In today’s episode, I’m talking with Kate Doster of the Do The Brave Thing Podcast. She has been using bundles to get more people on her email list and is revealing how you can do the same. Sign up to Kate’s free bundle, All Treats No Tricks Bundle, which is coming October 28th.
Becky Beach: Oh, hey everybody! This is the Becky Beach Show! This is Kate Doster. She’s an email marketing expert at katedoster.com. Welcome, Kate! Hi! I’m so excited to be here! Yeah, Kate is really good about bundles. Like she uses bundles for her email marketing, and we’re going to talk all about entering bundles to grow your email list.
Becky Beach: So take it away, Kate. How’d you get started with bundles? Sure. So,
Kate Doster: in 2018, I was a registrant for a free bundle. So it was, I’ll never forget it, it was the Cocious Toolkit Giveaway or something like that. And it [00:01:00] turned out that the person that was running it, Actually lived 15 minutes away from me and I’m from New England and from Rhode Island.
Kate Doster: And there are like no other online business owners up here ever. Uh, Maria was the first and honestly only other online business owner that I have ever met. I’m like, this is such a cool concept. So I saw it late in, like I said, 2018. And I’d asked Maria, I’m like, Hey, Like, do you mind if I host my own? And I’m like, I’m going to call it a bundle.
Kate Doster: Cause people get very confused with the word giveaway. Cause they think like, Oh, is everything like a sweepstakes? So words matter. So I changed the name from giveaway to bundle and we’ve been running them since 2019.
Becky Beach: That is so, so cool. So what’s the difference between a giveaway and a bundle?
Kate Doster: I think from what I gather from talking to people is they think of a giveaway, almost like a sweepstakes.
Kate Doster: So I think they’re thinking like, Oh, one person is going to be able to win access to all of the courses that are in [00:02:00] there. But with a bundle, people actually get like, Oh, I get all of the things. So that’s how we found out that the word giveaway. People thought like, Oh, one person’s going to win it because that was also sort of back in like the 2018, 19 sort of era running a giveaway where there was only one winner, kind of a sweepstakes.
Kate Doster: That was also like really big. I know the guys that run AppSumo, they were really big in that. So I think that’s how people got confused. They’re like, is there one winner? It does everybody got everything like what’s going on. So we changed the end of it from giveaway to bundle, a lot less customer support tickets after that, even though on that registration page and on the claim page, we make it very clear,
Becky Beach: you know, how it is sometimes.
Becky Beach: Oh, yes, yes. Like exactly. I could, you know, I do kind of think a giveaway. I’m thinking about one person winning kind of like, kind of like, like that publisher’s clearing house giveaway where they give a big check, you know, to somebody.
Kate Doster: Yeah, that’s the answer. Ed McMahon [00:03:00] moment. Yes, exactly.
Becky Beach: But a bundle, like what, what, what price should people charge for their bundles?
Kate Doster: So it honestly depends. Like I tell people, it depends on a lot of things, but usually it’s where you’re at in business and what your goals are. So one of the biggest issues that I think people run into when they decide that they’re going to host a bundle is they don’t have an after plan. So we developed something like, so we’ve been running this for five years.
Kate Doster: So we developed the bundle sort of on ramp system. So it’s like, okay, if you are Like just starting out in business or say, you know, you’ve been doing this for about less than a year, you’re not really seeing a lot of growth. Your traffic went down the crap forever since AI answers came down and you really need eyeballs, right?
Kate Doster: You really need relationships. Then I always say go with a free bundle, but there’s a lot of ways that you can monetize a free bundle because I know at the beginning, you’re like. I’m putting in all this work and I’m not getting paid. We can talk about ways to get paid from a free bundle. Not a problem at all.
Kate Doster: But the [00:04:00] reason why I say, especially for newer people, or honestly, I say, if your email list is probably under 5, 000, that’s also a good benchmark, go with free because you are going to get so much more exposure. You’re going to get so many more new subscribers to talk to you. That is going to give you the momentum and it’s going to give you a bigger base of people to actually launch to.
Kate Doster: Because like, think about it, like somebody might like casually sign up for a free bundle and sign up for your item and you could get, you know, a couple hundred, you could get a thousand, you can get well over. We have, we have people that get lots like four thousand and above registrants for their free bundles, which are amazing.
Kate Doster: But if you’re putting a price tag on a bundle, you’re looking at a lot less. So it’s like, oh, it’s like, do I need a lot of people to market to? And then maybe next time I’ll do a paid bundle where, you know, I’ll be happy because I’m just really, really looking for revenue. So that’s where I sort of tell people because It gets to one of those things where say you have, you know, over 10, 000 people, you know, while it’s cool to have an extra 2000 brand new people to launch to, [00:05:00] especially if you hate Facebook ads, it might be more beneficial in your business to see, you know, some income generated instead.
Kate Doster: And just, you know, adding, you know, like 200 new people who purchased the paid bundle. So that’s why I would say kind of be where you’re at. Also, it kind of depends on say, if you are going to be doing like a big live launch, right? And you’re like, okay, I don’t necessarily need to make a lot of money for the bundle.
Kate Doster: I’ll still tell you how to talk about free stuff later. But one of the ways that I teach in my course about hosting bundles is make sure you’re doing a bundle strategically timed to when you’re going to do a big launch. Of your signature offer or a big push. So that way you have a whole bunch of new people to launch to, right?
