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Showing posts with label Make Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Make Money. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 February 2015

[How To] Get People To Buy Stuff From Your Blog

If your blog relies on advertising to earn money, chances are you haven't quit your day job. While advertising can bring in some money, the average blog earns enough to pay the hosting bill and little else. The blogs that do earn big money from advertising are the ones with massive traffic, multiple million unique visitors per day. Chances are your blog will never reach that traffic level, and so your blog will not earn you a livable income from advertising alone. How can you make your blog profitable then? By following an age-old formula. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger Media preaches the simplest approach to earning money online. Take a look at this three-step method to making money online. If you have a blog you already have taken the first step, which is to provide compelling and useful information. Chances are, though, that you're missing out on the third step: "Create valuable products that help your readers." Others have written about how to create products to sell on your blog, but that's not what I came to talk about today. As a marketer I'm not as focused on the product itself as how to sell the product. That is, how to get readers to understand that the product can help solve a problem they have. If you follow this guide you'll find it easier to get people to buy what you're offering. Understand Readers' Problems If you run a successful blog, chances are you are in direct contact with many of your readers. Some readers are simply more social than others, and will email you to talk about certain issues. Maybe it's to praise or criticize a post, or maybe it's just to talk a bit more in depth. These conversations can reap big rewards when you're trying to market products. In these conversations, readers reveal problems. They want to do something, but they don't know how. As a blogger you can fulfill this need by writing a post about it. But that post won't bring you any money. In addition, you probably can't really solve the reader's problem in the span of a blog post. You can address it, but you can't solve it. The easiest way to market a product is to demonstrate how it solve someone's problems. If you create an information product that helps solve a long-standing problem of your readers, you can more easily market that product to them. After all, who doesn't want to solve all their problems? If you focus on the problem-solving aspect of your product, you will win many more customers. Focus On Benefits, Not Features When you write about a product you created or a service you provide, you probably want to talk a lot about the features of that offering. After all, it is yours, and so it must be inherently interesting. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Your customers aren't interested in the features you offer. They are interested in how the product or service will benefit them. Chandeep understands this concept well. On his Services page he leads with a simple sentence that demonstrates the benefits of working with him: "We can offer a number of services that will reduces your efforts and to help on your blog development." He is offering first and foremost to reduce your effort and help develop your blog. Only after he talks about the benefits does he talk about the features of his service. No matter how much you love your product or service, other people aren't going to feel the same. Think about it this way. You are the star of your own show, but every one of your readers is the star of his or her own show. As such, they're not interested in your star. They're interested in what it means for them. To sell something to them, you have to put yourself in their shoes. That means letting them know how they'll benefit, before you let them know the specific features. Make It Easy To Pay Even if you solve a reader's problem and show her exactly how she'll benefit from using your product or service, you still can lose the sale. In sales there is a concept known as friction, which refers to any obstacle between the prospect and the sale. The higher the friction, the lower the chance of closing the sale. All too often I see blogs offer great products, but at the same time make it very difficult for people to actually buy that product. The biggest sticking point comes when it's time to pay for the product or service. The unfortunate truth is that most blogs will offer only one way to pay for service. That's a big mistake. In order to make the sales process easier, blogs must cater to their customers and offer them a wide array of payment options, including: Major credit cards Direct bank payment PayPal Other online money transfers The last point is important, because many people dislike and distrust PayPal. You can easily sign up for services like WePay, which is similar to PayPal, and at the same time gain the ability to accept credit cards and other payment methods. The more ways you accept payment, the easier it is for customers to actually pay you. Because without payment, you don't really have a product. To create a product to sell on your blog is to understand the simplest form of conducting business. Ads might be easy, but they don't pay the bills. Offering customers solutions to their problem does. It takes plenty of work in creation, and even more work in marketing. But done correctly it's the most effective way to earn a profit from your blog.

If your blog relies on advertising to earn money, chances are you haven't quit your day job. While advertising can bring in some money, the average blog earns enough to pay the hosting bill and little else. The blogs that do earn big money from advertising are the ones with massive traffic, multiple million unique visitors per day. 

