Making Money Online with Amy Lynn Andrews, Episode 62

Episode Transcript

Carrie: Hello. Hello everybody! Welcome to officehoursfm episode # 62. I am live coming to you from Benbrook Texas with my next-door neighbor in Arlington Texas Amy Lynn Andrews. Amy, how are you doing?

Amy: I’m good. How are you?

Carrie: I’m doing just fine thank you. Very excited to have you on the show today. For you guys that are listening our show sponsors today are DreamHost and ManageWP. I’m going to tell you more about them later. For now if you are tuning in you can ask Amy questions by tagging it on Twitter with #officefm or you can go directly (makes sound) that was my rewind sound but it didn’t rewind the tape. OK. You can go you directly to Google+ look for the officehours.fm community and see this broadcast there and just drop a question there and we will get it and ask Amy. So without further ado how the heck are you Amy?

Amy: I’m doing well. Thank you. I’m really enjoying the warm weather. Are you? Are you a hot weather person?

Carrie: You know I prefer hot to cold that this whole like having to shower multiple times a day thing kind of gets old. It’s really bizarre because we went from flooding… literally flooding…to its just been dry as a bone and over 90° for the past week or so.

Amy: Yeah Wild.

Carrie: Yeah. So totally crazy. So you guys that are listening Amy and I were chatting in the preshow and discovered that we literally probably live within half an hour of each other. Which was news to me. So I guess last week Kori Ashton is from San Antonio so we’re just kind of kicking it smart women Texas style. So Amy I first encountered you…actually you sent me an email a while back about maybe doing some work on your site which runs on the Genesis framework. And then I don’t know I just saw you online everywhere and I started stalking you. I signed up for your newsletter which I want to ask you about here not in a little while and I…just so much awesome information week over week over week and I’m really excited to be able to chat with you a little bit and figure out how you went from blogging to actually making money with your blog, how you found your audience and figured out the best ways to connect with them. And then you’re actually creating things to sell. So we’re going to cover that and more. So yeah…let’s start with… just tell the world if they haven’t stalked you like I have just a little bit about yourself.

Amy. All right. Well I started blogging back in 2004 after I got this email from my cousin one day who had started a nonprofit and was like hey check out my website. I was like what? You have a website? For me, I had found the internet before that but I had never thought about being a producer on the Internet. I thought you had to be super techie you know…and I wasn’t. So the fact that he had a website I was like whoa! If he can do it, I can do it, right? I mean we weren’t that different. We grew up like brother and sister almost. So that kind of started my whole little you know exploration into the production side of websites…and whatever. Really early on in the journey, it wasn’t really that popular. 2004…it was so long ago. Most of the people online were really smart computer tech people. Somebody had mentioned hey you know what? The easiest way to start a website if you would just start on WordPress. And so I didn’t know any different so that’s how I started. I kind of accidently stumbled on WordPress… and started just tinkering really…at the beginning…and then finally got this website up. This WordPress site. I was like wow that is so great but Oh No! Now I have to write something. So I don’t enjoy writing a whole lot. But what I was surprised to realize is that I really enjoyed the backend stuff a lot more then the writing part and so that went on…I call myself a closet blogger… for probably six or seven years and then that was a season of my life I had a lot of little kids at home and stuff and I just didn’t have time to time to kind of network and get out there. Then it was about 2010 when my littlest was a little bit older, I had a little bit more time and so that’s when I actually got on Social Media. Before then I wasn’t on Social Media at all. I got on Social Media about 2010 and realized that there was this whole community of bloggers that were asking questions like on Twitter…how do I make my website do that… and how do I make my website do that. See they were the opposite of me. They wanted to write and started the whole blogging thing but hated the back end. Well you just do that…Oh! You just do that that. And so I got so many questions finally I was like…ok fine. You know I just basically started a brand new site that kind of walked people through the process of how to get up and running on WordPress.

Carrie: That’s awesome. See not everybody has to be super in love with writing. Yeah. Once you put that url out there…there is this immense pressure to actually write content.

Amy: Yeah.

Carrie: But I’d say for someone who doesn’t like doing it you produce a fair amount of really quality content.

Amy: Well thank you. I think it’s probably more accurate to say it doesn’t come easily to me. I mean one blog post for me especially if it’s a tutorial or something like that…I mean it is…it is a day’s long process. Hours and hours and hours. Of course I’m just you know fitting it in nooks and crannies of life anyway. So it’s not like I am sitting down and being…I’m not able to devote big chunks of time. And oh! It’s just so exhausting for me. I enjoy collecting information and organizing it. That’s really my favorite part. And then putting it into a coherent blog post is the challenging part. But I do enjoy it and the reason why I have enjoyed I think the tutorial parts of it and stuff…when I actually publish them it’s…I know that they’re helpful and I know for myself people were so generous with their help at the beginning because I knew nothing. Nothing, Nothing, Nothing. So it’s always satisfying to hear from somebody who says…Hey…you know what? I followed I don’t know even know how to turn my computer on. I followed your tutorial and now I have a Website. (both laughing)

Carrie: That’s awesome. Well you know being newer to WordPress you come with a really unique perspective. That is you remember when you didn’t know how to do things. I think for those of us who have been…I’ve been doing this for well as we say in Texas… since Moby Dick was a minnow…and I forget what it’s like for something to not be intuitive about you know code and websites and all that stuff. So you’re in a unique place to now that you know those things to really write some awesome helpful content. Is that like finding that niche and getting that good feedback from people was that when you were like ok let’s keep this going?

