The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 125. Mediavine Journey: How Bloggers Can Monetize Sooner

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

We are excited to welcome Heather Tullos from Mediavine back on the show! She is sharing more about Journey, a new service that is aimed at helping smaller creators monetize their content. Heather also shares the benefits of Grow, Mediavine’s engagement tool suite. She is even sharing more about long-term planning and the onboarding process for Journey and what is needed. Tune in if you want to hear more about how you be a part of Journey!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsJoin the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp HERE!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode125

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Today, we are really excited to welcome back Heather Tullis. She is from Mediavine. She's the Senior Vice President of Support and Customer Success. And also, she has had a food blog called Sugar Dish Me. So she likes to share strategies to help turn content creation into a full-time business. And so today, we're really excited to talk about one of the opportunities that Mediavine is offering in order to help publishers and content creators create a business with their blog. And that is called Journey.

So welcome to the podcast, Heather. Thank you. I'm really excited to be back talking to you both. Glad to be here today. Super excited to talk about Journey. You just let me know where you want to start. Yeah. So I guess let's just hop right in. Tell us, I guess, a little bit to get started about Mediavine, what you guys do. I think most of our audience is pretty familiar with it. So let's just do a high level overview of what Mediavine is and what you offer to content creators. And then we will dive into some of your more specific programs. Perfect. So Mediavine offers full service ad management to publishers. I like to think that it is the place to be. If you are looking to create content and then monetize it with video and display ads, we offer a full suite of reporting and tools and advice and obviously really high quality, high class support and a team that is really working towards your success. We've also been really well known over the years for building products that solve problems for publishers. So the product that we're the most focused on right now is obviously Grow, which is a big piece of our very multifaceted solution to solving for third party cookies, which is another thing you have to care about if you're going to make money with display and video ads. And that

also kind of neatly fits in with journey because it is a piece of that puzzle. So yeah, Mediavine, I've worked with Mediavine since 2016. I think Mediavine has been publishing and has existed as a business for a little over 20 years now. So I've been here for almost 8 years. Mediavine has been serving ads on my site for 9 years. I was a publisher before I worked here. And yeah, I think for me personally, but for us as a business, our goal is really to help creative people, particularly women, but content creators as a whole to build sustainable businesses. And we want to help everybody grow now and into the future. I love Mediavine and I love what you do. We will make sure to link your other podcast episode that you were on.

It was last year. And it was just such a great... It was such a great episode. And I feel like... Because a lot of people, when they become bloggers, don't fully grasp what that means to be on an ad network. And you did a really great job at doing that. And so we will make sure to link that specific one in the show notes. So go back

and that one is definitely worth the listen. But since we spoke to you, that's when Journey has come out. Journey is actually a new product that you're offering or service. I'm not sure exactly how you want me to phrase that. Yeah. But let's dive into that. Because I think when a new blogger especially comes onto the scene and they hear the numbers that are required to get on an ad network, it's like, whoa, is this even possible? Yeah. I had that conversation with a friend over the weekend. She has a physical booth at our local farmer's market. She makes these beautiful cork bags. And she also writes and sells patterns. She's got all these beautiful cork bags. And she also like writes and sells patterns. She's got all the pieces for a website. And she's like,

what can I what else can I do with my business? And I don't think she understood what my actual job is. And she was like, Oh, wait, okay, I could do that. And then she was like, I have readers. And then she sort of heard the number of readers that you need to work with Mediavine. And she was immediately defeated. Yeah. Which is not, you know, because I, you know, as a blogger, I very distinctively remember, like one day I had 67 readers on my site. I was like, Oh my gosh, 67. And I was so excited that somebody besides my mom was reading my content and that I was pretty sure it wasn't my sister's either, you know. And so when 67 or 100 or 1000 felt like such a huge hill to climb and then somebody says like, okay, 50,000, you sort of feel like, dang, that is such a long road. So I want to backtrack a little bit to 2020. So if you were familiar with Mediavine prior to 2020, you might remember that we did used to have a lower

