Does a bigger audience really mean more income?
https://www.ambitiousandcaffeinated.com/
Enjoy this AI generated caption. Gave me a chuckle too much to delete!
As I stood in the midsts of motherhood with 4 under 4, with just 200 followers to my name, I orchestrated a product launch that brought in $20,000. This episode peels back the curtain on the power of cultivating a smaller, more involved social media following, where I spotlight the strategies that turned my modest online presence into a financial triumph. Unfolding the journey, I reveal how dedication to genuine connections and a smart two-tier offer system can defy the common belief that a hefty follower count is the only path to success. We don't just talk numbers; we talk about the human element of social media, where respect and personal touch translate into loyalty and impact.
As the conversation flows, we navigate the waters of fostering relationships through strategic messaging, with a nod to my own 25 message rule on Instagram for warming up leads. The nitty-gritty of time management, content batching, and the revelation of the challenges that come with a ballooning audience, including hacking scares, are all laid bare. It's not just about the metrics—it's about striking a chord with resonant content and making your audience feel seen. Sharing my experiences, I advise against waiting for a magical follower number before making a mark. Instead, I encourage listeners to start cultivating those impactful bonds today, ensuring each follower feels valued, each interaction feels personal, and every effort is imbued with good karma.
Does a bigger audience really mean more income?
https://www.ambitiousandcaffeinated.com/
Enjoy this AI generated caption. Gave me a chuckle too much to delete!
As I stood in the midsts of motherhood with 4 under 4, with just 200 followers to my name, I orchestrated a product launch that brought in $20,000. This episode peels back the curtain on the power of cultivating a smaller, more involved social media following, where I spotlight the strategies that turned my modest online presence into a financial triumph. Unfolding the journey, I reveal how dedication to genuine connections and a smart two-tier offer system can defy the common belief that a hefty follower count is the only path to success. We don't just talk numbers; we talk about the human element of social media, where respect and personal touch translate into loyalty and impact.
As the conversation flows, we navigate the waters of fostering relationships through strategic messaging, with a nod to my own 25 message rule on Instagram for warming up leads. The nitty-gritty of time management, content batching, and the revelation of the challenges that come with a ballooning audience, including hacking scares, are all laid bare. It's not just about the metrics—it's about striking a chord with resonant content and making your audience feel seen. Sharing my experiences, I advise against waiting for a magical follower number before making a mark. Instead, I encourage listeners to start cultivating those impactful bonds today, ensuring each follower feels valued, each interaction feels personal, and every effort is imbued with good karma.
Does bigger really mean better? No, for real, I'm talking about social media. I've had six TikToks go over 20,000. I've helped so many of my clients explode their TikToks in different social media platforms and, funny enough, my Instagram has stayed between that 1400-1500 mark for quite a while now and, interestingly enough, instagram is my most lucrative platform. I want to talk about how smaller sometimes can be better, because it means you're fostering a beautiful, intimate environment, but I want to sit here and give you the actual tips, tricks and strategies on how I was able to foster such a lucrative yet intimate and beautiful environment in the first place. If you want the inside scoop, keep listening. You are so excited for this conversation.
Speaker 1:If you haven't noticed, I did an Instagram Stories training week and all of these podcasts are just a longer version of how all of those stories were Today. I just really wanted to talk about this because so many people are in my inbox and they have small audiences and they're like I just don't understand how I'm supposed to grow. I have 300 people in my audience. I only have 500. I only have a thousand. The truth is, I've worked with people who have over a hundred thousand followers and that means diddly squat, because it doesn't mean that they got good at selling. It doesn't mean they're good at monetizing and they're good at getting brand deals but not necessarily selling their own stuff. So they don't really have control over their income, which is another whole other thing. But I this is you know, you've probably heard this a million times I had my first $20,000 launch with about 200 people in my audience and I was about 37 38 weeks pregnant with Miles, who is my last baby. It didn't make sense. I had so much like I'm just gonna talk about the mindset part of it. It worked because I showed up comma, I did the work, comma, I had freaking faith that it was all gonna come together, even when it felt like I didn't.
Speaker 1:I think I did like a three week launch or something like that for my social media management. It was like engagement services, so something I could do very on my own time and it was very flexible, but got them the results and I just mentioned that because I was about to have four under four but we needed the agency and and any who. So the last I think it was the last four days. If I'm not mistaken, this was several years ago now, but it was like the last couple days. I know it was like at the very end of the launch. That's when I had all of the people start enrolling into the course I was having and also into the services.
