AP 1147: Where Are They Now? Jackie Bolen from ESLSpeaking.org

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1147 of AskPat 2.0. And you're listening here at the end of the year to a series of Where Are They Now? episodes here on AskPat, which means we are inviting back people who have been on the show before. And today we're speaking with Jackie Bolen, who has actually been on AskPat twice before, once in episode 1003, which was sort of when we started doing the more coaching and deeper diving-style of coaching versus just answering voicemail questions, which were the first 1000 episodes, and then she came back in episode 1046 to give us an update.

And there's been some really interesting developments, which is why I wanted to bring Jackie back to get an update on that to pass it on to you and to consider the outcome of what had just been learned and to see how you might be able to implement that into your business and into your life, too. Really radically different than where I thought it was going to be based on the last time we chatted, so really, really excited to catch up with Jackie here today. Here she is, Jackie Bolen from JackieBolen.com.

Jackie, welcome back to AskPat for a third round. We just can't get enough of you. Thanks for coming in.

Jackie Bolen:
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Pat:
This'll be fun. You're the first person to come in ... You started in episode 1003, you were the first person we did in the new coaching style where we went deeper versus the voicemail questions. And we had you back in episode 1046, and we're in the ... close to 1100s now, which is crazy.

I'm curious to hear what's happened within the past year or year and a half since we've last chatted. Obviously the pandemic has happened and a bunch of other things. I'm curious to see how you've pivoted, adjusted, et cetera. Last time we chatted, Amazon websites, as well as some new partnerships that you were feeling out ... and just give us a quick update. What's been going on since?

Jackie:
Sure. Well, lots of new things have happened. When I talked to you last time, I had all these ESL teaching websites and books that I wasn't that excited about anymore, and you helped me figure that out, that I just was more excited about the Amazon affiliate sites that I had. I partnered with somebody who was going to manage the sites and we were going to share the additional profits. But after a few months with those guys ... I think they just kind of over-committed themselves and they kind of dropped the ball on it and they didn't really do anything, and I just would email them and say, "Hey, what's up?"

And meanwhile, I was just kind of losing money because nobody was working on those sites and those books. And I was feeling frustrated. I just was like, "This isn't what I envisioned at all, actually." I just messaged them and just said, "Hey, this isn't working out. Can we just dissolve the partnership?" And thankfully they agreed. They just said, "Yeah, sure. You're right. You're right. We actually did drop the ball."

Pat:
Sorry to hear you went through that, but you got lucky that they were cool with it, because sometimes with these partnerships, they can turn into a real mess.

Jackie:
Yeah. I was kind of annoyed, but then I just was like, "Okay, well they're actually decent guys." They ... just let it go and it wasn't a big deal. And around that same time right after I talked to you, the medic update hit, all the health websites and stuff. My big website, my big Amazon affiliate website, the one where I made the most money, it kind of got hit pretty hard. And I had been working on that steadily for a couple of years and it had been going really well. And so I tried a little bit to get it back and updating my content and updating my About section and all those kind of recommendations. And eventually at one point I just realized that it wasn't going to come back to its original ...

Pat:
This was a Google algorithm update or was it Amazon?

Jackie:
Oh, it was a Google algorithm.

Pat:
It was a Google algorithm. Yeah.

Jackie:
Yeah. The medic update kind of hit the health, wealth, and money sites. Some of them actually did quite well, but then a whole bunch of them just tanked a little bit and went down and mine was one of them. But at that same update, my ESL teaching websites started to do well, really well, better than they ever had, and my book sales started to increase.

Pat:
Wow.

Jackie:
And so even though I wasn't super pumped up about those sites anymore or about working on that stuff, I was like, "Okay, the writing's on the wall. Google loves these sites." I started working on them and just a little bit of effort and I hired somebody actually to write articles for me for that site, so he's been working steadily for the past year adding content to those sites, and I've been writing articles in my own, writing more books and yeah, I've started to make more money on those sites and those books than I ever have. I've kind of let go of the Amazon affiliate stuff and now I'm doubling down on the books and the ESL teaching and I have some renewed energy because I saw that money was coming in and I was feeling happy about it and it felt like I was working hard, but I was getting some reward for it. So yeah, I was way more motivated.

