#270: The Top Secret Way to Create Digital Products

One of the most popular ways to make money online as a blogger is by selling digital downloads like ebooks, planners, or printables.

But what are the secrets for doing this with ease? I had the pleasure of interviewing digital product coach, Cait Blakley, for the podcast. She is a successful digital product creator, teacher, and entrepreneur.

Cait has built a thriving business selling digital product templates to bloggers so they can personalize her templates for their niches, and sell them themselves. This mean no starting from scratch creating products.

Whether you’re already selling digital products or just starting out, you won’t want to miss these valuable insights and hacks from someone who has been there and done it successfully.

Show Notes:

• MiloTreeCart
• Catch My Party
• MiloTree Pop-Up App
• Cait Blakley
• Personality Quiz: What Digital Product Should I Create?
• Join My Blogger Genius Email List
• Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
• MiloTreeCart Affiliate Program
• All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes

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Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie, I am so happy you are here joining me. Just a little background about me, my husband and I started Catch My Party, our first site in 2009.

Jillian Leslie 0:28
And we’ve grown it into the largest party ideas site on the web. In fact, if you need party ideas, inspiration, printables DIYs, head over there.

Jillian Leslie 0:37
Then we built our pop-up app MiloTree which you can install on your blog to grow your social media followers and email subscribers. And most recently, we have launched MiloTreeCart, which is the easiest way for you bloggers and creators to sell digital products.

Jillian Leslie 0:57
In my last episode, I shared that I was watching what people were selling in MiloTreeCart. And I just wanted to say that I just looked again, and I noticed many of you are starting to offer one-on-one coaching. If you have something to teach, rolling out hour long coaching sessions is a great way to get paid for what you know.

Jillian Leslie 1:22
I wanted to share how much people were charging for their coaching sessions. One person is charging $45 for an hour of coaching. And we’ve got $70, $95, $120, $150, $250 and one person is charging $997 for one session of coaching. I’m going to be doing a podcast episode about pricing.

Jillian Leslie 1:55
I just wanted to tell you that it is really okay to charge what you’re worth. So, let that sink in marinate on that and see if this might be something you can offer in your business.

Jillian Leslie 2:11
For today’s episode, I have Cait Blakley on the podcast, and she is a digital product coach. Plus, she creates templates of digital products that she sells to bloggers and online entrepreneurs that they can then personalize and sell to their audiences. She goes into a big explanation about this.

Jillian Leslie 2:35
Personally, I think it’s pretty genius. And for you, if you’ve already started, if you’ve got your business off the ground, but you are ready to include digital downloads like planners, calendars, things like that. This is the episode for you. It is so much easier to get started than you could even imagine.

Jillian Leslie 2:59
So, without further delay, here is my interview with Cait Blakley.

Jillian Leslie 3:05
Cait, welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast.

Cait Blakley 3:09
Jillian, thank you so much for having me today. I am so excited to be here. I have checked out your podcast and it’s amazing. Thank you for inviting me.

Jillian Leslie 3:18
Oh, well, thank you for agreeing to come on. You mentioned something before I press record that I want to explore with you. You said this term messy action. And then by the way, we’ll get into your history, but it just is right there on my brain. Please explain messy action.

Cait Blakley 3:41
Oh, we can talk about both because my history is embedded with messy action. Messy action is all about just doing something before you know everything before you feel ready and see what happens. It’s all about collecting data and just testing the results of something before you feel ready, because oftentimes will never ever feel ready.

Cait Blakley 4:03
And I have friends who had business ideas, when I started my business, we had a business idea together. They’re still thinking about things, but not me. I took action to begin with. And so, I’m still tweaking things, but I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars while doing that. And that’s what I recommend for everybody is just to just get started.

Jillian Leslie 4:22
That’s so speaks to me because people listen to my podcast know I talk about B- work, which is messy work. It’s above average, by the way think about it B- it’s above average, which is what I’m saying. But it’s doable, and it is good, not great. And I say go be a little bit embarrassed.

