which is half the battle when trying to hack you.

Lately, I’ve fallen in love with Audible. I have always enjoyed reading and really believe in the power of books. But in recent years, I often don’t have the time to dedicate an hour a day to reading a book. Audiobooks, on the other hand, are fantastic. I can listen while I drive or while I work.

I like to try and keep abreast of books in the business and marketing space and The Way of The Wolf, owing to the hit movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” has gotten a lot of attention.

In the book, Jordan Belfort explains his selling system. He calls it the straight line system. And it is the process of turning prospects into buyers.

I wanted to talk about one specific aspect of that system in this post. And it’s something Jordan calls The Three Tens.

There are three aspects of a sales situation that the prospect must rate as 10/10 if there is to be any hope of them buying from you.

The three aspects are:

1. You (the sales person)
2. The company
3. The product

In face-to-face sales, the sales person needs to be trustworthy and genuine. They need to look smart. And they need to conduct themselves well.

The company needs to have a good reputation. The prospect needs to believe that the company is a reputable company to deal with.

The product needs to solve the customer’s problem. They need to believe that the product will make their life better.

Let’s translate this into the digital realm.

In online sales, your website represents two out of three of those aspects. The sales person is the sales page and the website design and branding represents the company itself.

This is exactly why going cheap on web design is false economy. Your website is literally everything (except your product). You need high quality web design. Everybody does. And the higher the price of your products, the higher quality web design you need.

Because web design is the key to having your prospects believe in you. Good graphic design equals trustworthy company. It may sound weird and unlikely when put like that, but essentially, that’s the situation.

At Smart & Slick, we can’t help with your product – unless it’s an app – but we can help with everything else. We can provide you with high quality web design and branding, and we can also provide you with sales copy that sells.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you sell more online, get in touch and we’d be happy to help.

Bye for now 🙂

There is a very prevalent school of thought within entrepreneurship and among small business owners that the lone wolf entrepreneur or small business owner should do everything themselves. From servicing customers to marketing to graphic design, building and managing the website, the lot! And, of course, it works for some people.

However, I’ve often found that when I get to know these people better, other parts of their life are struggling and it becomes clear what has happened.

At Smart & Slick, we follow a philosophy from the world of software development. It’s called…

The Single Responsibility Principle

The philosophy goes like this: each and every part of a program should have one job and only one job. This makes it easier to solve problems when there is a malfunction. It means that replacing that one part of the program will not affect anything else. So fixing one problem will not create another problem.

I’ve come to believe this is a very useful philosophy outside of software engineering. It applies to business too, but sounds like this…

You Cannot Do Everything Yourself…

And nor should you! Part of being a business owner and leader is knowing that you aren’t fantastic at everything. And to try to learn everything is going to spread you very thin. There are also going to be jobs you just don’t like doing and make you feel uneasy, a feeling you’ll take home with you and will play on your mind and seep into other parts of your life.

But there’s a solution…

…So Don’t Try!

Decide what your job within your business is. All other demands of the business should be delegated to other people and organisations. Get an accountant, hire a digital agency to take care of your digital infrastructure, hire a marketing agency to take care of your marketing. Empty your plate as much as possible.

This will have a number of effects: You’ll be much more focussed and high performing in the role you’ve given yourself. You’ll also be more relaxed generally and able to give some energy to other parts of your life.

The advent of Web 2.0 gave publishing capabilities to those Internet users who could previously only consume. Because little or no coding or web design skills were required in order to actually put something on the Internet, putting things online was no longer just for nerds.

If you want to publish articles, sign up at Medium.com. If you want to sell, go to eBay or uDemy or Kajabi, or – I’m going to show my age – ClickBank.

So there seems to be a growing school of thought, particularly among under 25s, that having your own website is old-school and unnecessary.

I don’t think so. You may think that as a web designer, I would say that, but that’s not really true. I am a purveyor of tech solutions. And if it’s not websites it will be something else and I’d better start learning that. But the truth is, I don’t think the website will ever really stop being a useful thing.

When smartphones first became a thing, the App Store and Google Play were big for a while. And they still have their place. The tech media were asking the question of whether apps would replace websites. They didn’t.

Besides from which (nerdy insider information) a lot of apps just access the website that they are the app of via an API feed, so the app cannot exist without the original website anyway.

Apps have their place and there are equally very good reasons why many businesses might want apps. But think about it – when you want to find out about something, do you really want to go to the trouble of downloading an app in order just to learn about the thing? I’d rather not. What does everybody do? They Google it. And google search results are full of web pages.

So what then, about web 2.0 properties that you can publish on but don’t actually belong to you?

I’d say they’re a great starting point for the non-tech savvy, if they don’t want to spend money on a website. In the proof of concept stage of a venture, it makes sense to do everything as cheaply as possible.

But as you progress, there is major value in having the central HQ of your brand or business on a web property that you, as the entrepreneur, fully control. And having your own website is the only way you can guarantee that.

All of the Web 2.0 properties from social networks to blogging platforms to eCommerce platforms, have rules. There are things they allow their user bases to do and things those users have no control over. Additionally, changes and new rules come into force regularly.

I wouldn’t want my business to be completely at the mercy of a billion dollar company whose best interests will not always align with mine. Sure, there may be a period of time when I get more business from Instagram or Clubhouse than from my website for a while, but these relationships tend to last for as long as that’s the case. If it ever stops being the case, I’m going to want my website to still be there to fall back on.

Need a website?

Talk to us today.

Accounting is a core part of running a small business. So naturally, small business accounting software is one of those things that every business needs. There are hundreds of accounting programs out there which will give you as a small business owner plenty of choice and opportunity to find a package you’re comfortable with.

Accounting Software For Startups

To be honest, in the very early stages of a company, Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice and GoogleDocs all provide the basic functionality required to keep a track of your spending and calculate profit and loss. They may not be the software products that come to mind when you think of accounting software, but they are a perfectly good solution to the problem because one of them you possibly already have (Excel), and the other two are freely available.

QuickBooks

Currently the favourite amongst accountants, QuickBooks has spent a huge amount of money on making itself known in recent years. It offers a much smoother user experience than the free solutions I’ve mentioned above. Using your smartphone, you can photograph a receipt or invoice and the software will enter the data into your accounts. This is just one of the possible advantages specialist accounting software can offer over programs designed for broader use. Of course, digital voodoo like that doesn’t come for free: Like most software nowadays, it runs a software-as-a-service business model, with a subscription starting at £6 a month.

Accountz

Accountz is a UK based software company specialising in accounting software for home and business. Because of the entry-level nature of some of their products, it’s ideal for entrepreneurs for whom maths and accounting isn’t exactly their strong point. Accountz has focused on making accounting accessible to those who don’t know the lingo.