WordPress – Page 5 – Splendid Digital Solutions

Hosting your first WordPress site on AWS for free for first 3 months on 5$/10$ per month plan

AWS, AWS LightSail, Blog, Brand (WordPress), Brands, Cloud Computing/Startup Resource, Nexcess, Plesk, Web Development & Internet Marketing, WordPress, WP Engine

For hosting progannum.com, I was considering a managed WordPress plan that has a reputation of meeting mission critical needs and yet most cost effective. Out of numerous, I considered WP Engine and Nexcess given my association with them as agency and affiliate partner for my other entities. The third option which I finally opted was AWS. Given my past experience hosting WordPress sites on Amazon Lightsail using Plesk Web Admin edition, I found AWS the most cost effective one. While Plesk Web Admin comes free with a Lightsail instance, more managed features can be activated by pro Plesk subscription. On the downside, there will be limited support from both AWS and Plesk unlike WP Engine and Nexcess where you get 24×7 customer support and true managed WordPress environment with few clicks, easy install of WordPress site.

Reading ratings/reviews on Trustpilot is a great way to leverage experience from past and present customers about a brand. Unlike the likes of G2 and Capterra where paid reviews lead to a bias, Trustpilot appears far more trustworthy.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/wpengine.com

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/nexcess.net

WPEngine has its one site WordPress managed hosting plan starting from 30$ when paid monthly (keeping aside initial discounts). With Nexcess, it is 19$ per month.

Initially I contemplated applying for AWS Activate Founders Credit.

https://aws.amazon.com/activate/founders

But as could be seen later in the screenshots, not approved. The reason should be I had already availed AWS Activate Founders Credit for one of my other entities in 2020 being granted 1350$ AWS credit (1,000 USD in AWS credits, valid for two years, and $350 USD in AWS Developer Support credits valid for one year).

Registering for an AWS account

Applying for AWS Activate

Launching WordPress site on Lightsail @5$ per month plan with first 3 months free making use of Plesk Web Admin option (free version)

The free Lighsail instance that is provided for 3 months is apparently for one AWS account, one instance. As could be seen from the screenshots above, I was not allowed to activate 10$ plan and instead asked to get in touch with the AWS Support. As I raised a ticket, I received a phone call over which the AWS Support agent enquired about the no. of instances I am planning to use. He further said that for one user, they allow one free instance and that he will help activate 10$ plan. As I already in the meantime activated 5$ plan, I was told that for this AWS account, it will not be possible now to revert to the free 10$ plan trial of 3 months. If indeed I needed to activate 10$ AWS Lightsail plan (with initial 3 months free), then I might need to register a fresh AWS account. I decided to continue with the 5$ plan.

Interesting to note is that each AWS Lightsail instance launched on Plesk hosting stack (Plesk Web Admin edition) allows 3 WordPress websites. So with a 5$ per month AWS Lightsail plan, you can have 3 WordPress sites up and running. Obviously you will need to upgrade your AWS Lightsail instance from 5$ per month to higher in case memory and resources exhausted.

Once AWS Lighsail instance activated with Plesk Hosting Stack, next process is to move to Plesk dashboard and from there launch WordPress instance.

Here is the process explained in my earlier articles:

Also by upgrading your Plesk Web Admin edition, you can get more managed WordPress features and upto 30 domains (websites) instead of 3 domains.

Read our review about AWS Lightsail and Plesk here on TrustRadius: AWS Lightsail: Highly recommended for launching WordPress websites

https://www.plesk.com/upgrade/

Although AWS Activate credit was not approved, within few days of opening the AWS account received an email of offer of 300$ AWS credit. This should be more than sufficient to avail AWS Lightsail hosting for free for the WordPress site for more than 12 months of their 5$/10$ per month plan.

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities

Blog, Discussion, Discussion (WordPress), Web Development & Internet Marketing, WooCommerce, WordPress

Given pro grade plugins by WooCommerce are not affordable to many, any suggestion on how to develop own solutions for similar outcomes. For instance, I need an online form (with calculator) that user will fill, followed by making an online payment. Also, users submitting the form are added as customer (as part of user list).

