Jetpack â Essential Security & Performance for WordPress

Five Ways a WooCommerce Backup Plugin Can Save Your Business

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 19:43:30 GMT

It takes a lot to build a successful online store, and the last thing you want is to lose all of that hard work. But permanently losing your website or customer data should never happen, because it’s completely avoidable. And if you use the best WooCommerce backup plugin — Jetpack Backup — it never will.

Here are five ways Jetpack Backup can save your website and your business.

1. It saves you time

Consider this scenario: Your site crashes for some reason, at the worst possible time, and you need to restore it immediately. Every second counts, because you have customers placing orders, visitors coming to your site, and ads running on social media.

But to restore your site, you first have to find the problem. What caused the crash? Will it keep happening? Then, you have to fix the problem. All this investigation takes time.

But with Jetpack Backup’s activity log, you can pinpoint the specific action that caused the crash and the exact moment it happened.

For example, the activity log would show you if your site went down right after a plugin update. With real-time backups from Jetpack, you can simply restore a copy of your shop to the moment right before, buying you time to troubleshoot and find a solution.

Or, let’s say you change the colors of your site, switch out some photos, and restructure your navigation, but aren’t happy with the result. With backups, it’s super easy to revert back to the original design.

Manual backups aren’t good enough

While manual backups are certainly better than no backups at all, they’re very time consuming. You have to personally back up your database, then connect via FTP to download all of your files. If you want a regular copy of your site, this could take hours each week. Manual backups are also tricky because:

They can slow down your server, causing your site to briefly time out.
You’re responsible for safely and securely storing them.
They require technical knowledge or a developer to help.

Think of all the time you’d have to invest. And that assumes you never need to use the backups! What then? Learn more about why you should avoid manual backups.

2. It protects against malware and security breaches

The worst reason to need a backup is a cyberattack. Your site could stop working, your customers could be tricked into giving away personal data, or you could suffer a damaged reputation and be penalized by Google. But this doesn’t have to be a concern if your data is continually backed up.

If you purchase Jetpack Security, which includes Jetpack Backup, it will regularly scan your site for malicious code, catching potential problems early. Jetpack helps secure your store even more with downtime monitoring and brute force protection. Learn more about these security features.

3. It safeguards your content, orders, and customer data

Your content is original and irreplaceable. So unless you have it backed up, if your site crashes, you can lose it all. An even bigger concern would be losing all the valuable customer data and order information you’ve accumulated from your sales.

Imagine losing all the digital assets that appear on your website:

Product photos
Marketing funnels
How-to videos
Comment threads
Blog posts
Order and customer information
Reviews

Losing these would be a total disaster. And trusting your host to manage backups isn’t good enough, because if your server is compromised, you won’t be able to access your files.

With Jetpack Backup, your files are stored in multiple locations. This redundancy prevents the situation just described from happening. Because it backs up your site every day, you can completely eliminate any fears of content or data loss. And if you choose real-time backups, a copy of your store is saved every time someone places an order, you update a product, or a customer leaves a review.

4. It ensures minimal revenue losses

If your site goes down and you have no backups, you might need to spend a bunch of money on a developer to recreate your store. Or, at the very least, you’ll need to spend your valuable time rebuilding it yourself. You can save almost all that money if you have a WooCommerce backup plugin in place.

You’ll also save money by dramatically reducing downtime. Every minute your site is down, that’s another order you’re missing out on and another customer lost to a competitor. But with Jetpack Backup, you can restore your site with a few clicks and be up and running again quickly.

5. It protects your reputation

If your site is hacked or down for too long, even your most loyal customers will begin to question your reputation. They don’t care about your data, but they care very much about theirs. And a crashed site is simply less trustworthy.

Your brand is on the line. A backup plugin like Jetpack Backup preserves your hard-earned reputation by keeping your data safe.

Try Jetpack Backup

Jetpack Backup is available in two versions: daily backups and real-time backups. For eCommerce stores, real-time backups are often the best choice, since your site is always updating with new orders, reviews, and products. But regardless of the option you choose, you can rest easy, knowing your customer information and hard work is protected.

Get started with Jetpack Backup

The Real Cost of Unlicensed Plugins

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 14:34:53 GMT

Note: Are you interested in how the Jetpack team investigates malware to help protect your site? Then we’ve got you covered. The takeaways are for everyone, but the second half of the article does require some technical knowledge of how WordPress works.

Creating your new business website or your personal blog is really exciting! Choosing a nice theme which will showcase your vision and selecting the proper plugins to deliver the best user experience is not an easy task, and it will most likely add to the cost of having this project up and running. Pirating software may be tempting as an easy cost-saving measure.

Besides software like Windows 10, Microsoft Office, or Adobe Creative Suite, you’ll find pirated WordPress extensions out there too. Downloading plugins and themes from sites that aren’t licensed distributors will only add to your cost in the long run. Let me explain why.

In 2018, BSA published the Global Software Survey, where it states some striking numbers:

37% of all software installed on personal computers is unlicensed
The cost of fixing malware or viruses installed from pirated software is nearly $360 billion a year

Some may argue that a pirated WordPress theme or plugin will do no harm to their computer, or doesn’t even represent a threat to their information since it’s running on someone else’s computer (also known as the cloud). This couldn’t be more wrong.

Question the sales pitch

Many software engineers rely on other companies to distribute and sell their work. In addition to legitimate distribution avenues, there are pirated software websites. They don’t have to worry about engineering code because they steal it to profit. They spend their time focusing on the sales pitch, since their only goal is to get you to download and install their pirated software.

Why pay the developers and the distributor if you can get it for free?

We encourage you to be cautious of any site that has lots of ads and download buttons which can confuse you and increase their bottom line by increasing their site clicks. Also, be on the lookout for clear violations of distribution like the example in the image above.

The deal with Mephistopheles – Reading the fine print

From German folklore, Faust, aiming gain more knowledge and power, made a deal with the Devil. Similarly, sites that provide pirated versions of WordPress extensions are not clear on what they’ll get in return, so you’re taking all the risk.

Don’t worry, we are here to help you understand the deal you’re really signing.

I downloaded this Cinematix Theme from a shady theme site. Immediately I noticed that the content of readme.txt file is the same as version 2.3 of default Twenty Seventeen theme.

Is it Cinematix or Twenty Seventeen theme?

We advise you do not do this yourself but since we’re security professionals I went ahead and followed the instructions. I renamed the directory name from nld_theme_index to cinematix. This felt completely unecessary and in fact it was.

In the themes section of my wp-admin I could see that the theme was installed but it seemed off because there was no preview picture. Perhaps if I activate it, then it will work?

No preview available, perhaps it’s just a matter of activating it.

After activation, I got a nice little message that I have to purchase the software! You will never be asked to purchase a theme license for a free theme from the WordPress directory. There are many great premium themes that require a purchase but that usually comes before you download. Do not pay for themes that you did not download from the developer or company that created them.

But the message said it was free… And what’s about that typo?

In the name of science, I’ll remove this lock and use the Cinematix theme for free.

As predicted this “Cinematix Theme” is actually just the free open source Twenty Seventeen theme in disguise. We saw this coming by looking at the readme.txt earlier.

Let’s dig into the code and see what we can find, but where do we start? The fake theme already gave us a hint when it tried to convince us to pay for a license we didn’t need. The THEME LICENCE INVALID, PLEASE PURCHASE message is not part of Twenty Seventeen and can be our guide to locate other nasty stuff.

I found this message on /inc/template-tags.php, which is also present on the original theme. However, the code isn’t, and it’s our first Indicator Of Compromise for this malware.

function licence_invalid() {
	echo '<h1 style="color:red;">THEME LICENCE INVALID, PLEASE PURCHASE.</h1>';
	die;
}
add_action('template_redirect', 'licence_invalid');

SHA1 – f0df1a134caf09e79b6e852dbcf853cbca4e04f6 nld-theme-index/inc/template-tags.php
MD5 – 7cb7118ed422d867b2fd0f607b056581 nld-theme-index/inc/template-tags.php

Everything that preceded that function was of course malicious and dangerous; let’s take a look:

The first function there ( getUserIpAddr()) is not bad by itself, but it’s used by the activate_nulled_theme() to provide information of the compromised site when phoning home.

The first thing it does is adding the wp_rest_apiuser as an Administrator to the site, and here we have our second Indicator of Compromise.

Not only are they trying to get you to buy a license you don’t need but they are also “phoning-home” (an opportunity for the malicious code to share information about your website with the author of the fake theme). You can see the code to phone-home in the wp-remote_post function, where it’s set to send your site’s URL, IP address, and credentials.

For those of you reading who aren’t experts what we are seeing here is that the malicious code in this pirated theme going to send a username and password to hackers so they can log into your site. This will give them access to private content, orders from e-commerce shops, and give them full control of your website.

In addition to all that, it drops a copy of this code /inc/adminindex.php to wp-includes, wp-admin and wp-content/uploads. Can you guess what this file does?

It is a File Upload Backdoor, giving the attacker your site’s address, an admin user, and a way to drop in any additional malware they want to add. This is our last indicator of compromise, though at this point it’s just icing on the malicious cake.

SHA1 – 6ab059929f89a77c698619a88de756f69a9f8c53 nld-theme-index/inc/adminindex.php
MD5 – 940864af2095f4fcfa646d45c1dd2366 nld-theme-index/inc/adminindex.php

Conclusion

Using pirated software can seem like an easy way to cut costs, but behind the curtains, it can be doing terrible things to your site and later to you or your visitors. Exploit kits, as our friends at MalwareBytes shared on this post, can be added to your site using this File Upload backdoor or the wp_rest_api user and used to attack any visitor’s browsers.

We strongly recommend that you have a security plan for your site that includes malicious file scanning and backups. Buying your software allows developers to continue their work, but more importantly, ensures your site and visitors are safe.

Jetpack 9.3: Happy New Year from Jetpack

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 14:06:34 GMT

It’s been a hard year for many of us, so we are excited to turn the page and move forward with renewed optimism into 2021. On behalf of the Jetpack team, we hope you and your business or hobby have a great year filled with success.

This has been a busy cycle for updates behind the scenes, improving site stability and optimizing performance of some of your favorite blocks:

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

Addison Stavlo, Alex Kirk, Andrei Demian, Andy Peatling, Ben Dwyer, Bernie Reiter, Biser Perchinkov, Brad Jorsch, Brandon Kraft, Case Silva, Chris Rosser, Christopher Allford, Damián Suárez, Dan Roundhill, Darren, Gary Jones, Gary Pendergast, George Stephanis, Glen Davies, Harris Papazolgou, Jason Moon, Jeremy Herve, Kim Brown, Konstantin Obenland, Leo Germani, Marek Hrabe, Mario Zorz, Matthew Denton, Michael Cain, Michael P. Pfeiffer, Miguel Torres, Paul Bunkham, Prappo Prince, Renzo Canepa, Robert Felty, Robert Franklin, Sergey Mitroshin, Sérgio Gomes, Staci Cooper, Terence Eden, Tony Arcangelini, Yaroslav Kukharuk.

