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The Power of Not Being Stubborn

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The Power of Not Being Stubborn

What do advanced sports analytics have to do with digital commerce? Well, everything — at least when it comes to the story of Ed Feng and his site The Power Rank.

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In this 31-minute episode, Ed shares a number of lessons he has learned in his half decade as a digital entrepreneur:

  • Why he’s so committed to “doing remarkable things.”
  • How not being stubborn was the key to turning a hobby into a thriving business
  • The important advice from Sonia Simone … that Ed ignored (and later regretted)
  • Why he’s struggling to move forward with a podcast
  • The classic book that has made a huge impact on Ed’s ability to build his audience and convert customers

And more. Plus, Ed answers my rapid fire questions at the end … which includes one of the simplest productivity hacks you’ll ever hear, and mention of this sensational video: Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats.

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below …

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The Show Notes

  • Enchanting Marketing by Henneke
  • The Power Rank
  • @ThePowerRank
  • Jerod Morris

The Transcript

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. You’re listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. DCI features an in-depth, ongoing instructional academy, plus a live education and networking summit where entrepreneurs from across the globe meet in person. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce. That’s Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show where digital entrepreneurs share their stories and the lessons they’ve learned so that we can all be better in our online pursuits. I’m your host, Jerod Morris, the VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital. This is episode number 33. This episode of The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales later, but you can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by someone who has built his professional life around making sports analytics more accessible. After reading an academic paper on Google’s technology, he got inspired to apply his Stanford PhD to ranking sports teams. His friends liked the resulting NFL rankings that he produced and encouraged him to do more.

In 2012, his story predicting Alabama’s win over Notre Dame in the college football title game actually appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A study by FiveThirtyEight found that his 2015 NCAA Tournament predictions were the most accurate of anyone. Frankly, if you crave the thrill of winning your March Madness pool or if you’re looking for an edge against the spread in football, there is no excuse to not be a member of his site, The Power Rank. He is Ed Feng and he is a digital entrepreneur.

Ed, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. How you doing, man?

Ed Feng: I’m great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Jerod Morris: Of course. It was great seeing you at Digital Commerce Summit a couple weeks ago.

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. You too. It was a great event, as always. You always learn so much, not only from the talks, but just chatting with other people. Even though it is so hard to get time from you and Brian because everyone wants to talk to you guys.
Jerod Morris: What I thought was really interesting is you have a group of folks that you’ve kind of become a little team almost, where you come to all these events and get together, and that’s really neat to see.

Ed Feng: Yeah, it’s been really awesome. That’s all Sonia Thompson. She got together a Facebook group. It’s supposed to be like a mastermind group. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but we keep in touch and we try to help each other out as much as we can. I’ve gotten some WordPress templates from other people in the group. It’s been great.

Jerod Morris: Speaking of which, you and I had a good talk about a potential mastermind that we should follow-up on here soon, because I think that would be a good idea. Did you have a big takeaway from Digital Commerce Summit? Anything that stood out?

Why He’s So Committed to ‘Doing Remarkable Things’

Ed Feng: A couple things, two things. I really liked the talk about long copy — Joanna Wiebe — and I’ve been thinking about that in a different context in terms of what it takes to stand out in a digital world right now. Everyone’s doing 1,000-word blog posts, and I think you got to do something remarkable. One of the ways to be remarkable is to do something longer and more in-depth. I try to do things on my own site like that. I’ve really been intrigued by a site called Wait But Why which is — the growth has just been phenomenal, and all he does is 2,000, 3,000-word posts. It helps if Elon Musk tweets you out.

Jerod Morris: That’ll help.

Ed Feng: Yeah. But there are a ton of examples in the sports world too, which is where my company is doing more remarkable things, and that’s the way to stand out and get shared. I thought that all related to what she was talking about with longer copy, even though it was not quite the same thing. If that makes sense.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I love that idea. I love that. We’ll dive into that a little bit more because I want to get into what you’re doing now and what your business is. But I want to start with where I start with everybody who comes on The Digital Entrepreneur, and that is with this question. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom. That was actually a theme that people talked about a lot at Digital Commerce Summit, the freedom to choose your projects, the freedom to chart your course and, ultimately, the freedom to change your life and your family’s life for the better. What is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that. I really enjoy the freedom. I can’t imagine not having my own site, doing my own thing. As much of a pain that is sometimes — to do all your own marketing and do all your own books. There’s a lot of work in running a business. But I can’t imagine just writing for big sports site anymore. You lose that freedom.

I think the freedom is absolutely crucial, and I’ve been really lucky that I’m at the point in my business where I can take advantage of that freedom a little bit more. Things are going pretty well and I’ve started to get a little bit more involved with my kid’s school. I teach math there, and that’s something I’m starting to get more passionate about. The freedom and the time to do that — even during a really busy football season — has been fantastic.

Jerod Morris: You have a couple of kids, right?

Ed Feng: I’ve got two. They’re five and seven.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Let’s go back. Before we talk about what you do now, let’s go back. Take me back before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing and what was missing that led you to want to make a change?

Ed Feng: Yeah, so I got my PhD from Stanford and I always thought I was going to be professor. I was doing jury and simulations. I was trying to understand how polymers moved and polymeric materials. Then I just got a little burned out in that course. Made a lot of mistakes myself, but also wasn’t interested in writing papers that not a lot of people were going to read. I was looking to do something else. It turns out my background in applied math was a perfect way to get into sports. I wrote a paper about Google’s PageRank — for those of you that don’t remember, that was Google’s first breakthrough. They looked at the web and said, “Well, let’s look at the link structure, links that point from one website to another, and let’s rank sites based on that.”

There’s this beautiful, elegant mathematics that is actually very similar to what I did in my PhD research. I’ve always been a sports fan. I came and I looked at that and I was like, “I want to apply this to sports.” You have to do some work because the straight application of PageRank doesn’t work at all for sports, but if your start accounting for margin of victory, you can start ranking teams really well. And if you’re interested in college football, if you’re interested in your March Madness pool, these are calculations that you’re interested in.

How Not Being Stubborn Was the Key to Turning a Hobby Into a Thriving Business

Jerod Morris: Talk to me a little bit about how you structure your business, because obviously you and I, we’re both sports fans, so we can throw out some of these terms and we get them. Obviously there’s a big part of The Digital Entrepreneur audience that’s maybe not as big into sports, but there’s still a ton that folks can learn from what you’re doing because the fundamentals of digital entrepreneurship are the same for you just as they’re the same for other people. You’re building this business around — as I mentioned in the intro — around analytics and making analytics accessible and helping people make predictions. How have you built a business around that?

Ed Feng: Yeah, I think this is an interesting story about not being stubborn, because when I first started out, I saw that gamblers were interested in what I was doing and that didn’t seem like what I wanted to do. I thought about taking more of media outlet-type of approach. I changed my mind pretty early and now the people I serve are people who need quantitative predictions, and those are gamblers. Those are anyone in an NFL pick against the spread pool. Anyone — if you’ve ever filled out a March Madness bracket, you’re potentially someone that might be interested in what I do on my site.

So those are the people I serve. I’m proud to serve them, and I am a full believer in the Copyblogger way. Build an email list. I believe in the power of direct response copywriting. I fully believe that we should be teaching every high school student in America that skill, because our world would be a much better place if that were the case.

I focus on building my email list. I monetize based on memberships. If you’re really in that pool and you’re getting crushed in your NFL pool, you can come to my site and get my predictions for every NFL game, every college game. The NFL, in particular, has been particularly good so far. I think through week 8 we’re about 58 percent against the spread, which, unfortunately, is an unsustainably good rate, but something that could help you out in a pool.

Jerod Morris: Just shows you how difficult it is to succeed when you say 58 percent is unsustainable. That shows you the difficulty of it. In terms of the revenue model then, people pay to have a membership, they get access to your premium picks, and you also have a free email list, so you have your free content there. Is it a membership in a community in a forum? Is it just access to the picks? What do people get with memberships?

Ed Feng: With membership you get access to my best predictions. These are the picks I was telling you about. I don’t really want to call them picks, because that’s a term that’s used for — some shady people on the internet that will give you games to bet on against the market. I’m trying to take a little bit more of a … I give you the results of my best computer model. If you go to my site. For free, I’ll give you access to parts of it which aren’t as accurate as looking at all the different methods that I have for predicting games. If you’re serious about your pool, if you’re serious about March Madness, you pay for membership to my site and you get my best stuff.

I’m also really interested in data visualization, so I’ve, over the course of the years, developed these data visuals that allow me to look at match-ups in games. Jerod, you as a basketball fan will appreciate this. For basketball you can look at, “How does a team’s offensive rebounding match-up against how the opponent defensive rebounds or boxes people out?” You can get a quick look at match-ups, see if that’s something that’s going to affect your outlook on the game and who’s going to win.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Let’s talk about your experience now in your business with The Power Rank. Tell me about the milestone or the moment in your career so far as a digital entrepreneur that you’re the most proud of.

Ed Feng: I honestly don’t know if it’s one moment. Getting my first content in Sports Illustrated was a very important first step, and that was three or four years ago right now. I really think it’s about the journey. That’s kind of cliché. Just getting better every year. I’ve seen consistent growth in my business. The trajectory is in the right direction, which is how I know I’m doing the right thing. I remember three or four years ago I was hoping for a tipping point. For me, there really wasn’t a tipping point. I think every year, more people find out about my site, more people like what I’m doing and sign up for the lists. I think that’s the experience for a lot of people.

Jerod Morris: It wasn’t just some hockey stick of growth? You’ve just steadily grown year over year, one brick after another?

Ed Feng: Yeah. I think of it as a marathon and I try to put in my work every day and every mile, and that’s worked for me.

Jerod Morris: All right, well let’s take a quick break and when we come back, I’m going to ask Ed about his most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur.

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Now back to my interview with Ed Feng. All right. Ed, tell me about the most humbling moment that you’ve had in your career so far as a digital entrepreneur, and most importantly, what did you learn from it?

The Important Advice from Sonia Simone … That Ed Ignored (and Later Regretted)

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. I actually have two examples here. First was when I was just starting out the business and I found this site called Copyblogger. I was a member of something called Third Tribe. Third Tribe, was that what it was called?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Third Tribe.

