Tips Tuesday – GPSR, WP vs WPEngine, Mini Courses for 2025 

Tips this week include:

• Why you need to pay attention to the new GPSR compliance for the EU
• My opinion about EU online safety
• WPEngine wins – for now
• A call for WP governance reform
• Ad agencies are getting lean
• Why you seriously need to think about creating mini courses in 2025

BlogAid Happenings

I have been covered up to my eyeballs in client work this past week.

And I totally missed the new GPSR compliance regulation that went into effect because I thought it only impacted physical products. But it looks like it affects those who sell digital downloads too. More on that in a moment.

Got My Studio Set Up

I also spent every minute of my off time in the last 3 weeks researching how music is made now. That includes figuring out what gear and software I need. 

What a confusing mess it has been. I almost gave up twice. But this is just like learning guitar. You have to really want to do it to go through making your fingers nearly bleed to build up those calluses. So I stuck with it through the mental pain.

I understand the tech. I was around when it was first invented. And I had similar gear in my old studio setup, it was just all hardware. Now it’s all software except for the computer and the keys. But even keyboards have become integrated with certain software platforms, and that’s the route I took.

The pain came from trying to find out what goes with what, and how to hook it all together, as that has radically changed.

Plus, there are hundreds more vendors and platforms than back in the day when I was active with it.

First Relaxing Video

This weekend I was finally able to produce a little something.

Serene Silent Night will help you forget all about the world for a moment.

GPSR Compliance

There are new regulations for selling products in the EU that you need to check out, even if you sell digital products. It went into affect Dec 13, 2024

It’s the General Product Safety Regulation, or GPSR for short.

It affects most products sold in the EU and N. Ireland. Britain is exempt from it.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and my statements about GPSR are not legal advice. You need to do your own research and compliance checks, especially if you sell on platforms that have specific compliance rules. I also suggest you go directly to those platforms for what you need to do and to not listen to blogger and vloggers alone.

I honestly thought this was only for physical products, which is why I didn’t alert you.

But it seems as though it also affects digital products.

My limited understanding of it is that you need to include more things in your product listing, like:

• Contact info – do not put your email address – give the link to your contact form
• Who made the product – this can be your brand name

Hopefully you have already included both of these things in the digital product itself. But now you need to include this info on the product listing too.

For the website where your products are listed, you must provide:

• Safety warnings – if there are any
• Usage instructions

Here’s where there is a grey area for digital products, at least far as I can tell.

The regulation states that all software or connectivity must undergo additional safety checks to protect from hacking.

To me, the regulation is referring to software and apps that you connect to with your smart device. In fact, they call out smart devices in the regulation.

I don’t see how this pertains to certifying that your digital downloads are virus free, and I don’t think you want to post that statement, as it legally binds you to ensure that the storage places you use for your files are also virus free, and you have no control over them.

Like I said, I’m coming to this a little late because I didn’t think it involved digital downloads.

And as mentioned in the disclaimer, you need to do your own research – and ensure that you vet the info from at least 3 sources. Don’t just take anyone’s word for it, not even mine, no matter how much you trust them. 

And be sure to comply with regulations on any store platforms you are using. In fact, that’s the first place you need to look.

Lock Delivery Access

Another thing to look for with these platforms is your market. That’s especially true for those who ship physical products. You may be able to lock it down for delivery to only certain areas. This way you are taking yourself out of the EU marketplace.

Security Tips

EU Online Safety

I’ve heard some sellers say they will simply block visits from EU countries as a way to solve these tightening regulations. Good luck with that, as I don’t think you can totally do it.

Many of us already use cookie plugins that detect the IP address and only show a pop up to EU countries. But this new regulation goes way beyond that. And there’s a way around even that.

At Cloudflare, we already challenge any bot visits from many EU countries, as most of them are the greatest offenders for allowing bad bot and hacker traffic.

The Netherlands has been the top offender for decades, as many server farms for Europe are located there. France and Spain are right behind them. There are about 30 countries in all that we challenge, and I add at least one or two a year now. (Not all of them are in the EU.)

The way we do that challenge blocks the majority of the bad bots hitting on the domain – to the tune of 30,000 hits a month. If a person wants to see our site, they have to jump through a few “check all the boxes with bicycles” type challenges first.

And there is no way you are going to successfully block more than that, as folks can simply use a VPN to get an IP from any location in the world – and that’s exactly what many folks in these countries do anyway, as the US version of apps and such are different from the more restricted ones they have.

So, it’s damn ironic to me that the EU is spending time regulating the minor digital security splitters of everyone else instead of focusing on getting the bad bot haven log out of their own eye.