How to Maximize Social Media in Less Time

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 16:00:00 GMT

Whether you’re a small business owner, online merchant, or blogger, social media is a valuable tool to grow your audience. It gives you the opportunity to connect with people where they already spend their time and enables fans and customers to share your content with their own friends, family, and followers.

But you probably don’t have hours of extra time to spend on social media, and hiring a professional may not be in your budget yet. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to maximize your efforts without taking up your entire day.

1. Batch your posts

Variety is the spice of life, and that’s never more true than on social media! Mix your latest posts and product announcements with testimonials, fun pictures or videos, and related content. In general, only a few out of every ten posts should directly promote your business or products.

Instead of logging in every day and trying to come up with something to post, plan in advance to make the most of your time. Choose one day a week to create and schedule all of your social posts for the next seven days. This gives you the opportunity to mix and match different types of posts to keep things interesting for your followers.

When should you schedule posts? Some platforms, like Facebook, provide data to help identify when your audience is online and which of your posts are most successful, but you should also experiment with days and times to find what works best for you.

You can also make decisions based on what you know about your audience and your website. A post encouraging people to call your office might not make sense to share on Saturday if you’re not open. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post anything. If you run a destination business that’s only open on Friday and Saturday nights, you can still post on a Monday. While people are bored at work, remind them to start planning their next weekend adventure!

With Jetpack’s free social sharing features, you can automatically publish your latest blog posts to your social media accounts as soon as they go live. And, with a paid upgrade, you can schedule future posts.

2. Share content from related brands

Just as you appreciate the funny or interesting things your friends share, your followers like to see these same kinds of updates from you. But it can be exhausting to constantly come up with fresh, unique ideas. If you work with partners like equipment or material suppliers, share some of their posts and ask them to do the same for you. It helps you stay top-of-mind, but takes a little of the burden off of you.

You can share anyone’s post as long as it’s related to what you do. If you sell pet toys, sharing a funny animal video makes sense because your followers probably appreciate that kind of content. Posting a car racing video doesn’t (unless a dog’s driving, of course.)

Here are a few ways you can find content:

Pinterest groups. If you use Pinterest, try joining group boards or Tailwind tribes, which are made up of members that focus on the same topic — fashion, cooking, design, etc. These groups provide nearly unlimited, curated content that your followers will love!
Google Alerts. Create alerts based on specific keywords — like your industry or brand name — and get emails with new articles and posts you can share.
Feed readers. Choose the topics and websites you want to follow and get updates every time they publish new content. Feedly is one great option.

3. Recycle evergreen content

Only a fraction of your social media followers see your post organically (without advertising) and since social media moves so quickly, many of them won’t remember it anyway. That’s exactly why it’s okay, and even advantageous, to share a post more than once — you’ll get it in front of more people!

But you don’t necessarily have to repost the exact same thing. That great blog post you spent so much time writing? Increase the chances that your followers read it by quoting new lines or sharing fresh images.

Just make sure you leave enough time between them — at least a few weeks — and post on a different day of the week than the original so you increase your chances of reaching new people.

With Jetpack’s premium social media sharing tools, you can quickly re-share existing blog posts directly from your WordPress dashboard.

4. Gather content from followers

People are quick to recognize advertisements and shy away from things they think are fake, but more than 90% of people trust recommendations from friends and family. This makes existing fans your best secret sauce! They aren’t paid actors; they’re genuinely interested in what you have to offer and are often eager to help.

Try creating a giveaway to gather images of customers using your products or written testimonials of why they love your brand. Or, if you’re a blogger, ask your fans to share their favorite books, dog toys, or recipes.

This is a great way to gather additional content that’s also completely authentic. Of course, make sure to get permission to share your followers’ images, names, and information.

5. Encourage followers to share your posts

Here’s another reason your fans are your secret sauce: each one of them has a circle of friends and family members who don’t know about your brand yet. Many of them would love to share your content with their friends — they might just need a little nudge.

Jetpack’s free sharing tools add buttons to the bottom of your blog posts that make it easy for readers to share them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

People like to share the things they love with friends and family — make it easy for them.

6. Make lists of reusable hashtags

Hashtags get your social media posts in front of people that are interested in similar topics. Though you can use them for commentary — #LovingThisNewQuiltingStyle — they’re mainly an organizational tool. So, someone passionate about quilting might search #quilting to see all kinds of interesting posts. If you sell quilting supplies, use that hashtag to get some exposure.

For hashtags to be effective, though, they have to be phrases that people actually search. The long hashtag example used above is not something that many people will look for. It might be a fun thing to include, but won’t get you more views.

Take the time upfront to research the most effective hashtags for your brand. When you type in a hashtag on Instagram, for example, related topics and search volumes will appear. Or, use quality research tools to find even more ideas and information.

Then, create groups of related hashtags that you can quickly copy and paste each time you post on social media. For example, if you’re a lifestyle blogger, you might create a set for travel and another for outfit ideas. This makes it easy to grab and go when you’re batch scheduling posts.

7. Focus on a couple of platforms

There are dozens of social media platforms and you don’t need to have a presence on every single one. In fact, if you spread your efforts too thin, you may not be effective on any of them!

Instead, focus on a few that are most impactful for your business and spend time creating engaged, active communities.

Not sure which ones to pursue? Find out where your audience spends their time and compare social media platforms here.

8. Automate what you can

Which social media management tasks do you find yourself doing over and over again? See if there’s a way to automate them. The first place to start is with the Jetpack social media tools we’ve already mentioned.

But you can take it even a step further. IFTTT is a free tool that connects apps and devices for seamless automation. You can automatically do things like:

Share content from your RSS feed to Facebook or Twitter.
Post new YouTube videos to Facebook.
Change your Twitter profile photo if you update your Facebook profile photo.

But the options are endless. What tasks can you automate?

9. Set time limits

Set specific time windows to respond to comments and engage with social media followers. Instead of randomly checking in, set a timer for, say, 15 minutes at the beginning and end of your work day. When the timer goes off, move on to another task. This keeps you focused on what you’re doing and prevents you from spending too much time on social media.

But, depending on your priorities, this might not be possible for everyone. If your brand needs to constantly monitor social posts, consider hiring someone who can provide simple interactions and answer basic questions.

Make the most of your time

Remember to keep things fun, be authentic, and get your fans involved! Jetpack’s social sharing tools and the strategies above can save you hours of time while still making the most of social media. Get started with Jetpack today.

Why Influencers Need a WordPress Site

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:54:43 GMT

If you’re a social media influencer, you’re no stranger to creating engaging content. You’ve built a loyal following that’s excited about what you have to say. Now’s the perfect time to expand and protect that audience with your own website.

Photo © https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/

Benefits of a website

You may be familiar and successful with one or two social media platforms. Why change what you’re doing? Your own website allows you to:

Fully own and protect your content. You spend a lot of time creating posts, images, videos, recipes, or podcasts and that content is the foundation of your business. But social media platforms can deactivate your account or remove any of your posts if they determine (at their own discretion) that you’re violating their terms and conditions. Your website, however, isn’t dependent on the decisions of third parties — your content is only deleted if you delete it yourself.
Have full control over your following. While social media is an excellent way to reach and connect with your audience, you have very little control over who sees your posts. At any point, Facebook or Instagram could change their algorithms and the strategy that’s worked for you so far won’t be the right one anymore. On your website, you can capture email addresses and reach your subscribers via email, where you know your content will land in their inbox.
Have flexibility around your design, branding, and content. On social media, you’re limited by photo size, word count, and layout. On Instagram, your photos will always be square and on Facebook, your profile photo will always be round. The platform logo and colors will always be on the page. But you can build your site however you’d like — use any colors, fonts, style, or design. Feature rich photo galleries. Write long blog posts. The sky’s the limit!
Expand your influence to other areas. You may be making money from social media now, but your other opportunities are somewhat limited. With a website, however, you can generate money from advertising, sponsored content, services, courses, products — whatever you feel like adding to your brand.
Reach a larger audience. With a website, you can create content that’s optimized for search engines. This helps you show up higher in search engine rankings, so you’re visible to an entirely new audience, one that’s specifically looking for what you have to say. Read how interior design influencer, Kylie M., uses a website with great content and powerful search engine optimization, to get 50,000 page views a day.
Avoid distractions and competing content. When one of your followers views your posts on social media, there are nearly endless distractions vying for their attention — advertisements, posts from competitors, messages from friends, and even cat videos. On your site, you have much more control over what they view on the screen and can more easily keep them from going elsewhere.

Photo © https://www.deliciousdays.com/

Why build a website with WordPress

Now that you know why a website is important, you need to decide how to build one. WordPress is the leading website building tool, powering nearly 40% of the web. It was designed specifically for content creators and makes it possible for non-developers to create a beautiful, effective site. Here are just a few of the other benefits:

It’s affordable to get started. WordPress itself is completely free. All you need is a domain name (the URL someone will type to access your site) and a host (a company that stores your site files and makes them publicly viewable.) Domain names typically cost around $14/yr and hosting costs around $7.99/mo. If you’re looking for the simplest way to start a WordPress site, check out WordPress.com.
You can choose from tons of themes. Themes define the design and layout of your site. There are thousands of free and paid options, many of which are specifically designed for travel, fashion, or food influencers. You’re sure to find a style that you love.
It was built for content. WordPress was originally created as a publishing system, and that passion for high-quality content is still at its core. You can seamlessly add blog posts, videos, podcasts, recipes, images, and more.
You can create pages and posts without code. Don’t worry about learning a single line of code! The WordPress block editor lets you add text, images, buttons, galleries, videos, tables, and more just by clicking a few buttons. Drag and drop these elements (called blocks) to create any layout you’d like.
Use plugins to extend functionality. A WordPress plugin adds functionality and features to your website, making it possible to build virtually anything. Enhance your comment system, add quizzes or polls, display a calendar of events…the options are endless.
The WordPress community is unrivaled. WordPress is developed by a large group of contributors who are truly passionate about helping everyone be successful. Those contributors — along with thousands of other people who use WordPress — develop plugins, provide guidance, and work together to better the web. If you ever need help, it’s readily available in support forums, meetups, and Facebook groups.

Amplify your website with Jetpack

Jetpack is the ultimate WordPress toolkit, providing everything you need to amplify your marketing, security, and design in one place. There are both free and paid plans available, along with unrivaled support.

Create engaging content

Your followers value your content — they watch it, read it, listen to it, and incorporate it into their daily lives. Make it as engaging as possible so you can keep existing followers interested. Jetpack provides tools that add the following to your site:

Tiled galleries: Add beautiful galleries to pages and posts. Showcase your favorite outfits, pictures from your vacation, or top recipes.
Slideshows: Grab attention with slideshows that feature the best of your images.
Podcast players: Embed recent podcast episodes directly into pages and posts. Existing followers will have another way to listen and you may gain new subscribers as well.
Pinterest boards: Add boards and pins from your Pinterest account into posts. If you’re writing about fall fashion ideas, add your board with sweaters and boots. If you’re sharing a cupcake recipe, add your board with dessert ideas.
Related posts: Automatically share related topics so that site visitors can keep reading what they’re interested in. For example, if your post is about a kids’ nature scavenger hunt, readers may also like one about leaf crafts.
Instagram posts: Display your latest images on your site. Add them to the bottom of pages to drive more traffic to your Instagram account.

