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Algebra Teacher Online Entrepreneur
Jeanette works with Algebra 1 teachers and has struggled to find the best products and strategies to take her site from generating hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars CONSISTENTLY.
She recently restructured her products and created a membership site with WordPress.
We’re going to talk about how to build on her momentum (she recently got 55 signups for her new program) and what she needs to do going forward.
You will learn
- Success leaves clue.
- You don’t need everyone to pay you, You just need a few people.
- Consolidate your products and raise your prices.
- Are you solving someone problems well enough to retain them as a customer?
- Some ideas on how to acquire new customers.
- How to evaluate a sales page.
- The implications of accurately targeting your ideal customer.
Links and resources mentioned in today’s show
We would love to help you write the success story for your online business.
At the end of today’s show, head over to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife where you can learn more about building and growing a successful online business with the help of our Flip Your Life community.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thank you for listening!
Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show!
If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! On today’s podcast, we’re helping Janette take her online business to the next level.
Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us, each week, as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, great to be back with you again this week. We are super excited because this is a Flipped podcast where we bring on a member of our Flip Your Life community, who is out there trying to flip their life around, change their life through online business and we help them with a free consulting call, and we air that on the podcast so that everyone can benefit from the knowledge. And today’s guest is an amazing member of our Flip Your Life community, someone who is just knocking it out of the park right now, building a lot of momentum in her online business. Our guest today is Janette Steins. Janette, welcome to the show.
JANETTE: Thank you, I’m so excited to be here.
JOCELYN: Yeah, we are very excited to have you. You have been just really killing it in our forums, inspiring other people, and doing some great things on your own. So we are really looking forward to talking to you and kinda delving into all that and how we can help you further and just keep doing great things.
SHANE: All right, so what is your story Janette? What is your background, where did you come from? Tell us a little bit about maybe how you discovered online business, and kind of how you got into that and what was going on before you found Flip Your Life?
JANETTE: Sure. I live in Michigan, I have six children; four are adopted, two are biological and very quickly, love teaching. I’ve been a teacher for 17 years, and but with my children I really want to be at home. So about four years ago – I looked at the date on my first blog post before I came on here, and it was four years ago. I couldn’t believe it, I’m like, gosh I’ve been doing this – trying for a long time. So I’ve been really – what drove me is I really wanted to create a website and be able to serve teachers, and work from home, and be able to serve my children better as well. So that was really my huge momentum and then I have been kind of this one-hit wonder through all of this. It’s like I’ll come up with something, and it might sell a little bit and I’ll make a couple of hundred dollars, and then it goes away. And I’ve created this huge website and for a while, I had Ad Sense on it, and I remember when I got my first check – back then they sent paper checks, I guess that shows you how long I’ve been doing this. And I got my first check for a hundred dollars from Google, and I took it to the bank and then I turned around and I’m like I have to keep it; like I can’t even cash this.
SHANE: Like you go into a barber shop and they got like their first money on there, right?
JANETTE: Yeah, I took like 800 pictures and then finally deposited the check. And my husband’s like, “That’s crazy; go put it in the bank.” So you know, it’s been – and then I’ll have nothing. And then I’ll create a course and release it, and then I have nothing and I felt like I went from course to course to learn how to do all this and everybody was doing like these huge, amazing things and they were spending like 800 hours on one video, and I got so overwhelmed. And then I heard you guys on Pat Flynn and I thought, they’re teachers ‘cause I kept thinking, maybe I should leave the teaching niche, you know, like can you really make money from teachers.
JOCELYN: You definitely can.
SHANE: Trust me, we asked ourselves that many times.
JANETTE: Well, you’re my first people that I talked to and I’m like, whatever they are doing, I’m just gonna follow it. So when I found – I mean, I was one of those – I heard you on Pat Flynn, I hunted you down, I’m like yeah, whatever – you know, I heard Tony Robbins say, “Success leaves clues.” So whatever you did, I wanted to do.
JOCELYN: That’s so funny, so are you trying to say you’re a stalker?
SHANE: Yeah, are you stalking us?
JOCELYN: Just for the record.
SHANE: I mean, that’s okay. We’re all good.
JANETTE: You know I am.
SHANE: I know you are.
JANETTE: I mean, you see me everywhere, it’s kinda freaky. I bet you’re like –
SHANE: Hey Janette, you’re on Periscope, there she is on Facebook, back in the forums.
