[00:00:00] Debbie: I was at a a great conference last year and a mastermind group. And we were talking about things like this.

[00:00:06] And someone mentioned that, Oh, this sounds like a good idea for a product, or you could expand this and interact more with your clients and get top of mind more with your clients by having something like this. And it was like, that was where I got the idea, but I hadn't, I didn't have anything quite this, this nice or developed or, you know, thought out until after that.

[00:00:28] And that's the idea came from there. And I just started taking my emails and my Word doc and some other things and putting them in, trying to put them into like one concise kind of thing that was more user friendly. 

[00:00:40] Rene: Hey everyone. Welcome to Your First Digital Product, a show that helps maxed-out service providers create their first digital product so they can gain an additional income stream, grow their impact without increasing one-on-one work and experience more time freedom. On the show, I talk to business owners who have launched digital products and dig deep into how you can create, launch, and market your first digital product. I'm your host, Rene Morozowich. Let's go. 

[00:01:08] Hey everybody. Today I'm here with Debbie Campbell and Debbie is a designer and WordPress developer who's been managing care plans for clients since 2014. She recently created and launched her first digital product, The Website Care Plan Welcome Packet.

[00:01:22] Hey, Debbie, how are you? 

[00:01:24] Debbie: I'm doing well. How are you? 

[00:01:25] Rene: I'm good. Thanks. I'm so glad you're here. And I'm so excited to talk all about the welcome packet. But first do you want to say a little bit about you and like what you do for clients and, and all that good stuff? 

[00:01:35] Debbie: Yeah. My name's Debbie and I have been designing and developing for WordPress pretty exclusively since 2009.

[00:01:42] And I have a good number of clients, local clients, national clients. And in 2014, I had been hosting clients anyway and managing sites for them for quite a while. So I decided I would try to monetize that a little bit and, and work on building a care plan business. And it's been [00:02:00] going strong since 2014.

[00:02:01] And now I've, right now I've got about 83 clients. Wow. 

[00:02:06] Rene: Yeah, that's awesome. Maybe for people in the audience who don't know what a care plan is, like what is all involved whenever you take care of someone's website? 

[00:02:13] Debbie: Well, generally it's, it's WordPress updates. WordPress updates, backups, taking care of backups in case something explodes on a website and you can restore backup easily.

[00:02:24] My plans include hosting. I think most of them do private hosting and then other things like, you know, just support. Support help desk, monthly reports. I do annual site review where I go through and do an audit and then we have a phone call and discuss opportunities and things we can do to improve the website.

[00:02:41] So just general care, availability for support. That kind of thing.

[00:02:46] Rene: Yeah. Nice. It's just taking care of things and having somebody to call in case something goes wrong or in case they want to do something. So really just kind of like being almost a, like an extension of their team and their business.

[00:02:59] Debbie: Yeah. Most of the clients that don't have like an IT department, they don't know a whole lot about the technical parts of WordPress and don't want to learn, which I don't blame them. So yeah, sort of an extension of their team. 

[00:03:08] Rene: Yeah, awesome. Yeah, very cool. So you created this welcome packet.

[00:03:13] So do you want to tell us a little bit about like what that is? And, and you use it in your business. So tell us a little bit about how you use it. 

[00:03:21] Debbie: Yeah, when I first started, I didn't have anything like this and it was more seat of your pants. Yeah, I think when you brought a new client in, but I over time kind of built up a a document and it was, it was like a word doc and it was just a few things in there.

[00:03:35] Or I would originally just send them an email with a list of a couple of things about details about the care plan, how to get in touch with me. But eventually it became a little bit more than that. And I was at a a great conference last year and a mastermind group. And we were talking about things like this.

[00:03:50] And someone mentioned that, Oh, this sounds like a good idea for a product, or you could expand this and interact more with your clients and get top of [00:04:00] mind more with your clients by having something like this. And it was like, that was where I got the idea, but I hadn't, I didn't have anything quite this, this nice or developed or, you know, thought out until after that.

[00:04:12] And that's the idea came from there. And I just started taking my emails and my Word doc and some other things and putting them in, trying to put them into like one concise kind of thing that was more user friendly. 

