The post Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? 7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

Ever wondered if tapping away at your keyboard can really pay the bills?

• Is it really possible to make a living from blogging?
• Is it just a small number of people making money from blogging?
• Is it only really possible to make money blogging if you write about the topic of making money blogging?
• If it is really possible to make money blogging, how likely is it that you’ll succeed?

Let’s cut through the noise. With a swirl of myths and a sprinkle of truth, the blogging world is ripe with tales of riches and rumors of impossibility.

On one hand, we see hype on the topic. Periodically someone will claim to be able to make millions from blogging quickly. These claims are usually accompanied with the release of a product or service (i.e. they are marketing spin).

On the other hand, I periodically see people writing about how it is impossible to make money blogging (or that anyone claiming to be full time is either a scammer, a liar, or is selling something on the topic of making money online).

The reality is somewhere between these two extremes.

I’ve been in the game long enough to tell you: Yes, you can make money blogging. And no, it’s not just for the “make money online” gurus.

From personal hobby to full-time income, I’ve seen it all. Fashion, food, travel—you name it, bloggers are cashing in. But here’s the straight talk: it’s no overnight success story. It takes grit, creativity, and a bit of blogging savvy.

Ready to transform your blog from a digital diary into a moneymaker? Your blogging breakthrough starts now.

7 Things I know about making money from blogging

1. It is possible

I’ve been blogging for just under ten years and for nine of those I’ve been making money blogging. It started out as just a few dollars a day but in time it gradually grew to becoming the equivalent of a part-time job, then a full-time job, and more recently into a business that employs others.

I used to talk about the specific levels of my earnings when I started ProBlogger but felt increasingly uncomfortable about doing so (it felt a little voyeuristic and a little like a big-headed boasting exercise and I didn’t really see the point in continuing to do it)— but my income has continued to grow each year since I began.

On some levels I was at the right place at the right time—I got into blogging early (in 2002 … although I felt I was late to it at the time) and have been fortunate enough to have started blogs at opportune times on the topics I write about.

However I know of quite a few other bloggers who make a living from blogging, many of whom have not been blogging anywhere near as long as I have.

For some it is a hobby that keeps them in coffee; for others it is the equivalent of a part time job/supplementing other income from “real jobs” or helping their family out as they attend to other commitments (raising a family). For others it is a full-time thing.

I’ll give you some examples below but you might also like to check out my How to Make Money Blogging Tutorial too.

2. There is no Single way to Make Money from Blogs

Recently at our Melbourne ProBlogger event I featured numerous Australian bloggers in our speaker lineup who fit somewhere in the part-time to full-time spectrum. They included:

• Nicole Avery (Parenting/Organization Blog)
• Jules Clancy (Food Blog)
• Nikki Parkinson (Fashion Blog)
• Mrs Woog (‘Life’ Blog)
• Gavin Aung Than (Cartoon Blog)
• Cintia Gonzalez (Craft Blog)
• Christina Butcher (Hair Blog)
• Caz and Craig Makepeace (Travel Blog)
• Nathalie Brown (Child Behaviour Blog)

The year before, we had others, including:

• Lucy Feagins (Design Blog)
• Emma Merkas (Dating Blog)
• Chris Hunter (Motorbike Blog)
• Phoebe Montague (Fashion Blog)

Most of these bloggers are full-time (or well on the way to being full-time bloggers). They come from a wide array of niches and all monetize quite differently—doing everything from selling advertising, to having membership areas, to selling ebooks, to running affiliate promotions, to promoting their offline businesses, to selling themselves as speakers, to having book deals, and so on. Many have a combination of different income streams.

They are all also Australian, and are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is happening here in Australia—the same thing is being replicated around the globe.

There are many ways to monetize a blog. To give you a quick sense of the many methods check out this “money map” I created a year or so back, which outlines just some that I brainstormed (click to enlarge).

I also recorded this free hour-and-twenty-minute webinar giving an introduction to the topic.

3. There are no Formulas

From time to time, people have released products that claim to be formulas for success when it comes to making money online. They outline steps to follow to “guarantee” you’ll make money.

In my experience there is no formula.

Each full-time blogger I’ve met in the last ten years has forged their own path and has a unique story to tell. They have often acted on hunches and made surprising discoveries along the way.

There are certainly similarities in many of the stories but each blogger has their own personality and style, each one is reaching a different audience, and each niche tends to monetize differently.

The key lesson is to be aware of what others are doing and to learn what you can from each other, but to also be willing to forge your own path as well!

4. Many Niches Monetize

One common critique of the topic of monetizing of blogs is that the only people making money from blogging are the ones writing about how to make money blogging.

This is simply not true.

In the above list of speakers from our Melbourne event you’ll notice I included topic/niche of each blogger. None sell products teaching others to make money blogging—all are on blogging on “normal,” every-day topics.

My own experience of having a blog about blogging (ProBlogger) and a blog about Photography is that it is my photography blog that is by far the most profitable blog (I’d estimate it’s ten times more profitable).

I’ve interviewed numerous full-time bloggers of late in a webinar series including:

• Sarah Wilson
• Tsh Oxenreider
• Ana White

Interestingly, none of them make money by teaching others to make money online. Sarah largely blogs about health and wellbeing, Tsh blogs about simple living, and Ana blogs about woodwork.

5. Most bloggers don’t make a full-time living from Blogging

Every time I’ve surveyed readers of ProBlogger about their earnings, we’ve seen that those making money from blogging are in the minority.

In a recent survey of 1500 ProBlogger readers we asked about their monthly earnings. What you’re seeing below is the spread of earnings from readers who are attempting to make money blogging (note: not all ProBlogger readers attempt to make money, so not all are included in these results).

Keep in mind that ProBlogger readers are generally newish bloggers—about half of those who took this survey had been blogging for less than two years.

So of those trying to make money blogging, 10% don’t make anything and 28% are making less than 30 cents per day. A total of 63% make less than $3.50 per day.

Let’s be clear—most bloggers who are attempting to make money are not making a living from blogging.

Having said that, of the 1508 bloggers surveyed 65 (4%) are making over $10,000 per month (over six figures per year) and a further 9% were doing over $1000 per month (which is at least a part-time level of income).

My feeling, having been attending blogging conferences for six or so years now, is that the number of full-time bloggers is on the rise, and there are actually quite a few more people now at least making the equivalent of a couple of days’ work a week in income from their blogs.

However, most bloggers don’t make much.

6. It takes time to Build

When I dig down into the stats from the survey on income levels above, and do some analysis of those who are in the top income bracket, it is fascinating to look at how long they’ve been blogging.

85% of those in that top income bracket have been blogging for four years or more. Almost all of the others had been blogging for three or four years.

This certainly was my own experience. I blogged for a year without making money and once I started monetizing it was around two years of gradual increases before I approached a full-time income level. It would have been four years before I joined that top bracket of income (over $10,000 per month).

Blogging for money is not a get-rich-quick thing. It takes time to build an audience, to build a brand, and to build trust and a good reputation.

And of course even with four or five years of blogging behind you, there’s no guarantee of a decent income.

7. It takes a lot of Work

Longevity is not the only key to a profitable blog. The other common factor that I’ve noticed in most full-time bloggers is that they are people of action.

Passivity and blogging don’t tend to go hand in hand.

Blogging as “passive income stream” is another theme that we hear in many make-money-blogging products, however it is far from my own experience.

I’ve worked harder on my business over the last ten years than I’ve worked on anything in my life before this. It is often fun and gives me energy, but it takes considerable work to create content on a daily basis, to keep abreast of what’s going on in the community, to monitor the business side of things, to create products to sell, to build an audience, and so on.

The four main areas to focus upon in building profitable blogs are (click each for further reading):

1. Creating Great Blog Content
2. Finding Readers for Your Blog
3. Building Community on Your Blog
4. Making Money/Monetizing Your Blog

The key is to build blogs that matter to people, that are original, interesting, and helpful. But this doesn’t just happen—it takes a lot of work.

Note: the other major factor is starting. It might sound obvious but I’m amazed how many people I meet have ‘dreams’ for starting a blog but never do it! Here’s how to start a blog (do it today)!

Conclusions

Yes, it is possible to make money blogging. There is an ever-increasing number of people making money from blogging at a part-time to full-time level —however they are still in the minority.

Those who do make a living from blogging come from a wide range of niches, however one of the most common factors between them is that they’ve been at it for a long while.

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Each week here at ProBlogger we publish numerous articles and tutorials on building great blogs.

Our articles and tutorials focus upon the four key areas mentioned above (creating great content, finding readers, building reader engagement, monetization strategies) as well as some of the technical side of running a great blog.

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The post Can You REALLY Make Money Blogging? 7 Things I Know About Making Money from Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

Ever dreamt of making a living through blogging but feel overwhelmed by the journey ahead?

You’re not alone. Many aspiring bloggers share the ambition of turning their passion into a full-time job, yet the path to achieving this goal often seems daunting.

The Dream of Full-Time Blogging

Last night I was chatting with a blogger who was feeling completely overwhelmed with their goal of making a living from blogging.

I asked them how much they wanted to make from blogging.

They responded that they wanted to be a full time blogger.

I pushed them for a figure – what does ‘full time’ mean for you?

They thought for a moment and said that they could live off $30,000 USD a year (note: they wouldn’t have minded earning more but would be able to quit their current job at this kind of rate).

$30,000 a year sounds like a lot to make from a blog – especially when you’re starting out and are yet to make a dollar. To this blogger it seemed so overwhelming that she had almost convinced herself that it was not possible.

Transforming Overwhelm into Action

If you’re in a similar boat, feeling like you’ve hit a wall in your blogging journey, here are three pivotal steps to help you navigate through:

1. Don’t Give Up Your Day Job…. Yet

Earning $30,000 a year from blogging is achievable, but it demands patience and realism. Overnight success is rare in the blogging world. Maintaining your current job while gradually building your blog ensures financial stability and allows you to invest in your blog without immediate pressure for returns.

2. Set Clear, Specific Goals

Saying that you want to be full time as a blogger is a great goal – but it’s not really specific enough. This is why I wanted the blogger I was chatting with to name a figure. For her full time was $30,000 – for others it could be more or less – the amount is not the point, the point is that you need something more concrete to work towards so that you’re able to measure where you’re at.

For me when I decided I want to go full time as a blogger I decided that I wanted to aim for $50,000 (Aussie Dollars) in a year as the bench mark (at that time $50,000 was around 36,000 USD). That’s around what I would have been earning in my current main job if I had been doing that full time (I was actually working a number of part time jobs at the time as well as studying part time).

Knowing what I was aiming for helped me in a number of ways when it came to getting to that goal.

