Tips Tuesday – Monetize Recipes, YouTube Shorts Pay, TikTok Search Case Study

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• New member site theme revamps are complete
• GA4 course tutorial creation is underway
• WordPress 6.1 Beta 1 is out
• Where to get WP update instructions
• What became of Google’s Helpful Content update
• TikTok vs Google as search engine case study
• YouTube Shorts pay from the Partner Program
• How one blogger got in the money by thinking like a business owner
• Now you can monetize your shoppable recipes

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BlogAid Happenings

We’re about to enter Q4 and I know most of y’all are just like me right now. We’re already running the race to the end of the year.

I’m doing my best to stay as narrowly focused as possible on getting the new GA4 course ready for October and my new secret project ready for the end of the year.

How about you? How does your end of year race schedule look?

BlogAid Village Happenings

New Member Site Themes Done

I’m thrilled to report that all of the theme changing and theme related cleanout is complete for both of my member sites!!

Thank you so much to Marcy Diaz of Amethyst Website Design for her incredible work in bringing these Genesis themes up to date with Gutenberg and current WP core code. And I’m especially pleased with all the old code and styles and plugins that got removed too. That cleanout was a big job.

I still have a bunch of updates to do on my end with converting pages to Gute and making a few more content things ADA compliant, but I can do those a little at the time.

If you are a member of any BlogAid course and see anything goofy, please do let me know.

BlogAid Course Happenings

GA4 Course Update

This past week I got way deep in the weeds with Google Tag Manager research. I can’t for the life of me understand why they don’t make some of the most popular elements we want to track be stuff that’s easily available and in their starter documentation.

For all the pressure that Google puts on us about User Experience, you think they would get that log out of their own eye first.

I can also tell you that the way Google, and everybody else teaches this stuff is chaos.

I guarantee that my GA4 course will bring you absolute clarity on the setup.

I’ll be treating it like a recipe. 

I’m going to show you the end result and whet your appetite because I know that if I do that, you’ll be as excited as I am about the kind of things you can track.

And then I’ll give you the overview of how the four separate components fit together so you’ll have a clue what these different things are and how they fit together to generate an awesome report with info that you definitely want to track. You know, things like whether a visitor saw the optin in the middle of your content and then if they clicked on it. Yeah, important stuff like that.

After you have the concept of what’s involved, going through the settings will be easy and you’ll understand the what and the why and the how.

This week I’m taking a deep dive into the custom reports you’ll be creating because the default ones are useless.

And, you can make several custom reports in tabs that you can flip through to see just the filtered info in them. That way you can very quickly look at THE most important info you want to track without having to click through a bunch of metrics you aren’t even interested in.

Plus, you’ll be able to easily drill down into those metrics faster too.

That’s all the happenings from around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips and news.

WordPress Tips

WordPress 6.1 Beta is Out

WP has released the beta of version 6.1 for testing.

There were over 200 bug fixes in this release, most of them on FSE (Full Site Editing), that none of us are using.

But, they also focused on more standardization for all Gutenberg blocks to ensure that each of them has at least all of the basic tool set. And they are going to remain focused on that for the next several releases, which is a good thing.

We also dodged the bullet of WebP by default in 6.1 and I doubt it will be added through next year’s releases either – at least I hope that’s the case.

The public release of 6.1 is slated for November 1.

I won’t be testing it until we get the RC1 version in mid October – which is the first Release Candidate.

And I’ll have a video tour of it before it releases too, as always.

Get WP Update Instructions

BlogAid News subscribers will be the only folks who get my special WP 6.1 update instructions.

If you aren’t receiving Tips Tuesday in your inbox, then you aren’t subscribed.

So, if you just listen to the podcast, or you’re in a BlogAid membership, you are not auto subscribed to BlogAid News.

Make sure you’re on that list too.

Security Tips

Password Vault Update

In last week’s Tips Tuesday I mentioned that I can’t use LastPass, or any other password vault service, because I’m constantly logging into the same vendor sites for my clients.

Folks left comments on the blog and even emailed me that LastPass can store different login credential sets for the same vendor site.

That is true.

But, I don’t retain any client logins as they come to me for short-term services. So, it’s a hassle to have that thing pop up and try to populate the login fields every time.

However, if you maintain sites for clients, or have family members who have their own account with the same vendor, that mutli profile feature might be useful to you.