WordPress Tips

WPEngine Wins – For Now

I haven’t been keeping you blow-by-blow up to date with the WordPress vs WP Engine fiasco for a reason – it’s drama we don’t need.

But, I do want to share with you a win for all of us, not just WPEngine (WPE).

A judge forced Matt Mullenweg to reinstate full access to WP.org for WPE, and for them to get their ACF plugin control back as well.

The dev community is still a bit divided and you can read more about all that drama here, if you like.

I’m just glad this part of it is over.

But the damage Matt did to WP is far from over.

Call for Governance Reform

A group of 20 high-level, and long-time WordPress contributors has issued an open letter that essentially calls for major reform in the way Matt Mullenweg runs his dictatorship.

They want involvement, transparency, and accountability in the decision-making processes. More than anything, they want to stop Matt from acting unilaterally and to no longer be above the law, which is WordPress’ Code of Conduct – which he has broken in the fight with WPE.

What is most troubling about this open letter is that the 20 signatories feared retaliation if the publicly released their names.

Instead, the group provided The Repository with access to the letter before publication so that they could verify each person.

And they all protected their identities from each other as well.

Y’all, think about that for a moment.

People can’t even speak out freely about governance reform without fear of what may happen to their jobs and businesses.

And that alone is why we need governance reform and a way to put some limits on Matt Mullenweg.

You can read the letter, and quotes from folks who signed it, here.

Monetization Tips

Ad Agencies Getting Lean

I’m not going to mention names here, but y’all can read between the lines on this, I bet.

A few years ago, one popular ad agency decided to solve several of their partner’s problems by acquiring a social media plugin, and then building their own theme, and recommending specific hosts.

The problem is that their devs are not from the WordPress world. They come from an enterprise, hard coded from scratch world. And while that code is pristine there, it simply does not play well with WP, as I have long lamented.

Well, times are tough now for all ad agencies.

They have spent a LOT of $$$ trying to deal with the 3rd party cookie situation, only to find out that Google has been lying to us for the past 5 years.

That hurt – in the wallet.

The HCU took away a ton of traffic from their bigger partners too.

So, they finally released their lower-barrier traffic program, and botched that the same way they botched every other extra endeavor they chose to do.

At this point, they are letting anyone and their sister into their Pro program, so I’ve heard, even sites with 1k sessions/mo.

And they’re shedding every extra thing they took on, like the social media button plugin, and now their custom theme. They sold it to a company I’m not at all fond of. And they just sent the folks who still use that theme from the frying pan to the fire, IMO.

The host they recommend is equally distasteful to me, if you’re serious about cyber security and speed.

As much as I have lost respect for this ad agency, I don’t wish them failure.

I see all of these moves as getting lean so that they can survive.

But I do hope it means the end of them coding things for WP outside of the ad mechanism needed to deliver those ads, and in a way that makes sites fast.

If you’re still using any of their other products, contact me and let’s get you off them.

Mini Courses for the Win

I’ve got 3 mini courses planned for the first half of 2025. More on that in my end of the year post in a couple of weeks.

And I’ve got at least 3 clients who want to offer a mini course in 2025 too.

In fact, I’m looking into Restrict Content Pro to help them do it, as they don’t need something as complex, and expensive as MemberPress for just 1 or 2 mini courses. (I offer a turn-key setup on both.)

And I’ll be helping a client set up MemberPress for 7 mini courses, and then integrating it with her existing Shopify store so folks can purchase anything they want in one place.

Folks, mini courses are in high demand.

People starting out just want the basics to get going.

And folks at every level just want something specific that is quick and cheap and gets them back on their way.

And then you have those folks on your list and they keep coming back for more info that makes it quick, easy, and cheap for them to get stuff done, when they are ready to do it.

Last week I was talking to one of my site audit clients during our yearly mini consult about this very thing.

She has specialized knowledge that she could easily put into a pdf and sell it as a standalone, or bundle a few together as a mini course.

She already has the knowledge. In fact, she already has most of the content, it just needs to be reformatted.

Forget selling a “book”. Do it as a PDF guide or a mini course.

That’s EXACTLY what I’ve done on the eCreators Hub.

I literally built the courses and guides based on what folks told me they wanted.

I have 6 more on the way for next year.

I have another client who offered a PDF guide for a “donation” and she was shocked that folks gave her twice as much money for it as what she was thinking about charging for it.

What do you know that others need to know?

Hmm. Maybe I need to do a mini course on how to do a mini course, at least as far as gathering your thoughts and creating the content.

What do you think?