In today's Q&A, we are talking about

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Our question today comes from Bob of Cubicle Bliss

Have a Question? Ask it here!

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome back to today’s Q&A mini podcast and we are going to answer today a question from Bob Bassett. I hope I said that right, Bob, of CubicleBliss.com. Bob writes:

“I have a site that deals with the office environment and products that help improve the work place. I average over 10,000 page views per month, but I hardly get any comments. How do I generate more comments?

I thought about adding a forum or creating a Facebook group, but I’m not sure if that’s the best route. I love what you guys do. I have a long commute so your podcast and Q&As really motivate me on my work commute so some day I will never have to make that commute again.”

SHANE: All right, Bob, we’ve got a couple of suggestions for you on how to get more comments on your blog. We get a lot of comments on Flipped Lifestyle, probably more than most. For some reason, our people are really engaged on there and we do get a lot of comments on our different blog posts and podcasts, and things like that.

There are a couple of things that you can do to kind of spur that conversation on. The first thing is we always say this is not field of dreams with Kevin Costner. Nothing online works if you build it, they will come and people will just magically engage with you. A lot of people sell that, but that is totally false hopes.

If you want people to do something online, you have to either ask them to do something, tell them to do something, or show them exactly how you want them to do something. If you want more comments on your blog, you’re going to have to have specific call to action on your blog post that say, “How would you handle this situation? Leave a message in the comments” or “What do you think about this topic? Leave a message in the comments.”

Don’t be afraid to ever ask for anything on the internet especially when you’re giving so much value on your blog and you’re helping people do better in their workplace environment. You’re giving so much value. Don’t be afraid to ask them to engage with you in your comment section.

You can do a Facebook group and things like that, but the question we always ask ourselves is, "Do we want all that content that’s generated by the comments to live on Facebook or do we want it to live on our blog?" That’s why we keep a comment section.

A lot of people get rid of their comments and try to engage only on social media. We think that there’s a lot of value in that conversation being included with our blog post so we leave our comments open and we try to drive traffic to that post so that we can get all that engagement. The first tip is, tell your people what you want them to do. Ask them a question, engage with them. Let them know, “Hey, I want to hear from you. Sound off in the comments.”

JOCELYN: Yeah, a lot of people think this is kind of obvious. I have a comment section so people know to leave comments there. Well, that’s not necessarily true. People may not even notice that you have a comments section so if you’re writing a blog post, just stick down there at the bottom,

In today's Q&A, we are talking about where to register your first domain and host your websites.

There are a lot of registrar and hosting services out there, which can make finding the one right for you difficult. Many look similar, so what's the difference? Listen up as we discuss this from our personal experience.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Namecheap - our domain registrar of choice

Hostgator - the web hosting service we started out with

Have a Question? Ask it here!

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: What’s up guys? Welcome back to another Q&A mini podcast where we answer your questions about online business. Our question today comes from Mark Biggs. Mark writes:

“What service did you use to register your first domain and where did you host your websites when you started out in your online business?”

JOCELYN: All right, Mark. We actually get this question quite often and we always buy all of our domains through Namecheap.com. There’s really no particular reason why. We just heard about it when we were first starting out. We checked it out and thought that it looked good so we started using them.

It’s very inexpensive to register domains there and we have just always used them and never had any issues. Now it is important that you register your domain name through a different person than your hosting provider.

SHANE: Namecheap is not a host. They are not an actual place you can put your website. They just register domains.

JOCELYN: The reason that you want to keep those separate is because if you ever decide to change hosting companies, and you might, you want to make sure that you’ll be able to easily change that.

If something happens and your domain and host are registered through the same, say, maybe you have a billing error and something can’t be paid, then your hosting company can hold on to that domain and not release it if something like that ever were to happen. If you don’t have them registered at the same place, all you have to do is log in to your domain name provider and just change those name servers.

That might sound a little confusing but it’s actually really easy.

SHANE: You basically just point your domain, for example, let’s say you’re hosting in company A and you have your domain registered with Namecheap, you take your domain and you point it at where your website lives on that server in company A. But if company A starts making you mad, they have lots of downtime, they are not working really good, all you have to do is go sign up an account in company B, go to Namecheap and point your domain name at company B and then you can deal with company A later when you’re canceling your service.