Speaker 1:I always do a two-tier offer system. I've already talked about that, I think, in the seven day sales cycle episode and I also talked about in the last episode about you know, embodying that, those five figure months, and I've talked about it before. So this isn't gonna shock you. But always having a two-tier offer system, I was like, hey, I can do it for you and this is gonna be the price, or I can teach you in this group program or in this course for this price. So I was able to funnel people into two different areas. So I think I had four people, if I'm not mistaken, paying full for my engagement services and then I also had maybe it was five, but four people paying full for my engagement services and then I had like I Don't know, ten people come into the program, something like that, and it works out to be a $20,000 launch. And I literally cried. I was like this, this can't be real. Oh, my freaking goodness, this cannot be real. And I was just blown away and it just opened up so many beautiful doors. But I don't want to just sit here and talk all about my launch, but there's a Lot to be said here.
Speaker 1:I only had 200 people in my audience 200 people and I think that gave me a lot of confidence in growing my social media, because what I started to do is I would Break down how much money my business would make per hundred people in that platform. So I actually want to take the time to show you how I break down how much my social media makes per followers. If you have a more intimate audience, like you know under you know ten thousand will just say it makes more sense to break it down per hundred followers. And when you have a larger following like, let's just say, over twenty thousand it makes more sense to break it down per thousand. So I remember telling you guys that I had a tick tock Like I said, it was ranging between 30 to 40,000 followers and I made about $12,000-ish that year on that platform. So when I break it down per thousand followers, I would make $342.85 per thousand followers.
Speaker 1:I also want to know if I get any of this math wrong. Even though it feels very simple. I have discolcular and I literally cannot comprehend how some math equations work, even though I know, like I'm not a dumb person. I have a really hard time with, specifically, numbers and I think it's kind of comical, but like, here we go. So let's just say your Instagram is making $50,000 a year and you have a thousand people in your audience. If we break it down for every hundred followers or sorry, pardon, yeah for every hundred followers, it would mean you make $5,000 for every hundred people that come into your audience, if they're the right people. This is the math that I had used at the time. I had literally, I think I made like $40,000 on Instagram. We'll say like $35,000 on Instagram.
Speaker 1:By the time that launch $20,000 launch happened, I only had like 250 people in my audience that like, by that point, I think Okay, so that would have meant I made $14,000 for every hundred followers. Why am I telling you this? You're probably like, yeah, like. What does that have to do with anything? As you can see, there's quite a difference, even the TikTok versus the Instagram. Like per thousand followers, I'm still making a fraction of the amount, as I do per hundred followers on Instagram, because it's an intimate platform and you have the opportunity to deeply connect and warm and nurture your audience. I am not bringing up these numbers to rub it in anyone's face, or you know. I just I really want to share the behind the scenes of what that looks like, because to me it's just really important to be transparent about you know, about your numbers, but also by understanding like, oh dang, if I made you know in that season, I was making $14,000 for every hundred people who came into my audience. You, dang better believe that I'm going to prioritize growing my audience and this looked like.
Speaker 1:I've talked about this in the past. If you go to my Instagram at ambitious and caffeinated, I literally have an old, old, old, old stories training called my 25 message rule. Well, this 25 message rule is teaches you to go find 15 new people. Just have a conversation on their stories. No, hey girl messages. No weird cold ZMs. Literally just reply on their stories and then go to 10 inclinations old people just already in your network and rewarm the conversations. That's all you're doing.
Speaker 1:The lead generation part of things gets to be so fun because all you are doing is rewarming your audience, building up connections, building relationships, and your content does all the selling for you, and I know for a lot of people they're like, wow, that sounds like you're putting a lot of trust into the algorithm doing its part. But what people fail to understand is when you're having conversations with people, your content goes right in front of them. So the more you're having conversations with people, the more you're engaged with them, the more you're popping up right in front of their face. So it's kind of like a no brainer. But the reason I just want to showcase this is I was on Instagram for only a couple hours a week and this is like during a launch phase.
Speaker 1:This is during like selling out one of my high ticket programs whether this is my one on one or my mastermind like I was on it for probably three hours a week and my content was already scheduled. This was a huge focus and building relationships and engagement. And then what's really beautiful is, once you were sold out and you have that reoccurring revenue, you can really let go of your social media a little bit in terms of being on it consistently. And this is just so beautiful by growing it into my audience and having this beautiful network. And this works not only well for if you have a high ticket offer. This works for any kind of offer, because your audience is consistently seeing your content and consistently seeing your offer and it's just like so phenomenal. This works exceptionally well when you do have a high ticket. But I mean at that, my prices are not what they are now, and so even my prices then were like a steal of a deal and I was still being able to create that income while working part time.
