It’s crazy to me that I’ve been blogging for over three years now. When I started I didn’t really know much about blogging. While I still feel like there is so much I don’t know, I have learned so much in the last three years. And one of the things I learned is how much more there is to blogging than just writing.
Three parts of blogging
1. Writing, photographing, and creating content
2. Sharing, promoting, and interacting with content
3. Updating website, maintaining server and domain, and backing up content
There are a lot more parts, but those are the three main things blogging boils down to for me. And each of these three things takes up a lot of time.
Juggling a full time job, a part time job, and my blog is lot for me. I can’t do it all. So I focus on doing what I love and what I’m good at.
I love creating blog content for Her Heartland Soul and fostering conversations with my readers. I also love sharing and promoting said content on social media. I’m a social media marketer. It’s my job. 😀
What I don’t love to do? Understanding what the heck is going on with the back-end of Her Heartland Soul. Up until recently, I had never backed up my site. I updated a plugin a few months ago and found myself completely locked out of my site. Her Heartland Soul was just gone. Thank goodness I was able to get it back. But it really underscored how much I was playing with fire. I was putting all this time and effort into creating years worth of content, growing my community and sharing that content with the world. All it would take for all that to go away is one mistake on my part, one hacker, one virus.
While blogging is not my full time job, I still treat it like a business. And all businesses have profits (hopefully!) and expenses. I recently decided to hire professionals to take over management of the back-end of Her Heartland Soul. I went with a business called AcceleratedWP and I could not recommend them more fully.
If you have a self-hosted blog, you know you have to pay a company to host your site. It’s for them providing you your little virtual space in the world wide web. With a traditional host that’s typically all you get; a place to store your website and a monthly backup if you’re lucky. While this was perfectly fine for me when I started out, it’s no longer enough for me as I’m working on growing my blog.
AcceleratedWP is the perfect hosting option for those looking to take their blogs to the next level, and those blogs that are already there.
It is a completely white glove hosting service.
Your site is backed up daily. It’s protected 24/7 so you never have to worry about losing your content or being hacked. If something does happen, they take care of everything for you. (Unlike other backups that simply email you a Zip folder of all your content that you then have to figure out what the heck to do with.) WordPress and its plugins are updated for you. You’re matched one-on-one with an AcceleratedWP professional who is your go-to-contact for questions and queries. I cannot tell you how amazing it is to have a technical question or concern about my website and just be able to email Joe (one of the managing partners) and get a super fast response. It is such a weight off my shoulders. All setup and mitigation is free and you are given a 30 day money back guarantee.
If this was all AcceleratedWP did, they’d be pretty amazing. But on top of the 24/7 monitoring, optimizing, and trouble-shooting they do for your site, they also make it faster. Like, a lot faster. They edited everything from my pictures to my pages to my ads to load faster. Her Heartland Soul went from having an average load time of 6.21 seconds to 3.16 seconds. That’s a 96.5% increase in speed! I want my readers to love visiting my site. I want it to be easy, enjoyable, and fun to visit and read my posts. The faster viewers can read my content and view my pictures, the better.
AcceleratedWP‘s services are more expensive than traditional web hosting services. This is because they do so much more than traditional web hosting. And that expense is worth it to me to have peace of mind concerning my content and my site. It was time for me to make a serious investment in Her Heartland Soul’s future, because I see it going big places! 😀
If you’re interested in investing in your website, AcceleratedWP was generous enough to offer a special deal to Her Heartland Soul readers. Now through the end of the month sign up for a Standard or Professional plan and receive 15% off your monthly price. Simply enter the code HERHEARTHALLOWEEN2014 at checkout.
If you’re looking to take your blog to the next level and stop worrying about the technical side of things I 100% recommend AcceleratedWP. They have gone above and beyond my expectations and have made incredible improvements to my site.
Questions of the Day: Do you have 24/7 backup protection on your site? What have you invested in on your blog? What is your favorite part of the three parts of blogging?
*This post contains my AcceleratedWP affiliate link.
I will definitely have to look into this more- thanks for sharing Erin!
Of course Melanie! I love to share when I find things I love!
