AUDIO

Audio to me is one of the most overlooked aspects of video. I don’t care how good your video is, without even decent audio, your video goes to junk. People don’t want to hear that tinny, nasty audio that comes out of your camera, your computer or your phone. So I have a lot of audio products.  In fact I buy more audio products, then i do video products.

Podcasting/ScreenCasting Audio Products

For when I am doing computer tutorials or if you want to do podcasting, I use an Audio Technica AT-2035 condenser microphone.

This microphone is not overly expensive but gives good quality audio. Make sure you get a filter to filter out the pops and S’s when you talk into it. Because this is a condenser microphone, it needs power from phantom power and, because it is an XLR microphone, I have to find a way to interface it with my computer. In that case I use a Focusrite 2i2 which allows me to use phantom power to the microphone.

Finally, to keep the microphone out of the way, I use a boom arm from Blue Microphones that looks nice and allows me to move the microphone in front and away from my mouth.

Face to Camera Audio

I prefer to use a wireless Lavalier microphone plugged either into my camera, an audio recorder or if all else fails, into the focusrite. This allows me to record directly into camera or use something like audacity and sync in the editing tool later.

If quality is most important, I use a Sennheiser EW 100 G3 microphone system. Its several years old and has been replaced with the G4 system but man, I love this thing.

On the Go Audio

If I am on the go, I have a few devices I use. But ultimately, I use a Zoom H1. This is great because I can plug it into my laptop and it gets used as a USB microphone. It can also be handheld and with a dead cat can be used in the wind. Finally, I can also plug in an inexpensive wired lapel mic and it works as a quite good lapel microphone.

LIGHTING

After audio, lighting is the most important aspect of video. Your camera needs good light and lots of it to perform at its best. The lights I currently use are no longer produced but they are LED lights and then I use an umbrella in front of them to soften them up. If I was buying now, i would get these pancake lights that would work great in the small spaces here in Hawaii

There are lots of modifiers you can use with your lighting. This can be umbrellas, white boards but one of the best tools I have found is 5 in 1 reflector. Pull the inner part out and its a great scrim to soften the light. I then hang up the silver reflector on the other side to bounce some light back on my face.

VIDEO

This is where I fall behind all the other people online. For the most part, I am using my iPhone Xs to do video a lot of times. It records in 4k and I bought the one with 256K memory in it. If you are just starting out, this is the last place you spend money. Audio and Video first.

DSLR/Mirrorless

I have a Canon T5i I have used for years. It frankly is not a great camera. It doesn’t have duel pixel autofocus like the 80D and others but paired up with a Sigma 18-35 lens, it gets good background blurriness. This  lens is available for lots of cameras from Sony to Canon. I am not sure what I will do next. To be honest, Sony has been tempting me with a lot of their cameras.

On the Go Camera

This little camera is a favorite of mine. It is not a 4K camera but there is a ton I like about it. And it is the Canon G7X Mark II camera. Why do Iike it? Pop up screen so I can see myself in the camera. An auto white balance that seems better than the setting on my T5i and dual pixel autofocus. I took this thing to Europe and it was a champ. If it just had a microphone input it would be perfect.

STABILIZATION

I use a ton of tripods. But to be honest, find one that works for your needs. Most times my camera sits on a fairly inexpensive tripod from Raveli. What I like is it will go super high for when I am standing up or want to point it down. I also use a Joby gorilla pod and a table top tripod from Benro.

Image	Title	Price	Prime	Buy
	Ravelli Professional Video Tripod (72 inch)			Buy Now
	JOBY GorillaPod 5K Kit. Professional Tripod 5K Stand and Ballhead 5K for DSLR Cameras or Mirrorless Camera with Lens up to 5K (11lbs). Black/Charcoal.			Buy Now
	Benro PocketPod Tabletop Tripod (PP1)			Buy Now
	Vastar Universal Smartphone Tripod Adapter Cell Phone Holder Mount Adapter, Fits iPhone, Samsung, and all Phones, Rotates Vertical and Horizontal, Adjustable Clamp			Buy Now

My secret for when I need smooth pans and tilts is a monopod. Specifically I like this one from Benro. It works fantastic and is pretty inexpensive. I like the Benro stuff.

Make Money, don’t spend Money

I am able to make some decent money with this equipment for both clients and my own affiliate websites. Eventually I will get a new camera, but to be honest, I don’t need them since I am not doing weddings or commercial quality audio and I dont’ want to much up my set up. Any of these would work great for you. Don’t over think it and spend your money wisely.

Well low and behold, I log into my Shopify site and I find out that the Shopify App is being removed from Shopify. Find a little digging and you find there has been… lets say.. a disagreement between the companies. Frankly, not my issue, I just want a platform that has deep integration into Shopify to make my email marketing easier. So it begs the question, what do I do now…

So lets talk about some options to continue running your email marketing.

