Writing for Your Wealth

When I first started trying to make money online, I hadn’t yet figured out I could write my way to financial independence. That came later.

In the beginning, I signed up for a paid-surfing program where you installed a special toolbar and made a tiny bit of money for each site you visited in the network (and I do mean tiny–it was something crazy like 1/4th of a penny per site).

It was a bit like Stumble Upon except no matter which category preferences you chose, you’d be looking at junk, and you had to stay on each page for a certain length of time before you could click through to the next site. I watched TV or read while I waited for those seconds to tick by. When I visited the forums for the program, I heard others admitting to similarly distracted viewing. No one was at all interested in the sites they were surfing to, so it couldn’t have been that rewarding for the companies paying for this dubious traffic. And yet there were always new sites to visit in the queue, and a few people were actually making money from this paid surfing (I never did make it to the $20 minimum required for a payout).

In the end, these companies were wasting their time, and we writers need to make sure we’re not doing the same thing.

Oh, I’m sure none of you are paying for paid-to-surf companies (do these things even exist any more?) to send visitors to your site, but if you’re like me, you may forget sometimes that only certain visitors really matter for you. Only certain visitors should be invited to your site.

The Importance of Attracting Your Target Audience to Your Site (and forgetting the rest)

Whether you’re a blogger or an author (or both), you probably already know that only certain people are going to be attracted by what you write. Certain people are going to click the ads on your site, or sign up for your newsletter, or buy products through your affiliate links, or order your book from Amazon. The rest of the population… isn’t.

And that’s okay. We really only want the folks who identify with us, like our writing style, and are genuinely interested in the topics we write about. We can’t–and shouldn’t want to–force ourselves on those who don’t fit the characteristics of our target audience.

This seems obvious, and yet we bloggers in particular are bad about this.

We keep track of how many people come to our site obsessively, sometimes checking our traffic stats multiple times a day. We’re always trying to drum up more page impressions, more unique visitors. We sign up for programs such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Twitter, hoping that we can work a bit of magic and flood our site with new readers.

While it’s certainly beneficial to have a goal of continued growth, we really only want to spend our time attracting members of our target audience. We want the folks who will buy our products, or click our ads, or sign up for our newsletters. Anyone who doesn’t fall into that category, we wish them well but in the end they’re just sucking up our bandwidth. They may be a part of someone else’s target audience, but they’re not ours. So why invite them to visit in the first place?

Let’s take a look at a few tips for making sure you’re attracting the right visitors to your site:

Comment on the right kinds of blogs

It always bemuses when I click an intelligent comment on a blog on internet marketing or some such, and the poster’s link takes me to his site on race cars, pest control, yoga, or some other topic that is completely unrelated to the blog he is commenting on.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that you can’t post on any blog you want to (there’s certainly something to be said for participating in conversations on subjects that interest you), but if your primary reason for leaving comments is to gain more traffic to your site, leave those comments where they can do some good: on blogs related to yours.

The readers visiting that related blog found it because they’re interested in the same topic you’re blogging about. After reading your insightful comment, a visitor might click through to your site, find out they jive with what you’re writing about, and become a fan!

In addition, the writer for that related blog might visit your site and see that you’ve written something that might interest her readers, and post a link to your article.

It’s far less likely for that to happen when you’re commenting on a blog on European Travel and leaving a signature link to your site on warts and corns.

Post in the right kinds of forums

This is, of course, along the same lines as blog commenting. It’s fine to visit a webmaster forum and become a part of that community, but leaving signature links that promote your ferret grooming site is again probably a waste of time. Odds are there aren’t going to be many ferret owners in that group.

On the other hand, posting on Ferret World puts you in touch with your target audience right off the bat.

We’re drawn to forums that allow us to communicate with other writers or other entrepreneurs, but unless we’re actually writing on those subjects, these folks aren’t our target market.

The simple lesson here is to hang out where your target audience hangs out. Become a trusted member of their communities.

Be very careful with social media marketing

It’s easy to invest a lot of time in becoming a reputable member of StumbleUpon, MySpace, Digg, etc., but if your primary reason for signing up for these social media sites is to get more people to visit your blog or buy your book, then make sure the work you are putting into these sites is actually converting for you. Watch your traffic statistics. Note what these visitors are clicking or buying.

