Episode 321: Why You Should Not Just Use Rented Land With Ryan Waterbury
Show Summary
Rob Cairns and Ryan Waterbury talk about what you should not just use rented land to promote your business.
Show Highlights:
- You do not own rented land.
- The only thing you truly own is your website and your email list.
- Rules on rented land provider can change.
- Remember on rented land you are the product.
Show Notes
Hey everybody, Rob Here!
Here and today I’m here doing my monthly podcast with Ryan Waterbury, my partner in crime. How are you today?
I’m doing pretty. Well, today.
No good. It’s uh spring has. Sprung, I think, and the weather’s. And Toronto, we’re above 0. We’re not freezing for change and we’ll just we we are.
For yourself.
We’ll send all the Arctic air to Minnesota because we can.
Ah, yes. No, we’re actually below freezing today and tomorrow should be our last two days and it’s because we’re getting that cold Canadian air.
Yeah, that’s the way it is.
Today you and I were talking and we thought we’d get into. All rented land own your content on your website. Own your business conversation. We need to. I’ve been doing. Some teaching this week with my good friend Jeff Brown’s social media marketing group, and one thing I always tell them is to be careful, cause you don’t own the social media platforms and we know the rules changed by the day. So I’m a big proponent of, first of all, let’s start with the website side of it. Owning your website and that means using self hosted solutions and it means staying away from cost solutions like Shopify or Etsy. How is your take on that? And why?
I’m a huge proponent of self hosted open source solutions and you know, even before I was in WordPress I was doing some work with durbal. So you know there when we talk about self hosted you know we’re in the WordPress. Right now, but the open source self hosted options out there have had a long history. You know, over the past 20 plus years. The When you talk about Shopify, Etsy, Bigcommerce. Some of those solutions where they might have a little bit nicer interface might get you up. A little bit quicker. You’re on somebody else’s server and. You are on somebody else’s service. So one you. Have to abide by their. Rules and if for example your store is in a particular market, I’m working in a store for a. Client right now. For cannabis, both CBD and THC, and we’re building a WordPress. Because Shopify is another option, but they’re very restrictive. And that cuts. Out a third of their products that can’t be. Shown on the store. And if they’re put up, you’re immediately banned and your store is taken down. So that’s one of the dangers of. Running your business operation on someone else’s hardware and software that if you violate some term of service. You’re done. They can take your shirt down in a minute, and if that’s where your main source of revenue comes from, you’ve just killed your business completely.
Yeah, it’s so true. And even if you’re going your self hosted solution like WordPress. You can be taken down if you’re on a server like you’re doing some cannabis work. I’ve done some work in the adult industry, same problem, same rules. So so a lot of web hosts that won’t go near that and it’s against their terms of service. So you got to be careful that the other problem with using things like. API and Etsy is first of all, if you try and change the payment gateways it gets really expensive. Shopify has a policy. Say that if you use their payment gateway you’re fine, but if you try to use a non Shopify proof payment gateway they just charge a higher percentage. And then the other problem is if the servers get sold, you can’t pick your site up and move it very easily. Whereas if you have a WordPress issue with the host, you can actually pick up your website and move it to another server. I’m actually in the process of doing that for a client right now, so I think that is some outlying issues as well, wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, absolutely. The the platforms are nice and you know they’re no code solutions for, you know, those clients that we have that say I hate WordPress and want to move to, you know, a provider that has that no code solution when we start looking at those no code. Solutions, though they’re restrictive and they only allow you to do certain things now. Shopify has been very good at separating their tears, so when you start looking at pricing, you know it it doesn’t cost you a lot to get started. But then you realize that, oh, I need shipping. So you have to pay for their shipping module that integrates with your preferred shipping provider. Their base platform, just their their ground level 1. I think they have a 1% fee on top of the payment processor fee. And you don’t. Get away from that until you move to the next tier. Which is a higher monthly cost. And so you start adding these things up e-mail marketing and then even within the e-mail marketing automation, they nickel and dime you and you really don’t realize the the full cost of the platform. Until you’re in it, your entire business is built on it. You’ve spent hundreds of hours building into the platform and you’re stuck. And you’re you’re paying a lot of money for all these things that work pretty well together because you’re in a closed platform but you. Pay for it.
No, I would. I would agree with you 100%. I mean, you know, I had a a client come to me and say, oh, I can get chopped for $29.00 a month. And I said, yeah, as long as you want to do anything with it because the minute you start adding modules to get to the point where you’re doing anything like for example, we all know. Most in all pro space. While they have a Shopify module, what they don’t tell you is to use that module. You have to be on the $89.00. Plan a month so. You know I’m. Not saying you shouldn’t pay for what? You get. I’m a big proponent of that, but. To say you’re going to these no code solutions to save money. If you want to do anything complex is actually going to cost you more, in my opinion.
