Our Work at Home Life with Jason and Jami: Online Business | Blogging | Working from Home

On the podcast this month we've been talking all about product launches. We covered the big picture overview of how to launch a product and how to work with affiliates to help sell your product.

Today is my favorite episode yet. We are going to be talking about how to create a free opt-in offer that leads to the sale of your product. So let's jump in!

This comes under many names - a freebie, freemium, lead magnet, opt-in offer, etc. But they are all essentially the same thing. It's an awesome piece of content that you giveaway for free. Your readers sign up for it with their email address.

It's an amazing way to grow your audience but it also provides incredible value for your readers. My readers are always thanking me for the awesome free content I give away!

Grows your email list

This one is obvious. This is usually the #1 reason why people giveaway an opt-in in offer. They want to build up and grow their email list. This is great, but if you combine it with an email sequence and a product in mind, it can really push the needle!

Nurtures cold subscribers before selling to them

A free opt-in gets people onto your email list. And it also nurtures them from cold subscribers into raving fans. Throughout your free opt-in offer and a subsequent email sequence, these new readers really get to know you and build that trust.

Great to share on guest posts

A free opt-in offer gives you something extremely valuable to share on other people's blogs as guest posts. You COULD be a guest poster on someone's blog and share your product. But you probably won't get very many sales.

Those readers don't know you from Adam, they don't trust you, they don't yet love you. But GIVE them something awesome for FREE and they get to know you.

Affiliates can share very easily

This is usually my #1 reason for creating a free opt-in. My own readers know me pretty well by now and know if they want a product I come out with. But my affiliates audiences don't know me. Creating an awesome free offer that is easy for your affiliates to share, helps you gain a new audience to sell to AND your affiliates can sell more easily.

Easy to push really hard and then do the actual selling over email

It's so easy to push a free offer insanely!! You can share it on your blog, Facebook live, all over Instagram, in your emails, guest posts, etc. No one gets tired of hearing about a great free product!

So you can push this really hard without feeling like you are selling! And then you can nurture them through an email sequence where you sell hard.

Finding Joy in Your Home Free eCourse

This is by far our most popular free offer. It's a mini-eCourse called Finding Joy in Your Home. This has become my main free offer for my blog and eventually leads to a sell of our academy, My Homemaking Mentor.

This works well because MHM is our most expensive item. So giving them a full course as a FREEBIE works well. Plus, the academy is video based. So giving them a free PDF wouldn't be nearly as effective as a free video series so they can get used to me on video and how I teach.

14 Days of Praying for Your Husband & Marriage

This is a freebie that we launched at the beginning of this year. It's a card set that is designed to be used over 14 days. It has a scripture and a prayer topic on each card. These were super popular!

They lead to a marriage bundle of resources and are the perfect lead in to more printable products!

5 Keys to Planning a Successful Day

The meat of this freebie was an in depth PDF that I put together that was essentially a mini training manual. I wanted to include a video component however, so I took that training and turned it into a video. So the reader has the choice of reading it or listening to it. It also includes a few bonus printables. This was our free opt-in for the 2016 homemaking conference.

Here are some other freebie ideas

• If you are a photographer: Create a checklist of essential newborn shots to get
...

One of the best and most exciting ways to make an income online is by launching your own products. Earlier this week Jason and I shared a big picture overview of how to launch a digital product.

Today we are going to share how to take that product launch to the next level by working with affiliates!

A big focus of ours in our won business in 2017-2018 is expanding our affiliate base. We have around 100 active affiliates right now but only a small portion of these make any significant sales.

A good rule of thumb when thinking about brining on affiliates, is to launch your product first without affiliates. Do a launch, get comfortable with it, make sure the product works, and then bring affiliates into the mix.

People who are interested in sharing your product can sign up for your affiliate program. Once approved they will get their own affiliate links to share your products.

If someone purchases through those links, that affiliate gets a percentage of the sale. Typical commissions on digital products are 30-50%.

Running an affiliate program takes a little bit of technology. I know it can be scary, but there are several different options that can make it easier.

The most common option are Wordpress plugins. Here are a few that we've used.

iDevAffiliate

This is my #1 recommendation if you are using wordpress. It's not actually a plugin, it's an addition you add to your site. It's a little wonky to get set up but once it's set up, it gives you SO many tools. This is an affiliate program you can grow with.

