Podcast appearances and mentions of cheri tracy

Something that I've wanted to do ever since I started my podcast was to go back with past guests and get updates on their businesses. Today I'm bringing you one of the first of these updates. About a year ago, I spoke with Cheri Tracy from Orglamix. In the last year, she's made some big changes to her business. Profitability is higher than ever and she works less than ever. Find out to learn how she did it. Links: Wavebreak Orglamix Listen on iTunes Get new episodes via email Learn more about Wavebreak You can't scale an ecommerce business without... You can't scale an ecommerce business without email marketing. But email is hard and time-consuming. At Wavebreak, we help ecommerce stores stop leaking revenue with done-for-you email marketing. We completely take email off your plate and turn it into a top revenue driver for your brand. Only 2 slots left. Click here to apply for a free consultation.

Today joining me is Cheri Tracy, founder of beauty company Orglamix. In the first 12 months of her brand's existence, her products were reviewed on over 1,000 blogs. In this episode, find out how she did it and the results that followed. Listen on iTunes Get new episodes via email Learn more about Wavebreak "I know I could do better with my email marketing" Does that sound familiar? Do you feel like you're leaving money on the table with your current email marketing situation? Download my free 31-point Email Revenue Checklist to find out how to take your email marketing to the next level. Get it at EmailRevenueChecklist.com

Have we told you lately that we're obsessed with Blab?  It's true!  Blab is a live-streaming video platform that allows for up to four people to chat on video at once.  This past week, we Blabbed with Mei Pak of Tiny Hands Jewelry & Creative Hive Co. and Cheri Tracy of Orglamix Cosmetics.  Both women have partnered with influencers on Instagram multiple times to grow their following, their email lists, and ultimately gain more loyal customers and sales. Press play on the podcast player below to hear the (slightly edited) version of the chat we had.  Or, if you'd like to see the whole thing uncut, you can play the Blab video player at the bottom of the notes.   Mei Pak is a serial entrepreneur who started Tiny Hands Jewelry, a handmade scented food jewelry business in 2006.  She now teaches other creative entrepreneurs about business at Creative Hive Co.  Cheri Tracy sells colorful, cruelty-free cosmetics at Orglamix.com. Growing an Instagram Following Mei confessed that she grew her jewelry business account on Instagram from 0-1000 followers by buying those followers. She doesn't recommend doing this after having done it herself! It helped build up credibility early on but those followers were fake and unengaged.  Mei started a second Instagram account for her newer business @creativehiveco For her new account, Mei has collected a list of hashtags that she knows her ideal customer is using.  For every 50-70 likes she gives out to potential customers, a small portion will notice her, head to her profile, and if they like what she's doing, they'll follow her. Mei has 3500 Instagram followers for her @creativehiveco account that is only 3 months old! Mei doesn't follow people unless she finds really great stuff from them, but instead she likes and comments on others' photos to get them to take notice. Cheri has primarily reached out to influencers to grow her Instagram account.  She's reached out to accounts with 1500 followers all the way up to 100,000 followers.  Cheri's Orglamix account is about to hit 10,000 followers as of October 2015. Early on, Cheri also pushed her new Instagram account everywhere.  She told her email list.  She told her fans on Facebook. She connected with bigger names in her industry on Instagram to get noticed. Pay attention to the time you post and how it performs.  Cheri does a morning post, a lunchtime post, and an evening post around 8 PM.  Her night-time posts get the most interaction. Other ideas for growth: Loop Giveaways, or reaching out to accounts that feature handmade sellers. Beth Anne has grown the @brilliantbizmom account to 2100 followers as of October 2015. She found relevant hashtags in her niche and liked and commented on recent photos.  Then she would also find newer accounts interested in blogging or handmade business and like their photos along with following that account. Iconosquare helps her to unfollow the users who aren't following you back. Her current strategy is to post every day and use relevant hashtags in the first comment. (You can post up to 30 hashtags in one comment.) How an Influencer Can Make an Impact Mei started off with a great example of just how effective a partnership with an influencer can be. She found an influencer on Instagram one day who had a style and fashion sense matched hers perfectly.  This woman was a musician on The Voice. Mei found her email address, introduced herself, told her she loved her style, told her about her jewelry, and offered to send some as gifts for her and her friends and family. The email landed in the singer's publicist's inbox.  The publicist relayed the information, and the woman chose several pieces that she really wanted.  This woman then took a photo of all the jewelry laid out on the table and tagged her, and within 48 hours Mei had 2,000 new followers on Instagram. Mei wants to note that these followers are completely different from paid followers. These are people who saw the photo of her products, genuinely liked them, and took the time to check Mei and her business out and choose to follow her. These are potential customers for Mei that she can build a relationship with. How to Reach Out to Influencers Cheri sends a direct message on Instagram to an influencer she wants to work with, and about 8 times out of 10, she receives a positive response back. Whether the influencer wants free product, a gift card, or cash depends on the person and the size of their account. Details to Consider Use specific hashtags when working with an influencer (to draw in more viewers to the post) and specify the amount of time the post is going to stay up.  