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Adding Digital Product Ideas with Christina Scalera
Black Friday is right around the corner, and it can be a great time to introduce a new offer to your audience. In particular, digital product ideas. Ones that you can create systems and automations around, so that you don’t need to be present during the sale – allowing you to bring in some extra cash, while still spending the holidays with your family.
And the queen of digital products? Christian Scalera.
Stationery hoarder, Shopify lover and horse girl, Christina is an expert featured by Entrepreneur, Goal Digger, Being Boss, Don’t Keep Your Day Job and Creative Live. She founded an award-winning store called The Contract Shop® that runs completely without her. She helps her clients turn their services into bestselling, passive digital download products sold through an online storefront. She’s dubbed this “D-Commerce®” selling, and she’s here to help you work because you want to, not because you have to.
I am so excited to bring you this episode today, because whether you have a shop, don’t have a shop, want to get started with digital products, haven’t heard about them at all, or are just looking to see more sales from your shop, there’s an action step in here for you.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Visit ContractShop today
- Magnetic Membership Workshop Bundle
- This week’s action step: Ask yourself how do I make [insert scary dollar amount] today? Approach every task with the mindset of “will this make me that amount today?”
- This week’s book recommendation: I will teach you to be rich by Ramit sethi
- Find us on Instagram
Stationery hoarder, Shopify lover and horse girl, Christina is an expert featured by Entrepreneur, Goal Digger, Being Boss, Don’t Keep Your Day Job and Creative Live. She founded an award-winning store called The Contract Shop® that runs completely without her. She helps her clients turn their services into bestselling, passive digital download products sold through an online storefront. She’s dubbed this “D-Commerce®” selling, and she’s here to help you work because you want to, not because you have to.
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Black Friday is right around the corner and it can be a great time to introduce a new offer to your audience. In particular, a digital offer. One that you can create systems and automations around so that you don’t need to be present during the sale, allowing you to bring in some extra cash while spending the holidays with your family and the queen of digital product.
Christina Scalera, stationary, hoarder, Shopify lover, and horse girl. Christina is an expert featured by entrepreneur Goal Digger, Being Boss. Don’t keep your day job and Creative Live. She founded an award-winning store called The Contract Shop that runs completely without her. She helps her clients turn their services into best selling passive digital download products, sold through an online storefront.
She’s dubbed this decom selling, and she’s here to help you work because you want to not because you have to. I am so excited to bring you this episode today, because whether you have a shop, don’t have a shop, wanna get started with digital products. Haven’t heard about them at all, or are just looking to see more sales from your shop.
There’s an action step in here for you. You’re listening to episode 129 of the Chasing Simple Podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.
[00:01:14] Amanda: Christina. I am so, so, so excited to have you on. I’m so excited to share you with everyone, for everyone that’s listening. If you skipped the introduction, Christina is my one to one coach right now, and I am so pumped to share just her infinite knowledge with you guys, all about digital products. So thank you so much for being here today.
[00:01:34] Christina: Of course. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:36] Amanda: So I read your bio, but just kind of introduce yourself to everyone and tell them what it is and what you do and who you.
[00:01:43] Christina: Sure. So, yeah, I started with digital products in 2015 after a slew of failed businesses, which was so fun. And then after a, few years of selling it, I was being approached about like, how are you doing this?
[00:01:59] Christina: Wait, so you don’t even have a funnel. I’m like, no, I don’t really know how to have a funnel. So people are just going to your website and then they’re checking out and then that’s it. And I’m like, well, they come back and they buy more and they’re like, what? Like, it was this crazy phenomenon that I just didn’t really think about because every single day we’re using online storefronts to buy products, but we’re not necessarily doing that with digital products all the time.
[00:02:25] Christina: But now I start to use people’s digital storefronts, like the digital products that they sell in their shop, as they’re about page. Like, I wanna see what they’re an expert in and the easiest way for me to do that is to go to their shops and see what are they selling, because that is like the ultimate pinnacle of what they are good at and what they know and what they wanna share with the world.
[00:02:47] Christina: And so. One little, secret about digital shops and about mine that I think is a, a fast hack for anybody that wants to learn more about you or anybody else who’s out there who has a shop. But yeah. So anyway, long story short, that was how I got started with digital products. I was selling contract templates at the contract shop and.