Amy: Yeah. It was very satisfying when people started you know going…oh wow… thank you so much! I had no idea. You know? So then I sort of ditched my first blog entirely and kind of went this whole direction…which is how to start a blog. But I feel like it’s already,,,it’s already changing again. I’m sure you see that too. It’s like now…before those types of blogs like how to start a blog site that I had…you know it was kind of like you can cover everything. But now everything is exploded so much and there’s so many areas of specialization that you just can’t…like one person can’t cover everything.
Carrie: True. That’s why there’s Lynda.com.
Amy: Yeah. Exactly.

 

Carrie: Woo! Wanted to chime in for the listeners are very sorry for some folks who saying that this is not watchful live on my site. So yeah…sorry about that. You can…there’s a link there on Twitter #officefm to watch it directly from either YouTube or Google+. I pretty much broadcast everywhere. Because you know…the more the merrier. All right. So anyways thanks to everybody who’s tuning in, even if you are a little late to the party, we’re glad to have you. Ok. So I’m curious. You send out this once a week newsletter called the Useletter. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re not familiar with it, go over to AmyLynnAndrews.com and check it out. So you send out this weekly Useletter and I love it that you call it the Useletter. It’s full of all these really great usable little nuggets of info. Did you originally start like going…just broadcasting your blog posts rss style and then evolve to the weekly newsletter? What was that like?

Amy: Well I think it sort of came…it’s sort of all…I don’t know…perfect storm situation. I’m not even sure how it all happened. But I think there were a couple of things at the time that…this is Summer 2013…that made me think wait a second…ok so I had this issue of really not being super excited about writing blog posts. Then I have the issue of you know just at that time is like…start a list…start a list..everybody’s like start a list you know? Then we started seeing Facebook traffic…organic traffic and stuff. That’s all taking aside…and then you can just see each network right after that it’s like domino effect it seems…that everybody introduces the personalized search. Or they introduce the Pinterest search or whatever…and it kind of all goes in the same direction as Facebook went. And then what I realized was you know once people get started and they’re online and they’ve got a website that’s great. But you know I was starting to get to the point where all of the posts that I had written in the past…or not all of them…but so many of them became outdated so quickly. So I thought, wait a second. I’ve got to rethink this format. Because I didn’t like idea of somebody going to my site and landing on a post that was written two years ago. I mean I could go in there and make a note or whatever …this is no longer relevant or whatever but I didn’t like the idea that people were getting…maybe be getting outdated context. I thought there’s got to be le a better way to do this. And so I thought you know what? Why don’t I just start producing most of my content in the Useletter. Then I can just do kind of these snippets and then direct people to the places where you know somebody really knows what they’re talking about…I mean I can tell you how to get on WordPress…but you know I’m not a coder. I am not… my expertise is limited, let’s say that. But I can tell you a lot of places where oh you want to know about Facebook guys? Go check out this resource. Oh you want to know about SEO? Go check out these resources. You know, that type of thing. So it was just a nice way to you know I guess make it work better. I think it suits me better too.

Carrie: Have you found that it’s reduced traffic or time on site for your site since you’re sending people off? And you said I should mention somebody hadn’t gotten the Useletter before. You’re not clicking through to read the newsletter on your site. It all arrives via email. So potentially somebody could get all this great information from you and never even go to your site. Does that make you sad or are you getting plenty of organic stuff from other directions.

Amy: It is making me sad. And especially in the last couple of months. I don’t know. My traffic has tanked. I mean like 50% loss in traffic in the last two months. So I mean…I’m just like ok…whatever, you know? Now one thing is I do get a lot of organic search traffic. That is one thing that I never really set out to do that but because I think my domain has been around so long and you know whatever…whatever. It has kind of happened that way. But I didn’t really notice…oh but I should say that my traffic was never gigantic to begin with. It wasn’t like I was getting a million page views, you know? So it’s like… whatever the traffic is going down…so I’m really at this point focusing my efforts on the e-mail now. I figure well you know if I can keep the open right up on the email then at least I know that people are still getting myself. I can basically…you know affiliate marketing has been my main source of revenue up till this point. So I can put affiliate marketing links in the email just as well as I can do elsewhere…so on the blog. I don’t really know what to do about the blog honestly. Isn’t everybody experiencing a traffic drop?

Carrie: Yes. Yes this latest Google whatchamacallit. Which I really don’t pay attention to. I don’t care. I’m just going to keep doing what I do and not try to game it is because I will get gamed when it’s all said and done anyway. Yes there has been a noticeable drop. I was attributing it to the fact that I’ve only been publishing like one blog post a month which I thought was the cause of my traffic drip. It could be partially Google as well. Interesting. You know maybe you could do like a video. Add a video component that’s posted on your Website that adds some value other than what’s just in your Useletter and then direct people online to get like the message from Amy. Because you’re such a personable character. I mean I’m sure people would love to go watch your face on Google. A three or four minute snippet or something.

