Ep. 3

28,439 Quiz Leads With Psychologyjunkie.com Founder with Susan Storm

Susan Storm founded Psychologyjunkie.com in 2015, and is now a six-figure business owner selling courses and ebooks to an audience of nearly a million website visitors every month.

In October 2019, after four years of considering using a quiz she took the leap and put one on the home page of her website as her main lead magnet, and since that day just six months ago she has generated 28,439 new email subscribers, leading to increased revenue both from ad sales and ebooks/courses.

In this episode she shares her story of how she created the quiz and what advice she has for others looking to get started.

To check out Susan’s quiz, head to psychologyjunkie.com


Podcast Transcript

Josh Haynam:
Hi everyone. I’m really excited today to be here with Susan Storm. She is the founder of psychologyjunkie.com and is using quizzes in so many cool ways that I just want to hear about how she’s doing it and what it’s doing for business. Thanks for coming on, Susan.

Susan Storm:
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to talk this over with you.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah. Let’s just kick things off. How did you start using quizzes? What’s the origin story of all that?

Susan Storm:
Yeah, so I’m an MBTI practitioner. If anyone’s new did that, it’s I’m certified in Myers-Briggs typology. And if you ever heard of extroversion or introversion, sensing or intuition, these four letter codes that people get, like INFJ or ISFP, these are Myers-Briggs types. And as a practitioner, I created a website where I talk about the Myers-Briggs types in depth as well as enneagram types and how you can improve your life by knowing your type. And for the longest time I knew I needed to create a quiz. It was something that was really important to me, but a lot of the quiz builders that I found out there were just too simplistic for what I was trying to do or they were too complicated for me to figure out because I’m not a tech wizard by any stretch of the imagination.

Susan Storm:
I finally found TryInteract and I loved how much you could tailor it to exactly what you needed. There were so many options from, you could do the visual tests or you leave them as questions, you could put unlimited options in there and just set it up so that you could have a funnel directed to the specific results people got. And I spent a really long time on a complicated test and then I realized, you know what? It actually worked out better when I made it simpler anyway, and the test was great. I created a Myers-Briggs type test, now this isn’t the official. If you want to get the official Myers-Briggs tests taken you have to actually go to a practitioner or take it from their official site. But I made the best test I could create for people.

Susan Storm:
And on the first, I think so far we’ve gotten 28,439 leads since we launched the test back in October. I think it was October 19th. And it more than doubled our email list. We also have a child’s personality type test, so if you want to know your child’s Myers-Briggs personality type, you can take that. And that one I haven’t publicized as much, there’s a lot more I need to do as far as promoting the test, but I’ve brought in 881 leads from that and that’s only been, I think that’s only been probably for a few months now. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been great. TryInteract has definitely helped us to grow our email list quite a bit and get us closer to our customers.

Josh Haynam:
Wow, that’s incredible. That number 28,439, right?

Susan Storm:
That’s right. Yeah.

Josh Haynam:
Wow, that’s crazy. That’s amazing. I think for a lot of our customers and potential customers, it’s like, oh, that’s awesome. That sounds incredible. I would love to have that kind of result. But then it’s almost like, I don’t know if this happened to you in school, but when you’ve got a math problem and you just did not know how to start, and you just sit there and you stare at it for half an hour and your test is an hour and you’re like, well, I’m going to fail. But I think a lot of people are in that spot right now with the quiz where it’s just like, sit down. I want to get 28,439 leads. That sounds so exciting. But what’s the first step in this problem? Take us back to the beginning for you, what was the first step?

Susan Storm:
I think I, and I completely relate to that struggle because I started my business in 2015 and it took me four years to actually get around to making a test. I completely understand the trepidation that people feel. I initially, I created this very complex test with branching logic and all these, it was super complicated and I worked for months on it with my husband and it just wasn’t testing right with people. People were getting the wrong results. And I think my particular test is especially complicated just because I had to break it down into, we have these preferences in Myers-Briggs like extroversion or introversion and sensing or intuition, all these things. But there’s actually beneath that these eight different cognitive functions, which is really complicated so I’m not going to go really far into that, but I needed to, in order for it to be really accurate, I needed to find the underlying motivations for why people do what they do and which motivations are stronger versus which are weaker.

