From Panic to Profit: Turning Google Changes into Blogging Opportunities
Download my free guide here to discover the 6 powerful purchasing triggers that turn your product into a must-have and make people want to buy it. 🚀
In this week’s episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I sat down with seasoned bloggers and hosts of the The Smart Influencer Podcast, Christina Hitchcock and Corinne Schmidt, to discuss effective monetization strategies for bloggers and creators who have been impacted by Google algorithm changes.
Table of Contents
Understanding the Impact of Google Algorithm Changes
Christina Hitchcock’s Experience
Christina Hitchcock shared her observations on the recent shifts in Google’s algorithms. While she hasn’t been directly targeted, she has noticed a decline in traffic as her previously high-ranking content has slipped down the search results. Christina views these changes as an opportunity to pivot and explore new avenues in blogging, emphasizing the importance of adaptability.
Corinne Schmidt’s Perspective
Corinne Schmidt echoed Christina’s sentiments, noting a 25% drop in traffic year-over-year despite her strong keywords remaining intact. As a single mom relying on blogging for income, Corinne expressed the stress of these changes but also highlighted the excitement of exploring new creative avenues. She believes the current environment has leveled the playing field, encouraging bloggers to return to creativity and experimentation.
Show Notes:
- MiloTree
- 6 Purchasing Triggers Download
- The Smart Influencer Podcast
- It’s a Keeper
- Wondermom Wannabe
- The 3 AI Prompts You Need to Create a Freebie Cheatsheet
- Join The Blogger Genius Newsletter
- Personality Quiz: What Digital Product Should I Create?
- Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group
Subscribe to the Blogger Genius Podcast:
Actionable Monetization Strategies
- Growing and Engaging Your Email List
Both Christina and Corinne emphasized the importance of email marketing as a powerful tool for monetization.
Christina’s Approach
Doubling Email List: Christina has doubled her email list in the past year, reaching just under 75,000 subscribers.
Segmentation: She segments her audience based on their interests—recipes or printables—and sends tailored emails accordingly.
Consistent Engagement: Christina emails her list every day, alternating between recipe and printable content, which helps build relationships and drive sales.
Corinne’s Strategy
Printable Opt-Ins: Corinne uses printable opt-ins to grow her email list.
Collaborations: She engages in collaborations with other bloggers to share content and drive traffic, participating in themed collaborations and bundles to reach new audiences.
Leveraging Purchasing Triggers
Use these six purchasing triggers to develop products that resonate with your audience:
- Making Money
- Saving Money
- Saving Time
- Promoting Happiness
- Alleviating Pain
- Raising Social Status
By evaluating products against these triggers, bloggers can enhance their marketing and sales efforts. Jillian suggests using tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm product ideas that align with these categories.
- Exploring New Traffic Sources
Corinne shared her success with push notifications, which allow users to subscribe to updates from her site. Despite her initial skepticism, she found that push notifications significantly increased site visits. This demonstrates the value of exploring different traffic sources to drive engagement. - Utilizing Content Syndication
Christina discussed her experience with MSN’s partner program, which requires consistent publishing to gain approval. Syndicating content through MSN not only drives traffic but also generates ad revenue. Christina highlighted the benefits of using tools that simplify content formatting, such as slideshow galleries. - Testing and Iteration
Both Christina and Corinne stressed the importance of testing various strategies to find what works best. They shared their experiences of trying different approaches, from push notifications to content syndication, and how some methods may not yield immediate results but can pay off over time. - Building Relationships with Subscribers
The speakers emphasized the importance of building relationships with subscribers by providing value through free content and then offering relevant products. Christina mentioned that once someone opts in for a freebie, they are more likely to consider purchasing additional products. - Long-term Strategy
I encouraged bloggers to think beyond immediate sales and consider long-term strategies, such as creating membership programs or subscription services. By addressing ongoing problems faced by their audience, bloggers can develop sustainable income streams. - Overcoming Self-Doubt
The speakers acknowledged that many bloggers struggle with self-doubt regarding the value of their offerings. They encouraged listeners to recognize the worth of their content and to be confident in charging for it. By reframing their mindset, bloggers can better position themselves in the market.
Conclusion
Embrace experimentation and not take failures personally. Monetizing your expertise doesn’t have to be overwhelming; instead, it can be a journey of learning and adaptation. The key takeaway is to start small, test ideas, and leverage community support to find success in the ever-evolving blogging landscape.
Connect with Christina and Corinne through their podcast, The Smart Influencer Podcast, where they share insights and lessons learned from their blogging journeys.
For those interested in the six purchasing triggers discussed in the episode, Jillian offers a free resource available at milotree.com/triggers, encouraging everyone to take the first step toward growing their audience and monetizing their expertise.
This episode serves as a reminder that while the blogging landscape may be changing, there are always new opportunities to explore and strategies to implement for success.
Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:
MiloTree, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products and Grow Your Audience
I also want to introduce you to the MiloTree, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like AI-generated sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support.
With MiloTree, setting up your products takes less than five minutes, and you can start generating income without any hassle. Plus, MiloTree offers unlimited freebies and lead magnets to grow your email list, and social media pop-ups to increase your followers, all in one place. Sign up today and get your first 30 days free to see how easy it is to start selling your own digital products and growing your audience with MiloTree!
Transcript #361: From Panic to Profit: Turning Google Changes into Blogging Opportunities
Jillian Leslie 00:00:04 Hello there and welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. I’m Jillian Leslie, your host and co-founder of MiloTree, the all in one platform that helps bloggers, creators, coaches and entrepreneurs grow their email lists, boost their social media followers, and sell digital products with ease. At MiloTree, we make it simple to monetize your expertise without the tech headache. Whether it’s digital downloads, workshops, memberships, subscriptions, coaching, MiloTree is your partner for turning ideas into income. And the best part? You can try MiloTree for free for 30 days. Just head to milotree.com and see how easy and inexpensive it is to get started. For today’s episode, I am diving into actionable monetization strategies with two of my favorite guests, Christina and Corinne. From the Smart Influencer Podcast, these two seasoned bloggers, with their own separate blogs, share practical tips and strategies that you can implement right now to make money, even without much help from Google. So they’re talking about growing their email list. Combined, these two have over 100,000 email subscribers to offering tripwires and selling digital products.