[00:04:24] Rene: Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of us have that, like, you know, we're working with clients and, yeah, we have the emails and we have the documents and they're all kind of around, but, like, really kind of putting them together in one nice thing to sell sometimes helps us even more because then, yeah, we can give that really nice thing to our clients and all the clients going forward, and I've looked at your welcome packet and it has a lot of great sections in it, so more than just, like, how to get in touch with you, but also sections on, like, other services you offer.

[00:04:53] Yeah. Which I think is so beneficial because I just ran into this myself yesterday that one of my clients, a long time client said, said something like, I didn't know you offered that. And I was like, Oh no, I must be doing something wrong that you are not clear on everything that I do and don't do. So I think it's really important.

[00:05:14] And also setting those expectations. So just to recap then, your product you were using for your client, so, but not in the polished form that it is now.

[00:05:22] So you created it, sent that out to your clients. And I think you got some feedback on it from your clients and from other coaches and things like that to kind of really make it robust. You want to tell us a little bit about that? 

[00:05:34] Debbie: Yeah. After we, the mastermind group I was in at the conference was actually really helpful.

[00:05:39] I sent it out to them a couple of times as I was going through iterations. And I also sent it to a couple of my marketing clients who, you know, they have a marketing firm and I do design and development for them. And they thought it was really helpful because they will usually aim their clients toward my care plans after we launch a site that I've done for them.

[00:05:59] So [00:06:00] they they provided feedback too, and that was all really useful. It took about four months really to get the whole thing. It just kind of coalesced from all these different sources and, and input into this final thing. And it's not a final thing. It's evolving, but right now it's at 16 pages and I don't, I'm always thinking about how can I expand it further, but right now that's, that's where it is, but it seems it's in a good place right now.

[00:06:24] Rene: Yeah, and I kind of feel like it's something like your contract where, you know, when you first start out, your contract looks like this, but as you run into different scenarios and, you're like, oh, I need to add that to my contract or, oh, I need to add that to my email sequence or my welcome packet or whatever it is.

[00:06:40] So like, you keep learning what clients need to know and what they have problems with and yeah, you can keep growing it. So you can just do a version two or a version three, you know, as you move on. 

[00:06:52] Debbie: Yeah, we're on version, I guess, 1. 1 right now. 

[00:06:55] Rene: Nice. I like it. So do you want to tell us a little bit about what's included in the document? Not that you have to kind of spell it out exactly, but just to kind of give people a sense of like, what is a welcome packet and what types of things would you include?

[00:07:07] Debbie: Okay. Well, we're actually talking about two audiences, too, because the product is not for clients.

[00:07:14] The product is for designers, developers and agencies, but in the care plan that they are going to, it's designed to help them on board their clients and also maybe to put together a care plan if they don't have one already. So the main things that are in it are things like office hours, how to get support, when to get support, when should I start a support ticket, because a lot of clients don't know.

[00:07:37] And then what's included in the care plan because they probably looked at it on the website once and never thought about it. So defining what is and it is not included so that they're not asking for things that are not included in their plans. Optional add ons. I've got a few things like privacy policies and improved email delivery with Postmark and a few other little things like that, that, like you said, have just kind of [00:08:00] crept in over the years.

[00:08:02] And I just started adding them as add ons. So it talks about add ons and FAQs. And then especially asking for referrals is always a good thing to do. But just basically an overview of the whole care plan and it's written in a way that's like you know, plain English, easy to read and just designed to be something that they keep exported as a PDF and they keep it and can refer to it going forward.

[00:08:27] Rene: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And good thing about you mentioning two different audiences. So yes, when you use this with your clients, it's great to let them know. Yeah. When can they get in touch with you and when to wait and what other services you offer and FAQs like questions that everybody asks, but in creating it to sell it to your peers, I have another episode I'll link in the show notes about audiences to sell to. So, you know, this specifically is for your peers, people who are also offering care plans or want to offer care plans and need something, you know, they don't have to start from scratch. You've already created this, that they can modify, you know, with their logo and color branding and their, their specific offerings and their specific office hours.

