The Blogger Genius Podcast

Welcome to episode 51 of The Blogger Genius Podcast. This week my guest is Gina Bianchini, founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, an online platform to help you build your brand in a variety of ways. Gina and I go into detail on how to build a vibrant online community, why Facebook groups are waning, and why there's real value in getting your fans to interact with each other. Resources: MiloTree Mighty Networks Teachable Kajabi Patreon CoCommercial The Happiness Project Zoom Crowdcast Catch My Party * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript: How To Build A Vibrant Online Community with Gina Bianchini Host 0:04 Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I'm really excited about my guest today. Today, I am interviewing Gina Bianchini. Gina is a legend in Silicon Valley. If there is a list of female founders, she is always on it. She is the CEO of Mighty Networks. Many of you have probably heard of Mighty Networks or are using Mighty Networks. It's a place where you can build your own community. So without further ado, I bring you Gina Bianchini. Gina, welcome to the show. Gina Bianchini 0:48 Thank you for having me. Meeting Gina Bianchini of Mighty Networks Jillian Leslie 0:50 I was thinking about it and I think we met about five years ago. So we both went to the Stanford Business School at different times and there was a conference. You remember this? An entrepreneurship conference, and you were leading a session on product-market fit. Gina Bianchini 1:10 Yes, I do. Jillian Leslie 1:12 And I reached out to you afterwards and said, "Hey, we should get together." And then we met in your offices in downtown Palo Alto. Gina Bianchini 1:19 Yes. Jillian Leslie 1:20 And we sat down and we were talking about our business models and things like that. You were so kind. I remember you being like, "I totally get what you're doing. And any way I can help, I'm in." Then recently, somebody I was talking to mentioned Mighty Networks -- at the time it was called MightyBell, right? Gina Bianchini 1:41 Yes. Jillian Leslie 1:42 And I was thinking about you and I thought, "Oh my God," I wanted to reach out to you, have you as a guest on the podcast. What my audience probably doesn't know is that I think of you as one of the original "girlboss" founders in Silicon Valley. Gina Bianchini 1:59 Which makes me feel so feel old. Jillian Leslie 2:01 I don't mean it to make you feel old. Gina Bianchini 2:04 Okay, okay. I'm just going to, like, embrace it. Jillian Leslie 2:06 Embrace it because you have seen a lot and you have built businesses. Gina Bianchini 2:13 Yes. Jillian Leslie 2:15 So let's start. So can you share then your story and how you became an entrepreneur, how you founded businesses, and where you are today with Mighty Networks. Gina Bianchini 2:25 Sure. And I almost want to start with where I'm at today because I always think that that's sort of the more fun, you know spot, to begin with. What is Mighty Networks and who is it for? So Mighty Networks is a software platform. We sell it as a service, so people pay us money although we do have a free version to build brands and businesses that bring people together. So our passion is how do we enable and unlock for... We think about it as niche entrepreneurs, but it can be anybody from a small business owner to a creator to a lifestyle influencer to... actually, big brands use us as well. The really special secret sauce of a mighty network is that because you have in one place what you're probably using today as a group on a big blue platform... Jillian Leslie 3:25 It shall remain nameless. Gina Bianchini 3:27 Right. An online course on a platform like Teachable or Kajabi, an email list over here, a website over there. All the time you're spending in social media. We actually let you bring those things together. And when you bring those things together, something magical happens, namely, the thing we learned about at Stanford Business School which is called the "network effect," meaning you can create a brand or business that brings people together such that it gets more valuable to everyone with every new member who joins. That is the reason Facebook is as powerful as it is today. That's the reason we're using Skype right now for this podcast. And it's the reason that each and every one of us has the power and potential to take a small business and make it a lot bigger. Because if we bring people together in one place such that your courses, your groups, your website, your content, your events, and your messaging are all in one place under your brand, you are able to create something that gets more valuable with every new member who joins. So I share that as kind of the the opening because everything in my life and career has brought me to this moment in this place where I am absolutely obsessed with the notion of how to enable niche entrepreneurs to bring people together and create something much more valuable as a result. So I grew up in Cupertino down the city, where Apple was founded and is headquartered today. I grew up amongst orchards. My grandparents owned a nursery and I watched how the orchards got taken over with office buildings. But what I learned which was just sort of a function of where I was. My dad was a history teacher. My family was obsessed with thinking about how does social change happen and how have cultures changed. I was always really fascinated by people systems and how we've gone from one culture to another culture. Then being in the heart of Silicon Valley, looking at technology through the impact it has on culture, I feel like everything in my life led me to the moment that social, you know, at the time was called web 2.0 really in the early aughts. But fundamentally, It was about "Oh, I get this." I have been surrounded by technology. I worked in the Goldman Sachs high technology group. I understand technology, I understand engineering, but my passion just happened to be how do you bring people together not as robots but as human beings. Jillian Leslie 6:40 And I remember the first time we talked and we sat down, and you said that to me, so your message is incredibly consistent. Like, this is what gets you going. It's not the things. It's funny because this is stereotypical but there is some truth here, which is women like people, men like things. And so you found a way to use technology for people. Gina Bianchini 7:03 Certainly, I hope so. There's certainly moments when I feel like, "Oh my gosh, am I I working on the right stuff? Is this going to be successful?" We all have those moments of fear, vulnerability, but what I know to be true is whenever I have followed my own curiosity and hit the send button on something that scared me just a little bit, the results have been profound. At times that's kind of all we've got in terms of what drives us and what motivates us. I feel very fortunate that I was born in the right place at the right time to be able to do what I really believe in, which is how do we push out to the edges of the network in a really dorky technical way of saying it. What it really means is how do we push out to beautiful individuals with the ability and curiosity and passion to bring people together and allow them to create network effects. You know, again, create a brand that brings people together without needing to be an engineer or commute from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Or whatever it is. You can be anywhere in the world and as long as you have a passion, a niche that you want to bring together, that the tools and technology exist for you to be able to do that and create something that gets more valuable with every new person that you bring into that tribe, you bring into that niche. Jillian Leslie 8:57 Okay, so let's break it down. My audience is somebody who might be listening to this probably started as, let's say, a food blogger and they loved food, so they started putting their recipes out there and then they started getting visitors. Then they started growing social media networks, social media accounts, and then they started to monetize. And this is very true, which is I think that a lot of online entrepreneurs especially female entrepreneurs kind of start with their passion. Then they figure out over time, "Okay, how do I monetize this? So usually, first, you put up some ads and then you say, "Oh, I can work with brands." Then you say, "I want to create my own products and I want to grow my social media accounts," and they start building that way. So could you talk about how you think about that and what happens? Gina Bianchini 10:00 Absolutely love this question. Jillian Leslie 10:02 Oh, wait, wait, but I just want to say because what happens is the people who you start to piece together these stacks of technology. "Oh, I need to make a course, I go over here." "Oh, I need a Pinterest Scheduler, I go over here." Whatever it is. So we end up with all of these different things that all you hope kind of talk to each other. Gina Bianchini 10:25 Yep. Jillian Leslie 10:26 So talk about then the organic growth of somebody's business and how you could help them. Gina Bianchini 10:32 Yeah. And you forgot the podcast. Jillian Leslie 10:34 Oh, and the podcast! Gina Bianchini 10:35 Yes, you forgot the podcast. You forgot like, "Hey, wait a second. Should I be doing a YouTube channel?" "Oh, gosh, there are no more ads. Should you know, should I launch a Patreon subscription?" So, I love this question so much because it's our world. Jillian Leslie 10:57 Oh wait, and one last thing. My audience, typically, is not super technical. They are much more creative. So I think I told you we created a little like a SaaS business called Milotree. And our intention -- our users are bloggers and people like that don't care about the technology, so we took on the technology. Because my husband's my partner, he's a technologist -- I am not -- but we made it really smart and really easy to use because we said, "Uh-oh, we're not going to give you a lot of options. If there's a good option, we're going to make this choice for you so all you have to do is just install it," and it works. And I feel like philosophically, we are speaking the same language. Gina Bianchini 11:44 Yes. Jillian Leslie 11:45 Okay, so go for it. Gina Bianchini 11:48 Okay. So the first thing is, let's just celebrate for a second that wherever you start, following your passion is awesome. It just is. The hardest step is... and I sort of think about it as the courage to focus. The hardest step is the first one, which is launching that first blog or launching that podcast or launching whatever it is the first thing that you decide to do that expresses your passion in a way that can bring people together. So, yay, like this is awesome. The interesting thing and the part for us that we passionately believe is that it's actually great for all of these different platforms and terrible for the entrepreneur, the business owner, the food blogger in this example, to be trying to use all of these different services at one time. And there's the obvious reason which is it's a heck of a lot of work. You're also paying SaaS fees for each and every one of these services. Or you're giving cuts of things. A cut over here, a cut over here, a cut over here, a cut over here. But the big problem with having 10 different services, you know, because we haven't even talked about like what if you want your people to start meeting up or you're going to go on a live event podcast tour? Jillian Leslie 13:35 You wrote a cookbook and now you're going to go around and talk about it. Gina Bianchini 13:39 So the problem -- and this is something that again, I think it's a really positive thing in terms of the opportunity for Mighty Networks, but it makes me mad as a technologist and as a Silicon Valley person, which is it's absolutely a missed opportunity for every entrepreneur, every food blogger who is not first and foremost thinking about "how am I bringing my people together in one place, so that when I want to launch events, it's one click to turn it on." Jillian Leslie 14:13 Right. Gina Bianchini 14:13 Or when I'm ready to launch my course, I don't have to go use a new service, it's right there. It's already in my mighty network, in this case. Again, I'm biased. But the reason why we've invested millions of dollars in building out this type of functionality is because when you bring together the option of turning on groups, for example, or the option of launching a course or deciding, "Hey, I launched a course, and instead of it didn't work as well as I wanted it to, I just turned it off." But I don't have to move my people anywhere, I don't have to, rebuild in each and every one of these different places, and the most important thing. We talk about Mighty Networks as like the simplest way to build a business online today because your subscriptions are in one place so you don't have to go use Patreon separately. Jillian Leslie 15:07 Will you just explain what Patreon is because I'm not sure my audience knows. What is Patreon? Gina Bianchini 15:11 Sure. Patreon is a service that is actually really, really good. It started because YouTube channels, the sponsorship money for YouTube channels kind of went away. So people who had a large following on YouTube would go to patrons on Patreon who they would essentially ask. Almost like a Kickstarter where it was like $5 to join my exclusive Facebook group, $10 to get exclusive access to this kind of content first if I have a new post coming out, for example. Or you get to hear my podcast before other people hear it in a week. So, it essentially shifted the business model for YouTube creators from sponsorship to subscriptions. Jillian Leslie 16:01 Right, right. And, in fact, there are certain podcasts that I give money to on Patreon because I love the content and they've decided not to do ads. So, I'm willing to pay $5 a month to get access. Gina Bianchini 16:17 So we built that into a Mighty Network alongside with online courses or groups or events or questions and polls. So the idea is you don't have to go to four more different services over time as you want to add various things to your business. It's all an on-off switch directly in your Mighty Network. So at whatever point you decide to use a Mighty Network, you might just use it upfront to replace your website or instead of a Facebook group. But what's awesome is that you never have to go somewhere else when you're ready to grow your business in another way. Jillian Leslie 17:04 Okay. So is like an email service provider? Gina Bianchini 17:08 That is the only thing we don't do, but we have notifications built in. So if you want to create, for example, an article and let everybody know that the article is up, that's all built in. If you want to run a separate weekly newsletter, that's something you go to MailChimp. But here's an awesome thing. Actually different from every other service out there, we give you access to all of your data. Jillian Leslie 17:39 What does that mean? Gina Bianchini 17:40 Meaning that when you create a group on Facebook or even, you know, even on Slack, you don't actually get anybody's email address, location, the topics they're following, anybody that they referred into that group. We give you all of that information. Plus a bunch of analytics that make it so you actually know what people are doing with your content or conversations or we think about it as engagement plans. So what that means in practice is that, one, you're not beholden to a Mighty Network. We want to lock you in because it's awesome, not because you have no alternative to leave. But more importantly, again, when everything's in one place and you can turn on different features when you're ready to expand, it means your people can actually meet each other. You do less work when your community can come together And if your people are actually meeting each other, your followers, your fans, your subscribers, when they're meeting each other, it means that you actually are going to do less work. Jillian Leslie 18:50 What do you mean by that? Gina Bianchini 18:52 They're not relying on you exclusively for all the posts. They're not relying on you to build all the content. They're not relying on you for any reason that they would pay attention to your comeback. So there's a woman. I'll give you a very specific example. There is a woman named Tara McMullin, formerly Tara Gentile. Tara has been a long-time creative, live small business guru. I learn from her every day. She woke up one day and was like, "I am exhausted. I don't want to actually be the person who is front and center and have it be all on my shoulders," which is the reality of life for whether it's us as bloggers, or, I mean, I feel that when I've run a blog or when I have been the face of a company or whatever. So she launched a Mighty Network called CoCommercial, and CoCommercial she describes as a virtual co-working space for online small business owners. She charges a subscription fee for basically it's a one-time annual price of 199 to be a member of CoCommercial. And she's posting in CoCommercial. It doesn't mean that she hasn't in any way, shape or form stopped posting on social media. But what it has meant is that she not only has another revenue stream (subscriptions) but she's freed up her time so that when people are sending her emails, and this happens a lot especially to podcasters... She's got a great podcast as well, where it's like, "Oh, my God, I don't have time to answer all of these fantastic emails coming in from my followers or my subscribers, I wish they could talk to each other." So that has a thriving Mighty Network in CoCommercial. And even the name is not about her, it's about what people are doing together. They are co-creating their businesses together in the context of this network. Jillian Leslie 21:10 So they can ask advice, that kind of thing, help each other, kind of raise each other up. Gina Bianchini 21:16 Exactly. As we all know, anybody who's listening to this podcast, is listening to this podcast, in part, because all of us have tough days. This is a tough path that we have chosen. There are moments of absolute and utter delight when we have that sense of accomplishment of having posted something, or added that video, or made that recipe -- and it's awesome. And then there's the next day where you're like, "Oh, my God, I have to do this all over again today and then I have to do it all over again tomorrow." Jillian Leslie 21:47 Yes, it is. It's like you're Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill and then it rolls back down. Absolutely. Gina Bianchini 21:54 Choose a model where you're consciously building a business that brings people together, that goes away, and you become much more closely aligned. You're a host of a party which is very different. It's like I always think about it as the difference between when you have to give a speech and dread it for two weeks and work really hard on the speech. Versus hosting a party is really, yeah, you have to set up the room. But for the most part, people are there to meet each other. And you get to engage as much as you want or as little as you want and it doesn't change the fact that people are there interacting and engaging with each other and creating something special that you've still brought together these people. But you've done it in a way that is not exhausting. Jillian Leslie 22:48 Okay, so let's go back to the food blogger who starts with a food blog. Then she says, "Hmm..." I or he, I want to build this into a business into a business with multiple income streams. So they sign up for Mighty Networks. Would they move their blog, first of all, to Mighty Networks because you're a blog platform? Gina Bianchini 23:10 It depends, Okay, so here's the beautiful thing. It's a free country and you get to do it in whatever way that you want. The beautiful thing is, you know, we have tens of thousands of active thriving Mighty Networks and they're all doing it a little bit differently. But here's what I would recommend. If you want to move your blog, great, move your blog. What I think is better is to replace your website. So if you have a website or something that's static, we have sort of a very simple landing page that you can fully customize. So the idea is, replace one of the things that you're doing. Bring together, replace your website. Definitely think about migrating a Facebook group, or if you're using a Slack team, that's really where where a Mighty Network shines. Why you might move your Facebook group to a Mighty Network We have some really specific kind of 123's for how to do it well because we've worked very closely with a number of very large Facebook groups who have moved over to a Mighty Network. Jillian Leslie 24:18 I would say a lot of my audience either has their own Facebook group or participates in Facebook groups daily. Gina Bianchini 24:25 Yeah, absolutely. Two years ago, I would say the kind of overall sentiment was, "Oh, my God, why would I ever leave Facebook? Everything is already on Facebook, I'll miss things like..." You basically would tell group admins they were idiots if they were moving. Fast forward to today... Jillian Leslie 24:49 Yes, how things have changed. Gina Bianchini 24:52 So now, actually, the crazy thing and I'm still sort of surprised by it is that now... I actually talked to a podcaster two weeks ago now -- time is flying -- two weeks ago who said he runs a retirement podcast, and he's like, "I was ready to start a Facebook group. My members, I sent a survey out of what would they want, and they were like, 'Do not do this on a Facebook group. We don't want the distractions. We want to actually be able to meet people in sort of its own space." So instead of feeling like you're in sort of a crowded bar, the idea that you're in sort of a room where people can talk to each other, it's like the back private room. And, then there were other concerns about Facebook that I don't, unfortunately, think are going away anytime soon. Jillian Leslie 25:54 What do you mean by that? You mean in terms of privacy and data and stuff like that? Gina Bianchini 25:59 Just the fact that you really have no predictability around what people are actually going to see. The outcomes are so challenging that where six or seven years ago, people would organically see all of your posts. Jillian Leslie 26:16 I know, yes. Gina Bianchini 26:17 Today, 1 to 3 percent. So the thing I can promise anyone who goes to a Mighty Network is, you know what, you have 100% guarantee people are going to see your stuff. And that's pretty powerful. So basically, we have some nice little tools that make the transition from a Facebook group to a Mighty Network just a little bit easier. Then there are some great best practices that are awesome, that have been done over and over and over again. The momentum in terms of the number of people who are moving their Facebook groups has really accelerated in the last 90 days. What's exciting from my perspective is that people are actually really excited about moving, and people love a Mighty Network. So what is happening is we're seeing larger and larger YouTube channels and bloggers. I mean, one of our earliest adopters of Mighty Networks, actually, is a woman named Gretchen Rubin who I'm sure your audience knows from The Happiness Project, or her latest book called The Four Tendencies. She has a podcast called Happier that's extremely popular. She chose two years ago, almost two and a half years ago now, to move her brand and build a new one on a Mighty Network called Better. The reason was that she wanted people who followed her, especially around The Four Tendencies, which is basically a way to think about how you react to expectations that are placed upon you. She actually launched it a year before she released the book and it went to the bestseller list in part because her most passionate fans were all at the same place. Because they had a deeper connection with the content and obviously with Gretchen but it was really about the content because of the relationships that they had with each other. The book went to number one, and she just successfully launched her second cohort of The Four Tendencies online course which has basically sold out in a week. Jillian Leslie 28:44 Wow. Gina Bianchini 28:44 This is all because she brought people together, she created a network effect. She focused not on "Oh, shoot, I'm going to stay in this sort of fragmented... I'm doing all these different things in all these different places." But rather, she knew that hub of her activity and her brand needed to be about bringing people together because it's highly scalable, meaning more and more people can use it without any more work from Gretchen. Everybody gets more value with every new person who joins. And she has full access to the data and the activities so she can see what people are doing, and get to know her followers and fans even better. So, as she's planning out her next course or her next book, or we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of The Happiness Project that she can really think about how does she get that to what does she do for her most passionate fans and followers, but then how she harnessed their energy to get it out to more people. Jillian Leslie 29:54 One thing I talk a lot about is that to build a business, you don't have have to have the scale of Amazon. Remember, like, you need 1000 true fans. Gina Bianchini 30:06 Yeah, that's a great piece. Jillian Leslie 30:07 Exactly. And I've talked about it a lot, which is those are the people you want to cultivate. You don't want that person who's saying "Yeah, whatever." You want those people who go "Wow, I am all in." That's how you want to build this sense of community and this interaction where one plus one is five, and also where you can then get them on your side and get them to buy from you. Gina Bianchini 30:39 Yeah, I could not agree with you more. The other thing is that even Amazon, even Facebook, they started narrowly. They started with a niche. And the reality is that while a niche sounds like it's small, it just means that it's narrow. And anyone who's driving in their car, listening to this podcast is capable of building a compelling niche that brings people together by just simply framing these techniques that the best and brightest in Silicon Valley, all these moguls who unfortunately control a lot of our time and inputs -- media and books. But fundamentally, any of us can do it as long as we're not just plugging along, trying to do a little bit over here and a little bit over here and a little bit over here. The reality is that Gretchen Rubin, Tara McMullin, these amazing entrepreneurs and creators know who their customers are, they know who their followers are. And if all you are doing is building followings or building groups on other people's platforms, you will never achieve the level of success that they have because you don't know what your people are doing. Jillian Leslie 32:12 It's a little bit like putting a spike in the ground and saying, "Here's where I live and you can find me here, and you can find my people here." This is like the hub. Gina Bianchini 32:26 Yes, exactly. Jillian Leslie 32:27 Versus, "I'm a little bit over here and a little bit over here and a little bit over here," and you have to reach out. You can reach me but, like, personally, I'm not as good at getting back to people who DM me on Instagram, but if you email me, I will definitely get it. But other people are like, "Oh no, I spent all my time DM-ing on Instagram," for example. Gina Bianchini 32:49 And also for every DM that you have on Instagram -- because here's the problem. Your fans can't really meet each other that well in the comments section of Instagram. Why you don't have to worry about algorithm changes So now imagine instead of you having to answer each and every one of those DMs, your emails, that you can jump into a community that people are answering each other's questions. They're DM-ing with each other. And you get to come in. First of all, your brain just has more time to be creative. Then when you jump in, you can do what make the conversation just take off and participate in as deep or as light of a way that you want. That is the magic and also the sustainability of our businesses. Jillian Leslie 33:38 Right. And we talk about this all the time. So a lot of us have been in this business for a long time and we have seen algorithm changes and just you are beholden, you're a sharecropper if you're building your business on Facebook or Instagram or wherever. My audience flips out when Pinterest changes stuff because Pinterest drives lots of traffic. And it's kind of the nature of it, and the nature is you have to be flexible. But what I like is you're coming and saying "No, no, no..." I mean, you do have to be flexible but you don't have to be at the whim of all of these services. Make your own -- make your own business. Okay, a couple things. One, let's say I want to join one of these communities. Can I go to Mighty Networks and search for Gretchen Rubin's community? Is there some sort of directory? Like with Facebook, I can search for groups. Gina Bianchini 34:34 Yes. So we have a "Find a Mighty Network" function. It is not something we invest heavily in at this point. So we're not going to be your best source of new traffic, but at the same point in time, neither is Squarespace or Shopify, Jillian Leslie 34:57 So you think of yourself as, say, a Shopify store or a Squarespace, meaning people are discovering your network on Mighty Networks. They are learning about it and then using the platform like you might with a Shopify. Gina Bianchini 35:11 Right. Jillian Leslie 35:11 Okay, that makes sense. Gina Bianchini 35:13 Yeah, and part of that is it is very consciously, because we want you to be able to create the Mighty network that you want. Jillian Leslie 35:21 Got it. Gina Bianchini 35:26 When you start to do a lot of discovery as a service that like what you get is some spam and potentially bad actors or other bad things that can necessarily happen. We'll get there as we find ways to do it in ways that are positive, optimistic and awesome. Jillian Leslie 35:45 I like that. Yes. Gina Bianchini 35:47 What we are focused on right now is how do we allow a creator, that food blogger in our example to have everything at their fingertips that they may want to experiment with next on that online course, on that podcast. Jillian Leslie 36:07 Is the backbone of a Mighty Network then like a feed? What does it look like? Gina Bianchini 36:14 Yeah. So we do have an activity feed that is personalized for every member, meaning that they can opt in or out of topics. If they're using a course, that course update will show up in their feed. People they follow will show up in their feed. But the difference is that the host, as we call the people who are it's the equivalent of our group admins, a host or a creator at any point in time can make sure that everyone sees something that they have added. So there are some override features and also some just really nice discovery features we've added as well that that allow for that feed to be augmented with topics, with groups, with events, with courses and other features. Why MiloTree will grow your social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube Jillian Leslie 37:06 I wanted to take a minute to talk about MiloTree which is the company that I have built with my husband, David. MiloTree is a group of pop-ups that you install on your site and they help grow your social media followers. So you can have an Instagram pop-up that will say "follow me on Instagram" or a Pinterest pop-up that will say "follow me on Pinterest," or Facebook, or a YouTube pop-up that says "subscribe to my channel," or even an email pop-up that says "join my list". You get all of these pop ups in one MiloTree account. If you head over to MiloTree.com and sign up right now, you'll get your first 30 days free, so you can try it out. And again, it takes your traffic and converts your traffic into followers. To be honest, what better followers could you get than people who've already been on your site who've already liked your content. In today's world, you want engaged followers, MiloTree grows engaged followers. These are people that will interact with your social media channels and will read your email list. So if you're trying to grow your business, it's worth checking it out. So head on over and I invite you to head over to MiloTree.com and sign up today. Now, back to the show. Why Might Networks is good for authors Lots of people write books. So I like that example that you used from Gretchen Rubin. I write a book and I'm going to maybe self-publish it because it's the internet today and I can do that. But I need to get people to discover my book. So instead of, again, creating a Facebook group and trying to be active on Instagram, or Pinterest, or Facebook or whatever, I would go to Mighty Networks and I would start a network. Gina Bianchini 38:59 Yes. Jillian Leslie 39:00 And then I would be directing people to my network. Gina Bianchini 39:04 Yeah. Think about it as a hub. So you're still going to have these folks on Instagram or on an email list or on Facebook or on Twitter or on Pinterest, but you're sending people to one place -- and that one place allows them to meet each other. It allows you to launch new things. So, take a book. If you have a book and it's a nonfiction instructional book... Jillian Leslie 39:37 Right, let's say it's a cookbook. Gina Bianchini 39:38 It's a cookbook. That is a perfect online course. That is a perfect series of events. That is a perfect way to do live Zoom or Crowdcast. The way to think about it is that you can sell more books by having this type of Mighty Network and you can extend the life of the book in all of these other ways. And Gretchen Rubin, if you go to Betterapp.us, it's fantastic. It's public, you can you can see everything kind of in one place. It is a wonderful example for those who have instructional books, or a cookbook or a finance book or anything in between. And you can find more ways to not just promote your book to your most passionate fans and followers but also extend the life of it in all of these other ways. Jillian Leslie 40:41 Got it. Wow. Again, I feel like it's funny because you're right, two years ago, it'd be like you're crazy not to have a Facebook group. And today, it's a little bit like that you want to kind of be able to step away from these large platforms and really build something. I think it's like the power of Shopify, for example, which is you might have started with an Etsy shop. But then you don't own your Etsy shop where all of a sudden with a Shopify store, I can own my e-commerce site and I can do all of this cool stuff, but it's mine. Gina Bianchini 41:22 Right. And by the way, we have a great, great way to integrate Shopify stuff. So, I just digress. Jillian Leslie 41:30 Oh, no, no, please because I want to know all the things that can integrate. So if, in fact, I have multiple cookbooks and I put them in my Shopify store with all of my cooking tools, I can then integrate that into Mighty Networks. Gina Bianchini 41:45 You can add a link in just the upfront navigation. There's a couple of different navigation spots where we let you put custom links. Then we also have this really cool feature which is we call it the "Welcome" and "Featured" sections, meaning that you can actually do like a full article promotion and then basically put it in a place where everybody sees it. It's like first when they come in and then when they come back. So you get to have those spots where you can promote additional products and services. Jillian Leslie 42:19 And if I post in my Mighty Network, can I make it so that everybody gets some sort of notification? Gina Bianchini 42:27 Yes. So we have something called "Notify All" that is only available to the host or creators of the Mighty Network and that then notifies everybody that you just posted something. And it's totally opt in. It doesn't happen automatically. But it's a really nice way of having 100% confidence that everybody is seeing something that you just posted. Jillian Leslie 42:57 Is it the groups that are the most active that you think are the most successful? How active then? Because if you are the host of your own party, you do need to be walking around and making sure everybody's happy and making sure everybody has a drink, let's say. What are some best practices for hosts? Gina Bianchini 43:19 So here's the good news. I was thinking about it this morning, actually, because I was writing something up. We run our own Mighty Networks. While it may just seem like it's good business to make it really easy to manage a Mighty Network and do quick things that actually pack a punch, we do it for very selfish reasons, namely, that we run our own Mighty Networks. We're sitting there and were like "ugh" and without doing this thing and it's a total pain. So some of the ways that we let you automate the drink, making sure everybody has a drink, obviously, we have the normal ways of moderators and other people that you can deputize to be making sure everybody's having a good time. Again, another basic thing is scheduled posts or scheduled features. So you can basically line up a bunch of stuff for the week and let it go and know that it's going to get out without you having to do anything. But there are some very specific features that we have put in place because of our own expertise and experiments that we run that are awesome for getting the conversation started in a very low effort way on the part of hosts. One, we, we have something called an icebreaker question. An icebreaker question basically drives up the number of people who start contributing in their first session. So they join and they're asked a very simple question that a host can set up. We love the question, what do you want to get from a community of peers? Or what do you want to get from people who love the food blogger? And the answers people will contribute in their first session are so rad. So right then and there, more and more of your members are already getting comfortable contributing. And for everybody who contributes, other people see it and can say "hey, welcome." The second feature that we have that makes it really easy to manage a Mighty network, which is we call it "Welcome All". So we were manually welcoming every single person that was coming into a Mighty network that we were running a few years ago. At the end of a Saturday where I had probably welcomed 300 people and I was like, "Oh my god, there's 1000 people that joined in the last 48 hours," we built a little feature that lets that process get automated, namely, I go in and for all the members who have joined since the last time I click this button, they get a welcome email from me. A personalized one from Gina saying, "Hey, welcome to this particular mighty network." And then there's a button that says, you know, say thanks or say hello, and then I can start conversations with people. But everybody gets that warm welcome from me and it's one click. Another feature that we put in place are polls. Polls are one of our favorite features because a quick hot cold poll which is basically a pole that says are you positive or negative on X, Y or Z, or for or against X, Y, or Z. We also have a poll that's what we we call a percentage poll, meaning what percentage of your time are you spending listening to this podcast, or what percentage of your time do you spend cooking each week. Then you can compare your time or resources or whatever to the rest of the membership. So there's just some really fun ways to use polls that for the host, it takes like five minutes to post the question and it takes on a life of its own. Jillian Leslie 47:18 Got it. Gina Bianchini 47:18 So those are just that. Another thing that our hosts do, you know, when they're... Tara McMullin, again, is deep in building a book and doing some amazing half marathons and things like that. So what she does is just sets up a weekly live Zoom call or Crowdcast chat -- I think she uses Crowdcast -- where she can just take questions and people can meet each other. It's once a week and it's live. So it feels like it's almost like just this coming together of everybody at the same time and then it reactivates and reengages people in CoCommercial, her Mighty Network. So what's fun about this is that there's all sorts of different ways to keep it interesting, to keep it fresh, and to really set it up so that it's no more than a few minutes every day or an hour to set up kind of the week ahead. Then when you have online courses, for example, that's certainly more of an investment that your listeners are probably already doing or thinking about doing because people will pay for courses today. But you set that up and people are meeting each other in the context of a course, and you don't have to do a lot. So we continually find ways to make Mighty Networks in the technical term 'self-organizing'. But what it really means is that you as a host get to set it up, you can decorate it. Why Mighty Networks is good at bringing people together Some of the best parties any of us have been to have had a big bag of Costco chips and some root beer. But it's fundamentally about the people that you bring together. And again, it doesn't mean that you can't decorate your Mighty Network to the nines and really make it your own, but it also means that if you bring people together and have some really compelling questions, that can make something wildly successful. Jillian Leslie 49:27 What's interesting, I'm just thinking about it for myself, which is, so I've talked about this on the podcast. I have very siloed businesses. So for example, when we first met, my husband and I started a company called Catch My Party. It still exists, it's still growing, and it's completely separate from MiloTree, which is our SaaS app (software as a service app). Then, out of that, I grew the Blogger Genius Podcast. And I had this SEO expert on and we were talking about this and this has come up a variety of times, which is that if we take Catch My Party out of the equation, the Blogger Genius and MiloTree, they're different but they're kind of related and I have a very difficult time integrating them in a more cohesive whole. And you're getting my, you know, like the wheels are spinning, and I have a Facebook group called the MiloTree Mastermind Group. And again, you and I have real business backgrounds and my goal with the Blogger Genius is to interview people like you, people who have been successful, people who have ideas to share, but also because I want to help and I want to share what I've learned being in the trenches. And I want to share that with my audience. I want to say exactly what you were saying which is some days, it's really hard. Some days, I don't want to get out of bed, and other days, I am so excited to get out of bed. Anyway, so for me in my businesses, I'm thinking "Wow, I am all over the place." I am on Facebook and I am on Pinterest and I am on Instagram -- and it makes my brain explode. Gina Bianchini 51:21 Yep. Jillian Leslie 51:22 So we're gonna have to have a conversation after this. Gina Bianchini 51:25 You know, I don't know that it's our tagline at Mighty Networks but there's probably something along the lines of Mighty Networks to help you make your brain not explode. Jillian Leslie 51:37 Yes, yes. I like that. I think you should should trademark that Gina Bianchini 51:43 I'm going to get on that. Jillian Leslie 51:44 Well, Gina, okay, so if as a female entrepreneur who has been at this and again, we have meant to but just there is something really special I think about having somebody like you on the show who has rolled up your sleeves and really just you've dived in there, dive, whatever it is really like talking the talk, what piece of advice would you have for other entrepreneurs? Gina Bianchini 52:15 It's interesting, I really try to stay away from advice because I think it shuts conversations down as opposed to stories and experiences and ideas that kind of continue the conversation. But here's what I would say. I would share that no one who it looks like they have it all together, that looks like they're wildly successful, that looks like that they're perfect, none of them are. Each and every one of us gets up every morning and has a little bit of terror, a little bit of fear of what if this doesn't work or what if this goes away, Or if I'm walking into some kind of bad news situation today. And what I've learned is, the more that I view what I do as a series of experiments and the opportunity to learn, the happier I am. Jillian Leslie 53:28 I like that. I like that. I really like that. Oh, well. Okay, Gina, how can people reach out to you? How can they learn more about Mighty Networks? Gina Bianchini 53:36 Yes. So first, my email address is what you think it would be. Just Gina@mightynetworks.com. Our website is Mightynetworks. com. It is free to create a Mighty Network. We have also tons of resources, and they're only going to get more and more, fun and deep in the new year related to not just how to get the most from a Mighty Network, but really like how to grow your brand and how to grow your business as you start to really take your niche, take that food blog, take that unique category that you are building and expand it into a podcast, into a series of events, into a VIP subscription, into an online course. You don't have to do any of these things all at one time or juggle things that are more than what you want to juggle. But there is something really powerful of just experimenting and just trying things. I tend to post on LinkedIn occasionally. It's probably where I do the most when I write something. One of my goals for 2019 is to get a little bit more comfortable with putting a video on my face and talking, I'm not there yet. Like, I look at myself and I'm like, "Oh, I should really, really start to actually want to wear makeup," which I don't. So hopefully, I will do more of that in the new year. But for the most part, you know, send me an email, join Mighty Networks. We're friendly, Jillian Leslie 55:25 Awesome, awesome. Well, Gina, thank you so much for being on the show. You have given me so much to think about, especially as I try to wrap my arms around my own business, and I'm sure for all of you. I like what you said, which is to experiment. You know, it's funny, we met at that session. You led on product market fit, and what I have learned over the years is you will never know if you have product market fit unless you are experimenting like crazy. That's the only way to find it. Gina Bianchini 56:00 And that is something I relearned every few years. Jillian Leslie 56:04 Me too, me to. Gina Bianchini 56:07 And so this notion that anybody knows... that anybody is doing it really well, it's just they're better at busting through the fear. Jillian Leslie 56:17 Yes, I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Gina Bianchini 56:21 It's my pleasure. Have a great rest of your day. Jillian Leslie 56:24 Oh, you too. I hope you liked my interview with Gina and I invite you to head to milotree.com and start growing your business faster. If you're trying to grow your social media followers and your email list, Milotree will do it on steroids. It will grow your followers 24/7 and your email list, and it does it while you sleep. Watch your followers on Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook or YouTube or your email list grow faster! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

