Tips Tuesday – Focus on the Money, MemberPress, Shopify

Tips this week include:

• A change of season is in the air
• Time to gear up with super courses
• Bringing my expertise to MemberPress
• The 2 key factors that cost you – ease or money
• Why to focus on the money you make
• Bringing my expertise to Shopify
• New Search Console Recommendations
• Where’s your audience?
• Amazon partners with TikTok and Pinterest

BlogAid Happenings

Change of Season

Are you feeling the change of season yet?

It’s definitely in the air – and I mean that literally for my part of the country. It’s been such a wet and hot spring and summer so far. On Thursday that pattern finally broke and we’ve had cooler and dryer air for days now. In fact, Zak and I had to cover in a light blankie in the mornings on the deck this past weekend.

My neighbor across the street asked in our ‘hood’s Facebook group if it was too early to put up Halloween decorations. Everybody told her to go for it.

I’ve taken advantage of the weather to get a jump start on the end of summer yard chores.

Time to Gear Up with Courses

And like many of you, I’ve been preparing my sites and businesses for the end of the year push.

Here’s what I’ve got coming for you to help you do that.

• Right now is a great time to see what’s trending, so I’ve got new workshops coming for the DIY SEO course with some special keyword research.
• A new course for Playground AI was released this weekend in the AI Images for Profit. And I sent members a new way to make money with AI images that pay $20/$30 an image too.
• The new Digital Downloads with Google Docs course for the eCreators Hub is almost fully written. I will be finishing it up this week and then will start recording the videos. There will be about 50 tutorials in this course and it will include Templates that you can swipe, as well as how to create those templates from scratch too.
• GA4 has released some new metrics. I’ve got checking into them on my to do list for later this month, as I want to see if I can bring them into EZ Metrix. Plus, I’ll be bringing forward some tutorials from my GA4 course into EZ Metrix on how to set up Conversions so you can see exactly what posts and pages are making you money.

Bringing My Expertise to MemberPress

This past week I was invited by the MemberPress team to give feedback on their new features and the product overall.

They took 4 pages of notes and want to speak with me again.

Why?

Because I know my clients.

I know what they need and what platforms and features fulfill those needs.

I also know UX (User Experience) on the front and backside of a platform.

And I know their competition.

One of the things I emphasized is that with a platform as extensive and complex as MemberPress, which can do everything, their target audience is not the site owner.

The folks they need to cater to are people like me who make the recommendations and do the setup for those site owners.

A platform like MemberMouse, which can only do one thing, is the type of app that should cater to non-techie site owners who have a single, one-price course, or a few text-only resources, and is super simple for the site owner to set up themselves.

Key Factors – Ease or Money

The fact is, the problem with marketing any site related thing is split between 2 camps – ease of setup or making real money.

I see it every day – build a website in 5 minutes with AI. Yeah, and it looks and functions like that too.

Y’all know the influencer hook – get on Bluehost and use Divi and make money blogging in just 4 hours a week.

You also know that 80% of folks who start blogging that way fail in less than 2 years – and you know why.

Running a successful, money making site takes work and knowledge. 

It also takes investing in the right stuff, including good hosting, tech help like me, a good theme, some paid plugins, learning SEO, image optimization, marketing on social media, running a good newsletter with a super optin, and more.

I’m not sure why folks think it’s any different with running a membership, course, or store.

They still fall for the ease of setup marketing hook.

Here’s how to avoid that expensive mistake that leads to failure.

Focus on What’s Important – the Money You Make

Get educated on how to make money by delivering your own product, no matter what it is.

That’s why I insist on doing a consult to help my clients find 4x more money in whatever it is that they want to deliver. 

And then we choose the tech that can deliver it.

We focus on the money, not the setup.

We focus on how much more they will make, and how many expensive pitfalls they will avoid.

We focus on how they will get and retain buyers.

After that consult, they don’t give a flying flip about ease of setup anymore because they see how much money they would leave on the table by using something that is limited to their non-techie know-how.

They just need to know how to run it after it is set up.

So, you can get educated up front and start making money Day 1 or you can go the Bluehost/Divi route and wake up a year later realizing that you fell for a marketing hook and it’s going to cost more to come out of that and rebuild than it would have to cost to build it right the first time.

Bringing My Expertise to Shopify

Last week I attended a webinar for how to speed up a Shopify site.

A full 45 minutes of that hour was devoted to how much a slow site costs you in revenue.

Another 10 minutes was devoted to showing data of how much a speed agency helped some big e-comm clients when they moved them off a custom enterprise-level site and onto Shopify.

Only 5 minutes was spent giving tips on how to speed up a Shopify site.

And they used Google PageSpeed Insights as their only measure of speed.

All of my site audit clients know that GPSI is THE worst speed tester on the planet because it doesn’t give you enough info to actually see the issues much less fix them.

Speed on Shopify comes down to these 3 main things:

• Theme
• Images
• Apps, which are like plugins on WP 

You know, the same speed demons on WordPress.

So, I’m digging into how to bring my speed expertise to help Shopify folks.

And I have to tell you, the more I look into Shopify stores at $40/mo, the more I’m liking their Starter plan at $5/mo to do an integration with an existing WP site because that avoids most all of the speed issues.

Plus, if you’re the one doing all of the SEO and marketing to get folks to your store, then you’re not really missing much by not having a Shopify store front.

But, if you are starting anew, and don’t already have a site, and don’t count on blogging to get traffic, but use ads instead, then a Shopify storefront makes more sense to do.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a site, but you do have a strong social media presence, then the Starter plan makes more sense.

There is no one-size-fits-all with this.

That’s why it makes sense to get a consult first and pick the tech last.

SEO Tips

New Search Console Recommendations

Google Search Console has launched a new feature called Recommendations.

I’ll be digging into this and we’ll have a live workshop on it in the DIY SEO course.

Visibility Tips

Where’s Your Audience?

Nothing sells without promotion.

The cardinal rule of marketing is to be where your audience is.

But that changes all the time because social media and video change all the time.

Search Engine Journal has a nice post on what platforms are appealing to different demographics.

It’s titled Facebook Attracts Gen Z Users While TikTok’s Boomer Audience Grows.

It’s definitely worth a read if these are the demographics you’re hoping to attract.

Monetization Tips

Amazon Partners with TikTok and Pinterest 

Woot!!! I’m delighted to see Amazon make this move so that folks can purchase directly from social media on both TikTok and Pinterest.

This follows Amazon partnering with Meta and Snap to start running ads on those platforms.

But, it does require folks to link their Amazon account to these platforms to see current pricing.

If this goes well, I’m wondering how long it will be before Amazon affiliates are allowed to post their links.

You can do that now on YouTube if you have your channel registered in your Amazon affiliate account. 

I have to tell you, folks are making bank by recommending things they find on TikTok Shop.

And if Amazon will allow TikTok to take a little cut, we may see the affiliate door open on that too.