I wanted to experiment with the plugin I wrote about in my last post and see if I could make something similar.

What did I build:

A subscription based service to send daily motivational or de-motivational text messages to the number of your choosing.

The steps below is a rough highlight of each piece needed to be done. I’ll assume you have a Stripe account or know how to setup one up and you own the Gravity Form developer license as it is needed for the add-ons. You will also need a paid Twilio account with an active phone number.

Setup Site

Setup a simple WordPress site. Install a theme, I used Altitude Pro from Genesis. Yes, I put it on WPEngine.

Setup Gravity Forms

Install Gravity Forms along with User Registration and Stripe Payments add-ons.

Create a form. I made a simple form that asks for the purchaser’s email address and then credit card info. The radio buttons decide use conditional logic to set the product price. After you click a plan then the price is shown and you can enter credit card payment details

Put form in widget area on home page.

Setup Texting Plugin

Install and configuration Joy of Text Pro plugin with Scheduling add-on. This step took an extended bit of time because I had to create 60 different text messages. 30 texts for 2 groups sent out daily. I’m not going to go through the detailed process I used to setup the plugin. But it was pretty basic and the instructions provided by the plugin author were enough to make it work.

Setup customization for Gravity Forms and Restricted Content

Keep the signup forms hidden from public for the Joy of Text plugin.

What I wanted to happen is when somebody submitted payment to send out the texts I needed them to go to a second form where they could enter the name and phone number. I didn’t want these pages to be public so I had to research some code to make gravity forms auto login a user upon payment of front page form.

-Process flow:
Customer fills in form on home page and submits payment then >
Gravity forms custom function automatically creates user and auto logs in user and then forwards to correct customer page depending on option chosen.

-What I needed for this:

Restrict Content (free) by Pippin Williamson and this bit of code added to functions.php

Step 5:

Test website with Stripe set to testing mode.

Step 6:

Turn it live and profit

Time involved:

2-4 hours of configuration of plugins/site/payments/etc

2-4 hours to find and craft each motivational message and set into the scheduler of the plugin.

Questions or Help?

Contact Me

Normally I would say “let’s find a Gravity Forms solution” and I went down that road. I found a couple posts by Chris Lema here and here. But I then I thought that Roy might not have Gravity Forms, or was looking for a free-ish solution, or wants something easy.

I spent a little more time on the Google and I found this plugin. Get Cloud SMS. They even have a lite version Joy of Text Lite. This plugin looks pretty slick. Yes, I only used the light version but the paid version is only $65 bucks for 1 site. They have other extensions for scheduling messages, comment notifications, WooCommerce extension, Member Mouse and Easy Digital Downloads. Oh and if you buy the paid version you will get Gravity Forms integration and so much more.

What I did:

Step 1:

Install the Joy of Text Lite version

Step 2:

Setup a Twilio account and get a number (local #’s are $1.00 a month and $2 for toll free). Also during the setup you need to turn on Programmable SMS and make sure URL shortening is turned on.

Step 3:

Get keys from Twilio and setup plugin

Step 4:

Setup form

Step 5:

Create page and insert form with shortcode provided on form setup.

See it in action here -> Get a Free Tip

Step 6:

Tell people about it, collect phone numbers and make millions.

Sending the Coupon:

To send a coupon you will upload a image to your media library, get the link (ex: https://needweb.help/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20-percent-off-sale.jpg), paste the link into your welcome message and then turn on

Thoughts:

After you have the numbers you can even send a message manually to everyone in your list. Great for sending out sale notifications. Just don’t abuse this and piss off your potential customers. The paid plugin has so many features. I’m going to have to buy a copy.

Total Cost:

1 hour of time while watching Shark Tank
1 plugin = free
$20 = fund Twilio

Do you know anyone who suffers from Mental Illness / Depression / Bipolar / or..

Check out this site by Ed Finkler -> Open Sourcing Mental Illness. Ed is giving talks to companies and conferences on the issue of Mental Health in the tech industry. He also is featured on this podcast at the Drad Cast with Dre Armeda and Brad Williams

Episode 094 – Open Sourcing Mental Illness

I also watched this amazing PBS show called: Ride the Tiger – A guide through the Bipolar Brain . Ride the Tiger is a one-hour documentary that tells the stories of individuals who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Websites are Dead, you don’t need a custom built website with your own domain name.

I saw this article on Facebook of all places “The Fallacy of Dead Or Alive Marketing” Scott Stratten of UnMarketing. It’s a great read but I’ll sumize with this:

No marketing tactic/channel is dead, nor are any alive. It’s what we do with them. Email, blogging, video, presentations, social media, trade shows, direct mail and yes, even knocking on people’s doors can work for sales and marketing. Just depends on your resources, ability and product/service being offered.

