How To Start Your Blog And Make Real Money

The inspiration for this post is pretty simple, I was broke trying to pay the bills, attend my kid’s school activities between my 9-5 job.

Recently I have been online researching ways to make money online, most of what I found were scams. Websites pulling you in with false promises and then trying to get you to sign up for something. At that point I usually just close the window and move on to some other research of how I can get rich quick… so far I haven’t found anything – let me know if you find it!

So let me explain how you can actually make real money from your blog….

How do blogs make money?

The two most common ways are:

1. Affiliate marketing
2. Sell your own services/products

Affiliate marketing is a pretty popular method right now. It is pretty easy and all you need to do is tell people about someone else’s product. I mean seriously, if someone clicks your affiliate link and makes a purchase, you get some money – easy! Even better, you don’t have to deal with customer support because that is all taken care of by the product owner!

Selling your own products OR Affiliate marketing?

I have tried some affiliate marketing as well as selling products online (MiniFigClub). So far I really haven’t made much money with affiliate marketing compared to selling my own products. That of course doesn’t mean affiliate marketing isn’t profitable. A lot of people make tons of money from it.

However, if you are starting a new blog, I feel that creating and selling your own product is what will get you into much more lucrative income and much faster than trying to make money off of affiliate commissions every month.

What is the point of having a blog?

Who hasn’t wondered why just about every business has a blog? Have you thought about why people spend so much time and energy creating these blog posts?

It’s a pretty simple answer: Content Marketing.

Content is key and a blog is basically a content marketing machine! It’s sole purpose is to generate leads through content. Collecting those emails is the most effective way for any blog to grow, build fans and of course generate those sales we all want!

You want to use those email opt in forms to your advantage! You can see that I have an opt in form on the homepage, the sidebar and at the bottom of blog posts. I even utilize this on exit pop ups within some blog posts. Everything is about capturing visitors’ emails.

The Email List is Your Business Core.

The more emails you collect, the more money you make. Seriously. Not joking.

With an email list, you have a catalyst of growth that you can control with the click of a button. This can be for whatever you like!

Just for an example, MMOWITHSEO has an email list of about 5,000 people. There is around a 10% click through rate for my emails I send out. So that means I have the power to send roughly 500 people to any page I want on my site.

Create a new blog post – 500 readers right away!

Create a new product – 500 people viewing the sales page!

That is the power you hold when collecting email addresses and building out your email list.

Think of the blogs with 100k people on their email lists.. bet they are making bank!

Now, Let Me Show You How Things Convert.

Here is my example – which I might eventually offer in the near future. Let’s say I am going to bring back my SEO consulting work I used to do at $1,000/month. I only want to take on 10 people as more than that might be too many for me to handle.

Glad I have an email list! Or I would have no one to sign up – it is a challenge to try and get 10 people to sign up without an already established following. I would have to either pay for traffic, put up banners and links on my blog and hope that people click it.. ew.

Email List Kicks Ass!

$1,000/month isn’t cheap, but my work is pretty amazing

Now, I am taking on 10 people to do SEO for, that is $10k each month!

So, if I am sending my email to all 5,000 subscribers and get the 500 people to view the page, 10 out of 500 people is not very hard to get.

Everything is simply done by email and it’s amazing.

The very same example can be used if you are selling a product!

So When Do I Make My $100k?

Alright, alright let’s break it down.

I know you are thinking $100K is pretty crazy, but in all reality it is pretty realistic to achieve. It’s a number game.

Your first year of blogging, you get 10,000 subscribers, which really isn’t too hard if your content is good.

At the end of the year you decide to finally launch your first paid training product. The price of your course is $1000, which is pretty competitive for high-value training courses.

Math…

To make that $100,000 you only need to sell 100 copies. Guess what?! You have 10,000 people to sell this to and you only need a conversion rate of 1%.

If you have been engaging with your email list over the last year and giving them valuable content, 1% should not be very hard to get to convert. So, now all you need to do is have a good product launch. Just think, even if 2% convert, that’s $200,000!.

What about a couple years from now when you have an email list of 100,000 people and you release a new product and convert just 1%? That’s when the big bucks come in!

You are right, this is something log-term that you need to work at but this all only gets stronger as time passes.

So what did we learn today?

Email List, Email List, Email List, Email List… the key to happiness is building your email lists, engaging your subscribers and providing them with great content.

That is how to make your $100,000 from your blog.

Read Part 2.