Why This Blog Exists
Here’s my story. About 4 years ago I was on a “enforced convalescence”, after a little health incident that nearly killed me. My doctor suggested the convalescence, my wife enforced it…(’nuff said). Although I couldn’t work at my job, or work in my shop, or drive, or even pick up anything over 10 pounds for about 3 months, I could use the computer. To keep myself busy (and to keep from going stir crazy), I spent a lot of time online. My wife had started her own business, so I researched the cheapest, easiest way to for us to get an online presence, and also to get that web site high up in the rankings at Google, Yahoo and MSN.
I wound up building several websites using free and dirt cheap software that I found online. Along the way I also found lots of other cool, free stuff. And I managed to get our main website for the business listed on the first page of results for all three major search engines. I went back to work for about six months, and then quit to help my wife out with her business. My website, and those totally organic Top Ten rankings, had made the business profitable and busy enough to keep us both occupied.
Now, flash forward a few years to today. Our main business is still going strong, but it has slowed down a bit. We own a mortgage brokerage that specializes in mortgages in Florida, and I’m sure you all know how that business has decreased in the last few months. We’re still going strong, but things have slowed down enough that my wife, the two other licensed brokers that work for us, the processor and our mobile closer can handle just about everything, without much help from me. By the way, if you need a Florida Mortgage, check out our website to get in touch with us. We have reasonable fees, excellent service and we’ll search our database of over 400 lenders to find the best rate and terms for YOUR mortgage needs.
Anyway, I ‘ve used my free time to catalog some of the free, fun stuff I found before, research more fun and free stuff online, and start a series of articles that can help anyone get a professional looking website up and running, quickly, easily and cheaply. I also plan on sharing some of the SEO tips and tricks I’ve used to take our main site to a top position in the search engines.
Since I’m always on the lookout for free stuff, especially if it’s fun, easy to do, and there’s no “catch” to doing it, I’ve been sending the good links I find out to friends in emails, but I wanted a chance to send it out to others, too. So this is a blog I’m starting to fill everyone in on all of this fun, free (or cheap) stuff I found, and I’ll update it with more stuff, as I find it.
To start out with, for all of you who are still using online services for your blog, you really should checkout Wordpress, which is what this blog is written in. It’s free, it’s easy to install on your website, and it’s easy to use, too! Just follow the “wp” link at the bottom of this page, or click here http://wordpress.org/ to download it. There are hundreds of different templates you can download, as well. To see some of the best ones, just follow this link;
http://www.alexking.org/software/wordpress/theme_browser.php
I’ll probably rotate a few different ones on this page as I go along, until I find one I like.
I’ll be adding some more links to other free stuff on the menu bar, as I go, so look it over for changes. So, if you like free stuff, and you want it to be easy to get, just pop back here and check out the Freebies.