JANETTE: I know.
SHANE: No, it’s all good.
JANETTE: I just want to learn one way to do it and stick with one way, and quit chasing all these different ways. Every guru has a different way to do it.
SHANE: Yes.
JANETTE: You’ve been successful in my niche; you’ve got great down to earth advice, you’re not selling me 8000 things, and I just love it. Yeah, so I’m excited to be here and it’s been really crazy. So since I’ve been in the community, I put out my first to-do list and you’re like, that’s great but why don’t you create a membership site?
SHANE: Right.
JANETTE: You sound kinda like a dad to me sometimes. You’re like, “That’s good but no, you’re not going the right way.”
SHANE: Right. But that’s what the forum is for though.
JANETTE: You’ve done this to me two or three times, but I love it.
SHANE: That’s what that’s for though; like I think that like everybody on the – like you said something really important that I want everybody to kinda go back to, I don’t want anybody to miss this, like the important thing online is there’s a lot of different ways to do it. Like we are very open to – we say a lot of different things than some of the gurus do. And we say – and that’s okay because their way worked for them, our way works for us. What I have a problem with is when people are like, “This is the best only way you can ever succeed online.” But then people don’t succeed, and they don’t know why they didn’t succeed. Well, that’s just because that method wasn’t best for them. We would never want everyone on Earth to think our way was the only way to do it because it might not work for them, you know? So that was a really good point that you just made that you know, you picked one way and you stuck to it. You stopped listening to everything else, regardless of if it was our way or whatever. That’s what usually holds a lot of people back, and then they are trying to do it alone. Like they’re trying to go into these ten different methods and trying to figure it all out themselves, and they don’t have that voice of reason that says, ‘No, you should probably do it this way’ like that forest for the trees; somebody kinda looking in to the – outside of your business. You know what I’m saying?
JANETTE: Exactly. That’s exactly, you know, where I think my momentum – it’s like I was working in all these directions and getting nowhere. It’s like running in circles.
SHANE: So you said you had made a little money before like, where were you right before you got really focused, got onboard with the plan, were you making any money, or was it just kind of had petered out a little bit?
JANETTE: It had petered out; I think I got – I mean I think it took two or three months for me to get my last Google AdSense check which was 150 dollars.
SHANE: Wow.
JANETTE: Yeah, that was really sad.
SHANE: And that’s frustrating too.
JANETTE: And then I put a course out and I did pretty good – I mean, I thought it was pretty good, I think made just under 2000 dollars.
JOCELYN: Oh yeah, that’s great.
JANETTE: But then I didn’t keep it going. Like I just let it fall apart.
SHANE: Yeah, a lot of people get into the launch mentality online like where everything is just – you know, they make it sound – people make it sound really good like “I’m gonna launch this big product and look how much success I had launching a product.” Well, those people already have 100,000 Twitter followers. Of course, they had a good launch, you know?
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: And they have 40 JVs that are selling their stuff, and then you know, it’s kind of like – it’s almost like multi-level marketing almost; like a pyramid thing because yeah, the guy with the big, huge audience is gonna have a great launch and can show this great example, but what about the person who’s just doing it on their own or starting out?
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: It doesn’t make sense. And you start living – we say you’re living launch to launch; that’s what we say. It’s like a pay check to pay check almost.
JANETTE: Right which I really wanted to get away from. So yeah, following you guys was just great and then your Pricing podcast, like I seriously listened to that and then I went and purchased your product because that changed everything for me ‘cause I was following somebody else’s advice and I was putting out like one lesson plan and selling it for 2.99.
JOCELYN: Yeah, exactly.
JANETTE: It was crazy. Like oh yay, I got – my last payout, I sent it to you, a picture of it, it was like 30 cents from teachers pay teachers.
JOCELYN: Yeah, and that’s [Crosstalk] like people always assume that – you know, like people told me when I was starting my website, “We’ll teachers won’t pay that. There’s no way you’ll get teachers to pay that.” And I’m like “Oh yeah? I’ve got them to pay it a lot of times.”
