Amy Katz is the founder, recipe developer, and photographer of “Veggies Save The Day” where she shares easy vegan recipes inspired by a healthy Mediterranean diet. She started it as a hobby in August 2015 but turned it into a business and left her full-time accounting job in March 2017.

In today’s interview, I interview her about how she uses Deadline Funnel to add authentic urgency and scarcity to her tripwire funnels, offering the new leads who join her email list a limited-time opportunity to purchase her ebooks at a discounted price.

Watch the video of my interview with Amy or read the transcript below!

Links

VeggiesSaveTheDay.com Deadline Funnel

Transcript

Jack Born: Hey, everyone. This is Jack Born. I’m the founder of Deadline Funnel. I’m here with another fantastic client, Deadline Funnel client. I’m here with Amy Katz. Amy, great to have you here.

Amy Katz: Great to be here.

Jack Born: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your business, and tell us who you serve and how you do that.

Amy Katz: Sure. I’m a vegan food blogger at “Veggies Save the Day”, and I create easy vegan recipes that are based on a healthy, Mediterranean diet. And the recipes are suitable for those who are just getting started on plant-based eating or if they’ve been cooking for years. Anyone can follow these recipes.

Jack Born: So, tell me a little bit about your origin story. How did you get into this? Did this start with a major life change for yourself? And, just tell me the story.

Amy Katz: Yeah, I had always kind of leaned toward vegetarian, even when I was a kid, but I wasn’t fully vegetarian or vegan until about almost 10 years ago. And I did it for a variety of reasons. I’d always been concerned with the environment and animal welfare, and then I also started learning about some of the health benefits of a plant-based diet. So I started experimenting, and as I did, I was posting photos on Instagram. And a lot of my friends who saw the photos, they encouraged me to start a blog so that I could share my recipes.

Jack Born: So you start the blog and then were, were you initially selling anything, or was it just putting recipes out there?

Amy Katz: Yeah, it was just really for a hobby, but then I started seeing other food bloggers in particular and I saw that they were actually able to make money. So I thought, “well, if they can do it, why can’t I?” So initially I started with trying to work with brands, doing sponsored posts, using their ingredients to create recipes. And I also then delved into having advertisements on my website. But then it wasn’t really until a few years ago that I thought to myself, “well, why don’t I try selling some of my own products?” And so that started initially with ebooks.

Jack Born: Okay. And so what was your first ebook on?

Amy Katz: So my first ebook was, it was on Thanksgiving recipes. And that one I actually just gave away for free because I wasn’t really confident about being able to sell anything. But then I decided that I would try to go ahead and create an ebook that people would actually buy. And so that one was called “Vegan Mix and Match Salads”. So I showed how to make different components so you could create like a salad bar in your refrigerator so you could always, you know, open it up and put together all different combinations of salads.

Jack Born: Well, a vegan recipe book or cookbook for Thanksgiving is definitely a challenge ’cause if there’s one day of the year that I think is like dedicated for meat lovers- that and July 4th. Those are probably the two days.

Amy Katz: That’s true.

Jack Born: So how many years ago was that?

Amy Katz: So that was about, let’s see, about two and a half years ago.

Jack Born: Okay. And so now you’ve, I assume you’ve moved on, well, okay. You certainly are charging for your ebooks. Are you still primarily selling ebooks, or is it courses? Tell us a little bit about how you’re engaging with clients now.

Amy Katz: Yeah, so predominantly it’s still ebooks. So I have a few that I kind of rotate in and out of my little store. But I’m actually now delving into classes. So they’re on-demand cooking classes so that someone can learn how to prepare in a complete meal with different courses. And then they can sign up, get the class, watch it anytime they want, and also download a little mini ebook that has the recipes that go with it.

Jack Born: That’s awesome. So how are you finding the experience so far of going from ebooks to on-demand classes?

Amy Katz: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I think that it’s different because I try to have everything so that I don’t wanna be on camera for hours showing how to make something because who wants to have to spend that much time in their kitchen? So I try to make things that are as simple as possible and that anyone can, they watch it, and then they can look at the recipes, download the shopping list, go get the ingredients and replicate it themselves.

Jack Born: It’s like your own version of The Cooking Channel.

Amy Katz: Yeah, exactly.

Jack Born: That’s awesome. So tell me a little bit about how you became our client. What was going on in your business that brought you to think that you might need Deadline Funnel?

Amy Katz: Well, it started with learning about what people call “tripwire sales”, or sometimes they’re called “easy yes” offers. So, someone would land on my website either from like Google or maybe Pinterest or Facebook or something, and they would download something I have for free. And then what I wanna do is offer them one of my paid products for a price that’s just a no brainer because I’m offering them a huge discount. And I wanted to have it so that they only have like 15 minutes to make that decision. And if they don’t decide during that time that they won’t be offered that special price anymore, they’ll have to pay the regular price. And I looked around. I use WordPress for my website. And I did try out some different plugins that are available, but none of them really worked. Like there was always a way to get around that timer, or the plugin would just break. And so then I’d go to the page and there could be no timer on it anymore. So, I looked around, and I talked to other online entrepreneurs. And unanimously, they all said that Deadline Funnel is the only one that works. So I was convinced. I gave it a try, and sure enough, I mean, my sales, they really improved once I just had the Deadline Funnel on there.

