The Beginning of a Journey: Launching a Membership Website After Creating for Others

This website after so many clients…

I have discovered something valuable in creating the WP SiteGenius membership site… that it turns out to be far more effort than I had originally expected. I work on it tenaciously many hours a week, far surpassing a full-time job. Each day now, I contemplate on how I can extend this insight to my non-work life. What requires effort that I hadn’t seen before I started this journey?

This answer always shifts, but I’m finding it’s there for me to learn.

Back to the membership site. Securing WordPress well, ensuring each detail is both right and within all best practices, takes concerted attention to every facet of the broad amount of settings and code.

I now have two courses with 52 video lessons between them, over 30 pages on the website itself, 14 (and counting!) published blog posts, a free 39-page E-book, and a 45-page paid small business marketing toolkit. I’ll be adding more!

Making the membership aspect of the courses top-notch requires iterations of review, and constantly improving the site in even the tiniest of ways when I see an issue or something I want to change.

What should I work on today? Will I meander or stay on task?

This is both a challenge and a learning experience: there is always something to improve! Although I am exacting with web development, modern websites with their responsive design, integrated elements, and continuous updates, are realistically always in a state of evolution.

No website itself is stagnant or constant, and I have to be continuously adapting to theme changes, plugin updates, new releases, and every other aspect of web development I usually perform for clients. Because I value integrity and efficiency combined, I provide the best services for my clients in as short amount of time as possible.

With this being my website, I can spend hours working on the design, fonts, loading speeds and optimizations, the SEO, and everything else that goes into a full-fledged website.

I’ve been surprised at the amount of time it actually takes to run it well and address all the needs I see as I pour over the site on this continual basis. I want to always offer the best customer experience for the members. I seek to deliver all the tools in a website that a person beginning a small business, whether it’s online or in a local area, can have to increase their ability to succeed.

But with this, I don’t want to leave success up to chance, but to solid determination.

I have found, in starting this business, that it demands far more time than expected to advance it to a position of success. Any business takes skill, but also perseverance. If the business is online, then the website is central to it. If the business accompanies a brand, then the website is an adjunct to it. Either way, it’s necessary in the internet-based world.

With the introduction of professional branding kits for DIY entrepreneurs like the graphics at Canva, all business endeavors have been elevated to a new standard. This puts image increasingly at the forefront, with a professional business appearance across all media types essential to its overall success.

Brand identity, even for small businesses, starts to be required in order to compete. Investopedia posts about this and the Online Digital Strategy Simplified Small Business Marketing Toolkit fits in directly with analyzing the market, setting goals, and identifying customers. Once these are known, then the personality of the business can be developed.

This appearance, and the voice for social media and blog posts, need to all be selected at the start to make certain the business grows with strength since it has a stable, defined foundation.

There are an increasing number of website builders, whether AI-based or theme-based, but the important fact about these is that knowing how to professionally administer your website takes further knowledge beyond the installation.

Anyone can make a website, but is it at the professional level needed for a business? This is what I attempt to offer through the site: the ins and outs of what you need to know to create and maintain your website as if you were a developer so you don’t have to hire one. I sought to have the professional strategies and actual development of a site, even with no-code or low-code, to be accessible to someone who had never built a website, at a low cost.

Being a programmer with a computer science degree, I had to image what it was like to be looking at the dashboard as if I had never worked with it before. What is second-nature to me would be entirely new for someone who is trying to get ahead by making their website. For instance, after installing a plugin, the settings need to be changed for your website. What are those and how do you know what to adjust if you’re new to a WordPress website dashboard?

If you create a website elsewhere, learning about the plugins and SEO is still fundamental to expanding your business through the web. With years of client website development proficiency, I recommend the best plugins that I extensively use throughout my work. The courses at WP SiteGenius are intentionally left for members to watch in a non-sequential order, to learn additional skills that might be needed if they aren’t actually making the website.

Every now and then I want to post a humorous meme, but this is a serious site. Forming a business around an idea and then executing that idea well entails remaining true to my original vision. Serious small business owners understand the dedicated toil and sweat necessary to achieve results. The not-so-glamorous late nights changing a set of graphics to launch a webinar on time.

I strive to always overdeliver so my customers are always satisfied with my products and services. From a five-star reviewed Etsy shop to an over-ten-year Top Rated freelancer, setting yourself with resolve to the grind will get you where you want to be in the future.

I always dreamt of creating my own membership website as I worked on them for clients, and I’m truly glad I did. I hope you find the content and community to be what you need to succeed. I’m always looking for feedback so feel free to comment and let me know what you’re looking for in your business website creation.

I’ll leave you with this: always, always be learning, in whatever you do!

Much success to you!