Cheri thought her sponsored posts would stay up indefinitely, but then a larger influencer told her it would be $100 for 5 hours.  So you have to specify whether the post will be up permanently or for a certain time-frame.  Once a post is deleted, the hashtags and its ability to be found all disappear. Do you ever send a cold package to Influencers? Mei has heard of a brand who makes high-end chocolates. If they truly believe the person they're planning to send something to will love their products, and they can't get in touch with them via email or social media, they will go ahead and send out a blind product and that has worked for them. For Mei, however, she always sends a pitch first to ask for their permission, and then they get to decide which of Mei's pieces they would like the best.  Mei says of sending cold packages, "don't be afraid to do that with people who you think will fall in love with your stuff." Mei is dying to get in touch with Ree Drummond of the Pioneer Woman.  We all had ideas for sending the perfect care package to her! What should you say when you pitch an Influencer? Cheri keeps her pitches really short and sweet, 3-5 sentences, and includes her email address if they'd prefer to get back to her that way versus Instagram direct messages. Cheri will always find a connection or compliment she can give where she mentions a blog post she loved or an Instagram post she connected with.  This lets them know she's a real person and genuinely likes what they do. Focus on what you can do for them and their customer base and not what they can do for you.  For example, Cheri can focus on someone who is an advocate for cruelty-free products. Mei had several tips to share too: Don't make the pitch feel like a favor.  Make it all about them. Don't be formal with your greeting.  Don't say Hi Ms. So-and-so.  That feels spammy.  Call the influencer by their first name. Mei keeps her pitches at 10 lines max. Don't just read their latest blog post.  You have to do your research.  They will sniff you out if all you did was read the first post. Mei also recommends including a P.S. note at the bottom of your emails, because people tend to read and pay attention to that P.S. note! Mei reached out to an editor of Girl's Life magazine, and that editor had mentioned a band she liked.  Mei was able to include a P.S. that she loved this band too and went to college with them! Do Instagram Direct Messages Work? Does an Influencer have to be following you in order to see your messages?  No.  You can direct message any account that you personally follow. Whatever you would say in an email, Cheri sends in a direct message.  She gets responses almost immediately for many of her pitches. Cheri sent a message to Sue B. Zimmerman (the Instagram Expert) the other week and she received a response back within 5 minutes! Most influencers get back to Cheri within 24 hours, and about 8 out of 10 pitches get back to her with a response.  Cheri believes this response rate is much higher than if she were to email them.  People who are on Instagram are really active and they're on there all the time.  And direct messaging is still under-utilized so it's a quick win right now. Note: If someone isn't following you on Instagram, your message will show up as a notification at the top of their inbox.  The person receiving the message can click the notification and choose to allow messages from that person or not allow.  So as long as they allow the message to come through, you're good!  And either way, they should see that notification right at the top of their inbox. How to Identify Influencers to Work with Mei looks for as large a following as possible, but she also looks for great engagement.  Her general rule of thumb is to have 5% or more engagement on each posts.  For example, an account with 1,000 followers should have 50-100 likes or comments with each post. If you have a list of hashtags that you know your customers are using, you can see the top 9 most popular posts for that hashtag. Chances are one of the top 9 photos was posted by an Influencer in your niche. Finding the right Influencers involves some elbow grease.  As you explore Instagram and interact, you'll run across Influencers and you can write them down and keep track of them on a spreadsheet. Cheri also looks for accounts that have high engagement.  She searches for relevant hashtags as well and keeps a running list of her favorites. How to Weigh Follower Counts versus Engagement Although 5% engagement might be hard to find, it tends to be way more worth it for Mei to find those accounts to work with versus just finding the biggest possible account. Cheri agrees that she tends to get better results with smaller accounts because they tend to be more engaged. In addition, larger accounts often require a cash payment of $250 or more, versus a smaller account who may accept a free product or a gift card. When Cheri first started working with influencers she would provide the photos or they'd take one off of her website, but she's seen way better results with lifestyle shots - even if the influencer just shares the package they received.  Natural shots right from the influencer perform much better than a generic photo from your site. Mei says it's not impossible for influencers to use photos from your website.  A lot of larger influencers charge more if you use their photo and less if they take their own photo (they got a free product from you.) How much does it cost to work with an Influencer? Cheri says that larger accounts look for a cash incentive.  