26. Investing in Your Traffic Goals

Stephanie 0:00

We know how important it is to have a plan for our traffic goals, and sometimes that plan requires us to open our wallets. Let's chat about how you can make sure that you are investing in the right things in 2025.

Stephanie 0:15

Hey there, teacher business owner. It's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:26

Welcome back to the podcast. I know that the middle of December is such a busy time, so if you are listening to this episode around the time it goes live, just know that I appreciate you making the time to chat with me today. In this episode, we are going to continue our discussion of turning our traffic wishes into achievable goals for 2025. Now, as much as I would like to say that organic marketing is completely free all of the time, the reality is that there are costs associated with blogging and pinning for your business. If you plan to focus on blogging more consistently next year, like we talked about in the last episode, but you only have room in your budget for one investment to make that happen, let's talk about some of the questions that you can ask yourself to just narrow it down and help you make that decision.

Stephanie 1:25

The first question to ask yourself is, where is my money already going? What tools are you paying for right now, and what purpose are they serving in your workflow? To answer this question, I highly recommend writing down all of these expenses so that you can see them all in one place. This could be paper, pencil, it could be in asana, in airtable, Google Sheets - whatever it is, just get that list written down because you might realize that you're paying for tools that you don't even need anymore. Just as an example, if you listened to my podcast episode about paying less for images, we talked about how stock photo subscriptions are becoming a little more obsolete now that you know Canva pro basically licenses those same images, and so there can be some overlap, and you might not need to be paying for both of those things anymore. As you're listing out the different expenses, this would also be a great time to kind of reacquaint yourself with all of these tools that you're paying for, because they often come out with new features. And down the road, when you are considering purchasing a tool, you might actually already have something in your toolbox that will meet that same need, and you're already paying for it. Just as an example, I was recently looking for a particular tool, and I randomly discovered that my email service provider offers that service now, and I thought, Oh, well, that's nice. I'm already paying for my email, so yeah, I'll just utilize their version of this feature, this tool. And so that is definitely the first thing you want to do before you decide to make any sort of investments in your business, is just to really kind of audit what you already have.

Stephanie 3:20

So now question number two, what do I need in order to move forward with my goal? Because after listening to last week's episode, hopefully you thought about what hurdles were standing in the way of creating fresh, consistent blog content, and you set a goal to help you blog more consistently in 2025 and so with that goal in mind, decide if there is an investment that you need to make in order to achieve that particular goal. Now I know we all have that mental shopping cart with the list of courses we would love to purchase, or the tools that would save us so much time if they were in the budget. But as we look at that mental shopping cart with a clear picture of our goal for the next year, we can really decide, Okay, do I need any of this in order to move forward with my goal. And I truly think more often than not, we don't necessarily need to make an investment in order to actually move forward. So let's talk about a couple of points in the blogging journey that you might be at, and maybe some possible investments that you would consider making in order to meet your goal. So if you're at the beginning of your blogging journey and your goal is just to get started, some investments that you might be looking at could be your host, your domain, your website theme, any of those foundational things. Because really, you need to have a place for your blog post to live in order to move forward with your goal. If you are in the middle of your blogging journey, you have your website set up, you've been blogging a little bit, but you just feel like your main bottleneck in your workflow is creating pins for Pinterest, like you have identified that is your hurdle, and so you might decide that it's time to invest in a Canva pro account, because you just want a tool that's easy to use and you have everything at your fingertips. You also might decide to invest in some custom pin templates, because that's your least favorite part of pinning, is creating the pin designs. Whatever it is, you know, you can identify an investment that would help you move forward. And then if you've been trying to blog for a while, but you know for yourself that the key to consistency for you is just hiring some help, then you might want to research the different ways that you can invest in blogging support to help you move forward with your goal. And if you want a few ideas for the different ways that you can hire help for blogging, because it isn't all or nothing, go back to Episode 15, and I have some tips for you in that episode.

Stephanie 6:26

The final question to ask yourself when you're looking to make an investment towards your traffic goal is, do I need this right now? So just a quick analogy, because I am who I am, imagine that you're standing in an arcade, and you have a handful of quarters because you're there to play some games. You wouldn't dream of just throwing the quarter across the room and trying to get it into the slot of the video game way over there. You would put the quarter in the machine that's right next to you, and then you would work your way around the arcade, playing each game as you get to it. I know it seems like a silly analogy, but that's what goes through my mind when people are making purchases for tools that they really don't need at this point in their blogging journey, because by setting a goal to blog more often, you have stepped into the arcade, so to speak, like you're in the right place. You're doing the right things. But it might not be time to open your wallet yet. And the reason why it's important to time it in the right way is because you could be saving money. Or in the two months that you decide to wait to make that purchase, maybe another tool, another competitor, comes out with some new features, and it's a better option. Now, you just never know, and at least at the bare minimum, you're just saving a couple of months by not making these investments until you actually do need them. So just one quick example that comes to mind would be people that want to start taking their blog more seriously, blogging more often, and they want to have a really good, reliable website host, because they've heard that some of these starter hosts, you know, can be slower and less reliable. But in reality, those beginner hosts are perfect when you're a beginner, and then as your website grows, then you can invest In a faster, more reliable host, because it does take time for your traffic levels to grow to the point of needing a more premium website host. And so that was just a quick example that came to my mind of how sometimes we make investments, because in our mind, it all fits in that goal, right? We're standing in the arcade, but we're not at that machine quite yet, and so just keep that in mind when you're looking to make investments in your you know towards your goals. Is it something I need right at this moment, or can it wait?

Stephanie 9:15

The online marketing industry is notorious for telling us that the answer to our traffic trouble is yet another tool, or maybe a course. So I hope that this episode has given you the permission slip to make only the investments that are going to propel you forward towards your current goal.

Stephanie 9:35

If you have a teacher, business bestie, who could use the same permission slip, I would love it if you could share this episode with them. I appreciate it so much when listeners help me connect with other busy teacher business owners.

Stephanie 9:50

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher biz bestie. You have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.