I’m always asked about how I launched my very first digital product when I was still living in an RV. In fact, I didn’t even have an internet connection back then!
So how the heck did a travel blogger who hadn’t traveled yet win big with a book release for an audience of three hundred people?
First, shout-out to Lowe’s for having the best free Wi-Fi in their parking lots! At the time, I couldn’t have launched anything without figuring out how to work on the margins of life.
So listen in on today’s AskLiz session and let me take you back to 2017 for a look at my first steps as an online entrepreneur!
I’ll share how the idea for Tales From the Black Tank came to me and why I leaned into collaboration straight from the get-go.
And this wasn’t just the first income I earned online! As you’ll hear, the brand partnership and networking opportunities that came my way were absolute game-changers!
Tune in and enjoy!
You’ll Learn
- How I came up with the idea for my first digital product
- Getting real proof that making money online is possible
- Why I created a product even though I only had 300 followers
- Finding collaborators at the same level and growing together
- Overcoming the fear of selling to build a real business
- My reaction when I started making sales for the first time
- How my first product led to my first brand partnership
Resources
- Send in your online business questions at SpeakPipe.com/LizWilcox to be featured on the show and get some awesome free swag
- Subscribe to Superfans Secrets—our weekly newsletter on the strategies behind building real relationships with your audience, delivered free, straight to your inbox
- Check out our special deal at SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use the code SECRET50 to join the SPI Community at 50% off your subscription for life
- Connect with me on Instagram
AL 016: Can I Launch My First Product with a Tiny Audience?
Liz Wilcox: What’s up? Liz Wilcox here, and this is another amazing, fun, awesome episode of Ask Liz. I’m really excited about this one because I actually just got off a call with the SPI community, and I’ve been telling this story kind of lately ’cause we’ve been talking a lot about digital products and selling them and also growing your email list and, you know, really just putting the I back in SPI, right, income.
And so I’ve been telling the story of my very first digital product. And before we get started with the question, I just wanna say I have a histamine issue, and so I’m a little out of breath, but I don’t want to mess up the schedule. Our editor’s name is Paul, and Paul is so amazing. I don’t want to miss the deadline.
So you might hear me, huh, just being a little out of breath today. I’m fine. I’m not running up a hill. I just have a histamine issue, and I also have something called mast cell activation syndrome, and sometimes it just causes me to be a little out of breath. So I apologize if I sound like a pregnant lady trying to run uphill.
Whoo Anyway, this is Ask Liz, and this is where you ask me questions about products, services, online business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle, whatever, whatever. But today I’m not going to, like, stitch a recording in because I, I think this question about my very first digital product and how it helped me not only make money but grow my email list I’ve just been getting this question a lot, so I wanna bring it to the masses here.
All right? So let’s dive in. So first and foremost, picture it. It is 2017. I’ve been in business, quote, unquote business, I’d been blogging online, not really making any money. Do you even have a business if you’re not making money? The answer is no, okay? So , so I– You know, I was listening to awesome people like Pat, right?
And they’re telling me, you know, ” Income, income, income. You gotta… You know, you gotta sell, you gotta sell.” And I’m like, “What the heck do I make?” And the problem was I was a travel blogger, but I hadn’t actually traveled yet. I lived in my RV or my caravan, depending on where you’re listening to this in the world right now.
So I was living in my RV, but I wasn’t traveling, and I had started the blog because I wanted to travel, and I wanted to be, you know, like Pat Flynn, making smart passive income so I could travel around the country with my family. My daughter was, I think, two and a half at the time of me creating this first product.
I was married at the time, and truth be told, my, my then husband, I call him my wasband. He was my husband. Now he’s not. Uh, he thought— I don’t wanna… You know, I don’t want to trash talk him, and I’m not going to, but he really didn’t understand the whole smart passive income thing, the whole premise of making money online.
And maybe you have good people in your life, people that love you that, that still don’t understand it. So there I was about nine months into blogging, and I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to create something,” But I can’t create these how-tos like everyone else because I don’t know how to travel in an RV. I, I’ve never done it.
I just live in my RV, and I’m trying to get on the road, right? So I actually surveyed my audience, and at the time, my audience was about three hundred people, and these were people on my email list, okay? And I think I had s-some people, like, on a Facebook page, maybe, like, another hundred people. But honestly, they probably were intermingled, right?
Some people on the page, some people on the list, right? So it was about three hundred people. And I said, “Why the heck do you follow me? I’m kind of all over the place with this blogging thing. I’m talking about RVing. I’m talking about motherhood. I’m talking about running ’cause I-I’m a huge runner,” Right?
