Tips Tuesday – Digital Downloads, Image SEO, Email Marketing, Astra is Spectra

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Issues with various plugins being reported
• Astra is now Spectra, sort of
• Why I’m taking a little time off from TikTok and all such videos
• A reminder to get your ADA compliance taken care of, and resources to help you do it
• Image SEO Part 3 bonus workshop is this week in the DIY SEO course
• Planning your digital download workshop is today in the BB Hub
• A set of digital downloads setup manuals are on the way
• How to ensure you get better email deliverability
• How transactional emails are different from marketing email services
• A new membership goals comparison is underway
• Why selling your own products is the future
• A free Yoast webinar this week on growing your email marketing sales
• Why I’ve been quiet on the Web3 front lately

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Different Order Today

I’m switching things up for this Tips Tuesday. We’ll have important news you need to know first, and then we’ll have a front porch chat.

News You Can Use

Issue with Plugins Being Reported

Some of y’all may remember about 1.5 years ago we had all manner of funky issues being reported with various plugins. And then all of it magically cleared itself up in a few days, and none of those plugins were actually at fault, as far as we could tell.

Well, that seems to be happening again. And I’ve seen reports on at least 3 different plugins, and all of the sites are at different hosts too.

If you get an email from your site that a plugin is causing an error, and the site is still live, do nothing.

If you see an error notification when you go to the site, then you may need help turning that plugin, or all plugins off, at the host level, just to get the site back up.

You may also need to check the remaining plugins that have connections to 3rd parties to ensure they are still connected, if you turned them back on.

I’ll keep you posted as I have more info.

The main thing is not to panic. The next main thing is to not have the plugin vendor or your host try to fix things.

Astra is Now Spectra, Sort of

Astra sent out emails last week that there was a Spectra beta version to try.

To me, that sounds like the thing has not been released yet.

But, I also saw last week that they renamed the UAG plugin as Spectra.

Honest to goodness I can’t tell if this is just a theme, or theme and plugin, or what. Their messaging about it is all over the place.

I signed up for the beta, but I have not had time to dig into it yet. And some of my webmasters signed up too, and we are waiting for their reports on it.

I’ll keep you posted on what we find.

BlogAid Happenings

Spring has sprung for real in my part of the world. No more cold. And that makes me and Zak exceedingly happy because we get extended deck time. We especially enjoy listening to the frogs and crickets at night. And I’m so grateful for nights that are warm enough to be on the deck without a jacket, but cool enough that the skeeters aren’t out yet.

Front Porch Chat

It’s been a while since you and me had a front porch chat to reflect on the changing online landscape.

And that’s what we’re going to do today.

So, have a seat in the swing, or pull up a rocking chair, and I’ll bring you a cool glass of lemonade and let’s talk.

Laying Off TikTok for a Bit

For those of you who are following me on TikTok, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted there in a couple of weeks. I have also stopped posting those quick vids to YouTube and Facebook too.

Here’s why.

I had a whole list of quick videos to make. But, as I’m changing the focus of BlogAid, I realized that those tips and news were just going to attract too much of the same thing that I was getting from being active in some blogger groups. And that led to too many ill-fitting jobs and clients. And that’s why I’ve been far less active in them this year too.

So, I’m taking some time off from making those videos until I can get my new messaging squared away. And I’ll keep you posted.

I just didn’t want y’all to think that I’ve given up on video, or that they don’t work. It’s that they do work and I want to ensure I’m attracting the type of business and clients that are a good fit for what I offer.

Video is the fast track to more eyeballs and I won’t be laying off it any longer than I have to.

ADA Compliance Reminder

Quick reminder that many of you started on your ADA compliance checks last month.

It’s time to get that finished up and done.

The lawsuits seemed to have calmed down a bit, but they’ll be back.

Be sure to read these 2 excellent posts from Michelle Phillips at Codefetti:

• Why You Need an Accessible Website – a super primer with deep insight
• How to Make Your WordPress Website Accessible – tests and checklist

Screen Reader Text Format Plugin Tutorial

And I have a new video tutorial for you on one of the super helpful tools that Michelle recommends that allows you to add more screen reader text to things like button links and such.

That way you can keep your great Call-to-Action text and still be Accessibilities compliant.

BlogAid Course Happenings

Image SEO Part 3 Workshop this Thursday

This week I’m making the schedule for the bonus workshops in the DIY SEO course.

And there is new info about image SEO, so I decided to add that as Part 3 of our existing Image workshops. We’ll meet this Thursday for it.

I’ll also be flipping the order of the rest of the workshops for this year to put our Content Revamp series next, and I’ll be incorporating some of the new info about ways to redo your content without getting your ranking lowered by Google over it. Those were going to be bonus sessions, but I think this will be a better way to do it.

And then I’ll be working on the schedule of incorporating more bonus sessions for doing content reviews too.

BB Hub Happenings

The BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of perks and support, like these offerings.

Planning Your Digital Download Workshop Today

I’m delighted to be meeting with my fellow BB Hubbers today for our next Digital Downloads Workshop.

This one is being presented by visibility expert Denise Wakeman and she will guide us on planning our download. That will include making an outline, plus all the stuff you need to include for better conversion and such too.

Ecomm Coalition Happenings

Yes, the Ecomm Coalition of vendors that I have put together is still very active behind the scenes. And we’re working on some goodies and info for you.

Digital Download Setup Manuals Coming

There are 3 major parts to creating a digital download:

• Deciding what to create that your audience wants
• Figuring out how to create it
• Setting up the payment and delivery system

Our BB Hub Digital Downloads workshop is covering the first 2 of those tasks.

