Podcast appearances and mentions of paula rollo

Today, SEO expert, Paula Rollo, returns to the The Blogger Genius Podcast to share 5 quick SEO wins to get you more traffic. What blogger doesn't want more traffic? Paula shares how you can find easy wins that can add up to serious traffic, if you know how to find them. She also shares why you should be digging into Google Search Console instead of Google Analytics to guide you in your SEO journey, why you need to call yourself an expert, and the value of doing roundup posts... with your own content. If you're trying to grow your organic Google traffic faster, don't miss this episode! Show Notes: MiloTree Easy Payments EMAIL CHALLENGE: Set Up a Paid Workshop in 5 Days! MiloTree Pop-Up App Paula Rollo SEO Paula's SEO Workshop Blog Post Checklist Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes Subscribe to the Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to: Get More Traffic With These New SEO Tactics with Paula Rollo Smart SEO Strategies To Get You More Traffic with Casey Markee (Rebroadcast) How to Grow Your Traffic with the New Google Update with David Leslie Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today, Paula Rollo and I are sharing how to get more traffic with these new SEO tactics we outline. Paula is my friend and SEO expert, who loves nerding out on how to have success on Google. In this episode we talk a lot about "search intent," thinking about what problem someone is having and how to make your content the exact right solution for them. By thinking about search intent, you gain a deeper understanding of what kind of content to create. We also talk about how to target certain keywords for success, how to create content that shows your authority, and how to analyzing your past posts to determine how successful they are. We also talk about how to speak Google's love language so you can build a strong relationship with the platform. You might not get love back, but at least you'll get traffic. :) If you're trying to grow your organic traffic, don't miss this one!

In this episode with my friend and SEO expert, Paula Rollo, we talk about how to know exactly what to blog about by using your Google Analytics. Before you listen to the episode, grab my Google Analytics Cheat Sheet. Google Analytics can be confusing. But with this cheat sheet, you will know exactly how to find the 4 most important pieces of info. How many time have you asked yourself, what should I blog about? How do I know what type of content to spend my time on. Paula and I also discuss ways to use your analytics to figure it out, not only what your audience wants from you, but also what Google thinks you're an expert in. We talk about how all that information is in your Google Analytics and Google Search Console, if you know what you're looking for. We talk about targeting keywords in your niche to grow your traffic, how to find hidden opportunities to get your content found, how to piggyback off of what's already working for you on social media, and how to think about riding cultural waves to get your posts to show up in search. After listening to this episode, you'll never wonder again what kind of content to create to be successful in your business. This episode will give you all the shortcuts you need to grow your traffic with the right content!  

n this episode with my friend and SEO expert, Paula Rollo, we talk about how to use Google Analytics to know what to blog about. How many time have you asked yourself, what kind of content should I invest my time in to grow my business? How do I get the biggest bang for my buck? We're discussing ways to use your analytics to figure out, not only what your audience wants from you, but also what Google thinks you're an expert in. Paula and I talk about how all that information is in your Google Analytics and Google Search Console if you know what you're looking for. We talk about targeting keywords in your niche to grow your traffic, how to find hidden opportunities to get your content found, how to piggyback off of what's working for you on social media, and how to think about riding cultural waves to get your posts to show up in search. After listening to this episode, you'll never wonder again what kind of content to create to be successful in your business. I think  you're going to find this episode super helpful! Show Notes: Blogger Genius 4 Biggest Takeaways Email MiloTree App MiloTree BlogStart Service MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group MiloTree Google Analytics Cheat Sheet Paula Rollo/SEO Catch My Party Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher YouTube Hello friends. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Before I get started, I wanted to ask you if you wanted to receive an email from me on Sundays, where I talk about my most recent episode, and I share my four biggest takeaways from that episode. So, think of it as a cheat sheet, or like Cliff Notes. It will save you a ton of time because you can decide whether it's an episode you want to listen to. But if not, you will stay up to date on what is really working in online business and blogging today. It's easy to remember, bloggergenius.com and just add your email address.

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

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

As bloggers, our number one need is traffic. We all know it, and yet sometimes, we try to talk ourselves out of it. We think we can grow our blogs and our businesses and not worry about traffic. And that's not true. If you want to increase your blog income, you have to increase your traffic first. Here are 6 easy hacks to get more traffic to your blog Today, I've got my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo, back on the show, and we are talking about increasing your blog traffic. SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, and MiloTree are all great ways to grow your traffic. You'll notice I didn't mention Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. While social media can still provide traffic, the game has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. When the social media platforms first started, there were many hacks and tricks you could use to gain lots of traffic. Today, those platforms have tightened up so much, you have to truly provide good content to gain that traffic. Google doesn't run on keywords alone anymore either. Today, Google actually reads your content and serves up only the best content to its audience, not just the most keyword-heavy posts. Easy strategies to get your content found So, if social media isn't the way to get your blog in front of new readers, what are the best ways to do that now? There are several strategies you can use to get more eyes on your content: Answer actual questions that people are asking You want to be the authoritative voice in your niche Master your niche In order to be an authority, you have to figure out what it is about your content that your audience is connecting with Look at your analytics See which posts get the most engagement After you've done this: Build up your content Create blog posts on this topic and related topics Link your posts internally on your blog Google will see those links and serve up that content when someone has a question about your expertise. Create a page on your site where you have all your posts organized in a useful way Create long-form content Google likes longer content so aim for 1,500 3,000 words per post Know who your perfect audience is MiloTree's perfect audience is people who already have traffic and want to convert that traffic. That's who I want to go after because I can actually help them. I am very intentional in my blog posts and podcast episodes so that my target audience knows it is for them and is going to help them. You want to strategically go after the audience that will benefit from you. If you know your audience, then you will know the things they will be interested in. You do not want to go after every audience possible. You want to go after a specific person you know is interested in your topic. Growing your traffic through Pinterest To grow your traffic through Pinterest – Search Pinterest for popular pins and create content that is similar or on similar topics Use keywords in your title, your board descriptions, your pin descriptions, and on your pins Use relevant hashtags — 2-3 per pin description Just being active on Pinterest is not enough anymore. You have to be intentional. Why you need to be intentional and focused in your business If you think you cannot be creative in your niche, then you can experiment outside that, but I would suggest you find new ways to be creative inside it. While you do have the ability to do what you want, you have to be consistent if you expect to grow your business. You certainly don't have the same level of freedom that bloggers had several years ago. If you are an influencer as a business, you do not have the freedom to just do what you want. You can always start a little side project to play with, but you should not let it affect your business. The audience I am looking to help is business people. Even if they have no experience with making money on a blog, that is their first and foremost desire. If you have a creative idea, and you don't care about making money with it, go for it. But do not sink your business to follow a creative idea that will not make you money. It isn't all fun and games. Sometimes you have to sit down and look at the numbers, you have to think about the business side of it. How to get traffic from newsletters I know a food blogger who sends out three recipes a week to her email list. Her RSS feed is what drives the majority of her traffic because she has a very loyal audience. At the end of the day, you're paying for your email service. Email services aren't cheap, so you have to balance what you're making on ads versus what you're spending to send them. You need to make sure you can make money from those emails and not just get traffic. If you're planning on selling a product, then your email list is essential. Your subscribers are your biggest opportunity for making money through selling. On MiloTree, I put together a post about growing your Instagram followers. I give this valuable information away to people who are willing to give me their email address.  What Type of Business Owner is MiloTree Right For? Now that I'm getting more intentional with my own blog and business, I'm not just going to be going after people who just want to grow their Instagram followers, but people who already think of themselves as a business –people who can see that MiloTree is a great way to help them grow their business. Are you in the middle stages of growing your blog? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let MiloTree help you get to that next level. Sign up today! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP  7:04 Strategies To Get Your Content Found 17:57 Know Who Your Perfect Audience Is 24:02 Growing Your Traffic Through Pinterest 29:34 Being Intentional and Focused 35:29 Traffic and Newsletters Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

Productivity is something I am always thinking about and trying to learn more about because I know that it is crucial to growing my business. So in this episode, we're talking about how to find new productivity hacks for yourself. But let's be honest, sometimes we, as bloggers, get bogged down in the weeds instead of doing the things that will take us to that next level.  That's why I invited my friend and MiloTree community manager Paula Rollo back on the podcast, where we are talking all things "productivity."  We're sharing what works for us, the things that don't work, and where we are winging it in our own businesses.  Before we jump into our discussion though, I have to say that I have been having loads of fun over in my Facebook group. I am in there all the time, chatting, going live, and helping you build your business. And the group is full of other bloggers, encouraging each other and answering questions.  If you haven't joined us yet what are you waiting for? Come on over today and introduce yourself. We're all waiting on you in the MiloTree Mastermind Group! Okay, are you ready to be more productive? Let's jump right into my discussion with Paula... Balance Is a Myth One of the biggest issues with productivity is the old comparison trap.  We think that everybody else is more productive than we are. But it's not true.  We all struggle with the number of things on our plates, and I've never met a blogger who was satisfied that everything was getting done. My own mom reminds me frequently that balance is not a state that you achieve; rather it's something you move in and out of. There will be days when you plow through your to-do list like a ninja, and days where it feels like you are walking through molasses.  So, don't get too hung up on trying to find that elusive balance. Let's shoot for productivity instead. When Are You Most Productive? So, rather than comparing myself to Susie Blogger over there, I need to look at my own life and how my days are structured.  When am I at my best? When do I accomplish the most?   And I'll be honest, I am at my best from 3:30-5:30 p.m. If I have some deep work that needs doing, that is the time when I can really dig deep and focus. So, pay attention to your own rhythms. You will notice the time of day when things come easier to you.  If you are trying to get stuff done and you feel that you aren't doing your best work, move on to something you can do easily. Save the heavy lifting for when you are in the right mindset, even if that's late at night. Another tip is to do those easy mindless tasks when you aren't at your best. This will give you a boost because you're accomplishing a goal, instead of just wasting that time on social media.  Using the Pomodoro Technique  One of the tricks I use to increase my own productivity is called the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique is simply a system where you work without stopping for 25 minutes and then you take a 5-minute break. I use the online timer at tomato-timer.com.  You repeat the 30-minute cycle 4 times and at the end of the third or fourth round, you take a longer break.  (Tomato-timer allows you to set the length of your short and long breaks, as well as the length of your focused work session.) If you say that you are going to work for several hours straight, you may goof off for a lot of the time. You may get distracted, you may feel bad about how little work you're doing, and you may only actually work for 25 minutes of that 2-3 hours.  But, if you can set that goal of 25 minutes and really focus, you will get more work done in those 25 minutes than you will sitting at your desk for 2 hours but wasting the majority of it. Be Intentional About Breaks Breaks are necessary when you work online. Your eyes need time away from staring at the computer screen.  The trick is to use that break time to actually do something away from the computer. If you use your break time to scroll through Facebook or Instagram, it won't feel like much of a break when you switch tabs to get back to your work. During your break, use that time to walk around, get a drink of water, step outside for fresh air, or talk to a friend or family member. Stop to smell the roses every so often and you will find yourself more productive when you sit back down to the screen. Breaks aren't optional; you will be more productive with well-timed and regular breaks than you will if you sit there and try to press through for hours.  Scheduling Software and Paper Planners  As someone who runs several businesses, you would think that I am the most organized person on the planet, that my planner is scheduled to the half-hour every day. And I'll admit, a good schedule is not optional when you are a business owner. We also use  Trello in our business and we love it.  However, I want to be completely transparent and let you know that I am just like most of you and I wing it a lot.  The system that I actually use more than any is Post-Its. My desk is covered with Post-Its.  I love that they are something tangible that I can write on, and then see in front of me as I accomplish my goals.   Paula works for several clients and uses both Trello and BaseCamp. But personally, she can't live without her Erin Condren paper planner. Working In Advance  One of the best ways to increase your productivity is to work in advance. My assistant and I use a calendar to schedule our posts for Catch My Party. We write out what the posts will be about and we schedule those a couple of months in advance. We post on that site 3 times a week as follows: New content, usually focused on a trend we are noticing An updated post A highlight of our 4 favorite parties of the week As you know, because you are reading this post, I also release a blog post every week based on the podcast for those who would rather read than listen.  This blog post also allows us to rank for SEO and it provides a place for listeners to grab any links we mention in the podcast. One thing to notice is that you may be more scheduled and more productive than you think you are. Going through this exercise showed me ways that I am being more productive than maybe I would have said I was.  When the Work Feels Hard While I'm sure that there are some incredibly organized people who seem to have it all together, most of us are still kind of winging it and that's okay.  It's okay to decide how scheduled you want to be and when you need to say, “Enough!”  But, if you don't want to do something, think about what it is worth to you financially.  That post you don't want to write? Why are you writing it? Is it because you've got a family that depends on the income that post will bring in? That right there might be all the motivation you need to get off Instagram and finish the post, even when it feels hard and you just don't want to do it. At the end of the day, you are running a business. Typically, the harder you work, the more money you make.   If you want to have the freedom to do what you want, you need to put in the work necessary.  Find the System that Works for You At the end of the day, you have to know who you are and what works for you. You need to know how you function best and what type of schedule brings out your best work.  No one else can tell you what is right for your business and your mental health.  If you aren't as productive as you need to be, ask yourself why you haven't gotten your work done. Take the time to ponder what rhythms would work better for you.  Everyone has their own unique rhythms, their own schedules, so I challenge you to figure out how you function best. You get to decide what your days look like and what productivity means for you and your business. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you'll share with me what works for you. I go live on Mondays at 3 pm in my Facebook group and I'd love for you to join me and let's chat all things productivity! Read the transcript for "How to Find Productivity Hacks That Work for You" TIMESTAMP Intro 1:46  Balance Is a Myth 2:48  When Are You Most Productive? 7:57  Using the Pomodoro Technique 12:00  Be Intentional About Breaks  16:54  Scheduling Software and Paper Planners 21:31  Working In Advance  25:00  Mixing Up the Schedule 30:29  When the Work Feels Hard  33:17  Find the System that Works for You   TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS  Balance is a myth; some days you will slay your to-do list and some days it will slay you. Stop trying to achieve balance and focus on increased productivity instead. Pay attention to when you feel at your best and do the deepest and hardest work during those times; save the mindless tasks for when your brainpower is lowest. Be intentional about taking breaks; use break times to take a walk, talk to a loved one, stretch, or anything that involves stepping away from the screen.  If the work feels too hard and you just don't wanna, remember why you're doing it. Knowing that your family depends on the income can make it easier to press through.  Bonus- Don't depend on somebody else's system to work for you. Find the best times and schedules for your unique set of circumstances and please don't compare what works for you with what works for others!   Now imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… It can be with MiloTree! Try the MiloTree pop-up app on your blog for 30 days risk-free! Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Are you ready to boost your blog income during the holidays, because it is not too late! This post will help you put a plan in place to increase your revenue in Q4 before the year is over. Most businesses generate the bulk of their revenue in Q4, so if you're not sure what to do first, listen to my newest podcast episode where Paula Rollo and I share our best tips for how to have a successful Q4 and grow your income! We will also be giving tips for the beginning of the year when Q1 hits and we all have some fun new gadgets to play with. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to encourage you to head over to my Facebook group, The MiloTree Mastermind group, where I am going live every Monday to discuss my biggest takeaways from the podcast. I'm focusing on building our community and would love to have you join in! So, head over to Facebook and I'll see you there!   Creating Gift Guides for the Holidays Gift guides are huge. I know you've seen your favorite bloggers sharing gift guides throughout the year and you can create one for your audience.  The thing to remember is that your gift guides need to be niched down to match your blog content.  Brands are great at the more generic types of gift guides, like, “The Top 10 Gifts for Foodies.”  Don't try to compete with the brands on the generic guides. Instead, make your guides niched and unique. Really narrow down the focus of your guides. Think about your blog content and which posts are super successful for you, and build your gift guides off of that content. Listeners, Paula shared some truly genius ideas for content that maybe isn't a traditional gift guide but brings in tons of affiliate sales. Listen in starting at the 5:10 mark to have your mind blown in the best way! Optimizing Existing Content for the Holidays  Okay, so you want to increase your affiliate sales during Q4 but you really and truly don't have time to put together any gift guides.  Is there any other way to beef up your affiliate income without creating a bunch of new content? You better believe it! One easy way to boost those affiliate sales is to have a few evergreen pieces that you can switch around seasonally.  Paula has an evergreen post titled “Best Gift Ideas For Grandparents.” This post has a generic, evergreen, pinnable image. But when Q4 comes around, Paula simply switches out that image for a more seasonal image, and changes the title to say, “Best Christmas Gift Ideas for Grandparents.”  The titles of your posts can be changed to fit any holiday that the content fits with. Change out your image and update the post and you're good to go! IMPORTANT: Check Your Blog Links  One of the worst things to happen is for a reader to click on an affiliate link on your blog and find a broken link. You can't earn money on links that don't work. And if you have one broken link, your reader may not bother checking any others. Take the time now to go through your top posts and make sure that all your links are not only working, but leading your audience to the sites you want them to go to. You don't need to do this for every post on your site, but you definitely should check your most popular posts and those that already bring in some revenue. Update Your Pins for the Holidays  On Pinterest, if you update the photo of an old pin, it will automatically be viewed as new content.  You can add the new image to your blog posts if you like, but just creating those new pins will bring fresh traffic to your evergreen posts.   And here's a nifty tip -- if you tap the price tag icon on Pinterest, you can add your affiliate link to that photo. *Note: not all affiliates allow this so check your specific affiliate programs to see if you can use your link on pins. Use All Social Media Channels  Once you've updated your content or created some guides, checked your most important links, and pinned new images to Pinterest, it's time to use the power of social media.  Think about how to use each of the platforms to drive traffic to the sites you have affiliate links for.  You could put together a series on Instagram showing your "Top 10 Sensory Products for Kids," and then promote this series on your other channels to get people to come over and watch.  You could do a series on Instagram stories; you could do it through a series of emails to your subscribers; you could do a series of Facebook Lives.  Create a sense of excitement around the content you're going to be sharing so that your audience will share it with their friends.  Selling Products During the Holidays  Have you ever thought about designing your own products? Does that sound crazy?  It's not as crazy as you think when you use sites like Zazzle, where you can create t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc.  You can sell other people's creations or you can design and sell your own.  Creating your own products doesn't have to be a huge, all-consuming affair. It can be simple. Take advantage of the technology available to find new ways of creating products.  SEO Tips for Christmas and Q4 Go into your Google Search Console, look at your performance, and search "holiday," "Christmas," or any holiday-type search word.  If you enter the word "Christmas,” it will show you how many times you pop up in Google when someone searches the term “Christmas.”  This can show you opportunities you didn't know were there. Find out where Google is already ranking you and what your readers are looking to you for. Then create more content in that vein. Scroll through your results and see what you could take advantage of for the holidays.  It's hard to believe that Q4 is here already, so we need to dive in. If you're not sure where to start, take one of the tips we shared today and start there. Pick the lowest hanging fruit and see what you can get done this week. And be sure to come over to my Facebook group so we can discuss this episode together. I can't wait to chat with you! TIMESTAMP 2:46 Gift Guides  11:45 Optimize Your Existing Content  16:39 Check Your Links  17:00 Update Your Pins  20:56 Use All Social Media Channels  22:42 Selling Products  23:55 SEO Tips    TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS  If you're creating gift guides, make them niched and unique; they should mesh with your most popular content. Optimize your evergreen content with affiliate links and updated information. (Make sure every affiliate link on your most popular posts still works.)  Create new images for your evergreen posts and make new pins from them. Consider creating a series to share on Instagram, Facebook, or even to your email subscribers.    Read the podcast transcript for “How to Boost Your Online Income in Q4”   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! Are you serious about growing your online business? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Today I have my good friend (and Community Manager at MiloTree), Paula Rollo, back on the podcast to talk about how to best optimize your blog's About Page. If you are a blogger, you already know how important your About Page is. Your About Page tells the story of your own personal journey, including struggles and successes. Why Do I Need an About Page? Your About Page sets you up as the expert in your niche which helps to build the know, like, and trust factor with your audience.  It is also typically one of the most-visited pages on your site, so you want it to be full of links and other information that will keep the visitor clicking around your site.  We'll go over what About Pages are, who they are for, and how you should think about them.  Your About Page sets the tone for how you are positioning yourself on your site. This is important for 2 reasons:  It helps your readers understand what the value is of your site or blog.  It allows brands to find out about you, understand what you do, and understand who your audience is. Your about page is one of the first pages you ever create when starting out, and it can be excruciating to get it perfect… and then often we never look at it again.  As your business grows, it's good practice to look back at your About Page and see what's missing, and what you can edit or tweak to make it a strong page on your site.  What Should Be On My About Page  There are a few things that are absolutely basic that you should always have on your About page: Your name -- If you are doing this casually, feel free to just use your first name. If you are using this as a business, definitely use both first and last.  Your contact information -- A lot of professional bloggers have special “Contact” Pages and that's great, but you want to give the reader a way to contact you directly from the About Page. This could just be a button that takes them to the Contact Page. Have it at the top of your page so that you are providing access to a relationship with the reader. Your content -- Share what you create and why.   Extras0 -- Share little quirks about yourself that people may not know from reading your posts.  Two types of people come to your About Page:  The raving fan who has already read a bunch on your website and wants to know more about you  The brand new reader who has only seen one post on your site and wants to decide whether to follow or not The focus of your About Page needs to be on your audience or the brands that are visiting and what value you can give to them.  Read your own About Page and see if you are putting the value of what you are doing right in front of your readers.  Statistics for Brands  Brand managers are looking for bloggers in specific niches.  We recommend directing these brands to a different Contact Page with more of your statistics and data. You can share who you're interested in working with, whether or not you do giveaways, etc. On your page with all your statistics, you can use logos from the brands you've worked with to give you more credibility. Logos are immediately recognizable so those are a great way to catch the eye of a brand manager.  Make Your About Page Interesting Your About Page is like anything on your site - it needs to be skimmable.  Have your fun facts in bullet points. You want the reader to be able to quickly scroll through and see what you are about without having to read every single word you wrote.  Make your page fun. You want to make it an interesting page for your reader to visit.  You want your reader to have an, “Oh, me, too!” reaction while reading your about page. Above all, you want your reader to be able to relate to you. If you have tougher things that you want to share, they can be linked to a blog post or even an Instagram post about that topic. You don't have to share all the intimate details on the About Page and we recommend not putting a lot of difficult topics in a bulleted list.  Add Your Most Popular Posts in your About Page Some people link to their most popular blog posts on their About Page.  We highly recommend doing this, because it's a great way to grab the visitor who is checking out your About Page to decide whether or not they want to follow you. Highlighting your most popular content, whether that's your favorite posts or your readers' favorites, creates a good sampler platter of what your site offers.   On your “Work with Me” page, you can share links to posts from previous sponsored content you have done.  Checking Your Page for Mistakes  Make sure that all of your links work.  Go over both your About Me and Work With Me pages and make sure that all your links go where they should. So many times I click on links and they are broken. That doesn't make me want to stick around.  When links are broken, it makes the reader feel like you don't care about them. That's frustrating for them. You want to be serving your audience well.  You don't want typos on your pages.  You also want it to be mobile-friendly. Once you finish typing it up on your laptop or desktop, go look at it on your phone and make sure it's also skimmable on your phone.  Think about your audience skimming your page in line at Target. Or the brand manager on his phone in a cubicle looking for influencers quickly. Make it a good and easy experience for them.  About Page Images It's a great idea to have a nice, professional headshot on your About Page so that your audience can see you.  Many bloggers like to add several other images on their About Page which is fine, but always check your site speed if you decide to add more images.  Few things drive new readers away faster than a blog that loads so slowly they can't see it within a few seconds.  If you're trying to attract brands, make sure that your images are as professional as possible. If your blog is more casual, you don't have to spend a ton of money on photos. Share Your Credentials  At the very top of your page, right after your name, you need to share what your credentials are and how you can serve your reader or a brand. If you have credentials that are relevant to your content, you want to share that immediately because it gives the reader that extra comfort and belief in who you are and what you're sharing.  If your credentials are relevant, but you still feel weird sharing them, you can soften the blow by sharing what your passion is immediately afterward. This shows that you aren't going to lord anything over them or make the reader feel bad about themselves.  Add a Call to Action One of the most important elements of your About Page is a "call to action." If you share that you live in Virginia, you can link to your Instagram where they can find more about where you live. Or if you talk about loving to cook, link to your Pinterest where you have more recipes.  The ultimate call to action is asking them to sign up for your email list.  Tell the reader what you want them to do. You always want to be clear about what you want from your audience.  Don't throw a ton of choices at the reader. Give them one call to action and they are more likely to follow it.  Conclusion Well, wow. After this conversation with Paula, I am reinspired to go back and take another look at my own About Page and see what I need to edit.  I encourage you to take some time this week to really look at your own About Page. Pretend you're a first-time visitor to your blog and give your About Page a thorough once-over. Or ask a friend who doesn't read your blog to visit your About Page and tell you what they notice or anything that confuses them.    What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turn your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp Intro 0:50  Why Do I Need an About Page?  2:22 What Should Be on My About Page 9:45  Statistics for Brands  17:42 Make Your Page Interesting 21:58  Most Popular Posts 24:12  Checking Your Page for Mistakes  27:00  About Page Images 29:45  Share Your Credentials  33:15  Call to Action  Read the podcast transcript for “How to Best Optimize Your Blog's About Page” TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THE EPISODE If your About Page hasn't been changed since you began blogging, revisit it. Edit, adjust, and tweak it to make it fit your business as it is now.  The focus of your About Page should be on the reader or the brand you want to work with. What problems can you solve for the reader? How can the brand's product solve your reader's problem? Use bullet points and short paragraphs to make the About Page skimmable, especially on mobile.  Add a call to action. Ask the reader to do one specific task like sign up for your email list. 

