According to an article in The New York Times, 95% of bloggers fail.
It's evident that blogging advice doesn't always lead to blogging success. And as the search engine landscape gets more competitive, it may seem like it's too saturated to make money blogging today.
Adam Enfroy begs to differ. He is an expert blogger who grew his readership to 450,000 monthly readers and told me he makes $80,000 per month in revenue — while spending $0 on advertising. I sat down with Adam in a recent interview and took the opportunity to ask him how he scaled his blog so quickly.
1. Focus less on writing and more on scaling
With limited time outside of a full-time job, starting and growing a side hustle can be challenging. "When I first learned how to start a blog, I had a stressful full-time job that took up 50 hours a week. I had to figure out how to scale my processes so I could spend my time in the most meaningful ways," said Adam. He began to outsource certain components of his blog — he hired a team to write first drafts and an assistant to help with link building and guest blogging.
"It didn't cost much and freed me up to spend my time on what I'm best at — building relationships and influence in the digital space," he continued. "If I was just a tortured writer spending my nights clacking away at the keyboard writing every single word myself, I couldn't have scaled. Jeff Bezos doesn't write every word for Amazon.com; bloggers shouldn't have to do everything themselves."
Adam's strategy worked. In less than a year and a half, he published over 120 articles on his blog and over 100 guest posts. Adam's blog income overtook his full-time salary and he left his job for good — just seven months after launching his blog.
2. Plan your monetization strategy from day one
"Most bloggers are told to write about their passions and then figure out how to monetize their passion down the road," Adam said. "However, bloggers fail because they don't know how to transition from writer to business owner. They start with a passion in mind, write for years, get burned out when it's not working, and quit. If you flip the script and plan your monetization strategy before you even start, you're much more likely to succeed."
Adam says that this planning includes three core components: keyword research, content, and affiliate marketing.
"All three of these disciplines need to mesh. For example, before you even begin your keyword research to see if people search for your topic, you first need to ask yourself if your topic can actually make money," Adam said. "For example, if I'm a fitness blogger, I could rank for fitness tips but that post may be hard to monetize. What if instead I ranked for best fitness bikes and pushed people to my affiliate links? There's a big difference in potential revenue."
Adam's mixture of review list posts and how-to guides are the formats he recommends to generate not just clicks and traffic, but blog revenue.
According to Adam, "You need a mixture of posts that bring in high traffic and high-intent posts that generate revenue."
3. It's okay to make mistakes
Although it takes grit to launch a side hustle that lets you quit your full-time job, Adam says it's okay to make mistakes. "Blogs are living, breathing things. It's okay to experiment and fail; you just need to give yourself the freedom to pivot," Adam said.
"In the past, I tried to create hyper-specific niche sites and I'd quit when they didn't pan out. Creating a personal brand blog gives me the freedom to adapt and change my content strategy if one area doesn't work," Adam continued. "I made a lot of mistakes. I started my blog on Squarespace and switched to WordPress. I wrote a bunch of travel content that I've since deleted. I put ads to my site way too late and still haven't even launched my online course."
Adam is open about his mistakes and documents them to his 35,000 email subscribers and his Facebook Group of 3,500 "Blogpreneurs" looking to follow in his footsteps.
"I documented this stuff so that others don't have to make the same mistakes I made. If I can help foster the next generation of bloggers, that makes everything worth it."
5 steps to start growing your business through blogging
My goal was to be the proof of my pudding and sell my business's brand using only content. For a content creation agency like mine, there couldn't have been a better strategy.
I focused exclusively on content for two years, not paying for a single ad during that time. By the end of the second year, I'd published 215 blogs, which brought in 500 visitors a day and income of $29,000 a month.
But excitement soon turned to exhaustion. I realized I was doing too much without reaping the success I dreamed. I was writing night and day, publishing blogs I wasn't proud of, and continually racking my brains for new topics my audience could relate to.
What was I doing wrong? Why wasn't my business skyrocketing through my exhaustive blogging efforts? Why had I hit a ceiling?
After several setbacks, I decided to pull back and rethink my content marketing. I spent time regrouping and rebuilding, convinced I didn't want to resort to going back to paid advertising. What I came up with was a formula for growing my brand through blogging: a content strategy.
Once I'd implemented my content strategy, I began to see exciting results. We hit $71,000 a month in income. The number of keywords we ranked for on Google doubled. Our inbound leads were highly qualified and ready to buy our products.
Here's what I've learned from my nine years doing content marketing: You can grow your business through blogging, but only if you have a solid content strategy to back you up. Here are five steps to building your own.
1. Define your audience members, and learn how to turn them into customers
You can whip up content that's sophisticated and well-polished, but it won't gain attention if it's not what people are looking for. For example, if your audience wants to learn how to make goat cheese at home, they won't read your beautiful, in-depth blog about the history of goat cheese.