It’s perfect, don’t listen to anyone who says “that method is dead” (well unless it’s myspace). No tactic/channel is dead to you unless that tactic/channel produces no results.

Do you really need a website?

Maybe not. I’ve seen artists who only use Instagram as their marketing channel and then when a follow requests to buy one of their pieces they send them to places like etsy/ebay/amazon/custom made/etc. I’ve also seen some of these artists use Square as their ecommerce platform.

What is my point?

Use what you want to use and what works for you. Sometimes that thing that works for you is to have a website built and maintained for you. Sometimes it’s making a social channel work for you. What ever the solution is, use the solution and make it work.

Is “blogging” dead?

Nope. Stay tuned for the next article

Goals: Simple, Cost Effective, Mobile Friendly
Platform: WordPress
Theme: Altitude Pro by StudioPress
Plugins: Gravity Forms and FooGallery
Site: http://dhaberer.com

See more of my porfolio -> Need Web Help Porfolio

What I used:

Beaver Builder
Genesis Dambuster

How I set the page settings before setting up the page with Beaver Builder

Step 1:

Create page and set template to Landing Page

Step 2:

Check box for Genesis Dambuster “Enable Tweaks”

Step 3:

On the Genesis Dambuster tab ‘template width’ check the box for Full Width. On all the other tabs check all the boxes for “remove”

Beaver Builder setup of the video landing page

Step 1:

Add a row with “width/content width” at Full and Height at Full

Step 2:

Set the background to Video and choose your MP4 and WebM video. You can also choose a fallback image for mobile devices. You can also play with overlay colors on the video.

Step 3:

Add boxes to the row for intro and signup form

All done

See example here -> Video Landing Page

Here is how I suggested it be done

https://gist.github.com/lorennason/b01bb8c9cd2dc999635c0a7169e36f84

The inspiration came from Bill Erickson’s post on Customizing Menu Arguments.

I just added an extra statement to apply only when on Front Page

Why are people upset?

I see this all the time when someone goes and buys a theme or child theme of a framework and then they expect it to magically look like the demo. Unfortunately this is not the case. Yes, most themes have a way to import the demo content. This can help with visualization of where stuff goes but now you have all this demo content that you have to replace. This doesn’t make things faster and I think can sometimes make the process take longer on setting up your site.

Is this there fault?

No, this is not your fault. It’s also not the fault of the theme developer as well IMO

Is there a solution?

No, not really. The best solution so far is the importing of demo content and then you replace the demo content with your own.

Can anyone help?

Of course I can help.

What you shouldn’t do:

Don’t delete the old content. People are getting to your site from old links but they are getting there. Don’t make their life difficult by getting a 404 message.

What you should do:

Notify them they are visiting old content and direct them either to the new content or just direct them to a generic spot to find the “newer” info.

I found this plugin by Bill Erickson Old Post Notification, but I wanted a little more oomph and automation. The plugin only gives you a check box that you have to manually check each post that it’s “old”.

You could use this plugin Juiz Outdated Posts which gives you a settings page to apply a notification to all posts older than X dates.

Create a custom function that then puts the notification anywhere you want it. See below for this method.

How to setup a notification box:

First I found this post that creates a function that can filter posts based on how old the post is back x amount of days.
Display Ads only on Older Posts

Then I created this snippet of code in my functions.php

https://gist.github.com/lorennason/5e9a0ceafbd7883ddf41

See example here -> Old Post

Conclusion:

I like the Juiz Plugin. It’s simple and it will work for many people.

I like the custom code solution as it makes it easier to place anywhere in your site. Maybe even make a Pop Up notification?

Now you have bought (or a free one), installed and activated your plugin. Now the magic happens right?

Half Built

Unfortunately no. Nothing happens when you install the plugin. It won’t magically bring you  1000’s signups to your email list. You won’t start generating $10k in sales every hour. It will do nothing because you haven’t done anything to make it work.

What do you do then?

Dive In

There is no way around it. You have to dive right in a learn how to use the plugin and make it perform to your will. Start with tutorials put out by the plugin maker. Then look for blog posts of others using the same plugin and see what they do.

Are you stuck and still can’t get the plugin to work?

This is where I come in where I can setup the plugin and even manage/change/improve the plugin for you on a one time or monthly basis.

The process of learning and using a plugin to it’s fullest is not a quick process for everyone.

Some plugins might only take a little bit of time because you don’t need it to do much except 1 small thing. If you get into the email marketing / pop up plugin / “do something fancy” plugin then you could be looking at a couple hours or so.

The time that has to be spent is not because the plugin is hard. The time is to fine tune the plugin to look and do what you want. Some plugins you could end up tweaking changing on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. I can help you with this. Need help?

Ask Me How