The tables are turned in this episode. Paula Rollo, community manager of MiloTree and founder of Beauty Through Imperfection, is interviewing me! I this episode we talk about my background as a blogger and entrepreneur, how I stepped away from a career in Hollywood when my daughter was born, what it's like working with my husband, and why I try to embrace failure as much as possible! Please reach out and let me know what you think. I hope you like it! Resources: MiloTree Catch My Party Beauty Through Imperfection SiteGround UpWork Fiverr Host 0:03 Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I am approaching my one year anniversary of doing the podcast and so this week, what I decided to do was to have Paula Rollo (who is our community manager at MiloTree and my very good friend) interview me and ask me all the questions that she's been wanting to know, and maybe you guys have, too. So I think you'll like this. It was really fun to do. I love this podcast, I am super committed. And so here we go. Paula, welcome back to the show. This is really exciting for me because this is signaling the end of my first year as a podcaster. And all of a sudden now that the the seats are switched and you get to interview me and ask me anything that you want, so I don't know, I'm excited and nervous to get started. Paula Rollo 0:42 I'm excited too. It's like pulling back the curtain, you know? Jillian Leslie 1:06 Yes? Paula Rollo 1:06 You know? And seeing like all the magic that happens behind the scenes. And I'm excited for everybody listening, because I feel like I have this inside track to Jillian, that like we talk about things all the time and like I'm always talking to your brilliant mind. But on Blogger Genius, we only get you talking to other brilliant minds and little tiny glimpses of your genius shining through sometimes. But I think this is just going to be a treat for everybody to get to hear the real you and how brilliant you are at this. Jillian Leslie 1:37 Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Paula Rollo 1:43 So, are we ready? Jillian Leslie 1:44 I'm ready. Jillian Leslie's background as an entrepreneur and blogger Paula Rollo 1:45 Okay, so I want to start with your background and your entrepreneurial journey. I know in various podcasts we've heard that you have a business degree and you used to be a writer in Hollywood, which is so cool. But I want to know how you pictured your life as a kid or as a teen, whenever you started saying like, "This is what I want my life to be." And then you've changed careers, you've gone from working for someone else to owning your own business. So how did you go about building a life that you loved, and how did that morphing change as you have grown up? Jillian Leslie 2:22 Wow, okay. When I was younger, I always wanted to be creative and I always wanted to be entrepreneurial -- and I didn't know what that meant. But I had this feeling that I didn't want to work for other people. But again, like, you know, it was all just kind of mushy. And I would say that there are always these two parts of me and they're not in conflict as much as they kind of like, as you know me, you kind of know these two sides. One, I am incredibly analytical. I love numbers. You know, I love digging in. And I love research. I nerd out in so many ways in my own free time. And I am incredibly creative, and being creative really feeds my soul that if I weren't creating every day, in some capacity, a part of me would die inside. So I've gone back and forth in both of those areas like going deep in one and then deep in the other. So when I was younger, all I did was dance and draw and write and do things like that. And then as I got into high school, for example, I got really academic because it was what was demanded of me. And I went to college, I went to Stanford, and I was really academic. That's what I cared about. Because somehow I knew that my goal was I wanted to be financially independent. And again, I didn't know what any of this meant, but it was like that was the way to do it. So I did that, and I got out of college, and I got a business job at Disney working in their strategic planning department, which was this organization that was making all these big decisions for Disney. And it seemed cool, and I hated it. Working at Disney and hating it Paula Rollo 4:11 Oh, my gosh! How did you hate working for Disney? Jillian Leslie 4:14 Isn't that weird? It was so funny because I'd call people up from my job and I'd be like, "Hey, this is Jillian Tohber calling from The Walt Disney Company." And people would say to me, "Oh, my God, you work at Disney! You must be so happy, you must love it." And I'd go, "Oh, my God, I totally do." And I'd get off the phone with them and my day would be so crappy that I would just be crying at my desk. So it was this weird disconnect. And I thought to myself if this is what work life is like, I am really unhappy. And I felt like they rented my brain Monday through Friday, and anybody who was kind of smart could do this job, but it had nothing to do with me. It was so inauthentically Jill. So I said I need to find another job. And I ended up getting a job working for Bette Midler. She had a production company on the Disney lots. Because I thought to myself, "I need to be creative. This is the least creative job ever. I need to go that way." I started working for her and I kept always in life looking to people and going who has the better job and who has the more casual clothing. That was always the way that I thought about it. I'm working for Bette Midler and, by the way, I was like, a scrub, I was getting coffee, I was making copies. I was that person. But the writers would come in, they would be in jeans. And everybody would listen to the writer and I'd be like, "Ooh, that looks cool." Like, maybe I could do that. But kind of as an aside, I had gotten into business school during this time. I had applied and I had even deferred it for a year because I was like, "Hey, I'm working for Bette Midler. Sorry, guys." But ultimately, I decided, you know what -- because again, I have these two sides to myself that I would go to business school. I went back to Stanford and I got my MBA. And by the way, I loved it. Because I went back to Stanford and it was very different than the first time I was there because I just kind of thought, "I'm going to do something creative." So I don't really have to care that much about like my classes. I did things like I took directing and improv and acting and all these. Becoming a writer in Hollywood I was like the weird business school student. Yeah. When I got out, I was like, "Okay, I know you guys really like business but I'm going to go to Hollywood and become a writer." And I did. I went to Hollywood. By the way, I lived in my crappy apartment. All my friends were getting these really big jobs and I was really struggling and writing scripts. And yet then I ended up like getting back working at Disney as a writer and it was really cool. And as a writer, I was like my own little business person because it was like my own career and I was navigating my own career. And then as I shared previously, I had my daughter, and that changed everything for me. And all of a sudden, I said to my husband David, "I want to take my fate more into my own hands, into our own hands and let's start a company." My husband at the time was working at MySpace. He was like a senior person at MySpace. How we built Catch My Party And we started Catch My Party. And I think I've shared this previously. It was a sight for teen girls because that was how we conceived of it, because all my husband was doing was, you know, who was on MySpace. Teens, teen girls. Paula Rollo 7:38 Right. That's the audience you knew, yeah. Jillian Leslie 7:40 That was it. And I was writing teen comedies. So it was like, we own this space, this is it. We get our audience. And, lo and behold, teen girls did not care about Catch My Party. They didn't want to share their party photos. But moms did. Paula Rollo 7:57 Interesting. Jillian Leslie 7:58 That was like our first moment of saying, "Whoa! Wait a second. We had this all planned out and it didn't work." But we found another audience to serve. Paula Rollo 8:09 Right. Jillian Leslie 8:10 And that was how it evolved. So I'd love to say that this was all planned, and that it has this great linear path, but it doesn't. And then now we have MiloTree on top of this and the podcast. And what I would say is, they've all been what I like to call "emergent", meaning they are authentic to where I am in my life. And they don't necessarily make sense in terms of just like if I had a plan, "Oh, this would be the next piece." No, not at all. But they've all been organic and I always am listening to what I feel is the right next step, and what people are kind of informing me is the right next step. Paula Rollo 9:01 That's so interesting. I think you brought like a second piece to the average, normal advice that you hear because people always say I guess like when you when you're graduating high school, they're always like, "Go towards what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." And like "Follow your dreams, follow your heart, just do what you love." For entrepreneurs, that stream of advice doesn't stop, right? That's always what we're hearing and we're always trying to get to this special day where it doesn't feel like we're working. Jillian Leslie 9:33 Yes. Paula Rollo 9:33 Then those of us who are actually entrepreneurs are like, "No, that doesn't happen. I do stuff I don't like all the time." Jillian Leslie 9:40 All the time. Paula Rollo 9:41 Because your business is you and you have to do those things, and that has to happen. But I think that what I hear you saying is that you identify things that you love to do and that are life-giving, and those set your direction so you're always headed in a direction you love. Sometimes you have have to do things that you have to grit your teeth through. But because it's on the way to a direction that you adore, that's okay, and and you're willing to grit your teeth. And that doesn't make it fun to do the little jobs that are just menial and that are not fun you know your direction is you. Like starting MiloTree, starting a new business is not fun, but going towards something that's organic and that's creative and that has all of these strategic numbers, that makes sense for you. How being an entrepreneur challenges you Jillian Leslie 10:26 Absolutely. What I would say is being an entrepreneur looks so cool on the outside and it is so challenging on the inside. Paula Rollo 10:39 For sure. Jillian Leslie 10:40 It will challenge you though on a whole host of levels. It will challenge you in terms of one, that you have to work when you don't want to work, and you have to do crappy stuff. And you don't have a boss necessarily, so all of that motivation has to somehow be intrinsic. And that can be a struggle. It will challenge you in how you see yourself and it will question everything about you. But for me, it's also like the most satisfying path I could ever choose. And it's very humbling. Because we talk about this all the time. You can think you're really smart and you can think you have a brilliant idea. Then you start working on it, and you start hitting walls, and it can be so demoralizing. Entrepreneur depression, what is it? You know, there's something I read a lot about other entrepreneurs and I read about entrepreneurs at these huge companies raising all these rounds of money. And I don't know if people know about this, but there's something called like "entrepreneur depression." Paula Rollo 11:46 No, I don't know about it. Jillian Leslie 11:47 And I would have thought, "No, no, these people..." Like, "Oh, my God, I just raised $60 million," like, I should be on top of the world. And there's a real thing where entrepreneurs hit these walls and get really depressed. And, again, I thank God we have not raised $60 million but there are times where I'm like, "Oh, my God, why did we set out on this path?" I mean not every day is puppies and rainbows And in fact, there are times where it's really cool. Like, you get to speak at stuff or people come to you for advice or they email you how much they love what you're doing. But that's like such a small piece of it. It has to be some place inside that is feeling satisfied by what you're doing day in and day out. Paula Rollo 12:41 Yes. I think one of the things that like -- not to try to psychologize all entrepreneurs, but I think that, at least for you and I both, one of the things that has helped with the entrepreneurial depression, and maybe avoiding that a little bit is that we've never made our business define our life. How not to let your business define your life Jillian Leslie 13:02 Yes. Paula Rollo 13:04 We have our business, like we have this entrepreneurial thing that we're doing, and that's wonderful. And we love it most of the time. And then we also turn it off and we have our life over here. We have our kids, we have our family, and we have those two separate things. So thinking about that from that perspective, I would think kind of helps you prevent that depression and prevent that burnout. Because it's not my identity, it does not rise and fall on my business. My identity is over here with my family with things that I love to do outside of making money. And so there's less stress of like, "Well, I raised $60 million, but next year, I've got to raise$ 70 or I'm a failure." But that doesn't matter. My failure or success is not just my business. Jillian Leslie 13:47 I would totally agree. You know, it's funny, because so many people were like, "Wait, you were a writer in Hollywood?" and I go, "Yeah, I really was." And they go, "How could you have ever left it? It's so glamorous!" And I said because my whole worldview shifted and it was no longer as satisfying for me. I always have gone toward what feels right. I mean, I try to make very informed decisions, but I'm willing to jump. It's funny because David, my husband, who's also my partner, is much more grounded than I am, which is great because he kind of holds us down on the earth. But I'm the one who says, "Let's do it. Let's go. Let's do it." I would say that that's probably one of my best skills, is I'm willing to jump into the unknown with, again, with preparation, but you can't ever fully prepare. Paula Rollo 14:45 Right. You can't know for sure what's going to catch you because things change so quickly. Especially in our industry, things change so quickly. Making micro adjustments in your career Jillian Leslie 14:52 Oh, my God, all the time. And I believe this. Somebody said this to me when I was in my 20s, and they said life should be about micro adjustments because that way, you don't end up with a midlife crisis. Paula Rollo 15:04 Oh, interesting. Jillian Leslie 15:05 And I have lived by that, which is, "You know what? This isn't fitting me anymore, so I'm going to go this way." Then I'll see how that feels and if it doesn't work out, guess what, I can always course correct. So I'm a big believer in course correcting. Paula Rollo 15:19 Right. Just don't do something that can't be changed later and then you can go forward a lot easier. Jillian Leslie 15:25 Exactly, exactly. Like don't get yourself into a lot of debt or... I don't know. But just kind of making those smart choices but then be willing to say, "I'll try it. And if it sucks, I can change." So we just recently, as you know, moved to Austin and the way that I could do -- and by the way, we have no family in Austin. We barely knew anybody in Austin but we liked it, and we're like, "Let's do it!" And my daughter was like, "What are we doing?" And I said if we hate it, we can always move back. And again, that would have been a big deal, you know, but something about it made us braver and that we can do it. And guess what? We're loving it. I'm so happy we did this. Paula Rollo 16:10 I love that. I love that. Welcome to Texas. Jillian Leslie 16:13 I like Texas, Y'all. Paula Rollo 16:17 Yes, y'all. I end up saying 'y'all' on so many interviews and in professional settings because it's just the word I've grown up with and I get laughed out a lot for that. Jillian Leslie 16:28 I think it's like the cutest, sweetest word ever. Paula Rollo 16:32 It's just our word. I don't even have a Texas accent but I do say y'all." Jillian Leslie 16:37 I love it. I love it. Paula Rollo 16:38 But in light of these shifts and these leaps, I want to ask kind of two questions at one time -- and that is, what has been your biggest business success and then what has been your biggest life success? And I'm asking them that way because like we just talked about, it's not the same. You have these two sides to yourself and keeping those things in view I think is really important, and really encouraging to those entrepreneurs listening that if you haven't reached your business success yet, remember all of your life successes like "this baby I have" or "this house I bought" or those things because it's not just your business. And that's life. My biggest life success Jillian Leslie 17:21 My biggest life success is my little family. It is my husband and my daughter and our extended family as well. But we are this really fun threesome and there is nothing I like better than spending time with them. And it is weird because again, I work with David, so we're together all the time. But there's nobody that makes me laugh more than he does. Paula Rollo 17:49 Aww. Love it. Jillian Leslie 17:52 So, by far, what has given me purpose is definitely having my daughter, and I would say my husband feels the exact same way. Again, people can't believe that we work together. Because they're like, "I would die if I had to work with my husband." But we met working together during the dot com bubble. And so we bonded over work and so I knew exactly what he was like to work with. And there's nobody I think that's smarter or more committed or engaged than he is. So that made perfect sense for us. But I feel like our biggest creation, our best creation is our daughter who's just so fun and awesome. Which by the way, does not mean that she can't be a huge pain in the butt, and that it hasn't been difficult at times. It is. Parenting is one of those things where I always say this, like the least sexy thing you could ever do is have a child. Paula Rollo 18:52 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 18:53 But I think it is one of the most meaningful things you could ever do. Paula Rollo 18:59 Absolutely. Jillian Leslie 19:03 It brings natural happiness to your life -- it can. But it also can bring a lot of pain, but I think it does bring meaning. Paula Rollo 19:14 Yeah, yeah. It doesn't magically fix things, the problems that are there. Jillian Leslie 19:20 No. And it can make a lot of things worse. Paula Rollo 19:22 Right. It makes everything deeper. Jillian Leslie 19:26 That's a great word. Paula Rollo 19:26 Pain is deeper, love is deeper, happiness is deeper... all of it. Jillian Leslie 19:30 Exactly. When I compare that to, say, my businesses which are like babies, we talk about this, I am so happy to have them because they are outside of... I mean, they are kind of part of my family because I work with David but they are also separate. There's something that I'm building, they're very personal to me. I would say that those are also a big success and are like a big satisfying piece of my life. But having both does balance me. And that I am not one who just wants to be a bazillionaire and who doesn't care about my family. I care about them all so deeply, you know. So I don't know if that answers the question. Paula Rollo 20:22 It does. So what was your biggest business success? Jillian Leslie 20:26 I would say that my biggest business success was really making it happen, that we've we've done this and we built now two businesses. I look back and I go, "Oh, my God," you know, we didn't know when we started Catch My Party whether anybody would ever add a party to our site. And we now have tens of thousands of parties that people add and tons and tons of content and millions of people who come to our site. So I think that when I think back -- Paula Rollo 20:59 Which is crazy. Jillian Leslie 21:01 What did you say? Paula Rollo 21:02 That's crazy that that happens, you know. Jillian Leslie 21:04 Yeah! Like when I think back when we were like... I remember my mom going like, "How do you think you're going to do this? And I was like, "I don't know. The teen girls are going to show up." Paula Rollo 21:15 They're going to come in droves. Jillian Leslie 21:17 Exactly. Paula Rollo 21:18 And then they didn't. Jillian Leslie 21:19 And then they didn't! Paula Rollo 21:19 Yeah, it's just incredible. Jillian Leslie 21:22 So that's what I would say is, when you're in it, it's very difficult to see your successes because you only see what's in front of you and what needs to be done. You think, "Oh, if I only get to this point, then I'll be happy." I fall into that trap as well. So I do do those things that seem kind of cloying where I do force myself to come up with what I'm grateful for and to continually use that as my narrative. Even if I'm saying "Well, I'm super grateful for X," but in my heart, I'm going "Yeah, but if only I had Y." Because I do feel like just even putting it out there and making myself go through that exercise is really helpful and loosening the grip of the grasping, of the wanting, of the longing, of the thinking I'm not full or complete. Paula Rollo 22:16 Yes. I think because entrepreneurs are such dreamers and visionaries, we do get stuck on what could be. And we miss like "I created something out of nothing." And that's amazing. Jillian Leslie 22:30 I totally agree. Paula Rollo 22:31 Even if you haven't taken off yet, even if your business is still strong, like there was a website that didn't exist and now it does because of you. There are people that you're speaking to that weren't being talked to now before and now they are because of you. And that's amazing. it's incredible. I remember one day, like the numbers we throw around, you're like, "Oh, yeah, millions of people come," like it's no big deal. But if you try to picture millions of people in your head, that's insane. Jillian Leslie 22:57 I know. When you know you've arrived as a blogger Paula Rollo 22:58 And if you try to talk to all of those millions of people that you literally talk to every day, you couldn't. Jillian Leslie 23:03 I know. We were living in LA when we started Catch My Party. And my husband is the biggest realist in the world. I think that our page views hit something like 30,000... our unique visitors, 30,000 unique visitors a month. And David goes, he goes, "You know, that's the size of, I don't know, some place in LA like Santa Monica or something." And I go, "Oh, my God, that would mean like every single person at Santa Monica has come to our site? And he goes, "Yeah," and I go kind of like, "We've arrived!" And I remember him go, "No, no. That number, in order to make any money has to get However, many times bigger." I remember being like, "Oh." But I did have that moment of like, "Oh, my God! Everybody in Santa Monica has come to my site?" Paula Rollo 23:48 Yes. And I think it's important to have those, like we need to have those goals we're ruling but also be like, 30,000 people, like that's such a small number in our industry, right? We're like, 30,000? You can barely get into MediaVine with that. Jillian Leslie 23:59 Exactly. Paula Rollo 24:00 But like, 30,000 is crazy. Jillian Leslie 24:02 Crazy. Pretty crazy. And so I think you're right, which is, you know, we all sit at our computers in our own little worlds and we don't really understand the impact that we have. Because there are all these people who are coming to our sites who are learning or getting entertained, or whatever it is. And you're right there is that... So I do recommend everybody out there to take those moments and force yourself to be in gratitude, to force yourself even if it feels really icky and uncomfortable. Paula Rollo 24:32 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 24:34 To make that a habit. Paula Rollo 24:37 It's so encouraging. It's so encouraging to do. Even I remember one time I was really down on myself I think it was after a algorithm switch, so my page views went like cut in half. They probably went from like 300,000 a month to 150 or something like that. And I was like, really kicking myself about it. I felt horrible. And my husband was like, "Wait, you're at 150,000 people a month? Do you know how many people that is? I talked to like 10 people this month. You talked to 150,000 people this month about something that you care about? That's a pretty big deal." And I was like, "Oh, right." I'm just thinking of it in terms of like, "Well, Jillian talked to a million and I only got 150,000." And they're not people in my head. They're just a number because I have my avatar in my head and that's it. I'm not thinking about there's 150,000 of my avatar that I get to talk to and that's amazing. Jillian Leslie 25:30 And touch. Paula Rollo 25:31 Yes. And change for the better whether it's with a recipe or a craft or whatever it is that you're doing, you're impacting these people or they wouldn't be on your site. Jillian Leslie 25:40 Exactly, exactly. Paula Rollo 25:42 So, I love it. I love it. I love our job. Jillian Leslie 25:45 I do, too. I really do. And by the way, remember I'm always looking for the people in the most casual clothes. I am sitting here in my sweatpants and my sweatshirt. I have not showered and I couldn't be happier. Paula Rollo 25:59 Same situation. It's like the entrepreneur dress code. Jillian Leslie 26:05 Totally. Paula Rollo 26:06 Lack of shower -- that's how we roll. Jillian Leslie 26:08 Yes. And I do that thing, which is really funny, like I compare myself to Steve Jobs, which is I buy the same sweat pants in every color, even the same color, just so I have a uniform. Paula Rollo 26:21 Yes, I love it. That's hilarious. Okay, so pivoting a little bit from successes, the other thing that you and I I feel like talk about a lot is how our failures are not just necessary or a necessary evil but they're actually a vital part of our business. Talk about a little bit how specific failures have shaped the way your business looks today and what failures have propelled you into something great. The need for more "at bats" in your business Jillian Leslie 26:53 Ooh, okay. The one thing that I would say -- David and I talk about this a lot and we call them "at bats," like you're at bat as a baseball player. That instead of thinking about something as a success or a failure, we think of it as an "at bat" and the goal is to have as many as you possibly can, realistically speaking. I was reading this article about Nestle. I think this is right but it could be no. But Nestle hit it out of the park, with Nespresso and it grew their business incredibly and they have not had many successes since then. The reason is because they captured lightning in a bottle, it was like the right idea at the right time and it, boom, exploded their business. But catching lightning in a bottle and betting your whole business so you're going to find another one of those is not a good business strategy. Paula Rollo 28:01 Oh, that's good. Jillian Leslie 28:02 So not many things you try are going to work, and somehow recognizing that makes it feel less personal. And I've started to really think that. So we had this idea recently where with MiloTree, we're way into this, you know, remember we're geeks, so we're into the technology. And what we realized is lots of people were using sites that were not secure, right? We know about HTTPS versus HTTP. We noticed a lot of our users were not using secured sites. So we decided, "Hey, here's an idea." What we could do is we could help these people get on to I think, we were looking at SiteGround because we really like SiteGround. That we would help them move their blogs to SiteGround off of, say, Bluehost or something, a site that wasn't secure at the time. And we're like, "Hey," and that could be good for us because we could make affiliate money by doing this and what we would offer is we move your site for you. So we looked through our data and we found all these people who did not have secured sites and we reached out to. I reached out to maybe 100 of them. And I said, "Hey, here's the deal. Just, you know, your site's not secure. This is not a good thing." I explained why. "And what we'll do, we believe in this host called SiteGround and will help you do this." And we thought, "Wow, this could be a great income stream for us" and we'd be providing our users a service and, you know, it would be a win-win. Nobody wanted to do it. Paula Rollo 29:48 Wow. Jillian Leslie 29:49 Nobody. In fact, people were a little, I want to say, kind of almost offended. What we realized is that it's kind of risky for somebody to move their site. Most of us, except for David, are not super technical. And that's like, "What? who are these MiloTree people coming in and saying, "Hey, well, you know, you got this problem and will help you, but why would I trust you?" Even though, again, they might be using MiloTree. They might know me still. And I noticed, I started to feel bad like, "Oh, wow, that didn't work." And then I thought like what a dumb idea. I started to personalize it. Then what I realized was, "No, no, that was just one at bat." And by framing it that way, I thought, "Oh, okay. We need to come up with more ideas." So this one didn't work, well, okay, but we're looking. And then what you do is, ultimately, you do find stuff. It's like, you know, dating. You kind of have to date a bunch of people until you find that right one. And so that's really the frame through which I think David and I have pivoted our thinking about failure. The more failures I have, the better, because that means I'm on my way to finding that thing that will work. Paula Rollo 31:12 What did you get from that specific example? Were there things that you learned from it that helped you with your next at bat that you framed the next one differently or something from it? Jillian Leslie 31:25 What I would say is it taught me that that it showed me again, that our customers, they're much more creators than they are interested in the technology. So again, that's something that we're always thinking about. And so when we build MiloTree, we're always trying to take the technology piece out as much as we possibly can and not focus on our features and all this cool stuff we do. We want to do that in the background so that the creators could go create. Paula Rollo 32:04 Yes. And in framing it that way means more responses, more purchases. Jillian Leslie 32:11 Exactly. Like we've got your back. So what we're trying to say in these emails was, "We've got your back." But, ultimately, it was too big of an ask. Paula Rollo 32:18 Right. You just overwhelmed me with technical jargon. I have no way to check if you're lying to me. I have no way of understanding. And that's ultimately not what I come to MiloTree for either, right? It's shifting in this direction that you're thinking, "Oh, I can help all these people," and these people are thinking like, "I just want you to get me Instagram followers." Jillian Leslie 32:40 Exactly, exactly. So that's what I would sa,y like how we learned about it and how it has helped inform us. So my husband is a typical guy. He loves the data and he's like, "Maybe we could create a dashboard for people's Google Analytics." And I'm like, "No, I don't think that our users would have any interest in that." Paula Rollo 33:03 Right. I'm sure some people would but it's not like the next step you need to take because the percentage isn't there. Jillian Leslie 33:09 Exactly. So it helps us, again, further define who our customer is and that even though we identified the pain point, they didn't perceive it as such. Don't solve a problem people don't think they have Paula Rollo 33:21 Yes. That's so important to like, if you solve a problem people don't acknowledge, it doesn't matter that you've solved that problem. Jillian Leslie 33:29 Exactly. It's like creating, you know, like think about in your own life, I don't know, like do you need a better way to sit down than a chair? You know, a chair is pretty good. So it's like that. Paula Rollo 33:44 It's like the people who invented the banana slicer? It's like, yes, your product is more efficient. But did I need it? Jillian Leslie 33:52 Exactly. Paula Rollo 33:53 And you created something that did work better than a banana slicer and it would have helped, but the way people are looking at it is just like, "No, this could cause me just as many problems as it solves because now I have to wash it, then I have to store it somewhere. They don't understand enough to know that this is actually going to help. Jillian Leslie 34:12 And typically what I have read is that if you have a new solution to a problem that already has a solution, it has to be 10 times as good for somebody to switch. Paula Rollo 34:22 So true. We've seen that with every new social media platform that has tried to launch like Ello tried to be a thing and all these other places. And because they're just Facebook but Ello. Jillian Leslie 34:35 Right, right. Paula Rollo 34:37 I'm not going to go over there because you only have one new for each feature, two new features, and all my friends aren't there yet. And there's nothing to get me there. But with Instagram, when Instagram came out, it was new, it was shiny, it was completely different. When Pinterest came out, same thing. It was new, it was shiny, it was completely different. And so people came over because it was 10 times better or different even though at the end of the day it's just social media. And my same friends who are on Instagram are also on Facebook. And my same friends are on Snapchat and all the other ones. But it's different enough that I'll do it. Entrepreneur advice: Make sure you're solution is 10x better than the next option Jillian Leslie 35:08 Absolutely. So think about that. Just if there's a problem that you're trying to solve, how much better is your solution than what's already out there? Paula Rollo 35:17 That's so good. That's so good. I guess that that can be like a way... a follow-up question is just like how can entrepreneurs look at their failures and so they don't just ball it up and throw it in the trash and forget about it. But what keys do you look for to say, "I'm going to take this small thing from the failure and try my next at bat." Like, how can we not waste those failures? Jillian Leslie 35:40 Ooh, that's a good question. I think depersonalizing them which is the more you can say, "I'm not a failure," the more you're willing to be curious about why this failed. And to use that curiosity to say, what does this tell me about my assumptions and does it tell me about my customer, my avatar, and how are they not connecting. Paula Rollo 36:12 Right. Jillian Leslie 36:14 And then there is always this piece that you won't know. You will make these assumptions but then that's why you need the at bats because you think, "Okay, I'll go this way then" and you try that. And if that doesn't work, okay, what is my next hypothesis? But the more things you can be testing and trying in the most down and dirty way, the better. So, for example, and don't be afraid to do stuff that doesn't scale. So in this experiment, to see if we could help people secure their sites, all I did was I said, "David, please send me..." I think I went to our most recent customer, something like that. And I went to every single site and I looked to see if it was secure or not secure. And if it wasn't secure, I took a screenshot of where it says "not secure" in the browser and then I came up with an email, and then I would email these people with using the screenshot where it says "not secure", and like this was not scalable. But I wanted to see what feedback I got. Maybe I went through 100 accounts, maybe I sent 25 emails and got almost no responses. I think I got one... No, I don't think I got any positives and I got one kind of nasty email back. Paula Rollo 37:48 Wow. Jillian Leslie 37:50 So that was a very strong signal. Paula Rollo 37:52 Yes, this is the wrong way. Jillian Leslie 37:55 This is the wrong way. Don't go this way, go another way. So again, it's like, maybe I spent a couple hours on this but I was in there mining. You know, I've written about this which is you're a miner when you're an entrepreneur, looking to monetize. And again, there's a lot you won't know. Paula Rollo 38:19 Yes, but it's worth looking at, to see what you can identify. Jillian Leslie 38:24 And there are times where you go, well, maybe these were the wrong people you reached out to. Maybe if you reached out to the next hundred people. And that's the thing. I don't know. Maybe that's true. So you don't ever really know whether your test was a good test or whatever but you kind of have to make a lot of assumptions and kind of figure out what your next at bat is. Paula Rollo 38:46 Right. And then from there, see if maybe you need to start back at the first one or not. Jillian Leslie 38:50 Yes, exactly. How is your avatar different from you? Paula Rollo 38:51 I think what's interesting in what you identified from this failure, it sounds like to me, is that, okay, so most entrepreneurs, we have our avatar like this is a common common phrase we know. And for most of us, we are our avatar, right? It comes from, "This is what I know and so that's what I can speak most to." But I think what's key that you identified there that we don't talk about as much is how your avatar is different than you. And you have this really unique thing where you like numbers, which is very foreign to me, by the way, I hate numbers. If it involves a number, I'm not going to remember. Like, no, I feel like my brain just rejects it as soon as I hear a number. My brains is like, "No, I don't like it." Jillian Leslie 39:32 That's funny. Paula Rollo 39:33 I just like creative and I like strategy. I like charts that have pictures, not charts that have numbers and just that's how I am. But you were able to look at this and say, "Okay, I am my avatar. I'm reaching these entrepreneurs." But there's this big key way that your avatar is different than you and then finding that is really helpful for your success going forward because next time, you can frame it in a different way that, "oh, maybe they don't like the number but they would like this." Maybe they don't like this technical jargon but like you're saying, they like hearing how it frees them up to be more creative. Jillian Leslie 40:08 Exactly, exactly. Paula Rollo 40:11 With Jillian as my avatar, you would have never realized that. Jillian Leslie 40:14 No, and in fact, it makes me more empathetic. So what I want to say is you can trust me because I've got David. I like numbers, yes, but I've got this technical powerhouse behind me, and we're trustworthy, that maybe there's a way I could take more of the technical burden off your plate. Paula Rollo 40:41 Right, exactly. Instead of sending them an email chock full of numbers and nerdiness and geekiness of how this works. Jillian Leslie 40:49 But also, I think too by sending them an email with a screenshot where it says "not secure with your URL," there's a little bit of shaming that I might have done. Paula Rollo 40:59 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 41:01 Like, "Ooh, I don't want to look at that. Why are you doing this?" I think it was not received in the way that I anticipated it was. And again, did I have a moment of shame and ickiness? I totally did. But then I was able to go, "No, no, this is just what you do as you test stuff," and you see. Paula Rollo 41:24 Right. Well, and it was also where the only thing you lost was your time because it's not like those 25 people went and deleted their MiloTree accounts and demanded refunds because, "how dare you?" They were just like, "I don't see what she's doing." The one person got mad. But it wasn't something you couldn't take back. It wasn't something that was going to be, like we were saying before, like go ahead, jump out, try it. But make sure it's something that you can just completely retreat on. Jillian Leslie 41:53 Exactly. Exactly. So that was definitely a really good learning. And I want more at bats. And the hard part too as an entrepreneur is where do you find the time for that, to carve those out. So what we do is we try to, you know, have a list of ideas and go "We need to test these things." What does Jillian's typical day look like? Paula Rollo 42:16 That's good. Well, I was just going to say like, in that, what does your typical day look like? How many at bats do you try? How many days? Is it just like, "I have to share on Facebook. I have to pin on Pinterest"? Jillian Leslie 42:31 Okay, that's a really good question. And I wish I could tell you that my days are more kind of structured and organized. I live with Post-It's and I have Post-It's all over my desk because they're immediate. I've tried all these all these places like Trello. And I do use Trello but just in terms of what's most immediate, I have like my days set out in Post-It's. And I have really neat handwriting. Paula Rollo 43:04 I didn't know this about you. This is very interesting. Jillian Leslie 43:08 Okay. I have like my most important tasks up on Post-It's. What I typically do is, first of all, I drink a lot of green tea during my day because I find it very calming and soothing. But I have different teams. Jillian's Catch My Party and MiloTree teams So I've got you as my MiloTree team, so you, David, and me. And then I've got my Catch My Party team, which right now is my assistant, my lovely assistant in Portugal, Ana. And then I have another assistant in the Philippines named Marie who kind of comes in. And I've got different Slack channels. So I've got Catch My Party as my Slack channel, and I've got MiloTree. And then I also have another group of designers who live in South Africa that we work with a lot. Then I also have some consultants that we work with. We're working right now with Deepak who has been a guest to work on SEO. So we've worked with ad consultants, or SEO consultants, or different designer consultants. And so I always have some kind of project working. I'm usually working with some outside help. And I usually then check in in the morning with my teams and see what's going on. Ana does a lot of the heavy lifting for Catch My Party, but together, we are coming up with strategy. We are coming up with blog posts, she's creating them, and then I'm editing them and pushing them out. What I have found is it's all about the quality of the people you work with. And that if you can find people who you jibe with, who you like to... it's a little bit like, "Hey, how was your day? How was your Thanksgiving?" That kind of thing. Like, I like my team personally and I like them professionally. Paula Rollo 45:03 That's good. Jillian Leslie 45:04 And I feel like they've got my back. Paula Rollo 45:06 Yes, we do. Jillian Leslie 45:09 Yeah. So therefore it's a little more ad hoc than you would think it would be in that I don't... you know, some people block out days. "Today, I'm going to work on blog posts. Tomorrow, I'm going to work on social." All that stuff. I wish I could be that organized. But it's typically a little more, "Okay, this week I know I want to do these certain things" Also, all these blog posts are going live. We do three blog posts a week on Catch My Party, I do a podcast episode every week that goes live that has a whole host of stuff that has to happen. So there are a variety of things that keep kind of moving forward and that in the midst of this, I'm trying to, in the cracks, figure out what the next at-bat is or working with a specialist. Right now we're experimenting with SEO and Pinterest ads -- and those are the two things kind of running in the background. Paula Rollo 46:05 You've almost transitioned from this one-man show that we all start out as to a manager. Jillian Leslie 46:12 Yes. Paula Rollo 46:12 And having teams of people that work for you and still doing a lot of the legwork yourself because that never goes away. But there's just management aspect that makes your day, it sounds like a little more chaotic. Jillian Leslie 46:24 It does. And what I found is, the fewer people I have to manage, the better. I've grown my teams bigger and I shrink them down to the bare bones. But what I would say, and we talked about this before we started recording, is like, how do you know when to hire somebody or when not to. That kind of thing. Advice: How to hire VAs And what I would say is start with something like Upwork which I use, which is where I can find, or Fiverr something. I've got a task, I need help with this task, I will hire somebody to help me. And if I find a gem, I will then give them another project. Paula Rollo 47:04 Interesting. Jillian Leslie 47:05 I don't go, "Oh, I need a VA for everything." Uh-uh. I need a VA to do this task." Paula Rollo 47:12 Right. And then you scale your VA. If I like my VA, if we work well together, if my VA is responsive and responsible and kindhearted, then I'll go, "You know what, I've got another project." So I think in terms of projects. And that way, I don't know, I can budget, I don't know, $100 to try them out and and see how how it works before I'm willing to commit, I don't know, thousands of dollars. Right. Yeah. And then you can slowly grow that team. Jillian Leslie 47:44 And then I can pull back. So again, I think of it as emergent more than I think of it as top down. Paula Rollo 47:55 How did you know it was time to hire your first VA test? Jillian Leslie 47:59 I was drowning. I was drowning and I was making enough money that I could justify it. How to know when to hire someone for your business Paula Rollo 48:06 Okay. What does enough money look like then? I think a lot of people are in this position like "Should I? Shouldn't I?" I think that it does help breaking it down to a project because normally the decision is, "I'm going to hand over all social media forever" and it's going to be like $900 a month. And that's too much. How do you know that you have enough money and how do you identify that first project when you are drowning, and you have to have time to hand something off? Jillian Leslie 48:33 Okay, here's what I would say. How much is your time worth? And if in fact, if your time -- and again, I like numbers. So you can figure out how much your time is worth by thinking about how much you make, how many hours you work. Okay, so I make let's say $20 an hour. If I can hire somebody for less than $20 an hour, it's worth it because I can then use myself in that hour to do something of higher value. Paula Rollo 49:06 For the first one, it may not even be taking hours off your plate. It may be more changing what you're doing with your hours. Jillian Leslie 49:14 Yes, yes. If I can move to a higher task, let's say social media. My social media is kind of this rote job, and it's not using all of my brain in terms of my creativity, or my ability to go mining for other opportunities. It's worth it for me to hire that out. And then I can use my own resources, my own brain for something that could bring in more value. The problem with kind of what we do, is we get on these like hampster wheels, and it's hard to get off of them. And I struggle with this as well, like, "Oh, I'll just go do it." And then what I realize is, you know, there's three days have gone by and all I'm doing is social media, and I haven't been able to elevate above it, and really do some strategy or reaching out, or whatever other things are that will push my business forward, not just keep me in the same place. Paula Rollo 50:19 That's so good. Jillian Leslie 50:21 And again, here's what I would say, for the people I work with, I typically create little training videos. Paula Rollo 50:30 That's good. Jillian Leslie 50:32 That I then add to YouTube as non-public or whatever, so that there's a link so that I don't then... let's say I'm going to try somebody out for a project. And this is how I want to do a task like do Facebook posts or something like that. I will make a video and go through step-by-step how I think about it, how I do it, post it so that VA can see that video. Then let's say I hire this person, and you know what, it doesn't work out in, here's what I would say, too. Cut your losses early. If it's not working at the beginning, it's not going to work at that end. So move on, in a kind way, but find somebody else. And I've already got the training video. Paula Rollo 51:13 Right. You don't waste "I talked to her for 45 minutes and I hired her the next day." Jillian Leslie 51:17 Exactly. You already invested. There's this thing called sunk cost which is, you know, let's say you're at a restaurant and they say it's an hour wait, and now you've waited an hour, and they say "oh, it's another hour," or whatever and you go, "I've already waited an hour." Well, that's gone. Evaluate whether you still want to wait another hour. So it's like, well, I've already trained her and it's 45 minutes, but it's not wort... you know, you spent all this time already. I've invested all this energy I can't pull up. No, you can pull up. So therefore systematize things in very down and dirty sort of ways. Paula Rollo 51:57 Yes, because it's not worth the mental load to keep on somebody who's failing. Advice: Work with people you like. Life is short. Jillian Leslie 52:03 It is so not worth it. Like work with people you really like. Life is short. Paula Rollo 52:08 Yes. One of the best benefits of working from home is you don't have that annoying coworker you hate. Jillian Leslie 52:16 Exactly. Paula Rollo 52:17 You get to pick your coworkers and you can learn. Jillian Leslie 52:19 I will share this. We talk about this. I am a huge introvert. And I get enough social interaction just by like chatting with you on Slack. And then I can just go away and just be quiet and not have that co-worker come into my office. So that really works for me. Paula Rollo 52:37 Yes, you can mute me when you need to. Jillian Leslie 52:40 Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I would say. So systematize, do things in projects. And I will say this. I think we did this. I don't know if we did this. I think we did. Like let's start with two weeks. Paula Rollo 52:52 Yeah, we did. Jillian Leslie 52:53 See how it goes. Paula Rollo 52:54 We did. Jillian Leslie 52:55 See if we're both happy. Paula Rollo 52:56 Yes. And take the mental load off too. Because if it hadn't worked out, it wouldn't feel like, "Oh, Jillian fired me. I'm not going to talk to her again." Jillian Leslie 53:05 Right, right. Paula Rollo 53:06 It could have just been like, "Well, it didn't work. My expectations were different than her expectations." And, you know, maybe she's too picky. But I'm not going to feel bad about myself because it was only ever a trial. Jillian Leslie 53:17 And we can still be friends. Paula Rollo 53:19 You can do the old breakup, "it's not me, it's you." Jillian Leslie 53:21 Right. Exactly. So that's what I would say which is, you know, be flexible. I think that as we're talking, the theme that I keep hearing is this idea of being an entrepreneur is all about being flexible. And it's all about not taking things personally, which I struggle with. Paula Rollo 53:40 Yes. Oh, it's so hard. Jillian Leslie 53:44 But if there are a couple things that I would say it's more at bats, like really put yourself out there, just try because who cares? And, you know, don't beat yourself up as much as we all like to do and personalize it. The other stuff. And to notice -- notice the stories we tell ourselves because so many of them aren't true. Paula Rollo 54:09 Yes. I feel like you tell me that every week. This is true Jillian right here, guys. Jillian Leslie 54:17 Yeah. And I don't know. Like just even I say it to my daughter all the time. She comes up with these elaborate tales of how tomorrow at school is going to be a bad day. And I go, "Wow! What a story." Paula Rollo 54:29 Right. And it's so helpful to hear that like rational... You're right. This is one possible outcome of an infinite number of possible outcomes. Jillian Leslie 54:41 Right. And how do you know you're right when that's going to happen. Paula Rollo 54:43 Why would I pick that one? Jillian Leslie 54:44 Right. Absolutely, absolutely. Paula Rollo 54:47 So good. Okay. So as we're ending here, I do want to know this is a year of Blogger Genius, which is amazing. And so I want to know what inspired you to start The Blogger Genius Podcast in the first place and then also what information gap do you feel like it's filling in our industry. Jillian Leslie 55:08 Ooh, okay. I am a huge podcast listener, so I am my own avatar. Paula Rollo 55:14 Perfect. Jillian Leslie 55:17 And I love the intimacy of it. Again, I love to learn. So the idea that by having this platform, I can invite people on and learn from them, and then share it with other people. Like, there could be nothing better for me. Paula Rollo 55:32 Love it. Jillian Leslie 55:33 And I haven't done any podcast where it's just me talking and maybe I will get there. But I feel like having a guest and kind of getting to ask the questions that I want to ask, it gives me this excuse to even ask the more personal questions or the question that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily ask at a cocktail party. Paula Rollo 55:53 Right, yes. Jillian Leslie 55:56 So weirdly, there's a selfish component to it which is I'm learning along with you. Paula Rollo 56:00 Right. Jillian Leslie 56:04 And that has been incredibly satisfying. I went to a conference called Podcast Movement. And I had been toying with the idea for a long time. And I took a workshop, a one-day workshop that said you could start a podcast really easily. And I have to say you can, but it's not as easy as I thought it would be. But I did it. They said that most people quit before their eighth podcast episode. So I made it like a thing that I was going to get past eight, and I loved it from the get-go. Paula Rollo 56:41 That's so cool. Jillian Leslie 56:43 And I guess the gap that the hope of what I'm providing -- and please reach out to me and let me know if this is true -- is I'm hoping to shine the light on the hard lessons or what people are doing, or that there is no one right answer. And to hopefully make it not as lonely. And that you can hear other people's struggles or other people's successes and see what you can then take into your own business. And I hope to be a friendly voice in your ear cheering you on. Paula Rollo 57:25 Yes, I think you can do that. And I think to connect it with what you were saying too, it almost gives listeners ideas for their next at bat. Like SEO wasn't on my radar and then Deepak gave us a thousand ways to grow in SEO. Maybe this or that business plan, depending on where people are, they can listen and they can hear from somebody else's at bat and go, "I want to take a crack at that ball. I'm going to try that." Jillian Leslie 57:52 Absolutely. Then the thing that we always talk about is, just because it's working for somebody doesn't mean it will necessarily work for you. And this has been a hard lesson for me to learn. Paula Rollo 58:05 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 58:07 So therefore, hopefully, the guests give a whole host of ideas, and you can see if -- I'll try that in my business. And again, this is the piece that I'm always working on, which is, if it doesn't work, it's not personal to me. It's like when people personalized like, "Oh, Facebook doesn't like me." Paula Rollo 58:27 I've said that. Jillian Leslie 58:30 Yeah. But it's like, "Okay, this might not align for my audience or my customers. But I can find something that does align, and I'm going to keep searching." Paula Rollo 58:41 Yes. Because even somebody else's fail story, there could be somebody listening right now who their audience would have resonated with an email, with a screenshot of your site is not secure, and they could go, "I'm going to send that email to my audience." And all hundred of their people would say yes, because their audience is different. Or the same happens with somebody sharing this epic success, and then somebody would go, "I'm going to try that" and then it's an epic failure for them because our audiences are different. But it's helpful to hear what other people are trying and experimenting with, and we can kind of create our experience or our experiments with the benefit of their experience. Jillian Leslie 59:21 Totally, totally. And I guess the thing is, to know that we're all struggling. We're all in this struggle, but it's okay to be in the struggle. And we all wake up sometimes and go, "Oh, God, I don't want to work today." And then there are days where it's effortless. And that's the thing that I think is so interesting, is that you show up and it just... who knows what you're going to find? Paula Rollo 59:53 Right. It just clicks. Jillian Leslie 59:55 It's a little bit like having children and every day, they're different. Like, some days I turn to my daughter, I go "Who are you today? I don't recognize you." Paula Rollo 1:00:07 Yes. I had a friend use this analogy for something last night, actually. Se said it was like starting a gas stove, and how you turn the crank and it clicks, and it clicks, and it clicks. And then at one moment, you've just got this flame, and it's on and you've got it. But you had to click it so many times at first. Jillian Leslie 1:00:25 Yes! Paula Rollo 1:00:27 That's how it works. But we just want the flame immediately -- and that's not how a stove works. Jillian Leslie 1:00:33 Yes, yes. So I would say that if, in fact, you are willing to work hard, you are willing to do crappy stuff, you are willing to be in the unknown, you're willing to face yourself and your own demons, there is nothing better than this job. And chances are, you're not going to get rich tomorrow. Paula Rollo 1:00:56 No, but your life could be rich tomorrow. Jillian Leslie 1:01:00 But your life could be rich, yes. It's funny. I will say this one thing, which is, so during the dot com bubble, I was writing television shows. Remember there were hiatuses in television season. So I was on hiatus and I went to my agents and I said, "There's this thing called the internet, guys. And there are these new internet companies that are doing entertainment content and I want to write a show for one of these companies. So I don't care about money, I want stock options. Because guys, we're going to get rich." And my agents looked at me like "You're crazy!" And I looked at them like, "You guys are just so... you don't get it." Well, I went to work at this company. It was called Z.com. I met David and we started working on a project together, and we really hit it off. Ultimately, the company burned through something like $35 million and went out of business. And I always say I didn't get rich in the way, I thought I was going to get rich, but I got rich in a whole different way. Paula Rollo 1:02:16 I love that. And that's the entrepreneur journey right there. Jillian Leslie 1:02:21 And there it is, there it is. You don't know what's going to show up in front of you, but it could totally change your life. Paula Rollo 1:02:31 Well, I don't know how we could end a podcast better than that. Jillian Leslie 1:02:34 Awesome. Well, I have to say, this has been really fun. And thank you to you, Paula, for being my partner -in-crime. and I always call you my best thought partner. And I'm always saying to David "Isn't Paula so smart? Like, look what she came up with." So I want to just thank you and let you know how much I appreciate you and all that you do. Paula Rollo 1:02:58 I appreciate you and being on this team, it's a lot of fun. Jillian Leslie 1:03:02 And also I want to say thank you to my audience for showing up every week and listening to me and please reach out to me, let me know what you like, what you don't like -- I won't take it personally, maybe a little bit. but still, please do it. And let me know what you want to hear for the show. And just thank you for coming along on the journey. Get MiloTree to grow YouTube and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and your email list and remember, get your first 30 days free. I welcome you to join the family. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Since it's getting toward the end of the year, today is December 24th, what I thought I'd do for this episode was go back into my archives and I would pull out one of my favorite episodes. In fact, this isn't just one of my favorite episodes. This episode has been downloaded so many times. It's an interview I did with my friend Courtney Whitmore from the blog, Pizzazzerie. Courtney creates beautiful recipes. She's a a cookbook writer. But what is most special about this interview is that Courtney shares how to get brands to pay you what you're worth. In fact, she has some great advice on how she negotiates with brands and how she gets them to pay her what she thinks she deserves. I think it is enlightening, especially if in 2019, you want to be making more money. You want to position yourself with brands, I think you will get a lot out of it. So without further ado, here is my interview with Courtney Whitmore. Here's the full transcript of this original episode including show note links. Courtney has been a long time MiloTree customer. She grows her Instagram with her MiloTree Instagram pop up. If you are thinking of working with brands, I recommend you sign up for MiloTree. Watch your followers on Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook or YouTube or your email list grow faster! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today I'm interviewing Meredith Marsh, YouTuber and creator of the blog, VidProMom. In this episode, we explore how to win with YouTube! We talk about ways to monetize your channel, how much you can really make with YouTube ads, down and dirty tricks to creating video on the fly, what metrics matter most on the platform, how often to publish, and so much more! If you are new to YouTube, or an old-time YouTuber, there are a lot of great tips in this episode. Resources: VidProMom MiloTree Video Pursuit Podcast Fiverr Adobe Premier Rush Lumafusion InShot iMovie Filmora Transcript - How to WIN with YouTube with Meredith Marsh Host 0:03 Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today, we are talking all things YouTube. And as I confess, I am a little intimidated by YouTube. So I love my guest today. Her name is Meredith Marsh, and she blogs at a site called VidProMom. Of course, she has a YouTube channel with close to, I think, 30,000 subscribers. She also has a podcast called the Video Pursuit Podcast. But she really breaks it down -- you'll hear what is important, what's not important, what works on YouTube, and really how to think about it. So without further ado, here is the episode. So Meredith, welcome to the show. Meredith Marsh 0:59 Thank you so much for having me on. Jillian Leslie 1:01 I'm excited because, to be honest, YouTube is something I'm a little afraid of. Meredith Marsh 1:07 I hear that a lot. Jillian Leslie 1:08 Do you? Meredith Marsh 1:09 Yes, I do all the time. Jillian Leslie 1:11 Okay. So can you share your background, and how you got interested in YouTube, and how you've built your business with YouTube? How to start a career in teaching YouTube Meredith Marsh 1:17 Sure. So I used to be a freelance web designer. Out of college, I just decided that's what I was going to do, so that's kind of what I did. I taught myself like WordPress development and stuff like that. And I did that for about five years. And then in 2013, I had an opportunity to take a full-time job kind of managing web design and social media stuff in like a local company. So I gave up my freelance business, took a full-time job. And I was there for about a year before I was like, you know, I think I kind of like working for myself. So I really enjoyed the job itself. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but I missed the freedom. And so I had been kind of thinking I don't really want to go back to web design, just like straight up working with clients, but obviously, I had web design skills and I really liked creating content. So I thought maybe I should just start a blog and turn that into my business. Jillian Leslie 2:28 Did you know what it would be? Meredith Marsh 2:29 No. I noodled around ideas for like a year and a half trying to find like a niche or an idea or a topic that I felt like I was passionate enough about, that I wasn't going to get bored in a year. Because at that point, I kind of felt like I was really good at having ideas and then getting bored with them after I started them. And I was like, I'm done with that, I don't want to do that anymore. I want to find something I can really be passionate about and stick with it. So at the time, my kids were small. I have two little girls, they were like 7 and 4 or something. So I'm working a full-time job, I've got these two little kids. My husband was working crazy hours. And I felt like if there is a way that I could come up with a topic for a blog that related to us spending more time together or being more intentional about having family adventures and kind of capturing those moments. I just felt like if I could just knit all that stuff together, that would be great. But, I mean, that makes it sound like, "Oh, of course. Yeah, that's a no-brainer." But really, I was not connecting the puzzle pieces in my head at that point. I was just kind of like very abstract thinking about what a blog would look like and what those topics would be. Jillian Leslie 3:56 And what year was this? Meredith Marsh 3:57 This was late 2013. Jillian Leslie 4:03 Okay. Starting a YouTube channel about GoPro Meredith Marsh 4:06 And randomly one day, it was probably like Cyber Monday of that year, I decided to buy a GoPro camera. And I was like, "You know what, we're going to buy this camera and we're going to go on family adventures and just fun everyday stuff." We're not very adventurous people but if we like go for a hike or something, we can capture it on video, and we could make family movies, and that would be a really fun family sort of hobby. And so I bought the camera. I opened it up and it just so happened that we had like a foot of snow on a Saturday morning and I sent my kids out. Jillian Leslie 4:42 Where are you located? Meredith Marsh 4:44 I live in upstate New York. Okay, so it was early December. I sent them out with the GoPro and I created this video of them just playing in the snow and then decorating Christmas cookies with their grandmother. And I put this video together, and I was like, "Wow! This is actually kind of priceless." And I feel like I need to teach other people how to do this, too. Jillian Leslie 5:08 Did you have experience like editing footage? I know you're creative, I bet your artistic... Meredith Marsh 5:17 I want to say no, I didn't really have experience but I had played around with iMovie before. And I put together like a slideshow of still images for my grandmother's memorial service. That was the first time that I created something that was essentially a video even though it was still photos that I created something that people watched. I kind of liked that like, "Wow! That's kind of interesting to see it on a big screen." And seeing people's reactions to it was kind of fun. And then when I created this family video, seeing my kids' reactions to it was was also fun. And I thought, I think I could probably teach other people how to do this. Using keyword research to find a niche on YouTube And that's when all of the puzzle pieces started connecting. And I started doing some keyword research. I'm kind of a nerd. And so I dove right into keyword research to see like are there tutorials on this, are there video editing tutorials. And what I found was pretty much everything online that has to do with video or video cameras or video editing is geared toward professional people. And so I kind of just dove in to how can I teach regular everyday people -- moms and dads, families -- how to create videos, how to use a GoPro, how to edit the videos and things like that. And so I started blogging and it just sort of made sense to me that I should create videos for YouTube. Because if I'm going to create a tutorial on how to edit a video... Jillian Leslie 6:54 Right now. Meredith Marsh 6:55 Like, who's gonna read that? Jillian Leslie 6:56 Right. It gets very meta. Meredith Marsh 6:58 Yeah. It needs to be a video, right? And so I saw YouTube as a place to kind of house those videos. And then as soon as I started publishing a video every week along with a blog post, people just started subscribing and commenting and saying, "Well, can you do a video on on this? And can you do something on this and that?" And it's just where my community and my audience was growing, was on YouTube, at which was a total surprise for me because I wasn't a YouTube user really up until that point. Jillian Leslie 7:36 Okay. And how quickly did you see it connect? Did you go, "Ooh, this is working?" When you know your YouTube channel is getting traction Meredith Marsh 7:47 I would say about six weeks or so. Jillian Leslie 7:49 Okay. Meredith Marsh 7:50 Because I was getting views. I mean, I didn't look at the views at first because I didn't realize that was like... it sounds so silly now. I didn't realize at the time that YouTube was like a platform that people grow businesses on. Jillian Leslie 8:05 Right. Meredith Marsh 8:07 It really was just a place to house the videos I was creating. And one day just logged in, I was like, "Oh," there's like people watching these videos that I published and there's comments. And like, I can't remember. I think it was maybe four or five-ish months I had about 1,000 subscribers, which I thought was funny because just a few months before that, I didn't know that there was this thing called subscribing. Jillian Leslie 8:37 Wow. Meredith Marsh 8:38 So it just kind of grew. And like it was probably about six to nine months before I realized that I wasn't just a blogger with a YouTube channel. I was really a YouTube creator with a blog. And I just kept going kind of full steam with both platforms. And because just my community and my audience just kept growing over on YouTube. And it's turned into, like, I call it my powerhouse platform. I think all bloggers probably have at least one platform that's like their big platform for them. Jillian Leslie 9:16 Yup. Meredith Marsh 9:17 And for me, it's YouTube. Jillian Leslie 9:19 That's amazing. That's amazing. Okay. And then how have you seen it evolve? So you started off by creating content for moms and dads, right, to say "Hey, this is an easy way to take your video that we all take and do something with it," right? Meredith Marsh 9:38 Yeah, exactly. Jillian Leslie 9:40 Because I don't know about... like I just have video on my phone and then it gets onto my computer. And then I probably never look at it. Meredith Marsh 9:47 Right. That's exactly... Jillian Leslie 9:49 How did you then start to evolve that? Or is that still who your main audience is? Meredith Marsh 9:57 That is my core audience of my blog and my YouTube channel. And I would say about a year and a half ago, I had other bloggers that were contacting me or messaging me and saying, "Hey, how do you do this whole YouTube thing? Is this something I should do? How do I get started?" How to teach about YouTube in a podcast And so just this year, I launched the Video Pursuit Podcast. So that's a separate audience from my, you know, from my core blog and YouTube audience. And so I started that as a way to connect with other bloggers and content creators and help them get started or get serious about YouTube, so that they can use it to expand the reach. Jillian Leslie 10:40 So you interview other YouTubers or other bloggers who have a big YouTube presence. Meredith Marsh 10:48 I mostly use it more as a teaching platform. So it's usually just me or I'll bring on a co-host and we'll talk about specific topics. Jillian Leslie 10:59 About YouTube for bloggers, or for people who want to use this as a business platform. Meredith Marsh 11:07 Well, for example, I just had someone on, we talked about Pinterest. And so we didn't really talk. We really didn't talk about video stuff at all. We talked about Pinterest, and Tailwind and some of the new features of Tailwind. And so, it's really a resource for bloggers and content creators. And I might talk about anything that has to do with blogging and creating content, but there's a definite spin on it with video and YouTube. Jillian Leslie 11:40 Got it. Okay. And so here is my question, which is, well, let's start with you. How do you then monetize and how do you use YouTube to monetize for your own business? How to monetize a business on YouTube Meredith Marsh 11:56 Yeah. So I monetize my YouTube in pretty much the same way that I monetize my blog, which is through ad revenue and affiliate revenue, sponsorship deals, brand deals, things like that, and lead generation. Jillian Leslie 12:16 What do you mean by lead generation? Meredith Marsh 12:18 I have a couple of digital courses on editing videos. So, you know, I'm using it to grow my email list and things like that. Jillian Leslie 12:28 Sell to those email subscribers. Meredith Marsh 12:31 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Jillian Leslie 12:33 Yeah. Okay. So could we walk through then all of those different ways? Meredith Marsh 12:38 Sure. Jillian Leslie 12:38 Okay, so let's start with ads. Monetizing YouTube with ads Meredith Marsh 12:41 Yeah. So YouTube is owned by Google, so Google has their AdSense ad platform, and that's how you would earn ad revenue on YouTube. And recently this year, YouTube changed the minimum requirements to be a part of their ad program. So you have to have, I think, 1000 subscribers. And I think it's 4000 hours or minutes of watch time in the past 12 months or something. You basically have to be an active channel in order to earn ad revenue. And it's not meant to keep new creators out. It's really meant to keep people from stealing viral videos, and then setting up a YouTube channel, and immediately being able to monetize those videos. Jillian Leslie 13:40 Interesting. Okay. Meredith Marsh 13:43 And so the ad revenue on YouTube is, I mean, it's a lot like a blog where it kind of depends on your niche a little bit and what as far as how much you would make. So, you know, it's a supply and demand thing with ads. And so some niches might make more, some might make less. But yeah, ad revenue is something that if you hear some YouTubers will say, "Oh, don't focus on ad revenue, it's not reliable," or it's not this, or it's not that it has been reliable for me. It continues to grow as my channel grows and my views grow, and it's definitely one of my stronger revenue streams. Jillian Leslie 14:28 Okay. Because, again, I too have heard like, "No, you're not going to make a lot of money on YouTube in ads," that that is not going to be the way that you are going to, you know, buy that new car. Meredith Marsh 14:40 Right. I think it's, yeah, it's about perspective, I think, because I think as bloggers, we sort of know that we have all these revenue streams available to us where. I mean, I hope that as bloggers, we know that we have multiple streams that we can dip into and focus on. And for people who just focus on YouTube like an actual YouTuber or YouTube creator, they don't know about like how do you work with a brand, how do you get a sponsorship deal, what is affiliate revenue. Like, they don't know about those things. So they tend to focus on "Well, if I create videos and I'll get ad revenue," and they realize if you're brand new to the platform, unless you're somehow getting copious amounts of watch time on your videos, you're not going to have that ad revenue because you have to have the views and the watch time to get the ad revenue. Jillian Leslie 15:42 But I've even read that those huge YouTubers who have millions of subscribers, those people are not making their money on ad revenue. Meredith Marsh 15:51 Right. It's possible that they're not. Can you make a lot of money with YouTube ads? Jillian Leslie 15:54 Okay. So you wouldn't say to somebody "Go start a YouTube channel because you're going to make butt-loads of money with that." Meredith Marsh 16:03 Right. Yeah. I wouldn't lead with that, no. Jillian Leslie 16:05 Okay. And like, for example, do you make more money with ad revenue on your blog or ad revenue from YouTube? Meredith Marsh 16:13 Right now, YouTube is ahead by a little bit. But it's been pretty much neck and neck for me. Jillian Leslie 16:20 Now, what is nice about that is you have two passive income streams. Meredith Marsh 16:23 Yes. Yeah, exactly. The value of multiple passive income streams as a creator Jillian Leslie 16:25 And, you know, you take like, not a ton, but you keep finding these passive income streams, you add them together, it can become substantial. Meredith Marsh 16:34 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jillian Leslie 16:35 Okay, so ad revenue is the first thing. Then the second piece, what would you layer in next? Making affiliate revenue on YouTube Meredith Marsh 16:43 Affiliate revenue. A lot of people don't realize you can do this on YouTube. You can put your affiliate links in your YouTube description. Just like you would in your blog, you have to disclose that it's an affiliate link and you might earn money if, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, the disclosure that you have to have. But you can put those in your YouTube description. So what I like to tell people is look at the products that you use every day that you recommend to your readers every day, and you could come up with four or five different video ideas around that one product. Because you could do a review, you could do a, you know, alternatives to this product. You could do top five uses of this product, right? There's all these different things you could talk about around this one product and use those videos to drive affiliate revenue. Jillian Leslie 17:46 Now, I have a couple questions. One, I've heard that if you put a link in like an affiliate link and somebody clicks on it and drag those off the platform, that YouTube doesn't like that. Does driving people to a link off YouTube hurt your channel? Meredith Marsh 17:59 That is true. YouTube doesn't like people leaving their platform just like every other, you know, social platform. So there's always a trade off, right? So if someone clicks off and goes to Amazon and they make a purchase, and you make, you know, five bucks or something, then that might be worth it to you in your channel to have had somebody click off. And so there's a balancing act there. If you were going to build your entire YouTube strategy around people clicking off the platform to make affiliate purchases, that probably wouldn't be the best/strongest strategy, but if you weave in those affiliate style videos every once in a while, especially this time of year and during the holidays, then it can work out really well for you. Jillian Leslie 18:56 So would you say that you would not make all your videos affiliate videos? Meredith Marsh 19:02 Yeah, I probably wouldn't. It depends on your niche and what you want to do with your channel. It really does depend. If you can get people, if you can get your viewers to watch your entire video before they click off, then you'll be in a much better position with YouTube, if that makes sense. So if you can get people to come back, then you're, you're golden. So I like to get people onto my email list and use my email list to send people to make affiliate purchases. That way, they're on my email list. Now, when I publish a new video, I can email them and say, "Hey, here's this new video I think you would enjoy." Now I'm bringing in more views. So I got them to click off that one time. Using YouTube to grow your list Jillian Leslie 19:54 To join your list. Meredith Marsh 19:55 Yeah, but I'm sending them back so many more times now. I wish I had a statistic on like for every person I send off of YouTube, you know, I get them back 5 more times or 10 more times or something. But yet the YouTube algorithm will see people clicking off, but they see also people coming to YouTube through your content, and they'll reward you for that. Jillian Leslie 20:24 So how do you send them off to join your list? Meredith Marsh 20:28 There's a couple different ways. So you can put a link to, if you have an email opt-in landing page or something, you can link to that in your description. You can also tell people in your video that "Hey, I have a great cheat sheet for you." And I usually like to say, "When you're done watching this video, you can head down and grab the link in the description," just to make them kind of like "hold your horses, watch the video" and at the end, you can remind them again, "Don't forget, I have a link to this special cheat sheet for you." Also, YouTube has something called "cards" which are like you you can create a link that would pop up on your video at a certain point, you get to decide when. And it could be a link off YouTube to your opt-in page or it could be a link to another video. Or it could be a link to, I think, like another channel or something or another playlist. And so you could use that to send people off to your opt-in. You can also use the end screen element. So like you have 20 seconds at the end of your video that you can send people different places, and one of those places could be to your email opt-in. Jillian Leslie 21:53 And how successful has that strategy been for you? Meredith Marsh 21:59 Over time... I don't have any data on that. I should look that up, actually. What I did was in April 2017, I did 30 days of GoPros. So I set out to publish one video every day for 30 days. It ended up taking me six months to do the 30 videos. But what I did was I created a GoPro cheat sheet, a GoPro settings cheat sheet, put that on just a one-page PDF. So I have this 30-day series and so the first video in that series is me talking about this series and telling people where they can get the cheat sheet. And so in video number two, I'm doing the content and then saying, "By the way, I have this great cheat sheet for you. You can head back to video #1 to grab it." And so if somebody finds video #15 randomly through search or recommended video, and they've never heard of me before and they don't know about the series, then they watch the video and they hear me say, "I have a great cheat sheet for you. You can go back to video number one to find it." And they click on the card or the end screen element, or they click the link in the description. And now they're going back to video #1. So now they have the link to the cheat sheet to the opt-in page. Now they also know this is a series, so now they can start there at video #1, watch the whole series. And that month in April, I had 500 new people on my list just for that one GoPro settings cheat sheet opt-in. Jillian Leslie 23:49 Wow. And every video you would say, "Hey, if you're liking this, go back to episode one." Meredith Marsh 23:54 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Jillian Leslie 23:56 That was brilliant! Meredith Marsh 23:57 Yeah. Thank you. Jillian Leslie 23:59 That was really smart. But I like how so many things were communicated in that without a lot of explanation. Meredith Marsh 24:05 Right. Exactly. How to grow your YouTube subscribers with your MiloTree YouTube pop-up Jillian Leslie 24:08 "Did you know that you could grow your YouTube subscribers with your MiloTree pop-up? In fact, if you go to Meredith's blog at VidProMom.com, you will see it in action because she is using the MiloTree YouTube pop-up to increase her subscribers. Head to... I invite you to go to MiloTree.com to set up your own pop-ups to grow YouTube, or Facebook, or Instagram, or Pinterest or your email list. You can set it up and get it up on your site in under three minutes. And if you sign up now, you get your first 30 days free and you get access to my weekly newsletters." And now back to the show. Before we go on to other different ways to monetize, I just wanted to stop and ask you what are the metrics that YouTube cares about the most. Like, you keep mentioning watch time. Meredith Marsh 25:14 Yeah. YouTube wants people to keep watching videos and never leave YouTube. Jillian Leslie 25:22 Like my daughter, by the way. Meredith Marsh 25:24 Yeah, my kids too. So for example, in your videos, if you're going to create videos, you want people to stay on your video for as long as possible, you know, until the very end would be the goal. But very few people watch to the very end.And so if you can get more than 50% viewer retention on your videos...To the end. Well, yeah, if you can have at least 50% of the people that start a video finish the video, then YouTube will start to see that as, okay, people are interested in this -- it's helpful or it's useful, or it's entertaining, or whatever it is, and they'll recommend it to more people. Because if YouTube feels like this is working, people are watching this, then they're going to want to recommend your video over someone else's video that doesn't have as good or as high of a viewer retention. Jillian Leslie 26:31 Okay. So what is watch time? What is watch time on YouTube and why is it important? Meredith Marsh 26:34 Watch time is the amount of time view a viewer would spend watching your videos. So, yeah, basically the amount of time, like the actual number of minutes. Jillian Leslie 26:50 Okay. And what is the ideal? I've heard this, you know, change over time that you want your videos to be at least 10 minutes. Is that true? Meredith Marsh 27:02 I think different people say different things. So like, for me, personally, I don't set a target. I mean, I try to make my videos more than three minutes. But if they're more than 15 minutes, it's just for me, personally, I'm like, "Okay, this is taking forever to edit. I need to do something different here." So I don't give myself like a hard... like it's got to be 10 minutes no more, no less. Because it's more important to me that I keep people interested in watching that video and not getting bored or distracted and clicking off. I would focus on the retention, keeping people on your video. I'd focus on that before I would start looking at, you know, have they watched for 10 minutes or 5 minutes. Jillian Leslie 27:54 And you can see all of this in your analytics. Meredith Marsh 27:57 Yeah, the analytics for YouTube is very, very detailed. It can be very overwhelming because it is so detailed. Jillian Leslie 28:03 Like Google Analytics, yeah. Meredith Marsh 28:04 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 28:04 Same company. Meredith Marsh 28:05 Yeah, it is very detailed. One of the nice things about it is, I feel like with Google Analytics, they're just like dumping data on you. And whereas with YouTube Analytics, it's sort of displaying the data in a way that is giving you clues about what it cares about, what YouTube cares about. So it will tell you like here's your watch time over the last 28 days, here are your subscribers, here's this, here's that. And it's essentially telling you what it cares about the most. And over the years, it's changed a little bit. Jillian Leslie 28:48 So what are you looking at when you go to your analytics? Meredith Marsh 28:52 When I go to my analytics, the first thing I usually look at is what's my subscriber number. Jillian Leslie 29:01 Okay. Meredith Marsh 29:02 Has it gone up or down? And it's actually kind of funny because it's very steady for me. I usually gain subscribers -- everyone gains and loses, but I don't ever have like a spike in subscribers or like a big loss. So I don't know why that's always the first thing I look at. Because it's pretty much always just like, yup, more subscribers... Jillian Leslie 29:26 And how many subscribers do you have? Meredith Marsh 29:28 I just rolled over 28,000. Jillian Leslie 29:30 Nice. Meredith Marsh 29:32 So I don't know if there's a big celebration at 30. Jillian Leslie 29:36 That's nice. I feel happy every time I roll over another thousand. I'm like, "Yes! Still going." Okay, so you look at subscriber numbers. Then what do you look at? What YouTube analytics should you care about? Meredith Marsh 29:46 Watch time is the next thing. For me, like, I look at subscribers, but YouTube doesn't really care about your subscribers. They care about watch time and views. And then I also look at my revenue, which the revenue is a little bit like it goes up, it goes down, you don't really know why it might have.. it usually doesn't have anything to do with your content. It has to do with the supply and demand of the ads. Jillian Leslie 30:15 Of the ads. So can you share like around for, say, close to 30,000 subscriber what that would entail in terms of revenue? Meredith Marsh 30:26 My revenue right now in the last 28 days is $430. And that's usually about where it is. Sometimes it's up closer to 500, but it really depends. Jillian Leslie 30:41 Got it. Okay. So you can see how if you have 3 million followers, how that number would grow. Meredith Marsh 30:51 Right. You would think so, yes. Although I have friends that have a lot more subscribers than me who make the same as me or less. Jillian Leslie 31:02 Interesting. Meredith Marsh 31:03 Yeah, but they're in a different niche. They're talking about different things. So the people that are watching their videos have different interests, so therefore, they're going to be served different ads. Jillian Leslie 31:13 Right. Meredith Marsh 31:14 I have a very consumer-focused audience. This is just me taking a guess, but I think that my ad revenue is probably fairly good for the amount of watch time that I get because my viewers are consumers, and Google knows that. Google knows everything. And so, that's just kind of my data. Jillian Leslie 31:44 And typically buying high-end products -- cameras, things like that. Meredith Marsh 31:48 Right. Yeah. Jillian Leslie 31:50 Okay. So let's go back to other ways to monetize. So we talked about ads, we talked about affiliates, we talked about driving people off to sign up for your list. So now, let's say working with brands, which is one that lots of YouTubers, that's how they monetize. Now, do you work with brands? Working with brands as a YouTuber Meredith Marsh 32:15 I do work with brands occasionally. And I have never had a brand ask me for just a blog post. It's always a video. And so when I go and I price out how much should I charge for a blog post versus a video, it's like double for the video. So I'm always basically pitching back to them you're going to get a video and blog post and social shares. And without having the video as a deliverable, I don't think I don't even think doing sponsorship would even be worth it. Jillian Leslie 32:59 Interesting. Yeah. Meredith Marsh 33:00 Yeah. Because they want to be in front of my exact audience. Jillian Leslie 33:08 So what kind of company would you work with? Like GoPro? Meredith Marsh 33:12 I have not worked with GoPro on a sponsored deal but I'm part of the GoPro family kind of like their influencer family. So they just put out a new camera in September. Yeah, September. And so they sent me the new camera so I can do an unboxing and a review and all that kind of stuff. So I don't ask them for money because I just want them to keep sending me new products. Jillian Leslie 33:41 New cameras. I totally get it. Meredith Marsh 33:43 I'm happy with my relationship with GoPro in that regard. This year, I worked with Adobe on some tutorials for using Adobe Premiere Elements, which is their consumer-level editing platform. I've worked with other brands like GoPro accessories or just different video editing software and stuff like that. Jillian Leslie 34:12 Got it. Okay. And do you ever reach out to brands? Meredith Marsh 34:17 I do. Jillian Leslie 34:18 "Hey, I've got this cool YouTube channel. Here's my audience." That kind of thing. Meredith Marsh 34:22 Yeah, I do reach out to brands and it's kind of a hit-or-miss with them. And sometimes they're like, "Okay, cool." And other times they're like, "Nah, not interested." Jillian Leslie 34:34 Right. And now, you also sell courses? Meredith Marsh 34:38 I do, yes. Jillian Leslie 34:40 And so how are you using YouTube to drive those sales? Meredith Marsh 34:45 Yeah, so I have a couple of video editing courses. One of them is very focused on Adobe Premiere Elements. So if I'm creating a video like a tutorial on Premiere Elements, and I'm getting people on to my email list because I gave them a cheat sheet, now I know that they're interested in learning Premier Elements. So they're an ideal candidate to be a customer. And so that's kind of how I'm using YouTube in that regard for for my courses. Jillian Leslie 35:21 Got it. And so if you sell that, then people get access to those videos, whereas they're not just up on your channel. Selling a course as a YouTuber Meredith Marsh 35:31 Right. Yeah, the courses are additional videos, they're not just YouTube videos. So they're more in depth more... you know, like I mentioned with YouTube videos, I'm trying to keep people on my video. So I'm keeping it kind of moving fairly quickly. I like to say I like my videos to be snappy and not boring because I don't want them to click off. But that's not necessarily the best way to learn. You want to sit down and actually learn the program, you need a little bit of a slower pace. And so that's what I have inside the courses. What is a playlist on YouTube? Jillian Leslie 36:08 That makes a lot of sense. Can we talk just briefly about playlists, what a playlist is, and do you recommend them? And how do you think about playlists? Meredith Marsh 36:17 Yeah, playlists are great. I like to think of a playlist in terms of it's almost like setting categories like you would on your blog. So similar, you know, related topics could be under one playlist. You can have your video in more than one playlist. And then what I like to do is on the homepage of my YouTube channel, you can customize your homepage, and I put my playlist there so that it's almost like I have one row is, you know, GoPro tutorials. one row is Premier Elements tutorials, and they're categorized and they're in playlists. And so the playlist themselves can actually come up and help you with your SEO because it's just another opportunity for you to put in your keywords and your topics. Jillian Leslie 37:13 Oh, interesting. Okay. Because I feel like all I have right now on our MiloTree YouTube channel are a bunch of my podcast interviews, but I haven't even organized them and I barely have put cover images on them, so I feel like I have a lot of work to do to optimize that with keywords, with everything. Meredith Marsh 37:34 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 37:36 In fact, I was just on Fiverr yesterday looking for somebody who could man it, like set it up for SEO and things like that. Okay. Here is the, I think, million dollar question. Meredith Marsh 37:51 Oh, boy. How to find the time to make videos as a blogger? Jillian Leslie 37:53 Ready? It's not that hard for you, but it's hard for us as bloggers. In fact, I was just talking to our MiloTree community manager, Paula Rollo, just before I got on this call. And I said, "What would you want to ask? I'm talking to a YouTube expert. What would you want to ask?" And she said, "How to deal with the fact that making videos takes a lot of time." And she's like, you know, "I feel like I've started and I've stopped doing YouTube. And I never know if I should keep going, like, I'm almost going to break through, but it just takes so much time to create content." Meredith Marsh 38:38 That is a fantastic question, which I would answer with another question. How much time do you bloggers put into creating their written content? Because when you think about the amount of time you're researching your topics, and then you're writing and you're creating your Pinterest images, sometimes you're creating loads and loads of Pinterest images for each blog post. You're scheduling your Instagram and your Pinterest, you're already spending lots and lots of time on a piece of content. And so you're really more than halfway there of creating a video because you've already done the research. If you've written the post, you've essentially written what could be a script or an outline for you. And so you're already more than halfway there. And the video part takes some time to get used to and learn but there is no one right way to create a video. And if you use your cell phone, that's perfect. And if you use your fancy camera, that's perfect, too. If you can create a video that doesn't need to be edited, that's outstanding. And if you create a video that does need to be edited, that's great, too. And so, just start wherever you're at. But I think bloggers in particular are really primed to be excellent YouTube creators because you already have so much content, you've already done more than half the work compared to any random person off the street that wakes up today and wants to be a YouTuber. They don't really know about creating content. They're just thinking "I want to be a YouTuber." Jillian Leslie 40:28 Right. Exactly. They don't know what SEO is, they don't know what keywords are. They don't know how to build an audience. Meredith Marsh 40:36 Right, yeah. So I can't argue with the fact that it takes time to create video content, but it takes time to create all of the content that I create. We're spending that time somewhere. And YouTube has just such great organic search components and things that that's where I like to spend my time. How to make YouTube videos in the easiest way possible? Jillian Leslie 41:00 Okay. So let's say I decide I'm going to start making video and I want to do it in the most down and dirty way, but where my content looks good relatively, you know, and so I'm going to use my phone. And let's say I have like a little tripod and I'm going to do a craft or something. Would you recommend that I try and just do it in one shot so I don't have to edit? What are some tricks to help me speed up this process? Meredith Marsh 41:34 If you are going to do a craft with your phone, I would use your phone to shoot your hands creating the craft and then when you're done creating it and you've shot that part, you can do a voiceover and explain what you've done, essentially. And then you can just shoot a little intro with your face on camera saying like, "Hey, this is so and so. And I'm creating a craft called such and such for, you know, for a Christmas craft for kids," or whatever it is and then have a little outro. You would then just have to put those pieces together and you can edit those on your phone. Jillian Leslie 42:18 Okay. And do you recommend I edit stuff on my... what is the easiest way to edit video? Meredith Marsh 42:24 Easiest way? Well, I would say the easiest way would be on your phone. That'd be the easiest and quickest. Jillian Leslie 42:30 Really? And what what am I using? Meredith Marsh 42:32 Oh boy, there's lots of options. Adobe just came out with their Premier Rush, which is an app for your phone or your iPad, but they also have it for your desktop so that everything you create on mobile is also going to be there when you open up on your desktop. So that's an interesting one, they just came out with that recently. There's also Lumafusion -- is a really, really good editing app for your phone. It's very robust, but it's still pretty simple. Jillian Leslie 43:08 I've never even heard of that. Meredith Marsh 43:10 That's a good one. I like that one a lot. Let's see. There's one called the InShot that I know a lot of people use for Instagram. There's Adobe Clip. I'm looking at my phone right now. Filmora has a mobile app. There's also iMovie for iPad and phones. So it's really just a matter of taking, you know, if you have five separate clips, an intro, an outro and a middle, you know, it's just a matter of putting them together. Advice: Don't over-edit your YouTube videos Jillian Leslie 43:49 Wow! Well, now speak to this, which is I think that as bloggers we're perfectionists. Like I find with my podcast, for example, I could spend days editing out "um's" and the phone ringing and all of that stuff. And so how do you deal with that with video so that you're not just overly editing everything? Meredith Marsh 44:17 Wow. That is such a good question. You know, done is better than perfect. Jillian Leslie 44:27 I love that, yeah. Meredith Marsh 44:28 I don't think in reality, nobody expects perfection from most people. I mean, I have trained my audience that you don't expect perfection from me at all. You expect me to show up and be useful and helpful and deliver the content that you came looking for, but certainly not perfection. And you just just have to publish and keep going. You can always improve. But if you don't publish, right, then you have nothing to improve. Right? Jillian Leslie 45:05 Right. I like that. I do, I agree. You know, it's that scary thing of putting yourself out there. And, you know, especially with video because I think that we feel more exposed. Meredith Marsh 45:20 Yeah, for sure. Jillian Leslie 45:25 And there's a vulnerability to it. Advice: Have bright light for shooting video Meredith Marsh 45:27 Yeah. One of my favorite tips for people who feel like "I can't do videos because I don't like the way I look on camera" is just make sure you have lots of great lighting, which means you could just stand in front of a window or be in your car. Because when you have not very much lighting, that's when all of your least favorite features will like be predominant. Especially I feel like for women who might have skin imperfections or wrinkle or something, light can just magically make those things disappear. Jillian Leslie 46:06 That is a great tip. Meredith Marsh 46:07 Yeah. Really, really just light it up. Jillian Leslie 46:11 Okay, one more question, which is, do I need to publish a video every week at a specific time? Do I need to? People talk about this, you train your audience to know that on Tuesdays at 9:00 there'll be a new video. Is that true? Consistency on YouTube -- Do you need to be? Meredith Marsh 46:29 I am going to say yes, it's good to be consistent. But, I mean, at the same time, if somebody said, "Well, I can't publish every week," I would say then publish every two weeks. Don't let consistency keep you from publishing once even a month, if that's all you can do. It's not like if you can't be consistent, you might as well not do it. That's not a piece at all. But it is good to be consistent and try to do once a week and try to do the same day, same time, if you can. And a really good way to do that is to just prepare four or five videos over the course of like a weekend and you have those videos ready to go. And maybe all they need is just to be edited and published versus actually creating a whole video every week. That gets really tiring really greatly. Jillian Leslie 47:27 Right. So like batch them. Meredith Marsh 47:29 Yeah, batching is really good, especially when you're first starting. It's really good. Jillian Leslie 47:33 And is it that Google wants you to be consistent or is it really that your audience knows, "Oh, it's Tuesday, there's going to be a new video." Meredith Marsh 47:42 Yeah, I think it's your audience. And I don't necessarily know that people are like looking at their watch, you know, like, "Oh, okay, it's 1:00 on a Wednesday. I know that Meredith is going to be here right now." Jillian Leslie 47:53 Right, right. Meredith Marsh 47:54 But it's that you're there when they when they do open up YouTube and they're expecting you and it's familiar to them. And, you know, they've just become used to seeing your face in a new video every week or every two weeks or whatever. Jillian Leslie 48:12 Oh, wow. Meredith, I have learned so much from you. Meredith Marsh 48:15 I'm so glad. Jillian Leslie 48:16 And you know what you've done? You have made video seem a little less scary. Meredith Marsh 48:22 Good. That's excellent. Jillian Leslie 48:24 The whole idea of editing video on my phone. Do you have a bunch of tutorials on that? Meredith Marsh 48:31 I don't have a bunch. I do have one on my, funnily enough, it's not even on my YouTube channel. It's on my IGTV channel. I have been on editing vertical videos in Lumafusion which teaches you how to use that. Back when IGTV first came out, people didn't know like, how do I even create a vertical video for IGTV? So I created that and I put it on IGTV. But mostly for me personally, I'm using my desktop to edit. Because I'm not in the editing apps a whole bunch. I haven't created tutorials on them yet. What are your thoughts on IGTV? Jillian Leslie 49:10 Got it. Okay. And tell me what are your thoughts about IGTV? Meredith Marsh 49:15 I don't have any thoughts on it really. I very rarely watch anybody's IGTV. I don't even really know that they're even there. I don't pay attention to it. I don't know, it's too early to tell, I think. Jillian Leslie 49:29 Right. it's too early to tell. Meredith Marsh 49:31 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 49:31 Well, Meredith, honestly, please tell people how they can reach out to you see your videos. Meredith Marsh 49:37 Yeah, so my podcast is the Video Pursuit Podcast, so you can find that at VidProMom.com/podcast or you can just search for it in your favorite podcast player. I do have a Facebook group called Video for Bloggers and Content Creators, and that's where I run my five-day challenges -- five days to a polished and profitable YouTube presence. And have a good community going there as well. So that's the Video for Bloggers and Content Creators Facebook group. Jillian Leslie 50:07 Oh, Meredith. Well, honestly, thank you so much for being on the show. Meredith Marsh 50:11 Thank you for having me. Jillian Leslie 50:13 Get MiloTree to grow YouTube and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and your email list and remember, get your first 30 days free. I welcome you to join the family. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today I've got Deepak Shukla back on the podcast for Part 2. Deepak runs an SEO agency called Pearl Lemon, and he is an expert in SEO. Today we are talking about online reputation management -- one new strategy that will grow your traffic. It's all about managing your online reviews and testimonials because this can have a major impact on how your blog or business shows up in search. You will be blown away by the tactics we discuss, so check it out now. Resources: Pearl Lemon MiloTree StartUp Podcast Moz Capterra Wordpress Plugin Marketplace Shopify App Store TrustPilot Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant Transcript: One New Strategy that Will Grow My Traffic with Deepak Shukla Jillian Leslie 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Deepak, welcome back to the show. Deepak Shukla 2:26 Hey, Jillian, how are you? Jillian Leslie 2:28 It is so great having you back on the podcast. And as I've shared with you, I got such great response from your first episode. If anybody hasn't listened to it... Deepak Shukla 2:39 Oh, thank God. Jillian Leslie 2:40 ...I'll link it in the show notes so you can hear part one. Deepak Shukla 2:45 Yeah, I had a lot of fun. And thank you. I'm really glad and happy to hear that. Thank you. To the listeners. Jillian Leslie 2:52 Yeah, you were so generous with what you shared. And since then, just to get everybody up to speed, we have decided that we're going to start working together for MiloTree. Yes. Amazing. Exactly. And the cool part about it is because there's one thing to sharing tips and strategies like on a podcast, just to be talking about it. And it's another thing to actually do it and see what happens. Blogger lessions in SEO Deepak Shukla 3:23 Yeah, completely agree. Completely agree. Completely agree. Jillian Leslie 3:27 So we had our kickoff call with David, my partner, my husband, and afterwards, we're like, "Oh, I wish we had recorded this." So next time, we do that, we'll record it and we'll release it so that people can hear us strategizing and talking about ways we can dig in with SEO, with marketing to grow MiloTree. Deepak Shukla 3:50 Completely agree. Jillian Leslie 3:52 I know. So it's really fun. And I don't know if anybody has ever listened to the podcast Startup. But the first season was exactly that. It was them trying to raise money and kind of what the journey was, and all the mistakes in the work. So hopefully, you'll get to see our mistakes in the works too, and be kind. Deepak Shukla 4:15 Exactly. Be kind. Jillian Leslie 4:17 Be kind. Deepak Shukla 4:18 I know. I'm happy to be a part of the journey and yeah, I'm excited. SEO Strategy: Online Reputation Management Jillian Leslie 4:24 Awesome. Okay. So today, what we're going to do was we were going to go deep in another SEO strategy. So offline, you and I talked about the topic of online reputation management. Deepak Shukla 4:40 It's how we do everything offline anyway, isn't it? I mean, online reputation management really simply is a fancy way of saying, "Well, what do you think about that, Jillian? What did you think of that movie, Jillian? Or have you shopped at H&M or Prime Mark or Walmart? What was it like?" It's literally that, but just online, the management of a reputation that a business has. So it's, yeah, let's get into it. There's a lot there. Jillian Leslie 5:11 Because when you said it, I was like, I don't even know what that means, or how it would relate to an online entrepreneur or a blogger or somebody like that. So would you kind of start there? Like, what is the benefit? What is online reputation management? Deepak Shukla 5:24 Yeah, absolutely. So really, simply, let's start from a couple of ways. So from the kind of common sense perspective, right? When you're about to make a purchasing decision, it's very typical to be part of your kind of initial filter: "Does this business or does this individual or does this product or does this service or does this restaurant, whatever it may be, have good reviews?" What do people think about it? It's something that's a big pot certainly of our landscape is consumers. Before you go to the cinema, you're looking at IMDb, or Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic or something. Before you buy something from Amazon, your look to see if they're a trusted seller, same thing on eBay. And the dividing line between that being different from B2B and B2C is ever blurring. And that's why there's probably been this huge rise, many listeners probably, or some businesses have noticed that you just start as I call it, seeing stars and stripes in search a lot more with featured snippets, and just basically seeing stars when you Google a company name, and that's, everybody, what I want you to have. So when people are deciding or people are thinking about, "Can I trust working with you guys?" they'll quickly look and see that, "Well, everybody's saying good things about them; therefore, this is important." And for anyone who's kind of a technician, if you look up, for example, like Moz, their survey basically indicates that online reviews count up to as much as up to 10% towards kind of local SEO in general. It's got a huge kind of constituent ranking factor as to what will help you rank if you do any level of local service. And that's, again, corresponding the beginning to leak into nationwide search and that's why the sites like, I don't know, Capterra or the WordPress repository for plugin reviews or the Shopify repository for in a plugin review. So it's really looking at that person, right? Because this is about conversions. It's really looking at the person who's about to make a decision whether to install or to add to cart or to download and they're deciding whether your business is one that's trustworthy. "How well are they going to to rank you?" "Well, let's see what my friend, Jillian, is telling me about this app before I download it. Ah, she's given it five stars. Jillian's have given this product five stars. Why online reviews are important for online reputation management Therefore, of course, it's going to be the case that that's going to help you basically get highest up on the shelf at eye level, where everybody's looking, which is where you want to be. Jillian Leslie 8:31 It's a funny saying this because in my head, I haven't really thought about it this way, but everything I do is all about reading reviews. My husband refuses to go to a restaurant that isn't highly reviewed on Yelp. Like we could be walking by a restaurant, we're someplace that we've never been before. And I'll go "How about we go here?" And he'll be like, he'll be like, "No" because he has to get on his phone and see what the Yelp review is. And we just moved and so we're buying stuff for our house and like a lot of stuff on Amazon. And it could be like a trash can. And I am always reading the reviews of the the trash can, like it's something stupid. I am trained now to read reviews. Or my Uber driver, I want that five star Uber driver. Deepak Shukla 9:25 Yes, exactly. Exactly. Jillian Leslie 9:27 But I hadn't even thought about. I mean, it's just part of, it's like just part of my nature now that all I think about is how highly reviewed is something. Deepak Shukla 9:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And when you kind of inverse that and think,"How highly reviewed am I?" Jillian Leslie 9:46 Yes, definitely. Deepak Shukla 9:50 Absolutely. And I mean, at its simplest level, Jillian, the big takeaway for everybody, of course, and people are kind of fearful of the idea of asking somebody or how does it work in practice, but reviews are huge. And your wonderful partner, David, has just demonstrated that by making you literally move away from restaurants that you're outside the front door of... Jillian Leslie 10:17 Yeah. Deepak Shukla 10:17 ...because it doesn't have... How powerful is that? Jillian Leslie 10:21 I know, I know. But it's funny because remember, you'd be on vacation, you see a restaurant, you just go in, and it's like, "Oh, no, we don't do that anymore." Deepak Shukla 10:29 Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. And here's a statistic, I think, that is mind blowing to me that local search as in the Google three pack, the stuff that appears in when people run searches, and they are running a local search, apparently, up to more than 60% of the time, depending upon what comes up within the top five, it results in an offline purchase. It's incredibly... It's incredible. And Google My Business, the place on the right hand side, they encourage you to go out and get reviews. It's part of their listed ranking algorithm. And, but Google is saying "Hey, help us help you. Ethically go and ask customers for reviews." Advice: You don't just need to get reviews from customers or clients And to make this really practical. And this is the part that I think sometimes people get worried about, you don't just need to get reviews from customers or clients. You have partners, you have people that you pay for services, people that you buy services from, people that you've worked with in business, people that you've done lots of weird and wonderful things with as long as there's something commercially that's happened, and they feel that they've benefited or vice versa, there's no reason why it isn't ethical to ask them for review. And that is something that is probably the lowest hanging fruit in terms of going out and generating reviews out of the gate, because you'll have friends that you built in business. And LinkedIn recommendations. Jillian Leslie 12:11 Right, I like what you're saying, which is being strategic about how you curate. It is about curating your reputation. It's not just saying "Hey, anybody, write a review for me" but it's saying "I know this person. I've done business with them." That person is going to say something that will shine a light on how good my product or service is. Absolutely, absolutely, I think that you've, you've hit the nail on the head, Jillian, that's within your network through and when I say you, I'm talking to you, the audience, right, you're in business, or you're going into business, but you at some level, have done something that constitutes advice. One of the things that I've began doing when I was starting my agency in the early days, the first two months, when I was scrambling, I would have 20 minute calls where I give some great advice. People would say "Amazing, thank you." It wasn't commercial. That was just a conversation. And at that moment, though, they would say, "Wow, thank you so much for this advice. Can I help you any way?" I would, at that moment, have a link ready and they "Actually, David, you can." Is it okay if you just leave a review for me just reflecting what you just said, that you had a consulting call with Deepak, it went really well, or whatever you want to say that you think is relevant? Could you do that for me? And who's going to say no, after that, and that was probably where I got my first 30 reviews from across the board online. Well, okay, today, just before I got on this call, I got an email from someone who I don't know, and who just said, "I want you to know, I'm really enjoying the podcast." And I wrote back "Thank you so, so much for reaching out. I'm so glad. We've got some great episodes coming up. So stay tuned." And now, I'm kicking myself that I didn't say "Hey, by the way, could you write a review on iTunes? Here's a link." How to ask people for online reviews Deepak Shukla 14:14 Jillian, the goodwill is not lost. I would recommend and advocate that you go back through your inbox, search keywords that relate to anyone who's left an enthusiastic response and spend two hours crafting a shit load of follow ups to say, "You know what, I'm kicking myself. Is it okay that what you wrote here, insert quote, you could reflect that, you putting a review online? I really appreciate it, like smiley emoji, prayer hands and see what it throws back." Because I've also done that exact same thing. And that's always how I followed up and 20% of the time, people say, "You know what? Yeah, I can definitely write that for you. Because there's still goodwill between us." Jillian Leslie 14:57 Oh, okay, because I have to say, I don't know, putting maybe some emojis in there, like it's hard. We talked about this the last time. It makes me cringe. It's hard to ask. Deepak Shukla 15:09 I understand. You have to, when we go in, I always go into conversations like that within mind that everybody favors the underdog. So position yourself as the underdog. And when people feel like they're doing something to help you succeed. And that you're being really kind of nice with it, I found that I get way better responses. And the best way in absence of my body language and tone of voice and my loveliness on call is emojis. Jillian Leslie 15:42 I just have to tell you, there's a reflection on my screen right now. So I can see myself and as I'm talking to you, I am like holding my mouth because I can tell that, like not consciously, but I can tell how uncomfortable this is for me. I have my hand like over my mouth going "Oh, this seems so." So I have to work. I feel like this is like our therapy session that I have to get better at being okay asking for that. Deepak Shukla 16:15 And if it helps to the technically minded people out there, Google is beginning to index emojis as part of search. Oh, really? So you can search with a burger icon plus near me and Google will bring up burger joints near you. It's something that has begun to start featuring recently. Therefore, this is a thing the young kids are doing it. So let it be known that there's data to support the rise of the emoji even from a Google ranking perspective. Jillian Leslie 16:48 That's so interesting. Please leave a review for me and The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Hey, it's Jillian and I am doing the uncomfortable. I'm doing what Deepak suggests. I am asking you to rate me and to rate The Blogger Genius. So if you head over to iTunes, please leave a review or rate us. I am so curious to hear what you have to say. And remember, if I can do this, so can you. So now back to my interview with Deepak. How a food blogger can ask for reviews Okay, is there a use case for a blogger? Let's say, I'm a food blogger. We have a lot of food bloggers. Is there a use case for reputation management for a food blogger? Let's say I don't even sell any or let's say maybe I do affiliate marketing. Maybe I sell a cookbook, and I make a lot of money via traffic and working with brands. Deepak Shukla 17:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that it's a really amazing place to get reviews because the biggest number one thing when it comes to converting traffic, you're a food blogger, you talk about food that you love, what we want is some kind of audit-able trail of people saying how fabulous your recommendations have been. And that was a couple of things. So number one, in terms of, let's answer the practical question, where would those reviews live? Jillian Leslie 18:18 Yeah. Deepak Shukla 18:19 Well, number one, as places like Trust Pilot. Number two, I would look at also where you can get reviews that relate to your industry. My initial place for everything is Trust Pilot. Jillian Leslie 18:32 I don't even know. What is Trust Pilot? Deepak Shukla 18:34 Trust Pilot is literally as it says on the tin. It's all about kind of trust. And I have a Trust Pilot that relates to both my business and both me personally so when you search Deepak Shukla, for example. So, so, okay, brilliant. I'm thinking out loud now. Yes, to extend it. So to be practical, number one, Trust Pilot is a great platform to ask people for reviews upon. Index is very well and good going. It does give you the stars and stripes effect which is pretty nice. If you search even Deepak Shukla, it's about paid position number nine. So people can actually rank for their own keyword or their own name. So if you're a food blogger and your blog is, I don't know, Frank. Frank Loves Food, or Frank, Frank Reynolds, because you're Frank Reynolds, then you can get some stars and stripes next to your name if you are a food blogger. So it really helps with branded search number one, and then people see that you're someone who's got a lot of reviews online; therefore, they'll trust the advice that you give. So you can really just treat yourself like a business to that extent. Leaving reviews on Facebook for repetitional management Deepak Shukla 19:44 So really simply, food bloggers. So number one, TrustPilot. Number two, Facebook reviews because Google indexes Facebook reviews big time, so one of the things that I quickly did was I have my own personal Facebook like page. It stands to reason a blogger will have a page either related to their blog or related to them personally. Jillian Leslie 20:05 Well, like if you have a business page on Facebook, people can leave reviews? Deepak Shukla 20:11 You can leave reviews. You can leave a review for somebody so you could go over right now to me on Facebook, and you'll see that I've got about 30 plus reviews. Document everything. When someone leaves a comment on your blog, also ought them to, could you write that on Facebook as a like and then you can begin to get the stars and stripes effect of course because Google has Facebook like reviews then you've got from Trust Pilot. If you want to set your business up locally, then you can also get into the Google business reviews and other ranking factor and then of course, you can use that as part of either your copy or your content, and put it around any of those key areas that you wish to of course have people convert from. So on the same page, for example, that you have a particularly well-performing, or maybe even an under-performing affiliate link that has a high rate of traffic, you could experiment with inserting Deepak Shukla as seen on Trust Pilot, take 109 reviews online and you can put the direct links to it and again engender trust that while Deepak must know about food, if he's got all of these reviews. Jillian Leslie 21:19 I was just thinking. Let's say I'm a food blogger. And one of the ways I monetize is working with brands. If I could send them a link like let's say, there's a brand I really love and I want to work with them like Ben and Jerry's... Deepak Shukla 21:34 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 21:35 ...and I find out who their person, their social media person is, and I send an email saying, "I'd love Ben and Jerry's. Here's why," but if I also were to put, again, that a link to something that gives reviews about my recipes, or even working with me, that I am trustworthy and that I produce good content, that could be a great way to give myself that edge. Deepak Shukla 22:06 Absolutely. 100%. I mean, if that leads to Ben and Jerry's getting reviews and referring back to you, if that leads to you writing an open letter as a blogger saying, "Ben and Jerry's, I'd love to work with you," and then referencing some way to lead that into a review that, then absolutely, and I think that at a food blogger level. I think that this is where there's space for the individual and building trust and thinking about the ways that you can do that. Document all your reviews and testimonials Because the irony is that when we talk reviews, blog comments, YouTube video comments, that all forms and reviews. A review is simply an online testimonial that verifies what you're saying, or what you've said or who you are, or what you've delivered is of know, and is now worthy. And the really important biggest takeaway is that document everything. If it's in your inbox and nowhere else, it's useless. Jillian Leslie 23:10 I love that. Okay, so for me, the way that I document stuff is I have a folder in my email, and I call it "love letters." And if somebody, if you write me a love letter, I will save it in love letters, but then I don't go back to them. They make me happy, I appreciate them. I always write back to them, that kind of thing. And then I also have a Trello board where I have asked people for reviews of MiloTree, and I will keep those and then I will recycle those. Like we have testimonials on our homepage. Deepak Shukla 23:45 Yeah. Yeah. Jillian Leslie 23:46 But I do feel like I'm not doing enough with these comments and reviews and things like that. Deepak Shukla 23:54 And absolutely, and it's great that you've documented it in Trello as well as the other places you have been because you have them there. And this can be even something as simple as creating a dedicated page for your reviews and enabling the Discuss plugin on WordPress or whatever you want to use to capture comments and then that could be used and re-purposed in so many ways in terms of how you reuse that across your site. A lot like these info product marketers that will screenshot so many reviews, and the simplest way to do this is as soon as someone leaves a comment that's really positive in your inbox or something. An Instagram direct message or a Facebook message, then send them a link to a dedicated... milotree.com page. We'd love to hear what you think about us page where people can just literally write up a comment and publish it on your site. Jillian Leslie 24:46 Wow. Wow. Okay, this is kind of blowing my mind because it is about making it easy to do, right? Deepak Shukla 24:56 Absolutely. Make it easy for people to leave reviews Jillian Leslie 24:57 Because I guess the thing that I would say is all of my stuff, they're all over the place in different buckets, kind of like I'll get to them at some point. Deepak Shukla 25:06 Yep. Yep. Build one bucket. Make sure that it's so easy for people to just make it as easy as writing a Facebook instant message if you find that the review platforms aren't of use because you're a blogger and open that page up to the world and let people see. And how powerful would it be of what people are saying about us page where there's just literally tons of comments that fills up with an endless scroll and the use or the flow for that is "Oh my god, that podcast with x person was so great, Jillian. Amazing! Could you say exactly what you just said on this page?" You can just type it in and you send them a link to milotree.com/wonderful-words or whatever it may be. Jillian Leslie 25:52 Right. Right. Deepak Shukla 25:52 And again, they type it in, published, done, off and away, and you've got it documented in a way that Google will index that reflects upon you really well, that engender trust because if it's a social login, then leave their Facebook page or leave their link to their Facebook and then the app, the devil's advocate, is thinking, "Can I trust Jillian and MiloTree?" She'll see 57 reviews with people that have left their direct Facebook link which means they can link back to their actual page, and it creates also a very transparent level of trust. So there's all of these benefits are begin to come from building buckets that make it easier than ever for people to be able to leave reviews. Jillian Leslie 26:39 Google is rewarding this. Google wants to know that Deepak does good work. Deepak Shukla 26:48 Absolutely, as I said, it's up to 10% now as a ranking factor in terms of percentages what Google favors like reviews I'm seeing. And I would, again, just point to the common sense experience that people have the reviews are too big to be ignored. There are, I don't know if they're billion dollar but TripAdvisor... Jillian Leslie 27:10 TripAdvisor, yes. Deepak Shukla 27:14 ...is built literally around reviews. Jillian Leslie 27:16 Yes. Deepak Shukla 27:17 It does. Jillian Leslie 27:18 And it's so funny you saying this because again, I live my life based on reviews. And I haven't really thought about it. I hadn't thought intentionally about managing my own reviews. Now, let's talk about this. Which is, I think what is cool about it is it does make you up your own game. It does make you believe in karma. Deepak Shukla 27:44 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 27:45 Which is I'm gonna put my best work out there because somebody could write something about me. Deepak Shukla 27:53 Absolutely. Absolutely. Then it just becomes a win-win always because it brings more value to the exchange because you know that you can not only deliver value but the other person can give value back via the review because a review, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this: document, don't create. It's his phrase and just building opportunities that make it easier than ever for any positive comment to be documented is so important. AppSumo ended up taking advice for me because they couldn't understand how I was able to... I've done a course launch basically. And what's interesting about my course launch was that I was able to generate about 23 video reviews, literally people on YouTube saying great stuff about the course before anyone had actually even finished the course. Jillian Leslie 28:47 Really? How to get testimonials before people have completed your course Deepak Shukla 28:48 Yes, you could go on to YouTube right now and type Deepak Shukla. Deepak Shukla testimonials, I think. I'm just searching now. Here's 23 videos up that are all in relation to a course. And what's really interesting about it, of course, is that none of them had yet finished the course. This is literally after two weeks of the course going live. And it's like a three month program. And they were like "How are you able to do that?" And I said that "Yes, if you search Deepak Shukla testimonials on YouTube, you'll find a bunch of the reviews as to that ranked top at the moment. And they're two of many. And again, the way that you do this is in effect is simple. It's what you see in the retail world all of the time, when did they upsell you the popcorn at the cinema, which they make far more money on this in the cinema ticket, when you just purchase a ticket, and you're really excited to go and watch the Avengers or Avatar or Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever it may be. So you need to hit your customers with the asked at the point at which they're the happiest. And everybody's the happiest when either one, they're gushing; two, actually gushing because they bought something and it's really excited. They're really excited. And then or after, when they come and reach out to you, as soon as people were like, "Hey, I've just bought the course, Deepak. I'm so pumped." I'd say immediately "That is amazing. Could you just record a video if it's okay? Please say why you bought the course in the first place, what was different about my marketing and what you felt made me trustworthy, given there's lots of so called gurus, out there, and people are really happy. But yeah, I'll absolutely do that. Because it's at the point of purchase that you go and tell everybody, "Hey, I've invested in the MiloTree pop up," or "Hey, I've just bought something from here." And that's when you want to move forward with the documentation process. Jillian Leslie 30:55 Okay, first of all, what is the course? Deepak Shukla 30:58 It's called Secrets of a Six Figure Lead Gen Consultant. It talks about how I built my agency using cold email and how you can. It really focuses around how to build an agency based around cold email, because that was how I built my SEO agency in the beginning. Day one, the problem that I had was that I couldn't rely initially on SEO for my initial means of revenue, to attract customers to my site to then sell them SEO. So I had to find different means. And it goes through ultimately, it's really about how to build a pipeline, how to build a continual flow of sales calls that you can get on where people are interested in working with you. Because in the service industry, the biggest problem that people have is that you have a great product of course, as we know, but how do we get people that are interested in potentially buying from you to talk to you. Example of how to get testimonials And Secrets of a Six-Figure Lead Gen Consultant really deals with that. The space of lead generation based upon someone who has no network, never wants to meet anybody, wants to work from home, you know, how was it he go about build a business. So that's what the course is about which is of course, a side note. Jillian Leslie 32:13 I know. But I'm curious only because, again, this comes so naturally to you. Okay, how about the idea? So let's go through a couple usecases. So we talked about a food blogger, let's say somebody who sells a product. Deepak Shukla 32:31 Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that in the space of e-commerce, let's say that you sell a teapot or let's say, you've got a teapot because you're British like me. So you drink tea. So therefore, you sell it, and you're British Indian like me. So that means that you're the big exporter of tea so you send it from India to the UK and now, you sell teapots. What a lovely business. It's great. So you're selling teapots online, of course, and you may be making let's just say 10 sales a day to people they haven't met. The question always is, as you know, how do you get reviews. So there's two ways to do this, I think. There's the first way which everybody kind of knows and works to a limited degree, which is some form of automation, which is okay, someone's just purchased, boom, hit them with an email saying, "Hey, what do you think about a product? Could you leave a review saying what you thought about" which can work. Certainly, if you're doing things at scale, then I think that there's a benefit to that. There's a second way that I think can turn customers into raving fans that will write gushing reviews that can even write blog posts about your product. And that's the way that I prefer, so the way that you do that, and again, remember we discussed about everybody favors the underdog. Why the people love Rocky, why? Absolutely, so in that instance, if you're a e-commerce business owner, deepaksteapots.com then deepaksteapots.com would have an intern because you probably do have an intern anyway because you're growing e-commerce business. If you've got an intern and I do have, for example, I have a virtual assistant called Lincoln. Lincoln works with me. You can look him up on PearlLemon.com. I think he's there, and Lincoln... Jillian Leslie 34:29 Where is he located? Deepak Shukla 34:30 Lincoln located in Kingston, Jamaica. I'm slowly employing his entire classroom which is quite interesting and brilliant. And Lincoln really just would see a transaction that goes through from jeremywillis.com, would look up jeremywillis.com online, find him probably on Facebook and reach out as you know an intern at PearlLemon or deepaksteapots.com and say, "Hey, Jeff, I hope you don't mind me reaching out. I noticed that you bought a teapot." And he's like, "Yeah, dude. Yeah." And basically creating this level of personal reach out and catching people when they're excited, and they won't work for everybody because you need to be able to find them on Facebook, need to find them. You can just email them also. But really, if you can send personalized messages, get a really crazy, enthusiastic response from somebody saying, "Dude, I'm so excited. I've just got my teapot. I'm about to get my teapot." You can then asked him the same thing saying, "Hey, that's brilliant. I would totally love, if it's okay, could you just record a video saying why you bought the teapot, what you thought about deepaksteapots.com, what was it that made you buy our teapot instead of other teapots." And they're yet to receive the teapot and just ordered it. They're super excited so a proportion of people but, "You know what, screw it. I will record a video about teapots," or, "I will leave a review online about teapots." Or and again, I'm reusing the same process, Jillian to support the SEO growth of my course. Because I'm beginning to get people to write case studies now, and to write reviews of the course, and then to link back to the course at the moment when they're happiest and then asking them if they do that favor for me. And by and large, people say yes. And when you position it as someone who's inside the business if you're an e-commerce store, just reaching out to Jeff saying, "Hey, what did you think? Sorry to reach out on Facebook. I apologize." But you've just bought a teapot from the company. So of course, you're going to accept it. "Oh, no. Hey, man, it's cool. It's really cool. This is released. This is really novel. I like it." "How can I help?" Or "I love your teapots." Jillian Leslie 36:44 Interesting. Is there a way to do a quid pro quo in terms of, like, does that seem smarmy and not as cool like, let's say, somebody buys your teapot. And guess what? He said he sells tea or he sells a different product or whatever, to say, "Hey, would you review this? And I'd love to take a look at your stuff." Or... Deepak Shukla 37:11 Absolutely. You know what? It really, so in my experience, I always go for building that further down the line of the value ladder. So that it depends upon the nature of the ask. So in my experience, if someone's like, bought your teapot, and they sell tea, first of all, you can say, "Hey, how's the teapot? Or is everything okay? Why did you buy the teapot?" They say, "It looks really good." I would, at that stage, maybe awesome to leave a review. And then later down the line asked about doing some level of higher exchange. Because you know what, a lot of this depends upon who you're asking. If you're asking me, Jillian, I could leave a review and five seconds, right? So we don't know how big the ask is. I would say, in my experience, that experimentation, once you've got direct dialogue with a customer, it's really easy. It's when you send emails off into the business, it's a problem that you don't know how it's received. So what this does, when you communicate with someone on a direct messaging platform where it feels more personal, you then immediately reframe the conversation. So what connecting with somebody on Facebook does, if it's someone internal and you're selling tea pots, and the other person sells tea, is it makes the conversation much more mano a mano instead of one business to another. Jillian Leslie 38:35 Yes. Deepak Shukla 38:36 And that is way more productive in terms of eeking out something productive. Jillian Leslie 38:40 Yes. I mean, I keep hearing this, which is anybody who leaves a comment on an Instagram post, you kind of have the right to strike up a conversation with them. Deepak Shukla 38:52 Absolutely. I mean, they're your fan, they've said it publicly in some way, or they're expressing their enthusiasm that they like you. Jillian Leslie 39:01 Right. Exactly, like those are, that's kind of like, that's your low hanging fruit. Are even people who are just commenting on your post, like, that's a way to build that relationship. Deepak Shukla 39:14 Absolutely. And then once you begin to build a process for that, what becomes really powerful is that then you can begin to audit, which are these people have a social media presence in their own right. If you have a SAS product, for example, like MiloTree, what we'll do. Jillian Leslie 39:29 Wait a minute. I just want to stop you. It sounds great in your accent. So you're saying, I have a SAS product. And in my accent, which means software as a service? Deepak Shukla 39:39 Yes. Jillian Leslie 39:40 Like a subscription? Okay, that sounds better the way you say it. Deepak Shukla 39:45 Oh, I don't know about that. But absolutely, if you have a SAS product like MiloTree, I would say that you're going to have some raving fans who just installed it or said "Just bought your product. I'm pumped." And all you need to do is number one, obviously build a process in place to say "Hey, that's awesome. Could you be so happy to leave a review, just explaining why you decided to buy the product?" And then that does not hold on anything unethical because you've been very clear about what you're asking for. You're not asking them to review the product, you're asking them to write a review for why they bought the product. That's number one. Number two, is that once they begin using the product, you check in and say "How's it going?" They're like, "Hey, yeah, loving it." And you're like, "Amazing. Could you now leave a second review on a different platform?" The first platform could be the WordPress plugin repository site. The second platform could be Capterra where you can look at a review so that would be the second thing. And then the third thing down the line is that, "Hey, you know what? This is out there. But we'd love to maybe give you three months of free." And if they have a blog, basically, you want them to write a case study. Jillian Leslie 41:00 Okay. How to ask someone to write a blog post review of your product Deepak Shukla 41:01 Or if they've recorded a video testimonial, you can probably put those. You can turn that into a transcript. And you could write the elements of a blog post in their behalf. To be honest with you, I've just asked people to say "Hey, how would you feel about writing a blog post?" And some people have said to me "Deepak, I don't even have a blog." And I'd say "How about you create a blog on wordpress.org and just write one up?" They're like, "You know what? I love your product for you, man. I'll do it. And they do. Jillian Leslie 41:27 Wow. Okay. Deepak Shukla 41:28 And I say look, just do it on wordpress.org. Just link back to the site. It's all good. I just care about you or even say, "Write the blog post and I will sort out the technical and just whip up a wordpress.org site very quickly just so they can post it for secretsofasixfigureleadgenconsultant.wordpress.org. And I don't see really many people doing this like really TEDx-ing how much goodwill that you get from people and how much people want to see you succeed if they think what you're doing is really valuable. Jillian Leslie 42:01 I love that. I love that. Weirdly, I feel like I am looking right now in the world for moments of kindness. I feel myself trying to be even more kind and giving because I feel like the world is in a tricky place. Deepak Shukla 42:20 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. That it is. Jillian Leslie 42:22 I noticed myself. I mean, this is like, but just even at the grocery store saying a little bit of a stronger "thank you", just validate for people that this world is a really lovely place. So you saying this somehow is triggering that kindness place like hoping that we all have the capacity for goodness. Deepak Shukla 42:46 Absolutely, absolutely. And everybody is listening that this all come from a place of me assuming and knowing that you're already delivering the value. So the value that you deliver is worthy of asking for review. And I'd say to anybody that believe in what you offer. If you don't believe in what you offer, then maybe you're offering the right thing because if once you know that what you're giving is value, then asking somebody that they can help you on your journey by writing a review by putting a blog post together by writing by recording a quick two minute video, which is easy as these days is absolutely okay, and also the ethical thing to do because it helps them as well. Have a link on your site to testimonials Jillian Leslie 43:31 Yeah, absolutely. Yes, in fact, absolutely, I love this. So do you recommend then on a blog like even on our MiloTree site to have like a link to testimonials? Deepak Shukla 43:47 Oh, 100%. You want to overwhelm people with social proof, you want to leave no kind of stone on uncovered. The number one, the company. So the company in this case would be MiloTree, for example. Jillian Leslie 44:14 Okay. Yeah. Deepak Shukla 44:14 The number two, they need to be convinced on the service or product. So the product in this case would be the pop ups that you guys offer. They need to be convinced "Oh, MiloTree is a company." They need to be convinced on the pop ups. They need to be convinced on the individual who's going to be delivering the product or the service, which in this case, might be whoever it is on customer support, or whoever is the account manager, or broadly speaking, the founders of the company. And those three spaces need to be in alignment. So those three spaces need to in order to get as many conversions as possible, because you can have two out of three, and you can still make a sale. People can be convinced on a product, people can be convinced on the company, and people don't really know who the founders are and they can still buy the product, but then you don't build what I call brand loyalty really. Jillian Leslie 45:04 Right. Deepak Shukla 45:06 Because you connect it more and more so, especially today to a person. So I would absolutely say that testimonials reviews give people kind of no room to question the excellency of what you deliver. And certainly I think that in terms of the conversions that we've made as a business, our social proof Pearl Lemon, that we built has been such an outlier that it's been incredibly helpful in... There's never ever been any issues with quality or trust or service or delivery. And this is me selling high ticket items where it's going from three to $5,000 a month and people that I've not met on the basis of one or two phone calls, and they're happy to just wire me money across and... Jillian Leslie 45:57 Wow. Deepak Shukla 45:57 ...what we need to think about in those instances is what can we do to leave no stone unturned? And this is where, as I said, Jillian, that a lot of people have typically one of those things out of alignment. The importance of building brand loyalty And if you're a brand that's faceless, then you have the issue of they're not really sold on the people behind the brand because it doesn't exist, and therefore, it becomes a little bit of comparing apples to apples meaning that MiloTree is no different from other pop ups. Jillian Leslie 46:28 Right. Deepak Shukla 46:29 But if I get Jillian with MiloTree... Jillian Leslie 46:32 Right. Deepak Shukla 46:33 ...no one else is Jillian. Jillian Leslie 46:34 Right. Well, two things that I, well, it's funny, I didn't do this from a strategic point of view. But I started the podcast because I'm super curious. And I thought, wow, if I have a podcast and I can interview people, I can help people by sharing like Deepak, your knowledge. And I can learn, and everybody can learn. And hopefully, people get to know me behind MiloTree, especially because again, like we built this for ourselves, it worked, and we're in the trenches also. That was really what I was trying to communicate. And then I also have my newsletter, where if you join MiloTree, I send you weekly nuggets. And again, it's so that you see that I'm in here struggling along with you. And that there's no, like, we're not some big company, we're just David and Jill trying to build something and help inspire others on their journey. Deepak Shukla 47:35 Absolutely. And your biggest unique assets are completely absent from your website, which is the crazy thing, right? Because there's not any pictures of you or David, which would be really endearing because "I want to support you, the little guys." And you said you have a cross fertilize. I can go from your podcast or to your blog to MiloTree, but I can't go from MiloTree to anywhere else. And it becomes, it looks and smells and feels a lot more like a big company. Jillian Leslie 48:08 I think that's what we were trying to do was for us to look bigger than we are. Deepak Shukla 48:20 Absolutely. Well, you're selling a product that's for $9 a month. Small businesses are going to be buying it and it's going to be composed of individuals. Jillian Leslie 48:32 Right. Deepak Shukla 48:32 Or what I do because I'm trying to sell, of course, a high ticket service that doesn't scale with any way that MiloTree does. It's important that for me to make sure I position myself and my agency as a company, of course, that we are, but with your audience, it's different from the audience that I sell to. And it could be that there's a little bit of a misalignment with what you offer versus who's buying it. Building a cohesive whole with your business Jillian Leslie 48:59 Yep. I see that. I see that. Yeah, I think that we're not putting that, again, that things are in buckets. I've talked about this previously on the podcast, and we need to kind of build more of a cohesive whole. Deepak Shukla 49:15 Well, the brilliant thing is that it's already, with all of that being said, the design and how it is presented is already excellent. And it's just little tweaks that we can apply to the company and we all do this right. We fall into what I call a little bit of a corporate mode, and we forget kind of where our roots are, and why people followed us in the first place. And I think that certainly the more that we see that and it's going to be relatively simple, I think the greater returns that you'll get because that's, of course, as everybody talks about, certainly in the blogging space, this is how you build your tribe. So let's give them the opportunity to become loyal to MiloTree. Jillian Leslie 49:58 Yes, yes. Yes. Oh, Deepak, honestly, I feel like this has been so valuable. And I hope as bloggers, entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs, you recognize, I am recognizing the value of people getting to know you and writing authentically about you. And I see so many ways that this is valuable. One being Google. Deepak Shukla 50:28 Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 50:31 Thinking your own life where like you won't go to a restaurant unless it has good reviews, or you won't buy on Amazon just thinking or go on that trip without looking at TripAdvisor. So you've got Google, but also, you've got that personal touch. Deepak Shukla 50:48 Yeah. Absolutely. Jillian Leslie 50:49 And I feel that people can go, Oh like, we've gotten some reviews, for example, where people have said, "Wow, Jillian and David were so helpful, because one thing that we try so hard is to provide really good customer service. And I've always discredited those testimonials." Deepak Shukla 51:08 Yeah. Jillian Leslie 51:08 Because I've weirdly thought it doesn't make us look corporate if they're talking about Jill and David being like, right there solving their problem, solving people's problems. Deepak Shukla 51:19 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jillian Leslie 51:20 And now I'm thinking "No, we want people to see that." Deepak Shukla 51:24 Absolutely. I think that you just look to the voyeuristic nature of what people love right now. Snapchat is probably the best example of it as a billion dollar company that's focused around, give us the snap literally... Show your personality in your blog or company Jillian Leslie 51:40 Totally. Deepak Shukla 51:41 ...of what you're up to at the moment or live streams, etc. So, I think that it's definitely a great opportunity, and it's going to be with people to offer so much value. And the beautiful thing here is your neurons are probably firing, and you're thinking of about 110 different things you got to activate. And I always wanted to be, I always want, I wanted to be stuff that you can just go out and do and that you get, and then it does carry a return and stuff. And I think that this is certainly where everything is going or if not, it's already gone. And the more that you can kind of personalize and show your quirks, the more that I think you'll get people that will just love you guys and stay with you. Jillian Leslie 52:26 Thank you. And again, though, for our audience, if you reach out to brands, and you want to sell yourself, get some testimonials that you can then send over so that you can increase your trust if you sell a product, get people talking about using your product. Or if people are loving your recipes, put those up. If you're a food blogger, and you're like, "Yeah, but I just monetize via ads." Deepak Shukla 52:56 Absolutely. Imagine being able to show Ben and Jerry's Jane's blog about food is the reason why I'm an addicted Ben and Jerry's customer, then you can get a review like that and sending that over to their marketing manager. How powerful is that and how different is that from anything else that verifies that you're smart with SEO? It demonstrates that you've got a real audience and it's just so different from anything else that it's much more likely to get responses. So if you can generate reviews at scale, and you can get your customers to insert the keywords of the products they bought, especially if you're an affiliate, that just creates endless leverage for the things that you can do with that. Jillian Leslie 53:37 And the one last piece, as women, my audience is predominantly women, get used to being uncomfortable in asking because I'm right there with you. And I am now going to after we get off this call, email that person back and ask if they would write just a two or three sentence something that I can then use. Deepak Shukla 53:58 Brilliant. I think that you absolutely should, and I hope that everyone listening does the same thing. Jillian Leslie 54:03 Yes, we'll do it together. So Deepak, thank you so much for for this. I feel like I have learned so much. I hope, as audience members, that you guys have a bunch of takeaways. And this makes me think to put a more personal touch on stuff. Deepak Shukla 54:22 Absolutely. I think that let's all remember that you can position yourself as professionally as you want to. But no one's fooling anybody. People will Google you before they're going to buy anything from you, or if they do buy and they haven't googled you, they're probably gonna have a bad retention rate because they don't care enough, and it was more of an impulse purchase. So give your audience reasons to love you. Jillian Leslie 54:46 I love that. Okay, so we're going to be back at some point where we talk about us like down in the in the nitty gritty, rolling up our sleeves and seeing what's working and what's not. So please come back and listen to our journey. Deepak Shukla 55:03 Absolutely. I'm excited. Jillian Leslie 55:06 Deepak, how can people find you? Deepak Shukla 55:09 Absolutely, guys. And why I'd say guys? Sorry, ladies, I apologize. Yeah, no my mistake. I am sorry. Ladies, if you listen, just check deepakshukla.com, head to deepakshukla.com. If you're interested in the course I spoke about earlier, there's a pop up that will appear at the top. If it doesn't, then find a way to message me online, on the site. There's a bunch of different ways, and I always do my best to respond to everything. So you can catch me there. Jillian Leslie 55:39 Alright. Wonderful. And spell your last name? Deepak Shukla 55:41 Yes, absolutely. So D E E P A K, first name. Last Name, Shukla, S H U K L A. If all of that fails, and you could just look up Deepak Shukla and spell it still incorrectly and write TEDx. I've got a TEDx talk that you could find that ranks. Okay, so you could go ahead and just wander over to that. Jillian Leslie 56:04 Oh, wonderful. Well, I look forward to going on this journey with you. Deepak Shukla 56:08 Ditto. Ditto. Jillian Leslie 56:09 I hope you liked this episode. And as Deepak said, our reputations really matter and that includes our social media reputations. If you want to grow engaged, active followers and subscribers. I invite you to go to milotree.com to sign up for our pop ups. You get your first 30 days free and see what we can do for you, and how you can really put your social media accounts on steroids.

