The Blogger Genius Podcast

If you want to know how to successfully sell your products online, you are in for a treat. I'm interviewing my friend, Monica Froese, from Redefining Mom, on how to know what products to sell, how to find product opportunities, how to build highly converting sales funnels, and how to provide wins for your customers so they keep coming back. We do a deep dive into the strategies and frameworks you need to know to build compelling products for your audience and market them successfully so they happily buy. Show Notes MiloTree Pop-Up App MiloTree Membership Group Redefining Mom Catch My Party 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 Blogger Genius. Looking for tech support, teaching, and community? Join our MiloTree Membership Group Before I get started, I want to announce that we have a program called the MiloTree Membership Group. We were listening to what you guys were telling us in terms of feedback. And one thing that you kept saying is getting tech support is difficult as a blogger. Bloggers have to wear so many hats. So the idea that you have to dig in and deal with all of the back end technology related to your blog can be difficult. Also, we've heard that you want ongoing teaching sessions and workshops, like in the podcast, and third, you're looking for a community of like-minded bloggers and entrepreneurs. So within the MiloTree Membership Group, we offer tech support. We offer workshops, and we offer community. It's all of that rolled into one. We're very excited about it. It's like having a whole support system behind you. So if you want to learn more head to milotree.com/membership. It's a monthly membership, but you can cancel at any time. We, as you can tell, are really committed to helping you succeed. For today's episode, I have my friend Monica Froese back on the show. What we are talking about is business building. And we are talking about how to think about your blog as a business, how to roll up your sleeves and really get to know your audience, how to solve problems for your audience, an dhow to sell to your audience. We give you the whole framework in this podcast episode. And I love Monica because she is so straight. And her advice is so clear. I think you are really going to get a ton out of this interview. So without further delay, here is my interview with my friend Monica Froese from Redefining Mom. Monica, welcome to the show. Monica Froese 2:51 Thank you so much for having me again. And I was just saying to you that your episodes are some of my most popular so I was very excited to get you back. Monica Froese 2:51 I think we've recorded some really good ones like the first one was right after I had the baby, which I still think is one of my favorite because it's a it's like a snapshot in time. I get to listen to how I was feeling in that postpartum period. Jillian Leslie 3:03 Yes. And I think that you were so authentic and honest about the struggles. Yeah. And I found that. Yeah, but I think that there was something. I think other people could see themselves in that struggle to go. Yeah, that explains all those feelings that I'm having. Monica Froese 3:19 Yeah, for real and that and I've gotten emails with people who told me that that really helped them. So I appreciate you having me on so that I can share that kind of stuff with people. How to Build Online Products Jillian Leslie 3:28 Absolutely. So what I wanted to talk about with you today is products. You've built your business— you tell me if this is true—by serving needs, finding needs, serving those needs to your audience. And we talked about this before, which is when you started Redefining Mom, you were a variety of different things. And I think that you've been able to potentially find your sweet spot. Monica Froese 3:58 Yes, even a lot has changed since the last time we talked in terms of my product strategy. So when Redefining Mom started in 2013, there were no products because I was working full-time corporate, didn't have time for that. When I decided to start taking it seriously, I knew that I really wanted to do products, but I needed somewhere to start. So I had this brand Redefining Mom, which is for working moms. Now it was for corporate working moms and like time management for corporate working moms, and we've morphed into helping moms balance running a business and motherhood. So it's taking them out of corporate and moving them into like the entrepreneurial space, but we still cater to the mom needs and the business needs. But what has happened is so when I got started with Redefining Mom and creating products, it was very much geared towards the stuff that moms needed to address. And I started with a product. The Importance of Experimentation in Building Products online Jillian Leslie 5:02 You started with like a Google Sheet or a spreadsheet or something for yourself. Monica Froese 5:07 still one of my best selling products. Yeah. So I basically when I in 2016, I remember this, it was June of 2016. And I wanted to accelerate the process of leaving my corporate job. And I wanted the quickest win I could get. And my husband actually said to me, because we had this really awesome family budget spreadsheet that we had developed while we were in corporate, to manage our finances, we got out of $65,000 in debt doing it or using it. And he's like, moms need this. Why don't you just throw this up as your product and see how it goes? Well, it ended up going very well. Which was like my first sign of understanding what people need and then how to fill that gap. Jillian Leslie 5:55 So it was like a light bulb moment. Monica Froese 5:57 It was a light bulb moment and I would say it took a few months for the light bulb moment because I, I didn't really know what I was looking at, like, why are all these people buying this stuff and or buying the spreadsheet and I had to like back into it. So it took a few months to try to dissect what was going on. Like, why was this such a big hit? And, you know, part of it was the uniqueness of Pinterest at the time, and still the uniqueness of Pinterest, which we can talk about. But at the time in 2016, you could get a lot of organic traffic pretty fast, like you could rank under keywords pretty fast in 2016. And this happened to take off for me. And now you can still rank but it's a little bit different. Creating a Product for Pinterest by Using Pinterest And I've I look at creating products for Pinterest a little bit differently than I used to, which I know you're probably gonna talk about, but what happened after the budget spreadsheet was I started creating more products for moms. Specifically, I had a course which I've since retired, which was to help moms take their corporate skills and repurpose them into the online world. But what happened was I ended up getting really good at Pinterest ads because I'm impatient. And I got to the point where I was sick of waiting for organic traffic to come to me. I really wanted to have more metrics that I could look at. I love looking at data, you only have so many metrics that you can go off of like you can't see specifically what keywords are getting you traffic clicks, conversions, but promoted pins would tell me that. So I got really good at that. And of course, as soon as you get good at something that nobody else is doing, everybody wants to know how you did that. And so teaching Promoted Pins took on this life of its own. I developed the Promoted Pins course right before I had the baby at the end of 2017. And I would say for all of 2018 and all of 2019, it was all about refining that course like I put all of my energy into making this the best Pinterest ads course that it could be. There's no recurring fee to be in my student group. And so like people who bought the course two years ago are still getting support. I do monthly office hours. And so I really became known as the Pinterest ads girl. But there was a part of me that still felt this pull to help moms and create products that I knew would help them. And for reasons that they were coming to Redefining Moms so we made the decision, which we hope to finish this year, which is to break off all of the Pinterest products under my own brand. Creating Products for Women Balancing Careers and Motherhood So just MonicaFroese.com and bring Redefining Mom back to what it was originally intended to do, which was to help moms, particularly with balancing motherhood and their careers, specifically bringing them from their corporate career into the online world. So this really has created this opportunity to create two distinct products sets for two different audiences. Jillian Leslie 9:00 That's terrific. Again, we have Catch My Party we have MiloTree. They don't look at all alike, but one came out of the other one. And one is a SaaS business, which means software-as-a-service and one is a B2C business which is, you know, consumer-facing. And most people have no idea I'm the person behind both, you know, there is some crossover, but not a lot. But again, it was organically how we grew our business. Right? Nobody said, you know, you didn't start off and go, I'm going to become Pinterest expert. You started using it. It started working for you. And you thought I can teach this. Monica Froese 9:37 And I really feel like now that I'm a few, like four years into really taking this as a serious full time business. My corporate skills were invaluable to me for where I ended up here because I looked at Pinterest differently. All the people who are teaching Pinterest back in 2016 were not looking at it in the same way. All I care about is ROI and what I'm getting from it. So, like I got very hyper hung up on the fact that everyone was talking about all the pageviews they could get from Pinterest. And I just was sitting there scratching my head thinking, why do I want a pageview? I don't like what comes after the page view and see, you know, sale. Yep. And that's the thing, like, you know, a lot of bloggers at the time and still, are monetizing through ads and sponsorships and stuff. But you don't have as much control over that. And I couldn't get, I could not get away from, why am I going to spend all of this time getting traffic to my site for them to click away from my site. It just never resonated with me. And when I put into place the principles that I executed in corporate, which was like the ROI principles that I was accountable for when I ran large marketing campaigns. It just seemed logical to me that paid advertising was the way to go, and the most targeted way to go. And that's kind of how it ended up happening. And honestly, I don't regret it at all. Because while I still have this pull, I want to help women get out of corporate into this world and repurpose their skills. I couldn't have funded that part of the business if I hadn't gotten to be known for something. And if that happened to be Pinterest ads, that's great. And that has served me too. So it's been an interesting ride, to be honest with you. I couldn't have predicted it a couple of years ago. How to Create Emergent Online Products Jillian Leslie 11:30 There is this concept that I think about a lot. I talk about it a lot, and it's called emergent business building. And what that means is bottom up, not top down. So top down would be, I have this hypothesis, and I'm going to go toward it and not be open to what my audience is saying to me. What people are coming to me, for that kind of thing. And, again, I have used this example I live in Austin. An Austin is all about emergent development, meaning it's the antithesis of the planned community. You go down some street and like there's a shopping mall, and it looks like it's out of the 70s. But there'll be one cool coffee shop in there. And then all of a sudden, you notice, like, there's the record store, or there's something else is coming, like right next to it. And it's because all of a sudden people are discovering this. And then other businesses are drawn to those businesses. So it looks really messy. Yes, but it's emergent. And I believe when you are building businesses on the internet, that is definitely the way to go. Because if you think you're going to plan this out, that it's going to work the way you think it's going to work, I think you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. Should you Niche Your Blog Down? Monica Froese 12:53 I completely agree. And actually, because I originated in the blog world, I hear a lot of conflicting advice about you have to niche down right away, or it's okay to go broader and then niche down and I am all for the broader first to see what resonates. If you think about it, I had no business putting any budgeting stuff on Redefining Mom, it wasn't the purpose of the site. But I did it anyways, and it ended up being a huge smash hit, which has made me a ton of money. And I wouldn't have done it if all I listened to were the people who told me you have to niche down, you have to niche down, you have to niche down. I'm to the point where I firmly believe if you know how to drive targeted traffic, then you can really have a funnel about anything as long as you're, I mean, don't be a fraud, like be able to give the advice that you're saying that you can give, like for me with the budgeting spreadsheet. I literally had at that point used it for five years. We did use it to pay down $65,000 a debt. It's the only thing that saved us from literally going completely broke when we had our daughter because we were paid on commission, and it was how we estimated out, like the highs and lows if we hit commission if we didn't, how we, you know, literally could pay our bills. And because I used it, I was able to authentically speak about it and the tools that we use every day. Like, I would have sat back in 2016 and said, doesn't everyone have a budget spreadsheet? And my husband said to me, he's like, No, your father is a CPA, and drilled this into your head. Ordinary people don't actually do this all that often. And I was like, Really? Jillian Leslie 14:34 I know. Yes. Yes, yes. So we call them "at bats," which are, how many times are you at bat? And the goal is to increase the number of experiments that you are running, because you don't necessarily know what's going to hit, and you think you have a hypothesis, but I can't tell you how many times we've been wrong, or it's morphed into something. We could never anticipate it. And that is always the surprise. You are trying to attract the audience that you think is the right audience, but you have to be open to I always say like, hold your hypotheses, have them, but hold them lightly. Because you can get blinded thinking, Oh, no, you're the wrong audience for me. So I'm going to kind of push you aside trying to attract the quote-unquote, right audience, when you need to recognize No, no, this is the right audience. They just look different than I thought they were gonna look. How to Attract an Audience on the Internet Monica Froese 15:34 So I get asked all the time, because I bring on thousands of people through my budgeting stuff onto my list, which my email list is integrated with these both sides of the business, and I've gone back and forth about are we gonna divide out the email list or are we not at this point. I don't think I will. Because the thing is, if people are interested in saving money, they're also interested in making money and because my brand attracts, primarily moms. My messaging is actually very on point if they came in on the budgeting side, or they came in wanting to know more about how to build a business, how to get good at Pinterest, marketing, all of that stuff. I have done a really good job, in my opinion, at least of connecting the two. And the people who don't like the connection, they'll weed themselves out, and I've become okay with that. I just am because I this is how this is what resonates with me. This is how I like teaching. This is how I want to develop my products and so people who aren't okay with that, they'll just believe. Jillian Leslie 16:37 So let's talk about your products. You started with a budgeting spreadsheet, which surprisingly sold really well. And then you figured out Pinterest ads and started teaching people about Pinterest ads. Yes. Now you also then have other products. What are they and how did they emerge? Monica Froese 16:57 Yeah, I have a lot. So they're all digital. I'm actually in a mastermind with two girls who do physical products. And I think that's a lot of work. And I give them so many kudos because obviously we need physical products in the world, but it's a lot more work than digital products. Just there are a lot more intricacies that go into it to make sure it's profitable. So the order of things: I had the budgeting spreadsheet, then I launched the course, which was to help moms in similar positions to me who were in corporate and they're like, I want to have a career. But I also want more time with my kids. How do I make that happen? It's like, No, you are smart, you are smart, and you can take what you've learned in corporate and bring it over to this world. That was the next thing. From there. What ended up happening was because people were saying, How are you getting all of these leads? How are you selling these products, and I was selling them with Pinterest. So it started with a 13 video course that I made for friends because I got asked the same questions of what I did on Pinterest. I gave them I literally gave these 13 videos away just to friends and they're like, you should have people pay you for this. Like this is really good. This is better than other courses I've taken on Pinterest, and I wasn't even trying to make it a course. So then I put it up for sale and that was my original organic marketing course. How to Teach what You Already Know Monica Froese 18:23 This is how it started with me teaching organic Pinterest marketing to people who simply just in conversation, were asking me questions. And then I turned that into a course that I did an actual launch for that in like mid-2017. And that well. At the time, I was also very heavily invested and getting traffic to the mom side of my business with Pinterest using Pinterest ads, I had the budgeting spreadsheet. I have a few other templates, spreadsheets, a planner, stuff like that. And so my blogging friends who took my Pinterest organic course were then like, I want to learn how to do this next level things because it really at that time was definitely next level. I mean, I would argue it's still next level because not a lot of people actually do Pinterest ads still. But it was certainly next level at that point because all anyone talked about was organic. And nobody talked about the power of