Why Adaptability Is the Key to Blogging with Kirsten Oliphant

Welcome to episode 005 of the Blogger Genius Podcast. My guest today is Kirsten Oliphant from the blog, Create If Writing.

Kirsten started her first blog in 2007, and has seen her blog, business, and the Internet change ever since.

In this episode we discuss why adaptability is the key to blogging, why connecting with other bloggers is key to your success, and the importance of understanding your “why” in why you’re blogging. Listen now, you won’t want to miss this!

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Table of Contents

Transcript – Why Adaptability Is The Key To Blogging

Jillian: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome. I am so excited to be talking with Kirsten Oliphant from Create If Writing. That’s Create If Writing, That’s I – F. She is a writer, a blogger, and a podcaster, and a friend. So welcome to the show.

Kirsten: [00:00:30] Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be. I’m so excited you’re having a show here.

Jillian: [00:00:38] And thank you for being here and for being such a good friend. To be honest, behind the scenes we are really good friends. So absolutely. I want to talk about your blog and I want to start with how did you start, because you’ve got a lot of titles. Writer, blogger, podcaster. So what inspired you?

Starting a blog

Kirsten: [00:01:00] Well, I think I sort of have a similar story to a lot of people who started blogging in 2007. And in that, you know, pre 2010, I feel like is a really different world in blogging.

Kirsten: [00:01:11] I thought I didn’t understand blogs. I didn’t really get them. I had a friend who had one, and they seemed like, why would anyone write a blog? It’s like a diary online and who wants to read that?

Kirsten: [00:01:23] So I kind of thought they were really silly, but then I was living in Texas, and got pregnant with my first child, and my whole family and most of my good friends were in Virginia.

Kirsten: [00:01:32] So we were doing a home birth, which everybody thought was completely insane. Ended up not having a home birth. But we were planning a homebirth, so I thought I would start a blog where people could just kind of see, you know, the baby bump pictures, as we go because they weren’t seeing me in person, and also I could talk about this home birth thing, because not everybody wanted to talk about it.

Kirsten: [00:01:52] I knew they all thought I was nuts because the first friend I had that had a home birth, I wanted to call the authorities. It just is like a weird thing if you don’t know… Like now it’s so much more known. Birth choice is more of a conversation. And so that’s how it started.

Kirsten: [00:02:10] And it’s interesting, I have all these titles and they were really separate to me back then. It took me four or five years before I realized that blogging was writing, and I know that sounds really silly and I knew it in a way that it was because it was such a good outlet for me.

Kirsten: [00:02:27] I have my master’s degree in fiction, so that’s kind of my background. Like I majored in English and wrote stories and I was a terrible poet. Sometimes I wrote poetry and songs, like I did that in college, but mostly it was short stories and novels.

Blogging as an outlet

Kirsten: [00:02:40] But having kids also just derailed that whole thing because it’s just too hard for me personally to write fiction with kids. And so while blogging was like a really good outlet, I didn’t think of it as writing for a long time. And then one day it kind of hit me.

Kirsten: [00:02:57] Hey if this book gets published I’m working on, or any of these books, and people come back to this blog are they going to be confused? And the answer was yes.

Kirsten: [00:03:06] I would just write. It was very very personal, very very intimate, very very like post a million times a day, post about what we’re eating. And I did amass a following, and it was easier to do that back then because blogs weren’t everywhere, and nobody was sharing on social media. People just somehow found you. Which I don’t understand how that worked, but it did.

Kirsten: [00:03:29] And I am a good writer just on my own, like if I’m not trying too hard, like I still have those skills, right. But there was no intentionality to it.

Kirsten: [00:03:37] And I also felt like it was so different than what I was writing, that I realized those things were just too far apart. They needed to be closer together so that’s kind of I think when the shift took place, and then I kind of got derailed a little bit where I realized people were making money blogging, like with sponsored posts and stuff, and I was a mom and mommy bloggers, that’s a thing, so for a while I was doing a lot of sponsored posts.

Kirsten: [00:04:01] And then I think I had that realization again, like hey, like ultimately even though right now I’m not publishing novels, I’m a writer. Like do I really want posts about you know, pepperoni on my site, or diapers, or car insurance, or these things that I’m getting paid for just to have some extra money every month.