If you’re trying to cancel and transfer over, I just had a buddy the other day and he was telling me it was taking him like seven or eight days to get his domain name and his website transferred from one company to another because they kind of hold you hostage a little bit while they are trying to do that. So never register at the same place.

JOCELYN: We really like Namecheap. They have several different tools to help you find domain names and have suggestions for alternative domain names if the one you want is taken. We just always had really good luck with it.

SHANE: All right as for hosting, when we started out we tried a bunch of different companies. We tried FatCow, we looked at Bluehost, but we really didn’t go with Bluehost. Even though everybody seems to support and promote Bluehost, we learned early on actually that’s because Bluehost pa...

In today’s podcast we are going to show you how to create and sell digital products to make money online.

Creating digital products is our preferred way of making money online for several reasons, so in this episode we're going to share the why and how of making and selling digital products.

You will also learn:

What we think is the first thing you should invest in in the beginning

Why using the right technology and services can make running your business much smoother

The controversial thing we believe was well worth the investment when we first started

Why we think attending live events is so important

Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what’s possible for your family!

Listen to what others are saying about Flipped Lifestyle

Click here to leave us an iTunes review and subscribe to the show! We may read yours on the air!

 Links and resources mentioned in today’s show

Flip Your Life eCourse

Logonerds - for cheap logo design

Odesk - a great outsourcing tool

Flipped Lifestyle Resources - for all our favorite plugins, equipment, etc.

Tropical Think Tank - Chris Ducker's event that we are attending this year in the Philippines

Join us in San Diego for our first ever live event with Jill and Josh Stanton from Screw the Nine to Five

Thank you for listening! Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business.  Help us by sharing the show!

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.  See y’all next week!

Can’t Miss Moments

Each week Jocelyn and I share moments that we might have missed if we had not started our online business. We hope these moments inspire you to see the possibilities and freedom online business could provide for your family.

Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, on today’s podcast, we are going to talk about the best ways to invest in yourself so you can be successful online. [spoiler]

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome to this week’s Flipped Lifestyle podcast where we’re going to be talking about spending your money wisely and investing in yourself.

These are two things that we’re really, really passionate about and we’ve learned so much about in hindsight just from the different things that we’ve done along the way to invest in our business and to invest in ourselves.

We’re going to share with you today a lot of things that we have learned from this process of being in online business for the past three years. But first, we are going to share a comment from our blog.

SHANE: Each week, we try to share something from our audience, whether it’s a Facebook comment, a tweet, an email, or an iTunes review, and this is the first time we’ve actually pulled something from our blog. We get lots of comments on our blogs. We’re one of the few people I think left that still have comments on their blogs. We don’t use any fancy system or we’ve not gotten rid of our comments.

We love having comments and discussion in the show notes of our podcast and in all of our blog posts. Today, we have a great compliment from Patrick Roden and he left this on a blog post over at FlippedLifestyle.com.

Patrick writes, “Shane and Jocelyn, what you’re doing matters. You will never see the full ripple effect for good from your efforts. Just know it’s there. Thanks for being so inspiring and generous with your insights.”

When I read that post today,

In today's Q&A, we are talking about the different options you have for publishing your book on Kindle.

Just a quick disclaimer, we do not work for Amazon or Kindle and are in no way experts on this subject, however we have found some details that may make choosing your publishing option easier.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

The Amazon FAQ for Kindle Publishing

Have a Question? Ask it here!

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

JOCELYN: Hey guys, welcome back to this week’s Q&A with S&J. This week’s question is from John Hipes and John says:

“In your podcast, you mentioned that if I decided to Kindle publishing, I can still offer the product on my site. Is this really true?”

Okay, John, well, we want to preface this by saying that it’s always important that no matter who you’re working with that you need to read their terms and conditions fully and that things are subject to change at any time. We are certainly not experts in this realm or we are also not legal professionals so don’t take what we say…

SHANE: And we don’t work for Amazon.

JOCELYN: Yes, so don’t take what we say as the gospel. You need to always check into these types of things before you get started but as of right now, Shane has done some research for you and he has some information.

SHANE: All right, if you’re going to publish on Amazon, like if you’ve got an ebook and you want to sell it in Amazon, Kindle, or something like that, there are basically two services that Amazon offers. They have where you can just publish your book and sell it individually on Kindle but then they also have this like subscription service where you can include your book, like people can pay like so much a month and they can read unlimited books and ebooks on their device.

