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Best podcasts about restrict content pro

Latest podcast episodes about restrict content pro

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Post Status Happiness Hour | Session Twenty

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2025 47:02


In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Stephanie Hudson from StellarWP about Stellar Pay, a new payment gateway plugin for WordPress users. Stephanie, the Product Marketing Manager, discusses her background in web development and marketing. They explore Stellar Pay's features, including its integration with Stripe, subscription management, and no additional fees for essential features. They also address e-commerce challenges like shipping and taxes and future plans for Stellar Pay, including potential PayPal integration. Additionally, Stephanie teases the upcoming launch of Stellar Sites, a new website solution combining the best features of popular platforms with WordPress's power.Top Takeaways:Stellar Pay Simplifies E-Commerce: Stellar Pay is designed for those who either actively run e-commerce businesses or avoid it because they find it difficult. The tool aims to make the process easier and more accessible.Free and Easy to Get Started: Users can download Stellar Pay for free from the website. Signing up directly on the site comes with added benefits like onboarding tips and extra resources to help users get started.Stellar Pay Provides E-Commerce Tips: The team behind Stellar Pay offers a newsletter that provides useful insights and strategies for running an online store successfully. Michelle encouraged users to subscribe for ongoing guidance.Mentioned In The Show:StellarWPStellar PayLiquid WebGive WPThe Event CalendarSolidWPLearndashRestrict Content ProDevin WalkerStripeJoel ButlerPayPalPoodle PressBen Ritner WP Accessibility DaySolid AcademyJono Alderson

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#274 – Migraciones a RCP, campos ACF true/false, variaciones de bloques y nueva entradilla

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2024 43:39


Síguenos en: Bienvenidos a Freelandev, un podcast imprescindible para todos aquellos que quieren estar al día de las novedades WordPress. Somos Nahuai y esther, desarrolladores freelance y creadores de plugins y temas modernos en Osompress. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Mucho trabajo de agencias para tareas de maquetación, ajustes de diseño y nuevas funcionalidades. Upgrade de PHP 5.6 en producción sin problemas ACF, campo true/false creado a posteriori, imposible filtrar sin asignarle un valor a todas las entradas Semana Nahuai Código Genesis cumple 6 años.

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Post Status Happiness Hour | Session Eight

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2024 61:50


In this episode of the Post Status Happiness Hour, host Michelle Frechette interviews Alex Sandiford about his affiliate plugin, Siren Affiliates. Alex explains how the plugin simplifies the management of affiliate, loyalty, and royalty programs by centralizing various incentive structures. He discusses the development journey, challenges faced, and future plans for the plugin, including potential integrations. The conversation emphasizes the importance of building relationships with affiliates and providing them with the necessary tools and support to succeed. The episode concludes with insights into the ethical and collaborative aspects of affiliate marketing.Top Takeaways:The Power of Affiliate Relationships: Alex emphasizes that successful affiliate programs are built on strong partnerships and personalized support. Providing affiliates with both the right tools and fair compensation can lead to mutually beneficial success. It's not just about the percentage they earn, but about helping them market effectively.Siren's Pricing Structure: Alex outlines Siren's pricing tiers as very affordable, with a focus on bringing in early adopters. The initial pricing is $59 for the first year, renewing at $79. This pricing will likely increase as the plugin stabilizes and grows.Challenges in Affiliate Marketing Perception: Alex is focused on shifting the negative stigma around affiliate marketing by showing that it can be honest, impactful, and built on genuine partnerships. He contrasts the negative view of affiliates with the popular trend of influencer marketing, highlighting their similarities.Platform Migration and Customization: Siren offers platform migration support for users switching from other affiliate plugins like Affiliate WP. This feature has proven popular, and Alex plans to streamline the migration process to make it more efficient, showing a focus on enhancing user experience and meeting customer needs.Future Development Plans: While Siren does not yet have built-in tools for providing affiliates with marketing resources like images and copy, this is on Alex's roadmap. He recognizes the importance of giving affiliates the resources they need to succeed, although existing tools like Google Drive and the block editor can partially solve this for now.Mentioned In The Show:LifterLMSUdemyPayPalStripeKadenceAffiliate WPWooCommerceEasy Digital DownloadsLearnDashNorth CommercePersonalized WPRestrict Content ProGoogle DrivePartnerShip PodcastWP WorldMarcus BurnetteWordCampUS

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#268 – Ideas para conseguir que WordPress sea sostenible en el tiempo

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2024 44:56


Síguenos en: ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Semanas caóticas y conflictos con agencia Semana Nahuai Enviado Freelandev como medio para formar parte de Media Corps. Developer hours, Section/Block Style Variarions, color and typography presets, custom aspect ratios, grid, CSS specificity, theme.json v3. Refinando, aún más, la estructura de Uprising Next. Añadiendo nuevos pasos al flujo de trabajo de creación de temas de bloques. Cambiando la contraseña y añadiendo 2FA en el perfil de WordPress de OsomPress. Contenido Nahuai Un par de nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis: Obtener el número de sesiones activas de un usuario de WordPress: https://codigogenesis.com/obtener-numero-sesiones-activas-usuario-wordpress/ Mostrar en blanco y negro las entradas a las que no tiene acceso un suscriptor Restrict Content Pro: https://codigogenesis.com/mostrar-blanco-negro-entradas-no-acceso-suscriptor-restrict-content-pro/ Tema de la semana: 11 ideas para conseguir que WordPress sea sostenible en el tiempo (Matt Mullenweg) Las cosas sencillas deben ser fáciles e intuitivas, y las complejas, posibles. Los blogs y los sitios dinámicos son mejores. La documentación debe ser wiki, fácil de editar. Los foros deben estar en primer plano. Plugins y temas con infraestructura comunitaria. Buenas previsualizaciones de temas y estética diversa. No podemos excedernos en las directrices y los requisitos. La retroalimentación es muy importante. El núcleo debe ser original y extravagante. Si haces WordPress, usa WordPress. Mantente cerca de nuestros usuarios finales Enlaces relacionados https://ma.tt/2024/05/wp21/ https://jamesgiroux.ca/11-reasons-why-the-future-of-wordpress-is-bright/ Novedades Se lanzó la actualización de seguridad 6.5.5 https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-5/ Ya está disponible la RC de WordPress 6.6 y la guía de campo para desarrolladores https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/ Una nueva propuesta para "sustituir" a los shortcodes: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/08/proposal-bits-as-dynamic-tokens/ El directorio de temas rediseñado: https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2024/06/19/the-theme-directory-gets-a-refresh-and-is-now-powered-by-blocks/ Se podrán editar los campos personalizados conectado mediante block bindings: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/editing-custom-fields-from-connected-blocks/

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#266 – Masters en Divi, cambios de membresía con EDD, selects de CF7 y mucho trabajo de clientes

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2024 30:59


Síguenos en: Dicen que la práctica hace al maestro... así que si se trata de pelearse con maquetaciones en Divi p personalizar funcionalidades de membresías con EDD, ya somos unos Masters. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Caos de horarios y rutinas de junio Toda una experta ya en maquetación con Divi Contact Form 7: campos select con valor diferente al texto mostrado texto|valor (https://contactform7.com/selectable-recipient-with-pipes/) Borrando la cuenta de Instagram de OsomPress Semana Nahuai Mucho curro de clientes, desarrollos para Restrict Content Pro e Easy Digital Downloads Meetup de Terrassa de final de temporada, tomando algo en una terraza.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#265 – Días negros, páginas de contactos, reuniones, actualizaciones de plugins y overlay en query loop

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2024 45:54


Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#250 – Creando temas de bloques

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2024 42:51


Síguenos en: Seguimos avanzando en la creación de temas de bloques, no sólo con el nuevo theme Osom Business que en breve estará disponible en el repositorio, sino también preparando la conversión de nuestros child themes de Genesis. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Enviamos el tema Osom Business a revisar para que se publique en el repositorio de WordPress. Pequeños conflictos con el text domain. Creando plantilla “limpia” a partir de un theme premium Woocommerce active those session cookies: sbjs_migrations, sbjs_current_add, sbjs_first_add, sbjs_current, sbjs_first, sbjs_udata, and store this: sbjs_session. (Desde versión 8.5) Se puede desactivar desde Ajustes > Características Semana Nahuai Follow-up con el error de Restrict Content Pro. Nuevos iconos para los plugins de OsomPress. Con su pizca de emoción con un bug muy raro. Investigando la mejor manera para convertir un tema clásico en uno de bloques. Probando la nueva gestión de tipografía de WordPress 6.5 y confirmando que se bajan las fuentes en formato WOFF2. Curiosamente al usar el plugin Create Block Theme todavía se bajan en formato TTF y al exportar no se lleva las fuentes bajadas desde la gestión nativa de WordPress. Enviado un patrón al directorio de patrones de WordPress (comentar limitaciones). Ya tenemos Osom Block Visibility aprobado, gracias al equipo de plugins por la gestión y poner tan fácil el cambio de propietario (lo subí con mi perfil de WordPress por equivocación). https://wordpress.org/plugins/osom-block-visibility Contenido Nahuai 2 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades Ya está disponible la primera beta de WordPress 6.5 Lanzado un programa piloto para probar GatherPress, una alternativa a Meetup pero creada sobre WordPress. Se añade la opción de indicar dependencias de otros plugins https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/15/merge-announcement-plugin-dependencies/ Menciones La gente de Sírvela (Amadeu y Joan), aprovecharon el día mundial de la radio, para compartir un listado de podcast que recomiendan y mencionaron Freelandev. :) Mariano pudo recuperar un archivo contactándole a soporte de Google de workspace y ellos tienen una herramienta de backup más avanzada. Sergio Calderón, que ya está usando la beta de iOS 17.4, nos pasó unos pantallazos de las transcripciones de Apple Podcasts y tenían muy buena pinta. Escribía bien Nahuai y todo!!

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#249 – No somos infalibles e nuevas ideas para plugins

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2024 31:48


Síguenos en: A veces nos quejamos de la tecnología, pero no olvidemos que el error humano sigue siendo ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Me cargo la hoja de cálculo de dashboard de gestión de TWP sin opción a recuperarlo

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#233 – Incidencias de Zapier y Factura Directa, onboarding de temas y batallando con render_block_data

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2023 39:47


Síguenos en: ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Trabajando con Oxygen + CPT + ACF (Episodio con Bohdan Shila hablando de Oxygen) Virguerías con Elementor y el responsive Incidencias Zapier y Factura Directa Semana Nahuai Incidencia de integración de Zapier con Factura Directa, revisar facturas (Zap parados). Ojo porque el "replay" en lote de Zapier lo hace en orden inverso a las fechas. Charlas en el WordPress Day del Mobile Alcalá muy interesantes, especialmente la de Fernando Rebolledo sobre WordPress Playground. Esther, tenemos que hablar. https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/toys-for-playground/ Volviéndome loco con render_block_data, funciona en algunos bloques pero en otros no. Trasteando con Restrict Content Pro. Terminando las entrevistas para Sustain WP y empezando a montar la web. Votación abierta, hasta el 13 de octubre, para elegir los representantes del equipo de sostenibilidad. Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades Ya se puede completar la encuesta anual de WordPress https://wordpress.org/news/2023/09/help-influence-the-future-of-wordpress-by-taking-the-2023-annual-survey-today/ WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 ya está disponible y finalmente la API de gestión de fuentes no se incluirá. https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-4-font-library-feature-punted-to-6-5-release Temazo de cómo solucionar el problema del onboarding de temas. https://wptavern.com/ollie-theme-faces-pushback-from-wordpress-theme-review-team y https://wptavern.com/contentious-review-process-leads-ollie-theme-to-remove-innovative-onboarding-features-amid-stagnating-block-theme-adoption Ya se ha abierto la llamada para aplicaciones a las siguiente cohorte de GWF

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#233 – Incidencias de Zapier y Factura Directa, onboarding de temas y batallando con render_block_data

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2023 39:47


Síguenos en: ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Trabajando con Oxygen + CPT + ACF (Episodio con Bohdan Shila hablando de Oxygen) Virguerías con Elementor y el responsive Incidencias Zapier y Factura Directa Semana Nahuai Incidencia de integración de Zapier con Factura Directa, revisar facturas (Zap parados). Ojo porque el "replay" en lote de Zapier lo hace en orden inverso a las fechas. Charlas en el WordPress Day del Mobile Alcalá muy interesantes, especialmente la de Fernando Rebolledo sobre WordPress Playground. Esther, tenemos que hablar. https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/toys-for-playground/ Volviéndome loco con render_block_data, funciona en algunos bloques pero en otros no. Trasteando con Restrict Content Pro. Terminando las entrevistas para Sustain WP y empezando a montar la web. Votación abierta, hasta el 13 de octubre, para elegir los representantes del equipo de sostenibilidad. Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades Ya se puede completar la encuesta anual de WordPress https://wordpress.org/news/2023/09/help-influence-the-future-of-wordpress-by-taking-the-2023-annual-survey-today/ WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 ya está disponible y finalmente la API de gestión de fuentes no se incluirá. https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-4-font-library-feature-punted-to-6-5-release Temazo de cómo solucionar el problema del onboarding de temas. https://wptavern.com/ollie-theme-faces-pushback-from-wordpress-theme-review-team y https://wptavern.com/contentious-review-process-leads-ollie-theme-to-remove-innovative-onboarding-features-amid-stagnating-block-theme-adoption Ya se ha abierto la llamada para aplicaciones a las siguiente cohorte de GWF

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#222 – Pseudo-vacaciones, incompatibilidades, poltergeist y más.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2023 32:28


Síguenos en: No nos cansamos de repetir el lujo que es poder adaptar el trabajo a tu forma de vida y no al revés, y hacerlo en remoto ayuda muchísimo, aunque no evita que aparezcan imprevistos y poltergeits durante nuestra ausencia. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Ventajas del trabajo en remoto Opciones desaparecidas en Gravity Forms Conflictos caché GF + Stripe Semana Nahuai Directo NED explicando el cierre de Discord. Actualizar la versión de la API de Stripe (2022-11-15) en varias web que usaban Restrict Content Pro. Creando variaciones de bloques Valorando el cambio a PayPal Payments Webempresa actualiza servidores y crea un poco de desconcierto. Incompatibilidad de Modern Events Calendar Lite con Easy Digital Downloads, no permite editar las suscripciones existentes ni crear nuevas. Terminando de pulir la estructura base del tema de bloques de OsomPress Follow-up sobre el vídeo molón de WordPress, me apareció en Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7082032593562423296 Contenido Nahuai 4 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades WordCamp Madrid el 4 y 5 de noviembre. Ya están las llamadas a ponentes, voluntarios y patrocinadores abiertas.  https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-3-released-introduces-ui-changes-to-pattern-management La versión de WordPress 6.3 dejará de dar soporte a PHP 5.6 https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-to-drop-support-for-php-5 Primeras pruebas de la Fase 3 de colaboración en tiempo real: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/ https://wptavern.com/wordpress-plugin-review-team-adds-6-new-sponsored-volunteers-opens-applications The new members include David Pérez, Evan Herman, Francisco Torres, Luke Carbis, Marta Torre, and Paco Marchante. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/ Menciones Elías recomienda los episodios de la WordCamp Europe y de VS code (con Carlos Longarela) Lucas Bonomo comparte el episodio en el que hablamos con Joan Artés sobre trabajar en Automattic. Juan María Arenas nos incluyó en la lista de podcast que escucha habitualmente.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#222 – Pseudo-vacaciones, incompatibilidades, poltergeist y más.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2023 32:28


Síguenos en: No nos cansamos de repetir el lujo que es poder adaptar el trabajo a tu forma de vida y no al revés, y hacerlo en remoto ayuda muchísimo, aunque no evita que aparezcan imprevistos y poltergeits durante nuestra ausencia. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Ventajas del trabajo en remoto Opciones desaparecidas en Gravity Forms Conflictos caché GF + Stripe Semana Nahuai Directo NED explicando el cierre de Discord. Actualizar la versión de la API de Stripe (2022-11-15) en varias web que usaban Restrict Content Pro. Creando variaciones de bloques Valorando el cambio a PayPal Payments Webempresa actualiza servidores y crea un poco de desconcierto. Incompatibilidad de Modern Events Calendar Lite con Easy Digital Downloads, no permite editar las suscripciones existentes ni crear nuevas. Terminando de pulir la estructura base del tema de bloques de OsomPress Follow-up sobre el vídeo molón de WordPress, me apareció en Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7082032593562423296 Contenido Nahuai 4 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades WordCamp Madrid el 4 y 5 de noviembre. Ya están las llamadas a ponentes, voluntarios y patrocinadores abiertas.  https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-3-released-introduces-ui-changes-to-pattern-management La versión de WordPress 6.3 dejará de dar soporte a PHP 5.6 https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-to-drop-support-for-php-5 Primeras pruebas de la Fase 3 de colaboración en tiempo real: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/ https://wptavern.com/wordpress-plugin-review-team-adds-6-new-sponsored-volunteers-opens-applications The new members include David Pérez, Evan Herman, Francisco Torres, Luke Carbis, Marta Torre, and Paco Marchante. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/ Menciones Elías recomienda los episodios de la WordCamp Europe y de VS code (con Carlos Longarela) Lucas Bonomo comparte el episodio en el que hablamos con Joan Artés sobre trabajar en Automattic. Juan María Arenas nos incluyó en la lista de podcast que escucha habitualmente.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#201 – Incorporando el FSE, snippets de Restrict Content Pro y nuevos precios de Stripe

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2023 25:26


Síguenos en: Somos conscientes de lo mucho que hablamos del nuevo editor del sitio de WordPress, de bloques y patrones, pero es algo que nos afecta en nuestro día a día y que estamos incorporando en nuestros proyectos y los de los clientes. ¿Qué estrategia debemos seguir para los nuevos desarrollos? ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Acabada y publicada la web en FSE (pendiente ajustes CSS) Planteando nuevo proyecto: FSE + Multiidioma?? Semana Nahuai Programando un snippet que no permita reactivar suscripción de Restrict Content Pro una vez cancelan (con el mismo email). Comunicación con clientes menos familiarizados con el mundo digital, que parte incluye crear una web y cual no (SEO y posicionamiento). Mañana Meetup de WordPress Terrassa con Ester Serra que hablará sobre cómo extender WooCommerce con integraciones (casos prácticos). Contenido Nahuai  2 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades Stripe sube los precios de las comisiones en abril Tip de la semana https://theresanaiforthat.com Menciones Silvia nos felicita por el plugin OML que les soluciona la vida a muchos.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#201 – Incorporando el FSE, snippets de Restrict Content Pro y nuevos precios de Stripe

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2023 25:26


Síguenos en: Somos conscientes de lo mucho que hablamos del nuevo editor del sitio de WordPress, de bloques y patrones, pero es algo que nos afecta en nuestro día a día y que estamos incorporando en nuestros proyectos y los de los clientes. ¿Qué estrategia debemos seguir para los nuevos desarrollos? ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Acabada y publicada la web en FSE (pendiente ajustes CSS) Planteando nuevo proyecto: FSE + Multiidioma?? Semana Nahuai Programando un snippet que no permita reactivar suscripción de Restrict Content Pro una vez cancelan (con el mismo email). Comunicación con clientes menos familiarizados con el mundo digital, que parte incluye crear una web y cual no (SEO y posicionamiento). Mañana Meetup de WordPress Terrassa con Ester Serra que hablará sobre cómo extender WooCommerce con integraciones (casos prácticos). Contenido Nahuai  2 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Novedades Stripe sube los precios de las comisiones en abril Tip de la semana https://theresanaiforthat.com Menciones Silvia nos felicita por el plugin OML que les soluciona la vida a muchos.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#193 – State of the Word: Autónomos 1 – Multilenguaje 0

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2022 45:36


Síguenos en: Está claro que si Matt fuera catalán otro gallo cantaría..... pero no, el multilenguaje no es una prioridad en WordPress, así que tendremos que seguir apañándonos con los plugins que hay. Por lo menos este año aún siendo autónomos hemos podido disfrutar de una comida navideña de trabajo como cualquier hijo de vecino ;) ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther RCP + Easy Table of Contents -> error en página registro. Contact Form 7 Ajax sí pero no Cliente vuelve por Navidad con pishing Semana Nahuai Preparando y presentando en la Meetup Barcelona, la vuelta a los escenarios con Nora tras el Late Night Show de WordPress. Ya está disponible el vídeo. Comida de autónomos de Navidad. Discrepancias entre las métricas de GAU y GA4. Ha notado menos emails de clientes. Contenido Nahuai  3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Mostrar información de drip content de Restrict Content Pro en la página de entradas de un CPT Tema de la semana: State of the Word: Mapa dinámico sobre la creación y número de grupos de Meetup (Yesares, Casares y más) Style Book -> donde se muestran todos elementos del tema y puedes navegar por las variaciones de bloques Modo zen o libre de distracciones, la idea es que el backend se parezca más aún al frontend Block Pattern locking (ContentLocking) Taxonomías de plugins en el repositorio Individual Comunidad (no upsell) - Canonical plugins (review by core) Comercial, ofrece una versión de pago Colaboración en tiempo real (Fase 3) Multilenguaje (Fase 4) -> still years away… Preguntas Soporte de PHP 8 Certificación WordPress Novedades https://wptavern.com/mailchimp-for-wordpress-plugin-for-sale-in-the-ballpark-of-e1-6m Ingresos de unos 36.000$/mes (+400.000$/año) y pide 1,6 millones de dólares Tip de la semana David comparte un parche si usas LearnDash y WooCommerce https://www.dropbox.com/s/bighnphy030kdr3/learndash-woocommerce.zip?dl=0

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#193 – State of the Word: Autónomos 1 – Multilenguaje 0

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2022 45:36


Síguenos en: Está claro que si Matt fuera catalán otro gallo cantaría..... pero no, el multilenguaje no es una prioridad en WordPress, así que tendremos que seguir apañándonos con los plugins que hay. Por lo menos este año aún siendo autónomos hemos podido disfrutar de una comida navideña de trabajo como cualquier hijo de vecino ;) ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther RCP + Easy Table of Contents -> error en página registro. Contact Form 7 Ajax sí pero no Cliente vuelve por Navidad con pishing Semana Nahuai Preparando y presentando en la Meetup Barcelona, la vuelta a los escenarios con Nora tras el Late Night Show de WordPress. Ya está disponible el vídeo. Comida de autónomos de Navidad. Discrepancias entre las métricas de GAU y GA4. Ha notado menos emails de clientes. Contenido Nahuai  3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis de los cuales destaca: Mostrar información de drip content de Restrict Content Pro en la página de entradas de un CPT Tema de la semana: State of the Word: Mapa dinámico sobre la creación y número de grupos de Meetup (Yesares, Casares y más) Style Book -> donde se muestran todos elementos del tema y puedes navegar por las variaciones de bloques Modo zen o libre de distracciones, la idea es que el backend se parezca más aún al frontend Block Pattern locking (ContentLocking) Taxonomías de plugins en el repositorio Individual Comunidad (no upsell) - Canonical plugins (review by core) Comercial, ofrece una versión de pago Colaboración en tiempo real (Fase 3) Multilenguaje (Fase 4) -> still years away… Preguntas Soporte de PHP 8 Certificación WordPress Novedades https://wptavern.com/mailchimp-for-wordpress-plugin-for-sale-in-the-ballpark-of-e1-6m Ingresos de unos 36.000$/mes (+400.000$/año) y pide 1,6 millones de dólares Tip de la semana David comparte un parche si usas LearnDash y WooCommerce https://www.dropbox.com/s/bighnphy030kdr3/learndash-woocommerce.zip?dl=0

Marketing Digital para Podcast
132: Cómo crear un podcast Premium de pago por suscripción

Marketing Digital para Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2022 31:14


Cómo crear un podcast Premium de pago por suscripciónQué opciones hayCuánto cobrar Qué ofrecerCuándo hacerloMi experiencia¿Podcast de pago por 100€/mes con Newsletter o 500€/año? ¿Solo podcast? ¿Solo se accede al contenido que se publique desde que entres? FOMO. https://substack.com/ permite crear podcast de pago y newsletter.Que se escuchen en todas las plataformasSin publicidad.Exclusivos en mismo feed o en otro.Perdemos control si usamos plataformas.- Acceso a podcasts premium antes que nadie y después en abierto como hace El Sentido De La Birra con Ricardo Moya que está en Podimo.Audiencia actual: Spotify 40%. Apple Podcast 30%. Ivoox 17%. Google Podcast 8%. (YouTube más)¿Creo podcast nuevo de pago o episodios de pago en alguno actual?Siempre he dicho que hacia todo gratis. ¿Cambio de opinión?Ya probé SEO para Google pero nadie se apuntó en ivoox hace unos años.¿Cuáles son los beneficios exclusivos para suscriptores que puedo ofrecer?Si bien depende de ti, según tus objetivos y tiempo invertido, los beneficios pueden incluir acceso a contenido adicional, acceso anticipado al contenido, acceso a entrevistas exclusivas o una versión sin anuncios de tu contenido.PLATAFORMAS PARA CREAR PODCAST DE PAGO- Substack. MEJOR OPCIÓN. (we charge 10% and there is a credit card fee charged by Stripe): Se crea un rss distinto para cada suscriptor de pago y al suscribirte se te mandan los enlaces con acceso directo para cada app que uses con la que se añade ese rss con un click.Casi todo en inglés.- Anchor/Spotify: https://es.blog.anchor.fm/paid-subscriptions Obtén la mayor ganancia posible. Solo deja 1, 5 o 10€/mesEl programa de suscripciones más amigable para los creadores: sin tarifa anual ni tarifa por plataforma hasta 2023 (luego se cobra un 5%). Eso significa que recibirás el 100% de tus ingresos por suscripción (a excepción de las tarifas de procesamiento de pagos). Probar una nueva fuente de ingresos nunca ha sido tan fácil para los creadores.Si bien Spotify ofrece la suscripción y experiencia de escucha más fluidas, los oyentes tienen la opción de agregar una fuente RSS privada a su aplicación de reproducción preferida una vez que se hayan suscrito a tu programa.- Ivoox (5% del total de los apoyos recibidos, sobre los cuales hay que aplicar la comisión de la pasarela de pago y los impuestos correspondientes) Muestra 7 minutos de inicio de cada episodio. Solo acceso y pago con app de ivoox. ¿Widget para web?- Podimo: Audiencia joven. Reparten ingresos. Creciendo.- Mumbler (20% comisión RSS abierto y privado): Opción interesante.- Spreaker con Patreon poniendo cada episodio con acceso limitado. Patreon: Entre 5 y 12%. Además, tramitación del pago.Si tu podcast o episodio es de Acceso limitado, podrás compartir la URL para que los oyentes lo sintonicen desde Spreaker.com o desde un reproductor integrado de tu sitio web (desde una página a la que solo podrá acceder una audiencia específica. Membership site).Podrás copiar el enlace del acceso limitado desde la página de información básica mencionada anteriormente.Además, los oyentes podrán utilizar un feed RSS de acceso limitado especial en plataformas como Apple Podcasts o Pocket Casts.- Apple Podcast: Pago mensual o anual. Crear canal con acceso a varios podcasts. Red de podcasts. 14 días gratis. ¿Widget de pago? https://www.pushkin.fm/join-pushkinhttps://www.apple.com/es/newsroom/2021/06/apple-podcasts-subscriptions-and-channels-are-now-available-worldwide/https://podcasters.apple.com/Crear canal y luego abajo: Las suscripciones te permiten ofrecer a tus oyentes prestaciones especiales, como acceso anticipado, contenido extra o episodios de archivo.Tendrás que pagar una cuota anual de 19.99 EUR- Audio de Podcast en tu web con suscripción mediante membership site con Paid Membership Pro por ejemplo.WordPress con membersite site que accedan a los audios desde la web 1. MemberPress · 2. Restrict Content Pro · 3. OptinMonster · 4. WooCommerce Memberships · 5. Paid Memberships Pro · 6. S2 Member7. https://simple-membership-plugin.com/8. También WPForms de pago https://wpforms.com/how-to-accept-recurring-payments-on-your-wordpress-forms/PowerPress Podcasting plugin by BlubrrySeriously Simple PodcastingSmart Podcast PlayerPodlove Podcast PublisherSimple Podcast PressBuzzsprout PodcastingLibsyn Publisher Hub- Ivoox Originals, Amazon Audible exclusivos, Spotify...Me doy de alta en https://www.ivoox.com/podcasts-patrocinios-welcomeEnlaces recomendados:Prueba gratis Audible y escucha audiolibros desde https://borjagiron.com/audible Prueba Canva Pro 45 días gratis para crear diseños fácilmente: https://borjagiron.com/canva Hostinger: Mejor hosting WordPress al mejor precio: https://borjagiron.com/hostinger Semrush: Herramienta SEO y Marketing Digital todo en uno: https://borjagiron.com/semrush Sendinblue: Herramienta de Email Marketing: https://borjagiron.com/sendinblue Benchmark Email: Herramienta de Email Marketing: https://borjagiron.com/benchmark Manychat: Automatiza mensajes en Instagram: https://borjagiron.com/manychat Cursos Marketing Digital Gratis: https://triunfacontublog.com Blog: https://borjagiron.com

Buying Online Businesses Podcast
The Due Diligence Mindset You Need When Buying An Online Business with Dave Rodenbaugh

Buying Online Businesses Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2022 44:31


One important part you should identify in due diligence before buying an online business is the risk it has, which categorizes into controllable and uncontrollable risks.   Once you identify these risks, you can make informed decisions for your business. Dave came back on the show to spill the beans about due diligence so you can spot a great deal! Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. We have discussed the first site mistake that  Dave made, personal brand dependency in business, and risk versus opportunity. Should you buy for opportunity or less risk, which is better and why?  We also talked about long-term games with long-term people. What happens to people who rush? How to put time on your side rather than against you? (which is what most people do, and it squashes their growth) How should you work your way up to Saas business? Ultimately, Dave will share a piece of advice for people wanting to get into buying websites. If you want to buy a business or just earn an income online, this could be the most important podcast episode of ours you'll listen to.Hit the ‘Play” button now!   Episode Highlights 03:30 Early mistakes Dave made 08:30 Risk Vs Opportunity  19:25 It takes a lot of experience 20:43 Hiring great people 25:30 "Fast Burn Fast Churn" 31:01 Opportunity will come! 33:00 If it's not HELL YES then it's a HELL NO! 36:05 What pushed Dave into Saas Business? 40:10 Where should YOU start?   About The GuestDave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. Dave started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2011, having built a business directory and classified plugin business from scratch and selling them both in 2020. He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores. He truly loves email, dark beer, lifestyle businesses, and his family. Not necessarily in that order.   Resource Links ➥ Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  ➥ Download the Due Diligence Framework (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) ➥ Visit Niche Website Builders and get EXCLUSIVE OFFERS as a BOB listener (https://www.nichewebsite.builders/bob/)   Connect with Dave Rodenbaugh: ➥ https://recapture.io/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Honest eCommerce
Bonus Episode: Refuting Your Email Alibis with Dave Rodenbaugh from Recapture

Honest eCommerce

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2022 25:23


Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more.  On this bonus episode, Dave Rodenbaugh from Recapture goes back to encourage founders who hesitate to start or continue sending emails: Where to get content when you don't know what to say, how to start when you're busy, why you are sending less than you think, and so much more! To learn more, visit: http://honestecommerce.co Resources: Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube Scale your business with electriceye.io Try out Recapture 60 days for free! recapture.io/honest-ecommerce-special Follow Dave on Twitter @daverodenbaugh If you want help with email strategy, email Dave david@recapture.io Get inspired with the best showcase of email design and resources on the web reallygoodemails.com

Buying Online Businesses Podcast
How Dave Bought 18+ Website Businesses & Replaced His Income with Dave Rodenbaugh

Buying Online Businesses Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2022 50:30


Running an ecommerce business looks so simple, not until you have tried it YOURSELF!  The reality is most start-ups STRUGGLE TO MAKE SALES and don't know how to structure their marketing process properly.  In this exciting episode, Dave Rodenbaugh comes to the BOB podcast to share his insights about the ecom world. Dave is the founder of Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores.   We have discussed who should buy an online business & who shouldn't? What type of questions to ask during due diligence?  We have also talked about what his biggest win was in buying business. How he built his empire over the last 11 years and how you can learn from his mistakes? If you too have an ecommerce business and want to scale it or plan to have one, then watching this episode would be a great HELP! Smash the ‘Play' button now!   Episode Highlights 00:00 What you'll learn in this episode? 03:48 How did Dave get into buying websites? 12:29 Buying vs Starting an Online Business 15:24 Setting Goals! 17:01 Dave shares his experiences in running online businesses  23:46 How many sites Dave bought? 27:16 What opportunity really means? 29:21 What Dave learned the hard way about Due diligence? 35:40 How do RECAPTURE help online entrepreneurs? 38:42 It takes time to grow, be patient! 44:42 Calculations of profits on Abandoned Carts 48:29 Where can you find Dave? About The Guest Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of https://recapture.io/ an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro and more. Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over 2.0 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $200,000,000 for stores worldwide. Dave started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2011, having built a business directory and classified plugin business from scratch and selling them both in 2020.  He's also the co-host of the RogueStartups podcast and the WP Minute Ecommerce show.  He now works exclusively on ecommerce and has a passion for making merchants of all kinds more successful with their stores.  He truly loves email, dark beer, lifestyle businesses and his family.  Not necessarily in that order. Resource Links ➥ Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  ➥ Download the Due Diligence Framework (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) ➥ Visit Niche Website Builders and get EXCLUSIVE OFFERS as a BOB listener (https://www.nichewebsite.builders/bob/)   Connect with Dave Rodenbaugh: ➥ https://recapture.io/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#171 – Mejorar la búsqueda de WordPress con plugins o código

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2022 37:06


Síguenos en: No es un secreto que el buscador nativo de WordPress deja mucho que desear. Como desarrolladores o implementadores, es necesario siempre echar un vistazo a los resultados para restringir qué páginas no queremos que aparezcan o para preparar un buscador algo más avanzado para alguna de las categorías de la web. Como siempre, eso es algo que podemos hacer sólo con código, o utilizar algún plugin que nos ayude a conseguir lo que necesitamos. Hoy haremos un repaso a las opciones más habituales que solemos utilizar. Pero antes... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Mantenimientos habituales y reflexión sobre accesibilidad del editor de bloques a raíz de una consulta. Semana Nahuai Follow-up con la actualización de Restrict Content Pro, ¡era la caché! Follow-up de la pausa de suscripciones con Restrict Content Pro, se puede modificar la fecha solo desde la web. Intentando sacar un snippet que permita automatizarlo. Investigando mucho sobre patrones de bloques, registrarlos, desregistrarlos, priorizarlos... Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Con código Utilizar la etiqueta condicional is_search Excluir posts o páginas en concretoExcluir un CPTBuscar sólo en posts Con plugins: Relevanssiexcluir o priorizar CPTelegir campos SearchWP Otros Plugins: Ivory Search Ajax Search LiteACF Better SearchAdvanced Woo SearchFiboSearch - Ajax Search for WooCommerce Tutoriales relacionados: Mejorar la búsqueda en Genesis FrameworkMejorar la búsqueda en Genesis Framework con Relevanssihttps://codigogenesis.com/excluir-etiquetas-resultados-busqueda-wordpress/https://codigogenesis.com/incluir-custom-post-types-resultados-busqueda-wordpress/Excluir las entradas de los resultados de búsqueda en WordPressPriorizar un CPT en el resultado de búsquedas en WordPressPriorizar un CPT en el resultado de búsquedas con Relavanssihttps://codigogenesis.com/ocultar-productos-woocommerce-sin-imagen-destacada-resultados-busqueda/Ocultar de los resultados de búsqueda los productos de WooCommerce sin imagen destacada Novedades El nuevo equipo de rendimiento proponen usar el formato WebP por defecto. Create Block Theme, un nuevo plugin que ayuda a crear temas FSE. Tip de la semana Usar SearchWP o Relevanssi junto con FacetWP para filtros y templates avanzados. Menciones Xavi nos felicitaba en Twitter por el episodio de gestión de accesos de otros profesionales.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#171 – Mejorar la búsqueda de WordPress con plugins o código

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2022 37:06


Síguenos en: No es un secreto que el buscador nativo de WordPress deja mucho que desear. Como desarrolladores o implementadores, es necesario siempre echar un vistazo a los resultados para restringir qué páginas no queremos que aparezcan o para preparar un buscador algo más avanzado para alguna de las categorías de la web. Como siempre, eso es algo que podemos hacer sólo con código, o utilizar algún plugin que nos ayude a conseguir lo que necesitamos. Hoy haremos un repaso a las opciones más habituales que solemos utilizar. Pero antes... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Mantenimientos habituales y reflexión sobre accesibilidad del editor de bloques a raíz de una consulta. Semana Nahuai Follow-up con la actualización de Restrict Content Pro, ¡era la caché! Follow-up de la pausa de suscripciones con Restrict Content Pro, se puede modificar la fecha solo desde la web. Intentando sacar un snippet que permita automatizarlo. Investigando mucho sobre patrones de bloques, registrarlos, desregistrarlos, priorizarlos... Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Con código Utilizar la etiqueta condicional is_search Excluir posts o páginas en concretoExcluir un CPTBuscar sólo en posts Con plugins: Relevanssiexcluir o priorizar CPTelegir campos SearchWP Otros Plugins: Ivory Search Ajax Search LiteACF Better SearchAdvanced Woo SearchFiboSearch - Ajax Search for WooCommerce Tutoriales relacionados: Mejorar la búsqueda en Genesis FrameworkMejorar la búsqueda en Genesis Framework con Relevanssihttps://codigogenesis.com/excluir-etiquetas-resultados-busqueda-wordpress/https://codigogenesis.com/incluir-custom-post-types-resultados-busqueda-wordpress/Excluir las entradas de los resultados de búsqueda en WordPressPriorizar un CPT en el resultado de búsquedas en WordPressPriorizar un CPT en el resultado de búsquedas con Relavanssihttps://codigogenesis.com/ocultar-productos-woocommerce-sin-imagen-destacada-resultados-busqueda/Ocultar de los resultados de búsqueda los productos de WooCommerce sin imagen destacada Novedades El nuevo equipo de rendimiento proponen usar el formato WebP por defecto. Create Block Theme, un nuevo plugin que ayuda a crear temas FSE. Tip de la semana Usar SearchWP o Relevanssi junto con FacetWP para filtros y templates avanzados. Menciones Xavi nos felicitaba en Twitter por el episodio de gestión de accesos de otros profesionales.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#170 – Cómo gestionamos las facturas y contabilidad de nuestros negocios

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2022 39:18


Síguenos en: Aunque no es el tema más veraniego posible, nos guste o no las cuestiones administrativas y de gestión de nuestro negocio son importantes y nos pueden dar más de un dolor de cabeza y disgusto si no lo cuidamos como el resto de temas. Hoy repasamos un poco cómo lo hacemos nosotros, en cada caso como autónomo y administradora de sociedad limitada. Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Duo satánico Divi Builder + Visual Composer Semana Nahuai Investigando el problema con la actualización de Restrict Content Pro en Código Genesis. Sorprendiéndome de que a pesar de que WooCommerce tiene muchos filtros no tenía el que necesitaba para añadir un campo a la dirección en la página de mi cuenta. Entrevista con una empleada de WPE para tener acceso a la versión alfa de la herramienta FSE Studio. Mejorando algunas políticas de indexación en alguna webs (disallow en robots.txt vs X-Robots-Tag). Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: nahuai Autónomo (pago de la cuota mensual 300€ aprox)Cuenta separada de negocios (sin separar IVA)Programa de facturación: Factura DirectaServicios: Creación de webs, bolsas de horas y mantenimientosProductos (Código Genesis): Automatización -> Restrict Content Pro + Stripe + Zapier + Factura DirectaConectado la cuenta de negocios -> permite ver ingresos de afiliadosIngresos de patrocinio del podcast Freelandev. Balance con ingresos de OsomPress.Asistente virtual (Celi) para a sistema de facturación de la asesoríaExportación de facturas en PDFs ingresos de Factura DirectaSubir facturas/gastosAsesores fiscales se encargan de revisar todo y presentar los impuestos trimestralmente esther Autónoma hasta 2017 -> Luego S.L.Cuenta separada siempreFacturación: Factura Directa - Series de facturación distintasServicios -> Facturas directamente en FDTranquilidad WP -> EDD + Stripe + FDZona DPW -> RCP + Stripe + FDOsomPress -> EDD + Stripe + FD ($)Asesoría / Gestoría para contabilidad y fiscal. Novedades Follow up adquisición de ACF por parte de WPE, ventajas para combinarlo con Atlas y ofrecer una experiencia headless más completa. Solo el 1-2% de los usuarios de StudioPress o Local usan WPE. WP Engine explica el futuro de Genesis y FSE en un post en su blog. Tip de la semana Follow up, las fuentes de Bunny son las Google Fonts realojadas en sus servidores/CDN. https://wordpress.org/plugins/local-google-fonts/ Menciones Israel se pasa por comentarios para dejarnos un enlace donde se pueden descargas las fuentes Google Fonts en todos los formatos.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#170 – Cómo gestionamos las facturas y contabilidad de nuestros negocios

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2022 39:18


Síguenos en: Aunque no es el tema más veraniego posible, nos guste o no las cuestiones administrativas y de gestión de nuestro negocio son importantes y nos pueden dar más de un dolor de cabeza y disgusto si no lo cuidamos como el resto de temas. Hoy repasamos un poco cómo lo hacemos nosotros, en cada caso como autónomo y administradora de sociedad limitada. Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Duo satánico Divi Builder + Visual Composer Semana Nahuai Investigando el problema con la actualización de Restrict Content Pro en Código Genesis. Sorprendiéndome de que a pesar de que WooCommerce tiene muchos filtros no tenía el que necesitaba para añadir un campo a la dirección en la página de mi cuenta. Entrevista con una empleada de WPE para tener acceso a la versión alfa de la herramienta FSE Studio. Mejorando algunas políticas de indexación en alguna webs (disallow en robots.txt vs X-Robots-Tag). Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: nahuai Autónomo (pago de la cuota mensual 300€ aprox)Cuenta separada de negocios (sin separar IVA)Programa de facturación: Factura DirectaServicios: Creación de webs, bolsas de horas y mantenimientosProductos (Código Genesis): Automatización -> Restrict Content Pro + Stripe + Zapier + Factura DirectaConectado la cuenta de negocios -> permite ver ingresos de afiliadosIngresos de patrocinio del podcast Freelandev. Balance con ingresos de OsomPress.Asistente virtual (Celi) para a sistema de facturación de la asesoríaExportación de facturas en PDFs ingresos de Factura DirectaSubir facturas/gastosAsesores fiscales se encargan de revisar todo y presentar los impuestos trimestralmente esther Autónoma hasta 2017 -> Luego S.L.Cuenta separada siempreFacturación: Factura Directa - Series de facturación distintasServicios -> Facturas directamente en FDTranquilidad WP -> EDD + Stripe + FDZona DPW -> RCP + Stripe + FDOsomPress -> EDD + Stripe + FD ($)Asesoría / Gestoría para contabilidad y fiscal. Novedades Follow up adquisición de ACF por parte de WPE, ventajas para combinarlo con Atlas y ofrecer una experiencia headless más completa. Solo el 1-2% de los usuarios de StudioPress o Local usan WPE. WP Engine explica el futuro de Genesis y FSE en un post en su blog. Tip de la semana Follow up, las fuentes de Bunny son las Google Fonts realojadas en sus servidores/CDN. https://wordpress.org/plugins/local-google-fonts/ Menciones Israel se pasa por comentarios para dejarnos un enlace donde se pueden descargas las fuentes Google Fonts en todos los formatos.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#169 – Gestionar acceso a WordPress a otros profesionales

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2022 44:57


Síguenos en: Es habitual que cuando gestionamos páginas web de clientes necesitemos dar acceso puntual a otros profesionales, ya sea por tema de contenidos, SEO, e-commerce, etc... ¿Qué tipo de rol y qué permisos debemos darle en cada caso? Hoy ampliamos el episodio en el que hablamos de roles nativos de WordPress y sus capacidades para ver qué hacer en estos casos en concreto. Pero antes, como siempre.... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Semana corta y tranquila Semana Nahuai Actualizamos Osom Modal Login para solucionar un PHP notice en version 8.0 o superior. Y de paso ganamos otra valoración 5 estrellas (y ya van 10!).

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#169 – Gestionar acceso a WordPress a otros profesionales

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2022 44:57


Síguenos en: Es habitual que cuando gestionamos páginas web de clientes necesitemos dar acceso puntual a otros profesionales, ya sea por tema de contenidos, SEO, e-commerce, etc... ¿Qué tipo de rol y qué permisos debemos darle en cada caso? Hoy ampliamos el episodio en el que hablamos de roles nativos de WordPress y sus capacidades para ver qué hacer en estos casos en concreto. Pero antes, como siempre.... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Semana corta y tranquila Semana Nahuai Actualizamos Osom Modal Login para solucionar un PHP notice en version 8.0 o superior. Y de paso ganamos otra valoración 5 estrellas (y ya van 10!). ???? Investigando cómo pausar suscripciones en Restrict Content Pro. Ojo con la actualización de Restrict Content Pro (3.5.16). Reunión comunidad de sostenibilidad web de la W3C. Contenido Nahuai 2 nuevos tutorial en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Roles nativos de WordPress -> adaptar un rol nativo para añadir o modificar sus capacidades.Con plugin (User Role Editor   WPFront User Role Editor PublishPress Capabilities)Con códigoRoles específicos de algunos plugins:WooCommerce: gestor de tienda (acceso a  ajustes de WooCommerce, edición de productos, informes)Yoast SEO: SEO Editor y SEO ManagerRankMath: role managerBuddyPress / BBPress: roles específicos para gestión del foro y comunidad (Moderadores, participantes…) Recursos mencionados: Episodio sobre roles de usuario y capacidades. Ocultar (casi) todos los elementos de la administración de WordPress a un rol de usuario. Novedades El equipo de temas recomienda pasar a fuentes autoalojadas https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-strongly-urges-theme-authors-to-switch-to-locally-hosted-webfonts WP Charitable adquirida por Awesome Motive y ficha a David Bisset para liderar el proyecto https://www.wpbeginner.com/news/welcome-wp-charitable-to-the-wpbeginner-family-of-products/ Matt Mullenweg lanza una opinión «controvertida» sobre el papel de GoDaddy en el ecosistema de WordPress. Tip de la semana Fuentes open source y respetuosas con la privacidad. 