Cait Blakley 4:42
And it’s funny that you say B-, because that’s kind of looking at a scale like everyone’s looking at the same scale. But the truth is, our audiences don’t really know what we’re doing whatever we put out to them as the authority.

Cait Blakley 4:55
They’re, they’re going to either like or be impressed with or they’re just going to say, “Oh, that’s not for me,” they’re probably not saying that’s an A+, it’s got to stick.

Jillian Leslie 5:04
Yes, absolutely. It’s like from your inside looking out or from outside looking in, and you’re about outside looking in. I’m thinking about the insecure overachiever that I am, who always was like, I have to get the A and how paralyzing that was.

Cait Blakley 5:21
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve always been a student who was like, how can I easily get the passing grade and still spend my time doing whatever I want the rest of the time?

Jillian Leslie 5:32
I love that.

Cait Blakley 5:33
That’s how I started my business. I was like, how can I get these people something that they can use; something that they’re going to love without me stressing about it too much without me putting all my time into it.

Starting a Business That is Supportive of your Life

Cait Blakley 5:34
I don’t know if you know this about me, Jillian, I’m big on having a business that is supportive of your life and not necessarily the other way around. So, I limit my business hours to 10 a week for most of the time. And so, I knew I didn’t want to create something that was going to have me working 40 or 50 hours a week.

Cait Blakley 5:49
You hear those quotes that are like, “Entrepreneurs are the only people in the world who won’t work 40 hours for someone else and they work 80 hours for themselves.” I was like, “No, that is not the dream. That is not what I’m out here to do.”

Cait Blakley 5:49
Will you share that? How did you get started? What do you do for my audience who doesn’t know you?

Cait Blakley 6:29
I should tell them what I do. As a digital products coach, I mostly help bloggers sell printables on their sites, I am the host of a membership called Printables and More Club, where I give my bloggers 15 Done For You PLR templates every month, things like journals, planners, sheets, challengers, that kind of thing.

Cait Blakley 6:55
And then they can take it and customize it for their audience, or they can sell it as is because some of my clients have like a lifestyle blog where they talk about a lot of topics and they can just sell, they can look at what they have, and see where they can fit my things in for themselves.

Cait Blakley 7:11
And so, my goal is to teach bloggers that you don’t have to play by someone else’s rules. You don’t have to do your sponsor posts if you don’t want to, you don’t have to do exactly what the ad agency says and depend on that revenue if you don’t want to. You can create your brand and your business to be what you want, by selling your own products.

Jillian Leslie 7:35
We are so like-minded when it comes to this. Give me an example. Let’s say I am a lifestyle blogger and I blog about my kids, travel, food, decor, and I join your membership. And explain please what PLR is.

What is PLR?

Cait Blakley 7:56
Oh, yes, of course I will. PLR stands for Private Label Rights. And it’s the worst name ever for content that is already done and you take it and tweak it and make it your own.

Jillian Leslie 8:08
So, I get it from you. And I now own the rights to this?

Cait Blakley 8:12
You own the rights to recreate from it and say I have created this and sell it to your audience or put it in front of your audience as your content. You don’t own the rights in that you can’t turn around and sell it as I sell it to other bloggers to sell again, like I am to you.

Cait Blakley 8:28
So otherwise, that’s why they call it Private Label Rights is that you got like a one-time content license for yourself.

Jillian Leslie 8:39
Tell me then I’m this lifestyle blogger. And you’re going to give me the menu and then how would I think about selling it? I’m just a blogger. I’ve never sold anything before.

Cait Blakley 8:54
I’m glad we can talk about this, because this is what I talk about all the time. What you want to do is look at your content. Think of it like a content upgrade. If I’m looking at this post, and it’s about traveling to pumpkin patches, what downloads, can I sell them to go with this.

Cait Blakley 9:11
A lot of you are already doing this and giving them away for free. And you don’t always have to give everything away for free. So, let’s say you look at the post and you think okay, in this post, what will be perfect is a scavenger hunt for pumpkin patches.