Reach new and existing followers

Even though you have a great audience, you always want to expand. Jetpack helps you connect with existing followers, reach new people, and turn them into loyal readers.

Subscription forms: Collect email addresses in exchange for free content or updates. Jetpack offers several ways to do this — use the Subscription block to simply notify followers of new posts or the Creative Mail integration to send emails right from your dashboard.
Social share buttons: Add buttons to your blog posts so readers can easily share to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. This is a great way to expand your audience.
Automated social media publishing: With a paid plan, you can automatically share new blog posts to your social media accounts and re-share your most popular content.

Improve your site experience

An easy-to-use website experience keeps followers coming back and even improves your search engine rankings. Jetpack helps by offering the following free and paid features:

Search tools: Make it easy for readers to find exactly what they’re looking for on your site. Add powerful filters that help them drill down to a specific post and prioritize your most important content.
Video hosting: Add videos to your site without the ads and competing content that come with services like YouTube. Load them quickly, so site visitors don’t have to deal with frustrating buffering.
Speed optimization tools: If your website doesn’t load quickly, visitors might leave and go to someone else’s blog. Prevent that by putting the proper speed measures in place.
Security features: Protect your site (and followers!) from intruders with an entire suite of security tools. If anything ever does go wrong, restore a backup to get your site back to normal quickly.
Spam protection: Get rid of unwanted comments that negatively affect your reputation and put your followers at risk.

Generate revenue

If you want to generate more revenue and expand what you offer to followers, Jetpack has everything you need.

Ad program: Display high-quality, relevant ads on your site and make money off of each click.
Payment tools: Accept one-time or recurring payments for consultations, appearances, events, or products.
eCommerce: Want to sell your own line of clothing, cookbooks, or makeup? Use Jetpack with WooCommerce to create an online store that’s completely customizable and can grow with you.

Expand your influence with WordPress and Jetpack

As an influencer, you understand the importance of quality content and an engaged following. Building your own website is the perfect way to create great resources for your audience, have full control over your brand, generate more revenue, and reach new people.

WordPress and Jetpack are here to help you create a beautiful, customized website that’s effective, secure, and easy to use. The best part? You’ll get support from an entire community of people that want you to be successful.

Get started with WordPress and Jetpack.

What Is a CRM and Does Your Business Need One?

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:37:24 GMT

Do you feel like you’re always behind in your business no matter how hard you work? Are you failing to follow up with customers and missing out on new revenue? Are you struggling to understand what’s working and what’s not? As common as these feelings are for business owners and entrepreneurs, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Running any business requires an array of procedures, tasks, and details. The goal of a CRM is to make these tasks easier to complete. Once you start effectively using a CRM, your company will run more efficiently, increase sales, and track contact data better.

For new entrepreneurs just starting out, a CRM is an essential startup tool that will give you an edge over the competition so you don’t feel like you’re always climbing uphill.

What is a CRM?

A CRM — customer relationship management — is a software tool that coordinates many of the background tasks that are essential to running and growing a business. It can automate many of the things you would otherwise do manually or using disconnected, impossible-to-organize forms, docs, and pages.

Suppose a new customer calls you and has questions. You answer their questions, promise to email them more information, and then hang up.

What happens next?

Without a CRM, all too often nothing happens next. You get distracted with new calls, forget exactly what you promised, and diminish your opportunity to turn a lead into a sale.

A CRM makes it easier to implement a customer follow-up system. But following up on leads is just one of a hundred tasks you need to do as part of running and growing your business.

Let’s take a deeper dive into some tasks a CRM enables you to complete more efficiently, consistently, and profitably.

How Jetpack CRM helps your business

Jetpack CRM was built just for entrepreneurs — specifically those using WordPress to start or expand their company. The result is a streamlined solution with all the basic features small business users need and extensions to grow along with you.

Customer communications

When a customer calls, a good CRM enables you to record the details, preserve the record, and implement and keep track of your follow-up efforts. Jetpack CRM makes logging call information and setting up follow-up tasks very easy.

Payment processes

Your CRM should be able to easily sync with payment and eCommerce platforms like PayPal, WooCommerce, and Stripe. You’ll be able to track payments according to each customer account over time and visualize sales data cleanly. This is especially valuable for eCommerce businesses, since all your customer transactions happen online.

Data tracking and monetization

As your CRM accumulates data, you’ll be able to start tracking key metrics like average revenue per customer and average sales per week, month, or year. Run growth reports to identify weak spots and missed marketing opportunities, as well as waste.

Suppose you’ve been running a ‘back to school’ marketing campaign for several years every August and September. Your CRM data reveals your revenue was actually lower in those months than the rest of the year. That might mean these marketing campaigns aren’t working very well and you may profit by optimizing them or trying another approach.

Quoting and invoicing

With quote templates and multiple ways to send invoices, you’ll be able to convert leads into customers much faster. No more printing, scanning, or faxing to get them critical documents. Suppose your current invoicing process takes five minutes per transaction. If your CRM enabled you to reduce that to two minutes, you just got 60% of that time back.

By automating and standardizing these sorts of processes, you’ll not only save time, but will close more sales because leads won’t be left hanging. And if they decide to buy, Jetpack CRM efficiently turns a quote into an invoice in a professional way.

Email marketing

By integrating email with other CRM data, you’ll be able to segment your customer list into actionable groups. Suppose you want to run an email campaign for customers who have spent over $500 with you and live in a particular city. That’s no problem for a CRM that pairs purchase data for each customer with their email and contact information.

You can send individual emails, group emails, and targeted emails using customizable templates and you’ll have the full array of CRM data at your disposal to create hyper-specific segments.

Want to send something to everyone who hasn’t yet made a purchase? Jetpack CRM can quickly produce that list. How about a special loyalty reward offer to every customer who has been with you for more than three years?

What else can Jetpack CRM do?

The biggest complaints almost any business or nonprofit has about CRMs pertain to ease of use. They don’t do what they want and are too clunky to use. It’s rare to find a business owner who ‘loves’ their CRM.

The developers of Jetpack CRM took these common experiences to heart to create an easy-to-use, customizable tool built specifically for WordPress. Jetpack CRM:

Is customizable and cost effective

The power of WordPress is its customizability. With a modular approach, Jetpack CRM continues the tradition, letting you pick which features you need and remove anything that clutters up the experience. That’s why it remains the best value when it comes to CRM options, even with no customer limits.

Makes setup easy

Jetpack CRM includes a helpful Welcome Wizard that makes it easy to get set up. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own.

Works internationally

It has international compatibility for language and currency, so just about anyone from any country can use it.

Includes a B2B mode

Turning this feature on lets you assign contacts to each company so you know who you’ve spoken with in the past.

See many more features of Jetpack CRM here.

Make running and growing your business easier and smoother than you ever thought it could be. Get started with Jetpack CRM.

If you’re also looking for site security, real-time backups, or custom site search, check out Jetpack Complete, which includes the Entrepreneur level of Jetpack CRM.

Jetpack 9.2: Ready for WordPress 5.6

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 14:34:09 GMT

Jetpack 9.2 is now available. Give the latest version a try, by installing Jetpack or updating your existing installation.

In this release, we’ve focused on maintenance work to ensure that Jetpack remains compatible with the upcoming version of WordPress, version 5.6, scheduled to be released on December 8th, 2020.

WordPress 5.6 comes with a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-One. Give the new theme a try — it’s fully compatible with Jetpack!

Viewing blocks in subscription emails and RSS feeds

In the past couple of years we’ve released quite a few blocks. Those tools can help you build your business’ website, interact with your customers, and write posts. In this release, we’ve improved the Form, Payments, Slideshow, and Podcast blocks to make sure they not only look good on your site, but also in RSS feeds and subscription emails sent to your followers.

And more

We’ve also made Publicize — the tool you can use to automatically broadcast your posts across your social networks — more robust and reliable.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

Aaron Robertshaw, Alex Forcier, Andy Peatling, Bernie Reiter, Brad Jorsch, Brandon Kraft, Caroline Moore, Chris Rosser, Damián Suárez, Dan Roundhill, Dave Smith, Dion Hulse, Enej Bajgoric, Foteini Giannaropoulou, Henry Ng, Jason Moon, Jeremy Herve, Jeremy Yip, Jonny Harris, Kim Brown, Kirk Wight, Konstantin Obenland, Leo Germani, Marcelo Serpa, Marek Hrabe, Matthew Denton, Mario Zorz, Paul Bunkham, Ramon Dodd, Renzo Canepa, Sergey Mitroshin, Tugdual de Kerviler, Will Norris, Yaroslav Kukharuk.

Nine Ways to Prepare Your WordPress Site for the Holidays

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 14:37:00 GMT

If you had to describe the holidays in a single word, from the perspective of many who run a website, it would be this: busy.

The holidays are a busy time, and for many companies, the most important time of the year. And not just because of sales. Schedules adjust. Employees take time off. B2B businesses change their routines. Bloggers create new holiday content.

So whether you’re hoping to increase sales revenue, draw more traffic to your site, or keep your customers or readers in the loop, there’s a lot to do.

The last thing you want is to be scrambling to put out fires and make last minute updates because you didn’t plan ahead.

1. Communicate clearly

If you’re a retail or online business and you have holiday sales, feature them on your website and make sure the offer is crystal clear. Include shipping details, special hours, in-store events, and curbside pickup information. Make these things easy to find by using special popups for the holiday season or including banners at the top of the page.

2. Check your site’s speed

A slow site can be disastrous for business, especially during the holidays when people are shopping around and wanting to get it done as fast as possible. If your site loads too slowly, people won’t wait.

Jetpack offers several tools for speeding up your site, including a site accelerator and lazy loading features. Learn more about Jetpack’s speed tools.

Not sure how quickly your site loads? Use tools like GTMetrix and Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find out.

3. Go the extra mile to serve customers

Customer service is so often what determines where the money goes. Give bad service, and you’ll make less money. Don’t treat your customers and readers like inconveniences. They’re the most important people in your life!

If you’re a restaurant, don’t just say you offer curbside pickup. Explain any relevant details. Does the customer wait outside? Go into the welcome desk? Use their phone to say when they’re there? Don’t make them guess. Make it easy.

If you sell online, give more than one payment option, especially for larger purchases. Consider offering “buy now, pay later” options or allowing monthly installments. Accept multiple payment methods — like PayPal, credit cards, Apple Pay, and more — for optimal convenience.

If you have special extended or reduced hours on particular days, don’t bury them on your site. Make them impossible to miss. This is especially true for retail stores and restaurants — and especially with all the confusion caused by COVID-19 — the last thing you want is for customers to show up to a darkened store.

4. Make sure your site is mobile responsive

Check your site on devices of all sizes: desktops, tablets, and phones. Make sure it’s easy to use, nothing’s cut off, and visitors can find what they’re looking for instantly. If you don’t, you’re missing out on traffic, sales, and search engine rankings.

5. Secure your site in advance

A website going down during the busy holiday season can be catastrophic. Don’t let it happen to you.

