The Rebranded Teacher

Breaking 1,800 Subscribers and Strategic Future Plans

Subscriber Episode Lauren Fulton - The Rebranded Teacher

Subscriber-only episode

Curious about how we've skyrocketed to over 1,800 email subscribers and hit early sales in July? Join us in this episode where we spill the beans on our latest store milestones and share the excitement of receiving our first unsolicited reviews on paid products. We also discuss the progress of our virtual assistant on major projects and our plans for new resources. Even though new products haven't been added recently, our strategies are in motion, and we’re aiming high for back-to-school season.

We reveal our tactical reduction of Facebook ad spending to $10 a day, the launch of a new tripwire for additional sales, and our thoughts on TPT's data updates. Learn how we maintain a balanced approach to sales tracking amid temporary traffic concerns. Plus, we outline our ambitious plans to automate more processes and empower our VA to take on bigger responsibilities. Don't miss out on our comprehensive update and future vision for the store!

Speaker 0:

All right, here we go A little update, and as we kind of get a little bit further into this, it's probably going to be every two weeks or so that I do a store update. So for the month of June, we ended right at $72, right about there. Currently, for the month of July, we're at $21.50. So, basically, we've made three sales for this month so far, and we're one weekend, so I'm not mad about that. I'm not upset about that at all. One of the big things, though, that I am really excited about is we got our first two reviews. Those were unsolicited, so I'm pretty excited about those, and it just so happens that one is on one paid product and one is on a different paid product, which is really nice. So now I have two products in my store with reviews, which is exciting. We got our new store updated with the new store banner and all of that good stuff, so we're excited about that. Zero new products in my store, so I'm still at three paid products. I have one resource that's pretty much ready to go the pages need to be ordered and my VA is currently helping me on much bigger things right now. So that has kind of been put on hold, which I'm a little disappointed about, but I'm hoping that things are gonna slow down here pretty soon with work and she'll be able to get back into the swing of creating resources and uploading products. So I'm excited for that. The other thing that I've done since then is we did hit 1,500 email subscribers. I turned Facebook ads back down to just $10 a day, so I wasn't spending a lot, while I'm still not making a lot of money. So right now we're at a little over 1800 subscribers, which I'm really happy with, and that should put me around 2000 by the time we get into back to school, which I'm really excited for. So Facebook ads have been turned down. And then I've also set up a small tripwire. So from Facebook ads, after they confirm their email, they'll get the success page like success check your email, and then it'll also upsell them to like. By the way, if you want to get all of these dinosaur worksheets, you can click here and you can get them for $8.99. So I'm excited to see how that goes.

Speaker 0:

I'm a little disappointed and, look, I'm not on the whole train of like hating on TPT because they're only updating the data twice a day. I honestly do not care because I don't check it that often for any of my stores and honestly, I feel like I'm so much healthier for it, whereas if I'm constantly watching to see if I'm making a sale, if I'm making a sale and then I didn't make a sale that day in the new store, then I feel kind of like disappointed For my original TPT store. If I'm constantly watching it, then I'm a little bit like slightly stressed and it's kind of like riding a roller coaster you know what I mean Like oh, I had a great day, didn't have a good day, great day, bad day, really bad day. You know that kind of thing. So honestly, I'm not pressed about the fact that it's only updating twice a day. But I tell you what I am a little pressed about right now and I know that it's just a thing that we got to give time. I'm a little pressed about the traffic because I can't see if the tripwire is working. Like. I don't know if any of those sales came from a tripwire. I don't know if any of the sales came from an email I sent out, so I'm not sure, I don't know, I don't. So I know it's only been a week, but I am a little pressed about that, not loving that. But I know, again, it's temporary, so not going to worry about that too much. But yeah, that's where we're at right now with the new store.

Speaker 0:

The next plan is to start to automate some of this. I think I'm going to start to train my VA, the lady that's been creating these resources for me. I've been giving her clip art showing her what to do, telling her what to do, all that kind of stuff. I actually think I'm going to start training her to look on TPT and to search on TPT for trending items and not trending items but trending like how do I say this?

Speaker 0:

Like themes. So, for example, you know I've got the dinosaur theme and then I've got a transportation theme that I'm working on and I've talked to my audience and they've given me a couple of ideas I mean, you know, mostly they were like Paw Patrol or Disney characters or things like that that I can't do because, lord knows, I cannot afford that licensing but a few other ideas that I'm going to try to create some themed units with. I'm going to think I'm going to start kind of training her to do some of that and give her, like maybe, a list of ideas or have her source through a list of ideas and search on TPT to see which ones she thinks will be the best, and then maybe even source the clip art for me and start training her to do a lot of those things so that she can start making these workbooks and making these units without me. That would be the goal. I honestly would be really excited about that, because then products could get listed without me being present or without me having to like constantly oversee that, and I think that that would be really wonderful.

Speaker 0:

Then the step after that, which I've got a little ways to go before I get here, but I do want to branch out from just doing the worksheets into more of a complete type of unit or more of a complete curriculum. I just have to figure out a way to do that in a way that really does line up with my audience's needs, because my audience is really busy moms who, if they can't just grab something that's been printed up with, like you know, weeks worth of worth of work in it, then it's not gonna get done, or it's only gonna get done on the days where they have a little bit of extra time, which means it's not gonna be done on a regular basis. So I'm trying to make sure that I'm working within that framework of who my ideal customer is and really keeping them in mind, and I'm trying to come up with ways to talk to my ideal customer and get them to respond back to me. It worked for, like having them share what their toddler's obsession was, but that was pretty much it. Like, honestly, that was pretty much it. So I'm going to ask, start asking them about maybe their toddler's favorite books or what does their day look like, or anything to try to get them to start replying to emails. But yeah, in somebody in a market where your target audience are people who are busy, that usually means that they're probably not going to reply. So that's kind of the rub. There is that having to try to figure out how do I get someone who's busy to stop what they're doing and reply to an email that they probably know is automated. You know what I mean. So that would be the next step.

Speaker 0:

Megan wisdom is writing my my funnel for my welcome sequence slash funnel for my email opt in, and that is supposed to be finished at some point this month. So I'm really excited to get that and to put that into place and to execute and to get that going. But other than that, there's not a whole lot of new things happening with me right now. But the next time I come to update you guys, I'll let you guys know how the tripwire is going, because I'm really anxious to see how that goes. I would really like to set one up for my math business, but it's going to be not more difficult, it's just going to be a little bit more maybe time consuming because it's not just one target audience, it's not like just preschoolers, it's, you know, multiple grade levels. And so I feel like it's a little bit harder to set up a tripwire where there's not just like buy this one singular product, it's like, hey, go ahead and buy one of these different products. You know what I mean. You're giving them a lot of choices.

Speaker 0:

But I do hope to set something like that up in my business. So I'm really hoping that this tripwire for the busy homeschooler goes well and that I'm able to at least recoup some of my ad spend as I'm growing my email list. That's kind of my hope there. But overall, truly the big thing right now is that I need to get more resources in my store like full stop. It just has to happen. I need more than three paid resources in my store, so I'm going to be working on that. Hopefully, towards the middle of July we'll be able to get back to that and for sure, all through the rest of the year. That's what we're going to be doing. All right, you guys. That's the update. I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks.