Quitting the Day Job

The easiest way to create a profitable blog is to already have a strong interest in your chosen market. It’s not so easy to regularly blog about something you have little or no interest in. If all you are seeing is £ signs, then your blog will reflect this and you won’t have any readers at all – which = no income. Your blog needs to provide valuable content to your reader and it’s down to you to provide it.

So think about what you are interested in, do you have any hobbies? Perhaps it’s craftwork or do you like to fish? Maybe you attend an athletics club or are an avid reader! There are so many things that you can blog about but as a general rule, there needs to be a theme that runs through it. This will be your niche and it means that you are attracting a certain type of reader and one who will be open to any potential products that you may be selling in the future.

Now I personally have no interest in any of the afore-mentioned niches, but let’s say, for instance, that I attend an athletics club (if anyone I know is reading this then you can stop clutching your sides with laughter at that thought), there are thousands of different posts that you can write on that topic and even I can name a few. You could write about your personal experiences, the experiences of others, tips for beginners, tips for pros, interviews, track and field events, the Olympics (very topical), gym equipment, diet & lifestyle, vitamins, supplements so on and so on. I’m sure there are many, many more topics you could think of if this was your niche and don’t forget that each one of these is just a category which would contain all of your entries on that subject.

You get the idea of the structure but where does the money come into it? Well there are a number of ways that you can go about doing this. One way is to use advertisements from Commission Junction. They have a bank of advertisers and you can find the ads that best fit in with your niche. Every time someone clicks on your ad and makes a purchase, you get some money paid into your Commission Junction account. You are unlikely to become rich by doing this alone, so what else can you do?

Once your blog gathers momentum and starts to become popular, you will likely have advertisers approaching you, so make sure that you have a rates page on your blog that outlines the cost of the various ads in the various placements as this will make it nice and easy for a potential advertiser to book and ad or contact you about one. You don’t want to lose an advertiser because your ad rates weren’t clear or accessible. People are always in a rush and don’t have time to contact you and track down the info they need – so hand it to them on a plate. It’s good practice to get this page up near the start of your blogging career.

Other ways to monetise your blog are via affiliate links. An affiliate is someone that promotes ans sells somebody else’s product for a percentage of the full price. A lot of affiliate products offer a fantastic rate like 75%, so if you are affiliating on high end products over £100 then that’s at least £75 for each time someone clicks through and purchases on your affiliate link.

Let’s go back to the athletics example again and consider that there is a piece of gym equipment that you can be an affiliate for. If it’s a product that you like the look of, then write a blog about it, include all of the relevant details – pics etc and obviously your affiliate link and you will likely make some nice money. If this piece of equipment is £300 and you’re on a 50% commission then that’s a nice little earner!

Always remember, when using an affiliate link, that you haven’t personally used the product – so don’t say that you have! Of course, you can order the product yourself and review it properly but if you don’t then don’t lie! You can still write a review as it’s something you found on the Internet that you felt your readers would be interested in – but don’t tell them that ‘it’s cured your bald spot’ or that you’ve ‘lost 4 Stone in 3 days’ if that clearly isn’t the case. Your readers won’t thank you for it and you will lose your credibility.

The best place to find these affiliate links is over at clickbank. You can see what’s on offer and choose the best products for your blog. Do remember though that the foundation of your blog is great content. Your readers will soon drift away if you hit them with an affiliate link or product sell every time to write a post. It needs to be a carefully balanced procedure.

Don’t forget that there are other places that you can get these links. Amazon runs an affiliate program – the money isn’t high but it’s worth looking into and lots of little sales certainly add up! Have a look into the various places there are available to you as there may be something more suitable for your needs other than Clickbank & Amazon.

As you become more and more established within your niche, you may find that manufacturers approach you to do product reviews. This means that they will send you the product in exchange for a review on your blog – you will also get an affiliate link with this – very cool! It’s down to you to write an honest review, so if you don’t like it then you should say so – with your reasons why! This shows that you have your readers best interests at heart and your credibility goes through the roof! They trust your opinion and are far more open to buying the products that you do recommend!

You can also approach companies yourself and ask them if they would like you to review a particular product for them. If you have a good reader base then most companies will agree as it’s free advertising for them and they are reaching the market the product is intended for. Also, the readers have faith in the writer – so if it gets a thumbs up, it great news for the manufacturer, the blogger and the buyer!

The great thing about blogging is that you can start off small and fit it around your existing job in your spare time. Initially a blog needs 3-4 posts a week to breathe life into it and as it grows and you start to see some money coming in for your efforts, you can consider cutting down your work hours and going part-time until you can eventually make a full-time living from your blog! Full time bloggers have an awful lot of freedom as they can blog from a laptop from anywhere in the world. They write about what they have a passion for and they make an incredibly good living from doing it! It takes determination and perseverance to become a great blogger and the majority fail as the blogger never had the drive or the passion for his subject in the first place.

If you decide to blog to make money and that is your sole reason for blogging, then you will fail! You only need to look at every successful blogger today to realise that they love what they do, they consider it a pleasure to write their blog and are humbled that they actually earn a living from it! If you have these qualities, then you have the credentials to succeed!

Most of the well renowned bloggers on the Internet today are pulling in six figure sums from their blogs and living a luxurious lifestyle, so there is no reason why you can’t make a very comfortable full-time wage from your blog even if you don’t reach the six figures that others have.

All of these successful bloggers started with the same blank page that you will and they grew it over time. One particular blogger that I admire is Yaro Starak, an entrepreneurial blogger from Australia (with mad hair)! I have learnt an awful lot from him and he is incredible generous about teaching!

So if you are starting from scratch and you’d like to know where to start, go and check out Yaro’s free video tutorials on How to Become a Blogger. Once you are happy with that go and get his Blog Profits Blueprint report which again is Free and gives you a really in-depth look into how you can make money from your blog. It’s a really lengthy report and I’m amazed he doesn’t charge for it as the information you get is just brilliant! It’s in a handy PDF format which you can save and refer back to time and time again throughout your blogging journey.

Finally – if you are really, really serious about blogging and want to get on the fast track to success then join the Blog Mastermind program where you will benefit from being mentored by Yaro and have a complete insight into how you can give up the day job and become a full time blogger, sooner rather than later. It’s a six month program that is hugely popular with many of Yaro’s ex-students now becoming incredibly successful in their own niches. This is only for people wanting to give up the day job so you only want to enrol on this course if you are serious about making an income from blogging.

You can learn more about Blog Mastermind here.

That concludes this small insight into blogging, I hope that it has helped you to see the potential that blogging has and perhaps it will lead you to have a wonderfully, profitable blog and a new way of life.