As wiser folks than I have said, that which gets measured gets improved.

Some people have carved out niches for themselves on sites like MySpace, and they’re doing very well marketing their products there, but more people have found themselves frustrated, seeing no tangible benefit after countless hours wasted.

In some niches, social media can be effective, but in other niches (for example, those that target the sorts of people who blink in confusion at talk of “Twittering”) it may be a waste of time.

Another potential pitfall of social media is that those who use Stumble, Digg, Plurk, etc. are probably looking for entertainment rather than information. When we want information, we Google it.

So…

Don’t underestimate the power of basic SEO

There is a lot of advice out there that suggests people ignore search engine optimization. That’s a shame. While there’s little point in trying to game the system, there’s a lot to be said for working on getting people who are looking for information on losing weight with the Paleo Diet to your blog and book that’s all about the Paleo Diet.

It’s certainly not necessary to optimize every post with specific keywords, but it’s definitely useful to study the keywords people are using to find things in your niche. Then use those words liberally on pages on your site that happen to be about what these folks are looking for.

Now that I’ve had my say, do you have any suggestions for attracting the right people to your site?

Since I make the majority of my income through running advertising and affiliate links on my blogs and websites, I write on those topics fairly often, but there are a lot of other ways a writer can build wealth. A blog should be a part of your core strategy (it’s the best way to attract visitors and build up an audience), but selling advertising may be just the beginning for you.

A lot of ambitious writers go on to create products of their own.

If you’re a words-loving blogger, you might naturally think of books or ebooks as a next step, but some successful Internet entrepreneurs are going past products people pay only once for and adding “continuity products” to their arsenal.

What Is a Continuity Product?

Basically it’s something people pay for again and again, on a regular basis. If you’ve ever subscribed to a magazine or newspaper, then you know exactly how it works. You pay a certain amount per month, quarter, year, etc. and you receive new installments at set intervals.

Fortunately, you don’t have to own a magazine or be a newspaper publisher to take advantage of the possibilities continuity products offer. If you enjoy writing, there are quite a few models open to you. We’ll look at a couple here: subscription newsletters and membership sites.

Subscription Newsletters

This is exactly what it sounds like: you charge your interested readers an ongoing fee and send them a newsletter chocked full of good information.

On the Internet, publishers have been experimenting with premium (or paid) content for years, and many have had little to no success. With so much information available for free on the web, it can be hard to get people to pay.

In order for a subscription newsletter to work, your words don’t necessarily have to be golden, but they should focus on solving problems for people (as we’ve mentioned before, there’s money to be made in providing solutions to people’s problems) or satisfying their wants.

Also, your potential subscribers need to believe you’re the person qualified to fulfill this role.

Through your blog, you can gradually work toward that type of authority. They say everyone is an expert at something, and if your expertise lies along a line that others will pay to learn about, then you may have the opportunity to turn it into ongoing income through paid newsletters.

Don’t feel you have to stick with online newsletters either. Many people value physical products they can hold in their hands more than purely digital products.

I know I’ve ordered physical ink-on-paper newsletters from a couple people based on information I’ve read on their blogs or websites. I don’t know if I’d ever pay to subscribe to an email newsletter, but in this day and age when you’re lucky to get anything besides junk in the mail, it’s nice to get a letter in the real mailbox!

The cool thing about a physical newsletter is that it’s something you can start at home, just using your own printer (you may want to invest in a P.O. Box though, since you don’t necessarily want your subscribers knowing your home address). There are plenty of software programs that allow you to print a professional looking newsletter (you may want to outsource the design of the original template), and when your content is good, few people are looking for flash anyway.

Once your subscriber base grows, you can turn the distribution over to a fulfillment company which will print out and ship the letters for you.

With all information products, your earnings tend to be high since costs to create the products are low, and with a subscription newsletter your income will continue in at a steady (and ideally growing) amount each month.

How much can you make?

It depends a lot on your subject matter and audience demographics, but in certain niches (finance, real estate, business, etc.) people will pay $100 and more a year to subscribe. Even in niches that have nothing to do with teaching people to make money, it’s possible to build a base of paying subscribers. Just think of all the folks who want to lose weight, find their ideal match, train their dog to stop destroying the house, etc.

Another perk is that when you’re talking about a topic that you know well, it may only take you a few hours a month to write a quality newsletter of a few pages. (Once you’re established, guest authors can be brought in to help fill out the pages too.)

