Educational Institutions and Universities need attractive websites to attract new students and serve exceeding students. Educational websites have lot of information to show, they need to provide details of admissions, syllabus, results, information of a student. So these types of websites need good designers to be worked on as UI is very important to make it reader friendly.
Early this year, Perry Belcher spoke in the Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013 and shared his Secret Selling System strategies during the seminar.
According to Perry, “Selling is not evil. Selling is power – a great skill to have”. Here are some of the highlights of what he shared during the event.
Important parts of selling:
– getting in front of prospects who are most likely to buy
– what you like is not necessarily what your customer likes.
– (From Dean Jackson – ilovemarketing podcast)
– mistake is selling too early.
More Perry Belcher next week!
One billion unique Youtube viewers every month, 48.7 million pinners, 200 million linkedin members in over 200 countries – mind-blowing statistics and very difficult to visualize. You might as well be looking at the stars. But those numbers are real-time stats of real people who are interconnected, interwoven, and networked all across the world wide web. Wouldn’t you love it if all this traffic got sent your way? Of course, it could break your site but that can always be fixed.
Here are some of the traffic hacks shared during the last Traffic and Conversion Summit 2013:
YouTube now allows you to create links to external pages
Enable monetization on external “clickable” link annotations. Send traffic to a squeeze page, Facebook page, or to your main money site.
Video Optimization:
Get more publicity to your videos by exposing it to a bigger market – the shared video loophole or use a paid service like shareyoutubevideos.com or videomarketingblaster.com if you are too busy to do it yourself.
Did you know that Pinterest outpaced Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined for share of referral traffic? Below is a sample on how you can get traffic followers, opt-ins, and sales from Pinterest:
Hold creative Pinterest Contests (sample below)
When someone shares the images, they enter the contest and send their Pinterest followers to the opt-in page.
Conduct Teleseminars and uses memes like “Pin it to Win it” with urls linked to the squeeze page for the teleseminar</p
Carl White shared a 5-minute agenda on how to monetize followings on big groups like LinkedIn:
What Carl does
Take these hacks for a spin and see how it works out for you. We’d love to hear your results.
If this post has caught your eye, you are probably a current WordPress user, author, developer, designer, or if not, perhaps a potential one. The subject of pricing is a tricky topic that some prefer to ignore or avoid – the proverbial elephant in the room. Why, because this is a hot topic indeed.
For the purpose of this article, let’s start off by saying that a WordPress theme is a downloadable digital product as compared to an actual physical product that can be shipped. When you purchase a WordPress theme you do not receive any physical items at all but instead, you are given permission or license to download an electronic/ digital product (the theme), via email or a provided link, and use it according to the author/developer’s specific TOU (Terms of Use).
Traditionally, the actual cost of producing/manufacturing tangible products can be arrived at by adding the cost of materials used and the labor paid to produce these products to arrive at the total cost of goods. Others may add on overhead costs but strictly speaking it’s simply materials +labor. For services rendered, actual cost can be arrived at based on a rate applied to the number of man hours spent (time) on a project or the professional fee charged by the person (expert) rendering the service.
However,
Digital products require an approach to pricing that differs from that used for physical products. Most digital products have common characteristics which includes:
- high fixed cost to produce the first unit, but low marginal costs to produce subsequent units
- quality is difficult to judge without actually experiencing the product
The most common pricing method that can be used for digital products is to use a licensing approach.
(source: Digital Economy: Impacts, Influences, and Challenges by Harbhajan S. Kehal, Varinder P. Singh)
The cost structure of digital products = high fixed costs that are sunk, and tending towards zero marginal costs.
Fixed costs refer to the costs associated with a product, that are fixed over a number of units. Thus regardless of the number of units produced and sold, the fixed costs remain the same. With digital products, much of the fixed costs are actually sunk costs, and therefore non-recoverable costs. A large portion of the costs associated with digital products are fixed, and sunk, and not variable costs, which are more typical of traditional manufactured goods.
Sunk costs refer to costs that are non-recoverable fixed costs. Digital products usually have significant sunk costs (when compared to other fixed costs) in the form of research & development and intellectual property (copyright, patents etc.) for the product. If the product is not successful in the marketplace, the costs associated with the the product development (intellectual property, labor) cannot be recovered. Thus when making pricing decisions about the product in the future, one should not factor in the sunk costs. If a product’s cost structure is made up of sunk costs (no other fixed costs) and zero marginal costs then any price above zero will contribute to the company’s bottom line. Other fixed costs, that are not sunk (rent, depreciation on equipment etc.) should be factored in when making pricing decisions in the future, since these are ongoing costs to the company. The company will continue to have to pay these costs in the future, this is not the case for sunk costs.
Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).
(source: http://www.udel.edu/alex/dictionary.html#d)
How many of you enjoy BTS (Behind the scenes) footages of upcoming movies? BTS clips give you a sneak peek of how these movies were filmed and the production process these films have gone through. Similarly, if we could do a BTS video of how a WordPress theme is created, can you imagine the amount of work that goes into creating a theme? Can you identify which activities fall under fixed costs, sunk costs, or marginal costs? Can you tell how many working hours have gone into its creation? Can you measure the education, experience, competence and expertise of the author/developer?