3. Break  Down Your Goals into Something More Achievable

$30,000 USD still sounds big when you’re a new blogger – and in some ways it is. However there are different ways of thinking about that figure. Lets break it down in the way that I used to look at my target.

• $30,000 a year = $576.92 per week
• $30,000 a year = $82.19 a day
• $30,000 a year = $3.42 an hour

We could break it down on a monthly or on a minute by minute basis if we wanted to (in fact I did do it by minute from time to time for fun) – but the exercise is really about helping you to see that perhaps your big goal is a little more achievable if you are to break it down. Making $82.19 somehow seems a little bit easier to me than making $30,000 (or is that just me?). Viewing your goal through these smaller lenses can make it appear more attainable and manageable.

OK – the other way that I used to break down my goal that I found really helpful to me was to do it based upon what I need to achieve to meet that target. For me I would usually look at the daily figure – in this case $82.19.

What do I need to do to make $82.19 a day ($30,000 a year)?

Well there’s a number of ways that much. Lets look at a few:

• CPC Ads – lets say we’re running mainly AdSense on our blog and that the average click is paying 5 cents. That equates to 1643 clicks on AdSense ads (note: AdSense also runs CPM ads so it’s not quite as simple as saying you need 1643 clicks… but to keep this simple lets just go with that).
• CPM Ads – lets say that we’re running CPM ads on our blog and we’re being paid $2 CPM per ad unit and we had 3 ads on each page (which is effectively $6 CPM per page). This would mean we’d need 13,000 page impressions.
• Monthly Sponsorships – one way to sell ads directly to advertisers is to sell ads on a month by month basis as a sponsorship. To make $30k in a year you need to sell $2500 a month in ads. You might have 6 ad spots on your blog so this is 6 advertisers at $416.66 per advertiser per month.
• Low Commission Affiliate Products – Lets say we were promoting affiliate products from a site like Amazon and your commissions were on average about 40 cents per sale. To earn $82.19 you’d need to sell 205 products.
• High Commission Affiliate Products – In this case you might be promoting ebooks and earning $8 a copy (that’s what you’d earn selling my 31DBBB ebook per commission). The math is simple on this one – you’d had to sell around 10 e-books a day.
• Really Big Commission Affiliate Products – of course e-books are not the biggest product out there to promote – there are products like training courses where you can earn hundreds per sale. Lets take one that might pay out $300 for a yearly membership on a bigger product. In this case you need to sell 8 of these per month.
• Selling Your Own E-book – got your own product, perhaps an e-book, to sell from your blog? At $19.95 a sale you need to sell just over 4 of these a day. You can do the sums on cheaper or more expensive products.

Of course there are many many other ways to make money from blogs. Subscriptions, donations, paid reviews, selling yourself as a consultant….. etc. You can do the sums for yourself on your own model.

I know that some of the above figures still sound out of reach for bloggers – 1643 clicks on your AdSense ads sounds massive to a new blogger…. and it is – but do keep in mind that you can combine some of the above (in fact I’d recommend you diversify your income).

You might run 2 ad networks on your site, promote Amazon affiliates, sell your own e-book and promote someone’s membership course.

Reflecting on Income Streams

When I first aimed for a full-time blogging income, I diversified my revenue through a mix of AdSense, Chitika, direct ad sales, Amazon affiliate sales, and other commissions. It took over two years of dedicated blogging to reach my goal of $50,000 AUD annually and for me at that time my income mix looked a like this (going from memory here):

• AdSense: $35
• Chitika: $20
• Private Ad Sales: $20
• Amazon: $15
• Other Affiliate Commissions: $10

Note: I didn’t achieve this milestone until I’d been blogging for over 2 years (I blogged for the first year without trying to make money).

Embracing the Journey

This didn’t happen over night (let me emphasize this – blogging for money is neither quick nor is it easy money) but I really found that breaking things down into more bite sized pieces helped me to stay motivated but also helped me to identify what I needed to work on in order to reach my goals (and for me to quite my day job). Remember, persistence and a strategic approach are key.

Again – don’t quit your day job yet (in fact you may not want to quit it even when you reach your goal – it can be good to have a back up plan) but do work hard at being specific about your blogging goals and attempt to break it down in a way that helps you move towards them.

Remember: Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. By setting clear goals, breaking them down into achievable targets, and diversifying your income sources, you can build a blog that not only fulfills your passion but also provides a sustainable income. Stay committed, stay focused, and let every small success propel you closer to your dream of full-time blogging.

The post How to Make $30,000 a year Blogging appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 6: Tell the World appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

Welcome to the final installment in our hexalogy, concerning how to sell blog products in an era when people are reaching into their pockets and finding mostly lint. So far, we’ve discussed how to plan out products drawn from your expertise, create them, distinguish yourself from your competitors, test-market, figure out how much to charge, and find a clientele. If you’re late to the party, check out the previous parts of this series, right from the start, before going any further.

Say you’ve done all of the above. Now, the only remaining step is to get the sale. Sounds obvious, but all the preliminary work means nothing if you don’t close. You need to tell people to buy, rather than just crossing your fingers and hoping that they might.

It’s not just writing…

There’s a certain finesse required with this. You don’t sell in the same voice in which you entice, cajole, or inform. Lots of bloggers have trouble making the transition. If you’re going to put yourself out there as a seller of “you-branded” content, you don’t have the luxury of stumbling through and hoping that your sales pitch falls on receptive ears.

At this point, considering how much you’ve put in, selling yourself is mandatory, not optional. You have to use language forcefully, more forcefully than you do in your blog posts. Burrow into your prospect’s head, and by extension, your prospect’s wallet.

Focusing on the benefits

There’s a timeless axiom in the advertising business: People don’t want a bar of soap, they want clean hands.

The benefit of the product is far more important than the product itself. When you instead start focusing on the product—which, granted, you expended considerable effort to create—you’re not exactly empathizing with your clientele. It’s supposed to be about them, not you. No one cares how many hours you spent interviewing people for the DVD series you’re selling. Nor could anyone be less interested in how many pages your ebook is. (Beyond a certain point, of course. If you’re going to charge $329 for a three-page ebook, it had better contain the GPS coordinates for the Ark of the Covenant.)

No, cost-conscious buyers—any discerning buyers, really—want to know the answer to the universal question:

What’s in it for me?

How are you going to make your readers’ lives easier/simpler/richer? State how you’re going to do it. Yes, it’s great that you poured your heart and soul into your work, but that doesn’t necessarily make it sellable.

The human tendency is to concentrate on oneself, rather than other people. Which makes perfect sense—of course you’ll brush your own teeth and wash your own windows before doing the same for your neighbor. But if you want other people’s money, you have to force yourself to think about them first, as unnatural as that might sound.

Here’s an example of what not to write to get people to buy your products. The example is technically fictional, but it’s a composite of other bloggers’ calls-to-action:

“Starting today, I’m running a discount on my latest project. You can get my 36-page, 8,459-word ebook for just $11.99. This ebook, Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them, is the result of many months of research, and is now being made available to you for a special introductory price.”

Wow. Thanks for doing me the favor of offering to take my money. This is like the employee who walks into the boss’s office requesting a raise, and the first point he cites is how many hours of uncompensated overtime he puts in. Or that he has a baby on the way. You need to give your employer, or anyone else in the position of enriching you, a reason for doing so. Again, concentrate on the end users here. Without them, you and your product are nothing.

Here’s an alternative sales script, one that focuses on the buyer. It’s longer, but it also (hopefully) appeals to the buyer’s senses:

“Your car makes an unfamiliar noise. So naturally, your first reaction is to drive to the nearest mechanic, and waste maybe half an hour in the waiting room, putting yourself at the mercy of a professional whose livelihood rests on finding as many things wrong with people’s cars as possible.

For the love of God, don’t. Stop throwing your money away. That knock you hear doesn’t mean you need a new $1400 transmission assembly. It means you need to spend a couple more dollars on higher-octane fuel. That ear-splitting undercarriage rattle can be quieted in seconds, with the appropriate ratchet and a quarter-turn of your wrist.

My new ebook, Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them, breaks down the most common, least pleasant sounds that can emanate from your car. It tells you where they originate, what they mean, and how to prevent them. Some will require a look from a technician, but you’ll be amazed how many won’t. Fix them yourself instead, and you’ll save untold time, money and aggravation.

Car Noises And How To Diagnose Them includes sound files of dozens of the most common noises, along with complete directions on how to locate and assess them. Download it here for just $12, and I’ll include a mobile link for iOS and Android (because very few car noises occur when you’re sitting in front of your computer at home).”

Obviously that sales treatment isn’t going to be suitable for your blog and its products, but you get the idea. People are more budget-conscious these days than they’ve been in some time. They will part with their money, but you need to give them a compelling reason to.

Drawing the line

This doesn’t mean you should be penning advertising copy with dubious assertions. (“Scientifically proven to regrow hair!”) Quite the contrary. If there’s ever a time to be honest, it’s when you’re explaining to your readers what your products can do for them. Your readers will respect you for it, and if you give them value, they’ll spread the word.

For an established blogger, creating products that extend that blog can be a rewarding way to engage your readers and foster an ever-growing audience. For an up-and-coming blogger, selling a worthwhile product can cement your reputation as an authority in your field all the more quickly. Creating blog products takes plenty of time and effort, and while selling them in a rough economy can be a challenge, it’s such challenges that separate the average bloggers from the remarkable ones.

Say what your product’s benefit is (not what your product is, what its benefit is.), and sell.

Key points

• Understand that writing sales copy is different than blogging.
• Don’t write about yourself.
• Don’t write about your product.
• Write about your product’s benefits.
• Practise makes perfect: keep trying to improve your sales writing skills.

That’s it for our tour of the tricky business of building blog products that sell. How are your products selling at the moment? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 6: Tell the World appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 5: Finding Customers appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

History dictates that the current economic malaise will eventually end, but we’re still waiting for some unambiguous signs. That’s why for the past few weeks, we’ve been learning how to create products that are inspired by (and that tie into) your blog, and how to plan to sell them to an audience whose collective disposable income isn’t quite what it used to be.

So finally, after approaching this scientifically and methodically, you’re there. You’ve created a product built on the expertise your readers have expected from you and your site. And you’ve priced that product (or series of products) at a level that will generate income without scaring off too many potential buyers. Now all you have to do its open up the storefront and watch the money roll in.

If only.

The good news is that at this point, most of the work is done. But you still need to build your clientele beyond its traditional bounds. To amass your army, if you will.

Flipping the switch

After you’ve created products and made them available for purchase, a radical shift occurs. Whether you realize it or not, you’re now (at least) 51% entrepreneur and (at most) 49% blogger. The set hours that you spend updating and freshening your blog every week are now secondary to your sales efforts. Once you’re committed to creating and selling your product, people will identify you with it, for better or for worse.

