Six Figure Blogger Blueprint

© 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 1 From Hobby Blogger To Six Figure Blogger In The Beginning, There Was.... The Absolute Basic, Simple, No-Brainer Idea 4 5 10 Deciding What To Blog About (Market Selection) 13 The Importance of Choosing The Right Market 4 Factors For a Good Market Donʼt Forget Passion 13 15 16 How To Get Traffic First Things First But, Donʼt Stop Build a List - Now! Using Social Media Strategically Seduce, Donʼt Molest What About Search Engines? OK, Traffic. Now What? 17 17 18 19 22 25 26 27 Turning Your Blog Into a Cash Machine Making Money With Affiliate Marketing Secret To Massive Affiliate Income The Six Figure “Secret” to Blogging Turning Your Blog Into a Sales Funnel Success Versus Failure - Which Will It Be? 28 29 31 32 35 37 © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 2 A Step-By-Step Blog Launch Plan and Roadmap 41 Would You Like To Work With Me To Take Your Blogging Efforts Into Hyperdrive? 45 © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 3 From Hobby Blogger To Six Figure Blogger The purpose of this report is simple: to open your eyes to the true potential of professional blogging and to provide you a path forward. As I outlined in my report, The Blogging Wealth Gap, there is a fundamental cause to why most bloggers just donʼt make any decent money from their passions: they suck at marketing. In that report, I documented that fully. I also gave you a very simple equation: SOLID BLOGGING + COMPETENT MARKETING = LOTSA MONEY. This concept, while simple, is also fairly profound when you consider just how many bloggers out there completely fail to apply it. So, the key to becoming a problogger and making six figures per year in this business is: • Learning how to think like a marketer • Learning to treat your blog like a business rather than a hobby. Even if it IS a hobby (which is hopefully the case), youʼve got to treat it like a business in order to make business-level income. And youʼve got to do things that businesses would do. In this report, I am going to outline an overall blueprint to designing a blogging business. My goal is simply to get your gears churning and to get you thinking about your own blog in an income-producing way. Iʼm confident that the pages ahead are going to represent what is likely an entirely new way of approaching blogging. Yours in Blogging Success, David Risley © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 4 In The Beginning, There Was.... Well, not much. Iʼve been in this business for some time. I actually started my first website way back in 1997. By around the turn of the century, I was already making money at it. My primary method of making money was banner ads. By this time, I had created PCMECH.COM. It was then known as “PC Mechanic” and I basically just wrote about computer hardware and building PCs. In 2001, I graduated from college. While in college, I was making money both from the Internet as well as a job at Samʼs Club. By the time graduation came along, a decision needed to be made. Find a regular job? Or pursue my own thing? I was making money online. Enough to pay my bills (which were understandably a lot lighter at the time). But, I figured if I put my full efforts into it that I could make enough to live off of completely. So, I went my own way. I graduated college and I was technically unemployed. I went off into this world of internet publishing that hardly anybody understood. While this account is already abbreviated, letʼs pause to make a point: Lesson #1: Necessity Level is definitely important to success online. Youʼve got to NEED to do well. In my case, I graduated college and had no paycheck. I had no choice but to make this work. This was a factor in my development as a problogger. Mindset is VERY important. Ok, moving on... © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 5 Back up just a bit and letʼs recall the dot-com boom of the late 90ʼs. People were of the mentality that if it was on the Internet, it was gold. You could print your own money by just having your own dot-com. In the midst of this digital gold rush, a company offered to BUY my website (PCMech) for a sum total of almost $1 Million. If you think I saw that and didnʼt have grandiose thoughts of being a college millionaire, think again. Iʼm human! And I fell for it, signing a contract. Long story short, it was a bad deal. I made some good money for some time, but when the dot-com bust began and online businesses were dropping like flies, the company who “bought” PCMech ran into major difficulty as well. The company was primarily a website aggregator, buying up large chunks of digital real estate and putting ads on the sites. Well, when reality started to hit home that banner ads donʼt make businesses and that all this crap was WAY overvalued, the crap hit the fan and I wasnʼt getting paid. Big problem! My website was technically owned by somebody else and I wasnʼt making nearly enough money to pay my bills - even while in college. So, again, necessity level came in and I had to get inventive. If banner advertising was proving to be so unreliable, then perhaps selling something directly to my siteʼs audience would do better and be completely in my own control? So, I created my first info product. What was it? A compilation of material previously written for my own site. I compiled it into a nice e-book format, threw in some bonuses and a few computer utilities, and I burned it to a CD-ROM. I literally just bought blank recordable discs at Staples, burned the discs on my own computer, stuffed them, and ran them to the post office to fulfill orders. And guess what? It worked! People bought it. And therein lies another lesson: © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 6 Lesson #2: Sell Your Own Products. See, I was doing banner ads. I even sold a few things as an affiliate. But, the economic issues drove home to me a very import lesson very early on. I guess you could say that it was forced upon me out of necessity. Lesson #3: Donʼt Put All Your Eggs In One Basket. I had all my eggs (or most of them) in banner advertising. And I was getting burned. So, I started selling my own product. Looking back on it now, the product SUCKED! Knowing what I know now, it is hard to believe anybody bought the damn thing. But, I had managed to diversify my income and I did it by making my OWN offer. I was selling this CD for $21.99 and there were weeks where Iʼd sell 15 or 20 of the things. So, not huge money, but it was $350-$400 per week that I wasnʼt making before. So, when the crap REALLY hit the fan with this company, I had my lawyer draw up a letter holding them in breach of contract (Funny how people think its cool to have a lawyer, but in reality I was just paying somebody $350 an hour to read a contract and write a letter). I sent it to them and used my FTP access to their servers to essentially STEAL my own site back. I did it under the radar, but it wasnʼt stealing because they were 100% in breach and not paying me. At the end of the day, I had PCMech.com back into my rightful hands and in my full control. Looking back on that, Iʼm glad I had the experience because it taught me several important things about business. Now, in the years after, I considered myself an internet publisher. The word “blog” or “blogger” hadnʼt really entered the lexicon yet. By the time it had, I had the same views as so many other people: that blogging is mainly for personal journals and not for me. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 7 I was already a problogger, even though I wasnʼt technically running blogging software. It wasnʼt until 2007 that I actually underwent the transition and switched to Wordpress. It was quite an ordeal making that transition from my prior content management system. Once I had, though, I re-learned the potential of a true blogging platform and fell in love with it. I was officially a blogger now. So, I guess you could say my development into a problogger was a bit indirect. People didnʼt really see me as a blogger because I didnʼt really see myself as a blogger. I didnʼt talk about blogging. Nobody knew me in that way. Once I switched to blogging officially, I took more of an interest in the tactics and strategy specific to blogging. I learned quite a bit. Around this same time, I took more of an interest in internet marketing. I saw the power of ACTUAL marketing on the Internet. And I had seen successes with basic concepts in my own business. In 2008, I started DAVIDRISLEY.COM and I actually began to publicly talk about myself as a problogger and a six figure blogger. Even though I am apparently new to the scene, Iʼve actually been at this for some time now. It has developed into a true passion and I wanted to begin to make my mark in the field. And here I am. :) Today, I make a good living as a blogger. I generate between $15,000 and $20,000 per month on average in my blogging business. I am able to provide a nice lifestyle for my little girl and my wife. Weʼre able to travel. In fact, as I begin writing these very words, I am sitting on a plane on my way to Las Vegas. 3 weeks ago, I took my wife to Manhattan for our © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 8 anniversary (and made over $5,000 while I was there for 4 days). Not even two months before that, my wife and I went on a week-long Caribbean cruise (and I made over $12,000 while I was doing that). In another three weeks, Iʼll be in San Diego. It doesnʼt suck. I still pinch myself that it is all done while I make my living as a blogger. It just SOUNDS weird. So, thatʼs my background. From here on out, weʼre going to focus on laying out a blueprint. It is a blueprint developed over the years and borne out of necessity and setbacks. Because early on, I realized that I had to treat this like a business if I wanted to have ANY hope of success. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 9 The Absolute Basic, Simple, NoBrainer Idea As with anything, there is the high-level, overview type of stuff and then there is the minutia that goes into it. But, in order to understand all the minutia (which comprises a lot more information and a lot more time to know), you need to understand what youʼre doing. Some people liken this to strategy versus tactics. If you picture a battlefield, it is easier to understand this. There is a war raging and the goal is to win the war. You have, letʼs say, a general who goes into the war with an overall plan to win. This is strategy. Orders are then issued to commanders on the ground who are in the business of tactics. Tactics are the smaller actions necessary to fulfill the strategy and the mission. So, “surround them on two sides and attack at nightfall” might be an overall strategy. At the tactical level might be orders like “use rubber bullets” (if the commander is feeling particularly nice). So, you see, there is the grand view and then there is the ground-level view. If we spend all our time talking about tactics, then what happens? Total confusion! Taken back into the area of internet business, why do you think some people spend all this money on products to show them how to make money online, yet never seem to make it? Is it because the products donʼt deliver? No! It is because theyʼre too concentrated on tactics and have no direction to them at all. So, letʼs take a birdʼs eye view first. How does a blog actually generate any money? © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 10 In short, a blog is used to build up attention. It is used to make people aware of you and then to build a relationship with them through good content. These people are LEADS. Then, you FUNNEL these leads into offers. Thatʼs the simplicity of it. Blog attracts attention. Then you sell stuff. Now, what most bloggers try to do is “Blog Attracts Attention. only about half of this. They try to build Then You Sell Stuff.” up a lot of traffic. Then it all runs up into a brick wall and they end up just selling OTHER PEOPLEʼS STUFF via banner ads. Do you have any idea how limited that is? It is a beginnerʼs way to monetize a blog. To illustrate that, look at this fact. Letʼs say the average CPM (cost per thousand page views) for a banner ad is around $3.00. So, you get 1,000 page views and you make $3.00. You could have a million page views per month, and youʼd still only make about $3,000 per month. Instead, take that same 1,000 page views and funnel them into a unique offer customized to that blogʼs audience. Letʼs say the product cost $20 and maybe 1% of the people who go to the page actually buy it. Thatʼs 10 sales, or $200. Well, $200.00 is a LOT better than $3.00, isnʼt it? So, person comes to your blog. If youʼre doing your job correctly, they find value in your blog. Youʼve now got their attention. You ask them for the lead (usually a subscription to an email list). Then, the process begins of converting that lead into a sale. Thatʼs it. Everything else is tactic. With that global concept in mind, Iʼm going to walk you through some basics of how to set this up. Things like: • How do you decide what to blog about? • How do you get traffic to the site? • How do you funnel that into an offer? © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 11 • WHAT do I offer and how do I create it? It isnʼt as hard as it might seem. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 12 Deciding What To Blog About (Market Selection) Choosing the right market is very important. Unfortunately, talking about this to a blogger usually hits them broadside for one simple reason: most bloggers didnʼt give it the slightest bit of thought before getting started. Most bloggers start blogging out of passion. They are interested in something and they wish to share. Later down the road, you might be sitting there wondering how you can make any money with it. While not impossible, it is generally harder to make money with a blog when you didnʼt put any thought into that going in. I speak from experience here, by the way. My largest blog (PCMech) is in a very tough market with people in it who are generally very cheap and donʼt like to spend any money at all (outside of their computer, that is). The fact that I make as much as I do with it is, quite frankly, testament to the fact that I know something about marketing. But, it is a tough market (and a saturated one) and if I had to do all over again, I probably would do something different. The Importance of Choosing The Right Market If you desire to make money as a blogger, the road is a lot easier if you choose a solid market to begin with. A few guidelines would be: 1. As a blogger in your prospective market, can you help your reader solve real problems that exist in the real world? 2. Does your prospective market have certain goals that would give them pleasure? Or perhaps something they fear that would give them great pain? 3. Does your market have any kind of traits that would just make them not willing to spend any money? © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 13 With those guidelines, you can begin to see why certain types of blogs are going to have a much tougher time making any money. If your blog is essentially a news site, for example, what problem would you be solving? What are the goals or fears of people on a news blog? And surely youʼre going to have a tough time getting anybody to pay you since people are USED to getting their news for free. A celebrity blog would be in the same boat. It is just pure entertainment. Entertainment blogs are tricky to monetize and that is because the audience is just there for fun. As a collective audience, they have no common problems, goals or frustrations. Plus, people expect online entertainment to be free. The best markets are those where there is a real-life problem to solve, there is a goal which they feel strongly about, or there is a nagging fear which they are afraid of. It isnʼt a coincidence that some of the bloggers who make good money talk about how to make money blogging. Ever thought about why that is? :) It is simply because there is a big, overriding GOAL to the market. In other words, MORE MONEY. And who isnʼt motivated by that? However, donʼt go into “make money” blogging just because you think it would work. You have to have actually done it before you can talk about it with authority. The same philosophy works in a BUNCH of different markets: Musicians have the common goal of being better players. They want to perfect their craft, gain respect, pick up chicks because theyʼre so good. Theyʼre a potentially good market. Business owners have the goal of making more money and retiring early. Easy market. Dating is a good market because everybody wants to have a partner and men want to get laid. I mean, face it. :) Markets where there is competition among members of the audience are good, too. For example, Iʼve seen popular sites that are all about taking cars and making them look better, drive faster, etc. Modifications, essentially. Great market because you have a rabid audience of people who are out to impress their friends and have a generally more bad-ass car than everybody around them. And theyʼll PAY for that. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 14 (I once knew a dude who paid more for the rims on his car than he did for the car itself. I was floored). So, market selection is very important. “ When we talk about making When we talk about making good good money blogging, the money blogging, the entire thing is entire thing is going to be going to be much harder if youʼre not much harder if youʼre not talking to a market which has goals or talking to a market which has pains. It is much better to think about this before you start blogging for money. goals or pains.” If youʼre already blogging, then take stock of your market and see if it adds up. If it doesnʼt, you might want to adjust to better align with something having market potential. 4 Factors For a Good Market A lot of people wonder about what they should blog about. What market should you enter so as to maximize your traffic and your income potential from blogging? There are four big areas that seem to work very well. It is because these are key benefits that people look for in their personal lives. They are: 1. Being healthy. 2. Making more money. 3. Being sexy and finding a mate. 4. Saving time. Now, these are very broad and you shouldnʼt read into these too much. Iʼm not saying that you need to blog about one of these four. What these are are big, macro-level views of markets that work almost without fail. What you SHOULD read into this, though, is this: focus on benefits! Whatever your market is, you should focus on how your information is going to benefit the lives of your readers. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 15 Bear in mind that people buy based on emotion and justify with logic. Your information is logical. But, when it comes to marketing your blog or your information products, you need to hit the emotional buttons and focus on what theyʼre REALLY looking for in their lives. And chances are, your audience is looking for one or more of the big four mentioned above. You can never be too rich, too thin or too beautiful. Donʼt Forget Passion Iʼve provided some guidance on what kinds of markets work best when it comes to extracting money from an audience of blog readers. But, what about actually CARING about what you write about? Most bloggers get into blogging out of passion. Youʼre interested in a particular thing and you want to share with the world. It is very noble and the last thing I want to do is take anything away from that. We are, though, talking about making money. So, ideally, you can find an intersection between an area you have strong interest in and the marketability of the concept. Thatʼs the key. Youʼve GOT to care, though. Youʼre simply not going to be able to create quality blog content if you donʼt really care about your market. As said above, though, you want to cater to an audience with goals, problems or fears. And your material should talk to those goals, problems or fears. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 16 How To Get Traffic So, youʼve chosen a market. You build a blog. In this report, Iʼm not going to get into how to build a blog, install Wordpress, or anything like that. Iʼm going to simply assume that you already know how to do that. If not, there is a LOT of information available on the Internet in how to get your blog set up. So, once you build a blog, you want traffic, right? You want eyeballs. But, donʼt make the mistake of losing sight of the overall strategy. You want this blog to act as a funnel into offers. You therefore want TARGETED LEADS. So that means that you need to: • Build yourself up as an authority to those types of people • Orchestrate all of your content so that it all provides value to that market and is designed to attract eyeballs. First Things First So, your first thing is to create 5-10 good, solid quality articles. Another great problogger by the name of Yaro Starak refers to this as “pillar content”. What youʼre basically doing, though, is laying the foundation for your blog. This is a brand new blog, after all. When you begin to get readers, you want to hit them with your best stuff. You want to “wow” them with how valuable your content is. So, you do this with your pillar content. In the beginning, this will serve as your primary blog content. As you begin to write more and more over time, you might refer to these pillar articles as your “best of” and continue to point people back to those posts. So, take your market. Then create high-quality posts which are aimed to solve real-world problems for your market. These are high value posts, now. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 17 But, Donʼt Stop OK, youʼve got your pillar content out there. When somebody comes to your blog, they now have a series of 5-10 really solid posts designed to help them. So, thatʼs great. Now what? Keep writing! Nobody said that being a six figure blogger was easy. Youʼre not going to be able to sit there and rely on your pillar articles to magically draw traffic to you for years to come. Youʼre not going to be able to take dumb short-cuts like importing content from other peopleʼs RSS feeds. As an aside, people who auto-import other peopleʼs RSS feeds into their blogs are CHUMPS. They are not bloggers. They are “fakes” who are trying to give Google some juice without having to work for it. I have ZERO respect for these people and theyʼre not going to make much money like that. Let them remain bottom dwellers while the rest of us proceed to do it right and reap the profits that are possible from building a real relationship with an audience. You want to post continually to your blog. In my case, I try to post every day of the week at least once (except weekends). If you post less than this, it can work out just the same. Whatever you do, though, stay consistent. If you post 3 times per week, then continue to post 3 times per week like clockwork. Your readers will hate inconsistency. They also hate dead blogs with no fresh content. So, be steady and train your readers when to expect new content. Aside from that, just bear in mind that new posts are fuel for search engines. So, generally, posting more often is better for search traffic than posting less often. Posting regularly to your blog is perhaps one of the biggest hurdles I hear from people. I see bloggers all the time who consistently “donʼt have time” © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 18 to post to their blog. Or they run out of ideas. Luckily, I have some tips for you: 1. Write in batches. I tend to write all my posts for the week in one sitting at the beginning of my work week. When I am in “writing mode”, I am in gear and I can just churn out content. So, Iʼll hammer out five posts and that gives me posts for each day, Monday through Friday. 2. Maintain an idea file. Whenever you think of an idea for a blog posts, add it to your idea file. Later, when itʼs time to write, take some ideas from your idea file and write the posts. Saves hassle in coming up with topics to write about. Carry a voice recorder or something with you so you can take note of post ideas wherever you might be. 3. Actually CARE. This has a lot to do with selecting the right market (discussed previously), but if you consistently have a hard time coming up with content, then you just might be in the wrong market for you. One of the traits of the right market for you is that you can churn out content without much hassle. 4. Donʼt overthink it! So many bloggers spend so much time secondguessing their post quality. They end up falling into the trap of taking a REALLY long time to complete a post. Stop that! I like the saying “Donʼt worry, be crappy”. Iʼm not saying to publish crap, but know when to say good is good enough and move onto the next post. This is a blog post weʼre talking about here, not a novel! So, continue to write. Develop a regular posting schedule and stick to it. Apply the ideas above and hopefully you will avoid writerʼs block. Build a List - Now! So many bloggers fail this absolutely ESSENTIAL step of having an email list. You have the opportunity to jump out ahead of every blogger not reading this report right now by simply setting up your mailing list if you donʼt already have one. So, donʼt have a list. Set one up. Now!!! Why? © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 19 Your email list will be one of the most important assets you have in growing your blogʼs traffic and in monetizing it and making a bunch of money. I have made many thousands of dollars from my email list. In fact, probably over half my yearly income as a blogger is generated from my blogʼs mailing list. The $12,000 I made on a cruise? The $5,000 I made while up in Manhattan? NONE of it would have happened if I didnʼt have an email list. So, how? Find a solution for managing your email list and sign up. Of course, the big confusion there is going to be where to put your list. Youʼre probably going to try to find some script to install to your server to manage your list. Youʼre might even try some open source freebie. Iʼm here to save you a lot of hassle. And just trust me on this one. Sign up for Aweber. They are a third-party, commercial email service. Yes, that means it is going to cost you a little money. Admittedly, it might seem like a lot of money right now because you may not be making any money yet. But, Aweber is the right solution. The thing about Aweber is that email deliverability is stellar. Plus, setting up with them early in your problogger career is going to save you a LOT of hassle later. I used to manage my email list in-house (meaning on my own server). Eventually, I began to find that a lot of the emails that I sent were not even arriving to my subscribers because of various deliverability issues and spam black lists (even though I wasnʼt spamming). I grew a brain and decided to go with a commercial service. Aweber, however, makes you reconfirm every subscriber when you import. I lost over half my mailing list because I had to move it! Iʼm not kidding. So, take my word for it. Set your list up in a quality place from the get-go. And Aweber is my recommendation to you. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 20 If you REALLY want to maintain your list in-house despite my recommendation, then check out 1-2-All by Active Campaign. It is pretty good software, all in all. I advise against Feedburner for a mailing list. They do have an RSS-toemail option and it is better than nothing. But, you have very little control of your list. Plus, you cannot email them separately from your blog posts and that really inhibits you from using the list for marketing purposes. Set up a mailing list. Generate an opt-in form (the form where your readers will submit their email address to your mailing list), and put the code into your blogʼs theme. I recommend that you minimally put the opt-in form on your blogʼs sidebar. You will need to play around with it to see what works best. Your goal is to convert as many of your blogʼs visitors into email subscribers as you can. So, you want the opt-in form to be obvious and you want it to grab the userʼs attention. Your goal should be that every person who comes to your blog sign up for your list. In reality, you wonʼt get everybody. But, you get as many as you can. A common tactic to encourage people to subscribe is the “ethical bribe”. In other words, give them something cool for free in exchange for signing up for your list. A free report. A video (or a series of videos). Something which is really cool and relevant to your market. Then, go out there and promote it everywhere. Everybody can get it for free as long as they sign up for your mailing list. Donʼt make too big a deal out of the bribe. Writing a free report is not as hard as it may sound. Think of it as a glorified blog post. Sure, itʼll be longer than a typical blog post. But, the most important thing is that it add value. You want it to be useful. If you can be useful in 10 pages, then 10 pages is as long as it needs to be. Donʼt make the mistake of thinking you have to write an entire book just to get people onto your mailing list. You donʼt. Once you have this set up, then your list will begin to grow. Over time, you will make adjustments to maximize the percentage of your readers who subscribe to your list. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 21 Now, how will you use the list? Youʼll use it both as an extension to your blog as well as a way to make offers. Letʼs explore that. First, your typical passer-by to your blog isnʼt going to come back again. However, if you get a person onto your list, youʼve got their lead. That means you can contact them and get them to come back. You do this by emailing your list valuable content and telling them about your latest blog posts. So, set up a “blog broadcast” such that your latest posts are automatically emailed to your list. This will bring back repeat visitors. Aweber does this for you and it is easy to set up. Additionally, you can email your list bonus stuff. You want to build a relationship with your subscribers. You want to be personal. You want them to find you to be a valuable person to know. So, send them cool stuff. Send them stuff that isnʼt on your blog to make them feel special. And, no, you donʼt charge them for everything. Trust me, youʼll make offers to them eventually, but people are more willing to buy from you if you have a record of providing a lot of value for free. Using Social Media Strategically Ok, so you have a blog. Youʼve got a list. However, you are still an island if you just stop there. Youʼve built a house out in the middle of the woods and you have no roads to it. So, youʼve got to build some roads. This way people will find themselves at your house (your blog). You do this by going where the people are. You do this by being EVERYWHERE. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 22 A business acquaintance of mine (Paul Colligan) has a cool term he coined called ISYOT. It stands for “Iʼve seen you out there”. This is what you want people to say about you. When they see you, you want them to say “Iʼve seen you out there”. Even if they donʼt remember where. When youʼve reached a state of ISYOT, youʼve got a cool thing going. But, how do you do it? You do it through the use of outposts. In other words, your blog is your hub. But, youʼre going to have a BUNCH of real estate out all over the Internet which gets peopleʼs attention and funnels it back to your blog and, eventually, your offers. So, what are we talking about here? - Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Youtube - Vimeo - Viddler - Squidoo - HowCast.com - Myspace - Plurk - Itunes and the list goes on. In other words, you go where the people are. You produce content and just “get it out there”. You want to be EVERYWHERE. You want videos out across the multiple video sites on the Internet (with Youtube being the big one, of course). You want a solid presence in the social media space (especially Twitter and Facebook). To illustrate how this works, behold the following diagram: © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 23 What we have here is a traffic map for PCMech. It shows many of the various incoming traffic sources for PCMech. The black arrows represent incoming traffic. The red arrows show relationships between these various blog outposts. So, Iʼve got sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter, Ustream.tv, social bookmarking sites, video sites (about 12 of them in total) - ALL of these act as outposts for PCMech. When I produce videos, I use TubeMogul to distribute the videos to 12 video sites. That means that every video provides 12 different outposts for the blog. When I post to Twitter, I use the Twitter/Facebook app to automatically bring my tweets into Facebook. This means all my Facebook friends are © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 24 getting my updates, too. As of now, I have close to 900 Facebook friends and I donʼt want to leave them out. I also donʼt want yet another thing I have to manage. So, thatʼs why I hook it up to Twitter. My tweets are also piped into FriendFeed. And Plurk. Additionally, my blog posts are automatically sent to Twitter using Twitterfeed. This means that each post I do is auto-broadcast to all of my followers on Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and Plurk. It is also sent to my mailing list using the blog broadcast. I could easily also record a podcast or even rip the audio from my videos and make that available as a podcast in the Itunes library. This way people can encounter me wherever podcasts are found and take me with them on their Ipod. Are you seeing where ISYOT comes from here? Weʼre talking mass distribution. This is the new media. This is how you can be “out there” in the market without spending money on advertising. This is how you will build up your blogʼs traffic. Seduce, Donʼt Molest This is a phrase I first heard from “Coach Deb” and I think really describes the workability of this system. Most people think of marketing as “Hey, look at me and check out my crap!”. In other words, it is annoying and it is interruptive of the market. “The reason bloggers can absolutely KILL IT when it comes to internet income is because they have the power to master this mass distribution” The reason bloggers can absolutely KILL IT when it comes to internet income is because they have the power to master this mass distribution idea as described above. Sitting in my home office in Tampa, FL, I am able © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 25 to get my stuff all over the Internet and have people coming to my blog. They either like what Iʼm doing or they donʼt. But, my lists are growing. Iʼm getting RSS subscribers. And Iʼm making money. And I donʼt spend A DIME on advertising. Never have. So, you have your market. You know what they need or want. You then GIVE it to them using mass-distributed content which is found on your blog and across the entire Internet. By satisfying the needs of your market, you build a following through seduction. You will develop a herd of followers who will WANT to hear form you. Because you HELP them. And they like you, too. What About Search Engines? You might have noticed that I really havenʼt talked about search engines yet. Why? Because theyʼre not the end-all-be-all. Your power as a mover and shaker in your market will come from relationships. This is why being out there in the SOCIAL web is, in many ways, more important than tailoring everything for Google. So, yeah, you do want to pay attention to search engines. Search engines will act as major sources for new leads. But, donʼt blog with just the search engines in mind. Write for people, and the search will take care of itself. Just apply the basics here and donʼt overthink beyond that. - Have search keywords in your post titles. In other words, try to name your titles something that people would actually type into a search engine. - Similarly, feel free to modify the post “slugs” so that the words in your blogʼs URL are actually search keywords. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 26 - Give your blog a title that is search friendly. Donʼt name it after your name, for instance. Nobody is searching for you. theyʼre searching for things they need help with. Target that. Screw your vanity. - Use headers in your posts. - Use the All-in-one SEO plug-in for Wordpress. Youʼll get a lot of traffic from search. Realize that people are searching the search engines for things they NEED. So, you target those things with your posts and phrase it in such a way that it closely matches what theyʼre searching for, and youʼre golden. OK, Traffic. Now What? Traffic is paramount for making a six figure income as a blogger. The techniques above should help you out with that. If you apply those tactics to your market, you will eventually be a player in your market. And thatʼs where you want to be. These things donʼt happen overnight, mind you. Blogging isnʼt a get-rich-quick business. However, if you do it right, you will dominate. And youʼll have a long-term business. That said, the key word here is business. And youʼre not a business unless you make offers and make money. So, how do we start turning this thing into a business? Read on. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 27 Turning Your Blog Into a Cash Machine This report is all about the blueprint to being a six figure blogger. So, you want to make money. Letʼs first dispel a myth. Or letʼs say, it is a disease that most bloggers suffer from. I call it “banneritis”. The symptoms are complete inability to think beyond banner ads as a source of revenue for a blog. “Google Adsense. Or as I like to call it, the blogger welfare program.” Most bloggers work really hard to build up traffic. When it finally dawns on them that “Hey, I could probably make some money with this!”, they think first of banner advertising. And where do they usually turn? Google Adsense. Or as I like to call it, the blogger welfare program. Now, even if you work with other ad networks besides Google, the simple truth is this: “If youʼre not seeing any return for your time, you are a lot more likely to be yet another one of the frustrated bloggers who conclude you canʼt make any money blogging” You wonʼt make hardly any money from banner advertising unless you command a LOT of traffic. Most bloggers make a few bucks per day (or less), and only if theyʼre making any money at all. No wonder they decide it isnʼt worth the effort!! I donʼt blame them!! Iʼm certainly not willing to put in hours every week in order to make a few bucks! Even if I really love doing it, eventually reality hits home and boredom sets in. If youʼre not seeing any return for your time, you are a lot © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 28 more likely to be yet another one of the frustrated bloggers who conclude you canʼt make any money blogging. It is really unfortunate. So, letʼs move past banner ads. Iʼm certainly not saying you canʼt make good money with banners. You can. I make a few thousand dollars per month with banners. But, I have a lot of traffic. And thatʼs what youʼll need in order to make decent money with ads. Making Money With Affiliate Marketing If a blogger manages to get over the banneritis, he or she will usually look into affiliate programs. NOW youʼre getting into the right frame of mind. At least youʼre selling things. Of course, youʼre selling other peopleʼs things and giving away a large portion of the money you generate because it is their product. Youʼre just getting the commission. But, its still good. Affiliate programs remain an awesome way to make money as a blogger. You can actually make money worth your time with far less traffic. After all, if you have a following of people interested in a particular market, then recommending products that are relevant to that market and actually useful is not only adding value to your blog, but making you sales commissions. As long as you keep your integrity and donʼt just recommend crap solely for the commission, everybody wins. I recommend, right now, that you go to Clickbank.com and sign up for a free account. Clickbank is the largest marketplace of information products on the Internet, all of which you can sell RIGHT NOW as an affiliate and make money. After you get your account, go to the Clickbank Marketplace. Enter a few keywords for your market and search. Start looking for and checking out products that your market would be interested in. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 29 If the product fits your market, then Clickbank will actually TELL you if the product is selling and might be worth your time. Every product listing in the marketplace has a series of numbers beneath it. Those numbers are: $/Sale: This is the commission you will make for every sale. Future $: This is the future commission you can make as recurring revenue. Only defined if this is a membership product. Total $/Sale: How much money you will make when you make a sale. %/sale: The sales commission percentage of the total price. %refd: The total percentage of this productʼs sales which were referred by affiliates. The remaining percentage was direct sales with no affiliate. Grav: This is the gravity. It is usually the most difficult number to understand, however it is essentially a number of affiliates who have made a sale of this product in the last 30 days. The higher the gravity, then the more affiliates who are out there promoting the product successfully. If you find a product with a gravity above 20, it is a good product to promote. A lesser number could work, too, if the product is really relevant to your audience. A higher gravity means that other people are promoting this product successfully. Does that mean you will have competition? Yes, it does. But, who cares? Competition is a good thing because that means there is money there. If others are successfully converting to a sale, then you can, too. I recommend that you set up MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate as a plug-in for Wordpress. It will allow you to do a few really useful things: Shorten affiliate links in your blog, turning a long affiliate link into a nice, clean link using your own domain name. Automatically hyperlink keywords across your entire blog with your affiliate link. HUGE time saver. Track click-throughs so you can see whatʼs working If youʼre going to promote affiliate products on your blog, I consider MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate a must-have. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 30 Secret To Massive Affiliate Income If you market things on your blog as an affiliate, there is one thing you can sell which can magnify your income tremendously. That is membership programs. The reason for this is because you sell it once and you gain recurring commissions each and every month that the person renews. It turns into a recursive affiliate income stream. Sell anything which has a subscription to it and you can tap into this. To illustrate, letʼs say you sell a $47 ebook with a 50% sales commission. This means you pocket $23.50 in profit. Some money in your pocket, but it ends there. “If you build this up enough, you could practically just turn your blog off and quit, but youʼd still be making money.” On the other end, you sell a membership which bills the customer at $47 PER MONTH. If that program has a 50% commission, thatʼs $23.50 coming in each and every month for as long as the person stays enrolled. So, promote quality programs and promote monthly services which solve a real need. For example, Aweber has an affiliate program. I use them myself as my email list solution, but I also refer people to it because I like it. Iʼve had several people sign up with Aweber after I referred them. I make a commission from Aweber each and every month. In fact, without trying that hard at all, I make enough from Aweber every month that it not only pays for my Aweber account but I make a profit on the top. And because Aweber is a quality service that people really NEED for their online success, people donʼt tend to cancel it. So, it adds up over time. If you build this up enough, you could practically just turn your blog off and quit, but youʼd still be making money. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 31 HINT: Yet another reason why you want an email list. It is SO much easier to market such things to your clan when you can contact them by email. and you sell them once, you get paid for awhile. The Six Figure “Secret” to Blogging To make REAL money as a blogger, though, we need to move past banner ads. We also need to move past affiliate marketing. Realize that BOTH of these income streams are still important and good money can be made, however my aim is to help you become a real BUSINESS. I put the word “secret” above in quotes because Iʼm being a smart-ass. In reality, this really isnʼt and shouldnʼt be a secret at all, yet most bloggers simply donʼt do it. That secret is... SELL THINGS! More specifically, sell your OWN products. Then, learn to MARKET your products in a competent way to your readers. It continues to amaze me that so many bloggers completely gloss over this as THE way to make money as a blogger. Even the “experts” in the world of problogging donʼt give this the time of day. I wish it werenʼt true. Sure, you can make money with any of the following: Ad Networks Direct Banner Ad Sales Affiliate income Recursive Affiliate Income Text Ads Paid Reviews © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 32 All this stuff works. But, I will pit direct product/service sales up against these things any day. More specifically, information products marketed competently to an audience which needs and wants what youʼve got. It will earn you money. This is THE key to why I make a six figure income as a blogger. So, if we go back to the beginning of this report, I talk about the wide strategic view of problogging. The idea is that you use a blog to build up an audience and build relationships with your readers. Those people turn into leads and you then sell stuff to them. I also gave you the formula in a prior report: SOLID BLOGGING + COMPETENT MARKETING = LOTSA MONEY. In other words, weʼre turning the blog into a BUSINESS. Weʼre turning it into business by having things to sell to your readers. Additionally, I talked about how I learned early on not to put all your eggs in one basket. So, the way you do that is to combine all of the other ways of making money with a blog with also selling your own stuff. To illustrate, letʼs look at how I make money with PCMech.com and DavidRisley.com. PCMech.com is primarily monetized through the use of: Banner Advertising (mostly from various ad networks) Affiliate commissions (mainly from info product and software sales) Membership income (I sell premium memberships) Product sales (e-books, DVDs, books, etc) The first two income streams are no surprise to most people. But, those last two are things most bloggers just donʼt do. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 33 It is great to promote other peopleʼs membership programs. It can result in passive, recurring affiliate income. But, it is a lot better to be at the top of the food chain by having your OWN membership program. As I finish this report in May 2009, my membership program on PCMech has generated $44,660.74 in revenue in 2009. Thatʼs about on par with what I have generated through both ads and affiliate income combined on that particular site. On average, the program has generated about $8,932 per month. Iʼve sold $1,277.89 in products in 2009 so far (e-books, DVDs and books). These are MY products where I am the supplier. And this is money Iʼve made with barely any promotion of those items at all since most of my efforts this year have been on the membership program. Letʼs take DavidRisley.com. This blog does only a fraction of what PCMech does in terms of daily traffic. After all, Iʼve only been blogging consistently on this site since mid-2008. If I were to host Adsense or something on this blog, I would be lucky to make $8-$10 per day. If Iʼm lucky! Instead, I have made pretty decent money through affiliate income (using the mailing list which, as of this writing, has less then 1,000 people on it). But!... A couple weeks ago, I launched my first information product for that market. In fact, it is a product geared toward people like YOU because it shows the overall framework (without getting into nitty-gritty detail) on how to set up a blogging business. It is a good product, actually. But, as of this writing, Iʼve made $4,543.04 in sales on that (thatʼs net after Clickbankʼs cut). This is in just a bit over 2 weeks that the product has been available. So, the blog has been active in the market for only about 9 months. Iʼve spent this time building authority with my market and providing a lot of value. Then, when I finally put together a small info product to sell to them, I make over $4,500 in sales in about 2 weeks and only by using the siteʼs mailing list. Trust me, Iʼm only beginning. So, whatʼs the secret that shouldnʼt be a secret at all? I sell stuff! © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 34 Turning Your Blog Into a Sales Funnel In marketing circles, youʼll hear the term “sales funnel”. What is this thing and why does it matter? It is a very simple concept, and it also represents how you need to look at your blog site. What is a funnel? Well, it has a wide end at the top, and it focuses everything down to a single point. Take into the sales context, you have leads (or readers) who come to your site via various means. Then they enter your funnel and you gradually work on converting them into a sale. The diagram above demonstrates how this works (despite my funky drawing skills). © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 35 Using the many outposts you have all over the Internet (remember ISYOT), you attract traffic to your blog. The blog serves as the hub of your wheel, so to speak. All of these outposts serve to bring new, fresh leads into your sales funnel. Your blog, too, brings fresh leads into the sales funnel. The funnel varies from business to business, however the pattern is the same. Usually, the first step is to get the person onto your mailing list. It is going to be really hard to build a relationship with a lead and move them down the funnel if they are not on your list. So, you convert them into a subscriber. Once they are a subscriber, you continue to provide additional value and nurture the relationship with the reader. Eventually, you can convert them into a first sale. Usually it is something cheap. You then work to move the customer further down the funnel into a more expensive item. And so on. And so on. At each point in the funnel, you are constantly working to get the person to refer new people and bring new people into the funnel. Get testimonials and post them. Set up an affiliate program to incentivize them to refer new people. When a person buys something from you, you try to do an upsell. So, if they buy an e-book from you, immediately hit them up for a secondary sale. Perhaps another e-book. An important concept to keep in mind is that it is a LOT easier to convert an existing customer into another sale than to get the first sale. Selling to somebody who has already bought from you is a lot easier than selling to a brand new person. Of course, all this is contingent on the fact that your products are actually worth buying. A common upsell practice, then, is to hit them for an upgrade immediately after they agree to buy. Often, this is called the “one time offer”, or OTO. The idea is that you present an offer to your new customer one time and they have to take it right then and there. Usually, it is a discount on another of your products. It is time limited in the fact that if they bypass your offer, they will not see it again (hence the “one time” concept of the offer). If you donʼt have another of your OWN products to offer as an upsell, you can offer an affiliate product. A common practice would be to complete the © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 36 sale, then on the “thank you” page you provide options to move into purchasing a related product from somebody else. From your perspective, you will earn additional revenue as a sales commission. Regardless of whether the person takes your OTO or your upsell offer, they are then a customer. Through followups and additional offers, you work to move the customer further down the funnel (buying more of your stuff). There is a lot that goes into setting up your sales funnel. There are also powerful strategies and tactics to assist you in your marketing and convincing people to buy from you, but weʼll get into that stuff at another time. By the way, an alternative way of looking at this funnel concept that I have heard is to refer to it as a pyramid. The concept is the same, but you basically turn it upside down. With a funnel, when a person reaches the end of it, they fall off the radar. Well, in business, you want to ideally maintain a customer for life. So, you donʼt want them to fall off your radar and disappear. Hence, the idea of the pyramid, where the customer is constantly climbing and becoming better educated. However you choose to look at it, the idea is the same. Do you see how this is actually a model for a REAL business on the Internet? All of your blog content (regardless of the medium) serves as seduction for your market. It attracts leads into your funnel. With this, you have the blueprint for a REAL six figure blogging-based business. Success Versus Failure - Which Will It Be? The income potential of blogging is astounding, but Iʼm not going to lie. It is work. It is a lot of work. Especially at the beginning. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 37 Blogging is NOT passive income! It is NOT a “get rich quick” business. Realize that it takes time to BUILD this network of seducing content to attract people into your funnel. And in the early days, it will seem like slow going. Realize that making six figures is certainly doable, but this is an outcome of effective blogging and effective marketing. The two MUST be coupled together effectively to make it work. At the same time, donʼt get too overwhelmed. You do not need millions of readers to make decent money. Compared to the scope of the world WIDE web, you need a VERY small fraction of those people in your clan. Weʼre talking small numbers in the scheme of things. If you even get 1,000 people on your mailing list, youʼve got a good start and you can most definitely make some money (much better than banner ads will make you). Your goal is to build a loyal audience of true followers. Start small and build. As you build more, your leverage will increase and it gets a lot easier to continue growing. “Realize that making six figures is certainly doable, but this is an outcome of effective blogging and effective marketing. The two MUST be coupled together effectively to make it work.” Donʼt Get Lazy!!! Unfortunately, most bloggers are lazy. Hell, most people looking to make money online are lazy. Thatʼs why some make it while the majority donʼt. Thatʼs what leads people to chase down “get rich quick” schemes. Forget about that. This report is going to circulate to a lot of people. Chances are, they will read this report and understand it. Theyʼll see the potential of this blueprint as a model for a real blog-based empire. But, what will happen? Not much. Because most people will keep chasing shiny objects instead of taking action. Theyʼll keep reading other blogs. Theyʼll keep chasing “secrets” across the Internet. But, they wonʼt stop and take action. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 38 The absolutely best thing you can ever do for your online success is to decide - right now - to be a forward leaning person. Your motto in life should be TAKING ACTION. Not only to take action, but to keep your eye on the goal and to ensure that your actions continue to line up with what youʼre trying to accomplish. Why Those Other Bloggers Fail Since success as a professional blogger is the goal, letʼs look at why those other blogger fail. 1. Laziness. As I said above, laziness is a common issue. Youʼve got to be an action taker. That goes for almost anything, not just problogging. 2. The wrong motivation. If you begin blogging just for the cash, youʼre going to fail. Youʼve got to have a passion for your market. Youʼve got to truly care about your audience, your material. Youʼve got to ENJOY writing and interacting with people. If money is your only goal, this just isnʼt going to work for you. 3. Faking it. Donʼt do that! Donʼt blog about something which you donʼt really know. Donʼt make the mistake of going into the “make money online” market unless you are a model of success. You will have ZERO credibility if you start trying to teach others how to make money when you yourself arenʼt making much and still work a regular job to pay your bills. Credibility and, hence, authority is VERY important in your marketing. Be the real deal. 4. Blogging in a Bad Niche. Market selection is pretty important. If you are sitting there in a bad market trying to make money, you just might be screwed. Remember, competition is GOOD. If literally nobody is on the Internet discussing your topic, thatʼs probably a good indicator that nobody cares and youʼre not going to make any money. 5. Lack of Focus. Donʼt try to duplicate this blueprint in several different niches using multiple blogs. You will spread yourself too thin and none of them will succeed. Blogging is real work and you need to maintain focus on one blog in order to build it up properly. I do this for a living and I only have two blogs and it is a LOT of work. Plus, the © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 39 first blog is 90% covered by other people now. If I had to personally author every post for both blogs, Iʼd be in real trouble. Your job is not to make these common mistakes. Your job is to TAKE ACTION. Iʼm telling you, my friends. If you just lean forward and really take action on the things I teach you, you will be way ahead of the majority of bloggers out there. It is that important. Everything I teach you is contingent on you actually doing this stuff. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 40 A Step-By-Step Blog Launch Plan and Roadmap There are a lot of bloggers out there just getting started. They want to make it big. They want traffic. They want to make money. Great! Today, I make six figures per year as a professional blogger. It was a long road for me. What I thought I would do is share a quick, step-by-step approach to how I would start all over again, right now. Realize that this is a broad overview of steps. I will not get into detail on each one in this particular post. The idea is to provide you a roadmap so that you donʼt forget what I consider to be very crucial steps. Also, this overview is focused on the development of your blog into a money-making venture. A hobby blog is a completely different animal. With that in mind, away we go! 1. Decide on your blogʼs target market. Do this by finding the intersection between what is popular to others and what you are interested in or good at. Your interest and knowledge is very important here. Within that subset, you do market research to determine what has the best likelihood of developing into a moneyproducing market. Also, create an idea file for blog post ideas. You should have no problem creating this list and, if you do have difficulty, you should question whether the potential market is a good fit for you. 2. Secure hosting and a domain name. I recommend self-hosting your blog and using your own dot-com domain name. Sub-domains are unprofessional. Simultaneous to choosing a domain is, of course, © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 41 naming your blog. When doing this, think about your long-range plan. Think about brandability. Memorability. Find a domain which can be stated verbally without spelling clarification. 3. Set up Wordpress. I am an evangelist for Wordpress and I simply donʼt recommend you go with any other blog software. I would install the All-In-One SEO plug-in and the Google Sitemaps plug-in and set those up from day one. Also, change your permalinks to a more SEO friendly version. 4. Set up a blog theme. When first starting, I recommend using a free theme and modifying it enough to make you happy. If you want, you can have somebody design a logo for your blog. 99 Designs is a great site for getting this kind of work done for you. But, donʼt get overly focused on your blogʼs appearance at this point. 5. Start Your Mailing List. Yes, you should start it from day one. Ideally, the moment your first reader arrives on your blog, they should have the option to get onto your mailing list. Use a system which allows broadcast mailings, but also allows people to receive your latest blog posts via email. I highly recommend Aweber. 6. Create Your Pillar Content. It is time to get started writing. Create 5-10 really killer pieces of very valuable content for your new blog. This is your showcase of your best stuff so as to “sell” your blog to new readers when they arrive. Since nobody is yet reading your blog, just publish each piece of content as soon as you finish it. 7. Create Some Back-up Draft Content. I always recommend having around 5 posts in draft in your blog so that you can publish when time is short. 8. Sign up For Twitter. Use a Twitter handle which is either related to your blogging niche or perhaps just your name. Be sure to use a real picture of yourself as your Twitter profile. Link your Twitter account to your about page on your blog, and enter a bio into Twitter which is descriptive of your market. With your profile created, find other Twitter users which are in your market and start following them. 9. Set up Twitterfeed. Use Twitterfeed to tweet your latest blog posts directly to your new Twitter account. 10. Set up a Facebook account. Set it up the same way as you did Twitter. After that, install the Facebook Twitter application so as to get your tweets piped into Facebook automatically. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 42 11. Keep Writing. Just throwing this in as a reminder that you need to keep on writing for your blog. You might have your pillar content there already, but you need to keep producing at least a few new posts per week in order to keep your blog fresh. So, donʼt forget this part! Itʼs crucial! 12.Start Connecting. Using Twitter and Facebook (and any other social network you feel like joining), start conversing and connecting with people. Track down the opinion leaders in your market and start conversing with them. Do not approach them with a pitch for your blog! Instead, keep it real and be real. You can mention your blog if it is applicable and relevant. 13. Research and find relevant blogs in your market. You want to find several of the leading blogs in your market and subscribe to their RSS feeds. Start becoming a regular reader and a regular commenter on those blogs. Obviously, when you leave a comment, use the website field to link to your blog. Ensure all your comments are useful and not self-promotional. Realize that there is no “launch button” on your blog. The moment you upload it the web, your blog is live. Chances are, though, that nobody knows about it. So, get it all set up and get your pillar content created before you start telling people about it. Then, the moment you start connecting and networking on other blogs and on social media, thatʼs more or less how you flip the switch and launch your blog. So, all this time, you need to be producing regular, quality content. This is the most important thing. Assuming that youʼve begun networking on social media, other blogs and that youʼre continuing to produce content, you should expand your marketing strategy a little bit more. For example… 1. Start authoring guest blog posts for other leading blogs in your market and send them to those bloggers. Read these guidelines for guest posting. 2. Start taking some of your pillar content, doing any necessary editing you feel necessary, then submitting to the major article directories such as EzineArticles. You could also use a site like Isnare to submit to multiple directories. Be sure to author a bio to go along with your article which links to your blog. Better yet, link it to a landing page © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 43 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. within your blog which will work on getting new readers subscribed to your mailing list. Set up an autoresponder on your mailing list to begin sending useful, relevant content by email to your subscribers automatically. Your first message can be a simple welcome message, perhaps asking them to follow you on Twitter, etc. Subsequent messages provide useful content and link to your pillar content. Start planning and working on your first information product. Remember, if the aim is to make money, you need to quickly start laying the groundwork for your offer – even if youʼre still building up your list and your traffic. Author a highly relevant and high quality PDF report to make available to new email subscribers. Use this free report to attract new subscribers to your list. Join up on Meetup.com and start finding, attending and/or starting relevant meeting groups. Personal networking is very important to online business! Continue to be active on social media and on other, relevant blogs. This is an activity that, along with writing, will never cease for as long as you are in the business of blogging. As you move through these steps, youʼll probably be learning all kinds of new tactics and strategies for traffic building. Thatʼs great. But, be careful not to become overwhelmed. Donʼt get so interested in tactics that you forget the basics: networking and producing quality content. With that, welcome to the world of strategic blogging. Youʼre well on your way. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 44 Would You Like To Work With Me To Take Your Blogging Efforts Into Hyperdrive? My sincere hope is that this report has been an eye-opener. I hope it has given you a new way to look at blogging as an actual business. My aim has been to give you a blueprint. But, remember my talk about strategies versus tactics in the beginning? Well, there are a LOT of tactics and skills that go into doing this right. There are skills that go into building up a blog, building traffic and building community. There are also skills directly related to marketing, how to generate sales, how to design and create your products, and how to get into your prospectsʼ heads and get them to buy from you. I have made no bones about the fact that I think most bloggers suck at marketing. But, it doesnʼt have to be that way. Hereʼs the deal. Those internet marketers out there? They almost LAUGH at bloggers! See, they realize the importance of marketing. That remains their emphasis and, quite frankly, thatʼs why they make decent money. But, most of them suck at blogging. Whereas, most bloggers suck at marketing. Neither side really GETS the other one. The sheer power of a competent blogger and a competent marketer is not to be underestimated. If you implement this blueprint and couple it with solid marketing and writing chops, you WILL be off to the races and you can most definitely grow into a six figure blogger. And it doesnʼt have to take NEARLY as long as you might think. Hell, I floundered around for years before I hit the right combination. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 45 So, hereʼs what I got for you. It is a club. One where the members will be interacting with me personally to achieve these goals. It is called the Blog Masters Club. My aim is to make you into a blogmaster. A master of blogging. Because I KNOW that bloggers can make more money than they do. So, what is the Blog Masters Club? It is a coaching program created and hosted by yourʼs truly. It is a private members only program designed for bloggers who want to take their blogging to the next level. Members will have the opportunity to get the inside scoop and work more closely with me to perfect their blogs and build a real business. This course and coaching program consists of 16 core modules where you will discover the information youʼve been missing, including: ✓ How to increase your blog production and time effectiveness so you ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ can get a successful blog even with a full schedule How to pick the right market for your blog and test it to see if it will work before you delve in and spend all that time writing. How to manipulate Wordpress to your will. How to persuade and compel your readers to act and do what you want. How to maximize your usage of social media and actually make money with it. How to drive an endless stream of traffic to your blog(s) How to optimize your blog for the search engines. How to produce and release compelling videos for the web. How to REALLY monetize your blog and be able to forget about Google Adsense and other bottom-of-the-barrel revenue sources. How to design an effective business with your blog at the hub. How to build up your email list and get your subscribers waiting to buy things from you. http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 46 © 2009 David Risley ✓ How to set up powerful joint ventures in your market and move yourself from blogger to “guru”. ✓ How to set up a recurring source of revenue, where the money keeps pouring into your bank account every month. ✓ How to get into the minds of your readers and persuade them without ever coming across as pushy for feeling like a lowly salesman. ✓ How to outsource so you donʼt have to do all the work! All modules will be delivered in video format (both streaming video and downloadable, audio format (for listening in the car), and in written transcript. Modules will also come with a to-do list checklist so that you can put the information to use in your own blogging business. If you want more information, go here - www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Because Iʼm going for the jugular vein. No BSing around. Iʼm not going to get into how to install Wordpress or buy domain names. Iʼm going to assume you know the basics and weʼre going to jump right into traffic and marketing. This is a step-by-step program with written content and a LOT of video content where I am going to teach you advanced traffic building strategies, list-building, monetization, and advanced (and powerful) marketing strategies and tactics. These are highly effective tactics for building a six figure blogging business. If 16 modules isnʼt enough, Iʼve got some other bonuses that youʼll get as a member of this coaching program: ✓ Members-Only Forum ✓ Live Group Coaching Calls, where you can ask me questions LIVE and Iʼll help you with your unique situation. ✓ Behind the Scenes “Swipe File”, where Iʼll show you and walk you through some of my past marketing campaigns, how I put them together, and the exact emails and videos I used. ✓ Rolodex of powerful links and resources © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 47 ✓ My mystery bonus! (details inside) And, I want to make one thing very clear. This is stuff I learned in the trenches, by studying and doing. I didnʼt make my money by teaching people “make money online” snake oil. I am a tech blogger geek, and I learned what I do by marketing to some of the cheapest people around PC users. So, Iʼm not in the business of continuing the echo chamber of “make money online” products, by selling it to other people in the business. I donʼt come from that world. Iʼm a geek with business sense. And Iʼll tell it to you like it is. What else makes it different? Because information overload is a DISEASE that keeps people from success. You can continue to surf endless blogs pulling small tid-bits of information. All little pieces of a very big puzzle that you can never seem to complete. Do you want to be one of the many bloggers who fail due to overwhelm or confusion? Do you want to be sitting here a year from now making no more money with your blogging efforts than you are today? If you want something more, then the club is for you. And, yes, while I cannot guarantee you will generate six figures at this, that is what Iʼm striving for. At the very least, I want you to build your online business to a point where you can quit your day job. That is my aim and Iʼd like to work with you to help you achieve that goal. Youʼve got to be an action taker. Because if you donʼt change anything, nothing will change. It is pretty obvious. www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Ever since I began blogging about what I do, Iʼve had people hammering me for consulting gigs and one-on-one help with their blogs. I just donʼt have the time to help people one-on-one. Iʼm too busy working on my own business. So, I have created the Blog Masters Club as a place where I can help many people at the same time, hopefully while still providing personal assistance to help members with their specific questions. © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 48 Do you want to become a Blog Master? Do you want to turn your blogging efforts into a real business? Then, I invite you to learn more about the Blog Masters Club. Even though this is a virtual program, “seating” is limited. Why? Because I can only handle so many people at a time. So, check it out for further information and I look forward to working personally with you. www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Thanks for reading the blueprint. From here, the ball is in your court. If you decide to join my coaching course, thatʼs great and I look forward to working with you very soon. If not, just donʼt forget that taking action is the most important trait that will get you to your goals. Keep taking action consistently and, eventually, youʼll get there. Yours in Blogging Success, David Risley BlogMastersClub.com Finis © 2009 David Risley http://www.blogmastersclub.com/signup/ Page 49