Today my guest is Melissa Johnson from the blog, Best Friends for Frosting. Melissa has built one of the most beautiful and successful lifestyle blogs out there. In this conversation, we talk about the best ways to monetize and grow a lifestyle blog, what it's like working with your husband, how to experiment with selling products, and tips for working on sponsored posts with brands. Melissa has been at this a long time, and you can tell by all her wise advice! Listen now! Resources: The Blogger Genius on iTunes Best Friends for Frosting MiloTree Cupcakes & Cashmere Bando Best Friends for Frosting Pinterest Heartfelt Success Podcast Transcript: How To Monetize And Grow A Lifestyle Blog with Melissa Johnson Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jilian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello and welcome back to the show. Before we start, I have a very quick favor to ask. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Pause it for 10 seconds. Just press the subscribe button on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts. This will help get the podcast found, help it grow so that I can keep bringing you awesome guests. So let me tell you about today's episode. Today I am interviewing Melissa Johnson, and she is the creative force behind the blog Best Friends For Frosting. Melissa is an old timer like me, when I think about her blog, it is one of the most beautiful blogs. She creates incredible content, she is the ultimate creator. So without further ado, here is Melissa Johnson. Melissa, welcome to the show. Melissa Johnson 1:09 Hello. I'm so excited to be here. Jillian Leslie 1:12 So we have been kind of like friends, colleagues online, but we've never spoken, and it's so fun because it feels like I'm talking to an old friend. Melissa Johnson 1:24 Same here. I feel like it's been so long that we've emailed back and forth and we've been Facebook friends, and it's about time we have a call. So this is perfect. Jillian Leslie 1:32 Totally. I don't even know your story. Tell me how you started with Best Friends For Frosting. By the way. I've always loved that name. How your business your entrepreneurial journey has evolved since then. Starting the blog, Best Friends for Frosting Melissa Johnson 1:44 So I started Best Friends For Frosting, eight years ago, and it was initially a dessert blog but I learned that I was multi passionate. So about a year and a half into blogging I turned it into a lifestyle website where we cover everything under the sun whether it be entertaining, DIY, a little bit of fashion, recipes, interior design, all that fun stuff that I'm passionate about. The way that I see the blog is that it's all of my favorite things that I get really excited about on my little corner of the internet. So that's what I've done at Best Friends For Frosting over the years, and then also we've expanded into product lines. We have launched a Best Friends for Frosting Airbnb that was named after our Best Friends for Frosting Instagram hashtag, that has over 120,000 shares. Jillian Leslie 2:29 Wow. Okay, keep going. But we're going to have to come back and talk about that. Melissa Johnson 2:33 Sure okay. There's just a lot going on. It's been really fun. And I absolutely love blogging. So I feel like this podcast feels like a second home to me already. Jillian Leslie 2:43 Good. Okay. So have you always been creative? Melissa Johnson 2:46 I have ever since I was little. I love baking. I love doing little DIY projects. My mom would always take me to the craft store to get little pieces of confetti and stationary. So I have always been creative. Yes. Jillian Leslie 3:00 Okay. And so you are the quintessential lifestyle blog? Melissa Johnson 3:05 Yes. Jillian Leslie 3:09 You are the ultimate lifestyle blog. Melissa Johnson 3:11 Yes. The ultimate lifestyle blog. I guess you could say. I don't know big words like that. Jillian Leslie 3:18 But again, like it doesn't matter. Because look how creative you are. You have an Airbnb. Okay, so explain. Did you start because you're like, I want to be a blogger, or this is like my business. How did that work? Melissa Johnson 3:40 So my brother actually, he started blogging about, gosh, I want to say like, almost 15 years ago, he was like, an original blogger. I remember one day I was working a job that I was not passionate about. And he came to my parents house and he had a check for $30,000 from Sprite. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I always thought I was more entrepreneurial than my brother was, I feel kind of bad saying that. But growing up I did just because I was really organized. And my brother wasn't as organized as me. And I just always felt like I was driven. So it's like, oh, my gosh, if he can do it, I can do it, too. And so he really inspired me just seeing how he monetized. And so he taught my husband and I some things about blogging. And then I just figured out what I was passionate about. And then I ended up running with it. Working with your husband on a blog Jillian Leslie 4:25 That's amazing. Okay, and you work with your husband? Melissa Johnson 4:28 I do, we work full time together. It's our only revenue stream. Jillian Leslie 4:31 Wow. And did it start that way? Melissa Johnson 4:34 No, we did not start that way. So it was just myself actually. And I'll tell you what, my son was actually about six months old when I started blogging. And basically what happened was, at first, it was myself running a blog. And then I was working as a marketing director for senior in home care agency. And so I was working that job while blogging. About a year into blogging. I started monetizing. And so I was able to actually quit my job immediately from that monetization. And do that full time. My husband ended up quitting his job, I want to say about three years into it. It's all so blurry to me. But about three years in the blogging, he quit his job and came with me full time. So ever since then, it's been him and I on this. Jillian Leslie 5:14 Wow. And how do you split up what you do what he does? Melissa Johnson 5:18 So it's really cool. Because with him, and I, and we both have total separate zones of geniuses. So with him, he's very much a true blue artist. He does photography, he does recipe development. It's amazing. I really hit the jackpot with him. And so with myself, I'm really great at marketing, branding. Um, gosh, I mean, we're both good at a lot of different things. But we're able to split up equally what we're both individually good at and take those skill sets, and then blend them together and just kind of run with it. So it's been really fun. Jillian Leslie 5:55 I work with my husband, David, and he's the technologist and he built all of the software and all that stuff. And I would agree, which is we have very concrete domains. And I've heard this from other interviews I've done that sometimes when you work with your spouse, it can get kind of mucky if you don't have those delineations. And the people who seem the most successful are the ones that have these, you do this, I do this, we come together for this. And we kind of hand stuff off to each other. But like, I don't have to answer to you. And you don't have to answer to me. Melissa Johnson 6:33 Yes, it's so true. And its so funny you say that, because I feel like this is gonna sound horrible. I love my husband. But I feel like during our work hours, the least that we have to run into each other, the least smooth sailing, it's going to be. I'll tell you all of our fights that we have revolved around business and kids, because those are the things that we're super passionate about. Jillian Leslie 6:55 Yeah. And for us, I would say that people say that what is for you the biggest downside of working with your husband and I always say that, it's like, we can't, it's hard to turn off the business side and the parenting side, like, just to be the two of us goofy and funny. My husband is really funny, and he cracks me up all the time. And sometimes though, when we're like, in our work zone, we will be playful with each other. And it's a weird, I miss you, even though I work with you. Melissa Johnson 7:36 We're the same way too, because you're working. We're in the mode, we're in the zone, but outside, we have to have boundaries on that as well, where it's like, okay, like five o'clock and beyond we are not going to talk about business. We're focusing on the kids, we're focusing on our family weekends as well. We really try to adhere to our schedule Monday through Friday working. It's exciting too because our daughter, we have a two year old daughter, Claire, and she actually just started preschool a few months back. So I feel like she's been at home with us for the past couple of years. So it's really exciting for us where we feel like the newness is kind of coming back, we are able to dive in deeper into our business and focus on things that we weren't able to focus on months or even years ago. Monetizing a lifestyle blog Jillian Leslie 8:17 Okay. So when you start your blog, you start monetizing via traffic, via display ads. Melissa Johnson 8:23 Right. Jillian Leslie 8:23 And we both talked about how we were with the same ad network, Mode. And they went out of business and we both lost a ton of money. We'll just say that that was very painful. But I did feel really bonded to you. Because we're in this Facebook group talking about it. It was we were both talking just before we got on, how it made us both sick. I remember walking around with a stomach ache for like weeks. But it was horrible. Melissa Johnson 8:47 And honestly, I'm an open book about it. I have been very candid about the loss in interviews and different things. I think it is important for bloggers to realize to get their money up front versus waiting. Because I was very much trying to trust with our agency and so on. I just kept thinking, oh it's going to be fine. It's going to be in my Paypal. It's all good. And then yeah, I just remember like I was signed with them. They were the first company that allowed me to quit my day job. So I was so thankful for them. And I still a very thankful for the opportunity even though it's crummy, what happened. But yeah, it's crazy. Jillian Leslie 9:21 Yes. I think it taught us a very valuable lesson, which is, the internet is a crazy place and don't count your eggs. What is it? Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Melissa Johnson 9:35 Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Jillian Leslie 9:36 Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, if you're doing this full time you're doing this with your husband. It's a wild ride, huh? Embracing change as a blogger Melissa Johnson 9:45 It truly is. Jillian Leslie 9:46 You gotta hold on and just like be willing to embrace change, to embrace disappointment. And there are some really cool things about it. Melissa Johnson 9:57 Yeah, you said it so well. And I think, embracing the change in the disappointment. Everybody deals with that no matter what part or part of the journey they are in. For myself, even right now, I'm embracing a lot of change, a lot of different things on my journey. And just because right now, I'm really focusing on growing a podcast from the ground up, and you're probably, you probably can relate to that. I mean, especially with MiloTree, what you've been growing and working on, which is so cool. I mean, it's like, it's kind of like you have your business, but then you're starting new businesses and new adventures. Jillian Leslie 10:28 Absolutely. Okay. So let's talk about this. Okay. So you start your blog, you're monetizing via ads, and sponsored content. And then how did you start growing into products? How did you start growing into an Airbnb, all of that? Selling products as a blogger Melissa Johnson 10:44 So this year, we really tried to like beta test different products, because we haven't put a ton of money behind it. It's more of like brands have come to us and have paid us for releasing the line, that sort of thing. So we really wanted to beta test it behind other brands. So that way that we wouldn't lose a ton of money it into a product line, just to see how our audience reacts to the sales and all of those different things. So that was our game plan when we release the product line, which sold out. Jillian Leslie 11:12 Slow down. I need you to go step by step. Okay. So you decide you're going to make a product line product, right? Melissa Johnson 11:21 Yes. So we decided to make a product line. Jillian Leslie 11:24 Okay, what kind of products? Melissa Johnson 11:26 So for starters, we released a desk, a very stylish modern desk. We released the desk earlier this year. Jillian Leslie 12:00 I have to say, it's a little random. Melissa Johnson 12:04 It is random. But I mean, it isn't. Because interior design is one of our most popular category. I really wanted to test what sells would be like releasing an actual furniture product. Jillian Leslie 12:15 Okay, got it. Melissa Johnson 12:17 So we released the desk, but you sit and write out or work on your laptop out. And I'm actually sitting here as I'm talking to you. It sold out. Jillian Leslie 12:27 Wow. And you did this with another company. Melissa Johnson 12:30 We did. We had another company manufacturer it, ship it out, sell it. We took the product imagery, I worked in designing it. And that's how the whole thing came about. Jillian Leslie 12:38 Got it. And then was it like a rev share kind of thing where, you know, this is their manufacturing and shipping it and all that stuff. Like you get a cut of it. And they get a cut of it? Melissa Johnson 12:48 Correct. Jillian Leslie 12:49 Okay. Melissa Johnson 12:52 So that ended up performing really well. And then in addition to that, we also released a product line with a company called Readable. It's a female founded company. They're amazing. And they're just doing some really cool things. They did their first collaboration with Emily Schumann, of Cupcakes and Cashmere. And they also collaboration with Band-O. And so I'm the third one on board. And so we did a product line collaboration, which sold out to different rounds, I believe. Jillian Leslie 13:24 What kind of product? Melissa Johnson 13:26 So it's actually like, it's a box that you order. I know this is a little confusing, but it's a gift box that you ordered, put really fun things inside. And then on the inside of the box is personalization. You can upload your own custom photos. And a little message like Happy Birthday says, I love you, or whatever you want to write in the box. And so I designed the exterior of three different prints for the boxes. And they performed really well. It was really fun for me, I got to work hand in hand with their designer, oversee the entire design of each box. So it was just a really cool experience. Jillian Leslie 14:11 With you selling these products. Were you testing if people would buy from you? Melissa Johnson 14:22 That's exactly what we wanted to see how the sales generated. And it's tough when you're in the blogging industry, and you see your audience and the other side. It's hard to know, okay, what are they going to gravitate towards the most? What are they going to be most inclined to purchase? And so we just really wanted to test the market and see how that worked. Without totally breaking the bank. Jillian Leslie 14:41 Totally. Wow. And it's good. I mean, your stuff is selling. That's phenomenal. Okay, let's talk about social media. Your husband takes some beautiful photos. When I think of you, I think of beautiful photos. Melissa Johnson 15:02 That's really sweet of you to say yes, to me and then also we've collaborated with a couple other photographers in Sacramento over the years as well. And so now my husband's doing more of the photography. He updated his camera this year. And he's really been learning it and practicing it. So it's been really cool. How to drive traffic as a blogger Jillian Leslie 15:19 Okay, so talk to me then about how you drive traffic to your blog, and what social media platforms do you use? And what where have you connected the most with your audience? Melissa Johnson 15:32 Oh, that's a great question. Okay. So for in terms of social media, I would definitely say Instagram and Pinterest have been our most popular platforms in terms of building relationships, and really making Best Friends for Frosting turn into a brand. I know that they're so different but I'm such a visual person where I love that on Instagram, its so easy to be able to see things, and Pinterest it's so easy to see things. But when it comes to Facebook or Twitter, right, it's not as much of a visual thing. And so in terms of like, generating traffic, Pinterest is working on a case study for Best Friends for Frosting. It turns out that they have told us that we are one of their highest engaged accounts. Yeah, we actually we have 6.5 million monthly viewers on Pinterest and so that's been an awesome way to grow an extension of our brand, because our readership, people learn about us through Pinterest, Best Friends for Frosting from Pinterest, and then from there, will generate more site traffic, which makes makes us able to demand higher rates for sponsored blog post. We can also have a higher amount of traffic from our visitors from Pinterest. And then the other cool thing is that if people are feeling really inclined, they can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. So Pinterest has been a great, great part of our growth. Jillian Leslie 16:55 Right? And do you use MiloTree? Why the MiloTree Pinterest pop-up will grow your traffic Melissa Johnson 16:57 I do. And I love love, love, love MiloTree. Jillian Leslie 17:02 What are you growing with it? Melissa Johnson 17:04 So MiloTree right now I'm focusing on Pinterest, because one thing that I noticed on Pinterest for a hot minute there, was that followers weren't growing as rapidly in the earlier part of this year, because we weren't putting as much content. I just saw that those numbers weren't growing as fast as they previously were when we were pinning a lot more actively. And so I installed the MiloTree plugin and had a little pop up on my website. This is "Follow me on Pinterest." And I have literally grown thousands and thousands of new followers just by having that little pop up. Jillian Leslie 17:34 What I see probably working for you is if a lot of your traffic is coming from Pinterest to your site, and then your pop-up shows up and says, Follow me on Pinterest, they already know that you're an influencer on Pinterest. So they're more apt to then follow you. Melissa Johnson 17:51 Yes, that's so true. The other cool thing about having that plugin as well, is that people will come and find us on Pinterest. But maybe they just want to see the actual like posts. They're trying to find us from Pinterest, go to my blog. And today, like they haven't even had an opportunity to say like, Oh, I'm going to follow her on Pinterest because they're trying to find that direct content to my blog. And then that pop-up comes up. And it's like, oh, yeah, I need to follow Best Friends for Frosting on Pinterest Jillian Leslie 18:15 Right. I'm so glad it's working for you. I'm so happy. Melissa Johnson 18:21 Honestly, it's funny, because we download a lot of plugins. And a lot of times it's one of those things where we waste money. We buy a year subscription and it's like, oh, this sort of works, but we're not going to renew it. And MiloTree is one of those plugins that I like tell every blogger, like you have to download it, it's so helpful to grow your following, like whatever platform that you're trying to nurture and grow have that MiloTree pop up for. Jillian Leslie 18:43 And we want you to love it. And if you don't, we don't want you to pay for it. So we don't lock you in. I mean you can buy a year subscription but you can also just pay nine bucks a month, and we're super happy, and we we want to be part of your success. Melissa Johnson 18:59 That's what I'm so thankful for, recently we bought a recipe plugin. And they want a whole year up front. And I get a little commitment phobic, like I don't want to pay all that up front. What if I end up not loving it? And so my MiloTree it's cool because you can spend you know that $9 a month and you get these awesome newsletters with all the business tips that you send out, to which is cool. Jillian Leslie 19:19 Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I love doing that. Again. I love connecting. That's how we did this, was you read one of my emails. And you emailed me back and then I said, Come on my show. Melissa Johnson 19:36 That's awesome. Yeah, I'm so thankful to be here. This is so great to just be able to be on your official podcast. I've heard so many great things from other bloggers about this. Jillian Leslie 19:47 So now for Instagram. So Pinterest is driving traffic to you. Is Instagram driving traffic? Or what are you getting from Instagram. How to use Instagram as an influencer Melissa Johnson 19:56 So Instagram right now, we have our website like in the actual address bar on our Instagram page. But to be totally honest, I feel like Instagram is more of a place where it's kind of like its own animal. So it's housing all of its own content. Now it's doing video. Now it's doing stories. I'm even getting to a point where I'm posting my recipes. And I'm not even saying go back to my blog on my here's my recipe because now they're even trying to have like that Pinterest aspect where you're able to save your own content and create your own prints. And so I feel like they are trying to be their own animal and a lot of ways, right. And so I especially, because a large portion of our bread and butter is sponsored posts. I make sure to really nurture those relationships. And offer as much up front value without taking them outside the platform as possible, though, I'll tell you, I do have like anxiety moments where I'm like, I'm going to be kicking myself because Instagram, Facebook owns it. And we don't know what's going to happen because we don't own that platform. When it comes to our blogs. We own that, we own those platforms. And you can easily search for things that a search engine on your blog posts, like, and as a search option, you cannot do that on Instagram. I mean, it's kind of it's a very unique time for content creators. I have to say. Jillian Leslie 21:12 What do you mean by that? Melissa Johnson 21:13 Just, I mean, those spaces just constantly evolving and changing, and there's just a lot happening, Jillian Leslie 21:19 Right. Do you monetize more from sponsored content than traffic? Melissa Johnson 21:25 Oh, yes, we do. Sponsored content is our bread and butter, I would say for sure. We do monetize from or traffic too. But the largest portion of our monetization is from sponsored blog posts and social shares. Jillian Leslie 21:37 Got it. So are you constantly doing sponsored posts? Strategies for sponsored posts as a blogger Melissa Johnson 21:42 We are. We do quite a few a month. Gosh, I mean, anywhere ranging from like, three to ten per month. Jillian Leslie 21:51 Wow. Okay. And how do you think about it? Like, how do you think about managing your time, managing your process, so that you're not just constantly reinventing the wheel? Like, okay, we've got another recipe, like, how do you how do you do it so that you can get everything done? Melissa Johnson 22:13 It's tough. I mean, honestly, it's a never ending battle, because I feel like I'm always refining that process, and then eventually ends up not working for me, or something ends up just, I don't know, it's really tough. I feel like it's a never ending battle. But I am at a unique point where as much as I love blogging, I really want to generate multiple revenue streams. So I am focusing on how to fine tune Best Friends for Frosting to run like a well oiled machine, where I'm not having to be such hands on as I currently am. And so I have that mindset right now. It's an interesting time for us for sure. Jillian Leslie 22:52 We also now have two businesses, so that we're really trying to find a variety of income streams, and especially, you know, when Mode exploded in our face, like it did, you know, I think that that's further inspired us to, to really look at how we can make money in a variety of different ways. Melissa Johnson 23:13 Totally, I completely agree. I know, it was such a shocker. And that was a big eye opener, where it's like, you can't put all your eggs in one basket. And so now at this point, we're working with a lot of different agencies in terms of closing deals for sponsored posts. Jillian Leslie 23:27 That was my question. Are brands reaching out to you? Who is your favorite agency? Like, how do you get work with brands? Melissa Johnson 23:37 So in terms of getting work with different brands, and things the majority, a lot of them are coming to us directly, like Hey, we found you, and we'd love to work with you on this or that. And so then it becomes a negotiating process. And so, you know, sometimes they're not willing to pay our rates, and so it doesn't end up working out. And so it's just a case by case basis, for sure. But we do work directly with ad agencies, PR agencies, and then directly with companies, a lot of companies now. In the past, they used to get companies like ad agencies or PR agencies to house in facilitate their blog partnerships. But now companies are actually hiring dedicated people in their headquarters to handle those themselves. So I'm a little bit of everybody. Jillian Leslie 24:21 Okay. And then how does it work? Like, are you ever racing at the last minute to get the content created? That was always our thing, where I'd tell me husband, this weekend, we can't have any plans, because we have three posts, we have to work on. Melissa Johnson 24:41 Yes and it's hard. Yes, absolutely. We've been there, done that so many times. And it's hard, because, I mean, we've never been late, we always fully execute. But we have had times where we have to scramble at the last minute and so that's the hard part. I love what we do. But there is that side things where it's like, there's so many steps involved, you have to generate that organic content to keep your audience staying put, and loving what you're doing, then you have to pitch brands, create the content to support what you're doing. So there's just so many different steps when it comes to blogging, and not to mention all the social media growth and all that stuff. Jillian Leslie 25:19 Yeah, so how many new posts are you posting a week? Melissa Johnson 25:25 Only two. We're only doing two, we used to do about four to five, years ago. It's just kind of to the point where I thought, you know, quality over quantity, and it's just, I really want to, like produce things that I'm over the moon excited about that are meaningful to me, versus just scrambling together to drop a post. Jillian Leslie 25:41 Does that include sponsored content as well, like, that would be one of the two that you're releasing that week? Melissa Johnson 25:46 It does. Not every single week, but a lot of times it does. Jillian Leslie 25:50 Now, are you going back? This is the thing that we're doing. Are you going back and updating old content? Melissa Johnson 25:58 I should be. I'm doing it for SEO purposes. And I have it on my list. And I'm like, Okay, I gotta jump to that. But I'm at the season where I know I'm kind of touched on this earlier, but I tried the whole, getting an office, having employees, having a team, and then I just felt like I got to a point were just getting to the office was a pain in the, you know what, and then, micromanaging people, where managing employees was just so hard for me, because I'm type-A and I'm a perfectionist. And so I just had a point where I just realized, it's easier for Andy and I to do this together. So that's kind of where we've been this past year. But I'm now at a point where I feel like I'm running myself ragged in a lot of ways. I'm doing a lot of smaller tasks, whether it's like updating a social media platform, or I hate to say it like that. But I mean, when I'm updating Facebook or Instagram, I do have an intern update that for me, but I am on like Instagram and I myself and an intern manage the Pinterest being like, totally fully transparent. But it's hard because I'm trying to do everything and then it's like factoring in growth. I mean, the strategies are just getting tougher and tougher and tougher, right? Updating old blog posts as an SEO strategy Jillian Leslie 27:12 Yeah, they're getting more intricate and so here's what I would say. What we've done that has lightened our load is we used to post three original pieces of content a week and now we have gone to two and all we do with that third one is update a post. Melissa Johnson 27:30 Really? Are you saying that you update it and change the date? Jillian Leslie 27:35 Yes. Republish it, because Google doesn't care. They don't care that you did an evergreen post three years ago, if it's still relevant. And you can maybe make a new collage, update text, all this stuff. Google's happy if you publish it today. Melissa Johnson 27:56 That's awesome. That is really cool. I've heard other people talk about it. But I'd never heard it broken down that way. Where it completely makes sense. Jillian Leslie 28:03 Yes. I used to believe that you had to feed the Google machine with new content, new content. And then actually, it was at the AdThrive conference where the SEO guy was like, it doesn't matter in Google's eyes. And in Pinterest's eyes, if you update it. It's much easier, first of all, to update a post than it is to create a new post. All you need to do is like, right now I'm editing out photos, I realized that we had too many photos in a post or making a new hero image, or trying to really optimize the post for SEO. So I am putting more links at the bottom of a post. So let's say it's a Halloween post that we're updating, well then at the end now we'll say, "Hey, you know, do you want free Halloween party printables?" And then we'll do some links to our other posts. And literally, that's how we update the post Melissa Johnson 29:06 Yeah Google loves those links. Jillian Leslie 29:08 So good. So right. I'm trying to provide for Google, but really, I'm really trying to provide for somebody who wants to see, you know, let's say we do we have Halloween pretzels. And they're cute. And so at the bottom will say, hey, do you want Halloween free Halloween printables? Because, you know, you probably have printables at your party with pretzels. And it's been a really successful strategy. And it's taken a lot of the load off. Melissa Johnson 29:36 Oh, I can imagine. Jillian Leslie 29:37 So you could go to like, one piece of content a week and then take an old evergreen post and update it. Melissa Johnson 29:45 I might just need to do that. Jillian Leslie 29:49 I think that the emphasis used to be back in the day for us was like, we did four posts or five posts or seven posts. And now it's seems like the emphasis is on quality and updating your content. Somebody described it to me as a library, you have a library of content, and all you're doing is just making the books ar as good as they possibly can. Like, you don't even need more books. You just need high quality books. Melissa Johnson 30:20 Right. And that's what I've been learning more and more, even with blogging and building my business in general, is that it's quality over quantity. And simplifying is so important. So if you can take something in fact, it it's better like, just think about In and Out Burger. They could have so many things on their menu, right? They, keep it very simple. Because decision fatigue. Have you ever gone to a website where you're gonna buy something and you love something. But then you see six things that you love, and you can't make the choice and you end up saying to heck with it. And you leave. Jillian Leslie 30:48 I feel that way at Zappos. Shopping for shoes. I can go through 32 pages of shoes. Melissa Johnson 30:56 No way. No way. But if you go somewhere, like In and Out Burger, there's like four really good things that have been perfected, and somebody put their heart and soul into it and just made it the best. I feel like that's the way to go. Jillian Leslie 31:07 And by the way, that's our same philosophy with MiloTree, which is one ask per visit. So it's not, Oh, my God. And then we've got all these things that we need you to do. And you get like, totally overwhelmed as a visitor versus, Hey, follow me on Pinterest. Melissa Johnson 31:22 That's so smart. Yeah, and it's definitely working. Especially from my perspective, from the growth that we've seen on our Pinterest audience loving it. Jillian Leslie 31:30 I'm so glad. Okay, so tell me, what about your business are you most excited about right now? Melissa Johnson 31:41 Is that bad, that I have to think about that for a second? Jillian Leslie 31:43 No, because I know what your life is like. I relate. Melissa Johnson 31:51 You know, right now, I feel like I have five really good ideas in my head. And I'm having a really hard time saying and giving myself permission to say, this is where I'm going to start. And this is the one that I'm going to focus on. And so that's been tough for me. But I'll tell you what I learned during that process. And I'm going to get right back to your question kind of intertwined together. Blogger advice: the secret to getting ahead is getting started But I learned the secret to getting ahead is getting started. So, for example, Heartfelt Success Podcast, that's my, new podcasts that I launched, we feature celebrities and entrepreneurs. And we talk about things that can motivate or uplift you or offer value, whether it's social media tips, or growing your blog, or a challenge that you may have faced in your life, or motherhood or whatever it may be. It's a little bit of everything but I was so nervous and so scared to start that podcast. What I ended up doing was I just started sending out emails and getting guest on and recording and then you know, one thing led to another. We had to learn different things as we were going, but we ended up getting everything going. And so I learned, you know, the secret to getting ahead is getting started. But anyways, that's kind of where intertwines back. I am really excited about Heartfelt Success Podcast, we have some awesome guests lined up. So we've already been featured Laila Ali, and we have other guests in the pipelines that will be released soon. So it's been fun. But yeah, that's what I'm most excited about. Blogger advice: Start a podcast And I have four other things that I'm really excited about, but I just, I don't know which one to go on to next. So that was my whole answer. In a nutshell, I talk a lot, I blame it on being Italian. Jillian Leslie 33:28 I went to a podcasting conference. I love podcasts. I came home. And I said to my daughter, I'm going to start a podcast. And I think she was like, yeah right, mom. And so in a weird way, I wanted to show her that I was going to really do this. And so I just same thing, I just put one foot in front of the other. And I remember it's like saying, I'm really starting a podcast. And she was kind of like, whatever. And then I kept reminding myself that done is better than perfect. And so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to figure out how to do this. And then the literal boom, I have a podcast. And as I was saying to you, it's kind of messy. And I'm not the best editor. And, you know, sometimes, something will happen in the middle of it. And I go, Well, you know done is better than perfect. And so, I get it. And I'm excited for your podcast. Because I have to say, if you out there are thinking of starting a podcast, do it. It's, it's not expensive. I really fun. I find it really satisfying. Melissa Johnson 34:34 It is really fun. And yeah, that was the thing is that I thought it would be so hard. But honestly, like it's really easy to get things rolling and going. And the secret to getting ahead truly is getting started. I agree with Jillian, if you're thinking about starting a podcast, just go for it. There's so many resources and Facebook groups, and great ways to really learn and find out how to go about it. Jillian Leslie 34:54 Tell me if you agree with this, I think you find your voice. Melissa Johnson 34:59 Yes, it's true. It's true. I said yes. And like a really funny voice. I'm like, wait, but that's not my voice. I know what you're saying you find your voice, you find what you're passionate about. And what's really meaningful to you. Jillian Leslie 35:15 It's like a good way to learn about yourself, that's what I think. Melissa Johnson 35:19 I agree. Jillian Leslie 35:19 Okay, so how can people learn more about you reach out to you all of that? Melissa Johnson 35:25 So in terms of if you want to follow along, I am over on Instagram at Best Friends For Frosting. You can type in Best Friends For Frosting on Pinterest. The website is bestforfriendsfrosting.com We are just now building a website for Heartfelt Success Podcast, so we do have the website holding page up at heartfeltsuccess.com. And then if you go onto Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, just type in Heartfelt Success Podcast and then you can hear me talk unlimited again and we can keep in touch. Jillian Leslie 35:53 Awesome, okay. Well I have to say friend it is so nice having known you for so long, to actually get a chance to chat with you and have all these other people listen. Melissa Johnson 36:06 Yay! We're so overdue. I love that our first conversation was actually recorded, so we can go back to this one day and just laugh about it. Jillian Leslie 36:12 Oh Totally. Well, thank you for being on the show. Melissa Johnson 36:16 Thanks for having me, this is great Jillian Leslie 36:19 If you want to see why Melissa loves MiloTree so much. Head on over to MiloTree.com, set up your pop-up, put it on your site, and watch your Pinterest followers grow. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

This week my guest is Max Bonds from the blog, Tried and True Mom Jobs. With her blog. Max shows moms how to easily find lucrative jobs working from home, so they can stay home with their kids. We discuss a variety of online jobs available and how much they pay. We also talk about how Max started her own blog a year ago, and grew it to where it is today. If you are looking for interesting ways to make money online, or how to grow a blog quickly by solving a need, you'll definitely want to listen to this episode! Resources: Blogger Genius on iTunes Tried and True Mom Jobs MiloTree Boss Moms Facebook Group VIPKid Holly Johnson Earn Money Writing Glassdoor Michelle Schroeder MediaVine The Female Brain Ibotta MiloTree Affiliate Program Catch My Party SiteGround * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript: How to Easily Find Lucrative Jobs Working From Home with Max Bond Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:01 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Before we start, I just had to give a shout out to Paula Silva, who left me this comment on iTunes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:13 She said, "I love this podcast, listening to it opened my eyes to many different ideas. Jillian is amazing, curious and eager to learn more. She always brings guests with great experience and ready to share their knowledge." Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:28 So big shout out. Thank you, Paula, for leaving that comment. If you guys are liking the Blogger Genius, please head on over to iTunes and review it, write a review or just even rate it, I would love it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:42 Okay, today I've got a really cool episode. Today I am interviewing a woman named Max Bonds. She is the founder of a site called Tried and True Mom Jobs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:56 She wanted to leave her corporate job after having children. She didn't know how, she was looking for resources online. And when she couldn't find any she created this site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:05 In this blog she shares tips on how to find jobs for stay-at-home moms. What's cool in this episode is we get into how much moms are making working at home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:18 She's got some great tips. So without further ado, here is the episode. Max, welcome to the show. Max Bonds 1:26 Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:28 Alright, so I don't know anything about timelines. When did you start Tried and True Mom Jobs? And can you tell us how that how that happened? Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I know you were working in corporate and then you said, enough. A need to find a job while staying home with your kids Max Bonds 1:47 Right. So, it first came about because when I became pregnant with my second child, I knew that I want to stay home. I was already missing out on so much with my son who's already two years old. And I know new that I needed to stay home. Max Bonds 2:01 But I needed also a way to make money to help contribute financially because we were living on two incomes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:10 Got it. How long ago was this? How many years? Max Bonds 2:14 I launched the blog at the end of January of this year. 2018. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:18 No way. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, what's your job? Before this? Max Bonds 2:22 I was a marketing communications manager at a large manufacturer. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:26 Wow. Max Bonds 2:27 Yeah. So and my background is in marketing, and I enjoy what I did. But I would have enjoyed being home with my kids more. So I knew that corporate life was no longer for me after I had my kids. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:40 Right. So you said, Okay, I see these women, you know, moms making money online. I need to be doing that. Max Bonds 2:47 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:51 Tell me, how did you then come up with this idea? Max Bonds 2:55 Sure. So I was looking for ways to make money from home online. And I would see the articles about ideas that you can do to make money from home, but I didn't see how do I get started? Was it legitimate? Max Bonds 3:09 I want to see a success story from a mom, who was able to do this today and make money while raising kids. And most importantly, how much money were they making? Max Bonds 3:18 I didn't see that anywhere. There wasn't one website that I could go to, to find all this information. So I created one. Creating a blog to solve your own problem Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:29 I love it. Max Bonds 3:30 Yeah, thank you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:32 In your research, how did you think you would go about monetizing a blog and making an income? Max Bonds 3:43 To be honest, I had no idea. I recently created our website for our church. So I had a little bit experience doing that. And I just was looking for all this information. Max Bonds 3:56 And then it just occurred to me, since there's nothing out there, I might as well just create one. I didn't have any thoughts of how would I monetize it. How would I get traffic and even having a background in marketing, I didn't even think about how I would market it, I just kind of just did it. Max Bonds 4:13 So I did it. But I was lacking success stories for mom. So I had to reach out to moms who were actually working from home. So it was a lot involved in what I was doing. Max Bonds 4:28 But I just knew that I want to do this, because I knew how badly I needed this information, I was desperate to find a way to make money from home and raise my kids at the same time. And I knew that there are other moms out there. That wanted the same information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:40 Got it. So are you pregnant at this point, and starting this site and working your full time job? Max Bonds 4:46 Yes and I didn't even think of the blog idea for about maybe four or five months within my pregnancy. Because during that four to five months, I was just searching online for anything that I could do to make money from home. Max Bonds 5:01 I didn't even think about blogging, I was just looking for ways to make money. I just knew that I had to make some kind of money, but I didn't know what. Creating a resource for other stay-at-home moms Max Bonds 5:09 And since after searching for months and not finding any success stories from other moms, I just said, All right, it just occurred to me that I'm just going to create a website where I can find all this information in one spot, and just create a resource for moms like myself to go to for when we are looking for ways to make money from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:29 What I love about this is you had a problem and you built a business solving it. Max Bonds 5:36 Yeah, thank you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:37 You weren't going, what could I do? Like, what's an idea here? You know, again, always starting with the problem. Max Bonds 5:46 Yeah, exactly. And I never thought I would be a mommy blogger. So I don't know what I will blog about. Max Bonds 5:53 It's funny because I'm a marketing communications manager. But I'm not even a good writer. I have my mom review my articles before I post them because she's good at writing. Max Bonds 6:02 But that's the great thing about blogging, you don't have to be like the best writer out there when it comes to blogging, just kind of talk in conversation and give good information, it doesn't have to be perfect. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:14 Absolutely. I think the hardest thing about it is just starting. Max Bonds 6:20 Exactly, yes. I totally agree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:22 Okay, so you start to research this and tell me how you research, then how you were able to find content for your blog. And one last thing I want to say which is you are your avatar? Max Bonds 6:36 Yes. Correct. And so I kind of got lucky. Facebook groups have been just amazing. I feel like it's this underground world where every there's so much great information that so many people don't even know about. But I joined this Facebook group called Boss Moms. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:53 Okay, I've heard of that. I was on her podcast. Max Bonds 6:58 Oh, awesome. And I love the group, it's a group of supportive women helping one another out. Max Bonds 7:06 I was searching through the search tool just trying to find out I can't remember what search term I chose that I was looking up women who work from home or something like that. Max Bonds 7:19 I found a thread where someone had already asked if they could interview some stay-at-home moms who work and it was a popular thread, where there were boss moms giving their email addresses saying what they did, and that they would love to be featured in that article. Max Bonds 7:38 So I reached out to them as well. And I said I told them what I was doing I want to help other moms like them be able to find out what they did, how did they get started, and how much money they made and they were very transparent. Max Bonds 7:51 I was glad to see that they weren't holding back on which they made, because I know sometimes that's very personal they don't want to share that information, but they let me have it. Max Bonds 8:05 It was awesome because they helped me decide what I want to do. And I knew it would help others try and find their avenue trying to work from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:14 Okay, now you have to share how much are they making? How much money moms are making working from home Max Bonds 8:18 Okay, so I interviewed this one Etsy seller, I call her a pro Etsy seller. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:25 Okay. So she's selling on Etsy, is it product she's making or is it product she's finding in China? Max Bonds 8:32 It's products she makes herself, she used to be a graphic designer. And she makes $300,000 a year on Etsy with her husband. Her husband was able to quit his job and work full time with her as they raise a kid together. Max Bonds 8:48 So she gave me her full schedule her day to day schedule, and how she was able to do it, how she sells on Etsy she's able to promote her items. She gave me everything. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:00 What kind of items, I know she's making them. But what are they? Max Bonds 9:03 Yeah, they are like stamps, they are rubber stamps for weddings and different occasions and invitations I believe and that's what she does. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:17 Wow. Max Bonds 9:18 Yeah. So go figure. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:20 Wow, tell me more. Max Bonds 9:26 I found a mom, her name was Brittany Sutton. And she makes $1,700 dollars a month working only two hours a day for VIPkid. Max Bonds 9:36 And that's just, you know, for some people, that's just enough, just two hours a day, just teaching kids English in China. That's basically what they do for VIPkid. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:45 So VIPkid, so she's online teaching Chinese kids how to speak English. Max Bonds 9:51 Yes. And it is also great, because you don't have to worry about her kids. So, you know, in China, the time difference is right. So I think she works from like four in the morning to six in the morning. Max Bonds 10:07 And so she's able to do it when her kids are asleep to teach kids how to speak English. And she has enough time to take care of a kid and do whatever else she wants to do. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:15 Oh my god. Give me another example. Max Bonds 10:17 And then another one was an interior designer that I had the pleasure of interviewing. That makes I don't know exactly how much, but I do know that it's a six figure income. Max Bonds 10:28 And she just gave me the whole story on how she was able to do it. How she got started. And it's just a great interview. Max Bonds 10:36 And another one, there's a boss mom who makes over $200,000 freelance writing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:47 And how does she find her clients? Do you know? Max Bonds 10:51 Of course, she has a course. And she tells you all about it. But it's a free workshop to where she will show you about how to get started, and how to find clients, things like that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:02 And what is her name in case people want to know. Max Bonds 11:05 Holly Johnson. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:07 Great. We'll put that in the show notes. Any others that are interesting? Max Bonds 11:11 Um, you know, Corky, I'm sure you've heard of her. She's a virtual assistant, And she created a course to how to get become a virtual assistant in less than 30 days. Max Bonds 11:24 And there's also some jobs that companies that are hiring right now, virtual assists with minimal experience that I do list on my website as well. Max Bonds 11:36 And I also do make sure that all the companies that I put on my website, they have to have a four to five or higher rating on Glassdoor. Max Bonds 11:45 I don't want companies on there that don't have a good reputation. So I do make sure whatever I list is thoroughly research before I put anything on my website. I want to make sure that it's tried and true. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:58 Okay. So this is terrific. All right. So moms out there, if you're looking for ways to make money, definitely head to Max's site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:07 My question for you is, so you're doing this, right. So you start and you go, Well, I need to figure out how to make money online at home, and you start interviewing these women. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:18 At what point did you say, No, I'm not going to be let's say, tutoring kids in China or selling on Etsy, I'm going to work on my blog. Max Bonds 12:30 Right. So I'm interviewing these amazing women and I love what they're doing, but it's not what I want to do. Since it's not what I want to do, that doesn't mean anything. There are people who still want to do that there are other people who wanted to those things. Max Bonds 12:47 So I wanted to make sure that I was sharing this information, but I'm still kind of searching for what to do and researching all this stuff. Looking at other bloggers' income reports online Max Bonds 12:56 I keep seeing blogging, and I'm seeing these blogging income reports. And I'm seeing Michelle Schroeder makes $50,000 a month. And that was just a while ago. So I mean, she's making even more than that now. Max Bonds 13:09 And I'm thinking why can I do that? I mean, I know I have a marketing background, but I think anyone can do this. I think that blogging will work for you if you just are persistent and you are diligent about being focused on what you want to do. Max Bonds 13:25 And I believe that anyone can do this but you just have to really want to do it because there will be days where you just really want to give up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:32 Now here's a question. Are these bloggers, how are they monetizing? How is this woman getting to $50,000 a month. Is it through ads is it through affiliates is it through selling virtual courses? What do you find? Max Bonds 13:49 So I'm finding for myself she talked mainly about affiliate marketing. I don't know if she's doing more now than that. Max Bonds 13:56 But also Carly Gamble I believe is her last name, she makes a lot of her money through ads and when I saw that, that was what intrigued me. Like if I can just get people to my website and make money off of that alone that would be great. Learning about affiliate marketing as a blogger Max Bonds 14:10 On top of that, learning more and more about this blogging world I found out about affiliate marketing so that's kind of how I'm thinking that this blogging thing could work. Max Bonds 14:21 I also interviewed two bookkeepers who are stay at home moms, and one of the moms has nine kids, homeschools six, and she is still able to make money as a bookkeeper part time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:36 That's amazing. Max Bonds 14:37 Yes. So these are just amazing stories that I just can't believe that these women are able to do these things, and still bring money in and raise kids. Max Bonds 14:52 So she took a course. So it's a bookkeepers course, and the courses are quite expensive. It's $2,000, but these two moms, and there are other moms have taken the course. But I interviewed them specifically to see is this course really is something that a mom could do and actually be able to build a business after taking? And their answer was yes. Max Bonds 15:14 And they told me all about their journey taking the course and how they have succeeded after the course. And I became an affiliate for this course. Because I knew that it was tried and true. Max Bonds 15:27 And I just had one person sign up for the course, after reading the success story, from those moms, and that was $500. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:34 Wow. Max Bonds 15:35 Just from one person taking the course. And I did want to make sure that I'm not just trying to sell any old course. This is the actual course that people have taken and have become successful after taking and that's why I'm referring this information. So I'm able to give good information and still profit at the same time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:56 So you then right now, are you monetizing mostly via affiliates? Max Bonds 16:02 Affiliates and ads. I was able to join Mediavine, which is a higher paying at network. So after joining them, I was able to greatly increase my earnings through ads. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:18 Got it. And how are you driving traffic to your site? Driving traffic to your blog with Pinterest Max Bonds 16:24 So primarily, and shockingly, Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:28 Yes. Not shockingly. Max Bonds 16:31 You know, it was really a shock to me, because I always as a personal user, will go to Pinterest for home decor ideas or fashion, inspiration, or quotes. Max Bonds 16:44 I would never think that Pinterest was a way for the personal finance niche. I just, I would never go to Pinterest for those reasons. Max Bonds 16:51 But I'm finding out just because I don't, doesn't mean other people don't, it has been a great traffic source for me to talk about these success stories from these moms. And people really want to know, they want inspiration. Max Bonds 17:05 And they want to know, how do you make money from home, people really just want to know how. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:09 Well, especially I think there's a book that I highly recommend. I read it when I was pregnant. So 11 years ago, and it's called The Female Brain. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:19 And what it does is it goes through a woman's life, starting at birth, what happens for females, and there was this chapter about pregnancy and how your brain gets rewired when you're pregnant. How having children changes your life and your brain Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:33 And I kind of read it. And I was like, whatever. And then I had my daughter. And I was like, Oh, my God, my brain has changed. Like, I love this little person so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:44 And all the things that I valued before this, I don't value in the same way. And that's how we ended up starting Catch My Party. I was a writer in Hollywood, a working writer in Hollywood. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:59 And I just, I had my daughter and I said, You know what? Like, Hollywood's not as cool. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God and I turned to my husband. And I said, I just want to take our fate in our own hands. And I don't want to have to answer to anybody. And I just wanted to start a business with you. Max Bonds 18:21 Wow. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:21 And I felt braver. But in hindsight, I can't believe that I did this. But at the time, I felt like I had no choice. It was like, I have to do this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:36 So I get that struggle. You know, you're working in corporate America. So I wasn't even working in corporate America. But let's say you are, and you're just kind of grinding it out. But you know, you're getting promoted or whatever. And then all of a sudden, you have children and everything shifts. Max Bonds 18:52 Yeah, that's totally true. I didn't want to travel anymore. I wanted to be home, I want to come home to my kids. I didn't want to be out of town and not be with my kids anymore. Max Bonds 19:04 My aspirations in the corporate world were just no longer I didn't even care for those things anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:10 I remember I was nursing my baby, you know, still nursing her, so she was an infant, and I'm in a meeting a Paramount and you'll be like, Oh, my God, that's so cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:20 And it was cool. But it was cooler again, before I have my daughter. And I'm sitting in the meeting. And the way that meetings work in Hollywood is everybody kind of like, you kind of talk about chuffa in the beginning. What movies you've seen, what TV shows your liking, that kind of thing before you get down to work. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:38 And here I am my boobs are so filled with milk, and I'm going in my head. I'm going, you guys I don't care about this anymore. I have something. I have a more important job right now. Yeah, like, I'm a mom. I Lainey's mom. And I've got to get home to her. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:53 So I remember just going through the motions thinking, can we get this thing started, and afterwards, driving home and thinking I just need to be with my baby. And this was not me. This was not who I was. Max Bonds 20:07 Yes, yes. You change. Definitely. I can never be the same. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:11 Never. And, still to this day. So anyway, so I feel like I relate to this need that women have. It's almost like putting on a sweater that doesn't fit anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:25 And the desperate need for moms to take off this itchy, tight sweater and find something that works for them. Max Bonds 20:31 Yeah, I love it. Yes, that's it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:39 But yet women need money. And especially if you're a dual income family. You can't just, you know, have the luxury of saying, Well, I'm just going to stop working. Max Bonds 20:48 Right. Exactly. Right. And you still have to bring it and even if it's just $1,000 or I mean, I don't know someone situation. Everyone's situation is different. But just any type of extra income to help offset from costs will help anything really. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:05 Absolutely. I also think though, that like for me, I would not have been okay emotionally without a something outside of being a mom. Max Bonds 21:21 I was just about to say that. Yes, I totally agree. Max Bonds 21:26 It's important for us moms, and even as women to have some kind of creative outlet. Because we love our kids. But I mean, during that time, we do have time or at night at night or early in the morning. Max Bonds 21:39 We do have time to do something that we want to do for ourselves. And I think it's healthy as even a mom and a woman to be able to have something of our own. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:48 Absolutely. Because at a certain point, I could not sing "Wheels on the Bus" anymore. You know what I mean? I had to have something adult. Something that was was mine. And I still hate that song. Max Bonds 22:04 Yeah, and I had this "Baby Shark" song in my head all the time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:07 I know the Baby Shark song! I get it. I get it. So I agree. And again, for some women, it's enough to do the Baby Shark song and Wheels on the Bus. But for others, you know, we need to kind of find what works for us. Max Bonds 22:22 Yep. I totally agree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:24 Okay, so for you, then you're doing ads, you're doing affiliates. Any other way that you're making money? Max Bonds 22:30 I did do one sponsored posts. And it was my first time doing it. But it was like the easiest $250 I ever made. Doing sponsored posts as a blogger Max Bonds 22:39 And it was actually an article that was very relevant to my audience on how you can make money by doing laundry from home, go figure. Max Bonds 22:48 You can start your own business. I get it seems like as some people are working, and they have their busy lives. They don't have time to do laundry. So of course, they the market is out there for people who are looking for people to do their laundry for them. Max Bonds 23:03 So I'm that inspired laundry care is the business. And you can start your own business, doing laundry for others and make $500 a week actually. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:16 So it's like Uber for laundry. Max Bonds 23:18 Yeah, exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:19 That's so interesting. Yeah. And what would you say? Okay, so you did your sponsored post, you would like to be doing more I take it. Max Bonds 23:27 Yeah. So after they approached me and asked to do a sponsorship, a sponsored post, and I wrote the article after working with them and getting information. So it was relevant to my audience. So I'm definitely willing to do more sponsored posts for anything that's relevant to my audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:47 Got it. And what would you say is the most popular job, I don't know if you can tell on your end. But that moms, you know what articles they're reading on your site, or whatever. What is resonating in terms of Tried and True Mom Jobs? Max Bonds 24:04 So right now, what's going viral on Pinterest right now is the VIPkid job where Brittany works two hours a day, making $1700 a month. Max Bonds 24:20 And Nikki who makes $300,000 a year on Etsy. Those are the one of my two popular, most popular articles right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:34 And how is it going for you? So you haven't even been doing this a year? What a blogger can make in her first year blogging Max Bonds 24:39 Yeah, you know, it's, it's done very well, actually. And I'm probably making maybe about $1,000 a month now. And I started really promoting it in, I would say March on Pinterest. And that is my biggest traffic source. Max Bonds 25:01 I started heavily promoting it in March on Pinterest. And I've seen great success by joining MediaVine within three months of really promoting it on Pinterest, which I didn't have a lot. You have to get 25,000 sessions or more so in order to join MediaVine. Max Bonds 25:23 So in that short time, I was able to have some posts go viral about saving money, and work from home jobs, and it just kind of took off. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:34 Pretty amazing. Yeah. And then you also talk about budgeting on your site. Sharing budgeting tips as a personal finance blogger Max Bonds 25:40 Yes, I'm a very frugal person. That's just my nature. I don't want to spend money on anything that I don't have to. So I guess I have a lot of experiences of how to save money that others aren't doing, or they just don't really know about. So I share that on the side as well. Max Bonds 25:58 And that's kind of the how I want to educate a lot of moms on ways to make money, save and invest so they can become financially free. Max Bonds 26:09 And I really just want to get across that they can really have the best of both worlds. You can make money and still be able to stay home and raise your kids. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:18 Have you thought about doing couponing? Because those are big sites. Max Bonds 26:22 You know what? No, I have not. And I'm just starting to actually do some couponing by looking through the paper and things like that. So yes, I guess I am. Max Bonds 26:35 I love the Ibotta app, I think it's so it's so amazing. So easy. Just how you can just take pictures or take a picture of you receipt by downloading offers that you already buy anyway, and getting a little kickback for that. How to get more Pinterest followers with the MiloTree Pinterest pop-up Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:49 Right. Right. And then you also have a whole section on blogger tools. And I think you're a MiloTree affiliate. Max Bonds 26:58 Yes. Oh, I love MiloTree it has contributed to all of my followers on Pinterest. And I have over 3,000 followers on Pinterest now. Max Bonds 27:08 I think the first week I got over 100 followers after joining MiloTree, and I just always hear new bloggers. Well, I consider myself a new blogger. But people who are just starting out, how they don't know how to get followers. And that's the first thing I always tell people. MiloTree is definitely what you want, because Pinterest make so many changes. Max Bonds 27:30 Now, I don't even know how people get followers without a tool like MiloTree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:35 Right? It is tricky because Pinterest isn't really like the cult of personality that say Instagram is, where, oh, I want to follow that person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:48 On Pinterest. It's a little bit more of a disconnect. Like, I like these recipes. But it's not like I'm identifying that recipe with this person. Max Bonds 27:57 Exactly. You're only going to that article because of the of that pin you created. Max Bonds 28:06 So MiloTree is a great reminder to say, Hey, you like this content, follow me for more stuff like this. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:11 Exactly. The one thing that I am seeing more and more, especially as Pinterest has told us a little bit about their algorithm. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:21 Remember, Pinterest shows your pins to your followers first. So you want those followers to be really engaged followers. Because if your followers like those pins, then you will get broader reach with those pins. Pinterest then goes Oh, these are good will show these to more people. Max Bonds 28:40 Yes, and I attribute Pinterest followers even sometimes a little bit even more important than email subscribers. Max Bonds 28:46 Because like for example, if someone joins my email list, they'll never really know what I've put out there in the past because I'm not going to talk about old things I've talked about before. Max Bonds 28:58 But if they are my Pinterest followers, they're always going to see pins from my older blog posts that they may be interested in. And just stay up to date on everything that I've done and all my pins and that. Max Bonds 29:11 But my email followers will never get all that information. So I do think Pinterest followers are very important especially for the way I market my business Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:19 This is interesting and what are you doing then with email? Max Bonds 29:24 The way I'm using email right now is just keeping them updated so whenever I have new article about something, I'll share it with my email list, or if I find a new way to make money, or to save I'll share share with them so I just keep them updated on the blog and what articles we have going on. Creating a free course with affiliate links Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:41 Are you thinking of creating a course or creating products that you can sell? Max Bonds 29:48 You know I thought about that and I think what I do want to work on is creating a blog course on how to get started, because I've learned so much in such a short amount of time that and I've done pretty well and such short amount of time, that I want to create a free course for anyone. Max Bonds 30:05 Because I know when you're trying to start a blog, the last thing you want to do is spend money on something that you're not getting money from, so I definitely want to create something that's free. And if I profit off of it it would be through Affiliate Marketing. Max Bonds 30:18 So for example, if you got to create a website I would recommend SiteGround that's who I host my site through. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:27 I recommend them. We don't use SiteGround because we use Amazon Web Services because we have a big site with Catch My Party and stuff. But we love SiteGround we think are really great. Max Bonds 30:39 Yes, they are. And they're probably one of the most inexpensive hosts out there that has the great support. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:49 Definitely. Okay, sorry. So you were going to do a course or you're going to put together some resources that are free, but then monetize via affiliates. Correct? Max Bonds 31:02 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:03 You know what, I was just thinking of top of my head, you could so do a lead magnet, like a one page lead magnet to get people on your list that just says Here are the top five ways to make money as a mom blogger or is as a mom as a stay at home mom. Max Bonds 31:19 I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:21 You know, you can do all these kind of interesting things, like do somebody laundry or teach English to Chinese kids, or whatever it is just boom, down and dirty. Like here, go do this. You'll start making money right away. Max Bonds 31:35 I'm writing this down right now. I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:40 Because I think it is hard to, like you were saying, if you just want to jump in. How do you jump in? And where's the low hanging fruit? Max Bonds 31:54 Right, exactly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:56 Well, I think this is just so great. Do you have time to be putting together a course? Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:05 How does it work for you with two young kids? Where are you finding the time? How to manage your time as a mom blogger? Max Bonds 32:11 It took me some time to really figure out how to use my time management skills the best. Max Bonds 32:16 I finally feel like I've gotten into a rhythm where it works. So I can do two hours in the morning before my kids get up. My kids are great nappers. They nap around two to three hours. So that's another time that I work. Max Bonds 32:32 And then at nighttime, so my husband comes home, I devote some time to our family. And then after I put the kids to bed, and spend some time with my husband, then I'll open my laptop up, and then just work until I can't work anymore, and then have to fall asleep. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:47 So how many hours a week would you say you work on your business? Max Bonds 32:50 I would say 40. And it's possible because just early in the morning, two hours here, so two hours in the morning, two hours during that time, and then whatever I can do for the rest during the nighttime, I just work. Max Bonds 33:06 And then I also work the weekends the same kind of schedule. So the one thing while we're on your own businesses, if you don't run it, it won't run. Max Bonds 33:18 I just pretty much work as much as I can. When the kids are sleeping. I really pride myself in trying to be an intentional mom and being there and not being a mom that just gives them my phone or whatever, just so I can finish some work. Max Bonds 33:34 They are definitely my priority. And I just I make it work by just staying up late. And getting up in the morning and utilizing that time. Max Bonds 33:43 And one thing I do though, I will clean and cook and do everything I do when the kids are awake. And then that's when I just do everything that needs to do for the house as well. Max Bonds 33:53 So that's all the time that I had to do those things that I know a lot of moms do when the kids are asleep. But I just do it when they're awake because when they're asleep, that's my work time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:05 I get it. So if you had a piece of advice based on all of the research that you've done, and also starting your own business, so let's say I'm a mom, and I'm working in a bad corporate corporate job that doesn't fit me anymore. And I really want to be home with my kids. What piece of advice would you have for them? Max Bonds 34:26 Well, I would say check out Tried and True Mom Jobs! Max Bonds 34:29 But honestly, I would say that because every job is different for everyone. I know that I have a list of 20 ways that moms are making money from home. Max Bonds 34:37 But the only one that I'm really doing is blogging and affiliate marketing. Because it's just something that works for me and what works for me, that may not work for you. Max Bonds 34:47 So I would definitely check out the website and see how moms are able to do it, you can check out success stories and and see how they are able to do it while raising kids at the same time. Max Bonds 35:00 And just the job itself, I'm being a virtual assistant. That was definitely something that I was considering that I would have done had I not found blogging, because a virtual assistant can be so many things. Max Bonds 35:14 I actually have a list on there of 150 virtual assistant skills that you could have that you could service out to others. So I'll honestly just say to check out the website and see what it is that you think that you will want to do. Max Bonds 35:31 And then you can find out how to do it and that into start from there. And I'll continue into at ways that moms can make money from home, like I'm there. Max Bonds 35:42 I know that a lot of moms that are business coaches or life coaches that make money doing that. So I'm looking for someone that can review there. Max Bonds 35:51 I'm looking for a mom who's doing that today that I can interview and share with others to show how you can make money from home. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:05 Are you continuing to interview moms like, Is that still the bread and butter of your site? Max Bonds 36:10 Yes, it definitely is that and my saving money articles, I feel like that's what people are most interested in. How to get interviewed as a mom entrepreneur on the Tried and True Mom Jobs blog Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:23 Okay, so let's talk about how can people reach out to you and are you looking for people to interview. Max Bonds 36:29 Yes, I'm always looking for people to interview, especially if you have a success story. Max Bonds 36:35 So if you make money from home, I just want to hear from you. I want to know how you're doing it, and if I can share your story with other moms just like myself, and looking for ways to make money from home. Max Bonds 36:46 So my email address is Max@triedandtruemomjobs.com. Max Bonds 36:57 And Triedandtruemoms.com and I check my email daily several times a day so I'm definitely looking to hear from from you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:09 Oh, great. And they can find you on Pinterest and Instagram and all of those places? Max Bonds 37:13 Yes, and I just recently joined Twitter. I actually fell off on Twitter. I didn't realize that it was still a big thing for the personal finance niche. So I just created a profile that I'm going to start being more active in as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:30 Awesome. Well, honestly, Max, thank you so much for being on the show. Max Bonds 37:34 Thank you for having me. Join the MiloTree newsletter by signing up for a month free of MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:36 I don't know if you know this. But I if you're liking this podcast, I send out weekly emails and I'm sharing tips, tips on social media tips about email marketing tips about growing your business, but I also share tips, personal tips on how to manage your time tips on how I over apologize and what to do about that I really try to cover the gamut of being an online entrepreneur being a female entrepreneur. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:07 And if you want to get onto my list, the best way to do it is to sign up for MiloTree for one month free and you'll automatically be added and that way also you can take that those 30 days and see how MiloTree can work for your blog or your site by growing your social media followers on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and YouTube, and also grow your email list. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 If you have any questions always feel free to reach out to jillian@milotree.com I read everything. We're here to troubleshoot and really we're here to support you and help you grow your business. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