Pinterest ads. So during my third trimester, they pushed me into launching this course which I was so adamantly against. I didn't want to do it. I just wanted to have this baby. I want to go nesting. I am so thankful to my friends that pushed me to do this because clearly it was a huge gap out there was stuff that people wanted to know, but they didn't know they needed to know. It was like they didn't know they needed it until someone was there presenting it to them. It's kind of what ended up happening. When I was on maternity leave. I was getting very big influencers, like people that I had followed for years, sending me dm saying, Can I get this course? And I was sitting there saying I just had a baby I'm not working because I didn't have help or anything. At this point, so I was like, No, no, I had a baby. I don't have time for this. And my husband tapped me on the shoulder and said, maybe you should take a day and open the cart since these people are begging to give you money and let them in. And I was like, okay, so we did that. And then I came back from maternity leave. And I got really invested in making that course the best it could be, while having this calling to wanting to get back to creating other products that I could put behind funnels because as I was doing the Pinterest ads course, what was the prevailing thing that I kept running into was, when you are ready to run an ad, you need an offer that converts. Like you should not put money behind something that doesn't convert. Overwhelmingly, I was getting people joining my Pinterest ads course that didn't have a converting offer. And that could be converting someone onto your email list, converting someone into a sale. They didn't have an offer. How to Create Sales Funnels that Convert So then they would run an ad, and they'd come to me with data even though I said this is in the course. I don't think it necessarily resonated. They just wanted to get to the running ad part. So they'd run the ad and they come to me with data and they'd say, this didn't work. And I'd say, What is it? What is your objective? And overwhelmingly they'd say, to get traffic? Well, why then my question be like, Why? What is it for? Well, I don't know. Just I have ads on? Jillian Leslie 21:22 And by the way, we talked about this all the time to run an ad to for traffic never make sense. It will never be itself. So if you are thinking that you're going to boost now, if, for example, you're working with a brand, and you do some sort of sponsored content, and you want to show the brand that you've got traffic to make the brand happy because they've paid you a bunch of money for this. It's worth putting some money behind that to go look at my numbers. But if you think you can monetize that traffic, just because you're with AdThrive, or you're with MediaVine, it will never, you'll always be upside down. Always, you'll always be paying more than that traffic is worth to you with ads. Monica Froese 22:11 And if you think about it, you're literally running an ad that you're paying for to send people to another ad that you'll make back end money from it. It seems it's very goofy to me. Add the MiloTree Pop-Up to Your Blog and Grow Your Followers and Subscribers on Autopilot Jillian Leslie 22:22 Given this uncertain time as online entrepreneurs, all we crave is certainty. So what if I could promise you that growing your social media followers on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, plus your email list could happen automatically. All you need is a blog or a site you own and some visitors and I guarantee that the MiloTree pop-up app will automatically convert those visitors into followers and subscribers and you don't have to do a thing. We are no longer living in the world as it was. I think we're all realizing the importance of nurturing our online businesses. So we can have freedom to live the lives we want, but in order to get there, we have to manage our scarcest resource time. So let MiloTree do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to growing followers and email subscribers, and you spend your time creating content solutions products that serve your audience, so you can start seriously monetizing your blog. So here's my advice. stay consistent. Kill the perfectionist in you so you can get stuff out there quickly. Touch yourself with kindness, embrace the mess, and go make a couple of smart choices like using MiloTree on your blog to grow your followers and subscribers. So you don't have to worry about that. Get Your First 30 Days of MiloTree Free Sign up now for MiloTree and get your first 30 days free. There's really no risk 8,000 other bloggers just like you, are using MiloTree right now to grow their businesses. Please pause this episode and head to MiloTree.com to sign up for your free trial. With all the worry we're feeling this will give you one less thing to worry about. So what are you waiting for hit pause, head to MiloTree and sign up today. How to Start to See the Opportunities for Creating Products Monica Froese 24:07 So what ended up happening through running this course and getting very dedicated to being in it for these two years and not letting myself diverge off and create all these new products, is I started to see the gaps. And I took notes of these gaps, but I was resistant to filling them until I had that course so buttoned in, and just and the students were doing really well with it. Once I got to that point, and I would say that took just under two years. So I started the course in November of 2017. And in November of 2019 is really when we started launching, again, different products. So the first thing we did was we realized that some people have really ugly landing page and it matters for conversions, and I get super good opt-ins and tripwire conversions. And I have other different funnels that I teach, specific to Pinterest that I get really good conversion rates. And when I would be asked to review like my ad tanked, I'd go into the page that they're promoting. And I was like, you know, and it's hard to get feedback like that, but your page is ugly. You know, that's hard. That's hard feedback to give. So I thought, How can I solve that problem? I created templates in Elementor and LeadPages. I use LeadPages for all my funnels. And so that was my first. That was the first way I was going to solve the problem of people not having ugly pages. Unknown Speaker 25:39 Are you working with a designer? Are you designing them yourself? Selling High Converting Template Landing Pages Monica Froese 25:43 Funny enough, I don't feel like I am a designer at all, but yet I make pretty good landing pages. I like pretty things that convert. So first in my mind was, how do I get this to convert? Second in my mind is how do I make this look aesthetically appealing? Because and this is super important. Pinterest is a visual search engine people expect to come from Pinterest and see pretty things and I was seeing so many funnels that had ads popping up and pop-ups here and pop-ups there and it's like, guys, like a display ad should never be on a sales page Jillian Leslie 26:36 For MiloTree, we create it so that you can turn it off on certain pages and people say why would I turn it off? And I go, if you are selling something you do not want to distract from the sale even if it's my product, turn it Monica Froese 26:52 off. Yeah, exactly. And that's the stuff that Oh, I just feel like there was a big gap of understanding. Finding that and so when so we started with the templates and those went super well. Monica Froese 27:09 I created them on LeadPages. And we duplicated them on Elementor. So we have two solutions. Here's the difference between my templates and what you see on the market for other people's templates. A lot of templates sellers are giving you templates in different color palettes, right. Mine are designed with the conversion mechanism in mind and you have to plug in your branding to it. So it's like branding agnostic. I'm not giving you different color palettes or anything like that. I'm giving you a page that I know convert. You plug your messaging and your brand into it, which is, I found very different than pretty much anything out there that I've seen at this point. And it's very specific because I've spent years testing, where different buttons should go and different headlines. And so it's basically like, the best information I can give you for what has worked on Pinterest. Not just with me, though, with hundreds of my students, because as I've cultivated this promoted pins group, I help them to change their pages. So over time, you just get really good when you see the back end of hundreds, I mean, really thousands of campaigns, you just get good at knowing what works and what doesn't. If You Get People to Trust You, They Will Buy More From You So that's when that came out. But there was still a gap I had in the Pinterest suite of things. So I had the organic Pinterest marketing course which we were keeping updated, but it wasn't necessarily my passion. It was kind of like the on-ramp into getting to know how I teach. And I do think when you stick with the same teacher makes things more seamless. So by the time we get to my promoted pins course, it's like you already understand my logic of Pinterest. So I had an organic, I have an organic Pinterest course, then I did an affiliate marketing course, on Pinterest because not everyone is ready to move right to products. So affiliate marketing is a nice gap that can be filled on Pinterest. Then it went right to paid ads. What I realized was I had a gap between the affiliate marketing and the paid ads, which was I needed to teach people how to create Pinterest-friendly sales funnels. And so actually, as we speak, I am in the very last module right now I'm launching it. I have 125 people in the beta round and I would say probably 85% of them are promotion students so they're my students that know they trust me. They know I delivered in that course, and I'm telling them hey, this course is going to make your funnels just amazing so that when you go back to ads, they will convert like gangbusters. And they're like, yeah, we trust you. We know you you know what you're talking about. That launch I did on Black Friday went nuts. It was like, incredible. The power what I learned from that because all these are learning lessons like, every time I've launched the Promoted pins course, I've learned so many different things like from flash sales, to life challenges, to how long you should have between launches. When I launched them Black Friday, this new sales funnels course to my current students that taught me the power of cultivating your students and pouring into them, they will buy almost everything else you offer, because they trust you. And I'm like, Whoa, light bulb, like I mean, that's logic, right. It's actually very logical. But it was such a lightbulb moment for me to realize that people that everything I did over those two years, really meant something. So that's what we're doing now is teaching people and when this is over, it's kind of like the last installment of my Pinterest, then I have like really a whole framework in place. So there are a few things you have to decide one we want to move the Pinterest courses to MonicaFroese.com. So that Redefining Mom can go back to being for moms. I really feel passionate. The Importance of Integrity as An Online Entrepreneur Like my employee right now, Haley, she's pregnant. And it really reignited my passion for maternity leave. Because under the law in the US, I'm not required to pay her or give her a maternity leave. But I'm going to because I believe that I need to set an example if I'm going to sit here and preach about that stuff, which I did when I started Redefining Mom, that I need to live up to that. And it really reignited my passion to want to help moms. So my goal now is to get the Pinterest stuff buttoned up running. However, we ended up combining it maybe it's gonna be one framework we don't know yet. Like that's our questions there. And then that's going to be moved over into its own thing and then I want to dive back into creating more funnels in more products for the mom side of the house. Jillian Leslie 32:03 I love that. And just to go back for a second to filling in gaps, I noticed because I'm on your email list that you are always coming out with templates for pins and selling them or offering some I think for free. I don't know how you do it, but what I love about what you're saying, Have I noticed a gap? I fill it. Monica Froese 32:28 When I got started, there were a lot of like marketing people, gurus, experts that would say stuff like that, like listen to what your audience is telling you, and then create the product that they want. And for some reason that never clicked for me. I'm like I don't under I didn't. It didn't resonate until I was in the weeds. And this is part of the reason why I don't want people to get stuck. I see so many people getting stuck in the questions that they should not be getting stuck in because you don't know until you try. You have to start putting stuff out there so you understand what people want from you. And then you move forward. Like if I had never done the promoted pins course, I never would have realized how important teaching the sales funnel piece was. You know, it just all I needed all of that, Jillian Leslie 33:15 I would say, and you can tell me what you think the more you are willing to roll up your sleeves and get in the muck with your customers, the more success you'll have because it's in the muck. It's in the confusions. You can't be kind of above it all thinking you're gonna sell stuff to people. You need to get down and dirty. Like it's, you know, I always talk about this, get on the phone. Monica Froese 33:45 Oh, yeah. Jillian Leslie 33:46 Do things that do not scale. You know, you think you're going to set up all these automations are all going to be working in the background and the money's just going to come? And it's like, you take that person who's asking you questions and you say hey, can we do like a 10-minute phone call. And of course, you can't do that 100 times, but you could do it three times, you could do it five times. We've been successful in businesses where we understand where people are struggling, like from a visceral place, not from an intellectual place. Monica Froese 34:21 So one of the things that I like to tell people, because everyone always wants to look at where I am now, and they forget all the things I had to do to get here. I used to do 15 minute calls. All the time, I had a free Facebook group that I had regular teaching lives in that I never missed for like a year and a half, like so I had, I ended up having to close the group when the baby was born just because I could not keep I couldn't keep up with it. And I didn't have an employee at that point either. But the point is, like I showed up for free for a very, very long time to understand what people want it. It wasn't just a matter of I put up a funnel and it did well. I'm not gonna lie, I can put up a funnel now, and I can get it to do well without ever getting on the phone with someone. But I've learned so much over the four years. It's all of that experience that has gotten me to the point that I can do that now. Jillian Leslie 35:22 Absolutely, absolutely. So do it's messy. Like, those are always those are always my thing. Like, don't think it's neat. Don't think it's like you just kind of follow what you know, you pay thousands of dollars for a course and boom, all of a sudden you're gonna have business and it's all gonna work out. Ah, it's like nights of anxiety where you don't understand why this should work and it's not working and it's tweaking and it's making it ugly before it looks pretty and it's, it's getting down in the weeds. So if you're willing to like, get in the muck, that's how you grow business. It doesn't look you know you see people Like Goop with Gweneth Paltrow and it just looks so effortless. And so even though you look at it and go I want that. Like No, no, it's you in your pajamas. It's you. You know with a crying baby on your hip. It's you going Why isn't this working? It's you investing in Pinterest ads and sometimes losing money because you're trying to learn, right? So if you think it's glamorous or anything, trust me, it's totally not. But I think it's totally worth it. But know that your mess is not unique. It's the way through to ultimately find little nuggets of success. Why You Need to Treat Your Online Business Like a Full-Time Job Monica Froese 36:48 I absolutely agree with all that. I show up every day I treat this like a full time job. I get up every morning as if I'm going to work. I take my shower, I get changed. I make my coffee, I sit down, and I work for eight hours. It's not, I don't, I don't work in the margins. I personally don't feel like I'm wired to work in the margins. And I have seen women that do work in the margins. And they have made some really amazing things doing that. I would, I would argue that the majority of people who are going to be successful are going to need to treat it as if it's a full-time job and treat it like you would get up for a job. There are plenty of days like this morning, I got a migraine. And it would have been much easier for me to close my computer and not be on this podcast and not finish the Facebook ads. I'm going to finish when I get off this podcast and not finish the module. But I'm not going to because that's not what gets me to the next step. It's all building blocks. I say that all the time. Like my sister right now is trying to start a blog because she's at home with her kids. She's a health care worker, but she's, uh, she goes to people's houses. And so that's pretty much like not happening right now in the current environment. Um, so she's home. And she's thinking like 15 steps ahead, and I keep reminding her that like you have 15 building blocks you're missing here. You got to go back to the beginning. Everyone started from nothing, you got to go back there. You can't be where I am now, because I had four years to get here. Jillian Leslie 38:27 Absolutely. People ask me all the time. They want a magic bullet. They want something and they say, how did you grow Catch My Party to millions of pages a month? And I go, it's a long slog. That is the answer. And they don't like that. Because if I believe me, if there were a magic bullet, I'd be using it. And I'd be selling it for like millions of dollars. But the truth is, you make mistakes, you make a couple smart decisions along the way. You add some keywords in there, you know, work with your audience, you