This blog is in response to a question I got asked by Arthur Hernandez, on a Facebook Group about Outsourcing.
Arthur asked:
“I have a few blogs that I have made zero $$’s, and my question is Do I need more than 1 Va to handle all the work.These 12 (websites) blogs are on the internet but I am not making money. Where do I start? How do I start?”
Good Question Arthur. Let’s break down this post into 3 parts:
1) 12 Websites/Blogs Attempting To Make Money
2) VAs (Virtual Assistants) to handle the work.
3) How to make money? The Fundamentals.
1) 12 Websites/Blogs Attempting To Make Money
This is the first problem. Having 12 websites making $0 is a lot more wasted time and work than just having one. The best approach is to get one blog site making money first, and then replicate the formula in a different niche. So Arthur, choose only one, according to the fundamentals outlined later on.
2) VAs (Virtual Assistants) to handle the work.
Virtual Assistants (VAs) are individuals that you can get to help you do tasks. Usually, they cost around $2-$5 USD per hour, and they can help you with blog posting, commenting, research e.t.c. A properly trained VA can be trained to do any task which you think makes more economic sense than you doing it. E.G. If you can use that time to gain higher value, then it makes sense to outsource. I will get around to another full post on VAs, but basically, it is important to give very clear instructions and give active feedback. Shoot me an email if you have any specific questions about VAs. You can final VAs on sites like Odesk, Freelance, Online Jobs.
3) How to make money? The Fundamentals.
This is the most important part of the question and the part I’ll give most attention to. There are basically 4 ways to make money through blogs/blog type websites:
1) Selling your own product
2) Selling other peoples products 3) Visitors clicking on your ads
4) Being paid to review products/services
There are no real other secrets to make money using blogs, and the 4 fundamentals above depend on one more important element: Traffic. Traffic is the amount of people who visit your blog.
Acquiring traffic comes down to writing interesting content and being active in your community. You can also hire others (e.g. VAs) to write interesting content for you and be active in the community on your behalf – however it’ll take a structured framework, careful guidance and lots of feedback to get this right. There are also online courses which may teach you to do this, however I can’t recommend any as I haven’t reviewed any myself. Learn more about financial tips by checking out this latest blog post at skrunble.com.
As you publish more content and contribute to the community, your traffic grows. Once you have a good amount of traffic, (over 50 visitors a day), you can consider making a couple of 100 bucks a month out of a blog by following monetization steps that would follow. You can also buy visits to your blog through paid ads, although I would suggest this unless you had a clear monetization funnel (more on this later).
If I wanted to make a blog to make money, I’d focus on keywords that had high enough traffic by doing a search with something like the Google Keyword Research tool and Google Trends. There are more advanced tools available, but they are all based on these sources and just add prettier metrics to the data.
After you’ve created your blog and you’re writing interesting content, it’s time to look into how you can monetize it. If you’re writing an “authority blog” – e.g. “I’m an Expert in dog training”, then you may consider selling your own product. This would involve you shooting videos, creating PDFs, and packaging it up into a product that you can sell through your blog. You can also get affiliates to sell your product through a marketplace like Clickbank, once you establishing it. If you’ve got good traffic and people look up to you for advice on a specific niche, it’s good to have your own product. Further details are beyond the scope of this document. However, I plan to write on it in the future.
The next best thing to creating your own product is to sell someone else. If you clicked on the link to Clickbank above, you will see 10000s of products that you can sell to others and make a commission (often up to 70%). The catch? You need relevant traffic to sell it to. If you can find products in your blogs niche, this is a good indicator that it can be monetized. Use this as part of your initial research when choosing your blog topic.
The third fundamental was visitors clicking your ads. This is not going to get you that much money overall, and unless you build a massive unique visitor count per month (over 50,000), you’re not going to generate any significant revenue from ads.
The final fundamental is being paid to review products/services. You may get approached by brands, as they believe you’re an influencer and your opinion matters in the space. Often you get the product for free and get to keep it. In return, you do a review and reveal you got paid. As long as it’s interesting content for your audience, everyone wins.
I like to keep my posts to under 1000 words, but there is a lot of scope for elaboration here. There is no push button solution to making money from blogs, and while some tools on the market may claim to make it easier, it still takes hard work and dedication to a cause. I’ll elaborate on the things mentioned in this post in the coming month, for now, subscribe to this blog for updates! =)
Thanks!
