A Code Of Monetization?

OK, I admit it. I didn’t quite make it to the end of the Super Bowl.

I’m not exactly a night owl. In fact, I’m usually hitting the sack by 10-10:30 at night and I’m up pretty early. So, when that game went into the end of the 4th quarter and it was a tie? You gotta me kidding me! 🤪

Super inconvenient. LOL!

Then, I find they changed the game rules to make overtime take longer. And well… I called it a wrap and missed the ending.

All I will say is…. boring game until the 4th quarter. That was pretty good football at the end there.

Commercials? Some good ones. Some dumb ones. Don’t know why so many of them try to stuff celebrities in their commercials but can’t even make it memorable enough to know what was being advertised. 🤣

Anyway, congrats to the Kansas City Chiefs. A well-earned win.

And let’s get movin’ on our week here…

The Blogger Code Of Monetization

OK, let’s be real with each other, you and I…

You and I both know there are dishonest marketers out there. There are people who are selling crappy products, “gurus” who have no business coming off that way, and marketers who spend more time trying to extract money from you than delivering real value.

You and I both know there are internet marketing people who spend more time trying to brag to you about their wealth than doing anything real.

You and I both know that some sites have gotten so overbearing with banner ads that it has gone overboard. I guess your browser crashing or having a bunch of pop-ups and autoplay videos doesn’t bother them, really. Anything in the quest to increase their revenue.

You and I both know of people who promote products only for the affiliate commission.

You and I both know these people exist.

What’s more, I’m guessing you don’t want to be one of those people. Have vowed not to be. Perhaps you’ve even gone a little too far with it by never selling anything to your audience for fear of “selling out”, or coming off as pushy. You want so hard NOT to be one of those crappy marketers that you run full-speed in the opposite direction.

Well, you can’t do that. Not if you want to build an online business and make money with your site. Sales and marketing are part of what makes this world work.

The good news is that you absolutely CAN sell on your blog and sell to your audience without crossing the line. People do it every day. You and I both likely know people like that, too. People who deliver immense value, so when they offer something for sale you don’t mind at all. Even if you don’t buy it, you don’t mind them trying to sell it to you.

To that end, I propose the Blogger Code of Monetization.

This code is voluntary. Nobody can really enforce it on you. It is something that you abide by if you agree with it, but I propose it as a simple set of guidelines that keep things running smoothly as you monetize your blog.

Let’s do this…

1. You have the right to do whatever you want with your own blog and you do not need to justify that to the world. You own it, you do the work on it, you pay the bills. It is your’s to do with what you want.
2. Always strive to place more value into the lives of your readers than you extract. Help them solve real-world problems and help deliver the the transformation in their lives that you are in the business of delivering.
3. If you work very hard to provide a lot of value, you should be rewarded for it. The world is based on exchange and, when that is violated, negativity and complaints will result. With this in mind, you are usually doing yourself AND THEM a favor to charge a suitable price for something of real value.
4. Never promote a product as an affiliate that you don’t fully believe in. Never promote just for the money.
5. If you question the value of something, or some money-maker is giving you an uneasy feeling, don’t promote it.
6. Never disparage or minimize yourself and your value. Not. Ever.
7. Do not require that everybody like you. Realize that a small, but dependable percentage of people are routinely negative and will complain no matter what you do. You are better off to get them out of your space than to attend to their complaints. On the flip side, don’t be dismissive of all complaints! Some are valid, but you need to learn to tell the difference between a legit issue and a person just taking out their own unhappiness on you.
8. If you would personally be annoyed by the number of ads on your blog, don’t run so many ads. Also, realize that you probably need a better business model.
9. Respect your reader’s attention and their time. Not necessarily by keeping it short, but by making their time with you well spent.
10. Always be helpful.
11. Acknowledge your reader communications. This is a two-way street and nothing says “I don’t care” than not treating your reader with the respect of acknowledgment. If they take the time to email you, you should take the time to read and respond.
12. Always be honest and authentic. That doesn’t mean you tell them every little thing about you, but it does mean that what you do say is not a lie.
13. Look out for your readers and help keep them out of trouble. That means helping them avoid pitfalls, even if them avoiding that pitfall might cost you a sale or commission.
14. Create products and services aimed to serve your readers well, and choose to promote products you are comfortable staking your reputation behind.
15. Ensure that everything you sell to your readers is so good that you feel it would be a disservice NOT to sell it to them.
16. Never use false deadline, manipulative marketing, false claims, false testimonials. When you have something truly awesome for them to buy, sell hard but honestly.