threshold. We onboarded publishers at 25,000 sessions a month, and we onboarded second sites at 10,000 sessions a month. But if we all just collectively remember back to what happened in 2020, when we all lost our minds when we got trapped in the house, and everybody was like, I know the answer. The answer is website. And so people just started cranking out new websites, because they what else did we have to do besides weird dances on TikTok? And so, you know, and so people were, and, and because everybody was home, those websites were growing really quickly. So people were starting new blogs, creating new content, and their traffic was growing really quickly. Things were getting traction because everybody was home and there were so many eyes to look at it. And as a company,

we just started getting flooded. Like, truly, it started maybe end of March, early April. So I think like, lockdown, at least where I live was like, right around St. Patrick's Day that year. And then, you know, it was like, three weeks later, we just had a million applications and they just kept growing and growing. The volume was so high. And we kind of had to make a decision as a company that we were either going to take care of our existing customers, be trapped in this sort of existing cycle of just only onboarding and never actually helping people once they're here, or we were going to have to make a change. So we raised our threshold in 2020. And for a lot of publishers in very specific niches, like travel was hit really hard that year because nobody go anywhere. So for them,

where they were trying to pivot and create websites in another niche, that was just, it felt like a second blow. They were like, I thought I had the answer. I was going to write about cork bags. And then you just told me like, now I have a steeper hill to climb and this can't be the answer. And so I moderate our Facebook group. So if you're a Mediavine publisher, you've probably interacted with me at some point. And the question always comes up, when is Mediavine going to build the offering for smaller sites? And it took us a while. Journey is the answer to that question. Journey Ads by Mediavine is our offering for

growing publishers, for publishers that don't meet Mediavine minimums. And we're super excited about it. But the reason it took us this long is because building a separate offering requires us building tools that automate all those pieces that made onboarding so many publishers. Truly, we've had almost 3,000 people register interest since we launched. I think we launched mid-March, something like that. March 14th, 15th, 16th, something like that. And so in that small amount of time, we've had almost 3,000 people say like, yeah, I'd be down for that. And so we had to build all of these pieces to help people on board for me to not have to hire 94 people to help all of these publishers on board and to make that experience really smooth. So that's what we did.

Yeah, that's what I love about Mediavine. I feel like as a company, you're very on top of the latest, you know, blog, like what's going on in the blogging world and the publishing world, because there's so much honestly, like volatility with, you know, how people are getting traffic when people are getting traffic. And you guys are always looking ahead to how can we collaborate together as content creators and, you know, the service provider to create a really good solution that works for everybody. So I know we are very excited about this offering. We have students that are very excited about this offering. Can you just talk a little bit about what it is and if this is something they're interested in, what do they need to do today

to start working towards that? Absolutely. So the great thing about Journey is that it's really just we built this. We can call it a product. We're deciding, is it a program? Is it a product? We're going to call it a product. We built Journey as a product that would be a pathway to Mediavine. talking about how to get to Mediavine. What are the things that you need to do for your website to grow, to meet our minimums, to get through our approval process, meet our application standards, all of those things were what we were discussing that time. And the steps for Journey, honestly, I'm so excited about some of these sites. I've looked at the sites that have applied, and there are just some incredibly beautiful blogs full of talented creators and that have put together like really beautiful content. So I'm excited about them.

But Journey was really built as a way for you to apply all those same best practices and principles and then just help you monetize your content while you're learning, while you're growing, while you're deciding how to diversify your traffic, while you're setting all your other strategies and doing all of those things. So the first step to onboarding with Journey is to install Grow, which I mentioned a little bit earlier. If you're not familiar with Grow, Grow is an engagement suite of tools. So it is, if you have a WordPress site, it's a plugin. If you do not have a WordPress site, it's a script that you install. And it offers you all of these little features that are things that

help you grow your traffic, hence the name. But what Grow also does is it helps you to authenticate your traffic or collect first party data. And that's a whole like complicated order that we don't need to get into the weeds with. But basically, those are pieces of, you know, this bigger monetization puzzle that we mentioned earlier, that will make sure that advertisers understand your audience and can spend the most on them as we go into the future. So for publishers, Grow is you just install it and then you can set up all the features. If you have been setting up email forms or, you know, like paying for email forms through another provider, Grow offers a whole suite of forms that are really slick. They're

smooth. They convert really well. And they're fast. So that's one of the settings that you can offer. It's got a feature where readers can save. We've got a save button if you've got a recipe site. There's a save button if you've got a how-to card. There are some really cool new features that are coming. But it also offers things like recommended content. If you've ever gotten tangled up in the weeds of site speed and checking your Core Web Vitals, those third-party recommended content plugins will often pull those numbers down and cause you some problems. Grow does not. It lets you offer recommended content in a way that really converts well. So Grow is basically just like a suite of tools, and you can mix and match and use as many of the features that you want.

