#311: How to Thrive in a Post-Cookie World: 5 Strategies Bloggers Need to Embrace Now!

Hello, fellow entrepreneurs and bloggers! I’m Jillian, founder of MiloTreeCart and your guide through the ever-evolving world of online business. As the host of The Blogger Genius Podcast, today, I want to dive deep into a topic that’s on the forefront of every digital entrepreneur’s mind: preparing for the changes in 2024.

I’m talking about how to thrive in a post-cookie world and 5 strategies bloggers can use to thrive.

The Dawn of a New Digital Era

The online business landscape is shifting beneath our feet. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), updates to Google’s search algorithms, and the phasing out of third-party cookies, it’s clear that 2024 will be a year of significant transformation. But fear not! I’m here to arm you with the knowledge and tools you need to pivot and adapt.

Show Notes:

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

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Embracing AI: Friend or Foe?

AI is no longer the stuff of science fiction; it’s a reality that’s making waves in how we conduct business online. From personalized customer experiences to automated content creation, AI has the potential to revolutionize our approach to online entrepreneurship. But how can we harness this technology to our advantage? That’s a question I tackled in our latest podcast episode.

Google Search: Playing by New Rules

Google’s search algorithms are constantly changing, and staying ahead of the curve is crucial for online visibility. In 2024, we can expect even more updates that will challenge the way we think about SEO and content creation. I’ve shared some cutting-edge strategies to ensure your blog remains at the top of search results, no matter what Google throws our way.

The Cookie Crumbles: A Post-Third-Party World

The digital marketing world is bracing for the impact of third-party cookies being phased out. This change will fundamentally alter how we track user behavior and target our advertising. But it’s not all doom and gloom! There are innovative approaches to user data that respect privacy while still providing valuable insights.

Five Tips to Future-Proof Your Online Business

In the podcast, I’ve outlined five essential tips to help you navigate these changes with confidence. Here’s a sneak peek:

1. Experiment and Pivot: Be willing to try new things and change direction when necessary. Flexibility is key in a rapidly evolving market.
2. Diversify Your Traffic Sources: Don’t rely on a single platform or channel for your audience. Use a mix of social media, SEO, email marketing, and other avenues to reach your customers.
3. Build Your Personal Brand: Establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche. A strong personal brand can open doors and create opportunities.
4. Develop and Sell Digital Products and Services: Create scalable products like courses, ebooks, or consulting services that can generate revenue without constant hands-on work.
5. Leverage AI for New Skills: Embrace AI tools to enhance your capabilities, whether it’s for content creation, data analysis, or customer service. Then see if you have AI skills that you can offer as a service to others.

A Bonus Tip for the Road

As a bonus, I shared an additional tip that could be the key to your success in 2024. But I won’t spoil it here—you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out!

Conclusion: Thriving in Change

Change can be daunting, but it’s also ripe with opportunity. By preparing now and embracing the strategies discussed in the Blogger Genius podcast, you can set yourself up for success in 2024 and beyond. Remember, the future belongs to those who are ready for it.

Stay tuned for more insights, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Blogger Genius podcast for your weekly dose of online business wisdom. Here’s to thriving in the digital age!

Other related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes you’ll enjoy:

• The Truth About Blogging Success: Hard Work and Risks with Faith Mariah
• Secret Truths About Selling – Part 1 (Why Is It So Uncomfortable?) with Jillian Leslie
• Secret Truths About Selling – Part 2 (Insider Tips on 6 Best Ways to Sell) with Jillian Leslie

MiloTreeCart, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTreeCart, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like fill-in-the-blank sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support. MiloTreeCart is currently available for a lifetime deal of $349 or three easy installments of $116.33.

Transcript of “#311: How to Thrive in a Post-Cookie World: 5 Strategies Bloggers Need to Know!

Jillian Leslie (00:00:00) – Hi, I’m Gillian, welcome to a brand new episode of the Blogger Genius podcast. But before I launch in, I have a question for you. How are you planning to grow your income in 2024? With competition from AI content and ad revenue potentially declining due to the phase out of third party cookies? My advice it’s time to pivot by selling your own digital products and services to your audience. And this is where my literary cart comes in. Imagine setting up unlimited memberships, digital downloads, workshops, coaching, and many courses in less than ten minutes. Milo Tree Cart isn’t just another tech tool, it’s the easiest you’ve ever used with real people behind it ready to help. And here’s the best part. For our first thousand, VIP customers were offering mileage regard for a one time lifetime deal of just 349. No recurring fees, and our customers often find it pays for itself after their first product launch. Then we’re going to a traditional subscription model. So get it now. Plus, we’re all about trust, so we offer a 30 day, no questions asked money back guarantee.

