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24 December 2015

Merry Christmas from Theme Valet

Wishing all our friends, customers and supporters a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Please note we will be closed (but still taking orders) on the following days:

  • Fri 25 Dec
  • Mon 28 Dec
  • Fri 1 Jan

I hope you manage to have a fantastic break.

23 December 2015

The importance of focus with Lane Kennedy

Our founder Nick Davis, talks about the importance of focus and the origins of ThemeValet on the Game Changer podcast.

Listen now at Lane’s website!

23 October 2015

Selling online courses with WordPress, Gumroad and ProductPress

NB. If you only want to sell a course and you don’t care about delivering it through your website specifically, you can simply put together a collection of files containing all the course contents (Word docs, video clips etc) and sell it as a ‘multi-file’ product in Gumroad (see Part 1 of this article and more detailed instructions here).

This tutorial, however, assumes that you want to use Gumroad to handle payments / storage of ‘behind the paywall’ files but actually keep the main experience of accessing the course on your WordPress website itself.


You blog, you tweet, you help people out online (for free) and you start to build an audience.

At some point though you may decide you can make a bigger impact (and more directly monetise your expertise) by creating an online course that you can sell to your audience.

A win for them and a win for you.

You just need two things: the content and a way of delivering and selling the content to your customers. But it needn’t be a lot of work.

Firstly, the content. Think back to those aforementioned blog posts and emails, you probably have a good base for the course right there. Oh and don’t forgot webinars, Periscopes and other things you may have done that could all add a lot of value to a course too.

So that’s your head start on the content, now what about the course itself?

Fortunately that’s neither difficult or expensive to set up either. In fact using your WordPress site and Gumroad (who I also recommend as a quick way to sell a digital download on your website) you can get your first course ready to take orders in less than an hour.

Let’s walk through it together.


Before we begin…

What you’ll need:

  • A ‘self-hosted’ WordPress website for your business (if you pay a company for hosting every month / year, that’s self hosted)
  • An account with Gumroad
  • A copy of the ProductPress plugin (available to buy from Gumroad, of course).

What we’re going to do:

  1. Connect your WordPress website to Gumroad via the ProductPress plugin
  2. Add content to your WordPress website that only course customers can see
  3. Create a sales page for our course on Gumroad, tell our audience where to buy it, sit back and let Gumroad handle the rest
  4. Bonus: I’ll show you how you can also create and sell multiple courses with this technique

What this tutorial is not designed to teach you:

  • How to set up a recurring subscription site where members pay every month or year for access
  • How to set up a complex, multi-tier membership site with ‘dripped’ content, online communities or formal learning exercises.
  • How to sell courses directly on Gumroad, i.e. not involve your website at all, but just give customers access to all the course content as a collection of files on Gumroad itself. (If you prefer this simpler option, you can simply create a multi-file product in Gumroad as explained in the first part of this article from the Gumroad blog).

(Of course, there’s nothing with doing any of the above, but this tutorial / approach is designed for those who want to create and sell a simple course online but have people access all of the course content on their own website for a one-off fee).

What are the costs?

  • WordPress website: Presumably you’ve already paid for this (if not, check out our Launch with WordPress guide to learn how to get a great WordPress website for your business)
  • Gumroad account: The account is free, they take 5% + 25c on each transaction
  • ProductPress plugin: $39 for a single site

1. Connect your WordPress website to Gumroad (via ProductPress)

Once you’ve bought the ProductPress plugin and setup your Gumroad account, the first thing you need to do is login to your WordPress website and install the plugin.

1.1 Install and activating the ProductPress plugin

From the WordPress menu go to Plugins > Add New and then Upload File. Find the zip file you received from ProductPress, upload it and then make sure you activate it.

1.2 Connect Gumroad to WordPress

Now you need to connect Gumroad to WordPress so that WordPress knows when someone has paid for something so it can create a login for the customer.

In WordPress, go to Settings > ProductPress.

(If at this point, ONLY if you see a message saying: ‘Warning permalinks are disabled. ProductPress won’t work without pretty permalink[s]’ go to Settings > Permalinks, select Post name and click Save Changes and go back to the previous screen. If you don’t see that message you can ignore this step).

On this screen you’ll see Your redirect URI:

ProductPress plugin configuration, Your Redirect URI highlighted
Select and copy the highlighted text, beginning http://

Next, in a new browser tab, go to the Gumroad website, login and navigate to Settings

The Settings menu option in Gumroad

…and then click the Advanced tab.