Speaker 1:And I always reiterate that, like I was working part time, I had four under four, or I had three under three and was expecting my fourth, and I'd like to share that with people, because you're not alone, right, like you could, totally can, do this in a timely manner. And the biggest thing is really taking the time to time block. I don't create one piece of content to post and go all my stories and create a piece of content to post and then you know, scramble up a sales page and scramble up at this and no, I don't do that. What I do is I batch out all my content and then that I wake up and I'm like, oh yeah, that's fun. I didn't know which posts was being posted today. That's so fun.
Speaker 1:I was already scheduled and some of my stories are scheduled not all of them because I do like to bring in the real life aspect of like hey, like this is an intimate platform. This is so beautiful, but what it does is it allows me to free up so much time in growing my audience. And this is why I love repurposing my content, because if you're always growing your audience and I know it's kind of contradicting I was like I'm going to have my platform stay between 1,400 and 1,500 for a while, but it's like I'm always bringing new people into my audience regardless, and it did take a three month break from my business in the fall. So kind of makes sense. It checks out. But repurposing your content, when you always have new people coming into your audience and you put like a different flavor, so to speak, on your content, it just adds a beautiful level of ease to your business and it keeps the consistency, which is just so fun.
Speaker 1:A whole different conversation for another time, um, but smaller really can be better in my opinion. I've worked. I mean, I'm going to be very transparent. In one year, I think I grew my entire following and social space to over 100,000 people in my audience. I couldn't handle it. I could not handle the terrible emails that were being sent to me. I could not. My banking got hacked. All of my social media channels got hacked, like everything it was. It rattled my world and I'm not saying that I really didn't want to bring that up in this episode, because I've talked a lot about it's safe to be visible.
Speaker 1:Funny enough, like one of the pieces of content I'm putting out this week is like 90% of my 90% of the clients hire me in the beginning and they're scared to be unsocial. They're scared to be visible and it's safe to be visible. I know that sounds so contradicting because of what I just shared, but at that time I was posting more controversial stuff and it was wild, though I did not expect that kind of clash back and it took me. It set me back in the sense of an intimate audience, and working so closely with my ideal clients is the business model I want. I want to work with people one-on-one, I want to serve people with passive courses and I don't need a million people in my audience to be able to have beautiful income and I just want to know I don't look at, I don't just follow and have a conversation with someone because I'm like, ooh, they look like a paycheck. I've never, ever, ever, ever thought that I connect with people where I know I could rock their world in the best way possible, when I know I'm like, yes, oh my gosh, she has a beautiful business already. Imagine taking it to the next level. And I connect with people on a deep level, on purpose, and so it really showed a lot about me in a way that I'm so grateful for.
Speaker 1:And social media I changed my entire perspective when it comes to social media too. Like you know, I thought that having a large social media audience was gonna change my life and it just created more work and not necessarily more profit, and that was eye-opening. I did not expect that. I also had a great example. I had a blog that I started with mom blogging way back. Actually, I had a secret blog when I was pregnant with Maverick my first and I did not publish it because I was too embarrassed. But I, oh my gosh, I forgot about this. I had the most amazing carrot muffin recipe literally ever, and I lost it because I didn't publish the dang site. So, anyhow, lesson moral of the story, done is better than perfect, and I don't even know what that recipe is anymore, because I freaking made it up Anywho, totally off track. I was doing mom blogging.
Speaker 1:Well, right when COVID happened and that hit, I ended up blowing up my blog. Like I got 20,000 views on my homeschooling resource in one day and I thought that when I got that many views on my website it was going to unlock my business. And do you know what happened? Google analytics would just flag me and say that it didn't make sense for me to have that much influxion. So if I even was trying to apply to get ads on my website cause you can make very amazing money if you have a certain amount of views per month I think the first one is 20,000 views per month and then it kind of goes up and you get paid more cause they look like more high quality ads Well, anytime I would have an influx, it would just nope. That was a fluke, somehow. And I'm like girl, I'm doing a whole Pinterest strategy. It was not a fluke. That's where they found me.
Speaker 1:I just I started to get really frustrated and upset and I was like you know what, like I thought this was going to change my life and I remember working towards that goal of 20,000 views per month and I got that in a day and I just remember feeling really defeated, like I just put my entire life into this and then nothing happened out of it and it really showed me that bigger is not better. Like truthfully, bigger is not better. I had a huge platform and I didn't. I ended up not even making a dime because my whole ad strategy that was at the time why I was putting so much into my blog it flopped. And it wasn't just that one time. It wasn't like I let that one little bump in the road defeat me. It happened like that for over two months.