With malware scanning, backups, brute force protection, and many other security features available through Jetpack Security, you can protect your site from attacks, restore it fast if it goes down, and keep it running smoothly and reliably.

6. Write specialized content

If you’re a blogger, you could create content that readers will appreciate and find valuable. Go for super practical stuff here: gift guides, special recipes, outfits for holiday occasions, time-saving tips, activities for kids, getting along with cranky relatives, and whatever else fits within your niche.

If you’re a B2B company, you could write about what’s happening during the holidays, including special hours and how you can be reached in an emergency. Think about what your clients might need, and explain how they can get it.

If you’re a restaurant, you could announce holiday specials like limited-time desserts and drinks, as well as free gifts with particular purchases.

7. Make sure key pages and processes are working

If you’re an eCommerce store, walk through your purchase process. Do you receive order confirmation emails? Do customers see receipts and order summaries? Is the process easy to get through or confusing?

Also, test important links throughout your site, including those that go to important holiday information pages.

You can also implement Jetpack Search to make your site easier to use. It’s a robust tool that allows visitors to quickly find what they’re looking for.

8. Run load tests

A load test, also known as a stress test, is a process that simulates how a surge in traffic impacts your site.

Imagine a big-name celebrity or niche influencer mentioning your blog or product. Or a well-known brand linking to a page on your site. Maybe your Cyber Monday deal goes viral. These and many other events can cause a surge in web traffic that can overwhelm your system, depending on your host and other factors.

A load test is a way to find out in advance how your site will perform in such a scenario. Find more information on load testing.

9. Automate as much as possible

You’ll be busy during the holidays, just like your customers and visitors. The more you can set up now to run on autopilot, the less you’ll have to worry about when things get busy.

If you’re an online store, write and schedule your emails in advance. These messages are critical for communicating with customers. After checkout, they should get a receipt, and if they agreed to marketing messages, should later get new offers and deals. You can also set up autoresponders for people who abandon their carts before checkout — a proven way to boost revenue.

If you’re a B2B business, you can automate appointments using Jetpack’s Calendly block. And if you’re a blogger, you can automatically set blog posts to go out on social media.

Have your best holiday season yet

Preparing your WordPress site now to handle increases in holiday traffic and serve customer needs will reward you with a more relaxed December, and better outcomes for your website or business.

Jetpack offers an array of tools to make all this happen in the simplest way possible.

Prepare your site for the holidays

Black Friday Sale – Save 40% on all new purchases

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:00:00 GMT

With the holidays around the corner, your to-do list is piling high. But it’s not just a busy time for you and your customers, it’s also busy season for hackers. A report released by Infoblox in 2019 showed that 31% of retail IT professionals saw an increase in cyberattacks during the holiday season.

Check one thing off your list by letting Jetpack manage your site security. Jetpack Security provides easy-to-use, comprehensive WordPress site security including backups, malware scanning, and spam protection. Let us guard your site so you can focus on more important things.

Save 40% on all new purchases through November 30 — use code JETBLACK at checkout.

There’s no better time to make sure your site is protected. Stay ahead of security threats and get back online quickly to minimize lost sales.

Save 40% now.

No code required: Build a fast, world-class WordPress site

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 17:00:00 GMT

This post was written by Dan Walmsley, Lead Architect for Jetpack.

We spend more of our lives online than ever before. Whether you are building a business or expressing your creative side, you need a website that is fast, beautiful, and able to gracefully present your biggest ideas. And with search engines prioritizing performance more than ever, a slow website can really hurt your ability to optimize your SEO.

In this article, we’ll discuss how just two plugins working together, Jetpack and the official AMP for WordPress plugin, will give you world-class performance and SEO. Are you ready? Let’s go!

The Plugin Conundrum

WordPress’ 55,000+ plugins give you a lot of power, but finding the right plugin can be difficult. Once you’ve chosen your plugins, making everything fast is a huge challenge — each plugin adds its own files to the page, bogging down your site.

Often the only option is to edit the plugin or theme itself. This leads many site owners to hire expert help, which can get expensive fast.

One of the best tools for making a fast website is AMP, originally created by Google and now a part of the OpenJS Foundation. AMP does a lot to improve performance automatically, but the AMP ecosystem is still growing and is thus not compatible with all other WordPress plugins just yet.

What if there was another plugin, that when paired with AMP provided an even simpler solution for non-programmers? Good news, now there is a way to get all the power and performance you need for almost any website from one set of tools.

AMP + Jetpack: Simplicity, power, and speed

Over the last six months, Google and Jetpack have worked closely with XWP, a premier WordPress development agency, to create a high performance all-in-one toolkit for WordPress.

Jetpack has always been one of the best all-in-one plugins for WordPress. With over 25 blocks and 30 widgets, Jetpack provides all the features that most websites need in one place — stats, social sharing, payment buttons, video hosting, a podcast player, and much more. Plus, with built-in backups, anti-spam and malware scanning, you can rest easy that your site and data are protected.

The official AMP for WordPress plugin, built by AMP project contributors including Google and XWP, provides out-of-the-box solutions to help minimize the amount of resources needed to build and maintain sites that perform consistently well.

By using these plugins together, you get all the features you need to build a beautiful, fast, modern website with no coding required.

Getting Started

Installing and configuring Jetpack

Head to “Plugins > Add New” ([your site URL]/wp-admin/plugins-install.php). Browse or use the search box to find Jetpack, then install and activate it.

When prompted, click Set Up Jetpack.

Installing and configuring AMP

Again, head to “Plugins > Add New” ([your site URL]/wp-admin/plugins-install.php). Browse or use the search box to find AMP, then install and activate it.

Once the plugin is activated, click the AMP “Settings” link from the plugins list, and then configure the AMP plugin to use “Standard Mode”. This tells WordPress to use AMP to render every page on your site. (Using Standard Mode within the AMP Plugin requires using an AMP-compatible theme – visit the AMP for WordPress plugin site to learn more about the various configuration options available for using AMP and Jetpack, even if you are not using an AMP-compatible theme).

Anything is possible

That’s it! You’re ready to go. With Jetpack and AMP, you have all the power to build a website that truly stands out, with blazing fast performance and top-notch SEO.

Now that you’re set with the backbone of a great website, check out how you can use Jetpack blocks to add all types of engaging content. Once again, no coding needed.

Jetpack 9.1: Focusing on Compatibility

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 14:05:49 GMT

Jetpack 9.1 ships several under-the-hood improvements and bug fixes that make Jetpack’s features work even better for you and your website. This month, we focused on improving compatibility of the Jetpack plugin with other plugins you may be using on your site:

We’ve improved how Jetpack’s comments, embeds, blocks, and Google Analytics features work with the AMP plugin.
We’ve added support for Google’s Web Stories plugin to our Open Graph Meta tags.
We’ve improved the performance of the block editor when using Jetpack alongside the Gutenberg plugin.
You can now track WooCommerce events with Jetpack’s Google Analytics feature, even when using the AMP plugin.

Jetpack is more than the sum of its code — it is the collective work of an amazing group of designers, product experts, Happiness Engineers, and code wranglers at Automattic. Does distributed work sound interesting to you? Check out our CEO Matt Mullenweg’s Distributed podcast. Want to join the fun and make the web a better place? Come on and work with us!

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

Alex Forcier, Allison Levine, Andy Peatling, Anna Foldvari, Ash White, Atanas Angelov, Ben Dwyer, Bernie Reiter, Brad Jorsch, Brandon Kraft, Caroline Moore, Chris Rosser, Claudiu Filip, Claudiu Lodromanean, Damián Suárez, David Biňovec, Derek Smart, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, Foteini Giannaropoulou, Francesco Marino, Gary Pendergast, George Stephanis, Glen Davies, Grant Kinney, Harris Papazolgou, Illusaen, Jason Moon, Jeremy Herve, Jonny Harris, Joseph Scott Evans, Kevin Zoschke, Kim Brown, Konstantin Obenland, Leo Germani, Marek Hrabe, Marin Atanasov, Matt Gawarecki, Matthew Denton, Matthew Reishus, Miguel Torres, Paul Bunkham, Rob Pugh, Scott Evans, Sergey Mitroshin, Tom Cafferkey, Tugdual de Kerviler, Weston Ruter, Yaroslav Kukharuk.

Create Beautiful, Effective Real Estate Sites with Jetpack

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 16:00:00 GMT

Long before signing a contract on their new property, nearly half of all potential home buyers turn to the internet to start their search. This means that, for both agents and brokers alike, there’s real opportunity to attract new clients and streamline the process for existing ones.

But to be effective, real estate sites need to have reliable, up-to-date information and be well designed to capture and keep attention. WordPress, with the help of Jetpack, is the perfect platform for any agent looking to boost their online presence.

Key features of successful real estate websites

Creating a visually-pleasing and easy-to-navigate site should be your first priority. Your homepage should display everything your customers need and convince them to access other features on the site. Here’s how to make that happen:

Responsive web design

With people using more types, shapes, and sizes of devices than ever before, you must ensure that you have a responsive layout that works well on each one. If not, you could be missing out on a significant chunk of incoming traffic. Using a responsive WordPress theme is a great place to start.

Advanced search

Search is incredibly important for real estate sites. Add an advanced search bar where users can filter results to find listings and compare them based on price, number of rooms, building size, location, or backyard space.

Informative guides

Establish your business as a trustworthy source for information on your area to draw in customers who are skeptical about relocating. Buyers will be curious about the neighborhood itself, so providing them with a thorough guide on local attractions is a great opportunity to establish expertise and attract new clients.

Beyond neighborhood guides, walk them through the buying and selling process. Position yourself as an authority by sharing home improvement tips and helpful advice on topics like financing or taking out loans.

Photo galleries and virtual tours

Stellar image galleries keep users engaged with your property listings. Upload high-resolution images or video tours of well-furnished interiors to get homes on potential buyers’ wishlists. They can preview a wide range of properties without having to step outside their house.

Contact forms for lead generation

Set up a contact form so people can ask you for an in-depth overview of the properties on your site. Encourage visitors to join an email list to receive important notifications and updates on new listings. And remember, clients prefer working with agents who respond in a timely manner.

Build an amazing real estate website with Jetpack

If you own a WordPress site, or are starting one, plugins are a natural way to extend functionality and optimize the visitor experience.

But installing too many plugins can be detrimental, which is why Jetpack is a great all-in-one tool to boost performance, marketing, security, and design.

Video hosting

Videos convert on-the-fence customers by supplying them with easily-digestible information they can watch anywhere and any time. And videos are perfect for hosting virtual tours when people are reluctant to attend in person.

Unlike other services, Jetpack’s video hosting for WordPress feature lets viewers watch clips directly on your site without the distraction or interruption of ads. Its high-speed CDN ensures your site visitors won’t leave because of long load times. And there’s no need to pay for additional bandwidth, because it includes unlimited storage.

Jetpack Backup

User error, hackers, or updates gone wrong can result in a crashed site. Buyers looking for your listings and potential clients seeking to work with you will be met with an embarrassing error message. With all of the work put into your site, you’ll want to keep a copy of it on-hand in case something goes wrong. If it does, restore it with a single click using Jetpack Backup.

