AP 1189: Where Are They Now? Jackie Bolen (of AP 1046 and 1003)

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. And today, we're speaking with Jackie Bolen on an episode that takes us back in time. And what I mean by that is every end of the month, we love to bring back people who have been here on the show before. Time travel is one of my favorite things; I love to incorporate it here because we coach people, and I want to bring them back to see how things have been going. Now, Jackie has actually been one of our guests on AskPat a few times before. In fact, in episode 1003, 46, and then in 1146, I believe, or 1147.

Anyway, she's had this incredible journey. She started out doing niche websites and helping people with ESL and then having some Amazon sites. She was going to partner with some people who were supposed to take a bunch of work off of her plate, but it didn't quite work out.

And we're going to dive a little bit deeper into what had happened there and then where things are now, and you're going to see this very nice sort of character arc that Jackie has gone on. It's going to be a big lesson for all of us, no matter what part of business we're in, in our journey, you're going to see that this can help us. I mean, Jackie is obviously, you'll hear, she's doing pretty well now, but she had to go through this stuff in the middle to find her way here, because she actually wanted to walk away from this stuff. And now she's back in full force and you'll hear the whole story here.

So let's just not wait any longer. Here she is, back on the show once again for “Where are they now?” Jackie Bolen from ESLSpeaking.org. Here she is.

Jackie, welcome back to AskPat for now, a third time. I'm really excited to catch up with you once again.

Jackie Bolen:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Pat:
Now, last time we chatted if people don't remember, was in episode 1046, I believe. And it was at that point that you had made some decisions with some partners, handing off a lot of work to them, and them hopefully taking it to the next level. And it was still early on to see the results from that. I'd love to know how things are going with them and where you're at now?

Jackie:
Actually the whole partner thing didn't really work out.

Pat:
I'm sorry to hear that.

Jackie:
Yeah, it's okay. But it actually ended up all working out well in the end. So, I ended up taking back control of my websites and my books. Not that they had full control, but they were going to manage them for me, but they stretched themselves too thinly and didn't actually do anything really with my stuff.

Pat:
Oh, so it was mostly just maybe they were good talkers and didn't take action or they just didn't really know what to do?

Jackie:
I think they definitely had the skills and knowledge; they know what they're doing, but they just, I think, had overcommitted themselves. Yeah, so each month I just kind of saw my profits going down, and I wasn't really taking any action because I was like, "That's why I partnered with them."

Pat:
Right, you handed it off to them.

Jackie:
To manage that and they didn't, so I just sent a few emails and was just like, "Hey, what's up? You guys are kind of not holding up your end of the bargain." And thankfully, they agreed with me, and they just said, "Okay, let's just dissolve this partnership." And yeah, so I got control of all my things.

Pat:
Okay, well that's not too bad. It could have been definitely worse. There are some times when contracts are in play and things like that, and I'm glad that they were acknowledging that maybe they didn't do their work and they just gave it back to you. I mean, I'm sorry that happened, but it could have been a lot worse, so that's good.

Jackie:
Yeah, for sure. And I definitely learned to be more, I guess, careful. I knew those guys and trusted them. But yeah, like a website or just rights to books and any of that kind of stuff, it's like a potential asset or an asset that could potentially make you like thousands or millions of dollars down the road. Yeah, so I guess I've kind of seen the value of not letting that go so easily.

Pat:
Can you remind people the reason why you wanted to let those go in the first place to get some more time back to do something?

Jackie:
So I wanted to focus on other things, actually, other websites, and the things I let go or partnered with those guys were for ESL teaching stuff. So I have some websites and books and social media accounts and things like that. Yeah, I taught English in South Korea for 10 years, and I was honestly just kind of burnt out on it. I wanted to focus on other things.

Yeah, so what's kind of happened since then is that the book started to become quite successful, and those websites and that kind of world started to take off and do really well in Google. I started doing display ads on my websites and just started doing paid advertising for my books. It's just become quite successful now, and I'm kind of just doubling down on that. So, I've kind of taken a 180-degree turn on my feelings about it. I was burnt out, but I'm back. I'm back now, so it's been five years since I moved back to Canada, and I have renewed energy for that, I think. And it's actually the thing I know about most, so it's easy to write the books and it's easy to do the blogs and update my websites with articles and stuff, because actually my knowledge is in that area, and I don't actually have to do a lot of research. I just know that information already, so.

Pat:
It's almost like you needed this time away from it to realize how much you actually loved it in a way?