Option 1 (not recommended): Do nothing. Keep using Mailchimp.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mailchimp and still think its a great platform, but the deeper integration is one of the keys to effectivly using an email marketing platform. So if you want to use something like a pop up maker like sumo or others, then go ahead and use it, just realize that you dont get all bells and whistles

Option 2: Klaviyo & Shopify

SIGN UP FOR KLAVIYO

You might not have heard about Klaviyo before but it has been around for a bit and its an email marketing system designed specifically for the ecommerce market. Here is what I love about Klaviyo and you should consider it. First, it has the obligatory deep integration with Shopify.

Even better it has a free tier. Yep, if you are just starting out, or have less than 250 subscribers, than Klaviyo has a free tier. It gets better from here. Those of you who have Mailchimp and worry about the transition Klaviyo has a one way integration with Mailchimp meaning you install, add your API key and it pulls in all the data and formats it to Klaviyos way of doing things.

Once that is done, the platform has a series of flows or automations already set up. The best one, Abandoned Cart. The Shopify plan I am on does not include automated abandoned cart. With Klaviyo you can stay on the lower plan and still get automated functionality. it also included customer thank you, cross sell and others.

Klaviyo is the ultimate platform for ecommerce and I am currently playing with it myself for my Shopify site.

Option 3: ConvertKit & Shopify

SIGN UP FOR CONVERTKIT

Convertkit is the other Email Marketing System I use and there is a ton of benefit to using ConvertKit. In addition to having a robust email automation system, you can easily tag subscribers based on actions they take. So if you are doing a lot of content marketing and then driving them to buy at your store, then Convertkit might be another useful tool.

Also, if you run multiple properties, CK is a tag based system instead of a subscriber based system. One issue I had with Mailchimp is depending on lists you could have subscribers counted twice. Now, I know Mailchimp implemented tagging to solve this but every time Mailchimp did wholesale changes I felt like I had to learn it over and over again.

ConvertKit does not use lists. Instead your subscribers get tags so depending where they sign up, they get tagged in different ways. I think CK is the best for digital and content marketing platforms. In addition, if you want to use a variety of pop up makers, landing pages or welcome mats, ConvertKit probably has the most integrations right now.

My recommendation

If you are lazy and just need to move things quick, then Klaviyo was tailor made for you. Sign up, connect, integrate and finish off where you left from. If you are doing tons of content marketing, then ConvertKit is where you should play at. Either of them are great and will take you a long way towards effective email marketing.

Notes: Frankly any EMS with a direct integration will work. But I am all about the right tool, at the right time, for the right product. Take the time to set them up right and see how email can help grow your business.

The other thing that is great about Beaver Builder is the white labeling. If you run an agency then the ability to have “Your Agency Builder” is a great way to lock your customers in. As wordpress becomes more advanced, the sites built with it can slow down and no matter how good they are coded, page builders do slow them down a bit.

I have tested caching plugins with Divi, Elementor, Avada, Salient and now Beaver Builder. Let’s get started.

How to Speed up your Website

There are multiple ways to speed up your website. Some of these are just not viable for most people. Use a lighter theme. This is great if you are a coder and can make them yourself. But we are using a page builder for a reason, lack of coding skills and speed to market. For non coders, the best route for speed include:

Quality Hosting

That hosting your paying $2.99 a month just is not gonna cut it. Especially if it was recommended by gurus. I have 4 hosting companies I recommend. Two are traditional CPanel providers, one is managed wordpress and the third is a newer solution to the market that sits in cost between cpanel and managed hosting providers.

Image Optimization

This part right here is usually the best route to increase the speed of your website. I have been surprised how often websites are created with full sized images directly out of a phone or dslr. These 2MB and larger pictures take for ever to load, especially on mobile.

Content Delivery Network

A CDN can be a good route for speeding up websites but it does take a little more effort and technical understanding. I have found a well designed site (in my humble opinion) benefits less from a CDN. I have not really used them myself but the bigger your site gets, the more advantageous they get.

Caching

Without getting into the technical details, content management systems are slower because a site renders the page on your browser every time you come to the page. What a caching plugin does is save the last render of the website and holds it in a file so when someone comes to your site, it just servers the pre-rendered page making the site that much faster.

Caching plugins run into issues sometimes with page builders because those page builders take up a lot of resources. I found that Visual Composer is a beast compared to the stand alone platforms. I am curious how it will work with Beaver Builder so lets get started.

Disclaimer: I think it is important to let you know, I am not a programmer, network genius, CISO, or other tech provider. i am a marketer that knows enough to maybe be dangerous. That being said I have learned enough to get good results and I am going to share them with you. So tech folks, please be kind.

