hi everybody susie here and i have
erica today on my channel she has
reached
amazing success and it's been phenomenal
so i want her to go through
sharing what she's done all through a
small 1499
digital product all right and she is
like
it's gonna blow you guys away so without
saying too much
i want erica to share this in the
interview um
let's go into it erica where are you
from and where do you blog
sure so i am from illinois and i blog
at milestonemom.com all right and when
did you
start that i am in my
almost fourth year of blogging so
yeah so it's been a little while yeah
and then
what inspired you to start this blog why
did you because blogging it does take
some time you're building a business
from scratch like what
brought you to actually start this whole
thing yeah so i am a certified
elementary
education teacher um graduated
in 20 i'm showing my age 2005.
um and back in the day it was so hard to
get a teaching job
so hard that a couple of the colleges
opened up
special education endorsements
so i went on to get an endorsement in
special education so i have elementary
ed
special education and i feel like i'm
always two steps behind everybody else
so then by the time i'm applying for
jobs
um everybody else has gotten out of this
course right
and still could not find a teaching job
and i had a friend from easter seals um
that um worked in the developmental
therapy department and she's like you
need to go on and get your developmental
therapy credential and i'm like
okay what's that yeah what is that
yeah so she my mentor um
and i learned what a developmental
therapist was um so i went on to get
a credential as a pediatric
developmental therapist
in the early intervention program so
if you don't know what the early
intervention program is every state has
one
they're just called something different
and it's a birth to three program so if
your child
we see a lot of kiddos i mean kiddos
that are born premature
born addicted to drugs they've been in
the nicu
dcfs refers them to us parents refer
pediatricians refer
the health department refers so any
child that is birth to three
that we think might have a disability
or delay we will come in and assess them
so that's what i do as a developmental
therapist
and i will say we do sometimes have
parents call and say i just want to make
sure that my child is on track
developmentally
yeah yeah um so i
went through all of that um i had to
have my bachelor's to even go
through the developmental therapy
process so all along it was like a
journey for me i had to have one to get
the other
yeah and it's been a decade that i've
been working as a developmental
therapist
and i we are a natural environment which
means that we go into families homes
and for 10 years i've been in families
homes with
basic speech delays to a mom literally
getting a call on the phone
that her child has a terminal illness
after genetic testing came back
oh man and so for 10 years i have done
that and i realized
i realized along the way that a lot of
moms don't know about child development
yeah and that's okay because unless you
study it why would you know
about it right um so they don't know
about child development and then if they
do
sense that something's off they're not
really for sure where to reach out
yeah um and then
so
and this is like the hardest part of all
of it is the emotional part
like as a mom you would die for your
child right
you want to protect them um no matter
what
and sometimes when your child is
diagnosed with autism sensory processing
disorder down syndrome
a basic speech delay like it's out of
your hands yeah
and um so i've dealt with that emotional
aspect with the parents too
and so three years ago i mean even
before that it was wearing on my heart
and i was like what can i do like how
yeah i'm in the homes
one-on-one with them but how can i take
this broader
and um i thought i'm gonna start
i'm gonna start a blog yeah you are
so you can help more people yes so i can
reach
the world right yeah um
and so going into it i wanted to teach
parents about child development like
what was typical development what was
atypical development
and going back to what i do as a
developmental therapist is
i go in and look i mean this could be a
whole nother video honestly susie but
i go in let's say the referral comes in
and your child maybe has
maybe isn't walking yet yeah right um so
we would get we would have a um uh
sorry physical therapist come in and
also a developmental therapist which is
what i would do
so you'd have those two people assessing
your child now a developmental therapist
looks at a child globally so five
different areas of development
and i would test them on that and so i
just thought
you know those five areas overwhelm
families
you know and i want them to know like
what is typical
and atypical development so
created milestone mom i wanted to be
that support for families
whether it was a mom coming in just
saying hmm