Jillian Leslie 00:01:32 If you’re ready to grow your business with new ideas, you’re in the right place. So without further ado, here’s my interview with Corinne Schmidt and Christina Hitchcock. Corinne and Christina, welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast.
Corrine Schmidt 00:01:52 It’s great to be here. Thanks for having us.
Jillian Leslie 00:01:54 It’s really fun seeing your faces when you guys popped up on zoom. I’m like, oh my God, I get to hang out with friends. So I so appreciate you coming back. This is your second time on the show and what I love, just even when we were talking before I pressed record, it’s like there’s something to talking to old school bloggers about the journey. And I think this is a time of flux and change, and you’re both of your attitudes are kind of like, been there, done that, seen this before, not necessarily that the issues are exactly the same, but you ride the ups and you ride the downs. So do you mind both of you sharing where your blogs are and how you’re thinking about that? So I will jump in first.
Christina Hitchcock 00:02:44 This is Christina. My site is it is a keeper. Com and I feel like with these recent Google changes I have, you know, I have felt some of the effects of them. While I don’t feel like I was specifically targeted by the updates. I’m going to knock on wood there. I do feel like I had a drop in traffic because of it, because content that was ranking in position one, two and three has moved down, and it’s just not getting the traffic that it was prior to these updates. So, you know, I felt it and I’m continuing to feel it. my attitude though is, you know, we’ve been in this game a long time. We’ve seen lots of changes, lots of things going on in the industry. And I feel like this is just an opportunity to pivot and find what’s working. And it’s kind of like a new frontier for us and going out and trying new things that maybe weren’t an option before.
Jillian Leslie 00:03:45 And Corinne, what about you?
Corrine Schmidt 00:03:46 So, yeah, this is Corinne.
Corrine Schmidt 00:03:48 my sites. Wunderman wannabe. Com. Same thing. I don’t think that, like, I like when I go into Search console. It’s not like, all of a sudden my positions evaporated overnight. in fact, most of my strong keywords are still there. But when I go Google them, like when I go search for them, I might be in position one, but position one is on page two. Like I’ve got all the I, I’ve got the Reddit results, I’ve got a bunch of questions like so like my ranking didn’t change, but my position did, if that makes sense. So yeah, I’m down about 25% across the board, as a result. And so definitely a year ago. So yeah, when I compare year over year, I’m down 25% roughly like it depending on what day I’m checking. And you know what I’m saying that parameters at but pretty much down 25%. and like that’s sucky. Of course that’s terrible. But again, like I, we were talking about this beforehand.
Corrine Schmidt 00:04:48 It’s stressful because like, I pay like I’m a single mom, I pay the bills with with what I bring home. So it is stressful and I hate that. I hate that part of it. and anybody that got hot hit even harder. Like. Like my heart bleeds, right? Like, I, I do feel bad. But on the other hand, there are some things about this I really love. I do like. And we talked about this, like, I feel like it leveled the playing field again. Right? Like we were all doing the exact same thing. There were formulas for what we did the set and forget. Part of me really loved that. But it also is very boring, right? Like, it was a very specific way that we all did everything. You were saying it, Julien. We all had the same theme or like like we’re all following the same post template. Like it kind of got boring and now like, that doesn’t work. And so we all had to go back to the drawing board and that’s fun.
Corrine Schmidt 00:05:38 Like, I’m not naturally a creative person, but I’m in this space because I do like to create an experiment. And I get to do that now. And now I don’t feel like I’m doing it from behind. Like before. It was hard to buck the system because you knew what worked. Well, now we don’t know what works, so it’s kind of fun to try again. it’s stressful because then you got to try a bunch of stuff and you don’t know where to put your time. And we still only have 24 hours in the day, so that’s that’s been hard. But I do feel like it’s also a period of like new discovery. And that that is exciting. And, you know, some of the things got that got put on the backburner. Like I’ve been wanting to build up my products for a long time and focus more on printables. But I was making money on food, so I wasn’t putting time there. Well, now I can, now I can, and now it’s paying off.
Corrine Schmidt 00:06:27 And like, I don’t know, I, I think a lot of us tend to have a little ad like a lot of us in this field. And I, you know, it’s fun. It’s fun to do something different. So, it’s a it’s a terrible time for sure, but it’s also not a terrible time. Like there there’s a silver lining there if you’re looking for it.
Christina Hitchcock 00:06:47 I also say I kind of approach it with the same approach that I give my parenting advice to my son. I’m like, there’s situations in life that you just can’t change, right? You’re not in control of that. We can’t control Google. So could I get mad at it? Yes. Could I be frustrated and rant and rave to get out my frustration? Absolutely. I do it and it does feel good afterwards, but I can’t stay in that place because that frustration and anger isn’t doing anything. It’s not going to change things. So the only thing that’s going to change is the way I react to it.
Christina Hitchcock 00:07:19 So if I decide I want to stay in this game, I’m going to need to find a way to react and pivot and move my business forward. Getting mad just isn’t isn’t an option that works.
Jillian Leslie 00:07:33 I think that is so smart. And where I am seeing green shoots because I’m I’m like you, I’m interviewing people looking at our own businesses, like, where do I find the green shoots and where I see it, it’s getting smaller and deeper.
Christina Hitchcock 00:07:50 I agree.
Corrine Schmidt 00:07:52 it’s less about.
Jillian Leslie 00:07:54 I’m going to get a million page views, and it’s more I’m going to serve a thousand people who are people, not visitors. page views know.
Christina Hitchcock 00:08:03 Like, and trust you. These are the people that know, like and trust.
Jillian Leslie 00:08:07 And I’m just going to say this I see your face is show up, show up on zoom. And it makes me happy. I’m not in the same room with you guys. You know, we’ve done zoom calls in the past, but you show up and like, I was looking forward to this interview today because you’re real people and we’re like minded and it’s like, okay, I get to hang out with some friends for a little while and I don’t discount that.
Jillian Leslie 00:08:33 That is really valuable. Right.