Website Hosting

I have four recommendations for good quality hosting. I use a reseller program from a company called Veerotech as it gives me the most flexibility. The issue is they do not have phone or chat support, only ticket. If you need that flexibility but need more hands on support, then check out A2. If you have a single site and want fast and speedy, WP Engine is the way to go. If WP Engine is out of your budget, then check out Cloudflare which sits on top of individual VPS’s at Amazon and Digital Ocean. Check out the links below to see what they offer.

Managed WordPress

Cloud

Set up

I use a reseller hosting package from a company called Veerotech. This allows me to set up individual CPanels for each testing site. They use CloudLinux, Litespeed and all SSD servers. The data center is in North Carolina so not entire ideal for me in Hawaii but ti works. If you are using different hosting, your results might be different.

I created an initial build with Beaver Builder using the free Astra theme. I was not able to get a hold of the Beaver Builder theme so the results could easily be different. I then created 5 pages, set up the menu and installed the typical plugins I use which include:

• iThemes Security Pro
• BackupBuddy
• All In One SEO
• Anti Spam Bee

I then cloned it to a variety of test sites to quickly test different caching plugins.

A thought: What I wonder is if the caching I am doing is really affecting the Astra theme instead of the builder because I am getting very similar responses to when I tested Elementor which also used the Astra theme. If anything that just tells me how well Astra is coded

The Control Site

The first thing I do after cloning everything is test the initial website to get a baseline speed to compare against. I ran sped tests 5 times and it ran from 1.9  to 2.2 seconds. I decided 2.1 seconds was the best representation of a non-cached version of this Astra and Beaver Builder site.

The Rules

I tested about 9 caching plugins. One is a premium plugin, the others are either free or have a freemium element that allows you to upgrade for more features. Each of the plugins had to have:

• At least 1000 installs
• At least a 4 star rating
• Updated in the last 3 months

With the changes in WordPress especially with Gutenberg, I thought it important that stuff not updated in the last 3 months not make the cut. IN fact on a previous test when I tested a plugin that had not been updated in 6 months, it performed horribly given how easy the caching was for other caching plugins. Also, given how WordPress is a target for hackers, having old plugins on your site is just a non-starter for me.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is normally the first plugin I test on these sites. The reason, it normally performs in the top three. It is a premium plugin which means there is technical support if you need it. And, if you are using managed wordpress hosting, it works on managed wordpress hosting like WP Engine. At 1.4 seconds it performs quite well. Anything under 2 seconds is considered a good load time. And if you are using WP Engine, then this is the plugin to buy.

WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache is another plugin that performs very well. It is not as pretty as WP Rocket but it is also a freemium model that has a free and paid program. The only issue I had on Divi sites was if I cahced a page that had a form, either email optin, or contact form, the forms would not work after they were used one time. That being said, here are the results. 1.3 second load times is quite good. Again, the only thing I would test is how do your forms perform with it. In Divi, this was an issue I had.

WP Super Cache

WP Supercache is designed by the folks at Automattic that run WordPress.com. It is regularly updated and has a ton of downloads. It is not as flexible as some other plugins but is simple to set up. At 1.3 seconds it performs really well.

Hummingbird

The folks over at WPMU developed this plugin. If you have ever used WP Smush It, you know the folks. On my last test they performed very well compared to how they performed two years ago. At 1.4 seconds, it reaches what others do as well. I did not test the premium version.

Litespeed Cache

My hosting company uses Litespeed as a drop in replacement for Apache. Litespeed has created a caching plugin designed to work with litespeed set ups. If you are using Veerotech or A2 (with its Turbo mode) then this test will be relevant. If you are using others, maybe not so much. I was able to get 1.3 seconds of load time with this cache. I have never used it on a non-litespeed site.

W3 Total Cache

W3Total Cache has been around for a long time. It is probably the most flexible of plugins but with that flexibility comes difficulty setting it up. I would never recommend it as a plug and play solution but if you are willing to slowly test, then yes, go ahead and use it. I was not able to test the minification which used to cause issues. In that case I used autoptimize and it performed well. But even using the basics it performed really well. 1.2 seconds which is what I got to.

Cache Enabler

Cache enabler is a simpler plugin to use. Unfortunately it did not perform as well as the others and only got me to 1.5 seconds load time. It is still is a good number and better load time than most wordpress websites but the other plugins are better.

Breeze

The Breeze plugin is created by the folks over at Cloudways which is one of the recommended hosting providers I detailed above. Unfortunately it also performed at 1.5 seconds so not as good as the others. That being said, it is possible it performs very well with Cloudways.

Simple Cache

Simple Cache is… well.. simple. It only has three options. Turn it on, how long the cache lasts before being purged and whether you want to Gzip Compress the files. And with that simplicity you get a very respectable 1.4 second load time.

Conclusion – Best Caching Plugins for Beaver Builder

As I mentioned earlier, my performance figures might be skewed by using the Astra theme and I just have to say, congratulations to the folks over at Astra for making a well coded theme. That being said.