Basically what happens is you can go in and you can be a part of that but if you do, then you’re not allowed to sell your book anywhere else except through that area of Amazon. Basically, you’ve got Kindle direct publishing where you can publish your book and you can publish it on Kindle. People can buy it, but then you can still offer it over on your website.

Now there are some limitations to that. You have to read Amazon’s terms and conditions to see that, but they also have a new service, that subscription service, that’s called Kindle Unlimited. If you choose to publish in Kindle Unlimited, then you have to make your title exclusive to the Kindle service. Basically, you have the option, you can either sell it one way where you can publish it on your site too or you can choose Amazon’s service where you can make it exclusive on Kindle.

Now they reward you for doing that. I think they give you like more of the money or something like that. You have to go read in the very specific information but the bottom line is this, there is a way to sell it on Kindle and in the Amazon store as well as on your website. We know a lot of people that do this. They have the self publishing setup on Amazon. They also sell it on their website. It’s like an ebook or something like that so yes, you can do that. You just have to read those terms and conditions to make sure you’re doing it correctly.

JOCELYN: The purpose of doing that for most people is just to get exposure. So you have your book on Kindle and it’s available to people who are searching for it but then it’s also available on your website where you’ll make obviously more of a profit from selling it there.

In today's Q&A, we are talking about how to deal with online trolls and haters. Unfortunately, there will always be someone out there trying to bring you down when you're up, so we're showing you how you can deal with it, and still come out ahead.

Do you have a question you want answered on our podcast?  We would love to help you!

Click here to ask your question!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Jocelyn's post on how to deal with haters

Today's question comes from PersonalizedToday.com 

Have a Question? Ask it here!

Let’s dive into this week’s question!

JOCELYN: Hey y’all, you’re listening to Q&A with S&J.

SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let's get started.

What’s going on guys? Welcome back to another Q&A with S&J. Our question today comes from Matt and Meredith from PersonalizedToday.com. Thank you guys for writing in and for leaving your domain name, and make sure you leave us your domain if you do submit a question so that we can read it on air and put it in our show notes.

Matt and Meredith write:

“Hey guys, the biggest hurdle that has been keeping us from starting an online business has been dealing with haters and trolls. I see all these trolls all over YouTube and on other people’s website comments. My question is, how do you all deal with haters and how can I not let them bother me and stop us from reaching our online goals? If you already have a post on this subject, please let us know which episode or post. Thank you so much. Keep up the awesome work and God bless.”

JOCELYN: We actually do have a blog post about this. I wrote it a while back and it’s called Dealing with Haters.

SHANE: Got to hate, hate, hate. Sorry, I’m a big Taylor Swift fan, so I had to go ahead and do that.

JOCELYN: Wow. So if you go to FlippedLifestyle.com/Haters, you can find my blog post about dealing with haters and this is something that we have dealt with as well. I actually have a theory about this. If you have haters, that means you have officially arrived because the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what you do in life, no matter how good it is or how well intentioned, there’s going to be somebody out there who wants to just cause trouble for you.

That’s just the way of life. That’s the way it is when you’re young child, that’s the way it is when you’re an adult. I just think that probably never changes. It is really, really frustrating to have somebody to say something negative about work that you’ve done or something you’ve written or something you’re trying to sell. This has happened to me actually many times and it is, I mean, it’s just hard. It makes your whole day just kind of bad because somebody says something bad and it just makes you think that everything that you do is terrible. That’s just not true.

You just have to remember that no matter what you do, there’s going to be somebody out there for whatever reason - whether it’s jealousy or whether it’s just being mean - somebody is going to hate on what you do.

SHANE: Most of the time, we really let that negative comment overwhelm us when really, we’re doing so much good for so many people that that one person is just a drop in the bucket anyway but it’s like that negative comment feels louder. We have over 200 five star reviews on iTunes and if you haven’t left us a review on iTunes, we’d really appreciate if you’d do that. just head over there and tell us what you think about this show but we have almost 100% positive reviews on iTunes and one person one time, didn’t even leave a comment, but they came in and left us a one star review. It’s our only review that’s below four stars. It’s the only bad one and they didn’t even leave a comment.

When we got that review,