Have you toyed with the idea of building your own home staging website for your staging business? Before you get yourself 
absorbed into a project you may wish you never started, I’d like to offer a word of caution: it’s not as easy as it looks!
When I decided to build my first website, I went out and bought a pile of how-to books on the subject and in total it took me over 40 hours to get it finished. And that was only for a very small and basic website!
I remember being so involved in it that one evening my child who was in kindergarten at the time, came down to my basement home office saying, “Mommy I’m hungry.” That’s when I realized it was 7pm on a school night and I hadn’t even thought about preparing dinner because I was so engrossed in my website project.
There’s a lot that goes into learning how to build a website but as I’ve said before, there’s also a lot more to it than just making it look nice. You have to pay a considerable amount of attention to your home staging website’s SEO.
If you’ve already gone ahead and started working on your own website or even if you’ve hired someone else to build a website for you, there’s a free tool that can help you measure how you’re doing: websitegrader.com
Please note that you can only use this tool if you have a stand alone website. If your domain is forwarded to a page on another domain, you will not get accurate results!
I ran a report on StagingDiva.com and am really proud of my score of 96% out of 100. The report also showed me that I have an Alexa rank of 1,236,867 which is in the top 3.98 % of ALL websites. (Alexa is an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings.)
While WebSiteGrader will give you an idea of ways you can improve your home staging website for search engines, you might find the report overwhelming and you might need some help sorting through all of the information. If that’s the case, you could benefit from my Home Staging Website Check up Service.
I’ve been building websites since 1999 and selling my own home staging services online since 2002. In fact, I got my very first project from a client who found my home staging website after an internet search and I made $5,000 on that project alone!
Because of all this experience, combined with the fact that I invest about $1,000 a year on continuing education on this subject, I’m in a unique position to help you learn how to improve your home staging website— so you can make money from clients who come to you rather than you having to chase after clients one by one.
Of course, if you’re just not interested in learning anything about designing, building or promoting your own website then why not get a listing in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers and let me handle all of it for you?
Home stagers, what’s the biggest problem you’ve run into with trying to build and promote your own website?
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are more than 4000 Staging Diva Students in over 20 countries. Debra is frequently profiled in the media for her home staging expertise and is the author of 5 guides for home stagers.
The biggest problem I’ve run into while trying to build my own website is the money to hire a professional to do it for me! That being said, I’m also spending “heaps” of time setting up a blogspot, a Facebook page, a wordpress blog and a Linkedin profile! I’ve always loved learning new things but I’m finding this a bit excessive! Just last night, as my husband pulled in the driveway, I realized it was 6:30 and I hadn’t even started dinner yet! I guiltily shut down my computer and ran to the kitchen to “pretend” to be busy…he had seen me in the window with my laptop on my lap…AGAIN! I suppose a good place to start would be with some good quality “before” and “after” shots, now if I can only remember to take the “before” shots….
Jackie, my advice is to focus your efforts on one thing at a time and complete it. If you have a bunch of half done profiles and blogs that aren’t being contributed to, then they aren’t doing you any good. I recommend you do some more research into blogging before setting up two of them. And also ask yourself honestly how many different places you can contribute to regularly.
Having a blog or a website, is like having a hungry dragon in the basement.
Now that he’s there, you have to keep feeding him. Getting the dragon was only the first mini-step (even though that in itself is huge), it’s all the care that comes later that will be the biggest drain on your time, energy and resources.
Super jzazed about getting that know-how.
Thanks for your insightful comments! I love the analogy of the “hungry dragon”! It’s so true! I will certainly take your advice!
Debra,
The information you just provided about the scores on your website and site rankings is to your credit and great for us – thank very much! And I can verify what you said about building a website! I gave up after trying to figure out two different web builders (GoDaddy and WordPress). I am going to keep my staging diva directory page becaue its incredibly valuable. I have also contracted with an independent web designer that I met through the two classes he taught at the Small Business Development Center on getting your site found on the web (through SEO and proper web deveopment). I am setting up my own website because I want a professional web site that I can drive traffic to through Google’s Ad Words. The web designer I am using is also a Certified Ad Words Partner through Google and this requires him to complete annual training and do a minimum amount of business with Google Ad Words.