Kirsten: [00:04:19] You know and I decided no. Mostly I don’t. I take very very few sponsored posts now. I’ve had a lot of shifts over time and I feel like anyone who’s been blogging along time has had those same shifts, and they may be different than my shifts.

Kirsten: [00:04:35] But like right it’s organic, it’s changing. And I think the blogging landscape has changed so much.

Jillian: [00:04:44] Yes definitely. Oh definitely definitely. Your blog is your spoke and everything else is like a spoke off of that.

Kirsten: [00:04:54] Yeah and a lot of the blogging I did back then I would post several times a day, and that wasn’t super uncommon.

Kirsten: [00:04:59] I mean I kind of cut my teeth on gossip blogs, like I would read those and they post every five seconds, but that’s because like Brad Pitt was always out to dinner, and so you keep posting pictures of him. I didn’t think about the fact that like that’s not like we don’t need that, or real life, but now we all do that on Facebook right here, on Twitter and Instagram Stories.

Creating a second blog

Kirsten: [00:05:18] And then when I started Create If Writing, which is my second blog, it was because every year I did like this yearly survey and I would ask people like, OK I talk about food, I talk about parenting, sometimes talk about faith. I was playing roller derby so I talked about that. And then I talk about writing and blogging. Like what do you not want to hear? What do you want to hear?

Kirsten: [00:05:36] And. Every time. Hands down people didn’t want to read about writing and blogging. And I was super frustrated because I was like, you guys, how can you want to hear about everything but this?

Kirsten: [00:05:47] But my audience was not people doing what I was doing. So they didn’t care about writing or blogging and so I went ahead and started a new site, because I really I had an interest in it, and I had a lot of blogger connections with people who were blogging. They just weren’t necessarily coming daily.

Kirsten: [00:06:05] Like my main readers were not bloggers, they were not writers yet. So I started the separate site and there’s some crossover but not very much.

Becoming a blogging expert

Jillian: [00:06:13] OK so then you’ve become like this authority, this expert on blogging, and monetizing and all of that, like helping other bloggers. Blogging seems like such a limiting term. Helping people figure out how to create a living online, like a satisfying life online. You teach people. Really you’re a teacher, this is how I think about you.

Kirsten: [00:06:49] Yeah. Which I love. Thank you. Well I could go to a really specific kind of moment and time for that. I mean I talked a little bit about writing and blogging on my blog, like I said that was one of my categories but it wasn’t a big one.

Kirsten: [00:07:08] I self-published my first book on Amazon when I realized that was a thing. And I wrote about how you did that, which was yet early early in the days when you could do that. And I learned from somebody else who had done the same thing. So it was mostly learn as I go.

Kirsten: [00:07:26] But I was always in the room with people who were smarter than me, or more experienced in the blogging world, because I blogged in a vacuum.

Kirsten: [00:07:34] For years I did not ever talk to other bloggers about blogging tips and when I went to my first blogging conference, which was Blog Elevated here in Houston, and I think 2013, and I met other bloggers, I realized how much I didn’t know. I was always the person who felt like I was the small one in the room. So I went to a writer’s conference in the beginning of 2015. I LOVED IT SO MUCH I started going to all these blogging conferences and social media things.

Kirsten: [00:08:02] So I went to this writer’s conference, and all of a sudden, I was the expert. I just went to the conference, and it was not like I’m going to go make a name for myself as a whatever.

Kirsten: [00:08:16] It just happened that they had somebody speak on Pinterest and she was like really smart. But people, writers especially writers, hate the self-promotion stuff. They hate social media.

Kirsten: [00:08:30] They don’t like platforms, they just want to write stuff and have people read it, which you know the only way that works these days is that you have to get out there and market. And so I remember there were literally people groaning in the audience, as this woman was talking, and she showed us a slide of a spreadsheet that she had, that was color coded, and how and when she shared pins and literally there was like this like…

Kirsten: [00:08:57] There is the girl next to me and she said I’m leaving. And she put her pen down and she left. So this was where I was and I would have conversations with people and they would say something, and I would be like oh… Then it was like people would gather around. It was very weird and all of a sudden I realized I had been thinking of myself as somebody who didn’t know anything. And I realized I actually know a ton of stuff that I just picked up along the way right.