 Today, MiloTree Community Manager and my friend, Paula Rollo, is back on the show and we are talking about how to think about branding yourself and your business.  We're looking at the question of where best to focus your energy.  In this episode, we share how we have both gone through our own branding process and how you can easily do it, too.  Branding Beginnings  Branding is so much more than just hopping onto sites like LogoJoy or TailorMade and creating your logo. There is also a tool on Shopify that will generate business names for you.  These are all fun tools to play around with but there are steps you need to take before you start making logos.  When Paula started her business around 15 years ago, she did not even know about branding. She simply made content without a vision and hoped people would find it.  Tip: When coming up with your blog name or logo, you don't want your viewers to have to guess what you are about. You have to state upfront what your brand is about.  When I created Catch My Party, I was very specific about what the business was, but that made me feel pigeonholed into that space without a lot of room for growth or change.  The inspiration for MiloTree comes from a beautiful tree found in Hawaii.  The name is very open-ended, which allows me to expand somewhat within the boundary of the name. And I'm glad we chose it as we have definitely expanded the things we offer through the app. It's no longer just the "Pinterest Pop-Up Company." When branding first became important, you didn't have to be as specific, but as Google has evolved and the industry has grown, you need to be much more specific about what you're offering to your audience so that you become an authority in your field.  Personal Branding vs. Company Branding  Before I started my own personal Instagram account recently, I thought through what I wanted my account to look like.  I keep Catch My Party, MiloTree, and my own personal account, Jillian Tohber Leslie, separate to brand them as the individual things that they are. I decided to focus on three things with my personal account: How I run two businesses and a podcast Moving to Austin and discovering the area How I focus on my wellness and health My husband and daughter occasionally show up on there, but they are not the main focus.  When I am posting about myself, I am showing the human side of my business and people can get to know me. That builds trust with my audience.  You have to decide early on if you want your brand to have a personality, or if you want to be your brand. A lot of blogs and brands get stuck trying to do both.  Some brands don't want a face behind their brand, but then they lose all personality whatsoever. People want something to connect to, even if it's just a common theme.  Sharing Yourself To Build Trust  When building your brand, you need to know where your business is going, know what you're trying to accomplish in the world.  For instance, if you have a health and wellness blog, you are trying to convince me to change something about my lifestyle. To do that you need to share your personal story and credentials in order to gain my trust.  Anyone can start a business success blog, but I need to know your backstory. I need to know that you have a successful business and that you know more than me about building a successful business.  Focus your personal brand on how you can serve others, and you will be able to remain authentic and true to yourself.  Being A Personal Brand  We all need to be mindful of the brand we're putting forward.  Today it is easy for people to find us online, including prospective employers. The brand you put forth is what they're going to see and how they're going to think about you.  If you do not brand yourself, and you focus on your company's branding, you are still discoverable. You still need to have a personal aspect of your brand.  I always suggest that people Google themselves and see what shows up.  Do you like what pops up under your name? If not, you may need to think about some personal rebranding.  Comparing Yourself To Others  Another way to get clear on your branding is to look at your competitors to see what they are doing right, and mimic that. But you should also be looking at your competition in order to see the ways that you are different. If someone was unhappy with another company, how would coming to your business offer them a different experience?  Find ways to differentiate your blog from others who are in the same niche.  Brands tend to solve one problem and move on. Focus on being cohesive and offering solutions to problems that might not even be known yet.  You can fill in the blanks that the big companies are missing because what may not be lucrative enough for big brands could be lucrative enough for you.  Honesty vs. Oversharing At one point, a couple of years ago, our culture decided that we wanted to know everything about everybody. We shared pictures of our food, our friends, our evening routines.  But people quickly discovered that they didn't care what their neighbor had for dinner; they weren't following them because their neighbors were food bloggers.  Today, people want you to be honest, but people also understand that there are boundaries to sharing your life.  Boundaries look different to everyone, and you are free to decide what your boundaries are.  I do not post any pictures of my daughter on Instagram, whereas Paula has pictures of her children all over her account, but without their names posted. We both set the boundaries that we are comfortable with.  I came to the personal branding game late, but if I am making someone feel happier, feel less alone, or more inspired, then I am branding myself the right way.  What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turn your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp   Intro    1:14 Branding Beginnings   14: 41 Personal Branding vs. Company Branding    24:47 Share Yourself To Build Trust    28:08 Being A Personal Brand    29:34 Comparing Yourself To Others    32:56 Honesty vs. Oversharing Read the podcast transcript for “How to Think About Branding Yourself and Your Business” TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS Don't make people guess what your blog is about. State upfront, through your name, logo, description, bio, etc, exactly what you are about and what the reader can expect. Decide if you want your business to have a personality or if you want to be your own brand. Share your own story so that your audience can develop a sense of trust in what you tell them to do. Find ways to differentiate your blog from others in the same niche. Ask yourself, “If someone was unhappy with another business in my niche, what could I offer them for a better experience?

Today I have Paula Rollo back on the show to talk about burnout. If you are an entrepreneur, burnout is part of everyday life. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to cope with entrepreneur burnout. We're going to share personal stories and tips to help you know how to think about burnout, how to live with burnout, and how to overcome burnout. We want you to know how to use burnout as a guide. What Causes Burnout as an Online Entrepreneur? One thing that causes burnout for me is when I work very hard on something and then don't see the results I want. I teach that we need to put ourselves out there, try new things, and that 95% of our ventures will fail, but even so, it is still demoralizing to me. It is hard to not begin thinking that everything you try is going to fail. It throws me into an irrational tailspin of imposter syndrome and thinking I am only a failure. We almost never take stock of our successes; we focus in on the failures. You have to focus on how far you've come because if you only focus on how far you have to go, you'll never get there. You'll always be falling short. Ways To Work Through Burnout There are a couple of things I do to try and get myself out of burnout: I remind myself that burnout is temporary. I will eventually come out of it. I try to get curious about something that may be causing my burnout and see if I can fix that situation I try to touch myself with kindness, even if it's hard, and I don't think I deserve it Burnout can be a good indication that you're doing too much. Take a look at different areas of your life that may be causing burnout, (I'm looking at you, social media!) and either hire help, or decide if you want to continue doing that thing, whatever it is. Taking A Break Burnout may mean that you need to take a break. You may need to step away for a time. The world will not stop turning if you take a break to recover. You might feel like you're letting everyone down if you take time off, but that is not the case. Doing the bare minimum can help you see what things are actually needed, and what things are unnecessary that you can stop doing altogether. Being Satisfied with B- Work I believe in doing B+ work, not A+, and when I am burned out, I allow myself to do B- work. I never say to go for A+ work because if you do that, you're setting yourself up for failure. No one can be perfect all the time. So strive for B+ work but be okay with whatever you can do. Allow yourself to let things go, to use the content you have, and to be proud of your work. Stepping Out of the Box When Paula was struggling with depression, she could not reach into her creative space to write blog posts about her children for her parenting blog. Instead, she sat down and wrote about her burnout. She wrote a five hundred word post about how she couldn't write words. Paula felt that she wasn't creative because she couldn't write about parenting. What she really needed to do was reach her creativity from a different angle. If you're feeling that you're not creative, go create in a way you might not normally do and see how that feels. Working With Burnout I love using the Pomodoro technique; if you go to tomato-timer.com, you will get a timer for twenty-five minutes. Tell yourself that you only have to work for twenty-five minutes and you will consider it a success. Then if you're feeling up to it, you can do it again. Another thing I do is set a small goal. Maybe the goal is to do one email for the day. Or pin one pin on Pinterest. When I accomplish that goal, I can congratulate myself on getting it done. I don't make myself do more and I try to feel that I'm a success! Listening To Your Burnout If you are experiencing a lot of burnout, there comes a time when you might want to listen to that. Your burnout might be showing you that you're going in the wrong direction. It might have been the right direction at one point, but maybe it's not anymore. If you've tried everything else... Getting back in touch with your creativity Finding new passions Taking a break ...and it's still not working, and you don't want to continue doing what you're doing, you need to do something new. If the reason you are doing your work is different than when you started, you need to find something else to do. Have you struggled with burnout? Tell me about it in the comments. I'd love to hear your ideas on how you overcome burnout, what causes you to experience burnout, and your best tips for getting through it without throwing your business out the window. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp  Intro  3:20 What Causes Burnout?  8:05 Ways To Work Through Burnout 14:17 Taking A Break 18:55 Being Satisfied with B- Work 20:07 Stepping Out of the Box 24:14 Working With Burnout 27:07 Listening To Your Burnout   Read the podcast transcript HERE:   TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE Burnout can be caused by working really hard at something and seeing little or no results, or by needing to move in a different direction in your business without seeing it. Focus on how far you've come, and not just how far you have to go because you'll never get there. When you're experiencing burnout, settle for putting out B- work instead of A+ work. The goal is to be kind to yourself. Your business is not going to die if you step away from social media for awhile. Find a hobby that you have no intentioned of monetizing but that gets your creative juices flowing again. *Btw, Netflix is not a hobby.   Want More Blogger Genius Episodes About Burnout and Focus? #058: How to Overcome Burnout as an Entrepreneur with Jason Zook #066: How to Stay Focused as an Entrepreneur with Stephanie Uchima-Carney    

As bloggers, our number one need is traffic. We all know it, and yet sometimes, we try to talk ourselves out of it. We think we can grow our blogs and our businesses and not worry about traffic. And that's not true. If you want to increase your blog income, you have to increase your traffic first. Here are 6 easy hacks to get more traffic to your blog Today, I've got my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo, back on the show, and we are talking about increasing your blog traffic. SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, and MiloTree are all great ways to grow your traffic. You'll notice I didn't mention Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. While social media can still provide traffic, the game has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. When the social media platforms first started, there were many hacks and tricks you could use to gain lots of traffic. Today, those platforms have tightened up so much, you have to truly provide good content to gain that traffic. Google doesn't run on keywords alone anymore either. Today, Google actually reads your content and serves up only the best content to its audience, not just the most keyword-heavy posts. Easy strategies to get your content found So, if social media isn't the way to get your blog in front of new readers, what are the best ways to do that now? There are several strategies you can use to get more eyes on your content: Answer actual questions that people are asking You want to be the authoritative voice in your niche Master your niche In order to be an authority, you have to figure out what it is about your content that your audience is connecting with Look at your analytics See which posts get the most engagement After you've done this: Build up your content Create blog posts on this topic and related topics Link your posts internally on your blog Google will see those links and serve up that content when someone has a question about your expertise. Create a page on your site where you have all your posts organized in a useful way Create long-form content Google likes longer content so aim for 1,500 3,000 words per post Know who your perfect audience is MiloTree's perfect audience is people who already have traffic and want to convert that traffic. That's who I want to go after because I can actually help them. I am very intentional in my blog posts and podcast episodes so that my target audience knows it is for them and is going to help them. You want to strategically go after the audience that will benefit from you. If you know your audience, then you will know the things they will be interested in. You do not want to go after every audience possible. You want to go after a specific person you know is interested in your topic. Growing your traffic through Pinterest To grow your traffic through Pinterest - Search Pinterest for popular pins and create content that is similar or on similar topics Use keywords in your title, your board descriptions, your pin descriptions, and on your pins Use relevant hashtags -- 2-3 per pin description Just being active on Pinterest is not enough anymore. You have to be intentional. Why you need to be intentional and focused in your business If you think you cannot be creative in your niche, then you can experiment outside that, but I would suggest you find new ways to be creative inside it. While you do have the ability to do what you want, you have to be consistent if you expect to grow your business. You certainly don't have the same level of freedom that bloggers had several years ago. If you are an influencer as a business, you do not have the freedom to just do what you want. You can always start a little side project to play with, but you should not let it affect your business. The audience I am looking to help is business people. Even if they have no experience with making money on a blog, that is their first and foremost desire. If you have a creative idea, and you don't care about making money with it, go for it. But do not sink your business to follow a creative idea that will not make you money. It isn't all fun and games. Sometimes you have to sit down and look at the numbers, you have to think about the business side of it. How to get traffic from newsletters I know a food blogger who sends out three recipes a week to her email list. Her RSS feed is what drives the majority of her traffic because she has a very loyal audience. At the end of the day, you're paying for your email service. Email services aren't cheap, so you have to balance what you're making on ads versus what you're spending to send them. You need to make sure you can make money from those emails and not just get traffic. If you're planning on selling a product, then your email list is essential. Your subscribers are your biggest opportunity for making money through selling. On MiloTree, I put together a post about growing your Instagram followers. I give this valuable information away to people who are willing to give me their email address.  What Type of Business Owner is MiloTree Right For? Now that I'm getting more intentional with my own blog and business, I'm not just going to be going after people who just want to grow their Instagram followers, but people who already think of themselves as a business --people who can see that MiloTree is a great way to help them grow their business. Are you in the middle stages of growing your blog? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let MiloTree help you get to that next level. Sign up today! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP  7:04 Strategies To Get Your Content Found 17:57 Know Who Your Perfect Audience Is 24:02 Growing Your Traffic Through Pinterest 29:34 Being Intentional and Focused 35:29 Traffic and Newsletters Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