Chances are your blog will never reach that traffic level, and so your blog will not earn you a livable income from advertising alone. How can you make your blog profitable then? By following an age-old formula.

Brian Clark of CopyBlogger Media preaches the simplest approach to earning money online. Take a look at this three-step method to making money online. If you have a blog you already have taken the first step, which is to provide compelling and useful information. Chances are, though, that you're missing out on the third step: "Create valuable products that help your readers."

Others have written about how to create products to sell on your blog, but that's not what I came to talk about today. As a marketer I'm not as focused on the product itself as how to sell the product. That is, how to get readers to understand that the product can help solve a problem they have. If you follow this guide you'll find it easier to get people to buy what you're offering.

Understand Readers' Problems

If you run a successful blog, chances are you are in direct contact with many of your readers. Some readers are simply more social than others, and will email you to talk about certain issues. Maybe it's to praise or criticize a post, or maybe it's just to talk a bit more in depth. These conversations can reap big rewards when you're trying to market products.

In these conversations, readers reveal problems. They want to do something, but they don't know how. As a blogger you can fulfill this need by writing a post about it. But that post won't bring you any money. In addition, you probably can't really solve the reader's problem in the span of a blog post. You can address it, but you can't solve it.

The easiest way to market a product is to demonstrate how it solve someone's problems. If you create an information product that helps solve a long-standing problem of your readers, you can more easily market that product to them. After all, who doesn't want to solve all their problems? If you focus on the problem-solving aspect of your product, you will win many more customers.

Focus On Benefits, Not Features

When you write about a product you created or a service you provide, you probably want to talk a lot about the features of that offering. After all, it is yours, and so it must be inherently interesting. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Your customers aren't interested in the features you offer. They are interested in how the product or service will benefit them.

Chandeep understands this concept well. On his Services page he leads with a simple sentence that demonstrates the benefits of working with him: "We can offer a number of services that will reduces your efforts and to help on your blog development." He is offering first and foremost to reduce your effort and help develop your blog. Only after he talks about the benefits does he talk about the features of his service.

No matter how much you love your product or service, other people aren't going to feel the same.Think about it this way. You are the star of your own show, but every one of your readers is the star of his or her own show. As such, they're not interested in your star. They're interested in what it means for them. To sell something to them, you have to put yourself in their shoes. That means letting them know how they'll benefit, before you let them know the specific features.

Make It Easy To Pay

Even if you solve a reader's problem and show her exactly how she'll benefit from using your product or service, you still can lose the sale. In sales there is a concept known as friction, which refers to any obstacle between the prospect and the sale. The higher the friction, the lower the chance of closing the sale. All too often I see blogs offer great products, but at the same time make it very difficult for people to actually buy that product.

The biggest sticking point comes when it's time to pay for the product or service. The unfortunate truth is that most blogs will offer only one way to pay for service. That's a big mistake. In order to make the sales process easier, blogs must cater to their customers and offer them a wide array of payment options, including:
  • Major credit cards
  • Direct bank payment
  • PayPal
  • Other online money transfers
The last point is important, because many people dislike and distrust PayPal. You can easily sign up for services like WePay, which is similar to PayPal, and at the same time gain the ability to accept credit cards and other payment methods. The more ways you accept payment, the easier it is for customers to actually pay you. Because without payment, you don't really have a product.

To create a product to sell on your blog is to understand the simplest form of conducting business. Ads might be easy, but they don't pay the bills. Offering customers solutions to their problem does. It takes plenty of work in creation, and even more work in marketing. But done correctly it's the most effective way to earn a profit from your blog.

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Some Reasons Why Bloggers Fail To Make Money


Do you make serious money from your blog?

Do you make any money?

About 90 percent of bloggers will answer no to the first question, and many of those will also answer no to the second. Making money online has never been more difficult. All of the methods we used a few years ago have become incredibly ineffective, leaving bloggers scrambling for new ways to earn. Many of them have stopped blogging completely.

You don't want to stop blogging, do you?

