Building a Blogging Empire with Bob Dunn

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And now on with the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks “How did you build that?” Today, my guest is Bob Dunn, also known as Bob WP. Bob, thanks for joining me today.

Bob Dunn: You bet, I’m looking forward to it and I’m a big fan of your podcast. So I really appreciate being asked to be on it, honored.

Joe Casabona: Well, thank you, sir. I am also a big fan of your podcast, which, you know, I was also on. So, it’s fun to have this little network of podcasters that we get to talk to every now and then.

Bob Dunn: Exactly.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So cool. Very cool. So today we’re going to be talking about just bobwp.com. You are a well-known blogger and, oh, I haven’t had like a straight-up blogger on the show talking about his or her blog, right? I’ve had Chris Lema, but he talks more about the membership side of his website. So, you know, today we’re going to get back to basics for WordPress and talk about blogging.  So maybe the first thing you can do is tell people a little bit about you and about your blog. 

Bob Dunn: Okay. Well, I have a long history of being self-employed. My wife and I had a marketing and graphic design business for about 17 years. 2007 Started dabbling in WordPress. Probably about 2008 started blogging a bit, not much. It was a business site we had for our existing business.

And then in 2010 is when I really switched over to BobWP. So between then and now I’ve done a lot of different stuff. I’ve done design for sites. I’ve done coaching, training workshops, online courses, the whole, everything you can possibly think of I’ve tried. Some of that I’m continuing to do. Right now, It’s pretty much morphed into just having the blog. I don’t do any services anymore. I don’t do training. I don’t do the coaching, which I did for the last five years. It’s really a focus on content which is a blog and the podcast. And it’s different because you just have to start thinking, “Okay, how can I actually make money from this blog and from this podcast?” and it can be a challenge. It’s not easy. Let me tell you that. So, that’s where I’m at right now. I’ve been blogging about WordPress, and that’s what I do. I mean, you and I have a lot in common with the teaching and it’s just been a lot of tutorials on how to do things. And I’ve been kind of moving into the e-commerce space more and moreover the last I’d say 12 months or so. 

Joe Casabona: Nice. And yeah, so we kind of got connected because we were both doing WordPress education, which you were doing a little bit. You know, before me, as far as making a name for yourself in the space, I’ve been a developer for a long time and just recently kind of started getting into the teaching as a proper business in WordPress. So that’s kind of how we got linked up. And I know that, you know, when it comes to product research, right? You can look at the competition, and see what they’re doing. You can talk to potential users, you can scratch your own itches is something that we’ve talked about a lot on this show. But when it comes to kind of coming up with your own content, and doing it at the volume in which you do it, what kind of research goes into, you know, creating the blog posts that you create. Or, you know, talking to the guests that you have on your show, you know, do you do a lot of research in that sense?

Bob Dunn: Yeah, for the blog. I think it’s been pretty much how it’s been for the last several years. The content I mean, it’s not easy to come up with content no matter what, you still think you have tons of ideas. And being in that space and of course, you can relate to this of teaching and liking to teach people to do things there’s plenty to do with WordPress. 

And I’ve always focused kind of on the beginner a lot in the past. And the research is seeing what other people do. Just constantly seeing what’s out there, how you can create, you know, your own voice, your own brand. That’s important because there are so many blogs out there. So much content and you have to build up that audience and that all takes a lot of time. So the research is kind of finding your own groove, I guess, in the blogging world. And looking at what others are doing, you know, you don’t want to compare yourself because everybody has a different audience. Everybody has a different approach and you don’t want to just get bogged down to think, you know, “Why are people reading my blog coming to it again?” It really is something that you just keep building on. And you got to be constantly changing and understanding what your readers want. And for me, a lot of the initial ideas came from not so much research as just since I had a lot of clients, both in coaching and design and training. I was able to get a lot of ideas for posts from them because they were asking me the same questions over and over. It’s like, okay, well those questions, “Hey, everybody else may want to know that…” And they come to find out. Yes, they do.

Joe Casabona: Nice. I mean, that’s such a great tip. Chris Lama gave us kind of the same tip. You know, when coming up with content, he says he gets a lot of emails, people asking him questions and he answers them kind of in the form of a blog post. Because it’s a free idea that, and you know, people want to know about it, right?

