Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Recent Developments

It's weird to think that in a matter of days I've gone from being a Twitter user and a blogger to having a website in development, a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile. What's weirder is the even more recent development: I've offered my services to help people set up websites of their own through wordpress.com. For free. So long as I know the person and can arrange a time with them to put together the website as they want it to be from what's available, I'll do it. I won't supply content - the stuff that makes up the website - but I will do the actual putting together of the website.

It wasn't that I had intended to do it, but when I realised that it might come in handy for some people and that I could get it done pretty quickly for them, it made sense to help. I've already started referring to them as clients (actually, I've been saying "clients" all day, inverted commas included, because that's just the closest word to what actually describes them.) To make things even more frighteningly professional, I've started to make appointments for my "clients".

So far I have two to do in September (this will be after my website has launched, so they'll have a few days to see the finished product before finalising on all of their choices). I won't say who they are just yet, but I'll be linking to their websites when they go online. I also plan on giving a crash course in marketing to them, if they're interested, since I'll be right there with them. It's all optional and entirely free of charge. The only thing they'll ever have to pay for is the optional stuff offered by wordpress.com. I don't believe in making money from my friends with something like this, because really all I'm doing is saving them time. The websites are just put together using the basic functions on wordpress.com.

What makes this service helpful is that I actually have experience with wordpress.com. I've used a few times over the years for different projects. I'm fairly handy with it. I may as well save people some time by setting this up for them. It'll look professional but it will have required little effort for myself or my "clients".

The reason I'm mentioning this is to offer the service to anyone whom I know personally. It took me a day to set up my website (it doesn't look like much right now, but that's because the actual technical stuff has already been done to hide the website that's been made - it's a magic trick.) And I mean a whole day with tips from somebody else to guide me along the way, having already used wordpress.com before. I know that I could do it all in the space of a couple of hours again, and all I need is the content to add to it.

So, if you want a website and if I know you (especially or even if you're still in the same college as me), drop me an email using the Contact button on my website (use the red P button in the right-hand sidebar to get there) and let me know. It's advisable for bands/musicians, writers, illustrators, photographers, actors and, if they're interested, societies in college. I'll gladly help. I'll be putting together a check-list of things for websites so that people can see what choices they have to pick from from wordpress.com. And remember, it's all free.

Also, if you read this far, I can reveal what my exciting announcement from yesterday was: I'm now an official writer for thephantomzone.co.uk. I can't wait to get started with it properly!

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