Kirsten: [00:09:24] It’s old hat to me because I was always with bloggers and not with people who speak this language, and I am a teacher. I mean I went through most of the Education Department in college. I dropped out because the only thing they would do is collaborative learning and it was one of those things where you’re in the group and you’re the only one who does the work. Literally that happened to me every time. And I was like I will not do this anymore.

Kirsten: [00:09:51] But I love teaching I’ve always loved teaching and so I hadn’t thought I could do it in this space. I always sort of felt limited and kind of fake. Are we a phony you know? Like that whole not feeling like an expert kind of thing, but it took me having people ask me.

Kirsten: [00:10:12] And then after the conference people started following up with me, like can you help me? And so that was actually right before I got a new phone that had the podcast app. Like right there on it.

Starting a podcast

Kirsten: [00:10:25] And I did not know what podcasts were. I mean I heard of them but I was like I don’t know where they live. Like how do you listen to them, which are really common questions people ask. Yes. And I push the button on the app and I started just listening to podcasts. And two weeks later I started my podcast.

Kirsten: [00:10:42] And so I just I love the medium and I feel that was a perfect place for me to sort of start doing more of this teaching on this specific topic. And I had a lot to say.

Jillian: [00:10:56] Yes. Well again the reason why I’m doing this podcast is because of you. I was inspired by you. So let’s go back to your blog or your business. Now since you’re not doing sponsored posts for car insurance, how do you monetize? How do you make money at what you do?

Kirsten: [00:11:18] Well that was a big shift and kind of a slow one it took me stepping back from any income I was making because I did stop the sponsored posts. I did keep ads up so I have the two sites I have kirstenolipant.com, which is kind of the lifestyle blog and kind of my central hub. And I do have ads on that site, because it gets a good enough traffic to have them pay.

Kirsten: [00:11:40] And so that’s just like a little bit of money every month and I work with Mediavine whom I highly recommend for anyone looking. They are just the best people to work with.

Creating multiple income streams as a blogger

Kirsten: [00:11:53] What’s become interesting to me is I’ve tried a lot of things, like I want to see what works, and I see what other people are doing. And I just try things. I’ve had the luxury of that because I’m not the primary person putting the food on the table right.

Kirsten: [00:12:05] I didn’t have a big budget in the beginning, especially to throw into things, but I was like I can just try stuff and if this doesn’t work, then we’ll try something else, or we’ll adapt it. So I’ve been able to actually build a much bigger income, like more than double with less than half of the pageviews. And I think that was the thing that really made me like, whoa.

Kirsten: [00:12:35] So I have a mix of revenue streams. I have courses. I have books that I sell both on Amazon and also directly on my site with Gum Road and different integrations.

Kirsten: [00:12:51] I have affiliate sales which actually have become the biggest piece consistently. It’s always up and down like if I have a course launch then that month might be courses, but affiliate sales have become stable, which is interesting again with very low pageviews, very low like under 10,000 pages.

Kirsten: [00:13:15] And what else? I do some coaching. I don’t do a lot because one on one is so intensive that I you kind of just have to charge this big price and so I take two clients.

Kirsten: [00:13:27] And yet I don’t have them every month but that’s fine because when I’m working with one, it’s exhausting to me. It’s great but it’s for me mentally hardest Like if I could just make all my money creating courses. Yes.

Kirsten: [00:13:39] Because I like teaching but like the one on one stuff can be really just so draining.

Jillian: [00:13:43] So it looks like you have a variety of income streams, but they’re all related.

Kirsten: [00:13:52] Yes so they all kind of fall under like a similar umbrella. I teach people. I do a lot of teaching. I would kind of put it under the heading I guess of like platform building, so helping writers and bloggers kind of build e-mail lists is what I’m super passionate about.

Kirsten: [00:14:09] So I have my main course like kind of my signature course is called “Own Your List,” and it’s all about e-mail. How to Make Money With the list you love.