definitely are making decisions and you hope that those are the right decisions, or if they're not that you're able to pivot those decisions. But for me, I would argue it's all about showing up. Just what you're saying. Monica Froese 39:16 Yeah. And I went through a period in late 2018, where I was, I was in a pretty bad burnout stage. And I stopped emailing as much as I used to, and there's a direct correlation with communicating with your audience to sales, really, I mean, it's all about consistency and showing up and being a real person. Unknown Speaker 39:45 I feel like we're gonna have to do a part two, where you come back and talk more about this, like the nitty gritty, Monica Froese 39:51 I took notes before we got in. Okay, I know I know. At some point in my notes, I said, connection and more connection, especially when you're first getting started, tell us and then like how I have my free group and I went live every single day. And in my paid course I show up every single day, they didn't just pay me money, and then I disappear. Reputation is everything. And I've said this so many times, and I firmly believe that I will make money slower. If it means keeping my integrity and my ethics in place, and I love that. There are people that make money online that are not ethical and they don't keep their integrity in place. And I don't want to be that person. Jillian Leslie 40:44 And I feel if you want to be in it for the long term. That is the answer because people can ultimately I believe that it gets discovered. You know, like you can't, I don't believe that if you work in the internet, you have to weirdly believe in karma. Because eventually it comes back to you. So the more good you put out there, the more good you ultimately get back. Now, it might not be in the way you think it's going to be. And this is again, that idea of, you have to hold things, ideas lightly, because you don't know what it's going to look like you have an idea of what it's going to look like, like, I'm providing all this value, why isn't the money coming? Well, maybe something else is coming. You know, maybe, who knows, maybe you're attracting a person to you that you can ultimately work with. And that's gonna lead to something like it's not necessarily going to look the way you think it's going to look. But if you put enough good stuff out there, over time, you weirdly, I think, attract a lot of good stuff back. And the reverse is true, which is if you cut corners, if you don't walk your talk, if you don't deliver, you could probably survive for a year or so but eventually it will show. Yes, You Want to Make Money Online Monica Froese 42:02 So the thing is, I, okay, I find nothing wrong with being in business to make money. Like that's what we have to feed our families. Like I show up every day, I should get paid for my hard work. There's nothing wrong with running a business that's profitable, and making money at all. There's nothing wrong with it. I think the disconnect is when you don't, when a business owner doesn't understand the bigger impact that they're trying to make in the world, and it's just all about the money. If it's only about the money. It is very hard to wake up every day, stay motivated and keep doing it. Because absolutely, just money is great, but I'm going to tell you I firmly believe now and the thing, more money, more problems. That is a true statement in my opinion. It's not all rainbows and roses all the time. It's a lot of hard work and so if you lose sight of why you're doing it to begin with, and that's why, like when my employee got pregnant, and they put me in this position where I could walk the talk, which meant when I started Redefining Mom, my rant was about maternity leave in the US. I actually got to talk to President Obama about this to his face. And I will never forget when he said to me, he's like, so what are you going to do about it? That was what ignited me to start this, like to make this a business that served moms, not just about money, but it was about making a greater impact. So when she got pregnant, I actually can hear him saying I can see and hear him saying this to me. What are you going to do about it? Well, you know what, I am going to offer her a paid maternity leave because she deserves that. I ranted about that and I am not going to contribute to that problem. Jillian Leslie 43:50 And I would say by you doing that, which is it's a sacrifice to you, you're not going to have an employee, and money's going out out the door. However, She will love you and be so dedicated to you and go the extra mile because you saw her and you were there for her. Again, not a bad situation, but you know what I mean? Like, again, you do not know that you will, chances are get that back tenfold. Unknown Speaker 44:25 Oh, absolutely. Jillian Leslie 44:26 But it's about the faith of that. It's about putting out your best highest self and it gets rewarded. So I again, I don't mean to sound all woowoo about this, but think about how you show up and where your values are because I believe people can sniff it out. Monica Froese 44:45 They can. Okay, so this actually goes to like the topic of the tripwires because a lot of my students and a lot of people I teach, are afraid to sell. They are so afraid to sell and and I always ask them, Do you not believe in what you're selling because if you believe in what you're selling, you wouldn't be afraid to sell like I got to a point in this, I think was the last launch I did for the promoted pins course, I had someone emailed me and was not very kind about. They thought that I was charging too much. And all these course creators think they can charge all this money and they all suck and they don't provide. I wrote her back a very factual answer, which is that there are some crappy courses out there. I've taken them I've invested in them, and I understand where you're coming from, but mine's not crap. And I show up every single day, and it is worth what I'm charging you and I'm I stand behind it. I don't feel bad about charging it because I know I provide that plus more value. And so when people feel like they can't sell that, the question I always have is, do you not believe that what you're selling can actually help the person you're selling it to? Because if you believe it, there's no issue with selling because it's your expertise, you're giving them the shortcut, you know, selling is a good thing. Also selling is what keeps our economy going. People Value What They Pay For Jillian Leslie 46:08 Absolutely. And wait and I will say this. There's this weird reverse thing, which is, when I get something for free, I tend not to value it as much. But if I put money behind it, you better believe I'm going to show up, I'm more likely to show up. If I paid a couple of hundred bucks, let's say for something versus it's the exact same product, but now you're giving it to me for free. So if you want a more dedicated say, student, my hunch is those students that have made the decision to actually open up their wallets and pay you will be better students, which will make a better course which will make a better you know, the whole environment is better. So free is not always better. In fact, I would argue if you're if you are providing value, you charge for it because you want to attract the kind of customer who's willing to pay for it Monica Froese 47:04 Exactly. And so that when you offer something for free to get a conversion to get people on your list, you give them a taste of who you are and what you know and what you can offer them. But it doesn't give away the kitchen sink as they say. Pinterest is a visual search engine. So people come to Pinterest with a problem. They search it, they visually are looking to see their solutions. That's what they arrive on with search results. It's a visual solution that they're looking at. So I come they like to say like meal planning for a week. When I get there. I want to see a visual representations of what meal planning solutions, that's what I'm looking for. So when I click to the meal planning solution, let's say it's an opt-in, that opt-in is to solve, it's meant to solve a quick win. Your Opt-In Should Be a Quick Win It's to give them that immediate gratification that you can help them over that hump. And then your paid product is like, and it can go. There's two different ways, i Pinterest that often can be a layer of your solution, like the first prong of your solution. And the paid is the rest. It's how they take that first prong and make it an actual system. Or your opt-in can be the "what" and the "why,"like, this is why you need this. This is how it will help you and then your paid product is the how. So there's two different ways that you can look at it. I would say I lean more towards the "what" and the "why" and the paid product is the "how." Jillian Leslie 48:46 So I like that. Oh, I like that. Okay, so Monica. I feel like we could talk forever and I know that you have a hard stop. Will you come back? Can we put this in our calendars. We can talk about the tactics, I feel you and I, we are so like-minded. I'm so happy to know you as my online friend on the east coast. Because I feel like my audience loves the tactics, you know what not to do what to do that kind of thing. Monica Froese 49:19 So interesting that you say that because my course on sales funnels is broken down. Strategy is the first three modules. And the last three are tactics. And I say in the course, you cannot have the tactics without the strategy and everyone wants to go to the tactics always and not have the strategy and that's when you fail. And I seriously take my students kicking and screaming sometimes through the strategy, like they just want to tell me where to put this and tell me where to put that and No, I will not. I refuse because if you don't understand the strategy if you don't understand the problem you're solving if you don't get all of that and how it fits into the bigger picture. But you can have all the tactics in the world and it will not help you make sales. Jillian Leslie 50:05 Absolutely, absolutely. Okay Monica. I just I love talking to you so, so let's we're literally going to hang up this call and schedule part two. And I just love that you come on on the show and you share so much. Monica Froese 50:22 Well, I'm really glad that you have me. People listen, I love doing this. Jillian Leslie 50:28 Alright, so Okay, so until part two. Key Takeaways My big takeaway from this episode is how putting in some thought about your solution, how to attract your audience, how to provide them with a quick win and then ultimately sell them on the solution, I think is really powerful, I think to step back in your own business and think about putting these pieces together, lining them up. So they all make sense is what I recommend. Did it take some thought it really does. If you want to talk product with me, please reach out at Jillian@milotree.com. And I'd love to hear what you're thinking and give you some feedback. Also, I want to say do check out the military membership. So it's Milo tree.com/membership, if you are looking for tech support, ongoing tech support, so we've got your back. So when you want to make a change to your blog, we can do that for you. Also, it provides you with workshops, ongoing workshops of what is what are cutting edge strategies that we want to share with you both strategies that are working in our business, but also strategies that we are seeing work in people's businesses and also community because being an online entrepreneur can sometimes feel lonely. It can feel like you are yelling into the abyss and you're not sure anybody is listening. Well, I'm listening and this community is listening. So, if you if any of those things are interesting to you, and you can roll them all into one, please head to milotree.com/membership. And again, there are no contracts or anything so there's really no risk and I will see you here again next week. 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 been thinking about starting a blog and selling products? If so, you'll want to listen to this episode. My guest on today's podcast is Suzy Karadsheh. Suzy and her husband have built their site, The Mediterranean Dish, into a thriving online food blog and business. And because it's all about Mediterranean flavors, their blog is what I would consider a niche food blog. Suzy started the blog as a hobby when she began staying at home with her young child. She chose the niche of Mediterranean food because she grew up and lived on the Mediterranean and was familiar with cooking in that style. Monetizing a Niche Food Blog The hobby blog that Suzy started in 2014 has turned into a profitable business, and Suzy's husband recently left his job as an insurance executive to join the business full-time. It was in 2016 that Suzy realized that blogging could be a source of income for her. She began to research blogging as a business and she joined a few blogging groups to understand how to turn her hobby into something more. Today, Suzy and her husband sell their own private label ingredients such as spices, oils, etc., that are used in the dishes she shares. Sponsored campaigns and ads are additional streams of income for the blog. Learning How to Sell Food Products As Suzy has developed the site's product sales, she has learned a lot about inventory, shipping costs, and customer satisfaction. Because the products they sell are produced by small, family-owned businesses, Suzy and her husband aren't able to stock thousands of, say, bottles of olive oil or jars of spices. Their inventory is smaller and not yet handled by a third-party company. Shipping costs are kept low and packages are typically received by customers in just a couple of days after ordering. Selling food products is a tricky business to learn, as you don't want to stock up on too much inventory until you can see how much you are going to be able to sell. And because Suzy wants to sell the freshest ingredients possible, she doesn't buy in huge amounts upfront. This side of the business continues to grow though, and as it does, Suzy is growing with it and making changes that make her products available to more customers. Marketing Food Products Through Email We all know how crucial an active and engaged email list is for online business, and it is no different for a niche food blog. Suzy currently has around 80K people on her email list. She cleans her list regularly, so those people are her most engaged audience. And those people bring the greatest returns. When you have a super-engaged audience and you reach out to them with products that fit their life and solve their problems, that's where your biggest sales come from. Suzy emails her list 2-3 times a week, offering recipes and the ingredients to make them. Her goal is to serve her audience, not just sell to them. And it shows in her success. Her audience enjoys the free content that Suzy creates, and is eager to support her by purchasing the products she sells. Creating Content for a Food Blog I was curious about how many people are helping Suzy with content creation since she had told me that her husband is mainly in charge of running the storefront. She does have someone who manages her Pinterest account and a mom friend who helps with some Pinterest and Facebook content. But Suzy manages her IG alone. She has great IG story engagement but admits to sometimes simply forgetting to do them. (Who can identify? I can!) The thing that blew my mind was when Suzy shared with me the amount of content she is currently creating for the blog every week. She single-handedly creates 3-4 recipes per week. And of those, Suzy does 100% of the recipe development, creation, photography, and writing. *Suzy shared in the episode her process of creating 5-8 videos per month of recipe creation, so be sure to listen in to hear the insane amount of work involved in that kind of content creation. How to Deal with Blogger Burnout I didn't have to chat with Suzy for very long to wonder if she ever experiences burnout. She maintains a grueling schedule that not many of us could handle without struggling with burnout. And she was very transparent with me that she deals with burnout on a regular basis. When asked how she deals with it, she said, "I cry and I play with my puppy." In all seriousness though, Suzy arranges her schedule so that after an especially grueling day or week, she has a day off. Her video days are the busiest for her business, so she is sure to take a day off after a day on camera. I'm curious, do you struggle with burnout? If so, I would love for you to email me at jillian@milotree.com and tell me how you deal with it. How Building an Online Business Affects a Family Because my husband and I work together in all of our businesses (Catch My Party, MiloTree, our BlogStart service, and our Entrepreneur Coaching group), I know what it's like to have the business be a topic of conversation all the time. It can be difficult to remember that the dinner table might not be the best place for discussing business, especially if you have children. Our daughter is quick to remind us if we get too far into business discussions at dinner, and Suzy shared that her older daughter does the same thing. We also have to remember that we are husband and wife before we are business partners, and sometimes we need to spend time together not talking about business stuff. Sometimes we just need to laugh at a show on Netflix and enjoy each other's company. How to Sell Products Online I asked Suzy for some advice on selling products and she gave a few things to focus on: Research, research, research -- it's a lot to learn and takes a while Go slow -- Don't try to ramp up too quickly. Try different things, different sources, and different products --You don't have to go with the first company you try. Solidify your niche first --What do people come to your site for? How can you supplement that with a product that makes sense for them? Choose a product that serves your audience -- This is the only way you'll be successful Episodes like this one with Suzy are some of my favorites because you get to see the full, behind-the-scenes picture of what goes into running a successful blog. And it is a ton of work! Suzy found a way to serve her audience with fantastic and consistent content, and in return, her audience is highly engaged with both her content and her products. So, I want to hear from you on how you're serving your audience and engaging with them. Join me in my MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group and share your tips with those of us in the group. 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!