Cait Blakley 9:27
A little planner for your day, like what activities are you going to decide that you’ll be doing because a lot of those they pick and choose maybe a printable when they can make their own schedule.

Cait Blakley 9:40
Maybe there are some printables that they can print out and they can take around and take photos with them. Like maybe a little pumpkin. You have to be creative just like you already are when you’re writing your blog posts, but just think what is something that they could also use, in addition to this that they can download and print out?

Why You Should Add Digital Products to Every Blog Post You Write

Jillian Leslie 10:00
Got it. And by the way, this speaks to how I think about it. Your blog posts are not just blog posts, your blog posts are sales pages, and it could be you are selling people to get on your list. But there’s a goal. There should be, I think, a goal to every blog post rather than I’m just providing information.

Jillian Leslie 10:23
So it is, I’m also selling, I’m selling this affiliate product, I am driving traffic to a sponsor, but thinking about what is the Meta goal of the blog post? The blog post is not just making you say, ad revenue, but how else can you monetize that post. This seems perfect.

Jillian Leslie 10:42
I’ve got this blog post, it provides a lot of value, I’m going to make money, because let’s say I’m running ads. But now what you’re telling me is, I can have these other printables, and things that I can sell so that when somebody goes, oh, I need this $5 download, this is a no brainer, because it totally relates to the content that I’m creating.

Cait Blakley 11:06
Absolutely. And it also solidifies a relationship with their audience, I want you to think Jillian, about a time you’d been to a website and you found something you could download and actually print out and hold in your hands and use.

Cait Blakley 11:20
Did you feel more connected to that blogger to that website than a website where you just click over and get a recipe and then leave?

Jillian Leslie 11:29
And by the way, if in fact, I’m buying something from a blogger, chances are, I’m going to end up on that person’s email list. If you provide value for me, because I go now to the pumpkin patch. And I’ve got this cute printable that my kid can hold up, you’ve made my experience much richer, and you’ve put it IRL into my real life.

Cait Blakley 11:56
Totally. And so many bloggers I work with have an old school mindset. They think that they don’t have a buying audience, or no one wants to buy from them.

Everyone Is Buying Online Today

Cait Blakley 12:04
I’ll tell you the truth in 2023 everyone is buying online, my grandmother is buying online, my 11-year-old buys things online. There are people who are not purchasing on the internet, what we’ve got to do is show them why what we have is worth trading dollars for.

Cait Blakley 12:21
We just have to shift our thought process about what our audience wants from us. And realize that people love spending money on good experiences and on things that make their life easier and things that make their life better. We don’t have to be afraid to sell to them. selling to them can be a service.

Jillian Leslie 12:42
Could you talk about that? Because I also run into this with people that I coach and people who buy MiloTreeCart and have this sense. People will say, I bought MiloTreeCart. So, I can sell some stuff. Because other stuff I need to give away for free. And I say why? And then they go because it warms them up?

Jillian Leslie 13:08
And I said no. It trains them to think that what you do is provide stuff for free versus saying, “Oh, Jillian does such great content that’s so valuable. I do need to pay for this.” And then I value it more.

Cait Blakley 13:23
Absolutely. I think that when someone comes on your site and immediately is offered something paid, they start thinking of your site as a different kind of website than just like a blog where they can read information. I’m not going to say you don’t need opt-ins. You do. You need something for free. Yes.

Cait Blakley 13:47
Something my clients hit is, I know you know what a tripwire is Jillian, I don’t know if your audience does. What I teach is to give people your opt-in and then immediately sell them something larger.

What Is a Tripwire?

Jillian Leslie 13:59
Can we stop for one second so I can explain this. As soon as somebody gives you their email address. You know this, you end up on a thank you page that says thanks for signing up. Well, a tripwire lives on that page.

Jillian Leslie 14:13
At the top, it might say thanks for signing up, hey, and boom, you offer something and the reason why I think this is so valuable is because everybody sees that page.