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#155 – Trucos y consejos para gestionar pagos con Stripe

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2022 45:33


Síguenos en: Stripe se ha convertido en unos años en un estándar en cuanto a pasarelas de pago, especialmente útil para pagos recurrentes y suscripciones. Hoy echamos un repaso a sus características y algunos trucos prácticos. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther De esas semanas anómalas y con temas familiares que nos sacan de nuestra rutina, pero siguiendo con actualizaciones de instalaciones de WordPress muy desfasadas. Semana Nahuai Retomamos las charlas en persona de WordPress Terrassa https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Terrassa-WordPress-Meetup/ Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Stripe es una de las pasarelas de pago más populares y que se caracteriza por tener una API muy potente con unas comisiones razonables. Prácticamente todos los plugins de eCommerce de WordPress lo soportan (WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, Gravity Forms....). A su vez muchas plataformas de facturación ofrecen integración con Stripe (Factura Directa, Quaderno...) Crear una cuenta de Stripe y dar acceso a tu desarrollador web (a veces necesario perfil de admin)Tarjetas para realizar pagos de prueba https://stripe.com/docs/testingElegir cada cuanto se envían los pagos a tu bancoAñadir días gratis a un suscriptor (desde la suscripción) - Ajustar también los días en el pluginForzar pago de nuevo (desde la factura)Enviar una factura para que realicen un pago puntual (práctico cuando la actualización de tarjeta no funciona bien a través del plugin)Ajustar saldo cuando no hace bien el cambio de membresía o similaresEnviar metadatos a Stripe (plugin o código)Soporte para adeudo domiciliario SEPA (comisión de 0,35€)Utilizar payment linksComisión reducida para micro-pagos (menores a 5€, contactar con ellos)Stripe ofrece comisiones reducidas a organizaciones sin ánimo de lucroStripe Climate (1% de ingresos)Stripe Radar Novedades Digital Ocean adquieres CSS-Tricks.  Newfold Digital adquiere Yith.  Gravity Forms consigue el dominio gravity.com. Menciones Antonio nos comenta que usa un pantallazo de Lighthouse en Google Chrome Ragose comparte el episodio de WPO Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#155 – Trucos y consejos para gestionar pagos con Stripe

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2022 45:33


Síguenos en: Stripe se ha convertido en unos años en un estándar en cuanto a pasarelas de pago, especialmente útil para pagos recurrentes y suscripciones. Hoy echamos un repaso a sus características y algunos trucos prácticos. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther De esas semanas anómalas y con temas familiares que nos sacan de nuestra rutina, pero siguiendo con actualizaciones de instalaciones de WordPress muy desfasadas. Semana Nahuai Retomamos las charlas en persona de WordPress Terrassa https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Terrassa-WordPress-Meetup/ Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutoriales en Código Genesis, de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Stripe es una de las pasarelas de pago más populares y que se caracteriza por tener una API muy potente con unas comisiones razonables. Prácticamente todos los plugins de eCommerce de WordPress lo soportan (WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, Gravity Forms....). A su vez muchas plataformas de facturación ofrecen integración con Stripe (Factura Directa, Quaderno...) Crear una cuenta de Stripe y dar acceso a tu desarrollador web (a veces necesario perfil de admin)Tarjetas para realizar pagos de prueba https://stripe.com/docs/testingElegir cada cuanto se envían los pagos a tu bancoAñadir días gratis a un suscriptor (desde la suscripción) - Ajustar también los días en el pluginForzar pago de nuevo (desde la factura)Enviar una factura para que realicen un pago puntual (práctico cuando la actualización de tarjeta no funciona bien a través del plugin)Ajustar saldo cuando no hace bien el cambio de membresía o similaresEnviar metadatos a Stripe (plugin o código)Soporte para adeudo domiciliario SEPA (comisión de 0,35€)Utilizar payment linksComisión reducida para micro-pagos (menores a 5€, contactar con ellos)Stripe ofrece comisiones reducidas a organizaciones sin ánimo de lucroStripe Climate (1% de ingresos)Stripe Radar Novedades Digital Ocean adquieres CSS-Tricks.  Newfold Digital adquiere Yith.  Gravity Forms consigue el dominio gravity.com. Menciones Antonio nos comenta que usa un pantallazo de Lighthouse en Google Chrome Ragose comparte el episodio de WPO Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

The WP Mayor Podcast
Write newsletters where you blog with Newsletter Glue

The WP Mayor Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2021 39:23


In this episode, Gaby Galea talks to Lesley Sim, co-founder of Newsletter Glue, a WordPress plugin that helps users send newsletters from within their WordPress dashboard. Lesley and I discuss what Newsletter Glue has to offer and about the business side of starting a WordPress plugin and marketing it. Episode Highlights and Topics: Newsletter Glue: Started with an old membership plugin with Mailchimp add-on Timeline: Newsletter Glue launched as a free plugin in August, then turned pro Newsletter Glue: makes writing, designing, publishing in WordPress faster and easier How Newsletter Glue works: Sends blog posts as newsletters via email service providers ESPs like Mailchimp: Specialize in deliverability and make sure bulk emails get sent Patterns: Use your own and/or those supplied by Newsletter Glue Show/Hide Feature: Decide what goes into a blog post and what goes into a newsletter Clients: Combination of bloggers and eCommerce to newsrooms and publishers Membership Plugins: Paid Memberships Pro, Restrict Content Pro, Memberful, Pico Community/Connections: Learn how to grow your business from other plugin owners Discovery Questionnaires: Get to know clients by changing how you ask them questions Email vs. HTML: Newsletter Glue is optimized for email; HTML is for web sites Framework: One-to-one, one-to-some, and one-to-many to market WordPress plugin Newsletter Glue Affiliate Program: What works best - live streams and demos Resources/Links: Newsletter Glue:15% off first purchase (use coupon code: WPMayor) Lesley Sim’s Email: hi@newsletterglue.com Lesley Sim on Twitter: @lesley_pizza NewsletterGlue on Twitter: @NewsletterGlue Newsletter Glue on YouTube Mailchimp Block Editor MailPoet Post Status on Slack The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Spotlight (Instagram feed plugin) Elementor Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) Castos WP Mayor Email WP Mayor

The WP Minute
Pippin, LearnDash, Awesome Motive, Liquid Web all walk into a bar

The WP Minute

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2021 5:39


It's the WP Minute! This is Kathy Zant and I'm filling in for Matt. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com! You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. News time! If you thought the WordPress acquisition train was safely tucked away at the station, think again, it's full-steam ahead! Breaking news announced earlier this morning, AwesomeMotive has acquired one of the — if not the most — highly regarded brands in WordPress: SandHills Development, widely known for Easy Digital Downloads. Pippin Williamson penned an excellent summary of the events sharing what led him to the decision. Every business owner knows (or will eventually learn) that there are three possible fates for their business:1. It will one day be passed on to someone else, perhaps through family inheritance2. It will slowly or rapidly decline and at some point be shut down entirely3. It will be sold to a new owner for one reason or another. If you're a business owner, his post is absolutely worth the time. Liquid Web announces another top-tier brand is being added to their stack, one of the most popular LMS plugins for WordPress: LearnDash. LearnDash will join the Liquid Web Family under the StellarWP brand, which is the umbrella for our premium WordPress software solutions and includes well-known and respected WordPress leaders such as iThemes, The Events Calendar, GiveWP, Restrict Content Pro, Iconic, and Kadence WP.” You can learn more about how the acquisition went down in our interview with Justin Ferriman and Chris Lema. Highlights include: How long the process tookWhat you should do if you want to get acquiredSpeculation on WooCommerce and the ecommerce space Speaking of WooCommerce, they've announced the acquisition of extension maker SomewhereWarm who currently has seven products available in the marketplace. “This is a huge opportunity for us to help shape the future of WooCommerce, having a clearer view of the path ahead, more resources than ever before, and the support of like-minded people.” DeliciousBrains did a stealth acquisition of the ACF Blocks plugin, picking it up from the folks at Extendify. Extendify acquired EditorsKit earlier this year and the Redux framework last year. The fantasy league of WordPress We're thinking about starting a fantasy league of WordPress business & All-Star communi

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#119 – [Perspectiva WP] – iThemes, Cory Miller y Liquid Web

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2021 41:10


Síguenos en: Fundado en 2008 por Cory Miller. Periodista con familia de emprendedores. Resume que gran parte de su éxito con i Themes fue «To be at the right place in the right moment» Tiene un perfil no técnico desde el inicio colocó al cliente como centro de sus productos → "make people live awesome". También cree que es vital alinear la vida y el trabajo.  2008 Cory funda la empresa iThemes.Empezó con la idea de crear temas, optimizado para buscadores, para distintos sectores.Contratar a diseñadores para convertir webs de +2.000$ en temas 2009 Se incorpora Matt Danner.Objetivo de reclutar a más diseñadores y desarrolladores.Tienen un fallo de discos duros que les da la idea de crear BackupBuddy. 2010 Lanzan iThemes Builder y BackupBuddy (equipo de 3 personas) 2011 Su porfolio de producto ya comprende WordPress Plugins  WordPress Themes >  iThemes Builder + 150 temas, 80 temas hijos para iThemes Builder. WordPress Training iThemes Sync   2012 Ya forman un equipo de 17 personas.El tramo más duro para Cory fue pasar de 10 a más de 20 trabajadores.La mitad de la plantilla iba a la oficina física (Oklahoma) y otra mitad trabajan en remoto.BackupBuddy alcanza las 100.000 licencias vendidasRenuevan la web 2013 Contratan a 2 personasActualizaciones mayores de sus principales plugins (BackupBuddy, Builder...). Exchange e-commerce Adquieren el plugin Sync y lo renombran a iThemes SyncAño record de ingresos22 personas en el equipo  2014 BackupBuddy alcanza las 300.000 licencias vendidasSupone casi el 50% de ingresos Churn alto (todos los productos licencias anuales)Tickets de soporte complicados (calidad del hosting)Adquieren el plugin Better WP Security y lo renombrado como iThemes Security.Contratan a su creador Chris Wiegman para mantenerlo y mejorarlo.Lanzan iThemes Security Pro.iThemes Security supera los 2 millones de descargas.Formación sobre crear webs, gestionar clientes (Bill Erickson) iThemes Exchange el plugin de e-commerce 7-8 meses sin ingresos (250.000€ de inversión) luego addons de pagoIntentaron ofrecer servicios pero no funcionó  2016 Liquid Web se alía con iThemes para ofrecer el bundle iThemes Sync Pro. 2017 AJ Morris Product Manager de Liquid Web compra iTheme Exchange. Lanzan iThemes Sales Accelerator una herramienta para mejorar la experiencia de reportes, clientes etc en WooCommerce. 2018 Liquid Web adquiere iThemes y sus 23 empleados.  Además del conocer el equipo ejecutivo (por el acuerdo de colaboración previo), Cris Lema VP de Liquid Web es amigo de Cory. Cory se queda con el puesto de business manager. 2019 Cory deja Liquid Web y Matt Danner le releva en su puesto. De los 500 empleados de Liquid Web, 27 están en iThemes Discontinúan iThemes Sales Accelerator por la falta de tracción del proyecto. 2020 Cory Miller se incorpora como socio al projecto de Post Status (Bryan Krogsgard) iThemes adquiere Restrict Content Pro y WP Complete. 2021 Cory Miller compró Post Status a Bryan Krogsgard. Liquid Web cuenta con más de 600 empleados. El equipo de iThemes tiene 22 personas: 1 manager general7 developers12 soporte2 marketing1 training Liquid web adquiere the The Events Calendar y Kadence. Liquid Web adquiere GiveWP  (+ WP Business Review de Impress.org) y aprovechan  para lanzar Stellar WP , una marca y web donde juntan todos los plugins de la marca: iThemesThe Events CalendarRestrict Content ProKadence WPGiveWPWP Business Review. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

How I Built It
Why Speakers Should Start a Podcast

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2021 28:24


Podcasting can be like your own personal stage. If you’re a speaker, you have the opportunity to create your own portfolio of work, allowing potential event organizers and audience members to see what you know and you speak. This can lead to more paid speaking gigs and a following. But that’s not the only reason speakers should start a podcast. … Why Speakers Should Start a PodcastRead More » Transcript Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Club. If you want ad free extended episodes of this podcast in the form of a podcast called Build Something More, as well as access to a community, live streams, bonus episodes, and deals, check out buildsomething.club and sign up for just $5 a month. You’ll get a bunch of great content and you get to support the show directly. Today on build something more, it’s a solo episode. So I will be telling you all about how I put my own talks together because today we’re talking about why speakers should start a podcast. I’m also going to be telling you about the tools I use for speaking, and I’ll ponder a little bit about if speakers should always be paid. So again, that is buildsomething.club. You can sign up for $5 a month, or you can get two months for free at 50 bucks a year. And every member gets an exclusive member chip in the mail. Head over to buildsomething.club today. All right. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 221 of How I Built It. Today’s sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them a little later on in the show. But today we’re going to be talking about why speakers should start a podcast. This is a continuation of a series that I’ve been doing that started with course creators and then authors. And so now if you are a speaker, or you want to be a speaker, or you want to be a paid speaker, well, this episode is for you. Because I think a podcast can really help you. Now, of course, as usual, I’ll start off by saying that I covered the more general points of why anyone should start a podcast in Episode 154. You can go to Howibuilt.it/154 for that. Again, it’s up and coming medium. Lots and lots of people are discovering podcasting, both as audience and as creators. So it’s a great way for you to get ahead of the curve, and get out there and create your own podcast with your own niche. It’s a great way to establish trust. And it’s quickly growing. The latest Edison Research has shown that over 50% of American adults listen to at least one podcast episode a week, or at least one podcast. So it’s a growing audience. It’s grown considerably, especially over the last couple of years. And with Spotify, and Apple, and Amazon all throwing their hats into the ring and putting a ton of money behind podcasting, it’s going to get even bigger. It’s the next great content plane, it’s a great way to grow your business. And it’s easier than ever. But if you’re a speaker, why should you specifically start a podcast? Well, I think that there are a few reasons. And of course, we’ll break this down by why you should do it personally, and then how it can help you, all of the ways that you can help you. So first of all, if you’re a speaker, everybody I’ve been speaking to you lately on these episodes, these targeted episodes need to establish trust of some kind. And yes, that’s true in general if you’re a business owner, but I think it’s even more important if you are a… we’ll say a knowledge worker, if you are selling knowledge or selling a process, if you’re teaching people how to do something, which is what course creators do, which is what authors do, which is what speakers do. So I truly believe that a podcast is instrumental in helping you establish trust with people who will potentially be in your audience, but also with people who will potentially hire you for speaking gigs. And speaking of that, a podcast helps you create your own portfolio, one that you could send to potential events where you might want to be the keynote speaker or just a speaker. You can say, “Hey, don’t just take my word for it. I have a podcast where I talk into a microphone regularly. I’ve got the skills. Here’s my style. If you like it, hire me.” Plus, this portfolio that gets created doesn’t rely on other events providing the video or audio for your talk. Because that’s another thing. Maybe you’re on the speaker circuit all the time but maybe the events don’t make the recordings publicly available. So, now you need to figure out another way to show people what you really know, what your process is, and if you’re actually a good public speaker. You can establish trust by creating this portfolio of you talking about whatever it is you talk about. So if you’re a business coach, talk about things that you’ve coached people through. Heck, maybe even make some of your coaching calls public, with the permission of the person you’re coaching, of course. If you are a web developer, talk about the things that you’re doing at your job that you would repurpose into a talk or that you’ve talked about. What things are you doing to make your website faster or more accessible? What new CSS things are out now that you’re trying? If you own a coffee shop and you are hitting the speaker circuit about what it’s like owning a coffee shop, get on the mic and talk about different blends, and the terminology, and what it all means, and how you choose your blends. What’s the best grind for an AeroPress? What’s the best grind for iced coffee? Seriously, what is the best grind for iced coffee? So talk about things like that. And if you need content, you can also repurpose older talks into episodes or an episode series. If you give a talk for an hour, then you can break that down into three episodes. Part one, you set it up; part two, you solve the problem; part three, you give the actionable advice: go forth and do this. Maybe you can even have a Q&A where you invite your listeners to submit questions about your talk and then you answer them in the fourth episode of that series. Or you could just do the whole talk in one episode if you want to go for an hour. And then invite listeners to ask questions later or ask some questions you’ve gotten at that talk and answer them there. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Build Something Club rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s using Restrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: You can also test concepts for new talks. What are some ideas you’ve got kicking around but you haven’t fully fleshed out? I did that just recently, as I record this, with a podcast episode for a talk that I’m going to give at a WordCamp later. Now, those ideas are out there. Now, I’m getting feedback. “Well, what about this? What about that? Maybe they should think about that, too. How do I do this?” Great. That 15-minute episode now will let me not only take what I thought about and the questions that I think people will be asking, but now we’ll be able to get actual listener feedback and integrate that, include that in the talk. And it’ll make the talk better because now I’m inoculating the listeners, the audience against questions that they would have had that I wouldn’t have thought to ask. And now people feel even better coming away from my talk. I understand the problem better. So you can test out new concepts, things you’re thinking about, see how they land, see how well they’re received. If they’re not that well received, great, don’t spend the hours that you would spend putting a talk together with the slide deck, with the rehearsing. Speaking of, you can rehearse new talks as well. Maybe hear you have a members-only feed or a Patreon feed, where you give the dress rehearsal version of your talk, for people to listen to. You can work on the delivery. You can read through it. I’m a speaker myself. And let me tell you, the amount of times I’ve talked to my computer or my camera as if they were real people because I was rehearsing a talk. If my family didn’t know what I was doing, they’d think I was crazy. I was just talking to myself. So this gives you the opportunity to not… I’m not going to say waste, because rehearsing a talk is not a waste of time, it’s very, very important. This is why you should rehearse and you should have your sides done before you go up on stage. I know a lot of people, at least in my field, in my circles, are working on their slides right before they go up on stage. I don’t do that. Maybe I’ll add a slide… This is a tangent, but that’s okay. Maybe I’ll add a slide based on an earlier talk because then you get to do that pro move of like, “Blah, blah said in their talk earlier…” and then continue to make their point and your point. It’s a good move. But my talks are usually done and dusted before I go up on stage because I’ve made the slides, I’ve rehearsed, I’ve told the story that I want to tell without checking the notes. So you can rehearse your talks. You can rehearse the stories too. Maybe you just have a few stories that you’re telling story episodes, see which ones land, see which ones do well, and then tell those during your talks. Or wait till after you give the talk and just tell the stories later if you want the stories to be a surprise. Aside from your talks, though, where you can create your portfolio, repurpose older talks, test new concepts in your hearse, behind-the-scenes content kills. People love going behind the scenes to learn how things are built. That’s why this show does so well. And that’s why it did so well in the beginning. I feel like I discovered before a lot of people that behind-the-scenes stuff does really well. And I told those stories of behind-the-scenes stuff. So behind the scenes stuff kills. Talk about how you came up with the concept and how you put it all together. Talk about your favorite speaking engagements. Talk about times when it went wrong. I should really save this for the members episode and just tease that. But gosh, when I was giving my master’s thesis, when I was defending my master’s thesis, I made a point incorrectly and my advisor corrected me tight then in there. He stopped me and he said, “That’s not really how it works.” I was very embarrassed. I had a lot of friends in the audience, too. And I saw their faces and they looked mortified. And I said, “Well, if anybody has any questions about anything I’ve talked about, besides the bounding box algorithm…” I said, “If anybody has any questions for me, let me know. I’m happy to answer them. Unless it’s about the bounding box and you can ask Dr. Bishop.” And I kind of recovered. That’s happened to me a few times on stage before. If you speak a lot, it’s bound to happen. But people love hearing those stories because that relaxes them a little bit too. You know, I’ve had people correct me about… I told a story about the Empire State Building one time and this person was like, “Well, actually, the Empire State Building was done in this,” and I’m like, “That’s not really the point of my talk…” But, you know, you learn how to deal with that stuff. And people love hearing stories like that. And then again, your favorite speaking engagements, right? Where did you absolutely kill it? What was a really good talk? Maybe what was a talk that you didn’t think would do well that went really well, and vice versa? Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. When you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes, ensuring your team remains consistent, current, and accurate. TextExpander can also be used in any platform, any app and anywhere you type. So take back your time and increase your productivity. But that’s not all it does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop-up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So we’ve got how you can integrate your talks into your podcast, how you can build up your portfolio, how you can use behind-the-scenes content to give people a peek behind the curtain of your talks. But you can also become a coach for other speakers. So you can invite aspiring speakers on maybe. I kind of said this from the beginning. How do you get a paid speaking gig? Other common speaking questions. Again, ask listeners to submit questions for you around speaking, then you’re established not only as an expert in your field, but also as an expert speaker. That can open a whole bunch of other doors that we’re going to talk about in a minute. A podcast also shows potential event planners that you’re consistent that you show up and that you know you’re talking about. I’ll tell you, one of my friends was planning a virtual event. And virtual events are hard. He did like a double blind selection of speakers. So he just looked at the ideas and he kind of picked what he thought would be good, and he looked at proposals. And he had one that didn’t work out at all the way he thought it would. And luckily this was an online event. So the talk came in before the actual event and he was able to provide feedback and coaching and things like that. But that’s a risk that that event planners take. They don’t necessarily know how good their speakers are going to be. But if you have a podcast, you’re showing them, “Hey, you can believe in me, you can trust me and you can relax a little bit.” Then finally, on this kind of grab bag of other benefits for starting a podcast for speakers, you can build an audience and eventually sell products or services based on your speaking gigs. A lot of times people who are speakers are already authors or teachers, or they have some product or new method. But those people are building the audience through the products, or they’re building the audience through the speaking gigs. What if you had a built-in fandom for your speaking gigs? You can do that with a podcast. Now you have people who are going to come to the event just to see you speak. And you’ll be able to build those products and services based on your gigs. Plus, again, if event planners find out that people are going to attend their event just because you’re going to be there, it’ll be a lot easier for you to get gigs. And that is how the podcast can help you in more ways than one. We talked about the benefit of your content and you getting your content out there. But a podcast also helps you engage with your audience more. It helps you engage with your audience when you’re not on stage or just offstage asking questions. It’ll give you more stories to tell. It’ll help you book more speaking gigs. Because again, if you already have a built-in audience and you know that you’ll get butts in seats at these events, event planners love that. That’s why they want the big names to be the keynotes because they know people will come. That also means you’ll get more paid speaking gigs. Again, I’ll talk about paid speaking gigs in Build Something More. But you put a lot of work into these talks, you should get paid most of the time. And if you offer a lot of paid speaking gigs, you can provide a membership for your podcast for our listeners to gain access to those pay talks without attending the events. Because I mean, I’ve ever signed a contract saying that my talk is exclusive to the event. Just make sure you don’t do that, I guess. But yeah, if I’m giving a talk, a paid gig, I’m going to put it on the Build Something More feed too for my members as a benefit. And if you have a lot of fans, a lot of people who love your talks, who can’t go to every events because they’re not going to follow you around the country, it’ll be great for you to get those talks up there for them to consume. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by The Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, The Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with The Events Calendar, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. With the Virtual Events add on you can quickly and easily manage your online-only or hybrid events. With deep Zoom integration, custom virtual event coding for search engine optimization, and the ability to embed video feeds directly on your website, The Events Calendar makes putting virtual and hybrid events together easier. And I can’t stress this one enough. Let me tell you, I have tried to roll my own webinar software, my own live stream event software, and it is difficult. And I have 20 years’ experience making websites. The Events Calendar is the tool that you need to make virtual events a lot easier. You can even sell tickets and only show the stream to ticket holders. If you run events, whether in-person or online, you need The Events Calendar. Head on over to howibuilt.it/events to learn more. That’s howibuilt.it/events to start running your events more efficiently today. Thanks so much to The Events Calendar for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So there you have it. There we have it. lots of reasons for a speaker to start a podcast. That potentially gives you a clear path to other ways to make money. Not only is podcasting the next great content plane, not only is it easier than ever to start a podcast, and not only are you as a speaker already equipped to talk into a microphone for some amount of time, but it’s going to open more doors for you because people are going to see the work that you do. They’re going to see that you know what you’re talking about, they’re going to see that you’re consistent and that you show up and that you’re good at what you do. And you’re going to create your own audience and build fans. And you can tell them how you put those talks together, give them behind the scenes access. Maybe they’re willing to pay you a membership to get access to more of your content and access to you. And it can lead to more speaking gigs. So, if you are a speaker and you need a little bit more convincing, feel free to reach out. I’m at @Jcasabona, you can email me Joe@casabona.org. But I think podcasting is the perfect medium for a speaker. And you know why else I think that? Because especially in the pandemic, we’ve seen lots of stand-up comedians turn to podcasting. Even before that. Dax Shepherd with Armchair Experts, Conan O’Brien, Bill Burr. Lots of… I just named like three white guys. But stand-up comedy is a good content for the podcast medium because it gives… for the all the same reasons I talked about with speaking, right? It gives people the ability to workshop some stuff, flesh out some jokes, talk about things they might not talk about on stage. All reasons that you should start a podcast as a speaker. All right, that’s it for this episode. If you want to find the show notes for this episode, you can head over to howibuilt.it/221. If you want to get the bonus extended episode that is ad-free, you can become a member at buildsomething.club. But I do want to thank TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar, three plugins that will help you manage a membership or your speaking events, for supporting this show. This podcast would not help happen without them. If you liked this episode, share it with a friend. You’ll find all the calls to action over and howibuilt.it/221, the ability to share it, the ability to support the sponsor, sign up for the membership. Just head over to howibuilt.it/221. Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source

How I Built It
How to Audit Your Website for Accessibility with Bet Hannon

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2021 57:57


A few months ago we heard from Amber Hinds about the importance of accessibility and how her WordPress plugin can help you create more accessible content. She also said that you need a human being to catch most accessibility issues – that’s where Bet Hannon comes in. Bet tells us all about what to look for when auditing your website, and how to execute a sampling audit. We also talk about a TON of tools. In Build Something More, listeners get a pre-and post-show. The pre-show is all about beer. The post-show is about database queries. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 219 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. That’s a relatively new tagline I’m trying. It used to be “the podcast that asks, ‘how did you build that?'” But we’re expanding beyond that and I’m really excited about that. First, before we get into it, I want to thank our sponsors: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them later in the show. But first, I want to bring on Bet Hannon. Bet Hannon is the CEO of Bet Hannon Business Websites. We are going to be talking about their website accessibility sampling audit. In an earlier episode, I spoke to Amber Hinds about accessibility in general, their tool, the Accessibility Checker. Now we’re going to learn how an agency actually goes about doing an audit and helping their clients not get sued and have a more accessible website. So Bet, how are you today? Bet Hannon: I’m great. Glad to be here. Joe Casabona: Thanks for coming on the show. For those of you who are not Build Something Club members, bet and I had a fantastic pre-show conversation about craft beer. So if you are interested in that, you should become a Build Something Club member over at buildsomething.club. But for now, Bet, before we get into the nitty-gritty, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Bet Hannon: Great. So I run an agency that’s focused on WordPress. I got involved with WordPress in about 2008 after I had worked for 15 or so years in nonprofit management and doing some techie geeky things for the organizations that I served. But my position got downsized in that financial crisis and kind of stumbled into starting to do a little freelancing and then develop that into an agency. And have been loving it. I love problem-solving for people. Every project is like a little puzzle to solve. Joe Casabona: Yes, absolutely. That is what I also enjoyed about. When I was doing the full-time freelance website making thing, that was always my favorite part. I wrote a plugin recently, the first one in a while and I was like, “Man, I miss this.” So I’ll have to make it a habit of coding regularly. You lose it too. I guess it’s kind of like riding a bike. But men, things change. Bet Hannon: I know. I’m missing more. I’m doing more. I’m doing less and less of that myself, you know, as I’m running the agency. But it is nice to get in. What I miss is diving in and doing Gravity Forms customization. Joe Casabona: Nice, nice. Well, not nice that you miss it, but nice that you would do it. I always liked customizing Gravity Forms. So you got into WordPress in 2008. So this is your second recession, we’ll say. As we record this, there’s still a global pandemic. Bet Hannon: We actually have been doing okay. I was kind of worried for a bit. You know, a lot of folks really just figuring out they need websites or they need to revamp their websites, or they need to repurpose their websites. So we’ve been doing okay. Joe Casabona: That’s great. That’s interesting. I had a conversation with Brad Morrison back in May 2020 about that very thing. Like we were both kind of making websites in 2008, 2009. And I feel like whenever there is a recession, people realize they need to pivot or improve their online presence. I mean, especially true with this current one because…yeah. Bet Hannon: Right, right. Figuring out how to get information out there about when they’re going to be open or how they’re going to do curbside pickup or all of that stuff. I am kind of notoriously bad for giving unsolicited feedback about websites. So when I go to the local restaurant and I’ve looked up their thing, and I go, “Hey, your colors here are not accessible and this is terrible on mobile.” Joe Casabona: Man, I would do the same thing, where I’m like, “This should really be like that.” However, the PDF doesn’t download or whatever. Your website not…” Bet Hannon: Last week I went to the dentist. I paid the dentist bill from a couple months ago, but there’s no way to pay it online. I had to call and give them and do it over the phone. So when I went in, I said, “You should really not be taking those numbers over the phone. It’s easy to make a payment form. Call me.” Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. “Let me know.” I’m always incensed when you can’t pay for something online or whatever. So you have a WordPress agency now. Would you say that your main focus is accessibility or it’s just something you bake into every website? Bet Hannon: Well, it’s something we bake into every website. We got started with accessibility almost four years ago now. We had a client where we were doing administrative maintenance on their site and they are… they’re still our client. They were our a big agricultural Water District in California. And because of the way they’re connected to the state of California, they became aware that they were going to have some accessibility requirements. And they asked about what needed to happen. We said, “Oh, we could refer you to somebody.” And they said, “Well, we want to work with you. Let’s all learn this together.” Joe Casabona: Wow. Bet Hannon: So we dived in, and our entire team got trained and learned a lot about accessibility and worked through a lot of that with the client and just really got hooked. When you start diving into what makes the site accessible, but also the power of making the website available to more people and usable by more people and seeing how it really can impact people’s lives, whether they have a permanent disability or a temporary disability even, you know, to be able to use the sites. And so we just really got excited about that. Some of the best advice I got as an agency owner was never ever put accessibility in a proposal as something to be refused. That you should never put yourself in a position of allowing the client to throw people with disabilities under the bus in terms of bringing down the cost. That for me it’s staking our reputation as an agency on… everything we do has accessibility baked in. And I truly believe that accessibility is going to be what mobile responsive used to be five or 10 years ago. In another five to 10 years, everybody will be doing accessible websites and it’ll just be what every self-respecting developer does. So we’re just kind of on the early curve for that. Joe Casabona: I love that. When you said that it reminded me a lot of responsive web design. Because that was something that I felt I got in on early. I saw Ethan Marcotte talk about it super early. I put it in my proposal as like, “Do you want a responsive website?” And then I was like, “Why am I even asking? It’s just going to be part of it. It’ll be part of the cost. If they want to buy a cheap website from someone else, they can.” Bet Hannon: Yeah. And quite frankly, more often than not, when I talk to clients, and I say, “Look, this is part of what we do. We bake it into everyone. There are some legal requirements that you may or may not have. You need to do this,” and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, thanks. I hadn’t even thought about that yet.” So they’re usually grateful for having it or the topic being brought up. Joe Casabona: Absolutely. I mean, it’s our job right to advocate on behalf of our clients and inform them, right? When I go to a pizza shop, the pizza shop should expect that I know how to make the perfect pizza. I shouldn’t expect that they know how to make a website. Right? Bet Hannon: Well, it’s kind of what we do as freelancers and agencies. The client comes to us and they may say, “I want this one inch of website.” And we start looking at their… our job is to kind of take a consultative approach and to say, “If you added this on, this would really impact your business in a positive way. You can really grow your business by adding this thing on,” or “tell me about how you do the sales process. Oh, we can help automate that for you.” You know, so that you’re taking more of a consultative approach to helping people understand what they might need that they don’t yet know that they need. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Build Something Club rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s using Restrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So you mentioned that your team got trained. What was that like? Is there a certification process for accessibility? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm. Joe Casabona: All right. I was going to add a second part of that question, but your face lit up. So go for it. How was it like? Bet Hannon: There are. They’re both. There’s some online journey. There’s a ton of training that you can do out there. So if you’re just starting out and you’re wanting to learn more about website accessibility, some free options for doing that are going to WordPress TV. And there have been a bunch of presentations at various WordCamps on some of the technical pieces for accessibility. I’ll just be the first to confess that I’m not the lead developer at our agency. So some of those kind of technical pieces are not where I would necessarily be helpful to people. But there are tons of presentations from WordCamps to start getting going. There are some LinkedIn Learning pieces. Joe Dolson, who’s an accessibility advocate within WordPress has a great LinkedIn Learning course on Accessibility and WordPress. Very helpful. And then we had our folks do Deque, D-E-Q-U-E, deque.com, they do services around accessibility, but they also have some learning pieces. You can buy basically a membership for a year to do their self-paced online learning pieces. So we have everybody in our group do their base level, which is just awareness about disabilities, and what different accommodations are. So just kind of educating our team about what those are. And then our lead developer has been doing more advanced pieces in preparation for taking a certification exam. So there’s the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. They actually have some certification pieces. Those are several levels, in fact. Those are kind of where our folks are going. So as you may or may not have guessed, one of the ways that you might you would test a website for accessibility might be to use yourself a screen reader. So screen readers are what people who have visual impairments might want to use, and it reads out loud things that are on the web page. We’ve done that, and our developers done that for a long time. But we became aware like, I don’t know, maybe like six months ago, sort of like, well, you can use these tools, but are you using them like a visually impaired user would use them? So I did a little networking and found the consultant and agency, that is the Oregon Federation for the Blind refers people to. So if I experienced blindness and I needed to get training, my state would send me to this guy to learn how to use a screen reader. And we sent her to do training with him, our lead developer. And that was amazing because we had known for sure, but sure enough, people who are blind or visually impaired use screen readers differently than maybe we had anticipated. And so that then helps us be better at testing what we’re doing and how we’re building things out. Joe Casabona: Wow, that’s really interesting. I’ll mention one more resource that I read. Because there’s a chapter in my book on accessibility. But I read “Accessibility for Everyone.” It’s a book by Sarah… Oh, my gosh. Her last name is escaping me right now. I’m very sorry, Sarah. Oh, no, it’s not even Sarah. It’s Laura Kalbag. Laura Kalbag. That’s right. Sorry. But the book is fantastic. I will link that and everything that Bet just mentioned in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/219. Your mention of using a screen reader is very interesting because for my book, there’s a video component where I tried using one in order to show my readers how to use it to test. And honestly, it’s just I had never used one before. So I don’t think it was the most effective demo. But that leads me to ask another question, which is there must be resources in general for testing accessibility with a target audience. Right? So for example, I have transcripts for this podcast. I suspect that there’s a way for those who… Forgive me, I don’t know that I… The proper terminology is escaping me but people who are deaf or have hearing impairments. Is that the right way to put it? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm, hard of hearing. Joe Casabona: Okay. Someone got upset with me for saying hard of hearing Bet Hannon: Well, all kinds of groups, there are a variety of takes on things. Hard of Hearing is what I do see often. Joe Casabona: Okay, cool. That’s what I thought too. Okay, cool. But in any case, I guess, are there resources for you to test accessibility features with those who are most likely to use them? Bet Hannon: Do you mean doing testing with disabled users? Joe Casabona: Yes. Bet Hannon: The actual disabled users? Joe Casabona: Yes, yes. Bet Hannon: Well, people with disabilities often are chronically underemployed, and so if you have a way that you want to do a lot of testing, you could certainly do some networking to find people who could help you with testing. I think you should never ever ask a disabled person to test for you without getting compensated. Joe Casabona: Of course. Bet Hannon: I mean, think that’s just rude. We have several folks that test for us and consult with us when we have questions. Sometimes you’re testing a site and it’s just really hard to get a sense for… you know, if you tagged into this in a certain way, it might get you into a trap that you couldn’t get out of. You know, what are the clues? And so, just kind of having people do some testing for us. So we have a few people that do that for us. Joe Casabona: Got you. Bet Hannon: But resources for finding those people, I don’t… I mean, that’s going to vary quite widely. Joe Casabona: Got you. But there are resources available if you do some networking, like you said, and ask around. Bet Hannon: Yeah. You know, I would ask around. I mean, there’s some state agencies in your state, probably. You could network around about where do they send people when they need training? And then those people who are doing training on those things may often do some consulting like that on the side. Joe Casabona: Awesome. That makes perfect sense. This has already been super informative. Now, you have a website accessibility sampling audit. In a previous episode, I think I mentioned this earlier, with Amber Hinds, we kind of talked about like the WCAG ratings and things like that, which is sort of an automated thing, right? You go to a website, you get a rating. If it’s double, great. If it’s triple, even better. But we still need a person auditing your website, right? Bet Hannon: Yeah, yeah. Right. There are a variety of tools that are out there, automated tools there where you can test your site. And wave.webaim.org is the one that Amber was probably talking about. That’s one of the best known. Lighthouse is another one. It’s a Chrome extension that you can put in in the specter tools and you can look at there. They’re great. Those automated tools are really good and important to us because they can help save you a lot of time. The important thing to remember about them is that they only catch about 30% of the accessibility issues. And you may get some false positives and false negatives. And you’ll always need humankind of… you’ll need to look at things with a human eye. Those testing tools are never going to be enough to say that you’re fully accessible. So, for instance, an AI tool can tell you “yes or no, there’s an alt tag for this image.” Yes is good, No is bad. But if the alt tag is the name of the file, jpg49678, that’s not compliant. So it can give you the false negative that you had all the alt tags are taken care of when they’re not really. So you want to make sure that you’re using those tools as they’re intended, to do some basic screening, but at the same time that you’re really looking at things. Even the tools that Amber and her team have put together are great but they really require you to engage. And that’s the thing with accessibility. There is really no just put a plugin on or just pay to make it go away. You really have to learn what’s accessible and what’s not and implement it regularly. Accessibility has some parts for WordPress, and that’s what we deal with almost always. For WordPress, some parts of accessibility are in the theme. So whether your menu is accessible or not is largely controlled by your theme, for example. Your color contrast of your buttons and your color contrast is set by your theme. But a huge piece of accessibility is your content. So when you’re putting in content, are you making sure that the images have alt tags? Are you making sure that the H tags and the headings are nested without skipping any levels? So a lot of that content piece is stuff that people are just going to have to learn and learn to implement correctly as they go. Joe Casabona: That’s a really important point. I think Amber made the same point, right? Because Accessibility Checker… I don’t know if you’ve used it. Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah. Joe Casabona: She gave me a pro version. That was an inaudible “oh, yeah.” But the education part is really important. When I look at my blog posts and I see the kind of score I get, it’s like, “Hey, you have two h2 tags in a row here and you skipped an h2 tag or whatever it is.” Because I always forget if the… maybe this is a question you can answer for me. The site title is an h1 in most themes, which means your blog post… Bet Hannon: No, the page title is the h1. Joe Casabona: The page title is the h1. Okay. Bet Hannon: Yeah, yeah. Joe Casabona: So if I’m looking at a blog post… gosh, I should know this, but I don’t right now. If you’re looking at a blog post, should the title of the blog post be an h1 or an h2? Bet Hannon: Well, the title of the post or the page will be the h1. And that should be taken care of in the theme. The theme should handle that for you. And then when you start putting in H tags for kind of organizing your content, you should start with h2s. And you can go you can skip from an h2 to an h2. You just can’t go from an h2 an h4. Joe Casabona: Right. Bet Hannon: I think people often don’t quite understand or get that you shouldn’t use the H tags to style font. Right? Joe Casabona: Right. Bet Hannon: An H4 four can have as big a font as the h3 or the whatever. But you’re kind of organizing the content. I sometimes say it’s like when you were in high school English, and you had to do that outline with the Roman numerals and the capitals and then the lowercase Roman numerals and lowercase letters, and you have to kind of build it out in that way. My team doesn’t like that because “who learns to do that in English class anymore?” is what they tell me. Then I feel old. Joe Casabona: Really? Hold on. We can talk about this in Build Something More because it’s a sidetrack. People don’t learn how to do that in English class anymore? I’m outraged. Bet Hannon: Ohhh, yes. Well, you graduated before No Child Left Behind really diminished education. Joe Casabona: Oh, gosh. Bet Hannon: My wife is a college professor and sometimes what people have not learned in high school is quite astounding. Joe Casabona: Ah, that saddens me. Bet Hannon: Yeah, it is. My team sometimes talks about it as nesting file folders. That’s a different example that you can talk about. Like the whole drawer is the h1 and then you can have h2s and then nested folders. But you have to make sure that you don’t skip any. Joe Casabona: That’s interesting. I’m going to bet like most of my blog posts are inaccessible because I guess it was just always like a mental block for me. I thought the site title was h1, the page titles h2. So I always started in on h3. Bet Hannon: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Joe Casabona: I better go back and fix all those. I reckon that there’s like… Bet Hannon: A few at a time. And that’s the thing. When people realize that they’ve been doing something incorrectly… I mean, know better, do better. That’s the thing. When you know better you can do better. And so when you realize that you may have not done that correctly over time, it can seem insurmountable. I mean, it just seems like this overwhelming task, I mean, if you have hundreds or thousands of posts to deal with. So the key is start and do a little at a time. Just make a goal to do two of them a week or three a week. It doesn’t take very long once you figure out what you’ve done. And then just kind of make your way through them. There are some tools for doing that. There’s a couple of really great alt tag checker tools. So there’s a free one in the repository—and now I’m going to forget its name, but we can put it in the show notes—that basically when you install the plugin, it’ll show you all the images in your media library and just show you which ones are missing alt tags. Joe Casabona: Oh, great. Bet Hannon: But then you still need to go back and fix them. And then there’s a paid tool, and it costs like $200 a year. I don’t remember the name of it, either, we’ll get into the show notes… Sorry, guys. I know it’s two, guys. Well, one is written by my friend Andrew Wilder and his team, but the other one I don’t even know. But anyway, the paid tool is really nice because it pulls in all existing alt tags. It will use AI to try and generate an alt tag based on what’s there. You have you still have to go in and kind of like say, “Oh, that’s not quite right. Let me actually fill this out.” But it gives you that help, that start. And then when you fix it there using that plugin, it fixes it on every post that’s used that image. So if you have a lot of images, it’s probably worth getting that paid tools. Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. For 200 bucks saving you hours of work. That’s really interesting. Because as we’re talking about this, I thought I could probably make a plugin that loops through the content of all of my posts and just bump up the heading. I’d still need to check. Bet Hannon: Yeah. If you knew it, you could do that, I suppose. Joe Casabona: I’d have to make sure it doesn’t go above h2. So I’d have to say, “Is this an h3 change to an h2, or whatever.” It would have to be smarter than just looping. Bet Hannon: If you knew you were consistently making the error, right? Joe Casabona: Yes. For me personally, I’m confident I consistently make that error. You know why I’m confident? I write in Ulysses, which is a fantastic writing app. It’s markdown, and it exports directly to WordPress. And I always start with an h2 for the document title, and it bothers me, and then I do h3 for all subsequent headings. So I know for a fact. Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you start fixing it, you could do that. You might be able to do that. I got into doing more database query stuff a couple of years ago. We had a really large site with a ton of stuff, and very active site. We were going to be doing a new theme for them. And there’s always that problem where you have the active site where there’s WooCommerce, or an active blog, or whatever, and then like, you’ve got to pull that back together. So I was experimenting with a plugin that purportedly was going to merge in the changes from the production site. And in the testing, it looked all great. But during the time we had it in development, it got stuck in some kind of a loop with Gravity Forms entries. And I had 15 million, with an M, additional extraneous entries. I just had to start learning how to write queries to get stuff out because it was so huge. I couldn’t even get it to load. Joe Casabona: Jeez. That’s horrifying. Bet Hannon: It was crazy. Joe Casabona: There was a plugin a few years back that I guess was not viable market wise. It was bought by Delicious Brains. Bet Hannon: By the time I was looking at this, they’d already pulled that off. Joe Casabona: Oh, man. Bet Hannon: This was another one. But it’s a difficult problem. It’s not an easy problem to solve. Anyway, I learned how to do a little bit of SQL. Joe Casabona: Very nice, very nice. We can talk about that in Build Something More because I have some fun stories. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. When you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes, ensuring your team remains consistent, current, and accurate. TextExpander can also be used in any platform, any app and anywhere you type. So take back your time and increase your productivity. But that’s not all it does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop-up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: We haven’t even talked about the service yet, the website accessibility sampling audit. Tell us how that works, how you put it together, why you put it together, all that fun stuff. Bet Hannon: So you might want an accessibility audit of your site to help you know what things are wrong. Like you have been doing some of these things to try and fix things, but there may be still things that you are not sure are problems yet. And it is difficult with accessibility to know… It’s kind of like SEO—knowing where you’re kind of moving toward. It’s a moving target or that’s kind of fuzzy sometimes. So getting an audit is a great thing to do. Traditionally, an accessibility audit would look at every single page in detail and give you a detailed report of every single page of your website. And as you might imagine, that’s a labor-intensive thing because that’s a lot of work. So even if you have a moderate-sized site, it could run you into tens of thousands of dollars. And so what we discovered is that, by and large, if you have problems on with accessibility on your site, you can catch a lot of those with a sample of your content. So we developed an audit that was taking a sample of your content, and then you as the site owner can get this report. And then you have to extrapolate from there. If on your site audit we note that you have images without alt tags, you probably have a lot more than those then on the pages we looked at. So we try to work with folks to do around 25 URLs or so. Even sites that are really big blogs with thousands of posts, you really don’t need more than about three or four posts to do that. Unless you have a blog with a variety of authors. So we try to tell people, you know, try to get all of your page templates represented, try and get a good kind of representative sample of content through time. So like maybe if you start changing and doing better with your H tags now… but we’re only looking at those, we might not pick up that you still have that problem earlier. Joe Casabona: Got you. Bet Hannon: So we want to look at content creation through time. We want to get a variety of the authors on the blog. So maybe one person is continuing to do this one thing that is creating accessibility issues. Look at various features. If you’re doing a WooCommerce site or some other eCommerce site, you know, you want to look at the checkout process, you want to look at its membership site, looking at the process for doing that, and just try to work with them to come up with around 25 URLs to look at in terms of doing that. Joe Casabona: That’s right. And then we produce a big report. Often the reports are more than 15 pages. We actually give them a list of everything we looked for whether or not they violated it so they know what we checked for. We use those automated tools, but then we have human beings checking the page. And then if we run into something where we’re not sure about, we’ll call in our consultants and have people with actual disabilities looking at the content as well. And then we do include an hour of consultation time at the end. So then you can jump into a Zoom call, we can explain it to you, we can demo problems for you, show you why it’s a problem. Some people find that really helpful. If you want, you can bring your… we don’t need to do the remediation. But if you have a regular developer you work with, you can bring them on the call and we can make it more of a technical call about how they might need to fix that or what they might want to do to fix a problem. Joe Casabona: That’s great. That sounds a lot like when Gutenberg first rolled out I created a course, and I basically said like, “How to audit your website to see if it’s ready for Gutenberg.” Very similar. Page templates. I said just like, “Pick a sampling of old and new posts.” But content through time is a very nice, snappy way to put it. I know exactly what you’re saying and I think that’s great. Authors, various features, things like that. And then the one-hour consultation at the end. Patrick Garman came on the show a few weeks ago. They have in a WooCommerce performance site audit, also includes some consultation time. This was not a planned question or anything like that, but do you think that the audit has been a good addition to your business? Do you think it’s helped your business a lot? Because it seems like it’s an idea that’s catching on more, at least in the WordPress space. Bet Hannon: It is. I do think we have to be careful about taking on too many. It takes about two weeks start to finish and we only onboard one a week just because it represents a pretty good chunk of labor for us. And keeping up with our other projects is kind of priority in terms of paying the bills. But it is a good thing. Because most of an accessibility audit is done from the front end, we’re able to do audits on sites that are not WordPress. We can do a Shopify site or a Wix or Weebly site. But those folks don’t tend to want to do those kind of things. But you can do it on any kind of other platforms that someone might want to do. I think people are increasingly concerned. I’m seeing that more niche-driven. So for a bit, we had a ton of audits for food bloggers. So a pretty well-known food blogger got sued around accessibility, and it just raised that awareness for everybody that they… On the one hand, a good number of them are like, “I don’t want to get sued.” But what they also do know that it’s an important thing to do. They can increase their audience, it gives more people access to their content. So they definitely aren’t just anxious about being sued. And I want to be careful about not throwing around the fear-monger kind of thing. Joe Casabona: Right. Right. Bet Hannon: I mean, it is about not getting sued at one level, but it’s also that there are a lot of really great reasons to make your site accessible. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve said this on the show before. People ask me how I grew my show so quickly, and I think one of the big growth points in the show’s history is when I added transcripts. I saw a definite increase in traffic to the site and even an increase in listenership. Sometimes it’s not just the deaf and hard of hearing who want to read the transcript. It’s people who maybe can’t listen at that moment and or maybe they want to read along while they listen. Bet Hannon: I have seen statistics go by that say that 80% of the videos on LinkedIn are played without sound. Joe Casabona: Wow. Bet Hannon: 80%. It’s very high. It’s pretty high like that for Facebook, too. I think about that, well, one of the times when I’m surfing LinkedIn is in the early morning when I don’t want to wake somebody up, or when I’m in a waiting room somewhere, pre-COVID, or where I just can’t listen. But I sure watch videos go by and yeah, the captions. Joe Casabona: For sure. I mean, that’s super interesting. 80%. That’s wild. For me, it’s usually maybe I listened or watched something and I remember a phrase and I want to find that phrase. So even for those who do listen or watch with the sound on, the transcript or the captions, the searchable text is invaluable to a lot of people. Bet Hannon: Well, you’re getting the search engine juice from that too. Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. Bet Hannon: Right? Joe Casabona: Yeah. Bet Hannon: When you think about captions, you have to think about whether it is… if it’s a video, often you’re doing captions because the video is conveying something of the conversation or the interaction as well. But for a podcast, doing the transcript… Well, I often do listen to podcasts at time and a half or, you know, I bump it up. If you got a transcript for me to read, it’s much faster. I can read a lot faster than I can listen. Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Awesome. Bet Hannon: So it’s not just situations where I might be time pressed and I just want to skim through stuff. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by the Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, the Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with the Events Calendar Pro, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. With the Virtual Events add on you can quickly and easily manage your online-only or hybrid events. With deep Zoom integration, custom virtual event coding for search engine optimization, and the ability to embed video feeds directly on your website, the Events Calendar makes putting virtual and hybrid events together easier. And I can’t stress this one enough. Let me tell you, I have tried to roll my own webinar software, my own live stream event software, and it is difficult. And I have 20 years’ experience making websites. The Events Calendar is the tool that you need to make virtual events a lot easier. You can even sell tickets and only show the stream to ticket holders. If you run events, whether in-person or online, you need the Events Calendar. Head on over to howibuilt.it/events to learn more. That’s howibuilt.it/events to start running your events more efficiently today. Thanks so much to the Events Calendar for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: I know some well-known, big time podcasters who have kind of poo pooed transcripts because they don’t feel the added cost is worth it. And I’m just like, “First of all, you’re making more money than I am podcasting.” Even if you don’t use… Rev is expensive. My virtual assistant transcribes the videos I sent her so I know that she understands the task at hand, and she transcribed a 30-minute video in like three hours. Worth it. Worth it to pay her that. It’s cheaper than Rev. Bet Hannon: And there’s some other services that are up and coming too. And I think we will see more and more of those. Joe Casabona: I’ve been using otter.ai. Any place that offers an educational discount, I’ll grab it. Bet Hannon: I just heard about Otter today in another… I was in a meeting this morning and somebody mentioned that one. Joe Casabona: How funny. Bet Hannon: I hadn’t heard about it. Joe Casabona: What’s that called? That’s called something. You hear about it once and you hear about it everywhere. Bet Hannon: Synchronicity Joe Casabona: Oh, man. Bet Hannon: Oh, no. Joe Casabona: There’s something effect. I’ll look it up for the post-show. But anyway, we could talk tools all day. I mean, I guess that’s helpful, right? It’s an accessibility show. But otter.ai and Descript both offer educational discount, so if you have a .edu address, you can get it at like half price. So I’ll just snag those. I’ve been pretty happy with Otter. There’s a few things, but it’s AI, transcription. Bet Hannon: Right. And I don’t know if it kind of produces a transcript, but I do know that I’ve been seeing going around that Zoom is giving… For Zoom, they’re giving free on the fly too closed captioning for meetings. Joe Casabona: Yes. Bet Hannon: But if that gets saved in a file, that would be checked out. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Bet Hannon: There’s a way to turn that on in your account. Even if it’s live transcription, stuff like that is often a little buggy. But at least you’ve got something to start with from there. Joe Casabona: Again, you can hire an editor to edit it or have your virtual assistant read through and just spellcheck. It’s probably easier for them. So yeah, absolutely. Gosh, this has been super great. As we wrap up, if somebody wants to get started, maybe they have a website, and they’re not sure if it’s accessible, what are some tips to get started? Bet Hannon: Well, the first would be don’t be tempted by what are called the overlay plugins. So it’s big business right now. Those overlay plugins have huge amounts of venture capital pouring in. So their ads are everywhere, and they want to suck you in with just “buy our service and everything will be taken care of.” And they don’t. So don’t get sucked in with that. And then just start educating yourself about what needs to be there. I’d say the very base kinds of pieces are the things that we’ve already talked about in this podcast. You know, your alt tags and you’re heading tags, and then just start trying to work your way through testing your site, getting your content squared away. But ask questions. There are tons of people out on Twitter and LinkedIn and other places that are, if you have a question, willing to look at that and give you some, you know, not free consulting, but point you in the direction of some resources. Joe Casabona: Awesome. That’s fantastic. And with alt tags—again, I think I brought this up on the show previously, but I do want to drive this point home—it should be as descriptive as reasonably possible. Is that kind of the way to put it? Bet Hannon: Right. Yeah. We have a blog post that should come out on our site in another couple of weeks about alt tags. We’re in process with it. But yeah, you want to make it descriptive of the image, but you never want to put in the word image or photo or graphic or anything like that, because the screen reader reads that out loud. The screen reader already tells someone that it’s an image. And so you would just say, you know, “Father and child playing on the beach on a sunny day.” You know. It shouldn’t be too horribly long but it should be… If it’s a photo of a person, it can say, “Photo of Joe Casabona, an incredibly good-looking Italian man.” Joe Casabona: Well, thank you. You’re making… Bet Hannon: You can embellish your own text. Joe Casabona: Yeah, there you go. People will probably picture like Fabio or something. Maybe Fabio is like old-timey reference and newer, good-looking Italian man. That’s interesting. So “father and daughter on beach on a sunny day” is good. But maybe like, father and daughter on beach sunny day with red pale and father’s wearing like green swim trunks. That’s too much. Bet Hannon: Too much detail. Too much detail. Right. Yeah. Well, the thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to put anything in a meme-like image with text on the top. People do that a lot. They just go to Canva and they’ll make a little meme thing to promote an event or to promote whatever. The thing is, when you do that, you need to make sure that you’re providing alternatives for that. So you can do it but you just want to make sure that… For instance, we have clients where they’re doing a lot of events driven pieces. They might make that graphic, but then in the text of the post, they need to… so that the alt text on the graphic can say, “Graphic promoting this event, details in the post below.” And then the person can skip into the content and get the details. Joe Casabona: Yeah, details in the post below. That’s another thing that I think Amber mentioned. Go ahead. Bet Hannon: But the thing is, if you only put that little Canva image that’s kind of meme, like, Google can’t see that text either. So you’re not getting any search engine juice off of that. Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. So you wouldn’t necessarily want to have that exact text in the alt tag if it’s also like the title of the post and mentioned in the post below. Is accurate that accurate? Bet Hannon: Right, right. It becomes repetitive. Joe Casabona: Okay. Cool, cool. Bet Hannon: And actually, people who are using screen readers, which the alt text is about people who are using screen readers, like the rest of us, they skim through content. When we all go to a website, we just skim through, and we’re looking at the headings, and we’re looking for what interests us. We’re not really reading every word. So people who are using screen readers are skimming through, and they’re skimming through to look at the headings, H tags, come back to play on the links. And you want to make sure your links are set up so that the link text, the part that gets underlined or made into a colorable or whatever that effect is, but that link text is descriptive because often they’re just skimming through the text and having the screen reader read out that text to them. So if all of your link texts say “click here,” “click here,” “click here,” there’s no context. They’re gone. Joe Casabona: Oh, jeez. Wow. All right. Lots of really good… Bet Hannon: So “click here to learn more about accessibility. Click here to do blah, blah, blah. Click here to download a blah, blah.” Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love that. Right. And then I guess the same with buttons. You don’t just want to say like, “Click here.” You want to say like, “Enroll today” is usually what I put. But maybe I put “enroll today in Podcast Liftoff” or whatever. Bet Hannon: Right. I mean, yes, potentially. And then you remembering that buttons are really just links. Joe Casabona: This will be the last question before we wrap up. We’ve been talking forever. Bet Hannon: [inaudible 00:51:51] Joe Casabona: I know. I know. It’s just such a great conversation. This is mostly for me, and I hope the listeners are getting something out of it. With anchor tags, you can add a title text, right? Bet Hannon: Mm hmm. Joe Casabona: What’s the utility of the title text? Can I say like, “Enroll in the clickable tags” and then have a title that has more context? Or is that kind of like frowned upon? Bet Hannon: Oh, you’re asking me more of a technical question now. I’m sure there’s an answer, but I don’t know. Joe Casabona: All right. I mean, that’s a good answer too because that means at least you weren’t presented with some hard opinion on it. I’ll find something… Bet Hannon: You gotta remember I’m very rarely any more in the content in that way. Joe Casabona: I’ll find the link for the show notes for that because that’s… Bet Hannon: Cool. Joe Casabona: Again, we didn’t talk about that. It just came to my brain and I wanted to ask. Bet Hannon: Yeah, for sure. Joe Casabona: Before we wrap up, you gave us some great tips, do you have any trade secrets for us? Bet Hannon: Oh, yeah. Just don’t get hooked into those overlay things. They are… I really try not to say this very often, but they’re really kind of evil. A, they purport to fix all your problems, but they can only deal with the 30% that’s AI. They kind of make it sound like you won’t get sued if you use them. But that’s not really the case. Actually, we’re seeing some cases where people are being targeted because they’re using them. And the predatory lawsuit people know that they can’t take care of everything. They’re hooking people in a way that just feels kind of manipulative and not very… just not a good heart behind that. Joe Casabona: It’s snake oil. Bet Hannon: It’s snake oil. It really is. And because it’s an overlay, so it’s fixing some of those accessibility problems on the fly as your page is loading, which is adds extra bloat, slows your site down, do those increasingly focusing on speed. So it’s not great for your search engine kind of results and all of that as well. And when you stopped paying for that service, all of those problems are still there. You haven’t fixed anything. You’re paying all that money to the service over time and nothing’s getting fixed. Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. So these overlay products are not like, “Here’s what’s wrong.” It’s like, “Here’s what we’re telling you is wrong and we’re just going to add a little JavaScript to fix it or whatever.” Bet Hannon: It’s like, “We will try and fix the things we can fix.” So they’ll use AI to put in alt tags, which may or may not be correct. They’re just guessing at the alt tags. And then they put these little, they put some little tools over on the side. Well, if you are a person that has a tool, an accessibility tool that you use on the web, if you have a screen magnifier or you already use some kind of colorblind filter thing, you have tools that you already are familiar with that you have installed that you want to use. And so those little accessibility tools things, it’s kind of like, look at me, I’m trying to be accessible is what it comes down to. And for people with disabilities, it’s sort of like saying to them, “Hey, you should leave the tools that you like and all the shortcuts for to use my second rate thing that’s going to come…” Because those tools conflict them. They create a conflict. So you should leave the tools that you know, and like, and know all the shortcuts to and use my special tool over here that I paid minimal bucks for.” Joe Casabona: It’s almost like a virtual signal. Bet Hannon: It’s frustrating. It’s a virtue signal but it’s really… it’s like telling the person in the wheelchair, “You got steps in front of your restaurant, you need to go around and use the ramp and come to the kitchen.” Joe Casabona: Jeez. Bet Hannon: It’s really offensive. Joe Casabona: Absolutely. And it just goes to show you, right? Because… Bet Hannon: I get that people want to be concerned about accessibility, but take some time to think it through in. Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, be concerned and then find an actual solution and not some Band-Aid that you bought at the dollar store. Bet Hannon: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Those services are not cheap either. And that’s the thing. Over time, you’re paying a lot of money, but it’s not really getting fixed. It’s just a kind of a cover-up that’s going to go away when you stop paying. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. It just goes to show you that the best way you can be accessible is to write good semantic HTML and know the best practices. That’s just… Bet Hannon: Yeah, exactly. Joe Casabona: Awesome. Bet Hannon: Know better and do better. Joe Casabona: Yeah, know better and do better. I love it. Bet, this has been such a great hour we’ve been talking for. We may talk about other stuff in Build Something More. So be sure to catch our pre-show where we talk about craft beer, our post-show where we talk a little bit more over a build something club. Bet, if people want to learn more about you, and they should, where can they go to find you? Bet Hannon: You can find me on Twitter @BetHannon, and then our website is bhmbizsites.com. Joe Casabona: Fantastic. I will link those and lots of stuff that we talked about. This is a tool-heavy episode. So it’s going to be long show notes over and howibuilt.it/219. Bet, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Bet Hannon: It’s been great. Thanks for having me. Joe Casabona: Thanks to everybody listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks to our sponsors, TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. Until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Post Status Excerpt (No. 10) — GiveWP + LiquidWeb, Acquisitions Good For WordPress?