Oh yeah, absolutely correct. And you know, yeah, you touched on Etsy as another platform and I think it’s, I think Etsy is a great platform and there are some great integrations with their two Shopify 2 Commerce to do 2 way product syncing and get. Do you know? Some more visibility. Last year they had a pricing increase and you know, a lot of these, I have a few friends that are small jewelry makers and artists and you know, they just want to get some of. Their stuff out. In the world and make people happy. And it’s a hobby. And I think that’s where a lot of the Etsy. Store started around. Yet people were monetizing their hobbies that, you know, they were making too many things that, you know, they could sell for money. Well, they raised their payment processing fees and taking a larger percentage. So and it got progressively and exponentially worse. In favor of Etsy as far as payment, the better you did. And so, you know, we’ve seen this in. Not only Etsy, but. You know, we talked about. Shopify with the the the modules adding on, but Gumroad is another place to sell digital products. They had a huge price increase for. Taking a cut of sales, you know, and if you spend a lot of time getting on these platforms and and building your store. That’s time lost. You can’t just move it when you want. Want to look at Replat forming? You’re stuck. You’re starting over from scratch when you’re building a store out on another platform. You you can possibly export your products, but that’s about it.
I would, I would agree. So my other thing I always say when we’re talking about owning your content and owning what you do in your business. Is there’s two things. You know, we already talked on your website, right? And the other thing is your e-mail marketing list, not the platform, but the list. Would you agree on that?
Yeah, I think people that even you know use third party platforms, you know to run their e-mail marketing. And there are some. Some definite advantages to you know using a platform and not doing self hosted to do your e-mail marketing. I personally do self hosted. And don’t worry about my list. But even if you were, you know, using, let’s say convert kit or active campaign. It’s a good idea to make an export of your list periodically so that you have it, and that you have a a backup copy of it.
Here here.
Even those platforms, while they’re awesome to use, MailChimp about a year ago made a change in the terms of service. And had a few clients that their accounts were dumped because they didn’t like something that they. Violated their terms of service. They didn’t have a. Backup of their list. They were starting from Ground Zero. And now they’re running self hosted. One of the clients is back. Up to they did some good social media communication and. Their subscriber list is back up around 30,000, which is where it was previously, but it. Took over a year. To get that list back where it was. It takes a lot of time and work.
It does. e-mail marketing takes a lot of time. Generally as a rule. The couple of places I sit is for some basic stuff, male or light these days for some other stuff. If it’s self hosted male pull it for a few clients but it’s not what I’m using. Convert kit for more complicated things and then I’m moving actually towards and sharing with you before went to record to Groundhog in the next couple of months. So because I want to do some more automation and frankly I don’t want pay convert kit because there’s the size of my list and I’m just going to self host. It and be done. But the problem with being self hosted is times. You gotta be a little techie and that takes a little bit for some people.
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I I use fluent CRM for my mail list capabilities and. I gotta tell you the the. Nice thing about tools like Groundhog and Fluence your. As they continually get. And they’re really good companies, the. Owners and the development teams on both those products are really responsive. If you wanna offer suggestions and solutions and you know the technical part that only happens around setup from what I found in either product it’s connecting your forms. Connecting your mail compliance on the back end because you’re going to use some SMTP sending service. And once that’s done. They’ve gotten very good where the mapping on automations is a drag and drop process influence CRM where you know it, it’s pleasant to build a customer journey and and actions within there. So while there is some technical know how as far as getting set up, once that’s done. You’re over the. Hurdle and I. And I think the self hosted solutions now are just as good, if not better than some of the. Tools that are self hosted that we mentioned convert kit active campaign that will delight and and the others.
No, I I would agree with you. It’s funny. I’ve I think I’ve shared with you the story, but so I have to issue the disclaim. The founder of Groundhog, Adrian Tobey’s, an old friend, so I have to say that right off the top. So yeah, I’m a little biased and I’m allowed to be. And I remember when Adrian was developing that product and he was working for his parents company, training business pros in Toronto. And I walked in the office and Adrian would call me over and say come check this. And you showed me something he was building, and at the time, I didn’t know that what he was building would actually morph into Groundhog. And Adrian, I have talked about that numerous times over the years. So it was just really interesting to see that product being built from the the ground up. So it’s been a. It’s been a journey for Adrian, I’m sure. And do you notice how I didn’t mention? Infusion confusion, soft in the middle of. All this.
Aren’t they now known as? What does it keep?
Infusionsoft Infusionsoft by keep and and that said I’m infusion soft drained and I still won’t go near the product. So does that tell you?
You know, they’re they’re you. You blink and you know there’s another new CRM solution out there.
At least it.
Was that way in the in the late twenty 10s, blowing up to 2020, it seemed like and I.
It was crazy.
You know, there were a lot of niche ones out. There they were. Really good. And the problem that I started seeing with them is they would start you out on this really inexpensive plan and you know it was really good for one or two people and then. You start to grow. And then all of. A sudden it’s $100 per user per. Month and then. Pay for the. Extra add-on package for the marketing automation and you. Know it. It got kind of ridiculous. Like we were talking about with Shopify where? They they make it. Really easy to start. And they make it difficult to. To leave because you have so much time invested. I mean they can get. Expensive. And that’s and that’s. Where these self hosted solutions were were developed from where?
No question, no question I think. The on the head and. The key is as long as you got good support now, without what I’ll argue is in the WordPress. So why do people say ohh if? You put more in WordPress. You’re hurting your website and my argument would be did you bother to look at your hosting package and what it allows before you say that? Because I think the whole key to WordPress and doing anything self hosted, whether it’s a ticketing system, there are a few out there whether it’s a. System like this CRM is to have the proper word press resources so you’re not gonna do all this on the 299 a month plan. I hate to tell people.
