My 5 Step Process to Profitable Blogging
My 5 Step Process to Profitable Blogging
Using a Strategic Funnel
Copyright BlogTyrant.com 2014
The content of this eBook is for information and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Please use this as a starting point for further research and consult an accountant, lawyer or relevant expert if needed. Always make sure any information you read applies to your own website as results vary for everyone. Some of the links included in this report are affiliate links. If you purchase a product that I have linked to by clicking my link I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I never recommend any products unless I have used them myself and found them to be valuable. Please make sure all recommendations and tips are right for you before proceeding. INTRODUCTION G'day! My name is Ramsay and I run a website called Blog Tyrant that is all about making your blog massive through tactical strategies. When I was in college I sold a blog for almost $20,000 after just eight months. That was how I got started. Since thenI've been working from home and experimenting with different ways to use blogs to make a living. While I have had some success, that doesn't mean that my way is the only way. In fact, there are people out there making a hell of a lot more money than I do. That being said, the methods that will be outlined below are much safer. I've always been the kind of person who would choose a slow growth but secure online income over some quick method that might work really well or not at all. So, if you're looking for a super-fast get rich quick scheme this is not for you. That's not my style. But if you are looking to build a blogging empire that is loved by your readers, is stable and secure and thrives over time - that's what I'm about. You'll have to work hard but your work will pay off. Build the whole picture The steps below start out quite simply and get progressively more complex. It's important that you don't skip over any of them because they all fit together to make a "big picture" that has been working for me across multiple niches. Many bloggers feel overloaded with information early on and as such they miss some really important stuff because it all just seems to hard. Please do not do this! Take your time and do not worry about getting everything done as fast as possible. Shortcuts don't pay off. It's much better to go slow and get it right the first time than it is to get it set up quickly and then realize that your can't do something critical because you missed a step. THE 5 STEP PROCESS AT A GLANCE This report is going to cover five broad steps. Some of this information will be completely new to you, some of it won't be. Please keep in mind that the goal of this report is to point you in the right direction. I want to give you an overarching strategy to base your blogging efforts around – I'm not trying to solve every individual problem that you might come across. The reason I mention this is because it's so important for bloggers to learn how to test, experiment and try new things for themselves. If you follow a plan blindly you'll find that you get stuck or run into problems quite regularly and won't know how to solve them. By giving you the “broad strokes” of the picture I can point you in the right direction (based on what works for me) and then leave you to fill in the learning based on the gaps that you feel you personally need to fill. The five steps that will be covered are: 1. Setup, strategy and a blogging brand that gets noticed 2. Creating targeted content for the right people 3. Building a funnel and capturing email subscribers 4. Promoting smartly for better traffic 5. Leveraging influencers Please note that the money is made at Step 3. The aim of our blogging is to drive targeted and highly interested traff ic to a solidly branded blog's mailing list where you can then introduce products, affiliate products or services to your trusted readership. There are many other ways to make money blogging (ads, sponsorship, etc.) but this method is the most secure for the long term as you are capturing email subscribers that you get to keep after any sale is made. I'm going to go through all the steps and then summarize the strategy at the end. Let's dive in! STAGE 1: SETUP, STRATEGY AND A BRAND THAT GETS NOTICED. There are more blogs out there than ever before. It's harder than ever to cut through the noise. But, if you can cut through,you will do extremely well because people are dying to interact with a blogthat provides quality. So the setup phase is very important because it is here that you create the brand and the identity that people are going to either love or ignore. This stage involves: • Development of brand identity and niche selection (ongoing tweaks) • Getting your own domain and web host that you control (10 mins) • Installing WordPress as your blogging software (30 seconds) • Choosing a theme that emphasises your content and opt-in form (20 mins) Some of this will seem complicated if you are new to blogging but I have tutorials and guides both in this report and on my blog that simplify the whole process. Furthermore, I have also only chosen services that I have used myself and either know to be simple or that have excellent support staff for you to contact should the need arise. Development of your brand identity and niche selection The reason we get started here is because the brand identity that you come up with is going to affect things like the domain name that you choose and the blogging template that you select for your new blog. It's vital that you have a good understand of what a brand actual is. Is it your logo? No. Is it your color scheme? No. Is it your goals or message? No. Your brand is all of those things combined. It's your name, your face, your content. It's the feeling that people get when they visit your blog. It's the things that people say about you after they have left. So before you get started with a professional blog you want to think about all of this information. Ask yourself questions like: • How do I want people to think about my site? • What demographics am I targeting? • What actions do I want them to take? • How do I want to be positioned as compared to my competitors? It's a very good idea to have some plan about your brand identity before you select your domain name (i.e. www.blogtyrant.com) because your domain name will be the very first “feel” that people get for your brand. A critical factor at this stage At this stage of the process there is a critical factor that many bloggers overlook. It's quite a shame because if this stage gets skipped, the rest of the process can be really difficult and sometimes even pointless. Before you set up your blog and pour your heart and soul into it, you want to make sure that you have some idea about how you are going to make money from it. That doesn't mean you need to have your full plan entirely in view for the next five years. But you should have some idea about what you are going to do beyond writing a few articles. So how do you do it? Well, the best bet is to simply look at the other blogs in the niche that you are interested in. A bit of friendly competition analysis. What products are they promoting? Have they built any programs, courses, eBooks, etc. of their own? Find out what they are doing and start planning ways that you might be able to take their lessons and improve upon them, or promote them in a different way. Remember, you do not need to be the first to do it. Subway wasn't the first fast food restaurant but they now have more chains than McDonalds. You just need to find a way to be distinctive and strategic about how you get traffic. We'll get on to that later. So how do you choose a domain name? There are many schools of thought on how to select the best domain name but basically we can condense them all into three options. Firstly, you can choose a domain name that is keyword based. For example, I have the word “blog” in my domain name and my website is about blogging. This can be beneficial for SEO but also gives people an instant understanding of what you do. Secondly, you can choose something distinctive. Everything about your brand should be distinctive, of course, but sometimes a memorable domain name that has nothing to do with anything can work wonders because it sticks in the minds' of your readers. Thirdly, if your blog will have something to do with your personal self (perhaps it's services you offer, a personal blog, your own thoughts on a particular topic, etc.) then you can consider using your own name. This might be a play on your own name mixed with a keyword in your niche, or it might just be straight up www.firstnamesurname.com Whatever you do, try to make sure it stands out and is consistent with the rest of your brand. You want everything to feel like it fits together nicely. As mentioned above, this requires constant tweaking and you absolutely don't need to get it all finalized before you get started. The main thing is that you believe in your domain name and brand and are excited by it. If you are, then chances are other people will be as well. Getting your own domain and web host I am of the firm belief that free blogs do not work for long term success. If you've been reading my blog or are part of my mailing list you would have heard me say it a dozen times. The reason I emphasise it so much is because bloggers are forever setting themselves up on free platforms like Blogger and then wondering why they can't get any traction on Google or with subscribers. In the end they ALWAYS want to migrate to a self hosted WordPress set up where they have full control and ownership. But migrating after you've been somewhere else can be a real pain in the butt so it's much better to get set up the right way the first time. This stage does not need to be expensive or complicated. BlueHost currently give you a free domain