The Blogger Genius Podcast

Latest Episodes:

#114: How to Deal With Marriage and Family Tension While Stuck at Home Mar 30, 2020

Show notes

If you need ideas for how to deal with marriage and family tension during this time of social distancing, please listen to this episode. There are a lot of tips in this episode to make your life saner and happier!

Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am releasing another special episode. This one is not about growing your business. This one is not about how to pivot. This one is not about what to post on social media.

This one is about how to survive and thrive during this time when we're all at home with our families. Today, I'm interviewing my mom. I'm not just interviewing her because she's my mom. I'm interviewing her because she is a marriage and family therapist.

I think she has some really interesting insights, strategies, ways of looking at your life in this very unusual, anxiety-provoking time.

Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie.

I think she has some really interesting insights, strategies, ways of looking at your life in this very unusual, anxiety-provoking time.

#113: IMPORTANT—How to Find Success During Coronavirus Mar 23, 2020

Show notes

Today, I've got a special episode, where I'm talking about how to find success during coronavirus. Yes, it is possible if you know how to pivot your business. These are scary times, especially as online business owners, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. We've watched our Catch My Party traffic fall by half in one week! But if we can solve problems for our audiences, we will be okay. I believe that in my heart. And our businesses will be stronger for it. My advice: Be the light for your readers because we all need more light right now. My hope is that this episode gives you a roadmap for how to look beyond the paralysis, fear, and panic that we're all feeling, and shift your focus back onto your audience so you can become a resource, guide, and helper. And your audience will reward you for it! How to Find Success During Coronavirus Host 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Wow, what a time we are living in. The word that just keeps popping up for me is "unease". I just feel like everything is off balance. But that is why I'm going live with this interview early because I want to give you more balance, especially in your online business. I'm interviewing Matt Molen from Personalized Paths. He is my email marketing guru. What we are talking about is how to move your business in the right direction during this uncertain time, how to be there for your audience, and still build your business. MiloTree BlogStart to Start Your WordPress Blog Also, for those of you who have not yet started your entrepreneurial journey, David and I have started a service called MiloTree BlogStart, where we will set up and optimize your WordPress blog for you. Setting up a WordPress blog can be tricky. There's a lot of tech, there are a lot of settings or a lot of features, and we know how to do it. We know how to set you up and get you started on the right foot and be there for you with any technical help you need. So, it's MiloTree.com/blogstart. If you're ready to take your fate in your own hands, definitely let us help you. Okay. This interview, I think you are going to really get a lot out of it. What I love about Matt is he gives actionable, practical real tips and ideas. For those of you who need to feel inspired, this is the interview for you. I got off this call, and I just felt lightness and excitement, and a way to really be there for my audience. So without further delay, here is my interview with Matt Molen. Matt, welcome back to the show. I am so excited to talk to you right now. Matt Molen 2:29 Well, Jillian, thanks for having me. I know that there's a lot on people's minds right now. And, you know, you and I have been chatting a little bit. I think there are some things that people could be doing in my area of expertise that they're not doing, and I just want to have a chance to talk about it a little bit. Jillian Leslie 2:45 And first of all, I have to say you reached out to me yesterday and you said, "Hey, do you want to talk about how people can respond to this very uneasy time?" And I will tell you that you gave me a feeling of solace because of the normal seat like, "Of course, I want to talk to you." Because when I talk to you things are normal, and we're talking about business. Even just when we got on this call, hearing your voice, I said that to you. I said, "Oh, it just feels comforting." Mostly because I'm doing what I normally do. And by talking to you, I'm not checking the news. I am not thinking about my family and all the worries of the world. So, I want to thank you for reaching out and for just giving me let's say, 45 minutes of normalcy. Matt Molen 3:36 Well, thanks. I love that you think of it that way because that's how I've been thinking about it is that most people right now, myself included, are feeling very uneasy, very uncertain. Not just about blogging, but about life in general. And, I'm getting all these emails. You are too. In fact, I got one in my inbox. It kind of made me laugh. It was so ridiculous. It was from a life insurance company that I don't even have a policy with. And the message was, "Hey, this life insurance company is open." Thanks so much, guys. What a help that was. And so, I think that we're getting so much news. It's distracting. It's hard to concentrate. And if you're a blogger in this in this environment, you're worried about your ad revenue. You're worried about your site traffic? Just the general feeling of where is this going? Jillian Leslie 4:34 Yes. How long is this going to last? Matt Molen 4:38 On top of that, our routines are disrupted. So that's weird. It's hard to focus. And then, I think that I've seen this other thing and I feel it too. Is this desire to reach out and help somebody somehow. Jillian Leslie 4:50 Yes. Yes. Matt Molen 4:52 All of that usually is leading up towards paralysis or a lack of strategy going forward. Now my area of expertise, of course, is with email marketing specifically for bloggers. I have the benefit of talking with content creators every single day about their email. On top of that, I'm looking at email campaigns that are coming across. And I'm just going, "Man, you guys are blowing this." Because this is a situation unlike any other. And what I thought that I would do, I know I've been on the podcast before and I shared kind of my system. Many people may actually, or not many, but some people may actually be familiar with the way that I think about things and my system. Jillian Leslie 5:29 Yeah, and we will of course link to your previous episodes. So, definitely. Matt Molen 5:35 Awesome. But this situation is so different that I wanted to come and share perhaps an email strategy that your listeners could think about employing for the next few weeks or months if that's how far this thing goes on. Hopefully not. But that's what I want to talk about today. Jillian Leslie 5:56 I'd love it. Love it. How to Think Differently About Your Business During Coronavirus Matt Molen 5:57 Okay. So, what I want to tell everybody, first of all, is that I want them to lace up their running shoes. All right? I want them to think that they're getting ready right now mentally to get out and work. Okay? Because so much of this is preparing your mind to take action. These are unprecedented times and it's going to require… I'm not saying unprecedented levels of work, but it's going to require a different way of thinking and a little bit of hustle to really optimize and be of the most service that we can be. I recently did a talk on this. I was telling some of the people that were on my list that I was doing it. I got an email back from a lady that runs a Disneyland website. Her website is 100% about Disneyland. Her message to me was, "Email saved me so far." And what I'm going to talk about today, and I'll come back to her. Her name is Jessica. I'll come back to Jessica's story at the end about what she did. But email saved her. Think about what it must be like with her site. Disneyland closes. She's got nothing to talk about. Nobody's doing any searching. Her ad revenue has got to be tanking. They're not buying her products. For her, she is probably staring down the barrel of an uncomfortable gun, if you will. What I want to start with though, is that I want to start with an overarching principle. This principle always works. This is the principle that I live by for marketing in general. And that is solve your reader's problem. Solve Your Readers' Problems Now Jillian Leslie 7:37 Love it. Matt Molen 7:38 Solve your reader's problems. If you keep coming back to that over and over again, it's going to change the way you think about your opportunity here. So, let's talk about email in general, and what to send to your subscribers right now. I have seen… You've probably seen this too. And I don't fault people for sending this. They're sending emails that say, "How can I help?" Now, the spirit behind that is I want to help you. I want to know what you're going through. Here's the problem with that, though. Everybody is uncertain because this is new to all of us. Your readers, they don't know what they need. Jillian Leslie 8:19 Exactly. You're putting the onus on somebody to tell you what they need. Matt Molen 8:27 Exactly. And they don't know what you can do. They don't know what they need, but you as the subject matter expert, you do know to a degree, what they need within your sphere of knowledge and influence. So the question I have for anybody listening is, "What problem can you solve in the right now? How would you provide value in this environment right now?" I got some examples of some really positive examples that I got from some emails from people. Just today I got one from the best ideas for kids. It was a hundred plus indoor activities. There's a lot of moms with kids at home. That solves a problem. I received one eight days ago, which I thought was almost prophetic. But it was, "Don't panic. Be prepared. Free 14-day meal plan and shopping list." That was from Favorite Family Recipes. One of the sub-headers in there is, "A little panic planning can bring great peace of mind." And so I thought that was good. I got another one that was an activity binder for teens. So, some people are understanding the value that they can provide to their readers. But let's talk for just a second. There are some blog categories that are really hard hit. We've got travel. We've got fitness. We've got finance. Or just "lifestyle" in general. Who's thinking about even Easter activities right now? Jillian Leslie 9:59 Absolutely. I think in terms of fashion, for example, the last thing I want to do is buy clothes right now. I'm in my pajamas. Matt Molen 10:10 So, the brainstorming activity that I would do if we had people in the room here together is I would say, "Look, let's think about it for a second. Fashion blogger, travel blogger, finance, blogger, fitness, blogger, what problem can you solve for your readers right now?" If I'm a travel blogger, and I actually do have a travel blog on the side, we need to be thinking about what's going through our readers' minds right now. Well, they're sitting on vacation plans. Maybe not right now but down the road. They don't know should they keep them. What are refund policies like? What are cancellations like? Is now a time to actually book cheap flights in the future? Do I go look for hotel values right now? As an aside, we have some trips planned out late in 2020. Those hotel rates have dropped. So, do you advise them on how to go change those? You see what I'm saying? There are ways that they can solve a reader's problem that is unique to this situation. Jillian Leslie 11:11 Absolutely. I have my assistant for Catch My Party and I will tell you that our traffic has died because if you were planning that mermaid party for your daughter next month, you're not planning it now. We have a content schedule where we have our blog posts blocked out for a couple of months, and we literally said, "Oh my God, we seem tone-deaf." If we are posting about a fun summer party, even summer, because who knows? And what we did was we step back and we said, "People are home." Our users are typically… Our visitors or moms. How can we bring some festivity or some lightheartedness, or just something to moms? And what we thought about was… Well, a couple of things. How to Plan A Virtual Party During Shelter at Home One, how do you plan a virtual party? What platforms can you use to do that? What kind of games can you play online with a group of people? What if it's a group of, you know, five-year-olds versus what if it's a group of 15-year-olds? We're right now building out a bunch of content about how would you do that. Or we give printables away for things like… We have like game night printables. Well, guess what? You know what? Maybe for your family you could print out a couple printables and put out some games and have a game night just to break up the monotony or just have a little bit more play in this stressful time. So it's amazing how quickly we said, "Oh, my God. Our normal content doesn't work anymore." We understand because my assistant and I are both stressed out. Like, what would we want? And that's kind of the direction that we're heading in. Matt Molen 13:10 I love that. And you know what that tells me? This is the type of people like you who get into this business, for this reason, is to innovate. It is to create. And quite often we get into a rut, we get into our routines, and we stay in our lane. What this is forcing you to do is look at your expertise, and twist it a little bit. Turn it on its head, and come up with the solutions to the problems using your expertise. You know how to party. Jillian Leslie 13:40 Right. Matt Molen 13:40 And being able to convert that into today's dynamic, wow! I could see NBC News interviewing you just because that type of content is going to be so readily available, or so readily adopted. People are going to want that. They want to have some fun for all the reasons we've been talking about. So, that's the power though. When you figure that out, that's the power of having a robust email list. Because the traffic isn't necessarily coming to the site now. Now, we need to use our list and drive people to the site so that they can absorb it, so that they can then share it with their friends. Why Email is More Powerful Than Ever Jillian Leslie 14:21 Absolutely. Because for example, I don't have the time right now to be hanging on social media to be like, "Let's go to Pinterest and just kind of browse around." But if something comes into my inbox, I probably will open it. Matt Molen 14:36 Exactly. So, if you and your team and everybody within the sound of my voice, if they write down three to five problems that they can solve for their readers in this current situation, and maybe different problems than they ever otherwise would have been. The good news is that in most cases, you probably can leverage your existing content. You just have to twist it a little bit. Sometimes you got to make new content. That's why I was talking about we got to lace up our running shoes, it's time to hustle. The next question that I want to address is how often should you now email these people? One of the most common rebuttals, I guess, from people that have not adopted email is, "I don't want to annoy people." Well, yeah. You know what's annoying? It's that email from that life insurance company. You didn't ask for it. Jillian Leslie 15:12 Good question. I call them the tone-deaf emails. Like, how many of you have I gotten in the last week? Matt Molen 15:39 They're not solving my problems, therefore, those are annoying. However, it's not spam if you're providing value. If you are solving your readers' problems, especially right now, they are all yours. So, let me give you a little analogy. I used to work in the daily deals industry. In that space, as you can imagine, ecommerce Q4 was huge but especially Black Friday weekend. There are deals left and right. We sent so many emails and people absorb the emails. They wanted the emails because they're deal seekers and they wanted to know what was hot t…