There seems to be a lot of confusion over how to use Instagram for your blog. Instagram doesn't tend to lend itself to driving traffic so what's the point of using it? The key to Instagram is engagement. In this episode, we share how to boost your engagement on Instagram so you can unlock all the platform's potential. My guest today, Paula Rollo, MiloTree's Community Manager and she also heads up the MiloTree affiliate program. Be sure to join if you haven't already! Paula and I are talking about the importance of engagement -- the secret sauce of mastering Instagram. We look at Instagram from different perspectives and how you can use Instagram for your business. Why Who You Follow on Instagram Matters Facebook owns Instagram and they have made it increasingly difficult for users to gain followers. But believe it or not, there is a purpose behind this. Instagram's algorithms have gotten incredibly granular and intelligent. Their goal is to serve up the most engaging content that they can. They want to serve you the content that you want to see so you will stay on the platform longer. Why Engagement is king on Instagram. If you are a content creator on Instagram, you need to be thinking about your audience. It's not about your overall general follower count, it's about engaged followers. Instagram is tracking everything you do on their platform. For example, it's not just who's following you, it's also who you're following. If you are a food blogger, you want to be following not just food bloggers, but also an audience that is interested in food blogging. Why You Need Two Instagram Accounts If it's important who you follow, does that mean you shouldn't follow your Great-aunt Sally and your cousin, Lucy, and your sister and her sister-in-law, etc.? In a word, yes. At MiloTree, we strongly recommend having 2 Instagram accounts: a personal account and a business account. I know it may be confusing to think about having 2 accounts so let me explain the reasoning behind it If you are a lifestyle blogger using your personal account for your blog, you don't want to be following hobby accounts like Harry Potter or Disney or cats, even if those things are outside interests of yours. You want to follow the types of people who are interested in your business or blog. Remember - who you follow is a signal to Instagram of what type of content you create. The muddier your signals, the harder it is for Instagram to figure out who you are as a content creator. So, create a personal account and a business account and then go follow Harry Potter on your personal account. Creating the Content Your Followers Want to Engage With On Instagram, you need to figure out what types of content your audience prefers. Maybe you took a trip to Disney World and your Instagram followers are highly engaged with those posts. I'd be booking another trip to Disney or somewhere comparable. Your followers are speaking to you loud and clear through their engagement with the travel content.   We absolutely must be intentional in creating content for Instagram and give our audience more of what they love. Milotree fits perfectly into this strategy. For bloggers who already have traffic, you can use the MiloTree pop-up for Instagram which takes your blog visitors and turns them into Instagram followers. The reason this is so valuable is that you're capturing people who are already on your site, who already like your content, and you can convert these people to Instagram followers. Chances are that these will be your most-engaged Instagram followers. You want your followers to be engaging with your content to signal to the algorithm that it's good content. They know which followers are engaged in your post, so they will show your content to other similar audiences, especially in Instagram's Explore tab. Another tip for increasing the odds of getting shown to new audiences is to go through and get rid of your least-engaged followers. Why would you delete followers? Because Instagram is tracking you and they know that you have a lot of followers but not much engagement. This makes them question the validity of your content. Ways To Create An Engaged Audience The first step in building an engaged Instagram audience is to be an engaged Instagram user. The “follow/follow back” method is no longer a recommended way to gain an engaged audience. You need to be making more direct connections. There are a couple of ways to interact. Leave a comment. You could just put an emoji, but you want to be more intentional than that. Tell them why you connect with their post or answer a question they ask. Respond to what they shared in their post. DM them. Direct messaging, or DM'ing, is what it's all about now. If you really connect with something they've shared or you want to develop a relationship with them...or perhaps it's a brand that you want to work with...getting into their DM box is the best way to build that authentic relationship. DM'ing is the secret sauce of Instagram today. Getting On Instagram's Explore Page Ultimately, you want to end up on Instagram's Explore tab. The way I ended up in the explore tab was by putting geo locations in my posts. You can even put geo locations in your Instagram stories. If you have a local business, definitely be geo-tagging, and also hashtagging your post with your location. Let's say you make beautiful cupcakes. They may not end up on the explore page because the food niche is very saturated. Niching down to your location can open up more possibilities for you. When you think of Instagram in a more narrow way, you're going to have more success. Why Are You on Instagram? Why are you even on Instagram? Are you there because everyone else is? That's not a great reason to do anything in business. On a platform like Instagram, where the ROI can be a bit trickier to measure, you can't invest the amount of time you'll need to be consistent just because you have FOMO.   One of the best reasons to be an active and consistent user on Instagram is that brands want you to be there. And they are no longer just looking at your follower number. They're looking at your engagement. Why You Don't Need the Swipe-Up Feature on Instagram to be Successful If you don't have the swipe-up feature, it sounds awesome, right? It's not the end-all, be-all. It doesn't drive that much traffic. It interrupts the scrolling which is the primary experience of Instagram. Think about your own behavior. How often are you swiping up? I think there are other strategies that are better than the swipe up so don't wait to hit 10K followers before starting to share your business account on Instagram. A  few reasons you might want to set up an Instagram account and get busy building an engaged audience are - Working with brands. Brands want you on Instagram and they want to see you actively engaging your audience. Brands used to only care about the number of followers you had, but now everyone is much more interested in how engaged your followers are. Selling products. You can sell your own products on Instagram or sell products that you are an affiliate for. If you're a beauty blogger, you can sell beauty products. Lifestyle bloggers can sell anything that goes along with their blog content. Linking to your site. At MiloTree, we use a tool called Link In Profile. This allows you to put a link to every single post on your blog that the user can click through to be taken directly to that specific post on your blog. This is one way to drive traffic on Instagram. How to Market Products on Instagram If you sell products, you can post in your feed or on stories about that product. If you sell courses, even if you don't have a swipe up, Instagram is a great way to sell those courses. Marketing on Instagram begins with posting beautiful pictures of your products in your feed. You then follow those posts up with stories where you show the behind the scenes of your business. This “behind the scenes” content that you share in your stories allows you to show your authentic personality to your audience and gives them an opportunity to really feel like they know you. Brands want to see you sharing your authentic self on Instagram. This builds an engaged audience who knows, likes, and trusts you and will make purchases that you suggest.   You can also use your DM box to build these relationships. If you offer products for sale, show the products in your feed, and then in your stories, tell your followers to DM you if they've tried the product or if they have a question about it. Or offer them a freebie and tell them to DM you for it. Once you have someone in your DM box, you can then build on that conversation. This is the way to create your loyal followers, your true raving fans. Making the Most of Instagram Stories Instagram stories are so popular because they've brought back the “Insta”, in “Instagram”. Whereas now the algorithm decides what posts you see, you can always choose to watch the Insta stories that you want to and they are always real-time posts. Stories help to flesh you out as an influencer or a publisher or as a brand. People want to feel like they are your personal friend, and know how you did what you say you do. You may post a photo to your feed of a product you are promoting for sponsored work but your audience doesn't know if you really use it unless they see you using it in your stories. Recap on Boosting Engagement on Instagram Instagram is the platform to be on, but know why you're doing it. There has to be a better reason than just the fact that everyone else is on it. Think about what you want to get out of it. How do you want to use it to grow your business? Be conscious of what you engage with on Instagram. Take notes. If you engage with something in particular, use that same type of content in your own account. Be intentional about who you follow. Be intentional about who you reach out to. Install Milotree right now. You want our Instagram pop-up on your blog because it's a sure way to grow engaged followers. It only takes two minutes to download it onto your site and you have thirty days to see what it can do for you, completely free. If Instagram is your jam and you're not using Milotree, you're missing out on a really powerful tool that can grow your engaged, most valuable followers. MiloTree takes less than two minutes to set up on your blog. Let the followers begin! Head to Milotree.com to get started. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp 1:21 Why Who You Follow Matters 6:23 Why You Need Two Instagram Accounts 8:20 Creating the Content Your Followers Want 13:25 Ways To Create An Engaged Audience 20:24 Getting On The Explore Page 22:24 Why Are You on Instagram? 26:35 Why You Don't Need Swipe-Up 30:55 How to Market Products on Instagram 35:17 Making the Most of Instagram Stories 45:00 Recap   Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

As business owners, we are all looking to make a profit from our businesses. If you're going to spend hours, days, months, and even years trying to grow a business, you have to find a way to make it profitable. One of the best ways to make your business more profitable is to scale it. Scaling your business simply means that you find ways to make it grow. You produce more by outsourcing tasks that don't make money, so that you, as the business owner, can focus on those tasks that increase profits. This week, MiloTree community manager and my friend, Paula Rollo, and I are going to be discussing how to find ways to make money in your business. In particular, we will talk about how to find product-market fit. Product-market fit is when you find something that connects with your audience that they're willing to pay for. What Does It Mean to Scale Your Business? Scaling is a word that entrepreneurs use a lot, but it is rarely clearly defined. For the purposes of this conversation, we are going to define it as that moment in your business when you find product-market fit. Product-market fit simply means that what you are offering connects with your audience and they are willing to pay for it. The majority of your time is probably spent trying to find your product-market fit and testing to see if it works. When Should I Start Scaling my Business? You have a product but you don't know whether to start scaling your business. What do you do? You test your hypothesis. Let's say you've written an ebook and you want to see if it resonates with anyone. You could put up a landing page for your book, put a buy button on the landing page, and see if people click. If people are willing to buy it, then you know you have a good product. It's important to make sure that you're not just getting signals that your idea is working but that you're getting real information to confirm that people want it. This means you don't do anything just because your mom likes it. No matter what, you want to be sure that the signal is strong enough for you to start investing money and time confidently. Don't get discouraged if it takes a while to find your product-market fit. The Planning Stage of Scaling Your Business So you're ready to start scaling. What are your next steps? Write down your goals. Remember, if you don't have a destination in mind, you'll end up nowhere every time. Write down what you hope to accomplish. Do you want to sell a certain amount of books and become a full-time writer? Write it down. Write down your hypothesis. What do you think will happen when you test your product? Get started. You can build a website for super cheap these days, so get something up and start testing. Get feedback. Your customers should be your co-creators. The more input they have, the more successful you will be. Create solutions. As your audience tells you their problems, create solutions for them. These are the products they want from you. Finding Flexibility in Your Business When we started Catch My Party, we were sure we understood teen girls. I mean, come on. I had been a teen girl! We thought teen girls would love to share photos of their parties. We hired developers and did it very cheaply as a side hustle. And when we opened, we had no audience. It turns out that teen girls weren't interested in a site where they could load their party pictures.  It looked like the business was a disaster. Luckily, moms with Etsy shops started using the site. We had to be flexible and realize that our intended audience wasn't the right audience. We had an audience; it just wasn't the audience we thought we had built the site for. We had to learn a lesson about being flexible. You can always shut your audience down, but how will your business profit from that? You need to be able to be flexible about how others might take your ideas and your vision and use that to help themselves. Planning For Change in Your Business   When you scale a business, you are preparing for change. Maybe you will change an ebook into a webinar and sell a course during that webinar to increase your revenue. Maybe you will take a piece of free content and expand on it to create something totally new that you can sell. The best steps when planning for change: Plan in 6-month increments Hold your plan loosely Have a long-term vision/goal Know your audience and their needs Remain flexible Remember... The only thing that is consistent is change. If you have carefully cultivated your audience, if you know them, then you can continue to pinpoint ways to help them solve problems in new ways. As you grow and change, your business will also grow and change. Find an audience that will grow and change with you. Qualifications for Scaling Your Business Product-market fit is important because even if you don't know who's showing up for your product, but you see that your bank account is growing, you can still begin to scale your business. But if your product is not engaging your target audience, you shouldn't assume that more of that same audience will show up for what you're offering. I would use either the fact that your traffic is growing or people are paying for your product as evidence that you can begin to scale. Even if someone tells you how amazing they think your product is, if they won't back it with money, then it is not a product market fit. Pick Up the Phone I have been using short phone calls to people who use MiloTree to get ideas for what solutions will and won't work for other issues my audience is facing. We tend to have our own preconceived notions about things, but that doesn't mean we are right, especially if our ideas aren't working to build our business. People are happy to help you. If you call someone and ask if they're willing to look at something for you, most of the time they will say yes. Testing Your Product Many people will suggest you give your product away for free to get feedback. I do not recommend this when testing for product-market fit. The reason I don't suggest it is that people typically don't commit to anything if they haven't paid something for it. What you can do though is offer it for a steeply discounted price. Ask your buyers for feedback; what they liked, what was helpful to them, and what they would like to see changed. Again, this makes your audience feel like they are co-creating the product with you and they will be more invested in it. Are You Ready to Get Started? Let's sum up the process of scaling your business. Connect first - figure out what problem you are solving Test the product - find out if your solution works for your audience Scale - hire a VA or someone who can take on parts of your business so that you can focus on product creation Build - if you put $2 into a Facebook ad, you should be earning $3 back This takes time, patience, and money. You may lose money at the beginning of your scaling process. But be patient. As long as you are following the steps of writing down your goals, getting feedback, testing, and solving problems, you should just keep plugging away. Knowing How Long To Experiment A lot of knowing how long to keep going is just a feel for how it's going or how long you can stomach it. One thing I have learned is that if we get early traction, that's a signal that it could work. It is so important to know your audience. If you know them well, you will know fairly early on based on the feedback you receive whether or not they love your product. Check Your Assumptions When you are working on something new, be sure you don't have assumptions about how your audience will react. Once you've been past the testing stage and have gotten some feedback, your product will likely be a completely different product than what you started with. Remember how we talked about being flexible? Be willing to change your ideas and how you do things based on the feedback you get from your audience. Don't assume that scaling is going to be easy or require no effort. Scaling is a process. If your ideas don't work right off the bat, you are not alone. Everyone who has managed to build a successful business has had to go through the learning stages. If you have any questions, please email me because I would love to hear if you are currently scaling your business and how it's going for you! We'd love to take your questions and address them in a future episode. You can email me at jillian@milotree.com.   Timestamp of Episode 1:05 What Does It Mean to Scale Your Business? 2:48 When Should I Start Scaling 6:20 The Planning Stage of Scaling Your Business 8:06 Finding Flexibility in Your Business 13:33 Planning For Change 19:12 Qualifications for Scaling 21:25 Pick up the Phone 27:35 Testing Your Product 32:02 Are You Ready to Get Started? 34:00 Knowing How Long To Experiment 37:57 Check Your Assumptions If you're looking for more followers, subscribers, and sales, MiloTree can help you do it faster and more easily than you are doing it now. But it can't help you unless you take the first step and add it to your site today. Head over to MiloTree.com. Sign up now and receive your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