• Pure Performance: Go for W3 Total cache and spend a few hours optimizing it.
• WordPress Hosting: WP Rocket
• Plug and Play: Fastest Cache and Super Cache
• Any type of tech support, CDN, etc.: WP Rocket

If after using those plugins you are not under 2 second load times, then you need to consider a different hosting provider in my opinion.

What is a caching plugin?

Without getting too technical (please tech folks be kind with my explanation), with a wordpress site, when the browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) go to a website, the wordpress program (PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript) actually renders the page each time. Versus a traditional static website, it maintains what it looks like at all times. This rendering takes time and as WordPress and themes get bigger and larger, that time to render starts going up.

As we all know (or should know) page loads are a big deal when it comes to user experience. Ideally, our sites should load in less than 3 seconds and even better if it is less than 2 seconds. There are several ways we can do this.

1. Make the site simpler. This is difficult given that we are using a publicly available CMS and a theme designed to do lots of things. Still, reducing animations and extra code and plugins will help.
2. Optimize Images: I will talk about optimizing images at another time, but the smaller the image, the quicker it loads
3. Better hosting. There is a reason we now have wordpress specific hosting. In fact WP Engine is a great host if you have the money. But even without that extra hosting, we can still increase page speed by not using the cheap hosts that every guru recommends.  Blue something or other…
4. Use  Content Delivery Network. A CDN keeps local copies of your website ready at various nodes around the world so it serves a copy that is closest to the computer. Just like it takes less time to drive across town versus across the country, keeping the files close to a computer increases their speed.
5. Caching

What a caching plugin does is take the web page that would normally be rendered each time a browser asks it to, and serves the last known page to the browser. Because the cogs don’t have to work over and over, the increase of speed can be dramatic.

All caching plugins work a little differently and some work better with different hosts. Over the last two years, on average, the best caching plugins for me have been WP Rocket, Lite Speed Cache and WP Fastest Cache.

Setting up the caching test for Elementor

The first thing I did is set up a test site with the Astra Free theme and Elementor Pro installed. I then created a series of 5 web pages just using the premade templates Elementor provides. Ideally I would clone a customers site but I didn’t want to spend hours recreating it just for this test. Since many will just use the premade templates anyway, this is a good test.

I then installed the other plugins I normally do for customer sites. This includes:

• Antispam Bee (use instead of Akismet)
• BackupBuddy
• iThemes Security Pro
• MainWP Child
• All in One SEO Pack

What I then did is set up a second site and clones my initial test site to try different plugins on. I actually would blow out and reinstall the site after every test to make sure there were no residual code left from the plugin that was tested.

My Technology Stack for this test

I think it is important to tell you what the technology stack I am using. Because what I use might be different, your results might be different as well.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a programmer, network engineer, linux guru, javascript mystro, PHP wrangler or any other specialist in technology. I am looking at this from the perspective of a non-technical person trying to get the most out of their speed test. Also, you are using different hosting, have bad connectivity, are half way around the world or any other thing that might make a difference. Either way, this should give you an opportunity to see which ones I found performed well with the Elementor plugin.

I use a reseller program to host customer accounts. This allows me to set up separate independent CPanels  for each and every website. This allows you to protect individual sites and to allocate resources to each one. If you want a reseller account, the two I recommend would be:

If you just need really fast hosting, I recommend below:

If you are looking for a step up and don’t need all the bells and whistles of cpanel, then take a look at:

The hosting company I use is not WordPress Specific but uses Cloudlinux and Litespeed to give a little boost to the speed.

Criteria for choosing a plugin to test

I have tried to be consistent when I test plugins. They have to have the following criteria to be tested. I am sure I have missed some, and if I do, please let me know.

At least 1000 installs – I figured with 1000 installs kinks will be worked out.
At least 4 Star Rating – Most people reading this don’t want to deal with hassles so a good rating is key.
Updated in the last year – no need for a caching plugin to open up security holes. This is one advantage to a premium plugin.

Control Elementor Site

I ran the control site through GT Metrix to give me a baseline of what my site would look like without caching involved. My initial tests were quite impressive. 2.2 second load times on the first test and 1.9 on the second test. That is impressive with no caching. But lets try some more.

Wp Rocket

WP Rocket is a premium plugin and one I have had very good luck with when it comes to speeding up websites. It normally sits in the number one or number 2 spot when it comes to speeding up websites. It is inexpensive at $39 a year for a single site. Easy to configure as well. And if you are using a managed wordpress provider like WP Engine, you can use it on their platform as well.

Disclaimer: WP Engine gave me a review copy two years ago but at renewal, I paid of the renewal myself. Yes it is that good.

When I initially installed the plugin and used normal setting, I didn’t see any improvements in the speed. IN fact, it was exactly the same. But in the File Optimization tab you can start minimizing CSS and Javascript. But I recommend testing these on a staging or test site because sometimes it can break thinks in your website. Minimizing CSS brought load times down to 1.4 seconds without breaking anything. I then minimized the javascript and didn’t see a huge difference but I would experiment with both. That being said, 1.3 to 1.4 second load times is great.

