Transcription
Hello solo family. Welcome back to another workshop. Today we are going to be covering how to find your people and what to talk about once you find them.
I have grown my substack and my channel is by taking three different subniches and stacking them on top of each other. The niches that I use are people who are over 50. The second is people who have been displaced. And then the third is people who want to make an income online. Not to start a local business or a physical business, but a digital business. Writing, making videos, podcasting, digital products, and book sales. That is what my triple stack is. Over 50, out of work and wants to do it with digital publishing and an online income only.
Like a lot of people my age, I have my share of physical and if I'm being honest, you know, mental issues, too, but I try to keep that a little bit under wrapped. You know, finding your stack of subniches will be the secret to gaining traction quickly on whatever platform you choose to go with. I'm here to help you minimize risk and maximize reward. I've selected several participants from the comments and we're going to dive into those right now.
Everybody starts from the same place, a blank page. Even the big names that you're used to looking at on Substack and YouTube and any other platform all started from nothing. Started from square one. Just like you and I. I started on Substack and YouTube at the same time and you can watch the growth of both and they parallel each other almost identically.
When I started over here on Solo Shannon, you can see the progression of my posts. My first couple of posts were very focused on technical things. I was just kind of getting my feet wet and testing things out. But then I start to get a lot more focused around mid August and I did that because of the research to see what do people on Substack want to learn about. And the overwhelming answer was they want to learn about Substack. There's a lot of writers here, a lot of people who are trying to get Substacks started and there's tons of, you know, your generic LinkedIn style growth advice. There's not a whole lot of meat and potatoes.
I started looping back and forth between here and YouTube. And you can see exactly where I did that. Do you want to hold the lantern or draw the map? And this is a private video on my channel. It's not published publicly. It's only available to the people who got this email. Only my subscribers on Substack are able to see this content. And you can come right over here to my YouTube channel and see how I have done that. The hybrid coach right here is unlisted. I have several unlisted videos that are specifically um linked to my Substack. And the reason that I didn't just publish the video on Substack is because of my feedback loop that we talked about um in other in the other workshop. I'm using Substack and YouTube together. But all of this information came from doing the specific research to get to this point to get focused in on who needs my help and the things that I know how to do that I can help them with.
So, let me show you how all of that gets done. Google AI Studio is pretty much the heart of everything that I do and I start every project with the AIs that I have built to help me with this process. I start always with my longtail keyword generator. This is where I come to get the keywords that uh we're going to focus in on to develop the content. And what this app specifically does, you'll notice it right here in the description. This is untapped keywords. I'm looking for keywords that are under served. For instance, um if I put in midlife reinvention, it's going to spit out better keywords that I can actually rank for. Midlife reinvention is saturated. There are tons of articles, videos, and much more authoritative pieces that are going to rank above me every single time. So, if I want to write about or make videos about midlife reinvention, I've got to find better keywords.
Now, once I have those keywords, then I can move to the next step of the process. Um, these keywords that it is giving me here, these longtail keyword suggestions are based upon um that gap I was talking about, the untapped keywords. And I just download these as CSV files. And I keep a running list of all of my keywords. So let's do midlife career change for women over 40 and move to the next step of the process. After I find my keywords, then I'm going to ask the creative market compass to analyze this keyword for trends, potential digital products, books, um, SEO for Substack, and underserved videos on YouTube. Again, this one is built the same way the first one was built to look for emerging trends and keywords. Um, and that's that's kind of my secret right there is that I don't go for things that are popular right now. I go for things that are just starting to climb. I'm looking for the keywords that are at the beginning of their growth wave rather than the peak. And unfortunately, when we look to what's doing well right now on YouTube, what's doing well right now on Etsy, you have no way of knowing where in the wave process that keyword is unless you specifically build an AI to help you with that.