Ed Feng: Yeah. This brilliant woman named Sonia Simone said, “The best day to start your email list is yesterday.” I ignored her and I didn’t start a list, and then I got featured during March Madness of that year. SB Nation came and did a video of my predictions and this cool little bracket that I had. To have had an email list then would have been spectacular. It would have been a really good start to what I was doing. Of course, I didn’t listen to Sonia and that was not a good idea. I think things would’ve gotten off to a better start with that.

Then, this is just another story I’d like to tell about different ways of monetizing. I’ve written a book about How to Win Your March Madness Pool. Super fired up about doing it. I’ve written it. It’s something you get on my site. But it was also, in a sense, a little humbling to note that the average person is only interested in that book for four days out of the year. When you work in sports — the sports world revolves around football in the United States. It’s football, college football, NFL. And college basketball takes a little bit of a backseat. Obviously people in Indiana disagree.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Ed Feng: If you sample the public in the United States, they get interested in college basketball after the Super Bowl, and they really get interested for four days while they’re filling out their bracket. To realize that later … It’s not like I regret writing the book, I still think it’s my best piece of content I’ve ever had. But it was kind of humbling to a) realize that later, and b) also to just know it’s pretty hard to sell books.

Jerod Morris: Yes it is.

Ed Feng: That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a thing that I’m proud of and that I wouldn’t go back and do it again, but that was definitely humbling.

Jerod Morris: How are you using that asset now? Are you still selling it or are you using that now as free attraction content? Have you changed what your strategy is with it?

Ed Feng: Yeah, a little bit. I wrote it two years ago and I feel like there’s been two March Madnesses in which I’ve sold the book and it’s been fine. I definitely use it as a way to get out there, a way to do something different during that time. I finally finished the book after this March Madness. I finished it for me. There’s a little bit of a next chapter that I had to finish up.

I’m hoping to get it out there during the Christmas time, which I haven’t gotten. So I’m hoping to do that. We’ll try to sell it again going into March. It is certainly not out of the question that I could give it as a freebie for joining my email list in a few years. Yeah, I think it’s really important to keep an open mind and see whatever the best is for your business. That’s probably the way you should go about using an asset like that book.

Jerod Morris: Let’s talk about this after we get off the interview too, because we’re actually — Andy Bottoms is starting a new show, Bracketology.FM, this year. And there may be some good synergy there with your book, because obviously that’s the same audience. Okay, so let’s fast-forward to now. What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today?

Ed Feng: I would say my business is steady and growing. That’s two words.

Jerod Morris: I thought you might just throw out Harbaugh or something like that.

Ed Feng: Harbaugh, yeah. No,

Jerod Morris: Steady and growing works. We’ll give you two.

Ed Feng: Okay, thanks. Appreciate that. Like I said before, I just believe in getting up every day and working on your business. In the long run that’s going to pay off.

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

Why He’s Struggling to Move Forward with a Podcast

Ed Feng: Ooh, that’s a great question. Actually, right now I would have to say almost the mental hurdle of starting a podcast. I’ve been talking about this for two months now. Every week I’m like, “This needs to happen,” and I’m still trying to get it done, because it has to happen during the football season. As humans, we like what we know and it’s always hard — even for those of us that have jumped off and tried to do our own thing — it’s hard to do something new. That’s probably my biggest pain point. I think a podcast makes a lot of sense for my business, just as it has for Copyblogger, just as it has for Assembly Call, and I need to make that happen.

Jerod Morris: What’s causing the inertia? Is there some kind of technical challenge or is it just your own mental hurdle of having not done it before?

Ed Feng: I think the mental hurdle of not having done it before. It also hurts that I’m pretty busy during football season and there’s a lot of things during the course of the week that have to get done. To get the mental energy to say, “Okay, I’m going to solve this new problem,” even though I know someone in town to call about it to help me out with some of the technical details. Then, later, to interview people and to get people on that as well. There’s some issues that I’m just trying to get my head around.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Ed Feng: I really think the teaching, in the sense that I think a lot of analytics — while it’s very useful for predictions — is also about stories. It’s about unexpected truths that you dig out of the data. And I really enjoy the teaching aspect of that. So whether that’s in terms of writing content, producing content, or just telling people about it, it goes back to my interest in — I volunteer and teach math at my son’s school. It’s a really rewarding aspect of my work. I feel like I don’t want to die just having sold data to gamblers. That would be a little disappointing for me. It’s really rewarding to teach and I think that’s something I probably picked up from Copyblogger and reading it over the years, to give back. And to give back in a way that is really meaningful and to help people.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, that’s great. Let’s open up your toolbox, if you don’t mind. What is one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: My business is all about analytics. All my code is in Python. Python is a beautiful language that allows you to get things done. More importantly, it allows you to go back and look at your code later and not be completely confused about what you did. That is the basis of all the calculations I do on my site, so I would have to say Python.

Jerod Morris: I would say that’s pretty important. What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Ed Feng: Yeah. Unequivocally, direct-response copywriting. All the principles that I first started learning through Copyblogger, through various books I’ve read — this is something I try to get better at every year. In my off season, I try to go read a book. I try to get some more coaching. Just working on persuasive writing I think is the most … It’s a pillar of my business, for sure.

The Classic Book That Has Made a Huge Impact on Ed’s Ability to Build His Audience and Convert Customers

Jerod Morris: Obviously reading Copyblogger would be one, and we hope that everybody who’s listening to this show is a fan of Copyblogger and reads our work at Copyblogger. If you had to give a piece of advice to someone who, like you, is looking to get better as a direct response copywriter, what would that piece of advice be?

Ed Feng: This is stolen directly from Brian Clarke, but Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. It’s a book by Joe Sugarman. As Brian has always said, it is the best introduction to persuasive writing that there is. I don’t even know if you can get it on Amazon. I have some bootleg PDF copy on my computer. I think I’ve read it twice. It’s a fantastic tool.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Okay, perfect. Earlier I asked you for the one word you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You gave us two: steady and growing. When we talk again in a year, what do you want that one word to be?

Ed Feng: I want to serve my customers even better than I do now through the accuracy of my predictions. It’s clear that’s what people want. It’s something that I’ve been a little slow to perfect, and it’s something I want to … That’s the kind of stage I want to be at next year.

Jerod Morris: Even more accurate.

Ed Feng: Yeah, even more accurate. There’s a sense of cleaning some stuff up and fine-tuning some stuff. Things that you would never do unless you know this is exactly what your audience wants.

Jerod Morris: How much are you benchmarking? Each year, are you keeping pretty good track of how successful you are and then measuring that — this year’s against last year’s and the previous years to keep score?

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. You can check that out on my site. I need to put out this year’s numbers on the site. But yeah, that is the benchmark. How well can a computer model do at predicting the outcome of these games. I do believe there is an upper limit to how good that it can be. We just want to get as close to that limit possible.

Jerod Morris: Are you pretty transparent about that with your audience? Obviously that’s what they’re coming to you for, is accuracy. So when something goes wrong or you have some picks that don’t go right, are you pretty … Do you try and bury those or un-publish the blog post or do you try to be pretty transparent about it?

Ed Feng: No, I try to be as transparent as possible. But I also am not telling people exactly what I do. I give people a general idea. There’s a lot of information on my site about what makes the original algorithm I developed good. That’s progressed to where, in 2016, what we’ve learned is to make good predictions you combine a bunch of good predictors, ensemble methods. So now, instead of just taking my algorithm based on points per game — which is what all college football team rankings do — now I apply that algorithm into other things such as data from the markets, such as efficiency metrics like yards per play. When you combine all those together, that’s how you get better, more accurate predictions. I certainly talk about that on the site a lot. To know exactly what my coefficients are for how to weight each one is probably stuff I stay away from.

Jerod Morris: How much, if at all, do you kind of care about the “fame” that can come from succeeding in sports analytics. Now, people who are listening to this who aren’t big sports fans may not know names like Football Outsiders and Jeff Sagarin and Ken Pomeroy, but you and I obviously know those names. How much does that matter to you to someday be mentioned with those guys? Does that matter?

Ed Feng: It does. I think there are two ways to go. I feel like there’s two ways to go. I either feel like you can focus on your business and not really get out there in the broader context, or you can focus on getting out there in the broader context, and this is what Nate Silver has done. He started out in baseball but he’s obviously very famous for his political predictions right now.

It’s hard to do both because they kind of contradict. Time that you would spend … For example, if you really want to get out there in sports analytics, you could just start writing for ESPN and use that platform as a way to get your name out there, and that’s certainly a good thing to do. Certainly other people have done that. But I feel like the things you would do to make that happen are different from what I do now to serve my audience.

I feel like there’s a trade-off. And it’s not entirely exclusive, by any means. I’m certainly writing things that I hope get shared that people want to read, and I hope that’s getting the word out there about my name. I think that in the regular digital commerce space it’s the difference between something that goes viral but doesn’t necessarily bring in core customers, and content that is maybe not read by everyone, but is read by the people who are going to pay you for your service. I think those are two different things. I’m certainly interested in both, but over the next year I think it’s my job to focus on my core audience and what they need.

Jerod Morris: You got to keep your eye on the ball.

Ed Feng: Sure, absolutely.

Jerod Morris: All right, well I have a few rapid-fire questions here to end with. Are you ready for these questions?

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

Jerod Morris: All right. If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book — and you already told us about one book, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, so you can’t choose that one — what would the book be?

Ed Feng: I don’t really want to seem like a literary snob, but I really love the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s known as this dense book and it’s really hard to get through. You kind of got to devote part of your life to it, but it’s a really meaningful book about how to get the most out of your life.

Jerod Morris: If you could have a 30-minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Ed Feng: Tim Ferris. He is a whiz at networking and meeting people and marketing. I don’t feel like I’m bad at those things, but I look at him and just know that he’s that much better than me. He’s like the 206 marathoner out there. He just goes. I really respect what he does. Yeah, it was amazing. He sent out an email about his new book in December for pre-orders, and it was kind of tucked away a little bit in the email. Then I clicked on it and he was like the 12th overall Amazon book that day. Just unreal.

Jerod Morris: When you have that kind of list you can do that.

Ed Feng: Exactly.

