.........
Start a High-End Blog:
It seems that everyone is blogging these days — from your nosy co-workers to distant acquaintances and even Grandma Mary.
Let me be blunt: if you are going to treat blogging as just writing about your passions and hoping you make money, you may be disappointed.
Because once you see that you’re not getting desirable results, you are likely to quit — just like at least 59.3% of other bloggers.
....................................
However, if you are serious about learning how to start a blog to make real money, then keep reading.
The first step is to get a paid domain name and WordPress hosting. I recommend Bluehost, and they’ve helped me tremendously in scaling my blog to make over $80k/month.
1. Focus on building a personal brand.
If you’re not a great writer yet, don’t worry. You have to become the next Hemingway or Shakespeare to build a personal brand presence online.
Blogging is not penning an editorial to the New York Times.
With blogging, you have to write like you talk — because here, your main motto is to influence others to act.
And you cannot influence others under the guise of intellectualism.
Part of being a blogger is sharing your story with the world and not holding things back.
This is what my About page looks like:
.
As you can see, I don’t talk about any business success or what I claim to be good at – it’s mostly just a photo of me as a baby haha.
By being vulnerable and real in your content, you can break through the noise, connect with your followers, and build your influence faster.
You will also be happy to know that influencers are in high demand these days. According to statistics, influencer marketing has skyrocketed 90x since 2013.
Here are the main steps that turned my blog into an effective personal brand platform:
.
2. Pick a profitable niche.
“Follow your dreams; write about what your heart says, and money will follow.”
I reject this popular notion.
I’m passionate about all kinds of topics – distance running, astronomy, traveling to far-off places, fantasy football, elephants lol – but if I had to write about any of these topics incessantly without seeing any readers or income, I’d quit 100% of the time.
This sort of advice is not only wrong but also ineffective.
Whether you’re a starving artist, graphic designer, coach, consultant, teacher – anything in life – recognition and human connection are what we’re after. And focusing just on your passions without a business plan is no way to start a project that is supposed to build a following and generate income. So rather than focusing first on just your passions and hobbies, begin with a business mindset.
You should first pick your niche based on market factors.
When it comes to blogging, start by picking a niche that you’re well versed in, but also has decent search volume on Google and market demand.
For instance, if you are trying to tap into the digital marketing industry, then don’t only base your blog on “Digital Marketing.” It’s too broad.
Instead, start more narrow like SaaS SEO, B2B content marketing, or any other sub-niche.
Start as the #1 expert in one small niche with an audience you cater entirely to. Then you can expand and work toward other niches in the same vertical.
Ultimately, your niche needs what I call ARP – audience revenue potential. How much money is your target audience willing to spend with you?
When selling, it works better to go after a high-quality B2B audience that can drop $5k at the drop of a hat, rather than an audience with less money. For example, it’s harder to sell to a struggling college student with $15 or less for pizza and beer (been there, done that).
In the end, money and recognition fuel human passion more than tortured writing ever will.
Focus on high-end consulting when starting out.
Once you’ve positioned yourself as an influencer in your industry, the first step to monetization is selling high-end consulting services.
The great thing with high-end B2B consulting is you don’t need much traffic to make a lot of money.
It’s a simple formula when you’re just starting:
- A blog at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an “unbalanced” force of SEO knowledge
- This law shows how traffic, links, and audience potential are related, as shown in the equation below:
- Low Traffic * High Price = High Traffic * Low Price
It’s pretty simple. When you’re just starting out and not getting as much traffic, you naturally need to charge a higher price and do more hands-on consulting work to make the same amount of money from lower traffic. For example, if when you start your blog and are getting 10x less traffic than in the future, you need to charge 10x more to make the same amount of money from your passive income streams.
You can check out my email newsletter to dive into this further, but with the right guest blogging strategies to grow your Domain Authority, you can use your consulting profits to accelerate your blog’s growth with content and links.
In the end, I want you to start making a lot of passive income in 3-6 months, not 3-5 years.
Remember, you first have to position yourself as a high-end consultant. Make sure that you focus on converting your visitors into business clients and providing an excellent customer service experience.
Next, remember you’re not just a blogger, but a business owner so thinks like one. Hire writers instead of writing everything yourself, focus on sales at the beginning, and realize you can be successful fast if you put in the work.
To summarize again, start by focusing on consulting, then use this revenue to fund your blog and accelerate your content production. As your traffic grows, you can then move into passive income streams like affiliate marketing, digital products, and online courses.
The first step to starting a high-end blog is to sign up for web hosting with Bluehost.
