And that you really ought to invest in an email list management service if you want your business emails to look professional.

So you dutifully went out and signed up for AWeber — or you’re about to.

But now, you’re stuck.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, you’re not alone — and there is a way out. I’ve talked to other business owners in just your situation, I’ve listened to their questions and frustrations, and I finally got together with life coach and master perception-shifter Shannon Wilkinson to do something helpful, doggone it!

Earlier this summer, Shannon and I held a free teleclass entitled Three ways to get more out of your AWeber investment. You can get the recording of that class by clicking that link.

Then we taught a four-week workshop all about AWeber, which was a ton of fun and helped some complete AWeber novices get a solid start with their email marketing plans.

Now, we’ve turned that workshop into a home-study course, and everyone who buys it before September 21 will get invited to a follow-up bonus teleclass to get your AWeber questions answered live.

Love Your List: Cozying up to AWeber to build relationships with your right people

This home-study course is for you if:

• You’ve got Aweber (or are about to sign up), and you’re asking yourself, “now what?”
• You’re a do-it-yourselfer who wants step-by-step instructions and compassionate guidance as you learn the basics of AWeber.
• You find yourself easily overwhelmed or frustrated by technology.

Each of the four one-hour audio recordings features help and tips from me and my fabulous co-host, Shannon Wilkinson. And the audios are accompanied by a PDF workbook chock-full of screen shots, instructions, and examples.

1. Walk through each step with Wendy. During this portion of the audio, you’ll listen to a step-by-step explanation of a specific AWeber task. You’ll be able to follow along in your workbook, looking at screen shots that illustrate each step.
2. Shift your perceptions with Shannon. She’ll lead a group exercise that will help address the anxieties, worries and fears that arise naturally when learning a new technological task. Instead of fighting these fears, or letting them dominate you, we’ll put them into perspective. We encourage you to listen to these confidence-boosting exercises as many times as you need to.
3. Take action with handy checklists. Now that we’ve shown you the steps to take and addressed the questions and issues that have kept you from doing it so far, you get to actually do the steps yourself using our checklists as a guide.
4. Get your questions answered on the course website (Premium Course only). You’ll get access to a password-protected website where you can ask your AWeber questions and see the questions others have asked (and the answers).
5. Get live help during our Bonus Call (Premium Course only). On September 21, we’ll hold a bonus Q&A call so we can answer as many of your questions as possible, live and in real-time. Premium purchasers will automatically receive an email invitation.

The complete home-study course will be ready for delivery on September 14. If you order it before then, we’ll thank you by giving you a special discounted pre-sale price.

And remember, anyone who buys the Premium course before September 21 will get invited to our bonus follow-up teleclass, where we’ll be doing AWeber Q&A live.

Check out the Love Your List workshop page for details and ordering information. Got a question? Feel free to leave a comment here, or talk to me during Open Office Hour (that’s every Thursday from 10am to 11am Pacific time).

Related posts:

1. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List
2. How to get your shopping cart and mailing list to play nicely together
3. Upcoming classes: Backups, Upgrades, & Web Colors

Do you know Tara? She’s amazing. Not only does she create handmade, beautiful, eco-friendly yarn, but she delights in figuring out — and then turning around and teaching — smart business-y stuff.

The kind of stuff that one-person businesses, like yours and mine, can really use. Like how to find the right people to buy your stuff, and how to find the right price for said stuff. Whether said stuff is handmade or purely digital.

And now she’s going to tackle The Newsletter Question, and she asked me to help with the technological side. Since I love teaching live classes, I was thrilled to say yes. And I am positive that I will learn new things from her part of the class, too, so count me double-thrilled!

What happens to the people who come by your website but decide not to buy?

Do they have something low-risk and totally free to DO?
Or do they wander away, forgetting all about their intention to return and buy their aunt that gift?

The easiest way to grab these potential right-people is to give them something.  Something free, something that gives them regular doses of your awesomeness that is totally risk free.

Often this is a newsletter.

But forget those notions of boring family newsletters or  corporate HR newsletters or spammy mcspammerson everyday buybuyBUY messages.

No, we’re talking about relevant, desired, down-right delightful love notes.

