Growing an Online Business to $100k a Month (Greatest Hits)

25:54They really need something in the middle. So we're excited to make this but it's kind of funny we're having to backtrack. It's okay, we're grow, it's okay. I'm just thinking of something along the lines of to try and replicate this in a different niche and like piggybacking on the cricket or whatever tool happens to be in your space. It seems like a lot of the content and keywords are driven by like, okay, I have this thing, like, what can I do with it? How do I use it better? And there's this whole niche economy around this thing. And I'm curious, okay, the gear starts spinning, like, what could I pivot that to?

26:32What's the equivalent in your niche? If you can go. Absolutely. I think many niches have something like this. People have this thing or they're thinking about getting this thing and they have legitimate questions and they need real help to figure it out. Instant Pot. There are many communities around the Instant Pot. Peloton Bike in the fitness niche, right? Like, how do I use this thing? How do I actually make it work? If you look, you will discover that there are whole little micro communities around these popular products. And in a way, they're very popular and they have big audiences. And in a way, you're kind of piggybacking on their audience, right?

27:12I don't mean to sound like you're like stealing it. It's not like that. There is a community right there. They're eager for help and information. And if you can provide it and actually be of service to them, you will rise with them as well. Yeah, absolutely. We see mostly in the software space of like, okay, I'm an early adopter of Asana or PipeDrive or any number of different software tools. I'm going to create some content around how to do that. People are going to hire me as a consultant. I'm going to build the course around how to use this for some specific business model. But here's an example of how to do it with a physical product.

27:48With a physical thing. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What else on the content front? So primarily written tutorial content, or are you doing video stuff for every post that goes out there? what else is going on on the content side? Right. So we have step-by-step tutorials in our principal, which is pretty awesome. And at this point, every tutorial has a video that goes with it, a full length step-by-step video. They're usually 20 to 40 minutes long, and they're on YouTube. What's really interesting about that is I thought I was just doing this as another service for my readers to help them because they were asking for it.

28:26But it turns out that YouTube is a whole community unto itself. And when we went onto YouTube and did our very best job, showed up and did amazing, we are actually getting more traffic and discovering new people through YouTube now than we are, say, through Pinterest. So this has been huge. YouTube has been huge for us. And that's why we are now putting out a video with every project, which is not easy, by the way. It's a lot of work, but it's so rewarding. In fact, one of the things I do every year is, I don't have a good name for it. It's like a content blast. I think maybe there might be names for this.

29:01I don't know. I just sort of made this up. But each month when my keyword is most popular for me, that's December, I put out a new project. So a new post and a new video every day for that month. It's grueling, hard work, but because that's when my keyword trends and Google trends specifically, it's where I look, I am just carpet bombing YouTube and Facebook and my mailing list, my Facebook groups, everything. Are you able to batch that stuff at all? Or is it like literally every night, like filming and editing? Oh, oh yes, it's every night because I'm not a batcher. Oh, I wish I was. We're working on that though, because clearly I cannot scale that up.

29:41So that's a separate conversation. But yes, I am up every night till 6 a.m. working on that in December. This is how dedicated I am. It takes a lot of dedication to do that. But it's so, what it does is it levels us up each time I've done it. This is the third year I've done it now. In the beginning, it was just tutorials. And then I added the video. And each time I've done it, it's like increase my traffic and my revenue by three to five times. And it stays there. So it's like a little stair step. It's pretty amazing. I highly recommend that folks try it. But if you can batch it, it's better.

30:16So you don't go insane. All the work that goes into that elusive passive income. But I appreciate you sharing that too. When did you start in earnest on YouTube? December 1st, 2018. A year and three months, and to have 225 ,000 subscribers clearly hit a missing pain point. Like I said, we showed up with intention. Or I did. It was just me back then, yeah. So outside of those content blasts, is there a routine publishing schedule? Yes. So I try to get something amazing out once a week. And we try to do that on the weekend. And it's a post and it's a video tutorial and it's a lead magnet. Always those three things.

31:00And I try to get it on the weekend because that's when my audience is doing stuff, not surprisingly. That's our regular schedule. Okay, that makes sense. Only once a week just because it's difficult to do that high quality work on a more regular basis. But my goal is to build an amazing content machine. And one day we will have amazing content every day of the year. Free pattern and a step-by-step tutorial and an amazing video. And it's going to be awesome. It sounds like you already have a pretty amazing content machine. But every day, can you imagine? And what I do, content is very important.

