Today I read an article where the author talked about how he had streamlined his business by deleting all of his own websites and got rid of his email service provider to focus on running his business using only 3rd party platforms.
He is not alone, more and more people are doing this.
Also today, in contrast, I watched a webinar where someone I know personally (who has made millions of dollars in information publishing online) is working towards finding more clients for his monthly membership where customers pay $97 per month to have a website built for them which allows them to build an email list and sell several of his products as an affiliate.
The price includes:
A support desk where they can raise questions and concerns they have about the program.
A weekly webinar where they can learn what is new in his business and how to do specific things.
Their website is populated with two new articles each week.
They get access to a powerful CRM where they run their email and social media marketing campaigns.
And they get social media content created for them to share.
What they get is great value for their money… but I do fear that it is a bit too clunky and unnecessary for today… especially for complete newbies.
Today, there is no need to have such a large infrastructure of online properties and tools.
The websites that these customers get as part of the program are not getting free visitors from the search engines. Those days are long gone.
They need to start sharing their content on social media but they are not doing that and so basically they are paying to have a website sitting in the darkness of empty cyber space gathering dust.
The number of people who visit blogs to read articles has dropped dramatically over the last couple of years.
To make things worse, social media platforms are trying their hardest to stop people leaving their platforms to go to websites.
I myself have started to remove unnecessary websites and hosting accounts opting to use only a handful of 3rd party platforms.
I intend to keep my main website only in case I should ever get de-platformed - although I doubt that would happen - so that I have at least one place online that I own and people can find more information about me.
I even deleted several email lists and cancelled my pricey email service provider and opened up a new ‘free’ account to start again.
Where I was paying over $50 for multiple email lists which were no longer responsive, I now have a couple of free accounts that allow me to email two small lists for free.
There is no need to pay over-the-odds for services or tools that are just not needed.
I had one website which was set up to take both one-off payments and recurring payments for various digital products, but it required specific paid plugins, and those plugins needed updating.
The website and hosting needed regular maintenance, if I used up too many inodes or bandwidth the website would crash!
And…and… and… it was a lot of hassle keeping that website working.
If a plugin crashed or needed updating, it could affect other plugins and so the website could be broken and I wouldn’t know anything about it until I decided to go and take a look.
Today, I don’t publish articles to my website as blog posts, I publish them to Substack and Medium where there are people.
I don’t faff about embedding videos to my website now, I simply upload them to my Skool group and host them there.
Skool is a platform that is already built and has a team of techy guys working behind the scenes so you don’t have to.
They do all of the maintenance work without you ever needing to know.
Skool, like Patreon, Substack, Payhip, and others, processes payments for you.
Skool costs only $9 per month for one group/community with one admin.
If you want to run more communities or have more admins you will have to pay $97 per month…but there is really no need, at least not at the beginning.
Some platforms differ to Skool as in they do not charge you to use them, they take fees out of any transactions they process for you, instead.
They are not necessarily any cheaper than hosting your own website in cost, but they are cheaper as in the fact they do all of the maintenance and hosting work, you simply add content and focus on building up your business.
Truth be told, today you really only need a platform like Skool, and one or two platforms such as Facebook, Medium, YouTube, Substack, Instagram, etc to run a successful online business.
Platforms such as Gumroad allow you to send emails to specific customers and so you can actually do email marketing without the need of paying for an email service provider.
Skool and similar platforms will send emails whenever you publish anything new.
The only downside is that you cannot build an email list you actually own.
If you close down your Skool community or Substack newsletter, you lose all of your subscribers details.
You can technically build a successful online business for free… or at least for a few dollars each week.
It just depends on which platforms you choose to use.
Until next time.
Have a great day.
Andi
PS. I have a community here: The Freedom Skills Academy, where I share my video courses and best content, please feel free to come over and check it out.
Thank You For Reading The World According To...
I send this email weekly. If you would also like to receive it, join the growing group of the smartest people on the planet who absolutely swear by it.
👉 If you enjoyed reading this post and found it useful or interesting in any shape or form, please share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
Platforms can, and do, kill off people’s accounts without warning, so to ensure that you never miss out on my articles, join my personal email newsletter HERE!
Find me here:Facebook | Skool | Substack |Medium | X(formerly Twitter)
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.