Corrine Schmidt 00:08:37 Well, Christina and I have said that for a long time on our own podcast is one of our favorite things we do. because you get to like it’s kind of a lonely business. What we do sometimes and doing the podcast just reminds us that we’re all facing the same stuff. And, and it always impresses me. Like I’m always amazed at how generous people are with what they know. Like people want to connect. so I’m with you, like getting on zoom, like seeing people’s faces. It’s a wonderful thing because we are in ultimately in the business of people. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 00:09:07 And I think we forgot that when I talk to people who start selling digital products, right, with our tool MiloTree and they say to me, you know, same thing. Like, I didn’t really want to do this because, like, I was making money with my with my food content and I’m just like cranking out posts and updating them and using lots of tools and keyword research.
Jillian Leslie 00:09:33 It became almost like, again, a formula. And now when they start selling solutions to people, they feel re-energized.
Christina Hitchcock 00:09:46 Right. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think that building that connection is definitely where it’s at. I’ve seen it a lot through through YouTube. I do a lot of did a lot of YouTube videos, and then I took a pause. For almost a year, I stopped creating content, and when I finally posted a new video back there, a few weeks ago, I was getting so many comments. I’m so glad you’re back. I love seeing your face. And that kind of feedback was really re-energizing, because I feel like people were able to to connect in a way that they couldn’t with just reading a recipe. Right? They like to watch they you, you you build that connection, you make those, you know, you start building that relationship with them where they know that they can they they feel like they like you. Right? Because you’re you’re making that eye, that eye to eye, even though you’re not, you know, looking at the person, you’re looking into the camera, you’re making that eye to eye contact.
Christina Hitchcock 00:10:47 And it’s not it’s not as bad as I thought it was at first, like I was afraid to be on the camera, right? Like, oh, my hair is not right. Or, you know, I don’t I don’t want to do my makeup today or my house, like, my kitchen isn’t perfect or whatever it is. People don’t care. They really don’t care. And they will give you a lot more grace than you’re giving yourself. And they might even just like it. Yes, because you’re real. And the best engagement I get is when I turn the camera around and show the mess behind the scenes and people are like, oh, now that looks like my kitchen, right? Because it’s not always perfectly sterile and clean. With the right appointed accessories here and there, it’s a disaster behind the kitchen or behind the camera. And I think people feel like they can relate to that when they feel like they can relate to you. Like you’re not trying to hide something or be something you are not.
Christina Hitchcock 00:11:39 they feel more connected to you. So I found a great, connection in video. I also do TV segments with our local TV station and just this past weekend, a woman approached me like she heard my voice. And she goes, I know that voice. And she goes, oh my God, you’re Christina, dude. Like she starts going. She’s like, I feel like I should get a picture with you. I wanted to melt into the rack in the store. I did not want to be seen. And my friends are standing there with me going, yes, she is. You want me to take the picture? And I’m like, shut up, I just got to melt into the rack. But what I learned from that is she connected with me in that way. It was just my voice that she heard and she knew it was me. And she’s like, I love your recipes. I make this one, this. And she rattled off at least a half a dozen that she’s made and like, it really got me thinking, like, I need to do more of that because that is where it’s at.
Christina Hitchcock 00:12:33 Because she’ll come to me when she needs a recipe. Now she knows she’ll come right to my website rather than just googling where to find that recipe. She’ll come to me first. And I think building that connection with people is, is one of the greatest things we can do now in video is where it’s at all across the board.
Jillian Leslie 00:12:51 So will you share some? What kind? So you were making recipe video like are you like set up and do you have like a bunch of cameras when you’re doing YouTube videos of you cooking or what are you like, how does that?
Christina Hitchcock 00:13:05 I do like cooking show style videos with my face on camera. So I actually have two cameras, my regular DSLR, and then I just have my son’s GoPro hanging off my pendant light over my kitchen island, so nothing fancy. prior to that, I had my iPhone just hanging over somehow, in some precarious way, mounted to my my, my lighting fixture. But it didn’t take a ton of equipment or anything to do.
Christina Hitchcock 00:13:34 And I think people see these big produced type videos and they feel like there’s no way I can recreate that. That is not me. I just do it with what I have. I use iMovie to edit or I use. I have some college interns that help me with editing, so it’s nothing fancy, but it works.
Jillian Leslie 00:13:55 Wow, I like that. That reinvigorated you?
Christina Hitchcock 00:13:59 Yeah, it really did. And it was just this weekend and I’m like, I need to do more of that.
Jillian Leslie 00:14:04 Like that. I again, I don’t know if you believe in the universe or something, but I feel like that was a sign.
Christina Hitchcock 00:14:09 Well, you know, it’s funny you say that because I was thinking the exact same thing. So that was Saturday when that happened. What? Today’s. Okay, so Tuesday, I get a text from the TV station. Are you available on this day to do a couple of segments? And I’m like, yes, I am. It was right. It was put out into the universe.
Christina Hitchcock 00:14:29 So I’m not a very woowoo kind of person. But I do believe.
Jillian Leslie 00:14:35 I do believe.
Christina Hitchcock 00:14:36 That if you if you put good out, I always say have good parking karma because I put good karma out. I’ll get the good karma back. But I think if it’s one of those things, like if you focus on it and think about it. And you, you can kind of make that stuff happen.
Jillian Leslie 00:14:50 I love that story. All right, Corinne, tell me about how your woo woo is is driving your business.
Corrine Schmidt 00:14:57 Yeah. No, I don’t do well like to like, I don’t do videos. So just so for those of you listening that like, took away from that, we’ve got to go to the video. I agree. Like I know video is a powerful tool and I think it is where everything is headed. I’m just not like I won’t say never because, you know, never say never. But that’s not my thing. I’m not comfortable there. It’s going to take a big, big push to ever get me to be there.
Corrine Schmidt 00:15:22 So I’m I’m pushing like I love email. That’s where I connect with mine. And so let’s try that. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s where I share like my, my email subscribers know more about my personal life than maybe some people that know me in person. Right. Like I share I share everything like, yeah, I shared about my ex-husband’s death. They share like I share everything in my email. That’s where I’m a writer. It’s where I feel comfortable expressing myself. I like the ability that I can edit first. Like, this is why I can’t do video. The I’m too self-critical, like I can’t have something preserved out there in the, you know, in the internet where people could keep coming back and, you know, talking about my big forehead or whatever, like, I just, I can’t sleep at night. It’s not.
Jillian Leslie 00:16:06 Me. But let’s talk about then email and how do you get people on your list and then how do you nurture them? And then are you yet selling to them?
