by: AskPat 196 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody. Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 196 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm feeling great. I hope you are feeling great too.
Before we get to today's question from Jonny, I want to thank ZipRecruiter.com, today's sponsor. An awesome service that you can use for free if you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. What it is, if you're going to hire anybody for your business, instead of going to all the different types of job sites that there are available out there, and posting the description for the person that you want, you can just post it on the ZipRecruiter.com, and with one click, send it out to 50-plus job sites.
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Awesome, check it out, and let's get to today's question from Jonny.
Jonny: Hi Pat, it's Jonny Pratt here from SafeStaff.com. Thanks for all you're doing. Just a quick question: you seem to be really pro WordPress, and all the sites that you launch, and your Smart Passive Income site uses WordPress as well. Can you give me reasons why you use WordPress over things like Squarespace, and Squarespace's got great design. It's not as customizable and I'm getting that's why you use WordPress. I value any insight in this. Thanks for your time, and keep doing what you're doing. Cheers.
Pat Flynn: Jonny, thank you so much. This is actually a common question that I'm getting recently, because there are a lot of different services beyond WordPress that are coming out lately to help people build their websites. I think with how obvious it is to get online these days. Back in the day, WordPress was the easiest solution, and now there's all these other solutions. Cloud-based solutions, things like you said, Squarespace, which is really big. I know a lot of people who use Squarespace.
There's another one called Wix, W-I-X, which apparently has been around for a while, but I haven't heard it until recently either. Of course there's WordPress, and a bunch of other ones. We are beyond the days of, what was it, Dreamweaver, or Frontpage, or … I don't even remember what those ones were, or just obviously using plain HTML on Notepad. We are at an age where it can be really easy to set-up websites. And yes, Squarespace has great designs and makes it completely easy.
Wix, I checked it out right before recording this, and it seems pretty easy as well. But, like you said Jonny, it's the customization options that are not available on those platforms, that make me want to stick around on WordPress. Now I've been using WordPress since 2007, and I'm familiar with it, I know how it works, and what to do, and what not to do with it. There are a ton of people out there who have provided services. There are a ton of plugins, both free and premium, that allow you to do a lot of cool things.
That's sort of limited on Squarespace and Wix. It can be difficult to do a lot of these or more of advanced things that you might want to do on a website with those platforms. But if you're just starting out, those can be great, but I will be honest with everybody out there, I haven't used them myself. I can't recommend them. I don't recommend anything I've never used. I'm not saying they're bad. I mean, I know a lot of people who use them, and use them very successfully.
Squarespace especially. It's very easy. I hear there's a drag-and-drop sort of interface, so it just allows you to create really great designs, and have a website up in no time. Like I said, there's a lot of WordPress tutorials, and a lot of people out there willing to provide support for WordPress. For me, in terms of understanding SEO, understanding just a lot of the more advance features in terms of even doing things relating to lead pages, or collecting emails, and buying processes, WordPress is definitely the way to go for me.
Of course, I do have a domain and host that connects with WordPress really easily. If you go to AskPat.com/bluehost, that will take you to a hosting company that, you can one-click install WordPress. Even then, you still have to find a theme, and there are different themes out there free off of the WordPress repository, or there are theme, sort of places, where you can get premium themes, like ThemeForest, or WooThemes. Squarespace, a lot of themes come sort of built-in, and they're adding more and more.
Yes, I mean that's sort of a long-winded answer for yes, you're right Jonny. I use WordPress because it's what I'm familiar with, but also because it's more highly customizable, especially when you start to get into the advanced features. Squarespace, Wix, both are great. I've been hearing a lot of Squarespace ads on podcasts. To be honest, they actually called me to sponsor this podcast and my other podcast, but I had to turn down that money, because I never used them.
Again, like I said, I don't promote stuff that I've never used, or aren't completely familiar with, to a point where I could provide sort of my own customer service for my audience after recommending people to those things. I can't do that on Squarespace. It's up to you. You can check it out. Either way, there are great solutions out there for all of us. If you don't have a website right now, and you're looking to start one, you are in a perfect position to do it, right now. You have no excuses not to have a website out there. Do it.
Awesome Jonny. Thank you so much for the question, I hope that answers it. For everybody out there, if you have question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page using the speak pipe widgets. I'd love to hear from you. More and more questions are coming in each day. I just can't wait to answer yours, hopefully. Again, I can't answer all of them, but I will get to as many as I can. One per day, five days a week here. It's awesome. I'm having so much fun with this.
I also want to thank today's sponsor, like I said, it's ziprecruiter.com. If you're hiring anybody for your business, you gotta go through this, because it's much, much easier. It's free for you. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. You get the ability to send a job description for somebody that you're looking to hire for your company, whether you're looking to add a second person to your company, or you're 50th person to your company. This is the place to go. Again, ZipRecruiter.com/pat.
As always, I like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Michael Hyatt, from MichaelHyatt.com, and actually speaking at his event at Platform Conference in Colorado Springs in a couple weeks, which I'm really, really excited about. His quote today is, “Most of us have experienced wow moments. We just haven't taken time to think deeply about them.” I love that. That goes along with his book, Platform, which talks about—I think the first chapter is even about—creating those wow moments for your audience.
It's something to think about. What are you doing with your website, no matter what platform you use to create it? How are you creating wow moments for your audience? How are you actually having to think about that and appreciate it? That's how you build those raving fans, and that's how you become successful. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you guys in the next episode of AskPat.