Episode 26: How Kadence Helped Shelley Marmor Grow Her Brand Through Blogging

Through serendipity, we stumbled upon a podcast with one of our community members, Shelley Marmor, who runs some very successful travel blogs and teaches others to do the same. Shelley switched her blog’s theme to Kadence and began finding greater success online. Through both affiliate marketing and a successful advertising network, Shelley’s business focuses solely on building effective sites with Kadence. In this episode, we talk about how Shelley got started blogging, how the switch to Kadence helped her find greater success, and Shelley explains some foundational blogging advice as well as how anyone can start building a business online.

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Links

• Shelley’s travel blog: Travel Mexico Solo.
• Learn travel blogging with Shelley: Travel Blogging 101.
• The Niche Pursuits podcast featuring Shelley.

Timestamps

• :00 Intro, how Kathy found Shelley
  2:00 How switching themes upped Shelley’s income
  3:10 Core web vitals/improved load times
  4:29 How Shelley got started blogging
  6:20 First income made online
  7:29 Financial freedom + remote work perks
  8:25 Kadence learning curve/getting started
  10:08 Enduring the sandbox phase
  12:57 Milestone successes
  14:16 Shelley’s road to quick success
  17:08 Your theme and host could be tanking you
  18:35 Serendipity
  19:38 How to enter the world of blogging
  21:16 Niching down
  23:33 Lowest barrier to entry
  24:32 Riches are in the niches
  26:35 Don’t discount your hometown
  27:18 Knowing your competition
  28:23 Keyword research
  31:30 Trusting the data
  32:46 How Shelley got to Mexico
  35:01 How to find Shelley
  36:51 Have a great life

Transcript

Kathy: Welcome to another episode of the Kadence Beat. We have a special guest here today. Hi Shelly. How you doing?

Shelley: I am doing amazing. How are you doing?

Kathy: Doing great. And Hannah of course, is here. It’s, so good to have you here. I found you I was walking my dog and I was thumbing through YouTube on my phone looking for something just interesting to listen to and the title of this Niche Pursuits podcast was so interesting because it said someone is making $50,000 on their blog. I’m like, I’ll bite, I’ll listen to this, and it was an interesting interview. But then somewhere in the middle, you talked about the theme that you used and how as soon as you switched your theme, things really started to roll for you.

I made a mental note to come home and find out what theme you’re using, because of course we’re doing the Kadence thing here. Not only did I go view source on your blog, I find out that you were using Kadence. I went into the Kadence Group on Facebook. And there you were. I immediately reached out to you and I was like, I need to share this podcast that you just recorded with Niche Pursuits.

Are you okay with that? And you were cool with that. And, but it was just such a serendipitous thing. I wasn’t looking for more work. I wasn’t looking for an interview subject. I was just looking for something interesting and hey, there you are. You’re one of us.

Shelley: Yes, I am. I am happily one of you. I love Kadence.

Kathy: Amazing. And it’s been really successful for you?

Shelley: Yeah, I have it on five sites actually. I run a Facebook group and I do some blog coaching as well, and I always am recommending Kadence for everyone. I can’t ever recall if I’ve re even ever in the history of working with students and that I’ve ever even mentioned another theme, there’s not another option

Hannah: Oh, wow.

Shelley: I was not paid for that. I was not, this is genuine statement. Yeah. But yeah, I do use it on five, across five sites.

Hannah: Love hearing that.

Shelley: Yeah, I was with another theme that I won’t mention, I will say it’s marketed as the “best theme” that there is out there and it’s a higher ticket theme.

And yeah, I mentioned in the Niche Pursuits podcast that two things happened within the same month for me, and one was changing themes and one was changing hosts. I also went from a budget host, I will not mention but I will say you get what you pay for. So if the price sounds too good to be true, it’s cuz it is.

And so in that same kind of month and a half period, I switched themes and I switched hosts and the theme change was over to Kadence and that was the month pretty much my site. I doubled in traffic and that was like the month I got onto Mediavine. And that really started me down this path of.

