52 - Creating Website Content

Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.

Verbatim text

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to WP Innovator podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi, and welcome to episode number 52 of the WP Innovator podcast. This means we’re a year old, so happy birthday. Yeah. Oh, and also in a couple of days, we’re going to be moving office as well, so that’s really exciting. We’re getting everything prepared. We’ve already pulled half of the soundproofing off the wall, actually.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All of the soundproofing on the wall. Things are crazy here. But anyway, we’re excited, and I’m sure you are, too. We’ll make sure we put pictures up on Facebook. Speaking of Facebook, we have a Facebook group. It’s amazing. And head on over to leejacksondev.com group and you can join in the fun over there. We’re Talking all things WordPress and WordPress agencies and design agencies and all of that good stuff.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Really happy to have today’s guest. It’s Dave Toomey. He is so good. He’s funny. He’s got a great Irish accent. I’m not gonna spoil it. I’m gonna shut up and let you enjoy. Hi, this is Lee at the WP Innovator podcast.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And today we have Dave Toomey. Dave, how are you doing?

Dave Toomey:
I’m feeling very honored to be in the presence of such a luminary as yourself, Mr. Jackson.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t even know what luminary means, but it sounds really good.

Dave Toomey:
We’re going to talk about big words, aren’t we? So, yeah, absolutely. Take it as a compliment.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thank you. I’m going to Google that later. It’s probably something super offensive and I’ll be like, what? Dave is a good friend of mine. We’ve met through the interwebs, through Facebook. Sorry, say again? You’re gonna say something.

Dave Toomey:
I was gonna say, isn’t that how we all do it these days?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It is how we all do it nowadays, and I can assure you it was not through a dating site. It was actually through. Through Facebook. And our joint interest in WordPress, in podcasting, in marketing, in great content, all of that good stuff. He’s a good friend. We love a good banter. All of us do on Facebook. So if you’re not on the Facebook group for a start off, head on over to leejacksondev.com group and you can hang with Dave there as well.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
He’s funny, but, Dave, I’m going to shut up. And could you just give everyone a little introduction as to who you are, what you do and all that good stuff.

Dave Toomey:
Yeah. My name is Dave Toomey. As you said by background, I’m a WordPress developer consultant. So same as yourself, have clients that looking for amazing websites to do amazing things for their businesses. Mostly I work by referral, but over recent times I’ve been providing content as part of my service and the recent near past I’ve decided to offer that service to WordPress agencies, design agencies, as a done for you service.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nice. And do you have any like major hobbies or anything like that or styles of movies?

Dave Toomey:
Absolutely. I mean, at the moment, I suppose with the kids and everything, I’m more watching sport than playing sport. So I’m big into rugby and both codes now that’ll mean nothing unless you’re from the north of Eng. So rugby union fan, Rugby league fan, books wise. Lee Jack or Lee Child? Nearly said Lee Jackson. Lee Child, I was gonna say I’ve not written. Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Funnily enough, there is a guy called Lee Jackson who’s written two crime novels set in the Victorian times. So I bought both so that I put them on the shelf in my office. People come in and, you know, they’re standing around looking and then they’ll be like, oh, did you write a book? Yeah, yeah. And I’ll see how long it goes until they finally realize I’m absolutely BSing them.

Dave Toomey:
But you’ve not actually read them, you just bought them.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ve never read them, no. It’s probably really good books, to be honest. Anyway, I found out I googled my own name. That’s pretty narcissistic. That isn’t. But any Google my own name. Up comes this guy, Lee Jackson, writes amazing books.

Dave Toomey:
I haven’t done it in a long time. I’d be afraid to see what’s on the Internet with my name.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, to me, sounds like quite a rare last name. I mean, you’re the only one I know, are you?

Dave Toomey:
There’s a lot of variations on it. There’s Tumi or Tomi and there’s all sorts and like there’s one of those things where it just couldn’t be bothered figuring out what’s going on. It’s just that’s the way you’re given and you get and you move on. So I don’t know of any really hugely famous to me. But you know, there might be someone.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
There’s time yet though, Dave, remember. There is.

Dave Toomey:
There’s probably some avant garde dancer from Australia.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I was thinking more you. You know, you’re. You don’t hide your light under a bushel anymore, mate. I think it’s time you, you fly and go for it.

Dave Toomey:
I wish I had a bushel. I wish I had a bushel.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
How did you get into WordPress then?

Dave Toomey:
Oh, one of those things like, I mean, years ago, just, just faffing about with, you know, looking to build a website and started by. With, with Joomla. And within about 3 nanoseconds. Not for me. Yeah, exactly, not for me. And then it was around the time that WordPress. Oh, gosh, I don’t know, was it in the ones or the early twos? Yeah, but it’s, it’s got to be 10. It’s got to be 10 years ago.

Dave Toomey:
Yeah, and that’s just, you know, asking people, how do I make it do this and then make it do that? And one thing led to another and it’s, you know, the snowball effect where you move down and the next thing you know you’ve got people asking you to build a website for them and next thing you know you’re charging them money for it. You know, it’s. And then there’s a community. Oh my God. There are other people that like this thing as well. So it’s, it’s, it’s that exactly, you know, and I’m convinced that 80% of the WordPress community across the world have exactly the same story.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I have exactly the same story, mate, as well, you know, just. I actually started building websites about my old computer. I had like an AMSTRAD pcw. Do you remember those? Alan Sugar?