Now, there are specialized tools that you can subscribe to like SEM Rush, Vid IQ. There's tons of things Kindler has. um, Publishing Rocket. There are lots of things that you can subscribe to, but I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to do this um, for free and I did. So, I built these. And I get that not everyone can build them, but I can help a lot more people with these than if I was trying to do manual research, which I wouldn't even be able to do because I need these AIs to scrape the data for me. Etsy isn't I can't just go knock on Etsy's door and go, "Hey, can I have your sales data? Hey, Amazon, can I have your sales data?" They don't give that to me. But if I if I use their API and I build an an application to make calls on that API, I can get a lot more information than just making random searches. And the generic subscriptions to SEO keyword applications and grow on YouTube applications, they're created for the general population. Well, I'm not doing the general population. I am specifically helping people that want to monetize their life story who want to take their experience and turn that into an income. So all of my AIs are built to support that. Does that make sense?
One of the biggest areas that it is predicting growth in is upskilling and reskilling. And these are things that we're going to be focusing on a lot on this channel is is taking the skills that you already have and in order to accomplish your own goals, you're doing it right now. By attending this workshop, you are upskilling. You're learning new skills to take your solo business where you want it to go. And so that helps you. And this also helps me because I'm on the front end of a wave. I'm at the beginning of an emerging trend. And that's what you're looking for. You're looking for leverage. You're looking for a way to compete against bigger brands and bigger creators. And that leverage is flexibility, agility, and speed. Bigger channels and bigger brands have cumbersome processes. And being on your own allows you to just pivot and change whenever you want to.
The digital products section of the report is where your profit's going to come from in the beginning. Digital products also help to build trust and loyalty and will lead to bigger ticket sales. The report also pulls from Amazon KDP sales and gives us untapped markets specifically where people are performing searches and there are not enough books to fill that search demand. Then it tells you exactly who your target reader is. This information right here helps you to zero in on who you're talking to because even making your short list of who you can help and how you can help is still an overwhelming thing. Like I was talking about, I start thinking about crocheting and and all of the things that I know how to do. But none of that has to do with what I'm teaching. It has nothing to do with the people I'm trying to help who have been displaced from the job market and are desperately looking for a new way to support themselves. So, it's very important that I stay on target and that I am talking to who I'm supposed to be talking to. And that's what you need as well.
So, this is what a raw report looks like for one keyword. This is just keep this in mind, okay? This report is one keyword, just one. Midlife career change for women over 40. Now, what if we did all of those keywords that we just downloaded? What if we did all of these keywords? Do you see how quickly you would have an unbelievable amount of focused content to serve your audience? Do you see how quickly you could develop books and digital products without ever having to worry about whether they're geared to the market? I guess this is the secret to the growth that I've experienced. But that's the only thing that I can really put my finger on. And it's how I discovered the Substack and YouTube connection was through this research and finding that they worked together so well to support new ideas and new concepts that it's just a no-brainer that I would have been foolish to ignore the data right in front of me.
After it spits out all of the information, you can read it on the screen or you can download it in a very convenient report. And here's what that report looks like straight out of the generative machine. And then I go through and refine it for myself and my clients. In this report, I'll uncover more keywords and more ideas that I can springboard off of. Do you see how this report quickly can become a source for 25, 30 articles off of just this one keyword? This one keyword will wind up spinning off several article series, YouTube video series, and even a book series for this client.
All right, now that you understand better how the system works, we're going to dive in and help the audience. I've selected Substack subscribers to participate in this and we're going to help them do a market analysis for their audience and find that intersection, that triple stack of ideas to help them launch their business.
I took Sherry's keyword, spirituality and money, and she's sitting at the edge of a key market shift that combines spirituality and personal finance. Women in particular of Gen X and men and women of millennial and Gen Z are increasingly looking for spiritual principles in managing and growing money. There's been a recent growing interest in apps that teach abundance and a healthy money mindset. And this is a key piece of information, Sherry. There are emerging tech platforms called faith tech that are that are combining spiritual principles with finance. This is really promising information for you to be one of the first to develop something like this in the United States. And don't be overwhelmed by that. I'm not saying run out and develop an app. What I'm saying is start developing content right now that aligns with these apps. You could develop brand partnerships with the apps and make a a very lovely income on affiliate sales alone. Mindful money management is a very underserved market that people are s actively searching for information on and there are very few creators that are dealing with this subject. uh financial therapy. Your background Sherry has a background in social work. Financial therapy is a concept that is just emerging. It's like the wisdom economy. Financial therapy is a term emotional spending. Uh these two terms are really important for you. These are hashtags you should be using in all of your content to establish yourself as one of the first people to use them. And I'm sorry there's probably a lot of noise today. It's hunting season and my dogs don't like it.