From you.
For your people.
To build trust.
To entice.
To delight.

You may already have a newsletter.
Or you may be too overwhelmed with the tech stuff to start.

In either case, we’ve got you covered.

Tara already has several different newsletter-ish things, each one thrilling her with the way it fulfills her business needs (whether that’s connecting with her people, making sales or growing her business).

On September 8, Tara’s going to teach you her best make-your-people-happy newsletter tricks.

And on September 15, I’ll explain the tech steps you’ll need to take to put those tricks into action.

Each class is $30, or you can get both as a package deal for $50. Go to Tara’s Delightful Newsletters page to sign up.

Each class includes:

• Invitation to hour-long live teleclass
• Chance to ask your questions before or during the class
• Recording of the hour-long lecture
• Pretty PDF Summary of everything we cover
• Checklist on setting up newsletter (for How To Make class ONLY)

Related posts:

1. Webinar starts tomorrow!
2. “Is everything delightful?” or, why market to your existing customers
3. WordPress Webinar begins tomorrow!

I’ve been invited to use a Google Group, but I want to use a different email address than the one used to invite me. Can I change my email address in my Google Group profile? Or add a different address?

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that the way you accomplish this depends on the way your addresses are viewed by Google.

This post should help those of you with more than one email address. Especially since you probably have a darned good reason for having multiple email addresses (to filter specific types of email to specific accounts, for instance), and right now Google seems to be messing you up.

There are two scenarios that could give rise to this situation.

Scenario 1: You just want to add another email address to your existing Google account

You can add an alternate email address to your Google account (here are Google’s help pages for alternate email addresses), and then choose which of those emails to use for your Google Group stuff. Here are the steps to follow:

1. When logged into any Google service (gmail, Groups, Blogger, Reader, Calendar, etc.) look in the top right corner of your screen. Click the link that says “My Account.” It might also be in a drop-down labeled “Settings.”
2. Under Personal Settings (right column) of the Google Account page, you’ll see your email address. Click the small blue link below it that says “Edit.”
3. On this page, you can enter an additional email address (it won’t replace your existing email address) to use with this Google Account. You could also change your address, but I’d recommend keeping the same main address and adding an alternate address as saner in the long run.
4. Google will send a verification message to this alternate email address, containing a link you must click.
5. After you’ve clicked the link, you should be able to log into any Google Group, click “Edit my membership,” and choose from a drop-down menu containing your verified email addresses to use for all notifications etc. for that group. Don’t forget to click “Save these settings.”

That should do it for most people.

Scenario 2: You have more than one Google account

You’ll know you fall into this category if you followed the Scenario 1 steps, but got stopped at Step 3 by Google telling you that you can’t use the additional email address because it’s already associated with a Google account.

This also happens if you try to use a gmail address as an alternate email address — because a gmail account is automatically a separate Google account. Gah!

Most people don’t need more than one Google account, but it’s quite easy to get there by accident. I’m actually one of those myself — I have an “old” Google account that I used to create blogs on Blogger long ago, and then somehow I ended up setting up a totally new one so I could use gmail. So if that’s what happened to you, rest assured, you’re not alone.

Google does not provide a way to merge two Google accounts. Here’s their official help page saying there’s no way to merge accounts.

So you can either choose to use the invited address for your Google Group (see Google’s help topic on using multiple Google accounts simultaneously), or you can join the group again with your preferred Google account (this might involve asking the Group administrator to re-invite or re-add you with a different address, if it’s an invitation-only Group).

Hope this helps!

Google is huge and mighty and sometimes quite confusing. Got more Google questions? Leave a comment here, and I’ll see if I can point you in the right direction!

Related posts:

1. WordPress plugin: Google XML Sitemaps
2. Google Calendar
3. Email Filters

Hi Wendy,

I have a question about the Atahualpa theme and spam. I just saw a google alert for my blog, and there was a mysterious reference to, uh, I don’t want to get caught in your spam filter, but let’s just say there was spam in the header. Do you know if this is a ”legitimate” part of the Atahualpa theme, or is it likely that my blog got hacked? Aside from upgrading WordPress (did that) and upgrading Atahualpa (reluctant until I understand this better), is there anything I can do to prevent further problems? Thanks!!

