Your MyListing Project Will Likely Fail, and It’s Your Fault

It’s your fault. This is the harsh reality, folks.

It’s not the fault of WordPress, which powers a massive portion of the web. It’s not the fault of the MyListing theme, which I know for a fact is behind many lucrative online businesses. It’s the choices you make.

For your project to succeed, you must make intelligent choices and truly invest in it. If those choices and investments lead you to the products and services that MyListing Club offers, great! If not, that’s totally fine.

How Can You Make Such a Bold Statement, Ryan?

People come to me all the time to rescue their projects.

Sometimes projects can be rescued in place (i.e., making the changes required to be successful, without starting over), sometimes they can be rescued by starting over (i.e., new hosting, new website build, etc.), and sometimes the project is a lost cause (i.e., the business owner isn’t willing to make the required investments – time and money) and the project shuts down.

Here are just some of the things I’ve witnessed and heard over the years:

• “The person I hired isn’t the expert they claimed to be.”
• “The first person I hired was a jerk, and the second and third people I hired were jerks.”
• “The person I hired screwed everything up and takes forever to do anything.”
• “My website is slow, clunky, and often breaks. My users are frustrated. I’m frustrated.”
• “I’m not making any money, and users complain about the return on their investment.”

“The person I hired isn’t the expert they claimed to be.”

There is a well-known YouTuber who “built” an entire MyListing website on his channel. This person is what I call a “surface expert.” They learn just enough about the subject matter to seem competent in a YouTube video, but underneath, they have no clue what it takes to bring a MyListing project together.

I was in the middle of a MyListing project with a client, and it became clear they were watching this guy’s channel and were interested in bringing them into the project. The client was making the strangest requests that go against the very basic principles of building WordPress websites, and the requests were provoked by this YouTuber who claimed to be an “expert.” Crazy!

Ultimately, I had the client work with the YouTuber, and I left the project. Guess what happened? Nothing! After almost a year, the project is seemingly dead.

I understand that non-technical people have more difficulty verifying the skills of someone offering technical services. Still, some things don’t require technical knowledge.

In the example above, the MyListing website owner made the wrong decision to put more trust in a “surface expert” with many YouTube subscribers over someone (me) who has been focusing on and building MyListing websites for years.

“The first person I hired was a jerk, and the second and third people I hired were jerks.”

When I hear this, it’s a major red flag. It’s not a good sign when people blame everyone else for what goes wrong with their project.

Some people consider the phrase “The customer is always right” gospel. It’s just not true. I’m a customer and know with 100% certainty that I’m not always right.

I just went through this the other day. The person said they worked with a few developers from the MyListing community, and they were all jerks. Really? Every single one of them? You had no hand in what went wrong? You were the perfect client?

My red flag in this case was justified because as I started to work with this person, they refused to follow procedures and were unwilling to invest in their project (time or money), constantly asking for more discounts.

“The person I hired screwed everything up and takes forever to do anything.”

This has happened to anyone who has ever hired someone for website work, home improvements, or other tasks. As much as you don’t want to hear it, there is still a good chance this is your fault.

Where do you look for people to hire? What were your criteria for hiring this person? Have they built MyListing websites before? Were you looking for the cheapest rates?

Typically, what I’ve seen here is that website owners poke around the web and find someone who claims they’ve worked with the MyListing theme before, and they offer the cheapest rates. Then, things rapidly fall apart.

The saying “You get what you pay for” exists for a reason.

Even so, it’s about more than just money here. There are more questions to ask.

Were you an active participant in your project? Did you communicate well? Did you set clear and realistic expectations?

I made the Club’s Custom Development service a client-only service because it is difficult to get random customers off the streets to communicate effectively and set realistic expectations.

Often, people think something should take five minutes, but they don’t consider the time it takes to communicate, test, implement, etc.

“My website is slow, clunky, and often breaks. My users are frustrated. I’m frustrated.”

This one is easy. The people involved in the project (website owner, hired “experts,” etc.) are not experts when it comes to building websites that look good and perform well.

The website owner buys the cheapest web hosting, and they rationalize this decision by saying, “Once I get going, I’ll invest more into quality hosting.” This is the wrong approach!

You don’t buy a cheap security system for your home (at least, I hope you don’t) and justify it by saying, “Once I get my first break-in, I’ll invest more into securing my home.”  

There are some things you need to do right and right away. One of those things is starting with a solid foundation (e.g., web hosting). While my analogy above mentions security, that’s just one aspect of what a quality web host provides, including security, performance, 24/7 expert support, etc.

Then, there are plugins. Website owners often install plugins without considering how they can hinder performance, cause conflicts, etc. When I do website audits or onboard websites into Website Care, I often see plugins that aren’t needed because they overlap in functionality with other installed plugins or are not needed at all.

Another thing I often see is the overuse of Elementor add-on plugins. Website owners read about a feature that an add-on has, read about another feature they like from another add-on, and install the add-ons without understanding the potential repercussions of doing so.

Then, there is the actual building of Elementor-based content. Often, when I look at some of the pages the website owner or “expert” created, they are a rat’s nest, with elements that don’t need to be there, with every element having individual settings (i.e., nothing is set globally), using older technology (e.g., sections and columns), etc.

Now, I’m not picking on Elementor here. I’m using it as an example since it’s a core component of MyListing websites. While it’s not perfect software, it works a heck of a lot better when used correctly.

I’m just barely scratching the surface of all the components that require close attention. But, again, it’s your fault if any of this stuff goes wrong. You do the hiring, purchasing, and sometimes the building.

“I’m not making any money, and users complain about the return on their investment.”

There is a phrase from a popular movie here in the United States: “Build it, and they will come.” That is not the case when building websites, let alone MyListing websites that you’re trying to monetize from.

Why should people list their business on your website? What’s the incentive? Do you have competitors? How are you differentiating business from others?

What MyListing website owners fail to do is ask themselves, “Why would I want to be here? Why would I want to list on my website?” If I had to guess, it’s because they are afraid of the answer.

It’s not enough to let people add free Listings and hope to monetize by placing ads all over your website. Ads only work if people have a reason to visit your website. Even then, the ad game isn’t what some people make it out to be.

It’s not enough to charge people to add Listings to your website just to be present on your platform. There needs to be more of an incentive, whether saving money on products and services (yours or your partners), helping them eliminate the need to sign up for separate services (e.g., booking), etc.

Don’t Be Cheap Only to Turn Around and Charge for Listings on Your Platform

I’ll end this article with a rant covering something that drives me absolutely bonkers.

I’ve had people complain about paying me the cost of a coffee ($5) for a Pro Club Membership that grants them access to Guides, Code Snippets, Partner Deals, and more, only to find out they charge $200+ per month for a Listing. WTF?

My point is that some website owners expect things to be free or super low cost for products and services to make sense to them, yet they turn around and charge for their products, services, etc. 

I’ve seen some website owners pay $4.99 for web hosting, charge $14.99 for Listing on their website, and wonder why their project fails. Instead of investing in their business, they try to do everything for the cheapest price while offering very little value to Listing Owners.

Invest in your business. Invest in your customers. Invest in yourself. Anything short of this and what you have is a hobby, not a business.