RYB 844: Best 3 Traffic Channels and Content Types – Producing Evergreen Assets (Friday Jam Session)

00:00:01 - Yes, what time it is Friday jams way. Hey, Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott. Bowker a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you.

00:00:15 - This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand.

00:00:36 - What's up everyone. Welcome to this Friday jam session, super excited. You're here. And if you haven't heard me say it before, I'm going to say it right now. This is probably one of the highlights of my week because I get to hang out with some cool people every single Friday and answer some really awesome questions. Now you might be asking Scott, how do I get my question answered? Well, all you need to do is become part of our take action crew. How do you do that? Very easy head on over to take action crew.com. It's totally free. And we do it every single Friday and it is a blast. So what you're about to listen to is one that we did last week. So this way here, even if you can't attend, you can always show up here to the rock, your brand podcast, and listen to our live jam session. All right, guys. So sit back, relax and let's jam.

00:01:29 - All right, guys, welcome to this Friday edition, this Friday gym session. And today I am going to be answering your questions here. Now, if you are listening to this on the podcast, you may notice a little bit of a difference in my voice. And that is because, well, we're recording this live and a, well, my microphone had a little bit of some issues, so we just, we just went with it cause we're here live and I'm hanging out right now with my take action crew. The people that have been showing up daily, and what we're doing today is we're turning this into a question and answer, and we are going to start out with the one question and that is more around traffic, but also what platforms should I start with? Should I start with YouTube? Should I start with Instagram? Should I start with Facebook?

00:02:20 - Should I start with a blog, a website? Should I start with Pinterest? Which ones should I start with? And this question I believe came in from Ashley. Uh, and, and I want to address this because I think a lot of people get hung up on what they, they see that the trend is, right? Like people are looking at like the trend. What is everyone starting to gravitate towards? Right. I didn't even throw in there tick tock. Right? Should we do tick tock? Uh, you know, and so what you need to ask yourself, okay. Couple of different questions to ask yourself, but the one big question you need to ask yourself is number one, we need to identify where the market is hanging out. Where is the market consuming content? That's the very first thing that we need to identify. All right. And the way that we can identify this is we can start to look on these different platforms.

00:03:22 - So the way that you would do it, if you were, let's say, for example, you were going to say, okay, I wonder if there are people searching on Google for my niche, right? So you would go through that process of going to Google typing in a keyword of some kind, a short, maybe a, you know, a really direct, uh, keyword. So maybe it is a bass fishing, right? Maybe you're going to start there. And then from there, you're going to also maybe go and start doing some long tail. Right? And so what you're going to do is you're going to start to see is their content being created. And then from there, I would most likely I would go into a, uh, a tool. Uh, and the one that I like to go into just to start to do some digging is Uber suggest, right?

00:04:11 - And then from Uber suggest, I would let that tell me some of the content that's being created. And I would start to find other websites. And then from the websites, I would then identify what content is doing well. And then I would start to look at those websites and I would start to look at their, their channels that they're leveraging. And most of the time you're going to see YouTube. You're going to see Facebook. You're going to see Instagram. You're going to see, uh, did I say YouTube, YouTube, right. So, so you're going to start to see that they're also leveraging those other platforms. So that's one way that finding or using the keyword to find proof that there are people searching for content, and then it will direct you on what platforms that they are using in order to get the traffic. Right. And so that's, that's kind of like the overall view on how I always do that.

00:05:06 - And I call this our brand growth validation process, and we have a checklist for that. And if you are watching this, uh, or even listening to it, you can go to just brand creators.com. You're going to go there. And you're going to see a button there that says the checklist. You're going to download that for free. And it's going to walk you through that. So what we're really doing here is we're identifying what is the best platform right now that I should start with, because it's already been proven that there's traffic there. Now the next question that you need to ask yourself is, okay, I've identified Google search. I've also identified Pinterest. I've also identified YouTube. And now I gotta ask myself, what platform could I start with that I know that I'm not going to really struggle. Okay. And this is important because you may go, Oh, YouTube is looking really good.

00:06:06 - Right. And Google is too, but YouTube. Yeah, look really good. And you're like, but I don't want to shoot videos. So do you start there? Probably not. Right. And also part of that validation process, you're not just going to, you're not going to bank on one traffic source, by the way, right. Through this validation process. If you're only finding one traffic source, we got to find others. Right. And that's why the three that I would be looking into is Google traffic. I'd be looking into Pinterest. And I would be looking into YouTube. Those are the three. Why are I, are, am I really looking at those three the most? Because they're evergreen types of traffic. Okay. Meaning I can create an asset and put it on my website or blog. We just had this happen. We just discovered a post that was done 10 months ago.

00:07:01 - That is now starting to take off. All right. And I say, taking off, it's getting around two to, I'd say 2200 to 2000 to 2200 page views every single month. Right now it was literally crickets up till about maybe a month and a half ago. And now it's starting to take off and you'd say, well, Scott, why is it taking off? Because that's how Google works. Right. We gotta plant the seeds and then let them take off. So now, because you know, we went and we tapped into that. We already did the validation. We knew that now we're able to now leverage that piece of content and then start to monetize that one piece of content, which I'll talk about that in another, another, a coffee talk or a, another podcast episode. And we'll kind of go deeper in that. But what I really want you to think about is what is something that, you know, that you could commit to consistently.

00:07:57 - So number one, find the traffic source, right? And in this case, Google Pinterest or YouTube, pick one of those right now, Pinterest, I wouldn't start with just building traffic on Pinterest. I want to know that I could get traffic there, but I wouldn't start there. I would start with either YouTube or a blog. Right. And preferably I would try to do both. Uh, I think the question from Ashley was also, should I start on YouTube and then repurpose it over to the blog? The answer is yes. Like the perfect formula and the perfect scenario would be that it would be taking that YouTube video and then embedding that into a blog post and then writing a full blog post about it. Like that would be it. And then the third component would be the Pinterest account and profile and your boards that are going to drive traffic to either one of those or both of them.