She's found prices anywhere from $10 up to $5,000 for a post that would stay up for 5 hours.  (That account had about 300,000 followers at the time!) Cheri always starts by offering free product of the influencer's choice, then she'll offer a $50 or $100 gift card.  But many influencers just want cash.  Cheri has found prices to be about $50-100 per 50,000 followers. If a private account has representation, they may have rates posted.  But Cheri has found that everything is negotiable. Mei also stressed the importance of negotiating: "Just because we're women doesn't mean we have to always play by the rules," she says. Mei always chooses to send free product first.  Next, she chooses to pay for features where it's anywhere from $40 to $200 with discounts for multiple features, and extra fees to also do a giveaway or keep the post up forever.  At $300 you're normally getting a "package" of posts and benefits. Another option: Working with feature accounts. These are accounts on Instagram that only post photos from other people's accounts within a very specific niche (such as planners, handmade items, skateboarding, you name it!).  You don't know who they are or where they're located, but some of them get great engagement with their followers within their niche. Tips for Streamlining on Instagram Mei hired a Virtual Assistant who re-posts much of Mei's old content on Instagram. This system works because Mei's time is limited, but her engagement has gone down a bit as a result. She used to get over 1,000 likes with just 10,000 followers because she was posting fresh content and it was posted by her - the maker.  Mei now gets 600-900 likes on a photo, and her account has over 20,000 followers. Mei tends to push posts from Facebook over to Instagram. Hiring a virtual assistant for her main business Instagram account also has another added benefit: Mei gets to avoid the drama that can happen there.  (Apparently heated words were exchanged over a bacon necklace...made with clay, not real bacon.) Cheri pushes posts from Instagram over to Facebook to populate her page more often. Facebook and Instagram work well together because you can use a square photo on each so you don't have to edit and re-size. In general, both ladies (along with us!) found that the followers they have on Instagram aren't usually the same people who follow them on Facebook.  You're reaching a new audience when you grow on Instagram. How to Track Sales from Instagram Cheri uses a bit.ly link in her profile that is linked to a landing page on her site.  Her goal with Instagram is not necessarily to get direct sales but to gain email subscribers.  Cheri knows the lifetime value of a subscriber so she can track how well sponsored campaigns are working based on how many new subscribers she may get on a certain day when a campaign is live. Cheri also recommends doing a featured post in combination with a giveaway because your engagement will be much higher.  In addition, you can offer a custom discount code to that community and this will allow you to track the success of that feature based on how many customers use that code. Mei recently moved over to Shopify, but before that she used a self-hosted e-commerce platform.  She asked each customer how they found out about her.  The majority of her customers came from Facebook, with Instagram coming in at a close second.  So even though Mei couldn't directly track Instagram sales she could easily tell that many of her customers were coming from the platform. Mei reminded us that there are many marketing strategies that you can't directly track - for example, giving out business cards at a craft show or a friend telling another friend about your shop. There's another barrier to marketing on Instagram - you only have one clickable link which is in your profile. However, Mei says you can counter this resistance by selling directly on the platform. You can ask followers to comment with their Paypal email address to purchase an item and be invoiced via Paypal.  Beth Newitt has successfully done this as well. Spreesy.com allows you to bring your entire shop over to your Instagram profile, and you can do this on Facebook as well.  It counters the barrier of only having one link to click on. Link your Spreesy account to Instagram or Facebook and when someone comments with their paypal email address to purchase the product, you don't have to manually send them an invoice, spreesy just automatically sends the invoice to them and tells them how to check out.  You're meeting people where they're already hanging out and not forcing them to leave a social media platform. With Spreesy, people can subscribe to any new product that you're adding to your Instagram profile as well so they'll be notified when you come out with new items. Other Resources Check out Jill from Rustic Cuff's interview where she shared how she sends her products to Influencers for publicity and exposure. A few Instagram accounts who feature handmade products that might be worth checking out.  For many of these accounts, a feature that stays up forever costs just $25. @helloimhandmade @hellolovehandmade @handmadeloves @favehandmade Find Cheri and Mei online! Cheri Tracy: Orglamix.com @Orglamix on Instagram Mei Pak: CreativeHiveCo.com @TinyHandsJewelry and @CreativeHiveCo on Instagram