And, one of the vendors in the Ecomm Coalition is putting together some sweet manuals to cover the last task and help you set up your payment and delivery system for both free and paid downloads.

Our hope is to give you the info to DIY it, and to also have trained support to do it for you if you want to outsource the setup.

Better Email Delivery

Part of that trained support also includes setting up your email records to ensure delivery instead of your stuff going into the spam folder.

This is also a service that is required for my site audit clients, as sending email through the host is a security issue.

The setup includes:

• Moving your domain-related email off the host and onto a 3rd party provider
• Creating all of the proper verification records at the host and at Cloudflare, if you use that
• Creating all of the proper verification records for your email list service
• Putting notification emails from the site on the SMTP delivery system instead of going through the hosting

Out of all the hundreds of site audit clients I have worked with, I have only encountered one that did this full setup themselves. 99.99% of site owners only have 33% of the required records added, and those are only for their domain-related email. They totally miss the more important verification records for both their domain-related email and their list service provider.

Transactional Emails are Different

Most of my clients have an email list service provider like MailerLite and ConvertKit or such.

Those are considered Marketing Email List Providers.

But, for folks who need transactional emails at scale for things like member sites and digital download delivery, there are other services like SendGrid.

Some of them also have a marketing email side to them as well.

And they are WAY cheaper to run than the marketing email providers.

However, they can also be more daunting to set up, as they rely on API connections and such.

And this is another area I’m looking into as I continue my deep dive into member sites. And I intend to offer that setup service as well.

Membership Goals Comparison Underway

Speaking of membership sites, THE most expensive mistake I see new membership site owners make is choosing the tech or platform before knowing: 

• How to make money with a membership site
• Options for delivery of content
• How to market a membership
• How to retain members

That’s why I insist on doing a paid consult first where we talk about all that, because most folks are just focused on their content creation and none of the rest.

But, that’s also why there are so many posts out there that do a features comparison chart of the different platforms for running a membership.

However, if you have no idea how to make use of those features to customize a profitable product, that info is mostly useless.

This week I’m making a membership goals comparison chart that will help folks determine the feature set they need to meet their goals.

And then it will show which of the platforms can do that.

Honestly, I think that is the only way to make real sense of the dizzying array of choices available.

And nobody benefits from having a gazillion choices. They benefit from having clarity on what will work best for them, including upfront cost and then cost of maintaining and running a membership too. 

I have yet to see a comparison chart that speaks to the reality of that!!

So, I’m going to make one.

Selling Your Own Products is the Future

Every prediction I have made for the last 10 years has come true.

EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Blogging for ad revenue is the hardest and slowest way to make money online.

When 3rd party cookie tracking drops from Chrome, the profit from it is likely to go down as non-targeted ads pay less.

Marketing and selling your own knowledge and products is the fastest way to profit online.

I’ve been preaching this for 2 years, and I don’t see enough movement in that direction by most bloggers who use ads as their primary income source.

And I’ve been telling you for 2 years that the focus of BlogAid is shifting away from catering to ad-revenue bloggers and into some type of e-commerce.

That includes helping you get started in digital downloads and membership sites.

That includes incorporating the services and education I offer now for speed, security, and more.

And it will eventually include how to market them successfully, and blogging will still be a part of that.

So, BlogAid is not dropping services.

But, the types of clients I cater to for those services is being redirected into who I believe will be most profitable in the near future and have the money to pay for those services.

For all of you who have well-established, large audiences, and ads are your main revenue, you’ll still be in business, but the sum of profits may be lower.

For all of you who are just starting out and plan to monetize via ads, take a different direction now into monetizing your knowledge directly.

Yoast Webinar on Email Marketing and Sales

And to help you with that, I hope you’ll be able to attend a free webinar that is hosted by Team Yoast on how to grow your sales with email marketing.

It is this Wed, which is tomorrow, so sorry for the short notice, but I just learned about it too.

And I did see a quirk with their registration link. I had to ask it to email me the link. But that may because I’ve previously registered for other webinars, I’m not sure.

Quiet on the Web3 Front

At the beginning of the year y’all may recall that I was all a tizzy about Web3.

I still am.

But, the current financial instability in the world has drained the end user momentum out of many of the projects.

That includes folks being active in the various metaverses.

Here’s the thing.

Web3 is the future.

Those projects still have PLENTY of venture capital and they are still being developed and are growing. They just don’t have much retail investment now due to all markets crashing, including the crypto market.

What else has become abundantly clear is that there is an enormous lack of skilled developer talent to fill all of the job openings for those Web3 projects.

And that has a lot to do with why we are seeing so many hacks too, with literally billions of dollars getting drained off chains and wallets connected to them.

They just don’t have enough security developers or time and ways to adequately test deeply.

And that lack of security is the main reason I cooled off a bit on actively building Web3 projects myself.

We’re still insanely early to the game.

And early birds make bank.

But, not at the risk of losing it all.

I want to give some time for the devs to build in more no-brainer security for retail users and investors before I present more opportunities to y’all.

What I will say now is that you need to be super cautious with folks who are pushing their own coins and NFT projects as very few of those gurus know diddly damn squat about security with all of this.

If you do get into crypto or Web3, get a separate laptop and lock it down like crazy. Don’t do any of it on your phone or other mobile devices. And read, read, read, read, read all you can about how to stay safe with your wallets and logins and such.

How are You Changing Focus?

Many of my clients have been making major life changes this year.

And they’ve been making big changes with their site too.

Have you been wanting to make a change?

Feel free to share what you’ve been reflecting on and what is speaking to you these days.

Leave us a comment here on the blog, or anywhere you see this post online.

And I would kindly ask that you don’t email me privately with your response, unless you are looking to do a consult and want to talk through a big change you want to make.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

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Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.