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

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

Today I'm back with my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo. Paula is an affiliate marketing pro. She's back on the show to share her advanced affiliate marketing tactics. These will help you make even more money through your affiliate marketing strategy so you don't have to worry about pageviews. In this episode we cover why you want to treat your affiliate products like they're your own, how to find ideas for affiliate products in your own life, what the MiloTree Affiliate Program is all about, and much more! Paula has so many tips to share. If you want to grow your affiliate income, don't miss this! Resources: MiloTree Beauty Through Imperfection How Blogging Makes You Braver with Paula Rollo Catch My Party I See Me Personalized Books MiloTree Affiliate Program GumRoad Refersion FTC Rules The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes * May contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you. Transcript - How to Make Even More Money with Advanced Affiliate Marketing Tactics with Paula Rollo [00:00:03] Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:11] Hi everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I am excited because I am joined by my good friend, Paula Rollo. Jillian: [00:00:23] You guys might have already been introduced to her. Paula is the MiloTree Community Manager. She's also my right hand woman. I'd be nowhere without her. Jillian: [00:00:34] She's a blogger who has been blogging for many many years. Her blog is called Beauty Through Imperfection. And today we are going to be talking about advanced tips for affiliate marketing. Jillian: [00:00:46] Paula has been doing affiliate marketing forever, and she really upped my game. So hopefully she can yours too. So welcome to the show, Paula. Paula: [00:00:56] Thank you for having me. Jillian: [00:00:59] Absolutely. So this is your second time on the podcast. Paula: [00:01:02] Yes I'm excited. Jillian: [00:01:03] So I will link to your first interview and. I thought it was terrific. We talked about a whole host of things. Jillian: [00:01:13] But little did I know that you were an affiliate marketing exper. So tell us what you think about affiliate marketing and what tips you have to kind of up someone's game. How to Improve Your Affiliate Marketing Strategy Jillian: [00:01:27] We're thinking that this is for people who understand what affiliate marketing is, who've tried it with some success, but who really want that passive income stream. Paula: [00:01:40] Sure. So I love it. It's one of those things that I ignored for a few years. Then when I really understood it, and just really finally was able to wrap my brain around how powerful affiliate marketing is, I've been all in since then. Paula: [00:02:00] I feel like it is one of the most passive ways you can have an income. Obviously nothing is truly passive, but where a sponsored post disappears as far as your income goes, affiliates don't and they can get stronger and stronger. Paula: [00:02:19] My goal is to have my affiliate income matching my sponsored post, and my ad income if not exceeding it. [00:02:25] Because it's not as dependent on pageviews, it's not here today gone tomorrow, like sponsored posts. You can truly have a steady income stream. Paula: [00:02:38] Which is why I'm so passionate about it and excited about using it, and making sure other people use it well. Jillian: [00:02:44] Exactly, and you know what I would say is when we started with Catch My Party, brands would reach out to us and I would feel so happy like, oh my God, Target wants to work with us. That's incredible. Jillian: [00:02:58] And then what I realized though pretty quickly is that we would work really hard on those sponsored posts. But the problem is you can't scale them so soon as it's over, it's over. The pros and cons of sponsored posts Jillian: [00:03:10] The money is good and then it's gone. And it's not like that post is useful anymore, and then you're waiting for another brand, or you're reaching out to brands. Jillian: [00:03:21] But what I realized is when I had a plate full of sponsored posts, I'd be happy, but I'd also go, oh no, I know have all this work to do. And then once that work's done, it's done. Paula: [00:03:33] Exactly. It's never coming back. Maybe they'll hire you again in a year, but you're going to have to put in the same amount of hours to do another amazing post for them, which is a lot. Jillian: [00:03:45] And I feel like people were upping their game, so that what used to work as a really good sponsored post back in the day, no longer was good. Brands got smarter or just more demanding. Paula: [00:03:59] Yeah both, I think both. [00:04:03] Sometimes they come to me now and say, well we wanted your images to look like this." And I'm like, "Well there is not an image on my blog that looks like that. So why would you expect that from me?" Jillian: [00:04:12] Right. Or they want this number of social shares, it used to be kind of easy and now they want you to hit these numbers with them. Jillian: [00:04:19] So I have found that the world of sponsored posts, even though we've been doing them for years and years. It hasn't gotten easier. It's actually gotten more time consuming. Paula: [00:04:28] Yes a lot more demanding. Jillian: [00:04:29] A lot more demanding and it is a little bit of trying to hit a moving target. Jillian: [00:04:37] Just in terms of before the brand would be like. Thank you. Great. Here's your check. And now they're like can you re-shoot this or it's not exactly what we were thinking. Paula: [00:04:49] Yes. It's so hard. Jillian: [00:04:53] I found it more difficult. Paula: [00:04:55] That's one thing that when I'm communicating with brands on my own, one of my favorite ways to do that is to try to get sort of a hybrid going. Paula: [00:05:07] I'll ask them for 50% of my normal sponsored post fee, and I'll let them know what my sponsored post fee is. And then I asked them for an affiliate commission too. How to structure a sponsored post fee and an affiliate fee in one campaign Paula: [00:05:23] Some brands don't have the technology set up for a affiliate program yet. But a lot of them are willing to set it up or give me a code so that it can happen. Paula: [00:05:35] It is kind of the best of both for both parties. The brand has a little bit of security where I'm actually going to make some sales or I'm not going to make up the rest of my my income that I wanted from this post. So they know that I'm I'm planning to do that. Paula: [00:05:50] But then I also have security. You know sometimes I think a brand's going to do amazing and it doesn't, and it falls flat. I got some pay today for the work that I put in. Jillian: [00:06:01] Can you give an example of a brand that you've done that with? Paula: [00:06:05] It's oftentimes like smallish brands. Jillian: [00:06:08] OK. Paula: [00:06:08] So maybe an app. A lot of the more techie brands will do it that way. Or a small travel company has hired me to talk about their bags and traveling with kids. Paula: [00:06:22] They gave me a small sponsored post fee, and then they gave me an affiliate commission. I still make money off of that post, which was technically a sponsored post ,and was technically below my pay grade because I got the commission as well. Paula: [00:06:37] That's one of the most interesting ways that I think a lot of people aren't taking advantage of. You can do it on both sides. If somebody is contacting you about a sponsored post, pitch them that you want an affiliate commission as well. Paula: [00:06:48] Or if you're working regularly with an affiliate, you can reach out to them and say, "I want to do this super-mega-awesome sponsored post for you. You should pay me extra on top of my affiliate commission." A lot of them will agree to that as well. Are affiliate commissions negotiable? Jillian: [00:07:04] I love that. Here is a question. Are affiliate percentages, like what you get paid, negotiable? Paula: [00:07:15] Absolutely. That's another thing I do frequently with brands. It has to be someone you've worked with before. They have to be able to see that you've done something for them. Jillian: [00:07:29] That made money, right? Paula: [00:07:30] Exactly. Jillian: [00:07:30] You made everybody money. Paula: [00:07:31] Yeah. That you brought in customers to them. There's this brand that every month I'm selling. These I See Me personalized books. People love them. Paula: [00:07:43] That's one of my biggest commissions every single month on my blog. So a brand like that that you have a track record with you can reach out to. Paula: [00:07:50] Say this is what I'm planning. I want to do this amazing post. I want to do it at this time. Will you double my affiliate commission for this month? Paula: [00:07:58] They're not going to keep your affiliate commission at that level forever. They're not normally allowed to do that. Paula: [00:08:05] But you can ask them for a special promotion, say would you mind doubling it? Would you mind bumping it up from 15% to 20% or things along those lines. Paula: [00:08:15] And then when you push that new post, or you push that Christmas Roundup or whatever it might be. Instead of getting $10 per sale, you're getting $15 and that adds up. Jillian: [00:08:26] I've never thought to do that. That is a very good idea. Paula: [00:08:32] Normally, those affiliate people are really excited. Jillian: [00:08:35] Because you're excited. Paula: [00:08:36] Because you're excited and they want you to stay excited. So I wouldn't ask for something crazy but even just asking, "Is there any wiggle room? Could you increase it?" And see what they come back with and just kind of take it or leave it. Anchoring as a negotiating tactic Paula: [00:08:51] If you're not super comfortable with throwing out, "I want this number," I know a lot of us are kind of timid about negotiating still, and that's OK. But just asking what they can do is good to get your feet wet to see what's possible. Jillian: [00:09:05] I will just say that I went to business school and spent a ton of money on business school, and I've come back come out with a couple little pieces that I remember. Jillian: [00:09:17] And one of them is the concept of anchoring. Negotiating is tough. And it's especially tough for women. But if you have the courage to throw a number out, that will probably benefit you more than saying "Tell me what you can do." Jillian: [00:09:35] Only because what tends to happen is if I say, "Hey how about 30%," they will negotiate even without knowing that they're doing it around the number that you throw out. So that's just a thing that I remember, that I want to share. Paula: [00:09:50] Yes. Jillian: [00:09:50] So that little gem was like $10,000 for business school. Jillian: [00:10:06] I always think about that when negotiating, that even though it feels uncomfortable to put a number out. Because they will negotiate around it. Paula: [00:10:14] That's awesome. Jillian: [00:10:14] OK so tell us more. Well first of all we should take a minute just to say that you run the MiloTree Affiliate program. Paula: [00:10:25] I do. MiloTree Affiliate Program -- What is It? Jillian: [00:10:25] Will you talk a little bit about lie what your job is. What you do and how you have helped us grow through the affiliate program. Paula: [00:10:33] All right, so I've been an affiliate of MiloTree for years. Long before I knew you, really other than being the CEO of MiloTree. Paula: [00:10:45] And I've always loved it. MiloTree is one of those really good affiliate programs I feel like. And I'm not just saying that because I run it. It was really good two years ago when I started being an affiliate. Paula: [00:10:58] Because you get $20 per referral, What you're referring is such a cheap product, like as far as how much money they're putting out right away. Paula: [00:11:08] With most affiliate programs you get a commission. So if they buy a $10 product I'm probably going to get a dollar, which is not very exciting. [00:11:18] But MiloTree is 30 days free and then they have to pay $9 and as soon as they pay that $9 I get $20. Jillian: [00:11:25] Well, wait. One thing ,they have to go through two pay cycles. Paula: [00:11:29] Oh, OK. Jillian: [00:11:30] So therefore we make $18 and then we give out $20. Paula: [00:11:35] So they get the 30 days free and then two more months. Jillian: [00:11:38] Right. Paula: [00:11:38] But still, I feel like that's very cheap. Because in the person's mind, they've only spent $9 because it's been two months of $9. Jillian: [00:11:45] Right. Paula: [00:11:47] So that's a pretty easy sale for me to make, and normally to make $20 off of one thing, like I just sold a mattress or something, which is not going to happen very often. Paula: [00:11:56] But I can sell an app that's $9 a month pretty easily. So that's one of my favorite programs. Paula: [00:12:03] Programs that work like that as an affiliate are some of my favorites to participate in because it's easy to make you know $50 to $100 a month off of one product, which is always the ideal. Jillian: [00:12:16] If you join our Affiliate Program, you will get emails from Paula with tips. So it's even worth it to join. I'll put a link to join the affiliate program. Paula: [00:12:27] Yes because I try to send out tips every other week, with ways that you can implement MiloTree and advertise it on your site. Paula: [00:12:34] Here's a feature you didn't know about because I know I'm constantly using things. I don't know all the features. Paula: [00:12:40] I've used MiloTree for two years and didn't realize it had email. So I'll send out those tips and that helps you. Paula: [00:12:50] But the tips are evergreen. You can you can apply them to other affiliate programs that you're with. I know you're not just an affiliate of MiloTree. Jillian: [00:12:58] In fact I think you're all about making people smarter affiliates. How affiliate marketing serves your audience Paula: [00:13:01] Yes I am. Because it's such a wonderful way of promoting products. I think it serves the reader better than most other marketing ways. Jillian: [00:13:16] Can you explain what you mean? Paula: [00:13:17] Yes. So, ads. I use ads and I love them. Obviously love the paycheck I get from my ads every month. But they're not really serving my reader all that much. Paula: [00:13:29] It's like you have to see something in an ad like what is it, like nine times before it starts registering. Paula: [00:13:37] So that's not a great experience for my reader. I have ads because they're making me money. Paula: [00:13:43] Sponsored posts may or may not serve your reader. It depends. Paula: [00:13:50] Sometimes you just get those brands. It's funny, my son gets this. I got this sponsored post one time and I was driving in the car and I think it was actually a sponsored tweet. Paula: [00:14:03] We were driving, and he's like, oh where are we going? He's like 6 at the time. I said we were going to the store to get something for a blog post. And he was like, oh what are we getting. Paula: [00:14:11] Sometimes that means like a toy or something exciting. And I said oh we're getting water because they were paying us. Paula: [00:14:22] And literally my 6 year old from the back seat goes "No offense mom, but I think everybody already knows about water." And I'm like, you're right. Paula: [00:14:32] This is not a very effective thing that they're hiring me to do. I would never post an affiliate link to water because everybody already has water. Everybody already has their opinions about water. I'm not changing anybody's mind. Paula: [00:14:46] But the products that I sign up to be an affiliate for, like MiloTree, like I See Me, for these personalized books like all these other affiliate programs I'm in. Paula: [00:14:56] I'm in that particular affiliate program because I adore the product and I'm excited about it, and I feel like it's something my readers might not know about. Paula: [00:15:04] So I'm connecting with them by solving a problem. Where yes, my readers need water, but they're not really coming to me for that. Jillian: [00:15:12] It's kind of like I think you can be a much more authentic helper. Paula: [00:15:17] Absolutely yes. And you can solve problems that they didn't know they have also. Paula: [00:15:22] Because you're bringing up products you know before I mentioned it my reader might not have known about MiloTree. My reader might not have known that they could get this personalized book about becoming a big sibling for their toddler. Jillian: [00:15:36] Right. Right. Paula: [00:15:37] And so it's bringing them brand new information. Instead of just being like, Hey this big box store that you already know about has water which is a product you already know about. Jillian: [00:15:46] Right. And again if you are that kind of person who sees people at drop off for your kids, and is like oh my god. Have you tried this? There are always those people. Jillian: [00:15:56] If you are one of those people, I think affiliate marketing is perfectly aligned for you. Paula: [00:16:02] Yeah for sure. And I mean I'm ragging a little bit on sponsored posts. I do them. And I do my best to make them useful, as you can make a sponsored post useful. How to add value to your audience with a sponsored post Paula: [00:16:12] Even if it is just about water. And I do. But it's a much easier, or more organic, more authentic thing when it's a product that I'm actually really excited about, and not a product that I'm kind of meh about, but I'm weaving it into a more useful story. Jillian: [00:16:29] Right and for us, to when we do a sponsored post we always say, OK what value add can we provide, whether it be a free printable, whether it be a recipe, something that the brand hasn't asked for. Jillian: [00:16:44] And yes it's serving the brand, but we always say how can we justify this. Paula: [00:16:50] Absolutely. Jillian: [00:16:51] Versus we're just shilling for this company, because it feels bad. Paula: [00:16:55] It does feel bad. But then it's frustrating because you created this whole recipe. And you're not going to be making money off of that recipe for the rest of your life. Paula: [00:17:04] Where if it had been affiliate product, you would be making money off of that recipe for the rest of your life. Jillian: [00:17:11] So tell me some more things that I would not have thought of. Paula: [00:17:14] OK. So one of the biggest things, and this one is always funny to me because I'll mention it like it's old hat. Paula: [00:17:22] And everybody would be like oh my gosh! And I'm like oh, I thought we were all thinking about it this way. Paula: [00:17:27] So I don't know where I picked this up, or how I just kind of automatically started thinking about it this way. But the way I view affiliate marketing and affiliates in general is that I'm going to treat them like they're my products. Treat affiliate products like they're your own products Paula: [00:17:41] Meaning if I wrote a book (which I did). Or if I made a course (which I did). I squeezed that thing into everything that I can on my site. I talk about it all the time. Paula: [00:17:52] Every relevant post has "look how great my book is, look how great my course is." I spent 10 years trying to create this thing, so you better buy it, is how I feel. Paula: [00:18:04] Because I spent all that time making it and realistically for a lot of those products I'm not going to make that money back in the time that I spent on it. Paula: [00:18:11] I created it because I wanted to. My book doesn't sell millions, I wish. But I put it everywhere. Paula: [00:18:19] Now affiliates save you time, because you have this ready made product that's amazing and you can put it everywhere. You can rave about it like it's your own, because you hopefully have this personal connection with it. It's changed your life in some way. Put it in everywhere. Jillian: [00:18:37] So give me an example. Paula: [00:18:39] This isn't for an Amazon link. This wouldn't work with Amazon because Amazon gives you nothing. For something like MiloTree, where you're working with another blogger. Paula: [00:18:48] If another blogger has a book. If another blogger has a course. You generally get higher percentages from other bloggers because they're so excited. The only way that they're getting out there is if we all help each other. Jillian: [00:19:01] Got it. Paula: [00:19:02] Another blogger is probably you know, here's a $10 book they wrote. Well they're going to give you 5 of those dollars to promote. And that's a huge win, versus if I promoted a book off of Amazon I'm going to get like 10 cents. Jillian: [00:19:17] So what I think I hear you saying is, if in fact you're somebody who creates courses, then you're of course, want to promote your course. But, what about promoting somebody else's course. Paula: [00:19:32] Absolutely. So I think, do I need to make this course? Or is there really good course that I can promote instead. You can save yourself a lot of time. Paula: [00:19:42] Now there are people of course that make like $10,000 courses and they make their millions and all of that. But the amount of work and effort that it takes to have a $10,000 course is more than I'm willing to do personally. And more than most of us are even able to do. Paula: [00:19:59] But we can ride their coattails in a way, and make a couple hundred a month off of each of them, because we didn't have to do any work other than researching the product a bit at the beginning. And then adding it to our relevant posts. Paula: [00:20:12] And so if I'm really passionate, if I'm really excited, if I know the brand backwards and forwards, I can treat it as if it's my product. Jillian: [00:20:21] Yes. Paula: [00:20:22] Obviously I'm not telling people this is my product, but I adore it like it's my own. And I talk about it like it's my own, because I'm actually making more money off of that than if I made my own product. Jillian: [00:20:33] And of course all the time you save. I remember interviewing another blogger and she makes meal plans or recipe books. And she said I will promote my competitors because there's enough that goes around. Promote your competitor's products Jillian: [00:20:53] You know there's enough, in that if I can make a sale maybe a product that's similar but slightly different, or for a slightly different audience. She will still promote it, and I remember thinking wow that's genius. Paula: [00:21:05] Yes. Jillian: [00:21:07] So it's like even in your own space, to believe in abundance, and to offer multiple options, not just your own option. Paula: [00:21:16] Well and it will build your credibility, because you can say, here's the product that I offer, and here's who it's for. But if you are this person you might actually better be served by this product from my friend. Paula: [00:21:30] You're making money off of both but the person is like, wow I can really trust her. She's not telling me that her product is the end all be all, but she's realistically giving me the view. Paula: [00:21:41] She says this recipe book has this type of recipe, and that recipe book has that recipe. I can make my decision as an informed person now, instead of going to her site and reading her bias about her product, and going to someone else's site and reading their bias about their product, and not really knowing what's the best choice for me. Jillian: [00:21:57] That is terrific. And if there's a product, like let's say somebody makes a printable or a course or something, and they don't have an affiliate program. You might want to reach out to them and say I'd like to promote this. Could you set up an affiliate program because it's not that hard to do. Paula: [00:22:14] Yes. I've gotten people to make them for me. Jillian: [00:22:18] Right. Paula: [00:22:19] Because a lot of times people think, especially if they are new to the industry, they think, "oh no one would want to sign up to promote my product". If they're not really sure, they're not going to spend time on it. Paula: [00:22:29] They don't know that there's interest right right away, because they don't know how to do that piece of finding new affiliates. So it's a hard thing to do when you're starting. Paula: [00:22:38] So reaching out, and saying that and even just saying here, sign up for Gumroad or Refersion or you know, get one of these and work it out oftentimes they will do it. Jillian: [00:22:49] Okay that's great. So tell me do you have any other ideas? Paula: [00:22:54] Okay. Yes I have so many ideas. Fitting them all into however much time we have is the issue. Paula: [00:23:02] Another strategy that I use that I think is a little underrated by people. I don't know, people just don't pay attention to this stuff, and I love it. Paula: [00:23:13] Thinking about, not going broad. So we think with our affiliate links like "I just need get people to click them." I'm going to put a gotcha, and they'll just click it and it'll be great. Paula: [00:23:25] And that's just not effective, people don't buy that way. But if instead of casting a really really wide net, try to cast a narrow net, where people are actually looking to buy. Paula: [00:23:41] So yes I do put affiliate links in every post when I can. I forget a lot of the time. But my intention is to put an affiliate link in every post, because if they're going to buy something, I want them to buy from me. Do affiliate roundup posts that are niche Paula: [00:23:53] But my actual strategy is not based around I'm putting affiliate links in every post. My strategy is based around trying to hone in on some keywords that are smaller and more niche. Paula: [00:24:06] They aren't getting a bunch of noise from everyone about. That they'll actually want to buy. Paula: [00:24:13] So there's two sides to this. One is that like going into Christmas we're all going to be making these toy roundups and gift roundups. And I mean that's just what you do at Christmas time right. Paula: [00:24:25] Affiliate link, affiliate link, affiliate link. And they're annoying but effective so do them. But there's a way of doing and that's more effective. Paula: [00:24:37] If I put a affiliate roundup of the "best gifts for toddlers" for example. It's not very compelling and they could go to my list, and it has however many things it has. Like if it has only 10, they might not be interested in something, but it has a 100 they're going to be overwhelmed. Paula: [00:24:55] And so getting someone to actually act on something that's like gifts for toddlers is really really hard. You're not going to get that much actioning from that. Paula: [00:25:05] But doing more niched in roundups, like the best board games for toddlers (that's an actual post I have). The people coming to that post actually want to buy a board game. Jillian: [00:25:16] Right. Paula: [00:25:16] They're already ready to buy a board game. They're interested in a board game and you're just going to tell them which one to buy and why. Paula: [00:25:21] Where, best gifts for toddlers, they might be looking at that before they go to Target and buy a gift for a toddler, and just getting some ideas and inspiration. Paula: [00:25:33] You're not going to make the sale as easily as you would from somebody who's already decided that this is a toddler. It's my nephew I'm buying him a board game. Tell me which one I should get, and I'm going to order it right then and there, because I don't know if Target has it. Paula: [00:25:46] Instead of saying "I want to reach every mom of toddlers," no. Absolutely you don't. Because right, it's going to be pageviews. But it's not going to be purchases on your affiliate links. Paula: [00:25:58] You want to go narrow and think what specific thing might someone be looking for, and create a really useful roundup of those things. Paula: [00:26:08] You're going to get a lot less pageviews. But the pageviews that you get the intent is actually to buy from you. So it's a lot more powerful, even though it's probably not going to go viral. Paula: [00:26:19] But honestly, the chances of your "toddler best gift ideas" going viral is quite slim because everybody has a best gifts for toddlers post. I have one from before I knew better. Paula: [00:26:29] It's still on my site. I still promote it. But it makes me much less money than the board games for toddlers does, or the gifts for kids who like to wiggle, or things along those lines. Paula: [00:26:40] Where you think like, Oh Billy likes to wiggle. I'm going to click that and I'm going to buy him something because you resonated with me already. You already showed me that you understand this child more than just "a toddler." You know who my son or my nephew, you know who they are as a person. And so I want to buy from you because you get them. Jillian: [00:26:59] And I would say, Tell me if you agree to start with yourself. So if you have a wiggly kid, you understand what wiggly kids need. Find ideas for affiliate posts in your own life Jillian: [00:27:09] I don't have a wiggly kid. So for me to do the wiggly post doesn't make sense. Paula: [00:27:15] Right. Jillian: [00:27:15] But go look in your own life. Like if you love moisturisers, and you have serious opinions about moisturisers for dry skin because you have dry skin, go write about that. Jillian: [00:27:28] Or let's say even better, you've got eczema. And so you understand that whereas if you've got oily skin, don't be writing about dry skin because you think the dry skin market is bigger than the oily skin market. Paula: [00:27:42] Yes exactly. Exactly. Jillian: [00:27:44] So look around your own life and pull from your own experience. Paula: [00:27:49] Yes. Because I think especially with those roundups people just try to cover everybody. Jillian: [00:27:56] Yes. Paula: [00:27:56] And that just makes it where you're actually covering nobody. People don't go and say "Oh I feel so understood after reading this. She addressed every issue that I had with my skin type." Paula: [00:28:07] Instead of thinking, she literally just went to Amazon and took all the five star rated things and threw them in a post and I could have done that. Now I'm annoyed and I'm mad. Paula: [00:28:17] Actually my husband literally does this. If he lands on a post like that, when he's looking for information he will x out and then go to Amazon himself, to look at the same product because he doesn't want to give them the sale. Paula: [00:28:30] He knows how it works, so if they give him good information and he doesn't buy right then, he will go back to the site like a week later and click it because he knows how it works. Jillian: [00:28:41] Right. Paula: [00:28:42] So it amuses me he is that way and he's he's not even a blogger. Jillian: [00:28:46] Right. But it is that ideal, if you are providing value people will want to thank you. It's a way to say thank you. Paula: [00:28:55] They are happy to help you make money if you're providing them value. Jillian: [00:28:57] And it doesn't cost them any money. Paula: [00:28:59] Right. Exactly. Jillian: [00:29:00] So it's not like well you know contribute to my Patreon account right. Paula: [00:29:06] Right. Jillian: [00:29:06] So tell me some more. Paula: [00:29:10] So that second thing with this is kind of like a two part thing is having a second page strategy. Have a two blog post affiliate strategy Paula: [00:29:18] And what I mean by this is, I read something a long time ago and I wish I had bookmarked it because it was from like an actual, like I think, psychologist. Paula: [00:29:28] But they were talking about how clicking through to a second page on your site builds a lot of trust. If someone is willing to do that, then they trust you a lot more. And so psychologically they're more interested in purchasing from you. Paula: [00:29:42] They're more likely to purchase from you if they've gone through and clicked through a second page. Paula: [00:29:47] So I was fascinated by this. And I tried it out. And I'll just give you that example of a post I've done it in, And I've done this in like multiple posts since. Paula: [00:29:59] But there is this initial post that I wrote years and years and years ago, that did extremely well. It was during the stage where things were still going crazy insane viral on Facebook. Jillian: [00:30:09] Yes, a long time ago. Paula: [00:30:12] 2014 or 2015 somewhere in there. I don't remember when I initially wrote it. But I wrote this post about overcoming child abuse, and it was about how to talk to your kids about abuse in age appropriate ways. Paula: [00:30:25] And you and I were actually talking a little bit about this before the show. But how to have those conversations, like I talk to my preschooler or I talk to my toddler and little ways that I do that, not like terrifying ways. Just little subtle things that you can do to empower your kids and make them feel in charge of their own bodies. Paula: [00:30:44] To let them know if something weird happens, that they can come and tell you without having to have a concept of what different types of assault are, and what could happen and things along those lines. Paula: [00:30:55] So anyway, I created this whole post. It was great, it was going nuts it was going viral. Well there's these children's books that talk about these things, which I adore like Your Body Belongs To You, and I Said No. Paula: [00:31:09] There's a whole collection of them that you can read literally, with a toddler and it introduces these topics that they're really fun. And they're bright and they're colorful and the toddler doesn't really know what they're learning, but they are great. Paula: [00:31:22] And so I initially had one of those like Amazon native ads in there with all those books, and it was not performing well. Those things never performed well for me, but I had it been there and all the books were there. But it wasn't doing anything for me. Paula: [00:31:39] And what I did was I created a second post, second page whatever you want to call it. And it was essentially a round up just of these books. Paula: [00:31:48] So it was like Books To Teach Your Child About Child Abuse. No one is searching that on Google, I can tell you right now. Paula: [00:31:55] No one is on Pinterest looking for this post, but I created this post anyway and I talked about, I think it's just four or five of the books. Paula: [00:32:04] There's lots of them, but I talked about the ones that I had read. I talked about what ages I thought they were appropriate for and how I would use this book, how into detail that it goes. Paula: [00:32:13] Because some people want more detailed books, like as my kids got into elementary school I told them a lot more than what we were talking about when they were 2 and 3. Paula: [00:32:21] But we did start these conversations legitimately, when my kids were 2 and 3. And so I talk through each of the books with a picture with an affiliate link. Paula: [00:32:29] These are all going to Amazon. You know I don't like Amazon but this is just where those books are. So it's all of this. Paula: [00:32:38] And I just link to it at the bottom of this very emotional, very personal post, about overcoming child abuse and talking to your kids about it. And then say "If you want to read more, if you want to learn how to talk to your kids about this, click here I've created this resource for you." Jillian: [00:32:54] Wow. Paula: [00:32:55] And so people have this emotional experience with me but I'm not just leaving them. Jillian: [00:33:02] Yep. Like, "buy my stuff." Paula: [00:33:03] Yes. And I'm also not leaving them there. They want to action it because they're feeling something. Jillian: [00:33:08] Yes. Paula: [00:33:08] And so then they click through. Only the people who are interested in actually click through and then they but the books. Paula: [00:33:15] I wrote this post years and years ago. On Amazon you can see exactly what's purchased and so many of these books still sell every single month. Paula: [00:33:24] It makes me so happy because I know so many kids are getting educated on this. Paula: [00:33:27] But it works because I don't promote this post otherwise. Like the images for it are abysmal and just the topic like how do you phrase, "how to teach your kids about child abuse" in a way that makes people want to click on it? You can't do it. Jillian: [00:33:41] No. Paula: [00:33:41] Not until they've first read this other post. Creating an affiliate marketing purchasing funnel Jillian: [00:33:43] Right. I mean you've created a purchasing funnel. Paula: [00:33:49] Yeah I guess so. Jillian: [00:33:50] The idea behind the funnel is somebody comes in at the top and they kind of go down the funnel and funnel gets smaller. Jillian: [00:33:59] Meaning that lots of people at the top, but not everybody comes out the bottom. But that you're being intentional as you move through, so that they trust you, so that they understand what they're buying. Jillian: [00:34:10] And you're kind of guiding them rather than being like, Oh here's this personal post and just here are some links to buy stuff.  You're saying OK you want to learn more, go here. Jillian: [00:34:22] And this is more of me because you're putting yourself into these posts, into the post with the books. Paula: [00:34:29] Yes. They already know me and like me, presumably from the first post. Jillian: [00:34:33] Right. Paula: [00:34:34] Or they wouldn't have clicked through. Where if they just came upon that post all on its own. And I feel like this is how a lot of those round up posts end up, like you're kind of annoyed. Paula: [00:34:42] You're like, oh I thought this was going to be really helpful and it's just them selling a bunch of products. Paula: [00:34:47] Where if there is a step one. Now instead of landing on that post and being annoyed, they're landing on that post and being like, oh my gosh this is so helpful. She did all the work for me and I can figure out what I want. Jillian: [00:34:59] Yes. Paula: [00:34:59] So that second page post is actually really really powerful, and can convert a lot of sales because you're really doing all the work for them. Even for like other products like this. Paula: [00:35:12] This is one I haven't done but is on my list to do this month. I See Me brand that I keep talking about, I sell a ton of their books because I have all of this content about becoming a big sibling, and they have a personalized book specifically for becoming big sibling. Paula: [00:35:28] And so I sell those in the post themselves, but I could actually do a review post. Which I'm not a review blogger and generally like just promoting a review post on its own, I'm like "yuck." Paula: [00:35:40] I know that there are review bloggers and those are valuable on their blogs, but on other people's blogs I'm like, why are you just reviewing something, that's annoying. Paula: [00:35:47] But I can tuck this review post, I'll backdate it on my site so it's not on my home page. It's not what I'm known for, but I can put like "for a full review of this product click here" in those other posts. Jillian: [00:35:57] Right. Right. Paula: [00:36:00] Or same with MiloTree, doing a whole review of Milotree and putting it on my front page, not going to do it. I love you, but I'm not going to do it. Jillian: [00:36:07] No, I get it. Paula: [00:36:07] But I mention MiloTree in a lot of my blog posts, and it's helpful to be able to have a little like, "I use MiloTree, it saves me time in growing my social media." That's like one point in a post of maybe 10 points about social media growth. Paula: [00:36:23] But I can link them to "here's a full review of MiloTree, I'm going to tell you everything about how amazing it is. If you're interested." Paula: [00:36:31] But you didn't have to spend 45 minutes scrolling past that interview about MiloTree if you already have it, you already know about it, you already love it. Paula: [00:36:39] So it's really kind of serving people better by making them click a second time. Jillian: [00:36:43] Yeah and having these very focused posts. Paula: [00:36:48] Yes. Jillian: [00:36:50] Again where you go down that funnel like fewer people are going to click on your second post than clicked on your first post. Paula: [00:36:57] Right, but those people have an intent to buy. Jillian: [00:37:00] Right and you want to get to those people and make them feel comfortable and get them excited to actually make the purchase. Jillian: [00:37:06] Versus, I see, gosh how many products a day. Like thousands? And how many do I buy a day? Maybe less than one? Paula: [00:37:18] Right, of course. Jillian: [00:37:20] But it is interesting to see as a consumer are going through your experience on the internet. What is it that makes you want to buy? Jillian: [00:37:32] Think about your own behavior. And even now hearing you tell the story as you're talking about the second page, if I went to that page. I would buy. But I wouldn't necessarily buy on the first page. Paula: [00:37:48] And if I came to that second page on its own I wouldn't buy. Jillian: [00:37:52] No. Paula: [00:37:53] But if I came to it from the first page I would. And that's what's so fascinating about it to me. Jillian: [00:37:57] I get it, it's a little bit like connecting the dots and help holding my hand through the purchasing journey. Paula: [00:38:05] Yes. Yes. And you're making this sale personal instead of just trying to make the sale. Paula: [00:38:11] Because people know if they're being sold to and it annoys them. Jillian: [00:38:16] Yes. Paula: [00:38:18] And some people won't even buy from you if you're trying to sell to them. It's counterintuitive because we just said people won't mind if they like you, and that relational piece is what makes the difference. Paula: [00:38:30] The difference is between people knowing they're being sold to and being angry, and people knowing they're being sold to and thanking you for it. Jillian: [00:38:36] Right. Paula: [00:38:37] People in my real life have thanked me for the second page post because they purchased the books. Paula: [00:38:43] But that's how you can know, how authentic it was because sometimes when I do things people in my real life are like "really" or "you're doing that? That's not necessarily in line with who you are as a person." And I'm like I know, but it is for my readers or whatever. Jillian: [00:39:01] Right. Paula: [00:39:01] But for something like that and for an affiliate thing, people in my real life know how true this is and they go buy. Jillian: [00:39:10] Right. They can feel it. Paula: [00:39:13] And my readers can feel the same thing. They don't know me personally but they think they do, and they go buy. Jillian: [00:39:19] Right. OK give me one last tip. Paula: [00:39:24] I feel like it would be remiss to talk about affiliates without talking about the FTC. FTC regulations for affiliate marketing Jillian: [00:39:29] OK let's do it. Paula: [00:39:31] So we're going to have the link to the FTC in the show notes. Jillian: [00:39:36] Great. Paula: [00:39:36] And I'm going to say to bookmark this page. Because every few months there will be a meltdown on Facebook about the FTC changing rules. Paula: [00:39:47] Or is this allowed or is that allowed or whatever. And I don't even engage in those conversations anymore because people get so irritated with each other. And so just in their head about what they allowed to do and what they're not. Jillian: [00:40:00] Yes. Paula: [00:40:01] And I'm very strict about the FTC rules. Like I absolutely do not just look at what everyone else is doing and follow them because most bloggers are breaking the law. Jillian: [00:40:10] OK good. I mean I'm glad we're getting to this. Paula: [00:40:15] Doing #aff is not legal. Jillian: [00:40:17] OK. Paula: [00:40:18] "Affiliate link" is not legal. That's just not according to the FTC. But the FTC is very clear about what they want. They don't say you have to say xyz, you can do it in an authentic way. Paula: [00:40:30] You can do it in a way that makes sense for you. But you have to disclose. You have to disclose it properly. And it has to be able to be understood by the average person. Paula: [00:40:42] That's where they are at right now, and this is August of 2018. So if this is anything but August 2018 when you are listening, click that FTC link that we're giving you and go make sure that it's the same. Paula: [00:40:52] Because that's the frustrating thing to me. This is the reason why these conversations get brought up and people freak out about it all the time. It is because they'll listen to a podcast or they'll read an old blog post and it's from 2015 when the FTC had different rules. Paula: [00:41:08] And so then they're like oh my gosh, I have to change everything and they get everybody riled up on Facebook, and people are freaking out and you need to just go to the FTC yourself and read it. Paula: [00:41:15] It's much simpler now than it used to be. It makes sense. I'm still annoyed that we have to do it. But that's just a pet peeve. Jillian: [00:41:24] Yeah. Paula: [00:41:24] And you can do it in a way that that's authentic and that makes sense to your site. Like "I've partnered with these people I adore them."You know I try to make it authentic sounding. Paula: [00:41:34] On social media it's more difficult to do that and oftentimes I'll just put ad. Jillian: [00:41:37] Right. Right. Paula: [00:41:39] Because you can't put "affiliate link". And I know that for people industry like "it's not an ad!!!" I know that, but that's all that the average consumer understands and so I'll put AD. Jillian: [00:41:50] We did a lot of work with Bounty. And the truth is I use Bounty and I love it. The environmentalists out there, you might not like me because I love paper towels. Jillian: [00:42:00] Anyway but I would write, "This is a sponsor post, we are partnered with Bounty but I do love Bounty, I use it every day". Paula: [00:42:13] Absolutely. And I actually in some of those I have a second page for my disclosure as well. Not the legal disclosure that we all have to have up. But I have a page that explains sponsorship to my readers. Paula: [00:42:26] So it's like if you have any questions, click here and on it I explain, this is my full time job. This is why I do these sponsored posts. Paula: [00:42:35] Also I'm able to tell them, you know sometimes I get really high paying jobs and I've turned down a $900 job before because I didn't believe in the company. And that means something to people. Paula: [00:42:47] They're like OK she's not just literally shilling for anybody. Like yeah I did the blog post about the water, or it was a tweet. But did I think that that was really changing anyone's life? No but it was helpful. Paula: [00:42:57] And I believe in the brand and the service that they were offering. It was kind of a unique-ish service with water but I still laugh about it, but it worked. It was OK I don't feel bad about it. Paula: [00:43:07] But then there was a laser hair removal post that I was offered a lot of money to do, and I was like I can't, I'm just interested in that. It didn't work with my readers. Paula: [00:43:23] But I can put all of that information there and kind of explain my heart behind sponsorship behind affiliate links behind why I'm making money on this. And I'm not trying to take advantage of them. Paula: [00:43:33] And for the few people who care, or are curious, they click through and I have gotten some click throughs on it. And I think that it builds trust for those people. Paula: [00:43:41] Without me having to spend a whole paragraph explaining I'm doing this in a way that's not lying to you. I'm not misleading you. I can keep that authentic. Paula: [00:43:51] And yes I adore this brand, and I normally try to put those things in there but I can keep it to a sentence, and then have another link out to something else that's a little bit longer that shares a little bit more of my story. Paula: [00:44:03] Like I sent back product to a brand because I emailed them and said I'm going to give you a bad review, or you can take your product and run. And they took their product and ran. Being authentic and honest with affiliate marketing Paula: [00:44:12] Things like that happen and I'm not just going to give a good review to get paid. Jillian: [00:44:16] One thing I really like about what you're saying is you will use pages on your blog or a second post to elaborate, to tell who you are to be your authentic self. Jillian: [00:44:36] You recognize most people don't care. But for the people that do you're going to go that extra step and explain yourself. Jillian: [00:44:48] And if somebody wants to know who you are by reading your blog they can. Paula: [00:44:55] Yes.. And that's important to me, and as a writer, it is easier for me to do that. I feel like some people who writing is not their thing. It's hard enough to get this blog post out today. I'm not writing a second blog post. Paula: [00:45:10] I get that for sure, and you can do some of these things in video form, if that's easier for you just set up your iPhone and have a chat with your readers or just space it out a little bit more. Paula: [00:45:20] I have now this initial second post that I was writing about with the books I have like 6 posts that all point to the second post now. Paula: [00:45:29] And so you can try to create things like that as well where you can look and say you know these four posts on my site do pretty well. Paula: [00:45:37] I'm kind of like halfway way trying to sell this product in each of them. I'm going to write one more post, even if writing is a challenge. I'm going to write one more post and really sell this product and just link to it in all four of these posts and you'll see more results from that than you will from writing a brand new post and linking it in as an afterthought. Jillian: [00:45:58] Yes and I talk about this a lot, which is you want to find your thousand true fans. You don't need a million, and if you get an extra fan because you've explained yourself and how you feel about affiliate marketing, chances are somebody is going to read that page and you will have turned them into a raving fan. Paula: [00:46:22] Yes. Instead of just mildly interested. Jillian: [00:46:27] Yeah and by the way I'm sure those pages do not get a lot of traffic. Paula: [00:46:32] Oh not at all. They've never been in the top 10. They're probably not even in the top 100. Jillian: [00:46:36] But kudos to you if you could get somebody interested enough to want to know more. Paula: [00:46:44] Yes. Well there are pages in my top 10 that will never make me a dime other than ads of course. Jillian: [00:46:50] Yes. Paula: [00:46:50] There's this post I did when Beauty and the Beast came out .It got I think like 300,000 pages in 2 days or something insane. Paula: [00:46:59] But nobody bought anything for me. Nobody stuck around. Nobody cared about me other than my opinion on Beauty and the Beast, and a lot of people got really angry about me for my opinion. Paula: [00:47:18] I got a huge payout from my ad network from those 300,000 views, that was insane. Paula: [00:47:28] But, today it's like 18 months since Beauty and the Beast came out. My blog has had no positive impact from that post at all. Jillian: [00:47:35] Right. Paula: [00:47:36] Where the 10 people, I don't know, maybe it's 50. I don't look at the numbers on the second page posts hardly ever. Paula: [00:47:42] But however many, very few people read that post every single month has a huge impact on my blog because they make purchases. Because they stick around, because they send it to their auntie or their mom. Paula: [00:47:55] Because they're like, hey I'm trying this new thing with my kid and he did not just like force hugs on him anymore or whatever. Paula: [00:48:01] It's being passed around and it's changing people's lives. Which is important to me. Paula: [00:48:06] I know that's not important to every blogger, and it doesn't need to be but that's important to me and the pages that matter on my site reflect that. Jillian: [00:48:14] Wow. Paula I love this. Jillian: [00:48:17] It's like you get to change people's lives you get to make the world a better place and you get to make money. Paula: [00:48:22] Yes. Which is also nice, I'm not against the money. Jillian: [00:48:25] No. Then that's the thing. But it's like finding those things like the wiggly kid. And it's exploring parts of yourself in your own life that you feel comfortable sharing. And figuring out how you can be of service to other people who might be struggling with this and find solutions to help somebody. Jillian: [00:48:45] And then the benefit make money off of it. Paula: [00:48:48] Right and don't feel bad about banking money off of it. Jillian: [00:48:52] Right. And then you can repeat it. Paula: [00:48:54] Exactly. You can find the next thing that will help someone and they're saying and the next thing. Paula: [00:48:59] And brands love it because they know that that's converting true fans, and you know your readers love it and you love it. And it's that's the sweet spot for me, has to be Happy Brand, Happy Reader, Happy Me. Jillian: [00:49:13] So Paula this is great. So if people want to learn more about affiliate marketing, about how to take their their post to the next level. How could they reach out to you? How can they work with you? Working with Paula Rollo to learn more about affiliate marketing Paula: [00:49:28] So I offer a few different services because I feel like everybody's in a different place, and has different needs. And I'm passionate about affiliate marketing so I want to be able to help you wherever you are in that. Paula: [00:49:42] So I do affiliate masterclasses where I just kind of teach you some of what we were talking about today, and how to implement this. I walk through it with you. But it's a group setting. So that's the low budget option. Paula: [00:49:58] Then there's also one-on-one coaching. If you're like, I don't know what my blog needs, but I need it to be working with affiliates I need to do better. But you want to do it yourself. Paula: [00:50:09] I can do one on one coaching with you where I'll go through your site and I'll come up with a plan for you. And then we'll talk on the phone and I'll give you that plan and tell you how to implement it. Paula: [00:50:18] And that's always really fun because people feel like very empowered that they did this themselves. But they have all the tools they need to do it which is important. So we don't get stuck spinning our wheels. So it removes all of that worry and just lets you know exactly what will work for your site. Paula: [00:50:35] And then the last thing I do is affiliate management which is different. Like I do it on both sides so like for Jillian, I do manage her affiliate program and so all of her affiliates I talk to them and I help them do well. Paula: [00:50:50] But I do the other side as well, where if you're a blogger and you know that you need to implement affiliates. Maybe you have some idea of what brands you want to work with, maybe you don't. But you can hire me to come and optimize your site for affiliates. Paula: [00:51:07] So I'll add the affiliate links in your site. I'll add the images .I'll go through everything and update it. Because I know when I started working with affiliates I was like 800 post deep in my blog and it took me like 18 months to to add all the affiliate links that I knew I needed to add. And do everything that I knew I needed to do. Paula: [00:51:27] But the reality of having a business and trying to add in something else is a little bit daunting. Jillian: [00:51:32] So if people were to reach out to you what is the best way. Paula: [00:51:38] Yes you can email me directly my personal email is just my name. PaulaRollo@gmail.com And if you reach out to me personally, I'll get back to you and we can talk strategy and figure out what you want done. Or I can help you figure out what might be the best fit for you. Paula: [00:51:55] Anything like that just let's have a conversation and figure it out. Jillian: [00:51:59] I love that. OK wait we have to do one more plug for MiloTree. So if you have not joined our affiliate program, definitely do it's on the bottom of our home page you can see a link. Jillian: [00:52:10] We'll put a link in the show notes. But you'll get to hear from Paula and from me and hopefully to be honest, when I get to send money to our affiliates, it makes me really happy. Paula: [00:52:24] Yes. Everybody's winning in that scenario. Jillian: [00:52:27] Absolutely. Absolutely. So anyway Paula I love working with you. Thank you for being my right hand person. And thank you for coming on the show for part 2. And we will come back and do more affiliate stuff in part 3. Paula: [00:52:44] Thank you for having me. Please give The Blogger Genius Podcast a five star review on iTunes Jillian: [00:52:46] I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you're liking the blogger genius podcast please head to iTunes and give give us a five star review. It will really help. Jillian: [00:52:58] It will help other people be able to find the podcast. It will help me get really good guests and I thank you in advance. So thank you.  

