“Blog Smarter: Don’t Just End Up Trading Hours for Dollars” plus 1 more

Blog Smarter: Don’t Just End Up Trading Hours for Dollars

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 12:04 PM PST

This guest post is by Sunil of extramoneyblog.com.

Many business owners leave or start their businesses thinking they can achieve more freedom only to find themselves toiling away in their businesses and thus having bought or created themselves another job. Blogging is no different for most bloggers.

Many bloggers who enter the blogosphere with the intention of making money online and someday freeing themselves up from time commitments such as a 9 to 5 job often end up getting tied up to their blogs and don't realize it until often it's too late.

That is quite alright if your intention is simply to work online from home, but if your intention is to free yourself up so that you have more time, you must approach blogging from the lens of building a business that generates passive income for you.

See many people that want to break free from their jobs often have the illusion that they want to make more money online and that they can. What they don't realize is that what their subconscious really wants is more freedom and flexibility. Money is secondary.

Think about it, how long can one continue to trade five days in exchange for only two (weekends)? This never made sense to me. Does it make sense to you? Why? Even if you love your job, you have to be there and show up even when you don't feel like it some days. Why should you have to?

After an individual reaches a certain point in their career or profession, there comes a point when the incremental money gained from incremental time and effort invested is simply not worth it. At that stage, individuals start craving for time more so than money. Study after study has been conducted on this subject and the results are fairly consistent (watch out because after money, freedom and flexibility, the hunger for power is next).

If you haven't yet caught on, this post is not meant for someone who wants to supplement their income by blogging, or someone who wants to quit their jobs to work online full time, but rather those who are interested in building a business online that generates passive income for them, thus giving them the balance of time and money.

I am not going to go into what passive income is and whether it exists. There are about 1,943 different schools of thought on that subject. For the purposes of this post, let's say passive income is income that is at least the same or more from what you make at your job without having you put much effort into generating it on an ongoing basis. Simple and conservative enough?

Most bloggers produce content, guest post, market their blogs, find advertising partners, then rinse and repeat the cycle. Many take up writing gigs to supplement their incomes because the blog doesn't generate enough. Others take up freelance gigs to help other bloggers out.

What ends up happening is the constant trade of hours for dollars. There is nothing wrong with that if that's what you want. But if you want the freedom brought by passive income, then your approach to blogging must change. Most blogs would die overnight if the authors stopped posting to them. Like I said, it's like buying yourself (or creating) another job. Ask yourself, what would happen to your blog if you stopped blogging today?

So how can bloggers move away from trading hours for dollars so they can focus on semi or fully automating their "online business"? Here are a handful of ideas for starters. Take them as a little food for thought.

Focus on search engine optimization: SEO is well and alive even today. If most of your traffic comes from other websites and blogs, your RSS readers, and the community you have built, you are compelled to create content periodically to keep your blog alive. Focusing on SEO will help you spread your traffic spider web by catching more free, organic search engine traffic when web surfers are looking for information you have on your blog. Effective SEO ensures you gain the long-term benefits of the traffic your blog generates whether you update it or not.
Publish evergreen pillar content: Hand in hand with SEO goes the creation of evergreen "pillar" content. This refers to content that was valid yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow. Moreover, this content discusses a core topic or subtopic within your niche that people would be interested in reading about regardless of when they see it.
Focus on list-building: How many times have you heard the "money is in the list"? Enough times. Building a list ensures you have a business model to leverage and scale long after you stop posting content to your blog. An RSS readership is similar, but not the same. An email list allows you direct, personal contact with your subscribers. Moreover, it is not predicated on the success of your blog or the existence and use of RSS technology. Email, on the other hand, will follow us to our graves.
Collaborate: This seems to be the hottest trend in blogging today and the direction in which most popular blogs are going. Think Huffington Post, ProBlogger and the likes—single individuals are no longer running and managing those entities. Many believe the future of blogging lies in collaboration, and that those who do not collaborate will die over time. Because this is such a recent trend, the long term impact is unknown. There are cons to collaboration as well, such as loosing the blog's identity and main voice which were behind building the massive readership to begin with. So far it seems to be working alright, but time will tell how collaboration shapes up.
Leverage experience: Your journey as an online entrepreneur will teach you several invaluable lessons which you can leverage to build a more passive type of business the second time around. You will be wiser the second time around, which will help prevent you from building an online business that turns into a job. I made that mistake in 2005; luckily I was able to sell the site for $250,000 two years later after growing it faster than I could handle at the time. Ensure that your business is "scaleable" and sustainable with relatively low effort.
Build multiple streams of income: As your supplemental income increases, put some of it away and invest in establishing other passive streams of income such as a dividend portfolio, rental property, certificates of deposits, annuities, etc. The beauty of an online business such as blogging is that you can do it while maintaining a 9 to 5 job, therefore you can take all the profits from that scaleable side business and invest it to establish other streams of passive income that require little to no effort.