name when you sign up for a new hosting account. If you sign up through the link above you will get a discount rate of $3.95 a month. BlueHost is where I started my first blog and I have been using them ever since. The main advantages of BlueHost include: • 24 hour live support You can get on live chat with a technician any time of day for any problem. • Anytime money-back If you aren't happy with their service you can get your money back. They don't ask questions. • One-click WordPress installation Installing WordPress requires no technical skills and is all done by clicking their WordPress button and following the prompts. • Unlimited domains and email addresses Want to start another blog after this one? You don't need a whole new hosting account – you just add new domains and website to this current one. You could have five blogs all from the same hosting account and at the same price. • Trusted by thousands BlueHost is used by over 850,000 bloggers. That means they aren't suddenly going to shut up shop and close your blog without warning. If you'd like to read more about why I recommend BlueHost you can read this detailed blog reviewon my site. A final word on self-hosting I cannot stress the importance of having your own domain name and host enough. Even if you do not use my recommendations, please find your own preferred company and get started with them. As far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no point in proceeding with a strategy about building a profitable, longterm blogging business if you do not own the assetthat you are growing. You won't have enough control over things like stats, plugins and technology and you don't fully own the brand name that you are building unless you are on your own hosting set up. If you are ready to get started then just click this link to read my step-bystep installation guide. It will take you through three of the dot points in this section: getting a free domain name and a web host, installing WordPress and choosing a new theme/template. STEP 2: CREATING TARGETED CONTENT FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE. The next stage in this strategy is to understand how to develop targeted content that gets in front of the right people. For this strategy there are going to be three types of content that you need to produce: 1. On-site content This is the articles and landing pages that go on your own blog. 2. Off-site content This is the content that you produce in guest posts and other places around the net to get you attention. We'll talk about this in the promotion section. 3. Email list content This is the strategic content that you send out to your email subscribers. The problem with most bloggers is that they just write random articles about every single topic related to their niche hoping that something will stick. It doesn't work. Even if you get floods of traffic from those posts you'll find that not much comes of it because your offer doesn't match the visitors that you're getting. A strategic blog funnel vs a regular blog's approach Here is a little metaphor to show you what I mean. Have you ever been a music concert and watched the thousands of people flooding through the gates? All of them are there to see their favorite musician play some of their favorite songs (content). Now, picture the merchandise stand. People are throwing their money away for some overpriced, poor quality t-shirts, posters, jumpers, etc. with the latest album's artwork on it (product). But imagine if they had John Mayer merchandise at a Skrillex concert. Or Susan Boyle CDs at a Justin Bieber gig. Nothing would get sold. Unfortunately, that's what most bloggers do. They have poorly placed products or services for the traffic that they are getting. It's not that the products are necessarily bad, but they don't match the traffic that comes to their site. What we want to do is have the most amazing product ready and waiting for people who are desperate to engage with it. And what's more, we want to have an impeccable salesperson telling them why they should buy it. Let's take a look at how we should be doing it. On-site targeted content The first step to any successful blogging funnel is producing targeted, evergreen content on your blog that solves problems. The idea here is to use long-form content (3,000+ words) to really blow people away. It might take the form of a tutorial, a review, a comparison or a really long story mixed in with some information that is valuable to everyone. So what is evergreen content? It is content (articles, video, podcasts, etc.) that stays relevant forever and is not based on trends. For example, How to Get Famouswill be relevant forever. How to Get Famous on X Factor in 2014is not because it will soon be about an old series of a show that may or may not be popular. The main point should be that the content is an off-shoot of the product that you eventually want to promote to your mailing list. Solve problems, amaze people, get them to sign up. For example, let's say you want to eventually sell an eBook on how to throw the perfect uppercut punch. Your long-form blog content could be about subtopics of that niche like 5 Exercises that Build Real-World Punching Strengthor How to Train on the Heavy Bag. You are solving problems for people in that niche but also keeping your focus very tightly around the end-result that you would eventually like them to take. Offsite targeted content Offsite content is the exact same thing except you are placing that content on other websites and blogs in the form of guest posts, comments and so on. The idea here is to start the funnelling process by writing an article that is realated to your blog and your mailing list and eventually your product such that they read your guest post and click a cleverly placed link that goes back to your blog in order to subscribe to your mailing list. Now, these links have huge SEO benefits if done correctly but that is beyond the scope of this report. The main thing to understand is that you want to write a brilliantly long article and direct people back to your own website where you then encourage them to subscribe to your mailing list. That mailing list will then further provide them with related information and then eventually an introduction to the product that you are selling or promoting. Email list content Your email list content can come in the form of a free report (like this one) or an ongoing email course that you provide to your readers as a free “thank you” for signing up. While the point of the on-site and off-site content is to “wow” people and introduce them to your style and message, the point of the email list content is to build trust and personalise the process. Good email list content is still highly useful and helpful for the subscriber, but it should have more of your personal story in it. Videos are a great way to do this. Again, make sure you keep the focus close to the end result that you want people to take. You're not trying to cover every topic in your niche – just a very few selected ones from around your chosen theme. Example: I use this strategy on Blog Tyrant all the time. One simple example that you can see in action is my guest post on Copyblogger called How to Get More Subscribers for Your Email List. In that article I talked about (and linked to an article on my blog) how I sold a blog for $20,000 in university before I really understood the power of email subscribers. I then go on to describe why they are so important and how to get more of them. When people click through to my link they saw a huge evergreen article on how to sell a blog, and an option to sign up to my email list and get a free eBook on how to grow your mailing list by 120%. This worked extremely well and has brought me hundreds of subscribers, all interested in how to further use blogging to grow a mailing list. STEP 3: BUILDING A FUNNEL AND GETTING SUBSCRIBERS Okay so there is going to be some overlap between this section and the previous one because I couldn't really talk about how to develop content for a funnel without talking about the actual funnel. But now we are going to go into more detail about how to actually set it up so that it flows nicely and adds value for your readers. Here is a chart that I drew for myself when I was nutting out the process for some of my own campaigns and funnel-based blogging activities. You'll have to ignore the bad drawing and crooked lines, but hopefully you get the idea. Let's go into a little more detail. 1. Off-site content and advertising The content part has been discussed above in more detail but basically consists of guest posts, mentions and content that you can get on other sites through forums or commenting. Advertising refers to purchasing Facebook Ads or other advertising buys in order to drive relevant traffic to our on-site content. Don't worry, you won't need a big budget and you can often reinvest earnings so you're not out of pocket. 2. On-site content As mentioned above, this refers to our detailed, long-form evergreen articles that are on our blog. 3. Free giveaway This is one strategy that works extremely well. All you need to do is create a free giveaway like an eBook, report or email course and offer it to people who subscribe to your mailing list. You want to send it to them automatically after they subscribe which can be done easily with Aweber. Here is a tutorial I've done on how to set it all up. Remember, we want that free giveaway to be aligned with the topic of our guest posts, on-site content and also the future product that we are promoting. 