SHANE: And people get confused because they think you have to get every teacher to pay you. You don’t have to get every teacher to pay; you just need the ones that want your stuff and then you’ll have to get them to pay you consistently so you have a good steady growing, stable income. That’s where people miss the boat on online businesses. Everybody brags about their numbers; like people will come out – and we are guilty of this, we used to do this when we first started out and we realized this is silly. Why are we doing this? Because people have like their expense reports and all their income reports and they are like, “I made 400,000 dollars in a month.” But what they don’t tell you is, a lot of times, one that’s revenue and their expenses were probably 390,000 dollars for that month; you know what I mean?
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: And then also too, they don’t tell you all the background that goes in behind that; those big numbers kinda pull people in but it’s kinda depressing when you look at what actually happens. People forget that that launch is over and that person now has to go work 80 hours a week again for every week for a month to even come close to replicating that. Whereas the way we teach it, I think that there’s a better way to do it where you can create a steady income that’s stable, that’s growing, that’s predictable, where you can invest back in your business and also you can kinda see those successes every day instead of that one big high and then you crash.
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: So tell us where you are, like what’s happened since you joined Flip Your Life and you’ve had this mindset shift where you’re starting to put in like a membership model which actually we just had this mindset shift three or four months ago and we’ve started teaching it to everybody in our community now because we are so into it and we really believe in it. What has happened since you joined Flip Your Life?
JANETTE: So I joined about a month ago, and you set me straight probably within the first two or three days I was in the forum. You’re like ‘No, stop it, create a membership and put it all on one spot’ and which matched exactly with that I bought into with your pricing model.
SHANE: And you had – how many products did you have when you joined?
JANETTE: I don’t know.
SHANE: A bunch, right?
JANETTE: A bunch, yeah.
SHANE: And you were selling them like piecemeal.
JANETTE: And they were just nickel-and-diming my time and effort to death, and it wasn’t selling like that. So, I put them all into a membership model, I put my course into a membership, into the same membership all just for Algebra-1 teachers and my target is people who are trying to teach without a textbook or an outdated textbook for the new standards. And then I raised my prices drastically –
SHANE: How far? How much did you raise them; ‘cause we love – people need to hear price –
JANETTE: I raised it from 2.99 or assessment packages for 16 dollars and my membership is 397 per year or 39 dollars per month.
SHANE: Love it, that is awesome.
JOCELYN: That’s great.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: So what happened when that went on sale?
JANETTE: That went on sale 19 days ago, I’ve got 55 buyers –
SHANE: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
JOCELYN: And that’s crazy.
JANETTE: Yeah, and so I’m super excited. I have given early-bird discounts, and that ended yesterday.
SHANE: Good.
JANETTE: So you know, it kind of was like a little bit of a launch, and then I followed your advice you gave me on the Periscope about when to set up those emails and that helped me tremendously. I tried to follow exactly what you say and – ‘cause what you do works.
SHANE: How many of those members were like annual? Was it like 50-50 or –
JANETTE: No, it surprised me. It was way more annual; probably 75% of them are annual.
JOCELYN: Wow.
SHANE: Isn’t that surprising because you sat there and you think, ‘Well nobody will ever pay me a premium price for something.’ So then even as you are looking at your membership, you’re like I’ve got this affordable membership monthly package which makes sense for a teacher to pay right?
JANETTE: Yeah.
SHANE: And here comes a group of people that love your material and are like, ‘I need this’ and I need this community, I need it to be in here to ask people for help, I need to talk to Janette –
JOCELYN: And I’m gonna commit to a whole year.
SHANE: I’m gonna commit to a whole year, and you never would think that they would just drop that much money, but people will because it has nothing to do with the price. It’s all the value.
JANETTE: Yes.
JOCELYN: And it has to do with are you solving their problem?
SHANE: That’s right, that’s it.
JANETTE: Right, and then I did get a couple of emails, ‘Thank you so much; because now that you’ve packaged it up, my school district can help me pay for this.’
SHANE: Exactly.
JOCELYN: Exactly.
SHANE: Yeah, that’s awesome.
JANETTE: Yeah, so that was huge too.
SHANE: And now, you’ve got this core of membership people that you know are going to visit – now here’s the great thing why this isn’t a launch: In a membership model, those people will recur next year, you know, you will have a conversion rate of probably 85%-90% anybody out there telling anybody that it’s 60-70%. Like we used to think that but when we studied it, we realized that the people who were preaching that membership models were terrible, they were not providing value. Of course their people are going to leave on them; but if you are consistently giving some new things, if you are giving people a place to belong, if you’re giving them this community, they have all the reason in the world to renew that. The monthly people are gonna pay that 39 dollars a month and now you can look ahead to next month and say, ‘Ah, if I didn’t sell anything, at least they would pay.’