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2021 26:31


Announcement of LiquidWeb acquiring GiveWP sparks discussion: are all acquisitions good for WordPress?In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Cory Miller and David Bisset discuss the recent announcement of GiveWP and WP Business Reviews joining the Liquid Web Family of Brands. StellarWP will house all of Liquid Web’s software assets, including iThemes, The Events Calendar, Restrict Content Pro, and Kadence WP.Also covered in this episode: David gets Cory's take on acquisitions in general for the WordPress space — what's the potential (good or bad), and how should the WordPress professional view the consolidation of their ecosystem under fewer, bigger companies?Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

How I Built It
Why Now is a Good Time to Build a SaaS with Jason Meller

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2021 47:47


If you’ve ever worked for a bigger company, you know that it’s easy to get bogged down by software and other restrictions in the name of security. Heck, I was once told I couldn’t work off-site because of it, and we had a VPN! Well, Jason Meller was sick of that and he suspected others were too, so he started Kolide. We talk all about what inspired him to take the leap and start a company, how he and his team built the software and the honest security manifesto! In Build Something More, we talk about cybersecurity and fear-mongering. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 218 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks: how did you build that?, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. My name is Joe Casabona, I’m your host. Today our sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them more later in the show. Right now I want to bring on our guest, Jason Meller. He is the CEO and founder of Kolide. We’re going to be talking about restructuring, how SAS products are built, how comprehensive solutions can impact scalability, and of course, we’ll learn a little bit about Kolide. Jason, how are you today? Jason Meller: Good. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Excited to talk about SAS. Joe Casabona: Likewise, thanks for coming on the show. When y’all reached out to me, I was excited to kind of hear… You know, we’ve talked about SAS before on this show, but a lot of stuff has happened since that episode. The global pandemic is one thing that happened. But also we still… Jason Meller: Just a little thing. Joe Casabona: Yeah, just that small thing that’s been going on for a year now as we record this. But also we’ve seen a big rise in things like no-code solutions and things like that. So I’m excited to talk more. The show is also pivoted from a big focus on WordPress products, so just general technology products. So I’m excited with that in mind to get started. But before we talk about all things SAS, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Jason Meller: As you said, my name is Jason Meller. I’m the CEO and founder of Kolide. But before that, my whole career has really been about cybersecurity. And not just securing devices and organizations and things like that, but actually building products for other folks that are in cybersecurity discipline. I found out very early on in my career that while I really enjoyed the practitioner part of being an incident responder and looking at it like cyber intelligence and things like that, as an engineer and someone who’s really obsessed with product, I found I got way more out of actually building the tools and capabilities that made those people a lot smarter, better, and faster for jobs. I found that out my first real job doing this professionally at General Electric on their Computer Incident Response Team, where I was hired on the team to really be doing intelligence type stuff, and then I just kind of was like, “Man, I really want to build really cool tools for these really smart people in my team.” And I ended up doing that and then basically building an entire career out of that. I moved on from GE to a company called Mandiant. They were sort of the company that you would call if you were compromised by one of those super advanced threat actors. I’m talking about nation states like Russia and China. You would call this company and then they would send these consultants in suits and ties. We were called the million-dollar company because if you gave us a call and we actually sent out consultants, you were probably going to be paying us at least a million dollars to deal with a major incident response effort. So in that context, it was a lot of fun building products there. And then over time, I realized that I was really good at the business side of this as well, and I wanted to strike out and do my own thing. And that’s how I started to Kolide. In 2016 is really a point in my life where I decided, “You know what? I think I can build my own product. I want to build a business around it. I want to do a startup.” And I transitioned from my last organization to starting the company. Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. It sounds like you’re doing some really… I was going to say high level stuff, but it’s probably more low level stuff, right? You’re building products help with cybersecurity. Mandiant, it seems like they’re probably pretty busy given the current events that are going on and all the breaches that we’ve been hearing about lately. Jason Meller: Yeah, yeah. The CEO there, Kevin Mandia, he was actually just doing a congressional testimony a week or so ago over the solar winds hack, where they found basically all this malware in this very, very popular security product that most companies have and directly attributing it to major nation state that was using it to do reconnaissance and other types of really scary stuff on all our organizations. So, when I was working there, Kevin was always on the ground floor of probably the most important incidents of that time period. We were responding to all the major ones that were happening when I was there in the early 2000s. You mentioned I really like to kind of go low level into the stuff. The reality is, is the reason why I got into building products in the first place is I actually like distilling down really complicated topics to people who have never been exposed to them before. So a big part of what we do at Kolide is we try to make these really complex topics, something that’s accessible to someone who’s entering the industry, they’re a first time practitioner, or even end-users who have this type of software endpoint monitoring software on their devices. I’ll talk a little bit about that later in terms of the ethics around that. But ultimately, I really love talking about these types of topics with beginners and people who are just interested in the industry. Joe Casabona: That’s really fantastic. And cybersecurity is definitely something that I am interested in as well. I want to dig more into it. I think that’s probably a great topic for us to talk about in Build Something More. So if you are a member, you will get that in the episode you’re listening to right now. If you’re not, you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. So we’ll talk about cybersecurity in Build Something More. I’m really excited about that. Let’s get back into SAS stuff because I just started thinking about all these questions for later. So your current SAS, Kolide, is focused on cybersecurity or data security in some way, right? Jason Meller: Yeah, we actually call it HONEST Security. A big thing that I wanted to tackle when we started Kolide was I just felt that the current security industry was really almost sick, in the sense that we as engineers and people who work for large organizations, we started these companies, and then we are provisioned these laptops or sometimes we’re even allowed to bring our own and all this cybersecurity software sort of foisted onto that laptop. Now that we’re working from home and everything, it just felt weird to me that the software which can open up programs, it can really understand what your web browser history is, and you do all these things in the name of security, it just felt like to me that we really need to explore the privacy and the rules of engagement for how the security team should really be interacting with end users. End users in the security don’t really have like a really good relationship at most companies, even really technical organizations. The people who are building stuff feel really frustrated by the limitations imposed by the security you get in these laptops, they’re super locked down. “Oh, I can’t get Docker working. Is it because my firewall is messed up. And oh, I can’t even play with the firewall because all the options are grayed out.” This is pretty typical. And there’s just no one out there that was really thinking about this. So I wanted to build a security product that really focused on making that relationship between the security team and the end users a lot better, and actually putting them on the same page on a lot of different cybersecurity issues, like keeping their computer up to date and working properly without having to lock it down. So while cybersecurity and endpoint security are huge technical topics. Our application is actually really simple. It’s actually a web app and it also is a Slack app. So we work with companies that use Alack and we use an application that we built and we serve from the Slack App Store. And we actually work together with them to build this experience where you can actually work with the security team and collaborate on all the maybe the issues that you have in your device, like the firewall being off or you’re missing patches. And it’s really about having a hand on your shoulder from the security team, letting me know how you can manually get your device into a secure state without having to opt in to all this additional management, which could really impact productivity. So I wanted to build a product in that space, which is not a space that exists. So I had to write a whole manifesto about what HONEST Security was. That’s free. It’s on a website called honest.security. That’s the whole domain. So if you go there and check it out, you can kind of get a sense of what we’re going for with that entire topic. But yeah, that’s what the product is in essence. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. 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If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: You know, I was self-employed for a long time, then I worked for my alma mater, the University of Scranton, which for all intents and purposes most higher education are giant corporations with nonprofit budgets. There was a back and forth between me a web developer who likes to try out new tools and new local development environments and the lockdown nature of my machine. I couldn’t access certain ports. I had to put in requests with the other department in our IT area to get. And it would take me a couple of… I just started bringing my own laptop and doing things. Jason Meller: There you go. That’s exactly the problem we’re trying to solve. Because I think there’s a lot of security teams out there that believe that they are actually solving a security issue by locking down these devices. But what they’re really doing is they’re actually killing their own visibility into the issue because people are bringing their own laptops in because they feel so you’re trapped by these restrictions. They can’t get their work done. And they need to. I mean, it’s their livelihood, they have projects, they have expectations that they’ve made with their boss. You don’t really want to wake up like 10 minutes before you’re about to give a presentation and realize, “Oh, I can’t even turn off screen lock, my demo is going to get all interrupted when I’m recording because it’s like set to some insane degree.” At Kolide, we believe that end users really do have enough capability and knowledge to manage the security of their device. They just need to know what to do, and understand what the expectations are of the security team. It should be giving a little bit of nuance and I would say some latitude in terms of how they really can manage that based on the circumstances that they’re in. If I’m in an airport, that’s probably the right place for me to really set the screen lock to be like two minutes, because I might get up, I might go to the bathroom, I’m going to leave the whole thing out. But if I am at home, and we’re all home from COVID-19 working remotely, I don’t need it to be two minutes. I’m here. I’m surrounded by trusted family. No one’s coming over. Those are decisions I can make. As long as I’m staying within the parameters of what the security team really expects me to do and I can have a conversation with them, then that’s a much better solution than just wholesale locking down everybody to the worst possible level because that’s the only way you can do it. Joe Casabona: Right. And not to mention… I mean, I’m a savvy enough person to know what I should and shouldn’t be doing on the internet. Most times. I’m not saying I’m foolproof. But the big warning signs are there. But for the faculty at the University who might not know better, who are equally as frustrated, who then bring their laptops in, they might be even more compromised now because now they’re currently on the network, they’re doing stuff. We one time… maybe this is a story for Build Something More. But we one time had this JavaScript inserted into every single page of our content management system. So maybe I will tell that story and Build Something More. But it’s frustrating. It seems like you had the passion for this, you have the domain knowledge. Did you do other research to see if this was something that was viable from a market standpoint? Jason Meller: Yeah. I guess a piece of advice for the folks out there thinking, “I want to do a startup and maybe I want to build SAS products specifically.” I remember when I was a lot younger, I would often have ideas and then the first thing I would do is I would go on Google and I would go and see if anyone else had thought of that idea before. And then if I found any version of that idea out there, I was immediately discouraged. I was like, “Oh, this isn’t a new thing. I don’t want to do it.” But what I’ve learned over time is that oftentimes your passion for something doesn’t necessarily… just because there’s something out there doesn’t necessarily mean you have to avoid doing it. You can have a better iterative take on something out there that already exists without… you don’t have to come up with something completely brand new novel 100% in order to be successful in business. Sometimes it’s just an improvement or just a spin on something that exists out there. For HONEST Security, there was really nothing out there that I would say existed that really kind of focused on this issue. But there’s an entire industry of endpoint security products that are out there that have maybe little aspects of this. Like they have Slack notifications, but maybe they’re not interacting with end users. I think it would have been foolish for me to kind of look at those little starts and fits that other companies are doing and say, “Okay, they’re clearly going to head in that direction so I’m just going to give up.” I think if you’re really focused and passionate about a problem, you should still go for it if there are existing incumbents in the space. And sometimes you’ll find, you know, as you build out the entire idea and actually go through iterations of building it and getting in front of real people, that where you started from actually changes completely by the time you actually ship something by the end of it, and you ended up in a completely different direction, but you’re grateful for that journey. So I think if you’re passionate about a problem, sometimes doing your market research can help but I wouldn’t let that influence your decision 100% or whether or not you should actually move forward with it or not. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great advice, and it harkens back to a few previous episodes of great advice I got. First of all, maybe there’s a pre-existing product that doesn’t tell a good story or present the solution as good. So there’s that. If there is a pre-existing product, it means that there is a market for what you want to do, right? Jason Meller: Right. Joe Casabona: So just because there’s competition it doesn’t necessarily… I mean look at all the calculator or weather apps on the App Store. Then the other one is from a friend of mine, Scott Bollinger, who talked about kind of what you said about getting it out there into the hands of users. Get an MVP out there as soon as possible and start getting feedback. Because ultimately, the users will shape the direction your product goes in. Jason Meller: And there’s a good example of that. At Kolide, when we first started this process, we really wanted to focus on connecting the security team with the end users. And the first step of that was really the security team be able to convey what issues are on those devices and give users step by step feedback. But when we did that, we realized that it felt really strange for an end user who didn’t even know what Kolide was to suddenly get this ping out of nowhere. Like, “Hey, your devices missing these patches and your firewall is disabled, and here are the steps of how you can resolve that.” It’d be like if you know someone just burst in your house and there’s just demanding things. That wasn’t something that we… It sounds funny in hindsight but it wasn’t something that we thought about when we were building the MVP version of this experience. So we spent a lot of time thinking about how can we really put people at ease on the privacy aspect of this. And we actually arrived at an area where they actually self-install the agent. So we actually reach out to them via slack as an introduction, explain what this whole thing is, and then you actually install the installation package that puts the endpoint agent, that thing that gets all the telemetry on the device. Yourself versus it just being sort of foisted upon you by the IT security team. And that’s something that doesn’t exist. We’re the only security company that I’m aware of that actually encourages you to have the end users to install the main piece that makes it work. That was not something that we just got in the room and we thought of just out of the sky. It was based on talking with real people and hearing their concerns. So the most novel parts I think about our system are due to the feedback that we’ve had from our earliest iterations, not things that we thought of before we embarked on building anything. Joe Casabona: That’s such a great story and it makes perfect sense. I want to ask you the title question here, “how did you build it?” before pivoting into the more blue sky philosophical sort of questions, I guess. So you mentioned that this was a web app and a Slack app? Jason Meller: Yes. Yes. Funny story. We built it twice. The first time we did not build it well, and I think it’s because we took a very traditional I think VC-backed startup approach to how are we going to build our MVP. And we kind of embraced all the hot tech that was out there. We were like, “Okay, what’s the…” This is going all the way back to like 2017 or so. Like, “We want to build it in Golang because Golang is really good right now, everybody’s really talking about that, we’re going to host it on Kubernetes because Google just released their own container, you know, hosted version of Kubernetes, so let’s put it on there. And we want to, of course use React, and we want this to be micro services,” and so on and so forth. What we ended up realizing was that we didn’t suit the technologies that we chose to the actual talents that we had within the organization. We just assumed, I would say, sort of naively that we could just instantly transitions from tech that we had known and grown up with to I think really modern tech. And that ended up causing a lot of issues. In fact, most of the discussion at the company and the innovation that we were building was really just on the technical aspects of managing all these components, versus what we should have been talking about, which is actually building the product and having product discussions in order… what is the user experience of this going to look like, and not really worrying so much about the architecture. So we kind of crashed and burned pretty hard, I would say, at the end of 2018 or so, and we decided, “You know what? We are just building on top of this shifting sand and we just need to start over.” And that’s exactly what we did. The model from that point forward was “let’s keep it as simple as possible and let’s not concern ourselves with these major architectural designs and future scalability issues.” I think that a lot of engineers really worry too early about scalability when it’s not warranted. In fact, they’re worried that they’re going to have to scale up really, really fast, and they’re not going to be able to do it. Like their product is just going to be so successful, it’s going to be like the next Twitter, or they’re going to have the same reaction that Clubhouse is having right now. And then suddenly, they’re going to be completely hosed and they’re going to lose their moment. But that is so rare in practice. In fact, the thing that you should be optimizing for is that scaling up, but scaling down when your idea isn’t quite right. If you make all of these financial investments, financial investments in the form of your time as an engineer, but also shelling out money to, you know, Google Cloud Platform and AWS for all these expensive servers and container frameworks and things like that, it becomes really, really hard to actually scale that down to a financially feasible slow burn as you actually get your first few customers in the door and really understand what your product is. I think it’s more important that you protect yourself from not the outcome of your products going to exceed past your wildest machinations. It’s can you actually protect yourself in a scenario, the most likely scenario where your product isn’t going to do well? And you need to learn a lot more about why. And you need to at least a year or two of timeframe to really be able to do that and make the iteration is necessary. So try to figure out how you can scale your solution and your architecture down or make it so that it’s easy to do that, so you have as much time as possible. In Kolide, for us specifically, I was always a Ruby on Rails developer. I started off in PHP and then I really kind of fell in love with Ruby around the time. PHP really started taking off with classes and things like that that really, really kind of just grabbed me in. So we just focused on that. Instead of like trying to host it ourselves, we just went to Heroku and we hosted the whole thing there. And you know what? It turns out these platforms as service providers, like Heroku and some of the other ones that are out there, they’re probably the Laravel community and everything, they are really, really good at helping you scale when you are successful. So right now the biggest part of our app that’s I think challenging from an architecture perspective is the fact that we have all these devices out there for our customers, like tens of thousands of devices, and they’re all checking in on a regular interval to our device server. And there’s a lot of traffic to handle there. But the reality is is that it’s web traffic, and we can put the data in the database. And we don’t need all these crazy, hot technologies to layer into that to perform I would say, very, very basic operations. Like data comes in, we save it in the database, we visualize it in a web app that’s built-in Ruby on Rails. And then on the Slack app side, Slack has made it really, really easy with some very basic API [unintelligible 00:24:43] to have a really compelling experience. So we built that inside of the Rails app as well. And it’s really, really simple. and it’s something that we can maintain with three or four engineers, not like this hoard of hundreds of engineers that are really focused on the infrastructure and the operations and “oh, we need a front end engineer, and that front end engineer needs to collaborate with someone who’s going to really be building a back end API so they can plumb everything together.” That’s just not the reality of how the financials work at an early stage startup. You need to be able to have features go out the door without a lot of different hands touching them. The companies that have built all these crazy new technologies that are not so much new now, they’re huge. And they built these technologies to solve organizational issues at their size. That doesn’t necessarily mean these technologies are appropriate for companies that only have two or three people in them because those problems are just non-existent at a company of that scale. 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I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: I’m a web developer… I’m sure this is for all programmers, but it’s like, “Oh, did you see the new thing? .js or whatever? We should use the new thing .js.” And I’m like, “I don’t want to use it. Why do I need to learn a new thing when I don’t know if I’m even going to need it?” I was working on an app for a hosting company a couple of years ago and they’re like, “We should make this headless WordPress and use Gatsby.” And I’m like, “Why? There’s no reason for us to use Gatsby. I don’t know Gatsby. And if I have to learn Gatsby, I’m going to charge you the hours it takes me to learn Gatsby because we don’t really need it.” So I think you’re absolutely right. Actually, this conversation here is timely to when we record this because I was lamenting how I was going to build out the community aspect of the membership. Again, I’m a web guy, I’m a WordPress guy, I was like, “I’ll just use like bbPress or BuddyPress, two plugins that bolt on the community. But no offense to the people who maintain bbPress, but it definitely looks like it was made in 2004 and I wanted something that looked nicer. And I was like, “I could invest all of my own development time to make bbPress and BuddyPress work the way I want, or I could just pay Circle.so 30 or 40 bucks a month and have everything. And on Twitter, I got a lot of well like, “You should just build it yourself. That’s what I did.” Someone said like, “That’s what I did, though nobody’s using the community.” They kind of said tongue in cheek. And I’m like, “So you invested all this time for nobody to even use the community.” Jason Meller: Right. That’s right. Joe Casabona: In two months, if nobody’s using the community, I can just stop paying for Circle instead of burning hours. You triggered me a little bit there but in the best way possible. Again, do the minimum viable thing instead of burning development hours when you don’t need to for the sake of trying the new thing or using this tool that you want to try out. Jason Meller: Yeah. I think that you touched on something. You said you’ve been doing web development for a while, and I have as well. And I think that there’s almost like a self-deprecating ages and thing that can kind of come up when you reach a certain age and you suddenly feel like there’s all this new technology that’s… it was a slow burn, like it was really kind of coming up, and then it just appeared and then everybody started using it. And then you almost feel like, “Oh, my gosh, am I becoming that old dude that doesn’t know what’s going on anymore? Am I going to be left behind.” I think that type of anxiety and that sort of self-deprecating “am I really in the mix anymore?” can force really bad errors of judgment in terms of “You know what? I need to learn something” that you really don’t need to learn, and in fact, might actually be worse than the thing that you already know. I think that when you’re really young and inexperienced, everything is brand new and you don’t have the benefit of the history of how all these things came together. So something that may not be optimal is fine by you and you’re going to learn that thing. But when you’re older and you have experience, you can compare and contrast how this new thing works compared to how used to build stuff. And sometimes the new thing is way worse. And you’re just like, “Why did I do this when I actually was much happier and more productive and there’s more maturity in the libraries and there’s more things for me to be able to kind of plug into this thing? What am I doing?” I think that’s where we ended up. And it sounds like it’s a very easy problem to avoid. But when you get in your own head, and you start thinking about those things, it can really force these errors that really just don’t need to happen early on in your company. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the WordPress space, Gutenberg is the big thing, and everyone’s like, “You need to learn React.” I haven’t learned React yet and so far I’m okay. I’m like, “I haven’t lost a job because I haven’t learned React. I’m reluctant. I mean, now it’s probably I know it’s around to stay. But I learned Angular Version 1 and then Angular was like, “We’re changing everything in Version 2.” And then React came out, and then Vue came out. And I’m like, “I’m just going to solve the problem the best way I know how.” So I think that this is really important. Jason Meller: True. Joe Casabona: This can be translated to… Jason Meller: I was just going to say, by the way, don’t feel bad about learning React. We don’t build a stitch of React that Kolide and we have an incredibly successful web application. I am 100% anti-React. That’s basically what I was alluding to earlier when I said there’s these new things. I’m 100% on this camp of let’s bring as much back to the server side as possible. I grew up in an era where when you were coding for the web and you got to pick whatever language you want. It didn’t have to be JavaScript. You could pick anything. You could build a web app in C++, you could build it in COBOL if you wanted to. It really didn’t matter. And that’s the thing that’s really special about the web is that if you know HTML and you want to build something on the back end, you could do it in anything. And that is not the case with really any other platform that’s out there. Like if you want to build an iOS app, yes, there’s Electron and React Native and all these other technologies. But if you really want to build a good app, you have to do it in Swift or Objective-C. Like you just have to. That’s the lingua franca of the device. But on the web, that isn’t the case. And I feel like these React folks are now bringing like Server-side React, and they’re trying to make JavaScript the language of the web on both sides, which is fine for them. But someone who hates JavaScript, I don’t want to go there. I think that that actually is really important that we preserve that aspect of the web and how it came from and the flexibility and the freedom that’s there. So my hope is that React maybe can stand the client side and doesn’t end up being this thing that just eats the world. Because I think you can build really, really well-designed web apps that are performant, that are exciting, and making millions of dollars without even writing a stitch of it. And I hope that that continues to be the case. And I’m advocating for a world that exists. I didn’t expect to say that on this podcast, but here I am. Joe Casabona: Oh, that’s perfect. We can talk about more on this in Build Something More if it suits us because I have a lot of opinions about that as well. Jason Meller: Sure. Joe Casabona: Now that we’ve gotten really nerdy I’ll probably add chapters, like podcast player chapters to this one because I do want to bring it back to the small business owner who is maybe interested in building a SAS, but we’re a year into a pandemic as we record this, maybe there’s some economic uncertainty. It seems like the outlook changes every week. Why would we want to build a SAS right now? Jason Meller: It is a really great question. I think it’s very counterintuitive to say that actually it’s a really good time to start thinking about new business ideas, and specifically SAS products right now. But that’s actually how I feel. When you have these big societal shifts like the pandemic and everybody working remotely, they create opportunities that were none existed before. That’s very much the case at Kolide. We started it before the pandemic but we realized, because of the pandemic, people’s attitudes were really shifting about how security agents and the surveillance they were having on their device, the context of that just felt different when everybody was working from home than when you’re in a cubicle or in an office that’s really maintained by your employer. Suddenly, solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams and all these things were way greater use than they were, most startups were using them and engineering style organizations were, but not every company on the earth. And now suddenly, these organizations, they’re looking for ways to use the existing apps that they’ve always used but now in a context where everybody is remote. And they really want them to be integrated in these chat-like experiences. So we just happen to be in the right place the right time. But my advice to folks who are thinking about how do you capitalize on this pandemic specifically is start looking at what is the ideal interactions that these business owners and business employees are really looking for in terms of dealing with their HR app, and how do I deal with expenses and things like that. Suddenly, all the incumbents in the space are on their back foot because new players can enter in and really offer a compelling experience that feels way more relevant to folks who are really not working from home, and doing 100% of their communication through a chat window or maybe Zoom. I think that that’s the seed that can generate this entire ecosystem of new stuff. Obviously, the pandemic is really scary, and people are losing their jobs, and there’s a lot of uncertainty there. But if you are someone who has an entrepreneurial spirit, you’ll often find opportunity in those lowest points. Now, I’m speaking from a position of privilege because I had the money to be able to kind of have the savings to be able to strike off and do it on my own. I had some investors come in and things like that. And not everybody has that opportunity. But I encourage folks who can do that and feel confident in their ability to do that, to find an opportunity, see where something isn’t working and draw from your own experience. If you’re frustrated by something, it probably means there’s tons of other folks that are frustrated by that exact same thing. It doesn’t have to be this huge, massive multimillion-dollar startup, it can just be something small that you sell online, and you just get on gumroad and just throw something out there. It doesn’t have to be even technology. It could just be an idea that you codified into a book that eventually can become something that’s backed by software or something else that you can sell a subscription for. So I encourage folks to take these dark times and look for opportunities there because that’s where new solutions can be born out of just changing circumstances. This pandemic is certainly a big example of that. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by the Events Calendar, the original calendar for WordPress. This free plugin helps you with calendaring, ticketing, and more powerful tools to help you manage your events from start to finish. Whether you run school events, concert at a venue, or fundraisers for nonprofits, the Events Calendar gives you the tools you need to make it your own. And with the Events Calendar Pro, you can create custom views, recurring events, add your own custom fields to events, and much more. Run virtual events? No problem. With the Virtual Events add on you can quickly and easily manage your online-only or hybrid events. With deep Zoom integration, custom virtual event coding for search engine optimization, and the ability to embed video feeds directly on your website, the Events Calendar makes putting virtual and hybrid events together easier. And I can’t stress this one enough. Let me tell you, I have tried to roll my own webinar software, my own live stream event software, and it is difficult. And I have 20 years’ experience making websites. The Events Calendar is the tool that you need to make virtual events a lot easier. You can even sell tickets and only show the stream to ticket holders. If you run events, whether in-person or online, you need the Events Calendar. Head on over to howibuilt.it/events to learn more. That’s howibuilt.it/events to start running your events more efficiently today. Thanks so much to the Events Calendar for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: It is important to highlight that certain people are afforded certain opportunities more than others. But I still in 2020, I am a firm believer in the American dream and I know that there are a lot of people who are still able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do things in a way to put themselves in a better situation. Jason Meller: That’s true Joe Casabona: With the government handing out money right now, if it’s a little extra money that maybe… I’m not a financial adviser. But if it’s extra money that maybe you can put aside, invest in yourself a little bit and put that money towards having an MVP developed or something like that. Jason Meller: You know, everybody’s situation is a little bit different. There’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—you got to take care of your essentials before you can really start thinking about these things. I don’t want to get into the whole social-economic situation of our country right now, but the reality is, is that when you don’t have a lot of money, and I know this from experience, graduating from college and not having a lot of money, it weighs on you mentally. Suddenly, a simple trip to the grocery store, where today I can fly into the grocery store, now I don’t even go. I just order online and they just deliver it to me. But before, like last year, I would just go and I really wouldn’t be looking too hard at the prices because I didn’t have to. But when you’re on a really tight budget, suddenly something as simple as going to the grocery store becomes very exhausting because you’d have to do all this math. “Oh, is this check going to bounce if I got this extra thing?” And it can add up over time. I’m hoping that the relief from COVID-19 I think helps folks. I think it has a chilling effect that maybe all those anxious thoughts, and maybe people can start thinking about higher order activities like career and building things and things like that. That’s what that aid can sometimes help with. And my hope is that people see it that way. Joe Casabona: That’s a much better point than I made. Listen to Jason. Awesome. Well, man, we covered a lot of ground here: cybersecurity, how things are built, starting a SAS, socio-economic conditions. Before we wrap up, I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Jason Meller: Yes. I kind of gave it away earlier. I was saving that for the trade secret. But again, taking stock into how things change over time and then understanding where the opportunity is generated. And I just talked about how that was the case Kolide with this pandemic and people really starting to wake up from the work from home situation. But there’s things like that that happen all the time. And they don’t have to be these monumental society shifts. Sometimes it’s more of like a slow burn. Sometimes they’re political, sometimes it’s something that’s in the news. But things change all the time. And we sometimes just take for granted that all the things that we’re doing today are going to be the things that we do forever. But it was just 20 years ago that we’re driving to Blockbuster and renting movies that way. And everything has changed if you really think about it. It’s very important to kind of pinpoint those moments where it tips just a little bit too much where suddenly something that made a lot of sense and everybody wanted to do, it doesn’t make any sense anymore and nobody wants to do it. And that’s where you need to seize that opportunity and see that moment before anyone else does, and then hyper-focus on building something that solves a problem. And it’s very important not to think about that academically. You want to think about it from your own experience. Because if you’re feeling that pain, others are feeling it as well, and you’re solving a real problem, versus like I think this is a problem, I’m just gonna take a guess. The second best thing to do is talk to people. But even better than that is you just have so much empathy for the problem because you are facing it. Those are the best places to start. You can save a lot of time and shortcut, a lot of market research if you know the problem inside and out because it’s one that you have. So that’s the trade secret is pick the problems that suit you because you’re not going to have a lot of time to like meet thousands of people that experience this problem and come up to speed and then build a whole thing yourself. Solve problems that you’re familiar with and you understand because then you can get on podcasts like this and passionately talk about them without having to do a ton of research because they’re just part of you. So that is my trade secret is solve problems that you have. And you can build businesses on top of that if you do it well enough. Joe Casabona: I love that. I feel like you read the blog post I published a couple of weeks ago where I basically say that. It’s called What Baby Clothes Can Teach You About Your Business or something like that. Basically, how we have these baby clothes that must have been designed by a parent because they’re so easy. In the pre-show… I don’t know if you want to make this public or not. Jason Meller: No, it’s fine. Go for it. Joe Casabona: In the pre-show, we were talking about how you’re a new parent, eight-month -ld baby girl. I have an eight-month-old son. Man, that smile on your face right now that nobody can see but me is just the pure joy that a kid brings you right before they throw up all over you. Jason Meller: That’s right. Joe Casabona: So you’ve probably been awake in the middle of the night trying to change your kid. And these pajamas—this is a tangent—they have a reverse zipper on them so that you zip up to unzip them. They must have been designed by a parent. Because the snap-on ones are definitely just designed by some random person who’s never touched a kid before. But the reverse zipper ones, this person understood the problem, the way that Jason is telling you to understand and solve problems. So bringing it back, Jason, this has been such a great conversation. If people want to learn more about you, where can they go? Jason Meller: I mentioned this earlier in the podcast. But if there’s one thing that you want to look into me about is I want you to read HONEST Security. You can find that just by going to honest.security. That’s the whole URL. If you want to learn a little bit more about Kolide, you can visit us on the web at Kolide.com. Kolide with a K. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can hit me up @JMeller. Joe Casabona: Awesome. This has been absolutely fantastic. Stick around for Build Something More, where we’re going to talk about cybersecurity, maybe Clubhouse and JavaScript tools. There’s a lot that we could cover honestly. For all the show notes as well as a link to the club, you can go over to howibuilt.it/218. Thanks so much to our sponsors: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and the Events Calendar. And Jason, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Jason Meller: Thanks for having me. Joe Casabona: And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. The Events Calendar Source

How I Built It
Why Authors Should Start a Podcast

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2021 34:59


Promoting your book can be a tough road – I know because I’m currently on it. On top of establishing trust, you need to demonstrate that you’re worth investing in. Plus, unlike online courses, it can be tough to build and keep an audience if people are just buying your book off Amazon. Luckily, a podcast can help. We’ll get into all of that in this episode. Plus, in Build Something More I’ll tell you all about my experience with both self-publishing and going through an actual publisher. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 217 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips to small business owners. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Today we are continuing a small miniseries I started a few weeks ago about why certain people in certain industries should start a podcast. Now back in Episode 154—I will link that in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/217—I talk about why everybody should start a podcast. This was a kind of general point episode. It was just before the pandemic started, and it seemed like lots of people were going to get into podcasting in 2020. As we wade into 2021, I think that there are specific use cases and benefits for people who I am looking forward to helping specifically. So certain niches that I believe I can help because I have strong experience in those areas. A few weeks ago, it was course creators and why course creators should start a podcast. Today it is why authors should start a podcast. I’m an author myself. I’ve written five books, four with an actual publisher. So I guess I’ve written six books, four with actual publishers. I’ve been through the process a lot. And reluctantly, with my most recent book “HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide“, I actually didn’t start a podcast where perhaps I should have. So we’re going to get into all of that today. Our sponsors for today’s episode are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. You’ll hear about them later in the episode. But first, let’s get to it. Now, again, in Episode 154, I covered all the reasons. It’s called All the Reasons You Should Start a Podcast. And I rehashed them a little bit a few episodes ago, I think that was Episode 214, where I talked about why course creators should start a podcast. But just the gist, it’s easier than ever to start a podcast. You no longer need thousands of dollars’ worth of recording equipment. For probably 100 bucks, you can get up and running. You can get relatively cheap audio hosting. You can also get free audio hosting, but you can get relatively cheap audio hosting, which is what I would recommend. It’s the next great content plane. It’s where lots of people are going to get content because a podcast doesn’t require you to sit in front of a screen and read. You can multitask while you listen to a podcast. You can do it while driving or commuting. You can do it while cleaning the house or mowing the lawn. So it’s a convenient form of content. And then it’s a way to grow your business because it’s a lot more intimate than other forms of content. People have your voice in their headphones while they’re listening to a podcast. It allows your listeners to get to know you better. But those are the general points for why anyone should start a podcast, why should authors start a podcast. Again, I have experience here. I am an author. I’ve written a bunch of books. In fact, in the extended episode of build something more, which is the members-only episode, I’m going to talk about what it’s like or what it was like writing each of my books and the difference between publishing and self-publishing, and why I didn’t start a separate podcast from my books and things like that. If you want to get that part of the episode, you can head over to buildsomething.club and sign up. It is $5 a month or $50 a year for lots of extra content, including what I’ll be talking about today. So you’re an author, you’re writing a book or you’ve written a book and you want more people to buy it. Why should you start a podcast? Well, again, it’s one of the best ways to establish trust. If people are buying educational content from you, like a book, like a course, then people need to know, like, and trust you before they buy. Now, a book is a little bit easier. Especially if you’re going through an actual publisher, the book might be on the bookshelves, and so people going to bookstores, as people start to do that more might just happen across your title and pick it up. But if they’re perusing Amazon, why should they buy your book over this other book? My most recent book got a few bad reviews because there was a miscommunication as to an extra part of the book. My book is the ninth edition. It’s about half the size maybe of the eighth edition, but there’s also like 40 videos that come free for anybody who buys the book. And those videos because it’s an HTML and CSS course, are invaluable. In the book, I teach the general information, the semantics, the markup, but in the videos, you actually get to see what happens when you write some code. That is a giant value add that maybe the people who left the bad reviews didn’t know about. And when you get a bad review, as I talked with Michael Begg about in Episode 209, if you get a bad review, it’s hard to come back from that. So how do you combat that? Well, if you have a podcast where people will know, like, and trust you, and they understand that generally people like to leave bad reviews more than good reviews, maybe they’ll be more likely to buy your book because they know who you are. They don’t know who the commenter is, but they know you and they know what you’re talking about. Similarly, it will help you establish authority in your subject matter. Again, if we just take the example of HTML and CSS, maybe I should have started a separate HTML and CSS podcast. It’s not too late. The book came out less than a year ago, and we’re coming up to a point where teachers will start evaluating what books they want to use in the classroom. So maybe I start a podcast called, I don’t know, HTML and CSS Bytes, or something like that. I’m brainstorming right on the show. I should write this down, though. That’s probably a good idea. If you have that podcast and you’re putting out episodes and your teaching the thing that you teach in the book, or if you wrote… I should say that this is mostly nonfiction that I’m talking about here. If you write a fiction book, we’ll get into things that you can do with a fiction book. But if it’s a knowledge worker book, if it’s a business book, a nonfiction book, then you can take those topics and repurpose them and talk about them on your podcast. And I know what you’re thinking here. Am I giving away the shop? If I start a podcast about what my books about, am I giving away the shop? And here’s the thing. No. Because maybe Chapter 10 of your book is relevant for your most recent podcast episode. If I pick an example, Chapter 19 in my book is about CSS preprocessors. Maybe news just broke that a new CSS preprocessor is coming out and I want to talk about it. So I can use some of the content from my book for that. But unless you already know CSS, the CSS preprocessor conversation will be out of context. Your book puts everything in context. So your podcast will help show people: “Hey, I know what I’m talking about. If you want to know more about what I’m talking about, then buy my book.” That is up next, right? What is your call to action on your podcast? And that’s something really important to talk about. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Build Something Club rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s using Restrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: So, your call to action is very clear. It’s “buy my book.” My call to action on this podcast has been “join my mailing list” pretty much, right? I’ve been working in the membership call to action. But if you’re starting a podcast where you want people to buy your book, super easy. “Hey, you like what I’m talking about? You want to learn more about what I’m talking about? Go to howibuilt.it/book and buy my book. And then you can get even more. And mention that you heard about it on this podcast and I’ll give you a shout out.” Or “if you email me a receipt from the book and say that you bought it because of this podcast, I’ll send you a bonus audiobook” or something like that. So your call to action day in and day out will be “buy my book.” And people will hear that every time: “buy my book.” All right? “Well, this episode really made me want to buy the book, so I’m going to do that.” Again, to get people to buy the book, you can incentivize them a little bit or you can, for the podcast, include bonus materials that didn’t make it into the book. The editing process is long and hard and there are a lot of things that maybe you thought about including in the book, but because of time constraints or because of other constraints, you maybe decided not to talk about those things. Maybe it wasn’t relevant to the final edition of the book. A really good example from the HTML and CSS book that I wrote is I had a section maybe on doing mockups and why you might want to do mockups, and how they can help you. But when I wrote the outline and then started to write the chapters, I realized this is not a how to design websites book. This is a book about HTML and CSS. So the markup section, not super relevant. Another thing that I have in my mind map is linters and JavaScript libraries, static site generators. Those are things that as a web developer you might want to know. But if we’re trying to fit everything for HTML and CSS into 400 pages or so, then some things had to go. And that was those three topics had to go. So I have a lot of stuff here in this mind map that I can talk about on the podcast. So in your writing journey, be sure to keep notes about things that do or do not make it into the final product and that stuff that you can then share with your audience in a different way. Again, you can take it out of context, and then tell the listeners, “Hey, if you want all of this in context, today’s episode goes really well with chapter five. So buy my book, take a look at Chapter 5. You’ll get even more out of it.” Or “now Chapter 5 will have even more meaning to you.” Along with that, you can also share your journey through the book writing process. So include the bonus materials that didn’t make it, but also talk about the process in general. When I was writing my book… I’m going to make just a gigantic excuse here. So I’m going to steal this excuse from you. This is not a good excuse. While I was writing my book, I was doing a lot of other things as well. I wasn’t as cognizant as I could have been in preparing for the marketing of the book. So I didn’t pay super close attention to all of that. I just wanted to get it done, especially because I was supposed to be wrapping up as the pandemic started, and the pandemic pushed the process back a little bit. So by the time I was ready to publish, I was pretty much at my wit’s end with everything. I just wanted to get it out the door. But if you’re writing your book right now or you took better notes than I did about your book, then share your journey, talk about the research you did, talk about the apps and tools that you used. I used the MindNode for mind mapping. Did you mind map or did you draw it all out on a whiteboard? What did you use to write the book? I wrote a lot of my booking Ulysses, which is a fantastic writing app, but then I did have to move it over to my publisher’s template in Microsoft Word. “How’s editing going?” Editors can be brutal. And they need to be. My editor was brutal. And I’m grateful for it because I have a much better book now. But talk about how editing is going. What’s something that maybe got pointed out to you in the editing process that made your media book better? Talk about other behind-the-scenes stuff, cover design, image creation. If you’re self-publishing, how’s that going? What kind of research are you doing for self-publishing? Are you going to put it on Amazon with Kindle publishers direct or are you going to use something else? And then you can get early feedback as well. Maybe if I had a dedicated podcast for my book, I could have talked about the things I covered in say Chapter 3, and then gotten feedback from listeners. Is there anything I’m not covering here that you want to see? Is there anything unclear? What else can I do to make this chapter better? And then all of this will again make people feel more attached to the book. You’re going to be talking about this behind-the-scenes stuff, they’re going to want to know what the final product looks like. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. When you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes, ensuring your team remains consistent, current, and accurate. TextExpander can also be used in any platform, any app and anywhere you type. So take back your time and increase your productivity. But that’s not all it does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop-up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text. No more fighting formatting is I’m copying from Word or anyplace else. Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and then I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: Your podcast will also help you leverage your book’s audience, so people who buy the book. And I should say, if it’s not too late, mention your podcast in the book, too. This could be a two way street. But it could help you leverage your book’s audience to join your mailing list, to get other products, to join your community. So up until this point, I’ve kind of talked about the podcast as being a way to get more people to buy your book. But it can also help connect with the people who’ve bought the book already. Because that’s hard, right? If you are an author, especially if you go through a publisher, then you know that you don’t get direct access to all the customers’ information. Heck, the publisher might not even get direct access to all the customers’ information. My publisher sells to bookstores. You think Barnes and Noble is giving my publisher a list of all the people who bought my book that day? They’re probably not. So my publisher doesn’t even have all the information. And then certainly, unless there are very intense disclosures, they wouldn’t pass that along to me either. That’s why you see a lot of authors say, “Hey, download the bonus materials at mywebsite.com/book or book.com/bonus or whatever.” Because that’s how they are connecting with their audience. That’s how they’re getting their audience email addresses. But if you have a podcast and you say, “Hey, listen to my podcast. If you want even more content around this topic, listen to my podcast.” From there, you can get them to join your mailing list. You can get other products to them. You can get them to join your community. Imagine having a community of people who’ve read your book and talk about the book. You can engage much more with your audience on your book-related podcast. Or even if you write a book… Maybe you’re James Patterson and you write like four books a year, you get to talk about those books more. You get to talk about the process more. But you get to engage with your audience more than with a book. As the author, you write a book, people read your words. And unless they really want to take action and email you, you’re probably not going to hear from most of those people. Now, maybe you do. At a conference, people have walked up to me and they’ve told me like my book helped them become a WordPress developer. And that is just such a rewarding feeling. But that’s few and far between. It’s certainly fewer than the number of people who bought the book. But again, if you have your podcast, you’re talking about your book and bonus materials, now you can engage with your audience more. You can ask them to write in on today’s topic or a topic that they want to hear about. The other thing with that is you can go deeper on topics or you can update topics. With the HTML and CSS book, CSS has a new text-based proposal that came out recently, several months after my book is published. So, again, if I have this HTML and CSS podcast—I’m kind of convincing myself to start one—I can share updates on that stuff. I can share errata. I can have like an errata episode where “Hey, in this part of the book…” hopefully I wouldn’t have too many of those. Hopefully, you wouldn’t have too many of those. But things happen, things change. So you can share updates, errata, and current events related to the book. If you have an SEO book or a digital advertising book, that’s a good example. If you have a book on how to leverage digital ads that’s out, you probably wouldn’t have written about Google’s FLoC, which is like federated learning of cohorts or something like that. So you can have a podcast episode about that and then relate it back to the content in your book. So it makes your book content a lot more dynamic. It makes it living, especially if it’s a printed book as well as a digital book. But even if it’s a digital book, how often are you going back to that well to update your book when there are updates? Ideally, your book should be passive income. People buy your book, they get knowledge out of it. But the podcast can be that outlet for updates, errata, current events, and things like that. So what do we have so far? Why as you the author should you start a podcast? It’ll help people establish trust in you. It’ll get them to know, like, and trust you. It’ll establish you as an authority in the subject matter your book is about. You can have a very clear call to action: “buy my book.” Now, in lieu of what we just talked about, maybe the call to action is “join my mailing list.” And in your onboarding sequence, say, “Have you bought the book already?” And then you can segment your people that way. And then for people who haven’t bought the book, you can market the book to them. But for people who have bought the book, you can share behind-the-scenes stuff. You can include bonus materials that didn’t make it into the book in your podcast. You can share your journey through the book writing process. Again, this helps people become attached to you and like you even more. You’re sharing a process that lots of people are excited about or are at least interested about. I get tons of questions. What’s it like writing a book? Did you publish it? Did you go through a publisher? Did you self-publish? What was that like? So that’s really good content, not just for the people who want to buy your book and your target audience, but in general. So you can share your journey. It’ll help you leverage your book’s audience and connect with them more, and it’ll help you kind of sudo update the book as time goes on. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s where Mindsize comes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe Casabona: So that’s a bunch of stuff that we just talked about. But it can help you without being directly related to your book too, right? I mean, yes, it can help you because more people will buy your book. You’re putting a voice to the words. I think that’s really important. You can engage with your audience more, because people who are buying your book might listen to your podcast then or people who are listening to your podcast can buy your book. Either way, that’s two contact points for a single audience member. Get them on your mailing list, and then you can ask them direct questions. “What did you like about the book? What didn’t you like about the book? What do you want me to cover on the podcast that you think I should have elaborated more about in the book?” Or “I just finished Chapter 4, here’s what I cover. Do you think I’m missing anything?” Or “is there something that’s unclear?” But then you can also book more speaking gigs. Because here’s the dirty little secret. Writing a book is probably not going to make you rich. I mean, unless you’re like James Patterson or J. K. Rowling. Especially in a nonfiction title, right? That’s why every business book you read constantly promotes whatever service is related to the book they wrote. “Hey, we just talked about this in Chapter 5, if you’re trying to do this and you’re having trouble, hire one of our experts.” And that’s fine. I mean, that’s fine within reason. I read like an 80-page book recently, where he promoted it like every five pages. And I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to hire you. You only wrote this book to promote your services. It’s not really helpful.” But anyway, you can book more speaking gigs. That is something that pays pretty well if you find the right conferences. And the more people buy your book, the more clout you get, and then the more speaking gigs that you have. And if people are listening to you speak on your podcast, they know your cadence. They know the kind of content that they’re going to get. So, I mean, your podcast can be an audition for speaking gigs. So, all of these things put together, I think that a podcast can not only help you sell more copies of your book, but it can help you create super fans for your book, because you’re giving them a lot of extras that they wouldn’t otherwise get. So people will buy your book, people who bought your book will listen to your podcast, and they’ll learn more about you. Maybe if it is a nonfiction book, and you do have consulting services, you can offer them. I know my books that I usually write are specifically written for the classroom. And so maybe teachers will listen to the podcast, and they’ll pick up my book so that they can teach it to their students. Maybe I get a guest lecturer gig. Things like that. That’s everything that I have for why authors should start a podcast. Oh, and I should mention this really quick actually. Friend of the show, Brittney Lynn from Human Connection Agency and the Human Connection Podcast had a really good episode about PR for authors and how and when authors should start promoting their book. And I was shocked. I think she said… I want to say six months before. For a course launch, they usually say eight weeks. But you want to start the merry go round of book promotion. I will link the episode in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/217. But it was a longer lead time than I expected. I want to say six months. So if you start a podcast while you’re writing the book, that is a built in marketing channel for you, because you’re starting the book, you’re doing it out in the open, which people love behind-the-scenes stuff. You are maybe getting real-time feedback as much as your publisher will allow. Or again, if you are self-publishing, you’re just doing it in the open, you’re generating buzz. Throw up that preorder page and start getting orders. And then when it comes out, you have a big launch episode and then you continue creating great content. And that’ll open up a lot of opportunities for you. So that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to TextExpander, Mindsize and Restrict Content Pro for sponsoring the show. If you liked this episode, head over to howibuilt.it/217 and join the mailing list. Maybe join the Build Something Club. Right after I end this, I’m going to talk behind the scenes of my books, all of the books I’ve written, and what the process was like publishing versus self-publishing. I feel like this was a cathartic episode for me though. It gave me some ideas for—even though my books have been on the shelves for about six months—why I should start a podcast for that book. So maybe I should eat my own dog food. Let me know. If you’re an author, write in. You can do that over at howibuilt.it/217 as well, if you got any good ideas or if you’re looking for help promoting your book. All right, thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source