[00:03:06] Christina: People wanted to know how I was doing it. So I turned that into a couple different programs closed my one-on-one coaching. Just opened it again. After two years of it being closed because I got married, got a house. Like I finally feel more settled to have this capacity in my life to work with clients more closely.
[00:03:22] Christina: I started the two courses, the two programs that teach people how to set up their shop, how to sell more, how to make this a sustainable and consistent thing. And it really is. So funny to me as I talk about it, because these are all things that feel so boring and obvious to me. And I know they’re not like I know every single time I get on TikTok and make a video about it.
[00:03:43] Christina: People have comments, they have questions, and it just is a good reminder, like this isn’t as obvious to people. So I hope that that was like the, the overall summary of what I do in a way that’s at least interesting to people and not just like a rehash of. Chronological events.
[00:04:00] Amanda: Well, and I would actually love to go back because I know that something you talk about a lot in your programs is the fact that a good digital shop will find that intersection of a couple different things that you’re good at.
[00:04:15] Amanda: And a lot of times there are things that we don’t realize that we think are boring. Mm-hmm because we don’t realize it’s so needed for other people. But I would love to hear more about what some of those failed businesses were and how they led you to this intersection of contracts and for creatives, and then also digital products for creatives after that.
[00:04:37] Christina: Yeah, sure. So I was working in-house as a trademark attorney, and that was where I got my start after law school, which was kind of weird because most people go right to a law firm. And I, I went in-house instead to their their legal department and they just needed another attorney. I was already interning there, so it just was a really good fit.
[00:04:55] Christina: And then I decided to leave that job Did a 180, because I was having kind of like a quarter life crisis, I guess you’d call it. I had finished law school. I had anybody who’s like a type a overachiever is gonna understand this , but like you go to middle school, you get the best grades that you can so that you can go to high school to get the best grades that you can and do all the extracurricular activities and everything to get into the best college that you can so that you can get either the best job that you can from there.
[00:05:21] Christina: Or, you know, for me, it was going to law school after that. Then after I did all the things right. Checked all the boxes I get out there in the real world. And I just had a moment where I woke up. I was, my alarm had gone off, I don’t use an alarm anymore, but my alarm had gone off and I found myself going through this.
[00:05:39] Christina: Like, like I felt like a zombie. I was just picking up my makeup, putting it on. Like, it just, it was a really weird experience. And I just remember thinking that moment. Oh, my gosh, this is every single day for the rest of my life. I have to wake up at this time that I’m not really suited to wake up at and do these same exact motions, literally just going through motions.
[00:06:01] Christina: that’s it. That’s my life. And I work every Monday looking forward to Friday, like that’s not a life. So I went out to California. I got certified as a prenatal yoga teacher. Prenatal because I actually can’t do hot yoga. I have like a lot of health stuff that basically like hot yoga is very bad for me.
[00:06:19] Christina: and so prenatal yoga was the only one that didn’t have heat. So I got certified in that I started teaching prenatal yoga. I was a terrible prenatal yoga teacher because I kept traveling and I kept wanting to talk about business and blogging and those kinds of things, and women that are pregnant that are coming to your class, that just worked a really hard, long day.
[00:06:38] Christina: Don’t want to know what’s going on in blog land. So that was how I got started with blogging and just kind of talking to people about business. And as I was doing that, like I would go to these events and I’m like, I’m a yoga teacher. I’m a yoga teacher. Inevitably. It was like, the universe was like, bam, like, no, you’re not here’s this thing.
[00:06:57] Christina: And it would constantly be like, here’s like a contract question. That’s very, very easy to solve in this group discussion of 10 women. And none of them are lawyers. And so I’d like inevitably end up outing myself and just help them because I just, I wanna help people. through that I realized I was actually doing yoga in the park.
[00:07:17] Christina: It was gonna be a free yoga class. Cause that was super desperate to get clients like I wanted to have private clients. That was my goal. And nobody was, was connecting. I tried bridal yoga, like doing yoga on the day of a wedding. No one, no one wants to do yoga. They wanna drink. I tried to do yoga in the park and this is Atlanta in October and it gets like really cold and no one showed up.
[00:07:38] Christina: So , it was just like really sad and cold that morning. and I just, I was like, this is not working, but people seem to really hang onto every word that I, I say when I talk to them about these very basic legal concepts. So I started blogging about that on carte blanche wellness, which was my yoga blog at the.
