AP 0630: I’m Just Starting My Website. What Should I Do First?

AskPat 630 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody, Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 630 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Matthew and this one is for all the people who are just getting started out there. And here we go, here's the question.

Matthew: Hey Pat, it's Matt Cox here. I'm trying to figure out where I should start and when…after I get my domain name, and my WordPress all associated, my theme all associated, what are some of the suggestions that you have to…where do I start next? Should I set up an AWeber account, or a ConvertKit account, or do I set up my LeadPages? What are some things I should focus on, right after, should I…after I get my…obviously this is like post. I got my logo and my site up, up for the most part. What are some things that…should I start first…what comes first essentially? AWeber or LeadPages? Thanks a lot! Have a good day.

Pat Flynn: Hey Matthew, thank you so much for the question today. To answer your very last question, which was very simple, very basic, very to the point. First comes your email service provider, your ESP, whether that's AWeber—I'm on ConvertKit right now. I know a lot of people who are switching from AWeber to other ones and AWeber's great. I started with them, they're fantastic. ConvertKit's what I recommend, however just easier for a lot of the automation and more advanced things that will be coming down the road for you. But whatever one you want to get started with, that's great. And then LeadPages comes on top of your email service provider. LeadPages is a way to enhance the landing pages, the lead boxes, all the lead capture that then brings people into your email list with that email service provider, so you can send emails out, have auto-responders, have sequences go out as people subscribe and that sort of thing.

But here's what I would do. Hopefully you've discovered what your niche is, and what their biggest problems are. You have a list, potentially an Excel file or some spreadsheet of 50 articles or topics that you could write about. That's what I would also have. And then after you register your domain, you get your website up. And don't worry about making it too perfect. It's one of the biggest mistakes I've seen people make when they first start out is, they worry too much about the design and the look of their site. Spend a lot of money on these big themes, when you don't even have enough stuff yet to actually utilize what those themes can give you. Most important thing is you want to get up and running, get the methods in place to collect email addresses, so, which is why that initial question's really important and why I wanted to focus on that too.

But, then it's about putting yourself out there, writing content on your site but also making connections with others, and guest posting on other sites, marketing, and just getting the word out there. There's a number of different ways to do that, obviously. There's hundreds of thousands of ways to do that but we won't get into that in this episode. A lot of the questions before this one are in reference to what to do when you're just starting out in terms of traffic and getting your name out there. But in terms of the tools and other things you could utilize, I actually wouldn't even get involved with LeadPages immediately. You do want to get your email service provider up and running, that's for sure.

And start to just make sure that these emails that you're writing out and your auto-responder sequence and these connections that you make with your initial subscribers are there. Because that's what's key. That's actually your advantage as somebody who's just starting out and whatever space you're getting into, unlike everybody who's already in that space with all that noise out there, you're coming in fresh with a new angle, new perspective, new position, but you also have the ability to reach out to those individual subscribers. Even if you have ten. Even if you have only ten, those are ten actual people who you could then reach out to, talk to, discover what their biggest pains are, understand the language that they use that you can then incorporate to your own content or the other content that you publish on other people's sites when you help spread the word. You don't need much other services beyond your hosting and domain company and AWeber or ConvertKit or any other email service provider. That's what I started out with. Actually I didn't even start with email service provider, but I do say that that was one of the biggest mistakes I made.

So I'm glad you're talking about this. But you don't need to spend that much money. I think a lot of people feel like buying more tools will make more traffic come in. And to a point, or to an extent that is somewhat true because some of those tools allow you to discover where you can get more traffic, but really what's going to get you the most bang for your buck is understanding what to write about and where to post it and how to get it out there.

So Matthew, good luck to you. Best of luck to everybody out there who's just starting. And if you want to start out, if you aren't even on a website yet, you could check out my recommendation for a hosting company, which is Blue Host. If you go to AskPat.com/bluehost, you could check out that at a special deal special rate just for you.

And I want to thank Matthew for his question by sending him an AskPat t-shirt like I do with everybody whose question gets featured here on the show. All you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask your question right there on that page. I look forward to listening to it. And again, kudos to all of you who are just starting out on this journey because you are here not just to change your own life but to change the lives of others too. Always be focusing on serving others first and your rewards will come if you open up those avenues for your audience to be able to pay you back for the value that you're providing them.

Now as always I like to finish with a quote. And today's quote comes from Bryan Eisenberg. Says, “Our jobs as marketers are to understand how the customer wants to buy, and help them do so.”

Cheers, take care, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.