Yeah, it’s been a long while and you know, even in up to up through 2020, you know, the late late teens, you know, I I still would see those like $3 hosting plans and you know. Also, advertising the the famous one. Click uh five minute not even 5 minute WordPress install I mean 30 seconds and. You can’t run a. A decent website on shared hosting on that. So when we start, yeah, when we start talking about self hosting. You need more resources than than the those plans. I mean, those $3 plans you’re sharing your server resources with, you know hundreds if not thousands of other websites and who knows what the content is on there. That you know that IP that you’re sharing might not have some good reputation, so. Getting good hosting is one thing. And even even when we. Talk about that. You know I was. Discussing cannabis site hosting and a few people mentioned hey, I’m using WP engine and somebody else said well they shut me down. And you have to. Be careful when you’re in these niche and emerging market industries that. You comply with your state laws and you know that’s where we really come down to. I I manage all my own servers and that’s why I have some of the clients that I do mainly because. I allow them to run, you know, the content that that they want need to to run their business. And it’s all legal. But some of the. You know, even the the quote. UN quote good WordPress hosting providers will drop your site if you’re not in perfect compliance or they don’t like what you’re doing. So, you know, even in the self hosting area you. Need to do your research. Where and who you’re hosting with.
And I and I would add even more supports a big issue and there have been many hosting companies. Geez, do I wanna call anyone out? Yeah, sure. Site grant that they start off as being great hosts and then they grow and then they say, oh, we don’t need that support cause that cause that hurts our business and you know where that goes, right, very quickly.
Yeah, I mean, I can point. Out to you specifically. A move that they. Had made to. I think it. Was to run on Google Cloud underneath when they had made that move. I don’t know if they anticipated how expensive that. That’s going to be for the efficiency increases. And you know, you’re right it. It it kind of hurt their support cause I think they, you know, couldn’t cover all those costs right away, which is unfortunate. I think for a. Long time like that was a. Good host, but I can’t. Recommend them to anyone anymore. And that’s really, you know. I got into. You running my own servers and when I say that I am using a cloud control panel run cloud, I can’t say enough good things about them. They make a lot of things easy as far as spinning up new web applications and the server management from a nice GUI, but they also allow you got access to the server so you fully own it and you know that’s the sound point. That benefit that that. I talk about with my clients that we can. Every site gets tailored and optimized. Specifically, you know for their needs. You know you’re. Not just a number. So you know when we talk about, you know, working with their clients. And doing web care, you know. That’s one of the benefits that you and I have as smaller providers that. We can provide. That agile service and tailor some of our things specifically to clients.
I also wanted to jump into. So we’ve talked about two things you’ll and. That’s your website. And your e-mail list and a. Lot of people like to mark it on social media, including you and I at time. And we all know the problems with social media marketing. So the listeners of this show and you know my Horror Story with Facebook, that’s now going on 2 1/2 years by the way for direct. I cannot post any of my business domain and now my personal domain on Facebook because Facebook tells me I’m not meeting community standards. And I suspect what happened was some. Filed all kinds of reports saying I was violating all kinds of terms of service in Facebook. Say I decided to outright ban me. Now, if you’re a political client, there’s all kinds of new rules you can thank Donald Trump and the US for those rules. Thank you very much, trumping and. You know, there’s all kinds of rules that political clients, what they have to fill out to be able to advertise in the games they gotta. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you cannot make guarantees on Facebook. They don’t allow them in the ads. You can’t even suggest a guarantee or a percentage saying 50% of people will be effective. With this, you can’t do that. It is such a tough. Game these days, what do you think?
Oh, absolutely. It’s speaking at Facebook. You know, I usually go through my memories daily. On my personal profile. And you know, clean anything up and. Go through and and see what happened. You know, years ago and 2018. This is when I was in a super growth mode with my agency and just before I was adding staff to do PPC stuff specifically. And I talked about. Updating Edwards campaigns and you know, optimizing landing pages because that was still the heyday that, you know, we were able to throw a pixel on site and gather all sorts of fun data and be successful pretty. Actually, truth, that’s all changed. You know those platforms and yeah, I mean, you can thank Donald Trump because he actually used the data like the, you know, opposing team had done successfully for years. And they said, oops, we don’t. Like it? So people started complaining and you know. That’s where we. Have a lot of the new privacy laws. GDPR in Europe was already becoming, you know, it was already a thing at that point. And you know, we were starting just to see it in the North American markets after that.
And Canada is going that way too, Ryan, I mean, you know you will not interrupt you, but we can carry this on. We we’ve got all these video creators who have built platforms on TikTok. And they’re on the verge because they haven’t built those platforms anywhere else, moving their entire audience because there’s big discussion whether we’ll get banned in the US, I think it will eventually, which means it will get banned in Canada. And what happens to all those creators and all the time and money they’ve invested?