–Worried about hackers

Dear Worried,

Atahualpa definitely does not do this — your website content is totally determined by you, and Atahualpa never inserts content or links (the legitimate exception being the link to the theme’s author in the footer area). I hate to say it but it sounds like Intruder Alert time.

Here are a few quick tips to make your blog more secure:

1. Back up your stuff. The WP-DB Backup plugin backs up your database and the WordPress Backup plugin backs up your images, theme, and plugins. Use them both to get a complete backup of everything. Bonus tip: Give yourself some additional peace of mind by having these plugins schedule automatic weekly (or daily) backups. Then you’ll always have the ability to restore a damaged site if necessary.
2. Upgrade WordPress, all plugins, and your theme. Upgrading WordPress is a one-click process (assuming you are all backed up as Step 1 suggests). Upgrading plugins is even easier. Upgrading Atahualpa can feel really scary (depending on what version you have — recent versions have the ability to export and import Atahualpa settings files, which lends extra safety and security to the process) but I’d do it (or have someone do it for you).
3. Change your username. If your login username is still “admin,” use the plugin WPVN Username Changer to make it something different (because the easiest hacks are on accounts where the username is known, and most people leave it “admin”). New WordPress installations allow you to set a custom username with no need to use this plugin.
4. Change your passwords. At least change your WordPress login password and make sure it’s secure (at least 8 characters, with a mix of upper and lowercase and a few numbers or symbols). You may also want to change your FTP password, and even your email password (since hackers can send password-change requests to your email account).

This list is not comprehensive — there are many other safeguards, plugins, and security tricks that exist to protect your website. But these four tips will put you ahead of the pack.

If you want a professional hack-cleaning service, I have heard positive recommendations for Sucuri (not an affiliate link, since I haven’t actually used their services). Sucuri also offers a hack-monitoring service to alert you if anything suspicious is added to your site (and since sometimes these suspicious additions are invisible, unlike the header spam you immediately noticed).

Hope this helps!

Related posts:

1. How to add an audio clip to your WordPress site
2. WordPress Plugin: WP-DB Backup
3. Now you can get your WordPress installation with a cherry on top!

I handle the tech stuff (installing, configuring, plugins…if your eyes just glazed over then my services will probably help you a lot), and you get to come home to a cozy new just-for-you website and start bringing your smartnesses to your right people. You know, the ones who are out there hoping to find you and will be thrilled when they see that you have a website.

Call me during Open Office Hour any Thursday (from 10am-11am Pacific time) if you have questions or want to know if I can help you. I might even be able to give you a (free) solution right on the phone!

Here are my packages (links take you to pages that describe the packages in detail):

Basic WP Install: $99
Blog Move-In Special (Basic WP install by me, plus copyediting by Michelle Russell): $199
Bonus WP Install (includes theme customization & extra tweaks): $299
Bonanza WP Install (includes custom header and art by Amy Crook): $599

If you know someone who deserves a blog of their own, or want to tweet (I’m @wendycholbi, just @ reply me to say hello!) or send a friend to this blog post, that would be super-nice of you. And I would be way-more-than-happy to send you appreciation monies if you are one of my affiliates.

August is going to be a good month (I’ll be fresh off the train from Jen Louden’s Taos retreat!). A busy month (that’s why I’m setting aside this limited number of slots now!). A fun month (classes, ebooks and good times ahead!). A month when eight new blogs will see the light of day.

I’d love for one of them to be yours.

Related posts:

1. Go ask Johnny if you need a WordPress installation before January 11

In this no-cost one-hour call, we’ll tell you how to choose (and more importantly, how NOT to choose) a color scheme for your website, give you some solid design principles to help you use color effectively, and offer recommendations for upgrading and fine-tuning your website’s colors. Got a question about color? Join us and ask it live!

Amy is going to announce a special deal just for callers, and this call is also the official launch of our joint WordPress packages, but this is not a sales call. We’re going to have fun picking apart some websites we know and love, and learning to see web colors with a designer’s eye. We’d love to have you join us!

