News

Every once in a while, IÔÇÖll run across a site running on the Genesis Framework. Actually, itÔÇÖs more than every once in a while, but what do you expect when so many people use Genesis?!

Anyway, sometimes IÔÇÖll visit a site running Genesis and notice that theyÔÇÖre running Genesis as the active theme, instead of using a child theme. I canÔÇÖt help but shake my head when I see this, because not only is this incredibly risky, but we strongly recommend that you DO NOT run Genesis as the active theme on any site.

Why not? There are several reasons, actually …

A child theme allows you to customize

When you read a tutorial for adding or removing things from your site output, itÔÇÖs likely that the tutorial will say something like ÔÇ£put this code in your child themeÔÇÖs functions.php file.ÔÇØ ItÔÇÖs hard to do that when youÔÇÖre not running a child theme.

Also, child themes allow you to run and manage your own CSS file. 100% custom, if you want. You can make your site look exactly how you want it to look, or use one of the dozens of child themes we sell here at StudioPress.

The point is that youÔÇÖre going to have a very difficult time customizing GenesisÔÇöand your siteÔÇöif you don’t use a child theme.

A child theme protects your customizations

Once youre done customizing your site, you want to protect all that hard work from being overwritten when we release an update to Genesis  and were always updating Genesis.

Even when weÔÇÖre not in an active development cycle, weÔÇÖre still pushing updates to Genesis and preparing maintenance releases. And if we decide to change things in the default Genesis CSS, you want to be sure that your site design stays intact.

A child theme keeps all your custom code and CSS safely in its own folder, so Genesis can be updated without affecting the look of your site.

Your site will show an error if you activate Genesis

If you activate Genesis directly, we now show a warning on your dashboard that advises you to use a child theme.

Do you really want to stare at that warning every time you log in to your site? Of course not!

So, go get yourself a beautiful child theme and get rid of that warning for good!

ItÔÇÖs just good practice

This boils down to separating the core functionality of the Genesis Framework from the specific customizations and design of your site.

Let the framework be a framework.

And let your creativity and custom code stay where it should stay  safely housed in a child theme.

Should I @import the Genesis style.css

WeÔÇÖve gotten this question many times over the years, and we answer the same every time …

No.

Genesis is not a CSS framework. And over time, the Genesis stylesheet has changed a lot. If youÔÇÖre dynamically using the Genesis CSS as the base for your siteÔÇÖs CSS, sooner or later the design of your site is going to break.

Always start with a fresh stylesheet in your child theme. Not only will this perform better, but it will keep all your CSS safe from any changes we make in Genesis.

ÔÇö

There’s really no reason not to use a child theme. I mean just look at all this beauty waiting for you over at StudioPress.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Oops, I did it againÔÇölast week I hopped on Facebook Live and answered your questions on design. Thanks to everyone who showed up, it was another round of fun! (Though, I still need to figure out that rascal audio thing.)

I’m going to be back at it again this Thursday, March 9th. Feel free to drop by as I’ll be doing an open mic. You can watch last week’s episode below, then send in your own question for this week’s show.

Hope to see you then …

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

If you’re not already using Pinterest as a marketing tool for your website, you should be!

Pinterest is my favorite tool for boosting traffic to my blog. It’s a powerful platform that continues to pick up speed and should not be underestimated in its ability to increase traffic to your site.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is the new Google. I’m not lying, it’s true. Let me explain …

Google is a text-based search engine. It employs “bots” to crawl your website looking for text that it can use to identify and you and your content. It then categorizes all of this information into a giant database that can (almost) instantly serve up relevant website choices or results from that database when you google something.

Pinterest is a visual-based search engine.

Like Google, Pinterest is essentially a giant database of categorized pins (aka image links to websites). Pinterest uses object recognition as well as keywords in the pin descriptions and titles to categorize its database. When a user searches a topic, Pinterest serves up relevant pins (pictures/links) to its users.

Along with Pinterest’s search engine capabilities, it also provides the ability to save results (pins) to personal or public boards and offers suggestions of things you may be interested in via a Facebook-like feed!

It’s a combination of pins from those you follow and pins customized to you based on the pins you search and save. How cool is that!?

Here is what Pinterest has to say about themselves:

“We think of ourselves as a search engine, but a very different kind. GoogleÔÇÖs great for facts, for questions that have a very specific answers. We think of ourselves as a place you go to when you have a subject of questions. Like what am I going to eat, what am I going to wear, what should my house look like. Questions for which the right answer is specific to you.ÔÇØ

Currently, “Pinners conduct 2 billion searches a month.” That number doesn’t even include all of the browsing and discovery activity that Pinterest is famous for. It’s addicting, trust me. Even my husband admitted last week that he has better luck searching on Pinterest.

On Pinterest, your content shows up in search results by you and others saving images from your articles to Pinterest. This is why it is so vital to have a Pinterest-ready website.

You want your audience to save your articles to Pinterest so that more people discover and save what you have to offer.

More fun facts about Pinterest

Take a look at this …

• 150 Million people use Pinterest each month
• 66% of Pinners say they use the service to save and collect things that inspire them
• Around 5% of all referral traffic to websites comes from Pinterest
• 93% of Pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases
• 88% of Pinners say they find new ideas on Pinterest
• 75% of content that Pinners save comes from businesses
• 72% of Pinners say that Pinterest has introduced them to a new brand or service

All in all, Pinterest will put your story or product out there for discovery. And it’s fun to use, too.

How to find out if your audience is on Pinterest

First, check and see if your audience is already pinning your content.

Head over to pinterest.com/source/yoururl.com and see if anything shows up (of course, change yoururl.com to your URL).

You can also check your own analytics. In one of his recent Facebook live videos, Brian Gardner mentioned that he had no idea Pinterest was so relevant to his niche. However, he noticed in the analytics for No Sidebar that he had 1,800 unique visitors from Pinterest in one day. He started optimizing for Pinterest after that. Smart man.

If you don’t see any traces of Pinterest in analytics, or your site isn’t being shared there, don’t fret. That doesn’t mean your audience isn’t on Pinterest, you just haven’t optimized for Pinterest yet.

Try some further searches in Pinterest. See what other content related to your niche is there. You may be surprised. If not, be the first! You could have a golden opportunity.

Create a Pinterest picture for every post

Since Pinterest is a visual platform, you’ll want to create a pinnable image for every article you publish.

Vertical images perform best and take up more space on Pinterest. The perfect size for Pinterest is actually a ratio. Pinterest recommends a minimum ratio of 2:3. Anything longer than a 1:2.8 ratio will be cut off in the mobile feed and displayed with an ÔÇ£Expand PinÔÇØ overlay.

Images created for Pinterest should be at least 600 pixels wide. DonÔÇÖt feel like you have to use the minimum or maximum height recommendations, feel free to use any size in-between those two.

If we take a look at the pins saved from Copyblogger, you can see that their horizontal images get a handful of pins. Whenever they include a vertical image or infographic, their articles get pinned hundreds to thousands of times. Brian Clark’s Grammar Goofs article, written in 2012, has been saved to Pinterest over 194,000 times.

The image you use is what will entice people to save your article on Pinterest and click over to your site. Pinterest advises that when you create your pins, they should be “beautiful, interesting, and actionable.”

You can use stock photography, take your own pictures, or design graphics for your Pinterest images. If you include text on your images, make sure that it is readable on mobile devices.

If vertical images in your blog posts aren’t your thing, don’t worry. You can hide the vertical image and still make it pinnable.

Optimize for mobile users

75% of Pinterest usage takes place on a mobile device, and 52% of search clicks came from smartphones in Q4 of 2016.

With the vast majority of Pinners using their mobile devices, it’s important to have a mobile-responsive, fast loading, and easy to navigate website. When you are designing your images for Pinterest, you also want to make sure that it is easy to view on mobile devices.

Confirm your site with Pinterest

Once you have a Pinterest account set up, you’ll want to confirm your website to Pinterest.

Confirming your website to your Pinterest account will add your profile picture to any Pin that is saved from your site, along with a button encouraging Pinners to visit your site. You’ll also get access to Pinterest’s website analytics. (The Genesis header script box makes this step super easy.)

Apply for Rich Pins

Rich Pins provide a little extra insight to the Pins saved from your site. There are six types of rich pins: article, product, app, place, movie, and recipe.

When you have rich pins enabled on your site, the meta title and description of the blog post will be associated with the pin in big, bold text. Regular old pins don’t get this kind of special treatment.

If you use StudioPress Sites to host your blog, you donÔÇÖt need to add in any code or use a plugin to apply for Rich Pins. Simply head over to Pinterest and apply. If you use WooCommerce to sell products, your StudioPress Site will also be ready to go for product rich pins.

If you don’t use Sites, you will need to add in meta-data or open graph data to your site to qualify for rich pins.

If you are a food blogger, the Cookbook recipe plugin by Feast Design Co and WP Site Care is all you need to enable recipe rich pins on your site.

Recipe rich pins will list the ingredients and descriptions of your pin, making it easier for Pinners to find your recipe when they are searching for specific ingredients or dishes.

Start pinning!

Encourage readers to pin your articles by using sharing buttons like the Genesis Simple Share Buttons. When readers click the built-in Pinterest icon, they will share the featured image for the post and the document title as the description for the pin.

Create Pinterest boards for the topics you write about, and pin content from your blog to your Pinterest account regularly.

Use your boards to express your blog’s values, goals, and purpose.

Have fun pinning for traffic and don’t forget to let your readers now that they can follow you and your boards on Pinterest!

Sources:

• 150 million people finding ideas on Pinterest
• 10 reasons why your business needs to be on Pinterest
• How Pinterest drives double-digit brand lifts
• A new take on search – A perspective from Kenshoo and Pinterest

ÔÇö

Want to easily build your own Pinterest-ready website? Check out StudioPress Sites.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Shay Bocks of Feast Design Company. Shay started hustlin’ in 2008 to connect her creative gifts and ravenous curiosity with the ambition of creative entrepreneurs.

Nowadays, that dream has manifested into a full-time operation serving other dreamers just like herself.

Within the Genesis community, Shay is best known for her Foodie Pro theme, one that has continually been the #1 selling theme on StudioPress. She followed that up with a theme called Brunch Pro, and just recently released another one called Cook’d Pro.

In this 31-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Shay Bocks discuss:

• How Shay’s first 7 jobs shaped what she does today
• Challenges she faces as a small business owner
• The popularity of the Foodie Pro Theme
• What makes a successful food blogging brand
• A recipe solution: the Cookbook Plugin

The Show Notes

• Follow Feast Design Co. on Twitter
• FeastDesignCo.com
• Foodie Pro Theme
• Brunch Pro Theme
• Cookbook Plugin

Food Blogging: Is it Really a Lucrative Business?

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I will discuss the business of food blogging with Shay Bocks of Feast Design Company.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and I’m joined, as usual, with the vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. We’re excited to talk to Shay today because we’re continuing our series here where we’re talking to members and experts, mind you, of the Genesis community. We’re going to just jump right into it.

Today, we’re joined by Shay Bocks of Feast Design Company. Shay started hustling in 2008 to connect her creative gifts and ravenous curiosity with the ambition of creative entrepreneurs. Nowadays, that dream has manifested into a full-time operation of serving other dreamers just like herself.

Now, within the Genesis community, Shay is best known for her Foodie Pro Theme, one that has continually been the number one selling theme on StudioPress. She followed that up with a theme called Brunch Pro and just recently released a new third food-blogging theme called Cook’d Pro. Shay, it’s a huge pleasure for Lauren and I to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Shay Bocks: Thank you. I’m super honored to be here with the likes of you guys. Y’all are my heroes, so this is awesome.

Brian Gardner: Ah, the y’all has already started.

Shay Bocks: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Brian Gardner: I love talking to you because you have such a great accent. It’s awesome. I love it. It makes me smile.

Lauren Mancke: I didn’t even notice. That’s how we talk around here.

Shay Bocks: Exactly. Lauren knows what I mean.

Brian Gardner: So I’m the outsider is what you’re saying?

Shay Bocks: Yeah.

