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In today’s podcast we’re going to help Janelle start selling her digital products on her website subdays.com.
Janelle has a product and a vision for her online business but has some questions to really kickstart her growth so she can stay at home with her son.
She has great questions about everything from social media advertising to how to position herself as an expert.
You’ll definitely be able to get some value from these common questions we hear about launching your online business.
You will learn
- The actions Janelle needs to take to start generating sales for her products.
- How to start growing your email list with Facebook ads.
- How to balance the paid vs free content on her site.
- The art of pre-selling your product.
- Why you should always be working on your brand and your content.
- If you need ISBN numbers or not on your products.
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show
Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!
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Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all. On today’s podcast we are going to help Janelle take her online business to the next level.
SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We are your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip you lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? Alright. Let’s get started.
JOCELYN: Hey guys welcome to this week’s Flipped podcast. We are very excited this week to have our listener Janelle Afasiab. I hope I said that right Janelle. She has actually asked a question before. I am pretty sure we butchered that name before so we are really excited to have her today. We have a New York to Kentucky connection today so this is going to be an interesting call. We got the north and the south but we are super excited to her.
SHANE: And no fighting we are not going to fight. There is no north and south fighting tonight, alright Janelle.
JOCELYN: So we are very excited to have you today Janelle you have some great questions and I know that ty will really benefit out listeners out there. So let’s start out and go ahead introduce yourself and tell us about your family and your online business so far.
JANELLE: Okay, well my name is Janelle Afrasiab. And I have been married eight years and we have one son. He is about five weeks away from turning three and my husband is currently at home right no babysitting. We don’t have much family here on New York. I am originally from North Dakota. I don’t have much family out here so getting a babysitter is a little bit more difficult. I am a former high school Spanish teacher and what I have done is I have taken my activities that used in class, put them into a book and now I am trying to sell and market them.
SHANE: Awesome. And do you work right now?
JANELLE: Just a stay at home mom.
SHANE: Okay. So tell us a little bit about like why you want to get in to online business. Why do you want to flip your life? What is your husband do for work? And then how do you think that online business would make your life better?
JANELLE: My husband currently we have a Bollywood, video slash Western Union slash electronics store here in New York and the reason that I want to flip my life is because I had the opportunity to spend every single day at home with my son since he’s been born and I want to continue to do that. Even once he goes to school, I want to be able to have a reason that I am able to stay home so that I am there putting him on the bus there when he comes home and I want him to be involved in lots of activities in school and I don’t want to miss a single one.
SHANE: What is a Bollywood store?
JANELLE: Bollywood is Indian movies.
SHANE: Oh okay.
JOCELYN: Okay, so Flipped Lifestyle people if you are listening and you need a Bollywood connection–
SHANE: Call Janelle and you will get a Bollywood movie. Is that like where they dance, like a big production and stuff?
JANELLE: Yes, basically a two-hour musical.
SHANE: Nice. I like it. Awesome. Okay maybe we can squeeze some more Bollywood into this episode.
JANELLE: Actually Johnly Dumis was in a Bollywood movie and we have that on our store.
SHANE: That is hilarious. We totally need to get that clip and put it on YouTube. Okay Janelle, let’s jump into your questions and let’s see how we can help you. So you have not started your online business? You’re just getting ready to, right?
JANELLE: I have my website up. It’s subdays.com. The idea being if you are a teacher and you need a sub, these are ready-made lesson plans for you for that days so your sub day.
SHANE: That’s a great idea.
JANELLE: So I have free samples of my activities up right now. I don’t have a way to pay because I thought that I wanted to get people to know my materials first instead of them thinking this is just another person that wants our money. And I guess one of my question sis it has been five years since I have been in the classroom and I kind of feel like I am getting some people that feel like I don’t know what it’s like anymore not one of them because I have been out of the classroom for so long and I was just wondering if you are running into that or how you would deal with that.