4. Mailing list's content This is the content that you provide your mailing list with in order to build trust and provide value. The main goal here is to position yourself as a trusted expert before you promote anything for people to buy. 5. Product The last step is to promote a product that you have made or an affiliate product that you wish to promote. This can be done directly to the mailing list or in a more subtle way by writing more quality on-site content that mentions that product as well as providing a new avenue through which people can find you on social media and search engines. Remember, the beauty of this strategy is that you can do it over and over again for new products and promotions because you own the mailing list. And as long as you are honestly building trust and solving your subscribers' problems you will find that they have absolutely no problem hearing from you again and again. Email subscribers lead to more email subscribers One of the unspoken reasons as to why this strategy works so well is because your email subscribers will actually help you get more email subscribers by becoming loyal members of your tribe that actively promote everything that you put out. For example, let's say you have 500 people on your mailing list and you send out an email to them notifying them of a new 5,000 word article that you've written. Those 500 people are an initial promotion base that read and buy your stuff but also Tweet and Share your content because they wish to help you and be seen as someone who has discovered a good piece of useful content. Some marketers use shady lead magnets to get email subscribers and them spam the heck out of them. This churn and burn attitude is really strange to me because (other than being really unkind) it doesn't think about the long term realities of using those subscribers to get you more subscribers and more influence. Please don't do that. Increasing your subscriber rate I want to share with you a few things from a design and form point of view that work really well when you are trying to get more people onto your mailing list. Sometimes you see really good content being let down by some shoddy opt-in form work. • Popup forms work People really seem to hate pop up forms when you talk about them but in three years I've hardly had any complaints at all. And, what's more, the statistics are really encouraging. The popup form on Blog Tyrant has brought me about 3,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2014. • Bonus features work Try to give a bonus product or feature as opposed to discounting something. This helps to create desire but also keeps your perceived value high. • Forms places directly on Facebook campaigns work A website like Shortstackwill allow you to add email opt-in forms directly to your Facebook page under a new tab. This will allow you to send Facebook ads directly to an email opt-in form and converts really well. • Hellobar works http://hellobar.com/is a floating bar that sticks to the top of the screen when readers are on your blog. It can cause a high spike in signups if you use it to direct people to a subscription offer page – perhaps combined with a “get this free eBook” pitch. Make sure you keep testing these things and don't just take them as truth because you've seen it work somewhere else. Getting subscribers is really important so you don't want to be doing too much guesswork. STEP 4: PROMOTING SMARTLY FOR BETTER TRAFFIC. Almost daily I get emails from bloggers like this: “I've written some really good content but no one is coming to my site! It's just dead!” The main reason for this is because most bloggers think that writing a good article is enough. What they don't understand is that a blog is like any business – you have to promote it smartly. Imagine if you set up a new restaurant near your home. You have amazing food and wine but instead of advertising it and having a huge launch party you just open up at 9am and close at midnight. Sure, you might get a few people in who drive past and maybe a few others who have heard about you from their friends. But the really successful restaurants promote the heck out of themselves. Just think about how many McDonalds ads you've seen this week. A lot. A blog is exactly the same. If you want to grow it quickly you need to learn to promote it cleverly. And that means spending less time in and on your blog and more time helping other people grow theirs. It sounds odd but I'll explain. First you set your blog up, install a nice theme and fill out your About Page and all of that other stuff. Then you write that epic long-form content that we talked about. But once you've done that, you need to find the right people to visit. And that can only be done by going off-site and contributing to other people's blogs or purchasing advertising. Yes, you can play the SEO game and that does work. But it should form a part of your strategy and not the whole thing. If the majority of your traffic is coming from Google you can potentially be in a very risky position. Strategic guest posting I don't care what anyone says, guest posting is still one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog and get qualified leads. Every time I do a guest post on a site like Copyblogger I end up with a few hundred new subscribers in the space of two days. The task is to find places that match your audience and then research extremely well the kind of articles that succeed on that site. Research is entirely necessary and takes time, but it will pay off. Make sure you look into: • How many guest posts they take If it is a site that is completely flooded with guest posts then it might not be a good idea to spend too much time there. • How much interaction posts get Do articles get a lot of comments and social shares? That is a big indicator for how well the site will perform for you. • How much promotion occurs Will the owner of the site promote your guest post as if it was one of their own? Or does it get hidden somewhere? • What topics work best Find out whether or not your niche is narrowly matched to the guest post site. The closer the relationship between your two sites the better. • Policy on in-article links If the site doesn't let you have links to your own stuff inside the article that can cause problems. It's not the end of the world but it's much better if you can. Over time you will get a sense for the kind of blog that is best to target. You will also refine your pitching process so that you increase your chances of success when you go to get a guest post. Experiment with different formats to see which drives the most interest and traffic to both the guest post and your own article. For example, long list posts might outperform an ultimate guide post or visa versa. Facebook Ads Facebook Ads is currently one of the cheapest and most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog or landing page. In fact, there are many marketers and bloggers saying that if you are not on Facebook Ads you are missing a huge “boom time” opportunity. Take a look at the massive success one of my readers had when she started a new fashion blogand took my advice to try out Facebook Ads for herself. This is a screenshot excerpt from an email she sent me. Yep, that's 17,800 email subscribersin six weeks! This is a phenomenal achievement and not one that everyone can expect to replicate (or afford to spend the money to replicate). But it does show you the power of a good quality campaign. Marina, like us, uses an email list based campaign where she offers a free giveaway for signing up. Again, there is not enough scope in this free report to give you a tutorial on how to set up Facebook Ads campaigns. That kind of information takes up entire courses! The best thing to do is just get started. Make yourself a Facebook Page (if you don't have already) and start experimenting with small amounts of money and see if you get any leads. You might choose to send $5 worth of traffic to a page on your blog that explains what your free giveaway is and that people can get it by just signing up to your mailing list. It could be that simple. If you start to get some success you can then use that information to start defining your ad further – change the images, text, etc. and watch what works best. Here is a full case study on Marina's setup and success. Running it all on autopilot The wonderful thing about all of this is that you can, over time, get it set up so that the whole funnel, from the Facebook Ads to the final sale, runs pretty much automatically. If you sign up with Aweber(as mentioned above) you can create automatic follow up sequences that get sent to someone as soon as they subscribe. So, your Facebook Ad drives traffic to a place on your blog where people can subscribe, and then over the coming days they get automatically sent a series of emails that add value and then finally promote a product to them. Once you start to see some success with this method you then spend your time tweaking your ads, articles, opt-in forms and landing pages so as to increase your conversions as much as possible. Incidentally, that type of information is the main thing I write about on Blog Tyrant as I keep experimenting with strategies like this one. Private advertising buys There are heaps of other places to pay for traffic but one of the cheapest and most effective methods I've found is something called BlogAds.com This website basically allows you to place ads (images mostly) on websites within the niche you choose. Some of the blogs that are available on the website are priced extremely well and you can end up getting your ad in front of several thousand visitors for just a few dollars. As mentioned, when you use this service you will mostly be placing a square image on someone's blog and have people click through to your chosen page via that image. This means you need to think about conversions just like you would an ad on Facebook. Some things that have worked for me include: • Using a face looking at text If you can have a face looking at the text you use on your image that can help to draw attention to the ad. • Tell people to click Some people don't know that they need to click the ad. Make sure you have some text telling them what to do. • Make sure it matches Make sure the advert itself