Shay Bocks: Before we start talking to Shay, the Shay of 2016, I thought it would be fun to head back in time a little bit. Last week on Twitter, there was this hashtag going around called the #FirstSevenJobs. Everybody would Tweet the first seven jobs that they had, and then they used the hashtag. Anyone you were following, you can kind of see what they were up to in years past. Some people flipped hamburgers, and other people were DJs and stuff like that.

Let’s talk about when you were younger — you’re still young — but younger than you are now. Before you became this Internet powerhouse, what did you do before this?

How Shay’s First 7 Jobs Shaped What She Does Today

Shay Bocks: I’m super excited you asked this. A lot of times, those hashtags go around, and it’s kind of silly what people do. But when I actually sat down and wrote out my first seven jobs, it was a realization as to how all of those previous, kind of insignificant jobs, that you start out with really informed what I’m doing now. It’s kind of cool to see how that turned out.

The first job I had was actually when I was 15. I became a youth facilitator for a major nonviolence organization. I got to travel around the world with McGruff the Crime Dog, if you remember him. I also got to work with a lot of teens and teach adults how to work with teens, and we lobbied politicians.

The biggest thing that I got out of that was that, when I got this insight into using creative solutions to solve problems because we worked with these teens to create media campaigns and we sat in think tanks with refugees from Uganda and different things like that, that had to be the best job that I could have ever hoped for, especially when I was only 15 years old.

Brian Gardner: Sure.

Shay Bocks: From there, I did something way more boring. I worked as a service coordinator for an HVAC company. I had to switch gears from that and do something a little bit more exciting. I went to New York to live as a live-in nanny. I worked for a single mom, who was really this big-shot corporate creative in New York — really got to see how she leveraged her skills for what she was doing at the time. I’m sure she’s still doing amazing things.

After that job was over with, I came back to Chesapeake, Virginia, and worked as an office manager at a radiator repair shop. It was owned by friends of ours. I would say that one taught me how to work with difficult people and how to get invoices paid, but in a very nice way, to make sure the people were happy at the end of the day.

Once I was done with that job, I actually left there to move to Texas with my husband at the time, and because we were in an area full of other Army wives, it was so difficult to find a job. I ended up working as a makeup artist at Glamour Shots. I would say that this job was least in-line with my own personality and my values. But now looking back, I can say that’s definitively where I learned how to use Photoshop and how to make a sale.

Once my husband deployed and I had our baby — Steve deployed when our baby was two months old — I didn’t want to leave the baby, so I decided to become certified in Army childcare. I ran a 24-hour care for infants out of my home. At any given time, I would have four infants at my house, like all the time. That was my first lucrative business venture. Even though what I was doing was very different from what I’m doing now, I learned so much about business by doing that.

I have to tell a short little story and say that the way I got most of my clients, or families that I worked with, was actually by turning a Myspace page into a website. I didn’t know much about web design at the time, but I knew how to manipulate the HTML in Myspace. When someone would come to my Myspace page, it looked like a website. It didn’t look anything like a Myspace page. That seemed to impress families for some reason.

Brian Gardner: Lauren, did she just say Myspace?

Shay Bocks: I did.

Brian Gardner: Let’s talk GeoCities and Myspace on StudioPress FM. That’s awesome. Go on.

Shay Bocks: That’s how I learned how to code, just being straight up with you.

Brian Gardner: Hey, that’s what we want to hear.

Shay Bocks: After doing that, I decided to start designing for other Army wives, and thinking back on it now, it was really kind of desperate and ridiculous. But I created graphics for Army wives so that, while their soldiers were gone ÔǪ it was like these little blinky graphics with pictures of them and their soldiers, and “Oh I love you,” “I miss you,” and all of that kind of stuff.

Then, from there I realized that, “Well, these same Army wives are starting to build their own businesses, and they need websites.” There were a lot of bloggers, so I figured out how to create blog designs for these Army wives, which then went down a whole path that led me to where I am now.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. I had two jobs, basically, before this web thing. The first was a manager at a convenient store, and that gave me the experience of customer service and how important that is. That is something that, for very obvious reasons, has come through when I started StudioPress and having to deal with people and why giving them the benefit of the doubt and being as helpful and generous as I can.

Then, the second job after that was project manager at an architectural firm. That experience put me in front of a computer all day, which basically gave me access to teach myself everything I know now, which was, back in that day, all Microsoft Windows, Excel, Word, Outlook, and all that stuff.

When I was kind of getting bored with what I was doing, I went online and started teaching myself things. So, yes, to your point, when you look back at the jobs that you had, in some fashion you could probably pull some nugget of how that helped you establish your Internet entrepreneurship that we all have. You know what I mean?

Shay Bocks: Absolutely. I completely agree with you on that.

Lauren Mancke: Shay, you’re clearly a talented designer, and you’re quite savvy from a business side of things. How did you decide to become an Internet entrepreneur?

Why Shay Decided to Become an Internet Entrepreneur

Shay Bocks: That’s a loaded question. I think the best Internet entrepreneurs get to call themselves that because they followed some kind of magnetic pull from the universe, I guess. That might be kind of a woo-woo way of explaining it. I know that, in my case, all I did was allowed myself to be curious and to dig in when I really didn’t know what I was doing — then to recognize opportunities that intersected with the path that I was already on.

I was open to success and so it has found me — and it’s still finding me. I think I am just at the beginning of this journey, but that’s not to discredit the intense amount of work I’ve put into my business or how I’ve leveraged my skillset to do it. I guess that’s just my attempt at a balanced answer for you.

Lauren Mancke: I know having kids and being a single mom is probably difficult. What other challenges do you face with running your business?

Challenges Shay Faces As a Small Business Owner

Shay Bocks: I think I have a very unique perspective that’s valuable to the audience I serve. My current challenge is being able to scale that and to build a team that serves even more bloggers seamlessly, just as I would. For me, I want to do so many things. My list is big.

But you’re right — I’m a mom, and a single mom at that, without a lot of support on the home front. Being able to balance this ambition with the recognition of what I can actually get done in a day is really hard. That’s where my team is coming in, and I can’t even begin to describe what a difference that’s made for me and the people that we’re serving.

Speaking of my team. Last month, I got to promote my creative assistant to full-time designer, and I’m super excited because he’s coming with me to Circles next month. You’ll get to meet him while we’re there.

Brian Gardner: That’s awesome. I know last year that was the first time you and I got a chance to meet face to face.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah and us too.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Lauren, unfortunately, can’t join us this year because of family reasons.

Shay Bocks: Oh pooh.

Lauren Mancke: I’m in the family way.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. You’ve got a couple buns in the oven, now that we’re going with this food and baking concept. We will definitely miss you, Lauren, there at Circles conference, but Shay, I cannot wait to see you again.

Shay Bocks: Same here.

Brian Gardner: We’ll get to, Shay, how you and I kind of met online here in a minute. As an outsider looking in, I’m always fascinated, and we just talked to Rebecca at Web Savvy Marketing about this, there are things about people that I see from my perspective that really make me happy and proud to call people as friends and fellow entrepreneurs.

Watching your journey from when we first met as struggling single mom trying to make money and kind of figure this out, to where you’re at now, having developed a team, multiple products. You just announced some stuff, which we’ll also get to, and knowing the road ahead for you is probably way longer than it is behind you, it’s just so fun.

As a cheerleader, kind of sit on the sidelines of your life and your journey and just watch that stuff go down. See how things play out and pictures that you post. Having people to your place to do pictures and staging, all of that stuff. I’m so happy and proud of where you’ve gone, and I cannot wait to see where you go — quick aside there.

Let’s go back because I want to talk about Foodie. I mean that’s the elephant in the room. At some point, we’re all going to look back and say that just changed and revolutionized food blogging as it is now. Foodie Pro was a theme that you designed. It’s really where our paths crossed on the Internet.

I think you were on my radar, and I saw a link to something. Someone Tweeted something. I went there, and I instantly said, “That is a theme we have to have on StudioPress.” I don’t remember the exact chain of events, but I’m sure I probably just emailed you and said, “Hey. I’m Brian, founder of StudioPress. Want to sell your theme? See a lot of opportunity. Are you interested?” From that, it’s probably a pretty obvious question to answer here, but what is the effect that Foodie itself has had on your business as it is right now?

The Popularity of the Foodie Pro Theme

Shay Bocks: Yeah, absolutely. That moment that you just talked about, where you reached out to me and said, “Hey, I want to sell this on StudioPress,” that was a pivotal moment in my journey. I was already on the path towards working more with food bloggers. I think I saw where things were headed with this industry, and I wanted to be a part of that. But it was really getting Foodie on StudioPress and opening that up to such a bigger audience and such a wider breadth of online contributors that really kind of set all of this into motion.

I think just being able to have something like Foodie online in a mass setting for all of these newbie food bloggers who are just starting out, who don’t even know yet if they have something to contribute to the online world, but being able to say, “Hey, this is a theme that was built for me, and this is how I can get started.” I think that has been tremendous, at least for the food bloggers I’ve talked to. They have at least a starting point.

Once they have that WordPress installed, the Genesis Framework installed, and the Foodie child theme installed, they know that now they can just write something, press publish, and worry about the rest later, figure it out later. Foodie is giving them that start, which I think is incredible.

Brian Gardner: So quick aside here — Lauren and I, every month we get a report of sales on StudioPress, and every month we think to ourselves, “Is this the month?” Lauren, correct me if I’m wrong. I think there was one month at one point.

Lauren Mancke: Yeah, there was one month.

Brian Gardner: Every month we wait to get the report. We’re like, “Ah, she did it again. Foodie’s the number one selling theme on StudioPress,” which, of course, is not us being selfish. It’s just more of a fun game than anything.

So food blogging — that’s obviously something that we want to talk about today. It’s quite the rage, and has been probably for at least two or three years. Now, I don’t necessarily think it’s in a saturated state, but it’s sort of getting close. But it’s so popular, and people are still doing it.

People are still starting it. It seems like every day people are starting up a new food blog. A lot of popular sites out there, such as Pinch of Yum, Minimalist Baker, run by John and Dana. John’s a good friend of mine. Cookie and Kate is another one. What’s the deal? The whole food-blogging theme, just talk to us about what it is and why it’s such a rage.

Why a Personal Brand Is Essential to Building a Successful Food Blog

Shay Bocks: Yeah. I think food blogging may be big, and you’re right — some people may even say it’s an industry that’s getting over-saturated. I actually hope to hear more voices getting into this food conversation. There are so many food blogs out there, but you know why? It’s because of the mom that’s sitting down every Sunday afternoon wondering what the hell she’s going to get into her kids bellies this week, or the millions of people who are suffering with chronic conditions and are looking at their diets to help them tackle the challenges that they’re facing.

There’s so much room in this space because eating is a need that humans will always have. Discovering ways to use food to make life easier, happier, sexier, and even divinely inspired, that’s where food bloggers come in. I don’t think people realize how incredibly influential this industry is.

These bloggers are the ones behind the recipes and magazines that you read, the cookbooks you rely on, on the cooking shows you’re watching, and especially in the recipes that you seek out on Pinterest. Brands notice, too. That’s why so many food bloggers are doing so well online.

Lauren Mancke: My husband, he actually went to culinary school, just for fun, so he’s a classically trained chef. People are always telling us that we should start a food blog because I can take the pictures, he can cook the food. And is it really all that simple? I think about how much time and effort that would take, and I think it’s a common misconception about building a successful food blog is that it’s that easy. What do you think about that?

Shay Bocks: Yeah. I definitely have to agree with you. It’s not some fly-by-night operation. I would say that I think you should start a food blog because I would certainly read it. I would enjoy it. I think it would be valuable to a lot of people, but I would not say it’s all that easy to do. It’s easy to do as a hobby. If you’re looking to really make an impact with your blog, it’s not a hobby.

In order to really build an influential food blog, you have to have a personal brand. A lot of work goes into building a personal brand. That’s just my take on it. Getting started is easy, but actually making an impact with your blog, that’s not easy. The people who are doing it, they need to be recognized for the work they’re putting into their blogs.

Brian Gardner: One of my favorite decisions you’ve made, and you and I had many conversations during the success of Foodie when it started out — “What’s next for Shay? What’s phase two? What’s the next thing?” We have kind of joked — at some point, that ship will sail, right?

