Jennifer Marx from JenniferMaker.com started her site in the DIY/crafting niche in late 2016 as a hobby site.
She went from earning $33 in her first month, to 6-figures and beyond every month today.
Tune in to Episode 381 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:
- Why she decided to focus on blogging
- How she found her initial traction
- What drives traffic today
- And how she’s built an email list that’s almost the population of Cleveland!
Related: Check out my free course on how to start a website of your own.
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How’d You Get the Idea to Start a Blog?
Back in 2016, Jennifer started a blog as a way to share recipes and craft ideas with her daughter. She was interested in blogging and enjoyed using Pinterest, so she wanted to learn how to publish content online.
She ended up starting three sites, and decided to test adding Google AdSense to one of them.
A year later, a check for $100 appeared in her bank account. Jennifer said it came as a complete shock, but a most welcome one as her business wasn’t going well at the time.
“It was a sign,” Jennifer told me, recalling that $100 check. “I’m going to turn this into a real thing and put actual effort into this,” she added.
Jennifer added some affiliate links and started adding more content to her site and in the first month of focusing on her blog, she made $33.
Were You Concerned About Competition at the Time?
“I have learned, it is never literally too late to ever start anything,” Jennifer told me.
Jennifer was 47 when she started her blog and had a good amount of experience writing, teaching, and had some of the other skills needed to create a successful blog.
She said she could see that the craft space online was crowded, but she knew she had something unique to offer and didn’t question entering the niche.
How Did You Find Initial Traction? What Were the First Few Months Like?
“I was toiling in obscurity and no one could find me, and I wasn’t OK with that,” Jennifer said.
She started learning about all the different ways people could find her. Being in the crafts niche, Pinterest was an obvious platform to focus on as it’s very visual.
Jennifer said she spent as much as 6 hours a day learning everything about Pinterest and how people use it to drive traffic to their blogs.
“When I had a good foothold, I moved to Facebook,” Jennifer told me.
More specifically, she joined a lot of Facebook Groups. Groups where crafters and people interested in crafts hung out. She was active in those groups posting helpful replies to questions, and where appropriate would share her own projects and send people to her blog.
Those were the two main ways she got traction in the beginning. After 4 months she was getting 10,000+ page views a month from Pinterest and Facebook.
What’s Working on Pinterest Today?
“You have to make amazing things that attract attention, “Jennifer told me.
This lends itself perfectly to a niche like crafts as Jennifer is able to use images of her craft projects. She said you can still stand out in a non-visual niche; you just need to create amazing graphics and pins.
A tip she shared is to find out what people on Pinterest are looking for, not what you think they’re looking for.
What’s Your Pinning Strategy?
Jennifer has a launch strategy for when she produces new pins.
When she’s finished a new blog post, which is typically a “how-to” style post, she creates a dedicated pin for that post.
She then pins it to the most relevant board with keywords that align with her topic. Jennifer then shares her post and pin with her community through all her social channels at once to try and drive some engagement to the pin.
She asks her followers to repin it to their boards, share it, and she pins it to more boards over the coming weeks.
Jennifer said that all of these signals help tell Pinterest what her pin is about, and demonstrates that it’s getting good engagement. Her pins then appear in the search results when people are typing in keywords relevant to her pin.
If you’re just starting out on Pinterest Jennifer recommends pinning other people’s content, as long as it’s keyword-relevant. As her account is long-established, Jennifer no longer pins other people’s content herself.
How Do You Make Money from Visitors?
“I actually think of my blog posts as a funnel to my mailing list,” Jennifer told me.
Jennifer uses affiliate links within her blog posts and has some advertising on her site, but her goal is to always get a visitor to sign up for her mailing list.
Most of her content on her blog and YouTube channel is “how-to” types of posts. There is almost always something vital the visitor needs to complete the crafting exercise, such as a pattern or stencil she can hold back behind a lead magnet.
She then gives this away for free when someone signs up for her mailing list.
Once on her list, Jennifer says she “nurtures” her subscribers by talking to them and inviting them to reach out to her. She does this to build trust before offering them paid products like eBooks and courses.
Jennifer has set up three main email funnels. Subscribers can then move around based on what links they click within the emails to make sure they’re being offered products relevant to them.