Corrine Schmidt 00:16:16 So I’ve got I do a lot of printables, so I use a lot of printable opt ins, but I’ve got opt ins anywhere.
Corrine Schmidt 00:16:22 Like you come to anything on my site, you probably get a pop up asking you to sign up to get something. so pop ups everywhere. I will say the last last year I leaned in really heavy on collaborations. really started collabing with other bloggers to share each other’s content so that we could get in front of each other’s list, participating.
Jillian Leslie 00:16:43 And then I pause you for a second. Is this like somebody saying, hey, I’m going to reach out to my list and share about you and your freebie, and they reach out to their list and oh, no.
Corrine Schmidt 00:16:55 I’m glad you asked because we’ve I’ve been approached for the smart influencer. We’ve been approached for things like that. But no, that’s not actually the type of collaboration I do with my person, with my Wonder Mom content that it’s more like there will be a bunch of printable creators and we’ll we’ll have a spreadsheet, we have an organized spreadsheet. a couple of them have organizes and they’re like, that’s a great thing with some of these homeschool bloggers, they’re very organized, but they’ll have themes.
Corrine Schmidt 00:17:20 So like let’s say like talk Like a Pirate Day. That week’s theme was Pirate activities. So we all share a link to a pirate activity. And then we all agree that week to send an email that shares the links to everyone’s, and so they go to the blog posts and then if they want that activity, they opt in to your list to, to get it. So more things like that, where we’re sharing each other’s content and then sending each other traffic to so and like I love that it’s a it’s low risk because you’re giving your audience something for free. and they’re choosing what they want to go sign up for or not.
Jillian Leslie 00:17:57 So, so just to break that down, you have a group. How many people in this group, this share group, let’s say.
Corrine Schmidt 00:18:04 So I’ve been in ones with as few as four. The four was the smallest. And with as many as ten there were ten of us total.
Jillian Leslie 00:18:12 And what you do is do you do a blog post with links to everything and you send the newsletter.
Jillian Leslie 00:18:17 It’s just a newsletter and you say, hey, I’ve got these great other blogs and here’s different activities. Click here, click here, click here, click here if you want these activities.
Corrine Schmidt 00:18:30 Yeah like hey Shark Week is next. You know is coming. So here are a bunch of shark activities to, you know, to keep the kids occupied or to make them, you know, an educational experience out of it. So, you know, like mine would be linked first. And then I link to my friends. some of the sharing groups, they like the mystery links. And that’s a requirement to participate that you can’t name the activity. It’s activity one two, three, four. to get more clicks. So everybody kind of had if you organize, you can tell me, you know, what you want to do. And if I don’t like it, I won’t participate. So, so they make the rule. That’s the nice thing about organizing it. You get to be in charge. I don’t, I don’t I’m happy to do what someone tells me.
Corrine Schmidt 00:19:09 So I have an organized one. But, I do really like those collaborations. And then also participating in bundles. I’ve participated in several bundles where you submit a freebie, and then you promote it to your list, and then everyone’s promoting it to their list. So if anyone wants your freebie, they come sign up for yours. and then speaking at summits, I’ve been speaking at a lot of summits, on topics related to what I blog about, to get in front of new, new people. That’s the closest thing to doing video that I do because they are typically lessons, but it’s contained.
Jillian Leslie 00:19:45 In a private.
Corrine Schmidt 00:19:45 Group. Yeah.
Christina Hitchcock 00:19:48 I’m going to push you. I’m going to push you into that. That’s going to be my goal for 2025.
Jillian Leslie 00:19:55 Right.
Corrine Schmidt 00:19:55 Maybe she’s also still trying to get me to buy a mac so I can hold out.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:02 Okay. So talk to me then you get you’re using all these great techniques to get people on your list. And has your list been growing like, is this.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:11 Yes, I’ve doubled it.
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:12 And since last year it’s doubled.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:14 Okay. And and it’s in the thousands I take it.
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:18 I’m at 75,000 now. Just under.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:21 Wait. I’m sorry. Say that again.
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:23 I’m just under 75,000 as of today. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:26 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Wow. That is yeah I.
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:31 Aggressively grow my list.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:33 That is incredible okay. So then you get people on your list. How often are you emailing them.
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:41 Every day I email every day.
Jillian Leslie 00:20:43 You and what are you emailing?
Corrine Schmidt 00:20:45 So I have I do it so I don’t email all 75,000 every day. My list is split between recipe because if you come to me for recipes, you don’t necessarily have a child that wants printables and then the printables. People don’t necessarily care about food. So in the welcome sequence, I give you the opportunity to click something so I can tag you with both. but my list does split almost very nicely right down the middle. Like I’ve maybe got 40,000 on each, you know, between the two lists.
Corrine Schmidt 00:21:16 So I do send an email every day, but depending on your segment, you only get it every other day. So recipes go out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then printables are Tuesday, Thursdays, and then Sunday when I’m on my game, I’m sending out a weekly newsletter.
Christina Hitchcock 00:21:30 Yeah, I email by 5 to 6 days a week.
Jillian Leslie 00:21:34 Oh my gosh. And now. And Christina, can I ask how big your list is.
Christina Hitchcock 00:21:41 Yeah, my list is not quite as big as Karen’s. It’s about half that.
Jillian Leslie 00:21:45 Oh my gosh. Okay, both of you guys here where I’m sitting and what I see if you’re not actively selling to your people, like there’s a bag of money sitting right there. Yeah. The best way to sell anything is through your email.
Christina Hitchcock 00:22:05 Yeah I agree.
Corrine Schmidt 00:22:07 And that is where most of my affiliate income comes from. And I’d say actually most of my sales probably come from the tripwire offer. So when you opt into my list and you go to the tripwire, most of my sales come from that.
Corrine Schmidt 00:22:19 But I think after that, like the sale sales within email probably outdo anything else that I’m doing. Like it’s outperforming what I get from Pinterest or, you know, Google or Etsy.
Jillian Leslie 00:22:31 So, so and so again, for everybody who’s who’s listening, who doesn’t know the triple A tripwire is, hey, opt in, I’m going to give you something for free. Give me your name and your email address. And then when you press submit on that next page, the thank you page that shows up that says, hey, it’s on its way to your inbox and wait while I have your attention. What about this? How about purchasing this for a discounted price for, say, a limited amount of time and that can now you can’t sell a usually $1,000 item?