What if you could create beautiful photos... of 100 products...in minutes? No, you're not dreaming! Using Photoshop and Smart Objects makes it possible. Sarah Guillot has worked with these tools for years as a User Experience Architect (how cool does that job sound?!) and now she has her own side gig helping Mamapreneurs like you and me use Photoshop for business to make our lives easier and faster. On the Podcast 00:52 - Architecture for Users04:26 - Solving a Real Problem Inside a Make-Believe World08:57 - Not all Mock-ups are Made Equal14:02 - What Makes an Object Smart?24:12 - Photoshop Perks29:23 - Help for Photoshop Newbies31:44 - Silhouette Studio34:00 - Sunshine Sticker Co.38:24 - It's only a Season39:57 - The Most Requested Podcast (for 5-7 year-olds!) Architecture for Users In October of 2014, Sarah Guillot launched her first side gig. But she's still working full time during the day as a User Experience Architect (UX Architect for short) Essentially, Sarah helps big companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and GoDaddy figure out how to create the best possible experience for users traveling through their website. She works on user flows, wire frames (a demonstration of how a website will look and function) and works on landing pages to optimize them for sales or other conversions. Despite her brilliant day job and experience with the online world, Sarah says she had all sorts of fears that held her back when it came to starting her own business. There were so many unknowns she'd never dealt with before - getting a business license, figuring out taxes, and lots of other little details.Although friends have been raving about Sarah's crafty presents for years and encouraging her to open an Etsy shop, she didn't drum up the courage to do it until her kids came along. Sarah has two little girls, age 5 and 7 years old, and she knows how precious her time with them is. She wants more time at home with them and less time answering to a manager! In October of 2014 Sarah purchased an online course for writing and publishing e-books. She followed it step-by-step until she learned about marketing her book and getting reviews. Unfortunately, Sarah felt that the course creator was encouraging her to get reviews in a way she thought was unethical. So Sarah didn't have the huge book launch she wanted, but she did get her books out into the world. After that iffy experience, Sarah shifted directions and started making printables in the Fall of 2014. She thought it was the perfect time to jump on board since everyone would be buying Christmas printables to decorate their homes. Despite her best efforts, over the next six months Sarah wasn't getting much traction on her printable sales. The niche is so crowded already, and there are many beautiful ones available for free online. Sarah realized she'd have to drive a ton of traffic to her shop to really make a living selling printables. In the meantime, Sarah realized there was a big problem in her niche that she could solve! (Ever notice how the path to business success isn't always straight and smooth? Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to find the right niche, or a problem that demands a solution. Don't give up, Brilliant Business Mom!) Solving a Real Problem Inside a Make-Believe World When Sarah was setting up her printables shop, she used Photoshop to make mock-ups so she could quickly and easily show case her printables. Sarah quickly realized that there are many Etsy sellers in all sorts of field who can benefit from mock-ups to showcase their work in a realistic way. So What's a Mock-up? A mock-up means taking an image, such as a frame, mug, book, or t-shirt (often with beautiful props alongside it!) and putting your digital design right onto that image to show how your designs or creations will look in real life. Mock-ups are perfect for T-shirt designers or drinkware designers who don't want to do a photo shoot for every new design they create. They use their digital design (without even making the product) and place it onto the beautifully styled photography scene. Not all Mock-ups are Made Equal Sarah looked around at the styled stock photos currently available and realized there was a big gap for sellers who create more unique items. There aren't nearly as many mock-ups for products that don't go into a frame. Mason Jar Mug sellers, glass sellers, mug sellers, and other vinyl decal sellers didn't have as many beautiful photos to choose from, and if they did find a great photo, they weren't sure how to get their designs into the photo and have them look natural. One great way Sarah researched this niche and knew which problem to solve was by participating and listening in many Facebook groups. Sarah joined many groups for Etsy sellers and noticed that 5-10 people every day were asking about mock-ups. They'd wonder, "How do I make a mock-up? What are mock-ups good for? Who can find styled stock photos that fit my product?" Sarah began solving their problems and answering their questions by recording Youtube tutorial videos and posting them on her blog. Finally, Sarah created a Mock-up Design Essentials Course. The course has short videos that add up to about an hour of tutorials along with photoshop template files that have pre-styled scenes. The Differentiator Sarah differentiates herself from other styled stock photo sellers in two key ways. She offers tutorial videos so that a seller can turn any lovely stock photo into a smart object where their designs can be easily overlaid. So, they're empowered to be as creative and unique as they want to be! Sarah's templates all include smart objects, so the colors and placement of the objects in her scenes can be altered. You can't do this with a regular stock photo! What Makes an Object Smart? So... we're pretty sure these objects in photoshop don't have an IQ of 145. What makes them smart?A smart object turns a layer in Photoshop into something that can easily accept a new design element without changing its basic structure. (Sounds a little confusing, right?! It's easier to give an example than to talk about smart objects in theory.) Here we go! If you have a styled scene full of cute little desk accessories and you want to lay your printable (pretty piece of paper in digital form) on top of a desk, this is