And they said, “Well, Liz, you’re really funny, and you can tell a good story.” So that’s when the ding, ding, ding light bulb moment went off, and I was like, oh my first digital product shouldn’t be, like a how-to e-book or whatever. It should actually just be a book of funny stories, a collection if you will. So I actually created this book called Tales From the Black Tank, and now when I say book, I did not get into Kindle publishing, I didn’t get it on Amazon, nothing.
I actually went into Canva, and I created this book. Okay? So first and foremost, I don’t know why I didn’t use Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Honestly, probably because I had neither one of those things, but I did have a Canva account. This was back when Canva was like becoming a thing, okay? And everybody was gaga over Canva, which they still are.
Anyway, back to my original point. So I wanted to create this book. I was gonna use Canva. I wrote the first chapter, like my first crappy story because we had bought this RV, but we didn’t know anything about it, and it turned out we had a bunch of mold in our RV, and we had to pull up the carpet, and we had to rebuild the floors, and the walls, and everything.
It was terrible. And why did I choose these terrible stories? Because it’s funny. Because, eh, you know #RVLife is really big, or it used to be really big when hashtags were really big, and I’m gonna say really big one more time . Um, and everyone was kind of selling this dream, right? And I had bought into the dream.
I had bought this RV, I had started a business to fund this dream, right? And I realized, like it’s kind of a crock. Like, yeah, I love living in my RV, but it is not all sunshine, rainbows, and Instagram posts. Like, this is real. This is real mold, right? And I can tell a funny story. I can craft this in a funny way that’s gonna be relatable to my audience, right?
What’s more relatable than a crappy story, right? We all … You know, misery loves company type of thing So I make the first chapter, and I realize, “Oh my gosh, this kind of sucks. I don’t… This is taking me forever. I, I wanna get this book out now.” And so I went into some Facebook groups that I knew other RV bloggers and RV entrepreneurs were hanging out, and I said, “Hey, I’ve got this idea. It’s called Tales From The Black Tank. It’s gonna be a collection of hilariously crappy RV stories. Do you have one of those horror stories? Will you write a chapter?” It could be anywhere from, I think I, I said 500 to 2,000 words, so you know, I’m using the word chapter loosely, right? I’m being really liberal with that definition.
“I cannot pay you, but what I can do is set up an affiliate link for you. So if you contribute a chapter, say you’re chapter seven, I can give you an affiliate link, and I’m gonna give you 50% of the sales. I’m gonna sell this book for $20,” right? Because most books are $20. Y’all, the audacity for me to charge $20 for this book, LOL Right?
So I found 12 other bloggers that were interested in growing their email list, making a little extra money, start dabbling into affiliate income, and I got them to submit their chapters, and I took it… They wrote it in Google Docs, et cetera, and I put it into Canva with like pictures, and you know, the pictures I thought would add humor to it, and it totally did right And it took– I think it took me about two months to make this book because of people missing deadlines.
Y’all when I started my business I didn’t even have internet on my phone or in my RV. And so because I was using Canva not something I could use offline I would have to go to libraries and Lowe’s parking lots. Shout out Lowes they have the best WiFi in their-in their parking lot its insane …and laundromats and things like that.
So I had to work in the margins of life. Also sometimes I lived in a campground at the time Sometimes the wifi would work but it would be really slow Back then Canva wasn’t what it is today It wouldn’t save properly, you know what. Like it it was a crapshoot we will say But at the same time remember I want to make money from this. At the same time I started pre selling this book I started telling these people hey, liz your funny you tell good stories. Hey you gave me an idea for Tales From The Black Tank Will you buy it Im going to sell it for $20 dollars buuut you can buy it now for ten while im creating it i kindof took screenshot of canvas to prove this was real thing
It was like July 2017. And so a lot of those posts are coming up because I promoted this thing for two months nonstop on my literal personal Facebook page. I didn’t care who bought it. It didn’t have to be an ideal customer.
I just wanted the money. I wanted to prove that I could have a real business right? Because I mentioned ten minutes ago if you’re not selling, if you’re not making money You don’t have a business; you have a hobby Let’s put the ‘I’ back in SPI okay And so I was selling to anybody, and I would say things like, you know, my goal…
I think my goal was 30 sales in the first 30 days, right? And which is a lot. Now that I look back, I’m like, “Wow, that’s really something, Liz.” And so I would tell people like, “Oh, I’m halfway to my goal,” but I never told them the goal was 30, right? And I’d only made 15 sales. To me, that felt like that sounded pathetic, only 15, and this girl is just talking about it over and over and over again.
So I was like, “Oh, I’m halfway to my goal. I’m 70%. I’m 80%. Will you help me get to 100%?” And I was just shamelessly asking, which side note, by the way, I have never given up the shameless asks. How the heck do you think I’m on the Smart Passive Income Podcast today? I just shamelessly ask. That doesn’t mean I’m not scared to ask.