Getting enough passive income that I could be, that I could be like, okay, now what can I look at on my site to really start taking income to serious levels? And that was through affiliate marketing. But it really was that bump of getting onto Mediavine and being able to just have the passive income of literally just the ads sit on my site and I make money while I sleep.

And that really catapulted me. But there’s definitely an element there where I have to credit Kadence pretty big time.

Kathy: Yeah. So were you doing like core web vitals analysis or anything prior to that, and did your scores go up, but what was it that really, was it just the that your site was more responsive to requests?

Shelley: Yeah, it was just that it was way faster.

This was. Was this 2020 or 2021? This was like early 2021. I don’t even know if they had fully rolled out core web vitals yet, but it was like in the Google page speed developer’s site and the GT Metrics and a couple of the other speed tests. It, went from I wanted to just say failing core web vitals, cuz it’s easy to just call it that.

But I don’t know if that was really what it was called at the time, but it went from four second load times, to under two second load times. So although if you haven’t been doing websites a while, that might be like, who cares about two seconds. But that’s an eternity in web time, so it went from thumbs down to thumbs up, to use non-technical terms. But yeah, I don’t even remember if it was core web vitals back then.

Kathy: or not. Yeah, I think it was… I had to write some content back in the day at about that time. So it was just starting to really roll out and become like a thing and everyone was talking about it and trying to figure out what does this mean and what do I need in order to pass these things? So it was pretty new, I think.

What I’m curious, What got you started, what got you started blogging? What got you started like even wanting to do this?

Shelley: Yeah. The blog story’s kind of funny. I was doing I was, I had been in corporate America like 15 years and I just got chewed up and spit out. I know that’s a lot of people’s stories and it was like, I have to do something else. I have to figure something else out. And so I wanted to be location independent and, work in my pajamas and all those kind of things. Working online, working for yourself is the way to do that. So I started just looking into anything like how to make money online and I had a drop shipping store.

It was called Pockets on My Dress, and I sold dresses with pockets only. And I started doing okay with it after a couple months, because I invested in some courses. So expedited my learning curve and then the pandemic hit. And not only did people stop buying things, but a lot of drop shipping is done through Facebook. And Facebook ads doubled in price. So not only was everyone’s income cut, but cuz everyone was on Facebook, that was the Hangout. So I was like, what else can I do? And I previously had worked at travel magazine in Miami. I was the editor there for almost a decade before that company closed.

So I had some experience doing travel stuff, doing online stuff. And at this point I had traveled in Mexico for a year by myself and I was like, I guess I can start a Mexico travel blog. So I joined a couple travel blogging groups on. Which were super active actually, cuz no one was traveling.

But everyone was like, doing online stuff and I started seeing. Wow. There’s people, these people are still making money, during the pandemic, even as travel bloggers. And I was like, okay, let me look into this. And then I just started going down the rabbit hole and realizing that I could maybe turn this into something.

And my first money ever made from my travel blog was from Airbnb, it was through their affiliate program, which they don’t have anymore, not for their houses. And I made $77 and it might as well have been 77 million. But I just knew something in me was like, if you could make $77, you can make $77,000.

And I was like, you just have to keep finding these little, for these little things that are working and do them many more times. I had some Airbnb blog content that was working, so I made more Airbnb posts and then I was having $600 months on Airbnb. And then sadly they closed the Airbnb affiliate program which is a big drama in the travel blogging world.

But I was able to just keep the momentum going. So that was, that’s the origin story of the first blog. And now I have four travel blogs and a blog about blogging which is where I do a lot of my…

Hannah: That’s amazing.

Shelley: Yeah. So that’s how it all came about.

I had this joke that I’m gonna start a travel blog during the pandemic and become a millionaire. I just always thought that would be like a ridiculous story to tell. And here I am on my way.

Kathy: That is so amazing. It’s just such a great story and I know people use WordPress for so many different things, but the thing that really excites me the most about WordPress is a story like yours, that it gives you that financial freedom to live the life that you desire, that works for you that your hours work for you. The pajamas… I’m all about that. The work from home, work from anywhere that kind of thing.

Shelley: Not using an alarm clock. That’s a big one for me. Yeah. I always tell people I wake up when I’m ready.

Kathy: I love it. That’s amazing.

