Transcript
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show!
What's up my Bloggy friends?
Welcome back to the show or if you're new here, welcome to the Bloggy Friends show.
So I've been blogging since 2009 and I've been paid to do it since 2011 and I have learned
a lot in my 15 years of blogging.
And though I don't quite have the level of success that I want yet, I do know a thing
or two about using your blog to make money.
So that's what I want to talk about today is how to turn your blog into a business.
Because here's the thing, when you blog as a business, the sky's the limit in terms of
what you can do, how much money you can make, all the things.
So let's get into it.
First up, you have to figure out why it is you want to start your own business in the
first place.
Before we can dive into like the how-to's of monetizing, you need to first get clear
on why you want to take something that's normally a hobby and turn it into a business.
Being an entrepreneur, it's not for everyone.
Some people thrive with the structure and predictability of a 9-to-5 job.
In fact, a lot of people, they prefer to keep their hobbies completely separate from what
they do to make money.
So I recommend that you take some time to reflect on what's driving your desire to
turn your blog into a business.
For example, do you crave the freedom and flexibility of being your own boss?
Are you passionate about growing an idea into a viable income source?
Does the stability of a regular paycheck appeal to you, or does taking risks energize you?
Making money from a blog or having a blogging-based business?
It takes consistent effort and discomfort as you learn new skills like marketing, selling,
and managing a business.
And yes, I did say selling because you will be selling yourself a lot.
So be honest with yourself about whether you're willing to push through these tough times
for the rewards of entrepreneurship.
The fulfillment that comes from turning your creative passion into a career, for some people
it does make the hustle worth it.
But for others, monetizing something that could be just a hobby, it zaps the joy completely
out of it.
And it's a very personal decision whether you take your blog to the next level as a
business.
It may not be the right choice for you.
So before you really jump in and get serious about this, do some soul-searching.
Your motivations and your temperament need to align with the realities of entrepreneurship
for it to be sustainable in the long term.
Okay, so now you've decided you're all in.
Let's get you prepared.
When we think about preparation, we're thinking, what do you need to have in place before you
first start monetizing?
You want to think about quality content, an engaged audience, solid social media presence,
all those things.
So after you've already done all the soul-searching and you've gotten really clear that you do
want to turn your blog into a business, the next step is really getting prepared for monetization.
So there's a few things you're going to want to do to get this going.
Obviously, you first need to have a blog.
And if you don't have a blog, it's very easy to set one up.
And we won't be getting into that today as to how to actually set one up.
There's lots of resources I can leave in the show notes.
If you go to famousashleygrant.com backslash boss blogging, you'll be able to find all
kinds of awesome resources for how to actually start your blog.
But assuming you already have one, the next things you want to think about are established
authority and trust.
Do you have a solid reader base who sees you as an expert in your niche?
Are you publishing high quality content that consistently adds value for your audience?
You want to focus on growing your blog's reputation and community before you start thinking about
how you're going to make money from it.
And trust me, I know it really sucks whenever you hear someone say something like that because
as soon as you think, okay, I want to start a business, I want to make money.
And I get that.
I really do.
But if your website isn't actually driving people that will keep coming back, you're
going to fail.
So you need to start thinking about creating quality content consistently.
Next you need a clear content strategy.
Is your blog content cohesive and serving your target audience?
Or is it just random musings?
That's the big mistake that I'm making with my own website right now.
I have random musings on it.
And though I still use it as a portfolio to make money and to get other clients for like
ghost writing, the truth is that my actual famous ashlegrant.com, it doesn't have a consistent
strategy.
And so if you're trying to actually make a business from your website, you need clear
content.
You need clear strategy.
So think about that as you're defining your blog's purpose and refine the content to build
a loyal audience.
Next let's talk about having a functional website.
I talked about this in my New Year's Goals episode.
You have to have a website that actually functions the way it's supposed to.
So think about things like your site speed, mobile optimization, your user experience.
That's something that I've been trying to work on myself by like taking all the big
images that are way too large that make the site take forever to load.
I'm starting to go back through all of those pages and make them open up a little bit faster.
You need to invest in your blog's infrastructure so you can actually run it like a business.
And by the way, that's a huge key.
If you're planning on turning your blog into an actual business, you need to think of it
as a business.
Speaking of, another thing that is on my blogging goals list this year that I talked about in
the last episode is your email list.
This is one of your most valuable business assets for connecting with readers.
You have to make sure that you have a system for capturing emails and sending newsletters.
Again, this is something I have talked about for years for clients, for my own website.
I've talked about this a lot and I'm really bad at it myself as well.
And I get it.
It's really hard to be like, hey, sign up for my email list.
But if you have an email list, they often say that the money is in the list.
And the reason why is because you have a dedicated group of people you can send emails to and
make offers.
And that's a big deal.
But we'll get into that a little bit later.
You also need a defined target audience.
Get very specific on who your ideal reader is so that you can tailor content and monetization
to their needs.
And I'll say that this is a big deal whenever I'm doing ghostwriting work for my clients
because I have to get into the mindset of the person that they are selling to so that
I can actually talk to that person and write the things that they want to hear or that
they're searching for.
Because if you're writing about, I don't know, let's say bowling balls and you're putting
it on a website that only sells KitchenAids, well, you're probably not going to sell very
many KitchenAids.
Do you get what I'm saying?
I think you do.
Next, you want to think about your business account.
You need a business account, a registered business name at the very least.
Now, some people will say that you need an LLC.
Others will say you should get a sole corporation or an S Corp or a C Corp or all those other
things.
To get started though, to actually just get started, you just need a business name.
A lot of states will have fictitious name setups that you can start.
For example, whenever I was in Florida, I was able to just go to floridasunbiz.org and
create my own business name.
And then I was able to use that to register for a business bank account.
You want a business bank account so you can take care of legalities from the start.
And it also helps to start getting you in the process of if you do start an LLC or an
S Corp or a C Corp or any of those things, you're already training your brain to go,
okay, anything that I'm buying from this account is for the business.
Anything that is for anything else, I buy from my personal accounts.
With these foundations in place, your blog has, you know, it's ready to start the monetization
elements and start actually generating revenue.
You shouldn't rush into making money before laying this groundwork.
And again, this is something I was bad at.
I just started making money before I started thinking about any of this kind of stuff.
I had a PayPal account and just was raring and ready to go.
And I thought I was good to go.
But then I realized later I needed to actually have a business bank account.
All right, so let's talk money, honey.
How do bloggers make money anyway?
There's a lot of ways.
This is the fun part, right?
Actually making money from your blog.
There are a lot of proven monetization strategies that successful bloggers are using.
And you may not be successful from these different ideas from the get-go, but every single one
of them does work if you can figure out how to make it work.
So the first one is affiliate marketing.
This is the lowest barrier entry.
It's the easiest one to get started with.
And it's basically where you promote relevant products and services and you earn a commission
on sales you drive.
It's great for monetizing review posts or gift guides or even just putting things on
your social media where you're trying to talk to people about different products that you
either use or that you're thinking about buying.
I highly recommend only talking about ones that you actually believe in unless you're
basically one of those review sites that bitches about stuff.
And then you can put whatever links you want to because you're telling people the truth
and it's their fault if they buy it, right?
Next is sponsored posts.
This is where you get paid by brands to create branded content and advertisements that align
with your blog's niche.
Now, and I know I've probably said this a couple times.
I'm saying niche and niche.
I use them interchangeably.
It's just how I roll.
And if you don't like it, you can go ahead and stop listening now because it's going
to happen a lot throughout this episode and future episodes if it hasn't already.
Next is display advertising.
This is where you actually sell ad space on your site directly to advertisers or you use
a program like Google AdSense.
When you do display advertising where you're selling directly to someone, you can get the
full amount of money to yourself.
Whereas if you use like Google AdSense or Mediavine, those companies are going to take
a cut.
You're only going to get a cut of whatever the advertiser is paying.
Sometimes it's helpful to use one of those kinds of companies though because they go
out and find the advertisers for you.
They do all the groundwork.
You don't have to think about it.
You don't have to do anything.
It's just an ad that goes on your site.
But it's up to you if you want to do it the hard way or the easy way.
Another way to do monetization on your blog is digital products.
This is things like creating online courses, ebooks, membership sites, selling digital
products to your audience.
You get the idea.
Another way is consulting and freelancing.
This has basically been my bread and butter personally is freelance writing.
I use my website to find leads to get freelance work.
That's kind of how I started in this game.
My guess you'd call it is I started using my website as a portfolio of the things that
I had written and I used that to start getting writing work.
This is where you can offer your expertise as a consultant or a freelance writer to brands
and businesses.
Next up is physical products.
This is where you design merch or products to sell based on your brand.
You could do things like t-shirts, coffee mugs.
I've seen calendars.
I've seen...
