One of the most exciting things being an entrepreneur is that you can have more control over your income.
The problem is, it’s all too easy to over simplify the process
You know, you get all excited thinking I’ve got this great idea for a product, program or service…. and people will flock to my blog and start buying it in droves.
This kind of thinking can leave you frustrated when you put all the effort in and all you get is nothing….
Instead it is much better to take some time to think about who you want to serve, what their pain points are and what do they need to solve their problems.
Getting this right takes work and you have set up your platform the right way.
Here are five ways make more money with your blog:
1. Build a blog that works
Some of you may be thinking yeah, this is a no brainer
First you need to build a high quality website that sets you apart as an expert and sell their products.
You must treat your blog like a business and it needs to be the center of all of your marketing efforts.
If you are aiming make even the money online and attract quality prospects, you must have a a high quality website with a good customer experience aimed at converting visitors into leads (joining your mailing list)
It’s like having a clean store with excellent customer service.
To help you get thinking about what you need, here are a few websites we’ve built for clients that convert very well:
A. Tina Forsyth – CEO Business School
B. Todd Creager -Marriage Therapist Orange County CA
I just got an email a few days ago from someone on my list asking me what platform should they use to build their website?
Hands down I prefer WordPress, there are so many great responsive themes and plugins that help to make your site work smarter, not harder for you.
This is is why myself and many others go through WordPress.
According to WordPress’s statistics, there are thousands of sites being created using WordPress every day.
Even if you are not an SEO expert, adding in SEO by Yoast plugin will help you get really great results.
RELATED: SEO Basics: How to Optimize Your Blog Post in 10 Minutes or Less
When you have the right keyword strategy in place, you’ll get free organic traffic daily to your website.
2. Attract Free Traffic With SEO
Okay so you’ve built your first product, service or program and your website is still a dead zone….
What do you do to attract traffic to your blog???
This is where you need to get some SEO help.
To put it simply, it’s all about getting your site found in the major search engines when prospective clients go into Google for example and type in keywords related to your product, service or content you are publishing on your blog.
Like I mentioned earlier, WordPress is the best when it comes to out of the box SEO which means that they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
I love to use the SEO by Yoast plugin to assist in my SEO efforts.
And yes it has it benefited me and my clients greatly.
Here’s a little background on this plugin that you might not know…Google asked them to create this plugin. I’d say that if they worked along with the folks at Google to create this plugin, then you know it definitely does what it’s asked to do. You can use it for yourself because it has very easy to follow instructions.
If you don’t have this plugin get it right here https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
3. Generate Leads
It’s never too early or too late to start building your list.
To build an opt-in that effectively generates leads you need TWO things:
A. You need an actual lead generation form.
It’s a pretty simple thing. Just a little box that people can type their name and email address into. That way, prospective clients can get regular updates on products or special events that your site is hosting.
B. You need a Free Offer that is compelling
You need to make your free offer compelling enough that they will give you their name and email in exchange for it. Think about something quick and easy that you can teach them that will give them results quickly.
C. You need to have content upgrades.
This is how you get more opt ins fast…you create mini opt ins that help your readers apply what you teach them in a blog post.
Once I started creating content upgrades I started getting multiple opt ins started happening every day. Before that it hit and miss, I could go for an entire week without a single opt in
The general rule of thumb is that the bigger the list of leads you have, the higher the chance you’re going to make a sale, so you want to start building your list TODAY.
4. Nurture Your Leads
One of the biggest issues I see is that a lot of entrepreneurs forget to nurture their new leads….
It goes like this…they get a great engaging website, they fine tune their SEO machine to make sure they are on page one or two of every search engine, and they get a good list of leads going.
Then they either go silent or they immediately try to go in for the kill and immediately ask for a sale.
UGH!
The right way is to nurture your relationship with your leads by giving them more content and no selling.
We tell our clients to use follow up sequence that doesn’t ask for the sale until after the 5th or 7th touch and even then it is a very simple offer like a strategy session or a lower priced product.
Up until then we tell them to give, give give.
5. Improve Your Conversions
Lots of people mistakenly think that if they just get more blog traffic that the money will come rolling in.
Wrong, but you can almost always increase sales just by making a few minor tweaks to that will help you convert more visitors to your list.
A. Add a pop up to entice people to take advantage of your free offer.
You have 3-7 seconds to impress people on your site and in the initial moments on your site they are usually scanning to see what you have an may overlook your free offer.
B. Write better copy
Put extra effort into creating great written material for your site.
Start this process by thinking about the customer experience you want people to have when they land on your site.
What do you want them do know and what do you want them to do on your home page?
It’s a smart idea to study websites of people who are successful in your niche.
Don’t steal but do study what they are doing and emulate it in your own style. If you’re having trouble with making good copy, there’s no shame in making a file of already well produced copy and tweaking it to your purposes.
C. Make it easy for people to buy
Not only that give them instant access to the content once they pay.
We’ve used all kinds of shopping carts and integrations to set up products and programs. We’ve done sending the CD in the mail version and I’m pretty sure that pretty much out dated.
Give your clients immediate access to the product or service you’ve sold them. There are a lot of great sites out there like Teachable that are so simple to set up and integrate.
Got a product, program or service you want to monetize? Then take all 5 of these strategies to turn your blog in to a money maker and put them to work for you.
