The Blogger Genius Podcast

Do you have a skill you know very well? Could you teach it? In this episode, we're talking about how to grow a successful business teaching what you know. Then we'll explore how to grow that business using social media in creative ways, especially Instagram. We will get to all of that in just a moment with my guest.  But first, are you looking for a community of bloggers to join? Do you need help, encouragement, to just a safe place to ask questions?  Or maybe you’ve been blogging for a while and you have some wisdom to share with others.  If any of these apply to you, I would absolutely love to have you join my Facebook group. I’m in there all the time, participating, and answering and asking questions that are pertinent to your online business.  I also go live in the group every week, sharing my takeaways from these podcast episodes. So, if you want more than just listening to the podcast, but you want to join the conversation, come join me and hear my takeaways and let’s discuss yours! Now, let me introduce my guest.  Kimberly Espinel is a food photographer, a prop stylist, a food stylist, a food photography teacher, an Instagram growth coach, a podcaster, and a food blogger. Yep, that's a lot! Growing a Passion for Food Photography Kimberly didn’t plan to start an online business when she started her food blog. She had changed her own diet and merely wanted to blog about her recipes.  She was also in school to be a nutritional therapist and figured that the recipes she was creating could be used with her clients when she finished her training. That was her thinking at the time; she had no goals to make money with the blog.  It didn’t take long for Kimberly to realize that her food photography wasn’t up to par, and so she began to focus on practicing her photography skills.  Before long, she became more passionate about food photography than she was about nutritional therapy.  By the end of her third year of blogging, she was teaching food photography one-on-one, and working with brands on sponsored campaigns.  How to Know When It’s Time to Raise Your Rates When Kimberly began doing her one-on-one sessions, her rates for those sessions were fairly low. She wanted it to be affordable for the bloggers who wanted to work with her.  But as time went by, and she did more and more sessions, they began to sell out so quickly that she realized she was underpricing them. So, every quarter hence, she began raising her prices.  She also began working with a business coach who has helped her find new ways of meeting her financial goals. One of those was to begin doing group classes for photography.  How to Set Up Online Courses No matter how many one-on-one or private smaller sessions Kimberly makes available, there are always people who can’t make it in, as well as people who can’t quite afford the private class. But Kimberly still wanted those people to be able to learn from her.  She is gifted at teaching and she felt compelled to find a way to help everyone who wanted to get better at food photography. The solution, she discovered, was in offering group online classes. The main difference between the private class and the group class is that the group classes are pre-recorded, while the private classes are live.  The pre-recorded classes also meet a need for those in time zones where attending a live session would be close to impossible.  Creating the Content That Your Audience Wants If you only create content that you are interested in, you won’t grow a dedicated audience. You have to meet the needs of your people, and you have to answer the questions they have.  Kimberly has taken this understanding to a whole new level by creating Instagram challenges for her audience.  So, even though she originally started her blog to share recipes, when she saw that her audience was more interested in her food photography, she made a turn in that direction.  And when her posts on Instagram strategy brought readers in droves, she started the IG challenges.  Kimberly has been able to stay with her true passion, which is food and teaching others. But her business doesn’t look quite like she thought it would when she began.  Branching into Food Photography as a Business Over the years, Kimberly built up relationships with many brands through the sponsored campaigns she did with them.  The skills she developed in food photography eventually turned into brands approaching her to do food photography for them.  This includes restaurant photography, packaged foods, and any items in the food and drink category.  The bulk of Kimberly’s income is now doing that type of paid food photography.  Developing an Instagram Growth Strategy Before Instagram changed its algorithm, Kimberly was able to grow her followers to around 30K in just under a year. She did this without running ads or paying for followers.  With that growth came a lot of people asking to pick her brain over coffee.  So she created a series on her blog where she talked about trends, developments, tips, and tricks for using Instagram. She called it, appropriately enough, The Instagram Series.  The posts in this series exploded in popularity, with the most popular being 3 Reasons You Are Losing Instagram Followers (and What to Do About It.) From that series, Kimberly developed more free content, (and eventually paid products) around Instagram growth.  What Is Working on Instagram Today? I asked Kimberly to give us her top 3 tips for using Instagram today, keeping in mind that things that work for one niche might not work as well in another niche.  So, fair warning: blogging and online business involves a ton of testing. You have to test, test, test to figure out what your audience responds to and what they will engage with.  Top 3 Tips for Instagram: You have to produce consistent content. Yes, folks, you have to show up if you want to attract a loyal audience. Because of the new algorithms, posts don’t stick around on IG the way they did in the glory days of the platform. Kimberly strongly suggests posting at least once a day, at the bare minimum. Most successful bloggers post multiple times per day. Create attention-grabbing photos and captions. Good isn’t good enough anymore, now that the space is so crowded. Your photo quality must be stellar, and your captions should draw your audience in and make them want to engage with you. Your captions should directly address your audience’s felt needs.  Provide value to your audience. There are many ways to add value to your Instagram, whether through stories, in your feed, or in IG Lives. Share information that is helpful to your audience or solves a pain point for them.  Be sure to follow Kimberly on Instagram and check out her podcast for more tips and tricks to help you grow your online business.  Instagram is a powerful platform to allow you to build real authentic relationships with your followers.  Be sure to use all of IG’s features, like stories, IGTV, and Lives. And now, IG offers you the opportunity to send voice replies to your DM’s.  My followers get such a kick out of hearing my voice answer them through Direct Message on IG. They always say, “Oh my god, it’s really you!” What a great way to help your followers feel like they know you. And remember, when your followers feel like they know you, they also like you and they will trust you.  And once those 3 factors are in place, you are ready to build new income streams! Want to know more about building those income streams? Join my husband, David, and me in our blogger coaching group, where we teach you how to take your blog and create a real online business. Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

If you are interested in how to get started selling successful products online, you’re going to love today’s episode.  I’m chatting with Emma Lee Bates, online marketing expert, about all things sales: landing pages, selling to your email list, trends in online marketing, and sales funnels.  If you struggle with selling or you just want to learn more about how to do it well, this is the conversation for you! But, before we dive in to my conversation with Emma, I want to ask you a question: have you listened to 5 or more episodes of this podcast but you don’t have your own blog yet? If so, you are not alone! My husband and business partner, David, and I have noticed a trend among some of our listeners; a lot of you want to start an online business or a blog but you have no idea where or how to begin. If the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!  MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree/BlogStart to see how we can help you. We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you’re not tech-savvy.  That’s why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.  If you’re ready to make 2020 the year you finally start that business or blog you’ve been dreaming of for a long time, let us help.  Head over to MiloTree/BlogStart to get started.  We can’t wait to see what you build in 2020! Why You Should Be Using Tripwires We’ve begun experimenting with tripwires on our site, Catch My Party, and I’m loving it. For those of you not familiar with tripwires —a tripwire is a product you upsell to your audience when they sign up for your email list.  When someone opts in for your lead magnet, instead of simply sending them to a thank you page, the thank you page becomes a sales page of sorts.  On this page, you can upsell a product that is an obvious next step for the lead magnet they just signed up for.  Over at Catch My Party, we give away free party printables. We literally have thousands of free printables that anyone can download and print out.  So, if someone opts in to receive free printables for a Minecraft party for their kid, the thank you page offers them a Happy Birthday banner that they can personalize for just $5. Tripwires are an easy way to bring in extra money for a couple of reasons: It’s a no-brainer purchase for the customer. Your tripwire is an obvious next step for them. It’s passive income. You set it up once and you’re done. “Hello, money in my bank account while I’m sleeping.”  It requires no actual selling. You’re merely providing the person who already said they wanted your other products, with the opportunity to get one more thing that will make their life easier.  Using Tripwires to Train Your Audience to Buy From You If you give away a ton of stuff for free on your blog, as we do on Catch My Party, your audience might start to depend on you for free stuff. And that can make it harder to sell to them later. Whereas, if when someone signs up for your list, they get sent to a landing page with a tripwire, they can see right away that you also charge for some of your products.  The great thing is that when someone clicks the button to buy your lower-priced tripwire product, you are training them to click to purchase from you.  So, if they buy your $7 tripwire today, they are more likely to purchase your $25 product next month.  How to Write Successful Sales Emails Let’s say you’ve been blogging for a little while now, you have a warm and active email list, and you want to sell a product to your list.  If you’re anything like me, you dread writing the sales emails.  And the reason I dread it? Because all the sales emails that I get in my inbox are super long and detailed, telling me all sorts of stories and information before they even get to the part about the product.  And I don’t want to do that.  My feeling is, if you’ve been on my list for a while, you probably already know, like, and trust me, so I should be able to just write the email, tell you about the product, and ask you to buy it.  If you are truly my avatar, I should know you well enough to know exactly what product you want and need, and I shouldn’t be bashful about introducing you to it or asking you to buy it from me.  The trick in writing sales emails, says Emma, is to write the way you normally do.  If you typically send your list a nice, long, 8-paragraph email once per week, then if you send three 2-paragraph emails asking your people to buy something, that’s going to feel very off to them.  So, write like you typically do.  Be warm and personable like you always are; don’t be awkward about selling. Be yourself and tell your audience about the thing that’s going to change their life... or at least make it a bit easier.  How to Write Successful Sales Pages Have you noticed that the sales pages for online tools (such as email service providers or online course software), are always super short? Sometimes you don’t even have to scroll to see the entire sales copy.  And yet, when I go to a sales page created by an entrepreneur, I typically have to wade through scores of paragraphs, including videos, testimonials, tons of words about the incredible value this person is offering for the price, etc.  *To my listeners: would you email me at jillian@milotree.com and tell me how you feel about those super long sales pages? I seriously want to hear from you.  Emma shared that the reason for the novel-length sales pages is for the cold audience you may be driving to your sales page through Facebook ads. And indeed, if you are driving a cold audience to your products, it is going to take some space to convince them to buy from you.  