31:38Yes, I could totally just coast at this point. I absolutely could. But I see the effect that good content, not good content, excellent content has on our business. And I know that getting more content out there is going to help us reach our goal, which is quite audacious. So we need to work very hard. How do you keep coming up with new content ideas? Oh, that's actually very easy. The more I niche down, the easier it gets. My audience tells me what they want. So I have a very active Facebook group. They're awesome. We have 110 ,000, 15 ,000 people in there. I ask them all the time what they're interested in.

32:16I do polls. They tell me, they say, hey, Jennifer, will you show us how to make this thing? It's very easy. I have so many projects lined up, I can't even get them all out. Okay, so doing one a day would not be a problem. Not at all. Nope. It would be great. Are people finding the Facebook group through your email list? Hey, by the way, we have a Facebook group. Are they finding it organically through Facebook? Is it linked from the blog? All of the above. All of the above. So yes, some people just find us, stumble across us. At the end of every video, I say, hey, do you have questions? Come on over to our awesome Facebook group and we'd be happy to help you.

32:51I encourage people to share photos of their projects in our Facebook group. And when they join my welcome sequence, I invite them to come in and get some help and get to know us. So all the places I can think of, I do that there. Is it just Jennifer Maker or does it have a different name? I have three. the biggest one, the one that is the cricket related one is called Cricket Crafters and Makers hosted by Jennifer Maker. All right. We'll link that up in the show notes. 117 ,000 members here. Wow. A thousand posts a day in here. It's very active, which is great. Yes, it's endless content, but how are you moderating that?

33:27Or do you have to, can you even do it at a thousand posts a day? Jennifer's response coming up right after this, plus her plans for the future of the brand. Are you still overpaying for wireless? It's time to say yes to saying no. At our partner, Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. And here's why I said yes to making the switch over five years ago, and yes to getting premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. I really liked being able to keep my existing phone and my existing phone number when I switched over. This year, we've taken advantage of their easy international add-ons, including free service in Canada and affordable packages when we were visiting Japan.

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35:24There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. That's a good point. There's some things that we can't do. So while I have only been in blogging for three and a half years, I have been online since the mid-90s. I was a beta tester for the World Wide Web.

36:03No online community is a stranger to me. And I was teaching people back in the America Online days how to actually build online communities. And I feel very strongly about this, that if you set the tone and you are present in your community and you show your members how to behave, they will follow suit. And I actually have always, because of this, been blessed with communities that are relatively well-behaved, awesome contributing members. Yes, of course, you're always going to have your trolls and stuff, but really, we don't have a lot of issues. Just the little stuff here and there. This is a really important thing.

36:40When you're there and you're present, and I don't mean you're spending all your time in a group. That's not what I suggest at all. You have things to do. But when you're there and you're setting the tone by being positive, and it truly makes a difference. Yeah, I found the same thing. It's like most people are pretty well behaved, but it's just at a certain number, it just becomes a little daunting to manage, especially at all hours of the day. But I do have moderators. I have volunteer moderators, but I also have employees and we have a schedule and we're always checking so that we can get right on top of things.

37:12What's your team look like today? So today there are 15 employees, which is amazing. And we have a regular rotation through our group. So I don't know exactly how many because I'm not the one who manages my team. I have an amazing operations director who actually does that for me. Thankfully, because I would be no good at this, I am a visionary type. I'm not really a manager type. But we all communicate in Slack, which is an amazing tool, by the way, for team communication. And they're excellent. I'm very, very pleased with my team. What was your first hire? It was my operations director. Only I hired her as an assistant.

37:51And I will tell you, it was not easy. I procrastinated it for months because I was so worried that I was going to pick someone and I was going to be a bad boss or that person was going to let me down or it was just going to be a disaster, right? I mean, I'm sure you've heard this before. But eventually, when I put out one of my products and I was getting so many emails and I could not keep up with it, I had no choice. I had to bite the bullet and go looking for someone. I went out into my own community to look for someone who hopefully was drinking the Jennifer from Maker Kool-Aid already. And I found her.

38:21So she's been with me for a year and a half now. And she's become my operations director. And she now hires and trains the other team members. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. Yeah, I've heard that from other people as well. Hire from within your audience. Because they're already, they know who you are and what you do. And they already believe in what it is. So it's working really well. All of our team members have come from our community. So you're very much the name, the face of the brand. You're in front of the camera on all the videos and stuff. Is that the bulk of your time today is like producing the stuff, producing the content?