Full show notes at the publisher

#112: How to Find Financial Freedom with a Niche Blog Mar 18, 2020

Show notes

You hear me say it all the time...the riches are in the niches. Today's guest on the podcast will show you how to find financial freedom in a niche blog.

Cassidy Tuttle is the creator behind Succulents and Sunshine, a blog solely devoted to the care and propagation of succulents.

That sounds limiting, doesn't it? A blog that talks only about succulents?

I think you might be shocked at all that Cassidy has been able to accomplish with her blog. I'm talking products, courses, and more.

Cassidy is more than a blogger; she is a businesswoman.

But, before we dive into my conversation with Cassidy, I want to ask you a question: have you listened to 5 or more episodes of this podcast but you don't have your own blog yet?

If so, you are not alone!

My husband and business partner, David, and I have noticed a trend among some of our listeners; a lot of you want to start an online business or a blog but you have no idea where or how to begin.

If the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!

MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree/BlogStart to see how we can help you.

We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you're not tech-savvy.

That's why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.

If you're ready to make 2020 the year you finally start that business or blog you've been dreaming of for a long time, let us help.

Head over to MiloTree/BlogStart to get started.

We can't wait to see what you build in 2020!

How to Start an Online Business

I have discovered over the many years I've been in online business that many bloggers start their blogs to fill a hole that they found in the market, and that was certainly true for Cassidy.

She began a photography blog back in 2012 to show off the projects she was working on. And during a particularly harsh winter, she purchased two succulents and placed them in her window.

When she tried to find information on how to care for them, she couldn't find anything. She began posting about them on her photography blog, (she says they are very photogenic plants!) and explaining how she was caring for them.

What was "kind of a happy accident" turned into a business when Cassidy realized she was getting organic search traffic from Google to the posts she was writing about her succulents?