That cold audience is going to need videos, plenty of testimonials, and your backstory in order to develop that "know, like, and trust factor" with you. They haven’t had the opportunity to get to know you through months of being on your email list.  For a warm audience, you don’t need nearly as much information. You need the basic information, the transformation your customer will experience as a result of their purchase, and a clear call-to-action to purchase. Lastly, you need buttons. Lots of buttons.  Don’t place a buy button only at the very bottom of a page. If I have to scroll 25 times to get to a button, I am much more likely to click away before I get there. I want a button at the top, again after a bit of information, and again after more information.  Don’t assume anyone will read the entire page.  I want to click “PURCHASE” as soon as you’ve convinced me I need it. So, add a buy button every few paragraphs if you’re going to create one of the super long sales pages.  How Much Should You Charge for Your Products? I think that setting prices is one of the most difficult parts of online business and definitely the piece that holds so many of us back.  How do you set prices? Do you set it at a price that more people can afford? Or do you price it higher so that your customers will also purchase other higher-priced products from you?  And is it true that the more people pay for your products, the more likely they are to actually use the products, and therefore, the more likely they are to personally experience the transformation you promised? Emma firmly believes that when selling products, your customer should be at the very forefront of your mind. And if you are selling something that could transform her life but she can’t afford it, you are not serving her.  Always keep in mind where your customer is right at this moment and what she can afford. Are there products worth hundreds or thousands of dollars? Yes, definitely.  And if your avatar is at a point in her life where she can afford to pay that, and it will deliver a transformation that will surpass the money she spent on the product, go for it.  But if the price is out of reach for the majority of your readers, it’s too high.  How to Think About Personal Branding Branding is a hot-button topic in today’s online world. With everybody creating personal brands, how do you brand your blog, and how do you expand the branding to cover your products, etc? Emma suggests keeping your personality in mind when developing your brand.  If you’re going to be growing an online business, you need to be present—front and center in your business. So, above all, be yourself.  Your people will be drawn to who you are. They will find you and they will stick around because they can see who you truly are. Don’t try to put on some fake persona.  Speak your truth. Be yourself. Serve your people well.  *There were so many things we couldn’t include in this post that Emma talked about. If you want to hear which shopping cart software that Emma (and we) recommend, listen in at 21:40. Emma discusses her own products and where she hosts her online courses at 24:00.  I know you learned a ton of amazing info from my conversation with Emma. I loved chatting with her and I hope you’ll check out all the great content that she offers on her own site.  And as always, please email me with any questions or comments on the podcast, and be sure to join me over in our Facebook group, where I go live every week to discuss the podcast and my biggest takeaways! Read the transcript for "How to Get Started Selling Successful Products Online" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Perfection is the biggest business killer out there. In this episode, I'm sharing why you need to do B- work to grow a successful business today. My husband, David, and I are currently enjoying coaching our first group of students, and there are some business principles and practices that I want to share with you, my podcast audience because I think they can help you as you build your online business.  I recorded this episode on March 13, 2020. Things have changed drastically since I recorded the last episode. If you’re worried or afraid, please know that we are all right there with you.  These are uncertain times and we must stick together, (6 feet apart) in order to make it through.  I want to hear from you on what you’re doing to grow your business during this time of uncertainty. Email me at jillian@milotree.com and share how you’re handling the new normal of working at home or having your kids home with you full-time.  What Is Emergent Business Growth? Have you ever noticed how businesses start in your city or town? There seem to be 2 main ways to build a business that I’ve noticed.  First is the “top-down” approach.  This starts with a piece of land being completely leveled and prepared for a building to be built from the ground up. There is a plan for everything that will take place, from the building itself to the businesses that will inhabit it. Inventory is planned, employees are hired, everything is thought through and the plan is put into place, a step at a time, and in the perfect order that was decided beforehand.  And then there is the “emergent” approach.  Here in Austin where we live, it’s not uncommon to go through a part of the city that’s a bit run down, and one day, see that a new coffee shop is opening in one of the older buildings. A few months later, a record store might open a few doors down, followed by a sushi restaurant.  This is what I refer to as “emergent business growth.”  It’s taking things one step at a time, but in an organic way that allows you to take your next steps based on what’s already working.  I think emergent growth is the perfect way to grow your online business. It may look messy from the outside, but sometimes the best things happen in the midst of a mess.  A Look at Our Business Growth I wanted to briefly take a look at the businesses that David and I have created as an example of emergent business growth because what we’ve done is exactly what I’m talking about.  *I go into a lot of detail in the episode about these businesses, so tune in for more details than I’m able to share in this post! Our first business was Catch My Party, which is a social sharing photo site around parties.  We were looking for ways to grow our traffic to that site, and our MiloTree pop-up was born, which we then began to offer to other bloggers. But since a plug-in isn’t a very personal business, I started this podcast in order to connect with other bloggers and those who use our product.  Then, my listeners started emailing me about the struggles they faced setting up their blogs, so we developed our BlogStart service, where we will set up your WordPress blog for you. But we wanted to do more, so we decided to work with small groups of bloggers and pour all of our knowledge and expertise into them through our group coaching program.  Our businesses may not seem to go together at first, but they are each just the next step of the organic business growth we were experiencing at the time.  Yes, You Still Need a Plan to Grow an Online Business Now, just because I’m talking about things emerging organically, as you see what naturally comes next for your business, does not mean that you don’t need to set goals or have a plan.  I have a list of things that need to happen and goals we want to reach, but each day is different and I don’t always know when I sit down at my desk what I’m going to work on. I hold my list lightly and work on what’s most important at the time.  When you’re building an online business, your results come through testing. You are running everything through the lens of what your audience wants and what they respond to.  So while you do have a plan, you have to remain flexible and be willing to pivot as your audience responds to what you offer.  Strive for B- Work, Not Perfection! One of the first things I teach my students is the absolute necessity to be satisfied with B- work.  If you are constantly testing and pivoting with your audience, you simply can’t do everything perfectly. If you are always shooting for an A+, you won’t build your business, you’ll get stuck. I want you to post things that scare you in their imperfection.  Your job as an entrepreneur is to learn what works and do more of it. As long as you put your authentic self out there, your people will be attracted to you.  *If the thought of putting out B- work makes you uncomfortable, listen in at 12:00 as I discuss the need for discomfort when growing an online business.  The 3 words I want you to remember are: Messy Uncomfortable B- Put Yourself Front and Center Next, if you want to build an online business, you have to put yourself at the forefront of that business. Your audience needs to have a relationship with you. Plenty of people are putting up sites that I call “content farms.”  You know what I’m talking about: tons of content filled with affiliate links, only there for the money-making opportunities. There is nothing personal or authentic about those sites.  You have the opportunity to do something different. You can reach an audience in a way that draws them in as you share your expertise on a topic that matters to them.  This doesn’t mean your blog should be about you.  No, it should be you, focused on helping other people solve their problems. You be you, providing value to others, and those people will feel a connection to you.  Business Growth Isn’t Linear I think one of the biggest misconceptions in online business is that growth is linear.  We hear about sales funnels: how your audience starts at the top by getting to know you through your content, then signing up for your email list. Once they sign up, they develop a relationship with you through your emails, and eventually they “know, like, and trust you.” Soon, they will be willing to make a small purchase from you, followed by even more and possibly larger purchases in the future.  And I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t work like that.  The fact is people are distracted today; they bounce in and out of your funnels all the time. They are being pulled in a thousand different directions every day.  How do you as a business owner address this? Tell Your Audience What to Do That’s right, tell them what you want them to do.  Let me give you an example of this from my personal life. When my daughter was tiny and I felt overwhelmed, I would often ask David for help around the house. But the poor guy didn’t know what he should do. I learned that if I asked him to wash the dishes and take out the trash, he was more than happy to do so. But he needed me to tell him specifically what would be helpful.  Your audience is like that. They need you to tell them directly and specifically what you want them to do.  Don’t expect them to figure it out. They won’t!   Tell them to “Click Here,” “Buy Now”, or “Reply to This Email.”  If you don’t tell them what to do, don’t be surprised when they do nothing. Every piece of content you create, whether it’s a blog post, an email, or a social media post, should have a call to action.  I hope this has been helpful if you are working on building an online business. Be sure to listen to the episode in its entirety as I simply couldn’t include everything I talked about in this post! And if you need help, please go to MiloTree and sign up for our next coaching group.  We would love to help you build your blog or online business! Transcript for "Why You Need To Do B- Work To Grow A Successful Business Today" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

If you need ideas for how to deal with marriage and family tension during this time of social distancing, please listen to this episode. There are a lot of tips in this episode to make your life saner and happier! Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am releasing another special episode. This one is not about growing your business. This one is not about how to pivot. This one is not about what to post on social media. This one is about how to survive and thrive during this time when we're all at home with our families. Today, I'm interviewing my mom. I'm not just interviewing her because she's my mom. I'm interviewing her because she is a marriage and family therapist. I think she has some really interesting insights, strategies, ways of looking at your life in this very unusual, anxiety-provoking time. If you need ideas for how to deal with marriage and family tension during this time of social distancing, please listen to this episode. There are a lot of tips in this episode to make your life saner and happier! Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am releasing another special episode. This one is not about growing your business. This one is not about how to pivot. This one is not about what to post on social media. This one is about how to survive and thrive during this time when we're all at home with our families. Today, I'm interviewing my mom. I'm not just interviewing her because she's my mom. I'm interviewing her because she is a marriage and family therapist. I think she has some really interesting insights, strategies, ways of looking at your life in this very unusual, anxiety-provoking time.

