Making Money From Your Blog

As we established from the very start,

If you missed the begining of this course go read it here 

 your blog is a way to attract leads to your mailing list so you can then work on converting them into a sale.
With this in mind, you may as well forget everything you may have heard of in the past about monetizing your blog through banner adverts, Google Adsense etc.
While you can make some money from these methods and there is no harm in putting some such advertising on your blog, it will only be a fraction of what you can earn with a substantial, targeted mailing list.
However, you must also appreciate your blog is not going to make you rich quickly. It will take time to build a successful blog and attract significant numbers of people onto your mailing list. I will go as far to say the early days will feel like a slog and when you are making little or no money, you will probably questions yourself whether it's worth the effort.
What I will say is, stick at it! This method will see you build a proper, long term business built on solid foundations and you will not need huge numbers of people on your mailing list to make a decent income.
The key here is to start small, be patient and build.

Want to Make Money? Then Sell Things!
The way the six figure pro bloggers like John Chow, Yaro Starak and David Risley make their money is by selling products to their mailing list subscribers.
More specifically, they promote information products to a targeted, hungry audience who want solutions to specific problems.
In time, ideally you want to sell your own products to your subscribers but you can also pitch other people's products as an affiliate and earn a commission for every sale made.
In your early stages with your blog, the majority of your money is likely to come from affiliate sales.

An Introduction to Affiliate Marketing
While you are building your list and working on your own products, you can make money in the meantime by promoting other people's products and earning a commission on every sale you generate.
Affiliate programs are an easy way to earn money from your mailing list. Even if your list is small, it is still targeted and your subscribers will be interested in a product aimed at their niche. In fact, some people on your list will actually thank you for recommending a product to them which helps to solve their problems!
Imagine that – people actually thanking you while they are giving you money!
You can get started immediately with affiliate programs. Sign up for a free account at Clickbank, which is the largest marketplace for information products on the internet. They have been in business for 10 years and always pay out like clockwork. I have never had an issue with them in around eight years of holding an account with them.
When you are signed up, take a look at the marketplace and search for available products in your niche. There are thousands to choose from in many popular niches – make money online, dog training, weight loss and dating to name but a few.
When you find a product you are interested in, Clickbank will also tell you if it is selling and worth your while. Every product listed has the following information associated with it:
●$/Sale. The commission you will earn on each sale.
 ●Future $. If the product you are promoting is a membership website with a monthly fee then you will earn recurring revenue on an ongoing basis. 
●Total $/Sale. The money you will earn when you make a sale. ●%/Sale. The sales commission percentage of the total price.
●%refd. The total percentage of the product's sales referred by affiliates. The remaining percentage was from direct sales with no involvement from affiliates.
 ●Grav. The gravity of the product which is essentially the number of affiliates who have made sales during the last 30 days. The higher the gravity, the more affiliates who are actively promoting the product and making sales. Look for products with a gravity of 20 or above. It means you will have more competition of people promoting the same product but it also means there is money to be made out of promoting it!
You can see there are two types of product you can promote – one off products or recurring income products, i.e. membership subscriptions.

Membership subscriptions can be a great source of passive, recurring income because you will earn a commission each and every month a person renews their subscription.
For example, you could sell a $67 ebook with a 75% commission and this would put $48.98 in your pocket for every sale you make.
However, if you promoted a membership website which costs the customer $67 per month and has a 75% commission, that means you earn $48.98 every month for as long as the customer stays subscribed!
As you can see there is a lot more money to be made out these methods than a few lousy dollars you can charge for banner advertising space on your blog or few cents we are talking about for Google Adsense which encourages your traffic to click away from your blog!


