Is Your Site A Frankenstein?

Well, hey there! Welcome to a new week!

Well, we survived our winter snap here in Florida. I know a lot of you see snow all the time, but… snowing in Florida? Crazy! Those photos of up around I-10 look like you could have been sitting in Maine!

Alas, here at our place, we didn’t see any snow. We’re in the Tampa area, and this area hasn’t seen snow since 1977. But, it was still colder than snot. And you know us Floridians… we wear heavy jackets when it gets into the 40’s. We’re not used to this stuff!

Anyway, this week, I’m getting back to my shorts and t-shirt. And it doesn’t suck.

Alright, let’s get into another packed issue of the newsletter.

4 Lessons I’ve Learned While Running My Concierge Program

OK, well you know by now that Concierge is my core offer on my website. It is what keeps me busy all week. And yes, I’d love the opportunity to work with you if (or when) you decide to enroll your site in Concierge. But…

I’ve definitely learned a lot as I pivoted the Blog Marketing Academy into being primarily an agency business rather than an educational one.

I’ve learned certain things that have allowed me to be much better at what I do. And therefore be as helpful as I possibly can to my clients. So, let me share some of them with you.

#1 – Being Personal Is A Strength

We live in a world where companies send their customers through phone prompt hell before you can talk to somebody. Or outsource it to people who barely speak the language. Or, try to use AI chatbots that just spit out pre-programmed crap.

I dunno about you… but I find myself getting annoyed really quickly when a company makes it hard to talk to somebody.

Not only do I make a point to reply to all clients personally (and I always will), but I even make myself available on the Roadmap calls without any money changing hands.

Sometimes people come off those Roadmap calls and become clients. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, I’m good. Because every call is an opportunity to learn and to listen. And to understand my target customer even better.

When I record private videos for my clients, I used to use Loom. Now, I use Cleanshot Cloud and even have my own sub-domain just for my private client videos. It not only looks good (my private client videos literally get an automatic transcipt), but it really ramps up that private, personal relationship with my clients. And they love it!

So, be personal. Don’t avoid talking to people. Look for opportunities to be your natural self. Not only is it rewarding as hell, but it will grow your business.

#2 – Invest In Good Tools

I provide better service – and make my own life significantly simpler – by purchasing and using the best tools to serve my clients.

I buy agency support licenses in some of the best tools I can find in order to add them to the Concierge Toolkit. Not only does this “sweeten the pot” a bit for the value-add of Concierge, but it literally makes MY life simpler because I can deliver for clients faster.

I use Rocket as my primary web host for clients. And…. you think Rocket is cheap?! It definitely isn’t. You should see my hosting bill every month! But, Rocket is the best host I’ve ever worked with and their support people are personal, knowledgeable and accessible. Paying that big hosting bill to host my clients on Rocket makes everybody’s life simpler.

I also use a tool called WP Remote to manage and update client sites. Got almost 90 sites in there right now. It isn’t a cheap tool. But, it is a key component of my service and totally worth it. Several times, as an example, I’ve used the incremental backups (powered by BlogVault) to rescue a client site after they broke something. We didn’t have to restore the whole site but I could just restore one portion of it.

Point is…

Don’t cheap out on tools. You get what you pay for. And yes, I pay a lot for the tools and plugins I use to service my clients. But, it is worth it because it literally makes me better at what I do.

#3 – Recurring Productized Service Is Awesome

OK, here’s just a strategic point to consider, but that is that productizing a service and turning it into a recurring monthly plan is very good for business.

A productized service is just a service which you have pre-packaged, turned it into an offer at a set price, and then sell it like a product. This is very different than a totally custom service which differs from person to person and/or requires an estimate upfront.

There’s great marketing strength to taking a service people are looking for and packaging it into a service with an upfront, predictable price.

That repeatable nature of the service means you can systematize it, take advantage of economies of scale, and really tweak it to perfection.

And doing it as a recurring, monthly subscription provides incredible stability to your gross income.

