Tips Tuesday – Thrive in ‘25

Tips this week include:

• It’s about eyeballs, not SEO
• You’ve learned something new before – you can again
• The DIY SEO course is changing
• New Video Mini Course Mastermind
• Why you need to fall in love with marketing
• My multiple streams of income with video plan
• The TikTok concern – it’s not what you think
• Your bottom line for ‘25

Happy New Year’s Eve y’all!!!!

Let’s look forward into 2025 and see what’s in store for us.

We’re past surviving.

We want to thrive in ‘25.

It’s About Eyeballs, Not SEO

Google SEO is no longer the reason we create content anymore.

Be honest, the only reason you got interested in SEO was to get eyeballs from Google search after it became a “thing”.

And many of you would have never been interested in it if Pinterest had not betrayed you years ago.

Well, those tables have been turned.

Google is no longer a blogger’s friend anymore. In their recent Creators Summit, where they invited top bloggers to give them feedback, they as much as said so. And those bloggers were flabbergasted. Google basically invited them to participate just to tell them to their face how much Google no longer cares about their content.

On the other hand, Pinterest got a new CEO a couple of years ago and they righted that ship to be a blogger’s friend again.

You’ve Learned Something New Before – You Can Again

You learned Pinterest.

You learned SEO.

Just because Google SEO as we know it is over, doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel no more than it was time to totally give up when Pinterest went south for a while.

Now it’s time to learn something else to keep getting eyeballs.

You can do this.

And I’m here to help you.

The DIY SEO Course is Changing

Well, it has to, doesn’t it?

I honestly thought about starting a different course for visibility, because I honestly don’t see any point in trying to rank blog posts on Google anymore.

Yes, I know some of you are still getting Google traffic. I would not count on it staying that way. If one of their devastating core updates hasn’t hit you yet, just wait, it likely will. Plan on it.

What we will be covering in the course for 2025 are all the non-blogging things that are still ranking in Google.

And we’ll be covering other places to get eyeballs that are not Google.

These things include:

• Pinterest
• Reddit
• Medium
• Substack
• And of course, video

All of these platforms have their own SEO, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on.

Several of these will be mini course workshop type things in the DIY SEO course.

Contact me by simply replying to this email if you want a HUGE discount on the DIY SEO course, as I am not making it public.

Or, if you’re reading this on the site, just hit the Contact link at the top.

New Mini Course Masterminds

Some of the new courses, like video, will be standalone mini courses. 

Actually, they will be masterminds. And we’ll be doing the learning and the creating together.

Here’s the thing.

For eCreators Hub, I have to generate a whole new audience who is interested in e-comm if I want to sell those courses at scale.

And that means creating a whole new marketing campaign.

Many of the new things I’ll be teaching in both the DIY SEO course and the standalone courses are coming right out of the marketing efforts that I’ll be making for eCreators Hub.

My money, and time, are where my mouth is.

And we are not going to start with the camera in this new video mini course either.

We will be going all the way back to the beginning with what to say, and making super short text-type videos on desktop first. 

And, we’ll focus on where to post what.

Once we get all that squared away, then we’ll pick up our phones and film our feet walking and put text over that, and so on.

Baby steps – that work – in all ways – with our comfort level and with building an audience.

If you would like to join me and get more eyeballs in new ways, that would be great!!!!

Just reply to this email and let me know if you are interested.

We’ll do it together.

Fall In Love with Marketing

I hear so many bloggers say that they hate marketing.

And they prove it by spending 20 hours on a blog post and 10 minutes on marketing.

Folks who are in business know that NOTHING gets sold without marketing.

If anything these days, you should spend 10 minutes on a post and 20 hours on marketing it.

That’s how things go viral.

Pinterest people get this a little bit. They spend a LOT of time making new pins to keep the same content looking fresh.

What I’m asking you to embrace is reality.

Viewers want tidbits of helpful info now.

If they like that, they will follow you to get more of those tidbits.

At some point, those will add up into money by some means.

Multiple Streams of Income with Video

Keep in mind that some platforms pay you for just posting the tidbits and gaining that audience.

In fact, that’s my biggest pivot for 2025, and I hope you will make it with me.

Heartwood Art

My Heartwood Art YouTube channel has been monetized for years.

But one of the reasons I stopped doing so much with it was because those big build posts and videos took 20-30 hours. I simply did not have that time. I still don’t.

Plus, it took the joy out of doing the build to have to stop and take pictures and video snippets constantly.

So, I pulled it back to being a hobby channel.