JANETTE: Yeah.
SHANE: And I can just keep them happy and it’s so much lower energy to kind of keep those – your current customers happy by providing additional value than it is to go out and spend all this energy trying to find new people and this that and the other. It’s an amazing model and I’m so glad that you had that much success fast. I can hear it in your voice the difference; even just like from when we first started talking to you online, like the way you spoke was different than the way you speak in the forums now because there’s hope, there’s energy, there’s momentum.
JANETTE: Oh yeah.
SHANE: So let’s figure out now, what we can do to take it to the next level, because this is just – I mean, you’re just one step into your journey right now. I mean, this is just the beginning. So, give us a few questions, let’s roll into it, and let’s see how we can build on this momentum and make this thing grow even farther.
JANETTE: Okay, so my first question is just how do I keep this momentum going. So, you fed right into my question; I don’t want it to be another one-hit wonder. Yeah, you have one month but, you know, you mentioned webinars so I would love to maybe talk about if that’s the way to go.
SHANE: Yes, the very first thing that you should do is you know, it’s just like in war basically; I’m a big Sun Tzu ‘Art of War’ guy. When you win battles, you don’t just be like ‘Okay, I’m gone.’ You consolidate the surrounding area, you consolidate your gains. So, the first thing you have to do is you wanna make sure you have a really good retention strategy for the people that have already signed up for your membership, and you need to make sure that the value keeps coming. And for you, that’s really easy and it’s actually pretty easy for most people. The one thing you have to do is be involved in your community for sure, because you want to be in there, driving conversation. You have to lead your tribe; you can’t just leave them to their own devices and hope that they become friends. We do that in our community, we’re in there every single day, we post new topics, we keep things going, we reply to everything we can and it just – you have to be visible as the leader of your community and then you need to be adding to your community each month. That’s what we do; we try to give a member call where people can call in and ask for things that they need help with. That’s a huge benefit and we also provide new content.
JOCELYN: That may be a little bit different for you because of the nature of what you do, and it’s really the same for me. What I’m doing on Elementary Librarian is I’m going to do basically a monthly – what I’m calling a training session or a training module. It’s essentially a webinar, but mine are gonna be pre-recorded. So I don’t want to give the impression that I’m doing it live, but I’m gonna have people sign up and that’s basically going to be my lead generation. So I’m gonna do this free training for librarians and when they sign up for that – I’m gonna do some Facebook ads for that, and when they sign up for the free training, they will get on my email list and I’ll give them an offer at the end of the training.
SHANE: And then basically what you do is, you use – you actually have to give value in these public training and then you put them into your membership area as new content. So that way, the people who join new, I mean they get access to these 20 trainings you’ve done in the past and you’re constantly putting something new in each month. For you what I would do, you’re going to have a very community-driven model, so you can also – you need to have a forum where people can publish their own stuff; you need to say, hey submit – request the lesson plan forum, that will be great for your membership area. Maybe you don’t have something, let your members share only within that community, like only paid members get access to this and that takes some of the burden off of you for your content. Now, you’re gonna have to put something in your terms and conditions that say, “Checkbox – when you submit this, this becomes the property of the forum, I can use it in advertisements and things like that –” whatever. But that’s a way that people can generate their own content and share.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: For any niche, the main thing is, you just need to keep delivering consistent value with access and new information. It doesn’t have to be a lot. For Flipped Lifestyle, all we do is we have a request forum, we look at what people need and we’ll do a training on that once a month and we’ll put that in the forum. It takes about an hour and then we also do a live Q&A, and then we’re in our forums every day. So if you can provide that consistent value, that’s gonna keep the retention and that’s the most important thing that you can do right now, okay?
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: All right now next thing though is sales, like Jocelyn said, you’re gonna have to have a monthly strategy to bring in new teachers. So you can do that through those public trainings like Jocelyn said, or you can just try to run advertising on Facebook and things like that and target those teachers, target your niche and try to get them to a sales page and try to convert people that way.