Jillian: [00:14:17] OK. Got it.

Kirsten: [00:14:19] And then my biggest affiliate commission every month is from ConvertKit, who’s an email service provider.

Kirsten: [00:14:24] And you know, a lot of people getting started with affiliate sales only hear about Amazon. But the reality is there are so many other programs and to put a word out there about ConvertKit and why their affiliate program so amazing, is it’s a recurring. Right. Right. So I make 30 percent of what people under me are paying every month. That versus the two percent or something you get from Amazon. It just doesn’t even compare.

Jillian: [00:14:55] What I like about what you’re saying though is that I know a bunch of bloggers who are kind of grasping at all these different things, and they are they’re splitting their focus in so many ways. They’re always trying something new. I’m going to put Amazon affiliate links on my site, then I’m going to make a course, but I don’t yet know what my course is going to be about. What I love about what you’re doing, is this all it’s all coming from the same core.

Kirsten: [00:15:29] Yes. So definitely they all relate to each other.

Jillian: [00:15:33] How do people then find you? Like where are people discovering you and how are you putting yourself out there so they find you?

How to get found on the Internet as a blogger

Kirsten: [00:15:43] Yeah I feel like there has been a lot more interesting with Create If Writing because again, I don’t have a ton of pageviews so people are not finding me necessarily through the blog first. It’s harder to track. I will say that. So with kirstenoliphant.com, I know I can look at analytics. I can tell where people are coming from because they’re finding me through my site and they’re finding me through Pinterest or Facebook with creative writing.

Kirsten: [00:16:19] I did some guest posting for a woman named Jane Freeman who’s really influential in the writing community. And so every now and then, even today someone join my facebook group, and I have those questions like: How did you hear about this? Because I started getting really interested in that question. I’m like where are people coming from? And that person came from Jane’s blog, even though that was like forever ago.

Kirsten: [00:16:44] Interesting right. She’s an authority and it’s perfectly aligned, so that makes sense.

Kirsten: [00:16:51] Yes. And so I’ve had guest posts that were kind of a waste of time, like no traffic. I get new people. Yeah. You kind of have to really vet those places if you’re going to take your time. So there’s that. People do find the podcast on iTunes.

Kirsten: [00:17:03] I’ve started doing more interviews and other people’s podcasts because that way you’re not having to convert a blog reader to become a podcast listener. You’re already getting people who are podcast listeners who can come and listen to your podcast.

Kirsten: [00:17:16] My Facebook group it’s still not huge. I don’t want it to be huge. It’s just getting close to 5,300 people. But it has writing in the title because it’s Create If Writing.

Kirsten: [00:17:28] People search “writing” and now Facebook is suggesting it to them. It’s kind of interesting because it’s like you have all these funnels now because it’s like people are coming to this group. They don’t even know who I am at all. They do not know i have a podcast.

Kirsten: [00:17:42] Unlike e-mail where you have a welcome series with a Facebook group, I realize I have to be much more intentional. I have be much more present because otherwise people just think it’s like this random group of writers, and I’m like, no this is a group formed by one person. So people have found me there.

Kirsten: [00:18:05] I’m in a lot of Facebook groups and they have promo days, which I think can be really over-used. But at the same time, I’ve started studying those threads, looking at what ones have all the comments. Which ones have the likes, and then trying to choose which of my posts I can put in that day and also how to frame it, because most people just drop a link and no one ever clicks on it. But if you are explaining it and talking in a winsome way, people will find you.

Kirsten: [00:18:37] I’ve started speaking more at events like conferences, virtual summits. I hosted a virtual summit in 2016 and 2017. That’s the Profitable Blogging Summit. And other people that we had speak, brought their audiences so people found me through the summit.

Kirsten: [00:19:06] So I’m just in a lot of different places. And so even though people are not coming first through my site, and that’s one of the big things I’m working on, is getting my SEO working because I feel like something was actually broken. I know how to do SEO and Google is not telling anyone about my site, so I had to hire someone to come in.

Jillian: [00:19:30] The one thing I so admire about you is how much content you create. And again it’s all about teaching. It’s all about trying to show people the path you’ve walked and helping them find success on those paths. So how many hours a week are you working on both of your blogs and your podcast?