very tricky to do because the angle of the image will be quite different than your flat-rectangled printable. You'll have to stretch, tweak, and mess with Photoshop for a while to get your printable design to look just right laying on the desk in the photo. But that's not the case if you turn that piece of paper into a smart object. THEN, adding your printable design to the desk goes like this: Double click on the smart object layer in Photoshop A new tab will open up. You'll see a blank rectangle on this tab. You can past your printable design onto this rectangle. Hit save and close the tab. Your printable is automatically placed into the image on the table at exactly the right angle. No weird distortions necessary! Smart objects are perfect in this instance for two reasons. Not everyone knows how to stretch and distort the perspective of an image to make it look natural in a photo. Smart objects allow you to work much faster. You can take 100 of your fabulous designs and plug them into your beautiful styled photo scene in no time. Voila! 100 new listings are ready to go in your Etsy shop, and to your customer, they look just as they would if they were photographed in real life. An added benefit to using smart objects: You can also use one smart across multiple Photoshop files. So then, if that object needs to be changed, Photoshop will automatically change all the other files that include that object for you. Again, let's use an example so this makes more sense! If you're designing a website with a team of people and everyone is using the same header. (It's a smart object) Then one day someone says "we're going to change the header color" The team doesn't have to go in and edit 100 files that all include that header. They simply change the smart object for the header, and all the other files are automatically updated. (Is it just me or does that sound amazing?!) To create a smart object, take that layer you want to turn into a smart object and save it as a.psb (This is the extension for a smart object versus .psd which is the typical photoshop file extension.)Now, when that object is altered and saved, it's updated everywhere it's used. For more help, you can check out all of Sarah's free video tutorials right here. (If you're wondering if Adobe is worth the price, you should know that you can get a 1 month free trial, and after that you can get Photoshop and Lightroom for $10/month. We're not affiliates, we just use Adobe products regularly. Check out our interview with Kim VanSlambrook to hear how she uses Lightroom to save her loads of time when she takes real product photos.) Photoshop Perks So how does Photoshop stack up to the other great photo editing tools out there, like Canva and Picmonkey? Sarah hasn't used Picmonkey in a while, but Beth Anne says adding your own fonts is easy, and arranging transparent pngs to get the perfect graphic design is a cinch. Canva is great for typography. They have so many creative templates that you can plug your headlines into. They also have social media image sizes ready to go so you can save time. Photoshop has some unique features that you can't find anywhere else. For one thing, their color correction tools are powerful, and you can color correct just one aspect of your photo while leaving everything else the same. Working with layers in photoshop also means you can customize which aspect of your photo you edit, and you can shift layers around (like the png overlays I use in picmonkey). Photoshop has powerful editing tools for other aspects of a photo as well, such as smoothing out blemishes, adding shadows, or erasing something. Adobe products also work nicely together, so if you use Illustrator for graphic design, you can drag layers over into Photoshop for more editing. If you're not sold yet, Smart Objects will put you over the edge. No other photo editing tool on the market can so quickly and easily take your design and place it perfectly on the right object in a photo. Help for Photoshop Newbies Sarah Korhnak mentioned in the interview that she probably wouldn't give Photoshop a try, because it just seemed way too complicated, and Picmonkey works great for her! But... she may have been persuaded. Sarah Guillot says the beauty of Photoshop is that you don't have to know how to use every single feature in order to benefit from the program. Sarah's course teaches sellers just what they need to know. You can get started and save yourself tons of time while simply ignoring the 100 other tools that you don't need at the moment. For her course, Sarah focuses on helping sellers get their designs out the Silhouette program and into Photoshop, how to add those design to your smart object, and how to change colors, shift objects around in the mock-up scene. Silhouette Studio One of the most common groups of people who can benefit from Photoshop Mock-ups are those designers who use a Silhouette. What exactly is Silhouette, and what can it do? Silhouette Studio is the name of the design program that accompanies Silhouette printers. The Silhouette Cameo is a printer that can print 12 by 12 inch sheets of vinyl designs, stickers, or other items. The Silhouette Portrait is a smaller printer that can work with letter-sized sheets of material.Sarah says that Silhouette Studio tries to mimic Adobe a little bit. She says it's not too difficult to figure out the basics of designing with Silhouette, but even as an experienced designer she often turns to Youtube to learn a new trick! A Silhouette costs about $200 to $250 for the machine and a few tools to print designs. Sunshine Sticker Co. One of the things we love about Brilliant Business Moms are the genuine friendships we make with brilliant women who are growing businesses. Our private Facebook group is such a positive, encouraging place, and for many women, it can be a jumping off point