Creating Your Own Products
I want to briefly touch on creating your own products but in the very early stages of your blogging career it is not that critical.
Your first information product should be one which you give away free, as an incentive for people to join your mailing list.
You could write a beginners guide to a topic you really take to. If you are involved in the internet marketing niche it could be about setting up a blog (or more specifically, Wordpress), Twitter, social media, list building, affiliate marketing or something else.
You can use blog posts you have already made on the topic as a basis for your free report as well as any notes you have kept along the way during your learning.
The report needs to be in the industry standard PDF format and the easiest way I have found to convert word processed documents into PDF is by using OpenOffice.
Use the Writer package (word processor) to produce your ebook and then click the Export Directly as PDF button to convert your document into PDF format.
There is no need to purchase a specific PDF creator when the free and more importantly, stable OpenOffice does a perfectly good job.
As you get more knowledgeable about your niche and more aware of what other products are available on the market you will be able to create as many new reports, video tutorial series' and even coaching programs as you wish in time.
Again, it's about starting small, being patient and gradually building.

Your Blog is a Sales Funnel

You may have heard the terms “sales funnel” or “marketing funnel” and that's exactly what the purpose of your blog is.
A funnel is wide at the top and narrows as it focuses everything down to a single point.
All of your blog content, Twitter posts, videos and social media offerings act as a magnet for new leads and attracts them into your funnel.
Your blog and methods of lead generation enter your funnel at the top and you gradually work on converting those leads into sales, promoting more expensive items as you work downwards.
The diagram, below shows an example sales funnel for a marketer operating in the “make money online” niche:
The first step is to turn your traffic into a lead and get them onto your mailing list. Once a lead is on your list you can build a relationship with them and start to move them down the funnel. It's a good idea at this stage to offer people an incentive to join your mailing list, such as a free ebook.
If your blog is related to the make money online niche, you are free to give this ebook away as an incentive to get people to join your own mailing list.
Once a person is on your mailing list you should then provide them with more valuable, free content and try and over deliver with high quality as much as you can. Ask them if there is anything else they need help with or answers to. You can reply to them personally but answering questions makes for great blog post material too!
The next step is to convert your lead into a paying customer and this is usually a cheap ebook or video series. If the customer is willing to give you a little cash now, then they will be more open to persuasion for larger purchases later down the line.
When the person makes a purchase, you can try and squeeze additional money from them via an immediate upsell. For example, if you sell them an ebook, you can ask them if they would like to purchase another ebook or video series which compliments their initial purchase.
A common upsell practice is the One Time Offer or OTO. This means you present an upsell offer to your customer and they have to make a decision there and then whether to buy it or not. These offers are usually a discount on one of your other products or perhaps an affiliate deal you have struck with another seller. If they choose not to purchase, they will not see the offer again.
Whether or not the customer purchases your upsell, you then attempt to move them further down the funnel to purchase a more expensive item. For example, if the first purchase was for a $27 ebook, next time you could try to sell them a $47 or $97 ebook. Or, you could recommend a membership site where they have to pay a $47 subscription fee each month, earning you a continuous passive income.
Eventually you want the customer to purchase a high-ticket item from you, such as an
ebook, course or coaching program which costs hundreds of even several thousand dollars and then you can enjoy a mega payday!

Contacting Your List
This is the final subject I want to go over in this report.
At this point your blog should be set up and receiving traffic. Some of this traffic will join your mailing list as prospects and ideally you should give them a free report to persuade them to sign up. This will add value and start the relationship building process.
You must email your list frequently otherwise they are going to forget about you quickly! The only way to make your list more responsive is to contact them frequently and do not worry if people unsubscribe – if they do it's likely the were not interested in buying from you anyway and are just freebie seekers taking up space on your list.
For example, a list with 500 subscribers costs $19 a month with Aweber but when you hit 501 it shoots up to $29. For cost reasons alone it's in your interest to have as tight a list as possible, especially in the early days when you are growing your subscriber base.
You should expect a monthly turnover in your list of about 10%. This means on a monthly basis around 10% of your list should be unsubscribing. Again, this is positive because the dead wood will remove themselves and over time your list will grow in numbers into one which will at least put up with the emails you are sending them!
The more your list get used to receiving your emails and indeed tolerate them, the more likely they are going to become customers!
We have discussed how you are going to promote either your own products or recommend affiliate products to the people on your list but it's not as easy as just shooting them an email saying: “Hey, this products is great, go out and buy it!”
Successful email marketing is an art form in itself and an entire report could be dedicated to this subject alone.
However, I just want to get you going and to give you some tips to think about when constructing your own email messages.

