Tips Tuesday – NFTs, Core Web Vitals, Stop Scrapers, Video Payouts

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• An offer I got to explore the NFT music space
• Core Web Vitals live workshop this Thursday at an earlier time
• What’s new in WordPress 5.9 video tour
• An easy way to make a short and long-term contingency plan for your site
• Why you can’t stop image scrapers with a plugin
• How a simple WP setting slows down content scrapers
• Which video platform pays the most and why
• NFTs on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• Why you want to be cautious about jumping into NFTs

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Spill the Beans Livestream tonight

Do join us live tonight at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on the BlogAid Facebook Page. We spill the beans on this week’s news, breaking stories for the day too, and special info just for those who watch. And the replay is available here on this Tips Tuesday post later too. But the live party is so much more fun.

Replay

Who I Help

All BlogAid posts and tutorials are intended to assist business-minded, hands-on bloggers and webmaster designers who are serious about making money and who want to stay up-to-date with site changes. And our BB Hub is a private member site and Facebook group for my site audit clients that has lots of extra perks and support.

BlogAid Happenings

Exploring the NFT Music Space

Y’all may remember early last year my Peak Into Our Future sections in Tips Tuesdays where I reported my first glimpses into Web 3.0 and what was coming down the pike for us.

And one of the first things that caught my eye was the insane price tags on NFT art. I reported how odd I found it that digital music was not leading the way into the NFT industry, and I’ve been keeping my eyes on that topic ever since.

Well, on TikTok I have been closely following folks who talk about the business side of Web 3.0. And one of those folks just opened an NFT music library house. 

I congratulated her on the announcement and mentioned that I had professionally written jingles for years and was looking forward to her journey with it.

Well, she invited me for a live chat later this week.

Now, I’ve worked with music houses before, and I know how they work as far as the payment structures and such. In fact, the sheer inequity of it is one of the reasons I got out of the music biz years ago. But, their distribution model is how I got airplay in 14 countries, including on TV shows in the US, like The Ellen Show, Saturday Night Live, The Young and The Restless, and more. So, there’s that.

What interests me in this new venture is that the whole premise of Web 3.0 is to put content ownership back into the hands of the creators to ensure they get the biggest percentage of the pay.

So, we’ll have a chat and I’ll get to see what she has planned, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Core Web Vitals – Next DIY SEO Live Workshop

Woot!!! I was delighted to start meeting live again with the folks in the DIY SEO course for our first live workshop last week on the big changes for SEO in 2022.

This week our workshop will be on Core Web Vitals and we’ll be running live tests to help everyone read those metrics.

Plus, we’ll be discussing why online testers can’t show you all of the issues, as well as why plugins can’t fix all of the problems.

And this session is going to be 2 hours earlier than normal too, so please update your calendar.

Fix Your Site Issues

These testers not showing all of the issues is why you need a full site audit. We see all of the speed drags and fix the underlying issues instead of just covering them up with trickery.

What’s New in WordPress 5.9 – Video Tour

WP 5.9 is set to start rolling out today.

And I made you a video tour of the changes and new features, including:

• Gutenberg Blocks
• Stylesheet changes
• PHP and jQuery support
• Full Site Editing updates

So, there’s something in the tour for everyone including end users and designers.

Get Your WP 5.9 Update Instructions

There are a bunch of core code changes, so I advise you to not update to WP 5.9 right away.

If you are my client, it should not auto update for you, as it is a major release, and I put code in one of your critically important files to ensure only minor releases are auto-updated.

For non-clients, remember that sites created from WP 5.6 and up have all auto updates turned on and/or you may be at some flavor of managed host that will auto-update you.

Good luck with that.

And then some of you have outdated themes that will tell you to wait a month or two before doing the update – and you need to get out of that kind of setup, which is nutty.

BlogAid News subscribers will get an email from me when I think it is safe for most of us to update, along with instructions for how to do the update and special things to check, if any are needed.

Make a Short and Long Term Contingency Plan for Your Site

It’s the start of a new year, and now is a great time to get your ducks in a row with regard to having a contingency plan with your online business.

For most of us, our family and friends have no real idea what we do. And they would be totally lost to take care of your online business should you be out of commission.

And you would be totally unable to take care of your own business if something disrupted your life in the short-term. Even things like an extended power outage could have you strapped to do things that need to get done right away.

To help you think through all of this, I made a post for you that covers all the stuff you wouldn’t even think about needing for a short, medium, and long contingency plan.

It’s actually pretty easy to make these plans with all that help to lay it out for you too.

So, stop putting it off and just get it done.

I promise it will be such a relief to both you and your loved ones.

Site Services Update

We are running on time and the wait list is only about 4 weeks for new requests.

So, if you’re wanting to get your site all squared away for spring, now is the time to put in that request!!

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

Plugin Tips

You Can’t Stop Scraper with a Plugin

WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click – I’m seeing this plugin on new client site audits a lot more these days.

I don’t know which uniformed blogger started the rumor that you should use it.

But this plugin does NOT stop scrapers from grabbing all of your content and images.

Scrapers don’t manually right click and download stuff.

They use bots and automation that take everything directly from the HTML, and NOTHING can prevent that.

So, this plugin is no more than a false sense of security, if you’re using it for that purpose.

RSS Feed Settings do Slow Down Scrappers

Now, those automation bots that scrapers use are mainly focused on getting all of your images.