If your product is, say, a collection of spreadsheets you can use to organize your home and eliminate clutter, then sink or swim with it. Henceforth, home organization will be your blog’s primary focus. Even though you may love collecting miniatures, and have occasionally blogged about it in the past, your days of doing so are now over. Apple used to sell stand-alone digital cameras. Not anymore.

You’re now a salesperson, and the more seriously you take your new job, the better you’ll do.

For generations, your typical commission salesperson was given a list of leads and an admonition to break a leg. If the new hire didn’t work out, no big deal. There would always be plenty of others willing to step in. Unfortunately, your incipient business doesn’t get that same luxury. The sales staff is you, as is the product.

And your current audience, regardless of its size, is limited. Some of your longtime readers might buy out of a feeling of allegiance or mild obligation. If they do buy, it probably won’t be because they’d been dying for someone to create whatever it is you created. And while your loyal readership may have given you the impetus and spawned the idea for your product, they’re not the only ones you’ll want to buy it.

So where to find a lasting and larger clientele? It involves expanding your horizons, but not in a rote way.

Finding customers

If you blog long enough, eventually you’ll be approached by similar bloggers offering you various stratagems for mutually benefitting your sites. A link exchange, a guest post exchange, and so on. Those are all well and good, if you enjoy the novelty of exposing your blog to an audience that is already loyal to another blogger who operates in the exact same field of interest that you do.

One fellow personal finance blogger, who seems to be an awfully agreeable fellow, recently offered to create a discreet badge allowing me to sell my products on his site, and vice versa. I trust that he accepted it as a business decision and didn’t take it personally when I told him I wasn’t interested.

Why not accept the exposure? Among other reasons, his blog has fewer readers than mine does. Many of those readers of his already read my blog anyway. Besides, what’s to stop him from making a similar offer to other bloggers with greater readerships than his, diluting the impact of his agreement with me?

Also, to put it kindly, he’s not an authority. He’s a guy with a blog, and a relatively new one at that. My products will be an afterthought on his blog, as his would be on mine. That won’t do.

A passionate evangelism

In selecting and pursuing offsite promotional opportunities that will actually help you find customers, you need to be a passionate evangelist for your product. Whether you’re considering buying ad space, using email marketing, social media promotions, or even creating a physical promotional freebie to give away (which we’ll cover on ProBlogger later today), you need to advocate strongly for your product, all the way.

My products need to be advertised in a place of prominence, because I care about them. Not just in and of themselves, but for a more pragmatic reason: it sounds obvious, but every item I ship makes me wealthier. I don’t want the seminars I hold and the ebooks I create to be just another offering in a catalog, vying for attention with someone’s unreadable treatise on dividend investing and the overpriced collection of Visio diagrams that someone else slapped together.

I want my products to stand front and center. I also want to remind potential buyers that no one else’s work can substitute for what I’ve created. If you want to know The Unglamorous Secret to Riches, no one else has it. If you want to know how to get out of whatever unhealthy relationship you have with your employer, that outspoken guy who runs Control Your Cash is the only one who’s going to show you how.

Just another vehicle

That’s why you have to acknowledge the limitations of your own blog. Most of your buyers aren’t there. They’re on unrelated sites, where it’s your job to get their attention and show them what you have to offer. It takes time. In my case—and you can apply this to your own situation—it means posting regularly at major, well-established blogs in my area of concern. It means guest posting at general-interest blogs where I know I’ll reach a diverse and erudite audience. My business model is predicated on the following belief: if people like anything I have to say, once they find out a little bit more, they’ll like everything I have to say.

Which means your blog becomes just another vehicle for selling your product(s). Once you sell to someone unfamiliar with your blog, you then sell that buyer on your blog itself. Anyone who buys your product should immediately become a subscriber. Now that buyer knows where to find your entire oeuvre, including the subsequent products that you’re doubtless working on.

Key points

• Once you launch your product, you’re a salesperson. Be prepared to put your product first.
• Recognize that the bulk of your buyers should not come from your own site: if you’re to give your product the best chance of success, you’ll need to sell it to people who have never visited your blog … so far.
• Be choosy about the promotions you use.
• Become a passionate evangelist for your product. This will help you sift the great promotional opportunities from the not-so-great.
• As your promotional efforts gain traction, you’ll begin to see your blog as just another vehicle for sales. Importantly, those customers are becoming subscribers … which will help when it comes time to sell your next product.

Still, buyers in 2023 remain wary. They have less money available to spend in an ever-growing market. With more vendors making their products available for sale every day, the successful sellers aren’t necessarily the ones who shout the loudest or the most frequently. Instead, the ones making sales are the ones who communicate the most effectively. Next week, we’ll find out how they do it.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 5: Finding Customers appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 4: Price Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

If you’re late to this particular party, we’ve been spending the last few weeks examining ways to monetize your blog in an era when readers are holding onto their wallets more tightly than ever.

Sure, you can make money by selling ads if all you care about is revenue. Any link farm can do the same thing. But by extending one’s blog into different media, a diligent blogger can create and sell products that no one else can duplicate.

The process we’ve stepped through so far has been fairly straightforward. First, coldly assess what makes your blog distinctive. (If the answer is anything other than “Nothing” or “I don’t know”, proceed to the next step.)

Next, create something identifiable with your blog and your style—a video lecture series, ebooks, online classes, personal coaching, podcasts, whatever. Budget the requisite time to create your products, plan far enough in advance that your blog won’t be compromised in the short run, test-market your products, then make them available for sale. Couldn’t be easier, right?

This is precisely where many would-be entrepreneurs get smacked in the face with the harsh truth of the marketplace: putting a dollar figure on that product.

How much should you charge?

Not to turn this into a university-level economics lesson, but the tricky thing is to set a price that maximizes revenue. Sure, you can sell your ebook for 10¢ and theoretically reach the widest possible audience. But if you could charge three times the price, and still retain half your audience, wouldn’t that make more sense?

Ideally you’re doing this to turn a profit, which isn’t necessarily the same as generating as much revenue as possible. You also need to factor in your expenses. Otherwise, this is just a pastime or a vanity project. Creating products certainly requires time, and possibly requires materials.

That means that before you sell your first unit, you’ll already have spent money that you’ll need to recoup.

Say you’ve spent 30 hours writing a plan for a coaching program you plan to sell via your blog. Is $20 an hour a fair assessment of your worth? (That is, could you have earned that much doing something else?) Then you’ll need to sell a single copy for $600. Or two for $300 each. Or three for $200. Or…

You can see where this is going. It’s tempting to lower the price as much as possible, in the hopes that every reduction will attract more buyers. That’s largely true, but a) the relationship isn’t linear and b) there’s a limit—otherwise, you could give your product away and an infinite number of people would use it.

Finding the balance

How many unique visitors do you have? If you don’t know, Google Analytics can give you an idea. What proportion of those are invested in your blog and read it regularly? And what proportion of those will cough up a few minutes’ worth of wages in exchange for the promise of you enriching their lives somehow?

On the flip-side are blogging entrepreneurs who charge too much for their services. They’re like the commission salesman who wanted to get a job at Northrop Grumman, selling B-2 Spirit heavy bombers at $1 billion apiece. (“People have been slamming doors in my face all week, but I get 10% of each sale. And all it takes is one.”)

To avoid this, you need to find a comfortable medium between how much you’re willing to accept, and how much your product can realistically benefit its user. That sounds obvious, but most sellers don’t even bother weighing those variables. They just conjure up a price and hope for the best.

What does your product do … for whom?

Be honest with what your product can do. It won’t make the blind walk and the lame see. But will it show readers how to declutter their lives once and for all? Can it teach them how to change their car’s oil and tires themselves, instead of relying on costly technicians? Can it help readers travel to strange places inexpensively, and does it include an appendix that will teach those readers how to keep their cross-border hassles to a minimum?

Then say so. You don’t have to work miracles. You just have to make some aspect of your readers’ lives easier, less complicated and/or more fulfilling.

More to the point, remember who you’re selling to: your readers, not yourself. No one cares how much asbestos you inhaled in the mine, they just want the diamond. It’s a cardinal rule of civilization that results count, not effort.

One famous globetrotting blogger has recently diversified, and now sells a guide that ostensibly tells artists how they can throw off the shackles of poverty and start making money. He’s certainly appealing to his clientele’s emotions—what’s a more accurate stereotype than that of the starving artist?

Never mind that this blogger is not an artist, and that his background consists of little more than that educational punchline, a sociology degree. His blog’s sales pitch details how many painstaking hours he spent writing how many words and conducting how many minutes of interviews in the creation of his guide, as if any of that matters to an artist who just wants to know how to locate buyers for her decoupage and frescoes.

Keep scrolling down and you’ll find out that for just $39, you’ll receive “15,000 words of excellent content”. No one buys this kind of thing by volume. Xavier Herbert’s Poor Fellow My Country runs over 850,000 words. That’s 90 times longer than Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which sold far more copies and was far more influential.

Don’t hide your price!

That brings us to another thing not to do: treat the price as fine print. Which is to say, don’t build to a crescendo and make your readers sift through paragraph upon paragraph of hard sales copy before finally deigning to tell them how much your product is going to cost them. To do so is insulting. It’s the tactic of someone who has something to hide.

(There’s one exception to this rule. That’s when you’re using the late-night infomercial strategy, saving the price of your product until the very end because it’s so shockingly low. That almost certainly doesn’t apply in your case. You’re not an experienced marketer with a reputation, hawking indestructible knives and superabsorbent towels that suck up ten times their weight in liquid. You’re a blogger looking to turn your followers from loyal readers into paying customers.)

Getting back to the real blogger in our example, if you spend another $19 on the deluxe version, he’ll throw in three more audio interviews. There’s nothing quantifiable here, just a collection of messages that differ by media. (Incidentally, I asked this blogger how what kind of volume he does. I wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t receive one, but it was important to make an effort to see if his methods worked.)

Given the choice, I’d rather take my chances giving my money to a blogger with authority and experience, who’s offering me something believable, and who’s not afraid to tell me how much it’ll cost me and how much it’ll benefit me. Is that you?

One more thing. If you’re creating a series of products in which each builds on the previous ones and no individual product can stand alone, you’re putting yourself in a fantastic position. You can give away the first and then start charging with the second. If you do, that’ll give you an accurate gauge of how many people are legitimately interested in your product, as opposed to just being curious.

Accounting for expenses

Once you make the decision to sell, and to price, you’ll have to account for expenses you’d never imagined. Maybe you’ll need to move from a shared host to a dedicated one. Or pay for a business license in your home jurisdiction. Or hire a graphic designer after concluding that your own Adobe Illustrator skills are wanting. A few hours of planning and estimation now can save you weeks of frustration down the road.

