October 2023 | Exploring Online Income #3 Monetizing Social Media | KCK Soapery

                                            

    The world of social media is increasing as fast as new upgrades to phones and other gadgets.  I remember when it first started with Myspace, Friendster, and a few others.  We were all grateful for its inception.  Long distance calls and paying a part of your budget to call home just because you missed your family is history.  Now we can call anytime through Facetime, messenger, etc. just to say hi and listen to about anything your family wants to talk about without hurrying them or yourself have become a blessing.

    Social media is a way for us to get news, connect with others, and boost each other's reputation or destroy each other.  The possibility is endless with just a click. As an adage goes, always think before you click.

    Now, we use social media to buy and sell stuff as well as use other platforms that is readily available to monetize our presence in it.  Why not, right?  We are using it all the time anyways.

    Let's start with the ones I have:

    Facebook - we have billions of people on it. Using it to post pictures was the main purpose in the beginning.  Mailing pictures is not necessary now.  People who wants to know how you are just have to be friends with you and click on your name then they see everything what you have chosen to post publicly.

    Recently, I noticed quite a lot of my friends sharing reels/stories and asking for stars.  Upon further inquiries, I learned that they are using the platform to monetize it so I started to ask these friends how to get going with it.  Since I already have a soaping facebook page that I can use, I started to ask for more likes and shares hoping for more engagements, too.  

    Here's the requirements for monetizing Facebook.  Your page should have at least 500 followers for 30 days.  You should have active and loyal followers who will like, share, and comment on everything that you post. Then, Meta will pay you $1 cent for every star that you receive.

    When you increase your presence to 5000 followers or have 60,000 eligible minutes of viewed videos and have 5 active videos, then you can add another income stream, you can add ads to your videos and hope that people will be tempted to click on those ads to give you additional income aside from the stars that can be monetized.

    Finally, when you get 10,000 followers or 250 returning viewers, 50,000 engagements or 180,000 minutes viewed, then you can provide subscriptions where you can earn monthly income from subscriptions your viewers pay to watch your videos or reels.

    Without really asking people to follow me incessantly, I acquired about 300 family and friends to like my page facebook.com/kcksoapery.  Now that I am trying to monetize it, I asked my family and friends in my personal page to follow my soaping page.  After a week, I grew from 300 to 500, but that is with a lot of my family and friends helping me to get to that number.   To reach 5K or 10K, I have to keep at it or make sure I am a member in a lot of soaping pages or buy ads so I can have more people to follow me and hope that they like me enough to follow my page.

    Youtube,  I posted in Youtube just so I can watch how I poured the soap batter to get a design result for my soap.  I have 103 videos there with 1.52K subscribers.   My son has been asking me to monetize the site but I always have a hurdle to climb when I check on the requirements.  Now that I finally got the number of subscribers, I only have 23 watch hours. To be approved to monetize, you need to have at least 3K watched hours.  Check out Gillian Perkins on how to monetize youtube.  She discussed about the requirements and she has a lot more videos on how to earn using other online platforms as well.

    I have an account on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok but I don't have a lot of posts and online presence on them.  Here is a video on how to monetize TikTok.  It is the media of choice for kids and young adults. They are forever on TikTok and monetizing it is a no brainer right?  You earn 2 to 4 cents USD per 1K views.  If you have 1K to 10K followers there is a potential for a $5 to 25 USD earnings per post.  Since Shopify and TikTok are now in partnership, you get to post your TikToks on Shopify easily to sell your products.  Here is another video post from shopify on how to monetize TikTok.  

    So, in reality, you have to consistently post videos, reels or shorts that are really engaging your viewers enough for them to give you stars, gifts, donations and buy your products online.  If you have the voice or the looks to attract a company to pay you as one of their influencers or  creators, then you have a better shot at it too! But since great influencers are asking for more, a platform called UGC (User-Generated Content) creator is the platform for newcomers and companies that are allocating huge sums of money and everybody is saying they are getting paid a lot for creating content of their favorite products.  How long will this last and what will come next is something we will know soon, I guess. 

    Here is a link from Modern Millie  about UGC and how to get started on it.

    I will just keep on doing what I do and hope that consistency will eventually pay off in the long run.

    Let me know of any other platforms that are showing up since new platforms kept on showing up. I can't seem to keep up with it!

    Thank you!

    Glynith

October 2023 | Exploring Online Income #2 Online Selling | KCK Soapery

                 

    We now live in a time when everything is on the phone and online buying of anything is available with just a click of a button! Opportunities to earn money online where people click on something you offer then pay you is just as plenty as well.  Just don't go buy courses or ads to get the click and traffic unless you want to add it to the cost of your product.  There are a lot of available blogs and youtube videos that will walk you through with what you want to know without asking for your credit card number.

