If time were equal to money, every blogger today would be bankrupt.
The truth is, regardless if you are new to blogging, a seasoned veteran, or the king of your niche, each day you simply have more things that need to be done with your blog than you have time to accomplish.
You feel the need to write more, but the amount of time you have simply won’t allow it.
You currently have way more product ideas than you could ever create.
You get sucked in with the latest shiny new tool (or product) for increasing traffic to your website and risk getting your blog penalized by Google.
The truth is that there really is not enough time in the day to get everything done on your to-do list.
Even though you already know some tasks are more important than others, you realize you are not using your time wisely.
This bothers you because you know you are smarter than the results you are producing. You compare your content to your competitor’s content and your content is clearly better.
The fact is you really need to learn how to build a popular blog!
Learn How to Create a Popular Blog
So you wonder what the secret is, how can you get all those tasks done and still have time for sleep each night?
The answer might surprise you, because the solution is really simple. The most important lesson you’ll ever learn about blogging is to simply put the right things on your calendar every day.
That’s the secret!
If that doesn’t surprise you, let me expand on that a little further.
If you are currently struggling with your blog, you most likely think it has to do with making use of the wrong traffic technique or your writing is terrible or you may have chosen the wrong blogging topic, correct?
The actual truth could be yes, or it could be no, but it really doesn’t matter. The root cause of your problem is going to be the same.
You are simply putting the wrong things on your daily calendar, or what’s even worse, you don’t even have a calendar.
So let me go into a little more detail.
The Blog Basics Maturity Model
Have you ever written an e-book, but no one bought it?
Have you ever created a fantastic promotion for your blog, then no one visited the site?
Have you considered hiring a virtual assistant, then realize that the good ones are out of your price range?
These three problems are simply the result of putting the right things into the wrong sequence.
Every blog will go through five levels of maturity.
If you are not sure what stage you are in, or if you are trying to accomplish something that should be in a different stages, the will be much more difficult.
For example, it is impossible to make very much money from your blog until you complete the first four stages. Even if you are trying to sell e-books, services, products, or whatever, it simply will not work unless you get extremely lucky.
It is just a waste of time promoting the content on the blog until you have made the appropriate connections. Doesn’t matter how good the content is, you will almost always get ignored.
So how can you grow your blog?
You need to first understand the maturity stages that blogs go through:
The Authority Blog Maturity Stages
Stage 1: Awareness
Do you feel like you have no clue as to what you are doing sometimes? If so, this is the awareness stage of the blogging process. You are still in the learning phase, trying to understand who your audience is, how you can help your growing audience, and power of different authorities working in your niche.
Stage 2: Relationships
Once you have an understanding of how blogging works, you must build strong relationships with people in the position to help you. These can range from gurus, podcasters, veteran bloggers, and other important people within your niche. You can not exit this stage until you have three or more relationships with authorities that are interested in helping you to succeed.
Stage 3: Conversions
Now you need to learn how to convert visitors to your blog into e-mail subscribers. The size of your e-mail list is going to be the largest contributing factor in whether you make money online or not. This can take a while for many blogs, and you will exit this stage when you have implemented a process on autopilot for converting those unique blog visitors into valued subscribers.
Stage 4: Content
At this stage you are ready to grow your e-mail list by creating some killer content (i.e., epic content). Don’t focus only on blog posts exclusively, work on making some compelling free reports, courses, and videos. This can be the most challenging stage for many bloggers because it can take the longest. To exit this stage, you need to be getting at least 10,000 visitors to the blog, even though the money is not really rolling in yet. That is when you move to the final stage.
Stage 5: Monetization
This is the last stage, finally making money with your blog. To be successful at the start, you should focus on selling services to your e-mail list of subscribers. Either provide them a service or provide advice on the telephone. Regardless, that is the fastest way that you are going to earn those six figures you have been dreaming about.
In the comment section below, tell me what stage you’re in right now?
If you are stuck in the awareness stage, don’t be discouraged. Everyone has to start there. Once you know what stage you are in, accept it, and start working on moving to the next stage.
Shh! The Hidden Secret to Building a Popular Blog
Are you ready for the secret?
Start working through the blog maturity model in the right order!
Pretty simple, right?