Dave Toomey:
Oh, God, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So I built a website all about that Total Geek was using. What was it? Tripod. Do you remember that? Tripod back in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was like. So I mean, free Tripod site. And then it was, I think when I found WordPress it was, I think they called it B2 or something like that. And then it forked off into WordPress. At that point was my first blog. I was like, oh, this is amazing.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, but yeah, same as you just fiddled around for years, wasn’t even a coder before then, proper code.

Dave Toomey:
I mean, I figured out early on that one of the best things to do was to buy, I think it was a.net domain or a dot info for 99 cents, put on WordPress and try and break it. It was basically, this is the way to learn WordPress is buy yourself a cheap domain, install WordPress and just add plugins, see what they do, go searching through the repository, find stuff, put it on your site and kill it. Absolutely. Look in the code mess about and that’s how I developed my skills was was breaking stuff and then figuring out how to a fix it and B not break it in the future. And that’s by far the best education I’ve ever had. Was the 99 cent GoDaddy for a dot info domain 10 years ago, 12, 15 years ago, whatever it was.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well we won’t mention this to godaddy in case they want like a percentage of your ongoing fees that you’ve been charging for web development, etc.

Dave Toomey:
I am long gone from GoDaddy a long time ago and I know our favorite friends at Beaver Builder have some kind of relationship with them, but I’m long gone from GoDaddy. I mean there are better options out there.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well let’s go on to that. There is no plan to this interview right now. This is the guys basically we’re drinking. Well I’m drinking beer, Dave’s drinking nice coffee because he’s driving later and he’s a good citizen but we’re having a chat here. So hosting who’s your good experience of hosts rather than negative experience? Who are the go to guys?

Dave Toomey:
Good experiences I’ve had with A2 hosting InMotion and Liquid Web WP engine of course I use for big big clients, not big big clients but that I want something a bit more WordPress focused. I was originally a Hostgator client and the minute Eig bought them I got out as quickly as possible because the service went through the floor and there’s a couple of websites on there that keep a list of the companies that have been bought by eig. When I moved to one of the other hosting companies I emailed the CEO. I found his email address because he join us, ask us any questions and I said categorically have you had or do you plan to have any discussions with EIG owners of currently owners of Hostgator to sell A2 hosting to them? And then he came back and said no, absolutely not. We’re small family organization, we believe in customer service. And I said right, you have a client. And I’ve been yeah, absolutely. It was just, you know, that’s fine.

Dave Toomey:
Happy days. And for domain name Register namecheap Been with namecheap now for God knows how long and it’s just so easy particularly when you buy a domain name, hook it up to your hosting and you can start working on install WordPress and your cPanel is live within like two minutes. And I remember with GoDaddy. When you set the DNS, you’d have to wait 24, 48 hours. Now they do say it could take 24 hours for it to connect, but it doesn’t. It takes 10 minutes, five minutes or almost even straight away.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s one thing that blows my mind about namecheap. That is so, so good that it can do that. I mean you can always trick it with the hosts file, but if you want a client to see something within say an hour, it’s a bugger, isn’t it? When you’re waiting around for Propagate.

Dave Toomey:
Yeah, no, they’re just so fast now. I’ve had a couple of issues and it was just, you know, human error, like Dumb Dave typing in the wrong DNS and you know, having to wait for it to sort of reset. But that, you know, that, that sells me on the service. And they’re fantastic as well. Like, you know, they’re really, really good and they’re cheap enough now. It’s not, you’re not paying like premium, premium prices. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re very good service and I’d recommend them any day of the week and I, and I recommend them to people without an affiliate link or anything. So just go to Namecheap and particularly UK clients.

Dave Toomey:
They’ve would reg 1, 2, 3 and companies like that are just such a nightmare to deal with. So I’ve moved customers, clients off of, you know, those kind of name domain name registers and hosting accounts and move them into Namecheap and things like A2 and never look back really.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So is that A2hosting.com, that’s A2hosting, yeah. So guys, check out A2hosting.com and also Namecheap.com as well. I recommend Namecheap myself, they are brilliant. And the amount of choice as well isn’t there of domains since me and you started out like domain name choices are phenomenal now, you know, you can think of anything and there’ll be something available for it. Even if it’s like XYZ or something like that, you’re still gonna find a domain.

Dave Toomey:
The problem is, the flip side is a problem as well that if you’ve got somebody who has, you know, it’s domain names that would be generic enough becoming harder and harder to find the.com or the.co.uk. because of, you know, domain name availability. And it’s just you come up with this amazing name for a business or something, somebody has it and you the worst thing in the world. You Open up the domain on a browser and it’s sitting there with this domain was purchased in 19 or 2007 on GoDaddy and there’s nothing there.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re like, do something with it, damn it. Or sell it to me. I’ve got exactly, I’ve got a four. One of the first domains I bought was like a four letter domain back in the day. And I get, I’ve still got it and it’s like it was my earliest email address. So I’ve kept it on now just because I still get emails forwarded from it. But I keep getting emails like every single day with people offering me a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars now for this four letter domain I’m like, why? I don’t understand it, but obviously because it’s four letters and it’s a dot com, I guess everyone wants their hands on it. I’m just waiting for someone to offer me a million and then I’ll like really consider the, the pain in the ass of changing my email address.

Dave Toomey:
You’re a hard man to please.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, £1 million should do it. I think I have to inform like eight different people, like eight different systems that oh, this is my new email address. But I’m like, I’m not moving for anyone thousand dollars. Come back with more 1,200. Go away. I had that email this morning.

Dave Toomey:
Oh, fantastic.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s awesome. So I mean, you know, you said you were building WordPress websites and then somebody wanted to give you money for a WordPress website. I always find it quite interesting finding out how that went. Can you remember how that went, that very first paid project?