Amy: Actually that’s a great idea! In fact I did start this thing. I did four episodes of what I called the Hey Amy show, because everybody’s like Hey Amy! How do you…Hey Amy? How do you…duh, duh duh. Ok. So here’s the Hey Amy show. I’ll just answer your questions. I can talk a lot better than I can write. So I did four episodes of that. That was fun and I enjoyed it. I enjoy it a lot more than coming up with a blog post. But then…you know how it is. Every time you start something new it takes so long to kind of get the rhythm and get the hang of it. I was basically learning video editing from scratch. I’m the type who…I just like that stuff so I like to tinker so it’s fun. But actually there was a lull in my Hey Amy show episodes but I just recorded three the other day. So it is on the horizon.

Carrie: On like Donkey Kong. Are you most of these guys on YouTube or Vimeo?

Amy: Yeah. You know what? The first four are all on YouTube. I never did write blog posts for them which was dumb. Ok. Really it’s because I’m lazy. Let’s just say it. (laughing)

Carrie: You know what? I don’t know if lazy would be the word to define you maybe that just wasn’t your priority.

Amy: There we go. There we go. But now I have somebody who’s actually helping me so hopefully we’re going to establish a system where she can put it up on the blog. I don’t know! I have issues. Let me tell you…I have issues. There is something about that WordPress publishing window. It is so hard for me to click the publish button. It’s so goofy but…I don’t know why it gives me all kind of stress.

Carrie: Well you’re not alone. It really is like this little something sitting on my shoulder you know hounding me to push publish and get stuff out there. I can’t seem to do it on a regular basis because I never put up short stuff. They’re always know things like you said tutorials and things that are kind of time consuming. But just a thought…

Amy: Oh sorry.

Carrie: Sorry. It was me you first. You first.

Amy: (laughing) No. I was just saying…tutorials…they take so long to write…don’t they?

Carrie: Oh yeah. Definitely. That’s why I’m only publishing once a month. But last week when we had Kori on, they do quite a bit of posting videos on YouTube and she mentioned that she started adding closed captions. Which is basically just a form of transcription and that she saw her numbers just kind of boom. So that might be interesting. I do transcripts for the show but haven’t toyed with doing them for YouTube yet. But that might be another interesting way to repurpose some of your content that you’re producing over on your blog without completely just rewriting all the stuff. Anyways…

Amy: Yeah. That’s a great example of leveraging your content and just splitting it up. You know Jay Baer? I don’t know how he does…did you ever see that post of his? He does one 3 minute video and it gets split up into eight different pieces of content.

Carrie: Whoa!

Amy: Oh Carrie. You’ve got to see it. I’ll have to send you the link. I don’t have it in front of me but it’s just such a great idea.

Carrie: That’s awesome. OK. We’ll throw that in the show notes (here you go!) and post that on Twitter later after we find it. So I’ve got a couple of questions for you. You mentioned affiliate income that today that’s been your largest source of revenue. It sounds like you do it some on your Website and also some via the Useletter. Can you talk a little bit about what’s your strategy has been, who you affiliate for and how you use your affiliate program?

Amy: Right. It was kind of a no brainer at the beginning when I was teaching people how to get started on WordPress. They obviously need hosting so hosting was an affiliate and then Genesis. I use Genesis myself. I would say 99% of the products that I promote as an affiliate are ones I actually use. And I buy them like paying customers use. So even if somebody emails me and says Hey I’ve got this product you know. Do you want a complimentary copy or whatever…a lot of times I just prefer to go to through the sales page and process and try to myself in the shoes of a reader. If I know my readers, is this a product that I would really be interested in? So much that I would be willing to pay for. So basically it’s just the products that I’ve use along the way that I now say Hey! This is a great product and I this has…there’s a lot of helpful things that you can do with this and you know that’s really my strategy. I don’t have a huge you know marketing strategy at all.

Carrie: Well that I think what you said is perfect! Like you’re going through the process seeing what products that you actually would with be willing to spend money on. Then that way when you’re recommending them it’s coming from…it’s not so selly salesy. It’s more from helpful-helpy which is bound to be successful for myself as well.

Amy: Well and I think too is that then I don’t feel pressure to say all good things. If i didn’t find that they were all good things then I can really…I could say yes this is really great. But you know what? I’m kind of disappointed. I spent this money on this and I can’t even do x-y-z. You know something like that. I’m just a sucker for free stuff and so it ‘s kind of like keeping myself in check.

Carrie: A sucker for free stuff. All right. I mean really. Aren’t we all? I’m wearing a free t-shirt as we speak. Ok. Sorry. I had to take the breath though there because I don’t even have an excuse. Just add it to allergies and such. Ok. So Jackie has a great question on affiliate disclosure while we’re on that topic. So at least in the US there’s quite a few regulations or rules kind of dictating how affiliate links are disclosed in an attempt to not be smarmy about it although the rules are for the people that aren’t going to be smarmy about it anyways. The people that are going to be swarmy aren’t going to go by the rules. Anyways…what are your thoughts? How do you disclose your affiliate links?

Amy: Well a lot of my posts in the past that I’ve done before have like a disclosure at the end of the post. I just haven’t had a chance to go back and update them. I forget when the FTC guidelines came out with that 20…oh man…was that 2012 I want to say? The last one.

Carrie: Yeah. Maybe so.

