Tips Tuesday – Short-Form Content, YouTube Affiliate Sales, AI Trends Tool

ByMaAnna Stephenson
Tips Tuesday – Short-Form Content, YouTube Affiliate Sales, AI Trends Tool

Tips this week include:

  • Short-form content mastermind this week
  • Link-in-Bio page creation workshop
  • Circling back for another Substack workshop
  • Special guest for Reels session
  • Getting affiliate sales through YouTube works
  • The way I’m making fast and easy money
  • Beginner tips get eyeballs
  • AI Trends tool in YouTube works great
  • Videos set to Unlisted by default
  • Time to update to WP 6.8.1
  • Guide on the new Speculative Loading feature

Don’t skip the Video Tips section, even if you don’t make videos. There are super content creation tips there too!

DIY SEO Everywhere Happenings

Y’all, we’re on fire in the DIY SEO Everywhere course!!!

We’ve been focused on video for the last few weeks. And I definitely want us to do more with both YouTube and Reels.

But, I think we need to back up a minute and ensure we’re set up for creating the short-form content that is getting eyeballs now, and ensure we are set to profit from it.

Short-Form Content Mastermind This Week

Y’all have heard me talk non-stop about the need to switch your mindset right now and start creating short-form content.

But, during mini consults that we do after site audits, I’m hearing most of my clients say they have not started down that road yet, mainly due to being overwhelmed with where to even start.

Okay, let’s fix that!!!!

Let’s do a mastermind this week so we can do a mini-consult type chat on your content. 

I know everyone can’t make the live sessions, so I invited course members to send a link to their best content and/or topics they cover so I can include them in the session and then they can pick up that info in the replay.

Link in Bio Workshop

We all use social media to get eyeballs on our content. But we also need to ensure we get clicks to that content and to our offers.

Not every platform allows direct linking.

So I’m putting together a workshop on how to create a great Link in Bio type page on your WordPress site.

Yes, you can use services for this, like LinkTree, but why, when you can create the same look, or better, on your own site?

And this way will be faster and easier for you to include your optin and offers, plus update when you have new things you want folks to see too.

I’m meeting this week with our favorite Kadence theme designer, Michelle Phillips of Codefetti and we are going to have a look at several layouts and recreate them on one of my sites. This way I know that I’m using best-practices with the design elements.

I’ll be using mostly native WordPress Blocks, but I’ll also be using the free version of Kadence Blocks where needed too.

In this workshop you’ll get to see a bunch of examples and exactly how to create them. 

Look for it in the next week or two.

Circling Back to Substack

We’ve already had a good workshop on Substack. And several of you are doing very well there.

I want to do another workshop on how to strategically use Substack when you already have a WP blog.

So, look for that in the coming weeks as well.

Special Guest for Reels

I’m finalizing dates with a very special guest speaker who just crushes it with Reels. And she’s an amazing business coach too.

I’ll keep course members posted on when we’ll be doing this extra special live session.

Join Us

It’s always a good time to join the DIY SEO Everywhere course!!!

We have replays on everything we have covered this year, including all of the ways we are going WAY beyond Google and getting new eyeballs.

If you’re already in a BlogAid membership/course, look there for a big discount.

Or just contact me and I’ll send you a discount code.

Video Tips

Affiliate Sales Through YouTube

As you know, I’ve tweaked my video creation strategy for Heartwood Art this year.

Instead of videos on an entire big build, like the corner desk I just finished, I’ve been making shorter videos focused on just one aspect of the whole.

From this one build, those topics included:

Doing it this way gave me WAY more focused titles for specific things folks were searching.

More importantly, every one of these videos has something I can do an affiliate link on.

And it’s working!!!!!

I verified my YouTube account on my Amazon store so that I could share the links there, too.

I’m getting clicks on those links as well as the ones in the post on my site.

And folks are buying those tools or others!!

Getting paid twice was the whole goal – first, from folks watching the video and then from affiliate link sales.

What products can you attach to a video showing how they’re used?

Fast and Easy Money

The fact is, I was going to build that corner desk anyway.

Making these videos allows me to buy the materials and write them off on my taxes. In addition, I make enough extra to get 6 months of my groceries paid for too!

My goal is to get all of my groceries paid for and then some this year.

Plus, these shorter videos are so much easier and faster to edit too.

It’s nothing like the 20 hours per video and post I was spending when I was doing full build tutorials. That’s why I had to walk away from it for a few years. 

But now I’m hooked on short-form content, and I can see my way forward with making real money with Heartwood Art again.

The same is true of written content. Shorter is working now.

Start looking for focused tips you can share.

Beginner Tips Get Eyeballs

My next video is going to be on a tool I used in one of those videos.

It’s a jigsaw, and there are all kinds of settings, jigs, and methods for using it.

I have a similar video on how to set up a Kreg Rip Cut attachment, which requires assembly and alignment. It’s even better than the tutorial from Kreg, or so folks tell me!

Never overlook, or take for granted, what you had to figure out the first time you encountered a new tool, device, software, or way of doing something.

There are other folks who are overwhelmed with trying to figure it out, even if you consider it simple.

Do the beginner tips.

You’d be surprised at how much traffic they get.

AI Trends Work

In one of our YouTube workshops in the DIY SEO Everywhere course, we went over the settings in YouTube, as many of them have changed and/or so many new ones have been added.

And we covered some of the new features, including the Get Inspired AI assistant in the Trends section.

Y’all, this has been a massive game changer for me!!!!

Before I even shoot a video, I check there now to see what title, description, and images they suggest. They even give me a suggested outline for the video.

But what I appreciate most is seeing the interest meter and whether this is something my followers would want to see.

It’s just like looking at metrics for your competitors, but way faster.

I’m going to use this tool even for posts that I write that don’t include a video. It’s that good!!!

Videos Unlisted by Default

Speaking of YouTube settings, even though there is a global one for publishing your video as Public, there is a new, per-video setting that overrides the global one. And it is set to Unlisted.

It took me a while to figure out why my latest video did not show up on my channel’s home page.

So, watch for that next time you create a new video there!!

WordPress Tips

Time to Update

Me and my webmasters have been updating our sites and client sites over the last week without issue.

So, it appears that the WP 6.8.1 release fixed the major problems.

I sent an email to my site audit Hub clients and Webmaster Training members with the specific steps to take for this update to ensure all goes well.

Speculative Loading Guide

One of the big changes in WP 6.8 is the full support of Speculative Loading.

This definitely helps with speed, but all aspects of it are not fully embraced by all browsers yet. In fact, I don’t see any upcoming plans for Firefox or Safari to support the API.

All Chromium based browsers do support it.

Now, we’re already using some aspects of this, like preloading fonts. And for most of us, these aspects are going to be enough for our speed needs.

But for shops that have a gazillion product images loading on many of their pages, or entertainment sites that have background videos, they may need more of this help.

And this is definitely something that you want a designer to help you implement, if you want to use it.

Here’s a post from the nice folks at WPExplorer with more info on Speculative Loading, including code examples.

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.