Intro 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello friends. Welcome back to the show. I hope you are staying safe and healthy during this unusual time. Before I start with today's episode, I wanted to announce that on May 26 we are starting our next coaching group. Join Our 6-Week MiloTree Entrepreneur Coaching Group Starting May 26th It's a six-week coaching group. It is for new bloggers and experienced bloggers where we dig in, get to know you and your business, and teach you really how to grow an online business today. Especially, during this time. There's a lot. There's a lot that's the same and a lot that's different, and we break it down piece by piece. In fact, don't take my word for it. I'm going to read what Clara said about our coaching group. Coaching Group Review She said, "Being part of the group was such a great experience. Jillian and David provided so much valuable information, tips, ideas and help. They shared all their expertise and that is a lot. I strongly recommend anyone join. It's empowering. It's helpful, dynamic and fun. Every session with them opened my mind and gave me fantastic insights and support for my own business. It's totally worth it." Well, Clara, thank you for saying that. Clara has continued on with us in our monthly membership. This is just a great way to get some momentum. That's what I would say. And we'd love to have you. If you want to learn more, head to MiloTree.com/group. Email me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. If you want to get on a call to talk about your business and how I think we can help you, I would love it so please reach out. In today's episode, I have David as my guest. He is, of course, my husband, my partner. He is a technologist. He is really insightful. I learn from him every day. What we are talking about is how to look at your blog with fresh eyes. Show Notes MiloTree Entrepreneur Coaching Group MiloTree Pop-Up App—30 Days Free MiloTree BlogStart MiloTree Downloadable Blog Checklist MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Episode #110:Why Site Speed can hurt your blog and How to Fix it GTmetrix Google Site Speed How to Look at Your Blog With Fresh Eyes We get really comfortable with our own blogs and we almost become blind to that. So what I've been doing in my Facebook group, my MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group, (If you're not a member, please go to Facebook and join.) is I will ask people and say, "Hey, do you have something you want us to review?" And people will say, "Yeah, will you look at my blog?" So, what I'm doing in this podcast is outlining how David and I take a look at your blog. What's great is we've got fresh eyes, but we also have a systematic way of looking at the pieces of your blog to see if you are making good choices to help move your business forward. I'm going to give you some insights into how we think about it. If you want a free download, a checklist of what we're talking about, please head to MiloTree.com/blogchecklist. You can go through this and hopefully see your blog in a new way. And if you want help doing this, that's where David and I come in. Please join our coaching group. What's great about it is that David is there to give technical and design help. If for example, you look at your blog and you go, "Oh my God, I really need to change this or whatever." We're here! Reach out at jillian@milotree.com and we will help you. That's what we are here for. So, without further delay, here is my interview with David. David, welcome back to the show. David 4:05 I'm glad to be back. Jillian Leslie 4:06 It's fun. It's funny because we're sitting here close together, talking. David 4:10 Sharing a mic. Jillian Leslie 4:11 Sharing a mic. Thinking about whether we should have two mics but realizing that it's probably logistically somewhat difficult. David 4:19 I don't want to have to Skype from another room. Jillian Leslie 4:21 It's cute. It's like we're all cuddled up here next to the mic. Okay. We just finished our first coaching group. And it was really fun, wasn't it? David 4:32 It was good. Jillian Leslie 4:32 What was cool about it was getting to know the bloggers and entrepreneurs in the group and really getting to understand their businesses and they are our friends. David 4:41 Yeah, especially during the time we're quarantined and not seeing anybody. It's kind of nice to meet new people and talk to them. Jillian Leslie 4:49 Yeah. And that you have this ongoing relationship. It's funny, we started the group before quarantine, and then all of a sudden the world shut down around us. And it was something that I started to really look forward to not just because it's fun, and we want to help people succeed, but it was like, "Hey, we could just show up with this group of people." Because the truth is we've been hanging out a lot together for a while. So it was really nice. So anyway, we are starting our second coaching group on May 26th. And what's cool is that we have really been able to take this time to synthesize how we teach, and what we think is really important. Has Your Blog Gotten Cluttered? We thought about doing this episode and sharing how we look at blogs, especially you David because you have such a technical foundation. Our blog is kind of like your home, which is you move into your home with your stuff and you put everything in place and it looks really nice, let's say. And then over time, you start to bring in more stuff. You might bring in a tchotchke or a decoration. David 5:59 Some souvenirs from the vacation trip. Jillian Leslie 6:01 Exactly. And then there's the stuff that is kind of functional, but you don't really have a place for it. Like the big mixer ends up on your countertop in your kitchen. And then, the pile of papers. And at a certain point, you step back, and you go, "Oh my God, my house is so cluttered, and it used to not be cluttered." David 6:25 Or you never step back and you never realize it. Jillian Leslie 6:27 Exactly, yes. David 6:29 But when your friends come to visit, they might go, "Hmm." Like, "How do I get to the kitchen behind that pile of books?" Jillian Leslie 6:37 And in fact, I think a blog can be somewhat similar, which is, it's really easy to add stuff. I think that we get used to our blogs and how they work and we forget to take stuff off, or we forget to pare it down. In our Facebook group, the MiloTree Mastermind Group, and we just did this recently. I'll say, "Hey, do you want feedback on your blog?" And somebody will give me their blog URL. We're always happy to do this. What I do behind the scenes is I say to David, I go, "Hey, David, look at this blog with me." And so, usually we sit by your computer and you call it up and you start looking and kind of how… If I were to think like you, what are your first thoughts of when you're evaluating somebody's blog? David 7:18 Right? Well, the advantage we have is we may not have seen the blog before, so we can really bring fresh eyes. Jillian Leslie 7:23 And we've seen hundreds and thousands of blogs. David 7:26 Right. So I think as we give this advice to you, having you lived in your blog. The main thing I would say is you're trying to bring fresh eyes. Bring your own eyes in a fresh way looking at your own site. Putting yourself in the position, a new visitor coming in for the first time. People Don't Start on Your Homepage Anymore As content creators, we are intimately familiar with our blogs or sites. I think inherently you kind of think of it hierarchically, right. Imagine you're putting up your blog. Start with what is my homepage going to look like? And then, what are my sections? And then, I'll put the blog post in the sections. But, you know, in the world today, it's the opposite. Right? Someone's out on the internet, they're on Google searching for a recipe. They're on Pinterest looking for a cool photo of some home decor. Hopefully, your site comes up and they're going to click on it and they're landing deep in your site, like they're in a blog post. Ninety percent of the time they're not coming to your homepage and looking at the cool hierarchy you set up, they're landing in it, on your content. How Does Your Blog Feel Overall? So, the very first thing is, like really the feel. A lot of that is about performance, page speed. Not like in like, you have your stopwatch out, but just when you go to your page, what does it feel like like? Are things loading in blocks and shifting around? If I'm starting to see your content and want to scroll down, can I? I don't know if you've been to sites that are loading really slowly you can't move the page. That can be super frustrating. That can be like an automatic… Jillian Leslie 9:13 Bounce. David 9:14 Yeah, people back out because you know, they're not even confident that the content they want is going to be there. So, go for that feel first. Jillian Leslie 9:24 Okay, wait. We did a podcast episode, David and me, about site speed. I will link to that where we talked about certain tools. But what is the URL or where do you go to detect people's site speed where they can just put their URL in? David 9:39 Google PageSpeed. So, I was just saying like, don't think to spot stopwatch. First, go for the feel. But also after that, especially if you think there's a problem, go to Google PageSpeed. I think that's an important metric to have, because a lot of the performance we're doing is in the hopes that Google will reward us or not penalize us for PageSpeed. And there's another site called GTmetrix. I like GTmetrix if you're going to sit down and try to optimize your site performance because I think that some of the feedback it gives are a little more clear than what you get from Google PageSpeed. Jillian Leslie 10:17 Let's talk about orientation, because you talk a lot about that. David 10:21 Right. So, once someone's there, like they're in your recipe post… Jillian Leslie 10:27 Kind of like in the bowels of your blog. David 10:29 Yes. They haven't come to your homepage, they haven't gone through this. It's not the museum tour, or they come at the front front desk and get the map and there's the desk going, "Okay, we're going to start here. We're going to go into the east wing first. We're going to learn about deserts, and then move into…" Actually, maybe start with appetizers, end up in deserts. But they're deep in your blog. So, I think these days on the internet, like one question every time you arrive at a new site, maybe someplace you haven't been before is like, "Is this place legit?" Jillian Leslie 11:01 Right. There's like a moment of skepticism because we all know that there are people out there wanting to scam us or somehow there's like this underbelly. And also if it's a recipe, like do I trust this person? David 11:16 Yeah, exactly. I'm sure anyone who uses Pinterest. Sometimes you'll go to a pin and like, "Okay, that's a great photo. I want to get more information." And then you'll click and then like, who knows where you'd end up. Nothing related to it. They're just kind of spamming that photo out trying to get a click to something unrelated. Jillian Leslie 11:33 They probably stolen that photo. David 11:35 Stolen that photo. Reused it. Bought an unrelated stock photo. So, one thing is like when you're pinning, like hopefully, there's a easily mental connection that the person can make between the photo you're pinning from your post and the content that's in your post. And it doesn't have to be the same photo. I know you can do like custom pin photos, kind of the tall with a label. You may not have it in your post but as long as you just want to be able to, like the gut reaction should be okay. How to Orient Your Visitor When They Come to Your Site Jillian Leslie 12:12 Oh, I'm here and this is right where I'm supposed to be. David 12:15 Right. Because that's your first hurdle The second one is like they might go like, "Okay. Before I invest, like more than two seconds here, start scrolling. Like, what is it this place?" Jillian Leslie 12:26 Who are you? David 12:27 Who are you? Jillian Leslie 12:28 Why should I trust you? David 12:29 Like one thing we recommend is having the little mini bio. If you're an individual blogger, your photo could just be like a sentence or two, your mission statement, who you are. Jillian Leslie 12:42 Right. And you can click to another page that has much more information about you. Have Your About Section on Every Page David 12:46 Yep, by all means have an About Page if you're comfortable with that, but with more of it too because you don't know where people are coming, what page they are going to view first. Assume that on every page, you want to have something about yourself to let people know, "Hey, I'm a real person. I have a real mission here with my site." Jillian Leslie 13:08 Right. I like that. So you would have a photo, preferably a few, like a liner to about you. And if you can put your mission in there of like, so it's not just I'm a mom of three and I live in Colorado. David 13:22 Right. I'm a budget baker. I could say it should be on the first page that people view but you don't know what that page is. So, you blanket it on every page. Jillian Leslie 13:31 And then also, let's talk about nav because your nav should be on every page. David 13:37 Absolutely. I think the question around nav is once someone has arrived, like you've done all this work pinning images and optimizing for Google search results and someone clicks to your page, like, asked what do you want from that person? What do you want them to do? Jillian Leslie 13:56 Yeah, this is a really interesting question because I think as bloggers, especially if we started 10 years ago, we didn't think about that. It wasn't about building a business. It was like I was creating a blog. And look, I can put ads up. What Do You Want Your Visitor to Do on Your Site? It was almost like you backed into a business. And today, I think it is all about what do you want this visitor to do. And how does that help you grow community, make money, build your brand, but very clearly, do you want this person to read this post? Do you want this person to sign up for your list? Do you want this person to download something? Do you want this person to buy something? Do you want this person to click on five different pages of your site? David 14:44 The gut reaction, I'm sure of everyone, is yes. Right? I want all those things. Read the recipe. Print it. Make it view five more pages. Pin stuff. Draw on my list. Click my affiliate links. Jillian Leslie 14:57 And follow me on Instagram. David 14:58 Exactly. Jillian Leslie 14:59 With your MiloTree pop-up. David 15:02 The truth is you want to be optimizing for one thing. Jillian Leslie 15:06 Right. And this is so hard. It's so hard. David 15:08 You got someone on your site. Is your goal to get them on your email list? Is your goal to get them to buy something? Is your goal to get them to view more pages because you've got great content? Jillian Leslie 15:21 Yes. Yeah, I want it all. You're right. But there should be a hierarchy in terms of what is most important for your business. And again, how many times do you come to a blog and then lots of things are popping out at you? I mean, this goes back to MiloTree. When we created it, our feeling is really one ask. Now, people will have multiple pop-ups on their sites in addition to MiloTree, but really our thinking is always funneling people to make it so easy for them to do what you want them to do. And not confusing them. It's the kind of thing where again, this is one of those moments where when you step back and you think about it that way, you want to find that journey. And kind of put road signs pointing going, "Do this. Go here." I like actually, when blog say start here in the nav, because guess what I do? David 16:21 Start there. Jillian Leslie 16:21 I start there! You just told me what to do. Install MiloTree on Your Blog and Get 30 Days Free Advertisement 16:25 Given this uncertain time as online entrepreneurs, all we crave is certainty. So, what if I could promise you that growing your social media followers on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, plus your email list could happen automatically. All you need is a blog or a site you own and some visitors and I guarantee that the MiloTree pop-up app will automatically convert those visitors into followers and subscribers and you don't have to do a thing. We are no longer living in the world as it was. I think we're all realizing the importance of nurturing our online businesses so we can have freedom to live the lives we want. But in order to get there, we have to manage our scarcest resource - time. So, let MiloTree do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to growing followers and email subscribers, and you spend your time creating content, solutions, products, that serve your audience, so you can start seriously monetizing your blog. Here's my advice. Stay consistent, kill the perfectionist in you so you can get stuff out there quickly, touch yourself with kindness, embrace the mess, and go make a couple of smart choices like using MiloTree on your blog to grow your followers and subscribers so you don't have to worry about that. Sign up now for MiloTree and get your first 30 days free. There's really no risk. Eight thousand other bloggers just like you are using MiloTree right now to grow their businesses. Please pause this episode and head to MiloTree.com to sign up for your free trial. With all the worry we're feeling, this will give you one less thing to worry about. So, what are you waiting for? Hit pause, head to MiloTree, and sign up today. How Does Your Site Look on Mobile? David 18:10 I think it's also a good time to bring in mobile. Again, as content creators, we're spending a lot of time at our desk on our desktops, laptops with big screens. Jillian Leslie 18:26 Yeah, you should see what our office looks like right now with our big screens. David 18:32 You have to always remember that we have the bulk of our audience on mobile. Jillian Leslie 18:40 Yes. David 18:41 It could be 60. It could be 80. It could be higher, 80% or higher of people coming on their phones. That means there's a lot less on their screen when they visit your site than on your screen when you're designing and creating