On Valentine's Day of 2013, she purchased the URL for Succulents and Sunshine and began to pursue it as a real business.

How to Create Online Products

Cassidy was earning some income from ads when she moved her business to succulents. She had ads on her photography site and she also placed ads on her new site. But if you look at her site now, you will also see products for sale.

In 2014, based on the Google search traffic she was getting, Cassidy decided to write an ebook on the most popular topic on her blog: propagating succulents.

She released the ebook to her tiny email list, (which was mostly just an RSS feed at the time) and she made $1K from her $10 ebook.

While Cassidy was initially disappointed in the amount she earned, it didn't take her long to realize that the ebook would continue to earn money forever. And it did. In fact, it still brings in at least $500 every single month.

Cassidy also continued writing ebooks (she has 5 currently), and eventually, she branched out into courses (she has 2 as of today), succulent ID cards (150+ plants), and a membership site.

How to Use Tripwires to Increase Online Sales

Tripwires are something I've been talking about a lot lately and something that Cassidy has used very effectively to increase the amount of revenue she is bringing in.

When a customer purchases one of her ebooks for $10, they are given the option to purchase the entire bundle of 5 ebooks for $25 instead. And her conversion rate on this tripwire is an incredible 35%!

Cassidy has tested several other tripwires but none has brought in the increased revenue like the book bundles.

How to Test Email Opt-in Strategies

Testing is so crucial when you're developing products. I love that Cassidy is always testing to see what works and what her audience responds to.

In 2019, she spent some time testing her email opt-ins and how she was asking site visitors to sign up for her list. She began with a typical pop-up, but she decided to switch things up and see what happened.

Instead of the pop-up lead magnet, she wrote a paragraph about watering succulents.

The text offered a cheat sheet for knowing how much to water your plants and how to know if you've watered too much. At the end of the paragraph, she had a button that said, "Click Here to Get the Cheat Sheet."

Only then did the box pop up for the visitor to enter their email address.

This testing was a huge success, as her opt-in conversion rate more than doubled with the new system.

How to Find New Blog Income Strategies

At this point, I know you might still be surprised by how Cassidy has been able to take a blog about succulents and have so much amazing success with it.

I asked her to share with us how she earns an income from the blog and what her percentages look like from her varied income streams.

Cassidy's own products make up about 40% of the blog's revenue. Roughly half of that comes from the digital downloads she offers. (Ebooks, ID cards.) The other 50% of that is course sales.

Courses, while a newer piece of her overall strategy, has become an important part of the business. Simply put, courses are a higher-ticket item, so even if you sell fewer of them, you still earn more money.

How to Create Content in a Tiny Niche

You all already know my feelings about niching down, but I wanted to hear Cassidy's take on the pros and cons of blogging in a tight niche.

When she travels to blogging conferences, Cassidy hears the same thing over and over from other bloggers:

"How in the world do you come up with enough material to blog about succulents on a regular basis?"

The thing is, Cassidy never has to guess what her site visitors are coming to the site for.

Whereas a lifestyle blogger might not know if her audience prefers her recipes, or the DIY projects she shares, or her fashion posts, Cassidy knows exactly what her audience wants.

That takes all the guesswork out of content creation. Cassidy also uses the questions members of her Facebook group ask on a regular basis to create content that answers those questions.

Why You Might Want to Put Content Behind a Paywall

After several years of building out her site, Cassidy no longer considers herself a true blogger.

One new piece of content is added to the site weekly right now, but that will stop at the end of this year. (2020) Why stop adding new content to the site?

It's simple really.

Succulents and Sunshine gets a ton of traffic, so Cassidy doesn't need to continue creating content in order to drive traffic. The site contains all the content someone would need in order to grow and propagate most succulents.

And for those who want more, there are the courses and the membership site.

Cassidy is beginning to add new content, besides the one piece of content per week, to the membership area.

Her business model is one of providing helpful free content for the masses, but asking those who want to go farther to pay for the additional content.

What I love about Cassidy's business is how it continues to evolve and grow as her customers tell her what they want. She has developed a level of trust with her customers that is amazing.

Another thing I love is that while her membership site isn't huge by most standards, she has members who have been there since the beginning simply because they want the one-on-one attention the membership provides them.

So now I'll ask you: what does your audience need one-on-one help with? What are you currently giving away for free that you could put behind a paywall?

Last thing - did you hear Cassidy's one piece of advice for new bloggers? I'll give you a hint: listen in at 49:15 and you'll hear what it is!

Then, join me in our Facebook group as I discuss my favorite takeaways from this episode.

Transcript for "How to Find Financial Freedom with a Niche Blog" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#111: How to Sell Products on Amazon and Kill It Mar 11, 2020

Show notes

Listen to this interview with Amanda Wittenborn as she shares how to sell products on Amazon and kill it!

I used to think that selling products on platforms like Amazon was all about competing with others on price.

Amanda has taught me that I was wrong.

She started out selling printables, but she was struggling to really grow her business.

So she began selling invitations on Amazon that she had created and printed, and she has now grown this into a 7-figure business.

I can't wait for you to hear Amanda's story of how she went from struggling blogger to finding what worked for her. But first...

I'm excited to announce that my husband, business partner, and tech genius, David, and I have started our first blogger coaching group. I've been mentioning this for a few weeks and I am so excited that it's off the ground!

This is a 6-week program that help online entrepreneurs understand all the things they need to know as they start to build their blogs into a profitable businesses.

We're talking about all the tech stuff for sure, but we're also covering how to create content, how to find your audience, what products to sell, how to monetize, and how to understand SEO.

We also talk about social media platforms, email marketing, and all the other pieces of building an online business you need to know today.

There are live Q&A's, teaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and we are there with you every step of the way.

If you're ready to get your business off the ground, email me at jillian@ milotree.com so I can reserve your spot for our next session starting in late May.

Creating Products Fit for Amazon

One of the first lessons Amanda had to learn was that not all products are going to work on Amazon. She had to figure out the types of products that would work and focus on creating those.

Prior to Amazon, Amanda created personalized invitations, with all the pertinent information already on them. She sold files that a customer could print, or a customer could purchase pre-printed items.

Once she began selling on Amazon, she switched to creating fill-in invitations. Amanda actually doubted that anybody would want invitations they had to fill in manually, but people loved them.

When someone purchases invitations from Amanda, they can also purchase Thank You cards, stickers, and water bottle wrappers, and all of these items match the theme of the invitations.

Will Your Business Work on Amazon?

There are 2 sides to Amazon that are possibilities for selling your products. There is the regular Amazon, where most of us shop on a regular basis. And then there is Handmade by Amazon, which is like the Amazon version of Etsy.

So, how do you know if your business will work on Amazon? Amanda gave us a tip to figure out which Amazon platform you need to be on:

If your product is quick to create and you can keep a lot in stock, use the regular Amazon platform.
If you create personalized products that require time to complete, you may want to sell your product on Handmade by Amazon.

Isn't Amazon Too Competitive to Sell On?

Oh my goodness, I don't know about you guys/gals, but when I think about selling on Amazon, I picture a young dude trying to beat the Amazon algorithm to show up in the Buy Box.

And actually, Amanda says that is truthfully how the system works... unless you have a completely unique product.