Jerod Morris: Speaking of that, what is one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Ed Feng: Henneke. Henneke is Copyblogger. I would butcher her last name. But I met her two years ago at Authority, at the conference. She’s fantastic. I read a lot of her content. It’s all about copywriting and persuasive business writing. There’s a lot of that out there — and obviously I’ve learned a ton from Copyblogger — but I love her stuff.

Jerod Morris: Excellent, yeah. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What non-book piece of art has had the biggest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: Hans Rosling is a data scientist out of a Scandinavian country and he does these beautiful visual animated data visualizations. I’ll send you a link, but it was a beautiful thing about health and wealth over 200 years that he did with the BBC. I feel like data visualization is a very important way to get the word out about analytics, and that was a very motivational piece.

Jerod Morris: Very cool. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Ed Feng: The timer on my iPhone. Almost no matter what, I work in short bursts, about 30 to 40 minutes depending on how late I was up the night before. I set a timer and I focus. When the timer goes off I take a break.

Jerod Morris: Kind of like the Pomodoro Technique, but without the little tomato timer.

Ed Feng: I’m not the kind of person that can hack through something for five hours straight. It’s just not me.

Jerod Morris: How long of a break are you taking, usually?

Ed Feng: Like 10, 15 minutes. Go make my bed. Go put some dishes away.

Jerod Morris: Do something. Get back at it.

Ed Feng: Yeah, and go get back at it with a fresh mind.

Jerod Morris: Finally, what is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Ed Feng: You can go to ThePowerRank.com and sign up for my email list. I’ll give you lots of cool content and predictions for football. That’s the main thing I do on my site. That’s also an easy way, because you’ll get a welcome email back and you can just hit reply and ask any question you want either about digital commerce or sports analytics.

Jerod Morris: You do all personal replies from your email list?

Ed Feng: I do.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I do the same thing.

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

Jerod Morris: Same thing. Awesome. Well, Ed, awesome to talk to you. Now we have some stuff to talk about offline, clearly. Great to talk to you, man. Really glad you came on The Digital Entrepreneur.

Ed Feng: Thank you so much for having me on.

Jerod Morris: Yep, for sure. All right, that concludes this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks to Ed for joining me. Always great talking to him, and I’m sure that you were able to learn a lot from his story and from the lessons that he has learned and that he shared.

My thanks, as always, to our production team here at the Digital Entrepreneur. Toby Lyles and his team, putting the final product together. Will DeWitt and Caroline Early who helped me get everything organized and ready to go. And my thanks, of course, to you for being here, for being such a loyal audience member. Not just for listening to this episode all the way to the end, but for listening to so many episodes of The Digital Entrepreneur over the past several weeks and months.

As always, send me a tweet @JerodMorris. I love to know when people listen to these episodes, so it’s good to hear from you. @JerodMorris, that is my Twitter handle. I would love to hear from you there.

Alrighty, thanks again for being here. We’ll be back next week with another brand new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur.

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

Usability and SEO: Optimising your website to nurture customers with Woj Kwasi (NEWBIE)

by admin

Listen to PODCAST by The Recipe for SEO Success

In today’s episode we’re talking all about optimising your website to make it a better experience for your customers. We know it’s important to rank number one, but what if when you hit the top spot, and the traffic starts coming it’s still not converting? This could be to do with having a confusing website that the users struggles to understand. According to Marketo 96% of customers who come to our website are not ready to buy? So in this episode we’re going to find out why and fix the problems.

Tune in to learn:

● How user journeys work

● Great tools to track your customers’ journey

● Common user experience mistakes

● Our tips on how to improve the user experience on your site

● Which questions you should be asking your users

http://www.therecipeforseosuccess.com.au/usability-and-seo-optimising-your-website-to-nurture-customers/

http://www.therecipeforeseosuccess.com.au

 

https://therecipeforseosuccess.libsyn.com/usability-and-seo-optimising-your-website-to-nurture-customers

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

by admin

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

Sarah Morgan may rub some people the wrong way with her dedication to naps, her casual approach to online interaction, and the occasional curse word in an email. But make no mistake: she’s serious, works hard, and has found a way to create a lucrative digital business that keeps her, above all, entertained.

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In this 30-minute episode, Sarah and I discuss:

  • How she went from corporate job and circus performer to thriving digital entrepreneur
  • Why she won’t apologize for cursing, naps, or walking her dear old dog
  • The joy she felt in that moment when she realized she was making more as a digital entrepreneur than she had been at her corporate job
  • The work habits and discipline that help her get work done and keep moving forward
  • Her failed Photoshop course — and what she learned from the experience
  • Why hanging out in her communities (on her couch) fuels her why

And much more — including my rapid fire questions at the end, in which Sarah shares how Simon Sinek, The Real Housewives, and the opera have influenced her career.

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below …

Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • xosarah.com
  • @xosarahmorgan
  • Jerod Morris

The Transcript

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

You are listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. DCI features an in-depth, on-going instructional academy, plus a live education and networking summit where entrepreneurs from across the globe meet in person. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce. That s Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show where digital entrepreneurs share their stories and the lessons they ve learned so that we can all build better digital businesses. I am your host, Jerod Morris, the VP of Marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and this is episode number 32.

This episode of The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales a little bit later, but you can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. That s Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

On this week s episode, I am joined by someone who four years ago was working a corporate job that she didn t love anymore. She began growing her blog, building her email list, and expanding her social media following. After nine months of serious hustling, she made her escape and literally ran away with the circus. We re going to have to ask her about that.

Now she spends her days teaching other bloggers, freelancers, and solo business owners how to create a kickass online presence through ebooks, workbooks, and courses so that they can conquer their goals too. She is Sarah Morgan, and she is a digital entrepreneur.

Sarah, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. How are you?

Sarah Morgan: Thank you for having me. I m good. How are you?

Jerod Morris: I m very good. Very good. Very excited for this chance to talk. Looking forward to it.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: I have to start out with this. When I was doing some research ahead of time, I read on your website a little bit about your history. I want you to, obviously, get into telling us more about that, but there was one line that I found particularly interesting, and we have to start here. You said, After nine months of serious hustling, she made her escape and literally ran away with the circus. Can you ?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. My fans were excited about that.

Jerod Morris: Can you unpack that sentence for us a little bit?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. I guess I can tell you my whole journey and how that fits in, because I did also have a real job as well.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, let s do it.

How She Went from Corporate Job and Circus Performer to Thriving Digital Entrepreneur

Sarah Morgan: I m a blog strategist. I started blogging when I was a teenager. I used that to learn web design and development, and then after college I got a corporate job doing web design at a TV station in Detroit. I m originally from Michigan. At some point in there, like most people that end up self-employed, I was not loving my job anymore. Not loving getting up and going to work, the projects, or anything that I was working on. I started a side hustle doing freelance web design. Around the same time, I had a — I call it my side, side hustle. That was as a circus performer. I was performing Cirque du Soleil aerial silks and trapeze, that kind of stuff.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. So I was performing a lot and I was teaching. I was blogging in the morning and then going to work and blogging. Getting my work done really fast. I was very efficient. Then, editing photos, coding, and doing all of that stuff any time I had a minute at work. And then, after work, I would go and train, or teach, or perform, or go and do more web design client work.

Jerod Morris: Wow. How did you have time for all of this?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It was more like, How did you have time for anything else? because I pretty much It was like a year, nine months where I was doing everything all at once, and I didn t do anything else. I wasn t partying. That was in my late 20 s. How long have I been doing this, four years?

I should ve been going to the bar and going out to dinner, doing all kinds of stuff. I was working like a crazy person. I always say I was working 25/8. I was working from the second I got up until the second I went to sleep, and I loved it … 95 percent of the time. The rest of the time, I was super stressed out.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I don t want to dwell on this too long because it s obviously a show about digital entrepreneurship, but I am interested about the performing part of it, because that seems like this outlier detail about your whole story. Is that something that you had grown up doing, and what are you Are you still doing any of that now?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I moved to San Diego a little over two years ago. I still teach. I don t really perform anymore because it takes a really high level of training. I would have to be in the studio training six, seven days a week, and at the moment I m feeling lazy about that. I m really focused on building my online courses. So I m still teaching and I still go in and train every once in a while.

But when I was back home in Detroit before I moved here, I was performing a few times a month. I did outdoor festivals, fairs, and corporate events. I did, actually, a couple of NBA halftime shows. I got to perform with Salt-N-Pepa, which was crazy.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Hey.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. They re like, Do you want to come and do this show? I was like, Yes. Yeah, whatever you want me to do, no problem.

Jerod Morris: Of course. Yeah. When you do your online courses, are you doing a lot of video stuff? Are you on camera for the courses?

Sarah Morgan: Some of them I am. I have one course, my main blogging course about growing blog traffic and your email list.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I am on camera doing video for every single module.

Jerod Morris: This performance history that you have, does that come out at all in your videos? Are you able to use any of that, or is it more just like sitting in a desk straight into the camera?

Sarah Morgan: I m not sitting at a desk. I m more of a work-on-the-couch kind of person, so it s a little more relaxed probably than most people that make online courses.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I m not upside-down or anything, or wearing the clown makeup.

Jerod Morris: Not yet, but for future courses.

Sarah Morgan: Not yet. Yes.

Jerod Morris: Sarah, I ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom.

Sarah Morgan: Yes.

Jerod Morris: The freedom to choose your projects. The freedom to chart your course. Ultimately, the freedom to change your life and your family s life for the better. What is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

Sarah Morgan: I m going to go with freedom as well. I really am bossy, so I like being in charge and I like deciding what project I work on, who I m working with, who I m collaborating with. I like being able to structure my own days. I like being able to like fly home to see my family whenever I want. Michigan is cold so I don t really do it that often, but I can if I want to. Also, that I can experiment. I can try something, and if doesn t work then it doesn t work and I can try something else. There s nobody going to come down and with a hammer on me or something like that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I m able to move a little bit quicker than I would if I was doing this same type of work under someone else at a corporate job or something.

Jerod Morris: Sure, so you described what you were doing before you got to the point where you re at now. When was that moment when you said, Okay, I m pivoting and I m going online. I m doing this full-time with ebooks and with courses, and this is how I m going to make money. What was that decision like?