Dave Toomey:
Yeah, somebody said, you know, I need to build a website. But they were more of a friend of a friend than actually a friend. And I said, well, okay, it’s going to cost you $250, whatever it is, and you send me, send me PayPal money and we’ll see what we can do. And then I got the PayPal money and thought I was rich. You know, it’s like I’ve got beer money. So you know, that’s, that’s that first time. It’s been so long now I can’t remember who it was, I honestly can’t. But it was definitely probably someone in the fitness niche.

Dave Toomey:
That’s one of the big areas I work in. And, and it may have even been to fix their WordPress website that somebody else did, but it’s so long ago I can’t remember. But I do remember thinking, hold on, somebody wants to give me money for this and it’s, it’s the old adage of, of, you know, you drive your car into the mechanic and there’s a rattle and he says, I can fix it and charges you 200 pounds or euros or whatever it is, and then kicks the tire and the rattles gone. And the guy says, you just kicked my tire. Why so much money? Well, it’s, you know, 5% for kicking the tire, but it’s 95% for knowing that to kick, kick the tire will fix the problem. So I’ve spent 20 years learning how to kick tires. And it’s exactly the same with the Internet in terms of getting work done. You know, it’s, you’re paying for knowledge even though you know what the outcome is.

Dave Toomey:
You want. Somebody’s got to get to that point. So you’re not necessarily paying for the time or the work. You’re paying for the knowledge. And that’s true in my business today. You know, I pay designers, I pay graphic artists, I pay content writers, obviously, but I’m paying for expertise. I’m not paying necessarily for a finished product, but all I care at the end of it is have I got what I was expecting and what I wanted. And then this is the cost to get there in a reasonable amount of time to an expert quality.

Dave Toomey:
Then you got to pay for it. If it’s not worth that kind of money, I don’t need it. You know, I don’t. If I need it, I’m paying for it. And that’s the way of the world. I mean, you try and get a plumber to come to your house at midnight on a Friday night.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, tried that.

Dave Toomey:
He’s not coming for a cup of tea and a biscuit?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Nope, tried that as well. Yeah, I was like, do you want a cup of tea? No, thanks, mate. Where’s your problem? I was like, okay, this way. It was a big bill.

Dave Toomey:
Okay.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Cute.

Dave Toomey:
So we can live with the smell.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly. It’s fine, it’s fine. The pigs live in this. It’s fine. Hey, so you got that first $250. Let’s say it was that first gig. You’re like, hey, I can get paid for this. I’ve never asked this question of any of our guests yet and I’m actually quite fascinated.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
How did you get from like, I assume you had a job at the time, how did you get from that into moving into like a full time agency that’s based on referral?

Dave Toomey:
By not liking the job I was in?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah,

Dave Toomey:
it’s simple, you know, it’s like the way I look at it is, you know, we go to school and we learn seven, eight, nine subjects and there are certain subjects that we just adore. We love, we love doing them, whether it’s art or whether it’s science or whether it’s whatever, but you have to do all the other stuff. And I got into that of, well, let’s go to university, get a degree and whatever, you know, and you know, Irish parents, it’s like, you know, do something important, you know, and you come out and say, look, hold on, life is too short. I want to do something that I enjoy doing. And to my wife, the idea of building websites as a joyful thing, it’s just, she can’t understand it, you know, but to her, what she does and you know, and it’s, it’s like, well, no, I get the same joy out of building a website, making it look nice. Like you complimented me on a website design yesterday and I was delighted. And it’s, you know, it’s, this is, it just gets the hairs in your back of your neck when you go, oh, if I make that blue instead of red, that looks so much better. And only people that do this understand that.

Dave Toomey:
But everybody has something in their life that, that kind of reaction comes from something they love. Whether it’s knitting or whether it’s, you know, scoring a goal in five a side, it’s, it’s kicking a football. There’s something in your life that when you do it and you go, nailed it. Love that. And it just happened to be, as time went on in my life, it was working with clients and building stuff that they at the end of it go, I’m getting compliments from my client, from my customers saying, wow, this is so much better. Your website functions better, it looks great. Your graphic design is amazing. Where did you get it? How did you do it? So that’s, that was just my cocaine.

Dave Toomey:
As you were, you know, it’s just like a drug and a drug addict. It’s just happened to be WordPress design content building stuff that works for people who are going to come back to you in the future and say, now I need this and I’m going to pay you money for it.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s cool. So you just tell that step. You realize, I want to do something I love all my life, not actually just do this job that I’m being paid to do because it puts food on the table. I want to actually go put food on the table and have fun at the same same time.

Dave Toomey:
Which is 100%.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly what? You know, if anyone right now is thinking, oh, do I go into freelancing? I’m not sure. Or you’re kind of trying to do both, I definitely encourage you. It’s the best thing I ever did as well. Just taking that leap. Disclaimer Disclaimer. If you lose your house, don’t blame me.

Dave Toomey:
That’s the thing our generation or my kids generation have over our parents generation is we have that option with the Internet.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Totally.

Dave Toomey:
It’s changed the world for us because you can do it evenings and weekends. And that’s exactly what I did. If you want to be a writer and get paid to write, then you write. Just set up a WordPress.com blog and start writing. And then if you decide you want to get paid for writing, go and look for people who are paying for writers and offer them your services and show them your writing. It’s as simple as that. If you like to design baseball cards, design baseball cards and put them on dribble. It doesn’t matter, you know, we can find an audience for what we love to do these days, you know, and like I said to you earlier, I built courses for some of my clients, like in the fitness industry that like, I’ve built a website for a guy that teaches people how to get fit by lifting sandbags.