matches the destination page and offer in some way. You want to make sure that people feel like they are safe and know exactly where they are. You really don't need to make these ads that fancy either. Glen from ViperChill once showed me an ad that he did in MS Paint that looked like crap but converted off the charts. I had similar success with this ad: It looks absolutely terrible but I ran it on a really fancy fashion website. I think it stood out enough and made people curious and it caused a good click through rate. Of course, you need to test these things but the main point is that you don't always need to spend a fortune to have some interesting results. Again, you don't need to spend a fortune. Just experiment with a small amount of money and see if you can get some results. In the end you'll be reinvesting profits to pay for this type of marketing. STEP 5: LEVERAGING INFLUENCERS. One of the most important things that you can learn from this report is the power of influencers. So what is an influencer? Well, it is someone in your niche that can promote your content or support you in some way that will help you and your career. But before we get into the details of all this I should mention that I firmly believe that you shouldn't think about them like that. The best way to go about this part of the strategy is to try and make genuine friends with people in your niche. The reason for this is simple: the relationship that you develop is a two way street. You will both promote each other's content. You will both email each other in times of stress or when you need to bounce an idea off of someone who knows about your niche. If you are just trying to get something out of someone in a position of power you will just come across as a spammer and get no where. You'll miss out on the benefits of their promotion and, worst off all, you'll miss out on developing a friendship that could be genuinely useful over a number of years. Finding influencers and making contact By now you probably have some idea about who are the big players in your niche. Most of the time those people are too busy but it can't hurt to make contact in gentle ways. The first thing you should do is jump on Twitter and Google+ and follow their accounts. Share some of their content and make sure you add your own remarks to the Tweet to show that you've actually read it and find it interesting. The next thing that I like to do is link to their blog in one of the massive big evergreen articles that I write. This is particularly powerful if you link to them on a blog that you don't own. For example, I recently linked to my friend Chris Ducker's website on a Copyblogger guest postthat I did. It just so happened to be during the time when he was launching his new book and I know he appreciated the extra traffic. Once you have done something for someone you will find that they are much more open to returning the favor – even if it is just sharing the article that you've mentioned them in – it all counts. Konrad Sanders did this really well recently on his blog where he included a bunch of internet marketers (myself included) in a huge collection of tips. He then tweeted everyone to let us know it had gone live: The great thing about the way Konrad does it is that he includes humor and a lot of personality. When you draw attention to the obvious fact that he'd like some promotion it really does lighten the mood a little bit. Every influencer will understand the power of a back link. By adding a link to their website in your own articles you massively increase the chance that they will take notice of you, visit your site and get to know your face and brand. EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESSFUL FUNNEL. I'd like to finish off this report by showing you a successful content funnel in action. This will give you a chance to go and inspect the way they do things and take lessons away for your own content. Remember, you should never copy anyone's content or product ideas but there is no point in being totally original either. It is okay to borrow ideas, expand on them and add your own distinctive knowledge and flavour to something that is already being done. Example: Nerd Fitness and the Paleo App Steve Kamb is the owner of NerdFitness.com and has one of the most active and loyal communities on the net. One of his biggest content successes has been an article on the paleo diet that ranks at the top of Google for the search term “paleo diet” and brings him thousands of visitors every day. You can see from this screen shot that he even ranks above the Wikipedia page and the actual home page of the paleo diet! This is huge authority. If you read the article you'll see that it is thousands and thousands of words of pure gold. There are photos, graphics, videos and a depth of information that is the perfect example of how to write long form, ever green content. The first thing Steve does that is very clever is has his own Paleo eBook that you can download by subscribing to his list. He has an opt-in form placed at the very top of the page when people are still hungry for information. People who are looking for diet information are usually desperate to get quick answers. Steve knows that and uses a time sensitive call to action (GET IT NOW!) to hurry people along. The next thing that Steve has done that is extremely clever is create an App for iPhone and Android called Is It Paleo? This is a fantastic idea because it solves problems and also gets more of Nerd Fitness's branding in front of people. Whenever people need to know if a food fits in with this particular diet they will be looking at Steve's App and be reminded of his content. The main thing to notice here is that Steve has taken an article about a very specific niche topic and created products around it in order to capitalise on the success it was having in Google. Now, not all of us are going to rank for a term as popular as “paleo diet” but the point is that when you match some quality content to a useful product and drive traffic to it you can have a lot of wins. Remember, you can drive traffic in many ways (blog ads, FB Ads, Google Adwords, guest posting, etc.) and some of these options are a lot more stable than Google search results anyway. Now what? A good thing to do at this point now would be to sit down with a piece of paper and Steve Kamb's blog open. Have a look at the article and the way it links up with Google on the front end and his mailing list and App on the back end. See if you can replicate that process (remembering that traffic can be purchased) for yourself with your own niche and your own product or affiliate product idea. Start with the end result (the product you want people to buy) and then work backwards through the long form content (on and off site) and then plan some ads or promotion opportunities. Once you have it all planned out you can work on getting each stage set up one by one. Give yourself a solid timeline and some goals as targets and see what happens. GROWING THIS STRATEGY FASTER. Once you have a few ideas for this type of strategy you'll really want to start growing it as fast as possible. It's exciting! But it's impossible to do it all by yourself. At this point I'd really like to encourage you to look at Freelancer.com and ChrisDucker.com as they are two places to get some really good idea about how to get cheap help for growing your online business. On Freelancer.com you'll be able to hire workers from around the world to help you with creating content, building landing pages, developing graphics, etc. The great thing about it is that each job comes with a guarantee so if they don't finish the work they don't get paid. Chris Ducker is an expert in outsourcing and virtual assistants. He has built a huge company in the Philippines which helps people to find the right staff for their online projects so that they can become more prolific. I highly recommend you visit his blog and have a look around at some of the different strategies you can use to outsource some of this work. Finding the right person/people to help you do some of the time consuming tasks can really free you up to build something awesome! USEFUL RESOURCES TO GET YOU AHEAD. Every now and then someone will tell you about a tool, plugin or service that completely changes the way you do things online. Here are a list of resources that have helped me out and hopefully will help you jump ahead of the pack. BlueHost– This is the web host I recommend for setting up blogs and websites. Comes with an anytime money back guarantee and 24/7 live support chat. Clicky– Better analytics for your website. They have a free option but the Pro package gives you heat maps to show you where people are clicking on your ads. Extremely useful for seeing what works. Visual Website Optimizer– This website allows you to do split testing on your blog and landing pages. You run two versions and see which one performs better. Takes the guesswork out of marketing. ShortStackApp – This is an awesome website that lets you easy build landing pages with email opt-in forms within Facebook. These work extremely well when you send ads to them. Aweber– This is the service I use to store my email subscribers and send mail outs. Lots of stats and let's you split test different forms (colors, buttons, text, etc.) to see which one makes people sign up the most. Pingdom Tools– This website tests your blog to see how fast it loads and lets you know where the slowdowns occur. A fast loading website it essential to online success so play around with this. HelloBar– This website ads a little bar at the top of your blog which you can then put a link and a call to action in. Converts very well and is a good way to get visitors' attention and direct them to an offer. Thank you for reading! I hope this little report has been useful and gives you some ideas for your next online marketing project. Make sure you check out www.BlogTyrant.comas I'm always posting new experiments, ideas and tutorials.
