‘Why is my blog not earning me money’ or as I like to put it: “WHY DOES MY BLOG SUCK!” is one of the most frequently asked questions in my mailbox.
Today’s post (video and enhanced transcription) is all about that subject and what you need to do to eliminate the SUCK factor!
But first – how do you define the SUCK Factor? For most it is of course lack of earnings or very low revenues but really that is the wrong way round. You see in ‘theory’ if the Blog did not SUCK then there would be plenty of revenues. In this video I attempt to highlight some of the most critical factors that will increase the SUCK Factor, but before you watch the video I’d like to throw in a couple of other FACTORS that are crucial.
You see I have seen plenty of pretty decent looking blogs, where the blogger is doing most of the right things and where in theory the blog does not suck but the blogger is earning very little just because the NICHE SUCKS! We don’t often talk about niches sucking in blogging but for sure if your goal is to earn money, then some niche’s really do suck. Lots of bloggers advise you to ‘build a blog around your passion’ but I would change that and say ‘BUILD a blog around a passion that also has a PROVEN Revenue model’
A friend of mine used to run a celebrity blog that even of occasion got over 100000 visitors in a week but rarely earned more than $1000 in a month from it. You see people who are interested in celebrities can get all the information they want for FREE – so finding away to monetize the blog (other than with very low paying Google Adsense clicks) is very difficult. Of course there is exceptions like Perez Hilton (PerezHilton.com) – but Perez is the exception, not the rule!
Basically, when selecting a Niche to Blog about, do your research and make sure you have a definite strategy for monetizing the blog (And Google Adsense and setting up some Amazon Affiliate links – while good, are not a great strategy in my opinion)
Honest, despite what I say in this video: Action Beats Perfection. Just about everyone’s blog (including mine) sucks until you have the time to tweak it / perfect it. If the points I raise apply to you, don’t get disheartened because now that you know them you can go about fixing / perfecting. Congratulate yourself because you took the first and most important step of TAKING ACTION!
By the way, you never stop perfecting. I am constantly making tweaks and changes on this website - and what is more, they don’t all work. Take ACTION, Measure RESULTS and CORRECT / PERFECT (Or READY, FIRE, AIM as I said in previous post)
Let me know your thoughts and comments below. What makes a blog suck in your opinion? What change did you make to your website to stop if SUCKING?
Share your experience below.
To Our Blogging Success
Michael
Today I want to talk to you about something very important, and that is, why blog sucks.
Getting a blog online, getting traffic and earning money from it does not have to be difficult.
For me there are four vital categories that bloggers need to focus on when launching their blog:
We’ll start with creation and the first point I often end up making is that: You’re domain sucks.
I know it may not seem that critical, but often it is the first thing a visitor discovers about your website and having a great domain name is a good way to make a first impression.
Use two words (a maximum of 3) that clearly explains what you are about. Look at incomediary.com I like the word diary and other variations of it are: fitnessdiary.com, or weightlossdiary.com Anyone seeing those domain names would have a pretty good idea what the website is about straight away. Of course you don’t have to use the word diary (that is just my example) – but it is critical in my opinion (unless you have a huge budget for branding) that your domain name makes a STATEMENT about what you do.
Also, try to avoid dashes in a domain name – ie don’t go with: Michael-Dunlop.com. Also for me, it always has to be a .com (not .net. .org. .info etc)
Imagine you are meeting someone and giving them your domain name but they don’t have a pen to write it down – would they remember your domain name when they get home? That is my test for a ‘good domain name’
Design is very, very important. However, it’s very, very easy to get right these days. Just go into WooThemes.com or any of the premium Word Press theme sites and invest in a well designed THEME. I always say WooThemes.com, but there’s loads out there.
Get a WooTheme, put it online, choose a color, and then put a logo up. That is it – no more things need to do, until you get into the big time. That’s what I did.
I started with just a WooTheme, and only after I had hundreds of thousands of visitors and started to make some serious money (tens of thousands of dollars) did I then start to invest in an even better design with features that would be unique to me.
It is quite incredible but I regularly have people tell me they will launch their blog once they have the design sorted and then a month or two later they are saying the same thing. Don’t over think it to start — just get a good theme from WooThemes.com and crack on with launching your blog ASAP!
