blog posts

6 Ways To Monetize Your Blog

How To Get More Loyal Blog Followers

Blogging is an effective way to expand your business, attract more clients, and maintain relationships with your current customers. But how do you make your blog visitors into loyal followers?

It really boils down to posting relevant content and finding ways to remind them about you via email, social media and even ads.

Let’s look at the ways you can get more loyal blog followers and keep them coming back for more.

By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.

OK, let’s dive in…

Post More Content

You’ve heard that before. But it’s not that simple. You can’t post anything and end up with fans following you and begging for more. You have to know who your audience is, and what they need to know and post that. Content needs to be relevant and of a high quality to be effective.

Relevant – The only way you can ensure that your content is relevant is if you do the work necessary to get to know your audience so that you can deliver the type of content they want and need.
High Quality – While you do not have to be perfect, don’t just slap up anything. If you buy PLR, ensure that you rewrite it and make it your own. If you outsource any writing, edit the writing, and put your voice into it, and always add a watermarked image so that when it’s shared it comes back to you.
Consistent – Finally, post consistently. You don’t have to blog every single day. You want to blog multiple times a week and provide meaningful content to your audience. Otherwise, they might get bored and stop visiting.

When you post relevant, high-quality content on a consistent basis in a variety of forms such as images, video, text and so forth your audience will be more likely to stay interested in what you have to say which will make them keep coming back, sharing, and engaging with you.

Plus, potentially buying something you created or promote.

Promote Your Content

Just posting content is not enough. There are more than 100 million blogs in existence.

That’s worse than a needle in a haystack. For anyone, including your customers, to find you, you’re going to have to promote each piece of content that you post.

Social – Whatever social media your audience uses, you need to be using. While you can’t use them all 100 percent alone, you can at least choose the top three that is most popular with your audience. If you can outsource some of your social media marketing then you can do more, but at least start with the top three. Share and engage about your blog posts to bring more traffic and create more interest in your content.
Make it Simple to Share – Don’t make it hard on your readers to share. Get a social plugin that enables you to add share buttons at the top and bottom of your posts. Make it a point to ask your audience to “click the like and share buttons.” Make it part of your call to action.
Get Them on Your List – In addition, put a box at the bottom of every single page to encourage your readers to sign up for your newsletter. Leadpages.net offers a really great and attractive option for “lead boxes” that you can put on your blog to help people get what they need.

You can do this easily with a few plugins, but – do not forget to engage with your audience when they comment on your shares. You don’t want communication to be only one way.

You want to build relationships so that they don’t just want to read your blog due to the great information; they want to read it because they care about you.

Provide A CTA

A call to action (CTA) is so important if you really want to make a difference. There are different ways to create a call to action.

Your CTA can include asking your audience to share, like, follow, join, sign up, buy or whatever it is that you want them to do.

If you really want them to take action, clearly state what you want them to do.

Ask for a Comment – A great way to get your audience to act and come back for more is to generate more comments to your posts. You can get people to comment more if you ask them to.
Be the Devil’s Advocate – If you really want to get comments rocking, try being controversial. This can be risky so be mindful of the potential repercussions. Try calling out a situation that makes you mad, sad, and upset. But try to end it on a positive note if possible.
But a Subscribe Button after the Post – A great way to get people to subscribe for blog updates is to put a Lead Box on the bottom. You can use Leadpages.net for this. It works well and it was developed by marketers.
Offer a Free Discovery Call – A great way to get your reader’s attention is to offer a short 15-minute discovery call. Put a sign up box below the post along with words that attract their attention and get them to want to give their email address to sign up for the call.
Ask Them if They Want to Learn More – A really effective CTA asks your readers if they want to learn more, then using an attractive “learn more” button will entice the reader to click. On the learn more page it can either be more information or you can make it an easy one step opt-in box so that you can send them more information via email.
Give Them a Special – If you’ve talked about specific products or pain points in the blog post and you know about a product or have created a product that will help them, make them a special offer at the bottom of the blog post.
Offer a Freebie – Match your freebies with the topic of your blog post and offer a download button for the freebie that relates to the blog post. Collect their email address so that you can add them to your list. If you use software like Leadpages.net, you can avoid sending to duplicate email addresses on your list, while still offering the freebie to your readers.
Ask Them to Join Your Mailing List – Get right to the point and ask them if they want to learn more, get reminds of new posts, and so forth and ask them to sign up for your mailing list. Let them know the benefits of doing so, and you’ll get more sign ups if the sign up box is after your posts.

