Costly Pitfalls To Avoid When Setting Up Your Website: Q&A With MaAnna Stephenson

Today, I'm happy to have back a former visiting expert to Marketing Tips For Authors, MaAnna Stephenson. MaAnna is the creator of Blog Aid, a place where even we non-geeks can learn all about blogs and websites. Today, I'm sitting down with MaAnna to discuss the costly pitfalls to avoid when setting up your website.



Before we get started with her Q&A, I have one quick announcement to make. The workshop that media consultant Kat Smith and I are conducting has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 30th. Market Your Book And You will give you hands-on tips that you can start to put into your marketing plan immediately. You will also be able to interact with us as we help you adapt these tips to your plan. And all who register will receive my free PDF CD of Conducting Effective Twitter Contests- with videos and Kat Smith'sThe Naked Author - Exposing the Myths of Publishing as part of your registration. These gifts are a $35 value value. Check out the Writer's Guild Of Texas website for more information on registering for this valuable workshop.



Now, let's get started with our Q&A with MaAnna...





MaAnna, you've been in the web business for a long time. Tell us about your background.



I volunteered as a web director for several non-profits back when you had to be a coder to build and maintain sites. I constantly had referrals from that and never once had to advertise. It was a side business and I took a break for a few years to research and write a book (The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom http://www.SageAge.net) I was shocked at how much online promotion had changed by the time I began to build the book's site. WordPress and Twitter were just becoming popular, as were blogs, and I had a new learning curve to get back up to speed.



I wrote nine books, which were three sets of three on platforms like Blogger, WordPress.com and WordPress.org and promoted the techie aspects of sites on Just the FAQs http://www.JustTheFAQs.net.



Over the next year, I sold quite a few of those books, but not enough to warrant all the promotional work I was doing. Then someone asked me to teach a WordPress class, and I've had great response to that ever since.



I opened BlogAid as a sister site, to help folks with the online marketing aspects of being a site owner, and then eventually merged Just the FAQs into it.



You've primarily made your living as a second site designer. Who were your clients?



Mostly, folks who got ripped off with their first site. They had taken what seemed like the easy route and hired a designer who also included hosting and a domain in the initial package. When the site owner informed the designer that they had found a better deal, wanted to move to another host, or wanted to move to WordPress, they found their entire site gone the next day.



That's something that I constantly warn my readers about, and for that very reason. Always purchase your domain and get your own hosting.



That's right. I've seen so many good folks loose their entire brand they spent years building, not to mention that all of their SEO goes down the drain too.



How else do you see new site owners get ripped off?



A lot of my clients paid $500-$900 dollars for their first site. It was beautiful, but they didn't know how to use it and the design competed with their content instead of enhancing it. Content is what rules the Internet, not design.



You use a unique training method in your classes of WordPress training first, content second, and design third. Tell us why you do it that way.



Because it works and it's the fastest way to do it right the first time. Most new site owners come to me with a design already chosen. After they take the class and learn all that WordPress can do, and begin to create their content, they discover that their site actually needs to be in a different shape or configuration from the design they had originally chosen. And, that's exactly what most of my second site clients say too. They had no idea what they needed in a design until they started working more with content. After a year of marketing experience, they usually choose a very simple design that does not compete with their content.



How often do people usually do a full site redesign?



About every two years. Trends in design and marketing change by then. And, most folks create a site that grows like a cactus in multiple directions. Also, many solopreneurs go through two or three iterations of their business before they find a niche that works best for them. I did the same thing with Just the FAQs merging into BlogAid because it was, by far, the more marketable domain. And, I was giving myself double the work, and splitting my audience, by having two sites with different focuses that were too narrow.



So, I advise folks not to pay too much for a custom design because it's likely that you'll want to tweak it or completely change it in two years.



For authors, especially new ones, they may want to design a site around a book as the brand. That's okay, and gives a lot of SEO for the book title. But, if they write more than one book, or they plan to be a professional writer and speaker, they may want to consider building a site around them as the brand.



You can have multiple domains point to the same site, right? So you can have a domain with the book title and then a domain with your name both go to the same site if you like.



That's right. And, it's a good idea to get your name as a domain anyway, just so others can't hijack it and hold it hostage. A lot of famous people and brands had their names as domains practically ransomed back to them years ago.



What other advice can you give to help people avoid expensive mistakes with their website?



Hire the right type of designer if you plan to have a site customized. There are three types. One is primarily a coder. They tend to build highly functional sites that may be on the dull side, as far as graphic appeal. Then there are graphic designers who know almost nothing about marketing and why sites are laid out as they are. The best type of designer is one that has a good balance of skills, and most importantly, understands a little about online marketing.



BlogAid is offering a grand prize in my Twitter contest that is starting on April 22nd. Tell us about that.



I'm offering an open consultation/training session with me for whatever they need help with, or a full video review of their site – winner's choice.



What is a video site review?



I bring a fresh pair of qualified eyes to someone's existing site. I ask them about their target audience and goals for their site and then I give advice and tips about how they can improve their site to meet those goals and be more effective with their audience.



Before we end, do you have any tips on what to look for when you evaluate a hosting company?



Most reputable hosting companies, like Host Gator and Blue Host, have great customer service and offer unlimited space and bandwidth, even on their smallest packages. So, the real differences are in the whistles and bells, such as including a domain, multiple email accounts, and even an SSL certificate that you can use if you plan to sell things directly from your site using a merchant account.



Hosts also offer free setup of WordPress for you, but don't do it that way. They use a 1-click installation that is not as secure as it should be. And, the backend of WordPress is not fully optimized for you, like setting up your permalinks, and even the date and time so you can schedule posts. It's a good idea to get a geek to set up WordPress and fully optimize it for you.



MaAnna, I want to thank you for your generous time and for sharing your advice with my readers. Blog Aid is becoming a regular stop on my daily reads and I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone working on a blog or website.



For my readers, here is a little more about our guest today:



MaAnna Stephenson's BlogAid site features a wealth of tips and resources for blog and website owners, along with classes, site consulting, video tutorials, and video site reviews, that are specifically for non-geeks who are on a budget. Her experience as a web developer, professional engineer, nonfiction author, and artist allow her to draw together the right mix of teaching skills, technical expertise, and online promotion techniques that are best suited to each site owner and their target audience. She specializes in working with creative folks like authors, artists, as well as small business owners. You can follow MaAnna on Twitter @BlogAid



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 -------- Tony Eldridge is the author of The Samson Effect , an action/adventure novel that Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure." He is also the author of the Twitter marketing book, Conducting Effective Twitter Contests .