The biggest digital product opportunities that you have right now are workbooks for conscious spending. This is a big unfilled market on Amazon, YouTube, and in SEO. So, you've got opportunities for this in Substack, on YouTube, and in book publishing. Likewise for ancestral energetic money flow, the connection between karma and where we are today in our money management, divine timing. Um, I I do see the potential for this interactive planners for intuitive financial decision making. Um, but my gut feeling says the first two, the conscious spending and the energetic money flow is where your opportunities really are right now in this in this um subniche. And a lot of people think that drilling down means limiting yourself on what you can do and what you can create. Sherry's passionate about finances, but she's also passionate about helping people and how our spiritual journey ties into it. Well, she doesn't have to pick one or the other and she doesn't have to start two channels. She can do both from one place, from one platform. And then later, if she wants to to spin off, she's going to be in a position where she has a dedicated audience to take with her. The spiritual aspects of career transitions. Again, ancestral money healing came up in this report. And uh for book market intergenerational money trauma is a is a very large opportunity on Amazon right now. And the planners the spirituality integrated financial planners. And this is a suggested um stack for you how you could make you could write a series of smaller books that deal with different spirituality aspects of life planning.
The trend analysis is extremely encouraging for this niche. The keyword that came out for Karen that stood out beyond all the others was menopause fatigue. And the audience that's impacted the most by menopause fatigue happens to be creative entrepreneurs. They're the ones searching for this information in the highest volume. So Karen, do you see how this gives you a way to um piggyback these two ideas on top of each other? And I think the reason that creative entrepreneurs are the group that is searching for information on menopause fatigue the most is because it's standing in their way, pursuing something they really want to do. that midlife shift to something more creative. They need information on how to make these holistic naturopathic shifts from exhaustion into sustainable creative energy. And not only is your story impactful to help them, but you can come up with the tools and the kits that they need to be able to make this shift. My research shows that they're searching actively for planners that help them manage their creative energy effectively. They're also looking for workbook tools that can help them to clear the brain fog associated with menopause fatigue and how that brain fog impacts their ability to show up creatively in their own lives and in their own work. Recovering from burnout and rapid relief handbooks are the big opportunity in the book market. So, professional resilience guides, Karen, where people are where you're helping people with actionable steps, preferably creative steps that they can take to recover from burnout and fatigue in the workplace. And then those would go hand in hand with pocketsize practical guides for relief of physical, emotional, and mental symptoms of the fatigue and brain fog that goes along with it.
My SEO research revealed that there is a glaring lack of content that goes beyond hormones, but instead focuses on daily energy biohacks. There's a big gap for daily energy bio hacks, ways to feel good each day that don't include supplementation or hormone replacement. People are looking for ways to connect emotionally, spiritually, creatively to the universe through their biology to gain that emotional resilience that they're looking for. On YouTube. Again, many documentaries have come up in several categories that I've been researching lately. Many docs are 15 to 30 minute long exposees of a single topic. Create playlists that is a stack of mini docs. So for instance for you Karen, you could do a stack of mini docs. Menopause fatigue, menopause brain fog, menopause joint health, how menopause impacts your creativity, and then stack these together into a playlist of many docs for your exact target audience, creative women who are facing menopausal fatigue and brain fog. This is going to allow you to build a community quickly and authentically, topics that you're so comfortable with. And your third pillar is showing people how to creatively use their expressive ability. Whether it's writing, jewelry making, Karen made handmade jewelry for years and it became such a drudgery to her that she completely burned out on it. That part of your story is critical to your audience. They want to learn from you, from your experience, and how you are actively overcoming this. And you're demonstrating it through the content. They're watching you overcome it in real time. Just like my audience is watching me overcome no job, having no job, and no way to support myself or to provide for myself. They're watching me overcome that in real time. And that's what your audience is going to be able to do with you, too, Karen. Um, the color scheme that I used for these slides is the recommended color scheme that your books should reflect warm with lovely afternoon glow. I'm going to package this report up for you, Karen, and send it over to you after the workshop.