There are many more ways to get your audience to act on your content, but you’ll need to tell them what to do. People are relatively lazy, so make it easy for them. You’ll get a better response.

Give Stuff Away

Freebies, lead magnets, tripwires, ethical bribes, opt-ins, and so forth can be lucrative ways to collect email addresses from your audience so that you can market to them via email.

When you give away small things to help them accomplish their goals, you’ll endear yourself to them in a new way.

To give away stuff without giving away the farm, follow these tips:

Use PLR – To create your freebies consider using private label rights information that will appeal to your audience and help further your relationship.
One Problem – Help them solve one small problem, not the entire kit and caboodle. You want them to come back for more, so in your freebie give them enough to show them your work quality and skills but don’t give them the farm.
One Customer – Don’t try to please everyone, make each of your offerings focus on one persona / customer at a time. Create a profile for the ideal customer and direct your product only to the people that fit the profile. This works better than trying to appeal to everyone.
Make it Short – A checklist, a spreadsheet, a simple app – these things won’t take much time and money for you to create but will make a huge impact on your audience member if you are careful to ensure it fits your audience.

Remember that you can also choose to “give it away” for just a buck.

Optionally, if you use a system like Gumroad.com, you can let them pay whatever they want, as long as it’s at least a dollar.

“When a freebie isn’t actually “free” but is very inexpensive it can make more to the user and make them value you more

When they value you more, they’ll be more likely to come back. Remember inside your opt-in provide a link back to your blog, and to other products, services, and offerings you have.

Get Visual

People get bored without pretty and interesting things to look at. In the case of your blog, you also want the images to be relevant.

You want them to expand on your point and help your audience not only understand but to remember the information you provide.

Images can brand you in such a way as to ensure that your audience really remembers you.

Images – You can get stock photos from a variety of sources including StockFresh.com, StockUnlimited.com, and others. Be sure to read the licensing agreement and try to learn about copyright laws and fair use.
Video – Today, video is one of the best ways to create a loyal audience as well as engage with them. They love seeing your face and feeling as if they know you. You can create video the easy way or the hard way. Easy – use your phone and decent lighting. Hard – buy professional equipment. Either way, video will get great results.
Graphics – Infographics, memes and charts are a great way to explain hard concepts to any audience. There are awesome programs. A great infographic software to try is Piktochart.com. You can also hire a graphic designer to help you. If you have the data, they can create the graphic.

You can use programs like Canva.com to create amazing graphics and use your phone to make video.

Today, it’s not impossible for an amateur to create wonderful images, video, and graphics but if your skills aren’t up to par, don’t think it’s too expensive to get help from a professional.

Build Authority And Awareness

Another way to get more loyal blog followers is to become the go-to person in your niche.

You can be viewed as the authority by being a guest on a podcast, TV show, blog, and so forth.

You can also build authority by demonstrating your skills by creating amazing products and services that your audience wants to use.

Write Long Form Posts – Long posts, more than 1500 words in length, are a great way to show what you know. Well-organized, long content pieces show that you know your stuff. When you know your stuff, people will gravitate to your content.
Publish a Book – When you can put your knowledge down in book form people automatically view you as smarter, more successful, and intelligent. Don’t let a book scare you, if you can write a blog post, you can write a book, one page at a time.
Speak – You can speak in public events, or by creating a YouTube channel, or even by recording talks and publishing on your blog. When people can speak clearly, tell a story, and explain concepts in this manner it automatically makes them seem more authoritative.

Another way to build authority is simply by finding your authentic voice and using it on your blog and across all social media networks that you and your audience use.