Sarah Morgan: It started a couple years in. Maybe three years in to the seven years at my corporate job, I had a moment of feeling like I didn t enjoy designing websites anymore, and that was something I had been doing since I was like 13.

I always say I had a mid-20 s crisis. I was like, If I don t design websites anymore, what am I supposed to do? I didn t have any other interests, hobbies, or career path. That was my thing. So I panicked. That s when I started blogging again. I had stopped for a couple of years because I was doing a lot of design work and writing news stories, which is super boring. I was doing that all day at my corporate job, so I stopped blogging.

At that point, I started blogging again. I started getting a little bit more into creative design and blog design, and I realized that I had people coming to me and asking for blog headers or asking questions about how to format their own website. I ended up starting a little bit, and then nine months before I left my job I got very serious. I was really unhappy. I really didn t want to go to work in the morning.

I decided, “In a year, I m leaving my job. Next September, I m leaving. That s it. I think my boyfriend at the time and my parents were a little bit concerned for my mental state of being. I was like, I m leaving my job. I can t do this anymore. This is 40 hours out of my week that I m unhappy.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. I decided, and from that point on, I worked like a crazy person to make it happen.

Jerod Morris: Sometimes you got to put your own back against the wall and you find out what you re capable of.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, absolutely.

Why She Won’t Apologize for Cursing, Naps, or Walking Her Dear Old Dog

Jerod Morris: I m looking at your website, and you ve got your tagline on here, The no bullsh*t blog strategy for the daring and driven. I m curious, as you went about developing your brand and putting this all together, did you just follow your own personality, or were you very intentional about adding a little bit of an edge to how you were going to present yourself?

Sarah Morgan: That s my personality. If you talk to me in person I will probably swear at you. I get people that email I used to be on MailChimp, so people could write a comment when they unsubscribe. All the time people would say, You swear too much. I can t take the cursing, and I m like

Jerod Morris: You swear in your emails?

Sarah Morgan: Oh, yeah.

Jerod Morris: Yeah?

Sarah Morgan: I try to not drop the f-bomb too much anymore. I’ve pulled back a teeny-tiny bit, but yeah. I say all the other four-letter words. That s the way I sound.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I think that s interesting. I think some people shy away a little bit even if that is their natural way. Have you found that it has helped you to attract the kind of people that are going to be your best kind of customers and repel the people who won t?

Sarah Morgan: Yup, absolutely. That s one of the reasons that I ve never been shy about swearing or writing in the way that I speak, or creating videos and not being in a blazer at a desk. I m always sitting on my couch or I m sitting at my kitchen table, and I m dressed the way that I always dress. I think that does attract the right people to me. Because I do a lot of I run online communities for all my courses. I do weekly hangouts for some of my courses, and I don t want to be hanging out with people that aren t on the same vibe that I m on.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, just a very authentic way of doing business.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, it brings in the right students and I always have fun when I m doing the consulting and coaching.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Tell me about the milestone or moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur so far that you are the most proud of.

The Joy She Felt in That Moment When She Realized That She Was Making More as a Digital Entrepreneur than She Had at Her Corporate Job

Sarah Morgan: Ooh, that s a big one. Okay. It was when I realized I was making more money being self-employed than I had been making at my corporate job.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: That was about two and a half, three years in. I just remember standing in my kitchen and being like, Holy sh*t. I make more money doing all of this stuff by myself than I did working for somebody else. It s crazy. I didn t think — I really assumed, “I m going to be making $30,000 a year, and that s fine if I can work from home and build my own business. That s fine. I ll be a starving artist or whatever.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I did not expect that to happen at all. When it did, I was really shocked and really proud of myself.

Jerod Morris: Was it a steady progression to that point, or were there some pretty big jumps that got you there?

Sarah Morgan: It was definitely a whole year of doing webinars and finally growing my email list. Finally taking all of the advice in creating an email list. The couple years before I d been making $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and then yeah, that one year I more than doubled my income.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Congratulations on that, by the way. That s fantastic.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: Alrighty. Let s take a quick break. When we come back, I m going to ask Sarah about her most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur.

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Now, back to my discussion with Sarah Morgan.

Alrighty. Sarah, you told us about your proudest moment as a digital entrepreneur. Now tell us about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur thus far, and most importantly, what you ve learned from it.

Her Failed Photoshop Course and What She Learned From the Experience

Sarah Morgan: Okay. I definitely have had a course that was a failure. I did a Photoshop course, but I didn t really take into account that people would have to purchase Photoshop in order to take my course. It was like, Spend $500, or $200, or whatever on Photoshop, and then also spend $300 on my course. It didn t really work. That was a bummer because I put a lot of time into it and it was a really good course, but the people that were buying it were the ones that were already in my audience and already had Photoshop, and that was not enough for it to be sustainable.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, so what have you done with that course? Is that still out there just for folks who can use it, or did you shutter that one?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It was online for maybe a year after. I just left it in my shop. A few people purchased it, but eventually I really wanted to drill down on blogging and create a progression of courses, so I took it offline.

Jerod Morris: Is there anything that you would do differently with that course if you were going to re-launch it? Obviously there s an inherent challenge there with needing people to buy Photoshop, but how would you approach something like that where you have a useful skill to teach but you ve got this barrier there where people need to buy X product? Is there anything that you would do differently in a similar situation? Maybe it s just not do the course, but is there anything else?

Sarah Morgan: I think I would have focused more on design, and then included tutorials for Photoshop and a couple of the online free design platforms so that it was accessible to anyone. But for me, I really When I learned Photoshop, I felt like I learned maybe like 10 percent of it, so that was my intention with the course, is that you really miss all of these tools that are really helpful. But it didn t really work. It definitely needed to be more accessible by having a free platform that people could try all of the tech tutorials for.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. I appreciate it.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Let s fast-forward to now. What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today? One word.

Sarah Morgan: You re getting me with all these questions.

Jerod Morris: And it can t be a curse word.

Sarah Morgan: I m feeling very entertained by my business right now. I m just trying lots of stuff.

Jerod Morris: Oh, that s a good one. We haven t had anybody use that word before.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It s always been entertaining, but the more I get interesting opportunities — I had the opportunity to go to New Orleans and speak at a conference which was like, Okay, sure.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: “I would love to go to New Orleans for free. If I have to get on stage and speak, I can probably do that.” Yeah, it s been entertaining to see what s happening, interact with my audience, and build communities. I m just having fun over here.

Jerod Morris: Is that something that you want to do more of, speaking?

Sarah Morgan: I think it is. I would panic in high school, and middle school, and college when they would call on me or where you had to write a presentation and you had note cards and stand up in front of class. That was my worst nightmare.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Somehow, I think through teaching and doing webinars, I ve become a lot more comfortable talking to people and having people all stare at me all at once. So it was a really good experience to go and speak at the conference, and I think I would do it again.

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

The Work Habits and Discipline That Help Her Get Her Work Done and Keep Moving Forward

Sarah Morgan: Oh, probably getting enough done. I can have 15 tasks every single day. I m always adjusting and adding. I just adjusted the end of some of my email sequences, but now I want to go back through and do it to all of them. I could literally work non-stop and not sleep and not eat.

So really staying focused and organized. I ve been using Asana, which is very helpful in order to get specific things done and put off adjusting all of those email sequences to next week or next month, or something like that.

Jerod Morris: That is a pretty common recurring pain point, I think. That s the one. It s the double-edged sword of freedom. You have this freedom, but then there are so many different things that can fill up the time. How do you, a) keep your priorities in order and make your choices for what you re going to do, and b) try to keep some barrier around your professional life so that you can have a personal life as well?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. So I said Asana, that really helps. I generally try and put like three tasks per day, three big things. And I plan a quarter in advance. So I know for November and December, while I haven t gone through and added daily tasks, I know I m going to be reworking one of my courses in that month. I have my end goal for those two months, and then I can go in and say, This week I need to do the sales page. This week I need to do emails. This week I m going to go through lessons or videos.

Having those larger goals and then breaking it down into months or weeks, and then breaking it down into days and not putting too much into each day. One of the nice things about Asana is that I can go back through and see, Really, what did I accomplish every day? Can I do 10 things? No. Okay. I can only do 5 things every day. If I m doing video, that s probably going to take my whole day. If I m writing a blog post, I can probably add in another two things.

Jerod Morris: Cool. What element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Why Hanging out in Her Communities (on Her Couch) Fuels Her Why

Sarah Morgan: Hanging out with my communities, for sure.

Jerod Morris: Yeah?

Sarah Morgan: I love talking to people. It s two things. It fuels my why, my purpose and motivation for creating courses and doing what I do — blogging and writing emails. But it also is really great research. Any time I build a course, do a webinar, or send an email, it s generally because one of my students or community members has had a question or is trying to figure something out that they re stuck on. Then I can take that and turn it into something that works for my entire audience. So that s been really nice, to do daily, really easy research.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. You mentioned before how much Asana has helped you. I want to open your toolbox a little bit and figure out what tools you re using. In addition to Asana, what s another technology tool that contributes the most to your success?

Sarah Morgan: I ve got three that I ll tell you. I love ConvertKit for doing emails, sending emails to my list. Their tagging tools are amazing. I was on MailChimp. This blows MailChimp out of the water. It s so easy to segment my list and send emails just to people related to the specific things they’re interested in so that I don t have to send thousands and thousands of people every email. That never works.

I really loved Tailwind for scheduling blog posts to Pinterest. I get 90 percent of my social media traffic from Pinterest, so I always have that scheduled in advance.

Jerod Morris: Oh, wow.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It works. It s not just for recipes and makeup tips.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. How do you do that then, with Pinterest? Do you have to have a pretty defined visual style? Do you create specific blog post images that go with your posts? What s your strategy with Pinterest?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. My blog post images are Pinterest-sized. They re giant, big, tall images. Then I pin those into my boards and group boards. I use Tailwind because I can pin 1 pin to like 20 boards in literally 2 seconds. It s two clicks and then they re all in there, they re all scheduled. So I can pin a ton of content, which Pinterest really likes. I can pin a lot of content all day long, and I only am working maybe 5 or 10 minutes, depending on how lazy I m feeling.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Wow, very cool. That sounds like a really neat program.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, and then I also use Buffer. For Twitter and Facebook I use Buffer.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What about the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Sarah Morgan: Can I say my couch? Taking a nap?