Shay Bocks: Right.

Brian Gardner: We talked about just different ideas of themes that you could do next, so one of the things you did that made me super proud, and I was just so excited, was when you decided to go with the second theme, also food blogging. At that point, I think you kind of said, “This is where I’m going to plant my flag. I’m not going to try to just go all over and be everything. I’m going to become the food blog person.”

As I mentioned earlier on the show, we’ve got a third theme that just came out called Cook’d. It’s been fun to watch you stick with that and ride that horse further past Foodie by introducing a couple of other well-designed themes. Then, of course, you renamed your business Feast Design Company, obviously to go along with the food-blogging theme, which I thought was another brilliant move.

Lauren Mancke: I love that.

Brian Gardner: Yeah.

Shay Bocks: Thank you.

Brian Gardner: Kudos to you.

Lauren Mancke: I saw that, and I was like, “Oh yes, I love that.”

Shay Bocks: That means a lot to me that you say that. We went through a lot of hemming and hawing over that, about what we should call ourselves. It’s hard to name anything. I just kept saying to myself, “Feast your eyes on this.” The word ‘feast’ just kept coming up, and because it’s such food-related and reminds people of jubilant Thanksgivings or a time when people are coming together, that’s what we went with.

Brian Gardner: Okay. Walk us through some of the typical, and sometimes very lucrative, monetization strategies. I mentioned, Pinch of Yum, they have a course. John and Dana at Minimalist Baker, they have things that they’re doing. There are a lot of opportunities for people outside of just the advertisement or things like that. How can people make money with the food blog?

How to Make Money with a Food Blog

Shay Bocks: Yeah. We get new food bloggers in, and they’re like, “Oh, I want to monetize. Let me put some Google Ads on my website,” and I have to kind of sit down and educate them and say, “You’re not really going to make money that way.” Ads are valuable for blogs that have a ton of traffic, but we’re starting to see food bloggers branch out into other avenues of monetizing, which is really exciting.

You see sites like I Am Baker, where she has a huge partnership with a big brand, McCormick Seasonings, and she’s putting out content left and right. That’s supported by that brand that supports her online business, but it’s also extremely valuable to the people that she’s writing for. Then we have, you mentioned Pinch of Yum and Minimalist Baker. They do make a lot of money on ad revenue because they have the traffic to support it, but they’re also diversified revenue.

They have products of their own. They’re using affiliate links. They’re just tapping into every lucrative avenue they can get their hands on, and it’s working for them, which is wonderful.

Then you have other big hitters like Pioneer Woman. She started as a blogger, and she leveraged her personal brand to put out a cookbook. I think she has her own Food Network show. There are endless possibilities. What I’m looking forward to seeing is even more creative solutions, stuff we haven’t even seen before.

Brian Gardner: If you’re looking for those types of ideas — I know John and Dana do this at Minimalist Baker, I’m not sure how often — but a lot of these popular food blogs are doing the transparency thing with their monthly reports, right? Where they go top to bottom and actually show you how diversified their income stream is. There’s things that even I see on there where I’m like, “Wow, I would have never thought of trying to monetize that way.”

A lot of them are even supported by web-hosting companies for people who are searching for how to start a food blog, right? They go through and walk you through, and they recommend themes, such as the ones that you have with us on StudioPress and hosting, so there’s that and the obvious courses. Food Photography School, I think, is a course. I can’t remember if that’s Pinch of Yum?

Shay Bocks: Both Pinch of Yum and Minimalist Baker have photography courses, which is awesome.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Education and training — if you have thousands of followers that are trying to basically replicate your success, that’s a great opportunity to basically teach them how you did what you did, which gives them value and you revenue. Lots of opportunities to make money in food blogs.

Shay Bocks: Absolutely.

Lauren Mancke: Say I was going to start a food blog, or have some sort of food-blogging aspect to a website, what do you think some of the obstacles I would face would be in order to make it big?

Obstacles to Growing a Big, Successful Food Blog

Shay Bocks: I think the first thing that I see most new food bloggers doing is that they’re trying too much to be just like the people who are successful at food blogging. Brian, you mentioned a second ago that Pinch of Yum and Minimalist Baker have some education and training aspects to their products. I think those kinds of things are incredibly valuable, but the problem comes in when a new food blogger tries to copy exactly what they’re doing.

New food bloggers coming into the realm need to take that information, learn from it, but then also figure out what’s making them unique. There may be a 100,000 paleo blogs out there, but your unique perspective is what’s going to make your blog different, what’s going to make it stand out, or what’s going to make people want to link to it. What people are going to want to consume and eat up.

Brian Gardner: No pun intended, right?

Shay Bocks: Yeah, exactly.

Lauren Mancke: Pun intended.

Brian Gardner: She walked right into that one.

Shay Bocks: Yeah. I think it’s really important to set yourself apart, but doing it in a way that’s not competitive. This blue ocean strategy — if anyone knows about me — it’s being able to have a unique perspective, something valuable to present to the world, but in a way that’s really collaborative with others in the space.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Food blogging isn’t the only space. We even see that within the Genesis ecosystem and people who are selling themes. The unique voice, I’m so glad that you alluded to that. That is so important because so many people just try to replicate success without there being any kind of unique positioning.

Back in the day, I don’t know if you know who this is, but Jeremy Shoemaker, a guy named ShoeMoney back in the day, made a ton of money doing stuff with the ringtones. So everybody wanted to be the next ShoeMoney and do the exact same thing. So all of a sudden, you had a bunch of cloned sites.

Even back when Darren Rowse was starting out with ProBlogger and all of that, everyone, kind of like a flock of sheep, just tried to basically do the same thing on a different domain name. So I think, now, in this even not so saturated market with food blogging, there’s still so many opportunities.

You even mentioned it earlier, just the different types of sort of layers within that where you can create — whether it’s paleo, whether it’s this or that, or how it applies to wellness, like Katie is doing at Wellness Mama, just kind of how that allows you the opportunity to serve a very specific audience. Maybe it’s gluten-free. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s desserts. Food blogging is a big, big ocean.

We would encourage anyone who was looking to start a food blog to just find a unique element. Maybe it applies to you as a person and your personality. Maybe there’s some flamboyance involved, so you’re like RedHotChef.com or something like that, where you bring a certain kind of flavor to it.

Okay. Give our listeners who are interested in food blogging some trade secrets. In other words, what are some things that they should focus on when they are trying to start their successful food-blogging brand?

Where to Focus Your Food-Blogging Brand: A Unique Perspective and a Specific Audience

Shay Bocks: I’d say the number one point is, what I said before, building your personal brand and focusing on what makes your prospective unique. Second, I would say speaking to a specific reader or target audience. When I do strategy sessions with potential clients or some of the people we work with on themes, we get really specific about who the target audience is.

I don’t mean 35- to 45-year-old women with a college education. I mean like what are this person’s deep desires, fears? What are her mantras? What does she get up in the morning for? What makes her frustrated, sad, or discouraged? Then speaking to that one particular person in everything that you write or any image you put up online or anything. Have that person in your mind when you’re putting anything up online.

Then, I would say the last point is just following your intuition about what opportunities make the most sense in building your own online empire. Not all solutions are going to be right for you, so you have to have kind of a gut check with anything you do.

A Recipe Solution: The Cookbook Plugin

Brian Gardner: Okay. Here’s where I’m going to jump in and ask the bonus question: The Cookbook Plugin. Yesterday, you made a big announcement online with the folks at WP Site Care about a plugin I knew about for some time. In fact, you and I had separate conversations about something we were going to consider doing, but never did. For our listeners, I’m going to read this straight from your sales page, just so they know what we are talking about.

Here’s what Shay and friends have to say. “Start and grow your blog with a recipe plugin that actually works. All the existing WordPress recipe plugins are busted, poorly supported, hard to use, or just plan ugly. We’ve built a feature-rich recipe solution that is crafted with care, well-built, it looks beautiful, and works the way that food bloggers do. You can get excited about publishing new recipes again.” Care to go more into this, Shay?

Shay Bocks: Well, it’s interesting, when you say it, that sounds a little harsh. I will say that there are a lot of well-meaning developers out there who are trying to solve the issue of recipe plugins for food bloggers. Anyone familiar with this space knows the past few months have been really volatile when it comes to recipe plugins. Some plugins are being dropped completely. Some are just not being well-supported. The ones that are being well-supported are just kind of really overly bloated, ugly, or not easy to use.

Those are harsh judgments, but these are the things we’re hearing from our customers on a daily basis. They want to know, “Which recipe plugin do you recommend?” I have to honestly say I can’t in good faith recommend any of them. I’ll tell them what their options are. I’ll tell them what I think the pros and cons are, but I don’t feel comfortable about any of them.

It was in this moment of frustration, really — actually, a few years of frustration — talking with some colleagues over at WP Site Care, figuring out that what people need is a supported plugin that’s going to stick around, be well-developed, and be beautiful.

So we decided to build it. We decided we’re tired of waiting for other people to do it. It’s time for us to do something about this. I think bloggers are tired of every week trying to figure out, “Should I switch plugins? What’s the right software to install this week?” Bloggers need something consistent and something that’s really dedicated to working the way they do.

That’s why we started on this path. We’ve got a solid plugin that is in its final stages of just wrapping it up, getting it tested, and getting it ready for everyone to use. We decided to go ahead and announce it yesterday and let everyone know that it’s coming. We’re excited about what this going to mean for recipe publishers.

Brian Gardner: To me, it makes a lot of sense. We do the same thing at Copyblogger ÔǪ or excuse me, Rainmaker Digital is our new name. If we get frustrated with a solution that’s out there or we need something for our own internal use, we just go ahead and build it. Then if it makes sense, we release that to the public.

For you, so many people who are using the food-blogging themes that you’re designing, even from your prospective, it probably makes it easier to have the control over what does this plugin or the functionality for what most food bloggers are going to need.

It’s easy to work with that because you built it rather than having to be frustrated with the reliance on somebody else’s development, and sometimes changing code, markup, or whatever. It’s kind of like in-housing the solution. Obvious reasons include you guys get to make money on it yourself, and things like that. Then, it just makes it much more of a pitch to say, “Hey, I recommend this because it works well with the stuff that we’ve built.” Kudos to you guys for ceasing that opportunity and running with it.

Shay Bocks: Thank you. I want to say #truth. All of that is wonderful. I completely agree with you.

Lauren Mancke: I’ve really enjoyed all your thoughts, Shay. Do you have anything else to add?

Shay Bocks: Just that I’m honored to be able to connect food bloggers with the amazing tools over at StudioPress. Of the major contributions in this space, you guys are such a big hitter, and I so appreciate how you’ve embraced me and my people.

Brian Gardner: Yeah. Well, that’s going to continue to go even further. I have some ideas that, Shay, you and I will talk about offline, just about how to leverage the stuff that you’ve built, the stuff that we’ve built, our audience, and how to put that together and really present a unified front when it comes to food blogging and people building their personal brands for that.

Speaking of personal brands, I have a question for those who are listening in. Are you looking to build a better brand for your blog? Well, Shay has created an actionable five-part challenge, and with that, you’ll have just the right tactics you need to build a digital design and brand. This will help lead you to a profitable website — and best of all, it’s free. Sign up, and get your first challenge delivered immediately.
For more information, you can check it out over at FeastDesignCo.com/5-days. We’ll also include a link to that on the show page.

If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at, you guessed it, StudioPress.FM. You can also help Lauren and I hit the main stage by subscribing to the show on iTunes. It’s a great way to never, ever miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

[/episode_transcript]

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Well, here it is, a replay of my first take at live video on Facebook. Thanks to everyone who showed up and asked questions, it turned out to be a really good time! (Sorry for the delay in the audio, I’ll work on that.)

I’ll be doing this every Thursday (for as long as you want me to). You can watch last week’s episode below, then send in your own question for the next show. There won’t be one this week because I’m taking a break in Colorado.

But I’m shooting for the following week (3/2). See you then …

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. She is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant.

Rebecca Gill is an active member of the WordPress community, participating as a WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator.

Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities.