We started off using iDevaffiliate for our digital products and used it for a long time before we had to switch where we host our digital products. Now we use iDev for our product store. It's not the cheapest option out there because it does offer so many features. But it is very affordable compared to make other big programs. I think it's a great happy medium.

Find out more about iDevaffiliate here

What it costs:

• Cloud option: $39 a month and includes a TON of extra features. If you need a FULL affiliate suite (which most people don't need when just starting out), this is an incredible deal!!
• Standard: $199 one time fee. This is very important: a lot of the more robust programs are monthly fees. The standard version is what we have had for several years and it was $199 one time!

Make sure to come follow us on Instagram: Our Work at Home Life!

Woocommerce Integration

If you already use Woocommerce then there are a couple of plugins that are already integrated with woocommerce. It's not necessary to use one of these plugins if you use woocommerce. After all, we run Woocommerce in our product store and yet we use iDevaffiliate as our affiliate center.

I have not used either of these and do not know how easy/hard they are to get up and running. I do like the idea though that they integrate with woocommerce.

The two options they offer are Affiliate WP ($99 a year) or Affiliates Pro ($59 a year).

LeadDyno

The other robust affiliate program that I have been very impressed with in the past is LeadDyno. We used it for a short time last year when we were trying to figure out some fancy things. Ultimately, we ended up moving our affiliate program to Clickfunnels but for different reasons.

Overall I was very impressed with LeadDyno. It was easy to use and offered a TON of advanced features that you can easily grow with. I will need to wrangle Jason into doing a comparison video one day of LeadDyno verses iDev!

Find out more about LeadDyno here.

What it costs:

• $49 a month for the starter plan (which is all you need for a while!)
• Be aware however: The more traffic you have, the more it costs! Overall, iDevaffiliate IS cheaper over all.

We moved our entire digital product database to New Kajabi in 2016 and we haven't looked back! Kajabi comes with an internal affiliate program wh...

Question: "My husband and I would love to entertain the idea of entrepreneurship. While his job is sufficient in providing for us financially, it leaves much to be desired in regard to family life. However, we feel completely stuck at the moment. In addition to a dependable salary, his job also provides excellent insurance coverage for all five of us (dental, medical, and vision). He has a 401k and retirement account that has been funded since he began with the company over ten years ago.

There is a lot to fund financially, and these are all just the basics! How is this done while pursuing entrepreneurship? Are people (entrepreneurs) able to get on top of all these in ways we've yet to discover beyond dependency on a corporate job? Or, are people just going without the future being funded?

Furthermore, how do you fully learn about the local, state and federal regulations and requirements? Registrations and taxes are required of a business.

These are the kind of entrepreneurship questions that are generally not addressed. Having started and managed several successful businesses yourself, what has been your experience in these areas? Have you found any resources that have been particularly helpful? Again, please don't feel obligated to answering anything that may be too personal since these questions do pertain to finances. I appreciate your time in reading and responding to this message."

Getting Started

All this little stuff IS the overwhelming stuff. It's what holds you back. It feels huge and impossible and so scary. And a lot of it we are still figuring out along the way!

If your husband (or you) works a corporate job with a good income, it can be really really difficult to leave. We gave us all of those things when we took the plunge to be self-employed.

Years ago, the security of a corporate job made us feel safe. We needed that. Now we've embraced the freedom in being self-employed AND we've started to view our life as a lot more secure, since our business is up to US, and not a huge company or bosses that could change our fate with a pink slip.

It's a slow process. We built things up on the side first. Jason didn't quit his job on day 1 and then day 2 we tried to figure out an income stream. We tested things out, we built up side income, we knew that with more time and attention dedicated to the business, we could make more money.

So yes, there is a LOT to consider and a lot of different pots that money needs to be funneled into, but those things are simply coming from a different income source. At your job, medical, dental, retirement, etc all comes out of your paycheck. It's just all done for you, BEFORE you see the money and somehow that feels a lot less painful.

So these are all things to keep in mind when considering the jump! But it is doable. Millions of people are self-employed and figure it all out :)

Taxes & Regulations

Personally, I think this was the biggest headache trying to figure out. We had to figure out taxes, what kind of company we needed, did we need a business license, what forms need to be filed, etc.

LegalZoom.com was a huge help to us in the beginning! Because every state (and country) is so different on taxes, regulations, and companies, it's impossible for me to give any advice on how to get started with this.

