How to (finally) Make Money with your Blog
If you invest in your business, you want a return, right?
It is no different from your blog.
All that hard work, writing, editing, publishing?should be bringing in new business. Well, at least that’s the idea.
At BlogWorks, we help busy professionals publish amazing blog articles that attract new business. Every day we see business owners throwing time and money in the wrong direction.
The solution to making money with your blog is not a fancy website…
Like most things in business, if you want to make money from your blog, it comes down to basics.
There are 5 ways to increase the money you make with your blog:
Focus on improving this list and you will start to see results.
None of these cost money—they just need you to spend a bit more time on strategy.
1. Get the numbers
You can’t drive a car without a dashboard, and you can’t make money from your blog if you don’t know the numbers. And the numbers come from installing Google Analytics.
In?this post?learn how to make sure Google Analytics is installed. In?this post, learn how to begin reading Google Analytics to understand what’s happening on your site.
The?raw numbers?you need to watch are total traffic and traffic to your “revenue pages.” These are the pages for your products and services. Overall traffic is reported as “users,” and you can see traffic to revenue pages by going to Behaviour > Overview and entering the URL of your revenue page in the search bar at the top of the display table.
2. Make it obvious what you do
Don’t assume readers can read your mind.
Every blog post should remind the reader what you do.
** Did you notice this sentence at the start of this post? “At BlogWorks, we help busy professionals publish amazing blog articles that attract new business.”
This will sound obvious… if you want to make money with your blog, you need to make it obvious WHAT YOU DO.
Imagine you go to a sales presentation, and the salesperson never asks you to buy. Strange.
The fix is easy. Mention a client’s experience, talk about a speech you gave, or refer to a coaching client you worked with.
Don’t make the reader work hard…tell them what you do.
3. Drive traffic to your store
When readers come to your blog, they could be spending 3 to 10 minutes reading. Meanwhile, the average time on most pages of your site will be?less than one minute!
At BlogWorks, we say it’s like having an audience at your door everyday!
That’s a huge opportunity to?make money?with your blog!
When we?re-publish our clients’?articles, we always include at least 3 links to their revenue pages.
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Every blog post should point readers to your revenue page.
Instead of waiting to the end (only about 30% of readers get to the end of your blog post), insert links?in your?blog to your revenue pages.
Here’s a quick fix:
Open your top-performing blog post (see #1 above to find it). Next, look for words or phrases that describe what you do. Finally, insert links to your products or services pages.
It’s that easy—2 to 3 links in every post will start getting more traffic going in the right direction.
4. Build your list
This strategy might be the most important on the list…
Nothing beats a mailing list.
Unlike social media posts that disappear in minutes, your emails could get opened hours – or even days – after arriving in your prospects’ Inbox! Using your blog to build your list is a smart way to build rapport with followers and value in your company.
Facebook and LinkedIn might change their rules, but only you control your email list.
The trick is to make it inviting and easy to join your list.
You can include an opt-in offer next to your blog or use a free pop-up tool like?OptinMonster?or?SumoMe.
Just like traffic to your website, if you want your list to get bigger,?you need to?track the numbers. At least once a month, record in a simple spreadsheet the total list size and the change for that month.
5. Ask for the money
If you want to make money with your blog, you need to start by doing what any good salesperson would do…ask for the money!
Ridiculous, right? Of course, you ask for the sale.
Let’s try a little test…
Go to your latest blog post and count how many times you ask for the sale. Here’s what to look for:
Here’s the bottom line. Your investment in a website and especially in a blog should be returning revenues.?You need an ROI from your blog.
The good news is that?it is possible to retrofit those old articles?and put them to work. Instead of collecting digital dust, your blog posts can be generating leads.
That’s what we do. We?identify blog posts?with the most revenue potential and then supercharge them with SEO juice (to get a higher ranking in search engines) plus drive traffic to your revenue pages.
It’s time to put your blog to work.
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