Membership Sites

This is another model of continuity product. With a membership site, you pay a monthly fee for access to a website, which is usually set up in an e-course format. You’ll often learn in modules and may have the opportunity to interact with the instructors and other students taking the course at the same time. A membership site may run six months or be ongoing with registration open all the time, and new courses being added on a regular basis.

This is more technical than writing a newsletter and as you can imagine, it’s best to sign up for someone else’s membership site (maybe several) before trying to start one of your own.

In addition to the e-course style site, there are also some that regularly publish original articles for other webmasters, ezine/newsletter editors, etc. to use. These articles often come with Public Label Rights (PLR), allowing the folks who subscribe to download them, alter them, and even claim them as their own. These types of membership sites may be limited to 200 or 300 subscribers at any given time (so the folks getting the articles know there aren’t thousands of other people out there with access to the same articles).

If you love to write articles, then you could learn more about PLR membership sites and start one of your own. To put out the necessary articles, you’d probably want to outsource some of the writing (some people outsource it all!).

Notice that both of these membership models are focused on solving problems for people. With an e-course style site, you’re teaching people how to do something. With PLR articles, you’re providing content for those who don’t want to write all their own stuff.

While creating a membership site is probably more work than writing an ebook or publishing a newsletter, the potential for profits (ongoing profits) is impressive. Again, how much you can charge depends on your niche and the authority you’ve built up, but site owners charge anywhere from $20 to $100 per person per month. Even if you just had 100 subscribers, that could be a pretty lucrative addition to your income each month. The downside is that membership sites require more technical knowhow to get them up and running, but it’s certainly possible to outsource a lot of the work (just count on a higher initial outlay than with a newsletter).

But before you can be successful with continuity products…

The challenge with these types of products is that you need to establish yourself as an authority in your field and be willing to share information people want in order to attract subscribers. You also need to offer quality, precision content that may be difficult for people to obtain elsewhere.

A newsletter that covers the latest home and garden trends probably isn’t going to get as many subscribers as one that teaches you how to launch a successful interior design business with low start-up costs. The former is something people can already get in magazine form for a low price, but the latter promises to teach and share information that may not be available unless one spends a good deal to hire a consultant or coach.

Again, you don’t have to be teaching people how to make money in order to build wealth of your own with continuity products, but you do need to establish yourself as an authority. And it’s okay if you don’t know today what you want to be an expert in–there are lots of other ways to make money, and along the way you may just find your field.

Links to Successful Newsletters and Membership Sites

Since I’ve not personally pursued these avenues myself (yet!), I’ll direct you to some established pros, so you can get a better idea of what’s possible.

John T Reed is a no-B.S. real estate writer who has published a line of books and charges $125 a year for his subscription newsletter.

Yaro Starak has been making thousands a month from his blog for quite a while, and teaches his blogging secrets in his Blog Mastermind* membership site.

*Affiliate link (I’ve been following Yaro’s blog for years and figured as long as I was going to use his program as an example, I might as well make it affiliate link!)

A few years ago, when I started trying to make money online, I was suffering from repetitive stress injuries, back pain, migraines, and other health issues that made it hard to spend more than an hour a day sitting at the computer. I was racking up credit card debt on visits to doctors who couldn’t identify the roots of my problems, but were happy to prescribe plenty of expensive pills that didn’t help.

I had gotten out of the army and returned to school, so I didn’t have any medical benefits. All I knew was that by the time I finished my degree, I needed to figure out a way to make a living, and with all those problems, the typical 9-5 desk job didn’t sound likely. I needed something I could do part-time that would be far more profitable than the average computer job. That’s what ultimately led me to blogging.

I’m not a big name blogger (and don’t particularly want to be), but I’ve managed to turn a part time pursuit into a full-time income. This whole blog is about sharing what I’ve learned (and what I’m continuing to learn), but I thought Darren Rowse’s “Killer Title” group writing project would be a good excuse to boil down some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last few years.

So, without further ado, here are nine of my top “Success Secrets”:

9. Create a blog funnel to find your jewel

Every now and then when I’m browsing the blogosphere, I’ll see bloggers recommending people create one blog and stick with it until it is large and profitable. They should learn everything and be successful before they start any other sites.