If you come in with something unlike anything else that's on the platform, you won't be fighting for the Buy Box because there isn't a comparable item to compete.

Yes, there are other invitations on the platform. However, the competition isn't the same as if you have people ordering generic items from China to sell.

Amanda takes advantage of sponsored ads and keyword placement to get her products in front of more eyeballs, but the cut-throat competition just isn't a thing when you have a unique product.

Hitting Income Goals on Amazon

Amanda's first year selling on Amazon resulted in $250K in sales. So, the next year she set a goal to double it.

And that following year, she did $650K in sales. (Wow, right?!)

Her third year, she decided to go for a million in sales. I'm sure it's no surprise that she hit that goal, too.

And Amanda says that it didn't take long at all to hit the $20K sales mark. She recommends being prolific in your creation and testing things along the way. When something works, she adds more like it.

Merchant Fulfilled vs. Amazon Fulfilled

For the first 6 months of her business, Amanda printed all the invitations she sold and shipped then to her customers herself. This is known as "merchant fulfilled, "meaning the seller is the one fulfilling the orders.

At first, it was easy to do. With 2-3 sales per week, Amanda had no trouble keeping up with fulfilling the orders. But when it got to be 10-15 sales per week, and then continued growing from there, it became very difficult to keep up.

Keep in mind, she had to do all the printing, cutting, packaging and shipping. And her orders were ramping up quickly. It was then that she began having her invitations preprinted and she started building up stock.

She had 40 designs, so she had 10 packs of each printed. She paid $750 for that first order and she was terrified at the outlay. What if they didn't sell?

But they did sell, and because Amanda switched to Amazon Fulfillment, she no longer had to worry about the packaging and the shipping. Amazon held her stock and when orders came through, Amazon packaged them up and shipped them.

The other amazing thing about using Fulfilled by Amazon is that your customers can take advantage of the 2-day Prime shipping.

Selling on Etsy vs. Amazon and Pricing Products

Amanda no longer has her Etsy shop since she started using Fulfilled by Amazon, simply because of all the extra work Etsy requires.

Amanda also shared with me that she is not the cheapest price for her product on Amazon, but she sees that as a good thing. Sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we think we have to price our products super low so people will buy.

That's wrong thinking, according to Amanda. If you price too low, people will think your products are cheap and will expect everything you sell to be priced low. The lower your prices, the more complaints you get.

Amanda found that pricing her products in a higher price range led to better sales; not as many sales but more income. Whereas another seller might have to sell 100 packs of invitations to make a certain amount, Amanda only has to sell 50 packs to make the same amount.

Learning to Sell on Amazon

Just like any platform, Amazon has a learning curve when it comes to using the platform for selling your own products. But unlike most other platforms, Amazon provides all of the education for anyone wanting to use the platform to sell.

Amanda found everything she needed right there on Amazon. Their help center provides videos and articles for every step of the process.

Anything you need to know, Amazon provides the answer. If you don't see your issue addressed, you can call them and get help.

Buying Ads on Amazon

Amanda mentioned that she purchases ads on Amazon, so I asked her to dive into a bit more of what that means and how it works.

Amazon has a sponsored ad campaign system that allows you to set up ad campaigns for your products. You can set the daily amount you want to spend and you can also bid for your products.

For example, Amanda may have a pirate-themed invitation. She can bid $0.20 for her product to show up when someone searches for a "pirate invitation" on Amazon.

Amanda no longer runs her own ad campaigns on Amazon. She recently hired a third-party agency to manage them for her.

The Flexibility of Owning Your Own Business

One of the great things about Amanda's business is how flexible it is. She can be there for her kids after school, on school holidays, and when they are sick.

And she has grown a team of women who work for her who also appreciate that same flexibility.

Amanda reaches out to stay-at-home moms she knows when she needs to hire something out because their lifestyle matches hers. She likes knowing that the women who work for her can be there for their families.

And because of the growth of the business, Amanda can take a lot of time off over her kids' school holidays to be with them without worrying about the business suffering. She and the other women work around 20 hours per week and for Amanda, that feels just right.

I think that's the part I love the most about Amanda's story; she set a goal to reach a certain lifestyle, and she not only accomplished it for herself, but she also provides the same opportunity for other women who want the same thing.

And I want you to listen in because Amanda shared a lot about how her blog's lack of success is what drove her to start selling on Amazon.

She is a perfect example of what I always tell clients and bloggers—if you have an idea, test it.

If you want to see Amanda's products, you can go right to Amazon and see all the amazing things she offers.

And if you would like to chat with her about any questions you have, she'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out at amanda@amandacreation.com.

Transcript for "How to Sell Products on Amazon and Kill It" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#110: Why Site Speed Can Hurt Your Blog and How to Fix It Mar 04, 2020

Show notes

In this episode, my husband, business partner, and tech extraordinaire, David, and I are talking about why site speed can hurt your blog and how to fix it.

Have you been blogging for a bit, but you aren't seeing the traffic you thought you'd see? Or is your bounce rate super high?

If you're dealing with issues like these, perhaps your problem isn't your content; perhaps your site speed is to blame. In this episode

We're digging deep into why site speed matters, and how to be sure that yours is where it needs to be.

But first, if you're new here, I wanted to take a minute to explain what MiloTree is about and what we offer to our customers, besides this podcast! I like to call this the "MiloTree Umbrella."

First off, if you are a new blogger, or you're thinking about being a blogger but you haven't started yet, we are here to help. Setting up your blog is what holds back the majority of people who want to blog.

And we get it. Tech can be confusing and it can make you procrastinate indefinitely. But lucky for you, my husband and business partner, David, is a genius with all the tech stuff.

So, if you head over to MiloTree/BlogStart, you can sign up for our blog start service. We will set up and optimize your WordPress blog, and get everything in place for you to begin creating content.

Then, once you have your blog up and running, you'll want to install our MiloTree pop-up on your site. This allows you to grow your social media platforms, email list, online shopping platforms, or whatever you want to grow!

Go to MiloTree and click on the purple text in the top right corner to start your free 30-day trial and see how quickly you can begin to grow your audience.

And then finally, David and I are finally offering blog coaching for entrepreneurs! I'm so excited about helping you all develop a real business through your blog.

We are currently in our first 6-week entrepreneur coaching session, and we would love to have you in a future group. If you aren't getting the results you want, come join us and let us help you reach your goals and build a business that will grow with you.

Just click through to sign up for your spot in our next session.

Now let's get technical, without being too technical...

What Is Blog Site Speed and Why Does It Matter?

Site speed, simply defined, is how fast your blog pages load when someone comes to your site.

Pretty simple, right? The question though, is why should you care? David explains there are 2 reasons why site speed matters.

You want to give your visitors a fantastic user experience
Site speed plays a role in how friendly Google judges your site to be, and how much traffic they send you
It will help lower your bounce rate because people will want to stick around

Be Your Own User and Tester

If you want to know how quickly your site loads, the best place to start is with your eyes.

Be your own user, in other words: go to your site and see how fast your pages download for you. Do you find yourself waiting for the full page to load?

David also recommends getting out of your usual space to check your site speed.

If you're like us, you're blessed with really fast internet at home. So, when you get on your desktop in your home office, your site might load really quickly.