Great post!! I am currently undergoing a huge blog upgrade- new domain name, new logo, everything new! I am soooo excited to move my blog into a more professional and grown-up space 🙂 I love the new look of yours and think it’s such a good idea to have a service do all the back end stuff!!
How exciting!!
i use ryan at WP site care – he’s amazing! 🙂 he backs everything up for me because i would flip if anything happened!!
I’ve heard really good things about him too!
I so need to look into this!!
I’m so happy I switched domains to work with AcceleratedWP! It’s nice to not have to worry anymore.
I need to look into something like this! Like Linz I’ve gone through Ryan before and having someone help you is AMAZING.
Yes! It is so nice to have peace of mind!
I am so not techy at all with my blog. I want to learn more, but just know don’t when and how. Thankfully, my friend is an IT guru, so he does anything technical with my site that I need done.
That is such a nice friend to have!! haha
It’s good to have a techy person on your side. Thank goodness I have Jeff!
Jeff is amazing! It’s nice to know if anything goes wrong he’d be able to fix it!
Great reminder for me to contact my current host and figure out how to back up my posts!! Thanks, Erin!
Of course! I would cry if something happened to my blog.
What a great service! I agree 100% with how you feel about all the behind the scenes stuff.
I wish I understood it but I do not! haha
Thanks for sharing this! I’m curious what plan you use?
I use the Standard plan. 🙂
So nice to have someone help you with the backend stuff! really helps keep my stress level down!
Yes! I love having that peace of mind!
So many new neat options for blogging for sure!
Yes! There are great services out there!
This was helpful to me because I am guessing I do not have a backup system for my site. That would be sad to lose all my content!
I would cry!
Erin, thank you so much for sharing this with us! I am definitely in a place to think about this stuff, and what a great service. Appreciate your blog post.
I’m glad it was helpful Janelle! It’s so nice to have that peace of mind and know my site is in good hands. 😀
Backing up your blog is ESSENTIAL! I do it manually because I use archaic old Blogger for my main blog, but I am so paranoid about it being randomly taken down that I back up at least once a week. This sounds much easier!
I’m so glad my blog is now backed up! It’s crazy how long I went before finally deciding to do something!
Really interesting information! I kind of thought that my blog would just always be there for all eternity and never thought there was the potential to lose everything. (I am new to blogging so obviously this is new to me as well!) I will definitely look in to this! Thanks for the heads up!
You’re welcome Heather! Yeah, it didn’t occur to me until I had been blogging for years! I’m glad my site is now protected. 🙂
I was wondering what site you got your blog theme?
Murnan Creative created my blog for me. http://murnancreative.com/ I love it!
I am definitely not a technical person. I need to look more into having help here too!
It’s so nice to have my blog backed up and taken care of! It puts my non-technical self at ease! 😀
I had that heart stopping moment too. When I just couldn’t activate my stuff. Most scary moment ever! I too stepped up and got web hosting to protect my site and bring my blog to the next level too.
It’s so worth it for the peace of mind and security the service brings!
Thanks for sharing! My blog needs an update!
xo,
Jacqueline
stylininstlouis.com
Of course! My biggest problem is knowing when to stop working on my blog. I love it so much I’m always looking to improve things. Sometimes I just need to stop and be happy where I am.
I enjoy learning about the technical stuff, but I still have a lot to learn. I usually back-up my site myself with a plugin, it makes it pretty easy to import if things go awry. I’d like to invest in something like this in the future if I need to, though!
That’s awesome you can do it yourself! I’m too terrified I’d mess something up. haha
Umm this looks like exactly what I need!! I just did a blog makeover myself and now everything is so slow! I know a big part is my images..for a good long time I never resized them so I have 3 years of super large files and I don’t resizing them all sounds like a huge pain! But other than that I have no clue how to make things faster. Definitely will consider this, thanks for sharing!
Sounds like such a great deal and a stress you now don’t have
The technical side of blogging isn’t my strong suit either. I hadn’t thought much about the need of backing up things daily or anything like that. Great post, Erin!
I was just about to sign up for WP site care but now seriously considering this- thanks for that!