She said her product ladder is still a work in progress as she didn’t expect to grow so fast. Her top tier product is currently a course that’ll teach someone how to make their own cut files. This isn’t an evergreen offering, however, it’s a course she opens up twice a year.
Jennifer is using ConvertKit to handle the tech behind her lead magnet forms and mailing list.
What’s the Revenue Pie Look Like?
The breakdown of what’s ringing the cash register for Jennifer looks like this:
- 5% Ad revenue
- 5% Affiliate commissions
- 90% Own product sales
Jennifer is currently experimenting with scaling back on ads to see if it improves the user experience on her site.
That 5% slice of the pie for ads equated to $40k in December, so it’s still a substantial source of income. With her own products potentially having a higher ROI, however, it makes sense to see if she can funnel more of her traffic onto her list.
What Are Your Products?
Jennifer has a few eBooks for sale:
- Cricut Coach Playbook – $19
- Cricut Shortcuts – $15
- Craft Room Organization – $15
She also has a course that ranges from $249-$359 depending on the tier.
What’s Your Content Strategy?
At the beginning of December 2018 Jennifer started a YouTube channel, and her content strategy changed from that day onwards.
She started creating a full step-by-step video to accompany every blog post she created. Jennifer’s videos took off on YouTube, and her audience there now drives more traffic to her videos and blog posts than Pinterest.
In just a little over a year, she already has more than 225k subscribers to her YouTube channel. Her typical release schedule is one post + video a week. Jennifer says she releases her content on weekends as that’s when her audience is most active doing crafts.
This changes in December, however, as December is the most important month for her keywords. For the last three years, Jenifer has released a new post every day during December and seen a permanent-growth of 3-5x to her overall traffic.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s so rewarding,” Jennifer told me.
Looking forward, Jennifer’s goal is to create “an amazing content machine” and produce an amazing blog post + video every day of the year.
How Are You Coming up With Content Ideas?
Content ideas are something Jennifer is not struggling with.
“The more I niche down, the easier it gets,” Jennifer said.
She also has a very active Facebook Group with more than 778k members always keen to suggest new ideas and ask for specific patterns and crafting solutions.
Jennifer said she has more than enough projects lined up to keep her and her team busy, even if they did start producing one article a day.
What’s Your Team Look Like?
Jennifer has a team of 15 “excellent” employees helping her manage all aspects of her business.
She made her first hire about a year and a half ago when it was becoming impossible to manage her workflow herself.
Jennifer looked within her own community and found someone to become her assistant. That person is now her operations director and trains the newer staff Jennifer brings on – all of which she finds in within her community.
She keeps in constant communication with her team using the instant messaging platform Slack.
Where Are You Spending Your Time?
Being a name brand, Jennifer is the face of all the content on her site, and she is still heavily involved in the content creation process.
She knows that to grow her business she’ll need to outsource or delegate more of her tasks in the future, so that’s something she’s working on. But she no plans to stop creating all the content herself in the foreseeable future.
What’s Next?
For this year, putting the “content machine” Jennifer mentioned earlier into action is one of her main focuses.
By December she wants to have hired a video editor and a project manager so she can release one new blog post and video a day throughout the month without getting stressed out trying to do it all herself.
Jennifer’s #1 Tip for Side Hustle Nation
“Figure out where your people are, and go there.”
Episode Links
- JenniferMaker.com
- Jennifer’s Pinterest Page
- My free guide on how to start a blog
- ConvertKit
- Cricut Crafters & Makers Facebook Group
- Slack
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Hey Jennifer and Nick – I learned a lot here! “Dominating your source of traffic” would be my takeaway! I’m currently growing a Facebook group about tips on how to multiply your streams of income.. and I’ m starting to get a nice amount of traffic to my blog. It’s all about how good your content is – if it’s exceptional, people would want to know more.. but if not, your FB group will die. Read more here: https://slashercareer.com/how-to-get-blog-traffic-fast/
This was a fantastic episode! I am loving all of your content!!!
Thanks Michele!
I dropped by to say that I’ve saved and listened to this episode at least three times in the past two months. It’s been unbelievably helpful as I’ve been working to launch a blog and utilize Pinterest effectively. Jennifer does such a great job of distilling her journey and her strategy into easily understood action steps.
This episode has so much valuable information in it that I’m sure I’ll keep on repeating it. Thanks Nick and Jennifer for putting it together. It really has helped me so much.
Thanks Heather!