I have been copying all information you provide to us about web sites, SEO, etc. so I can review the information with the web designer and he can answer my questions and reassure me. I will let him that I plan to use the websitegrader.com site to see how the site ends up scoring and I may build a minimum score requirement into my contract with him. If you have any thoughts about this, please share them. You have been in invaluable source of information in this area and you have been my source of inspiration and a source I can trust. Thank you!
Stacy, Thanks for sharing and for your feedback. Remember you can also use AdWords to send traffic to your directory listing, it doesn’t have to be a stand alone site.
As for your web designer being a Certified AdWords Partner “required to do a minimum amount of business with AdWords,” there is an inherent conflict of interest built into that. If I’m understanding this correctly, he needs YOU to spend money on AdWords so that he maintains HIS “certification.” Plus, does this mean that you won’t have your own AdWords account and instead all the advertising and results data that will come with it belongs to him??? I would be extremely careful of this.
If you are spending YOUR money on AdWords, you need your own account so that you maintain control of how the money is being spent and YOU have all the results/tracking data that will come with that.
Review your past recordings from Staging Diva Dialog as we talked quite a bit about Google AdWords and how it works. Good luck!
Jackie,
Do NOT spend heaps on website development. Contact your Small Business Development Center and see if their staff can refer you to several who are not part of a huge firm. When designers belong to a huge company, it will cost you more becauwse they have a large “overhead.” The designer I am using is independent and used to belong to a large company. For $1500 I will have a website that I own and it will be developed using WordPress – which allows me to go into my site and make text changes to it (I will have a password to do this). That is why I am using WordPress – because I don’t have to understand code to make the changes. I am paying $75 per page on my site, I will host it on the web designers server for $10/month and the $1500 includes my first month (of six) free for initiating the Ad Words. When I asked him about his prices, he told me that he is a independent designer and SEO guy that does not have big overhead; meaning he can afford to do the work at a more affordable price. I have seen examples of his websites and contacted two of the site owners to see how the sites werer functioning and how they would rate his services and follow through. All comments came back with a rating of A+. WordPress also has other features that I plan to use on my site; blogging, videos and much more. So, look around – do the work required to find a good designer and then use all the information Debra has provided in her trainings and resources so you are the smart one!
Good luck – you can do it.
There are plenty of independent WordPress developers out there. Mostly they customize the look of the site for you because WordPress templates already exist that allow you to add your own pages, update content, etc.
Before hosting your site with an independent designer, you’ll want to get information about where it’s actually being hosted. If he has his own server in his basement, what happens if it goes down and he’s on holiday?
Frankly, I’d want to maintain my own hosting account not go through a third party. What if you and your designer have a falling out? What if screws up and you fire him and he takes down your site and you have no back up????
Debra,
Can we use the websitgrader.com to grade any website, not just our own?
Yes Stacy, you can plug any address you like into there!
I can relate as I am presently developing my website. FIrst – I wouldn’t think twice about having one for your internet presence considering our target markets and their age range. We’re generally marketing locally and not nationwide.
My marketing strategy is website for potential customers and social media as a secondary extention of my marketing efforts for industry and further ranking development.
Website is still my PRIORITY supported by our statistic of over 85% of our customers begin their search on line depending on the presence of a website.
I have researched and trialed several options for the do-it-your selfer website developer and depending on your word processing and graphic design knowledge, I would recommend the following.
1) Vistaprint website builder or Microsoft website builder for those with fundamental and working knoweledge
2) Network Solutions for those that have had a little exposure to website design, word processing and graphic design.
All are inexpensive – have full service multi-media marketing options – user friendly and produce a great internet presence.
My strongest advice is to align your tools with your target market and what THEY would use to FIND you and THEN use to stay connected with you – not necessarily the next-best-thing in social media that requires yet a further learning curve.
Good luck – report back.
In follow up to my comment to Stacy about being able to plug any website into the service to have it ranked:
Please note that you can only use this tool if you have a stand-alone website. If your domain is forwarded to a page on another domain, like the Directory of Home Stagers for example, you will NOT get accurate results for your domain because your domain is not actually a website!
Thank you Stacy, Amy and Debra for your comments. I feel quite overwhelmed at this point. As Debra suggested for me, I think my first step is to get ONE of my blogs running smoothly and then focus on a website. I don’t have the skills or the time to develop my own website at this point, so your information is very valuable to me. Since we’re on the subject of websites, blogs etc., do any of you (other than Debra) have a facebook fan page?