Amy: I think it was a while ago. Honestly I’m not really sure how to advise people when they give me the question. I mean of course I’m not a lawyer or anything like that but a lot of people have said well those are guidelines. I’ve heard people make the argument those are guidelines that’s not the law. I think…well… I don’t know. So basically I can do what I want. Some people have said well…and this makes sense to me…like okay so you’re looking at like a commercial on TV or something. In this totally unreadable print at the very bottom of the screen is they have their disclosure statement…you know… it’s like what? So as a blogger I’ve got to put this full paragraph at the beginning of my post with my disclosure? Like what car dealership who’s got like this you know 2 point font at the bottom of the TV screen that’s flashing on there for like 1.2 seconds. You know?

Carrie: You may die if you use our products.

Amy: Exactly. These results are not typical or whatever. Anyway…so I guess the reasonable part of me is thinking you know that’s a good argument. Yeah. That seems reasonable. However I mean the FTC guidelines to me seem pretty clear. That you just want to make sure that somebody who’s clicking through the link is somehow connected to income for you. So what I’ve been doing now is….well I’ve done a series of things. One of things I’ve done is put * by anything that’s an affiliate link and then at the bottom of the post there’s just an * asterisk…blah…you know what I’m saying?
Carrie: Easy for you to say…

Amy: With a note that says this is an affiliate link. You will find a full disclosure policy whenever…so I use that method. I also like in the Useletter…I just put right at the top you know this email contains affiliate links. And even when the email doesn’t contain affiliate links, I just leave it in there. You know? So I guess I wrote a post about it on how you disclose things properly. I think eventually what I’ll do…I’m just going to eventually sort of…as I update my site….my site is a mess. In my brain it is like a mess and in need of constant updating. Eventually what I hope to do is just put a disclosure right at the top of every post and just say this may contain affiliate links and kind of leave it at that. Of course you got other stuff.

Carrie: Somebody random just showed up in our Hangout.

Amy: Oh Yeah.
Carrie: Sorry Derek. In the words of Alanis Morrisette You’re Uninvited. (laughing) Well Ok

With that complete non sequitur, I would like to tell our listeners about our fantastic sponsors. We’ve got DreamHost. They recently just introduced DreamPress2. It’s hosted on virtual private servers. It’s super duper fast. It’s a Managed WordPress host. They’ve got a lot of speed enhancing features like solid-state drives and if you like to play with like caching your hhvm which stands for hip hop virtual machine. How fun is that to even think about? I just imagine the cardboard and (Carrie seat dancing)…ok never mind…Anyways if you are really into the server-side of things you will enjoy DreamPress 2. Check them out@ dreamhost.com/officehours and as a side note I’m about to well…I won’t say a whole lot. I’ve got a site over at DreamHost in the works and it’s for a second podcast that I am working on. So yes…I’m doing it again.

And then our second sponsor the lovely ManageWP. If you’re not using them you may be wasting your time. Automate all your WordPress administrative tasks from a single dashboard for multiple sites. You can update, backups, generate client reports which are really handy if you’re doing maintenance for a client you can just click report, select the time period and it’ll show you all the plugins you’ve updated, if WordPress has been updated, how many times it was backed up. It’ll show all of that for you. So you actually have something to you client for the money they are giving you to support their site. Check them out at ManageWP.com. And now back to our regularly scheduled program. We’re at the halfway point here and if people are trickling in late, I just want remind you that you can ask Amy questions over at #officefm. Ok. We’ve got another one. You ready?

Amy: Yes I set it.

Carrie: Ok. So Davinder is asking other than affiliate income what other income streams have you set up for your blog?

Amy: Ok So affiliate income. I did try to display advertising like Adsense for a while. I didn’t like the way that it looked and…I felt…you know I just didn’t want to send people away. The other thing that I did in 2010 was I wrote an e-book. That was kind of an experiment you know as I said, writing is not my greatest thing but I thought hey, let me try this e-book thing and see how it works. So I did that. That actually works quite well and it’s still…I still get sales every month from that too. So that’s kind of cool. I like that because you know you do it once and then that’s it. I need to update it probably eventually but for now it’s OK. It’s a timeless topic and that’s what I would recommend anybody who’s doing e-books to do. If you’re going to write an e-book, especially a traditionally a published, make sure that it’s timeless. Otherwise things get outdated so quickly. Especially in this genre. Then I’ve also experimented with a membership site. Now I have something that’s also similar. It’s kind of a membership site but it’s… what…I guess it’s basically free access to my notebook. You know the place where I keep all of my notes as I’m searching through the Internet finding stuff.

Carrie: Ok. Yeah. So that’s membership or restricted content.

Amy: Yes. Premium content. I think those are mostly the main income streams. I mean there’s really not a whole lot other than that, right? I mean your products. Oh services! I did that as well for a while. I was a virtual assistant. I helped a couple of other bloggers. I did consulting/coaching one on one for awhile too. I tried it all. I guess. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Carrie: I like that cowboy spirit of sort of throwing it up seeing what sticks. I mean that’s really…as an entrepreneur that’s kind of what you have to do. But it sounds like you found some things that are going successfully for you. What’s been the response to the notebook and actually first if you would share with folks who haven’t heard of the notebook…I always want to say (says slowly) n o t e b o o k because it’s spelled Knowtbook. What is that and how are people responding to that content?

