Log In
Members
Home
Add Reply
Add Topic
Topic RSS
11:37 am
September 16, 2011
Offline
QuoteHi! I have a nice WP.com site. Is what you talk about here at all possible on this service or do I have to move before I can do any of it?
3:16 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Hi Helene, and welcome to the forum!
Over the past several weeks, I have spent countless hours, first on Wordpress.com, and then on Wordpress.org learning about building websites. What I discovered is that both of them start out looking pretty similar as long as you are just doing real basic stuff. Before I took MMM 2.0, any website built using Wordpress.com probably would have looked just fine to me.
I know better now! One very important thing I learned in MMM 2.0 was about clever methods of building up your mailing list, which is extremely important. I used to think that a mailing list was all about letting people know where I was going to be performing, so that (hopefully!) they would come to see my shows. I now realize that as my list grows, probably 99% of those people on my list will never see one of my live shows, but they will very likely become customers by buying CD's, single downloads, videos, internet concerts, pet food dishes with my picture on them.....(huh?, what?!) Ok, I might be stretching it on the last one, but then again, who knows!
Two very major parts of driving people to your mailing list is a "squeeze page" and an "opt in form" that is displayed very prominently on both your squeeze page, as well as on every page on your website. The opt in form needs to be set up with an auto responder so your prospective customer is contacted by email immediatly after they have shown an interest. Don't worry! If things like "squeeze page", "opt in form", and "auto responded" sound unfamiliar and overwhelming, don't feel alone. I knew absolutly nothing about setting up this kind of stuff less than a year ago. I now have it all up and running, and showing positive results! All of this new knowledge came from MMM 2.0 and this forum.
Anyway, to answer at least part of your question .....no, you cannot do what I have just talked about with Wordpress.com. They do not allow you to install things like webforms. However, Wordpress.org does, and Wordpress.org also allows you to install plugins to enhance your website, and there are probably thousands of them out there, for free! Again, don't worry. Until a very short time ago, I though a "plug in" was when I plugged my amp into the wall!
Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org are both free, but Wordpress.org offers soooooo much more. The downside is that to use Wordpress.org, you have to have an outside hosting company that you pay for. I now use Hostgator.com, and they fully support Wordpress.org. My cost is $9.97 per month, and for that price I can have as many websites, squeeze pages, etc as I want. They have outstanding, and unlimited chat and phone support, 24/7. I have used their support many, many times, and they have always resolved my problem, usually before the phone call is over. The monthly fee is a tax deductable expense if you are a working musician, so it still winds up being free. If you already have a Website using Wordpress.com, they could probably help you switch it over to Wordpress.org so you wouldn't have to start from scratch. You could then just start modifying and adding all these great tools that Wordpress.org lets you use.
Hope this helps! If you have any more questions, be sure to ask on this forum. There are people on here who are way ahead of me with all of this, and they have been a tremendous help to me in getting all of this stuff put into action.
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
6:52 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Hi Helene,
Greg's right. You can't place an opt-in form on your wp.com site, but you can with a self hosted wp.org.
Don't worry though, you'll find that your wp.com site will come in handy for you still because it's a web "property" that you control and will support your brand.
You can start a wp.org blog today, but still use your wp.com site as a supporting site for your content. This can quite possibly allow you to rank the same content twice in the search engines... especially if you are posting frequently. Do not discard your current work, just use it to support your brand new, self-hosted blog.
-Steve
7:48 am
September 16, 2011
Offline
thanks guys,
looks like I'll have to investigate a move 🙂
2:36 pm
June 10, 2011
Offline
Hi again Helene,
When I first started working with Wordpress, I tried countless different themes. Steve suggested that I try a theme called "Suffusion", so I did. I still continued to try other themes for a while, but I kept going back to Suffusion. It wound up being one of the easiest themes to use, works well with almost every plugin that I tried out, and had more built in and easy to use editing features than any other theme I tried. If you are going to try building a new site with Wordpress.org, you might want to take a look at this theme.
My new site using this theme has not been published yet, but it looks completely different than the original theme......dark background, opt in form, MP3 player, custom header, links to my facebook and twitter, gig calendar, photos, press page, blog....It was all pretty easy to figure out once I got into it, along with some very valuable help from John and Steve! I was not able to get some of this stuff to work very well, or even work at all with some of the other themes I tried.
What would a jam session with Gordon Lightfoot, Collective Soul, and Damien Rice sound like?
Check out Greg Parke and you’ll have a pretty good idea!
6:03 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Even I'll admit... Suffusion was over the top with more capabilities than I need or usually go for. I'm into really simple.
