Blogging Strategy

Share Your Squarespace Tips for New Business and Profit

Squarespace guest authors wantedSquarespace designers and developers: how would you like to get paid to share your knowledge while advertising your services? Turns out, my readers want to see more Squarespace design and code-related tips, but it's not something I can provide at scale. As a result, today I'm calling for guest authors within the Squarespace design community, and I'm willing to pay.

BigPictureWeb.com and the Squarespace Community

I didn't initially start this blog to cater to Squarespace users. At first it was more of a hodgepodge of Internet marketing tips. But over time, Squarespace users kept coming back looking to connect and for tips on the platform. At this point, nearly three-quarters of my vistors each month are looking for Squarespace tutorials, tips and content. 

Squarespace customers like BigPictureWeb.com

What Type of Squarespace Tips do People Want?

I'm a marketing guy by trade. I know enough code to be dangerous, and know enough about design to know I'm not really good at it (case in point: the modified stock image that intros this post). That said, when asked, the Squarespace community told me that they wanted to see more design tutorials and examples, as well as tips on how to implement code snippets on Squarespace.

Useful Squarespace blog content

Great. Squarespace podcasts and marketing/business tutorials are only somewhat useful, but it's the designer/developer tips that people really want.

So what do you do when you have over 6,000 monthly Squarespacers looking for content that you can't personally produce? You recruit!

Customers and Dollars for Squarespace Tutorials

In order to give the Squarespace readers what they want, I'm looking for Squarespace designers to contribute guest posts on this blog. In return, you'll receive three unique benefits for becoming an author on BigPictureWeb.com:

  1. Authors will receive monetary compensation for each blog post published
  2. Authors are allowed to plug their design services within each blog post published
  3. Top contributors will receive a featured listing in the Squarespace Designer Directory, worth between 50-100 clicks to your site each month from Squarespace customers looking for designers

Where else can you get paid to advertise, just for simply talking about projects and techniques you've already mastered? And just think of all the Squarespacers you'll be helping who read this blog. 

If you're interested, head on over to the sign-up form, and we'll be on our way to Squarespace design tip goodness together in no time. You get new customers and a little cash, I get content for my blog, and the Squarespace community gets new ideas and tips for their sites. What's not to love?

Happy Holidays

I hope you had a wonderful Holiday weekend, regardless of what you celebrate. Here's a special video created by my amazing lady, Emily Manifold, to wish you all the best during this Holiday season. Have a safe New Year's Eve. I look forward to connecting with you in 2012.

What's Your Opinion of Squarespace?

Opinion of SquarespaceDo you use Squarespace to publish your website or blog? If you've considered Squarespace and didn't use them for your site, why not?

I invite you to share your thoughts about Squarespace with me for an upcoming blog post on this website. Take 2-5 minutes to share your thoughts and I'll be sure to give you credit and a link to your website. Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion of Squarespace!!

What's the Best Thing About Squarespace?

best thing about SquarespaceWhat's the best thing about Squarespace? I get this question all the time from users of more popular blogging/website platforms. All too often people automatically assume Wordpress and Tumblr are better because they have more users. That's just not true. The best web publishing platform is the one that does what you need it to. Before you pick a platform, you should at least take a minute and learn about what Squarespace does really well.

I recently surveyed Squarespace users and asked what they liked best about Squarespace. I received over one hundred responses from a wide range of Squarespace customers: developers and casual users; bloggers and business owners; new customers and people who have been using the service for more than four years. What did Squarespace users like the best about Squarespace?

The Best Thing About Squarespace

Ease of Use is what people love most about Squarespace. The Squarespace team makes it incredibly simple to build a high quality blog or website without knowing a lot about Squarespace or developing websites in general.

Looking across all the answers, there were clear themes among the responses. Overall, four main categories emerged:

  • Ease of Use - Squarespace users appreciate how easy the tool is to use
  • Effort Required - People appreciate how little time or knowledge it takes to use Squarespace
  • Support & Reliability - Squarespace has a rock-solid hardware infastructure and a 24/7 support staff. Squarespace users love the peace of mind that comes with the service.
  • Quality - Squarespacers love the level of refinement and sophistication Squarespace builds in to its vast system of web building tools.

Favorite things about Squarespace(Ease of Use is what people love most about Squarespace, followed by effort required, support/reliability and quality.)

Individual Thoughts on Squarespace

Write-in comments are my favorite thing in the whole world. What people say as an anonymous, unwatched survey respondent can be some of the most enlightening and unfiltered insights you could ever hope for. That said, below are the verbatim, unmodified responses to the survey question, "What's Your Favorite Thing About Squarespace?" Read through them, then add your favorite thing about Squarespace in the comments.