Hannah:You’re making money while you sleep, so why wake up.

Shelley: Yeah, and make that is a good question that I’m gonna deal with later for myself, if I need some extra time, my sleeping I’ll be like, you’re already earning.

Hannah: Shoot. That could really cause for a law of snoozes, you’re like no, I’m good. I’m still good.

Shelley: That’s funny. I never thought about that. That’s awesome.

Kathy: Did you find Kadence had a steeper learning curve than the theme you were using before? Or did you find the migration to Kadence to be an easy one?

Shelley: So the theme I will not name was also a builder theme. And I had been using that for a while. I had built some websites, actually. I had built two websites, but both using that theme. So I was familiar with the builder. So for me it was an easy transition. It was actually. A seamless transition?

I would say more or less. Different things will call different things. This is a block or this is a row. But I it’s pretty interchangeable after seeing it twice. But I would say it was a seamless transition for me, but I do always warn my students and my my coachees that, there’s a learning curve.

But the Kadence Facebook group is really helpful. There’s so many tutorials online on YouTube. But and everything has a learning curve. I feel like I got lucky that mine was low, but I was anticipating one. And that’s just how it is. When you’re new, there’s a learning curve and then all of a sudden you’re a pro.

It happens. I think it happens quick. I think it, but I do always encourage people just take the take a template, don’t start messing around. Like a pro built this template, this is what you’d pay someone to do. It would be custom and you could put in requests and things like that, but there’s going to be a time when you’re blogging into the ether and nobody’s looking at your blog and it’s still so new and it’s in the Google Sandbox and all those kind of things.

It’s always, I’m always like, just do you know the quickest thing to get you started and then worry about the tweaks later? So I’m always telling people, just pick a template, update the pictures. Yeah. And go from there. Cuz there’s some really great templates even in the free version of Kadence that I really love.

Kathy: Can I ask you about that? When you’re in that sandbox and for those who aren’t familiar, when you start a brand new site, it takes some time before Google’s like, all right, we’ll pay attention to you. Working through that has to have some mindset challenges because you’re working and nobody’s paying. You’re working, you’re putting effort in, and it’s taking your time, and there’s no real return on that. Can you talk a little bit about what that’s like and how you worked through it and what things did you tell yourself in order to keep working through it?

Shelley: I think when I throw around my income numbers and all these kind of things and other people throw around their big income numbers, I think people think like that’s attainable quickly and it nothing that’s attainable quickly is sustainable.

So when I have people come to me and they’re like, I need to do this, I need to be profitable in a year, and I was like, then don’t hire me. I can’t make miracles happen. I can show you what I did. But regarding your question specifically, I knew it was coming.

I knew there was, I knew businesses aren’t profitable right away. But actually it was a YouTube couple that I randomly met when I was living in another city in Mexico. And they were like, we’ve been at this two years, or maybe it was three years, and you just like, success is enduring those two years.

And they were telling me like, we knew there were so many bad YouTube channels out there, but if you stick around long enough, that’s success in the end. It’s the perseverance that is success. But also, yeah, I did a lot of mindset work. Like I would not, let in, you know, negative beliefs and things like that.

Like I say, that I like flooded my psyche with positive, inspirational mantras. And I listen to biographies and autobiographies by successful business people and they talk about this. You just, it’s toughness that kind of gets you through these years that are like, when you’re talking and just, maybe you’re, or you’re blogging and maybe your mom’s reading it.

Maybe not, but it’s just, I knew they were coming and I knew that I was no exception. Because these very successful business people all talked about the same thing. And then they would say and this, it’s not, when you move on to the second phase of business or you branch out into, your, my business, my restaurant business is doing well, but now I wanna do pre-packaged foods, you’re still starting at the bottom, you have to be tough and you also have to just like embrace, I think. And then I do tell students this too. I’m like, one day you wake up and, yesterday you weren’t successful, and today you are. That’s how it happens. But you just have to believe that the day is coming and if you give up, you fail.

If you keep going, you’ll get there. It’s probably, people probably hate when I say that, but there’s no magic pill. There’s just no magic.

