626: Monetization Trends for Bloggers - How to Sell Your Expertise in the Form of Digital Products with Jillian Leslie

financial, personal or professional. I'm Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I'm on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. You are going to want to download our bonus super cut that gives you all the information you need to grow your Instagram account. Go to eatblogtalk.com, forward, slash Insta, growth to download today.

Are you wondering about new ways to monetize your business in the coming year? If so, you are going to love this episode with Jillian Leslie from Milo tree. She talks about digital products being a great way for food bloggers to monetize their

businesses, whether they've done it in the past or not. She talks all about how to get started with this, which project you should start with, what tools you need if you get hung up on the tech aspect of it, and my favorite part of the conversation was her advice to just get started and consider it an experiment. Do it ugly, do it messy, and learn along the way, no matter where your business is at. I think this will be a

really valuable episode for you going into 2025. it is number 626 sponsored by RankIQ. Food bloggers. It has been a tough year. Am I right? We have endured a lot of changes in our industry, and it feels like the blows just keep coming. One thing that has remained constant this year is the Eat Blog Talk mastermind group, the way we show up for each other, and the fact that the members in the

group are pivoting when needed. Staying in touch with relevant information and thriving is huge, and it says a lot about the group. I want to share this audio clip with you from Kristina. She's the blogger at When Salty and Sweet Unite. She is part of the group this year, and here are her thoughts about you, considering joining the group next year in 2025. For more information and to apply go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind, here is Kristina. "There's just something about people who are

investing in themselves. There's just something about us that we get it like we want it. We're gonna go get it. We're gonna go figure it out. And let's all do this together, right? There's no room for negativity. There's negative things that happen throughout that, course, but that's not what we're focused on. Yeah, and I think in free groups, I noticed there's a lot of negativity, and I don't know why that is like, is that because this is truly a free group? Is that because we're not

touching on mindset enough. Is that because, like, when you get free, is what you get is free? Like, I don't know, right? So I don't have an answer to why that is, but I just feel like, you know you can make it happen, like, if you want, if you want that growth, because I understand not everyone can do a mastermind, but somehow, somehow you can make it happen, whether it be do a payment plan. We found a way to make it work. Yeah, it has really, like you said, it's absolutely worth it.

Now, back to the episode. Jillian Leslie is the co founder of the blog catch my party and software company Milo tree, which empowers bloggers to sell digital products to their audiences. Jillian is also the host of the blogger genius podcast, where for the past six years she has been interviewing successful online entrepreneurs,

content creators and industry experts. Her goal is to empower bloggers and creators to build successful online businesses so they can change their lives and have the freedom they crave. Jillian, so happy to have you back on the podcast. How are you today?

Catch My Party. And if you go you can see our pop up, and you can see our site is still like there and growing, and it's the largest party ideas site on the web. And we saw this need to grow our social media followers, and my husband built a pop up, and when it worked for us, we offered it to other bloggers to say, hey, this works for us. Chances are this will work for

you. And then we saw another need during the pandemic, where food bloggers and other kind of like craft bloggers wanted to create memberships, paid memberships, and they would have, like, big Facebook followings, even like a Facebook group, and they wanted to figure out how to get paid for that group, how to have members. So we kind of looked around at what we could hack together for people. It was really

complicated. The one as I'm going to I'm going to talk a lot about problems today and solving people's problems, the problem we saw, and we see it all the time. Technology is really hard, so if we can serve up easy tech for you, it's complicated on our end, but it's simple for you, we want to build that after I saw how complicated it was to help these women start memberships, I said to David, could we build this and could we build it

better? And we started. We got to work. And now, with MiloTree, our cart, you can offer any sort of digital download and sell it, and we'll deliver that PDF. Let's say to your customer, you can set up subscriptions, memberships. You could do coaching. It's a way workshops. It's a way to easily get paid

for your knowledge. You can sell products and services simply so MiloTree one you can sell digital products, as I said, and then one thing we're really leaning into is helping people grow their audiences, because that is becoming even more important for all you bloggers out there.

