Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 41 - How to get 1000s of subscribers without using Facebook Ads. Plus five things I learnt from contributing to Lizzy Goddard's Xmas party goody bag bundle.

podcast Apr 11, 2023

Signing up for and contributing to a business bundle can be an amazing opportunity to try something new, learn from other people, and even make money. If done right, it’s overall a rewarding experience.

In this episode, I review and reflect on the 5 things that I learnt from contributing to Elizabeth Goddard’s Christmas Party Goodie Bag Bundle. I also share 3 things to remember when signing up for these business bundles.

Listen and Enjoy!

Key takeaways from this episode:

A business course bundle is a collection of digital products from different contributors. You either sign up for free for a bundle of things in exchange for your email address or you could pay a low-cost paid option for one.

5 Things I Learned from Contributing to Elizabeth Goddard’s Christmas Party Goodie Bundle:

It is a great way of building your list without using ads.
You can make money from contributing something even though you’re giving away something free.
You get an amazing behind-the-scenes experience.
It’s good to try things out and experiment. It’s an interesting and rewarding experience.
It’s an incredible opportunity to learn how other people do things and to get inspiration from them.

Some Things to Remember When Signing Up for Business Bundles:

Be open to different ways of growing your list.
Avoid sign-up overwhelm.
Remember there’s a value exchange when you get something for free.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Podcast Intro

01:08 Episode Intro

01:58 What a business course bundle is

03:27 What Ruth contributed to the collection

04:06 A great way of building a list without using ads

04:41 Earning while contributing something for free

05:47 An amazing behind-the-scene experience

06:43 Trying things out and experimenting

07:26 Getting inspiration from other people

08:00 Ruth’s advice

10:35 Outro

➡️ To learn about being a Bundle Contributor or hosting your business bundle, look at Lizzy’s Summits and Bundles Success course.

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free Masterclass: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/the-sold-out-solution-2022

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription

Ruth Gilbey 00:04

Hello and welcome to the Inspiring Women in Business Podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling for myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time, that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments, as we uncover and kick to the curb. All the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey 01:08

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the inspiring women in business podcast. Today's podcast is a little bit of a review and a reflection of five things that I learned from contributing to Elizabeth Goddard's Christmas party goodie bag bundle. And if you are thinking what on earth is she talking about? I will explain what a bundle is and what goes into it as well. So last year, I signed up to contribute to Elizabeth Goddard's Christmas party, a goodie bag bundle. This was the first time I've contributed to a course bundle like this. And it was also the first time I'd also signed up for one as a customer. So I thought, why not do an episode sharing my experience as both a contributor and a consumer?

Ruth Gilbey 01:58

So first of all, let me attempt to try and explain what a business course bundle is. It's a collection of digital products from different contributors. And you either sign up for free for a bundle of things in exchange for your email address, or you could pay a low-cost paid option for one. So for Elizabeth, she's got a regular goodie bag, which is free, and a paid option, which is like a premium goodie bag, which was $100. And within those, you get products that usually cost something and you access a whole host of courses and digital products that usually cost you thousands if you buy them individually. But you get an opportunity to either get a bundle of courses for free for a time-limited period, or you pay a lower amount and in this example, the premium goodie bag was $100. Digital products are generally only available for a short amount of time and which makes sense you wouldn't be giving away something that you usually charge for all the time, whether they are free or paid you also as a consumer, as a customer, you hand over your email address to the contributors to access the free product they are offering. A bit like the whole kind of like freebie lead magnet, except you're doing it on mass.

Ruth Gilbey 03:27

As a contributor, the aim is to get your digital product in front of a bigger audience and grow your list. I joined in and I contributed my low-cost toolkit to the regular goodie bag. It's usually 48 pounds, and it's called the revenue generator which I'd recently had a bit of a revamp. I've revamped it and got it ready for the goodie bag. And I wanted to share five things that I learned from the experience because I got more out of it than I thought I would I thought I was just going into it to grow my email list. And it was a very, very different experience and a really positive experience. And I wanted to share my learnings.

Ruth Gilbey 04:06

So the first one was that it is a great way of building your list without using ads. I have ads running all the time to freebies, building my email list. So I'm always paying Facebook money every month. So it was quite nice to have a different way of growing my list. And I added over a thousand people to my mailing list which nearly tripled in size and possibly these were people that wouldn't have been in my world otherwise, because I at the moment target the UK and I know that this was going out globally as well. So it was an international goodie bag, not just nationally.