I've even seen decks of cards.
There's all kinds of novelty products you can do.
I actually did an article, 101 Ways to Make Money Online, where I actually dive into the
different things you can make physical products wise where some of them you don't even have
to have inventory of these items because you can basically create whatever you want and
they do a direct to consumer shipping situation.
I'll leave that in the show notes as well.
It's 101 Ways to Make Money Online.
Two last ones that I'm going to talk about is email newsletters.
Now, live events.
Email newsletters is where you use highly targeted ads in your newsletter for steady
income stream.
Now, I have seen some people do this really, really well.
The two that I'm thinking of right now that are just fantastic is Pat Flynn and Jay Klaus.
Both of them, their sponsored content is fantastic.
They make it obvious that you're going from reading content that they've written to content
that they are being paid to put out.
They get paid because of their audience.
They get paid for the ability for these companies to have direct access to their audiences.
Now, grant you their audiences for Pat Flynn and Jay Klaus, their audiences are huge so
they can demand a certain amount of money.
But when you're first starting out, it may not be that much money, but basically the
sky's the limit as to how much you could start charging for people to have access in your
email newsletter to your audience.
Like I said, the last one is live events.
This is where you host in-person workshops, retreats, conferences, whatever it is that
your audience would value.
So if you, let's say you're a gardening website, you could create a live event teaching people
how to actually garden in their own homes or do those vertical gardens and all kinds
of things.
There's so many different ways that you could take what it is you blog about and turn it
into an event.
So get creative and try different income streams and see which one resonates the most with
your audience and your niche.
And the best thing you can do is aim for multiple income sources so you have diverse monetization.
The reason I recommend this so much is because at any given point, any of your income streams
could dry up.
For example, I think we all remember what happened with the whole affiliate marketing
situation during the pandemic.
It was really bad what Amazon did, but it happened and so let's talk about it.
Amazon Associates was a huge way for bloggers to quickly get into affiliate marketing and
start promoting products and they were getting paid a commission for every single person
they sent to Amazon to buy a slew of products.
And some people's commissions got as high as 10, 12, 15% per product and people built
entire websites all on Amazon affiliate links.
Then what happened in the pandemic is Amazon thought, you know what, we're making so much
money and so many people are coming to our website that we don't need all these bloggers
anymore and they cut commissions across the board.
And one of the saddest things that I saw with some of these bloggers that were making four,
five, $10,000 a month, suddenly making $1,000 or less and some had to go get day jobs.
Some stopped doing blogging completely because they were so upset.
So that's why diversification is so important.
And you shouldn't also, excuse me, you should also diversify who you're an affiliate for.
Also, just work with Amazon, work with ShareASale, work with Rattketon, work with all the different
affiliate companies that are out there because the more you have and the more opportunities
you have to share different product links, the less likelihood you have of if one of
them dries up, you can still be making money on others.
Okay, now that we've talked about a bunch of the different ways you could make money,
let's start reverse engineering how much you will actually make.
One of the most important things to do when you're trying to turn your blog into a business
is reverse engineer how much money you're going to make.
This will help you set goals and understand if blogging can actually replace your nine
to five income or if you don't have a job, how much money you need to make to be able
to at least pay your bills.
So first thing you want to do is look at your current traffic metrics.
And the reason you want to do this is because if you have 50,000 monthly page views, you
can estimate about how much money that would make from the different monetization models.
For example, let's say display ads on Google AdSense pay around $20 per thousand impressions.
If you have 50,000 page views a month, you can make $1,000 a month with display ads alone.
And if you have 50,000 monthly page views, you can qualify for Mediavine, which would
give you even more ad income because they tend to give bloggers more money for those
page views than something like Google AdSense would.
Next you want to factor in your audience engagement.
It's a small but highly engaged audience that is going to buy your products that will be
more valuable than a large disengaged one.
Here's what I mean by that.
If you have a bunch of people that are coming to your website regularly and they're purchasing
products and they're constantly engaging with you, then you are already doing way better
than the person who has millions of page views a month that no one ever comes back to.
So you want to look at things like what's your email open rate?
How many followers do you have on social media?
All those metrics, put them together and estimate potential digital product sales.
So like if you have 100,000 people on your email list and you have a 1% conversion rate,
you can kind of do the math as to how much money you could be making from those people
if you're selling, let's say, a dollar product.
So if you have a 1% conversion rate and you're selling a dollar product and you have 100,000
people on your list, you're making $1,000 a month.