Kate Doster: Cause if you’re like, Oh man, I launched like three times a year. Okay. Well about a month before have that free bundle. So that way you can nurture those people for three weeks. And now you have all those people that will buy off the back end. Right. It’s like, Oh, she’s so awesome. So definitely think about it that way.
Kate Doster: And whether you’re a bundle host or if you’re [00:06:00] participating in a bundle, this is really key for both of you. Make sure the item that you put into the bundle, whether it’s a free bundle or a paid bundle, makes sense as an entry point into your business. One of the biggest mistakes that I see, like, for example, I have a product called Trello Magic.
Kate Doster: It is basically productivity. If you’ve got ADHD with me, it’s got like a million Trello boards. It just breaks things down to how my brain works. Right. But I don’t have any after products for that. If you will write, like I’m not doing coaching for people. I don’t have like a membership. So sure. Trello Magic, but now people are going to think of me with Trello with productivity.
Kate Doster: But I don’t have anything else to give them. So it’s one of those things, like I know we always want to put super valuable things in, so we’ve got a lot of signups, but you’ve got to think like, okay. These people are only going to know me for this, this topic. What else am I going to have to offer them? Or if you’re just starting out potentially later on down the road.
Kate Doster: Right. So it’s like, okay, I’m like, I might only, [00:07:00] you know, right now, say talk about emails. And so I’m going to give some email templates, but I know in my head. In a couple of months or in a month, I’m going to have a big signature course ready, or I am going to take coaching clients. So be strategic about the item that you are putting in that bundle.
Becky Beach: Yeah. That makes so much sense on how you should strategically place the product and in the bundle, depending on what’s your expertise. Cause yeah, I kind of make that mistake where I’ll put something in the bundle. Like for instance, your bundle, the upcoming, uh, no tricks, all treats. Is it all tricks or what is it?
Kate Doster: All treats, no tricks.
Becky Beach: All treats, no tricks. Okay, that’s cute. I kind of think of trick or treating. So, all treats, no tricks. So for that, I put my course. On courses and that that’s like I usually sell that for like like 97 or so But I do I have additional courses I could sell to those people who are interested in courses So I guess that works out plus like a membership and everything.
Becky Beach: So like i’m not um, yeah I think that was a good good [00:08:00] decision to put that product in but But do you notice people putting like full courses in bundles or like smaller products?
Kate Doster: I think that it truly depends on sometimes it’s whether it’s free or paid. I have noticed and I, we, and all bundle hosts just should have like a standard for the stuff they’re going to allow in there.
Kate Doster: So like we have like requirements, right? Like we’re not going to put in an item, even for our free bundles. That’s like a one page PDF. Because one, if people are going to choose between like, Hey, do I want like this? Like three page PDF guide. Right. Or do you want this full fledged, like course that someone’s given out?
Kate Doster: Like, of course, they’re going to pick the course because people have stuff. Right. So they’re going to pick bigger or two. And we’ve never had this issue because we have quality control. I don’t want people coming back. Honestly, to my other contributors, I never want to create more work for them and be like, hi, I signed up for the all tricks, no treat bundle.
Kate Doster: And I got this thing that claimed it was a hundred dollars. And [00:09:00] it’s literally a three page PDF. Like this is garbage, right? I never want my contributors who are bringing their audience for their audience to have a bad time or to create an extra work for them. Right. Which is why the biggest thing that usually with bundles is.
Kate Doster: There’s always tech gremlins, like for some freak reason that’s always when ThriveCard decides it doesn’t want to work efficiently, right? So we try to stay on top of that as much as we can, right? Or if we do notice a certain issue creeps up because we’re by the computer, like we’ll make sure to send an email to our contributors and be like, here’s a script, we’re working on it, or we’ll take away a part if we have to.
Kate Doster: Always make sure that we have a plan B when it comes to those things. So some people, yes. Um, like Faith Marat, she puts in like her whole social media course that she gave us for the bundle, which was great. Uh, then we have other people that sometimes they will take, you know, if it’s a free bundle and it’s allowed, they will take parts of their paid products.
Kate Doster: So if I’m in a free, free bundle, for example, I’ll usually take, you know, say a set of my newsletter templates out of my paid product, the email marketing fairy that has a whole bunch of them, [00:10:00] right. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to give you just the newsletter portion of this for the bundle, because like we had talked about, right?
Kate Doster: What’s the next logical step? Hey guys, you got your newsletter taken care of, but what about your welcome series? What about your funnel? What if you have an email people in forever? Oh, look, I’ve got this whole other big thing. Right. And we make sure that what we give it has the branding, even of the paid product.
Kate Doster: Cause I’m legitimately taking it from it. Right now, if it is an actual paid bundle, then it might just throw in, especially, I know both of us really love like workshops. Almost like live workshops or pre recorded workshops. So I’ll put in like a really juicy one of those with templates. Like I have a, a 10 ways to casually sell to your email list.
Kate Doster: I’ll put it in there. So I think that it just, it truly depends again. You just want to make sure does this represent what I want to be known for? So you can, you can do either way, but again, everyone’s going to love it. I just try to make sure that it’s, I always say if you wouldn’t sell it, at least on your thank you [00:11:00] page, as a tripwire, then don’t put it in any bundle, regardless if it’s free or paid.
Kate Doster: And again, if it’s a paid bundle, and say it’s like, you know, a 100 paid bundle, and you really want to put in something that exactly you charge her for, or more, then go right ahead.