Blogging schedule

Kirsten: [00:20:02] Not as many as you’d think. Or as I would like, probably. So we have five kids and the oldest is nine. The youngest is nine months, so we’re like in the throes of toddlers at home, like up to my neck with little ones

Kirsten: [00:20:21] And so and I don’t have the kind of kids — like you hear about people who homeschool and blog. That is not my house, my house is loud and insane. And there’s always someone fighting with someone or doing something wrong. So it’s just crazy. So I try but I don’t really work when the kids are around. Which means that I work at night right now and I’m often so tired that’s not even the best working time.

Kirsten: [00:20:47] I’ll try to add it up. It fluctuates but I joined the YMCA just to get two hours of childcare every day. So genius! It turns out that someone in a Facebook group said they did that and I was like yes, because it’s $75 or something a month for all my kids.

Kirsten: [00:21:07] And that’s like two babysitting times if you’re paying a babysitter, so I go for two hours not every day of the week but five days usually. So there’s at least 10 hours, or I’m at the Y working and then at night sometimes, depending if my husband and I are not hanging out. You know sometimes I’ll do like two hours of work but not every night because sometimes again, I’m just like you give me wine and give me Netflix and I can’t. I can’t.

Kirsten: [00:21:33] My kids, there are two of them in preschool. Two are in regular school like elementary. Two are in preschool two days a week and then the baby is not anywhere. I wish it were 30 hours. I love what I do. I would work. I’d be a crazy workaholic if I could, but I am probably working like 15-20 hours.

Jillian: [00:22:13] Wow. Because I think you are just so. Prolific. I love that you set your mind something and you do it and that you exude passion in everything you do. It comes through.

Jillian: [00:22:34] And you inspire others like me to start a podcast. If you were to think about, when you first started. What do you wish you could have told yourself then that you know now.

Kirsten: [00:22:56] Two things. One is more like a tiny technical thing and then one is like a bigger picture thing.

Advice: Start your blog on WordPress.org, not WordPress.com

Kirsten: [00:23:02] So the tiny technical thing first is that I wish someone had told me when you start a WordPress blog, start on WordPress.org not WordPress.com.

Kirsten: [00:23:10] First of all I used to be a WordPress or I was a Blogger first. That was a mess to move. So I started on WordPress.org. But to go into your settings so that your post titles do not have dates. That is like the dumbest thing but it’s so important like it really does matter for SEO.You can pay someone to go retroactively do it, but when you’ve been blogging forever, it’s a lot of redirects. And I’m just not willing to do it.

Kirsten: [00:24:02] And then the more big picture thing is… I think you need to be connected and I think people do this better now than they used to. Maybe we’re too connected. And so I kind of want to qualify that a little bit.

Advice: Connect with other bloggers

Kirsten: [00:24:15] I blogged in a vacuum like I mentioned. I did not talk to other bloggers except for like we left comments for each other. But we didn’t share like hey what are you learning? Hey what’s your latest tip?

Kirsten: [00:24:26] Once I started doing that and once I went to my first conference and I came out and like eight of us started a little Facebook group and we would share each other’s post. We would talk about things we learned. And that’s when I started growing. When I started connecting with other bloggers.

Kirsten: [00:24:40] But I will say now we’re so connected that there are all these gamey things like Instagram pods, which can be good I’m sure. But for the most part it’s creating an inauthentic engagement where every time somebody posts, you have to go like it or comment or whatever.

Kirsten: [00:25:02] Brands have figured out about this and are getting frustrated with influencers who do this. So I think you have to find the kind of collaborations that work for you and I actually don’t know that I told you that but I’m working on a book that’s hopefully coming out at the end of September.

Kirsten: [00:25:21] The hurricane here in Houston kind of put off a lot of things. And our house did not flood. It just affected like when my books are coming out. But the book is all about creative collaboration and ways to partner with people that are good for both of you. You know not just using somebody to get ahead.

Kirsten: [00:25:39] Yes some people do. Yes. Yes.