38:56Yes, I'm still in the trenches creating the content, which is difficult when you need to scale up, which is what we need to do, which is why I mentioned the content machine that we are working in. But I plan to stay here as at least as the face and the voice of Jennifer Maker for the time being because we know this is working for us and I am happy to do so. But I need to keep it at the bare minimum so that I can actually lead our company to success. It's very difficult, I believe, to both create the content and be its leader at some point. In the beginning, that's what we all have to do. But at some point, you need to, especially when there's a team, I have to be able to actually spend time doing things that aren't making a tutorial or a design.

39:43So we now have designers and we're interviewing people to be sort of a manager, over-encompassing the design team and a whole process for creating the video and editing the video and all that. So at some point, it'll just be me going to my studio for the day to record my videos introducing projects that I have approved and doing some voiceovers. And other people will take all of that raw data and put that into something like what we have now. That's our goal. Yeah, show up. Everything is ready for you. Hit record and you can do your thing. And then everything else is handled afterwards. And even you've seen in the financial space, Dave Ramsey understands he's not going to live forever, but he wants his brand to live on.

40:31So he's bringing on other Dave Ramsey experts. It's similar. Yes. And that is my goal. I would like Jennifer Maker to live on beyond me. So at some point, there will be other people who come in and then eventually take over as the face. At some point, I mean, I'm 51 years old. I don't want to be working forever. That doesn't sound like any fun. So that is my goal. Like Betty Crocker, although she's fictional, but you know what it means. Yes, she lives on. Was there anything else that, you know, any specific tactic that you feel was a big inflection point? And you've mentioned a ton of different things over the course of this conversation, but anything that we haven't touched on yet that really attributed to some traffic or revenue growth?

41:16Well, the thing that comes to mind I've already mentioned, which is my mailing list. by focusing on my mailing list from almost the beginning. I would say it was month four. I really feel that that has been the biggest thing that has made a difference for me. I can't stress that enough. When I first started blogging and I heard people out there saying, oh, you have to have a mailing list. I was like, oh, give me a break. That is so 90s. I am not starting a mailing list. I really thought this. But I heard it so many times. I'm like, okay, okay, I get it. And so I began focusing on it And it started growing.

41:50And at first, I'm like, oh, my goodness, I just have all these people. Like, it's just costing me money. And I'm not actually doing anything with it. I wasn't okay with that. I decided, well, I need to do something. And that became my motivation was I have 5 ,000 people on my list. That's awesome. But I need to actually make something with this happen. And that's when I began nurturing that list. So, like, talking to them. And I don't mean, like, with fancy graphics and stuff. I like just send letters to them as if they're my neighbor or my sister. And I tell them about what's going on in my projects so that they feel like they know who I am.

42:29I'm trying to share me and what's going on so that I can relate to them and they can say me as a normal person, which I totally am. I'm just very driven and creative at the same time, right? And so that I can then actually say, hey, you know, I have this cool project. You should actually try it, right? That's my goal. I'm not actually even trying to get them to buy things in the beginning. I'm trying to get them into to drink the Jennifer Maker Kool-Aid. That's all I can think, right? It's to get them to trust me and try making projects and realize that this is something that they can do. And then they're super fans.

43:06Yeah, it's very similar. We just recorded with Rosemary Groner for the fourth time. I love Rosemary. Very similar. Her emails are really long, storytelling, relationship-building emails, but then there's this quick tip or call to action or a quick win that she delivers. Again, the same goal, how do we get them drinking the busy budget or Kool-Aid so they keep coming back? I'm going to stand out from all the clutter if I can deliver these kind of quick wins, and it sounds like it's really similar here. It is very similar. I found Rosemary in the very beginning and I read every email she sends because I also learned just by watching people, which I think all of us should be.

43:49And when you find someone that is doing a great job, get on their mailing list, see what they're doing, go to their groups, don't copy them, but look at what they're doing and see how you can make that work in your space. Because I, even today, I read one of her emails. I'm like, Rosemary, you're awesome. she is i'm totally a rosemary fan girl you and me both so you mentioned the daily content what else is on the horizon for for this year for this year our big goal is that content machine i mentioned so getting the pieces of it put into place so finding that video editor finding someone to help me assemble projects on video so that we have a something that is consistent every time And it's not me because it's very time consuming to do.

44:38So our goal is that by December 1st of 2020, all of our projects, all of our videos are all ready to go. And Jennifer doesn't go nuts trying to stay up till 6 a.m. making them. And once we have that in place, it's going to be a matter of finding awesome new people and training them and putting them into our awesome content machine. And then we can ramp things up. Cool. Ramp things up even more than they already have. I love it. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me. You can find her at jennifermaker.com. We'll link up all the social channels as well for you in the show notes for this episode.