It looks like Rebecca may have stumbled upon something that is going to make her very very wealthy and that is the concept of manifestation design. Designing the life that you want to live beyond a vision board and what that looks like for women in particular going into midlife. the group of people who are actively searching for this type of a transformation with the tech skills that I know you have, Rebecca. Um, you're really sitting at the precipice of something really cool. AI tools will allow you to create personalized manifestation plans for people and you could wrap all that into a very simple app that you could deliver through the mobile app stores. This would allow you to combine your amazing design skills with all of your tech functionality, too. So, make sure you're keeping this on your radar. There are several untapped digital niches for manifestation tools. The Gothic aesthetic, the Gothic Withering Heights type of vibe is completely underserved in the digital marketplace. This was an interesting thing that popped up was wannabe expats. People who are looking for a digital design nomad type lifestyle and really wanting to manifest moving out of the United States. So an interesting angle that it came up with that is underserved in the marketplace. Here's that interactive feature again on these trackers too. Simple apps to help people with their manifestation um process, particularly paired with an AI tool that would give them personalized manifestation plans.
Content gaps were plentiful. There is so much room in this space. I really thought this would have been saturated and it isn't. There's a strong demand for detailed guides on how to create digital manifestation design tools using Canva. Figma aesthetics is becoming a much bigger part of the manifestation niche. And right now the only aesthetics that are well represented are the kind of the cottage core much more feminine literary undertones showed up over and over again in my research for this. The other thing that came up that is not currently served well are career focused systems of manifestation. being able to not just manifest money, manifesting from a place of creative exchange. That's six of pentacles energy of creative exchange. Your ability to use digital tools and to create tutorials. Um, you have a really cool opportunity here of creating tutorials to use these tools for manifestation, not necessarily to create branding material or anything like that. Those are very saturated markets. And it's not to say that you cannot offer that content as well, but in order to establish your voice, you've got to find your way in front of people. And the way you're going to do that is hitting these key terms that no one else is doing. Using Canva to create digital manifestation tools. You would own that alley. No one's doing it. The other thing you could own are aesthetics. Any type of an alternative aesthetic, futuristic, retro, there are so many underserved aesthetic lanes in the manifestation world. Take your pick. You can do whatever you want with this as long as it's beyond the traditional celestial feminine. A lot of gaps in the market for manifestation design in physical spaces. This was also a surprise to me. The use of physical design in manifesting the type of life you want. The concept is taking okay I want to experience this type of a lifestyle and you create that in one room your manifestation space Rebecca like this is a huge opportunity for you the science of manifestation design. There are also big gaps here but these two on either side the manifestation space design and decor you have like run now Please do it. I want to see how fast you grow with this because these are amazing opportunities particularly in the visual space and you you could be one of the first.
I really love this title, designing your midlife manifestation space. That could be that could be a book for you. That could be your flagship digital product right there is designing your midlife manifestation space. creating a space that that allows people to step into that feeling. We all we know in manifestation how important the feeling is. And if you could just create a tiny little space where you when you step into that space, you get that feeling. You've unlocked something big here, Rebecca. And I am excited to see what you do with it. I'll be sending you the full report after the workshop is over.
Thanks for hanging out with me today for this workshop. And if you've got any more questions, you can click the link in the description box or the pin comment below to head over to my Substack chat and we can continue the conversation. I'm Solo Shannon and we'll talk again soon. Bye y'all.