Speaking of quantifying, here’s a sample budget (in PDF) that you can adapt for your own use. Be conservative with your revenue estimates, liberal with your expense estimates, and you can get a better handle on how much you should charge when your products finally make it to market.

You might also find the formula presented in The Dark Art of Product Pricing useful. It integrates many of the considerations I’ve outlined here but, like this post, that one can’t definitively tell you what you should charge either. Ultimately, that’s up to you.

Key points

• Cover your expenses. Don’t set your prices so low that you’re losing money on every sale.
• Don’t set your prices so high that you need to camouflage them, either. Be direct.
• Honestly assess what your product can do for your customers.
• Explain to your customers what they’ll get for their money.
• Like anything else, first plan, then execute.

Next week, we’ll discuss how to increase your potential clientele beyond its traditional bounds.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 4: Price Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 3: Develop Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger.

This guest series is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

Welcome to the third weekly instalment in our series on how to sell products of your own creation, via your blog, in a world in which everyone’s reluctant to spend money. If you’ve been following the series so far, then you’ve learned how to conceive of a product and conduct market research into its viability, at least in theory.

In the process, you’ve learned how to identify your clientele, and create a product that:

• has unmistakable value
• people will want
• is a natural extension of your blog itself, and
• no one can duplicate.

Today, we’ll look at actually developing the product you’ve been thinking about.

Making time for product development

Identifying what your product should be is one thing; actually creating your product is something more. It’s a laborious process that requires you to devote hours that you’d otherwise have spent on your blog’s day-to-day upkeep, your sleep, or your work schedule.

Do yourself a favor and choose the first of the three – your blog’s day-to-day upkeep. A weary blogger is an inefficient blogger, and a blogger who leaves the office early to work on his blog every afternoon will soon see his mornings free up, too.

That doesn’t mean you should let your blog go dormant while creating your ebooks, online courses or series of webinars. Far from it. Instead you need to leverage your time, which is a skill that every successful person on the planet has mastered. That applies to bloggers as much as it does to anyone.

With a little planning, you can maintain your blog’s relevance and timeliness. A few minutes of prevention are worth hours of cure.

Accept guest posts

If you’ve ever been approached by people wanting to write guest posts for your blog—and I think almost all of us have—there’s no better time to take them up on it than when you need to commit resources to creating your suite of products. Let someone else do the work, at least temporarily. Besides, guest bloggers don’t exactly drive hard bargains. A backlink or two should be enough to keep them happy.

Toil away on the task at hand while you delegate what can be delegated, and your readers will marvel at how you managed to create sellable products while your blog never missed a perceptible beat.

Publish timeless content

But what if you’re the kind of blogger who considers every post a uniquely crafted representation of your ability to persuade or engage, and who would no sooner have someone else write for your blog than have someone else raise your children?

You can still leverage your time, by breaking out timeless content.

To give you an example, I update my blog with long-form posts three times a week. Occasionally the content is topical and temporal, but most of it is evergreen.

Write in advance

When you know you’re going to be immersed in creating your product for the next few weeks, write as many blog posts as you can, as far in advance as you can. I always have at least a month’s worth of posts ready to go in my content management system, even if I’m not working on a product.

Not only does it give me peace of mind, it gives my blogging partner plenty of time to shop around for a replacement should I get hit by a train.

Write hot; edit cold

Creating a sellable product from scratch takes more time than does creating a blog post, so you want to be able to set aside sufficient hours to work on said product without thinking, “Alright, that’s enough. I have to stop so I can get to tomorrow’s blog post.”

The author’s directive to write hot and edit cold applies here. When you’re sufficiently motivated and your muse is feeling prolific, that’s the time to knock out as many days’ worth of blog content in advance as you can.

Get committed … and disciplined

If any of this sounds daunting, rather than inspiring, save yourself the energy and don’t even waste your time getting started. There are countless bloggers who sell (or more accurately, can’t sell) redundant, uninspired products. Don’t be one of them. Be at least as passionate about any products as you are about your blog itself. You need to have a more compelling reason for selling products than “I probably should” or “everyone else is doing it.”

Creating my own products forced extra discipline on me, which is never a bad thing. Instead of writing until I’d lose interest, I had no choice but to devote certain hours every day to building and formatting my ebooks. For me, that meant 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for writing, editing and researching products. If I needed to, I’d work on my blog itself later in the day, a few hours removed from the pressing problem of completing each ebook by my self-imposed deadline.

Maintaining the other parts of my life (physical activity, earning money, feeding the pets) prompted me to get as much production as I could out of the finite time I’d allotted for ebook creation. If I hadn’t, I’d have fallen behind schedule and possibly never recovered.

Test marketing

So, you’ve done everything according to plan, and you’ve finally managed to create a product that you think has real value. As far as you know, your brainchild is ready for its formal debut. The readers you’ve spent years building a relationship with should be ready to overcome their inherent frugality and spend a few dollars patronizing you.

But how do you know they will? Or at least, how can you increase the likelihood of them doing so?

You test market your product, just like a major conglomerate’s sugar-free soda or exotically flavored toothpaste. At this point, your product is a hit only in theory, and you need to determine via a sample of people whether you’re ready for the marketplace at large.

This is the hardest part of the process for many. Most people feel uncomfortable having their work criticized. And among the few who think that they’re beyond that, most of those handicap themselves by selecting test marketers who’ll give them the answers they want to hear.

Here’s how you test how feasible the first draft of your product is.

1. Choose your testers

First, determine whom your 12 most critical friends and acquaintances are. You want the ones whom are unvarnished, even caustic in their opinions. Candor counts even more than objectivity does, because the former is a harder quality to find. The fawners and sycophants have no place in this experiment, and your mother will be of little value. They’re not going to help you, and they’re not going to help the only people who matter here—your readers.

Assess your potential test marketers honestly. The absolute last thing you want is respondents who are going to tell you how awesome you are and wow, you created a blog and every post you write is magical and it’s only a matter of time before the International Herald Tribune comes calling and asks you to share your opinions on budget scrapbooking with a worldwide audience.

Why do you want 12 test marketers? Because six of them are going to agree to critically assess your products, yet never get around to doing so. Bribe them if you have to. Offer to buy each one lunch or something.

2. Send them your product

Now, give them your product, with explicit instructions for them to be as critical as possible. Tell them to try to find something wrong even in the parts they like. A third party (or the fourth through 14th parties) will notice mistakes and omissions that you’re too close to the action to see for yourself.

Never send anything to market too early. If you’re a blogger looking to extend your brand (and line your pockets), that might mean nothing more than adding or rewriting a few lines of code. It is far, far better for everyone concerned to improve a product before it goes live, rather than after.

As far as can be determined, no prototype in the history of commerce has been better than the finished product slated for release.

Key points

• Don’t sacrifice your income to develop a product: plan development up front.
• Accept guest posts, publish timeless content, write in advance, write hot and edit cold, and develop discipline and commitment to what you’re doing.
• Test market your product with actual readers of your blog.
• Take their feedback and use it to improve your product. Run the tweaked product past your most reliable testers again if you wish.

Alright, enough about “what?” and “why?” Next week we address the most critical question of all: “How much?” But stick around, because later today, ProBlogger will be taking a closer look at a technique to help you generate an unending stream of post ideas. It might just help you save some time to put toward developing your product.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at [email protected].

The post Build Blog Products That Sell 3: Develop Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post The 4 Rs That Show a Brand Your Blog is Influential appeared first on ProBlogger.

Image created in Canva

One way to monetise your blog is through working with brand partners.

This could be  anything from sponsored content and affiliate promotions through to ongoing ambassadorships or sponsorships. In any case, there are a number of factors I consider when it comes to determining if a blogger is “influential” and can be successful in securing an opportunity with a brand.

As you would expect, metrics tell part of that story, so let’s take a look at them using a framework I thought I came up with, but has also been neatly described by Nielsen as the 3 Rs – Reach, Resonance, Reaction. I actually use at least one more R for Relevance which we’ll cover later.

1. Reach

How many people in the target audience is the blogger reaching?

Potential Reach and Actual Reach are two types of metrics to consider and not all platforms will provide you with both.

Most traditional marketing channels report potential reach, for example, circulation numbers for a newspaper. Your ad or story could potentially be seen by 300,000 people because that’s the number of copies distributed, and may or may not include a multiplier for ‘pass-along readership’ ie the number of people who might read the same copy.

Thankfully digital media gives us a more granular view, with not only potential reach, but also the actual reach of our content. Using a few platform examples (not an exhaustive list) below we can see the difference.

Reach Metrics

Google Analytics: Unique Visitors (potential reach), Unique Pageviews (actual reach)
Facebook Insights: Page Likes (potential reach), Lifetime Post Reach (actual reach)
Email analytics: Total Subscribers (potential reach), Total Unique Opens (actual reach)

Above is an overview of Facebook Insights Data. You can get more granular data from the exported insights.

2. Resonance

Does the content and message resonate with the audience so that they engage, remember or, ideally, change their attitudes or behaviour because of it?

Resonance is one of the main reasons brands work with influencers – their connection to their audience, their ability to tell a story that resonates with their audience far more than a branded message could, and the effect of their authority or trusted voice on the beliefs and actions of their readers.

The more your content resonates with your audience the more likely they will be to engage with it, and those metrics are easily tracked as dwell time, likes, comments, shares and click throughs.

Resonance/Engagement Metrics

Google Analytics: Time on Page (dwell time), % of return visitors (the higher the better), comments, social shares (to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc), some blog platforms have ‘likes’ which you can also include.
Facebook: Likes, Comments, Shares, Link Clicks
Twitter: Likes, Replies (comments), Retweets (shares)
Pinterest: Likes, Comments, Pins/Saves (shares)
Instagram: Likes, Comments, Tag in comments (shares)

A bit about link clicks – if your content has resonated to the extent that your audience follows a link to the brand or branded content, this is a great result. Make sure you capture it either by using a tracking link provided by the brand, or one you can track yourself like Bitly. You can use these links in your blog post and social posts to show click throughs and also to work out the click through rate ie the number of people who clicked the link divided by the number of people who viewed the content.

3. Reaction

Is there a measurable outcome in the change of attitude or behaviour of the audience?

All influencer campaigns are done to achieve some kind of reaction, whether it is awareness, acquisition (ie leads) or sales. It is at this point that you as a blogger/influencer are less able to measure the outcomes. It is here where rubber meets the road and the brand can determine if they got a return on their investment. However, you should still have an understanding of what actions you can drive that they will ultimately measure at their end.