[00:09:06] But it really gets them started to be able to hit the ground running with their clients. I think we have a lot of experience and, and I'm sure that you found this like earlier in your career, you know, with the masterminds and with the other groups, like relying on the experience of others, people who are a little bit further along than you, like is so valuable.

[00:09:25] So it's kind of like, you know, giving back to the people who are kind of just coming up now and kind of climbing that ladder as well. 

[00:09:32] We talked about the product and like what's included and why you use it. Do you want to talk about like the actual, you talked about creating the product too, so you went through that feedback you know, in different groups of people but what about the what I think you went through a couple of different sales platforms to kind of find that one that really worked for you because there's no one, there's so many of them and there's no right one for everybody.

[00:09:56] You know, you have a lot of technical know how, so do you want to tell us [00:10:00] like what you ultimately, well, what you tried and then what you ended up with in terms of like actually selling the product? 

[00:10:06] Debbie: Yeah, yeah. I tried a couple, I tried Gumroad, and another that was really similar to that. And if you're familiar with them they're pretty limited. I mean, you're, you're allowed to put in a few description, some photos and a few things, but they're pretty limited. 

[00:10:21] And I ran into, I don't recall exactly what the issues were, but just a couple of little things that made it not ideal for that. And the other one like that. I also tried Etsy put together an Etsy shop and it was up for about a month, but it didn't really do anything. And I, I think that was really more problem of not so much the platform, but of needing to really focus on the audience and niche down because it's just too broad of an audience on Etsy.

[00:10:46] But then I have a lot of experience with WooCommerce. So eventually I just wound up building a WordPress site and with WooCommerce, and that worked out a lot better because I could totally customize it. And it also helped because I could do things like start a blog and I can put more like resources on there and lead magnets and things like that.

[00:11:06] So it was really the best, the best platform and I should have probably just done that from the start.

[00:11:11] Rene: But we don't know what we don't know. 

[00:11:12] Debbie: Yeah, we don't know what we don't know. And those other ones sounded like they would be good, but it just didn't work out in this case. 

[00:11:18] Rene: I love that you have so you have at least one blog post.

[00:11:21] You can create content that can be found via search engines and do you do any like did you say you you do have a lead magnet on there?

[00:11:29] Debbie: I do. I created a resource page. It's a care plan management toolbox and I put on there my top five recommended tools for people that are managing care plans and then I've got a page of a lot of info.

[00:11:42] There's a, there's a PDF of this, which is a lead magnet. And this is also my affiliate page, which is also a useful thing to do is become an affiliate of as many you know, different resources that you can. So yeah, that's, I have the ability to do that and where I couldn't have done that on one of the platforms, like, yeah.

[00:11:59] Rene: And [00:12:00] all things that you use and like too. If we're using these products anyway, and we really like them, you know, sharing an affiliate link, I think is it's great because you're saying like, Hey, I really love this product and if you want to check it out, here's my affiliate link and you know, and it's not like we're all getting super rich from affiliate links. I don't know. Maybe some people are, but you know, like 20 bucks, 40 bucks or whatever.

[00:12:20] Like it's nice, you know, it's just a nice little added income stream. 

[00:12:25] Debbie: Yeah, I think that's, I think it's great. I think for someone who's doing something like a care plan where you are using a lot of different resources, you may have, you've got a host, you may have a lot of professional licenses for things.

[00:12:37] I think an affiliate page is a great idea. I mean, it can't hurt for sure. 

[00:12:41] Rene: Yeah, exactly. And I think when we're starting out too, like, I don't know about you, but in my experience, like, I tried so many different things, you know, like this backup plugin and that backup plugin and, you know, this product and that product.

[00:12:52] And, you know, you kind of over time find the ones that work for you. So just telling someone like, here, I've been doing this a long time. I already did all the work for you. Just use these tools because these are the best ones, like, I think can be really valuable for people just starting out. 

[00:13:06] Debbie: The other thing I was going to say is that I started out in Google Slides. I made the first one in Google Slides, and then I, you know, I really found that Canva is really the place to be. So I taught myself Canva and made another version of it in Canva. So I've sold about, probably about half and half.