SEO Tips

What Became of Google’s Helpful Content Update?

Last month, it really looked like the Google Helpful Content algorithm update was going to be a huge deal.

But turns out it was a bit of a dud, and here’s why I think that is.

This past week I had a conversation with one of my buddies who is now a professor and he showed an example of a short essay that was written entirely by AI and was given an A by the teacher.

I read the essay. It was well written.

And I don’t see how Googlebots could tell that it wasn’t written by a human.

The fact is, some site owners write so poorly that I believe those are the only sites Google hit hard with the new algorithm.

But I also expect this was just Round 1 of that update and there will be more refined changes to come. 

And I’ll keep you posted.

Video Tips

TikTok as Search Engine – Case Study

David Pierce did a case study for The Verge on comparing the same search on TikTok and Google.

Here’s a summary quote of what he discovered:

“What I found was, in a sense, not terribly surprising: there are things for which TikTok is an absolutely useful search engine, even if TikTok’s algorithm and content aren’t quite tuned for that yet. But for what Google does best, there’s no competition. Ultimately, I don’t think Google is actually nervous about TikTok’s growing search prowess. But YouTube probably should be.”

Okay, that’s a nice baseline case study.

But, I think the results will be changing radically by the end of the year due to the changes TikTok just rolled out.

TikTok has radically expanded the description character limit to 2200. And it now has relevant links for related search on keywords in the description and comments too. At least I think it’s in both places.

And yes, even though all of the reports are saying that it’s the younger generation that is using TikTok as their search engine, that’s also the biggest new demographic that every social platform is trying to attract.

It’s also why Facebook is losing its top platform position – because a whole generation has left it in the dust.

So, TikTok may not be where you think your audience is today, but that will change. And every other platform is going to ruin itself trying to be TikTok and compete. Where you’re getting your traffic today will suffer along with it.

Like it or not, you have to keep up with the times and the changes.

YouTube Shorts Pay

Woot!!!

I was delighted to hear that YouTube has finally expanded its YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to now include Shorts!!!

This is definitely going to give TikTok a run for the money with creators, and perhaps keep it a top search engine.

Until now, views of Shorts did not count toward your watchtime that help qualify you for the YPP.

They do now, but the view count is insanely high.

Here are the qualifications:

“become eligible for YPP by gaining 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.”

For folks only doing Shorts, like my foodie clients, you may very well get those view numbers. On top of that, you use that same video as a video ad on your site, instead of the YouTube version, and those pay more than any other ad.

So, I seriously hope this helps encourage you to make more Shorts, even if they are just from your still images.

Blogging Success Tips

Think Like a Business Owner, Not a Blogger

The nice folks at The Tilt have a profile on a foodie blogger that I think every blogger on the planet should read.

It’s about Alyssa Brantley who runs the Everyday Maven site.

When she started 10 years ago, she was thinking like a blogger and always churning out content with no ROI, or Return on Investment for her time.

When she flipped to thinking like a business owner, the money started coming in.

I want to repeat the actionable tip highlights from the article so you’ll see what I mean about the mindset switch.

Our Favorite Actionable Advice:

• Add a potential revenue stream as you build: Alyssa didn’t think enough people would read her blog to make the addition of Google ads valuable. But she slowly grew an audience and got her first check 18 months later.
• Collaborate: Alyssa connected with creators locally and in her industry. They helped her improve her photography skills, earn guest blogging links on top sites, and more.
• Make time to promote: Ten years ago, Alyssa spent 90% of her time on creation and 10% on promotion/SEO. Today, she spends 90% on SEO/promotion and 10% on creation. 

Please do see the whole article because Alyssa tells the story that moved her from being a blogger to being a well-paid online business owner.

It will change how you think about the content you create and help you clarify the purpose of it too.

Monetize Shoppable Recipes

Hey foodie bloggers – this is great news from the nice folks at WP Recipe Maker – which is THE best plugin for foodie bloggers to use, hands down.

Instacart recently released a new program that allows you to earn commissions on any purchases made from within your recipe.

And WP Recipe Maker has included that integration right into the plugin.

All you have to do is join the Instacart Tastemakers program and put your new Tastemakers ID into the proper place in WP Recipe Maker.

And woot! 

WPRM also just added small icon images for your ingredients list.

Y’all know that folks eat with their eyes. And this should help whet their appetite to see the pix of what goes into the meal too.

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.