The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers.

In this 39-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Rebecca Gill discuss:

• The accidental entrepreneur
• Empowerment in training others
• A holistic approach to SEO
• How to avoid risky black hat tactics
• The 3 most important elements of SEO
• Long-term SEO strategies

The Show Notes

• Follow Rebecca on Twitter
• RebeccaGill.com
• Web Savvy Marketing
• Web Savvy Marketing Themes
• SEO Consulting
• DIY SEO Courses
• SEO Bootcamp

A Beginner’s Guide to SEO that Works

Lauren Mancke: On todayÔÇÖs episode, we are talking search engine optimization with Rebeca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. WeÔÇÖll cover this topic from all angles, so listen in.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone, welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. IÔÇÖm joined, as usual, with the VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. We are very excited about the show because right now we are starting a new series where we are talking to members and experts, mind you, of the Genesis Community. Lauren, what do you think about that?

Lauren Mancke: Very excited to have everyone on.

Brian Gardner: We could probably go 30 or 40 episodes deep easily with people that I want to talk to. WeÔÇÖll break them up into little compartments. But itÔÇÖs going to definitely be fun for us. Today we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. Rebecca is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant as well. SheÔÇÖs an active member of the WordPress community with a variety of participation as WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator.

Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities. The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes, ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers. Rebecca, itÔÇÖs our pleasure to welcome you to the show. How are you?

Rebecca Gill: IÔÇÖm great. Thanks so much for having me here.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, itÔÇÖs funny. When I sat down to think of the people who I wanted to have on the show there were a few names that instantly popped up, and yours was one of them. I was kind of hoping at some point, and maybe … I know down the road we have another series that IÔÇÖm going to talk to Chris Cree who worked with you very closely and just recently left. WeÔÇÖll be able to tackle both sides of your business where he also was involved. LetÔÇÖs kick this off. IÔÇÖve known you for a number of years. You’ve been around the WordPress space for some time. Walk us through the early years of how you got started as an online entrepreneur and how you created Web Savvy?

The Accidental Entrepreneur

Rebecca Gill: I didnÔÇÖt set out to be an entrepreneur. I was at a small company and I was their VP of Marketing. I was with them for about 10 years in total. The company dynamic shifted and it was evident that I really needed to leave, but it was the heart of the recession and there were no jobs in the Detroit area. The situation in the company got so bad that I was so distraught and distracted from it I actually mixed up my medication, put myself on the ER for eight hours, and ended up on the couch for a week recovering. It was at that point my husband and I were like, ÔÇ£You know what? It doesnÔÇÖt matter whatÔÇÖs going on with the economy, you need to leaveÔÇØ It just it was affecting our personal life more than we could tolerate, so I quit.

I was going to go into SEO consulting and I started to do that. I actually had some initial success, but I quickly realized that the companies I was working with didnÔÇÖt have access to their websites. Everything was in HTML and nobody could actually go in and make implementations of my SEO recommendations. I went back to my experience with Joomla and WordPress and started to work on web development. That was just a means to be able to get the SEO out there that I needed to for the small businesses. I quickly fell in love with the WordPress community and dove in. We started creating custom themes and development, and then when Genesis came out we jumped on the Genesis bandwagon and itÔÇÖs been a great ride ever since.

Brian Gardner: ItÔÇÖs funny how many stories start with, “How I became an entrepreneur online more out of need than want.” Not many people have the luxury of saying, ÔÇ£I just think IÔÇÖm going to wake up and one day IÔÇÖm going to start this.ÔÇØ ItÔÇÖs really, “I got fired,” or “I had to leave my job,” or, “My husband lost a job and so I had to basically figure out how to make money online.” It sounds like your story is somewhat that way. Sometimes itÔÇÖs also health-related and things like that. thank you for sharing that. ItÔÇÖs encouraging to other people to hear how that type of thing gets started.

Rebecca Gill: I always joke that IÔÇÖm the accidental entrepreneur. My husband jokes that I can usually slip and fall but I always end up smelling like roses at the end, and I think this is a good example of that.

Lauren Mancke: Running a small business isnÔÇÖt always easy, what are some of the things that you struggle with?

Rebecca Gill: I think, for me, my biggest struggle is a mental struggle, because I now have an agency and I hadnÔÇÖt planned in having an agency. I spend a lot of time on operations and worrying about payroll and receivables and things like that, checking on projects. ThatÔÇÖs all things that I donÔÇÖt like. I would rather be doing SEO consulting and training and marketing and sales, because thatÔÇÖs really what makes me happy. I think if I were to say what is my struggle, thatÔÇÖs the biggest struggle. That I donÔÇÖt get to focus on what I really want to focus on and where I know IÔÇÖm really good. I have to focus on these other things. That can be a mental challenge that you just have to overcome and push through daily.

Brian Gardner: For me in StudioPress back in the day — I think at the core that all comes down to that struggle and how it affects us mentally. It’s sometimes related to our inabilities to let go off control. When we as independent people start something and do it all on our own, obviously it comes to a point where we need to scale and get bigger. With that comes the pain of doing things that we donÔÇÖt want to do. For me it was support — as much as I love working with people, it just got to a point where I couldnÔÇÖt work 85 hours a week. You have to entrust people — as you have, and have done successfully. Start to grow the company and entrust those responsibilities to other people so that you donÔÇÖt become a nut case. ThatÔÇÖs what I had to do. You know what I mean?

Rebecca Gill: ThatÔÇÖs so true.

Brian Gardner: Genesis — letÔÇÖs go right into this because you were one of the big, popular, most known Genesis agencies, along with Brian and Jennifer Bourn. Talk us through how Genesis came into your picture.

Rebecca Gill: I actually tried the beta version of it. When it didnÔÇÖt have trial themes. I created a website that is still out there today, that is using that original version. That was me going in –that was still when it was me hacking themes and customizing myself, which I shouldnÔÇÖt be doing. IÔÇÖm not allowed to do that anymore. I had a familiarity with it, but then Chris Cree, who you mentioned earlier — when you came out with the real Genesis framework and the trial themes, he said, ÔÇ£We need to start using this.ÔÇØ He explained to me how we can have a base trial theme of the things that I like and we can use that as our box that we are going to play in.

We started with it and I quickly found that it was just such a good path for us. Not only do you all produce really good code and a great framework for us to work within, it creates a box for my team where we have a set of best practices and standards. We’re all beating at the same drum. I think that from agency owner’s perspective thatÔÇÖs really invaluable to me. Plus, I just know that my clients — somebody has got their back besides me. If I get hit by a train — or whatever reason Web Savvy goes away — I know they have you and theyÔÇÖve got the Genesis community that can pick right up where we left off. That makes me really happy. We made that decision early on, jointly with me and Chris. WeÔÇÖve never strayed from it and IÔÇÖve never regretted it.

Brian Gardner: ThatÔÇÖs music to our ears, right, Lauren?

Lauren Mancke: Definitely.

Rebecca Gill: IÔÇÖm a Genesis cheerleader, I canÔÇÖt help it.

Brian Gardner: We like those.

Empowerment in Training Others

Lauren Mancke: Aside from the general services you offer. I heard youÔÇÖve gotten recently into training. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Rebecca Gill: IÔÇÖve actually been doing group training since 1995. First it was an operational training. My first job out of college I was an Operations Manager. Then, when I worked for the ERP Software Company, I was doing training for the user base. IÔÇÖd go onsite for five days and walk people through the setup of the system and talk about everything from bill of materials and manufacturing production lines through the general ledger and accounting. ThatÔÇÖs been in my blood.

I havenÔÇÖt done it for years because IÔÇÖve been so busy building up the agency, just with the daily to-dos. WeÔÇÖve got a really good project manager now who manages all of our custom developments. ThatÔÇÖs freed me up so that I could go back to training and start really using my SEO education and sharing that. The reason IÔÇÖve been doing it is because, from an SEO standpoint, itÔÇÖs a lot of labor. There is only so much of me to go around and I only have so many hours in the week. I donÔÇÖt want to be working those 85 hours that Brian mentioned.

IÔÇÖve been starting to do more and more training — both in the course and then with the boot camp — so we can really spread that education and empower people. Let them have that education so they can have a long-term path. Honestly, I love it. ItÔÇÖs like Chris creating the support forum, he loves that and I love training. You just empower people and you make them happy. The light bulb goes off and they are thrilled with that. Then you know that youÔÇÖve given them a foundation that they’re taking forward with them.

Brian Gardner: When I started StudioPress, training was definitely not something on my radar. Only because — like I said earlier — I was so busy trying to keep up with the creation, the ideas. This even was before Genesis, back in the days of Revolution. I was just creating the product and micro-training in the sense of writing tutorials and things like that. For me it never clicked, there was never that, ÔÇ£Hey, you should do paid training.ÔÇØ ThatÔÇÖs basically a way to scale your time because you can create something and then charge for it and then build that out.

Not until StudioPress merged into Copyblogger did I really understand. Back then, Teaching Sells was our big training thing. I realized very quickly that there was a lot of opportunity, just in general, across the Internet space for training. You see places like Lynda.com and stuff like that now. It seems like everyone’s doing training. ThatÔÇÖs interesting. On your website, you have a dedicated section to SEO consulting. As you mentioned, you like to teach, you like to do SEO, and folks can hire you to do SEO consultant. In fact, I just recommended you within the Genesis Facebook group. Someone asked about SEO. They lost their SEO person. I donÔÇÖt know if they contacted you or not, hopefully they did.

LetÔÇÖs talk about what got you interested in SEO. From a web standpoint, from a design and development it’s ÔÇ£less appealing.ÔÇØ ItÔÇÖs that almost taboo word where people are too afraid to even mess with it because they’re not sure what it is or how to do it. ItÔÇÖs easy to make something pretty and put it online, but as IÔÇÖve always said, a well-designed website without traffic is a well-designed website without traffic. Talk to us about SEO and how that came into your life from an important standpoint, and just a little bit about the consulting that you do.

Rebecca Gill: My background with SEO was at my prior job where I was the head of marketing. We didnÔÇÖt have a big marketing budget, and I taught myself SEO because I was in the marketing department. I competed against people like SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle — really large organizations that had teams of marketing people and teams of SEO people. I quickly learned that that team environment was very fragmented and they didnÔÇÖt have a good structure. If I could just learn and apply I could beat them and get on page one. I grew the sales that we brought in from the Internet — it became our lead source and the majority of our sales.

We grew the company 400% in two years. When you are selling a $100,000 product, thatÔÇÖs a lot, thatÔÇÖs a huge shift. To me that was empowerment. I really fell in love with SEO then, because I realized how much control you have over things and how much good you can do when you just work hard and do the right thing in the right path. That really got me set. I had SEO on our website for a while but then I pulled it back because I didnÔÇÖt have time to do it. I was so busy with custom work that I didnÔÇÖt have time to work on the projects. Again, bringing Mary back on with project management — it’s freed some of my time up so that I can do consulting projects with people.

Now we do a mix of both. From an SEO project standpoint, I will work through the project with you — keyword research, sitemapping, down to optimizing your content. We also do customized boot camps on-site for SEO, blogging, and social media. Now weÔÇÖve got the courses that weÔÇÖre offering at diyseocourses.com, as well as the seobootcamp.com, which is our new in-person training in a group setting in Dallas. WeÔÇÖve evolved it, and itÔÇÖs really my effort of trying to help as many people as I can and teach them the right way to do things.

I donÔÇÖt want to everything for everybody because I donÔÇÖt think that thatÔÇÖs good for them long term, but I want to teach and I want to train. ThatÔÇÖs the heart of our SEO. Even when we’re doing a project with somebody, IÔÇÖm not going to just do everything for you. IÔÇÖm educating you along the way with best practices and the right way to do things, so when IÔÇÖm gone you can take that forward and continue on your path and have good success.