Pat:
What a rollercoaster, by the way, of just, I'm sure, emotion and what do I do next and here's the next thing ... I think the diversification that we talked about the last time was really helpful because obviously if you had all your eggs in that one basket, then if it gets crushed ... and then there you go. And additionally, and this is very common in the Amazon associates world, is all the Amazon affiliate stuff got hit recently too, as I'm sure you know. The fact that you have your own products now and your own books on top of that, I mean, that's huge. And plus you don't have to share any of that income. What's the typical work week for you now that you're managing these sites and you have writers and things like that? What's usual now?

Jackie:
Well, I've kind of just let go of the Amazon affiliate sites. They're still making a little bit of money, a few hundred bucks a month, but I generally don't really work on them. Maybe I'll get my writer to do one article a month or something, just a few things to maintain it or keep it a little bit fresh.

But yeah, he's working on ESL teaching articles for me. I manage that, so I do keyword research and come up with ideas for articles. I spy on a lot on my competitors, see what they're doing and what kind of articles they have that are ranking well, and I use Ahrefs. There's a competition gap or competitor gap, so I put my competitors in there and then my own website and can see what they're ranking for and it's the best way that I've found to come up with new blog article ideas. That was actually super helpful when I discovered that. I was just like, "Oh, there's hundreds of new articles that I could write." And I thought I had covered most things, but in reality I hadn't.

Pat:
Just scratched the surface.

Jackie:
Yeah. I do blog articles and then I also spend a good amount of time doing books. Probably about half my time is writing or editing or getting covered designs or optimizing my Amazon listings and uploading stuff. And yeah, so probably half and half: half website and then half books. Yeah.

Pat:
That's great. Do you mind if I unpack some of this because I'm very curious about some of the how-to here, especially when it comes to the blog post that you're writing. SEO is becoming a thing that a lot of people are struggling with right now and you seem to find some sort of strategy that works. And when you say you compare your website to others, how do you then take that information in terms of, "Well, there's an article that's popular on their website?" sometimes we consider, "Oh, well they beat me to the punch. I can't create something better." But how do you approach writing a topic that other people have written in a way that you know that perhaps you can eventually outrank them?

Jackie:
Well, I use the keyword research tool Ahrefs. And so I find the pages that people are ranking for, the keywords that people are ranking for that I don't have an article covering it. And then I check their article and some of them are just these epic ... They're just so good that I just will let go of those ones. Often I will, unless I know a lot about that topic or I'm motivated to do it, then I'll do it. My one main competitor, their articles are not great actually. I don't know. They're kind of helpful, but they don't really have images and they don't have introductions or conclusions and they're not really optimized for SEO. They have a bunch of those pages that are ranking number one for these keywords that are like, say 500 searches a month or something.

When I look at them, I just was like, "Oh, these are easily beatable." They have, for example ... if it's ESL grammar activities, they'll have six activities. And I'm like, "Oh, well, why don't I make an article with 25 activities and make it just way better and make a video and make these cool Pinterest images and stuff like that and then optimize?" I'll put their page into Ahrefs and see the main keywords they're ranking for, so maybe the article, the title will be like "Teaching English Activities for Grammar," but then I'll see the number one keyword that they're getting traffic for is say, ESL grammar activities. I'll name my article their number one keyword, like the title tag, which they're not optimizing for.

Pat:
Right. They're not optimized for it. You're actually just giving Google more of what they want based on what another website is kind of giving Google. I like that strategy. And you said 500. A lot of people would go, "Oh, that's not enough," but you're targeting smaller ones and you're playing the ... Tell me your thought process on the number of people searching. Like 500 in most cases is not that much per month, but you find that you're getting value.

Jackie:
It's not a ton, but I mean, each article that I write it will be like ... say if ESL grammar activities is 500, there'll be like "ESL grammar activities for adults," "ESL grammar activities for teens," "teaching English grammar to whoever." There'll be all these long tail keywords, which I'm sure your listeners have heard of long tail. And so each article that I write will rank for that one main keyword, usually in the top three, but then it'll also rank for say in some cases up to 500 more keywords. Even if you're going for something that has 500, which doesn't seem like a ton, 500 times whatever, how many, all these keywords have like 50, 50 times 100 keywords is a ton of volume.

