Desirae Odjick: From personal finance to full-time blogger at Shopify

Desirae is a full-time content marketer at THE Shopify (in addition to her A+ personal finance blog Half Banked). Don’t forget to check out my 2018 SEO Strategy video as well!

Straight-up, this conversation is amazing for anybody looking to make a full-time (and then some) living from writing and/or digital marketing.

Desirae drops incredible knowledge bombs on what it takes to get hired as a full-time blogger, as well as the very specific skills you need to be able to prove in the process.

And she should know!

In this episode, we chat about:

• The 4 P’s of Marketing – What they are and why they’re important
• How to price your products 🙂
• SOLID tips for writing
• What matters for SEO in 2018
• How blogging develops critical skills that are in HIGH demand in the workforce (seriously high-paying and flexible roles too)

This has quickly become one of my favorite interviews on DYEB, and you’ll definitely see why. Desirae is so much awesome. #grammar. #hire-me-Shopify

Enjoy, and be sure to check out the takeaways below 🙂

Quickkk question

If you love this podcast, there’s a super easy ways to support it: Head to iTunes and leave me an honest rating and review! 1 star, 5 stars, doesn’t matter. It takes 2 mins MAX, and it helps me better the podcast!

Show notes and referenced links

• halfbanked.com
• Live Journal
• Shopify
• Ramit Sethi
• Regina “by regina”
• Codecademy – AWESOME place to learn basic HTML/CSS
• Board Booster – I’m currently transitioning to them from Tailwind.
• Buffer – I use SmarterQueue
• Sumo.com/careers
• Sarah Peterson’s post on republishing.
• Trello
• Hot Ones – The world’s best YouTube channel right now 🙂

Key takeaways from today’s episode with Desirae

1 – The top skills to get a blogging job.

Desirae mentioned a few really key ones which I found unexpected in interesting. Let’s hit them in order:

Write good content

UGHHHHH.

That means absolutely nothing, I get it. Luckily, Desirae gave 2 specific “things to do” in order to improve writing skills specifically:

1. Read everything you can get your hands on.
2. Write more.

Again, it’s entirely too easy to glance at these and think “yeah ok. Read and write. Got it Pete. Thanks. Moving on…”

But STOP and think about what she’s really saying: Get way more experience, get immersed in content so much so that you start to LEARN what goes into producing good content.

And in that respect, she’s totally right. Immerse yourself more in other people’s content. Ask questions like:

• why did I enjoy this article so much?
• what made me read all the way to the end on this blog post?
• what was it about this book that made me NOT want to put it down?

Etc.

Also, write a lot.

It sucks to hear it, but it’s true, like ANY other skill on the planet: The more you practice, the better you get.

From Seth Godin (paraphrased)…

Are you writing bad? Is what you’re writing terrible?

Write more. Keep writing. Write until it’s good again.

10 pages or 10 years. Write more. Get better.

Be able to adapt your content based on your audience.

This is another critical skill…and this is what adaptation looks like in the content marketing world:

You should be able to demonstrate (not just tell somebody how) you’ve tested and optimized.

Tested and optimized your content.

• I wrote XYZ, this happened.
• So I wrote another XYZ but with ABC, this happened.
• THEN I wrote just the ABC, this happened.
• Now we make money.

Marketers (or at least marketing hiring managers) LOVE tracking and testing and optimizing. Constantly.

Tie revenue in to whatever you’re doing.

Desirae said it best: “companies (or freelance clients) aren’t hiring bloggers just to write about what they’re passionate about. They’re hiring bloggers to make them more money.”

Note: Desirae didn’t say your blog has to make $x,xxx per month.

She said, you need to KNOW how your content ties back in to revenues.

Is it specifically generating leads? Is it directly producing revenues via sales or affiliate revenues?

Notice anything?

Tracking and testing and optimizing. Constantly. Marketers like that stuff 🙂

Takeaway 2 – What on Earth do I charge for my products? Pricing is a part of marketing.

You are considering two diamond rings:

1. The first costs $799.
2. The second costs $7,999

We can’t help but assume the 2nd diamond is the better product. We mentally assign values based on cost, and we do this all the time.

Thrift store, Amazon, blogging products.

(Ever wonder why I’ve priced Online Impact so high before DYEB has even hit a year old?)

Ok great. But what price specifically should I price my online course/ebook/whatever at?

Desirae brought up a nice tip from Ramit Sethi: If you have to ask, you probably don’t have enough experience to accurately price something.

More specifically…

The best way to get a solid grasp of how much an info product should sell for…is to have bought other similar info products.

Over time, you’ll develop a sense of exactly where something should be priced at. BUT…given you don’t want to specifically go purchase $4,209 worth of online courses before you price your own….just make your best educated guess based on your previous experience.

Then add 10% 😉