Corrine Schmidt 00:23:05 No, but I don’t have $1,000 items.
Jillian Leslie 00:23:07 But you can sell something for how much is your trip wire typically. So most of.
Corrine Schmidt 00:23:12 My trip wire products are trip wire at 499. Like we’re not I’m not making millions off of this, but that’s amazing.
Jillian Leslie 00:23:18 And then.
Christina Hitchcock 00:23:19 Mine are 299.
Jillian Leslie 00:23:20 Oh my gosh, you guys. That’s amazing. I would say usually up to night, like I would say the most, like the sweet spot could be like $19. So you might want to put them together in a bundle and sell.
Corrine Schmidt 00:23:34 My best converting one is actually for those listening, please do this because someone told me to do it and like was a money maker overnight. I used to give. If you signed up, you just got access to my entire printable library. So all of my free printables, like because I thought I’m already giving them away for free, right? Like why I have to go visit 100 different, you know, blog posts to go get them? Well, someone was like, you have how many free printables? And I think at that time I had 200 something like I had over 200. They’re like, you should be charging for that because no one’s going to want to jump around to 200 blog posts to go get them all.
Corrine Schmidt 00:24:09 So I put it on trip. I only sell it on trip wire. In fact, like I don’t think I promoted any other way. So for $10.99 I tried a bunch of different prices. 1099 is the money maker and I sell those every day. I sell at least one every day, and I was giving it away for free for at least two years.
Jillian Leslie 00:24:30 Yeah, well, I think as bloggers we got into the habit of giving stuff away In order to get page views right. And then and I also think there is something to us not necessarily really understanding our own value. Oh I should give this away for free. I’m a nice person. Instead of saying wait a second. What, what I’m doing is really valuable. And there are people out there who would pay me for this rather than everybody knows this. It’s not a big deal. it’s just some stupid recipes or who knows what instead of saying, no, no, this is valuable. And now I can charge for it. And what’s great, Corinne, is both of you guys.
Jillian Leslie 00:25:22 You’re training people to purchase from you.
Corrine Schmidt 00:25:24 Well, that’s what I was going to say that I love about the tripwire. Because just as soon as you hook that person, because you gave them something for free, whether or not they purchase that tripwire, you are letting them know right away I sell.
Jillian Leslie 00:25:40 Did you know with MiloTree you can offer unlimited options and unlimited tripwires? It’s super simple. Just upload your freebie to MiloTree, create your opt in page with help of our AI. Pick a product you want to sell as your tripwire, and then share the link to your opt in on social media, your website, anywhere your audience hangs out. Offering freebies is one of the best ways to test new ideas and build your list, and tripwires are a simple way to make easy money. Try it out, head to milotree.com. And now, back to the show. When we were building MiloTree, we’re like, we’re going to create a product where we enable you to offer freebies. And then it was like the immediate request was, wait a second.
Jillian Leslie 00:26:36 I want to have the ability to set up a tripwire so that you get to grow your email list with your freebie will deliver your, say, PDF directly to your new subscriber. And then, oh my God, now I can sell. And while typically, like you were saying, it’s not like you’re going to get crazy rich on your tripwire, but that’s the beginning of the relationship. Yeah, right.
Christina Hitchcock 00:27:05 And I’ll tell you, I expand upon that even further. So in addition to the tripwire, once you if you decide you want that, then I’m going to hit you up with a bump and say, oh, wait, do you want to add this product for a low, low price? And then once you have that, then I’m going to upsell you and say, but wait, why don’t you just get the whole bundle of stuff for this? And I will tell you, I would say 85% of the time I sell the bump and the bundle that the bump and the upsell. Yeah.
Christina Hitchcock 00:27:35 And because they’re so tightly aligned and I know when they’re when the person is coming in, what they’re interested in, just based on what opt in they’re requesting, I know what that trigger point is, and it’s a no brainer deal for them, because once they have that credit card out, it’s easier to add on to it. Then let them put that credit card away and ask them again later on to I.
Corrine Schmidt 00:27:58 Will say, this is one of Christina’s superpowers. Like we, we brainstormed products for our niche sites together, and when we would sit down and talk about like, if you’re buying this e-book, which ones do you want? Like she does? Like she sees those connections and like, we’ll just do these three pop up and then we’ll bundle those together. And they do. They perform very well. Like if you know what they’re looking for when they come in. yeah. And it is Christina’s superpower for sure. She’s really good at it, seeing those connections.
Christina Hitchcock 00:28:26 But I understand the food niche, I don’t think I, I think with the principle niche, it’s a little bit different.
Christina Hitchcock 00:28:31 And I think that that’s where Karen really excels, and she really understands how to capitalize on that. So I’m going to toot your horn right back.
Jillian Leslie 00:28:40 Oh, that’s so sweet. And what I would wear I’m seeing people succeed is taking what you guys are doing. And really seeing that as the first step and thinking, what is the bigger problem I’m solving for somebody, right. And then how can I continue to sell more and more expensive things or things like membered like the money is really in a membership, let’s say, and because of recurring revenue. But like, how do I build on the solution like I’ve tapped because what you guys have both found is what I like to call gold. You’ve, like, figured out if I offered this like that, maybe say this freebie, I can attach it to this product. And because it makes sense in terms of what the problem is I’m solving, I can chances are, predict that a certain number of people who opt into my freebie are now going to want to purchase this additional solution that maybe takes it a step deeper or for you, Corinne, now you’re offering your entire library, and it’s like, oh, and I challenge everybody like you’ve found gold.
Jillian Leslie 00:29:49 And the thing that, I, I see is when somebody finds gold, even if it’s a little bit and some people will be like, well, but I’m just selling like a $4 product or something. I’m like, but you found the connection.
Corrine Schmidt 00:30:04 Well, you know, who’s really, really good at that is Matt Mullen. I don’t have you had Matt on? He’s a wizard. He has this great. First of all, his mind is like unbelievable to watch him work in real time. It’s phenomenal. But his he does that when he’s working with people on email is he’s like picture what your person was doing when they landed on your site. Like, you know, for a food blogger this is very easy, right? Like mom came home like they just got home from school or from soccer practice, and now she’s got to make dinner. She has no idea what she’s going to make. She lands like this is the mindset, but like to really picture what the person’s doing and then what’s the problem that they’re going to solve? Because like the option that you present, she’s not looking to cook 12 meals right now.