45:15But let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. I really think that a lot of the problems that people have getting traction in the beginning is that they're really not out there promoting themselves and their content enough. And they get stuck and they don't get far enough and then they give up. And so getting out to where your people are, finding them, wherever that may be. And so my people are on Pinterest and Facebook groups and YouTube, which took some time to move up to. But your people might be on LinkedIn or they might be, they might even be on Reddit. I know that's a little tricky, but they are out there.

45:53You have to figure out where they are. You need to get into their spaces and understand them and be a part of that community. Just trying to do a thing and hope that someone finds you is not going to work. You really need to get where they are and be part of it for your content and the services that you offer to actually be noticed and appreciated. Yes, absolutely. Figure out where your people are. Go there. I had one more question I forgot to ask. And that was if there was a point, you know, maybe several months into this effort where like this isn't working, I'm not seeing the results or on the flip side, like an inflection point where all of a sudden everything clicked.

46:41Both. Yes. So about six months into my blog, I found myself sort of losing momentum. I think it had been like three weeks since I posted and I could see that if I continued down this path, it would just peter out. And I had to stop and say, how bad do I want this? Am I going to allow it to peter out? Or am I going to actually work at this and put what is required into it? And obviously, I redoubled my efforts. And that was the last time I had that. It was just a matter of life. Life gets in the way sometimes. That was the last time, though. I decided that this isn't something that I just do. When I had free time, I made it a priority.

47:23And that changed everything as far as that goes. And as far as when things clicked, they clicked about one year in when I offered my first course, which is my design course, which was a suggestion from my community, which I didn't think that they would actually want. I thought it was too complicated, but they said they wanted it. So I created a course for them and I made enough that month to take care of the problems I was having supporting my family. And that's when I realized that this is something that I could do exclusively, and I could let the other things that I've been doing to support my family go.

48:00And that was truly a magical moment because I love what I do, but I also love taking care of my family. And now I could do both together. I love it. Well, thank you for sharing that, Jennifer. Once again, jennifermaker.com. Thank you so much for joining me, and we'll catch up soon. All right, my top three takeaways from this call with Jennifer. Number one is that email is still a priority. This is admittedly something I've kind of taken my eye off the ball with over the last couple of years. But Jennifer's comments and Rosemary's comments from a few weeks ago are making me rethink it in a serious way.

48:38I've been taking a look at both of their sites to see how they have these content upgrades or lead magnets woven organically into their content, where it really seems like a value ad and not a frustrating like, oh, hey, why are you withholding this information from me? That's probably a fine line, but they both seem to do it really well. And the second part of that is what do you do with someone's email after you have it? First off, obviously you deliver what you promised, but then what next? So I'm rethinking my welcome sequences, which are a few years old at this point, relatively unchanged.

49:10And so that's something that's definitely on my project list. So that's takeaway number one. Email is still a big, big priority for any online business. Takeaway number two for me is to learn as you go. Now, I think having worked online for years certainly helped shortcut Jennifer's learning curve for this new business, but there was still a lot to overcome. And I personally found her attitude super inspiring. Kind of like whatever challenge or barrier to the next level is, I can figure that out. I can figure it out. And her comment at the end, how bad do you want it? Actually, one interesting side note is I've been reading The Power of Full Engagement, which was recommended by Noah Kagan.

49:47And it talks about this idea of sprint and recovery, of stress and rest, and how you actually need both to grow. So I heard some echoes of that when Jennifer talked about her content blasts, like I'm gonna do a video every day for 30 days. Those obviously being the sprint phases. But you can't sprint all the time. That's a recipe for major burnout. So instead, ask yourself the questions. Can you learn as you go? You probably don't need to know the full three to five year plan down the road? It's probably impossible to predict anyway. And then are you mapping out appropriate sprint and recovery times?

50:21I thought that was a really powerful idea. And takeaway number three for me was the idea of piggybacking. This was something that definitely stood out in our call, how Jennifer piggybacked on the popularity of the Cricut crafting machine. I'm still not entirely sure what this thing does, but it's also important to note that I don't have to. I'm not her target market. There are plenty of niches that are big enough to build, as you've seen, a really substantial business. So the question is, is there a tool or product or software that you could similarly piggyback on and create content about? That way you're not having to create demand.

50:54You're just answering questions and providing content for a tribe that already exists. And I think that's a much easier path. I hope this call got your creative gears turning because it certainly did for me. Once again, if you hit up sidehustlenation.com slash Jennifer, you'll find links to all the resources mentioned. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. I'll see you then. Hustle on.