Diving into how to start your blog and seeing the ways in which you can monetize is one of the best ways to create passive income for yourself. I am no expert on this topic but I will share my experiences with blogging. Note this is a lengthy post with loads of information.
Having your own blog can give you a huge presence in the online world as well as leveraging your influence to impact others.
The Benefits:
- Building an amazing audience base that shares the same goals and interests as you
- Ability to express yourself
- Document your experiences and memories that can potentially provide value to someone else that helps them succeed along the way
Blogging can be a lot of fun too but it can also make you some serious cash if executed correctly. Today, I will be covering everything you need to know to start your blog and monetize it so you can live the life that you WANT!
Making Your Blog:
First things first, we need to create a website that you can call home for your lovely thoughts. We need to find a host. The topic of hosting can get really technical but a simple way to think about it is leasing a space on the internet that you call home. Kind of like my 12-month lease for my apartment in college.
The flip side of your apartment lease and hosting is actually really cheap. Hosting a website costs on average about $3-7 per month to set up.
Blue host is the website hosting that I use for lifeofpedro.com and they have treated me so well since I joined them. They have a 30-day money back guarantee safety net that and provide top-notch customer service. Given this was my first ever website, they have been helpful in the process.
Below are instructions on creating your BlueHost Account:
1) Get Started Now
2) Select Your Plan
3) Create Your Domain (This is your http://www.__________________.com)
4) Create Your Account
5) Install WordPress
Building Your TRUE Audience:
Next thing on your agenda is building a true audience. A true audience is the key to making your blog valuable.
Let’s take Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi for example. Whenever these two soccer superstars come out with a new cleat, there are millions upon millions of people that are die-hard fans that will sacrifice everything to get their hands on them. Like people will take drastic measures to get their hands on their idols new product. This can be applied to you as well.
All it takes is to build a strong solid audience base of around 100-1000 of true fans that
- Love your work so much they will buy whatever it is you are offering
- Notice how I said 100-1000. You don’t need millions of people to make this possible
For example. Let’s take an amateur soccer player who loves to play soccer and nothing else. All he needs to do is build a fan base of 100-1,000 people.
For instance. if he finds 1,000 people and offers ONE cleat or ONE jersey that are willing to give him $100 for his product
This equals out to be $100,000.
Can you live off that? You absolutely can. This is what your average college student thrives for, is a six-figure salary but here we do it in a passive approach as to getting a degree and getting a job to make that salary.
The amazing thing about this too, you don’t have to be the best blogger or influence in your industry or “niche.”
Now the more you build this the more income you are guaranteed to make and more channels of influence you gain.
Interesting story:
Whenever I was 12 years old, I had the dream of becoming a pro soccer player. After slow growth and frustration, I figured I would learn from a mentor to improve my skill set. That way I could actually play and all my friends would be peanut butter jealous. Hours of research led to one thing on how a Mexican little boy can achieve his dreams.
Finally, I found a guy named Matt Smith. He was a random guy that loved playing soccer and teaching people how to get better. I binged watched all his previous YouTube videos to kind of check out his style.
Sooner or later, it happened
Matt reached out to all his die-hard YouTube subscribers and asked if he made a training program if people would buy it? Everyone said yes. The birth of Epic Soccer Training came into place for the price of $50.
Matt has sold over 200,000 copies of his $50 training program.
Now do the math.
CREATE VALUABLE AND EXCITING CONTENT
So just as Matt did, you need to figure out you are passionate about and begin writing about it.
You want to offer value in return for the reader reading your blog. This is where your creative brain that I know you all have comes into play.
But like anything else guys, this will take time. A lot of times it will feel as nobody is reading your blog except your mom but don’t give up. Give it a whole year before the thought of quitting comes into mind. 95% of people that start something completely new give up whenever things start to get tough. But remember, to live how other can’t you need to do what others won’t.
Matt Smith was making videos and tutorials long before he became famous. Now, he lives of that hard work he put in the beginning and barely has the work again. His program alone makes him about $10,000 dollars without ever having to work again. Why? Because he built his true audience base.
Ask yourself. Does working hard now and enjoying the beautiful things in life later worth it?
110% my friend
If he can do with teaching people how to play soccer better, imagine the endless things you can do.
Offer A Solution To The Customer:
Our biggest goal is to build your true audience. Building your audience is the most important component of this process and the one you should focus on when you first start out. Note, this is a marathon, not a 100m sprint.
No worries though, you can still make some cash flow by recommending products through affiliate marketing. I would highly suggest this route for your first year before you start selling your own products.
Now if you want to dig deeper into Affiliate Marketing: I will be posting a blog post specifically for that next week:
After you have built a strong following base, you are ready to send out details and updates
You can go two routes with this.
- Writing a blog post or uploading a video to your product or
- My preferred option: create an email list
Benefits of Creating an E-Mail List:
We all have fallen into giving away our email list to a company or brand just for that coupon or discount right? The same concept applies here
Whenever giving away your e-mail address you create a confidential relationship between you and the reader. In order to get their email list, you have to give them something to offer, it could be a funny joke, a cookie, and high-five literally anything guys!
Once you have infiltrated the inbox, you are in the clear. For me, my email inbox is where I store all my important information that interests me the MOST.
Now if you able to gain access to that space, you have a greater chance of the reader actually looking at your product/service and promotes an even higher chance of you closing on that reader. Sounds good so far right?
What I personally use for building an email list and send out my monthly newsletter and updates is, Get Response. Get Response is one of the m
ost reliable, easiest and cheapest platforms to do this on. This platform automatically sends out these emails which is the beautiful thing about it. All the work you have to do it setting it up. The rest is taken care of.
This is how I’m doing it:
- I find out what people are interested in the most or something they are struggling with
- I research products and services to best help that needs
- I send them a funny and engaging email through Get Response and mention a product that is worth checking out
- The reader checks out the product and wallah you got a traffic and a sale
Easy enough right?
The beautiful thing is that by collecting this email list, you are able to contact directly with your readers and you know exactly what is they want. Focusing on the right product/service is the only hard part but once that is done you can let this machine roll.
Wow, that was a load of information in one post. Hope that this article was helpful to you!
Creating your own blog and making a living from it is extremely challenging and exciting. Now that you know all the basics that you need on how you can create a blog and make it worthwhile…
What is stopping you?
P.S. Here is a pic of me when I was 6 years old grinding hard af on these blog posts on my HotWheels Laptop
Your boy,
Pedro Segundo
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.
