Good morning and happy Monday! Ready to get movin’?

Couldn’t tell from lookin’ at me, but I’m about to get movin’ literally because…. I’m about to head to the gym. But first…

Got a packed issue for you this morning. Oh, and I’m working to ramp up my Youtube channel and am more regularly releasing new videos over there. Not all of them make it to the Academy blog, either. So… if you’re not subscribed on Youtube, click here to get subscribed. And, as the “cool kids” say… SMASH the like button. 😉 

Oh brother. 🤪

Alright, let’s go…

Coming up…

How to host your big files and videos (without using Amazon S3)

Giving Less And Making More Money

FluentBooking and FluentCRM Updates

Presto Player Playlists… and how they can improve

Featured This Week

Hosting Your Videos And Big Files Without Costing A Fortune

Hosting videos, large downloads and even large audio files on your own server is a bad idea. Even if your host gives you plenty of storage, it just isn’t the best idea.

The biggest reason for this is performance. See, your web server for your website is optimized for… web hosting. But, delivering a really big file across the internet takes up a lot of server resources. Your server has to sit there and deliver that one file for as long as it takes to get it to the end user. The end result is that those big files not only take up a lot of space, but slow the heck out of your website because your server is being asked to do something… big.

That was my non-nerdy explanation. 😉 

So, we want to offload those big files somewhere else.

Many people end up using Amazon S3. But, Amazon is just plain complicated. Unnecessarily so, if you ask me. They could make a nice modern UI and make the thing user-friendly, but they don’t. Something about those large corporations just makes them want to make things as user-unfriendly as possible. Google has done the same thing with their web services.

Check out Bunny.Net is you haven’t already.

Bunny.net is easy to use once you get the hang of it.

One of their services they call the “Storage Zone”. And basically you can upload and store all the big mega-files you want. It is like Amazon S3, except easy to use. Then, for any files you want to make web accessible, you set up what is called a “Pull Zone” and link it up to your storage zone.

So, have a bunch of big downloads you want to offer to your members? Then, drop them into a folder in your Bunny storage, set up a pull zone that links up to that folder, then you’ll have download links to all the big files in there. You can even set up permission controls on it so they can ONLY access to those files from your own domain. It’s handy.

And, need video hosting? Bunny.net does that very well, too. You can use the “Stream” section of your Bunny account. Upload your video file and it will automatically transcode it just like Youtube would so that it is optimized for various devices. Then, you can use the Bunny video player to embed the video anywhere you want on your site.

These are branded video players with permissions, customization options, statistics, etc. Basically, like using Vimeo Pro (which costs $240/year) without the cost.

Bunny is a useful tool to have in your arsenal. In short:

Use it to store and host large files while not being overly complex like Amazon S3.

Built in video hosting (with player), making it a great option for online courses and membership sites.

I no longer use Amazon S3 that much. I just don’t like it. Bunny is much easier to handle and I feel like they design for actual human beings.

Keep It Simple and Make More Moolah

Let’s ditch the techie stuff here and just talk business and content strategy here. And let’s keep it simple. In fact, that’s the idea.

See, I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years. And now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I see a lot of others have made that same mistake. And that mistake is…

Creating products that are just too damn big.

When I go back and look at a lot of the courses I’ve created over the years, I now think they’re too big. Too many videos. Too much talking.

People try to pack too much into their membership sites, too. They promise the world in an attempt to earn the sale. But, they end up trapping themselves into too many promises… or the people who join are too overwhelmed and engagement isn’t what you hoped.

You see it with ebooks, too. People make these lead magnets that are just way too big. Nobody will sit and read that thing!

We’re all busy. We’re all overwhelmed with content. We’ve all got a bunch of different streaming services on our TVs delivering anything we’re in the mood for. Youtube videos showing us almost anything we want for free. Social media distracting us. Commercials trying to sell things. Emails littering our inboxes trying to sell us stuff.

I’m tellin’ ya… I sat with my daughter the other evening and TRIED to watch some of the Youtube videos with her that she likes. And… I damn near got dizzy! The fast pace of scene changes, quick cuts and…. utter insanity! This is how their mind is going these days! It is unnatural, in my view.

But, to one degree or another, that’s just how a lot of people are these days.

But, in this sea of noise, how is your big honker course going to get the attention? Will anybody get results?

No. Because most of us don’t have the time nor patience to sit there and watch the damn video. It’s sad, but true.

People want LESS, not more.

So, give them LESS, not more.

But, make that “less” that you give them pack a punch. Focus on the outcome. Focus on the transformation you’re delivering to your customer. And remove ALL the fluff, all the complexity and give them the shortest POSSIBLE path to what they want.

Give them a win. And give it to them fast.

In fact, I’d impose a rule on yourself.

Creating an online course? Try to pack the entire thing into an hour of total content. Give yourself no more than a day to make it.

In fact, if you do this, you probably don’t even need a big online course plugin like LearnDash. Just a clean one-page course with a video at the top. Or a video playlist. Or one video broken into chapters they can click through. But, it is ONE page. Simple.

This is my path going forward.

You may want to consider it, too.

Frankly, it is easier in some ways. Less pressure. Why break our brains trying to create some huge mega-course when barely anybody is going to consume it anyway?

Just keep it simple. Simple, but targeted PRECISELY to what your readers and audience wants. Sell the solution… make more money.

WordPress Quick Bits…

FluentBooking has already come out with several updates since initial launch, only proving that their lifetime launch deal is going to prove to be well worth it. Version 1.06 shipped several needed features, including a buffer time between scheduled appointments. Check out the changelog here.

FluentCRM released 2.8.32 with some nice interface improvements. Also important if you’re using the new High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) for WooCommerce. This FluentCRM provides full compatibility with HPOS.

Mark from WPMayor made note on Twitter about how Monster Insights alters the plugin tab so that you basically see their own stuff first.

Install @monsterinsights pro and every “Add Plugins” tab (Featured, Popular, and Recommended) lists @AwesomeMotive products above the rest.

No ethical disclosure to users that these are purely the company’s recommendations, not WordPress’.

❌ Talk about dark patterns ❌

— Mark Zahra (@markzahra)
Oct 26, 2023

As you already know, I’m not a fan of how Awesome Motive does business. I avoid all of their plugins for this reason. They’re not poor quality, but their marketing tactics are sketchy.

Cloudways introduces internal security scanning to look for vulnerabilities, powered by Patchstack. It is a nice addition to their service, although I had it freak out many of my Concierge clients unnecessarily last week. 😉 Just keep in mind…. they’re scanning all your archived and staging sites, too. The ones you may not be maintaining. Might be worth deleting your old staging sites. Overall, kudos to Cloudways for introducing this.

The Feedzy plugin has introduced a new feature that uses AI to paraphrase or re-word content. Feedzy is the best plugin I’ve seen for auto-importing remote content via RSS into your WordPress site. Potentially quite useful for content curators. The new version of their PRO version now can re-word content on the way in. Interesting…. but… sketchy perhaps?

The Parent/Student Access For Learndash plugin has now gotten the official WP Fusion treatment. This plugin allows parents to have sub-accounts for their children and enroll them into courses in LearnDash. And now with this new integration, that info now goes into the CRM so the student record in the CRM will now be linked to the parent profile.

Here’s a nice video which quickly shows some of the upcoming changes to WordPress 6.4 (which is coming out next week).