JOCELYN: Well, it’s definitely something that I would have considered because we are now out of the classroom also and I do still sell activities to librarians. But I actually don’t really call attention to it. I mean I am not trying to portray myself in a false way but with the way that I put it is that I am a certified librarian. I am still a certified librarian. You know I don’t say that I have been out of the library but I don’t say that I am still in it. you see what I mean? I mean if somebody point blank ask me then I’ll tell them yes I am no longer a librarian but as long as they don’t, I just say I am a certified librarian and move on and never had an issue.
SHANE: Just on a live event, she did a live event with about 20 librarians down in Nashville, Tennessee and someone did asked her that because they realized you know we know you’re making money online, how are you still in the classroom and Jocelyn said no there is no way that I could run my business and be in the classroom at the same time, there is just not enough time of the day to do that. And they are like oh cool. It wasn’t even an issue. So I think that’s kind of one of those fears that you get into and I think that everybody gets into. Whenever you start providing lessons or materials or information to people as you know an instructor or as a teacher or just you know as a service, I think we all think then I am not actually in the business but you still have all that experience. You still have all that knowledge. You still have all that in your mind and those people want the knowledge. They don’t necessarily want you in the classroom.
JOCELYN: And another thing that I would say to that is that I actually have people who are currently librarians to create content for my site so I am not actually writing those blog post about being in the trenches because I am not in there anymore. So I have other people write those and I actually pay them to write them for me.
SHANE: Like for example in football like I am not coaching anymore either. I did not coached at all last season and I do not plan to coach any time in the near future because we don’t have time to do that. Coaches know that I am not on the field anymore but they just want to know what my playbook is. I had a coach from Indiana or Illinois, I can’t remember, the other day he called me and he was like we want to pay you to come up here and go over your playbook with us basically. And he didn’t care that I don’t coached anymore. He knew that I didn’t coach because he actually called my old school first and they told them that he got out of coaching last year because of his business but he called me anyway because he wanted the knowledge. He wanted the information. He wanted whatever we could provide to make his life better. He knew I have the experience but he didn’t care if I was still you know doing that. So that’s kind of an irrational fear that I think a lot of people have and you can just scratch that off your list if that’s one of the things that’s holding you back because 90% of the time, nobody is even going to bring that up.
JOCELYN: So in other words, we are not saying to hide the truth necessarily but just don’t bring it up unless somebody asks.
SHANE: Right and tell the truth if they do. And if they don’t like they’ll go away and somebody else will come back in and buy from you.
JOCELYN: Yes exactly. Alright so let’s move on to your next question.
JANELLE: Okay, this is about my email list and how to grow it. Right now I have a pretty small list. It’s only about 20 people right now and I am willing to spend money on advertising but I just want to know what’s a good realistic budget that I should prepare to start with.
JOCELYN: You can start out really small and this is something that I think is really smart for you to do from the beginning. I wish it’s something that I had done from the beginning and we would say if you are going to do like Facebook ads, we really like Facebook ads right now because they are super highly targeted. If you are going to do something like that we recommend staring out with about $5 a day if you can do that. You do want to keep a close eye on it and make sure that your ads are doing what you want them to do? But don’t stop them after like one day because that’s really not enough time to see if they are actually working. You need a lot of room for several days and see if you are getting conversions or clicks or emails or whatever your goal of your ad is.
SHANE: And there is another trick there to a lot of people will, let’s say you want clicks to a website, maybe that’s the only goal you have at first because you know if they come to your website you are going to have an email thing there that says, get some free lesson plans, get my free product and you’ll give your email. So you always want to look at how much money it’s costing per click on Facebook but then you really want to translate that to how much it’s costing me to get an email. Because if it’s costing me $5 to get one email well that ad is not probably working well, if it’s costing about a dollar an email or less depending on your niche, some niches if you are on the online money space it’s going to cost you $3 an email. If you are in the teaching space or the coaching space lie we have seen we think we can get emails for about 50 cents. So you want to really track that but then you don’t want to like just say I got 10 emails for $5 that add must be perfect; I’ll fill $50 at that one. You want to raise those very small amounts each week like if one add does really well for $5 a day, you may the next week only want to raise that to $6 a day. Don’t just go crazy and throwing money at something hoping it works, very slowly raise that overtime. Don’t try to spend so much money that you think it has to work. Start low, grow it very small and eventually you are going to have to convert. Don’t go for likes. Don’t go for followers or anything like that. That is not going to make you money. The only thing that matters on ads is am I getting an email address, am I getting a good lead and is it selling a product. It has to lead to make money. If you spend $25 on ads over five days you need to have something where you can sell at the end of that to say I spent $25 to make $50. You know what I am saying? So make sure you are looking at leads as the most important thing and grow that slowly. Don’t try to just throw as much money as you got at it. You got to learn what the data is telling you to be able to spend your money very efficiently
JANELLE: Okay, so do you start off with a couple of different types of ads when you are doing this?
