Since incorporating my ebook venture at the beginning of this year, I have spent a lot of time (maybe too much time) updating the online presences for various In 30 Minutes™ guides and videos. This has involved several steps, including 1) Migrating certain pieces of content from the old Blogger websites to the new WordPress sites and 2) creating new content for the new websites (for example, the new “What Is Google Drive?” webpage that I created for the product website for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes” earlier today).
In this post, I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of the steps involved in migrating content or setting up a WordPress site. Rather, the focus is on why I moved the book websites from Blogger to WordPress, particularly considering the Blogger-based sites were only six months old.
I have several reasons why I started with Blogger:
- The original Blogger sites were set up as experiments. In the summer of 2012, I launched the ebook venture, having no idea if it would be a success. I needed a flexible, low-risk website solution — and Blogger fit the bill. If it didn’t work out, I’d only be out a small amount of money ($10 per site) and a few hours of time per site.
- Blogger-based sites are much easier to set up than WordPress. A basic site can be whipped up in an hour or two, and I developed a few “hacks” (described in Google Blogger For Small Businesses In 30 Minutes) to make static product sites using Blogger.
- Sites with hosted domains on Blogger are cheaper than WordPress. A dot.com website costs just $10 for the domain and hosting is free and robust (I’ve had pages that have been slashdotted and they never go down!). WordPress domains can be had for the same price, but hosting is $30-$40 per year … or more, if you need additional bandwidth.
- I didn’t know if the In 30 Minutes “brand” would be dropped in favor of something else. I actually tried another brand for one title (“The Rogue Manual”) and considered others, including “In 20 Minutes” and “In 33 Minutes” (don’t ask!). Creating WordPress sites for each brand type would be expensive and time-consuming.
These are the reasons I started with Blogger. However, I should note that when I created the product sites on Blogger, I knew that I might migrate them to WordPress if the idea took off. Why? In a nutshell, Blogger is an imperfect solution. It may be cheap and easy to set up, but the templates don’t look great. Further, while the functionality is sufficient for creating online content, adding product links and buttons, and performing other basic tasks, WordPress takes things to a much higher level. I knew from working on WordPress blogs in the past that there are some gorgeous WP themes available, as well as plug-ins and other tools that can really supercharge websites.
What eventually happened? I launched my product sites on Blogger starting in the summer of 2012. Here’s what the old product site for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes” looked like:
As you can see, it covered the basics — a cover image, pricing, buttons to buy the ebook/paperback, etc. Even though I started to get some sales through the website, the appearance bothered me. It was nowhere near the quality and professionalism of the actual book cover for “Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes”, which was handled by a professional graphic designer in Rhode Island. I worried that the poor Blogger templates might be turning some potential customers away.
In early 2013, it was clear that the In 30 Minutes concept was working. I was selling hundreds of ebooks and paperbacks, and had been profitable since the second month of operations. I incorporated and decided to move the official product sites to In30Minutes.com, using subdomains for each one of the titles. I found a good theme for the master site (In30Minutes.com), and then strong product themes with a solid call-to-action for individual titles on the subdomains. Here’s what googledrive.in30minutes.com looks like now:
All of the other titles are using the same theme (Responsive, which I have modified using child themes). For most of the WordPress product sites, I have added “buy” and “author” pages. Most of the product sites have individual blogs devoted to the topics covered in the guides, which mostly contain text posts and videos that can help readers. I also added several WordPress plugins, one of which has no equivalent in Blogger.
However, I haven’t deleted the old Blogger sites yet. The main reason is they still get traffic. For people hitting the old sites, when it comes time for them to make a purchase I link off to the “Buy” pages on the new sites. In the future, I may add 301 redirects, but want to make sure I have everything ready on the new sites before I throw the switch.
For other authors reading this post, have you considered WordPress for your book or author sites? Why or why not?