Kathy: Yeah I can imagine that process if you are not like really paying attention to it. If you are not really investing in the mindset of and committing to, I’m doing this until, setting a goal or setting some kind of marker.

Yeah. Where you can say, okay, this is what I’m aiming towards short term, or, and this is what I’m aiming for long-term. So I think some of those longer term things are harder to like work towards, but if you can chunk it down into like smaller, like milestones of , all right, I just wanna get to 10,000 page views, I wanna get to 20, I want, and you set those kinds of smaller milestones, they end up being like, the trip from Denton, Texas to Phoenix, Arizona. It’s like that trip is a very long trip if you’re gonna drive. But if it’s like, all right, I can get to Amarillo, that kind of thing and just, chunk it down, I think that plays a part in being able to do that.

So it’s really interesting to hear that you did flood your mindset with positive thoughts so that larger goal can get, could get reached.

Shelley: Yeah. But it’s intimidating when people are like I wanna make the money you’re making, or whatever. They, I wanna make a million dollars.

And I’m like, we need to make $1, yeah, totally. See, let’s start with a dollar and then we’ll make 20. And then we’ll make 200. Yeah. And then you’ll believe that you can do anything. But yeah let’s make a dollar.

Hannah: I love it.

Shelley: And then we’ll continue the conversation.

Hannah: I’m curious how long you were blogging before you made that first like $77.

Shelley: About a year. So I had a faster process than I think a lot of people have. And that’s because this was never a hobby for me. I think a lot of bloggers start as a hobby and then after some amount of time they’re like, oh, I can do something with this.

I was like, I saw the money people were making and I was like I’m gonna do that. So it was never a hobby for me. So I think my mindset at “Hello” was a little different than a lot of people’s, but also like with drop shipping, I was only able to start making money with that fast because I didn’t try to do it myself, right?

So there’s definitely free information online, but there’s like a lot of caveats. One, you don’t know if it’s good information, you don’t know if it’s current information. You don’t know if you’re getting the full story. Some people put out free information to get people to their paid information, right?

So you don’t know at what point of the process, you’re not getting the whole story of this is how to actually make this work. Some people are just like, here’s steps one and two, I invested in courses all throughout. So I started the blog in April, 2020. And in September, from September to November, 2020, I was in one course.

It was like a monthly membership course. And then October, November, December, I bought a course during Black Friday. That was like a three, three for one month thing. So I was just doing courses the whole time. So mine was expedited. So I learned about affiliate marketing early on and that’s what I knew I didn’t have the page views to get into any of the premium ad networks, which was all kind of a goal for me from the beginning.

And I just was like, all right, what’s affiliate marketing? Okay, people are having success with this Airbnb program. And again, this was during the pandemic, so that one was really big for a lot of people. I guess people from bigger cities were trying to go out to like smaller, like cabins in the woods and isolate and things like that. And the Airbnb program was what I kept seeing come up again and again in Facebook travel blogger groups. So I was like, all right, let me try that. And that was it. I think I made my first paycheck from them, actually, no, it wasn’t even a full year. So if I started the blog in April, 2020, I had a paycheck in January, 2021, so eight months.

Hannah: Wow. That’s amazing.

Shelley: Yeah. But again, like I had guidance yeah. I wasn’t just, what can I figure out on my own? I was like, what can I pay someone for? And I was like in a, financial position to do that. And I know not, that’s not everybody’s circumstance. But if you can, like the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.

I took that to heart. I don’t know if that’s a hundred percent true for every single person. Not there are people who have not spent money to make money. But, for me, I was like, let me expedite as best I can with the surest way that I can do it. so that’s how I started making money pretty fast.

Hannah: I love it. And I’m curious, what was it that made you realize that you needed a new theme, and then how did you then find Kadence?

Shelley: I hired a blogging coach after, I guess it would be a year and two months after I started the first blog. And she was the one that was like, you really need to think about your host and your theme, because I had been stagnant around 25,000 monthly sessions and I was my goal to get onto Mediavine, so I needed to double that.

