Meet Lindsay Wilson, the founder of Shrink that Footprint. I asked him 5 simple questions about Blog that Converts, and here are his responses:
Enter Lindsay…
Hi, I’m Lindsay. I joined BTC back in early May. I was traveling with work at the time, so didn’t start using it till June but it has been a great resource for me. My blog is quite niche (carbon footprinting), but growing happily with a good deal of thanks to BTC. My results are modest, but show some potential for the long run.
To the questions:
1. What did you think about blogging BEFORE enrolling in Blog that Converts (BTC)?
I was suffering from the ‘build it and they will come’ problem. Although my blog was only a couple of months old at the time, I was producing good content once a week for a niche subject (carbon footprinting). BTC forced me to start promoting my content and start thinking about conversion to email.
2. What did you think about blogging AFTER going through the training?
There is no point in churning out good content if non-one is reading it. Better to choose your five best old pieces and put your energy into promoting them. (I also removed the dates from my stuff to help this. I do research driver stuff so it is quite evergreen)
3. What big problem were you facing BEFORE BTC? What from BTC helped you solved that problem?
I use BTC like a text book. I go back to it every few weeks for ideas. Although I have had success with the content archetypes, building a blog network, email strategies . . . I would say the thing that helped me most was the masterclass with Derek & Jeff. Only July 10 2013, the day I launched my eBook, I had 47 email subscribers. Today I’ve got 570. I know this is pretty modest. But conversion jumped from 0.2% to 3% of visitors by adding the free eBook plus a splash page, feature box and bottom of post opt-in.
4. What specific results have you achieved as the result of this training? Please use hard numbers if applicable. If no numbers, just be as specific as possible.
Traffic was about 4,000 unique visitors in June, it is about 36,000 uniques for October. Growth has been spikey (Note from Derek: We talk about Traffic spikes in the beginning of Module 3). I publish once or twice a week depending on commitments. As I said, the strategy Jeff and Derek talked about in the advanced training was a big win for me. See the chart:
5. What would you tell another “new student” of Blog that Converts? What words of advice would you have now that you’ve gone through the program?
Don’t try to do everything at once. Pick a couple of things that you think my help you and work with them. Then when you are in search of a new ‘event’ or ‘strategy’, go back to the resource. It will still be there, and the ideas are evergreen. At this point I’ve used less than a third of the info properly. My blog is a side gig currently, so I just don’t have the time to go crazy with new hacks.
This is my blog, ShrinkThatFootprint.com Rocking a pretty dated thesis theme, but it converts a lot better than it once did 😉