Copyright BlogTyrant.com 2014
The content of this eBook is for information and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Please use this as a starting point for further research and consult an accountant, lawyer or relevant expert if needed. Always make sure any information you read applies to your own website as results vary for everyone. Some of the links included in this report are affiliate links. If you purchase a product that I have linked to by clicking my link I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I never recommend any products unless I have used them myself and found them to be valuable. Please make sure all recommendations and tips are right for you before proceeding. INTRODUCTION G'day! My name is Ramsay and I run a website called Blog Tyrant that is all about making your blog massive through tactical strategies. When I was in college I sold a blog for almost $20,000 after just eight months. That was how I got started. Since thenI've been working from home and experimenting with different ways to use blogs to make a living. While I have had some success, that doesn't mean that my way is the only way. In fact, there are people out there making a hell of a lot more money than I do. That being said, the methods that will be outlined below are much safer. I've always been the kind of person who would choose a slow growth but secure online income over some quick method that might work really well or not at all. So, if you're looking for a super-fast get rich quick scheme this is not for you. That's not my style. But if you are looking to build a blogging empire that is loved by your readers, is stable and secure and thrives over time - that's what I'm about. You'll have to work hard but your work will pay off. Build the whole picture The steps below start out quite simply and get progressively more complex. It's important that you don't skip over any of them because they all fit together to make a "big picture" that has been working for me across multiple niches. Many bloggers feel overloaded with information early on and as such they miss some really important stuff because it all just seems to hard. Please do not do this! Take your time and do not worry about getting everything done as fast as possible. Shortcuts don't pay off. It's much better to go slow and get it right the first time than it is to get it set up quickly and then realize that your can't do something critical because you missed a step. THE 5 STEP PROCESS AT A GLANCE This report is going to cover five broad steps. Some of this information will be completely new to you, some of it won't be. Please keep in mind that the goal of this report is to point you in the right direction. I want to give you an overarching strategy to base your blogging efforts around – I'm not trying to solve every individual problem that you might come across. The reason I mention this is because it's so important for bloggers to learn how to test, experiment and try new things for themselves. If you follow a plan blindly you'll find that you get stuck or run into problems quite regularly and won't know how to solve them. By giving you the “broad strokes” of the picture I can point you in the right direction (based on what works for me) and then leave you to fill in the learning based on the gaps that you feel you personally need to fill. The five steps that will be covered are: 1. Setup, strategy and a blogging brand that gets noticed 2. Creating targeted content for the right people 3. Building a funnel and capturing email subscribers 4. Promoting smartly for better traffic 5. Leveraging influencers Please note that the money is made at Step 3. The aim of our blogging is to drive targeted and highly interested traff ic to a solidly branded blog's mailing list where you can then introduce products, affiliate products or services to your trusted readership. There are many other ways to make money blogging (ads, sponsorship, etc.) but this method is the most secure for the long term as you are capturing email subscribers that you get to keep after any sale is made. I'm going to go through all the steps and then summarize the strategy at the end. Let's dive in! STAGE 1: SETUP, STRATEGY AND A BRAND THAT GETS NOTICED. There are more blogs out there than ever before. It's harder than ever to cut through the noise. But, if you can cut through,you will do extremely well because people are dying to interact with a blogthat provides quality. So the setup phase is very important because it is here that you create the brand and the identity that people are going to either love or ignore. This stage involves: • Development of brand identity and niche selection (ongoing tweaks) • Getting your own domain and web host that you control (10 mins) • Installing WordPress as your blogging software (30 seconds) • Choosing a theme that emphasises your content and opt-in form (20 mins) Some of this will seem complicated if you are new to blogging but I have tutorials and guides both in this report and on my blog that simplify the whole process. Furthermore, I have also only chosen services that I have used myself and either know to be simple or that have excellent support staff for you to contact should the need arise. Development of your brand identity and niche selection The reason we get started here is because the brand identity that you come up with is going to affect things like the domain name that you choose and the blogging template that you select for your new blog. It's vital that you have a good understand of what a brand actual is. Is it your logo? No. Is it your color scheme? No. Is it your goals or message? No. Your brand is all of those things combined. It's your name, your face, your content. It's the feeling that people get when they visit your blog. It's the things that people say about you after they have left. So before you get started with a professional blog you want to think about all of this information. Ask yourself questions like: • How do I want people to think about my site? • What demographics am I targeting? • What actions do I want them to take? • How do I want to be positioned as compared to my competitors? It's a very good idea to have some plan about your brand identity before you select your domain name (i.e. www.blogtyrant.com) because your domain name will be the very first “feel” that people get for your brand. A critical factor at this stage At this stage of the process there is a critical factor that many bloggers overlook. It's quite a shame because if this stage gets skipped, the rest of the process can be really difficult and sometimes even pointless. Before you set up your blog and pour your heart and soul into it, you want to make sure that you have some idea about how you are going to make money from it. That doesn't mean you need to have your full plan entirely in view for the next five years. But you should have some idea about what you are going to do beyond writing a few articles. So how do you do it? Well, the best bet is to simply look at the other blogs in the niche that you are interested in. A bit of friendly competition analysis. What products are they promoting? Have they built any programs, courses, eBooks, etc. of their own? Find out what they are doing and start planning ways that you might be able to take their lessons and improve upon them, or promote them in a different way. Remember, you do not need to be the first to do it. Subway wasn't the first fast food restaurant but they now have more chains than McDonalds. You just need to find a way to be distinctive and strategic about how you get traffic. We'll get on to that later. So how do you choose a domain name? There are many schools of thought on how to select the best domain name but basically we can condense them all into three options. Firstly, you can choose a domain name that is keyword based. For example, I have the word “blog” in my domain name and my website is about blogging. This can be beneficial for SEO but also gives people an instant understanding of what you do. Secondly, you can choose something distinctive. Everything about your brand should be distinctive, of course, but sometimes a memorable domain name that has nothing to do with anything can work wonders because it sticks in the minds' of your readers. Thirdly, if your blog will have something to do with your personal self (perhaps it's services you offer, a personal blog, your own thoughts on a particular topic, etc.) then you can consider using your own name. This might be a play on your own name mixed with a keyword in your niche, or it might just be straight up www.firstnamesurname.com Whatever you do, try to make sure it stands out and is consistent with the rest of your brand. You want everything to feel like it fits together nicely. As mentioned above, this requires constant tweaking and you absolutely don't need to get it all finalized before you get started. The main thing is that you believe in your domain name and brand and are excited by it. If you are, then chances are other people will be as well. Getting your own domain and web host I am of the firm belief that free blogs do not work for long term success. If you've been reading my blog or are part of my mailing list you would have heard me say it a dozen times. The reason I emphasise it so much is because bloggers are forever setting themselves up on free platforms like Blogger and then wondering why they can't get any traction on Google or with subscribers. In the end they ALWAYS want to migrate to a self hosted WordPress set up where they have full control and ownership. But migrating after you've been somewhere else can be a real pain in the butt so it's much better to get set up the right way the first time. This stage does not need to be expensive or complicated. BlueHost currently give you a free domain name when you sign up for a new hosting