Over the next several episodes of Pep Talks for Side Hustlers, I’m going to take you behind the scenes of my strategic planning process – so be sure that you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss a step!
From setting big goals to getting into the weeds with data to planning out what I’m doing next and and when it’s going to happen, I’m going to break it all down for you, and share the insights I’ve uncovered along the way.
In episode 155, I shared with you some key metrics that you’ll need to pull together so that you can figure out where to focus your time and money in the upcoming year, and a formula for figuring out what to focus on based on the numbers.
In episode 156, we talked about how to survey our current email list to find out who is buying from us, who isn’t and what to do about it.
Today we’re going to talk about where our current website traffic is coming from vs. where we’re spending our time and see if our efforts are paying off or if we need to shift focus.
But before we even get into where our website traffic is coming from, we need to know two things:
How we make money in our business. Where our revenue comes from.
How we are spending our time – or how we are paying other people to spend their time.
Like, for real break it down.
So let’s start with the money.
So if you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that I publish an income report every single month where I break down how much I make and how much I spend, like down to the detail. Like you see how much I sell of every course that I have, how much affiliate income I make, and how much I make from one on one client work.
And one of my goals has always been to scale the passive income side, and then build a team to support clients so that I can create the content and do the marketing required to grow the business.
My strategy is that all roads lead to the 5 Day Website Challenge. That’s where people get to know, like and trust me, they get tons of value and that’s where I introduce them to the other things I can help them with in their business.
And I look every month at how much each of my products and services brings in, and also how much I’m actually promoting and launching those things, what products I spend the most time on vs. how much they are making, etc.
And I took some time to rank my offerings based on how much they bring in for me.
Then I listed out all the different ways I spend my time from most to least, so I can see if how I spend my time is in alignment with how my business actually makes money.
Email
Client Work
Admin Work (building the things)
Podcast
Instagram/Planoly
Twitter
Facebook
Pinterest
Blog Posts
Guest Posts
Engaging with my Community in my Facebook Groups
Creating New Content
By doing this, I can see if how I’m spending my time (or paying others for their time) is in alignment with my goals.
And for me, the answer is no. In fact, I’m a little upside down. So that tells me what I need to work on.
So let’s talk about TIME.
Outside of doing client work and running the business, I do all the things to market my business. Instagram. Pinterest. Facebook. Facebook Groups. Twitter. LinkedIn. YouTube. Weekly Blog Post. Weekly Newsletter. SEO. A Daily Podcast. Guest Posts. Pitching myself to be on other podcasts. Virtual Conferences.
Throw it all up against the wall and see what sticks.
And work 80 hours a week, automate as much of it as I can and pay other people to do the rest of it for me.
And then I feel bad about the things I hear I should be doing that only I can do, like Livestreaming. InstaStories. But I’m too tired to actually get ready and look presentable enough to go live. And trust me, without makeup on, you wouldn’t recognize me!
So how do I know if anything I’m doing is working? And how do I decide what to cut back or outsource so I can work less?
Google Analytics.
And there’s a right way to use Google Analytics to tell you what’s working, and there’s a wrong way.
And it totally depends on your goals, but I’m never not going to tell you that you need an email list no matter what.
If I were to simply open up Google Analytics and see that because I’m doing all the things, page views are up, or traffic is up, okay great!
If you’re a blogger, you’re probably ecstatic because as we talked about back in episode 150, pageviews are a metric that bloggers really care about for sponsorships.
But for me, I care about one thing. Did you opt in to my email list or not?
And to know that, I need to set up a Goal in Google Analytics. And that’s part of the reason why I tell you to create a Thank You page to send your subscribers to when they opt in instead of just confirming them via email.
When you land on that thank you page, you’ve completed the goal. And Google Analytics can tell me exactly how many people from Facebook complete the goal, how many people from Pinterest complete the goal, how many people from Instagram complete the goal, and how many people from that guest posting gig I’m doing are completing the goal, and how many people from that random guest appearance on someone else’s podcast two years ago are completing that goal.
That’s how I know if where I’m spending my time and money is effective. And what’s effective for ME is going to be totally different that what works for you because we have different businesses, different audiences and different goals.
So what I discovered is that while people tell me how pretty my Instagram is all the time, my followers continue to grow… but I’m getting very little traffic to my website and practically zero subscribers from Instagram. But I spend a lot of time and money on Instagram.
I need to make a decision about where I’m putting my time and money. Instagram is on the bubble.
I’m getting a lot of traffic from Pinterest, in fact, it’s eclipsed Facebook as my number one source of traffic from social media… but my conversions from Pinterest aren’t as good as they are from Facebook. But I see the potential there because I’m a beginner and I’ve been dabbling.
And I also see that I shouldn’t abandon Facebook, and that I probably should spend more time there once I’m ready to increase traffic.
So that’s social media – what about all the blog posts I’m writing every single week? I can look at those too and see how much traffic they are getting and how much of that traffic actually opts in to the 5 Day Website Challenge. Blog posts have a dual purpose for me – keep my audience engaged and continue to deliver value, but also to get more traffic – but what content is getting the most engagement? What types of content do I need to stop creating and what do I need to double-down on?
Finally, there’s this podcast. All roads lead to the 5 Day Website Challenge, this podcast included. So I’m paying really close attention to how many referrals from Pep Talks for Side Hustlers are completing the goal.
In fact, I literally just paused this recorded and added a link to my 5 Day Website Challenge right to the Pep Talks for Side Hustlers navigation menu.
And it all comes down to one thing – Goals inside of Google Analytics. So if you don’t have a goal set up, I highly recommend you do that because it’s going to tell so much about the effectiveness of how you’re spending your time and money.
And the last thing that I want to leave you with…
You have got to try things and put content out there to get this data back! You aren’t going to know what is going to work until you do it! And you give it some time to get traction. And you become a student of it, you approach it like a scientist. You do your research, you do some experiments, and you evaluate the outcome.
What I see more often than not is that people want to come out of the gate having everything right, perfect and all figured out. Instead, just come out of the gate, and evaluate as you go – you’ll learn a lot faster that way!!
Okay, so now that we have all of our data, it’s time to set some goals. So go ahead and hit subscribe so that you don’t miss the next episode, and tomorrow I’ll share with you a strategy I learned to set goals that actually put me on the path to starting this business and quitting my day job.
Today’s pep talk is brought to you by Bluehost. Go to www.shannonmattern.com/bluehost and get 36 months of web hosting for just $2.95 a month. That’s less than one trip to Starbucks a month – and if you’re anything like me, you’re at Starbucks more than that!
Then you can sign up for my Free 5 Day Website Challenge at www.shannonmattern.com/5day and I’ll show you step by step how to get started building your new website for your side hustle.