[00:13:23] Google Slides and Canva. So that worked out well. And I know how to use another tool now. It wasn't something I planned at the beginning, but seemed to be necessary. 

[00:13:31] Rene: Yeah. Yeah. People, Canva is all over the place now. Like you hear about Canva left and right. And yeah, that is a great point of having your product, you know, because it is a template that people can customize, having it be in a tool that people can customize.

[00:13:43] Like you wouldn't put it in like InDesign because. You know, we don't all know InDesign, you know, you might, but just making it the easiest. And I'm not saying like you would put it in every platform to give tons of options, but you know, those are two really popular options, right? Google Slides, a lot of people [00:14:00] know, people have Google Workspace and Canva, a lot of people using it.

[00:14:03] So I think those are two great options to deliver the same thing. And do, so it's the same price and you just get to pick which one or how do you have it kind of priced out? 

[00:14:12] Debbie: Yeah, they're the same price and you get the same, it's the same document, just different format. 

[00:14:16] Rene: Oh, nice. Cool. Nice. Awesome.

[00:14:18] Okay. So you, and you also, you mentioned, you know, you created a WooCommerce site and you know, blog posts, SEO, and you also like bought a specific domain for it. So you have a domain. I I've talked about this before on the show that often when you're selling to your peers, putting that content on your own website, on your agency website or on your business website can be confusing for potential customers. Like it's not a great place to do it.

[00:14:42] So, yeah, do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Like, how did you pick the domain and and that kind of stuff? 

[00:14:46] Debbie: Yeah, I definitely didn't want to put it on my my agency site because clients would would have no idea what it was or yeah. And then the other thing is my agency site I have. A separate website for my care plan business, and that's, that's another, you know, point of confusion for people.

[00:15:04] So I wound up with the domain name and it's way too long, but it's, but it's, I mean, it's, it's wpcareplanwelcomepacket.com. So I don't think I could be any clearer with that. 

[00:15:15] Rene: Yes. Mm hmm. And so how do you, like, I guess maybe we're jumping ahead a little bit, but like, what if you have other products later?

[00:15:23] Like, do you, well, do you have any thoughts about other products? And then would you put them on that site or would they all still be related to the Welcome Packet? Like, what about the future, I guess? 

[00:15:33] Debbie: Well, I don't have any plans right now. I've, I've tried thinking about it, but I'm really just focusing on marketing this one still.

[00:15:39] And if I did have other products, they would probably fall under the care plan universe somehow. Yeah. So I think it would probably be fine to have them on that site. If I did, I don't really have anything in mind right now, but I think that they would probably be related. 

[00:15:56] Rene: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I talked with Nathan Ingram on the show a little while [00:16:00] ago.

[00:16:00] And yeah, he mentioned the products that he has are in alignment with each other. So yeah, it's not like something like way out there. It's, they're, they're all related to each other. And that makes it easier for you to create and manage and have them all, you know, kind of in one place and related to one thing.

[00:16:16] I think it makes it easier for your audience too. Because whenever you're doing this and this and this and, you know, your audience is like, wait. I'm not sure what's going on. Like, what are we talking about here? 

[00:16:25] Debbie: So, yeah, I agree. 

[00:16:26] Rene: For sure. Yeah. So you mentioned the marketing focusing on marketing. Do you want to tell us some ways that you have been marketing the product or some ways upcoming too?

[00:16:35] Debbie: Yeah. Like I said, it's really important to think about your target audience. I have a super niche audience. Yeah. And I did try a little bit of Facebook marketing, but I'm not, that's not my forte, didn't really do much with it.

[00:16:45] But I have found that doing like sponsoring newsletters and podcasts is good because that's, that is again, a super niche audience. So that is, I've done I've gotten some sales from that and I'm going to continue doing that. I've made a spreadsheet, I've got a marketing spreadsheet where I keep track of who I, you know, who I contact about sponsorships and that kind of thing.

