Since beginning my journey into entrepreneurship, I can safely say one the best things I ever did, was learn how to build my own website. It’s probably one of the most important skill sets that every entrepreneur should have in their toolkit. Have you ever gotten a quote from someone to build your website? It can get pretty pricey and if it’s too cheap, you really gotta question it. So let me break down 4 reasons why you should learn to build your own website.
- Save money to start and overall
- No wait time to put out content
- You can compete with bigger players in your space
- Earn money off the skill
- More creative control
Save money now and later on
Learning this skill is an investment in time or money to learn it but it pales in comparison to what you would pay somebody to build it for you. Whether that person charges an arm and a leg because they are that good or if the person is that bad at building your site and it begins to cost you money.
The reality is that with platforms like WordPress now, it has never been easier to put together a high-quality website on your own without any coding knowledge. Getting your domain and hosting is peanuts and getting an amazing theme that suits your purposes can be very affordable as well.
It really comes down to learning the fundamentals and then you can begin seeing how things all work together for your benefit. To this date, I haven’t paid for a web developer but I have spent hundreds of hours over the past 3 years learning how to improve my website, basic SEO, how to drive traffic to my website and how to monetize my website. Just by having a website that gets traffic, it already has earning potential for you to make money in multiple ways.
No Wait Time To Put Out Content
You see this part right here…Nothing kills creative momentum like procrastination or being at the mercy of someone else to put your content out there. The fact that I can come online create my content or update my product list at whatever time I want, empowers me to keep ongoing.
Especially when you drop a hot topic and you start getting engagement, it fuels you to drop more content. Whenever I have had to submit my content to someone else to post on their channels and they take a week or more to post it, sometimes not even posting it, that always kills my creative energy.
When you learn how to build your website, you can go in anytime and make your changes and keep your momentum going.
Competing With Bigger Players
If there is one thing the digital age has done for us small entrepreneurs is level the playing field. You are now able to rank for your competitor’s names or the keywords that they use on their websites, so you pop up in a Google search right alongside them.
I can’t tell you how many times people call Droid Island and thinking it is either Bmobile, Digicel, Huawei or Samsung. That’s because after right so much content about some of the biggest players in the space, my content will pop up many times in searches for the bigger players.
That gives me a level of authority, it sends traffic my way and it also gives my clients a level of comfort, knowing that they searched for Digicel and my articles pop up. You can be more agile than the bigger players in your space. Whenever so juicy topics come out, you can beat them to the punch when you release content and hijack a lot of the traffic that they would go there way.
One huge caveat is that, if you are outside of the US, the internet and ranking for things isn’t as competitive or expensive to rank for keywords. So it’s much easier to gain some real traffic, especially if you are in the Caribbean.
The Skill Earns Money
One of the best things about learning how to build websites for yourself is that if you ever feel to earn a little side money, you can build some for others. Who wouldn’t want to earn a little extra cash by doing 1 or 2 websites a month?
Now granted, it is a lot of work but if you feel like this is something you love to do and you want to continue working on that skill, start doing websites on the side. But I warn you, try to aim for just 1 or 2, it’s a lot of work and while building the website itself can be done over a few days or a week, chances are the people you are building it for will want ALOT of support. That’s where you will start to realize that you may or may not want to build websites for people lol or limit yourself to 1 or 2 a month.
Creative Control
Now, I will never call myself a web developer, that’s a slap in the face to the people who are actual web developers lol. I simply know how to put together a good WordPress site. But it has allowed me to have creative control and set things up the way that I want and do things how I would want and not be at the mercy of someone else.
Learning the basics, I have a fairly good idea of who knows more than me and knows what they are talking about, so if I do run into some issues or I can’t do something, I know where to go.
Having creative control over your website will constantly empower you to tinker with it, to learn more and continue building. When someone else has built it for you, many people leave it up to someone else to build/grow their website and they may or may not understand how your website should be working for them.
Your website is the only employee in your company that works 365 days a year. It puts you in front of the right audience if you have done your SEO correctly, it takes bookings for you without people needing to speak to you and also takes money for you.
There is no better feeling in the world when checking your emails and seeing order notifications. Or seeing your newly posted blog getting tons of views and checking out where in the world your content is being viewed from.
As a small/med business or a content creator, the best skill you could learn is how to build your own website. When you understand the mechanics of how the search engines work and how your website can generate opportunities or money for you, it will make sense why it is the most important part of your budding business.
On Sept 21, we are back for our WordPress workshop pt 2. We will be working on building our websites. You will need your domain name, hosting and WordPress theme in order to attend. We will have a developer on hand to work with us as well.
If you are interested in attending and want more info…hit this link –>(Create Workshop: WordPress Pt 2)