And if you're selling a product that's $10, well, you're making $10,000 a month.
So that's kind of how you reverse engineer all that good stuff.
You want to research the earning potential for your niche.
For example, finance blogs, they often make a lot more money from affiliate marketing
than food blogs would.
The reason for that is they're constantly, or I shouldn't say constantly, they're often
selling products that have a higher commission.
So where if a person is selling a syrup on their food blog that links back to Amazon
and it's a $2 syrup and they're only getting, let's say, $0.04 for it, that same amount
of, I guess, page views could be making significantly more on a finance blog where if that person
clicks through, let's say, on Robinhood and they get a $20 kickback, then obviously they're
going to get a lot more money for every time that someone clicks their link and purchases
a product.
So you want to see what other popular blogs are in your industry and what they're charging
for advertising, sponsored posts, etc. to compare.
And then you want to put together rate sheets and media kits and things like that so that
whenever you start talking to advertisers, you know how much money you should be charging
for those kinds of things.
Finally, you want to consider any outside income like consulting, freelancing, speaking
opportunities, etc. that could come from growing your blog's authority.
Adding up all these income sources like the digital products, the affiliates, the ads,
the services, etc.
Use that to calculate what your total monthly earning potential is.
And if the numbers aren't where you want them to be, then you can start, you know, creating
goals that actually drive you towards what you're looking for.
When you start doing this, you have to ask yourself, does the reverse engineered income
surpass what you're currently making?
And if not, keep growing your audience and your income models until your blogging business
can fully replace your 9-5 salary or whatever it is you're doing to make money at this time.
Okay, I know we've covered a lot, but let's get into the next steps.
Here's what you do next.
You have a clear vision of turning your blog into a business.
You have the income potential and it looks promising.
Now it's time to actually take the action and implement these monetization strategies.
So here's the concrete next steps you should be taking.
First, you want to sign up for those affiliate programs.
Amazon Associates is the lowest barrier to entry.
Almost everybody I've ever met that applies is accepted.
Another one that's really great is ShareASale, and I actually will have a link in the show
notes if you're interested in signing up for that.
ShareASale is an affiliate network that connects you to other companies like Rugs R Us or Healthy
Wage and things like that.
They will, at least at the time of this recording, they connect you with those advertisers.
So if anybody purchases products on those links, you would get a kickback.
So definitely start signing up for affiliate programs immediately.
Like I said, they're the lowest barrier to entry and the easiest way to start making
money.
Then you want to research advertisers and sponsors in your niche.
Start reaching out to brands that could sponsor your posts or run ads on your site.
The third step is you want to build your first lead magnet to start growing your email list.
This could be anything.
It could be an ebook, a checklist, a mini course, anything you want to create that you
can use to get people to give you their email address.
First I want you to outline your first digital product idea to sell.
This doesn't have to be something scary or something you have to do immediately.
Just start with something simple like an online course or maybe even a guide.
Then I want you to start getting images and branding assets that are designed for your
blogging business that will polish your online presence.
For example, if you want to be the face of your website, go get new headshots.
If you don't want to be the face of your website, then hire someone to create your avatar or
something that you can use that will be the image or the face or the brand of your website.
Then start setting up social media business profiles if you don't already have them.
Now, the one thing I will say is with this, go ahead and get all of your social media
profiles but don't feel like you have to be on all the social media profiles because let's
face it, being on all those social media companies, that's a lot of work and it's going to take
a lot of time to build engaged followings.
What I would do is pick one, maybe two, and only focus on that to actually grow your audience
and then make sure that on the others, like let's say your main one is TikTok.
Everybody's talking about TikTok now.
You're on TikTok but you still have an Instagram account, a Twitter account, a Facebook account,
et cetera.
I'm sorry, not Twitter, RIP Twitter.
You have an ex account.
Basically what you're going to do is every once in a while, you're just going to put
one post that keeps your account active and engaged just so that you can make sure you
can keep your username on it because the truth is if you don't keep those pages active, you
could lose them because I don't know if you've ever seen the terms and conditions of all
these various social media profiles but they actually say if you just are squatting on
it, like keeping the thing but not using the thing, they have the right to discontinue
your account and you don't want that to happen especially if you start building a brand that
really gets known.
So at least post on them once in a while, just something generic or whatever you want
but make sure you at least keep the pages active but only focus on one to build up and
keep your audience growing and then if you want to start branching out into the others
or repurposing your content in some other way, go for it.