for developing their own masterminds or partnerships. Sarah Guillot and Ashley Monda met through our private Facebook group and teamed up with a few other women to form a Mastermind. They hold weekly Google Hangouts to encourage each other. When Sarah came up with her idea to help Etsy sellers with photography mock-ups, she turned to Ashley for feedback, because Ashley uses her Silhouette often to make party supplies. After getting to know each other well, they both came up with the idea to get into the planner sticker market. (Planner stickers are huge these days!) Sarah could bring her design skills to the table, and Ashley could print and ship the stickers. The more these ladies researched their new idea, the more excited they got. They got together on Google hangout and said, "Wait... are we really going to do this?" The answer...."Yes!" Sarah and Ashley have never met in person, but their planner sticker business, Sunshine Sticker Co. has already launched! Sarah says she already knew Ashley well and developed a friendship with her. She knows all about her family, her business, and she knew Ashley had a great work ethic. They both live in Washington state, so in-person meetings are possible down the road. We're so excited for Ashley and Sarah and can't wait to see how their business grows! It's only a Season Sarah is in an interesting place right now when it comes to combining business and motherhood. She's still working full-time, and she's also working like crazy to grow her new businesses. She doesn't want to work 40 hours a week for someone else forever, but.... right now she's working 80 hours per week trying to grow her biz and work her day job! Sarah is often up past midnight working hard on her business. She says it's a lot of juggling, and some days it just feels like way too much to take on. But Sarah is keeping the end goal in mind. It's just a season, and working 80 hours per week isn't the way her life will run forever. (You got this, Sarah! We can't wait to see you kiss that day job goodbye!) Sarah with her adorable family. The Preferred Podcast for 5-7 Year-Olds! This funny mom moment made our day! Sarah says she listens to a lot of podcasts while she drives her girls to school. Among her favorites are Pat Flynn, Flipped Lifestyle, and Brilliant Business Moms. She didn't realize how much her girls were paying attention to what was said until one of them asked if she could start a business someday. Sarah said, "Sure!" Here comes the best part: Sarah turned on Pat Flynn one day and her daughter said, "I want to listen to that other podcast ..you know ..the mom podcast!" Pat Flynn, we love you, but apparently Brilliant Business Moms is a little more popular among the elementary school crowd :) (Pssst - that's not the first time we've been requested by little kiddos. Cheri Tracy's girls love us too. How fun!) Stay in Touch with Sarah! SarahDesign.comInstagram: @SarahDesignMockupsSunshineStickerCo.comInstagram: @SunshineStickerCo

It seems like there's a new form of social media popping up every day.  How do you decide which ones to invest in and which ones just aren't worth your time?  Well, you may never know unless you test things!  Cheri Tracy is a master at testing new forms of social media to see if they'll result in sales for her cosmetics business, Orglamix.  But she tests in a way that doesn't consume her entire week.  With as little as 15 minutes each week, Cheri can be active on a social media platform and see sales as a result. Find out where she's promoting her products and where she's seeing results - along with tons of other e-commerce tips! On the Podcast 01:13 - The Business that Started on Bed Rest5:50 - Why Shopify is Worth the Price08:32 - Must-Have Apps for Selling12:19 - What is Wanelo?15:08 - The Buy Button16:09 - How to Get Found on Wanelo18:26 - How to Connect with Influencers on Wanelo21:00 Once Upon a Time...25:02 - How to Get your Brand Page on Wanelo27:03 - Outfy32:51 - Cheri's Secret Weapon37:25 - Productivity Tips40:11 - When your Business Feels like Cleaning the Toilets43:04 - Cheri's Magical Mom Moment ;) Press Play on the Podcast Player Below The Business that Started on Bed Rest When Cheri was pregnant with her first daughter, she was on bed rest at the end of her pregnancy and bored out of her mind!  She already had a business private-labeling cosmetics (buying existing formulas and putting your own branding on something to sell it.) but as she sat in bed, she started reading and researching all of the ingredients in the cosmetics.   Some of them had 30-40 ingredients in them, and she didn't think they needed to be there. Cheri realized that she could build a better product.  So she started Orglamix to create cruelty-free, natural cosmetics that felt more fun and glamorous than the current granola make-up brands in the marketplace. Cheri started out on Etsy, and sold there for several years.  It was really slow in the beginning, but she kept at it and grew year after year. One year Cheri looked back and she had sold 10,000 units over the previous year!  She thought, "I can do this!  I have a business here!" As Cheri's business grew, it got to the point where she was working 80 hours per week to keep things going, and her husband was across the country for his job each week.  She was overwhelmed, so she stopped everything and took 18 months off from Orglamix. Cheri just relaunched Orglamix on the Shopify platform a year ago, and it's been growing quickly! Why Shopify is Worth the Price After trying several platforms such as a Wordpress plug-in that constantly crashed, and other e-commerce sites like Etsy and StoreEnvy, Cheri just can't get over how incredible Shopify is! Cheri was hesitant to try Shopify at first because of the cost.  The base price is around $100/month, and that doesn't include other apps and features you may need.  