How I Built It
How to Make Your eCommerce Store Even Better with Patrick Garman

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2021 57:49


One thing the global pandemic taught us is we need to have a great online presence. This is especially true if you need to sell online – and let’s face it, we all do now. Well Patrick Garman of Mindsize has the knowledge and experience to help anyone launch and improve their eCommerce store. And he gives us some of his best stuff in today’s episode. Plus, Mindsize went through a bit of a rebrand, and we talk all about it in Build Something More. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Build Something Weekly newsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro: Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 211 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, “How did you build that?” The podcast offering actionable tech tips for small business owners. That’s the new tagline that I’m working with. Today our sponsors are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. Mindsize being of note here because my guest today is the CEO of Mindsize. His name is Patrick Garman. Patrick, how are you today? Patrick Garman: I am great today. It’s a little chilly in Texas. It’s not why I moved here. But we’re getting past that. Joe Casabona: Awesome. As somebody who is born and raised in the northeast, what is a little chilly in Texas? Patrick Garman: I think today it’s 60s-ish. It’s been bouncing between 40s and 60s. I grew up in Illinois, so I definitely know what cold is. Joe Casabona: Yeah, you know what cold is. Patrick Garman: And that’s why we don’t live in Illinois anymore. Joe Casabona: Yes. It feels like 34 here right now. I haven’t tried to talk my wife into… because as we record this, we just got dumped on like 10 inches of snow. I’ve been trying to talk her into moving to Texas, as a matter of fact. And she was like, “What about California with all your California friends or whatever?” Or her brothers in the Navy. And I’m like, “We’ll get tax to oblivion in California.” It’s like too expensive out there. Patrick Garman: I can summarize it very quickly for you how to decide where to move. Joe Casabona: All right. Patrick Garman: North half of the country, too cold. So you got to be lower half. Southeast, too humid. Southwest is either California or desert. You don’t want to live in California for taxes and all those reasons. You don’t want to live in a desert. Pretty much leaves Texas. So then within Texas and tech guys usually going to be near bigger cities. So you got DFW, Austin, San Antonio, Houston. Houston still got that humidity. San Antonio is a bit too far south. It gets a bit warmer than I care for. Austin is not much of a travel hub, but it’s still a kind of a great place for visiting. Would never live there. That leaves DFW. Joe Casabona: All right. Patrick Garman: Within DFW, Dallas is too busy. Fort Worth is really calm and relaxed. Now we live in Fort Worth. Joe Casabona: All right. There you have. See, we can end the episode right here. Where do you live? Fort Worth. I am being pulled towards Houston of course because our friends, Chris Lemma and Shawn Hesketh both live there. Yeah. And my favorite cigar shop, Stogies, is there. Stogies, world-class cigars. Patrick Garman: Three hour drive from Fort Worth. I’ll give it 10, 20 years. There’s that bullet trainer. Fast trainer button. So it’s not too far. Austin is right in the middle, too. Joe Casabona: There you go. Three hours not too bad. That’s the drive to my parents’ house, from Near Philadelphia to an hour north of New York City. Patrick Garman: At the end of the day, though, in the winter, Texas is about 20 degrees warmer than Illinois. In the summer, it’s 5 to 10 degrees warmer than Illinois. So during the winter, what that means is when you’re getting 10 inches of snow, it’s chilly here. During the summer, you’re really hot and you’re air conditioning on, in Texas, we’re really hot and air conditioning on. Exact same. Joe Casabona: I like that. Here we go. I’m going to present the evidence again to my wife. The only problem—this will be the last thing and then we’ll talk eCommerce after this—is if I do move to Texas, say I live near Houston, I am a die-hard Yankee fan and I will be in Houston Astros territory. That’ll be like me moving to Boston as far as I’m concerned now. So I don’t know. Patrick Garman: It’s tough choices. Joe Casabona: I know. I know. Baseball. I see you’re a baseball fan. You got the Cubs pennant in the background there. Patrick Garman: I was a Cubs fan before they won the World Series. When they were losers. My family’s all Cubs fans. My mom I think has the little ID card from I think my great grandma or her great grandmother says, “Cubs fan for life.” Joe Casabona: Nice. Patrick Garman: So we’ve all been Cubs. Joe Casabona: Very nice. Another thing I see in the background there is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Patrick Garman: Of course. Joe Casabona: So we were introduced… You brought this up in the pre-show, so you can relay this story, but I remember it. Lindsey Miller, friend of the show, introduced us at Post Status publish, is that right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. I forget which one it was or where we were. It was the big garage space and I was talking to Lindsay. I think I was telling her something about how my wife and I were married in Disney. She’s like, “Have you met Joe?” I knew who Joe was, but she brought me over and introduced us, and here we are. That was a couple of years ago. I made it sound like it was immediate. Joe Casabona: Yeah. Gosh, well, it feels like a lifetime ago now. The big garage one, that must have been at Atlanta, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. Joe Casabona: Because the first one was cold and in Philadelphia. Actually, it was unseasonably warm for Philadelphia the year of that WordCamp US—the first year of WordCamp US. But not as warm as Atlanta in August. I’m really glad to have you on the show. Of course, Mindsize is a sponsor of the show. Mindsize is a full-service eCommerce shop. We know each other through the WordPress space. I know you do a lot of WooCommerce work, and you’ve worked for a few of our friends in the greater hosting space and things like that. But you don’t just do WooCommerce, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. We work with pretty much anything that our customers use. So even before Mindsize existed, I had worked on some of the largest WooCommerce and Shopify sites that had existed. And then Mindsize was basically built on top of that technical expertise. It’s very few people can walk into a room and talk eCommerce on multiple platforms that are running nine-figure stores. It’s a rare talent. It’s a rare thing to have any experience in. The people can run large sites, they can run load tests of, yeah, we can theoretically handle this amount of load and traffic. And then there’s actually taking in millions of dollars of sales in an hour. There’s a big difference between theory and real life. So we work on a variety of platforms. They’ve all got their pros and cons. We always look and see what platform is going to fit the need of that site. Joe Casabona: That’s actually a great thing to think about, right? Because as we record this, we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. That global pandemic drove eCommerce growth 77%. Patrick Rowland was telling me 77% growth in 2020. That’s about as much as they expected it to grow in four to six years. Patrick Garman: We saw stores doing, I mean, basically their year’s worth of sales in the first quarter last year. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: I mean, doubling overnight effectively. Especially in the grocery space, I saw a lot of grocery chains that were quickly trying to turn digital and get to curbside. And then there were some shops that would literally turn their entire site off effectively and say we’re working on a new digital experience but they couldn’t take orders online. They had the platform and it just buckled under the stress. And that’s what we’re here to solve. Joe Casabona: That’s super interesting, right? Because actually, you mentioned something that I also learned in my… I did a project called WordPress Year in Review, and I looked at WooCommerce and the eCommerce space in general. It sounds like BOPIS. Is that what it is? Buy online pickup curbside? Patrick Garman: I hadn’t heard of that acronym but I’m sure it exists somewhere. If it didn’t exist before, it exists now. Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. But I heard that that the biggest growth actually happened there. It wasn’t necessarily lots of people trying to fulfill and ship orders online. It was like people selling their wares and then people coming to pick it up. Patrick Garman: That was true of stores big and small. Grocery was really picking up in the beginning and then other brick and mortar stores were adding it. I can remember vividly black Friday, Saturday right after Cyber Monday, my MacBook actually died right before that. So I needed a laptop to work. I placed an order on Best Buy. It was a deal because it was right. But I drove to Best Buy to pick it up, which Best Buy previously I don’t think they had pick up in their parking lot, but then they had it. I mean, it’s DFW sales all over. You imagine the lines that existed in the stores previously. The line was now outside. There was an hour wait to get curbside pickup at Best Buy. Joe Casabona: Oh, gosh. Patrick Garman: There were parking spots numbered up to around 100. So I found a parking spot in their parking and then we just sat there and waited for an hour for someone to bring our laptop out. The sales were still happening. And because of COVID, they were happening in the parking lot and people bringing stuff out. So logistics completely changed for all these stores. And I think they expected some of it since they did have parking spots numbered to the 90s and I think a hundreds but I wasn’t expecting that at all. It’s crazy. Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. What were some of the things that you and your… Well, first of all, Mindsize, we were talking about – what? 11-ish people? Patrick Garman: Yeah, including myself, 11 people. And only two people in that are nontechnical, non-developers. The rest of the company, including myself, are developers actively working on our client sites. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since the Build Something Club rolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s using Restrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp. That’s howibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe Casabona: What did you guys see going into the pandemic? Was it a lot of businesses they’re like, “Oh man, I need to set up a website”? Or was it more like, “I’m online and I need to do something better because my logistics has completely changed.” Patrick Garman: We focused a lot more on the digital for businesses. So they usually had a website and either had eCommerce or needed eCommerce added. We helped a lot with that transition and bringing people to digital and selling online where they weren’t before. One of the biggest things I learned though from it all, in a lot of meetings with people, I would almost sound like the crazy, paranoid person. Like, “We’re going to build this for scaling even though we’re probably not going to scale anytime soon. We’re going to build it the right way. You don’t need 20 web servers, but we’re going to build it to at least run on two so that if you ever need it, it’s there. We’re going to build it in a specific way where it’s scalable. We’re not going to take the shortcuts.” We lost some work because of it, because we wanted to take what we believed is the right path. When COVID really hit and things really started blowing up, the sites that we were working on and built in that way, we didn’t have to go back and make it scalable, because it already was. We didn’t have to have that transition from “Okay, we built the site for x scale, now we’re at 3x. How do we go make it work?” We instead took all our efforts with our clients and put them into how to better serve their customers. Instead of figuring out how to sell online, we figured out how to better serve their customers. We worked with clients to build programs for people to better get their grocery and other items from the curbside. Hotlines that people who normally wouldn’t order online, seniors, for example, being able to call a phone line and place their order and then pick it up at the store in the parking lot. Instead of having to have that 70-year-old person learn how to order online, they just talk to someone on the phone and place their order. So by building it right, one, it was extremely validating because now I’m not the crazy person, I’m the person who just planned right. But we were better able to help people. And as a company, and as we’ve been changing what Mindsize is and what we do, that’s the thing I’m looking to get out of Mindsize. I [unintelligible 00:15:13] a CEO now. We want to help people. We want to make people’s lives better, make the world a better place. And when I talk to clients and I hear the stories of their customers, of the work that we’re doing impacting their lives, it makes everything worthwhile. Joe Casabona: That’s truly fantastic. And that validation is always important. I mean, I’m a developer, too, right? Not quite at the scale that you do work. I do different kinds of development work. But I think about stuff like that, too. Even being overly paranoid, but not really. Even we were going to get together with some friends and I was like, “I don’t know if we should, blah. blah, blah, pandemic.” And it turns out that one of their moms got COVID. And I’m like, “I feel totally validated now.” It’s nice to not actually be the crazy person. But that’s great. When it comes to kind of scaling, how much of that is coding versus the server’s stack? Can I set up a Shopify site and understand that they’re set up to scale so that I don’t get slammed if I’m getting like a thousand orders a minute or something? Maybe a thousand orders a minute is not a lot. Patrick Garman: It’s different depending on the platform. So Shopify, scalability is usually handled for you. I’ve worked on sites where a single flash sale could bring more volume to the entire platform than their entire platform had in a previous Black Friday sale. I mean, a single site being able to handle that level of traffic broke stuff at the time. However, they took all their learnings there of caching in their database, sharding everything, and put it at the core platform level, where every store, in theory, should be able to handle that level of traffic immediately and succeed. So for Shopify, scalability is not your problem. What your problem is, is that it’s very Apple versus Android when you look at Shopify versus WooCommerce. Shopify is polished. They are very opinionated. “This is how you sell this is how you’re going to do things.” And if you fit that model, you’re going to have the easiest time in the world selling. They integrate with pretty much everything because they’re so big. They’re going to get those integrations first. I think they were the first platform to have shopping on Instagram. Joe Casabona: Oh, wow. Patrick Garman: As a customer, I use shop pay all the time. I go to an eCommerce site I’ve never been to before I see the shop pay button, I click it, I type in my email, and away I go. I just paid securely. I didn’t have to enter anything else after that. WooCommerce, if you don’t fit the mold, you need something custom. You need that Android experience of being able to change anything and everything. But you have to think a bit more carefully about what you’re doing. And it’s less the server stack and it’s less… I mean, it is the code, but it’s knowing how to architect things. To be honest, when we run servers for our clients, it is pretty much Vanilla. We like AWS server Google. But any other one, we use the Vanilla services they have. Very little customization. And the reason for that is it works. I’ve proven it works at very high scale. But then also, if our entire team, the Mindsize team has a trip and we’re all on a bus and that bus crashes and we’re no longer here, Vanilla means that anyone can pick it up that knows AWS and continue serving their customer. So complexity for the sake of milliseconds doesn’t actually gain you too much because you still have to pay for that in the back end of, “Okay, how do we actually support this?” It’s 3am, our server is down. Do we call the one person in the world who actually knows how to fix it? Or do we call any sysadmin who can come in and fix that, and then it’ll set up? But really it’s summarized in two things in WooCommerce: database reads and database writes. Write less to your database, read less from your database and your site’s going to scale. Joe Casabona: I love that. I love that philosophy. The server philosophy, I should say. I mean, naturally, the more static you can make your site, will say, the faster it’s going to be. You’re just serving up. It’s almost like you’re serving up flat files, right? Patrick Garman: Yeah. Joe Casabona: If you do it right. But the servers are Vanilla. That reminds me of a conversation I had early on in this show with Pippin Williamson, who I asked him what his development setup was like. And this was at a time where everybody was like grunting or golfing or whatever in Node JS ran everything or whatever. I didn’t see why people were doing it that way. And then Pippin really validated me. And Patrick, you just validated me more. He said, “If my laptop falls into a lake, I want to buy a new one and be up and running in less than an hour.” And if you like grunt and gulp everything, like it’s going to take forever. You got to install Homebrew and then figure things out and then update or whatever. Like whatever needs to happen to make all that magic stuff work. So I think you’re absolutely right. Patrick Garman: When my laptop died actually and I bought that new laptop, I had to do the exact same thing. I have the same exact philosophy there. Git clone, run a few commands, import the database, I’m up and running. I mean, Laravel Valet does everything I need. Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. Yeah, awesome. You’ve mentioned Laravel. Maybe in Build Something More, the members-only show, we can talk about Laravel, if the developers and the nerds want to hang out. So we’ve been talking for a while and we haven’t… I mean, we’ve gotten into kind of your experience a bit. For a lot of the people who are not developers who are listening, what should they look for? Let’s say in two situations. They don’t have an eCommerce shop and they want one, or they have an eCommerce shop and they want to improve it. Let’s look at those two people. Let’s start with I don’t have an eCommerce shop, what do I look for if I want to start one? Patrick Garman: I speak a lot in analogies. It makes it very easy to talk to my clients and get complex scenarios described them in a way they understand. So I’ll use one here too. Building your eCommerce shop is not like buying a car. When you buy your car, if you don’t get that feature in the beginning, when you first buy it, you’re probably not going to get it later. Unless you own a Tesla and everything’s, you know, paywall and every feature. If you don’t have air conditioning when you buy your car, you’re not going to have it later. If you don’t have leather seats now, you’re not going to get it later. Your eCommerce site or any WordPress site, or pretty much any site at all is not that. It’s something you can gradually build on. So we talked to a lot of people who want a site that’s everything in the kitchen sink, every feature possible, single sign on, have 20 different social networks. You’re doing two things there. One, you’re adding a whole lot of bloat to your site. It’s just not going to help. And two, you’re losing focus of what you’re actually trying to do by adding so many bells and whistles. Just focus on what your business is, what’s the minimum that you can do to get this out and launch it. And then continue to make data-driven decisions based on what you add next. So that will ultimately give you a faster site because there’s less code and then also you’re going to have a cheaper build in upfront. You don’t have to pay for 50 features if you can get by with three. And then you can get live faster, start making money faster, if it’s eCommerce, at least. And then use that to continually reinvest in the business, either in the business itself or the digital side of it. But if you already have a site, whether you added 50 bells and whistles or not, the simplest thing you could do, whether you’re a developer or not, is install Query Monitor. Just install Query monitor, browse around your site. Does it turn colors on you? Is it turning orange? Is it turning red? I think there’s like five different colors it can turn. If it’s turning a color in your admin bar, something’s wrong. If it’s red, there’s errors. If it’s orange, slow queries. So first, see if it’s turning colors. If it is, it’ll tell you why, and then you’ll probably need to talk to developer about fixing it. If it’s just slow and not turning colors, look at the numbers at the very top. How many queries are there? How much time is it taking to run? On average, if your page is using over 100 database queries to build itself, find a way to get less. If your homepage takes more than 50 to 70 queries, get that number down. And just think of everything exponentially. It’s not if one user has a hundred queries to build a page. It’s if a hundred users or a thousand users get to it. If you can knock 20% of your queries off, that exponential savings is what will keep your site online when there’s a global pandemic and now you have five times the traffic. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. With TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste, better than scripts and templates, TextExpander snippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages. TextExpander can be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type. Take back your time and increase your productivity in the new year. And let me just say that snippets is not all it does. With advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop up fields, and much more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can use TextExpander to manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharing TextExpander snippets with my virtual assistant. This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home. TextExpander is the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Joe Casabona: First of all, great analogy. I think it’s really important. Because you hear it all the time, right? “I want this, this, this, and this.” “All right, let’s just start with the first thing that you absolutely need. We’re just going to make it so that you can accept payments online.” When I recommend podcasting strategy to people who have very little money to spend, they probably don’t want that monthly hosting bill, I’ll usually say something like, “Start on Anchor. Have a plan to get off of Anchor fast.” I mean, just because it’s on your platform, right? And if the product is free, then you’re the product or whatever. Is that a reasonable path to take with eCommerce too? Like start on something that’s cheaper and easier to spin up like Shopify or whatever, their Squarespace stores—I don’t really know the pricing off the top of my head—and then move to WooCommerce. Do you think that’s reasonable? Or should we just start on WooCommerce because the… non-technical debt, but the migration path is a bigger pain in the neck. Patrick Garman: It depends on where you’re heading. If you are going to have a site and you know you’re going to have subscriptions in it but you don’t want to start with subscriptions out of the gate, I wouldn’t start on Shopify first because you will have to move off to get a good experience. Shopify and subscription sites, you can do it. If you want to have two completely different checkouts and have a customer that has to have two different wallets of cards and they can’t share them, that’s a terrible experience. If you just want to get up online, cost wise, it’s probably negligible, about the cost, to build a site on one platform or the other depending on what you’re doing. I mean, small sites, if you’re just throwing up a site, I’m sure you can find the nickels and dimes that you can compare back and forth. Joe Casabona: Sure. Patrick Garman: For a reasonable size business, something that is large enough that it can be your sole income, at the end of the day, it’s not going to make that much difference. Shopify, you’re going to pay a monthly fee, but you don’t have to pay hosting on WooCommerce. WooCommerce, you have to pay more upfront for plugins. There’s usually an annual fee for support and updates. Shopify is lower monthly because you have to pay monthly, but then it ends up being the same. I think it actually ends up being more expensive on Shopify. I did a comparison. If you go back far enough in my Twitter feed, I did that comparison to someone on Twitter. And I think it ended up being Shopify was like 30% more expensive for a subscription site. But start wherever you can. If you can get a site up on any platform, start on the one you think you’re going to end up long term, then you don’t have to worry about replatforming later. But if you can get up now on Shopify and will have to move later, everything’s exponential no matter what we’re doing. The sales you start now, just like your savings account will continue to build on each other and you’ll get more word of mouth, more marketing. Even SEO, you’ll have more age with your business. Start now. Start getting sales in the door so then later you can get even more sales. Any sales is better than no sales. Joe Casabona: Any sales is better than no sales. That’s perfect. You mentioned subscription specifically. But even if you’re switching let’s say subscription plugins or membership plugins, you still might run into the issue of having to migrate users, right? Like if they’ve accepted auto payments monthly through one plug in and then you switch plugins, they’re going to have to redo that anyway in some cases, right? Unless maybe you use Stripe for everybody. Patrick Garman: It is tricky. There’s a migration no matter what. Replatforming costs generally don’t benefit your customers much. It’s going to cost a fair bit for you to do it. Customers aren’t even going to care to notice. Sure, maybe it’s a slicker interface, your website is a little bit faster. They’re already paying you they don’t care. Avoid replatforming if you can, but not at the expense of just not even starting your business. Joe Casabona: Right. Again, I think that’s great. I always wonder… this is a small tangent, before we get into, well, I guess what’s going to be like the tail end of this conversation, because we’ve been talking for a while. I always was kind of annoyed that WooCommerce memberships and WooCommerce subscriptions were two different plugins because it was double the cost for me. But then LearnDash, which is my online course platform, LMS rolled out memberships as part of the plugin and I could dump WooCommerce memberships because the only reason I was using WooCommerce memberships was to create access to all of my courses, which I needed custom code for anyway. So I was able to replatform the membership part without messing up my monthly subscribers, because WooCommerce subscriptions was still at the root of that. I don’t know that I worded that right. Basically, I was able to replatform part of it because the subscriptions was decoupled from the memberships. Patrick Garman: In this case, you couldn’t really plan ahead for that because they came out with a feature. But any planning you can do at the beginning of what gives you the best long-term roadmap and the most options will usually work out better in your favor. We do the same with data. When we’re building a large site, we have a lot of data involved. How do we plan this? Your data is going to grow exponentially. Do you need 20 metas to be saved on an order every single order to do these features that you don’t even know if you’re going to do? Then you think about the exponential side of it 20 metas per order times 1,000 orders a day times however many days you’re doing sales. Your database now is growing exponentially, and all your other costs continue to rise. So we always try and look at the big picture. We generally don’t do individual tasks work for clients because that one little feature, if you’re not thinking about the big picture, you’re probably going to miss something. We had that experience recently with a client where they asked for a feature and we built something that achieved it. But we built it in a very specific way that ultimately gives them even more flexibility, more abilities in their site. And they actually asked a question in a call, like, why did you choose to do it this way? It’s a better result but we didn’t ask for this yet you gave us something that serves it and more. And that’s because we’ve been working with them for months, so we know where they’re headed and what the goals are. And we can take all that into account. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great. You’ve mentioned a couple of times now planning for the future is so important. I tell people that I was always most successful at selling my security package to clients after they had some incident. Like they deleted their site accidentally or whatever and I happen to have like an early backup. Or their site got hacked. And then they saw the value in paying me to make sure it didn’t happen again. But planning on the front end, like you said, it’s insanely important not just for the unknown the kind of known unknowns or whatever. But you were able to spend your time servicing your clients, customers better because you took the right moves early on, you made the right investments. It is a bit easier for us compared to the typical WordPress agency. If you think back five years ago or even further, they’re selling sites to businesses. And you’re always going to have that executive in the boardroom of, you know, we’ve been selling in our stores for 50 years. Why do we need a website now? The internet’s fad, it’s going to go away. So why are we building a website? For us, in the eCommerce side, we can sit there and say, “You know, we did this work. Here’s the data to show that that actually increased your sales by Y percent, plus that other work we did that increased it Z percent.” So you can show the value of the work being done. Whereas a landing page or a blog is harder to do that. There’s a lot easier calculations for ROI on eCommerce than there is before. So we are benefiting a bit from that. And we can show in a project or two, here’s the ROI of the work we’ve done. So we can prove it and get more work going forward. I’ll gladly take that as my benefit over trying to sell normal sites, which I say as we’re trying to get into selling more normal sites. We’re known for eCommerce and 90% of our work is people saying, “I’ve got a site and it’s slow. Patrick, please save me.” What I keep telling people is if you build it right the first time you don’t have to be saved. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s where Mindsize comes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, big commerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe Casabona: Before we wrap up here, I do want to ask you about a couple of interesting services that you offer, and I’m wondering how you put them together. So this is like where the title question could be, right? How did you build it? One is the site audit, which is a two-week process where you audit an eCommerce site. And the other is kind of the white label agency service. So let’s talk about the site audit first. How did you kind of come up with that and what’s the process for it? Patrick Garman: Sure. So we’ve been doing site audits, basically, since the beginning of Mindsize. It’s a process we’ve refined over the years. It’s a process I had before Mindsize existed of how to look at a site and really drill down at the high level what we’re trying to solve. In that two weeks, it’s not two weeks of hardcore diving into code, looking at every single thing. It’s not a line for line review with a site. It’s looking at the analytics, looking at the data, looking at where the site is, where they want to take it, and determining what issues we see for one at the high level. We’re not going to find every single security flaw, and that’s not what we’re looking for. If you were to look at a chart of all the issues on a site, we’re looking for the mountain peaks. We’re looking for the big issues that we can solve, get those out of the way. You’re going to find more afterwards. But we look to beat up the site and make it more scalable as a business and as a website. If we do that right, at the end of the two weeks, we’re going to deliver a report that’s going to say, “Here’s all our findings. Here’s what we recommend.” And every report also includes, you know, “Here’s our prioritized list. If this were our business, this is the order in which we would solve things in the timeline we would solve them.” And usually, it’s “in this month, we do this, in the next three months, six months, twelve months.” However long we need to go out, depending on how many issues there are. So we’ll list it out. Of course, we’re a business. At the very end, it’s going to say, “We also recommend a retainer of this size. This is how we can achieve everything we just said in the timeline we just said.” I tell everyone that we’re going to do that at the beginning so they’re not surprised. But this audit you can take anywhere. It’s a flat rate. It’s two weeks. We’ll dive into your site, we’ll figure out what’s wrong, and tell you how to make it better. And then we can do it. We’ve worked with companies who had their own internal development teams, and we assisted them to knock out the work. And others have just taken it straight to their own development teams. Joe Casabona: I mean, that makes sense for situations like that. It’s like a discovery phase, right? Well, a paid discovery phase, where I will tell you everything that you need to do. “Here’s your whole plan. I can do it, because I just looked at the site, and I know how I’m going to do it. Or you could take it to another site, another agency who will do it may be cheaper or differently, or you’ve worked with them before.” It almost sounds like this is like the car inspection, right? Where you’re not going to fix like the stains on the seats or whatever. But if I need new brakes and rotors, that’s the thing that your site audit will uncover and you’ll mention in the report. Patrick Garman: Exactly, yeah. And we have found things from API’s that didn’t need to exist. The absolute worst offender was…I think, as developers, sometimes we get specs that had buzzwords in them. And I think this one included REST API. So they found a way to use the REST API. But the way they did it, it needed to talk to an external database. So they made a REST API endpoint that served database credentials that were already hard coded into the site. The REST API endpoint had no authentication. So you could just get it for free. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: And then code within the site. I’m pretty sure it’s in the same exact plugin actually would make a HTTP call to the REST API endpoint, which then bootstrap the site again to then get the database credentials to then put them into a SQL query. Joe Casabona: Oh, my gosh. Patrick Garman: We find some crazy stuff sometimes. We obviously fix that. We find security issues. Sometimes we flag it right away. We don’t wait for the end of the two weeks. Joe Casabona: That’s what I was going to ask you. Do you like find it, and you are like, “Put it in the report.” Or you were like, “Uh, guys, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Patrick Garman: We found a few cases like that where we had actually reached out… Usually, we start the audit and we ask questions along the way. But we try not to get too much bias. And at the end of the audit, we do a one-hour call just going over everything with the store owner. But in those cases, we reach out, we let them know. We’ll usually have some sort of fix ready or a recommended fix. So we do sometimes find the granular, but we’re usually not looking for it. Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s story reminded me of a site that I was working on for some people I worked for at some point, where they were taking donations and the credit card information was stored in a plain text file on the server. I immediately brought it to the manager and I was like, “This is bad for a lot of reasons, but number one is you’re violating… this is not PCI compliant. This is a data security issue. This is really bad.” Patrick Garman: Unfortunately, I think we’ve all got stories like that. We’ve run into it too. I’ve been running into those as long as I’ve been working on WooCommerce, which is starting around like version 1.1. Joe Casabona: Wow. It’s just like crazy. Because the first time a client brought that to me, I was still in college. They said that they were like raffling off a house, like a million-dollar home, and PayPal view that as gambling, so we couldn’t use PayPal. So they’re like, “Well, why don’t we just save the credit card information then we could process it on our end on our machine.” And I’m like, “You can’t do that. We’re not allowed to do that. It’s bad. People’s credit cards will get stolen.” I knew that as a college kid. I just don’t understand how it gets to a point where, I mean, I guess it’s just like my nephew can make a site and he’s just going to do whatever I tell him to do. Patrick Garman: Is that the guy I mentioned or referred to before, the executive in the boardroom that thinks the internet is a fad, yeah, let’s just get the credit cards, we’ll run them. Joe Casabona: That’s a good point actually. The CEO of that company is the person who made that recommendation. Thankfully for them and me, I was like, “We can’t do that.” Which brings me to your next service, the White Label eCommerce. Because that project, to use an Italian term, gave me agita. Once I saw that it was going sideways, it made me actually sick to my stomach. It was like the highest stakes site I’d ever worked on, and I didn’t have like the breadth of experience I thought I needed. I really could have probably used your white label service. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that. Patrick Garman: I don’t remember where I first heard this phrase, but experience is what you needed when you didn’t have it. I’ve talked to a number of site owners, agency owners, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the eCommerce space. Mindsize, we’re 11 people. We’re not a tiny company but we’re not a huge company. We consider ourselves experts on the work we’re doing. So we charge accordingly. We’re not the cheapest, we’re not the most expensive either. But there’s a lot of work that other people can do with some simple guidance. Something where you can build it. Joe, you’ve got development skills. If I told you how to build something, you could build it. You just need the blueprint for how to build it, which you don’t have. As a company and me personally, I try and give back a lot to the community. My entire career is built on the community effectively. I got a lot of information from it. I’m the developer I am today with a lot of the code reuse I got previously. So I try and get back to the community. I try and do a lot of talks just sharing information. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much I can share. Our agency support plan, though, it’s $499 a month and basically gets you direct access to the Mindsize architects. So in our projects, we have the project manager, we have an architect and a project lead and then the developers on it. So an architect would be someone like myself. I can take the business needs and turn it into the architectural plans for a project or a task that we’re doing. Once we have that spec, we can then work with the project manager and project lead to turn it into what the tasks are and then have the developers do it. So with this plan, $500 bucks a month, you get five support hours with our architects. You could use those for asking, “Hey, I need to build this plugin. How do I make sure it’s scalable?” It could be “what kind of hosting should I look for this type of site?” One of the first questions I ask when we’re hiring and I’m in second interviews is, “What is your recommended hosting.” And for 90% of people in our interviews, it’s usually a shared hosting. And there’s different levels. I get all the way from Bluehost, to GoDaddy, to Siteground, one on one, all the big names that popped up. That goes to show you even people who are getting to our second interviews of senior developers may not know what the best hosting for a different type of site is. And our architects do. So, five hours a month, you can ask quite a few questions. If you were to ask me, What do I do to find out how the site is slow, and I tell you, “Install Query Monitor, look for pretty colors,” we’re going to have that conversation in five to 15 minutes. So you get that benefit of being able to ask questions to people you trust will get an answer to you within a day, you know, business days. I think, for most people will get a Slack channel set up to use. There’s quick and easy access. But what I’ve learned the most from other business owners and agency owners is we have nowhere to turn for this stuff. We’ll try slack, we’ll try different communities, we’ll try online. And I wish I could just have these questions. $500, for some people, it’s too expensive. For small mom-and-pop shops, they’re probably not going to pay $500 for support. But for a decent-sized agency that just needs this extra level of support, it seems like the right price point. And on top of that, I actually saw recently in some of the Facebook groups I’m in with different smaller freelancers and agency owners, how do you take vacation if you’re solo? Who do you give your clients off to? With our agency support plan, we also have an opportunity for getting our development hours at a discounted rate. So if you need to just have us do some work for you either for a large project or for someone who just wants someone to watch the ship while they’re away and having a vacation, they deserve to finally take, our teams available to help with that too. So we think we’re experts in what we do and we’re trying to share that in a way that benefits everyone involved—as you’re probably not going to ask the same question multiple times. So once we answer something for you, you’re going to learn from that, continue to know it, it will better your business as well. Joe Casabona: I think that’s great. There’s two points I want to just kind of drive home here. $500 a month you say might seem expensive to maybe freelancers or small mom and pop shops. But if you can sell an eCommerce site, right… I mean, I don’t want to anchor a price to an eCommerce site, but when people come to me, I say an eCommerce site sell at $10,000 for me to do the basics. Whatever, right? One guy came to me and needed like 10,000 products, medical products on the site. And I was like, “That’s going to be $30,000.” He’s like, “That’s expensive.” And I’m like, “Like, “It is $3 per product. $3 per product is what I’m charging you.” But if you sell on eCommerce site, you’re probably selling it where you can add in that extra 500 bucks a month to get access to deliver an even better site. The value that you are going to add by paying that 500 bucks is going to be much more than 500 bucks to the client. Patrick Garman: And if you think of the hourly rate, someone who’s going to be interested in this and is probably charging, it’s going to be somewhere…I’m assuming, $50 to $75 to like $100 $125 an hour. $500 monthly, that’s an hour to a week extra. If we can answer questions for you that can get you back an hour or two a week to better serve your own clients and immediately has ROI. Joe Casabona: Right, exactly. Spend that hour, go on a podcast. That’s a little bit of marketing to maybe get more clients, right? Patrick Garman: That’s what I’m doing. Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. The other thing is you mentioned taking vacation time and getting people to cover for you. I think this is another important thing that it’s easy for solo shops to overlook. But find somebody like a friend or Mindsize. When I went on my honeymoon, two weeks in Italy did not even take my laptop. I barely had internet. I asked my friend Matt Pritchett, Fort Worth natives, right? I think he’s living in Tennessee now. I’m sorry, Matt, you’ve moved a lot and I’ve lost track. But I asked him, I’m like, “Hey, man, I’ll just forward my emails to you. If there’s a problem with one of my clients’ sites, do the work, “I’ll pay you when I get home.” There were shocker there were no insane emergencies. So I think it’s really important. It’s maybe hard for some people but take that time. Take that time to yourself. Patrick Garman: We’re all working too hard. I mean, between the work I was doing prior to Mindsize, and then starting an agency, and then also just getting through a pandemic, I mean, as a business—not all businesses were as fortunate as we were to survive even in 2020—but I took my first vacation where I wasn’t working in 10 years last year. Joe Casabona: Wow. Patrick Garman: I spent a week. I did have my laptop on me. So I didn’t go that far. I’m too paranoid to not bring it with, but I trusted the team we have. Over the course of 2020, we put a lot of processes and policies in place that enabled me to finally take a vacation. I mean, I had taken trips to Disney and I was sitting in our resort room working. Joe Casabona: I worked from the Disney Vacation Club members lounge in Epcot one day. I had my laptop with me. It was kind of planned. It was like a half vacation day but I have my laptop with me. I’ll tell you. I mean, working at Disney World makes working a little less bad, but I’d still rather be. Patrick Garman: Yeah. It’s better not to. But walking down Main Street with my phone out on slack trying to tell someone how to reboot a server, that’s not what I should be doing on Main Street. Joe Casabona: Amazing. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Patrick Garman: I’ve kind of given them away a little bit. But at the end of the day, for an eCommerce site or any site, keep it simple. I mean, that’s number one. Simplicity is going to make everything better. I run into that every week where someone’s trying to overthink a problem or clients building content had a scenario yesterday. One of our clients building content on a page and the page builders alert block that was there, when you click “dismiss,” it would throw the page out of whack a bit. So I have a question, “Do you need it dismissable?” “No. Okay, so don’t make a dismissable. It’s simpler content, and it’s not going to break.” We could spend five hours figuring out why the “dismiss” button is making the content go out of whack. But we have a problem now, so we solve it now with a simple solution. And number two is just look at your database queries. If you have an eCommerce site and it’s on WooCommerce, install Query Monitor. It’s free. It’s not that hard to use. How many queries are you running? How much can you get rid of? The less you do by keeping it simple, your site’s going to go farther, and be faster. Joe Casabona: Love it. And Query Monitor is fantastic. I think Brian Richards, friend of the show, recommended that plug in to me when I was having some issue. Well, this has been fantastic. What we haven’t touched on, which we’ll touch on in Build Something More, is you recently went through a rebrand and I would love to hear more about that because I just signed up as we record this for Design Pickle. So now I have a graphic designer who I love his work. I’m just so excited to have all of the things that I designed which is basically just like a font redesigned from a real person, a real graphic designer. So excited to talk about that in Build Something More. But first, Patrick, where can people find you? Patrick Garman: I’m usually on Twitter. My personal tag is @pmgarman. I’m not AGPS. You can also find Mindsize there @Mindsizeme, and then my own website Pmgarman.me and mindsize.com. Joe Casabona: All right. I will have links to those and everything we talked about in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/211. If you want to catch my discussion with Patrick on the rebrand and Build Something More, and you are not yet a member, you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. Thanks so much to our sponsors for this episode: TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and of course Mindsize. Thanks so much for listening. Patrick, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Patrick Garman: Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here. Joe Casabona: And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source

How I Built It
Why Having a Personal Brand is SO Important to Your Success with Michelle Knight

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2021 49:22


Have you ever wondered why your product or service didn’t get much traction on social media even though you post all the time? According to Michelle Knight, it’s all about your personal brand (or lack thereof). Maybe you’ve heard the term before, but what does “personal brand” really mean? Luckily, Michelle has us covered! She’ll tell us all about why you need a personal brand and how to craft one. In Build Something More, we talk Star Wars in the pre-show and social media dos/don’ts, traveling, and schooling in the post-show. This has been one of my favorite conversations so far this year! (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe:Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about theBuild Something Weeklynewsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over athowibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro:Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 210 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today’s sponsors areMindsize,Restrict Content Pro, andTextExpander, who you will be hearing about later on in the show. Now, if you are aBuild Something Clubmember, if you’re subscribed to Build Something More but you happen to be picking up the normal feed, definitely get the Build Something More feed because we, Michelle and I, had a fantastic pre-show conversation, which is a show first. I’m sending out the pre-show because it was really good. Speaking of, my guest is Michelle Knight. She is the personal branding and marketing strategist over atBrandmerry. Michelle, how are you today? Michelle Knight:Oh, great. Thanks for having me. Loved our little pre-show chat. Joe: Likewise. Likewise. Thanks for joining me on the show here. Thanks for joining us. It was a lot of fun and nerd culture and WandaVision. First of all, if you’re not watching WandaVision, you should watch WandaVision. I guess by the time this comes out, we will actually be behind. So, if you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert. But if you’re all caught up, you know, don’t tell past us what happened. That’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking today about how to market your business without relying on social media, which I’m really excited about. I was looking at your website, again, personal branding consultant. I think this is a really good topic to talk about because I feel like I was telling my students about this like 10 years ago. I was teaching at the college level, college freshmen a computer literacy course, and I’m like, “You need to have a personal brand.” And they’re like, “Who cares?” But now fast forward to 2021, I feel like that’s even more important. So before we dive into the kind of social media stuff, I suspect having a strong personal brand will help with that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you do there? Michelle Knight:Yeah, absolutely. I founded my companyBrandmerryright after my son was born in 2016 out of just the need to be home, to just not want to commute to work anymore. I had a background in PR, background in communications and I dove headfirst into creating my online business with really kind of wearing this coach consultant hat. I struggled a lot. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was mimicking everybody else. I spent months creating a website that then didn’t look like or sound like me, which is highly relatable to a lot of people. About nine months into it, when I was planning on leaving my nine to five, I was like, “Something needs to shift.” So I started to do more and more research outside as well as some internal research to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to build a brand around. And everything really started to shift for me at that point in time. I started to show up in a different way, I started to really express myself, I did more live videos and I started to share more stories. And instantly, I saw connections start to happen. The same people who had been in my community for months were buying from me suddenly. And I didn’t change the offer. All I did was change how I was showing up and creating a brand that was a representation of that. So that’s what I really fell in love with personal branding and storytelling, and I spent, the next three or four years really focusing on that aspect, teaching entrepreneurs specifically how to figure out, number one, who they are and how they want to show up online and then creating a brand and a product suite that’s in alignment with that mission. And then I’ve moved in the last couple of years to focus on, now, how do we market that? Because you realize really quickly that you can have an amazing personal brand, you can have an amazing product, but if you don’t know how to effectively market it, then nobody else is going to know about it. Joe:I love that. And it’s so funny that you mentioned that because I feel like between the pre-show and this you must have been listening into the solo episode I recorded right before this, which wasEpisode 205, where I talked about my failed Patreon experiment. It’s the same thing. I started this podcast in 2016. I went self-employed in 2017 after my daughter was born, and I thought, “I need to launch memberships. I need to launch a membership for my podcast.” And I just copied everyone else’s benefits, everyone else’s levels. And I’m like, “How come no one’s buying?” And then I came to realize I’m just promising a bunch of stuff that I don’t even know if I can deliver or not. So I took that down, and I’ve changed directions. Well, now people are actually buying my membership because it reflects me and what I can offer. So I think that’s fantastic. Michelle Knight:Well, I tell people all the time that people don’t buy the product or the service, there’s a million products and services that are exactly the same across the board. If people really just focused on that, then they would just buy the first thing that they see. But it’s about that connection, it’s about that relationship. And that’s why personal branding is so important. Joe:Yeah, absolutely. As people listen to this, I know that’s something I struggled with early on when I was freelancing and making websites for people was, how do I write my copy? Do I write “I”? Do I write “we”? Who is this? Is it the royal we? So maybe we can start there? How you present yourself, as you said, is so integral to connecting with customers, with selling more products and services? I or we? Michelle Knight:I think it depends. I think when you’re starting a business and you’re the sole CEO and face of that business, I always recommend going with “I”. Primarily because, who is the “we”? You and your imaginary team, probably not in the beginning. You’re the decision-maker at that point in time. The “I” allows for more of that personal connection. If you’re working with a company, I think you go back and forth. If we’re speaking on behalf of the company, I have a background in nonprofit management, if you’re speaking on behalf of the nonprofit and the work that they do, it’s a “we”. But if your CEO is stepping out and saying something, sharing their story, sharing what they’re doing, it’s an “I”. And then I guess as your business evolves, and I see this a lot, especially as someone who has added more team members and is moving more into a company role, I go back and forth between the two. If it’s me, I’m showing up, I’m sharing a story, I’m focusing on connecting, I’m the one telling the story. But if I’m talking about the team as a whole and we made this decision, then I can share that. So right out of the gate, I say default to “I”. As you grow, incorporate the “we.” Joe:I think that’s great. And that’s generally the advice that I’ve recommended as well just because, you know, there are benefits to working one on one with a freelancer. And maybe they’re not available 24/7 but they are there to fully understand your business to be invested in a way that some giant agency can’t be. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:Awesome. So when it comes to building your personal brand, we’re not just talking about website copy and “I” or “we.” What are we talking about? If I wanted to start investing in more of a personal brand for me, where would I start? Would I look inwardly? Would I do some research into things I should consider? What does the process look like? Michelle Knight:It’s kind of all of that. I like to say that branding as a whole, and I think it’s important to say, is an experience. I think very old school and what I thought even just five years ago was like, “Let me get my website up. Let me choose my colors and my fonts. If I do that everything will be fine.” And we’ve really learned. And now that information is so readily available to us, that it’s not about those things. It really is about the experience that we’re creating. And those things can help with that process, but at the end of the day, it’s that voice, it’s that mission, it’s how we’re carrying through everything that we’re doing, from website design to coffee to our products and our offers. The method that I teach is first to look inward because as a recovering perfectionist, I have a tendency to go outward, and say, “Oh, what are you doing? That seems to be working. Let me just copy that.” And that’s what happened in the beginning of my business. So I recommend going inward first. The first practice that I love to guide people through is just what’s your story because one of the first pieces of copy that everyone should really write is their brand story. And it’s one of the most fun things that you can create in the beginning. So going inward and saying, “What is my story? What has led me to where I am today? What’s the purpose behind me wanting to put my work out in the world?” As I mentioned before, I’m from a nonprofit background. So I always recommend my clients establish a mission for their brand. What are your values? These are the things that you want to identify right out of the gate so that you can make sure that you’re always showing up in those pieces—your brand is always showing up. Then the second piece of this is, all right, now, who do you want to attract? A lot of people forget this step of the personal brand, and then we start showing up sharing content and stories and it’s not resonating with people because it’s just about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, when what we share needs to resonate with the people that we want to attract. So, you’re not showing up and just like writing your biography online. You’re building a business. So the stories that you share, the content that you share, even the colors that you choose needs to come down to, you know, how do I want my audience to feel? What are they seeking? What are they looking for? What’s happened in their life? That portion of it is where we get more into research, you know, the dreaded ideal client research that everyone hates. But I swear you have to do it. I personally love it. But that’s where that piece comes in. So then you combine those two things together, and you say, “All right, now let me decide what offer can I create based on my expertise that my audience absolutely needs? Because I know them so well at this point. What types of messages can I create that showcase my expertise and my strengths that resonate with my ideal customer. And so everything then kind of pulls on those two pieces as you build your business. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byRestrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than theRestrict Content ProWordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. 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If you want to learn more aboutRestrict Content Proand start making money with your own membership site today, head on over tohowibuilt.it/rcp, that’showibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks toRestrict Content Profor supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe:This is the exact thing that I said, again, in that episode I just recorded. “I made the Patreon copy about me and I started my own business and I want to make content full time. And you should give me money so I can make content full time.” And I just read it back recently and I’m like, “What was I even thinking?” Who cares? Who cares that I want to make content? People want good content, and they will support good content, but they’re not just going to give me money to create it because I want to create, I should say. Michelle Knight:Exactly. Unless you’re a celebrity, and then maybe they’ll be so obsessed with you and your life that they’re like, “Yeah, sign me up to watch behind the scenes.” But the majority of us are not there. And I think too, just circling back to what you said, everyone wants to know what’s in it for me? What’s the benefit? So even if you are at a stage where maybe you’re sharing behind-the-scenes stuff, why should someone pay you to see that? What’s the benefit to them? So no matter what you’re doing with your copy with your content, even with storytelling, where you might be saying, “My son was one month postpartum when I started my business,” you still gotta turn it back around to your audience and provide value to them so it’s not like a talking head situation. Joe:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that’s fantastic. And then looking inwardly, I think that’s really important. A book that has just resonated with me ever since the day I read it was “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek. And it’s what you said there. A lot of the same things. It’s figure out why you’re doing something. Establish your mission. And then everything should focus around that. Now, a lot of the listeners here are small business owners. A lot are in the WordPress space, but a lot aren’t. I guess that was a weird thing to say. That’s redundant. A lot of people are definitely small business owners who maybe don’t have the time or resources to fully invest in something like this. Are there one or two things that they should really focus on first and then maybe build out over time? Michelle Knight:Yeah. What I always recommend is get super clear on those two pieces that we just talked about. You understand, like I said, your mission, craft, understand what has led you to where you are. Because doing that story work allows you to pull on the strengths and the experiences that you’ve had, which then you can share through your copy and your content. And then you’ve got to do the ideal client research. Don’t tell me you don’t have time for it, because you’re going to suffer. People come to me and they’re like, “I don’t know what content to share.” And I’m like, “Do your ideal client research.” “I don’t know how to write a better copy.” Do your ideal client research. We always want to think there’s some mystery formula that we just have to follow. But it really is just like do the work, do the dirty work and you’re going to be set up for success in your business. I call it the foundation. One of my first coaches was like, “You shouldn’t use that word. It’s not sexy.” And I was like, “I don’t care.” It’s legit what I’m teaching. You build a foundation like you would a building so that you continue to add to it. And it just topples on top of itself. So those two pieces are key. I tell entrepreneurs all the time you don’t need a perfect website. You don’t need… Designers don’t come at me. But you don’t need to hire a designer in your first year of business. There are so many tools out there. Go into Canva, put some colors in there, and make a logo. You don’t even need a frickin logo, which branding people always come at me for that too. It really comes down to your copy and your messaging. If you can write clearly to your ideal customer, you can have a white background on a sales page with black copy and a photo and a button and you will still make sales. Joe:Yep, absolutely. What you said there really reminds me of like, get super clear on your mission. If you don’t do the ideal client research, you’re wasting your time. It reminds me of just last night, I woke up in the middle of the night. My son was hungry, he was crying. I didn’t want him to wake up my daughter. So I ran downstairs and I pulled a bottle out of the fridge. Now I knew I should have warmed it up. Because he doesn’t like cold formula. But I was like it’ll be fine. And I tried feeding him for like 10 minutes and he kept rejecting it and then I had to go back downstairs. And then he drank it all. But I wasted probably 20 minutes there. And I knew. So don’t serve your business cold formula I guess is what I’m trying to say. Michelle Knight:I love, love, love that analogy. And you wasted 20 minutes, but entrepreneurs waste years. Joe:Me too. I’ve done it. Michelle Knight:I start working with entrepreneurs and they’re like, “I have a website. I post every day on social media. I’m doing the things.” And when we nearly get down to it, there are gaps in their foundational pieces. That small tweaks fix and then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, sweet. Now I just need to show up and keep running with this and scale my business.” Joe:Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned social media. Part of the reason that I had you on the show, which by the way, Brittany Lin, and I know I’ve mentioned her on the show before, she’s helped me out. She’s helped me figure out my kind of ideal client stuff and the niches I want to be in, connected us. And the thing that caught me the most was how to market your business without relying on social media. I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say, “I learned a long time ago that if you build it, they will come. That field of dreams marketing does not work. As a developer, that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. But then I just moved on to another fallacy, which is if I tweet it, they will come. I thought if I launched a course, if I tweet that I launched the course, people will see it’s great and they will buy it. But that’s not really how it works. Michelle Knight:No, unfortunately. I mean, fortunately for me because I teach the strategies, but unfortunately for us as entrepreneurs. Like I said, I was right there too. I spent eight months with my husband trying to figure out this whole website thing. And then I launched it, like full champagne toast video on Instagram, like full thing, nobody came. My mom maybe. And that website even sat there for months and months and months and wasn’t getting consistent traffic. So, I think like you were saying, one of the first things is that we build a website, and then we’re like, “All the people will find my website.” But it doesn’t work like that. So then we go to social media, which is really the first thing that we’re taught when we want to start a business. “Just post on Facebook, post on Instagram, post on Twitter, and people will find you.” But the reality is that people are using those platforms to find things. They are using those platforms for connection. So a lot of entrepreneurs use social media solely as the top level for getting in front of their cold audience and attracting that. The brand awareness stage basically. When really social media at emphasis should be more on that connection stage, moving your audience through the buying process, the personal branding aspect, then watching you on Insta stories. Are you making a funny reel? Are those different things? That’s where it should be. But so many entrepreneurs were focused on it to find new people, and then build their email platform. And then they grow by like five people every two weeks, and they get frustrated, when there’s actually a better way as I have come to find out. Joe:Yes. We’re going to talk about that. Perhaps in Build Something More we can talk about maybe effective social media uses, right? Because like you mentioned reels, and I’m like, “I don’t know how to use reels.” Somebody just invited me to Clubhouse today and I don’t know what I’m doing there. In Build Something More, we’ll talk about specific social media platforms, what to do, what not to do. But you have a better way besides just tweeting or writing on Facebook, “Hey, my website. Come check out my website.” My friends and family don’t care that I sell podcast courses. They don’t really know I have a podcast. Michelle Knight:It’s not that I hate social media. And I tell people this, I actually love it. I love hanging out on there and having fun. But it should not be what we rely on to build our email list, to attract consistent leads, and convert to sales. You think of a triangle, an upside-down triangle, we’ve all seen it like a pyramid, you’ve got that cold traffic coming in the top. That has to be consistent. Otherwise, the bottoms just going to dry up. You’re not going to have anybody moving into a paying customer. So these more evergreen strategies that I love to teach are the strategies that allow those consistent leads to come in without requiring you to consistently create new content every single day. Joe:I was going to say you’re speaking my language because my wife, and listeners now, my wife’s a nurse, she works three 12 hour shifts a week, which means on those days I’m watching my kids. So I’m not working. I don’t have time to create that kind of new content. Evergreen strategies sound like exactly what I need. Michelle Knight:This came about for me on accident really, because I had done the things, as we’ve talked about, I built the business and I did hit six figures in my business in a year through a lot of exhaustive hustle. I was raising a baby, I was working nine to five for the first nine months. So I was optimizing my strategies, I had some systems in place, but I was like, “There’s no way I can grow past this, and maintain this same idea.” So that’s when I really started to look at things like Pinterest, search engine optimization, the power of Google and blogging, YouTube video, or more of the search engine platforms where people are seeking out support in these areas, getting them, hooking them and then nurturing and building my community through fun content. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byTextExpander. It’s a new year and you can start off on the right foot by reclaiming your time. WithTextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. WithTextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste, better than scripts and templates,TextExpandersnippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages.TextExpandercan be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type. Take back your time and increase your productivity in the new year. And let me just say that snippets is not all it does. With advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop up fields, and much more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can useTextExpanderto manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharingTextExpandersnippets with my virtual assistant. This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home.TextExpanderis the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive.TextExpanderis available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about tryingTextExpanderor simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visittextexpander.com/podcastand let them know that I sent you. Joe:Maybe let’s pick one. Maybe let’s do YouTube, right? Michelle Knight:Okay. Joe:You said that you found YouTube as… that’s the number two search engine in the world. Google is number one, and then Google owns YouTube is number two. People go there to learn things. So if I’m trying to develop an effective strategy for building an audience through these evergreen strategies, is YouTube a good channel for that? Michelle Knight:It is. I always tell people to really think about how they like to create content. So some people love video. I’m one of those people. And I love video to be my core piece of content. So one of the things that I teach is repurposing. And people call me the repurposing Queen because I can take one piece of content and I can turn it into like 32 pieces of content. Joe:Awesome. Michelle Knight:So some people like video, some people write and so they prefer blogging. Truly the strategies are the same across the board. So that’s what’s cool. I mean, the way you upload your title, and maybe your keywords is different placement but the process that you go through is the same. And the reason that these all work, again, is because there’s search engines. Same with Pinterest, which a lot of people don’t think about. But Pinterest is where you go, you type in the search bar, it’s all keyword optimized and so people will find your content. I don’t know about you, but I don’t search for anything on Facebook. No. So when you’re thinking about these different platforms, and I’m happy to share some of the steps on that, but what I really want to drive home to is that you’re hitting people at every single stage of the buying process. So rather than just attracting somebody who’s maybe looking for content, we’re also attracting and getting in front of people who are ready to buy. So there’s the stages of the buying process. Someone understands they’ve got a problem, and so they’re looking for options to solve their problem. Then they move into the research stage, which is where people are googling and looking on YouTube and stuff like that, then they’re aware of a solution. So now they’re trying to explore, like, what’s the best solution for them. They’ve figured it out and now they’re shopping around to figure out which one they’re going to buy. And then they become a buyer. There are people who are at stage five, who are like, “I have my money, I want to give it to someone.” I’m telling you, they’re going to Google, they’re typing in what they want, and then they’re hitting up the first 30 people. And I know that because that’s where most of my clients come from is just searching in branding coach, and landing on my website, strong personal brand, investing the money. That’s what’s so cool about the whole concept of evergreen SEO optimized content is you’re able to get people in every single stage, whether they’re just looking for help with three tips to write a better story, they might land on a blog post, or they’re just ready to pull out their credit card. Joe:I think that’s fantastic. And it’s so funny that you mentioned Pinterest because I hadChelsea Clarkeon the show a few episodes ago and that was her trade secret. Michelle Knight:Yes, mine too. Joe:She was like, “Not enough people are using Pinterest.” So I think that’s so funny. I told Chelsea I would look into it now. I definitely will look into it. That’s incredible. This is really interesting that you say that. Because again, the conventional wisdom says like, “You need to get people at the top of the funnel and you introduce yourself. And then you get them on your mailing list and then you market to them for like 14 years and then maybe they’re right on. But people who are ready to spend money, those are probably the best people to directly market to in the short term. I don’t want to say that the nurturing is bad, obviously, because it’s great. But if people are willing to spend their money, they might as well spend it with you. Michelle Knight:Totally. The nurturing part is so fun. I’ve had things where I’m like, “Oh, you’re cool. Let me just see what you’re about and I’ll buy down the road.” But I think as a business owner, it’s important to understand that your ideal customer could be at these different stages. And when you create this evergreen type of content, you’re able to show up and pull them in no matter what stage they’re at, rather than social media, which is totally different. Not to mention actually getting it in front of people who are searching for it is near impossible. So that’s why these strategies are so helpful in sustainably growing your business, getting those consistent leads, and making that consistent sale. Joe:I think that’s super important. Again, if we’re talking about YouTube, just, for example, people are finding that evergreen content. I know because I see the comments come in on my YouTube videos, the most popular ones, and it’s like, “How to do separate audio tracks with Zoom.” Or my friends are like, “Dude, I searched on YouTube and you were the first one to come up. Great video.” How do I… how does one… I don’t want to make this seem like it’s about me. I was always that guy in class who raised his hand and asked a question because I knew I had that question but I assumed like half of the class also had that question. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:How do I get them from YouTube to mailing list? Or is from YouTube to mailing list even the right move? You say all these people are at different stages. What’s my call to action post-YouTube video? Michelle Knight:I always recommend email list. Because I always say an email is the first investment that someone will make in your business. And when we start thinking about email addresses as currency, everything changes. It pains me when people are like, “Come follow me on Instagram.” Or like, “Just like this video,” and that’s it. It’s like, no, if someone’s watched the end of your video for YouTube specifically and they’re engaged, they’re ready for the next step. So give them that opportunity. So across the board, no matter what you do, I always recommend some sort of lead magnet, some way to get somebody on your email list. And in service base, that’s typically something free. A free guide, a free video free something. But it can also be product-based. A coupon. Take a quiz. There’s all kinds of different things that you can do. But that’s really important because people are typically like, “This is great. I want more of this.” And we want to get them on our email list. Because although your email list is maybe on a platform that you don’t control, the reality is you do have more control over that information than Facebook or Instagram. If Instagram went down, and that was all that you were using to get in touch with your community, you would be screwed. But if you have an email list on the back end, you can download that spreadsheet, move to a different platform email, get really creative with it. So across the board, I recommend that. And because these pieces of content are evergreen, I very rarely recommend pitching a product or a service unless it too is evergreen. So if you have a course that you sell all the time or a membership site that people can join or even something that opens multiple times a year, and you’re just saying hey, “I offer this inside of my program, go here to learn more.” And then if they land their doors are open great. If not, they can join a waitlist. But yeah, across the board, always, always email list. I’m a firm believer in that one. Joe:Awesome. I’m really glad to hear that because that’s also what I’ve been preaching. I’m like, I’m a guy I know some things, but it’s always good to hear from the experts. But also I haven’t been good about that. I always end my YouTube videos with “like” and “smash that like button.” I’ve never said that for real. Michelle Knight:Thank you. Joe:“Like and subscribe,” and then my tagline. I’ll have like a card right so people can go, or the icon on the end screen. I’ve put a lot of time into my end screens, but saying it verbally in the video is super important, right? If you like what I’m talking about, get the free guide for whatever, 5 Zoom tips that’ll make you look even better. I just thought of that lead magnet now… Michelle Knight:I like it. Joe:By the time this comes out… Michelle Knight:It might be really valuable for a lot of people today. Joe:Yeah. I think that’s really important. And I really needed to hear that because at first, I wasn’t sure. But you’re right about owning your platform. I export my subscriber list like once every six weeks, which makes me sound like a crazy person. I use ConvertKit and I assume they’re not going anywhere because they’re really great. But if they disappear one day, I’m losing a bunch of email addresses. Michelle Knight:I use ConvertKit too. We do the same thing. We’re really adamant about our email list over here. I say we now because my team member actually does it. I don’t have to do it anymore. But we not only download but clean our list quite frequently. We get a lot of subscribers every day and I invest in advertising and some of those different avenues as well. I want to make sure that the people who are there actually want to be there. So we frequently like to clean our list to help with that as well. So there’s a little bonus tip for those of you. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byMindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s whereMindsizecomes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, big commerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check outMindsizeover atmindsize.comtoday. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’smindsize.com. Thanks so much toMindsizefor supporting the show. Joe:We are moving into the tips for listeners segment of the show. You’ve given us so much. But let’s say that somebody have taken your first two pieces of advice. Look inward, what’s your story, figure out your ideal client. What’s the next step? What should they do from there? Michelle Knight:I think from there, it really becomes creating content, we want to wait to create content until… I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, right? …we have the website up or the thing. But if you want to sell you need to have people to sell to. One of the best things that you can do once you’ve got a little solid ground with “Who am I? Who do I want to attract? What’s my mission? What am I offering?” then start putting content out there so that you can start building your audience. The first thing that I recommend is focus on quality content. Focus on things people are searching for. I’m holding my eyes right now—people can’t see me—because I’m trying to meditate. People always say, “What do I talk about? What do I create content about?” I’m like, “Go Google. See what people are searching for.” If you really want to show up, go into your niche and figure out what people need help with. There are so many free tools out there. I’m going to tell you some of them now.AnswerThePublicis an awesome free tool. All of these give you a limited amount of searches every day, but still just go do it every day for like five days, and you’ll be solid for 90 days.AnswerThePublicwill tell you the top questions being asked on Google. And you can type in your industry, you can type in your ideal customer, you can type in pain points, and they will tell you exactly what people are asking for. You can use a tool called Keywords Everywhere, which is a small investment but amazing when you’re wanting to do SEO. It’ll tell you how many monthly searches keywords get. You know you might be like, “This is great,” and it gets zero searches a month. It’s really going to help you. You can change even a little bit of the language, you can get thousand searches a month, and that’s amazing. You can even use YouTube specifically because they will autofill for you. So go to the search bar and type in something relevant to what you’re offering and let it tell you what the top searches are. So doing research and having that strong strategy in place to create content that people are actually searching for is important. And then you put your spin on it. I did a podcast episode the other day on morning routines. It was like pulling teeth from my team to get me to do this because I was like, “I’m not doing fluff content.” And they’re like, “Everyone keeps asking for this. Everyone wants this.” So I put my own spin on it. And it’s been a huge download. And I’ve gotten tons of messages that are like, “Oh my gosh, I love this.” You get to put your own spin on it, but you gotta make sure you’re getting in front of people. It’s the same with subject lines. If your subject line isn’t amazing, no one’s going to open your email, and no one’s going to know about all the goodness that you have. Same with titles of your content. So number one is focus on creating high-value quality content that people are actually searching for. Don’t just pull it out of thin air and be like, “This might be nice.” The good news is, you’ll have a lot of that information because you’ve done the ideal client research. Joe:I have been reminded… because I just do things I think are good ideas. I have been reminded that I am not my ideal customer. It’s something important to remember. This is great advice.AnswerThePublic. I’m definitely going to check that one out because I’ve never heard of it before. Really excited about that.Jennifer Bournwas on the show early on this year and she also talks about joining Facebook groups and even paid communities where people are asking questions of like… communities for your ideal customer, not communities of whatever you do professionally totally. Michelle Knight:Totally. And that’s what reallyAnswerThePubliccan also point you to forums and like Reddit and stuff, so then you can read through that. Full disclaimer. I actually hate Facebook groups. So I love them for paid stuff. Joe:Me too. Michelle Knight:But I don’t have my own account. I just stopped that a long time ago when I learned about evergreen content. But I will go into Facebook groups and just use the search function and just see what questions people are asking for support on and then write a blog post about it. So you’re totally right. It’s a great tool for ideal client research. Joe:That’s awesome. And then one more tool based on YouTube is vidIQ. Have you heard of this one? Michelle Knight:Yes. I love vidIQ. Joe:I think it’s really been helpful for me. I’ve only kind of used it superficially. Just like when I create a video, the extension in Chrome is there, and it’s like suggesting keywords. I really need to dive deep into it, though, because I think that it could be a really valuable tool for me. My channel is monetized now, and the amount I make is more than what they charge monthly. Michelle Knight:There you go. Joe:I think it’s a good investment. Michelle Knight:Well, it’s funny, because that actually is tip number two, which is to actually optimize your content. So you’re creating a high value content, you’re creating content that people are searching for, and then make sure that you’re actually optimizing that content. So no matter what platform evergreen platform you’re choosing will focus on YouTube, specifically, there are tools out there to tell you and give you tips on what keywords to use. Think about optimizing the title for search. The title, for instance, I might write a blog post that has a different title than a video of the same content that I put on YouTube, because I’m really paying attention to optimizing it for each of the platforms. Your thumbnail, right? Like making sure that these pieces are in place because they play a huge role in your content actually getting seen. We think like, “We’re going to have an amazing video, and everyone’s going to find it.” It really comes down to title and keywords and first impression. And that’s it. Those could be great and your video could suck and you’ll still rank as number one. We want it to be great all across the board so people want to hear more from you, but make sure when you’re creating this content, you’re taking the time to optimize it. Whether that’s SEO for blogging, writing your description, making sure your title and your keywords and your headers are in there. Same with Pinterest. Same with YouTube. Joe:Awesome. The YouTube thumbnail super-duper important. Michelle Knight:It’s crazy. Joe:I never thought about it until I noticed that all the people who were making similar content to me had them making a face and then pointing. Michelle Knight:It’s like a whole thing right now. Joe:It’s usually a screengrab of me that I like cut out and put but I just can’t… I saw one where I was like one finger up and looking like a teacher, and I’m like, “You look so unnatural.” But I’m doing my best. vidIQ is cool because it’ll show your thumbnail embedded with other thumbnails too in a search. Michelle Knight:Well, now you can do like gifs thumbnails. Joe:What? Michelle Knight:Yeah. You can do moving thumbnails. Joe:Breaking news. I did not know that. Michelle Knight:Breaking news. Joe:Awesome. I’m going to look into that too. I got a lot of homework for this episode. Michelle Knight:Sorry. Joe:Michelle, this has been so much fun. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Michelle Knight:Oh, man. I’m going to bring it back to the beginning on the storytelling piece. This is my secret. This is my secret. Not enough people do it. I’m going to challenge you that every piece of content that you create has a micro-story in it somewhere. Now that micro-story can be in the introduction, where you introduce what you’re sharing, and why you’re sharing it. That micro-story can be in the actual education piece of it. It can be at the end. But the thing with storytelling that is so amazing is the effect that it has in our audience’s brain. So when you incorporate even just one single sentence of storytelling in your content, your audience is 22 times more likely to remember it. I don’t know about you, but I want people to remember my stuff. So even just that simple thing… There’s neural co… I nerd out on this stuff. But there’s neural coupling that happens when we hear other people’s stories. So our brains are activated, dopamine is released. We feel good. And it doesn’t have to be an earth-shaking story as I like to say. It’s so small relatable moments. So that has been my secret. Every piece of content that I create, every podcast that I’m on, everything that you will see for me has a tiny little bit of storytelling in it, whether it’s mine or my ideal customer’s, or what I like to call future casting, which is like a pretend made up kind of figurative story because it’s so, so powerful, and will serve you on both branding and the marketing level and selling honestly. Joe:That’s awesome. Micro story. I love it. As you say that, something has clicked for me. Because one of my most popular pieces of content right now is a blog post that’s titled “Why Gear Matters Least when You’re Starting a Podcast. I tell a story about how growing up my favorite baseball player was Paul O’Neill and I wanted to bat like Paul O’Neill, but me trying to mimic him and look and sound like him, quote-unquote, didn’t work for me because first of all, I’m not a lefty. Second of all, he’s very tall. So I just think that’s great. Challenge accepted. Michelle Knight:All right. Joe:As I write more blog posts, I’m going to include a micro-story in each. I’m glad you said in the educational piece or at the end. Mine was towards the end. And I was questioning that. I’m like, “Should I put it up front to hook the reader?” But I think the headline hooked them enough to keep reading. Michelle Knight:It always depends on what you’re presenting. Sometimes if you have to give a backstory, especially like we talked about, educational content does really well because that’s what people are searching for. Sometimes you want to set that up. If we’re sharing a misconception or mistakes or how to do something, we might want to share our journey with that. But sometimes you can just hook by asking questions or speaking directly to your ideal customer. But yeah, no matter where, put that story in there. I don’t care where it is. Joe:Awesome. Michelle, this has been an absolute pleasure. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Instagram? Michelle Knight:Yeah, definitely find me on Instagram. You can go to my website, which is fully optimized. It’sbrandmerry.com. There’s links to all the things, tons of blog and video content on there, a freebie so you can join my email list You know, all the things. Joe:All the good stuff. Awesome. I will include that and all sorts of links that we talked about in the show notes over athowibuilt.it/210. If you want to hear Michelle and I talk more about the do’s and don’ts of specific platforms, maybe a little bit about travel because you mentioned something interesting in the pre-show, you can sign up for theBuild Something Clubover andbuildsomething.club. It’s a paltry $5 a month, and you get lots of really fantastic content, and a custom member chip—it’s a poker chip with a podcast logo on it. I love it. But in any case, Michelle, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Michelle Knight:Thank you for having me. Joe: And thanks to our sponsors: Mindsize, Restrict Content Pro, and TextExpander. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Joe:Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about theBuild Something Weeklynewsletter. It is weekly, it is free, and you will get tips, tricks, and tools delivered directly to your mailbox. I will recap the current week’s episode and all of the takeaways, I’ll give you a top story, content I wrote, and then some recommendations that I’ve been using that I think you should check out. So it is free, it is a weekly, it’s over at howibuilt.it/subscribe. Go ahead and sign up over athowibuilt.it/subscribe. Intro:Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 210 of How I Built It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today’s sponsors areMindsize,Restrict Content Pro, andTextExpander, who you will be hearing about later on in the show. Now, if you are aBuild Something Clubmember, if you’re subscribed to Build Something More but you happen to be picking up the normal feed, definitely get the Build Something More feed because we, Michelle and I, had a fantastic pre-show conversation, which is a show first. I’m sending out the pre-show because it was really good. Speaking of, my guest is Michelle Knight. She is the personal branding and marketing strategist over atBrandmerry. Michelle, how are you today? Michelle Knight:Oh, great. Thanks for having me. Loved our little pre-show chat. Joe:Likewise. Likewise. Thanks for joining me on the show here. Thanks for joining us. It was a lot of fun and nerd culture and WandaVision. First of all, if you’re not watching WandaVision, you should watch WandaVision. I guess by the time this comes out, we will actually be behind. So, if you haven’t seen it, spoiler alert. But if you’re all caught up, you know, don’t talk past what happened. That’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking today about how to market your business without relying on social media, which I’m really excited about. I was looking at your website, again, personal branding consultant. I think this is a really good topic to talk about because I feel like I was telling my students about this like 10 years ago. I was teaching at the college level, college freshmen a computer literacy course, and I’m like, “You need to have a personal brand.” And they’re like, “Who cares?” But now fast forward to 2021, I feel like that’s even more important. So before we dive into the kind of social media stuff, I suspect having a strong personal brand will help with that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you do there? Michelle Knight:Yeah, absolutely. I founded my companyBrandmerryright after my son was born in 2016 out of just the need to be home, to just not want to commute to work anymore. I had a background in PR, background in communications and I dove headfirst into creating my online business with really kind of wearing this coach consultant hat. I struggled a lot. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was mimicking everybody else. I spent months creating a website that then didn’t look like or sound like me, which is highly relatable to a lot of people. About nine months into it, when I was planning on leaving my nine to five, I was like, “Something needs to shift.” So I started to do more and more research outside as well as some internal research to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to build a brand around. And everything really started to shift for me at that point in time. I started to show up in a different way, I started to really express myself, I did more live videos and I started to share more stories. And instantly, I saw connections start to happen. The same people who had been in my community for months were buying from me suddenly. And I didn’t change the offer. All I did was change how I was showing up and creating a brand that was a representation of that. So that’s what I really fell in love with personal branding and storytelling, and I spent, the next three or four years really focusing on that aspect, teaching entrepreneurs specifically how to figure out, number one, who they are and how they want to show up online and then creating a brand and a product suite that’s in alignment with that mission. And then I’ve moved in the last couple of years to focus on, now, how do we market that? Because you realize really quickly that you can have an amazing personal brand, you can have an amazing product, but if you don’t know how to effectively market it, then nobody else is going to know about it. Joe:I love that. And it’s so funny that you mentioned that because I feel like between the pre-show and this you must have been listening into the solo episode I recorded right before this, which wasEpisode 205, where I talked about my failed Patreon experiment. It’s the same thing. I started this podcast in 2016. I went self-employed in 2017 after my daughter was born, and I thought, “I need to launch memberships. I need to launch a membership for my podcast.” And I just copied everyone else’s benefits, everyone else’s levels. And I’m like, “How come no one’s buying?” And then I came to realize I’m just promising a bunch of stuff that I don’t even know if I can deliver or not. So I took that down, and I’ve changed directions. Well, now people are actually buying my membership because it reflects me and what I can offer. So I think that’s fantastic. Michelle Knight:Well, I tell people all the time that people don’t buy the product or the service, there’s a million products and services that are exactly the same across the board. If people really just focused on that, then they would just buy the first thing that they see. But it’s about that connection, it’s about that relationship. And that’s why personal branding is so important. Joe:Yeah, absolutely. As people listen to this, I know that’s something I struggled with early on when I was freelancing and making websites for people was, how do I write my copy? Do I write “I”? Do I write “we”? Who is this? Is it the royal we? So maybe we can start there? How you present yourself, as you said, is so integral to connecting with customers, with selling more products and services? I or we? Michelle Knight:I think it depends. I think when you’re starting a business and you’re the sole CEO and face of that business, I always recommend going with “I”. Primarily because, who is the “we”? You and your imaginary team, probably not in the beginning. You’re the decision-maker at that point in time. The “I” allows for more of that personal connection. If you’re working with a company, I think you go back and forth. If we’re speaking on behalf of the company, I have a background in nonprofit management, if you’re speaking on behalf of the nonprofit and the work that they do, it’s a “we”. But if your CEO is stepping out and saying something, sharing their story, sharing what they’re doing, it’s an “I”. And then I guess as your business evolves, and I see this a lot, especially as someone who has added more team members and is moving more into a company role, I go back and forth between the two. If it’s me, I’m showing up, I’m sharing a story, I’m focusing on connecting, I’m the one telling the story. But if I’m talking about the team as a whole and we made this decision, then I can share that. So right out of the gate, I say default to “I”. As you grow, incorporate the “we.” Joe:I think that’s great. And that’s generally the advice that I’ve recommended as well just because, you know, there are benefits to working one on one with a freelancer. And maybe they’re not available 24/7 but they are there to fully understand your business to be invested in a way that some giant agency can’t be. Michelle Knight:Totally. Joe:Awesome. So when it comes to building your personal brand, we’re not just talking about website copy and “I” or “we.” What are we talking about? If I wanted to start investing in more of a personal brand for me, where would I start? Would I look inwardly? Would I do some research into things I should consider? What does the process look like? Michelle Knight:It’s kind of all of that. I like to say that branding as a whole, and I think it’s important to say, is an experience. I think very old school and what I thought even just five years ago was like, “Let me get my website up. Let me choose my colors and my fonts. If I do that everything will be fine.” And we’ve really learned. And now that information is so readily available to us, that it’s not about those things. It really is about the experience that we’re creating. And those things can help with that process, but at the end of the day, it’s that voice, it’s that mission, it’s how we’re carrying through everything that we’re doing, from website design to coffee to our products and our offers. The method that I teach is first to look inward because as a recovering perfectionist, I have a tendency to go outward, and say, “Oh, what are you doing? That seems to be working. Let me just copy that.” And that’s what happened in the beginning of my business. So I recommend going inward first. The first practice that I love to guide people through is just what’s your story because one of the first pieces of copy that everyone should really write is their brand story. And it’s one of the most fun things that you can create in the beginning. So going inward and saying, “What is my story? What has led me to where I am today? What’s the purpose behind me wanting to put my work out in the world?” As I mentioned before, I’m from a nonprofit background. So I always recommend my clients establish a mission for their brand. What are your values? These are the things that you want to identify right out of the gate so that you can make sure that you’re always showing up in those pieces—your brand is always showing up. Then the second piece of this is, all right, now, who do you want to attract? A lot of people forget this step of the personal brand, and then we start showing up sharing content and stories and it’s not resonating with people because it’s just about me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I, when what we share needs to resonate with the people that we want to attract. So, you’re not showing up and just like writing your biography online. You’re building a business. So the stories that you share, the content that you share, even the colors that you choose needs to come down to, you know, how do I want my audience to feel? What are they seeking? What are they looking for? What’s happened in their life? That portion of it is where we get more into research, you know, the dreaded ideal client research that everyone hates. But I swear you have to do it. I personally love it. But that’s where that piece comes in. So then you combine those two things together, and you say, “All right, now let me decide what offer can I create based on my expertise that my audience absolutely needs? Because I know them so well at this point. What types of messages can I create that showcase my expertise and my strengths that resonate with my ideal customer. And so everything then kind of pulls on those two pieces as you build your business. Sponsor:This episode is brought to you byRestrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than theRestrict Content ProWordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free levels and free trials. But that’s not all. Their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including ConvertKit and Mailchimp and integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. Since theBuild Something Clubrolled out earlier this year, you can bet it’s usingRestrict Content Pro. And I have used all of the things mentioned here in this ad read. I have created free levels. I’ve created coupons. I use ConvertKit and I’m using it with bbPress for the forums. I’m a big fan of the team, and I know they do fantastic work. The plugin has worked extremely well for me and I was able to get memberships up and running very quickly. Right now, they are offering a rare discount for how I built it listeners only: 20% off your purchase when you use RCPHOWIBUILTIT at checkout. That’s RCPHOWIBUILTIT, all one word. If you want to learn more aboutRestrict Content Proand start making money with your own membership site today, head on over tohowibuilt.it/rcp, that’showibuilt.it/rcp. Thanks toRestrict Content Profor supporting the show. And now let’s get back to it. Joe:This is the exact thing that I said, again, in that episode I just recorded. “I made the Patreon copy about me and I started my own business and I want to make content full time. And you should give me money so I can make content full time.” And I just read it back recently and I’m like, “What was I even thinking?” Who cares? Who cares that I want to make content? People want good content, and they will support good content, but they’re not just