Ruth Gilbey 04:41

The second thing is you can make money from contributing something even though it feels like you're giving away something free. There are ways you can monetize it. And this is just two ways, either with an order bump, which is when you go to the checkout. You give your email address and details and it says it's free and then you get offered something at the checkout before you go, would you like x and I saw people kind of reporting in the Facebook group for the contributors that they were making money from these order bumps, the other way you can make money is if the organizer allows you to be an affiliate of the goodie bag. So I made affiliate sales of the premium goodie bag sales, and I have made some money from that. So you can make money from either adding something at the checkout, which people call an order bump, or an upsell. Or you can be an affiliate for the goodie bag. And there are probably other ways that I haven't thought of as well. I mean, once you've got people in your world, and they go into your email marketing, they could potentially become a customer as well. So there's immediate revenue you can make and longer term as well.

Ruth Gilbey 05:47

The third thing is, and this was a surprise to me, you get amazing behind-the-scenes experience, I learned so much from the whole process of being in the contributor group, and how much organization went into it, it was really impressive the way it was put together, the emails, the way they organized it the things that we did, they checked every single application, every single digital product as well for the user experience for the customer as well. So it was really interesting to see what we needed to do as contributors and what we needed to supply as well. So it was so much organization goes into the bundles, the setup, promotion, the funnels, et cetera. So joining and being in a Facebook group of contributors gave me first-hand knowledge of what goes into organizing them. And it's great, I always think it's a really great way to learn by actually experiencing it and taking action in your business as well.

Ruth Gilbey 06:43

The fourth thing is, I learned is that it's good to try things out and experiment because I had some preconceived ideas that I thought I, you know, I don't want to know if I want to be part of a big bundle of courses in digital products, isn't that kind of overwhelm people? Am I going to find it overwhelming as well as signing up to them? That's why I'd never signed up to them before. And I'll talk more about that in a minute. But I came away, realizing and wanting from now onwards, I want to make more space in my business to experiment and try things out. So as I said, I've always avoided signing up or putting off participating as I thought it would be overwhelming. And I thought I'd have no time to digest everything. But actually, I found it a really interesting and rewarding experience.

Ruth Gilbey 07:26

The fifth thing is, it's great for inspiration. This is an incredible opportunity to learn how other people do things and get inspiration like what, are they selling. How are they positioning themselves? What tech are they using, oh, they use offering an order bump at the end and they're using Thrive cart, or they're using this tool or tech? Why was something popular? You know, because people were reporting on how things were working, and so much more. I was very much a lurker in the group. But I was absorbing an awful lot of information and learning, you know, as well from the whole experience. And my advice to you is to be open to different ways of growing your email list. I had a great experience from joining this. I learned loads, experience a different way of growing my list, and seeing how other people were positioning themselves people that I wouldn't maybe have met products that I might not have seen in the bubble that I'm in, and what I am being served online by Facebook ads.

Ruth Gilbey 08:24

The next thing is to really consider and give yourself time like avoid the signup overwhelm. Be mindful when you sign up for bundles don't as this is, as a consumer as customer doesn't overwhelm yourself with loads of signups in one go unless you can really cope with that. Because once you sign up, you are going to go into someone's funnel, and someone's email marketing funnel email sequences will come your way that is the value exchange. So if you get an email or sign up, overwhelm, I suggest you break it down into signing up to some over a period of time you get about a month or a few weeks with a lot of these bundles. They're all different. But give yourself space mock some time in your diary to actually give yourself to have a look and absorb everything so you don't feel like you're panicking. The way I approach it as I actually only signed up to five or six things in the regular goodie bag. And the premium goodie bag. Everything was amazing. Everything I could have gone like I want to get everything but I actually filtered it by what will take me closer or further to my goals. What do I actually need in my business, I gave myself the odd, Ooh, that looks really interesting. I want to have a look at that. Because not everything has to be about reaching my goals. It could be something that I just really want to learn. It's like personal to me as well.

Ruth Gilbey 09:45

And the last thing I would say is to be organized. Keep a Gmail folder of all the things that you've signed up for. And I always suggest that you use a password manager and I use LastPass. I get on well with it. Not everybody does. There are lots of password managers out there but I use LastPass and I've made a section for the courses that I have signed up for so you can track all your signups. So that's my experience of signing up to my first business bundle. If you want to learn more about being a business bundle contributor, or hosting your own business bundle, have a look at Lizzie's Summits Unbundled Success course I will put a link in the show notes for you to check it out.

Ruth Gilbey 10:35

Thanks for listening to be inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well. Come and connect with me, tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon