LJ Sedgwick

Content Writer for Coaches and Course Creators

  • About
  • Work With Me
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog

October 26, 2016 by LJ Sedgwick Leave a Comment

How To Promote Your Security Plugin for WordPress

You know that now, more than ever, businesses need to build security into their blog plan.

After all, in 2012, 170,000 WordPress sites were hacked. That number is easily higher by now.

But security is a difficult thing to sell unless you’re trying to fear-monger. And fear doesn’t actually sell that well.

So exactly how can you promote your WordPress security plugin without resorting to scare tactics?

As the internet matures, website security becomes increasingly important. But how do you sell a plugin to users who may not think they need one?
How To Promote Your Security Plugin for WordPress

Focus on the benefits, not the features

Sure, your plugin allows users to rename the wp-login.php to something totally different. Hide your login page so hackers can’t find it as easily!

And it’s amazing that your plugin blocks IPs when they’ve tried – and failed – to access a site 3 times in a row. It’ll certainly cut down on brute force attacks.

You totally need to tell people that your plugin also scans for malware. It’s a useful feature.

Some people will genuinely get a kick out of knowing all of that.

But people also want to know what’s in it for them.

Ultimately, you’re selling security to people

It doesn’t matter whether your target audience is other tech geeks or newbie bloggers just starting out.

They’re all still people.

They want to believe that your product will bring them peace of mind.

It’s called security for a reason.

So don’t just focus on the cool whizzbang features your plugin has (although sure, they’re still important).

Focus on the hours you’ll save them when your plugin stops an attack, and the blogger doesn’t need to reinstall a backup of their site.

Sure, you can focus on the loss of traffic to their site if they get hacked. But what does that really mean to them?

It’s not lost traffic. It’s lost time and effort. Possibly even lost sales. But it’s definitely lost visitors who won’t come back.

Remind them that your plugin works tirelessly in the background. It’s the Wyatt Earp of their website, patrolling the Wild West of the internet to keep out the Cowboys.

Let them know why you, and not someone else

Whether they’re a tech geek who wants to know the specifications, or a blogger who only has 6 regular visitors, they need to know the ‘why’ of your plugin.

Why do they need it? After all, if they’re not the same size as Buzzfeed, they might not think a hacker would ever attack them.

They need to know the risks they’ll avoid. But show them the benefits of avoiding them in a positive way. So less time spent tinkering with broken code, and more time creating awesome content. Fewer complaints about redirections to dodgy sites, and more insightful comments on their articles.

But specifically let them know why do they need yours above the others available?

Yours might do the exact same thing as the next plugin. But your interface is more user-friendly.

Maybe it’s a one-click set up.

Perhaps it has a better raft of features in the free plan.

Hell, maybe it’s cheaper.

You want to sell them on the need for your security plugin. So show them what that need looks like. Make it super easy for them to get your plugin. And get them secure and safe as quickly as you can.

After all, peace of mind is priceless.


If you have a security plugin that you need help in promoting, then get in touch! I’d love to help you reach your new fans.

Filed Under: Digital Marketing Tagged With: copywriting, plugin, promotion, security, wordpress

October 21, 2016 by LJ Sedgwick 6 Comments

4 things to learn from the DDoS attack to protect your blog

You may not consider the internet to be a fragile thing.

But today’s massive DDoS attack on Dyn just proved that we’ve been taking the internet a little bit too much for granted.

If you’re not sure what happened, then a whole host of extremely popular websites were unavailable not once, but twice.

A DDoS attack, or distributed denial of service, just means that useless data is directed at a DNS server. If you’re not sure, the DNS server is the thing that translates www.twitter.com into an IP address that it can understand.

The server can’t cope with the influx of junk requests, so it overloads. It denies genuine requests and no one can access the websites.

So Twitter, Amazon, Etsy, Spotify, Soundcloud and many others were essentially down between 7:10am and 9:36am ET, and again between 12:06pm and 2:52pm ET.

