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Your 3-Step Process for Getting Your Content Done (Finally)

June 9, 2017 | Content Marketing

Do you have a piece of content or a writing project that you’ve been putting off (hello, procrastination!) and you really need to get back in the swing of things?

Maybe it’s a blog post that you’re ignoring, updating (or writing) your about page (or other website content), upping your Instagram game, an email series, ecourse or podcast you want to launch, a digital product or new opt in…

#Allthethings, anyone?

If creating content feels like it’s all too hard, you don’t have enough time, and it’s taking your attention away from other areas of your biz, then it’s time for an intervention, my friend.

Sarah here. As a web designer, I know that content is what makes a website an effective, hard-working selling machine. So I asked my friend Brogan to talk about the vital importance of content creation. I know you’re going to love this guest post!

3 Step Process for Getting Your Content Done

So let’s dive straight into your 3-step process for getting your content project done and dusted (like FINALLY):

Reflect, Review, Plan

While it may seem a bit weird to start here (and not just dive right into your project) it’s really important that we start from a place of reflection, reviewing and planning. That way, we can see what’s worked well in the past, what hasn’t worked so well + put your writing project into the bigger context of your business.

Like always, we want to start from your why so that you can use it to drive you forward, gain momentum and see how your one writing project fits into the bigger picture.

Try this super simple “year in review” approach from Marie Forleo. It’s applicable at any time of year!

Why Your Pricing Strategy Is Leaving You Burned Out and Broke

May 19, 2017 | Career Advice, Freelance, Lifestyle, Managing a Small Business, Most Popular, Show on Homepage

You thought of everything when you came up with your hourly charge or your product’s price. You thought about:

all of the time and supplies that went into it
how much you need to make in sales plus taxes to make your desired yearly income
how many you’d be able to sell

But you forget to factor in the benefits. I bet you’re thinking, “But if I’m a freelancer, I’m setting my own hours and I’m my own boss. Aren’t those my benefits?”

Nah, girl, I’m talking about paid leave like vacation and sick days, and health and life insurance, and a retirement fund.

Wait, my pricing needs to reflect my insurance costs, retirement funds, and my days off?

It sure does. You know those great benefits those working a traditional job get? You’re entitled to those, too.

Vacation days
Sick days
401K contributions
Health insurance coverage
Life insurance

Starting to feel scared? Don’t worry, I’ve created this worksheet and walked through the steps in this post to help you create a pricing strategy that includes the benefits you need as a freelancer or smaller business owner.

If you don’t add benefits into your pricing strategy you’ll end up broke or burned out.

Let’s look at how differently you calculate pricing when you include your benefits.

Sarah Eggers: How Skillcrush Graduates Can Run a Successful Business

May 18, 2017 | Freelance, Managing a Small Business, Web design

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Skillcrush’s Learn WordPress Summit! It was so great to talk to all of you Skillcrushers! If you missed the talk, you can catch it below.

Want to learn more about Skillcrush?

Check out this blog post.

Are you a recent Skillcrush grad?

Up your skills with these posts:

Updating to WooCommerce 3.0 Broke Your Image Gallery? 💔 Here’s the Fix

May 12, 2017 | Show on Homepage, Web design

Are you one of the millions of people who updated to WooCommerce version 3.0 in the last few weeks?

Then I bet you ran into this issue: the new version breaks your product image galleries.

Why did this happen? It’s because WooCommerce added new gallery features and removed old ones, and your theme doesn’t have the code it needs to show off the new look.

What’s the solution? It’s easy! Just add this code into your functions.php file.

(If you don’t know where that is, watch the Ultimate WordPress Dashboard and Theme Files Tutorial. )
Add this code to your functions.php file to fix your image gallery:

add_action( ‘after_setup_theme’, ‘yourtheme_setup’ );

function yourtheme_setup() {
add_theme_support( ‘wc-product-gallery-zoom’ );
add_theme_support( ‘wc-product-gallery-lightbox’ );
add_theme_support( ‘wc-product-gallery-slider’ );
}

That’s all for now! If you are having an issue with WordPress, just ask! It might turn into the next blog post or tutorial.

How to Make A CSS Change to A Single Page in WordPress

April 13, 2017 | Show on Homepage, Web design

Wanting to make a change on your WordPress site, but wish that change would only affect certain pages? Well, you can do that! All you have to do is signify the page id number in your CSS.

what good does changing just one page do me?

Being able to change a single page is one of my most requested a la cart services. I have many clients who don’t want page titles to appear on certain pages or want to swap out their hero images on pages to make page-specific hero images. (I did that on my about page.)

Common uses for page-specific styling:

Have different hero images/headers for each page
Having different styles on a landing page
Remove page titles from a select number of pages
Show/hide content on certain pages that’s not in widgets

Note: In order to do this, you’ll need a basic understanding of CSS. You can quick pick up CSS knowledge from a free resource like Skillcrush’s 10-Day Boot Camp, or you can go full steam ahead in my Web Design Crash Course for Creative Bloggers.

So how do I find the page id?

It’s fairly simple! All you have to do is add the page id to the CSS style. You can find the page id by using Inspect Element or by going into edit the individual page in WordPress.

Here’s the page id for my About Me page. You can see that it says page-id-3731.

You can also grab the page id from the URL when you’re editing a page. It’ll be right after the post=.

How do I write the code?

Now that you know the page id number, you can write the code. All you do is add .page-id- before the page id number. In our example, my About Me page id number is 3731, so the code would be .page-id-3731.

Then you add that whole line of code .page-id-3731 before your style changes. When you put the page id first, you’re telling the code that you want your style change to only affect that specific page.

Here’s an example of the page id code. This CSS code says that I want to have a different hero/background image on my About Page.

Where do I put the code?

Your code goes inside your stylesheet.css file, or in the Additional/Custom CSS area in your theme Customization or Theme Options menu.

Wondering where that is? Watch this video lecture.

And that’s it!

It really is that easy. Now go forth and make engaging and unique changes to your website!

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