Shameless doesn’t mean fearless, okay? Anyway, back to the story. So I ended up hitting the 30, and … But the, the beautiful thing about this book, remember, I got 12 other contributors, right? So they are selling the book as well, and I’m giving them affiliate income. But here’s the thing. A lot of them were just like me, where they’re only making like one or two sales.
They have a s- very u- the microest of the micro aud- audiences, right? 100 people on their Facebook page, 10 people on their email list, right? We’re all small trying to work together. But the beautiful thing was I put my face on the cover. I put my name on the cover. And so when these people are promoting the book, they’re promoting my face.
They’re promoting my website, right? Because it’s all there on the cover, and that is where the story gets good, and this is where I want you to pay attention. Yes, 13 minutes in, I finally got to the point. People are promoting my thing, and so I’m becoming bigger very fast, even if I’m not making sales, y’all, which that was my goal, but I had this side effect that I didn’t even know was gonna be a thing.
And that is that my face was suddenly in all these Facebook groups, on Instagram. You know, people were making carousels back in the day, posting on Instagram, posting in Facebook groups. They’re sharing on their email lists, and suddenly Liz Wilcox is somebody. And so I’m bringing this to you today Because I want you to steal my idea, right?
I want you … And Pat and I have been talking ad nauseam all, what, for the last, like, eight episodes, collaborations, collaborations, collaborations. This was my very first collaboration. It was so fun, and yes other people they, they made a little bit of money here and there, right? But the book got so big that I ended up collaborating with a brand something that Pat talks about a lot, right?
And so I ended up somebody found it, like saw it because they were following these brands, and it turned out it was like the marketing director of this RV rental company in Europe. They told me, “Hey Liz we’re gonna pay y- Can we use this as lead magnet?” Right, “Can we use this as a freebie to get people on our email list?
We wanna run Facebook ads to it. Can we give you $7 for every lead it gives us?” I was like, oh my gosh, $7 because at this point I had been trying all different price points. You know, the 50% off 20, $20. I think did an initiative for two weeks where it was just pay what you want, right, because I just wanted those sales.
I learned very quickly if you can have somebody give you a dollar they’ll give you $100 later, right? So that percentage of customers from the very beginning I learned was a metric I wanted to track, and so I was like yeah, $7 oh my gosh. It ended up in the first 90 days which all these initiatives, with all that, that brand deal I made something like $7,000 in the first 90 days, and e- Oh my gosh, it was like move over Jeff Bezos, move over Elon, there is a new lady in town.
Liz Wilcox is here, and she is here to stay. And so I wanna share this because it brought me to a whole new level. Like I just wanted to make money, right? That was the whole purpose of creating this digital product. But it brought me so much more. Number one, it brought me a crazy awesome network, right?
Those 12 bloggers, you don’t think they told other bloggers who told other bloggers, “This Liz Wilcox, she might be new in town, but she’s serious about making money online. She’s doing all those things that people are teaching us in webinars. We need to watch her. You need to collaborate with her. She is a good partner to have,” right?
And so it grew, so it grew my network very, very quickly. It also grew the revenue, right? $7,000 in 90 days. Oh my gosh, I went to school to be a teacher in a time where the starting salary for teaching was like $23,000 a year, the st- to start. So to make $7,000 in 90 days, oh, my goody goodness, holy hot dog on a stick.
Again, I thought it was Jeff Bezos. I was like, “It, it’s over for everybody else. I just won the game.” Well, I’m, I’m … I hit the level, right? Oh, so naive. Anyway, it also turned me onto brand deals and sponsorships very quickly. I didn’t even have that in my brain. I was such a microbrand, right? 300 people in my audience, but this person that worked at this company, they gave me a l- quite a bit of money.
I think of that $7,000, I think like 4,500 of it came from, you know, that, that company. Shout out Camp Panda was the name of it, right? So this is where the story gets really, really good. Oh, and it grew my email list. So some people didn’t buy the book, but because they were seeing my face, because other bloggers were talking about it, et cetera, people were going to the website and signing up for the freebie even though they weren’t getting the, uh, the book, right?
So it was growing my email list. So that was like around July is when I launched it. It started slowing down around November, and by January I started to get ticked off, okay? I was like, “Oh my gosh, my email list is at around 700 people. I want to get to 1,000. I, I have been in business for, you know, a year and a quarter.
Why don’t I have 1,000 people?” Everybody and their mother says, you know… And Pat said this before with the superfans, right? You only need 1,000 superfans, and you’re set for life. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I wanna get 1,000 subscribers and start selling to them more”, right? Start surveying them. You know, they told me first I needed to create Tales of Black Tank.
What do I n- what do I need to create next? I need people to tell me. So I got this idea from a guy named Jeff Goins when I was asking him, “How do I get to 1,000?” And he said, “Well, do you have any paid products?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve got this book. You know, right now it just– it, it’s not selling as well as when it first started, you know.”