Here are my results:

WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache has always performed really well. The only issue I had with WP Fastest Cache on Divi, is some of the forms would not work on pages that had caching. In particular the contact forms and email optin forms. But, if you are using something like Sumo me or another pop up, you will have to test..

Just turning the plugin on got me to 1.3 seconds. Wow! Interestingly enough, minimizing the CSS actually slowed down the website and turning on things like Gzip didn’t decrease load speeds. Only thing to test is the forms to make sure it doesn’t mess with them.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is created and run by Automattic. Automattic is the company that runs wordpress.com and are kinda the unofficial/official wordpress folks. Installing and turning it on gave me a speed of 1.3 seconds. Turning on some of the advances settings brought the load time down to 1.1 seconds.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird is a plugin created by the folks over at WPMU. They make a variety of plugins including the Smush it plugin for image optimization. I tried their caching plugin before when I had a membership and it didn’t work great on Divi but in reading, some people were getting better results with it. I am only using the free version from the repository, lets see how it works.

After installing you run a performance test and it gives you recommendations you can turn on such as caching, gzip etc. Turning on Page caching brought me down to 1.2 seconds. Turning on Gzip did not change the load times and minimizing the css of elementor actually increased load times. So 1.2 seconds is what we get.

Litespeed Cache

Ok I will be honest, this caching plugin won’t work for many of you because it only works if you are using the litespeed software in place of apache. This is the plugin my hosting company recommends so lets see how it performs. 1.3 second load time. Advanced functionality didn’t push it further past that.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache used to be the standard in caching plugins. They have an extremely robust set of instructions that truthfully was really hard to configure properly. With the page builders, it seemed to break a lot of sites when it minified css and others. For themes like Avada, for a while they have a configuration file you could download and upload. Initially I just turned on page cache, opcode cache, database cache and browser cache.

Like the others 1.3 seconds is what I got in load times. I did minify just using the standard settings and it didn’t seem to break the site and did bring it down to 1.1 second load time. Finally I turned on a few other functions which ironically, increased the load times .

Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler is built by the folks over at KeyCDN. It has 60,000 installs and a four star rating.  After installing, i didn’t know if I was doing something wrong because it said the current cache size was empty. But I ran it through the speed test, and I got 1.3 seconds. Go figure.

Breeze WordPress Cache

This is a new caching plugin I have not tried before. It is a plugin created by the Cloudways folks, one of the recommended hosting companies. Just the basic caching brought me down to the 1.3 second load times all the other plugins were able to create for me. Minifcation didn’t seem to help a lot.

Simple Cache

This had 7000 installs and a good rating so I thought I would try it out. It is, like its name sames, very simple. You only have 3 options in its non-advanced mode. Engable caching and enable compression. I am going to test with compression on and off. If you guessed 1.3 seconds then you got it right. Compression did reduce load speed to 1.2 seconds.

Hyper Cache

I decided to add one additional cache to the test. I wasn’t sure if I should since it hasn’t been updated in 6 months and wasn’t tested with this version of wordpress. So since I was doing this on test sites, what the heck. And at 1.9 seconds load times, that would be a no. But now we know…

Best Caching Plugin for Elementor

So there is one thing I learned in this test. Elementor is very well codes. For a page builder it has pretty fast page loads and it responds about the same across the board when it comes to caching plugins. So just about any caching system will help you. If you are using WordPress hosting or need more technical support, then go for WP Rocket.

I know some of you don’t like video and prefer to read so here you go. If you need to, you can download a PDF of this below.

Be careful of shared hosting

So it is important to caveat this by saying, if you are using simple shared hosting, this may not work for you. The problem with using shared hosting is once one site gets infected, all the others get infected as well. Instead, I use Reseller hosting. Reseller hosting allows you to set up individual CPanel accounts for every website you create. In fact I even use it to create sub domains. This segregates and separates sites from each other. You can also most likely do this with a managed VPS. Just look for something that has both CPanel and WHM. The reseller program I use starts at $17.95 a month so maybe about $10 more a month compared to the shared hosting plan you have. And yes, even if you got the $2.99 a month special, after the first year they normally raise the monthly charge to upwards of $7.95 to $12.95 a month. This tutorial will assume you are using a reseller program.

Procedures for a Clean WordPress Website

WordPress allows you to export your content with having to export all the code. If you go into your Tools > Export…

The following page will come up.

From here I always export each items individually. So if your theme has more options and you are using them, make sure you export those. I don’t use Projects often but I make sure I export Posts, Pages, Layouts and Media. This will export everything as an XML. The content will be there but none of the malware. If your theme allows you to export settings, go ahead and export those as well. I use Divi a lot of times and I can export the settings via JSON files. Again, it doesn’t export the malware.