[00:07:56] Christina: And low and behold, I started getting blog views. I mean, where I was like fighting tooth and nail for like 10 views a day. Now, suddenly I’m getting 200, 400 views every single day. And I was like, whoa, like what is happening here? Still didn’t know about email marketing still didn’t know about anything.
[00:08:16] Christina: Right. So big fail there because I was missing out on capturing a lot of leads, especially in like 2015. Come on anyway, long story. That really switched over to a legal blog. And then I went to a couple conferences and, and events and realized like there was a deeper need for a product around this. And that’s when I pulled at this point I was also, I had a law firm, so I was also working with clients.
[00:08:36] Christina: So I pulled the templates I was using with those clients and sold them in a shop. And then for the first three months at that shop, everything was on presale. No one bought anything. Like just total crickets, which was very frustrating because all these people for now about a year and a half had been telling me, this is what we want from you put this in your shop basically, and we will buy this from you.
[00:08:58] Christina: And then I did, and no one bought from me and it was very, very disheartening personally. I was going through a lot. One of my immediate family members was in a non-medically induced coma, which like, I would not wish that on my worst enemy to watch that they’ve recovered. They, they weren’t supposed to anyway, my best friend died.
[00:09:17] Christina: He was 27. So like all this is happening at the time that I’m starting my shop and I, and no one’s buying. So I was just like really beaten down and really frustrated. And so if anybody’s like out there and they’re whether it’s a shop or something else that you’re trying to start. I just want people to keep going, because it’s like that cheesy stupid cartoon where the guy is like digging and he’s like about to give up like digging and the Gold’s like right on the other side, it’s so true.
[00:09:45] Christina: And that’s what I experienced, like through all these different failures that just kept showing me like a little bit more and more. And then like, since then I’ve had a bunch, I tried to start marketing for attorneys like teaching them Pinterest and Instagram. Nobody wanted that. Nobody now I could probably do it, but like in 2017, people were like, does it come with continuing legal education credit?
[00:10:08] Christina: I’m like, no, I’m teaching you like how to make more money, not how to be like a better lawyer necessarily. And they were like, oh, we don’t want it. We don’t want it. We, we want the CLE credit, which is like so minor and, and kind of trivial. And anyway, so there’s just so many instances of that where You know, so many rebrands that I didn’t even get to use the beautiful new graphics and material.
[00:10:32] Christina: Like I rebranded my law firm right before I shut it down. I mean, just so many instances of like very difficult decisions or failures that, that were totally like fail forwards.
[00:10:42] Amanda: And so all of that leads to the contract shop, which after those first three months started moving in the right direction and you hit that gold in that cartoon.
[00:10:52] Amanda: Right? on top of that, now it’s doing so well that I know in 2020, you were able to take nine months off from the operations part of your business. And you were able to let team members kind of run that for you. You put your one on one clients on hold for two years and then were able to bring it back because you wanted to, and not because you needed to.
[00:11:12] Amanda: And so what to you has been. Your favorite part or your favorite benefit of having a digital shop?
[00:11:22] Christina: That’s a good question. I mean, the sales notifications are definitely right. That’s a highlight of the day. Or like, if, if I’m out with friends and I forgot that my, my phone is on and I hear like the Ching, right?
[00:11:34] Christina: Like they’re all like, yay. My husband always claps or something like we still celebrate it all the time. As I’m saying this I’m so embarrassed, but I never throw out the sale notification emails. I still get every single email to my inbox. I archive them because I don’t wanna throw them out.
[00:11:51] Christina: so I think that’s, that’s like huge. I mean, you can’t, you can’t underestimate the power of what it feels like, even if it’s like a $20 sale, just to know that you’re. Driving to your in-laws house and suddenly there’s, there’s another $20 coming your way. It just, feels really free and abundant and it, it has, it’s totally given me location independence.
[00:12:16] Christina: And it’s funny because I know, I know you get this, but my one criteria, my number one thing when I was dating a couple years ago was like, I just don’t wanna marry someone in the military.