    There are websites where you search for what merchandize are trending. Then, you can start sourcing to get a better price to sell it cheaper on Amazon or you can sell it yourself on your own website or other platforms.  You can do dropshipping too where you don't even need inventory of the stocks.  You just get money from the customer. Customers will just go to AliExpress, Alibaba, DHgate and other wholesale suppliers and have them ship the product to them.  One example a Youtuber mentioned is a Valentine's gnome sold in Alibaba for $3 while amazon sellers are selling it for $15 to $20.  You can have it dropshipped or you can buy in bulk and ship the product yourself.  They will charge customers a shipping fee of $3 which is non-refundable that covers the price of the gnome already.  So if there is a problem like it's returned, lost or damaged, they are already being paid in full. If no problem arises with the transactions, then you may get a profit $15 to $20 just for one gnome.

    You can make our own products to sell if you find something you really like making.  You can create or invent something, apply for trademark, and earn royalty fees when others want to copy your idea.  Then go to another country to mass produce your product at a cheaper price,  sell your products on Etsy, Amazon, and many other marketplaces available.

    There are also a lot of e-commerce website builders like Squarespace, GoDaddy, Wix, Shopify, Paypal and others that have free basic plans that can generate money for you right away if you find the right products to sell.

    Home-based businesses like Pampered Chef, MaryKay, Zyia and others now offer websites to their sellers as well as parties online.  

    The trick is to find the right product that people are looking for. Then make the right video to put in your social media (especially TikTok and Instagram) where most young buyers are glued into these days. Make that video go viral. Subsequently, source the product cheaper than the Amazon Sellers.  Remember most people look at pretty ads then click to buy right away without checking for price comparison most of the time.

    Check out Isabella and her youtube channel Baddie in Business  talk about online businesses.  She is not selling any "how to" courses or apps, etc.  She emphasized in all her videos I watched that it is 25% product and 75% marketing.  That is what I need to learn.  I haven't been active on TikTok or instagram that is why my videos and reels are not going viral yet.  Here's something she said that stuck with me though: "It's not about money, it's about sustaining a business for long term."

    I also like watching Santrelmedia. These young six figure online entrepreneurs are just amazing to watch.  He explains in detail the different Amazon seller programs and other online businesses available as well.

    Just be sure if you decide to give them bank details like your credit card number for their courses or other enticing products/services and when you buy or join "you will get rich" lessons or apps, etc. that you really want to spend money.  As for me, I don't mind sticking with slow and prodding along.  I may not reach six figures yet but I am having fun with the process and not risking or wasting any resources.  Plus, these kids are so entertaining to watch and most are pleasing to the eyes too.

Thank you for stopping by.  

Glynith

October 2023 | Exploring Online Income #1 Affiliate Marketing | KCK Soapery

 

As we get older, the need to have some kind of a passive or residual income in our golden years will always be in our thoughts.  The opportunities available in the wide wide world of internet is vast and extensive.  The trick is not to get sucked into the scammy ones though.  

I delved into affiliate marketing a few years ago as a stay at home mom but stopped because I ended up  applying for a job in the hospital and having a guaranteed income coming in was a better idea than wasting my time learning something I am not sure will generate any revenue.  Although some requirements have changed from ten years ago, some things are still the same.  You have to get approved by the affiliate sites you wanted to work with and you have to have a lot of followers in your website and other social media sites for people to even click on any links of the products and companies you are affiliated with.  Building the number of followers that really bring in traffic and engagements to your sites really takes time.  I still have a long way to go from getting the number of followers and buyers for a steady income but now I hope I will have enough clicks and buyers to keep it going. Income stream with affiliate marketing can be viable if you are continually and consistently working  at it and have loyal followers and buyers that constantly visit your links.

Now that I am trying to work at it again, let's see if I can actually get it to give me some earnings.  I will surely let you guys know how it is as the time goes by.

As I am reading and watching youtube videos about affiliates, I always come across influencers.  If you base your comparison as an Amazon affiliate vs. Amazon influencer, they are basically similar.  Here are some differences among the two:

1.  You can start adding links as an affiliate as soon as you submit your  application as long as you have a running website or blog and other platforms you can add links to.  You just need to have some materials already entered.  It will take a little more time to get approved as an influencer though. You need to prove that you have the required number of followers and engagements in your social media sites before you will be approved, you don't need to have a website.

2.  You get links to share to your blogs, websites, etc as an Amazon affiliate while an Amazon influencer once approved gets an Amazon storefront.  When you click on an influencers' link you get an Amazon store site with the influencers' name on the left hand side.

3. An affiliate needs to have three sales within 180 days of opening the associates account to be an Amazon affiliate,  if you can't get the three sales within the 180 days, you are off the program.  An influencer starts earning right when they are approved and have their storefront.