Pat:
That's really cool. Thank you. When a person comes to your blog from one of those articles, how are you taking them into all the other things that you have, especially your books on Amazon? Is it just a link at the bottom of the post? Tell us how people are getting involved in your other paid stuff.

Jackie:
I have some pop-ups for emails. I have a pretty active email list of, I think 15,000 people or something like that. I have a huge autoresponder series and then I give away a ton of free information, but usually in each article I'm like, "Hey, if you like this information, check out this book on Amazon," or whatever. And then in each article that I write, I'll always advertise one of my books. If it's, say for example, ESL speaking activities, top 20 ESL speaking activities, halfway through the article, I'll be like, "Oh, hey, I have this book with ESL speaking activities."

Pat:
So organically kind of in there?

Jackie:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And I give away a lot of information. A lot of the activities, I give them away for free. I'll just say, "If you like this, then you're going to love this book," or, "It's from this book. Check out the other 48 articles," or whatever, something like that ... or 48 activities. And so that, and then in the sidebar, I have some books with links. They can go to Amazon. And then I also do paid advertising on Amazon so if people are searching, my books will show up on other people's pages and stuff like that. So yeah. That's how I get people, I guess, to my books.

Pat:
Nice, very nice. And on the books itself, what is important to you book-wise to get even more people to find your books, meaning are search terms important there, ratings and reviews? When you think of succeeding on Amazon, what is helping you?

Jackie:
I don't know. Amazon is a little bit mysterious to me. I think I understand how to rank in Google. Even if I don't always succeed, I at least understand it a little bit better. Amazon, I'm only kind of scratching the surface of how to rank, but as far as I know, yeah, it's reviews, so definitely getting reviews, which is something I struggle with. I wish actually I was better at it, but it's tough for me to ask people I think to do it. And so I could be better on that, but I actually do get some reviews just kind of organically that people just naturally read.

And then another thing that I started doing recently is optimizing my listings, so the description on the book and then getting it into more categories on Amazon and then updating my About the Author sections. Someone who actually does come to my page, I hope to improve the conversion rate optimization, because if they're there already, it's like the hard work is done, but I just want to take advantage of them being on there and just look totally professional. Because if they're on my page and they're a little bit uncertain about my book or another book that's quite similar, if I can present this super professional page, I think it'll give them confidence like, "Oh, the book is probably professionally done as well," as compared to someone who just doesn't have all that stuff down. Yeah, so that's what I've been thinking about lately or working on lately.

Pat:
Awesome. I want to ask you about, because the last couple of times you've been here, you had been somebody who had been doing a lot of things. You had a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of things. Now it seems like this has become the main thing. In terms of how main it is, how much percentage of your time is on the ESL stuff versus other projects, other websites, other brand-related things?

Jackie:
Probably 99%.

Pat:
99%?

Jackie:
Yeah.

Pat:
I'm curious. As somebody who did get their start by doing a lot of things, if somebody came to you and was like, "You know, Jackie, should I go all in and focus on one thing, or should I start by trying a bunch of things first?" Where's your head at now that you've been doing both? And what would you recommend to somebody who's maybe struggling a little bit with having too many ideas and wanting to try a bunch of things?

Jackie:
I mean, I think that's kind of a difficult question. I mean, I actually ... No, no, it's fine. It's fine. No, I love actually having a variety of different things because at one time, the ESL teaching sites weren't going that well. And so I focused on these other Amazon affiliate sites and they were going well and I was making most of my money from them, and they got hit and then I went back to ESL teaching. I actually love having different sites. And if Google suddenly decides they love one of my Amazon affiliate sites and the rankings start going up, then for sure I'll spend way more time on that site than I am right now.

And so I think that's quite a good strategy if that's your full-time job and you're depending on websites and books and whatever for your full-time income. It's certainly good to have at least two different things going on. But if it's a side gig and you have a full-time job, I'd probably focus on one thing and make it good. It's just a matter of time. If it's part-time, I don't know how much time people would have to devote to doing two or three different side gigs, I guess.