Reaction Metrics

Awareness – obviously the more people who see the message, the more likely they will be aware of it. However, reach or impression numbers alone do not prove this outcome. A brand could look at things like increases in branded search terms, mentions of their brand on social media, unprompted recall, how they heard about the brand.

One way you can help is to survey your own readers and ask if they were aware of the brand before you mentioned it, and or have bought since you mentioned it.

Acquisition – this could be driving your audience to register their email with the brand, either via a competition, to download a bonus, to sign up for their newsletter. The brand needs to track where these sign ups are coming from to attribute the activity to your campaign and work out the cost per lead.

Sales – did your audience buy something? This can be tracked with a promo code for online purchases, an affiliate link, a printed voucher for in-store purchases, or a simple ‘how did you hear about us’ at point of purchase.

4. Relevance – the Most Important R

I mentioned earlier that I use more than just the 3Rs above. Before you look at any of those Rs, the first lesson is to understand that the same blogger will not be influential in all situations. So your first job is always to show a brand how relevant you are to the opportunity on the table.

Relevance will depend on the opportunity itself. Two main indicators of relevance will be:

1. Audience Demographics, Psychographics and Sociographics

Who is the brand targeting? The more specific you can get the more chance you can show how relevant you are over the next blogger. We’re not just talking about women aged 24-45 – that’s pretty much most blog readers! What kind of women, what life stage are they at specifically, what problems is the brand trying to solve for them? Then look at your own data for your audience and see how many similarities you can draw between the target audience and your audience. Some places you can look without getting too technical are:

Google Analytics Country and or even City data:

Facebook Insights “People” will give you a demographic overview for gender, age and location:

So, if the brief is to attract women in Melbourne to a local event, you can give them specific data on your blog and Facebook reach specifically for Melbourne.
Another way to get a more specific profile of your most loyal readers is to survey them annually. This is a great way to get basic demographic data (like education, income and family size/makeup) as well as the psychographic and specific sociographic profiles of your blog readers (their attitudes, interests and lifestyle choices). For example, your survey may tell you your typical blog reader is 25, single, cashed up and loves coming to you for fashion advice because she’s too busy to try and figure out what to buy herself (Ka-ching! by the way!).

You can then use a combination of the above data to show how relevant your audience is to the brand’s target audience.

2. What Outcome is the Brand Trying to Achieve?

The second factor that determines how relevant you are is the overall objective for the brand. What kind of position are you in to drive the specific outcome they’re after? As mentioned earlier, brands work with influencers, bloggers and media sites for awareness, acquisition, sales. Some more specific examples are as follows.

a) Awareness Objective:
The brand is running a general awareness campaign and want major reach for an emotive piece written from your perspective. They need blog post views.

What bloggers usually rely on:
Monthly Unique Visitors

What you need to show:
How many Unique Visitors (relevant to the audience profile) you can deliver to a single blog post – not just your blog.  Work out your average unique views per post based on a range of other sponsored posts, and show them some examples and results of similar posts you’ve written.

They need you to know you can drive a direct response to the blog post, perhaps in conjunction with a social network like Facebook or your email list. Show them where your traffic is coming from and that your ‘big numbers’ are not just search traffic to one well ranking post.

For extra brownie points:
Show how engaged they are with your posts using your averages for the Resonance metrics such time spent on page, comments, shares.

b) Acquisition Objective:
The brand is trying to establish itself on Instagram and an increase in the brand’s followers will be a key performance indicator of the campaign.

What bloggers usually rely on:
Media kit vanity metrics ie number of Instagram followers

What you need to show:
Anyone can buy or ‘game’ Instagram followers. Your first task is to differentiate yourself from these types of accounts. Whilst the number of followers you have on Instagram will be important, the outcome here isn’t how many people might see your post – it’s how many people will click over to the brand’s account and follow them. Show the brand how engaged your audience is with your content with average likes and comments for your posts. Even better, show them the metrics for other sponsored posts you’ve done.

For extra brownie points:
Show them examples of when you’ve done shout outs for other accounts/brands on Instagram. Use screenshots and ask for testimonials. We’re straying outside of just quantitative metrics here and into qualitative data to support how relevant you are to their campaign.

Your Most Important Objective

All of the above should give you a solid basis to create a pitch to a brand that goes way beyond what a standard media kit can do. In fact I’m not actually much of an advocate for media kits for influencers. Remember, when you’re pitching for an opportunity for a brand, your biggest challenge is to differentiate yourself from other bloggers and all a standard media kit does is show one blogger’s audience is bigger or smaller than another’s.

Get smarter and use the metrics and evidence you have at hand to show how you are more relevant than all the others. At the very least, by giving them access to a deeper level of data, you may educate them to start asking the same of other bloggers and that could very well be in your favour!

The post The 4 Rs That Show a Brand Your Blog is Influential appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Principles of Choosing a Profitable Blog Topic appeared first on ProBlogger.

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I recently had a conversation with a reader about selecting the right topic for a profitable blog. In this discussion, I realized that finding a balance among various factors is crucial. Let’s explore these essential principles for choosing a profitable blog topic.

Topic Popularity

One important factor in the success of any profitable blog is that it will need to find readers. I could probably build a blog that would dominate the niche for ‘green striped paper bags’ and get 100% of those searching for the term on Google (there is no competition) however the fact of the matter is that I’d probably be my only reader. It’s important to choose a topic that meets a demand for information. It need not be on a topic that absolutely everyone is searching for information on – but the popularity of the topic is obviously one factor that could increase the chances of success.

Selecting a topic with a significant demand for information increases the likelihood of attracting readers. While it’s important to find a balance between popularity and competition, identifying niches within popular topics can be highly profitable. For example, rather than starting a broad blog about fitness, focusing on a specific niche like “keto diet for beginners” or “high-intensity interval training (HIIT)” can yield better results. These focused topics allow you to position yourself as an expert and capture a dedicated audience.

To gauge the popularity of a blog topic, keyword research tools can provide valuable insights. These tools help identify search volume, competition, and related keywords for conducting your niche analysis:

• Google Trends: This free tool allows you to explore the popularity of specific keywords over time and in different regions. It provides data on search interest, related topics, and rising trends.
• SEMrush: Known for its comprehensive keyword research features, SEMrush offers insights into search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor analysis. It also suggests related keywords and provides an overview of the competitive landscape.

Topic Competition and Narrow Niches

Another way of increasing the chances of profit is to choose a topic which currently has few quality sources of information already existing online. You may think that no such topic exists – but you’d be wrong. Whilst the web is a crowded place there are many topics where there is little competition and as a result you have the ability to be one of the biggest fish in that small pond. Sometimes you have to narrow your topic to find such niches, other times you have to be ‘the first’ as a new topic emerges and other times there might be existing sites on the topic – but they are of a low enough standard that you can compete easily by producing something better or more useful. Finding a niche with limited competition can provide opportunities for significant growth and profitability. Here are a couple of examples:

1. “Indoor Urban Gardening Tips”: With the rise in urban living, many people are interested in growing plants indoors. By focusing on providing valuable content and advice on indoor urban gardening techniques, tools, and plant care, you can establish yourself as an authority in this niche. Monetization options can include affiliate partnerships with gardening equipment suppliers or creating your own line of indoor gardening products.
2. “Sustainable Fashion for Men”: As sustainability becomes a global concern, the demand for eco-friendly fashion is rising. By catering specifically to men and providing content on sustainable clothing brands, styling tips, and ethical fashion practices, you can tap into a growing market. Revenue streams can include affiliate marketing with sustainable fashion brands and collaborations with eco-conscious clothing companies.
3. My narrowest niche blog is one that I run on UAV’s or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Now it’s not my most profitable blog by far – and when I started it ten years ago there weren’t as many people searching on the topic and I was able to get a fairly large % of those searching for my keywords because I ranked so highly on Google for them. These days this topic is a lot more competitive but it’s an example of what you can do over time if you’re willing to carve out a niche for yourself.

Here are some additional niche analysis tools to help you identify untapped markets:

• Ubersuggest: offers keyword suggestions and competition analysis. It provides information on search volume, difficulty, and related keywords, helping you discover specific niches with lower competition.
• Ahrefs: a powerful SEO tool that enables you to analyze competitors, discover low-competition keywords, and explore niche opportunities. It also offers content gap analysis, helping you identify areas where your competitors are lacking.

Availability of Revenue Streams

Ok so you’ve found a topic people search for and you don’t have much competition – but you’ll never turn a profit on it if you don’t find an income stream for it. Contextual advertising programs like Adsense offer varying click values for different topics. Ideally, you’d want to choose a high-paying topic, but you might discover intense competition within those niches. It can be worthwhile to explore medium-level click values with less competition. Remember, Adsense is not the only revenue stream for bloggers. Explore available affiliate programs relevant to your topic and consider opportunities for sponsorships from private advertising sources.

Identifying topics with potential revenue streams is essential for long-term profitability. Here are two recent examples:

1. “Smart Home Automation”: With the increasing popularity of smart home devices, blogging about smart home automation can be lucrative. Monetization options include affiliate partnerships with smart home product manufacturers, sponsored content from companies in the home automation industry, and creating digital products such as e-books or online courses on setting up smart homes.
2. “Digital Nomad Lifestyle”: As remote work and location independence gain traction, the digital nomad lifestyle has become a popular topic. Bloggers in this niche can generate revenue through affiliate marketing of travel gear, sponsored content from travel agencies or co-working spaces, and offering coaching or consulting services for aspiring digital nomads.

Researching “your topic affiliate programs” on search engines and exploring Amazon’s affiliate program can be excellent starting points. Here are a few examples of tools to assist you in assessing your blog affiliate revenue potential:

• Amazon Associates: Amazon’s affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, allows you to earn commissions by promoting products relevant to your blog’s niche. With a vast range of products, it can be a valuable income source for bloggers.
• ShareASale: an affiliate marketing network that connects bloggers with various merchants and brands. It offers a wide range of affiliate programs across different niches, allowing you to find relevant partners for your blog.

If you are going to use Adsense you ideally want a high paying topic. Unfortunately whilst you might identify one you may just find that your competition is incredibly high. Sometimes it is worth picking a topic that is in the medium level of click values and has less competition.

Availability of Content

You’ll want to do a little research on your topic before starting a blog to see if you’ll be able to sustain it in adding fresh content over a long period. The thing that kills many commercial blogs very quickly is that the author simply runs out of things to write. I’ve started numerous blogs over the past couple of years that I quickly found I had nothing much to say about.

Ensuring a steady stream of content is crucial for maintaining engagement and attracting readers. Here’s an example:

• “Plant-Based Recipes for Families”: As more people embrace plant-based diets, there’s a demand for family-friendly plant-based recipes. By curating and creating delicious, kid-friendly plant-based recipes, you can cater to this audience. Content can include meal planning tips, nutritional information, and creative plant-based alternatives for popular family meals. Regularly sharing new recipes and engaging with the audience can help build a loyal readership.

