Every business owner should be able to perform basic website maintenance. An entire industry has cropped up around building gym sites, SEO and marketing. Most of these are good builders; some are even a good investment. But a few capitalize on your fear of “breaking” your website to charge ridiculous hosting fees. Here’s a “fear factor” checklist: Can you build a landing page without their “help”? Can you create a simple signup form and embed it without waiting for them to do it for you? Do you know how to back up your site or move it to another host? If the answer is “no” to any of the above, you’re vulnerable. While your website isn’t the only tool you have to grow your gym, it’s a necessary one. And if you’re totally reliant on someone else to build and maintain that tool…well, they can charge you whatever they want, can’t they? I built this site from scratch after taking a course on WordPress For Beginners, purchasing the Salient theme and uploading pictures. It took a few hours, but I wanted to prove that I could do it with no previous knowledge. Cost: $19. Many new business owners will have more time than money available. If this is you, it IS possible to learn enough to build your own site with good functionality over a weekend. After I did the Beginner’s course, I downloaded the Salient theme from ThemeNectar.com ($59) I watched these videos: …and then just literally played around with things. I used these plugins: Subscriptio – allows you to sell different service levels, and automagically controls access for subscribers. Memberships for WooCommerce – allows for autodialing every month, and links with Subscriptio Out-of-the-Box – allows users to upload videos to your DropBox folder, and automatically gives them their own private folder. In the case of TwoBrainCoaching.com, gyms upload videos of their coaches for evaluation; for coaches, this would be for athletes. ...
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