Tips Tuesday – GA4 Changes, Video Money Examples, Online Safety Tips

ByMaAnna Stephenson
Tips Tuesday – GA4 Changes, Video Money Examples, Online Safety Tips

Tips this week include:

  • All the ways I’ve been helping site owners make more money this past week
  • How invisible issues at your host are costing you money
  • Why to talk to a mechanic instead of a salesman
  • Showing you the money and the fun in your online business
  • Why SEO is important outside of Google
  • Data Retention change in GA4
  • How to check and update your Internal Traffic Filter in GA4
  • Why we’re still not updating to WP 6.6 yet
  • Go where the advertising money is going – with real examples
  • Where affiliate marketing is booming
  • Tips to be safe online
  • Why to close inactive browser tabs

BlogAid Happenings

It has been a packed week of helping site owners with:

And for my site audit Hub clients:

  • Offering vetted advice on new plugins and 3rd-party vendors
  • Troubleshooting site-related issues
  • Advising on emails that came from vendors

I’m so glad to be a source of calm for my clients and a place where they know they can get expert help for whatever they need to run their sites and make more money.

It can be scary when you need to make a change or when something comes up and you don’t know which way to go with it or what actions to take or not.

My peeps know that I have the receipts to back up my tested advice, and the experience to help them make that change.

I can also tell you that I first met many of my clients in blogger groups that they eventually left because they woke up to just how awful the advice in those groups can be. 

How Invisible Issues at Your Host Cost You Money

Not everybody listens to my advice.

I’ve had site audit requests from folks on crappy hosts that can’t be fully secured or made as fast as a site needs to run. They told me that they have been on that host for years and not had any issues and they don’t see the need to switch to better hosting.

I wish them well, because I can’t do anything else to help them make their site secure and fast and remove all of the very issues they are complaining about that prompted them to get an audit in the first place.

I have to let them suffer from what they don’t know that they don’t know.

I’m always stunned at how much money site owners are leaving on the table, or how much harder they are working because of what they don’t know.

Or worse, dealing with a site that breaks or has constant issues.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Talk to the Mechanic

You don’t need to be a site tech to have a successful online business. 

But sites, and everything they integrate with are technical things.

You do need a trusted tech in your corner to ensure that your business is running at its peak and making you the most money.

That helps you avoid the expensive mistakes of kluging together a mess of things that are hard to run, or break, or they just don’t function as well as you need them to.

When you’re buying a car, would you rather talk to a salesman about it or a mechanic?

I’m the mechanic. 

My goal is to offer trusted advice and help you in ways that make and save you more money and trouble so that you can grow your business. And seeing real results helps me retain clients for decades – yes, decades. That’s how long many of my clients have been with me.

Show Me the Money – And the Fun

During our live chat to go over site audit reports, I always ask my client how their business is going and how they plan to grow it.

Every single time, those chats produce more ways for them to make money.

I’m not talking about theory or just great ideas. 

I’m talking about specific things and how to do them.

When clients get off the call, they get busy making it happen because they have clarity on what to do and the steps to do it.

I’m beyond thrilled that more of my blogger clients are moving into creating their own products, memberships, and video marketing!!

It’s working.

They are making more money.

And they are far less concerned about what Google does with Search or with 3rd-party cookies now too.

Some still enjoy ad revenue, but it is a side income now. Many have taken ads off their sites to have an even better user experience.

And many have found a new joy in their business. Being online is fun again.

What’s Your Goal?

Is your online business making you the money you want it to?

Are you doing what you enjoy?

Is it time for a change or to implement a new thing?

Let me help you get it done instead of just thinking about it, even if that help is just the encouragement and inspiration that you can do it!!!

SEO Tips

Why SEO is Important Outside of Google

Google Search is losing viewership.

But the number of folks wanting to know things has not decreased.

They are turning to other sources now.

You.com is one of those other sources, and it focuses on citing articles from independent publishers like you and me.

Watch this TikTok video to see a demo of You.com.

Your good SEO is what brings your article to the top of this AI-powered search engine.

And you get a citation.

This is also why I suggest not to hide your content from all AI bot crawlers.

Google and Bing are most certainly not the only places to search anymore. And as was stated in the video above, they are not incentivized to show our content.

These new AI research sites are delighted to show original, authoritative content from independent publishers.

And that has EVERYTHING to do with why more folks are turning to them instead of Google now too.

GA4 Tips

Data Retention Change

During the setup of EZ Metrix custom reports, we check several of your GA4 and GSC settings because if they are not correct, your reports will not be accurate.

During those checks I saw a change to the Data Retention setting. They have now split it into 2 settings, and you’ll want to check both.

See my post on GA4 Data Retention Setting Update for more details.

Check and Update Internal Traffic Filter in GA4

In a recent Tips Tuesday, I mentioned that I updated the tutorial on How to Find and Whitelist Your IP Address in Cloudflare.

And I included a solution if you have an IP that changes frequently.