Time to set up a test site

This is where your Reseller account comes in handy. By going into WHM, you can set up a completely separate subdomain. It might be like something repair.thisdomain.com . I then go into its very own cpanel and go through my website process. This includes installing Let’s Encrypt SSL (this is included in my reseller account) and then installing WordPress via Softaculous. I then add in the theme (Divi in this case) as well as plugins. After that I upload the JSON so the settings match. You may require you to add in the Logo and Favicon. After you are ready, go into Tools>Import and import all those XML files. There could be anywhere between 3 -8 different files. Set up your Menu’s and and set your home page and your site should be cloned. Your content should look the same, your posts should be there and your pages as well.

Blow out the Live Site

Now this will mean your site is down for the short period of time this takes you to do it, but go into your cpanel, and completely erase the existing site. Remove WordPress, remove the database and if you are worried, you can even terminate it in WHM and set up a new CPanel. If you are using Softaculous, just go in and X it out. Once it is done, go ahead and install WordPress again. Now here is the easy part. Whether you use BackUpBuddy, WP Clone, All in One Migrate, go ahead and migrate the test site to the main site. While it hasn’t been updated in a couple years but WP Clone works great for me but I also have BackupBuddy. On customer sites that are quite small, the cloning over takes less than 10 minutes. I have done a BackupBuddy tutorial below:

Because you have a fresh install, your site no longer has the malware installed. Your content is all the same, your permalinks are all the same, and at this point you can request Google remove your hacked site penalty. Any time I do this I find the hacking and malware disappears. In my limited experience have found using Fantastico or Simple Installer leaves something there that can be exploited. Your best bet is to do a manual install but I have not had issues with Softaculous. The two sites that have been hacked (one of mine and a customer) were set up with Fantastico and Simple Scripts. After you have done this, make sure you install something like a security suite. I recommend iThemes Security Suite Pro.

This does not discount using something like Sucuri to clean your site but I just feel more comfortable blowing out the site. Let me know what you think. Would this work for you or do you have a different process.

Ask any photographer and they will tell you lighting and composition is the most important thing. I am not going to pretend this will replace a professional photographer but given that these are very simple types of shots, mainly for listing on Amazon or your own online store, getting a clear shot is most important. In that case we need good soft light to make this work. IN the video below I show you how to set this up, and if you prefer to read, I explain this below the video.

Making the lightbox

This set up consists of items you can purchase from Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes or any store that sells these household items. All of this together probable cost me less that $60 and can be used outside just this type of set up.

Feel free to substitute, mix and or match any of the items above. The great thing about this arrangement, is you can store everything in the tub when you are finished. Also, because very little of the items are uni-taskers, you can re-purpose them.

You need to make sure you get a frosty looking tub. The reason we use the storage tub, is because when you shine a light through the tub, the material diffuses the light and makes it very soft on your products. The tub takes the place of diffusion material that you normally buy in a light box or things like white cloth. Nothing to tape, nothing to break or tear.

Next are your lights. It is important that you get the proper color temperature lights. If you look at the lights in your office or your house, you will see these lights are very yellow or orange.  But take a look outside and you will

see the outside sunlight is very blue. We measure light in Kelvin. Outside light rubs 5000 – 7000 Kelvin and is very blue. Inside lights run between 2,500 and 3,500 kelvin and are very yellow. I recommend getting daylight balanced lightbulbs for your product photography. Several reasons, I find it to be more flattering to products. Also, I find the cameras we use (smartphone, point and shoot or DSLR) tend to like daylight better than yellow light.

Finally, as a backdrop, plain ole poster board is what I use. The same stuff we used for our science fair projects. You can use white but I also like using colors if you want to make a statement or contrast what you have. The pack above has a ton of colors for you to use. I had a colleague who used blue and red backgrounds for his eBay listings.

Once you are set up, its key to shut off the other lights before you get started. You don’t want to mix light sources as it gives everything a very odd pall. Yes, you might be working in the dark, but this will make your photography that much better.

Finally, don’t be scared to edit your photos. I have photoshop but even something like Pixlr.com will help you edit your photos. So the photos below you will notice, some of them I removed the background and just made it pure white. Great if you are selling on Amazon. You will also see one where I use a piece of  black poster board and you will notice how the colors really pop on it. Poster board is cheap so feel free to experiment. Realize that this won’t necessarily work for larger items but small items that need photographs, this works great. See some examples made with a lightbox below.

My go to has been Canva over the last couple of years. It is very powerful and the pricing is amazing. While their paid graphical elements are photos run about $1.00 a piece, I have been able to get away with just their free elements.

So in this post we are going to go over the different “Free” design tools and compare them, using Canva as the standard we compare it to. Essentially I will test the tools creating three different designs standards I use the most. So an Instagram Post, a Youtube Thumbnail and an infographic.