Activity log

The activity log displays every action that takes place on your site, along with who took them and when they occurred. Monitor what happens even while you’re away negotiating contracts with soon-to-be homeowners.

Jetpack Search

Jetpack Search is a smart, effective tool that lets users retrieve the content they need from your site. Instead of digging through hundreds of listings, visitors can find the right house in an instant.

It’s easy to set up, so you can focus on making each listing attractive with beautiful images and great descriptions. You can even create searchable tags for pricing, beds, baths, and more.

The Map Block

With the Map Block, you can quickly add maps to any page or post.

This compels visitors to look up the exact address of available properties and gives them directions on how to get there. You can edit markers to make them more visible and prevent listings from blocking each other.

Another feature of the map block is the ability to zoom out of an area, in case users want to survey nearby towns and cities or determine if a house is within driving distance from where they currently live.

29th Street

Calendly Block

The Calendly Block offers convenient calendar solutions for coordinating business activities. List open houses or book showings, meetings, and appointments. Easily coordinate times with clients and never double-book again.

Contact forms

Visitors often prefer to send a contact form rather than write an email or call. Your professional site shouldn’t settle for basic, insecure forms, but you also need a tool that’s easy to set up and maintain, so you can stay on top of new leads.

Jetpack’s contact form collects customer responses and delivers them straight to your email. You won’t have to learn any code; it comes with a drag-and-drop editor and the ability to create custom fields. Pair it with Jetpack Anti-spam to save time fielding fake queries.

Image Compare

The Image Compare Block has a slider that lets users toggle between two different pictures, both horizontally and vertically. It’s a handy tool for promoting your staging services or featuring the before and after of a recent remodel. Or, show what a room looks like with and without furniture.

Tiled Galleries

Many real estate sites employ beautiful galleries to display their listings in the best possible way. Tiled Galleries add a unique style to your image layout, transforming ordinary photos into head-turning previews. Create stunning layouts to enhance your real estate marketing and display properties from every angle.

Tiled Galleries work the same way as image blocks, except you can assign a gallery type, choosing between square, circular, or mosaic tiles.

Slideshows

You need to make a glowing first impression on your clients. This means displaying attractive visuals they won’t be able to resist. Of course, do this tastefully, with the right balance of interactive elements, images, and text.

Jetpack’s Slideshow Block is the perfect solution: It has the ability to change slide transition effects for dynamic showings and includes an autoplay function to move images along for easier viewing.

Conquer real estate with Jetpack

Owning your own WordPress site can take your real estate business to new heights. But you don’t want it to take too much time to manage, or become burdened with dozens of different plugins and services. That’s why Jetpack’s suite of all-in-one solutions is loved by so many WordPress experts and site owners around the world.

Get started with Jetpack.

The Types of Malware Jetpack Scan Catches

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:11:00 GMT

No one wants malware on their site. It leads to lost traffic, sales, and visitor trust. If your website is your business, it could have huge financial implications.

Websites are hacked more often than you think — 30,000 times per day or more — and sites of all sizes are targets. The bots that carry out hacks aren’t looking for specific websites or people, just vulnerabilities they can exploit.

Almost 39% of all websites use WordPress, which means hackers often target WordPress sites first, for the biggest impact possible. But thanks to its huge popularity and community of contributors, vulnerabilities are usually found early and fixed fast.

Jetpack Scan monitors your website and alerts you if it finds something wrong. Let’s take a look at how hackers can access your site, the types of threats they cause, and why Jetpack Scan is the best method of protection.

How hackers access websites

There are a variety of ways hackers can access your site, including:

WordPress core: Out-of-date software, like WordPress, sometimes contains vulnerabilities that make it easier for hackers to get into your website.
Plugins and themes: “Nulled” themes and plugins — premium versions offered for free or for a low price — are often full of malicious code and are the source of a lot of malware infections. And also, just like with WordPress core, out-of-date plugins and themes are often taken advantage of by hackers.
Servers: Old versions of software (like PHP) don’t have the newest security features that protect your site.
Your login page: Insecure, simple usernames and passwords make it easy for hackers to guess your credentials and gain access.

Every plugin or theme you upload adds more potential vulnerabilities to your website. Limiting these to only the most important (and to the ones you actually use) is critical to staying safe.

Types of threats

Most WordPress hacks fall into one of the following categories:

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities within a theme or plugin. These happen when the data a user enters (e.g., filling out a form) isn’t sanitized to ensure that any code submitted is not executed in the visitor’s browser. The attacker will look for vulnerabilities so they can execute their own JavaScript code on your site visitor’s computer without having access.
Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) exploits occur when a user is tricked into doing something they didn’t intend to do. An example is a malicious link that resets a user’s password.
SQL injections allow an attacker to execute commands on your database to delete, modify, or steal data.
Back doors give attackers access to your site or server without having credentials. The attacker places a script (line of code) on your server — often through an insecure plugin — that lets them modify your site at will.
Brute force attacks are the simplest attacks — but they’re effective. An attacker tries thousands of username and password combinations that are commonly used on websites until they find the right one.
Open redirects are when URL parameters (which show up after a question mark in a URL) redirect a user to another website without any validation. These often occur after someone logs in or updates account information, and can be used for very convincing phishing attacks. A user might be redirected to a clone of their bank’s website, for example, where hackers can steal vital banking information.

How do attackers exploit compromised websites?

Hackers use these vulnerabilities to:

Inject unwanted ads for things like shady pharmacies and adult content.
Set up phishing scams, like fake anti-virus software.
Create ‘drive-by’ downloads causing site visitors to unintentionally download malicious files containing viruses or malware.
Steal data, like valuable customer information.
Bring down a website by deleting your database or critical website files.
Hijack your hosting resources for their own purposes. Since many hosting providers allocate set resources for each site, this can slow your site down or cause you to exceed bandwidth limits.

The impact of a hack

A hacked website suffers a variety of consequences, including:

A drop in search engine results. Many businesses rely on organic search results for most of their traffic. If Google notices you’ve been hacked, you may slip in the rankings.
Placement on Google’s internal “black list.” When users visit your site, they may see a warning that your site is unsafe, costing you customers before you can even greet them.
Loss of customer trust. If potential customers arrive on a site full of spam, they’ll lose confidence in your business and look elsewhere.
Financial loss. This can come in the form of fleeing customers or reduced traffic, but also fines. In 2019, British Airways was fined a record £183 million (approximately $240 million) for a data breach where hackers gained access to 500,000 customers’ data.
Time and expense. Unless you know how to fix a hacked site, you’ll need to pay someone to do it for you.

The solution: Jetpack Scan

At the time of writing, WPScan Vulnerability Database (sponsored by Automattic, the people behind Jetpack) has 21,688 known vulnerabilities in its database — that’s a lot! These are continually evolving and difficult to spot, so it’s important to have a tool that constantly checks your website. While you can never have 100% website protection, regular scans significantly lower the amount of damage a hack can cause.

This is where Jetpack Scan comes in. You don’t want to find out from your customers that you’ve been hacked! Let Jetpack protect your business, for a low monthly cost.

Jetpack Scan features:

Decentralized scanning: Everything takes place on Jetpack servers so it doesn’t affect your site speed.
Automatic scanning: Everything happens behind the scenes. You’ll get email notifications should something need your attention — new threats, bad actors, or suspicious behavior. This allows you to focus on your business.
Easy-to-use interface: The Jetpack Scan interface was designed for website owners, not security experts. Learn about issues quickly and solve many of them with a click.
Early access to information: Jetpack monitors millions of websites for vulnerabilities and is the first to know about the latest security threats.
WordPress-specific functionality: Jetpack Scan was built just for WordPress and is solely focused on the specific vulnerabilities most likely to affect your site.
Jetpack Backup integration: Add even more power with Jetpack Backup — if Scan finds any issues, you can restore your website to right before the problem occurred.

Protect your site today

Threats come in all shapes and sizes, don’t discriminate, and can cause lasting damage. Implementing a tool that keeps an eye on your site is a simple decision — the cost is nothing compared to the consequences of a hack.

Get Jetpack Scan

Meet Eric Binnion, Straight-shooting Lead Developer for Jetpack

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:09:00 GMT

It’s probably fair to say that if you have a tattoo that says “CODE IS POETRY” on one arm and a Wapuu on the other, you’re probably pretty passionate about WordPress.

This ink belongs to Eric Binnion, Lead Developer for Jetpack; this phrase is at the bottom of every WordPress.org page; and Wapuu is the cuddly Japanese manga-style mascot for WordPress.

We sat down with Binnion, who joined Automattic as a Code Wrangler in 2014, to talk code, Jetpack, partnerships, and more.

Q. How did you end up with WordPress-themed tattoos?

I look at tattoos as telling a story. I was at the Automattic Grand Meetup and there’s usually a group of people who go off and get tattoos during the events. So I said, “All right. I guess it’s time for another tattoo.”

I figured since I’m at a company thing, I’d get something kind of nerdy.

I got the ‘CODE IS POETRY’ quote in the same typeface used on WP.org.

Q. What does that phrase mean to you personally?

To me, code is beautiful in the same sense that poetry is beautiful. With code, there are so many ways to solve an issue. Software is like a craft. You’re trying to write the best stuff and not just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

If you take the time to write good code and think about everything and everyone that interacts with it, hopefully, it’s making your life and other people’s lives better.

Q. And what about the Wapuu tattoo?

I knew I wanted one, but there are so many Wapuus to choose from. I picked my top ten favorites and then put them up on my website and took a poll. I ended up with Obi Wanpuu. [Automattic CEO] Matt saw it and gave me kudos for it.

Q. How did you end up at Automattic?

I was 23 or 24 at the time, in college, and was working at a creative agency. One day, I saw a blog post from someone I met at WordCamp: Brandon Kraft. I live in the city Kraft grew up in — Wichita Falls, Texas — and we bonded over that. He had just joined Automattic and I started pestering him with questions. He suggested I read the book The Year Without Pants. I applied for a job in April, took the code test and the trial, and started in July.

Q. Why did you want to work at Automattic?

It sounds corny, but WordPress changed my life. When I was 18, I was working on a side business and needed to build a website. I was going to hire someone, but it would have cost $3,000. So, instead, I decided to open a book, watch some tutorials, and teach myself. I did it all with WordPress.

I was able to get something up and running and then tweak it as I went. Through that, I learned how to develop. And that opened up a path for me to start working at creative agencies.

Q. What was it like in the beginning?

When I started at Automattic, I knew PHP and a little JavaScript. They threw me on a Jetpack team that was Javascript-heavy and they were like, “Have a good time. You’re gonna learn.”

After about a year, I was moved to another team to work more on the framework side of Jetpack. They said, “Now you’re gonna learn PHP and go pretty deep. It’s not going to be comfortable for you, but have fun!”

Q. You got involved in the hiring process, also?

I worked on hiring part-time. So 25 percent of my time was spent interviewing for Code Wrangler and JavaScript Engineer positions. I was interviewing people from Google and NASA and getting to meet people from all over the world, which was great.