Speaker 1:It was like anytime I made traction Google Analytics, which is the platform you need to be able to like you hook it up when you're applying for the ad so that they can see it. It would always be like nope, that was a fluke Girl. I couldn't even click on my website 20,000 times in a day to fake that if I wanted to, but it was in a different country. That's, besides, the point. I don't wanna like rant, but it just showed me that having an intimate audience where you can serve people deeply is so beautiful and so fun. So my advice to you is take the time to truly nurture your audience and put out content that genuinely is speaking their language. If you are struggling with content, I do have a $37 Ultimate Content Workshop. I have a ton of $37 workshops that are up on my website now and if you want them all, you can unlock them all 50% off. It automatically comes up 50% off. So just a heads up If you're like I need help with a little bit more clarity, go check out some of my passive stuff on my site.
Speaker 1:I made sure that this year was really the year that we brought back affordable and quality trainings. Of course, like my one on one and when I open up masterminds and stuff, those might be a little bit more costly, very transparent, because it's so much more intimate and one on one and personal, but I wanted to make sure that there were some really good, high quality trainings for you to dive into, to like get that clarity. So just a little side note but my advice to you is don't don't plan on oh well, when I hit 5000 followers, then I'll be making $20,000 months. When I do this, then that will happen. Start making it happen now. Like really defy all odds. That mindset changed everything for me, because I was no longer waiting for anything and I was able to take my power back into my hands. And I think the biggest part of me sharing this was I was very delusional, but in, like, a positive way, I was like this is going to change my life and I mean I was able to create a beautiful course, my 30 K followers in 60 days. That's one of those $37 courses too, but I was able to create a really beautiful course on, like how. I did it multiple times for myself and my clients. But, at the end of the day, intimate is always better, but this really comes down to having beautiful content they can resonate with actually talking to your audience, not trying to quicken a sale.
Speaker 1:I think I've had this conversation with a lot of people. I, of course, when I see in a Facebook group of someone being like, hey, I need help with XYZ, can someone help me? Of course I'm going to pitch them. Of course I'm going to tell them about me and pitch them, but otherwise you will see me taking the time to nurture an audience deeply, because they deserve it, because they don't deserve a quick sale. They don't deserve to be you know, they don't deserve to be used as a paycheck, and I've never looked at someone like that, even the people that reach out for help and pitching like. I don't look at them like that, and the reason I bring this up is I know a lot of people listening to this.
Speaker 1:They that's not their intention, but it comes across that way. It comes across of like, oh, I'm just another number in your following. And by really taking control and making connections with people. That's when the door is open, because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they invest when you treat them well. Number one I totally believe in good karma. But number two that is how you build a loyal following. That is how referrals flow to you. That is how you transform your business, because now you don't have to sit there and wonder am I making traction, am I making impact? Do people even care? You, naturally, are building up the audience and pouring into them in a way that really no one else is, by making your business something that people can't Google or replicate.
Speaker 1:This is when you start to stand out. So it doesn't matter what industry you're in, there's always someone out there just like you, right? And so, at the end of the day, when we can take the time to connect and have conversations and be deep and be real. This is when we stand out. So, having a smaller audience, yeah, you might be. You might not be standing out like the influencers, but you are definitely standing out to the people in your audience and this is why there's.
Speaker 1:I've always thought this like why doesn't? Why does someone hire me and they don't hire and then insert all of the huge business coach names out there? Well, it's because I took the time to connect with them. I took the time to be real with them. I took the time to, you know, actually be a person with them. They're, unfortunately, like this actually kind of hurts my heart to talk about, but I'm so going to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1:There's this really big business coach and I invested in some of her master classes and like showed up to a lot of her different events and I just was like this is so beautiful, this is amazing. And I remember just having so much fun about it and just I binge her podcast, like I was like all up in it, I was just so freaking excited. And then I was like you know, I'm ready for her signature offer and I messaged her and she just like brushed me off and I was like, okay, that's you know, that's totally fine, that's totally fine. So I messaged her again, totally like literally are bombed or just hearted my message and I was like okay. And then there was another time that I had message because she had on her stories and I was like am I not your ideal client? Like I totally felt connected with her.
Speaker 1:And then I was talking to some of my other entrepreneur friends are like, oh, my gosh, I thought I was the only one. I thought something was wrong with me and I was like, no, apparently not, because some of these things you could only get the link if you message. And a lot of these other like the, these people I was talking to, were like that happened to me. I look at them like above me in the entrepreneur world and I think they're phenomenal. It's like, okay, so it didn't just happen to me.