Specially, I would like to know why there are so many pro grade forms software? Can online forms be not created by us as user in a simpler way. Without forms integrated with WooCommerce, core WordPress start appearing too limited. Without community feature integrated with WooCommerce, could anyone suggest me a learning path to develop such functionalities inhouse? Any reference to learning guides, courses, tutorials appreciated.

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/proposed-website-for-tax-filing-services/

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/income-tax-form/

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/website-related-with-professional-services-like-providing-tax-filing-service/

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/beyond-basic-free-woocommerce-how-to-develop-own-functionalities/

Seeking recommended plugins for tax filing service
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in ProWordPress

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in webdev

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPressPlugins

Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress

Setting up your branded store for free with WooCommerce and CJdropshipping

Brands, CJDropshipping, Web Development & Internet Marketing, WooCommerce, WordPress

WooCommerce is the most popular plugin that helps you start your own e-store on WordPress. While there are paid addons with WooCommerce, core WooCommerce is free and suffice for many use cases including setting up your branded store with CJdropshipping, which is the focus of this post.

With CJdropshipping, listing products to your store is free. It is only during the time of sale that CJdropshipping will charge a deduction. This is unlike Spocket, another popular dropshipping service provider, that has a subscription fee on listing while limiting the number of products in plans.

Plugins used

First of all, install and activate WooCommerce plugin (Start with WooCommerce in 5 Steps).

For integrating with Stripe payment system, I have chosen Payment Plugins for Stripe Woocommerce.

Although there is a CJdropshipping plugin, I have avoided it as it seems to be not updated frequently and having issues. Instead, chosen the option to connect through the Authorization option.

1. Once WooCommerce activated, fill the business and other details in Settings.

2. Similarly activate and fill details in Payment Plugins for Stripe WooCommerce.

3. Opening a CJDropshipping account and connecting with WooCommerce store.

4. Adding or listing a product from CJDropshipping to your WooCommerce store.

Relevant forum threads while troubleshooting

How to connect Add to Cart button with the following page

CJDropshipping payment problem

Watch the complete demo

Few affiliate marketing programs in web hosting niche to join as publisher and how to approach AWS/Plesk given they do not have affiliate program

Affiliate Marketing, Blog, Cloud Computing/Startup Resource, Web Development & Internet Marketing, WordPress

There are many great web hosting service providers through which one can launch websites. Almost all of them operate affiliate programs, either in-house or managed by affiliate marketing marketplace such as Impact Radius, ShareASale, PartnerStack. Do a Google Search or visit the brands’ websites to know about their affiliate/partner/referral programs.

You can take a passive approach and add one or couple of banners with affiliate links on the header/footer/sidebar. Some of the affiliate programs are indeed lucrative such as by Nexcess (owned by Liquid Web) on Impact Radius. Here is an instance of my affiliate commission screenshot. Based on my experience as web professional, I would recommend applying for the following programs:

1. Nexcess affiliate program (managed by Impact Radius). Here is the screenshot of commission received for sales (Action Earnings) and creating content for them (Other Earnings).

2. Flywheel affiliate (referral) program (managed in-house). They occasionally pay for creating content for them (screenshot of commission received).

3. WP Engine affiliate program (managed by ShareASale) or WP Engine partner program.

4. Moosend affiliate program (managed by PartnerStack). Moosend (email marketing software) too often comes with incentive for creating content for them (screenshot of payment received).

5. As an aspiring entrepreneur, the idea of coming out with a business plan is imperative. Consider joining LivePlan affiliate program. As a LivePlan affiliate helping your audience create a nice business plan, you might be offered a free premium version (40$ per month) for your own use.

In case you are already using WordPress as part of your web development activities, I recommend applying for WP Engine Agency Partner Program. Here is my experience with this program: WordPress: Getting access to free perks and privileges with WP Engine Agency Partner Program.

In case you are short of time, make use of automated affiliate program like the one by Skimlinks.