Jerod Morris: Sure, whatever works.

Sarah Morgan: That s what I do when I need a break. I just pass out.

Jerod Morris: Okay. How important is that, though? I think a lot of people are scared to take a nap or take breaks, always feeling they have to fill every moment with work. Is that a big part of what keeps you fresh and keeps you going?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I am very serious about sleeping. If I need a nap, I know that I m going to produce crap work if I try and push through when I m falling asleep. So I m all about taking a nap. Especially if I do the circus training in the morning, I need a nap and then I can wake up and actually work. Yeah, that and taking my dog for a walk. I know a lot of people — people get mad at me. I have a blog post where I detail how my day runs, and that is the only post on my website that I get hate comments.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Sarah Morgan: They re very mad that I can walk my dog during the day and take a nap.

Jerod Morris: By hate comments, do you mean like jealousy-driven like, I wish I could do that. Or like, You should be in the community paying your attention to us?

Sarah Morgan: No, it s like, How dare you say you re productive when you take a nap during the day.

Jerod Morris: Oh.

Sarah Morgan: I m like, I don t know. That s how I work. Sorry.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. It all goes to quality over quantity.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: If you re able to get more better work done in a shorter amount of time because you re fresher, then it all works out.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, or else you just end up burning out.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Sarah Morgan: That s not worth it.

Jerod Morris: Earlier I asked you for the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You said, Entertained, which is a great answer. If we talk again in a year, what word would you want that to be?

Sarah Morgan: Oh, man.

Jerod Morris: It has to be different.

Sarah Morgan: I probably still will be entertained. Something to do with expanding.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Sarah Morgan: I have a free beginner blogging course, and I would like to really expand the number of students that are in that course. That s my main goal for next year is to like 10x that so that I can get a lot more people online blogging. I have tons of middle-aged, 50-something women who are coming into my courses, which is not My branding is not really geared toward that person, but they re showing up in droves and I love it. Yeah, I want to expand. I want things to be bigger.

Jerod Morris: What s your current attraction strategy? How are these people finding you and how are you targeting the people that you –not that you don t want those people — the people that you are targeting. How are you going about doing that?

Sarah Morgan: Through social media. Sharing my own blog content on Twitter, I get a lot of traffic. And Pinterest — like I said. Then I run Facebook ads every once in a while. I m about to run one in the next day or two for my list-building course, so that will bring in a whole new audience. I try and target outside of the people that I already have.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, so that will help bring in lots more people.

Jerod Morris: Cool. Good luck as you work towards continuing to expand.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: I ve got a few rapid-fire questions here to end with. I will let you know, most people I send these questions to ahead of time and I forgot to do it in this case. But you seem ready, like you don t need them ahead of time, so I think we ll be okay. I think you ll do a perfectly fine job answering these. Are you ready?

Sarah Morgan: Yes.

Jerod Morris: Okay. If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book, what would it be?

Sarah Morgan: It s Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Jerod Morris: Good one.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I love I just saw him speak and it blew my mind.

Jerod Morris: Did you? Where did you see him speak?

Sarah Morgan: He came to San Diego and did Creative Mornings.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Yeah. I have not yet seen him speak other than, obviously, his TED Talks and online, but I imagine that had to be pretty great.

Sarah Morgan: He s super funny. It was awesome.

Jerod Morris: If you could have a 30-minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Sarah Morgan: Oh, man. You might laugh at me for this. I want to talk to Bethenny Frankel from

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: The Real Housewives are my guilty pleasure. But I think she is a badass, so that s who I want to talk to.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Hey, there s no judgment with these questions. Whoever you think will help. What is the one email newsletter that you can t do without?

Sarah Morgan: I don t really subscribe to anything.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Sarah Morgan: Honestly. I like a real clean inbox. Yeah. I don t subscribe to anything.

Jerod Morris: Is that because you want to keep it clean or because you don t find value in an email newsletter subscription?

Sarah Morgan: I don t take the time to read emails when I m subscribed to them because there’s so much other stuff in my inbox. I m like, Oh, there s 30 unread messages here. I m going to wait to read this. I would start putting them into a To Read folder and then I would never read them. I just unsubscribed from everything so I can focus on the most important stuff that s showing up.

Jerod Morris: Interesting. What non-book piece of art has had the biggest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Sarah Morgan: Oh my gosh.

Jerod Morris: This is the one that always seems to get people.

Sarah Morgan: I am a big reader. I ll read like a hundred books in a year, so that is my thing.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Okay. I really like going to the opera. Does that count?

Jerod Morris: Of course. Absolutely.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Just as an escape, or have you Is there anything that you ve taken from that experience that has helped you in what you do?

Sarah Morgan: Mostly, as an escape. It s so different than the world we re in today.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Sarah Morgan: I love it.

Jerod Morris: Hey, that works. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Sarah Morgan: Definitely tracking my tasks in Asana. It doesn t work to have that never-ending to-do list. Once I put everything in there and started really keeping track of what things were getting done, I can look back and see like, Oh. Well, that week, I got nothing done. High five to myself. It really helps to keep me accountable and see what s getting done and what s not getting done, and how long things realistically take. Because I do have days when I put 15 things into it and 2 of them get done. Yeah. It keeps me in check.

Jerod Morris: That s because you re always walking your dog and napping.

Sarah Morgan: Of course.

Jerod Morris: Okay, so what —

Sarah Morgan: My dog is old. Those walks only take about 10 minutes.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. My final question for you. What is the single best way for someone inspired by today s discussion to get in touch with you?

Sarah Morgan: Come over and hang out with me on XOSarah.com or find me on social media, @xosarahmorgan.

Jerod Morris: That is XOSarah.com?

Sarah Morgan: Yup.

Jerod Morris: Perfect. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on The Digital Entrepreneur and lending your insight.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you for having me.

Jerod Morris: This was great. Absolutely, and good luck expanding your business in the new year.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Always appreciate those of you who listen all the way to the end. You are the true Digital Entrepreneur diehards. Of course, my thanks to Sarah Morgan for joining us, and my thanks to our production team here at Rainmaker.FM: Will DeWitt, Caroline Early, Toby Lyles and his team. The show would not be possible without you all, so thank you very much.

And a reminder: go to Rainmaker.FM/Platform to take the Rainmaker Platform for a free test-drive. See if it s for you. It is the all-in-one solution for digital marketing and sales. I think you will find that you like it and you will find it useful. If you have any questions, comments, anything, hit me up on Twitter, @jerodmorris. That s @jerodmorris. I will look forward to speaking with you next week on another brand new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Talk to you then.

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

eCommerce SEO: 6 silly mistakes you should avoid with Aaron Agius (NEWBIE)

by admin

Listen to PODCAST by The Recipe for SEO Success

On today’s podcast, we’re talking about some of the mistakes the ecommerce store owners make with their SEO. This is a cautionary tale that will hopefully help you avoid making the same errors.

Tune in to learn:

  • Exactly how long your product descriptions should be
  • Why you’re probably choosing the wrong keywords to target
  • Why product reviews are super important
  • How to deal with duplicate content issues
  • The one area of eCommerce websites that most people for get
  • How to intelligently name your product images.

 

Show notes:http://www.therecipeforseosuccess.com.au/ecommerce-seo-6-silly-mistakes/ ‎
Website: www.therecipeforseosuccess.com.au

 

https://therecipeforseosuccess.libsyn.com/aaron-agius-seo-for-ecommerce

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

by admin

How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

This week’s guest on The Digital Entrepreneur remains wholeheartedly enthusiastic about captaining her own ship … even if, in her words, it’s a “rowboat” compared to the larger vessel for which she is an Executive VP. She’s spent the better part of this decade teaching savvy business owners how to boost their marketing skills, and in this episode she discusses some lessons she has learned along the way.

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She is Pamela Wilson, and she is a digital entrepreneur.

In this 40-minute episode, Pamela and I discuss:

  • The motivation behind her new book, Master Content Marketing
  • Her “contrarian” answer to my initial question about the biggest benefit she derives from being a digital entrepreneur
  • The epiphany about the eventual destination of her print work that led to her desire to shift gears
  • Why her first online course and community struggled, and what she learned from the experience
  • Her biggest recurring pain point (it’s personal), and how she hopes to overcome it
  • The unique (and surprising) strategy Pamela has for keeping her many to-dos straight, so she can get meaningful work done

And much, much more … including her answers to my five rapid-fire questions.

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below …

Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • Master Content Marketing — new book by Pamela Wilson (out Friday, October 21)
  • Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track–and Keeping It There — by Les McKeown
  • The Bobby McFerrin Plan for Creating a Remarkable Business — by Pamela Wilson
  • Digital Commerce Institute
  • Jerod Morris

The Transcript

How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. You are listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. DCI features an in-depth, ongoing instructional academy, plus a live education and networking summit where entrepreneurs from across the globe meet in person. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show where digital entrepreneurs share their stories and the lessons they’ve learned so that we can all build better digital businesses. I am your host Jerod Morris, the VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and this episode No. 31. This episode of The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales later. You can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

On this week’s episode, I am joined by someone who has built her professional life around teaching savvy business owners how to boost their marketing skills. My guest is an award-winning graphic designer and marketing consultant who has helped small businesses and large organizations create big brands since 1987, hint, hint.

In 2010, she founded Big Brand System to show small business owners how a system of strategic marketing and great design makes them look professional, cohesive, and successful. She believes that your business may be small, but your brand can be big. If you’re a regular listener of Rainmaker.FM shows and a reader of Copyblogger.com, then you’ll be very familiar with her and her work.

She’s currently the executive vice president of educational content at Copyblogger Media, where she helps people like you build a strong presence on the web. She is about to become a published author because her book, Master Content Marketing, will be officially released tomorrow. That is Friday, the day after this episode goes live, Friday, October 21st. You can get more information at MasterContentMarketing.com. She is Pamela Wilson, and she is a digital entrepreneur.

Pamela, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. How are you?

Pamela Wilson: I am great. I’m thrilled to be here.

Jerod Morris: You’re just back from Digital Commerce Summit, yes? As I am as well.

Pamela Wilson: Yes, have not finished unpacking my bags, but I’m back.