Dave Toomey:
I mean, what, where, what are you talking about? Hold on. And I’m talking. It’s not a small business, the income. He’s not a small business, but he said this is a way to get fit that you can do without loads and loads of equipment. You buy this special bag, that’s 50 quid, you stuff it full of sand and now I’m going to show you the exercises where you lift it and you throw it and you do this and. And, you know, a few years later, a few months later, you’re fitter, you’re healthier, and that’s a business. Like you tell me that 20 years ago when the Internet didn’t exist, I would have laughed at you. But nowadays, if you tell me that you can make money by selling pencil sharpeners that look like Simpsons characters, I believe you because I’ve seen them, I buy them.

Dave Toomey:
You know, it’s available out there that you can make money from your passion. The problem is you don’t deserve it yet you’ve got to put the work in. And that’s where evenings and weekends come in. If you’re that passionate about it, you will not watch Coronation street or Grey’s Anatomy for four hours on a Friday night. You’ll sit in front of your computer or your design board and you’ll do the work and you’ll enjoy it and you’ll love it. And that comes across when people look at your work is the enjoyment you have for doing the work you do. And that’s when you get paid.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Amen, brother. That’s awesome. I hope the enjoyment I get out of WordPress is evident through these podcasts as well.

Dave Toomey:
No, absolutely. That’s why I listen to it, because

Lee Matthew Jackson:
literally I’m just having a blast. WordPress. It sounds geeky, but WordPress is my life. I think I’ve said on the podcast before, like, I’ll be sat in the front room watching TV with the wife and I’ll have, I’ll be messing around with something on WordPress and she’ll think I’m working. And I’m like, no, seriously, this is not work right now. I am having some great fun. It’s not even related to a client. I’m just seeing if I can do something because it’s just cropped up.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Can I make WordPress do this? Damn it. I really want to have a go. And then I’ll sit there for like three hours just having a blast with it.

Dave Toomey:
I’m sitting here smiling because it is so true. It’s like, yeah, we’re watching a movie together in the cinema or something. Hold on. If I use CSS there and just move. Hold on. Okay. Yeah. Nah.

Dave Toomey:
When I get home, the first thing I’m going to do is turn off the parallax on that. Rol.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes, even that, Even that. Even small things like that mine are usually based around. I could create an application and it could do this. And I’ve got like all these half made things that I’ve made in front of the TV just because they’re just good fun to do. And then once I’ve achieved it, I don’t use it until like three months later when a client says, hey, I really need something that does this. And I’m like, oh, I just did that.

Dave Toomey:
Well, 99% of those thoughts don’t come to fruition, but it’s the 1% that are gold.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly.

Dave Toomey:
That’s the thing. You got to have the 99 to get to the 1 you know you’re

Lee Matthew Jackson:
dropping some great one liners, including make money from your passion. And that one that you just said that I can’t repeat because my brain’s just gone blank. I blame the beer.

Dave Toomey:
It’s Friday.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
It is Friday and it’s five o’.

Dave Toomey:
Clock.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Somewhere. Somewhere. That’s what I said to you earlier.

Dave Toomey:
Exactly.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So you’ve kind of diversified your offering. Now you’re launching an exciting new service that I’m obviously very interested in, given. Given the background. I’m working with design agencies. And one of the problems is content, and that’s actually getting content either from the client or, or my clients, who are all mainly design agencies, not really having any copywriters in house and I can kind of put together some copy. But, you know, I, yeah, I do what I can do, but it’s not my passion, nor is it my, you know, absolute skill. So can you tell me about the new agency that you, that you’re launch launching, Sorry, agency scribes, kind of how this has come about?

Dave Toomey:
Well, agency scribes, agencyscribes.com is effectively, the idea is, you know, scratching my own itch as a WordPress developer, as a consultant, as an agency in any way, shape or form. One of the biggest problems we have is that we can get, for want of a better phrase, wireframing prototyping done based on conversations and imagery and things like that. But what we can’t do is complete the site to go live and that holds up invoicing, that holds up completing projects. I mean, I have one guy that I have, and we’re still not finished 12 months down the road. And it’s about content. Content is the roadblock. So. And when I talk to some of the clients is, well, they have an idea of what they want to write and how they want to put it into words, but they can’t do it themselves.

Dave Toomey:
And then if you, you know, in the past we said, look, go on upwork or go on freelance or go whatever. And that’s a minefield because you’re, you’re, you know, it’s, it’s a crapshoot. You know, you put pay money and you get rubbish, whatever. So what I did is develop my own team and offer the service of content writing, content marketing, email, autoresponder series, etc. Everything that’s content about building a website for a client and saying, look, we can produce this content. And I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s simpler than you think. And what I mean by that is the content or the message that your client wants to get out is in there in their head. But to actually turn that want into an actual finished site with the content doing what it should be doing for their business, it’s such a roadblock, mentally.

Dave Toomey:
It creates stress for them that what we say in Ireland is put it on the long finger. I’ll get to that tomorrow. And tomorrow turns into a week, and a week turns into a month. Yeah, put it on the wrong finger.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.