Cait Blakley 14:24
Absolutely. And it solidifies how they think of your brand. And I will say a properly set up tripwire is also going to make you money. When you know your product is right and your sales page is right and you have the right customer on the page. You’re going to get paid on that page, even though they don’t know who you are yet.

Jillian Leslie 14:41
Can you some of the best examples of say a freebie where people then will opt in and then what kind of product does the best on the tripwire page?

Cait Blakley 14:54
Oh my gosh, I could talk about this all day. First of all, my pet peeve is coaches who are like, you can’t sell this on a tripwire. And you can’t sell that on a tripwire. The only thing I know of that you cannot sell on a tripwire is a high-ticket offer.

Cait Blakley 15:08
So, if it’s more than $500 or $1,000, don’t try to sell it on a tripwire. But most of our people are not trying to sell those things anyway, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 15:16
What would you say though the sweet spot is?

Cait Blakley 15:19
I have opinions. Here is my method that I love for you. Because I find that it converts as much for a $20 product as it does for a 99 cent product. A lot of my clients think, they have to go from free to a really cheap product, that is not the case, you have to explain the value on the page.

Cait Blakley 15:43
What I like to offer on a tripwire is a bundle of smaller pieces, it’s easy for us to put together a bundle, because most of us have a lot of little printables or other downloadables laying around. And when we put them in a bundle.

Cait Blakley 15:58
I have one client who puts I think it was 50 different holidays throughout the year games in one pack. We sold it for $20. And she had a 2% conversion rate, which is about normal on a tripwire that setup well.

Jillian Leslie 16:14
So, 2% means for every 100 people who come two are going to buy. And this is true with virtually all of these things. The more traffic you have, the more sales you have, because there usually is about a 2% conversion rate.

If You Have an Audience, You Need to Be Sell to Them

Cait Blakley 16:30
Exactly. That’s why it’s so great for bloggers to be able to sell printables and smaller downloads is because you guys already have the audience, you already have the traffic. That is where most people who are learning to sell things get caught up is they don’t drive the traffic and they quit. But bloggers already have the traffic.

Jillian Leslie 16:48
So, you’re saying she might offer let’s say an Easter something as an opt-in for free. But then so does the opt-in need to tie in with the tripwire?

Cait Blakley 17:05
Absolutely, because you want the person who is getting that opt-in, you want them to be someone who was already pre-qualified but they might want this bigger product.

Jillian Leslie 17:14
So, maybe like an Easter game for Easter, give that as the opt-in and then go, “He guys, you’ve already liked this, what about for July 4th, and Mother’s Day and you’ve got all the games you’re ever going to need?”

Cait Blakley 17:31
Exactly. You have this one game that they already need, they need it for their classroom, their Sunday school class, maybe their own kids, whatever it is, they need that thing, why not offer them a lot more of that same thing. You need this for Easter. Don’t you need it for the whole year?

Cait Blakley 17:48
And $20 is a price I love for you guys to get your bundles at because you’re going to see revenue points that make a difference in your business. And $20 if you provide the proper value is actually not a lot for our customers to be spending online in 2023.

Cait Blakley 18:07
In fact, I know a lot of people are talking about how inflation makes them want to charge less. But I’m seeing that people are willing to pay more for products now that other things cost more because their perception of value has shifted.

Download Jillian’s Digital Product Personality Quiz

Advertisement 18:24
I want to take a short break because I keep getting this question, what kind of digital product do you think will sell. What I’d love you to do is to get my digital product personality quiz. But not just for the quiz which will outline based on who you are; what you should be selling but the other piece to this is what triggers people to buy.

Advertisement 18:49
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Advertisement 19:11
And really look at these buying triggers tapping into one of these psychological needs moves your product from a “nice to have” to a “must have” and it’s the must have products that people purchase. And now back to the show.

Jillian Leslie 19:31
What I hear you saying is that consistency in storytelling matters. For example, you started with I’ve got a blog post about pumpkin patches. So, I’m not going to sell you stuff for Princess birthdays on the Pumpkin Patch page.