Jackie, you dont need to consider your blog and website as two separate things! They can be one and the same, as I’ve done for my own staging business. That’s a wordpress blog site at http://www.sixelements.com
My fan page is Facebook.com/TheStagingDiva
Others, feel free to list yours here.
Debra, I’m not sure where I’d be without you and the others who comment regularly on this blog!
Thanks Jackie, I appreciate all your comments and contributions to this community 🙂
Not sure that this is the appropriate place to ask this question (and Debra, I’ll understand if you decide not to include this question here) , but I am curious:…To all the Staging Diva graduates out there, if you were told that you could take only ONE unit of the Staging Diva Training Course, which one would you pick? I know that you’re going to have a tough time with this one, but not everyone who WANTS to take the Staging Diva Course can afford to buy the “whole schumozzel” at once. Since it’s the beginning of the “busy” real estate season, your recommendations could be very valuable!
Jackie, the courses do all fit together so that you get all the pieces of the puzzle to start and grow a successful home staging business. There’s nothing wrong with taking them one by one as budget allows. And you can certainly take them out of order since each one does stand on it’s own.
I can tell you from experience that 90% of the people who buy a single course end up buying all 5. Sometimes they end up getting them all within a week or two, others take 6 months or more to complete them. It’s really up to your needs and budget.
I look forward to seeing what others recommend as a course to start with, I’ll give you my thoughts here on what to do when your budget prevents you from saving with one of the 5-course packages, and based on what I think might be right for YOU based on an assumption that you already have a home staging business:
Course 2 is key to learning the right pricing strategy. After all if you’re not making enough on each client it will take you that much longer to make the money you want and you may never get there. Undercharging, or using the wrong pricing strategy, is like losing money on each and every client.
Course 3 is all about how to turn a prospect into a client and what you do when you get there. If you’re finding yourself running around doing free estimates that don’t turn into paying work, or you’re not sure about the most effective way to approach a home staging consultation, or you don’t know how to make sure you get paid, then this is the course for you.
Course 4 is 2 hours just on home staging marketing. Because I’ve been in marketing since the 1980s and have a masters degree in this subject, you’ll find a marketing orientation woven into everything I teach, but course 4 is where I focus exclusively on this subject. I do not take the conventional approach of telling you to focus all your energies on real estate agents. They are only one of 4 target markets and in my opinion, usually not the most important one. I share all the strategies I used to market my own home staging business, what worked, what didn’t and why. The emphasis is on low- and no-cost marketing tactics.
Hope that helps and looking forward to seeing you on the inside as part of my inner circle of Staging Diva students and graduates!
Oh I’ll get there alright! (or I’ll die trying!) 🙂
Jackie,
It seemed like a lot of money to me to purchase all 5 training courses, especially when you aren’t sure you will be successful at home staging. After months of reviewing the SD website and reading testimonials, I purchased the entire training package and am glad I did. I would have a difficult time suggesting just one course because, as Debra mentions, the courses are tied together. But if I had no other choice to find or borrow the money for the entire training package, I would buy Courses 2 and 3.
Debra,
The concerns you bring forward are excellent. I have sent the web designer an email with my questions (based on your cautions) and have asked for his written response. In my discussions with the web designer, we have touched on all of the points you bring up. I have read Google Ad Words, I have tapped into WordPress website templates, I have researched about website hosting and what it gets down to is this; I am willing to pay for someone else’s expertise to free up my time, reduce my frustration, help me produce a professional web site (that I own and can update myself), to help me determine the amount of money I want to use for “targeted marketing” in my local area, to run analytics on my Ad Words and my web site, and to confer with me on how SEO is going on a regular schedule. A good web developer who uses fpublicly available, free software such as WordPress templates isn’t a bad thing to pay for because of all the reasons above. WordPress provides templates but an experienced designer knows how to modify them easily and quickly to design a web site that meets my unique business needs. I’m a home staging expert; a business person, with a particular set of skills and abilties. Web designers are also experts and serve a function for those of us who are not.
I so appreciate the important questions you bring up, though, and I am working on getting answers from the web designer as I write. I may share those responses; will have to wait and see. At any rate, I have asked him for a complete list of all the services he provides to me and I will update my contract to address the points you raised in these postings.
