Best Business Model?

Super busy week last week. Mostly on client projects in Concierge.

I’m not complaining, but it has been… interesting. I mean, I have so much Concierge action going on right now that I haven’t even had much of a chance to write any new blog posts or record any new Youtube videos.

But, it is a nice problem to have. Hoping to hire somebody this week to help speed up the line. And then just reorganize a little to make it all go right.

So, let’s pop into this week’s issue of the newsletter!

Below…

• Blogs don’t make money anymore? And, of course, the best business model (in my opinion) at the moment.
• A look at what’s going on with Concierge
• Ways to speed up the WordPress admin panel

So, let’s dive in…

The Best Business Model?

Last week, somebody booked a strategy call with me and he wanted to talk strategy. Looks like he’s heading into affiliate marketing. But, he made an interesting comment in his writeup for the call. He said:

“All the blogging experts seem to have side hustles – like concierge services, or training programs. This suggests blogging alone did not provide enough income. So, I want to discuss setting reasonable expectations.”

While I expect to talk about broader strategy with him, I can set proper expectations really fast. That is…. blogging doesn’t make money. I’ve been saying that for a long, long time.

You’ve got to SELL something. If he wants to do affiliate marketing, then you’re still selling those products. You’re just selling somebody else’s product, but it is still selling.

He also mentions training programs. Lots of people sell training. In fact, frankly, too many people. It is different for different markets, of course, but online courses don’t have the shine they used to. For most, an online course means “more work”. And people want less work, not more.

Then he mentions Concierge services. No doubt, he called it that because of my own website…. as that is what I call my current core offer.

And yes, this kind of service works well. Many call it a “productized service“. It is a service offering that you sell as a product.

Offering a productized service is often a much faster way to scale up a business. Especially if you can lean in on a recurring subscription model with your offering, you can build up a reliable income stream very quickly. And the retention rate is usually much better than a typical training-focused membership site. That’s because you’re actually DOING something for them which is tangible…. whereas most people don’t actually use the online courses they buy access to.

To help you get the juices flowing, here’s a few different potential business models for productized services:

#1 – Packaged Service

This is where you can take a “done for you” service, package it up as a service with an upfront price and preset deliverables… and sell it as a one-time thing. But, the idea here is to systematize it and make it so that you can sell and repeat this service over and over again.

This can be easier to sell in some cases. It also comes with the downside that you always have to keep selling otherwise your revenue dries up.

#2 – Recurring Services

Find an ongoing need of your market and provide that service to them on an ongoing basis using a recurring billing plan.

This is what I do with Concierge. From a business perspective, it provides a lot of reliability in the income. While there will be some churn, recurring revenue is a much more predictable, sustainable income.

Keep in mind, you can mix and match pricing models. For example, sell a packaged service with a recurring on the backend for ongoing support.

#3 – “Unlimited” Services

Another approach is to basically sell a recurring retainer and in exchange for that offer an unlimited amount of a very specific service.

As an example, you’re seeing some graphics design services offer this. A monthly retainer in exchange for unlimited graphics design requests. I’ve even seen law firms who sell pre-paid legal on a recurring basis, but they have access to a lawyer when needed.

In reality, there does indeed need to be limits. Of course. You come up with how you want to structure that. But, it is another potential pathway to recurring revenue for the right kind of offer.

#4 – Recurring Coaching or “Done With You”

One of the biggest mistakes I see coaches make is to sell their time on an hourly basis. Selling hourly sessions is just plan stupid, guys. The way to sell coaching is to turn it into a productized service.

It can be sold as an outcome and offered a one-time purchase for that particular outcome…. or offered on a recurring basis.

#5 – Software Service

There are two ways to go with this one. First, you can build your own software and charge for it. Obviously. But, the other one I’ve seen many times now is the idea of selling a service WITH an external service.

For instance, it could be consulting service for some popular piece of software that users need to use, but they find it complicated. In the online marketing arena, you see consulting companies that specialize in things like HubSpot, Keap, or SalesForce.

It could also be a support offer to help clients of some software application, but you actually provide real personal support. Whereas the company itself might be hard as hell to deal with. You can be “Concierge” for that outside software application and your target market is anybody using that software.

This model can work nicely because you’re piggy-backing on the popularity of that software. The downside is that changes to that software can affect your business.

…

So, to the original statement of that person who booked a call with me….

Blogging doesn’t make money. Never did. It offers nothing but words. If you want to be a paid blogger for somebody else, then have it.

So, you need to sell something. Info products and online courses have been all the rage, but in my opinion, productized services are one of the best paths forward right now.

Every market is different. But, don’t ever dismiss the idea of offering a service. In all that time you could spend trying to build some dream online course, you could have been making money the entire time by offering a service.