The truth is it’s really not as simple as it sounds. Here’s why:
Depending which stage you are in, the activities that you need to focus on change. It’s important that you focus on doing things in the right order to get the quickest results.
To move to the next stage, you need to learn new skills.
Many bloggers stay stuck at certain stages because they don’t learn the skills needed to advance to the next stage.
This is where most bloggers start outsourcing activities for their blog.
You can outsource activities once the blog begins to make money, not before.
So what about now? You have to do it all yourself!
You might hate doing these steps, but that is the name of this game. Building a popular blog isn’t easy, it takes a lot of hard work.
If you don’t do these things, chances are you will never have a popular blog.
This is where having that calendar comes into play!
Blogging Productivity: Efficiency and Effectiveness
If you are curious about how I accomplish so much in so little time, here is my little secret:
I have a calendar that I put all my tasks on that help me advance to the next stage. I simply do what the calendar tells me.
I know it sounds boring, but this really is the reason that many bloggers fail. I hate doing most of the stuff on my calendar, and I hate scheduling everything.
But guess what?
There really isn’t anything else that works.
Humans are procrastinating creatures.
I will give you a great example in a few minutes of a sample calendar with all the stages you will need and what needs to be done within those stages. Most simply take these steps and just drop in a to do list thinking they can short cut the process.
Bad news for you: it will not work! You will do things that are easy or that you enjoy doing, leaving the challenging stuff for another day. Those things you really hate doing, you will find excuses to avoid forever.
You simply must:
- Make the most urgent tasks appointments on that calendar.
- Never move that appointment. This is like visiting with your physician when a life threatening surgery is needed.
- Do exactly what the calendar tells you.
I recommend Google Calendar because it is free, it is simple, and it works amazingly well. Simply set it up to remind you of important tasks, before jumping to the next task, and it will bug you all day long to get moving and get it done.
Any system will work as long as you follow the rules that I have discussed with you.
Consistently Taking Action Is Important to Your Blog’s Success
Now you are probably wondering several things, but let me address some of the most common questions at this stage.
- Is there a certain time each day when I need to do these things?
- How many of these tasks must I do each day?
- Is there software available to help keep everything in order?
- Should the day be scheduled in pieces or all at once?
Just experiment and use what works best for you. There really is no right or wrong answer here; just be sure that you follow the rules that I mentioned previously.
One approach that tends to work well for many people is to break down your tasks into two different type days:
- The Focus Days: The concept here is to simply concentrate on one huge task, designing a free report or writing a large blog post. You do not work on anything that day but this one huge task. Don’t send e-mails. Don’t make telephone calls. Turn your cell phone off and apply laser focus to completing this task.
- The Buffer Days: These are the days where you group together a variety of smaller tasks in the same day. These might include updating blog metrics, responding to comments, posting social media, or content promotion. All of these things get scheduled back-to-back in any order. Blow through this list quickly and get everything done. It might sound exhausting at first, but once it is done, you are free to ignore this stuff on your focus days.
Set a schedule for your focus days and buffer days. For example, my general schedule is that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are always my focus days. Then Tuesday and Thursday are the buffer days.
I make an effort to take the weekends off, to spend time with the wife and kids, although it’s rare that I take an entire weekend off.
It’s important to be flexible with your schedule as needed. For example, if you’re creating a new ebook, you might decide to mix up your schedule and have three focus days in a row.
Whatever works for you is up to you. The key is that you are completing the right things in your stage.
The Awareness Stage
If you are new to blogging, you need to accept one simple fact.
You do not know anything right now!
You do not know anything about WordPress, blogging, your niche, your competition, your audience, or even how to write compelling content. You might argue with me on this matter, but the truth is, you really are kidding yourself because you are blind.
I was blind too, I was a beginner, and embarrassingly I admit I wrote on the wrong subject matter, I listened to people who knew less than me, and I was pissed when I didn’t see any results from my hard work.
I took this abuse for over three years before I reluctantly accepted the truth that I was in fact clueless. I mean that was three years I could have been focused, all wasted. Fortunately for you, we are going to address this issue right here and now.
You never move to the next stage until you are 100% sure you understand the stage you are in. By understand, I mean you must be able to predict what will happen next with deadly accuracy.