ebook. Test it, try it. Figure out how. Because, you know, you go, well, a lot of bloggers come to me and they go, but it's already on my site. It's on my side, for free. Why would anybody pay for this? And I get that a lot. What I want to say is, and we were just talking about this before you press record, it's not necessary. It used to be like, I'm just going to put my 10 best recipes together and bundle it up and sell it as an ebook. And I go, wait, you need to go one extra

step these 10 recipes. They can be your most delicious, your best or your easiest recipes, but they need to solve a problem. So for example, they could be 30 minute recipes, they could be five ingredient recipes, they could be recipes for picky eaters. They could be Gluten Free Recipes. So but you've got the thing is, like, what is the envelope around these recipes? What is the solution these recipes... Like, what is the problem these recipes solve? So that's where I

challenge you to think about your content. Go to Chat GPT and ask. Say, Hey, I you know, even if you, let's say, do lots of different things, go talk to ChatGPT and say, what problem could my recipes solve? And I say, start there.

like it's right there for the taking. But then a lot of times, what food bloggers their next step would be doing a live workshop, which is, by the way, like down and dirty. I'm talking Zoom. I'm talking you, kind of talking to the audience, people potentially showing up live to cook along with you. And down and dirty in that it's okay, kind of, if things go wrong, or it just, it needs to be just kind of casual, like low stakes.

This is not a course. This is not a cooking show. It's you showing up, teaching something, solving a problem for people, but getting people to know, like and trust you, getting people to so let's say I'm vegan because I know, like, vegan blogs are so popular, but eventually people will go to chat GPT and go give me a vegan recipe for lasagna. And the difference is, it's like, oh, I don't want that recipe. I want Megan's recipe, or I want Michelle's recipe because I know like and trust

her, she's like my friend. So that's where I believe blogging is shifting. And so then once, by the way, you're recording this workshop, go sell it as a mini course. I don't recommend creating courses right now. I feel. Like that has crested, but you selling my workshop for, I don't know, smoothies or my workshop for this, but remember, package it in solving a problem. Give people a reason why they would want to purchase this from

you. Now, where the big money is is really in memberships. You know this Megan, because you have a membership, there are like, these cool communities of people who come together for you, but also for each other. So maybe it's like you make easy toddler foods, okay? Maybe you can make a membership for people who have picky eaters, or who have toddlers, or who, whatever, who have like, weird diet, not weird, but dietary thing, they can't eat salt, or they can't eat sugar, or they're trying to

lose weight, whatever it is. If you can make a community, that's where the recurring revenue is, that's where a lot of the money trust. I feel like I've seen some food bloggers try to start memberships without the community, and that really engaged, know, like trust factor that we talk about, and it really doesn't work very well, but the food bloggers who do have all of that do such a good job with creating memberships.

And one other thing, let's say you're listening to this and going, oh my god, Jillian, that's like, way too intimidating. Go put a bundle of digital downloads together. People love purchasing bundles. So it's my ebook, it's my guide, it's my whatever, my my workshop, my recorded workshop, people love that, especially if they feel like they're getting a deal. So you can sell them all individually, but then bundle them up and then create excitement around selling it.

Hey guys, I'm only offering this for this week. Get my bundle. It will solve this problem. Here's all the great stuff you're gonna get. You know, think about it as like a party and that. I have seen food bloggers be really successful selling.