[00:12:27] Christina: Spoiler alert he’s in the Navy. So I was just like, you know, I did that with my dad as a kid. Like my dad was in the army. We went all over the place. Like I just, I don’t wanna move around. Like, I’m, I’m ready to settle down. And now I’ve moved like three times in the last two years. But anyway it was so interesting because
[00:12:44] Christina: coming into that situation. Like he was so perfect for me in every way. And it was just such an eye opening moment when I was like, wow, like, I, I can live anywhere. I can move anywhere. You know, more than anything like the sales notifications and stuff, my first goal with my business was to create location independence.
[00:13:00] Christina: And at the time it was just to travel and ski and, you know, go to Colorado or go to Italy or whatever. that was my first goal. And then like, now that I’m a little bit more settled it’s, it’s definitely. Just knowing that everything is so sealed up and that all the work is, has gone into every single one of those like sales notifications.
[00:13:20] Christina: Like it’s not just the sale coming through, but it’s also like knowing how safely everybody’s purchase is being delivered and like, Every email that we’ve crafted along the way to support that journey, whether it’s before they buy or after they buy. And then just getting those testimonials and just completely UN we’re really bad at soliciting reviews and things like that.
[00:13:44] Christina: But just seeing those come in, you know, we have a channel where we celebrate that in slack, and those are the types of things that are just. until you experience them, you can’t it’s probably like having a kid I don’t have kids yet, but it’s probably like having a kid, like you can’t really explain how it feels to be a mom.
[00:13:59] Christina: Who’s someone who’s like to someone who’s not a mom. I’m, I’m imagining it’s like, you can’t really explain how it feels to have that kind of passive income until you start to experience it. And I think that’s what holds so many people back is like, they don’t feel like it’s possible for them. I know, I didn’t, I really was like in 2015, when I started my store and didn’t get sales for those three months, I was like, this is a scam.
[00:14:22] Christina: I just went to all these conferences. I listened to all the pat Flynns. I did all the, you know, dancing that Tony Robbins made me do in a very cold room, like this sucked and nothing happened. So it just, it felt like a scam until it wasn’t until like I started getting sales and I started getting people thanking me It had to have that time and that, that like journey with the customer to evolve into something that they were willing to buy. And now they buy it on demand consistently every single day.
[00:14:51] Amanda: So let’s say that there’s someone listening and they’re in that place right now, where they have a couple different digital products and they’ve got it in the shop on their website, but they’re not seeing sales kind of like re were those first few months.
[00:15:04] Amanda: Yeah. What are some common problems that you see with your students and with your clients that might be affecting these people? What are some common fixes that they could make some tweaks to help start getting those sales rolling.
[00:15:17] Christina: Yeah, well, the number one thing, and no one likes this answer is you, you weren’t talking about it.
[00:15:23] Christina: I mean, that, that was what it was for me is like, I just wasn’t getting my products out there. I was blogging about legal stuff, but I didn’t tell anyone that I was selling products. I mean, there was a shop tab, so I just assumed, oh, well they’re reading my blog. They’ll see the shop tab. No people need to be told exactly what to do so much.
[00:15:41] Christina: So that one of the things I end up telling, inevitably everybody I work. Whether it’s like in a group coaching program or one-on-one is make sure that when you are doing some sort of sign up, whether it’s an email sign up or a webinar sign up or a shop, like show them exactly how to do the thing, like how to sign up for your email list, how to buy a product from your shop.
[00:16:03] Christina: Like literally make a TikTok about here is how you, you go. Search a product in my shop, click on that product page, add it to your cart. And here’s what you’ll see. And then you can enter your contact details and payment information checkout, like literally showing them. And we should, we, we, we think everyone knows how to do this and they probably do, but they just wanna see you take them through that process.
[00:16:26] Christina: They just want to have the permission to do that on your store, which sounds silly right, but like, think about how much more inviting a store with an open door. Like let’s say you’re walking down a little cute main street somewhere. Think about how much more inviting it is to walk in and how much easier it is to walk into that store with an open door, like with a little candle inside.
[00:16:46] Christina: Maybe there’s a cute little dog greeting you. Like you feel welcome before you’re even there. And the online equivalent of that, is just doing a screen. Where you’re on a webinar and you’re selling and you show them exactly how to make a purchase or you’re on TikTok and you just dropped a huge knowledge, bomb and you don’t just say like, oh, head to the link of my bio or link of my profile, but you’re like, there’s a link.