Becky Beach: Yeah, I would just love that, because, um, like myself, like, I’m just, I do so many different types of courses, like so many, but then, I thought maybe I should just focus on business scaling because that’s all the different things I do is like how people will scale with different methods and ways.
Becky Beach: So that’s why I decided to call myself a business scaling coach before I was like a digital product coach. But I think the scaling makes more sense because I’m teaching people about how to do Pinterest, how to do like next week, I’m coming out with a flipboard course, you know, so just different things.
Becky Beach: And I like it that you could just put in what your what your specialty is, but I kind of do the opposite. Like, I like, I don’t really specialize anything in particular. You know, just some different courses under me. So what would you do say is like the, is a product not to put in the bundle?
Kate Doster: But like for you, because of your [00:12:00] business is set up, because you have the membership, because you have coaching, I feel like really any of your products, especially in the follow up series that you’ve got for people.
Kate Doster: Like you can talk about all of the different things that you have and like it’s going to kind of make sense. The things that we personally don’t allow in our bundles, and I tell this to all of my students, so if you hear these requirements, Chancellor, they got it from me. One, we do not let anybody put in anything that’s one on one.
Kate Doster: Absolutely not. Because you don’t know if 10 people are going to claim your No, you can’t do that. We do not allow people to like do like a pre sale like, okay, like I, your bundle is the 28th of October through the first, but on the 17th of November, I’m going to start my, you know, my free challenge series or even my paid challenge series.
Kate Doster: Can I put that in? No, because again, We’ve got quality control. Some people will say yes, some people will say no. The other thing that we don’t allow are things just like [00:13:00] quizzes. Like again, anything like a quiz, an assessment, um, we don’t allow straight up webinars. Not that a lot of people do automated webinar funnels that much, but like No webinar funnels.
Kate Doster: Again, we just want something that’s going to make you stand out. Again, it can be a natural next step to things. Like we tell people, if you want to sell on your thank you page or in your welcome series, of course, like I’m not going to hold that back from you. But the actual item that you’re getting, we need it to stand alone and be high quality.
Kate Doster: So that’s why we say no quizzes, no one on ones, no like, oh, sign up for this. And one of you could get this. It’s like, no. If you want to have that as a bonus raffle, like we’ll call it, right? Like if you don’t have that as a bonus raffle, like, Hey, and anyone who signs up for this course through this bundle.
Kate Doster: They’re going to be put into a pot and one of you is going to want a one on one like that’s fine. You can totally do that, but that can’t be the thing that you give in the bundle.
Becky Beach: Yeah, so agree. I also see people saying you can’t, you know, put in a membership because you got to give your credit card.
Becky Beach: Like they might say, Oh, you get a free month of membership, but in order to get that, you have to put your credit cards that way you’re building [00:14:00] next month. And I imagine a lot of people will say, Oh, I, I was charged again. You know, I don’t know if there’s a like, I don’t know a drive cart. You can’t, you know, do the membership for just one month.
Becky Beach: It’ll have to be reoccurring. And I’m going to be good jobbing other places. I’m not sure if you can. But what do you think about that?
Kate Doster: We don’t allow them and are free or paid because of that exact reason. Um, I want it was because And we, it was something that had come to me about it. Um, and I don’t believe any other contributors because again, I don’t want my contributors to have to deal with customer support tickets from their audience.
Kate Doster: I really just want them to be like, Oh my goodness. That’s what’s the best thing ever, Becky. Thank you for telling us about it. That’s all I want. But we did for one bundle, it was a paid bundle, allow someone to do a month of a membership. And I think there was only one person that came here because we did make it.
Kate Doster: Explicitly clear when people were signing up, like as they were previewing the item that like, this could happen, make sure to cancel. But that’s why we don’t allow that. What I tell people that do have that membership, [00:15:00] I’m like, Chancellor, there’s content in it, right? I’m like, pull out a lesson, make sure it still has the branding, let everyone know where it’s coming from.
Kate Doster: And then if you want to, on the backend in your welcome series or underneath whatever the resource is. Um, and then you can just go ahead and just offer them a one month into your memberships and go right ahead. But you just can’t make that the thing that they’re claiming that way. No one has to worry about that.
Kate Doster: So we do also have no memberships. And we also have it for actually for free and paid bundles, um, that people cannot have to put in their payment information to get anything. Thrive cart is the only one that I have found that has an issue with this. When you have a Thrive cart, Thrive cart. Native upsell.
Kate Doster: Cause I can’t think of another word, one contributor, I think figured out how to make it not happen, but say if you’re giving away an item for free and it’s just a coupon code that it zeroes it out. If you have that thrive cart, normal upsell, it’s going to force them to enter payment information because then it’s going to try to capture it on the next page.[00:16:00]
Kate Doster: So you have to, and this is what we tell our contributors. I’m like. You can have an upsell, but you can’t have the native one. You have to. I know this is annoying. I’m like, you have to create its own thank you page and your unique URL and just cut and paste whatever you there in Thrivecart and put it over there.
Kate Doster: That’s fine. Um, so like I said, we have a couple, couple issues, but Thrivecart is the only one that I’ve seen. Cause we have a couple of people who they give us coupon codes for Teachable. Cause I’m thinking of the bundle right now. We were just doing testing. And one, one contributor did have teachable. It did zero it out.
Kate Doster: I didn’t have to put any payment information and it did have the native, like teachable upsell on the next page where it would have asked you for your payment information. But again, it’s one of those things that people will get confused. I’m like, why do I have to put my credit card? If it’s free, Becky, what are you doing?