If you create a new blog post, you need to know well in advance this post is going to be extremely popular. If you create a call to action, you know in advance they will click the link and perform the action.
But how?
First you research, then you study, and finally you analyze.
Pretty boring stuff right?
It is, and that is why most bloggers fail. However, this is going to be the difference between success and failure for you.
What Must Be Done in This Stage
The simple answer is learning. You need to really study marketing (or internet marketing).
Now I know what you are thinking already.
What the heck do you mean marketing? I’m a writer (i.e., blogger), not some creepy internet marketer.
Think about this. Back in your school days, the teachers you remember today who really connected with you never just told you about the subject matter. These teachers made you care about that topic. They showed you why it was important and why you needed to pay attention.
The most savvy bloggers utilize the same technique. In each post they write, they never teach their audience anything, they sell the audience on giving them their attention. They make the audience care!
But how?
Utilizing the techniques that marketers use to sell services and products. They use these techniques to sell their ideas.
Learn From The Best Bloggers In Your Niche
The most popular bloggers are often appointed to their position.
In every single niche, there are going to be a group of influencers that will decide just how popular your blog is going to become. If they like your blog, then you are rewarded with traffic. If they do not, you will get ignored forever.
So who are these people?
It is different for each niche, but these three different categories of influencers are currently online:
- The Popular Blogger: These are people who run or own popular blogs. Take a look at Alltop or go to your browser and search “best [TOPIC] blogs” to see the list. For example, my wife’s blog is about curly hair care, so she would search for “best curly hair blogs” to find a list of blogs in her niche. Be sure to drill down to lesser popular niches (or sub-niches) in your space to find additional blogs that are getting traffic.
- The PodCaster: These are people who have podcasts currently on iTunes. If you are not running iTunes, download it today and do a search in your niche. Again, if your niche is not popular, drill down and find similar subjects where your audience could be interested.
- The Guru: These are those people who are teachers, public speakers, and best-selling authors who are actively selling information and courses on particular subjects. Look on Amazon for best selling authors or check local conferences for the author line-up in your niche.
You need to develop a list of approximately 20 or more influences, then you need to start stalking these individuals. Not literally, but you need to start absorbing everything you can pertaining to these people.
Why?
When most people go to a job interview, they take the time to get to know a little about the company looking to hire them. They do not consume every piece of information, they simply get more familiar so that they can come off as an authority on the company if asked. They find out about that companies founder, history, product lines, and more. The more time they spend on research, the better prepared they are for that interview, and the more easily they separate themselves from the other applicants.
The same is true when it comes to blogging.
During the next year, you need to position yourself so that you have some type of relationship with each one of those influencers on your list. The better you get to know all about them, the easier you will find it will be to make a connection with them. When you do get a chance to speak with them, you will be better prepared to sound like you too are an authority in that space.
So, what can you do to make this happen?
Pay close attention to everything they do each day. Subscribe to their blogs, podcasts, and their email list. Then be sure to follow them on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. If they are hanging out somewhere, so should you!
Then you simply WATCH what they do each day! Very Carefully!
You will need to dedicate at least one hour each day keeping a close eye on these influencers. Watch what they share, which topics they are interested in, and what types of new projects they are going to be working on.
It might seem like this is quite a bit to do, so here are two tools that make the process easier.
- Hootsuite: This free tool is a social media management dashboard that will allow you to keep all your social feeds in one easy to read location. Here you can monitor Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter on the same screen, easily keeping tabs on what is going on.
- Feedly: Another free tool that will show you all posts from different blogs in one simple to read location. Categorize these posts and read them at your convenience.
Study the Content That Bloggers In Your Niche Produce
In order to become a popular blogger, you need to publish the best possible content on your subject. This isn’t a once a month process, you need to do this each time you are ready to submit new content.
Does this surprise you?
Many beginners are in fact surprised. It doesn’t occur to them they are in such competition for that audience. They also have little clue what great content is all about.
This is the reason they fail time and time again!
Can you imagine a professional sports team trying to win a game without understanding their opponent. They would never be in a position to win the game. This is exactly what is happening everyday when it comes to blogging.
One other important note:
By saying the best or top in any industry, we simply mean as far as popularity goes. The more comments, shares, and links that blog post receives, the better the result. It doesn’t matter if you like the post or not. What matters here is how the influencers feel about your post, share it, comment on it, and link to it.