When you are simply yourself, it’s a lot easier than being false because no one can be false forever.

Engage With Others

As a blogger, there is almost nothing more important than truly engaging and interacting with your audience.

You want your audience to comment, like, share and sign up to your lists or buy your products and services and you can accomplish that is by being engaging and encouraging.

To encourage engagement, it’s important that you know how to get them to respond.

It all starts with truly knowing your audience. Understand that even if you did a lot of audience research five years ago when you began your blog that even when demographics stay the same often audiences grow and change.

For example, imagine what it would be like if Dawn dishwashing soap still marketed to you using the same techniques and issues from the 1950’s?

The message probably wouldn’t even reach you and if it did, it would not go over well. Stay up to date and interact with them in a way that makes them happy. After all, it’s really about them, not you.

The Money’s In The List

The final thing you need to know about blogging and keeping a loyal fan base is that you should focus on bringing them back to your blog, every chance you get.

There are many ways to do this.

Blog Broadcast – If you have an autoresponder, for every post you create, also create an email to talk about a similar topic and then link back to the blog post so that they can learn more.
Social Media – Announce blog posts on social media with a unique blurb. You can post about the new post more than once on each platform, more on Twitter, but don’t make each post a duplicate of the other. Instead, add a unique blurb to each one, even if it’s the same link.

You want to find ways to bring readers and customers back to your blog to read your new blog posts, as well as learn about your products, services, and programs.

When you have a way to interact with your audience on a regular basis through blog comments, social media, email, books, public speaking and more will help people become even more loyal to you as a blogger and an expert.

You don’t have to do everything at once, but you can start by adding sing up boxes to your blog posts and sharing more on social media. As you build up your blog, do more. Track everything so that you know what works and what doesn’t work. Do more of what is working and less of what is not working.

If you really want to know more about the power of blogging, you can take a look at the Rapid Blogging Blueprint training course or if you just want a few pointers for now you can grab the featured resource below for a free blogging report; download, read it and take action 🙂

Are Blogs Still Relevant Today?

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Blog

Ahh… everybody loves the sound of the word, “Free!”

In this case, free traffic means that you’re not spending money on paid advertising. However, it’s not entirely free, since almost all methods of free traffic require an investment of your time. Since time is money, you’re paying for it even if not a cent leaves your pocket.

You also have far less control over free traffic; if you are paying for traffic, you can switch it on and off at a moments notice, whereas with free traffic, you have to wait patiently for the traffic to start coming.

Now that we’ve established that time is currency, you’ll realize that to drive ‘free’ traffic, you’ll need to get the most mileage from your efforts. Below, you’ll find a few free methods to drive traffic.

These have been proven to work and yield excellent results. Do note that when trying out any traffic generation method, it’s best to stick with it until you see results. Pick one method, focus on it and go all out.

Do not spread your efforts over several different methods. Your results will be sporadic and elusive if you take this approach.

OK, on with the post…

Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are excellent places to siphon traffic from. Basically, you’ll be trying to leverage these sites to drive traffic to your own blog.

If you’re using YouTube, your videos and channel will have links in the description pointing curious viewers to your blog.

If you’re using Pinterest, the images will be linked to your blog posts or landing page.

If you’re using Facebook groups/pages, you’ll have posts and links pointing back to your blog.

You get the idea by now. You’ll have several links pointing back to your blog to get curious readers/visitors on to your own web property. Ideally, you should have a landing page with an attractive and valuable giveaway product that they can download/watch after they’ve signed up to be on your list.

Build a profile for your blog on the different social media platforms and tap into the massive amounts of traffic there.

Once again, pick just one social media platform and focus on it. This is a mistake that many novices make; they try to be everywhere all at once, but this doesn’t really work. Pick one platform and go all in until you have completely mastered it and are seeing results; only then should you think about trying another platform.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is a HUGE topic in the make money online niche. Getting ranked organically for highly searched keywords is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site. The bugbear here is that SEO takes time, and you must have a solid knowledge of it.