We’re publishing the dial-in number and access code so that you can join us easily. No strings attached, no reservation or registration required.

Free teleclass details

• Date: Wednesday, June 16
• Time: 1pm Pacific time (what’s that in your time zone?)
• Dial-in number: 402-237-2450
• Access code: 883119#

We’ll be recording the call, and we’ll be happy to send you a free copy of the recording plus a 5-page PDF handout on using color effectively online. For that, we’ll need a way to contact you. Sign up here to get on the mailing list for the call recording and handout (this handout was designed by Amy, and she’s an artist — trust me, it’s gorgeous!).

Related posts:

1. Upcoming classes: Backups, Upgrades, & Web Colors
2. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List
3. Free Teleclass April 26: Why WordPress?

I’ve taught quite a number of teleclasses about various tech topics, but I only realized recently that the setting-up and managing of teleclasses themselves is a tech topic that you might need help with.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end.

In the previous two installments I talked about conference lines and getting the word out. Today’s topic is recording your teleclass.

Why record in the first place?

If you’re just starting out, you might be a little shy or even squeamish about the idea of recording yourself talking. And I totally get that. I still get a little weirded out by listening to myself on a recording, so I’m right there with you.

But here’s the thing: There’s no downside to recording your class. That becomes pretty clear if you flip the question and ask “Why not?”

• I might say something stupid or sound dumb. Yep, you might, and no one ever has to hear the recording if you do. It’s yours. You can hide it, archive it, or delete it.
• No one will ever want to hear/download/buy the recording. Yep, that might be true. But no one will ever be able to make that choice unless you have a recording in the first place.
• I don’t know how. That’s OK, you can learn! Keep reading for your first steps.

Let’s flip these into reasons to go ahead and record:

• I might say something brilliant. However unlikely you may think this outcome, it’s at least technically possible, right? And if you do, you’ll have captured it for posterity. Bonus: If someone else says something nice about your class, you’ve captured an instant testimonial!
• If I ever want to create products to sell, having audio recordings gives me material to work with. You bet. You can even give them away as free bonuses, if you’re not ready to build an info product empire just yet.
• This is a chance to practice something new. I think it’s a great idea for us solopreneurs to learn how to do most, if not all, the work our businesses require. If there are tasks you hate, sure, you can plan to outsource them at some point, but even if you do have that plan, you’ll want to know enough about what you’re doing to describe your plans to future helpers, right? And if it turns out there are tasks you can do yourself that you don’t mind, you can save yourself some money and feel super-capable at the same time. What’s not to like?

Now that I’ve given this great pep talk, let’s move on to the actual recording how-to.

Use your conference provider’s built-in recording feature

Most of the free conference providers offer free recording of their calls. If your call provider doesn’t offer this service, or charges you for recording, you really ought to switch.

The exact procedure for starting and stopping the recording depends on the conference provider. There should be clear instructions on the provider’s website or in the email you received when you signed up. And the provider’s automated system should walk you through the process as you do it, too.

For example, when I’m hosting a call using FreeConferencePro, I just have to press *9 to tell the service to start recording. I’m prompted to enter a number to identify the call (this is just any number that I make up, and I don’t have to remember it), then the # key, and then I hear “This conference is being recorded.” And when I hang up, the recording stops.

That’s it. As few as four key presses, and I’m recording.

Your conference provider should store your recordings for you, but you should still download a copy of the recording to your own computer as soon as possible after the call (I’ll cover downloading in a future installment of this series).

Always have a backup plan

If you’re going to record the call, I highly recommend creating a backup recording. You can (probably) do it for free, so the same “there’s no downside” argument applies. There is more than one way to handle backup recording, so here are a few ways I’ve done it:

Use a paid service like AudioAcrobat or BYOAudio. Each is $19.95 per month after a 30-day free trial; those are not affiliate links since I’m not a paying subscriber of either service. I have used AudioAcrobat in the past and it does make publishing audio files very easy, but WordPress plugins can do that job just as easily for $0. To record a conference call, you’ll need three-way calling to connect the AudioAcrobat recording service with your conference line.