Without question, it's the community - those who ask the questions and the devoted who are kind enough to offer their time and assistance. I am continually amazed by users who go to great lengths to offer their time and care enough to help those users who...

It's reliability and ease of use.

I greatly appreciate both the simplicity of the product, as well as the ability to customize the bits I want.

How easy it is for clients to update their own site!

Ease of use

Ease of use and you don't need to worry about bugs or hosting errors. Everything is managed for you server wise.

The ease of use for my clients.

How simple it is for anyone to design any sort of website. It's simplicity can attract anyone with whatever of web design knowledge.

Its UI is easy to use, yet it's also very powerful. what you see is what you get

Easy to use, quick customer service responses.

The ease of customization and the drag and drop features.

Ease of use and support

Diversity of templates. Ease of use once I get through the learning curve.

Wysiwyg

I couldn't believe how easy it was to build a website that looks professional. I built mine in about 4 hours and I had never had any experience with websites.

Fairly easy to use. Intuitive user interface.

Ease of use and simple templates. it is easy to use and get a website up and running

Not tinkering under the hood like with Wordpress.org installations. Not being a tech, that got me worried just about backup and update time, and it always seemed time to do that kind of stuff.

on page editing

simplicity.

Ease of use - and the fact that there is a buzz out there driven by other bloggers and podcasters on how great SQSP is - which drives clients to my business :)

Seriously - its a great product, solid and gets the job done fast.

I like how you can hyb

Ease of use

Ability to customize

easy to use for new designers and pros.

Simplicity - I'm non technical.

'Visual' interface

Support has always been very responsive.

The ease of use and customization.

The ease of input of various entries etc.

Easy to get in and edit from anywhere.

So easy to use; easy to maintain and beautiful.

Looks good for relatively little effort

It's fast (i.e. pages are delivered fast), streamlined, simple to use, the graphic styling tools, built-in traffic monitoring, and no messing with hosting yourself (Apache settings, the problems you run with Wordpress using too much server time, etc.)

Getting a functional website up & running is so simple on Squarespace.

The ability to build a custom website with no prior knowledge of a coding language.

The ability for anyone to create a website to fit their needs with little-to-no effort.

The ability to customize without using CSS, the galleries

I like how easy it is to add new content and change things around.

I can manage my website without being an HTML guru

i know nothing about web design, and this makes it doable

That I do not need to know HTML code.

Squarespace is for the most part intuitive. When I first signed up for the service, it was easy to pick up where things are situated within the software. I like that it's all managed by the Squarespace team and that I can just focus on my content and de

The overall integration of the bits & pieces; the ability to get advanced functionality up & running fairly quickly in some rough-draft way.

Support, the all-in-one software/hosting/support nature of the service

The support, unlimited hosting and as a cms its pretty robust

The support. They really do care about their customers, it's incredible.

Solid dependable platform. Not having to worry about security vulnerabilities or databas backups. Or managing plugin compatibility.

The quality of the hosting.

It just works!

Security and backend

The support via email is fast and often helpful.

Great platform and customer service

I like the fact that you can't screw things up - save the fact you mucking up the css royally. But Porting this to other users - the interface is clean and understandable. good customer support.

Hard to break

Instant feedback on style changes

I like the concept of squarespace more than the actuality of it. I like that it's hosting and design all in one. I live the looks you can get.

The support team.

It's a very, very sophisticated platform, and it shows. Even simple templates yield a very polished website, while availing oneself of advanced coding and customization tools makes the possibilities just about unlimited. All while the Squarespace team is...

The ability to build almost anything you want on a reliable and easy to use platform

The ability to control a high-quality website & blog WITHOUT having to spend a great deal of time or learn programming

Simplicity in design, development and the ease at which you can create a consistent interface. I also like the gallery pages and audience feature.

Real-time editing and plug-in areas.

The CMS and the fact that if my site was discovered, it would still perform well.

HTML editor for journal pages, customer service, help

The Ajax system it uses

Editing features.

Robustness. I don't need to worry about a crash when I make a change.

love how easy SEO is! customer service rocks!

I really like the notes features where you can list references to refer to. Love the interface.

That they anticipate and manage all the technological changes. I feel like I'm standing on rock. When the iPad, HTML5, etc. arrived, the WordPress ground under my feet turned to sand; I'm handy, but I'm not a tech. Also, I love the Website Mgmt area

Quality v Price.

Multiple user access.

Professional service.