While there’s nothing you can do to stop that, there is one thing you can do to slow down some content scrapers.

Stop laying your full blog post at their doorstep.

Change your RSS feed to only show a summary of your post.

Otherwise you are just sending them the full content.

That way, if they still want to scrape it, they would have to send an automated bot scraper to do it.

To change this setting:

• In your left admin sidebar, go to Settings > Reading.
• Under ‘For each article in a feed, show’ select ‘Summary’
• Scroll down and click the Save Changes button

Now, be sure to check if this affected anything else on your site, like how your blog post excerpt displays on your home page, if you show them there, and on your archive pages, like your Blog page and your Category pages.

Plus, if you are using an RSS to email automation, it will be affected too. And honestly, if you are doing that, stop it. Take a minute to write an email to your list that will actually get a click back to your site.

There are more things you can do with your RSS feed to protect your content, like adding a link to the canonical or such.

And I teach you how to do all of this in my DIY SEO course.

Video Tips

Which Platform Pays the Most?

This past week I saw a video making the rounds by a well-respected video marketer who states you don’t get paid as much by making TikTok videos as you do making Instagram and YouTube videos.

He makes some good arguments.

But I think his premise is missing the point.

As for direct pay from the platforms, YouTube has the highest ad revenue sharing – but that is only if you qualify for their Partner Program. The fact is, YouTube is now running ads on all videos they can find a fit for. And you only get to share in that revenue if you are in their Partner Program.

With TikTok, they have a pool of money set aside to share with creators. And you get a percentage of that pool. The more creators who qualify to get paid, the less each one of them makes.

So, what he asserted about that part of the payout is true.

What he totally skipped over are all the brand-sponsored video payouts. 

I’ve watched a mom/toddler/cat trio make bank from those on TikTok too because the cat loves ham and the kid loves toys and those brands want to pay to get in front of their huge audience.

What else he totally skipped over is the direct fan pay on TikTok.

I see folks making bank daily from direct fan pay.

One guy sits by the waterfront and plays his thumb drum. He never says a word, he just smiles and plays and folks pay him the whole time he is live.

He also gets paid by fans for his recorded videos, but I can’t see how much that is like I can on live.

There is a mother/daughter team that got completely blown away by how much money they made in their first live on TikTok. And now they also have a thriving merchandise and affiliate business and are getting asked to be guest speakers at all kinds of events.

Same with Instagram. 

I’ve got clients that are nearly exhausted from all of the brand work proposals they are getting for sponsored IG videos.

So yeah, YouTube may pay more for splitting ad revenue, if you qualify for their Partner Program. 

But guess where I saw folks talking about the video this guy published – on TikTok.

Even if you don’t get paid much on TikTok yet, you get eyeballs to your longer content that does pay.

I see guys in the crypto space doing this every single day. They post a video on YouTube with longer-form content and then they put up a short teaser video on TikTok to drive folks to it.

This funnel works so well that I’ll be using it as I build my video audiences everywhere.

And I’ll be using YouTube to send folks to my site where I have the video also embedded in a post that has something to sell, as well as doing direct sale on the YouTube video itself.

And I’ll get that post and video ranked in Google and on YouTube. That’s something I teach you how to do in my Video SEO Booster course.

So, take what you hear about a narrow view of how much a platform pays with a grain of salt and consider how that fits into the bigger picture of your content marketing funnel instead.

Web 3.0 Tips

NFTs on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Last week Twitter launched NFT profile images. They are in a hexagon border shape.

You have to pay the $2.99 subscription to Twitter Blue to be able to post your NFT profile image, though.

And you have to be using an iOS device.

But besides those limitations, they are becoming a bit of a status symbol thing.

Facebook is now following suite by announcing that they are looking into launching not only NFTs for profiles, they want to launch a buy/sell marketplace for them, and make a way for you to mint your own.

Y’all be careful with this.

NFTs are way more than just the cartoonish images that are all the rage right now.

They are also music, stuff you can buy and use in the metaverses, like cool Nike sneakers or power-ups for games.

And, they also have a utility side for buying tickets to events and such.

Every purchase of NFTs is on the blockchain and available for public viewing.

Of course, to do that, you have to know the public wallet address of the NFT holder.

And just like everything else with Facebook, they are going to find a way to exploit your content and privacy, not to mention the Terms of Service for their part in ownership of your content.

That flies in the face of everything Web 3.0 stands for, which is privacy, ownership, and decentralization.

Be Careful with NFTs

I know some of y’all are all tickly with NFT stuff right now.

I think these cartoony image things are a fad, at least what is going on with them right now. And I know for a fact that more folks are getting ripped off with them than are making money. 

So, don’t be duped by the headlines of the few folks who are making tens of thousands of dollars with them. There are folks losing hundreds of thousands of dollars with them too, especially those who are naive about crypto security. They hook up their full wallets to these things to purchase and then get those wallets drained.

There are some blue-chip NFT projects where the creators and the buyers and sellers are making lots of money, but most are not things we can afford to buy.

I’m not saying you should not get into NFTs.

What I am saying is that you need to deeply educate yourself first and not be easily lured in and misled by flashy dollar signs.

If you think the hype and FOMO for get rich quick and easy is bad for site owners, just know that it doesn’t hold a candle to what’s going on with NFTs and crypto.

I want you to have fun and make money. But I also want you to be safe doing it.

Wrap Up

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

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