But I had been stagnant there for a while and she was really the one that said, “I think your theme and your hosts are tanking you.”” Essentially. And she recommended three themes and I think just by chance, the first one on the list I went to was Kadence. And like I said, it was like a familiar interface for me cuz I had used the page builder before, so I just was like, all right, Kadence, it is.

I just looked through the free theme templates because honestly, the transition, the learning curve to using Kadence was easy. But I did have to do a lot of work on the site itself because the previous one I used with the builder people who’ve switched from builder themes might know it’s all built like in CSS so that doesn’t really translate over. So I did have to rebuild all of the site, more or less. So that, that did take me a week. But it just, I liked some of the free themes on the free theme templates on Kadence, and it was one of the ones she sent me on the list. I truly didn’t know. It was actually maybe serendipitous that I ended up on Kadence as well.

Kathy: Magic. And that’s one of the things I love about Kadence, is there’s just something about I, I think it’s a lot of the community that there’s just so many really good-hearted people with integrity who really wanna help other people be successful in this.

Shelley: So I’m always, whenever people are asking like a tech question from my coaching students in my Facebook group, yeah, I always just direct them to the Kadence Facebook group. I’m like, I’ve gotten some really good information really quickly in here, and I just always tell them, like I say a lot, you get what you pay for.

But Kadence is such like a unicorn in that way. that it’s free. Yeah. And you really just get get so much I don’t know. I sing the praises of Kadence all the time.

Kathy: Thank you, you make our job a lot easier and thanks for sending people to the group.

It gives something for Hannah and I to do to welcome people and to bring everybody in. I’m curious about okay, so I’ve seen people, I’m like one of the terrible bloggers, like I have been blogging forever. I was blogging and movable type before WordPress was even a thing. But I’ve always just done it for fun blogging has changed a lot since the initial days. I’m curious, like through your experience, where do you feel like blogging is right now? Cause there’s so many people who are making like really good money blogging.

If somebody was brand new, I wanna get started, it just seems like there’s just so many different things to learn. Building with so many different choices. How would you recommend someone like getting started? Should they hire a blogging coach? Is that something that people really need right now because of the way blogging is right now.

If somebody wanted to get in on it, where would they start?

Shelley: So I pretty much have travel blogs, I’ll just answer this from a travel blogger lens and different niches are very different.

My boyfriend wants to start a cooking blog and I wish him luck, but I’m not learning it with him. I will support him emotionally because it’s really it’s not the same. Do you need a blogging coach to start? If you have the budget? Yes. If you have the budget and you do have goals to turn it into a business and not a hobby.

Yes. If you just want a hobby blog, no. But any, anything you can do to expedite, I would say if you have the budget, go for it. So from a trial blogger lens, the first thing that I think that’s the most important is nicheing down. I think a lot of people think of travel blogging. Like a general travel blog.

I travel the world and I write about my experiences. But that’s really not how it is anymore. I have coaching students that are general travel bloggers and I can just see how I grow my niche sites. I have sites that are about cities in Mexico and a state in Mexico. And then I have a large Mexico site.

And I’ll see how my city sites will. Surpass, these general travel blogs and general and bloggers that have been out there for a long time, like I know the names of a lot of travel bloggers. So when I’m looking up stats and stuff, I’ll see that my niche sites, even though they’re six months old, are surpassing like these very welle established sites because, you can’t be an expert in everything, right? So like even if you’re a traveler who’s traveler, quote unquote, who’s been all over the world in all these kind of places, I still know more about this city in Mexico, or at least in the eyes of Google. My blog looks like it knows more. About this one city in Mexico.

Even if you’ve been to 47 countries, 86 country, whatever your number is. . Now people are starting to see the value of niche sites, and you’ll hear a lot thrown around like the riches are in the niches, or riches are in the niches. That doesn’t rhyme as well. But I don’t think anyone knows how to actually say that word, but I would say consider a niche.

And don’t be afraid to start a blog about your hometown. That gives you a lot of authority in your niche. Google has just done an update called the E E A T update. One of the E stands for expertise and it, Google wants to see that you have expertise in this area. So you’re you’re clearly an expert on your hometown, right?