How to approach AWS and Plesk that do not have an affiliate program

There are a number of blog posts on my website www.wpcosec.com explaining the usage of AWS Lightsail and Plesk to launch WordPress websites While AWS does not have an affiliate program, Plesk does have a partner program which actually is not free. I would strongly recommend exploring AWS and Plesk web admin panel as part of your web development endeavor. In my case with AWS and Plesk, I do not earn affiliate commission but benefit from AWS Lightsail, a tool to launch WordPress sites. I use AWS Lightsail with Plesk Hosting Stack on Ubuntu. Here is my experience: Plesk Hosting Stack on Ubuntu: 3 websites under one instance with plans starting 5$ per month on Amazon Lightsail and a demo of migration with free Migrate Guru plugin.

There is an opportunity to avail free credit from AWS. I have actually availed 1k and 5k credit from AWS and all my websites including this one hosted on AWS. Here is the process as per my experience: Cloud technologies for startups: Tips based on our experience as a startup from India. You too can consider applying for the credit.

Given the popularity of Plesk web admin interface, you can get free learning and badges by enrolling to Plesk University. You can use this as an opportunity to prove your expertise in WordPress and Plesk admin panel while generating leads from the website tools such as Hire Us page.

In other words, you can earn from two broad sources:

1. Ads (pay per click/pay per impression programs such as AdSense, affiliate programs) while acting as publisher.

2. Web developer/digital marketing agency providing one-on-one services to clients.

Often you will end up buying for your clients web hosting, domain names from your affiliate links! In order to avail affiliate commission as you sell domain names to your audience, I would recommend NameCheap affiliate program that offers 30 percent commission. NameCheap’s prices are competitive. Although NameCheap has affiliate programs on Impact Radius, ShareASale, and CJ, I would suggest opt through either Impact Radius or ShareAsale (screenshot of commission received).

Content creation, web development & internet marketing: Do-by-yourself

Blog, Web Development & Internet Marketing, WordPress

1. Domain Name

We recommend NameCheap due to its competitive pricing, 24×7 customer support over chat, and free email forwarding feature.

2. Web Hosting

Despite a large number of great options from open source and proprietary technologies, we narrow down to open source, easy -to-use WordPress for a starter website. In WordPress, we suggest to go with a managed WordPress plan, making things user friendly for you as an end user.

Once again, there are so many great web hosting service providers. Our recommendation here in no way challenges them. Based on our usage and experience, we suggest NameCheap for those with a limited budget.

Recently, 10Web has attracted a lot of popularity for its AI-induced way to launch a website built with WordPress. Although website builders have been long there, 10Web has integrated AI with WordPress in a novel way. All you need to do is to fill few prompts like you do using ChatGPT and within minutes you have a complete, unique WordPress site matching your niche. Their starter yearly pricing is 120$ or 10$ per month when paid yearly and 20$ when paid monthly.

For those looking for mission critical sites, we recommend Nexcess and WP Engine.

For your e-commerce shop, WooCommerce plugin can be activated for free with any WordPress plan. Keeping in mind specific needs for an e-commerce store, most managed WordPress hosting service providers now have a special package for e-store and Nexcess and WP Engine no exception.

While cloud computing service providers like AWS and Google Cloud provide high-end web hosting, this post is not targeted for developers and trained web professionals.

3. Content Creation

Content is at the heart of perhaps any type of online business. While for a publishing/blogging niche, content is their core specialization, even for a software company focused on developing a software product, there is a need for documentation for which technical writing skills come into play. For an online store, product description forms an important component that in addition to generate interest about the product also helps bring audience to the site through search engines based on keywords used as part of product descriptions.

Relevant article by Interact: How to find SEO keywords you can actually rank for

In addition to text-based content (such as articles, blog posts, product descriptions, whitepapers), images, podcasts (audio files), and videos also qualify as content. Images are mostly used as part of text-based content and videos.

It is recommended to take help of AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Tailwind Ghostwriter to generate initial copies based on prompts/feeds provided. Since such AI tools generate content based on prompts provided, the choice exercised by a trained content writer filling prompts can differentiate the output. The copies generated by AI writing tools these days are accurate in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The content writer will more function as an editor reading the content generated by AI tools and depending on the use case revise before pressing the publish button.

Online forms are used to collect data from users. Online forms are not just used to gather user data for say completing a sales transaction but can be leveraged to be more interactive with your website audience like by creating quizzes (using a software like Interact).

