BBP 027: Understanding Page Builders with Pete Mcpherson
Tools and Resources Mentioned:
About Pete McPherson
Pete McPherson is a full-time blogger and podcaster at Do You Even Blog, a resource for income-seeking bloggers and online entrepreneurs. He spends his days interviewing the world’s top creators & entrepreneurs, including names like Neil Patel, Matt Mullenweg, John Lee Dumas, Nick Loper, Michelle Schroeder, and many more. Pete is also the CEO of Online Impact, a private membership community for online businesses. Learn more at Doyouevenblog.com
shownotes
Hey Boss, welcome to the Blogger Breakthrough Podcast, I’m your host, Liz Stapleton from ElizabethStapleton.com and founder of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit.
Today we’re talking page builders which Pete McPherson from Do You Even Blog covered during our 2020 Summit.
Remember, if you want to make sure you get notified when registration opens for the 2021 Summit, be sure to join the Blogger Breakthrough Summit newsletter and the link to that is included in the show notes.
Now let’s take a listen to part of his summit session to learn what page builders are awesome and which you should be avoiding.
[00:00:37].750] – Liz
So because when you start blogging, there’s obviously a lot of tech overwhelm, even just even just getting a theme set up. But after you’ve been at it for a while, you kind of reach the point where you need something to make pretty pages, not necessarily for blog posts, although sometimes depending, but landing pages and sales pages and all that.
[00:00:57].920] – Liz
And then you start digging into page builders and it’s like a whole nother level of overwhelm
[00:01:02].350] – Pete Yeah, totally
[00:01:02].460] – Liz
You know, and kind of which ones are good. Now, I, I loved love, thrive themes, products, but they were slowing down my site, so I’ve been moving away from them.
[00:01:16].500] – Pete Yeah,
[00:01:17].060] – Liz
it’s hard, it’s hard to force myself to learn a new tool. So that’s one solution out there. But some of the others, I don’t know how familiar are with them, just kind of touch on them. There is Divi, Beaver builder. Yeah. And then Elementor, I think those are like the main ones.
[00:01:34].760] – Liz
So any thoughts on those before we go?
[00:01:37].880] – Pete Yes, absolutely.
[00:01:39].650] – Pete
So before we talk about anything specific, I want to tell people what Elementor is and what it is not, think of like a knife. Like you have a nice kitchen knife and it’s a really great knife. It’s for a very specific thing, but I would not use it to be able to screw in a something into a socket or screws or it’s not a hammer. It is a knife Elementor or is more like one of those sweet Swiss Army knife where you opened up and all the little prongs come out.
[00:02:09].890] – Pete
You can use it for your theme. You can use it for a landing page, for sales, you can you can use it for just a new header across your site. You can use it for just one widget in a blog post or on the sidebar or here or there or anywhere. It is like a Swiss Army knife. But the good news is you only have to learn how to use the software Elementor like once. And it is a little tricky.
[00:02:33].800] – Pete
It’s not super beginner friendly and actually learn.
[00:02:36].350] – Liz
I mean, I’m not a beginner. I tried using last week and I’m like I can’t get it to look how I want.
[00:02:40].790] – Pete
There is that learning curve totally.
[00:02:42].260] – Pete
But once you have that oh man, you realize it is so versatile and powerful, you can use a bunch of different stuff. So Beaver Builder, I haven’t used it in over two years now. It worked really well when I used it, but it was still like a little limited. And it’s not an Elementor and I just like I was like whatever wasn’t very impressed with it. Divi, I tell everybody in my membership community, every blogger that I can get my hands on?
[00:03:07].550] – Pete
Don’t use Divi ever, period. If you do, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. It slows down your site and it has since the day they created it. The code behind the scenes is very heavy, is terrible. The worst part is that Divi does not want you to leave Divi. If you were to change your theme, if you want to uninstall it, it is a huge pain. In fact, there are WordPress plugins out there specifically built for all the people who have been like this is a nightmare.
[00:03:34].280] – Pete
How do I leave Divi now? It’s good news. There are people making plugins for it, but that should also be a very clear sign of don’t use Divi. It is slow. It’s still has the same learning curve Elementor has, it is just takes over your entire WordPress site to be able to leave. It’s a disaster. So those are my thoughts on all the other page builders. Those are the biggest ones.
[00:03:55].580] – Pete
There are maybe like a few more…
[00:03:56].840] – Liz
There is tons of other stuff in there. And I mean, I love Thrive. I really loved Thrive products it breaks my heart that it slowed down my site that I was like. I’m I’m making the choice that speed is over, better over the things that it can do. And so then I asked Grayson who is another speaker at the Summit, I was like, what do you recommend because he is like a WordPress guru right, and he helps people fix sites and stuff, and he was like Elementor or Beaver Builder in terms of like weighing down their site, like looking at it.
[00:04:25].780] – Liz
And the great thing about elementor is it’s free. I mean, there is a page version of Pro version that comes with more stuff, but there’s free. So what are your if you want to kind of dive into sort of the I don’t know if you use the free or paid version. Sort of. But OK, but can you get by with just the free version for….
[00:04:46].580] – Pete
I would argue no, yes, you can still use it, but so many of the different elements they like the widgets, which is the different elements, are Pro only and it’s not like it’s fifty dollars a month or thirty dollars a month.
[00:05:00].200] – Pete
It’s fifty dollars a year, which is just ludicrously affordable. You’ll look at other ins like a membership’s plug in or something like that. They’re all like two hundred fifty dollars a year. Three hundred fifty dollars a year like you get up there $50 a year is a steal or what the plugin is. Again, it’s just because of the elements, like if you don’t want to use the theme builder, which is also Pro only half or still, you can’t use a form like a form like an email often or a contact form or anything, a pop ups like this.
[00:05:28].910] – Pete
Again, Pro only you can use it [the free version], but it’s very it’s limited. But the pro version is $50 a year. So pony i tup. OK, avoid eating out for like a week. Or if you’re eating out lunches for like a week and it’s paid for an entire year
[00:05:46].400] – Liz Make one affiliate sale.
[00:05:49].190] – Pete That’s right.
[00:05:50].620] – Liz
Put your ad revenue for a month or something. It pays for itself. Yeah.
Wrap Up
Okay, hopefully this little snippet helped you figure out page builders a bit more. Be sure to join me next week when I’ll be sharing tips from Tracie Fobes about how to make money with sponsored content. Until then, I hope you have a fantastic day!