When you purchase a WordPress theme from a reputable WordPress author/developer you typically get a long list of features like the one below. But, have you ever associated any cost to these features?
Did you know that creating custom themes for clients range from around $1500 up to $50000 depending on the project. Looking at the list above, and seeing everything that goes into creating a theme, would you say that WordPress themes are underpriced? overpriced? or fair enough?
Let’s ask the next question. What’s important to you? How much do you value your business? your brand? yourself?
The answers to these questions will more or less determine how much you are willing to pay anything actually – whether it’s paying for your website, for your family needs, or even for your own personal growth.
Sometimes you have to make your decision, not based on cost, but based on value – which company do you want to work with? Which one has the most experience, the best portfolio, the most responsive people? A higher cost should not disqualify a company if that’s the one you’re confident can get the job done.
Pricing is not a magic, secret recipe. It’s just the cost of doing business, plus the value of expertise, plus the time needed to complete a project in a particular set of circumstances with a particular set of requirements. (reference: Websearchsocial.com)
At $39 you can already get 80 premium WordPress themes, no sweat. It’s about the same price, more or less, of a plugin or a slider, isn’t it? Do you agree that these themes should be worth a whole lot more than that?
Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
How does one become a certified WordPress professional indeed? Earning your stripes as a WordPress professional does not come from a course you enroll in and study for X number of years in your regular university. Neither do you get a degree or a diploma for the numerous WordPress conferences, seminars or webinars you attend. In truth, becoming a WordPress professional is not age bound, race bound, location bound, language bound or educational background bound. One key ingredient is the willingness to learn, make mistakes, and learn all over again.
Many current WordPress professionals and practitioners did not start out as such. Perhaps some have come out from the corporate world and taken a radical sabbatical from their daily grind while others probably started out in their dorm room or garage. Maybe others began tinkering with WordPress while they were in their teens while some are going through a second wind in their careers. The Internet has this built-in democratic leveling quality where anyone can make it regardless. Since the year is about to end, maybe some of you are considering a quiet change or transition into something else – a new career path of sorts. You don’t necessarily have to be a developer or a designer to be a WordPress professional. Here are a few options for you to think of if you are considering a shift into the exciting world of WordPress:
Web development is the back-end of the website, the programming and interactions on the pages. A web developer focuses on how a site works and how the customers get things done on it. Good web developers know how to program CGI and scripts like PHP. They understand about how web forms work and can keep a site running effectively.A good web developer will have excellent programming skills and be able to use a range of programming tools. He or she will be able to provide solutions to give a website the functions required. Web developers will use a range of programming tools such as ASP, Javascript, XML and SQL. The focus is more on the backend and the functionality of the site.
Web design determines the look and feel of a website. It covers the layout, navigation and colors of a website. Web design is more concerned with aesthetics and user experience than functions. A web designer will make a website easy to use and fit for purpose. A good web designer will have graphic design skills and a good understanding of marketing. He or she will know how to grab the attention of visitors and encourage them to explore a website. A web designer is concerned with how a site looks and how the customers interact with it. Good web designers know how to put together the principles of design to create a site that looks great. They also understand about usability and how to create a site that customers want to navigate around in.
Plug-ins and widgets are a great way to enhance the functionality of your site by adding in extra features. These can be placed anywhere inside your template by function hooks. You can start creating and eventually selling stand-alone plugins that add value to existing or new themes.
One of the most common deficiencies in the WordPress themes marketplace is the lack of or absence of theme support. You can start a career by being part of a support team that is responsible for providing after-sales support to customers who have purchased specific themes.
Providing consultancy services, networking, and hooking up clients with designers and developers is another option to becoming a WordPress Professional. Many times, a lot of great designers do poorly sales-wise because of a lack of marketing skills. You can offer your services to acts as a marketing consultant to WordPress designers and developers who have little or no time to do the marketing themselves.
With the explosion of WordPress themes in the marketplace, there is very little difference between one theme to the next and a lot of them look like clones. You can offer your services as a writer to create a marketing hook for designers and developers who would rather write code than a marketing spiel.
Providing appropriate and useful detailed documentation that is easy to understand even by WordPress beginners is another option. Transcribing the installation and setting up process in easy to follow steps adds value to the theme and a well written piece will mean less resources spent on support.
If you have acquired a certain level of proficiency in WordPress and you are confident enough about what you know, you can also try going into teaching and training.
These are just a few ideas to think of as you consider starting or shifting to a career as a WordPress professional.
2013 is just around the corner and it’s time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished the past year and what you can look forward to in the next. Keep abreast of the latest trends and participate in any one of these seminars or conferences to brush up on your WordPress, HTML5 and CSS skills to get you ready for 2013. Staying informed not just on WordPress matters alone but also web and business-related matters will keep you two steps ahead of your game.
Here’s a quick rundown of the latest WordPress events and other noteworthy conferences around the globe to help keep you on the cutting edge.