don't work for me, and I say, good for you. And that was a test, and that one didn't work. But let's see if you can come up with a new test. Maybe you talk to people and say, Hey, what? First of all, very much get close, close, close to your people so that you can talk to them. Have like three VIPs that will talk to you and tell you what they're struggling with. Again, remember, frame it in the language of I solve problems for people, because that is where you get people to take out their

credit card and purchase. So you ask them, What do you want like in your email newsletter. Give very you know, ask people questions, get people talking to you, and then go test another product. And this is why I say do not think about creating a course which will take six months to put together, unless you've been able to sell pre sell it five times like it doesn't make sense. What makes sense is these, what I call ad vats. You need a lot of them because you're slowly honing in

on what your people will buy from you. You have a hypothesis. Chances are you're pretty close, but you might not be hitting. You might not hit the bullseye on the first try. And this is what you know, so funny, because I was, I was being asked this on another podcast, like, well, if I sell something, like, let's say I go out to my whole list and I try and sell something and it's not successful. Like, have I burnt out my list, and can I

go back out with another product? And I'm like, of course you can, first of all, nobody, nobody's paying attention to you. How many emails do you get every day? Like, do not think you're that special, that people are like, whoa. Megan offered this thing. And I'm so embarrassed for her, because, like, nobody's thinking about that. Yes, go to your list, you know, a week later with your next offer, like, go, try, go, put it out there. And if people unsubscribe, well, their loss.

So this is, like, what I want people get so uptight about. What if I do it wrong, go do it wrong. Who cares? That's learning. So this is all like. One thing that I see in the world of blogging, especially food blogging, is there was a formula, and if you followed the formula, chances are you could get it to pay off for you. It might take a couple years, and you would create all these blog posts, and you would optimize your keywords, and you would do all of this stuff to get it to

work. And I believe now the world has shifted, and while, yes, I believe traffic is still incredibly important, but it is harder to come by, and the rewards aren't there in the same way. So people, I think, have been and by the way, a lot of people have really suffered from their income, declining, traffic declining. However you can reframe it as we're back now the like the field is leveled, and it's about people testing and trying and being creative.

world of blogging shift. It was kind of this one to many model where you had all these anonymous visitors, users, and now the way I see people having success is it's one to fewer. It's one to actual people that you know, that you're building relationships with, that want to learn from you. So you're not just another food blog. You are a person who represents a point of view who, yes, makes beautiful food, but it's like, now I'm in a relationship with you.

like, great, go be an introvert. But then figure out as an introvert how to still put your point of view out there.

one. I don't do as much searching on the front end of the process of deciding on a keyword, because there are so many ideas just waiting for me right inside the keyword library because of this I dig into the writing portion really quickly and with laser focus. Two, I write each post with confidence, because each keyword has been hand picked promising low

competition and High search volume. With other tools, I approach each keyword with hesitation because I really don't know how each one will perform or whether it's going to produce traffic for me and three, the rank IQ optimizer is the best optimizer out there. No joke. It provides very specific

words and phrases to use in my content. This makes the writing process go so quickly and smoothly as the optimizer acts as my guide, leading the way to a comprehensively written post, go to rankiq.com to sign up and check it all out for yourself. Now back to the episode. What about tech? I know this can be a huge hang up for people who haven't sold digital products in the past. They might be like,

I'm not techie. I don't I don't know what I need to get get started, and that can be something that can stop them from doing this. So what tools do we need to get started?

expensive, and this is a lot. And I noticed when I used, I think, podia, and I kept finding myself having to go to YouTube to watch videos to figure out how to do stuff. So we said, hey, we don't want to be your email service provider. What we're going to do, we're going to integrate with every email

service provider. So we integrate with MailChimp and mailer light and Flowdesk and ConvertKit and everything, because we just want to integrate, therefore your email addresses, like you offer a freebie, cool, you're

integrated. Those names and email addresses just get automatically sent, and then you get to decide how you want to use email going forward, we also, by the way, collect the name and email address, so even if you don't have an email service provider, that stuff will be saved on your dashboard, so you know you're still collecting them. But we're like, we don't want to be an email service provider as well as a payment platform. So we say, go start a membership. But we don't

want to be your membership platform. We go, go use a private Facebook group. Go use Zoom. Go use circle. Go use whatever it is that you want, and we'll get you paid, give you awesome, simple AI generated sales pages. So our job is to to kind of say, Yes, this makes sense, because this is easy, and then the rest of it go like, Be your own seller. Be your own

