[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

Also, I myself wake up early morning around 530-6AM and till about 11AM I am usually done with majority of work which requires from me concentration and no distractions. If you are not an early morning person this requires some changes in a habit, but maybe evening sessions work for you?

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

I myself maintain my calendar in a way that allows me to schedule calls and meetings on selected days only (usually Thursdays and Fridays, when things are less crazy, people are more laid back before the weekend).

I recently read this post https://localizejs.com/blog/startup/developer-productivity-saying-no from a startup called localizejs, which explains just this idea. It is a good read and it will give you some suggestions worth trying: such as scheduling meetings and calls only in selected days of the week (author of the post goes a bit extreme and wants to limit meetings and calls just to one day). That way, you have all other days free from major destructions.

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

Some people say that the web design business is dead – check this article http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/sell-web-design-agency/ from sixrevisions, however in my opinion the industry is not dying but changing, and only those who change together with the trend will survive and flourish (an another good read http://www.collaborativegrowthnetwork.com/blog/bid/6198/The-Web-Design-Business-is-Dead). Now, since very often we compete with all the site building tools, we need to talk to clients differently, look for different kinds of clients and learn new things.

I also noticed myself that business is slow during the winter, and many people look for web developers looking for refreshing their business site or creating a new business during spring and summer.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Dan.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

Some ideas:

Marketing:
– Google (adwords), Bing, Yahoo, Social Media Marketing (Facebook , Twitter etc.)
– Social media management
– Email marketing (copywriting, design, distribution, gaining new subscribers)
– Translation (translate blog posts or a website to other languages, you can outsource it)
– Blog post writing
– YouTube marketing
– SEO monthly reports with keywords tracking (you can create automated reporting in Google Analytics for that or use sites like seomoz and majestic.com)
– Audience/market research

Dev and design:
– SSL reseller and installation, Domain Registration
– Web Hosting / Email Hosting
– Website maintenance, especially if a client has ecommerce, they usually need help adding new products (retouching images), creating promo codes etc.
– Photography (outsource it if you are not a good photographer)
– Creating and designing social media profiles
– Email setup (help clients use their brand email with gmail, outlook etc.)
– Setting up Google Analytics, Webmaster Tool and teaching clients how to use it. If you know Google Analytics well, you can help them to create complex user’s tracking which is great for ecommerce
– Website backup

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

I also work mainly with WordPress and I faced the same situation. Over the last few months I started following a few rules (listed below) which almost completely removed the problems you describe:

With any WordPress installation, follow these rules:

1. WP Security – this is a great free plugin, which dramatically increases your website security. You should activate at least 80% of the settings the plugin provides.

2. You definitely need to make sure the website has a daily backup. I always recommend CodeGuard.com to my clients – it only costs $5 per month, is easy to set up and makes daily backups of the website, letting you restore old versions with one click. Of course you can also have some backups on your own server, but this is usually a paid option and much more expensive than $5/month. This tool also lets you know when code on your site changes, which is helpful with detecting any suspicious activity on the server.

3. When customizing the theme and plugins make sure to do it in a way that you can update them! This is crucial. Avoid modifying their core files, changing the look of plugins can usually be done by CSS, also use Actions, Filters, and Hooks (WordPress Codex: add_action, do_action, remove_action, add_filter, apply_filters). Also: use child theme (http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes) and do not download plugins and themes from unknown sources.
4. Use strong passwords (to the server and wp-admin), avoid sharing access to FTP with anybody.
5. Keep your plugins and WordPress updated (use staging environment before major updates).
6. Sign up for http://mxtoolbox.com/ and monitor if your site is black listed anywhere.

7. Install captcha on your Contact Form, and make bigger restrictions on comments (http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Discussion_SubPanel).

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

I personally used legalzoom, and the process went very smooth. For about $800 they will help you with everything and even give some free consultations with a lawyer.

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

First, optimize the speed of the site. These three sites will let you find the reasons of the slow speed and guide you on how to fix them:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
https://www.google.com/webmasters/

Note the score before and after your changes so you can document your work. You dont need to fix all of the issues here (impossible) but taking care of even some of them will significantly increase the speed of your site.

Also, for WordPress sites use https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ . This is an amazing plugin!

Shared hosting is usually a bad idea. I found this shared hosting for $20/month http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/shared/ to be a nice option for smaller sites – my smaller clients do not complain. However, if somebody is serious about their online business, they should invest $50 per month for a good VPS (I recommend http://wpengine.com/ and https://www.wiredtree.com/, http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/vps/ – I recommend MRT VPS, but I DO NOT recommend MT WordPress hosting).

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by  Daniel.

[daniel Keymaster Total posts: 28 Likes: 4]

Emails – I give it for free. This is a good selling point for me. Some hostings charge for email addresses, and in a few cases clients migrated to me just because of unlimited email addresses.

I do give access to cPanels, no limits on database or transfer. I have about 20 clients hosting on my machine so I monitor the hosting use and when one of the sites is abusing the resources, I contact the client to discuss. However, for sites which would abuse the data transfer or space (large ecommerce mainly) I always suggest the client to have their own dedicated VPS (~$50 per month). That being said – I try to host only very small sites.

You should have an affiliate account with your favorite hosting (I like wiredtree and MT, for more demanding sites I like Rackspace and AWS), so you can earn referral fees.

For backups, I use whatever plesk or cpanel provides (with backing it up on an external AWS webspace). I use codeguard.com for more demanding clients.

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