The Advanced tab in Gumroad settings

Scroll down and you’ll see a Create application box.

Enter an Application name, paste the Redirect URI you copied from the ProductPress settings page in WordPress and then click Create application.

The Create Application box in Gumroad

The page will refresh and two new pieces of information will appear: Application ID and Application Secret (I’ve blurred out my info because you should not share this publicly for security reasons!)

Application ID and Application Secret fields in Gumroad

Now copy and paste each one into the corresponding fields back in the ProductPress settings page inside your WordPress website and then click Connect to Gumroad.

About to connect to the Gumroad API in the ProductPress settings page in WordPress

On the next page that appears, click Authorize.

Gumroad API authorisation screen

You will now have successfully connected WordPress to Gumroad.

 

A successful connection between Gumroad and WordPress, via ProductPress

1.3 Creating a membership product in Gumroad

On the same screen (Settings > ProductPress) in WordPress, you’ll also see a list of any Gumroad products you’ve already created.

A list of inactive products on the ProductPress settings screen in WordPress

At this point, if you haven’t already you should create a product in Gumroad that’ll you sell to give access to your course over on your WordPress site.

To do this, go back to the Gumroad website and click Products.

The Products menu option in Gumroad

Click Add a product and then Digital product.

Adding a digital product in Gumroad

And then Product.

Adding a regular digital product in Gumroad

Give the product a name and a price (you can change later).

Naming and setting a price for a product in Gumroad

You must then upload at least one file for Gumroad to create the product. For now this could be a simple Word doc, PDF or text file with a welcome message and or instructions but you can change or add more files to this later.

To make things easier for your customers later on though, I suggest you use the Google Doc template I created at the following link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19axv229rULi3iKCz2kIm0ZjxYfvHUORIE5FSaH9Rgm8/edit?usp=sharing

Just go to File > Make a copy and then replace all of the parts in square brackets with your details.

Finally, go to File > Download as > PDF document and save it to your computer.

Then click Choose your files. Find the file on your computer, select it and upload it to Gumroad.

An uploaded file associated with a product in Gumroad

When you’re done click Next: Customize.

From here you have the option to create a more attractive sales page for your product by adding an image (Upload a cover) and adding a description (‘Describe your product…’).

If you’re not ready to do this now though just click Save changes and we’ll return to this page later before offering the product to your audience.

The customise your product screen in Gumroad

2. Adding (and restricting access to) your course content

Now we need to add all your course content and make sure that only those who are supposed to see it, have access to it.

Of course there are all kinds of different courses (and course content) you could use and create but I’ll take you through a couple of common scenarios.

The simplest way to do this would be to create a single page that contains the entire course but you can spread the course out over several pages if you prefer.

Single page course

Let’s start by restricting a single page. From the WordPress menu go to Pages > Add New.

First let’s give the page a title and add all the content (don’t publish the page yet, but you can click the Save Draft button if you need to).

Dummy course content

Now you’ll need to restrict access to this page’s contents to just yourself (a WordPress administrator) and the people that buy the course, to do this look for the ProductPress Products box on the Edit Page screen and check the Gumroad product (or products) you want to associate this page with.

Restricting a WordPress page to the buyers of a particular Gumroad product

And when you’re done click the Publish or Update button to make these changes live.

Adding videos

You can even embed YouTube and Vimeo videos in the page content if you wish.

To add a video just copy and paste the link to it on a new line somewhere within your page’s content and press Enter and WordPress should figure out it’s a video and embed it automatically, as in the following example.

Adding a video in WordPress

One note about video though. If you upload a video to YouTube or Vimeo and it’s set so anyone can find or view it (i.e. it’s publicly available), theoretically someone outside the course could find and watch it.

This may or may not be an issue for you but you have a few options:

  1. You can upload a video to YouTube and mark it as Unlisted (i.e. anyone with the link can view it but it’s not shown in search results). Strictly speaking someone in the course could figure out the link and share the link with someone else but you may take the view that it’s not a big issue, particularly when you’re starting out. In which case using Unlisted YouTube videos may be a good option.
  2. If you like the idea of embedded videos but you don’t want non course members to have any realistic chance of viewing them the next option to look at is Vimeo Pro (https://vimeo.com/pro) which lets you lock down videos so they can only be viewed when embedded in your website (you specify the domain names they’re allowed to be viewed on. (And of course you can put the embedded video itself behind your paywall). It’s $199 a year (but that’s a fraction of the cost of most serious, hosted video options).
  3. Finally, you can upload the ‘raw’ video files to the Gumroad product you previously created where they’ll be completely protected, though not embeddable (to my knowledge).