Do your keyword research thoroughly and focus on ranking for the easier ‘lower hanging fruit’ keywords. Then you can move on to the more difficult keywords and try ranking for those.

You’ll need to know on-page optimization… and also off-page optimization such as how to build external links and so on. Study SEO well and apply it. It’s a wonderful way to generate free traffic.

But don’t just write posts for the search engines! People want to read your posts and find them engaging, informative and useful. If you write to satisfy the search engines, you can end up stuffing keywords and the whole article simply doesn’t read well for a human.

So, first and foremost, write for your audience, and optimise later.

Guest Posting

This is a method where you create unique content that you’ll give away for free to a relevant site in your niche. You’ll need to approach the site owners with your offer and all you’ll ask for in return is for a backlink to your blog.

You’ll want to pick a site that’s popular, but NOT inundated with posts daily. One or two posts a day is fine. This will give visitors time to read your guest post and check out your blog. If there are too many new posts constantly appearing on the site, your guest post will be drowned out.

This is an old-school method but don’t discount it. You can easily get your post in front of a lot of eyeballs, and if you do a good job, you can get a lot of visitors to your site.

Email Marketing

Use a software like Thrive Leads or Conversion Gorilla to create sticky banners, scroll mats, pop ups, etc. to capture the email addresses of visitors to your blog and add them to your autoresponder of choice (I recommend Active Campaign)

Once they’re on your list, you can email them whenever you have a new blog post and this will drive traffic to your blog.

Exceptional Content

They often say that content is king. The truth is that GOOD content is what matters. The content on your blog should be informative, entertaining, and memorable.

Use catchy titles and headlines. Have internal links in your blog posts so that you increase the ‘stickiness’ of your blog and readers keep clicking on links to learn more from you. This will reduce the bounce rate of your blog and is a good sign to Google that your site is ‘worthy’.

Posting content on a consistent basis will ensure that your blog is fresh and readers always have something new to look forward to. This will encourage repeat visits.

While these pointers are not directly linked to driving traffic, they’re crucial to building your reputation and making you look like an authority in your niche. When you appear to be a serious player in the scene, your blog’s reputation will drive its own traffic.

Now that you know a few ways to drive traffic to your site, you just need to apply them. There are bloggers who have built a six-figure income just by driving traffic from Pinterest to their site.

This is just one platform. Now imagine if you had several working for you. The possibilities are endless. Choose one method and get started with it as soon as you can. Then move on to the next… and the next… and the next.

That’s free traffic generation in a nutshell.

How To Avoid The Top 7 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

Starting a blog can be a very interesting and financially rewarding endeavor, but only if you do it right. Unlike other online business models such as ecommerce, Kindle publishing or product creation, blogging has very few ‘moving parts’ to it and is simpler.

Once you install WordPress, a cool theme and some useful plugins, you’re almost set. Now all you need to do is create content.

As simple and straightforward as this sounds, there are still a few pitfalls that must be avoided.

Below you’ll find a list of 7 common mistakes that bloggers make… and what you need to do to steer clear of them. Take note of these pointers and remember them.

Not Defining Your Ideal Target Audience

You can’t be everything to everybody. It’s important to pick one niche, find a sub-niche within it and target a specific audience in that niche.

For example, fitness for men above 40. Or potty training for dogs. Or self-care for first-time moms.

You must have a specific audience in mind and your blog posts must be targeted at them. This is how you’ll build a loyal tribe of readers.

It can sound counterintuitive because you want a large audience, but a highly targeted audience is much more likely to get you and but from you once they see you as an authority.

Not Posting Regular Content

Initially, you’ll be excited when you set up your blog. You’ll probably create content regularly and be checking your stats to see if you’re getting traffic.

However, as time goes by, you’ll discover that content creation can be a grind. Writing is hard work. Constantly coming up with topics to write about can be a chore too.

You must have a specific audience in mind and your blog posts must be targeted at them. This is how you’ll build a loyal tribe of readers.

If you don’t post for a month or two, they’ll get tired of checking your blog and won’t show up anymore.

