If you’re not building an e-mail list for your online venture, crawl out from under that rock!

Using a free e-mail service like MailChimp is standard operating procedure for many of the marketing professionals and clients that I work with. You can send up to 12,000 e-mails to 2,000 contacts, every month, for free. The interface is intuitive, and clean, for the amount of options that it has to offer. Notice I didn’t say it was “easy.”

Like any large software product, MailChimp does come with it’s challenges, one of them being the part where it’s “easily hooks up to your WordPress website.” Luckily, folks like Tracy Levesque produce awesome plugins like Easy Forms for MailChimp.

Episode 20: Easy Forms For MailChimp

* Get the plugin

* Get the addons

Listen to the audio

Subscribe to the PluginTut channel!

Why use this plugin over another pop-up plugin?

The e-mail capture market is huge.

There’s some great services like OptinMonster, which create pop-ups with a degree of control that you’d expect from the likes of high-priced enterprise solutions. You can watch my tutorial videos by following this link.

That being said, OM is more of a jack-of-all-trades, versus a well-integrated solution strictly for MailChimp.

Easy Forms for MailChimp, on the other hand, really shines with the vast amount of MailChimp features, especially for those organizations that depend on using MC as a standalone customer database. Tracy’s team, which pulls from their experience as a services based business, have found themselves really capitalizing on this segment of the market.

Not everyone wants marketing automation and fancy pop-up animations.

Sometimes deep support for MC and managing subscribers outshines all the fancy conversion bells-and-whistles. Furthermore, Easy Forms is a WordPress-first plugin, and is more than just pop-up creator. In fact, the pop-up add-on comes at an additional cost, while giving you the ability to embed forms in pages, posts, and widgets with it’s free offering.

Is it right for you?

I think Tracy hits on all the right points during our PluggedIn Radio episode, so I invite you to spend the time to watch the show if you’re interested in seeing her demonstrate the software. If you need deep MailChimp integration, look no further than this plugin for your next project.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

One of the hottest segments in the WordPress space right would be the creation of membership websites.

We’re getting more and more plugins around the membership space (like my sponsor Restrict Content Pro) launching into the market, both free and paid. WordPress website owners are increasingly getting sold on new streams of revenue through selling online courses, e-books, and mentorships. In this video, I’ll show you how to setup a membership site using RCP.

LifterLMS demonstration

In today’s episode of PluggedIn Radio, we talk to Chris Badgett of LifterLMS to uncover the differences between a membership plugin versus a learning management system. We’ll also dive into a first-hand demonstration of LifterLMS on Chris’ demo server, looking at:

* Increasing course engagement

* Quizzes

* Course setup

* Tracks

* and more

In a future post, I’ll dive into a true PluginTut tutorial covering LifterLMS, but today’s video should give you a strong understanding of how to use LifterLMS for your needs.

Questions about the plugin? Post them below

Get LifterLMS learning management for WordPress

Listen to the audio

Nathan Weller, Marketing Manager at Elegant Themes, joins the show today to talk about content marketing, ghost writing, and Divi 3.

This is a small departure from our normal show, where we discuss WordPress headlines and demonstrate plugins from the authors themselves. Instead, I’m taking a page out of my own Matt Report WordPress business podcast book, and diving into the business of content creation. Nathan and I discuss the intricacies of deploying a content marketing strategy, the management of a team and the tools he uses to measure the success of such an endeavor.

Interview with Nathan B Weller of Elegant Themes

Subscribe to us on YouTube

The audio

Content marketing, blogging, and becoming an expert

Starting a blog as a soloprenuer comes with it’s own set of particular challenges: how do you carve out the time to create content, how do you go about promoting each piece, and how do you prioritize it over the rest of the work you do?

Lots to think about and execute on, but if you’re managing a team of writers, all of these challenges become amplified even more. The biggest lesson I learned chatting with Nathan is the importance of setting expectations with your team and managing the expectations of both the staff and the content being produced.

* Are they hitting the marks of the article?

* Is the audience learning something?

* Are we seeing a return of investment?

I look at content marketing (and podcasting) as an art form.

There’s no easy way to become “great” at it, in my eyes. Writing is like exercising — sometimes you feel it, most times you don’t. When it’s cold and rainy outside, you probably don’t feel motivated to pound out a few miles. When you’re tired and hungry, you probably don’t feel like sitting down and banging out 1,000 words — but you do.

If you’re into reading a book or two, Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, is published on the premise that an expert is born through 10,000-hours of practice. Debatable, sure, but think of the habits that are formed by showing up everyday. That’s nearly half the battle when it comes to becoming disciplined to write, and publish when you’re feeling wet and soggy.

Beyond Divi 3

We’ll dive into the release of Divi 3 and the future of the product, and which product refreshes Elegant Themes has on the horizon. It was a wonderful conversation, and I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

The links

* Nathan Weller on Twitter

* Get Divi 3

* Watch my Divi tutorials

* Subscribe to this show

If you’re looking to improve your search visibility, specifically in local search results, the Business Profile plugin might be just the ticket.