This frustrates me and is related to above (over designing) – but get online ASAP. A lot of people fiddle around with design, ‘perfecting’ their blog but never really get going!
I speak to people and they say, “Oh Michael I don’t want people to see my blog until the design is sorted, perfected” or “I don’t want people to steal my design.” Look here is you are worried about people stealing your design — don’t bother about getting online in first place.
Like it or not, no website / blog is ever really ready – there is always something that can be improved. Remember: Action Beats Perfection
Income Diary has never been finished. I’m constantly doing more things. Just get it online, even if you’re not ready to share it with anyone. Let Google come along, index it. It will make a big difference when you are ready to officially to launch.
If you are going to make a big launch of it, a new site, get the word out there. I call this creating BUZZ! Tweet about your new site, Facebook it, mention it on related Forums, tell people what’s coming. Keep the buzz authentic and helpful (maybe release an article of the results of a survey you have done, so people get an idea of what to expect. Then when people do come, it’s going to be a lot easier to get people inside and start commenting, posting, and telling their friends about it. I have never done this — but you can also easily add a COUNT DOWN Clock to the website detailing when you officially launch.
OK, that covers the CREATION side of things — but what about CONTENT once you have launched?
Content is where a lot of people go wrong. Consistency is the first thing here. If you’re not consistently posting, then it’s annoying to the reader, and it just sets a bad standard. So, even if you’re only posting it once a week, that’s fine as long as you post every week on the same day — and don’t miss a week. Or it could be every two weeks, once a month, once a day, three times a day, it doesn’t matter, as long as you are consistent. I have to admit that with a busy life I have struggled at times to be consistent on when I post, but this is one time I would advise you not to always do what I have done.
Be consistent – for example doing a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is a good target to aim for. If you’re writing them all in the same day, don’t post them all on the same day. Just make sure people know when to expect a post.
Authority is vital. Readers want to see you as a big guy, a guru, someone they know and can trust.
Two strategy’s that I have found work amazingly well for building authority for yourself is 1) Interviewing other Gurus in your niche and 2) Creating TOP LISTS for you NICHE (Example ‘30 Richest Weight Loss Experts” – if weight loss happens to be your niche)
I have spoken a lot about this in the past so I am not going to overdo it here – just take my word – IT WORKS!
Are you delivering value? Are your blog posts well thought out? Are you delivering information and observations and angles and creating discussion that your competitors are not?
Honest, I cannot over state this – I see so many bloggers put time and effort into design, buzz and they are even quite consistent (to start with) but the blog posts they create are short, offer little value (basically a rehash of someones post) and BORING!
Ultimately you will not succeed as a Blogger – unless you are prepared to work hard / graft and deliver top notch content. Every post I create takes several hours to put together – and while I may occasionally fire something of in 20 mins or less I have found the posts that get the most comments, get the most Google Juice (in terms of link backs) are the posts I took hours and occasionally days to create.
There has to be some reason for visitors returning to your site. Your post answers a problem, or it teaches them something, or they are just bored and want to be entertained. Your visitors have a ‘problem’ and your blog has to provide the solution. Very important.
How do you deliver your information / blog posts?
Here is a varied delivery example, this time related to interviews. Try delivering the interview in different formats for your visitor. For example Audio, Video and Text. (That is why I have every video I do transcribed – it costs money, but I also know many readers prefer to read and of course having all that text on the page is great for search engines as well)
Another variation on the delivery example – if for you to occasionally have guest posts from other bloggers. Not something I do a lot of myself, but one advantage of Guest Posters is that they tell their ‘fans’ about the guest post they did which brings you more traffic — especially if it is a Blogger with a good following. And of course it adds variety to your blog and a post you did not have to write yourself.
My favorite subject – monetization!
Here is a TIP I have gave you before. If you really want to make big money online (rather than easy money) then stop trying to sell banner advertising, paid reviews or text links. Cut it all out. Affiliate marketing is where it’s at. You’ll make more money promoting affiliate offers.
I have two sites in the same industry. One, retireat21.com has been around a lot longer and relies on selling banners / advertisers. It makes OK money, but it does not make LIFE CHANGING money! On the other hand, Incomediary.com has affiliate offers and Incomediary.com out-performs retireat21.com by at least a factor of 5, on an average day!