I've written about how to create binge-worthy content, but today it's all about how to create viral content. You know: the kind that everyone keeps sharing like hotcakes until your blog catches fire? That kind. Let's dive in! Going viral. I'd really love to know what comes to mind when you hear those words. Good thing? Bad thing? Something you've experienced or just hoped for? My question to you today is this: If you knew how to create viral content, would you? The easy answer might be yes. Because who doesn't want a viral post! But today I'm talking with Paula Rollo of Beauty Through Imperfection and Quick Blogging Tips about how to create a viral post, the downside no one talks about, and how to take your viral post into a binge-worthy post. Listen to Episode 128 - How to Create a Viral Post     HOW TO DEFINE VIRAL CONTENT First up, what IS viral content? It depends who you ask. There is full-on viral posts, which are the kinds of posts that take off and go worldwide. That's rarely what we get to see. Viral is often used to mean a post with a much higher reach than the normal for you, OR a post that has massive reach. Paula's encouragement was that you NOT compare yourself to others or feel like you'll never hit that massive reach. Consider what's viral for YOU. Aim for a post that has significantly more reach than your normal post. THE DOWNSIDE OF A VIRAL POST People don't often talk about the downside of viral posts. But you should realize that more eyeballs on your post can mean a few things. Here are a few negative sides when you create a viral post. If your post isn't on brand, it's not super helpful If your post is controversial, you will get the trolls If your post isn't something you're willing to stand behind, it's not helpful! I would say that you should always ask yourself before hitting publish: What if this goes viral? You don't always know if it's going to happen. You probably aren't going to get into that category of worldwide attention. But...if you did, is this the hill you want to die on? Is this post a great representation of you? Viral posts can bring unwanted attention. And if your posts goes viral, but isn't the kind of thing you usually write about or is one of those one-off posts that doesn't fully represent you, it's not going to be super helpful. If you wrote about something that's controversial or that people disagree with (which could be anything these days), you may also get ugly comments or people sharing your post because they HATE it. You could get angry emails or other negative responses. The more your post gets shared, the more likely you'll face criticism. THE UPSIDE TO A VIRAL POST On the plus side...when you have a post go viral, it gets tons of eyeballs on your site. Some people will meet you for the first time and these new readers that might become raving fans. The best-case-scenario is that you have a post that's close to your heart and your brand go viral. That will bring the right kind of readers to your post. HOW TO CREATE A VIRAL POST Viral posts aren't often the how-to posts or the ones that solve a tangible problem. Yes, those can take off and be read and shared. But the posts that get people sharing and sharing and sharing are the ones with an emotional connection. When you resonate with readers, they will share your post. So if you want to reverse engineer a post to go viral, you need to start with one emotion that you're hoping to evoke in readers. You'll need to find an image that somehow relates in feel or in the content to that one feeling. You can use stock photos or your own photos, but again--your looking for connection. As for your headlines, you can consider something like the Coschedule Headline Analyzer (also great for email subject lines!) and consider what would motivate someone to click. Your framing and description matter as well. Framing is how you introduce the post when you are sharing on social media. The description is usually the meta description that you create when you are setting up the post in SEO for Wordpress by Yoast or whatever tool you use for SEO and metadescriptions. (I do this in Yoast and also in my Social Warfare plugin.) TIPS FOR WHEN YOUR POST GOES VIRAL If you have a post go viral, you want to do the best job you can to optimize the post.