entrepreneur. And therefore we want it simple. You can be selling your first product in five minutes, 10 minutes like that, depending on if you want to add your own images or or just use our images that we provide. So that, again, is the problem we solve. If you're a tech bro, do not look at our product. We're not for you, but for your audience, Megan, we are for you,

muscle. You get better and better at it. But one thing that I see is people will pay for some expensive platform and then spend months or you're not necessarily working on your course, but you're working on setting all this stuff up with all this complicated technology, and in a weird way, you can hide behind that. So I'm going to say, Go sell. And I'm going to say, go over, sell, go. Tell people why what you're offering will make their lives better. And that is like you're a

helper. Put on the hat of the helper. Believe in yourself and what you're offering and. Remember, when people pay for your product, they are more apt to use it than if they got it for free.

way, B minus is above average. I'm not saying do average level work. But the thing about B minus is it enables you to test and try and put it out there and work on your selling skills or whatever. While you are iterating, it's like you're more vibrant if you allow yourself not to be perfect.

get feedback from you guys. So do not be afraid of the tech at all. And also, right now we offer a 30 day No, like, like, free plan, try it out for 30 days. Go get your freebie up and offered, because that's the other thing email today, I think, you know, forever people said, Oh, the money's in your list, and you need to grow your list. But it was a little abstract. And I think today we recognize that those people on your email list are gold.

I was talking to somebody who's running Facebook ads to grow her list, and she has gotten her acquisition costs down to, I think, $1.50 and that is great. If you could pay Facebook $1.50 to get one email lead. That's pretty incredible. That's that's cost effective, but if you can offer something for free and get email subscribers, think of each one worth at least $1.50 if not more, to you. So I was talking to somebody recently, and she's

like, Oh, I'm trying to make money, and it's really hard. And I said, how big is your email list? And she's like, 300 and I'm like, okay, you've got work to do on that list. Just because, if you think of everything as say, you know, certain percentage of people on your email list will buy from you. The larger that list is, the larger, the more customers you will get. And she was kind of, like a little sad about it. And I said, Think of every email subscriber put like, as if

you're putting $1.50 in your pocket. Those are really valuable. So in fact, here's another freebie that we offer to help you create your first freebie, and you can just grab that at Mila. Let me see MiloTree.com/freebieprompts. And what we've done is and it's like three AI three Chat GPT prompts, or whatever service you use. And what it will do is create an irresistible cheat sheet that you can then offer to grow your email list. And if that doesn't work, go make another one and

another one. I don't know if you're doing this, Megan, but one thing that I have found is, because I use my I use our own product, my MiloTree, I will come up with a podcast, and I, and I don't think I mentioned this, I have a podcast which, Megan, you're been on multiple times, called The Blogger Genius podcast, and I just recently recorded an episode about, like, Black Friday sales, and why everybody should offer a Black

Friday sale. And I'm like, Okay, wait, I'm gonna give people, I'm gonna come up with, like, a Chat GPT prompt to help you come up with what you could be selling, and some email templates. And now I just create these PDFs in Canva and then offer them to my audience on my podcast. So that's why like, I'm like, What is, what's the URL again, because it's so easy. So if for

like, I recommend everybody for your top five posts. I don't know if you talk about this, offer a freebie on all of your top five posts that are specific to that post.