SHANE: We do. Sometimes we will have like two ads but you don’t want to put like whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or anywhere, you want to set up completely different ad sets for all of your ads. You don’t want like the same ad to have three pictures and it’s like testing the pictures because that kind of put you at the mercy of the algorithm, whatever they are using to decide which is the winner. You want to make one ad test if for a week and then make a completely separate ad that is similar but with a slight twist; maybe you just changed the picture and you can run that as a completely separate deal side by side to see how it does and then you can kind of see which one is working a little better, eventually phase one out. But I mean really you just want to put an ad out there and let it run for a week, $5 a day, spend $35 and look at that one ad in isolation. If it was terrible, well there is no reason to split test the terrible ad. But if it worked pretty good but if you think it might work a little better you can make another ad, change something and run them side by side. So does that answer your question about advertising?
JANELLE: Yes it does and that was actually a good dollar amount that I was looking forward to.
SHANE: Yes, always start low. We start very low. We ran an ad, I think we have an ad right now in over three weeks. We started at $5 a day and we have only raised it to $6 a day. It’s converting very well like 62 cents an email but we don’t want to raise too much so always start low no matter how much money you have available, okay? Alright, what’s your third question Janelle?
JANELLE: Okay this one is about pre-selling content and I guess I understand getting teachers to you know say buy a material ahead of time and you could have them help to like tweak the material as its coming out. My question has to do more with what’s the lead time you have on that to get it out there because I know me personally as a teacher if I were to buy something I would want something that I could use right away and the stuff that I am thinking to do would take a little bit longer like I have some video ideas and those take a lot longer for me to prepare so should I not have videos be something that I would have teachers prepaid for but just wait until their done and then maybe have work with teachers to like build maybe the next level of my book?
JOCELYN: Okay, yes, I know what you’re saying and teachers are kind of a tricky market because there are so many free things out there but the same thing could really be said for any kind of industry so I will tell you a little bit about the way that I started my site. I started my site actually started working on it one summer and I decided that I needed something that was really irresistible to give to people so I could give their email address and what I did is I created an entire month of lesson plans ahead of time. And I actually gave away that entire month plus activities which is kind of crazy. It’s sort of a crazy big giveaway but that was something that I knew people needed. I knew that they needed it right away and so went ahead and created that. And then what I did after that is I made lesson plans one month at a time. So like in the month of August, I made Septembers and I had those ready by August 15th and then on September, I made October’s and I had those ready by September 15th, do you see what I mean? So I just sold on a little bit ahead of time and it is hard to do it that way because you are really under the gun like it’s a lot of pressure to get things done but it can be good on some ways because you know that you had people waiting for that. You know if you say it’s going to be ready by September 15th, it better be ready by September 15th. So that can be a good thing.