Jerod Morris: I barely finished unpacking my suitcase over the weekend. Man, it was really a great event. You gave a great presentation on developing an interactive community. Was there any one single takeaway for you from the event, from the experience overall?

Pamela Wilson: Overall — and I think we’ll probably talk some more about it — what I loved the most was just interacting face to face with people whose names I knew, whose avatars I had seen. Just to see them face to face, talk, get to know a little bit more about their businesses, and hear their questions — that element of it I just love. It’s my favorite part.

Jerod Morris: That is always the best part of the events, no question — to be able to meet people that we’ve interacted with via email or over Twitter, and being able to put faces with names. Yeah, just to hear everybody’s stories, talk about their individual businesses and projects, that’s by far my favorite part, too.

Pamela Wilson: You have that moment over and over where people are going, “That’s really you,” and you’re going, “That’s really you in the flesh. Yes, you’re a real person.”

Jerod Morris: Yes. Something else exciting happened while we were at Digital Commerce Summit. That is that I got to hold a physical copy of your new book, which I believe is the first physical copy out in the wild, if I’m not mistaken.

Pamela Wilson: It’s funny. This is a new thing for me. This is the first book I’ve ever written. I’m still learning the ropes, obviously. I had set this release date for later this week, but I still am not completely clear on how this happened. The company that’s doing the print-on-demand work started shipping them, despite the fact that, in my file, it says they’re not supposed to ship them until later.

Leslie Staller, who’s one of our long-time customers, showed up at the Summit with a copy of my book. She said, “I have your book. Have you seen it?” I said, “No.” She showed it to me. It was fantastic. It was such a good feeling to see it in real life. Again, it’s that feeling of seeing something in real life, right? Something that’s been virtual.

Jerod Morris: Absolutely, and it looked great. You sent me the proof of what the cover will look like, and it looked great in person. For Leslie, she’ll have a collector’s item forever, the first copy of this book.

Pamela Wilson: She will, and it’s the first book I ever signed as an author. That was kind of cool. Somebody took a photo, and we have photo evidence of the first book I ever signed.

Jerod Morris: Isn’t that cool?

Pamela Wilson: It was very cool. The other piece of it that was neat is that my background is as a publication designer. I did that for decades. Magazines, books, brochures, newsletters — anything in print that was basically taking words, putting them into print, and making them look good — that was what I did for decades, in English and in Spanish.

I did it for a really long time, and I haven’t created a physical product in a really long time. That piece of it was fantastic, too — just to see pages that I had designed all bound together into this object that you could hold. That was such a good feeling.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, now people may be wondering listening to this, why are we talking about a physical book when the show is called The Digital Entrepreneur?

The Motivation Behind Pamela’s New Book, Master Content Marketing

Pamela Wilson: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: The reason why is because a lot of what you talk about in this book, it’s lessons that you have learned along the way as a digital entrepreneur. Plus, you kind of walked through the process of creating this book on the show that you had. It was called Zero to Launch, was that the …

Pamela Wilson: Zero to Book with Jeff Goins.

Jerod Morris: Zero to Book, yeah.

Pamela Wilson: Yes.

Jerod Morris: Zero to Book on Rainmaker.FM, and you are actually doing an episode with us on The Showrunner talking about that experience as well. For folks who are interested in learning more about that experience, you can go to Showunner.FM and learn more about that.

Obviously, for the rest of this episode, we want to dive into the background that gave you a lot of the experience that you talk about in this book, your background as a digital entrepreneur. Let’s dive into that, if you’re good with that. Are you ready?

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, let’s do it.

Jerod Morris: Let’s start out with the question that I always ask our guests to start out. I’m always interested to hear the many varying responses that we get. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom — the freedom to choose your projects, the freedom to chart your course, and ultimately, the freedom to change your life and your family’s life for the better. What is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

Pamela’s ‘Contrarian’ Answer About the Biggest Benefit She Derives From Being a Digital Entrepreneur

Pamela Wilson: Well, you know me well enough, Jerod, you know I’m kind of a contrarian, right? My answer is going to sound a little bit contrarian, but it’s because I had my own business for almost 25 years at this point. From the beginning, my office was always in my home. That was because, when I started my business, I was a brand-new mom, and I basically just wanted to be where my children were.

Twenty-five years is a long time ago, and back in those days, people kind of looked at you side-eyed if you worked from home. It was like, “Oh, you don’t actually have an office? You work from home” — which is laughable nowadays because the tables have completely turned. I think in a way people are like, “Oh, you have to go into an office? You can’t do your work from home?” Right?

Jerod Morris: We’re the ones laughing now.

Pamela Wilson: I know, seriously. I have seen that whole change happen over the years. I was on the other side of that continuum. Now I’m over here where it’s totally accepted, and it’s almost expected that you work from home, especially in certain fields.

This is the contrarian part — as far as my working environment, I actually have had a lot of freedom and flexibility from the very beginning because I set it up that way. The difference that I have seen since I’ve become a digital entrepreneur and had an online business — which I started in 2010, Big Brand System –for me, it’s been about reach.

Back in the day when my business was offline, I had local clients, I had regional clients, and I had a handful of national and even international-level clients. But the national and international clients were all based regionally. They were people who I could drive to their offices and have a meeting with in person.

One of my clients was the United States Golf Association, which is a pretty big organization nationally. They oversee the US Open. They write the rule book for golf in the US. They were like a 45-minute drive away. I used to go over to their offices, and I produced a publication for them. I had another kind of international client that, again, was based locally. They were a 30-minute drive away.

That’s the difference that I see is I was able to get some reach, but really the clients were all local. The difference now is that I’m helping people from all around the globe. In Authority for example, we have people from all over the place, and we meet with them virtually and help them. I just love that aspect of it.

Jerod Morris: Well, and you kind of started to answer my second question here, which is, I’d love for you to take us back before you became a digital entrepreneur and explain what you were doing, which you did. Really, what was missing that led you to want to make a change and led you to want to start Big Brand System?

The Epiphany About the Eventual Destination of Pamela’s Print Work That Led to Her Desire to Shift Gears

Pamela Wilson: Well, I started my career as a designer, but I was always a designer who was interested in marketing. I ended up offering both things, kind of marketing consulting, and then design work. If there was print work involved, I could help to make that happen as well.

For part of my career, I actually was living in South America. I did my work in Spanish. I had my business down there. I just got to this point after almost two decades of doing that where I felt like I had designed everything that there was to design — from business cards to billboards, to magazines, to books, in English and in Spanish. You know what I mean?

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Pamela Wilson: I was just like, “I feel like I’ve done it all three times over in two languages.” It just did not have the same kind of challenge for me that it had in the early days. Then I also had this major crisis, and I’ve never told you the story. At one point in the late ’90s, it hit me that all the marketing materials that I was working to help create and bring to life ended up in a landfill. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. All this stuff that I’m helping people to create to promote their businesses, it all gets thrown away eventually.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Pamela Wilson: Nobody hangs onto it, right? That realization hit me in the late ’90s, and honestly, it wasn’t until later in the 2000s that I was able to figure out how to change that. That was where online business, online marketing, and content marketing really came into play. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to write Master Content Marketing. I feel like it’s a much better way to market your business. It just feels a lot more like you’re serving the people you want to reach, rather than just pushing messages out at them — which is what the first decades of my career were all about.

The marketing can be so valuable that people actually save it instead of throwing it away. I literally created marketing that would arrive in your mailbox, and you would stand over the garbage and just throw it out. That’s what I was doing for many, many years. They were beautiful pieces. Except for maybe the magazines and maybe some annual reports and books, there were really just a very small percentage of what I was bringing to life was saved and valued.

Now you can even see through social sharing, you can see the online content that people are valuing. People all the time come up to me and say, “You know, I save every email newsletter that you send.”

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Pamela Wilson: That’s unbelievable to me. It’s such a change. I love that element of online marketing and content marketing — that it’s starting from a position of really helping people.

Jerod Morris: Was there a particular eureka or flash-bulb moment when you had that realization about, as you said, all your marketing materials ending up in a landfill? Or was it something that you came to gradually?

Pamela Wilson: No, there was a eureka moment. The thing is, it was in the late ’90s when that realization hit me. It wasn’t, like I said, until almost 10 years later, like 2009, that I figured out what to do about that realization. I basically spent almost 10 years feeling like, “I’m creating future landfill material right here. The best-looking future landfill material that I can possibly create, but that’s definitely where it’s all ending up.”

It just dawned on me. One thing that designers do, and it probably doesn’t happen as much anymore, but when you were a print designer, you had a physical portfolio with samples of all your pieces. I think that’s where it hit me. I was like, “I have a portfolio full of what other people consider to be garbage, and that’s what I’m showing as my work. Here’s this brochure. This is the last remaining copy because everybody else threw it out after they got it.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah, wow. Tell me about the milestone or moment in your career since you’ve become a digital entrepreneur, since you’ve moved online, that you are the most proud of.

The Humbling (and Exciting!) Honor of Being Published on Copyblogger

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, well, I’ll tell you, Big Brand System actually started out that it was going to be a book. I wanted to write a book. I felt like I had learned a lot about how small businesses can create a recognizable brand that helps to position their businesses, and I was going to write a book. Right around that time, I found Copyblogger. That was how Big Brand System became a blog instead of a book. I’m very happy that it worked out that way. That was really the best way to do things.

What I did after I found Copyblogger is I signed up for Teaching Sells, which was launching right around the time that I found Copyblogger. I got to know the team a little bit, and I submitted a first guest post in early 2010. This is literally like only a few months after I started to write online content. That was unbelievable that was accepted by them, you know?

Jerod Morris: Wow, yeah.

Pamela Wilson: Sonia was managing the blog at the time, and I was just thrilled to my core that she wanted to publish this guest post. It’s this post called The Bobby McFerrin Plan for Creating a Remarkable Business. I had been to a Bobby McFerrin concert, and I saw all sorts of connections between what he was doing from the stage and what we were trying to do with our online businesses. I wrote this post. She published it. As soon as she published it, I sent another post to replace it. I’m like, “Okay, you like that? Here, I have another.”

She published the second one, so I sent another. This went on for a few months. She would publish something. I would send another to replace it. Finally, in June of that year — so a few months after I submitted that first post — she asked me to write for Copyblogger once a month. This, by far, is the digital entrepreneur moment that I’m most proud of.