Today, I've got a special episode, where I'm talking about how to find success during coronavirus. Yes, it is possible if you know how to pivot your business. These are scary times, especially as online business owners, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. We've watched our Catch My Party traffic fall by half in one week! But if we can solve problems for our audiences, we will be okay. I believe that in my heart. And our businesses will be stronger for it. My advice: Be the light for your readers because we all need more light right now. My hope is that this episode gives you a roadmap for how to look beyond the paralysis, fear, and panic that we're all feeling, and shift your focus back onto your audience so you can become a resource, guide, and helper. And your audience will reward you for it! How to Find Success During Coronavirus Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Wow, what a time we are living in. The word that just keeps popping up for me is "unease". I just feel like everything is off balance. But that is why I'm going live with this interview early because I want to give you more balance, especially in your online business. I'm interviewing Matt Molen from Personalized Paths. He is my email marketing guru. What we are talking about is how to move your business in the right direction during this uncertain time, how to be there for your audience, and still build your business. MiloTree BlogStart to Start Your WordPress Blog Also, for those of you who have not yet started your entrepreneurial journey, David and I have started a service called MiloTree BlogStart, where we will set up and optimize your WordPress blog for you. Setting up a WordPress blog can be tricky. There's a lot of tech, there are a lot of settings or a lot of features, and we know how to do it. We know how to set you up and get you started on the right foot and be there for you with any technical help you need. So, it's MiloTree.com/blogstart. If you're ready to take your fate in your own hands, definitely let us help you. Okay. This interview, I think you are going to really get a lot out of it. What I love about Matt is he gives actionable, practical real tips and ideas. For those of you who need to feel inspired, this is the interview for you. I got off this call, and I just felt lightness and excitement, and a way to really be there for my audience. So without further delay, here is my interview with Matt Molen. Matt, welcome back to the show. I am so excited to talk to you right now. Matt Molen 2:29 Well, Jillian, thanks for having me. I know that there's a lot on people's minds right now. And, you know, you and I have been chatting a little bit. I think there are some things that people could be doing in my area of expertise that they're not doing, and I just want to have a chance to talk about it a little bit. Jillian Leslie 2:45 And first of all, I have to say you reached out to me yesterday and you said, "Hey, do you want to talk about how people can respond to this very uneasy time?" And I will tell you that you gave me a feeling of solace because of the normal seat like, "Of course, I want to talk to you." Because when I talk to you things are normal, and we're talking about business. Even just when we got on this call, hearing your voice, I said that to you. I said, "Oh, it just feels comforting." Mostly because I'm doing what I normally do. And by talking to you, I'm not checking the news. I am not thinking about my family and all the worries of the world. So, I want to thank you for reaching out and for just giving me let's say, 45 minutes of normalcy. Matt Molen 3:36 Well, thanks. I love that you think of it that way because that's how I've been thinking about it is that most people right now, myself included, are feeling very uneasy, very uncertain. Not just about blogging, but about life in general. And, I'm getting all these emails. You are too. In fact, I got one in my inbox. It kind of made me laugh. It was so ridiculous. It was from a life insurance company that I don't even have a policy with. And the message was, "Hey, this life insurance company is open." Thanks so much, guys. What a help that was. And so, I think that we're getting so much news. It's distracting. It's hard to concentrate. And if you're a blogger in this in this environment, you're worried about your ad revenue. You're worried about your site traffic? Just the general feeling of where is this going? Jillian Leslie 4:34 Yes. How long is this going to last? Matt Molen 4:38 On top of that, our routines are disrupted. So that's weird. It's hard to focus. And then, I think that I've seen this other thing and I feel it too. Is this desire to reach out and help somebody somehow. Jillian Leslie 4:50 Yes. Yes. Matt Molen 4:52 All of that usually is leading up towards paralysis or a lack of strategy going forward. Now my area of expertise, of course, is with email marketing specifically for bloggers. I have the benefit of talking with content creators every single day about their email. On top of that, I'm looking at email campaigns that are coming across. And I'm just going, "Man, you guys are blowing this." Because this is a situation unlike any other. And what I thought that I would do, I know I've been on the podcast before and I shared kind of my system. Many people may actually, or not many, but some people may actually be familiar with the way that I think about things and my system. Jillian Leslie 5:29 Yeah, and we will of course link to your previous episodes. So, definitely. Matt Molen 5:35 Awesome. But this situation is so different that I wanted to come and share perhaps an email strategy that your listeners could think about employing for the next few weeks or months if that's how far this thing goes on. Hopefully not. But that's what I want to talk about today. Jillian Leslie 5:56 I'd love it. Love it. How to Think Differently About Your Business During Coronavirus Matt Molen 5:57 Okay. So, what I want to tell everybody, first of all, is that I want them to lace up their running shoes. All right? I want them to think that they're getting ready right now mentally to get out and work. Okay? Because so much of this is preparing your mind to take action. These are unprecedented times and it's going to require… I'm not saying unprecedented levels of work, but it's going to require a different way of thinking and a little bit of hustle to really optimize and be of the most service that we can be. I recently did a talk on this. I was telling some of the people that were on my list that I was doing it. I got an email back from a lady that runs a Disneyland website. Her website is 100% about Disneyland. Her message to me was, "Email saved me so far." And what I'm going to talk about today, and I'll come back to her. Her name is Jessica. I'll come back to Jessica's story at the end about what she did. But email saved her. Think about what it must be like with her site. Disneyland closes. She's got nothing to talk about. Nobody's doing any searching. Her ad revenue has got to be tanking. They're not buying her products. For her, she is probably staring down the barrel of an uncomfortable gun, if you will. What I want to start with though, is that I want to start with an overarching principle. This principle always works. This is the principle that I live by for marketing in general. And that is solve your reader's problem. Solve Your Readers' Problems Now Jillian Leslie 7:37 Love it. Matt Molen 7:38 Solve your reader's problems. If you keep coming back to that over and over again, it's going to change the way you think about your opportunity here. So, let's talk about email in general, and what to send to your subscribers right now. I have seen… You've probably seen this too. And I don't fault people for sending this. They're sending emails that say, "How can I help?" Now, the spirit behind that is I want to help you. I want to know what you're going through. Here's the problem with that, though. Everybody is uncertain because this is new to all of us. Your readers, they don't know what they need. Jillian Leslie 8:19 Exactly. You're putting the onus on somebody to tell you what they need. Matt Molen 8:27 Exactly. And they don't know what you can do. They don't know what they need, but you as the subject matter expert, you do know to a degree, what they need within your sphere of knowledge and influence. So the question I have for anybody listening is, "What problem can you solve in the right now? How would you provide value in this environment right now?" I got some examples of some really positive examples that I got from some emails from people. Just today I got one from the best ideas for kids. It was a hundred plus indoor activities. There's a lot of moms with kids at home. That solves a problem. I received one eight days ago, which I thought was almost prophetic. But it was, "Don't panic. Be prepared. Free 14-day meal plan and shopping list." That was from Favorite Family Recipes. One of the sub-headers in there is, "A little panic planning can bring great peace of mind." And so I thought that was good. I got another one that was an activity binder for teens. So, some people are understanding the value that they can provide to their readers. But let's talk for just a second. There are some blog categories that are really hard hit. We've got travel. We've got fitness. We've got finance. Or just "lifestyle" in general. Who's thinking about even Easter activities right now? Jillian Leslie 9:59 Absolutely. I think in terms of fashion, for example, the last thing I want to do is buy clothes right now. I'm in my pajamas. Matt Molen 10:10 So, the brainstorming activity that I would do if we had people in the room here together is I would say, "Look, let's think about it for a second. Fashion blogger, travel blogger, finance, blogger, fitness, blogger, what problem can you solve for your readers right now?" If I'm a travel blogger, and I actually do have a travel blog on the side, we need to be thinking about what's going through our readers' minds right now. Well, they're sitting on vacation plans. Maybe not right now but down the road. They don't know should they keep them. What are refund policies like? What are cancellations like? Is now a time to actually book cheap flights in the future? Do I go look for hotel values right now? As an aside, we have some trips planned out late in 2020. Those hotel rates have dropped. So, do you advise them on how to go change those? You see what I'm saying? There are ways that they can solve a reader's problem that is unique to this situation. Jillian Leslie 11:11 Absolutely. I have my assistant for Catch My Party and I will tell you that our traffic has died because if you were planning that mermaid party for your daughter next month, you're not planning it now. We have a content schedule where we have our blog posts blocked out for a couple of months, and we literally said, "Oh my God, we seem tone-deaf." If we are posting about a fun summer party, even summer, because who knows? And what we did was we step back and we said, "People are home." Our users are typically… Our visitors or moms. How can we bring some festivity or some lightheartedness, or just something to moms? And what we thought about was… Well, a couple of things. How to Plan A Virtual Party During Shelter at Home One, how do you plan a virtual party? What platforms can you use to do that? What kind of games can you play online with a group of people? What if it's a group of, you know, five-year-olds versus what if it's a group of 15-year-olds? We're right now building out a bunch of content about how would you do that. Or we give printables away for things like… We have like game night printables. Well, guess what? You know what? Maybe for your family you could print out a couple printables and put out some games and have a game night just to break up the monotony or just have a little bit more play in this stressful time. So it's amazing how quickly we said, "Oh, my God. Our normal content doesn't work anymore." We understand because my assistant and I are both stressed out. Like, what would we want? And that's kind of the direction that we're heading in. Matt Molen 13:10 I love that. And you know what that tells me? This is the type of people like you who get into this business, for this reason, is to innovate. It is to create. And quite often we get into a rut, we get into our routines, and we stay in our lane. What this is forcing you to do is look at your expertise, and twist it a little bit. Turn it on its head, and come up with the solutions to the problems using your expertise. You know how to party. Jillian Leslie 13:40 Right. Matt Molen 13:40 And being able to convert that into today's dynamic, wow! I could see NBC News interviewing you just because that type of content is going to be so readily available, or so readily adopted. People are going to want that. They want to have some fun for all the reasons we've been talking about. So, that's the power though. When you figure that out, that's the power of having a robust email list. Because the traffic isn't necessarily coming to the site now. Now, we need to use our list and drive people to the site so that they can absorb it, so that they can then share it with their friends. Why Email is More Powerful Than Ever Jillian Leslie 14:21 Absolutely. Because for example, I don't have the time right now to be hanging on social media to be like, "Let's go to Pinterest and just kind of browse around." But if something comes into my inbox, I probably will open it. Matt Molen 14:36 Exactly. So, if you and your team and everybody within the sound of my voice, if they write down three to five problems that they can solve for their readers in this current situation, and maybe different problems than they ever otherwise would have been. The good news is that in most cases, you probably can leverage your existing content. You just have to twist it a little bit. Sometimes you got to make new content. That's why I was talking about we got to lace up our running shoes, it's time to hustle. The next question that I want to address is how often should you now email these people? One of the most common rebuttals, I guess, from people that have not adopted email is, "I don't want to annoy people." Well, yeah. You know what's annoying? It's that email from that life insurance company. You didn't ask for it. Jillian Leslie 15:12 Good question. I call them the tone-deaf emails. Like, how many of you have I gotten in the last week? Matt Molen 15:39 They're not solving my problems, therefore, those are annoying. However, it's not spam if you're providing value. If you are solving your readers' problems, especially right now, they are all yours. So, let me give you a little analogy. I used to work in the daily deals industry. In that space, as you can imagine, ecommerce Q4 was huge but especially Black Friday weekend. There are deals left and right. We sent so many emails and people absorb the emails. They wanted the emails because they're deal seekers and they wanted to know what was hot then. Would that activity have been appropriate in a different time? No. That would not have been appropriate. But for you Jillian with Catch My Party, and the example that you just talked about, this might be your Black Friday. You can probably serve more than you currently are. And I say that to everybody who's listening. This might be your Black Friday. People need to hear your solutions. So, what does that mean for you? How many emails do you send per week? That's going to be up to you. But here's a couple of things for your consideration. I have four things. Number one, do your automated emails make sense? If you've adopted the Matt Molen system, you know that I love automated emails. My Forever Series, for instance, is a big part of what I do. But, like right now with my Disney Cruise Forever Series going, where it tells people what to expect on the private island? Does that really make a lot of sense? Time to Pause Your Email Series When I could take that slot, I could pause the Forever Series, pause that automation, and I could take that slot and send something that helps them right now. That's number one. Do your automated emails make sense? Number two is to recognize that you can serve more. What I mean by serve more is you can send them more emails. More emails than you think. Heck, you could have done it before. You just didn't believe me before. But now for sure, you can serve more than you think. What does that mean for you? It might mean an email every third day. It might mean if you're doing one email a week, it might mean two. For some of you who have a ton of great content, it might be an email every other day. I don't know. And you might want to test and experiment with it. But if you have the spirit of service, and you're solving your readers' problems, you can do more. Number three, we're sitting here. So much has changed at the date of this recording. So much has changed just in the last few days. It feels like it's been weeks. Things have progressed in a crazy fashion. Plan Out Your New Emails But I think we've settled into what the normal probably looks like, at least for the next few weeks. So, plan it out. I have a resource for you. If you want it, we'll drop it in the show notes. Jillian, if you're willing to do it. Jillian Leslie 18:42 Of course. Matt Molen 18:43 And all it is is a very simple calendar that shows the dates, the day of the week. And it asks you what problem can you solve for your reader? What is your reader thinking about? <!