your blog posts. Jillian Leslie 18:59 And the other thing I would say is if you came to our house and watched us at night, let's say watching a baking show or so, which we love, we will be on two screens. I'm going to admit it. You're sitting there. The show is on in the background. I've got my phone out, and I'm scrolling, which just means not only am I seeing a smaller screen, but I'm also distracted. That's why you want any way that you can direct people to do what you want. You need to be doing that because you're not only getting small real estate, but then also, like in terms of people's mindshare, they can only devote 15% of their attention, 30%, hopefully 60%, but chances are, it's not 100%. David 19:46 Yeah. One very specific point is your logo. Jillian Leslie 19:52 Let's talk about that. David 19:53 So again, we love our own brand. Jillian Leslie 19:57 We do. How to Optimize Your Blog Logo David 19:58 We want a nice big logo to show off. And again, on a desktop, you know, you can sacrifice a fair amount of space to your logo. It's not that big a deal. I'd say, I don't know, maybe half the blogs I go to, like between the logo and the nav, you can't even see the title of the post on the first page without scrolling down. So, you're already forcing the user to commit to your site, wait for it to load to scroll to even start to see your content. Jillian Leslie 20:31 What do you recommend for somebody's logo? David 20:35 Simple, wide, and short. Jillian Leslie 20:39 And we were talking about this, how many pixels tall would you? David 20:42 Under 100 pixels tall if possible because it's that short. That's why simple, easy to read. Jillian Leslie 20:50 Yep. All right, let's talk then. So, you want to have a small logo or a short logo, especially on mobile, and then also a short nav? Just in terms of height. David 21:02 Yes. Jillian Leslie 21:03 Okay. So again, like we fall in love with our own designs and our own… David 21:08 I mean navs are things that typically take up too much space because they're tall, but they might take up too much space, because there are too many options in them. Jillian Leslie 21:17 Let's talk about that. How to Optimize Your Nav Bar David 21:17 And again, that ties right back to what is the ask. Right? Someone's come to your site and they're not bouncing off but maybe they've read a lot of your content but now want to go somewhere, maybe see some more content in their choosing to use your nav. How many things are you going to put up there to give them a reasonable choice of making a quick decision? Jillian Leslie 21:43 What is the kind of conventional wisdom? David 21:46 Rule of thumb is when you're presented choices, five or fewer? Jillian Leslie 21:50 Do you have a home? Does it say home or does it not say home and you just link your logo to your homepage? David 22:01 It's okay. Your logo should always link to your homepage. Jillian Leslie 22:03 Okay, regardless. David 22:04 Regardless. I think it's okay to have a home in your nav but you don't need it. Jillian Leslie 22:09 Okay. So, you need space get rid of that. David 22:12 If you have six things in your nav and one of them is home, I would definitely get rid of it. Jillian Leslie 22:16 Okay. Okay. And therefore would you do, let's say that I am a travel DIY recipe blogger. I know it's a lot. It's honestly not what we recommend. We recommend go figure out which one of those is your most popular where people are really connecting with you and go that way. But let's say I've got a part that says recipes and DIYs and travel, and then I'm not going to have home but then am I going to have like an about us and maybe a shop? Are you feeling overwhelmed? You look overwhelmed. David 22:49 I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. Jillian Leslie 22:52 Okay. David 22:54 I might drop the about first. Jillian Leslie 22:56 Just put it in the footer? David 22:58 In the footer and you potentially have a about module somewhere. If it's on desktop, it's going to be at the top of the right rail. When you drop into a mobile view that'll typically drop below your content, which isn't as accessible but is still there. How Many Fonts to Have on Your Blog Jillian Leslie 23:14 Okay, let's talk about fonts. David 23:18 Definitely. I think a lot of people are attracted to many fonts. Jillian Leslie 23:24 Why don't you want many fonts? David 23:26 Starting with performance. Each specialty font, non-system font means everyone who views the page doesn't have to load the font before they can start reading the text in that font. Jillian Leslie 23:42 Okay. David 23:44 So, typically, I would say no more than two fonts. Jillian Leslie 23:47 Really? David 23:49 The main thing is you want like a typeface that's very simple, easy to read. Maybe a Sarah Font for your titles and asante sarah font for the body of your post, your content. Jillian Leslie 24:05 Do you really think that's enough? I think that we love fonts and they're pretty. We love photos, we love it. David 24:16 If you're trying to evoke something friendly and homey, you're going to be attracted to like a script type face but think about that those can be much harder to read. Especially at a glance. Someone's scanning the page and you just want something as clear as possible. Jillian Leslie 24:36 Okay. That's okay. David 24:39 Along the same lines, I think there's a disproportionate amount of time spent on WordPress themes. Jillian Leslie 24:48 Can we talk about that? David 24:49 And all these like getting the right background. I mean, the truth is, you want people to see your content first. Right? And to a degree, the type face and your theme and background image, those are helpful and kind of like setting the stage and creating like a feel for what kind of site it is. But the truth is what you want people to see right away is the title of your post, the content, the key photo from your post. You don't want the background color of your theme to distract people from the content. Jillian Leslie 25:26 Right and clash with your content, let's say. David 25:28 Yes. Can You Get Rid of Your Slider? Jillian Leslie 25:29 Okay, let's talk about then sliders. People love sliders. David 25:35 Yes, I would say sliders are emblematic of indecision. Right. I have limited space but I want to do multiple things with that space so I'm going to use a slider to put a bunch of things in that limited amount of space. Jillian Leslie 25:53 I like what you're saying because it is a little bit like this: "You're a visitor. I'm going to serve you up a whole host of choices and you decide." It sounds really good. I'm going to let my visitor decide. And we would say, "No, no, no. You decide. You as the content creator, as the blogger, you decide." David 26:11 Right. Welcome to our restaurant. Here are our three menus. Which one do you want to order from tonight? Jillian Leslie 26:15 Right. Right. David 26:17 Honestly, there's a lot of data around sliders too that people tend not to interact with them. Let's say you've got a slider with three pieces of key content. And typically, I would say people use sliders on their homepage, not in their hosts. If you think all three pieces of content are important, break them out of the slider and let people scroll vertically down. It's much easier to scroll vertically and scan through three pieces of content than to wait for a slider to load and wait for these transitions. Most sliders, I would say, are pretty poorly designed. Like, are my arrow keys going to move the photos? I don't know. Like, how big is the target to shift to the next slide? Can I go backwards? Like all the million little pain points, then I think most people have had enough painful experiences with sliders, they tend not to interact with them. Jillian Leslie 27:15 Yes. David 27:16 If you have a slider on your homepage, I would say, "Okay, look what's in it, and decide if you really want to promote all that content, and either get rid of it or break it out." Jillian Leslie 27:28 Got it. One thing that you've always taught me from like, I don't know, I feel like the last 20 years is this idea that when you make people click, they drop off. No matter what. Always. And therefore, you don't want to necessarily be giving your audience so many choices, kind of a little bit like the about page. We were just on somebody's site yesterday, evaluating it. The woman had a beautiful photo of herself and there was no text underneath it. You could click on it and end up on her about page. We were saying just even having a little bit of text right up, like pulling it up, will give people much more information about her than assuming somebody is going to look at that photo, click on it, and then go read about her. David 28:16 Guaranteed. That is true, right? Fewer people are going to click through, then we'll see it. So, if you want people to see it, put it there. Jillian Leslie 28:26 So, always think about what are you serving up? If you want people to see those, like if you're hiding stuff behind sliders, it's kind of a similar concept. David 28:37 Yes. If you imagine, the prime real estate on your blog homepage is a slider. It's going to get less interaction guaranteed than if you just had a piece of content that you were focusing on and featuring. Jillian Leslie 28:53 Yeah, I agree. And I think that that speaks to kind of what you've always said. You don't want to be hiding stuff, assuming people are going to happily click because every time you click, it's a little bit like you're opening a door. You don't know what's on the other side. It's like a commitment. It feels kind of uncomfortable. David 29:12 And weirdly, you present people with choices, the easiest one. Jillian Leslie 29:15 Is that true? David 29:17 Sure. Jillian Leslie 29:18 Okay. All right. As we're kind of wrapping this up, as I'm looking at my checklist of things, one last thing which I just wanted to mention is that something that you always look at and we talked about this in our previous podcast is, do they have a caching plugin? Do they have a photo optimizing plugin? I feel like when you just look at a site after you've kind of looked at it… David 29:41 I throw those into the page speed. How quickly does it load? How quickly can I interact with it? Just how does that initial feel? Jillian Leslie 29:49 Okay. So a lot of, I think, what we are sharing… And by the way, if you like how we are thinking about this, if this is resonating, please sign up. Join our next six-week coaching group because what we do is we do deep dives into your site and we give you thoughts and ways to figure out what kind of niche you're in, how to make money in your niche, how to create content that will get you to where you want to be, and how to be really intentional. I feel like that's a word that is coming out of our conversation today. Instead of saying, I'm going to push it on the visitor. It's like, I need to do all that thinking up front. And it's hard. David 30:32 It can be hard. You have to make, you have to choose. Jillian Leslie 30:36 You kind of have to like… David 30:37 Pick your favorite child. Jillian Leslie 30:38 Yes. And by the way, in our coaching group, we're there to help you make those choices. Look at your analytics, figure out who you are, what your what your mission is, what your message is. Why Analytics Are Important for Making Decisions David 30:51 In reality, data is a really powerful tool. Let's say you've put tons of stuff on your pages and you're trying to figure out what to take off. Looking at your data analytics to see what people have been engaging with is a great guide. Jillian Leslie 31:06 Right. And one thing we talk about a lot is this idea of you put it out there. And then you're co-creating with your visitors, with your audience. Like, it's not just the Jill show. It's how does the combination of something I put out there mixed with people, and their questions, and their interactions with me, and me going further. It becomes this kind of beautiful soup. And then, using analytics to go what vegetables in the soup do people like and how do I make another soup that's similar to this soup? And so, there's a lot of… as I like to call it, like emergent building and that's really how we think about building businesses on the internet. It's fun because you get to touch people, don't you think? David 31:56 Absolutely. Jillian Leslie 31:57 That's what I think I liked the most about it. David 32:01 If anyone's new here and… Jillian Leslie 32:05 You mean to the podcast? David 32:06 New to blogging. And maybe they've been thinking about it. So, I would caution them against spending like a ton of time designing a custom theme. Jillian Leslie 32:16 Yes, hiring somebody and spending thousands of dollars. David 32:19 Designing your nav. It will get something up that's quick, easy, simple, that looks good, start putting content in. And then, as Jill says, things will become obvious as you go. Jillian Leslie 32:37 As you go, you learn. And by the way, remember, we can help set up your blog with our BlogStart Program and we're happy to do it for that very reason, which is we want to get you going. We want to get you started. David 32:50 You might think when you start that you're going to have a desert blog and the nav is going to be candy, chocolate, and cookies, and cake. And then, you're going to put up two or three posts. And you know, "Oh my God. I didn't know this but people just love my cupcakes." So throw out your nav. Jillian Leslie 33:17 Yeah, exactly. David 33:18 Now it's like chocolate cupcakes, vanilla cupcakes, whatever, a frosting. That's the nav that's going to work for you. We don't know until you try it. Jillian Leslie 33:28 Yes. You want to right. You want to be really nimble. And this is where B- work comes in. Why Being a Nimble Blogger Is So Important David 33:34 Be nimble and not therefore invested into kind of designing yourself into something that's hard to change or expensive to change. Jillian Leslie 33:44 Absolutely. David 33:45 Like spending $1,000 for a custom theme that you're going to have to or want to totally redo after two or three months. Jillian Leslie 33:52 Absolutely. Yes, nimble, nimble, nimble. Fast, meaning get it up. Be embarrassed, do B- work. And then, see, and then reach out, and then listen, and then make decisions for your visitors. David 34:07 Yes. Jillian Leslie 34:07 Based on what you know, based on you as an expert, based on what you want from them. David 34:14 Maybe people want your email list. Maybe people want to follow you on Instagram because they're more interested in your photos. Jillian Leslie 34:22 Absolutely. David 34:22 So, you're going to try focusing on different asks. Jillian Leslie 34:27 Absolutely. David 34:28 Like, follow me on Instagram or join my mailing list. Jillian Leslie 34:30 Yep. Yeah, you don't know. And a lot of times you get to be surprised. But it is how you set yourself up as an influencer, as an expert. Do you want people to feel comfortable with you and to feel like you can solve their problems? So, that's what I would say. Okay, what we are going to do is have a checklist for you, so that you can do this for yourself. Like how you walk into your house that one day after you've lived there for a couple years and you've kind of potentially see it in a new light go, "Oh my God, how did all this clutter show up?" We want to help you walk into your blog. Take a look. Notice. By the way, one thing we've just looked at, when we were just recently reviewing somebody's blog, are all these things jumping out at you and doing all of this animated stuff. Like simple, simple, simple. Take stuff off. Get rid of things. Think about how much you've added to your blog. What Can You Remove from Your Blog? David 35:33 Think about anything that moves is going draw the eye. Okay, so how many times do you want people's eyes drawn off your content? And are you one at most? Jillian Leslie 35:45 Right. So think about again, it's that trite saying that less is more. I think it is. I think intention, focus, and simplicity, and going. Got up. Like go write stuff. That's how you learn. That's how you start connecting. It's not about waiting too much your blog until your designer has done everything for you. Waiting until you've gotten that one perfect blog post written, and then launching the site. David 36:17 Right. Until your friend from college finishes your perfect logo. Jillian Leslie 36:19 Exactly. David 36:20 Go ahead and use a stock logo. Jillian Leslie 36:21 Yeah, go make your own. Yeah, go to Canva. Like, just go is really, I think our recommendation. David, I have loved having you on the show again. David 36:31 Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. Jillian Leslie 36:33 And we'll do it again. David 36:33 Of course. Jillian Leslie 36:34 I hope this episode gave you a new way of looking at your blog. And if you want our free PDF download, head to milotree.com/blogchecklist and you can look through all of these items that we have highlighted. If this sounds interesting to you and you want to work with us, reach out to me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. Our coaching group is starting on May 26th. We would love for you to join. And in fact, I was going to read what somebody else wrote. Jenny Deremer said, "David and Jillian immediately came in, took a huge piece of that stress off me, and followed up with weekly small site fixes and suggestions. I've never been so proud of my site. David and Jillian are Energizer. Plus, David is a tech genius who's help to me has been in valuable." So, please reach out. We're here and we're really excited to work with you. The other thing that I didn't mention is it becomes a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and bloggers especially during this time when we are isolated. It can feel like you're almost like yelling into the abyss. Is anybody out there really caring what I'm doing or listening? Well, the truth is people are and we are. We're there to help you, support you, hold you accountable, encourage you, and teach you, push you, get you over those humps and get you really growing your business. So, please head to MiloTree.com/group and we would love to have you. And I will see you here again next week. 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!