#4 – Know Who Your Ideal Customer Is (And Be Willing To Say No)

It gets real chaotic real quick if you’re a “people pleaser” who can’t say no to any request. Not only that, if you don’t know who you serve the best and try to attract just anybody willing to work with you, then it also gets chaotic and you don’t really excel.

I know that my ideal customer tends to be a solopreneur. Or perhaps a small business entrepreneur with a small team. I simply don’t want the hassle of working with larger organizations even if they pay more…. because I know I wouldn’t serve them as well. They’re better off going with the suits.

It also really helps to be confident in what you offer and how you do things. And stay consistent about it.

When I’ve had people try to get me to twist and turn to get their business, I say no without hesitation. If they come to me with an attitude of me being their employee or them dictating terms, I tell them to find somebody else.

Positioning is important. Not just with pricing, but also in how you position yourself in the minds of the people you work with. And if you put yourself in a position where you will compromise with yourself to get their business, that’s not a good starting point for a long-term relationship.

This Week In Concierge

Let me go through some of the recent additions to the Concierge Toolkit. These are tools that I acquire agency licenses to so that I can install them on client sites when needed.

YITH WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips

The name of this plugin is a mouthful, but it is a useful plugin. It allows your customers to view and download invoices for their orders through the account screen. You can control the look and feel of the invoices, manage them from the backend, etc. It is also useful if you want to create pending orders in Woo, generate the invoice to invoice people for services. Then, they can pay via their account.

WP Armour Extended

WP Armour is my “go to” plugin for preventing spambot submissions on forms throughout client sites. It is quite effective. The “Extended” version provides additional integrations, ability to see stats and even log bot attempts. This one will protect forms in page builders like Elementor, WooCommerce checkout forms, and more.

Sonaar Music – MP3 Player Pro

While I use Presto Player for videos (also in the Toolkit), it’s support for audios is pretty basic. Sonaar’s MP3 Music Player Pro plugin is perhaps the most full-featured audio player I’ve ever seen. It can do podcasts, of course. But, it goes way past that into full audio libraries, beautiful playlists, and more. I’m still learning the ropes with it, but I have 2 client sites now using it and I figured it should be added to the Toolkit.

To view the full toolkit available for Concierge clients, click here.

WordPress Quick Bits

New Attack Vector on WooCommerce Checkout Forms. Security researchers are warning of a new type of attack which seems to be targeting WooCommerce checkout forms. It is a script that is embedded into the wp_options table which then sniffs out credit card numbers as users type them in. It requires a pretty specific set of circumstances to even work (putting an HTML widget onto your checkout page). You can read more about it here. The motto is… keep your plugins updated.

New White House Site Powered by WordPress. As Trump took office, a lot of people checked out the new White House site. Every administration completely redesigns it. And, the new site is powered by WordPress. Interestingly, it appears they are running a custom theme with NO plugins. Well, I see one small analytics script, but otherwise, this seems like a fully custom site designed specifically to need no plugins at all. Interesting.

SquareSpace Outpaces WordPress In US. Every chart of CMS usage I’ve seen shows that WordPress is – by far – the most popular CMS in the world. The keyword there is… “world”. Because, if you limit it to just the US, it appears SquareSpace outpaces it according to this survey. Maybe all those Super Bowl commercials worked.

Stellar Launched StellarPay. Stellar is the company which owns Learndash, Kadence, MemberPress and others. And now they add a new tool to their list – StellarPay. This is a free plugin that connects WooCommerce to Stripe. On the outside, looks to me like it works much more directly with Stripe, perhaps even using Stripe’s native subscription setup. Details are light, so I won’t be using it soon. But, will keep an eye. And, of course, realize why it is free. Like all such gateways, they can see customer data on transactions.

FluentCRM 2.9.40 Release. New version of FluentCRM came out last week. This new version sports new contact filtering options. MemberPress subscriptions widget, exporting campaign data, and more. Definitely some new conveniences in this update. Click here to see the changelog.

xCloud Keeps Developing. xCloud is the hosting panel I use when I’m not using Rocket. And it is really nice to see them always improving the panel. 3 new features just added including built-in backup integration with BackBlaze, ability to restore any site from a backup (without other tools needed), ability to control SEO visibility. See their full changelog here.