If I’d followed that route, I’d probably be lucky to make $100 a month today. My first site–a history site–wasn’t exactly a big money maker. I signed up for the Amazon affiliate program, and after writing (er, speaking–I was using voice recognition software to write back then) thirty or forty articles for it, it made me a whopping 93 cents.

Inspired (amazingly) by that success, I got serious and spent time reading and lurking in webmaster forums. I learned more about what kinds of sites make money (and I learned that Adsense was a lot easier for me to make money with than Amazon!), and I started some other sites.

In fact, that first year, I ended up starting eight or ten sites.

The people who recommend sticking with one blog until it’s a success probably would have shaken their heads knowingly, certain I’d never make anything.

But here’s what I learned:

No matter how much you research, no matter how scientific your approach to analyzing a niche, no matter how much you think you love the topic you’ve picked, you can’t predict for certain which sites will take off.

Sometimes a chance link from a big name site will get you noticed and start a ball rolling. Sometimes the site that didn’t score well with keyword analysis tools will become so popular that it won’t matter that advertisers aren’t paying a fortune for clicks. Sometimes your interest will fizzle in a topic you thought you loved. Sometimes you’ll run out of things to write about.

In my opinion, there are too many “sometimes” to stake all your hopes for success on one site, at least in the beginning.

That doesn’t mean you have to start ten, but you may want to start three, four, or even five. Chances are you won’t end up keeping them all, and that’s okay.

Think of it like a funnel. Start a few sites, see which ones have potential, and then gradually weed out the ones that don’t excite you and aren’t making enough money to be worth the effort. Focus on the winners. Once you find a winner that may be the only site you need.

8. You don’t have to get everything right to win

Until I started this blog last month, I completely ignored social media. (Now I only almost completely ignore it). I’ve never “dugg” anything, and when my sites have been “Stumbled,” it wasn’t on account of anything I did.

This doesn’t mean I don’t think social media can’t be a great way to build up a site–it just means I’ve stayed away from it because of its potential as a time sink. (Because I’ve wanted to keep my work part-time all along, I’ve been pretty careful about techniques that can be time consuming.)

I’m sure I’m missing out on some potential traffic and profits, but I do enough things right overall that I’m able to make a nice living.

And that’s the point: you don’t have to get it all right or do everything the pros tell you in order to become successful with your sites and maybe even turn blogging into a full-time income stream.

On the other hand, if you try to follow every tactic recommended, you’ll probably feel overwhelmed. You also may find yourself frustrated when some take a lot of energy and don’t deliver much in the way of results.

If you just learn the basics of SEO and pick a few time-tested promotion techniques, you’ll probably end up doing better than the folks who try every new thing that comes down the pipe. There’s definitely such a thing as being spread too thin, which leads me to my next topic…

7. The 80/20 Rule applies to blogging for profit too

Pareto’s 80/20 Rule gets mentioned a lot in finance. According to Wikipedia, it originally referred to wealth distribution in Italy. A native economist, Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that 20% of the population had 80% of the wealth. He also noted that 20% of the pea plants in his garden produced 80% of the peas.

Others have found the rule applies in many areas of life, and 20% of their efforts account for 80% of their results.

The rule isn’t an exact science, and the ratio is often skewed even further (90/10, 99/1, etc.), but it may be something that can help you with your websites.

If you take a look at your advertising/affiliate reports, you’ll probably find that certain pages convert a lot more often (and make a lot more money) than others. And it’s worth studying your traffic logs too. if you’ve worked to get ten links to your site from different sources, you may find that one or two bring in the majority of the traffic.

By looking at your stats, you can figure out which topics are the most profitable and which traffic generation methods are the most lucrative. Focusing on those areas more (and the others less) can go a long ways toward increasing your bottom line and making you more efficient with your time.

6. Plain and simple sites are all it takes

I’ve only had two blogs professionally designed, and one is a site for short stories (not for profit). For the most part, I’ve stuck with free templates that are simple in the extreme.

Simple sites just do so well for me.

I think it’s because blogs are busy by nature. You’ve got menus full of links, pictures, widgets, polls, and lots of other things to distract from the article (and the ads). If you’re hoping to make money with something like Adsense or affiliate programs–things that require people to notice the links and click them–a very simple page without the eye candy can perform better.

