You know everyone thinks we’re fools, right?
To most of the world, blogging is a joke.
It isn’t a career. It isn’t a way to make money. It isn’t a tool for changing the world.
It’s
a hobby, a diversion, a fad that’ll come and go. Sure, you can start a
blog, but don’t count on it to take you anywhere. That’s just silly.
Try
telling your family or friends or coworkers you want to quit your job
and make money blogging. They’ll smile politely and ask, “Does anybody
really make money from that?”
Yes, they want you to have dreams. Yes, they want you to chase them. Yes, they want you to succeed.
But they also want you to be “realistic.”
If
you really want to improve your life, you should get an advanced
degree, write a book, or even start your own business, not hang all your
hopes and dreams on some stupid little blog. There’s no money in it.
Or is there?
I’m hesitant to say this, but…
This Blog Makes $100,000 per Month
In
January and February, we cleared over $100,000 per month in sales. The
verdict is still out on March, but if we didn’t make it, we should be
close enough.
How?
Well, I’ll tell you. Not because I want to brag (well, maybe a little), but because most of the advice out there about monetizing your blog is complete crap.
For instance, do you see any ads on this site?
No? How about e-books for sale?
None of those either, huh? In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find anything for sale at all.
There’s a reason why.
Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the smartest bloggers on the planet. I worked with Brian Clark as he built Copyblogger to
a multimillion dollar brand. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah also hired me to
help them launch the KISSmetrics blog, and while they’re not big on
publishing revenue numbers, they did recently close a $7 million venture capital round.
Combined,
I wouldn’t be surprised if both blogs have earned more than $50
million. In comparison, the $100,000 per month I’ve managed to generate
is a pittance.
Want to know how much money you could be making from your blog? Find out with our free Blog Profit Calculator.
But everyone has to start somewhere, right? 
The
reason this blog has made so much money so fast is I learned from the
best, and then when I left, I kept learning. Every day, I crunch
numbers, read books, talk to experts, and spend at least 30 minutes in
silence, staring into the distance, doing nothing but thinking.
It’s paid off. If you’ll take some of these lessons to heart, it’ll pay off for you too.
Because here’s the thing:
You’re Not a Fool. You Can Make Money Blogging.
So, you want to make a living teaching other people what you know? Nothing wrong with that.
Professors do it. So do public speakers and best-selling authors.
Hell, consulting is a $415 billion industry, and what are all those consultants doing?
Getting paid to teach.
Blogging is no different. It’s just the same old models with some rocket fuel thrown in, courtesy of social media.
In fact, we might as well call that the first lesson:
Lesson #1: You’re Not Just a Blogger
You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor, maybe even an entrepreneur. Your blog is simply a launchpad for all those things.
Look
around, and you’ll find nearly all “bloggers” who make a decent income
have books, courses, a side career as a keynote speaker, or even
software. That’s how they make money. Their blog is just the “freebie”
they give away to attract customers or clients.
Lesson #2: Don’t Sell Advertising
Selling
ads is attractive, because it’s passive income, but you can usually
make 3-10X more money using the same “ad space” to sell your own
products and services or even promote an affiliate product.
Pat Flynn, for example, makes about $50,000 a month in commissions from promoting Bluehost.
Here
at BBT, we mostly promote our own products, but we’re also in the
process of creating affiliate sales funnels for LeadPages and
Stablehost, both of which offer hefty commissions (and are great
products too!)
Lesson #3: Build the Funnel in Reverse
We’ve all experienced sales funnels.
A
company entices you with a freebie, then they offer you something cheap
but irresistible, and then they gradually sweet talk you into buying
more and more expensive stuff. It’s a tried and true marketing tactic,
and you should absolutely build a sales funnel for your blog.
What you might not know is you should build it in reverse.
A lot of bloggers launch a cheap e-book as
their first product, and then they get frustrated when they don’t make
much money. Here’s why: the real profit is at the end of the funnel, not
the beginning.
Selling
e-books is fine and dandy if you have half a dozen more expensive
products to offer your customer afterwards, but it’s downright silly if
you don’t. You’re much better off creating and selling the expensive
product first, and then gradually create cheaper and cheaper products.
When
you do have some less expensive products to sell, you can offer those
to new people first, safe in the knowledge that you have something more
profitable up your sleeve to sell them later.
Here
at BBT, our products cost $9,997, $997, and $591. We’re working our way
down the funnel in reverse, releasing the most expensive products first
and then gradually getting cheaper and cheaper. It’s been much, much
more profitable this way.