While some say it only really affected the US, Business Insider UK noted that the second wave did affect Europe as well.

The internet experienced a massive outage. So what lessons can you learn from the DDoS attack to secure your blog and protect your online business?
4 things to learn from the DDoS attack to protect your blog

What lessons can you and your business learn?

It means that you can’t rely on the internet! While attacks like this have so far been rare, Gizmodo predict that we’ll see a lot more of them in future.

You can’t hold back a DDoS attack, and as an end user you’re pretty much at the mercy of the attackers.

But here are 4 things you CAN do to mitigate the impact in future.

1) Keep a local back up of your files

It can be tempting to keep all of your data ‘in the cloud’, especially as accessibility improves. After all, cloud storage allows you to access your files from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

But if any of those services become unavailable, for whatever reason, then so does your data.

The loss of power to a data center owned by Delta led to the cancellation of over 740 flights. That’s a huge cloud-based problem!

Keep files on your machine, if you can, and keep an external hard drive close by. It doesn’t need to be connected all the time, but make sure regular back ups are a part of your routine.

If one of the cloud services does have an outage, then you’ll still have access to your files.

I use a WD Elements 1TB External Desktop Hard Drive (aff link) and it does the job spectacularly!

2) Make regular back ups of your blog

There are plenty of plugins to help you back up the content of your blog.

It’s best practice anyway, since just updating a WordPress theme is easily enough to ‘break’ your blog.

If that happens, you don’t want to realise that everything you’ve poured your heart and soul into has disappeared.

So install a plugin like UpdraftPlus or BackUpWordpress and get yourself a little peace of mind. Both of these will perform regular, automated backups. The pro versions will let you backup to specified locations. Just make sure you download a local version of your backup too!

But if you do nothing else, then go to Tools and then Export in your sidebar. Download the .xml file that contains all of your posts, comments, and other data, and keep it on your external hard drive.

3) Check the security of your blog or site

I use the Wordfence plugin for WordPress and my web hosting comes with Cloudflare.

If you’ve never heard of Cloudflare, then it’s a service that explicitly offers protection from a DDoS attack for your site.

Sounds great, but Cloudflare were one of the sites affected by today’s attack!

So if you don’t have one already, install the Wordfence plugin (as a minimum) to help secure your WordPress site. A good alternative is iTheme Security, which gives a raft of settings you can change to bring you that extra peace of mind.

Even better – don’t use your default admin account to log in. Hackers will be able to guess ‘admin’ as a username, and it won’t take long for them to crack your password.

So set yourself up as a new user and use that to post your content instead. If you do want to use your admin account, give it a weird name that no one can guess when you set it up.

There are some awesome advanced tips here that you can try too.

4) Remember there’s a world beyond the internet

It can be really hard in the internet age to remember that business was conducted for centuries without email.

I know the internet makes things a lot easier. Heck, it’s how I’m talking to you right now.

But it’s okay to unplug and do things in the ‘real world’ from time to time.

Pick up the phone and call someone. Browse a local trade directory and make a list of potential leads. Brainstorm topics for your blog posts or email campaigns. Just work on paper for a while.

I didn’t even notice the outage because I was with my students. What were you doing?

Over to you! Do you think you do too much online, or did you completely miss the DDoS attack too?

Filed Under: Digital Marketing Tagged With: back up, blog, ddos attack, security, website

Find me online!

 facebook-48google-plus-48
instagram-48 twitter-48 pinterest-filled-50

Icons by Icon8.

Who am I?

I help tech startups connect with new audiences by writing in-depth blog content!

Find…

Coded Creative

Coded Creative

Recommended Wordpress Themes

Beautiful Dawn Designs - Feminine WordPress Themes

Links

About
Work With Me
Portfolio
Contact
Privacy Policy

Email me!

hello@ljsedgwick.xyz

Find Me Online

Who am I?

I help coaches and course creators connect with new audiences by writing in-depth blog posts and course content!

Copyright © 2025 · Hello Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in