Rock Your Brand Podcast

Welcome to another week of our Friday Jam session. This is always one of the highlights of my week. I love spending some time with some awesome people and answering some great questions. If you want to be a part of our Take Action Crew, we go live every single Friday where you can ask me any questions you have about starting your business. To join us, head over to takeactioncrew.com to sign up for free.

Let’s dive right into today’s session. 

Valuable Advertising and Affiliate Info 

This week I had a bunch of questions related to ads and affiliate links and when is the best time to use them.  I'm excited to answer a few of those today, and hopefully, you'll find my answers helpful. 

When to Apply for Affiliate or Ad Programs 

Don't apply too early. You need to focus on getting traffic before you can even consider monetizing your site. Once you get there, you'll have plenty of options. We didn't turn on ads until we had 18,000 visitors to our site for one of the brands we're working on. 

We do have a few affiliates but no ad networks. You'll need at least 10,000 visitors to your site to qualify for an ad network.

 Don’t talk about monetization until you have traffic. 

Start out by writing a few pieces of content, including reviews or comparisons, where you can go back in later and add affiliate links when you're ready. Just get the content written now, and you can do the rest in the future. 

Should I Consider Advertising on My Website

Yes, advertising is great. Over on brandcreators.com, I'm currency only offering private offerings. Our playbook, checklist, and signups for Brand Creators when registration is open again in July. I'm not selling anything else on my site. 

We do have a resources page with all the products that we use that link to affiliate programs.  If you're driving traffic to your site to sell your own stuff, I recommend limiting your advertising to other companies. You'll just need to pick and choose what to include. On a side note, I do run ads on a couple of our other sites. 

Just be sure that any ads you include on your site are of interest to your visitors. 

In regards to affiliate links, you can have a few on your site, and once the traffic is there, people will see the. Keep in mind that the benefits of affiliate links just aren't there when you only have a few thousand-page views. Instead, focus on creating content and wait to get steady traffic to worry about affiliates.

How to Get The Most Out of Your Blog  

When you’re getting ready to start a new website or blog, it can be overwhelming. This week I answered a few questions that I hope will help make it easier to get started. 

What Elements to Include on Your Homepage 

Let people know immediately that they’ve come to the right place. Answer the questions they’re looking to have answered. Always have a lead magnet front and center but also make sure they know they are in the right place and not just in an eCommerce store, so it’s not a turn-off. 

Ask yourself what your visitors are trying to achieve and tell them right up front how you can help. Keep your messaging on brand which will help detract people who aren’t ready to hear your message or not apart of our target market. 

Why You Should Integrate Your Online Store to Your New Blog

Include a tab on your blog that includes access to your shop. Integrate the two as soon as possible, especially if they are in the same niche and go hand in hand. You can always have a separate Shopify store and use a  subdomain, so it still looks like it’s all apart of the same website.

Post Blog Content As Soon As Your Website is Up and Running 

Who is seeing your unpolished blog if you don’t feel like it’s ready? 

Just start publishing blog posts, and you can make changes to your site later. There will always be things you want to change and fix. But to an average person, they’re going to look past those things. Just start getting it running so you can monetize sooner. You won’t get any traffic if you don’t publish any content. There’s no better time like the present to get started.  

How To Come Up With New Blog Content

What are the five questions your market is asking right now? Write “how to” articles that answer these common questions. They are easy to answer and are asked often. 

Create a content tree where you have the main content topic you’ll focus on and branch off from there.

Head over to Google and use the autofill feature to see what is being searched for often in your niche and what keywords people are using. 

Best Ways to Sell Digital Courses or E-books on your site. 

You’ll need to create a sales funnel on your site. It can be as simple as creating a landing page in Convertkit or Gumroad. Keep it simple.  

Build an email list and hop on social to bring people to your website where they can view your digital course or e-book. 

How to Structure an Interview 

I start by asking questions that you, as the listener, will benefit from. Know your audience and what they would want to know.  

Make sure the person you’re interviewing feels comfortable. 

When I interview, I only have a couple of points, including their back store. 

I also ask a few of the questions, like what did they do when they had a business venture fail.

So many people don’t typically share their failures, and I think it’s so important for my listeners to hear about how successful people overcame rejection and discouragement. 

When I interview, I want to know what people do on the days that are bad. And how they kept pushing through. Get really raw and real. Get questions answered that they aren’t usually asked. 

Live Streaming & Video Editing Tips 

I’ve had a lot of questions about live streaming during the past few weeks and am excited to touch on a few of those today. 

Live Streaming Videos on Multiple Platforms

In the beginning, you need to get comfortable and make it easy. Start broadcasting to one platform. You can always add another platform at a later date. The goal is to get a few people watching who you can engage with. Even if you don’t have anyone watching in the beginning, still get started and don’t overthink think it. 

Live streams are not easily searchable on Facebook. Consider streaming to YouTube because it’s saved on the site and makes it super easy for people to search for those videos at a later date. You can always take your YouTube video and upload it to Facebook. It’ll perform better when you upload it directly to Facebook.

Should I Go Live & Stick With The Same Time Every Week

When you do something live there is less structure and it becomes more natural. Just get started and know what you’re going to do upfront.

Commit to yourself and show up the same time every week. This will help people look forward to joining and know when to expect they’ll hear from you. Consider answering questions that show you are an authority in your market. 

How to Crop Videos for YouTube

ScreenFlow is great for Mac users. You can zoom in and even slow zoom on different parts of your video. 

If you’re just starting out consider going to Fiveer and hiring out someone to edit your videos for you! It’s pretty cheap to find someone and will save you lots of time from having to do it yourself if you have a lot going on. 

Too Many Plugins Will Slow Down Your Site

Keep your website very light so it runs faster. You don’t need a bunch of plugins to get started. If your site is slow people won’t stick around. I recommend starting out with just a couple of plugins like Yoast and an optimization plugin that compresses images. 

Always check to see how your site works on mobile.

Why I Don’t Charge More for My Products 

I’ve had a lot of questions about why my products are so affordable. In particular, my Brand Creators Playbook. I use this all the time within Brand Creators. I only charge $4.99 for the playbook. If you buy my book, it shows that you are interested in my content and is a great lead magnet. I also want to help you succeed, and I can reach more people if I charge less.

If you purchase the playbook, I do off a market selection class, but I don’t advertise to anyone else. I actually go in and show you how to go through the process to find if a market is good and show some examples of some that should be avoided. 

My goal is to give people enough content and information to get them started. And if they’re interested they can join Brand Creators when it opens again in July. 

Always give people as much value as you can and don’t be afraid of giving too much. 

The goal is to attract the right people.

Thanks For Tuning In!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Friday jam session. Head over to takeactioncrew.com to join for free. We go live every Friday at 10 am when I answer all your questions. Thanks for being here.

Remember, I’m here for you, I believe in you and am rooting for you!

It’s time for you to take action and go rock your brand! 

Take-Aways From Today’s Episode

  1. Valuable Advertising and Affiliate Info (3:50)
  2. How to Get The Most Out of Your Blog (7:13) 
  3. How to Structure an Interview (15:40) 
  4. Live Streaming & Video Editing Tips (9:20)
  5. Why I Don’t Charge More for My Products (41:45) 

Quote

You won’t get traffic if you don’t publish content. There’s no better time like the present to get started.  

Or 

Always give people as much value as you can and don’t be afraid of giving too much. 

Direct download: RYB838.m4a
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

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