You’ll lose your audience, and your blog will appear stale. So, aim to post at least twice per week. This will ensure that you’ve fresh content in your blog regularly.

If you dislike writing or you’re busy, you can always hire writers from Fiverr, Freelancer, Upwork or TextBroker to write articles for you.

Not Building Your List

You’ll definitely want to build a list from your blog so that you can stay in touch with your readers. Install the Thrive Leads plugin on your site and you’ll be able to create pop ups, scroll mats and even embed sign up forms in your blog posts.

With a list, you can earn commissions via affiliate marketing, or you can increase traffic to your blog by letting your subscribers know whenever you have a new post.

Make sure you use a good autoresponder service, such as Active Campaign or Aweber.

Poorly Written Content

It goes without saying that your content needs to read well and not be full of grammar and/or spelling errors.

Besides the obvious errors, your content needs to be informative and entertaining at the same time. If your readers are bored, they’ll close your page and move on.

People will sit and binge watch Netflix for hours. It’s not so much an attention span issue here as it is an ‘interest’ issue. If your content is interesting, you’ll hook your readers and keep them on your blog.

Make sure the content is user-focused and it’s best to write like you talk. Conversational content will always win online. Leave the formal writing to stuffy college professors and dusty books at the library.

Your blog needs to provide information that’s relevant, useful and entertaining. It’s a tough juggling act, but that’s what separates the popular blogs from the thousands of blogs that no one bothers visiting.

Selling Too Hard

This is a common mistake made by many beginners to marketing. They either display too many ads on their blogs or their content is too salesy.

People can see through the bloggers’ veiled attempts at providing skimpy information with an ulterior motive to sell.

You’ll want your blog posts to appear as natural as possible. The goal is always to educate and entertain. Selling should appear as an afterthought. Deftly weaving affiliate links into your content without calling attention to them will spark your readers’ curiosity.

Let them click on these links on their own… and they’ll be much more likely to buy what you’re promoting. People love buying stuff, but they hate being sold to.

So, don’t overtly sell all the time. Keep most of your posts content-driven but have affiliate links scattered here and there so that you get sales.

Poor Formatting

The Gutenberg block editor can seem clunky in the beginning but once you’re adept at using it, your blog posts can be made to look great.

Make sure you’re using a clean, fast-loading theme. Readability matters. The font used should be easy to read and legible. Use headings, sub-headings, images and videos to break up the text.

You may choose to have a sidebar or not. Not having a sidebar does give a page a cleaner look, but this is a personal choice. What matters is that your content is easy to consume. The user experience is very important.

Not Having A Clearly Defined End Goal

If you’re blogging for fun, then it doesn’t really matter what you post or when you post. But if you’re blogging for profit, then you must have an end goal in mind for EVERY post you make.

Is it to educate? Or will you be selling products through it? Or is it for traffic generation and list building?

Having an end goal in mind when creating content will help your blog stay focused on what you want to achieve – which could either be a bigger email list, increased readership or more sales.

So, decide what the goal is first – then write your blog post. If you want to know more about writing a great blog post, check out this post here.

These 7 tips when applied consistently will help you create a blog that’s engaging, popular and profitable.

Over time, you’ll have an income-generating asset that makes passive income round the clock… or you can flip it for 3 to 6 times (or more) what it’s currently earning and walk away with a sizeable chunk of profit. It doesn’t get better than that!

blog posts

6 Ways To Monetize Your Blog

How To Get More Loyal Blog Followers

How To Get More Loyal Blog Followers

Post More Content

Promote Your Content

Provide A CTA

Give Stuff Away

Get Visual

Build Authority And Awareness

Engage With Others

The Money’s In The List

Are Blogs Still Relevant Today?

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Blog

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Blog

Social Media Platforms

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Guest Posting

Email Marketing

Exceptional Content

How To Avoid The Top 7 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

How To Avoid The Top 7 Common Mistakes Bloggers Make

Not Defining Your Ideal Target Audience

Not Posting Regular Content

Not Building Your List

Poorly Written Content

Selling Too Hard

Poor Formatting

Not Having A Clearly Defined End Goal

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