Lesson #4: There’s No Such Thing As a “Cheap” Market
“But Jon,” I can hear you spluttering. “I can’t sell a $10,000 product! My customers don’t have that much money.”
My
response: you’re 98% right. Unless you’re selling exclusively to
multimillionaires, the vast majority of your customer base won’t be able
to afford premium products, but what’s interesting is it doesn’t matter. Often times, you can make more money selling to the 2% than you can to the entire 98% combined.
For
instance, our $10,000 product is a year-long coaching program for
writers – a group that’s not exactly known for their wealth, but I
always fill all 10 spots within minutes of
opening the program. Here’s why: I notify 40,000 writers about it. 2%
of 40,000 is 800 people who might possibly buy a product in that price
range. By only accepting 10, I’m creating a situation of extreme
scarcity.
You
can do the same thing, even if your list is much smaller. If you have
100 subscribers, chances are two of them might be willing to buy premium
products or services from you, and those two will often pay you more
money than the other 98 combined.
Lesson #5: By Charging Premium Prices, You Can Offer Premium Service
Feel guilty about charging that much money? You shouldn’t.
By
charging premium prices, you can offer premium service, doing
everything possible to help your customers get results. For example,
with my coaching program, I get on the phone with students every week,
review their homework, answer their questions, look at their blog, and
guide them through every step of the process.
Could
I put that same information in a $7 e-book? Sure, but I couldn’t give
anyone one-on-one help at that price, and that’s what people who buy
premium products and services are paying for.
Lesson #6: Deliberately Delay the Sale
Another big shift in thinking: rather than trying to push everyone to buy your products upfront, smart bloggers delay the sale.
I first heard this idea from Rand Fishkin over at Moz.
They offer their blog readers a free trial to their Analytics and SEO
software, but after studying the behavior of their customers, they
noticed something interesting: people who read several blog posts before
signing up for a free trial stayed customers for two or three times
longer than people who didn’t.
I’ve
noticed the same thing with our customers. Instead of immediately
clobbering readers with sales pitches, it’s much better to give them
some content first and build trust before you begin talking about your
products and services. Yes, you’ll make less money in the short term,
but the long-term profits go through the roof.
Lesson #7: You Are the Bottleneck
Without
a doubt, time is our biggest problem as bloggers. Not only are we
expected to publish a continuous stream of content on our blogs, but we
also have to deal with technical issues, read books and articles about
our field, create new products to sell, answer questions from readers…
the list goes on and on. The further into it you go, the more clear it
becomes that you can’t do everything.
So, what’s the answer?
Believe
it or not, I found answers from studying manufacturing processes. If
one machine is working slower than others in a plant, it can literally
cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. To make sure it
never happens, smart plant managers are willing to spend any amount of money to eliminate bottlenecks. They have an unlimited budget, because the cost of eliminating the bottleneck never comes anywhere close to the cost of the bottleneck itself.
The
same is true for us, except the solutions are often different. Instead
of buying a new machine, for example, we might purchase a new type of
software that automates some of our business, or we might hire a virtual
assistant or programmer. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile
if it saves you enough time, because then you can dedicate that time to
higher value activities.
Lesson #8: Measure The Value of Everything You Do
What are those higher value activities, exactly?
Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase traffic,
for example, start measuring the visitors per hour invested. Let’s say
you invest three hours in writing a post, and it brings you 100
visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post that brings
you 500 visitors. The first activity has an hourly rate of 33 visitors
per hour. The second activity has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per
hour. Guest posting, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog.
Granted,
it’s a short-term perspective, not taking into account long-term gains,
but it’s still extremely useful to start measuring your time this way.
Not just for traffic, but also for subscriber growth and revenue.
Lesson #9: In the Beginning, Creating Content for Your Own Blog Is Silly
I
tried to sneak this one under lesson #8, but I think it’s important
enough to get its own number, even if it does get me labeled a heretic
and burned at the stake. Because here’s the deal:
In
the beginning, your blog is like an empty classroom. Standing in front
and giving a lecture is silly, because sure, it might make you feel
important, but there’s nobody listening.
You’re all alone, and you can come up with the smartest, most
entertaining lecture in the history of mankind, but it won’t matter,
because no one else heard it.