I absolutely you know in you know. I think when I was switching from. Dripple to WordPress and around 2012 to 2014. In that time era I was starting to talk to businesses. You know that didn’t have a website and it? Said oh, why on the Facebook page? I don’t need it. Yeah, and that was the. Thing where businesses started just solely running on. Social media platforms and you know, it’s such a different game. I talked about this briefly in my newsletter recently that, you know, a lot of these social media influencers. And there was one case example like y’all had millions of followers and then she said. I wanna launch some, you know, clothing lines and try and run it through the Instagram chat. She made seven sales in a week and you know I I think you know, we need to look at social media as a completely different tool for entertainment one. But if you do use it for business. You can’t really rely on it. Because one it’s it’s not. That’s not what it’s designed for. One and two again, we’ve talked about violating terms of service. Things can change. Overnight, whether it’s a law or public sentiment that you can find your your store making zero money. And if that’s your only. Asset your only piece of land digital real estate out there and you don’t own any of it and you get like out of. It your business. And I I don’t think a lot of people realize this, that your your Facebook shop can get shut down at a pretty quickly and.
Outages too, like Facebook and Instagram have had some really big outages and I know of a person who lost no word of a lie $30,000 in the last Instagram outage because he refused to build a website and sell everything. In the shop now, if he was on the shop. The odds are he probably would have been up faster than the 24 hours that Instagram was down, and he figures he lost 30 grand. If you can believe that.
Oh yeah, I that’s not hard to believe. At all and you. Know. So really what we. What we need to think about is. Build your website and then that is your hub and you push out through the spokes and these are your social media platforms. So whenever I’m working with a new client, you know, and we’re building an ecommerce shop, we can mirror those products on Facebook, Instagram without a problem. But we or Google Merchant Center, but those are all pushed from the store. And those are all channels that we market through. But if anyone of those falls off, you can still find and purchase things from the store and you own that that real estate and. Unfortunately, it requires time maintenance, but on how you’re you’re going to improve it. Which is work and that’s another piece where when you’re starting a business, either one, you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of time and you know a lot of these small business owners. They don’t know how to get online and they don’t, you know, want to spend the time learning. How to build? The website so they don’t. Do it and you know and then. The ones that go viral overnight and they’re successful. You know, sometimes they come back and do it and you know, work it backwards. But a lot of people never get to that point, and some of them, you know, get shut down and locked out, which is unfortunate.
And the ones going viral, let’s be honest, are far and few between. For people trying to sell out digitally online these days, it doesn’t happen very often. And you know, unless you you’re a big name, i.e. The Kardashians. You’re probably not gonna go viral these days. It’s hard to do.
Yeah, it’s not even 1% of people. That, you know, have viral success overnight.
So what I would what I would suggest to anybody who’s marketing on social is to try and get those clients off social media sooner. Get them on your e-mail list. Get them on your website, get them on the phone, get them away from social media sooner than later, personally.
I mean, you know, we look at social media platforms and. They’re from when they were released. Really, you know, hits certain demographics. I mean, you look at Facebook as being. Boomers and Gen. Z mainly be from because of the time it was released. Then you start looking at Twitter, hitting the millennial market heaviest because it was released a. Little bit later. And was more popular with that market. Late millennials and Gen. Z we see. Snapchat, Instagram and some of the other younger platforms and you know the current generation is all TikTok. 100% they’re they’re on very few other platforms because it’s new. It’s the new hot fun thing, and their parents aren’t on it.
No kidding.
So you know.
And their parents aren’t there.
So they can hide.
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s the biggest thing and why you know. Platforms are split across generationally, but you know when you’re looking at, you know, that rented plan out there. It’s, you know, you’re only hitting a certain section. Of demographics and you know, I broke them down by age. There are other differentiating factors. But your website is. Out there, available for everyone and. You know, we I talk about Twitter and being heavy millennial, it’s actually only. Out of the social media users. Less than 10%, I think it’s gone. Up and down but. It’s still only got 10% of, you know. Active social media users daily. So you know you have to take those factors in that if you build your store on rented land, you’re only hitting a very small percentage of a very specific. Each demographic and user base, so you’re also missing out on people that aren’t on the platform, whether they just don’t use it because their friends and colleagues aren’t there, or they have political differences with the ownership. Whatever the case may be. Yeah, yeah. The new platform dodge, I mean, Twitter might be. One that I’m. Pretty heavily here, but. Yeah. When you’re on somebody else’s rented man, you know, one here at the ones on the platform. But. You’re only hitting the demographic of the users on that platform, and so you’re you’re limiting yourself quite a bit.
So true. So true. Ryan, thanks for sharing your time today. Always appreciate the conversation. I I think listeners will get a lot out of this and it’s good food for thought. It’s more about protecting your business if somebody wants. To get a hold of you. How do they get?
You know, I I’m going. To tell you that every. Major social media platform at one dog solutions. You can find my website one dog dot solutions or e-mail me at Ryan dot Waterbury at 1:00. Dog dot solutions.
And the whole key for Ryan get getting back to you is that those two office managers in his office actually do their work. I don’t know what they’re up to today, but, you know, they tend not to do much.
Where we’re getting that cold shot of Canadian air, so it’s overcast, cold and depressing today.
So that means they’re sleeping again, Ryan. Thank you very much. You have an amazing day, my friend.
And you too.
This episode of the STM show was sponsored by stunning digital market. And the agency to handle all your WordPress website security needs going over to stunningdigitalmarketing.com and find out how we can help you secure your website so you no longer have an issue with backups being hacked or your website being compromised. That’s stunning, digitalmarketing.com a very special thank you to Ryan for joining me on this edition of the STM show. Thank you for listeniAudio file
Episode 321 Why You Should Not Just Use Rented Land With Ryan Waterbury.mp3
Transcript
From the center of the Universe, Toronto ON Canada. This is the SDM show with your host Rob Cairns. The SDM show focuses on business life, productivity, digital marketing, WordPress and more. Sit back, relax, grab your favorite, drink and enjoy the show. Here is rob.
