Tips Tuesday – Sponsored Content, Tribe Beats Traffic, WPEngine Acquires Plugins

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Why Tribe beats traffic
• How Tribe makes you money
• How to move out of the blogging for ads mindset
• Why you’ve got to move with the times or get left behind
• Live, group content feedback sessions are this week in the DIY SEO course
• WPEngine just acquired a whole bunch of our fave plugins
• There’s a Google tool to remove your personal info from search
• Google adds new schema markup for academic lessons
• How to make sponsorships a good revenue stream for your content business

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BlogAid Happenings

My days have been full of client work and consults this past week. And I’m getting ready to change my offerings list to highlight these consults as they pay for themselves big in both money and time.

I’ve helped several clients shave off months of work, plus avoiding really expensive pitfalls.

I help them find where the real money is and put them on the fast track to direct pay.

This is the power of having worked with a village of creators for going on 2 decades, plus keeping my folks ahead of the curve – like 2 years ahead.

They avoid panic and stay in the money and grow their tribe.

Tribe Beats Traffic

To get in on direct pay from the emerging Creator Ecomony, you need to stop thinking about just bringing traffic to your site and start thinking about how you can build tribe.

Bloggers  who run ads as their primary revenue are working too hard for their traffic.

The user experience is not great and too many of those visitors just read the one blog post they found somewhere and then they bounce.

They don’t:

• Engage
• Follow
• Like
• Share

Why should they?

The site owner has given them zero reason to do any of those things.

The blog post just delivers the info and doesn’t give that visitor a reason to take any other action but leave.

Oh yeah, they may have comments open, an optin, and social follow and share buttons on the post.

Those are passive mechanisms or ways to take action, not a reason to take action.

I want you to think about the last time you read a post that was so helpful or inspiring or entertaining to you that you felt compelled to say thank you to the creator, even with a like, or share that info with someone you know or in a group.

In your own posts and videos, do you actively ask people to become part of your tribe or engage with you?

Let us know here in the blog comments or anywhere you see this post online.

See what I did there?

Tribe Makes You Money

BlogAid has a loyal following. 

Some of my folks have been with me for the entire 15+ years I’ve been doing this.

And they buy everything I offer.

I get emails with offers every day asking for me to share or promote something of theirs to my tribe or to get a mention in Tips Tuesday.

Some of my clients have generated a loyal tribe on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. They are literally exhausted with trying to make all of the money that is being laid on their table for brand sponsorship.

And their tribe is gobbling up those paid-for videos too.

In fact, YouTube is doing everything it can to encourage real people with real tribes to do more product review videos. Amazon is too.

And you get paid directly for your time through the brands or affiliate links. 

The bottom line is – if you take the time to build a tribe, everybody wants to pay you directly – the brands and the platforms and the audience.

Some TikTokers go live every evening and make bank directly from their viewers.

YouTube has a membership program.

All of the video platforms are making ways for creators and brands to hook up.

In other words, Patreon is not the only game in town.

And video is, by far, the fastest way to making a personal connection with your peeps and build tribe.

And tribe generates repeat viewership.

And repeat viewership means that you are not working so hard to get another 10k/mo new viewers.

And your tribe trusts you and buys things from you or because of you.

See how this works?

Moving Out of the Blogging for Ads Mindset

One of the blogging groups I troll is run by an affiliate marketer. And everyone who offers a class or a service wants to get into her good graces so she will promote their offerings to her tribe.

And that includes someone who offers a class on how to build a niche site.

He did a free webinar and Facebook group for follow up questions for her blogging peeps.

Over and over and over again folks asked how they could turn their blogging for ads site into a niche site.

It was clear that they totally missed the point.

Niche sites that offer courses and products don’t blog much. They advertise through things like this strategic alliance, or ads they run, or via podcasts or videos.

Even the biggest name in the biz to teach you how to run a successful member site builds their tribe mainly through their podcast.

That’s not to say that some niche sites don’t blog. It’s to say that each blog is not passive. It points to direct-pay money in some way.

Every YouTube tutorial I make for BlogAid answers a question or fixes an issue that someone has. They get hooked into my tribe because I actively ask them to. And eventually they buy everything I offer.

On Heartwood Art, I only make info videos. I’m not trying to build tribe or lead to direct-pay. And I only make passive income from Amazon affiliate sales and now the YouTube Partner Program. It’s enough to go out to dinner once a month and that’s about all.

If I wanted to turn it into a real money maker, then I would be doing this a whole other way that not only builds tribe, but gets me brand sponsorship and direct-pay lives and a subscription model for my peeps. 

But I’ve decided to keep it a hobby site. However, I am in the process of building the type of niche site that I’m telling you to consider making too. And every single piece of content will lead to building tribe and direct pay from that audience.

Here’s My Key to It

It’s an entirely different mindset and focus for your content creation time than blogging for ads.

When you start thinking like a business owner with a product to sell, which is your time, vibe, and expertise, it hits different than thinking like a blogger who gets paid by someone else.

You start talking directly to your peeps, and serving them directly.

And that’s exactly what I do here on BlogAid.

I’m talking to YOU. I’m helping YOU make money. And I’m showing up, in person, to do that.

My paying clients get to see and hear me and get live attention from me.

Your Way May Vary

That’s how I do it.

It’s not the only way to do it.

But it is a different way than just blogging text and making pretty graphics. Those are good, but they are passive engagement.

Somehow you want to maneuver into being a person who shows up for your peeps so they can connect with YOU, not just your info.

That is at the heart of the Creator Economy. The creator is the key. And folks are giving their attention and money directly to YOU. They are not passively paying an agency for scrolling past an ad, that in turn does an ACH transfer to your bank account. That’s the difference in the direct pay model.

Same with brand sponsorship. You get paid for the fact that you have a tribe’s attention. You get paid directly to make that content – guaranteed, not a percentage of the traffic that sees it – instead, you get a flat fee for your time.

What if you knew you would get paid for every piece of content you created? 

What’s the Catch?

You have to put in the effort to build your tribe first, just like you did with your blog.

The great thing is, you already know how to do that. 

You just need to take that knowledge and apply it to something other than a just a blog post.

And, you may have to show yourself as the creator and engage with your audience more.

Those who are making that shift are making money – and establishing themselves with what could be your tribe.

The longer you wait, the harder it will be for you to get established in another way because those markets are going to become just as saturated as your blogging niche is now.

And if you wait until after your blogging for ads revenue goes down, you’ll be competing with thousands of folks that are in the same boat.

Now is the time to make that switch.

I’ve been telling you this for 2 years now and the folks who listened to me 2 years ago are already in the money.

Ads have become a secondary income for them, if at all. Some of them have dropped ads altogether to create a better user experience for their tribe.

Moving with the Times

Blogging is not going to totally die.

But attention spans for reading are getting shorter due to the extreme rise in popularity of quick tip videos.

Podcasts, like this one, are still going strong because folks can listen while doing other things.

I literally had to stop doing TikToks for BlogAid with quick tips on site stuff because they were working. They were just attracting too many of the ill-fitting clients I drew last year from blogging groups I trolled. I stopped answering those questions in those groups too.

And when I do start making those quick tip videos again, it will be focused on these new services I’m offering, like consults and member sites and niche sites and such.

You’ve already seen how the tone and focus of Tips Tuesday has changed.

I’m switching my business model to exactly what I’m suggesting you consider doing. And I’ve been in the process of making this switch for the last 2 years, I’ve just accelerated it this year because I have to. This is where the business is going. 

I’ve always offered services and education that is ahead of the curve, like services I brought to you for site security, then speed, then HTTPS, and courses like SEO, and Gutenberg, and now Video SEO. 

And it’s changing again and I’m changing BlogAid with it.

Are you moving with the times?

BlogAid Course Happenings

Gutenberg Ninja is Closed for New Purchase and Renewal

Thanks to everyone who has taken the Gutenberg Ninja course!

I’m so glad it helped you make the switch.

I am still working on the scripts for the WP 6.0 tutorial updates. But I have found two bugs with new features.

So, I’m going to hold off making the video tutorials until the next 6.1 patch comes out and hopefully fixes those bugs.

I’ll let all course members know when the new tutorials go live.

Content Feedback Sessions for SEO

Last week in the DIY SEO course we covered all the why to and how to for building Content Silos.

These things are even more powerful than Categories for both SEO and viewer retention.

I use them with great effect on Heartwood Art.

Folks just stay on my site forever, and that sharp increase in time on site and sharp decrease in bounce rate makes the SEO ranking soar.

It also significantly increases watchtime on my YouTube videos, and that gets me paid more for them too.

So win, win, win.

For the next 2 weeks we’ll be doing live group sessions to review each other’s content and other factors that may affect SEO as well as your ability to build tribe and make money, like user experience and such too.

It’s never too late to get in this course. Replays are always available for the workshops. And we have a Facebook group for asking questions anytime too.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into more tips and news.

Plugin Tips

WPEngine Acquires Delicious Brains Plugins

The folks at Delicious Brains make some of the most popular WP plugins, like:

• Better Search and Replace
• WP Offload Media
• WP Migrate
• Advanced Custom Fields

Well, after 10 years, the lead dev and owner of Delicious Brains is ready to move on to other ventures. And he has sold the plugins to WPEngine.

End users, I don’t expect any changes to these well established plugins with such a large user base and large license holder base for Advanced Custom Fields.

That has historically been the case with all other WPEngine acquisitions.

So, no worries for us with this.

But, it is worth noting that businesses like WPEngine, LiquidWeb, and even GoDaddy, which primarily are known for hosting, have become the main holders of many of the plugins we use.

The upside to this is that through their diversification of offers, and consolidation of support, we can expect these plugins and services to stay around and remain active and supported. 

And that’s a good thing.

Security Tips

Google tool to remove your personal info from search

Have you ever Googled yourself and found too much of your personal info in search?

Well, Google has a tool where you can request that search result to be removed.

Now, that does not remove your information from whatever entity was showing the result.

But at least it won’t be shown publicly in search results for everyone to see anymore.

Video Tips

Google ads new schema for academic lessons

Okay, this is interesting, and good, but also has me turning my head into a curious dog pose.

Google is now supporting special schema markup to help identify academic lesson videos.

That’s great!

But what qualifies as an academic lesson?

I mean computer sciences and webmastering are taught in colleges, and even in high schools.

So, do BlogAid tutorials fit the criteria for an academic lesson?

How about my woodworking videos over on Heartwood Art for how to build something or set up a tool for accuracy or even woodworking tips and hacks?

How about your recipe videos or your craft videos that actually show the steps of making something?

The schema markup for this is not new. But Google’s support for it is.

So, I’m going to be keeping my eye on this.

And I’ll be keeping an eye on the Yoast Video SEO plugin to see what of it they support too.

This could be a great way for us to break out of the pack when it comes to instructional videos.

Monetization Tips

How To Make Sponsorships a Good Revenue Stream for Your Content Business

The nice folks over at The Tilt have a fantastic article that ties directly into what I mentioned at the top of Tips Tuesday about moving into brand sponsorship and making direct connections with your tribe.

Even if you are not ready to show up in person, you can still make money with sponsorships – lots of money.

So, definitely do give this article a read and I’m betting it will get your gears turning in that direction.

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.