When you first start out, writing content for your own blog is one of the least efficient
ways of building your audience. You’re far better off serving a little
time as a “guest lecturer” first. In other words, write guest posts for someone else’s audience, impress the hell out of them, and siphon off a portion of their readership for your own.
That’s what we did here at BBT, and it resulted in the most successful blog launch in history:
13,000 email subscribers in 60 days, before I even wrote a single blog
post. We had nothing but a coming soon page and an invitation to join
our email list. Sounds strange, but I can promise you it’s vastly more
efficient.
You
don’t have to wait until you get to 13,000 subscribers to start, but
I’d advise accumulating at least a few hundred. That way, you have an
audience to share your content when you start publishing posts.
Lesson #10: Don’t Waste Time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.
Here’s another shocker: you know your dream of building up a huge following on
Facebook
or
Twitter and then using it to promote your blog? Well, it’s a dumb idea.
Out of everything we’ve tested, building our own social media accounts
produced the lowest visitor per hour figure. In other words, it’s quite possibly the worst way you can spend your time.
Does that mean having followers in those places is useless?
No. Facebook is nice because you can advertise to your followers. Google+ can help boost your search engine rankings.
Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be near the top of your
list for things to do. In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at
all until you hit 10,000 subscribers, and then outsource the management
of them to someone else. You can use your time more efficiently in other
places, such as:
Lesson #11: Webinars Kick Butt
If
you’ve been on our list for long, you know that we do a lot of
webinars. Here’s why: on average, each webinar generates $40,000 per
hour invested. It’s by far the most profitable thing I do. Nothing else
even comes close. If you’re wondering how on earth we make that much
money, all you have to do is attend one of our webinars to find out.
Everything we do is on display, and you can study it, free of charge.
Interestingly,
webinars are also the most effective way to build our subscriber base.
When doing webinars for other people, we average 500 new email
subscribers per hour invested. It’s not uncommon to gain 1,000-2,000
email subscribers from a single webinar. If we’re promoting a product,
we usually make at least $10,000 too.
Translation: webinars kick butt.
Lesson #12: Longer Content Gets More Traffic
You know what else works? Long content.
It
might seem strange, but on average, longer content gets much more
traffic than shorter content. Not just for us, but for our students too,
regardless of the niche, and here’s a post where SEO expert Neil Patel came to the same conclusion.
The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post. That’s why
posts here on BBT are much longer than your average blog.
Granted,
content of that length also takes longer to produce, but if you measure
the visitors per hour invested, longer content still wins by a mile.
Assuming you’re promoting it, of course.
Lesson #13: Promote The Crap Out of Your Content
The
problem is almost no one promotes their content enough. And by
“promotion,” I’m not talking about sharing your own posts on Twitter and
Facebook. I’m talking aboutblogger outreach – the process of building relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.
At
a minimum, you should spend just as much time on outreach as you do
creating your own content. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week
writing blog posts, you should be spending 10 hours a week on outreach
too.
Can’t
do that? Then scale back how much content you’re creating. Spend five
hours on writing blog posts and five hours on outreach. You’ll get
better results.
Lesson #14: Ignore SEO for the First Year
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against SEO. Far from it. We now get tons of traffic from Google. I just think most bloggers focus on it way too early.
Again,
it all comes down to time. When your blog is new, the most efficient
uses of your time fall into three broad categories: building
relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating
content worth linking to, and selling your products and services. If you
do those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and
prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic without doing
anything.
And then you can focus on other things that matter more, such as…
Lesson #15: Your Email List Is More Important Than Anything Else
In
analytics, there is a principle called “the one metric that matters”
(OMTM). The idea is that you find a single number that accurately
predicts the success or failure of your project.
In
the case of blogging, that number is the size of your email list. (Not
RSS, mind you – it’s dying a slow but certain death.) In my experience,
your email list is the most accurate predictor of how much money you’ll
make.
Here
at BBT, we make about three dollars per subscriber per month – an
impressive feat, due mostly to our skill with marketing. The number
isn’t important, though. The point is that I can accurately predict our
sales based on the number of subscribers. So can you.
If
you’re new to this, I would strive for one dollar per subscriber per
month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers
should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers
would result in $10,000 per month in sales, and so on.
The
more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Granted, your
relationship with your subscribers and the quality of your products or
services and dozens of other factors still matter, but to drive revenue,
focus on email list growth. To make money blogging, it’s absolutely
essential.
Find out how much money your blog could be making – and how quickly you could grow your email list – with our free Blog Profit Calculator.
