WordPress Orlando MeetUp Notes – “WordPress in Business”

Product Reviews

This morning at Ideas Orlando, the WordPress Orlando Meetup held a talk and called it “WordPress in Business”. In this talk there were a few talking points that were mentioned that I notated below. I was unable to post all of these on the MeetUp page as the text exceeded the comment limits so I created this post for the notes. Please feel free to share where needed.
Hosting Provider Suggestions
  • Host Gator
  • Digital Ocean (cloud based)
  • SiteCore
  • SiteGround (inexpensive shared hosting for starter users)
  • Pagely (high volume of traffic)
  • GoDaddy (WordPress specific hosting)
Food for Thought:
A good idea to note is that hosting providers do not make changes or updates to your website. When you get to a point of making money with your business/website consider hiring an agency that will monitor and maintain your hosting services for your websites.
Plugin Suggestions
  • Pretty Links
    Shrink, beautify, track, manage and share any URL on or off of your WordPress website. Create links that look how you want using your own domain name!
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/
  • Gravity Forms
    Advanced Forms for WordPress Websites Just Don’t Get Any Easier than Gravity Forms
    http://www.gravityforms.com/
  • Member Mouse
    MemberMouse is an easy to use WordPress membership plugin that allows you to sell products, subscriptions and memberships, setup a password protected member’s area, offer 1-click upsells and downsells, manage customers, automate customer service, track critical retention metrics and more. No matter where you’re starting from, MemberMouse has the power you need to maximize revenue and get your business running like a well-oiled machine.
    http://membermouse.com/
  • WooCommerce
    WooCommerce is a free, powerful WordPress eCommerce plugin. With the extendability of a huge catalog of commercial themes and extensions we have all the tools you might need to get your shop running.
    http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/
  • Shopify
    Online shopping cart software
    http://www.shopify.com/
  • Sharesale
    ShareASale has been in business for 15 years, exclusively as an Affiliate Marketing Network. Our technology receives accolades for speed, efficiency, and accuracy – and our reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the industry. We encourage you to browse around our website and learn more, but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
    http://www.shareasale.com/
  • Commission Junction
    Affiliate Marketing
    http://www.cj.com/
  • Click Bank
    Entrepreneurs everywhere use our powerful online and mobile e-commerce platform to build a vibrant business across popular lifestyle categories. We believe in cultivating a new generation of digital entrepreneurs and helping them transform their passion and expertise into top-selling digital products and affiliate marketing programs to achieve financial happiness. Our solutions, combined with top-rated client support, help you grow and maintain every part of your business. Making money online has never been easier.
    http://www.clickbank.com/
Tips and Ideas
  • Amazon has tips and reports about website speed and why it is important to your website conversion rate and more.
  • Look into CDN options like CloudFlare or JetPack. (Content Delivery Network) This will make your website load much faster by utilizing distributed content processing.
  • For video hosting you can use Amazon S3 hosting, YouTube, or Amazon. http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
  • To check your web page load times check http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ or try
  • Google Page Speed Test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
  • Set up email filters (Gmail)
  • Hire a virtual assistant for your repetitive tasks and saving more time each day to dedicate more to yourself or to the core parts of your business
  • Advertising on Facebook is really the most effective once you start paying for ads. Even at a small daily rate.
Suggested Reads:
Great source for asking questions or finding answers about WordPress: