June 2016 Monthly Performance Report

I did a lot this month. I have always felt this way, but writing about what I did each month allows me to remember everything in detail.

 

June 2016 Summary

My high school running career ended. Now I’m preparing for my college running career.

I interviewed a bunch of people for my podcast. Jeffrey Shaw was my first guest. I have interviewed successful Kindle authors, freelancers, millionaires, TEDx speakers, and many high-profile people.

I am eager to publish the podcast and share all of those interviews with you, but I want to have enough podcast episodes done before publishing. I have no idea what my college schedule will look like, so I want a three week buffer in case I have less time to interview people.

I’ll publish those interviews by the end of the summer.

I find these interviews inspirational and educational. Preparing for the podcast will take up most of my time, but I did other cool stuff in June too. Here’s the performance report.

 

Expansion

I’m writing guest posts again, and I won’t stop for a very long time. I’ve read case studies about people writing 30 guest posts in 30 days.

I get pumped by these case studies and they impact how I approach guest blogging. I lost count but I have written at least 10 guest posts this month. Some of them have already been published while others are in the works.

I am also trying to appear on more podcasts. Right now I’m at the stage where I can say yes to most requests, but that won’t last forever.

 

Thrive Leads

I got Thrive Leads this month and I already see the impact on my blog. It’s a plugin that makes it easier for you to grow your email list.

Thrive Leads allowed me to add a welcome mat to my blog that’s hard to miss.

And that welcome mat works. In a given day, that welcome mat will have anywhere from a 4-9% conversion rate. This welcome mat shows up almost everywhere on my blog which is sweet.

Here’s data from the first 206 unique impressions it got in June.

I was very surprised to see that I was getting a few new subscribers from StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is notorious for being a website that gets you a lot of traffic, but for the most part, a high bounce rate.

Some pages have low bounce rates, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

But I began getting more subscribers by sharing my content on StumbleUpon. Sure, on those days the conversion rate is messy. Most people won’t subscribe. However, I ask you this.

If you could get 10,000 targeted people on your blog and achieve a 1% conversion rate or get 100 targeted people on your blog and achieve a 5% conversion rate, which would you prefer.

One option results in 100 new subscribers and the other results in 5 new subscribers.

The cool part about StumbleUpon traffic is that it won’t interrupt what you are currently doing. If you can get 10 subscribers each day, the subscribers you get from StumbleUpon are a nice bonus.

And who doesn’t want more targeted subscribers?

 

Guest Contributions Now Accepted

I never thought I’d see the day I would allow guest contributions. I have been adamant of only allowing my content on my blog.

But from an educational and content marketing perspective, I see the point of guest blogging. There will always be people in my niche who know things that I don’t know.

I want that knowledge on my blog so I can learn from my blog too 🙂

If you are interested in contributing to this blog, you can learn more here.

 

Consultation Sessions

I now offer consultation sessions. In a way, I always have, but I intentionally priced them far out of reach. For a limited time, I am not charging as much for my consultation sessions.

Some day, I may never offer consultation sessions again, but if you want me to grow your business and get actionable insights, my consultation session is the right one for you.

It will be interesting to see how I maintain the consultation sessions and everything else during school.

 

Twitter Analysis

I am conducting a deeper analysis of my Twitter engagement. The goal behind this deeper analysis is to discover specific areas of digital marketing my audience likes the most.

I also want to consistently get 200,000 impressions per day. Right now, I get over 120,000 impressions each day.

Impressions are not the most important data to look at. But more impressions mean more clicks, and I like big numbers 🙂

I’ll have to follow-up on an earlier post I wrote about analyzing my Twitter account.

 

Utah

My mom got a speaking engagement in Utah and was kind enough to bring my brother and I for the ride (or should I say flight).

I listened to several audiobooks on the plane ride both ways. We had a lot of fun at Utah, and I got to run up mountains.

The only problem was that as the only runner in the family, I mostly ran alone. I trekked into an area of complete isolation for what must have been a mile.

I don’t take selfies often, but with no one else to take the shot, I had no other choice. I like to call these types of pictures “Pictures Of Proof.”

 

Books I Read

I read a lot of books this month largely due to flying back and forth from New York to Utah. Here’s the list:

Smarter Faster Better: Charles Duhigg dives deep into productivity. He shatters myths, mentions powerful ways to boost our productivity, and provides provocative stories of his methods in action.  

Content Inc: This book changed the way I view content marketing. Focus on providing value and building your audience before you shift towards making revenue.

The Entrepreneur’s Blueprint To Massive Success: This book is a manifesto that should even be read by the best entrepreneurs on the planet. I learned a lot in this book and started applying some of the methods today. For instance, I always drink water upon waking up to boost my energy. That’s one of the many tactics I’m applying from the book.

Be A Sales Superstar: I was originally skeptical because I thought most of the book would be related to cold calling. However, the methods in the book can be carried over to virtually any profession. The most important lesson I learned was to be prepared for any type of response in advance so you can steer the conversation in the right direction.

How To Win At The Sport Of Business: Mark Cuban combines all of his blog posts and experiences into one quick read that will leave you motivated and hungry for success. If you want to get motivated and learn in a way like never before, read this book.

