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This is a very personal post I am writing and may delete later on. Next week and the week after I’m publishing two SEO case studies, so if you don’t want to read this post then leave until next week when I go back to sharing stats and strategies.

This post is for consultants and people looking to become a consultant.  It is a warning about something that causes myself and many other contractors seasonal depression around the holidays, contract anniversaries and birthdays.

For the last 8 or so years I’ve traveled overseas or somewhere for my birthday (New Years Day).  I unwind and unplug and most important I avoid my emails! This year I was not able to do this and it brought back something I had forgotten about. The consultants holiday depression.

I’m writing this post not to vent, but to help other contractors cope with an unexpected seasonal depression that hits many of us. I’m going to share it from my personal experience.  If you have anything to add or coping mechanisms, feel free to leave a comment below. I’m leaving them turned on for a while.

I am very fortunate that I have incredible companies and brands I get to work with. I love each of them for different reasons. But being at home for this holiday season was a big reminder that I am in fact a consultant and I am not and will never be treated as an equal by some of my clients. Not all, but some.

As a consultant you are not entitled to benefits, gatherings, happy hours or any perks employees get. That includes birthday wishes, holiday party invites and participating in gift exchanges. This is totally fair because we are not required to work outside of our agreements whereas an employee is. That is the tradeoff.  It is what we all agree to.  But that is where the fine line that creates holiday depression for consultants comes into play.

As a consultant you are not entitled to benefits, gatherings, happy hours or any perks employees get.

The reason I travel overseas is that many times clients forget about my birthday and don’t invite me to their holiday happy hours. But when they need something they let me know they think of me as “part of the team” and act real nice so they get free work. Especially when it is work outside of our contract and they don’t want to pay for the time, skills or knowledge.

The issue is that when you or I do this work outside [Read more…] about Something to Remember When You’re a Consultant

(Please note many of the links below are affiliate links and I’ll earn a commission if you shop through them.  Some are affiliate links and I will not earn commissions like the SmugMug link.  I’m sharing it because that is the only way for you to get a discount on a new account.  Others are a for me to track because I like data.).  

Many of you know I manage the affiliate program for Cratejoy.com.  That means I get to work with awesome content producers from bloggers to YouTubers, and I also get to talk to small business owners who create monthly bits of happiness for their subscribers.

TL:DR (Too Long Don’t Want to Read) – Skip to the bullet list below and go to the section relevant to your niche.  You’ll learn how to source product or get ideas to create your own subscription box and subscription service.

The box owners curate monthly packages with everything from local and international foods to kids crafts, geek and fashion boxes, STEM and educational kits, books with interactive gifts to match the chapters, and even a kitchen sponge of the month subscription.

There are more than 2,000 boxes available for consumers, but what happens if the owner’s city goes into lockdown or sourcing product becomes tricky.  It could be anything from their farmers market closing because of quarantine or a hobby store where you’d normally source crafting supplies shutting down for being non-essential.

Just Because Covid-19 is Here it Does Not Mean You Have to Lose Subscription Box Subscribers!

If this happens, marketing and creative strategy come into play.  That is my specialty and what I help clients with.  As a way for me to give back and encourage small businesses like mine to not give up, here is what I normally get paid for totally free for you to use.  Any shares or likes and comments are greatly appreciated.

If you’re a box owner, you could offer pauses on your boxes to save subscribers, but you can also offer the following strategies as an alternative and work to keep more active users.

If you do not have a current subscription box, use this post for inspiration to launch one.  If you reach out to me through the contact form, I’ll connect you with the Cratejoy marketplace team and get you their instructions on how to launch a subscription box service.

Cratejoy does not know this post is coming, so I hope it is a good surprise for them and is another thing I can do to support my clients as well.

Here are the current niches I have ideas for.  Feel free to skip to the most relevant section if you do not want to read the entire post.  As I come up with more ideas I’ll add them to the list.  Feel free to leave a comment below with your own way to source product or keep a subscription box going in the comments section below.

How to Source Product for Subscription Boxes & Keep Subscribers:

• Food Boxes
• Pet Boxes
• Fitness Boxes
• Kids Crafts
• Kids and Young Adults Books
• Adult Books
• Photography and Art Boxes
• Sex Boxes
• Cocktail and alcohol boxes

One Thing To Know Before We Go Into Sourcing

Before we jump into the options to keep your subscription box subscribers happy, there is one thing I am going to be recommending you do.  Use your phone, camera or computer and stream out to Facebook and YouTube.  By doing this you can engage your users, grow your audience and save the video.

That video can then be optimized for SEO and work to build you new followers and new subscribers.  It is as simple as clicking “go live” so don’t get nervous with the technical terms.