i wonder how many words my child should
be saying
yeah you know my child's 15 months
they're not walking like what do i do
like i wanted to be that place
right if you're questioning it this is
what we do
or no mom it's okay you know these are
typical
they're within the typical time frame
and let's
you know i've got other reese's
resources on here you know how can i
help you out
and so i knew i had something good yes i
knew it
and i still know it the problem that i
had
was um and i never thought blogging
would be easy
i think the marketing part of it is like
yes these moms want it
how do i let them know i'm here yeah
yeah and so for
years yeah i feel like i've just been
spinning my wheels
yeah all right so what happened recently
that kind of changed things a little bit
you've been doing this for a while and
then
how did you come to this new thing that
you discovered
yeah so susie i've done it all right i
even look looking back you know my
husband like i told you is my biggest
supporter
and i thank you i am so down on myself
all the time because i'm like the money
i spent on courses
um just trying to figure all this out
the money i've spent on
va's trying to do something for me that
maybe i should have like
really been razor focused on myself to
figure out
yeah um so much money that i have spent
and you know he says it's okay it's like
you're going to a university
oh that's so awesome i know he's like
this
is a business you know how many
entrepreneurs do you know start
something and fail
start something fail start something
fail everybody mm-hmm
so first of all i need to stop beating
myself up about it because
i've done everything you know you hear
well i i create
um my my honest what my heart is in
is really reaching those moms like i
told you that want to come to my site
and say what do i do
um but i also create printables and um
so i and they're low-cost printables
right i'm not selling anything that's 99
or anything like that so i have had
income triple in
but i don't think i've ever really made
over a hundred dollars you know i did
the affiliate links
yeah um i hired someone to
come in and make sure i had all the
green lights in yoast
oh as you know it doesn't stop with
yoast right
seo is much greater than that yeah yeah
this is just a checklist
it's just a checklist uh
so many things susie that i've learned
along the way um
so i feel like i'm checking off all the
things right like i think my seo is good
um
all these things i'm creating the
products right i'm running a freebie
with a tripwire
yeah um i really was not hitting social
media very hard like most of my traffic
does come in from pinterest
um so i'm like you know what i'm gonna
buy a scheduler
and i'm gonna be consistent for four
months and
it worked i mean i did increase
um in followers and stuff but really
what i found was
it's more for social proof because i
didn't really sell anything i mean i
didn't make money doing that
yeah um but i am finding my people that
way
you know so i
um last november i attended a vip
workshop um with ruth sukup okay awesome
and
i'm telling you it was a priceless thing
because
i met my people
yeah you know i've been in that
community because i started ebay
when i first started blogging um and i
think what i can say about that
is the connections is priceless yeah and
so there were
i think 12 of us that went to this
vip workshop um it was like a two three
day intensive
on really how to funnel things
how to make money and one of her big
things
was um you can't control social media
you can control you know pretty much
your email list
and paying for marketing and i did not
think i was at the place yet for
facebook ads
right in fact they scared the heck out
of me yeah
but going to this you know i have found
some lifelong friends
um some of us like myself
weren't making very much but then i was
also in a room with others that were
making a hundred thousand dollars a year
yeah so there was different ones of us
and now we have this facebook group
i wouldn't even call it a mastermind
it's just a facebook group that you go
and say okay like my
facebook pixel ads um purchases are not
matching up with my shopify ones like
what do i do
yeah like in-depth questions like that
right
and then so i put that in the group the
other day and um
my friend yvonne she's like oh yeah you
just gotta put a little bit of code in
i'll send you the
the thing so that is priceless right
yeah
well one of the girls in my group her
name's jenny
she's from the relaxed home school
she's pretty big so i'm sure some of
your listeners have actually heard of
her especially with everybody looking
for homeschool stuff
exactly she has really taken me under
her wing
and she's been a mentor for me and she's
yeah i mean she's doing very well in her
business and
i literally just message her when i have
a question
she gives me advice she's been a huge
help so
she after she came back from the event
as well in november