Your sites don’t have to be ugly, but if getting clicks or a newsletter signup is the ultimate goal, think before you stick widgets all over the page. Also make sure that whatever action you want the visitor to take is readily apparent (not buried beneath the fold or under a bunch of other flashy stuff).

Don’t be afraid to keep the layout simple.

5. Substance is crucial for long-term success

I’m always surprised by the people who bother creating spammy sites, or start blogs that just republish feeds from other blogs. There’s absolutely no reason why someone would bookmark that site or subscribe to the feed. There’s no reason someone would recommend that kind of site to a friend.

You can get some search engine traffic through article marketing, or publishing and pinging frequently, or even buying links, but in the end you really need some human beings to like your site (and link to it and share it with others) for it to grow to any level of lasting success.

Write valuable, original content. More than that, try to write content that isn’t already available out there. It’s hard–there are a lot of bloggers out there these days!–but try to be a thought leader instead of a follower.

4. “Purple Cow” posts get links naturally

A lot of people (including myself!) advocate publishing quality content, but it’s entirely possible to write good information that’s not at all remarkable. A purple cow, as term-coiner Seth Godin notes, is remarkable. If you saw one, you’d talk about it. Chances are you’d blog about it too.

Bloggers are always looking for new things to write about–especially the bloggers who are committed to creating content every day, so they’re just hoping they’ll stumble across those quirky cows. Then they can write about them, and in that writing it’s natural for them to include a link back to the original story.

That story can be yours.

You don’t have to make every article remarkable (it’s hard to do that all the time), but every now and then try to find a story that will interest your readers and will catch the attention of other bloggers.

Back in the day, my home and garden blog first started getting notable traffic after a link from Gizmodo. I don’t remember what funky home gadget I’d written about, but it’s a forgone conclusion they weren’t linking to my article on septic tanks.

Remarkable stories get links. (And when you get a link from one of the big boys, you often get links from other sites who watch the big boys and will cover the same story for their audience.)

3. Pick topics that are fun or fulfilling but don’t bother if there’s no profit potential

I definitely have an idealistic streak and would like to say that you can make it simply by following your passions, but the world is full of bankrupt people who thought their passion alone would lead them to success.

I do feel it’s important to get gratification (and hopefully enjoyment) out of the work you do, but don’t just assume that your greatest passion will translate into a profitable blog or products.

I generally recommend you make a list of five or ten things you are interested in and could see writing about for years to come. You probably have lots of interests, and chances are one of them can make you money. Do some niche research and take the most likely candidates and drop them into the top of that funnel I mentioned. Eventually you’ll figure out which of your interests can pay off for you.

2. Blogging Success Formula = 10% talent and 90% sticking with it

Every now and then a blog will be “discovered” and become a big hit in its first year, but the vast majority simply grow into popularity over time. It is over time that links are built, RSS readers are gained, newsletter subscribers trickle in, and blogs turn into a source of full-time income.

As I mentioned in an earlier post on “How to Be a Black Belt Blogger,” a big part of succeeding at making money online is sticking with it.

A lot of people give up and abandon blogs just short of reaching their potential.

And for those who are early in the stages and looking for inspiration, I’ll let you know that I found it a lot harder to go from 0 to $10 a day than from $10 to $100 a day.

The beginning is hard, but if you stick with it, the payoff is worth it.

1. Freedom is the end goal

When I got started writing content for the web, I was desperate to make money. I needed to get out of debt, and I needed to figure out how to make a living around my health issues. Back then the magic number for me was $100/day. I had it posted next to my computer as a goal.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing–in fact being that focused probably helped–but if I’d been able to work 12 hours a day toward that goal I might just have done it.

That’s fine if you want to trade one job for another, but if you want to gain freedom as well as money, then make that a consideration when you’re planning the style of blog that works for you.

I write huge posts for this blog (because I have a lot to say!), but for my main money-making blog, I usually only spend a half hour a day writing posts. Those posts are short and to the point, highlighting new products or ideas for the home. That style has worked for me and kept me from getting bored with the site or bogged down at the notion of writing long articles every day.

Find what style of blogging works for you. And from the very beginning, keep your ultimate lifestyle in mind. Work toward that goal just as much as you work toward monetary ones.

We think we want money and all the things it can buy, but what really makes us happy is having a dream and the freedom to pursue it.