People being quarantined and needing to isolate is increasing viewership and watch times for my video clients which makes sense.  Now is the perfect time to engage your users instead of losing them.  Here is what I would do if I had a subscription box company or was going to start one by niche.

Food Subscription Boxes

[Read more…] about How to Source Product for & Start a Subscription Box

One thing companies don’t realize when they brag about revenue and sales is that they give away a lot of their secret sauce.  For example, I build (have someone build when it’s out of my skill set or I’m being lazy) weird algorithms and formulas for fun regularly (mainly because it is fun to mess with colleagues and friends) and because it gives me an advantage in the business world.

Whether it is creating a plan to destroy a client’s competitor, pitch a new affiliate or pitch a potential client who won’t share data, I can get solid estimates by simply gathering some of the data points they post publicly and weighing them out with a series of if/then, and/or statements and weights.  The company is usually shocked when I start reading the results to them, mostly because they don’t realize how simple it is to do this.  The best part is that most of it is publicly available, you just need to put the pieces together.  So why did I just ramble for two paragraphs?

Someone recently said, you can’t tell my AOV and I won’t share it.  If you know me well you know I love a challenge, so here’s what I did.

Note: I have not created this algorithm….yet….but I might in the future.  =0)

[Read more…] about How to Forecast a Competitor’s AOV & Beat Them

This is not a this year post, this is evergreen and won’t change.  It is something I print out and keep handy during each holiday shopping season and since we’re now in October, I figured it’s time to share it with you all.  It’s a checklist of things to remember so that you can do your best have a successful Q4 with your marketing campaigns and strategies.

The big thing to remember is that if it’s not making you more money and more productive, it won’t impact your Q4 and it does not matter.

Do Not Complain About Missing or Lower Traffic

Complaining and worrying about missing traffic or a channel that is falling won’t make you money.  Tweeting to Google, yelling at an affiliate manager who lost a big partner or complaining in a Facebook group about the Facebook algorithm doesn’t make you feel better in the long run and distracts you from what is important.  You know what does make you feel better, recovering sales and growing.  Sit back and see what is in your control and then focus on that, not complaining and looking for peer reaffirmations.

Can you launch in new places like Amazon, Walmart.com or other market places.  There are almost always untapped traffic sources within your reach and this could be the time to test them.  Same with going to Bing if you’re only running Adwords or you can begin creating video and video ads for YouTube.  You probably have a cell phone or a computer with a camera, use it.  Don’t let fear and self doubt stop you!

What Are Other Ways You Can Use What You Have

As a digital marketing consultant for both large and small companies I have to be creative regularly and evaluate, audit and come up with recommendations based on capabilities, availability of skills, financial situation and the reality of executing campaigns properly.  To do this I have to be creative and think of alternate ways that clients can use their assets without eating up too much time and also have a good chance at driving revenue and leads.  The same goes for you.

Think about your newsletter list.  If you’re only emailing to it you’re limiting your own potential.

Other ways to use an email list:

• You can upload it to social media ad platforms or Google and run ads
• Use it for cross promotions with complementary companies for a giveaway to grow it
• Cut a deal with a media outlet like a blog, local paper or even a major media site that sells impressions.  Trade them coverage for the promise of you emailing the coverage/article to your list.

[Read more…] about How to Prepare Your Business for a Successful Holiday Season

Q4 is now upon us, well in about a week or so, and with this happy time that makes marketers want to scream comes a plethora of predictions, analysis and hopes for an exciting new year.

Below you’ll find some of our predictions for SEO and Affiliate Marketing in 2019 and we feel confident that a majority of these will in fact come true.

[Read more…] about 100% Accurate SEO & Affiliate Predictions for 2019

This year has been especially busy with red flag emergencies.  Sites that once produced sales or businesses whose leads stopped overnight wake up and see nothing, then hit panic mode.  Do not be one of these business owners, instead read this post and process the situation before reacting.

Although there is not a one size fits all solution, I help companies with this regularly and am going to share some of the ways I approach these situations before developing a custom plan and strategy unique to theirs.  Use these steps as a starting point and to help trouble shoot a way to work through the issues you’re website is facing.  If they don’t work, feel free to contact me using the form on the right and I can help to troubleshoot with you.

Steps to Find Out Why Website Sales Stopped:

1. Find the missing traffic or sales
2. Look for where you can recover immediately
3. Test your sales or lead funnel based on the channel or broken piece
4. Find the right person to fix the specific issue

Now let’s go into more detail on each.

[Read more…] about What To Do When Sales & Leads Stop Overnight