Corrine Schmidt 00:30:43 Really. She’s got this very immediate problem of getting dinner on the table. So what can you offer her that she’s going to take the time to put her email in because she doesn’t need 12 other chicken dinner recipes right now, right. Like and like he has such a great way of putting you in that frame of mind. Like I’m not doing it justice right now. Like, and I’m trying to use an example he gave and I still can’t even recall it perfectly. So Matt doesn’t much much better. But what you’re saying, Jillian like really understanding who your audience is, what their problem is, and not just that, but what their problem is in the moment that they found you.
Jillian Leslie 00:31:19 And therefore not just in. And then what is the bigger problem. Right. So for example if, if the mom comes home after soccer practice and needs a quick chicken recipe, What else? Like, chances are that’s not the first time that that’s happened. So are there other things you can sell? The busy mom who like, for example, a meal plan where every Wednesday a meal plan shows up with because, you know, she’s got, let’s say, you know, soccer practice every Wednesday, that boom in her inbox.
Jillian Leslie 00:31:52 There’s the recipe, and maybe you could have a variety so that you’ve got the ones for the vegans and you’ve got the ones for the picky eaters and you’ve got the like, because these are the problems that these moms have.
Corrine Schmidt 00:32:06 Yeah. Why did they have that problem today? Like what’s happening in their life that this is their issue?
Christina Hitchcock 00:32:12 I was just going to say, I think that there’s a lot of missed opportunity here in the blogging world. first of all, I think there’s a lot of people that aren’t using email at all because either they’re intimidated by it or they feel like it’s just not worth my time or I don’t have the time to to figure that all expense.
Corrine Schmidt 00:32:31 It’s another thing to learn.
Christina Hitchcock 00:32:33 Yep. But and I think that that is a huge missed opportunity right there. So I think that that is something that if you’re not doing it, you really should make that your 2025 goal and and get on that, especially with the state of Google and SEO. number two is I think a lot of times we look through our own glasses when we’re trying to figure out what these problems are, and we think we’re our target audience.
Christina Hitchcock 00:33:00 And so many times we’re not. And I hear this all the time in the groups of people saying, I would never email somebody more than once a week because I don’t like getting all these emails in my inbox. Well, you know what? I’m not my target customer. My target customer likes getting the emails. And if they want to unsubscribe, they can, but they’re not. You know, I love that. Yes, you have to remove yourself from it and really come through the eyes of your target audience. And to do that, what I like to do to figure out, like what their problems are or you know, what pain points are out there. I like to survey, but not only just my list of people. I go out on Facebook to my personal friends and family because so many of them are in my target audience and I know they’re going to be honest. Right. So when I put a question out there, I’m not going to get the response less ads. Well, that’s not going to happen, right? They’re going to give me the honest feedback that I want, and they’re going to tell me things that I never realized they needed or wanted.
Christina Hitchcock 00:34:03 And for me, that kind of feedback is priceless. And so many times it’s so much more than what I’m thinking.
Jillian Leslie 00:34:10 And I’m going to take it a step further. Are there ways that then you can create quick down and dirty solutions and test them? Yeah, that’s what we do with MiloTree is we say, go test your products, test your freebies, go make a bunch instead of being so up in our heads worried that it’s got to be perfect. Oh my God, I’ve gotta go create a book and it’s got to be perfect. And I’m now going to spend six months.
Christina Hitchcock 00:34:41 Stressing over the cover design.
Jillian Leslie 00:34:43 Nobody cares. And so it’s like kind of like if you if you do what you’re saying, which is Christina, which is I’m getting feedback. Okay. I’ve got like five ideas. So I’m going to pick the one that I think might be the easiest to test and might be the most popular. That resonates with me. Okay, but I don’t know. The only way you know is by putting it out in front of people and saying, do you want this?
Christina Hitchcock 00:35:08 And sometimes it’s as simple as changing.
Christina Hitchcock 00:35:12 So if I’m selling ebooks, it’s as simple, as tight as changing the title. Like that’s simple. The content, the guts of that e-book are exactly the same. Nothing has changed other than the title, and I’ve done that a couple of times, and every time I do it, it amazes me that something so simple, like a fix that is so simple, instead of just giving up on it. Well, this product didn’t work. I might judge the title a couple of times and see which one resonates more, because it doesn’t really cost me anything extra to make that change in Canva, but I can get anything with that.
Corrine Schmidt 00:35:46 Specifically talking about digital products like that, it always amazes me, and I’m almost actually I won’t say almost always, I’d say about 5050. I’m wrong. I thought we we almost always do like two covers, right? Like or two pin images to see. And the one I like better is not the one that performs better about half the time. Like half the time, I guess.
Corrine Schmidt 00:36:06 Right? Half the time I’m wrong. Like, people are fickle. and like the number of times that I see this all the time with my friends, they’ll be redoing a logo and they’ll put it out to all their friends. Like, which one do you like? And you watch everybody vote, and you got five logos and like, three of them have equal votes, right. Like people are different so you don’t know what’s going to fly. So I agree with you. Testing works, but I like then actually test it. Like don’t throw out one thing and be like well, it flopped because maybe it didn’t give up on it because the thing is a.
Christina Hitchcock 00:36:34 Terrible idea, because you then be like, well, ebooks don’t work or email doesn’t work.
Jillian Leslie 00:36:38 And we take it personally. Like, I can’t tell you how many calls I get on people where they say, I tried it. It didn’t work. Like like somehow my audience does not want to buy from me. And I’m like, well, maybe you’re not necessarily figuring out exactly what your audience wants, or it’s like a puzzle.
Jillian Leslie 00:36:54 And the more curious and the more willing you are to put stuff out. That’s rougher than you think to say, but but that solves a real hokey problem. Yeah, I think it’s much more people focus on the colors and the fonts and forget about the fact that I will pay to get out of pain, right?