Q. And now you’re the lead developer for Jetpack?

In March, I moved into the role. I’m lucky to work with 34 amazing developers. I’m behind the scenes a lot — reporting, hiring, doing data stuff, writing scripts, building reports, helping people test things, and working with team leads to make sure we’re delivering what we should.

Q. What does partnership work entail?

We work with hosting partners like Bluehost, DreamHost, and others. We build API tools so partners can offer a best-in-class experience for their users. The overall idea of our partnerships is that a rising tide lifts all boats.

It’s great for hosts because onboarding with Jetpack has been a factor in decreasing churn rate, which is good for their company.

Jetpack helps WordPress users build more secure sites, log in more easily, take advantage of backups, post beautiful pictures on their site, and so-on.

Q. You mentioned site backups. But don’t most hosting companies already do daily backups?

Hosts and Jetpack operate on two different levels. The host delivers basic backups. They’re at the server level. They copy the files and database once a day and they’re done and that’s cool. We hook into WordPress and see an incredible level of detail with Jetpack Backup. We see every single action that happens on a site and store backups completely off-site, so if the server is deleted or hacked, they can still be restored. And the interface is easy to use, so anyone can do it.

If your site is a storefront and takes payments, you probably want to have backups and scanning on your site. Imagine if the last backup was at 6:00 am and the site goes down in the middle of the night and you’ve lost 18 hours worth of orders you didn’t know about. Jetpack can go back and see every little event so you’ll have all that information backed up.

Q. How do you explain Jetpack to people?

You know when you go to a diner and the menu is crazy? It’s like 12 pages of three columns with the smallest text ever. Then, you go to Five Guys or In-N-Out Burger, and there are only four or five options.

Jetpack is like that. It makes your life much simpler by curating an experience. We’ve taken the most important tools for your site and put them all in one place.

You just download this one plugin and you only have to flip a switch to decide which features you want. “Do I want backups? Yes, cool. Turn them on.” Turning stuff on and off with Jetpack is easy. Many other plugins and pieces of software have complex settings pages and dropdown menus and they make you type in things.

The Jetpack interface is meant to be very simple with just the options you need to get started.

Q: Do you think some people are too overwhelmed when starting a website simply because there are so many choices?

The last time I checked, there were 57,000 WordPress plugins, almost 8,000 themes, and 49 pages of results when you search for “backups.”

So yes, imagine that you’re starting your first WordPress site for your company. You don’t care about all the intricacies and you don’t want all the choices. You don’t have time because you’re building a business. You just want to create a site that looks great and schedules appointments or accepts payments. With Jetpack, you can just quickly switch on the most important features to fit your needs.

Q. What’s the most exciting thing coming down the pike for Jetpack?

I would say blocks are the coolest thing we’re doing right now. We’re releasing new blocks all the time. The WordPress Block Editor makes it easy for you to create pages to look exactly the way you want.

The power of blocks is you can pull them anywhere into a post and get a preview before publishing — right there in the editor.

Q. What are some examples of blocks?

Blocks include Jetpack features like the Ad Block, Form Block, or Related Posts Block. They also include external blocks like Latest Instagram Posts, Pay With Paypal, OpenTable, and Eventbrite.

This is one of the first times we’re promoting external products within Jetpack.

Q. Word on the street is that you’re a straight shooter. Literally.

Outside of work, I do shooting sports. Specifically, Precision Pistol, or bullseye. We shoot with a .22 caliber through .45 caliber, single-armed and at 25 and 50 yards. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years.

Photo © U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit

Q. How did you get into that?

I needed something outside of work. Work used to be my hobby. I’d be sitting there at night with a sweet tea, coding. It got to the point where my wife was closing my laptop. That’s one of the dangers of working from home, I suppose.

So competitive shooting takes me outside and away from the computer and around people. It’s more of an escape. It clears your mind. You can’t be thinking about anything else. You’re being as still as you can, looking at the sight and pulling the trigger.

I love WordPress, but now, when I’m done with work for the day, I like to focus on other things.

Jetpack 9.0: Continue sharing Facebook and Instagram posts on your site

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 13:07:35 GMT

Note: we’ve received some reports of issues with this new version of Jetpack. We’ve consequently held off with this release for now, and are working on a fix at the moment. We’ll release a new version of Jetpack (version 9.0.1) as soon as the problem is fixed.

In this month’s release, we’re offering new ways to transform your content and extend your reach. Now it’s easier than ever to move content from your site to social media and vice versa.

Even better, all updates included in Jetpack 9.0 are available for free.

The easiest way to embed Facebook and Instagram posts

Facebook and Instagram are ending support for their oEmbed API on October 24. After this change, you must register a Facebook developer account, create an app, and provide a token when calling the new API. Otherwise, embedded posts from Facebook or Instagram will no longer display on your site and will return an error message.

Millions of WordPress sites rely on this functionality to share their content, so we wanted to find a way to simplify this process for you. We partnered with Facebook to create a seamless transition to ensure Facebook and Instagram posts will continue to display as expected.

Simply connect your site to Jetpack and start sharing. We’ll handle everything behind the scenes so you don’t have to worry about it.

Share your post as a Twitter thread

Have a blog post that you think would work well on Twitter? It’s now easy to convert a post into a Twitter thread to further promote your content. It’s a great companion to the ability to gather Twitter threads and post on your site.

The new options in Publicize allow users to publish to Twitter as a link in a single tweet or as a tweet thread. Any text, images, or videos from the post will be automatically uploaded as well. You can even see where the paragraphs will be split so you can customize exactly how your tweet thread will be displayed.

Explain your message quickly with the Loom Block

In today’s increasingly remote work environment, it can be challenging to deliver a message with enough context. Loom is a video recording tool that helps you get your message across clearly and quickly by recording you and your desktop simultaneously.

The new Loom Block allows you to embed a Loom video in a post by simply pasting the URL.

And more

As always, we’ve made other improvements to make site management easier.

Improved AMP compatibility to speed up your site
Added ways to detect connection issues and fix them quickly

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

Aaron Robertshaw, Alex Forcier, Allison Levine, Anne Mirasol, Atanas Angelov, Bart Kalisz, Bernie Reiter, Biser Perchinkov, Brad Jorsch, Brandon Kraft, Chris Rosser, Christopher Allford, Damián Suárez, Dave Smith, David Lonjon, Derek Springer, Dion Hulse, Enej Bajgoric, Eric Binnion, Rob Pugh, Eru Penkman, Fernando Marichal, Filipe Varela, Foteini Giannaropoulou, Gary Pendergast, Geoff Guillain, Glen Davies, Harris Papazolgou, Henry Ng, Igor Zinovyev, Jason Moon, Jeremy Herve, Kevin Zoschke, Kim Brown, Konstantin Obenland, Leo Germani, Marco Pereirinha, Marin Atanasov, Matt Gawarecki, Matthew Denton, Miguel Torres, Oscar Lopez, Paul Jacobson, Paul Schreiber, Reint Jan Hoiting, Robert Franklin, Rua Haszard, Răzvan Papadopol, Scott Evans, Sergey Mitroshin, Sten Ridley, Tony Arcangelini, Weston Ruter, Yaroslav Kukharuk.

Six Website Problems that Can Ruin Your Reputation

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 19:31:00 GMT

A great website can catapult your business to success — and one plagued with problems can hurt your reputation and impede growth.

Your website is the face of your business. It’s typically the first thing potential customers and clients see when they want to find out more about you and what you’re selling. You can’t afford to compromise a visitor’s first impression with a bad experience.

Jetpack protects your brand’s online reputation by eradicating some of the most common issues that turn good websites bad. Let’s take a look at a few of the problems it solves.

Malware

Hackers use website malware (short for malicious software) to sneak into your site undetected, steal private customer data, alter its appearance, and plant harmful code in hard-to-find places.

A malware attack can cause your website to get suspended, blacklisted, or even taken down completely.

How do I keep malware off my site?

Jetpack Scan keeps your site one step ahead of malware threats with daily scans to ID suspicious code and activity. If it detects anything, it instantly sends you an email with detailed information on which files are affected.

Slow load time

Nothing causes potential customers to leave your page faster than a slow website. Every second matters: research consistently shows that if your site doesn’t load within three seconds, you’re losing customers. And Google factors site speed into its search results, so a slow site hurts your rankings.

But websites like Amazon have conducted studies showing that slower load time leads to significant drops in revenue, while faster pages result in increased conversion rates and a boost in sales.

How can you improve your website’s load time?

Jetpack’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) is free! Enable it in your dashboard and Jetpack will automatically employ its fast, effective servers for all your pictures, CSS, and static JavaScript files, reducing the strain on your website and servers. The tool even resizes images to increase load times for mobile devices.

You can speed things up even more by enabling lazy loading images, which loads photos as a viewer scrolls rather than all at once.

Comment spam

Spam comments are unsolicited, irrelevant, annoying, and can include inappropriate or offensive content — not great for your reputation. Worse, spam can include links that divert website traffic from your site to the spammer’s site.

Spam doesn’t directly hurt your website’s security, but it does make you look unprofessional to visitors and search engines.

How can you get rid of spam?

Jetpack Anti-spam automatically clears known spam out of comments and supported form submissions. It frees you from spending time manually reviewing fake comments and ensures your website visitors won’t be distracted, duped, or frustrated by phony links.

Missing information

Accidents happen when you’re editing a website. You might delete a page, form, widget, or plugin that provides valuable information for site visitors. If a potential customer can’t find a way to get in touch, learn about your services, or purchase a product, they’ll go elsewhere.

This is why regular backups are critical. If anything is deleted, you can restore your site without redoing the work.

How can you make sure you never lose anything important?

Jetpack Backup automatically saves your entire website, so you never have to worry about missing information.

Website downtime

It’s a terrible feeling when a customer calls to tell you they can’t access your site. Wouldn’t it be better to catch it and fix the problem before they notice?

Most business owners don’t have the time to constantly monitor their website to make sure it’s running properly. By the time they realize their website crashed, the damage is done. You can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken!

How can you monitor your website 24/7?

Jetpack’s free downtime monitoring feature keeps tabs on your site and notifies you the moment it stops working. Pair this with Jetpack Backup to get real-time backups and one-click restores, so you can get back up and running again, fast.

Hard-to-find content

Have you ever gotten frustrated trying to find a specific article on your favorite blog? High-quality search functionality helps readers find things faster, keeps them on your site longer, and leads to more conversions. Learn more about the importance of site search.

How can you enhance website search functionality?

Incredibly powerful and customizable, Jetpack Search uses an advanced algorithm and powerful filtering mechanisms so visitors spend less time digging and more time reading and buying.

With contextual learning, it deciphers a searcher’s intent: if someone searches “cat” it might display results about “kittens,” but not “categories.”

Read the story of Kylie M Interiors’ recent switch to Jetpack Search and how it instantly improved their business.

Choose between daily backups (which save your site once a day) and real-time backups (which save your site every time an action occurs). If you ever need to restore your website, get up and running in a few minutes — no code or complicated processes required!

See how Jetpack Backup saved the day for a community bookshop in the UK.