00:08:54 - Right. So that's it in a nutshell guys. Right. So if you're thinking to yourself, well, uh, I'm not quite sure what platform to pick. Number one, figure out where the traffic is the most, or, you know, on multiple channels and then pick one that you feel that you could show up and just deliver that content. Okay. Just what are you confident about that? You know, that you can just start getting into it, right? Like just what is not going to get in your way and what is going to allow you to show up every single day, every single week, right. Consistently, and back to the point of, you know, the post that we recently, or not recently, 10 months ago, and now all of a sudden it's starting to take, right? That is, that is because we identified that there is traffic on Google. So we started writing content on that.

00:09:48 - Now that brand, we don't have a YouTube presence, our presence. And we may, but right now we don't why, because I knew it was going to be harder to do video for us because we weren't the face of it. And we weren't, it wasn't our expertise. So because of that, it was going to be harder to do the video. So do I do the video, even though I say, well, it might be a little bit of a better channel with traffic, but it, over here, I don't have to think as much. I just got to find writers. Right. And that's it. So hopefully that helped you on picking a channel for your market. Now you also didn't hear me mention anything about Instagram, anything about Facebook, anything about tick tock, anything about Snapchat? You didn't hear anything on that, right? Cause if you haven't done those three, I would not start on one of those other platforms.

00:10:40 - Oh, I'm going to build a Facebook group and I'm then I'm going to, I'm going to monetize the group. No, no, that's, you're, you're playing with a non, uh, evergreen piece of content or just, you know, your efforts. You want to always think about, if I plant a seed, can I come back 10 months from now and go, Oh wow. That thing's grown. Right. Or am I going to plant a seed? And then all of a sudden it's buried and no one can find it because it's buried in, in Facebook or it's buried in an Instagram feed or, you know what I mean? Like, or Snapchat. And the other thing is like, people get hung up on, on the numbers, right. Is like, Oh my gosh. Like, did you see that, that ticktack thing got like 40,000 views in like three days. I'm like, great.

00:11:30 - How many clicks over to your website? Right. How many clicks over to your website happened? That's the more important number that I'm concerned with guys. Right. And that video, that tic-tac thing. Right? What did it do? What's it doing six months from now? Is it still growing? And if it is where's that traffic going, right. Cause views, views are not, they're not, uh, you know, it's not money in your bank account ever really. Right. Unless you're like a huge influencer and you just mentioned something and people go rush out and buy it. Right. But then again, that's still, it's not long tail. We want to always think about planting the seed and then go, wow. That seed is growing and guess what it's going to continue to grow. Right. And so that's why I'm so big on that. So. Okay. Let's go to another question here. Uh, let's see. Okay. Here we go.

00:12:26 - Okay. Oh, Karen loved the Pinterest workshop. Love how the info is presented. Really easy to follow. When is the first live call that is tomorrow, Saturday, Karen and inside of brand creators Academy. We just posted that as well, because you're all able to go through that as well. And then, um, anyone that is in the Pinterest traffic workshop right now, currently that call is going to be live. And we have a few, uh, we have a few reviews we're going to be doing as well of people's accounts. Um, awesome. And then, uh, also I sent an email late last night about my business. Did you get it? Oh, yes, I did see it, but I did not get into that yet, Karen, but we will be doing that hat seat. Uh, okay, here we go, Diego. Okay. Uh, I have a third party managing my website for some reason.

00:13:13 - They do not support blog integration. I would like to take over the site, but I am afraid I will lose the little traffic I have. Okay. So Diego, I probably need a little bit more, um, info here. How much traffic are we talking about? How many articles, how many pieces of content are there on that platform? Because there are ways that you can port that over to another website or blog. Um, so sometimes like in this case, if you have a third party, that's managing the website, we talked about this in a past coffee talk. It's almost like they're holding you hostage in order to make changes. And I can't stand that. Um, so I would say it's going to probably be worth it for you to move over to a platform that you control that you have access to. And I love WordPress. I mean, we built everything on WordPress now, Shopify, uh, you can, you can use their blogging platform, whatever, but I do love WordPress. Um, and not the free WordPress. Like I think it's wordpress.com. It's a, you want the theme that is installed or not the theme you want, the framework that is installed on your own host, which they have, uh, like a quick install. Um, so there is a difference there. Uh, let's see here. Um,

00:14:29 - okay. Uh, people are crazy about tick-tock and say it is the next big thing since Facebook and Instagram. Yes. And it's a shiny object. It's a, it's a shiny object. That's all there is to it for me. Right. And you know, what is your market there? If they are great, drive them to your website, your blog. So I want, I would, I would challenge anyone. That's like, Oh my gosh, I'm getting 20,000 views on my, of, you know, someone doing this funny dance or someone that, uh, you know, uh, did this, uh, I don't know this bouncing ball trick or something. I would still love to see where is the traffic going? Right. What good is it if I don't, if I don't have access to the traffic going to my website or going to my YouTube channel. Right. So, yeah, it's a shiny object for sure.

00:15:18 - Um, do you have a recommendation when starting out, how many posts per week you should put out per platform. So here, here's the thing Ashley, you want to commit and, and really be consistent. Okay. That's the main thing here. So I would not suggest saying I'm going to commit to four posts a week and I'm going to do that because what'll happen is, is you might get overwhelmed and then you'll stop. So I would rather let's start slow. Okay. And what I mean by slow is one post per week, and then go through that process and go through that process for the next four weeks. Right. And learn the kinks, learn the process, learn how to batch content, right. Learn how to optimize, right. Because if you do that, then you're going to build a process that now you guys, all you have to do is just feed the process, right.

00:16:14 - Feed the hopper. Right. So I would suggest starting with one per week, I would commit to that, like you had had that done and it was a deadline. Right. So I would say, make sure that you set a date okay. That it's going to be published. And then from there it is done. Okay. And that way there, you're going to commit to it. Um, you are signing up in your own mind that you're going to do it and just, it will allow you to show up consistently. Now if you are, and I know your market. And so if you are going to do a video first, cause we talked about this the other day and anyone that is just listening or watching, uh, basically the question was, if I do a YouTube video, is it, is it a good idea to then take that and create a blog post about it?