Jillian Leslie 19:48
I’m going to serve up exactly the next thing you need so that it’s a no brainer or as you say your tripwire or your opt-in and your tripwire need to be connected. So, I’m going to sell you this Easter game, I’m not going to sell you $400 coaching off of the Easter game.

Cait Blakley 20:09
That’s exactly right, Jillian. And I was just in my mastermind with my bloggers that do these things for a living. And we actually, were just setting up our funnels this week. So, I have a story to share with your audience about it. And it sounds really complicated and scary.

Cait Blakley 20:28
First, you have to write the blog post. And I know you guys are already like, I’ve got to SEO my blog post and get my photos, right. And this blog post feels like a big thing to be doing. And then now I had to put a product in it. And now I have to have an upsell for it. That sounds like a lot.

Use Messy Action in Your Business and Build it Piece by Piece

Cait Blakley 20:41
This is where we come back to messy action. Just get your opt-in on the page for now, if that’s all you can do for now. And when you come back later, then you can put the tripwire on it. Just do what you can now. Don’t feel like you have to wait to have this huge thing to do all at once later. Little pieces now make a difference. Everything adds up.

Jillian Leslie 21:00
I think the thing is that we look at successful bloggers and think it happened overnight. And the truth is you are tweaking and learning. And we talked about this before I press record about it’s all about learning. So, you put the pumpkin patch schedule or let’s say sign that your kid can hold. And that does well. And that’s an easy test.

Jillian Leslie 21:26
Then you go wait a second, I’ve got this other post for Christmas, hey, maybe I can make a similar sign for Christmas. And that’s cool for the mom, because she’ll have these consistent photos of these cute things that her baby can hold. And so, you learn from the one post to go, I’ll do this on the second post and see if this works.

Jillian Leslie 21:49
And I would say that’s the way to build your business. Not, “Oh my God, I’ve got the pumpkin patch sign. But then I’ve got to have the tripwire and I haven’t even tested whether this works.” I find this that people will go, “Oh my God, I need to buy all this expensive technology to just try out my one printable my one download.”

Jillian Leslie 22:09
And I go, “Don’t do that. Please start small and be scrappy about it be nimble about it and build it that way.”

How We Set Up Our Catch My Party Upsells

Cait Blakley 22:20
Absolutely, back to where we’re talking it feels like this big looming thing to get started. But if you can break it down into smaller steps for yourself, it doesn’t feel so scary. You have to have a process or things will become overwhelming.

Jillian Leslie 22:42
Absolutely. So, for Catch My Party, what we do, we give away a lot of party printables. And what we figured out by casting and I think we started with like Minecraft or something is I will give you lots of free printables.

Jillian Leslie 22:56
And all you do is give me your email address. And then we do have a tripwire where I say, “Hey, for $7 you’re going to get all these others.” I know that you’ve already given me your email address, and I know you want Minecraft printables. Here you want the invitations, I keep the more special pieces for purchase. And by the way it worked.

Jillian Leslie 23:21
So, guess what we did, we rolled it out the exact same thing for Princess. And now I think we probably have 20 different versions of this exact same funnel very simple. But it was proof of concept at the beginning. And then now it’s just very easy to copy and paste.

Cait Blakley 23:43
Yes, absolutely. And I love how you’ve tested it to see what worked what they love. Something I like to add or like to have my clients add after they’ve gotten to where you are is a subscription for those types of things.

Cait Blakley 23:57
So, you have people who are coming to the site, and you know that it’s converting that they want these more special pieces, you can take all of what you have, even if it’s for sale somewhere else, even if it’s free somewhere else, and put it inside of a vault and have them paid monthly for it.

Cait Blakley 24:11
I have a client we started her membership; she calls it a membership. It’s really a subscription because it’s just the printables no community or anything. She started it in 2020 when I open Printables and More. And now it makes her $2,500 a month.

Cait Blakley 24:26
All she does is take the printables on her site that are already there, put them into the vault. And then also whatever I give her and Printables and More she adds every month.