Jackie:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Pat:
First of all, can you remind people where to go and follow and find your ESL stuff?

Jackie:
So you can check out ESLSpeaking.org.

Pat:
ESLSpeaking.org.

Jackie:
And then there's all the links to, I have a TikTok channel and YouTube and a podcast and all that kind of stuff, so you can find it all there.

Pat:
Oh, so cool. I'll ask you about TikTok in just a minute, but with regards to what you had initially wanted, which was, okay, let's hand this off so you can get more time to do, and I think it was a bunch of Amazon affiliate type of websites, where have those gone? Are those still in the works? Are you still working on those, or have you completely let those go? Give us an update on what you had once wanted to be your main focus?

Jackie:
I've sold two of them. I guess I bought six, but I sold two for a profit for both of them.

Pat:
Congrats.

Jackie:
Yeah, so that was really good. It was good to let them go, and they were the two actually that I was least interested in, in the niche or whatever. And I still have a few of them, but I've kind of neglected them and they're still online. Yeah, I don't know, I make probably 5% of my monthly income from them, so it's hard to justify spending any more than like an hour or two a month just doing basic updates where I can actually be way more successful doing something else. Yeah, that's why I've let them go. Almost, I think I would love to actually sell them as well, but even that requires a significant amount of time and effort to get them ready to sell and all the financials. And so, even that time investment feels like too much when I have this other thing going on.

Pat:
Yeah, and it's so good for you to know that. Just to go, "You know what? Even that's not worth my time." It seems like you much better have a vision for where your time should be spent and what you enjoy doing and what you have a passion for. And it can be hard, because those things are there and it's always like, "Oh, but if I put a few more hours it could do this." But it's like, "Do I even want to do that?" I think it's cool that you sold your websites. It reminds me exactly the same feelings I had toward my security guard training website, my Foodtruckr website; these weren't passions of mine, but they were making money. I put a lot of time in the beginning into them and they were kind of just on autopilot.

And then eventually I sold those as well, beginning of 2020. And I do have a couple of niche sites that again, similar to you, are just there, and it's not even worth my time anymore. So that's cool. So it's interesting that you've now focused on the thing that actually you now have more control over, because another thing that happened in the world of Amazon recently, was they made some big affiliate commission changes. Were you hit by that?

Jackie:
Yeah, exactly. So, I had one website in the health area, and they cut the commission rates from, I think it was 4% or 5% to like 1%. Yeah, so most of the products I would sell were $20 to $30 products, so you have to sell so many things if you're only making 30 cents commission, so it just didn't feel worth my time, where the books it's like, I still sell most of my books on Amazon, but my commission rates are between 60 and 70%. It's so much more profitable, I guess. And plus, I have full control over pricing.

Pat:
Exactly. You had mentioned TikTok earlier. I'm curious of that, and what other ways are you getting people to find your books and find you? Is TikTok a big thing for you?

Jackie:
I started out doing a bunch of books for English teachers, like ESL speaking activities and that kind of thing, and then I did a bunch of market research. There's way more English learners in the world than there is English teachers. I know that's kind of an obvious fact, but I didn't actually write that many books for English learners, so that's what I've been doing this past year. So that was my motivation for starting a TikTok channel. So I just have little quick tips about—it's called Learn English with Jackie.

Yeah, I talk about idioms, like an idiom of the day, or like an expression of the day and that kind of thing, and it's been fun. I haven't gained a ton of traction, but it's only been a couple of months now, so I think there's potential in it. Yeah, it's just one of those things that was a fun experiment to see what would happen, and I'm not entirely sure it's worth the effort. Maybe it is; it's almost impossible to track direct sales of books from TikTok to Amazon. Just the analytics are not quite there, so it's kind of this fuzzy gray area. Maybe I've sold some books or something, but I'm not entirely sure.

Pat:
On the other hand, you're showing up and you are putting yourself out there, and it just adds to your energy for your passion for this space. And so, I think it can definitely do a lot for you over time and if you're only a couple of months into it, I mean, honestly, it can just take one video, right? We've seen this before with other TikTokers and Instagram Reelers and now YouTube shorters: one video seeing nine million views. It's like, "Wow, there you go. There's a way to introduce your brand and your books and other things to people too."

So, is it just the books on Amazon, and is Amazon doing a good job of pushing that out for you or are you having to work hard to get people to discover it?

Jackie:
Amazon doesn't do a great job of selling books unless you're a very famous author. If you're one of the little guys like me, you have to do, I'd say 99% of the marketing efforts on your own. I guess it starts with a well-optimized listing. I do extensive research about, you get seven keywords, so those seven keywords are super important and that's how you get traffic through Amazon, so that's how you sell through them.