JOCELYN: Well, but you don’t want to advertise straight to a sales page unless there’s people on your email list. I’ve had pretty much zero success doing that.
SHANE: So the sales page is basically what Jocelyn, like a lead magnet or something or –?
JOCELYN: Yeah, if you’re gonna advertise to cold leads, that means people who are not aware of your brand at all, you need to be taking them to something for free and that’s what I’m using my free trainings for, those pre-recorded webinars. I’m using those to generate leads. And I have not tested the strategy yet, I’m gonna start it in August and that’s actually when this podcast comes out. So about the time this thing releases, I’ll be starting to test –
SHANE: For the membership model. But you’ve done that in the past for your big model; you’ve sent people to the free lesson page, and then you got people to buy the actual big, 400-dollar package after that in your email list.
JOCELYN: Yeah. So you know, if you are gonna advertise to your email list, you can advertise an offer to them but if you’re advertising to people who are not aware of you, you need to familiarize them with your brand and you a little bit.
SHANE: Like we only run ads at Flipped Lifestyle, we only run them to our podcast. We don’t run them to like the Flip Your Life membership, we don’t even really run them to that lead magnet stuff because we want it to be organic content that they discover that we know is valuable. So, we’ll send people to our best podcasts and we know that they’ll eventually listen, there’ll be a lead magnet on that page that they can download that’s related to that podcast, they’ll get on our email list, they’ll go through our sequence, they’ll eventually become familiar enough with us to where they might give our community a shot. So, make sure you’re sending people to that – what’s your freebie right now? Are you giving away so many lesson plans or something?
JANETTE: Yeah, I have a unit-one bonus where I have some of the weekly assessments and performance tasks, and then a technology guide as well.
SHANE: Yeah, so you can just target people and say, ‘Free Algebra lesson plans’ basically.
JANETTE: Yeah, and I started that yesterday.
SHANE: Cool, love it.
JANETTE: Yeah, it was exciting ‘cause I got like 50 leads, which I thought was good.
SHANE: That’s great.
JOCELYN: That’s awesome.
SHANE: Now you got – now what you need to do is you take those email leads each month, you’ll upload your list into Facebook and those are the people that you target with your membership ad.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: ‘Cause they’ve downloaded your free stuff, they are familiar with your content, they at least know about you. So now in your email auto responder, you’re going to sell to them but then your Facebook ads are gonna be like extra exposure behind that. So they’re gonna get these free lesson plans, they’re gonna get that value, and then all of sudden they’re gonna be on Facebook, they’re gonna see an ad that says, oh, there’s also – get a year of lesson plans, there’s something every day, or we get great value each month. And then that’s when they’ll be exposed enough to start really thinking about joining your community.
JANETTE: Okay.
JOCELYN: And Janette, just a question for you, I’m on your website here and do you do most of your selling through your email list? I notice there’s no – there’s not really like a sales link on your page that I see.
JANETTE: Well, that is such a good point. If you click on any of the blog posts, there’s one at the top to get on the email list and then one at the bottom to sell the membership, and I think I was thinking that if they’ve read the whole blog post and they were interested, then I’ve got them.
JOCELYN: Yeah, I think that you could have a lot of –
JANETTE: I need something on the front page?
JOCELYN: Yeah, you could have a lot higher conversion if you are a little bit more overt about that.
SHANE: Yeah, you got to be seen to sell; don’t ask for it to sell.
JOCELYN: Yeah, don’t bury it down in the bottom of those posts like that; I see what you are talking about, but that is – you know, it’s just – I think you could do a lot better actually saying “Join Now” at the top.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: And also too, like I clicked on your member login link that you’ve got, so like I might click on that as a person who is not a member, and I get here and it just says one sentence. This basically needs to be a login but then if they click on – there needs to be something here that says not a member –
JOCELYN: It does say that.
SHANE: I know, but it needs to be bigger. It’s like a text, like it says “This is the login page for Algebra-1 teacher membership area” and then it says, “If you’re not a member, click here.” But you need a big, huge, graphic with a “Click here” orange button whatever that says – like it’s a picture of teachers, they’re having fun together, like I need something – I skimmed right over it. Jocelyn noticed it ‘cause Jocelyn can see a misspelt word from 35 miles away and she can like decipher text of any book ‘cause she’s a librarian, it’s her super power. But I just glanced right over it and I just hit back.
