Shingle

To the extent that our web hosting and Internet service providers allow it, our domains and websites are the ideal "storefront" upon which to hang our shingle. The irony in that, of course, is the flaw in the analogy. In cyberspace, no one sees our shingle. there is no Main street.

Instead of a shingle, we need a bullhorn. Most folks use Google to shout, "Look at me!" Some folks piggyback on popular platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Whatever bullhorn we use, the experts tell us to drive traffic back to our own websites.

I've never been big on that strategy. I tried all the old-school methods:

• EzineArticles (a form of guest posting)
• StumbleUpon
• HubPages
• Solo ads (LOL!!! Who remembers those?)
• SEO (I know it works. I got a ton of traffic on a post about fixing CAPTCHA in a plugin)
• CommentLuv

With the exception of SEO and CommentLuv, I don't bother with getting traffic to my site. But, now that I'm trying to build something that I want to sell, I'm faced with the decision to do one of two things:

1. Get on the bullhorn and promote my site
2. Go all in on someone else's platform

In my indecision, I wound up with a confusing mix of both options. I recently started publishing on BuyMeACoffee. While climbing up the learning curve, I missed an important part of the site's philosophy: an all-in-one site that does away with signups and unnecessary integrations. In the site's FAQ, it is written:

With Buy Me a Coffee, you get everything you need to run your creative business. You don't have to worry about paying for and stitching together a dozen services, from sending emails to charging for subscriptions.

I say I missed this because I was testing out Sendfox, an Email Service Provider. I got it into my head that people needed to be on my own list, rather than that of BuyMeACoffee. That's flawed thinking. If I'm not going to undertake the task of integrating everything into my website, there is no point in just doing parts of it.

In other words, why have a SendFox email list if I have nothing to offer? With BuyMeACoffee, I can already email my supporters and members.

Throw in the confusion caused by sending social media clicks to my website instead of to BuyMeACoffee and you have a muddled mess! 

Despite all of this, I am a firm believer in controlling your content. I just need to reduce the friction between getting interested people from social media to BuyMeACoffee. On my site, I'll link to my BuyMeACoffee page instead linking to SendFox with call to action to subscribe to then get an invitation to BuyMeACoffee.

I only did the SendFox method to invite family and friends without spamming them directly from BuyMeACoffee. I'm going to have to study some other creators on the platform to see how they handle the shingle.

This whole experiment reminds me of Fiverr. On Fiverr, you have something to offer and you have to promote your page via social media. It's unethical to divert Fiverr's acquired viewers to your own website. BuyMeCoffee is the opposite. In fact, it has an entire article on promoting your BuyMeACoffee page. Part of the instructions tell you to link to your website!

Eventually, I plan to use my website to drive traffic to my BuyMeACoffee page. I set up a domain, www.punagrams.com, for social media branding. That domain redirects to Morpho Designs, where it highlights just one of the puzzles I will be designing. Right now, I just have a button in the footer. Later, I may be more proactive with my Call-To-Action.

The reason I chose this style of puzzle is that it is visual, it (hopefully!) is click-worthy and share-worthy and, most importantly, I have a ton of ideas and the workflow tools to crank them them out. (You should look at Stencil)