As you might of noticed, I haven’t published a blog article in few months (but I have been busy – see below). I have uploaded a few blog training videos to the classroom area but blogging, not so much, and here’s why…
When you’ve been blogging for as long as I have there comes a point where you hit a rut.
Truth be told, when you’ve been blogging about the same topic for as long as I have you have hit many ruts and if you’re still around it means you persevered through them.
At this point you’ll probably be telling yourself “I’ve said everything I need to say.” But not only that, everyone else has already talked about it, too.
This is the point where blogging starts to become a little bit harder because you have to start getting creative when you write a post(s) about things people have already talked about.
Examples of Rehashed Content
Here’s a quick bulleted list of topics I’ve covered in my blog or in the classroom area:
- Choose quality over quantity
- People buy benefits, not features
- Write for humans, not Google (but be aware of what Google looks for)
- How to properly format your writing for screen reading
- Newsletter tricks to increase optin rates
- White hat SEO tips which will help you in Google
- Black hat SEO examples which will ultimately hurt you in Google
- What social media is all about
- How it’s important as an (online) marketer to be active in social media to show Google your authority online
- How to spy on your competition so you can outrank and outsell them
- Guest Blogging
- Off page SEO
- On Page SEO
- Funnels (leading people through a sales process)
- WordPress tutorials
- WordPress Security
- Affiliate Marketing
Okay you get the point. As a blogger looking to make a little money online and promote yours or someone else’s product…
There are certain things you need to do and know and everyone and their dog are blogging about it. I’m subscribed to a few (respectable) marketer’s newsletters and here’s a few of the newsletter topics I’ve received over the last few days:
I’m certainly not knocking these marketers, they are all smart and have achieved a certain amount of success. I’m just illustrating why it’s hard to keep blogging sometimes because seriously you come to a point where it’s like, “We’ve all said this stuff before”.
I use to read Copyblogger religiously, but I stopped a couple years ago because although the content is great (writing is top-notch), it’s all rehashed stuff. Dig through the achieves and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Oh and by the way, we haven’t even talked about how no one really reads all of your content. Well okay, maybe some, but most people skim through it. The ones who read it all are likely either brand new to blogging or you are showcasing step by step how you’re making thousands and thousands of dollars.
The question then becomes, “I’m putting all this time and effort into a blog and awesome articles and less than a quarter of the people who come by actually read it all? WTF?”
What Should You Do?
That of course is a question only you can answer. But it’s an answer which you must come to by using your entrepreneurial skills.
What you don’t want to do is sit idle and do nothing.
A true entrepreneur evaluates their assets and liabilities and finds a way to make sure their assets work for them to reduce their liabilities (I talk a lot about this in my newsletter, so subscribe to it if you want the scoop).
If you are a blogger who blogs about:
- blogging
- SEO
- WordPress
- Affiliate Marketing
You got your work cut out for you. Back in the day (when I started) it was easier to blog about this stuff because so few people where doing it. These days, however, everyone who starts a blog wants to blog about blogging or affiliate marketing.
If that’s you, you have to get creative – but here’s my suggestion.
If you want to start a blog about any of the topics above but you’re not already highly successful at it THEN don’t blog about it.
Seriously, if you’re not a TRUE expert in the field then you’re going to have a hard time building your following. Is it impossible? No of course not. But I guarantee you it will be much much harder for you to break into this field if you haven’t already achieved great success.
What I Decided To Do
I might not have a large number of comments below each of my posts, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about blogging, seo, and marketing. For me the reason why I don’t have lots of comments is I’m kind of burnt out on what it takes to network, build products and all that in order to get that following.
To do that it takes a lot of one of your most valuable things you own as an entrepreneur… time.
My best strategy for getting more comments and a bigger following is to set out on a high quality guest posting campaign and leverage other people’s following to increase mine. Then from there build products and services to keep that following.
Truth be told though, I personally don’t want a huge following.
I’m the kind of entrepreneur that wants to make a ton of money but not have to continually work hard at getting it to roll in. I want to work hard getting it all set up so it comes in on autopilot every month (more on that below). I shouldn’t say I don’t want to work hard, I suppose it’s best to say I want to work smart.
So what I decided to do is slow down (not abandon) blogging about blogging and blogging about seo and marketing because it’s so damn competitive and you know… if your goal is to make money online, there are a lot easier ways to do it than competing against the best.
I use to do niche affiliate marketing and mini sites adSense but Penguin shot down my sites so I’ve taken to another approach.
My New Direction Which Is Making Me Money Every Month…
I now build very smartly built websites for local business niches and then rank them and rent them out to local businesses in that area.
I don’t want to give away my niche, but an example might be swimming pools.
I build a website around swimming pools and target the website in, say New Jersey. When or just before I build the site I contact a pool contractor in that area and explain to them how I’m an expert in SEO and marketing online and I’m planning to build a local website to rank for something like “pool contractors in New Jersey.”
I show them examples of other sites I have ranked to prove I can do what I say I can do and then negotiate a monthly rental price they will pay when my site gets to the first page of Google for a keyword term or two.
The competition for these small local sites is extremely low and easy to beat as compared to trying to rank my blog about blogging and SEO.
So it’s not that I’m not working hard, because believe me you I am. But what I’ve done is evaluate what I really want in life and took a good hard look at my skill set.
I’m really good in SEO.
In fact, very few people do it the way I do it because it doesn’t include any kind of software or spun content. I also don’t use directories, article submission sites, bookmarking, and stuff like that. These are things my competitors use (local SEO businesses, like Local Splash, pool contractors hire to do their SEO).
So I have two options…
1. Continue to blog about blogging and build premium training courses, WordPress security stuff, offer web hosting, and use my blog to sell affiliate products…
- or -
2. Build 20 sites which are real sites but in a less competitive niche and rent them out for $600-$1,000/month (you do the math).
Once the sites are built, there’s very little up keep and what little off page SEO I should continue doing my employee can do for me.
For me, option 2 works best. But to each their own, right?
What Should You Do If You’re Blogging About Blogging/Marketing?
If you’re making lots of money doing it and already successful, keep doing it if you’re happy. If you’re not, then I suggest you analyze your skill set and really figure out what you want in life (money-wise and personal time-wise).
A good place to start is don’t follow your dreams, follow your effort.
If your dream is to quit your day job and build an income online, well there’s lots of ways to do that. If your effort is in learning SEO and applying it to your site, then you have a ton of options to make money online.
It doesn’t only have to be about blogging.
Also, go where the money is.
Lots of money flows through Amazon.com. Can you become a drop shipper or find a supplier you can buy at wholesale? For less than $100 you could hire someone from oDesk or eLance to create you a product label and then you can ship a few products to Amazon’s product fulfillment center so that when someone buys your product from Amazon, Amazon does all the shipping for you.
There’s also a lot of rich people out there and businesses with money waiting to be thrown at you. What can you do for them?