Hey everybody, I’m rob kerens. I’m the founder. CEO and chief creator of amazing ideas of stunning digital marketing. In this podcast, they sit down with Ryan Waterbury and we talk about. Why you should not use just rented land for your digital marketing, sit back, relax and enjoy the show. This episode of the STM show was sponsored by stunning digital marketing, the agency to handle all your WordPress website security needs. Going over to stunningdigitalmarketing.com and find out how we can help you secure your website so you no longer have an issue with backups. Being hacked or are your website being compromised? That’s stunning digitalmarketing.com.
Hey everybody, rob counts.
Here and today I’m here doing my monthly podcast with Ryan Waterbury, my partner in crime. How are you today?
I’m doing pretty. Well, today.
No good. It’s uh spring has. Sprung, I think, and the weather’s. And Toronto, we’re above 0. We’re not freezing for change and we’ll just we we are.
For yourself.
We’ll send all the Arctic air to Minnesota because we can.
Ah, yes. No, we’re actually below freezing today and tomorrow should be our last two days and it’s because we’re getting that cold Canadian air.
Yeah, that’s the way it is.
Today you and I were talking and we thought we’d get into. All rented land own your content on your website. Own your business conversation. We need to. I’ve been doing. Some teaching this week with my good friend Jeff Brown’s social media marketing group, and one thing I always tell them is to be careful, cause you don’t own the social media platforms and we know the rules changed by the day. So I’m a big proponent of, first of all, let’s start with the website side of it. Owning your website and that means using self hosted solutions and it means staying away from cost solutions like Shopify or Etsy. How is your take on that? And why?
I’m a huge proponent of self hosted open source solutions and you know, even before I was in WordPress I was doing some work with durbal. So you know there when we talk about self hosted you know we’re in the WordPress. Right now, but the open source self hosted options out there have had a long history. You know, over the past 20 plus years. The When you talk about Shopify, Etsy, Bigcommerce. Some of those solutions where they might have a little bit nicer interface might get you up. A little bit quicker. You’re on somebody else’s server and. You are on somebody else’s service. So one you. Have to abide by their. Rules and if for example your store is in a particular market, I’m working in a store for a. Client right now. For cannabis, both CBD and THC, and we’re building a WordPress. Because Shopify is another option, but they’re very restrictive. And that cuts. Out a third of their products that can’t be. Shown on the store. And if they’re put up, you’re immediately banned and your store is taken down. So that’s one of the dangers of. Running your business operation on someone else’s hardware and software that if you violate some term of service. You’re done. They can take your shirt down in a minute, and if that’s where your main source of revenue comes from, you’ve just killed your business completely.
Yeah, it’s so true. And even if you’re going your self hosted solution like WordPress. You can be taken down if you’re on a server like you’re doing some cannabis work. I’ve done some work in the adult industry, same problem, same rules. So so a lot of web hosts that won’t go near that and it’s against their terms of service. So you got to be careful that the other problem with using things like. API and Etsy is first of all, if you try and change the payment gateways it gets really expensive. Shopify has a policy. Say that if you use their payment gateway you’re fine, but if you try to use a non Shopify proof payment gateway they just charge a higher percentage. And then the other problem is if the servers get sold, you can’t pick your site up and move it very easily. Whereas if you have a WordPress issue with the host, you can actually pick up your website and move it to another server. I’m actually in the process of doing that for a client right now, so I think that is some outlying issues as well, wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, absolutely. The the platforms are nice and you know they’re no code solutions for, you know, those clients that we have that say I hate WordPress and want to move to, you know, a provider that has that no code solution when we start looking at those no code. Solutions, though they’re restrictive and they only allow you to do certain things now. Shopify has been very good at separating their tears, so when you start looking at pricing, you know it it doesn’t cost you a lot to get started. But then you realize that, oh, I need shipping. So you have to pay for their shipping module that integrates with your preferred shipping provider. Their base platform, just their their ground level 1. I think they have a 1% fee on top of the payment processor fee. And you don’t. Get away from that until you move to the next tier. Which is a higher monthly cost. And so you start adding these things up e-mail marketing and then even within the e-mail marketing automation, they nickel and dime you and you really don’t realize the the full cost of the platform. Until you’re in it, your entire business is built on it. You’ve spent hundreds of hours building into the platform and you’re stuck. And you’re you’re paying a lot of money for all these things that work pretty well together because you’re in a closed platform but you. Pay for it.
No, I would. I would agree with you 100%. I mean, you know, I had a a client come to me and say, oh, I can get chopped for $29.00 a month. And I said, yeah, as long as you want to do anything with it because the minute you start adding modules to get to the point where you’re doing anything like for example, we all know. Most in all pro space. While they have a Shopify module, what they don’t tell you is to use that module. You have to be on the $89.00. Plan a month so. You know I’m. Not saying you shouldn’t pay for what? You get. I’m a big proponent of that, but. To say you’re going to these no code solutions to save money. If you want to do anything complex is actually going to cost you more, in my opinion.