Dave Toomey:
And you as an agent, an agency, depending on how you’ve set up your invoicing and your contracts with them, you know, you, you’ve got your 50% deposit, you’ve done all the work and now you’re waiting for your other 50% or your 30% or whatever your final invoice is. And over time, that, that has an effect on cash flow of all businesses because you’re not getting content the work in because you can’t go live with a half site. Now, not only is that bad for the business, putting a site live without the right content on it, but it’s also bad for you because you can’t then use that as an example in your portfolio because you don’t want to put your name to something that is bad. So what we’ve done is come up with a few package offerings where we will say we can do the content for you. And it’s like I said, it’s not easy, but it’s simple. And basically what we want to do is offer you the chance to offer your clients a content service so that A, you can charge for that, and B, it takes away the roadblock of getting your site built, done faster, you get paid faster, you’re a hero on the client’s eyes because you’ve taken away that massive roadblock and stress from them. And they can get their brilliant new website that you’ve developed and designed out into the real world. They can start making sales, start having conversations with their customers, and actually see the results of the money they’ve paid you to build their site.

Dave Toomey:
And until that happens, you’re an expense. And as WordPress developers, we know that once it’s out there and doing the job that it should be doing for a business, it’s not an expense, it’s a necessity. And the way the world is going and the Internet is blowing up. When was the last time you opened the Yellow Pages?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I don’t think I ever did. I think the Yellow Pages was so uncool by the time I was 16, I just used the Internet. Yeah.

Dave Toomey:
Just so long ago. So, you know, all businesses have a need for it and that’s just the way it is. And that stomping block was in my business. So I said, okay, I’m going to build a team, we’re going to do it. And now I’m offering that Service to other designer WordPress agencies.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So for my brain, I’m literally thinking right now, what you’re saying to me is I could put in the main bar or in my services section, copywriting, which would link through to a page saying we do amazing copywriting, yada yada yada. Click here, they will call me and give me all the information. I’ll then call you and go, all right mate, I got a quote here. You’ll give me a quote. I give them a marked up quote because I can charge whatever the hell I want. Yeah, exactly. You then call, hey, this is Dave from Lee Jackson. Dev, let’s get pick your brain.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All right, great, go away, do the content delivery. Job done. Everyone’s a winner.

Dave Toomey:
Well, there’s two things to that. One is we’ve productized our offerings. So we have a launch IT plan which is basically static pages of content, content homepage about page, product and service page, contact page, things like that.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s like five pages or something.

Dave Toomey:
Exactly, yeah. Five high quality pillar articles. What we call pillar articles are basically unique content on there that connects your audience at the highest possible level. So if you’re a dentist, you’re talking, you know what your clients are most paying you for, most interested in. So we can have five or five things and we will write pillar articles about those things. So they’re the main chunk of stuff on your site. And we would hope and expect that 12 months from now those five articles are the most visited articles on your site because they really go to the heart of the client’s problem or the client’s client’s problem. Next we produce a written lead magnet.

Dave Toomey:
Now that could be an A4 sheet with a checklist or a tip sheet or a couple of sheets, that’s an e book. And thirdly, we provide a 5 part email autoresponder series. And the whole thing is about getting a potential client to become a paying client. So there’s copy on the website, an email opt in and the email series to promote the product or service that your business has. So we really encourage email list building, which as a WordPress consultancy you should be offering all your clients. Like, I mean it’s the first thing you should be doing is building a list. And if you’re providing that service where you can add in email services as an agency to your clients, there’s a recurring income there. So if we can provide the content for those emails, there’s a recurring income there.

Dave Toomey:
So as a launch IT package, we do five pages of content copywriting, five pillar Articles, a lead magnet PDF and a five part email responder series and a few other little things. And that’s one packet. And then we have the monthly packet which is once you’ve done that, you want to encourage your client to keep promoting their website using content. So content marketing. So we would have a monthly package where we would provide four high quality articles. Not necessarily pillar articles, but excuse me, but content articles that people will come back to very specific types of articles. Like if you were a plumber, we might do an article on the three things you might call a plumber when it’s not an emergency, like boiler maintenance, you know, things like that. So there are reasons that people would still come to your website as a plumber if they’re not having an emergency.

Dave Toomey:
That’s an example of an article and more email content. And we do some social media promotion of those articles to get traffic to your site. So that’s a monthly service. And then the last one is the kitchen sink. Just straight off the bat. We do the whole lot. The two productized services slammed into one. So we only have three offerings at the moment, but that’s how we do it.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s really good. I think, guys, if you head on over to agencyscribes.com I just had a look whilst you were talking through that. I was listening. Don’t worry, I was following. But I was just intrigued to have a look because you kind of. You springed, sprang, whatever. Something in my mind about the whole idea of I tend to build websites and I think a lot of us do this and I definitely do this. I tend to focus on the website build and then very often we forget that kind of ongoing process.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
But what you’re doing by not only offering, hey, here is a value, a valuable service, Mr. End Client for X. We can give you all of the copy for your website, five pages. And we can give you these five key pillar articles which are going to help with SEO and help drive people to your site. But also we’re going to set you off on the right track with regards to email campaigns, etc. And I guess the beauty of that is that that is then something that I as an agency can then continue to monetize with my client. Because why would I expect my client to know how to market their website and make it successful after I’ve built it? Whereas I know how to do that, my client doesn’t. But we do.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I so often forget that. So you know, just looking at that, it just reminds me, crap, there are things I need. There is so much of a post go live that I could be doing to help clients. I mean not me so much because obviously it’s actually I work for agencies and some agencies are good at doing that and others are on. But I’m thinking of the ones that aren’t good at doing that. I should be helping them with that as well because that’s only ever going to lead back to me with more business as well. So yeah, that’s, that’s 100.

Dave Toomey:
I mean if we, if I talk to my agency friends, basically, you know, it’s a small enough community. WordPress agencies, you know, small two, three, four man teams and women. Excuse me.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Larissa would be appalled if you heard that.