Jillian Leslie 24:35
Wow. Here’s the thing, all of those printables are also for free on her site?

People Will Pay for Ease of Use Even if You Give Your Printables Away for Free

Jillian Leslie 24:41
That’s the thing people it blows their minds that they say to me, “But wait a minute, it’s already free on my site,” and I go, “People are paying for the ease of use. I don’t want to go searching through your site. I’m never going to do that. So, if you serve it up to me in an easy to consume way, I’ll pay money for that?”

Cait Blakley 25:03
Absolutely. Something we tend to do is think that all of our customers are the same customer, there are customers who will go through your whole site to get everything for free. Absolutely. But do you think that 2% of the people who are hitting your site would just pay so they didn’t have to deal with it?

Jillian Leslie 25:20
I think that that is something that I think, is hard for many people to fully understand. And I think it’s also the idea that you don’t know my site. I know my site backwards and forwards, I know how to navigate and find all the things, and I’m so comfortable with it that I can’t even believe somebody would pay me for this.

People Value What They Pay For

Jillian Leslie 25:43
But if I can solve a problem for somebody, guess what people will pay. And I am from the belief that we value what we pay for. I do workshops, I do webinars talking about digital products, and ultimately abandon it, I hope you’ll want to buy MiloTreeCart. I charge $10 to come to this.

Jillian Leslie 26:05
And this is like counterintuitive, because most people are like, no, no, I want as many people as possible at these workshops, because who knows? I feel like, I want you to get something out of this. And I know you’ll show up differently if you pay me $10 and by the way, if you buy MiloTreeCart, I’ll happily give you your $10 back.

Jillian Leslie 26:25
It’s like I feel like you show up with skin in the game already. Like wait a minute, I’ve already purchased this. And so, if I can provide you value and that’s it, I feel like chances are you will more likely take action just by putting down $10.

Jillian Leslie 26:44
Remember you sign up and you go, yeah, but I’m going to get the replay. And then the email comes with the replay and I never watch it.

Jillian Leslie 26:54
I want to incentivize you to watch it even if you don’t buy MiloTreeCart. But hopefully your attention will be more focused. And then you’ll start to think how can I take action in my business?

Cait Blakley 27:10
It’s so true, Jillian, but it goes back to value, they understand that it has more value because they exchange something for it, even if it’s just $10. If it’s free, they don’t value it the same. But if you have it for sale, and you can show what it’s worth, why it’s worth something to them, it makes a difference.

Jillian Leslie 27:26
For bloggers, where do you see them have the most success with the different PLR that you offer? Is there a certain product? If I’m listening to this podcast and I’m thinking do I want to start selling something. Where do you recommend I start.

Advice: Start By Selling a Planner

Cait Blakley 27:41
The very first thing that I feel like anyone can sell is a planner. No matter what walk of life people are in, they need a planner for what they’re doing. And even if they don’t print it out and use it, buying a planner immediately makes you feel more organized.

Cait Blakley 27:58
If you’re a travel blogger, they need a trip planner. If you’re a mom, you need a meal planner. If you are homeschooling you need a planner for your curriculum. If you’re a teacher, you need a planner for your curriculum. I don’t think that there is anyone out there who couldn’t use a planner. Whatever audience you have, you can sell at least a planner.

Cait Blakley 28:18
I also love journals. I love sheets that have a cheat sheet for doing an activity. One that I know that’s really popular that my friend sells a lot of is she brews her own beer, and she has a checklist for brewing your beer. And she sells a ton of those. So, anyone can sell printables.

Jillian Leslie 28:38
Do I need to have any sort of design skills like you’re a designer, and I was telling you offline, I’m not a designer, and I get very insecure about my own design skills. So, do I need to have design skills to be selling printables?

Cait Blakley 28:57
You absolutely don’t. When I started making printables in 2017, my first one took me two weeks to make. And I made it in Microsoft Excel because you couldn’t make printables in Canva back then the Tech has become so much more simple. And now there are a lot of templates available.