i'm actually it was since november that
i started profiting
um but like i said i never got over that
hundred dollars fine right
and i would look at my friends and i
know you're not supposed to compare
yourself to someone else's middle
i know um but i did i kept questioning
why yeah and um so jenny has a facebook
um person that she uses her name's micah
she actually blogs at
home faith family okay and
again another great connection because
jenny is pretty much
in my niche yeah um even though i'm you
know printables homeschool
um child development kind of thing right
so when i had asked micah to start
running
ads for me and i've been running ads for
a little bit
what i was doing initially was more for
um
you know well i wanted to make the sale
but it was more to grow my email list
yeah so we were running an ad actually
we're running two ads
um to a freebie which then lead it into
a tripwire
and again i was selling some of those
but the price point was seven dollars
and i wasn't i was never getting over
that hundred so i'm like what am i doing
wrong
yeah well she suggested and i know this
is what jenny does she said
um make a bundle and she she recommended
she's like i really don't
recommend that you go over 50 or under
15
um because we're going to change it up a
little bit and we're going to go
we're going to start to add more for
conversions
or for sales yeah so it's a little bit
different when you set up facebook ads
um so she's she'd already been doing
this for jenny um so
i'm assuming she just targeted jenny's
audience
like she does jenny what was working
yeah um
and yeah so she started running my ads
and
honestly like it's been game changer and
so what
happened when you started running ads to
your because
your facebook person said no more than
or around 15
right yes or no less you charged at
14.99
i'm at 14.99 a penny less
i have well it's a 185 page bundle yeah
i probably could have went up you know
this pricing thing is just not my thing
i don't know um i did bounce it off
jenny for sure
um i don't know yeah i did 14.99 it's
185 page um preschool bundle
that's awesome so yeah anything you need
in there math shapes tracing
pre-writing skills um so that's what my
ads been running to
but if you're okay can i back up a
little bit yeah yeah yeah sure is the
whole story yeah
because i cannot leave this part out
please so
i started running my ads last monday
yeah and
um i have a screened in front porch on
my house
my husband's a contractor and initially
we had a porch on there that was
rotting and falling apart and he ripped
the thing down
and we it's floor-to-ceiling screamed in
porch
and i love being outside but i hate bugs
yeah
yeah i hate them too yeah so this is
like my home away from home i am
always out there you know either working
either homeschooling like we're always
using that porch
well i also teach at vipkid um so i
teach english to kids in china and i've
been doing that for
wow three years now i think um
so i get up early anyway so i get up
early
and i go outside and i spend time with
god and that's
that's just our thing right it's dark
yeah the world has not woken up yet it
is quiet
yeah all i hear is birds and crickets
singing yeah
and literally like sometimes i'll listen
to worship music but it's a good
half hour where it's just me and him and
what he created
yeah and i know monday
i was just susie i was done like
i didn't know what else to do why are
these people
successful in making money and i feel
like i'm doing all the right things
right
but nothing's happening yeah
yeah and i remember like i was in tears
and it was at that moment i said god
take it
be the ceo of my business take my
business
do what you will with my business i
don't want it
yeah it's yours yeah and i also said if
this is my agenda and not yours
then i don't want it yeah and it i mean
there's one thing was saying
take it and not meaning it but when you
feel this peace over you
um it just was not mine
i didn't care at that point if it failed
like
um and i'm not kidding monday
afternoon my sales
i think i had topped a thousand dollars
that day
and we started running on the 10th it's
now the 19th i just checked i'm almost
at 10 grand
oh my lord that is amazing
yeah and that is gross so that is not
with expenses yeah
um however i have been averaging one to
two thousand dollars per day
wow so by the end of the month i can
confidently say that i will be a
five-figure blogger
in that short a time and i owe it all to
him honestly
i'm not gonna give credit to anybody
else oh that's i think we should all
just
ask god for some help for our business
yes i think that's we'll take that
lesson from here
because it's it's very true it's very
true like if you try to
handle it all yourself you're trying to
control everything
it's like hey i'm here for a purpose to
serve god
and like if i need to do this business
throughout this life that he gave me
then
let him bless it otherwise then i should
