I’ve been trying to practice this for a few years now, leaning in to what is working for me.

Basically, I’ve been focusing on trying to do more of what is already bringing success and what is bringing me the kind of life I want in terms of every day living and in my business.

I’m seriously trying to look at everything this way and I have to say, it is really helping.

an Example of What is Working For me

Today, I’m going to share some seemingly small tweaks I made in my website that are rendering a lot of success, all because I noticed and acknowledged something. I leaned into what was working, tweaked it a bit, and now it is working much, much better for me.

Whenever I’ve leaned in to some proven success, here’s what I’ve found.

I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
I don’t have to start from scratch.
I don’t have conceptualize something new.

And yet, it renders better results, faster, than anything new I could have done.

With this example I’m sharing today, I couldn’t have done this without the help and encouragement of a few friends and business associates.

My SEO consultant, Buddy Rigotti of Cristers Media, gave me the main idea and then a Pinterest consultant that I’m friendly with on Instagram, Dama of Details to Dama, suggested I take it one step further.

Well, they were right and it is paying off.

Here’s what I’ve done.

I’d actually been noticing for months that I was getting heavy traffic from Pinterest to a particular item in my outlet shop.

It was a downloadable pdf I created a few years ago, but I had not had much success with selling it. I had it for sale for $12. It was full of good info, especially for homeowners looking to partially remodel their kitchen, but it just didn’t reveal enough to cause people to buy.

The fact that it was getting so much attention from Pinterest users and not much conversion, showed me that the problem was likely with the title.

I mean, it really doesn’t reveal what the heck I’m talking about at all, and for someone to follow through and purchase, it was just too vague.

(You should take time to read my post about vague blogpost titles. It always helps to be direct and state the obvious with titles, for SEO reasons as well as just general recognition too.)

What the title was doing though, was attracting a lot of curiosity and well, people actually wanted to know the “secret”. They just didn’t want it badly enough to buy it because it was too hard to tell what it was.

Really, it was a great blogpost title, just not a good product title.

I just didn’t really know what to do about it.

In one of my monthly phone calls with my SEO consultant, Buddy, we discussed this. He brought this traffic up in our convo and I said that it was just titled wrong, so no one was buying.

He suggested that I just give it away for free then. Don’t put up the monetary barrier there. Getting the info out there and in someone’s hands would probably render a new blog reader and that would be better than just having people turn away.

Brilliant! Yes! Why not?

So, I marked it on sale and set it up for free in mid-December.

Basically, I have had around 100 downloads of that pdf since I turned on the FREE sign. And they started happening that day, because of the traffic that was coming there already.

The one thing that was bothering me was that this traffic coming from Pinterest was getting what they wanted, but were they really staying on my blog enough to see what else I could offer? Were they really getting on my email list?

Although that is part of the process of downloading that pdf in the shop, I didn’t know if they were then immediately unsubscribing once they got what they wanted because maybe they just hadn’t seen enough of what I have on my blog.

I enhanced the verbiage in the shop section a bit, but really, I felt it needed almost a blogpost introduction to present the value that the download and my site might have for readers.

Here’s how the item looked in my outlet shop, after I put it on sale for free.

Getting ads on my blog has changed everything for me. I think of my blog and traffic driving in a totally new and different way.

Since I have ads now, every reader that sees my ads makes me a little money, so I’d rather them not dip in, get one thing, and go. I’d rather them read a blogpost, see the ads, maybe link around a bit and see what else might be going on that would interest them.

When I mentioned the freebie thing in a convo with Dama, she suggested that I redirect the link to a proper blogpost to take maximum advantage of the traffic that was already coming to that url.

Ummm……YES! I hadn’t even thought about redirecting.

So, I asked Buddy about it and Voila! Done!

A New Blogpost For A Better User Experience For incoming Traffic

I wrote a new, short post about what the pdf was all about, to give a little more context, shared more about what I do and am all about here on my blog, and published.

He redirected the shop URL to this blogpost, and now all the traffic I’m still getting from Pinterest to that item is going to a more well-rounded page. That page has a definite email capture form where I can monitor results and it has monetization in place via ads.

Not only does that Pinterest traffic have a better user experience, but my regular blog readers and email list got a chance to see that offer and grab that for free, hopefully creating some goodwill with them.

In the first 24 hours from publication of that post, I had around 500 downloads of that item.

While many of those were from my email list, so they were already subscribed, I still had over 50 new subscribers that first 24 hours, because I also posted it on Instagram, where I was hoping to catch a few that were not subscribers already.

Two things I learned here….

If you have a product like a downloadable pdf that isn’t selling, consider giving it away for free as an email capture. That way it won’t be wasted.
TAKE NOTICE of where traffic is coming to your site. Make sure you have enhanced those destinations for a good user experience. Look for ways to capture email addresses and even monetize, if you are monetizing your blog. (Affiliate links, product sales, etc.)

Does this situation I shared have your head spinning?

Are you thinking of how you can go into your site and see how some minor tweaks might affect traffic and money made from your site?

I hope so.

You might want to check out those two pros I featured above who helped me with their smart ideas.

Design Influencers Conference Round Tables

If you are attending Design Influencers Conference this year in San Francisco, you might want to make plans to visit with me and other Design Influencers at our round table discussions!

I’m doing the round table peer-to-peer early morning discussions again with Deborah von Donop, Jana Philips, Jeanne Chung and this year, Laurel Bern is joining us too!

I’m sure we will be full the brim like last year, so sign up now to get in on these FREE add-on sessions. :-)

And if you end up at my table, I’m probably going to ask you, “What IS working for you right now? What destinations on your website are bringing in the most traffic? How can you enhance those or even modify them to get more of what you want from the traffic that is already turning up?”

See you all there!

And pin this, below, to Pinterest for me please, to help me spread the word! :-)