00:17:04 - And the answer is, yes, the problem that I see people get faced with is it becomes too much work for them upfront and they get overwhelmed. And then they're like, Oh, it's just too much. I'm not going to do it. So I would rather, you do one thing and then we can always, always go back and we can then do the second half of that. Right. We can repurpose that, but in a perfect scenario, it would look like this. You would shoot the video, right? You would shoot the video with your hook, basically. What, what are you going to learn from this video? Right? Uh, and then from there you would teach whatever it is or you would share whatever nugget that you're, you're giving the people. And then at the end you would make a small call to action, go to our website, go watch the next video, whatever.

00:17:52 - Right. And then you'd be done with that. Once you're done with that, it's fully optimized on YouTube. And then from there you would take that and then you would either, either have it transcribed. And then from there you would go in and edit it. So it flowed more like you wrote a blog post and then add some images, maybe from the video, do some screenshots and stuff. And then from there, you're basically going to create a blog post. And that blog post is going to be independent from the YouTube side of things. And then what you're going to do is embed the video from YouTube over on the block. Right? So now we have two different assets that reside on two different platforms that have two different search platforms, right. And so that is what I would do there. And then the third thing I would do again, not all at once is I would take the Pinterest side of things.

00:18:40 - And every single post, every single video, I would create a pin and that pin would live on the blog. And it would also live on the, or inside the Pinterest account, um, in our specific boards that are for that topic. And that is the process. And I would get that figured out first, I would dial that all in. It might start with the video first and just keep doing the videos and then come back later and start to introduce the blog post. Or maybe you do in both side by side, if you think you can handle it. Right. And then, or you can start with the blog post first and then create a video about the blog post. And then that way there, you're kind of like just taking the same, the content, you're just putting it in a different form. Right. So that's how I would do that.

00:19:24 - And if anyone's listening right now, write that down. Okay. Write that down or make a mental note of that. I would prefer you to write it down. It's like it would go, it would go just like that in that order, depending on if you know that you're not going to show up on video, then don't do video. Right. Don't do it right now. Just do blog posts, new content and do Pinterest. Right. Cause you don't have to be on video to do Pinterest. So if I was to start a new brand right now, I would, and again, if, if I, if I was going to be on video, then I would, yes, I would do YouTube first. And then I would do the blog post and then I would do Pinterest, but I, then I would have them all running simultaneously. Okay. But if I'm starting and I don't want to be the face where it's hard for me to do the video stuff, then I'm just going to do the blog post stuff and in the Pinterest, that's it.

00:20:13 - Alright. Let's move on. What do we got here? Salomon. When you start building brands, are you aiming for organic traffic only? Would you recommend paid ads? Would that speed it up? Well, okay. You always do want to have organic traffic because organic traffic is just, it's a beautiful thing, right? When you have organic traffic with a diversified, uh, uh, traffic stream or streams, it allows you to have more control over your business, but also attention in the traffic. Okay. So you always want to be planting those seeds. Now, is it faster to do Facebook ads? 100% problem is it's going to take a good amount of money in order to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And then the other thing is, is like any platform Facebook gets cranky or Facebook changes something in their ads and it gets disapproved. And you had an ad that was running real well.

00:21:18 - So there's there's problems that you're going to be dealing with there financially. It's going to take some money. Like if you're thinking to yourself, well, I got 500 bucks. I think I'm just going to ramp things up. It's probably not going to work. Um, you're going to need to be able to take at least, uh, probably probably 500 to a thousand dollars to just test. And you're not going to make any money on that. You're just going to test. That's why, if I am going to run paid ads, I'm building an email list. So that way there, I have an asset. You see what I did there? I've got an asset that I can go back in and keep tapping into, right? So if I'm building the email list through Facebook ads, which we've done inside of brand creators Academy, by the way, we built the list of over 9,000 in 30 days.

00:22:06 - And we spent overall, we spent probably right around 1500 bucks. That's on the giveaway that we did. Our, our prize was like 250 bucks. And then the rest of it was Facebook ads, right? But now we have a list of 9,000 people. And now we send a weekly email that goes out to that list and that brand isn't even being monetized yet. You see, we're willing to wait for the monetization to happen later, but we're building the attention. We're building these assets that we have at our disposal. So if you are building an email list, you should be built. And I'm sorry, if you're running Facebook ads, you should be building an email list. You absolutely should be. All right. So that's a big, big deal there. Uh, okay. Derek, the gurus are sending out new shiny objects, uh, about new tools for tic-tac. Okay.

00:22:55 - Can I be real with you guys? Just, just turn it off, right? Like honestly, like, yes, you're going to have marketers that are going to say, tic-tacs the next new thing. You should be using it in your business. My question would be, are you, are you creating content for Google right now? Google is not going anywhere in the next 20 years. Okay. At least I don't think they are. Okay. The search engine that we've all, you know, basically brought into our lives. It's not going anywhere. So that's pretty sure. I mean, we're pretty sure of that. Right. So do you want to go over on a platform that's brand new that you're like, Oh, I could be there first and I'm going to get a whole bunch of views or do you want to, do you want to put money into something or time and resources into something that you know is going to be an asset you're going to have for years to come.

00:23:46 - Right. So Google right. Content. They're a Pinterest. That's another one I would say I'm going to bank on. And then the other one is YouTube, right? Like, so those are the three, those are like the big three, um, Facebook having a community. That's a bonus, right? That's an extra thing. Instagram, if you want to, to get some attention fine. Right. But I would not bank on those tic TAC to me is an amplification tool again, but it's still, I don't even see how that's going to be used right now. Um, so anyway, yes, you're right. And I would turn that off Derek, if, if you're starting to get tempted with like other, uh, you know, people that are sending you emails or gurus or marketers or whatever, I mean, you're, you're smart. You're you're you're saying to yourself right now, like, yeah, they're sending me out this thing.