Christina Hitchcock 00:37:16 I agree 110%, and sometimes that pain point is something you never even considered. And that’s why I say you have to remove yourself from the formula completely. You have to just sit back as an objective observer and just, you know, gather the data and watch. Because so many times we are not that audience. We’re we’re more tech savvy, we’re more, you know, we’re in that industry. We know what to expect. So we’re bothered by things that are different than our consumers. So you really have to remove yourself from that equation.
Corrine Schmidt 00:37:53 Well, and to that point and to something you said earlier to Gillian about like in terms of like selling to people, I think a lot of times we like we get in our heads about like what is worthy of selling.
Corrine Schmidt 00:38:06 And the one like moment for me was because I’m stingy with my time. Christina hears me say this all the time. I’m so stingy with my time. the older I get, the more true that is. I’m like, oh, I’m down to last minutes. Like, I. I gotta cherish these babies. You got to pry them away from me. People pay for convenience like some of my top selling products. Again, like the freebie printable, some of my best selling products, or things that I literally give away for free in some shape or form. But I bundle it together so that you can download it, and they don’t care how pretty it is. They don’t care how big it is. Like, I tend to price things low because I have a hard time assigning value to what it is I sell that. That is my mindset issue, so just price it lower. But because then if you do that and you start to see those dollars, you’re like someone will pay something for it.
Corrine Schmidt 00:38:56 That kind of gets you over that hump. But like if you think about this is where we can be like like our our reader, like we all want convenience. Like you said, Jillian, to pay, you know, I’ll pay to get out of pain. I will pay to not have to bounce around to ten recipe posts to get the recipes. I can download it in one click for a couple bucks. Dun dun.
Jillian Leslie 00:39:20 Dun. Absolutely. I think that is so true. And and just briefly I shared this a lot, but I there are these six purchasing triggers. And when you think about your own product, see if it can fit into at least one of these. And this helps you in terms of marketing and selling, can you create a product that makes somebody money? So MiloTree I make you money too. Can you create a product that saves somebody money? And then here is what you’re talking about. Can you create a product that saves somebody time? Can you create a product that moves somebody toward happiness? Can you make a product that moves somebody away from pain? And can you create a product that raises someone’s social status? Those and so thinking, you know, kind of backward going, okay, like here’s a product that I can create.
Jillian Leslie 00:40:15 How how well does it fit into one of these buckets. And can I put it into two and bill and and use ChatGPT and say, hey, ChatGPT come up with some ideas. In fact, like we’ve got I’ve got ChatGPT prompts to help people write an e-book. But it starts with, I think the first prompt is something like, okay, give me some ideas of products I can sell in my niche that fits into at least one of these purchasing buckets, and I just have all of the purchasing buckets. It will save somebody time, save the money, you know, goes through the list and it’s amazing what ChatGPT can come up with. And so like use that as your as your sounding board as your guide.
Christina Hitchcock 00:41:04 Yeah okay. So I agree with that.
Jillian Leslie 00:41:07 So as we close I want you to tell me then where you predict or see green shoots.
Christina Hitchcock 00:41:19 I see it In reaching my readers in different ways. So I was telling you about video and going in that direction. I’ve seen a lot of I’ve gotten a lot of traffic over the past year now from push notifications.
Christina Hitchcock 00:41:35 That was something that was a long time ago and I wasn’t doing it properly the last time. Now I started doing it again, and I it’s usually one of my top traffic drivers every month saying, you.
Jillian Leslie 00:41:47 Explain, explain what that means.
Christina Hitchcock 00:41:49 Sure. So it’s those little things you see on your web browser that says, you know, do you want to subscribe to get notifications when this site is updated and you enter your email and or not your email, you, you, you click sign up. And then every time a new post comes out or I want to trigger a new post to go out, I can send you a notification through your browser that will say, you know, so you when you log on in the morning, it’ll be like it is a keeper just posted XYZ and you can click on that and see that notification. Wow. So yeah, I’ve seen a lot of growth with that recently. There’s just a lot of different things.
Jillian Leslie 00:42:31 What what service what tool are you using for that?
Christina Hitchcock 00:42:35 I use push li.
Jillian Leslie 00:42:36 Okay for that. Nice. Yeah.
Christina Hitchcock 00:42:38 So yeah. So that’s that’s really helped me in in the last year. so I just think exploring different things as a user, I hate them, I unsubscribe from them, I do not subscribe to them, but they drive traffic to my site, so why wouldn’t I use that again? I have to remove myself from the equation. And the more you force yourself to do that, I think the more it’s easier to pivot to different things and to open your the horizons to new stuff.
Jillian Leslie 00:43:12 I that is terrific. I’m going to go look that up as soon as we get off. All right Corin any green shoots.
Corrine Schmidt 00:43:19 So yeah, it’s funny because Christina and I would joke about this all the time, that we often start in the same place and we end in the same place, but we take different paths to get there. And this is one of those examples because like when we’re talking about throwing spaghetti at the wall, all of I think similarly, our efforts have been at trying to find new ways to get in front of people, you know, get people to our site like so push is working for I use the same service.
Corrine Schmidt 00:43:42 I’ve not had the same success. I think it it works really well. If you’ve got a niche site. I think this is where my lifestyle site hurts me a little bit there, like I’ve segmented them, but because it doesn’t work as well for me. so what does work for me? Like I’ve been like trying to do more with MSN, like I was originally working with them as like syndicating my content to MSN, and that is it’s helping like you like also is a revenue diversification because you earn ad revenue on MSN. So that’s mostly what I was doing it for. And then like a weird little green shoot that popped up is all of a sudden now I’m picking up a lot of traffic from news sites because of the way that that feed goes out and the type of posts that it is. So like the I’m getting a ton of traffic from these sources, I didn’t I wasn’t even considering.
Jillian Leslie 00:44:32 Explain the MSM thing. Explain that.
Corrine Schmidt 00:44:35 So Amazon has a partner program MSN start that you can apply to.
Corrine Schmidt 00:44:41 You have to in order to get approved, you have to publish at least five times a week. So this isn’t for the person that’s updating their site once a week. but it is to be like.
Jillian Leslie 00:44:49 You’re republishing the same post, but it’s updated.
Corrine Schmidt 00:44:52 Yes, you can be updating post and pushing up, but you have to have new. You have to have post going live five times a week, but they can be updated posts. Okay, so anyways, but then you apply. I think the process is faster now. Like at the time that I applied I had to wait like it was several months. but I know people that have applied in the past like six months that got in within a month.
