Only $50 are you kidding me?
I know.
On one side we talk about making a million and on the other side, I am writing about making $50.
Remember, Million is not broken into 1000’s but it is a slow accumulation of singles.
But hey, we started this blog to teach you about passive income and within a week with only 3 posts in it, we made $50.
I don’t think it is bad at all.
I know when I started other blogs or when I was helping many people start their blog. We were struggling to make this $50 for a long time.
Given that we were able to get somewhere quickly.
Start with a blog business plan
Even before we started the blog, we had a solid plan in place.
The plan, we define various elements
- USP (Unique selling point) – It defines why your blog is different than others. What unique value you provide to your audience.
- Products and Services (Monetization methods) – Define your products and services that you would offer in this blog. To know the ways to make money from your blog.
- Your Values & Motivation – Why are you set out to help others with the blog and what motivates you to go forward with it.
- Target customers Demographics – People who would potentially buy from you and what are their characteristics.
- Customer Aquisition – The channels to find your potential customers and how to acquire them.
- Tools required – Tools required to support your blog and growth.
- Budget – Time is money, even you time worth something. However, sometimes money can buy you time as well.
- and more.
Having a plan for your blog is critical. This plan will tell you exactly how to move forward and reach your goals.
When we started this blog. The first thing we did is to figure out the business plan for this blog.
It is amazing when you go through the plan and the results you get. It clarifies many questions and doubts you have for the blog.
Once you have the details on the steps. Next step is execution.
Start monetizing your blog from day 1
We started with this mindset to monetize the blog from the first day.
Many people wait for a long time before they monetize their blogs. I think it is a myth and mostly some misguided information that says, provide value first and then talk about money.
I recommend you need to do both at all times. Provide the insane amount of value and make money by doing so.
So start your blog by knowing the exact way to monetize your blog.
That is exactly what we did.
Every post we write will have a lot of value to the users, as it is actionable with a lot of details and steps. When we write such posts we also offer the recommendation to products that we use and see results.
And obviously, when you genuinely share your experience and show the results, people will try to mimic them and use your recommended products.
Since you are recommending something to your audience, we can ask the business to pay a commision to you. This is called affiliate marketing.
We started off by setting up affiliates with Clickbank and Shareasale and started promoting the products that we used and worked for us.
Drive Targeted Visitors to your blog
We started with affiliate marketing as our first phase in monetization. Then based on our blog plan we know exactly who are the audience to reach.
When we defined that then next we looked for places to find those people.
Based on our research we know that our potential audience hangout on Facebook.
However, we all know Facebook organic reach is almost dead. We posted on Facebook and got nowhere.
We started the Facebook ads for the posts. (At this time we only had 3 posts in the blog).
Look are the stats here.
Detailed targeting of your audience on the age, location, and interest. We know who are our audience and age group based on our blog plan.
Also look at the ROI, after spending $4 we made $50 on affiliate commissions.
The important takeaway is you do not wait for traffic to flow, then figure out various aspects and monetize later.
Start with a solid plan and get the result quickly with minimum effort.
Leverage tools and people
Another most important aspect that is often overlooked is leveraging tools and other people expertise.
When trying to solve a problem, we should always ask for help from people who have already solved that problem.
The same concept applies to the tools if a tool could help accelerate growth then we should leverage it. Check this post on how we made $1000 with Pinterest using Tailwind
Similarly using ads helps us grow faster. I know many bloggers would frown when I say spend money on ads.
But look from a perspective of spending a few dollars to make a lot more out of it. It not only speeds up the process but also gives you the motivation to continue.
Do not rely on display ads to make money from a blog
Many bloggers start with display ads services like Adsense.
The only reason is it is super easy to get started. But the question is Does it really make good money?
My experience is NO.
We have blogs that bring 100k views each month and ads still won’t bring 1000’s of dollars.
Always keep in mind traffic does not equate directly to money.
You should always look for other income opportunities and I strongly recommend affiliate marketing for starters. Check out this post about it.
Focus on one thing
This is hard for most of us.
I often struggle with this too.
Focusing on one thing, especially when you are beginning to blog, and most likely are in doubt whether to continue or if there is a better opportunity.
However, it won’t work if you do not focus on one thing at a time.
Pick a topic on your blog and go deep into it, write posts, create products and everything around that topic. At one point you would have a ton of resources that makes you look like an expert in that field.
For example, this blog talks about 2 topics. Investment and Passive income. Right now we are focusing on passive income and go deeper into various ideas to show you how we are doing it, so you can copy the things that work for us.
Once we saturate that space and help enough audience to set up passive income streams, we will start focusing on teaching what to do with the money.
Focus also means not getting distracted.
Often we also get distracted with all other things that won’t matter.
Like focusing on
- Increasing the social media followers
- Collecting emails (it won’t matter unless you know what to do with it)
- Designing the blog
- Even writing posts that are not aligned with your goals.
Follow your blog business plan and do only the things that would move the needle forward.
Keep in mind as the blog ages it gets better
I have been blogging and helping many bloggers for the past 5 years. I have seen blogs get better in terms of revenue, traffic, value and everything as it gets older.
The only secret sauce is moving forward and keep the momentum going even if it is too slow.
Never worry about what you don’t know or compare yourself with others. Your version is always unique There is still a lot of room for growth and there are people waiting to hear from you.
Next, stop at $1000
We just got started with the blog. I always know blogging is one of the best opportunity available for anyone to create a passive income or even start a huge online business.
It is going to be a journey, where I will experiment with new things and share it with you guys as well.
We just made a $50 and the next goal for is to reach $1000.
Stay tuned for the next update.
These tips were really helpful. Thank you!
Glad you found it useful.