Adding other files

Similarly to videos, you can either:

  • Upload any downloadable files like PDFs, Word docs etc to WordPress (via the Add Media button in the Edit Page screen) with the proviso that, in theory a course member could share a link to the file with someone else.
  • Or, to make things slightly more locked down, you could upload the files to your Gumroad product instead. (Though of course a member could still download the files and share them with someone else anyway, however this is just the nature of doing an online course and not something I would lose any sleep over)

In short, do whatever works you think will work best for your customers.

Multi page course (optional)

To create a multiple page course, just repeat the ‘Single page course’ steps above for each page of content.

At the end or each page you’ll likely want to link to the next step of the course.

You can do this in the page editor by simply selecting the page you want to link to, clicking the link icon and linking to the appropriate page (the page must be published for you to link to it).

Adding a link to another page in WordPress

When you’ve added your link just click the Update button.

3. Selling the course

Once you’ve set up your course, it’s now time to open the doors to get some sales!

3.1 Setting up the sales page on Gumroad

If you didn’t already set up the sales page for your product and publish it, now is the time.

Head back to the Gumroad website, browse to Products, and click the name of your course product.

Gumroad product sales page options

First of all, click Upload a cover, find a good image on your computer you want to use, upload it and you’re done.

Next simply type your sales pitch for the product in the Describe your product… box.

A completed product sales page in Gumroad

When you’re done, click Publish.

Next click Preview and you’ll get a preview of your landing page, plus your product’s link which you can include on your website, social media or email list to drive people to purchase your product.

A Gumroad product preview page with URL highlighted

You can of course come back to the Gumroad website later and get the link then, but if you want to you can copy it now so it’s ready.

3.2 Activating the product in WordPress

Now that you’ve fully set up and published your product, you just need to activate it in WordPress.

To do this go to Settings > ProductPress and under Configure your Gumroad products set your course product to Active and then click Save Changes.

Activating a Gumroad product in WordPress with ProductPress

Finally, if you want an email every time someone makes an order simply enter your email address in the Email(s) section under Logging on the same page and click Save Changes.

The Logging section of the ProductPress WordPress settings page

3.3 Set a thank you message in Gumroad

Oh and one final final step, just to make things a bit nicer for all your customers.

To do this follow the instructions at:

https://help.gumroad.com/11169-Creator-FAQ/creating-workflows-to-send-automated-updates

And I suggest using my Google Doc template for the wording if you’re not sure what to write:

https://help.gumroad.com/11169-Creator-FAQ/creating-workflows-to-send-automated-updates

And that’s it.

You’ve got your link, you’re all set up, you’re now ready to sell!

4. What happens when someone buys?

After going to the sales page and paying via credit card or PayPal, the customer will be invited to first download any files associated with your course (I suggest making at least one file a ‘read me’ or instructions file which tells them what to do next and how to contact you if you they need help).

After purchasing a product with Gumroad

Your customer will receive an email like this telling them that they should set their password.

The WordPress set your password email

However as this is not the clearest email in the world, I suggest you make the steps more obvious by doing two things, both described above:

  1. Using the Google Doc template as described earlier in the article to include some simple instructions in the downloadable file that goes into the course.
  2. Setting an automatic ‘thank you’ email (with similar instructions to the Google Doc) in Gumroad on every purchase

After setting a password, customers can then login (via WordPress) and access the course content at whatever page you created to hold the course content, e.g. mywebsite.com/course.

5. Creating multiple courses

Simply repeat the steps above!

  • Just create a different product in Gumroad for each course,
  • Add the appropriate content in WordPress (making sure to set the right ProductPress Products box access for each page)
  • Set up the Gumroad sales page and activate the product in WordPress.

And you’re done.


Closing thoughts

As you can see this is pretty simplistic solution for selling courses via a WordPress website and it has it’s quirks, like:

  • insisting on including at least one file in the course product (overcome by using it to include a ‘getting started’ instructions file)
  • requiring your to be aware of how you will deliver your video files (though you would have to make the same choice with many other popular online course plugins too)
  • requiring you to manually create instructions to tell the user what to do when creating the course (overcome by using the Google Doc template provided earlier in the document and setting an automatic ‘thank you’ email on purchase in Gumroad)

…but compared to many options, it’s not difficult to setup, it has a very low up-front cost and uses a very popular and trusted platform in Gumroad. It also supports multiple courses too.