account. If you sign up through the link above you will get a discount rate of $3.95 a month. BlueHost is where I started my first blog and I have been using them ever since. The main advantages of BlueHost include: • 24 hour live support You can get on live chat with a technician any time of day for any problem. • Anytime money-back If you aren't happy with their service you can get your money back. They don't ask questions. • One-click WordPress installation Installing WordPress requires no technical skills and is all done by clicking their WordPress button and following the prompts. • Unlimited domains and email addresses Want to start another blog after this one? You don't need a whole new hosting account – you just add new domains and website to this current one. You could have five blogs all from the same hosting account and at the same price. • Trusted by thousands BlueHost is used by over 850,000 bloggers. That means they aren't suddenly going to shut up shop and close your blog without warning. If you'd like to read more about why I recommend BlueHost you can read this detailed blog reviewon my site. A final word on self-hosting I cannot stress the importance of having your own domain name and host enough. Even if you do not use my recommendations, please find your own preferred company and get started with them. As far as I am concerned, there is absolutely no point in proceeding with a strategy about building a profitable, longterm blogging business if you do not own the assetthat you are growing. You won't have enough control over things like stats, plugins and technology and you don't fully own the brand name that you are building unless you are on your own hosting set up. If you are ready to get started then just click this link to read my step-bystep installation guide. It will take you through three of the dot points in this section: getting a free domain name and a web host, installing WordPress and choosing a new theme/template. STEP 2: CREATING TARGETED CONTENT FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE. The next stage in this strategy is to understand how to develop targeted content that gets in front of the right people. For this strategy there are going to be three types of content that you need to produce: 1. On-site content This is the articles and landing pages that go on your own blog. 2. Off-site content This is the content that you produce in guest posts and other places around the net to get you attention. We'll talk about this in the promotion section. 3. Email list content This is the strategic content that you send out to your email subscribers. The problem with most bloggers is that they just write random articles about every single topic related to their niche hoping that something will stick. It doesn't work. Even if you get floods of traffic from those posts you'll find that not much comes of it because your offer doesn't match the visitors that you're getting. A strategic blog funnel vs a regular blog's approach Here is a little metaphor to show you what I mean. Have you ever been a music concert and watched the thousands of people flooding through the gates? All of them are there to see their favorite musician play some of their favorite songs (content). Now, picture the merchandise stand. People are throwing their money away for some overpriced, poor quality t-shirts, posters, jumpers, etc. with the latest album's artwork on it (product). But imagine if they had John Mayer merchandise at a Skrillex concert. Or Susan Boyle CDs at a Justin Bieber gig. Nothing would get sold. Unfortunately, that's what most bloggers do. They have poorly placed products or services for the traffic that they are getting. It's not that the products are necessarily bad, but they don't match the traffic that comes to their site. What we want to do is have the most amazing product ready and waiting for people who are desperate to engage with it. And what's more, we want to have an impeccable salesperson telling them why they should buy it. Let's take a look at how we should be doing it. On-site targeted content The first step to any successful blogging funnel is producing targeted, evergreen content on your blog that solves problems. The idea here is to use long-form content (3,000+ words) to really blow people away. It might take the form of a tutorial, a review, a comparison or a really long story mixed in with some information that is valuable to everyone. So what is evergreen content? It is content (articles, video, podcasts, etc.) that stays relevant forever and is not based on trends. For example, How to Get Famouswill be relevant forever. How to Get Famous on X Factor in 2014is not because it will soon be about an old series of a show that may or may not be popular. The main point should be that the content is an off-shoot of the product that you eventually want to promote to your mailing list. Solve problems, amaze people, get them to sign up. For example, let's say you want to eventually sell an eBook on how to throw the perfect uppercut punch. Your long-form blog content could be about subtopics of that niche like 5 Exercises that Build Real-World Punching Strengthor How to Train on the Heavy Bag. You are solving problems for people in that niche but also keeping your focus very tightly around the end-result that you would eventually like them to take. Offsite targeted content Offsite content is the exact same thing except you are placing that content on other websites and blogs in the form of guest posts, comments and so on. The idea here is to start the funnelling process by writing an article that is realated to your blog and your mailing list and eventually your product such that they read your guest post and click a cleverly placed link that goes back to your blog in order to subscribe to your mailing list. Now, these links have huge SEO benefits if done correctly but that is beyond the scope of this report. The main thing to understand is that you want to write a brilliantly long article and direct people back to your own website where you then encourage them to subscribe to your mailing list. That mailing list will then further provide them with related information and then eventually an introduction to the product that you are selling or promoting. Email list content Your email list content can come in the form of a free report (like this one) or an ongoing email course that you provide to your readers as a free “thank you” for signing up. While the point of the on-site and off-site content is to “wow” people and introduce them to your style and message, the point of the email list content is to build trust and personalise the process. Good email list content is still highly useful and helpful for the subscriber, but it should have more of your personal story in it. Videos are a great way to do this. Again, make sure you keep the focus close to the end result that you want people to take. You're not trying to cover every topic in your niche – just a very few selected ones from around your chosen theme. Example: I use this strategy on Blog Tyrant all the time. One simple example that you can see in action is my guest post on Copyblogger called How to Get More Subscribers for Your Email List. In that article I talked about (and linked to an article on my blog) how I sold a blog for $20,000 in university before I really understood the power of email subscribers. I then go on to describe why they are so important and how to get more of them. When people click through to my link they saw a huge evergreen article on how to sell a blog, and an option to sign up to my email list and get a free eBook on how to grow your mailing list by 120%. This worked extremely well and has brought me hundreds of subscribers, all interested in how to further use blogging to grow a mailing list. STEP 3: BUILDING A FUNNEL AND GETTING SUBSCRIBERS Okay so there is going to be some overlap between this section and the previous one because I couldn't really talk about how to develop content for a funnel without talking about the actual funnel. But now we are going to go into more detail about how to actually set it up so that it flows nicely and adds value for your readers. Here is a chart that I drew for myself when I was nutting out the process for some of my own campaigns and funnel-based blogging activities. You'll have to ignore the bad drawing and crooked lines, but hopefully you get the idea. Let's go into a little more detail. 1. Off-site content and advertising The content part has been discussed above in more detail but basically consists of guest posts, mentions and content that you can get on other sites through forums or commenting. Advertising refers to purchasing Facebook Ads or other advertising buys in order to drive relevant traffic to our on-site content. Don't worry, you won't need a big budget and you can often reinvest earnings so you're not out of pocket. 2. On-site content As mentioned above, this refers to our detailed, long-form evergreen articles that are on our blog. 3. Free giveaway This is one strategy that works extremely well. All you need to do is create a free giveaway like an eBook, report or email course and offer it to people who subscribe to your mailing list. You want to send it to them automatically after they subscribe which can be done easily with Aweber. Here is a tutorial I've done on how to set it all up. Remember, we want that free giveaway to be aligned with the topic of our guest posts, on-site content and also the future product that we are promoting. 