[00:17:04] And then I also am signed up for a number of like Black Friday Cyber Monday deal pages this year. I think that's going to be a place to get it the product in front of a number of people. The other thing I I will mention that I did make a mistake that I made I did I was kind of like focused on one place that would have been a good place a great place to market and get it in front of my audience but I really made an error by sharing that with the person that runs that space too soon before it was really in a position.

[00:17:40] And it was, it was that was my mistake. And I, since then, I, it was less than finished. It was not in a position to, to be doing that yet. I guess it wound up being a good experience because it helped me really make the product a lot more unique and it helped me really focus on making sure the product was not part of the [00:18:00] sales process, but something that you would give after the sales process.

[00:18:04] So it was, it was entirely for, you know, the benefit of the client and not part of you trying to sell something to the client. 

[00:18:12] Rene: Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. And again, you know, back to like, we don't know what we don't know. And I think some of those things like, you know, kind of going down the road of like, let's look at some of these sales platforms because they're easier.

[00:18:23] I hesitate sometimes to recommend you know, doing this big thing because then it makes the project that much bigger and, you know, people are less likely to launch, but yeah, sometimes you kind of go down a path. You're like, oh, wait, this isn't the right path. Let's backtrack.

[00:18:36] And, you know, I think we do find the lessons in those mistakes, even though we don't like it at the time. 

[00:18:42] Debbie: There's always something, usually something good will come out of something like that. Anyway. 

[00:18:46] Rene: Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you have that attitude of looking for that too, instead of like, Oh, this was terrible.

[00:18:51] Like, okay, what did I learn here? What can I do differently next time? But yeah, I totally agree. And I like that you are identifying opportunities, like where your audience is. The newsletters that they are reading and the podcasts that they're listening to, you know, borrowing those audiences from other people, I think is really valuable. A great place to find them.

[00:19:11] Debbie: Yeah, it's also a lot easier than trying to target them with ads because those audiences are already there. So it's just a matter of like doing research into the podcast and sponsorships and, and that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Black Friday. I think I've never, I've never run a Black Friday ad of any type, so I'm, I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how this works out.

[00:19:30] Yeah. 

[00:19:31] Rene: Yeah. I think it's fun. I think a lot of this is just like experimenting and so yeah, like, Oh, I've never tried an ad before. Oh, I've never tried, you know, selling on Black Friday. And your audience specifically is very Black Friday interested. Like the WordPress community is really into Black Friday.

[00:19:45] Yeah. We're looking for the deals we want, you know, we're, we're waiting to see what comes up. So yeah, I think that's a great place to market.

[00:19:53] So do you want to tell us maybe your recommendations or so maybe like what you learn and, or your [00:20:00] recommendations for people who are creating their first product?

[00:20:03] Debbie: Yeah. It's very time consuming. I would say it took me about four months and I guess work was a little light at that point. I thought, well, this is great. I have an opportunity to do this, but it was, it was a lot more work than I thought it would be. And I, you know, it wasn't difficult for me to build that WordPress site with WooCommerce.

[00:20:20] It was harder for me to actually, the time I spent trying to figure out the platforms that I didn't wind up using. But then I learned that they were not the right platform for me. But yeah, it's, it was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. Another one is. I had no idea what I was doing, so without your guidance, I, it wouldn't have gone anywhere because I had no idea what I was doing.

[00:20:41] So I really appreciate that. It would have taken a lot longer. You, you knew how to help. And it was it. I mean, I couldn't have done it without you, to be honest. 

[00:20:49] Rene: Oh, that's sweet. Thanks. There's a lot of pieces to it. Like, there's a lot of, there's maybe more pieces than we think. Exactly. I do agree. In it, but I think it's great to go through because like you personally like you may have clients who want to sell something online. Something that you learned here may be helpful for you, too When you're serving your clients, so you know, I think that it's it's just a It's just a great learning experience.

[00:21:15] And yeah, if you make some money, that's great, too. 

[00:21:17] Debbie: Yeah, and I would say another thing to be really attentive to detail. I'm pretty much a perfectionist when it comes to like graphic design stuff, and it took a while to get Canva to the point where Google Slides is not, I mean, it's not that great for graphic design, and neither is, and Canva is, but it was a learning experience with Canva, and I wanted everything to look really.