JANETTE: Yes.
SHANE: So be more overt, put that on there, that way people who are actually coming to your blog know that something is for sale and that’ll help too. All right, so that was a great discussion on retention and getting new members, so what other questions do you have for us today?
JANETTE: So sales page, how do you evaluate how effective your sales page is? Is there – I know, I’m a numbers person, you’re not –
SHANE: I am not a numbers person.
JOCELYN: We are definitely not.
SHANE: I would fail your class actually.
JANETTE: Every time I hear you guys talk about numbers on the podcast, my kids know ‘cause they just hear me laughing.
SHANE: That’s hilarious.
JOCELYN: Yeah, we’re like so terrible with that, it’s just not our strong point; either one of us.
SHANE: I think letters and numbers should be kept away from each other so you and your Algebra is confusing.
JOCELYN: However, me and Excel are pretty much BFFs, you know.
JANETTE: Perfect.
JOCELYN: We’re pretty tight.
JANETTE: That’s good. But I’m wondering about my sales page, I’ve gotten feedback on the forum that people like the video, I feel like it’s really clunky, I think that’s probably – I don’t know if that’s me or if I should re-do it, but I’m wondering how do I evaluate the effectiveness or if I need to go in and tweak that?
JOCELYN: Well, are you using Lead Pages?
JANETTE: I am.
JOCELYN: Okay, you can actually do two different lead pages and have like an A-B split.
JANETTE: Okay.
JOCELYN: I have not done this personally before but I’m pretty sure that there are probably videos on Lead Pages that show you exactly what you need to do.
SHANE: It’s pretty easy.
JOCELYN: And you can try different wording, I mean, you don’t want to change a ton of things about your sales page when you do a split test, it’s mostly just to test like a headline or maybe you have two different videos and you see which one converts better. Video sales pages are usually a really good way to go. I’ve had a really good success with mine. If you log into Lead Pages, it will tell you your conversion rate. Have you seen that?
JANETTE: I have but because I – it tells me how many people have been to the page but because I’m not actually collecting an email, it’s not giving me the percent.
SHANE: Yeah, basically what it does is like if you wanna look at your conversion rate – but you can still figure it out though because you know how many people went to the page and you know how many people bought.
JANETTE: Okay, oh cool, yes.
SHANE: So you can just go in and look at that; you can just – that’s what I do on the – I don’t put in the conversion tracking and all that ‘cause you can kinda eyeball it and see about where your conversions are and on the split test, you can try to do different things like one thing at a time like Jocelyn said. Like change your headline, change one piece of copy, you don’t ever want to test more than one thing once, but if your conversion rate is steady and you’re getting about – if a hundred people go to the page and around ten of them buy, you know, a ten percent conversion is what we kinda shoot for on any of our pages because that’s really a good solid number.
JOCELYN: Yeah, that’s a really good conversion rate.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: Yeah, all the other gurus talk like 3%-5% is something successful but Jocelyn and I have no problem getting to ten because we speak to our audience, we are very – we don’t try to be clever with – we just go straight up and tell you what’s in the package and what it is, we just be really very clear on what’s in the thing. So the people who get there know the truth and they don’t – either they are gonna buy it or they are not going to. So you get a true conversion rate. What’s gonna make you more successful is your targeting. Targeting is way more important than all that sales page stuff because a lot of people talk about sales pages because it’s easy to do but in reality, if you target your avatar correctly and you are getting the right person on the sales page, you’ll have a higher conversion rate.
JANETTE: Okay.
SHANE: So focus a lot more on your targeting and getting the right people into your brand and eliminating the people that aren’t going to be in your brand. The people – like never buy ads or anything for people who look for free lesson plans because those people are wanting free stuff, and you are not offering free stuff. Now if you target people that are looking for the best lesson plans, ‘cause they are willing – they want the best lesson plans.
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: Things like that, just make sure your targeting is really good and just make sure your sales page is really clean, really clear, and it just keeps people moving down the page to see what’s next and make sure your offer is super clear and it’s easy to buy. Don’t come up with 15 options and all that. It’s just option A, option B, maybe option C if you need it and that’s – the sales pages need to be very clear, very clean and make sure your targeting is getting the right people to it.
JANETTE: Okay, ‘cause I’m at like 6%.