Jack Born: That’s awesome. That’s a really cool story. So are you, have you started experimenting at all with paid traffic? Are you buying ads at all?

Amy Katz: No. Right now it’s all organic.

Jack Born: Okay.

Amy Katz: Yeah. I’m fortunate that a large percentage of my traffic comes from Google.

Jack Born: That’s awesome.

Amy Katz: So I focus on SEO a lot. So yeah, so far I haven’t delved into the paid ads.

Jack Born: And it sounds like you’re also getting some referral traffic from Pinterest.

Amy Katz: Yeah, sometimes. Pinterest is a little tricky these days, but I think it’s still a good way for people to discover your brand. Same way that Instagram is. Like Instagram, I’m not necessarily getting a lot of direct clicks over to my website, but it makes people aware of who I am, what I do. And then they kind of put a face to the name, and they’ll remember it. So, indirectly I can get traffic that way.

Jack Born: So what would you say having traveled from, having this idea of starting a blog, offering something for free and now you’re all the way to creating online course content. What would you tell someone who’s just starting at that beginning of the journey? They’re just starting to dip their toe into this idea of selling their own things online. What would you tell them based on your experience?

Amy Katz: I would say the number one thing that has helped me is building my email list. So I use ConvertKit, and it works really well with Deadline Funnel, too. I can embed any of the timers into my emails. And, I think that offering people something for free is just a way to gain their trust. Because if they see like, “wow, she provides so much value for free and I really like what she’s offering, I’ll definitely trust her when she offers me a paid product.” So I think that building that email list of customers is, even before you sell them anything is really key.

Jack Born: And going back to the tripwire offer, if I could dive just a little bit deeper on that. Have you learned anything in terms of what sort of principles you would look for in choosing a tripwire offer?

Amy Katz: Yeah. I think that the tripwire should be related to the freebie. So a lot of times I’ll work backwards, and if I create an ebook and then I think, “okay, here’s, I wanna offer this as a tripwire, so I’m gonna offer it, say 50% off, what is something that I can give my audience for free that directly relates to that tripwire product?” So for example, I created an ebook that’s all sauce recipes, so it’s called “Vegan Mix and Match Sauces”. I like that mix and match thing. So I thought to myself, “well, what would make someone think like, ‘oh, I do really need recipes for sauces’?” So I offer them a free guide that’s called “Instant Flavor”, and I call it “the four-part formula for turning your vegan meals from dull into delicious”. And so I start off with, “okay, if you wanna create a meal, here are the four steps,” and the fourth step happens to be “add a delicious sauce”. So when I’m mentioning in that, I say, “hey, by the way, check your”, when they sign up, “check your email. It’s gonna, your inbox, it’s gonna be there in a few minutes, but while you’re waiting, let me give you a hint. The most important step is number four, and that’s ‘choose a delicious sauce’. And by the way, I have this ebook that you can get for 50% off for the next 15 minutes. And that’s gonna give you all the recipes you need to make these sauces.”

Jack Born: That is absolutely brilliant. So is this, not that it really matters, but go ahead and tell me, is this a video where you’re talking to them on the thank you page? Or is this text? What is, how-

Amy Katz: This is actually just a text. Yeah, I said, I just do everything on my WordPress blog. So I just set up a page, and then I put the timer on it. So after 15 minutes, it will automatically redirect to the regular sales page. But for the tripwire page, I just keep it short so that they have time to read it quickly, and, you know, before the timer runs out, they’ll have time to either put in their PayPal information or go grab their credit card and put the numbers in. And they’ll have plenty of time to do that.

Jack Born: Awesome. Yeah. That’s another key thing, is that if you’ve got a, say a 12 minute video, you wanna make sure that there’s at least 12 minutes and possibly a few extra minutes to be able to watch the video and make a decision and then go purchase, but not so long that they procrastinate. So there’s definitely that Goldilocks zone right there. Well, that’s some great information, and I know that that’s gonna help a lot of people start to experiment with their tripwire. We’re actually putting together some training on that. So I’ll make sure to include those ideas. So that was really great. So if someone is interested in checking out your stuff and they wanna buy the ebooks that you have or they just wanna opt into your list to see how you nurture your audience and build trust, where can they go?

Amy Katz: Yeah, so they can go to my website, which is www.VeggiesSaveTheDay.com. And I’m also on Instagram @VeggiesSaveTheDay. And you can find me on Facebook, Pinterest, all the usual places.

Jack Born: That’s terrific. Awesome, and we’ll make sure that the links to all of those are somewhere right near this video. So that’s great. Thank you so much.

Amy Katz: Thank you, Jack. It’s great talking to you.