Negocios & WordPress
142. Contenido restringido en WordPress

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2021 45:46


✏️ Deja tu comentario En el episodio de hoy os traemos algunas novedades de WordPress pero sobretodo enfocaremos nuestro tema central en proyectos que requieran restringir el contenido de alguna u otra forma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hNrbCLgS6E&t=1s Novedades Malas noticias para los poseedores de un hosting en OVH. Arden los servidores del mayor centro de datos de la empresa OVH, aunque nosotros nos hemos librado... Vemos a un Elías con bastante hype por las mejoras en SiteGround y no es para menos ya que prometen mucha más velocidad y mejor optimización de los contenidos, además de un nuevo panel. Toda la información en el siguiente enlace: https://eliasgomez.pro/articulos/velocidad-siteground/ Ya habíamos comentado por aquí las novedades de WordPress 5.7 pero como ya ha salido oficialmente, os dejamos un enlace al artículo publicado por Fernando Tellado. https://es.wordpress.org/2021/03/10/wordpress-5-7-esperanza/ Otra cosa que le encanta a Elías es Easy Digital Downloads, plugin que mencionaremos también más adelante en el tema central. Pero ahora nos centramos en las novedades de la versión 2.10 que entre otras cosas, ahora incluye la pasarela de pago Stripe. Como cada semana, comentaremos los tutoriales y novedades de Yannick en La Máquina del Branding. Esta semana, conexiones con REST API y Jet Engine, AffiliateWP y elementos responsive de los listing items. https://lamaquinadelbranding.com/capturando-datos-de-un-cct-externo-con-jet-engine-y-rest-api/ https://lamaquinadelbranding.com/affiliatewp-introduccion-y-ajustes-basicos/ https://lamaquinadelbranding.com/listing-grid-de-habitaciones-responsive-listing-item/ Además, anunciamos el primer directo de Yannick en La Máquina del Branding (sobre el DevTools KIT de Crocoblock) y os invitamos a una meetup que dará lugar el 25 de marzo, sobre Jet Engine, que por supuesto presentará Yannick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISOCrfRB2iw Contenido restringido en WordPress Como siempre, os dejamos aquí el guion del del tema central. Pequeña introducción acerca de los permisos y roles en WordPress.Caso 1 - Protegido con contraseña.Podemos hacerlo de forma nativa en WordPress, aunque para personalizar la apariencia tendremos que incluir un poco de CSS ya que por defecto lo dejará un poco... simple. Podemos editar un poco la apariencia haciendo referencia al hook the_password_form, y con un poco de CSS o incluso utilizar la función post_password_required y poner un condicional, etc...También tenemos opción de utilizar un plugin que permita más personalización tanto en diseño como en funciones: WordPress Protect Password Page.Y para los Elementers, cualquiera de los clásicos que todo el mundo tiene (The plus addons o Essential Addons) tienen widgets para configurar a medida estas opciones.Caso 2 - Restringir el contenido con permisos.Podemos crear un rol (o un permiso) para los usuarios que puedan acceder a cierto contenido. Hay 2 plugins importantes. Content Control y Restrict User Access.Caso 3 - Restringir el contenido a usuarios que hayan comprado un producto virtual.También debemos crear un rol. Pero en este caso, utilizamos el plugin Restrict (a secas) para que solo los usuarios que hayan comprado un producto obtengan el contenido asociado. Funciona con WooCommerce pero también con Easy Digital Downloads.WooCommerce Memberships (con o sin producto vinculado): https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-memberships/Contenido faseado (dripping content)Productos limitados a miembrosMétodos de envío para miembrosDescuentos para miembrosEDD Content Restriction: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/downloads/content-restriction/Proteger cualquier single de un CPT compelto, o parcial con shortcode, accesible a quién haya comprado un determinado producto (o a cualquier producto)Compatible con bbPressCaso 4 - Restringir el contenido a usuarios con un plan de suscripción o membresía.En este caso podemos encontrar plugins que nos hacen las 2 funciones, es decir, la restricción y la membresía. Tenemos Restrict Content PRO o también, si queremos tener WooCommerce como base, WooCommerce Memberships.Caso 5 - Restringir la compra de productos.Si simplemente queremos indicar que ciertos roles no puedan ver o comprar productos. Podemos utilizar el plugin gratuito Product Visibility by Role. En caso de que solamente miembros de un plan de suscripción puedan acceder a ellos, podemos utilizar un addon para Restrict Content PRO, se trata de la integración de RCP con WooCommerce.Otros casos, control de visibilidad y métodos artesanosEn ocasiones podemos querer utilizar algo más sencillo. Podemos crear un rol y que solamente ciertos usuarios con ese tipo de rol puedan ver esos contenidos. En WordPress podemos utilizar cosas como: if ( current_user_can( 'tu permiso' )Y en Elementor, herramientas como Jet Engine o Dynamic Content for Elementor, con sus ajustes de visibilidad condicional nos permite hacer la misma jugada.Del mismo modo, también podemos jugar con condiciones como si el usuario ha iniciado sesión, etc. Los formularios de Jet Engine o Gravity Forms nos permiten crear formularios que registren usuarios con un rol específico. Esto puede ser útil en combinación con todo lo descrito anteriormente.NOTA EXTRA: La clase WP_USER tiene varios métodos (funciones) para gestionar roles:remove_role, que le quita el rol al usuarioadd_role, que añade el rol al usuarioset_role, que quita los que tenga y le pone el nuevoAdemás, hay hooks correspondientes a estas tres funciones, por lo que podríamos hacer acciones adicionales como mandar un email, crear un post, etc. Enlaces Incendio de OVH: arden servidores en Europa del mayor centro de datosMejoras en SiteGround para optimizar la velocidad de tu página web - Elías GómezWordPress 5.7 «Esperanza»Easy Digital Downloads 2.10 released - Now includes Stripe - Easy Digital Downloads

How I Built It
How to be an Effective Podcast Guest with Kristin Molenaar

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021 46:10


Going on podcasts can be a great opportunity for small business owners. You’re getting in front of a new audience to tell your story and show your expertise. But did you know there’s a whole other avenue you can explore? Kristin Molenaar does, and she tell us all about it! Plus, in Build Something More, she walks us through forming your podcast pitch. (more…) View on separate page Transcript Joe: Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 207 of How I Build It, the podcast that asks, How did you build that? Today my guest is… I’m so terrible because I just asked you how to pronounce your last name. Kristin Molenaar. Kristin: You got it. Molenaar. Joe: Excellent. Excellent. I’m excited to be talking to Kristin Molenaar. She is the founder of YesBoss. And we’re going to be talking about why being a podcast guest is ineffective for many entrepreneurs. But before we get into that, I do want to tell you that today’s episode is brought to you by three fantastic sponsors: Mindsize, Restrict Content Pro, and TextExpander. You will be hearing about those fine folks later in the episode. Right now. Let’s bring on our guests. Kristin, how are you? Kristin: Hey, I’m doing well. How are you? Joe: I am doing fantastically. Like I said, I’m really excited to talk about this. Because I do feel like for a long time I didn’t take advantage of the fact well enough that I was going on other people’s podcasts and trying to build my audience, things like that. I know that a lot of my guests, this is a platform for them. Basically, what we’re trading here is you are giving me some of your time so I can create good content and I am putting you in front of my audience. So I want you to have people get in touch with you and stuff like that. So hopefully, this will be a good reference for future guests on this podcast and others. But before we get into that—I just said ‘before we get into that’ like three times—I want you to tell people who you are and what you do. Kristin: I run a company called YesBoss. We’re a podcast booking agency, essentially. So we help mostly service-based entrepreneurs, so online service providers, we help them get booked on podcasts so they can generate more leads in just an hour a week. My zone of genius is talking. I like to talk for a living, and we help other clients who like to do that exact same thing. Joe: That’s fantastic. And I’ve got to say you do a good job. I get lots of guest pitches each day and I have a pretty strong litmus test for if I’m going to respond or not or if I’m going to accept the guest or not. And you pass not once but twice or thrice, I think at this point. Kristin: A testament to our service, huh? Thank you for that. Joe: Absolutely. Because you get the pitches and it’s like, “Hi (name), I’m person…” And then like five paragraphs about why they’re so great. And I’m just like, “I don’t want you to just… I want to bring value to my listeners.” I don’t remember exactly what you said in your email but I read it and I was like, “I think this will be insanely valuable for both me and my listener.” Kristin: Well, I’m excited. There’s definitely a formula there. There’s definitely a lot of testing we’ve done to those pitches. So I’m so glad to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you so much. Joe: Absolutely. And thank you for taking the time. I feel like you’ve listened to the show and you knew exactly what I want to talk about. So, you don’t have to say whether you have or not, but it felt that way at least. So you are a podcast booking agency. There is definitely a lot of value in that. So maybe before we get into the main thing that we’re talking about, why should more entrepreneurs go on podcasts? Kristin: I would say that it’s like the simplest sales funnel I’ve ever built in my whole entire life. I feel like as entrepreneurs, you know, especially if you’re an entrepreneur that has ever been on Facebook, you’re gonna be hit with a lot of messages about how to do all the things. And I think what took me a while to really learn because when I first started in this entrepreneurial journey I was floundering for 14 months, and then I found a rhythm that really worked. What I really found is it all boils down to having a sales funnel that hits a few checkmarks. So at the top of that sales funnel is, how are you getting visible? How are you attracting those people? How are you then nurturing those people, selling those people, and retaining those people? So that’s just this basic sales funnel strategy. And there’s all these ways to do that. There’s ads, there’s social media platforms. There’s all these top level things to get new audience attraction, then there’s all these ways to nurture your clients, you know, email lists or people that are on your social media. How are you retaining those existing people and selling? So there’s all these different ways to do this. What I have found though is… I stumbled upon this honestly. When I started doing podcast guesting myself, what I realized is I was getting in front of new people and attracting new people, and forming relationships with a new person. So specifically the podcast host. And what happened afterwards was people were coming to me to ask about my services and they had already been pre-sold. Because the nature of a podcast episode is that you are building that trust factor really rapidly, you are attracting. You’re the nurturing by really sharing all of your genius on that episode. Like you already said at the beginning of this episode, you bring on guests, and you want to highlight all the ways that they know how to do what they do. So you’re providing a platform for me to talk to you about how smart I am. I mean, if you want to put it that way. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it is. Kristin: And by the end of the episode, you know how to work with me, you know who in your network to tell to work with me. And then as a ripple effect, so I see this as a secondary thing, as the secondary thing, your audience and the people that are listening to the podcast also know that. So I’ve just been kind of blown away at how effective and fun it’s been. Joe: That’s incredible. I love a lot of what you said there. I mean, if longtime listeners of the show will know I’ve said no trust a million times on this podcast. Because it’s so important. It’s why I teach people how to start their own podcasts to grow their business because it’s an easy way… not an easy way but it’s a fast way to convince people that you are likeable and trustworthy. And people invite me into their headphones every week. So they feel like they know me. And it’s a strong bond. So, when I have a guest on the show, I’m saying I trust this person enough to give them the platform of listeners I have teach me something. I learn something from every single one of my guests. So I love what you said there about how this is the simplest sales funnel you’ve ever built in your life. How do you figure out what shows you should go on? Kristin: I think this is a really good question. I think I’ve got to start it by saying this. I think that most people see podcasts guesting in one of two ways. They see it as a traditional marketing strategy. And that marketing strategy says, “Find the podcast with the biggest audience that you can attract and go there.” And then the other people see this as traditional PR strategy. And the PR strategy says, “Get on the podcast with the biggest name recognition so you can leverage that authority on your website, your social media presence,” all those places. For me, I see it a bit differently. For me, I have realized that being a profitable podcast guest has more to do with relationships than it does marketing and PR strategies. So when I’m looking at what podcasts I want to be on… You know, I looked at you, Joe, I didn’t necessarily look at your audience and who you’ve attracted but like, are you someone that I want to have a business relationship with? Are you someone who has a complimentary or similar message to that that I share? Do our business philosophies align? Do we think the same way when it comes to what we do for our clients? Because I have seen that when I focus on relationships, the ripple effects of every time that I show up are so much greater than what can happen when I just attract your audience. I’ve seen things being invited to be a guest inside somebody’s paid course or mastermind or whatever. I’ve had those opportunities arise. I’ve been invited to speak on stages, I’ve been invited to have JV partnerships, somebody that interviewed me is now an affiliate partner for me, so they make money when I make money. These kinds of things all come from relationship. And when you’re looking just at the person’s audience, you’re really missing out on that relationship aspect. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Restrict Content Pro. If you need a fast, easy way to set up a membership site for yourself or your clients, look no further than the Restrict Content Pro WordPress plugin. Easily create premium content for members using your favorite payment gateway, manage members, send member-only emails, and more. You can create any number of subscription packages, including free trials and even free tiers. But that’s not all, their extensive add-ons library allows you to do even more, like drip out content, connect with any number of CRMs and newsletter tools, including my favorite ConvertKit, and you can integrate with other WordPress plugins like bbPress. When the Build Something Club comes out later this month, you can bet it’s going to be using Restrict Content Pro. I’m a big fan of the team. I’m a big fan of the tool and I know they do fantastic work over there. If you want to learn more about Restrict Content Pro and start making money with your own membership site today, head on over to howibuilt.it/rcp, that’s howibuilt.it/rcp to learn more and get a special offer for listeners only. Thanks so much to Restrict Content Pro for supporting the show. Joe: It becomes increasingly clear now why your pitch to come on this show stood out more than other pitches. Because, again, I really can’t stress this enough. I talk a lot. I try not to talk about myself a lot. When I get a pitch is just like, “Jim baseball, went to Harvard, and was the first of his class and all this and now he’s great. And here’s all the reasons He’s great.” I’m just like, “Cool. What does that mean for me?” I’ve had great people on my podcast, but I want my audience to come away with someone they can feel like they can form a relationship with. So I really love that. Kristin: There’s two things that I want to say to kind of expand on what you’ve just said. It’s the job of the podcast guests to deliver an episode on a silver platter to the podcast host. And that starts with writing a really good pitch. The pitch has got to include talking points that are not all about how I built a million-dollar business with a team of five people. Okay, cool. But what is that episode about? What is the value that you’re going to be bringing to the podcast host audience? So, the podcast guests, they should be focused on the podcast host. What they have to understand is a podcast host is looking for how to deliver the most value to their audience. So you’ve got to deliver to them exactly what the episode is going to be about. Because if I hadn’t written talking points that were valuable to your audience, we would get on this interview and you would be thinking, “Cool, I don’t know what to ask Kristin. I am not sure what her zone of genius is. I don’t even know what this episode is gonna be about.” No one would find value in that episode at all, and that would be me doing you a disservice. Joe: That’s a very generous way to put it. Because I also think it’s the host’s job to tee up things, really good things for the guests to ask. It’s a good back and forth, a good conversation. But like you said, you gave me topics, and I’m like, “Yes, this is really good for my audience.” If we look at the pitch and it’s like, “Yeah, I built a million dollars in 30 days with five people or whatever,” it’s like, “Cool. I want guests that my audience can relate to.” I’ve had really good big name guests, but the episodes didn’t do very well because the guest was not relatable. Whereas some of the episodes with maybe lesser known people, people who don’t have their own giant audience, but delivered huge value… downloads through the roof. So it’s definitely less about who is on the show as much as what you talk about on the show. Kristin: It also hits on the point that your accolades have to have relevance. Accolades for the sake of accolades are not interesting to anyone but yourself. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Kristin: There’s a place for it in the pitch to talk about the things that you’ve done, but the point of talking about those things are to just prove to the person that you have the ability to talk about those talking points. So if it’s where I went to college or something else, there’s no relevance there. There’s no tie into what the episode is actually about or what we’re going to be talking about. Joe: Right. Yeah. Unless my show was like, “People who went to Harvard.” Kristin: There you go. Joe: Especially the revenue one. This is my last ranty point. But the revenue one is always suspect to me, because if you have a million-dollar revenue business and your expenses are like a million in one dollars, you don’t have a successful business; you are making no money. There are at least better accolades than how much revenue your business makes. Kristin: Right. It’s a vanity metric. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Kristin: Revenue is a vanity metric. Joe: Yeah, exactly. Well, that was fun. I have strong opinions and I’m always happy for it to wax poetic about them. But getting back on course here, why should we go on a podcast? We answered how do you figure out what shows to go on. Let’s say now that the listener here has reached out to a podcast and they have successfully landed the guest spot. The topic that you reached out about, the reason why being a podcast guest is ineffective for most entrepreneurs is one that really rings true to me. Because it’s time that you should really take advantage of in some way. First of all, let’s talk about why is it ineffective for most entrepreneurs, then we can talk about how to not make it ineffective. How to make it effective? There we go. Kristin: Yeah, I think that’s perfect. I think that’s perfect. I do talk to people all the time and have said, “I’ve been invited to speak on a podcast and it didn’t yield any results for me. I didn’t get any clients from it. There were no results.” However, that looks to you. And at the root of it, I feel that there’s a common denominator here. And often that is that the person doing the guesting doesn’t really know what they’re offering. It’s probably too wide. I mean, really, this is like a business foundational thing, but it is so essential when you’re getting yourself out there and creating visibility for yourself. Yes, okay, maybe you’re a business consultant, business coach, maybe you’re a copywriter, but those are really, really broad things. You’ve got to know like, what are you specifically doing? So here’s the thing about what I do. People know that I booked people on podcasts. That’s not very wide. That is really darn specific. That same kind of specificity can be for even the business coaches or consultants that offer a wide variety of services, you have to think about what’s your point of entry. What’s the first thing that people do to work with you? What is that one problem or one solution that you can solve for somebody, that very first one that you can solve for them? If you’re a copywriter, I’ve talked to several copywriters, who because they’re really great copywriters and they’ve got great social media presences, they’ve been invited to speak on podcast and they’re like, “But it didn’t yield anything.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, when you got off that episode, did the podcast host, they probably thought that you were really smart, and they would love to work with you if they had some kind of work to give to you, but did they even know what to hire you for? Were they hiring you to write their sales pages? Were they hiring you to write their social media content? Were they hiring you to write emails for them? What were they hiring you to do?” Because there’s got to be that really specific offer that you know how to talk about. The way that I talk to my clients is, do you have a methodology for what you do? That methodology becomes so easy to get in the room and have an interview about how you do all the things you do. So, for me, my objective with a really good podcast interview is I’m able to talk someone else through how to do my job. So essentially, if you’re a DIY kind of person, you could do my job for me. And that’s okay because my ideal clients, the cream of the crop are the people that hear that I know what I’m doing, they know that they don’t want to DIY it themselves, and it becomes a no-brainer for them to work with somebody like me. Joe: Love that. Because something I think a lot of people are worried about, especially when they go on podcasts or when they blog, is that, “Well, if I just tell people what to do, they’re gonna do it, and they’re not gonna hire me.” But that’s not the case. Imagine if you hired somebody to remodel your kitchen. After he walks me through how he’s going to do it, I want to hire him even more because I’m like, “I can’t do this. I’m gonna mess this up.” Kristin: That’s a good example. Joe: It’s the same. I was on a podcast recently where we talked about four ways to monetize your podcast. And I told them everything that they need to do to monetize their podcast. And if they want to go off and do it, they can, but if they’re like, “Wait, I don’t know how to configure this tool that Joe talked about to do it,” or “I don’t know how to set up a membership site with WordPress,” now they know how to get ahold of me because… Well, I don’t want to spoil what you’re about to say, but they do know how to get a hold of me I suspect because of the way you’re going to answer this next question, which they don’t know what they’re offering. How do you begin Build an offering for a podcast? What are the steps that I need to take to make sure I am making the most of being a podcast guest? Kristin: There’s two things. There’s what happens before, which we already kind of touched on, and what happens after. So the what happens before is making sure that you’re writing those talking points that lead the conversation into that. The whole topic that we’re talking about right now is being an effective versus an ineffective podcast guest. You asking me that tees up all the talking points and the methodologies that I have to share. You are asking me questions where the answers are my methodology. Like I’m able to talk about that. This is something that when we work with our clients, we give them a really big questionnaire that’s talking… We ask them to tell us all about how they serve their clients and just tons of stuff. And then we use that information to write talking points that will really showcase their genius in the best way possible. So it all starts there. But then I think what people really miss out on is it follows up by having a connection with that podcast host. And starting that relationship after the interview has ended, after you stop recording, having a conversation about like, “How can I serve your audience? How can I be of value to you?” I think that that then formulates the snowball effect of a genuine relationship and showing up in a way for that podcast host where they know that you’re there for that relationship. Well, I think that some people would think that my answer would have to do all about the methodology and sharing about that methodology. The only real secret there is, when you’ve got to have one? And it’s going to be dependent on what you do. You’ve just got to know how to do what you do, and you’ve got to be willing to have a genuine pullback, all the curtains, talk about all the things. I mean, I tell podcast hosts when I come in, like, “I’m an open book. You can ask me whatever you want.” My mindset is that I don’t have any secrets. We live in a world where you could Google everything. Like me pretending if I don’t tell you you won’t know, who am I fooling really? So you’ve got to leverage on teeing up the conversation and being really genuine about having a goal of a relationship with the person that you’re in the room. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. It’s a new year and you can start off on the right foot by reclaiming your time. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcuts called snippets. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. With TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes. Better than copy and paste better than scripts and templates, TextExpander snippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of the repetitive things you type while still customizing and personalizing your messages. TextExpander can be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type. Take back your time and increase your productivity in the new year. And let me just say that snippets is not all it does. With advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop up fields, and much more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, Hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my keyboard and convert it to plain text so I’m no longer fighting formatting. Plus, if you have employees or contractors, you can use TextExpander to manage and share snippets with them so you all get it right every time. I’ve recently started sharing TextExpander snippets with my virtual assistant. This year, How I Built It is focusing on being productive while working from home. TextExpander is the perfect tool for that. Plus, they’re providing resources and blog posts to help you make the most of their tool and be productive. TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Joe: Actually, to your exact point, the exact point that we’re making, I listened to Smart Passive Income some time ago. This is Pat Flynn’s podcast. And he had a publicist on there named Brittney Lynn. And I listened to that episode and I was like, “Well…” I hired her. I hired her to help me figure out my messaging. And she sent me a huge questionnaire and I honestly had to think about it for a week. And I’m like, “What do I want out of whatever? What is my messaging?” Now I have those talking points, mostly around podcasting and a target audience and things like that. I think that’s super duper valuable. I think also something that you’re talking about that I had not thought of, or I honestly didn’t think the conversation would go in this direction, so this is great, is you’re really leaning on the relationship you’re forming with the podcast host. So this is not just a call to action, go to my website/joe to get the free download. It’s like, “I just spent an hour talking to this person. We get along well. How can we help each other?” It’s almost like you’re creating public networking meetings with a podcast host? Kristin: It’s like speed dating for business almost. And I say speed dating on purpose because the idea is that we get past all the fluff. We’re not like, “How are you?” And we did do some of this. I know that you have kids. You know that I have a kid. We did a little bit of that before the interview recorded. But it’s like, let’s get down to like the nitty-gritty of how we’re serving our people and the meaningful stuff about our business to see if like, “Hey, maybe I can support your audience. Maybe you can support my audience.” We’re getting into the really important details that are essential when you’re having a good business relationship with somebody. Joe: That’s super interesting. I’ll ask you this then. This sort of, we’ll say strategy, works pretty well for you because you are in the business of podcast booking. So obviously, you go on a podcast, I like you, I trust you, now you know what the show is about. So if you have a potential guest for me, I am more likely to accept that, right? Kristin: That’s true. That’s true. Joe: What about people who aren’t necessarily in the podcast space. Again, let’s say I make or I fix bicycles or whatever. I keep using that example but it’s like hyperlocal. So it doesn’t really work that well. But let’s just say I make websites. What… Kristin: That one works. Joe: Yeah, that one works. Kristin: I can work with that. Thank you. Joe: Just to give you a really hard exam. How good are you? Kristin: I know, right? Joe: So I make websites, I’m booking myself to go on podcast to talk about making websites, how do I nurture that relationship with a podcast host if they don’t have…” Well, I won’t qualify? How do I nurture that relationship with the podcast host? Kristin: What we have found is our sweet spot is entrepreneurs that serve other entrepreneurs. No, I’m not saying that there is not a viable strategy here beyond that. But for us, that is really our sweet spot, and where I can just talk all day long. Here’s the thing. When you are an entrepreneur and you’re getting in front of somebody who has the same business philosophies as you do, you can riff and get passionate about the same exact things, which I know that you and I can do that. What happens is my network becomes open to you and your network becomes open to me because we know that if this friend of ours or this peer of ours, somebody… Well, I’ll just say it this way. Somebody else that has interviewed me, another podcast host, we know that telling that other podcast hosts that they should meet you, Joe, like, well, they like me and they got passionate about the same things with me as you and I got passionate about. So if they need websites, you’re the guy. And you know somebody in your network that you have hit it off with, they hit it off with you and you and I have hit it off, so they’re gonna hit it off with me. So it’s easy to make those inner network connections. This is where I think that the strategy in my mind or what’s played out for me and our clients is so different than PR and marketing because we’re looking at… You’ve said it. We’re looking at the relationship and we’re looking at, you know, is this somebody that would be an easy person for me to tell my network, “You’ve got to hear about Joe.” But also what that does is… This is not the answer the question, but it just came to mind. Another thing that does is when I go and fulfill my obligation to tell my audience about this interview, because I do think that if you’re going to be a guest, you’ve got to be willing to talk about the fact that you’ve been on the interview, that is bare minimum commitment in my mind, it’s easy for me to write something genuine on LinkedIn, like, ” You’ve got to listen to podcasts with Joe. He and I have so many things in common. These are the things that we talked about.” That excitement that comes from sharing that episode is genuine because of the relationship I felt. I see this as really tapping into each other’s networks. Another example that I like to give is relationship building also opens doors to bigger podcasts, and bigger mediums, and all of those things that you want to look at when you’re doing traditional marketing and traditional PR. So, the example you talked about Smart Passive Income, you know, there’s tons of people that would love to be on Smart Passive Income and they’ve come to me and said, “Can you get me on Smart Passive Income.” And what I say is this. “Look, you don’t just knock on that door and say, ‘Hey, here I am. Can you please have me on your podcast?'” What you do though, is you look at other people that are in his circle, and get in with those people to see who can open those doors. So a great way to drive this home is you don’t go and send a cold pitch to the queen and expect to be invited to visit the queen. However, there are people that know the queen that maybe you can get in with them. And if you really liked them and you have some commonalities there, they might invite you to come meet the Queen someday. This is a long-term strategy and it doesn’t stop at just my network and your network. It ripples. It ripples if you really foster these things. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a great analogy. And it’s proven too. A warm lead is more often likely to succeed than a cold call. If someone makes the introduction for me as opposed to me just saying, like, “Hey, I want to use your platform,” the warm lead is going to work out better more often than not. So we’ve talked about kind of tapping into the network through forming the relationship with the host, and the guest host relationship. Do you do anything to talk directly to the audience? If someone is listening now, they’re like, “Man, I really want Kristin to help me get on other people’s podcasts,” is there a strategy there for that as well? Kristin: On our end, if I’m asked what my call to action is, we do have that backend stuff in place. I will say though because I want to make sure everybody’s expectations are correct, I have found that not as many people wanted to come and get on my email list and take my DIY content. For me, that hasn’t been a huge… I don’t know, a huge success, I’ll say. Some people do end up on my email list but I think that… And maybe this is because my service is very done-for-you that the people who are attracted to a done for you service are interested in consuming your DIY content. Joe: Oh yeah. Kristin: So I think that you’ve got to be really creative about how your content is positioned if you’re a done-for-you service. I mean, you can touch on that DIY but you’ve got to be really concise about it. So for example, my opt-in is a 10 minute masterclass and I had a few clients review that and they were like, “I think it needs to be shorter.” It had been like 13 minutes and I chopped it down to 10 minutes. Because what I realized is, look, the people that want to hire me don’t want to hear me drone on and on. I’ve got to get to the point as quickly as possible. So I think you’ve got to think about that back end offer a little bit. And I will just say my experience has been that, that has not been the most profitable. So, like say 100 people end up on my email list. I am getting more value from meeting two people in the podcast host network than I am from those 100 people that got on my email list. And heck, those 100 people took a whole lot more work. Because that’s the kind of work that you’re like sitting behind your computer trying to… You know, you’re writing the content. For me, that’s harder. Joe: You’re building up. Kristin: Exactly. I would rather meet another podcast host or be invited to speak inside somebody’s paid mastermind or group coaching program. For me, those have gotten just greater impact because the people that want to say yes are quicker yeses, and I don’t have to nurture them as much. So I don’t know. Yeah, you can nurture but it’s not my favorite strategy. Joe: I think that’s a very interesting perspective. Because, again, longtime listeners of the show will know, I’m like, “Your call to action if you have your own podcast or whatever, build your email list, build your email list.” This is from a more product-centric approach for me. I sell $99 courses or whatever. I sell a $9 a month membership or whatever. So the nurturing and the adding value is a bit more important for me. Also, those people are DIYers. So my DIY opt-in is going to work a little better. But for the done-for-you service, I think that’s a really interesting and valuable perspective. Perhaps we’ll dig into that a little bit more in the members show. If you are not a member by the way, you can go to buildsomething.club to sign up. It’s just fantastic. It’s a hoot there. Before we get into tips for the listeners, I am distracted by something in your background. Is that a cigar box? Kristin: It is. It is. My husband and I found a bunch of cigar boxes in a thrift store. I don’t know, five-plus years ago, and I have them sprinkled throughout my house because they’re really great storage boxes, and they’re just kind of industrial and fun. Joe: Yeah, absolutely. They smell nice. I’m a cigar smoker myself. So I saw the box and I was like, “I wonder.” Kristin: Oh, that’s interesting. Joe: Yeah. Fantastic. I don’t have any empty boxes right now, but next time I have some I’ll let you know. Kristin: I mean, they’re perfect for storing things. They look cool in your house. I think so. Joe: Yes, they do. Yeah, absolutely. Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Mindsize. Look, it’s super important for stores to have an online presence these days. If customers can’t buy online, they might not buy at all. And while doing eCommerce fast has gotten easier, doing eCommerce right still has its considerable challenges. That’s where Mindsize comes in. They are a full service digital agency that focuses on WordPress and WooCommerce development. But that’s not all. They work with Shopify, big commerce, and more. And they’ll work with you to create the perfect strategy and website for your business. Already have an eCommerce site and want to make sure it’s up and running in tip-top shape? Their flat-rate site audit is exactly what you need. Over the course of two weeks, they’ll dive into every aspect of your site and deliver a prioritized list of actionable recommendations to make your site even better. That means more sales and engagement for you and your store. Or if you’re a freelancer or agency who feels in over your head or with an eCommerce build, their agency support plan is built specifically for you. There were a few times in my career where I really could have used that. They’ll take a high stress situation and help you relax while still delivering for your client. So check out Mindsize over at mindsize.com today. They will help you make more money, whether you need an eCommerce store, whether you need to improve your current eCommerce store, or if you build eCommerce stores for others. That’s mindsize.com. Thanks so much to Mindsize for supporting the show. Joe: As we get to the end of this conversation, what are some tips for the listeners that you have? I think we talked a bit about how to get on people’s shows and the things that you should think about before you go on people’s shows. Maybe if they’re starting from square one, what’s one or two things that they should do to make sure they have an efficient podcast guesting experience? Kristin: Talking to this audience, the person that’s never done it before, one of the biggest apprehensions that I hear is, “Am I ready? I’m nervous. When I show up, is it going to be a good episode? It’s gonna get published and I don’t know who’s gonna hear it.” There’s some of those concerns that come with first time guesting. And I know that people that ultimately are going to be fantastic guests still have those apprehensions. I did. So I can totally relate to that. So I want to offer this piece of advice that I feel not a lot of people take into consideration. And that is that there’s still a ton of value in being featured on a brand new podcast. I talked to somebody recently, a podcaster, I was interviewed by her and she told me that she actually likes to be in that first episode because when somebody finds a new podcast that they like, they go way back to the beginning and they begin bingeing it. So maybe that doesn’t help prove by point that you should go after a smaller podcast because the barriers are lower, because I just talked about how everybody’s going to hear it. But the strategy for me has been, look, if somebody is serious enough about their business to decide to start a podcast, that’s a serious entrepreneur right there. You can speak to the fact that building a podcast, it is not a small logistical commitment. It is a big deal to decide that you’re going to be a podcast host. So if you are feeling apprehensive, but want to kind of test the waters, get out there a little bit, I would say there’s tons of Facebook groups, tons of communities of people learning how to launch their podcast. Get in with those people. I think that the barriers might feel a little bit lower because they’re not going to be expecting as much from you because they’re just starting out. You can kind of be beginners together a little bit. But I would also say with that, like, here’s the reality. This is a conversation. Joe, you’re asking me questions, and I’m answering them with things that I can just talk about off the top of my head. I’m not over-preparing for episodes. If you were to ask me things… “Well, here we go.” If you had gone with that bicycle example, I would have said, “You know, Joe, I would love to tell you how I’m smart enough to figure that one out but I don’t know.” Being okay with saying that and realizing like, “I know what I know really stinking well but that doesn’t mean that I know everything. And I’m okay with that.” So it’s just a conversation. Be true to who you are, talk about what you know, and be honest about the things that you don’t know or maybe even your failures. Some of those things are really inspiring as well. Joe: I agree wholeheartedly actually. One of the reasons that this show did so well in the beginning was because we did talk about failures a lot. And I think that makes starting a business maybe less intimidating, right? Because you see the gold medalist win the gold medal at the Olympics but you don’t see the years it took for them to train and fail and break their leg or whatever. You don’t see the struggle as often as the success. And I think that that’s important. That’s great. So get in with people who are learning how to podcast. Remember, it’s a conversation. I think that’s super important. Because some people want me to send them exactly the questions I’m going to ask ahead of time, and I’m always happy to oblige. But honestly, I genuinely don’t because I did a little background research on my guests, I know what you’d like to talk about and I mean, frankly, I’m gonna have any conversation. I talk a lot. I’m an extrovert, I’m from New York, and I’m Italian. So we talk a lot. So I’m most likely going to ask you questions that you’re prepared to answer anyway. I love that. I think that’s fantastic. Then, before we go, I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us? Kristin: Gosh, I’m trying to think of the best way to answer that. The trade secrets. Yes, I do have one. I do have one. So when you are pitching for yourself and you want to find podcast hosts that are in alignment with what you talk about, here’s a really cool insider secret. Find somebody who has done a podcast tour who has a message that’s complimentary to yours. I have a very easy example. I’m all about work less, make more. I offer a done for you service. So this is for people that are not interested in DIY, they’re cool with delegation and spending a little bit more to shortcut things. You know who talks about work less, make more? James Schramko who has a really great podcast and he has been a guest on a lot of other people’s podcasts. So what you can do is you look at that influencer, so James is my influencer, you find all the places that he has previously been featured. And guess what? There’s a gold mine of people that would probably be a good fit for you. Joe: What? That is an incredible… That’s a good trade secret. That’s legit. I love that. Like I said, we’ll talk a little bit more about kind of building your pitch and figuring out your messaging and things like that in the show after the show, the membership show. But for now, Kristin, this has been fantastic. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you? Kristin: I personally hang out on LinkedIn. And because my last name is spelled with two A’s, got a unique spelling there, when you search me on LinkedIn, I’m the only one that shows up. Kristin Molenaar. So if you’re a podcast host, and you’re looking for guests, I mean, that’s not our paid service but we would be happy to hook you up with some people that have got their act together. Joe: Awesome. Kristin: And then if you’re interested in our services and just want to check that out, our website is yesbossva.com. And that has our 10-minute masterclass that I just briefly talked about here. Joe: Excellent. I will link to all of that and more over at the show notes. You can find those at howibuilt.it/207. Kristin, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Kristin: This was so much fun. Thanks for having me. Joe: Yes. And thank you to our sponsors, TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and Mindsize. Thank you, of course, for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something. Sponsored by:Mindsize: Your WooCommerce Partner Restrict Content Pro: Launch your membership site TextExpander: Get 20% off your first year by visiting the this link. Source