00:24:34 - It's a new shiny app about tools for tic-tac. Right. So, you know, in your heart that that's probably just a thing that they're trying to do to do a money grab right now. Right. Turn them off. Okay. Turn them off. Uh, Nicolas. Good morning, Scott. Happy Friday. I'm glad to finally be on with you live. I listened into your coffee talks every morning, but can't make it live, do to work. Happy to be here today. Nicholas, thank you for showing up and being here live and thank you for also letting me know that you're watching these or listening to these later and it looks like you're on YouTube. Um, so I appreciate that. And I also, uh, it allows me to know that there's people out there that are watching the replays that can't make the live and that's okay. But it also, um, it confirms that for me.

00:25:19 - So that's good to know Nicholas. Thanks for being here. Uh, I appreciate you, uh, do all platforms require same commitment per week. Uh, okay. There's no platform that says if you produce, you know, five things every single week, you're going to get a better, a better return on your, you know, in the algorithm. There's nothing saying, okay, but I would say this when you can be consistent with good content, it's going to pay off. Right. And the problem is some people think they have to post every single day. Right. And the problem with that is then burnout becomes a thing and then they stopped. Right. So I would say, don't worry about what you think a platform is saying we want because no one really knows. What I do know is if you show up consistently for the next 52 weeks, you're going to have content out there that that seeds are planted and that you could be getting traffic from that you could turn into monetization.

00:26:16 - Right. So that, that's what I would say. Uh, okay. Moving down the list. Oh, I should probably pop in here real quick. Uh, if you are listening to this on the podcast and, uh, this is, uh, obviously we're doing a live call right now. If you want to be part of this head over to take action crew.com, that'll take you to our Facebook page where these get broadcast and also YouTube if you're on YouTube. So I just wanted to throw that little mention out there. We would love to have you, uh, okay. Let's see here. A lot of questions. This is great. Uh, Derek says Snapchat is dead pretty much. Uh, Wendy, Hey Wendy. Good to see ya. I'm not sure if I've seen you on a coffee talk. So I appreciate you coming by what is the Pinterest training? Uh, it's something we wrapped up, uh, enrollment, uh, last Sunday.

00:27:03 - It was, and we're a weekend right now. It's also a training we do inside a brand creators Academy. Um, so right now it's not open to the public. It may be again in the future, but on July 6th, I should probably throw that out here too. On July 6th, we're going to be opening up brand creators Academy, which that Pinterest training is a part of, but there's other trainings in there as well, basically how to build out your brand. Everything we do here in the playbook, uh, is all gone through in brand creators Academy, which we're only opening four times per year. And we'll be opening that on July 6th. So that's coming up. So depending on when you're listening to this or watching this, uh, make sure that you get on our, our waitlist or just download the brand growth validation checklist. And you'll, you'll be on that list.

00:27:48 - Let me just throw that up here real quick. If you go to brand creators.com, click on checklist, download the checklist and you'll be notified when we open brand creators Academy. All right. So Wendy, thank you for stopping by, uh, where do we find the link for tomorrow's Q and a in the Pinterest workshop? Oh, Selma. We, uh, we already sent out the email. So you should have received that if you did not receive it, send me an emailScott@brandcreators.com and I'll make sure you get that link. It's a zoom link. We're gonna be doing it on a zoom call. So that's tomorrow for anyone that is on here right now or listening. Um, and if you're listening to this, it's going to be after the fact, but we're doing our a Q and a call for the Pinterest traffic workshop. Uh, John happy Friday, Scott, I'm fairly new to SEO and I've been posting once a week on my blog for the last two months.

00:28:36 - I'm starting to see some increase in keyword rank. Yes, but not much organic traffic yet since SEO can take three to four months to start showing results. How do you know you're on the right track in the first few months? So, um, let me first see here, you're posting about once per week. You've been doing it for about two months. Yes. You're going to start to see that you're either getting ranked. So what you can do is if you're using Uber suggest it'll help you find that, or even on your own site, or you can just do some keyword searches for your own or, you know, for keywords that you're going after and seeing where your ranking. Um, but I really wouldn't even start looking a lot at the numbers at the two month Mark. Of course, we're always, you know, we're always curious, right?

00:29:22 - Uh, I would say after the three to four month Mark is when you should probably start looking at that. Now with that being said, we did a whole, what we call a content tree and we built out a, about 17 posts that were all kind of connected. And we did that and we had some that were ranking within like three, four. And now, since that has been about a month and a half, maybe two months, um, we're starting to get a first page placement, so it can happen fast, but that's where your keyword research comes into and where you want to go after the long tail, if you go after the long tail, you're going to have a much greater chance of ranking in a lot quicker. Um, and again, I go, I go through that inside of the playbook for brand creators, uh, the playbook.

00:30:06 - I also teach that inside of brand creators Academy. Uh, again, if you are interested in grabbing the book, um, you can for just $4 and 99 cents, okay. So you'll buy me a cup of coffee. If you, if you grab the book and this year, it will give you really how do identify the keywords and really had to dig through your market and find good at topics for your niche. Uh, okay. So let's see here, Tamara, what's up Tamra. I'm going to take a sip of coffee here for a minute because, uh, a lot of times you guys remind me, but I'm jamming right now and we gotta take a sip of coffee.

00:30:44 - All right. So how do we use tags in our blog? How many per blog do you bring in traffic different than keywords? Okay. This is a great, great question. Tags in your blog are not going to help you rank, okay. Let me say that one more time. Using tags inside of your website in your blog is not going to help you. Rank tags are meant for this purpose. If someone does a search on your website, you have a little search bar up there that is going to help them find your content. There's no SEO, uh, you know, a guy or girl out there that is an expert that will tell you that tags will help you rank. Okay. So what you really want to do here, we, we made this mistake early on, by the way, um, that we were thinking that, and we were wrong.

00:31:41 - Um, and so what we do now is we just keep those, those tags very specific to what people would be searching for on the site that will lead them to the different pieces of content that talk about that. So think about that way more so than, um, if you are going to get ranked, um, better for tags. Um, so I would say keep it to like, and again, I mean, how many is too many, right? There's probably only going to be three to five. That makes sense. Right? Like, uh, if you have one on five lures to catch more bass, you might have lures to catch bass. That might be a tag, right. Uh, or the other one might be like catch more bass. That might be a tag, right. Or how to catch bass. Um, those would be tags. That would make sense. Uh, okay.