Christina Hitchcock 00:45:13 I got out very quickly.
Corrine Schmidt 00:45:14 Yeah. So I think that that process has improved. But, I’m going to do a shout out for Grayson, if that’s okay. Grayson developed a plug in because you can publish your articles there, and that’s how I started. But, they do slideshow galleries.
Corrine Schmidt 00:45:29 And again, as a user, I hate these things. Like, if I land on a post like this, I am aggravated, but these are the moneymakers on MSN. So it’s the you know, it’ll be a topic and then you hit the button, you go to the next picture and it gives you the recipe or the description of what it is, and you got to go through the whole slideshow to see these are the moneymakers on MSN. So those are how the poster formatted. And Grayson Belle from Imarc interactive developed a service to to create a feed so that you can create these types of posts, because it is almost impossible to do without some sort of tech on the back end. so he developed that, thank God, so that we could do this, because that has been it’s been a moneymaker. Like I’m making some ad revenue over there, but, not enough that I probably would have continued it just, you know, a for the. What I’m making is probably not worth the amount that I’m publishing, because you have to publish almost daily does seem to reward consistency.
Jillian Leslie 00:46:28 Now are these the same? So these are the same posts though that are going live on your blog.
Corrine Schmidt 00:46:32 They are live on my site. Okay, now most of the people I know are no indexing them, but I didn’t do that, which I think is why I started getting this other traffic. So so you do get you will get traffic from MSN if you link to your own content in those slideshows. But Newsbreak app in particular is the one that’s sending me a ton of traffic. It seems to like these posts. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 00:46:56 Wow. Well, I love that that you just you kind of put it out there and then it has the now again, my being in this business for a long time, I’m going to say that is like making hay when it’s when, when they’re sunshine. Because who knows how long this will last.
Christina Hitchcock 00:47:15 Exactly.
Corrine Schmidt 00:47:15 Well, and the funny thing was, I tried it back in April. I’m like, okay, well, we’ve got the plug in, like, let’s try it.
Corrine Schmidt 00:47:21 So I published every day for in April and it wasn’t at the time. I’m like, okay, I didn’t make enough money off of this. This isn’t worth publishing daily. I’ve got other things I can put my time to. So I stopped and then in May, those posts I published in April still were going like I didn’t think because a lot of them are seasonal posts, so I did not think there would be dwell time. So may I actually made the most that I’d ever like. I made a lot more than I did in March and April, and I just started with Amazon in March. so then I was like, so. And then I kept making money with them all summer. So that was why back in September, I decided to to run it again. so they do they dwell. You can republish and it just puts it right back at the top. So I did.
Christina Hitchcock 00:48:09 A whole deep dive on this on the Smart Influencer podcast a few weeks ago.
Jillian Leslie 00:48:13 Great. I’ll link to that.
Jillian Leslie 00:48:15 Awesome. Wow. All right. So. So it’s funny because when we first got on this call and it was like, wow, things are changing, but all of us. But you Caryn saying yeah, but this is like kind of exciting because there are all these new opportunities. And I feel like we’ve talked about a whole host of these opportunities, and it’s a little bit like you got to try a bunch of things to find that success. And when you when it when you do it and it doesn’t work okay. Good learning. Move on. I feel the same way. The people who have the most success selling products and services are the ones who are willing to test a whole host of ideas without taking it personally and recognizing. So, for example, Karen, at first you’re like, this is a time suck, it’s not worth my time. And then all of a sudden it’s like, well, wait, maybe there are these additional benefits that I need to give it a little more time to see the reward.
Corrine Schmidt 00:49:12 Well, and this is where I feel like it’s super helpful to have friends in the industry like so, because Christina and I are in a couple masterminds together. and like people, you can only test so much as an individual, but each person can be testing something different. So then somebody comes back, they’re like, you know what? I’m running Facebook ads and it’s working really well for me. And it’s a low cost per click. Well, they already ran the tests, so now I feel a little more comfortable trying it. It doesn’t always work right. Like that is actually an example of something that someone in our mastermind group said they were doing. It didn’t work for me. but like if you’ve got friends in the industry, you can kind of spread that test time around. So all you introverts like, you don’t have to be friends with a thousand people, but go make a few changes or yeah, find your four because you’ll save some time.
Jillian Leslie 00:50:03 I think that is terrific advice. All right.
Jillian Leslie 00:50:06 So you guys, if people want to reach out to you, learn more, listen to your podcast. Where should they go?
Christina Hitchcock 00:50:14 They can listen to our show anywhere. They download podcasts. So it’s the Smart Influencer podcast. They can head over to our website, the Smart influencer.com, and find all of our channels there. But we drop new episodes every Tuesday. And a lot of times, like you, Jillian, we have very informative and helpful guests sharing some great insight and expertise. And sometimes you just get Corinne and I sharing what we’ve learned our lessons from the trenches.
Jillian Leslie 00:50:42 Well, you’re kind of part of then everybody’s mastermind.
Christina Hitchcock 00:50:46 Yeah. Every Tuesday tune in for your mastermind.
Corrine Schmidt 00:50:49 Well, I just.
Jillian Leslie 00:50:50 Have to say, it is fun reconnecting with you guys. And let’s do this again and say another six months so we can see how these green shoots where they are.
Christina Hitchcock 00:51:00 Yeah. That sounds great.
Jillian Leslie 00:51:02 Yeah. Awesome. Well, I just want to say Christina and Corinne, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
Jillian Leslie 00:51:09 Thank you for having us.
Christina Hitchcock 00:51:10 It’s our pleasure.
Jillian Leslie 00:51:11 I hope you guys like this episode. My biggest takeaway is that monetizing your expertise doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Christina and Corinne shared such actionable strategies, from using freebies to grow your audience to leveraging tripwires to start making money as you build your list. It’s all about starting small and testing your ideas. And speaking of freebies, if you want a copy of the six buying triggers I talked about in the episode, just head to Milotree.com/triggers to grab it. And even if you don’t think you’re ready to grow your audience and start selling digital products, trust me, you are ready. Sign up for milotree and get your first 30 days free! If you think a friend would enjoy this episode, please share it. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast. New episodes drop every Wednesday night at midnight central time. Thanks for listening and I will see you here again next week.