So a lot of people don’t think to you, your hometown is. It’s just a given, right? But like to someone traveling who’s never been, they don’t know anything. Like they need to know everything that you know. So I think the niche is the most important thing at the moment. Try to. Not look at a niche as limiting.

A lot of people will tell me that they don’t wanna limit themselves with a niche. And I always tell them that the least limiting thing about me is my income. So don’t . I love it. , yeah, they’re, those sites just grow faster. I’ve seen it with my general Mexico country site versus my city sites.

And then, I would say a course is the logical next step. . And then just think in terms of lowest barrier to entry. I think a lot of people get hung up on the name, for example. All my sites have really basic names. Because you have to remember you’re speaking to Google, right?

So you’re speaking to a machine essentially, so While you wanna be clever and stand out, like the machine doesn’t speak clever. The machine speaks in like directs. That’s interesting. So yeah, I would say don’t stress the name too much. You do not need to come up with a clever name. The name of the name is like a tattoo like on certain days, you just hate your tattoos. You wish you had a different one, but like it’s a lot to change it, so you just hate it that day and move on. Yeah. I probably sound like such a coach. Awesome. This is my rehearsed coaching. Students tend to have these same kind of questions when they’re starting out.

So I try to just, that’s why I’m also like, take one of the Kadence free themes and just plug and play. So that, those would be like my biggest pieces of advice niche down and just get started.

Kathy: It’s amazing to me because as you’re talking, I’m thinking of myself as I, I’m, okay.

Let’s say I’m going to research, going to a specific town it feels almost like I found, a diamond. As I was hunting through this forest, looking for the precise information, if I find someone who’s blogging specifically about that thing, so I could see why Google would highlight that of oh here’s the diamond.

Have fun with this because it’s you. You’re finding someone’s true expertise. It’s interesting to me also like on my personal, like I’m just blogging because it’s, Hey look, it’s me. Here’s my experiences. One of my most popular if every time I get those monthly Hey, here’s how your site’s doing.

And I’m like, thanks Google. Not really paying attention. The number one thing is always like people trying to figure out Mount Shasta. Because I lived in Mount Shasta for nine years and I wrote this big long thing about like, all right, if you think, cuz people would write to me and ask me like, what’s it like to live there?

And so finally I’m like, all right, everybody’s asking me this. Here’s the story. Here’s where you grocery shop, here’s why housing is such a problem. And it’s still. I haven’t, I think I updated it when I lived in Arizona, but it still gets a lot of traffic. It’s probably super outdated, but nobody else is writing about that very niche expertise.

Yeah. Of you’re going to raise for groceries for these things, but go to grocery, the place up in Weed. You wanna go to Weed for this kind of thing. Like really super nichey niche’s work.

Shelley: wYeah. The riches are, and that’s your experience. Nisha. The riches are in the niches. Yeah, but it’s true.

That’s, I always just say, you can’t be an expert in travel. There’s literally no such thing because how can you help someone who wants to travel to Zimbabwe, that’s not really on the travel radar for most people. So like now you’ve, now you’re not, now you’re a general travel blogger, but not this, and you’ve never been to Mount Shasta.

Now you’re a general travel blogger, but not this one and this one. So you’re gonna niche yourself down on accident. So it’s good to like go into it with an intention. But yeah, I always tell people not to discount their hometown. While it’s boring to you I guess it depends on what your hometown is, but while a lot of people’s hometowns are boring to them, like it’s thousand percent exotic to someone who’s never been.

And that’s really always a very low barrier to entry as well.

Kathy: Because you’re writing about what you know. ChatGPT is not gonna come up with what you know. It’s impossible.

Shelley: Exactly. And that’s what Google wants.

Hannah: I am so inspired right now because I am convinced that I know the most about the city that I live in, and I’m like, I can make a really cool blog about it. So I’m going to look, see if other people are doing this. It’s interesting.

Shelley: Yeah, that, I guess that would be a phase two. Like how competitive is it? Cuz Yeah. Mount Shasta, I think compared to Paris you’re comparing, it’s night and day for sure. But then there’s still like niches within niches, right?