Branding as part of content strategy

When it comes to logo, you can spend a ton of money hiring a sophisticated logo design professional. On the contrary, you can have a logo at a reasonable price designed by yourself using software like Canva and Looka. We recommend Canva if you are in tight budget (even free plan by Canva can do, pro plan starting from 499 INR/per month). Check Canva pricing here. Beyond one-time logo, with a monthly Canva subscription, you can take care of all your image/banner/video creation needs.

Looka with a slightly higher budget can help come out with a great logo in an automated way by just filling fields like name and tagline of your business, preferred colors.

4. Email Marketing

Once you have your website live, your focus shifts on building subscriber lists and engage with your subscribers.

While we use Moosend, we recommend Omnisend for e-stores given their expertise in e-commerce and additional SMS feature.

5. Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The first place to explore once your business starts is stand out on Google with a free business profile.

For Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook marketing, Tailwind helps automate the process by coming out with fresh designs that align with your brand (Tailwind Create) to scheduling and sharing from one dashboard. We are talking organic social media optimization; that is, opportunity available for free to Pinterest/Instagram/Facebook account holders.

RelateSocial is a newly-introduced social media manager tool by NameCheap that supports more social media platforms in its Pro plan (including Twitter, Linkedin, Google Business profile, not supported on Tailwind) but seems lacking design capabilities of Tailwind Create.

6. Paid Ad Campaigns

Given the dominance of Google Search, consider starting a Google Ad campaign choosing your targeted keyword, location that you wish to target, and daily budget. Similarly to make your business visible on social media, there are paid campaigns on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.

Another paid/inorganic way to speedup your marketing activities is to subscribe to B2B database services like the ones by Apollo.io and ZoomInfo.

Relevant article by Interact: Organic Ads vs. Paid Ads: How to Use Both in Your Business
List of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) and other offerings with free developer tiers.

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For the above tasks, you can also hire us to get your work done in a professional way.

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GoDaddy Website Builder versus WooCommerce for your online store

Blog, Brand (WordPress), Brands, GoDaddy, Web Development & Internet Marketing, WooCommerce, WordPress

GoDaddy Website Builder is a proprietary software by GoDaddy. Creating a website/e-store is as easy as operating your Facebook/Instagram account. With simple drag and drop, you end up launching a complete website/e-store within an hour.

Here is our website fincosec.co.uk built with Godaddy Website Builder software. With a few clicks, I was able to connect our Stripe account for accepting payments.

I would suggest making use of the free trial to see if your needs are met by GoDaddy Website Builder. At times, a few tweaks might work for pain points.

For instance, GoDaddy Store allows having variants of a product.

While putting for sale a digital product, I needed three variants:

(1) Domain for sale: The buyer will buy only the domain name and not the connected website.

(2) Website for sale: The buyer will buy only the connected website without domain name. While the ownership of the website will be transferred to the buyer, the domain will not be transferred. The seller will still have the ownership of the domain name that he will disconnect from the sold website.

(3) Domain + Website for sale:

The accurate working should have a feature if the domain is sold, there is still a listing of the website for sale while removing the domain + website for sale variant. Similarly, if the website is sold, the domain listing is active while removing the domain + website variant. If the third variant (Domain + Websiite for sale) is purchased, the first two should be inactivated. Also, free shipping if not quantity (set to 1 as part of tweaking) is not relevant.

GoDaddy Community Forum

All such tweaks are not possible with GoDaddy Website Builder. At most, I could set the quantity equal to 1 for all the three variants. Now, this is faulty. If someone buys a domain (first variant), the website (second variant) and domain + website (third variant) will still be available for sale. Of course, once it comes to my notice that the domain sold, I can remove the two variants manually. In case indeed payment is made, arranging a refund is only a matter of a few clicks. Yet, this is not perfect and might even not be acceptable. Open source CMS WordPress plugin WooCommerce can meet such customized needs. You might need to hire a developer in case available readymade features of the plugin or its addon fail to meet your needs. The problem with GoDaddy Website Builder is that you are out of options very fast if available drag and drop features do not meet your specific needs. With WooCommerce, you can change the underlying codes, something GoDaddy Website Builder will not allow.