[00:17:14] Christina: Here’s what happens when you click it and you flip the camera around, you show yourself clicking it and it opens up your shop. You can say, you can pick this product. It’s exactly what you need. You can actually like, as you’re talking over. Add that product to the cart. And then you can even say in a voiceover, like now just click this cart, check out, you’re ready to go.
[00:17:32] Christina: That’s what people really need. So need to talk about your products more. You need to tell them they exist. And if you are like sick of talking about them, they’re just like, people are just starting to hear about them. I mean, every single day I am so sick of talking about the programs that I sell and like on the contract shop side I’m so, so I’m so over telling people what an LLC is so boring to me now, but like every time I do a video about it, I always get five new questions.
[00:18:02] Christina: So it’s like this isn’t old and this isn’t boring to the people that are watching it. No one is annoyed that you’re talking about your products again for the fifth time, because they’re only seeing it for the first. So the biggest mistake that people make is they just, aren’t talking about their products and putting them out there enough.
[00:18:20] Christina: And that’s not the answer everybody wants, cuz they want me to tell them that, you know, there was an Instagram filter I used that blew up my career or something, but that’s not true.
[00:18:30] Amanda: Well, and I’m so glad that that’s what you said because I reiterate this all the time, but of course it’s probably the first time that anyone has heard it.
[00:18:40] Amanda: People only see a fraction of our content, but people only see a fraction of the content that we actually create and put out there. And if you want to be the expert in someone’s mind, if you want to become known as whatever it is that you’re doing, or as this digital product owner, as this course creator, you have to talk about it hundreds of times before someone’s even seen it a couple of times, because people only see so much of what we actually put out there.
[00:19:07] Christina: Yeah. And who knows how distracted they are listening,
[00:19:11] Amanda: especially on social media.
[00:19:12] Christina: Yeah. It, it is just, it takes many, many passes to hear the same phrase over and over to finally do something. Yeah.
[00:19:19] Amanda: It, what is it like seven to 10 times
[00:19:22] Christina: before someone? I bet it’s more, I, I actually bet it’s more. I think that’s a, like, cuz I’ve been hearing that statistics since like 2013, 14 and.
[00:19:32] Christina: Media, as it exists now is so different addressing. I bet it’s more . So if you’re not tell that’s a good standard, if you’re not telling people about your product, like at least 10 times, then no one has heard about it, basically. No.
[00:19:45] Amanda: And even of that, if you say it 10 times, they’ve seen it once, maybe because it’s such a crowded.
[00:19:52] Amanda: I don’t wanna say it’s a crowded industry, but it’s just a crowded world. We it’s noisy. There’s a lot of media now. It’s always changing our attention. Spans are always shrinking it just is what it is. What let’s say that someone’s an anomaly and they are actually talking about their products, but they’re still not seen sales.
[00:20:11] Amanda: What can they do to dig even further and to start generating that revenue?
[00:20:16] Christina: Yeah, good question. The first place I go is just talking to people. So in your DMS, you know, if you wanna just have very low key conversations with people, if you want to do something a little bit more organized is you can have some kind of survey.
[00:20:32] Christina: I like to incentivize the surveys with like a guaranteed prize of like a $5 Starbucks gift card, or just some sort of like, You know, out of every every hundred people will add like a $50 Amazon card. So we’ll do a drawing for that. So one out of every hundred is gonna win. . I would also say that I think that’s the main thing is if you’re not talking to people about your product, even if it’s just asking questions, asking things around your product, like, Hey, is this actually an issue for you?
[00:21:01] Christina: You know, like, is, is email marketing even hard for you? Like, what’s hard about it. Oh, the Tech’s hard about it. That’s interesting because I’ve been selling this other thing and I didn’t even include like a little, even if it’s like a five minute tutorial about tech or. Not even a tutorial about tech, right?
[00:21:17] Christina: Cuz those would become nightmares, but like a tutorial about where to find the tutorials about tech. Okay. Here’s how you find something on MailChimp. Here’s how you find something on convert kit. Here’s how you find something on flow desk. So those are the types of things that, that people are like when they’re on your site and they’re on your shop, they’re really rooting for you to sell to them.
[00:21:35] Christina: They’re already in the store. They’re just waiting for you to be like, yes. Looks perfect on you. And so that’s what your product description page is there to do. And if they’re not seeing those things like the extra little five minute tech package or whatever that you found out through market research is what they really are after.