If you’re wanting to test the availability of content keyword research tools can help identify popular topics and generate content ideas. Here are two tools to assist you:

• BuzzSumo: allows you to discover popular content in your niche by analyzing social media shares and engagement. It helps you identify trending topics and create content that resonates with your audience.
• AnswerThePublic: This tool generates a visual representation of questions and phrases related to your chosen keyword. It can inspire content ideas by revealing what people are searching for and what information they seek.

Measure your own Energy, Passion and Interest

Lastly (and very importantly) it’s worth trying to objectively measure your own passion, interest or energy level for the blog. Whilst there might be plenty of news going around on the topic will you still be energized by posting on the topic in 6 months time (without the motivation of money – because it might take take a year or two to establish yourself in a niche). If you don’t have something motivating you to post on a topic it can become very difficult to keep doing so – unless you have a very dedicated personality type.

Put it all together

The fact is that you’ll rarely find a topic that all these factors come together on unless you’re either very lucky or the first in a popular new niche that you just happen to have a passion for. Most blogs fall down in one (or more) of these areas. This does not mean it can’t be a viable and profitable blog, but it’s good to be aware of the weaknesses as you venture out. The beauty of blogging is that there are no rules – and some of my most successful experiments have flown in the face of most of the above principles.

For example (just to disprove myself and give a little hope to you rebellious types) – arguably the most successful blog I’ve ever been involved with (over a short period of time) was the Athens Olympics Blog that I ran with a mate which generated 2 million visitors in a few weeks and made us a tidy sum of money.

This blog succeeded despite having massive competition (from every major news website going around) and despite having very low click value on Adsense and few lucrative affiliate programs. The sheer weight of people searching for information over a short period of time was the main ingredient to our success. This was coupled with us working incredibly long hours (around the clock for two weeks and for months before) providing a blog that was actually quite useful. We actually became known as a site that updated statistics and information faster than most of the ‘professional’ sites covering the event.

Despite being dormant (and falling into disrepair lately) it still even gets reasonable visitor levels to this day.

So take these principles as friendly advice – not rules. In many ways they are ‘ideals’ which you will almost certainly have to compromise some of at some point but which can help you choose a topic that has a greater chance of success.

Add your own suggestions and experiences in choosing a blog’s topic below in comments12.

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The post Making Money Because of Your Blog – Indirect Methods appeared first on ProBlogger.

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We now turn our attention to ways of making money from blogging that are more more ‘indirect’ in nature – or how to earn money because of your blog rather than from it (How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods).

Many of the following methods are the result of the profile and perceived expertise of the blogger themselves (whereas many of the direct methods mentioned previously are less reliant upon this).

Building a profile as a blogger doesn’t happen quickly and starting a blog with some of these hopes should be seen as a long term thing. My own experience in this area when starting ProBlogger is that it took about 12 months for opportunities to open in most of these areas. However, with the accelerated pace with which you’re now able to build a personal brand online, these opportunities are probably all available sooner.

Consulting

When you are perceived as an expert on a topic you will find that people naturally come to you for advice – some of them willing to pay for it. Some niches are probably better positioned than others for their bloggers to get into paid consultancy work of course. I spoke with one blogger recently (blogging in a business/technology field) who was able to charge himself out at $600 per hour to give advice to a large company. Many bloggers sell appointments in their calendar, using a cart linked to a booking app or an all-in-one solution like Book Like a Boss. Most of these 1:1 consults are at the top of a pyramid of consulting-type services or digital services that bloggers offer.

• Neil Patel has built a successful consulting business by leveraging his expertise in SEO, content marketing, and online advertising. He offers consulting services to companies and individuals seeking to improve their digital marketing strategies and increase their online visibility.
• Amy Porterfield is a blogger, online marketing expert, and host of the podcast “Online Marketing Made Easy.” Through her blog and online courses, she provides valuable insights and resources on topics such as social media marketing and list building. Amy has expanded her business by offering consulting services, where she works closely with clients to develop and implement effective marketing strategies.
• Joanna Wiebe is the founder of Copyhackers, a blog and training platform dedicated to teaching persuasive writing and conversion copywriting. Joanna has utilized her expertise to offer consulting services to businesses aiming to improve their copywriting and conversion optimization.

These examples demonstrate how successful bloggers can leverage their expertise and credibility to offer consulting services in their respective niches. By sharing their knowledge and providing personalized guidance, these bloggers have built thriving consulting businesses, helping clients achieve their marketing and business goals.

Employment Opportunities

There’s many examples of companies not just hiring bloggers as consultants, but actually employing them full-time for their demonstrated expertise. Here’s just a couple to give you an idea of how your blog can act like your online CV.

• Lindsay Ostrom started the food blog Pinch of Yum in 2010, where she shared recipes and food photography. Her blog gained a dedicated following and her photography skills attracted the attention of the kitchenware company, Williams-Sonoma who eventually hired her as a full-time photographer and recipe developer.
• Gina Luker ran the DIY and home decor blog The Shabby Creek Cottage. Her blog’s success and expertise in home decor and crafting led to her being hired by a home improvement retail company to create content and lead DIY workshops for their customers.

Successful blogs can lead to career opportunities and partnerships with companies seeking to tap into the blogger’s expertise, industry knowledge, and audience reach

Business Blogging

Similarly there are some businesses who employ people to blog for them either as their main role or part of their role. These companies recognize the value of bloggers in creating engaging and authentic content that resonates with their target audience. Hiring bloggers to focus solely on creating content for the company’s blog allows them to tap into the blogger’s expertise and established audience, enhancing their brand’s online presence

• Kate Arends, the founder of the lifestyle blog Wit & Delight – which covers topics such as fashion, home decor, and personal development – was hired by Target, where she worked as a full-time blogger and content creator for the company’s website and social media platforms. 
• The Toren brothers, Adam and Matthew Toren, started the blog YoungEntrepreneur.com, which provided resources, tips, and inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs. Their blog’s success led to them being hired by Dell as full-time bloggers and content creators, where they contributed to the company’s entrepreneur-focused initiatives.

ProBlogger Jobs is worth following if you’re looking for these types of jobs. There are hundreds of jobs listed each month across a variety of niches. You can set up job alerts based on keywords associated with your niche interests.

Book Deals

Some days as I read through the RSS feeds that I follow it seems that every blogger I read has a book either in progress or coming out. Once again it’s about being seen as an expert in your field – if you can achieve this you will find publishers are more receptive to having an idea pitched to them and at times will even seek you out. This is becoming more and more common with publishers as they are seeing not only some great writers but that many of them already have large amounts of content on their blogs ready to be pulled together into a book! Self-publication is also a viable option if you’ve built up an audience via blogging.

• Ree Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman, started her blog sharing stories about life on a ranch and her love for cooking. Her blog’s success led to her securing a book deal. She has since written several cookbooks, including “The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl,” which became a New York Times bestseller.
• Jenny Lawson, known as The Bloggess, gained popularity through her blog where she shares personal stories with humor and candor. She received a book deal and published her memoir “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir,” which became a bestseller and launched her career as an author.
• Brandon Stanton is the photographer and writer behind the blog Humans of New York (HONY). He started the blog as a way to capture the stories of people he encountered on the streets of New York City. His blog gained widespread recognition, leading to a book deal. He has published several books featuring photographs and stories of the individuals he has encountered, including “Humans of New York” and “Humans of New York: Stories.”

These examples showcase how bloggers who have established a strong online presence and gained a loyal following through their blogs have been able to secure book deals and transition into successful authors. Their unique voices and storytelling abilities captured the attention of publishers and allowed them to share their experiences and perspectives through printed works.

Offline Writing Gigs

Bloggers who demonstrate expertise, thought leadership, and a unique perspective through their blogs can also attract the attention of news outlets, leading to employment as full-time writers and contributors.

• Ezra Klein began his blogging career on The American Prospect website, where he wrote about politics and policy. His insightful analysis and writing caught the attention of The Washington Post, and he was eventually hired as a full-time blogger and columnist for the publication.
• Megan McArdle began her blogging career with her blog “Asymmetrical Information,” where she covered a wide range of topics including economics, politics, and public policy. She was hired by The Atlantic as a full-time blogger and columnist, where she continued to write on similar subjects.
• Martin Lewis began his career as a journalist, then launched the personal finance blog MoneySavingExpert.com, gained a significant following, and was then hired back as a full-time financial journalist and expert by a major news publication.

Online Writing Gigs

Similarly, some bloggers land jobs writing for other niche websites as a result of being discovered from their blogs, to contribute their knowledge, insights, and engaging content to the platform.

• Joanna Hawley, the creator of the blog Jojotastic, which focuses on home decor, lifestyle, and travel was hired by Apartment Therapy, a popular home decor and design website, as a regular contributor and writer.
• David Lebovitz a food blogger and author known was hired by the food and cooking website, Food52, as a regular contributor, where he shares his expertise and delicious recipes.
• Ana White’s self-named blog focuses on do-it-yourself furniture and woodworking plans. Her expertise in woodworking and her ability to provide accessible DIY tutorials led to her being hired by the website BuildSomething, where she writes and shares woodworking projects exclusively for the platform.

Business Partnerships

One of the benefits of blogging about a niche topic that interests you is that you will begin to connect with others who have similar interests and expertise. As you interact with them it’s amazing to see the opportunities for working together that arise.

• Joy Cho is the founder of the lifestyle blog Oh Joy!, known for its vibrant and creative content. Through her blog, she connected with her now business partner, Angi Welsch, who also had a blog focusing on children’s fashion. They joined forces and established Oh Joy! Studio, a design and branding agency that offers creative services, licensing partnerships, and product collaborations.
• Jess Constable, the founder of the blog Makeunder My Life, and Erin Loechner, the creator of the blog Design for Mankind, met through their respective blogs and realized they shared similar values and goals. They collaborated and co-founded The CAMP, a creative agency that offers branding and design services, as well as workshops and educational resources.
• David Schneider, a blogger and software tester, connected with Rosie Sherry through their shared interest in software testing and quality assurance. They co-founded the Ministry of Testing, a community-driven platform that provides resources, training, events, and conferences for software testers worldwide.

These examples showcase how bloggers who meet through blogging can form meaningful partnerships and go on to create successful businesses together, leveraging their complementary skills, shared interests, and established online presence to pursue ventures beyond their individual blogs.