I didn’t even post to it for 4 years and yet all 4 years I made money.

And the kicker is that the little tidbit videos that focused on one tip have been the ones buying my groceries all this time.

I get paid from folks watching the video anywhere. And sometimes folks click over to my blog to see the tools and materials list. I make a wee bit of Amazon affiliate money on those tools.

So, I’ve decided to get busy on that channel again with these shorter, far easier to make, tidbit videos.

I’ve been putting together a whole list of videos to start making when it warms up again in the spring. (It’s too cold to be in the shop during the winter.)

And I’ll be driving traffic to those videos with Pinterest, Medium, Facebook groups, and Reddit.

Deeper Seeker

For my Deeper Seeker YouTube channel, I sure appreciate everyone who has watched and subscribed recently!!!!!!!

But, I’m not meeting my goals with it.

I have done everything I can to trip the algorithm wires on that channel to get YouTube to blast it again like it did when I first started it. Nothing is working. I don’t know if it has been shadowbanned or what.

What I do know is that I will continue to post shorter videos there as I play with, and work out, my production workflow for them.

As you know, I have a new music setup and I’m still learning my new tools.

And I’m learning new ways to create with them. For the most part, I don’t even touch my keys now. It’s wild!!!!! But this is exactly how music production is done now – in every genre – from things you hear on the radio to what you hear in movie scores and behind podcasts, videos, and jingles, and such.

It will take me months to get up to speed with this new way of doing things. But when I do, I’ll be able to crank out production on it.

FYI, I did the same thing when I started shooting videos for Heartwood Art. I took about a month to learn the tools and now I have a “way” of doing them that is cookie cutter, which makes it fast and easy.

Once I get that production rolling, I will very likely start a new channel and see if I can get YouTube to notice.

I’ll let you know where, as so many folks have expressed how much they enjoy the videos.

eCreators Hub

And of course, I’ll have a new video channel for eCreators Hub too, but that will only be one place I’ll be posting those marketing videos.

I’m also in the paid version of Medium, and that’s where I’ll be blogging for eCreators Hub. The free content will mainly be in support of the videos that I’ll be embedding. But the exclusive content will be short tidbits – and these will NOT be replicated exactly on the ECH site.

The point is, I plan to get paid for the content I’m making – directly from the platforms. Forget trying to rank them and hoping someone clicks on that link.

And some of these don’t require anyone to buy anything – just consume the content on a platform other than my site.

This is also why blogging for only ad revenue is holding you back, as folks HAVE TO visit your site for you to make any money.

The TikTok Concern

I’ve been holding off saying anything about a new video mini course/mastermind until we had a better picture of what was going to happen with the TikTok ban.

That’s because it involves more than Tik Tok.

Right now, we still don’t know. And things are so fluid that we likely won’t know for sure until at least mid to late January.

But, what we do know is that the threat of a ban is having a major impact on all other platforms already.

I heard Trump say that he has his eye on the TikTok ban due to concerns of what monopolies may arise in the wake of it.

Did y’all take notice that Mark Zuckerberg has been donating to him like crazy and even made an in-person visit recently? Yeah, he stands to gain billions if TikTok is banned.

YouTube is drooling over how much more they may make with this ban too.

And there is a new platform coming called Neptune that is scheduled for release this spring.

Not to mention where all those TikTok shop owners, and their millions of dollars are going to go if it is banned.

I’m keeping very close watch on this development.

But it is not going to keep me from starting that video mini course. In fact, all this may expand it, as there is a LOT of money in getting established on a new platform early.

My concern with the course is that I had planned to use CapCut for our video editor, as it is free and has both phone and desktop versions. But, it is owned by ByteDance too, the same parent company as TikTok. So it, and Lemon8 would also get banned.

I’m going to start making the content how-to part of the course and wait until we know if we’ll have access to CapCut or not before making those tutorials, or doing research into free alternatives that everyone can use.

Your Bottom Line for ‘25

Google SEO traffic as we’ve known it is over.

Blogging for dollars is over.

Video is king.

E-comm is growing rapidly.

For 2025, we’re going to have to do things differently to get eyeballs.

That means learning new ways of communicating and learning to do it on different platforms, not just our site.

It also means growing our newsletters.

And that can mean more freebies and then more upsells (e-comm).

But the bottom line of what all of this means is that we need to start talking to our audience and building real relationships with them instead of broadcasting at random people.

We need to build our tribe.

I’m here to help you do that – and let’s do it together in 2025!!!!