On the back end, it also has an analytics piece. So while it is, you know, helping you collect email addresses and doing all of these other things, which is the part that you kind of interface with as a publisher, and what your readers experience on the front part of your site. On the back end, it lets us collect all the same things that you would collect with Google Analytics. So those analytics inform the journey application process. So you install Grow. Once it's installed, you go back to your little dashboard and you say, okay, Grow is all set up. I am interested in working with Journey Ads by Mediavine. And then you just register interest and you go into this list of fabulous sites that I get to look through. And yeah, so we will be onboarding the first sites to Journey next week. We took a month to register interest, make sure our reporting tools were all good and where we want them to be. And it's been really fun to see the kinds of sites that are applying, see the growth features that they're using. And I'll be interested to see like

how fast traffic can grow with using those features. Those will be fun data points for later because I know what it looks like on a site that's already been doing that when you convert. But understanding what it looks like on a site that is still in that growth phase, I feel like those numbers will be really, really fun to watch. Oh, yeah. I think all of this sounds fun. Truly. And what I appreciate about it is that Mediavine is not like an exclusive attitude. It's more like we want you actually to be able to join us. And thank you too. I'm going to like way backtrack here, but thank you for sharing why the threshold changed. I wasn't sure why it changed. I was, I'm going to call myself a lucky one who got in at 25,000 sessions back before 2020.

And then when that raised, it was like, oh my gosh, that was double. And it is a lot. But now I think understanding that, it makes sense why you had to do that. And so just thank you for being really transparent and sharing that. And also, I think it's awesome that in time, you've said, okay, like we know how important that was for creators to start earning revenue earlier in their journey. That way they don't quit. Yeah.

And so by offering Grow, by offering Journey, it gives them that the ability to do that. And I think, you know, we coach a lot of students who are in blogging and like getting started. And that's been the thing, you know, when they're like, how many does it take to get? And you're like, 50,000. Like, you know, 50,000. Because we don't personally recommend anybody prior. And so having this offering, it just feels like you really can put some wind in their sails. Like this is attainable. Like this really, really is attainable. And Jennifer, I know that you have utilized Grow

with like the email portion. I'd love for you to share, I mean, with Heather too, but with our listeners, how you have seen that impact your site specifically. And you're already, you know, you're already on an ad network, but just using Grow, even if that's not your goal, I think it's important to know too. Yeah. So I found out about it, I think last fall. Would that be right? You guys had this product back in like maybe October? We started building Grow in 2020. Well, I'm sorry. I think we started building it in 2019. And I think we started rolling out some of the little new features in 2020. And we've just been building on it ever since.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I finally implemented this in October. And I set it up on the recommendation. So I have somebody that helps me with some of the SEO stuff on my blog. And she wanted me to find a better way to have recommended content within my blog posts. And so I started researching the way that you guys do that.

And you guys have an algorithm, essentially, that does a really good job of knowing what when somebody is looking at a particular post, what else they might want to see. And it might not be what our brains think of. But that's how I got started down this road. And I got that piece of it set up. It looks fantastic. It functions really well. My traffic has been growing even through all of these Google changes, where a lot of blocks have been hit hard. And then I also did implement the spotlight subscribe form. And oh my gosh, I don't know the percentage off the top of my head,

but my subscribe rate to my email list has increased tremendously since October. It's been really exciting to watch. Yeah. So if nothing else, I think that people would really benefit, bloggers would really benefit from getting at least some of the features set up. I know there's so many more features that I haven't even started to attempt yet. But even if you just get started with one or two of the features, I think it's well worth it. And it's free to install. Is that correct? Yeah, it's totally free, totally free. And I think, yeah, there are a ton of features and we're rolling out new ones all the time. There's also like a setting that you can turn on that is called Grow Labs. And so Grow Labs basically says like, yes, let me have access to brand new things that you guys are testing. that you guys are testing. And so when we have new features, you'll get access to them, you know, sometimes six or eight weeks early. And you can be part of that feedback process and tell us like,

this does work the way I want it. This doesn't do exactly what I thought it would. Or like, wow, this was really great. You know, because I think all of the things that we build are very, very, you know, they're very focused on two things. We always have our customers in mind, what you all want, how you're going to use a tool and what it's going to do for you, then always like, also your bottom line, like that, you know, making you money is really important. And so I think there are really cool features. Like I also love spotlight subscribe. But if you have a site that uses a jump link, we've got another feature that's coming soon, which is just basically like the most valuable content form. So if you've got a jump link on

your site, you'll convert people that are reading your posts, but we all know a lot of readers like don't actually read. And if they skip over your if they skip over parts of your content, using a jump link, this form makes sure that the email opt-in is where they land. It works in a smart way. And so it can be in a recipe card or it can be in a how-to card or it can be in a specific place. You can designate a content selector. So if you're jumping people to a specific guide on your travel site, you want to make sure that when they get to that guide, you can capture their email address. It does that for you. And then there's another feature that I wanted to mention that is, it's called Action Pack. I think

it's called Subscribe Action Pack. And basically, if you enable it, anybody that tries to click the little grow buttons on your site, like anything that is grow that's on your site, if a reader interacts with them, it'll be like, Hey, didn't you want to subscribe to this email? It just like pops up a little box. And it's like, cool, you saved it or like, cool, you did this. Didn't you want to subscribe to the email though? And it just gives them like another opportunity to stick with you. Yeah back to your website. So it solves a lot of problems. It's a pretty cool, cool little tool. Yeah. And you're a blogger yourself, Heather. So you understand somebody listening who maybe let's, let's say they're a new blogger might be like,

why do they keep like referencing email? Like, why is that so important? And the reason being is that we want to bring these people obviously to our site and to find it, but we also want them to come back. We want them to make sure that it's not just like a one and done deal. So anytime that we are talking about how to grow your blogging business, it's not just getting traffic. It's also making sure that it's return traffic. And the way that Mediavine is doing this to ensure that that's happening is like a huge service to bloggers, I feel like. So that is awesome. I'm so glad we talk a lot about that, you know, growing your email list because that's what you own.

It's truly like one of the only things that you can actually control, right? You know, like you can't control Instagram. You can't control Facebook. We all know you can't control Google. And so those things can serve you really well for a long time. But once they make a change with their own business in mind, which they do very often, you can't be like, hey, man, that was really working for me. Can you put it back? They have their own goals and agendas that don't necessarily align with yours. And that can be super frustrating. So I like to think about my own personal website, but also the websites of all the publishers that I work with. If you're running a business, so if your website is your storefront, if it is your brick and mortar business, like how are you going to make sure that people that are shopping in your store can find what they want really easily, can get to the cash register?

And then also you want them to come back. Like that's the trick, right? You have to make them want to come back to your store. What reasons are you giving them to return? And so a feature like grow helps people move around your site or a feature set like grow. It helps people move around your site. It helps people find more of what they want. It's kind of like when you're at Lowe's and they like put all the little things, they like hang them on the little aisles in between stuff. So you like went to buy one thing and you're like, Oh, I definitely needed a paint scraper. Sure. And that's kind of the approach there. And then, you know, when you connect with people, and they connect with your

content, and you can like collect their email address, they can come back to your store and you send them little mailers and ways for them to be like, oh, that business does have things I like. And you give them lots of reasons to return. So the more you grow, the more we grow, I think is really what it boils down to. So giving you tools that do that is helpful. Definitely. boils down to. So giving you tools that do that is helpful. Definitely. Have you been listening to the podcast because you want to start a blog? Maybe you've listened to several episodes now and you're feeling inspired, but something is still holding you back. Most often, tech is what prevents people from starting their blog.