-- wp:paragraph --> So basically, you just go through that and you say, "Well, okay. If I'm at Catch My Party, I know that they're wanting to do a virtual party with friends." Well, that would be fun because the kids get stir crazy. Okay, that would be one thing. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Number two, mom wants to just make the quarantine shut up in the house. I want to make that more fun. Okay, we could do our scavenger hunts. Or, you know, we're going to have a dress-up day. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And so, we're going to take the elements from our princess parties, and we're going to add those together into, you know, 10 ideas of how you can have dress-up time at home. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> There are three emails right there, and I don't even know your content. So, if you did that with your team, and plan that out, would your audience be receptive to that? Absolutely. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> If you find out they aren't, well, then you just don't send them. But you've started the planning process. You've thought it through on how you can serve them. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> That's number three is to plan it now. Don't wait and sit here and just go in, "Boy, I'm going to hit CNN one more time." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Number four, the last one is write the emails. You can write them advance. Write them in advance, and then you can just not send them if this thing miraculously goes away and the world changes again. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I don't think it's going to miraculously go away. I think that we've got two months of this. That's my guess. But I could be wrong and I hope I am. But what if I'm not? You could have that stuff done. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So, do your automated emails make sense? Number two, decide to send more and serve more. Number three, plan those out now with a calendar. Number four, write those. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 20:34 Imagine growing your Instagram followers with no work. Highly engaged followers. Now, imagine it with Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube. How about new email subscribers? Seriously, no work. This is all possible if you install the MiloTree pop-up on your blog. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David, my husband, and I, started our blog Catch My Party in 2009. We've since grown it into the largest party idea site on the web with millions of pageviews per month. We did it with hard work, and our secret weapon, our MiloTree pop-up which David built for us. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> We've grown our Pinterest followers to over 1.3 million, and our Instagram followers to over 164,000. And right now 8000 other bloggers just like you are using MiloTree to grow their businesses. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> With MiloTree you can focus on growing one platform or switch between several. But here is the important thing. If you aren't converting your visitors into followers, subscribers, and customers, you're honestly wasting your own traffic. Make this asset, your visitors, work for you. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Since we're bloggers, we get bloggers. So we've optimized MiloTree like crazy. It's a snap to install, it won't slow your site down, it's Google-friendly on mobile, and it's so darn cute. You can even add animated sparkles to your pop-up if you like. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Sign up now and get your first 30 days for free. Please pause this episode and head to MiloTree.com to sign up. I know you will thank me. As a bonus, once you sign up, I'm going to send you weekly actionable business tips to help you grow your business. I've been at this a long time, and I have a lot to share. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Remember, your scarcest resource is not money, it's time. So let MiloTree free up time for you so you can focus on the other important parts of your business. So what are you waiting for? Hit pause. Head to MiloTree and sign up today. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I think that if you can reach people where they are… This is something I've been thinking a lot about, which is I want to touch you, Matt, where you are. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Like, let's say I'm freaking out in my brain. I don't want to touch you with that. I want to touch you with me in my highest self when I've had a moment to kind of calm down. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And even if I'm going to freak out in another minute, I want to be one half a step ahead of you. But I don't want to be five steps ahead of you. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I want to be able to touch you where you are, and point you in the direction to give you solace or to solve that problem. Does that make sense? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> People Want to Be Lead <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 23:27 Absolutely. People want to be led. They want to be helped. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 23:30 But I don't want to be the authority. Meaning, I don't want to be like, "Guys, look, you don't have to worry about this. This is going to be over in two months." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> No. I want to say I'm vulnerable. I'm feeling this way. And I have a solution for you that has that worked for me. So, I'm like half a step ahead of you. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Because I'm like holding my arm. I'm like holding my hand out. Kind of like I'm a couple of steps like higher up on the stairway and I'm just going to put my hand out and gently lead you up to steps so that you can have a little bit more calm or peace or whatever. But I'm not four flights up. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 24:14 You don't have to solve the virus thing for them. All you have to do is help them with one little aspect of their life during that time and you achieve hero status. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 24:24 Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's funny. It's like I want it. I just sent an email to my list because I was feeling just so much unease and so much confusion, but I had a moment of clarity. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> What I did was I took my to-do list that has been there, that's written on like a scribbled piece of paper of all the things I hope to get to. Right? And all I did was I took that piece of paper, and I took a new clean, fresh piece of paper. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I took my to-do list and I just organized it on a new piece of paper. That's it. I can't tell you the peace of mind that gave me. I wrote an email. I said, "Here's something that worked for me." This is really a very… <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I have all these feelings, and I feel really vulnerable. I'm sure you do too. And, I believe in doing small things. Like laundry and cleaning out your kitchen junk drawer. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And I said, "Here's what I recommend for work. This is what I did. This worked for me and I recommend you find those small tasks that push you forward, but aren't so taxing that they're intimidating or they're overwhelming. Go do something small." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 25:48 Absolutely. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 25:51 And I got the feedback of saying, "You know what? I needed this. Thank you." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 25:58 That's fantastic. I think that's the spirit that I want to convey here is you can do more of that than you are doing. You can do way more of that than you're doing. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And what I'm seeing… I saw it from a blogger that I greatly respect. I got an email from her today. It says, "I want to help. Fill out this survey. I really want to help." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And I'm sitting there thinking, "You know what? How you can help me is you give me some ideas. You can give me some suggestions on how to occupy my mind, or how to make more of this." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> That to me is the opportunity. I know it's in your all's heads. It's just a matter of sending it to your people and sharing that with them. Don't be selfish about it and keep it to yourself. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 26:40 Yes. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> It's Time to Server Your Audience During Coronavirus <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 26:41 With this dynamic comes an opportunity for you to serve more people by getting more people onto your list. I know that is counterintuitive. And maybe what I mean by that is to capture more people and convert out of the traffic that you're currently getting. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Even travel sites that are way down. Even Catch My Party if the traffic is down. The traditional way we do that is through an email hook. Printables, downloadables, checklists. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> If you listen to my previous discussion on this podcast… The last time I was here we talked about the Quickstart Guide. That's still my favorite. So, I'm going to push you to do that. The question is, does your email hook solve the current problem? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 27:26 Right. Does it make sense? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 27:27 I have a client food blogger. And before all this was going down, we were on the normal schedule. We put together an Easter quickstart guide with an Easter pop-up and the whole thing. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Guess what? Nobody's thinking about Easter right now. So, it launched and it went. You know, we're not getting subscribers from that. Let me give you a couple of examples of things that have worked. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> If you go to a favorite family recipes. They have one that is killer copycat recipes. That's their pop-up. It's the most popular, like restaurant copycat recipes that you can try at home. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> We're not going to restaurants right now guys. If you still want to make the outback cheese fries or whatever, here's how you do it. And you can have some fun with that. That's blowing up for them. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> There's another one, Sally's Baking Addiction. She put out a post with a whole bunch of home baking projects. These are things you could do with your kids to teach them to love baking. It went crazy. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> She's like, "You know what? People love this." She converted that into her opt-in. So, the question I have for people is what is your current opt-in? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Take a look at it and put together an email hook that you can launch right now that is more appropriate for the here and now. You're going to capture more subscribers and therefore grow your list and serve more people. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 29:00 Let's say you do like a quick start guide, right? And let's say you've got four emails in your quick start guide. Guess what? You can launch it with one email, and just then quickly write the other ones. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Meaning, you don't have to sit back and go, "Oh, it's going to take me four weeks to write these four emails, or however long." Go launch it! <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 29:25 Yeah, very true. You sound like me right now. And the other thing that I would even say normally, "I love to have something that's three to five emails long in a quickstart guide." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Heck, I'd be happy with a one page PDF. If it's more relevant, put that out there. So again, I'm adapting to what's happening right now. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I firmly believe in my other program, you know, the Quickstart Guide and the Forever Series and all these things. I'm adapting to the current situation. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 29:57 I have this philosophy that I have been preaching called B- work, which is I recommend all of my students, everybody that I talked to from my podcast to do B- work. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I'm going to say now, maybe C+ work. And what I mean by that is done is better than perfect. And because I want to reorient everybody that if… Let's say I can be of service and helpful, but my emails are not going to look pretty and I'm not going to have a great beautiful graphic or whatever. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> It might have some typos. But if I can get it out there and calm people or help people or touch people, it's much better if that is B-. So, be thinking about how can I get it out there? How can I move quickly? Meet people where they are. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 30:52 Go fast. Break stuff. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 30:54 There you go. There you go. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 30:56 I like the perfect is the enemy of done. I like that. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 30:59 Yes. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 31:01 So, let's talk about a technique or two that people could go try right now. I want people to understand, these are just ideas. They are not going to work perfect for everybody. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> They may not be right for your situation. Take the idea and see if there's a plausible way to apply it to your current business. The first one that I'm going to share with you is called "swipe up to sign up". <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I just got done reading an article about how much people are on social media right now. They're obviously at home. They have a little bit more time to do that. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Plus, when you're kind of in a daze that's where you default. It's a source of news. It's a source of comfort. It's a source of commiseration. Well, go to your Instagram stories. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> Use the Swipe Up Feature on Instagram to Grow Followers <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> If you've got 10,000 people or more followers on Instagram, then you're qualified for the swipe up feature of Instagram stories. I want to tell you an example. I did this last year with Ralphie Jacobs. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Her Instagram handle is @simplyonpurpose. She is a parenting expert. She doesn't even have a blog. We created a quickstart guide that was four emails deep. It's called "Why we yell, why it doesn't work, and what to do instead?" <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> She started with zero subscribers. She launched a little simple landing page,.Very simple. All it was was the title of the thing and a name and address. Yes, I want it feel. That's all it was. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> After two weeks, she had 20,000 subscribers. Remember, did she had 20,000 followers to begin with. So I don't do well at math. But that's approximately five billion percent, right? Conversion. That's pretty awesome. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So, she was able to take and get 20,000 subscribers in two weeks by sharing this resource. Let's go all the way back. What problem do you solve for your readers? I asked you to identify what problems were. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Then I asked you to think about what your opt-in might be. Create that opt-in and then share it. And any other opt-ins that you have. Maybe you've got printables on your site. This is a great time to share those. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Trade that printable. Trade that course. Trade that quickstart guide for an email address. So that's one. Oh, gosh, I've got another example. You guys have seen this one in action. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I hope by the time that you hear this recording that you get it because Janssen at Everyday Reading is doing this right now. So, to understand this, Everyday Reading is a website for moms who want their kids to develop a love for reading. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So, everything she does is in that vein. She created a list of her favorite online educational programs. I think she made a PDF of it. That was it. She went on to her social. This was last Friday. So, this is one week ago. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And in a week's time on her Instagram stories, and through a post on Instagram, she said, "I'll email it to you right now. Just swipe up to sign up to get this list of online educational resources." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> She has a base of 40,000 Instagram followers. In the first five days, she had 1100 new subscribers. And in the two days since, she's averaged 75 new subscribers per day. Not only that. She gained 1600 new Instagram followers while she was doing that. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> That was a curated list of online educational resources that she put together and then shared with them. She made life easy for them. She identified the problem that she was solving and she's having tremendous success with it. And serving while she's doing it, while she's growing her list. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So, here's a very practical piece of advice for anybody that has a large social following. Create your opt-ins or make a list of them. Get out your calendar and say, "Okay. On the 25th, I'm going to share this. On the 28th, I'm going to share this. On the first, I'm going to share that." <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And just make a calendar so you don't forget your days in checking out Fox News or whatever it is. You'll have a plan to go promote your opt-in. So my question for everybody, what email hook can you share on social media right now? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> Do Small, Doable Tasks Now <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 35:33 What I like about what you're saying is I love the idea of having your calendar and filling it with doable things that are small enough so that you can do them and get out of your own way, and get out of the news, and get out of your own anxieties and fears because you know, you have this one task? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 36:01 Yeah. Even if your days, right, you know, you're feeling it yourself. Yeah, like, are you gonna do that thing, <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 36:07 You know, I always recommend I use the Pomodoro Technique, which is this, I go to tomato-timer.com. And it's a timer for 25 minutes. And I get my work done by saying I can do this for 25 minutes. And I find it to be incredibly powerful. And I use it when I have tasks to do that I don't want to do. And I feel like what you're saying is here, create these concrete tasks that you probably could do in about 25 minutes. And go do that because not only will it by the way, not only will this serve your audience, it will serve yourself. Yeah. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 36:48 You'll be moving your business forward, you will feel a sense of accomplishment when you check that off the list. Absolutely. It takes you out of the malaise that we're all kind of stuck in. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Unknown Speaker 36:57 Yes, that paralysis <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 37:01 I, I have another idea for people that they can actually go see, this one's a little bit more of if you've got like, let's say, your this blog, this might make sense for you. And that is to create a challenge. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> Create a Challenge For Your Readers <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> The idea behind a challenge, it's kind of, but it's an email chain is about what a reader needs to do. And so you can create an email challenge where you have, you know, say three to five emails in a row, which might include a welcome email, it might include a daily email for three to five days and each email includes a principal, teach them how to do something or why they need to do something, and then assign a task and explain how to accomplish it and then ask them to report back. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> There's a really good example of this. That is, she's always doing it. I wish I knew this woman. I wish I could say I had anything to do with it. It's the simple green smoothies channel. Yes. Calm Yes, she right now has on her website, the 10-day smoothie challenge. Now I when I saw that I've seen this 50 times, but I'm sitting here at home and I am I'm eating all the comfort food, aka junk food just because I'm stressing or something I don't know. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And then she shares this thing that says 10-day smoothie challenge boosts your immune system with tasty smoothie recipes. And she's got dates on there. Like, Oh, you do it during these days. Oh, okay. I mean, right. It's a sense of community. It's a sense of, I'm taking action taking control of my life. So anyway, I don't need to spend a ton of time creating a challenge because a lot of people won't ever do that. But if that's appropriate for you, that can be an interesting way to grow your list as well and to gain community while you're doing it. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 38:39 I love that. I think that that is really, I think that especially something that is doable. Something health-related is terrific. Something that is self-care, especially for moms who are stressed out. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> You could even put it to put together like a Kindness to Yourself Challenge like what One day bath, you know, the next day do a Korean face mask. I mean, whatever it is just to, you know, find a way to touch your audience and help them through this, you know, difficult time. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 39:16 Totally. Now, the last thing I think people are struggling with, and I'll kind of wrap up with some, this will be a rapid-fire series of ideas. These are income boosters. Some people have been really hammered with, you know, low RPMs from ads from pageviews. Or just, you know, whatever, it might have no sponsorships, what have you. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So here are just some ideas. So take these ideas if one of these hits you, then awesome. So the first one I'm going to talk about is if you make money off of ads, that means you need more pageviews and you need higher RPMs. So one tactic is <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 39:53 RPM is revenue per page. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 39:55 Exactly. So that's how people are calculating revenue per dollar. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 40:00 In eyeballs. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 40:02 So the first thing would be to increase your page views is increase your email schedule, we already talked about that. But if you're solving more problems, now might be the time to bring more people back to your site, even though a visitor does not pay out as much, you can kind of solve a little bit of your issue by getting more people to the website through your email. Okay, so you can recoup some of that. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> Increase the Number of Emails You Send <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So by increasing your email schedule, the other thing that you could do is if you're, if your ad network tells you what your highest earning pages are, like, for instance, a Disney Cruise, usually, content about Disney Cruise usually pays more than, say, a Disney coloring page. So if I if you sent more readers to those higher RPM pages, you're going to make more so you could deliberately plan out your content around what is going to be more valuable right now. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, now it's a little bit of a guessing game with what because brands are in their own unique funk right now too, but you get my point. Yeah. Another way to make money is through affiliate sales, affiliate sales. Some people do it great. Some people don't do it at all. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> But if you're going to get into this, make a list of brands that you love. This is where authenticity comes into place. You just start there. One thing you can do once you have that list is you could create a roundup of your favorite resources. If you're a food blogger By the way, people love the behind the scenes of what's in your pantry. What's in your kitchen. Yeah, what knife set Do you use and all of that and especially <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 41:35 How about this, you know, if people because everybody now is cooking at home, what are the top five tools you use to make homemade meals fast? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 41:50 Absolutely. And then take it to the next step. This is what I really like to do. This is where you can go beyond just a what feels like a little bit of a money grab within a field. The thing I think some people don't like that is create a how to series. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So, a how-to series is ... I mean, you know, Cricket has got an amazing affiliate program, they are gonna they're gonna probably their business is probably going to not die during this time because maybe we're teaching our kids how to do crafts or we're because we're not going out we use that time for crafting. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> What if you did a how-to series on how to make x how to make y how to how to use your machine for this? Yeah, you probably can make more by doing that. And by the way, the reason I'm sharing all these things is you're using email to push people there to these point to these to these opportunities <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian leslie 42:44 And again solving their problem <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 42:46 sSolving their problem. Oh, I just thought of one that I forgot. So if you go back to food blogging for a second, but it applies everywhere. If you're a food blogger, and you do well with Instant Pot. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Instant Pot has so many accessories that most people don't know how To use, but I bet you do. You know, accessories are fantastic. And they're probably not sold out. So that's, that's a way that you can keep your business going. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Last but not least on affiliate is why not just in your outgoing emails, just add some relevant skills and steals to the bottom of your email. I'm actually borrowing that from that phrase from Corey who runs Hey, Let's Make Stuff, because I was just looking her email earlier today. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I have to give her full credit. It feels authentic, it feels natural, but it's just deals and steals. And she's mentioning some of her favorite brands and the sales that they have going on. And it's kind of a, it's kind of a footnote. But hey, any of that that flows through is going to help her out. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 43:52 And by the way, I of course I'm getting a ton of emails from businesses, you know, like West Elm, and there's struggling. So guess what, I can get 30% or 20% off right now. So just you know, know that these businesses want sales and they are offering discounts. So letting people know, of the sales is beneficial <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 44:17 in the days of the the 2008 financial crisis that we had. So many daily deal sites cropped up out of that. The reason I bring that up is that some people are going to say, that feels weird trying to push a product right now. what I'm telling you is that people are saving their pennies. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, they still want to shop, they still want to get a good deal there's gonna be people are going to take advantage of the situation for the good and get a good deal. So if you provide that and look at it from that lens. And if you believe in these tools as well. Then you tell your friends about a one, two, absolutely. So to get over that, I guess is what I'm getting at now. This one's a little bit out there. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> How to Work With Brands During the Coronavirus <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So we'll see if this one's useful to people. But for those of you who are doing sponsorships, I realized that those may have dried up. So there's a couple of things that you could possibly do. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Number one, you go to some of your favorite existing sponsors, and you offer to sell email as an add on. Now, this requires you to have a list. But if you have a list of any sort, you can say, hey, look, in addition to our current contract for another 10%, I will send out x number of emails or you could go to old sponsorships that have expired and off and refresh it and not just offer an email thing but you could say, hey, let's reengage this what do you say it's tough you know, it's a this would be a good fit for the current environment. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Now of course it needs to be you but then you can offer to send that to your email list as well. And lastly on that, if it is a brand that is cash strapped, but still, they still you know, you have got a marketing manager over there. That still needs to hit some goals and his boy, they'd look like a hero. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> If they did, you could this is this is, you know, thinking outside the box, you could defer payment for that brand in exchange for a better deal in the fourth quarter with them, or just pay me later, kind of deal. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Now, I know everybody's situations are a little bit different. I'm just saying that there are ways to think about this a little bit differently. And of course, if you can make up a product man, do it. You know, there's a ton of graphic designers out there that can make digital resources for you. So if you can think of an affordable digital resource that's perfect for your audience. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> You could bang one of those out and use your email list to share that. And if you're an e-commerce company, you should be manufacturing reasons for people to buy from you right now. I'm getting emails from restaurants, for example, that say, yeah, we're open. But I'm like, yeah, I'm not going anywhere. Here's the difference though. I got an email from a local restaurant. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I went to the Italian restaurant and they said $35 family plan deal. And this is like, like a little bit higher-end restaurant. And it's Wednesday and Thursday only. And it's takeout only. And it includes all these amazing things. And they show pictures of it. And I'm like, Huh, I wasn't thinking about going there. But they gave me they manufactured a reason for me to buy from them right now. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 47:22 I think that's great. I think that is so great. Again, put your brand in front of people with solutions and you will break the kind of stupor that people are in right now. And in fact, I might argue that if you do it in a way that is helpful, that is heartfelt, that is humorous, whatever it is, if you can break that stupor, break that haze that we're all walking around in, you will have tremendous success because we're all in uncharted territory. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And we're all uncomfortable. And if you can find a way to give people something positive, I think it would actually be even more valuable than in the normal hubbub when we're all just kind of caught up in our lives. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 48:19 So, I want to come back to Jessica, I'm going to close it all out with remember, Jessica is the main blogger. So Jessica, hustled, she thought this through. Again, I don't take any credit for any of this. This is all Jessica. She inspired me. She anticipated here's what she did how email remember she said, email saved me so far. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> She anticipated that Disneyland was going to close and so she wrote a blog post about it. And she wrote an email back before it even happened. The minute they announced the closure, she was the first to send it out. So she's got all those people going oh my gosh, what? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So she beat the news outlets to the punch by using her list. So she benefitted from that traffic, people coming and the brand building. So she prepared her email content. She prepared her web content ahead of time. Second, she changed her opt-in to something that was more appropriate updates about Disneyland closures. So if you go there right now, the happiest blog on earth calm in the midst of this crisis, that's what you'll see. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And so she's actually growing her list in the midst of nobody going to Disneyland. But the people who are searching and kind of landing there, she's getting she's capturing more of them. She turned off her automated welcome series that was, you know, that pitches, you know, more information about making the most of your time at the parks because it's not relevant at this moment. And she increased her frequency of her sense. All of almost all of the things that we talked about here that she did, she is living. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 49:55 Right and it seems counterintuitive because it's kind of like when you normally zig, you gotta zag. Right? And, if you catch people when they are vulnerable and you can comfort them or you can provide information or make them feel safe, they will be that much more loyal. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 50:19 I think that we have so much this audience, this group has a lot more to give. I think number one, we've got to pull ourselves out, we got to put our running shoes on, number two, we got to think about how we can serve our readers. Number three, we need to change a few things that we're currently doing and be prepared to change back. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, it's not an all-time forever strategy I'm talking about for the right here right now. And we need but we can take action and we can, we can help many more people including ourselves in the process. Now there's a couple just to finish things off. Mainly my intention in talking with you today. Jillian, is not to sell anything. I have a free resource for people. If they want <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> To check it out and learn more about the quickstart guide, if they want to learn about how I write emails, and if they want to learn about this thing called the forever series, they can go to emailjumpstart.com, it's free. There's three videos there. each one's about 10 minutes. It's, it's like I'm giving away a lot of a lot of stuff there. But it's awesome. And you can go put it in play right now, if you want. I, <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 51:19 I just I was going to sing your praises. And I will say that you are my email guru. I learned so much from you, and you are the real deal. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 51:32 Well, I appreciate you saying so it's been it's a pleasure to work with you. Look, here's the thing. I do have a course, if, it's not out of place, I will put a 50% discount code on that. I don't think I've ever gotten that low before because given the circumstances, I'll give it to your readers. If any, if it happens to be the time you've got time you want to invest in email, maybe that course would be helpful to somebody out there. I'll give the code to you, Jillian. Good luck everybody. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 52:04 Okay Matt. How can people reach out to you if they have questions or want to learn more that kind of thing? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 52:13 Personalizedpaths.com is my website. My email course is called Email on autopilot. Discount code is: BLOGGERGENIUS to get 50% 0ff. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And yeah, hit me up. Anybody has a question, I'd love to hear what people do. I'd love to hear what changes do they make? Is there something that they put into play? This is a time to be creative. And I'm just throwing out ideas that popped into my head. I'm sure that there are, you know, some seriously creative folks out there that can turn this situation into a much more positive. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 52:47 Well, Matt, I have to say you I have so enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for getting me out of my stupor. You've gotten my wheels turning. You've made me excited. To figure out ways that I can serve my audience, and be proactive. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Matt Molen 53:09 I'm so glad it was helpful. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> Join the MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Now! <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Jillian Leslie 53:11 I hope this interview with Matt gave you the inspiration you need to move forward in your business and to see it in a whole new light. If you are looking for more community and want to especially in this uncertain time, be with other like-minded entrepreneurs and join me please join my Facebook group called the MiloTree Mastermind Group. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I'm in there all the time. And it's such a supportive community of like-minded bloggers and entrepreneurs, people just like you. And I feel like this is a time when we are alone isolated in our own homes, where we need to find ways to connect To feel like we are part of something bigger. So please again, head to Facebook, go Google, or Google search for the MiloTree Mastermind Group and please come join me. I would love to meet you. And I will see you here again next week. Please stay safe. <!-- /wp:paragraph -->

You hear me say it all the time...the riches are in the niches. Today’s guest on the podcast will show you how to find financial freedom in a niche blog. Cassidy Tuttle is the creator behind Succulents and Sunshine, a blog solely devoted to the care and propagation of succulents.  That sounds limiting, doesn’t it? A blog that talks only about succulents?  I think you might be shocked at all that Cassidy has been able to accomplish with her blog. I’m talking products, courses, and more.  Cassidy is more than a blogger; she is a businesswoman.  But, before we dive into my conversation with Cassidy, I want to ask you a question: have you listened to 5 or more episodes of this podcast but you don’t have your own blog yet? If so, you are not alone! My husband and business partner, David, and I have noticed a trend among some of our listeners; a lot of you want to start an online business or a blog but you have no idea where or how to begin. If the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!  MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree/BlogStart to see how we can help you. We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you’re not tech-savvy.  That’s why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.  If you’re ready to make 2020 the year you finally start that business or blog you’ve been dreaming of for a long time, let us help.  Head over to MiloTree/BlogStart to get started.  We can’t wait to see what you build in 2020! How to Start an Online Business I have discovered over the many years I’ve been in online business that many bloggers start their blogs to fill a hole that they found in the market, and that was certainly true for Cassidy. She began a photography blog back in 2012 to show off the projects she was working on. And during a particularly harsh winter, she purchased two succulents and placed them in her window.  When she tried to find information on how to care for them, she couldn’t find anything. She began posting about them on her photography blog, (she says they are very photogenic plants!) and explaining how she was caring for them. What was “kind of a happy accident” turned into a business when Cassidy realized she was getting organic search traffic from Google to the posts she was writing about her succulents?  On Valentine’s Day of 2013, she purchased the URL for Succulents and Sunshine and began to pursue it as a real business.  How to Create Online Products Cassidy was earning some income from ads when she moved her business to succulents. She had ads on her photography site and she also placed ads on her new site. But if you look at her site now, you will also see products for sale.  In 2014, based on the Google search traffic she was getting, Cassidy decided to write an ebook on the most popular topic on her blog: propagating succulents.  She released the ebook to her tiny email list, (which was mostly just an RSS feed at the time) and she made $1K from her $10 ebook. While Cassidy was initially disappointed in the amount she earned, it didn’t take her long to realize that the ebook would continue to earn money forever. And it did. In fact, it still brings in at least $500 every single month. Cassidy also continued writing ebooks (she has 5 currently), and eventually, she branched out into courses (she has 2 as of today), succulent ID cards (150+ plants), and a membership site. How to Use Tripwires to Increase Online Sales Tripwires are something I’ve been talking about a lot lately and something that Cassidy has used very effectively to increase the amount of revenue she is bringing in.  When a customer purchases one of her ebooks for $10, they are given the option to purchase the entire bundle of 5 ebooks for $25 instead. And her conversion rate on this tripwire is an incredible 35%! Cassidy has tested several other tripwires but none has brought in the increased revenue like the book bundles.  How to Test Email Opt-in Strategies Testing is so crucial when you’re developing products. I love that Cassidy is always testing to see what works and what her audience responds to. In 2019, she spent some time testing her email opt-ins and how she was asking site visitors to sign up for her list. She began with a typical pop-up, but she decided to switch things up and see what happened.  Instead of the pop-up lead magnet, she wrote a paragraph about watering succulents.  The text offered a cheat sheet for knowing how much to water your plants and how to know if you’ve watered too much. At the end of the paragraph, she had a button that said, “Click Here to Get the Cheat Sheet.” Only then did the box pop up for the visitor to enter their email address.  This testing was a huge success, as her opt-in conversion rate more than doubled with the new system. How to Find New Blog Income Strategies At this point, I know you might still be surprised by how Cassidy has been able to take a blog about succulents and have so much amazing success with it.  I asked her to share with us how she earns an income from the blog and what her percentages look like from her varied income streams. Cassidy’s own products make up about 40% of the blog’s revenue. Roughly half of that comes from the digital downloads she offers. (Ebooks, ID cards.) The other 50% of that is course sales. Courses, while a newer piece of her overall strategy, has become an important part of the business. Simply put, courses are a higher-ticket item, so even if you sell fewer of them, you still earn more money. How to Create Content in a Tiny Niche You all already know my feelings about niching down, but I wanted to hear Cassidy’s take on the pros and cons of blogging in a tight niche.  When she travels to blogging conferences, Cassidy hears the same thing over and over from other bloggers:  “How in the world do you come up with enough material to blog about succulents on a regular basis?” The thing is, Cassidy never has to guess what her site visitors are coming to the site for. Whereas a lifestyle blogger might not know if her audience prefers her recipes, or the DIY projects she shares, or her fashion posts, Cassidy knows exactly what her audience wants.  That takes all the guesswork out of content creation. Cassidy also uses the questions members of her Facebook group ask on a regular basis to create content that answers those questions. Why You Might Want to Put Content Behind a Paywall After several years of building out her site, Cassidy no longer considers herself a true blogger. One new piece of content is added to the site weekly right now, but that will stop at the end of this year. (2020) Why stop adding new content to the site? It’s simple really.  Succulents and Sunshine gets a ton of traffic, so Cassidy doesn’t need to continue creating content in order to drive traffic. The site contains all the content someone would need in order to grow and propagate most succulents.  And for those who want more, there are the courses and the membership site. Cassidy is beginning to add new content, besides the one piece of content per week, to the membership area.  Her business model is one of providing helpful free content for the masses, but asking those who want to go farther to pay for the additional content.  What I love about Cassidy’s business is how it continues to evolve and grow as her customers tell her what they want. She has developed a level of trust with her customers that is amazing.  Another thing I love is that while her membership site isn’t huge by most standards, she has members who have been there since the beginning simply because they want the one-on-one attention the membership provides them. So now I’ll ask you: what does your audience need one-on-one help with? What are you currently giving away for free that you could put behind a paywall?  