Protect your reputation

There’s a lot to keep track of to protect your website’s reputation, and using a different plugin to cover each area becomes overwhelming fast. Plus, each plugin you add to your site increases the risk of slower load times and code conflicts.

Jetpack’s all-in-one solution gives you more time to focus on running your business while keeping your reputation in good standing.

Get started with Jetpack.

Jetpack Blocks: Tools for Creating Engaging Content

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 15:00:00 GMT

According to Hosting Tribunal, 70 million new posts are published on WordPress blogs alone every month. And though the average post is 1,150 words long, the average time visitors spend on a page is only 16 seconds.

To beat the average, it’s more important than ever to create quality posts that hook website visitors. Engaging, top-notch content requires more than just a text editor — you need tools that allow you to build visual, interactive, multimedia experiences.

The WordPress block editor (and additional Jetpack blocks) give you the power to deliver that without needing to hire a developer or learn a single line of code.

What are blocks?

In the WordPress editor, blocks are the elements that make up a page or post — paragraphs, headings, quotes, images, videos, buttons, and more. Each item on a page is its own block and you can edit and move each one independently to create totally custom layouts.

Jetpack’s advanced blocks extend the default functionality of the WordPress block editor, giving you provide elements for building engaging pages and posts. Here are just a few of the best Jetpack content blocks:

1. GIF block

A GIF is an animated photo that you can use to convey humor or personality. Here’s an example:

People love GIFs! They’re funny, shareable, and attention-grabbing. They’re also a great way to express emotion when you just can’t quite find the words.

With the GIF block, you can search for and embed an image from GIF search website Giphy on a post or page on your WordPress site — no more fumbling with embed codes to showcase your favorite scene from The Office.

2. Podcast Player block

50% of all U.S. homes contain podcast fans. And it’s no wonder — they’re fun, informative, and easy to listen to while driving to work, doing chores, or cooking breakfast. They’re also another way to encourage engagement: if someone doesn’t have time to read a long blog post, they can listen to it.

If you have a podcast or want to share someone else’s podcast, do it with the Podcast Player block. Embed a list of recent episodes, and visitors will be able to play them right on your website.

Episode 23: Lara Hogan on the Secret to Being a Successful Manager – Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg

Are companies setting up their managers for success? What are BICEPS? How do you assemble your colleagues like a management Voltron? Lara Hogan is the founder of Wherewithall, a firm that specializes in management and leadership training. She’s the author of Resilient Management, a must-read for anyone who is a manager, wants to become one, or generally just wants to learn how to be a better teammate.

3. Pinterest block

People perform more than two billion searches on Pinterest each month — it’s the third-largest social network in the world. That means it’s an excellent opportunity to get your content in front of a huge audience, especially if you blog about Pinterest-friendly topics like fashion, home decor, or food.

Use the Pinterest block to embed boards and pins from your Pinterest account into a post or page. You might add individual pins of your favorite appetizers to a blog post titled

“Ten-Minute Apps for Dinner Parties,” or you add a Pinterest board full of blogging tips to a “Resource” page on your site.

There are endless ways to add helpful, visual pins to your site and gain more followers for your website and your Pinterest account.

4. Map block

If you have a physical storefront or location, make it as easy as possible for potential customers to find you. With the Map block, you can add a visual, interactive map to any page or post. Add one address to your sidebar, or highlight multiple addresses on a “Locations” page.

Or be creative! Add maps to a blog post that lists the best California beaches, highlight all the places you went on your summer vacation, or show exactly which boutiques carry your products.

5. Tiled Gallery block

Want to quickly create a visual portfolio of your work or display a collection of images in an artistic layout? Use the Tiled Galleries block to create image galleries. There are four styles to choose from: tiled mosaic, circular grid, square tiles, and tiled columns.

Jetpack automatically crops each image, so you don’t have to resize anything to fit, and you can add additional information or descriptions with captions.

See interactive previews of each gallery type.

6. Slideshow block

There are lots of slideshow plugins to choose from, but many of them are bulky and add extra functionality that you don’t need, slowing down your site unnecessarily.

Use the Slideshow block to insert image sliders anywhere on your site. Select your images, drag and drop to reorder them, add captions if you’d like, and click Insert Gallery. You can even preview your slideshow right in the block editor.

Photo by Fabian Wiktor on Pexels.com
Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com
Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Pexels.com
Photo by Matt Hardy on Pexels.com

7. Video block

Jetpack’s Video block, available with paid plans, enhances the existing WordPress block, enabling you to upload videos and host them on WordPress.com rather than your server. This speeds up your site, and your videos won’t have the ads and distractions that typically come with third-party video services like YouTube and Vimeo. If you do want to share a YouTube video, simply paste the URL into the video block and it will transform into a YouTube block.

8. Subscription block

If you’re creating great content, you’ll inevitably have site visitors that want more from you on a regular basis. With the Subscription Form block, you can add a simple sign-up form to any post or page. Visitors can enter their email address and, once confirmed, will get a notification whenever you publish a new post. Easy-to-use settings let you customize the design of your subscription form — change the color, text, border, spacing, and more — to match your site and brand.

As with all these blocks, there are no complicated embed codes like with other providers. Just add the block to your page or post and Jetpack takes care of the rest.

9. Related Posts Block

If a site visitor likes what they’re reading and wants more information, they should be able to find it fast. For the Related Posts block, Jetpack scans and filters all of your content and displays relevant posts that visitors may be interested in.

If your post is about the best outdoor toys for kids between the ages of five and seven, Jetpack might display a related post about STEM toys for the same age group. If you publish a recipe for slow cooker chili, it might show another slow cooker recipe. And it all happens automatically — no work needed on your end.

10. Image Compare block

Do you restore furniture, remodel houses, or style hair? Use the Image Compare block to show off your work! Choose two images, like a before and after, and let site visitors compare them by dragging a slider. Make your content interactive, and share real proof of your results without sending people to another page.

Create more engaging content

More engaging content means more readers, more subscribers, and more customers. Jetpack makes blocks specifically for content creators. Use the block editor that you’re already familiar with, and add everything from videos and GIFs to galleries and slideshows.

This post only covers a few of the available Jetpack blocks — there are also great solutions for calendars, social media integrations, reservations, payments, and more! See the full list of Jetpack blocks.

Already have Jetpack installed on your website?

Open a a page or post, click the + icon to add a new block, and open up the Jetpack tab to see all of the options.

Not a Jetpack user yet?

Install the plugin today and start taking advantage of these tools to help you create better WordPress content.

The Fastest Way to Sell Digital Products with WordPress

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 17:25:00 GMT

If you’re a blogger or social media influencer, then you love creating high-quality content that you’re passionate about. How do you make money doing what you love? Affiliate marketing, advertising, and physical products are all great options, but there’s also a fourth that may feel more natural to your loyal followers: digital products.

Digital products include everything from videos and podcasts to live online events, online courses, books, and downloads. When you transform the content, you’re creating products you can sell and opening up a whole new world of possibilities for your website.

Your content is worth paying for

You may think that no one will pay for digital content because they can just get it for free. But here’s the truth: research predicts that e-learning, another word for selling digital products, will generate $325 billion in 2025. You don’t have to give your expertise away. People will pay for it.

The key? Figure out who will pay for yours, how to reach them, and how to distinguish yourself as an industry authority whose content has more value than all the free stuff.

How can digital products increase your income?

The greatest benefit of selling digital products is that you don’t have to manufacture, ship, or distribute anything. You make the product once, and sell it over and over. That’s why the margins are so high. Suppose you invest $2,000 in creating an online course, which includes some graphic design, copywriting, video, and other media. If you sell that course for $399, you make your investment back after five sales, and just about everything beyond that is profit.

Of course, this requires an audience willing to pay for your digital products. But if you’ve worked at that already – if you have social followers, email subscribers, event attendees, or book buyers – then you’ve done the hard part!

All that remains is turning the digital content you’ve already created into products — and creating more. Figure out how to repackage your work and sell it online. You’ll market it to your existing followers, so you don’t need online advertising to get started.

And if you don’t think you have an audience for digital products and can’t get one because you’re too localized or have too narrow a niche, that’s not true. The narrower your niche, the more you can charge for your expertise.

Suppose there are two health food experts. One’s a nationally known guru who writes about a range of health food topics, and another who wrote the book — literally — about the paleo diet. Who would you be more likely to pay $250 for a course on the paleo diet? The expert, not the generalist.

Two ways to sell digital products

The two primary ways to sell digital products are as one-time purchases or subscriptions. Both can be lucrative, but require different approaches.

1. One-time purchases

You sell someone access to an online course. You make the profit. And the relationship is complete, unless you find a way to keep the customer coming back for more. The two main ways to do that are (1) getting them to refer your course to their friends and co-workers, or (2) developing more products you can sell to the same person.

A successful digital content business using this model needs a continuous stream of new and valuable products that you can keep marketing to the same people. Again, developing your audience is the critical step here. If you don’t have a pre-existing audience, it’s a lot harder to sell digital products, (especially without online ads).

One-time purchases work well for high-value courses, video content, time-sensitive products capitalizing on a trend, and for businesses that want to make extra money on the side without having to worry about inventory. You could sell services online, like online yoga and fitness training, that happen live. A contractor can sell how-to videos with much higher quality than anything on YouTube, and their audience will buy them because they trust them. A T-shirt company could sell a course on T-shirt design.

2. Subscription purchases

The subscription model works if you can continuously produce enough new content to keep an audience happy — and paying monthly or annually. The main difference between one-time products and subscriptions is volume.

If you’re only churning out a few new digital products per year, a subscription model may not be the right fit. But if you release monthly doses of content across a variety of media formats, you can generate very strong passive income.

Variety of media is key. Some people like video; others prefer text. Still others prefer audio, or a combination. Some like to interact and print things out. Some like live programming, others want to do things on their own time. The more variety you offer, the better your chance at building a successful subscription business.

Suppose a physiotherapist holds monthly two-hour group sessions where she teaches new physical health techniques and then does a Q&A. She puts out the recording of the event and sends members an email summarizing thesession, including a link to a PDF with the key points and a worksheet. Some people who need ongoing help with physical therapy will pay for that instead of going into a clinic. What will they pay — $19.99 per month? $29.99? $49.99? You won’t know until you try it.

You can do group coaching online. You can put out how-to videos. Templates your audience needs. Samples of how to do something. Encouraging content. Motivational content. Teaching content. As long as you’re cranking it out regularly and your audience continually finds it valuable, you can charge a monthly fee.

How to create digital products with WordPress

Jetpack makes selling digital products on your WordPress site as simple as adding content to a page or post.

Start by purchasing a Jetpack plan, which also includes valuable security, speed optimization, and marketing tools, and install Jetpack on your site.
Set up an account with Stripe, a trusted, secure payment processor that partners with Jetpack to allow for easy online payments.
Create a new page for your product or edit an existing one.
In the block editor, search for and add the Payments block.
Add a price and description.
Set a renewal interval. You can charge for subscriptions on a monthly or yearly basis, or select the one-time payment option.

And that’s all it takes to accept one-time or recurring payments on your WordPress site.