Susan Storm:
And so one day I just was like, you know what? I’m going to start from scratch and I’m just going to take all this information that I’ve learned. I’m just going to dedicate this afternoon to just creating this test. And I opened up the quiz builder and I started actually by just putting in all the results, all the 16 different personality types and writing the descriptions in there. And then I just created the questions. I don’t remember. I ended up making it really visual with photos so people could identify more easily what they wanted. And I had to let go of the idealism, I guess, I had about making the test absolutely perfect and foolproof because no test is going to be 100% capture who someone is in every single way. And once I did that and just went for it and said, “I’m going to get this done,” I actually was able to finish it, my first draft of the test within an hour I think.

Josh Haynam:
Wow.

Susan Storm:
Not, that wasn’t writing every single of the 16 descriptions and creating all the funnels or anything like that. But at least getting the questions in there. And then I sent it to my Twitter follower, I sent it to my Facebook followers. I was like, I want you guys to try this out because I know it’s not perfect yet. But I wanted to see what results you guys are getting and then I can tweak it as I see where the discrepancies are. And so it went through about I think four series of tests where I had hundreds of people taking it and letting me know this is where they saw problems or where they really liked it until I sent it out to, until I really publicized it as being finished. But I think the first step for me and just really starting it was just letting go of the idea that it must be absolutely perfect.

Susan Storm:
And I know it’s different for a lot of different companies because they’re not, my company specifically is so centered around identity and getting your personality type right. And some companies might be focusing more on selling something like, I don’t know, web design services and what kind of web design fits your personality or something like that. Whereas my site is everything about it revolved around this test. It’s really the, if you go to my site, the test is the first thing you see. It’s the starting ground for where a lot of people go on the site. I knew it had to be really good, but once I really just, it’s hard to narrow it down to one step because it really was just a matter of just sitting down and committing to getting it done. Whether it was perfect or not, just at least getting that first draft of the test done. I hope that makes sense. But yeah, that’s what I had to do.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, no. That does make total sense. It brings to mind this idea of the good enough first draft. It’s a concept from Paul Graham who’s a kind of a startup investor guy and that resonates with me a lot. And being a marketer for a long time and from the beginning of Interact too, it’s kind of just you have to figure out how to let go of the perfect and test something out to see if it works. And it sounds like for you there was validation once you made that initial version and sent it out to some people and they had positive feedback for you.

Susan Storm:
Yeah, I think I just needed to trust myself, that I knew what I was talking about because I’d been doing this personality stuff for over seven years and I just needed to one, trust myself. And then two, just decide to start it and realize that this first part is, this first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, but I’m going to keep modifying it, keep getting feedback until it’s the best I can get it to be and get reactions from people. People are more than happy often to, people love taking personality tests and people love hearing about themselves and learning about themselves. It was just a lot of fun. And now that I’ve done the first one, once you do the first one, the other ones come a lot easier and I want to create quite a few more in the future. It’s been a great investment for us.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, no. That’s awesome. And then another thing that just came to mind is, so you launched this in October and it’s been a game changer for list building. What were you doing before October? How were you building your list prior to that?

Susan Storm:
Prior to that we had, if you scroll down to the bottom of every blog post, there was a opt in form, join our email list to learn more about your personality type. I had created some freebies, little guides to the different personality types. And so certain sites have a little pop up that came up. It was like, do you want this free guide for your INFP personality type. Enter your email here. And at that point, before I created the test and published it on our site, I think I was getting around 30, 35 subscribers a day. And now I know I haven’t done all the math, but I’m pretty sure on average I’m getting somewhere between 90 and a 100 subscribers a day. It’s definitely really improved what we can do and how many people we can reach on a regular basis.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, that’s incredible. And then how does this play into your business? I see on your site you have products, you have courses, what are the main revenue generators for you?

Susan Storm:
Our largest income stream is ad revenue, and that’s changing a little bit with COVID-19 going on, but ad revenue is our largest income stream. If having a bigger email list helps us to bring in more viewers to our site, which in turn gives us more ad revenue. But next to that is ebook sales. One of the great things about the quiz is when people get a result, say they got INFJ or INFB, whatever result they get, I can create a funnel for them that introduces them to their type and then leads them to an ebook and then they can decide whether or not want to buy it. Our eBooks right now are all $9.99. I don’t know, I don’t have a way as of yet to determine how many of our sales are coming directly from our email list. That’s something I need to do.