Dave Toomey:
Listen, I’m. I am a huge fan of that woman. I’m telling you, I’m a huge fan for that girl to go into your business with no experience and to do what she’s doing because you’ve taught her how to do it and have to look at your face every day. I’m a big fan of Larissa.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Apparently that’s part of the. She. She actually, she liked. She. She said that. But she doesn’t mind seeing my face every day. I’m a very beautiful man.

Dave Toomey:
So she’s got bad eyesight.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, she does wear quite thick glasses.

Dave Toomey:
But if you talk to, if you talk to. I mean it’s, it’s the biggest Bugbear feast of famine, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.

Dave Toomey:
You get a load of jobs particular time of year and we’re coming to Christmas. No business is thinking about a brand new website towards Christmas. Well, few are and they should be, but they’re not. And that’s part our fault for not, you know, explaining to our clients, you know, this is the time of year need to ramp up. But the feast of famine is. What have I got that’s coming in on a regular basis now you can do website care plans, so you do the hosting and update and whatever. You can do additional services so you’re adding more pages or design or designing brochures for their business or whatever. But one of the things that we’ve shied away from as WordPress developers because we don’t think we have the expertise to do it is in content production and content marketing and email marketing and automation services.

Dave Toomey:
They have huge technical elements to a normal business owner. You know, the idea of setting up an email responders email autoresponder and opt in on a business website for the business owner is just a gigantic hurdle. But if you’re anyway half incompetent in WordPress and it takes a couple of hours of research. You can set up an opt in, you can set up a lead magnet, you can set up an autoresponder series and tell them it’s going to cost them X amount of months to have ConvertKit or a Weber. Actually ConvertKit is my favorite at the moment and they’re not going to be able to manage that, but they can see the value in having that email autoresponder when you tell them that. You know, 20 years ago it took five touch points of advertising to sell a service and people like Coca Cola knew that. They started making Coca Cola branded everything. But nowadays it’s 20, 30 touch points.

Dave Toomey:
So if you get somebody who comes to your website and knows they want a plumber but not necessarily you, well then you convince them that you have the authority to do a good job with your on site content and then you can follow up with your email service by saying, you know, we’re coming up to the winter, here’s our package for maintenance. Your boiler is on there. You know, you can keep yourself in their mind with good quality emails that point back to your website and they will keep you in their mind when it comes to I need a plumber, who was that guy that I used three years ago? Or I can’t find them in the yellow pages or Google anymore. But if you’re emailing them on a regular basis, you’re keeping in mind now as a WordPress agent, offering that service to the business owner is a recurring income because that has to be maintained the same as hosting in a website. You have to put fresh content in, you have to keep things going. So there’s a recurring income situation service that you can offer as an agency to your clients and the ones that get it because you’ve told them why you know, and they’ve seen it in action, they will keep you on, which means you’re even more invaluable. So you’ve got the recurring income and you’re the hero in their eyes, the guy that can do or wrong.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s awesome. You know my tagline used to be your WordPress heroes.

Dave Toomey:
No, I did not.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I kind of took that out because it’s a bit cheesy. But some of some of our older clients still joke about it and every time we do something good they’re like, ah, this is why you’re our WordPress heroes. And everyone’s like chuckling, I don’t know why.

Dave Toomey:
I’ve got visions of top gun or something 80s pop movie. You’ve done.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
I love the 80s and I love those big sunglasses. Ah, so cool.

Dave Toomey:
But I mean, I mean, to use an analogy, just to sort of boil it down, because I have a tendency to waffle on. I mean, the website basically is like buying a car. You buy a car, you spend your money, it’s brand new, it’s clean, everything’s ground. Well, the content’s like the engine, it drives the car. But, you know, regular content and email marketing is the fuel. Because when you buy a car and fill up the tank of petrol, it will only drive so far before you have to add more fuel. So gas or petrol, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live in. And that’s one of the ways you can, you know, approach your client and say, look, you’ve now got this fancy new car, it’s going to need servicing and you’re going to need to put some fuel in the end, you know, to make it run.

Dave Toomey:
And these are the services we offer to make you do that. Now, they may not go for it, but a percentage will. And that’s recurring income for your business as a WordPress agency developer.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, yeah.

Dave Toomey:
So the fuel that we offer is content.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now with regards to content, then there’s going to be some people listening right now who will be suffering from mental block. I know this sometimes when I’m writing scripts for like future podcasts, I mean, I write, I don’t write full scripts, I write bullets and stuff like that. But still, still I’ll get stuck or I’ll be writing a blog. Like I did a flurry of four blogs last week or the week before because I didn’t realize I hadn’t written anything for absolutely weeks. But for those people who are suffering, can we just pick your brain for free for a little bit and just get some content writing tips from you? And I guess the first thing is, do you have any kind of particular time of the day where you start to write content or could you describe the environment you like to write content in?

Dave Toomey:
Yeah, absolutely. And the problem is it’s different for everybody. But it’s about when you’re on a high, I call it. So particularly during the day when I’m doing particular work or whatever, I may not feel like writing. I don’t have that creative juices flowing. So I’ll do a couple of things. One is I’ll stretch. Right, I know, listen, this is not tree hugging, yoga, Pilates type stuff.

Dave Toomey:
I’m not into, you know, angels. But if you stretch, it gets blood pumping. Now the most important thing to get blood to apart from your heart is your brain. So when we’re sitting down as computer geeky people sitting at a computer screen, we tighten up, our knees are bent, our hips are bent, we do everything, stretch. Secondly, go for a walk, right? Just stretch out, take some water with you and go for a five minute walk three times a day. During the day, get up off your chair and walk somewhere and don’t let it be the same thing. Just down the park, out the front door, walk around your house, look at the sky, look at the birds, whatever. It just freshes the mind a little bit.