Amy: Right. So in the last year especially…I mean it’s been before that. But this whole push for create your own product…create your own product…create your own products. I started thinking ok. What can I create you know and of course the whole e-course thing is big or has been big…and everybody’s doing it. I was going to create an e-course which basically gives people a little bit more information than what they get just on my blogs. I would say my blog is pretty much just covers the basics about blogging. Getting started with blogging, social media, that sort of thing. So I thought I’ll create an e-course that allows people to go a little bit deeper. Well I started going through the process…I thought…a couple of things struck me. 1) To do it really well in other words to compete with the people who are…you know like the Michael Hyatts of the world let’s say who are putting…who have this huge team and huge budget and whatever. You really have to invest a lot. I’m not anti-investing in my business at all, but just my personal my bent is just to stay really nimble. I like to be able to change my mind and change the pivot you know that buzzword…pivot on a dime. Because here’s what I’ve learned. As I’ve gone through the years blogging, I have learned along the way that some thing actually a lot of things I started that felt like a great idea at the beginning…once I did them I was like..oh this is not a good fit for me. For example when I first started blogging, it was a blog really about my life. At the time my husband and I lived in upstate New York. He was a pastor and I was a pastor’s wife. I really struggled in that role as a pastor’s wife. I went through depression…blah, blah, blah. Anyway, when it came time…when I had like started this WordPress site and I thought oh man. Now I have to write something. What am I going to write? I didn’t know what else to write except what was going on in my life. So that’s what I did. I didn’t think anybody was going read it. Well suddenly all these pastor’s wives found it. And so they were like…you know emailing me all the time and whatever. I then was like…I can’t keep up. The comments got more and more active. Someone said hey start a forum. Ok. That’s a great idea. I’ll start a forum. So I started a forum. But I wasn’t… I hadn’t done the forum for five minutes and I was Oh I don’t want to do the forum. I’m a total introvert. So I like to just do my own thing in my closet…nobody talk to me.
Carrie: (laughing) And here you are live on national television.
Amy: At the time it was like keeping up moderating the forum was so stressful. I had no idea that it would be my reaction to it. Besides as you get older you figure things out. So I started AdSense and I thought oh it’s not my style. I think it’s great for other bloggers. In fact it’s really great for a lot of bloggers but for me, it just didn’t anything for me. So that’s why I Iike to remain nimble and to be able to change quickly. So…I had a point….

Carrie: It’s all right. I was just listening to you pivot and it was fascinating.

Amy: I guess the question about what are my other income streams…so…oh…I know what I was talking about. The Knowtbook. You were asking me about the Knowtbook. So anyway I thought I’d do the e-course. Then I’m looking at what it would really take to put out a decent e-course…I’m like…I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to invest the time and I don’t want to invest the money. So…again that’s just me. A lot people do it so, so well. I just..so thought…wait a second…ok…I need to revamp…rethink my plans here. I have used WorkFlowy. Do you know WorkFlowy Carrie?

Carrie: No.

Amy: WorkFlowy is basically a list maker.

Carrie: Oh. I like lists.

Amy: Oh, it’s so simple, very lightweight, superfast, syncs across all devices and it’s just like…chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. Evernote, for example, I like. Evernote is like my phone…ok (nods head) already. WorkFlowy has been great. So what I’ll do…I love research. It’s my favorite part of everything. So what I’ll do…is I will have two screens…sorry…two windows on my screen…WorkFlowy is on one side and whatever I’m looking at reading on the other side. So as I’m reading I’m in the WorkFlowy taking notes. And I’m organizing the information as I can. I built this huge WorkFlowy notebook. I mean it’s basically just my notes. Some of those notes go into the Useletter some those notes are just my own notes to myself. Like Hey! So and so is doing this really interesting thing. I should check that out at one point or whatever. And then ask myself…wait a second… why don’t I just make my notebook accessible to all because WorkFlowy also has that option. You can you can share it with other people. So I thought that’s a totally easier way to do it. I don’t feel like I’m on the hook to produce this beautiful gorgeous polished e-course and at the same time I just build it. It’s what it is. My notebook. So I’m not doing professionally edited video. I am not…its you know…this is just what it is. If you’re interested in picking my brain, you know, right? Isn’t that the question we get so often? Hey Carrie! Can I pick your brain, right?

Carrie: I hate it. I just imagine like this how going in my ear and actually picking my brain. Yeah. Not interested.

Amy: I’m like this is my brain. That’s what I did.

Carrie: I love it. There are a couple points that I just want to circle back around and highlight. That is you found something that worked for you. I think that’s so important. It’s easy to see other people doing things and seeing some success in it and say…Ah! I want to try that. But the secret is not really in the “that”, the format. Whatever it is. It’s finding what’s comfortable for you and then connecting with your audience which is exactly what you’ve done. That is awesome. You’ve been able to monetize it so you get bonus points. So how….let’s talk about that…what is your price point for that access and how did you land on that price point?