SHANE: That’s good.
JOCELYN: That’s really good.
SHANE: That’s not bad.
JANETTE: Okay.
JOCELYN: Anything between five and ten is great.
SHANE: Yeah.
JOCELYN: I actually like to use ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ in my sales page for education because I feel like teachers, they might have some objections and I can sort of think about what those objections are gonna be, so I try to cover those in my ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.
SHANE: Yeah, that’s a good sales tip.
JOCELYN: So if you’re not using the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ page in Lead Pages, it’s the one with the video, I’m not sure exactly which one it is but that one converts really well for me.
SHANE: You can also just put it in the text.
JANETTE: I’m sorry I interrupted you – when I say like success leaves clues, like if you use that page Jocelyn, I have used that page. [Crosstalk]
SHANE: She’s actually using the same page that Jocelyn uses, we’re looking at it right now. That’s hilarious.
JOCELYN: Yeah, I see that now.
JANETTE: If you guys do one thing – I just think you’ve done and you’re doing it really well so why would I –
SHANE: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, that’s what we always say.
JOCELYN: Honestly, I mean you can always try something, a different sales page just to split test with but I think that’s a pretty good percentage. I think you are going down a good road, I just think that you need to pick up some of that low-hanging fruit like we talked about earlier, like have a more obvious place for people to join your website.
JANETTE: Great.
SHANE: If you just add more offers on your page and you really worry about targeting, like your percentage is going to go up to seven or eight very quickly, so I think at this point, you know, don’t nitpick your sales page as much as just get more people to it that are the right people. That’s where you really are right now and I think a lot of people do that. It goes back to the whole logo mentality; “Well, it’ll take me a week to get my logo right.” Why? Just put the name of your site at the top of your page.
JANETTE: Right.
SHANE: I had to format my blog post and my theme, well, why? Just write content. Like go get people to your stuff and you’ll be better off.
JANETTE: Sounds great.
SHANE: All right, I think we have time for one more question right now.
JANETTE: Okay, so this has been a big topic on the forums as well, the SOS, the Shiny Object Syndrome; I am getting emails from – you know, I target Algebra-1, so I’m getting emails from Geometry and then eight-grade middle school teachers going, ‘Do you have stuff for me?’ ‘When do you expand?’ Like how consistent does your Algebra-1 teachers need to be before you start surfing those eighth grade teachers and those tenth grade teachers?
SHANE: Not now, I would not branch out right now; that might be – like we get the same questions like for World-Civ, Geography, stuff like that on the History Teacher site and I will not make any more lesson plans until this one goes at least one more year. And I have – you know, I’ve got a goal in mind of how many teachers I want in there, and I also have to get my retention rate to make sure it stays about that 85%-90% range. So until – I would not, until next year at least, even consider doing that because you want to – here’s what’ll happen: if you start split focused on other business, which is what that is, that’s not the same business just ‘cause it’s math. If you go to a new avatar, then you’re automatically going to do less for the old one and until your community is established and you’ve got really enough content in there to carry on through the whole year, and you’ve got those locked in users that are really happy and they are recurring, you do not need to make these other lesson plans. It’s so tempting to say, ‘Oh, I’ll just do this’ but when you split focus, you’re splitting your focus.
JOCELYN: And let’s face the facts, you are in a really sweet spot right now; I mean, Algebra-1 teachers, that’s a lot of teachers.
SHANE: Yeah.
JOCELYN: So I don’t really feel like you need to do that; you just need to go out and get more people in the audience.
SHANE: Yeah, I think you’ll see the plateau eventually. Like right now, you’ve got – what did you say, 75 or 55 members something like that?
JANETTE: 55.
SHANE: Right, I mean, you know there’s hundreds of other Algebra teachers that love this product that haven’t seen it yet. When you find a good nail, hammer it. Just hammer it. And when that levels off and you can’t get that thing in the wood anymore, you can’t drop it down, it’s done. You’ll know ‘cause it’s flat, it’s done, it can’t go any farther. And when you see that plateau happen, that’s when you say, all right, I’ve got this community, retention is awesome, they love what’s in there, I’ve still got a few new people that are coming in that are replacing anybody that leaves, I don’t have to spend any more energy on this. I’m just watering you know, my crops like a farmer. I’m not out hunting anymore. Now, I’m gonna say, okay, what’s next? I’ll go and start a new field, I’ll plant my Geography crop or Geometry crop or whatever and I’ll make new lesson plans and open a new branch –
JOCELYN: You probably don’t want to do that to Geography.