Want to know how to up your affiliate sales right now? This is the episode for you. But before I begin... Join Our MiloTree 6-Week Coaching Group Starting May 26th! Our new MiloTree Coaching Group is starting May 26th and I couldn't be more excited. If you're a new blogger or have been at it for a few years and you're feeling like you're ready to dig in and get serious about your business, this group is for you. It's a program taught by David and me. It is a workshop every week, a Q&A session every week, and a private Facebook group. But really, it's a community of entrepreneurs, just like you. Right now, when we're feeling a little isolated, it's so nice to connect with other people who are building online businesses. Topics that we teach include how to find your niche, what products to sell to your audience, how to build your audience, how to create content that gets noticed, and how to do keyword research. We're also going to talk about social media (Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook), and how those help you grow your business. We're going to be talking about email marketing, Google Analytics. All of the fundamental things that you need to know. And again, everything that's working. Now, if this sounds interesting to you, please reach out to me, email me at jillian@milotree.com. We could talk about it. We could get on the phone. Also, you can find out more at MiloTree.com/group. Again, it's six weeks and it's starting on May 26th. I couldn't be more excited. David and I teach it together. We roll up our sleeves. We get to know you, and we get to know your businesses. We're really there to support you and help you grow. (And we offer a no questions asked 100% money-back guarantee if you're not completely happy!) So please join now! Today, I'm interviewing Jeannine Crooks. Jeannine has been in the affiliate marketing world for over 20 years and she shares her expertise with us on how to be successful in this area of online business. Jeannine currently works for Awin, which is the sister company of ShareASale. If you've been in online business for any length of time, I'm sure you've heard of ShareASale. In my conversation with Jeannine, we talk about why affiliate marketing is so powerful right now, how to optimize your site for it, how to think about which products to sell, and how to plan content around affiliate sales. We also discuss what's going on with Amazon's affiliate program right now, and how that isn't great news for publishers. Jeannine shares some terrific info on how to pivot away from Amazon and what that looks like. I think this episode couldn't be more timely. Join me, as I chat with Jeannine on specific and creative ways to rethink your affiliate marketing strategy. The Two Ways to Do Affiliate Marketing One of the first things to note is that there are two ways to do affiliate marketing—go wide or go deep. As you all know, I always encourage bloggers to niche down. You've heard me say a thousand times, "The riches are in the niches." And Jeannine agrees. But when it comes to affiliate marketing, you may want to take your deeply niched blog and spread a little bit wider. For example, if you're a food blogger and you have niched down to being a pasta food blogger, there are ways to widen your particular niche in order to do affiliate marketing more effectively. Not only can you market the dozens of different types of pasta, but you can broaden your affiliates to include the best pasta sauce to go with the specific types of pasta. You can widen it even further to share the best pans to use to make lasagne. You're widening your offerings while remaining true to your niche and to true to your followers. How Do I Know What to See as an Affiliate Marketer? I know that many of you have been blogging for quite some time and you're ready to dive into affiliate marketing, but you aren't sure how to get started. Or perhaps your blog is pretty tightly niched and you've dipped your toe into affiliate marketing but you're ready to take it up a notch. What should you sell? How do you know what your audience wants? How do you broaden your scope from selling a few products to branching out to more? Jeannine says the answers are as easy as looking at your blog. Here's her basic piece of advice: Any noun, especially a proper noun, can be an affiliate link. Now obviously, you shouldn't turn every noun on your blog into a product for sale, but the point is, whatever you talk about has the opportunity to turn into something you can sell. The thing to remember about affiliates is that you have the chance to provide something to your audience that they need, and you earn income without it costing them a single penny. It's truly a win/win situation. How to Create Content for Affiliate Marketing When you begin to get deeper into affiliate marketing, you realize that you can actually create content specifically for the purpose of using affiliate links. One thing Jeannine recommends is going to Awin and looking through their advertiser directory to get a sense of the companies they work with. You can get an idea of the different categories of merchants that are available to partner with. It's quick and easy to become a partner with ShareASale so that you can see their directory of advertisers and their products. You don't need any certain number of visitors to your blog to become a partner with these companies. Jeannine recently helped a client search for products on ShareASale for her vegan blog. After combing through all the possibilities, the client was left with nearly 400 products she could sell as an affiliate on her blog. Once you have the products or merchants you want to partner with, you can then create content to go along with those products. Should You Be An Amazon Affiliate? For years now, I have recommended to all bloggers, both new and seasoned, that they become an Amazon Affiliate Partner. Amazon is well known in the industry for its partnerships with online publishers, who drive millions of sales for the platform. Amazon has always been a great way to earn your first few dollars from your blog, and then as you grow, to increase those earnings. But recently, Amazon changed its terms of service with its affiliates and cut the commissions by more than 50%. Bloggers who have hundreds of Amazon links in their content will now see their commissions drop dramatically. The beauty of partnering with companies such as Awin and ShareASale is that their merchants develop relationships with their affiliate partners and they take care of the affiliates as well as the customers those affiliates send to them. How to Start Putting Affiliate Links in Your Content If you've been blogging for a bit and you've used zero affiliate links, it's time to start inserting some into your posts. But where do you start? Let's say you have 200 blog posts on your site. You don't want to just stick some affiliate links in the last 5 posts you did and then work your way backward including affiliate links in each post you've written. Instead, go to your analytics and find your top-performing posts. Choose the top 10 that bring you the most traffic and begin to include affiliate links in those posts. Get your most popular posts fully optimized for affiliates and then move to the next 10 most popular. Once you have some affiliate links in your posts, continue to update the post and create fresh pins for it. Check periodically to make sure your affiliate links still work and that the post is updated to be current. The Best Way to Get Your Affiliate Links Seen Affiliate marketing is not an overnight sensation. It is going to take time to begin to see a return on these posts unless you are swapping Amazon links for another affiliate partner. Those may keep bringing in steady income for you if they were already doing great. So, the first way to get your affiliate links seen is by placing them in your blog posts. But are there other ways of getting your links in front of your audience? There certainly are! Jeannine suggests thinking of all the places your audience can consume your content and be exposed to links. The majority of merchants in Awin and ShareASale allow you to use their links on your social media accounts. *Remember to use #ad near the top of your social media posts as a disclosure. You can also use your affiliate links on Pinterest, but be sure not to shorten the link with a link shortner. Pinterest requires you to use the full link. And disclose through #ad. What is a Cookie in Affiliate Marketing? If you aren't familiar with cookies on websites, they are one of the ways that your activity online is tracked. So, for example, if you click through an Amazon link on someone's blog, and you end up spending several hundred dollars over the next 24 hours on various items, that blogger makes a commission on everything you purchased. All because of the power of the cookie. Cookies are awesome for affiliate marketers because if an affiliate partner uses cookies, you can make a percentage on whatever products your audience member buys once they click through a link on your site. Awin and ShareASale have 30-45 day cookies. Some have up to one year. This means that your blog visitor has time to think about their purchasing decisions before buying and you still have plenty of opportunities to earn a commission on that sale. Jeannine shared an amazing piece of information concerning something called "cross-device tracking." Simply put, if your blog reader clicks through a link on your blog from their phone but doesn't make the purchase, and then later that same reader goes back to the website on any other device and makes the purchase, you get the affiliate sale if you're partnering with Awin or ShareASale. Make It Easy for Your Blog Readers to Click and Buy As bloggers, you are there to serve an audience. You write to a specific person with every post you create and you have ideas to help that person. As you serve your audience, they begin to know, like, and trust you. And as a general rule, we take advice from people we know, like, and trust. If you share solutions to problems with your audience but you don't give them a chance to purchase the solution with a direct link, you are hurting that person and yourself. They want what you're telling them will work, so provide the affiliate link. When you tell your reader how great something is but you don't offer a link, you are literally leaving money on the table. You can have 3-5 links in a normal blog post without it seeming spammy or too full of links. We are all trained to click on links. Anybody who spends any time online clicks on links every single day. You do it. I do it. Do your research on Awin and ShareASale and give your audience the tools and products that will make their lives better. If you're interested in chatting with Jeannine, please email her at jeannine.crooks@awin.com. Transcript for "How to Increase Your Affiliate Sales Right Now" 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!

I've got Paula Rollo, good friend and MiloTree Community Manager, back on the show. We are talking about how we're doing during quarantine and how we're finding ways to work in the cracks. We talk about how things feel messy and complicated, but how we're taking stock of our businesses and pushing forward, even in not the most graceful ways. This is our honest conversation about our struggles and challenges during this trying time. But it's also about how to get real and get your work done. Show Notes MiloTree MiloTree Coaching Group Catch My Party Tailwind Marie Kondo Jessica Turner's Coronavirus Time Capsule Dom Monaghan's Instagram Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Is the MiloTree Entrepreneur Coaching Group Right for You? Hello, friends. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius. Before I get started with today's episode, I wanted to announce with a lot of excitement that our new MiloTree Coaching Group is starting May 26th. If you're a new blogger, this is perfect for you. If you are an existing blogger, business owner, and you're feeling like you're ready to take your business to the next level, this is also for you. It's a six-week program taught by David and me. It is a workshop every week, a Q&A session every week, a private Facebook group. It's a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. Right now, when we're feeling a little isolated, it's so nice to connect with other people who are building businesses just like you. Topics that we teach are things like how to really find your niche, how to figure out what products to sell to your audience, how to build your audience, how to create content that gets seen, use of keyword research, all the latest strategies. We're also going to talk about social media (Instagram, Pinterest), and how those will help you grow your business. We're going to be talking about email marketing. All of the fundamental things that you need to know. And again, everything that's working. Now, if this sounds interesting to you, please reach out to me, email me at jillian@milotree.com. We could talk about it. We could get on the phone. Also, you can find out more at MiloTree.com/group. Again, it's six weeks and it's starting on May 26th. I couldn't be more excited. David and I teach it together. We roll up our sleeves. We get to know you, and we get to know your businesses. We're really there to support you and help you grow. How to Get Real and Still Get Your Work Done Okay. For today's episode, I've got my friend and MiloTree community manager on the show, Paula Rollo. We're talking about this very unusual, uneasy time that we are living in, and how we're both dealing with it, especially with our businesses, with doing online work. We're talking about how to give ourselves a break, how hard it is, and messy it is right now, how overwhelming it is, and how to even get work done during this time, but really, how to think about your business in a new way. Maybe there's stuff that you're doing that you don't need to be doing anymore. Almost like how you go through your closet and clean out all the clothes that don't fit. It's like that. How do you do that in your business because there's never been a better time. In fact, there's never been a better time to take this time and focus on building something on your own, so that you can really chart your own future in the way that you want to provide for your family. So, without further delay, I'm excited to bring you Paula Rollo. Jillian Leslie 3:25 Paula, welcome back to the show. Paula Rollo 3:27 Thanks. I'm glad to be back. Jillian Leslie 3:29 I love that last week, we got to talk and catch up. We said let's definitely record what we were talking about as an episode. Paula Rollo 3:39 Yes, I think we accidentally had an episode on the phone that we didn't record. Jillian Leslie 3:43 I know. I know. So, let's hope we can repeat our magic. But really, what we were sharing was strategies for dealing with family, businesses, social distancing, and how it's all kind of weird right now. Dealing with Your Kids' Challenging Online Learning Paula Rollo 4:02 It's so hard. I think I keep seeing people saying like, this isn't homeschooling, this is something different because if we were homeschooling, I would have a plan. But I have to update someone else's plan in their apps and they're communicating when they want to communicate. Both of my kid's teachers, and it's just challenging. Jillian Leslie 4:22 It is. That, I think, is a terrific word for this time. It's challenging. It's challenging on the home front. It's challenging on the business front. It's challenging reading the news or not reading the news. I find for myself, I would say that I am a pretty even level, like even-keeled person. And yet, my ups and downs during this time are so pronounced that I can go through a whole host of emotions in 15 minutes. I'm here, thank goodness, with my husband and my daughter. Thank God she's 13 and can kind of manage her own life. But just dealing with people and managing their emotions and managing our household, it's a lot. And our businesses! Dealing with Dropping Website Traffic And by the way, Catch My Party, our sister site, has taken a huge traffic hit right now. Thank goodness people are signing up for our MiloTree pop-ups because they want to grow their businesses during this time. I get it. People aren't thinking about parties right now, although we're coming out with great content on how to throw virtual parties. So, if you are interested in that, head to Catch My Party. There's my plug. But it is hard to be finding that balance between showing off beautiful parties and recognizing that there's this pandemic going on at the same time. How do you balance that? How do you manage that? One way we are doing it is still sharing beautiful parties, but putting up hashtags like #StayHome, #StaySafe. That we are creating beautiful things to hopefully give people pleasure, make them happy, but trying to be sensitive to where people are today. Paula Rollo 6:13 Yeah. As you said, it's balance. It's everything. Everything is a balancing act even business-wise and emotional wise. I think I don't know anybody who's sleeping well right now. We're all lying awake thinking and there's a lot going on. Why I Recommend We Shoot for "B-" Work Jillian Leslie 6:28 There is a lot going on. All right. So, let's talk about my favorite concept, which is why this is a good time to be doing B- work. What I mean by that is one, I always say this. "B- work is above average work." It's not like you aren't putting out solid good content, but it is about recognizing that this is not the time to be striving for... Like holding yourself to the standard you might normally hold your yourself to. Personally, I think we can all give ourselves a break. Now, and to be honest with you, always. The thing that I want to say to bloggers is, the reason why you want to be putting out B- work is because you want to be co-creating with your visitors, with your readers, with your community. So, what you want to do is put out something and say, "What do you guys think about this?" And then, it will help you form those ideas, figure out what content to create. Don't put out something that you think is A+ work because to be honest with you, you don't know how your audience is going to respond to it. Therefore, it's this constant iterating and building together, understanding what your community wants and giving it to your community. That's always my argument for putting out stuff that might feel a little rough, that you might feel a little like, "Oh, that maybe this is an up to snuff." And I say, post it, because you want that feedback, and you want that engagement, and you want to seem authentic. Now