AP 0180: How Can I Help My Site Grow?

AskPat 180 Episode Transcript

Pat: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 180 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. You're awesome. Just thank you. Now before we get into today's question from Tom, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com/AskPat.

FreshBooks is the extremely easy to use cloud accounting solution, helping millions of small business owners save time with keeping track of accounting and also invoicing if you have clients and you're doing coaching and stuff like that. Also, you can get a free trial today if you go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and you enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Go ahead and do that now. Thanks so much, and let's get to today's question from Tom.

Tom: Hey Pat. Tom Delaney here from HowToWrangler.com. Got a quick question about getting my site to the next level. I've been a big fan of yours for a while now and decided to make my niche site about “how to” and DIY videos for modifying Jeep Wranglers. I've noticed that most “how to” videos are really poorly done or done by a mechanic who knows way more about what he's doing than I did, and can be confusing or go over my head. I'm not a mechanic, but I gather the info and practice the installs I feature before I shoot the videos. To make my videos stand out even more I use a unique approach on how I shoot them, by wearing a GoPro on my head and having a wide angle view camera I can cut to, so you can really see what I'm doing. I've been visiting Jeep forums and posting my video pages in response to people asking how to do installs that I demonstrate in the videos. I post it to my Facebook business page and my Twitter account consistently, but I've seen the most traffic spikes when I posted it in the Jeep subReddit.

I've gotten great feedback on there as well and my visitors are growing, but very slowly. I feel like re-posting on Reddit is a big “no no.” I've tried a few Facebook ads with moderate success with my limited budget, but I want more. I also used a tip from you and tried writing an article about one of my videos on EzineArticles.com, but it hasn't been published by anyone yet. My site is only about two weeks old and I've had 753 sessions with 633 unique users and 645 YouTube video views. But, unless I'm actively doing something to promote, I feel like the traffic dwindles. Am I getting greedy this early, or is the drop I'm seeing going to continue? I know I need to promote and I listened to your AskPat 126 about resharing, but I feel like the natural growth should be starting as well. I appreciate your help.

Pat: Tom, thank you so much for your question. And first of all, before I get into the answer, I just want to say how cool this niche seems. It seems like you're doing awesome things here. I completely understand the sort of idea here in terms of bringing some more quality videos and “how tos” for how to customize your Jeep, which is what a lot of people do. Every car, like a Jeep or MINI Cooper or Harley Davidson, they have their incredibly ravenous community behind it, right? Who are all sharing things with each other. I think you can definitely tap into that for what you're doing and I love the fact that you're taking these videos that may or may not have already been done but doing it in a much better way. I love the idea of using the GoPro. That's super slick and easy to do, but also the wide angle views of what you're doing. I think it's awesome. I think it's extremely awesome.

The first question I want to answer for you is, “are you being greedy at this point in time with your site?” And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you said two weeks. You already have hundreds of views in just two weeks and that is great. That is more than what a lot of people can say. And I remember when I first started out, most of my sites, not including FoodTruckr, which did go through a pre-launch sequence creating buzz before hand, and had thousands of readers on that day, which was a good strategy. But, if you've already launched and you're into it a few weeks, having 100 views and 100 unique visitors on your site is fantastic. That's amazing. People would be really with that, and I think you should be happy too. And to know that this early on you're doing this kind of promotion, is just getting the word and I think it's really smart.

I honestly hope you are building an email list while you do this, because these people who are interested in their Jeep Wranglers, they're going to be interested in more modifications for their vehicles and so you would be able to more easily serve them by collecting their email addresses—but at the same time, be able to continue to grow your site. Because what happens is when you get people on the email list, when you come out with a new poster modification, you send it to them. That's more traffic to your site and then more shares perhaps, which means more people coming back on your site and going on your email list and so on and so forth. That's a great strategy that you should be doing right now. Sort of a low hanging fruit if you aren't doing that already.