Cait Blakley 29:18
For instance, in Printables and More Club I give you like a done for you printable the checklist might be for making beer. But if you’re not a blogger who talks about beer on your website, that’s not going to benefit you.

Cait Blakley 29:31
You can quickly go in and change it to your colors and make it a checklist for doing a Cricut project or for baking a certain kind of bread and people can print that out and keep it in their kitchen. The spacing, the design is just really really easy if you go in and tweak it to make it your own. You don’t have to be a designer in 2023 to sell printables.

Jillian Leslie 29:54
I would say with ChatGPT, with Canva and for let’s say, wanting to do some sort of membership or paid workshop with Zoom, you’ve got everything. If you are not starting to sell digital products to your audience, I think you’re missing out on a big opportunity. And can we talk about that?

Jillian Leslie 30:20
I feel like we mentioned it before I press record, again, you could tell we had a very in-depth talk beforehand. But we were talking about how bloggers are they need to build their businesses with potentially a bunch of different income streams, but a lot of them are fragile.

If You Sell to Your Audience You Own That Relationship

Jillian Leslie 30:42
And I think you and I were talking about selling directly to your audience or something a little more substantial about that of owning that relationship, of being able to say trust me buy from me, and chances are people will buy from you over and over again. Whereas it’s not just oh, showing up in an algorithm.

Cait Blakley 31:02
Exactly. And it also allows bloggers to show up more authentically. One of my clients, Jen, who joined Printables and More last year, she had only done sponsored work. And she got to the point where she was just like, I’m so sick of writing blog posts for just sponsored work, it just was not aligned for her. It wasn’t good for her spirit.

Cait Blakley 31:21
Her business was making her unhappy, which if you’re going to design a business, and put all that work into it, make it something you love, because anything is possible, anything is available to you. So, don’t do something you hate.

Cait Blakley 31:32
She came into Printables and More, and she set up her sales funnel, she made a bundle, she opened a shop, she was able to replace her sponsored writing income with printables. And she owned them and she got to be on her own schedule and sell how she wanted things that she loved.

Jillian Leslie 31:49
And I know having done a ton of sponsored content. Sometimes it’s a product that you don’t necessarily like, but it’s hard, you’re not going to write that in the post. And so, you can feel like you’re shilling for stuff that you might not necessarily believe in.

Jillian Leslie 32:07
I personally find, when you sell something that you value that you think is really going to help somebody, it feels good.

Cait Blakley 32:16
It makes your business fun. It makes it more like a hobby than something that you have to trudge through like a job.

Jillian Leslie 32:23
Absolutely. I feel like it is an income. And by the way, the sky is the limit, when you start selling digital products, one, you can scale them, because you’re not having to be in the back room, packing boxes and things like that, you make it once and you can sell it.

Jillian Leslie 32:45
There’s no difference between selling it 10 times and selling it a million times. And that’s one of the beauties of digital products.

Jillian Leslie 32:54
And two, it’s easy to create more and try new things and iterate and figure out what’s connecting like us figuring out that the Minecraft, that we could sell this upsell, and it worked. And then it’s like, Ooh, can we just continue to roll this out?

Cait Blakley 33:12
Absolutely. And I love how you talk about that. It’s scalable, because so many times I have clients in the past who would jump into doing service work or other kinds of things that pay out right away. They’re trying to make their blog work. They’re trying to make this income.

Cait Blakley 33:30
And I think we all know if you’ve been there that time between starting to work and not making anything you’re just like this the whole time, like Oh, holding on so tight, and just feeling like is this going to work and have a lot of anxiety and tension.

Cait Blakley 33:42
And I see a lot of people jump ship and decide this is not worth my time before letting the process go, getting enough people through your funnel or enough people in your shop. So, you can see if your products actually sell and then once you see if they sell or if they don’t sell tweaking them until they do.

Jillian Leslie 34:01
Can we talk about just very briefly. How do you recommend somebody sell in a blog post?