Welcome to episode 004 of the Blogger Genius Podcast. My guest is Paula Rollo from the blog, Beauty Through Imperfection. In this episode, we discuss how blogging makes you braver, and what it's like first-hand to show vulnerability, and share your truth with the world as a blogger. Resources: Beauty Through Imperfection Dinner with the Rollos Traveling Family Blog Quick Blogging Tips Facebook group Izea AdThrive Mediavine Clever  Sway SEMrush MiloTree Transcript - How Blogging Makes You Braver: Jillian: [00:00:11] Today on the show. I have my friend, Paula Rollo, and she is the the blogger behind Beauty Through Imperfection. She's not only a blogger, she's also a writer, and a social media expert. So welcome to the show, Paula. Paula: [00:00:29] Thank you for having me. Jillian: [00:00:31] You are an old timer if I can call you that. Paula: [00:00:35] Sure. That's true. OK. Jillian: [00:00:37] So can you tell us briefly how you started, how you got interested in blogging, and now I was just reading something about you and it says you have four blogs. Paula: [00:00:51] So I started when I was 15. A friend of mine had a blog and it seemed like a cool thing to do. So I started when I was moving away and so I used it as a little awkward teenager would, and keep in touch with my friends. And thankfully, that blog is no longer alive on the Internet. I've never been more grateful for a Web site going down. But I've never really stopped for an extended period of time since I was 15. I love writing and just connecting with people that way. And so I've been doing it a long time now, and loving it almost all the time. Jillian: [00:01:35] And what was the inspiration behind Beauty Through Imperfection? Inspiration behind Beauty Through Imperfection Paula: [00:01:40] So I had take a break while I was pregnant with my first baby. Beauty Through Imperfection started when he was about two or three months old. I just saw a lot of perfection on social media. I think back then there wasn't this common thing where if you said Beauty Through Imperfection, people know what you're about, and that you're wanting to embrace pain, those flaws and motherhood and not shame other people. Paula: [00:02:11] But it was a tiny internet where I wasn't seeing a lot and so I just wanted to speak into that space because I was just really worried I was screwing it all up, and realize everybody else was, too. So we kind of created this little space together. It's ok to not be perfect today. And there's beauty in that today, too. Jillian: [00:02:29] Wow. I love that message because yes, as a new mother, oh my God, you know that is like a crazy crazy time. Jillian: [00:02:38] My daughter didn't sleep as a baby and I would read all the sleep books and I would feel so inadequate, that I was somehow doing it wrong and then everybody had their advice. Have you tried music? You know I just pat my baby on the back, and she just goes to sleep. I would just feel so inadequate. So I wish I had found your blog back then. Paula: [00:03:03] I wish I had my blog back. That's why I started it. That's great. Blog evolution Jillian: [00:03:07] And so explain then how your blog has evolved, as in how long has Beauty through Imperfection been around? Paula: [00:03:15] Seven years. Jillian: [00:03:17] And how have you seen it evolve as you've evolved? Paula: [00:03:23] So it has been interesting because I think I started out blogging from this space of me too, I also feel really insecure. I also am really afraid that I'm screwing up. And not a lot of help in that but just maybe a comforting voice, like you're not the only one feeling this way. Paula: [00:03:42] And I think that there's a lot of value in that. But as I've kind of grown in my motherhood and not been quite as worried about every decision all the time, I've been able to kind of speak from a different space. You know, your baby will sleep. Like somebody was actually messaging me yesterday, like will I ever sleep again? Is that a thing because it's been three days. Now I'm able to kind of speak from a space where I did sleep last night. And I know that it's going to get better, but I also know it feels really hopeless right now, and that's ok. Like it's okay to feel that helplessness. And so I kind of try to keep both both voices in there now, where I am in this with you, but also. I do have some advice to share, or some words of encouragement of, this worked for me and it might not work for you, but it works for me, you could try it, in that I've traveled down this path. Jillian: [00:04:32] I'm a little bit of I'm a little further down the path so I can look back and have a little more perspective. Paula: [00:04:37] Exactly, because I still... my youngest is 5... but I still talk about baby and toddler years a lot just because I remember how hard those times were and how much you need a friend. And it's really hard to reach out to friends in that time. So I always want to keep that as part of what I'm doing. Jillian: [00:04:54] I love that. When I think of you the word that comes to mind is brave. Paula: [00:05:01] You are so sweet. Sharing about personal struggles Jillian: [00:05:03] Because again as we live in this curated world of perfection on the internet you have been willing to share about your own personal struggles and really put yourself out there. And I have to say I feel like I read one of your pieces before I met you. And I felt this real connection to you. And then like when I saw you in real life, I'm like wow, I feel so close. Can you share about that part of your blogging and what that means? Paula: [00:05:39] Sure. So I always use blogging as kind of like a way to heal. Paula: [00:05:45] I'm a child abuse survivor. There is a lot of abuse in my history and just a lot of really just crazy messed up stuff. And so I've written a lot as a way to process my feelings and to kind of put to paper words that I didn't feel comfortable speaking out. And so that just kind of naturally progressed into my blog. And I realized that I'm being quiet, and no one knows I struggle with depression. No one knows that I've had anxiety for years. So I wonder how many other people have depression and anxiety, and they're just not talking about it, and they're just not talking about how they're healing from abuse, or different things that have happened in their lives. Paula: [00:06:32] And so I just started putting it on the Internet and it took a long time. That makes it sound very simple like just I suddenly knew how to put this into words and put it online. But it's not the case. I think my first post that I wrote about child abuse and how that shaped my motherhood was three years in the making. Like I literally drafted it out and edited it for three years, which is not something I normally do. I don't even edit most of my blog posts at all I just kind of throw them on the internet and watch what happens. Paula: [00:07:03] But that one took a long time and I really had to get to a place where I was okay with whatever backlash came from it. Paula: [00:07:10] And there was some. And that's hard, but I also like writing about these things because it gives people, even people who haven't experienced abuse or who don't experience depression and anxiety, the chance to hear what their friends are going through. And hopefully even if they respond poorly to me, I want them to have that space to have that negative reaction so hopefully they respond better to their friends in the future. Jillian: [00:07:41] Now how has the reaction been? And this is where I use the word brave, because I don't think I could handle backlash about something so personal. Reactions to personal posts Jillian: [00:07:57] Have people been kind and civil? And how have you responded to that? Paula: [00:08:08] There's been both. So and that's why when people ask me about writing really personal things I always caution them to make sure they're ready. One of my most personal pieces I've had people comment, and be like, I don't know about your alleged abuse. This doesn't seem very bad to me. We need more proof. And really? Like it's not even about you know. I didn't go into details because it was not necessary in the post. Like are you just wanting to get entertainment from my abuse? So OK. I just don't understand why I need to prove myself in a blog post. Paula: [00:08:47] It's not like I'm suing someone. We don't need proof. So I'm not sure what area of pain that person was coming from but I've definitely gotten some backlash, mainly from strangers and mainly unwarranted. I think it's really important to me that I don't hurt anyone with my stories, so I even sent one of my post about my biological dad, who was a great dad, but he messed up a bunch, and he's no longer living, so I couldn't send it to him to get his approval to post. But I felt like I had something important that other people could learn from him and so I sent it to his sister. And I said I'm wanting to publish this. Will you read it and tell me what you think and tell me if you think that this is slandering his good name or anything like that because I don't want to harm anyone. Paula: [00:09:36] And if I'm harming some people to help other people I'm just not okay with that. So I'm very cautious in the way that I write and I think that has protected me from some backlash just because I'm careful with the way that I do it. But still I get all sorts of weird comments about my life. Jillian: [00:09:56] What about the positive comments? Paula: [00:10:03] Those are amazing. People will stop me. I remember the first post I wrote about abuse, and the point of it was to talk to your kids about it, and to really empower your kids to know what kind of touching is and it's not OK, how people are allowed to talk to them. And those types of things, because that stuff wasn't taught to me as a kid. And I think it's really important to empower your kids in that way, not just shield them but to give them the ability to shield themselves, and reach out for help when needed. Paula: [00:10:31] So I wrote this post, and my blog is predominantly for women. And I don't share my personal posts just because I write a lot and that would be obnoxious, but I walk into church that Sunday, and this random guy approaches me, like I know him but I don't think he reads my blog regularly, and he comes up to me and he's like, we had a conversation with our kids last night about abuse because of your blog. This has changed us. And I really really appreciate it. And so things like that, and I've gotten e-mails like that, and I see in my Amazon listings, all these books that are purchased pretty much every single day about empowering your kids and teaching them about yes and no touching, and things like that. Paula: [00:11:13] And that's really just my favorite thing because I know that kids are being impacted and hopefully changed through it, and protected from whatever might come their way. So it's empowering I think both to parents and kids, to add in those extra layers of safety and that's just priceless. Jillian: [00:11:32] Wow. But again I feel like you are this force for good out in the world. I'm happy there are people like you writing about this stuff. Paula: [00:11:43] I hope it's doing good. I think there are a lot of silent people both happy and sad about what I write. It's always encouraging to that even the people who are maybe not able to put it into words are talking to their kids. Paula: [00:11:58] Like all of you on the Amazon Pages I don't know what they're thinking, or what they've said, but I know that they're having conversations with their kids, and that's what is really important to me. On being a social media expert Jillian: [00:12:07] That's amazing. So this is an interesting thing about you. On one hand you have this very personal blog and you're sharing tips and trying to help people. Then you also though are this social media expert. Can you explain how that came about and where you were? Because I think when I first learned about you I thought of you as a teacher in social media and blogging. And then I learned about your blog. So explain where that came about and what that means. Paula: [00:12:44] I think it means a lot of different things to different people. For me I when I started blogging, and even when I started trying to blog professionally, which was only like four or five years ago, and there weren't social media teachers back then, there weren't blogging coaches, that was not a thing. I had heard rumors that there were some bloggers making money and that's why I decided to try it. It wasn't like everyone was posting income reports and things like that. And so I've spent a lot of time failing and figuring things out on my own, which I'm thankful for. But also we really needed money in that season of life. Paula: [00:13:28] So it would have been nice to be able to read this book or just get some advice from someone on how to do something, and maybe kind of take a shortcut to not having to fail as many times. That I could have made money for our family a little bit faster. But I'm thankful for that time. But that's what kind of makes me want to be a social media teacher, a blogging teacher, or whatever term to put on it. I just want to see people succeed and I want to see people reach their goals because I think there is a lot of talk in this space about making you know 97 figures a month or whatever. Paula: [00:14:07] There's a lot of that and I support that. And I am happy with people doing that. But that's just not what I'm about. I would rather help somebody who has a meaningful message that they want to share, or somebody who just wants to be able to keep the lights on for their kids. Advice for beginning bloggers Jillian: [00:14:30] So if you were to talk to somebody who is just starting a blog, just starting out, and you were to say here are your top three ways to make money or to be thinking about monetizing your blog. Jillian: [00:14:49] What would you recommend? Paula: [00:14:54] Number one that they know who they're talking to and how they can help those people. Jillian: [00:14:59] And what do you mean by that? Advice: Know who your audience is Paula: [00:15:01] Who are you blogging to? And why? Because just putting an article out into the whole world of the Internet, anybody can do that. But how are you making a meaningful connection with someone,because that's how we do things that really matter. And also that's how people make sales as well, because people feel connected to you. People feel like they can trust you. People know that you understand the struggle that they're having. And so when you say this can help you with that struggle or that product will, they're willing to buy into that. So it's really important. On a personal level, just to know that you're helping someone, but also it is a huge part of that money making journey. It builds trust with your readers so figuring out who you want to talk to and how you can help them. Absolutely number one. Jillian: [00:15:49] A lot of people call that your avatar. I like the idea of an avatar because it typically is one person. It's that one perfect visitor to your site. That person who gets you and wants this specific content and to really identify... is it a mom? Where does she live? Jillian: [00:16:14] What does she do? What are her struggles? What are her issues? And usually that avatar tends to be someone similar to us. So it is good if your avatar is similar to you because you know your own pain points. OK so the first thing then is to really be specific about who you're speaking to and why. Paula: [00:16:40] Yes because I think pageviews and income both stem from there. All three of those things are kind of her married together. Advice: Find an ad network Paula: [00:16:51] And then I guess my advice would be to find some sort of network. Most people start with Google AdSense. And then when you have more pages you can move along. Because that's just an easy way to keep doing what you're doing but monetize it. And you don't have to stress out about chasing a brand or anything like that at first, like I'd really keep it as stress-free as possible for as long as you can. Jillian: [00:17:16] And that's passive income. So you're just like making money as you sleep. What would be your third recommendation? Advice: Find a sponsored post network to start working with brands Paula: [00:17:34] I guess that would be sponsored posts. I would sign up for three or four networks, and try to get your feet wet working with brands through sponsored content. Izea was the first one I worked with and I feel like I learned how to work with brands through that network, because they would lay out how they wanted a post to look and how they wanted me to talk about the brand and how to take the photos. Paula: [00:18:02] And so there a lot of training in that, that I've kind of implemented into how I pitch a brand myself or as I'm making my own deals, or even as I'm using affiliate marketing. It's stemming from this education that I got through sponsored post networks from years ago. Jillian: [00:18:18] And what networks do you typically recommend? Paula: [00:18:22] Izea is my fav. I like them because they're kind humans, so they're like the places I like and I put emphasis on them like they're kind, and that's why I like them. Jillian: [00:18:37] It is all about relationships. Paula: [00:18:40] It is. It is. My ad network and Izea called me when Harvey hit and checked on me, and like personal messages from campaign managers they were messaging me. Are you ok? How's your family? Can we help you? Like, wow that's amazing. They know where I live. They know what's happening and they care. So that's the thing I care about. And also they help me pay the bills. Jillian: [00:19:07] First of all, what ad networks do you use? Paula: [00:19:11] I use AdThrive for my travel blog and Beauty Through Imperfection. And I'm on MediaVine for my food blog. Jillian: [00:19:18] OK and we use AdThrive for Catch My Party. Paula: [00:19:22] I love both. I really don't have complaints about either. I wasn't big enough for AdThrive, which is why it's a MediaVine. But I'm really enjoying my experience there as well, so I like having my hands in both. Jillian: [00:19:39] So what other sponsored content companies do you work with or do you recommend? Paula: [00:19:48] Clever is another one of my favorites. I worked with them quite a bit. Clever and Sway are probably the ones I work with more than anyone else. Jillian: [00:20:05] Now if you're small like you're just starting out, would these companies want to work with you, or is there usually a threshold? Paula: [00:20:14] Some of them do have a threshold before they'll even accept you. Paula: [00:20:20] And I feel like they're always changing, so I don't remember the numbers now, but the way I did my blog was I kind of waited until I was at 30k to 50k pageviews before I started pursuing things like this. Paula: [00:20:33] And the reason for that is you can get the odd sponsored posts or brand that might want to work with you when your blog is smaller, but you're going to spend so much time and effort finding that brand, that you could have been pouring that time into churning out awesome content and creating great things for your readers that would push you over that hump, where it's much easier to get sponsored content and the brands are kind of seeking you out a little bit more. Advice: Build your audience before reaching out to brands Paula: [00:21:02] So I would go ahead and sign up for them but maybe don't pour hours and hours and hours of work into that until you're about 30k to 50k pageviews a month because it'll just be a lot easier that way. Jillian: [00:21:17] Yes I would agree with that. And again I think as bloggers we have two scarce resources: money and time. And you always have to be thinking in terms of both of those. So if you're going to make fifty dollars from doing a sponsored post is that worth your time? It might be worth that if you're making two hundred dollars. Because it's probably the same amount of work. So that's always something to keep in mind. Advice: How to reach out to brands Jillian: [00:21:51] Now you mentioned reaching out to brands. Yes. How does that work? Paula: [00:22:02] It works in a lot of different ways. I use Twitter a lot to just kind of talk to brands and get on their radar if they're active on Twitter. It's one of the only things Twitter is good for. Jillian: [00:22:15] I totally agree. Brands are listening and they're listening predominantly on Twitter, like it's the most direct way and these are their social media people who are listening. So it kind of directs you to the right person. Paula: [00:22:32] So I'll do tweets for brands. Take a photo of us at some place that I want to work with. I'll respond to them and I'll retweet them, all things that I do charge money for. But if I'm wanting to create a big ambassadorship relationship with a brand, then I'll do that stuff for free on Twitter to get their attention. I wouldn't do a huge blog post or anything for free but a two second tweet. Paula: [00:23:01] And then if I am successful on Twitter then I'll usually direct message them and say I love their brand and it's been fun chatting with them. Who's the right person to e-mail with a marketing request or with a blogging partnership idea? If you can get the correct email, that is 90 percent of the work that you need to do. I mean finding those emails is really really hard sometimes. If that doesn't work or I don't have enough time to do that, then I will just go to a Web site of somebody I work with, and I will search and search and search until I find that marketing person, and then I'll pitch them, and I'll tell them what I want to do, and I'll tell them short and concise who my audience is. You're going to go back to the avatar you created. Brands care a lot less about who I am than they care about who I'm talking to. And so I can tell them I talked to a 100k moms with kids in this age range and they're all interested in whatever their product is, or they have this problem and this is how I'm going to tell them that your product solves that problem. That's a lot better of a pitch than just I enjoy your product. Paula: [00:24:23] And I'm in your target audience and I have a hundred thousand people that want to buy a product. They just don't realize it yet. Jillian: [00:24:33] I like the way you outlined for the brand what you can provide to them so they don't have to do the work. So it's not a huge back and forth. Jillian: [00:24:49] To say up front this is what I can offer you. Do you even put I'd like to do a sponsored post with you, and this number of shares, and I charge this much money. Or do you keep it more open ended? Paula: [00:25:05] I keep it more open-ended because they might have a product launch that I wouldn't know anything about. Jillian: [00:26:02] I've found that if you can get them on the phone it's a great way to close the deal. Paula: [00:26:02] As terrifying as it is, I hate talking on the phone. But it does work. Advice: How to drive traffic to your site Jillian: [00:26:08] So as a social media marketing expert, how are you driving traffic to your blogs? Where would the low hanging fruit be? Paula: [00:26:27] So I do try to keep a good balance. I feel like when I first started out, again this was years ago. So Pinterest was super easy back then. Like you just pinned something and watch your real time analytics go up and it was glorious. And that's not the case anymore, but I still have strived to keep things a bit more even. Instead of getting 90 percent of my traffic from Pinterest, when they change their algorithm I think we all realize that that was a really bad idea to have 90 percent of our traffic coming from anywhere. Paula: [00:27:03] And so now it's kind of split more into thirds, or maybe I guess quarters. So Facebook, Pinterest, and search are my highest. And then there's just this other quarter of random other stuff. So I try to make sure I'm maintaining all three of those things, and to be honest like Facebook is a weak point for me. I don't enjoy putting in all the work that it takes to have a really successful viral Facebook page. I know how to do it, but I don't like it, so I don't focus there as much. As far as growing my own page, and what I do there, when I realized I was really weak in that area, was I partnered with other bloggers who have a great solid Facebook strategy, and they have this huge page, and I offer them my services for free in exchange for shares. Paula: [00:27:51] My Facebook was really weak, my Pinterest is really strong. And so instead of waiting the year or even a few months that it would take for me to grow my Facebook page, I kept doing the things that I love doing, which is writing and connecting with my fans in other ways. And I work for other bloggers and take advantage of their Facebook pages. I mean I say take advantage. It sounds so mean. But I use their powers to get traffic to my site while giving them something in exchange for most of them. Like I said, I know the strategy, I just don't want to spend 10 hours a day doing it and honestly those bloggers don't either. So they're happy for me to come in and take one or two of those hours a week, in exchange for shares, and that kind of rounds out the weak point for me. Jillian: [00:28:42] And that will drive significant traffic to your site. The power of Facebook. If you can corral it and get it can work for you. It's amazing. But I've mentioned this previously, Facebook drives traffic to our site, but nothing but not like these super Facebook people. Paula: [00:29:05] Right. Exactly. And I knew I'm never going to be a super Facebook person myself, because I don't want to pay someone to do that. I know some of the strategies just aren't really in line with what I want for my page. And so I don't do it, and I don't compromise on that. But you find a work around. I'm able to use someone else's page to get the traffic, and then keep my Facebook page how I want it to be. Everybody wins. Everybody is getting what they want out of the deal. Thoughts about video Jillian: [00:29:40] What about video? Are you making video? Is video a part of your business and how do you feel about the idea? Paula: [00:29:49] I agree with everyone that videos is the future and it's a really big deal. But I'm a writer, and I love writing, and and this is a long time coming, like for a long time my identity and who I was was tied up in the success and failure of my blog, and getting more page views and growing. And a couple years ago, I just hadn't realized like why am I wanting to be bigger and bigger and bigger? This is kind of ridiculous. I'm at a good size and I'm happy at the size that I am. And I would love to be making ninety seven figures a month. Sure. That would be great. But what am I sacrificing to get that? I'm sacrificing my happiness. I'm sacrificing time with my family. I'm a person that does have high anxiety and I've had depression for like 12 years. And so there are times when life hits me like a truck and I can't work. And that's just not realistic for a site that has five million pages a month. I'm just throwing out massive numbers because we all just think bigger. It doesn't matter how big you get. You want to be bigger. And so I stopped all of that. And this is related to video I promise. How to run a business while dealing with anxiety Paula: [00:31:05] So I kind of stopped trying to chase those things and I'm more focused on maintaining what I have. My blog is our family's only income now, so I can't just put it aside. I can't just take a week off. like I can't do any of those things, but I have maintained now our family budget and a little bit over that, every month for about two years, and that's all I want to do. I am not striving super hard to make double my income. It's really hard in this industry because we can double our income. And what other industry can you do that in? You can't work harder at another job and double your income. And so it felt really wrong to not do that, to not jump on the next big train that's going to make your things go viral, and that's going to grow your page and all of that. And I followed that for a while, and finally realized like no, I'm not I'm not going to do it. And so video is kind of tied to that for me because it's something I hate doing. Paula: [00:32:08] When it comes to the editing process I hate it. And I don't want to hire out that much of what I'm doing. I like keeping things close to home. And it was just too much at this point in my life. At this point I didn't want to do it. I didn't enjoy doing it. The thought of it stressed me out. I'm just going to maintain what I'm doing and continue loving what I'm doing and continue paying the bills and then having just a really low key life that I actually enjoy. Jillian: [00:32:39] I think as mothers, especially as you were talking about how you go through these different stages. And my daughter now is 10. And it's amazing because I never thought this would happen, like I never thought that she could be as independent as she is or she can even help me with things, like she says she's going to be editing my podcasts. That hasn't happened yet, but she knows how to use Garage Band. Jillian: [00:33:10] So it's like you go through these windows with your family as your family grows, where eventually you might be able to take on more, or take or less depending, but there's something to recognizing that the way it is today, it will not be this way in a year and it will definitely not be this way in five years. Jillian: [00:33:32] And to be able to kind of roll with that. If you've been at this a long time, like we have, we've seen a lot of changes in the world of social media and the Internet and stuff, and you've also seen a lot of changes over the last let's say five years in your family. So you kind of think the better you are at uncertainty the more successful you will be. Paula: [00:33:55] Yes I agree completely. Jillian: [00:33:58] So if you were if you were to give one piece of advice to bloggers starting out today, that you wish you had known, what do you think it would be? Advice: You're not your business Paula: [00:34:12] Well I kind of hit it a little bit a second ago, and this is very personal to me. It just. You're not your business. And so succeed or fail, that doesn't define you and I did not know that when I started, and this is a very personal business. You're putting your life on the Internet even if you're a food blogger, you're putting your family's recipes on the Internet for people to hate or people to love. And when everybody is loving you that can feel really good. But I think that's just as dangerous as when everybody's hating on you. And so I've really learned to hold what people say loosely. The good things they say about me are held just as loosely as the bad things because what matters is what people in my real life think about me. What matters is that I'm being a kind person to the people around me and I'm doing things that I believe in. And pageviews don't always reflect that. And pageviews don't reflect your heart. I think one of the most popular, as far as people emailing me and saying this post changed my life is the greatest thing I've ever written, that post I think got 250 pageviews on it. Is like nothing for my blog, and I still remember the things that people said about it and it was beautiful and it was wonderful. But getting that next million billion pageviews is not what it's about. And it is not where your woth is found. Paula: [00:35:44] And so being able to hold loosely to those things has helped with my anxiety, and I know that not everybody has anxiety about blogging. I wish the message that I had when I was starting out is that you're a lot more than this, succeed or fail. Jillian: [00:36:01] I love that. And I would say, you show me a blogger and I will show you somebody who has blogging anxiety. It's like they come hand in hand again. Paula: [00:36:12] And you're right because there is a personal piece to this. You are putting a part of yourself out on the Internet. And again you have to be intentional about how much of yourself you're putting out there, and understand what the ramifications are for that. Paula: [00:36:39] And it's hard and it's wonderful and it's awful all at once. Jillian: [00:36:43] Absolutely. Absolutely. And what about your business right now are you most excited about? Plans for a new blog series Paula: [00:36:51] Well I am not doing it yet, but I have plans for a new series on Beauty Through Imperfection. I've been in just a funky spot for a while because I still write the things that I care about for new moms and stuff, but I am in a new season of life and I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate that new season, and what I care about personally. Like for me what I care about into my blog without losing its voice, and so I'm starting this new series. It was supposed to launch this fall and then Hurricane Harvey hit and that just kind of threw our whole city into madness. So I'm hoping for next spring. Jillian: [00:37:32] Was your house OK? Paula: [00:37:34] Yes. Our house was fine. But like within walking distance there was five feet of water. So it's just our grocery stores are still gone like it's just crazy here. Paula: [00:37:45] I've been thinking about this project for a while, and so it's going to be called Beautiful Perspectives, and I'm going to have people hopefully just write about their lives and write about their struggles and their challenges and and hopefully cover places that I can't cover as just a pretty average person. So I want to bring in people who are not like me, and people who I have questions about and this may actually incorporate some video interviews that are going to be pretty low key and unedited. But my goal is just to break down walls between people and maybe walls you didn't even know existed, and just make me get more comfortable to approach people who look different than you and act differently than you, and live drastically different lives. Paula: [00:38:29] And I'm really excited about it because that's what I care about in my real life, and I'm finding a way to incorporate that into my blog. And I don't think it's gonna be a huge income generator or anything like that, but that goes back to being able to let go of those things and maintain that income and now I can do something that might reach a couple of hundred people, but it's reaching them with something that I care about. Jillian: [00:38:53] And I would say that when we go towards stuff like that, you don't know where it's going to lead. It could be a book. Who knows? But if you could trust that voice inside to say I'm not sure how I'm going to monetize this but at least I'm going to try it out. It feeds your soul and it makes that job easier. Paula: [00:39:25] Right. Because the things that I write about to pay the bills are not things I love. But they're important and they're helping people and that's fine. But I'm able to add the soul feeding thing that I love. And that's what I'm excited about. I'm not really excited about my next paycheck. Paula: [00:39:47] How this will maybe just impact a couple of people like I said, that post reached 250 people, but I think it reached them with something that I want to be my legacy or the thing that I'm remembered for. Jillian: [00:40:05] Is there an online tool that you use for your business that you can't live without? Advice: Using SEMrush to improve SEO Paula: [00:40:13] Yes. And I will say it's expensive and I don't do expensive, but SEMrush is something that I've gotten in the past year and I'm kind of obsessed with. It's an SEO tool, and has just so much that I feel like I've been using it since May, and I still have barely scratch the surface with the data it's giving me. Paula: [00:40:34] But it tells you every back link to your site. It tells you what page you're ranking on in Google for any search term. And it's just nutty the amount of information. And it makes it really nice because I can kind of scroll through and look for... oh on page 2 of Google with this random search term, I'm going to create more content around this. And so that's been a game changer for me. Like I said I have Facebook, Pinterest, and search. Search used to be not even on my radar and the past few months, it's now number three. And like substantially number three. Not like a huge margin of error. It's matching Facebook now as far as what I'm getting in traffic, which is a first for me. And I genuinely owe that to SEMrush, which is obnoxiously expensive but worth every penny. So proud that. Jillian: [00:41:31] OK. We'll be linking to it in the show notes. It's been recommended to me so many times. But because you just said that, I am going to sign up. Paula: [00:41:40] Well I took a class at a conference at Tbex this summer and it was the most comprehensive and actually helpful thing on SEO that I ever attended in my life. I literally walked up to the woman and said, Will you coach me? And she said I don't do coaching. And I was, Let me rephrase. How much to buy an hour of your time? Paula: [00:42:00] I don't spend money. I'm very thrifty and this was worth it. I really trusted her recommendation because she knew what she was talking about with SEO and it's been really helpful. Jillian: [00:42:12] Well that's terrific. I love it. I literally going to get off this call and go sign up because it's been recommended to me over and over. Paula: [00:42:20] I had never heard of it, and now I see it popping up everywhere. Jillian: [00:42:27] And I do believe that when you hear a recommendation from a variety of people, you have to check it out. Jillian: [00:42:35] OK do you have any parting pieces of advice for bloggers. And then also how can people connect with you? Paula: [00:42:46] I say keep it fun and keep it realistic. I think there's a lot of information out there about specific paths to success or specific formulas, and I'm not saying those are not accurate, but make sure when you're adopting a formula, that it fits with your lifestyle and it fits with your personal goals, and it's going to be something you enjoy. So I think bloggers come and go really really quickly, and I think that the pain point that makes people quit, is that they put too much on their plate too fast, in order to try to follow what some very successful blogger said is the formula. It's not that that formula is wrong. Is it right for you right now in this moment, or do you need to focus on something else and move into this space at a slower rate because the space is always going to be here. There's like this urgency in the blogging community but we're here to stay. This is an awesome industry we're in. It's marketing and marketing is forever. So you have time to ease in and find your voice and find how you want this space to work for you. So take your time. Jillian: [00:43:57] I love that. I love that. Now let's go through all of your sites and how people can reach out to you and connect with you. Paula: [00:44:10] Beauty Through Imperfection is my main blog. That's the one I always joke that pays the bills. And then I have some others that I'm building slowly because I can't sit still. And so my food site is Dinner with the Rollos. My travel site is Traveling Family Blog. And then I have a Facebook community that is free, just join us if you want to. And that's Quick Blogging Tips. And I try to keep those tips under five minutes, something you can implement today. So it's super easy. Paula: [00:44:43] Teeny tiny improvements to your blog. And then you can always reach me on email, it's just my name, paularollo@gmail.com. And most of my social media handles are just my name as well. Jillian: [00:44:53] Are the tips that you're giving in your Facebook group, are those you jumping on live, or are they written tips? Paula: [00:45:04] They're mainly written tips. Again I'm a writer. I have been jumping on lives a little bit more, I'm trying to do that a little bit more because at least that doesn't have to be edited, so I can just talk. I've been doing that a little bit more especially now that school's in session, thank goodness. I'm trying to do some more live video in that group too. Jillian: [00:45:25] Well thank you Paula. Thank you so much for being here. Paula: [00:45:30] Thank you for having me. This was a really fun chat. Jillian: [00:45:35] If you're trying to grow your social media followers on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. Plus trying to grow your e-mail list. Definitely check out MiloTree. It is the smart popup. You add to your blog or your site, and it asks your visitors to follow you on social media or subscribe to your list. Just a couple of things, it's super easy to add to your site. We offer a WordPress plugin or a simple line of code. It's Google-friendly on mobile, so you don't have to worry about showing popups on mobile. It's lightning fast, it won't slow your sight down,and you can grow multiple platforms at once. So check it out. MiloTree dot com. We also offer your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Sometimes, the best way you can learn about something is by doing. That’s why today’s guest is the perfect person to learn from. Paula Rollo is a blogger and author of 8 (yes, 8) books, so she is a perfect example of someone you can learn from when it comes to book writing and self publishing. I think you’re really going to enjoy the interview with Paula that I’m featuring in today’s episode. We cover a lot of topics that are of interest to blogger-authors, including how to chose the right topic for your book, the decision to self publish or work with a traditional publisher, and how a ‘failed’ book may actually not be such a failure after all. Show notes: bloggertoauthor.com/50