Bob Dunn: Right. Exactly. And I’ve gotten the same thing, some emails it’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to spend the time answering this email, but, wow! This is a great idea for a post because I’m sure several other people have the same question.”

Joe Casabona: Yeah, that’s great. And so there are two things that you mentioned that I kind of want to touch on, and one is kind of comparing yourself to other blogs, right? A lot of people, I feel, think that “Oh, well, this person blogged about it, so I should not blog about it” right. But that, in my opinion, couldn’t be further from the truth, right?

Bob Dunn: Yeah. And we get to the point. Sometimes I’ve even been guilty of it. I’ll see somebody writing a post and I think, “Oh man, how many times have we said that?” And maybe they did it in a different way. Maybe they did a different approach, but there’s always people coming new to blogging and coming new to WordPress. So there’s always people that are still going to be asking those questions. Whether they find it in a post that’s, you know, three years old or something new. You can get in that rut of thinking, ”Oh, you know, I’m not going to write this post just for that reason because there’s 5,000 posts out there.” But you may just bring something a little bit different to it. And you’re going to hit certain people at the right time. Because again, everybody is at a different stage.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. It’s like on a baseball team, you don’t just have one guy who’s the hitter, because he’s the best hitter. You have nine guys. They all hit because they all hit a little bit differently and they all bring something new to the lineup, right?

Bob Dunn: Right, exactly.

Joe Casabona: So, and then the other thing he mentioned was that people can get discouraged quickly, right? Because they have a blog and maybe, you know, nobody’s reading it or they’re not getting the traffic that they want. But, can you speak a little bit to kind of, you know, Evergreen content and stuff that you write today that might be popular six months from now and stuff like that?

Bob Dunn: Yeah. I think that’s important to Evergreen. I’m one to really emphasize that if you’re riding tech too even though it’s Evergreen to still put a date on it. Because things change so much, nothing’s more frustrating than going to a post about a certain plugin and you’re thinking, are they talking about version 1.0 or 4.0. So that is what you have to be careful of within the tech area, especially talking Evergreen. But yeah, a lot of the posts, I’m always amazed at posts that I think may be short-lived and how long they survive.

I wrote a post on how to create two blogs with one WordPress install. And it’s as simple as just talking about, you know, categories and how you can organize your content and approach it as two different blogs. And this thing just, I had, how many comments, it’s one of my most visited posts. I had hundreds of comments. I actually revised the video, created a new post, and redirected it over and I’m continuing to get it. So the pit, never think of, I mean, sometimes you want to think of what will be Evergreen and always lasted. And certainly not every post you’re going to do, you know, WordPress 4.7 comes out. Well, people are going to read that first limited amount of time and not go back to it one year later. But you do want to generically think through some of that. And, and a lot of times, again, with tech, creating something that’s, what you might want to call it, Evergreen is going in and updating it at points. Sometimes I’ll go in and simply say, “this new feature has been added or this I’ll even often put that this plugin hasn’t been, you know, taken care of or babysit or whatever you want to call it for two years or four years. So you might want to be careful using it.” So it’s a constant work of updating posts that you see still getting a lot of traffic.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Yeah, definitely. And just to echo, you know, if you have a blog even like, even just tech, if I go to a website and like, and I’m reading a blog post and there’s no date like that, it drives me crazy. Because I like to, you know, I like to do something that may be a lot of people don’t do and that’s to contextualize the post as far as like what was also going on at the time this blog post was written. And, it’s impossible to do that when there’s no date. So,  it’s, you know, if I have one tip for the bloggers out there,  make sure to pick a theme that shows the date. You know, somewhere on the, I think mine’s at the bottom of my post, but it’s still on the page somewhere. So, though honestly, I should have it at the top I think so. 

Bob Dunn: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So,  kind of moving through the questions, I normally like to ask, you know, you’ve talked to students and people who email you to get content for ideas. But, you know, I found that talking it out with some contemporaries is also very helpful. Yu know, being part of a mastermind group or anything like that. So do you have like a core group of people that you talk to? I know that you’re pretty embedded in the WordPress community so I’m just kind of curious to see what you talk about with others as far as blogging, and your podcast, and e-commerce goes.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, that’s a good question. Nobody’s let me into their group. I don’t think they want me in there, theirs. 