My guest this week is Jennifer Priest from the blog, Smart Fun DIY, and the social media marketing firm, Smart Creative Social. Jennifer shares awesome advice about how to get more Pinterest traffic by crushing the Pinterest algorithm. By putting yourself in Pinterest's shoes, you can understand what they're looking for, and how by giving it to them, you will grow your traffic. We talk about optimizing your overall Pinterest strategy, using hashtags on Pinterest, what Pinterest communities are all about, and so much more! If you are trying to grow your Pinterest traffic, this episode is a must-listen! Plus, Jennifer is one smart cookie! Resources: Smart Fun DIY Smart Creative Social MiloTree Catch My Party Sharer Brothers Social Media Examiner Smart Fun DIY Instagram Smart Creative Social Community MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Transcript: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:10 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I'm really excited to introduce my guest. Her name is Jennifer Priest. And she started 15 years ago in the online space as a DIY blogger. She has been doing that for this long, she's still doing it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 She has a digital marketing consulting firm. So we're going to talk about both of those sides of her business. So welcome to the show, Jennifer. Jennifer Priest 0:45 Thanks so much. I'm really glad to be here. Why going to conferences is good for bloggers Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:48 We are trying to figure out when we met, but we have been circling each other. We've been at a variety of conferences. We definitely met at Vid Summit last year. We both believe in conferences and like going to conferences. Jennifer Priest 1:04 Yeah, oh, my gosh, conferences are like one of my favorite, favorite things to do. Jennifer Priest 1:11 I think, you know, one of the things is we work from home alone. And so it's nice to go and see other people and interact. And it's nice to put a face to the name. I've heard of MiloTree for so many years, and to be able to then go and like meet you in person and talk to you. There's nothing that can replace that face to face connection. Jennifer Priest 1:31 Even if we're doing Facebook Lives, it's so different to actually interact with someone in person. So I love just the networking aspect of it. And then there's also the learning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I so agree, and it's funny. It's exactly what you just said. As soon as you meet somebody in real life. It is like that friendship is so solid. Jennifer Priest 1:55 Yeah, you feel like you're like absolutely friends. And you're like, we literally talked for five minutes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:00 But it's like, I would trust you with my child. Jennifer Priest 2:04 Yeah, I have a friend that we've actually been friends online for two years. And a couple years ago, or we were friends online for two years before we met in person. And a couple years ago, we planned this retreat, where like, six of us were bloggers and artists decided to go on this crazy trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it was really fun. Jennifer Priest 2:22 And we met in a restaurant, and then we're going to carpool from the airport the rest of the way, to the place where are camping, and I was like, this is the first time we've actually met in person. And she's like, no way. And I'm like, Yeah, because we've known each other online and through texting for two years. But, you know, that's one of the great things about doing conferences is you can meet these people in person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:44 Yes. I think it's kind of what you were talking about. We work alone at home. And there is something to meeting another online entrepreneur that you're, you have this feeling of like, I understand your world. Jennifer Priest 3:03 Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone in my town who does anything remotely like what I do. I'd probably have to drive an hour to find someone local, that would even understand. Jennifer Priest 3:14 My family, my husband and my kids get it. But like my extended family, they're just like, you do something on the internet. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:20 Right, right. So there is that sense of what it's like to sit at your computer in your pajamas, you know, working on something that needs to get done for tomorrow. Jennifer Priest 3:34 Yep. Yep. Or getting up at five in the morning. Because you're like my blog post due today. I didn't finish it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:41 Yes. I think there is that kindred spirit element to when you meet somebody in real life. And you can say, hey, let's talk SEO. And you both know exactly what that means. Jennifer Priest 3:55 That and I think too, when you meet in person, the guard comes down. So we were talking earlier that we had we had been to the Adthrive Conference together. And while we were there, a blogger that I have known online for years, I have seen her conferences, but we never really talked, we had a mutual friend. Jennifer Priest 4:11 And so the three of us, we went out kind of adventuring in Austin. And it was the most fun tim. We started talking about family and our lives, and I feel so connected to her. And it's like you, you can't replicate that. Jennifer Priest 4:26 It's the commonality that we have that kind of breaks down the barriers, and then the conference gives us that opportunity to get those deeper connections. That's not even about blogging anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:36 Right. It's why I say, I trust people, I would trust you with my child. You know, it's weird. And there is an intimacy to it. Jennifer Priest 4:47 Definitely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:48 Let's hear your story. Because I don't know it. Jennifer Priest 4:53 So it starts quite a long time ago. I've always been entrepreneurial, like when I was nine years old, I had my first craft fair, selling earrings. Jennifer Priest 5:03 I've always been crafty, always been entrepreneurial, always kind of a busybody. I used to organize the kids in the neighborhood to like, gather cans and bottles to recycle. And then we would amass the money together and go buy candy and stuff. I was always an organizing kind of person. Jennifer Priest 5:24 And so when I had my daughter, I started doing scrapbooking. And I got a mail order kit. And I got really into it. And I started teaching classes. And I joined a direct sales company. And the direct sales company kind of came at the time that I had just graduated from college, and two bachelor's degrees, and I could not find a job because the economy was really bad. Jennifer Priest 5:46 So I joined this direct selling company and I worked my way up the ranks. And within six months, I was like the number two consultant in California. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:53 Now wait, what is a direct selling company? Jennifer Priest 5:55 So it's like, Stampin' Up or Tupperware it's multi level marketing where you order from catalogs, you do parties in people's homes and that kind of thing. And so that was kind of my entry into it. Jennifer Priest 6:08 I started doing email marketing to promote that. So previous to that, my online experience was to get through college, I used to sell like my daughter's baby clothes. And I would go and buy things and sell them on eBay for a markup. Jennifer Priest 6:22 So we'd go to like estate sales or yard sales and find something really expensive, and buy it for a good price, and then resell it. And that's a lot of how I got through college was was doing my eBay business. Jennifer Priest 6:33 So then I was doing this online thing with email marketing, because I was like, I don't know how to build a website. And so I did. I built that online business with email. And I was teaching in scrapbook stores. Jennifer Priest 6:44 And meanwhile, I ended up getting a job working for the local county. And I was doing grant writing, a mix of grant writing and contract management. Jennifer Priest 6:55 Working with all of these different contractors who provided substance abuse services for the county. I ended up losing my job, they're very crooked. And the day that they fired me was when they're being investigated bya grand jury and I was turning over records and they're like, No, you're gone. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:11 Oooh interesting. Jennifer Priest 7:13 Yeah. Very shady. So I was devastated because I was going to school to get my masters. And I thought that I would work in government for a long time. Jennifer Priest 7:23 I tried to go to class because I was getting my masters. I tried to go to class my professors, like you're a mess, you need to go and so I went to the scrapbook store, because that's where my friends all hung out. And I had I had kind of taken a moratorium from teaching because I was commuting really, really far. Starting a blog through teaching scrapbooking Jennifer Priest 7:42 I go in the scrapbook store. And I'm like all teary eyed because I lost my job and wounded my pride and stuff. And they're like, good, you can now teach classes here more often. And I was like, seriously? Jennifer Priest 7:53 And so my husband, he end up getting a promotion the next week, and because I was making a lot of money doing what I was doing and, you know, his promotion didn't equal to what we were making before. But He's like, you know what, stay home, do your thing, go work this business, I know you're really passionate about it. Jennifer Priest 8:11 And so that's what started it all. And that was back in like 2005. So I started teaching at all these different scrapbook stores and still doing some different direct selling companies, and making kits and selling them and making things on eBay and selling them. And I had clients in like Japan, and they were just order stuff over and over and over. Jennifer Priest 8:36 And then as at this one store in 2007, that was a pretty big scrapbook store in Southern California. And telling people about my classes in my emails. And they were like, you know, we really would love to be able to share this stuff, can you put put it on a blog, share your classes on a blog, and then we can tell our friends. Or, why aren't you on Facebook? Jennifer Priest 9:00 I was a technophobe. And I was like, I don't need all that I don't need a cell phone. I didn't have a cell phone forever. I didn't have texting forever. But if I needed it for my business, I learned it. Jennifer Priest 9:12 And so I was like, Okay, I'm going to get on Facebook. And so my intention with Facebook from day one was a business thing. And my intention with the blog from day one was to promote my offline business, which was sell these craft kits. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Are those craft kits you were putting together, or was this these companies? Jennifer Priest 9:33 I was putting them together. So at that point, I had transitioned over to ordering the supplies wholesale, you know, going down to the garment district in LA and sourcing all these like, really unique things, making some of the supplies like die cutting paper and, and sewing little applications and stuff like that. Starting an Etsy shop as a craft blogger Jennifer Priest 9:51 And I would put these kits together in mass, and not only teach my classes with them, but then I would sell them on Etsy. And so in 2007 is when I learned about Etsy, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like eBay handmade. For me, that was my reference point. And so I also started promoting my Etsy business in my emails and on Facebook. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:14 And where are you collecting these emails? Jennifer Priest 10:17 I was using Constant Contact. So I had a paper notebook that people would fill out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:26 When you were teaching, you said, Here, give me your email address? Jennifer Priest 10:29 Yeah, I would have them fill out this paper notebook while I was teaching or like, if I did a booth at a craft fair, or scrapbook expo or whatever, I would have this little thing, you could sign up on my email list. And then I actually started making those and selling them to other people. And I would decorate it for their businesses. Jennifer Priest 10:48 And I would sell like the printable. I'd be like, oh, I'll make it custom for your business. I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Jennifer Priest 10:55 And so I had a paper book. And I remember this one time as using Constant Contact at that time, because they were the gold standard. So anytime Constant Contact was like, hey, do you actually have that this person signed up and, and they're like, we're getting a few spam reports. Jennifer Priest 11:09 And so I sent them photos of my book, the pages we used to have to do that. I mean, can you believe that we used to have to keep a paper record that they gave us their email address. Jennifer Priest 11:21 And so everything kind of evolved. In my circles, I started becoming the go-to person for blogging and social media advice, because I was using it for my business. Getting into social media management as a blogger Jennifer Priest 11:31 In 2009, I booked my first corporate client, and so somebody where I manage their social media and for their company, and posted the things and manage their design team, and just did all of that stuff in the craft industry. Jennifer Priest 11:46 And so from there, I've gained more and more knowledge because I'm learning it for my business anyway. Jennifer Priest 11:54 I gained more clients and then workin in social media on different client accounts, really eye opening to see like, how different things can be, you know, between a multimillion dollar company and my small little blog, but also to see the commonalities in there. Jennifer Priest 12:11 And the challenges that they still face, like money is not the answer to everything. And it's given me a lot of really interesting insights into how to work social media. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:23 What are the commonalities? Jennifer Priest 12:29 Yeah, so to break it down as far as the commonalities, that's like more than a podcast. But I think one of the things is the methodology that you have to use, and looking at things that's the same. Using analytics and creativity to grow a business online Jennifer Priest 12:46 So you kind of have to approach it from more of a scientific mindset, where you're looking at the evidence, looking at the data, really analyzing it doing, you know, some level of creativity, so you've got to have both sides of your brain working. Jennifer Priest 13:01 So you look at, you look at the data, and you're really good with analytics. But if you you can't think of creative ways to then get to your goal, you're not going to be successful. Jennifer Priest 13:13 So I do a lot of studying the numbers, looking at what the platform is telling us based on how does our content behave, what happens to it when we post something on Facebook? And then what happens after that point. Jennifer Priest 13:26 But also looking at stuff like the signals that they're saying in the news, what their press room says, what is on their blog, what is Pinterest posting on their engineering blog,on Medium that gives us signals as to where they're going, and how the algorithm is performing. Jennifer Priest 13:44 And then I can take that information and also be some of my experience and the trends and say, Okay, this kind of content is going to perform well. If we put the content out in this manner, based on all this evidence, I think it's going to perform well. Jennifer Priest 13:58 And so every piece of content that we put out on social is an experiment we're trying to see, like, okay, I've hit check on these boxes that I think are going to make it work now. Let's see how it performs, and then go back and reanalyze it. Jennifer Priest 14:14 And so it's this continuous process of analysis and testing, analysis and testing. And I think that's where a lot of people get in trouble. Wwe go to a conference, or we take a course, and we're like, awesome, this person gave me a checklist of all the stuff I gotta do. Rainbows and unicorns are going to shoot out of the sky, I go home, I put it in place, everything's amazing. Jennifer Priest 14:37 And then tomorrow, the algorithm changes. And that stuff doesn't work. Because those are tactics, those are steps, those are tasks. And we're not learning how to think about the platform. Think about the platform and the algorithms of the platforms you're using to promote your business Jennifer Priest 14:50 And so that's the major thing that I've learned through all of this is just thinking about the platform and realizing the algorithms are here to stay, because there's just a fire hose of information. And they have to be there in order to give us a good experience on the platform. Jennifer Priest 15:05 I mean, if I saw everything that my family members were posting on Facebook, I would just delete it, delete it, because it's just too much. And so the algorithms have to be there. So we got to accept that they're there. Jennifer Priest 15:18 But then the second thing is what are the algorithms there to do? They're studying our behavior, and then making rules that help them get the outcome that they want. So we can do the same thing. If we study the platform's behavior, we can make rules to get us the outcome we want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:38 I think that is so powerful. In fact, the thing that I always say is, so Pinterest is very valuable for Catch My Party. It drives a ton of traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:49 And I say, when Pinterest says something, I pay attention. If they tell me, okay, we don't want these long pins anymore. And this is like, they come out and they say, 600 by 900, it doesn't matter if I don't like that. I'm not going to second guess what they say. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:12 I'm not gonna go well, my long pins have worked so well. I know they're saying this, but I'm not gonna listen to it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be the first one listening to it. Jennifer Priest 16:23 Yeah, when you think of these companies, they don't do things flippantly. And there's this huge machine behind them that then it's almost like, I think of like, a big alligator. Like, they don't move that fast. They're kind of or a dinosaur moving so slow. And so everything they do is very deliberate. And there's meetings after meetings and focus groups. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:49 And testing. Testing everything. Jennifer Priest 16:54 Yeah. And they're not making those announcements, because they just decided we're going to make it hard for bloggers. But that is that is the thinking that is pervasive in many Facebook groups with bloggers, is this idea of the platforms are just out to get us. The platforms are not out to get us as bloggers Jennifer Priest 17:13 They don't care. They just that is not their purpose. Like every single platform that's out there. And I feel like Pinterest is so good about being transparent about this, they have a mission. Pinterest's mission is to help people discover new ideas and go out into the world and try them. And so that's at the heart of everything that they're doing. Jennifer Priest 17:33 So if they're saying that this needs to be a two to three ratio pin, we can go and say, Okay, why is it that they're saying that because 80% of their users are on mobile, and they look better on mobile? Jennifer Priest 17:45 Have you tried to look at a giraffe pin on mobile, you can't see it. And so if that is what they think is going to help them get back to their mission to help people discover new ideas. Awesome. I'm going to help people discover my new ideas on their phone. Jennifer Priest 18:04 And so I think that the thing is, kind of a little bit of a mindset shift in how we think about these platforms. They are not out to get us, they absolutely know they need content creators to be on there putting stuff on there, whether it's Facebook, or Pinterest, or YouTube or whatever, but they have a mission. Jennifer Priest 18:23 And so if we accept that, and we stopped fighting it, and just take the signals that they're giving us and and then adjust our strategy to those signals. Jennifer Priest 18:33 First, we can have an ever evolving strategy. So that saves us a lot of grief. But second, we're going to have more success, because we're not wasting time. Jennifer Priest 18:44 I hate to kind of sound like I'm on a soapbox, but we're not wasting time with stuff that doesn't make any sense. And that is somewhat a level of immature thinking in our business to think that a platform is going to care about a blogger, even a 5 million views a month blogger to say, I'm going to make this change and platform to make that blogger's life hard. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:03 Yes. And again, you have to think that these platforms need to monetize, these are businesses. So you have to put yourself in the mindset of Pinterest, or Facebook or Instagram, and they're trying to give the best experience they possibly can to their visitors. Jennifer Priest 19:24 And they're all still free. They're not charging us and people say well, it's just pay to play. There are always outliers, always people on the fringes that are all of a sudden they're going viral, because they're doing something that captures people's attention. They're doing something that works within the algorithm. How to work the algorithms to your advantage Jennifer Priest 19:46 And sometimes people don't have a plan. They just have some kind of magic touch. But really, a lot of the people have a plan. Like if you look at these guys, the Sharer Brothers they are two college brothers, they decided we're going to start a YouTube channel. Jennifer Priest 20:01 They're very methodical and how they did it. They started in January of 2017. By October of that year, they had over a million subscribers. You can totally work the system to your favor. And I think it takes a mindset shift of instead of seeing a difficulty, a roadblock, first looking at it as a challenge. But then looking at it as an opportunity. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:27 Absolutely Jennifer Priest 20:30 A differentiator. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:31 Would you say that Pinterest is where you focus your time or where you are the biggest expert? Jennifer Priest 20:39 So you know, one of the things that's been a challenge, I had this discussion with Michael Stelzer from Social Media Examiner. And this is something that I'm going to share the story because it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's also something that we need to think about in our businesses, especially as a lifestyle blogger. Jennifer Priest 20:58 You asked me what kind of blog I'm like I say, DIY, because I'm doing stuff. We're kind of all over the place, right? Where I do recipes, I, I fixed my house, I make crafts, it's hard to communicate. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:09 Do you have travel? Jennifer Priest 21:11 I travel, Disney, Mexican food, there's a lot of stuff in there, right? And so we're trying to be all things to all people. And so I was talking to Michael Stelzer because he was like, Hey, you've kind of been on my radar for a while, but I didn't understand what you do. Jennifer Priest 21:29 And that was such like a heartbreaking but also revealing moment, because you can't be all things to all people. And so I think for us, when we're talking to people about what we do, if we can communicate like one thing that we're really solid on and that could be like our entry point. Jennifer Priest 21:48 And so I say, I'm DIY craft because that's something I'm really solid on. And that's an entry point into my craft blog. But I have recipes on there, too. Jennifer Priest 21:59 And so as like the Pinterest thing, I'm really solid on Pinterest. I have a course on Pinterest that makes sense for people to understand and know. But it's not the only thing I do. Jennifer Priest 22:08 I have a YouTube channel. I've had virals on Instagram. This year, I doubled the size of an Instagram account within a couple months and hit well over the 10,000 mark with it. So I can do stuff on lots of social media platforms. But I needed something that made sense for people to understand that, okay, she gets Pinterest. That's something bloggers need. That's something that businesses need to get traffic. Every blogger needs a niche -- a point of entry Jennifer Priest 22:31 And so that's like my entry point. But it's not the only thing. And so something for any of us that are like lifestyle bloggers to think about is like, what is our entry point that we can get people in and then they can learn all this other stuff. Because if we just say, I can do everything at the beginning, there's nothing for people to attach to. And they don't understand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:51 I get that. When I was at Mom 2.0 this last year, I went to an Instagram talk and I forgot who was leading it but she said this that I thought was really powerful, which you'll relate to. She said "lifestyle" on Instagram is not a niche. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 On Instagram you want to niche down and just how you said you know, Pinterest is kind of your way in, like if you are lifestyle blogger, pick your lane and really dig deep in that lane. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:25 Maybe you do more food than travel, or you like food better than travel, or like travel better. Go so that somebody can see you and go oh, travel well then you can add some food and stuff, but you do want to in the world of the internet, it's so easy to get lost. And so do think where could I... where's my comfort place? Where is my sweet spot? Jennifer Priest 23:51 Yeah, and I think you know, the idea to of having this one branded Instagram I mean I'm up against this too, I have a Smart Fun DIYs Instagram it is slow is slow growing. And I know why that is. It's because you look at it,and you're like I don't know what this is about, and people in less than a fraction of a second are making that decision and assessment where I have other accounts that are niched way down, and those are growing crazy. Jennifer Priest 24:22 Like in the same time period of three months on Instagram, Smart Fun DIY, this summer grew 1000 followers, it has 29.1000 followers. So not a lot bigger thousand in the same time period, I grew a niche to count from 7000 to 13,000. Jennifer Priest 24:42 It's going to be more than Smart Fun DIY before the end of the year. And it's because people look at it, they get it they're either in or they're out. They don't have to think hard. Their lazy lizard brain is like, I get it, I want it, I don't want it. And then they're in or they're out. Create niche Instagram accounts for your other content as an influencer Jennifer Priest 25:00 There's nothing that says and this is something I'm experimenting with. And I know other bloggers have experimented with this too. There's nothing that says that you can't take that and create other niche accounts. Jennifer Priest 25:10 So if I am doing let's say, food crafts and Disney and I have three different niche accounts that in interact with my lifestyle branded account, and I'm putting that content out in multiple places. Now, again, this is more of an Instagram thing. But why can't you do that. Jennifer Priest 25:28 And if you think of Pinterest, we have boards for different sub topics, you could treat Instagram like your boards to and have different sub topics. Now you need to be maintaining those. So there's a question of scale. You can't do it on 84 topics. Jennifer Priest 25:44 But it's something to think about of how do I get people in the door and then I get them to follow my main account just like I'm using Pinterest to get people in the door. But I do all kinds of other stuff for companies. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:57 Right. And I would say for Catch My Party, guess what if you go to our Instagram account, we're going to show you beautiful dessert table after beautiful dessert table and and we have over 150,000 followers. But you like it or you don't. Jennifer Priest 26:14 It makes sense to people. They have to understand it. You know Walmart's confusing, it's big and huge. You don't know what they do. You go into Pier One. You're like decor. I got it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:24 Yes. And by the way, I get overwhelmed at Walmart. Jennifer Priest 26:28 Right, Costco, the same thing. It like hurts me a little bit. Like, I have to figure out how to get my cereal and my motor oil. Like it's too much. Jennifer Priest 26:38 I go to Target. And I only shop in one side of the store. I'm like, I'll shop in the grocery side for groceries. And then I'll make another trip to go get candles and notebooks and like, it'll probably be a different trip to get clothes. Because it's too much. Why the Pinterest pop-up from MiloTree can help you grow your Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:55 As a blogger myself, I know that there is a lot asked of us. And sometimes it's too much. If you're trying to grow your traffic, then you definitely need to grow your Pinterest followers. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:08 There's a direct connection to active, engaged Pinterest followers and growth in traffic. Because those are the people who are going to interact with your early pins and Pinterest is going to show it to a larger audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 If you have not tried MiloTree head on over because we will help you effortlessly grow your followers. In fact, if you have a friend who's using MiloTree asked them what they think. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:36 The best way we've grown, our business is through word of mouth. And also if you sign up, you get your first 30 days free. You get added to my newsletter. I send weekly emails, sharing actual tactical tips, but also some ways to think about your business and manage the different things that we struggle with as entrepreneurs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:02 So again, head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up, install it on your site. If you have any difficulty. Reach out to me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. And now back to the show. What are Pinterest communities and what are they for? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:16 So while we're talking about Pinterest. Right before we recorded, so this is October 5, when we're recording this. And two things I want to talk about with regards to Pinterest. One is hashtags and one is communities which have just launched on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:34 You have a Facebook group which I saw you talking in. And what is your Facebook group called? Jennifer Priest 28:42 It's called Smart Creative Social Community. So not very original name. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:48 Definitely join her Facebook group. Because I saw you in there. And you were talking about communities. And I was like, oh, and then you are going to be on the podcast. I was really psyched about that. So, definitely join the Facebook group. Secondly, let's talk about hashtags and communities. Jennifer Priest 29:11 Yeah, so you've got to date it. Because like everything we know about social media today is a snapshot in time, and it could change tomorrow. So that is the challenge, right? Jennifer Priest 29:23 So first, let's talk about communities. Communities are relatively new. They talked about them, Pinterest did like this kind of a town hall conference where they invited people up to their headquarters this summer and told them about all these things. And communities was one of those things. Jennifer Priest 29:42 And luckily for us that didn't get to go. There were people who went who came back and share that information like, Alisa Meredith and Kate Ahl. They shared a lot of that information, which is really nice. Jennifer Priest 29:53 And so communities was one of those things. So we knew it was coming. We knew it was in beta testing, you could email and ask Pinterest to start a community. So now they've turned it on, essentially. And so the gist of it is, it's like if a Facebook group where you can talk and chit chat had a baby with a group board on Pinterest, it will be community. Jennifer Priest 30:16 So you can stick pins in there. They don't want it to be self promotional. They don't want it to be like a group board where, you know, I feel like bloggers come in and they break things. Jennifer Priest 30:26 So it's like, Hey, we started this new, beautiful thing called a group board. You can collaborate and their intention is something like my group board called Dream House, where my husband and I and my daughter are putting stuff on there that were like, Oh, I like this. Jennifer Priest 30:41 And bloggers were like, Hey, we can game the system. We're going to put 800 bloggers on here. We're just going to slam it with all our stuff. And we're gonna get it like a ton of traffic. And so Pinterest was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we wanted this like, collaborative thing, like, what's going on here. Jennifer Priest 30:55 And not that bloggers are bad for breaking it, I think it's really good to push the boundaries of what something can do. Because Pinterest answer to that is, oh, we still want this mission, we still have this thing that we want to do, we need to put that in a different package. Jennifer Priest 31:11 And so they didn't take group boards away, which is nice. So they've got communities, and communities, they're like, we don't want self promotion, we want this to be a place where you can discuss things, where you can share things, where you can connect with one another over the Pinterest platform over those visual search results within the Pinterest platform. Jennifer Priest 31:29 And so if you think about it as something the way you're going to manage it should be a lot like a Facebook group. You need to nurture it, you need to curate the people that you're inviting to it, you need to go in there every day and check. Jennifer Priest 31:43 I started a community. I've been in there once in like three days. So I definitely need to make sure to make it a priority. Jennifer Priest 31:50 I wouldn't start a community just because you're like, I want to snag the name or I want to snag that topic. I wouldn't start a community for that reason. Jennifer Priest 31:59 I would start it because you genuinely want to be there, experiment with it, experience it and build this additional community, additional resource for your people where you're going to be connecting, because it's not about just dumping pins. It's more about let's talk about this thing, Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:17 So I started a MiloTree Mastermind Community, and I kind of don't know what to do with it. Jennifer Priest 32:23 Yeah, so you can start discussions in there, you can ask them questions, you can share information, you can pin posts, which is basically like a sticky note, you can sticky note the post so it stays at the top. So like, I made some guidelines for my community and, and put those at the top. Why you want to be a social media early adopter as a blogger Jennifer Priest 32:40 So yeah, you can put pins in there, etc. But it's still pretty unclear. It's still pretty new. And I I've heard some people being kind of skeptical of like, well, we don't know if they're going to still have communities, and there's glitches and I don't know if it's useful, so I'm not going to be on it. And I think that's fine if people want to do that. But I think they're missing the boat. Jennifer Priest 33:00 One of the great things about adopting something early on is that you learned early on. You learn and evolve with it over time. So it's the same thing as like kicking myself, because I did not start that YouTube channel back in like, 2010. And I started a couple years later, it was harder and trying to start a YouTube channel. Now, I don't know how anyone would do it, because it's so complicated Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:25 And crowded. Jennifer Priest 33:26 Yeah. And if you learn early on, you can navigate it. And as they add new buttons and new things, and you're learning it incrementally as it as it evolves, instead of it being this really complicated thing. Jennifer Priest 33:40 So the other thing is people that are skeptical, going, like, Oh, this is a dumb move, and they should have made more research. Like I said before, it's this big, slow animal. And Pinterest has a reputation for doing things really slow compared to all the other social platforms. Jennifer Priest 33:55 You know, Facebook's motto is like, let's break stuff. Like, that's literally their motto. And Pinterest is like, we want everyone have a good time. And so they're just going really slow and they're very like methodical, and really intentional with everything they do. Jennifer Priest 34:12 So if they think this is a good thing to do, it is worth paying attention to, because they didn't make that decision lightly. And it is an extremely expensive decision to make, it cost them a lot of money to do it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:28 What would you recommend for somebody like, let's say me, so I heard about it. I went on, I created my MiloTree Mastermind. I also have a MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group, anybody out there wants to join, please find it. And you know, and sign up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:46 And so what would you say, now? I've got now I go, Oh, God, headache. I now have to have two groups that I have to manage. So what would you say to somebody like me or somebody out there. When to start a Pinterest community as a blogger Jennifer Priest 34:58 I would not start a community until you are ready to put the time in to nurture and grow it. I would just go and be in other people's communities and talk to them because you don't want people to join your community and have it be a ghost town. That same with the Facebook group. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:13 Okay. So people don't join my Pinterest community until I'm ready. Jennifer Priest 35:21 Or get a couple people who are active in your current Facebook group. If you have a thriving Facebook group, ask a couple people who are active in there and say, Look, I've got this community, would you guys like to come over and kind of help me keep it going. Jennifer Priest 35:32 I don't have the time to be in there every day. But I would love for you guys to be like moderator types. And I don't know if that's a setting or if that's if that's something that would be coming, but but engage those other people to come over and help them bring their energy to your community. If it's something that you're like, I want to grow it. But literally, the holidays are coming up. I cannot do this. Jennifer Priest 35:55 So that it's there. But you know, and know that if it's there, and you're not using it that it may be I don't know, it may be removed, it may just sit there and die. But I think at a minimum joining other people's communities and being active in it is a good idea. Even if you're like, I'm not sure I need one. Go be familiar with it. And get active with it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:14 Yes. Get your feet wet. See what people are doing and copy best practices. Jennifer Priest 36:20 Yeah. And I mean, sometimes something someone else is doing will spark an idea for you. That's totally different, which is awesome. So go try that. Jennifer Priest 36:28 There's no, there's no real rules right now, other than the one thing that I would say to do is Pinterest has community guidelines, which has nothing to do with communities. It's the same word. These are guidelines for overall Pinterest. Rather, they want you to do things. Jennifer Priest 36:43 So just google Pinterest community guidelines, and they tell you what to do, what not to do to be authentic. Don't spam don't incentivize people to like, you know, artificially boost your numbers, blah, blah, blah. So read those. And they just kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you are doing things in your community to make sure that it fits in with what Pinterest wants on their platform as a whole. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:07 Got it. Great. I think that's all great advice. And we'll keep kind of checking in to see what happens if people have great ideas about their own communities. Please email me Jillian@MiloTree.com. I'd love to hear what you're doing. So that I can get Jennifer back on the podcast. And we can talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:27 Yeah, yeah, that would be really fun. And just kind of leads into the hashtag thing. How to add hashtags on Pinterest pins Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:32 Let's talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:33 Yeah, so last year, hashtags. Hashtags, just had their one year birthday on Pinterest. And recently, last year, Pinterest, turned on hashtags. And again, the naysayers were like, Oh, that's dumb, it doesn't work. No one's going to use those. Jennifer Priest 37:47 And again, it's like for them to be able to turn that on, they had to pay a lot of developers to do it, they had to do a lot of research. And it makes sense, if we look at hashtags overall. And I've kind of become somewhat of an expert on hashtags. I also have a course on hashtags. Jennifer Priest 38:03 It was just serendipity that I had this membership, where I provided research, hashtags, lists, hashtag lists to people last summer. And they were like, I was giving them these lists, and then realizing they don't know what to do with them. Jennifer Priest 38:18 So I was making a course and then Pinterest turned hashtags on. And so I had this captive audience that was like, hungry for hashtag info. And I was like, Okay, you guys, let's test it. And they were so awesome, because they all jumped in and started testing. And we found out a lot of really awesome stuff about hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 Now, first, when you were creating this course, and sending people list of hashtags, was it all for Instagram? Jennifer Priest 38:40 It was. The list of hashtags were Instagram focused. And then I realized people didn't know how to use hashtags. The basis of hashtags really, is it's a tool to index content yet, if you remember, back when we had books like encyclopedia you would have an index at the back end, then you would say, okay, the banana shows on page 17, 21 and 842. Jennifer Priest 39:06 And really, that's what hashtags are for. Hashtags are a way to index that content. So you put hashtag banana on something on a platform, you click the hashtag, and that thing shows up for people looking for that topic. Jennifer Priest 39:22 That functionality is the same everywhere, from Instagram, to Twitter, to YouTube, to everywhere, that has hash tags, and that's the thing, Pinterest turned hashtags on last year, LinkedIn turned hashtags on two years ago, YouTube very silently rolled out hashtag functionality, there is a reason that these platforms feel that they need to make content easier for people to find. Jennifer Priest 39:47 And so not just this move by Pinterest as a signal that, hey, they've invested a lot of time, money thinking, mental power, etc, to figure out if they should do this, but that all these platforms are doing it. Musically has hashtags now. Jennifer Priest 40:01 So there's all these apps and platforms that are that are putting hashtag functionality in place. So and Instagram was stories. I mean, it's just, it's just all over the place that we can use them. Jennifer Priest 40:13 So it was like, okay, Pinterest, how do we use hashtags on there, because it is different than how we use them on Instagram. And so my first thought, like, we're trying to do hashtag searches and stuff, and it wasn't chronological. Jennifer Priest 40:25 Now, hashtag searches on Pinterest are chronological, these still are missing things. So I would think of it a lot like in that way, a lot like Instagram, you search for the hashtags, you're not going to see everything in the results. That's for that hashtag. But you're going to see the vast majority of stuff show up chronologically in real time. Jennifer Priest 40:47 So that's the same as if you search the hashtag on Pinterest. But where it gets really interesting, and where I feel like the power of hashtags is, and I have a free guide on how to do this on my site, you just get to a right from the front page of site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:00 I'll add it in the show notes. Jennifer Priest 41:02 Yeah, so the real power is in keywords. So making hashtags out of your keywords, not thinking about, okay, I'm putting this hashtag on here, because somebody is literally going to type in hashtag cauliflower recipe. I'm putting this hashtag because I want my cauliflower recipe to show up in searches for cauliflower recipe, not as a hashtag. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:28 Wait, say that again. Jennifer Priest 41:29 Yeah, it's a little complicated. So if you take a keyword and turn it into a hashtag that is like an additional signal to Pinterest about the topic of your content. Jennifer Priest 41:43 So if I want my content to show up for searches for like buffalo cauliflower recipe, I'm going to put those keywords in the description. I'm going to put those in the title of the blog posts, etc. And also a new thing on Pinterest this month is you can edit the titles of your pins, so that it's different from the metadata on your site. Jennifer Priest 42:04 So I could split test different titles with different keywords. Like there's some cool stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:11 That's very cool, yes. Jennifer Priest 42:13 Yeah. So let's say that I'm giving all those signals to Pinterest what the content is about, but the hashtag seems to be like a jab, like a like a double whammy of, Hey, if you don't know that, this is about buffalo cauliflower. Here's hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag cauliflower recipe, like putting those hashtags on. There's like this extra punch that really make sure that Pinterest knows it's about that content. Jennifer Priest 42:41 So no one out there is searching for hashtag buffalo cauliflower recipe, they are searching for buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower recipe, easy cauliflower, vegetarian cauliflower recipe, they're searching for those things. Jennifer Priest 42:56 And so the hashtag is a way that that keyword, very specific the hashtag is a way to make sure that that content shows up in Pinterest, search for the keyword. And when you talk to normal people, like Pinterest says, and I've heard them say this at multiple conferences. They're like, use broad hashtags. Use keywords as hashtags on Pinterest for search Jennifer Priest 43:15 So in that case of the buffalo cauliflower, Pinterest would say use hashtag recipe, use hashtag cauliflower, which cauliflower is probably a little more specific than they would go, and that will get you if people are searching hashtags. And they're searching these very basic ones that'll get you in the chronological search for that. But if that recipe showed up in a search for #recipe alongside a blueberry pie, who knows what they're looking for. Jennifer Priest 43:45 So there's that. But there's also that every single non marketer, non online business person that I talked to, doesn't even know how to use hashtags. They think it's a joke that you say, like, hashtag funny or whatever. And they don't notice they're on Pinterest. And they're definitely not searching for them. They're searching for best sangria recipe. Jennifer Priest 44:11 So that's how we were doing hashtags back in the beginning. With my group is we were like, less hashtag keywords. Let's try different things. And we found that when you put the keyword as a hashtag, it shows up higher in the search. Jennifer Priest 44:25 Now, I don't have any numbers that say it shows up higher in the search other than evidence that's somewhat anecdotal. Like I put my keywords as hashtags on a sponsored blog post two weeks before Thanksgiving. And it was about Thanksgiving, so it should have bombed and it went viral. Jennifer Priest 44:47 There's those stories that we have for that, but there's nothing that I have that says, Like, if you put hashtags in your pin, it's going to show up 20% higher in the search. I don't have that kind of data, and my brain starts to hurt when I think about doing that. I'm more from the angle of try it, test it, refine it, test it again. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:09 So would you then recommend the broad hashtag, if I'm doing let's say buffalo cauliflower recipe? Would I do a hashtag of recipe like Pinterest says, would I do cauliflower? Would I do cauliflower recipe? Would I do buffalo cauliflower, hashtag buffalo cauliflower. Like, how would you parse it out? How to come up with the right hashtags on Pinterest Jennifer Priest 45:27 I would brainstorm and also search on Pinterest, all of those things. First, I look at the keywords and then I would brainstorm my hashtags. And so those will be usually be about 30 hashtags or so. Jennifer Priest 45:41 I only want to put like five or six on a post. I mean, if I'm being like, really aggressive, I'll put more but you want to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing. It's very easy to do. But there have been some indications from people whose accounts have been suspended. Jennifer Priest 45:57 Now Pinterest hasn't come out and made it a formal announcement about any of this, but there has been some indication that there was a level of keyword stuffing with hashtags and to where you know, it's like 30 hashtags of like cauliflower, buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower buffalo, they don't want that kind of thing. Jennifer Priest 46:15 I would take like the 30 that I have and then split them up and maybe sets of five, so I might have hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag recipe, hashtag vegetarian, hashtag Quito, as the hashtags on one post, and then the next post might be slightly different hashtags. Got it? Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:34 Yeah, that's smart. Jennifer Priest 46:35 So I'm still hitting all those hashtags. Yet, I'm not doing it in a spammy way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Yep. Yep. And again, think about it from Pinterest's point of view, which is they want the user experience to be good. They want those hashtags to help inform the searcher not annoy the searcher. Jennifer Priest 46:55 Yeah. And I mean, if we look at the hashtags, we are putting the hashtag to help people who are looking for that content. Discover it. Yeah, that is straight up all we're trying to do. What is a fresh pin strategy? Jennifer Priest 47:06 And so there's another strategy that I use, I call it my fresh pin strategy, okay. And so this is where I have more than one pin for post. That's how I'm able to take that block of 30, sometimes at 50 hashtags, and I am rearranging them and putting them on lots and lots and lots of different pins, and then putting them out over the course of time over the course of the year, usually, to see how they perform. Jennifer Priest 47:33 And I've been doing this strategy since February. And again, I say, pay attention to those signals that the platform tells you Pinterest engineering blog, well, it will make you go cross eyed, because you're like, Oh, my gosh, they're talking about UX and UI. And also, I don't know what all this stuff is. It gives you all these amazing signals about what the heck they are doing. Jennifer Priest 47:54 Back in February, they started talking about a new AI, artificial intelligence they were using to read images into read posts, and help Pinterest generate fresh content based on like, the other content you've looked at, etc. And so this topic of fresh has come up multiple times when I've seen Pinterest talking on Facebook Lives or at conferences, or in some of their announcements and documentation. Jennifer Priest 48:21 And I think it's coming from there was a while there on Pinterest, where you would go and your home feed would have the same pins and data over and over there were the same like most popular pins, but you're like, dude, I've already seen that cleaning hack like six times, your house is clean. Jennifer Priest 48:38 So yes, yeah, we were annoyed. And so I think this is a response to that. Because now when you go to your feed, it is different every single time. And vastly different. I'll be like, wait, I saw that pin I wanted to pick and I didn't pin it like, you know. And so it's like, it's vastly different. Jennifer Priest 48:56 And so how can we capitalize on that? Because we have the same old content four years ago, that still amazing good content? I've updated it. I've done all this stuff. How can I keep that going? Well, you need fresh content. So fresh is new. But fresh, could also be maybe new graphics, maybe new descriptions, maybe new hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:16 Are you then putting these new images in the post, or you separately uploading them? Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:21 Let's say you do a post on January 20. And then, like you've created some images, and you post one image, let's say in January, and then you wait two months, and then you're going to post another image. But is that image already living in the post? Are you adding it separately? Jennifer Priest 49:42 No. So what we're doing is we're taking what we think is going to be the best performer and we're putting that at the bottom of the post. And then we're putting the rest of the pins out through Tailwind or through Pinterest. And then through Tailwind, because there's a little bit of a strategy there. And then I'm putting them out at a different frequency. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:02 But you are uploading them directly to either Tailwind or Pinterest? Jennifer Priest 50:06 Yeah, yeah. And then we do split testing and paying attention to how is this performing because of something rises to the top, that will now become the image on my blog post, because of this one image is driving more traffic, I want other people pinning that too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:21 So you're going to put that at the bottom. Jennifer Priest 50:23 Yes, And I don't do this for like, every single post. I'm not watching 500 posts, and going Oh, ok. post 499, we got to change the pin. I'm just looking at the cream of the crop at the top. The 80/20 rule in blogger and life Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:33 Great. Yep, yep. And again, remember, like the 80/20 rule, which is this idea that you can chop up things in terms of it usually takes 20% of the effort to go 80% of the way. And then it takes the last 80% of the effort to do that last 20%. But it works in all these different scenarios. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:57 So most of your traffic, 80% of your traffic is coming from, say, 20% of your pins, or 20% of your blog posts. So you want to take the cream of the crop and you want to optimize the hell out of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:11 And you do not want to optimize the hell out of the stuff at the bottom. That's not really driving any traffic, because you're not getting any value from that. But you're getting a ton of value from the stuff at the top. Jennifer Priest 51:23 Well, and then you also can use those signals, right? So like, what content do people want from me, they're telling me and the same, not just on my blog, but I've a YouTube channel. They're like, Hey, lady, we don't want your recipes at all. Only 40 of us watched it. But if you put up a craft room tour, 10s of thousands of people will watch that right. And I don't want to listen to their signal. I'm still making recipe videos. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:48 Right? That's funny. That's funny. Okay, and why are you not listening to their signal? Jennifer Priest 51:55 Because sponsors want me to make recipes. So if they're gonna keep paying me money, and and you know what I've thought about taking those recipe videos, and slowly moving them over to a recipe only channel, which I have enough content that I could probably do that for a new video every week for two years, and not run out of anything. Jennifer Priest 52:15 And seeing if it performs better, because, again, niching it down, they don't understand what Smart Fun DIY is about on YouTube, because it's all over the place. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 It's so interesting, how much of your time are you splitting between Smart Fun, DIY, and then also your consulting/social media management company. Jennifer Priest 52:38 So I'm first Smart Fun DIY, if I have a sponsored post and probably spending like maybe 10 hours on the the blog a month. And if I don't have any sponsored posts that month, usually I do have one. But if I don't have any, I'm literally working on it, like three hours, maybe four hours. Jennifer Priest 52:59 I do have a VA, she does a lot of submission stuff. For me, really, what I'm focused on this year with that site isn't so much making new content, but really dialing in on my SEO and, you know, making those those fresh pins and making sure that the content, when they get from Pinterest to my site is valuable. And you know, there's meat to it, and that it's going to give them some good information. Jennifer Priest 53:23 So I have, you know, there's I'm always up for trying like crazy stuff. So there are some low quality posts on my site that, you know, I was trying something out and it's just is not a good experience for people when they get there. So I'm, I'm really working on fixing that stuff. Jennifer Priest 53:37 But Smart Fun DIY, literally is a part time gig compared to what I'm doing at Smart Creative Social. So I've got two courses there, and a membership. I have corporate clients where I do strategy for. Jennifer Priest 53:53 I do have one client I'm still doing management for, but that is a service I phased out. So I only do strategy consulting, because I'm not here enough to do management, you know, management, you need someone that's available 24/7 or has staff available 24/7, you know. Jennifer Priest 54:12 So they can email you on Friday, have a holiday weekend and be like, I need these 50 pins up now. And you can do it and I don't think that lifestyle was super fun. And I know people that like love it. It was super fun for the years that I did it. But I'm like I'm retiring from management. Jennifer Priest 54:28 Because I feel like I can't do that service well, and there's a lot of people who can, but what I do well, is strategy. And so I also have some coaching clients. I have group coaching and that kind of thing, that I do where it's not just social media. I mean, there's so much stuff that we know these interlocking pieces, and that's more what I do in those areas. Jennifer Priest 54:45 And that is more than 40 hours a week. Just because I really like it. I have a lot of fun. You know, I'll be on the phone with clients at night. Or, you know, especially if it's a coaching situation or doing group calls with my course people. And that part is super duper fun. So I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:07 So Jennifer, if people want to reach out to you see what you're doing. What is the best way to do that? Jennifer Priest 55:14 they can go to smartcreativesocial.com. And you can get to everything from there. Or hit me up on Instagram. If you go to Smart Fun DIY on Instagram. Let me say it slower. Smart fun. DIY on Instagram. You can message me anywhere if you find me on Facebook or anywhere you can message me and that Facebook group that you had talked about. I mean, I'm pretty easy to find. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:44 I love it. Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show. And I hope to run into you at a conference in 2019. Jennifer Priest 55:53 Yeah, definitely. And thank you so much for having me on. It's been so much fun. I totally love dishing about this stuff. Please rate The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:59 If you're enjoying The Blogger Genius Podcast, please do me a favor, head on over to iTunes and rate us or write us a review or both. I would so appreciate it. Okay. Until next week...