Dave Toomey:
And I suppose the third thing I would do is talk to people, right? In this world that we live in nowadays, I’ll go get my coffee at the coffee shop, I’ll ask for Americano, I’ll pay the guy the money and I’ll walk out the door. Whereas if I’d approached it by saying, hey, how are you doing? What are you getting on? Did you see the rugby last night? And he says yes. Well then, now we have a connection, we can talk. The next time I say, how you getting on? Cool. And he’ll say, had a college assignment or whatever. And now we’re starting to interact and that helps with writing. Content is conversation, it’s about talking to people. And we don’t do it often enough nowadays.

Dave Toomey:
Now if you come up against a wall and some guy’s a miserable git and doesn’t want to talk to you, just move on to the next person. You’re not trying to come across as a stalker, you just want to converse with people. And there’s a very serious reason to do this. And the serious reason is web content is not about words, it’s about conversations. You’re trying as a business owner to have a conversation with somebody who wants use your services. And if you have a conversation rather than shouting at someone, you’re more likely to be engaged with that person and use their services. Whereas a lot of the mistakes we see on website copy is it’s about shouting at people, buy my crap, right? And it’s, that’s totally the wrong way to go about it. So we look at three things when we’re writing copy for our clients clients, which is their voice.

Dave Toomey:
So we do, or we ask the agency to do it, is have a 60 minute conversation about their business and their goals and record it. Because the way people say things will influence how best to write the website copy. Secondly, their audience understand who their audience is. You as a business owner, your job in writing copy is not to write copy for you and your peers, that is other plumbers or other mechanics or other. Or whatever the business is. Your job is to write people who don’t know the language that your peers know. So you’re writing content for people that don’t understand technical terms in your business. So you want to learn about their audience by asking the client these questions about their audience.

Dave Toomey:
And the most important thing at the end is what are the goals of the website? Because you need to then write the content in such a way that it pushes the potential clients towards the website’s goals. Now, that might be be to get on an email list, it might be to sell a widget, or it might be to book a call, or it might be to visit a premises, but you always keep that in mind. What’s the voice of the business owner, what’s the audience language that they use, etc. A prime example of this is if you asked me to write a thousand words on the importance of security to the United States of America in 2017. Now, now, if I am Donald Trump, I’m writing that article completely differently than if I’m Hillary Clinton. And my audience that’s reading this article, if I’m Donald Trump, is completely different to the audience that’s reading Hillary Clinton’s article. So you’ve got the voice of the person speaking the content or putting the content out there, how the audience is engaging with that content, and the goal. So you get those three things, you’re golden.

Dave Toomey:
And that’s what we do, and that’s how we do it, is we like to talk to our clients or the agents that have those clients to get a better understanding of the voice of the person that we’re writing the content for, the type and the avatar of the audience the content is for. And the ultimate goal that every piece of content, word, sentence, podcast image, video on your website should be pushing people

Lee Matthew Jackson:
towards, that is so good. The voice, the avatar, and the goal.

Dave Toomey:
That is gold.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Me. Absolute gold. Love it.

Dave Toomey:
And when you, when you understand those three things sitting down with a blank piece of paper is, it’s, again, like I said, it’s not, it’s not easy, but it’s simple. You know, you keep those three things in mind.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Do you mean that the. In theory, the process and keeping those in mind do make it simple still, you have to create. But creating without those, I’ll call them pillars, for now, we call them what you want. But without those three things in place, it almost becomes impossible, which is probably what we all struggle with. When we’re looking at a blank piece of paper and we don’t really know the voice who’s reading this and necessarily what we’re wanting to achieve, we just feel like, I need to put something out right now, and that’s not a good way to get started.

Dave Toomey:
Exactly. And the other thing about it is what you don’t want is. Yeah, what you want is you want to attract your ideal customers, and you’ll get people that are not your ideal customer but are slightly on the edges, the fringes of being your ideal customer. And that’s fine. But you also don’t want unideal customers, you know, and very quickly, content can actually create fan bases or a tribe of customers, people that will sing your praises as your business by having that connection, that engagement through your content. And again, content could be images, could be podcasts, it could be, you know, articles, whatever. That’s what we specialize in. But, you know, it could be any form of present of you and your business to the world should have a connection to your ideal client.

Dave Toomey:
And that’s why knowing your audience and knowing your goals and being familiar with the voice that you have is just, you know, there are people out there that make millions and millions, millions. Swearing constantly, you know, or doing stupid things like, I don’t know, you know, those guys used to hit themselves, all sorts of stuff on MTV. Jackie ass, jackass. Yeah, like, I mean, 20 years ago you said, okay, you know, this guy’s on telly hitting himself in the head with a baseball bat. Like, if I said that to my dad, who’s passed away, but if I said that to him, there’s a TV show where this guy hits himself around the head with a baseball bat and throws himself off stuff and shoots himself with, you know, pellet guns. He would be mortified if. How can that happen? These guys made millions because they were told, because they were talking to a particular audience, they weren’t talking to my dad. So similar sort of thing when it comes to your website and content.

Dave Toomey:
Yes, the WordPress developer, the design agency, is going to make it work great and look great. But content is what connects your audience to you and your business. And once you have that in the forefront of your mind, then things become easier when it comes to production.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Now, I understand you have a free gift to WP innovator listeners to help them unpack the importance of content and marketing in more detail. Can you tell us more about it?