How to Find the Most Popular Content in Your Niche
Start this process by using a free tool named Social Crawlytics. This tool will provide you a list of all the postings in a blog ranked by their shares. Click through the list, read the post, then study the structure. Then you begin to develop some ideas as to why it is so popular.
Study the posts with the most incoming links. You can use tools like Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer to provide you a list of blogs sorted by authority links. Study these as well. These two tools cost money, so start out with the free one until you have money budgeted to buy them.
What You Should Not Be Doing Right Now
You should not be doing anything that is not on that list.
Really? Not even making or writing posts?
Nothing! Here is why:
Until you have mastered the basics and learned which content is popular and why, nothing you write is going to have a chance at getting traffic. Stop wasting your valuable time!
Sample Schedule for the Awareness Stage
When in the awareness stage, how should you be spending your time?
Here is a basic sample schedule that will help guide you through this stage.
Weekdays
- Before breakfast: Use Feedly and Hootsuite (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During lunch: Read a marketing book (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During your commute: Listen to marketing related podcasts or audio books (120 minutes or 2 hours)
Weekends
- Use Social Crawlytics (300 minutes or 5 hours)
Time Invested Per Week
- 25 hours
Estimated Time to Complete This Stage
- Approximately 4-10 weeks, depending on your work ethic
Moving to the Next Stage
- You have read at least 100 blog posts from your influencers and studied why they’re successful.
- You have listened to five or more podcast episodes from influencers.
- You have read or listen to at least three marketing books.
The awareness stage is about education and preparation.
The Relationship Stage
Blogging (and getting traffic to your website) is nothing more than a popularity contest. It isn’t spiteful or childish, it is all about having the right people in your space helping you by making relationships.
These relationships you make are the most important aspect of your success. More important than your writing, your expertise in your niche, and your dedication and persistence.
It will take some time to build up these relationships. You do not need to be personally close to all the influencers in your space, but you do need a few strong relationships before you go to the next stage.
Here is how you can build up those relationships.
What You Need to Be Doing in This Stage
There are many different ways you can start building relationships with influencers in your niche.
For example, you could start by conducting interviews or guest blogging.
However, before you start doing those things, you should create a coming soon page first.
Why?
Assuming that your blog is new, you haven’t written any blog posts yet. So, you need a placeholder.
Once you create the coming soon page, you can easily capture names for you email list as anxious readers will want to be part of the launch.
These pages can be created in minutes using a free WordPress theme like LaunchEffect.
Now Your Guest Blogging Crash Course
The key to guest blogging is like being an opening act for a famous rock band. Give the band a chance to kick back and relax, they in turn give you the opportunity to perform in front of a huge hungry audience.
Guest blogging is one of the most effective networking strategies for bloggers (especially newbies).
If you take the time to write a guest post for a very popular blog, you have the chance of grabbing the attention of the editorial team as well. Then you also get the added traffic from all those other bloggers. Keep on writing great posts and in time, everyone will come to recognize you as a growing force in your space.
But how do you write that great guest post?
Find the writing guidelines for the blog you are interested in writing for. Send them a short pitch offering a number of headlines for posts with a short synopsis of what the content will reflect. If they like some of the ideas, they will gladly accept. If these ideas are not what they are looking for, they will simply pass on the ideas.
In order to build out those relationships, try publishing two or more guest posts each month. In between those pitches, continue writing rough drafts, make revisions, answer comments. Each of the posts should take about 20 hours to perfect. Remember your goal is to produce amazing content that will make people take notice of you.
I understand it is time consuming, but do it right, and your relationships will grow at a lightning fast pace.
Interviewing Experts
Here is the basic strategy for interviewing experts:
- Commit yourself to a mission your influencers can support. If you are working in the niche pertaining to parenting, try improving the exercise habits of children.
- Begin by sending out that interview request to between 10-20 influencers, making certain to focus on your mission and then ask them to take part in a short 15 minute video or audio session. Ask the parenting experts to share their favorite techniques for getting children to stay in shape.
- Then you publish these interviews, and contact each influencer and see if they would be willing to link to these posts. About half of the influencers will help by sharing the post immediately, the other 20% might share the content eventually (sometimes a few weeks later).