At the time, it felt like I was being invited to perform at Carnegie Hall once a month. It was just unbelievable that a site like Copyblogger wanted to publish my writing, and I didn’t feel like I was a writer. It just felt like major validation for something new that I was doing and was very exciting. I think I walked around a couple of feet off the ground for a couple of days. It was very exciting.

Jerod Morris: Hey, it’s obviously led to many opportunities since, so that’s great.

Pamela Wilson: I know, I’m still pinching myself. I can’t believe it.

Jerod Morris: On the flip side of that then, tell me about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur and, more importantly, what you learned from it.

Jerod Morris: Hey there, pardon the interruption, but I did want to make good on my promise to tell you more about the Rainmaker Platform. As you probably know, stitching together a website that truly gives you everything you need to demonstrate your authority, connect with your audience, and earn recurring profit isn’t easy.

You have to find good hosting, plus security and support you can trust, which is a headache. You need a patchwork of plugins that can prove to be a nightmare at the worst possible time. You need the ability to create content types, ranging from blog posts to podcasts, to online courses.

What about integrated landing pages, email marketing, and marketing automation to deliver a truly adaptive content experience? These aren’t nice-to-have features anymore for the smart, profitable digital entrepreneur. They are necessities.

Well, you have two choices. You can piecemeal it together, pay more in total, and then cross your fingers and hope everything plays nicely together — or you can use the Rainmaker Platform. Rainmaker is a fully hosted, all-in-one online marketing and sales machine that gives you everything out of the box in one dashboard.

You can run a successful podcast, host authority-building membership areas, and sell in-depth, module-based, revenue-generating online courses. You can even use RainMail to host all of your email lists and send broadcast emails and autoresponder sequences right there in your Rainmaker Dashboard. Plus, the full email integration with your website platform gives you insight about your audience and content flexibility that you simply cannot get with separate solutions stitched together.

Oh, and rather than having to choose from one of 100 different places for support when you have a question, with Rainmaker, it’s just one support team ready and excited to help you out. All of these reasons and more are why Rainmaker.FM runs on Rainmaker — and why all my personal sites do, too.

Don’t just take my word for it, check out the Rainmaker Platform for yourself. Go to Rainmaker.FM/Platform, and start your free 14-day trial today.

Now, back to my discussion with Pamela Wilson.

Why Pamela’s First Online Course and Community Struggled, and What She Learned From the Experience

Pamela Wilson: Well, I spoke about this at the Summit just a little bit because I did speak about membership sites, like you said. I took Teaching Sells. The whole point of Teaching Sells at that time was to teach you how to put together an interactive membership site. I took the course. I went through every single module, took notes on everything, and I put my head down and started creating my membership site.

Well, what I ended up doing, and I mentioned this at the conference, is trying to pour the entirety of my professional knowledge into this one course. It was just way too much information. I since have seen a lot of other people make this mistake, and I recognize it because I did it myself.

What I realize now is that people actually want less information, but they want that information to be more digestible. You can’t just drown them in facts and figures. It’s not fair. People are busy, and they need you to break it down and make it easy for them to understand. The other thing is that you burn out. As an information creator, you end up burning yourself out when you pour way too much into it.

Now what I do is make sure that everything I teach has some kind of structure that helps the people who are receiving the teaching to understand it and digest it. It also helps me to deliver that information in a format that’s just easier to produce.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, well, and that has shown in the work that you’ve been doing at Copyblogger in charge of the educational content, for instance with Authority, which just has so much information. That’s been some feedback early on was, “There’s almost too much here.” You’ve really gone about putting that information into little mini courses, grouping stuff together, and making it much more digestible for folks. You’ve really put this into action everywhere you’ve been.

Pamela Wilson: Right, yeah. We’ve been working on those mini courses for months. You just gave people a little preview because they have not been released. They’re in the middle of quality insurance checks right now, so it’s coming up very soon. Yeah, that was part of what I wanted to do was just to organize some of the sessions inside Authority so that they made sense together to teach specific concepts. That’s coming soon. I’m excited about that.

Jerod Morris: Let’s fast forward to now. What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today?

The Incredible Feeling of Being ‘Published’

Pamela Wilson: The one word that I would use is ‘published.’

Jerod Morris: Published, nice.

Pamela Wilson: Yes. It took a long time to get there, but like you said at the top of the podcast, it’s just this incredible feeling to hold this book in your own hands that you’ve been working on. It’s almost been a year that I’ve been working on that, talking about it on my podcast with Jeff, just putting in the hours to get it done, then learning the ropes of how to get it produced, and all of that. It’s been a huge, huge project. But when you finally have that published piece in your hand, it’s just an incredible feeling. I enjoyed it so much that I’m working on book two now.

Jerod Morris: Already?

Pamela Wilson: Oh yeah. This one I’m going to be co-writing with this person you know well, Sonia Simone.

Jerod Morris: Oh yes, I’ve met her.

Pamela Wilson: Yes, doesn’t that name ring a bell to you?

Jerod Morris: It sure does.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, we’re really excited. We’re going to be working on a book together. We’re still nailing down a topic, but it’s basically online business the Rainmaker Digital way and the Copyblogger way, which is a little bit different than maybe some people teach it. I’m excited about that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Hey, I should have asked you this earlier. For folks who are interested in getting your current book, where’s the best place to go to order it, or to get information about it?

Where to Find Pamela’s Book

Pamela Wilson: What I did is I created a landing page with links to all the different places where people can get it because people have their preferred places to find books. Because of the way I have it produced, it took a little extra effort to make this happen. I had it produced by a company that basically distributes anywhere.

If you have a bookstore down the street where you would like to order it, you may have to order it, but you could get it from your local bookstore. It’s basically available wherever books are sold, but if you want to find a convenient page with a little more information on the book and then some links that you can click on, you can go to MasterContentMarketing.com.

Jerod Morris: That’s a great domain.

Pamela Wilson: How about it?

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Pamela Wilson: That was one of those things that I checked to make sure the domain was available before I nailed down the name of the book.

Jerod Morris: By the way, you know you’re a content marketing nerd when you get excited about someone’s domain when they tell you and you’re like, “Oh, that’s so great.”

Pamela Wilson: Totally.

Jerod Morris: “And you got that in the .com, too. That’s awesome!”

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, definitely.

Pamela’s Biggest Recurring Pain Point (It’s Personal), and How She Hopes to Overcome It

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

Pamela Wilson: It’s interesting because it was highlighted in a good way last week at the Digital Commerce Summit. What I am finding is that I miss that personal touch that I had in my offline business. I used to have a lot of personal contact with clients. We would have meetings, go to coffee, or have lunch. I would make presentations to them, even phone calls.

Nowadays, when you have a purely online business, even a phone call seems weird in a way, you know? Everything is so online, email, virtual, and social media. That still seems a little bit weird to me. I am a person who, really, I like people, and I miss being around them. When I say it was highlighted in a good way it’s because I got to have that contact with people last week, and I loved it.

I think the pain point now for me is to try to figure out how we can combine the virtual delivery of our education with some kind of personal contact. Even if it’s not in real life, but it’s over video or on the phone. I think there’s a way to do that. I’m excited to pursue that and see if there’s a way to personalize our education a little bit more than maybe what we’ve been doing.

Sonia and I have already talked about it and talked about ideas that we might be able to implement. I have a feeling that’s going to fuel what we do going forward.

Jerod Morris: Well, and it’s going to be interesting to see where this goes. There is likely to be a coming revolution in this area with virtual reality as well, as Brian talked about in his keynote at Digital Commerce Summit. It’s going to be really interesting to see how that affects how we teach, how we interact with folks online.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, I would embrace that honestly. Anything that makes it feel a little more personal and like you’re really dealing with people, and there’s a little more two-way conversation going on, I would really embrace that. I think it’s missing. I miss it. That’s all I know. I think the students miss it, too.

I tried to introduce some things in Authority, just some sessions and things that highlight our community members, and I think people have enjoyed that.

Why Pamela Relishes Being the Captain of Her Own Ship (Even If It’s a Little Row Boat)

Jerod Morris: Yep. Okay, so other than participating in conference calls with Robert Bruce, what element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Pamela Wilson: You picked the biggest highlight, so what am I going to talk about now?

Jerod Morris: Right.

Pamela Wilson: I’m sure you feel the same way. I have a really amazing job situation right now. I have had my own business for almost a quarter century at this point. I had absolutely no intention of going to work for someone else. That was not even on my radar. When I was asked to join the team a couple of years ago, my thought was kind of like, “Well, I wouldn’t even entertain the notion if it was any other company.”

But like I said to Brian at the time, “I like the work that this company is doing in the world, so yes, I’d like to be a part of it.” But I still have enough time for my own projects, and I really value that. It’s just important to me personally to remain the captain of my own ship, even if that ship is just a little row boat compared to the company that I work for.

It’s important to me. I think it might be part of my identity at this point. I wouldn’t say that I’m unemployable exactly, but I’m someone who highly values entrepreneurship. It’s just an important part of who I am.

To sum it up, what gives me satisfaction is the fact that I can have both of those things. I can work for this company that’s doing this amazing work in the world, but I can still captain my little row boat. I’m happy about that.

How One Little Tool Manages All Pamela’s Important Information

Jerod Morris: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s open up your toolbox real quick here. What is the one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

Pamela Wilson: I would say Evernote, honestly.

Jerod Morris: Ooh.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, I know. I was using Evernote before I joined the team, but after I joined the team a couple of years ago, the volume of information that I had to manage just exploded. There was just so many more meetings and projects that I needed to track. Evernote is an extension of my brain. I cracked it open the first week and started using it pretty aggressively, the first week I started working as a member of the team, and I’ve never looked back. It’s completely searchable. I don’t lose things in there. When in doubt, I dump it in Evernote basically.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, that’s not a bad philosophy. It’s one that a lot of people follow, I’m starting to learn. What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most to your success?

The Unique (and Surprising) Strategy Pamela Has for Keeping Her Many To-Dos Straight, so She Can Get Meaningful Work Done

Pamela Wilson: I would say that would have to be pencil and paper.