And that is why we created the ultimate blog bootcamp. Our signature online course was created to support new bloggers as they start their journey. The ultimate blog bootcamp is a support you need as you get started. And we literally support you every step of the way you get instant access to the course and can start your blog today. It's time to stop thinking about it and just do it. The course is broken up in such a way that you start at the beginning from branding and design and tech setup, and we'll move into the basics of SEO and email marketing. You get our support on Slack for six weeks, so you never have a question unanswered and you will be empowered as you create your blog from the ground

up. We know how overwhelming starting a blog can be. And with our support and others who are in the course, we hope you know that your blogging community is waiting for you to say yes to your dream. Click the link in our show notes for more information on the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp and how you can get started now. now. So when somebody installs Grow to help track their traffic in order to qualify, you know, to use all the tools and in order to qualify to be on Journey as an ad network, do you not use Google Analytics at all? Should they still be installing Google Analytics to use for website traffic as well? Do they need both? That's a really good question. So for Journey, you do not need Google Analytics. You don't have to have it installed. I know GA4 is one of those things we also all want to dropkick.

It's hard to use. It's not good. I was a universal analytics stand and I could, I could put together reports and, you know, you can track things and know what you were looking at. And GA4, I was like, I feel like my brain, my brain is too old to learn this now. So, but I would still, because journey is a path to working with Mediavine. I would still recommend installing GA4 or at least some kind of other, you need some kind of secondary kind of analytics tool. Google is the most universal. If your goal is to partner with Journey,

serve ads with Journey by Mediavine and then work with Mediavine and move into our other programs in the future, you're going to need Google Analytics. So installing, it's like not going to hurt you. It's not going to conflict. It's not required. But if you think about your longer term goals, like you're probably going to want it. Yeah, that was a good question. Because that could happen fairly quickly. I mean, essentially, right? I mean, somebody could be on journey for like a month. And if you're not,

if you don't have GA4 installed, you have 30 days of data in order to apply for Mediavine, correct? Right. So we can actually use your Grow Analytics. What we need Google Analytics for on the Mediavine side is just to marry with the ad server piece. So with, I do think like, I can share the secret with you. I think that there's, I think that there's a plan to pull the grow analytics piece into the Mediavine piece. That has a longer roadmap, I think, you know, because people just reacted so poorly to GA4 and had so much trouble. I mean, truly, like, just monitoring the Facebook group, I bet I see at least three or four GA4 questions a week where

people are like, does anyone know where to find countries of origin? You know? Yeah. And so I, I think that there's a plan for there to be an option in the Mediavine dashboard. But because it's always good to have kind of two sets of analytics quickly and you do want to have, you do want to have all your little ducks in a row because the journey dashboard will actually tell you when you're ready to move to Mediavine. reporting and journey because we're monitoring your traffic that way. We know when you're getting close to the Mediavine threshold and because you're working with journey, because you're already using grow, because part of monetizing your site with journey ads by Mediavine is to kind of give you all those like tips and tricks to be successful. Once you get to Mediavine along the way, it's easier to make that transition. And yeah, so there's like a little flag and it says, Hey, man, you're ready. And then you can move to the next step. And then we'll have support engineers that help you with that. It's like a level up. That's awesome. Level up.

Yeah. You mentioned journey being a pathway to Mediavine. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? Like, what are the differences between the two? been differently on domains that haven't existed for as long or when there's not as much volume of traffic. So some of those pieces look different. The reporting looks different in Journey. And a lot of this, we're still very much in testing phases. We've got our owned and operated properties are running on Journey by Mediavine while we sort of work everything out. We've got some internal sites that have been running on Journey by Mediavine, but we didn't build Journey to be like a replacement for Mediavine if we're trying to figure out how one thing might compare to the other. It's not going to be a one-to-one translation. What we wanted to build is a really good competitive Mediavine centric way for you to make money and make good

money on your website while it's growing. And while you're trying to get to that next place, does that make good sense? So like the dashboards are very different, like the reporting is very different. And then one of the other things that is very different is, you know, Mediavine support is very hands on. If you've ever worked with anybody on my team, I hope they were wonderful to you and gave you the most amazing answers. That is their job. But we, you know, we work seven days a week. We answer questions and help people.