Joe Casabona: Oh, no.

Bob Dunn: No, but seriously, you know, I don’t belong to a mastermind group or anything. I think for me, it’s just that continued conversation, whether social. Sometimes just jumping on Skype with somebody catching up on things, seems other people are writing on their blogs. A lot of that is my, I guess you’d call my mastermind. It’s kind of a mix of everything and I’ve, I don’t want to say, you know, I’ve been in business, but I’ve been in business a long time and I’ve gone through a lot of this. And I met a point where now is just, it’s almost a free form of a masterminding for me where I will sometimes disconnect with somebody or say, “Hey, Joe, let’s get on Skype and let’s catch up on things.” And that’s kind of my little mini mastermind because we’re sharing some ideas or I’m asking some specific thing that you’re doing., You know, what, how’s that working for you or getting a little feedback? And I’ve done that a lot of times just for a one-on-one conversation. So it’s very informal, but that’s kind of how I’ve worked at myself.

Joe Casabona: Nice. I like that a lot. And, actually, that reminds me of a conversation that you and I had. You know, several months ago about, you know, I was kind of getting into this space that you were in and we were both, you were doing something that I was starting to try to do and you gave me some really good advice. I hope it was like a good conversation for you too. 

Bob Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Joe Casabona: So that’s great. I love that. Just like, and you know, that way there’s not like a lot of pressure to bring something to the mastermind group every week or every two weeks or however often you meet which is something that my mastermind group is thinking about right now. You know, we all kind of do updates and now there’s like a little bit of pressure, like, “Oh, I don’t have anything to say this week. Is that okay?” Blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I think that’s fantastic.

So you have your blog that you write about. Tons of plugins and themes and tools. So for the title question, how did you build it? Maybe we could talk a little bit about your favorite WordPress theme or plugins, or kind of what you’ve, what you’ve put together to have the presence that you have now, right? Cause you had two different properties, one for your blog, one for your podcast. That’s kind of been combined in one.

Bob Dunn: Yeah, exactly. And it was, that was strictly for traffic reasons. I mean, I thought that it was good to have it on a separate site. Boy, it’s, you know, I’ve done, I was just writing a wrap-up, I’d change my theme twice this last year. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve changed the theme. 

As far as the theme, one of my favorites has always been Genesis, their child theme. I think I started with Genesis. I don’t know how far back. And it just became a really easy norm for me. I’m used to it. I can always find it. I don’t spend a lot of time when I create my own sites with the details. I see something that I think, “Okay, this is a plugin and play. I can just fit my content and I don’t want to spend hours.” I’m not a developer, you know, I’m a designer by my past or whatever, but I don’t sweat the small stuff. You know, I see a theme. “Okay, cool.” 

So Genesis has been a big one. WooThemes themes, I have used those off and on because of woo-commerce. Woo-commerce, I’ve used that plugin since it was actually released. I’ve always used it for something to become kind of a mainstay in my site because I’m either selling services, coaching. Whatever I’ve sold, I’ve been able to use it. And it just has stuck there. I’ve found no reason to pull it out because there’s always something, even though it’s not a huge online store. 

Other plugins, man, you know, at one point I think I had 60 plugins on my site. People were saying, “Are you insane, Bob?” I think I may be down to under 40 now, but they’re always, there’s some reason I put them on there. It’s not just because they’re cool or they’re the newest one out there. Of course, I’ve always had probably Yoast SEO in there at some point or other. 

And one of the things I’ve used a lot around the blogging sphere is I use CoSchedule for not only scheduling my posts and having an editorial calendar, but also for social sharing. You know, I couldn’t live without that right now. You know, that’s huge, that’s a big one. But you know, plugins, “Oh my God!” You know, there’s been many I’ve used and I said, Oh, I just took like two or three off my site because I thought they were useful and I’m not really using them anymore. And really time to go. You know, the lead or whatever. So it’s always been, I always think when I change my site, whatever direction I’ve changed which people sometimes go crazy though. They’re always saying, “Bob, what are you doing now?” You know, two weeks ago I was talking to you and now doing something different.” But I’ve always made a point to find the ones that work well with what my needs are at that particular moment in time. And I’m happy to delete them. And even if I purchased them, you know, they’re gone if I don’t use them anymore. So it’s my list is, God, over the last five years is probably so crazy off and on but there had been a few standards all the way through. 