[00:21:53] Christina: Or like that’s their biggest reservation, then you’re not gonna be selling to them. The right product in front of the right person will always result in a sale. And so that’s what we’re always trying to look for and solve that equation is like, do we need to change the product at all? Or do we need to change?
[00:22:08] Christina: Who we’re talking to at all. And it’s usually a little bit of both, which is the hard part, but it’s not hard if you just consistently get out there and have conversations with people. And if you’re really introverted, cuz I’m, I’m pretty introverted and that takes a lot out of me. You don’t necessarily have to be the one who’s having the conversation.
[00:22:26] Christina: You can kind of just sit back and watch and listen and you can really absorb a lot. And like a life hack is just. Asking people questions about themselves. They love to talk about themselves. They love to talk about their problems. So you don’t even have to talk like you can just ask people questions and they’ll give you that information.
[00:22:44] Amanda: What would you say the first step to take is for everyone who’s listening that doesn’t have a shop yet, but they would love to start moving into the realm of digital products. Where do they even begin?
[00:22:56] Christina: This is such a good question. The first thing I would do is figure out, you can either go about it into one of two ways.
[00:23:04] Christina: So you can already look at like what it is that your clients need that you’re using on a consistent basis as far as the template goes, because if you are working with clients in a service based business, you’re not starting from scratch every single time. Like there are certain things that you’re always sending to the client to get started the questionnaire some kind of Asana board or some kind of.
[00:23:23] Christina: Like spreadsheet or something like that. Like, there’s always something that you’re working with with the client and that could be turned into a template. That you could be selling. So that’s one way, because you’ve, pre-validated it knowing that other people are using this already and it’s helping them.
[00:23:38] Christina: The other way to do it is if you’re not working with clients yet, and you just have ideas, it’s a little bit harder, it requires a little bit more patience, a little bit more market research, but you can still do it. And this just requires you go out and you look at what they don’t have in their life.
[00:23:53] Christina: That would make it easier. So basically what are their problems? I feel like this is just basic marketing, but with the, the digital product spin on. It would be that you pre-sell it. So you just create a listing that is available for sale. They can add it to their cart. They can check out, but all over that pre-sale listing.
[00:24:10] Christina: It says the words pre-sale. So it can say it in the thumbnail graphic used to sell the product. It can say it in the product description. It can say it in the product title. I usually put it in all. And then I also tell the people when that presale product will be delivered after purchase. And usually I run these presales in conjunction with some sort of promotional event, like, Hey, black, Friday’s here.
[00:24:33] Christina: We technically don’t have a shop yet, but we have six products on presales. So whatever you guys pick, those are gonna be delivered by whatever December 10th, if it was a black Friday sale. That’s a really quick turnaround, by the way, I, I usually say like give yourself 14 to 30 days as the product creator, but being black Friday, being sensational, being splashy, that could be a really cool angle to come at it from.
[00:24:55] Christina: that’s typically what I’m doing. And you can do the same thing for a mid-year sale, you know, July 4th or, you know, any other. Just pick like a random hall back to school. Like, it doesn’t matter what the, the occasion is. I find it tends to help to have some sort of excuse and not just like, I need a new fence in my backyard sale.
[00:25:12] Christina: Like , you know what I mean? Like, it just, it really helps to have some kind of it, it makes sense to people. Oh yeah. Things are on sale this weekend. I saw Macy’s as having a sale. So that makes sense that like the contract shop’s having a sale. Builds a little trust. So that’s how I would get started.
[00:25:27] Christina: If I, if I didn’t have anything available yet or shop available yet, you just need a way for them to check out and the ability to put up a pre-sale listing. Definitely
[00:25:35] Amanda: give yourselves plenty of time. I gave myself two weeks after the sale ended. And then I got COVID and most of my products were actually already created cuz I was using content and things I already had.
[00:25:51] Amanda: And I still had to create some of my shop products while I was sick with COVID because there was no way around it. If I was gonna. Produce by the deadline. So give yourself probably more time than you think you need
[00:26:04] Christina: and just let them know. That’s a good tip. That’s my recommendation,
[00:26:07] Amanda: because that was rough.