But you need to know how it loads for people on their phones, iPads, and for those with slower internet. So, go to a coffee shop or local hangout, and using only your cell phone data, see how quickly it loads.

And obviously, if your pages load slowly when you have optimal internet, you know you've got some work to do.

What Exactly Is Slow Site Speed?

When you're watching your site load, do you notice that larger things like welcome banners take a bit longer to fill in? Are you having to sit there and wait for them to be done?

Next, can you scroll? Or is the page frozen in the loading pattern, with the bottom half not filled in yet?

These are the kinds of things that make visitors leave your site before they ever even see what you have to offer.

The Two Sides of Site Speed

Site speed encompasses several different parts of your actual site. It's not only what the user sees. Site speed begins before the user sees anything.

The server side - meaning how long does it take your actual Wordpress (or other host) to load the site itself.
The user side - meaning how long it takes for the actual content to load (photos, fonts, text, videos, banners, etc.)

How to Have Good Site Speed? Get a Good Host

If your site seems slow, or you've had people complain about it taking a long time to load, you can take some definite steps to speed things up.

But the best place to start is with your hosting.

If you are currently paying less than $3 per month for hosting, you may be at risk for less than desirable site speed. If you'd like to know which hosts David recommends, email me at jillian@milotree.com.

Use a Caching Plug-in to Help with Site Speed

There are plug-ins to help with almost everything on your site, but be careful, because too many plug-ins can cause your site to be slow.

The first plug-in you need for site speed is a great caching plug-in. Caching means your pages are preloaded, in a sense.

So, the first person to visit your site gets a full download, but following visitors get a snapshot, of sorts, of the pages. Your site doesn't have to go through all the work of loading everything again; it uses the cache it has built to show the pages.

We use and recommend WP Rocket for our site cache. (This is our affiliate link.)

Optimize Your Content for Site Speed

Your caching plug-in will help on the server-side to bring the site up more quickly, but you've got content that needs to download for the user.

So, what can you do to help your photos, videos, and written content, including those awesome fonts you used, to download more quickly?

The first step to take here is to compress your images. Images take a long time to download, so you need to reduce the file size.

Here again, there are plug-ins that, when installed, automatically optimize your images for you.

*We use WP Smush for our photos. This is a free plugin we also use.

How to Check Your Blog's Site Speed?

If you've checked your site with your own eyeballs, you've used the correct plug-ins to reduce load time and to optimize your images, and it's still slow, there are some things you can do to figure out what's going on.

A couple of tools that David recommends are is GTmetrix and Google Page Speed.

All that is required to use these tools is to put in your URL and let the tool do its work. It will load your page, analyze it, and tell you what is slowing it down.

What Slows Our Sites Down?

We talked a little bit about how plugins and photos can slow our site down. But the truth is, every single thing you add to your site slows it down some.

Even adding another few words affects your site speed. Now, a few words will have a negligible effect, but another photo could add a second or more to the loading speed.

Back in the early days of blogging, before Google was the one setting all the rules, we could add as many photos as we wanted to our posts. And I will admit to being a little too in love with all my photos and not wanting to leave any out.

So, you would see recipe posts with upwards of a dozen photos of the finished recipe alone.

Nowadays, I aim to only include photos that serve a purpose.

The MiloTree Plug-In

If you're using the MiloTree pop-up on your site, David and I want to reassure you that when he built our pop-up, he built it with site speed in mind.

So while, yes, every single thing you add to your site slows it down some, one thing you don't need to worry about is your MiloTree pop-up.

We barely scratched the surface on site speed today, so stay tuned because David will be back to help with additional technical content in the future. If you have any questions for David or me, please reach out to us at jillian@milotree.com or david@milotree.com.

Transcript for "Why Site Speed Can Hurt Your Blog and How to Fix it" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#109: How to Get Ahead of the Changes at Pinterest to Win on the Platform Feb 26, 2020

Show notes

Have you heard? Pinterest is making changes. In today's podcast episode, Alisa Meredith, my dear friend and Pinterest expert, and I are talking about how to get ahead of the changes at Pinterest to win on the platform.

As bloggers, most of us depend on several platforms to drive traffic to our blogs. One of the major players in the game is Pinterest. Pinterest is responsible for driving millions of page views to our site, Catch My Party, every single month.

But with all platforms, sometimes things change. And Pinterest has recently made some changes that have a lot of people talking.

It is absolutely necessary as online business owners to be aware of these changes and understand what they mean for us and how to best move forward.

Before we jump into all things Pinterest, I'm so excited to announce that beginning March 2, 2020, my husband and partner, and tech genius, David, and I are starting our first Entrepreneur Coaching Group. I've been mentioning this for a few weeks and I am so excited that it is almost time to start!

This is a 6-week program that will help you understand all the things you need to know as you build your blog into a profitable business.

We'll be talking about all the tech stuff for sure, but we'll also be covering how to create content, how to find your audience, what products to sell, how to monetize, and how to understand SEO.

We'll also talk about social media platforms, email marketing, and all the other pieces of building an online business with a blog.

There will be live Q&A's, teaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and we will be there with you every step of the way.

If you're ready to get your business off the ground, head over to MiloTree and reserve your spot today!

Pinterest Wants Fresh Content

If you've been blogging for a while, you know that, in the past, you created a pin and then your job was to continue to pin that pin repeatedly, over time.

One of the main changes Pinterest is making is in regard to that practice.

Pinterest has said that they want new content. They no longer want us repinning the same pins over and over; they want pins that are fresh, and they are calling this "fresh content."

Let's define fresh content for Pinterest

Fresh content is simply an image that has never been pinned to Pinterest before.

Pinterest has stated that their users engage more with fresh pins, and that doesn't mean you can use the same image but change the words or the overlay. It doesn't mean you can slide the image a few pixels right or left.

Think about what makes an image fresh from the user's perspective.

The point here is to switch your time and energy from curating peer content and repeating your pins to creating and pinning fresh content.

Pinning to Multiple Boards

Obviously, the question arises then: Can you continue to pin your images to more than one of your boards?

You absolutely can! You can still pin your image to several relevant boards, with the important word there being "relevant."

If you continue to share the pin to boards that Pinterest doesn't consider relevant, you might receive a warning that you should consider creating fresh content before pinning to additional boards.

If you have a pin that is "sorta relevant" to a few more of your boards, change the text or the image to make it "very relevant" before pinning it to those boards.

The very first board you pin the new content to gets the most attention from Pinterest.

So, be very intentional about the first board you pin your new content to because that sends signals to Pinterest about the content and who they should show it to.

Relevancy and Recency on Pinterest

As time goes on, relevancy and recency are going to become more important to the Pinterest algorithm.

I asked Alisa to take a moment to define the terms, relevancy and recency, and how they apply to the new algorithm.

Let's say I'm searching for products for my curly hair. I will be shown images of curly hair, pins with text about curly hair, etc. In other words, pins that are relevant to my search.

The takeaway here is that your content must contain what your pin says it is relevant to. That relevancy must also be consistent over your entire online content, from your boards to your pins to your website.

You also need to remain relevant to the platform itself.

People come to Pinterest to be inspired. Your pins and content should be both inspirational and aspirational because that is what the Pinterest user is looking for.

Recency goes back to the fresh content piece. The more you create fresh content, the more that content will start to bubble up in the search results.

