Podcast: Track Your Income with Stephanie Soebbing.
Today we’re talking about tracking your income and Stephanie shares lots of details and the tools she uses to track her income so she knows what projects and products are the most successful.
This is super important because it can often feel like there are millions of possibilities for how to build your business. Should I write a pattern next or a book? Should I turn this project into a workshop or pitch it to a magazine? Tracking your income and traffic on your website can shed light on the best things to focus on at any time.
Now this is something I really haven’t done up to this point. Thankfully when we switched to Shopify a year ago we suddenly had lots more information and data about our site, but I’ve never gotten into seriously tracking traffic so Stephanie’s information is definitely going to change the way I do business…if I can ever find the time to learn how to use Google Analytics!
Stephanie and I are also collaborating next week to teach you how to make a super cute mini quilt. Stephanie will be teaching you how to piece a million pieces together to create a super scrappy mini quilt on Wednesday.
Then I’ll be sharing a video on how to quilt this little quilt with rulers on Wednesday as well so we’re going to link up those posts really nicely so you can learn from both of us on one day!
Just a quick reminder about the Machine Quilting Block Party – if you want to see the entire quilt, you can find images of the whole quilt in the new Sashing and Cornerstones Pattern available here.
This coming week we will be releasing the new Dresden Plate Template Set, a 10 piece set of templates that will cut dozens of Dresden Plate quilt blocks, tumbler / wedge shapes, circles, and you can use them for ruler work quilting on your home machine. I’m thrilled with how many things these templates can do and the hundreds of potential quilts you could make with them.
Now here’s a few links to the things we talk about in this podcast episode:
Stephanie’s 2014 Block of the Month project and free patterns.
Stephanie learned how to track her income from listening to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast and watching tutorials on Lynda.com.
She tracks her website using Google Analytics integrated into her WordPress website.
She uses a free plugin from Woo Commerce that works with her WordPress site and Google Analytics to see how customers arrive and what they click on.
In 2016, 80% of Stephanie’s sales came from email and she knows this because of tracking the traffic on her website. There is a difference between broadcast emails and followup emails and both can be used to generate income on an automated system.
Stephanie recommends looking at your data once a month just to see trends and check up on how things are going.
She has found launching a kit along with a pattern is very successful, but you do need to be careful not to over-order and have too many kits on the shelf. This can tie up your income over months and get you into a serious cash flow issue.
Her podcast, Sit and Sew Radio, has been super helpful for building her newsletter list. By interviewing other quilters, she’s getting shared to new audience each week. She uses an email popup box on her website and the podcast website to greet quilters and encourage sign ups.
Stephanie’s advice is to test everything with simple tests so you know what is happening on your website. She has found Facebook to be the most successful for driving buying traffic to her website.
She uses the Facebook Business Manager App and sets the ad minimum at $10 per day for the campaign and she looks at overall revenue from the ad and clicks from the ad. She recommends just breaking even on the ad (spending as much as you make) because the new customers you’ve gained will now be in your conversion funnel.
A conversion funnel is a series of steps like signing up for an email newsletter that connects with the customer and encourages them to take another step like buying a kit or a pattern.
Stephanie is going to do a lot more testing on ads in 2017. When you test an ad, just change one thing to know what is successful. Don’t assume an ad is unsuccessful the first time you try it. Change the image or change the text and try it again.
Stephanie is looking forward to raising her daughter and building her business so her husband can maybe quit his job too and be able to buy a bigger house so they can grow their family.
Let me know if you have any questions about this podcast! I’m always open to new quilting interviews so please contact me if you’d like to be on the show!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