4. Once you have three sales as an affiliate within 180 days of applying, you will not be removed from the program.  If an influencer whose  Amazon storefront and links stopped having traffic, you will be removed from the program.

5.  Both earn similar commissions. It depends on the category of merchandize and companies you link to.  Both can reapply if you removed.

Ana of Thesheapproach have a comprehensive blog and youtube post I'd like to share where she explains these differences in detail. 

As an associate, you are also required to disclose it to your followers. 

Here are examples from thesheapproach blog:

• “As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.”

• “[your name] earns commissions from some of the services/products listed on this site.“

• “[your name or blog name] is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com“

Thank you for dropping by.

Glynith

October 2023 | Basic Soapmaking Tools and Supplies | KCK Soapery

    I used to be an Amazon affiliate but stopped actively posting when I already took a full time job.  Now that it has been a few years and I am closing in to my retirement, I thought of getting it back up.  So I have applied to both Amazon and NurtureSoap for now.

    Soapmaking is a very addicting craft.  Once you try it and end up liking the process, there is no stopping.  In this post, I will share with you the basic products and tools you need as a beginner.

    First off, you will need a bowl to mix your oils in.  When I was just trying to see if I will like making soap, I started out with the melt and pour technique using pyrex glass measuring cups to microwave the soap. Then, I moved on to cold process soap making.  My first bowl was a gallon of ice cream container.  It held its shape for a few batches then I invested on a plastic mixing/baking bowl.   For diluting my mica and pouring soap batter, I used 4 cup capacity plastic measuring cups.  I just bought these funnel pitchers for a pouring technique I planned to do soon.  I am thinking on investing on a glass bowl just because it looks nicer on videos and watching the oils reacting with the lye solution looked mesmerizing on a glass bowl.  I also used another microwavable bowl for melting solid oils and butters.  But some soapmakers recommend against it since the blender can etch the glass and eventually break it.

    Next, you will need an immersion blender. I now use a cuisinart brand blender, but the first one I used was a Bella hand blender and it was good while it lasted.

    You will also need a weighing scale to weigh your oils and lye.  This is what I have been using for a while now.  You will need a measuring cup as well.  I use the metal ones you see in stores.  But I like the color of this Amazon measuring cup, mica powder scoops and plastic teaspoons to mix the mica powder with the oils.  I used to use a mini mixer but it did not last long.  You might get a longer-lasting mixer.

    Most of my learning was done on youtube but I bought a book as well.  A few I have on hand are: Soap Crafting and Milk Soapmaking.  Check out my youtube channel kcksoapery to see how I make my soap.  There are a lot of tutorials you can check out too!

Here is a link to nurturesoap for most soapmaking supplies.  Here is a starter kit for melt and pour and a starter kit for cold process soap.  I recommend doing the melt and pour for first timers since you won't be dealing with lye right away and you can still make it look colorful and there are lots of mold designs you can use for it.  If you want to jump right into cold process soap making, make sure you use gloves and some protective goggles (just to be on the safe side when dealing with sodium hydroxide).

Thank you so much for stopping by.

Here are the links in with the images of what they look like:

 

Enjoy your new soaping adventure!

Glynith

When you buy from any of the affiliate links I posted.

I may get a little commission from the sale of qualified products.

Thank you so much for your support.

August 2023 | "S" Grand Babies' Shower | KCK Soapery

    My friend "S" is having three grandbabies soon.  She asked if I was still making soaps. Although not in huge quantities as before, I do sporadically make mostly "melt and pour" soap and occasionally handcrafted soaps from scratch for loyal users of my soap. Then I said I would be honored to make her grandbabies' giveaways.

    I had my daughter's friend take some pictures of the different batches of soap made for her:

I sure hope everybody who received one of these would love them as much as I did making them.

Thank you for stopping by!

Glynith

June 2023 | Camouflage Soap 2023 | KCK Soapery

 

    Thank you to my friend "S" for remembering my handmade soap.  She ordered for a baby shower soap which made me decide to make some artisan soap for my hubby who is running low on his supply.

    The hubby likes my camouflage soap so I made a small batch for him for my first "made from scratch" soap for this year.

    This batch of soap is made with olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, castor oil, cocoa butter, and scented with "shave and a haircut" fragrance oil.  Colors used were white pigment, activated charcoal for black, brown and green mica.

    You will notice that in the video, I did not pour any fragrance oil to the white soap batter, that is because I used some of the white for my friend who wants a sample of another scent.

Thank you for dropping by!

Glynith

October 2022 | Baby Shower | KCK Soapery

These baby shower giveaways were made using melt and pour technique.

I used mica for color and they are scented with Cool Water fragrance oil.

I hope that everybody who receives them will love them.

Thank you so much for dropping by!

Glynith