But then I also have some websites, so I collect emails and I have a big autoresponder series, and then all of our different social media. My blog articles, I'll always say like, "Check out this book," so SEO and getting traffic from Google is a huge thing. Both for collecting emails and then also for selling the books. Yeah, you have to be a marketer as well as an author, so it's impossible to be successful at it without doing those two things. And then I've also really gotten into paid advertising on Amazon in the past few months, and that's kind of changed a lot for me. So it was a kind of an initial outlay of a lot of money, but yeah, I've seen some great results with that, so it's definitely increased my profits.

Pat:
Oh, that's great.

Jackie:
Yeah, maybe doubled my profits even.

Pat:
Wow.

Jackie:
From six months ago.

Pat:
Can you tell me more about Amazon advertising? Let's say there's an author listening right now, and they didn't even know that existed. Can you introduce to them what that means and perhaps lay down, is it expensive, is it cheap? How do we even get started with that?

Jackie:
First of all, I would totally recommend Bryan Cohen, C-O-H-E-N. He is kind of the king of self publishing, and he's actually where I learned kind of the basics of Amazon advertising. He's got a four-day, three- or four-day course or something like that and it's called Amazon Ad School maybe, or I don't know exactly. But yeah, just find Bryan Cohen and you'll see links to his course and it's super helpful. So, basically there's just various types of ads and then you put in a bid of up to a maximum bid, and I do 30 cents generally. And then you pay per click, which is actually better than something like Google or some of the other advertising platforms where you have to pay per impression, so that's just if somebody sees your ad, but they don't necessarily click on it where Amazon, you only pay per click. They actually don't do a great job of spending your money, which is kind of good in some ways when you're just starting out, so you're not going to burn through a ton of money, like on Facebook or something like Facebook ads.

Yeah, and people are coming to Amazon to search for books, so your ads will just appear. For example, if there's another author that you're competing against, you can use their name as a keyword, and then you'll appear as a sponsored product on a page with their books or their author page or whatever, something like that. And then there's also keyword targeting, there's auto ads, if you want Amazon to just optimize them and they do quite well usually. Yeah, so there's different kinds of ads you can do. But yeah, definitely check out Bryan Cohen.

Pat:
Yeah, Bryan's great. B-R-Y-A-N C-O-H-E-N. He and I had worked together in the past. He's a wealth of knowledge there for sure. And can you give us some idea, if you don't mind sharing, how much are you spending per day, and then how many books you might be selling?

Jackie:
I do ads in the US and Canada and then in all the European countries, so I think six European marketplaces, and I think per month I probably spend about $3000 USD.

Pat:
Okay.

Jackie:
And then there's a key metric; it's called ACoS, so advertising cost of sale, I think it is. It's basically like if you spend a dollar, then if you make $2, your advertising cost of sale is 50%. I hope that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Or if you spend $10 and then you make $20, your ACoS is 50%. So, just with the Amazon commission rates, I try to keep my ACoS below 40%. So if I'm spending $3,000, I'm making $12,000 or more, but that's not straight commission, because you get 70% commission on that, so that's why, don't think because I get 70% commission, then my ACoS should be 70%. It should be lower than that in order to actually make money. I hope that makes sense.

Pat:
No, it makes sense. I mean, there's math and... So, $3,000 a month, which is $100 per day, and at 30 cents per click, that's about 333 clicks per day to your book. That's huge, right? And depending on-

Jackie:
Yeah, that's a ton.

Pat:
That is absolutely huge. And how much is your book?

Jackie:
My books, the e-version are between 2.99 and about 4.99. And then the print on demand, which I actually sell a lot of print on demand. I think fiction authors, for example, don't, but just in the genre that I write, I sell a ton of those. Yeah, they are—$9.99 would be the very minimum, and then I go up to 15.99 or 16.99, and then I get 60% commission on that. And I have audiobooks as well as another option.

Pat:
Oh yeah, audiobooks are great.

Jackie:
Yeah, and I make $3 or $4 on each audiobook, so.

Pat:
So if you were to convert 25%, and again, it's different on Amazon. We hear large numbers like that. Facebook is different, right? When you hear conversion numbers, because people aren't on Facebook to buy things. Here they are, right? And so, when they click, they're clicking with reason to potentially buy, so the conversion rates are going to be usually higher. If you were to convert the 333 clicks, 25% of the time, I feel like that's being generous, it's 83 sales per day. And the $2.99 to $9.99 range and audio on top of that, you can definitely make up the costs, and it becomes like a machine at that point. Right? You put in a quarter, you get a dollar back; you put in a quarter, get a dollar. How's that been to sort of see happening?