Kate Doster: And then poor Becky has to forward the email to me. And then I need to go back to Becky’s person and to Becky as well. And again, As long as [00:17:00] we can make it, and hopefully all your other bundle hosts are doing it, as easy for our contributors as possible, I literally, our goal is always, if my mom, she is in her seventies, uh, she just turned 71, like if she per chance, if she per chance happened to stumble on this bundle, would it give her an issue?
Kate Doster: Would she be confused? Would she get overwhelmed? So that’s why I think, is anything that can cause confusion, even for like. Just people are other online business owners. No, no. It’s I was like, I always tell people like, especially say if you’re not targeting other online business owners say, cause I know like a lot of us like to do.
Kate Doster: Like printables, um, you know, like life planner kits and budget binders and all that cool stuff. Right. Imagine you’re selling it to a mom. She has a three month old who does not sleep. It is 3m. She’s scrolling on her phone. Cause she can’t even, she has not slept well in days. Guarantee you her outfit is probably covered in somebody’s throat at that [00:18:00] point.
Becky Beach: Yeah.
Kate Doster: Would it give her a moment of, Oh, then don’t do it. Don’t allow it.
Becky Beach: Ease of use. Ease of use. Yeah, that’s exactly what, what happened to me. When I, like, um, recently I ended up getting a charge back because this customer signed up for a free bundle, but then I had an upsell and I guess they, they, um, they ended up getting the upsell then they immediately did a charge back.
Becky Beach: So I’m kind of considering not doing upsells anymore on Thrivecart, you know, the native ones, because that happened, I ended up getting charged 20 for a charge back fee. And plus they, um, I had like, they did a dispute on PayPal. So it was like really stressful for me to deal with that.
Kate Doster: Yeah. So what we always tell our people, because for free bundles and for paid bundles, a lot of our contributors do legitimately just give, like they don’t usually create something new for my bundle, but I think we have three that did this time.
Kate Doster: It’s usually just a paid product for the coupon code, but I always tell them, especially if they’re in thrive cart, I’m like, Just duplicate the item in Thrivecart so that way it’s not your normal [00:19:00] one. Now you can, now you can see your analytics fresh too from the bundle, which I think is key. And I know you’re in analytics too, right?
Kate Doster: You can see it. If you have to set up a different backend for it, you can, it’s fine. So it’s like, okay. I know these people are coming from a bundle, so I’m not going to put an upsell, but on my real normal one, we’ll have the upsell because people already know what’s going on.
Becky Beach: Oh, right. So how would you organize a bundle?
Becky Beach: I’m sure someone out there listening to go, Oh, that sounds so overwhelming. Like, I don’t think I could organize a bundle. Wouldn’t that be a lot of work?
Kate Doster: I always say true smarts to start small. And I think that we have seen bundles, especially been in like the online space. It was the Christmas party one where, and like ours, like we had, um, the back to business bundle and I pulled out all the stops for it.
Kate Doster: All the stop. So we had 121 contributors for it in February. Oh goodness. Michigan, very, during the time, it was the first time we call it a mega bundle. It was the first and last time I will ever do the [00:20:00] mega bundle. Yeah. And it wasn’t ’cause we ran into a lot of tech issues ’cause we did. But for me, the part that I love about the bundle the most.
Kate Doster: Is getting to make connections with my contributors. Like now I know if anyone really wants to do printables or be able to turn quick profits and make courses, like I’m going to tell them about Becky, right? Like I love making connection with my other business owners. That’s one of the reasons I love running bundles.
Kate Doster: And so we have had students of my course that literally they will do a free bundle with them and for other, other friends. Literally, that’s it. And that’s what I always tell my students. I’m like, start off small. We had one student, she, let’s see, she had 12 people, and then sometimes people flake off. And so she ended up, I think it was like, with 10 gifts, she put two in there, um, and she ended up doubling her email list.
Kate Doster: And So her email list was under a thousand and now it’s over two thousand just from six or seven other people promoting it again, especially when you’re not willing to pay for ads to [00:21:00] get that in like a week. I always say, especially in business to business, it’s not the bundles take a long time put together, especially if they’re small.
Kate Doster: It’s more so can people fit it in their calendar. Which is why, like for us, when we’re doing a bundle and we know about it, rather than just doing applications, we’ll start pitching people like three or four months ahead of time. Not because we need that runway to put everything together, but because we work with other online business owners, you know, everyone loves a 90 day plan.
Kate Doster: So we need to make sure that they show 90 days. And so that’s why we’ll start pitching about four out. But I say, honestly, especially like if you’re in Becky’s coaching group and her membership, literally. If she allowed you or to ask her, be like, Hey guys, like, would five of you be willing to do a bundle with me?
Kate Doster: It’s like, I will put it together. Everyone just needs to contribute an item or a trip wire, something that they want to do, and then go with that way. Because again, why I love the bundle is it’s so hard when you’re [00:22:00] small, right? You’re trying to be like, look at me, look at me, look at me. And like. No one’s paying attention to you.
Kate Doster: Right. Let’s be real. Algorithms don’t like you. They’re actively trying to keep people on their platform away from yours. But for like a week, that’s what I always say to run it for. You’ve got four other people that are shining a light on you, on your stuff, telling people about you. Like finally, like the tug of rope of attention, you’ve got people on your side for once.