Cloudflare is not the only place you need to keep your IP updated.

You also need to ensure it is current in your GA4 filter to exclude your visits to your site from your metrics.

See my post on Check Status and Update IP in GA4 Internal Traffic Filter for details.

Since so many of my followers took my GA4 course and already have this set up, I didn’t go into detail about how to create the filter. 

This tutorial only covers checking the status to ensure it is Active and how to get to the IP field to update it.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.6 has been out for a week and we are still not ready to update quite yet.

One of the reasons why is that 6.6 makes all links underlined by default – even on buttons.

It’s not happening on all themes, though. 

I totally understand their position of wanting to make WordPress be Accessibilities compliant. But, you can’t dictate overrides of theme design choices in a global way like that.

The upcoming bug fix of 6.6.1 will roll that back. So, we’ll wait a little longer for that fix, and a few other bug fixes.

I’ll be sending an email with special update instructions to my site audit Hub members as well as my Webmaster Training members.

Marketing Tips

Go Where the Advertising Money is Going

Let me tell you something.

The proposed TikTok ban that was just signed into law has NOTHING to do with China. And the app ain’t going anywhere. There will be challenges to this for years. Even the person who signed the bill has an account there.

If lawmakers gave a real rat’s a$$ about our privacy then they would have banned Facebook a decade ago.

Follow the money trail – that’s where the real reasons behind things always lie.

Covid hurt Hollywood, including both film and TV. And then the strike hurt them again. Reality TV production is down 53%. Streaming services are no longer sustainable and are raising rates and running ads to try to find a short-term fix.

VFX (Virtual Effects) are being done by folks in their bedroom office. There is not as much work for set designers.

Casting sites in the UK used to have a listing every 2-3 minutes. Last week, there were only 30 listings – for the week.

The whole entertainment industry as we know it is crumbling.

The advertisement money that was connected to that industry is moving to where the viewership is alive, thriving, and growing – and that’s to independent creators.

YouTube and TikTok are drawing the eyeballs and the money.

Do you run ads on your written content? 

There’s that much money from ads that run on video content too.

It doesn’t have to be hard.

Folks who are just recording while they do their work are making bank.

That includes:

Others are sharing their hobbies:

  • Making a still image move in some odd way
  • Inspirational messages
  • Drawing – 3.4M views
  • ASMR sounds

Some share slice of life, like:

Yes, there are folks making $100,000 per episode on YouTube – not kidding. I read it weekly on The Publish Press and the Creator Economy on The Information,

But you don’t have to do the grind of a weekly show to make money.

All of these folks in the videos above are on TikTok and are getting ad money, brand sponsorship, and/or getting commission off a thing they found and used from the TikTok shop.

YouTube pays for my groceries for half the year – and I’m not even doing videos every month, much less every week or every day.

There is real ad/sponsorship/affiliate money in video, because the advertisers are loving people talking to people or just being entertaining in some way and they are pouring what used to be TV ad dollars into these platforms. 

Watch this breakdown of the TikTok Creativity Program and how just 1. Ideo made this creator $4k in 3 weeks. This is not one of those hype videos. All of the examples above are making good money just like this too.

I hope some of these examples give you ideas for how you can get into the money with it too.

Affiliate Marketing is Booming on TikTok and Instagram

If you do any kind of affiliate marketing, you need to read this post from the nice folks at Blogging Wizard with 9 Proven Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Blog’s Income.

And the first place they suggest you start is with short-form content on TikTok and Instagram. They also include promoting through your YouTube channel too.

The next thing they suggest is that you create targeted blog posts. They show you how to research keywords. You can get a LOT of good keyword info from looking at your own metrics in Google Search Console.

This is where EZ Metrix makes it so fast and simple to do. And it helps you find the content that you already have that would be good for revamping to make it better – or making a video out of it.

Security Tips

Tips to Be Safe Online

Your site’s security is not just about what I can implement, or what the 3rd party vendors we use can do for you, like Cloudflare and the host.

Your online security starts with you because you have admin login access to your site.

When you plan to log into your site, do these things to help protect yourself and your site:

  • Ensure you are logged out of all other sites.
  • Close all open browser tabs.
  • Close the browser and reopen.
  • DO NOT check email while logged into your site.
  • Actually log out of your site when you are finished, and then close that browser tab.

Do You Really Need All Those Browser Tabs Open?

During live sessions, I often see folks have 10-20 browser tabs open.

That slows down bandwidth, and it also makes our Zoom sessions a lot slower too.

But it is also a security risk.

Seriously consider closing browser tabs that you are not actively using.

Your internet connection will run faster.

And you will decrease your security risk off cross site scripting hacks through your browser.

Close Tabs on Mobile Too

And don’t forget about your phone or tablet.

Not only do I close all open browser tabs at day’s end, I also close all apps.

On iPhone or iPad, swipe up from the bottom to see open apps.

Drag them up, and off the screen to fully close them.

blank

MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.