Paula, you're in a unique situation in terms of B- work. So, can you share what you experience? Paula Rollo 8:20 Yeah. I think that there are certain aspects of our business that it's okay to release B- on. I think we all have those things, like this image is good enough, or this blog post is good enough. But in the type of client work I do, there's a lot of things that it can't be less than perfect. And I think that for all of us, even if you're not doing client work like I do, there are certain aspects of your business that have to be perfect. If you're selling a product that does need to go out, someone paid you for that, that needs to be 100% perfect, where a free blog post on the site could be a little less polished and that's fine. And so, I like thinking about the concept of knowing which corners to cut and strategically cutting corners when you need to so that you don't wear yourself out even before you're overly exhausted. Cutting the right corners so that you don't get to that point of exhaustion by Thursday night when you still have a whole Friday to get through. That might look like something like we were talking about before. You used to need to post, what was it, 24 times a day on Facebook for the algorithm. This was two years ago but that was something we were all doing. I know that there are a lot of people who are still consistently posting 8-10 times a day on Facebook. So, that might be a corner you can cut like let's drop our Facebook promotions by 50%. That's going to free up a couple hours a week. Jillian Leslie 9:50 And then, you can see what happens. How to Take Inventory of Our Businesses and Let Things Go Paula Rollo 9:52 See what happens. Experiment with it or look at how much traffic am I really getting from XYZ platform. Maybe you just don't post to Twitter for the next month because you don't get any traffic there anyway. Or you get one of those free plugins that automates some tweets. Is that the best way to put Twitter content out there? No, but if your business is not largely based on Twitter, it's an okay way to get by for the next month or two while you're still schooling your kids from home. Whereas, if you're a YouTuber, you can't stop putting out YouTube content because the YouTube algorithm will punish you for not consistently continuing to post. That's a corner that you can't cut. That's a way that you can't put out subpar work because you have to continue producing video content. Jillian Leslie 10:35 But you could lower the standards in terms of production quality. I like what you just said about Twitter, for example, which is this is a good time to step back and say, "Hmm. Is Twitter really important for my business? Am I putting effort there when I don't need to?" I'm going to say something that might sound controversial, but I feel like we all need to evaluate our Instagram strategies. What I mean by that is like people will go, "Oh, Pinterest is driving me traffic. Instagram is building my brand." And I say, "What do you mean by Instagram is building your brand?" Is it amorphous? Is it actually leading to sales or to eyeballs? Because if that's not happening, then I would recommend pulling back on Instagram. Still, of course, having a presence. I was talking to somebody recently who sells products. She was saying, "I get all my traffic from Pinterest." And I said, "What about Instagram?" And she said, "Not really." I said, "How much time are you spending on Pinterest and Instagram?" And she said, "About 50/50." I thought to myself, "Oh, no. I would not be spending 50/50. I'd be spending 75 to 80% of your time on Pinterest, and maybe 20 to 25% of your time on Instagram." So, this is a good time to take an inventory of your business, what really matters to it? What do you feel like you're doing because you're supposed to be doing it but you haven't yet really evaluated? What is the actual ROI, return on investment, that I'm getting from this? Can I automate it? And again, this is where Twitter is... you could do B- work, even C+ work with Twitter, because it's not doing anything for your business. This is a good time to kind of take like a red pen to all the tasks that you're doing. So that for you Paula, the stuff that really matters, you have enough bandwidth to do those. But then other stuff that you've been doing just because you've been doing it because somebody told you somewhere to do it or it worked two years ago, but you haven't really thought about, "Does this work today?" Why am I doing this? This is a time to be a little more ruthless in looking at your business with fresh eyes because otherwise there's too much. It's too much to deal with. If you're going to be in it for the long haul, this is how you stay in the game. Reevaluate One Thing Per Day in Your Online Business Paula Rollo 13:26 Yes. Yes. Maybe you're only reevaluating one thing a day. "I'm scheduling Facebook today so I'm going to evaluate Facebook today." It doesn't mean that you have to take six hours today and reevaluate your entire business because that's going to again, feel very overwhelming. But as you go through the tasks, think through. "I'm scheduling Tailwind for the next three hours. Is this worth it? Am I seeing a good return on this investment or am I not?" That's going to look different for each online entrepreneur depending on what you're doing, and how your readers are interacting with your content. I know a lot of people on Instagram, they don't get the click throughs but they get a lot of engagement and that's where their followers talk to them. That's very valuable, not in a way of page views but in a way of those are super, super fans. And so, you want to continue interacting with them. Jillian Leslie 14:17 Absolutely. And I would then say, if in fact, you're not necessarily getting the engagement on Instagram, and it's just this amorphous brand building, start working on getting engagement on Instagram, start being really intentional about what this platform is giving you as a business owner. It's a little bit like, I don't know, every so often... Oh, the perfect example is my daughter who's growing. Every so often, I have to go in her closet and go, "Oh, my God, all this stuff doesn't fit anymore. She doesn't wear any of it." But it's almost like it kind of goes by and I don't even think about it. And then one day, when nothing fits, I realize I got to go through her closet with her and start to get rid of stuff and get stuff ready for goodwill. And then you look and you go, "Oh my God, there's all this space." It's not like I'm doing... I'm not culling through her stuff, let's say every day, it's literally like twice a year. And this is a good time to think about that with your business of like, what doesn't fit anymore and what am I just keeping for some... Like, is this sparking joy, you know, in the Marie Kondo but is this something that is worth continuing? Am I really seeing a payoff for this? Or is this something that should go in the goodwill pile? Try the MiloTree Pop-Up App for 30-Days Free to Grow Followers and Email Subscribers Given this uncertain time as online entrepreneurs, what we all crave is certainty. What if I could promise you the growing your social media followers on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube, plus your email list could happen automatically. All you need is a blog or site you own and some visitors and I guarantee that the MiloTree pop-up app will automatically convert those visitors into followers and subscribers. You don't have to do a thing. We're no longer living in the world as it was. I think we're all realizing the importance of nurturing our online businesses so we have freedom to live the lives we want. Now, in order to get there, we have to manage our scarcest resource - time. So, let MiloTree do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to growing followers and email subscribers, and you spend your time creating content, solutions, products that serve your audience, and help you start seriously monetizing your blog. So, here's my advice, stay consistent, kill the perfectionist in you so you can get stuff out there quickly, touch yourself with kindness, embrace the mess and go make a couple of smart choices like using MiloTree on your blog to grow your followers and subscribers so you don't have to worry about that. Sign up now for MiloTree and get your first 30 days free. There's really no risk. Eight thousand other bloggers just like you are using MiloTree right now to grow their businesses. Please pause this episode, head to MiloTree.com to sign up for your free trial right this minute. With all the worry we're feeling, this will give you one less thing to worry about. So, what are you waiting for? Hit pause, head to MiloTree, and sign up today. Touch Yourself With Kindness This is my other big thing is touching yourself with kindness during this time. Recognizing we're all out of control. It's all messy, you know? It's like having your kids at home just adds this level of complexity. You know becoming the math tutor on top of all the other stuff. It's messy. So, it's embracing this mess. And it is like you just said, don't expect you're going to go through your business and just get rid of stuff. Every day tackle one small task and evaluate, "Is this worth it?" But again, touch yourself with kindness right now because this is not the time to be beating up on yourself and feeling like you're falling short. In fact, I've noticed because every day is kind of the same day for me. I'm living in Groundhog's Day, or as I like to call it, every day is blurs day. I need to take like half a Sunday and just step away from my computer, because otherwise it becomes a grind. I don't know if you're feeling that. Paula Rollo 18:51 A little bit. A little bit. I think that the most difficult thing for me is distance learning because I have so much client work. The things that I get to do for work are mostly things that I enjoy now versus when I was the solopreneur, I was having to do 40% what I love and 60% what I hate. Now, I get to do 90% what I love but mixing and having to be the teacher. It brings that feeling of blur, where I'm like, "I wish I could just work." And so, I think that might be a little bit different than maybe the average entrepreneur who has to work on a lot of things that they don't enjoy doing. You kind of want to get to the stuff that you enjoy and not have to focus so much on the things that you don't enjoy doing. But either way, pulling that balance of distance learning is just making... I think by the end of the day, I'm falling into bed more than ever before. Jillian Leslie 19:49 Exhausted? Burnt out? Paula Rollo 19:50 Yeah, absolutely. Mentally drained even though I'm still enjoying what I'm doing. Time Confetti vs. Time Chunks for Managing Time Jillian Leslie 19:55 Hmm. And there's this concept that I just heard on the podcast that I thought was really interesting. It's this idea of time confetti versus time chunks. I think I told you about this. Because news is happening so quickly and our kids are interrupting us, it's like we want a break. We're treating our time like time confetti, which means I'm going to scroll through Instagram for four minutes. And then, I'm going to switch to CNN. And then, my kid needs a snack. Weirdly, when you're living in time confetti, it feels like there's scarcity of time. It's difficult then to focus. Like I find just sitting down and going, "I've got 20 minutes to get this thing done." All of a sudden that 20 minutes is getting broken up because, "Well, I've got to figure out what's going on in the world." I've got to... Who knows? I'm being pulled in so many directions. We all are experiencing time confetti but if you can be mindful of it and go, "Oh, this is what this is. This is why I'm feeling so drained." Could I give myself 20 minutes to really dig in and do some deep work where I can feel like...? It's a little bit like eating food that's good for you and eating junk food. When you eat the junk food in the minute, in that moment it feels so delicious. But then afterwards, you feel a little sick, and you feel a little shamed, and you feel like it's not fueling you. So, recognizing time confetti is very much like junk food, and we need some junk food at this time. So again, give yourself that but also recognize what it's doing to you and that to nourish yourself, you need to set some time chunks together, which might just be 10 minutes. I mean, I'm not talking about you've got two hours, but recognize when you're scattered and you're going from thing to thing to thing. It's because of this kind of time confetti. And so, try to kind of pull it together a little bit to give yourself some more grounding when it comes to time. Paula Rollo 22:05 Yeah. And I think you can create... If you have older kids. Now, people with toddlers, God bless you right now. I don't even have any tips, I'm sorry. You're not going to sleep. I built my business when I had toddlers and I work until 3am most days. But, if you have older elementary kids, mine are seven and nine, some things that are working for us is we implemented right away snack times. Try to Add Structure to Your Life And so, we figured out what time they were eating at school. Those are the only times they get food during the day. It is rationed. If it's not 10 o'clock or three o'clock, they don't get to eat a snack. They wait for those times. They'll go look at the clock and be like, "10 minutes until snack time". I'm not being pulled away from work every 10 minutes to open a thing of fruit or to chop up a banana or whatever it is for snack. I know that at 10 I have to get snacks ready. I know that at three, I have to get snacks ready. We're doing only lunches that they can make themselves. They have a peanut butter and jelly every day because that's what they can make. They aren't suffering. They tell me that they're suffering. They really like me to make them, you know, a grilled cheese or something, but I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to chop up the cheese for cheese sandwiches today. They're going to make their own PB and J's and that buys me time. And then, we're doing liberal amounts of screen time. When I have a big project that requires a lot of brainpower, we literally pause school. I say, "Here's a documentary. Watch it. You're not allowed to stand up. You're not allowed to go to the bathroom. You're not allowed to do anything. Watch. Learn. Enjoy." And I'm going to go record a podcast. Jillian Leslie 23:48 In your car. Wait. Wait. You're in your car right now. Paula Rollo 23:52 I'm in my car recording a podcast but they're watching a documentary about dogs and they're interested in dogs. That's something that they enjoy. They know that I'm not available at this time. Where earlier in the day, I was scheduling Pinterest and they had questions about math and how to log on to certain things and whatever. That's time that they can interrupt and they know that. But I'm able to space out and buy myself more working time because they have a little bit more structure than I would normally create in their day. Our Kids Will Be Alright Jillian Leslie 24:24 I like that. And also, I think that as we all are, even if we don't want to admit it, we all are these kind of helicopter parents. We're so freaked out that somehow, we're going to ruin our kids. I want to say that our kids are so much more resilient than we give them credit for. To recognize that they're going to get through this even if they're watching crappy stuff on TV. It's great that you're making your kids watch documentaries but my daughter is obsessed with Tik Tok right now, and you know what? Godspeed. I am leaning into it and I'm recognizing that I'm not ruining her. Even TikTok is not ruining her. It's kind of like infants or little babies. They can kind of roll off the bed and be okay because they're malleable, and they're soft, and they're flexible. I know that's super weird, but they're just able to kind of roll with it. My kid, when she was little, rolled off the bed and she was okay. I believe that if we can internalize that message that our kids are fine and that a little more screen time is not going to kill them and that we don't need to be as worried. Because we all worry about that. It could help us sleep. Kind of like how I say, touch ourselves with kindness. Like, touch our kids with kindness and put a little more faith in the fact that they're kind of on the trajectory they're on. This time is not going to "ruin them". Paula Rollo 26:15 Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot with my youngest because both of my kids are really happy right now. They're doing really well except at bedtime. My daughter cannot fall asleep alone anymore. She's seven. The mom that I was a year and a half ago would have been like, "She needs to suck it up. She needs to learn." She's kind of milking it a little bit if we're honest. I know she doesn't need it every night but she's going to act like she needs it and then work yourself up to the point where she does need it. And it's a whole thing. So, I'm spoiling her in that way and that's okay because the poor child has been through trauma after trauma in the last seven months with our house splitting and now the virus. Jillian Leslie 26:55 Right. Yes! Paula Rollo 26:58 You know what, we're just going to do it. It's going to be okay because having that positive family environment and not fighting her every bedtime is more important to me right now than the bedtime structure that we had a year and a half ago that was awesome actually. Our bedtime was great. It was one of my parenting pride points and now it's gone. But that's okay because we're creating a positive environment at home still, and that's going to be much more important coming into fall and next year than what kind of bedtime routine we have. Jillian Leslie 27:31 Absolutely. I want to tell you that when she's 20, she's not going to want to sleep in your bed. These things seem so big. And yeah, they are in the grand scheme of things. It's funny because we do have stuff around sleep for my daughter, but now she's 13, and the thought of like coming into our bed is just kind of gross to her. Meaning, she will grow out of it eventually. Especially, I think of her at 13. You'll be wanting her to cuddle with you and she'll want nothing to do with you in that way. So, in a weird way, it's also "Take this in to suck it up." Meaning hold on to it. It's a little bit like I feel this way for parents with toddlers. When your kid doesn't want to leave you at preschool and it feels so awful, and all you want is for your kid to go off but your kid just wants to hold your legs so tight. Also know