However, Cheri's so glad she took the plunge. It's simple and easy to use.  Everything is pre-configured for you so that your site looks like a professional designer did it.  But the wonderful thing is that Cheri can manage the entire site herself. The other huge benefit to using Shopify are the sheer volume of Apps that integrate with the platform that will make your job as a seller so much easier. Must-Have Apps for Selling Cheri uses several Apps in conjunction with Shopify that help her e-commerce site to run smoothly. 1.) ShipStation. ShipStation can pull in shipping labels for orders from any platform that Cheri has integrated with it. Every morning she just pushes a few buttons and off her labels go to the printer. 2.) SEO Apps. Cheri uses several SEO apps that help her to get found in search more often. 3.) Email Marketing App. Cheri uses an app that's completely integrated with her site so that it can send out automatic emails if someone has a dropped shopping cart or if she wants to announce a new product. Cheri's biggest response is from a simple little email she sends out the day after someone makes their first purchase from Orglamix.  She essentially says, "Hi I'm Cheri, this is my company, it's so nice to meet you! I'm super excited for you to try my products, and please reach out if you have any questions."Cheri gets about 25-50 responses back each week from people who are so excited to hear from her and have that personal touch! 4.) Receiptful . Receiptful sends an email that asks if the customer is happy with they're order. Then they can click to rate Orglamix.  This rating system also helps Cheri to stave off any unhappy customers and resolve the issue quickly. Receiptful has another great feature.  If a customer shares it with their friends, they get a coupon for $10 off their next purchase, and their friend does too. So how expensive are these fancy apps? Cheri says that the fees for most apps are quite minimal.  Some are free and some are $6/month.  Ship Station is the most expensive app and it costs $99/month. What is Wanelo? Of all the social media platforms that Cheri has tried over the past year, Wanelo has been one of the most effective sites for her.  We completely understand the feeling of social media overwhelm!  You likely feel like you just can't add another thing! Cheri gets that too, but what changed her mind were the traffic and sales that came rolling in without too much effort on her part. So what is Wanelo, exactly? Wanelo stands for Want, Need, Love, and Cheri says it's best described as a social marketplace.  It's a way for shoppers to discover and buy products. What Cheri loves about Wanelo is that users aren't saving DIY projects or recipes or reading quotes, they're all there for one reason... and that's to shop.  Small indie brands can grow and make sales right alongside large brands like urban outfitters and anthropologie. Wanelo's demographic is majority female, and 50% of its users are between 18-24 years old.  Products that cater to young females tend to do well, but Cheri says that her market is considerably older, and she still gets high engagement and conversions with the site. The Buy Button One additional benefit to using Shopify is the "Buy on Wanelo" app that Cheri can use to sell her products directly on the site rather than redirecting Wanelo users to her site. If you have a shop that doesn't have an integrated app, you can simply redirect potential customers to your site, but often, a few sales may be lost in the process. Cheri says she pays Wanelo 10% commission for the feature, and they send her a check for her sales each month. How to Get Found on Wanelo You can get found in several ways on Wanelo. 1.) Create Collections. A collection is a group of your products featured together on your Brand page (the equivalent of your profile page on other social media sites). So if someone sees your brand page, they can browse your collections of your products. 2.) SEO. Use keyword -rich descriptions for your collections so people can find you on Wanelo via search. 3.) Create Stories. Stories are generally a mix of your own products plus others' products. It's kind of like a treasury and an Instagram post mixed together.  When you create a story, your followers may see that story in their feed on Wanelo.  They can then add your products to their own lists, collections and stories, and you'll continue to get discovered by other users.  (In this way, it's similar to Pinterest in that your content can spread from one user to another.) An added bonus?  Since Wanelo is very mobile-driven, many of its users are receiving push notifications when new things happen (like a new story from a brand they're following!) How to Connect with Influencers on Wanelo When you first sign up for Wanelo, the platform will suggest brands and shops you should follow, along with super users to follow.  Cheri calls these the Influencer accounts. You can also find these influencers by heading to "My Feed" then choosing "Find People to Follow".  Wanelo will suggest top influencers to you, whose follower numbers range from 20,000 to several hundred thousand. When you check out the profiles of influencers, many will provide their email address so you can reach out to them for potential partnerships.  You can work with an influencer to create a sponsored "story" in the same way that you might do a sponsored post with an Influencer on Instagram. Cheri just started reaching out to influencers, and she's in the process of doing 3 sponsored stories - she promised to report back to us on how it went! Basic pricing for a sponsored story is about $10 per story per 10,000 followers.  So if you want an Influencer with $50,000 followers to create a story with your product, you'd likely pay about $50 for the story.  