Robert’s (little) helpers – How a web developer helped his readers bring to life 25K+ websites in two years

October 13, 2016 8 min read

Being a developer doesn’t always mean your sole contribution to the world is code. Actually, there are plenty of developers who choose to help people and businesses by “translating” their knowledge into useful chunks of content for everyone interested. And that’s exactly what Robert Mening did with his business, where he put together lots of useful guides and articles that helped more than 25,000 people easily create their website.

The scenario

As data shows, the number of websites increased tremendously in the last years: from 1 website in 1991, we reached the 1 billion mark as of 2016. At what pace has the world grown up to that number? If we compare 1994 with 2014, we see a 33 million percent increase. Wow.

What these numbers are telling us is that websites have been skyrocketing ever since. Every day more people, and business owners want one whether it’s for selling products, earning money with on-demand courses, or even just having a way to express themselves.

But not all of them are developers or have the technical knowledge to build a website themselves. So they look for tips and guides that will support them through the process.

And that’s where Robert Mening, founder of Website Setup, wanted to make a huge difference.

The problem

Being a web developer doesn’t always imply your help should come in the form of code. There are plenty of developers, coders and anyone you might expect some sort of matrix-like response back who are great at helping people by writing. Robert Mening is one of them and his website provides loads of helpful information for those who are setting up their new website.

As you can easily imagine, such websites, featuring lots of guides and articles, generate a huge amount of traffic. And when things aren’t working properly (as you’d like them to be), the longer it takes to modify or fix them, the higher the chance for your readers to leave your website.

That’s what happened to Robert who needed to modify several elements of his layout:

I needed to do some minor changes on my WordPress site as I was really busy myself. Nothing too complicated, but something that could take quite a bit time when you need to do this by yourself.

Since he’s a web designer, he knew that what he needed to be implemented could take 2-3 days of work. The problem was, he wasn’t able to find time to get it done.

So he posted his first project on Codeable.

The leap

Robert was hoping to get the work done super fast, but was also a little concerned about giving his credentials to developers he didn’t know at all:

My main concern was turnaround time (TAT). I thought that if I use Codeable, it could take 2-3 days before someone fixes my site. I was also a bit concerned about the security since I needed to get them FTP access.

Because of Codable’s unique vetting and pre-screening process, Robert worked with top-notch WordPress experts who were able to provide him with what he requested, all in a matter of hours rather than days:

Luckily for me most of the tweaks were made in a couple of hours. Experts were very responsive, too. I truly hoped that I could get these minor changes done on my site ASAP. And Codeable truly exceeded my expectations 🙂

Robert knew he was talking to highly respected professionals when, right from the beginning, they proved it to him by helping him sharing logins and credentials in a safer way:

I feel safe, as I think the developers who use Codeable are somewhat verified by their background. Some of them also guided me on how I could give them access without being exposed to much (i.e creating a separate FTP account just for changing X files and so on..)

The end result

From that very first project on, Robert keeps using Codeable on a regular basis to focus his time on other important business aspects that fall outside the development scope:

So far I’ve used Codeable 12-13 times during the last 24 months. I was able to outsource all the WordPress development related tasks to Codeable. It saves me time so I could focus more on other aspects of the business, such as marketing, copywriting and promotion.

But that’s not the only satisfying result gained from his relationship with Codeable. Sometimes it’s not just a matter of time, rather it’s about moving your business forward by overcoming specific issues that get you stuck:

I once needed a special plugin that would show floating text at the bottom of my site. I had no idea on how to put it to work properly. Luckily I found someone quite quick who could do this. He managed to integrate a simple button into my WordPress dashboard, where I could change colors, text size and everything related to the floating footer bar. That was just awesome!

With a trustworthy pool of WordPress experts to rely on, Robert is now able to run his business with a more lean approach by addressing his readers’ WordPress requests more quickly:

When people get stuck I usually help them by myself. However, sometimes they need more time consuming and complex add-ons and it’s just easier to refer them to Codeable. Many of them have been really grateful for that. In that way, Codeable has been a major support for me making things way easier as well!

Codeable

Editorial Team

About the author

The Codeable Editorial Team consists of WordPress experts and professionals with years of experience building, managing, and growing WordPress-powered websites.