Speaking Opportunities

Once again this is dependent upon the topic you’re writing about but some lucky bloggers end up with all kinds of opportunities to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars on their topic of choice. Sometimes they are freebies, other times the conference will cover costs and on other occasions there are speakers fees. You can check out my “Speaking” page for some ideas. Other bloggers who make money speaking include:

• Pat Flynn – the founder of the blog Smart Passive Income, where he shares his experiences and insights on online business, passive income, and entrepreneurship. His expertise and success in these areas led to him being invited to speak at various conferences and events related to online business and marketing. He has become a sought-after speaker (he’s spoken at a few ProBlogger Events) and has delivered keynote speeches at renowned industry conferences, earning a fee for his speaking engagements.
• Rand Fishkin is the co-founder of the blog Moz, which focuses on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and online marketing. Through his blog and expertise in the field, he became a recognized authority in SEO. He has been invited to speak at numerous conferences and events worldwide (including ProBlogger Event), where he shares his knowledge and insights on SEO and digital marketing. His speaking engagements have contributed to his reputation and he often commands a fee for his presentations.
• Marie Forleo – Marie Forleo is a life coach, author, and founder of the blog and online platform MarieTV. Through her blog and online presence, she has built a large following and established herself as a thought leader in personal development, business, and entrepreneurship. Forleo has been invited to speak at major conferences and events, where she delivers inspirational and empowering talks with a significant fee for her appearances.

What does this mean for your blog?

If you’re planning to use some of these indirect ways of making money because of your blog it’s important that you think seriously about building your own profile and credibility as a blogger. Think about the types of people that you respect and look to as experts an consider what they offer in their fields.

These people are generally original thinkers that not only report what others are doing, but who provide answers and vision for their industry. They are also often well networked and have the ability to draw others along with them.

Here’s where I’d start:

• provide useful content that shows an understanding of your niche.
• network within your niche. Work on being connected with other key players (big and small).
• use your blog not only to report and rehash news but to also show initiative in proposing solutions. Be proactive in your blogging and lead the conversation rather than just react to it.

There’s probably endless indirect methods to leverage your blog to make money. What are some other ways you’ve used or seen?

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The post How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Having thought through whether you should blog for money it is now worth taking a look at some of the different models for doing so.

I tend to break the different models that bloggers are using to make money from blogging into two areas – Direct and Indirect methods.

Direct Income Earning Methods – these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog.

Indirect Income Earning Methods – these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog.

Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods – although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both ( I’ve seen a few bloggers get into trouble with this (example: Scenario 1 in the previous post).

In this post I’ll look at 7 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with.

Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers

1. Advertising

There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see working for bloggers include:

• Display Ads: Display ads are graphical or text-based ads that appear on your blog. They can be placed in various locations, such as the header, sidebar, or within the content. You can use ad services or networks like Google AdSense, Media.net, or Ezoic to display contextual ads that match your blog’s content and target your audience.
• Native Ads: Native ads seamlessly blend in with your blog’s content, providing a non-disruptive advertising experience. Platforms like Taboola and Outbrain offer native advertising solutions where you can display recommended content or sponsored posts on your blog.
• Programmatic Advertising: Programmatic advertising involves using automated systems to buy and sell ad inventory in real-time. Ad networks like Google Ad Manager allow you to manage and serve ads from multiple demand sources, including direct advertisers and ad exchanges.
• Direct Ad Sales: Selling ad space directly to advertisers gives you more control over pricing and placements. You can create an “Advertise with Us” page on your blog and reach out to potential advertisers in your niche. Alternatively, you can use platforms like BuySellAds, which connect publishers with advertisers looking to buy ad space.
• Sponsored Content/Advertorials: Sponsored content or advertorials involve creating content that promotes a specific product or service. You can negotiate sponsored content deals directly with advertisers or work through sponsored content marketplaces like IZEA.
• In-Text Ads: In-text ads appear as hyperlinked keywords within your blog posts. When users hover or click on the keywords, a small ad box or pop-up appears. Platforms like Infolinks and Sovrn offer in-text advertising solutions for publishers.
• Rich Media Ads: Rich media ads include interactive elements like video, audio, or animations. Platforms like Raptive specialize in serving high-quality, engaging rich media ads on your blog.
• Contextual Ads: Contextual ads are targeted based on the content of your blog. They analyze the keywords and context of your pages to display relevant ads. Ad networks like Media.net and Adversal offer contextual advertising options for publishers.

When considering ad services or networks, it’s important to evaluate their ad quality, payout rates, user experience, and support. You can explore multiple options and test different networks to find the best fit for your blog’s niche and audience.

2. Sponsorship

Another form of advertising that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.

The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Photography School blog for years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features programmatic ads as well as periodic sponsorships from companies who can purchase a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.

The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction, Clickbank, Shareasale and Impact.

Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.

4. Selling/Flipping Blogs

The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.

If and when you do establish your blogging business as a saleable entity, you can market it via sites like Flippa, Empire Flippers and FE International.

5. Donations and Tip Jars

Some blogs are making good money with voluntary payment platforms like Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee. To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work. Many more are providing more value and content behind a paywall with subscriptions (see below). An example from podcast world of someone who asks for and receives lots of donations is Dan Carlin with his Hardcore History podcast.

6. Merchandise

Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.

7. Selling Subscriptions

The idea of charging your audience readers for content is one that is growing, particularly in the podcasting space. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) blogs are starting to do this too. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic alongside an engaged audience with a real sense of community and attachment to you. Patreon is the top platform for this and a good example I’ve seen (listed to) lately is the Tooth and Claw podcast which alternates between free and paid (Patreon) podcast episodes.

Next in the series we’ll look at indirect ways of making money because of your blog.

If you want to learn more about monetizing your blog, you can take my “Make Money” course to transform your blogging hobby into an income-generating business.

The post How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post Should You Blog for Money? appeared first on ProBlogger.

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I speak with bloggers every day who have heard the stories of blogs that make big dollars and who want to try to make an income from blogging also. One of the pieces of advice that I attempt to convey (and I’m afraid it doesn’t always get through) is that it’s worth pausing, before running out to slap ads on your blog or promoting every affiliate deal available, to ask yourself whether making money from your blog is right for you.

While this might seem to be a silly question to some (what’s wrong with earning money?) I think it’s worth at least asking yourself the question

“Should I blog for money?”

Because, not every blog is suited to blogging for money.

Does it Fit with Your Blog’s Goals and Objectives?

For me, a lot of the advice that I’ve given in this series of blogging for beginners comes down to working out some goals, strategy and vision for your blog (I’ve written extensively on strategic blogging here so won’t unpack this now). There are many reasons why people blog and the motivation of money is just one of them.

Here’s some of the responses I had when I asked why people blog:

• ‘I blog for recreational purposes – to help me relax’
• ‘I blog as part of my plan for world domination’
• ‘I blog to help me promote my book/business’
• ‘I blog to keep a record of the life and times of me’
• ‘I blog because I want to help others’
• ‘I blog to because I’m lonely and want to connect with others’
• ‘I blog to pick up cute girls/guys’
• ‘I blog because it’s fun’
• ‘I blog because I want to build profile – I want to be known’
• ‘I blog to make a living’

Now there is nothing wrong with blogging for more than one reason – but bloggers considering adding income streams to their blogs need to consider the implications that blog monetization in all its different forms MIGHT impact their other goals.

Let me share some scenarios of real cases that I’ve come across (no names given) where putting ads on a blog wasn’t a good idea. If I were a betting man I’d say that they represent the story of many bloggers and that others could add more scenarios:

Scenario 1: Business Blogs – I remember one blogger who added contextual advertising to their Business Blogs (blogs which had primary goals of promoting a business’s services) only to find that the ads that were served to their blogs were for other businesses in their field who they were competing with. While they could block some of the ads they found that more ads replaced them. In the end they felt it was better to remove the ads and keep the focus on themselves.

Scenario 2: Reader Uproar – Another blogger who I have been talking with recently told me the story of the day she added impression based ads to her blog and created a mutiny among her readers who were angry that she’d gone that route. While on some blogs reader ownership are not very high, there are other blogs where for one reason or another that readers take great offense to bloggers changing the rules midstream – especially when it comes to ads. Depending upon the community levels and the way you introduce the ads you can end up losing readership and you need to consider whether the benefits of the income will outweigh the costs of fewer readers.

Scenario 3: Money Obsession – Perhaps one of the saddest examples that comes to mind is of a blogger who had been running a really interesting and reasonably successful blog (I wouldn’t call him an A-lister but he had a small loyal following) who got bitten by the ‘money from blogging’ bug so badly that it ended up killing his blog. Ultimately he ended up deleting a lot of his archives (the ones that had no income earning potential) and slapping so many ads onto his blog that it was hard to find any content. He ended up only ever writing on topics that he thought were ‘earners’. In doing so he lost the vast majority of his readership and ended up with a pretty poor blog. Greed took over.

Scenario 4: Poor Conversion and Clutter – A number of bloggers come to mind who have announced that they are fed up with ads on their blogs largely because the payoff has not been worth giving the space over to the ads. Ads do add another element of clutter to your blog and if the conversion isn’t sufficient they can seem quite pointless. This varies from blogger to blogger and sometimes comes down to the type of ad chosen and the topic that they are writing about – but it’s one of the main reasons I see bloggers taken ads off their blogs.

Scenario 5: Reputation – My last example is of a blogger who was blogging to build his own reputation in an industry. He’d been blogging for a number of months and was slowly become better known (although had a way to go). His problem started when he started promoting affiliate products that he’d had no knowledge of and which (he later found out) were actually ripping people off. In doing so he ended up doing the exact opposite to what he’d set out to do – he destroyed his own reputation.

I’m aware that this post has a somewhat negative tone to it and don’t want to disillusion readers too much. On the flip side of these stories of bloggers who found that blogging for money is not the answer for everyone are many more stories of bloggers who have found ways to supplement their income via blogging (and even a few stories of bloggers who now blog full time).

If you do want to build a profitable blog and transform your blogging hobby into an income-generating business, then I would strongly suggest you check out my “Four Pillars of Blogging – Make Money” Course. This course encapsulates my practical experience making money blogging for the past 20 years and takes you through:

• The many and varied ways to make money blogging
• How to create your own monetization strategy and
• What to focus on first to develop your revenue streams

The post Should You Blog for Money? appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Monetise Your Influence Type: Micro-Influencers appeared first on ProBlogger.

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Welcome to the next post in our series on monetising your influence type. Last time we looked at Platform-Specific Superstars – a small percentage of all influencers. This time we’re going to take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Most of us fit into the category of “micro-influencer”, and it can be an exciting place to be!

Who are Micro-influencers?

Call them what you will – micro-influencers, long-tail influencers, the “Power Middle” – who are they and why are they getting so much attention?