Jillian Leslie (00:01:12) – There’s absolutely no risk in giving it a try. Visit military.com and grab this exclusive offer, and here is a bonus purchase by the end of January, and we will get on a one hour coaching call where I will help you map out a strategy for growing your audience and income in 2024. You have the power to turn your passion into profit. Pause this episode. Head over to Military.com and say yes to monetizing in a whole new way.

Announcer (00:01:49) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast, brought to you by Milo Tree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie (00:01:56) – Hey friends, it is Jillian. Happy New year. Now that we’re actually in this new Year, I wanted to do this solo episode where I discuss ways you can prepare your blog and online business for the waves of change that are coming our way. I think everything we know about growing our businesses is going to start shifting. And why is this happening? Well, first and foremost, AI. AI is here to stay and it’s only picking up steam. So if you are not using it yet, please start.

Jillian Leslie (00:02:35) – No shame, but just google ChatGPT or Claude. Sign up for a free account and start talking to it. You’ll see pretty quickly how powerful it is. And remember, get playful with it and do it with, say, a certain role before asking it to help you. Like when I need it. To help me write sales emails, I always start by saying, you are one of the best marketers in the world, and then I give it direction and then I stay in conversation with it. There is very little I do where I am not checking in with ChatGPT, even if it’s just for brainstorming. I’m starting to think of it as my actual living assistant. Other changes you need to be aware of. Google search is changing, and if you rely on Google search for a lot of your traffic. Be warned, because Google is rolling out its search generative experience. What this means is when you type something into Google search, you’re going to get an AI result at the top, which will answer your question, and there will be links underneath that.

Jillian Leslie (00:03:51) – But I do believe that people will get more of their answers from AI, and therefore direct traffic to our blogs through Google will probably decrease by how much nobody knows, but it is definitely something to be aware of. Another seismic change is the phasing out of third party cookies by Chrome, which is the Google browser many of us use. I use it all the time, and other browsers like Firefox and Safari are also phasing them out. This is because of privacy concerns, which is a good thing. However, this is also how advertisers track people on the internet to show appropriate ads so you know how you’ll be browsing a mascara on Sephora, and then you go to another site and wow, there is that Sephora mascara that you were just browsing. Third party cookies enable advertisers to know who you are, which I know is weird, but if advertisers can’t track this, I think this is going to have, again, downward pressure on ad revenue. Plus, because AI generated content is going to be everywhere, including text, images, video.

Jillian Leslie (00:05:09) – I think we are all going to start to question what is real, what isn’t real, and trust is going to plummet. Given these changes, which, by the way, are already underway, the key is to start putting strategies in place now that will set you and your business up not just to survive, but to thrive in this new world. And yes, it’s possible if you embrace these five tips, I’m going to lay out tip number one. We’re going to spend a lot of time this year experimenting and pivoting. If anybody tells you they know what the world is going to look like, please don’t believe them because nobody knows anything yet. It is going to take a very long time for this to shake out. So plan on lots of uncertainty in this uncertainty, creativity and trying new things will be key. So you want to be thoughtful about it. Like not just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks because you’ll end up wasting a lot of time. What you want to be doing is you want to be listening, watching, continually coming up with hypotheses for what might work, and then run small tests all the time to validate whether your hypothesis is correct.

Jillian Leslie (00:06:36) – Now, how do you come up with these tests? Well, you see, this is where you’re listening. You’re watching. You see what other people are doing, how they are being creative, thinking about their own business. This is so. Look at what people in your niche are doing also. Look at what people in other niches are doing to make money to grow their businesses. See if you can borrow their techniques. Brainstorm about new products and services you can create by talking to your customers, talking to your visitors, finding those unmet needs. This is where it makes a lot of sense to send a survey to your email list and ask them what their biggest challenges are. So there is a lot of room for out of the box thinking. And keep going back to first principles. You are here to solve people’s problems. Be looking for the problems and the solutions and how you can package that. My hunch is we’re going to see a lot more people offering paid workshops, live classes, memberships, communities and coaching.

Jillian Leslie (00:07:57) – The next tip. Tip number two is thinking about diversifying your traffic sources. I’ve talked about Google and how traditional Google search might change. Therefore, it’s now about thinking more creatively on how you can continually drive traffic to your blog. This means digging into Pinterest again. If you’ve, say, abandoned the platform. From what I’m hearing, it is starting to drive a lot of traffic again. Another secret weapon is your email list. Be intentional about growing it because again, this is where your raving fans come from. This is where your best customers are. Also, collaborations. Find people in your niche that you can work with. One thing I’m doing is reaching out to people and saying, let’s do an email swap. I will send an email to my list sharing your freebie and you send an email to your list. Sharing my freebie collaborations are going to be an even bigger deal. Think about Instagram providing value and also selling what I call your vibe. Let people get to know you. Let people into your circle so that they go, yep, she’s my girl.

