jasontucker.blog

  • Applying focus to only a few personal projects this new year

    Good Morning! It’s Day 1 of January the first day of the new year. I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things I’ve done, started and haven’t completed and have realized that I need to ditch a bunch of projects I don’t have time for and only focus on the ones I do. Most of these projects have some monetary cost to me each year in the form of a domain name, here is what I’m keeping to start:

    Domains to keep

    • JasonTucker.blog
    • Jtuck.xyz
    • JenTucker.us
    • Jessalyn.blog
    • WPwatercooler.com
    • WPWC.co
    • Pressedlinks.com

    Domains to ditch

    • WPtalkshow.com
    • Wpshowandtell.com
    • WPreviewshow.com
    • WPrecommends.com
    • Whitescreened.com
    • JasonTucker.photography
    • Doing.church
    • Geekfit.com

    What I have realized is I haven’t applied focus on the projects that matter to me and haven’t found a way to apply a value to the ones I love, mainly in the form of monetization. I’m giving myself a year to monetize a few of my keepers and then I’ll reevaluate next year which I’m keeping.

    It’s just about money?

    Yes, when it comes to these they each cost money but all of them could make money but the passion for me isn’t there. The top 5 domains to ditch were show ideas that I wanted to do, most fall under the WPwatercooler umbrella anyhow. The photography one was back when gTLDs came out and I wanted to build a photography site, my photography is a hobby, stuff can be posted on JasonTucker.blog instead.

    GeekFit.com was a show I did with an old friend, the domain has value and I’m trying to sell it but haven’t got much leads on it. This year I’ll try selling it again and see if I can get more than $100 for it.

    Doing.church was an idea to provide churches with the tools needed to build an IT or AV infrastructure and the site would guide them on what other churches are using in this space, I didn’t have time to get it to take off but I thing the domain has value, do you?

    Are you cleaning out your domain closets? How do you go about getting rid of them?

    How to monetize a domain

    Running advertisements on your website seems to be the simplest way to do any type of monetization. The other way to go about it is to write blog posts and put affiliate links in there so that when people like your idea and want to try to execute it themselves they can just click on the link in your article and purchase the product or service that you’re talking about and you’ll make a little bit of money.

    The other way to monetize domain name that you no longer want is to try to sell it the simplest way to do that is just to put up a for sale sign on the domain name and then if somebody comes by and sees it they may want to buy it from you. So far I’ve used flippa.com and SEDO.com to try and sell my domain names.

    Monetizing what I want to keep

    As for the projects that I’m keeping most of them will most likely end up having to either some affiliate links or advertisements that I’ll run on the site myself or in the form of me speaking that advertisement on a podcast or YouTube show. My struggle here is that I’m not very good at selling so I need to figure out a good way to be able to sell ad space on my different podcast and YouTube shows so that I could make some money from them. For a long while now on the WPwatercooler we’ve never had advertisements in any form, I’d like to see if I can change that this year. Once I do I’d like to also continue to do this on WPblab so that there is some form of income that’s coming from it. Have you ever sold a speaking advertisement on a podcast?

    All month long we at WPblab are hosting something we’re calling “Just Create January” hoping to inspire folks to create, share and interact with others all month long in January

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    Jason Tucker

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  • WordCamp US in Nashville 2017 with my 12 year old daughter by my side

    This past weekend November 28 – December 3rd my 12-year-old daughter Jessalyn and I flew out and attended WordCamp US in Nashville Tennessee. As I wrote in my previous post –  WordCamp US through the eyes of a 12 year old Jessalyn and I were sponsored to go to WordCamp US by the kind folks at Bluehost via Women Who WP and giving us the means of flight and lodging to attend the event. Instead of boring you with a massive post I thought I’d build a bulleted list of my observations.

    • My daughter’s first flight ✅
    • Our WordPress community is amazing.
    • The venue, as well as Nashville in general, is absolutely gorgeous.
    • I wish we found time to go to the Johnny Cash museum, it was right across the street from the venue.
    • At first, I was a bit mad there was a room called “The Hallway Track” not because I have a show called Hallway Track but because it was weird that we legitimized something that was so organic, meeting one another between sessions during the WordCamp, it was its own destination and felt like I was depriving the speakers of people not being in their sessions. I latter realized that legitimizing this was a good thing, it allowed people who never go to sessions and just shake hands and kiss babies to do so in a room full of swag, marketers and sales folks. I spoke to a bunch of people about this and most said it was nice not having to be outside of the rooms talking with people and to be at a place where you could hang out and chit-chat with vendors.
    • I loved the idea of the community bazaar, how cool is that to have communities from all over have a place to be at to showcase what they do for their local or regional community. I loved that one of my communities Women Who WP was in attendance and had a booth to spread the love and community of women in technology.
    • I loved that ROSIE was EVERYWHERE including the State of the Word.
    • This years word was Gutenberg, love it or hate it it’s coming to WordPress like a freight train.
    • The food was awesome, Matt Mullenweg always brings the best BBQ to these events.
    • The official hotel and the event venue were walking distance away which is nice when you have a tired 12-year old that wanted to take a nap. That hotel was also really nice, we enjoyed ourselves.
    • My daughter’s swear jar got up to about $8 dollars. We’re not a family that swears and I have friends that don’t have kids of their own and find it challenging to communicate without swearing. Jess has an invoice she needs to send out to a few key people 🙂
    • Speaking of swearing I was a bit struck when I heard from the stage a poem that was said that included the word Mother F***er. It was crazy to think this happened in such a public forum almost as if Steve Jobs himself dropped an F bomb on state. Anyhow the video has now been made available on WordPress.tv has been modified to exclude an MF bomb in the middle of the poem. I gave WordPress and @photomatt some grief about this:

