The latest “Grab Beer with Online Entrepreneurs” meetup was a success. The new members brought a diverse set of backgrounds to the group. The old members were there for guidance and support. Here’s a small sample of what we talked about.
WordPress for Membership Websites
Membership sites were a hot topic again. You get the recurring monthly income from subscription fees, so you don’t have to constantly chase new customers for one-time sales. The technical challenges can be tricky, however.
How to Build a Membership Site in 48 Hours — If you want to build a membership site with WordPress, this is the holy grail article you’ve been searching for. This post is so extensive it could have been an e-book.
How to Launch a Membership Site in Less than an Hour — This blog post talks about an alternative called Ning. It’s a hosted service that allows you build your own social network. The advantage is that it’s ready out-of-the-box. With WordPress you’d have to install a bunch of plugins to turn it into a membership site. Ning is stronger for supporting user-generated content.
The disadvantage is that you can’t time-release content, like dripping out the modules to your members over a period of time. WordPress allows more control if you’re running a training program-type of site.
WordPress for Study Guides
One of our members sells an online study guide for a difficult exam. He was asking for how to have a dynamic table of contents that’s on every page, so users don’t have to constantly click back to the homepage to get to the next chapter. I think the proper term for this functionality is a “page tree” or “tree menu.” If you know better plugins, please suggest them.
Nice Navigation — This plugin adds a sidebar widget that lists all the pages on your site. You can organize them into “branches” that are sections of higher-level pages.
WordPress for Realtors
A realtor was asking about websites for realtors. They have specific needs, such as pulling in MLS property listings.
RealtyCandy — This company specializes in building WordPress sites for real estate agents. If you know others, please share them.
WordPress for Event Marketing
A business owner with an event-planning company was interested in overhauling her website.
EventBrite WordPress plugin — EventBrite is a popular web platform for running event registration. This plugin allows you to integrate a registration system with your WordPress site.
Manage Events Like a Pro with WordPress — A long, in-depth article about using WordPress as an event-planning web platform.
In my opinion, I’d rather hook up WordPress with a dedicated service (like EventBrite) instead of cobbling together WordPress-specific plugins to get the same features. Let EventBrite organize events, let Aweber do e-mail. Let WordPress focus on managing your web content.
Mistakes to avoid with pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising
One entrepreneur is using Google AdWords to promote his auto service business on Google.
10 Dangerous Default Settings in PPC — By default the ad settings are to make money for the ad network, not for you. Check these settings and tweak them to your advantage.
“I use GoDaddy” — NOOoo! [soul-crushing wail]
If you’re spending more than about $12 per year on domain registration, you’re getting ripped off. Entry-level web hosting rarely goes over $10 per month, unless you have massive traffic to your site.
For domains, use NameCheap. For shared web hosting, HostGator is a good option. Get more advice in my article on good web hosting companies.
GoDaddy’s 16-Step Checkout — Getting to the final checkout page involves dodging a minefield of upsells and cross-sells.
How to move your domains from GoDaddy to anywhere else — I followed this tutorial to transfer all my domains from Domains in Seconds (GoDaddy subsidiary) to NameCheap.
Selling Crafts Online
One member makes custom furniture out of car parts. He was looking for ways to sell them online.
Etsy — It’s like the Ebay of handmade crafts.
Shopify — A hosted service for building an e-commerce store for selling physical products. No programming skills required. Although many programmers are trying give WordPress e-commerce features, it seems like WP is not quite ready yet.
How NOT to Design a Checkout — In this video, a user shows his frustrating experience with trying to buy a product on the Internet. The tone of outrage is hilarious. “I’m trying to give you my money, why are you making it so goddamn hard?!”
Web Community for Makers
A couple of members are passionate about working on industrial projects by hand.
MAKE Magazine — a website for people who tinker in workshops, sheds and garages.
Social Media for Independent Musicians
Again showing the diversity of our meetup group, a jazz musician/documentary filmmaker needed advice on using social networks to launch creative projects.
20 Top social media marketing tools for musicians
Amanda Palmer takes connecting with her fans to a new level — A New York Times article that is an excellent case study of an independent musician taking full advantage of social networks to build an audience and strengthen her brand.
Linux for Windows Users
Zorin OS — A Linux distro that combines the familiarity of Windows with the superior security of Linux.
Chinese Web Design
A Chinese entrepreneur wanted to know how to get Chinese characters to display on her computer.
Pinyin Joe’s Chinese Computing Help Desk — A great website for learning how to install Chinese language functionality in all operating systems.
Showcase of Chinese Web Design — Examples and explanations for how websites are designed in this fast-growing economy.
Photo: Car keys. walknboston / Flickr