There you have it!
You might still be wondering how will this interview help to grow your relationship with the influencer?
The answer is one of two ways:
- The simple truth is we tend to like people a little more after they do us a favor. This also means we are more likely to grant a much larger favor some time down the road. Sharing links for example.
- When conducting an interview with this influencer, you get to talk with them before the interview for a brief time. This is so much more intimate than sending an e-mail or connecting on social media. They will remember you longer if you contact them in this manner.
This doesn’t mean this person will instantly become your best friend, but it does open up that door. This gives you the chance to impress them and let them see that side of you everyone loves.
Many times this is all that it takes to grow that connection.
Just remember, during this stage you still need to continue listening to podcasts, reading blog posts, and ultimately understanding what’s happening in your niche.
The Relationships Stage: What’s Out of Scope
At this stage it’s ok to create a few initial articles for your blog, but please don’t focus on writing posts for your blog right now. You’re simply not ready yet.
Sample Schedule for the Relationships Stage
Here is a basic sample schedule that will help guide you through this stage.
Weekdays
- Before breakfast: Use Feedly and Hootsuite (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During lunch: Read a marketing book (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During your commute: Listen to marketing related podcasts or audio books (120 minutes or 2 hours)
Weekends
- Conduct interviews or write guest blog posts (300 minutes or 5 hours)
Time Invested Per Week
- 25 hours
Estimated Time to Complete This Stage
- Approximately 10-20 weeks; depending on your work ethic
Moving to the Next Stage
Move to the next stage when you have developed relationships with two or more influencers. This means if they were asked to share a post, they would most likely help you.
So how many interviews or guest posts will that take?
Varies depending on the person, but the average is 10 interviews or 5 blog posts in total, not per person.
The Conversion Stage
The goal during this stage is to convert unique visitors to your website into e-mail subscribers.
The key reason why is related to making money. The money you make as a blogger will begin to grow in proportion to the size of your growing e-mail list.
While the exact figure varies, a good rule of thumb to use is, you earn $1 per each subscriber to your e-mail list per month. So in order to earn $10,000 each month, you need at least 10,000 e-mail subscribers.
So how do you get all those e-mail subscribers?
First you need a reason for these people to start signing up for your list, then you need to promote that offer on your blog.
Steps You Need to Take During This Stage
The most important step in this stage is developing an incentive for people to join your mailing list. You might notice that some bloggers call this incentive an opt-in bride.
In the not to distant past, you only needed to put a sign-up box in the corner of your blog offering free updates to subscribers. That was the old way of building up your list. It still works in some niches, but many more people will subscribe if you offer a valuable incentive.
Today, most bloggers guard their email lists like gold, because too many people in this industry have abused the trust of the reader and blasted them with spam emails on a regular basis. Your offer needs to be compelling to get anyone to fork over their e-mail address.
Getting “free updates” are generally not a good enough reason to get people to part with their privacy.
You need to sort of “bribe them” to get them to subscribe!
You Need to Bribe Your Visitors to Subscribe
If you are not familiar with the term, the bribe to subscribe process is nothing more than giving a freebie in exchange for an e-mail address you want. This can be a video, a series of interviews, a free report, free software, or anything that might be irresistible or peak the interest of the potential subscriber.
The bribe that you develop must be so compelling that these people would pay for such information, and are now thrilled they are actually going to be getting it for free!
But here is some bad news:
Chances are that this one bribe is not going to be enough. You might choose the wrong subject matter or the offer will not appear as irresistible as you might have thought.
In order to better protect yourself, create three different bribes to get them to subscribe. This way you have a better chance of developing an offer that works.
Use a Feature Box Your Blog
After you develop that first bribe to subscribe offer, make sure you place it inside the header box on top of your blog. Actually, you should consider using a feature box even if you haven’t completely created your opt-in incentives yet.
The majority of bloggers put the offer in the right corner sidebar, and they are lucky to see a 0.5% conversion rate. You can increase the odds significantly by simply placing the offer inside the header box.
Why does this work?
The normal visitor has been trained to now ignore those sidebar offers when reading content on a blog. Most sites continue to place their ads in that spot, and the buying public is now immune to those offers.