If you’re just starting out and want to offer a simple online course to your members you could do a lot worse than using Gumroad and ProductPress as a great way to monetise your site and provide something valuable to your audience.

Thoughts? Questions? Let me know in the comments.

22 October 2015

Sell your own online course with WordPress and Restrict Content Pro

You’re building an audience through content marketing and generally being awesome but there may come a time where you’re ready to charge for access to some of your best content by creating an online course and only allowing paid members to access it for a one-off fee.

The aim of this tutorial is to show you how you to do exactly that with your WordPress website using the Restrict Content Pro plugin.

(This tutorial specifically covers one-off payments in return for access to online courses and does not cover subscription or recurring payments).


Why Restrict Content Pro?

First up, why use Restrict Content Pro in the first place.

Well, first of all, it’s simple, it’s not expensive and it’s built by a top top developer (Pippin Williamson) who stands by his plugins.

Features include:

  • the ability to offer discount codes
  • support for Stripe, PayPal and more
  • ability to set-up multiple courses
  • automatically send emails to members
  • and it has great, responsive support

Finally, because Pippin and his team are also responsible for two other solid plugins (Affiliate WP and Easy Digital Downloads) it’ll work nicely with those too if you plan to use either of them in future, for affiliate sales or selling digital downloads respectively.

When not to use Restrict Content Pro?

It’s subjective of course but I’d say that if you plan or already sell products via WooCommerce, you might be better using something like WooCommerce Memberships for your online courses.

In other words sticking to one e-commerce ‘ecosystem’, one set of my account pages, checkout pages etc.

You can of course run Restrict Content Pro alongside Woo but I think in the long run it’ll be less headaches for you and your users if you just pick one, unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Cost

Restrict Content Pro costs $42 at the time of writing and then $42 a year – after the first year – if you decide to keep selling courses with it in future.


How to set-up an online course with Restrict Content Pro

Installation

After you’ve purchased and downloaded the plugin, you’ll receive a purchase confirmation email with a download link.

Once you’ve download the zip file which contains the plugin, login to WordPress and go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin from inside the WordPress admin.

Installing the Restrict Content Pro plugin in WordPress

Locate the Restrict Content Pro zip file you downloaded, upload it and then activate the plugin.

Activating the Restrict Content Pro plugin in WordPress

At this point, if this is the site you know you’re going to be using Restrict Content Pro on for your courses (i.e. it’s not just a test site you’re playing around with), go ahead and enter your license key (from the purchase confirmation email you received) so you can get updates for the plugin as they’re released (for better security, less bugs, new features etc).

Restrict Content Pro license key prompt

Entering the license key in Restrict Content Pro

Creating a course

Now we’ve installed the plugin, we’ll go ahead and create an example course called ‘Launch with WordPress’ to sell to customers.

From the WordPress menu go to Restrict > Subscription Levels where we’ll create a new subscription level which we’ll be used to determine who should (and shouldn’t) be able to view our new course.

  • Set a Name and Description
  • Set Duration to 0 Day(s) (because we’re not setting up any kind of recurring payment here).
  • Set your chosen Price
  • (Leave all other option as their default).

Creating a subscription level in Restrict Content Pro

Creating (and restricting) the content

Now we’ll add the course content to WordPress and restrict access to it.

The simplest way to do this would be to create a single page that contains the entire course but you can spread the course out over several pages if you prefer.

Single page course

Let’s start by restricting a single page. From the WordPress menu go to Pages > Add New.

First let’s give the page a title and add all the content (don’t publish the page yet, but you can click the Save Draft button if you need to).

Dummy course content

You can even embed YouTube and Vimeo videos if you wish (though bear in mind if they’re set to display publicly in YouTube or Vimeo anyone would theoretically be able to find the same video by searching on Google).

To add a video just copy and paste the URL and press Enter and WordPress should figure out it’s a video and embed it automatically.

Adding a video in WordPress

Now we need to restrict the page’s content. Below the content you just added is a Restrict this content box. Set it up with:

  • Check Paid Only?
  • Check Hide from Feed?
  • Check the Subscription Level you just created (‘Launch with WordPress’ in our case)

Restrict this content settings box in Restrict Content Pro

At this point if you’re done with the content you can go ahead and hit the Publish button.