4. Mailing list's content This is the content that you provide your mailing list with in order to build trust and provide value. The main goal here is to position yourself as a trusted expert before you promote anything for people to buy. 5. Product The last step is to promote a product that you have made or an affiliate product that you wish to promote. This can be done directly to the mailing list or in a more subtle way by writing more quality on-site content that mentions that product as well as providing a new avenue through which people can find you on social media and search engines. Remember, the beauty of this strategy is that you can do it over and over again for new products and promotions because you own the mailing list. And as long as you are honestly building trust and solving your subscribers' problems you will find that they have absolutely no problem hearing from you again and again. Email subscribers lead to more email subscribers One of the unspoken reasons as to why this strategy works so well is because your email subscribers will actually help you get more email subscribers by becoming loyal members of your tribe that actively promote everything that you put out. For example, let's say you have 500 people on your mailing list and you send out an email to them notifying them of a new 5,000 word article that you've written. Those 500 people are an initial promotion base that read and buy your stuff but also Tweet and Share your content because they wish to help you and be seen as someone who has discovered a good piece of useful content. Some marketers use shady lead magnets to get email subscribers and them spam the heck out of them. This churn and burn attitude is really strange to me because (other than being really unkind) it doesn't think about the long term realities of using those subscribers to get you more subscribers and more influence. Please don't do that. Increasing your subscriber rate I want to share with you a few things from a design and form point of view that work really well when you are trying to get more people onto your mailing list. Sometimes you see really good content being let down by some shoddy opt-in form work. • Popup forms work People really seem to hate pop up forms when you talk about them but in three years I've hardly had any complaints at all. And, what's more, the statistics are really encouraging. The popup form on Blog Tyrant has brought me about 3,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2014. • Bonus features work Try to give a bonus product or feature as opposed to discounting something. This helps to create desire but also keeps your perceived value high. • Forms places directly on Facebook campaigns work A website like Shortstackwill allow you to add email opt-in forms directly to your Facebook page under a new tab. This will allow you to send Facebook ads directly to an email opt-in form and converts really well. • Hellobar works http://hellobar.com/is a floating bar that sticks to the top of the screen when readers are on your blog. It can cause a high spike in signups if you use it to direct people to a subscription offer page – perhaps combined with a “get this free eBook” pitch. Make sure you keep testing these things and don't just take them as truth because you've seen it work somewhere else. Getting subscribers is really important so you don't want to be doing too much guesswork. STEP 4: PROMOTING SMARTLY FOR BETTER TRAFFIC. Almost daily I get emails from bloggers like this: “I've written some really good content but no one is coming to my site! It's just dead!” The main reason for this is because most bloggers think that writing a good article is enough. What they don't understand is that a blog is like any business – you have to promote it smartly. Imagine if you set up a new restaurant near your home. You have amazing food and wine but instead of advertising it and having a huge launch party you just open up at 9am and close at midnight. Sure, you might get a few people in who drive past and maybe a few others who have heard about you from their friends. But the really successful restaurants promote the heck out of themselves. Just think about how many McDonalds ads you've seen this week. A lot. A blog is exactly the same. If you want to grow it quickly you need to learn to promote it cleverly. And that means spending less time in and on your blog and more time helping other people grow theirs. It sounds odd but I'll explain. First you set your blog up, install a nice theme and fill out your About Page and all of that other stuff. Then you write that epic long-form content that we talked about. But once you've done that, you need to find the right people to visit. And that can only be done by going off-site and contributing to other people's blogs or purchasing advertising. Yes, you can play the SEO game and that does work. But it should form a part of your strategy and not the whole thing. If the majority of your traffic is coming from Google you can potentially be in a very risky position. Strategic guest posting I don't care what anyone says, guest posting is still one of the best ways to drive traffic to your blog and get qualified leads. Every time I do a guest post on a site like Copyblogger I end up with a few hundred new subscribers in the space of two days. The task is to find places that match your audience and then research extremely well the kind of articles that succeed on that site. Research is entirely necessary and takes time, but it will pay off. Make sure you look into: • How many guest posts they take If it is a site that is completely flooded with guest posts then it might not be a good idea to spend too much time there. • How much interaction posts get Do articles get a lot of comments and social shares? That is a big indicator for how well the site will perform for you. • How much promotion occurs Will the owner of the site promote your guest post as if it was one of their own? Or does it get hidden somewhere? • What topics work best Find out whether or not your niche is narrowly matched to the guest post site. The closer the relationship between your two sites the better. • Policy on in-article links If the site doesn't let you have links to your own stuff inside the article that can cause problems. It's not the end of the world but it's much better if you can. Over time you will get a sense for the kind of blog that is best to target. You will also refine your pitching process so that you increase your chances of success when you go to get a guest post. Experiment with different formats to see which drives the most interest and traffic to both the guest post and your own article. For example, long list posts might outperform an ultimate guide post or visa versa. Facebook Ads Facebook Ads is currently one of the cheapest and most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog or landing page. In fact, there are many marketers and bloggers saying that if you are not on Facebook Ads you are missing a huge “boom time” opportunity. Take a look at the massive success one of my readers had when she started a new fashion blogand took my advice to try out Facebook Ads for herself. This is a screenshot excerpt from an email she sent me. Yep, that's 17,800 email subscribersin six weeks! This is a phenomenal achievement and not one that everyone can expect to replicate (or afford to spend the money to replicate). But it does show you the power of a good quality campaign. Marina, like us, uses an email list based campaign where she offers a free giveaway for signing up. Again, there is not enough scope in this free report to give you a tutorial on how to set up Facebook Ads campaigns. That kind of information takes up entire courses! The best thing to do is just get started. Make yourself a Facebook Page (if you don't have already) and start experimenting with small amounts of money and see if you get any leads. You might choose to send $5 worth of traffic to a page on your blog that explains what your free giveaway is and that people can get it by just signing up to your mailing list. It could be that simple. If you start to get some success you can then use that information to start defining your ad further – change the images, text, etc. and watch what works best. Here is a full case study on Marina's setup and success. Running it all on autopilot The wonderful thing about all of this is that you can, over time, get it set up so that the whole funnel, from the Facebook Ads to the final sale, runs pretty much automatically. If you sign up with Aweber(as mentioned above) you can create automatic follow up sequences that get sent to someone as soon as they subscribe. So, your Facebook Ad drives traffic to a place on your blog where people can subscribe, and then over the coming days they get automatically sent a series of emails that add value and then finally promote a product to them. Once you start to see some success with this method you then spend your time tweaking your ads, articles, opt-in forms and landing pages so as to increase your conversions as much as possible. Incidentally, that type of information is the main thing I write about on Blog Tyrant as I keep experimenting with strategies like this one. Private advertising buys There are heaps of other places to pay for traffic but one of the cheapest and most effective methods I've found is something called BlogAds.com This website basically allows you to place ads (images mostly) on websites within the niche you choose. Some of the blogs that are available on the website are priced extremely well and you can end up getting your ad in front of several thousand visitors for just a few dollars. As mentioned, when you use this service you will mostly be placing a square image on someone's blog and have people click through to your chosen page via that image. This means you need to think about conversions just like you would an ad on Facebook. Some things that have worked for me include: • Using a face looking at text If you can have a face looking at the text you use on your image that can help to draw attention to the ad. • Tell people to click Some people don't know that they need to click the ad. Make sure you have some text telling them what to do. • Make sure it matches Make sure the advert itself matches the destination page and offer in some way. You want