This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today, we're gonna look at the exciting, thrilling topic of SSL. SSL stands for secure sockets layer. There's also a successor to SSL called TLS, transport layer security. As I said, thrilling. I know you're on the edge of your seat.
Like this is why I subscribed to side hustle school. Out of all the podcasts I could listen to, all of that true crime stuff, all those daily news podcasts, et cetera, what I really wanna hear about is obscure technical terms. Well, actually this one is not that obscure. It's actually very relevant. If you wanna have a website, you need to pay attention.
When you go to a website, it begins with either HTTP or HTTPS. Now you may know this already. You may or may not even notice it when you go to a website. But chances are you have probably been to a site that you go to this website, click a link or something, and it gives you this ominous warning. And it asks, are you sure you want to visit this site?
It says something like, you know, this site is not secure. We cannot verify that this site is secure. Are you sure you want to go here? And you have to actually approve that, or sometimes even go into your settings in your browser to say, I want to be able to access sites that are not HTTPS. So this is what SSL is all about.
And you can purchase an SSL certificate that allows your site to avoid those warnings. But is it essential? There's all kinds of stuff you could buy. I'm always encouraging our listeners to be careful, to be frugal. But what do you need to know about this?
Do you need to do something? That's what our caller wants to know. And as I said, if you have a website or if you want to have a website, it actually is relevant, even though this is not about true crime. Okay, stay tuned. Can I get away without buying an SSL?
We'll get into that after this quick message. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Spencer. I just started listening to the show and I've been enjoying it. Here's my question. I only recently learned that there's a difference between a website that begins with HTTP and one that begins with HTTPS.
Apparently the difference is about security, but it looks like it also costs money to add that S at the end. I'm worried about how this looks to potential buyers, but do I really need to pay more just so Google tells them my site is secure? It seems like a racket. What do you think? Looking forward to your response.
[Music]
Spencer, great question. Thanks so much. I'll try to be short and sweet here. Well, first of all, it is a racket. You know, everything is a racket, but in this case, it's a racket that you probably need to pay for, okay?
So the problem is that ominous warning that I mentioned in the beginning, do you want your website visitors to be put on notice that they should be worried? Like as soon as they arrive on your website, Google, if you're using Google Chrome, Google tells your website visitors, "Hey, this is a scary site." Like you don't want that. Other browsers are doing something similar. So you don't want that. These days, there's also another problem.
Not only will Google give that annoying message, Google itself will penalize you in the search engine rankings. So we've actually known for a couple of years that having a secure site, that HTTPS was a factor in the rankings, but it's only become more and more important. And now we're seeing things like most Google results that show up on the first page have to have a secure site. So it's really not optional. You'll be severely penalized without it.
All that to say, yes, you need to do it. And the good thing is, I guess, because it's a racket, it's not that hard. Like there's lots of sellers. If you search by SSL cert, you'll find dozens of companies that will sell one to you. It should cost less than $50 a year.
And in fact, the easiest thing to do is to get it from your web host. Like wherever you are hosting your website, whoever you're paying for that, that way you're billed for it along with your domain. And if you're using a provider like Squarespace or Shopify or some others, it's already built in. And if you're not sure whether you have it or not, just open your website in a new browser and you should see a little lock icon or something that designates security next to where you type in that domain. And if you have that, that's great.
If you don't have it and you get that ominous warning message, you probably need to do something about it. All right, so I love to save money, but this is not an area to do it. If you're selling online, don't skip it. Listeners, if you've got a question, come to siloschool.com/questions. I love hearing from you.
I love knowing what you're up to. Feel free to send updates, challenges, success stories, failures as well. We like to dive into all kinds of stuff here and I am cheering you on wherever you are in the world and however you're listening. Thank you for joining me. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