To make sure you're not wasting hours creating content no one will read, find the sweet spot between your expertise and the topics your audience wants to read about. Let's say you're a pastry chef and your audience wants to learn how to bake. To gain their attention, add recipes and baking tips to your blog.
The next step is to turn your audience into customers. Set up your website with clear pathways to your product. A capable customer services team on stand-by converts hot leads into customers like magic.
2. Use the right SEO keywords and framework to pull in that audience
There are billions of searches per day on Google. Ranking highly in search results is a powerful way to put your brand in front of an audience.
To create search-engine-optimized content, begin with root keywords. Find ideas for these in your products or services. For instance, if you sell pastries, use keywords like "chocolate cake," "recipes," and "bread."
The next step is to generate long-tail keywords from your root keywords. Long-tail keywords, usually terms three or more words long, are good to focus on because they have less competition to rank and because people searching for these terms are more likely to be making a purchase. Someone searching for "small black prom dress" has higher buying intent than a person searching for "dress" only.
Find long-tail keywords by using a keyword research tool. Sophisticated keyword research tools give you valuable information about keywords such as how competitive they are, search volumes and which sites are currently ranking for them.
3. Focus on your website and build authority through long-form blog content
If you're new to blogging, where should you publish most of your content? On Facebook, which has more than 2.7 billion monthly active users? On other sites' blogs that have established followings?
Sadly, many new bloggers focus all their energies on social media and guest blogging. While these platforms are excellent, they shouldn't be where you establish the foundation of your content "house." Post to a platform you're fully in control of — one you can grow steadily over time without worrying about disruptions.
Consider what happened when the Huffington Post discontinued its guest blogging platform. On the day of the announcement, many bloggers (myself included) realized they were losing access to years of hard work and creativity. If you build your content house on someone else's platform, there's no certainty you'll always have full control of it.
Focus on posting on your website to build brand authority. Spend most of your time publishing your best pieces there.
Tips for building your content house with authoritative content:
Content creation shouldn't be left to just when the muse strikes. Instead, it should be strategic, consistent, and well-planned. Block time in your schedule for content creation, specifically. Make an editorial calendar with topics lined up to specific publishing dates. (When I plan content, I fill my editorial calendar with topics for the next three-to-six months.)
5. Maintain and promote your content
Just like a house, content needs maintenance over time. I review my existing content at least once a year. I update old stats, fix formatting, and add new stories and facts where applicable.
Promote the content you create. Tell people it's out there. Share it on social. Send emails to your list. Content marketing should be 20% creation and 80% promotion. When you have unique, valuable content and you share it on the channels your audience uses, it won't be long before your content marketing successes snowball.
Did ‘The Simpsons’ Predict President Trump’s Death on August 27, 2020?
New Delhi: For the past few days, a picture was doing the rounds on social media, claiming that popular American animated sitcom ‘The Simpsons’ had predicted Donald Trump’s death on August 27, 2020. Also Read - US Will Get COVID-19 Vaccine by This Year, Announces Trump, Says We Will Crush The Virus Together
The photo showed an animated version of President Trump lying in a coffin, giving an impression that the still was from one of the episodes of the longest running sitcom. Also Read - Walmart, Microsoft Join Hands in Pursuit to Acquire TikTok in US
However, the image turned out to be fake as no episode of ‘The Simpsons’ actually predicted Trump’s death. Also Read - TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer Quits Less Than 6 Months Into The Job Amid Political Turmoil
The fake image started trending on the micro-blogging site Twitter after a viral video asked users to look for significant incidents linked to August 27, 2020, and somehow it was linked to Donald Trump’s death.
While some users were left confused, a few of the ardent fans of ‘The Simpsons’ clarified that the show never aired any episode predicting the US President’s death.
Notably, the longest running sitcom had managed to predict a few things right over the years such as Trump’s victory in 2016 US presidential election, 9/11 attacks, ebola outbreak and coronavirus pandemic.
Take a Look at Few Predictions by ‘The Simpsons’ That Came True
Trump’s victory: Before Donald Trump’s win in the US elections in 2016, the Simpsons, back in 2000, in the Season 11 episode “Bart to the Future”had predicted that the billionaire businessman would become the president of America.
Ebola outbreak: Much before the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the Simpsons warned us about the epidemic disease in briefly in 1997. The Simpsons episode called ‘Lisa’s Sax’ from the season nine showed Marge trying to make Bart who is down with fever into reading a book called ‘Curious George and the Ebola Virus’.
9/11 attacks: In 1997, the popular cartoon aired an episode named The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson in which Lisa is shown with a copy of a 9$ magazine entitled ‘New York’. The unusual symbolic representation of number nine against the twin tower seemed like an early warning about the coming attacks four years down the line. It was definitely one of their most horrific prophecies which came true.
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