00:32:34 - If you were starting over, would you still start selling on Amazon and sourcing from China? When do you start on Shopify? The answer is no, I would not start with that. Be brutally honest with you guys. Right? I've done it all. I have a physical product brand right now. We're actually getting, uh, we're probably about, uh, probably about a month away from selling that. Um, no, I would not start unless, unless I had something that I created, I created a product for myself. Let's say I created a tripod of some kind. Right. And it, and it was something that I've been trying to figure out the best way to create a tripod for vloggers and a similar to what Pat Flynn has done with his switch pod. But let's just say it's a tripod that stands up and then it can do overall overview shots, you know, like over top of the here, cause a lot of those don't exist.

00:33:26 - You have to buy a boom arm, maybe then it bolts onto your desk and it comes over. Or maybe it's over here. Like, I don't know. Right. Maybe I came up with something that I really like, and I know that that market is buying product because they always want to have just better equipment. I'm like start with that then. Right. And then I might build my content around that, but I'm not going to go to Amazon and I'm going to use jungle scout and I'm going to find the top selling products and I'm going to go launch those products and then build something around it. I'm not doing that those days are gone. Right. In my opinion, this is just my opinion. Right. Um, because, uh, there's the only thing that you have to differentiate yourself is the product. And if you don't have a product that has a PA and that can be protected and you have the ad or the, the, um, the ad budget, not the ad budget, the, uh, the financial budget in order to defend it, uh, then I wouldn't go down that route.

00:34:21 - Right. I would go down the route of building attention in a market and then leveraging it with, uh, ads like an ad network affiliate, uh, offers. Uh, and actually I'm going to do a blog post, or I'm sorry, a, a podcast episode here, uh, about what we just did and how we identified, uh, one of our posts and how that's going to probably turn into a money generating post, just because we, uh, we now see that it's starting to really rank well, and now we're going to start to add some, a different Philly. It offers to it. And the affiliate offers, aren't just Amazon products. This is actually like a digital product that's bolted on. Um, and we're finding them over on ClickBank. So there's a lot of different ways you can do it. There's a lot of different business models, but I'm not starting with a physical product at this point.

00:35:11 - All right. A lot more goes into that. Um, and, uh, I've done it all. And I could do that. I could definitely do that. I have the, the resources and I have the capital that I could do that, but I'm not doing that right now. I'm building actually two niche sites right now inside of brand creators Academy, actually three. Um, and, um, that's, that's the model I'm following right now. So anyway, hopefully that helped you. Uh, Mike, the only place I've run ads, drove quality traffic to my site is Facebook. I don't think a fan page has much value for me. Well, the only thing a fan page does for you is that allows you to run the ads, right? So if you have a fan page, it also will allow you to, uh, republics some of your, or repurpose some of your content and just share it there.

00:35:57 - But if you're driving ads, you're going into your Facebook fan page and why not build that out a little bit, just with some content. So if people go there after they're seeing your ad, they're like, Oh, they're a legitimate company. Right. But yes, you're right. I would not say I'm going to build a fan page. I'm going to get 10,000 followers and I'm going to have a great audience. No, you're going to reach maybe five, 10% of those if you're lucky. Um, so yeah, I agree with that. Uh, why do you like physical product business, even though managing cashflow is hard in the beginning? Um, I like physical products, but I think I just said I don't like that as a business model, if I'm just starting the business from scratch. Um, okay, Mel, Hey Mel, what's up? Uh, yes. The old, too much work.

00:36:40 - That is real. Yes, it is real. Uh, is it possible to have YouTube appear on Google search? Yes. That's the other cool thing. The other cool thing is, is now think about this. You create a YouTube video, you post it on YouTube. You take that video, you transcribe it, you get a blog post created, or you write it yourself. You put it on your website. You now put your video embedded in there. You got two pieces there, right? People go to YouTube, they can search, they can find you suggested videos, all that stuff. You're over on your website. People can find you from a Google search, a Bing search, a Yahoo search Pinterest. Now, if you have that, you're driving over to your blog. Right. But here's the other cool thing we didn't even mention that you can also get ranked for that video in a Google search.

00:37:25 - How many times have you went there and you see a row of videos, right. They're putting those videos there because they're popular and that people are responding to those. They're getting engagement. So yes, you can have another footprint in a Google search with that YouTube video. So absolutely 100%. Yes. Uh, Oh, protein hacks. What's up. Awesome. Exactly what I'm doing. That's awesome, man. Uh, writing it down. Gray says that's good. Uh, okay. Do blogs of all length work on website or higher word count does better? Uh, let's see. Or is it dependent on answer posts or how to posts? Okay. So this is, I'm going to go to my, my good friend, Chris Shaffer. It depends. Um, but what I always say is, listen, don't try to put more words in there just to make it a certain word count, but our rule of thumb is 1500 words minimum.

00:38:19 - Okay. And typically our question answer posts are about 15 to 1700 words. Okay. Uh, how to might be a little bit longer, but it doesn't have to be, if it, if it tells people what they need to know it, then that's all you do. Just give them what they need. Right. Um, and if you do a longer post, that would be more of a pillar post, right. And that pillar posts would also now we call that our content tree where it's longer, it might be 3000, but you have like five other posts that are related to it that will link to it. And then the, the big post, the 3000 word posts we'll link to those. So that's where we do our inner linking as well. Uh, okay. Let's go down the list here, Justin in the house, uh, from Australia, what's up my man.

00:39:03 - It starting out now just write blogs and Pinterest, that's it. Uh, or if starting out now, just write blog posts and Pinterest. Yes. Yes. Okay. That is exactly what you would do, right. If you don't want to create video, those are the two, those are the two. And the reason is, is because they are independent of each other, by the way. Right. So right now, last month we got on both brands that we're building inside brand creators Academy. We got over 4,000 visitors from Pinterest. Okay. 4,000 visitors, not impressions visitors. Okay. Now with that being said, we also got, uh, over 20 to 23,000 additional, uh, visitors, uh, from the Google content or the content that's resides on Google and Yahoo and Bing and all of those search engines, which by the way, um, that one piece of content gets picked up by those other search engines.