Last thing - did you hear Cassidy’s one piece of advice for new bloggers? I’ll give you a hint: listen in at 49:15 and you’ll hear what it is!  Then, join me in our Facebook group as I discuss my favorite takeaways from this episode.  Transcript for "How to Find Financial Freedom with a Niche Blog" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Listen to this interview with  Amanda Wittenborn as she shares how to sell products on Amazon and kill it! I used to think that selling products on platforms like Amazon was all about competing with others on price. Amanda has taught me that I was wrong.  She started out selling printables, but she was struggling to really grow her business. So she began selling invitations on Amazon that she had created and printed, and she has now grown this into a 7-figure business. I can’t wait for you to hear Amanda’s story of how she went from struggling blogger to finding what worked for her. But first... I’m excited to announce that my husband, business partner, and tech genius, David, and I have started our first blogger coaching group. I’ve been mentioning this for a few weeks and I am so excited that it's off the ground! This is a 6-week program that help online entrepreneurs understand all the things they need to know as they start to build their blogs into a profitable businesses.  We’re talking about all the tech stuff for sure, but we’re also covering how to create content, how to find your audience, what products to sell, how to monetize, and how to understand SEO.  We also talk about social media platforms, email marketing, and all the other pieces of building an online business you need to know today.  There are live Q&A’s, teaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and we are there with you every step of the way.  If you’re ready to get your business off the ground, email me at jillian@ milotree.com so I can reserve your spot for our next session starting in late May. Creating Products Fit for Amazon One of the first lessons Amanda had to learn was that not all products are going to work on Amazon. She had to figure out the types of products that would work and focus on creating those.  Prior to Amazon, Amanda created personalized invitations, with all the pertinent information already on them. She sold files that a customer could print, or a customer could purchase pre-printed items.  Once she began selling on Amazon, she switched to creating fill-in invitations. Amanda actually doubted that anybody would want invitations they had to fill in manually, but people loved them.  When someone purchases invitations from Amanda, they can also purchase Thank You cards, stickers, and water bottle wrappers, and all of these items match the theme of the invitations.  Will Your Business Work on Amazon? There are 2 sides to Amazon that are possibilities for selling your products. There is the regular Amazon, where most of us shop on a regular basis. And then there is Handmade by Amazon, which is like the Amazon version of Etsy.  So, how do you know if your business will work on Amazon? Amanda gave us a tip to figure out which Amazon platform you need to be on: If your product is quick to create and you can keep a lot in stock, use the regular Amazon platform. If you create personalized products that require time to complete, you may want to sell your product on Handmade by Amazon.  Isn’t Amazon Too Competitive to Sell On? Oh my goodness, I don’t know about you guys/gals, but when I think about selling on Amazon, I picture a young dude trying to beat the Amazon algorithm to show up in the Buy Box.  And actually, Amanda says that is truthfully how the system works... unless you have a completely unique product.  If you come in with something unlike anything else that’s on the platform, you won’t be fighting for the Buy Box because there isn’t a comparable item to compete. Yes, there are other invitations on the platform. However, the competition isn’t the same as if you have people ordering generic items from China to sell.  Amanda takes advantage of sponsored ads and keyword placement to get her products in front of more eyeballs, but the cut-throat competition just isn’t a thing when you have a unique product.  Hitting Income Goals on Amazon Amanda’s first year selling on Amazon resulted in $250K in sales. So, the next year she set a goal to double it.  And that following year, she did $650K in sales. (Wow, right?!) Her third year, she decided to go for a million in sales. I’m sure it’s no surprise that she hit that goal, too.  And Amanda says that it didn’t take long at all to hit the $20K sales mark. She recommends being prolific in your creation and testing things along the way. When something works, she adds more like it.  Merchant Fulfilled vs. Amazon Fulfilled For the first 6 months of her business, Amanda printed all the invitations she sold and shipped then to her customers herself. This is known as “merchant fulfilled, "meaning the seller is the one fulfilling the orders. At first, it was easy to do. With 2-3 sales per week, Amanda had no trouble keeping up with fulfilling the orders. But when it got to be 10-15 sales per week, and then continued growing from there, it became very difficult to keep up.  Keep in mind, she had to do all the printing, cutting, packaging and shipping. And her orders were ramping up quickly. It was then that she began having her invitations preprinted and she started building up stock. She had 40 designs, so she had 10 packs of each printed. She paid $750 for that first order and she was terrified at the outlay. What if they didn’t sell?  But they did sell, and because Amanda switched to Amazon Fulfillment, she no longer had to worry about the packaging and the shipping. Amazon held her stock and when orders came through, Amazon packaged them up and shipped them. The other amazing thing about using Fulfilled by Amazon is that your customers can take advantage of the 2-day Prime shipping.  Selling on Etsy vs. Amazon and Pricing Products Amanda no longer has her Etsy shop since she started using Fulfilled by Amazon, simply because of all the extra work Etsy requires. Amanda also shared with me that she is not the cheapest price for her product on Amazon, but she sees that as a good thing. Sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we think we have to price our products super low so people will buy.  That’s wrong thinking, according to Amanda. If you price too low, people will think your products are cheap and will expect everything you sell to be priced low. The lower your prices, the more complaints you get. Amanda found that pricing her products in a higher price range led to better sales; not as many sales but more income. Whereas another seller might have to sell 100 packs of invitations to make a certain amount, Amanda only has to sell 50 packs to make the same amount.  Learning to Sell on Amazon Just like any platform, Amazon has a learning curve when it comes to using the platform for selling your own products. But unlike most other platforms, Amazon provides all of the education for anyone wanting to use the platform to sell. Amanda found everything she needed right there on Amazon. Their help center provides videos and articles for every step of the process.  Anything you need to know, Amazon provides the answer. If you don’t see your issue addressed, you can call them and get help.  Buying Ads on Amazon Amanda mentioned that she purchases ads on Amazon, so I asked her to dive into a bit more of what that means and how it works.  Amazon has a sponsored ad campaign system that allows you to set up ad campaigns for your products. You can set the daily amount you want to spend and you can also bid for your products.  For example, Amanda may have a pirate-themed invitation. She can bid $0.20 for her product to show up when someone searches for a “pirate invitation” on Amazon.  Amanda no longer runs her own ad campaigns on Amazon. She recently hired a third-party agency to manage them for her.  The Flexibility of Owning Your Own Business One of the great things about Amanda’s business is how flexible it is. She can be there for her kids after school, on school holidays, and when they are sick. And she has grown a team of women who work for her who also appreciate that same flexibility.  Amanda reaches out to stay-at-home moms she knows when she needs to hire something out because their lifestyle matches hers. She likes knowing that the women who work for her can be there for their families. And because of the growth of the business, Amanda can take a lot of time off over her kids’ school holidays to be with them without worrying about the business suffering. She and the other women work around 20 hours per week and for Amanda, that feels just right. I think that’s the part I love the most about Amanda’s story; she set a goal to reach a certain lifestyle, and she not only accomplished it for herself, but she also provides the same opportunity for other women who want the same thing.  And I want you to listen in because Amanda shared a lot about how her blog’s lack of success is what drove her to start selling on Amazon.  She is a perfect example of what I always tell clients and bloggers—if you have an idea, test it.  If you want to see Amanda’s products, you can go right to Amazon and see all the amazing things she offers.   And if you would like to chat with her about any questions you have, she’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out at amanda@amandacreation.com.  Transcript for "How to Sell Products on Amazon and Kill It" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

In this episode, my husband, business partner, and tech extraordinaire, David, and I are talking about why site speed can hurt your blog and how to fix it. Have you been blogging for a bit, but you aren’t seeing the traffic you thought you’d see? Or is your bounce rate super high?  If you’re dealing with issues like these, perhaps your problem isn’t your content; perhaps your site speed is to blame. In this episode We're digging deep into why site speed matters, and how to be sure that yours is where it needs to be.  But first, if you’re new here, I wanted to take a minute to explain what MiloTree is about and what we offer to our customers, besides this podcast! I like to call this the “MiloTree Umbrella.” First off, if you are a new blogger, or you’re thinking about being a blogger but you haven’t started yet, we are here to help. Setting up your blog is what holds back the majority of people who want to blog. And we get it. Tech can be confusing and it can make you procrastinate indefinitely. But lucky for you, my husband and business partner, David, is a genius with all the tech stuff.  So, if you head over to MiloTree/BlogStart, you can sign up for our blog start service. We will set up and optimize your WordPress blog, and get everything in place for you to begin creating content.  Then, once you have your blog up and running, you’ll want to install our MiloTree pop-up on your site. This allows you to grow your social media platforms, email list, online shopping platforms, or whatever you want to grow!  Go to MiloTree and click on the purple text in the top right corner to start your free 30-day trial and see how quickly you can begin to grow your audience.  And then finally, David and I are finally offering blog coaching for entrepreneurs! I’m so excited about helping you all develop a real business through your blog.  We are currently in our first 6-week entrepreneur coaching session, and we would love to have you in a future group. If you aren’t getting the results you want, come join us and let us help you reach your goals and build a business that will grow with you.  Just click through to sign up for your spot in our next session. Now let's get technical, without being too technical... What Is Blog Site Speed and Why Does It Matter? Site speed, simply defined, is how fast your blog pages load when someone comes to your site.  Pretty simple, right? The question though, is why should you care? David explains there are 2 reasons why site speed matters. You want to give your visitors a fantastic user experience Site speed plays a role in how friendly Google judges your site to be, and how much traffic they send you It will help lower your bounce rate because people will want to stick around Be Your Own User and Tester If you want to know how quickly your site loads, the best place to start is with your eyes.  Be your own user, in other words: go to your site and see how fast your pages download for you. Do you find yourself waiting for the full page to load? David also recommends getting out of your usual space to check your site speed.  If you’re like us, you’re blessed with really fast internet at home. So, when you get on your desktop in your home office, your site might load really quickly. But you need to know how it loads for people on their phones, iPads, and for those with slower internet. So, go to a coffee shop or local hangout, and using only your cell phone data, see how quickly it loads.  And obviously, if your pages load slowly when you have optimal internet, you know you’ve got some work to do.  What Exactly Is Slow Site Speed? When you’re watching your site load, do you notice that larger things like welcome banners take a bit longer to fill in? Are you having to sit there and wait for them to be done? Next, can you scroll? Or is the page frozen in the loading pattern, with the bottom half not filled in yet?  These are the kinds of things that make visitors leave your site before they ever even see what you have to offer.  The Two Sides of Site Speed Site speed encompasses several different parts of your actual site. It’s not only what the user sees. Site speed begins before the user sees anything. The server side - meaning how long does it take your actual Wordpress (or other host) to load the site itself.  The user side - meaning how long it takes for the actual content to load (photos, fonts, text, videos, banners, etc.) How to Have Good Site Speed? Get a Good Host If your site seems slow, or you’ve had people complain about it taking a long time to load, you can take some definite steps to speed things up.  But the best place to start is with your hosting.  If you are currently paying less than $3 per month for hosting, you may be at risk for less than desirable site speed. If you’d like to know which hosts David recommends, email me at jillian@milotree.com.  Use a Caching Plug-in to Help with Site Speed There are plug-ins to help with almost everything on your site, but be careful, because too many plug-ins can cause your site to be slow.  The first plug-in you need for site speed is a great caching plug-in. Caching means your pages are preloaded, in a sense. So, the first person to visit your site gets a full download, but following visitors get a snapshot, of sorts, of the pages. Your site doesn’t have to go through all the work of loading everything again; it uses the cache it has built to show the pages.  We use and recommend WP Rocket for our site cache. (This is our affiliate link.) Optimize Your Content for Site Speed Your caching plug-in will help on the server-side to bring the site up more quickly, but you’ve got content that needs to download for the user.  So, what can you do to help your photos, videos, and written content, including those awesome fonts you used, to download more quickly? The first step to take here is to compress your images. Images take a long time to download, so you need to reduce the file size.  Here again, there are plug-ins that, when installed, automatically optimize your images for you.  *We use WP Smush for our photos. This is a free plugin we also use. How to Check Your Blog's Site Speed? If you’ve checked your site with your own eyeballs, you’ve used the correct plug-ins to reduce load time and to optimize your images, and it’s still slow, there are some things you can do to figure out what’s going on. A couple of tools that David recommends are is GTmetrix and Google Page Speed.  All that is required to use these tools is to put in your URL and let the tool do its work. It will load your page, analyze it, and tell you what is slowing it down.  