Kirsten: [00:25:42] But that kind of move you forward and I think that’s the biggest thing. Like talking to you inspires me. There’s something about the energy of talking to other people, working with other people, and learning from other people, that you will move forward so much more quickly if you can do that.

Jillian: [00:25:59] Yes and I would say that for me I went to my first Bloggy Bootcamp conference I don’t know how many years ago. And I just took copious notes and I was like oh my god, I didn’t know this. And I didn’t know this. It just took me to a whole new level. And then I would say that there is something about going to blogging conferences and meeting people and just the exchange of ideas, and also connecting with people in real life who you might have been a fan of online or maybe even in e-mails. But all of a sudden you see them and you talk to them, and you will be friends for life. And I feel like that has elevated me so much that I completely agree with what you’ve said.

Jillian: [00:26:54] But I do also agree that today there can be so much information that you can spend your whole life in Facebook groups and still feel like you’re not doing it right. And who knows where some of this information is coming from that people are saying is true. They know the truth about the Facebook algorithm. So there’s also a part of me where I have to step back and go wait a second.

Jillian: [00:27:20] OK I hear what they’re saying. I know I could get lost in this forever, and I’m just going to have to listen to myself and my own gut.

Kirsten: [00:27:29] Absolutely. And there are so many people giving out bad advice. So many don’t know who to trust.

Kirsten: [00:27:46] Parenting in this age is the same way. There’s like this overload of information. My mom and I were talking about breastfeeding. She was saying that there was no one around back when I was born in 1977. We can all rewind and figure out my age.

Kirsten: [00:28:03] But she said no when there was no support like breastfeeding was hard and it didn’t work and so she switched straight away but like when I was struggling with my first child and like why isn’t this working? I don’t understand. Like shouldn’t this be natural and just work.

Kirsten: [00:28:18] And it’s really hard. But I had the lactation consultant and I had friends who’d been there and there were a Facebook group and she was like you know we didn’t have this support. The flipside is that we have too much information. If I had posted that little anecdote on Facebook, I’d have 18 people telling me what I did wrong, and what my mom did wrong.

Jillian: [00:28:39] Yes. That is so true. When I had my daughter I too had difficulty breastfeeding and I found a breastfeeding support group and had it not been for the breastfeeding support group, I would have quit, because but every week I could go and it was kind of calm you know. It was just a bunch of women nursing their babies and asking the same questions over and over again.

Jillian: [00:29:01] But because I had that support I was able to continue. But I agree with you that there is also the flipside of this which is there’s just too much. Sometimes you have to trust your own gut.

Jillian: [00:29:13] So in terms of what you’re most excited about right now, would say it’s your new book coming out?

Kirsten: [00:29:22] I am and one of the reasons I think I probably am prolific in creating all this stuff is because I get excited about new things. I’m a bad finisher. I’m a really good starter.

Kirsten: [00:29:34] So I have a lot of things that are started, no one will ever see, that you’d be shocked by. There are so many of them but I really am excited about what I’m working on at any given moment. So I’m really excited about my book.

Writing a book on “collaboration”

Kirsten: [00:29:48] And it was fun because I decided, because it was about collaboration, that I not only wanted to talk about kind of the attitude to go into them with, because I get pitches all the time and they’re all terrible.

Kirsten: [00:30:08] And so I talk about how to pitch something. Here’s how to do it well. But the second half of the book is specific examples of collaboration. And I got different people who collaborate in specific ways to send me things.

Kirsten: [00:30:26] I had somebody send me a paragraph or two on how it is to collaborate with another podcast co-host and somebody else that does box sets with other people, and works to get on the USA Today bestseller list.

Kirsten: [00:30:40] And someone who’s a YouTube or talked about YouTube collabs and what that was like. So it was fun because I collaborated on the collaboration of the book.

Kirsten: [00:30:55] Only thing is that I want to get something from Vanilla Ice because I feel like anyone from my generation, when you hear the word collaborate, there’s like the whole like Stop Collaborate and Listen from Vanilla Ice.

Kirsten: [00:31:06] Yeah I don’t think that’s probably going to happen. But I have a few weeks to make it happen. So we’ll see Jillian.

Jillian: [00:31:14] So do you have any kind of parting advice for our audience of bloggers?