Brian Gardner: ThatÔÇÖs like the whole “teach a man to fish and he eats forever” type of thing. The Facebook group — when someone says, ÔÇ£I lost my SEO,ÔÇØ if they’re not taught good SEO or at the very least, the fundamentals of what the person that hired them to do has done, then they feel completely lost. Like this person probably says, ÔÇ£Oh my gosh, my person fell off the radar,” or they closed their business or whatever, “What will I do?ÔÇØ The services that you offer — itÔÇÖs great that you teach them at least the basics. That way, if something would happen to you, God forbid, they donÔÇÖt feel completely in the dark. They can at least take that and try to apply it towards the stuff that they produce there in the future.

Rebecca Gill: One of the questions that I ask people — itÔÇÖs an onboarding question when I first get an inquiry in about SEO — I always ask them, “Have you hired an SEO consultant in the past and what did they do for you?” You would be surprised at how many people have hired somebody and itÔÇÖs not just one, itÔÇÖs two or four or five at different stages through their business, but they have no idea what the SEO company did. They donÔÇÖt know what they were doing behind the scenes, if they were doing anything. Every time I hear that — and itÔÇÖs like 80% of the time I get that response — it makes me sick to my stomach.

ThatÔÇÖs like the guy in Facebook. He may not even know what his SEO person was doing, if they were doing anything. ItÔÇÖs tainted the SEO industry and the consultants. There’s a lot of really good SEO consultants, but there’s a lot of less aboveground people that are really doing high-quality work, telling their client what they are doing, and showing them what they are doing and educating along the way, which is the way it really should be.

Lauren Mancke: ThatÔÇÖs true, that there’s a lot of stereotypes in the SEO world. You say on your website that you have a more holistic approach. What does that mean?

A Holistic Approach to SEO

Rebecca Gill: For us, IÔÇÖm not going to just do for you. We’re going to take you in the process from start to finish and you’re going to learn along the way. Whether IÔÇÖm doing a consulting project, whether you’re taking my course — which is 8 hours and, I think, 65 lessons — or whether you are doing our boot camp. Holistic, to me, is we first start with your target market, we define who that is and who you are selling to, and what are their pain points and what solution you offer. That kind of information. We look at your competitors. You do research.

From that research, now youÔÇÖve got some data that you can start to plan and start to strategize. Then as you work through that, now itÔÇÖs under education. Then you look at analysis to see what worked and what didnÔÇÖt work. You go back and you rinse and you repeat. ThatÔÇÖs about keyword research and sitemapping and investigating competitors, auditing your content in your existing site, down to writing the really good content thatÔÇÖs going to be good for the user and optimizing it. Then, off page, link building and things like that.

Unfortunately, a lot of old-school SEO consultants still focus on link building. ThatÔÇÖs their primary focus because they can control that themselves and they donÔÇÖt need the client involved. They can do it all on their own, so they say, ÔÇ£ThatÔÇÖs what you’re paying me for.ÔÇØ ThatÔÇÖs the wrong approach in todayÔÇÖs world of Google and Bing. You have to have holistic. You have to have the user, the website visitor at the forefront of your objectives and goals to make sure that they’re happy. Because if they’re happy, that makes the search engines happy, and the search engines will reward you with more traffic. When I say holistic, itÔÇÖs a full circle from start to finish. With, again, education along the way, because I want people empowered.

Brian Gardner: Before I get to my next question, I want to go back. YouÔÇÖve said these phrases a couple of times now, and I want our listeners to understand. You said, keyword research and sitemapping in particular. LetÔÇÖs do a quick definition of a what each of those are just to give them an idea, for those who donÔÇÖt know.

Rebecca Gill: A lot of people, when you talk to them they will write a piece of content and throw it up in the web, which is great. I wrote the rant I had the other day about SEO, but before I actually posted that I did some keyword research to see what phrases would relate to that so I could utilize that within the post and optimize it. ThatÔÇÖs one form of keyword research, and thatÔÇÖs the shortest version. The other version is really doing a full plan to say, “What is a phrase or multiple phrases that people might search to reach my site or my blog?” What are they searching for, whether itÔÇÖs their pain points or itÔÇÖs solutions or itÔÇÖs people — going through analysis.

You start with a seed list. You generate your seed list. You come up with all of your potential possibilities that you think. Then you look at your competitors and you learn from them. You do things like you look at Google auto-suggest and related searches and you add that. Now you go to keyword tools to see what volumes and what other variations you can have. Then you look at that and you compare that to your existing site and what your future content may hold. You start mapping one keyword or phrase to a particular piece of content. ThatÔÇÖs the sitemapping part.

That part is not a quick process. It takes weeks to do it if you are doing it right, because itÔÇÖs data, itÔÇÖs analysis, and itÔÇÖs research. ThatÔÇÖs the part everybody skips. They just go and they jump to content, and they may or may not have a keyword for the content. Or, worse yet — and I hear this from mid-market companies, which is a dagger through my heart — they say, ÔÇ£We look at the website as a whole. Our website is optimized for X, Y and Z. ÔÇØ But they never actually assign it to content. What the problem with that is, is when you’re doing that you’re asking the search engines to decide which piece of content is the best one for a given phrase.

ThatÔÇÖs the wrong approach. Keep a simple form, donÔÇÖt make them think. Make it easy for the search engines to find the exact right page or post or product for a given phrase. There is no question if they know this piece of content on your website is the best piece of content for this phrase. ThatÔÇÖs the whole purpose of keyword research and sitemapping, is to do that. Once you get yourself into that process youÔÇÖll never leave it, because youÔÇÖll realize it just makes common sense. You’re doing whatÔÇÖs right for the visitor as well as the search engines and it helps you win in the end.

Brian Gardner: Not only does it make common sense, itÔÇÖs probably something that bears fruit, too. I think the way you explained SEO probably resembles to some degree the idea of — and this is a great time for us to talk about it because the Olympics are going on — it sounds like SEO … There is a lot of training in a lot of endurance in things like that where you have to do the right steps. You canÔÇÖt just hop off a couch and run. You have to eat well. You have to sleep well. You have to train well. To some degree, it sounds like you can cut corners in SEO but then you just wonÔÇÖt run as far and things like that.

Rebecca Gill: Correct, and itÔÇÖs short-lived. The one problem that I see all the time on peopleÔÇÖs website is you ask them and they say, ÔÇ£My focus keyword is X, Y, and Z.” You say, ÔÇ£Okay, tell me what piece of content on your website is reflective of that.ÔÇØ They either give you 10 or they have no idea. ThatÔÇÖs the same problem with the search engines. They are not going to know either.

If you do and itÔÇÖs short term — you’re trying to build a long-term plan for yourself, your visitors, and the search engines. The more research and planning you put into that and more due diligence at the front of the process, the more results you have and the longer your results are going to sustain. There are still people sitting on page one of Google for highly competitive phrases that I helped optimize eight years ago. ThatÔÇÖs because they did it the right way and they had the planning before the actual execution.

Brian Gardner: House built on solid rock versus house built on sand?

Rebecca Gill: Yes. ItÔÇÖs hard to get people to do that because they want to rush ahead. They want to see that end fruit and they want to just plow ahead. It’s like, ÔÇ£No, no, no.ÔÇØ You’re pulling the reins back and not letting them do it. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got to lock them in a cage and say, ÔÇ£No we’re not doing that.ÔÇØ

Lauren Mancke: I had a client one time ask us to call Google. They wanted us to call them and get them on the front page.

Rebecca Gill: IsnÔÇÖt that funny? There is consultants that promise that. That say, ÔÇ£I know Google, I know exactly what the algorithm is.ÔÇØ ThatÔÇÖs BS, you donÔÇÖt. You donÔÇÖt know people at Google. Just because Matt Cutts may have tweeted you five years ago doesnÔÇÖt mean you know people. You surely donÔÇÖt know the algorithms. You may suspect elements of the algorithms and what factors are, and you may have learned something through trial-and-error, but you donÔÇÖt know precisely every single algorithm, and you’re supposed to because the search engines donÔÇÖt want you to.

The 3 Most Important Elements of SEO

Lauren Mancke: For people that are a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to SEO — they hear the phrase and they are just like, ÔÇ£I donÔÇÖt even know where to begin.ÔÇØ Can you break it down into the three most important elements of SEO?

Rebecca Gill: My three most important would be keyword research, sitemapping, and then high-quality content. Granted, there is a lot that falls underneath each of those, but those are the buckets. IÔÇÖve structured my online course to have that. You start with basics, then you go to keyword research, the next segment is sitemapping, the next segment is content, and then you have the gravy that is the offsite stuff. If you skip those three blocks you are going to never succeed. Because the offsite activity that people want to do is pointing to a bunch of garbage thatÔÇÖs gobbledygook that the search engines canÔÇÖt understand. The offsite that you’re doing will never help unless youÔÇÖve got that core foundation set.

Brian Gardner: We talked about keyword research, and you also mentioned how you got your clients on page one of Google eight years ago. It reminds me back to eight years ago — remember the shoe money days and all of that stuff? I want to be very specific , keyword research is not the same thing as keyword stuffing, which is something that back in the day — people donÔÇÖt even know what that is anymore because itÔÇÖs so archaic in a sense. This was back when Google actually cared about the keywords that you would put into the post meta that would show up in the source heading. Google finally said, ÔÇ£People are obviously stuffing keywords by trying to cram them in and make every other word ‘jewelry,’ ‘diamonds,’ and stuff like that,ÔÇØ to try to whatever.

Even back in the day — Rebecca and Lauren, you guys probably both remember — I think I even tried this at one point, where at the bottom of your page you would write a bunch of keywords and then change the font color to white so no one would see it. Google finally got smart enough to realize that that would — and they would then penalize you. There was actually a non-benefit to doing something like that. It reminds of all of the black hat tactics that would be used by either people who didnÔÇÖt know any better or people who were just following like sheep the people who said, ÔÇ£Hey, this black hat stuff works.ÔÇØ

How to Avoid Risky Black Hat Tactics

Brian Gardner: You, Rebecca, you’re stand up. You certainly prefer to keep your hat white. What are the points of establishing a ÔǪ I guess this goes along with the three most important elements of SEO that we just talked about. The encouragement to do it the right way. To keep your hat white, which is whatÔÇÖs called white hat SEO, which basically means you are just doing it the right way. You are not trying to trick the system. IÔÇÖm assuming you are an advocate of that and you would encourage anyone who is trying to really invest in SEO to do that, right?

Rebecca Gill: Yes. First, your point of the hidden keywords at the bottom and the meta keywords in the source code stuffed with just a bunch of words — I still encounter that every single week with prospects or clients. You called it old school. You know itÔÇÖs old school, I know itÔÇÖs old school, but people still do it today. There’s still that philosophy that thatÔÇÖs what works, but it doesnÔÇÖt. If you break down white hat SEO to this: to be successful in search you have to make the search engines happy. LetÔÇÖs take Google, for example. What is their goal? Their goal is to make money. They are a for-profit company. They sell ads, they have other products, but thatÔÇÖs their goal.

The only way they’re going to do that is if they keep people happy. People come to the search engines, they search for something, they get good results that take them to a good website or blog that answers their question. If you veer off from that and you donÔÇÖt pay attention to the actual user and the visitor to your website and keeping them happy, you are not going to be successful with the search engines because you are not helping them be successful. ThatÔÇÖs white hat. ItÔÇÖs focusing on your visitor. Writing content for the visitor. Making sure that itÔÇÖs fast, it got great performance, itÔÇÖs designed well so itÔÇÖs easier to read and the site flows. Keeping that visitor happy will make the search engines happy, because that visitor will come back to the search engines and use them again.

White hat is focusing on that. ThatÔÇÖs your primary goal. When you start to look at any of the cheats — any time you start to want to manipulate the search engines with quick link building or hiding that text or keyword stuffing or having five pages of the same content with just slightly varied keyword-focused phrases — none of thatÔÇÖs going to work. ThatÔÇÖs all black hat, and the search engines are way too smart for that today. They’re putting more emphasis on bounce rates and click-through rates. That tells us that they are moving even further ahead with a focus on the user experience.

Brian Gardner: One thing we didnÔÇÖt talk about with black hat SEO is — IÔÇÖm sure youÔÇÖve encountered this too — some of these SEO consultants that weÔÇÖll call black hat, not only are they trying to trick Google and the search engines into stuff that benefits the client. They actually go — I donÔÇÖt even know if itÔÇÖs a blacker SEO or blacker hat SEO, where they would actually go in and try to manipulate the results so that it benefits them as the SEO consultant. In other words, they are stuffing these words at the bottom of the page that may link to their website, which is even worse than trying to do it for the client. They are actually trying to mooch off of that themselves.