that that's going to change. You're going to think so fondly about those times when all your kid wanted was to hold on to you and never let go. I only think because I now have a 13-year-old, I can look back with wistfulness. Even though it was awful. I know that that was really challenging. Those were really hard times but it does change. You will look back on it with a little bit of longing as your kids learn to go to sleep on their own or don't want as much cuddle time. It feels a little like, "Oh, that time is over." So, this is a good time to kind of do what you're doing and saying, "Maybe I'm spoiling her, but it's okay." Paula Rollo 29:33 Yeah. A friend and I were talking about this week because she has very young children and I had two kids under the age of two for a while in my house. Everybody was like, "You're going to miss it." You know, all this stuff. Holding Two Conflicting Emotions at Once It frustrated me at the time but I was like, I don't really have any way to say no, I'm not going to miss this because I'm still in it. But now that I'm not in it, I think the important way to think about it, at least for me, is that we can hold two emotions at once. It's okay to say, "I'm frustrated that I can't just unwind after the kids go to bed because I have to wait for my daughter to fall asleep." And also, at the same time, I love watching her fall asleep each night. I love that she wants to put her little leg on me where I'm sitting, because it makes her feel safe and I love that. I'm also frustrated and it's okay that those two things are happening at once. I can, 10 years from now, both love that I can just unwind after work and also miss that I used to sit with my daughter and watch her fall asleep every night. And so, it doesn't have to be only one emotion. Jillian Leslie 30:39 I love that. Paula Rollo 30:40 Even with distance learning. It's like, "Am I frustrated that I have to teach my kids?" Absolutely. I never wanted to be a homeschool mom. Also, my kids have two-hour zoom calls in Spanish and I didn't know they were that fluent in Spanish already. That's amazing and I love watching that. Two emotions at the same time. I don't have to say the negative doesn't exist because there's a positive. I can say, there's a positive and there's a negative. That's life. It's a lot of messy emotions at once. Jillian Leslie 31:06 I think that is so insightful and so true. I think that becoming a parent was when I realized that that was possible. I don't think I knew it until I was a parent. And you do. There are those moments where you love your kids so much, and you want to throw them out the window at the exact same time. I wouldn't have understood that until I became a parent. I feel like when you try to explain that to people who don't have children, it makes no sense. I think that you're so right. I would not want to go back to having my daughter as a toddler because that was really hard but it doesn't mean that I can't still wistfully think about those times when I was the center of her universe. And so, you're so right. Embrace the Mess Right Now I think too with coronavirus, it is messy because there are moments where we are so happy. And I think to myself, "I'm so content in this moment." And then I think to myself, "Oh my God, we're in the midst of a pandemic." And then hold those two thoughts and like, "Oh my God, Catch My Party is going through this really difficult time." And to hold these things in the same space is difficult but it speaks to this idea that this is mess. The more comfortable we can be in this place of yin and yang, and up and down, and happy and sad, I think the more peace we will weirdly have. Paula Rollo 32:52 Yeah, because one emotion doesn't negate the other. They both exist. And that's okay. We can embrace both of them at the same time. Jillian Leslie 33:00 Yes. And again, this is why when you are feeling so frustrated to recognize that maybe in the next moment, you'll feel something completely different. Now, it might not be happiness and joy, it might be hunger. Or it might be that you have to go to the bathroom. Or it might be that you stubbed your toe and now you're in pain. Who knows? But I promise you that it will change, and it will change faster than you can think of. That is okay. How to Sell During a Pandemic So, let's talk about selling during this time because that's a big topic of conversation. Does it seem unseemly to be selling when people are suffering and we're all scared and we're all scared about money? How do you sell appropriately? Because also, you want to be selling. Paula Rollo 33:51 We have to. Some people have to be. There are so many situations where you can't not sell right now because that's how you're feeding your family tomorrow. Jillian Leslie 34:00 Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's funny. So, I guess if I think about it, for example, I feel like if selling something can make somebody's life better, I am all for it. For example, we have a service called MiloTree BlogStart where we will get your blog, your WordPress blog, up and running in days. We will optimize it and we will get you launched on the right foot. We'll be there in case you have any technical questions or problems. And so, we want to support entrepreneurs. We want to support budding entrepreneurs, people who go, "I really should start a blog but I don't even know how." I want to sell you the service to get your blog up because I believe so strongly in that service. Therefore, I don't feel at all guilty or bad or uncomfortable about charging money for it, because it is a win-win. And so, that is how I've been able to frame it for myself. Honestly, I have no thoughts about it. In fact, I feel like more people should do it. Take us up on this because I can make your life better. Paula Rollo 35:21 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 35:22 What are your thoughts about selling right now? Paula Rollo 35:25 I think that the key in what you said was the framing. I think that we have to be right now a lot more careful in our framing than ever before. Where before, you might use something like, "Be making $1,000 a month with your blog in 30 days." That's a lot harder to do now. I know you. You don't throw things out like that very often anyway, unless it's something that you can quantifiably back up. But that's sort of like a gray area that a lot of people operate in a lot of the time that I think it's going over into black right now. A lot of the gray areas are not gray anymore. Just don't do it because you're using a scare tactic. Right? Usually, it's just like, "Hey, you can get rich." Right now, people are terrified and you're scaring them more and you're playing into that fear. And maybe accidentally, because in your mind, you're like, "This is how I've always sold." Maybe rethink some of those framing. Reframe things into helping into practical versus promises of success and money. Make Sure What You're Selling is Solving People's Problems Jillian Leslie 36:37 Yeah. Fake dreams. Fake dreams. This is what I would say, "If you can walk your talk, go sell because you're helping." If you are promising stuff that you know isn't really true, but you hope it is and maybe one in 1000 they'll be able to capture lightning in a bottle, I would say to rethink it in that respect. I would say that most of the online entrepreneurs I know that we work with are really trying to be there for their audiences. If that's the case, lean into it because if you can make somebody's life better and you can make money at the same time, do that. Paula Rollo 37:33 One thing that I think is helpful right now and, in any time, where there's a weird positioning in the world, is to go on Facebook. Normally, Facebook's a time waster. We don't keep it open during work. But go on Facebook, find the local moms' groups that you're in and see what questions people are asking. A lot of the time, you already have a product. If you already have five or six products, which I know a lot of people do, even if it's simple eBooks or freebies, you may have a product that fits that needs to be repositioned. And so, go into those groups and see what are people asking for. Are they asking over and over again, what do I make for dinner? Are they asking over and over again, what the heck do I do with my kids? You can take that summer activity bundle and make it a quarantine activity bundle and just repurpose it, reframe it in such a way that it feels relevant and feels right now. I think that those groups on Facebook that are normally time wasters can be one of the best ways to kind of get a pulse of what do people really need right now? How can I serve those specific questions that they're asking and make money off of it because we need to make money right now? Jillian Leslie 38:44 Absolutely. I love that idea. One thing that I think people are definitely looking for is connection, comfort, reassurance. I mean not that you can say, "Oh, this is all going to be over and stuff." But just to say things like, "I hear you. I see you." And so again, like us with Catch My Party, we are putting out our content, which is beautiful. What we're just saying is, do you want a little eye candy? Do you want to look at a beautiful cake? Do you want to just kind of escape this moment from what you're facing? And you know, we get it. So, this is our intention. Again, I think you're so right. Recognizing where people are and serving them right there, right where they are. Offer Freebies Right Now to Grow Your List Paula Rollo 39:42 I think the other thing is, if you go in there and you're like, "Nothing that I sell is relevant right now." I think that a lot of bloggers are in that position where they have some great products, but it's like, "You know what, truly, nobody needs this right now." That's when you build your list. I saw this woman this week or maybe it was last week on Instagram, Jessica Turner, if you want to go follow her, she's brilliant. What she did was she spent an entire week and she made a printable Time Capsule for quarantine. It is the coolest thing. It's like 12 pages. She's giving it away for free. She could easily sell it, but she's giving it away for free to build her list. And is that making her money today? No. But she's probably gaining thousands of subscribers that she's going to be able to sell to this summer. And so, she has a larger scale business and she works outside the home so she doesn't have to sell today. And so, instead of focusing on selling today, for those who don't have to, focus on building a list or building something that will let you sell tomorrow. Whether that's your YouTube channel, that's your Instagram, whatever thing that is your long-term plan. Lean in there. Give away a lot of free value there so that this summer or next fall, it's there for you to sell to. Jillian Leslie 41:00 I think that is brilliant. I really do. I love the idea of if you can't figure it out, if you're not fully aligned today, find a way to align. And if you can give something away, and yes, get an email address or whatever, how great is that? So again, think in terms of service and think in terms of as you said, "What are people asking about? What are they struggling with? How can you as a content creator create content that can help them?" Paula Rollo 41:36 Yup, even if it's simple. There's also another person I'm following right now. If you watch Lord of the Rings, I'm a nerd. Merry from Lord of the Rings, the actor is doing a daily three-minute Instagram Live Show on positivity. It's the happiest part of my day. It's so entertaining. It's so funny. Super low production quality. But I started following him because of that. I know a lot of people did. And if you were an online entrepreneur, now he could sell us something in the fall. So, it could be literally any platform anywhere that you want to build, anywhere that you want to grow long term. Think about that, and what content you could produce or what thing you could give away. He's giving away three minutes a day. That's all he's giving away, his three minutes. He says to everyone, "Hello, special humans." It's just so adorable and nerdy. I love it. Any of us could do the same thing. Jillian Leslie 42:32 And by the way, that's where B- work comes in, which is as you said, low production quality, three minutes, put it out there. Don't be looking for it to be perfect and beautiful. Go be of service. Let the idea of being of service push you to post it, to get it out there to help people. Paula Rollo 42:56 He has a sign written in crayon. He sits on his floor and talks to you for three minutes. I love it. Jillian Leslie 43:04 Exactly. Exactly. So, I think that is where the power is. I really do. Get out of your own way. Be kind with what you create. Put it out there. Maybe nobody will like it. And then, you know what that means? Go create something else until people start to respond to what you're doing. Then, you could take your crayon sign, and maybe you do it in marker. You can just kind of work on the edges of stuff to figure out, then you create your eBook, and then you create your physical book or who knows what it's going to lead to, but see where people are and start serving them. Paula Rollo 43:46 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 43:47 I love that. Okay. So, Paula. I feel like we have really hit on some deep things right now. Paula Rollo 43:55 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 43:56 And to be honest with you, just being able to connect with you, my good friend, makes me so happy. In fact, I think this is where having a podcast helps me in my own life because you are so near and dear to my heart. And so therefore, just reaching out to you… One, I reached out to you just to say, how are you doing? But then, to be able to go, "Let's do a recording." It just makes me get to spend this time with you, and that you're sitting in your car right now recording this and you probably wouldn't if we weren't saying let's show up and do this. Paula Rollo 44:37 Yes. Jillian Leslie 44:37 So, I just want to thank you because you've warmed my heart for today. Paula Rollo 44:42 I'm glad. Jillian Leslie 44:43 I always appreciate you coming on the show. Paula Rollo 44:46 I appreciate you. I love this show. Jillian Leslie 44:50 If you're feeling lots of different feelings, if you're feeling uncertain or anxious during this time, please know that you're not alone. Hopefully, this episode shows you that and also gives you some ideas for thinking about your business as you move forward. If you are looking for community, as we are all kind of isolated, please join my Facebook group. It's the MiloTree Mastermind Group, it's on Facebook. I'm in there all the time. It is filled with so many wonderful entrepreneurs. I think you will really like it. I'd love to meet you. So, please come on over on Facebook, the MiloTree Mastermind group. And I will see again next week. 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! This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on a link, we might make a small commission at no cost to you.

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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? People Want to Be Lead Matt Molen 23:27 Absolutely. People want to be led. They want to be helped. 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." 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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… 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. 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." Matt Molen 25:48 Absolutely. Jillian Leslie 25:51 And I got the feedback of saying, "You know what? I needed this. Thank you." 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. 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." 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." 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. Jillian Leslie 26:40 Yes. It's Time to Server Your Audience During Coronavirus 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. 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. 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? Jillian Leslie 27:26 Right. Does it make sense? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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! 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." 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Matt Molen 30:52 Go fast. Break stuff. Jillian Leslie 30:54 There you go. There you go. Matt Molen 30:56 I like the perfect is the enemy of done. I like that. Jillian Leslie 30:59 Yes. 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. 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". 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. 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. Use the Swipe Up Feature on Instagram to Grow Followers 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. 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?" 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." 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? Do Small, Doable Tasks Now 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? 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, 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. 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. Unknown Speaker 36:57 Yes, that paralysis 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. Create a Challenge For Your Readers 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Jillian Leslie 39:53 RPM is revenue per page. Matt Molen 39:55 Exactly. So that's how people are calculating revenue per dollar. Jillian Leslie 40:00 In eyeballs. 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. Increase the Number of Emails You Send 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. 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. 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 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? 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. 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. 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 Jillian leslie 42:44 And again solving their problem 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. How to Work With Brands During the Coronavirus 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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, 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. Matt Molen 53:09 I'm so glad it was helpful. Join the MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Now! 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. 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.