[00:26:08] Amanda: What about the people who they haven’t established digital shop? They are making sales, even if they’re not super consistent, what would you recommend that they focus in on, in order to get to the next level, to see some really consistent sales and kind of have it become the. If not the main piece, a large chunk of their incoming revenue.
[00:26:30] Christina: Yeah. There’s a couple ways to go about this depending on who they are. So one is obviously paid strategies like TikTok and Facebook ads. Those are, are great avenues. If they find that they already have content that resonates. If you do not have content that resonates with your audience, you were throwing money away on paid advertising.
[00:26:47] Christina: If they aren’t quite up for the level of paid adds yet a good compromise is to have an affiliate program because you can then just pay the affiliates after the sale is made. So basically, you know, if you have a hundred dollars product and the affiliates getting a $20 commission, like a 20% commission, then you’re only paying that affiliate after you already have the, the a hundred dollars in your bank account.
[00:27:09] Christina: So that’s a nice little compromise where you’re getting a form of a, of paid advertising, but it’s not. Like you have to, you know, like we’re in the middle of the launch right now. We just had to spend 10, $10,000 before anything even happened. before any money came into our bank account. So it’s just like, how can we make this more appetizing for someone who isn’t really used to that like big outlay of cash with no return for like basically three or four weeks until the launch happens.
[00:27:39] Christina: And then another, like the cheapest way is just to, to go back to going with collaborations and joint venture workshops, webinars, whatever you wanna call it, any kind of, you know, podcast like this, where you’re featured, you can talk about your products on things like that. Those are all really great.
[00:27:55] Christina: Any kind of collaboration is a really great way for you to get your, your your products out in front of a bigger audience, a different complimentary audience that someone else has the catch quote unquote catch. Right. So like affiliate takes a little bit of time, takes a little bit of money. Paid advertising takes less time, a lot of money, this kind of collaboration strategy.
[00:28:15] Christina: Doesn’t take very much money. Maybe they get a little affiliate commission or, you know, a little, little kickback or something, but it takes a lot of time. So those are kind of the three things that most people could check out, depending on how much time, how much money they have. And, if they’re lacking on both.
[00:28:34] Christina: Time and money, then they’re just gonna have to find a way to make content that resonates more and better with their audience, which is what you’re here for. I like to have a drawing of like a spiral that just keeps spiraling up and bigger and up and bigger and up and bigger because we think that it’s just like this line.
[00:28:54] Christina: Like a hockey stick curve where, you know, maybe we have a little dip in the beginning and then it just shoots up. But it’s actually more like a spiral where you go up and then you go back down and then you go up and then you go back down and every single time you go up, the, the circle gets a, you know, the piece of pie gets a little bigger, but it does take some time and some effort.
[00:29:11] Christina: And I just find that the biggest problem that most people have is that they’re not willing to put. Either of those things the time or the effort, it’s not so much the money, you know, you can, you can find ways around the money. You can make the money. That’s not ever been something that’s that I’ve held me back, cuz I’m just like, okay, well just make more so that hasn’t that’s my attitude towards it.
[00:29:32] Christina: But I would just say that most people don’t, they don’t give themselves a chance and it’s like the hardest, most heartbreaking thing to see. and because they’re so close, like they’re just so close, like just three more months of hard work, but like people wanted the result in one month, not five. And it gets really hard.
[00:29:51] Christina: Okay, so
[00:29:52] Amanda: to summarize, correct me if I’m I’m wrong or I’m missing anything, but if you don’t have a shop yet you wanna focus on what you already have, that you can turn into products. Mm-hmm . If you have a newer shop and you’re not seeing many sales, you gotta get in front of your own audience. And if you have a shop that is making sales, Fairly consistently you have to get in front of new audiences.
[00:30:13] Amanda: Is that kind of
[00:30:14] Christina: a, a absolutely that’s, summary’s a beautiful summary of it.
[00:30:18] Amanda: Perfect. Okay. So keeping in mind that we have all of those different levels, if there was one single action step that you could give the listeners this week, what would it be?
[00:30:27] Christina: I would ask yourself, how do I make. Insert scary dollar amount here. So when I first started, I would wake up every day and I would say, how can I make a hundred dollars today? That felt really scary and hard. And I would approach every interaction, every podcast, every Instagram post, everything from that place of like, is this getting me closer to making a hundred dollars?
