Good morning! How was your weekend?

Here in the US, we had a longer 3-day weekend due to Labor Day. I have to say… I DID work yesterday, but not with my normal schedule. 😇 That’s why we’re sending out this week’s issue of The Morning WP one day late. But, here we are!

Quick question before we dive in. I’d really like your input. Just hit the reply button and send me your suggestion.

If you had one suggestion for a future article for this newsletter, what would it be?

Short and sweet. Hit the reply button and send it over. 🙏 I’m over here waiting for your feedback.

When you’re done, let’s get movin’…

Here’s what’s on the menu for this issue…

GROWTH STRATEGY: Paid traffic = fact of life?

SITE STRATEGY: Shared logins between your WordPress sites (sync user profiles)

TOOL OF THE WEEK: Targeted CTAs… all within WordPress

WP TECH BUZZ OF THE WEEK: Copy/paste CSS for the block editor

Featured This Week

Paid Acquisition Is Just A Fact Of Life

If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of noise out there.

Of course you’ve noticed! It’s in your face every day. Videos, emails, tweets, posts, blogs, podcasts… oh my! 🤪

A big part of this, too, is that there are so many businesses, people and creators all vying for the same attention. YOUR attention. And so the volume of content has shot up. The quality has gotten really good. And there’s so much over-supply that people are moving around the internet with their guards up.

So, there’s just certain facts that we have to live with as content creators and online business owners. Things like:

In order to get noticed these days, you have to be prolific. Which means… lots of volume, lots of quantity. Which is insanely time consuming.

You can share and “engage” all day on social media and it will still barely move the needle. Simply because you’re drowned out by the noise.

These days, growing your email list can feel like a lost cause because people will unsubscribe as fast as they subscribe. Every time you send out, you get a certain amount of unsubscribes (which is totally normal). But, if you’re not adding new subscribers as quickly, your list actually shrinks.

I won’t go on. But, these frustrations are normal. I feel them, too.

We’re at a point now where paid acquisition – running paid traffic – is just a fact of life. ESPECIALLY if you don’t have the time or inclination to be as prolific online as you would otherwise need to be.

So many product creators out there can’t make any sales unless they have a paid traffic funnel.

So many membership site owners can’t get any new members without running paid traffic.

It is hard to get anything noticed on social media without using paid ads to boost your stuff.

Email lists sit there in paralysis (or even shrink) unless you’re running paid traffic to grow your list. Even really big newsletters out there just stop growing the moment they turn off ads. Unsubscribe rates equalize out the subscription rates and the result is just no growth.

For many, the need to run paid ads seems… bad. Spending money seems like a tall order. So many try to do it all for free.

But, it is actually a good thing for those who are willing to do it.

Because it forces you to approach everything like a business. If you realize you’re going to need to pay for exposure, it forces you to get really dialed in on the things that convert.

Plus, ad spend shouldn’t be looked at simply as an expense. It’s fuel. And the whole idea is that you set things up so that you at least break even on that spending. If you can at least break even, then you can grow easily. Put it into the profit, and you just became a money printer.

This is how you grow your business.

In fact, it is paramount. I think even just running a blog these days… you need to have something going on that permits you to be able to run paid traffic to your blog posts.

The alternative, in my view, is that you’re going to be sitting at your desk 24/7 just pumping out content trying to build inertia. And, hey, it might work. But, personally, I’d rather spend a minority of my time creating content. I have other things to do. I’m sure you do, too.