Jerod Morris: Hmm, old school.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, I know. I write out my to-do list every morning. It’s like a piece of lined paper, and it’s got one of those red lines and a narrow column along the left side. I write the hours of the day — 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 — however many hours I’m blocking off to get work done. Then next to those hours, I basically write in what I want to accomplish in those different blocks of time. That has been tremendously helpful, just to have a map of my day. It doesn’t always play out that way because stuff happens. Just to kind of have a map of what I’m aiming for first thing in the morning, that has been super helpful.

Jerod Morris: And you go pencil and paper. Do you have a tool that you use to track your to-dos, calendar, and all of that?

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, I’m just laughing because it’s so low tech it’s kind of ridiculous. I have an ongoing to-do list in ByWord. It’s just a document where I have everything dumped that I need to get done. Like we’re recording on a Monday — so I have everything I wanted to get done on Monday, but it’s not in any kind of order. I pull it from there and put it onto my pencil and paper to-do list next to hours of the day.

That’s how I know they’ll actually get done. It’s like, “From 9:00 to 11:00, I’m going to do this thing,” and I have this chunk blocked out for that one thing. It’s like a centralized list where all the to-dos live, and I put them into blocks of time with pencil and paper. Very low tech.

Jerod Morris: But very effective.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, I’ve tried lots of other tools, and this seems to work better than anything else.

Jerod Morris: Earlier I asked you for the one word you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You said ‘published.’ If we talk again in a year, what would that one word be? You’re not allowed to say published again with your book with Sonia.

The Possibilities That Keep Pamela Excited, Along with Being ‘Published Again,’ That Is

Pamela Wilson: Jerod, are you serious? I was going to say ‘published’ again. Now what am I supposed to say?

Jerod Morris: Were you really?

Pamela Wilson: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Did I really steal it? Okay, you can use it.

Pamela Wilson: Well, I am hoping that by this time next year, the book that I’m writing with Sonia will be out, and we’ll be talking about it. I’m hoping it will be out before then. We’ll have to see how it all plays out. I have that second book. I’m starting to get really excited about it.

I think some changes will be coming for the education inside Copyblogger. It was something that Sonia and I met about at the conference last week, but at this point, I’m not really sure what those are going to look like. I’m excited about all the possibilities, but I don’t know what they’re going to look like. I don’t have a word for them because I don’t know what they’re going to look like yet.

Jerod Morris: Okay, but ‘published again,’ that’ll work. That is a big, ambitious goal to get a book out this year, do it again.

Pamela Wilson: ‘Published again,’ and it’s two words. I don’t know, published again, maybe we’ll hyphenate them and make them a compound word or something.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Pamela Wilson: Published again, that’s a big goal.

Jerod Morris: Okay, are you ready for some rapid-fire questions here to close this out?

Pamela Wilson: Oh yeah, bring it on.

The One Book Pamela Would Insist You Read

Jerod Morris: All righty. If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book, what would it be?

Pamela Wilson: It would definitely be Predictable Success By Les McKeown, and I’ll send you a link to it. It is a fantastic book about the way businesses grow. It could be an online business. It could be an offline business. But it just explains the stages of growth in a way that’s different than anything else I’ve ever read. It’s super helpful to give you some kind of a map to follow, with some goals to aim for.

Jerod Morris: Hmm, okay.

Pamela’s Ideal 30-Minute Skype Call to Discuss Her Business

Jerod Morris: If you could have a 30-minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Pamela Wilson: The funny thing is, it would be Joanna Penn, who I ended up sitting next to at our conference one of the days last week.

Jerod Morris: Oh wow.

Pamela Wilson: She asked me to sit next to her, and of course, I didn’t want to fangirl out too much. I’m like, “I’m sitting next to Joanna Penn!” But she has built a business around books, so I would love to have 30 minutes to ask her. I was too embarrassed to do it during the conference because it’s hard if somebody’s sitting there peppering you with questions. I didn’t want to be that person, you know?

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Pamela Wilson: I’m very lucky that because of the Zero to Book podcast, I had many, many calls, I mean way more than 30 minutes, with Jeff Goins, who has been through that book-publishing process as well. He’s a successful author, so I got a lot out of my conversations with Jeff. We obviously recorded them all so that other people could benefit from them, too.

Joanna has a slightly different take. She does things differently. She’s a lot about volume of books and building up collections of books that you can then maybe group together and sell. I love that approach, and it’s worked really well for her. Joanna Penn of the CreativePenn.com.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, she really focuses on creating intellectual property assets. By the way, for anybody who is interested, we have a case study with her inside of Digital Commerce Academy. I know from when this episode comes out, we’re actually closing the doors to Digital Commerce Academy for a while, probably until early 2017. If you’re interested in learning from Joanna, you can get in and watch that case study. It was fascinating just to see her life story — where she was, where she is now, and just the whole strategy that she has.

Pamela Wilson: She really approaches it as a business, which I think is fascinating.

Jerod Morris: She does.

Pamela Wilson: I think a lot of people think that writing a book is all about it being a passion project. That is super helpful. It’s helpful to have that passion, but she’s very strategic about it. I love that. I get a lot out of her materials.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, and when you meet someone for the first time at these conferences, you don’t always know, obviously, how they’ll be in person. But she proved to be about as nice, kind, down to earth, and friendly as anybody could be. She was phenomenal.

Pamela Wilson: Absolutely, yeah.

The One Email Newsletter Pamela Can’t Do Without

Jerod Morris: Next question, what is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Pamela Wilson: I am really liking what CoSchedule is putting out these days.

Jerod Morris: Ooh, yeah.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah — they just have very well-researched, well-written, and nicely presented content. I find it very useful. They talk a lot about social media. I come from old-school marketing, so social media is still something I’m learning more about. And it’s always changing. They just have really good, solid information. I enjoy it.

Jerod Morris: Yep.

The Non-Book Piece of Art That’s Had the Biggest Influence on Pamela as a Digital Entrepreneur

Jerod Morris: Next question, what non-book piece of art has had the biggest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Pamela Wilson: This is like the world’s most awesome question, I have to tell you. Nobody’s ever asked me that. I am very inspired by Pablo Picasso’s volume of work, and I talked about it in my book. He just created a lot of work. He just did a lot of work. It’s one of the things that I recommend to people when it comes to content marketing is to just write a lot.

When you create a lot of work — first of all, you’re practicing, so you get better at it — but you just have more of a chance of creating a handful of pieces that become masterpieces the way his work became. Not all of it. He created a lot of work, and I’ve seen a lot of it in museums because he’s one of my favorite artists. What I said in the book is that not everything that he created was a masterpiece. Some of it, it just looks like he was trying to work out an idea, and the idea didn’t quite work, you know?

Jerod Morris: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Pamela Wilson: But you can see that he just kept at it, kept at it, and then he created a few pieces, they just take your breath away when you see them.

Jerod Morris: Hmm, great one.

Pamela’s Biggest Productivity Hack for Doing Meaningful Work

Jerod Morris: You may have spilled the beans on this one already when we opened up your toolbox, but I will ask you anyway. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, well I have a different answer than what we talked about.

Jerod Morris: Oh good.

Pamela Wilson: Yeah, my productivity hack really is breaking down a piece of content into its component parts and then understanding what each part of the content needs to accomplish. That’s actually the premise of my book. Really the guts of Master Content Marketing is this seven-chapter section basically, right in the middle of it, that talks about your headline, your first sentence, your introduction, your subheads, your main copy, your summary, and your call to action.

Once I understood that good content marketing was made up of those pieces, and then I understood what each piece needed to accomplish, it became so much easier. That’s why I wrote the book that way. It’s like, “If you want to write a good first sentence, this is how you do it,” and I devoted a whole chapter to it.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

How to Get in Touch with Pamela

Jerod Morris: Finally, what is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Pamela Wilson: Well, I’m on Copyblogger every week because I’m now managing the editorial team, as you know. The best place to find me really is on Copyblogger, but they can also find me on Big Brand System. That’s two ways, so it’s double for your money. There you go.

Jerod Morris: Yep, and that is BigBrandSystem.com, yes?

Pamela Wilson: Right, that’s it.

Jerod Morris: Excellent. Well, Pamela, it was fantastic to see you last week at Digital Commerce Summit. It is always great talking with you. Thank you for joining us on The Digital Entrepreneur.

Pamela Wilson: Thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened.

Jerod Morris: All righty, well thank you for tuning into this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks, of course, to Pamela Wilson, my guest on this week’s episode. My thanks also to Will DeWitt and Caroline Early, who helped me produce this, and to the great Toby Lyles, who edited this episode for you.

Just a quick reminder, go to MasterContentMarketing.com to check out the details on Pamela’s book. Don’t forget, as I mentioned, Digital Commerce Academy, we’re closing the doors next week. Not closing the doors forever, we’re just kind of shutting the doors for now. We’re going to re-open them in early 2017.

If you want to get in and get access to all of the great education that is in there, including that case study with Joanna Penn that I talked about and Brian Clark’s course on how to build your online training business the smart way, go to DigitalCommerce.com/Academy, get the details, and get in. When we re-open it in 2017, the price will be higher. Don’t forget about that as well.

Don’t forget to join us next week for another brand-new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. We will be here. We will have another great guest, another great discussion for you. As always. you can find me on Twitter, @JerodMorris. I always appreciate your feedback on the show, so Tweet me anytime. With that said, have a great rest of your week, and I will talk to you next week on another brand-new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Take care.

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

My SEO Story: How I succeeded in SEO and how you can too (STORY)

by admin

Listen to PODCAST by The Recipe for SEO Success

I love a good ‘How to’ podcast, I love finding out new SEO tips and tricks and sharing them with my listeners. But sometimes it’s interesting to hear about how someone put those tips into ACTION and today that someone is me. 

Please note; This is a new type of pod episode (with improved sound!) and the end of the video podcasts. 

Tune in to learn:

  • How I got started with SEO
  • The tactics I used to boost my SEO know how
  • The challenges and negativity I faced along the way
  • How and why I started the Recipe for SEO Success eCourse

Show notes: http://www.therecipeforseosuccess.com.au/my-seo-story-how-i-succeeded-in-seo-and-how-you-can-too
Website: www.therecipeforseosuccess.com.au

https://therecipeforseosuccess.libsyn.com/pod-epsidoe-6-kate-toon

Filed Under: Management & Marketing

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