[00:21:39] You know, really sharp. And the last thing I would say is, oh, thank you.

[00:21:42] Rene: It is very sharp. Yeah. It was like, I, when I first saw it, like when you first built the website and I was like, wow, that like pops, like that is, you know, it's really, I think, rare to find somebody who is both great at the development and killer at the design.

[00:21:55] So yeah, I was like, wow. 

[00:21:57] Debbie: Well, thank you. And the last thing I would [00:22:00] say is reviews are really important and they're hard to get. It's hard to get people to leave reviews. And the first guy that bought one from me is from Ireland. He left me a great review. And I would recommend, I've got a few reviews and I would recommend putting up a system for requesting them automatically.

[00:22:17] I use like Automate Woo, which, you know, does follow up emails, but you can, you know, set it up with Mailchimp or MailerLite or some other thing to set up like automated reviews, review requests after you launch, after they purchase the product. And it's, it's just really hard to get reviews, but they're so important.

[00:22:34] Rene: Yeah. And I love that automating. And I think a lot of times when we launch a product, we're, yeah, we're spending a lot of time on the product and on the marketing and on the followers, but really like we want to get to a point where it runs, like it just runs by itself. Yes. So that's the goal. So yeah, setting those things up and yeah, maybe you don't have them set up from the beginning, but yeah.

[00:22:54] Adding those things over time. Yeah. And I think getting those reviews. It's really important because yeah, people want to see that proof. Like, what is this? I don't know what this is, but you know, I still read reviews and even though I feel like Amazon reviews are crappy now, but that was kind of like, you know, what we were, I don't want to say like brought up with, but you know, in the online space, like reading Amazon reviews was like a big deal, you know, to see if the product was going to be good, good or not.

[00:23:18] So I think. In yeah, our products if we don't have those reviews and don't ask for them. Also I think it it's an opportunity to sometimes make some tweaks. Like if somebody leaves a review that says I like this and I had trouble with this. That's just an opportunity for you to make the product better.

[00:23:35] Yeah, you know, if you get that feedback. 

[00:23:37] Debbie: So yeah. Yeah, so far the reviews have, I've only got a few, but they've been really good. Yeah, that's awesome. And I haven't got anything, but yeah, it's totally a great way to, to find out what you need to work on. Mm hmm. Too. 

[00:23:48] Rene: Yeah. And you can use those reviews also as content, in maybe that newsletter that you're sponsoring or that podcast.

[00:23:55] So and so just bought this product and they said this about it. Sometimes I think it's [00:24:00] it feels easier to share what somebody else has said about our product than. Yeah. For us to share like this is a great product. You know, we feel kind of like salesy. So yeah, I agree. Yeah. 

[00:24:11] Debbie: The last thing was just about affiliates. If you only have like one or two things that you use, but with, if you're a WordPress developer, there's going to be probably, you know, a dozen things that you use all the time. And I think there's no problem at all being, becoming an affiliate.

[00:24:26] I have no problem clicking on affiliate links for other people. It's like you said, you don't get rich doing it, but it's certainly, you know, it's a passive income. Yeah, exactly. Passive income is great. 

[00:24:37] Rene: Exactly. Yeah. That's the goal. Like working less hours, you know, tying those hours to the income. I think kind of pulling away from that and also it, it promotes those companies that you like. You use this product and you like it like, and, you know, kicking some sales their way too can feel good.

[00:24:55] Debbie: Yeah. Absolutely. I agree.

[00:24:56] Rene: Awesome. So do you want to tell us where we can find you online? 

[00:25:00] Debbie: Yeah. The welcome packet is at wpcareplanwelcomepacket.com. And then my studio site is redkitecreative.com.

[00:25:09] Rene: Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show today. 

[00:25:12] Debbie: Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me. 

[00:25:14] Rene: Hey, thanks for listening. I'd love to continue the conversation in your inbox. Email SUBSCRIBE to hey at yfdp.show or sign up in the show notes to get bimonthly emails about how you can create, launch, and market your first digital product. Can't wait to see you there.