And Journey is not, it's self-supported. it's self-supported. So same great team, way more help articles, lots of tutorials, and a community there that is monitored by support engineers and support specialists. But it's not that same like one-on-one, I can email somebody when I get stuck kind of transaction. Yeah. It sounds like a really great tool and a really great motivator as well. Because if you can just, even if you know, you might be making a little bit less than you would if you had the higher traffic level, it's something to start with. It's something to turn your blog into a business. And, you know, we talk a lot about diversification in your revenue streams. And this is a fantastic way to add a revenue stream at a lower level of traffic

and just give yourself that boost and really start to think of yourself as a business. And I would suspect that people that are able to do that are going to be able to grow faster because they're going to have the support they need to do the things that are going to make their website grow. Plus, they're just going to have that motivating factor of I'm actually making money with this and that feels good. And I'm getting a paycheck. Yeah. I think that there are some other like really similarities that I should flag, which is that the script wrapper that delivers your ads is the same with Journey as it is with Mediavine. It is the same sort of like fast, we can update it all the time and make improvements. It's not going to knock down your site speed and cause you a bunch of problems with

user experience. We're still adhering very closely to the CBA standards and policies that we set. If you've never heard anybody refer to CBA standards and policies. It's the Coalition for Better Ads. It's basically like an organization that we're members of, but like so are Google and so are Facebook. And we help decide what is terrible user experience on the internet. And then we all agree not to do that. Good to know that's in place. So if you think about, you know, like CBA policies says that you can't have more than 30% ads to 70% content on mobile would be a good example. So Journey still adheres to those policies. We still have really nice paragraph spacing. We still offer features like InView that help you with core web vitals if you're familiar with that

feature. And if you're not familiar with that feature, it's basically like a box that goes around the ads that are in your content so that as you scroll, it's particularly helpful on mobile. As you scroll, the ad sort of like scrolls inside the box. Describing it with words sounds terrible, but when you look at it with your eyes, it's really slick. And it increases viewability, which increases the amount of money that advertisers will spend. But it also helps with things like CLS, which is a core web that everybody lost their minds about last year. Maybe it was a year before. This year, it's INP. lost their minds about last year. Maybe it was a year before. This year, it's INP. Yay,

everyone's favorite. So all of those things are still the same. We're still delivering a great user experience. The ad units are the same. So you'll still see the universal player. You'll see the same kinds of recipe card ad placements or in-content placements. The sidebar ad still sticks and refreshes. All of those things are the same. You just don't have to, you get to get to navigate it yourself. There's not a support engineer to do your ads text file for you, but that's okay.

I edited like 17 help articles in the last two days about ads text. So I think that's awesome though, to give people like the knowledge of what they need to, to give them what they need for their site. We're in the business of that. We started out doing people's websites for them and we quickly realized, no, instead we need to empower them to know how to do this. So when you truly understand it, I do think it can be really empowering and you can learn a lot about what is working and what's not, besides when it's, you know, just kind of done. So yeah, lean into the help articles. If I know anything about Mediavine, I know that you do have fantastic support. And so I know that if that support looks a little different on that side, which I do want

to point out, you know, we see a lot of like, different offerings that bloggers can utilize. That is a pretty across the board thing. When you're coming in at like an entry level product, the support generally does look different. So I don't think that like journey doing that as anything out of the ordinary. Right. That's something that we see with a lot of other products as well. So yeah, my goal with the with the, you know, like, unsupported, quote, unquote, product is to make it feel like you're still supported. You know, the way that we've always approached documentation for our publishers is like, if somebody emails me a question, and I can't answer it with an article,

like we should probably create an article. So we've tried to preemptively think about all the things that people might ask for journey and we'll be adding more along the way. Talking about other other products, competing products, I think that there are challenges with most of the other products out there that we've really tried to solve with Journey. You know, we talked about user experience and site speed. I think that's a big one. I think that trying to figure out how to manually place your ads, if you're using some of these products, you know, like we got into this to create content and share the things we do know, not to try to figure out how to be ad experts. So I know for me, when I was first starting before Mediavine was an option, because it was a very long time ago, just trying to figure out how to paste ad code into the right place on my pages

felt so foreign and intimidating. And I was like, why am I doing this? And then I would look at how much money I made. And I was like, well, that was stupid. Why did I do that in the first place? It felt like entering into all of these spaces that were not, they were pulling from my main focus and my main goals. And you're kind of, when you're just trying to figure out how to get a paycheck, you make the sacrifice. The goal with this is for you not to have to make that sacrifice. We're going to target the placements for you. They're going to land in the right spots. They're going to automatically be in places that we know perform really well. You don't have to think about that piece. I think that's great. I think that's great. Yeah. So out of curiosity, if somebody

applies today, let's say they are at, they've installed Grow, they apply today, how long is that onboarding process to get onto Journey? So we need 30 days of analytics. So the sooner you can install Grow, the better, even if you just think like you might be interested in the future. So let's say you have 4,000 sessions 4000 sessions or 5000 sessions, and you're still kind of growing to that 10,000 sessions place. Installing Grow now will not only help you grow your traffic, but once you get to where you would be interested, or you could be accepted at 10,000, and that metric might move, like if we can chug onboarding along and everything's going really smoothly and quickly, we might. I'm whispering that. We're going to see how it goes.