Oh yeah, absolutely correct. And you know, yeah, you touched on Etsy as another platform and I think it’s, I think Etsy is a great platform and there are some great integrations with their two Shopify 2 Commerce to do 2 way product syncing and get. Do you know? Some more visibility. Last year they had a pricing increase and you know, a lot of these, I have a few friends that are small jewelry makers and artists and you know, they just want to get some of. Their stuff out. In the world and make people happy. And it’s a hobby. And I think that’s where a lot of the Etsy. Store started around. Yet people were monetizing their hobbies that, you know, they were making too many things that, you know, they could sell for money. Well, they raised their payment processing fees and taking a larger percentage. So and it got progressively and exponentially worse. In favor of Etsy as far as payment, the better you did. And so, you know, we’ve seen this in. Not only Etsy, but. You know, we talked about. Shopify with the the the modules adding on, but Gumroad is another place to sell digital products. They had a huge price increase for. Taking a cut of sales, you know, and if you spend a lot of time getting on these platforms and and building your store. That’s time lost. You can’t just move it when you want. Want to look at Replat forming? You’re stuck. You’re starting over from scratch when you’re building a store out on another platform. You you can possibly export your products, but that’s about it.
I would, I would agree. So my other thing I always say when we’re talking about owning your content and owning what you do in your business. Is there’s two things. You know, we already talked on your website, right? And the other thing is your e-mail marketing list, not the platform, but the list. Would you agree on that?
Yeah, I think people that even you know use third party platforms, you know to run their e-mail marketing. And there are some. Some definite advantages to you know using a platform and not doing self hosted to do your e-mail marketing. I personally do self hosted. And don’t worry about my list. But even if you were, you know, using, let’s say convert kit or active campaign. It’s a good idea to make an export of your list periodically so that you have it, and that you have a a backup copy of it.
Here here.
Even those platforms, while they’re awesome to use, MailChimp about a year ago made a change in the terms of service. And had a few clients that their accounts were dumped because they didn’t like something that they. Violated their terms of service. They didn’t have a. Backup of their list. They were starting from Ground Zero. And now they’re running self hosted. One of the clients is back. Up to they did some good social media communication and. Their subscriber list is back up around 30,000, which is where it was previously, but it. Took over a year. To get that list back where it was. It takes a lot of time and work.
It does. e-mail marketing takes a lot of time. Generally as a rule. The couple of places I sit is for some basic stuff, male or light these days for some other stuff. If it’s self hosted male pull it for a few clients but it’s not what I’m using. Convert kit for more complicated things and then I’m moving actually towards and sharing with you before went to record to Groundhog in the next couple of months. So because I want to do some more automation and frankly I don’t want pay convert kit because there’s the size of my list and I’m just going to self host. It and be done. But the problem with being self hosted is times. You gotta be a little techie and that takes a little bit for some people.
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I I use fluent CRM for my mail list capabilities and. I gotta tell you the the. Nice thing about tools like Groundhog and Fluence your. As they continually get. And they’re really good companies, the. Owners and the development teams on both those products are really responsive. If you wanna offer suggestions and solutions and you know the technical part that only happens around setup from what I found in either product it’s connecting your forms. Connecting your mail compliance on the back end because you’re going to use some SMTP sending service. And once that’s done. They’ve gotten very good where the mapping on automations is a drag and drop process influence CRM where you know it, it’s pleasant to build a customer journey and and actions within there. So while there is some technical know how as far as getting set up, once that’s done. You’re over the. Hurdle and I. And I think the self hosted solutions now are just as good, if not better than some of the. Tools that are self hosted that we mentioned convert kit active campaign that will delight and and the others.
No, I I would agree with you. It’s funny. I’ve I think I’ve shared with you the story, but so I have to issue the disclaim. The founder of Groundhog, Adrian Tobey’s, an old friend, so I have to say that right off the top. So yeah, I’m a little biased and I’m allowed to be. And I remember when Adrian was developing that product and he was working for his parents company, training business pros in Toronto. And I walked in the office and Adrian would call me over and say come check this. And you showed me something he was building, and at the time, I didn’t know that what he was building would actually morph into Groundhog. And Adrian, I have talked about that numerous times over the years. So it was just really interesting to see that product being built from the the ground up. So it’s been a. It’s been a journey for Adrian, I’m sure. And do you notice how I didn’t mention? Infusion confusion, soft in the middle of. All this.
Aren’t they now known as? What does it keep?
Infusionsoft Infusionsoft by keep and and that said I’m infusion soft drained and I still won’t go near the product. So does that tell you?
You know, they’re they’re you. You blink and you know there’s another new CRM solution out there.
At least it.
Was that way in the in the late twenty 10s, blowing up to 2020, it seemed like and I.
It was crazy.
You know, there were a lot of niche ones out. There they were. Really good. And the problem that I started seeing with them is they would start you out on this really inexpensive plan and you know it was really good for one or two people and then. You start to grow. And then all of. A sudden it’s $100 per user per. Month and then. Pay for the. Extra add-on package for the marketing automation and you. Know it. It got kind of ridiculous. Like we were talking about with Shopify where? They they make it. Really easy to start. And they make it difficult to. To leave because you have so much time invested. I mean they can get. Expensive. And that’s and that’s. Where these self hosted solutions were were developed from where?