I'll leave a link to Rachel Peterson.
She has a video that talks about how you can repurpose all of that content on all the different
social media websites and it's a really cool way to take one piece of content and make
like 30 pieces of content from it so I'll leave that in the show notes.
And again that's famousashlegrant.com backslash bossblogging.
Next thing you want to do is you want to track your income goals in a monthly spreadsheet
to stay on target.
So if you have an amount of money that you want to be making, it's important to track
how much you're actually making so you can kind of keep an idea of where you're at, where
you're falling short, and what kind of things you need to be doing to keep this going.
Again remember, this is being treated like a business if you want it to be a business
so you've got to keep an eye on how much money you're bringing in and there's something really
special about tracking that amount of money because I'm part of Denise Duffield Thomas's
Money Bootcamp and I have to tell you, when she started having us track our income, it
makes you want to go get more.
Like if you have to put a zero for the month, there's something about it that just makes
you like, it lights a fire under your ass and you want to go get more money.
So I highly recommend you track your income and your goals and all that good stuff in
a monthly spreadsheet.
The key is don't get yourself overwhelmed but start taking small steps every single
week because consistent action is what will turn your dream of a profitable blogging business
into a reality.
And by the way, one thing I have to say is as you're going, there's going to be some
hard times, it's going to suck sometimes, so make sure you're celebrating every milestone,
every income goal you're reaching to stay motivated.
The how do you do that?
That's probably the question that's going through your mind right now is how do you
stay motivated even when it starts sucking?
So one way you can do it is by every single time you hit a revenue milestone or a traffic
increase, go celebrate it in some way, shape or form and it doesn't even have to cost you
money.
Maybe you can have the evening off or maybe you get a dance party with your dogs.
I don't know.
Do something that helps you celebrate.
Another thing I recommend is joining a mastermind group or community of bloggers to get support
and inspiration.
I did this myself by joining the Create and Go.
They had a blogging mentorship group for people that were in their courses and I highly recommend
that if you want to check out their courses, there'll be a link in the show notes as well.
They have the Six Figure Blogger Course and Pinterest Traffic Avalanche and all kinds
of amazing courses that I highly, highly recommend.
Another thing I recommend you do if you're trying to stay motivated is schedule time
off to recharge because the truth is burnout will zap your motivation and your creativity.
So make sure you're taking breaks regularly and then you'll come back recharged.
And then we're going to go back to the very beginning of this episode.
Remember your why.
You visit the original reason that you started this in the first place.
Every time things start sucking, just start thinking about why it is you're doing this.
For me, I was working at an insurance company and I was hating it.
Working in a nine to five, I don't do well with authority.
And so working in that insurance company was a soul sucking day job and every time I think
about the idea of having to go back to that, that's what makes me finally get some articles
written for my clients.
And that may be necessary for you.
You have to start thinking about, well, if I'm not doing this, what could I be doing?
You could flip burgers.
You could work at a CVS.
You could do all kinds of things.
But if you're enjoying the thing that you're doing now of actually blogging for money,
remember that and hopefully that'll motivate you to keep going.
So once again, I know we've covered a lot here, but I truly believe that with consistent
effort and focusing on your goals, you can power through the challenges of blogging as
a business.
I hope that you'll stay inspired by the freedom of being your own boss and doing the work
you love.
And hopefully your motivation will be renewed every time you get a check or a new client
or a new anything.
So that kind of wraps up today's show of how to turn your blog into a thriving business.
And let's quickly recap on some of the things we just checked about.
So first, I want you to reflect carefully on your motivation and make sure entrepreneurship
fits your personality before you commit.
Then I want you to lay the groundwork of great content, audience building, and branding before
you try to rush into monetization.
Next, take advantage of proven money-making models like affiliate marketing, digital products,
sponsored posts, and more.
Then I want you to calculate your income potential and set realistic goals so that you can determine
whether or not blogging can make the money that you need.
Then start taking small steps every single week to implement monetization strategies
without getting overwhelmed.
Finally, stay motivated through those challenges that you will face, you will inevitably face
these by tracking progress, celebrating your wins, recharging, and connecting with a community.
Turning your passion project into a profitable business, it's challenging, I admit it.
It's really hard sometimes, but it's so rewarding.
And I hope that everything that you've heard about in this episode gives you clarity and
actionable steps to move forward.
So don't forget to head to famousashlegrant.com backslash boss blogger and on that page you'll
be able to download an income goal tracker and other free resources to help you get started.
And until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.