I love the idea of posting on communities, and Reddit is a great place. You said you were getting a lot of great feedback from there, and I would continue to respond and, even if you have a really cool modification, post there. I think if you're providing value and you become known in the space, on that platform, that's okay. As long as you use common sense and you don't spam and you don't put every single post there. Maybe just put high quality posts that you do put up, that seem like they would take off. I would also ask you where else do Wranglers hang out? What other forums are there out there? You could become authorities on those forums too. On forums, more so than on social media, or places like Reddit, it's more okay to start threads and share posts that you have on your other site, especially if it's directly related to stuff other people have been talking about or it's just high value content like you are creating.

You can become known as an expert. That's sort of what I did when I first started on the LEED exam website that I have at GreenExamAcademy.com. When I was first starting out, even before I knew anything about marketing, I was on forums answering questions, posting helpful tips and charts and little things that I did here and there to help myself for everybody else. And it was high value to them and they were like, “Wow, this guy Pat, he's really helpful. Let's go to his website and check him out.” And they would eventually become customers, or a lot of them would. Also I would ask you, what other authorities are out there that are talking about the same types of things? You might be able to do some guest posts or even guest videos on certain websites. Maybe there's an authority out there who has a Jeep or maybe another person out there doing Jeep modification-type things, but they may be only doing it via blog post. Well, maybe you collaborate with them.

That's a thing that a lot of YouTube personalities do. They collaborate with each other, whether it's side by side on a Skype call, or even one person if you're in the area, going to the other person's house or garage and doing stuff together there. Just so you can get in front of another audience. And to know that only two weeks have gone by and you have hundreds of views and you have all these opportunities in front of you, I think it's a great, great sign and I will continue to move forward. There's going to be dips. Ups and downs for years, trust me. Ups and downs are just part of the game. As long as those ups and downs generally keep going up higher and higher and higher . You know, it's not going to to be a straight line; it's going to be a wiggly sort of—looks like a stock market graph, going up and down with the waves and times—but a good stock will eventually keep heading up. And that's what you want your traffic to do too, and I think you're just maybe in your first down period and that's okay.

I wouldn't worry about it and I would just keep doing what you're doing and, like I said, find those other authorities, find those other communities out there that would benefit from what you have to offer. Just keep going. Keep going and building that list and really making it, in terms of building that list, also making it easy to do that, but also giving people some incentive. Perhaps there's a couple quick free videos that you haven't shared on your YouTube channel yet or ones that are really in high demand that you put behind an email address wall where people have to subscribe first before they get it and then you're providing value, they're going to stick around. And when you come out with new stuff, they're going to go and check that out on your site or your YouTube channel. Over time what's going to happen, once you keep doing that and you have these really high quality posts on your blog, you're going to see that Google is going to start to rank a lot of your stuff because people are going to be searching for the stuff on both YouTube and Google.

There's going to be a lot of things you can do with that, even down the road perhaps. I'm not a lawyer, so you might need to check with a professional in terms of potentially writing a book about all these things. 101 Jeep Modifications for the New Jeep Owner. How awesome would that Amazon book be? And also to help you promote the site. A lot of things you an do there. You can even collaborate with Jeep and maybe get in contact with them. Maybe it's too early for that, but once you get going, once you start to rank really high, you could even do interviews, maybe podcast interviews or video interviews over at the Jeep manufacturing office, manufacturing warehouse, or the offices, or whatever and you can maybe even do a cool little video where you fly over there and you meet people and you see what it's like in the factory and talk shop all day. People who are into this stuff love that.

I think I did that all in one breath. But anyway, Tom, awesome job. Keep moving forward. Hopefully that helps answer your question and makes you feel better about the quick down period, that again, within the first two weeks you're going to have a lot of that, and it's going to be like that for most of our blogging career anyway. Great job. Keep moving forward, and an AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way. Thank you so much for the question.

For those you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show and you need a t-shirt too, you can go to AskPat.com and just ask right there. I also want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks. You know it's fall now, we're onto pumpkins and leaves and stuff, but we all have to realize that just around the corner, once a new year turns, it's tax season. Make it easy for yourself then by going to FreshBooks now and getting everything organized. Go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section for a free trial. Check it out.

And as always, I like to end off with a quote and today's quote is from Donald Trump. And he says, “As long as you're going to be thinking anyway, think big.” Take care and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.