Now if you’ve never made money online before, monetizing your blog is basically the Holy Grail of online business right now. It’s incredibly doable if you’re excellent at what you do and dedicated to pursuing it until it pays off. And it will pay off, I know that much. But, like most things, when you have a proven system to follow it makes everything easier and THIS is my process on how to monetize your blogging.
1. Get comfortable!
The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is choosing a niche to blog about and then getting tired of it and switching niches. I know of people who’ve started dozens of blogs over the years, only to abandon them when they changed their minds. And then they wonder why they aren’t successful at monetizing.
Friends, don’t make this mistake! The success of your blog depends to a HUGE extent on your willingness to dive DEEP into a topic for a long period of time. You’ve got to become THE guy or gal who knows everything about your area of expertise, so much so that you’re the ultimate authority every time someone in your audience thinks of that topic.
2. Start a mailing list!
Blog traffic is great, and it’s fun to watch those numbers go up when you share valuable content, but the real monetization of a blog comes from creating an email list. If you’re not already familiar with this, it means offering blog visitors an opportunity to receive regular emails from you by inputting their email address on your site. It’s easy and free to set up through MailChimp, and I also like Constant Contact for blog-specific mailing lists.
3. Ask your readers what they want to buy!
When you’ve grown a blog audience and mailing list that loves your content, the next step is simply to reach out and ask them what they would be willing to invest in if you created it. This can be an open-ended question or a multiple choice format if you already have a few ideas in mind. Don’t be surprised if your audience tells you they want you to write a book, develop a course, host a conference, or launch a mastermind. Your audience believes in you BIG TIME, and their willingness to share big dreams might be just the fuel you need to get creating.
4. Give the people what they want!
If your audience’s needs and requests line up with what you can and want to create, well, bingo! Create the thing they’ve told you they want, and offer it to them at a great price. Take their feedback and suggestions, improve the product, and continue doing that in a solid, on-going fashion. This is exactly how to launch your products and courses into the world. Simply solve people’s problems. It’s this easy.
Repeating steps 3 and 4 is your path to a monetized blog, my friends. And more importantly, it’s your path to a growing and sustainable community of readers who trust you for your expertise and turn to you for all their challenges, when it comes to your chosen topic of focus.
Remember we want to become somebody’s favorite. That’s it. Become a favorite and your readers will return to you over and over again – creating more opportunity for you to serve them over and over.
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