Less is more
After The Netpond Show today (what? You weren’t there? We missed you!) a few of us hung around and the subject, as it always does, turned to how to make the most of what we have. Conversions are down, and you could probably blame everything from Tube sites to the tooth fairy. You’re probably right on both counts 
But I think that there is one way to combat this trend which really does work, and it all comes down to the old maxim that “Less is More”.
You sell the sizzle, not the steak.
Less content on your sites, more opportunities to sell the surfer. I know, I know; Everybody else does it. The surfer won’t stay if they don’t get a ton of FHGs, free pics, tube videos, whatever. And it won’t work unless everybody does it anyway, so why should I be the one to start?
I’ll tell you why. Because it actually does work. If there is one thing I took away from LB’s last project, it’s that less content on your site directly translates into more signups. The site I built for his project has made twice as many sign ups as any blog I ever built on a lot less traffic. Not that I don’t make money on blogs (which is a whole different topic) but blogs take upkeep. They take work. If you can build a static site which doesn’t require much (if any) upkeep, and makes more money, well - why wouldn’t you?
If you’re interested in dipping a toe into the “less is more” mentality, then I advise you to go take a quick look at this article by Anasporn. And this one talking about how to marry it with blogging. The simple fact is that if your blog is nothing but tons of links to classic free hosted galleries, you’re probably not converting as much as you could be. Instead, try making one of these specialized gallery formats to link to, with less content and more ads/banners/seo content, and you’re going to see an improvement.
For that matter, a site which uses less content and plenty of SEO and sizzle is going to do better than most blogs. And I will be giving you some ideas on “content-less” content pages over the next few weeks. So get ready to go “less is more” and end up with less work, less content on your sites - and quite a bit more money. 
Embed Videos and Wordpress MU hack
**EDIT** Now there’s an easier way. You want THIS plugin, which will allow you to add embed, iframe and all sorts of goodies to your posts in Wordpress MU, even if you’re using feeds. If you want to know WHY this works, then continue reading below for the nuts -n- bolts. I’m still pretty proud I figured it out on my own! **END EDIT**
So you’re running a blog farm and you use third party software to manage it. You have one (or more) copies of Wordpress MU, and you’re trying to use Blogs Automater, or whatever your software of choice is, to post embedded videos.
And it isn’t working - all the code gets stripped out of your posts. It’s driving you nucking futs.
Well, after tearing my hair out this afternoon, I found the solution and I want to share it with you. It’s pretty simple BUT you’re going to have to modify a file in the wp-includes directory.
Ready? Here we go.
- Surf to your wp-includes directory
- open the file named “kses.php”
- Look for this line:
add_filter(’content_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_post_kses’);
as of this writing it’s on line 1019, but it may move in the future when they upgrade the program.
- place TWO SLASHES in front of the line, so that it NOW looks like
// add_filter(’content_save_pre’, ‘wp_filter_post_kses’);
- Save the file (and reupload it if you downloaded it to work on). That’s it, you’re done!
DISCLAIMERS
If I were you, I would ONLY do this little trick on Wordpress MU installs that you do NOT allow other people access to. Not stripping code out of posts (which is what this hack does) means that you could put some very sneakeh bits of code in there. Just a word of warning.
WHY MODIFY THE CODE INSTEAD OF USING A PLUGIN?
Well, because most plugins require more formatting in your posts - adding some bits that say [tube] around the video or something. And that means you’d have to go through all your sponsor posts (I believe I have 35,000 right now) and modify them.
Sound like fun to you? Nah, me neither.
Hope this helps someone - leave a comment if it did!