So, there you have it.

Do you agree with this code of monetization? Do you think it is something bloggers and online marketers should follow?

Awesome Motive Plugins Sharing Your Data?

So, there’s been an item of discussion I thought I would talk about with regard to Awesome Motive plugins. Specifically the ones that take payments.

Are they taking your customer’s order data and… collecting it? From plugins like Easy Digital Downloads?

I’ve heard this before. I even had a discussion once with somebody after Awesome Motive acquired AffiliateWP. They were speculating that AM would now have access to the sales stats of everybody using AffiliateWP, thereby giving them behind-the-scenes stats on a number of competitors.

And frankly, I don’t know.

Easy Digital Downloads does indeed have a checkbox to share analytics data. It was rephrased to “Join the EDD Community”, which frankly is a little misleading. But, what it means is “Help us provide a better experience and faster fixes by sharing some anonymous data about how you use Easy Digital Downloads.”.

Check out this article where they discuss the data being shared: What Does Usage Tracking in Easy Digital Downloads Really Mean?

So, while they SAY nothing is personally identifiable, they are indeed seeing revenue data. They’re collecting a lot of data from your site.

Could the same be true if you’re using AffiliateWP? Quite possibly.

One issue, too, is Stripe Connect. Stripe Connect is the system where you can connect your plugin to Stripe by just logging into Stripe and authorizing it. Technically, any plugin that allows you to connect to Stripe using Stripe Connect has some ability to see your sales data. See this for more info: Stripe Connect, and what it means for you!.

Some of that article is nerdy, but the bullet point is… any plugin author that uses Stripe Connect for you to connect up your Stripe payments… can technically see your sales data.

Many plugins use Stripe Connect. It makes it far easier to connect up to Stripe. It is more user-friendly, which is why plugins use it. But, yes, it opens up a privacy problem. It is always more secure to connect directly to your Stripe account using your unique keys.

So, it comes down to this…

It is good to be aware of the possibility that plugins you use to collect orders from your customers may also expose your sales data to third-parties.

If you’re using a plugin which uses Stripe Connect, that’s a potential data leak. It doesn’t mean anybody is looking at the data, but… they could. The preferred solution is to connect directly using your own keys and not use Stripe Connect.

And as for Awesome Motive… I doubt they are any particular risk. Are they collecting data from the sites using their plugins? I’m quite sure they are. They’re probably not the only ones. But, I would make sure to opt out of any options to share data for any purpose. There’s no need for that.

Oh, and maybe just stay away from Awesome Motive plugins anyway. You know, for all the other reasons.

WordPress Quick Bits…

Fluent Booking gets updated. Version 1.2.6 was released with some interface improvements, improvements to the scheduling process, ability to filter by meeting type in the backend, and several other changes that just improve the polish of the plugin. Learn more about the update here. I’ve been so busy that I hadn’t fully converted my own site to FluentBooking and was still using Calendly. But, I’ve now completed the transition and am now fully using FluentBooking in my business.

FluentCRM gets updated. Yup, they’ve been busy. FluentCRM was updated to 2.8.44. This one supports campaign sharing, multi-threaded email sending, new WP user merge codes, and several other things. What’s this mean? Well, if you have a powerful enough server, the multi-threaded sending will enable much faster email sends to large lists. And the new merge codes will be useful for membership sites. For instance, now it is MUCH cleaner to be able to include user info into an email. Even a password reset link, so you no longer have to use the separate default WordPress email. Learn more about this update here.

Kadence gets updated, too. Yup, there’s been updates to some of my favorite tools this last week. 😇 Kadence Blocks has some improvements to table of contents, and the PRO version has form analytics as well as conditional selection for form builds. Personally, I don’t use the Kadence form builder. Looks cool, but I prefer Fluent Forms myself. But, you can learn more about the Kadence updates here.

InstaWP Live Launches. InstaWP is a tool I’ve used on many occasions that allows you to quickly spin up WordPress sites. I’ve used them mainly for test purposes. Now, they’ve expanded into actual web hosting with InstaWP Live. The combination of functions they offer is pretty interesting, but probably only of interest to people in the business of WordPress. For normal people… not so much. 😇

Rocket.net Launches “Lock My Site”. Rocket (the hosting I use) has launched a “lock my site” feature which is suitable for static WordPress sites. It basically puts the site into “read only mode”…. which is powerful for security purposes. But, definitely not something you could use for a membership or store where things need to be written to the database. Interesting, though.