Amy: So my price point at this point is pay what you want. So I said, ok. Just to start…like ok. Just to start the price of the Knowtbook for access is $24 bucks. But you can pay what you want. Anything from a dollar up. Why did I get there? Ok. A lot of my life I lived in Kenya. Its super important to me…I mean I have personal friends there. Kenyans still live there that I spent a significant part of my life with. I just think myself here is a country with brilliant, brilliant, brilliant people. For a lot of them they just don’t have the access to the resources that could really help them. Also, a lot of my audience here in the States, Australia, Europe, a lot of them are single income families. You know like the mom or the dad, or whomever is not working outside the home and is trying to figure out ways to supplement income inside the home. That was my experience too when we first started. I just thought you know, there are legitimately people in this world that they can’t pay $500 for a course, you know? I didn’t invest anything in this. It’s not like I had to lay out tens of thousands of dollars to get it all put together because it’s really not the prettiest thing. I’ll be honest with you. It’s not the prettiest format at all. I think it gets the job done. And you know it can really provide information for somebody who needs it. That was kind of my thing at the beginning. I don’t know if I will continue the set your price pricing. But it works for now and I’m happy with it. I’m just trying to experiment with and figure out whether I want to expand it. Whether I want to make it bigger. If I want to offer more…whenever. You know? Then I’ll change the pricing. That’s where I’m at.

Carrie: So where do people generally fall in that range? If you don’t mind sharing.

Amy: Well a lot of people pay the $24 bucks. Because I say at the beginning the price is $24 bucks but for a limited time you can pay what you want. You know it would be interesting to pull some stats. Like exactly how it plays out. A lot of people just pay $1 a buck which is fine with me you know. So I’d say it’s a pretty good mix. I have not marketed it hardly at all. Like if you go to my main site you’ll see notes about it here and there and every once in a while I’ll mention in the newsletter. I didn’t do a huge launch. I didn’t do a huge marketing campaign for it or anything. So I get pretty…it’s interesting…I get a pretty wide variety. A lot people kind of land on the $10 mark. Like I said a lot of people pay the $24 bucks and a lot of people pay $1a buck.

Carrie: Have you had anybody pay over $24?

Amy: Yep. I have had people pay over $24. Not a lot of over $24. I don’t know…I know $25. Have I gone up to $30?

Carrie: (laughing) That’s for the OCD person that just likes tidy numbers.

Amy: Yeah. So I don’t think that really counts. They paid over, right? I can’t remember if somebody has paid more than that. Anyway. So it’s kind of interesting to see…at this point in time…I feel so ping pong balled brain right now. I’ve got so many things going on that I kind of need to focus. I just haven’t figured out where I’m focusing yet.

Carrie: That’s the chronic trouble with being in business for yourself. I mean there’s always so many little rabbit trails to follow and it’s…like how far do you pursue an idea before you…I mean you have to pursue enough to know if it’s worth pursuing. But at what point do you bail if it’s you know not going to pan out. Yeah. I feel you, is really the whole bottom line there.

Amy: Yeah it’s hard. And like I was saying earlier, it’s harder now too. Because you have to go in that direction. I think…when did you start blogging? When did you start online?

Carrie: Um….well I started with prodigy back in the early 90s. My first blog was on blogger and that was probably ’04 maybe?

Amy: Ok. Ok…like blogging…maybe we started about the same time. Wouldn’t you agree that back then it was like…you know…if you wanted to know about simple living there was one or two blogs that you followed, you know? It covered this huge niche and everybody…you just knew where to go. But now it’s like you’ve got YouTubers you’ve got you know the Viners… you’ve got the pod casters. Now you have the Periscopers and the MeerKaters. You know? I mean it’s just like you have to niche down so far these days. For me. when I started it was like I could cover so much. So I find it extremely difficult to do that. To limit myself.

Carrie: Ok. What last week on the show I learned what Periscoping was. Kori actually periscoped us on the show. What in tarnation is a Meerkat?

Amy: Well it’s an animal that lives in dry aired mountains. (laughing) No. Meerkat is very similar to Periscope. Same idea.

Carrie: Ok.

Amy: Yeah. The same idea. It kind of came out about the same time. Of course Periscope has the Twitter connection. So I guess we’ll see which one, if either of them win out. But it’s the same idea.

Carrie: Interesting. Those are people throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Amy: Exactly.

Carrie: We had a comment from Leonica and she says I’m a little sad because I cannot buy your Knowtbook through PayPal. I’m guessing that you could probably…Leonica if you connected with Amy. I’m just going to go ahead and throw it out there.

Amy: Yeah go ahead.

Carrie: I’ll pay the $24 on your behalf and Amy can hook you up with a book. I might pay you $25 because I’m feeling particular today.

Amy: Are you confessing you OCD?

Carrie: Only about certain things. I was sending an email to someone helping them out with a little bit of code last night. It was not for work. Not anything that was needed to be professional but I was typing headings and I got the dashes a little different on one. I had to go back and fix it because it bugged the crap out me. I’m like that is ridiculous! I could have done something better with those two seconds of my life and if you added all of them up they might make a whole day or something and I could be laying at the pool.

Amy: Exactly. I do the same thing. Oh my goodness. I’m so nitpicky. It’s bad.

Carrie: You know it comes in handy for certain aspects of life. Like coding for example. It’s good to not miss that one period or semicolon. That can really screw you up. So here’s something embarrassing. I have one plugin in the WordPress repository. I hadn’t updated it in almost a year just because I hate working with subversion and I couldn’t remember how to do it. I was going to have to Google how to do it all over again. So I finally bucked up and shipped an update to the plugin yesterday. Well somewhere in there and this is where the little dot and the semicolon come in. A plus sign + had worked its way into the code and I didn’t catch it. And so last night I got a note from somebody saying that I crashed their…gotten a fatal error and I was like…oh no.

Amy: Oh No!

Carrie: Yeah. So today there’s a new little release out there. Which really, me telling you this is apropos to nothing other than its good to be detail oriented in some things.