Susan Storm:
Like I said before, I’m not the most tech savvy person. But we probably, I definitely have noticed that our ebook sales have increased since we started doing the quiz and that’s just that those email funnels going through and I haven’t even gotten them finished for each type yet. I run the whole business just me from my home. And so there’s so many things involved and there’s so much more I can do with TryInteract that I am so excited to do and then I get caught up with all the busy work that needs to be done every day. But it’s definitely helped with ebook sales and traffic as well.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, no, that’s amazing. And then I’m just curious, what kind of recommendation you might have for, let’s say another relationship coach or somebody that’s giving recommendations, eBooks, courses, that kind of stuff based on personality types. How would you recommend utilizing a quiz in a business based on your experience?

Susan Storm:
I think the sooner you can get one created, the better. I think getting it up there on your site, on your front page is really important. People can turn down almost, I’ve tried lots of opt ins in the past between free eBooks, free email courses, free webinars, and none of them has been anywhere near as successful as a personality quiz. Even all three of those things combined would not be as successful. Getting one created and putting it up on your, making it easily accessible for people and then definitely work on creating the right funnel. Let people get to know you. And this is, I’m telling this to myself as much as I’m telling it to other people because this is something I still am working on finishing. But when people get their results, let them get to know you, write an indoctrination email series, show yourself as a mentor to these people in ways that you can help them and give them, keep regularly updating your blog, if you have one. And send those articles directly to the people that need to find you.

Susan Storm:
You can quiz people and ask for what kind of questions, what ways can you help them the most? What kind of questions are they looking to have answered? But just regularly taking advantage of those quizzes and regularly keeping in contact with those people is going to be really important. I’m trying to think what else would be, there’s so many things so I could go on about it for a really long time, but I’m trying to think what would be the most important thing for personality coaches doing this. I think it’s just getting it started and getting it, reaching out to people. I can’t think of anything really specific other than that right now, which seems really basic.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, no. I think it’s hard though. You got to get over that initial hump. Something that you said in there stood out to me a lot, which was people can’t resist the quiz. In your view, why is that?

Susan Storm:
People love to answer questions about themselves. If you read books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, they always talk about, ask people to tell you about themselves. And obviously, there are certain personality types who are more interested in this than others, but for the most part, people love to find out something new about their identity. Identity is just a huge, huge, it’s very popular right now. People want to know who they are. They want to know what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are. There’s a lot less boxes right now in our day and age that people are kind of pushed into. And so people are trying to find their identity and trying to, and they like sharing it with other people on Facebook or Twitter. They like letting people know, hey this is who I am.

Susan Storm:
And one of the things that, and so I think people, it’s like Buzzfeed quizzes, everyone knows those are really, really popular. Everyone wants to know who’s my, which Disney villain would I be? Or which Disney princess would I be? And so people really just think it’s almost impossible for them to just ignore that option I think. And my quiz that I created with with TryInteract was a lot more complicated than I think a lot of those which Disney princess are you? And that’s one of the things I loved about it is you could make it, you can create all these really simple quizzes, but you can also get really, really complex and precise with it.

Susan Storm:
And I just think the quiz gives people an ego boost in some way. And as a marketer that’s just something that’s kind of people you’re always trying to get. What can make people feel good about themselves or get them excited or something like that about what they can do or what their potential is. And I think quizzes are just a great way of doing that. Whereas email courses and eBooks, free eBooks or things like that, everyone’s inboxes are overrun with freebies now I think. And that they can’t even keep up with them. Whereas a quiz, they know they’re going to get an immediate result right away too. And they’re not going to have to wait for something to show up in their email that they’ll have to look through.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, the instant gratification factor that makes a lot of sense. Especially, yeah with an ebook or any other sort of freebie, they might be giving out, a hit off and requires you to do something which is more active, whereas this, you’re receiving something. That makes total sense. You alluded to a little bit before, but what do you have planned for using your quizzes in the future?

Susan Storm:
Yeah, I want to, I need to refine the funnels that I have for each test, for each type of result. I need to do that. But I want to create an enneagram test. Enneagram, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that. It’s also something that I’m getting more involved in. I’ve taken an enneagram coaching course, so I would like to create an Enneagram test. I would like, one of the things I’ve done is there’s certain Myers-Briggs personality types that are really frequently mistyped, like ISFPs, most of the time we’ll get INFJ on an online test because a lot of the online tests that are out there right now are really formulated poorly. Not to sound egocentric or anything, but one of my big motivations in creating a test is to side, to fix some of the mistakes that I was seeing in a lot of the free online Myers-Briggs tests.