Pat:
Right. Right. I think the biggest lesson is, and the recommendation is diversify. That's kind of important, but at the same time, you can't build all the things at the same time, right? When you put your effort into something, you've put focus on it, right, because if you were to spread yourself thin, then none of these things would have a chance, right? You've devoted time and energy to get them to a point where they were working and then move on to a new thing versus ... this is what most people do is, "I'm going to do four things all at the same time," and then each project is only 25% done and it's helping nobody.

Jackie:
One of my major weaknesses is I'm good at starting things, and I'm reasonably good at optimizing them and making them good enough, but just like all my Amazon product descriptions and whatever, I just started going back in the past, like say three or four months, and I was like, "Oh, they've been kind of crappy for whatever, four years or five years." How many books sales did I just leave behind because I hadn't cared enough or hadn't had enough time or I didn't think about it where I think in reality, if someone only has one or two books and that's all they're doing, that's where their focus is and they're going to make it good-good from the start.

I mean, yeah. I'm definitely not starting new things anymore. It's like, I'm still in the process of improving the things that I kind of a little bit rushed through and they weren't bad, but they weren't great. I'm trying to make everything way more professional and yeah, just build trust, I guess, from the people who come to my website or the people who check on my books. I just want to be, yeah, just be professional and then people see it and they're just like, "Yeah, she knows what she's doing," or, "She knows what she's talking about."

Pat:
I love that. I mean, the other approach is to focus on one thing and try to make it perfect, in which case it's never going to get done or you're never going to release it. I love the fact that you've sort of put it out there, you've gotten it going and now you're going back again to now optimize and make things better and you're probably going to continue to do that over time and improve. And I love that.

Jackie, thank you so much for the update, and where can people go to learn more about what it is that you're focusing on now? What's the website for the ESL stuff?

Jackie:
Sure. You can check out ESLSpeaking.org.

Pat:
ESLSpeaking.org. And of course the books and everything are linked there.

Jackie:
Yes, or you can just search for Jackie Bolen on Amazon or anywhere you buy books. Yeah, you'll find me there.

Pat:
That's B-O-L-E-N?

Jackie:
Yes, correct.

Pat:
Cool. Thanks Jackie. We appreciate you. Thanks for the update and keep on going. We love it.

Jackie:
Thanks Pat.

Pat:
I hope you enjoyed that rediscovery with Jackie and the catch up, JackieBolen.com. And it's just cool to see her focused on the one thing now. Now of course, it's easy to say, "Oh, I wish I could have focused on that first. Things would have been so much better." I have said the same thing as well, "Oh, I wish I'd done this differently," but you know what? A lot of the stuff that you do that are considered failures or things that were more experimental, I mean, that's all part of the process. It's a step-by-step situation, an iterative process until you get to where you're at.

And of course with every step comes learning, comes lessons, comes discovery. And that's when, if you do learn from your mistakes or what you like, what you don't like, what works, what doesn't work, and you move forward with that in mind, then you can land in a place like Jackie with some really, really good profit, really, really good developments and a really, really good looking future too. Jackie, proud of you. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much for the inspiration today and the recap.

And for those of you listening, hey, I appreciate you. And guess what? We're going to be recording more AskPat coaching sessions next year, obviously. And we're going into the 1200s next year, which is pretty amazing. If you want to get coached by me here for free, all you have to do is go and see ... I'm trying to rhyme, but it's not working out so I'm going to stop. Just go to AskPat.com and you can fill out the application form there. And I might select you with my team to have you on the show and help you out.

Truth is I can't select everybody. There are so many submissions that come in, but focus on the application and you might get lucky, and I can't wait to potentially chat with you and help you out and help everybody else out too. Thank you so much. I appreciate you for listening all the way through and means the world to me. Let's celebrate the end of the year here with, "Hey, it's the end of the year, woo," and also the new goals that we might have and the amazing opportunities that will be there in front of us in 2021. Here's to 2021 coming up. And again, I appreciate you and hit subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you next week. Cheers, take care. And as always, Team Flynn for the win.