change my direction so
i love that absolutely and so much has
happened
i mean even since then like you know
people talk about
like sending out um oh
what do i want to say where you question
your audience
yeah to your audience and i'm like well
i've got people in
in here that have signed up for my
freebie but i don't know my
my email list was cold and like no one
would respond to me
and i just i didn't i still didn't feel
like i had my people you know what i
mean
i would send out surveys no one would
send anything back
and this has been game changer for me
because i have found my people
through this through running this
facebook ad um i will have parents who
will say oh
well they'll say i love your product do
you have anything for kindergarten do
you have anything for first grade so
that kind of stuff's in the work i'm
working on a fall bundle
um but being a developmental therapist i
go a little bit deeper than that because
yeah here's the printable but like why
are we doing these pages
right right what does that do for your
child you know
i'm working on one that has them place
um
uh so it's numbers right but it has them
place buttons
how many numbers yeah and part of that
is because some kiddos have a hard time
with fine motor skills
yeah so i want parents to know like why
are we doing this so even when they
email me
um like do you have a kindergarten
bundle i'll say you know it's in it's in
the making but what is your child
struggling with
yeah you know like what can i create for
you oh i want to customize it to these
people
yeah and or to these moms and um
yeah i found my people my my facebook
group is growing
and i feel like i'm running a business
and not just a hobby
yeah because you're you're completely
you're focusing on your audience
on what you can do for them and how you
can help them overcome
their issues and their problems with
creating something that's
crazy affordable putting out all your
knowledge there
and and serving your audience like
that's that's just
i love these stories where the creator
is not charging a thousand two thousand
dollars for their product
where like i i get that i understand the
the
business side of that but honestly i
love this i love hearing like this heart
that you have for helping other people
and even though your product is 14.99
god is blessing you and your business is
growing so well because people are
responding so well to that
yes yes that is just awesome
so um i don't know how many people
listening know about ads i'm still
trying to figure it out so thank
goodness for micah
yeah yeah yeah um you know i started at
25
per day on monday ad spend
and i think we ran that for two days
and then i mean i was at 97 cents cost
per purchase at one point
wow so if you have a 14.99 yeah
i mean come on i'm spending what 13 or
whatever
like yeah or 14 pretty much even
and um so then we upped it to 50
and then it was still crazy
and then um so i was talking back and
forth to jenny from the relaxed home
school who's been doing this for a while
and she's so she's just she's my biggest
supporter too because i'm like i think
i'm gonna up it to 300 per day
and at one time in our meeting because
we meet once a month she told us how
much she was spending
in ad spend a day and i'm like i will
never get to that like twenty five
dollars a day is a lot for me right yeah
maybe times that by a week like that's a
lot of money
yeah 300 per day is uh how much is that
like
10 000 per month a lot yeah it's a lot
right so what we're doing is we're like
honing in on the day
right we're trying to overwhelm
ourselves like i keep looking at like
the whole week amount and my husband's
like nope let's take it down today
like like my goal is to make a thousand
a day
which susie i have to say this remember
when i reached out to you
yeah and i'm like kind of telling you my
story we had talked before that i think
it was something about one
and you're like you know what when you
get to a thousand dollars a month
call me or text me or whatever we'll do
the interview
i know and i'm a thousand a day average
and sometimes it's a little bit more um
but yeah so 300 we're at 300 a day
now yeah um and i'm starting to learn
how it works i mean mike is really
watching it for us
but um so yeah obviously i have to be
over
a thousand dollars a day right to
to account for shopify and facebook
shopify and um sorry paypal
expenses and then you add your um
your ad spend per day in there right but
that's only a couple percentage right
shopify
and paypal it is they're taking so for
14.99 i think they're taking 73 cents
out
okay okay both of them so it's not a lot
at all okay
um but that still doesn't add up when
you have a lot of sales
so shopify on top of paying their
monthly payment they also take some of
your
profit as well yes oh boy
yeah so i paid 29 i'm at the 29
per month right and then yeah they take
73 cents
right now is what it is on a 14.99
product
i don't like that very much yeah but