Jillian: [00:31:19] Maybe people just starting out, people who’ve been at it for a while. But given that blogging can be you in your own little bubble. Like what would you want to say to somebody to keep them on a path.

Kirsten: [00:31:33] Yeah yeah. I think one of the most important things, and this is the thing that I always kept coming back to, and I was like having those a ha moments. It’s like oh no one would want to believe that this was my blog. As a writer.

Advice: Love what you do and think about your “why”

Kirsten: [00:31:45] I feel like you have to stick with what you’re passionate about with a couple of caveats. But I think that passion will carry you through. So like I always love what I’m doing, and it makes it easy. It does not feel like work.

Kirsten: [00:31:59] In fact I have to tear myself away because I enjoy it so much, most of the time. But I need a break every now and then. I burnout like everybody else. But I really love it. So that will carry through. But I hear people say all the time like do your passion and the money will follow. And I just feel like that’s such a lovely statement. That may not be true. Like it’s just you know we can’t possibly all make livings off of what we’re passionate about.

Kirsten: [00:32:26] So I think you have to think about your “why,” because I do have friends who are blogging to put food on the table. And that looks different.

Kirsten: [00:32:34] And right now we’re in a season where my husband is changing his job and our life is a little bit more uncertain in terms of our financials. And so I’ve set up some different kinds of funnels and used things like tripwires in my email because the things that I hadn’t done before have not been because I was against them but because I didn’t need to, whereas now I’m like OK. I need to come up with an extra $4000 this month and next month and the month after.

Kirsten: [00:32:58] How am I going to do that? Yeah where can I plug that in. So I’m still trying to put it under my passion. But I think your “why” is really going to impact what that looks like for you. So in an ideal world we would all be passionate and make money.

Jillian: [00:33:13] I think that you have to be intentional about making money. It doesn’t just fall from the sky.

Kirsten: [00:33:21] Yes. The people that are like oh just create the content and it will come.

Jillian: [00:33:24] No it doesn’t work like that. You have to be strategic. Again it can fall within what you’re passionate about but you need to say this I’m doing to make money.

Jillian: [00:33:37] How can people connect with you. How can people find all your resources and see what a wonderful teacher you are.

Kirsten: [00:33:49] Yes well mostly createifwriting.com is where you can find all those things. We’re going to spell it because it’s Create If Writing dot com.

Kirsten: [00:34:03] And that was because I think when I was starting, I’m really into creative writing, that’s where my degree is in. I have a master’s in that, but I’m also into all these things.

Kirsten: [00:34:15] Other writers have these writing blogs or writing tips and that is not what my site is. It’s all about getting your stuff in front of an audience. Like the platform side of things.

Kirsten: [00:34:26] So it’s kind of like if you’re writing or if you’re blogging or if you are podcasting or if you have some people in my audience who are like yoga instructors, and you want to get your email list working for you.

Kirsten: [00:34:37] I have a Facebook group that you can find if you search Facebook is showing people where that is not just kind of cool but that’s just create if writing dot com forward slash community.

Kirsten: [00:34:51] And most of the places on social media I’m Kikimojo because I started social media so long ago, that I used my roller derby name and then I have too many followers to change it.

Kirsten: [00:35:01] So if you look for Kikimojo, that’s me on Pinterest and Twitter and just most places that’s where you’ll find me.

Jillian: [00:35:09] Oh this is such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Kirsten: [00:35:13] Well thank you for having me on.

Kirsten: [00:35:14] It was great to have a conversation with you and I’m so excited that you started a podcast.

Jillian: [00:35:18] Ah. All because of you.

Info on MiloTree

If you’re trying to grow your social media followers on Instagram Facebook YouTube and Pinterest plus trying to grow your email list. Definitely check out MiloTree.

It is the smart pop up. You add to your blog or your site and it asks your visitors to follow you on social media or subscribe to your list.

Just a couple of things.

It’s super easy to add to your site
We offer a WordPress plugin or a simple line of code
It’s Google friendly on mobile so you don’t have to worry about showing popups on mobile
It’s lightning fast it won’t slow your site down
You can grow multiple platforms at once