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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now that I have a pretty solid archive of posts I get comments on my posts just about everyday. Many of these comments are really helpful. Sometimes they ask for more information to clarify a point I made, sometimes they add some extra resources that I didn't mention, and sometimes they thank me for sharing my opinion or a tutorial. I love those comments because they help everyone. What I don't love are the comments that don't add anything to the conversation. Too many of the comments that come through don't add information they just drop a link for their product.
I've debated on and off what to do about these types of comments. Do I delete them? Do I edit them to remove the link? Do I ban them? All of those seem pretty harsh and I've mostly resisted doing that up till now. A few days ago Chris Lema wrote a post about his policy when it comes to blog comments and that pushed me over the edge to share what I do with my comments.
Disclaimer: there are emotions in this post. Gasp!
I'm currently participating in a month long blogging challenge and to be honest it's a bit draining. I love challenges. They could be anything from running a marathon to writing a book but I have to feel like I'm growing or contributing to the world. I have written a few useful posts (1 & 2) that I've been meaning to write for a while but sometimes I feel like I'm posting just to post and that really bugs me.
If you've been in the WordPress space for a while it's pretty likely you've run into Contact Form 7 at some point. It's pretty much the go-to form for new users and honestly for what it does – it isn't bad. The UI isn't amazing but it's a good starting point and it's totally free. If you're like me and you want to keep your costs low and you're just getting into WordPress it definitely isn't a bad choice. But there are better alternatives out there and some of them are totally free. The one I'll be talking about today is Ninja Forms.