This Week In Concierge

Last week was a busy week in Concierge. Moving several client projects forward… plus making forward movement on hiring a new team member to help get to projects faster. Time to take Concierge to the next level.

Some of what we’ve been working on last week is:

• Helping a client get her membership launch ready by fine-tuning the “plumbing” behind the scenes and getting the automations working properly. And she already made her first sale on the site! Well done!
• Re-built a client’s site on Kadence theme, cleaning up a ton of theme issues she was having previously in the process. Looks a lot better!
• Handling another client’s email routing as well as getting her site set up to take payments with Stripe
• Importing a client’s email list from Klaviyo into BeeHiiv and getting set up for the newsletter via BeeHiiv. Yup, WordPress isn’t my only skillset. 😜
• Did another live re-build of a client’s site from Elementor over to Kadence, and we did it in real-time over a Zoom session.
• Went live with a new Kadence-powered version of a client’s membership site, removing BuddyBoss in the process. Performance increase!
• Set up FluentBoards for several Concierge clients upon request.

I know it seems as if all I ever do is use Kadence. But, truth is, it is my “go to” these days. Thing is, we use Elementor and even Thrive Themes on other client sites. But, we pretty much always see major performance increases on client sites when we can transition to Kadence and away from these bulky page builders.

While we made a lot of movement last week across clients, my goal is to move even fast

WordPress Quick Bits

WordPress 6.6 and Synced Patterns Override. In WP 6.3, we got what was called “reusable blocks”. It is now called Synced Patterns. Basically, you can save page components and then re-use them all across your site. And if you save a chance to that template, it changes everywhere. Well, with the upcoming WP 6.6, we’re getting what they’re calling “overrides”. Basically, retain all the formatting of your pattern but with different content. If you want to learn a bit more about it, click here.

SureForms. The “Sure” family of products has gotten a new baby…. called SureForms. As you might guess, it is a forms plugin. To be honest, my response it…. “another one”? It is super early, so we’ll see what this plugin turns into. But, I can’t say I see a compelling reason to use it unless you’re really just in love with the “Sure” suite. We shall see over time.

New Search & Replace. The WPCode team (which means, Awesome Motive) has released a new “Search & Replace Everything” plugin. And, of course, they also have a “Pro” version. As you already know, I recommend not using Awesome Motive plugins. When I need to use a search/replace plugin, I usually go for Better Search Replace.

Kadence Gets Updated. Kadence Blocks (and the Pro version) gets updated pretty often, actually. This last week, Blocks got a few enhancements including tooltips on buttons, and Pro gets an author filter on the post grid. Read the full changelog here.

Speeding Up The WordPress Admin Dashboard

It is a pretty common thing to have the admin panel of WordPress feel kind of slow. When you click on things and try to work, you end up waiting for screen refreshes.

In many instances, the public part of the site can still work fine while the admin area is still slow. This is because the frontend can be optimized using caching and other means, but the admin panel is pretty “raw”.

So, here are some things you can do to speed up the admin panel. I’m not going to get into a ton of detail on this. It’d take up too much room and it can get rather geeky. 😇 But, you can either Google it for more info… or just sign up for WP Speed Fix and we’ll handle it for you. Let’s go…

• Update your PHP version. If you’re still on an older PHP version, you can get more performance by using the latest version.
• Removing the Admin Toolbar. That tooolbar at the top is convenient, but you can disable it in the admin panel and speed things up.
• Disable dashboard widgets. You can either go to “Screen Options” and turn off the ones you don’t need… or better yet you can outright disable them so they’re not even there. A cluttery dashboard harms performance in addition to being nasty to look at.
• Remove Slow Plugins. Some plugins are more effecient than others. I often use tools like Query Monitor and Code Profiler to find plugins which are slowing things down too much.
• Use Heartbeat Control. The heartbeat is how WordPress “pings” itself routinely to do things like auto-saves. You can slow down the heartbeat to reduce load.
• Increase server memory. This can help alot. If you can ensure each PHP process is allowed more breathing room in the server’s memory, it helps speed up the site. Don’t forget, too, just having more memory to begin with.
• Upgrade your Hosting. Yes, of course. Crappy hosting doesn’t give your site much to work with. Better hosting can work wonders for your site performance.
• Remove inactive plugins. Yes, while plugins that are not active don’t technically hurt too much, the admin panel is still checking for updates on those plugins. And those update checks slow things down. So, ideally, you would delete inactive plugins.
• Database Cleanout. In general, removing old trash from the database can speed up the admin panel. Especially when you can remove autoloaded WP options.
• Run efficient, well-coded plugins.