Amy: Yes. You are right. You know what? Like plugin writers and stuff…to me that is you guys need know your stuff. You can pretty well get by with so much just blogging in general but that stuff is to me is really impressive. So good for you. And that you found the little + because I know enough code to get myself in trouble. That’s why I e-mailed you.

Carrie: Well.. Don’t be too impressed. The entire file is only like 50 lines long and the error actually said which line that + sign was on. It wasn’t too hard to track down. We’ve got some good questions for follow up. Davinder wants to know what’s next? Do you have a what’s next? Are you thinking about becoming a Periscoping skydiver or what’s on the horizon?

Amy: Oh! That’s a good idea. I’m having mixed feelings about Periscope. But I think myself I’m going to go kind of like what we were talking about before the YouTube route I’m going to give that a little bit of a shot. And I think what I’m going to do is try to do what Jay Bair said really leverage the content. Produce it once and then kind of spread it across. Then try to monetize it as I can across those. I toyed with the idea of writing a book that is about my life which you know is totally unrelated to what I’ve done in last five years. But just my life in general. I have had a MasterMind group and we had a retreat a couple weeks ago and I was just you know talking about some of my own personal experiences growing up because I lived overseas quite a bit. They’re like you need to write this down. Why haven’t you writen a book about this? I’m like I don’t know. So they’re kind of on me to do that. I don’t know if I’ll get around to it, but that’s something. And then I also have thoughts about…I don’t know maybe something…we’ll see how this little video Hey Amy Show goes. Then maybe branching out into videos. You know more substantial videos. I don’t know…documentaries…I don’t know. It’s totally overwhelming. That would be years down the line. But I’m always looking for ideas.

Carrie: Cool. That’s fun to think about. Will people go subscribe to Amy’s Useletter so you can see if she’s all the sudden broadcasting live from Kenya one of these days. Davinder had a comment for you. You might want to look at Gumroad for selling your e-book. That they support both credit cards paypal and they take care of that whole EU VAT situation which I kind of conveniently ignored.
Amy: You know what? I would’ve been on Gumroad three years ago if they had an affiliate program. But they don’t. I mean…when I say that…I mean give me the ability to have affiliates on my own. But they don’t and last I read they didn’t have a plan to do that. I was like, really? Because it is. It’s beautiful. Gumroad is beautiful.

Carrie: That’s really interesting. That they don’t offer that component.

Amy: Yeah. It’s very sad. I’m like really? You won’t even…yeah I don’t understand. Like why? But it is what it is.

Carrie: We just had some random…Hey sorry Anthony…I got to kick you off brother. I don’t know where you came from. Ok apparently I made this Hangout public or something? I’ve never have random stuff pop up on the show. Interlopers. Interlopers they are. I have a question and this you’ve already kind of touched on this…but just thoughts on saturation of content for users on the web and how like…for instance you’ve build this audience so the content you’re writing…even though it’s great…it’s good stuff. But it’s not like you can’t find that information somewhere else on the web. Sorry Jackie. I’m hijacking your question but how do…or why do you think it is that an audience chooses to come back to you when there’s so much of this information available?

Amy: Yeah. And it’s a great question and it’s so true. I mean you could find anything right? Anything. What seemed clear to me that was probably another factor in me switching from the blog to the Useletter is that…it became apparent that back in the day 2004- 2005 whatever. You would follow blog. But then…and then Blogspot got all these contributing writers because they couldn’t you know sustain the writing. Just the one blogger themselves and so it really became clear to me that people who are going to be following people they weren’t going to be fine websites anymore. So my theory is it that everybody connects with somebody, right? And if I find somebody that I feel a connection to is maybe in a similar stage of life or maybe had similar bents that I do or has you know a story that resonates with me in some way, or whatever. I will follow them. So you no matter where they go, if they’re on social media, if they’re on their blog, if they’re on another blog, if they’re on YouTube, whatever…I’m interested in them and developing a relationship with them. So the way that I see the Usesletter is it’s not going to appeal to everybody. Absolutely not going to appeal to everybody and I’m not trying to appeal to everybody. But I can tell people hey look. This is kind of my story. This is where I’m at right now. I’m a non-techie person who kind of became techie and if I can do it you can do it too. And …you know the other things in my life are you know my husband and I have this kind of tag team work schedule. We both worked part-time. And then we’re the other part-time work we’re at home. We’re homeschooling our kids. So we have this really unique lifestyle. It that’s something that is familiar to you or you’d like to pursue or resonates with you in some way…I can tell you what is floating my boat at that point and I’ll share that with you. If that floats your boat too, then great. If you want another perspective for example…I’m not a huge stat person. I don’t follow my metrics a lot. That’s not because I don’t want to. It’s just because I don’t have the time…and I can’t…its priorities. If you are like hard-core I want the stats the scientific evidence for things and why this works and why this doesn’t work then I’m probably not the person to follow because I go by my gut. You know most of the time. I can refer you to somebody else. That Jeff Bledsoe or Rumor you know something. You know that has more of that bend. Absolutely. There’s nothing free. There’s nothing new under the sun really you know… are you connecting with the people I think is the main thing.