The Virgin Way: If you are not having fun and don’t have a strong team around you, you are doing it wrong. Richard Branson provides several anecdotes about himself, his company, and some of his competitors. The Virgin Way is a combination of knowledge, humor, and storytelling.

I find it easier to read my books as audiobooks. Audible has been a game changer for me, and you get a free book each month just by signing up!

 

Instagram

I am taking a stronger interest in this social network. I was at 1700 followers for a while and ignored the social network. Now I am a little over 2,000 Instagram followers and my goal is to have well over 10,000 Instagram followers by the end of the year.

Instagram is starting to excite me a lot. I’ll have more to say about it next month.

 

Blog Posts I Wrote

If you missed the blog posts I wrote in June and want to read them, I have included them here as a reference. I published a bunch of YouTube videos too which can be found on my channel.

How To Put On Your Marketing Hat: We can’t be creators forever. It’s essential for us to strike the balance between marketing and creation. If you create a bunch of products but don’t market them, you won’t get sales. In this blog post, I discuss how we can achieve that balance.

How To Prepare For Your Podcast Launch: A lot of things are happening with my upcoming podcast. I have interviewed several guests and plan on launching the podcast by the end of the summer. I discuss my experiences with podcasting and how you can prepare for a successful podcast launch.

3 Reasons Your YouTube Channel Isn’t Taking Off: Have a YouTube channel that isn’t getting much traction. This blog post will reveal what’s wrong and how you can fix the problems.

50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List: This is the longest blog post I have written to date. At a little under 6,000 words, you’ll get a bunch of effective tactics you can use to start growing your email list today.

 

June Review

In my May 2016 Performance Report, I said I would do five things:

More Udemy Courses

Blog Transformation

Guest Interviews

More Landing Pages

Here’s what happened.

 

#1: More Udemy Courses

I started a course. One of my favorite instructors was taken off the site. It sounds like Udemy had warned this instructor but that combined with the continuing effect of the price change did me in.

I didn’t create any courses this month. Instead, I put my courses on additional platforms like SkillShare. My HootSuite course on SkillShare is now accompanied by six other courses (two are in draft mode).

I would have put all of my courses on SkillShare to make additional revenue, but SkillShare wisely suggested that I release them consistently to not bombard my audience with courses.

 

#2: Blog Transformation

While I don’t have a homepage like Pat Flynn yet, Thrive Leads was a big plus for my blog.

Allowing guest contributions is a pretty big change in itself. I felt like I did good here.

 

#3: Guest Interviews

I have interviewed 10 people this month. I don’t have many interviews scheduled in July yet but that will change very soon.

 

#4: Create More Landing Pages

I managed to create one landing page this month but I wish I did more. I’ll set a specific number for July so I have a more clear target.

 

July Highlights

With June coming to a rapid close, I am now focused on July. These are some of my goals for the business.

 

#1: Interview At Least 15 People For My Podcast

Each podcast interview feels more like a conversation. They are enjoyable, but with that said, I want as much of a buffer as possible for college.

Considering I only have two interviews scheduled on my calendar this July, I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Keeping up with dozens of guests at once while getting more guests for the show is a challenge, but I get it done. My inbox has gotten very organized over the past few weeks.

I mark each of my podcast related emails with three flags, and each flag indicates what part of the process that guest is in.

 

#2: Create At Least 5 New Landing Pages 

I want to give my audience more options for the freebie that requires an email address. The more options I provide, the more conversions and segments I get.

Segments are important because you can provided specific content to specific people. You can identify which people are interested in Twitter and don’t care about Facebook and vice-versa.

 

#3: Publish At Least One New Kindle Book

I want to get back into the Kindle space because of the interview I had with Steve Scott. Chandler Bolt got me back into it a few months ago and now Steve got me back into it.

I learned the power of writing 500+ words for your books each day. Writing 500 words each day is a very manageable target, but the effect this can have on your book creation is huge.

If you write 500 words each day for one of your books, you’ll write over 180,000 words for your books every year. That’s 6-10 Kindle books depending on how long you make them.

Due to many years of typing away, it’s easier for me to crank out 1,000 words in a given day without a Kindle book taking away from the other parts of my business.

If I write 1,000 words per day for my Kindle books, I’d have 30,000 words total. The true challenge is the formatting, editing, cover, description, and the marketing.

 

#4: Average 1,000 Daily Visitors

In a quest to continue gaining blog traffic, I am in pursuit of an ambitious goal: 1,000 daily visitors.

For the purposes of this goal, I will be including StumbleUpon traffic.

In case one of my blog posts doesn’t go viral on StumbleUpon, the continued analysis of my Twitter account combined with guest blogging and the analysis of my Pinterest account should lead me to victory.

As my email list grows, I’ll get more traffic each time I promote one of my blog posts to the list.

 

#5: Create A Training Course

I’m not talking about an Udemy course. I’m talking about a course that I offer on my blog. It will be a mega course that is more detailed than any of the other courses that I have created.

Stay tuned…

 

In Conclusion

Expansion is the focus. I want more people to read my content and join my email list.

I am also getting back in the game of writing Kindle books. In all of my years as a Kindle author, I have never promoted a paid Kindle book to my email list.

I did a free promotion to my email list, but in my eyes that doesn’t count. I’ll offer my Kindle book for $0.99 for a limited time and then bump it up to $2.99.

Thank you for reading my month in review. I hope you enjoyed it.