I almost didn't write one of these updates for this month as my focus has been mainly on creating video content. However, toward the end of the month, there were some tweaks and adjustments that I made for Infiniti Crafting Co.
I've begun experimenting with paid ads again.
I'm going to be candid here and say, I'd started giving up hope. I've been doing a crazy amount of work since 2019 in an effort to get my work in front of as many eyes as possible. I'll have moments of relative growth and then...BOOM... dry spell. This is just one of those annoying aspects of trying to start a brand or business that everyone encounters. However, 2021 has been a year of expansion for my brand as far as content goes, yet there is relatively low engagement. I've pointedly figured out where things kinda got foggy for me though.
At the beginning (yes way back in 2018) I personally thought I had a great thing going and jumped the gun to start paying for Facebook ads. In reality, I was just getting started, no one knew who I was and it was destined to crash and burn. Now that I've been putting in the work and have built a nice audience on YouTube and Rumble, I realize that I still have a great thing going but I have less engagement/ROI than I did at the start. Crazy how that works, right?
For various reasons, I'd stopped running ads on Facebook, IG, and the like and as much as I dislike the idea, I've been feeling like organic growth on those platforms is dead. About mid-August, I ran a couple of ads on FB and IG and my analytics, ROI, and discovery skyrocketed. It actually sparked a little hope in me. So, for the time being, I'll be running ads again in hopes of getting this whole blog thing to be self sustaining.
Especially since I'll be returning to my college campus starting this semester, it'll be important to me to have an additional stream of income for when the need for books, supplies, and transportation inevitably hits me next year. By the by, this isn't to discourage my loving community that already shares, supports, and views my content. You all are amazing by all definitions! I just want to expand what I'm doing so that I can continue this mission God's put me on with this craft business deal.
There are now ads on the product page.
Just 3 at the moment actually and this sorta ties in with the previous section. After reviewing the analytics that first set of ads gave me, I concluded that my two most popular pages were the blog and shop. This will also tie into the below section but, I'll mention it here too. I've begun to add my products to a FB catalog so when prospective customers click through to the product pages, there will be ads there. So even if no purchase is made, it'll still help my Adsense a little. As of late, the interlocking pieces of ROI have been playing through my mind and having a circular, multi-faceted means of generating revenue just makes sense in my eyes. Again, I don't want to overload my site with ads. That's annoying. I also don't require people to turn off ad blockers at the moment because I find it annoying when sites require that of me. Also, depending on the site, it may come off as a little pretentious 😅. My blog is full of various affiliate links and ads anyhow but, I never once thought about the product page until now.
You will start to see some of my listings on the Facebook page.
As mentioned in the previous section, I'm doing this in order to make a full circle with my content engagement. My shop page was quite popular when I ran my ads this month and the site generated like $0.39 (I know) which was exciting to me given that the most I'd ever earned was $0.22 organically. In general, I know that there are a lot of eyes on Facebook that are looking for new items. Personally, when I do log on, if I see a reel of relevant items, I'll click through. I believe that my handmade inventory could shine our there on the interwebs if I put it out there in the right light so, I've been manually importing my shop catalog onto the platform.
Why manually? I'm glad you asked! You see, there's this pesky policy that they've imagined up that bars mask related content. Earlier in the whole pandemic thing, I wrote a knitting pattern for face masks. Though that isn't my main prerogative now (you can read and view all of my rants across my blogs and videos), it's still intellectual property that I wrote and I have no intention to retire it at this time. So now I'm stuck with importing each item one by one into my FB catalogue. Thankfully it's not difficult, just tedious. Eventually, I want to do automated placements when it comes to ads so I'm hoping that doing this will increase my traffic and sales to the site.
I've made Hey Craftepreneur! into a subscriber only deal.
I actually wanted to touch on this one a little more. After some contemplation, I came to the conclusion that this is the best format for the paid content. For $3.99/month you can access the full library of podcasts, get early access, and more. I've named the tier for this subscription "Super Crafty". Why? Because it's wild and expensive thing to try and start a business. As the environment for entrepreneurship shifts, it is only by the support of my community that I can continue to do the things that I do. For instance, I've got so much podcast content now, that I've had to expand onto Vimeo to host each episode of Hey Craftepreneur. That's going to cost an additional $84/yr on top of the $375 it takes to keep the blog going.
By subscribing to the podcast content, to me that means you love my general content and you believe in the future I'm trying to build here. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be trying to make income off yarn crafts, but here I am. And it's something that I look forward to everyday! So I want to thank any and everyone who has bought the individual episodes to this point. I enjoy sharing the developments that go on behind the scenes with my community.
I also think this format is a lot easier on the consumer end because you don't have to download the big files that accompany video content, you'll have lifetime access so long as you're subscribed, you'll get access to my patterns up to a week ahead of release, and a free copy of my e-booklet, Hop Into Patterning For Curious Crafties & Beginners.
Comments