But Suffusion is just so damned flexible that I just went with it and really liked it. Customizing the appearance can be daunting, but only because it gives the flexibility to change just about everything without having to know css. That's really why I recommend it. You don't need to know how to code to use it.
9:51 am
September 16, 2011
Offline
Wow! Thanks guys! Can I ask another stupid question? What happens to my existing links: will they still be found by google when behind the opt-in-page? 🙂 The theme I use at .com is Linen-has anyone experience of this one on .org?
6:00 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Helen,
I'm not sure if I completely understand your last question here...
But I think the strategy is to not change any of your existing links. Rather from this point forward you would want to drive cold traffic to your opt-in page.
Or you want to post content on the blog and have an opt-in form on your sidebar.
Also maybe set up a special opt-in page that is related to the keywords of your blog post, use the keywords you've targeted in the blog post as links to this tailored squeeze page (I use this strategy to get both the blog post and the squeeze page to rank for the same keywords... 2 listings is better than one).
What you can also do is go back to your wp.com site and start keyword linking that content to your new squeeze page or content on your wp.org site. This will leverage your old site (because of it's age) to give credence to your new site. Again... 2 listings is better than one 🙂
6:11 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Hi Helene, I'm not sure if I am completely clear either?
Are you asking what happens to your old site when you create a new one? If so, the answer is nothing. This would be a completely new site you would be creating.
Or are you asking how Google finds the interior pages of your site if your home page is a squeeze page which does not offer links to your interior pages?
If it's the later, there are actually problems with SEO if there are no links on your page to your interior content. The spidars will have a difficult time crawling the content correctly and in theory, it will hurt your SEO. For that reason I recommend you have your blog on your home page and use either an interior page, or a different URL altogether, for your squeeze page.
Let me know if that doesn't address the question.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
4:52 pm
September 16, 2011
Offline
Hi Steve and John,
thank you for helping and sorry for not answering back earlier. I have been busy moving sites. 🙂
I'm now at TheArtsongProject.com
@John; this does adress the question, thanks.
@Steve: how does on keyword-link in WP.com?
Would it be possible to have recent blog-posts be public and pages and older posts (Archives) subscriber only?
Thanks,
Helene
7:44 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Helene,
To link from wp.com to your new site, you want to make sure first that you are linking keywords that are relevant to the content they are pointing to. For instance, go into your wp.com site and for almost every instance that your name appears, you could like it to your new wp.org "About" page, assuming your about page is about Helene Lindqvist
To create a link just find the word you wish to link and select it. On the post tool bar there should be an icon that looks like a chain link. Click that icon and the insert the url for the content you want the keyword to point to.
Does that make sense/ answer your question?
5:49 pm
September 16, 2011
Offline
Hi Steve,
Yes, I actually get it! I thought it meant something fancy 😉 I can do that.Thanks.
Helene
6:20 pm
June 9, 2011
Offline
Cool! Glad I could help.
As far as making archives private, that's not something I have ever tried, you might need a plug-in for that, but first I would look on the publishing options inside of the post/ page editor to see if you can do it that way. (should be top right, next to the editor)
10:05 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
Helene Lindqvist said:
Would it be possible to have recent blog-posts be public and pages and older posts (Archives) subscriber only?
Thanks,
Helene
You could do this by going in a few weeks after each post was published and changing it to be password protected, or to do it right you could use Wishlist Member.
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
8:52 am
September 16, 2011
Offline
Hi Guys,
@Steve: Good thing I read what you wrote: As I went back to put some nice links, I discovered that most of the links on my new site were still linked back to pages of the old site! Now I could change this as well. Thank you!
@John: Thanks! I'm going to study your wishlist-lesson again, now that I can actually use it. Xo.
9:20 am
September 16, 2011
Offline
One other thing!
The Wp Audio by Martin Laine that you (John) recommend: does it play in flash only or does it show on mobile devices as iPads as well? Can't seem to find that out on its site.
2:00 pm
September 16, 2011
Offline
... I just posted that last question about the Audioplayer under "website design", no need to answer here.
4:16 pm
June 7, 2011
Offline
No prob. I responded on the other thread here: https://www.mmmanifesto.com/in.....lash#p1330
Having trouble with your marketing? Wish you could have an experienced direct-to-fan marketing expert look over your actual campaigns, music, or content and offer feedback? Or perhaps you’re just looking for a little one-on-one assistance so you can ask questions that pertain to your specific goals and get a second, more experienced, perspective? Click here to book a session with me now.
1 Guest(s)