Your relevant content that's older, can still come up in results, but if Pinterest has two pins that are both relevant to a topic, the more recent content will come up first.

You still want to pin seasonal content early because it's relevant to the season and because people are searching for that seasonal content ahead of time. So yes, repinning this type of content could be beneficial.

New Pins for Old Content

When we talk about fresh content, we are speaking specifically about fresh pins. So, what does that mean for your older blog posts?

If you make new pins for older blog posts, does Pinterest consider those pins fresh content? Yes!

The algorithm is not based on new URLs, but rather on new pins. You don't have to put out more content in order to have fresh content for Pinterest.

You can make new pins for older content to have the recency factor work in your favor.

Creating Gorgeous Pins

With more focus on new images moving forward, we need to know how to make the most clickable pins ever.

Tailwind has come to the rescue with their Perfect Pinterest Pins Toolkit.

Once you download this free toolkit, you'll see a pin checklist, a guide to writing great descriptions, and most exciting of all, free templates for creating gorgeous pins.

A new group of templates is released every month and is sorted by industry. Each template is 100% editable to make them your own.

You want your pins to be eye candy for the Pinterest user and this toolkit gets you there without you needing to spend hours on new pins.

All of these templates are available to add to your Canva account and are built based on Pinterest's best practices.

Is Pinterest Jail Real?

If you hang out anywhere that bloggers hang out, you've likely heard that some bloggers are finding themselves in Pinterest jail. In other words, they're having their accounts suspended.

I asked Alisa if Pinterest jail was a real thing, (it is!) and how we can stay out of it.

First of all, even if Pinterest recommended you pin no more than 25 pins per day, you wouldn't get suspended for spam if you pin 27 pins per day. It doesn't work that way. Pinterest has clearly stated that it isn't based on numbers.

But let's say you're pinning 40 pins per day, and some of those pins are the same pin, and it happens that nobody is engaging with that pin. Well, you're going to get tagged for spam and it's pretty easy to see why.

At Catch My Party, we have tons of content to pin because people are constantly uploading their party photos to our site.

We had been pinning 100 pins per day, but all of those are new pins. What we are testing now is pinning 75 pins per day and watching our analytics to see what effect that has on our account.

Your Pinterest Best Friend

The thing I love about the Pinterest scheduler, Tailwind, and one of the main reasons we use them, is that they are like a best friend, walking closely beside you and letting you know if you start to veer into dangerous territory.

Your Tailwind dashboard will always warn you if they notice you putting yourself at risk.

Tailwind is there to put safeguards around your account; they aren't reporting things to Pinterest, but rather are paying attention to best practices and passing those on to their users.

*Listen in as Alisa shares some in-depth information on how to best use SmartLoop and the future of video on Pinterest.

I so appreciate Alisa sharing her thoughts, and how Tailwind is approaching the changes that Pinterest is making. You don't have to be afraid of these changes.

If the platform becomes more user-friendly, more people will use the platform, which ultimately leads to more eyes on your content.

Action Tips

If I had to give you some action tips from this episode, they would be:

Keep creating fresh blog content
Stay consistent with sharing your content, both new and seasonal
Create new pins!

Use the platform well and you will see a return on your investment!

Transcript for How to Get Ahead of the Changes at Pinterest to Win on the Platform Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#108: Want to Know What I've Learned Reaching 100+ Episodes? Feb 19, 2020

Show notes

We are doing something a little bit different today. I recently hit a podcasting milestone, so I decided to celebrate by sharing what I've learned reaching 100+ episodes. Phew! I can't believe I did it!

My friend and MiloTree community manager, Paula Rollo, is back to help me share with you all some behind the scenes from the podcast.

Before we jump into the content though, I want to speak directly to those people who have been listening to this podcast for a long time because they're interested in starting their own blog but they haven't made the leap yet, for whatever reason.

Blogging is a great way to set up your online business, but the technology holds so many people back.

Well now, you don't have to wait anymore!

MiloTree now has blogging start-up services. For a small fee, we will get your Wordpress blog up and running, with the plug-ins we recommend and your blog optimized.

If you've decided that 2020 is the year you finally jump in and start your business, let us help!

Just go to MiloTree and sign up today.

Why I Started This Podcast

I have always listened to and enjoyed podcasts. It's one of my favorite things to do. I even look for excuses in my life to listen to my podcasts.

When I started this podcast, it was because I went to Podcast Movement and took a course on how to start a podcast.

I came home and told my daughter I was going to start a podcast and she said, "No you're not."

I had learned that if you can make it to your eighth episode, you are more likely to continue creating content for your podcast.

I told my daughter I would make it to episode 8, and I did it to prove to her that I could! I wanted her to see how if you put your mind to it, and do the work, things will happen.

My Favorite Part of Having A Podcast

My favorite part is that I am having an intimate, one-on-one conversation with someone that the world gets to listen in on.

I am not on a stage with a crowd of people watching me; I get to feel comfortable talking to someone as my natural self.

I can be my authentic self because I am focused on listening to the person I'm interviewing and responding to them.

I feel super honored to be let into people's ears and I love meeting my listeners.

The Space This Podcast Fills

I try to get guests who are going to have different perspectives on building online businesses.

I want to be really curious and ask questions about what people want to know.

My audience is very sophisticated and they want to know the inner workings and tactics on how to build a business.

I want my guests to share their failures so that my audience knows what not to do, as well as what to do.

No one on my show is an overnight success.

We share our struggles, the years of hard work it took, and the sacrifices we had to make in order to get where we are now. I am all about debunking the myth of the overnight success.

How I Plan Future Episodes

I usually fly by the seat of my pants episode by episode. However, I'm always looking for interesting people to interview.

One thing I like is people who build their businesses in unique ways. We all know that there are certain things you can do to build an online business, but I want to talk to those people who try new things and who discover new ways to find success.

My audience is very diverse.

I want to introduce new ideas about money, social media, etc., to my more experienced audience who need to be taking those next steps.

Helping New Bloggers

I also have an audience of people who are just getting started in this sphere. For that audience, I want to help them get off the ground.

There is so much to learn about blogging and building an online business and it can be overwhelming.

That's why my husband, David, and I started the BlogStart Service at MiloTree. We get it. We know how hard it can be if you don't have experience in online business. Just getting a blog set up is a huge hurdle for most people.

We wanted to help people overcome that hurdle, so we now have a service that will get a blog up and running in a very short time for someone who wants to get started but is held back by the technology required.

I want to build a path for the people who want to start their businesses but don't know the in's and out's.

If that describes you, please join our New Blogger Coaching Group we are starting March 2nd. Our goal is to give you a roadmap to go from blogger to profitable online entrepreneur.

Our coaching group will focus more on beginning bloggers, while this podcast will continue to do deep dives into specific aspects of the blogging business.

What I Want Listeners To Learn

I want my listeners to know that I want to help them. I am still learning too; we are all on this journey together.

To be successful on the internet we must all be continual learners, and having a podcast gives me the platform to ask all the questions I am wondering about.

My Message To You

If you enjoy this podcast, I want to say thank you. I am so honored that you make the choice to let me into your earbuds and that you trust me with at least part of your blogging education.

I would love to have you join my Facebook group.