Use your computer to record directly. This only works if you’re going to use Skype or a similar VoIP service for your call (which in general I don’t recommend due to possible connection and clarity problems), and if you have audio recording software and know how to use it. You’ll also likely end up with a recording that features your voice loud and clear, while any other voices on the call will sound like they’re, well, on a long-distance line. So you’ll want to be a savvy enough audio editor to do tricks like balancing out the volume levels. Not for the faint of heart.

My current favorite backup: TalkShoe.com. It’s a hybrid of an Internet radio network and a conference-call service, allowing both live webcasts and private invitation-only calls. I simply set up a private call, dial in using three-way calling, and have TalkShoe automatically record the entire call. Come to think of it, you could do this three-way-calling backup-recording dance with any other free conference service (or even another FreeConferencePro account).

Got a question about any of these services, or about recording conference calls? Leave me a comment or talk to me during my Open Office Hours!

Related posts:

1. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 1: Conference Lines
2. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 2: Getting the Word Out
3. My computer is dead, but my teleclass is ALIIIVE!

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 10), I’m Cairene MacDonald’s guest for a special Bite the Candy workshop on backups and upgrades. So if you’ve been putting off backing up your hard drive, or upgrading your WordPress plugins, or you want support with other backup-and-upgrade-related issues, join us for a dose of reassurance and some focused work time.

Learn all about Bite the Candy and sign up here.

Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, I’m holding a free Color Clinic teleclass with artist Amy Crook of Not Dead Yet Studios and Antemortem Arts. We’ll talk about the do’s and don’ts of choosing colors for your website (I’ve got lots of stuff to ask Amy, because I’m a builder, not a designer — I deliver function, and the form is pretty much up to you), plus we’ll announce our top secret joint project!

Learn about the Color Clinic and sign up here.

Finally, my Love Your List workshop with Shannon Wilkinson is going really well, and you can still join us! The live workshop runs through June 22, and you’ll have access to all the call recordings so you can catch up and get AWeber all set up to build your business. We will be packaging the recordings and creating a workbook for a home-study version, which will be priced 50% higher. So if you want all the same materials as the home-study version, for a much lower price, you’ll want to sign up now.

Learn about Love Your List and sign up here.

I love doing these live classes, and I’d be thrilled to have you join me for any of them.

Related posts:

1. Backups and Upgrades: The Greatest Hits Collection
2. Free website color clinic teleclass today!
3. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List

I’ve taught quite a number of teleclasses about various tech topics, but I only realized recently that the setting-up and managing of teleclasses themselves is a tech topic that you might need help with.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end.

Last week I talked about conference lines. Now that you have a dedicated phone number for your teleclass, how do you give that number to the people who need it?

Open the doors or close the gate?

The first decision to make is whether to require people to sign up to join the class, or just broadcast the telephone number to the world.

If you are charging admission, you obviously want to collect payment before giving people the call-in details. An example is the Bite the Candy teleclass on backups and upgrades I’m doing on June 10 with Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.

It costs $37 to register for the workshop, and Cairene has a nifty system set up so that buyers automatically receive an email message containing call details once their payment has been received (I’ll describe how I set up systems like this in future installments of this Teleclass Nuts & Bolts series).

If your teleclass will be free, it’s still a common and accepted practice to ask people to register. An example is the free teleclass called three ways to get more out of your AWeber investment (you can still sign up even though the class is over — you’ll get the recording), which I did with Shannon Wilkinson to promote our Love Your List workshop.

Why do you want people to sign up, instead of just handing out the number? So you can get your (electronic) hands on their email addresses, which you can then use to send marketing messages. In our case, we wanted to promote a paid workshop, and we also wanted a way to send people the recording after we held the live teleclass.

Of course, people will (rightfully) complain if you do this in a sleazy way, so it’s always a good idea to be upfront about what you’re going to do with their email address, and then make that something good. Such as sending them a recording of your class afterward, asking their opinion, thanking them with a special offer, or any number of other good-citizen marketing techniques.

Open to all

A note (and a question) about ungated calls: I’ve heard it said that giving something away (like an ebook) without requiring an email address means it will spread 20 to 50 times more people (not 20% to 50% more, but 20x to 50x). I’m not sure if those numbers apply to teleclasses, however (and I wonder if anyone has any information or statistics on this).