Turn your work into revenue

If you create content that people love, you have a great opportunity to turn it into a business. Wth a premium Jetpack plan, you can add products and charge for them using the same platform and editor you’re already familiar with — and benefit from security, marketing, design, and speed optimization tools.

Start selling digital products with Jetpack

Introducing Creative Mail for Jetpack

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 17:26:57 GMT

Relying solely on new traffic to your site isn’t enough. To sustain and grow your business, especially in the current, rapidly evolving eCommerce environment, you need to collect visitors’ information and connect with them regularly via email.

Creative Mail, a WordPress email marketing plugin built by Constant Contact, is designed to integrate closely with your site and WordPress Dashboard. Growing your email list and sending beautiful campaigns is faster and easier than ever.

Jesse Friedman, Director of Innovation for Jetpack, says, “The team at Constant Contact has built Creative Mail from the ground up to be a WordPress-first email marketing service. Creative Mail directly integrates with Jetpack and WooCommerce to provide you a seamless marketing experience.”

Now you can add a newsletter signup and opt-in functionality anywhere on your site with the Form Block.

Adding a Newsletter Sign-up block to a page in the WordPress editor

Easily create and reuse a Newsletter Sign-up form

Add the Jetpack Newsletter Sign-up form to any post or page, customize it to fit your voice, and collect information vital to your blog or business. The form is pre-built and ready to go out-of-the-box so you can start collecting subscribers with just a few clicks. You can also modify each field, change form label text, and add or remove fields as needed.

Adding a newsletter sign-up form to a blog post, click for a full-size image.

With the WordPress block editor, you can create reusable blocks or groups of blocks so you can spend more time writing, not building pages. Turn the Jetpack Newsletter Sign-up form into a reusable block to quickly duplicate it anywhere on your site. If edits are required, you won’t need to change every single block — just edit the reusable one and it will update throughout your website.

Creating a Newsletter Sign-up reusable block, click for a full-size image.

Combine this with the Repeat Visitor Block for an even more dynamic experience — show or hide your form based on how many times visitors have been to your site. If someone returns several times without registering, you could display a more direct request for subscription.

Adding the Repeat Visitor block

Already have existing contact forms? You can now add an opt-in field to collect even more subscribers. Select an existing Jetpack form, click Add opt-in, and customize text and consent requirements as needed.

Adding an opt-in field to an existing contact form, click for a full-size image.

Try out the Newsletter Sign-up form

How does Jetpack’s new email subscription form work? The newsletter form below was created with the same technology you now have on your site.

Go ahead – try it out!

Navigate through the sign-up process to see how it feels from a user’s standpoint. We’ve also added a return visitor form, which you can find by refreshing this page three times.

[contact-form]

It’s just as easy for you to create and implement these forms from the block editor. All we had to do was add the block, create the form, and update this page!

You can also stay compliant with CAN-SPAM Act privacy requirements by using opt-in functionality. This sends an email to anyone who fills out your form and requires them to respond before being added to your list.

How to send your first emails

1. Select your Newsletter Sign-up Form block.

2. On the right, look for the newsletter integration panel.

3. If Creative Mail isn’t installed, you’ll be prompted to install it, which will just take a few seconds.

4. Once installed, choose to automatically sync or manually import your subscribers, as this screenshot shows:

Syncing contacts from Jetpack Forms and WooCommerce

5. Creative Mail will guide you through the creation of stunning emails that work on any device.

Your blog posts and WooCommerce products are automatically pulled in and suggested as email marketing content. This process would normally take a lot of time with other platforms, but not with Creative Mail!

Creating beautiful newsletters with Creative Mail, click for a full-size image.

This means you can market directly to your growing email list and keep them informed and engaged, directly from your WordPress dashboard. See just how easy it is.

Sending email campaigns with Creative Mail, click for a full-size image.

Why Creative Mail?

Creative Mail was built specifically for WordPress by our trusted friends at Constant Contact. There’s no need for a contact sync plugin, API key, or SMTP server — you can access all email marketing functionality right from the WordPress dashboard. And since deliverability varies greatly across the email marketing landscape, it’s good to know that Constant Contact has an industry-leading 97% deliverability rate.

An even brighter future

This is just the beginning! Adding Creative Mail now positions you for powerful updates that are just around the corner, including several tools that improve your WooCommerce store. You’ll soon be able to use email marketing to:

Create triggered, multi-step customer lifecycle marketing journeys.
Send WooCommerce abandoned cart emails.
Send post-purchase follow-up emails.
Send emails about related products.
And much more!

As Curt Raffi, Senior VP of Product Innovation puts it:

“Creative Mail is all about helping WordPress and WooCommerce customers get more out of their websites and stores with simplified email marketing. Over the past four months, eCommerce has become core to small business survival, and Creative Mail is designed to enhance success. Creative Mail allows you to quickly build on-brand WooCommerce-triggered store emails. With our Jetpack integration, you can also easily market to site visitors right from your WordPress dashboard.

Soon, we’ll add automated customer lifecycle marketing journeys that are geared toward more advanced marketers and eCommerce sellers, but like everything within Creative Mail, they’re super simple to implement.”

Upgrade your customer email experience

Email marketing is the easiest way to engage site visitors and grow your following — the Creative Mail integration makes all of this possible! Newsletter form blocks and related tools will help you add new leads, communicate with customers, increase loyalty, and make more sales, all from within the WordPress dashboard.

Creative Mail is free for up to 1,000 contacts or 5,000 sent emails per month. Paid plans start at just $2 per month.

Get started with Creative Mail.

Jetpack 8.9: New ways to grow subscribers and collect donations

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 12:57:03 GMT

This month, start engaging your site visitors with two exciting new tools! The Newsletter Sign-up form and Donations Block will help you grow your subscriber and supporter base.

Jetpack 8.9 is also proud to support v2.0 of the official AMP plugin for WordPress.

Convert visitors into subscribers with Newsletter Sign-up

You can now create a Newsletter Sign-up form as part of the Form Block. Grow your email list and start sending site updates, newsletters, and marketing campaigns.

The Newsletter Sign-up form is fully integrated with Creative Mail by Constant Contact, so you can install and enable it while you’re creating the form. Creative Mail gives you the ability to pull your WordPress posts and WooCommerce products easily into new emails. Now, you can create stunning email campaigns and continue the conversation with your visitors after they’ve left your site, with reliable deliverability from the team at Constant Contact.

Collect donations, right on your site

The new Donations Block allows you to easily accept donations, tips, and contributions on your site to fund your creative pursuits, non-profit mandate, or other goals. If you’re on a paid Jetpack plan, you can quickly integrate your Stripe account to accept credit and debit card payments.

Share your social media content with confidence

Followers on social networks engage with content that’s engaging. With Social Previews, you can now preview how your posts will appear on Facebook, Twitter, and Google search results to ensure your content looks great — before you hit the publish button!

Toggle the Jetpack sidebar from within the WordPress Editor (look for the Jetpack icon in the top right corner) and look for the “Social Previews” panel.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google Search previews are available now, and LinkedIn is on the way.

AMP + Jetpack: Simplicity, power, and speed

Over the last 6 months, Google and Automattic have worked closely together to create the best, highest performance all-in-one toolkit for WordPress. By using these plugins together, you get all the features you need to build a beautiful, fast, modern website with no coding required. Jetpack 8.9 is proud to offer support for v2.0 of the official AMP plugin for WordPress.

Stay tuned! We’ll be following up with an in-depth blog post on how even non-developers can build a feature rich website with world-class performance and SEO using just Jetpack and AMP.

And more

As always, we’ve made other improvements to make site management easier.

Improved navigation to the Jetpack dashboard and made changes to better surface any communication issues between your site and WordPress.com
Fixed layout issues with some of our blocks and added customization options to existing blocks so they can better fit your needs

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to this release:

Aaron Robertshaw, Allison Levine, Aurorum, Ben Dwyer, Bernie Reiter, Brandon Kraft, Caroline Moore, Chris Runnells, Damián Suárez, Dave Smith, David Lonjon, Derek Smart, Echo Gregor, Eric Binnion, Filipe Varela, Foteini Giannaropoulou, Greg Ichneumon Brown, Harris Papazolgou, Itamar Eduardo Gonçalves de Oliveira, Jason Moon, Jeremy Herve, Jerry Jones, Kim Brown, Konstantin Obenland, Leo Germani, Marek Hrabe, Matt Gawarecki, Matthew Denton, Miguel Torres, Oli I, Ravi Chandra, Reint Jan Hoiting, Renzo Canepa, Robert Franklin, Rosalind W, Scott Evans, Sergey Mitroshin, Sten Ridley, Tran Ngoc Tuan Anh, Tugdual de Kerviler, Weston Ruter, Yan Sern, Yaroslav Kukharuk.

Jetpack â Essential Security & Performance for WordPress

Five Ways a WooCommerce Backup Plugin Can Save Your Business

1. It saves you time

Manual backups aren’t good enough

2. It protects against malware and security breaches

3. It safeguards your content, orders, and customer data

4. It ensures minimal revenue losses

5. It protects your reputation

Try Jetpack Backup

The Real Cost of Unlicensed Plugins

Question the sales pitch

The deal with Mephistopheles – Reading the fine print

Conclusion

Jetpack 9.3: Happy New Year from Jetpack

How to Maximize Social Media in Less Time

1. Batch your posts

2. Share content from related brands

3. Recycle evergreen content

4. Gather content from followers

5. Encourage followers to share your posts

6. Make lists of reusable hashtags

7. Focus on a couple of platforms

8. Automate what you can

9. Set time limits

Make the most of your time

Why Influencers Need a WordPress Site

Benefits of a website

Why build a website with WordPress

Amplify your website with Jetpack

Expand your influence with WordPress and Jetpack

What Is a CRM and Does Your Business Need One?

What is a CRM?

How Jetpack CRM helps your business

Customer communications

Payment processes

Data tracking and monetization

Quoting and invoicing

Email marketing

What else can Jetpack CRM do?

Jetpack 9.2: Ready for WordPress 5.6

Viewing blocks in subscription emails and RSS feeds

And more

Nine Ways to Prepare Your WordPress Site for the Holidays

1. Communicate clearly

2. Check your site’s speed

3. Go the extra mile to serve customers

4. Make sure your site is mobile responsive

5. Secure your site in advance

6. Write specialized content

7. Make sure key pages and processes are working

8. Run load tests

9. Automate as much as possible

Have your best holiday season yet

Black Friday Sale – Save 40% on all new purchases

No code required: Build a fast, world-class WordPress site

The Plugin Conundrum

AMP + Jetpack: Simplicity, power, and speed

Getting Started

Installing and configuring Jetpack

Installing and configuring AMP

Anything is possible

Jetpack 9.1: Focusing on Compatibility

Create Beautiful, Effective Real Estate Sites with Jetpack

Key features of successful real estate websites

Responsive web design

Advanced search

Informative guides

Photo galleries and virtual tours

Contact forms for lead generation

Build an amazing real estate website with Jetpack

Video hosting

Jetpack Backup

Activity log

Jetpack Search

The Map Block

Calendly Block

Contact forms

Image Compare

Tiled Galleries

Slideshows

Jetpack â Essential Security & Performance for WordPress