Susan Storm:
And so one of the things I’ve done is I’ve started creating tests that are like, are you an ISFP or an INFJ? Are you an INFP or an INFJ? If people, because a lot of people feel confused about which type is really me? And so creating tests for all the people who are like, am I an extrovert or an introvert? Or am I a sensor or an intuitive? And so that’s just, there’s so many. For me, I never have issues coming up with ideas. I could probably come up with four dozen ideas in the next 10 minutes, but those are the top of my priority list right now. Creating the Enneagram quiz, getting better funnels set up for the people who do get their results and then helping and then making tests that people can further solidify and have assurance about what their true personality type is.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, I like that. How do you come up with those ideas? So fascinating. That’s something that is kind of a struggle for a lot of people, including myself when I’m thinking about a new quiz. How do you do that creative piece?

Susan Storm:
Well, I think part of it is a personality type thing for certain people. Generating ideas comes really easily, whereas other people will have strengths in other areas that I definitely do not succeed in. But also I just see that, one of the things I do is I do keyword research. There’s a free website out there called answerthepublic.com and you can type in, depending on what your business is. For me, I can type in NBTI or ISFJ or any of these personality type codes and click enter. It will give me the most searched terms around that keyword. One thing that I can see is that a lot of people look up ISFJ or ESFJ or ISFJ or ISFP. And so as I do keyword research, I’d come up with lists of dozens and dozens of ideas that I can use to create articles, create quizzes, create videos.

Susan Storm:
And then in my own mind as I see those ideas, I think, oh and here’s some more that could be connected to that. Or I use, if customers email me a question and I notice that certain questions are coming to me a lot, I think, how can I turn this into a quiz or a or an article or a video? To me, one idea births another idea and they just keep coming. But and I just write them down as it happens. But yeah, there’s a lot of just feedback from customers. Keyword research definitely helps. Seeing what else is out there. Sometimes just looking around to see what the popular personality type tests are at the moment. I could just create a, which Disney villain are you test. Even though it had nothing necessarily to do with my site, it would still get people spending time on the site and then from there looking around at other things and maybe getting invested in Myers-Briggs.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, I really like that. That’s awesome and hopefully helpful to anybody out there that’s looking for inspiration on how to come up with new quiz ideas. We’re coming up on time here, but any last words or parting wisdom for somebody out there that’s just exploring this idea that may want to think about making a quiz? What would you say to them?

Susan Storm:
I would say definitely just go for it and don’t get bogged down in all the nitty gritty details. If there’s one thing I’ve learned being in marketing and then also creating this website is that so many people give up in that first stage where they’re trying to get maybe their brand colors just right or they want to get the first question just worded absolutely perfectly or they get so fixated on their perfectionism in that first stage that eventually they just burn out and give up. Don’t worry if the first draft of your test is sloppy or if you don’t have all your brand colors picked out or you don’t have a professional photo of yourself taken. The important thing is that you’re offering something useful to your customers and that’s what they care about more than whether or not you had a professional photographer take your picture.

Susan Storm:
One thing that I think is funny is that, I have a six figure business now in personality type blogging about this, but I still don’t, I’ve still have never had a professional picture taken of myself. And that’s one thing I really need to do. But it’s, I think that, I do think that, and I’ve seen it over and over again, that people just get so fixated on correcting and perfecting these minor details that they lose sight of the fact that what their readers and what their customers really want is to have a solution. And I think if you just work on that quiz and get that first draft done and don’t get bogged down in making that first track perfect and then get feedback and just keep fixing it and keep perfecting it over and over again. But don’t, yeah, just don’t give up on that first try when you’re feeling really stressed about things.

Josh Haynam:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Love that. Well, where can people go to checkout your quiz or your quizzes?

Susan Storm:
Yeah, my website is www.psychologyjunkie, that’s P-S-Y-C-H-O-L-O-G-Y-J-U-N-K-I-E.com, and right on the homepage is the link to our personality quiz and you can just take it right there.

Josh Haynam:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today, Susan. Really appreciate it.

Susan Storm:
Thanks for having me. It was really, it was a lot of fun to talk to you.

Josh Haynam:
All right. Bye bye.

Susan Storm:
Bye.

Make Your Own Quiz For Free
Josh Haynam

Josh Haynam is the co-founder of Interact, a place for creating beautiful and engaging quizzes that generate email leads. Outside of Interact Josh is an outdoor enthusiast, is very into health/fitness, and enjoys spending time with his community in San Francisco.