What Slows Our Sites Down? We talked a little bit about how plugins and photos can slow our site down. But the truth is, every single thing you add to your site slows it down some. Even adding another few words affects your site speed. Now, a few words will have a negligible effect, but another photo could add a second or more to the loading speed.  Back in the early days of blogging, before Google was the one setting all the rules, we could add as many photos as we wanted to our posts. And I will admit to being a little too in love with all my photos and not wanting to leave any out.  So, you would see recipe posts with upwards of a dozen photos of the finished recipe alone. Nowadays, I aim to only include photos that serve a purpose.  The MiloTree Plug-In If you’re using the MiloTree pop-up on your site, David and I want to reassure you that when he built our pop-up, he built it with site speed in mind. So while, yes, every single thing you add to your site slows it down some, one thing you don’t need to worry about is your MiloTree pop-up. We barely scratched the surface on site speed today, so stay tuned because David will be back to help with additional technical content in the future. If you have any questions for David or me, please reach out to us at jillian@milotree.com or david@milotree.com. Transcript for "Why Site Speed Can Hurt Your Blog and How to Fix it" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Have you heard? Pinterest is making changes. In today's podcast episode, Alisa Meredith, my dear friend and Pinterest expert, and I are talking about how to get ahead of the changes at Pinterest to win on the platform. As bloggers, most of us depend on several platforms to drive traffic to our blogs. One of the major players in the game is Pinterest. Pinterest is responsible for driving millions of page views to our site, Catch My Party, every single month.  But with all platforms, sometimes things change. And Pinterest has recently made some changes that have a lot of people talking. It is absolutely necessary as online business owners to be aware of these changes and understand what they mean for us and how to best move forward.  Before we jump into all things Pinterest, I’m so excited to announce that beginning March 2, 2020, my husband and partner, and tech genius, David, and I are starting our first Entrepreneur Coaching Group. I’ve been mentioning this for a few weeks and I am so excited that it is almost time to start! This is a 6-week program that will help you understand all the things you need to know as you build your blog into a profitable business.  We’ll be talking about all the tech stuff for sure, but we’ll also be covering how to create content, how to find your audience, what products to sell, how to monetize, and how to understand SEO.  We’ll also talk about social media platforms, email marketing, and all the other pieces of building an online business with a blog.  There will be live Q&A’s, teaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and we will be there with you every step of the way.  If you’re ready to get your business off the ground, head over to MiloTree and reserve your spot today!  Pinterest Wants Fresh Content If you’ve been blogging for a while, you know that, in the past, you created a pin and then your job was to continue to pin that pin repeatedly, over time.  One of the main changes Pinterest is making is in regard to that practice.  Pinterest has said that they want new content. They no longer want us repinning the same pins over and over; they want pins that are fresh, and they are calling this "fresh content." Let’s define fresh content for Pinterest Fresh content is simply an image that has never been pinned to Pinterest before.  Pinterest has stated that their users engage more with fresh pins, and that doesn’t mean you can use the same image but change the words or the overlay. It doesn’t mean you can slide the image a few pixels right or left.  Think about what makes an image fresh from the user’s perspective.  The point here is to switch your time and energy from curating peer content and repeating your pins to creating and pinning fresh content.  Pinning to Multiple Boards Obviously, the question arises then: Can you continue to pin your images to more than one of your boards? You absolutely can! You can still pin your image to several relevant boards, with the important word there being “relevant.” If you continue to share the pin to boards that Pinterest doesn’t consider relevant, you might receive a warning that you should consider creating fresh content before pinning to additional boards.  If you have a pin that is “sorta relevant” to a few more of your boards, change the text or the image to make it “very relevant” before pinning it to those boards.  The very first board you pin the new content to gets the most attention from Pinterest.  So, be very intentional about the first board you pin your new content to because that sends signals to Pinterest about the content and who they should show it to. Relevancy and Recency on Pinterest As time goes on, relevancy and recency are going to become more important to the Pinterest algorithm.  I asked Alisa to take a moment to define the terms, relevancy and recency, and how they apply to the new algorithm. Let’s say I’m searching for products for my curly hair. I will be shown images of curly hair, pins with text about curly hair, etc. In other words, pins that are relevant to my search. The takeaway here is that your content must contain what your pin says it is relevant to. That relevancy must also be consistent over your entire online content, from your boards to your pins to your website.  You also need to remain relevant to the platform itself.  People come to Pinterest to be inspired. Your pins and content should be both inspirational and aspirational because that is what the Pinterest user is looking for.  Recency goes back to the fresh content piece. The more you create fresh content, the more that content will start to bubble up in the search results. Your relevant content that’s older, can still come up in results, but if Pinterest has two pins that are both relevant to a topic, the more recent content will come up first.  You still want to pin seasonal content early because it’s relevant to the season and because people are searching for that seasonal content ahead of time. So yes, repinning this type of content could be beneficial. New Pins for Old Content When we talk about fresh content, we are speaking specifically about fresh pins. So, what does that mean for your older blog posts?  If you make new pins for older blog posts, does Pinterest consider those pins fresh content? Yes! The algorithm is not based on new URLs, but rather on new pins. You don’t have to put out more content in order to have fresh content for Pinterest.  You can make new pins for older content to have the recency factor work in your favor.  Creating Gorgeous Pins With more focus on new images moving forward, we need to know how to make the most clickable pins ever.  Tailwind has come to the rescue with their Perfect Pinterest Pins Toolkit. Once you download this free toolkit, you’ll see a pin checklist, a guide to writing great descriptions, and most exciting of all, free templates for creating gorgeous pins.  A new group of templates is released every month and is sorted by industry. Each template is 100% editable to make them your own.  You want your pins to be eye candy for the Pinterest user and this toolkit gets you there without you needing to spend hours on new pins.  All of these templates are available to add to your Canva account and are built based on Pinterest’s best practices.  Is Pinterest Jail Real? If you hang out anywhere that bloggers hang out, you’ve likely heard that some bloggers are finding themselves in Pinterest jail. In other words, they’re having their accounts suspended.  I asked Alisa if Pinterest jail was a real thing, (it is!) and how we can stay out of it.  First of all, even if Pinterest recommended you pin no more than 25 pins per day, you wouldn’t get suspended for spam if you pin 27 pins per day. It doesn’t work that way. Pinterest has clearly stated that it isn’t based on numbers.  But let’s say you’re pinning 40 pins per day, and some of those pins are the same pin, and it happens that nobody is engaging with that pin. Well, you’re going to get tagged for spam and it’s pretty easy to see why. At Catch My Party, we have tons of content to pin because people are constantly uploading their party photos to our site.  We had been pinning 100 pins per day, but all of those are new pins. What we are testing now is pinning 75 pins per day and watching our analytics to see what effect that has on our account.  Your Pinterest Best Friend The thing I love about the Pinterest scheduler, Tailwind, and one of the main reasons we use them, is that they are like a best friend, walking closely beside you and letting you know if you start to veer into dangerous territory. Your Tailwind dashboard will always warn you if they notice you putting yourself at risk.  Tailwind is there to put safeguards around your account; they aren’t reporting things to Pinterest, but rather are paying attention to best practices and passing those on to their users.  *Listen in as Alisa shares some in-depth information on how to best use SmartLoop and the future of video on Pinterest.  I so appreciate Alisa sharing her thoughts, and how Tailwind is approaching the changes that Pinterest is making. You don’t have to be afraid of these changes. If the platform becomes more user-friendly, more people will use the platform, which ultimately leads to more eyes on your content.  Action Tips If I had to give you some action tips from this episode, they would be: Keep creating fresh blog content Stay consistent with sharing your content, both new and seasonal Create new pins! Use the platform well and you will see a return on your investment! Transcript for How to Get Ahead of the Changes at Pinterest to Win on the Platform Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

We are doing something a little bit different today. I recently hit a podcasting milestone, so I decided to celebrate by sharing what I've learned reaching 100+ episodes. Phew! I can't believe I did it! My friend and MiloTree community manager, Paula Rollo, is back to help me share with you all some behind the scenes from the podcast.  Before we jump into the content though, I want to speak directly to those people who have been listening to this podcast for a long time because they’re interested in starting their own blog but they haven’t made the leap yet, for whatever reason.  Blogging is a great way to set up your online business, but the technology holds so many people back.  Well now, you don’t have to wait anymore!  MiloTree now has blogging start-up services. For a small fee, we will get your Wordpress blog up and running, with the plug-ins we recommend and your blog optimized.  If you’ve decided that 2020 is the year you finally jump in and start your business, let us help!  Just go to MiloTree and sign up today.  Why I Started This Podcast I have always listened to and enjoyed podcasts. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I even look for excuses in my life to listen to my podcasts.  When I started this podcast, it was because I went to Podcast Movement and took a course on how to start a podcast.  I came home and told my daughter I was going to start a podcast and she said, “No you’re not.”  I had learned that if you can make it to your eighth episode, you are more likely to continue creating content for your podcast.  I told my daughter I would make it to episode 8, and I did it to prove to her that I could! I wanted her to see how if you put your mind to it, and do the work, things will happen. My Favorite Part of Having A Podcast  My favorite part is that I am having an intimate, one-on-one conversation with someone that the world gets to listen in on.  I am not on a stage with a crowd of people watching me; I get to feel comfortable talking to someone as my natural self.  I can be my authentic self because I am focused on listening to the person I’m interviewing and responding to them.  I feel super honored to be let into people’s ears and I love meeting my listeners.  The Space This Podcast Fills I try to get guests who are going to have different perspectives on building online businesses.  I want to be really curious and ask questions about what people want to know. My audience is very sophisticated and they want to know the inner workings and tactics on how to build a business.  I want my guests to share their failures so that my audience knows what not to do, as well as what to do.  No one on my show is an overnight success. We share our struggles, the years of hard work it took, and the sacrifices we had to make in order to get where we are now. I am all about debunking the myth of the overnight success.  How I Plan Future Episodes  I usually fly by the seat of my pants episode by episode. However, I’m always looking for interesting people to interview.  One thing I like is people who build their businesses in unique ways. We all know that there are certain things you can do to build an online business, but I want to talk to those people who try new things and who discover new ways to find success.  My audience is very diverse.  I want to introduce new ideas about money, social media, etc., to my more experienced audience who need to be taking those next steps.  Helping New Bloggers I also have an audience of people who are just getting started in this sphere. For that audience, I want to help them get off the ground.  There is so much to learn about blogging and building an online business and it can be overwhelming.  That’s why my husband, David, and I started the BlogStart Service at MiloTree. We get it. We know how hard it can be if you don’t have experience in online business. Just getting a blog set up is a huge hurdle for most people. We wanted to help people overcome that hurdle, so we now have a service that will get a blog up and running in a very short time for someone who wants to get started but is held back by the technology required.  I want to build a path for the people who want to start their businesses but don’t know the in’s and out’s.  If that describes you, please join our New Blogger Coaching Group we are starting March 2nd. Our goal is to give you a roadmap to go from blogger to profitable online entrepreneur. Our coaching group will focus more on beginning bloggers, while this podcast will continue to do deep dives into specific aspects of the blogging business.  What I Want Listeners To Learn  I want my listeners to know that I want to help them. I am still learning too; we are all on this journey together.  To be successful on the internet we must all be continual learners, and having a podcast gives me the platform to ask all the questions I am wondering about.  My Message To You  If you enjoy this podcast, I want to say thank you. I am so honored that you make the choice to let me into your earbuds and that you trust me with at least part of your blogging education.  I would love to have you join my Facebook group.  I am trying to be in there every day, encouraging and offering tips and support for all of you. It is such a wonderful community of supportive entrepreneurs.  It is a dance. There are days where you kick butt. And there will be days when you feel too low to continue. You will question why you are even trying to accomplish this online business thing.  It is never as bad as you think, and it is probably not as great as you think.  You have to work through your emotions and know that you can still make a difference and grow. Tomorrow is another day. Always know that you are making a difference in someone’s life. Whether that’s a reader, a family member, or someone you’ve never met.  It was fun to do this episode for you all. I hope you learned more about me and my reasons and goals for this podcast. Now, why don’t you go right on over and join the Facebook group, and then head to MiloTree and let us help you with getting your blog set up or with some personal coaching?  Transcript for "What I've Learned From Reaching 100+ Episodes" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!