Let’s make one thing clear before we start. When we talk about the post-COVID world, we’re not talking about the virus having disappeared, or even the pandemic having ended. Despite the strong progress of recent vaccination efforts, that would still require looking ahead to a decidedly-murky future. Instead, we’re simply talking about the world as it is today: a world changed and shaped by an ever-looming threat.
Despite technically being a blogging platform, WordPress has proven to be more than capable as a business foundation throughout recent years, and the unexpected demands of 2020 did nothing to change that — but they did complicate the process of scaling on online business. Anyone can get a business going, but making it a broad success is exponentially harder.
The rest of 2021 will feature some major challenges, and you need to be ready to face them. To that end, we’re going to go through some tips for scaling a WordPress-based business in a business landscape still heavily influenced by the pandemic. Let’s get to them, shall we?
Optimize the Appearance of Your Site
Making an effort to scale an online business obviously requires getting more eyes on the site. You may have everything figured out as far as your daily routine goes, but that doesn’t mean your site is fit to serve as the core of your online operation. Does it truly look professional enough? If you happened upon it without knowing anything about it, what would you think?
One of the many great things about WordPress is its industry-leading support for extensions and themes, so you don’t need to commit time and resources to developing a custom theme. You can simply find an existing theme that fits your needs (here’s a great WordPress themes selection), and perhaps make some minor alterations to make your site feel unique — you can get all this done within an hour.
Start Building a Formidable Team
When your business started out as a blog, you can get stuck seeing it as a solo venture — and that can hold you back from achieving its potential. There’s some great insight to be gleaned from the Marketing Speak episode Growth through Automation with Matt Astifan, a noted digital marketer, but there’s one part in particular that resonates: “Creating systems is phase one. The next phase, which is the most integral, is finding the right people to put the plans in play.”
In short, there’s so much that goes into running even a small online business that you just can’t do everything yourself. If you want to scale up, you need some employees, whether they’re full-time, part-time, or freelancers — but whenever possible, you should invest in people who might want to work for you for years to come.
Embrace Various Forms of Monetization
Given its primary focus on blogging, businesses built on WordPress sites often start as blogs before coming up with ways to make money. Regardless of the origin of your business, you can look for new monetization options to make the most of the opportunities that come your way. For instance, you could set up a Patreon account to provide exclusive content (more on this next).
The most common monetization option for WordPress sites is adding ecommerce, of course: in particular, leaning on curated dropshipping products and branded merchandise to profit without requiring a huge amount of effort. How you approach this is up to you. You can add the free WooCommerce plugin if you’re happy with managing the hosting, or use something like an Ecwid integration to connect your site to a fully-hosted sales service.
It’s important to note that Ecwid prices are split into tiers (more on this here), so choosing this option will depend on what you’re trying to achieve. You might be able to arrange a good WooCommerce hosting deal with your existing host, in which case that would be a convenient option. That said, the fully-hosted option is usually the easiest as you can start selling immediately without the need to look after the backend and IT infrastructure.
Focus on Creating High-quality Content
We touched upon the notion of offering exclusive content, and this is because a smart modern retailer won’t just offer products. It’ll also offer articles, guides, infographics, and other pieces of entertainment. This has several useful effects. Most notably, it serves to boost search rankings. Producing top-notch content that hits actionable search terms can bring in a lot of leads.
Additionally, though, it develops your expertise into a recognizable commodity that you can choose to sell. Whether you put some content behind a paywall, offer paid consultations, or do both, you can bring in significant revenue in ways that fall outside your main business model. It’s all about diversifying your income generation.
Establish an Admirable Brand Image
We touched upon the notion of offering exclusive content, and this is because a smart modern retailer won’t just offer products. It’ll also offer articles, guides, infographics, and other pieces of entertainment. This has several useful effects. Most notably, it serves to boost search rankings. Producing top-notch content that hits actionable search terms can bring in a lot of leads.
Additionally, though, it develops your expertise into a recognizable commodity that you can choose to sell. Whether you put some content behind a paywall, offer paid consultations, or do both, you can bring in significant revenue in ways that fall outside your main business model. It’s all about diversifying your income generation.
