I Created This Free 4-Day Crash Course, Just for You

I’ve been there.

It’s not an easy feet… growing your brand and improving your online reach (or parenting a kid who has an entrepreneurial bent who wants to learn to do these things), but I’ve created a 12-step system that will serve as your framework.

Let me walk you through it. Just a few steps at a time, delivered right to your inbox over the next 4 days.

Feel free to work through the info at your own pace, but it will be sent in 4 chunks, over the next 4 days.

 

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Go Here for Special Offers

Go Here for a Separate FREE ecourse about Encouraging a Child to be an Entrepreneur.

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Looking for the Details from the Podcast Season?

This page is a collection of all the nitty-gritty important stuff we dive into in season 2 of the Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy podcast.

If you missed the beginning of this new season, start here:

 

Or start here, where I explain my 6 best tips for anyone wanting to be an online content creator:

 

Overall things that a content creator needs to do…

Improve your SEO

If you start to dive into online content creation, via youtube, a blog, social media, you name it, no matter what you do, SEO is so important. SEO stands for Seach Engine Optimization. It’s the secret to getting your content to show up when someone googles, or searches for, any topic you’re talking about. I can’t recommend any resource better than Kelly Holmes. And you can meet Kelly right here, by taking her totally free class on SEO.

btw, don’t miss Lisa Bass’ advice in S2 E3 of what she did horribly wrong that made her SEO and her site speed tank when she was a new blogger.

Learn from a pro

If you’re serious about making money blogging (and writing and youtubing) I can’t recommend Create Your Blog Dream and Video for Bloggers enough. Or get both at a great deal. Lisa means business about putting YOU in business. Plus she’s just an awesome lady and a good friend. btw, Lisa shares the #1 mistake she sees almost all bloggers and youtubers doing in S2 E3.

 

Stay Connected

We have all learned recently that no social media platform is free of drama, and the only true way to know you can always reach your followers is via email. From the very beginning, you want to be building an email list. I used MailChimp successfully for years, but am super happy now with flodesk. And they’re offering this great deal that if you use this link you will get 50% off. For life. Now that’s a deal I can get behind!

Host your site well

If you want to build any sort of online website you’ll need a hosting provider. I have loved working with Hostgator.

I want to explain, you can set up a free wordpress blog (it will have (dot)wordpress at the end of your domain name). And then you can convert it over later, once you’ve built up some quality useful content and are ready to start monetizing it a little.

BUT, If you want to save yourself a lot of heartache, and you have the funds to invest a few hundred to set it up correctly from the get go, I highly recommend that. The switch over to self-hosting was a pretty complicated process for me, I’m not gonna lie. In fact, it was the most difficult thing I had to do as a blogger in my first 5 years. (Lisa Bass mentions why wordpress is the best choice in S2 E3.)

Choose a Good Hosting Provider

When I was ready to start blogging “for real,” I spent a good while researching many hosting providers. I came down to two, and I don’t think you can go wrong with either. I say this with great confidence because I’ve been using HostGator for 4 years, and have never been anything less than pleased with them. Then my amazing tech friend, Dave, who I talked to about this topic, agreed that they’re awesome.

When Dave was helping me with a little tech issue (cause all tech issues are huge to me–the non-tech-y person that I am) he pointed out some amazing things about my hosting service, with HostGator, that I didn’t even know (well, #4 and #5 I already knew, first-hand):

• Why I Love HostGator 

1. HostGator does daily backups as a standard service offering. What!? I still continue to do my weekly automatic backups on my own, but I was super impressed that daily backups are part of my hosting subscription. At zero effort or charge to me!
2. HostGator offers https service (encryption of your site–to make it secure for your customers) for free!
3. HostGator can help you purchase your domain name too.
4. They have a super easy-to-use dashboard, which is super important for us non-tech-y folks.
5. They have amazing customer service. The first time I had to call them I was prepared for battle. Prepared to hold for 1/2 an hour and reach a customer service representative who barely spoke English and who didn’t care about my problem or offer a solution. Boy WAS I WRONG! The service is fast, super helpful, and totally in English. And I’ve called them many times over the years, with always the same great results.

