How to Take Your WordPress Website Down
You have launched your beautifully designed WordPress website and all of a sudden, it’s done viral marketing for you. You’ve got thousands of fans following you on social media who love your work and want to support you in any way they can. Woo, congratulations! You’ve just launched a successful business based on a blog. But here’s the catch: now what? How do you maintain this level of productivity and creative output with no outlet for your work?
In theory, you could keep doing what you’ve been doing and build up a large enough audience that you can eventually be discovered by a major publishing house or record label. However, in practice, this is far from the case. As great as your blog may be, it won’t lead you to fortune and fame. Why?
Because being a celebrity blogger is not all fun and games. It takes a lot of work to keep up with the trends, the constant need to constantly keep putting out content to stay relevant, and the headaches related to being famous. Here’s a side-honest confession:
Even though I love a good blog post more than anything else in the world, I’ve had to work hard at maintaining a level of interest in what I do. I get bored easily and constantly seek new and different challenges to keep my attention focused.
So you’ve got a choice to make. Do you want to keep doing what you’ve been doing and potentially see your engagement with your audience grow even more? Or do you want to close the chapter on your blog and see where this adventure takes you? I’d love to hear about your experience and what made you decide to shut down your blog.
Launch A New Website
If you’re looking for a new challenge, why not consider launching your own website? With a little planning and research, you can make a handsome living from a single source while keeping all of the awesome benefits that blogging has given you. (Side-honest confession: I miss blogging. I miss the creative outlet and being able to build something from the ground up.)
However, this is no bed of roses. Launching a website is a lot of work and you’ll need to get very serious about learning how to do it right. You’ll also need to have a clear idea of how you want your website to look and how you want it to operate. Do you want to be the classic online store selling everything from hats to shoes to cameras to whatever else you can think of? Or do you want to create a hub for your fans to come back to time and time again for your latest blog post?
The choice is completely up to you. You can expand your efforts to include more traditional marketing methods or you can dive in with both feet and really spread your site’s wings.
Redesign Blogging Platform
Another option is to completely overhaul your blogging platform. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in history and with good reason. It’s extremely versatile, allowing you to build anything you can think of. (Side-honest confession: I love WordPress. It’s the best blogging platform in the world. However, it can be a bit daunting to work with if you’re not tech-savvy or up for a challenge. If you’re looking for an easier way to get started, I’d recommend checking out SquareSpace.)
What if I told you there was a way you could take the great features of WordPress and use them to create a blogging platform that was as intuitive as it was easy to use? Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well, it is. Thanks to newer, more innovative blogging platforms like Hugo and Jekyll. While these two platforms are slightly more complex to set up than WordPress, they offer so much more in terms of functionality. (Side-honest confession: Hugo is technically my favorite blogging platform. However, Jekyll is completely free and open source so, naturally, I use that instead. I love that you can build anything with Jekyll. It’s extremely flexible and you can add more features and functionality with ease.)
Monetizing Through Affiliate Marketing
If you’re looking to make some quick cash, why not consider affiliate marketing? With affiliate marketing, you’ll need to find affiliate partners who will pay you for each purchase made from their website. You’ll then need to drive traffic to these websites and make sure they make at least $5/mo in commissions. (Side-honest confession: This is the most efficient and simplest way to monetize a blog. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can start making money quickly and easily. If you’re looking for an alternative source of income, this is one way to go about it. However, be careful not to blow your budget too soon. It’s not easy to get back in once you’ve fallen out of the habit of creating content. Don’t get too carried away with the excitement of building a passive income stream and lose track of your everyday expenses. (As an aside, if you’re looking to create a more traditional kind of online store, you can try Shopify.)
There are countless ways you can make money from a blog. If you want to keep doing what you’re doing, you can try using a tool like Google Adsense to monetize your content. However, if you want to pursue other avenues, there are hundreds of ways you can do so. Take some time to explore all of your options so you can find the right solution for you.