ThatÔÇÖs just definitely not a thing that should be happening. ItÔÇÖs obviously something that when folks hire SEO consultants like you they really should find someone that they can trust, find someone that has been referred to by them as a successful, holistic, white hat SEO type of consultant. Even if that means pay the extra money, because you do go get what you pay for at times.

LetÔÇÖs shift this a little bit away from the technicalities of SEO. For our listeners, who many of which are just starting out on the web. Maybe we call them the DIY-types where they are just trying to get online and just start. They’re not ready yet to hire an SEO consultant in all of that. You believe that great SEO begins well before the website goes live, right? Which means you have to plan before you even just launch?

Rebecca Gill: Yes. If we’re doing a custom development project with a small urban market company, for example, and the project includes both SEO and design and then the buildout in WordPress, we donÔÇÖt even start design until we work first on SEO. Going through research, planning and sitemapping and talking about their website personas and mapping the paths for the website that the users are going to take. Then, after we go through all of that, now is when we actually start the design process with the graphic designer. After the things are built out and content is going in, we come back and optimize again, but that design phase doesnÔÇÖt even start yet.

I think that thatÔÇÖs a mistake that a lot of people make. They look for a theme that makes them happy as opposed to saying, ÔÇ£What do I need? What does my visitor need? What kind of content do I need to display? What visitor paths do they have?ÔÇØ Then looking for a theme that matches that. They jump ahead. So you get those questions from people and email all the time, and IÔÇÖm sure you guys do too is, “What theme should I pick?”

I donÔÇÖt know what theme you should pick. I donÔÇÖt know enough about your content and your personas and your visitor flows and your paths and your objectives to be able to pick a theme for you. ThatÔÇÖs a process. It should be a process. I think that those are the steps that you need to do before a launch, as opposed to launching a pretty site and then adding in SEO after the fact. ThatÔÇÖs the wrong path and it creates extra work and a lot of delays and a lot of frustration.

Lauren Mancke: I definitely agree with the content-first mentality when it comes to design. I run into that issue all the time with people of stressing how we need to go through the content first because they think that thatÔÇÖs just an afterthought, which is definitely not the case. What are some other common mistakes you see businesses and bloggers making?

Long-term SEO Strategies

Rebecca Gill: I think a big one with SEO is expecting immediate results. It doesnÔÇÖt happen. Can you get immediate results within a week or two for a long tail keyword? Yes. Can you get it for something thatÔÇÖs competitive with 20,000 searches per month? No. ThatÔÇÖs going to take time to work up and build and you have to be really focused. I encourage people to have a couple of those, three to five of those high value phrases and know that itÔÇÖs going to take time to build up. ThatÔÇÖs definitely one mistake. Skipping the research and the planning phase is a huge mistake as well because, like I said, people want to jump ahead and they’re eager. ThatÔÇÖs just the wrong way to go.

I think the last one, I would say, is outsourcing everything. DonÔÇÖt outsource everything, educate yourself. Read high-quality blogs. Take an online course. Educate yourself on the process and then hire someone to help you execute that. In that way, you are knowledgeable, you know who you’re hiring and whether or not they have a good approach to SEO and whether they are solid. That way youÔÇÖll have success today and success five years from now. Like I said, eight years from now they are still sitting on Google, even though they may not even be doing anything.

Brian Gardner: Dictionary Brian jumping back in. You mentioned a phrase that I want to go over because this is huge. I think another one of the mistakes is people focus on these keyword phrases that are just too broad. You brought up the term “long tail search.” I know what means and IÔÇÖve gone into my own analytics and seen the effect of long tail search. ItÔÇÖs changed the way I — whether itÔÇÖs on StudioPress or the Copyblogger stuff that I write or even my own blog — I try to change how IÔÇÖm trying to write and which words IÔÇÖm trying to write for because I see the benefit of long tail search. Can you explain to our listeners what long tail search is?

Rebecca Gill: Sure. When you look at the keywords, youÔÇÖve got really broad, which in our case would be design. You could be designing anything. You could be designing diapers, or a car, or a website, itÔÇÖs too broad. Now you go into the next category which is more focused, which is website design. Much more focused, although that is still kind of broad because it could be website design in Joomla or Drupal or small business or enterprise. Now go a little bit more focused, which is WordPress website design. Now, from a service page thatÔÇÖs a great keyword, because it is your target market, itÔÇÖs what you do. ItÔÇÖs going to drive conversions when they actually hit the website.

A long tail, which would be more usually focused on a blogpost, could be a problem that someone is having and it could relate to a plugin for a specific function. ThatÔÇÖs a long tail search. ItÔÇÖs very precise, itÔÇÖs very focused. Those are much easier to win on and have success with than something thatÔÇÖs very broad like design or web design. What people usually forget is you donÔÇÖt want design. You donÔÇÖt want web design because a lot of those arenÔÇÖt going to convert. You want specific to what you do so the traffic you are getting is precisely focused on your offering and how you can help them. ThatÔÇÖs really going after that long tail and making sure that you’re providing very focused value to your visitors. ThatÔÇÖs what leads to success with conversions.
Brian Gardner: Not that I particularly care for conversions, especially with this blogpost that I wrote. But an example of the difference between a broad term and more of a long tail search term is a post on my blog where I wrote about my experience buying a MacBook Pro — how I returned my thirteen inch MacBook Air for a Mac Book Pro with retina display. I certainly donÔÇÖt get traffic when people type in “MacBook Pro.” I get a ton of traffic when people search derivatives of how much does a MacBook Pro weigh, which is a much longer term.

I will get zero hits. In fact, I probably wonÔÇÖt even be on the first 100 pages of Google for something as generic as “MacBook Pro.” But when you write something, and again, there was no intention here. I had no intention of trying to capture traffic or do anything with it. It was just to share a story. When you write something thatÔÇÖs a little bit more — maybe answers a question. When you think of writing something, write out in your mind, “What would people Google for?” When you type in, “How much does a MacBook Pro weigh?” I come out, I think IÔÇÖm number one in Google. I might even be in the snippet that shows up at the very top now for that particular question.

Start to think about that when you write your content, unless your site is extremely authoritative and gets a lot of Google juice. You may have to bank on the fact that the long tail search type of thing will bring more traffic in the long run.

Rebecca Gill: It really adds up. People always want to go after that high volume, that 20,000 searches a month. Guess what? You end up sitting on page 100 in Google and no one ever sees you. Even if you’re on page 3 people rarely see you. But if you take 10 long tail phrases that each have 50 searches per month, that adds up quickly. Now, not only do you have 500 visitors coming, they are very targeted to what you do. ItÔÇÖs in your benefit to focus on the long tail. ItÔÇÖs easier for you. It converts better. ItÔÇÖs easier to win. And it overall will make everybody happy.

Brian Gardner: Rebecca, you mentioned a little bit earlier in passing, SEO boot camp. ItÔÇÖs something that you just recently that came out with. IÔÇÖm going to do a direct pitch for our audience. I have a question: Have you ever wondered why your online marketing efforts havenÔÇÖt been successful? Learn the right way to do SEO with Rebecca from Web Savvy Marketing, along with other friends of ours, Carrie Dils who will be on a future episode, as well as Coy Miller of iThemes, who is a friend of mine and also will be on a future episode here at StudioPress FM. Jumpstart your website by attending their SEO boot camp conference on January 11th through 13th, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. If you want more information on that you can check it out at seobootcamp.com.

If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at — you guessed it — StudioPress.FM. You can also help Lauren and I hit the main stage by subscribing to our show on iTunes. ItÔÇÖs a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and weÔÇÖll see you next week.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

When I first started learning about search engine optimization┬á(aka “SEO”) I was really intimidated by it. It seemed big and scary, and I thought that only really smart people could learn about it and execute it well.

I was wrong.

Over the years I’ve learned that SEO is a little bit art, a little bit science, and a whole lot of common sense.

The key is to look at SEO from the eyes of the search engines. Once you start doing that, the pieces begin falling into place, and that big scary monster isn’t that scary at all.

So What is SEO?

SEO is simply the process of getting website traffic from ÔÇ£freeÔÇØ or ÔÇ£organicÔÇØ search results in search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

All major search engines provide answers to users’ inquiries and these answers (or search results) are ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to a given user’s inquiry.

The process of search engine optimization helps maximize the number of visitors to a particular website or page by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

Let’s look at SEO from the eyes of the search engines … and in particular Google.

Here is GoogleÔÇÖs definition of SEO:

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your siteÔÇÖs user experience and performance in organic search results.

Notice how Google states they are small modifications?

They are small, but there are many little things you can do to help position yourself better in search. The key is making these┬áchanges together — and in a planned manner — that is structured.

It’s the structure that most website owners and bloggers miss.

Why is SEO Vital to Your Website or Blog?

If youÔÇÖre like most website owners, at one time or another, youÔÇÖve asked if your website really needs SEO. ItÔÇÖs a fair question, but one I can quickly dismiss.

The majority of web traffic is driven by the major search engines like Google, Bing, or even the quirky, privacy-focused DuckDuckGo.

Social media, email marketing, and advertisements can push traffic to your website or blog, but the bulk of internet activity is driven by search engines.

This is most clearly demonstrated by the millennial generation, who quickly suggests that they or someone else should just “Google it.” In my family I tell my kids to “ask the Google” because I know Google generally has a much better answer than I can offer myself. I freely admit, I’m not smarter than a 5th grader on many topics!

Search engines are powerful because they provide targeted web traffic. Or in other words, search engines bring users that are seeking what you offer or sell. Targeted website or blog traffic provides exposure to the exact people you want to reach.

An Example of Targeted Traffic with SEO

If you’re a food blogger and you want to reach people who only want recipes and information about clean, organic eating, then you make sure your SEO is targeting just those people.

You use words and phrases that organic food lovers would look for and you ignore topics that would pertain to the McDonalds lovers of the world.

What you end up doing is serving the exact audience you’re aiming for — healthy eaters — and you serve them with targeted content that will help solve their problems and provide them with answers to their specific questions.

It’s that targeted approach that makes SEO work.

Some Interesting Stats on Search

Take a look at this …

• Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day
• Organic search drives 51% of all visitors to business-to-business and business-to-consumer websites
• Paid-search drives an average of 10% of traffic
• Social drives an average of 5% of traffic
• 20% of search is now driven by mobile
• The majority of the world’s internet users have yet to come online

Those are some seriously powerful statistics, that clearly show search is a powerhouse of marketing that is worthy of your attention and time.

Does A Beautiful Website Exist If No One Can Find It?

Have you ever read heartbreaking posts about bloggers who have spent their hard earned money and precious time producing a beautiful blog loaded with awesome content … and no one ever came?

Yep, me too. It saddens me beyond words.

But it doesn’t have to happen. You can build it and they will come! You just need to make sure smart search engine optimization is part of your process, and you’re doing your job of helping the search engines find your content and solve a user’s problem.

SEO is an amazing tool that helps you bring your story to the world around you. It helps you reach the world and connect with them.

My goal is to connect with you, teach you about SEO, and make sure your story is heard.

ÔÇö

Want the vast majority of your SEO work handled for you? Check out StudioPress Sites.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

In this inaugural episode of StudioPress FM, we focus on the story of the founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner.

Lauren and Brian discuss how he started the premium WordPress theme industry, StudioPress, and the Genesis Framework.

In this 29-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss:

• How Brian’s career began
• His start with blogging, WordPress, and freelance development
• When Brian and Lauren began working together almost ten years ago
• The one client that changed everything
• The birth of the premium WordPress theme industry
• The launch of StudioPress and the Genesis Framework
• The biggest business decision Brian ever had to make
• His favorite parts of the journey and lessons he learned along the way

The Show Notes

• StudioPress.com
• Revolution Theme
• Find out more about Brian on BrianGardner.com
• Find out more about Lauren on laurenmancke.com
• Follow Brian on Twitter at @bgardner
• Follow Lauren on Twitter at @laurenmancke

The Story of StudioPress Founder Brian Gardner

Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we’ll focus on the founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner, and his story. We will share how he started the premium WordPress theme industry, his company StudioPress, and the Genesis Framework.

Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. This is founder of StudioPress, Brian Gardner, and today I’m joined with my co-host, who happens to be vice president of StudioPress, a killer photographer, a mom, the best designer on the planet, Lauren Mancke. Lauren, how are you doing today?

Lauren Mancke: I’m doing good. That’s quite an introduction.

Brian Gardner: You know, you’re not following the script. You’re supposed to say, “I’m good. Really excited about this, Brian. How are you?”

Lauren Mancke: I’m going to go off script.

Brian Gardner: All right. Hey, listen up, everybody [paper crumpling] — that is us throwing the script out of the window. Welcome to the show. Lauren and I have been excited to finally record our first episode. It seems like we’ve been talking about this forever now. Although as creatives, we want everything to be perfect. What I learned last year when I did the No Sidebar podcast is that scripted shows sound like scripted shows.

As two creatives, we are going to just fly by the seat of our pants. We are thankful you are listening. We have a lot to cover, just today, in the series, and just on the whole podcast as a whole. How do you want to kick this off?

Lauren Mancke: I was thinking I could ask you a couple of questions. This first episode, we want to talk about you, Brian, and maybe I could do a little interview style.

Brian Gardner: This is my show because next week will be your show. I guess what we thought was that we would just introduce the StudioPress FM podcast with a little bit about my story, a little bit about your story. Then I think we’re going to go into the redesign of StudioPress. From there, we were going to, after that foundation was set, just go through and cover all kinds of topics — from design and branding and strategy, bringing in members of the community, from Genesis as a whole also.

Let’s get this started.

Lauren Mancke: Let’s start at the beginning. Even before you became an entrepreneur, how did you get started in the working world?

How Brian’s Career Began

Brian Gardner: Let’s go back to my job history. I think that’s a little bit of foundation for all of the things that ultimately brought me to where I’m at. Back in high school, I was a cashier and stock boy at a local convenience store. Unlike other people — my friends, they were into sports, and they did their thing — I actually had to work. I spent three or four nights a week, one day or two over the weekend, working at a local convenience store, doing all kinds of things. That was just kind of a get-me-started job.

Then I went to college, and believe it or not, one of my jobs was being a janitor of the dorms. When you are paying your way through, you’ve got to pretty much take any job. For me, that was just something I needed to do.

It was actually kind of fun because our dorm was one of them. That was an interesting experience. I’ll get to later why certain things like that kind of built into who I am now.

Most importantly, after college, I went back to the same convenience store I worked at. This time I was hired on as a manager. I was working 50 hours a week there, pretty much living there and getting to know all of the customers. There was this one experience while I was there that really started the formation of who I am now. That was, somebody had brought ÔǪ they were bringing coffees out to their car. They dropped the tray and spilled coffee all over the sidewalk. She came back in, and she told us, “Hey, I’m sorry. I have to go get more coffee.”

My boss at the time said, “Don’t worry about it. Fill your cups up and head out.” I looked at her. I’m like, “Aren’t we going to charge her again?” She said, “No. No, of course not. Benefit of the doubt, it’s a loyal customer. We take care of them.” That was my first experience ÔǪ or the introduction to the idea of customer service and how you take care of people because that type of thing goes a long way.

I worked at this convenience store for a couple years as the manager, got to know these customers. We were in a neighborhood, so it was the same people that came through all the time. One of the older gentlemen who came in and got a coffee and donut every morning, one Saturday slipped me his business card.

I got to know him pretty well, and we talked when he would come into the store and whatnot. He slipped me his business card, and he just says, “Call me.” I was confused, kind of had an idea of what he was thinking, so I called him. In short, he basically offered me a job at his company, which was an architectural design company and was a five-day work week, eight to four type of thing, holidays off, that type of stuff, which was so different from when I was working at the time. I was like, “I don’t even care what you do, but I’m going to say yes because I just want to get out of this.”

I became a project manager at this architectural firm. I was probably the youngest by probably 10 years there. I was kind of seen as the kid, the computer guy who taught himself a lot of stuff on the computer, which will ultimately get to where we’re at now. That’s my work history in a nutshell. Just things there I learned that are much more applicable to what I do now.

Lauren Mancke: At that architectural firm, isn’t that when you started writing on your blog?

Brian’s Start with Blogging, WordPress, and Freelance Development

Brian Gardner: Yeah, let’s go back, I think 2006, 2007 is where it was. I was very confident with what I was doing, but I was also bored. It was a desk job. I was crunching numbers and estimating projects. As even a creative back then, I wanted to start writing. This was back in the day when Google’s Blogger was the big thing and WordPress was very, very new. I started blogging on Blogger. It just didn’t do anything for me. A friend of mine said, “You should check out this WordPress thing because it’s a much better, more sophisticated thing,” which is funny because compared to where it’s at now, back then it was archaic.

I installed WordPress and figured out through Googling around how to set up WordPress install and what was web hosting and all of that. I started blogging on the side just as a fun thing to do. Yes, I did a little bit on the clock to kill time. I started blogging, and that was the start of the entrepreneurial journey.

Lauren Mancke: Right, because that’s when you started to do freelance jobs, right?

Brian Gardner: Yeah, what happened was, I didn’t like the theme I was using. Back then, there was a free theme repository. I had pulled down a theme, and as a neat freak and organizational type of person, I opened up these files that made up this theme. Of course, I didn’t even know what a theme was, or PHP files or CSS, back in the day. I was flying blind and just trying to see what would work and what wouldn’t work. Ultimately, I cleaned up the theme I was using. I renamed it. I thought I was like this real programmer kind of guy and, at one point, decided to make themes available on my site.

I would take themes and customize them, got my feet wet with design, and did what I felt was right, and started making these themes available for download for free in hopes that people would use them. The links in the footer would go back to my site, and they could read all about my journal and stuff that I was going through, which I figured people might be interested in. Who knows?

I did that, and some of those people who would download the themes would ultimately contact me and say, “Hey, I’m using your free theme. I want to know if you can help me change a few colors or whatnot.” These little freelance jobs that I took, $25, $50, to kind of tweak a few things grew into more of a thing where people would ask for full custom sites types of things, $250, $500 back in the day is what I charged. It was vacation money back at the time.

Lauren Mancke: That’s about when we met, right? That’s when our paths crossed?

When Brian and Lauren Began Working Together Almost 10 Years Ago

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I can’t remember what year it was, but I think it was Wes who reached out at one point, your old boss.

Lauren Mancke: It was 2007.

Brian Gardner: 2007, yeah, so he reached out and asked if I could do a couple of themes for ÔǪ I don’t know if they were your client sites or even his own site. He contracted me to do a couple of these sites and obviously connected me to you because you were the one who had done the designs for him. I was going to just do the development part. You and I back then, even though, fast forward nine years, we had no idea that we would be really working this closely together. That was the start of our relationship, just kind of on a casual, you were a client of mine type of thing — and look, here we are.

Lauren Mancke: Those were some pretty basic sites. I’m glad they are not on the Internet anymore. Besides us being your client, did you have any other clients at that time?

The One Client That Changed Everything

Brian Gardner: Yeah, there were a couple other people who, believe or not, were regulars that they had more than one project for me to do. It was nice to kind of have a few people who would continually send me work. Moonlighting was pretty much my gig, and I was doing these sites late at night, on the weekends, and a little bit during the day at work, but I don’t ever like to admit that. That’s how those types of things happen. Maybe a year or so into that part of my life, I had this client, a Boston real estate guy, and he was pretty much the guy that changed everything.

Lauren Mancke: How did he do that?

Brian Gardner: This is a story I tell all the time. To this day, I do not mention his name. I prefer to keep him in anonymity. I think that, at some point, and I’m 95 percent kidding when I say this, but I still think he’s going to come back and ask for royalties because he really was the guy that changed my life, my family’s life, really a lot of the things that transpired since then.

I was doing a freelance custom design for him. He wanted a real estate blog. I whipped up this design, and I was like, “I’m going to above and beyond,” and created this template that would work as a front page, so it would look more like a website than a blog. Then I sent him a link to the demo, and I said, “What do you think of this?” He wrote back, and he says, “This is great, but it’s not what I need. I need just a blog, and it’s got to be very basic.”

I was crushed. I thought to myself, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever created. It’s way better than anything else that’s out there,” but he rejected it. He said that it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough, it was just better than what he needed. It didn’t suit what he was looking for. At that point, I was left with this design, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The Birth of the Premium WordPress Theme Industry

Brian Gardner: Thankfully, I had built an audience, and I did what felt right. I followed my gut and just wrote up a blog post and said, “Hey, this is something I created. Would anybody buy it?” That risk, that blog post was the catalyst to what would then transpire over the next year or two of my life, which was the formulation of Revolution because people wrote back on the blog and comments and said, “Heck yeah, that’s great. I would love to buy that.”

I followed up that blog post with another one. Basically saying, “How much would you pay for a premium WordPress theme?” To this day, it’s arguable that, that is actually how the premium WordPress theme industry was named. Lots of people gave feedback, ranged anywhere between $50 and $100.

Even then, I had no business training, no schooling, and any of that stuff, but I knew that was an opportunity. I knew that there was probably hundreds of people who actually wrote on that and said, “I would buy that.” I knew it was an opportunity to create something in a way that could be packaged and resold. That was the Revolution WordPress theme.

Lauren Mancke: I’ve definitely heard that you coined the phrase ‘premium WordPress theme.’ I think it’s pretty amazing that you were able to just start an entire industry like that.

Brian Gardner: Most of these types of stories, especially startups nowadays, they usually come back to, at the core of that story, some sort of passion projects, something somebody created to solve their own problem. It’s never ÔǪ well, it’s not never, but most success stories come out of the accidental entrepreneur concept, which is people who don’t set out to go do something. It just happens, and then they roll with it.

For me, that was totally the case. At the time, I think Shelly was either pregnant or we were trying to get pregnant. I had no interest in leaving my day job because it was stable. I had income. I had vacation, benefits, insurance, and all that stuff. Never in a million years after I started selling Revolution did I think four months later I would be quitting my secure, stable job to do this ‘Internet thing’ — but that’s how it played out.

Lauren Mancke: How did Revolution then turn into StudioPress? A lot of our listeners might not know how that transitioned. I know I know because I was there, but give us a little rundown of how that transition went down.

The Launch of StudioPress and the Genesis Framework

Brian Gardner: The short story is, back in the day, even though WordPress itself was an open-source project, Revolution, I was selling it as a proprietary thing where ÔǪ and I’ll link to a couple of articles around this in the show notes. In short, I decided to take Revolution, which at the time we were selling, and make it open source. In other words, apply the GPL license to it. Part of that process was difficult because I was making a big change and risking potentially a lot of money.

I called up Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, and asked if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about this. At the time, there were few other people who started selling themes. They were also doing a proprietary license deal, which was, in a sense, against the ideology of WordPress and open source. I didn’t want to be seen as a black sheep. I called Matt, and he said, “Yep.” I flew out to California and met with him. At the point, CEO of Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress, and the three of us sat alongside Jason Schuller, my friend from Press75 at the time.

We sat in a room and talked about Revolution going open source. Out of that conversation, it became Revolution 2, which was sort of a, as I look back, hokey transition. It was just my way of saying, “This is Revolution done a different way.”

Not too long into that, I was served a cease and desist letter from a company in the United Kingdom that claimed some sort of confusion with their Revolution software, and again, like I said, I had no business knowledge whatsoever, no legal nothing. I was just doing what I thought was right. I brought that to an intellectual property attorney, and he said, “You can probably fight this and maybe win. It would cost a lot of money, so it might just make sense to rebrand.”

At that point, I thought it was suicide, brand suicide. I thought it was going to be the end of the world. I went ahead and looked up some domain names, and StudioPress was one that was available for purchase. I think it was BuyDomains.com or something like that, but I was like, “Eh, it’s got the press studio, kind of insinuates design.” Yes, I did Google StudioPress and make sure that there was no other conflict because the last thing I wanted to do was end up in the same boat.