Move the box to the top of the page, and magically your visitors will notice it again.
Depending on the design of your blog, moving the content might involve changing some HTML or CSS code in your WordPress theme. A programmer could help you do this and it’s generally inexpensive (less than $100). Visit oDesk.com and you can find a variety of programmers at all skill levels looking for work.
The Conversion Stage: What’s Out of Scope
Focus on your bribe offers. Don’t write any additional blog posts until you completely create your bride offers.
If your time is limited, stop during activities from previous stages and focus on the activities within this stage instead.
Sample Schedule for the Conversion Stage
Here is a basic sample schedule that will help guide you through this stage.
Weekdays
- Before breakfast: Use Feedly and Hootsuite (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During lunch: Read a marketing book (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During your commute: Listen to marketing related podcasts or audio books (120 minutes or 2 hours)
Weekends
- Create those opt-in brides (300 minutes or 5 hours)
- Recommended: Conduct interviews or write guest blog posts (300 minutes or 5 hours)
Time Invested Per Week
- 25-30 hours
Estimated Time to Complete This Stage
- Approximately 20-40 weeks; depending on your work ethic
Moving to the Next Stage
After you have created at least three free reports, you are ready to move on to the next stage.
A classic mistake that many bloggers face is they go overboard at this stage. Too many bloggers are tempted at this point to go for a masterpiece with their first free report.
You pick a gigantic topic, write a 100 page report that is supposed to knock their socks off, but you forget how much time is slipping away as you write.
It is much better to simply focus on simplicity for now in those first three reports, focusing on more specific problems that you have the answer for. Rather than write on skin care in general, pick a more detailed subject like infant acne. This will prevent you from attempting to write the next War and Peace. It’s simply not necessary to be successful. Your free offer does not have to be epic at this point, just get it done!
The Content Creation Stage
Can you believe how far you have come? You are just about ready to regularly publishing content!
Once you arrive to the Content Stage, things are going to start shifting as you regularly produce posts for your blog. You will also start learning how you can promote those posts to get massive amounts of organic traffic.
But guess what?
This is going to be surprisingly easy for you to accomplish.
To understand this process, you only need think about the bamboo plant. The bamboo plant develops its root system underground over a period of several years. You simply see nothing happening in all that time. Then one day, it springs to life and you see explosive growth.
Blogging works just about the same way. In the earlier stages you did all the grunt work, but saw little results. The process was slow and time consuming, but today, everything is going to start exploding quite rapidly.
Steps You Need to Take During This Stage
Write. Write some more. Keeping writing.
Since you have painstakingly built a solid foundation, now is the time to capitalize on it.
Publish Posts That Are Targeted to Your Relationships
Remember all of those relationships you worked so hard to build in the previous stages?
This is the time to put them all to use.
Your posts will have two audiences:
- The people who read your posts.
- The people who will link to your posts.
If you want to increase your traffic, you must satisfy both of these types of audiences. Which people link to the posts?
The answer: all those relationships you developed in the stage we just completed.
You must write some posts that are directly targeted to those individuals. This doesn’t mean ignore your audience, but focus your efforts on what those relationships might find too irresistible to not link to.
What does this all mean in laymen terms?
Stop focusing just on your audience, keep in mind the person that is going to link to your post and write something that interests them as well. The end result is you will get links and more traffic than you could possibly imagine.
Creating a Bimonthly Podcast
Have you ever noticed that many of the top bloggers have podcasts?
This is not an accident!
Not only does the podcast make some interesting content for your blog, it will also help you deepen your relationships with other bloggers. Want to get to know someone a little better?
Ask them to be part of an interview on your next podcast. Done and done!
In the beginning, only do a podcast once every two weeks. One week record a podcast episode, during the next week write a blog posts. Rinse. Repeat.
These two processes will help you to get explosive amounts of traffic.
The Content Creation Stage: What’s Out of Scope
Anything that you want to write about is out of scope. You have this great idea for a post, so you write it and post it. Then you go around looking for anyone who will link to the post.
Guess what?
You are going to be disappointed in the end more often than not. You think the topic is epic, but no one else really cared about it.
Swallow your pride right now and write about those things your audience wants to read about. Stop thinking about what YOU want to read about and deliver what they’re asking for and interested in reading.