But yeah, so I would recommend installing Grow ASAP just so that when you get there, you're there. You don't have to think about it because we do need 30 days of Grow analytics running. So you need to have that number in your head right now because we're very much like slowly and deliberately stepping into being sure that we are carefully onboarding and testing every piece of this as we roll out. So we'll be onboarding the first 25 sites next week. And then we're going to really closely monitor those as we've been doing with all of the sites that we've onboarded internally ahead of the launch. Make sure everything's smooth, iron out any troubleshooting that needs to happen. Your customers experience your products differently than you do. So we were really

deliberate about making sure we had a good sample of sites that are using different kinds of CMSs, different niches, different kinds of sites. I wanted to pull people from all the different kinds of places to see how they would be able to go through this. So once we get to the other side of those first 25, we will start onboarding in larger groups and we'll continue to ramp it up through the summer. If you install GrowNow, collect 30 days of analytics, register your interest, grow your traffic. We will reach out as soon as we are able. I don't want to put a specific timeline on it now. My personal hope is for us to be moving forward at a steady clip and to be fully automated by the end of Q2. But I'm not an engineer. So my goal might be too ambitious. Everything that I have tested

has been really, really slick. It was a very smooth experience. The engineers that have worked on this are so smart and so talented. And honestly, the branding is really pretty. I really like it. Shout out to our Marcom's team and our graphic designers. So all of the pieces that I've had my hands on really, really work well, but there's just a lot of testing with ad partners and things that'll happen on the interim.

So if anybody has already registered interest, please don't get discouraged. We haven't forgotten about you. I promise. We're going to start next week, which will be the week of April 15th is when we're going to start onboarding initial sites because that's 30 days out from launch. So we've got a solid group of 30 and then we'll pick up speed from there. Awesome. This episode is actually going live in May. So if you're listening to this today, it'll be after May. And so just get Grow installed right away. Yeah. Because they're already trucking and moving faster than they are at the date. Yeah. By May, we'll be moving faster. Yeah.

This is so awesome. I'm so glad that we got to sit down and have this conversation and for us to learn a little bit more about it too and about Grow and Journey and supporting bloggers because the first year or two, you're in the trenches. And it is nice when things come out that recognize that we all started there. It's nice when you're working so hard to know that, you know, you can get revenue sooner than later. Yeah. I'm so glad to hear it feels that way because I do, like I, you know, truly I remember working around the clock. Not that I, I do that differently now, but you know, when you're first starting out, you just pour all of your heart and soul into it. And you think like, okay, I've put together this beautiful product. I've built this business that I'm really proud of. And now you're telling

me that I can't make money for two more years. I definitely work for free for three if it makes anybody feel better. Yeah. Yeah. That's a common thing. That's a common thing. But thank you so much for just sharing about it. It's been great. We will make sure to put the link for Mediavine and Journey in the show notes. And then Heather, do you want to give them your contact info if they have specific questions that they can reach out? Yeah. So listen, my email address is not a place that you want to land. I'm in I'm truly, I'm in meetings all day. And so if you email me and are like anxiously awaiting my response, you might be disappointed by my response. And so you can always reach out to publishers at Mediavine.com. If you're

interested in Mediavine, we, you know, you can access us on Twitter if you have questions. We're on Instagram. Mediavine is available in a lot of places. And then I'll make sure that the links for Journey and Grow, as well as the help centers that I provide those with you all so that people have easy access. And then please use the community that we've built there. That's also a great place to ask questions because I would really like to know if there are things I didn't think of so that we can help solve those problems too. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Heather. We really appreciate you and Mediavine. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate your time.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes for those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the wait list for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.