Basic Email Template
Whenever you want to promote a particular product you can use this simple email template to produce an effective and more importantly, profitable email.
Subject Line. This should be benefit rich and provoke curiosity. What we want to do here is make sure your email gets opened in the first place.
Opening. Successful email marketing is based around telling a story. Remember, YOU are communicating with a person on your email list, so make the story interesting and personal to you.
Body. The body of the email should include a “call to action” and tell your reader what to do. This should tie into the product or service you are promoting.
Soft Sell. People love to buy but they don't like to be sold to and so you should use a “soft sell” approach. You should include links to the product within the story of the body copy but don't actually “sell” the product in the email. You could take this a step further by directing your readers to a video review you created of the product “in action” and show them how it is benefiting you personally.
Footer. You could include a post script with a further link to the product page but this is not always necessary. Your footer should include a link back to your blog and of course contain the CAN-SPAM compliancy information such as a physical address and unsubscribe link.
This style of email works because the content in the body of the email is relevant to the product page you are promoting, without having to sell the reader on the notion of visiting that page.
Email Checklist
After you have drafted your first email message, compare it to the checklists below relating to the subject line, body and footer.
Subject Line
●Does the subject line arouse curiosity or attention? 
●What about any benefits, news, credibility, quick solution or a combination? The minimum you want to aim for is benefit plus curiosity. 
●Was the subject line intriguing, sensational, provocative or gossipy? 
●Do the first two words convey something important or personal? ●Would the subject line stand out in your inbox if you received it yourself? 
●Could you shorten the subject line to 40 characters or less without losing effect if it is longer than this amount? 
●Is it obvious in the “from line” the email is from you?
Body Copy
●Does the first line expand on the main idea in the subject line? ●Did you write the body copy as an interesting story personal to yourself? 
●Does the body copy deliver on the promise in the subject line? ●Does the body copy build desire? 
●Did you include a call for action? 
●Is the body copy more entertaining than educational? If it isn't, what can you do to make it more entertaining? 
●Does each paragraph flow smoothly? 
●Did you read the email out loud to correct any errors?
 ●Is the entire body copy no more than 600 words in length?
 ●Did you include a working hyperlink to the sales page where necessary?
Footer
●Have you included an email footer? 
●Does it include a copyright notice? 
●Does it include links to your websites? 
●Does it include a physical, snail mail address?
●Does it include an unsubscribe link?

Further Help
The best advice I can give you to help you produce your own profitable emails is to sign up to the mailing lists of successful people in your niche.
That way, you can see how they construct their emails, look at the types of offers they are promoting and how they go about the soft selling approach.
These people are there on the front line, actively marketing to their lists and it's probably the best education you are going to get on this subject.
If you want to get into the internet marketing or make money online niche then please feel free to join my mailing list below this post to see the types of email I send out to my subscribers.


Summary
I can appreciate there has been a lot to take in here, especially if you are completely new to blogging and the concept of making money online. To make things easier for you, I will summarise the steps you need to take here and it won't be too long before you are making a decent income online. Who knows, you could be the next professional six figure blogger!
Remember, the steps outlined here are to develop your blog into a proper, money making business and not just a “hobby blog” which will not need anywhere near as much effort or commitment!
If you are ready to make money, let's go over this killer 12-step plan to success one last time.


1. Decide what you are going to blog about. Are you going to create a blog about yourself or one on a specific niche market? Getting this right straight away will narrow your focus and keep your mind on track.
 