How to Sell a Digital Product in a Blog Post?

Cait Blakley 34:11
Oh, I love this question because I’m actually working on a client with this. For some people, it works just to have an opt- in to the freebie and then they can go to the tripwire that’s the only way they sell.

Cait Blakley 34:23
I think a more effective way if you have traffic that might be used to not buying from you and need a little more nurturing to sell. Just talk about the product a little bit.

Cait Blakley 34:32
Let’s say you’re already blogging about going to a pumpkin patch, maybe you intro with painting a picture of what a lovely Fall Day it’s going to be when they go and how fun it is for the kids to choose their pumpkins and whatever it is.

Cait Blakley 34:45
And then the next thing you can say, I’d recommend doing it further up in the blog post. Introducing the product letting them know this is such a fun thing that goes with that. You can use it these ways and actually talk about the product and improving the experience versus just having an opt-in form and hoping people will click over because it’s related.

Jillian Leslie 35:05
That’s what I would say too. And again, I think that because selling can feel uncomfortable, a lot of times people put it way at the bottom of the post just like, hey, and I would say how can you make it about the benefit of enriching the experience?

Cait Blakley 35:25
Absolutely. And I think putting it at the bottom of the page is a throwback. When I first started blogging, I know they used to tell us have a call-to-action at the end. And so, we always think that that’s where we sell but the truth is, the selling is part of the storytelling of the whole post.

Jillian Leslie 35:42
Yes, and again, it speaks to my thing of every blog post is a sales page. Hopefully you think this way when you’re creating the sales page, that you’ve got something you want to inspire your audience to do.

Cait Blakley 35:59
And there again, the shift of selling is serving. You made them something nice. They like to buy things they already go to the store, buy things that they love, they go shopping at the mall, buy things they love, now you have something else they can love.

Jillian Leslie 36:11
I think that’s powerful. Cait, please, if people have questions about what you do, what you offer about selling printables, digital downloads, that kind of thing. How can they reach out to you and learn more?

Cait Blakley 36:30
I’m always available on Instagram via DMs and you can find me @the.cait.Blakley and it spelled kind of funny. Cait is C-A-I-T and Blakley is B-L-A-K-E-L-Y.

Jillian Leslie 36:46
Got it and it’s “the” in front of it.

Cait Blakley 36:49
That’s right the.cait.Blakley.

Jillian Leslie 36:52
Got it. So, if they have any questions about digital products, download, printables that kind of thing. This is the best place.

Cait Blakley 37:00
Yes, they can DM me there, they can follow me there. And I also have a podcast that I share on Instagram as well. So, if they want to look at more things, I’ll have it posted there.

Jillian Leslie 37:10
Awesome. Well, I have to say I love what you do. I love how you are empowering bloggers to grow their businesses. So, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Cait Blakley 37:21
Thank you for having me, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 37:23
I hope you guys liked this episode. For me. What I like is Cait’s perspective on building a business as a blogger, so that you’ve got these funnels that you’ve thought through and you’re selling products that people want to buy, and you’re building a more stable business.

Jillian Leslie 37:40
If selling digital products sounds interesting to you, whether it be coaching, whether it be digital downloads, if you’ve already started your business, but you’re feeling kind of stuck. You’re getting traffic, but it’s not growing like you’d like it to and you feel like you are on a treadmill that you can’t get off book a call with me.

Jillian Leslie 38:01
Go to milotreecart.com/meet and I promise I can get you unstuck. And with a little bit of help, you can turn on a whole new income stream. Yes, I will tell you how MiloTreeCart fits into this but no hard selling.

Jillian Leslie 38:17
This is really about helping you take your business to that next level. Again, go to milotreecart.com/meet because I’d love to meet you and I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes You’ll Like:

• How to Avoid These 10 Digital Product Mistakes with Jillian Leslie
• How to Nail Your Sales Message with Melissa Harstine
• How to Transform Your New Blog into an SEO Powerhouse with Kristi Dosh

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