Next Step New Plan

 

I got my first WordPress website started. It’s funny how people talk about it like it’s easy to use, clean and effortless. Those are people who build web pages and work with content all day. To them it is easy, for me the process of picking themes and trying out new looks it tedious. There is also the awkward amount of fiddling with colors and fonts to make it look right that adds too much time wasting. Before you realize it you’ve burned 4 hours clicking and unclicking. The fact that I paid good money for the hosting makes me take it a little more seriously. But I have zero knowledge about these types of web based tools. It’s just going to take longer than I’d like. That’s true of anything new I guess.

I began this whole idea because I wasn’t selling enough of my posts on the third party platform. I’ll explain: I do a little bit of writing through a company that hires writers for short assignments. It doesn’t pay well but it keeps my skills sharp and provides an easy way to make a few bucks. But lately I’ve been getting stepped over by other writers and rejected altogether. It’s not my writing they don’t like, usually it’s just too competitive. Some companies decided they want a different feature after they’ve already listed instructions. It’s frustrating because of the hours I’ve spent writing to their specs. This is part of the deal with writing anything for customers though, sometimes they dump you. The problem is the money isn’t good enough to risk waiting on flaky customers.

I’ll keep driving for Uber instead. Unless...

If I can get my own customers, even if just once in a while I’d make more money. So that’s the idea for the WordPress site. Another issue is the lack of actual work to show. Most WP sites are beautifully displayed with corporate logos of companies the writers have worked with, their pages laid out like trophies in a case. Or the sites are stuffed with information like a Wikipedia page. Mine is basically a digital business card. I’m OK with that for now. It will develop over time as more options become available and the work increases. I’m learning a lot of new terms as well as how the plugins work. It’s a lot of information all at once.

I have to remind myself that this is really new territory for me. I don’t like graphic design and having to size and re-size images. I don’t like sorting through themes and colors and options for every inch of the site. I probably could have stuck to a basic layout on blogger but I wanted the best. So I have to learn it. Knowing how to get through some basics of WordPress page building is for the best. This is actually something I need to do. I considered not doing a page until I got a little bit more established. But I wanted something to point people to and my personal blog (first principles) covers opinion stuff. It’s not exactly business friendly.

So for now I’ll be content with my digital business card and build the site like I build everything else, one brick at a time.