Today my guest is Kara Maria Ananda from KaraMariaAnanda.com. Kara is an expert in the healing and wellness space, and has built her successful online business creating health-related courses for women. Her first courses were all about natural health, but then when she saw other wellness professionals needing help building their own businesses, she moved into educating these budding online entrepreneurs. In this interview, we talk about Kara's journey from healer to teacher, and how she organically grew her business to help solve her customers' problems. I think you'll find Kara inspiring. She is continually looking to improve her life and her customers' lives, by adding lots of positive energy into the world. Resources: Kara Maria Ananda Catch My Party MiloTree Awesome Birth Teacher Training Women's Healing Arts Teacher Training Tailwind Simplero * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript -- How to Grow an Online Business in the Wellness Space with Kara Maria Ananda Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:11 Hello everybody. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Kara Maria Ananda. Now Kara is a women's healing arts educator. She is also a holistic business coach. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:28 What she wants to do is help women in the wellness space, get their message out. So welcome to the show, Kara. Kara Maria Ananda 0:29 Thank you so much, Jillian. I'm really excited to be here and talk with you today. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 Yeah, we were starting to talk offline and I'm like, No, no, let's wait wait. Both of us would start talking. I'd be like, Oh no, no, let's wait till we get on the show. You were talking just about your philosophy and all that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:56 So the way I found you was I was looking at our current customers who use MiloTree, and I saw your site and I thought, wow, I wanted to talk to you. Getting into the wellness space as a blogger Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:07 And I haven't interviewed that many people in the wellness space. So I thought this would be really interesting. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to be this online entrepreneur in this very specific space. Kara Maria Ananda 1:25 Oh, well, thanks so much. I've had a long journey in the wellness world and healing arts. I've always been passionate about natural healing. It's been a part of my life since I was younger and I found myself always gravitating towards that. Kara Maria Ananda 1:39 My very first job was actually at an integrative health clinic and massage therapy school when I was a teenager, and then later in life, I decided that I really wanted to focus on that professionally So I became a massage therapist. Kara Maria Ananda 1:54 Then I got really passionate about women's health and my practice as a massage therapist and evolved into really focusing on pregnancy and birth and women's cycles, and became a birth doula and a postpartum doula to childbirth educator. Kara Maria Ananda 2:11 I started teaching about women's health and for many years I had a private practice. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:15 And where are you located? Kara Maria Ananda 2:17 Oh, well, uh, currently. Kara Maria Ananda 2:19 So I'm actually located in Southern New Hampshire about 45 minutes from Boston, and I'm in my hometown right now where I grew up, but I actually spent 20 years living all over the West Coast. Kara Maria Ananda 2:32 I moved to Seattle, where I studied massage therapy and became a doula. I've lived in Oregon and California and Sedona, Arizona, and recently just last year, actually moved back to my hometown, which is really cool. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:47 Can you just briefly explain what a doula is for people who don't know? Kara Maria Ananda 2:51 Oh, yeah. A doula is a companion for somebody who is pregnant and going through birth and labor and postpartum. Kara Maria Ananda 2:59 They provide emotional support physical comfort measures like touch and massage, and heat packs and ice packs and all that kind of stuff, and but it's really somebody who supports women through through the childbearing process. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:15 I wish I could have had you. Kara Maria Ananda 3:19 It was so special, so I was really very involved in the doula world, and was attending a lot of births and was teaching doula workshops where I would travel. Kara Maria Ananda 3:33 What happened was, I was on call at the at the end of like doing all this for about 10 years in person. Kara Maria Ananda 3:39 What shifted me to working in an online business was that, I love all the doula work, but is really working one on one with people and I was on call 24 hours a day seven days a week. Kara Maria Ananda 3:52 I would then travel somewhere and then teach for multiple days, and was back on call and then some things happen in my life that really changed. Kara Maria Ananda 4:01 My mother passed away and I felt like I needed to shift, and I really just focused on how I could reach more people in more places, and be able to spend more time with my family. Creating an online business in the wellness space Kara Maria Ananda 4:11 So about 9 or 10 years ago, I really focused on the online business and so I started creating classes online to teach people about birth and women's health, and then that evolved into also business coaching and support and online business. Kara Maria Ananda 4:27 It's been really amazing. It allowed me to spend more time with my older son as he was growing up, and I've had two more children, but I'm able to be home with and homeschool. Kara Maria Ananda 4:36 I get to help support women to discover natural health, and become leaders and provide support in their own community all over the world from North America to Europe and Asia and the Middle East and South America. Kara Maria Ananda 4:52 It's been really satisfying for me to be able to feel like I'm making a bigger impact online, while also being able to have that freedom to actually spend more time with my own children. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:09 This audience is predominantly women and these are predominately moms. Although there are some, of course not moms, but what would you say to a female entrepreneur? Where do you think she needs the most support? Kara Maria Ananda 5:30 Oh, women, we need so much support, right? And especially if you're an entrepreneur and you're a mom, I get this question a lot. Kara Maria Ananda 5:37 People want to know how do I have this growing online business that I'm running, as well as being with my children and spending a lot of time with them and homeschooling. ADVICE: Setting clear boundaries as an online entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 5:49 Really, time management and being able to set really clear boundaries and ask for support when you need it. Like my husband. He supports me a lot and our business we really run it together, and homeschool our kids together. Kara Maria Ananda 6:02 So having that support is really key. And you know a lot of women that I know who are entrepreneurs, we need to ask for what we need and set time whether that's childcare or really prioritizing what we're doing. Kara Maria Ananda 6:19 Because it's not just the time that we spend with our children. That's important. But it's also the example that we're spending that we're showing them. Kara Maria Ananda 6:27 So spending time investing in our dreams and our passions and our hobbies and saying, this is important, you need to do something else, you need to find a quiet activity so I can do this. Kara Maria Ananda 6:36 It shows them and it demonstrates to them as they grow up that, investing time in their passions is important, too. So I think that there's a balance and we need to let go of guilt and having to do everything perfect and ask for what we need. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:54 I completely agree and I think that I've mentioned this previously on the show, which is I have a daughter and she has watched my husband and me running Catch My Party or our first business and MiloTree. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:10 And I like that we don't just go to an office and stuff happens. And then we come home and see her. She sees everything. Kara Maria Ananda 7:16 That's so great and what a fun business for her to grow up watching too, parties. I bet she has some opinions and ideas. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:23 Oh my gosh, yes. Very much so. Kara Maria Ananda 7:28 Educational too, you're teaching about how to be an entrepreneur. A lot of kids aren't learning this in the school system today. And I think it's one of the most important skills for children to learn to. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:38 Yeah, so my husband and I are talking business all the time and, and we only have one child, so she's there listening. And she created her first business, which is back like a year and a half ago, when fidget spinners were a big deal. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:52 My husband is a 3D printer guy. So he printed her 3D printed fidget spinner and she's like, Oh my god, I want to do this and sell them to my friends at school. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:05 So they figured out how to personalize them with somebody initials. And then she started a business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:12 What was so funny was, they were kind of outlawed at school. So it was almost as if there were like these drug dealing transactions going on. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:20 I've watched her kind of open her backpack up and like, take out the spinner. And then somebody would handle this wad of cash and she shoved in her backpack and she'd come home with all these singles and she'd be like, counting her money. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:36 And it was so funny, but I think because she has grown up with us as entrepreneurs. She's gonna be one. Kara Maria Ananda 8:43 Yeah, absolutely. You know, my oldest son, he just started college this year as a freshman. I have an 18 year ol,d a seven year old, and a two year old so they're pretty spread out. Kara Maria Ananda 8:57 But the the oldest one, he actually got really involved in entrepreneurship too, he did some programs during high school in the summers and entrepreneurship, but before that he got involved in it in junior high. Kara Maria Ananda 9:09 He figured out that on the way to school, he could stop off at the corner store and buy candy, and then he would buy the candy bars. He didn't eat them because we weren't really into candy. Kara Maria Ananda 9:20 I mean, he probably ate a few, but but he wasn't bringing them home and eating them. He would buy them and the take them to school and sell them for double what he bought them at the corner store. Kara Maria Ananda 9:29 He did this all on his own. I found out about it after it been going on for a while. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:35 Were you proud? Kara Maria Ananda 9:37 I am. I am kind of proud. Yeah. And then he ended up, as he was older in high school, he actually got a wagon and he would take it and park in the summertime and sell sodas to people in the park during the heat waves and yeah, entrepreneurial spirit. Kara Maria Ananda 9:51 I feel like I have more faith in him as he's growing up. I'm like, okay, he has the ability to like figure out strategies and solutions for things. Kara Maria Ananda 10:01 And I think that's one of the most important skills that that kids can have as they're becoming adults, actually, in a world that's changing so rapidly. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:08 Yes, yes, I totally agree. Okay, so let's talk about your journey. So you decided that you were going to move your business online and you created your first course? Creating your first course as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 10:19 Yes, I created my first course before I totally decided to go online. It was kind of like a little test. Kara Maria Ananda 10:25 I created a childbirth education class for parents. I didn't even really promote it. I just kind of tried it out to kind of feel around with the online space and had a few customers and it inspired me. Kara Maria Ananda 10:35 And then I realized, you know, after thinking about it, that I really wanted to shift and I wanted to reach more people. And that online was really a way the way to do it. Kara Maria Ananda 10:46 So then I really jumped in, really focused on the online business. And I created the what's now the "Awesome Birth Teacher Training" and started teaching, reaching out and educating childbirth teachers around the world. And it was so inspiring. Kara Maria Ananda 11:02 And so that developed. Then the next was the "Women's Healing Arts Teacher Training," which covers all the different cycles of a woman's life from menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause, and sexuality and different natural healing arts that we can use for empower self care during all these cycles. Kara Maria Ananda 11:20 And then after that, I realized that some of my students were amazing, and were had taken both of these trainings, and I knew that they had other certifications and other trainings. Kara Maria Ananda 11:31 But I was still seeing them struggling to actually get their business out in the world, and start teaching workshops or doing consultations and creating a website. Kara Maria Ananda 11:40 So then I created the "Healing Arts Business Academy" to support women's wellness leaders to create online businesses and products and services and find confidence to share and publish online. Kara Maria Ananda 11:54 And then that's grown into a variety of courses now, for all about women's leadership, and holistic wellness, and how to create online courses. Kara Maria Ananda 12:04 And I do a lot of private mentoring also, with women in the wellness field, who are coaches and midwives and doctors and massage therapists who want to expand their online presence and share their message in a bigger way. Building an organic online business by listening to your customers Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:19 What I think is so interesting about what you said just now, is that you started with something and then you started to listen and see problems that you could solve and that it sounds like it was like organic growth. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:36 Like, "Oh, I see that these women are taking my courses, but then they don't know how to start to build businesses, I will help them." Kara Maria Ananda 12:43 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:44 So it sounds as if it was this natural progression. Kara Maria Ananda 12:48 Yeah, it's very organic. Sometimes people look at me, and they're like, well, you do all these things, and how do you do all these things all at once, but I did them one at a time. And they've built up and it's been very organic. Kara Maria Ananda 13:01 I'm very passionate about what I do, and helping the people that I work with. Kara Maria Ananda 13:05 So for me, I have to feel really passionate about something. So I listened to my intuition and what I'm writing about to people, what I'm talking to people about in my coaching sessions. Kara Maria Ananda 13:15 And then these subjects that are the passionate kind of hot topics of the day, that's what tends to evolve into the next offering, the next course, the next sale. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:25 So just basics, what kind of platform are you using to build your courses? Kara Maria Ananda 13:33 I use Simplero, it's a great, very simple all in one holistic business management system that's really specifically designed for people that are creating online course businesses. Kara Maria Ananda 13:45 And I've been using Simplero for the past five years. I love it. So that's the heart of my business. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:50 I've never heard of it. Kara Maria Ananda 13:50 Yeah, it's smaller. It's not as popular as or well known, because it's a smaller company. But they've been around and naturally growing. Kara Maria Ananda 13:59 I connected with the CEO of the company about five years ago, through an entrepreneur group. And as he was starting the company, and I was like, this is a perfect fit. Kara Maria Ananda 14:09 He was a holistic coach that wanted to create a platform for other holistic coaches to be able to share their their courses online who are really focused on this. Kara Maria Ananda 14:18 And it's has a lot more than just online courses. So I actually run my shopping cart and my email list. And email automation, and you can do deadlines. And you can do landing pages. You can even do a whole website, although my website is on squarespace. com. But Simplero is really the heart of my business. Kara Maria Ananda 14:38 It's been pretty awesome. I have a blog post on it on my website about Simplero about how we use it. And actually, if you go to my website, I have a tools bar where I list my favorite tools, and Simplero is number one. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:51 Is MiloTree on there, by the way? Kara Maria Ananda 14:54 Oh, I'm going to add it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:56 Do you know, we have an affiliate program? Kara Maria Ananda 14:58 Yeah, yeah, definitely. I will add it, actually it's on my list of things to do. But you know, as being a mom, there's one thing at a time, right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:07 So let's talk about how to share this. Kara Maria Ananda 15:09 I will share more about how how your program has been helping me too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:13 Oh, well, here, okay, so tell me. So that's how I found you was I saw MiloTree on your site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:21 Would you share actually about Pinterest and your thoughts and how you ended up with MiloTree? Kara Maria Ananda 15:27 Absolutely. See, I've been using Pinterest since the early years, like what was that 2012 ? And I always enjoyed it. And I've always, tried to share my blog images. Kara Maria Ananda 15:38 And over the years, I've focused on creating vertical images and my blog posts that could be shared on to Pinterest. But I didn't really focus a lot on it over the last year. How Pinterest can grow your business as an online entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 15:51 But then what happened was that I've consistently noticed that even without putting a lot of effort into Pinterest, by sharing my blogs there, and by other people, pinning my blogs to Pinterest that I consistently get a lot of traffic. Kara Maria Ananda 16:06 And I have been quite focused on Facebook and Instagram over the last couple of years. But honestly, with the algorithm changes and the loss of organic growth, it's a little disappointing to see how everybody's organic growth is, is going down. Kara Maria Ananda 16:21 I still think that Facebook and Instagram are fantastic for connection and essential for entrepreneurs, especially for the ad platform. But I love that Pinterest was just bringing all this organic website traffic that was equal to Facebook without putting effort into it. Kara Maria Ananda 16:38 So I realized I should put more effort into this if all this traffic without really focusing on it, what happens if I really focus on it? Kara Maria Ananda 16:46 So the last, two, three months, I've been really focusing on daily going into Pinterest, really creating, super optimized vertical images with words for all my blog posts and sharing them on Pinterest and and and seeing what I can do. Kara Maria Ananda 17:02 And so I found MiloTree because I was like, yeah, how do I get more traffic. This is a really amazing place to be connecting with people through Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 17:13 And so MiloTree is really cool because I got this little pop up now on my website, and it just pops up and invites people to come follow me on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 17:21 So now I've been naturally growing and my Pinterest followers and my reach. And just last week, I actually hit a million monthly viewers on Pinterest for the first time. Kara Maria Ananda 17:34 It was really cool. Now it's like 800k, but I'm still like super psyched about that because it was like 7 k for like the last year and I realized it went up to 90k. Kara Maria Ananda 17:45 And I was like, Look, this is growing. I should do something about this. And so with my effort with having MiloTree, with using Tailwind with really optimizing my Pinterest images, that it's grown. Kara Maria Ananda 17:59 Specifically the monthly viewers is nice, but a lot of that honestly, is for pins that aren't even my own, to but my own personal website traffic, which is the indicator of how is Pinterest working for me since I started using these putting an extra focus on it. Kara Maria Ananda 18:16 My Pinterest website, referral traffic has grown from where it's been consistently been 4% of my monthly viewers to now 17% of my website traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:26 Wow. Kara Maria Ananda 18:26 Just from putting effort into Pinterest. So I'm super stoked about it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:31 It's motivating, isn't it? Kara Maria Ananda 18:32 Yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:33 When you see results. It's funny, because with Catch My Party, we were totally all into Facebook. And then all of a sudden we started noticing we were getting traffic from Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:46 And it told us go deep into Pinterest. And so that's why we built MiloTree and all of that. And so it was really kind of like, Whoa, we see this and almost like I think Pinterest is a sleeping giant because I don't think it's a sexy as Instagram. Kara Maria Ananda 19:06 Yeah, because you don't put selfies on Pinterest. Pinterest is not a selfie platform. Kara Maria Ananda 19:12 It's funny, they say that faces don't generate as much interaction on those pins as having to like just information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:20 Right. Kara Maria Ananda 19:21 Yeah, Instagram. I love Instagram. And I put a lot of effort into it. But recently, I haven't. I have just been kind of posting when I want to because Pinterest has been so satisfying. And the fact that it's an information place. Kara Maria Ananda 19:35 So I realize that as an entrepreneur, where I'm excited about sharing information and articles and blog posts and not like, necessarily pictures of myself. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:44 Right and the truth is that your audience wants to be inspired by you. But really, it's about them. Them learning and solving their own problems. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:58 And it isn't as much like a cult of person like oh my God, like what's Kara doing? No, it's like, what can Kara teach me? Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:10 And so that's where I would say, why it it doesn't surprise me that Pinterest is a richer platform for you then Instagram. Kara Maria Ananda 20:20 Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. I think you're right when it's like a sleeping giant because it's been around for a while. But this new phase, it's really changing. Kara Maria Ananda 20:29 And I think that it's different. I think a lot of people are really realizing that it's a great place for people who are sharing information. And it's a great place for being a wellness entrepreneur. Kara Maria Ananda 20:39 It's not just for crafts and food. People are looking for health information all the time on Pinterest. It's awesome. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:50 Maybe it's just my awareness. But I feel like the wellness space right now is blowing up. Kara Maria Ananda 20:56 It is. Absolutely. I have a couple articles about that on my website too. I have a lot of blog posts about what's going on in the wellness field. And it is huge. Kara Maria Ananda 21:07 So health and wellness specifically like natural, holistic wellness, alternative medicine. Healthy Food is a $3.7 trillion global industry. And it's poised to grow significantly in the next five years. Kara Maria Ananda 21:22 And women are leading this category. Not only are women leading as entrepreneurs and small business owners, which is really empowering and exciting. But women are the main consumers to women make 80% of the choices for the health care and food shopping and all these kind of, you know, healthy lifestyle changes in in households today. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:43 What's funny, so I would say that really Pinterest started and it was cupcakes and weddings and things like that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:53 And then I feel like food blogging just took off on Pinterest. And typically the ooey gooey unhealthy foods that you just look at and you just start dying to eat. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:06 But at the same time that is always has always been really popular. You know, beautiful cakes and cupcakes. And you always want to get that like chocolate shot, you know where it's like oozing out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:17 But then now I'm seeing wellness coming in. Especially with like Whole 30 and just this focus on living a healthier life. I feel like that is like this new wave of experience for women. Kara Maria Ananda 22:35 Yeah, people are looking up, like healthy snacks has been like trending as one of the top things that people are looking up on Pinterest recently. Kara Maria Ananda 22:44 And you know, there's tons of like paleo bloggers and wellness bloggers who have really blown up. I mean, you can find like thousands of recipes for like, how to make homemade bone broth and how to heal your gut and how to eat paleo and keto on Pinterest Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:59 And the combination. So for example, we just made, this weekend delicious chocolate cookies with almond flour. Kara Maria Ananda 23:08 Oh, that's awesome. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 And we found the recipe on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 23:11 I love almond flour last night. I just made homemade baked apple cider donuts with almond flour. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:21 You know you can have that ooey gooey experience now. But with like a healthy twist. A somewhat healthy twist. Kara Maria Ananda 23:27 Yeah, high protein. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:31 So thank you. By the way, I'm so glad that MiloTree is working for you. And one thing that's nice, I just want to say, here's my little plug, which is MiloTree will grow your Pinterest followers. Why MiloTree grows high quality Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:42 But what's great about it, it will grow Pinterest followers who've already come to your site, because it's your visitors. And those Pinterest followers are the Pinterest followers who are aligned with your content. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:54 So Pinterest will show your pins first to your followers. And if your followers respond to them, then Pinterest will show those pins to other people on the platform. So if you align your followers with your content, then you will have even more success on Pinterest. Kara Maria Ananda 24:15 That's awesome. And I think that's really cool. Because like I said, I've been on Pinterest for a long time. So I think that a bunch of my followers might have started following me like five years ago, they might not still be active on the platform. Kara Maria Ananda 24:28 And well, you're like reach and your monthly views, you can have a really small following on Pinterest and reach a lot of people. Kara Maria Ananda 24:35 I just have over 4,000 followers. And probably a lot of those came from a long time ago. But I just reached like a million monthly views. Kara Maria Ananda 24:43 But at the same time, having new engaged followers that are going to see your content interact with it first is really important. Kara Maria Ananda 24:50 And because of the platform, I don't feel like it's super easy. Like, you know, you click on pins, and you save pins, but you're not always looking to follow people. Kara Maria Ananda 24:58 So having a prompt for people that are visiting your website to also follow you there is is really helpful. I feel like it kind of closes that loop a little bit. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:07 That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way. But you're right. I mean, we currently with Catch My Party every day, we follow new people, because I think the algorithm likes that right? Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:21 It says, Yeah, active. But the truth is, when I'm like browsing for myself, I'm looking much more for pins than I am to find new people to follow, right. So that's interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. Kara Maria Ananda 25:34 Yeah, but now I see MiloTree or other bloggers, websites. And so it'll pop up, I'll be looking at somebody's blog, and it'll pop up and I'll be like, Oh, great. You're active on Pinterest, you know, right? Kara Maria Ananda 25:45 So it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a letting people know, like, I'm active on Pinterest right now, and tells me the sites that I think we're older. And so becoming more active and engaged now and sharing really good pins like, those are the people I want to follow. So it's a little badge. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:03 It's like a little bit of social proof. Kara Maria Ananda 26:04 Yeah, little social proof, which is really good. That's one of the things I've been focusing on a lot today. Kara Maria Ananda 26:10 I think that as the way that we interact online is changing. Like, now we have all these Voice Search technologies, and people are using Pinterest as a search engine. Kara Maria Ananda 26:19 And social media is changing, like having our own websites is really important. But also trying to think about how would our websites change into the future, and with this new interactivity, how can people interact with us in our websites, and we create more opportunities for interaction. Kara Maria Ananda 26:38 So that's one of the things I've been focusing a lot on recently, is giving people more options of things to do that engages them with my website, and content that can be like fun. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:47 Can you give some examples? Creating interactive experience on your website as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 26:50 Recently I created an online oracle deck on my website, which is really cool. So you can actually go to my website and choose a card of the day. Kara Maria Ananda 27:01 In the top navigation bar, it says oracle and you can click on that page. And they'll invite you to discover your card of the day. Discover your destiny. Kara Maria Ananda 27:13 And so these are messages for, like, positive motivation, living inspiration for leaders. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 Oooh I like it, so today, mine is "Trust your intuition and you will succeed." Oh, that's so nice. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:32 It's like you're just putting out some good energy into the world. So thank you. Kara Maria Ananda 27:36 Yeah, and the next right, you could choose a new card, you can come back whenever you want to, if you want, like a positive message. So little fun things like that. Kara Maria Ananda 27:45 The other thing that I did is I created a search bar on my website. So it's like my own little Kara Maria Google search bar. Kara Maria Ananda 27:53 You can actually type in any word like birth, or, sexuality, fertility your business, and it'll pop up all the different blog posts and pages that have that information. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:07 That's wonderful. I like the way you're thinking how people are all different. Somebody's going to use your search bar, and somebody wants a little dose of positivity, and you've got something for everybody. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:24 Which is, again, back to that strategy of like, let's say you're going deep now on Pinterest. And what I recommend then, is to show a variety of images for a certain post, because you don't know what somebody's going to respond to. Right? Kara Maria Ananda 28:40 Yeah, now, I've been spending a lot of time going back and updating my old blog posts, because there's some blog posts that still get a ton of traffic. And it's exciting to see. Creating new images for Pinterest and updating keywords for older blog posts Kara Maria Ananda 28:51 But then I realized, like, oh, wow, this is getting a lot of traffic. And it has an image that I created two years ago, what happens if I add a new image that we got to capture people's, current sensibility of what they're attracted to? Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:06 Yes. And then, are you adding new keywords? Are you adding more text or more information? Are you then updating the date? Kara Maria Ananda 29:16 Oh, yeah, that's another thing I did this year, I updated my website, and I took the date off of the blog post. So all of the blog posts will still have the date in the URL, but when you go to my website, it doesn't say right underneath the blog post, like this was written in 2016, Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:34 Okay, but you're not, you didn't have the date in the URL Kara Maria Ananda 29:38 I did at the very beginning, I didn't like 2013. And then I changed the blog URL around 2014, so that the date was no longer in the URL, right. Kara Maria Ananda 29:50 But it was still showing up on the blog posts until about six months ago, when I changed that. And I took that off so that now all those older blog posts, somebody could go to to it. And they would just see the title and they would see the content, they wouldn't know when it was published. So it feel more relevant. Kara Maria Ananda 30:07 And yes, I am changing keywords. I am adding keywords to headlines, I try not to take away the words that are already in the headlines, though. Kara Maria Ananda 30:16 If they are ranking on Google because you don't want to ruin a current ranking that you have. So I'll add an extra keywords. And I reformat the articles because some of my older ones, I realized that I had a lot more text, like multiple sentences and longer paragraphs. Kara Maria Ananda 30:30 Writing for the web today, we really want to create, almost a paragraph space between like every sentence or two. So definitely reformat it to make it more readable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:40 I love all these. I mean, everything you're saying. I'm like, Yes. Kara Maria Ananda 30:43 Yeah. So that is a huge, like getting a lot more traffic and more shares of blog posts that are still super relevant. You know, it's great Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:53 I see you have keywords at the top of your posts. Kara Maria Ananda 30:56 Oh, I do. Oh, those are tags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:58 Tags. Yes. So they're showing. Kara Maria Ananda 31:00 Those are actually searchable to on my website. If you click on the tag, you can find other blog posts with that same tag on my website. So that's another cool interactive thing on my website. Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:13 What I love is that as an entrepreneur, I can tell that you have been educating yourself, going from being a doula or a massage therapist, you wouldn't necessarily think online entrepreneur, but you speak in a very sophisticated way about your online business. Kara Maria Ananda 31:33 Absolutely, I am passionate about education, that's what I'm all about. And that's because I, myself, am a lifelong learner. And I'm super passionate about learning. The need to be a lifelong learner as an entrepreneur Kara Maria Ananda 31:41 So I consistently am also, taking online courses, and studying with mentors, and doing a lot of my own personal research. And really, you know, what entrepreneurs do is we learned a lot through trying things. Kara Maria Ananda 31:54 So I try a lot of things, and I really look at them and analyze what worked, what didn't work, and it's, those are all learning opportunities. And it's a great way to figure out how we can grow and evolve is through learning and trying and taking risks. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:13 That's terrific. Now I just have been thinking about this as you think about building courses content, I've been talking to some people who are building courses. And it seems like it is one of these things where you never finish your course, building it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:29 So how do you get there because everybody says, I should I should write a course, I should create a course. But how do you get from beginning to end? How do you know, when that course is done? What's your process? Kara Maria Ananda 32:42 Oh, well, you know, that's a really good question. And I love all my courses. And I'm really passionate about supporting people to create online courses today. Kara Maria Ananda 32:50 I actually created a new program that I have on my website, it's called the, Of Course Academy, you can create your own signature online course. How to build an online course as a blogger Kara Maria Ananda 33:00 And to help break down the process of how I actually do this, because there is quite a process. Kara Maria Ananda 33:06 I think the first part is really research, you have to research what you're doing, how to be able to communicate it online, what's going on and really figure out as part of your research, how you can stand out. Kara Maria Ananda 33:21 It's important to have your own style, your own story, that's the part of what you're doing, to make it you know, unique in the online world, and, and give it that value that only, you know, that is something that only you can really offer. Kara Maria Ananda 33:37 And then I use Simplero and really use, you know, an outlining process of creating an outline, creating topic and my sub topics. And then testing those out first through like social media posts about those topics, through blog posts, see how people react to them, and then organizing them. Kara Maria Ananda 33:56 And then, you know, teaching and teaching them is a lot of fun. I love teaching online. Having the right equipment makes a great deal. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:04 Are you making videos? Kara Maria Ananda 34:06 Yeah I do a variety of different things from different courses, I do videos of me presenting a teaching. I do screen shares, you know, presentation style videos about certain topics, or demonstrating things online and the online business and audios and PDFs. We can create so many different kinds of media and really create these amazing multimedia experiences. Kara Maria Ananda 34:29 And then, of course, yeah, there's also marketing and promotion. And, you know, you could have a launch. You could have an Evergreen Launch where you have your course available ongoing and there's different kinds of marketing strategies for each of those. Kara Maria Ananda 34:42 And then upkeep, yeah, it's really, it's never done. I mean, this year, I went back and I updated a lot of my courses and went through and redid the the course membership site that they were on to make them really beautiful and on point with my current branding. Kara Maria Ananda 35:00 So there's always more to do,. You can always go back. I think that if people want to create an online course, because they think it's just something that they just do once and the launch and it's just going to create passive income without them having to do anything else, that that's not going to exactly be how it turns out. Kara Maria Ananda 35:16 It's a path. And it's an ongoing process. And I love that about courses too, is that you can just do it the first time you get your course out, and whatever way it is, and then you evaluate, and then you can always upgrade it and add enhancements. Kara Maria Ananda 35:32 And so it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be really valuable and passionate, and actually give people the value and the solution that you're offering to them. ADVICE: Done is better than perfect as an entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:43 I love that because I teach this all the time. I say it to my daughter, I say to my husband, because he can be more of a perfectionist, Done is better than perfect. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:56 And Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn always says this thing, which is, if you're not launching your product, and you're not embarrassed, you've launched too late. Kara Maria Ananda 36:09 I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:10 There needs to be that element of like, oh, you need to know that in a year, you're going to look back on this and be embarrassed. And if you don't do that, you've waited too long. Kara Maria Ananda 36:20 Yeah, upgrades are always happening. I'm consistently going through my website and just changing little things, we put things out. Kara Maria Ananda 36:27 And then as an online entrepreneur, we're always, you know, upgrading. And I like to do little upgrades. Because sometimes you see, this is really good, but maybe it could do better. Kara Maria Ananda 36:37 And sometimes it's just a few words or an image or phrase. So I like to go through and make 10% changes, I'll make 10% of a change to like the words in an area or try, you know, changing a photo and test it out and see if it gets better results or worse results. And if so, then change it back to what it was. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:00 Now, given the you have a one year old -- Kara Maria Ananda 37:04 He's 21 months old right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:06 Okay. So almost a two year old. Kara Maria Ananda 37:07 Yeah. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:08 How many hours a week are you working on your business? Kara Maria Ananda 37:11 Oh, you know, I knew you're gonna ask this. And I've been stumped with this question. Because I don't work all at one time, right. And I don't keep a schedule. Kara Maria Ananda 37:20 I've been thinking maybe I should keep a timer for a week and test this out and actually see, because I work in little bits of time, a half an hour here or half an hour there, and then a couple hours here. Kara Maria Ananda 37:34 But I work a lot because I'm really passionate about what I do. And even when I'm not working on my website, or responding to emails or working with clients or create a course, I'm still working because there's other projects that I'm working on. Kara Maria Ananda 37:46 I have books that I'm writing slowly, creating images on Canva. So I'd have to say like, you know, at least 20 hours a week, if not, you know, up to 40, I don't know, I'm really not sure. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:01 That's amazing. Yes. Well, again, if you're passionate about it, you do the work, the great thing about being an online entrepreneur is you have the flexibility to say, Oh, my baby's crying, I can go be with my baby. And then I can come back with my baby is napping. Kara Maria Ananda 38:20 Absolutely. And you can be at the playground so that the kids could be happy playing, and you can get on your phone and do Pinterest or respond to emails. Kara Maria Ananda 38:27 So absolutely I take advantage of all those little time blocks when I can. How to monetize as a wellness online entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:32 Absolutely and are you mostly monetizing via coaching and courses? Kara Maria Ananda 38:37 Yeah, those are my two main main things. Right now. I have an amazing selection of online courses for women's health, birth, business, spirit manifestation and life. Kara Maria Ananda 38:49 And I also provide private coaching mostly for women and wellness and small business and who are wanting to create a bigger online profit sense, or just designed their signature programs. Kara Maria Ananda 39:03 And I also do some writing and some speaking, but those are my two main main things. I love teaching. And I love helping people to enhance their communication and spread their message. Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:15 Great. Okay, we started the interview. And I said, when you work with female entrepreneurs, what do you think they need? Jillian Tohber Leslie 39:23 And you were saying they need support and all of that. So how do you go about getting support and feeding your own sense of self, so that you can be a mother, homeschooler, and also have this business? Kara Maria Ananda 39:41 Oh, wow. Well, self care is really important. I make sure to eat really good food, like a high nutrient dense food. Kara Maria Ananda 39:48 We have snacks throughout the house, like hard boiled eggs, things that I can like, grab, like one hand foods are really important, you know, green shakes, things like that. Kara Maria Ananda 39:58 Also, you know, I have doors. I shut doors, headphones, headphones are a magic key for mom entrepreneurs. Kara Maria Ananda 40:08 The kids are noisy, they're watching, you know, Paw Patrol or something. You really need some time to really focus, putting on your headphones. Kara Maria Ananda 40:15 When you sit down at your computer or laptop, or even phone and listening to like relaxing music. It creates your own little world where you can focus and calm down, and relaxes your nervous system. Tips on setting boundaries as an entrepreneur Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:27 Mm hmm. Ok. And then how do you get it? You were talking about boundaries. So what are your tips on setting boundaries? Kara Maria Ananda 40:36 Oh, yes. You know what, I ask for what I need. My husband and I communicate a lot. And I make sure to check in, not only do we have calendar systems online, and in our family area for a family, but I'll check in like, every day before we go to bed. Kara Maria Ananda 40:51 It's like, Okay, this is going to happen tomorrow. This is when you need to have the kids to do that. This is what I can do this. Kara Maria Ananda 40:57 And then in the morning again, because sometimes we wake up and things can get, you know, really busy with the kids doing stuff. Kara Maria Ananda 41:03 And so again in the morning we will like check in with our tea or coffee and be like, Okay, this is what we need to do today here at this time there at that time, and then we know what other parts of the day can can kind of flow. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:16 That's great. That's great. Well, this has been such a pleasure, and I'm just like going to explore your website. Because you make me feel really good with my little moment of my oracle. Kara Maria Ananda 41:32 Oh, thanks so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:36 I feel very inspired and like the universe is today set out to kind of conspire to bring me, to give me what I need and what I want so what I'm working towards that. Kara Maria Ananda 41:48 Absolutely, Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:49 Truly this has been such a pleasure and thank you so much for being on the show. Kara Maria Ananda 41:55 Oh thank you so much. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:56 Oh wait, before we stop please tell people how they can reach out to you. Kara Maria Ananda 42:04 Oh, absolutely. Well, you can find me on my website KaraMariaAnanda.com and I have that free oracle and the top navigation bar you can get your personal message of the day. Kara Maria Ananda 42:15 And I also have some other great free resources to under the free tab on my website, including a masterclass right now for women on how to grow your wellness business, with the three tips to what is growing fastest and wellness businesses today. Kara Maria Ananda 42:32 And plus more fun stuff including some quizzes and women's wellness ebook and more. Kara Maria Ananda 42:39 And I love hearing from people to whether you have any questions about natural wellness for women or for creating an online business in the wellness world. Kara Maria Ananda 42:50 And I'd love for people to reach out to me through the contact form and say hello, and let me know you know if there's anything from this talk that was inspiring, and if there's any questions way that I can be of service or support. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:02 Oh, well, Kara, thank you so much for being on the show. Kara Maria Ananda 43:07 Oh, thank you so much, Jillian. I really appreciate it. This is a lot of fun. Getting more Pinterest followers with MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:11 Pinterest has been huge for Kara's business and that's why she uses the MiloTree Pinterest pop up because it pops up and it asks her visitors to follow her on Pinterest and her followers just keep growing. Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:23 If you want to get your own MiloTree Pinterest pop up, head on over to MiloTree.com. Sign up and you'll get your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