Jillian Leslie (00:09:19) – He’s my guy. I want to be part of that person’s community. Also, opportunities on TikTok and online groups. Get active in Facebook groups. Go make friends, go find customers, go connect. So the more places sending visitors, the more stable your overall traffic will be. Okay. Tip number three build your personal brand. I mentioned it when I was talking about Instagram. Selling your vibe. Your value is not just the content you can create, it is now about you being the person I want to learn from. I want to work with really cultivating who you are. One great way to do this is to ask your friends what kind of vibe you give off. Maybe you’re somebody who explains things really well. Maybe you’re someone who gets excited about things. Maybe you’ve got great style, whatever. Maybe you’re like a warm hug. Whatever it is that is your vibe. That is what people are drawn to and attracted to. And I would be leaning into that and I would see short video, whether it be Instagram Reels, TikToks lives, YouTube shorts as a way to sell your vibe.

Jillian Leslie (00:10:41) – I don’t know about you, but when I go to a new restaurant, I might go to their website to make a reservation, but I will always go to Instagram to see photos of their food to get the vibe. That is something to be thinking about with everything you are creating. Give your business a human voice, a human face. Share your experiences, personality. Help readers relate to the actual person behind the content they love. Because as we move to this world where we don’t know who to trust, building genuine engagement, real relationships will pay off in huge dividends. Tip number four diversify your income. If you are a food blogger and you have been lucky to make lots of money from running ads on your site, you need other ways of making money. I recommend developing digital products and services that you can then sell directly to your audience. This is still about selling not just the content, not just the solution, but you. You and what you stand for. Think about are there courses you could sell? Consulting services, paid communities, memberships? Any way that you could package up your expertise and sell it? You should be doing this.

Jillian Leslie (00:12:03) – I say this all the time. If you are a food blogger and you are not selling an e-book of your top recipes, you’re missing out. Go start there. Another product that is easy to create and can make you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars is paid. Workshops. What could you teach? Live for one hour and get people to show up for? And of course, if you want to be selling digital products, I recommend a platform like Milo Tree Cart because we are the easiest tool to use. This leads me to tip number five. We’re all terrified of AI. We also love it. So I’m going to say go leverage AI in two ways one. Use AI to learn a new skill that people will pay more money for. This could be something like email marketing or Facebook ads. These are skills people step up and pay for. Go learn that skill. And now you can do it faster with AI. And then the second way you can leverage AI is to think about what in your business are you using AI for, and then can you charge people to teach them that or do it for them? For example, I’m interviewing somebody for my podcast who is a Pinterest marketer, and she has all these systems in place where she’s using AI in her Pinterest management.

Jillian Leslie (00:13:33) – I said to her, God, you’re sitting on a goldmine right there. Go teach people how you specifically are using AI for Pinterest, because people will pay you to learn that faster than they would have to learn it themselves. AI is hugely disruptive, lots of jobs are going to go away, but lots of jobs are coming. So get good at it so that you can have these skills that you can then sell for lots of money. So spend 2024 mastering things that leverage coming technology trends to provide huge value to other businesses in your space. Remember, you just have to be 1 or 2 steps ahead to be able to teach what you know. So provide forward thinking solutions that you can charge a premium for. Those are my five tips. And just to recap tip number one experiment and pivot. Embrace that. Tip number two diversify your traffic sources. Tip number three build your personal brand. Tip number four develop digital products and services. And tip number five leverage AI for new skills. But of course I’ve got a bonus tip.

Jillian Leslie (00:14:57) – This is to cultivate an opportunity mindset. So so much change is coming and it can be unsettling. And like me, you know, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in fear going, oh my God, what is the future of online business? But really, what is the future for my business? But if I can make it a point to consciously shift my inner dialogue to one of curiosity, excitement, and endless possibility, I’m going to be looking for the opportunities most people won’t. So I already have an advantage. So again, as I said, get ready to fail fast and fail often because then you’re unstoppable. Nobody knows what the future holds so why not view it full of possibility? Your job is simply to go find the opportunities and make the most of them. So the winners will be those who meet AI and shifting algorithms with creativity, resilience, and relentless experimentation that can be you. So now get out there and make 2024 your best business year yet. I am excited to see what you do and when you come up with incredibly creative solutions that are making you money, I am going to ask you to be a guest on this podcast so we can all hear what you’re doing and learn from you.

Jillian Leslie (00:16:32) – If you’re ready to make money from what you already know, by turning that knowledge into digital products and you want to get on a call with me to talk about strategy, head to military comment. Because. Cause I would love to meet you. Also, I’m doing some new stuff on Instagram. If you don’t follow me over there, please just head to Milo Tree on Instagram. Give me a follow message me that you heard me on this podcast and I will happily follow you back and I will see you here again next week.