Using WordPress To Sell My RV?

Feels weird to say, but last week I sold my RV.

I know many of my long-time readers know my family has done a lot of RV travel over the years. And not to worry… I will be buying another one. 😎 But, have a few things to attend to first.

Interestingly, I built a landing page on WordPress for my RV. And even recorded a “sales video”. 🤪 And it sold in less than 24 hours. I’ll tell you about it below.

Also, a big bunch of drama spiked up last week with some price changes to the WP Rocket plugin. And it seemed to have a lot of people jumping ship to what they think might be greener pastures. We’ll talk about that, too.

So, ready to dive in? Ready to kick off your super-productive week with a dose of Dave and WordPress?

I know you are. 🤪 🤣

So, let’s do this…

WP Rocket, Price Increases, And Angry Customers

Well, it appears as if WP Rocket has sparked a firestorm and a mass exodus of long-time customers with a recent price increase.

WP Rocket is, of course, the popular WordPress performance plugin that combines numerous site performance enhancements in with a very effective caching system. The plugin works very well. One nice thing about it is how automated it is. For the most part, it is “plug and play”. Most of the settings are pre-done and, for the most part, it just works.

But, there are some big pricing changes – mainly affecting agencies that run a ton of different websites at once. The single-site plan remains unchanged. The Plus plan saw a minor increase and is now limited to 3 sites. But, the big one is… the old “Infinite” plan that allowed unlimited sites for $299/year is going buh bye. Instead, there will now be a “Multi” plan at different levels. It caps out at 500 sites…. which will run $599/year.

And boy oh boy!… are people pissed. 🤪 The WP Rocket group on Facebook is just full of people ripping on the company and leaving for other options.

In summary, it looks like the company might have sprung this change on people rather prematurely. Plus, it is a pretty substantial price increase. Many think they should have been grandfathered in.

In my personal view, I think the price changes are perfectly reasonable and actually rather overdue. $299 for unlimited sites is just way too low for such a plugin. Nice for people like me…. but tough on the business side of things.

Plus, the company is growing up. WP Media (the company behind WP Rocket) recently joined forces with group.one. Group.one is a fairly large European digital service conglomerate which owns several different hosting brands and also now the GTMetrix performance scoring tool.

So, while WP Rocket could have been more strategic about how they executed this price increase, I think the increase itself was coming and expected. And frankly, these guys all jumping ship and doing so publicly while acting like WP Rocket is such a horrible company are acting like childish drama queens. If your business is doing so poorly where taking on an extra couple hundred dollars for the year screws you up, then maybe you’re doing something wrong. But, maybe it’s just me. 🤷‍♂️

So, this has some looking for alternatives. And they’re definitely out there.

FlyingPress seems to be the most popular alternative. It actually looks like a great solution… and it does offer unlimited sites for just $249/year.

I like and use PerfMatters, but it doesn’t do caching. It does everything else, but not the caching.

If anything, the seemingly abrupt pricing increase has just shaken people awake and it has them looking around at alternatives. And they’re out there.

But, an “unlimited” license is something that isn’t always financially viable. FlyingPress might seem like a better deal… and it is for now. But, the company behind FlyingPress is also a small little outfit based in India. They’re a little lean startup…. compared up against WP Media (the company behind WP Rocket) which is much larger, offers others solutions (such as Imagify) and is now part of a much larger company. Small little teams can offer lower prices because they don’t have the overhead. But also…. sometimes small little teams don’t have the staying power. And if they DO grow, usually so do their costs. It is also worth noting that FlyingPress is based in India whereas WP Rocket is based in Europe. Obviously, the costs are different.

For now, FlyingPress looks great, though. It looks like the nimble little sports car compared to the more “plug-and-play”, user-friendly WP Rocket. WP Rocket is larger and more mature, but FlyingPress is more on the cutting edge. Small team executes faster sometimes. 😎

This Week In Concierge

Last week was all about creating smoother, more integrated systems for clients. That’s something I do quite a bit, of course. And all inside of WordPress.

One client brought me a Figma design for a landing page, and I turned it into a fully functional page using the Kadence Theme. The result looks pretty good. In this case, she had another consulting group create the landing page design. And I just implemented it into her site. Looks like I have a few edits to make for her today or tomorrow…. then she’s ready to launch. 🚀

Another client is finalizing her move away from ThriveCart and into WooCommerce. I’ve basically re-built all her funnels for her and set up all of the “plumbing”. This week, should be putting the finishing touches on all of that. It’s always satisfying to bring these elements in-house so they’re easier to control and fully brandable. Thrivecart has it’s strengths, but I fully remember the relief I felt when I moved my own sales into WooCommerce and all controlled “in-house”. Everything felt easier just having it all in one spot.

Also worth mentioning: I’ve noticed a few Concierge clients with email lists that could use a little spring cleaning. 😇 If it’s been a while since you ran a re-engagement campaign or pruned out cold subscribers, it might be time. Keeping your list warm (and responsive) is key—not just for deliverability, but for real performance. Don’t let zombie subscribers drag things down.