your system's working you're all good um
i'm not a very big fan of shopify they
are good for for awesome things like
this but i use a different funneling
system that you pay once and then you're
done
yeah well maybe we'll have to talk about
that because now that i'm growing i'm
looking at different avenues i've even
put
some products on my site with
woocommerce but
i don't know because you can you do
bumps with shopify
uh what do you mean bumps like if
they're on the checkout page
there's a little check box like hey add
this add the
kindergarten bundle yeah you might also
like this no you have to get
um they don't have a customized thank
you okay page or
an upsell or anything like that so you
have to get some sort of app so
maybe we'll talk after because yeah yeah
i don't know if you're doing so well
then if we add a little bit more to it
like you can
that would be awesome wow so this
is phenomenal you're it's a 14
e product how did you create it tell us
a little bit more about that
yeah so um i create my products
in well mostly in powerpoint
um so and i also have someone who helps
me with the design work
awesome so yeah she's been a godsend for
sure she does a really good job so
i work on some of it she works on some
of it and we just package it together
she also does
um powerpoint as well i love powerpoint
i know and people don't think right
noble's in there
they don't between canva and powerpoint
i i like canva because most people
understand it
and i like to teach canva but powerpoint
is like the secret weapon
because you can do anything with it and
being a teacher
i mean that's what we were taught on so
many years ago
people can create printables in canva
for sure
even bundles um but i think they only
allow so many
um i don't know 100 pages
maybe yeah i think there's a limit on
the amount of pages so it's 100.
yeah and i knew i was way over so i
don't know powerpoint just works
what she's working on she just sends it
to me and then i package
in whatever i'm working on we just
package i package it together and
um create a zip file and put it in
shopify and
do my graphics for my ad and then
mica usually helps with the description
of the ad
yeah and and then you
run it and then you go like that's it
yeah and then you say a little prayer
and crash your fingers and
oh my gosh okay so how do you feel now
you're almost grossing or sometimes more
a thousand a day
from a very super duper helpful
printable product for
preschool kids so anybody who's watching
guys if you need that
we will put a link below to erica's
product so you guys can check it out too
obviously
super affordable um how does this make
you feel what does your family
think about this um well
we're not shouting it from the rooftop
so
like we haven't told the kids or
anything my husband's my biggest
supporter
and he like all week he keeps saying
and he's a numbers guy and he's never
really helped with my business
yeah but he started deep diving into
this he's like babe
like we could really keep doing
something with this you know so he's
like looking at my numbers
and trying to figure it out and which is
fine because i'm not good with math or
numbers
so he's my biggest supporter and all
week he keeps saying
babe you made it
i know and i'm telling you susie i
i just feel numb like i i don't feel any
different
yeah okay if if people really think like
they got ten thousand dollars in the
bank in a week like
god knew where my heart was okay this is
for his purpose not mine
yeah and i really think that's why he's
blessed me so it's not gonna change who
i
am yeah i really don't feel
different yeah yeah i know people are
wanting to hear something different but
that's the truth like
it's it's strange isn't it like i've hit
some big numbers and i'm like
nothing changed no yeah i feel i feel
happy that i'm helping more people
and more people are getting into my
courses and my products and i feel happy
about that but like the money
it doesn't seem real it doesn't like
it it doesn't change anything it just
makes me want to help more people
yes and that's where i'm at i'm just
like bringing me more people because
that's
why i started this in the first place
yeah you know i want to help those moms
that are struggling with kiddos that
have speech delays and
maybe a mom who found out that her child
has a terminal illness you know and it's
only going to live
you know statistically until the age of
10 like
yeah money aside like that does not
matter
compared to people that i'm going to
reach
right you know right and um
yeah it's such a blessing we're going to
be able to get out of some debt my
husband is a contractor and
we built our first and or built we
bought our first investment property a
couple years ago
that he can work on all by himself you
know our goal eventually is for him to
quit his job so he can work on that
full-time and
um he's a godly man and he wants to go
in and
he wants to rip out all this stuff and