00:39:57 - And to do the breakdown, I don't have the exact numbers, but, um, off the top of my head, I believe let's say Google traffic was, uh, let's say it was like 20,000 visitors. And then let's say, or page views. And then let's say being was like 850. And then let's say Yahoo was about another 850. I'll still take it. Right. I'll still take the eight 50, even though I got more on Google. Right. But Pinterest now starting to show some good signs there too. So yes, I would. I would do that because it goes so well together. Right. You, you have a whole nother platform on Pinterest that will drive visitors to your blog posts and from what we're seeing, it's not hard. And it's just a nice, additional thing to add to your, your portfolio of assets that drive traffic to your, to your brand.

00:40:52 - Uh, let's see, uh, protein hacks, what's up protein hacks. Give me your name. I want to call you by name, uh, doing YouTube then making pins and just starting the blog. It's a lot of work, but it helps researching SEO for each platform. So you can know how to word everything for each media platform. That's right. And the best way to do it. It's just go in there and do an auto suggest if you're on. And we're actually going through this, uh, inside the Pinterest training right now is you want to go inside Pinterest and you want to do a keyword search and start to see what keywords are. Auto suggested. Those are the top keywords, make your boards, write those keywords and then fill the boards with content. It's pretty, it's pretty much common sense. Um, and yes, if you're on YouTube and you're gonna, you're going to create a video, use the autosuggest, right.

00:41:37 - What are, you know, what are good keywords that are getting ranked for? And one thing, one little tip here on YouTube, by the way, if, if you see that, uh, you are searching for a keyword and you see that there's some videos that are coming up, you want to look for videos that are getting good amount of views, but have a low subscriber count. And the reason why is that proves that that video did not get driven by, uh, their subscriber base. So that's one little tip there for you. Uh, if you are not doing that already, uh, Camille, what's up, my husband and I are getting ready to launch our first product on Amazon. Okay. Congratulations. We'd love to create a blog, but don't realistically see ourselves being able to keep it updated our updates while working full time. And two young kiddos. Eventually we do plan on starting one, but in the meantime, how much would that hurt our chances of success?

00:42:31 - You know, I can't really say how much it would hurt. Um, it, cause you know, it, it doesn't hurt. It just won't help. Right. If you don't do it. Um, so you have to think about when you're, so right now you're launching a product on Amazon. How are you going to get sales to that? Like, that's the, you have to, you have to build that process or the strategy you need to, you need to think through that. Okay. And so you might be saying, well, we're gonna, we're gonna run pay-per-click right. Um, we're going to, uh, maybe you're going to do some Facebook ads, right. And again, that's going to cost money. So anyone that's thinking that they're just going to launch a product on Amazon and they're going to get it indexed and they're going to start, you know, getting a whole bunch of sales.

00:43:16 - Um, it's just really, really hard. So you do have to put ad money behind that. You're gonna have to go aggressive on PaperClick and you're gonna have to be aggressive on Facebook ads. Hopefully build a list in the meantime that you can then drive additional sales with, uh, maybe even test Pinterest ads, um, cause they're working pretty good for us. Um, cause we use them in another brand. We aren't using that in our Pinterest traffic workshop. That's all organic and free. Um, but what I would suggest is try to find a way, try to find a way cause in your business plan, if I was sitting down and we're writing out your business plan, part of that business plan is creating one piece of content every single week. That's your business plan. It has to happen, right? And so if you do that, now you're going to have 52 pieces of content that could drive people to your website.

00:44:03 - And that's going to allow you to drive more sales. But also it opens up more opportunity because if you're trying to sell that one product, you only have one chance to sell someone something, right. If we can get traffic to our website, we have multiple chances to sell multiple different products, whether that's physical or digital. Also when we get that traffic, we can turn on a, an uh, an ad network and we can start to generate revenue there. So as a, we can't think about, I'm not going to open up a coffee shop and have one type of coffee. Right. It's just, people are gonna come in and go, Oh, you don't have French vanilla. I'm like, now I don't have it yet. I'm going to maybe later, okay, I'll come back when you do. I don't drink anything but vanilla. Right. Or you might be like, you might.

00:44:48 - Okay. Um, people are like, Hey, uh, do you have decaf? No, we don't have decaf yet. We're going to have that another time. And you're like, well I have, I have this. I'll just put a little water in it. We'll water it down now. Sorry. Right. So you gotta realize when you're launching a product, it's not really a business. Okay. And I'm just trying to be real with you. Okay. And with anyone. Um, so if you are going down that road, okay. I really believe that you should be building out that brand side as well, where you're getting traffic. Um, and so anyway, that's, that's just my thoughts on it and I know you're doing it. I sent you, I think you said with your husband and your you've got kiddos, right? So you're doing this probably to create a business that creates a lifestyle of freedom.

00:45:34 - Well, what if that one product does take off, let's say it starts doing well. Here's the deal here is reality. That product can go away. That can go away in a heartbeat. Either a trend goes away, or let's say that you get D uh, you get delisted or you get suppressed or you run out of inventory and you can't get any because we're in this COVID-19 thing, everything resides on that one thing. And that is risky. So that's why I would encourage you to figure out how to build this into your business plan. Okay. So hopefully that helped you and good luck Camille and yeah. Let me know how you're making out Derek. Should we make traffic our priority and spend our time with email collection and landing pages and or opt in pages and using auto responder to capture these emails? The answer is, yes.

00:46:23 - You should be focusing on traffic. If there's one thing, one thing that I think everyone should understand and they should make a priority in their business is traffic now not any traffic targeted traffic. How do we do that? We do that with lead magnets. Right? So I don't want everyone, like I'm casting a wide net, but I'm only attracting the right people into the business and that's by design. Okay. So like, example, this is a paid lead magnet, by the way. Okay. So this year, the playbook, and if you're listening to this on the podcast, you can't see me, but I'm holding up the playbook right now. It's a yellow cover. It looks pretty nice. Uh, and basically it's the brand creators, playbook, how to create a profitable online business with multiple revenue streams, pretty simple. Right. But everything is right here right now. Is that going to pertain to someone that's like, I just want to launch a physical product on Amazon because that's what other gurus are telling me.

00:47:22 - And I'm like, okay, that's fine. That's not our approach. Our approach is this, are there physical products in our future? They can be, but they don't have to be right. And so this here is a paid lead magnet. Meaning if people are interested in going through this process and building out a brand, they're going to raise their hand by putting in their credit card for $4 and 99 cents. What does that tell me? It tells me number one, they are interested in building a brand and I'm going to be able to communicate with those people and help those people. Right. And all my email, uh, uh, you know, our responders or not even auto responders, I've got like five emails that go out that are triggered after someone buys this. And all they are is to say, Hey, we're on day three. You should be. At this point, you have any questions.

00:48:09 - It's really me just following up with people. And then when people email me back, I can respond to them. Right. So that's, that's everything to me. If I'm building a business, it's always going to be around, how do I get attention? How do I get traffic targeted traffic? And then how do I build out other assets within the business that could turn into money, but they don't have to all turn into money, but there's multiple ways that we can do it now. Right. And I've said this over and over and over again, right. If we get the traffic, we can do so many different things like making money is the easy part. It's the getting traffic, which is harder. And it's a little bit slower in the beginning. Right. But I'm telling you, if you get the traffic, you focus on that. It's a skill set also that you'll be able to take with you forever.

00:48:53 - It's really, really powerful. Uh, okay. Uh, Ashley, we don't have a product to sell and are just working on building content. How do we monetize this content later and down the road? Is there, is it through advertising on the site? Is it through affiliate links? Yes. All will be above. And there's going to be opportunities that you're going to be able to identify once you get going, once you, again, like I said, we created a post in one of our brands, which is fairly new, it's under a year old. And it was, we, we, it was one of our first posts. Uh, and it just started to get traffic. That one, right there is actually around, uh, it can be around products, right. So instead of getting 3% commission from Amazon, I went out and I said, okay, let's go ahead and find something on ClickBank that would help in this.

00:49:40 - And we'll insert that there. So now instead of making 3% on something and you might make five bucks, I found an offer that if I sell one of those, I'll make 25 or $30 per percent. Right. And it makes more sense. So once we have the traffic, we can start to play a little bit with that. And yes, affiliate offers digital or physical. Okay. Uh, ad networks on your website. That's like one of the quickest ways to do it. Once you have the traffic, by the way, because you only need people to show up. It's impressions is what it's based off of a and R and R one brand that we started, we just turned on ads and the affiliate stuff. And I think we just, just touched $250, which isn't a lot, but that's how it starts. And that's where it grows. Um, and then, uh, the other thing would be if you wanted to launch your own physical products, but the cool thing about doing it, this other is we can identify physical products that people are buying and through our content.

00:50:32 - And then we can just replace that with our own, if we want to create our own product. So that's the beauty of doing that. Uh, okay. Derek, uh, should we use Bing or Yahoo or are these dead? It's not, you don't have to use them at all. You're going to get picked up automatically when you post content on your blog, it's getting pinged. Okay. By these different search engines, uh, Rebecca, what's up similar to Salmas question. What are your thoughts on Google ads? Are they only useful for physical product or are there ways to use Google ads to increase traffic to a blog site? I would never pay traffic, uh, or to get traffic to a, uh, to a blog post, unless that blog post was like a sales page. Like I would never do that. Um, Google ads are great for selling products, but again, you've got to learn, uh, you have to learn the best way to target keywords, and there's a lot of trial and error there.

00:51:25 - Um, but if it's, if all we're doing is trying to increase traffic to our blog, um, then the best way to do it is, and if you wanted to drive paid ads, the paid ads would be going to a lead magnet, capturing the email and then sending them to a blog post, maybe on a thank you page, or maybe on a follow up email, that's the best scenario there for increasing your blog traffic? Uh, all right. Let's see here. This is going a little bit long here today. Uh, okay. Um, what's my thoughts on LinkedIn. I don't really have any, I've heard some really good things about it, but I'm not going there yet. See, I'm not distracted by that. What am I focusing on written blog content, Pinterest, YouTube when it's, when it's applicable, right? Like that's it, uh, Derek, I'm now blocking out everybody that are bombarding me with shiny objects.

00:52:12 - Good for you, Diego. Um, what is the most practical and easy way to create a directory site for high end specialty cabinetry painting and how to bring the traffic? Um, so I think what you're asking is, is what's the best way to create a, uh, a directory for people to find, uh, maybe carpenters and painters and stuff like that, I think is what you're saying. Um, again, I think it would just be like doing local, like different areas and categorizing them and building out a directory, but then also a lot of how to useful content. Right. And I think that would bring over people. Uh, you know, I used to listen to the amazing seller when it was first launched in 300 episodes. And then I moved on from Amazon private label and bad experience, but this got, this is good. I'm in the process of creating a website of spirituality.

00:53:01 - Self-help I already got the domain. Do you have a step by step blueprint of what to do when creating a website, email list, et cetera, point me on the right direction. I've never created a website. I would say brand creators Academy would be perfect for you, but we're not open. We're not opening until July 6th, but in the meantime we give all of our brand creators Academy, this right here, that's the playbook. So brand creators book.com, that would be your best, uh, resource, because it's going to walk you through all of the different parts in the phases and the process. And we go through, um, picking your domain name and you know, where to get your hosting and all of that stuff is, is inside of there. Uh, right. A couple more guys. What is your favorite, uh, to, for spying on others in your niche area or space are our tool. What is your favorite tool? Uh, Uber suggest like Uber suggest it's not spying. It's just identifying a website and then digging through some of their content that they've written that's doing well. So it just gives me a little bit of an idea. Uh, don't forget to take a sip of coffee. Okay. Derek, I'll do that.