An Influencer with 250,000 followers will generally charge about $500 to post a story. Once Upon a Time... We're pretty sure Wanelo stories don't have anything to do with Snow White... so how do they work? A story generally has about 9 products in it.  Users create stories that have a certain look or feel.  The products all pair well together and tell a "story" about a certain person who would use those products. When you save a story to your Wanelo feed, it goes out to your followers.  Each product in the story has a photo as well as a link to the product so customers can either purchase the item on the site or be redirected to buy off site. Cheri shared Several Tips for Using Stories: Use a story to announce a sale. Use a story to host a contest. Work with brands whose ideal customer is similar to yours so by posting a story that includes each of your products, you gain shared access to each other's followers. (In this way, a story is similar to a loop giveaway - but you didn't have to give any products away.) Post stories at peak engagement times. For Cheri, this is between 8-10 PM Central time. She gets triple to quadruple the engagement on her stories at peak times. Recency and Engagement both matter for getting more eyes on your story. So the feed is similar to Facebook. Influencers with lots of followers who like and interact with a story with see that story rise to prominence in the feed. Create stories that don't just feature your own products but other products too. Cheri posts shared stories 80% of the time, and then her own specific story about 20% of the time.Interestingly enough, Cheri gets a higher level of engagement when she shares her own products, but sharing other stories helps her to share the love, network, and find new people to partner with. How to Get your Brand Page on Wanelo If you don't have a Shopify store, it can be a drawn-out process to create your Brand page on the site. You have to submit your feed, Wanelo will approve it, and then you can manually import your products into your feed.  Wanelo is made up of a small team of people, so it's a drawn-out process to get your brand going on the site. However, if you're on Etsy, you're in luck.  Etsy is a bit more tightly woven into the set-up process, so getting your feed approved for your Etsy shop is a bit easier. Outfy There's a new tool for e-commerce sites called Outfy.com, and Cheri is really excited about it! It helps you promote and schedule your products on social media and e-commerce networks.  Outfy integrates with Polyvore, WeHeartIt, Keep, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can schedule 10-15 of your products  to go out to each platform each day of the week in just 5-10 minutes' time.  You can try 50 shares for free if you're a new account. Cheri has been using Outfy for two weeks, and she's already seen a dramatic increase in sales as a result. Cheri's Secret Weapon Since Cheri sells directly on several sites such as Wanelo, Amazon, and her own website, we were curious about how she keeps her orders straight. Cheri says that Ship Station is her secret weapon!  All of the platforms where she sells are connected through Ship Station.  She pushes one button to import all of her orders, and a few clicks later she's printed out all of her labels for the day.  Cheri says it's like having a shipping assistant! Some Features of ShipStation that Cheri Loves: Saves data for product weights. Ship Station will automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order because it's programmed with all the product weights. Saves shipping costs on multiple orders. If a customer makes multiple orders within 24 hours, Ship Station will notify Cheri so she can group their orders together and save on shipping costs. Projects inventory and sales. Ship Station will let Cheri know how many orders she's done in a given week and whether she's up or down in her sales Tracks Turnaround Times. Ship Station will let Cheri know if she's taking longer than 2 days to ship her orders (which is her personal goal.) If she sees orders sitting for 3 days, she knows exactly what to prioritize. Productivity Tips Cheri often gets 100 orders or more each day, so staying on top of her workflow is incredibly important! Set aside designated days to make products. Cheri sets aside two work days per week to just turn out more products and build up her inventory. Leave room for creativity! Because Cheri loves creating new products, she allows her time each day to create, but this is completely separate from her inventory build time. Package orders in bulk. Cheri can package about 150-200 orders in 2.5 hours . This is possible because her inventory is already made and organized, and she has her trusty tool, Ship Station to help! Scale back to ease stress. If you're struggling to stay on top of inventory with your own small business, Cheri recommends you scale back your offerings until you can build up that inventory. It will ease your stress a great deal when you can stop making products on demand. When your Business Feels like Cleaning the Toilets Cheri strongly believes that you should price higher for custom orders and for products you simply don't like to make!  Your time, effort, and sanity are worth that higher price.  (We agree!) Cheri makes a pressed eyeshadow that takes her more time, and she doesn't like making it.  But she has customers who really want that particular product.  So... she raises the price... by a lot! We all agreed that the same premium pricing should apply to our household chores.  Triple the price for cleaning toilets :)   Cheri's Magical Mom Moment ;) Cheri had a really sweet moment with her two girls the other week.  Maybe they haven't outgrown the magic of childhood just yet! Stay in touch with Cheri Orglamix.com To connect with Cheri in our Facebook group, you can sign up for our list and we'll send you an invite!