Crello versus Canva

So the first tool I am going to compare to Canva is a tool called Crello. Cello was created by DepositPhotos.com just recently. It makes sense because given the inexpensive stock offerings from Canva, I could see them losing business pretty quick.

Canva provides a ton of stock layouts you can use for most purposes. This includes standard social, insta, Facebook posts as well as ebook covers, infographics, etc. So I have found it easy to create instagram posts and youtube thumbs with ease. They even have stock layouts for infographics, and I have used it to create ebooks as well.

Crello has a similar layout to Canva. There are quite a bit less stock designs but like any of these, you can put in custom dimensions. Crello has a ton more fonts to use but you can’t go any bigger in font size than what the system lets you which is really a bummer. Its also a little harder to find things like free pictures but the paid ones were awesome. Below is a comparison to two instagram posts I did for Bastille Day.

I created a youtube thumbnail next. Canva has the size as an option and some pre-made themes. Crello does not have a premed size, but you do a custom size at 1280 x 720 pixels and get started. Again, I really like the text control with Canva. Fonts, a slider for size. One thing I definitely appreciate about Canva, that Crello didn’t do, was save your pale of colors. So if you used a color once already in a document, it save it to reuse it which was nice when I was doing the background behind text and wanted to swap those out. Either way, its still pretty much a wash.

Finally I decided to create an infographic. This was super easy to do in Canva as they have pre-made designs for Infographics. A variety of free elements were easier to find in Canva. What I would like to see in both tools that neither does, is the ability to add drop shadows and strokes to elements or at least to text.

Which of these two to use? Overall, Canva is a better tool but for Youtube Thumbs, I kinda like the variety of text you can get. For Instagram and Infographics, I will still recommend Canva.

Stencil versus PicMonkey

Note: Since I did this video and review, PicMonkey is no longer free and is only paid. It is still a great tool but there is a small nominal fee associated with it as well.

In this round, we are going to compare Stencil to PicMonkey. I bought Stencil a bit back when they had it on special but they have a free tier as well to try it out. Ultimately you get the most out of Stencil when you buy a paid plan such as the Pro or Unlimited. I have the Unlimited plan.

I will be honest, there are things I really like about Stencil but I feel like it is much more targeted towards social media postings over a general graphic tool. So if you need to do things like Infographics, then Canva will be better. But, fi you are only looking for a social media tool, then we need to look at Stencil.

So when you get into the backend of stencil which just acts like a web app (and has a chrome extension) you will find a really simple interface. There are a ton of backgrounds, icons, and graphics included with the plan. What is really cool is a quotes section which will allow you to access quotes to use for things like your instagram, Facebook or other social media post.

Now here are a couple of the cool things you can do with Stencil. Now, like, Canva, you can upload assets, but what I find interesting is the ability to upload logos and watermarks to turn on or off on every post.

Where Stencil does better than Canva and Crello, is the ability to create text. Besides creating text with a variety of Google Fonts (1,200), your ability to style the text is amazing. This includes uploading your own fonts, ability to do drop shadows and even stroke on your text. The main point is your ability to push out content fast is where Stencil comes into hits own.
The other thing that is awesome is the ability to create standard ad sizes if you want to run Youtube overlay ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads. You name it it, it will do it for you.

One thing I haven’t used yet is the ability to post to instagram by sending via SMS. Apparently you get 100 free SMS messages a month with the unlimited plan. It also has direct integration with Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and buffer, or you can just download it.

If Social is your thing… Then Stencil is what you need. Try it for free in the link below.

PicMonkey has been around much longer than even Canva and has been a go to photo editing tool for many Youtubers. I think it is weak when it comes to social media and infographics but it makes up for it when it comes to creating things like Youtube Thumbnails. The ability to clean up photos, remove backgrounds, make outlines, there are tons of functionality that you will like and I can guarantee you there are several major youtube stars that use it to make their thumbnails. I recommend trying both and see which one works best for you.

Snappa versus Visme

Of these two tools, Visme is probably the newest and as I write this post/do this demo video, it is still in Beta. What I find interesting about Visme, is it is almost more of a substitute for powerpoint and keynote. I didn’t have the pro version to try out the HTML embed but it could be a really cool feature. Where I think Visme comes into its own is with its info-graphics. The number of stock infographics is pretty amazing.

Snappa is another competitor to Canva. The layout is quite a bit different but there are a few features I wish Canva had. First, the ability to add rounded corners to background squares. Now, Canva has these but you have to choose the rounded corners. The way Snappa does it will be much more familiar to people who either do photoshop, or design websites. Second, drop shadows on text. I know its not a popular option these days, but drop shadows can really help make text visible for certain backgrounds. But it doesn’t really have infographic functionality so I used it to create an ebook cover.

I think both tools are interesting and a great addition to your arsenal. If I did a lot of webinars, I think Visme is what you should check out further and I think Snappa can be an able competitor to Canva.