Nate Wright, owner of Theme of the Crop, joins today’s podcast episode to chat about the genesis of his plugin, the benefits of local SEO, and how it all comes together using his products. In this 40 minute demonstration, we’ll show you how to configure the options of the Business Profile plugin, and display our business locations on top Nate’s theme.

Business Profile Plugin and it’s local SEO advantage

Listen to the audio

Building a WordPress website for restaurant owners is a tricky business.

On the Matt Report, a place where I talk about serving businesses with WordPress, we often talk about the $500 website client. Someone who has very little money, but wants all the bells and whistles. Often, busy chefs and restaurant owners fall under that category — and it makes sense. It’s a very competitive business, it’s very seasonal, and there’s a lot of turnover.

But, here’s the thing, WordPress themes, plugins, and tools are getting much better and their affordable. You could take that $500 budget and put the right themes and plugins together to make huge wins for a small business owner.

Winning with local SEO

As Nate points out, the Business Profile plugin — or local SEO in general — isn’t about beating out your local competition, but serving the right business information to Google.

If you notice in the screenshot above, you’ll see the hours of operation, phone numbers, and other contact info associated with a business. Nate’s recent update to the plugin also supports multiple locations too, a huge boon, to larger businesses. Sure, Google does a decent job of identifying this information without you using the proper Schema data, but when you’re using a plugin like this, you can control it.

There’s nothing worse than a potential customer showing up to your location, and your closed.

What do you use for local SEO and do you have any tips for us? Drop them in the comments below.

Download the theme and plugins shown in the video!

The online learning market is huge. If you’re a traditional business owner or a new-age entrepreneur, one of the most effective ways to create new revenue is to launch an online course. You’re taking the knowledge and experiences you’ve painstakingly curated over the years, bottling it up, and selling member-only access to it. A pay-wall, as it’s known in the more traditional publishing space.

What an age we live in. Modern web technology empowers us to spread our knowledge and earn a living doing so.

On your WordPress website, member-only content or courses, are nothing more than protected pages/posts that you grant access to. Because WordPress powers a huge chunk of the modern web, membership plugins have become increasingly popular. I’d venture to say it’s just as competitive as the contact form or photo gallery plugin space.  Lots of choices, features, and decisions need to be made in order to choose such a pivotal plugin for your business.

In today’s show, Pippin Williamson of Restrict Content Pro, joins us to demonstrate the use case for his refreshed membership plugin for WordPress.

Restrict Content Pro plugin by Pippin’s Plugins

Editor’s note: Restrict Content Pro is this month’s sponsor. The episode was recorded before any dealings or negotiations were made to sponsor our content. Their sponsorship did not alter the questions or presentation of this episode. We thank Restrict Content Pro for making our efforts possible. Happy learning!

Lock away your exclusive content. Give access to valued members.

Internet marketing gurus have been preaching online membership courses for a solid 2 years — it’s presented as the easiest way to start earning money online.

And while that’s true, not all membership plugins are the same. In fact, most people starting a membership website, are first-time WordPress users. WordPress isn’t easy, and throwing in the overhead of managing a membership plugin, only makes it that much more complicated. Lucky for us, Pippin and his team have set out to streamline the WordPress membership process.

Restrict Content Pro isn’t new, but they have spent some time breathing new life into the product. With it’s own dedicated marketing and sales page, the team is poised to really put a dent in the membership plugin space.

I’d say this, even if Restrict Content Pro wasn’t sponsoring: I’m excited to see their team re-invest in the membership plugin space.  

When you’re choosing the right WordPress plugin for your website or next project, it’s important to look at the author’s ecosystem.

* Do they have complimentary plugins that aid in a more complete solution for your website or business?

* Can I get total support across the board?

With Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP, not only can you bet on having a robust solution, but the same team to support you across many key areas of your online business.

The video

The audio

The links

* Pippin on Twitter

* Restrict Content Pro

* AffiliateWP

* Easy Digital Downloads

* Restrict Content Pro Video series on YouTube

The opening season of PluggedIn Radio has been showered with lightweight plugins that serve very specific functions within WordPress.

Tom McFarlin’s Easier Excerpts makes excerpts, well, easier. John James Jacoby demonstrated a plugin that cleans up the user profile page and one that makes drop-downs look better. They are small, quick to develop, and make a large impact on our day-to-day WordPress usage.

Today, we look at a new plugin by Scott Bolinger of AppPresser that aims to be just as lightweight as the rest, but hopes to make a dramatic impact on your WooCommerce store sales.

WooCommerce Smart Checkout by AppPresser

It’s 2016; Mobile is on the rise, wether you want to admit it or not.

We’re increasingly consuming more content on mobile, and buying products is on the rise as well. Paper towels, soap, and I’ve even bought car tires through my Amazon app. WooCommerce usage, the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, is also on the rise. Recently acquired by Automattic, there’s a new driving force behind wider adoption and making the platform more ubiquitous for users wanting to launch an e-commerce store.

But mobile is still hard.

There’s a plethora of devices coming in all shapes and sizes. Themes are responsive,  yes, but that’s not all you need. If you’re really trying to push the needle of your business, you need to improve conversions — at any cost.