We rebranded as StudioPress, and there was a blog post announcing it, sort of alluding to the fact that it was a necessary change. One thing I learned is when you build a loyal audience, they’ll follow you no matter what. My concern that sales would tank and that the community wouldn’t understand quickly subsided once I rebranded, and StudioPress set itself off at that point.

Lauren Mancke: I think at that time, right around then, is when I actually was starting to go full-time freelancing. What year was that?

Brian Gardner: 2010-ish, 2009, ’10, ’11, ’12? Something around there.

Lauren Mancke: I think maybe 2009. You were one of my clients. I had some steady clients. That was kind of the impetus for me to go out on my own and quit my full-time job. One of those first big jobs I had was with you, doing a few theme designs.

Brian Gardner: I don’t know which of the times you are talking about because I think back then I tried to hire you three or four different times, but you were a prima donna. You were charging too much money, and I couldn’t afford you at the time. I think I at least three times you and I tried to figure out a way to work together on a full-time basis.

I knew back then that you were a great designer and you still are. I knew that, as an opportunistic person who wants to take my business to the next level, you had to play a part. So yes, we went back and forth a number of times to figure out how you can get involved. It probably wasn’t until the merge with Copyblogger that we were in a position to finally make that happen.

Lauren Mancke: You did ask me a few times.

Brian Gardner: You know what, I kept feeling rejected — like I was asking the pretty girl to the dance, and she kept saying no for some reason or like that she had someone better. I’m like, “One of these times I’m just going to stop asking,” but here we are.

Lauren Mancke: It worked out. The stars aligned, and the timing worked out.

Brian Gardner: For sure.

Lauren Mancke: A couple of those first projects we worked on, I remember helping with the brand of Genesis.

Brian Gardner: Before the Copyblogger merge, I had this idea. I think at the time Thesis by Chris Pearson was sort of becoming the thorn in my side, competitor, impacting sales type of thing. I knew at that point I needed to do something that was a little bit different from where I was doing. StudioPress, we had a number of individual themes that we were producing. I think a couple maybe you designed or I outsourced. The problem became once we had a number of themes that shared some code base.

This kind of gets into the history of Genesis itself, which was every time that we would need to update a function, I’d update every single theme. Around that time, Nathan Rice, who is currently lead developer at Rainmaker Digital, our company. He was working at iThemes with our friend Cory Miller. I think I told him at one point — I was outsourcing some kind of code work for him as well — I told him, I said, “Hey, look, if things ever don’t work out between you and iThemes, give me a call,” because I knew that there was this thing I wanted to build.

I didn’t know really if it was possible or what it would be called or anything like that, but I had this idea.

A few months later, he called back and said, “Hey, it looks like I’m going to no longer be working with iThemes, so here I am.” I pitched him the idea. I said, “Look, all of our themes share code base. Can we build something?” I don’t know even if I knew what a framework was or if it was called that back in the day, but I said, “Can we build something that basically shares the same code base, and then the design is just laid over the top?”

I always like to use the idea of an iPhone, or even a car for that matter, where the paint job is the design, and the engine is always the same.

You can change the way the car looks without having to change the engine. So I pitched him the idea. I said, “Let’s build something like that.” That was the initial conversation we had with Genesis.

Once we built Genesis and introduced that idea and concept to the WordPress community, people bought into it. Obviously, we had a pretty good following through StudioPress and me personally. That sort of transitioned from standalone themes to what’s now Genesis the framework and the child theme system that comes along with it.

Lauren Mancke: Then, taking that further, how was StudioPress then affected by the merger with the Copyblogger?

The Biggest Business Decision Brian Ever Had to Make

Brian Gardner: That’s a fun story. Chris Pearson and Brian Clark dissolved their relationship over at DIYThemes, and Brian reached out to me and said, “Hey, look. I’m looking to do something. I wanted to know if you want to partner together.” Of course I knew who Brian was from just Copyblogger and just the prominence he had in the blogging and marketing world. I knew that that was a huge opportunity to ultimately take StudioPress to the next level.

There were lots of elements around StudioPress that I didn’t want to be doing — i.e., support, account management, and things like that. I knew that there was just a next step and that merging into Copyblogger would do it. Him and I and three of our other partners flew out to Denver and formed the company in practically 35, 40 minutes.

We sat down and just knocked it all out and said, “This is what we want to do. This is what we want to build.” From there, we merged StudioPress into Copyblogger, formed that company, which ultimately meant that I was giving up full control of what I called my baby back in the day. A lot has happened over the last six years, much for the good, and StudioPress is still going strong. Finally got a chance to hire you. You’ve worked your way up through everything, and now you’re vice president of StudioPress. I like to call you my right-hand man, or if anything, you call me your right-hand man. You’re pretty much running the show now.

Lauren Mancke: Over those six years, a lot’s happened. Have you any favorite parts on that whole journey?

Brian’s Favorite Parts of the Journey and Lessons He Learned Along the Way

Brian Gardner: Yeah, I think what it comes down to is, I’ve always been kind of a gathering type. I love the idea of community and building something that appeals to a lot of people and where people can come together.

The company itself has become that for us, where we started out as five partners and a handful of employees. Over the last six years, we’ve grown and evolved and have built new lines of business, and that’s necessitated hiring. Tony Clark, our COO, he’s a really smart guy, and he’s like a company builder. He sets up the infrastructure of the company and the processes. He really helped form the company into something special.

Even just in April, we were all out in Denver together. Probably 50 to 60 of us, a lot of people coming from overseas, from south America. It’s crazy to then come together in one room. It feels like a true family. The standing joke kind of within our company is that we’re The Goonies and that we’re misfits creating meaningful work.

That’s one part of the last years that I’ve really gotten to enjoy is just working with different people, caring for other people, and so on.

The community itself that we’ve built around Genesis is just as awesome. The people who are building their own businesses around Genesis and selling services and products around that has been phenomenal to watch. I’ve met a lot of good people, many of which we’ve been able to meet in person. Some I call brothers and sisters. We’re that close.

That to me is, and always has been, the most important part of all of it. It’s really what helps me get up in the morning and why I want to do work and talk to people and help identify where we can promote their work. We’ve done some things lately, like add third-party themes to StudioPress in our Pro Plus package, as well as even sharing their work on our Facebook page.

We recently created a newsletter called StudioPress Notes where we talk about the latest things.

It’s been just really fun to watch the community, from developers to designers to everybody in between, gather around this product. They kind of serve as what I call brand ambassadors. They are making money and putting food on their table because of something that we started, that they are building upon. Those two parts of all of this is really been my favorite part of it all.

Lauren Mancke: I think also having a couple people on the show, too, will be a great idea about where we can take this podcast.

Plans for the Future

Brian Gardner: StudioPress FM, for me, is really going to be about that same sort of thing. We’re going to extend our platform in the spirit of trying to help other people’s platforms. In other words, yes, you and I are going to talk and riff about things that are happening and things we go through, work in our workday, and identifying design trends and what we should build and all of that.

The other part of it, and what I think will be fascinating for our listeners, is to bring in people from the community so we can hear their story, so we can hear what they’re up to and what they think about what we’re doing, but also just what the industry as a whole is doing.

There’s all kinds of people that I’ve already got in mind that I want to have on the show. We’ll go through a series probably, a four-part series where we’ll bring in maybe some designers, and then another series would be developers and so on. Industry people that can help bring some wisdom to the show. It’s going to be a fun deal. I’m really excited that we finally did this. I think it all hinged upon the fact that we landed on a great design for the podcast album cover. I think that was something we struggled with a little bit.

Lauren Mancke: That did take a few drafts.

Brian Gardner: The one thing we learned is that, in some sort of fashion, you and I are a little bit oil and water when it comes to taste. Typically, we resonate a lot, but there are some things ÔǪ and the podcast music itself was another instance where we just had to say, “We love each other, and we’re are going to have to find a way to meet in the middle.”

Lauren Mancke: We had to compromise.

Brian Gardner: Yeah, and that’s what the whole show is going to be about, where you can do your thing for a while, I’ll do my thing for a while. As long we are relatively on the same page, then things should work out.

With that said and on that note, I think we’ll end the show. We’re going to keep our shows typically around 30 minutes, just in the spirit of giving enough information, but not too much to where it takes away from your day. We love you guys. We appreciate your listening.

Next week, we’re going to hear Lauren’s story because it differs much from mine. It’ll be fun to hear her talk more and to hear what she went through, how she got here, and all of that. That’s a wrap.

Lauren Mancke: So tune in.

Brian Gardner: Next week, StudioPress FM.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Last week we launched a brand new design over at StudioPress, along with a stunning new software product we’re calling StudioPress SitesÔÇömore on that in a bit.

First, I’d like to formally introduce you to the new StudioPress blog … the blog you’re reading right now! It blends seamlessly into the design of our main site, but a quick look at the address bar reveals something just a little different.

Yep, that url is … StudioPress.blog.

Our friends at Automattic started serving up .blog domains late last year, and we jumped at the opportunity to secure this domain, along with a few other branded domains that made sense for our company.

With the launch of this site, I’m getting back to the basics of blogging. I can’t wait to discuss the things I’ve experienced over the years with you, like building an audience and growing your own blog, and making the most of the essential WordPress tools necessary to do so.

So here we are, excited as ever to be sharing with designers, developers, and bloggers. We’ll be publishing on a variety of relevant topics every week (including the StudioPress FM podcast), as well as letting you know about important software and theme releases.

Introducing StudioPress Sites

In three words, StudioPress Sites is WordPress made easy.

But here’s the thing … you no longer have to sacrifice the power or flexibility of WordPress.

We’ve been working really hard to build (what we think is) the perfect platform for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers, as well as those selling physical products, digital downloads, and membership programs.

We currently offer two StudioPress Sites plansÔÇöContent and CommerceÔÇöand both come with quarterly and yearly payment options. Here’s a quick look at what the two plans provide …

The Content Plan: You want a powerful personal or small business website. All the good stuff, with no unnecessary bells, whistles, or inconvenience. Perfect for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers.

The Commerce Plan: Your business and website needs are growing, but you donÔÇÖt want to break the bank. Our Commerce Plan is a perfect fit for selling physical products, digital downloads, membership programs, and courses.

Head on over to StudioPress to check out the fresh new design Rafal Tomal gave us, and to see what StudioPress Sites is all about. (And yes, the new StudioPress blog is indeed running on our Sites platform!)

More on StudioPress Sites, If That’s Your Jam …

• Introducing StudioPress Sites: WordPress Made Easy … Without Sacrificing Power or Flexibility
• The Who, What, and Why of StudioPress Sites
• StudioPress Sites: WordPress made easy
• No-Brainer Blogging With StudioPress Sites
• Introducing StudioPress Sites, a WordPress hosting option built for bloggers

OK, that’s it for now … see you next week!

ÔÇö

P.S. We’re kicking off something new on Thursday 2/16ÔÇöFacebook Live.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

You have your big idea and are ready to market yourself. How do you capture attention?

Designed by Restored 316 with bloggers, businesses and social media masters in mind, Market is a versatile third-party theme made to grab attention and hold it with delicate typography and airy, open space.

Market is the theme to get you noticed and set you apart in an ever-changing landscape

With custom categories and category indexing for easy post organization, the option to change every color using the WordPress customizer, and the ability to upload both a custom background and retina-quality logo, Market is a highly customizable way to represent your brand.

Plugin styling for WooCommerce, Genesis Simple Share, Simple Social Icons, Genesis Responsive Slider, Instagram Feed, and Genesis eNews Extended gives you further flexibility to create a site that truly reflects your business.

Market also includes all the reliable features youÔÇÖve come to expect with StudioPress themes:

• A mobile-responsive design that looks amazing wherever itÔÇÖs viewed
• Support, documentation, and the StudioPress community forum
• The best rankings possible because of our clean code and mobile-friendly design
• Super-fast page load times
• One-click theme updates
• Airtight security so you can rest easy

Click here to experience Market

The post Market Theme Gets Your Genesis-Powered WordPress Site Noticed appeared first on StudioPress.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.