Also stop trying to sell services and consulting, because that’s exchanging time for money. The whole point of having your own website in my opinion is so that you can have a passive income, and can work less and make more.
You’re promoting the wrong things. Test things. Don’t just keep promoting something because it looks like a good product to you. It may be not what someone wants in a site. Test different products and once you’ve found some that converts… Cool, keep that. Then look for another cool product to add to that winning product – and repeat the testing until you find another winner.
Very Important – you have to keep testing. It’s taken me a long time to find the right ones. However, now I have, because I spent time doing it. It’s making me five times more, I’m not joking. Testing is important.
Believe it or not, some of the blogs that suck have no monetization at all. Some people it appears are embarrassed to make money from their blog? I even had someone say to me recently — “I cannot be ‘independent’ if I am earning money from affiliate offers”. In the past I would have teared my hair out over that kind of comment but when he said that I just shrugged my shoulders and said: “yeah, you are probably right” (Of course he was not right — someone is going to earn from the products he his reviewing, so why no him, but I’m, getting a bit wiser these days — try as you may, some people don’t ever get it!)
The final one in this section – NO LIST (note the BIG LETTERS!). Without a list, you’re just not going to make as much money. 80 percent of my income comes from my list. One of the reasons for me releasing PopUp Domination was so that more people could build their own list faster. Please see my List Building post for more details of how you can build your list faster — also How To Drastically Increase Your Email Opt-in Rate
List building is VITAL – connect with people, deliver them value, keep connecting with them (again always delivering value) and then they will be much more receptive to your offers when you email them. As a guide on how often to “PROMOTE” one of my new mentors suggests one time in three is a direct Affiliate Promotion – no more than that. Email people daily with “OFFERS” and they will soon get tired of you. Also, one email in three at least should be nothing but TOP QUALITY, Valuable information. (The other post in three can be a mixture of both)
Building a list does not cost much money to start with. AWeber does an offer for just $1 in the first month and then $19 after that.
You want to have a good network of people around you.
You want to talk and connect with people in your niche, people to interview, for example. Once you interviewed people, take that relationship further. You also want to be able to bounce ideas off of people, off your readers…
Top Tip: Don’t let your ego get in the way – you may be good, but I have found you learn a lot more by asking questions of your peer group. Amongst the people I hang out with most of the time I am sure I am pretty well respected, but the more you learn the more you earn — so in my case I am always asking questions / opinions from friends in my niche. This is very important also – don’t expect them to always agree with you. Indeed having your view challenged is the best way to discover if you have the right view / angle on something in the first place.
Make sure you have lots of great people around you, that’s what I do. I’m always on Skype, chatting to different people. Helping them, being interested in them and what they are doing, looking for ways we can work together. If you are helping them you can be sure they will want to help you. It is called the law of reciprocosity.
I know some real networkers out there, especially on Skype. And actually, I had a great conversation with a friend recently about it. And really, you can build a business just on contacts. Like they say, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
If you didn’t have a good network around you, and haven’t been talking to people and networking on Skype, or at events, or Facebook or Twitter, then when you try to do a promotion you are going to struggle simply because no one knows you, respects you.
On the other hand if you do a promotion and people know you and respect you chances are very high they will promote you and your offer.
For example, I’ve promoted for most of my friends at one time or another. Then when it came time for me to pre-launch PopUp Domination guess what happened? All my friends have used it, and they’re all promoting it, and it’s really as simple as that.
You’ve got people you can talk to in your industry that are going to be good for your business. Make a list of the influential people in your niche. How could you work with them? Connect with them? These people will also give you valuable feedback, they can tell you what their readers are saying (this is vital because it from this that you overcome objections to the product and make the product even better)
The point here is to have a FOLLOWING amongst your NICHE even if you don’t have much of a list yet….
Homework: Connect today with some one in your niche that is an authority that you have not connected with before. Drop them a genuine, sincere email telling them how much you admire what they do. There is no need to include information on yourself (they can pick that up from your email signature)
If you are genuine and say something different chances are they will respond — even if only to say thank you. From that you can progress to perhaps asking for an interview sometime — or even you can offer to help them with something. For example if they ever visit your town offer to show them around. A few hours in their company may just be the difference your business needs.
Thank you, Happy Networking and Prosperous Blogging
Michael Dunlop
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