If you want to build a profitable blog, you need to write strategic content.
That doesn’t mean, writing things you don’t like.
It means, tweaking your posts so, that your audience loves it and that it makes sense.
Once you’ve established your niche, make sure you write and create strategic content that that type of audience loves.
Strategic content can be best created if you create an editorial calendar where you write down when you’ll publish what, and what it will accomplish.
Real quick, these are the things that you need to think of when you’re creating a content strategy:
- Define your goal. What’s your end goal? Selling something at the end of the month? If so, you need a buildup of strategic content. If your end goal is getting the right kind of traffic, you need to create the content they love. Here’s how:
- Create your ideal reader, as described before.
- Review the content you’ve already put out there. If it doesn’t align with the topics you picked in this article when you decided on your niche and perfect target audience, toss it. Unpublish the content, because it will confuse the reader.
- Brainstorm content ideas by ‘spying’ on your audience. Head to forums and Facebook Groups, see what kind of questions they ask, and what they’re currently interested in. Try to come up with content that compliments their needs, instead of your own needs. Once you do this, I guarantee you will see a spike of readers.
- Use Keywords Everywhere to come up with (SEO) keywords to maximize your traffic efforts.
- Determine which types of content you want to create, and how you can repurpose your content. Repurposing your content is the best way to max your work, do the work once, share it in different formats to make something new. Example: If you have a blog post, turn it into a podcast, multiple Pinterest pins, an audio blog post, a course or free email course etc.
So these are a few strategies you can use to build the right kind of audience.
What you need to do next to build a profitable blog with a small audience to create more freedom in your life is focus on growing the right kind of analytics.
Most bloggers get super stressed out and maybe dive into some more quote on quote illegal practices to get traffic. Link parties, Asking people to click on your links in Facebook ‘spam’ groups and tricking people into clicking with click baits, just so that the numbers are up.
But what they don’t know is, that once your traffic numbers are up, you won’t, all of a sudden earn a lot of money. Plus, it’s a strategy for the short term, because you have to keep these numbers up month after month. It’s a very stressful strategy, that I don’t recommend anyone. It’s not worth the display advertising income.
So should you focus on growing your audience on social media instead of focussing on getting blog traffic? If you grow your audience on social media, you have no control over them – what I mean by that is you don’t own your audience. The platform that you’re using to follow you on owns them.
I hear bloggers left and right complain about algorithms and strategies that no longer work. It absolutely blows my mind that people expect apps, they don’t own AND that are free to never change their business model so that the apps finally become profitable.
But the problem is you. You should never ever build your business on someone else’s platform, and if you do by accident, make sure people can find you in other places as well.
A good place to start is your blog, but to make sure you reach people in their ‘own space’, make sure you start a newsletter list.
So try to invest in it, starting with Convertkit. I can give away a free 30-day trial, no credit card necessary so you can try it out and see if you like it, and how much subscribers you can get in a month.
To claim the 30-days, click here, usually you only get 14 days for free.
No time, ad blockers and stuff
Everybody is busy, and with the rise of ad blockers and the number of new blogs, it’s getting harder earning all your money as a blogger with ads (display or content).
So what’s next? I’ll talk about that very soon, but the key is: building a great following (I’d recommend not on social media!) and creating stuff just for them. And the great thing: ‘automations’ make it possible to create things once, and have it all send out automatically afterward… this is such a gain of time for other stuff!! I love it.
Email Sequences
Convertkit makes it really easy setting up email sequences, and that’s also the main reason why I got Convertkit. I’ve been working on my new course/project, and automatic email sequences are a big part of my strategy. For example: when you sign up for my free e-mail course ‘ A Media Kit That Sells‘, you’ll receive the course in your inbox, send with Convertkit.
Tagging & link following
In Convertkit it’s possible to give subscribers certain tags. In reality, this means you can create different subscribe forms and keep track of which subscriber comes where from.
This is not all, if you send a newsletter you can track who clicked on what link (!!). This is perfect for leads & serving your subscribers what they love.
Because of someone clicks on a freebie designed for bloggers, I’ll send them more ‘blog related’ content, instead of other content. Everybody happy.
Pay for what you get
And last but not least, you pay for the number of email subscribers you have. So you start at $29 dollars for <1000 subs, up to >900.000 sub and $3,999 (uhm, but that’s definitely, not me!).
Now, if you’re down, you can get a free (no credit card necessary) trial with Convertkit, usually, it’s 14-days, but I can give you one for 30-days. This means you get to try it for a whole month, see if you like it and how quickly you can build your list to 100, 500 or 1000 subscribers, everything is possible. Click here for the 30-day trial.
If you want to learn how to build a profitable blog in 30 days or less, register for my free video training now!