Lesson #16: Start Selling from Day One
How long should you wait before you begin selling? 1,000 subscribers? 10,000 subscribers? More?
Nope. Start selling from day one. Here’s why:
One
of the biggest factors affecting the speed of your growth is who you
can hire to help you. Because you’re the bottleneck, remember? So you
want to hire a virtual assistant and someone to handle all of the
technical details as soon as you possibly can, but of course, that
requires money. Hence the need to start selling immediately.
Now,
a caveat: don’t turn your blog into a gigantic sales pitch. Nobody
likes that. You should, however, be offering something your audience
wants and needs. Don’t push them on it, but do make it available, and do
remind them from time to time that they can purchase it.
Lesson #17: Your Product Ideas Suck
You probably have all kinds of ideas for things you can sell, right? E-books, courses, maybe an iPhone app? Or a service?
Well, here’s the bad news:
More
than likely, your ideas for products suck. The good news is you’re not
alone in this position. Everyone’s ideas for products suck, including
mine. Here’s why:
We all tend to create products we can see people need, but they’re not aware of it yet. We think if we show them the magnitude of their problem we can convince them to buy our product or service to solve it.
If
you’re Steve Jobs, you can do that, but I have more bad news for you:
you’re not Steve Jobs. You’re a beginning marketer, and as a beginner,
you should only be selling products that solve problems your customer
already knows they have. If you have to convince them the problem
exists, you’ve already lost the battle.
Lesson #18: Surveys Are Dangerous
So,
how do you find what problems exist in the mind of your customer?
Traditionally, the answer is a survey, but I’ll warn you: surveys are
dangerous. Ask the wrong question, and you’ll get an extremely
misleading answer. Use that answer to guide your venture, and you can
waste years of your life, not to mention possibly going bankrupt.
If
you’re a beginner, I recommend asking one and only one question:
“what’s your biggest frustration with <topic> right now?” So, in
my case, it would be “what’s your biggest frustration with blogging
right now?” That’s it. Nothing more. Look for patterns in the answers
you receive, and you’ll learn a ton about what products or services you
need to create.
Lesson #19: Start with Services, Then Expand into Products
Once
you find a common problem, start offering a service where you solve the
problem for your audience. The reason is simple: you can start offering
the service immediately. You don’t have to create a product first.
You’ll also learn more about the problem as you attempt to solve it
yourself.
When
I started, for example, I worked as a blog traffic specialist. I was
contracted with a few different advertising agencies, and every time
they wanted to increase the traffic for a client’s blog, they called me.
I didn’t just advise them. I did the work myself, redesigning the site,
creating the content, everything.
It
taught me a ton about what worked and what didn’t. It was also
immediate revenue. The first month I offered my services, I made
something like $5,000.
After
working for more than a year as a traffic specialist, I felt I really
understood the problem and how to solve it, so I created my first
product: a course located atguestblogging.com. The first month, it generated something like $30,000 in sales, and now it brings in more than $250,000 per year.
It’s
a wonderful product, but here’s the thing: I don’t think I could’ve
created it if I hadn’t worked as a service provider first. I wouldn’t
have had the knowledge or the money. Keep that in mind when you’re
deciding what to offer first.
Lesson #20: Teach Others What You Learned
Now, we come to the reason for this post.
Why
on earth would the CEO of the company (me) work for hours to write a
post like this, sharing all our secrets? It’s closing in on 4,000 words,
for God sakes!
Simple:
It’s
my responsibility. If people are ever going to respect blogging as a
legitimate business model, those of us who are successful have to speak
up and share what we’ve learned. None of us works in a vacuum. The only
way we can advance our field as a whole is to collectively share what
we’ve learned.
And it is a
field. There are thousands of people around the world making a living
from blogging. The problem is, there’s not a repository, a central
community where we can all talk and learn from each other. Over the next
few months, that’s something we’re going to change.
In the meantime, could you do me a favor?
Share
this post. Not just so it’ll get me traffic, but so other people can
see that you really can earn a legitimate income from blogging. Maybe
reading this will even help them do it.
After all, isn’t that what we’re here to do? Help people?
In
the end, that’s what I love most about blogging: every article we
publish, every course we create, every coaching call we do can change
somebody’s life. Maybe not always in a big way, but we touch thousands
upon thousands of people, and we make their lives just a little bit
better. We inform them, we inspire them, we give them the roadmap for
achieving their dreams.
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