Carrie: I love that and I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. So I won’t even try. It goes back to what you were talking about earlier was sort of finding your niche. That you’re doing what feels right to you. You’re being true to yourself and in that you’re being genuine which of course is attractive to people. That’s part of building your audience. Awesome. Good little nuggets there. I’m afraid that our time is almost up here. If you’ve got a little question that you want to slip in under the wire for Amy #officefm. In the meantime tremendous thanks to ManageWP and DreamPress 2. Brought to us from our friends at DreamHost. I appreciate them sponsoring the show today so that we can bring you what I hope is helpful and useful content week after week. If you want to get a little email reminder about the show each week go to officehours.fm/subscribe. By the way there’s archives there and you can listen to any previous episode if you want to catch up on that. I’ve started doing transcripts like I mentioned so you can…if you don’t want to wade through listening to an entire episode you can do just you like a little control find and maybe search for a word or something that you recall and wanted to follow up. Oh! And I was telling Amy before the show…sorry Amy I’m going to share this with how ridiculous I am with listeners. So in my past couple of newsletters…or email reminders for the show I totally flubbed up. First I asked you to respond to an email address that didn’t work and then I sent you to a link that didn’t work and here I am. People pay me for my technology services. It’s ridiculous. In case you missed…

Amy: At least you’re making the mistakes on your own stuff. But you don’t make mistakes on anybody else’s.

Carrie: Who knows? I probably have at some point. Yeah I’m putting together…super-duper excited…I’m putting together a webinar series on developer workflow. So kind of taking that from the very beginning of the spinning up your site locally to deploying code and using version control and all that nerdy stuff in the middle. If you want to check that out to wpdevelopmentworkflow.com. Workflow singular. Ok. So Amy…

Amy: Wait! Is this your new podcast?

Carrie: No. That is something different because I have a professional ADD. I’m chasing the rabbits and seeing where they lead. No. The other podcast is going to be an effort with my mastermind group. And super-duper looking forward to it. I won’t talk too much about the format because we are really just trying figure that out. But essentially the value of those mastermind interactions (which you’re in one) so you get it. We are trying to deliver that value to other people via a podcast. So I think it’ll be interesting.

Amy: Oh. Ok. So is it like…now I’m curious from a purely selfish standpoint. Cut me off if I’m not allowed to ask the question. But so is it like…is there a specific topic or are you just talking about your own sites and what you’re doing and that type of thing. Are you tackling…

Carrie: What’s that?

Amy: Are you tackling a particular topic?

Carrie: It would be inviting guests on. Basically inviting them into our mastermind and putting them in the hot seat if you will. Giving them the opportunity to express maybe where they’re experiencing some frustration or not breaking through in some particular area and then basically us just opining….which I mean who doesn’t want to just get in front of a microphone and give their opinion? Heck. That’s why I have a podcast. I just love hearing myself talk. Just kidding.

Amy: You have so much expertise under your belt that even if you’re just talking there’s so much to glean anyway. You know? It’s nice to hear somebody talk about it because somebody who really knows the stuff… because then you’re talking about it and it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. If I have to go and read a blog post about it or something then it’s kind of like..um..it’s scary…scarier than if you’re listening to somebody chat about it…I think…so

Carrie: You’re totally right. I think that audio experience or audio..I don’t know…whatever…. I listen to a lot more podcasts then I read blogs. It’s just an easier way to consume information.

Amy: It is. And it’s like Oh there’s a real person on the other end. They’re not like…they’re not like a superhuman on the other end. (laughing) You know what I’m saying? Like you read some of these posts form these guys or these women who are so… you know they’re like so brilliant. You know they are graduating from the tops schools, or they’ve dropped out because they’re too good for the top schools. I don’t know. And they’re writing stuff …and it’s just like…ugh..I’m such a loser.

Carrie: And then you meet them at a conference and they’re kind of dorky. Just like…not that you’re dorky but you know I mean. They’re relatable.

Amy: Yeah. Like you meet them and it’s very disarming. And then so it’s like..ok..ok…like I can do this you know? It’s not as huge of a monster as I thought it would be. I’m a fan of podcast too.

Carrie: Sweet. Well I’m glad you brought up one more thing that I’m really glad you mentioned. Which is…again it piggy backs on that whole being yourself think…but put your story…and I’m just speaking to the listeners…put your story out there because I guarantee you…even if you think you’re a loser or you have nothing interesting to say….I guarantee you that somebody…what you have to say will resonate with someone. Regardless of where you are in your business journey or with WordPress etc. that you know more than someone else. So you have something to share there. So cool. With that bit of inspirational music…man! You know what would have been really cool? If while I was saying that inspirational bit there could have been like a 2.5 font at the bottom of the screen that read is the advice and should take your this will lead to you utter failure Oh my God. Ok. I derailed yet again. Amy it is been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. Now that I know you’re local, I’m going to stalk you I person. I won’t show up at your doorstep. Where can people follow-up with you online and say hello?

Amy: Right. Ok. So talk about loser…I just realized that looking at my lower third…I don’t even have my Website on there this whole time. It just says my name.

Carrie: Well lucky for you your name is your Website. It is your domain.

Amy: Oh my stars. Well that is totally so me. I like …anyway…AmyLynnAndrews.com. You can find everything.

Carrie: (laughing) and AmyLynnAndrews on the Twitters or everywhere. To everyone who tuned in today thank you so much. I always appreciate you showing up asking questions You’re awesome. Until next week guys we’’ll see you later. Bye!