And he said, “Well, why don’t you just take that book and give it away? Like, if it’s not selling anymore, why don’t you just give it away for free?” And I thought, oh, well, no, like, I’m a little precious. I… You know, won’t I tick people off? And he said, “Well, when you’re small like this, a lot of your people will want to support you,” so you can say like, “Hey, I’m gonna give this away for free because I’m trying to grow my email list.”
And I said, “Well, even in the B2C? Like, I’m not like you. I don’t teach business. I, I just tell funny stories about RVing.” He said, “Yes, people love to get behind you.” This was before I knew about superfans, right? He was basically saying, “Superfans will be super down for whatever it is you’re doing, as long as you are transparent about it,” right?
So that’s what I did. I went home. I used Kit at the time. I still use Kit. I’ve used it for ten years. And so I created a Kit landing page where I said, “Normally this book is $20. You’re gonna get it for free today.” So I created that really easy landing page. I think it just had a picture, uh, of the cover, and then it had, like, two or three sentences about the book, and I sent it out to my email list which, at the time, had about seven hundred people.
I put it on my Facebook page. I don’t know the number there. And I said, “Hey, I know you might have bought…” And I was super transparent. “You might have bought this book, but now I’m going to give it away for free because I just wanna reach more people. I wanna tell more funny stories. I wanna grow this virtual campground that I’m growing.”
That was the name of my business, The Virtual Campground. And people loved it. They were like, “Oh, I loved this book. I’m gonna give it to my friends for free now.” So even all my customers actually got behind me. Again, I was creating superfans, and I didn’t even know it. They were like, “Oh yeah, you know, I’ve been meaning to tell my buddies about this book.
It’s hilarious. Let me share this landing page.” And so I actually got– went from seven hundred to a thousand subscribers within, I think it was, like, fourteen or fifteen days. I said, “Oh, I’m only going to offer this…” I think it was fourteen days, so I h- and I hit the thousand within that timeframe. I said, “Oh, this is only available for fourteen days, so you gotta share it with your friends now.
Forward this email. Forward this email. Share this link. Share this link”. And I sent, I think, two emails a week about it. Like, hey, don’t f- you know, about other stuff, but it was always a reminder, like, “Hey, don’t forget, you can get this for free.” And people did really share it, and people really rallied around that goal of mine and, ah, it was just such…
What a little silly little idea that I got from my people when they said, “Oh, Liz, you can tell a good story. You’re pretty funny.” And I realize I’m 22 minutes in, and I’ve barely told any jokes. Like I said, I’m having a histamine issue, so I’m not as funny today as I normally am. Please forgive me.
Hopefully you’re still picking up on the nuggets even if I’m not laying down the jokes, right? So anyway, it really grew my ability to create an income. It grew my network, and it also grew my email list in many different ways. So this silly little idea that my customers gave me turned into this amazing fruit.
And so I would- just wanted to share that because people have been at– You know, I kind of mentioned it during List Building Live last month. And then, you know, like I said, I got off a call with my SPI community, and they were asking me a ton of questions about this first collaboration that I did, right?
Because it wasn’t just my first digital product. It was the first collaboration I ever did, and people were super curious about it. So I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna go really deep today for Ask Liz.” Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I really hope this inspires you. I really, really, really want to bring back the I in SPI.
I want you to make a living. My personal definition of success is that you do better than me. So of course, from here on out, you can trust that I am going to be as transparent as I possibly can about everything I’ve done in business, every idea I’ve had that I’ve implemented, I haven’t implemented, all the failures, all the successes, so that you can take it and make it your own.
You know, pick up what I’m dropping down. Throw down the stuff that doesn’t make sense for you. You know your capacity. You know your capabilities. You know your audience, and you should trust your intuition. I’m just here to throw out ideas for you. All right. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Can’t wait to, uh, see you on the next episode.
Psst, are you still listening?
Quick while Pat’s away I’ve got a special little secret just for you and me. If you love this episode and want more like a lot more You need to get yourself into the SPI community. You know that’s where I’m hanging out as the director my friend it really is where the magic happens. You get access to the full super fan system.
You know pat Flynn’s entire framework for turning strangers into ride or die fans of your business that actually buy from your business right. We’ve got courses resources implementation guides It’s all in there. Okay. Okay. Listen up. This is the part where you and I can get really close to your monetization goals i do office hours inside the community. That’s right. You can bring your business questions. You can screen share whatever is holding you back. We will figure it out together. But here’s the secret The SPI Community normally $99 a month. But with the coupon code SECRET50 you get 50% off That’s less than 50 bucks a month for life As long as you stay active. This deal is just for the people listening to this Ask Liz episode so don’t sleep on it babe. Head to SmartPassive Income.com/2026 and use code SECRET50 at checkout I will see you in there