I am trying to be in there every day, encouraging and offering tips and support for all of you. It is such a wonderful community of supportive entrepreneurs.

It is a dance. There are days where you kick butt. And there will be days when you feel too low to continue. You will question why you are even trying to accomplish this online business thing.

It is never as bad as you think, and it is probably not as great as you think.

You have to work through your emotions and know that you can still make a difference and grow. Tomorrow is another day.

Always know that you are making a difference in someone's life. Whether that's a reader, a family member, or someone you've never met.

It was fun to do this episode for you all. I hope you learned more about me and my reasons and goals for this podcast.

Now, why don't you go right on over and join the Facebook group, and then head to MiloTree and let us help you with getting your blog set up or with some personal coaching?

Transcript for "What I've Learned From Reaching 100+ Episodes" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#107: How to Write Successful Blog Posts Today Feb 12, 2020

Show notes

Do you struggle with knowing how to write successful blog posts today? How about how to constantly create new content and still do all the other things that blogging requires?

If you are curious about ads or systematizing your content creation, you're going to want to listen to today's conversation with Amber Bracegirdle.

But first, I wanted to share something with you. My husband and business partner, David, and I have noticed something; a lot of the listeners of this podcast want to start an online business or a blog, but they have no idea where to start.

So, if the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!

MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree/BlogStart to see how we can help you.

We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you're not tech-savvy.

That's why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.

If you're ready to make 2020 the year you finally start that business or blog you've been dreaming of for a long time, let us help. Head over to MiloTree/BlogStart to get started.

We can't wait to see what you build in 2020!

Amber Bracegirdle is one of the founders of MediaVine, an online ad network. Many of our listeners use MediaVine on their blogs for ads.

In this conversation, Amber shares how Mediavine came to be a business, her system for creating great content, and what the future holds for publishers and bloggers.

I think you're going to love this episode, so let's get to it.

Qualifications for MediaVine

There are many different ad networks that bloggers can work with and they each have their own unique qualifications.

Mediavine requires you to have at least 25,000 sessions, not pageviews, in a 30-day period.

They prefer to work with bloggers who target audiences from mostly English-speaking countries because that is where you are going to make the most money.

The other requirements are that you must post long-form content, your site must be at least 3-4 months old, and you must be in good standing with Google AdSense.

Creating Unique Blog Content

In today's world of blogging, you have to differentiate yourself from other bloggers. Finding ways to stand out from the crowd is a good thing.

If you've been blogging for several years, as Amber and I have, you may have an idea of what a blog post is "supposed" to look like.

You start with your topic, create long-form content around that topic, and at the end of the post, you give your reader a call to action.

Unfortunately, that's where most bloggers stop.

But there are so many other types of content that will allow your blog to rank higher in search engines.

One great way to use your own content, and incorporate content from other bloggers as well, is to do round-up style posts. Round-ups are lists of posts all revolving around a certain topic.
If you want to increase the traffic to your site, create content that answers specific questions. People go to Google to ask questions and Google then sends those people to articles that answer their questions.
The key here is to create different types of content (lists, DIYs, recipes, how-tos) aside from what you think of as basic blog content.

Venture out from the type of post you've always created and try a list or answer some common questions.

Keyword Research to Rank in Google

Back in the early days of blogging, bloggers could write about whatever they wanted. If I wanted to try a recipe for dinner, I could snap a few photos and write about how I made the recipe and whether or not my family enjoyed it.

Not anymore.

Blogs are no longer merely online journals of your daily life. Nowadays, bloggers have to be much more strategic about what they write about and how they write about it.

And that's where keyword research comes into play. Knowing what your audience is searching for is going to grow your traffic as you provide answers to their questions.

Be strategic about how you cover every aspect of a topic, with a different problem and answer in every post. And be sure to include links in each post to the other posts on that topic.

Multiple Blog Audiences

You don't have to put your content out to every audience you have, but it is on your site for the person who's going to ask that question and need your answer.

You have multiple audiences and you can cater to the different people coming to you from all over the internet.

Someone coming from Pinterest wants something different than someone coming from Google.

Be strategic about who you are writing your content for, and how you can reach everyone from every walk of life. This helps you avoid burnout as you create different forms of content rather than always having to create something new from scratch.

The Importance of Video as a Blogger

Video is growing in popularity and in importance.

It's great for your site's SEO; it's great user experience; it's huge for your income.

Just as an example, the CPM, (or cost per 1K ad impressions) for video ads in 2019 was $19. Whereas the CPM for display ads was $2-3.

The only problem with video is there isn't enough video content to meet the demand for it.

From the beginning, Mediavine has been interested in giving the reader what they want, and in the process, they gave the advertisers what they wanted as well.

If you're ready to start working with Mediavine, you can contact them at Mediavine.com, and listen to Amber's podcast at Theory of Content.

Read the Transcript for "How to Write Successful Blog Posts Today" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#106: How to Ride the Ups and Downs of Blogging Feb 05, 2020

Show notes

Is 2020 the year you are finally going to start an online business and follow your dreams?

If so, you're going to want to listen in to my conversation with Sue de Chiara, creator of The Zhush.

Sue and I discuss how she built her blog, and how she grew her Instagram to nearly 116K followers.

And be sure to stay tuned to the end because Sue is sharing some of the biggest mistakes she made along the way.

I always want to dig into the mistakes because those are an inevitable part of any business. Sue is very transparent and I think this conversation will be very valuable for you if you're ready to start your own business.

So, if the tech required for starting a blog has been holding you back, I have great news for you!

MiloTree is now offering blog start-up services! Just go to MiloTree/BlogStart to see how we can help you.

We know how overwhelming it can be to start a business if you're not tech-savvy.

That's why we decided it was time to help people get over the hump of getting their blog set up so they could move on to creating content, serving their audience, and developing products.

If you're ready to make 2020 the year you finally start that business or blog you've been dreaming of for a long time, let us help. Head over to MiloTree/BlogStart to get started.

We can't wait to see what you build in 2020!

Pivoting Your Business

In 2010, Sue started a blog where she shared how she decorated her home.

People came to her blog for inspiration, so she decided to do some affiliate marketing from it, setting up a storefront to sell the types of items she was using in her own home.

She ran the store for 7 years, which she says was "a year and a half too long."

The business was very successful for a while. They had great press coverage and feedback, but Sue just couldn't figure out how to scale it.

With no background in retail, and because this was the wild west days of online business, the business became more of a headache than it was worth.

However, at the same time, the blog was bringing in its own revenue and was something she thoroughly enjoyed doing.

She was afraid to shut the store down, but now, she wishes she had done it much sooner.

Do not be afraid to move forward with a new idea if what you're doing isn't panning out for you. We need to be flexible and learn how to read our audience.

Monetizing a Blog

With the storefront closed down, Sue began to focus solely on her blog in 2017.

She monetizes that blog through ads, affiliate links, and a few sponsored posts. She doesn't pursue sponsored work however; if a brand contacts her and is a great fit for her audience, she will take on the work.

Sue sells packages to sponsors that include a blog post, 1-2 IG posts, and IG stories.

Sponsored work has changed a ton since she started monetizing her blog. Now, the brands are more in charge of how they want the information shared, where and when it gets the most engagement.