We infer that while the mobile conversion rate is depressingly low, a mobile user is still somebody with purchase intent who is likely to convert later on another device.

The quote above references this Moz article covering the industry average conversion rate. If you haven’t had breakfast yet, don’t click the link. 1.4% sale conversion is an unsettling number, but depending on your industry, that might be the average. So what can we do to help that number, especially on small screens?

In today’s episode of PluggedIn Radio, Scott Bolinger shows us how to increase our conversion rate on mobile with the WooCommerce Smart checkout plugin. This plugin streamlines your WooCommerce checkout process by making it mobile-friendly and more intuitive.

The video

The audio

The links

* Scott Bolinger on Twitter

* AppPresser

* WooCommerce Smart Checkout

* Subscribe to PluginTut on YouTube!

On any given day, at any given WordCamp, if you asked someone to name WordPress plugin developers, John James Jacoby would show up on 9 out of 10 lists.

He’s breathing new life into his WordPress plugins, starting with WP Event Calendar, the best way to mange events in WordPress. Sure, event calendars are as ubiquitous as contact form plugins at this point, but JJJ and his team aim to achieve something slightly different with their take on it.

WP Event Calendar plugin by John James Jacoby

This calendar does not output a shiny AJAX-y calendar display like most do.

Instead, this plugin is a lightweight and functional approach for developers, a calendar framework of sorts. Instead of your typical event calendar plugin that you might install on a client’s website, WP Event Calendar plugin is meant for viewing the calendar *logged into* WordPress in the native dashboard.

Imagine if you had a staff of writers and marketing people that all logged into WordPress for content creation purposes. You could leverage WP Event Calendar as a content calendar, or even schedule meetings for the team using it’s Event custom post types. That’s not to say you couldn’t output the calendar to the front-end of the website, you’ll just need to get your hands dirty.

That’s not all JJJ is up to as we chat about the following plugins too:

* WP Chosen – a neat “micro” plugin that improves the look & feel of WordPress dropdown lists.

* WP User Profiles – an improved UI of the user profile pages within WordPress

Plugins Loaded

Plugins Loaded is a full-service WordPress plugin publishing company, inclusive of author, deployment, development, design, distribution, documentation, project management, general publishing, research, sales, support, and more.

I have this concept about selecting the right WordPress plugin:

FUSE: Fit, Usability, Support, Environment

JJJ realizes that picking a plugin isn’t easy and having a curated list of plugins at pluginsloaded.com is how he’s attempting to solve this pain point. This new venture aims to take well-coded, well-supported WordPress plugins to the next level. Still in it’s infancy, but yet another labor of love from John.

The video

The audio

The links

* John James Jacoby on Twitter

* Plugins Loaded

* WP Event Calendar

* WP Chosen

* WP User Profiles

Have you ever wanted to setup search filtering on your WordPress e-commerce store that looked like you were browsing Amazon products?

You know, the little checkboxes on the left-hand side of the screen that, when clicked, filter down the amount of products shown on the screen. That’s what FacetedWP plugin does for your WordPress website and it does it really well. It’s also created by someone that I respect in our development community, and he’s on a mission to provide a great product.

FacetWP Filtering Plugin

Advanced Filtering for WordPress. Faceted search for eCommerce, resource libraries, search pages and more.

If you’re someone that finds herself developing more intricate WordPress websites, like e-commerce or content-driven directories, chances are you need a smart solution for filtering all of this data.

But before we get into the demonstration, fair warning, this plugin should be used by someone that fancies themselves at the intermediate level. Depending on your theme, environment, and “other” variables, you ,ay find yourself diving into editing a few lines of code.

All of that said, FacetWP does provide some great docs and in today’s episode of PluggedIn Radio, you’ll get an overview of what it’s like to install and use the plugin.

The video

The audio

The links

* FacetWP

* Matt Gibbs on Twitter

* Watch all the PluginTut videos & episodes on YouTube

Welcome to the first episode of PluggedIn Radio!

This podcast serves as a bridge between the creators of WordPress products & services and our listeners. I feel it’s important that we understand who creates our software, before uploading to the websites that power our brands and organizations. The podcast also serves as a means to help listeners learn how to use the highlighted plugin, to gain better perspective.

How I hope this helps you:

* Fun & educational

* Learn how-to use a plugin or service

* Meet the people responsible for the software you love

Easier Excerpts by Pressware

In this kick-off episode, I sit down with Tom McFarlin to discuss how to use his new Easier Excerpts plugin. It’s an extremely lightweight plugin that allows a user to manipulate the excerpt field metabox in the WordPress editor.

In short: No more tiny text field for you to scrunch text into.

I’m really diggin’ these “micro” plugins that make WordPress work just a little bit better. Things that you wish WordPress included out of the box, can be handled with these thoughtful solutions. Have you tried Easier Excerpts yet? Post your feedback in the comments below and share your experience with the plugin.

The Video

The Audio

Important Links

* Tom McFarlin on Twitter

* Pressware

* Download Easier Excerpts

* Watch all the PluginTut videos & episodes on YouTube