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. Awesome. That CoSchedule is an interesting one to me. In a previous episode, I spoke to Nate over at CoSchedule about some of the cool things that they’re doing and kind of the content marketing stuff. So I think this is a nice one, two punch for that.

We’re coming up with how to come up with content and run a good blog and then using CoSchedule to kind of market your content. One thing that you do is review plugins, right. And you’ve used a ton, right? 60, the number 60 kind of gave me agida, which is the Italian word for heartburn. So, how do you go about evaluating plugins? Like, you know, when you, either for your reviews or for,  just personal use, you know, what do you look for? 

Bob Dunn: Yeah. Personal use, I’m probably from experienced listening to going back to that listening to colleagues who’s out there talking about it. I really pay attention if a new plugin has been released. I might play around with it. So on the personal side of things, it’s really got to fit my exact needs. Likely it’s going to be a premium plugin. I mean, I do have some free plugins. I mean, there’s a lot of good free plugins, but when it really comes to the important stuff that I need to be done, I will spend some money on Yoast. I’ll spend some money on CoSchedule those ones because they do exactly what I need. So personally, it’s, you know, does this do what I want? As far as reviews for the site, It’s interesting because I’ve always done it in a more educational sense. My reviews aren’t. “Okay. Here’s what’s good about the plugin. Here’s what sucks about the plugin.“

Mine is more, “Here is what the plugin will do for you. Let me share all these features with you.” I’m not wanting to go in and figure out if this code is bloated. I have no skills at that so I kind of trust listening to other people like you and other people on Twitter if they’re saying something to that effect. But for me, it’s really, here are the features. I’m going to tell you the things this plugin will do. And you decide, is it for you? I’m not going to make that decision. I’m not going to say it’s missing all these things cause obviously it is missing it cause I did not mention it, right.

So when I do reviews, both, I don’t even call them reviews much anymore. I call them more sponsored posts. So I do them for the plugins I just want to do. And then I do have a service where people can pay to have me write about their plugin if they want a guaranteed spot on my blog. But they also know that that doesn’t mean that every plugin I do is paid about, you know, the majority is ones I just choose to write about.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. And that is, you know, that’s something that never occurred to me. And that’s something I’m going to take away for my own personal use is that when you review a plugin, it’s not so much a review, it’s a walkthrough, right. Which is, because I’ve done paid reviews of not necessarily plugins actually, but cigars,  is something that I’ve been paid to review. And there was once ago, one time that I did not like, and I had a hard time reconciling. Taking money to review the cigar with, but I’m not recommending it. Like they’re essential, they’re paying me to tell me I don’t like the cigar and I kind of went a more objective route. Right? I said, you know, this cigar starts like this blah, blah, blah, this and that. And I tried not to interject too many personal views into it. I just said, “These are the things that you get from the cigar.” And I think that’s something to keep in mind for anybody who wants to get out there and do like, you know, kind of sponsored content. You’re getting paid for some reason, either traffic or your voice or something like that. And may just be upfront with the content sponsor, right? Say this is not necessarily an endorsement. I’m writing about your plugin to let people know what’s out there.

Bob Dunn: Exactly. And another thing I tend to stay away from is comparison reviews. Here are five SEO plugins. Let me tell you the good, bad, and ugly to each one. To me, comparison reviews are good in one sense, but in another way, they can be very confusing to the casual user. It’s like, “Okay, now I have these five things I’m trying to figure out what you exactly explain.” And they get lost in it even more rather than say “Here’s one plugin. Here’s what it does. Does this work for you or not? No. Okay. Well then move on and look at something else.”

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost like presenting somebody with two choices or five choices. They’re going to have an easier time between two choices because they only have to pick two, right? They only have to pick from two. So, that’s great. And plus, you know, you don’t, you know, I read, you know, there was a post about like WordPress versus media which is better. And I’m like, “Why are you like hitting these two things that are barely the same against each other and like this kind of negative way?” Like, so, you know, each person is going to need something different. And an objective view is really the important thing, I think. So that’s very cool. 

Bob Dunn: Exactly.

