“Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

—Inigo Montoya

This 1st paragraph is the “sum up,” with more details below. Fiddler Online isn’t going anywhere, but wpXPRESS is 1 of 2 new brands under the Fiddler umbrella, and will replace Fiddler Online as the brand for our hassle-free website services. So if you’re wondering why an email said it was from “wpXPRESS”? That’s why. It’s still us: Tevya, Roge, and Charry at Fiddler Online, only we have a new brand for that part of our business. And don’t worry, we’ll always take care of all our members they way we always have.

Changes… but No Worries

I’m excited about 2018 in a way I’ve never been excited for a new year before. I feel the future of my business is far more clear than it’s ever been and I know what needs to happen for us to turn Fiddler Online into a profitable, sustainable business. Fiddler and our personal finances have been better in 2017, but it’s still not what I’d call a truly successful business, and my family isn’t thriving financially. We’re doing great in many ways, but money is too often still tight.

Through natural progression, lots of hard work, completing my “school of hard knocks MBA,” and blessings from God, I know the ways in which Fiddler Online needs to pivot to become truly successful. This isn’t to say everything is clear and I know each step, or how everything will work out. I definitely don’t. But the big goals are clear and I know what direction we need to work and general most of the guiding principles and systems we need to implement to reach those goals.

Starfish Reviews WordPress Plugin

Some of you have noticed this brand already. I updated my LinkedIn some months ago with references to “Starfish Reviews” a WordPress Plugin brand that we recently created under Fiddler Online. I’ll post more about it soon. We saw a need that we could provide our members at Fiddler and realized that it could also be sold as a plugin for other marketers, webmasters, and small business owners who use WordPress for their websites. We’ll have more on this offering for our members, in the near future.

wpXPRESS

“wpXress” or “wpXPRESS,” we’re not sure how we’re going to write it just yet, will become the new brand for the website business. “Why?” you’re probably asking if you’ve made it this far in this post. Because it fits better with what we do: creating then providing full-service management of WordPress websites. Plus it fits better with what we’re going to do in the future: improve and manage existing WordPress websites, turning them into fully serviced, managed websites as well.

I’ll go into it more in future posts, but basically we’ve realized there’s a big need for us to manage, maintain, and optimize existing websites… ones we didn’t build. Maybe even ones we don’t host. In the past we’ve focused almost exclusively on building a new website for our clients “from the ground up.”

This approach has led to lots of great websites and full control over every facet of each website we manage. But it’s also caused us to leave out some small businesses who would otherwise love to benefit from our full-service approach. In fact, in the past year or so, we’ve brought on several new members with existing websites, for a discounted rate. So we were already doing this to some extent.

The “build it from the ground-up” approach It has also meant we can only grow so quickly, as each new website has to be lovingly handcrafted. We love that process, but it’s also a monstrous commitment of time and resources, and a huge bottleneck for onboarding new members.

This new model and brand is all so new, we don’t even have a logo for it yet. But you’ll be seeing more of it in the near future, and it’ll eventually mostly replace the current Fiddler Online branding and web presence.

The “Sum Up” …Round 2

So there will be more details in the future. The point here is that Fiddler Online will continue to be the company name, but it’ll “own” 2 brands that are the public “faces” of Fiddler: Starfish and wpXPRESS. Starfish will cater to marketers, webmasters, and small businesses looking to improve their online marketing, specifically around ratings and reviews; while wpXPRESS will become the new “face” of the website business, and will have some exciting new offerings and options for our existing members and new members, in the near future.