SHANE: Yeah, I know.
JANETTE: No, thank you.
SHANE: But basically that’s when you’ll know is when you’re done hammering the nail. It’s flat, it’s over, let’s go get a new nail and we’ll put that in basically.
JANETTE: All right, that sounds great.
SHANE: I would set a goal for 300 members right now to give you something to shoot for because there’s got to be 300 teachers out there that want this, and you just have to find them. There’s always 300 people that’ll pay for your service. So go find you 300 people, when you get to 300, if everything is going smooth, that’s when you think about the other thing.
JANETTE: That sounds great.
JOCELYN: All right Janette, well, I hope that that helps you to kinda know where you are going for your next steps; we are really excited to help you in our forums. I mean, you’re in there a lot and people are actually finding inspiration from you, so I find that really cool.
SHANE: Yeah, I love it when you post something – I get up every day and I’m like ‘I wonder what Janette posted in the success forum today’ ‘cause you’re in there like rocking that success forum like every single day. You inspire us, like it’s amazing because we see – it’s just so awesome when we see – ‘cause this is what it’s all about for us. We’ve seen someone like – when that energy happens, like one day Janette came into the forum and she typed, “My hands are shaking when I type this” and that was better than any sale, paycheck, launch, membership thing we’ve ever done; it’s just to know that how much that’s like impacting your actual life. So congratulations for all your success. You’re the one doing it, we’re just kinda showing the flashlight which way to go. We’re really proud of you.
JANETTE: Thank you so much, it’s been an amazing adventure. I’m super excited.
JOCELYN: All right, awesome.
SHANE: All right guys, that wraps up our interview with Janette. She did an amazing job in her online business, really got into the Flip Your Life community and took action and that is why she is experiencing success, and why she is going to experience success going forward. Janette will actually be at our live event in Clearwater, Florida on October 10th and 11th. Tickets are on sale now but they are selling out fast; we only have a few left. If you would like to come and meet us, hang out with us, let us help you in your online business, you can do that in Clearwater, Florida on October 10th through 11th. And you can go to flipyourninetofivelive.com and you can grab a ticket, but they will probably sell out this week if they are not already gone by the time this podcast goes out. So make sure you head over to Flip Your Nine To Five Live, pick up your ticket today, that ticket also includes a membership to our Flip Your Life community. So basically for the price of the online community, a little bit more, you get a full-blown two-day live event, you get to hang out with us, a private mastermind just with us where we take and break down your online business, help you get to the next level. You get the advantage of also having Jill and Josh Stanton from ‘Screw The Nine To Five’ there. They are going to help you with your online business and you’ll be surrounded by 20 serious entrepreneurs that are ready to help you take it to the next level. That’s flipyourninetofivelive.com, grab your ticket before they sell out today. All right guys, that’s all the time we have for this week, until next time, get out there, take action, flip your life. We’ll see you next time.
Michelle Pippin says
I haven’t yet finished listening to this episode, but HAD to give you guys a shout out for talking about REAL numbers.
I am so sick of “experts” shouting big numbers from the roof top, never mentioning that they give away 40% to affiliates, THEY must pay for any returns, THEY pay for food, event insurance, marketing, fb ads, all of that…. nor that they worked like a dog to launch, and MUST work like a dog to deliver. I’ve been here myself, even taking an idea from idea to past the $7figure mark… but I can tell you that the only numbers that matter are 1) the money that’s left over (what’s REALLY yours), and2) the number of days a week you’re really and truly able to live according to your own priorities.
Thanks again for your leadership in the digital space! Great work, as always!
Shane Sams says
Thanks for you rcomment Michelle! We keep it REAL around here!
Becky Watson says
Love this PODCAST so much and have listened 3 times over the past 24 hours…tons of value bombs. One thing that resonated with me … is the power of niche-ing your market and your product. I consistently say “not now” to potential clients who have contacted me from a different market. I have found when I say “not now” to them, it always allows more time for me to focus on my current clients (and to dive deeper) in providing them outstanding service (and soon a digital product)! Thank you !!
Shane Sams says
Thanks Becky!