Joe Casabona: Cool. So, what are your plans for the future with your blog? You’ve went through a bunch of changes in 2016. Were you, did you start your podcast in 2016? I’m like having a hard time remembering now.

Bob Dunn: Yeah. March, ideally.

Joe Casabona: Okay. Cool. So we’re coming up on a year on the podcast and you’ve changed your blog up and everything. It sounds like you were about to answer and I kind of cut you off, so I’ll just stop talking and let you talk.

Bob Dunn: No problem. I have a tendency to do that too, so don’t worry. Yeah. You know, I wish I could say, “Oh, these exact things with my crazy, the way in my head works, who knows what will happen in 2017.?” But, you know, the podcast will continue. That’s really going well and I’m happy with how that is working as it is.

The blog, I’ve made a gradual transition over the last few months, especially more heavily in the last couple of months into focusing a bit more on e-commerce and WordPress. And that really is what you’re going to see more in 2017 is talking, is me talking about the e-commerce aspect of WordPress with all the different plugins. But what’s interesting about this and what I had to kind of think through is of course, I have all my content on there already that is continually being found on Google and stuff like that. So beginners will still have all that content.

And when you say that you’re going to be a bit e-commerce focused doesn’t mean that I’m just going to be talking about EDD and WooCommerce and all of these. I’ll still be talking about social plugins. I’ll still be talking about SEO. I’ll be talking about all the other parts of it. It’s just that slant on e-commerce and every, every site that sells something. And e-commerce isn’t, you know, just online stores. Whatever you’re selling, you’re going to still have to know about, well, “Hey, I need this on here for people to connect socially. I need this for my comments.” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So it’s not a huge drastic change. It’s just that, and I’ve seen this in my subscribers and everything. The focus of being a little bit more on the e-commerce side of things is changing my audience. And that was kind of a plan that I have been working on and thinking through for quite some time. And so it’s, and I have a method to my madness, why I’m doing it, but I think that what people will probably see more and more on my site is more of that kind of focus in the next year.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. sounds cool. Well, I’m really looking forward to it. You know, e-commerce is more than just having a product to sell. It’s actually a lot more than that which is a lesson that I’ve learned this year. Well, I’ve continually learned that lesson, but having a defined product this year has really driven that point home for me.

Bob Dunn: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Speaking of, I don’t know if I’d like to thank you in person, but I have a blogging course on WP in one month. And I link to your content for coming up with content and making money with your blog. That’s been very valuable to me and my students. So, you know, if you want to find great content on how to come up with great content, head over to bobwp.com. 

And the last question I love to ask is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

Bob Dunn: Hmm, boy, I have a lot over the years. I know that other people talked about hard work and that’s obvious. I mean, that’s something, yeah, none of this comes by easy. Content blogging, podcasting, and you know, that is, it’s not simple.

I think one of the things that has always been a key for me is to be flexible and not to get stuck in ruts. Not to think, “Oh, this is the only way I can do it.” If something needs to be changed, if you see something on your blog, your site, your services, your products, whatever that isn’t working, then it’s time for a change. Don’t beat it to death and be flexible enough to say, “Hey, I’ve got to move on. This is the direction I go.” I am in the age bracket where technology some people may say, “Oh, you know, the older crowd isn’t quite as flexible as technology.” And I’ve always been, you know, it’s like, if something, if I need to learn something new, I learn it and I’d love to keep learning and I will till the end of my life, probably keep learning. But that flexibility of being able and willing to change and listen to people and not always be saying, “Oh, I know the right way or whatever, what you say, isn’t right.” Et cetera, et cetera. I’m going to, I’m going to change. I’m going to be flexible. I’m going to listen to everybody and listen to their points of view and “Hey, maybe it’ll actually make a big change in what I’m doing.”

Joe Casabona: That’s great. I love that. Be flexible, be open to change, and don’t stop learning. So that’s fantastic. Well, Bob, it’s been a fast and fun half-hour. Thank you so much for joining.

Bob Dunn: I really appreciate you having me on the show, Joe.

Joe Casabona: And I appreciate you being on the show. It’s always a good time talking to you.

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Thanks so much for listening, and thanks to our great guests and fantastic sponsors. If you liked the show, please rate it and subscribe on iTunes in Google Play or whatever your podcast app choices. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out at streamlined.fm.

And finally, until next week, get out there and build something.