Kate Doster: Like it’s amazing. So I always say, start small, right? Maybe I would say, you know, 15 people max. So I guess I just try it out with your friends first thing on. We like to make it special, like slap a logo on something, let people know they can only get it for free for however long it is. And then again, little sweat files for people.
Kate Doster: You can even have chat GPT help you with the sweat files if you need to. And you’re good to go. It’s when you see those huge mega bundles and you’re like, Oh my goodness, right? Or what’s another paid one? The genius bloggers toolkit, right? Oh, that one Oh my goodness, they’ve got so many in there. Oh no. Now for us, [00:23:00] we like to, especially with a free bundle with paid bundles, we’ll bend this rule a little bit, but we’d like to make sure that we don’t have the same topic covered more than once, or like it has to be really unique.
Kate Doster: So for example, in the all treats, no tricks bundle, We have someone that is teaching how to sell with Instagram automations. So not many chats, she actually has a piece of software. So like she’s teaching about like, you know, automations and that sort of stuff. We also have somebody that submitted Instagram templates that are to promote your product.
Kate Doster: So I’m like posting on your feed. That’s like mock ups is not really the same of like, Hey guys, here’s like how to use this many chat like thing. To be able to do all these things, stay in regulation, and all that. I’m like, oh, that’s pretty far apart. Um, so like that works. We’ve got like someone doing Pinterest templates, but another person talked about like Pinterest quizzes.
Kate Doster: So we try to keep them very far apart. And that when you’re adding, say, more than your five friends, and even with your five friends, make sure everyone has a different topic. Because we want to make sure, one, that everyone [00:24:00] signups as possible. And not to throw, not to throw genius bloggers toolkit under the rug.
Kate Doster: But at one point, I want to say maybe it was a couple of years ago and I’ve been in their bundles. I love them. I think they do a great job. So professional. They literally have like eight things about the same exact topic, like how to start a blog. They’re really bad one year. Yeah. Um, and so people aren’t going to want to invest their money if it’s paid, or they’re not going to want to invest their time if it’s free.
Kate Doster: There’s nothing in here good, right? And I don’t want people to ever come away from my bundles being like, there’s nothing in here good. It’s like, oh my goodness. It’s like, I got Chachapiti templates. And now I can do about courses. And now I know about principles and I got this and that and that and that.
Kate Doster: And that’s really what we’re going for.
Becky Beach: Yeah, yeah, so so agree. Like you have to make sure that the people that you’re submitting that’s what I liked when you were you signed up with your bundle. I mean, when you did your bundle form, there was different categories of people could contribute to and that that way you didn’t have somebody [00:25:00] coming into the same thing that way you can when you’re deciding on who to, you know, Keeping the bundle.
Becky Beach: You can look to see what category is in. You only pick one person in each category. I think that’s the way to go.
Kate Doster: I, I really like that because then again, it gives everyone the best experience. Okay. The person who registers, they have to, cause I realized I didn’t explain the setup when a person registers, they get access to like a little claim page.
Kate Doster: It can be like a special page on a website. Uh, ours, we put in thrive, learn, cause I use thrive, learn for everything. I say, if you already have a course platform, make a claim area in there. Cause why not? And then they get to choose between all of the items. So when you sign up for the bundle, I don’t, and nobody does share your email with all, you know, 40 contributors are all 12 or all five.
Kate Doster: No, no, no. You just have to put in your email to be able to then go in and claim again, usually it’s straight through people’s checkout pages, the items that you want. So it’s like, take what you want. Leave what you don’t, it is quite all right. They can not worry about your info getting shared. So that’s how a bundle works.
Kate Doster: Same thing, whether it’s free versus paid. If it is a paid bundle, then [00:26:00] definitely has that claim area in a course platform and not just like an unlisted page on a website. You want to keep that very safe. Um, because again, people are like, they’re going under the expectation, like, oh, it’s it’s paid. So even if I don’t get, say affiliate income from it, it’s there.
Kate Doster: Um, did you want me to talk about ways to get paid with a free bundle? Oh, yeah. That’s what I
Becky Beach: was going to ask Nass next, actually. He beat me to it.
Kate Doster: I made a note to myself because I get very excited when I talk about these things. And yeah, like I said, it’s just such a, it’s such a little guy approved way to see that bit of momentum.
Kate Doster: Like there’s nothing more exciting than being like, Oh my goodness, I have 500 more email subscribers and I only had 200 to be another week. And then like you just get. Pumps, right? Like that’s the reason why most businesses stop. They’re not seeing any progression. So this just makes you feel like you’re progressing.
Kate Doster: So when it comes to a free bundle, there’s a myriad of ways. We already talked about one of the ones that I think everyone should do. Don’t let that stop you from not hosting a bundle, but I do think planning it around strategic launches or [00:27:00] sales. It’s stuff that you know that you’ve got going on, potentially, definitely that.
Kate Doster: So we’re talking about launching on the backend. Say that you do indeed, say you already have an auto webinar set up. It’s one of those things you can’t put in an auto webinar, but in your welcome series for your item. You can guess what promote the webinar a lot so you can get people into your funnel that way.
Kate Doster: So it’s nice and natural, right? Maybe you just have like a live webinar just for the people that hosted for the bundle. Again, a bonus gift, right? A bonus gift at the live training guys, if you want to come that sort of a scenario. So you’ve got that. So you’ve got people into your funnel. You can, if you are the host, you can either have sponsors, which for me, because again, words matter.