00:54:03 - Thank you for reminding me, uh, John, thanks for the answer. I have the book best four 95 I've ever spent. Awesome. John, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. I'm glad you got value. How important is backlinks to your site and what do you recommend right now? It's not important. And the reason why I'm saying that, because there's more important things to focus on that there will naturally happen if you're creating good content. Um, but we haven't focused on any backlinking any at all, zero. And, um, and what we're doing now is we're just getting natural backlinks. They're just happening, but even without having backlinks or as many as you would think, we're still getting 30,000 page views. Okay. And that's on, well, the other one's about 27, 28,000, the other one's 30, no backlink outreach. So I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even talk about that right now, or I wouldn't even consider it.

00:54:54 - Do you prefer digital product or physical products? I love digital products when it makes sense for the business. Physical products are great too, but it takes more to make that all happen. You have all of the, all the logistics going through everything. You have, the capital that's tied up all of that stuff. So if I, if I had, uh, my choice, I would say digital products, for sure. Uh, should I have a fan page on each product I sell? No, not on each product on each brand. Uh, do ranking at the top of Google, mean you need to work on capturing the emails from that. Yes. When you, not, not that you have to focus on it, but once you have that traffic, then yeah. You're going to have maybe a popup on your website that says here, you know, download the 11, uh, you know, essential tools to create, um, your next woodworking project or something like that.

00:55:44 - Uh, geo in the house. What's up, man. Uh, Derek, have you ever heard about ghost dot or blog WordPress? No, I haven't heard of ghost WordPress. Uh I'm. I'm just a fan of WordPress. I've used it for years. Lloyd, what do you recommend using to embed videos in the emails you send out to your list? Or do you just link to the video platform? Yes. I only, I do not. I do not put a video in side of an email. I rarely put a photo because that could also flag the spam filters. So if anything, I would just link over to either YouTube, a playlist, by the way. Um, because a playlist keeps people in your world, um, or I would link them to the blog post that has the video inside of it. Uh, what are your favorite investments? Stocks, are you planning to buy more vacation property lessons learned from this property who I love that we could go deep in on that one?

00:56:33 - I actually just had a call with a friend yesterday who a were looking at a business opportunity, which we still are by the way. And I may do an episode on that. Um, but the Airbnb has been awesome. The problem is it takes a lot of capital to get going. I'm talking probably in the range of 200, 50,000 to 300,000 at the level I'm at, because I'm doing lakefront properties, but I, I want to do another one. It's just right now is not a good time. Uh, my daughter's pregnant, so I don't want to get tied up in a project like that. And, um, I just want to wait until the market has kind of died down a little bit, because right now the housing is really starting to spike. Um, but we'll, we'll do an episode on that if you guys want to, or a coffee talk, uh, should I put good descriptions and tags in YouTube videos?

00:57:18 - Yes. Good tags are good or good to have, but they're not a hundred percent. It's more of a, the title in the keyword is more of what you're going to want to focus on, um, is trying to products hard to get good prices on these days. Uh, it can be, uh, doesn't mean that you can't still J D Morgan Scott. I've been using the heck out of convert kit since you told me about it. Uh, in the other day, I have a few issues with trying to work through them, but I'm liking it. Awesome. Awesome. And we should have sent you over that little, uh, that little bundle, that little giveaway that we're giving for anyone that goes through our link, our affiliate link. Uh, let's see, uh, is there such a thing as too many links to our own products in our, in our own blogs, it's an educational blog, but relates to my product.

00:58:04 - I don't think so. It's just wherever it makes sense. I wouldn't stuff. It, is it better to move your email to outlook off of Gmail and then delete them off of Gmail? I think you're saying just, I would just create a new Gmail account. I think from what you're saying is the people that are just bombarding you with emails is domain authority important in your first year? If so, how do you increase domain authority? It's not as important as you would think right now we have a zero domain authority and we're getting 30,000 pages. Let that sink in zero domain authority, 30,000 page views. So is it important? It can be, but it also just means in the beginning, you're going to wait for long tail keywords. After that, we're going to start graduating to the more competitive ones once we start gaining authority, but authority is only going to really happen after you've, um, after you've proven to Google that you're, that you are giving out good content and you're getting good engagement.

00:58:59 - That's going to take time. You can't just manufacture that. Uh, okay. Uh, I'm glad to say about, Oh, the video emails. I won't do that now. So I do, so I don't look like spam. Yeah. I would hope I would not send any videos in the email. Uh, J D you didn't. Oh, okay. Well, I will make sure that we send that over to you. Um, so again, uh, if you don't receive something by next Monday, J D let me know, I'll get on that this afternoon. Okay. And we'll get that for you. All right, guys, that is going to wrap up this little coffee talk and this little, this little, uh, jam session. Um, I did want to remind you a couple of things before we do wrap up here. Uh, we are going to be opening up brand creators Academy on July six.

00:59:43 - You're going to hear me say that from now until July 6th. And if you guys watched and participated in the one copy talk where I was going through like a promotional, uh, strategy and a promotional runway and all of that stuff, it's basically what exactly what we're doing right here. We also followed that in our Pinterest traffic workshop on how we, how we promoted that, but how we did it in an ethical and a cool way. Um, and that's just what we're doing here. I'm just bringing awareness to you that we're going to be opening brand creators Academy on July 6th. So if you're interested, make sure that you go to brand creators.com and you grab the checklist or grab brand creators, book.com, grab the book. And that way there you'll be a little bit ahead when you do join, but also even if you don't join that right, there is a great playbook for you to kind of go through this process and just follow along and actually do it. All right. And, um, the last last thing that I wanted to say is if you want to join us on an upcoming jam session on our Friday jam sessions, you want to be part of our take action crew, just head on over to take action crew.com and you can join us.

01:00:54 - All right. Well, I hope that you enjoyed that Friday jam session. And like I said, in the beginning, if you want to attend one of our live Friday jam sessions, all you need to do is head on over to take action crew.com. That is where we show up every Friday, 10:00 AM, Eastern time, and you can join us. You can ask a question and then, uh, I can answer it and we can go ahead and also publish it here on the podcast. So once again, I just want to say, thank you so much for listening. This is always one of the highlights of my week. And until next time, remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it, proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now go rock your brand.