there she is. So you want to be instead of wowing, let's say you do a membership like, wowing your people with, like, all this insane technology. Like, don't do that make it simple. And this is always my word, and I think it's going to be my word for 2025. Is simplify, simplify. So I get on a call. This is like a perfect example. I get on a call with a woman yesterday who wants to start a membership, and she's telling me all about the membership she wants, and all the different pricing plans she

wants. And I'm kind of confused. And I go, Okay, so you've already launched this? And she's like, No. And I said, Wait a minute, you've got like, four different pricing plans, like, if you want the one month or the three month or the six month, you know, and she's got this whole thing in her head. And I said, you have, I'm like, I was kind of confused because it sounded so like advanced. And I said, Okay, I have to be honest with you, I think you're parting the cart before the horse,

please. Like, you could you do, like, a monthly plan and maybe a yearly plan, and that's it. And make and then she was like, and then they're going to be PDFs, and we're going to meet, I'm going to have experts. And this was, like, in a membership, and I go, Whoa, like, why don't you try it with one thing? Like, you're going to meet twice a month, like, for an hour each time the end, and see what that's about before you start, especially in your head, building out this super

complicated membership. That's not why people will join your membership. They a, don't care about the tech, and you do not want and two like B, you do not want to burn them out with all of this stuff you want to show up as a real person solving people's problems.

woman when you were boarding the plane. And in a strange way, that was simpler than it is today, even though today it's supposed to be simpler, because technology solves all these problems. So we look in the world and we'll be like, Oh my God, why is this so hard?

this big membership. Now, the thing is, I said, and she said, something like, I've got 300 and I said, Okay, I. You know, a good conversion rate is 2% 2% of those people will join your membership. But let's say you have an amazing conversion rate, so let's say it's 5% okay, we're maybe she had 200 people on a lift, I don't know. We're like, Okay, you're gonna have 15 people, and then you're gonna be providing every month all of

this content and PDFs and experts and whatever. I said, pare it all down, but know that in the beginning, it could be just a few people, but the way that you grow this is by growing your email list. So I said, I gave her our my email my prompt to create a cheat sheet. And I said, if you create this and get it to me tonight, I will review it and give you my feedback. And guess what, this morning, I wake up and there is an email from her, and I'm putting my money on her. And she, of course, in her

email is like, hey, this isn't great. I know I need to flesh it out, blah, blah, blah, but here it is, and to be honest with you, it was better than she thought, because really it was just to be like a little nugget of something, right? And I said, Make sure, like my notes to her, make sure you put your branding on it, make sure it links back to your blog and put like, kind of a like, some message from you, so that people who get it read this personal message from you saying, like, I'm in your

corner. I you know, she helps, like, I think, like women in their 30s, with their careers and and so where they're feeling kind of isolated, and it's like, Hey, you say I'm a real person. I'm here for you. And she's like, and I go and go put it out there, see what people think.

antidote to that is grace. I'm doing the my best. I'm getting my newsletter out. And yeah, they're going to be typos. And again, if you go, Whoa, Jillian has typos in her newsletter. I need to unsubscribe. Maybe you're not the right person for

me. Like there are enough people who will also give me grace who don't even notice the typo, like I'm being so much harsher on myself than I ever would be to you Megan, or to this woman yesterday, when I was I get it to me and I, you know, and her kind of saying, Oh, I'm not sure I did it, you know, it needs more. And I'm like, You're good.

it, because it will solve a problem for your people. But it's like, I if there was one thing I hope to inspire your people to do is just do go do it and and see what happens. And by the way, if anybody says they know what the future is going to look like, even in three months or six months, they're lying, because they don't what's cool about right now, we're all figuring it out.

Also you can email me because, remember, I really do love hearing from people like in your Megan, so many people in your audience have reached out to me, and you can email me at [email protected], you can DM me on Instagram at MiloTree, I'm super easy to get in touch with and give me your questions or share your fears with me, or, you know, tell me, like, where your wins are, like where you're how you're seeing the world, because that's what I love to do in my podcast, which is the

Blogger Genius Podcast. I love talking to experts like you Megan and other people to see how they are processing, digesting the landscape today. It's almost like, you know that that thing about everybody, like those blind men, feeling an elephant, and everybody feels something different, that's kind of what I feel like the world is like right now. And I'm trying to interview enough people, talk to enough people, to figure out what that elephant really looks like.