    https://twitter.com/jasontucker/status/937447189328138241

    • I think events like this need to foster the next generation of WordPress users, designer, developers and marketers and treating everyone in the audience on the same level outside of the professional norm is weird. I’m glad they have since modified the poem by blanking out the phrase used and the transcription of the poem, I feel this is in good taste given that WordPress is used by more than a quarter of the internet and countless businesses and organizations that dropping an MF wouldn’t be kosher.
    • The Nashville Science Center being rented out the way it was and we had full reign over the place was a welcomed addition to this awesome fun-filled event.
    • Jessalyn’s first room service ✅

    Thank you to all the 13 women that took the time to interview with Jessalyn, 28 of you came out of the woodwork (with many of you sharing on slack, facebook and twitter to spread the word) we wish we had more time to interview you all.  Thank you for taking the time and inspiring my kiddo to get involved more with technology.

    You can read Jessalyn’s blog post recap along with her interviews by going to the link below.

    https://jessalyn.blog/my-trip-to-wordcamp-us-to-interview-women-in-tech/

    Thank you!

    Thank you to Devin and the crew over at Bluehost for making our trip possible and for Women Who WP to supporting us throughout this project. You ladies mean the world to us!

    I leave you with a big photo album from our travels out to Nashville from Southern California:

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    Jason Tucker

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  • WordCamp US 2017 from the eyes of a 12 year old

    I’m attending WordCamp US in Nashville Tennessee at the end of this month. This is the first time since WordCamp SF turned into WordCamp US that I’ll be attended this event. For the last few years, aside from the local WordCamps here in California I’ve haven’t been venturing too far from home to attend a WordCamp. WomenWhoWP wanted to send two people to WordCamp US Bluehost said they would sponsor those people. So WomenWhoWP put an application on their site, we applied, and were selected from the entries. Jessalyn has shown interest in technology by getting involved in STEM at school and joining the Girls Who Code club there as well. For the last few months, I’ve changed my focus Meetup wise and have attended WomenWhoWP’s Meetup to show support for my friends Bridget Willard and Jen Miller and to get more involved in their community. I’ve been taking Jen and Jessalyn making this a family date nite of sorts and they recognized that Jessalyn is showing interest in technology, getting involved in it at home, school and in her social groups. Bluehost with WomenWhoWP’s recommendation wanted to send her to WCUS to learn more about WordPress and the technologies that I, her dad am fluent in. I’m stoked to get the opportunity to go with her and learn from her point of view what “WordPress” is to a 12-year-old.

    I’ve been to many WordCamps over the 10+ years I’ve been involved in WordPress and I’ve traveled a few times to far off places to attend. Miami is the furthest for me thus far with this WordCamp US in Tennessee being the second farthest.

    This trip has a few firsts for Jessalyn:

    • First time flying anywhere, ever.
    • First time building and writing for her own blog ( jessalyn.blog )
    • First time going further east than Colorado.
    • First time going to a WordCamp.
    • First time going on a dad and daughter only trip somewhere, ever.
    • First time Mom has both of us out of her hair for a few days this year.
    • First time interviewing people on camera – My idea to interview women in technology

    With all these firsts, I’m looking at this from her perspective. The drama of going through security, of getting on a plane (for the first time), of spending MANY hours on the plane (doing homework) and then arriving in a city neither of us has been to. Shuttle / Uber / Lift over to the hotel, staying in a hotel, dealing with time zone changes and then realizing we need to wake up really early (for us) in the morning. Breakfast, trip to WordCamp and then… WOW! This place is HUGE! swag, swag, swag, shirts, shirts, shirts, more swag and then going to her first session of the day. Many sessions later and an after party that is 100% kid friendly. This trip is very much for her to “ramp up” and learn how a “WordPress” website works. I use quotes here because other than it being a “blog”, she really doesn’t know much about the technology. Two days of that then we chase the sun and arrive back home just ticks on the clock face longer than we left TN. Whew!

    I’m really looking forward to this experience and looking forward to what Jess will get out of it. Her first blog post is out, take a minute and read it and then leave her a comment (obviously after you comment here on mine!), she’ll have a few out over the course of the next few weeks leading up to WCUS.

    https://jessalyn.blog/first-meeting-girls-code/

    Jessalyn will be interviewing women in technology at WordCamp US.

    https://jessalyn.blog/my-idea-to-interview-women-in-technology/

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    Jason Tucker

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  • How to build a new WordPress website – https migrations, seo, contact forms, google analytics

    This month at my local WordPress meet up I demonstrated how you can build a WordPress website and what tools you need to get started. I covered a myriad of topics and our plan is to cover this series for the next couple months. We hope that folks can figure out how to build WordPress websites themselves by combining all the info we share in this series.

    Here is the video from WhittierWP, my local WordPress meet that I co-manage. If you don’t live in the Whittier CA area and are looking to get involved in using WordPress you may want to find a local meetup.

     

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    Jason Tucker

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