Speaker 1:But I actually ended up unfollowing her and subscribing from her podcast, just the way it made me feel. And it wasn't like. I was like, oh, she didn't answer me one time, it was like consistent times. And then it was to everyone around me and I was like you know what. That's okay, like people always show their true colors.
Speaker 1:But then it really showed me once again a bigger platform is not always better because you can't take the time to connect with your audience deeper anymore. And there's some really beautiful people like Lacey Sights is a really beautiful example of that. She takes the time to connect with her audience so deeply and she has like a good chunk of following, and I really respect business owners like that who take the time to love on and nurture your audience. I have some really beautiful clients even who have like 10 20,000 followers and their inbox is always blowing up, but they take the time to nurture it. And so you know, I think it also comes like the bigger Can it be better. I mean for some people who can handle it and nurture their audience, but for other people I I don't think it's always. I don't think it's always that way, but Anywho, circling back reeling it in, I don't think that we need to be delusional in the sense of waiting for our social media to be bigger, our email list to be bigger. I think what really makes a difference is, number one, nurturing the audience. Number two, talking to an aligned ideal client audience and then taking the time to do mindset work and taking the time to know that this will, this is all coming together in the way that you envisioned. If not better, it's this or something better. Every no is an open door and open opportunity for something better to come along. And taking the time to look at opportunities are literally just obstacles disguised like that's something. Yeah, the other way around, obstacles are just opportunities in disguise, and I I definitely think a big audience can help with visibility, but at the end of the day, having Condensed social media space is just truly everything when you take the time to nurture it and you can have insane conversion rates because of this.
Speaker 1:I Just had a call with a beautiful ads woman that I just love dearly, but she's. I asked her if she'd do a business call with me and we were going over my sales page and she had mentioned that the sales page industry is about 5%. Actually, I looked it up. That is not true. The average I'm just gonna read it the average conversion rate for most websites is around 2.35%. The top 25 of sites that convert is about 5.31%. So if you're the top 25% of sales pages that do good, it's gonna be at that just over 5% mark and the top 10% have an almost it's a Almost 11 and a half percent conversion rate. So I was talking to her about this.
Speaker 1:I don't have a large, super large audience anymore because I got rid of my tiktok and it. There's a whole, whole other thing. I have a 13.9% Conversion rate on some of my sales pages. That is phenomenal. That doesn't even include in these stats for the average website conversion rates. It's oh my gosh, and we were talking about that and she's like that's literally phenomenal and I'm sharing that not in a breaking sense bit, because when you take the time to truly nurture your audience, when you take the time to Make sure that your courses are value-packed, when you take the time to make sure that everything flows Well, you're serving deeply, you have intention and impact before your really prioritizing income. That's when your business starts to flourish. And that's really what I teach and I know I talk about it so much and I'm almost like over explaining myself, but I'm really trying to get in the groove.
Speaker 1:Like Great example, this month I actually, for January, I have my one-on-one discounted Like significantly, and so if you're wanting one-on-one there's by the time I post this. There's only gonna be a couple days left of January, but it didn't make sense. I had my this discounted. I made all of my like high performing workshops that were over a hundred dollars. I converted them all into a thirty seven dollar page and I'm having a seven dollar boot camp that I Know I should have charged at least two hundred dollars for, and it was still the twenty thousand dollar month that we've been working towards. None of it made sense. None of it made sense.
Speaker 1:But when people can tell that it's value-packed, that you actually care about them getting results and they can see how you support them, there is no other way but for things to flourish and Although I think it's important to have a strategy, I think it's important to have those components locked in. But when your mindset is primed and when you actually take the time to put that intention in, like I said, it has no opportunity. There's no other way but for it to work. So that is my spiel. I'm so grateful that you tuned in. If you want to take the time to take a screenshot of this and Post it to Instagram, take me ambitious and caffeinated. I give three people coffee gift cards at the end of the month just for taking the time to say thank you and Actually supporting my podcast and my business. It just it means the world.
Speaker 1:If you feel called to leave a review, I would just be. I would just be so honored If you would do that. If you are looking for someone to support you growing your business, scaling what you have, being able to be really intentional with your time but grow the business of your dreams, I would love to have a conversation. I'm very open about pricing, deliverables, all of the things in my business. So definitely shoot me a message on ambitious and caffeinated on Instagram. There's no strings attached. I'm not going to hand you if you're just curious about my pricing and what this looks like for you. So don't worry, no strings attached. Feel free to have a conversation with me in the DMs. I love voice memo-ing, so you'll definitely hear some from me. I would love and be just be so honored to support you reaching your 2024 goals this year. So I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day and thank you for tuning in.