The good news is that you can, indeed, earn a decent income while blogging. In a recent guest post I talked about getting people to buy from your blog, which is a great way to turn traffic into money. But today the focus is not on how to make money from your blog, but rather why you're not making money right now.

1. Your Design Is Terrible

The old adage claims that content is king, but that's not necessarily true. It is at least prince, but there is one element that is probably more important: design. Think about it this way. If you visited a site that was poorly designed, would you even bother to read the content? Chances are you'd just leave and think that the page was spam. If your site isn't well designed, it doesn't matter what kind of content you have. 

Thankfully, there are many resources for fixing your design problems. Chandeep recently wrote a guide about design mistakes bloggers make, and it covers a lot of basics that I see on too many blogs. Most particularly, image sizes and fonts are the biggest errors that bloggers make. Make your text easy to read, and people will read it. It's really that simple.

2. People Can't Navigate Your Site

Navigation falls partly under design, but it is also a category unto its own. A website is not just a single page, but rather a series of pages that link together -- which is why they call it a web. Yet too many bloggers make the navigation process far too difficult. If people don't know how to get around your site, how are they going to become regular readers or customers? When people can't find their ways around, they tend to leave. 

What irks me most about poor site navigation is that it's so easy. The WordPress engine allows you to add a full and robust navigation menu, complete with drop-downs, on every single page of your blog. So why not take advantage? Create navigation bar entries for your most popular pages. Add drop-downs for categories and tags. Make sure there's a clear and click-able "home" button. In other words, make sure that you can get essentially anywhere on the site, no matter your current page. 

3. You Don't Make It Easy To Pay You

To repeat, selling stuff is probably the most effective way to make money blogging these days. Your readers are your potential clients. You can use your blog in large part to inform and entertain them, and in small part to steer them towards your products. It is a balance that has worked for many a blogger seeking to make more money than is available through CPM advertising. Yet even bloggers who get the balance right sometimes don't execute the sale correctly.

The No. 1 rule for any sales process is to make it as easy for the customer as possible. Don't make them fill out extra forms. Don't make them hop around to different sites. The fewer steps between adding an item to a cart and successfully completing an order, the better. Offering more ways to pay also helps. Sure, PayPal might work for some, but not for all. Offering mobile payments is another way to make things easier for your customers. Ease leads to sales. It's the one lesson any online businessperson should never forget. 

4. You Created Your Site To Rank In Google

In the mid-00s there was a gold rush on the internet. Google had risen to prominence, and by 2003 or 2004 it was driving obscene amounts of traffic. If you ranked highly for a commercial search term, you were almost guaranteed sales. That's when SEO really took off. Of course, when Google realized all the money people were making within its ecosystem, it decided it wanted a larger slice of that pie. In recent years they have made it much more difficult to rank for highly commercial search terms.

This is a problem for bloggers who create their sites with an eye on ranking. Those practices have been flagged by Google. Bloggers who used them in the past have been penalized, and those who continue to use them will continue to get penalized. While you might not rank as highly as before, it is highly recommended that you follow Google's guidelines for high quality sites. Google shouldn't tell you how to make your site, but you should also recognize Google for the potential sales it can bring -- if you do it right.

5. You Don't Make Yourself Visible

When people buy something, they want to know the source. Big brands have a huge advantage here. They're instantly recognized, and so people trust them more naturally. When you're a blogger trying to sell products or even services on your site, you have to be forthcoming with people. So smile for the camera and be prepared to divulge a lot about your self. The more people get to know you, the more likely they will be to trust you with their money.

Here are some quick tips for better visibility:
  • When you design your site, leave room for a headshot on the front page.
  • Tell a full story on your About page. Not just what you do, but who you are.
  • Provide your email address. Contact forms just don't cut it.
  • Link to all of your social profiles
If you're failing to make money with your blog, chances are you're failing at one of the points listed above. As far as I've seen, they're the biggest reasons why people fail to make money online.

Let me know do you experienced any of them or do you have any other reasons that blogger fail to make money.
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