SHANE: And just some general talk pre-selling, we actually pre-sell everything we do now because we have learned like from Jocelyn’s experience especially those people on September 1st will be like alright who wants September lesson plans at first year, they all bought even though they knew that it didn’t even exist and they were going to be out on the 15th. So we learned very quickly that pre-selling is the best way to go. Every course that we ever made for Flipped Lifestyle has been pre-sold. When we first did Flip Your Life, there was nothing. There were no videos, nothing and we sold out in the first week completely because what we did was we put a really detailed outline of what was going to be in the course and we say we’re going to make this, it’s going to come out on these days, this is what’s going to happen, it sold out and we did it. We just pre-sold another course. We’re making a new one like completely starting anew website and we pre-sold that and it has sold out in 24 hours and we know now there is a demand so pre-selling is a huge thing because it’s like an advance for an author. You know an author who has a book deal they give him money upfront to write the book because they know there is a demand for that book because people are already wanting it. So it’s the same thing with anything. Pre-selling is a great idea but you do have to have something ready. When we started Flip Your Life, what we did was we created a page so when they signed up they got, you know they paid us their money and they were sent to the actual page where the course was going to live. We took a lot of old content like we have got some great guides on time management, setting goals, getting organized before you actually start your online business and we even put a few of our podcast on there. We had content already made and we kind of used that as kind of like the appetizer. So we pre-sold it and they got something that da. But then they knew they are going to have to wait for the rest of it to kind of roll out and you had to be really upfront with people and tell them this is what’s going to be, it is not made yet but it will come out on these dates and you will get your material but they do need something upfront just like Jocelyn gave them out the lesson plans. We had all these old content that a lot of people had never seen before because all your readers don’t read all your content, you know what I mean? So we put all that there. There was something for them to do immediately while they were waiting for the pre-sell to be over and for the course to start. If I were you I’d take some of those old things that you already got made and you could say I am going to make this, there is going to be videos, we are going to do this, I am going to release them on this schedule but right now here is 20 things that you can do while you are waiting for it. Okay? And that way they have got something so they are happy that way and they are anticipating what’s coming next.
JANELLE: Okay, because right now I have o180 lesson plans done but what I wanted to do was make audio or video for each one of those.
SHANE: Yes, hold on a second, are those for sale?
JANELLE: They are going to be very, very soon.
SHANE: you need to forget the audio and video right now.
JANELLE: Okay.
SHANE: You have a digital product that mean, I mean Jocelyn how many lessons do you have? Like it’s about the same and Jocelyn sells that for $400 with no problem. So you have a huge digital product that is highly valuable ready to go, don’t wait for it to be perfect or add it on. You can add that later as like an up sale when you do that. That’s what I would do.
JOCELYN: Yeah I totally agree and I wanted to mention Janelle that you also might want to consider having a resources section. This is something that I have done on the Elementary Librarian that has worked really well. My first year of lesson plans. I have actually written two full years of lesson plans now but my first one I have made all the resources totally free. Like you don’t even have to opt in or anything. I just have them there. There is all kinds of different like PowerPoints, worksheets, tons of different things like that. The reason I like to that is because I want people always coming back to my site. If your eyeballs are coming back to my site, there is a possibility you may eventually buy something. You may never buy anything but if you are constantly coming back to my site, you always had that possibility. So I just want to mention that to you and you may want to consider making some of your resources out there available for free.
SHANE: And you can use the same ones that are paid for free because 90% of your people will not see 90% of your content. So you are actually doing them service by charging them to give them an organized thing that gives it to them day by day. So don’t be afraid to use something that it’s in your paid course for free. And I want to say something else here, I have a website called USHistoryteachers.com which is about 80% complete and our plan, I make lesson plans for history teachers on there and the plan was always we have PowerPoints, we are actually hiring voice actors to read the PowerPoints so someone could play that for their class if they wanted to. But that’s going to take three or four months to have done. There was no way I would ever have waited to sell the lesson plans that are already exist until that’s finished. As soon as you have anything that’s valuable. It should be for sale that day whether that’s done or not or perfect or not. We have made thousands of dollars on that site, it’s kind of like the dead star. It’s only half finished. Do you know what I mean? But it still works and it’s all there and people buy everyday. You know that site makes money because they are buying the stuff that are already exist and once the next phase is done I’ll go back and sell that. I’ll have an up sale, I’ll charge more for it and all those people that bought all those lesson plans before you’re going to have a customer based sitting waiting for videos. You see what I am saying? I would forget all of your future plans right now and I would say before the end of March, my 120 lesson plans are going to be for sale. I am going to get them in the hands of people so I can get good testimonials before the end of the school year so I am ready for July and August to be able to sell this product just like it is and then add to it later as you go. Alright. What\s your next question?