No question, no question I think. The on the head and. The key is as long as you got good support now, without what I’ll argue is in the WordPress. So why do people say ohh if? You put more in WordPress. You’re hurting your website and my argument would be did you bother to look at your hosting package and what it allows before you say that? Because I think the whole key to WordPress and doing anything self hosted, whether it’s a ticketing system, there are a few out there whether it’s a. System like this CRM is to have the proper word press resources so you’re not gonna do all this on the 299 a month plan. I hate to tell people.
Yeah, it’s been a long while and you know, even in up to up through 2020, you know, the late late teens, you know, I I still would see those like $3 hosting plans and you know. Also, advertising the the famous one. Click uh five minute not even 5 minute WordPress install I mean 30 seconds and. You can’t run a. A decent website on shared hosting on that. So when we start, yeah, when we start talking about self hosting. You need more resources than than the those plans. I mean, those $3 plans you’re sharing your server resources with, you know hundreds if not thousands of other websites and who knows what the content is on there. That you know that IP that you’re sharing might not have some good reputation, so. Getting good hosting is one thing. And even even when we. Talk about that. You know I was. Discussing cannabis site hosting and a few people mentioned hey, I’m using WP engine and somebody else said well they shut me down. And you have to. Be careful when you’re in these niche and emerging market industries that. You comply with your state laws and you know that’s where we really come down to. I I manage all my own servers and that’s why I have some of the clients that I do mainly because. I allow them to run, you know, the content that that they want need to to run their business. And it’s all legal. But some of the. You know, even the the quote. UN quote good WordPress hosting providers will drop your site if you’re not in perfect compliance or they don’t like what you’re doing. So, you know, even in the self hosting area you. Need to do your research. Where and who you’re hosting with.
And I and I would add even more supports a big issue and there have been many hosting companies. Geez, do I wanna call anyone out? Yeah, sure. Site grant that they start off as being great hosts and then they grow and then they say, oh, we don’t need that support cause that cause that hurts our business and you know where that goes, right, very quickly.
Yeah, I mean, I can point. Out to you specifically. A move that they. Had made to. I think it. Was to run on Google Cloud underneath when they had made that move. I don’t know if they anticipated how expensive that. That’s going to be for the efficiency increases. And you know, you’re right it. It it kind of hurt their support cause I think they, you know, couldn’t cover all those costs right away, which is unfortunate. I think for a. Long time like that was a. Good host, but I can’t. Recommend them to anyone anymore. And that’s really, you know. I got into. You running my own servers and when I say that I am using a cloud control panel run cloud, I can’t say enough good things about them. They make a lot of things easy as far as spinning up new web applications and the server management from a nice GUI, but they also allow you got access to the server so you fully own it and you know that’s the sound point. That benefit that that. I talk about with my clients that we can. Every site gets tailored and optimized. Specifically, you know for their needs. You know you’re. Not just a number. So you know when we talk about, you know, working with their clients. And doing web care, you know. That’s one of the benefits that you and I have as smaller providers that. We can provide. That agile service and tailor some of our things specifically to clients.
I also wanted to jump into. So we’ve talked about two things you’ll and. That’s your website. And your e-mail list and a. Lot of people like to mark it on social media, including you and I at time. And we all know the problems with social media marketing. So the listeners of this show and you know my Horror Story with Facebook, that’s now going on 2 1/2 years by the way for direct. I cannot post any of my business domain and now my personal domain on Facebook because Facebook tells me I’m not meeting community standards. And I suspect what happened was some. Filed all kinds of reports saying I was violating all kinds of terms of service in Facebook. Say I decided to outright ban me. Now, if you’re a political client, there’s all kinds of new rules you can thank Donald Trump and the US for those rules. Thank you very much, trumping and. You know, there’s all kinds of rules that political clients, what they have to fill out to be able to advertise in the games they gotta. If you’re in the healthcare industry, you cannot make guarantees on Facebook. They don’t allow them in the ads. You can’t even suggest a guarantee or a percentage saying 50% of people will be effective. With this, you can’t do that. It is such a tough. Game these days, what do you think?
Oh, absolutely. It’s speaking at Facebook. You know, I usually go through my memories daily. On my personal profile. And you know, clean anything up and. Go through and and see what happened. You know, years ago and 2018. This is when I was in a super growth mode with my agency and just before I was adding staff to do PPC stuff specifically. And I talked about. Updating Edwards campaigns and you know, optimizing landing pages because that was still the heyday that, you know, we were able to throw a pixel on site and gather all sorts of fun data and be successful pretty. Actually, truth, that’s all changed. You know those platforms and yeah, I mean, you can thank Donald Trump because he actually used the data like the, you know, opposing team had done successfully for years. And they said, oops, we don’t. Like it? So people started complaining and you know. That’s where we. Have a lot of the new privacy laws. GDPR in Europe was already becoming, you know, it was already a thing at that point. And you know, we were starting just to see it in the North American markets after that.
And Canada is going that way too, Ryan, I mean, you know you will not interrupt you, but we can carry this on. We we’ve got all these video creators who have built platforms on TikTok. And they’re on the verge because they haven’t built those platforms anywhere else, moving their entire audience because there’s big discussion whether we’ll get banned in the US, I think it will eventually, which means it will get banned in Canada. And what happens to all those creators and all the time and money they’ve invested?