Thanks for your good intentions, Debra. I know you share your expertise and experience to benefit us as we build a business.
Stacy, I’m glad I could raise some considerations to cover off with your designer. Absolutely using existing WordPress templates and having them modified to suit your needs is the way to go. WordPress offers tons of “plug ins” which you’ll be able to use and these offer significant cost savings compared to having a programmer build in that functionality from scratch! Good luck with your new blog!
I spoke with Victoria one evening before a conference call you had. I told her about my mistake of taking the wrong home staging course. She said she hears that all the time. I was very disappointed that after all the research I did, looking for the right course, I somehow missed you! I haven’t even finished that course and it is so unlike me to not “getter done” asap! I have lost all my drive because I don’t need to spend time cutting pictures out of magazines to prove I know how to identify “Roman” shades! You inspire me! Along with all of the graduates that participate on your blog. One day I WILL be a Staging Diva graduate (ask anyone who knows me…they now know you!) I’ll keep plugging away at that course just so that my hubby will let me invest in the Staging Diva program. You haven’t heard the last from your “Southern Ontario” neighbour!
Jackie, I hadn’t realized you were already in the middle of a different program. Really, that homework does sound like a questionable way to spend your time.
Unfortunately, because many companies try to pretend that there is such a thing as “certification” or “accreditation” in home staging, they feel compelled to create little “tests” for you which presumably prove your “worth” as a home stager. I don’t believe in making you jump through artificial hoops.
The Staging Diva Program does have homework, but it’s not anything you have to submit to me for marking. Because the whole philosophy of my program is based on teaching you how to make a living from your talents, the homework I give is all stuff that you need to do to get your business started. I only make it “homework” to nudge you into actually starting your business rather than procrastinating. But you do it for you, not to send in to me.
My advice, don’t lose energy beating yourself up for your past choice. You’re already into this other thing. See it through and try to get what you can out of it, which it sounds like you’re doing. Continue to hang out here and contributing and when the time is right, you’ll get behind the curtain to my inner circle and really get moving with what I have to teach you to make a real business from your talents.
If you want to email me privately, I’m dying to know who has you cutting out magazine pictures!
I enjoyed reading all of the comments about this topic.
I can relate to Jackie. I had been told website presences was paramount to getting business but I’ve since re-focused my attention.
I do have a newly designed and newly hosted website (which I love and am quite proud of). I did a complete makeover on my business image – business cards and all.
It all boils down to the reality that home staging – like real estate – is a local market. People in Nebraska aren’t looking for me. People in Maine are. More specifically, people in Bangor and the surrounding area. Although I do travel throughout Maine on special occasions (if the staging job is particularly up to my criteria) I find that most people who have discovered me have discovered me right in my own back yard.
Debra, you think so much like me it’s scary (on several different topics). I find myself emphatically nodding my head in agreement and many times saying to myself, “yep! that’s just what I have always thought or said!” LOL.
I’ve long held that those who are out on the internet and in book stores pushing “accredited and certified” Home Staging training glorified snake oil salesmen. It’s nothing more than that old saying “trying to cash in by trickery”. When I first decided this is what I wanted to do, I went out and researched the business startup process at my local book stores and libraries. I bought a book by a woman who coins herself as the “inventor of home staging”. While it had some halfway decent business sided information to it, it was mostly ego driven and self serving for her own pocketbook. I sold the book for more than what I paid for it so I guess what goes around comes around. LOL.
My mother was staging when I was a child. She didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what she was doing. How can this woman who wrote the book noted above claim to have “invented” something people have done for centuries? Cleopatra was a home stager, truth be told.
Of all the Home Stagers who’ve decided to make money teaching others, I find you to be the most sincere in your motives for doing so. Thanks for rooting your fellow creative, passionate Home Stagers on with your TRUE valuable information and education. You teach what we really need to know. How to market, advertise, price and make money doing what we love!
Thank you for sharing your passion about this profession with us.
Kathi Howland
Nicole Interiors Home Staging
Thanks for sharing your comments Kathi.
For my take on the whole “accredited” and “certified” topic, see these 2 articles:
https://stagingdiva.com/homestagingbusiness/home-staging-field-rife-with-fake-credentials/
https://stagingdiva.com/homestagingbusiness/the-debate-over-home-staging-credentials-continues/