Jackie:
Yeah, it's amazing, and it does take some work to optimize the ads for sure. And I've learned a lot as I've gone through it, but I've already done the hard work of writing the book and publishing it. This is just a simple way to, I guess, just take advantage of the resources that I have already. And it does require an investment of time and energy and money, but I think it's the one thing I've done in the past few years that's been a game changer for me and made it from just kind of surviving into an actual, full-time kind of feasible job that I can foresee myself doing for the future and not have to do side jobs or that kind of thing.

Pat:
Yeah, I think it's really cool the story between the three episodes now that we've had together, from you wanting to get more time back and then, “Yes, let's get this partnership going, have high hopes.” I remember you saying that in the last episode, "I have high hopes for this. It's promising." And then now to hear that, okay, that didn't work out, but what really happened is you've made some choices. You've been able to let go of things and really, truly find that focus.

And this is just a perfect story arc here that I think is a good example of what happens when you try things, you experiment, but also you double down on the things that you know that are working for you. And then you have the time now to go to the next level with that thing, right? Like you've just done these ads, which you maybe wouldn't have had time for before, or wouldn't have even thought about. I just love that, Jackie. I'm so proud of you for making those decisions. And where do you go from here? What's next for you?

Jackie:
It's a bit up in the air what exactly is going to happen. I think the next step for me is that I need to hire somebody full time. I've used a bunch of freelancers in the past, and there was like a Canadian Government program this summer, so I hired a couple of students this summer to work for me. So that was great, and it was really just, showed me that if I want to get to the next level, I need to hire somebody to be with me on my team full-time or even two people full time, so that's...

Pat:
What would they be helping you with?

Jackie:
Definitely blogging. I have a whole spreadsheet of articles that need to be written, and I think my time is actually better spent writing books. They're just more profitable, but I think there is value in blogging for sure. I make money from display ads from that, and it definitely gets people onto my email list and that kind of thing. So I just personally am tired. I'm tired of writing the blog articles, and also social media for sure is another thing. And like things like graphic design, I'm terrible at, and then also, I have my podcast, but I'm terrible at editing it, so there's definitely things that other people are way better at than I am.

Pat:
Well awesome, Jackie. Well, thank you so much for coming on and giving us an update. Very inspiring. One more time, where can people go to check out some of your stuff and your ESL website?

Jackie:
So, head over to ESLSpeaking.org.

Pat:
ESLSpeaking.org. Jackie, thanks for the inspiration. We'll chat again soon and keep up the good work.

Jackie:
Okay, thanks so much, Pat. Take care.

Pat:
Okay, take care. Bye.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that where are they now episode with Jackie. Jackie, again, demonstrating the perfect arc there. We kind of have to, as I said there in the episode, sometimes you don't realize how much you miss something until you don't have it anymore, how good you once had something until you don't have it anymore. And I love that she's now focusing full efforts on ESLSpeaking.org and her books and helping people there. This allows her to help those people and help them in all different kinds of ways. As I often say, instead of going one mile wide to two miles wide, you can go more deeply, right? When you are vertically integrated in your business, meaning you aren't just one inch wide, one mile deep, and then when you expand, you go two inches wide, three inches wide, one mile deep.

You're only scratching the surface with each of those different niches or each of those different ideas. But what if you stayed one inch wide, narrow niche, but you went deep, vertical with them? You have stuff for the beginners, the intermediate, the advanced, you have higher-tier things, you have books, you have a podcast, all about the same thing and you go five miles deep with them, you go 10 miles deep with them. And as a result of that, you have a deeper relationship and much more success. That's my opinion, but it's so much easier to compete that way, and it's so much easier to build systems that way. It's so much easier to have one customer go from one thing to the next thing and stay a lifelong customer and increase the LTV or the lifetime value of that customer versus trying to find new customers.

So, that's what I think. I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you'd love to get coached here on AskPat just like Jackie did, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and fill out that application there. You can also find the archive of other episodes and I'm looking forward to another set of episodes coming your way next month. This was a where are they now with Jackie Bolen from ESLSpeaking.org. And I want to wish you all the best. Please subscribe, if haven't already. I look forward to serving you in the next one. Cheers, peace out, team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our Senior Producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.