This episode demonstrates that it is possible to get to 6.6 million pageviews in 2 years of blogging, because Caroline Simmons of Swaddles N Bottles did it! And the best part is she loves sharing all her tips and tricks. In this episode, Caroline and I discuss how Pinterest has fueled her blog growth, and how she strategically uses group boards to find new opportunities. Learn how she hires contributors to create content for her parenting blog, and how she's started a new blog to teach other women how to build online businesses. This is all in addition to having two babies at home! If you want actionable steps to take your blog traffic to a new level, you will love this episode! Resources: Swaddles N Bottles Tailwind PinGroupie Pinning For Pageviews Canva Shutterstock Adobe Photos MiloTree Social Warfare HashtagJeff ShareASale CJ Affiliate PepperJam The Basics of Blogging The Basics of Blogging Facebook Group Mastering Affiliate Marketing The Slight Edge * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript - How to Get to 6.6 Million Pageviews in 2 Years of Blogging with Caroline Simmons Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:03 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today, my guest is Caroline Simmons. It's Caroline right? Not Carolyn? Caroline Simmons 0:21 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:21 Yes. okay, and Caroline is a mother of two itty bitty kids. And she's a blogger. She's owner of a blog called Swaddles n Bottles, and it's a resource for new moms. Now what's super interesting is that she started this in 2016, and she has since grown it to over 6.6 million page views. So we are going to get into how she has done that. Welcome to the show. Caroline. Caroline Simmons 0:49 Hi. Thank you for having me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:51 So I have to say that we met because you sent me the loveliest email out of nowhere, just saying how much you enjoyed the podcast. Caroline Simmons 1:02 Yes, I am someone who always want to be learning about whatever there is out there that I can get my hands on involving blogging and growing. And just finding new strategies and tips. And anytime I see your email pop up in my inbox, I either read it right then and there, or I flag it because I know it's always got such great content. So yeah, I really enjoy it. And, you know, I like that we were saying that the internet can be kind of a lonely place. And so I always like to just send a positive message whenever I can. And just send you a little word of encouragement that I'm reading it and I'm loving it. And it is absolutely helping me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 Thank you. And you're also using MiloTree, because if you sign up for MiloTree, you get my emails. So honestly, like when I get an email like that. It's it makes my day. Caroline Simmons 1:54 Well, good. I'm happy to hear that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:56 And then when I learned a little bit about your business, I was like, please come on the show, I want to interview you. Caroline Simmons 2:02 Yes, I'm happy to share whatever I can. Kind of pay it forward everything you've given me. I'd love to share some of my tidbits and hope that it can help someone else. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:11 Okay, so let's start at the beginning. You started this blog not long ago? Caroline Simmons 2:16 Right. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:16 So tell me a little bit about you. And how you did this. Caroline Simmons 2:20 Okay. Yeah, so I launched it in October of 2016. Starting a blog two years ago to help other mothers Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:25 Wow. So two years ago. Caroline Simmons 2:27 Just about two years ago now. And my first daughter was just three months old at the time. And when I was pregnant with her, I spent so much time online, trying to get my hands on any and all information I could about what was to come in my near future. In terms of my pregnancy and labor and delivery and bringing home a newborn and breastfeeding that newborn. And so I spent so much time online, just trying to collect every bit of information I could. Then as I kind of started going through, you know, those first couple months of motherhood and testing things out and trying to figure out. What was working what wasn't. What were the mom hacks that were saving me time and sanity and whatnot. I thought I would love to share this. And so I decided I wanted to start a blog. I had never done anything website related in the past. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:22 And what was your previous life? Caroline Simmons 3:24 My previous life, I kind of dabbled around in a few different things. And I spent a few years working for an energy company. I did some recruiting for them. I did some customer service for them prior to leaving my job. Right before I had my first daughter, Emmy, I was working in higher education and working with college students, which was really, really fun. So, to be honest, I can say that I hadn't found what I wanted to do long term. And then when this idea, once it struck me, like creating a blog creating something from scratch that I've done all on my own, and growing it to the point of reaching me, no, never would have guessed it would have been millions of mothers and helping them. Once that idea was in my brain, and in my heart, there was no stopping it. It gave me, it's still to this day gives me goosebumps, just thinking about having the opportunity to do that. And so that's kind of what set me on my path. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:24 Okay, so you get this idea. You have this tiny little baby, and you think I want to help other mothers, right? So what do you do? Start a blog to solve a problem you're struggling with Caroline Simmons 4:34 I bought a domain and I'm pretty sure my husband thought I had lost my marbles because he's like, do you know anything about blogging? And I didn't. And really, when I was a new mom, I was a new blogger. I researched. I took every free course I could find. I read every book I could find. I invested a little money in some paid ebooks and paid courses. I just just dug into anything I could get my hands on to figure it out. And I started creating content. I think one of the things that was the most helpful was that I was creating content for an audience that I was in the same position. I was going through the same struggles, and I was finding solutions. And I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that really helped. I had to tap into what's going on in my life. What struggles and am I going through? And how can I help others? Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:37 You know, it's so funny, because people will go, I want to start a business, what should it be? And I always say, examine your own life. Because, you know, if you're having a problem, chances are millions of other people are having that exact problem. And that's it again, we didn't set out to create MiloTree, we built it for ourselves, it worked really well. We're like, Hey, we could help other bloggers. And so we didn't set out to go, we're gonna make this app. And, you know, it's just, we scratched our own itch, and we were able to find a solution. Just like you did. Caroline Simmons 6:11 Right, yeah. And that is, I think, what what brings in the people is when you're solving a problem for them, and you're not setting out trying to do something for yourself, right? Having a mindset of helping as a blogger You're saying, and this is something that a lot of people are struggling with, how can I help? And when you have a mindset of helping, I think people can sense that. Yes. And I think that they are attracted to it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:35 I agree. It's like, they can smell it. Caroline Simmons 6:37 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:39 Okay. So you start writing posts. Caroline Simmons 6:42 I started creating content and building the website, which that was a struggle in itself. Learning this new platform of WordPress, and that, that took some time. That was probably the biggest learning curve. Jillian Tohber Leslie 6:57 Did you did you hire somebody? Caroline Simmons 6:59 No, it was really just tutorials, and watching a lot of YouTube tutorials, and just reaching out to other bloggers, and just kind of trying to figure it out little by little. And still to this day. I would say it was maybe three months ago I installed a new theme in my blog and made a major change. So I tried not to be too hard on myself with it being perfect in the beginning. Because that is kind of, building a website is ever evolving. That was probably the hardest kind of hurdle in the beginning was the technical stuff. Something as simple as changing the color on my menu bar would take me, you know, 45 minutes to Google it and figure it out, and then try it and it didn't work. So I had to try it again. So, that was definitely tough. But now I'm pretty proud of what I do know, and what I can accomplish. And it was fun to learn all of those new things. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:59 So there's a lot of content on your site. Caroline Simmons 8:02 Yes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 8:03 Did you write it all? Getting contributors to your blog Caroline Simmons 8:04 No, no. So I did in the beginning, and then I believe it was June of this year, I really kind of felt like, while my experiences were great, why not start providing some other views, some other experiences. Because every path through motherhood is unique. And why not give some other people an opportunity to share what they have. So I opened up an application and put it out there on social media, my Instagram, my Facebook. I started reading content that all of these other mothers had submitted. And I was blown away by the results. I never would have thought that I would have received as many applications as I did. And then from that, I now have three writers who write for me consistently. They are wonderful. I feel incredibly blessed to have them because they too, I think, really share my passion for helping moms and providing whatever information they can. So they helped me create a lot of the content. I have done a lot of guest posts in the past where I've allowed newer bloggers to share things. But I would say probably 70% to 80% of the content I wrote myself. I'm really loving having other views and other just stories and point of view this from others. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Do you pay them? Caroline Simmons 9:30 I do? Yes. My content writers who are with me, my three, I do pay them and I have not paid for, like blog posts in the past. But I do pay my writers. Absolutely. I mean, if you read some of the content they provide me with, it's amazing. It's stellar. And I like supporting them. And the fact that they're also trying to make something of themselves as freelance writers. So, yeah, I love being able to support them on their journey as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:59 And how much content. How often are you posting? Caroline Simmons 10:03 You know, that's one of the interesting things about blogging. Since I brought on these writers, I've been a lot more consistent. When I brought home my second daughter, she was born in October, she was a little bit early, so she really needed extra attention. And so I didn't post there for maybe two months. When I first found out I was pregnant with her, oh, my goodness. I have like the worst morning sickness. And so I didn't post then for two or three weeks. So I wouldn't advise that to other bloggers. Having flexibility as a blogger But I would say it is one of the nice things about blogging, is when you do have to take time for your family, and for yourself, you can. But I have seen a lot of growth since I've been really consistent. And I'd say for the month of September, I think I'm already up to we've posted 16 times. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:57 Okay. Wow. Caroline Simmons 10:59 And that's a combination of my own, and my writers as well. So as long as there's stuff to be shared, you know, we're going to be sharing it, we're not going to hold ourselves back. As long as we keep having inspiration on things to write. We're going to keep putting it out there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 11:17 That's awesome. Okay. Now, here is the million dollar question actually be 6.6 million question is, how have you grown your page views so big? Be where your audience is as a blogger -- focus on your most successful platform Caroline Simmons 11:29 Well, this is just kind of my philosophy for any blog is you have to know your audience and where they are spending their time, where are they hanging out. And wherever that is, you have got to work the heck out of it. For me, being that I am targeting women, new mothers, for me, that was Pinterest. And Pinterest has been the number one source of traffic for my blog. Really since day one, I have just researched and read and implemented and tested and dug into my analytics with Pinterest more than any other platform because it's what's working for me. And I think that that's something it took me time to figure out to work on what's working. You know, I think as a blogger, we can get so tied up with, well, there's Facebook, and there's Instagram. And there's Twitter. And there's LinkedIn. And, you know, there's all these different things and you're trying to make each of them work. Because you maybe hear that they're working for other bloggers or you think it could work. Where really I mean, if Pinterest is working, work Pinterest, and focus on that. And once you've got some consistent traffic from it, that's it's okay to start working on other things, and looking into other things. But I think that by really focusing on that one platform and doing whatever I could to learn and master and just make it work for me, that's what really drove the traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 13:05 So by the way, you are so preaching to the choir, I agree with you 100%. I always say this, which is go toward what's working. And then people will say, yeah, but what, what happens when Pinterest changes their algorithm, and I go, Oh, don't worry, they will. And then you go toward whatever else is working. But if something is working, dig deep, it doesn't mean that you ignore Instagram, but focus on what's making you money. Caroline Simmons 13:33 Right. And especially if you're just starting out, you're like, wow, this is working, okay, that means you've just skim the surface. If you've just pinned a few times, and it starts doing good things for your page views. Imagine what would happen if you really just took the time to educate yourself and read as much as you could. Even if you take three days to do nothing, but just educate yourself. It will pay you back and you will start knowing how to implement these things differently and just and really launch it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 14:01 So let's talk about this. Okay, so did you take Pinterest courses? Caroline Simmons 14:07 I did not take a specific Pinterest course. I'll be honest, I was an avid pinner before. I loved recipes. And when I was young and single, I had my dream wedding board, and all of that. My fashion board and such, so I was a pinner beforehand. And I think I understood how it worked. In that sense, when it came to making it work. For myself as a blogger, I think it was really just about digging into analytics. There's so many free resources out there, you know. Just a quick Pinterest search on Pinterest tips and what you can do to make it work for you. There's so much content out there. Which I love that about the blogging world. I love that people are willing to share, what is working for them. And so I might have taken some free Master Courses, as they call them, where it's like a one time thing where you sit and they share just kind of a few golden nuggets from Pinterest. But I didn't take one course that kind of changed everything. For me, it was more of just grabbing whatever I could, wherever I could, and just implementing little things here and there. Dig into your analytics on Pinterest to see what's working And then, like I said, it's all about digging into your analytics. You know, if you don't know what's working, you're not going to know what to stop doing and what to change. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:32 Okay, so so let's unpack that a little bit. Caroline Simmons 15:34 Okay. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:34 What does that mean? Digging into your analytics? Caroline Simmons 15:41 So you've got your analytics on everything, if we're talking specific about Pinterest? Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:46 Yeah, let's do Pinterest. Caroline Simmons 15:48 Pinterest analytics lets you know what boards you're pinning to that are getting the most results. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:54 Okay. Caroline Simmons 15:54 You can also look into things like what type of pins are performing. You can see what times of day that you're pinning that are working for you. I am an avid user of Tailwind. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:11 Got it. And we do too. Caroline Simmons 16:14 Oh, my gosh. And that it's not just the Pinterest analytics alone. My Tailwind analytics are huge for me. It lets me know so much. Using group boards as a blogger to grow traffic And especially like I said, I'm a big user of the group boards. And using group boards on Pinterest is a great way to expand your reach. And it's great how they can let you know, you've pinned to this board 67 times in the past month, and it's only been been repinned once. Well, that tells you that your ideal audience is not hanging out in that group board. That's you're not getting your pin in front of the right people. So it may be time to, take a break from that group board, possibly leave that group board and really start to focus more on where are you know, my my ideal pinners? How can I get in touch with them? And how can I make sure that they're seeing my content And clicking on it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 17:11 So in Tailwind, you're looking at which are your most successful boards? Caroline Simmons 17:17 I'm looking at what are my most successful boards. I really also love to look at what people are pinning directly from my domain. Because it shows them if there is an image within a blog post that really is like standing out to them. And they're really captivated by Wow, this is this is such an interesting graphic. And so if I see that that's being pinned a lot, I like to go in and maybe create a new PIN that's maybe a little modified version of that, that graphic, it just tells you so much. But the board analyzer as they call it, and that really helps me see where is my effort is most being returned. I'm using that time slot to pin to this board? Is it worth it? And then from there on the opposite end of, leaving boards and also helps me see what are my rock star boards? Where are my people for sure, hanging out. And I like to make sure that as soon as I have a new blog post that it's going to my rock star boards, because I know that that's going to be the fastest and the best way to reach my audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:24 And how many boards do you have? Caroline Simmons 18:27 Oh, my goodness, I think I'm probably in about 145 range right now. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:32 Okay. Caroline Simmons 18:33 And that's what's really great about group boards is because I personally have maybe 15,000 followers on Pinterest right now. But my reach is 4.5 million. Jillian Tohber Leslie 18:47 Wow, wow. Caroline Simmons 18:50 Being part of those group boards, it's expanding my reach well beyond my individual followers. And I mean, that's huge, right there. That is what I say is the secret to Pinterest is the group boards. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:04 Is the group boards. Caroline Simmons 19:05 Absolutely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:05 Because, again, I feel like I've heard over time that group boards are not as useful that they need to be very curated. Are you pinning in group boards that have thousands or hundreds of contributors? Caroline Simmons 19:23 You're touching on something that I've heard a lot of debate on. So I agree with you that if you are in boards that are pin whatever you want, no rules. Pin, whatever, and there's, you know, 4.5 thousand people in it. Yes, that can be a negative. But I am personally part of a board that I think have probably 700 or 800 contributors, and it's one of my top ones. That's why when I'm looking at group boards to join, I'm not usually making that decision myself. I'm going to ask to join, I'm going to give it 30 days. And I'm gonna let my Tailwind analytics Tell me from there. So I test it out, see if it's working. And if it doesn't, okay, I'll go ahead and leave. But I also think that you really do need to have a balance, I would say, you know, 70/30. 70% of your group boards you really need to be focusing for that's very specific target audience. I'm a parenting and pregnancy blogger, I'm going to be joining boards that focus around pregnancy, babies, labor and delivery, breastfeeding. That's what I want to be looking for. Testing out group boards as a blogger I'm fine with testing them out. But I'm also very quick to leave them if I feel like they're not working. But I'm not going to rule them out from the beginning. Let's give it a try. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:44 Now, how are you finding these group boards? Caroline Simmons 20:47 PinGroupie is an awesome resource. It has really evolved too, from when I first started blogging, they've really updated it. And it's a lot more user friendly. Now, you're able to go in and filter out the category of group boards that you're looking for. And so that's awesome. Another great thing is , go to your fellow bloggers, see what some of the bigger bloggers in your in your area and see where they are pinning to and into to get added to those group boards as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:25 And so will you reach out? You emailed them? Will you messaged them on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 21:30 Yeah, I'd usually just follow the instructions on the group board. And it'll say, follow me and, send me an email or follow me and messaged me on my Facebook page and things like that. And I think one of the most valuable things that's helped me is I have two things I always follow up, I keep a running list of who I have messaged in regards to these group boards. And then if I'm added, I make a note, send them a thank you email. But a week to 10 days later, if I haven't heard back, I send a second email and I continue to follow up with them. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:06 I love this. Okay, keep going. How to get added to group boards on Pinterest Caroline Simmons 22:08 And then more than that, a lot of times, and this is like a really big secret. But a lot of times, you'll notice that the bigger bloggers that have, you know 300,000+ followers don't have instructions on how you can grow the board. And so it takes some digging. I go to their website, I find, you know, their email address, and I send them a very personalized email to see if I can get added. And so a lot of times, I think that, you know, bloggers will look at these larger accounts. And well, there's no instructions on how to get added. So they must not be accepting contributors. And I don't take that as a stop, I keep going, I keep digging past that. And I find a way to make a connection with them. And I've got a group board that I'm part of. And you know, she didn't have any instructions. But she has half a million followers. And they're my target audience. And I reached out to her, and I kind of established a relationship with her and asked if I could be a contributor. And that was a big launch forward for my traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:08 That is terrific. Oh, my God, I'm going to go back and kind of rethink our whole group board strategy. Caroline Simmons 23:16 Yeah, it's powerful. Not only that, it's a great way to build a community with people in your network. In my ebook, I have an ebook, Pinning For Pageviews, where I talk about the strategies that work great for Pinterest. And one of my suggestions is to have your own group boards. And, you know, pay back the favor. Give other people an opportunity to market their blog post and their blogs to your audience. And I think it's a great way to say like, hey, I've got this many followers and this group board your content is great, I'd love to add you and you kind of do like a little group board swap and build a relationship there. So for all the group boards who have given you the opportunity to share your content, pay that back and invite some of our fellow bloggers to join yours as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:05 So how many would you say, how many group boards are you in? How many group boards do you have? And how many regular boards? Caroline Simmons 24:17 Yeah, I want to say I am probably part of at least like 100, 120, group boards and 40 are my own. I'm so worried that those numbers are going to be completely off. I'm thinking, like when I'm in tailwind, and I'm adding all those boards, I'm thinking of like, how many days right and so I want to say that's probably about right, I'm in like maybe 120 boards? Jillian Tohber Leslie 24:49 Wow. Okay, how do you keep track then of all of these group boards? Do you have, say, your top five group boards? So if you're pinning do you pin into 100 boards? Caroline Simmons 25:08 So this is going to be really hard to explain but tailwind, has this amazing feature called board lists. And what I do is I create groups of 10. So I have mom boards A, mom boards B, mom boards C, and that's how I go through. And I of course, have a Google Docs with all of my full list of all of them, and which one is on which board list so that way, I ensure that I'm not missing one. And then when I go to pin, a new pin, I go through my list. And I pinned to the group board A, group board B, group board C. Also having it set up in that way where I have those different board list helps me so that way, I'm not pinning, you know, all of the same boards and all the things day. Does that make sense? Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:01 Yeah. Okay. So let me see if I can say that back to you. So you can group boards on tailwind? So let's say you've got 100 group boards, you can lump them, let's say 25 into a group and then another 25 into a group. So that when you are choosing what boards to pin to, all you have to do is put that group name and all those 25 boards will be included. Caroline Simmons 26:32 Yeah, that's it. What's really nice is you can go on your first pin, you go A, B, C, D, then on your second pin, you go B, C, D, A your next pin. So that way you're really mixing it up. Group boards have rules they don't want you pinning 25 times in one day really helps you mix it up so that you're pinning all across your different boards each day. And that's really awesome, too. Because, I mean, you think about like I said 4.5 million when it's mixed up like that. You're really hitting all of those boards. All of those people throughout the week. Got it? What does your team look like as a blogger? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:09 Yes, this terrific. Okay. So do you have somebody helping you? Caroline Simmons 27:16 You mean with my Pinterest? Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:17 Yes. So are you doing all of this? Caroline Simmons 27:19 I did have a VA for some time who was really, really helpful. And she ended up finding a great full time job that was just like, so meant for her. She's so great at it. But she was helping me for a little while. And my husband helps me with some things like outside of Pinterest. He helps me with more of like the business aspects of it. But Pinterest, I'm really kind of doing it all on my own. And that's not a bad thing. I really enjoy it. I really love it. And it's such a wonderful platform. And like you said, they're always updating, they're always changing. And I think I've yet to see a change that I really dislike. I think that they're always just making it better for the users, which is great for us. Because that means people are enjoying it more. They're spending more time there. So yeah, I really don't mind doing these things on my own. Because I just I love Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:12 It's so terrific. Okay, how many hours a day are you spending on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 28:19 Spending on Pinterest? Honestly, not too many, thanks to Tailwind. I do do some manual pinning here and there. I really think that Pinterest rewards people who are in there being an active user. And pinning. So I do get in there and pin on different recipes and just things that you know, are of interest to me. So I do spend some time here and there. But I don't have much time to work each week because of you know, the two little babies. So I have to be pretty wise with my time. I'd say each week right now. And probably working. I would say 25 to 30 hours a week. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:00 Wow, that's great. Caroline Simmons 29:02 Yeah. So I try to squeeze in as much as I can during naptime. And after they go to bed. And they go to a mother's day out program two days a week for just five hours. So the night before they head off to their little school days, we call it I like to sit down and plan well, more than five hours of work. So that way, I can really just set the momentum for myself and just get as much done as I can in that amount of time. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:31 Who is creating graphics for you? Creating Pinterest images in Canva Caroline Simmons 29:34 I create my graphics. Jillian Tohber Leslie 29:36 Cool. Okay. Using what platform? Caroline Simmons 29:41 Canva and I also really have just discovered Shutterstock, I believe is the name of it. And Adobe Photos a little bit pricier when it comes to purchasing photos. But the quality of them is so great. And as much as I love Canvas, Canva images are very heavily used, and you really start to see and a lot of the same photos being used over and over again. So for me, it's worth it to spend, you know, $3 on a photo that I know is like 100% unique and really just is so on point with the blog post topic. But I love Canva. I am an avid user of it. One of my things for next week is to create a little tutorial for the bloggers and my facebook group who I kind of help with whatever goals they have on Canva, because it's just the possibilities are endless. And, you know, you can really I mean, every graphic on my blog, pretty much 99% of them I created in Canva. Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:41 Wow. And do you have templates set up in Canva so that you can put the image in change the text, and it looks like it's consistent with your site? Caroline Simmons 30:51 I don't. Canva provides a really great Pinterest template, which is that optimal size for a pin. But besides that, I think it's really just creating my own brand in a way in terms of I have certain fonts that I always use, I really I have just a look. And that I stick with. I really like high quality images. I like for the image to be big and bold. And I like for my my texts to be very easy to read as somebody scrolling through Pinterest. I don't want it to be too small. So in terms of templates, I'm really just using that Pinterest pin template on Canva, and then adding all of my own kind of signature things. Grow our email list faster with MiloTree Jillian Tohber Leslie 31:40 I wanted to take a short break to tell you about a new feature, we've added at MiloTree to help you grow your email list faster. Now in your email pop up, you can add add an image. So let's say you've got an e-book or a course or freebie. Or you just want to make your pop up pretty. Just add your image, you will increase the number of subscribers you get. So head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up for your account. Get your first 30 days free. And now back to the show. Keyword strategy for Pinterest Jillian Tohber Leslie 30:41 Now, what about writing descriptions? How do you think about that on Pinterest? Caroline Simmons 32:24 I think you've got to use the same kind of SEO tactics that you use on your blog with Pinterest. You've got to really sit down and create a very keyword heavy description. And you've got to be thinking in the mind of your ideal reader. What are they going to be typing into a search bar and whatever that is, you've got to find a way to work it into your description on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:55 Yes, yes. Now, are you using hashtags? Caroline Simmons 33:01 I mean, I think maybe once or twice. I have not jumped into that. And I know it's a newer feature. So I haven't started using them yet. But I know others are. And I haven't heard too much feedback on it. Have you heard of people really seeing a huge difference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:19 We are starting to put a couple hashtags into our descriptions. And I want to go back and add some hashtags at least like one to every board description. That's a big undertaking, because we have a lot of boards, but that's what I am thinking of doing. But we are starting to put a couple in our descriptions. I don't know if it's helping. I feel like it can't be hurting. And so what we're trying to do is put like our basic search words, you know, #babyshower, #girlbabshower, you know, #pinkbabyshower, that kind of thing. Caroline Simmons 34:02 And you've just touched on like, the toughest thing about blogging, things are always changing. And then you've got to decide, do I spend an entire day going back into this? It's like a few, maybe what, six months ago, Pinterest decided that they were going to change the shape of their board covers. And we all had to spend an entire day going back and fixing all these graphics. You have to really weigh things out and say, Is this a wise use of my time or is it going to even really make a difference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:34 And then you don't know that's the bit, you have all these analytics and all this stuff. And then at the end of the day to, there's a part of you, that just doesn't know. Caroline Simmons 34:42 Right. And I think that that's when you've got to take care of the things that you like we've talked about with Pinterest, you got to take care and nurture the things that are working for you, and take on those outside things just one week at a time. And don't try to do all of them at once. And you've really just got to space out and use your time wisely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:00 And what I want to say about you is you're not using hashtags and you're still getting tremendous traffic. So will you go entire day going back and doing hashtags because I don't think it's gonna change too much. Exactly. So you do a blog post. Or let's say, even somebody you have these writers. Do you create the editorial calendar for them? Did they pitch you ideas? How to work with blog contributors Caroline Simmons 35:27 No, most of the time I'm sending them the ideas based on what I know their strengths are. I have one girl that's just awesome at the How-tos she just wrote an awesome blog post for me about the maternity leave, with financial planner and how you can basically save up. She's very good at like actionable steps things to do. I've got another one who's just she's wonderful at, tapping into the emotions of motherhood and really just writing almost what I like to call like this supportive type blog posts. And then I also have someone. I have a labor and delivery nurse who writes for me, and she gets all of the things that have a lot of a lot of medical terminology. And, and she she is a great combination and knowledgeable in her field. But she also is so great at breaking it down so things aren't so scary. They're all very, very wonderful writers. And again, I'm so thankful that I have them. At the beginning of each month, I usually send each of them three to four posts, topics, and they begin writing and they have access to Swaddles and Bottles, and so they go in on the back end, and they create their blog posts, they do the formatting and things of that sort. And then it saves as a submitted post. And then I go in, and I do all the search engine optimization, I create the graphics for it. And I do all the little back and stuff, and then I publish it. Then I add it to my Tailwind, and I get it running through all of those group group boards. And then I put it on my Facebook schedule if I plan to share it there. And that's kind of just the the lifeline of a blog posts. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:19 And how many images are you making per post? Caroline Simmons 37:23 When I first started out, two to three. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:27 And they all have text overlays? Caroline Simmons 37:30 Yes. Always, use overlay. I like to just play around with the different titles change some words, you know, because the science of what makes a pin go viral. And what makes the pin just die off into the abyss is something that so many people have tried to specifically pinpoint. And it's not a perfect formula. I mean, you can't do ABC and within 24 hours have 20,000 readers, right. There's a lot of great guidance that we've received a lot of just general rules that people say, but again, you know, one of these, general rules that people say, is to avoid having like, faces in your pins but some faces and some pins that have done really, really well. So I think that it's a combination of a lot of things. And so I really like to try to tweak those things with each graphic that I make, just to kind of cover a few different bases. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:30 So what would those bases be? When you kind of go, Okay, I'm gonna make three images for this blog post, what will you go to, as things you think might be successful? Caroline Simmons 38:40 I'm just really changing the title. And I don't want to say call to action. But for example, let's say I wrote a blog post on losing weight, you know, I might do the first one on, you know, the Complete Guide to losing weight, I may do another one that's like, losing weight 101, 25 ways to get past your plateau, or than I might do another one of, Number stuck on the scale, can't get past a certain point? Here's how we can help you. So it's the exact same subject, but your wording it in different ways, because you never know what's going to appeal to someone, everyone's different. So I really just kind of rewording those things I might do maybe some different fonts, things might look different, just based on whatever the image is. If the image allows for me to do text over the whole image, then I'll do that. If it allows me to do text, they would just kind of like in a bar across the bottom, I might do that. So I really do try to make them pretty different. But the overall goal is, I want that text overlay to really be compelling, and really, really show them that there's value behind clicking through. Jillian Tohber Leslie 40:02 Yes. Got it. I meant to ask this, when you have your contributors, do you say this needs to be at least 300 words? Do you have a limit? Caroline Simmons 40:14 I usually will write that whenever I'm sending them the prompts. Sometimes, yes. The wonderful nurse that I have that writes for me, she just did an awesome blog post for me on the the biggest myths of labor and delivery. :ike debunked by a nurse, which was so awesome, because I mean, moms, you know, we got that we tell our horror stories, and everyone's like, terrified, but then to hear it straight from her. So with her, I usually just kind of let her roll with it. And they've all been writing for me, like I said, for so long, to the point where I think they just know what's the ideal length for Swaddles n Bottles. And we don't have anything that's, you know, an extensive 3, 4 page blog post, and I'd say, 2,000- 2500 words is probably the absolute most that we have. Everything ranges, probably in between, I'd say 650 to 1000 words. And the reason is, because it's a resource, we are trying to get you the information, we don't really want to fluff it a lot. We want to inform you, get you what you need, so that you can feel better about whatever it is that you're looking for. You're struggling with. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:30 Got it. And then will you add, say, the three images into the blog post? Or will you kind of add them into say Yoast, and then if somebody is going to pin your post, those other images will show up? Caroline Simmons 41:45 Yes. So usually, I just do one in the blog post, then what I will do is create new pins in Pinterest and put that link there. And you bring up a good point, a great tool that I really like, I don't want to get into too much of the debate because they have been having some technical difficulties is Social Warfare. They've done some updates, and some people are jumping ship, I haven't had any issues whatsoever, and I really, really like it. But Social Warfare allows me to select which pin, if somebody decides to click on that Pin It button, it lets me decide which pin is going to be used. And one more than that is it allows me to write that description. Like we talked about that description that's got those keywords. I don't have to worry that they're going to pin something with a blank description, whatever they're pinning, it's keyword heavy. It's got all of those things that I know are going to help it grow. Google vs. Pinterest for driving traffic Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:42 Got it. That's terrific. Okay. Now how are you doing with Google search versus Pinterest in terms of driving traffic. Caroline Simmons 42:52 Google or search engine traffic? Search engines are number two for me. I've seen a great increase. I used to get maybe about four 450 and pageviews a day from search traffic. I'm now into about the 2,000-3000s, and again that has come from all of the amazing bloggers out there who have been kind enough to share you know their tactics and their strategies. I took an amazing paid course from Hashtag Jeff. Are you familiar? Jillian Tohber Leslie 43:38 Love him, love him. Caroline Simmons 43:39 He's so good and I love how he's so real with you. He's like look videos are not my thing. I'm not a really like out there, bubbly blogger. But man, he is so good at what he does. And he breaks it down so well. I love the checklist that he gives you and everything like that. So taking his course why probably what really launched that forward for me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:06 I did a workshop with him at an AdThrive conference. And I loved him. Caroline Simmons 44:12 Did you go to the Adthrive Conference last year in Austin? Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:15 Yeah. Were you there? Caroline Simmons 44:15 No, me and my husband were so close to going, and I don't remember what happened. But we weren't able to go and I have like everyone in the Adthrive group has been talking about, when's the next conference? Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:28 Yes, oh I will go. Caroline Simmons 44:30 I'm so ready to go. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:31 Yes. Yes. So he was there. And that's where he just opened my eyes. I'm going to try and get him on the show. He opened my eyes to the power of SEO. Caroline Simmons 44:41 Yeah, he's wonderful. I love how he keeps it coming for you. Like he's constantly sending emails of new things. When this whole Google big whatever happened in August, he was the first person in my inbox saying here's what you need to do to try to fix it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 44:56 Was this like GDPR? Caroline Simmons 44:58 No, Google did a big update changed. Some things a lot of people in certain areas, saw some big drops. I didn't see anything too big. And I had one day where I got down to just like 1400 but it was one of those things where I think was really scary. A little dip and things have kind of corrected themselves since then. He's just so knowledgeable. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:22 Yep. Yep. Okay, so how do you monetize? How to monetize as a blogger with affiliates Caroline Simmons 45:26 My monetization strategy for Swaddles n Bottles. I think is really about and I think that should be the case for all blogs, diversification. You don't want to put your eggs in one basket. You don't want to have just one way that you're making money and so we just talked about you know, Adthrive. I monetize my website through ads first of all. Secondly I do affiliate marketing and I think affiliate marketing needs to be diversified. So many people just think Amazon, and Amazon is wonderful I absolutely love it. I was an Amazon mom well before I became a blogger who was promoting it. I mean I order more stuff off of Amazon than I would be willing. So I love it and I love promoting it to to my readers and the products that I use. But then I also love the smaller affiliate marketing setups. You know there's shareasale and CJ affiliates and pepper jam they all have affiliate programs. Target has an affiliate program. I mean, really, it's kind of difficult this day and age to find someone that doesn't have one, so I really think you need to diversify that and not just stick with Amazon, but reach out to all of those those other smaller affiliates as well. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Are you making your most affiliate income with products like strollers or bottles? Or is it courses about new mothers? What works for your audience? Caroline Simmons 46:57 You know, the product that I'm using, there are so many products for just having a baby in general. It can be difficult to really navigate through them. I do a lot of suggestions -- either the best products that is cost effective products, the ones that work the best things like that. I just did a blog blog posts too, on the products you do not need, because you're going to think that you do, but you actually don't need them. And so I do do a lot of that. I also do an affiliate for courses that like you said, you're a new mom. Here are some things that could help you out, or you know, you're a breastfeeding mother, here are some things that can help you out. So I think it's really just diversifying that. And in thinking outside of the Amazon box, it's a great way to get started. It really is. But then once you've got a good steady hold on it, start looking for more things. Because there are more things out there. The courses and things add so much value for my readers. And I know that they're really, really helping them. And so I love promoting and any other blogs that have courses like that. So that's another way that I monetize affiliate marketing. And then I do do occasional sponsored posts, I'm not too big on them. Well, not to say that I'm not too big on them. I don't do them very often. Because I really do try to stay super selective and which ones I do because I want them to be just really, really in line with my audience, and what they need and what products I think would actually benefit them. And so I do them. I'm not constantly aiming to do a certain amount per month or anything. And when I find a product that I think will be great, I love pitching them. And I have a lot of messages that come to my inbox as well about partnerships. But we just try to stay selective and what we do so that we we stay in line with what our audience needs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 48:54 And if you were to break it down? Are there any other monetization strategies? Caroline Simmons 48:58 No, not for Swaddles n Bottles. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:00 Okay, if you were to break it down, how much, percentage wise, how much would you say you're making the ads via affiliates? Caroline Simmons 49:09 Affiliates is always number one. I definitely make the most with affiliate marketing. To go back to the diversification, I was just looking at my different income for the month, and Amazon's great. It's on track. It's doing well but for the first time those small little here and there other affiliate opportunities is what I call them, has surpassed my Amazon income which goes to show you can't disregard the little things. This little affiliate program may only make you $100 a month, and this program may make you $100, but then when you've got 10 of those small wins it adds up, so affiliate marketing with Amazon and other affiliates combined, those are definitely my number one source of income each month. Ads as a close second and I think the ad network that you're with is a big part of that, and and then of course sponsored posts would probably the smallest percentage. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:14 Right and then because you've had all this success, you created another blog and you also have a Facebook group? Teaching other bloggers as a blogger Caroline Simmons 50:24 Yes. So then I created the Basics of Blogging and obviously I hope someone can tell through everything we've talked about today. I really love helping other bloggers. I am a firm believer that I could give away every blogging secret that I have, and it's not going to hurt my success. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:46 I love that. Say that again. Caroline Simmons 50:54 I had a wonderful mentor at my past job. And his saying was, a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:03 Yes. Caroline Simmons 51:06 And so I think that as bloggers, it's a natural for us to want to hold everything close. And not give away our secrets. But I think that as long as we all promise to just stay unique and always be ourselves and create our own content. There's nothing wrong with sharing what's working for you. And so I started the Basics of Blogging as a way to share just really anything and everything that was working for me. I created two ebooks Pinning for Pageviews and Mastering Affiliate Marketing, where I just kind of share everything. And then I have a Facebook group where I try to get on there and share just little tidbits here and there. We've recently also started doing something where we invite other successful bloggers to kind of take over the Facebook page. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:56 Oooh, can I come in? Caroline Simmons 51:57 Yes, absolutely. Come in. And you just kind of share. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:02 Can we talk about MiloTree? Caroline Simmons 52:03 I actually talked about MiloTree this morning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:06 You did? Caroline Simmons 52:06 Yes! Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:07 Oh, thank you. Caroline Simmons 52:08 Yeah, I told them. I was like, I'm doing an interview this morning. I'm really excited about it. And I kind of told them why I think it works so well. And how it's helped me bring back traffic and grow big following. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 I love it. Wait, but tell us what is this Facebook group? Caroline Simmons 52:26 It's called just the Basics of Blogging. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:28 Okay, got it. Caroline Simmons 52:29 And it's very different than your typical blogging Facebook group. Because in some of the other ones, you'll see a lot of like, promo days and follow for follow and comment threads and stuff like that. It's not really my goal. My goal is, like I've told everyone is just a constant waterfall of knowledge and support. And it's just really where I want people to come and grow and learn and hopefully meet their goals that they have. So it's not a place to come and share your latest blog post on the wall and stuff like that. It's a place to kind and just kind of join this community of people who have the same goals as you. We're all trying to be successful bloggers, and I really want it to be a resource for people. But I also don't want to be the only person sharing what I know. I really want it to be a community and kind of set the standard for whatever's working for you, share it, share the wealth, share the love driven knowledge. I'm excited. You know, all of this the blogging thing blogging about blogging is kind of a newer. Jillian Tohber Leslie 53:33 It's kind of meta, isn't it? Caroline Simmons 53:35 Yeah, it's, it's new. And it's very different than blogging about babies and bumps and birth and things like that. But I enjoy it. I do I really enjoy helping people. And I love hearing your feedback. And one of the bloggers who's doing, you know, takeover soon, she was one of the first people to purchase my ebook. She was a brand new blogger. She's now, bringing in well over 100,000 page views a month. I know that it's not just because of the blog, I know that she also just has a wonderful mindset in terms of continuously learning, and she's just sharp and she's just got something about her that she's been able to be very successful at this very quickly. And so I'm gonna let her take over and share some of her stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 54:19 Yes, I would love to come in, just to share kind of what's worked for us. Caroline Simmons 54:24 It's a smaller community. We just, I've just kind of picked up on this with them. Now that my girls are in school, and I have a little bit more time but I've got I've got big goals for it. And I really hope that it becomes something you know, five years down the road when someone else is doing an interview like that. They can say, well, the basics of blogging really helped me. Jillian Tohber Leslie 54:46 Oh, I love that. Okay. Do you have any parting advice for a mom blogger out there? Like you have two little babies, and you're doing this, like, what is your advice to somebody who listens to this and wants to be where you are? Advice: Embrace the process as a blogger, it takes time Caroline Simmons 55:07 I would say well, I would say to just really embrace the process. It takes time. Just the process of that journey of creating something and putting in these hours and staying up late after your baby good, it's bad. And, you know, hustling during those times. It's a tough journey. But man, when you get to the point where you're seeing your goals, you're knocking them off, and you're crossing them out, because you've done it, it's so rewarding. So just embrace it. and be patient with yourself. Don't try to shortcut it or, or anything like that. Really just just embrace the process. And be patient with yourself. Continue to just make those small efforts every single day they will add up. And you will start to see it happening for you. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:54 Oh, wow, Caroline. Thank you. Just you know, I love your mindset of small goals. It's a slow build, the overnight success is not really real. But if you just keep in there and learn and grow and do your right one thing every day, you will grow your business. Caroline Simmons 56:18 Yeah, absolutely. The Slight Edge is what I'm reading right now. And it's all about that same thing, just constantly making the daily efforts that if you look back at what you did yesterday. Those little efforts that's not what's going to make you successful. But it's continuing to do those over and over and over and over again, that's going to get you to the point where you're meeting your goals. Jillian Tohber Leslie 56:47 And one less thing, which is we all compare ourselves to others. And there are always people who are bigger than us, whose businesses look so much better than our businesses. And by the way, one thing I will say is you have no idea what really going on in that person or that business' life. When you feel yourself contracting and feeling less than, to force yourself into saying and I believe in abundance, and I believe in abundance. Caroline Simmons 57:14 Absolutely. Yeah, you're right comparison, like the saying, comparison is the thief of all joy. If we would all just focus on ourselves and anytime that we're feeling down, write down a few things that we've done and we've accomplished and be able to say that you're proud of yourself. That is a bigger motivation and to me then looking at someone else and trying to you know, catch up with that so to speak. Jillian Tohber Leslie 57:37 Absolutely. Well Caroline, this was such a pleasure thank you so much for coming on the show. Caroline Simmons 57:43 Absolutely. I have enjoyed speaking with you so so much. I hope I get to meet you in person at the next Adthrive convention. I would love it and we live kinda near each other. Yeah, we have made some family trips to Austin with our girls here and there. So I will absolutely reach out to you. If we make our way there. Jillian Tohber Leslie 58:03 I realized I ended my recording without asking Caroline how people could reach out to her me to give you that information. Now, her website is called Swaddlesnbottles.com and her email address is Caroline@swaddlesnbottles.com. Her other site is thebasicsofblogging.com and that's also the name of her facebook group. So do reach out, especially if you'd like this interview. And just like how Caroline is using Milottree to grow her Pinterest followers. Because Pinterest traffic is so valuable, you might want to do it also. So head over to MiloTree and get your Pinterest pop up that tells your visitors to follow you on Pinterest installed on your site. And if you do that you get your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!