2. Register a Domain Name & Arrange Hosting. Try and get a .com domain name if at all possible and try to register as memorable and brandable name as possible. To register your domain name I recommend GoDaddy and for hosting, Hostgator.
 
3. Install Wordpress.  Wordpress is fast to install, user friendly and very flexible. Make sure your permalinks are SEO friendly and install some plugins to make your blog experience that much better.
 
4. Add a Blog Theme. You can find a free theme but for a really professional look, I always opt for a paid premium theme. My blog uses the Streamline theme by Brian Gardner, while Woo Themes also have some great paid options there.
 
5. Set Up a Mailing List. You need to start attracting subscribers to your list immediately and don't worry if your blog is not established. Set up an email list with Aweber and plug the subscription form into your blog. Offer a free ebook as an ethical “bribe” to entice people to sign up to your list.
 
6. Write Your First Blog Post. Now your blog is set up, you need to get some content on there. If you can, write 5-10 high quality blog posts which will become your “pillar content”, essentially a showcase of what you have to offer your new readers. This initial content will allow your readers to like you, get to know you and more importantly, trust you!
 
7. Keep Writing! People hate blogs which are not updated regularly. If you start writing 23 blog posts per week, then continue in that manner! Draw inspiration from other blogs and forums in your niche for new content ideas and invest in 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by ProBlogger Darren Rowse. There is never nothing to write about so there is no excuse for letting your blog go stale!
 
8. Sign Up for Twitter. One of the easiest ways to drive traffic to a new website is via a Twitter account. Link your blog in the bio of your Twitter account and follow people who are interested in your niche. Very soon you will be able to create a large following of people who will be interested in what you have to say! Remember to follow me on Twitter and I will follow you back!
 
9. Connect With Other Blogs. Try to add value to other peoples blogs and this will be reciprocated many times over! Find other blogs in your niche and leave high quality, insightful comments on their posts. You can of course add a link back to your blog. You can also contact the blog owners and offer to write a guest article for their blog or perhaps come up with some other ideas for collaboration.
 
10. Get Yourself Out There. As well as Twitter, you can brand yourself on Facebook, Youtube and other video sites, submit your content to social media websites such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, submit articles to various article directories and collaborate with like minded blog owners on podcasts and webinars. Pretty soon your brand will increase and people will start to notice you popping up everywhere!
 
11. Promote Affiliate Products to Your Email List. It is widely accepted that every subscriber on your list is worth $1 per month but that is not going to materialise if you don't contact them! You should contact your list frequently and don't worry about people unsubscribing – you only want people on your list who WANT to be contacted by you. Find
high quality affiliate products at Clickbank and later, those offered by other blog owners you will get to know in your niche and let your email list know about them. Remember, people like to buy things but do not like to be sold to, so use a “soft sell” approach.
 
12. Work on Your Own Products. Longer term, you also want to develop your own products to either give away as an incentive to get people onto your mailing list and also higher ticket items to sell to them. It is a good idea to get on the mailing lists of other people in your niche to see what they are promoting and selling. You should also email your list and ask them what they want then create a product to sell to them.
Final Thoughts
So here we are – the end of the course!
You should now have an exact gameplan for how you are going to set up a blog with real purpose and create a huge mailing list bursting at the seams with customers desperate to hand their money over to you!
I just want to reiterate that mega success will not happen overnight. It didn't happen to any of the big “gurus” and it won't happen to you either.
The key to success is to take action and keep building as you go along.
If you are completely new to this then there are a lot of techniques and strategies to take on board in order for your blog to become hugely successful but try not to get too overwhelmed and try and take on everything at once.
Remember the basics – successful blogging comes from producing good content and networking with like minded people. The rest will take care of itself.
Also, I see this Equip course as a work in progress, so if you think I have missed anything out or if you have any ideas for what could be included in later rewrites, please  feel free to leave your comments!
I love receiving comments on my blog and I will comment straight back!