Economista Holística
356. Cómo cobrar un pago recurrente con Stripe

Economista Holística

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021 6:19


En ocasiones necesitamos cobrar de forma recurrente a nuestros clientes, pero no tenemos que darle acceso a un contenido que se va actualizando cada cierto tiempo. Para estos casos, es conveniente usar los productos de pagos recurrentes de Stripe. Vamos a ver qué debemos tener en cuenta. Cómo usar sólo Stripe para generar pagos recurrentes En primer lugar, tendremos que crear un nuevo producto. Para ello, podremos ir al menú lateral y seleccionar la opción de productos: Una vez allí, nos saldrá el listado de productos y podremos crear uno nuevo, como se puede ver en el botón que aparecer arriba a la derecha. Al crear un nuevo producto en Stripe, nos dará la opción de que el pago sea puntual o recurrente. Esta opción la encontraremos en la sección de Tarifas: Productos de pago recurrente en Stripe Al generar un pago recurrente en Stripe, lo que haremos será una llamada al banco cada cierto tiempo. El problema, es que Stripe no restringe contenido, sólo cobra. Aun así, si estamos pensando en vender un bono de sesiones de consultoría, por ejemplo, podemos usar el checkout de Stripe y cobrar recurrentemente por cada consultoría a nuestros clientes. Para ver cómo se puede generar un botón que lleve al checkout de Stripe y hacer este cobro recurrente, puedes ver este vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjZc5QAPd_U La ventaja de usar este método es que no tenemos que pagar una nueva herramienta tipo Easy Digital Download o Restrict Content Pro, porque Stripe nos da la opción de elegir una URL de pago exitoso y otra de pago cancelado. Si usamos la de pago exitoso para poner nuestro calendario y reservar las citas, ya tenemos completo el pago y el cliente tendrá acceso a toda la información sin necesidad de otras herramientas. Además, desde Zapier (incluso en su versión gratuita) podríamos automatizar por ejemplo, la entrada en un grupo determinado de nuestra herramienta de Email Marketing. Gestión de clientes en Stripe Otra de las ventajas, es que una vez que el cliente haya pagado, tendremos un pequeño CRM en Stripe para controlar cuándo será el próximo pago, modificarlo, dejarlo en stand by o anularlo directamente. Si te gustaría que hiciese un vídeo de YouTube o un episodio del podcast hablando sobre este tema, déjame un comentario más abajo. Por último, comentarte que puedes aprender mucho más sobre cómo trabajar con Stripe suscribiéndote a Cultura Económica, mi escuela de finanzas, donde encontrarás un curso completo. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nuriahidalgo/message

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#99 – Trabajando en staging en proyectos WordPress

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2021 36:41


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! Arrancamos la semana de carnaval (aunque algunos no lo sepan) comentando un tema muy de nuestro día a día... ya sea para rediseños, ajustes, pruebas, solución de errores y actualizaciones... solemos necesitar un duplicado o versión de staging de los sitios web para poder "trastear" sin riesgo a tener problemas o imprevistos en el sitio en producción. Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Organizando el time blocking para incluir una mañana dedicada a la gestión de TWP, temas administrativos, onboarding para el nuevo soporte, ideas de mejoras y crecimiento… Semana Nahuai Aprobados un par de presupuestos. Añadir bolsa de encargos en el Slack de NED Pro (vincular Gravity Forms con Slack). Trasteando con Restrict Content Pro y BuddyPress. Contenido Nahuai  3 tutoriales nuevos en código Genesis del cual destaca: Tema de la semana: Cuando o porque hacer versión en staging de una webDonde: local, servidor pruebas, servidor clienteComo: duplicator / all in one migrator / herramientas propias del hostingRestaurar en producción: opción de restaurar completamente o subir e implementar cambios de nuevo.Cosas a tener en cuenta:Ojo caché.Desactivar plugins no necesarios o con conexiones externas (analíticas, pasarelas de pago, webhooks…)No incluir carpetas muy pesadas (backups, documentos / pdfs…)Anotar todos los cambios y pruebas realizados por si han de repetirse luego en producción Episodio en el que hablamos de duplicar: http://freelandev.com/podcast/7-clonar-y-duplicar-en-wordpress/ Novedades Nos publican un guest post en el blog de StudioPress: https://studiopress.blog/osompress-uprising-theme/ + 100 descargas en Osom Login Page Customizer (+1.000 descargas todos los plugins) + 100 seguidores Twitter OsomPress Subida de precios de Sugar Calendar el próximo 1 de marzo: https://sugarcalendar.com/pricing/ Nelio Unlocker https://wordpress.org/plugins/nelio-unlocker/ Próxima Meetup conjunta de Terrassa y Granollers será el 16 de febrero a cargo de JuanKa que hablará de ACF. Tip de la semana All in one migrator: Subir copia seguridad por FTP o Panel del hosting directamente a la carpeta /wp-content/ai1wm-backups Plugin Bill Erickson para usar los medios de la página de producción. Tutorial para activar desactivar plugins dependiendo del entorno de WordPress. Menciones Muchas felicitaciones por la publicación en el blog de StudioPress. Pablo dice que aumenta el valor en un 9,7 en Osomness scale. ???? A Josué le gustó el Perspectiva WP y la entrevista con Flavia. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#97 – [Perspectiva WP] Pippin Williamson y Sandhills Development

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2021 49:31


Síguenos en: Pippin Williamson lleva más 10 años creando plugins y es el creador de algunos de los plugins más reconocidos de WordPress como Easy Digital Downloads o AffiliateWP. Vamos a realizar un repaso cronológico sobre la evolución de su negocio haciendo hincapié en esos factores que no parecen la clave de su éxito o 2009 - 2011 Desde 2009 a 2013 trabajó bajo su marca personal Pippin Plugins. 2012 Ingresos → 68.496$ (Easy Content Types y Restrict Content Pro)Lanzamiento de Easy Digital Downloads. 2013 Ingresos → 360.000$ (Easy Digital Downloads)Cambio de nombre a Pippin's Pages, LLC. 2014 Ingresos → 782.000$ (Easy Digital Downloads + AffiliateWP)Primer empleado.Lanzamiento de AffiliateWP.Affiliate WP nació de una necesidad/resolver problema. La herramientas que usaban problemas.Limitaciones Envato 2015 Ingresos → 1.139.500$ (Easy Digital Downloads + AffiliateWP)12 empleados + freelancers (+11).Cambio de nombre a Sandhills Development, LLC para dejar atrás la marca. personalTuvieron que esforzarse en comunicar la nueva marca durante 2016-2017. → Reflexión: Marca personal vs marca corporativa 2016 Ingresos → 1.480.375$ (Easy Digital Downloads + AffiliateWP)15 empleados (+2).Crecimiento lento, 1-3 empleados al año. (3-12 meses salario en banca) → Reflexión crecimiento lento Condiciones empleados buenas basado en "It doest have to be crazy at work" de jefes de Basecamp (Aquí tienes todos los libros de Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson) 2017 Ingresos → 2.268.000$ (Easy Digital Downloads + AffiliateWP)15 empleados.Despedir a dos personas.Subidas de precios en los principales plugins.Simplificar pricing (3 planes anuales) / reducir fricción muchos pagos 800.000 webs con EDD - 30-40.000 clientes EDDSubir precios 2x hace 4 años, roll back priceRecurring payments viene de cuando ellos pasaron a modelo de suscripción. Primero custom code, luego addonCerrar marketplace de EDD y adquirir los addons (unos 40) que les interesaban.Creación de Sandhills Brewing.Diversificar cervecería y conservación espacios naturales. → Reflexión sobre los valores 2018 Ingresos → 2.747.500$ (AffiliateWP + Easy Digital Downloads)19 empleados (+4).Vendió varios plugins de Pippin's plugins.Compra de WP Simple Pay.Marcha de John ParrisParó durante 1 año por motivo de un burn out → Reflexión de darse la oportunidad de parar 2019 Ingresos → 3.454.759$ (AffiliateWP + Easy Digital Downloads)Nóminas → 1.874.802$24 empleados (+6).Pagar igual independientemente de sus características. 2020 Ingresos → 3.721.934$  (AffiliateWP + Easy Digital Downloads)26 empleados (+2), distribuidas en 5 países.6 incorporaciones (700 solicitudes de trabajo)Sueldos públicos Resolución para reducir huella de carbono y convertirse en carbon-negative:Comprar terrenos (tallgrass prairie) → secuestra CO2Instalación solarPlantar árboles Venta de Restrict Content Pro a iThemes / Liquid webEstaban abiertos a negociarGanar focoMejorar soporte AffiliateWP Subida de precio de 50€Eliminar la opción LifetimeAumento del 24,5% en gananciasProducto que más ingresos supone Easy Digital Downloads Equipo core totalmente formado por mujeresVersión 3.0 en el horizonteDecremento del 6,86% en ganancias Sugar Calendar Aumento del 52,94% en gananciasMenos de 15.000$ WP Simple PayAumento del 41,49% en ganancias Payouts + Sandhills Brewing + Compras de inmuebles Valores de Sandhills Development: CRAFTING INGENUITY: With commitment and a deep appreciation for the human element, we aim to craft superior experiences through ingenuity. ConservarDevolver tiempoLibertad (de ubicación)Promover la diversidadPensar a largo plazoAsumir buenas intencionesAdherirse a estándares estrictosSer honesto Publica anualmente resúmenes anuales compartiendo muchos datos interesantes de su negocio. Desde 2012: 2020 Year in Review – Sandhills Development, LLC Enlaces actuales a los proyectos: Pippins PluginsSandhills DevelopmentSandhills Brewing Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#88 – Preparando (o no) el Black Friday 2020

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2020 39:04


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! ¿Preparados para la maravillosa semana del Black Friday? Pues si no tenías suficiente con el tsunami de ofertas por email que te van a ir llegando, también nosotros hemos decidido hablar de ofertas y promociones, por una parte desde el punto de vista de creadores y lo que implica hacer descuentos, y por otra como consumidores, compartiendo unas cuantas ofertas de herramientas y servicios que nosotros utilizamos y que os pueden ir bien. ¡Vamos allá! ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Tranquila y corta, por temas personales. Reunión con Toni Colom para la nueva imagen de marca de TranquilidadWP ???????? Meetup Granollers y Terrassa - llamamiento voluntaria/o para demostración con Visual Composer en la próxima meetup de diciembre. Contenido esther Preparando cambios internos web y Zona DPW Semana Nahuai Meetup conjunta de Terrassa y Granollers en que hablamos de la API REST de WordPress. Para celebrar que Código Genesis ha llegado a los 600 tutoriales, he lanzado una oferta temporal de la modalidad anual sin soporte a 100€. Avances importantes en la web de OsomPress. Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Sentimientos encontrados respecto al Black Friday: Por un lado como creadores no ofrecemos descuentos porque está muy saturado. En general las ofertas y promociones son un arma de doble filo. Van bien para conseguir ventas y llegar a aquellos que están interesados pero les frena el precio, pero: Reduces el valor de tus productosPerjudicas a los que han pagado más por lo mismoAunque sean productos digitales pueden incluir soporte y dar más trabajo. Pospones la compra si saben que va a haber alguna oferta. Por otro como consumidores estamos pendientes por si herramientas que necesitamos se rebajan. La recomendación es hacerse una lista de cosas que puedes necesitar y ver si se rebajan, no al revés. Ofertas interesantes: Vimeo: 25% en todos los planesWP Rocket 30% de descuentoRestored 316 25% (Cupón: R316CM20)Hostings: Webempresa 40% de descuento.Siteground (hasta un 75% de descuento en todos los nuevos planes de hosting compartido)Raiola Networks  (Hasta 40% descuento)Gravity Forms 50%Sandhills (EDD - Affiliate WP, WP Simple Pay, Sugar Calendar) 20%Learndash 50%Restrict Content Pro 40% WP Complete 40%Ithemes bundle (Cupón: DEAL40)Shortpixel (Appsumo)Mailpoet (Appsumo) Novedades La versión 3.5 de Restrict Content Pro trae bastantes mejoras relacionadas con la integración con Stripe. https://restrictcontentpro.com/blog/new-in-restrict-content-pro-3-5/ Tip de la semana Screenity otra alternativa a Loom, gratuita y de código abierta. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/screenity-screen-recorder/kbbdabhdfibnancpjfhlkhafgdilcnji Menciones Mención WPLevel en Twitter. Xavi nos deja un comentario y varias dudas en la web: Aclaramos que Antispam Bee está pensado para los comentarios de WordPress. Si quieres evitar que te ocurra en los formularios de contacto tienes que poner una medida en el plugin que los gestiona. Solemos usar el honey-pot de Gravity Forms y funciona bastante bien. Sino puedes optar por añadir una pregunta sencilla o un recaptcha (aunque yo odio esta última opción y no la suelo usar). Nos pregunta por la colección de UAG y por Matomo frente a Koko Analytics o Statify. Y es un usuario feliz de Osom Blocks. ???????????????? Juan Jacinto y Xiskiu nos dejan una valoración 5 estrellas en Osom Login Page Customizer. ???? Juan María encantado con la actualización de Osom Blocks. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#85 – Nuestra experiencia publicando plugins en el repositorio de WordPress

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2020 43:36


Síguenos en: Después de haber publicado un par de plugins en el repositorio de WordPress este último mes bajo la marca de OsomPress y ahora que lo tenemos reciente y fresquito, vamos a repasar un poco los pasos a dar y cosas a tener en cuenta cuando tenemos que subir nuestro plugin para que lo aprueben y esté disponible desde cualquier instalación de WordPress. Pero antes, como siempre.... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Solucionado tema checkout WooCommerce  Varias revisiones malware Supervisando proyecto WP y ayudando temas específicos CSS Sesión Show me the Code de El Arroyo Club con Carlos Longareda Contenido esther Preparando módulo seguridad Script para actualizar gastos envío checkout Semana Nahuai Movida con SendinBlue, no segmenta por productos comprados a pesar de que lo publicitan en su web. ????????‍♂️ Integrando Restrict Content Pro con WooCommerce y Mailchimp. Preparando textos para la web de OsomPress. Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Lo principal echar un ojo al handbook: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/ Respetar estándares de códigoTener muy presente temas de seguridad (escapar, sanitizar….)Ser cuidadoso con las notificaciones del adminTener en cuenta la internacionalización, hacer las cadenas traducibles.Procurar que los textos del backend son descriptivos.Crear un fichero .pot (se puede hacer con Poedit Pro o WP-CLI)Escribir el read me descriptivo que permita entender que hace el plugin de forma rápida.Enviar el plugin a revisión. (wordpress.org/plugins/developers/add) Una vez aprobado subir los ficheros + capturas de pantalla en svn (Xversion)Realizar traducción al castellano desde translate.wordpress.org (read me) y/o la app Poedit.Actualizaciones del plugin (necesario para incorporar nuevas cadenas). Validación y formateo de código con Visual Studio Code: PHP Code Sniffer (phpcs)Phpfmt (PHP formatter - Visual Studio Code extension)WPCS (WP Coding Standards)CSS Formatter (Visual Studio Code extension) En este artículo de TabernaWP tenéis un artículo de como instalar algunas de estas herramientas. Obviamente, también hay que seguir las guidelines (no trackear sin permiso, nada de contenido ilegal…). Glosario para las traducciones al castellano. Novedades Hemos migrado varias páginas sin problemas. Hay que tener en cuenta que si tienes CSS personalizado debes de reemplazar el prefijo «ab-» por «gb-». También he actualizado a Restrict Content Pro 3.4.4 y sin problemas. Tip de la semana Crear el fichero .pot usando WP-CLI. Ejemplo: wp i18n make-pot ./ languages/osom-modal-login.pot  Menciones Aritz recibió su merecido GIF y nos denominó «Podcast de culto». ???????? Jesús matiza: «Son muy achuchables y muy profesionales????» Bodhan comenta que seguramente nos referíamos a Show Current Template para mostrar la template de la página activa???? Maria en la red nos comparte en Twitter. Xavi nos da las gracias y nos felicita por el plugin. Adrián nos saluda y comenta que es muy fan de Query Monitor y usar background-color:red. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

WordPress Semanal
237 | Restrict Content Pro [A fondo]

WordPress Semanal

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2020 19:56


En el episodio 237 de WordPress Semanal te hablo del plugin Restrict Content Pro. Cuándo usarlo para crear un membership site y los pasos exactos para lograrlo. ¡Vamos allá! Escuchar en iTunes Escuchar en iVoox Escuchar en Spotify Restrict Content Pro (a fondo) En este podcast hablaremos de: ¿Para qué sirve el plugin Restrict Content […] La entrada 237 | Restrict Content Pro [A fondo] es una artículo de Gonzalo Navarro.

Implementador WordPress
Seguridad de inicio de sesión en RCP

Implementador WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2020 13:57


iThemes Security agrega seguridad al inicio de sesión a nuestros suscriptores de Restrict Content Pro.

Implementador WordPress
Seguridad de inicio de sesión en RCP

Implementador WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2020 13:57


iThemes Security agrega seguridad al inicio de sesión a nuestros suscriptores de Restrict Content Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#82 – Cómo conseguir una web más respetuosa con la privacidad de los visitantes

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2020 42:20


Síguenos en: Aún siendo festivo, que mejor forma de pasar un lunes por la mañana que grabando este podcast y compartiendo nuestras impresiones y experiencias sobre eliminar o sustituir los scripts que rastrean los datos de nuestros usuarios de nuestras webs por otros más respetuosos y que encima nos facilitan cumplir la RGPD. Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Bastante trabajo de mantenimiento y soporte de clientes. Gestionando nuevas altas de TranquilidadWP.  Contenido esther Review Amelia Bookings dentro del caso de estudio de la Zona DPW. Semana Nahuai Traducción del plugin Osom Blocks con sus cosas: Nos suspenden la cuenta de Twitter de OsomPress ????????‍♂️????????‍♂️ Batalla final para instalar scripts de seguimiento en páginas concretas cumpliendo la RGPD. ¿Hay que pagar por exportar los datos de Google Analytics? Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: A raíz de un tweet de Nahuai esta semana hubo bastante interés en cómo conseguir que nuestras webs y las de nuestros clientes carguen menos rastreadores. Camino seguid por Nahuai en sus webs (y de sus clientes): Eliminar scripts de seguimiento innecesarios Google AnalyticsExisten alternativas más respetuosas con la privacidad.Pixel de FacebookPixel de Active Campaign / MailchimpCambiar URLs de Youtube por youtube-nocookie.com Cargar el fichero stripe.js solo en la página de compra Los scripts que tengas que usar «por fuerza» que se carguen solo cuando se acepten las cookies. Plugin de WordPress recomendado -> GDPR Cookie ComplianceEventos de FB y GA de páginas concretas añadirlos de forma que solo se carguen si se han aceptado las cookies La típica frase de: «Pero es que si lo hago así pierdo muchos datos…» Post de Santiago Alonso donde hizo un experimento al respecto (60% pérdida de datos).En otro post estimaban una pérdida datos del 6-26% de las visitas.Soluciones:Haz el banner de cookies más visible Ventajas: Eliminas peso = carga más rápida de la webContribuyes a una web mejor Herramientas para revisar los scripts que se están cargando: Inspector del navegador webSafari 14.0 incluye un apartado dedicadohttps://themarkup.org/blacklight/cookieserve.comcookiemetrix.com Si te interesan estos temas te recomiendo que te suscribas a la newsletter de Nahuai donde comparte las mejores prácticas y herramientas. Novedades La empresa iThemes compra WP Complete para hacer en combo perfecto con Restrict Content Pro: https://ithemes.com/wpcomplete-joining-ithemes-family/ Próximo Meetup conjunto el 20 de octubre: Diseño web para no diseñadores: https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Terrassa-WordPress-Meetup/events/273769260/ Tip de la semana Recursos muy completo para revisar si se cargan scripts y de qué tipo: https://themarkup.org/blacklight/ Algunas webs detecta que hay un keylogger, pero son falsos positivos. Menciones Xavi Velasco nos felicita por el programa y el plugin. José Luis nos felicita por el plugin y nos sugiere añadir la opción de elegir la categoría. Os animamos a probar el plugin y dejar una valoración, nos ayudará mucho para seguir añadiendo mejoras. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#81 – Dropshipping, nichos, afiliación y otros sideprojects del montón

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2020 39:15


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! En alguna ocasión hemos comentado que, como muchos que nos dedicamos al desarrollo web, hemos tenido experiencia con negocios de dropshipping, nichos e ingresos por afiliación.. Hoy vamos a profundizar un poco más en este tema explicando nuestra experiencia, pero antes... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Tranquila, aprovechando para hacer pruebas de estilos y variaciones de bloques Publicando plugin repositorio ???????? Contenido esther Crear un bloque personalizado con Advanced Custom Fields Semana Nahuai Descubro que han comprado el dominio que dejé libre y han subido mi antiguo contenido scrapeado. ????????‍♂️ Grabación de podcast de divulgación científica. :o Peleando para meter scripts de Facebook en una sola página de forma legal. Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Ventajas: Irresistible como idea: ingresos pasivos y sin clientesPunto fuerte: somos desarrolladores, la parte técnica la dominamos Inconvenientes: tiempo a dedicarPérdida de focoCuestiones éticas Nuestra experiencia: esther: Dropshipping perfumes (1 año)Nichos varios con afiliación (max 100€/mes) - cerradosAfiliación software y hostings Nahuai: Estreno trasteando con nicho + afiliación (max 300€/mes) - recién cerrado.Ingresos por Youtube (+100€) - recién cerrado.Afiliación. Al principio de todo lo que se podía, ahora solo de herramientas/servicios que uso. Novedades Anunciar el inicio de la Meetups conjuntas de WordPress Granollers y Terrassa. Genesis Community TL;DR September 2020 Actualización Restrict Content Pro 3.4.2 Segundo aniversario de Semana WP Tip de la semana Pod.link es un recurso para compartir un podcast en las distintas redes/plataformas https://pod.link/1458340347 Menciones A Adrián le gustó el episodio anterior A Josué también le gustó y se sintió identificado con Nahuai. Vicent Sanchís se pasó por los comentarios para dar más info sobre el WPAD y contar cómo gestiona el síndrome del impostor. María en la red nos recomienda en Twitter. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#79 – Nuestra relación con el dinero y cómo lo gestionamos

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2020 39:21


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! Hoy venimos a hablar de money, money, money... ¿qué significa para nosotros? ¿qué relación tenemos con él? ¿Cómo lo gestionamos? Quizás no vivamos de ingresos pasivos, ni nos salgan los billetes por las orejas... pero sí vivimos la vida que queremos sacándonos un sueldo haciendo lo que más nos gusta... todo un lujo, ¿no? Eso sí... sin derroche ;) ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther De vuelta al “tetris” semanal para cuadrar horarios, pero por fin “sola en casa” para grabar tranquilamente.  Contenido esther Introducción a los casos de estudio Zona DPW Semana Nahuai Grabación del recap de Genesis Shapers.Directo de preguntas y respuestas en NED Pro.Resolviendo un expediente X Restrict Content Pro, con expiraciones de suscripciones random (o no).Batallando con marketers para cumplir la RGPD en las webs de mis clientes. Contenido Nahuai 3 nuevos tutorial en Genesis de los cuales destaca: Tema de la semana: Relación con el dinero: Educación estrictaAversion al riesgoExperiencias más q cosas. No me importa gastar en viajes, formación, libros y experienciasEs un medio, no es un finOdio al derrocheMinimalismo (mucha reflexión antes de comprar algo) Gestión: Cuentas separadas (personal y profesional)Revisión mensual ingresos / gastos / bfos ( negocio )Sueldo fijo / reinversion / “colchón”Contar con un gestor/a (saber delegar)No dedicar mucho tiempo Entrevista a Nahuai en el podcast de Economista Holística: 279. Cómo organiza sus finanzas Nahuai Badiola Novedades ⚠️ Ojo con actualizar a Restrict Content Pro 3.4, Sergio nos comentó en el directo de NED Pro que estaba teniendo problema en una de sus webs. Tip de la semana Herramienta para validar el feed: https://validator.w3.org/feed/ Menciones David Vogelpohl comparte nuestro episodio sobre Genesis Blocks y Genesis Custom Blocks en Twiter. ???? Victor Arévalo nos agradece la mención de su podcast. Jesús Yesares nos trolea un poco a la raíz de renaming de los productos de Genesis. ???? Alberto García nos pregunta a unos cuantos podcasters por el plugin que ayuda a traducir cadenas concretas. Joan dice que Loco Translate y todos estamos de acuerdo. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#78 – Explicando Genesis Blocks y Genesis Custom Blocks

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2020 33:08


Síguenos en: Ahora que parece que ya se ha estabilizado el tema de los nuevos plugins del entorno Genesis, y como algunos de vosotros os habéis mostrado interesados y nos preguntáis sobre las diferentes opciones, hemos decidido dedicar el episodio a explicar un poco Genesis Blocks y Genesis Custom Blocks, qué son, cómo funcionan y que incorporan en la versión PRO. ¡Vamos allá! Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Semana de reuniones: 3 de inicio de curso, entrevista, meetup de Granollers, OsomPress y proyecto conjunto. Terminando Dakota y preparando el 1er OsomBlock ???? Contenido esther Preparando el 1er caso de estudio para la Zona DPW: estudio de un proyecto web desde la versión mas sencilla a todos los extras, configuración de plugins, código... Semana Nahuai Poniéndome al día. Cerrando las fases finales del proyecto conjunto. Reunión de Genesis Shapers, esta tarde grabo el recap con Carrie Dills y David Vogelpohl. Entrevista a los profesionales WP del mes de octubre de Freelandev. Entrevista con una agencia de diseño/desarrollo para posibles colaboraciones. Más entrevistas: El de «Vendran lluvias suaves» donde pasé un buen rato con Paula Baldó hablando sobre sostenibilidad web.El nuevo podcast «Makers online» de Víctor Arévalo en el que hablamos de mi reconversión laboral y bastantes cosas más. Contenido Nahuai 3 tutoriales nuevos en Código Genesis del cual destaca: Tema de la semana: Genesis Blocks Evolución de Atomic Blocks -> colección de bloquesGratuito en el repositorio de plugins de WordPressCompatible con todos los temas (no es exclusivo para Genesis Framework) Plugin Genesis Blocks Genesis Custom Blocks Evolución de Block Labs -> creación de bloques personalizadosGratuito en el repositorio de plugins de WordPressCompatible con todos los temas (no es exclusivo para Genesis Framework)13 campos distintos Plugin Genesis Custom Blocks Versiones Pro: Genesis Blocks Pro: 51 secciones de bloques26 diseños de página Genesis Custom Blocks Pro: RepetidorCategoríaPostEtiquetaUsuarioTexto enriquecidoTexto clásico Futuro: Genesis X (la conversión de Genesis Framework a plugin preparado para el FSE) parece que se integrará dentro de Genesis Blocks. Nuevo Sample Theme preparado para FSE en los siguientes meses. Novedades Lanzamiento de la versión 3.4 de Restrict Content Pro: https://restrictcontentpro.com/new-restrict-content-pro-v34/. Nuevos hooks, opción de auto-renovar o no y muchas mejoras más. Redirecciones chulas en Freelandev: puedes añadir tu plataforma favorita al final de la URL o la red social y te llevará directamente a ella (freelandev.com/lo-que-quieras). Tip de la semana Añadir parámetro ajax="true" al shortcode cuando usas Gravity Forms y una una modal para evitar que se cierre. Menciones Ana Cirujano nos preguntaba cómo gestionábamos el histórico de dudas en el grupo de Slack Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro. Los plugins de Genesis mencionados en esta página son las herramientas que recomendamos y usamos a diario, tanto en nuestros propios proyectos como en los de nuestros clientes. Dicho esto, los enlaces que ves aquí son links de afiliado que nos permiten tomarme alguna que otra vez una birra a tu salud. ????¡Por las buenas decisiones!

WordPress Radio
182. Vendiendo un plugin o proyecto

WordPress Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2020 56:07


En este programa comentamos un poco el retomar un proyecto editorial, las novedades de Gutenberg 8.9 y el tema de la venta de Restrict Content Pro y si, en caso de que nos quisieran comprar un proyecto plugin ¿lo tenemos bien montado para ello?.

WordPress Radio
182. Vendiendo un plugin o proyecto

WordPress Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2020 56:07


En este programa comentamos un poco el retomar un proyecto editorial, las novedades de Gutenberg 8.9 y el tema de la venta de Restrict Content Pro y si, en caso de que nos quisieran comprar un proyecto plugin ¿lo tenemos bien montado para ello?.

Crossword
Acquisitions and Ecosystems

Crossword

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020 14:59


We discuss the acquisition of Restrict Content Pro by iThemes, the ecosystems being built by WP Engine, GoDaddy, and Liquid Web, and our sense that no one is doing it well - yet.

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast
#527 WP-Tonic Round-Table Show on Friday,September 4th, 2020 at 8:30 am PST

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020 51:24


We discuss this week’s best WordPress & internet news stories. We also have a great panel of WordPress community and marketing internet junkies. This Week Show's Sponsors Kinsta: https://kinsta.com/ GroundHogg: https://www.groundhogg.io/ #1 - iThemes has acquired Restrict Content Pro from Sandhills Development https://poststatus.com/ithemes-has-acquired-restrict-content-pro/ #2 - Apple, Google, and Amazon respond to European tech taxes by passing on costs https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/2/21418114/european-uk-digital-tax-services-apple-google-amazon-raise-prices #3 - Founders Yoast SEO take a stake in WordProof to push timestamp relevance for SEO results https://wordproof.io/founders-yoast-seo-take-a-stake-in-wordproof/ #4 - Stepping Into a Market With Major Players, Mario Peshev Acquires WP-CRM System https://wptavern.com/stepping-into-a-market-with-major-players-mario-peshev-acquires-wp-crm-system

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#77 – La ley de Parkinson y ser resolutivos

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020 37:05


Síguenos en: ¡Buenas! Después de una semana con la mitad de Freelandev de baja, volvemos ya en plena forma (o casi) con muchas ganas de pasar un buen rato compartiendo con vosotros, en este caso nuestra opinión sobre la Ley de Parkinson y cómo ser resolutivos en nuestro trabajo. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Mucho trabajo de soporte y mantenimiento de clientes después de vacaciones. Abriendo algunos módulos de la Zona DPW: https://www.zonadpw.com/registro-curso-gratis/ Contenido esther Y en el blog: Un vistazo a Genesis Blocks y Genesis Pro Semana Nahuai Mi cuerpo hizo huelga. Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Ley de Parkinson: "el trabajo se expande hasta llenar el tiempo disponible para que se termine" Cuantas más tareas tenemos y menos tiempo para realizarlas, mejor nos organizamos para llegar a todo. Aumentar la productividad está muy bien, pero tiene un límite. Llega un momento que no podemos producir más, o que no es necesario hacerlo (no somos máquinas!)Ser resolutivo: resolver problemas, encontrar soluciones, avanzar y escoger aquello en lo que queremos centrarnos y en lo que podemos “perder el tiempo” sin remordimientos.Escuchar a nuestro cuerpo y respetar nuestro “momento emocional”Dar plazos muy amplios pero no asignarle más tiempo del necesario a la tarea.Ser creativo: que algo “siempre” se haya hecho de una forma no quiere decir que sea la mejor forma de hacerlo. Novedades iThemes adquiere Restrict Content Pro Promoción en septiembre de iThemes: toda la suite de plugins por sólo 249$, incluye BackupBuddy, iThemes Security y Restrict Content Pro para sitios ilimitados Lanzamiento de Genesis Custom Blocks Welcome to Genesis Custom Blocks Tip de la semana A partir de la versión 14.0 de Yoast puedes elegir el Schema para las páginas de contacto o sobre mí. Solo tienes que ir a la barra lateral del editor de bloques y elegir en el desplegable de la sección Schema. Menciones Pablo Moratinos nos agradece que en Freelandev expliquemos y pongamos un poco de orden en el rebranding y nuevos productos de StudioPress. Jesús, David y Mario también dicen la suya. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast
#527 WP-Tonic Round-Table Show on Friday,September 4th, 2020 at 8:30 am PST

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020


We discuss this week’s best WordPress & internet news stories. We also have a great panel of WordPress community and marketing internet junkies. This Week Show's Sponsors Kinsta: https://kinsta.com/ GroundHogg: https://www.groundhogg.io/ #1 - iThemes has acquired Restrict Content Pro from Sandhills Development https://poststatus.com/ithemes-has-acquired-restrict-content-pro/ #2 - Apple, Google, and Amazon respond to European tech taxes by passing on costs https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/2/21418114/european-uk-digital-tax-services-apple-google-amazon-raise-prices #3 - Founders Yoast SEO take a stake in WordProof to push timestamp relevance for SEO results https://wordproof.io/founders-yoast-seo-take-a-stake-in-wordproof/ #4 - Stepping Into a Market With Major Players, Mario Peshev Acquires WP-CRM System https://wptavern.com/stepping-into-a-market-with-major-players-mario-peshev-acquires-wp-crm-system

Crossword
Acquisitions and Ecosystems

Crossword

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2020


We discuss the acquisition of Restrict Content Pro by iThemes, the ecosystems being built by WP Engine, GoDaddy, and Liquid Web, and our sense that no one is doing it well – yet.

That Talking Thing
Construction, RCP Acquisition, Karma, Shape Up, Sleeping in Shifts | That Talking Thing | S1, E4

That Talking Thing

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2020 67:37


Kim and Jason discuss the office construction, the Restrict Content Pro acquisition, karma, preparing the environment, shape-up bets, and sleeping in shifts. (more…)

Negocios & WordPress
115. Focus, sobreestimulación y RetroPanik

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2020 53:54


✏️ Deja tu comentarioBienvenidos a un episodio lleno de reflexiones profesionales acerca de la organización de tareas, el llamado focus , y en donde Yannick nos anuncia que se ha creado otro canal de YouTube llamado RetroPanik dedicado a videojuegos y cine. Novedades Comenzamos con algunas noticias no muy buenas, pero que creemos es conveniente que sepáis. Por un lado Google Ads anuncia que los reportes estarán algo más restringidos. Algo que Yannick averiguaba gracias al comentario en Twitter de SeoEstratega: https://twitter.com/seostratega/status/1301264493872402433?s=20 También Google actualiza sus políticas en YouTube y todo aquel que suba contenidos debería echar un vistazo a la nueva normativa que sobretodo afecta al tema de reclamaciones y también a la clásica sala de control de los directos, que dejará de estar disponible. Restrict Content PRO, uno de nuestros plugins favoritos para crear membership sites, es comprado por una empresa. Pero no os preocupéis porque se trata de iThemes, toda una entidad en el mundo WordPress. Elías nos hablará de cómo ha cambiado su glujo de curación de contenidos de manera que todo quede agrupado con más sentido y con más entidad semántica de cara a futuras campañas de SEO. También nos trae un pequeño truco en caso de que os haya pasado este problema. Movió las metaboxes de la zona principal del post a la columna de la derecha en el panel de control de WordPress y luego no podía devolverlas al estado original. La clave ha sido ir a la base de datos, y en la tabla usermeta se guardan varias opciones con el orden de los paneles con el nombre meta-box-order_{cpt_name}. Hablaremos un poco de Crocoblock, que hace ya mucho tiempo presentó sus "Dynamic Templates". Yannick no les ha hecho mucho caso hasta ahora, pero después de la invitación por parte de Crocoblock a probarlo, quizas cree algún contenido en el canal. Básicamente son plantillas que ya incluyen plugins como Jet Engine o Jet Appointment y por supuesto, un diseño de nicho; desde alquiler de coches a restaurantes. Lo seguiremos de cerca. Vamos allá con unos cuantos contenidos de La Máquina del Branding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjbIlnJkJ3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLP7c2gIu_Y Continuaremos el programa hablando sobre la creación de campañas de marketing con Facebook y en concreto Yannick se anima a probar las campañas de vídeo. Donde, entre otras cosas, es posible conocer el porcentaje de vídeo que el usuario ha consumido. Algo muy relevante a la hora de determinar clientes potenciales. Y tenemos nuevo anuncio. Yannick se ha animado a realizar otro canal de YouTube. Esta vez dedicado a videojuegos y cine. Los motivos son diversos pero sin duda le ayudará a tener más experiencia en otras áreas para él desconocidas. Cómo no, os dejamos un enlace a su canal. Pasamos al bloque final de Elías donde hablaremos acerca de la monetización de esos contenidos de su página web. Hablaremos del blog, de clientes, y de todo lo relacionado con ordeñar lo máximo posible esos artículos. También tendremos novedades respecto al portal dance con nuevos contenidos como los "Temazos" y la subida de una sesión aniversario que hoy cumpliría 10 años. Para terminar, hablaremos largo y tendido sobre organización del tiempo, focus, la sobreestimulación, cómo nos absorben las redes sociales y otras hierbas en un momento del podcast de absoluta reflexión. Herramientas Upcoming WordPress Events over the worldEncuentra cualquier evento WordPress a nivel mundial con esta página web. Creators CalculatorVisualiza de manera muy intuitiva las diferentes formas que tienes de ganar X dinero en diferentes plataformas de creación de contenido. Image Colorizer | Picture Colorizer Online Tool | FreeSube una fotografía en blanco y negro a esa herramienta gratuita y deja que la inteligencia artificial la coloree automáticamente. WooCommerce Pay for PaymentUtiliza este plugin si a tu cliente le ha parecido buena idea cobrar "extras" dependiendo del método de pago elegido en tu página web con WooCommerce. Feedback José Roldán, desde el episodio 112, nos recomienda una vez más la herramienta Kiwosan. Una herramienta que tuvimos la suerte de probar hace tiempo, pero que aún no tenía todas las posibilidades que ahora nos brinda. Sin duda habra que volver a tenerla en cuenta. Enlaces Cambios en políticas de reportes de Google AdsCambios en las políticas de YouTubeiThemes compra Restrict Content ProPlantillas dinámicas de Crocoblock - Dynamic TemplatesLos 10 mandamientos de WordPressDiseños dinámicos en PhotoshopCanal de videojuegos y cine - RetroPanik

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#73 – Conciliar la vida familiar con la de desarrollador freelance

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2020 40:45


Síguenos en: ¿Eres autónomo/a? ¿Cuántas veces has escuchado eso de que tú lo tienes más fácil porque no tienes horarios ni jefes? ¿Cuántas veces te has sentido culpable por estar con tus hijos pensando en el trabajo o atendiendo al teléfono mientras los intentas distraer para que "no molesten"? ¿Cuántas reuniones has tenido que posponer porque el niño se ha despertado con fiebre o gastroeinteritis? ¿Cuántos proyectos has dejado pasar por falta de disponbilidad? Muchos escogemos ser freelance para poder conciliar mejor nuestra vida profesional y familiar, pero eso no significa que sea fácil, ¿verdad? ;) ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Complicada. Bastantes incidencias y temas de clientes. Final de temporada en la WP Meetup Granollers Contenido esther Publicación de la web coporativa que hemos estado viendo en las últimas semanas. Dos nuevos arítuclos en el blog. Semana Nahuai Movidas con tarjetas y Stripe en Código Genesis y para clientes. Para acceder a la URL que permite realizar el pago hay que ir a: Clientes > Facturas > Elegir factura > Detalles > Página de pagos > URL. Locura para «debuguear» un formulario de pago de Stripe que no cargaba. Ojo con los scripts, en general, y en particular con los que se meten en el personalizador de WordPress. Tener en cuenta los distintos niveles de caché de los hostings (Magic Cache, Microcaché…) además del del navegador. Muchas entradas de leads. ????????‍♂️ Me pasé por el Meetup Granollers (fiesta fin de temporada) y Griñón donde Ana Cirujano hablaba de Figma. La charla de Ana ya está disponible en WordPress.tv: Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Ventajas cuando tienes hijos: Horarios, sobretodo cuando son pequeños, podemos adaptarnosMás fácil organizarse para no tener que dejarlos con 4 meses en la guardería.Afrontar imprevistos, quedarnos con ellos si se ponen enfermos, participar en actividades escolares y pasar más tiempo con ellos. Inconvenientes: ¿Baja maternal? eso que es?Sentimiento culpabilidad permanenteFalta de tiempo para trabajarDificultad para reuniones, networking… y tener que dejar de coger según que proyectos. Consejos: Acepta ayuda, consigue mínimo 2 o 3 horas completamente dedicadas al trabajo.Se práctica/o, céntrate en aquello que te es más sencillo y rentable.No pretendas llegar a todo y no te comparesDisfrútalos Convivencia trabajando los dos en casa: Fijar unas normas de interrupciónAcordar cuando uno se queda con el despachoIntentar no hacer piques de quien se levanta más tarde de la silla Novedades Nueva beta de Restrict Content Pro 3.4: https://restrictcontentpro.com/version-3-4-beta/ Tip de la semana Página web que te permite escapar HTML (y otros lenguajes): https://codebeautify.org/html-escape-unescape Menciones David se alegra de vernos tan ilusionados con el proyecto. Ana Pascual también nos felicita y nos anima. Adrián se pasa para decir que se ha puesto al día con los episodios. Aleix también y nos agradece las menciones (y links) cuando hablamos de CSS. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Negocios & WordPress
109. WordPress 5.5, Tarjetas Regalo y Directos en Twitch

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2020 52:48


✏️ Deja tu comentarioEn el episodio de hoy repasamos un montón de novedades del mundo de WordPress como son las actualizaciones de los plugins de Crocoblock y del editor de bloques Gutenberg. Hablaremos también de cómo realizar tarjetas regalo con WooCommerce y repasaremos una de las nuevas funciones de WordPress 5.5, el Sitemap XML integrado. Novedades Comenzamos el episodio recomendadoos dos escuchas 'must have'.: https://mixx.io/2020/07/17/bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq-2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh/ https://www.dariobf.com/podcast/post-type-podcast-1x40/#comment-31178 Y nos vamos a nuestra suite favorita de plugins para Elementor. Repasamos con Yannick las novedades más importantes de la última actualización de plugins de Crocoblock. Destacamos: Mucha mejoras en JetMenu, sobretodo relativas a como se mostraban submenús en móvil.Nuevo widget de Lottie para Jet Elements y poder integrar animaciones SVG exportadas desde After Effects.Posibilidad de editar los listing items directamente haciendo clic sobre ellos en un listing grid. Si sois de esos que están todo el día realizando pruebas y experimentos en WordPress (como Yannick para sus tutoriales), os vendrá muy bien está nueva zona de pruebas: TrincheraDev. Ofrece hosting gratis y entorno de pruebas para que podáis trastear con WordPress fácilmente. TrincheraDev, por cierto, nace de la unión de los amigos de TrincheraWP con el proyecto DemosWP. Nos vamos con más novedades, ahora de Gutenberg 8.6. Esta semana destacamos: Posición del vídeo en Cover blockPatrones de bloque actualizados (unos cuantos)Icono del sitio en modo pantalla completa (en lugar del icono de WordPress)Variaciones de bloque: buscar por palabra clave Y vamos a hablar ahora de más novedades, pero directamente del core de WordPress 5.5. Ya hablamos por aquí en su día de que las nuevas versiones de WordPress incluirían nativamente un sitemap XML. Con la última versión esto ya es una realidad, y mediante código podemos configurar multitud de opciones. Os recomendamos revisar esta documentación: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/07/22/new-xml-sitemaps-functionality-in-wordpress-5-5/ Pasamos ahora a Yannick que nos trae un pequeño truco o tutorial para crear tarjetas regalo, o casi mejor dicho, vales de servicio. Se trata de utilizar WooCommerce y sus variaciones. Algo muy sencillo para lo que en principio no necesitaremos ningún plugin dedicado. Seguiremos hablando de WooCommerce. Yannick ha hecho pruebas acerca de la convivencia de WooCommerce con Restrict Content PRO y parece que se van a llevar bien. Nos cuenta las pruebas que ha realizado en YEP! dance. Por último Yannick nos adelanta que sus siguientes vídeos en YouTube serán, por un lado, La Historia de WordPress. Y por otro, un vídeo más personal hablando sobre su trayectoria, algo que los seguidores de este podcast conocen un poco mejor, pero que Yannick no ha compartido con su comunidad de YouTube. Este último vídeo servirá como Episodio Especial para esa meta inminente de los 10.000 suscriptores en La Máquina del Branding. Esta semana, Elías, además de hablarnos de sus tareas y avances en diferentes facetas, nos trae una reflexión muy interesante. Hablaremos sobre las emisiones en directo y sobre como los streamers abren sus temáticas de nicho a cosas mas mundanas a la hora de realizar directos. Elías se plantea realizar algo del estilo para lo que tendremos muy en cuenta la plataforma Twitch, de la que también hablaremos. Feedback Jesús Olazagoitia nos agradece la mención a Heliblocks y nos invita a invitarle a este programa. ¡Un saludo, amigo! Herramientas WP Activity Log (formerly WP Security Audit Log)Vigila todo lo que ocurre en tu WordPress y qué usuario ha realizado cualquier cambio en la página web. OBS Virtual CamEmite la señal de OBS en cualquier aplicación como Skype, Whereby, Jitsi... permitiéndo mayor control de la escena con OBS. Lock itBloquea pestañas de Chrome con esta extensión y evita cerrarlas sin querer. Stories by Freepik - IlustracionesRepositorio de ilustraciones configurables. Tabler IconsRepositorio de iconos personalizables y configurables. Enlaces La mejor, peor noche de Twitter1x40 - Proyecto mínimo viable con @jdevelopiaTodas las novedades de Crocoblock - ChangelogTrincheraDev - Free hosting for WordPress Development and Test InstallationsMerge Announcement: Extensible Core SitemapsNew XML Sitemaps Functionality in WordPress 5.5What’s new in Gutenberg (July 22)Lottie - Documentación oficial

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#71 – Consejos para comenzar como desarrollador WordPress freelance

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2020 45:46


Síguenos en: ¿Qué consejos le daríamos a nuestro yo de hace unos años cuando empezábamos como desarrolladores web? Este es uno de los temas que no sugirió Juan para estos episodios de verano en los que nos gusta dejar un poco de lado los temas más técnicos y reflexionar e intercambiar impresiones sobre nuestra vida como autónomos. Pero antes, cómo no... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Poco trabajo de clientes y aprovechando para formación.  Nuevos contactos con agencias para colaboraciones con TWP Cena de la "Alianza NED" celebrando (con retraso) el evento GenesisBCN de noviembre Contenido esther Acabando el proyecto de web corporativa con ajustes responsive: https://www.zonadpw.com/cursos/web-corporativa-wp-directos/ Semana Nahuai Bastante curro de clientes. Entretenido con una consultoría/desarrollo de una web con donaciones/socios que a su vez es un membership. Opciones: Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads + addons, GiveWP + restricción de contenido. La caché de servidor dando errores de carrito vacio… Petición de una suscripción anual de Código Genesis por parte de un oyente del podcast, que ha conseguido que su empresa lo pague como parte de su formación. ¡Grande, Jordi! ???? Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: Consejos a nuestros yo del pasado Nahuai: Aprender de forma aplicada con especial hincapié en:Bases de HTML y CSSArquitectura de la información (Custom Post Type, Customs Fields, Taxonomías…)Investigar y escoger con quién formarme -> Evitar el picoteo de informaciónEscoger y limitar los canales de comunicación1-2 redes socialesEmail (cultivar la lista de suscriptores)Encontrar un referente de freelance + developer Gestión de clientes/proyectosGestión de presupuestosEncontrar un mentor/a esther: Poner horas, muchas, para aprender y buscar proyectos de cualquier tipo. Olvídate de la semana laboral de 4h e ingresos pasivosHay muchos caminos y cada uno ha de buscar el suyo según sus circunstancias. Inspírate, busca referentes, pero no te comparesEscucha a tus clientes y adáptate a lo que necesitan, no a lo que a ti te apetece hacerRodéate de buena genteNo dejes de aprender cosas nuevas, de probar y experimentarDiviértete Enlaces a los episodios de cómo llegamos al desarrollo web: #23 - Cómo llegamos al desarrollo WordPress #24 - Cómo llegamos al desarrollo WordPress (II) Novedades Nuevo addon de Restrict Content Pro que conecta con el servicio Recapture (29$/mes), que recupera carritos abandonados. Ya se se ha publicado WooCommerce 4.3, cambio en la home, mejoras en los bloques y recomendación de PHP 7.2. Esta semana es la undécima edición de SemanaWP en la que se hablará de accesibilidad web. Documentación para añadir tus plugin al directorio de bloques que llegará con WordPress 5.5. Tanto Jorge Gonzalez como Jesús Olazagoitia tienen un bloque ya. ???? Tip de la semana Jesús Olazagoitia ha lanzado su plugin Heliblocks y Pablo Moratinos ha preparado un tutorial bastante completo sobre cómo usarlo.  Menciones Taníamos pendientes varios comentarios de iVoox, entre ellos: Dani en el episodio 68 nos dice: se agradece mucho que a los novatos nos deis vuestro punto de vista sobre el tema FSE y el futuro de Génesis framework. Esperando el siguiente podcast!!!Ivan Barreda en el episodio 63 nos dice: Lo de Redsys y Cloudflare tienes que añadir unas IPs a la lista blancaTambién se pasó Jaime Garmar. Diego Medina un email contándonos como usa la extensión "sftp sync extension for VS Code Jesús nos recomienda darle una oportunidad a Edge y una extensión de VSC que permite sincronizar los cambios del navegador con el fichero. Vidania incluye nuestro episodio sobre Full Site Editing y el futuro de WordPress en Aprende Gutenberg. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Síguenos en: A menudo dejado de lado como lenguaje de programación frente a sus "hermanos mayores", a nuestro parecer el CSS no tiene la fama que debería tener, teniendo en cuenta todo lo que podemos llegar a hacer con él. A nosotros nos encanta y es algo que seguramenet se notará en este episodio. ???? ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Corta y bastante tranquila, con poco tiempo productivo (San Juan, entrevistas con tutores, graduación..) Problemas rendimiento web (theme premium con Visual Composer + Revolution Slider + WPML) WPMalaga David Perez: Snippets para Visual Studio Code Contenido esther Tutorial para SiliCodeValley sobre conectar Restrict Content Pro y Stripe con Factura Directa Semana Nahuai Bastante tranquila con una migración que le dio un poco de emoción… Directo de la Alianza NED en la que hablamos de cómo colaborar y delegar en proyectos web. Charla de Jodi Sala sobre copias de seguridad en la Meetup de WordPress Barcelona. Charla sobre Block-based themes y Full Site Editing organizada por Gutenberg Times. Muy interesante que ya hay un bloque para sacar el loop (Query). Contenido Nahuai Tema de la semana: CSS es básico junto con HTML y algo de JS para desarrollo web, aunque seas implementado WordPress Algunos temas de los que hemos comentado: Especificidad y prioridadesConocer bien el tipo de selectores y pseudo-selectoresDominar Flex y Grid para maquetarPseudoelementos (::before y ::after) para añadir iconos/sombrasPropiedades :not() y :lang()Variables / propiedades personalizadas -> ideal para combinar con JS Charlas Aleix Martí sobre variables CSS: Recursos interesantes: CSS Tricks -> tutoriales desde básicos a más avanzadoshttps://www.freecodecamp.org/ -> retos para practicar CSS muy practico (Grid, Flexbox…)https://codepen.io/ -> para encontrar ejemplos y practicarhttps://caniuse.com -> para conocer al nivel de soporte para cada navegadorCSS Reference: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/CSS Handbook: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-css-handbook-a-handy-guide-to-css-for-developers-b56695917d11/Documentación de Mozilla (¡gracias, César!)https://flexboxfroggy.com (¡gracias, Aleix!)https://cssgridgarden.com (¡gracias, Aleix!) Novedades Lanzamiento de Mai Reach Añadido a la lista de temas optimizados para Gutenberg y añadidos ciertos matices (Winning Agent Pro): Tip de la semana Ejemplos de maquetación preparados con CSS Flexbox: https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/ Caniuse: https://caniuse.com/ Últimos días para aprovechar la oferta trimestral de Código Genesis. Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

Finanzas Online
52. Modelo de Negocios - Membership site

Finanzas Online

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2020 9:04


Finanzas Online Episodio “52” Hoy en día generar ingresos por Internet sea puesto de moda, hoy te platico de un modelo de negocios muy interesante Membership site. Acompáñame. Muy buenos días a todo mundo, Gracias a Dios por un dejarme realizar un programa más de Finanzas Online, el programa, podcast donde hablamos conceptos, estrategias, recomendaciones, noticias..... todo lo relacionado con el dinero, ganancia, rentabilidad, punto de equilibrio, todo lo que tenga que ver con Finanzas..... esto es Finanzas Online. Episodio 52 del jueves 28 de mayo de 2020 El programa de hoy lo vamos a dedicar a todos aquellos pioneros que se arriesgaron a crear negocios en Internet y que hoy en día gracias a sus conocimientos y el aprendizaje constante podemos utilizar sus conocimientos para crear negocios exitosos, desde mi covacha les envió un enorme Podabrazo, El tema de hoy es el modelo de negocios Membership site, pero antes te recuerdo que estamos en el prelanzamiento del membership site de Finanzas Online, curso de finanzas para emprendedores, échale un vistazo en finanzasonline.com.mx estamos en los últimos días, el precio especial sólo durará hasta el 31 de mayo. Recuerda que me puedes hacer llegar tus propuestas a finanzasonline.com.mx/proponer Sin más .... MANOS A LA OBRA … Comencemos por definir ¿qué es el modelo de negocios membership site? Un membership site es un sitio web donde los suscriptores se registran para tomar cursos, comprar un producto, contratar un servicio, acceder a una comunidad,etc. A cambio de un cargo mensual o anual, dependiendo del tipo de suscripción. Los tipos de membership site pueden ser: Producto. Ofrecen productos mensuales,  Servicio, se ofrece algo a cambio puede ser asesorias por Skype Contenido, ofrecer cursos o contenido, un ejemplo es boluda.com y finanzasonline.com.mx Comunidad, se ofrece acceso a un foro, red social Híbrido, una mezcla de todo El acceso a lo que brinda el membership site puede entregarse de las siguientes formas:  Dripping, El contenido se muestra poco a poco Todo de golpe, acceso a todo el contenido para siempre  Modular o por méritos, se basa en alcanzar objetivos Fijo, cuenta con fecha de inicio y fecha inicial Lo que hace genial este modelo de negocios es que puedes lograr ingresos recurrentes, es decir, que cada mes conocerás cuánto dinero ingresará a tu cuenta, lo que como emprendedor eso te genera un tranquilidad porque comenzarás cada mes, con un respaldo de suscriptores. Es por eso, que este modelo de negocios, está tomando fuerza, ya que la forma de conseguir ingresos recurrentes está en proporción a lo que puedas ofrecer a tus suscriptores y futuros miembros.  Quiero aclararte que si piensas que son ingresos pasivos, para nada, porque si dejas abandonado el membership site, es seguro que los miembros comiencen a cancelar sus suscripciones. Si estás buscando ¿Cómo obtener ingresos por internet? de una forma rápida y fácil, el modelo de membership site, no es la opción. Porque tienes que trabajar bastante para tener siempre el interés de tus suscriptores. Es posible que te estés preguntando qué necesito para crear un sitio de suscripción:  Un theme o plantilla como la conozcas, en lo personal a mi me gusta trabajar con Wordpress, el framework de Genesis y el theme de Genesis Un plugin de suscripción, existen 3 que pueden ayudarte mucho Paid Member Pro. En el repositorio de Wordpress es gratuito. Restrict Content Pro. Existe una versión gratuita pero está muy limitada, en lo personal recomiendo la versión de paga.   Tanto Paid Member y Restrict Contect Pro son perfectos para membership site de Servicio, Contenido y Comunidad WooCommerce. Es para crear el de Producto o un e-commerce.   Elegir un proveedor que te gestione los pagos, entre lo más utilizados esta PayPal y Stripe, yo utilizo Stripe porque la comisión es menor a PayPal, además su gestión es mucho más accesible.  Este modelo de negocios es mucho más completo y muy amplio, de hecho, existen Podcast que solo habla de membership site, de hecho yo sigo un podcast que se llama Membership site, por sí deseas escucharlo, buscaré la forma de traer al Podcast para que nos compartan sus comentarios. Cuando tenga confirmada la entrevista se las haré saber. Sin más hasta aquí el episodio de hoy .......... Muchas gracias por escucharme, si te pareció interesante, pero sobre todo que te aporto valor y puedes aplicarlo a tu vida, por favor, házmelo saber con una valoración, comentario, siguiendome en cualquiera de las plataformas donde se puede escuchar Podcast. Esto me ayudará a que más personas puedan escucharme y tal vez sea lo que necesitan para salvar su negocio, así que ayúdame a llegar a más personas. Tus valoraciones, gustas, comentarios, recomendaciones me motivan a seguir compartiendo mis consejos, que aplico en mi día a día. Así que son bien recibidos todos tus comentarios, sugerencias cualquier cosa que me quieras decir, en finanzasonline.com.mx Que Dios te bendiga, te envió un enorme apretón de manos, un gran Podabrazo. ¡¡¡Que tengas un ...fascinante jueves!!!