While trading hours for dollars working online may give you the flexibility to work remotely from home or anywhere else (after all, you have the ability to travel), it does not necessarily mean that you have the freedom and flexibility to decide how much you want to work and when, which most likely was your underlying motive to begin with.

Keeping that critical distinction in mind from the outset helps develop a business strategy that supports a fairly passive and self-sustainable model if that’s what you want. Simply saying that you work online doesn't convey the full story at all. A data entry person works online from home. We need to understand the broader picture, address what we truly desire, and then develop a strategy that will get us closer to our desire. I hope this article helps you reflect on your true desire behind blogging.

Editor’s note: We’ll be building on the idea of scalable blogging over the coming days in a series of posts on Blogging Smarter. This series will look more closely at particular aspects of blogging where you can get more value for the time you put in.

In the meantime, let us know if you’ve thought about your motivations for blogging, and whether you’ve wound up simply trading hours for dollars on your blog.

Sunil owns over two dozen profitable niche websites, over 20 successfully selling ebooks, and is the author of “How to Go from $0 to $1,000 a month in Passive and Residual Income in Under 180 Days All in Your Spare Time“, a FREE report you can download instantly from his blog, where he discusses expedited wealth creation through solid personal finance, entrepreneurship and internet marketing. You can read more about him and his work on his blog.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Blog Smarter: Don’t Just End Up Trading Hours for Dollars

The Most Common Word at My House: “Why?”

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST

As a father of three boys aged five and under, there’s a word I hear a lot in my house. I’m sure other parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, child care workers, and people with kids in their lives will know what it is.

“Why?”

Why do I have to brush my teeth?
Why are there clouds in the sky?
Why do you have to feed the baby again?
Why do have to wear clothes and not my PJs to Grandpa’s birthday party?
Why does daddy get more chips than me?
Why does poo smell so bad?
Why do I have to go to bed now?

The questions come fast and while there are a few “what,” “when,” “where,” and “how” questions mixed in, “why” questions seem to dominate—at least at our place.

Of course why questions are a normal healthy part of a child’s life. They’re curious little beings and asking “why” is partly about making sense of the world they live in.

The other part of the “why” obsession is a little different, though. It has more to do with gathering information to help them make decisions.

Take “Why do I have to wear clothes and not PJs to Grandpa’s birthday party?” for example. Behind that question is a three-year-old trying to work out what to wear to grandpa’s birthday party, and whether to make a stand on it being PJs.

What he’s really trying to work out (in his own way) are the benefits of getting dressed as opposed to wearing PJs to the party. As his parent, if I can give him some compelling benefits of one or the other option, I’m hopefully going to convince him to make a good decision (although it doesn’t always work with three-year-olds).

As a result, after many “why” questions there is always a “because…” response.

Because your PJs are not clean.
Because we want to show Grandpa your brand new party shirt.
Because you’ll match daddy if you wear your clothes.
Because nobody else will be wearing PJs.
Because I’ll give you a chocolate if you wear your clothes (second-last resort—bribery!).
Because I said so! (last resort—only occasionally works if said in the right tone of voice).

Why isn’t just a “kids’” word

While my boys will mature in many areas of their life, they are unlikely to ever stop asking “why?” I know this because it’s still a word that I use all day every day. It’s not always spoken, but it’s definitely one that echoes in my mind all day long as I make decisions.

In fact, almost any time I come to make any kind of decision, big or small, I question “why?”