So say you, Paris is your hometown. There’s like Paris. S like just tours about Paris or just like hotels about Paris or, yeah, you can like, you can niche within the niche, if, this gets a little techy, but if there’s data there that shows that this could be profitable, this has enough traffic that’s, and then a percentage of that’s gonna convert into paying customers or affiliate income for you, is it viable? Yeah. Is it profitable? And also what’s your goal? What’s profitable to you might not be what’s profitable to me. So if you only want like a side hustle kind of thing and you’re like there’s enough traffic that I can do $5,000 months and that’s all I want.

Yeah. Then of course, maybe that’s, that $5,000 is probably not everyone’s income goal, but if that’s all you want, just get started. Yeah. That’s literally like totally . Get started. Iterate along the way. No business, probably ended at point Z at where they started at point A, but.

Hannah: Shelley, I’m curious where you get your inspiration for content. Cuz even just in me, like thinking about if I were to write a blog post or I create a blog about Boise, I’m like, I could write five blog posts. And of course I could probably come up with more, but if you’re gonna continue to do this for years, how do you continue to come up with content and where do you get your inspiration?

Shelley: So keyword research, I use keyword research tools which I don’t know if there are even really still any free ones out there. I use one that’s less than $12 a month, so there’s definitely ones out there for small budgets and they go up to 200 plus dollars a month. But, it’s essentially things that are spying on Google for you. And they tell you this number of people are looking up this keyword. And a keyword is just essentially what you type into Google or say into Google. Sure. And yes, I’m very aware there are other search engines out there, but , they all get called Google in my examples.

So yeah, there’s ways to find out what people are searching for. And I make content. Things that have a good search volume. There’s also other ways to find what some people call hidden keywords or zero volume keywords, which really like an easy way to do that is go to Google and kind of start typing stuff in and you’ll see what auto-populates.

You can also look at like the people also ask questions in Google, and while those questions might not come up in keyword research tools, Google’s not lying to us, we think. So if they’re saying people also ask, then people have also asked about those things and this is where you have to. Especially if you’re gonna do a hometown blog.

Yeah. This is where you have to push aside you as a person and all the millions of things that you know about your hometown to be like, okay, someone doesn’t know if there’s parking in downtown Boise. So like to you, you’re like, yes, I know there’s, you go here and you do this and like you do this to save money and you can park here for free on Friday.

I don’t know that. So it’s pushing aside those things that you think are obvious and then, I think content is infinite . But I know that there’s like the big things you think, again, like I’m just gonna keep using travel blog group examples, but like for travel, you might be like, what are the best hotels in Boise?

What are the cool tours in Boise? Best bars in Boise. But you can even go with what are called longer tail keywords. So like best things to do in Boise with kids, right? So , that’s a very specific group of people. Yeah. That doesn’t care about best thing, best bars in Boise, right?

So it’s like just two different audiences, but it’s essentially the same umbrella of what to do when you get to Boise. You can jump down keyword rabbit holes for sure.

Kathy: Yeah, I bet. Interesting. And then if you see something that’s working like best things to do with kids in Boise and that starts really working, do you then double down on that content and you start doing like best things to do with toddlers or teenagers and then.

See how that works. And then if teenagers starts doing really well, then you just start doing more teen stuff. And you could really niche in that way?

Shelley: Yeah, you could. Everything for me is, I’m all, I’m just data driven. The mo, my most quoted line from the Niche Pursuits podcast they asked me like, So like when you’re deciding what to do, do you kind of decide with your heart?

And I was like, I never listened to my heart. It’s all data, right? So interesting. That’s my most quoted line, Fortunately, or unfortunately, it does in encapsulate my business philosophy. But yeah, if there’s data that shows that there’s kind of volume for yeah, for those things, then yeah, of course.

Of course, go for it. I don’t know Boise well enough to see if, to know if there’s like a Boise with, someone might even do Boise with kids as a website. because I’ve seen that for me, my sites are all in Mexico. I’m, we’re in Mexico City right now, believe it or not. People are always like, it’s so green there.

I’m like, yes it is. All my sites are Mexico sites and I have seen Mexico with kids. It is possible, if maybe that started taking off for you or if you’re someone who. Kids or is planning to have kids for the next few years. Cuz the thing with kids sites is kids grow up, right? So yeah, things, I’ve had some, I’ve known some travel bloggers that do kid stuff and then they run into a wall.