This is the conclusion of my series on Why Isn't My Audience Growing? Today it's all about what to do when you feel stuck. We'll get a little more woo woo into the mindset, inspiration, and encouragement. To see all the posts, you can can check this page: How to Grow Your Audience and Platform. When you are trying to grow your audience, you are going to hit bumps and plateaus. To be honest, I'm not sure which is worse. Bumps are when something might not work the way you hoped it did, like a Facebook ad that flopped or a webinar that no one registered for. It stinks! Plateaus are when you go on for long periods with very little forward motion. You might grow a little here and there, but nothing consistent or worth writing home about. This also stinks! You might even feel like you are learning and applying strategies and following best practices with no results. Maybe you followed this whole series (catch up HERE if you haven't!) and still feel like nothing is happening. Your growth is stagnant. THIS POST IS FOR YOU! Listen to Episode 111 - What to Do When You Feel Stuck in Your Growth   Subscribe via Apple Podcasts (the artist formerly known as iTunes) or you can check out the Create If Writing Playlist on YouTube. You can also listen right here on the blog on the podcast page with a player like the one right above.  Troubleshooting When You Feel Stuck in Your Growth You May Not Be Creating the Right Content While I feel strongly that we should all create the things we feel passionate about, this does NOT mean you will grow an audience. Your content may not be interesting to outside readers. You need to consider writing for other people, not just yourself. Unless you just want to write an online diary. Which is totally fine! Just know that if you are writing only for YOU, it may be hard to grow an audience. For help with this, see a great post from Paula Rollo on How to Double Your Pageviews. You also may be struggling with your writing VOICE. I don't feel like people talk enough about this, but it's hugely important. Your writing voice is how you come across to other people. It's a mix of your tone and the personality and can even get as specific as whether or not you use emojis or ALL CAPS when writing. If you don't have a writing voice (think: your writing is pretty vanilla and could be written by any person on the planet or be included in a textbook) OR if you are writing with a voice that doesn't jive with the audience you're trying to reach, you may get stuck. For help with this, see my post How to Brand Your Writing Voice. You May Not Be Clear on Your Audience When you are creating content, you need to ask yourself if you are meeting the needs of your ideal audience and speaking in their language. If you have a disconnect with the kind of audience you want to reach, you will get stuck. Consider surveying your people you already have. I remember the big shock of finding out that the majority of my audience loves written courses...when I've been creating video courses. Doh. If you are not sure about this one, I have a whole series on Finding Your Perfect Audience that may help! You May Not Be Promoting Your Work Enough (or in the Right Ways) I go back and forth on how I feel about automation and scheduling. I want to be live as much as possible on platforms that are social. But I also have over 300 posts (probably way more) between my two blogs. If I am not actively promoting that content, few people see it. (Except those that come from evergreen search traffic like Pinterest and from SEO.)  If you don't promote your posts (or bake in really great SEO), you will struggle to grow your audience. You have to do work to promote. People won't just find you. Sometimes we think of promotion in a bad way, like self promotion, as in self-centered-ness. It isn't. I mean, yes, some people cross that line. But I know YOU won't. Right? :) If you need help here, you may be interested in my post on being a good steward of your content. Encouragement When You Feel Stuck in Your Growth Another big reason that you may feel stuck in your growth is that you are stuck in your mindset. Growth is hard. It's hard for all of us. It isn't just hard for the newbies. It's hard for the people who have full-time businesses. We all have to keep working. We all still have goals. You hit one, then you make another. No one has ever ARRIVED. I mean this to be encouraging! Not discouraging. I mean to say that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I struggle with growth! Still! Always! Sometimes I see results and I love what I do. Other times, I feel stuck and feel like I'm going in circles or stuck on a plateau. Two Truths about Growth:  Growth Begets Growth - When you hit certain milestones (especially public ones where people can see your following or growth), growth becomes easier. I felt like it took forever to get to 1000 Twitter followers. Now I'm over 6k and felt like I tried WAY less hard to get the next 5000. This probably has some to do with social proof (people see a higher number and think you must be worth following) and may also have some to do with you hitting your stride with that platform and how you use it. Passion Begets Passion - People can FEEL it when you are passionate. It comes across in your videos through your face, in your voice in your podcast, and in your writing itself. Embrace what you love because it may be much easier to do the work! It will be a joy, not just work. EVEN if you still struggle with growth. You may need to take a class and learn. You may need to step back. Find what it takes to tap into your passion! There may be a rare time when you need to give up, NOT push forward. And if you want to hear a really amazing and honest interview on that, you should check out this episode from The Fizzle Show.    Need some growth?? If you know you are in a learning mode, there is a FABULOUS resource that I'm an affiliate for (and have a product in) called the Genius Bloggers Toolkit. You can get $6k worth of books, courses, and other resources for $97 OR attend some great free trainings! Click HERE to check out the trainings or HERE to see what's in the bundle. (Just through October 9!)  DON'T BUY IT IF YOU'RE OVERWHELMED WITH LEARNING! Only if you need tools to help you move to the next step or get you out of a funk. :) This week's featured patron is Kate Johnston, an author and a story coach who helps writers kick their writing dreams into reality through inspiration, hard work, and a little bit of ferocity. She knew she wanted to be a professional writer when she was 8 years old and wrote a story about a good wolf. (I totally wrote a book about a good wolf when I was 8!) You can find Kate's book, Writer Unterrupted on Amazon! Want to get featured? Check out my Patreon page, where you can support the show for as little as $4 a month. 