Sample Schedule for the Content Creation Stage
Here is a basic sample schedule that will help guide you through this stage.
Weekdays
- Before breakfast: Use Feedly and Hootsuite (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During lunch: Read a marketing book (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During your commute: Listen to marketing related podcasts or audio books (120 minutes or 2 hours)
Weekends
- Create new podcast episode or blog post (300 minutes or 5 hours)
Time Invested Per Week
- 25-30 hours
Estimated Time to Complete This Stage
- Approximately 20-40 weeks; depending on your work ethic
Moving to the Next Stage
Keep working in this stage until your have at least 1,000 e-mail subscribers. By now your blog should be getting approximately 5,000 visitors every month.
Consider 5,000 visitors, and 50% being new visitors, so you should see 2,500 new visitors every month. With an opt-in rate conservatively at 5%, you should be getting at least 125 new e-mail subscribers every month.
Each time you publish a post, you are going to see traffic rise gradually. This means your subscriber count will also rise.
The Monetization Stage
Do you have 1,000 e-mail subscribers literally hanging on every word you say?
Congratulations and welcome to the final stage!
You are finally ready to start making money with your blog.
But you need to be prepared for a shocker.
You are not going to learn those “make money online” techniques that the gurus swear by.
No membership sites, no affiliates, no e-books, and no funnels. That CRAP is simply overrated.
Those techniques are probably very useful for going from $100,000 a year to $1 million, but not at this stage of the game.
In my opinion those techniques are a huge mistake.
You still do not know what you should be selling at this point, and you need to sell a boat load of those products to earn six figures. Your e-mail list is simply too small at the moment.
So what are the steps to grow from here?
You need to get some new clients. Nearly every blogger who went on to earn six figures started by selling a service.
We’re going to follow the same blueprint for your blog! Let’s get started.
Steps You Need to Take During This Stage
Let’s talk about the hard part first. Trying to convince you that people will actually pay large amounts of money for your services or advice.
If you have made it to this stage, there are people that will gladly pay you at least $100 an hour. Some are actually willing to even pay $200 an hour.
But you’re thinking you have no qualifications, no licensing and no experience – don’t worry. It really doesn’t really matter in this case!
If the field you are in requires a license, like Accounting or health care, a license is important. Don’t do anything that will put you in prison.
But for fields that don’t require any special permits or licenses, it is absolutely irrelevant. Just about all of your clients really couldn’t care less.
They simply want to work with someone who is going to get them some results.
What specific results?
This is what we need to discuss now.
Surveying Your Audience With One Question
Before we go any further, you need to stop and send this e-mail to everyone on your list.
The Subject Line: What Do You Think?
Hello! Can you spare a minute and give me your opinion on something?
I am working on some new and exciting things that I can do for your business over the next year, but I need to ask you one simple question.
On the subject of [YOUR TOPIC], can you tell me your biggest frustration?
Nothing more! Just a quick reply with your thought on this matter is all I ask.
Thank You!
Sincerely
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR NAME]
Now sit back and wait for those responses to start rolling in, and simply start looking for patterns. Most likely you will see two or more frustrations that keep appearing over and over again.
In many cases, it might appear at first challenging to help these people in those areas. For example, if you are in the space that focuses on self-improvement, you might find those frustrations center around the way others view personal development. How can you help in that case?
Maybe you could start a coaching service that is simply called “Getting the Support You Need.”
Then, you could help them map out how to approach their family, their friends, and their boss the right way to get the support they need rather than having to fight with them all the time.
Charge $199 for the first coaching session, and then after that, you simply send them some action steps they will need to take in order to get their life back on track.
Although this is just an example, you can make just about any frustration into a viable business opportunity.
Here is how you do it:
Pick from the e-mails you receive the most common frustration that you feel you can solve, then simply work on a solution. Could be a coaching session, or you could actually solve the problem for the client. By offering this service, you charge a premium of at least $99 per hour. If you feel confident in yourself, set the price bar much higher.
Now all you need are some clients.
Here is how you are going to secure some clients for your new service.
Create a Simple Sales Page that Describes Your New Service
The key here, nothing too fancy.
