My clients always ask me how my business is structured and why I have been able to succeed on line. I very quickly turn the discussion to on line real estate and the power of blogging. They want to know exactly how to make money blogging. My response to them is often very frustrating to them. I tell them that they need to commit to a year or more of content generation and relationship building. This does not mean that there is not money to be made in the first 12 months. The money will come in good time. The key to making money from blogging is making correct decisions early on and then doing the required work to succeed. I will share with your my top success tips on making money with blogging below. Each of them is very important, and you should weight each one equally. Here they are:
1. Get A Great Money Niche — You will not make much money if you do not select the correct money niche. You need to make sure the niche has money being spent in it. You need to do some old fashioned research in a local bookstore. Find the magazine rack and look for magazines in the niche you are thinking about building your blog around. If you do not see any magazines in this niche, you are probably in the wrong niche. When you find magazines in your proposed niche, open some magazines and look at the space ads in the back of them. This will give you a great idea of what kinds of products and services are being successfully sold in this niche. Take a tablet with you and make some good notes. This type of “hand on” research can prove to you right away that you indeed have a great money niche to build upon.
2. Get Your Content Generation Hat On — You will not make money with your blogging if you do not have great content. What is great content? It is original thoughts and experiences that your personally write down in the form of blog posts. The best content focuses on helping your readers solve their issues and problems. When you ask “Can I make money blogging?”, my answer is always focused on your content. Will you be able to build out a blog that can really help people solve their problems or address their current issues? If the answer is yes… you are good to go. If the answer is no… you need to find a way to get to a yes answer, or you need to search for another niche. You are going to have to generate content ideas even if you plan on outsourcing a lot of your content. You simply have to get your content generation hat on for your particular niche. If this does not “flip your switch”, blogging may not be for you.
3. Write Top Quality Posts — This is a very key success factor for you, especially in the early stages of your blog development. You are going to have to write some very interesting posts to get your readers excited about coming to your blog. If you are trying to break into a competivie niche like “Make Money From Home”, you are going to have to write some superb posts, as many people have gone before you in this niche. You want to focus on sharing what you know and provide solutions to problems. You also want to do your best to make the information interesting. How can you do that? The best way I know to do that is to share personal experiences and stories as much as possible. The quality of your content is a huge factor in how quickly you will be able to build some “raving fans” on your blog.
4. Two Way Communication — When people ask me directly, “How do you make money blogging?”, I respond that I help people. I also emphasize that I get into conversations with people. That is the best way I know to get a good handle on what the person’s real problems are. I really like to engage in Skype chat with my readers. I do it almost every day. Most of my readers do not find Skype as a threatening means of communication. A lot of people fear getting on the phone because they think I am going to try to sell them something. You will find the medium that works best for you. I can tell you for sure, you will not make a lot of sales without connecting with your audience. The way you communicate with your readers is your choice. I juse want to make sure you know that you should really go out of your way to open up two way communications with your readers. It is vitally important to your success.
5. Sell Only Quality Products and Services — Do not sell junk. Let me repeat it. Do not sell junk to your readers. This will give you a black eye faster than anything else I can think of. How can you make sure you are not selling junk? You need to sell products and service that you have personally used and can give a personal testimonial to. This may limit what you can sell, but that is actually a very good thing. You do not want to sell just anything in your niche. You want to be a provider of solid information to your readers. When you only recommend “the best”, your readers will like you and respect your judgment. When your readers start to respect your judgement, they will listen to what you tell them. When your readers start to listen to your recommendations they will buy things that your recommend. That is how you will start to make money from blogging.
6. Use Pre-Sell Techniques – People that make money blogging on line generally use some solid pre-sell techniques to “warm their potential customers up”. You are trying to sell your products and services to people via a website. If you think you are going to just send traffic to your blog and people are going to “buy your stuff”, you are in for a rude awakening. People will take a look at a product or service several times on average before they make a buying decision. They will buy from people that they know, like and trust. When you provide some pre-sell information to your readers, you are actually helping you both. You are letting your readers know how the product works and how it can help them with their problems. What you get in return is the ability to show your readers what you know about the product and even more importantly that you care enough about them to share this key insight and information with them. Once you start to understand how to correctly do pre-selling, you will start to make some sales for the products and services you are recommending.
7. Help Your Readers, Don’t Constantly Sell Them — It all comes down to relationships. If you are sincerely interested in the well being of your customers, they will know this. If you are concerned enough about your readers well being that you look out for them and are an advocate for them, they will love you. This type of behavior will set you apart from many other marketers in your niche that just want to sell their stuff. When you start to learn how to successfully help your readers, you will have found the key to making money from blogging. Your readers will have no problem at all in buying the products and services that you recommend when they truly believe the products will help them with their personal issues. When you adopt a help first, sell second approach, you will develop some “fans for life” on your blog. These fans will soon become customers and then eventually “customers for life”.
As you can see, it is really not that hard to make money blogging. You just need to keep things in the proper perspective and take care of your readers. The sales and income you are looking for will become a natural extension of taking care of your readers.
{ 21 trackbacks }