Teleclasses are different from ebooks, because they happen at a specific time. I’m sure that many more people will have access to the dial-in information if you make it public (for instance, simply publishing the phone number on your website, your blog, your Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc.). But that might not translate into more people actually calling in. Or it might. Does anyone out there know?

If you’re going to make the call-in information public anyway, I’d suggest going one step further and broadcasting your call as a live Internet radio show. You can do this for free at sites including BlogTalkRadio.com and TalkShoe.com (I personally prefer TalkShoe because there are no restrictions on when you can broadcast, you can have more live callers, and you can also schedule “private” broadcasts). People can listen on their computers or call in, you can easily get a recording (which will live on in your public archives, too), and you also get a bit more exposure by using the Internet radio site as a platform.

Countdown to the call

Whichever way you choose to set your call up, you’ll want to make yourself a Call Countdown Calendar, scheduling your publicity-generating activities so they build to a peak in the day or so before your call.

This is a chance to use your normal online activities to promote your call. For instance, if you hang out on Twitter, tweet a few times each day, and ask for retweets. Update your Facebook or LinkedIn status to include a note that you’re excited about your teleclass (with a link, of course!). Write a blog post (or several).

If you asked people to register for the call, I highly recommend that you set up a reminder email message to go out to everyone who registered, on the day before or the day of (the morning of the teleclass day is best, in my opinion). If you added them to an email list service like AWeber, it’s a cinch to set up a broadcast message containing the call-in details.

In my next Teleclass Nuts & Bolts installment, I’ll talk about recording your teleclass.

Related posts:

1. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 1: Conference Lines
2. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, Part 3: Recordings (and backup recordings!)
3. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List

Side note: “Without tears” is pretty much my preferred way to do everything, except maybe attend weddings — there’s no avoiding a meltdown of empathetic joy in that case, so I just bring tissues.

Anyway, I’ve written about upgrades in detail here on the blog, and I thought I’d collect all the related links into a handy-dandy reference in honor of biting the candy.

How to upgrade practically anything

This is a 6-part series on upgrading, inspired by my experiences upgrading WordPress from version 2.6 to 2.8. It’s written mostly about software, but the theory and practical steps apply to hardware, website stuff, and everything in between. More or less.

• Part 1: Taking Stock (or: Meeting Your Fears Where They Are)
• Part 2: Laying the Foundation (or: Back Up Your Stuff)
• Part 3: Preparation (or: Getting Out Your Ingredients)
• Part 4: Documenting (or: Show Your Work)
• Part 5: Testing (or: Run That By Me Again)
• Part 6: Postmortem (or: Monday Morning Quarterbacking)

I also wrote posts (with step-by-step screenshots) on how to upgrade WordPress and how to upgrade a WordPress plugin. Since I wrote the latter post, WordPress has introduced the ability to bulk-upgrade plugins (meaning you can upgrade a bunch of them all at once, with a single click), which is an awesome time-saver and probably means I need to write another post illustrating that process.

The backup brigade

Did you happen to notice that I devoted a whole entry (Step 2) of the upgrade series to backing up? If you go read my post about upgrading WordPress, you’ll see that I mention backups there, too. And any sane upgrade guide will tell you the same thing: Back up before you upgrade.

This is why backups and upgrades are a package deal. You need your stuff backed up before you attempt an upgrade (honestly, you need your stuff backed up no matter what, but upgrading is a great excuse!).

Here are three posts about backups:

• Back up before you upgrade (yes, this is the same link as Step 2 in the list above, because backing up is just that important).
• Detailed instructions (with screenshots) for using the WP-DB Backup plugin to backup your WordPress database
• My first post urging regular backups contains a short list of suggestions for starting a backup habit.

I’m looking forward to biting some candy with Cairene on Thursday, and I hope you’ll consider joining us!

Related posts:

1. Upcoming classes: Backups, Upgrades, & Web Colors
2. Four quick steps to make your WordPress site more secure
3. How to upgrade anything, part 2 of 6 (Heart-Centered Technology Tip)