Kate Doster: I just always felt like that word didn’t work for me. So I always call it selling VIP spots. So for a VIP spot, and again, you can decide if you want to charge 50. I know people that charge 2000. I, we keep ours pretty low because honestly, as soon as the same contributors that I work with hear about it, they always immediately take [00:28:00] them out.
Kate Doster: So you’re like, Kate, all these VIPs are always the same. Because they get great results. So they always buy the spots first. Um, but so for the VIPs, what we’ll do is we’ll make sure that their item is highlighted, right? So it’ll be the first couple ones that show up in, um, the search results for people.
Kate Doster: It’ll be on the claim page. We’ll talk a lot about it in the spike files that we give for people. So people are using their emails. We make sure it’s a very predominant social media this year. Like on our registration page, we have people’s logos and we make it when the bundle’s over. If anybody goes to sign up for the bundle.
Kate Doster: Or to, you know, try to sneak in and get extra stuff for free. Guess what? It’s going to redirect them to a page where our sponsors or VIPs, as I like to call them, very popular gifts, very important people have usually other items. And for that, we’re like, if you want to put your normal webinar, your normal free beyond there, like go right ahead.
Kate Doster: Uh, for that type of a thing. But again, it’s to give them a little extra results. So you can sell those, obviously, but just you and five friends, you’re probably the [00:29:00] only VIP or VIP. But say if you’re going to have 15, there’s nothing to say that you can’t even sell five, right? So again, they get a little specialty treatment.
Kate Doster: That’s a really great method. You can with a free bundle. What I like to call a bundle booster level. So we were debating about doing this, but because the All Treats No Tricks bundle, that’s its name, right? I want people to put away their wallets, is part of my big birthday bash celebration that I’ve got going on because I’m turning 40 on the 4th.
Kate Doster: I was like, I’m not going to do it this time. But what it is, and we’ve done it successfully in all of our other free bundles and stuff, is basically people go to sign up for the free bundle and it’s like, hey, for seven dollars, for nine dollars, do you want extra time to go through everything in the bundle?
Kate Doster: Do you want like an air table to keep track of everything? Or a Google spreadsheet? Uh, maybe it’s access to like a live Q& A. So just think of like little things to make that happen. Implementing the stuff in the bundle easier, right? So we also had in our little bundle booster level, I think they had like a, a [00:30:00] coworking or an action center.
Kate Doster: So again, it’s just a little way you can do that. Make sure if you do decide to add against that bundle booster level, you don’t want to talk about it on your registration page. Just, you know, when they go to sign up. Make sure that whatever platform you’re using, I think ethically, has an affiliate program.
Kate Doster: So that way, anybody who, like say Becky sends people over and they buy the bundle booster, she can get a cut. Granted, it’s like three bucks, but it’s her three dollars. She sent those people over there. So she deserves to get a little something something. Uh, we’re gonna do this because Becky and I, um, Last time that we had chatted, cause Becky’s on my podcast, do the right thing.
Kate Doster: We had run into PayPal issues. So I’m like, I can’t guarantee that’s not going to happen again. So I’m like, just for the shirt, like next year, probably next time we do a free bundle, we’ll do it. And everyone can get like 3 here. But literally I’ve been chasing people down to give them like 4, four months, because I had to find an alternative to pay them out instead of PayPal.
Kate Doster: Oh, it’s like, but you can definitely do that. So now you’re making little [00:31:00] bits of money there. You yourself as the host, make sure again, whatever item you’ve got in the bundle on that thank you page, sell something that makes the next step. So you’ve got tripwires. So there’s a whole bunch of different ways.
Kate Doster: Again, you’re going to have actual real sponsors. Like we had talked about the VIP spots, making sure you’re setting people up for your launch. There’s lots of different ways that you can start to get paid rather than just selling access to the bundle themselves. If, like I said, you’re more established in your business and you’re like, I don’t I mean new subscribers are cool, but like I’d rather have more customer customers and you know that the pool is going to be a bit smaller than perhaps for you doing a paid bundle makes the most sense.
Kate Doster: So usually what you’ll see, I feel like it really just depends on, you can do how many items, but usually depends on your industry. Is how much you’re going to charge. So I’ve seen anywhere for paid bundles that it is like, you know, 24, usually for consumer facing, um, sometimes for business, I’ve seen as low as like 12, [00:32:00] 9, that sort of a thing.
Kate Doster: Um, but usually. For most paid, especially business bundles, it tends to be around that 97 mark and 99. Um, sometimes what people will do is they will have like an intro price, right? So if you buy like the first couple of days, you know, it can be, I wouldn’t do this price leap, but it could be like 47. And then after that it’s 97, that’s sort of a scenario.
Kate Doster: Um, one of my students and really good friends, Dolly, I believe she does hers, um, for an early bird for 97. And then I think it goes up to a sort of 140 and she just kind of sells it in the background for a little bit, right? Like they do like a little bit of promotion for like the first, you know, three or four days that it goes up to the elevated price, but then it just sort of hangs out for a little bit and everyone, you know, can trickle in some sales there.
Kate Doster: And again, I feel like, again, you can 100 percent do either version. I would say usually for most people, for your first bundle, do a free one because you can get better results. Everyone else can get better results. It [00:33:00] stinks, right? If you do a paid bundle and somebody makes like two affiliate sales, like, yeah, they might get some signups, but I feel like contributors are thinking to themselves when it’s a paid bundle.