Want to know how to get more followers on social media? I've got you covered. This posts is the third in a series on Why Your Audience Isn't Growing. You should also read Why Your Social Media Isn't Growing to see mistakes you might be making! One of the biggest questions that people have about social media is how to get followers. No matter how many you currently have, we all seem to want to get MORE followers. And more. We can never have enough!! I especially know what it feels like to be just starting out where you have under 1000 followers. I remember my first year on Twitter with something like 300 followers, feeling like I would never grow. Getting followers feels like an impossible task. You need more followers so that you have some kind of social proof, so that more people will follow you, but no one will follow you without more followers. And I have found it to be true that once you pass a certain benchmark of at least a thousand people, it gets easier to grow. Getting followers is kind of like a chicken and egg problem. So let's talk about how you get more followers on social media, especially when you are just starting out OR when you are stuck. Note: This post contains affiliate links! That means at no extra cost to you, I will receive a commission if you purchase something through some of the links I share.  Listen to How to Get More Followers on Social Media You can listen right here or on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. Or keep reading below! HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Before we even get into the specifics of how, I want to talk about the WHY. Specifically YOUR why. If you are not super clear on your why, you are going to struggle to grow your social media presence, your blog, and your audience. Your WHY is your purpose. My background is in writing, so I like to think of it as your theme. A theme isn't the beginning-middle-end of a story, but the ideas that run throughout, tying the story together. For an example, my WHY is that I want to help writers and bloggers build an online platform without being smarmy. I love helping people connect with their perfect audience online, using all the tools and strategies that smart marketers use, but without the icky salesy tactics. Knowing my WHY means that if I have a post idea that doesn't fit into that overarching purpose, I don't write it. Or I write it in a guest post somewhere else. Or on my other blog. If you aren't clear on your why or the audience you serve, you are going to really struggle! Take some time to write out a clear statement of purpose. This should include who you serve, how you serve them, and what is unique to you. HOW TO GET FOLLOWERS THROUGH CONTENT Once you have your why in place, you can both create and curate content that fits under the umbrella of your why. In the second post of this series I talked about curating content, which is essentially the way that you share other people's content on social media. I want to go even deeper on this idea of sharing relevant content. Consider your perfect audience (see my series on how to find your perfect audience) when you are coming up with content ideas to create. In the same way, think about your target audience when you are choosing Tweets to Retweet or pins to share on Pinterest. Ask yourself: Does this serve my perfect audience?  When you share awesome content (your own and others), a really cool thing happens. People start to see you as an authority. You become their go-to for news, trends, and resources. You save them the time so they don't have to research all the latest trends or news. Sharing quality content will help you get more followers that are truly interested in you. That's why it's really important to share relevant content. PRO TIP: On Facebook in particular, you need to not only consider the topic, but the kind of content. If you keep sharing viral videos because they get great reach, but you don't CREATE video, this may hurt you in the long run. When you share your blog posts as links, your page is used to doing well with video, so the reach may diminish for link posts. An active page doesn't help you if it's active for video, but you are trying to drive traffic to a blog. Examples of People Sharing Consistent Quality Content Here are a few of my favorite creator/curators in different niches: The Sell More Books Show - Each week Bryan Cohen and Jim Kukral share five big newsworthy items and three tips related to book writing and marketing, especially in the indie space. I want to know what's going on, so I follow their podcast, follow them on Twitter, and like their Facebook page so hopefully I won't miss anything. Jenn's Trends - Jenn Herman has a blog focused on social media, specifically Instagram. Even though I've temporarily told Instagram, "it's not me, it's you," I can count on her to share big news I need to know about social media. I joined her Facebook group to keep up with what she's sharing about social media. Social Media Examiner - While this seems like a no-brainer because this is a hugely established site, I love Michael Stelzner's curiosity and passion for social media. (You can hear this particularly through his podcast, where he seems genuinely excited and interested in the guests.) HOW TO GET FOLLOWERS THROUGH CONTENT-SHARING TOOLS Sharing consistent quality content is HARD. Especially when you are also creating content too. I really rock at creating content. I love it. Give me content creation all. day. long. And while I shared in my post on why your blog isn't growing that it's not just about promotion, YOU HAVE TO PROMOTE your awesome content. If you are trying to curate good content from other people as well (which you should do), then you have even more posts to share and schedule. Promotion is a lot of work, so you'll want some tools to help with that. Note: Don't forget that you can't JUST promote. You have to engage with people as well! Read the previous post in this series for ideas.  So what tools can help you get followers on social media through content sharing? My favorite tools to share quality content- Quuu - (Facebook & Twitter) This app will generate and autopost relevant content to your Twitter or Facebook feeds for you. Like most apps, you can use some features with the free version and then upgrade. I honestly don't LOVE pushing out content that I haven't seen first. But they have a great vetting process for the posts that they take, so you will get great content! Quuu Promote - This is a paid part of Quuu where you can submit posts to go in the Quuu feed. I've seen really great results from putting my posts in here. This means that when other people sign up for Quuu and autopost links, YOUR links go in the pool to be shared on a particular topic. This has resulted in a good amount of traffic and also shown me what content is working well. Check out these two posts, both about email marketing. (For reference, another promoted post I did had 17 clicks from only 80 shares, as compared to the 300-something shares for only 8 clicks.) They don't accept posts automatically, but look through each. Promo Republic - I love this social sharing tool because it comes with templates and stock photos that you can edit (think: Canva), but you don't have to LEAVE the platform to share them. Instead, you create them right there, write your text for a post, then choose to share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram (reminder, not autoschedule, since Insta doesn't allow that). They share trends that may help you come up with post ideas and you can create a queue of content that will post at optimal times. Get this on AppSumo for a limited time with my referral code (that gives me credit at no extra cost to you) HERE.  Tailwind - I love this app for Pinterest! (It also does Instagram, but I don't use it for that.) It has one of the easiest scheduling dashboards I've used. You can click a button to shuffle them all, choose the best time slots you want per day, how many shares per day, and even join tribes of other Pinterest users to promote each other's content. If you use my affiliate link, you'll get a free month to try it out! Learn how to use tribes and where to find them Hootsuite - I have been using Hootsuite maybe longer than any other social tool! It's very similar to Buffer, which a lot of people like, but because I have never seen a reason to switch! Choose which one works for you. You can manage up to three accounts with Hootsuite's free plan, including Facebook (page, group, or profile), LinkedIn, and Twitter. I create Twitter lists within Hootsuite and then can easily go in and schedule content on a weekly basis. (Though I've been HORRIBLE about this lately.) It clears the clutter when you just want to pop in and see what's going on over on Twitter. This makes it easier to get in, engage and schedule, then get out without getting lost. How to Use Twitter in 15 Minutes a Day Iconosquare - Iconosquare is NOT a social scheduling platform and is strictly for Instagram. But it's a really helpful tool to manage your followers and to see what content people engage with so that you can create more of the same. You can even track details like which hashtags performed well for you. As with most tools, you can get more when you pay. Social Jukebox - This is a great tool to create a content library (or "jukebox") of evergreen content that get shared again and again over time.  RecurPost - Similar to Social Jukebox, this tool will let you schedule posts to share again and again. If you don't want to pay for Edgar or SmarterQueue, you can use these two together to get the max number of posts without paying.  PRO TIP: Remember to share your own posts with as much gusto and passion as you share other people's posts. This tip comes by way of Paula Rollo of Beauty Through Imperfection and her Facebook Group, Actionable Blogging Tips. HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS THROUGH FOLLOW FOR FOLLOW I know that in the past year, the idea of getting followers by following people brings out the eye rolls. Especially on Instagram, people talk about getting 300 new followers in a day, then losing 294 two days later. (True story.) That's a LOT of people doing it wrong.   The BEST way to follow people to get followers on Instagram and Twitter is to follow people you are actually interested in, interact with them in a way that isn't smarmy (ex: DON'T follow, then tweet at them telling them you followed and asking them to follow back), and then in a few weeks or month, unfollow the people who aren't following you back UNLESS they are stellar content creators and you want to keep following.  Give this practice a little more of a personal touch and a little more time to see it actually work for you. A Note on Facebook I have not mentioned much about growing a Facebook page here. There are a few reasons for this. First, this can be one of the harder platforms to grow. Because of the way the Facebook algorithm works, people often won't see your content. Even huge pages have very little reach on posts. I'll talk more about this in a separate post, because it's a HUGE topic. HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS...SPARINGLY Facebook groups - Many blogger Facebook groups have threads on a weekly or daily basis where you can link to your social profiles and then follow everyone and have them follow you. You really want TARGETED followers, so these don't always work well. But depending on your goals or while you're trying to get past that social proof number, this may really help.  Giveaways - You can definitely grow quickly and with big results using giveaways. But you are more than likely going to end up with people who don't care about you or your content. Particularly if you are giving away money or a gift card to a store. Try to be more targeted to your audience and give a great prize, but one that is specific to writers or moms or your audience.  Ads - You can run Facebook ads to get likes for your page, but this is something I would do sparingly. Facebook seems to drop your reach right after you pay for things to make you think you NEED to pay for things. So, realize this is an option in the ads manager, but don't rely on this.  Remember the Context When You Are Trying to Get Followers! If you are trying to get more followers on social media, don't forget your overall purpose. Think of the kinds of followers you really want and the long-term goals.  Consider all these tips in conjunction with the reasons your social media isn't growing, particularly thinking about the idea that you need to be SOCIAL.  What are YOUR tips for getting more followers on social media? Share in the comments!

Welcome to episode 5 of ShareWorthy, our snackable and shareable content and influencer marketing podcast. In this episode, we speak with Paula Rollo, a mom, blogger, influencer and author. We asked Paula about how she got started in her career as an influencer, the most obscure pitches she's received from brands, the pressure from brands to not disclose her posts, and why you should never click the links in the comments section. Tune in and Champion The Creators. Request a Demo: https://izea.com Subscribe to our blog: https://izea.com/blog/ Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/izeainc/ Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/izea

Learn how to go on your own journey and not let others or tactics get in your own way! Join us for Blogger Summer Camp nicoleculverblog.com/money Click to view: show page on Awesound

With a crowded internet filled with blogs and podcasts and websites to browse, it can be really difficult to stand out. Today on the podcast I'm bringing you tips for building traffic! I'm also going to share why I don't think traffic is the bee's knees (as in, my main goal is NOT to build traffic).  As a quick note, I am spending a whole MONTH talking about traffic in my paid membership community. We'll have exclusive interviews and resources and a guide to traffic. If you want to see what this exclusive community and training is all about, you can try your first month for $1! You'll have access to hours of video trainings and join our private Facebook group, plus get weekly email check-ins from me. Check the Create If Community Membership!   Tips for Building Traffic When we talk about traffic, we are talking about how many visitors you have on your blog, usually measured monthly. There is a difference between pageviews and unique monthly views, but for now, I'm talking about pageviews.  (If you REALLY want to know, pageviews are the number of times your site literally loaded and unique users separates out multiple visits from the same people, so you'll get a more accurate number of how many different people are reading your stuff. Sessions are kind of in-between-- the same user could have two different sessions and view six total pages, resulting in two sessions, one user, and six pagviews. Read this great breakdown here!)  Traffic from 2007 to 2017 In the old days of blogging, you wrote blog posts and people came. I like to think of this as Field of Dreams blogging: if you blog it, they will come. When I started in 2007, that's how it worked. People found me. I didn't seek them out, and I certainly didn't promote my blog. Social media wasn't really used for self-promotion back then. 2017 is a different world. If you write a blog post, hit publish, and do nothing else, chances are that maybe like 10 people might read your post. No one will just "find" it (unless you do a great job with SEO). Few people will share it (unless you first share it yourself). These days, you have to WORK to get traffic. Tips for Building Traffic in 2017 There are two main ways that you can build traffic to your site.  Get found by utilizing SEO best practices. This means optimizing your post with keywords so that search engines like Google or Bing and even platforms like Pinterest (which is really a visual search engine) will suggest your post. (Pinterest is considered social media, but I'll get into why I put it in this category. Keep reading.) Bring people to you by promoting on social media. This means actually pushing your link out over social media so that other people will see it, click to read, and maybe even share. The best idea is to use a combination of these two methods. When you have your SEO working for you, after the initial setup, you can expect to have traffic continue, no matter what you do. It's passive, long-term traffic. (Not to say that you shouldn't do updates or that you can't strengthen your game.)  Combine great SEO with promotions on social media, where you will see short-term spikes of traffic. It's great to diversify your traffic sources so that you can have a more secure foundation in case something major shifts or an algorithm kills off your traffic.  How can you grow the traffic you currently have? In theory, this is simple. Choose #1 & #2 (or, ideally, both) and work on your game. In practice, this is obviously not as easy as it sounds. SEO is more of a long game, which means that you can put things in place now and hopefully see some increases in the coming months. But the benefit is that after you set up SEO, it keeps going. Social media is more of a short game that will result in temporary traffic spikes. I've had a post go "viral" on Facebook that resulted in 50k pageviews in a few days. But then it dropped to 2k and then 500 and then...nothing. Social media is something you need to do once and then do again and then do again. In fact, a lot of people will say that you should spend 20% creating content and 80% PROMOTING. Yikes. But what is the purpose of building traffic?  If you are building an ads-based monetization strategy, straight-up traffic is what you want. Numbers = $$$. But it takes a LOT of traffic to make a significant impact. For reference, one of my sites gets between 10k-20k pageviews per month and I get about $200 or less in ads revenue. Traffic is fragile. So if you are building on straight traffic and straight ads-based revenue, you are building something delicate. One algorithm change and everything shatters. So it's important to think about how to capture traffic and what you want those visitor so DO on your site. My biggest recommendation is (surprise, surprise): EMAIL. The most permanent way that you can connect is by getting people on your list. Email is also a third, not as often talked area in terms of building traffic.  You also may want them to read more posts, check out your about page, or generally hang out for a while. So you can work on optimizing your site in a way that encourages reading, clicking around, and signing up for your email list. It makes #5 on Neil Patel's great list of ways to build traffic! Make sure as you think about ways to build traffic that you are thinking about WHY. You need a purpose. You want people to DO something. At the least, try to connect in a more permanent way with your readers by getting them on your email list.  Some Practical Tips for Building Traffic This is NOT an exhaustive list, but a few things that have been working for me in 2017. Also! I want to make a big note that in these things that are working, not ALL of them are about building traffic to my site. Many of the things I'm doing are about sending people to a landing page for my email list. So...why am I including them?  The reality is that whether you are asking someone to click to a blog page or a landing page for email, these tips ask people to click through to something. And these tips are working right now to get people clicking. I am simply focusing on my list right now and making that a priority over blog traffic.  Again...WHY? As I mentioned before, traffic is fragile. It can be awesome, and there is something powerful about having millions of pageviews a month. I have friends doing that and they are making more than full-time incomes on their blogs through ads and sponsored posts and other revenue streams. Since my main revenue streams are NOT related to ads or sponsored posts, I utilize my email list primarily to build relationships and offer products and services that fit their needs. Yes, I'd like to build my blog traffic. But it's not my main thing.  Utilize timely or time sensitive things. I did an experiment with social media over the last month. I scheduled out daily posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn advertising one of my big freebies, Seriously Simple Social. I found that I got less than 50 in total for the month. Meanwhile, I held a webinar and started signups for Summer School, a 6-week free class I'm holding this summer. In just a few days, I more than doubled the other signups. Even though these were events with email signups, you could try something similar by promoting timely blog posts-- like my boredom busters for kids, which I promote more heavily at the beginning of summer.  Post to popular Facebook pages.  I've seen the power of large Facebook pages sharing your posts. See this list of pages who allow or encourage sharing HERE. Basically, you can post on their page wall, where the post isn't super visible to regular visitors, but the page owner will see it. If it's a good fit, they will share it themselves on their page so it IS visible. When I had that 50k pageviews in a few days, it was from several large pages sharing my post.  Post with GREAT DESCRIPTIONS to Facebook group share threads. If you are a member of 1 million Facebook groups like I am, you'll know that there is usually a no-promo policy. This keeps everyone in the group from posting their blog links 100 times a day. (As a group owner, trust me that I delete a billion of these every day.) There is often a thread once a week where you can share your links. Many people miss this opportunity by just literally pasting a link in that thread. The people who see the most engagement and clicks are those who put a description and actually talk about their link and give a mini pitch.  Get excited about your own content. This is a tip from Paula Rollo of Beauty Through Imperfection. (She shared it in her Quick Blog Tips Group, which you should join!) She pointed out that often when we promote other content, we gush and give a great testimonial for why people should read. Then, for our own content, we say something like "Read my latest post." We can tell people our content is great without being smarmy. I know it's often hard to talk nicely about ourselves and it can feel...off. But if you believe in your own content (and you should), then give people a reason to read!  There are TONS more tips for building traffic, but these are a few specific actions that are helping me see results!  Want to up your blogging game this summer? Join me for Summer School! You can choose to focus on SEO, Blogging, or Building Your List (or all three!) after you register. You don't want to miss these classes, which start on June 15!