They have sections that explain all the different companies you can form from an LLC, to a partnership, to a sole proprietorship and more. We landed on needing to form an LLC and then we were able to file the paperwork with LegalZoom! They help you to file the correct file for your state and everything!

Our next negotiable suggestion:

Hire a CPA in your state. We have an amazing CPA who specializes in small business and we don't know WHERE we would be without him. When we get a tax form, or want to try something new, we run it all past him and he tells us what to do.

For what we do, we need someone who is very familiar with online business and our forms of revenue. Our CPA is amazing he helps us with all of that. Yes, it costs a little bit to have him handle all of our taxes but it is WELL worth it. He has walked us through everything.

Medical, Dental, and Vision

Yes, this is another headache. And again, this depends on what state you live in.

We ended up with a sharing company. Medishare.

Dental and vision not worth it. So we pay out of pocket.

Savings & Retirement Accounts

These are all totally doable, but you just need to do a little work to get them set up. We are actually in the middle of setting up these accounts. But again, a good CPA can help with that!

Last week we discussed how to develop a social media strategy. I did an overview of how I handle social media on my main blog, Young Wife's Guide.

Today I'm back to discuss how you can use Pinterest specifically for massive growth! Pinterest is an amazing way to build up your community and reach a massive audience. And Pinterest doesn't have to take very much time at all.

We get traffic from Pinterest in two ways:

1) Through my own personal Pinterest account for my blog.

This is where I pin my own content and other people's content. I typically follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of what I pin is other people's content, 20% is my own. Althought sometimes this shift on Pinterest is more like 50/50.

2) Through other people pinning my blog posts.

This is the beauty of Pinterest! As long as you've got good pictures (see below) and have some strategy when it comes to Pinterest, other people will start pinning YOUR content and you will get traffic from Pinterest without ever being active on Pinterest. Although being active yourself certainly helps.

(HINT: Here's the Wordpress plugin I use to install a Pin it Button ON MY BLOG, very important!!)

The best thing you can do to increase traffic from Pinterest is to make your blog posts more Pinterest friendly. When someone lands on your blog and finds your blog post interesting, make it easy for them to "pin" it to Pinterest.

The biggest thing you want to do is create long graphics to have in each blog post. Each blog post doesn't have to have a picture with words on it, but I always do. Here's a good example of a blog post with a tall vertical image at the top with words on it.

Please note: When I recorded this podcast episode, PicMonkey was a FREE option. However they have no moved to a subscription only service so you need to pay to use it. I think it can still be worth it, but it will cost you $3.99-7.99 a month now. Canva is the free option I now recommend.

PicMonkey is a free, really easy to use tool that allows you to put words on your pictures.

Canva is another excellent free website that gives you even more options (but can be a little more complicated to use).

I personally use Photoshop and have for years but this definitely has a learning curve to it. If you are not a techy person, the first two options will work beautifully for you. With Adobe Creative cloud, you can get access to the full newest version of Photoshop for just $9.99 a month (which is now almost comparable to PicMonkey)!

You need to be very careful about where you find images to use on your blog. It is illegal to just go to google and pull any photo you find (EVEN if you link back to the original source). It has to be a royalty-free photo, which means the original photographer or artist has given permission for it to be used on your blog.

There are some places to find free photos, but I caution you to be very careful about these free stock photo places because many of them have fine print that means you can't crop, add text, change, use for commercial use, etc. So just be careful with any stock photos you find (free OR paid for).

I personally have used 123rf.com for years. Their photos are usually $1-3 a piece and have been very affordable for me. But ask around because there are some other good sources out there. However I haven't purchased a photo on there for a long time now because...

I do still use some stock photos, but I'm moving more and more to using my own photos. I was hesitant to do this for a long time because I am NOT a photographer and felt like I just didn't have the time. But now I'm realizing that that authenticity IS worth the time.

But now when I plan out a blog post, I set aside 5-10 minutes of time to snap some photos of my own. They may not be professional quality, they may not always be the best lighting but I have found that they show more about my life. My own photos help my readers connect with me on an even deeper ...

Welcome to our new show! We laid the ground work in the first 10 episodes, but 2018 is the year of OWAHL and we are going to spend a lot of time this year on what has been our secret to success: sales funnel.

So we are going to take you deep inside our biggest product to date, the product that allowed Jason to quit his job, our annual conferences!