Dave Toomey:
Yeah. Basically what we’ve done is we produced what I call a white label, white paper so it’s an ebook. It’s only a few pages, but it explains from the point of view of, again, talking to the audience, your business owner, understanding why content is so important to their website and their business and how they portray it. But what we’ve done is rather than put our bracket branding all over it, because they are not our ultimate customer, you know, you, the website developer or the agency is. So we’ll give away the website, this document that you can put your own branding on. You can reword it, you can do whatever you want, but we’ve written it with explaining content and how important it is to the end, end user. So then you can take that and give it away as an email opt in. Or you can email it to your clients, or you can put it on your website.

Dave Toomey:
And all we ask is that you fill in the blanks with your business’s email and web address. And if you want to use your own graphics, whatever, that’s fine. But we’ll just, we’ll give you that so that you can promote content as a service from your business to your clients, rather than us trying to promote it to your clients. You promote it as a service you provide, and we give you the tools to do it. And one of those tools is this document. So we’re going to give that away for free.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
That is cool. And that’s going to be over on agencyscribes.com wpinnovation and I’ll put the link in the show notes as well.

Dave Toomey:
Perfect. All one word.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All one word, all lowercase.

Dave Toomey:
And then on the same page, there’ll be a contact form if anybody’s out there listening and wants us to have a chat. Not a problem. Jumping on Skype for a few minutes and discussing possibilities of working together. Happy to pimp and promote our service.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Definitely. That’s so cool, man. And the idea of giving away that free white labeled white paper is brilliant. And I was sitting there as you were saying it thinking there are at least three I could do to send to all of my clients and say, guys, use this in your marketing. Why the hell haven’t I thought of that one? So thanks. That’s a great idea. Totally stealing it.

Dave Toomey:
Oh, absolutely. 100%. I mean, it’s the easiest way to get a roadblock out of the way is provide the tools. And then, I mean, if I’m an agency owner and you give me a document that I know is meant for my clients or my customers or my potential customers that explain something I do and I haven’t got the time or the inclination to sit down and write something or produce a video or something. It’s one of the simplest ways to market without marketing is to produce white papers for your clients to use for their clients. Simple, easy.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah, mate, you’ve been absolutely awesome. Thanks. Obviously, no problem for the free gift because that’s cool even if people just use it for educational purposes. Awesome. But. But I do hope you get some leads as well from that because that’s fantastic. And thanks for letting me steal the idea as well. And I’m sure a few people listening right now are thinking, crap, I need to do the same.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
So how can people connect with you socially and through the site? What’s the best ways, the simplest way?

Dave Toomey:
If you’re listening to this, go to agencyscribes.com wpinnovator all one word and all the details of how you can connect with us on social media. And all the bits and pieces are on that page. So don’t worry about looking for, you know, also we’re on Facebook and we have a Twitter account and everything, but it’s all fairly new that side of things because we’ve just been working direct. Now we’re kind of going out to the big bad world and there’ll be more on there. But if you go to agencyscribes.com WP Innovator, then there’ll be enough there to whet your appetite.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
To whet your appetite. And also if you want to join the Facebook group, guys, it’s leejacksondev.com group that will redirect you. I believe, Dave, you are still a member. Haven’t got sick of cat pictures and anything else that we post in there. So you’ll be able to Dave to me him and no to ask him questions that everyone can get involved with because that would be freaking awesome. To get more conversations going. Mate, you’re a legend. Thank you so much for your time.

Dave Toomey:
Honestly, it’s been an honor. It’s been. I. I managed to finally, like I said to you earlier, I managed to finally talk to Lee Jackson in real time. I’m used to hearing you in my head, you know, in the car or whatever. But now I’m. It’s live. It’s Lee Jackson live.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Brilliant in your ears, am I?

Dave Toomey:
Hello, brilliant. And I will say, I mean, you’ve helped me. Like, there’s a couple of people that I like. Brian Jackson. Brian Jackson’s a legend. Love Brian Jackson stuff. Yeah, he gets content marketing, Brian. I mean, I know, I know it’s his job, but he gets it and if you, you know, you can read some of Brian’s stuff, you can see what he’s doing in.

Dave Toomey:
In a marketing sense and using content marketing for the businesses he’s worked for. I think it’s Kinsta he’s working for now and, you know, just even look at some of his own all blog posts and go back through the stuff he’s written and how he does it. It’s just fabulous. And I wouldn’t have known about Brian without WP Innovator.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, there you go. So if you’re listening to WP Innovator podcast right now and it has helped you, then please do go to itunes and leave us a review because that really, really helps. And if you know anybody as well that would benefit from the podcast, really want to get the word out there because we want to help as many people as we can. And thanks. Thanks for the that, mate. I’m very pleased. You know, Brian’s middle name is Lee as well, which is kind of cool. So Brian Lee Jackson.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah. We were cracking up about that when we first met and we’re both. We’re Both in the WordPress circles as well, so kind of cool.

Dave Toomey:
Has he written any books?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
No, he’s not.

Dave Toomey:
Do you have any of his books?

Lee Matthew Jackson:
No, I’m not a stalker, mate.

Dave Toomey:
Oh, fantastic.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
All right. Take care of yourself.

Dave Toomey:
Pleasure. Absolutely. Take care.

Lee Matthew Jackson:
And that wraps up episode number 52. Happy anniversary. If you want to tell us what you have loved about the WP Innovator podcast over the last year, then head on over to leejacksondev.com group. You’ll be redirected. Sorry. To the Facebook group and it’ll be great to hear what was your favorite episode, what episode made you laugh the most, and what would you like to see over the next year? So come on, head on over, join us in the Facebook group. Thanks for listening. Have a great day and keep innovating.