Implementador WordPress
Hablemos de membership site

Implementador WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2020 17:37


Hoy retomamos el curso de Restrict Content Pro y ante las dudas que van surgiendo de algunos oyentes… Hablamos de los membership site.

Implementador WordPress
Hablemos de membership site

Implementador WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later May 4, 2020 17:37


Hoy retomamos el curso de Restrict Content Pro y ante las dudas que van surgiendo de algunos oyentes… Hablamos de los membership site.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#59 – Desarrollo web y SEO

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2020 44:59


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! Hoy venimos a hablar de algo que nos gusta poco y de lo que tampoco sabemos demasiado... ¿Cómo es eso? Pues como desarrolladores web nos pasará en más de una ocasión que no podemos dar la espalda a todo aquello que está relacionado con la web y que hemos de tener en cuenta al desarrollarla... nos guste o no. ????????‍♀️ ????????‍♂️ Pero antes, como siempre... ???????????????? Nos han aceptado charla en la próxima WordCamp #WCES ???????? ???????????????? ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Una semana animada, con más movimiento de clientes, nuevas propuestas y altas de mantenimiento. Los niños empiezan trimestre online, lo que dificulta la organización del día a día, pero aún así salió el Curso para ofrecer servicios mantenimiento web y me he liado a cambiar WooCommerce Subscriptions por EDD + recurring payments ????????‍♀️ Contenido esther Dos nuevos módulos en el recién estrenado curso: Semana Nahuai Nahuai ha tenido semanas mejores....???? pero aún así pudo atender a la Reunión de Genesis Shapers donde estuvieron explorando el futuro de Genesis en la era del Full Site Editing. Contenido Nahuai Mostrar el nombre del tema activo en la «admin bar» de WordPress: Tema de la semana: Hoy hablamos de SEO y de cómo lo tenemos en cuenta en nuestro trabajo: Como desarrolladores debemos tener conocimientos de SEO, al menos técnico.Hay mucho desconocimiento y mala información.Saber aconsejar y recomendar ( propuestas “basura”).El buen SEO requiere inversión (contratar y/o generar contenidos).SEO para proyectos propios y side projects.Depender del algoritmo.Plaga de nichos y contenido de mala calidad.Muy recomendable conocer las bases del SEO on page (jerarquía de encabezados, links internos, titulo, meta descripción…). Novedades Hoy traemos unas cuantas....: Meetups online de Barcelona el 24 y de Granollers el 21.Nuevo add-on de Restrict Content Pro para el envío de emails según el nivel de membresía: https://restrictcontentpro.com/introducing-the-per-level-emails-add-on/Ya están en WordPress TV las WP Block Talk: https://wordpress.tv/event/wpblocktalk-april-2020/Nuevo proyecto Adoptauntheme de Carlos y Baptiste Tip de la semana Dos sitios para poder crear instalaciónes rápidas y temporales de WordPress: https://jurassic.ninjahttps://wpsandbox.net Menciones Xavi recomienda nuestro episodio de child themes de Genesis en Twitter. ???? Juan también le gustó el episodio de temas de Genesis y comparte mi reticencia de seguir los hilos. ???? Los chatanoogos tienden una trampa a esther. ????????

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#51 – Pasarelas de pago con WordPress

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2020 44:44


Síguenos en: Bienvenidos una semana más a Freelandev, hoy vamos a hablar sobre pasarelas de pago para WordPress, cuales son las que solemos utilizar, las que más nos gustan y las ventajas e inconvenientes que le vemos a cada una. Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Peor que la anterior, pero mejor de lo que me esperaba. ???? Preparando un child theme para genesis (aunque el futuro de los themes es incierto, por ahora los seguimos necesitando) Tuvimos la Meetup Granollers, hablando del editor de bloques y grabada para wordpress.tv gracias a Francesc ???? Contenido esther Semana Nahuai A medio gas por un virus ???? y peleándome con modificaciones en Sensei. Charla para la WordCamp Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2020 aceptada, donde hablaré de sostenibilidad web. ???? Hoy comunican las charlas aceptadas de la WordCamp Europe y sabré si me estreno como speaker en una WordCamp no española. ???? Contenido Nahuai Añadir campos extra a los inmuebles y mostrarlos el widget de AgentPress listings: +125 tutoriales de WordPress, no solo Genesis Framework: https://codigogenesis.com/genesis/wordpress/ Tema de la semana: Las principales pasarelas de pago que se utilizan hoy en día en España: Stripe (Comisión: 1,4% + 0,25€ para EU, 2,9 % + 0,25 € tarjetas no europeas)Paypal  (Comisión: 2,9% + 0,35€)TPV de los bancos  (Comisión: depende de las condiciones q tengas en tu banco, pero suelen ser mas bajas) Generalmente la integración la gestiona el plugin responsable de los pagos ( WooCommerce, Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads…). Integración usando las APIs (pública y privada) y configurando los webhooks. En caso RedSys: plugin de redsys bastante malo, plugin oficial WooCommerce gratuito y pro (Conti) Ventajas de Stripe: tecnológicamente el más avanzado. Buena integración con APIs para plugins de WordPress, programas de facturación, panel de control fantástico (especialmente si tienes un membership). Ventajas de Paypal: más cómodo para algunos usuarios, no tienen que introducir la tarjeta, sino email/contraseña. Tiene políticas muy protectoras con el comprador y por eso algunos prefieren pagar a través de este método. Ventajas de TPV: dependiendo el banco las comisiones son más bajas que Stripe o Paypal. Desventajas: Problema de usabilidad: redirecciona a la página del banco. El alta es más lenta y burocrática. No recomendada para suscripciones Novedades Matomo plugin para WP: ¡Todavía quedan entradas de WC Valladolid! ¡Anímate si todavía no tienes la tuya! Tip de la semana Plugin para WordPress que permite crear transcripciones de los podcast (Pat Flynn detrás del proyecto) Menciones Vicent nos deja un mega comentario a raíz de las comparaciones profesionales 1.- Pasando de todo, es difícil pero a veces funciona. 2.- Centrándome en mí, mi progreso personal. 3.- Esforzándome por dar el máximo en ciertas cosas. 4.- Networking, conocer a la gente a la que sigues. David nos felicita y nos cuenta una experiencia regulera con el soporte de Stripe. Cachondeo en TW con Jaime sobre lo rápido q nos picamos algunos para ir a WordCamps ¡Y hasta aquí el episodio de hoy! Muchas gracias por pasar este ratito con nosotros una semana más y os esperamos el próximo lunes. ???? ????

Web de Nutris, el podcast
178. Restrict content pro y SEO: un caso práctico

Web de Nutris, el podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2020 11:52


En el podcast de hoy os contamos un caso práctico y real que implica a Restrict Content Pro y el SEO de algunas recetas con contenido restringido.

Web de Nutris, el podcast
178. Restrict content pro y SEO: un caso práctico

Web de Nutris, el podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2020 11:52


En el podcast de hoy os contamos un caso práctico y real que implica a Restrict Content Pro y el SEO de algunas recetas con contenido restringido.

Negocios & WordPress
85. TranslatePress, SEO y La Máquina del Branding Reborn

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2020 57:37


Bienvenidos una semana más a Negocios y WordPress. Lo que tenéis hoy aquí es un capítulo completísimo que reúne trucos, plugins, noticias y sobretodo muchísimo contenido profesional basado en la progresión de Yannick y Elías y sus respectivos negocios. Vamos a comenzar el programa con algo ligerito. Nos vamos al mundo del ocio y de los videojuegos y fisgamos los planes de Google y Facebook para...Origen

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#45 – Cuando juntar o separar proyectos online

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2020 40:37


Síguenos en: ¡Muy buenos y fresquitos lunes de enero! ❄️❄️ Aquí estamos una semana más, con sueño y frío pero encantados de compartir este ratito entre nosotros y con vosotros, hablando de web y WordPress, de migraciones, de Stripe y Restrict Content Pro, de snippets y de todas esas cositas que tanto nos gustan y que nos alegran un poco estas semanas algo complicadas. Pero antes... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Bastante mala..., con imprevistos, problemas, paletas, urgencias… y un poco de todo... pero malo. ????????‍♀️ Contenido esther En el blog un post sobre nth-child de CSS y una novedad con el [Front] Snippet del día: Y en la Zona DPW un módulo explicando en detalle la migración de la academia que comentamos también en este episodio. Semana Nahuai Renovación de la home de un par de clientes. Movidas con RCP y Stripe. Terminando de hacer balance económico del 2019.., pero con calma, como comenta con Nuria Hidalgo: Contenido Nahuai Introducir texto animado en WordPress (Aplicado por Jordi Garcia Codina. :D) ???????????????? ???? ¡444 tutoriales! ???? Tema de la semana: Hoy hablamos de un tema, que si tenéis o en algún momento habéis tenido más de un proyecto en marcha, seguro que os habéis planteado... ¿juntos? ¿revueltos? o ¿cada uno en su casa? Sin duda dependerá del proyecto y las circunstancias de cada caso, pero en el episodio de hoy comentamos nuestra experiencia y lo que consideramos que se ha de tener en cuenta para decidir algo así: Estrategia de negocio (marca personal / producto…)Estructura de la informaciónSEOUsabilidad (que el usuario pueda navegar de forma más sencilla) Pero ojo, que los proyectos evolucionan y las decisiones no son de por vida... con el tiempo podemos valorar si vale la pena juntar o separar proyectos... y ese ha sido el caso de la Zona DPW que comentamos también hoy como se ha separado de la web principal esthersola.com Novedades Divi crea un bloque llamado «Divi layout» que te permite usar el builder dentro del editor de bloques. (Page Builder de Site Origin lo había hecho hace 9 meses.) Tip de la semana Solucionar el error al actualizar la tarjeta de crédito en RCP: para solucionarlo puedes ir a la ficha de su suscripción y cambiar «Método de pago» de «Pago manual» a «Stripe». No sabemos porqué en algunos casos aparece cambiado el método de pago y eso impide que el suscriptor puede actualizar los datos... si descubrimos algo más sobre este tema, os informaremos! Menciones ???? David Viña nos recomienda en TW a raíz del nacimiento de un podcast en gallego y Ana nos felicita por la charla enviada a la WCEU y por los plugins. ???? También hacemos un pequeño repaso a las WordCamps de este año, con la chuleta de Javier Casares: https://wpcalendar.io/es/wordcamp/ Y comentamos la próxima Meetup de Terrassa: https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Terrassa-WordPress-Meetup/events/266578727/ Y por hoy ¡eso es todo! Encantados como siempre de compartir nuestro lunes, y deseando que lo disfrutéis. La próxima semana... ¡más y mejor!

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#45 – Cuando juntar o separar proyectos online

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2020 40:37


¡Muy buenos y fresquitos lunes de enero! ❄️❄️ Aquí estamos una semana más, con sueño y frío pero encantados de compartir este ratito entre nosotros y con vosotros, hablando de web y WordPress, de migraciones, de Stripe y Restrict Content Pro, de snippets y de todas esas cositas que tanto nos gustan y que nos […]

Membership Sites
96. Monográfico de Restrict Content Pro para WordPress

Membership Sites

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2019 38:21


Hoy hablaremos de Restrict Content Pro, uno de los plugins de membresía que puedes utilizar para crear tu Membership Site.

Membership Sites
96. Monográfico de Restrict Content Pro para WordPress

Membership Sites

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2019 38:22


Hoy hablaremos de Restrict Content Pro, uno de los plugins de membresía que puedes utilizar para crear tu Membership Site.

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#34 – Dónde nos formamos como desarrolladores WordPress

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2019 41:16


Síguenos en: Buenos días, tardes o noches y bienvenidos una semana más a Freelandev. Hoy reflexionamos y compartimos sobre algo imprescindible: la formación. ¿Dónde nos hemos formado y continuamos haciéndolo? Pero antes, como siempre... ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther Una buena semana, con varias altas de nuevos mantenimientos, modificaciones en páginas web a medida y preparando plugin personalizado. Contenido esther Segundo módulo del curso sobre Advanced Custom Fields Semana Nahuai Gestionando la organización del evento de #GenesisBCN para el que ya somos 37 apuntados. ???? ???? (Recuerda que si te apuntas antes del 31 de octubre podrás pedir tu camiseta!) Refinando el plugin de Restrict Content Pro para liberar contenido según antigüedad del suscriptor e integrando WooCommerce con Contasimple. Meetup Barcelona, con Nora hablando de diseño: Contenido Nahuai Crear un nuevo diseño de «contenido estrecho» sin sidebars en Genesis Framework. Un post en nbadiola.com sobre el tema de hoy, formación en WordPress: + post en un blog internacional bastante conocido Tema de la semana: dónde nos formamos Siendo desarrolladores, independientemente de la formación inicial cuando empezamos a dedicarnos a esto, no tenemos más remedio que ir aprendiendo y formándonos de forma continuada. Viendo que novedades van apareciendo, profundizando en los temas que necesitamos para proyectos en concreto, y reciclándonos en actualizaciones y novedades. Coursera + MiriadaX -> Bases HTLM + CSS + JSBoluda.com -> Bases WordPress + HTLM + CSS + PHP + JSSilicodeValley -> HTLM + CSS + PHP + creación de temas/pluginsZona DPW -> gestión de negocio como freelance + trucos WooCommerce/GenesisCódigo Genesis -> seguir aprendiendo y mantenerme al día de WordPress y GenesisSridhar Katakam -> tutoriales modificar child themes de GenesisCursos Zac Gordon -> adaptación de themas a Gutenberg + creación de bloquesCodex + Developer en WordPress.orgMeetups y WordCampsWordPress.tvMantenerse al día con newsletters, como Enlace Permanente, Aprender Gutenberg y Semana PHP + podcastsSiguiendo blogs con Feedly Novedades Rediseño de Torquemag con Genesis Framework + Customs blocks + Atomic Blocks Menciones Vicent nos deja un comentario en la web sobre su especialización en accesibilidad WordPress y Juanma Aranda se preocupa en Twitter al entender que no hablaremos más de eventos ???? ¡Y hasta aquí este nuevo episodio del podcast! Estamos encantados de pasar un lunes compartiendo con vosotros nuestro día a día como desarrolladores freelance. Esperamos que os haya gustado y estaremos encantados de leer vuestros comentarios, y recibir vuestros likes, estrellitas y cualquier amor de suscriptor ???? ????

Negocios & WordPress
69. ¡Curso SEO GRATIS y DJ Elías a tope!

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2019 46:10


Os traemos un episodio cargado de novedades WordPress, pero también con grandes avances para los proyectos de Yannick y Elías. Un Curso SEO GRATIS y una trayectoria de DJ ElÍas que sube como la espuma en el mundo de los dj para bodas y eventos. Cuidado con vuestras tiendas online y sitios de membresía que utilicen Stripe. Con las nuevas normativas SCA para realizar pagos más seguros incluyendo...Origen

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#31 – Camino a la WordCamp Granada 2019 (desde Sevilla)

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 7, 2019 32:36


Síguenos en: ¡Muy buenos días a todos! Hoy traemos un episodio super-especial por varias razones... No es lunesNo estamos solosTenemos un super set de audio y sala de grabación megaguayGrabamos desde Sevilla (aunque hablemos de Granada) Fácil, ¿verdad? Pero antes... ¿Qué tal la semana? Nahuai: Puesta al día a marchas forzadas después de la escapada a Pontevedra y el norte, retomando el reto de la integración avanzada entre Restrict Content Pro y Stripe y estrenando charlas en la Meetup WP Tarrasa: https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/Terrassa-WordPress-Meetup/events/265309701/ Y ya está en WordPress.tv la charla en la Meetup de Pontevedra: esther: a tope, o más, para no perder el ritmo... cerrando el temas, migraciones con multisite y nuevos presupuestos... Tema de la semana: A Granada desde Sevilla Hoy, aprovechando que este fin de semana hemos estado en la WordCamp Sevilla (de la que hablaremos la próxima semana), no hemos pasado la oportunidad de tener con nosotros a dos de los organizadores de la próxima WordCamp Granada del 23, 30 de noviembre y 1 de diciembre, en la que los dos participaremos como ponentes y a la que nos hace mucha ilusión asistir. David Pérez (@davidperezmk) y Jesús Yesares (@jesusyesares) nos acompañan hoy para hablar del super-programa de la próxima WordCamp Granada. Realmente ha sido genial compartir un rato con ellos comentando la estructura y ponentes del programa que han preparado y que podéis consultar aquí. Como ya os imaginaréis, ha sido imposible mantener la estructura habitual de la escaleta (todo un trauma para el Dr.Nahuai...) pero sí hemos conseguido que la duración del programa no se descontrolara. ???? ???? Esperamos que os haya gustado, y la próxima semana... ¡más!

The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast
FL299 - How to Overcome Your Fear of Selling

The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2019 49:53


In today's episode, we help Sarah sell without being too salesy or spammy. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Sarah sell without being too salesy or spammy. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is so great to be with you today. Wherever you're listening to the show, thank you for listening. We're really excited to welcome another member of the Flip Your Life community onto the show, so that we can help them overcome fears, breakthrough obstacles and take action on the next steps in their online business. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member, Sarah Cottrell. Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah Cottrell: Hi, thanks so much for having me. Jocelyn Sams: Welcome Sarah, I'm actually sensing a little theme here in the podcast. If you listened a couple weeks ago, we had another attorney on, and Sarah of course is an attorney. Tell us a little bit about you, your background and your online business. Sarah Cottrell: Well, so I worked as a lawyer for the last decade. I graduated from law school in 2008, and last summer, after the last of our kids was born, I left my legal job to stay home with them. My path through being a lawyer was a pretty common story. This is true for a lot of lawyers, which is that I started practicing, and pretty early on realized it was not for me in the longterm. However, we had a lot of student loan debt, and I say we because my husband is also a lawyer. We actually met in law school and combined between the two of us, we had over $400,000. Jocelyn Sams: Ouch! Shane Sams: Oh my God. That is a lot of scary mountainous debt, especially when you're like, "I'm not going to use this degree anymore," right? Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. It's basically like you have a mortgage, except there's no asset associated with it other than your own blood, sweat and tears. Shane Sams: Wow, that's unbelievable. Are you still in debt? Sarah Cottrell: No, we paid off all of our debt last June, so June of 2018. Shane Sams: Well done, congratulations. Sarah Cottrell: Thank you. Shane Sams: I can't even imagine having that much debt coming out of college. Jocelyn Sams: What a weight lifted, oh my goodness. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I was about two years in to practicing when I realized, "This is just not for me in the longterm." When you have over $400,000 in debt, you can't just chalk it all and leave. We had to make a plan to get out, and it had to be a longterm plan. You know a lot of personal finance guru types will say, "Do all these things and cut everything down, and then pay off your debt in like 5 months and then you'll be great." Well, when you have a mortgage size level of debt, you have to have a little bit of a longer term plan that is survivable for five or 10 years in my case. That's what we did. Sarah Cottrell: We made a plan and got out of debt, and that enabled us to be in a position where I was able to stay home with our kids. I also have started doing some writing on the side, which is something that I've always been interested in. With a full-time job and young kids, especially a job that was a lot of research and writing, not a lot of time for writing. Shane Sams: Well for one thing, what's crazy when you were telling your story I was like, "How was 2008 over 10 years ago?" I saw this thing on Facebook the other day, and it was like, people of a certain age you always think the 70s are 30 years ago. I do think that. I'm like, when was 1970? What, 30 years ago? When was 1980? What, 20 years ago? Really, 1980 was like almost 40 years ago and it doesn't seem like that in my brain. Sarah Cottrell: Oh yeah. Shane Sams: When you said, 2008, I was like, how was that 10 years ago for one thing. Then getting out of debt in that short amount, that actually is a short amount of time to me to get out of $400,000 in debt. That's crazy that you did that. That's one of the things that hang people up that we always find coming into the community, is like, "Well, you know I got this college degree. Then I was in this career, and I've got so much time invested in this career, that I just don't want to pivot." I'm like kudos for you for having the guts to say, "Yeah, I'm not going any further. Two years is enough, even though I've invested all of this, I'll figure out how to use this later in my life." Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. Well, and I think for lawyers in particular, you are trained to be extremely risk averse. What you're talking about the sunk costs fallacy that I have all this money and time invested into it, so I can't leave, that's a very strong, mental obstacle for many lawyers. Shane Sams: For sure. Sarah Cottrell: For us, I mean I'm two years in I'm thinking, "I don't want to be a lawyer forever," but I still worked as a lawyer for another eight years. Shane Sams: You had an end game in mind. Sarah Cottrell: Exactly. Shane Sams: That's institutionalized though in almost all businesses and industries. The day I resigned from my job, I slid the letter of resignation over to my principal and he looks at me and he goes, "Man, are you sure?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm 100% positive." Then he goes, he's like, "But how long have you been teaching?" I was like, I said, "Nine years I'm going on my tenth year." He goes, "Nine years, and you're just going to throw all that away? You're just going to throw all that retirement away?" I looked at him and I was like, "Yeah, but there's 18 left before I can retire. I'm not just going to sit here for 18 more years." Sarah Cottrell: Exactly. Jocelyn Sams: Just because we put nine years in, I mean. Shane Sams: Yeah, I don't care how much time I've got put in it, I've got the rest of my life to live. Anybody listening out there, you know Jocelyn and I full degrees, masters degrees, all this education. Taught for almost a decade, we bailed, because we wanted to go a different direction. Sarah was a lawyer, she didn't want to be. $400,000 invested in her education, and decided to do something different. Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I'll tell you, I was looking yesterday because I have one pesky student loan left, and it doesn't have a large balance, but we have one left. Shane Sams: The reason is, I'll tell you why we keep that loan, this is so morbid. If you die, those go away. Sarah Cottrell: I feel you, yes. Shane Sams: We're like, we could pay it off early, or we could just use it as a reverse insurance policy if something ever happens. Totally morbid logic for why we still have the student loan. Jocelyn Sams: Well I was looking yesterday just to see how much was... Jocelyn Sams: Not that much left on it, but anyway, that loan is for an MBA that I never finished. To this day I am paying every month, it just comes out automatically whatever, I pay every month for a degree I didn't even get. You know what, it's part of my life experience. It's part of the reason that I am the person I am today. I don't have any regrets. I'm not sitting here every month going, "Oh you know I'm still paying for this degree that I don't even have." I don't even think about it. It's just part of my life, it's something I did. Jocelyn Sams: Somebody, is it Dave Ramsey that calls it the stupid tax? It's a stupid tax, we've paid a lot of stupid tax in our life. Shane Sams: We've paid a whole lot of stupid tax in our lives. It's all part of the story and it gets you to where you're supposed to be at. Sarah Cottrell: Exactly, yes. I mean to me, and this is part of why I created Former Lawyer, just because you put a lot of time and money into something, if it's not working for you, to say, "Well I'm just going to keep doing it for another one, two, three, maybe even four decades," is actually crazy. Especially because lawyers are so risk averse, it's very hard to get over that hurdle and say, "I'm going to spend the next five years getting myself out of this situation into a better situation, even though ultimately that's what's going to be better for you in the long run." Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you mentioned just there in passing what it is that you're doing now. You left your job and you started a website. Tell us a little bit about that. Sarah Cottrell: The site is called formerlawyer.com, and the purpose or the overall purpose of Former Lawyer is to provide support and inspiration to unhappy lawyers, who want to make a career change. Right now what that looks like is, there's a blog. There's a podcast I'm actually starting to record episodes this week. What I'll be doing is, in each episode I'm going to be interviewing a lawyer, a former lawyer, someone who used to work as a lawyer and now works in some sort of other career. Sarah Cottrell: My goal is also to have some membership component, but that's the piece that I am still working on. The other pieces I have a little bit more clarity. Shane Sams: For one thing, that's an amazing domain name formerlawyer.com. That's a masterclass in naming your business, because it's helped everything about what it is. Like the Former Lawyer Podcast, the Former Lawyer blog, formerlawyer.com. It's just so tight and good and it's a two word domain. Jocelyn Sams: That two word .com, like that is almost impossible to come by. Shane Sams: That is an awesome domain name and a name for your business. It's when you say it out loud, I can envision it like a miserable lawyer is driving to court to represent some dude or a lady in a divorce, that he just doesn't even want to be in court that day. He's listening to your podcast, interviewing someone who broke out of the prison. He hears that, and she hears that, and it's like hope. I could totally do that. Shane Sams: You said something interesting in your intake form that you filled out before you were on the podcast. "I don't see myself as a guru that tells people, "Do this," and end up where I am. This is more of just a John Lee Dumas model where you're not claiming to be the guru. You're just interviewing people who have done this and giving people ideas, and pushing them out that way. Is that what I'm getting from that? I'm I hearing that correctly? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Part of that is, every person's issues are so individualized. There are strengths, there are financial situation, whether they have a spouse or don't have a spouse or a significant other. There are just so many things that impact when you're making a plan for example to get out of debt, how long it will take. What it is that you actually want to do, and so there are some people out there who are former lawyers, who do specifically career coaching, where they're telling someone like, "Here's what you need to do. This is the job that you should be looking for," and those sorts of things. Sarah Cottrell: What I see as a need is, less so the, "Here let me tell you exactly what you specific person should be doing." More this idea of, it can feel really lonely. One, because you're like, "I'm I the only crazy person who doesn't actually want to be a lawyer? Is thinking about walking away from this thing that I put all this money and time into?" Also, it can feel like a lot of... My family and friends who are like, "What are you doing? You're throwing away this thing that they perceive as though great, because they don't necessarily understand all of the drawbacks of what it is to work as a lawyer. Shane Sams: For sure. Sarah Cottrell: Then also it's just the length of time. I mean, again, we're not necessarily talking about someone saying, "I want to get out," and they do three months and they're out. We're talking about sometimes two, three, four, five, 10 years. That's a long time to be doing something on your own without other people saying, "Hey, you're doing great, you're going to get out. Keep going." Shane Sams: Sure. I think that's really good, that's really, really good. It just fits the motif of the Former Lawyer. People will look at you like, what was the guy's name? What was Morgan Freeman's character's name? Gosh from Shawshank Redemption? Somebody go send me that on Facebook message. Oh Andy Dufresne. It's like you're Andy Dufresne, you got out. You got out of the prison, you're in Mexico on the beach. It's like whatever. You're the other side of where they want to be, like the story. We always say instant street cred, you did it once, you don't have to do it more than that, right? To be this expert that can actually present this story, and then show other stories of other people who've made it. That's awesome. Shane Sams: You've got a lot going on. You've got a lot of stuff that you've created, and you're already creating content. How many blog posts do you have on formerlawyer.com? Sarah Cottrell: I think that there are about, I want to say eight or nine currently. Shane Sams: Good. Sarah Cottrell: I have stuff scheduled to post three times a week. I'm currently only batching like for a week ahead. Shane Sams: This is still in the beginning of everything, right, it's all been created? Sarah Cottrell: Oh yeah, like June, it all launched in June. Shane Sams: When did you buy that domain name? Sarah Cottrell: Oh years ago. I mean before I even knew when I was going to be getting out of the law. Shane Sams: Give me an estimate of when you bought that. Sarah Cottrell: It was three to five years ago. Shane Sams: All of you people sitting on your old dusty domains that you bought five years ago, dust them off and get to work. You all get some blog posts going, it's time to start building that online business. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so you started working on content. First of all three times a week is very ambitious, and I applaud you for trying to do it. I don't know that it's 100% necessary, like it might take some pressure off you for now just to schedule the post out for like once a week. Shane Sams: Yeah. I would not go... Sarah Cottrell: Okay, sorry. Shane Sams: Be prolific with your promotion, not necessarily your content in the beginning. We have three rules, like one, be consistent with your content, for us that's a weekly podcast. Could be more, could be less, but we're going to have a podcast. Two, be prolific with your promotion, that's like sharing and ads and things like that. Write one post and promote it for seven days, then write another post. Then relentlessly sell, like sell every day to your list. Sell everyday on your social media. Sell every time somebody asks you a question, because everybody's only one question away from giving you money. Shane Sams: Think of it that way like when you're thinking about being consistent and being prolific, especially in the beginning. Like Jocelyn said, you can burn yourself out really fast, and we don't want you to be formerblogger.com in about six weeks. Sarah Cottrell: I think one of the reasons that I have been so prolific with content since starting not that long ago, it goes back to one of the concerns that I have of, I want to feel like I'm providing value. It's this issue in my mind of, oh well I need to show that I have something to provide. Therefore, I think I've been focusing more on the content creation, because I don't want to feel like I'm selling nothing. Does that make sense? Shane Sams: It does for sure, and that's why we're going to talk about this here in a few minutes when we get to your business question. I don't hear a lot of talking about what you're selling, what the product is. I was reading a book this morning. I've got this book on leadership and it said, let me word this correctly. "Our society loves the sound of hammers." We love the sound of the hammer and the nail and the building of things, but nobody likes to make a plan. Shane Sams: That's the thing is, you can have a pile of wood, a box of nails and a truck load of hammers. You can throw the workers out there, and you can say, "Go start hammering," see what happens and nothing will happen. It'll just be a bunch of wood hammered together, but if someone walks in and goes, "Here's the blueprint, this is the finished product. This is what we're selling. We have six weeks to put it together, let's go." That's going to create something. It's not necessarily just, "I'm going to write a blog, I'm going to start a podcast. I'm going to have a Facebook page. I started an Instagram last night. I bought-" Jocelyn Sams: "Maybe something cool will happen." Shane Sams: "Maybe something cool will happen, I'll get some value out there and people will love me." Even if you became the most popular person on earth, you would still have nothing to show for it, because there would be no product, nothing for sale. We always recommend that people start with a product first mindset, and figure out at least the basics of what it's going to look like on the end. Then it will evolve into what your customers want as you talk to them and get them. Shane Sams: You're probably just swinging a lot of hammers right now, and that's why it feels like, you're trying to get busy instead of start building a business. Jocelyn Sams: I'm going to make a little bit of an assumption here based on some of the information that you put in your form and also what I'm hearing from you. I'm assuming that you do not really want to make a type of product that basically tells people their next steps, I'm I right in that? Shane Sams: Or like what their job is or something like that? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. What I envision is something more like this. Okay, membership community where you can come in and talk with other people who are in similar stages. I actually, I'm in a writing membership, and one of the things that they do is facilitate people, forming smaller affinity groups. Say, people who are in a certain city and are looking to get out of the law. Or people who want to leave and be a stay at home parent. People who, I don't know, are getting ready to quit their job in the next twelve months, whatever. Facilitating things like that. Sarah Cottrell: Then also in terms of the podcast content, there are some questions that I'm planning to ask our guests that might be a little bit more like things they don't necessarily want, just blasting out into the entire universe. That would be stuff that would be available within the membership to members only. Shane Sams: A private place to share their concerns, not with everybody around them kind of deal. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Just the general, "I'm new and I'm trying to make a plan. What have you done people who might be in a similar situation?" The other thing is, many, many, many people who are lawyers and want to get out, have not thought about what else they want to do ever. Shane Sams: True. Sarah Cottrell: I know so many people who hit this point of, "I don't want to be doing this anymore," and they are just like, "I don't even know what's out there." Shane Sams: It's like a pro athlete that gets too old to pay, they don't know what's next. This is all they've ever done kind of deal. Sarah Cottrell: Yes, exactly. Shane Sams: Well let me jump in here really quick, because there's two things I'm hearing. I'm actually going to read this question you wrote in your form instead of let you do it, because I hear this is happening. Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Shane Sams: We have a question in our form that says, "What fears, mindset and obstacles are holding you back?" You say, "I don't want to be spammy, I don't want to be salesmany or seem like I'm trying to sell people something unrealistic." I hear a dramatic fear of commitment to your product, because you don't want to go sell something to somebody. I really feel like this might be like a major issue holding you back. When I'm looking through everything you've done, you've done everything but address. You've thought about the product or the membership, but it just sounds like with all of your questions and everything, like you're scared to sell these lawyers' something. Shane Sams: Is it because you feel it's like you're selling a dream to them, or you're selling hope to them? What is this fear of maybe even selling yourself a little bit, that you have that's keeping you from saying, "Hey, this is the product, I know people will join it. Let me write a sales page for this right now,"? What is that? This is a membership. Right now I don't hear a lot of content, so it's almost this could be opened next week if you really wanted to. Something's keeping you from doing that. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I think the primary thing is, well they're two things. One is the more, I don't know, high level meta thing, which is that I feel like many lawyers were sold a certain line of what their life is going to be like. Then they got into the law, and that wasn't accurate for them. And, I do not want to. Well I know there's a lot of value in what I'm wanting to provide. I do not want people to feel like I'm saying, "Join this membership and everything in your life will magically become better. You will be just like me and you will be able to leave the law." Shane Sams: What you really don't want is, you were sold that lie, and you resent the lie that you were sold. You don't want to be resented by someone else the way you resent being a lawyer. Sarah Cottrell: Yes. I don't want to prey on people's desperation to get out of the law. Shane Sams: You're not. You're not doing that, that's not true. You're not doing that. Sarah Cottrell: That is accurate. Shane Sams: You're wanting to help people, so that's the truth. Now, you can't help that the fact is they are desperate. They are desperate for a career change, they are desperate to get out. They are desperately in debt and might need someone to show them how to handle that. It's not your fault that they're desperate, it's a fact that they're desperate. The truth is, you want to help them and show them that there is another way. The truth and the facts are not aligning with your actions here. They're not. Shane Sams: Now your feelings, one thing you said, you said the four letter word. In our house, whenever we start a sentence with, "I feel like," we go like, "Conversation stops right there, hold on. What do you mean you feel like? Is that real? Is it factual? Is that the truth?" Facts don't care about our feelings. This seems like the major mindset issue here that you're struggling with is, you feel and you've told yourself this story. You don't want the end of the story to be someone's mad at you, but that does not match the facts and the truth of the matter that your intentions are good. They are desperate and need help, and you can help them. Jocelyn Sams: This is something that goes through my mind at times also, just by the nature of what we do. There are a lot of people out there who are selling the dream. If you pay me $1,000, I will help you buy a Lamborghini. Shane Sams: For $997, all your dreams will come true, end of the webinar, here we go. Jocelyn Sams: There are a lot of people out there who are selling that kind of dream. A lot of people out there might look at what we do and say, "Well you know you're just doing the same thing." Our truth is that, we want to help people who feel like there is no other way and they need to do something different in their life. We're here honestly to help people. It's just something that you have to reconcile with yourself, just I'm here to help people. If other people want to perceive it another way, that's their problem. It's not my problem. Shane Sams: What's that counselor friend you've got that says, what does she always say Jocelyn it's... Jocelyn Sams: Heather Gray? Shane Sams: Yeah. What's Heather say, what's the story or the... Jocelyn Sams: It's like the stories that you tell yourself. One of the things that she says to do is to say, "Some people might say this. What I want you to know is something else." Shane Sams: Right, so you said, some people might say, "I'm just preying on the desperation of lawyers who want to quit their job." Jocelyn Sams: What I want you to know is that, I felt this way. Shane Sams: I really want to help you. Jocelyn Sams: The reason that I'm doing this is because I want to help other people in the same situation. Sarah Cottrell: Yes, 100%. Shane Sams: You've got to reconcile that today. We're recording this guys, it's the fourth of July. It's the fourth of July right now you all. Jocelyn Sams: It's a holiday. Shane Sams: It's a holiday, but we're working, we're helping Sarah. We're getting after here. Listen, it's the day of freedom, so set yourself free. Be free of all that nonsense, because it is not true. You honestly, this is heavy, you may be the only person that possibly can help them. If you don't help them, then nobody else is going to say this stuff, because 99.9% of people don't want to let their family down. They don't want to quit the job. You're a doctor, a lawyer, your successful right? Shane Sams: If they don't have a trailblazer to say, "I did it. I'm going to introduce you every week to somebody else who did it," they may never hear that story that inspires hope, that gives them a chance to change their life. That's what we do and that's what you're doing. You're just doing for a different segment of the population. Okay? Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Jocelyn Sams: All right Sarah, we're busting through the mindset issues. Now let's talk about how we are going to make some money. How can we help you with your offer? Sarah Cottrell: Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to prioritize content creation and what I'm creating, when to start selling the membership or product. How to do a beta launch if that's what I should be doing, and how to price it. Basically, all the questions. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: Basically, you're like, "I'm making blogs, I don't know what else to do." Is that what you're saying? Jocelyn Sams: We're here until the fireworks tonight in other words. Okay. All right, so let's just break this down. I think that Shane and I have some different ideas. It's going to become interesting moving forward about what we think you should do. Ultimately it's about what you want to do. Take all this in and just think about it. Basically, right now we have nothing for sale right? Sarah Cottrell: That is correct. Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Shane Sams: You want to sell a support group for these attorneys basically? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: It doesn't seem like you want to create anything, you just want to have them to have a place to go. Is that true? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: Okay. I don't know. I think there's an asprin versus vitamin argument here a little bit, or like asprin or something we have to think about. One, I'm not sure how practical that is in my opinion, because to me it's like, it's a support group. You're alone, you want to talk to other lawyers who might want to quit their jobs, that's kind of a vitamin. There's a lot of serious headaches like, "Well how do I get out of $400,000 in debt? How do I re-identify myself as something else?" That's an asprin. Jocelyn Sams: "How do I talk to my family about why I'm doing this?" Shane Sams: Yeah, there's a lot of huge obstacles that you're going to have to solve for people like headaches. That you're going to have to provide them an asprin for, before you ever get to the vitamin. Usually the vitamin almost goes first, you know what I'm saying? The vitamins are free, the asprin cost money. If I've got a headache, I'm going to get up at midnight and run to Walmart to get some asprin, because I need to fix this headache, it hurts. If I wake up at midnight and I forgot to take my vitamin C, guess what, I'm not going to Walmart till tomorrow, it's not urgent. That's what we say when we say, is this an asprin or is this a vitamin? Shane Sams: Now I think at face value, it's a vitamin. It's like, is it really that urgent that I join this community? They might listen to your podcast, they might read your blog posts. Are they really going to go the next level if there's nothing in it to them to solve their actual practical problems that they have? Does that make sense? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Shane Sams: What we've got to figure out are some different ways that we can highlight the headache and make this thing where they're willing to get up out of bed, go to the computer. Get out their wallet and order the bottle of asprin. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, but before we go there, I want to present a possible other solution. Usually we will fall on the side of creating your own product and selling it. That we like that, is because that is what we have always done. However, I do think that there are some other ways, especially with things that are like this vitaminy. Where you can make money and it's a little bit less work. I just want to throw this out there and then we can talk about which way is more appealing to you. Jocelyn Sams: Basically, what I hear Shane saying is, that what you could do is address some of the hard issues that are facing people who want to get out of this field. I think what he's trying to say is that, you could create some content that would help people with these big headaches, right? Shane Sams: In a way. I think that's the draw into the membership. I think the membership is good, but I almost think that the membership itself should be totally free. It should be almost like a thing that they could sign up for and start connecting with these other attorneys, with these other lawyers. Basically, it's your lead magnet, like the forum itself, the community itself, whatever it looks like, is something you could just let listeners in. If you've got a podcast, if you've got the thing at the end of it, you say, "Hey, come join the Former Lawyer community. This is a private community that we can let people in," and have that private support group ready to go. It can be like an opt-in. Shane Sams: I know a lot of places that use forums or a community driven approach to their lead magnets. It's a place where you can go hung out. There's no barrier to entry, low hanging fruit, all that stuff. Then I was thinking in the community on your email list, you could create content that just showed how you did it. One of the things you said that really stood out to me before was, "Hey, everybody else needs other places they can pivot, they can quit their job, they can go a different direction. For a lawyer, it's a longterm plan." Shane Sams: You're not selling a, "I'll get you out of your law debt and fix careers in six months." It's, "Yo! If you want the fast plan, go somewhere else. This is the longterm plan." Then inside of that you show them content that addresses this things. You have a course called how to tell your friends and family. You have a course called how to pay off your student loan debt without being a lawyer for the next 40 years of your life. That content then is what you sell almost like an advanced tier. These people are all lawyers who are dreaming, interacting together, but then the content is led by you, and it's the lawyers who are actually taking action. You're the 20%, you're the people that are actually taking action. You're going to do it, and then maybe you do Q and As each month. That was what I was thinking. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so that's probably the way that we would do it just based on our history, and because creating content is fairly easy for us to do. Another way that popped into my head to do this, might be to... I was also on board with the free community, because in the age of social media, it's really easy to find groups of people who have something in common basically. I can go on to Facebook, I can go on to LinkedIn, I can look at these groups and find people who are probably similar to me. Jocelyn Sams: With you having the podcast, I think that's a really good vehicle for you to be able to do some other things. I think about one of the podcasts that I support. I've talked about several times on the podcast that I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and other types of media. Anyway, one of the podcasts that I support is Crime Junky, which is one of the top 10 podcast in the world right now. The reason that I support them, it's not something that I really need. It's definitely a vitamin in my life, it's not an asprin. They will create extra content for their fan club, so I joined their fan club because I love their podcast so much and I want to hear more content. I think that could be an opportunity for you. Jocelyn Sams: I think also selling affiliate products might be an opportunity for you. If you don't want to go and create all these courses, create this amazing community for people to come to and either take on sponsorships for your show of things that might be of interest to people who are leaving the law profession. Or, you could also find courses that other people have created for these same things, and be an affiliate for them. Shane Sams: Yeah, or she could even sell like other biz op stuff. There's a lot of people out there selling how to start a business, like ClickFunnels they do a lot of stuff like that. How to come up with your idea, how to set up your sales pages. They have an affiliate program to get people to sign up for ClickFunnels. There's other places that teach real estate like Bigger Pockets. They have an affiliate program I think for their stuff, where it's like learn how to do real estate instead of be a lawyer. You could promote that stuff on your podcast. Jocelyn Sams: There's probably courses out there, how to get out of enormous amounts of student loan debt. You could be an affiliate for that type of program. Shane Sams: Let's build an audience. I would only pick stuff that was high ticketed back if that was true though, because you're going to need any affiliate sales to make a lot of money. You know what I'm saying? Every time it happens, because it'll be the normal. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so let's go through some of the benefits. The benefits of having your own stuff obviously is that you get all the profit, I mean minus cost of course. Also, it is under your control, nothing's going to change all that kind of stuff. The drawback's is that it's going to take time, it's going to take energy, it's going to take effort. With the affiliate stuff, it's just the opposite, like the benefits is that it's already completed for you. You just sell it, but the drawback is that... Shane Sams: You have to build a huge audience to make affiliates work. You've got to have a good lead capture, but that could work though because of the forums. Jocelyn Sams: You don't have complete control. There are some different things that you have to consider for each side. I just want to throw that out there, it's not something that we recommend for all people. I think in this case, it might possibly work. Shane Sams: Well there's a lot of lawyers that probably hate being a lawyer. How many lawyers are there? Can you build a big enough audience of lawyers who hate their jobs to build an affiliate thing? I don't know. How many lawyers are there in the country? I'm going to look that up. Sarah Cottrell: I would have to go back and look at the data. I mean I think every year, I don't want to say a wrong number, because I'm just not completely sure. Shane Sams: Don't worry, I'm looking it up on Google. Sarah Cottrell: We're talking like... Shane Sams: We have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips here. At this time... Sarah Cottrell: The magic of Google. Shane Sams: All right, there are 450,000 lawyers right now practicing in the United States. There are 34,000 new ones every year. Let's just assume that half of those hate their job. Sarah Cottrell: Accurate. Shane Sams: Yes, so you've probably got 200. You've got an audience size of somewhere between 200 and 300,000 people to go out there and put this out there to your podcast. Then it's just a matter of converting those, either end with affiliate sales or whatever. Jocelyn, couldn't she do the affiliate sales inside of the community, like instead of her creating this stuff? On the podcast say, "Hey, come join the Former Lawyer community if you want to learn how to leave the law profession." Then you could populate it with other people's stuff that already exists, if you don't want to sell your own thing. Jocelyn Sams: Or you can also sell sponsorships on your podcast, so that's another thing that the crime podcast that I listen to they do that. Shane Sams: You could reach out to someone who sells a biz opportunity, because I don't think you're going to be able to promote this. You've got to show them a path to get out of debt and get out of their job. If you don't do that, they're not just going to go hung out for a support group, they're not going to do that. You've got to have some kind of path. You just have to figure out how to populate that path with content. Either create it yourself, or you go out and you promote other people's stuff. Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense to me. The affiliate thing that is a little bit clearer to me. The other piece, Shane that you were talking about, if I were to do my own thing, are you're saying like creating courses that I would then promote to the members in the community? Shane Sams: Yes, you would basically do... This is probably more of a free membership course driven webinar model, no matter how you do it. You're freebie is the support group. I'm trying to think this through, and then you would have maybe like weekly webinars selling a different aspect of the journey. Whether it's promoting someone else's thing or yours or something like that. You're just telling your story, like how did you get out of debt? All you've got to do is say, "I will show you how I got out of debt, which enabled me to leave the legal profession." That's a webinar, you sell the course, and it's just your steps that you took. Your plan that you created and they're open to follow it or not. Your job is not to make them follow your plan, it's to give them an opportunity to follow your plan. Jocelyn Sams: Essentially if your community's free instead of advertising other people's stuff, you would advertise your own products if that makes sense. Actually you could do both. Sarah Cottrell: That's what I was just going to ask. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, you can totally do both. Sarah Cottrell: There are certain things that I feel like I could create a course, and I feel confident that it would be helpful for people. There are other things that I think would be helpful for people that I'm just not the expert on that thing. Shane Sams: Like what? Name one. What are you an expert in, let's start there? Sarah Cottrell: Well, I guess I would say the things that I feel like I know something about are one, making a longterm plan to get out of debt. Shane Sams: Boom, that's the first product right there. Jocelyn Sams: I would say getting out of debt, I would say you're probably pretty good at that. Shane Sams: An expert, you did it, you paid up for it. It doesn't matter how long it took you, right? I love this. I love the alternative pitch there too of, it's not the get rich fast it's the, "Hey look, that's not true. Those people are wrong. This is the longterm plan, this is what I did." Bam, that's the product, right? Sarah Cottrell: Yes. Then like for example, I think I could talk to the people about how to start thinking about what you want to do, but in terms of specific career coaching. I want an individual person to hold my hand and help me figure out what to do. There are other people who do that, and I think do it well. I don't necessarily want to be doing that individual hand holding, but there are other people that I could refer people to, that would be helpful. Shane Sams: Okay, then this is all you have to do then. You're the bridge. That's how you get to view yourself. You build the community on your podcast. You give the Former Lawyer podcast, you give people hope by letting them hear testimonials and stories of you and other people who have actually left the legal professional and got to be debt free. You tell them, come join a bunch of other lawyers in a safe place where you can talk about not wanting to be a lawyer, it's free. Come join our free community. Shane Sams: You sell them one thing, the longterm plan to get out of debt. You can do that on a weekly webinar, where all of your members you invite them, they show up and you sell the product and the product can be $497. They're lawyers, it could be more if you wanted it to be. They've got disposable income, so you sell that. You have this nice generating, engine generating however many sales a week of thousands of dollars. At that point, and this is how all online businesses work, you sell them one thing, and then to make real money you sell the next thing. Shane Sams: Then you create a portfolio of affiliates, so you might promote twice a month. Maybe two times a month you sell them your get out of debt longterm plan. That's all you sell, and then you sell them and your other affiliates that maybe you go do a, what do you want to be? You go find someone. Maybe there's somebody that teaches people how to become writers, like you said you liked writing. Maybe there's a lot of lawyers that would like to become writers, so you have them come on for a guest webinar and sell their product. You get 40% of whatever's sold. You just find this portfolio of six to 12 good affiliates and over time that maybe you want to be in real estate , well have a real estate coach on. Sell their products and then you get half. Shane Sams: Your job is to be the bridge and the guide. Bridge them across the debt problem, and then introduce them to people that can help them find a new career. That's it. That's the whole business model, and all you have to do is podcast and drive the leads. Does that make sense? Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so we're feeling pretty good about that? Sarah Cottrell: I think so. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, awesome. Shane Sams: Yeah, it's a little overwhelming right now, but the good thing is you've got a lot of things in place. You really only have to just give the content out there and maybe create that one course. That way you could go ahead and say, "The community exists, there's a course inside." Within a month, if you would just create it, and then you can start looking for affiliates as you grow. Shane Sams: You know what's funny is, you're going to find affiliates, because these former attorneys are going to be selling something when they come on your podcast, I guarantee you. "What did you do?" "I bought 10 houses, some apartments, now I teach people how to do real estate." "Oh you do? Well how about you teach the Former Lawyers how to do real estate." That's where you're going to find all these affiliate programs from. Cool? Sarah Cottrell: That makes sense. I have one question about that, which is, should I start... Okay, so I have Restrict Content Pro on my site, I just haven't actually done anything with it. Shane Sams: What is that? I didn't hear that. Sarah Cottrell: Restrict Content Pro, it's a formatting software. Shane Sams: Membership forum basically yeah. Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, membership forum software. I have that already, should I be waiting to actually open the membership until I have created the course? Or should I be... Shane Sams: No, I think it's your main lead. Sarah Cottrell: Got it. Shane Sams: When you start recording those podcasts, episode one at the end should say, "Go to blank.com and sign up for a free account to the Former Lawyer membership site," whatever you call it. The Former Lawyer community and say like, "Even if you're still a lawyer, but you don't want to be, we want you in there. It's a safe place to talk." Make a pitch for it basically. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and every blog post you write, every piece of content should all be pointing there. Shane Sams: Then when you create this first product, that's going to be like your seed product, so you have your own thing, you can go ahead and create that. Then put that in there and sell it to those people, and then you can start finding these other affiliates to sell the other stuff too. Sarah Cottrell: I love that, because I feel like I want to help people, and that makes me feel like I'm helping people. Jocelyn Sams: Love it. Shane Sams: What if you just connected them and got them out of debt, then you tell them how to get a new job, that's amazing. You know what I'm saying, send them to us we'll be an affiliate, no I'm just kidding. Jocelyn Sams: All right Sarah, it has been so much fun talking to you today. I can't wait to see what happens next in your journey. Before we go, we always like to ask our guest, what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about here today? Sarah Cottrell: I am going to put together an outline for the course that I'm going to create for the membership. Shane Sams: That is an awesome action step. Product first, get that done, give those podcasts recorded. Who knows, Sarah you might be selling those before we know it. It won't be salesy and it won't be bad, and it won't be desperate. It'll be awesome,, because you're going to free a lot of people from the bondage of a career they found themselves strapped in. Okay? Sarah Cottrell: I'm excited. Shane Sams: All right guys, that wraps up another great episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Cannot wait to see what Sarah does with her online business, and we cannot wait to see what you do with your online business as well. Dust off that old domain, recharge that dream and get started. If you don't start, you can't finish and we would love to help you get started over at flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. Shane Sams: You can check out all the information about the Flip Your Life community. We have all the content, community and coaching you need to finally get your online business done, take it to the next level and who knows, someday maybe even flip your life. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We would love to help you inside of our community, and who knows maybe someday you will be a guest right here on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane Sams: Also, we would love to see you in Lexington, Kentucky this September 19th through the 21st for Flip Your Life LIVE. This is our conference, we are going to connect you with over 100 family focused entrepreneurs from around the world. Go through some amazing content, covering lots of sales strategies, traffic strategies and other things to grow your online business. That's happening this September. You can go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. There are only a few tickets left, and here is a huge announcement guys, we are not doing Flip Your Life LIVE conference in 2020. This is probably going to be your last opportunity. Your last chance to come to Lexington, to come and meet over 100 members of the Flip Your Life community. To come hang out with me and Jocelyn and take your business to the next level, live and in person. That's happening again September 19th through the 21st in Lexington, Kentucky. Shane Sams: Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live to see if any tickets are still available. There were only a few left when we recorded this promo, so you need to go there right now if you're planning on coming. Again, don't put it off, you can't wait till next year. It's not happening next year. It's probably not going to happen any point in the future. This is the last large Flip Your Life LIVE conference. We'd love to have you there in Lexington, Kentucky this September. Shane Sams: That's all the time we have for this week guys, but before we go, we would love to share a Bible verse with you. Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration in life and business from the Bible. Today we are super excited, because Sarah, our guest today, has a Bible verse she would like to share with you. Sarah Cottrell: One of my favorite Bible verses is Colossians 1:17 which says, "And he is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." I just love that verse, because it reminds me that ultimately my identity is in Christ, and I do the work, but He is the one who holds all things together and I can trust Him. Jocelyn Sams: Awesome reminder. I think that all of us need that reminder from from time to time. Shane Sams: All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Until next time, get out there, take action and do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you again. Jocelyn Sams: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Sarah's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress
#18 – Atraer y retener suscriptores en verano

Freelandev - Vivir del desarrollo en WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2019 33:59


Síguenos en: ¡Buenos días! De verdad, de verdad, que hemos grabado lunes por la mañana aunque no lo parezca... pero es que los dos hemos empezado tan bien la semana que nos ha sido imposible disimular ese optimismo y buen humor. ¿Qué tal la semana? Semana esther: Peleándome con un theme “premium” de los que incorporan maquetador propio ????, al final, viendo los problemas con los que se va a encontrar el cliente, opté por sugerirle que utilicemos un child theme de Genesis... ???? Contenido esther: Video-tutorial sobre cómo configurar un podcast privado para suscriptores Semana Nahuai: A tope finalizando un proyecto y preparando todo lo que implica la compra de Código Genesis, un acuerdo con Joan Boluda que comentarán a fondo en el próximo podcast de Así lo hacemos y al que, a poco tiempo de anunciarlo, de momento la respuesta de los suscriptores está siendo muy buena. ???????????????? Contenido Nahuai: Un tutorial sobre cómo relacionar dos Custom Post Types en WordPress, mediante metaboxes. Tema de la semana: cómo atraer y retener suscriptores en verano Hoy vamos a hablar de un tema que nos toca muy de cerca y al que llevamos días dándole vueltas y buscando opciones, y es que por norma general, el verano es un mal momento para la facturación en general, y para los sitios de suscripción en particular. Antes de nada, aclarar que no somos consultores de marketing online ni expertos en el tema (aunque "hemos leído/escuchado mucho sobre el tema"), pero cómo autónomos, a menos que tengas algún socio o contrates a alguien para ello, no nos queda más remedio que hacer de "comerciales" de nuestro negocio y dedicar parte del tiempo a pensar y diseñar estrategias y promociones. La ventaja que tenemos hoy en día, es que en el mundo online es mucho más fácil probar diferentes estrategias de una forma rápida y económica y ver cual o que combinación nos funciona mejor. ¿Qué podemos hacer para atraer y retener suscriptores en verano? En caso de sitios de formación, podemos apelar y destacar el hecho de que es una buena época para formarse, ya que solemos tener más tiempo libre.Fidelizar: intentar minimizar las bajas durante esta época ofreciendo contenido extra, ventajas especiales y premios a la antigüedad.Atraer: pensar en diferentes tipo de promociones para llegar a nuevos suscriptores, siempre teniendo en cuenta que no deben perjudicar ni hacer sentir agraviados a los suscriptores actuales. En la Zona DPW por ejemplo, este verano lanzamos una promoción de membresía trimestral de 3 meses/30€ sin soporte y a la vez se ha ofrecido a los suscriptores actuales diferentes opciones como agradecimiento, incluyendo la opción de cambiarse de plan si así lo querían, o la Guía para Desarrolladores Web gratuita, o un descuento en sus suscripción durante julio y agosto. El tip de la semana ????????‍♀️ ????????‍♂️ (se nos ha olvidado, y no sólo mencionarlo.... ni lo teníamos preparado... ha sido el calor, fijo). Novedades Un anuncio que nos atañe bastante, ya que ambos utilizamos Restrict Content Pro, es el de el próximo lanzamiento con muchas novedades y que nuestros amigos de Bicicleta Studio resumen muy bien en un tweet: Más info en: https://restrictcontentpro.com/version-3-1-beta-released/ Y WordCamp Pontevedra abre compra de entradas y envío de ponencias para su próxima edición del 20 al 22 de septiembre. 100% recomendada! Menciones JuanKa nos recomienda en el último episodio de su podcast junto a Darío: Post Type Podcast. Descubrimos por casualidad y para nuestra alegría que nos destacan en el apartado de «Nuevo y destacado» de Apple Podcasts !!! Ana Cirujano agradece la mención en el último episodio y comenta que ella también vota por episodios más largos ????????????????, mientras que Pablo Moratinos ya se informa de las adquisiciones del mundo WordPress en Freelandev ???? y Nuria Hidalgo nos felicitaba en Instagram por el destacado en Apple. Vuelve Enlace Permanente y si por si sólo no fuera suficiente buena noticia, Juan nos menciona en ella. ???? Se nos ha pasado las últimas semanas comentar las nuevas reviews y valoraciones en Apple Podcast, ya tenemos 13 reviews 5 estrellas!! Volvemos la próxima semana con mucho más ¡Feliz Semana!