Get Snappa Here

Get Visme Here

That being said, sometimes, you are just testing an idea and don’t want to spend the $600 – $1,000 (that my graphic designer charges for my clients) to create a logo for a business, that might not be here in a few months. In cases like this, I just want to try out different platforms that allow me to create a logo quickly at not to much expense.

I decided to test out Tailor Brands. They had a special on App Sumo a couple months back that allows me to test the product with-out being out of pocket to much. So I tested it trying to redesign the logo for this site. The video below is a walk through of the product.

What I really like about it, is for less than $50, you get a logo, with a vector file (EPS). This means, if you like what you have but needed it tweaked further, you can give the EPS to your designer to work with. Also, with an EPS, if you have a Vector software (such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkvine) you can then render out different sized logos without losing quality.

What I like about Tailor Brands

The system is super easy to use, and on top of it, you can actually try it out before paying for it. So, if you never find a logo that works for you, then you don’t pay. It is not super sophisticated. I wish it spent more time going over font choices, especially when you keep selecting, Dislike Both. At the premium level, there are a ton of add-ons to help you grow your business.

What I Don’t like About Tailor Brands

Their pricing is misleading since they price it at as low as $4.99 a month but you have to buy a minimum of 6 months. I am sure they have a reason but I prefer they just state something up front like, $49 includes 6 months of access. The designs aren’t super sophisticated, but that is fine for the purposes we are looking for.

What I will do going forward

Apparently you can do unlimited revisions so I may go back and play with it more, see what those revisions actually mean. My biggest worry is doing a revision and losing the original design. If you want to try it out, click the link below to be taken over to make a logo.

Today I decided to take a page from Matt Giovanisci over at Money Lab and do a money challenge. My goal is to launch a new membership site by the end of February. I keep a list of ideas but I have been procrastinating and they continue to languish. So I am going to document launching a membership site by the end of February which gives me 27 days. I am not sure if I will get it done but I will sure as heck try.

A list of idea

So I keep a list of ideas that I want to build courses around. But if that list doesn’t convert to an actual product, then its worthless. So lets get started.

Coffee

Many of you don’t know that I run a private label coffee business where I sell roasted to order coffee to gourmet coffee buyers. I also sell some local Kona coffee which is an easy sell since the restaurants that serve it do the advertising for me.

Anyone looking for either a side of full time business with a little bit of hustle, could do very well with a private label coffee or tea business. Compared to other consumable products business, the cost to start are low, margins can be good, and with the proper marketing, you can have a nice sustainable recurring business.

So my membership site will be how to create your own private label coffee business. This will be perfect for people that want to get into e-commerce, those in MLM that aren’t having success and can be done part time or full time. So high level overview will be:

• Sales Channel
• Defining different coffee tiers
• How to source and private label coffee
• How to create a website that sells
• Marketing your coffee store

So my to do for the next few days, I need to outline much of what I need to do.

Stay tuned.

February 4

So its Saturday, and I needed to move a little closer to getting this prepared. So today’s I outlined the course structure. I can be really bad about project management so I am using Asana which has a free tier to both outline and track my progress.

I may change things a little bit as I move a long but this will also allow me to go back to this as a template for future projects. I have already outlined the basic structure of the course. This will be a 4 part series. Part one will go through coffee culture as well how to find the coffee. Part 2 will talk about branding. Part 3 will talk about creating your website and part 4 will be marketing and selling your coffee.

I am thinking of doing one upsell. I tend to avoid WordPress for e-commerce and use hosted carts but maybe my up sell will be about using something like Woocommerce or Cart66 since the subscription service will be important. If you think I should just add it as a bonus, leave a comment below.

Two Hours Later…

Using Keynote, I have created 5 different slide decks to use in the Part 1 intro. Tomorrow I will start thinking about a domain name.

February 28, 2017

Ok, I failed. I failed at this challenge. This to often is why people fail at an online business. Not because their idea is terrible, but more often than not, you just don’t get it done. I will revisit this in the future but I got pulled into other projects that meant this one got placed to the side.

If you can leave a comment below on what you want from me in 2017, that would help me out a lot. This could be more instructional videos, behind the scenes or even early bird access to products, I want 2017 to be a year of giving to those of you that read me. If you can leave a comment below, or on my Youtube video, let me know what you want to see, I would appreciate it.

Some of the ideas I have include:

• Early Bird Access to products I create
• Weekly VLOG
• Behind the scenes
• Fast walk throughs
• Simple tutorials

I actually am not going to be prospecting for many web design clients this year as I am trying to concentrate on information products. I have 4 or 5 in the pipeline, several I am doing myself, and a few I am doing in collaboration with other people. So let me know.

Here is wishing you a successful and profitable 2017,

Chris

P.S. Here was a VLOG Video I Tried out.