I absolutely you know in you know. I think when I was switching from. Dripple to WordPress and around 2012 to 2014. In that time era I was starting to talk to businesses. You know that didn’t have a website and it? Said oh, why on the Facebook page? I don’t need it. Yeah, and that was the. Thing where businesses started just solely running on. Social media platforms and you know, it’s such a different game. I talked about this briefly in my newsletter recently that, you know, a lot of these social media influencers. And there was one case example like y’all had millions of followers and then she said. I wanna launch some, you know, clothing lines and try and run it through the Instagram chat. She made seven sales in a week and you know I I think you know, we need to look at social media as a completely different tool for entertainment one. But if you do use it for business. You can’t really rely on it. Because one it’s it’s not. That’s not what it’s designed for. One and two again, we’ve talked about violating terms of service. Things can change. Overnight, whether it’s a law or public sentiment that you can find your your store making zero money. And if that’s your only. Asset your only piece of land digital real estate out there and you don’t own any of it and you get like out of. It your business. And I I don’t think a lot of people realize this, that your your Facebook shop can get shut down at a pretty quickly and.
Outages too, like Facebook and Instagram have had some really big outages and I know of a person who lost no word of a lie $30,000 in the last Instagram outage because he refused to build a website and sell everything. In the shop now, if he was on the shop. The odds are he probably would have been up faster than the 24 hours that Instagram was down, and he figures he lost 30 grand. If you can believe that.
Oh yeah, I that’s not hard to believe. At all and you. Know. So really what we. What we need to think about is. Build your website and then that is your hub and you push out through the spokes and these are your social media platforms. So whenever I’m working with a new client, you know, and we’re building an ecommerce shop, we can mirror those products on Facebook, Instagram without a problem. But we or Google Merchant Center, but those are all pushed from the store. And those are all channels that we market through. But if anyone of those falls off, you can still find and purchase things from the store and you own that that real estate and. Unfortunately, it requires time maintenance, but on how you’re you’re going to improve it. Which is work and that’s another piece where when you’re starting a business, either one, you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of time and you know a lot of these small business owners. They don’t know how to get online and they don’t, you know, want to spend the time learning. How to build? The website so they don’t. Do it and you know and then. The ones that go viral overnight and they’re successful. You know, sometimes they come back and do it and you know, work it backwards. But a lot of people never get to that point, and some of them, you know, get shut down and locked out, which is unfortunate.
And the ones going viral, let’s be honest, are far and few between. For people trying to sell out digitally online these days, it doesn’t happen very often. And you know, unless you you’re a big name, i.e. The Kardashians. You’re probably not gonna go viral these days. It’s hard to do.
Yeah, it’s not even 1% of people. That, you know, have viral success overnight.
So what I would what I would suggest to anybody who’s marketing on social is to try and get those clients off social media sooner. Get them on your e-mail list. Get them on your website, get them on the phone, get them away from social media sooner than later, personally.
I mean, you know, we look at social media platforms and. They’re from when they were released. Really, you know, hits certain demographics. I mean, you look at Facebook as being. Boomers and Gen. Z mainly be from because of the time it was released. Then you start looking at Twitter, hitting the millennial market heaviest because it was released a. Little bit later. And was more popular with that market. Late millennials and Gen. Z we see. Snapchat, Instagram and some of the other younger platforms and you know the current generation is all TikTok. 100% they’re they’re on very few other platforms because it’s new. It’s the new hot fun thing, and their parents aren’t on it.
No kidding.
So you know.
And their parents aren’t there.
So they can hide.
Yeah, I mean that’s that’s the biggest thing and why you know. Platforms are split across generationally, but you know when you’re looking at, you know, that rented plan out there. It’s, you know, you’re only hitting a certain section. Of demographics and you know, I broke them down by age. There are other differentiating factors. But your website is. Out there, available for everyone and. You know, we I talk about Twitter and being heavy millennial, it’s actually only. Out of the social media users. Less than 10%, I think it’s gone. Up and down but. It’s still only got 10% of, you know. Active social media users daily. So you know you have to take those factors in that if you build your store on rented land, you’re only hitting a very small percentage of a very specific. Each demographic and user base, so you’re also missing out on people that aren’t on the platform, whether they just don’t use it because their friends and colleagues aren’t there, or they have political differences with the ownership. Whatever the case may be. Yeah, yeah. The new platform dodge, I mean, Twitter might be. One that I’m. Pretty heavily here, but. Yeah. When you’re on somebody else’s rented man, you know, one here at the ones on the platform. But. You’re only hitting the demographic of the users on that platform, and so you’re you’re limiting yourself quite a bit.
So true. So true. Ryan, thanks for sharing your time today. Always appreciate the conversation. I I think listeners will get a lot out of this and it’s good food for thought. It’s more about protecting your business if somebody wants. To get a hold of you. How do they get?
You know, I I’m going. To tell you that every. Major social media platform at one dog solutions. You can find my website one dog dot solutions or e-mail me at Ryan dot Waterbury at One Dog Solutions solutions.
And the whole key for Ryan get getting back to you is that those two office managers in his office actually do their work. I don’t know what they’re up to today, but, you know, they tend not to do much.
Where we’re getting that cold shot of Canadian air, so it’s overcast, cold and depressing today.
So that means they’re sleeping again, Ryan. Thank you very much. You have an amazing day, my friend.
And you too.
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