For our own site, Catch My Party, I've noticed that brands are far more demanding than in the past, and that campaigns take much more time than they used to.

Developing a Strategy for Affiliate Marketing

If you plan to use affiliate marketing as a stream of income for your blog, you have to go into that with a strategy. If you don't have a strategy, you won't see the success you desire.

Sue uses Reward Style to share products with her audience. Reward Style is affiliated with so many businesses that it makes it easy for Sue to talk about things she really loves.

She also creates gift guides on her blog using sponsored content.

These gift guides are very specific. If you want your gift guides to be successful, they can't be generalized.

Using Instagram as a Marketing Tool

Sue was a very early adopter of IG. At the time, she was just using it for fun, posting photos of her children.

But because she had a public account and was on there from the beginning, she built up a large following. It wasn't until Sue had around 25,000 followers that she realized she could use Instagram to help her business.

*Side note - As a business owner who helps people grow their social media accounts, I know that it can be discouraging to see your follower counts drop. But you need to keep in mind that Facebook and IG are always trying to find and delete spam accounts.

So what may appear to be falling follower counts could merely be that IG has discovered more spam accounts and deleted them.

Focusing on your numbers is not always healthy for you. Your following will rise and fall naturally day-by-day. Your engaged followers are going to be there for you as long as you continue to put out good content.

And if you want your real, engaged IG followers to grow faster, definitely add MiloTree to your site.

Sue posts to her feed once a day and to stories multiple times per day. She uses a mixture of personal content, swipe-ups to blog posts, and swipe-ups to affiliate products.

A Typical Workweek

Sue spends 40+ hours per week working on her blog and business. She posts to her blog 5 times per week, but 1-2 of those are usually repurposed content.

For a while, Sue had a guest poster once a month on the blog, which was a huge help, but she is now creating all the blog content herself. And she admits to hitting burnout at times.

To head off the feeling of overwhelm, she relies on an editorial calendar and an ongoing monthly series to keep the content fresh and exciting.

Tips for Growing an Online Business (and Mistakes to Avoid)

Sue wants everybody to understand that the most important thing for new online business owners to focus on is building an email list.

Sue says she "was asleep to that concept for too many years." It's important to begin building that list from day one.

Not only was Sue late to the email game, but she also only recently created a lead magnet to get folks on her list.

Sue also suggests that you focus on one area at a time. Don't try to learn Facebook, blogging, Pinterest, and Instagram all at the same time.

Conquer one area, learn everything you can about it, and then pick the next thing to work on.

Read the Transcript for "How to Ride the Ups and Downs of Blogging" Here Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

#105: How to Go From Blogging Failure to Massive Success Jan 29, 2020

Show notes

This episode explores how to go from a blogging failure to massive success, but before we launch in...

Have you been dreaming of starting a WordPress blog but you're overwhelmed by the tech aspects of it all? I get it.

Getting a blog up and running can be the one thing that hinders you from starting your online business.

Maybe you want 2020 to be your year, but you know that setting up a blog is going to be the one thing that keeps you from reaching your goals.

Now imagine if you could do it effortlessly. We, at MiloTree, are now offering blog set-up packages where we set up your blog for you right, and you can focus on creating content and developing your own products to sell.

We have been in this business for a long time, and we know what it takes to get a blog up and running the right way. We hear from so many of you that getting your blog set up is an obstacle you just can't get past.

Well, now you have help. Just go to MiloTree to see what we can do for you. We have several packages to choose from based on your specific needs. There is a package that's perfect for you! If you have any questions, please reach out. We'd love to help you!

In today's episode, I am interviewing Lauren McManus.

I find Lauren's story interesting, especially the party where she and her business partner started a blog that didn't go anywhere. Not everybody hits it big with that first iteration.

After the failure, they started another blog, Avocadu, that was a huge success by all standards. They followed that success with a business teaching others how to grow online businesses called Create and Go.

Lauren now lives the life I dream of a digital nomad. She travels the world while running her businesses. In fact, she joined me for this conversation from Chile.

From Failure to Massive Success

The difference between the first blog (failure) and the second blog (massive success) was the audience focus.

Lauren tried to cater to people exactly like herself with her first website.

Her demographic was young people who wanted to be social, but maintain their health at the same time. That website failed. The diet program they were trying to sell failed.

The second time they started a website, they hid their own faces and wrote articles addressing all health questions. The audience they ended up attracting the most was 45-year old women, mostly mothers.

They took the time to learn how to market to the correct demographic and their product sold immediately.

They took the time to drive traffic, build an audience, and learn their audience before selling products, and that made all the difference.

They still sell their original e-book with video updates, and it still performs very well.

Building an Avatar Through an Email List

As the blog was growing, Lauren was using Pinterest to drive traffic to it. Once someone came to the blog, there were multiple opportunities to sign up for emails.

Lauren and her partner also wrote articles on every single subject related to health they could think of in the beginning test phase.

They needed to find out exactly who their audience was so that they could create content and products specifically for that person.

Once they learned that yoga and weight loss content was what the majority of their audience wanted, they focused on creating products for those two topics.

At the bottom of their first email to new subscribers, Lauren would ask what the person's number one problem was in achieving their goals. The responses were typically very in-depth, and gave them the insight they needed to create a customer avatar.

How Many "At Bats" Does It Take?

Just like Lauren discovered, we don't always blow it out of the water on our first go 'round.

Sometimes, we have to try multiple times before we find the thing that's going to work for us.

I call these "at-bats," because they aren't failures; they're simply figuring out what works.

Do not be scared to change what you create when you see what resonates the most with your audience.

The more you tweak and test, the more you will know about your audience, and what works best.

Content Creation

For the first blog that was hugely successful, Lauren and her partner split the writing duties and only occasionally hired it out. These days, it is all hired out.

On the blog about leaving your 9-5, they really only create blog content when they create new courses. Projects demand most of their work time, so they tend to leave everything else behind for a bit while big projects take the focus.

They also focus on other types of content now, such as YouTube, podcast interviews, and updated courses.

Don't be afraid that by starting a blog, you will be creating written content for 60 hours a week forever.

Opportunities For You

Do you ever feel like there are so many blogs that there's no point in you even trying to start something? I think a lot of people feel that way.

But the fact is that even in a very saturated market (weight loss), Lauren was able to make money in the first few months of her blog. And she made 6 figures in her first 12 months!

There is always room at the top. But you need to know what your unique selling point is.

For Lauren, Pinterest and Youtube are the best platforms for her business.

The most important thing is to not overthink what you want your topics to be. Share where you have experience.

When you sell what you know, your audience will believe you and engage with you.

Lauren's Advice for You

It is so important to connect with your audience.

No matter what stage you are in with your business, find out who your target audience is and be relatable to them.

Be transparent, be yourself. People want to relate to you. They want to believe what you say and who you are.

Learn as much as you can from your audience and continue connecting.

If my conversation with Lauren has you all fired up and ready to start that blog you've been meaning to start for a while now, head on over to MiloTree and we can get you set up fast and right.

If the tech makes you want to pull your hair out, let us help! It's time to get your online business off the ground, whether you want to be a nomad or you just want to share your passions with others. Visit MiloTree today!

Read the transcript for "How to Go From Blogging Failure to Massive Success" Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree!

Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free!

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

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