As always, if you need help setting up a re-engagement sequence, optimizing a page, or moving more of your funnel into your own WordPress setup… that’s what Concierge is here for.

WordPress Quick Bits

UpdraftPlus Brand Unification. UpdraftPlus, WP-Optimize and All-In-One Security have all been unified into one central brand called Team Updraft. The new site looks really nice. Frankly, the old Updraft site looks rather unprofessional, in my opinion. The new one is nice, though!

TutorLMS 3.4. TutorLMS 3.4 was released, enabling bulk enrollment in membership plans, login on the checkout form, etc. You know, I think there is room in the market for a new, streamlined LMS. Too many of these course plugins try to do everything. I don’t want an LMS trying to be my shopping cart… or my membership plugin. But, they continue to bloat these things up. Is it just me?

Elementor v4 going CSS-First. The next major release of Elementor (version 4) is still a work in progress, but this video talks about how they are leaning in on a CSS-first styling system. Actually, if they do this right, it could be a really big improvement in the consistency of Elementor sites. Putting it more in line with how Bricks works, in some ways.

Automattic Development Pause Is Temporary. Matt Mullenweg was recently interviewed by Christian Taylor (video on Youtube). He commented about Automattic’s pause on contributions to WordPress and said it was temporary. “I’d like to get back to it”. Basically, being sued by WP Engine has shifted their priorities and is costing them a lot of money, so they need to adapt to that.

Elementor Launches Ally – Accessibility Plugin. Elementor has launched a new, free plugin called Ally. The plugin is a tool to enhance website usability for people with disabilities. Looks to me like it helps you do an audit of your site and will guide you to the corrections to be made. Could be handy.

PerfMatters Updated. PerfMatters (one of my favorite performance tools) was updated to 2.4.1. The changelog for such plugins is always a deep dive into nerd world. 🤓 But, the simple version is that it is doing much more effecient delay inline javascript (about a 15% code reduction), and has more built-in delay exclusions for things like Cloudflare Turnstile, Fluent Forms and Kadence Blocks.

Curious About WordPress MultiSite? CrocoBlock published a nice primer on the pros and cons of WordPress Multisites. There are instances where using Multisite can make sense. In my experience, however, it usually doesn’t make sense for most people. In fact, it can bring on some complications down the road. But, I think this article does a good job of spelling things out.

I Used WordPress To Help Sell My RV

OK, so this one is a little different, but…

I sold my RV. I will be getting another one, but it was time to get something smaller.

Interesting, though, is that I managed to sell the thing in less than 24 hours. Frankly, I was shocked it went that fast. And I know full well that my price was NOT too low.

I used WordPress to help me sell it. 😎 By building a little landing page. And by presenting the RV exactly like how I would appreciate if I were buying an RV from a private party.

You can view the landing page here.

I put the landing page on my little hobby RV site – HappilyRV. It is all built with Kadence Blocks. And I simply disabled the site header and footer to turn it into a landing page.

I took the RV for a spin to run the systems and recorded some brief footage on my iPhone of the RV going down the road. Then, after washing it, I recorded a video walk-through of both the inside and the outside. Then, I compiled that into a video. I had myself a sales video. 🤪

And the buyer told me that the video was indeed the main thing that sold it for him.

But, I also snapped a bunch of photos and created a nice photo gallery. I wrote up some super simple copy for the landing page… spelling out the benefits of the offer. 😇 Not just your standard list of vehicle features, but some of why it matters.

I even posted a short FAQ. 😜

I then put an ad out on Facebook Marketplace and also RVTrader. RVTrader is a site specifically for buying and selling RVs, so it was the perfect target market. And that’s where the buyer found me.

Oh, and what are some of the chief doubts people would have when buying a vehicle from somebody they don’t know? They want to know if it was cared for. So, I kept maintenance logs the whole time I owned it and I printed it out to PDF and included that on my landing page.

When the buyer walked into the rig for the first time, he commented that he felt like he knew it already. He came fully prepared to buy it and it was basically sold before he even got here.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and say I’m God’s gift to vehicle marketing. 🤪 I’m not. But, I DID apply some of what I do for a living and my own experience with online marketing to the sale of my RV. Namely…

• I positioned the offer in such a way to answer all of their questions and instill trust.
• By recording a sales video and building a landing page like this, I already stood out in the market because literally nobody does that when selling a vehicle.
• Most people just boringly list out features when selling a vehicle, but why not talk about benefits? You’re making an OFFER! Treat it like one!
• Hell yeah I built the landing page on WordPress! 😎
• I advertised right in front of the perfect target audience. Yeah, it costs me a little bit of moolah to list on RVTrader. But, hey…. it is paid traffic. 😜

And funnily enough… by the time the buyer had contacted me, I had only 10 clicks on my listing. So, I guess I had a 10% conversion rate. 🤣

Anyway, I admit…. it was a little bittersweet to sell my RV. I really did like that thing. I put a lot of work (and money) into it in the 9 years I owned it. It was a great motorhome and my family had a lot of great memories with it. But, it is time to move on to something smaller. I will be buying another RV in the coming months.