JANELLE: Okay, my next question then is I am finding it difficult to find recent or current blogs to comment on. A lot of the blogs that I am finding for Spanish teachers haven’t been updated in well over a year but I am finding that there are some list serves that are still pretty active, should I just be focused on providing good content to the list serves and answering questions there and kind of forget about finding blogs, or what do you suggest?
SHANE: I am going to let Jocelyn talk about list serves because she is way active on list serves than I am and she’ll kind of explain to the audience what that is and how to use them. I am going to talk about the blogs. Number one, we have a philosophy that is kind of if we were to write down the five things that govern our business, one of our big ones is we always want to build our brand. We don’t ever want to build someone else’s brand. We have never went out and commented on a lot of blogs unless we are authentically talking to people on a blog. We have never went out and try to do a lot of social media marketing. It’s important the advertising is great but we always want to spend our time creating more content and getting people to come to our website. So I would definitely say don’t worry about all that guest blogging and all that commenting on other people’s things. You want to network with people on your space, that’s for sure but the vast majority of your time should be making new content on your website that is so valuable all those other people in your space will going to take notice and they are going to share it for you without you having to do that work. Another thing about blogs, don’t worry about if a blog has not been commented on in a long time or has not been updated in the long time. If the website exists, it may not be maintained anymore but I would guarantee you if you found it on Google, somebody else is and it still being read. So if you do want to leave a comment on a blog, don’t worry about how old the blog post is because there is a good chance that is someone else is going to search for that and find that. It is still being read even though it is not being updated. So leave a comment if you find something drop a link. If you find a wiki page or something like that that it doesn’t look like anybody has been there in a while, you don’t know if people, there might be a hundred lurkers for every one person that comments. So I would go ahead and leave links if you want to, comment if you want to but definitely don’t get bag down sitting around looking for blogs to leave a comment on. Make more content, make more articles, make more post, buy some ads and you will get people back to your site.
JOCELYN: Okay, so I just want to throw in a little bit about list serves. Maybe a few people out there that’s like what in a world is a list serve. List serves are kind of like an old school email list and basically people join a list serve, they put in their email and each day they get either individual messages of people writing to the list serve or like a digest format that has all of the messages for the day.
SHANE: It’s like Twitter before there was Twitter.
JOCELYN: Kind of and if you know anything about education, education is usually like 20 years behind in technology so it always took a list serve a lot. There is nothing wrong with list serves and there is nothing wrong of being active on one if that is something that you think will beneficial to you. You just have to watch what you’re doing as far as posting links. They don’t really like it when people link to their businesses so if you want to be on there. Be an active participant and maybe you have your web address and your signature or something, I don’t really have a problem with that just don’t go on there and be like hey check out my lesson plans here at Spanishteacherslessonplans.com or whatever it is.
SHANE: And that’s a good rule of thumb for any groups on Facebook, Twitter itself, any social media, anywhere your comment, just anytime you are talking about your message it’s great to help people. It’s great to be an authentic part of the conversation. You can even say hey if you need some help, hit me up on a private message and then you can share your links but make sure you are not just dropping links to your stuff unless you have permission from the person who owns the list serve or the group or the Twitter feed. That you are not just spamming it out there just to get promotion. Always provide value even in that area so that people don’t think you are just a soft promoter.
JOCELYN: Right. I do want to mention too Janelle that you might want to check out wikis too. In the education space there are tons of wikis out there. Like if you go to wikispaces.com I think it is. You can search for different subject matters so like there are several for librarians. There is ones out there for all different kinds of education and the good thing about a wiki is you can edit it and put in whatever you want so you can actually put a link to your stuff in there and I have gotten tons of response and people coming to my website from wikis. Okay, does that help on that question?
JANELLE: Yes it does.
JOCELYN: Okay awesome. Well, I think we have time for one more question so what else do you have for us?
JANELLE: Okay, well this should be a pretty quick and easy one. I was just wondering, do you have an ISPN numbers on your product and are they needed?
SHANE: Are you talking about the number that like for the bookstores and stuff? Lik to register the book or whatever?
