I've really been getting into building a business and personal finance. One of the many books I read this year was Rich Dad Poor Dad. The author, Robert Kiyosaki, talks a lot about investing, real estate, and understanding the difference between an asset and a liability. There are so many good points in the book but perhaps one of the most important is mind your own business.
2014 Business Review
One of the most important things you can do is to look back from time to time and review where you are. Where did you start this year? Where did you end? Are you on the right path?
I did this last year after just getting into doing commercial plugin development and a lot has changed and my end of the year numbers (below) are very different.
Tell Users What You’re Doing
Imagine coming home from a long day of work. You open the front door, set down your keys, take off your shoes, and then see a present on the kitchen table. If you have a partner living with you it's probably a nice gesture of some sort. But what if you're the only person with keys to your home? Then it gets creepy right?
That's what I experienced today. Not with my home but with my site.
Improve Your Writing with the Hemingway Editor
Today I'm doing something a bit different. I'm writing this post in actual WordPress editor. Why is that different? Because earlier this month I switched to the Hemingway editor to help me improve my writing. I write in Hemingway, Hemingway lists suggestions, I make a few changes and then copy it into WordPress. It's an extra step but the suggestions are so useful and I've already learned how I tend to write and the types of things I have to watch out for.
Enable Free Shipping on a Per Product Basis
Just over a year ago I wrote a post which shows how to disable free shipping on a per product basis. That's really useful for stores that like offering free shipping on just about everything everything and want to disable it one or two items. But what about people in the opposite situation? You might have one or two really tiny items like bookmarks don't want to charge people $5 for flat rate shipping.
I figured it was time to revisit this and write a snippet that helps these people out. We can use the shipping classes built into WooCommerce combined with just a couple lines of code to make it really easy to mark any number of products eligible for free shipping.
Wishlists Done Right
Earlier this summer I was planning my 16 hour drive to Colorado and knew that podcasts wouldn't be enough. I needed some longer stories to keep me engaged for hours at a time. I heard about Audible many times over the last couple years but it took me until this summer to finally signup.
One of the things that's surprised me is how effective their marketing is. They maximize every piece of data they have. I've been especially impressed with their wishlists. I started adding books to my wishlist so that when I finished a book I could reference my list to buy the next book. What I didn't realize was that they would use that data to get me to buy the book today.
Podcast Compensation
Yesterday I talked about creating a happiness podcast and it's a really exciting idea. But before I get going I really want to investigate how podcasts make money – if they can even realistically do that. I want to know before I get started whether it's worth my while monetizing the podcast or keeping it as a pure hobby and not worrying about the money at all.
A Happiness Podcast?
Earlier this month I spent a lot of time thinking about why I like to write. I really like sharing information. I have a lot of technical knowledge about WooCommerce so if I can explain how to do something complex in a step by step process I like doing that. I like knowing that people use the information I have to make their business better.
Making Email from Your Website More Reliable with Email Delivery Tools
Today's post was brought to you by an email I received about making their website's email more reliable:
I am in the process now of launching a new event. I just did a test purchase, and unlike the previous events I did not receive an email alerting me that a new order had been placed. Do you know why this might be the case? I have not changed my settings in WooCommerce, and I just checked Settings>Emails>New Order, and it indicates email to be sent on New Order.
So it looks like they have all of the same settings, it sounds like it's going to the same email address, and this is happening on an otherwise working website. Sound work right? Unfortunately without using some really technical tools (which you might not have access to) to see exactly what your server is doing you don't really know what happened. Did something in WooCommerce break? Did the email get marked as spam before getting to your inbox? Or is the your web server limited in how much email it can send? All of those things could happen. Luckily there are some tools you can use to diagnose the problem and make your email a lot more reliable in the process.
Content Marketing Works – Even with Furnace Filters
A few months ago I wrote about the importance of blogging and content marketing for e-commerce stores of all sizes. Good quality content can bring in thousands of visitors to your site which can turn into tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. To me it's a no brainer to make sure your e-commerce platform can create good quality of content. And that's where one of the joys of blogging comes in.
A thoughtful fellow left a comment about the ineffectiveness of content marketing in some industries and I was so impressed that I didn't want to leave just another comment in response. I wanted to continue this discussion and create a brand new post.