Kate Doster: They’re judging success by how much affiliate income they earn, not necessarily how many new students or signups they get. Whereas in a free bundle, they’re only doing this because they want to grow their email list. So they’re like, Hot damn, I walked away with 400 new people. Granted, in a paid bundle, they could still walk away with, say, extra 400 people, but because they only made, like, two affiliate sales, they’re like, oh, I don’t know if I, I don’t know if I want to hang out with Kate again.
Kate Doster: Right? Usually if it’s well run, then people will want to hang out with you. But those are the different ways that you can make money again. Back end, front end, little upsells if you want to, down sells, those VIP spots, all that sorts of stuff.
Becky Beach: Yeah, you actually have a free bundle coming out. If you could sign up now and get on the waiting list, go to katedoster.
Becky Beach: com slash treats. [00:34:00] Tell us more about this bundle. Is that the all tricks? I mean, all treats, no tricks, right? Did I do it right? Yeah.
Kate Doster: The week of Halloween. So I’m like, I want to do, um, like I said, I’m turning 40 on the 4th of November and I’m like, I want to do like a two week bonanza. So I’m like, let’s do a free bundle the week before my birthday.
Kate Doster: And Halloween happens to be on that Thursday, right in the middle. So I’m like, Halloween. So you’ll see from like all of our sales stuff, it’s more like, like we have a little bit of orange, but it’s more like I always say the color scheme is more like the musical Wicked, even though it’s technically not lime green in there, but that’s the vibe.
Kate Doster: That’s the vibe. Um, so it is the all treats, no tricks bundle. So we have 40, it might end up being 41, although I thought the irony of 40 items was. Perfect for the birthday, but knowing me, I’m going to shove something else in there because I just can’t help myself. Uh, so we have over 40 items for people to choose from.
Kate Doster: We also have, because bundles can be very overwhelming to people, I have the [00:35:00] All Treats, No Tricks Success Roadmap. So like, I’m literally giving you, I know it sounds so silly, but I’m literally giving you a mini course on how to most effectively go through the bundle. Right. So like I have you sit down, look at your business goals, look at your holes.
Kate Doster: Like I have like a whole sheet for you to fill out. Right. Then I then go to the items rather than just like signing up for everything. I teach you how to manage your inbox because again, you’re going to be getting A lot of usernames, a lot of passwords, a lot of those, your course is now available for five car email.
Kate Doster: Yeah. Right. So you’re gonna, you tend to get overwhelmed. And again, my biggest thing, just like I know all their contributors, we want people to sign up for stuff, but we truly want them to take action and we want them to have the best possible experience. So. You get that as a bonus, absolutely free.
Kate Doster: Everyone gets a Google spreadsheet, which I don’t think is as fun. Um, and an Airtable database, that one’s my personal favorite, of all the items so that way people can keep track of their login links, of their usernames. Don’t put your passwords in those [00:36:00] things, guys. They are not encrypted. But so that way you have them there for you so you can be like, oh, this, right, like I remind people like, Put a time in your calendar.
Kate Doster: I like Fridays. I know you’re a self care Friday kind of a lady as well. Like put times on Friday for like two hours to go through the stuff from the bundle. So you’re actually implementing it because it does us no good if it’s just sitting there. So we have things like, I actually have a list in front of me.
Kate Doster: We have a hundred Instagram templates that we’ve got. We’ve got your course on courses. I have some stuff on chat, GBT and prompts. And I know them when we shove in some other stuff in there as well, potentially some flash sale templates. And I help myself. I just keep adding so many things in there, but I’m like, I like it.
Kate Doster: We have things to help with lead magnets. We have stuff to. help with threads, which I know not a lot of people, uh, are even using. We have ways to grow your list with collaboration. We have the digital product toolkit. And again, like I said, you can pick and choose. Uh, one of the courses that I, um, really enjoy a lot is about client success and like student success.
Kate Doster: So it’s like, okay, I’m You’ve created this amazing course from [00:37:00] Becky’s or rejiggered yours, but how can we make sure that we actually get people to complete it? Right? So we have a separate course on that. We have email templates on, say, if you’re a service provider, cause that’s one of our sections just for service providers.
Kate Doster: If you have to raise your rates or break up with a customer, we’ve got those sort of hard You know, conversation, email templates. We have affiliate marketing. What do I need
Becky Beach: to see this? Like the customer breakups. I need that,
Kate Doster: right? Again, as a contributor, you guys get early access. Uh, I think at the time it’s recording, there’s like a couple of tech gremlins, so you guys should be getting it soon, right?
Kate Doster: There’s just so many good stuff. Again, like the automated income, the client growth thing. So. We have a whole bunch of stuff. And I use a piece of software, it’s my favorite thing ever, called Spread Simple. And so you might have, if you’ve been to other bundles before, and before this piece of software, this is what we had to do, where it’s just one page and you just had to scroll forever.
Kate Doster: But with Spread Simple, you can search by name. So like Becky’s towards the top anyways, because she’s a VIP. But say you’re like, I just [00:38:00] want Becky’s stuff first. You can go to type in Becky’s name. You can type in a topic. You can sort by price points of what people normally sell this stuff at it because we have really one expert technically to like I said, like Instagram, there’s like two different ways you can take it.
Kate Doster: But because there are so many different topics, you can’t necessarily search by topic unless you manually type in the topic. So what we did is we grouped them together and what stages or businesses is helped with. So like the stuff on, you know, list growth and Pinterest and threads, that’s underneath our attraction section.