to make sure that people feel like they are safe and know exactly where they are. You really don't need to make these ads that fancy either. Glen from ViperChill once showed me an ad that he did in MS Paint that looked like crap but converted off the charts. I had similar success with this ad: It looks absolutely terrible but I ran it on a really fancy fashion website. I think it stood out enough and made people curious and it caused a good click through rate. Of course, you need to test these things but the main point is that you don't always need to spend a fortune to have some interesting results. Again, you don't need to spend a fortune. Just experiment with a small amount of money and see if you can get some results. In the end you'll be reinvesting profits to pay for this type of marketing. STEP 5: LEVERAGING INFLUENCERS. One of the most important things that you can learn from this report is the power of influencers. So what is an influencer? Well, it is someone in your niche that can promote your content or support you in some way that will help you and your career. But before we get into the details of all this I should mention that I firmly believe that you shouldn't think about them like that. The best way to go about this part of the strategy is to try and make genuine friends with people in your niche. The reason for this is simple: the relationship that you develop is a two way street. You will both promote each other's content. You will both email each other in times of stress or when you need to bounce an idea off of someone who knows about your niche. If you are just trying to get something out of someone in a position of power you will just come across as a spammer and get no where. You'll miss out on the benefits of their promotion and, worst off all, you'll miss out on developing a friendship that could be genuinely useful over a number of years. Finding influencers and making contact By now you probably have some idea about who are the big players in your niche. Most of the time those people are too busy but it can't hurt to make contact in gentle ways. The first thing you should do is jump on Twitter and Google+ and follow their accounts. Share some of their content and make sure you add your own remarks to the Tweet to show that you've actually read it and find it interesting. The next thing that I like to do is link to their blog in one of the massive big evergreen articles that I write. This is particularly powerful if you link to them on a blog that you don't own. For example, I recently linked to my friend Chris Ducker's website on a Copyblogger guest postthat I did. It just so happened to be during the time when he was launching his new book and I know he appreciated the extra traffic. Once you have done something for someone you will find that they are much more open to returning the favor – even if it is just sharing the article that you've mentioned them in – it all counts. Konrad Sanders did this really well recently on his blog where he included a bunch of internet marketers (myself included) in a huge collection of tips. He then tweeted everyone to let us know it had gone live: The great thing about the way Konrad does it is that he includes humor and a lot of personality. When you draw attention to the obvious fact that he'd like some promotion it really does lighten the mood a little bit. Every influencer will understand the power of a back link. By adding a link to their website in your own articles you massively increase the chance that they will take notice of you, visit your site and get to know your face and brand. EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESSFUL FUNNEL. I'd like to finish off this report by showing you a successful content funnel in action. This will give you a chance to go and inspect the way they do things and take lessons away for your own content. Remember, you should never copy anyone's content or product ideas but there is no point in being totally original either. It is okay to borrow ideas, expand on them and add your own distinctive knowledge and flavour to something that is already being done. Example: Nerd Fitness and the Paleo App Steve Kamb is the owner of NerdFitness.com and has one of the most active and loyal communities on the net. One of his biggest content successes has been an article on the paleo diet that ranks at the top of Google for the search term “paleo diet” and brings him thousands of visitors every day. You can see from this screen shot that he even ranks above the Wikipedia page and the actual home page of the paleo diet! This is huge authority. If you read the article you'll see that it is thousands and thousands of words of pure gold. There are photos, graphics, videos and a depth of information that is the perfect example of how to write long form, ever green content. The first thing Steve does that is very clever is has his own Paleo eBook that you can download by subscribing to his list. He has an opt-in form placed at the very top of the page when people are still hungry for information. People who are looking for diet information are usually desperate to get quick answers. Steve knows that and uses a time sensitive call to action (GET IT NOW!) to hurry people along. The next thing that Steve has done that is extremely clever is create an App for iPhone and Android called Is It Paleo? This is a fantastic idea because it solves problems and also gets more of Nerd Fitness's branding in front of people. Whenever people need to know if a food fits in with this particular diet they will be looking at Steve's App and be reminded of his content. The main thing to notice here is that Steve has taken an article about a very specific niche topic and created products around it in order to capitalise on the success it was having in Google. Now, not all of us are going to rank for a term as popular as “paleo diet” but the point is that when you match some quality content to a useful product and drive traffic to it you can have a lot of wins. Remember, you can drive traffic in many ways (blog ads, FB Ads, Google Adwords, guest posting, etc.) and some of these options are a lot more stable than Google search results anyway. Now what? A good thing to do at this point now would be to sit down with a piece of paper and Steve Kamb's blog open. Have a look at the article and the way it links up with Google on the front end and his mailing list and App on the back end. See if you can replicate that process (remembering that traffic can be purchased) for yourself with your own niche and your own product or affiliate product idea. Start with the end result (the product you want people to buy) and then work backwards through the long form content (on and off site) and then plan some ads or promotion opportunities. Once you have it all planned out you can work on getting each stage set up one by one. Give yourself a solid timeline and some goals as targets and see what happens. GROWING THIS STRATEGY FASTER. Once you have a few ideas for this type of strategy you'll really want to start growing it as fast as possible. It's exciting! But it's impossible to do it all by yourself. At this point I'd really like to encourage you to look at Freelancer.com and ChrisDucker.com as they are two places to get some really good idea about how to get cheap help for growing your online business. On Freelancer.com you'll be able to hire workers from around the world to help you with creating content, building landing pages, developing graphics, etc. The great thing about it is that each job comes with a guarantee so if they don't finish the work they don't get paid. Chris Ducker is an expert in outsourcing and virtual assistants. He has built a huge company in the Philippines which helps people to find the right staff for their online projects so that they can become more prolific. I highly recommend you visit his blog and have a look around at some of the different strategies you can use to outsource some of this work. Finding the right person/people to help you do some of the time consuming tasks can really free you up to build something awesome! USEFUL RESOURCES TO GET YOU AHEAD. Every now and then someone will tell you about a tool, plugin or service that completely changes the way you do things online. Here are a list of resources that have helped me out and hopefully will help you jump ahead of the pack. BlueHost– This is the web host I recommend for setting up blogs and websites. Comes with an anytime money back guarantee and 24/7 live support chat. Clicky– Better analytics for your website. They have a free option but the Pro package gives you heat maps to show you where people are clicking on your ads. Extremely useful for seeing what works. Visual Website Optimizer– This website allows you to do split testing on your blog and landing pages. You run two versions and see which one performs better. Takes the guesswork out of marketing. ShortStackApp – This is an awesome website that lets you easy build landing pages with email opt-in forms within Facebook. These work extremely well when you send ads to them. Aweber– This is the service I use to store my email subscribers and send mail outs. Lots of stats and let's you split test different forms (colors, buttons, text, etc.) to see which one makes people sign up the most. Pingdom Tools– This website tests your blog to see how fast it loads and lets you know where the slowdowns occur. A fast loading website it essential to online success so play around with this. HelloBar– This website ads a little bar at the top of your blog which you can then put a link and a call to action in. Converts very well and is a good way to get visitors' attention and direct them to an offer. Thank you for reading! I hope this little report has been useful and gives you some ideas for your next online marketing project. Make sure you check out www.BlogTyrant.comas I'm always posting new experiments, ideas and tutorials.