Cloudways Launching CoPilot. My old web host, Cloudways, is launching their own AI tool called CoPilot. This tool will apparently monitor your server(s) for you, detect issues as they arise, instantly diagnose and then recommend a fix. Could be interesting. But, I also know how comanies try to slap the term “AI” onto everything now to appear cool. Check it out.

WooCommerce 9.7 Coming On Feb 24th. This new version will have a new, modernized payment settings screen, faster block performance, and a few other little tid-bits.

WordPress .com Abandons Calypso. When using WP .com rather than self-hosted WordPress, users have long had a custom admin interface called Calypso. Now, they are going to discontinue that and instead use the same admin panel the rest of us use. And judging by the comments, a lot of people aren’t too keen on this change.

Matt Hires New Lawyers. Looks like Matt is making adjustments in his battle with WP Engine, hiring new lawyers. Clearly, this whole affair is not going the way Matt likely thought it would.

PressConf Speakers Stacking Up. PressConf is a conference for people who work in the WordPress space and use it for business. It will be in Arizona in April. I will be there. And apparently the Executive Director of WordPress and the Lead Architect of Gutenberg will be speaking there. The reactions to the announcement on X weren’t great, considering the controversy going on. But, I think it will be interesting to hear and talk to them in person.

SureForms 1.3. I don’t use SureForms, but people who use the “Sure” family of products have some reason to look at it. And it looks like the plugin now offers new features when it comes to entry management. In many ways, they’re still playing catchup to other forms plugins, but it is coming along.

Avoiding Frankenstein Sites

I’ve been involved with a heck of a lot of websites at this point. Obviously. And I’ve seen some doosies.

I call them “frankenstein sites”.

These are sites that feel like things are being held together with duct tape. Where it feels…. fragile. Like it wouldn’t take much to break it, so the owner is hesitant to do much of anything at all.

These kinds of sites usually run far too many plugins. Often plugins with overlapping functionality, too. It is the kind of thing where the person just slapped whatever ol’ plugin they could find to do what they needed at the time. Without much research. Without really knowing what the impact was.

And then one day, they find that their site is super slow.

Or they’re scared of plugin updates because the chances of a new conflict go up and things just break.

I have one client where I recently put WP Armour on there to stop a spambot problem… and within an hour his site apparently went down. WP Armour is a simple plugin that does one job, so the idea that that thing could bring down his site was perplexing as hell. But, come to find out, if that was indeed the trigger, it is because his site literally ran out of server memory. He’s on Rocket hosting, too, so memory is very rarely any issue . So, the fact it even came to that point is really something. His site must have been running right on the edge the whole time. But, he’s running 65 plugins. It is a big site. And yes, a bit of a frankenstein.

You want to avoid building a frankenstein site. You want a site which works well, doesn’t break easily, and is rather streamlined and performs well.

Here are a few thing that I personally do to avoid frankensteins:

• I try to avoid using large page builders if I can. (Elementor, for example.) I use and am very good with Kadence, which is far more streamlined.
• I try to avoid installing plugins just for tiny little things. In a lot of cases, I can create a custom code snippet to do what I need.
• I love using plugins that work together seamlessly. For instance, the “Fluent” family of products work beautifully together. The “Sure” family of products would be another example.
• I never keep a plugin active if I’m not actively using it. I don’t keep things active “just in case”.
• I avoid BuddyBoss. I know… it is good at what it does. But, plugin conflicts are just more frequent. It is what it is.
• I avoid bloatware as much as possible. Plugins that just load up on code, clutter the admin panel with notices, or do promotions in the ad panel. I try to avoid them. Lookin’ at you, Awesome Motive.

I could go on. WordPress is awesome because of it’s flexibility and freedom. But, that freedom comes with responsibility. Responsibility not to turn your site into a frankenstein monster.

I always try my best to de-frankenstein my clients’ sites. If you’ve got a frankenstein on your hands, book a call and let’s talk about what we can do about it.

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.