How To Build A Business, Not Just A Blog…
We’re gonna start this post out with a good ol’ fashioned quote.
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”
I say that to say this, while blogging may be a great way to make a full time income online if you don’t honestly sit down and learn the skills it takes to do it yourself then you WON’T have success. It’s that simple.
“Buy a blog and you’ll make a commission, build a blog yourself and you’ll get paid for a lifetime.”
But before you even get started doing any of that you will need to ask yourself the most important question of them all.
Why Do You Want To Do This?
If you don’t know why you want to blog in the first place then you aren’t going to get very far. You have to have guidance and a direction in which you want to take your blogging efforts. You’ve got to know exactly who you speaking to, or who your audience is. That way you can address their specific needs and your message will be much more effective in the long run. We’ll talk more about selecting a niche in just a bit.
For now, you need to figure out precisely why you want to build a blog into a business.
A few reasons could be some of these…
• You want a brand new sports car. (who the heck doesn’t)
• Your thinking about buying a new home.
• Working for the man sucks and you want more free time.
• Maybe you want the challenge of seeing if you can do it.
• Or you just think blogs are cool.
Whichever the reason it better be a good one because you need to have a passionate approach behind this or your message with just flat out suck. You want to communicate your deepest thoughts and details through your blog + people love that stuff. (and that’s really why you wanna do this) Because when people love stuff, they tell other people about it and then you start seeing a TON of traffic coming your way.
For me, I created this blog because I wanted to establish myself as an authority figure in the Internet Marketing niche and brand myself long term as a great blogger. You’re WHY should be something similar to this except with your own words. (I’m not you, you’re you, you already know why, now write it down)
Okay, now that we’ve got past that part of it it’s time to select a niche. Now obviously there are WAY to many different one’s for me to list them all here so instead of giving you examples of niches I’m going to give you examples of the types of blogs you will find throughout different niches.
You need to figure out what kind of business you are creating, for example…
• Do you want a blog that is personally authored by you and is something you become well known for?
• Do you want to create tons of small, niche specific, affiliate focused blogs?
• Do you want to use your blog as an online store front for your brick and mortar business?
• Do you want to create a blog that you can turn around and sell?
• And the list keeps on going…
It’s important to point out at this point you do not need to worry about being locked into one specific type of blog or online business because you can always expand into that niche later on. But what you do need to realize is that for the time being you will need to select one and focus entirely on it.
You Know The Business, What’s Next?
Once you have your business cemented in your mind next you need to do your market research. Here you will basically decide what market you want to get into. I must caution you on this because if you pick something you don’t like or have little interest in writing about it will become EXTREMELY difficult.
There are a few things you want to keep in mind when you are doing this type of research.
• Find a niche market you’re in already.
• Something you have knowledge of already.
• You know how to find contacts in.
• See similar blogs selling this stuff.
I want to make clear that the last two points in that list above are by far the most important ones because if you don’t know anyone in a market it can be hard to find JV partners to help promote your stuff with. And second, if you’re not seeing the content in your market actively talked about, being sold or purchased then you are probably in a cold market, that’s not what you want. (it’s gotta be hot!)
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
Yup, you guessed it, this section is going to be about keywords and how to find the secret “BUYER” keywords. Now you might be thinking, but wait Matthew, keyword tools only show you traffic and competition. Don’t you want the keywords with the most traffic?
The answer to that questions comes on a double edged sword. Yes and no.
Before I answer that, I want you to try and answer this for me. What are the MOST important metrics when doing keyword research?
• Traffic
• Competition
• KEI
• _________(can ya fill that in?)
You see, there are a bunch of really awesome keyword research tools out there today but the thing is most of them only tell you the basics, and I’m talking about like 99.9% of the tools out there today. They even use some snazzy sounding terms like KEI to try and confuse you into thinking it’s overwhelmingly important. In the end, they will always tell you the traffic and competition ratio so you can know how much to expect.
All seems to be in order, you’ve got to know you’re metrics so you can know how much traffic to expect from keywords. And then we’re even going to find those hidden gems with no competition and loads of free traffic.
Yet, why is it that once we decide on some keywords, build out TONS of high quality content, backlinks, implement countless SEO strategies, PPC campaigns, and you name it only to end up with TONS of traffic and no solid buyers?
What the heck? The traffic is great, the Google rankings are soaring, and you poured your heart and soul into the content?
Where’s The Kink?
This is the part of keyword research everyone seems to leave out for some reason yet it by FAR the most important part of the whole shebang! And this little discovery has lead to a massive turning point in my affiliate marketing business.
The discovery is this, there is a HUGE difference between “TRAFFIC” keywords and “BUYER” keywords.
You must understand that just because there is a gigantic amount of people searching for a certain keyword does NOT mean they are ready to buy something if they find what they are looking for, even if they find it on your site.
You can take the ‘skateboarding’ industry for example here. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people searching Google every minute for skateboarding gear be it decks, shoes, clothes, famous skaters, YouTube videos, tricks tips, and LOADS more. The problem here is the demographic, most people searching for this stuff are generally teenagers and probably can’t afford to buy your stuff. This is because they are fans of the market and not buyers.
However, this doesn’t mean you couldn’t make money in the skateboarding market, I’m not saying you can’t. Because you can, there is a bunch of AdSense money to be made here along with selling advertising space on your blog. But on the affiliate side of things the skateboarding industry is looking a little gloomy. There market just doesn’t have as many “MONEY” keywords as others do.
So again, I am not debating whether a profit can be made in this niche, I want to make it clear to you that traffic and revenue do not always go hand in hand together. If you’ve got PPC experience you probably know what I’m talking about already. You can have two keywords that are almost IDENTICAL, yet one will convert like crazy while the other one does squat.
Why Do Some Keywords Create Cash?
To be honest, no one really knows for sure. But what is fact is that certain keywords are used by “BUYERS” more than general Internet surfers. The question though is how to we uncover these keywords?
You’ve got two options…
•1 – Slow And Painful
Build tons of pages and niche sites, accumulate hundreds of backlinks, track everything and wait a few months to see what is converting.
•2 – Fast And Furious – Figure out what’s working in other niche markets and use that information to cut your keyword research time down from months to days.
Sure, traditional keyword tools are great but all they are ever going to tell you is traffic and competition ratios. The real good stuff is what they just happen to leave out like the sales, revenues, and profits.
So in order to figure all of this out I’m going to have to recommend that you download this eBook because this stuff gets WAY to extensive for me to write in one whole blog post. You would be scrolling for days on this page if I did that.
But it’s cool because my buddy John Cow is going to show you EXACTLY, step by step on how to uncover these KILLER keywords that not only have loads of traffic and low competition but are proven to be excellent buyers.
Get your copy of “Building A Business, Not A Blog” here.
If you haven't got it yet, you may want to download this private interview with Frank Kern. Thanks for visiting!
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