One week of having resources listed in the new store. What I've sold, how things are progressing, and what my plan is moving forward!
Speaker 0:
So as I'm recording this today, it marks one week since I posted my first resource on TPT, my first free and paid product. They're still the only two resources in my store. I sold one resource, let's see. I listed it on a Saturday and I sold it right after the back to school sale, so I sold it on a Thursday. I have about 18 followers in my store not anything spectacular. I'm also thinking that a good portion of those followers are probably coming from, say, people within RTA who have heard that I have this store and they may be following that, but I don't know. I also have had a little over a hundred views in the last week which I feel really confident in. Again, some of those may be coming from people who are just curious, but lots of good downloads on my freebie. I feel really good about that and, like I said, one sale which isn't anything major, but I feel I feel really good about that too. I've also started my email list and in the last episode I talked about smart versus scrappy and I was kind of trying to decide what all I was going to spend money on and after I made that first sale, I felt really I was feeling a little bit more confident, and so I decided that I was going to spend money on Facebook ads, and so I started that that evening, actually that Thursday evening, and now, about 48 hours later, I'm at almost 80 leads from Facebook ads, so feeling really good about that. That's definitely something that took me a whole lot longer to grow and I'm I'm starting to feel a lot more in my element.
Speaker 0:
The moment that I started to see those email leads come in, I immediately started to feel grounded. For those of you who've been here which probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you've been here, you've known me for a while you know email marketing is my thing. I love it. I feel at home in email marketing. I feel like a duck out of water.
Speaker 0:
In social media, I'm starting to feel like I might be getting my feet underneath me and blogging even though I'm only a few blog posts in I'm starting to feel pretty good about that. Social media not so much, and so I think when I first started this, I had sort of this like grandiose idea of I was going to have to do all of the things that other preschool stores are doing, like I was going to have to have the TikTok I was going to have to have the Instagram, you have to have the Pinterest, the blogging, everything. And now that I'm starting to see these leads come in, I'm like, okay, no, we're gonna scrap that idea and we're gonna go back to basics and do the thing that I feel really comfortable and confident in and that is really work on building my email list, having content that they can go to like via the blog and then using my email list to direct traffic to those other places, like social media, ultimately, so that I can showcase some of the things on social media that are a little bit more visual, like toddler activity ideas, or maybe allowing them to see videos of how some of my resources work, where they might not go to the blog to watch that, or they might not watch an email, and I'm definitely not ready to start a YouTube, but I'm thinking that I'm going to start with email marketing. This is the plan.
Speaker 0:
The current plan is start with email marketing, build that up through Facebook ads, get that sender reputation built up slowly but surely, which I'm really keeping a close eye on, by the way, because I'm getting these leads from Facebook ads. I'm really watching to make sure that I'm getting and maintaining good open rates from those Facebook ads, because I obviously don't want to be getting the wrong people on my list and be getting spam complaints and people not opening their emails and things like that early on and having to like overcome that poor sender reputation. So taking a little bit of a gamble with this, but I'm feeling really confident about it so far. So I think, also, having this email list and having people that I have to regularly email out, I'm going to be getting some direct and indirect feedback from my audience about what they like, what they're drawn to, what they're attracted to in terms of content and get hopefully be able to get a better feel for what they're responding to and also a real kick in the seat of the pants to keep up with the blog and to make sure that I'm creating content that I can send them to. So that's the goal creating content that I can send them to. So pros of doing it this way of starting with the email list first and really putting money behind this, putting time and energy and effort into the email list first is that I feel like it's going to make any other piece of marketing that I'm doing a little bit easier because I'm not going to be having to try to start from scratch with Instagram followers and like, make all this content and try to figure out how to get them to follow me and engage with me and interact with me. I can create the content and, from email, send them over to follow me and kind of help get some of those things off the ground. The other thing that is an obvious pro is that, like I said before, I'm going to be able to get some of that direct feedback hopefully some direct feedback with some replies, but some indirect feedback, just by watching what they're responding to and learn more about them and what they want, and I also have that motivation to continue to turn out content in other areas that I can direct them to. So those are a lot of the pros and I obviously have a way to market to them and I'm not having to wait to slowly build up an email list.
Speaker 0:
Cons to doing it this way is and I've talked about this before because people ask all the time like is it ever too early to start an email list? And the answer is no, it's never too early to start an email list, but it's may not always be worth it in terms of getting your money back right away is that I literally have one paid product in my store. I don't have a lot for them to choose from. Even if they go to my store right now there's like one paid resource. So that's one of the cons is that I don't have a lot of content for them to go and look at. I don't have a lot of things that are ideas that are already created, like blog posts that are already made. I don't have a lot of places that I can point them to. I don't have a lot of resources for them to buy. I just have the one. So that's a definite con is that I am putting money into Facebook ads to grow this email list and I know eventually it will pay off. But in the short term it's an investment that I'm not going to get my money back on for a while, like it's a. It's an investment that I'm not going to see the rewards of or the fruit of for a little while. So that's definitely the cons of that. But that is my game plan right now.
Speaker 0:
My game plan is continue to create blog posts, continue to do the email marketing, just put money behind that and continue to create the resources, money behind that, and continue to create the resources. One thing with my resources, though, is that they are longer, so my particular niche is homeschool preschool right now like very niche, but even within that niche, I am focusing on creating resources that are I don't want to say themed units, I want to say like chunked, to be like six to eight weeks of work at a time, because toddlers obviously get bored. So it's themed work. You know a summer theme, dinosaur theme, you know things like that. It's themed work, but it's comprehensive in terms of like. It's not just covering one letter or covering like five numbers, it's covering all letters of the alphabet within that amount of time, and it's covering counting one to 10 right now. But it also is like no prep, very little cut counting, like nothing to paste, nothing to glue, nothing to have to craft or anything like that, so that a parent can literally like print it out, hole, punch it, stick it in a binder and they have engaging work for their student to do or for their child to do. And so, with that like just knowing my ideal customer, which right now is just me, knowing who my ideal customer is is like that busy mom who's got multiple children at home that they are doing their best to help them just to get pre-K done right, just to have it done. They're not really looking for a lot of extras to do with their kids, like not a lot of crafts, not a lot of messiness, none of that. They're looking for things that they can do quickly, easily, that's going to keep their child's attention, and they don't want to have to, like, go back to the drawing board every week and start over. So it's curriculum that's lasting for like six to eight weeks. So it's taking a little bit longer to create some of these things than what I would love, and so it's.
Speaker 0:
I know that it's going to take a while for me to have a store full of products on the shelf. It just is. It's going to take a while and I'm okay with that, it's fine. But my hope is that by August I'll have 10 paid resources in my store, and I know that's not a lot, you guys. I mean I started mid-April to end of April, and so we're talking about like the space of three and a half months and only 10 products. But even that 10 products, like, I feel like it's going to be kind of hard to do Like I'm not even going to lie. But that's my goal right now is to just have 10 really solid paid products by the time we get into back to school season.
Speaker 0:
Continue to grow that email list, continue to create organic content. I'll also be pinning some pins to Pinterest, but I think it's probably not going to be until back to school hits before I really start on social media, just to kind of save my sanity a little bit and focus on a little bit at a time. But yeah, that's my plan. I will check back in in probably a week or two weeks and kind of let you know how things are going. I'm assuming that some things are going to kind of slow down. I'm not expecting that I'm going to make a lot of sales over the summer, but I am really excited for this and I'm feeling really good. So, yeah, that's the progress so far and that's.