[00:30:52] Christina: Like did I get out in front of 10 people who could tell 10 people and tell 10 other people about my shop? Did I cut a subscription that cost me $50? And you know, that’s $50 back in my pocket and then I made one sale. So now I’m over the a hundred dollars threshold. Did I reach out to you know, the six people who clicked on my link and asked them if they had any questions about buying my product, which is like unheard of, oh, what reaching out to people who clicked on links in an email.
[00:31:21] Christina: But yeah, like just, just doing whatever it takes and, and setting that goal for yourself, but like making it so that you. Like, it’s not even an option. It’s not like an optional goal to hit a hundred dollars. It’s just like, I’m gonna hit a hundred dollars today. And like, that’s it. I have to figure out a way to make that happen.
[00:31:40] Christina: It’s not like a nice to have. It’s not a dream. It’s not a wish. It’s not an idea. It’s like, I am at $50 right now. Let me reach out to three people and see why they haven’t bought from the email that I sent out today. And so I think when you shift your mindset from like things happening to you. To you are actually going out there and doing things to the world.
[00:32:03] Christina: It can really help you to just leverage this, this different empowered energy that helps you to have more of what you want. And so now, like that number is not a hundred dollars a day. It’s much more so you can, this can scale up with you. It can start at $10. It can start at $1, you know, how do I make $1 day?
[00:32:23] Christina: How do I make one tiny. We didn’t even talk about my Etsy shop that I had before the contract shop, but like, I was just trying to sell $2 digital downloads in that, you know, bathroom signs, literally employees must watch, must wash hands with like calligraphy and like. Clip art basically they call it vector art.
[00:32:40] Christina: Now I’m like aging myself, but , that’s what it was. And it was like $2. And I was like, how do I solve one of these per day? And I would do all kinds of stuff. You know, like tweak my Etsy listing, put different tags and, and, you know, keywords in the listing. And so it just was like a, non-negotiable not optional thing after a certain point.
[00:32:59] Amanda: I think that’s such an important mindset. And like you said, an empowered one, that this is something we can take control of and we can go out there and make it happen and see that growth that we’re hoping to see. So we end every episode with a book recommendation. Now this can be. Business or it can be fiction or it can be anything in between, but what would be one book that you would recommend that everyone goes and reads or listens to, or however it is that they take in books?
[00:33:30] Christina: Yeah. Well, you probably have this one a million times, but I’m gonna say Ramit Sethi. I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Mm-hmm I mean, everybody’s like, oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. Oh yeah. I, I read the first chapter. Read that book like a workbook and you will frigging be rich. like everything he said in there is so true.
[00:33:51] Christina: I just remember reading it on cuz I used to not be able to sleep really well at night and I’d just wake up like every night around three or four and I’d read my Kindle and I would read his book and I remember one night it was like four o’clock in the morning. He said created an IRA with Charles Schwab.
[00:34:09] Christina: So I did in like five. And like now that account has, I don’t even know how many tens of thousands of dollars in it, just because I did that because I opened it and I started contributing $5 a week. So people know that it exists. They, they know that book is good, quote unquote, but then they don’t do it.
[00:34:29] Christina: So I would just encourage you guys to like actually read it and actually do it. And like it works. It’s crazy. I’ve never found a better book about finances.
[00:34:40] Amanda: You wanna talk about feeling empowered, working your way up, the ladder that he sets out for you in that book? That’s empowering to say, oh, I can mark that rung off.
[00:34:49] Amanda: Oh, we can mark that one off. Oh. And working your way up to getting to the point where he’s eventually like, do whatever you want with your money. You’ve kind of done all the things that’s super empowering. So I, I second, this, this is a great book and it is, it’s a step by step. It’s not just this fluffy.
[00:35:05] Christina: Oh no. It’s, there’s something she can do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a reason it’s still in publication, you know, 12 years or whatever, after he first wrote it. yeah, that’s
[00:35:15] Amanda: incredible. Well, Christina, thank you. So, so, so much for being here today, where can everyone find you? Where would the best place be for everyone to go find you and to learn more about you and what it is that you do?
[00:35:27] Christina: Yeah. Thank you, Amanda. So you can go to Christina scera.com or the contract shop.com. So you can see what I do and then how I do it. Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
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