But yeah, that’s possible too. Boise with kids if that search volume was there. But I’ve definitely seen a Mexico with kids site as an example. Yeah.

Kathy: And speaking of Mexico, like one of my first questions was How did you end up in Mexico? What was the story of starting to live there?

Shelley: It was magic. It was

Kathy: So you do listen to your heart sometimes, just not about your blog?

Shelley: Yeah. Me as a person listens to my heart. Me as a business owner could care less.

Kathy: There’s the quotable right there.

Shelley: I’m gonna be a monster by the end of all my interviews. No, I don’t know I just lost my, when my job, my company closed. I was laid off. I went on unemployment in Florida which is three months and I was actively applying to, they make you and make you prove that you’re applying to, I think it was like 25 a month, but I was doing double that for sure. And I was just getting, no one was responding. And then I was like, I’m just gonna pack up my life.

I’m gonna sell my apartment and I’m gonna move to Denver. And I have no idea why I picked Denver. And then a friend, he also ended up like not working at the same time and he had some savings and he was like, look, we both have some money now that I sold my condo and he had some savings. And he was like, why don’t we go travel?

And I was like, okay. And he was like, let’s go to Mexico. And I was like, really? Are you sure? It’s like super dangerous, a very naive American response. And he was like, we’ll just go for two weeks. And I was like, okay, cool. I was like, I really wanna go to Buenos Aires. But if we start in Mexico and continue, then that’s okay too.

And five years later I’m still in Mexico.

Kathy: That’s amazing. I love it. So you fell in love with the country and it was just like that was home.

Shelley: It was love at first sight.

Kathy: Amazing. That’s such a cool story. I love it. Yeah, you’re full of cool stories, Shelley. I just have enjoyed this conversation so much. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you more. I’m so grateful that you chose Kadence and the serendipity of just me on a dog walk and in a cranky mood. Gimme something interesting to listen to. Please. I’m like trying to walk two dogs at the same time. And then, and you really captured my attention.

And I’m so excited for the success that you found. I am so grateful that Kadence has been a part of that and thank you for coming on and sharing your story. Now it give me the rundown on your blogs if you want people, if you want to do that. I know in the niche world, people are hush about things.

Whatever you, where can people find you, other than the Kadence Facebook group, which everybody should be in anyway, but where can they find you and your properties?

Shelley: So my Main Mexico site is called TravelMexicoSolo.com. My blogging site is called TravelBlogging101.com and that’s where all my coaching stuff is and my courses and my tips really on how to start with travel blogging and affiliate marketing, which is how I make the bulk of my money.

And if you want, there is a free download on there, which tells you it’s a little video course and it will tell you the five affiliate programs for travel bloggers that I recommend getting started with. And yeah, then there’s some niche sites, but those are the big ones.

Kathy: Amazing. Great. Thank you so much for for coming on the Kadence Beat with Hannah and me thank you so much for being here, Shelley. It was so great to talk to you. Yeah, it was such a fun conversation and I’m certain that people who have listened in or watched here on YouTube are inspired.

I can’t wait to see what travel blogs show up soon.

Hannah: Yeah. I’m inspired, you might see a Boise blog pop up soon.

Shelley: That’s awesome. I’m happy I inspired you. Thank you guys for inviting me, and I had a really great time talking to you.

Kathy: And thanks for everybody for listening. Thanks Hannah, for being here with me and always coming along on crazy ideas and my magical, serendipitous marketing world.

Hannah: Listen, she just messaged me after she like, yeah, was like, you have to listen to this podcast I just listened to. So we’ve been really excited. So thank you so much.

Shelley: Aw, thank you guys.

Kathy: All right everyone, we’ll see you on the next episode of the Kadence Beat. Have a great… what are my conclusions….Always suck.

Shelley: Have a great life.

Kathy: Have a great life. Thanks. I gotta get a plane in an hour or two and I’m like barely packed. So this has been… and American Airlines just popped up on my phone telling me, get on it. You gotta go pack. All right everyone, thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you later.