The content will be published but only visible to you (as a logged in administrator in WordPress) and to your course members once they pay.

Editing the default ‘this content is restricted’ message

By default, this is what non members will see when they try to access our content:

Content restricted message in Restrict Content Pro

However to make it easier for members to login in future we’ll add a login link to the page which paid members can use to easily login and access the content.

Plus, we’ll also make it easier for any non-members who stumble across this content to purchase it too.

  1. Go to Restrict  > Settings in WordPress
  2. Scroll to Premium Content Message
  3. Edit the content message so it makes sense for your course/s and audience, e.g. Sorry this course is restricted to members only.
  4. Then add a link to the purchase page – e.g. Get access to this course, purchase now – and creating a link to the Register page (which Restrict Content Pro automatically created).
  5. And finally adding the login form so that existing members can login. This is done by entering what is known as a shortcode on a line on it’s own where you’d like the login form to appear, the shortcode is:
    [login_form]

    Just type or copy / paste this into your page.

Here’s my example to follow:

Editing the Premium Content Message in Restrict Content Pro

Setting up a Welcome page

Finally, we need to setup an appropriate welcome message telling members where to find the course after buying it.

To do this go to Pages from the WordPress menu, browse till you see the Welcome page (which Restrict Content Pro automatically created) where you’ll see the following default content…

Restrict Content Pro 'Welcome' page default content

…and edit it to include a link to your course.

Edited content in Welcome page in Restrict Content Pro

Multi page course (optional)

To create a multiple page course, just repeat the ‘Single page course’ steps above for each page of content.

At the end or each page you’ll likely want to link to the next step of the course.

You can do this in the page editor by simply selecting the page you want to link to, clicking the link icon and linking to the appropriate page (the page must be published for you to link to it).

Adding a link to another page in WordPress

When you’ve added your link just click the Update button.

Selling the course

Now we need to sell our course.

To do that, first of all we need to pick at least one payment option (e.g. PayPal) for buyers.

Setting up a payment gateway (e.g. PayPal)

To start setting this up:

  • Go to Restrict > Settings > Payments in WordPress.
  • Make sure your Currency is correct
  • Then check the gateway or gateways you want to use under Enabled Gateways
  • Scroll and click Save Options

The easiest gateway option for most people to setup is likely to be PayPal Standard. This is where the buyer goes to the PayPal website to make a payment and then returns to your website afterwards.

Depending on the gateway you want to use, you should now follow the appropriate instructions on the Restrict Content Pro website…

  • PayPal Standard
  • PayPal Express
  • PayPal Website Payments Pro
  • Stripe

…and then return to this guide.

If you get stuck on any of the gateway part I encourage you to contact Restrict Content Pro support who will be extremely helpful.

Creating a sales page and allowing members to register

When you installed Restrict Content Pro it automatically created everything you need for members to register and access your course.

And with all of the steps above completed you can start selling right away (though you might want to do a test purchase from a different email account before sending the link out to your email list!).

To start selling memberships and allow members to register you simply need to point them to the Register page which Restrict Content Pro already created for you.

You’ll usually find this at:

yourwebsite.com/register

But if not, go to Pages from the WordPress admin, browse until you see the Register link and then click View. The page that appears now will be your registration page.

In terms of creating a sale page or anything else that’s entirely up to you. If you’ve got a list of people waiting to buy you can simply send them an email with a link straight to your register page.

Otherwise you can simply create a blog post (Posts > Add New) or sales page (Pages > Add New) which contains more details about the course and with a link to the register page at the end.

Member login

After purchasing the course (assuming there were no issues with their payment of course!) members will automatically be logged in and redirected to the Welcome page we edited previously.

From here they can simply browse to the course they paid for via the link you created.

Members can also login to your course in future by browsing to the course page and using the login link we created in the Editing the ‘this content is restricted’ page step of these instructions.


And, that’s it.

For $42 and a small (but not terrible) amount of work you can now sell a course on your WordPress website.

Restrict Content Pro has great documentation and fantastic support, but if anything is not clear in the instructions above or if there’s something else you’d like to do with Restrict Content Pro I haven’t talked about, just let me know in the comments below.

15 October 2015

Getting the attention of influencers

I would not have been noticed at all if I hadn’t worked from day one on engaging influencers. It’s extremely hard to get noticed. Even if my content was great, I still needed to get it in front of the right people

– Dan Norris, founder of WP Curve and author of Content Machine

Here at ThemeValet we love everyone.