Negocios & WordPress
49. Un rant a PageBuilder y control de descargas

Negocios & WordPress

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2019 59:35


A punto de llegar a los 50 episodios! La verdad es que esto avanza rápido desde que comenzamos a realizar el podcast de forma semanal. Aquí tenéis el episodio 49. Estados Unidos ha añadido a Huawei en su lista negra de empresas peligrosas para la seguridad nacional, de manera que no podrán realizar acciones comerciales con Google. Lo mismo está pasando con Qualcomm, AMD o Intel.Origen

Cómo crear un podcast Premium de pago por suscripción

Este episodio lo dedicamos a comentar la configuración necesaria de Restrict Content Pro para conseguir un plan de suscripción al que se enlace Powerpress.

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast
Episode #157 - Keeping Your Business Flexible with Matt Rodela

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2018 34:26


Watch the video podcast here. About Matt Matt started out in IT after he left the military but eventually got tired of the corporate world and decided to go out on his own six years ago and start an IT company working as an IT consultant. He had been building websites for years as a hobby and as he was consulting his clients, they either had bad websites or none at all. So being their IT guy they started talking to him about it. Not thinking it would be a full-time thing, he made a few websites and realised he was pretty good at it and that he enjoyed doing it. So 2.5 years ago, he transitioned to web development and hasn’t looked back since. Matt's Companies Matt has three companies at the moment- His first being the web design company Aledor (his surname backwards!) where he builds and redesigns websites for service professionals such as accountants and lawyers. His second company is Tech Site Builder which is a turnkey website platform specifically designed for computer repair workshops. He acquired this company when he was running his own IT consultancy. Through his podcast series, he made a lot of contacts in the computer repair industry. A fellow podcaster had created Tech Site Builder as a WordPress theme and was selling it packaged with tutorials. However, he wanted to get out of the industry and so he sold the theme to Matt. Matt then transitioned it from a theme to a turnkey website. Similar to Squarespace, you sign up for a low monthly fee and you get a starter website template with all the tools and plugins that they need. He has been doing this now for two years and it has created a recurring revenue for him with little input as most of it, including the onboarding process, is all automated. His final project is TurnKey Websites BluePrint which teaches other website consultants how to build their own turnkey website. This will be launched in a couple of months. How Does He Stay Focussed on Multiple Projects? Research shows that multitasking isn’t efficient and you get the best work done when you focus on one thing at a time. So with his separate projects, he likes to focus on it, get it launched and then come up with a process to keep it going with minimal involvement from himself. He has a VA who looks after a lot of things as well. Matt says that he didn’t go out searching for these new projects - they fell into his lap. When you're doing what you love, then this is what happens! Staff He has a part-time VA who works four hours a day as well as a part-time developer. The developer is based in Eastern Europe and the VA is in the States. Matt found her accidentally on Upwork when he hired her to do some photo edits. She had such a great manner that he asked her to be his VA because it is hard to find a good person online. Matt has been through many freelancers and VAs and learned from his mistakes so you need to hold onto a good person when you find them! What is Matt's Sweet Spot? It has evolved over the years and he has seen the common thread throughout everything he has done - he is really good at communicating, breaking things down and being able to explain complex tech stuff. He has so many aspects of his job that he enjoys doing, but he knows this is his strength and so he builds on it. He outsources the tech side of things and is slowly trying to let others take the reins a little bit. He finds it hard to let go of that control but once you find the right people that are even better than you at what they do, then that makes it much easier. What Has Been the Biggest Challenge? His biggest challenge when growing his business has been budgeting and understating how to put the money where it's most useful. Matt has gone through phases of Shiny Object Syndrome and blowing all his money on new tools for the business. So what helped him get over this was the book “Profit First” which teaches you how to budget your business finances. Pricing The key for Matt was finding his niche. The more you narrow down your services, the clearer the pricing becomes as well as the marketing and the message. Once he was able to find his focus, then people were coming to him and he was able to increase his prices to filter out the people who price shop to find the people who are really serious about working with him to get a great result. Through his sweet spot, Matt was able to find his niche. But what about people starting just up and who need to be everything to everyone? How should they find their niche? It's something that comes with time and can't be forced. The key is to know that you will eventually need a niche, but that you will need to be everything to everyone while you're starting out. It has to be something that you learn over time through the type of client that is attracted to you, or by discovering what area you are best at. It seems counter-intuitive to focus on a niche because you have a fear of missing out and won't be able to help as many people. But he said that it has had the opposite effect on his business. Word gets around the industry that is your niche and you are seen as the expert in their industry. Mindset Everyone has times when they're ready to throw the towel in when it comes to running your own business. Matt says that the struggle never ends and sometimes it gets more exaggerated as you get more experience. You need persistence and to stay positive. To get out of any dips in the business he has had to change focus. When he was working on the web development it was a struggle to get clients through the door, so he realised that he needed a different focus that would bring him recurring revenue. When he hits a problem, by changing focus he is able to go back to what wasn't working. With a fresh mind he can then tackle it from a different angle and take it to the next level. Through doing that he changes perspectives and builds mini businesses so that if one crashes and burns, he still has the others to rely on. Matt likes to hedge his bets! Balance So how does Matt balance personal and professional life? He purposely built these businesses to be flexible so he can work anytime from anywhere. He is a big fan of taking an afternoon off to go to the mall or places that are busy on the weekend and then sometimes working weekends instead. He also plays the trumpet, so he has the flexibility to play a gig and then sleep in. How Does He See His Businesses Evolving? Matt doesn’t like to plan ahead too much. He waits for opportunities to come to him. If he had a five-year plan for his IT business he may not have jumped on these opportunities that came to him. He likes to have short-term goals for his business and change them up. For example, subscriber, revenue or retention-based goals. But he keeps his mind open and businesses flexible to allow new opportunities to come to him. Tools Theme: His favourite WordPress theme is the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. Sometimes he builds a custom child theme off that. Plugin: He is a big fan of Restrict Content Pro he has been using it as a membership plugin and also for the sign-up process on his website. You can also use it to sell products online through a login process for the customer. Day to day tools: The stack he uses is Slack, Trello, Freshdesk (for support desk for all of his platforms), Process Street (for processes and checklists), and Active Campaign (for email marketing). He then ties them all together with Zapier. He likes the flexible solutions! Well, there you go... Matt's formula for success! I hope you got some inspiration from today's podcast. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Divipod
Episodio 19: Tres maneras de montar una plataforma de eLearning con WordPress y Divi

Divipod

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2018 42:46


Tienes algo que enseñar a tu comunidad y quieres hacerlo con Divi? Este fue otro de los temas ganadores en la encuesta que hice en la comunidad de Divi en español, así que en este episodio les voy a mencionar tres plugins que podemos usar para hacer una plataforma de aprendizaje [eLearning] con WordPress y tu tema Divi. Mi nombre es Jefferson Maldonado, Yo soy Emprendedor, diseñador web, Divi lover y consultor UX, y estas escuchando el episodio #19 DiviPod, el podcast donde aprenderás todo lo relacionado con el diseño web, WordPress, los negocios online y el amado y odiado Divi. Pero antes les recuerdo que en wpdivi.club podrán encontrar tutoriales, artículos, vídeos y herramientas para aprender a usar WordPress de una manera francamente sencilla. Recuerda que al entrar en el sitio web puedes ir a apartado de cursos, y apuntarte sin compromiso para recibir una oferta única de suscripción inicial a la plataforma de cursos de Divi, que será lanzada en los próximos meses. ¡Puedes obtener hasta un 75% de descuento y además participarás por el sorteo de 3 meses de membresía completamente gratuita! No esperes más entra en wpdivi.club y únete al club. Veamos los puntos tratados en el episodio de esta semana en Divipod: ¿Que es una plataforma de eLearning? ¿Cuales son los beneficios de montar una plataforma como estas? ¿Qué podemos enseñar? ¿Como montamos una plataforma de eLearning con WordPress y Divi? Forma 1: Plugin de Paid Membership Pro Forma 2: Plugin Restrict Content Pro Forma 3: Plugin Premium Learn Dash ¿Cual es la manera más recomendada? Conclusiones Precios de LearnDash: BASIC: $15o PLUS PACKAGE: $189 PRO PACKAGE: $329 Puedes ver aquí la información de Paid Membership Pro. Puedes ver aquí la información de Restrict Content Pro. Puedes ver aquí la información de Learn Dash. Toda la información de este podcast la puedes encontrar en https://wpdivi.club/podcast/ Patrocinador de este episodio: KINSTA HOSTING es un proveedor de hosting con un servicio especializado en WordPress. Dentro de las características principales de este hosting tenemos: Más 10 años de experiencia trabajando con WordPress Usan la tecnología más moderna como Nginx, PHP 7.2, contenedores LXD y Maria DataBase para asegurarse que tú sitio web cargue en un abrir y cerrar de ojos. Tu sitio está monitoreado y asegurado 24/7. Potenciado por Google Cloud Platform y sus 13 centros de datos globales. Migraciones de sitios gratuitas Tu sitio web siempre respaldado Escalamiento automático Y por supuesto lo más importante Soporte experto de WordPress Atención las 24 horas del día por diferentes canales Monitoreo web todo el día, todos los días ¡Ningún problema quedará sin resolver! Sitios de desarrollo de un solo clic. (Staging) Y Construido por desarrolladores para desarrolladores. Recuerda! kinsta hosting, tu hosting especializado para wordpress Noticia de la semana sobre Divi: ¡Nueva Actualización disponible! Elegant Themes acaba de lanzar una nueva mega actualización. A partir de la semana pasada tendremos a nuestra disponibilidad en nuestro maquetador visual favorito nada más y nada menos que más de 140 layouts incorporados en la interfaz de maquetación de Divi. Con esto podremos escoger uno de nuestros diseños favoritos e importarlos con un solo click. Veamos lo que nos comenta la gente de Elegant Themes: En palabras de Elegant Themes: Hoy incrementamos absoluta e increíblemente el valor a Divi agregando más de 140 pre diseños que puedes examinar e importar en tu página sin tener que salir del Divi Builder. Estos diseños están organizados en paquetes de sitios web completos que puedes utilizar para diseñar rápidamente tu próximo sitio web, y están llenos de maravillosas fotografías e ilustraciones originales que puede usar libremente en todos tus proyectos comerciales. Además, ¡estamos agregando nuevos diseños cada semana! Ahora, cada usuario de Divi tiene acceso instantáneo a innumerables diseños de clase mundial en una variedad de temas dentro del Divi Builder. Todos los increíbles paquetes de diseño de Divi ahora se pueden buscar dentro del constructor de Divi. Solo debes hacer clic en la categoría que desees para obtener una lista de los layout packs de diseños de esa categoría, seguido a eso puedes hacer clic en cualquier paquete para ver todos los diseños de página que incluye. Una vez que encuentres el diseño que deseas usar, puedes importarlo directamente en tu página, donde el diseño y el contenido se pueden personalizar fácilmente. También puedes buscar en toda nuestra colección usando palabras clave relevantes para el tipo de sitio web o el tipo de página que estás diseñando actualmente. ¿Ya realizaste la actualización, dime que opinas de ella? Plugin de WordPress y Divi Recomendado de la semana: Plugin Recomendado de la semana: Divi Learndash Kit: Learndash es un sistema de gestión de aprendizaje (LMS) que te permite crear tus propios cursos en WordPress. Es fácil de aprender a usar, pero las capacidades de diseño son algo limitadas. Los cursos con diseños mejor diseño serán más atractivos para tus alumnos, por lo que tener la capacidad de realizar tus propios diseños de cursos podría ser la diferencia entre el éxito o el fracaso de tu plataforma. La opción más obvia sería diseñar tus diseños con el Divi Builder. Un plugin highlight llamado Divi Learndash Kit hace exactamente eso y de paso esta estrechamente relacionado con nuestro tema de hoy. Lo que hace el plugin Divi Learndash Kit es que habilita el Divi Builder en las páginas de Learndash; pero va un poco más allá al agregar nuevos módulos al Divi Builder. Estos módulos se pueden usar para colocar elementos de Learndash dentro del área del editor para cursos, lecciones, temas, cuestionarios, etc. Agregar el Divi Builder al custom post type de Learndash es útil, pero Divi Learndash Kit va más allá al agregar 13 módulos nuevos al Divi Builder: Contenido del curso: una tabla que muestra el contenido del curso Estado de vencimiento del curso: muestra la fecha de vencimiento del curso Información del curso: muestra información sobre los cursos disponibles para el usuario Lista de cursos: muestra la lista de cursos Progreso del curso: muestra una barra de progreso que muestra el progreso que ha realizado el usuario a través del curso. Lista de lecciones: muestra la lista de lecciones Botones de pago: muestra botones donde el usuario puede realizar un pago Perfil: muestra el perfil del usuario Lista de preguntas: muestra la lista de pruebas Lista de temas: muestra la lista de temas Puntos del curso del usuario: muestra los puntos que el usuario ha obtenido Grupos de usuarios: muestra una lista de grupos a los que el usuario está asignado Video: muestra una lista de cursos con video Como lo ven Divi Learndash Kit agrega muchas características de diseño a sus páginas de Learndash. Solo agregar el Divi Builder a esas páginas ya es de gran ayuda, pero al darle 13 módulos de los elementos de Learndash y la capacidad de guardar e importar diseños a la Biblioteca de Divi es una gran ventaja de diseño. Puedes ver la más información de este plugin en: https://divibooster.com/divi-learndash-kit/ ¿Te ha gustado? ¡Valoranos! Por último recuerden que para todos los podcaster es de gran ayuda que puedan dejar una valoración en iTunes y likes o comentarios en iVoox. Así podemos llegar a más personas y eso nos permite seguir generando este contenido de calidad para ustedes. Recuerda solo debes buscar en tu app de podcast buscar Divipod y dejar por alli tu valoración de 5 estrellas con tu comentario acerca del podcast. Si te ha gustado este contenido no olvides compartirlo en tus redes sociales con todos tus conocidos en los botones de la parte inferior de las notas de este programa. Feliz de estar aquí con ustedes una vez más. ¡Un saludo! Escucha este podcast en la APP de tu preferencia:

UI Breakfast: UI/UX Design and Product Strategy
Episode 62: Teaching Design Theory with Jarrod Drysdale

UI Breakfast: UI/UX Design and Product Strategy

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2017 43:31


What's the best way to teach design skills? How do you connect theory with practice? Today our guest is Jarrod Drysdale — designer, writer, and author of multiple educational products. You'll learn what makes a good course, how to show-and-tell, and why it's difficult to capture the real-life design process on screen. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes Theory Sprints — Jarrod's new design course Getting Real — a book by 37signals The Tiny Designer — Jarrod's free email course Design's Iron Fist — Jarrod's free book Perfect Pricing (a series of guest posts): part one by Sacha Greif, part two by Jarrod Drysdale Cascade.io — Jarrod's design framework (discontinued) Restrict Content Pro, WP Complete — WordPress plugins for building courses Jarrod's website Follow Jarrod on Twitter: @studiofellow Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Balsamiq Mockups. A Balsamiq customer recently called it “the only wireframing tool that doesn’t make me feel stupid.” Try it free for 30 days at balsamiq.com — you’ll be productive in no time! Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes.

How I Built It
Episode 18: Pippin Williamson & Restrict Content Pro

How I Built It

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2017 32:13


It’s the first episode of Season 2 and I’m glad to be back! Leading off, I got to talk to Pippin Williamson about resurrecting Restrict Content Pro, what it’s like being in the WordPress product space, pricing, developing, finding balance, and lots more in this jam-packed half hour. Show Notes Pippin’s Plugins Restrict Content Pro Easy […] The post Episode 18: Pippin Williamson & Restrict Content Pro appeared first on How I Built It.

Agency Trailblazer Podcast - The web design podcast

It's the last episode of the Halloween 2016 Season... Here goes: Membership sites are an amazing way generate income based on your or your client's expertise. With WordPress being such a powerful content machine, it makes sense to let it drive your membership area. We share some great tools to get you started, and stay tuned for our first in a series of pretty BIG and exciting news! Restrict Content Pro  https://restrictcontentpro.com/  WooCommerce Membership  https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-memberships/  MemberPress  https://www.memberpress.com/  Memberium  https://memberium.com/  Beaver Tunnels & Beaver Builder  http://leejacksondev.com/beavertunnels http://leejacksondev.com/beaverbuilder  Simple Membership  https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-membership/  Membership 2  https://wordpress.org/plugins/membership/  --- OUR EVENT: Do you want to make real change in your business? Join us at our in-person event Agency Transformation Live Meet Troy Dean; Lee Jackson, Chris Ducker, Kelly Baader, Amy Woods, Paul Lacey, Dave Foy and other legends in this fantastic conference focused on actionable steps that you can use to transform your agency. --- See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners
S4 E1: Logan Nickelson of MusicForMakers.com

Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2016 45:18


Hooray! Season 4 is here! First and foremost, thanks for always tuning into the Matt Report, and craving great stories and how-to from our guests. Second, thanks to my two content sponsors for this season: Pagely.com & Valet.io. Without them, the Netflix style release wouldn't have been possible. Kicking of Season 4 is my friend Logan Nickelson, founder of MusicForMakers.com. He built a recurring membership business built on WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and Restrict Content Pro enabling him to sell his royalty-free music. You might be thinking that a musician turned digital product seller, might not relate to your more traditional WordPress product or digital marketing product — oh, but it does! The parity between a music artist, and today's freelance developer/designer, is uncanny. He pulls on a lot of similar threads that we in the freelance consulting world experience in our own business. He's also a digital content marketer by day, and he's building this business in his spare time. And when you're making the music, building the website, marketing the goods, and supporting your customers — it becomes quite a feat! I hope you enjoy Season 4 Episode 1 with Logan Nickelson! Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners S4 E1: Logan Nickelson of MusicForMakers.com Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window ★ Support this podcast ★

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Rejuvenating old software products, with Pippin Williamson

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2016 61:43


In this episode of Post Status Draft, I talk to Pippin Williamson, and we discuss the renewed effort he and his team have made to rejuvenate Restrict Content Pro. Restrict Content Pro was initially sold without even a dedicated landing page, was successful on Code Canyon for a time, then he let it sputter as he and his team concentrated on Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP. But Pippin knew that Restrict Content Pro still had more life in it, and he wanted to see it become the kind of product he knew it had the potential to be. So when John Parris -- at the time primarily working with Easy Digital Downloads -- said he was interested in helping make RCP a proper membership plugin, Pippin jumped on the opportunity. They have had a good bit of success early on in the attempt to rejuvenate this product: Our goal was to double or triple the monthly revenue within six months. In March, 2016, RCP brought in $7,700. Last month, July 2016, it brought in $11,400. August, 2016, is estimated to bring in a little over $12,000. We’re at the five month mark and have increased monthly revenue by about 1.5. That’s not double yet, but it’s getting close. Within another few months, I expect we’ve surpass $15,000 in monthly sales. Even with just an increase of 1.5, we’re still looking at more than $100,000 in annual revenue, and the monthly revenue is higher than it ever was in the past, so we’re succeeding. Our conversation picked up where the blog post left off. We talked about the pain points they encountered during this effort, some of the additional rewards they've had, and how he structures the business more generally to have the same team work on multiple products. If you are a business owner, or aspire to be one -- or if you are curious about managing multiple lines of business at once -- then I think you'll really enjoy this episode. And, if you're a Post Status Club member, Pippin and I recorded a bonus segment, where we discuss hosted WordPress eCommerce, and Pippin shares his opinions on the concept, and whether or not it's something they are considering for Restrict Content Pro and/or Easy Digital Downloads. Sponsor: Design Palette Pro makes customizing Genesis websites simple. The Design Palette Pro team has integrated with every Genesis child theme, and it’s the perfect place to send folks who need custom design, without a custom budget. Go to GenesisDesignPro.com for more information, and thanks to Design Palette Pro for being a Post Status partner. Original photo credit: Marc Benzakein at WCSD

Entreprogrammers Podcast
Episode 127 “Turn Your Head and Cough”

Entreprogrammers Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2016 126:44


Episode 127 “Turn Your Head and Cough” 2:00 No John today! John is lost behind the Great Firewall of China.  Chuck and Josh are going to be gone next week. So no EntreProgrammers next week.  EntreProgrmamers discuss their encounters with playing Pokemon with their children. Chuck mentions that this is a great way to connect with his kids and to spend time with them.  10:00 Chuck talks able automating stuff and working on scheduling podcasts tasks. Chuck talks about finishing up the press kits for sponsorships. Derick spots lego collector items in Chuck’s office. Derick shares he likes build legos, even without the kiddos.  18:00 Chuck talks about the different format of the sponsorships on his podcasts. Chuck explains the exposures numbers, mid roll format that will be available for those who want to buy spots.    23:00 Josh asks about how Chuck is working wth hired.com. Chuck mentions that he is using pretty links. Derick mentions that Chuck should be able to use the Pretty Links as he described.  27:00 Chuck mention that he is going to be moving over to Blubrry for more stats on his podcasts. Derick ask if people really do use the RSS feed for notification on podcasts.  32:00 Josh mentions he is going to be cutting off Meet Edgar to save on expenses. Josh mentions that he could save 600 dollars after dropping Edgar, among other useless tools. Josh mentions to look at your analytics to see if interaction is there before you stop using tools.  37:00 Derick talks about the official Twitter cards plugin, and  how it is helpful. Josh shares engagement and impression numbers for tweets.  Josh talks about is issues with his tweets.  43:00 Josh talks about the changes that will go into effect soon with tweeting and boosting of tweets. Josh mentions that because of this Edgar is not useful to him anymore.  47:00 Derick ask about Josh’s interaction on Twitter. Josh mention he may not be active enough. Josh mentions that he may have lock down a sponsor for Simple Programmer. Josh said he is excited because this may get him to milestone one.  52:00 Josh says that he is cleaning up old Simple Programmer stuff. He is have Aaron go through tasks for Josh. Josh loves delegating. Josh mention because of this he was able to crank away at more important task.   Josh talks about his struggle with building out his product, because he does not have the system down yet.  56:00 Chuck says that his resistants are getting started and having focus to finish the project. Josh mentions that he may have to announce publicly a least date to help him get things on track and done.  1:00:00 Derick has an relaunch planned  to go out to him email list to target new traffic. Derick talks about his first experience with launching, verses with all the working put into this round of launch prep. Derick is frustrated with having to put more working than anticipated.  1:12:00 Josh ask what is going on with Derick’s pop-up, as far as numbers and stats. Derick says he has nothing else to do, but to take care of these backend issues.  1:20:00 Derick talks about losing subscribers. Josh thinks that when Derick does a big push, he gets his numbers back up.  Josh asks what or when he could do another push to bring in more customers. Derick says that his plugin may need custom code to make things work.  1:25:00 Chuck talks about maybe getting Dev Chat TV redesigned, Chuck talks about how this will take time and money to get this done. Josh ask if this is worth the time and money, and will accomplish a specific goal for his products, program, and services.  1:29:00 Chuck urges Derick to look at other system to help with the membership programs. Derick mentions the the API on Restrict Content Pro has great features for developers. Chuck describes what system he is using and how that does similar feature to Restrict Content Pro.  1:37:00 Derick mentions that the bundle sales are declining as well. Josh asks what does he need, and if they could reverse engineer a plan to help the situation. Josh talks about ways Derick could do a discount on his products to increase the sales for a short time.    1:48:00 Derick says that he continuously tries things that are suppose to work, but are not. Derick is not sure what to do as far as marketing. Derick says that firing all his editor will solve that money issue, but that means tons more work for him.  1:56:00 Derick talks about how he is 10 grand in credit card debt and needs to pay into his retirement plan.  2:00:00 Josh mentions that Derick should do a one month pricing plan that is only to a small part of his list. 

Mastermind.fm
Episode 23 – Interview with Pippin Williamson

Mastermind.fm

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2016 56:21


Welcome to Episode 23 of Mastermind.fm! We're doing something a little different today as Jean and James interview Pippin Williamson, author of Easy Digital Downloads, Affiliate WP, and Restrict Content Pro. He's a man that's made the WordPress space a little more awesome for all of us, and a sharp mind to listen to for advice. You can find the questions we're hitting him with from both ourselves and Mastermind listeners below, but tune it to the full episode to hear what he has to say! Mastermind Questions for Pippin 1) How did you get into PHP programming and then into WordPress? 2) What was the first product that you actually sold as you moved away from freelance work? What inspired you to make the product and make the move away from freelance? 3) How much did you sell your first product for? Where did you market it? Did it sell well in the beginning? 4) When did it hit you that "Hey, I can make a living doing this!"? How long did it take you to decide that this was going to be a full time pursuit? 5) How important were mentors along the way? How important were these people in influencing you to go full time? 6) How many people are you working with at the moment? What does your team look like? 7) What does support look like for you? How do you onboard and what kind of resources do you devote to it? 8) Is there a point where you will "release" a customer? i.e. are there certain situations where you realize a customer just can't be supported anymore? What factors play into a decision like that? 9) You've become successful with a number of different plugins. How do you manage your time and effort between these and where do you draw the line and say 'enough is enough'? 10) How do you divide your team among the different projects and products that you have? 11) What is the most important piece of advice you'd give to someone starting or wanting to start their own business? 12) If you had it to do all over again (starting a business), what one thing would you change? 13) What would you say is the most challenging thing in your business today? 14) What is the most exciting thing going on in your business right now? Featured On The Show: WP Ninjas WP Mayor WP RSS Aggregator Easy Digital Downloads Affiliate WP Restrict Content Pro Pro Blog Design Easy Content Types

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
He plans to be #1 Wordpress Membership Plugin by 2017 with Jason Coleman of Paid Memberships Pro

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2016 14:42


Ep 173 Jason Coleman, founder and lead developer of Paid Memberships Pro. Listen as Nathan and Jason talk about his e-commerce membership plug-in and the numbers for his business. YOUR $100: Remember to subscribe to the show on itunes then text the word "nathan" to 33444 to confirm that you've done it to enter to win $100 every Monday on the show. Do this now. Stop reading this and do it! Click here to join the top tribe and instantly learn how Nathan made his first $10k at 19 years old: bit.ly/1SynoAg Top Entrepreneurs join Nathan Latka daily inspired by, Art of Charm, Pat Flynn, John Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire, Chalene Johnson, Lewis Howes, School of Greatness, HBR Podcast, the StartUp podcast, Mixergy, Andrew Warner, AskGaryVee, and the great hosts of BiggerPockets! 3 Key Points: Despite expecting to rake in 360K+ in 2016, Jason’s business doesn’t rely on paid acquisition or a sizeable number of employees. Paid Memberships Pro is quite independent. Because of the type of service they provide, Paid Memberships Pro has a hard-to-measure churn rate. (Churn is dependent of the type of service or product being sold.) Without many employees or expenses to run his business, Jason and his wife bring in almost all of the revenue from the business as profit. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:00 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show 01:32 – Jason joins the show. 02:09 – Paid Memberships Pro is an e-commerce membership plug-in for WordPress. 02:31 – Jason’s business has about 3-5K paying customers. 03:15 – The membership for the service is 200$ a year for premium service. They project about 360K+ in revenue for 2016. 04:25 – Because of the kind of service that Paid Membership Pro provides, churn rate is difficult to measure. 06:08 – The business has a few contractors but not many employees. 06:54 – About 40K sites use the service and 4K are paying customers. 08:05 – Jason doesn’t do paid acquisition – the business’s biggest expense is the developers working on the service. 08:26 – They make about 10-20K a month. Jason and his wife take in about 15K a month from it. 09:12 – Paid Membership Pros’ competitors include Restrict Content Pro and Easy Digital Downloads. 10:27 – Jason beatboxes. 11:32 – Famous Five Resources Mentioned:   Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for. Here isNathan’s Edgar Content Calendar Paid Memberships Pro – Jason’s WordPress business Biography – Jason’s personal description on his website The Singularity is Near – Jason’s favorite business book Slack – Jason’s favorite online tool Bryan Johnson – CEO Jason follows Bio Jason Coleman is the founder and lead developer of Paid Memberships Pro. The membership plug-in for WordPress that over 40,000 entrepreneurs and organizations use to get paid. Famous 5 Favorite Book?— The Singularity is Near – by Ray Kurzweil What CEO do you follow?— Bryan Johnson What is your favorite online tool?— Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Sometimes. If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—Focus on one thing at a time and fail fast.   Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews! Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries.   Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Running a successful membership site in real life, with Jonathan Williamson

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2015 76:40


Jonathan Williamson is the co-founder and COO of CGCookie, a membership website that provides as an educational resource for computer graphics and modeling. CGCookie has been around since 2008, and today is a network of five websites, has thousands of paying members, a team of six full time employees plus a number of contractors. CGCookie is built completely on WordPress and has a built in membership component. Some astute readers may recognize both the site and Jonathan's name; Jonathan is Pippin Williamson's identical twin brother, and Pippin has worked with Jonathan on CGCookie many times. So, in this interview, you're not listening to me talk to Pippin -- though it sounds like it -- but I'm talking to Jonathan Williamson. Jonathan is as passionate about CG, modeling, 3D printing, and the software that surrounds these disciplines as Pippin is about WordPress and programming. It was a pleasure to talk to Jonathan about what it's like to run a membership site that runs on WordPress. I think this interview will be beneficial for those that want to run a membership site, and also those that work with clients who make their living off of their website. How CGCookie evolved CGCookie started as a blog with news, tutorials, and resources for CG enthusiasts. The first form of its monetization was by selling the source files for the various tutorials. Within about two years, Jonathan and co-founder Wes Burke decided to add a membership component that ended up working far better than they anticipated. Jonathan has been working full-time on CGCookie since around the summer of 2009. They originally launched on aMember, before eventually migrating to Pippin's Restrict Content Pro plugin, along with Easy Digital Downloads. Today, CGCookie has more than 120,000 free users, and they have around 4,700 paid members. Since 2008, CGCookie have managed to not have a full time web developer until February of 2014, when they hired Nick Haskins. You may recognize Nick as the founder of Aesop Stories as well. Nick manages front-end development for the site, and they still don't have a backend developer -- though a backend developer and designer are on their roadmap. How CGCookie's eCommerce setup runs Considering Jonathan is using his brother's own plugins in the real world, it makes for a great avenue for feedback and insight for Pippin to improve those products. CGCookie is using Restrict Content Pro for memberships themselves, and EDD for their store. We talked about whether EDD could be used for both, or if there is room for improvement in the marriage between the two systems, and he believes there is and that it's a goal for the two plugins. For instance, currently, reporting and user management and a number of other features are independent between each plugin even though often times the users that utilize the system may overlap. I asked Jonathan about scaling WordPress and eCommerce for their large user base. He says that scaling for eCommerce has not been difficult, but with over a hundred thousand users, some default WordPress functionality has not scaled well; for instance, some admin areas create dropdowns for all users, which does not work well. Fortunately, there are some trac tickets in place currently to help solve some of these problems. Prioritizing goals for a membership site When discussing challenges running a membership site, Jonathan highlights the internal battles: balancing new features versus iterative improvements. Based on my short experience managing this membership site, I completely agree. For an example, Jonathan told me about a potential question and answer system to help his members get answers for specific technical topics that may be beyond the scope of a specific course. They believe a Stack Exchange style setup that allows them to refer their courses to specific questions would allow them to better serve their customers with the same content they already have. How do you get people to find your content that answers their question, but you don't have a way of just explicitly saying that these are the questions this course answers? They're considering a method of post to post relationships that direct courses as question answers and vice versa. For this feature and others, they try to do things with a short return on investment, but they also don't want to be a slave to it. They sometimes do things "that are important to the quality of CGCookie, that never make a dime." They removed ads last year under that very premise, to make CGCookie a better learning experience. Not the only place to learn Jonathan knows CGCookie isn't the only place to learn, so they focus on creating an excellent community and learning experience for their customers. Realizing that our sites aren't the only way to get certain information is an important thing to know to be able to better focus what we create for our users and why we create it. Pricing for CGCookie CGCookie has pricing for monthly, quarterly, or yearly pricing; all plans renew automatically unless explicitly cancelled. This is a feature they actively A/B test to see what's working and what's not. Behavior of customers varies between the three levels. Jonathan says that the users are more invested in their purchases (and getting more out of it) when they sign up for longer. Quarterly members have 10% longer lifetime memberships and spend three times longer on the site. However, they do have "a fair bit" of what I called "download and dash" members that sign up for a month, download a bunch of assets and cancel. Monthly memberships are also the most popular plan. They've considered locking down downloads for monthly signups but it's not something they want to do unless it becomes a bigger problem; however they do lose money on those customers that download gigabytes of files and videos but only stay subscribed for one month. Testing During A/B tests, they have found that people will be just as likely to sign up for quarterly as monthly if monthly isn't available, and quarterly members are more engaged. One thing they noted is that once people stick around for a few months, the average tenure of a user skyrockets; they have some users that have been a paying member as long as the site has been running. One of my big takeaways talking to Jonathan was about how significant testing can be. Their tests help them decide on the optimal pricing and payment plans to maximize a lifetime value. For testing, insights, and statistics they use both Optimizely, Mixpanel, and Google Analytics. Mixpanel allows you to create custom events in your software, and does require some code knowledge, but it can deliver valuable insights if you use it correctly. Jonathan notes, "It's basically as comprehensive as you make it." They can also mesh tools. They can track which A/B test from Optimizely a customer signed up with, and then use Mixpanel to track what they did and how they did it. They can get login metrics, renewal numbers, and more for each plan and signup flow. Mixpanel requires PHP and JavaScript knowledge to utilize, but Optimizely has an extensive visual interface that doesn't require code knowledge to utilize. What encourages membership signups "It varies day to day, week to week, month to month," in regard to how their signups work. A bad month in the economy can make their signups go down. Sometimes quarterly users will spike while monthly users are steady. Their biggest thing that affects signup rates is customer support. Some presale, but also support for new members to help answer questions and get people engaged. [pullquote align="right"]When they can help someone answer the question, "Where do I go next?", they are able to keep them for a long time.[/pullquote] They have one or two courses that drive a ton of traffic to their site, and it is therefore their largest onboarding channel for new members. However, they don't have a silver bullet for what it takes to get new users. They are always trying new things. On competing and the industry Jonathan doesn't see themselves as a part of a singular industry. While many think of CG as a part of the film industry, it's one of dozens of potential applications, and they don't want to narrow themselves to a particular one. They also poll users to get a feel for who they are and what industry actual users come from. Based on around a thousand responses, they had no real pattern at all. The results were all over the board. So they don't want to compete with a film tutorials site or any other industry site. They want to focus on the tool itself. They want to teach people how to use Blender and show them how it can be applied to various industries their users are a part of. Advice for those running membership sites "Build your community would be the main one. It's one thing to offer a really good product. It's one thing to build a really good website. But if you don't have the community behind you that's going to be willing to trust in you with their wallet ... it's not going to go anywhere long term, sustainably." Jonathan says it's about building the community as well as the sense of trust within that community. He believes that customers will want to know that not only the content will be worth it, but that it will continue to be worth it -- and that the communication and support from the team behind the site will be consistent as well. He believes that subscriptions and products are very different. With a subscription, the interaction is just as or far more important than specific content itself. When he refers to community, he doesn't mean it has to be strictly through something like a forum. He considers it a broad term, and for them it evolved out of their Blender community user base. At the time we recorded this, they didn't have forums, a dedicated chat system, or an actual community integration part. But the community exists and thrives within comments and their gallery functionality. Wrapping up Jonathan is full of great advice and I could listen to him talk about membership sites for a long time. I have no experience with CG but at the end of this interview he had me wanted to go build something with Blender. You can (and should) keep up with Jonathan on Twitter, or perhaps you'll see him at a conference near you -- but you'll probably think it's Pippin at first. Also be sure to checkout CGCookie's website; it's really great.

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast
027 Membership Plugins: Episode 4

WP-Tonic Show A WordPress Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2015


PRESS THIS LINK TO SEE BEHIND THE SCEENS YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE MAKING OF EPISODE 027 WITH JONATHAN DENWOOD AND BILL CONRAD   Episode 4 of WordPress and Membership Sites In this episode Jonathan  gives his recommendation to me for New Media Gold's membership plugin and it is Restrict Content Pro, a Premium Memberships for WordPress. Here our full article on all seven membership plugins! [su_button url="http://www.wp-tonic.com/7-powerful-flexible-wordpress-membership-plugins-build-successful-online-community/" background="#EE9D39"]Read More[/su_button]   Summary: which of these membership plugins is the best overall? We have a difficult decision here. You have seven really good WordPress membership plugins solutions that will all do an excellent job for you—no real dogs here! However, if you have a gateway provider that you have or want to use, you need to be careful connected to what plugin you choose. If your gateway provider is not PayPal or Strip, you need to check and make sure that your membership plugin supports this provider. There are two on our list that provide the most flexibility connected to gateway choices: Magic Members

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast
Episode #46 Pippin Williamson from Pippin’s Plugins

WP Elevation WordPress Business Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2014 71:18


  Pippin Williamson is the man behind the fantastic plugins Restrict Content Pro, Easy Digital Downloads and Affiliate WP as well as teaching others in his plugin development courses at pippinsplugins.com and co-opting the Apply Filters podcast with Brad Touesnard - and he's only 25! The post Episode #46 Pippin Williamson from Pippin’s Plugins appeared first on WP Elevation.

plugins pippin easy digital downloads restrict content pro wp elevation pippin williamson affiliatewp brad touesnard
WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast
Chris Coyier on WordPress, business, and building the web

WordPress | Post Status Draft Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2014 66:14


Chris Coyier is not a stranger to most of us web workers. He’s a designer at CodePen, a writer at CSS-Tricks, and a podcaster at ShopTalk. He uses WordPress on all three of his primary projects. For years, Chris has been a consistent advocate for the platform. He develops his own websites with WordPress, but his day-to-day interactions are as a user. Chris brings a unique perspective, I believe. He did some client work early in his career, but he’s been more involved in SaaS projects and membership websites; his current membership websites are on WordPress (CSS-Tricks) and Ruby on Rails (CodePen). I asked Chris about his projects, his perspective on various aspects of WordPress, and the community around it. I enjoyed learning from him, and I hope you do too: http://s3.amazonaws.com/PostStatus/DraftPodcast/chris-coyier-post-status-draft.mp3 Direct Download What have you learned from working on membership websites?  It’s just a good dang business idea. Chris was sold on the idea of membership websites from his tenure at Wufoo and SurveyMonkey (where he worked once they acquired Wufoo). He uses Pippin Williamson’s Restrict Content Pro for managing The Lodge on CSS-Tricks. At CodePen, they spend time thinking about pricing, churn, and other membership metrics. They talk about some of these things (and much more) on the CodePen Radio podcast — an awesome podcast for anyone interested in SaaS, not just CodePen. Delivering value Another aspect Chris noted about membership websites is how it makes you want to continually deliver value for customers. He always wants to make people feel like they’re getting excellent features and value for the price of their membership. Another thing he and the CodePen team are learning is prioritizing feature requests. When you are building for members, you want to build features members want; and sometimes that goes against other fixes that are less glamorous. So they are consistently trying to balance time spent on customer-facing features versus behind the scenes development. Build the feature, get the reward Chris talked about how important it is for him to build something, then be rewarded for the work he does, versus selling something and then having to build the feature for it. He experience this with his big Kickstarter project for a CSS-Tricks redesign a couple of years ago, and said that mentality was really difficult for him. What do you appreciate more now about WordPress, after using other software? WordPress comes with a lot of built-in features that many of us (I do at least) may take for granted. Need a user system? Check. Need comments? Check. Need categorization? Check. Building CodePen, Chris is able to appreciate (even more than before) just how powerful WordPress is and how much thought goes into every feature. We dove into something seemingly simple as an example: tags. It turns out that something even that simple takes a lot of thought, consideration, and user experience considerations. What it ends up as, is something you’ll have to iterate on for years to get anywhere close to how good the WordPress one works already. And that’s like the tiniest thing we could think about. Think about the login system, or something else. So his advice was to focus on simplicity and decisions when building features, because required effort grows rapidly as a feature gets more complicated. How would you compare the WordPress community to other web communities? Chris has exposure to a much broader web community than I do. I’m pretty locked into the WordPress bubble. He sees the Ruby on Rails world, the more generic web world, and attends and speaks at a slew of non-WordPress conferences every year. Even though he says he’s mostly in a WordPress bubble himself (he’s not exactly attending Drupal conferences, he notes), he thinks that the WordPress community is pretty top-notch, and hasn’t seen other communities that are “better” than the WordPress community. There’s definitely no other CMS that I’m jealous of that community. What questions about WordPress are you always seeing on the ShopTalk Podcast Chris and his co-host Dave Rupert (seriously, follow Dave and gain laughs and knowledge in life) get a lot of questions about WordPress on the ShopTalk Podcast. Some of these questions are repeated pretty frequently, and they see trends of common issues. Working locally and syncing remotely For WordPress, the most common questions tend to come around syncing the local development environment with the live environment. They’ve been recommending WP Migrate DB Pro for people trying to get around that, though Chris says he doesn’t think it’s perfect for huge websites like CSS-Tricks. I think, to a degree, the common confusion is logical. WordPress development is really centered around three different layers of “stuff”: the content (posts, pages, etc), the files in the directory, and the site management database options. I think there is plenty of room for confusion when it’s not easy to decouple website management with website content, from a database perspective. Learning more about WordPress through the lens of a different audience I used this segment to talk about other confusing aspects of WordPress. We talked about database management, the degree of PHP knowledge required for WordPress theming, using pre-processors in distributed versus custom themes, responsive images, and the asset-itis of many WordPress websites that utilize plugins that each load their own scripts and styles. Regardless of the specific issues people are having, I find tremendous value listening to ShopTalk — which is not as hardcore of a WordPress audience as I have here — where the trends of people’s struggles help reveal real struggles that perhaps we could build better tools for in WordPress. It’s also worth noting that some of the “struggles” we talked about are very modern struggles, and WordPress has been around for over eleven years. WordPress iterates pretty quickly and does a great job of supporting modern web features, but it’s rarely immediate, especially in terms of core support. But plugin support and the shear number of people innovating on top of WordPress is significant and awesome. Just build websites! So many people want to be told what to do and what to learn next. That’s for sure the #1 question on ShopTalk. In the face of lots of new and changing technology, Chris is often asked about what to do first, or what to do next. He and Dave have a core mantra at ShopTalk to encourage people to “just build websites!” The things that you learn will happen as a result of building those websites and things for other people. The degree of paralysis by analysis they see is significant, and Chris and Dave hope that people will let their experiences guide them versus a to-do list of things they must learn today. You’re desirable Another note is that pretty much everyone has something they can do to provide value to others. People surely know something from a tooling perspective that’s worthwhile; even sans-modern tools, basic knowledge of HTML and CSS — the building blocks of the web — could be a great asset to lots of business. Even more important than tooling though, is the ability to solve problems. Chris used an example of a business that sells wrenches. If you can help a business that sells wrenches to sell more wrenches, then you are able to provide that business a lot of value; so focus on helping businesses do what they do better. Learn by sharing I admire Chris’ degree of sharing what he’s learning, through ShopTalk, CodePen Radio, and for years on CSS-Tricks. He doesn’t do anything special to write about what he learns. He keeps his drafts right there in WordPress. He doesn’t take special notes. He just writes, and he often writes about what he’s learning. Over time he’s been able to refine his writing and learn what to expect, as far as feedback goes. But at the core he just writes, and through that writing he’s been able to grow his own audience and get better at everything else he’s doing professionally. Staying consistent and avoiding burnout I was curious what Chris has done to stay so consistent online and avoid burnout. It seems to me that a lot of people get temporarily motivated and quickly disenchanted. I’ve learned in my own experience with the web that any measure of success takes lots and lots of consistent effort. Chris hasn’t done a lot to think about avoiding burnout, but figures there are some things he subconsciously does to stay motivated. That may be taking extended breaks from the web and disconnecting for a trip to the woods, or shorter breaks just in the day like stopping and playing the banjo for a few minutes. Stay in touch with Chris At the end of every episode of ShopTalk, Chris and Dave give guests an opportunity to plug whatever they want. Chris’ plug for our interview was to advise folks to take some time off from building their own product and instead go into their issues list and clean up after themselves and their project — which is what Chris and team are doing at CodePen right now. He also noted that nothing would make him happier than folks going Pro on CodePen. If you teach, interact with others, or want a way to store private pens, you should definitely check it out. And it’s affordable too, at only $75 for the year. While he didn’t take the opportunity to plug much of his own stuff, you should definitely still check out his various projects. I’ve learned a ton from Chris since I started my own journey on the web. If my learning journey on the web were a university, I’ve definitely taken multiple classes from CSS-Tricks and the ShopTalk Show. Chris’ business is built on a three-legged stool right now. Check them out: CodePen – a playground for the front-end side of the web. ShopTalk Show – a podcast about front-end web design (and sound effects). CSS-Tricks – where the whole internet learns CSS. Also check out Chris’ fun about page with his life’s timeline and follow him on Twitter. I’d like to thank Chris for the time he spent with me, and I hope that if you enjoyed this interview and write-up, that you’ll share it!

The Freelancers' Show
The Freelancers' Show 079 – WordPress Plugins with Pippin Williamson

The Freelancers' Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2013 45:01


Panel Pippin Williamson (twitter github Pippins Plugins) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:28 - Pippin Williamson Introduction Pippins Plugins Easy Digital Downloads Restrict Content Pro 01:53 - Making Money Making Plugins Product Development Custom Development 02:57 - GPLv2 Licensing ThemeForest Support Disabling Features 11:45 - Building a business around open-source Audience 12:48 - Transitioning from freelance to product work Graduality 072 – Saying NO Doing products during spare time Brian Casel The Bootstrapped Web Podcast 19:10 - Starting with products vs consulting 22:38 - Occasional Consulting 23:41 - Marketing Products Personal Brand Word-of-Mouth Referrals 25:42 - Customer Support 27:17 - Advice for people getting into commercial development Go the extra mile for your first customers 28:01 - Deciding what products to build Building what you need Best Practices 31:30 - Pippin's Plugins CodeCanyon Easy Digital Downloads 34:26 - Pippin's Support Team 36:45 - Tools to Run the Business Github WordPress Skype WordPress-GitHub-Plugin-Updater HALL Ronin Twitter Picks 1Keyboard (Curtis) Radium (Curtis) Episode 148 | Online Marketing Trends with Special Guest Clay Collins (Eric) The Online Marketing Makeover Training Course (Chuck) Bloons Tower Defence 5 (Chuck) SearchWP (Pippin) FacetWP (Pippin) Next Week Our Stories Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at coding, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] [This episode is sponsored by Planscope. Planscope is a project management and collaboration net built for freelancers in the way they work with clients. It makes it easy to price out new estimates and once you're underway and help answer the question, these get done on time and under budget. I've been using Planscope to do my estimates and manage my projects and I really, really like it. It makes it really easy to keep things in order, and understand when things will get done. You can go check it out at Planscope.io.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 79 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have a special guest, and that is Pippin Williamson. PIPPIN: Hi everybody! CHUCK: Since you haven't been on the show before, do you want to introduce yourself? PIPPIN: Sure! As he said, my name is Pippin Williamson. I'm a WordPress plugin developer. I spend my days writing plugins, supporting plugins, and generally running a business around commercial plugins. I have a couple of large plugins out there. One called “Easy Digital Downloads” and another one called “Restrict Content Pro” that I've considered my main ones. That's pretty much what I do day-to-day. CHUCK: I'm a little curious, generally, when you're making money writing plugins for WordPress, are you writing the kind that people pay for and then they download the code and stick it in the WordPress installation? Or, are you doing custom development for people? Or, both? How does that work?

Devchat.tv Master Feed
The Freelancers’ Show 079 – WordPress Plugins with Pippin Williamson

Devchat.tv Master Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2013 45:01


Panel Pippin Williamson (twitter github Pippins Plugins) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:28 - Pippin Williamson Introduction Pippins Plugins Easy Digital Downloads Restrict Content Pro 01:53 - Making Money Making Plugins Product Development Custom Development 02:57 - GPLv2 Licensing ThemeForest Support Disabling Features 11:45 - Building a business around open-source Audience 12:48 - Transitioning from freelance to product work Graduality 072 – Saying NO Doing products during spare time Brian Casel The Bootstrapped Web Podcast 19:10 - Starting with products vs consulting 22:38 - Occasional Consulting 23:41 - Marketing Products Personal Brand Word-of-Mouth Referrals 25:42 - Customer Support 27:17 - Advice for people getting into commercial development Go the extra mile for your first customers 28:01 - Deciding what products to build Building what you need Best Practices 31:30 - Pippin’s Plugins CodeCanyon Easy Digital Downloads 34:26 - Pippin’s Support Team 36:45 - Tools to Run the Business Github WordPress Skype WordPress-GitHub-Plugin-Updater HALL Ronin Twitter Picks 1Keyboard (Curtis) Radium (Curtis) Episode 148 | Online Marketing Trends with Special Guest Clay Collins (Eric) The Online Marketing Makeover Training Course (Chuck) Bloons Tower Defence 5 (Chuck) SearchWP (Pippin) FacetWP (Pippin) Next Week Our Stories Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at coding, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] [This episode is sponsored by Planscope. Planscope is a project management and collaboration net built for freelancers in the way they work with clients. It makes it easy to price out new estimates and once you’re underway and help answer the question, these get done on time and under budget. I’ve been using Planscope to do my estimates and manage my projects and I really, really like it. It makes it really easy to keep things in order, and understand when things will get done. You can go check it out at Planscope.io.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 79 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have a special guest, and that is Pippin Williamson. PIPPIN: Hi everybody! CHUCK: Since you haven’t been on the show before, do you want to introduce yourself? PIPPIN: Sure! As he said, my name is Pippin Williamson. I’m a WordPress plugin developer. I spend my days writing plugins, supporting plugins, and generally running a business around commercial plugins. I have a couple of large plugins out there. One called “Easy Digital Downloads” and another one called “Restrict Content Pro” that I’ve considered my main ones. That’s pretty much what I do day-to-day. CHUCK: I’m a little curious, generally, when you’re making money writing plugins for WordPress, are you writing the kind that people pay for and then they download the code and stick it in the WordPress installation? Or, are you doing custom development for people? Or, both? How does that work?