build it new for people
and just you know be that really good
landlord for them and yeah
and business owner um you know now we
can do some of those things
that's awesome i can see your heart is
in such the right place and your husband
too
and that just like knowing that your
husband is supporting you is so
powerful it's so helpful when husband
and wife are on the same team
and you guys are working on this
together it's a big blessing
it really is so as we wrap this up
um what advice would you have for moms
that are might be watching this
that are starting their blogs and
they're kind of stuck
and they're they don't know where to go
what advice do you have for them
yeah i would say just keep going
i mean perseverance is the key you know
that's that's what makes
some bloggers successful and some not is
because there were so many stopping
points for me
there's two times in my blogging career
that i almost
gave up and i will tell you
the second time i was more frustrated
because
at the end of last year
i had worked full-time so i was a i'm a
developmental therapist and i still work
private practice
doing that but i was also a service
coordinator and if anybody listening
to this knows about early intervention
the service coordinator is the one that
comes in
and gets everything started right so the
referral comes to me
i get you know the developmental
therapist in there the speech therapist
occupational whatever
and i work very closely with the family
to get those services set up for them
so that's what i did for five years dt
for ten
service coordinator for five and um
what was i saying um what inspiration do
you have for other moms
oh yeah that's okay susie there's so
much going on in my mind
so i was uh what was i saying about that
though susie
don't give up you're gonna hit there's
times that you want to give up on your
blog
two times that's okay
yeah yeah yeah perseverance of ski is
what we got from that
oh what was i saying about the dt part
though for the
service coordinator i don't know we went
we went off into that
tangent and then and then we're trying
to find our way back now
okay hold on maybe it'll come to what
was i i seriously just drew a blank
maybe i wasn't supposed to talk about
that um
you might be thinking like okay well my
ads how much am i spending today you
might be in the back of your mind
yeah i don't know um okay don't give up
don't give up create a small product do
you suggest
bloggers should create small products
and start testing them out
yeah i think that would be um the best
place to start because in the beginning
i was trying to do all the things yeah
and it really
came down to just being razor focused on
this one thing
yeah and um i know especially beginning
bloggers are probably thinking
you know i'm not ready for ad yet and
that might be the case
i mean i would i know susie you have a
course
um or a couple courses right like i
would totally follow that first right
and get your your post in there and get
that foundation set
really start doing anything but um
just remember that you don't need to
create a thousand dollar product
to make it happen yeah um do what you're
passionate about
create a product around that and um
you know i had had the product for a
while but like i said it's the marketing
it's getting the people to it
yeah and so if you if you're
newly you know a new blogger and able to
do something like that then
start at 25 per day um
i think i i got blessed because i found
micah
yeah i mean i don't know what i would do
if i had to go through
an ads course and try and figure this
out myself it's a lot
it is a lot um so if you can find
someone that can help you that's
reasonably priced
or um maybe even that first investment
you know i told you i invested in so
many different products
yeah maybe that first investment for you
really is an ads course
right good one and you just focus on
that for six months
until you get it there because once it
takes off it just
it does its own thing and you have the
skills and then you know how to create
the product get the people to the
product and then that's pretty much what
business is
yes absolutely that is awesome so erica
this has been so fantastic
again where can my mommies and my
audience find you and then
get that product that you have as well
yeah so we're going to leave a link to
the product
in the comment section um but i do blog
at milestonemom.com
and then susie i think you're also going
to put a link in
for my facebook group yep my page is
growing but i'm trying to get people
into my group because we're going to be
doing fun things in there
i'll be talking about things in there
regarding child development some of my
printables that i won't be talking about
on my page so
awesome thank you so much erica i will
leave the links to your blog
your product in your group so people can
check that out again guys thank you so
much for watching and i'll see you in
the next video