Why should I buy the Volvo over the Mazda?
Why should I go for a run today?
Why should I read a book to my boys?
Why should I buy this app or ebook?
Why should I give money to that charity?

The questions are big and small, important and insignificant—but “why?” is a question I ponder almost every time. The “because” responses can be compelling … although at times it can be as simple as “because it will make me feel good.”

Why is this relevant to bloggers?

As bloggers I think it’s good to think about this, because “why?” is also something that your readers will be asking as they read your blog. Constantly.

Every time you ask your readers to do anything, they’ll be wondering “Why?”

Why should I read this blog?
Why should I subscribe to that newsletter?
Why should I read this post?
Why should I tweet out a link to this?
Why should I buy that ebook?
Why should I bookmark this?

Readers are asking these “Why?” questions almost every time you ask them to do anything explicitly (and sometimes just as they decide if or how to use your blog).

Knowing this, you can put yourself in a good position to respond. As you look at your blog on a big-picture level—as well as when you’re doing micro tasks like writing posts—identifying the “why?” moments and then providing compelling “because” statements can be a very effective exercise.

Sometimes you might weave the “because” into your writing in a gentle way, but other times, you might explicitly give voice to the “why?” questions and then give “because” answers.

Why? in practice

Let me give you an example. One of the important points of action that we have on Digital Photography School is around the selling of our ebooks. It’s not the first action we call people to take, but for the sustainability of the site, it’s obviously important that we generate income.

So as we put an offer to readers, I’m very aware that they’ll be asking a series of “why?” questions including:

Why should I buy this ebook?
Why is the topic relevant to me?
Why an ebook? Why not a “real” book?
Why buy this ebook over buying another ebook?
Why should I trust this site to deliver value?

Identifying some of these main “why?” questions allows me to begin to answer them in the marketing material for our products.

I first did this exercise on dPS with our very first ebook after reading some work by Michael Daehn (and some of Michael Fortin’s work on “why”). Michael Daehn talks in a case study in which they found that explicitly using the word “because” in your marketing had real impact.

The resulting sales page for our bestselling portrait ebook includes this section:

Why Invest in The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography?

Let’s answer the question of why this is a resource for you:

Because it will teach you how to take portraits with that “wow” factor.

Because it contains our very best portrait photography tips on 25 topics—all in the one easy-to-read book.

Because it has inspiring illustrations to show how the teaching along side them can be implemented.

Because each page is packed with teaching—there's no padding here.

Because you get six bonus interviews with pro photographers who make a living from taking portraits.

Because you get a 30-day, no questions asked, money-back guarantee.

Because you get it immediately—there's no delivery fee because it is a downloadable ebook.

If you look over the marketing material surrounding our other photography ebooks you’ll see similar “because” paragraphs in a number of them.

Not only that, but most of what you see in other parts of our sales pages also emerges from answering “why?” questions. Identifying the real benefits, rather than just listing features, gives readers a reason why what you’re offering is worth acting upon.

Again, this isn’t just about selling products or services—it’s an important consideration in any action you might ask people to take, whether that be subscribing, commenting, sharing, or even just reading.

So, if you want readers to act upon your calls to action:

Identify the “why?” questions your readers will be asking in different parts of your blog.
Identifying the benefits of their taking an action.
Provide “because” statements (whether they be explicitly stated with the word “because” or not).

You can do this exercise on a post-by-post level, on sales pages, when you’re thinking about your navigation and site-wide calls to action, services pages, advertisers’ pages—even on your social media profiles!

Why?

Because it works (and I’ll give you chocolate if you do).

When I asked my contacts how they felt about asking “Why?” in their blogging work, I got some interesting responses. Patricia Patton, who’s had trouble developing a unique selling proposition for her blog, said she felt this approach would help her “to be more objective” about herself and what she has to offer.

And Andrij Harasewych shared some thoughts from the perspective of a customer, saying, “there really needs to be some sort of truly unique content to get me motivated enough to buy an ebook.” All too often, he said, the “Why?” question is not even answered intrinsically by the product itself, let alone in the marketing copy.

Do you ask yourself “Why?” as you work to improve different aspects of your blog? Do you think this technique could be helpful? I’d love to get your insight in the comments.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

The Most Common Word at My House: “Why?”