But I also explain here why DreamHost is a good choice too. Since I thrive on choices and researching things to find what’s best for me, I figured I’d let you hash it out between these two great hosting companies to see which one is best for you.

You’re welcome.

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9 Tips as You Work Toward Monetization

Kate Schat, of Venison for Dinner, has monetized in a way that works really well for her. Check out Kate’s Insider Club.

Here are Kate’s 9 tips to encourage you towards monetizing:

1. Be consistent. Treat your online content creation like a true job, even before it’s earning you money.
2. Figure out strategies that help you know what is worth your time.
3. Do what works for you. Long-term content calendars don’t work for Kate, and that’s okay.
4. To build an engaged following on instagram, share things people want to reshare (even the little things). When others share it and tag you, you organically grow.
5. Be creative. When Patreon didn’t work for Kate, she created her paid mentorship her own way.
6. Commit that you will pay down your family’s debt with any and all income you are able to earn as a content creator, so you can be debt-free and finally have the confidence to rely on your income as a content creator.
7. Remember that scarcity is good marketing (Kate’s membership is only open a few particular times during the year) and encourages your audience to convert to a paying customer.
8. Use the “close friends” feature to monetize your instagram.
9. Finally, do the best you can with what you have.

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6 Ways to Use an Online Presence to Build a Brick & Mortar Store

Liz Marie Galvan, of LizMarieBlog.com, beautifully melds the two worlds, and uses her online presence–mainly via instagram–to continue to build her brick and mortar store, even during 2020 and beyond.

Here are Liz Marie’s tips for building a brick & mortar via instagram:

1. Consistently show up–daily–in instagram stories
2. Show off your style and store displays often.
3. Show the heart and soul behind your store. Often.
4. Let employees showcase their talents. Some may be gifted at setting up beautiful store displays, others at modeling new clothing in the store. Let your employees shine in your online presence.
5. Tell your story. Often. Every good store should have a good story behind why it opened and what it offers.
6. Make sure you’re not a continual commercial, but when you show your products that are for sale, teach your customer how you would pair one item with another or how you would use it. Folks like to learn and then won’t feel like you’re continually selling to them.

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6 Tips for Growing Your Reach on Instagram

A sweet new friend of mine, Vea Carpi, joined me in episode 7 to share great tips on growing an instagram page. (Meet Vea on her ig page right here.)

Read Vea’s practical 6 Tips to Grow Your Instagram right here, or listen in to the podcast episode or join in our conversation via video:

 

More Details

We’ll discuss these in detail as the podcast season continues, but I figured you might want this info now…

Content design

I use Canva Pro daily. Multiple times a day, most days. I use it to design everything from a simple photo with words overlay, to pinable images, charts, and printable pages, to long, complicated ebooks. They have an amazing free option for you to give a hearty try and see what you think. But I quickly knew I wanted to upgrade, with all the options there I save so much time a day, and the minimal cost per month is very worth it. With the pro option I have all my branded colors and style saved, so everything can fit my brand in an instant, and I love that I can so easily resize any image to do whatever I need it for next.

Logo design

If you’re ready to design a branded logo and don’t know (or can’t afford) a graphic designer, I highly recommend 99designs. You can put your ideas out there and have multiple designers give you their thoughts. Then you have options and are likely to have a perfect logo in no time.

Web design

Take web design to the next level! Find a professional designer for as little as $599. You can even throw your own design contest or use the nifty designer search tool here to choose from user reviewed, professional designers.

Or check out these guys and the awesome sites they create.

Smart Mockups

If you’re looking for sleek promotional images, smartmockups is your best friend.

Let’s say you want to start developing an email list, so you design an amazing ebook that you want to announce to the world… First thing you need in order to make this announcement is a snazzy image of that ebook, right? To make folks want to give you their email address so they can download it.

Or maybe you create your first course and want to let folks know what’s in your course so they want to buy it…

I use a combination of Smart Mockups and Canva Pro to make images like this one all the time… This is an image on my sales page for my Simple DIY Kombucha course:

 

Basically you want some nice way to show folks what electronic forms and books and printables are included with their purchase, and of course you don’t have 4 phones and 2 tablets to line up to photograph, so Smart Mockups to the rescue.