JANELLE: Yes.
SHANE: Okay, Jocelyn is the librarian. So I am going to defer. I am going to punt. I am going to back on punt this question to Jocelyn, take care.
JOCELYN: Okay, an ISPN is something that goes on materials that are sold and the reason for it is an identifying number for bookstores or for libraries or whatever the case may be. If you plan to eventually sell your product on any bookstore or maybe on Amazon, something like that it may be required but if you are just selling it on your own website it is not. I sell a book of lesson plans, I actually even print the book but I do not have an ISPN number on mine. But if I want to take it maybe to Amazon one day it will probably be a good idea to do that.
SHANE: Alright, well that was five great questions. Those are some pretty unique questions Janelle. We really liked that when we saw your application for the Flipped podcast and I was like these are some good things that nobody has ever asked before even in our Q and A sessions. So we just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on. If you wanted to tell everyone our audience if they wanted to check out like your website or what you’re doing, what is your web address or maybe if you have an email or something they can contact you on?
JANELLE: Okay, my web address is subdays.com SUBDAYS.com and I can be reached at janelle@subdays.com.
SHANE: Awesome. Alright. We always ask everybody this at the end of our consulting calls Janelle so we wanted to ask you, what’s your one big takeaway from this and what is something that you are going to take action on as soon as you get down this call like in the next couple of days?
JANELLE: Well, the first thing–
SHANE: I put you on the spot. I put you right on the spot.
JANELLE: The first thing I am going to do is I’m going to figure out Facebook ad that I am going to get up.
SHANE: Awesome. That’s great. You can do that today, you’ll have it run and that will get you some good momentum going forward.
JOCELYN: Yeah and I think that going back to your question about as far as commenting on blogs and things like that, I feel like paid advertising is going to do so much more for you than any of that little stuff would do and I wish I would have known that from the beginning so I think you’re starting in an excellent spot.
JANELLE: Alright.
SHANE: Alright. Thanks for calling Janelle.
JANELLE: Thank you.
SHANE: Alright guys. That wraps up our Flipped Lifestyle podcast episode with Janelle. I am not even going to try to pronounce her last name because I tried about five times but I can’t say it so I am just going to go with Janelle. Janelle did a great job. She had awesome questions. We hoped that you found a lot of value. A lot of benefit out of our interview today. If you would like to be on the Flipped podcast all you have to do is go apply but I would highly recommend you do that because that has become a very popular page on our website and we are getting dozens and dozens of request to be on a Flipped podcast where you can get a free consulting call from Jocelyn and myself. And if you want to be a part of that show, all you have to do is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flippedpodcast. Fill out an application and if we approve we will send you a link where you can schedule your interview. That’s all we have today. Make sure you tune in next week. We will have a lot of great content for you guys as always and until then we will catch y’all on the flip side. See you later.
Patrick J Roden says
This was the most valuable few minutes of my day.
Lesson:
Brand/content building-time > Social Media posting
Janelle says
Janelle here, thanks to everyone who has listened to this episode! The advise has been spot on, a little surreal to listen to myself on one of my favorite podcasts.
Dave Starr says
A great episode. Very helpful and actionable. I’m very impressed with the work Janelle has done so far and there are so many more success stories like this … including your own. Inspiring, and so appropriate to today’s economy where, I feel, paid for time “served” jobs are no longer the way to go. Keep up the wonderful work.
But one thing that really caught my attention was Shane’s little aside mentioning his new history teacher website. As an amateur certified history “geek” this really caught my attention. There’s probably no more common derogatory joke in education than “history” being the subject relegated to the football coach during his off season … it is so often the reality and history itself deserves better.
really interested in learning more about your plans on this, Shane. Hope to hear more RSN (Real Soon Now).
Gary says
G’Day, re Facebook ads, there is a way to make Page Likes worthwhile. Page Likes can actually make you money.
Here’s how. Advertise for Likes targeting Audiences relevant to your niche. Then you advertise special offers and show those ads only to folks who have Liked your page. I have seen excellent conversions for local businesses using this tactic.