Kate Doster: So again, to grow your audience, the eyeball section conversion, right? So we have somebody that’s helping you critique your sales page, especially with your people ask questions. It’s like, that’s over in conversions, right? We have people that talk about sales calls. So that’s in that section, right? We have another one that’s more like sort of like the backend stuff.
Kate Doster: So it’s like productivity. We have one. We have two technical productivity ones, but there are such unique topics. I’m like, people need to have this one of them as a focus finder. So for like me and you got a million ideas and you’re like, I don’t know [00:39:00] what to do. That’ll help you out. Duran did that one.
Kate Doster: And the other one that I just thought was the cutest thing ever. And we had to let it in was the holiday. Like instead of survival, it’s thrivival. If that makes sense.
Becky Beach: So
Kate Doster: it is, it is like Sir thriving the holidays. I’m just like, I’m a sucker for puns. It wasn’t someone from my audience. But that one was specifically how to get organized and still be productive with the holidays, but not have to be, you know, and I hate using the term chain, but not having to be like change your desk.
Kate Doster: Right. So that way you don’t have to worry, like screw it. I’m leaving and I’m just going to come back to a dumpster fire in January. So I’m like, I feel like finding focus and setting up for the holidays is two different types of productivity, so we’re gonna put them in there. And like I said, we have just so many amazing things.
Kate Doster: Like I said, our contributors are so generous. Um, like I said, there’s one about live challenges. It’s really good. Like I said, we have pretty much everything. I don’t think that we have anything paid ad related, just so everybody knows. [00:40:00] So like, we don’t have anything that talks about like promoted pins or like Facebook or Instagram ads.
Kate Doster: I couldn’t find any experts that we wanted to work with that were willing to give us stuff I thought was valuable enough. So that’s the only thing
Becky Beach: that’s always changing. I could see why.
Kate Doster: Yeah. Right. And again, I cannot blame them at all. I’m just like, no, again, it was a little bit of bordering on the PDF.
Kate Doster: It’s like, it’s like we tried, but for the most part, as long as you’re not into paid stuff, We’ve got things to help you out.
Becky Beach: That is just amazing. So, so again, you could, you could time the waiting list at Kate Doster, like Kate Doster dot com slash treats. And I’ll have the link in the show notes. So thanks so much for being here today, Kate.
Becky Beach: I really appreciate your time and make sure you check out the show notes at BeckyBshow. com where you could find Kate’s bundle and any more information about Kate we have. So do you have any last words, Kate, before we end the call today? So it
Kate Doster: is before October [00:41:00] 28th, when you’re listening to this, when you do go to katedoffster.
Kate Doster: com forward slash treats. because I couldn’t help myself. You are going to get an entirely free audio course. It is a seven part audio course, and there’s bonus lessons from all of our VIP contributors as well. That’s going to help you have your best black Friday yet. So if you are nervous about running a sale, you’re not quite sure who you would talk to.
Kate Doster: You’ve got a small list. Maybe you’re afraid of unsubscribes. I’m going to take care of all of that because you love listening to podcasts. Guess what? It goes straight to your podcast player. So it is the perfect medium for all of you guys there. Like I said, that is available until the bundle itself opens and I’ll probably sneak it into the bundle.
Kate Doster: So people can claim it if they want to there, if they missed out on the presale. And then again, when you head on over to katedosser. com slash treats after the first, there’ll be some extra goodies there as well. And like I said, you could hang out with me on the podcast. I think that. The biggest thing is whether you are hosting a bundle or you are applying to be in a bundle, which I know we didn’t necessarily talk about [00:42:00] that applying one, just to make sure that you are submitting something that makes sense to your business.
Kate Doster: For next steps or something you want to be known for. We’ve had a couple of contributors who have really used this to pivot their business. Yeah. I really want to talk about this more. And again, you have all of these new people, you know, the littlest I’ve ever seen, you know, has been even a couple of hundred.
Kate Doster: Now you have a couple of hundred people that know you for that thing. The other, and I know this is going to sound so silly, but I have to give this advice. Whether you’re hosting, whether you’re applying, whether you’re in a bundle, make sure the mock up, like the visual of your item is appealing. I cannot stress that enough, even though people are going to look for names, right, and they’re going to look for topics.
Kate Doster: If somebody has the scroll forever type of page, and even if not, even if they have spread simple like we teach our students to have, People, the pictures are what grab people’s attention. If your mock up looks nice and professional and put together, people are going to naturally assume [00:43:00] that the product they’re getting is high quality on the back end.
Kate Doster: So that’s, that’s my hot tip for everyone. When applying, not usually when you’re applying, sometimes you can put a mock up, sometimes you don’t. Um, if you are going to apply for a bundle and they’re asking for a URL, Make sure that the URL sales page looks really nice. And it’s not just like this kind of janky, like, you know, you copied the Thrivecart checkout page.
Kate Doster: And it’s just like, yeah. Spend a little time to make it a good user experience and people they’ll love it. So that’s the biggest thing strategic item. Don’t overthink it. And a nice mock up when you are submitting your stuff.
Becky Beach: Yeah. I just love that so much. Well, thanks again for being here again. You know, before we end, like make sure you go to katedoster.
Becky Beach: com slash treats and visit the show notes at beckybeachshow. com. Well, thanks so much, Kate, for being here. Goodbye, everybody. Thanks so much for listening to the Becky Beach Show. Please check out the show notes at beckybeachshow. com and my membership businessbeachclub. com to start and scale [00:44:00] your own digital product business.
Becky Beach: Have a great day. See you next time in the Becky Beach Show.