There is no one defining characteristic or measurement that defines you as a micro-influencer. Generally it’s those of us with an online audience of less than 100,000 followers, be that a social or blog following. Some define it more specifically as having 500-5,000 followers, the power middle crowd have been defined as having 100,000-250,000 followers. You won’t get a straight answer from anyone, so let’s look at something other than just audience size to help figure out if you’re a micro-influencer (my term of choice, so I’ll use that from here on in).

Generally, as audience size goes up, engagement comes down. As marketers get smarter and realise the power of engagement over reach, their gaze has drifted to micro-influencers. Here’s why, neatly summed up in a graph from research done by influencer marketing platform Takumi on half a million instagram accounts.

You could argue that the focus on the superstars and celebrities is warranted – 1.7% of 100,000 is still more people engaged than 9.7% of 1,000. However, here’s where it gets exciting for you if you’re a micro-influencer.

The Advantages of Being a Micro-influencer

As a micro-influencer, the people who engage with you are likely to be more connected to you and more aligned with your passions, niche and generally of a similar demographic. It’s more likely that they actually know you, or have followed you from the beginning of your online presence – they know, like and trust you. This is why reaching a smaller number of your specific and engaged audience can be better than reaching a larger number of potentially less relevant followers of a bigger influencer.

This leads to another reason why it’s good to be a micro-influencer: trust and authenticity. Micro-influencers are less likely to publish as many sponsored posts and ads as bigger influencers, and when they do talk about brands their recommendations are more trusted by their faithful followers.

One of the reasons why micro-influencers can be even more trusted than everyday customers when it comes to recommendations is the ‘expert’ factor. Expertcity, another influencer marketing platform, discovered that micro-influencers have 22.2 times more ‘buying conversations’ than regular consumers and more consumers find them to be more believable and credible, more knowledgeable and better at explaining products than regular consumers.

So maybe that’s why their study showed that 82% of consumers are “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro–influencer, compared to 73% who are highly likely to act on a recommendation from an average person? It could be that the word of a micro-influencer could hold more sway than that of a friend in situations where an ‘expert’ opinion is more valued.

The Disadvantages of Being a Micro-influencer

It’s all the the word ‘micro’ – you may have better engagement and influence over a more specific target audience, but too often reach wins out. In order to get the same reach of a macro-influencer, marketers need to work with a group of micro-influencers, and that’s hard work. Finding influencers, negotiating with them all and managing multiple content pieces vs working with just one big influencer – many marketers opt for the second.

However it’s not all gloom and doom, because it’s often the group of micro-influencers that will deliver superior results, especially when it comes to conversion rates. Again, as a micro-influencer your audience is more specific, more connected to you and more likely to engage and act on your recommendations.

Monetise by Working with Brands

Whilst it’s encouraging that marketers are realising the value of micro-influencers, they can still very much try and earn your influence rather than pay for it. For example, they’re more likely to offer discount codes or giveaways for your audience, rather than pay you to do a sponsored post.

Rather than be frustrated with this, look at it as a way to prove your influence. If you can show a prospective brand partner proof of how you positively influenced your audience for a brand, then you’re more likely able to convince them that working with you on a paid basis is less risky and will ultimately give them a return on their investment.

Your first hurdle will be getting on their radar, so here are some great tips on marketing yourself. Start small and build up as you build up your evidence of influence. Focus on your engagement rates and other evidence that proves your influence, like testimonials from your followers. Get to know your audience demographics, either through the insights provided by the social platforms, Google Analytics or by directly surveying your audience. For more ideas, check out How to Pitch Brands When You Have Low Traffic.

Monetise via Affiliate Marketing

Put that recommendation power to work with affiliate marketing. Whilst normally a high-traffic strategy, affiliate marketing can work for micro-influencers too. Your best approach is to carefully select the products or services you affiliate. Choosing a few highly relevant products that you have a close affinity to will serve you better than promoting anything you can think of and hope it sticks. What are the products and services you use and love and find yourself naturally recommending?

Also consider the value of the product and the level or type of commission being offered. Naturally higher priced items can net you higher payouts, but make sure you can stand behind why your audience should purchase them. Affiliate programs on recurring services often offer recurring commissions, so you are rewarded for the lifetime of the customer, not just a once off payment. Examples of this include email marketing and other software services.

If you’re going to give affiliate marketing a go, remember it’s more than just dropping in a few links and hoping for the best. Don’t forget the ‘marketing’ part – create great content around the product, tell your story and it will resonate more with your audience. Want to know more? Check out  this podcast episode by Darren on how he makes money with affiliate marketing (even though he’s not a micro-influencer, many strategies are the same).

Monetise by Selling Your Own Products

If you have influence with an audience or community you have built up, no matter the size, one of the best ways you can monetise is by creating something for them to buy. Whether it’s an ebook, a course, a membership community or an event, you are in a great position to listen to your audience and create what they need.

An excellent example of this is when Lisa Corduff from Small Steps to Whole Foods decided to run a free challenge after having run a small blog and Facebook group for a couple of years. 550 people signed up to her challenge which she then transformed into a paid eight-week course which she has now launched multiple times to create a six-figure business. You can hear her story here. With less than 15,000 Facebook followers and just over 1500 Instagram followers she’s definitely a micro-influencer who is punching above her weight due to the trust and connection she’s built with her specific community.

So, are you a micro-influencer? Are you having success with any of the above monetisation strategies? Which one appeals and feels most achievable for you?

The post How to Monetise Your Influence Type: Micro-Influencers appeared first on ProBlogger.

     

The post How to Monetize Your Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar appeared first on ProBlogger.

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When we think of influencers, we generally think of people with huge followings on their blog or social media platforms. There is more to influence than just audience numbers though, which is good news for the majority of us! Different influence types means there are different ways to monetize your influence as well.

In this series we’ll take a look at which monetisation strategies better suit your influence type. Hopefully you’ll find something that works in your particular situation, or a mix of strategies you can use do you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

In each context (or type of Influencer) we’re going to look at influence based on two factors to help inform the best ways to monetize:

a) where is your traffic is coming from?
b) what does the engagement look like?

Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar

Do you have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok or YouTube followers? Maybe you’re a celebrity of some kind? More likely you’re not quite there yet, but on the way, so here’s an insight into monetising the influence you have on one specific platform.

Celebrity endorsement is of course used and sought out by brands trying to make it onto the radar of their audiences. The combination of the reach and perceived endorsement is hard to look over, but with wildly differing rates among influencers, increasingly difficult to value! Social Media Stars are the new celebrity and are certainly enjoying their time in the influencer marketing spotlight (and its associated marketing spends). The shine is starting wear off however as marketers are starting to realise what the difference between reach and engagement, and even the type of engagement, means to their bottom line.

Monetize Your Influence Type Working with Brands

If you’ve got a large following you can certainly monetize by working with brands for product placements and endorsements – how much you can expect to successfully charge however will depend on whether you’re just driving impressions or actions.

Where is your traffic coming from?

In this case, where are your followers coming from? Are they following you because you are you (ie a celebrity in their eyes), because of your content, or (not recommended) because you bought them or are using bots to gain followers?

Some brands (or more likely the agencies that work for them) will not care who or where your followers come from – they just want eyeballs. It’s a short-sighted approach and amounts to paying over the odds for awareness. Impressions can usually be bought more cost-effectively through Facebook ads.

This is why marketers are starting to place lesser value on follower stats and even engagements. I’ve recently learned of one platform valuing followers as low as $0.001 per follower (yes, that is one tenth of one cent or a CPM of $1), or you can check out this article to see how marketers are arriving at a slightly more generous CPM of $5 or a Cost Per Engagement (for each like, comment, share) of just $0.25.

These are media buying metrics and the trend looks like the price of reach through influencers is heading south. So your best tactic is to trade on your influence rather than your reach. More importance should be placed on why your followers are following you, because this generally tends to inform the type of engagement and results you can get for a brand.

What does the engagement look like?

Social media superstars can have what looks like impressive reach and engagement, but on closer inspection that engagement can be quite shallow and doesn’t translate to influencing on behalf of a brand. It comes down to this – are your followers engaging with you or with your content? If you feature a brand in your Instagram post, let’s say a handbag, are your followers comments “You look amazing”, “Love your style”, “Insert emoji bot comment here” or are they “Does that bag come in other colours?”, “Where can I buy it?”, “Is it free trade?”, “Do you have a discount code?”

If it’s the latter, you can prove that you can drive conversions and should charge brands for your influence accordingly.

True influence drives action, not just awareness. There are certain verticals where social media influencers will be more likely able to drive these actions, for example: fashion, beauty, affordable gadgets, restaurants and experiences. These are purchases that are just a step above being convenience goods, where your followers are using you as a simple filter to help them make relatively low risk decisions.

Conversely there are some verticals that can almost be too aspirational and even a high level of engagement has less chance of converting. For example, health and wellness, fitness (fitspo), luxury goods. We can like them all day, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to sign up to the gym, actually change our eating or cooking habits, or buy that gorgeous $30,000 watch. These verticals convert better for people who are more relatable, which brings us to an alternative monetisation strategy.

Monetize Your Influence Type by Selling Your Own Products

If you do have a large following on one specific platform, you can use all the aforementioned influence to sell your own products, rather than someone else’s! This is especially so when your audience is more connected to you than just your content. Anyone can curate pretty content that people will click on, but only you can create an authentic connection with an audience and earn their trust.

Where is your traffic coming from?

Selling your own products works best when people subscribe to you because they see you as an authority or thought leader and they keep coming back for more. They seek you out rather than waiting for you to come up in a news feed, for example they subscribe to your YouTube channel and/or sign up to your email list. They want what you have, whether that be an uncluttered house, a passive income lifestyle, a skill they want to master. They’re coming to you to solve their problems, so create a solution and sell it to them.

What does the engagement look like?

When the level of engagement is deeper, the connection to your audience is stronger. Conversations trump likes, real life behind the scenes (ie Snapchat and FB Live) means more than perfectly curated content (Instagram feeds), content people can relate to and feel like you understand what they’re experiencing rather than superficial endorsements. Yes, you could still work with brands and influence this audience, but what they really want is you. When the connection and the intent of the audience (ie their search to find a solution to their problems) is this strong, create a product! Whether that be an eBook, a course, or even consulting services – listen to them and give them what they want.

You don’t have to be a social media superstar to sell your own products – this monetisation strategy and working with brands are not exclusive to influencers with large audiences. Stay tuned for the next instalment in the series where we’ll take a look at how you can monetize your influence when your traffic is passive and less connected to you.

Are you a social media influencer who relies on working with brands? Are you noticing brands being less willing to pay or pay as much? Would you consider selling your own products?

The post How to Monetize Your Influence Type: Platform-Specific Superstar appeared first on ProBlogger.