Equally.

But if you really push us we’d have to admit that there’s just some people in that big group of people we love who have just a little more clout.

People who know how to get a message out and have the audience ready to hear it.

I’m talking, of course, about influencers.

But how do you reach them and persuade them that what you’re doing is interesting to them and their audience too?

Well here’s a few ideas to get you started.


Start a podcast

Although I don’t have my own podcast (I’m all influencered-out right now) I’ve seen their enormous value in reaching influencers from other people I know that do run their own shows.

For example, Jon Nastor started his Hack the Entrepreneur podcast just over a year ago. He had no major background in podcasting and is not, to my knowledge, ‘internet famous’.

His first guest? New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan.

Who else has he spoken to? Derek Sivers, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Elon Musk!

OK, not Elon Musk, but you get the picture.

Having your own podcast a great way to reach influencers.

Here’s what Jon had to say on how having a podcast changed his life and helped him reach influencers:

Interviewing someone for my show is a great way to quickly go from a ‘cold’ relationship to a ‘warm’ one. All of the work I have put into building my audience, now provides instant value to my guest, and starts off a relationship by providing value. This is how true relationships are built.

Sounds pretty good, huh?

(Jon also now runs a second podcast called The Showrunner which is all about how to get into and succeed with podcasting if it’s something you’re interested in trying).

Learn from Tim Ferriss

Check out this podcast on ‘How to build a world class network in record time’ from investor, author and productivity god Tim Ferriss.

Although he’s mainly talking about how to network at events specifically, there are some solid tips in here in general on reaching influencers.

Help

Help help help them with something.

Lots of things.

Don’t ask for anything back (at least for some time).

Just help.

Don’t put them on a pedestal

Don’t be overly familiar, but don’t treat them in some weird way that you don’t treat your peers.

Unless you’re dealing with a total diva / ego maniac, there is nothing more likely to make them want to shut down and run for the hills in my experience.

Just ask

Email Seth Godin he emails back.

Email Derek Sivers he emails back.

Of course, the flip side of this is not to abuse that privilege.

Be interesting

Be brief

Stand out / first impressions

I know someone who gets access to amazing influencers – sometimes almost completely cold – by recording a short (to camera) video – explaining why the influencer is the perfect person for this particular thing, how it can benefit them and what help they can expect in return etc – and then including a link to it in the initial email.

Shows extra effort and distinguishes from just another standard email.

On a similar tact, I’ve got the attention of people I wanted to reach in the past by doing content that covers their product / service / thing to an almost ridiculous level of depth that they can’t ignore.

Just anything to stand out.

‘Copy’ Ryan Hoover

OK, don’t copy him exactly but do learn from some of the ways Product Hunt founder, Ryan Hoover used to build an amazing community and set of relationships.

In the following tweet, Ryan explains how he used Twitter to help him build his network:

Pre-@ProductHunt what things did @rrhoover do to build loose ties & relationships w/ people in the startup ecosystem? pic.twitter.com/4DWbBYjMEs

— Adam Kazwell (@kaz) October 6, 2015

Reach out to people before they’re ‘big’

Instead of chasing the people that are already ‘big’ (and likely get dozens or hundreds of enquiries a day), why not think about things another way / more long term.

For example, I’m sure there’s people you know of that might not be an influencer yet but you can be pretty certain from their trajectory that they look very likely to be one.

Of course it’s a lot easier to reach those people at this stage than later on, so I say don’t just aim for the big guns, look at those who are coming up and seem destined (by their hard work and smarts) for great things.

Need more ways?

Check out Dan Norris’ excellent book Content Machine, all about content marketing, including an in-depth discussion of reaching influencers.

In fact they’re probably even better than my suggestions.


Final thought

Reaching influencers is not about sucking up to or pretending to have some connection with someone who has no relation to you or what you’re doing.

Neither is it trying to trick them to ‘sell your stuff’ (they won’t fall for it anyway).

But if you have the chance to connect and build a relationship with someone who interests you and is at the top of the field why not take it.

Got an influencer tip of your own? Let me know in the comments.

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Fast, secure and friendly WordPress website setup (from just $99)

ThemeValet will set up your WordPress website for you so it looks exactly like the demo of the theme you bought (and wanted) without having to mess around with instructions.

(We can even add your content, brand colours and logo too).

Find out more

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