Using a regular WordPress page is perfectly fine. The page should be titled, How to [THE DESIRED OUTCOME]. Now in the body of the page you must first describe the problem, then offer the solution to the problem, and provide the call to action PayPal button to pay for the service.
This should not be over-the-top sales pressure here, just expose a problem, reveal a solution, and give them a chance to pay.
Then, send your client list this e-mail:
Subject Line: Can You Call Me?
Would you like to get me on the phone to help you achieve [THE DESIRED OUTCOME]?
I am offering opportunity that will help you be successful.
Simply click here for some more details:
[INSERT THE LINK TO YOUR WORDPRESS SALES PAGE]
Look forward to talking with you soon,
Sincerely
[YOUR NAME]
If you followed this procedure to the letter, you can expect approximately 1% of your e-mail list to take advantage of this offer. So even if you only have 1,000 subscribers, this mailing will get you 10 new clients within a few days.
Each month, you simply send out a variation to the original e-mail message, and you will receive more clients. Along the way you can develop new services as you find more people are looking for a specific type of help. This will help you avoid pitching that same message month after month.
Follow up with the clients who have taken advantage of the offer, send them an e-mail in a month seeing if they are interested in a follow-up session. Usually 50% will want to continue with the help, some might request auto-billing.
Imagine working 10 hours each week, $200 each hour, at $2,000 for the week! That comes to $104,000 each year only working 10 hours for the entire week!
You are free to increase your rate as you feel comfortable.
So you see you can really make $100,000 a year just selling your services to hungry clients.
The Monetization Stage: What’s Out of Scope
Do not focus on creating a service based on a solution. Focus on the outcome.
In this example, your blog is on relationship advice, and after your initial email the two frustrations you discover are fighting over money and being ignored by their significant other. You create a solution that improves communication between the couple and immediately solve both problems. This is not recommended. No one will pay for that service.
The simple truth, people are not going to pay for solutions, they pay for outcomes.
For this example, create two sales letters. One tells people how to get their partner to turn off the computer and talk with you, the other talks about how to get your partner to stop wasting money on crap you don’t need. Both address specific outcomes, even though the solution to both problems could be better communication. Get it?
Do not mention communication in the headline, keep the focus on the outcome! That’s how you get sales.
Sample Schedule for the Monetization Stage
Here is a basic sample schedule that will help guide you through this stage.
Weekdays
- Before breakfast: Use Feedly and Hootsuite (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During lunch: Read a marketing book (60 minutes or 1 hour)
- During your commute: Listen to marketing related podcasts or audio books (120 minutes or 2 hours)
- After work at night: Deliver a few coaching sessions (120 minutes or 2 hours)
Weekends
- Create new podcast episode or blog post (300 minutes or 5 hours)
- Write sales letters, promote your blog (marketing), surveys (300 minutes or 5 hours)
Time Invested Per Week
- 35-45 hours
Estimated Time to Complete This Stage
- Approximately 10-15 weeks; depending on your work ethic
Moving to the Next Stage
You are finally ready to move to the next stage when you are making a six figure income.
Here is the bad news!
Looking at this schedule it is easy to get overwhelmed. You will notice that in order to complete all the tasks on the schedule that you have to invest at least 40 hours each week. Each night you are going to be doing a few consulting sessions, on top of writing blog posts, and developing those podcasts.
But there is good news!
If you are starting to get that many clients at this stage, you are probably making enough money each week that you can consider finally quitting your day job.
Are You Ready to Get Started?
Today you need to focus on getting to that six figure plateau. If you can make it there, you are in the top 1% of all bloggers who are trying to make a serious income online. After you reach this level, you will be prepared to scale your business and start multiplying your income.
Don’t Forget to Put the Right Things On Your Calendar
Start putting the right things on your calendar today!
Throughout this journey we have taken, you may have forgotten the single most important point I have been trying to express to you. Unless you get serious and schedule the activities we have outlined, you simply will never become an authority blogger.
That would certainly be a tragedy.
This world needs more mentors, more teachers, and certainly more big idea thinkers.
That is exactly who you are or you wouldn’t have read this far. It is time for you step up and get the work done.
Get that calendar out and start scheduling those tasks right now. When you start seeing results, report back to me so we can continue this journey we have started together. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments section below.
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