As a follow up to my weekend question, I wanted to take a look at the main reason that the majority of bloggers are not making money – and how you can make sure you are part of the minority that do! If you were anything like me, for the first couple of years that I started blogging, MAKING MONEY WAS HARD! It is quite disheartening to see your traffic increasing and your subscriber count on the rise, but your income was going no where. Isn’t it obvious that as a blog grows in popularity that it should start making more money as well?

There Is No Correlation Between Blog Popularity And Blog Income!

I think that the first blogging myth that we need to break is that traffic or ‘popularity’ is the main ingredient for a money making blog! Because it is not! There are plenty of bloggers (even within my niche), who are getting a lot more traffic to their blogs than I am – yet are not making 10% of what I make online. Now I am not saying that to boast, I am just trying to break the mentality that you need a lot of traffic to make money!

In this post I want to highlight where the majority of bloggers are going wrong when it comes to monetizing the blog, and how you can jump ship and join me and the minority who ARE making money from their blogs!

Where Most Bloggers Fail When It Comes To Making Money

1. They Follow The Crowd

Have you ever noticed that when you visit a lot of blogs in the same niche that you are consistently seeing the same products being promoted? I don’t know about you but once I have seen an ad about 2-3 times, I get ‘ad blindness’ and that ad is now totally ignored – and I think this is one of the main reasons that the majority of bloggers are not making money. BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL PROMOTING THE SAME PRODUCTS!

Why Do Most Bloggers Promote The Same Products?

• Because They Are Sheep
  Blogging is very ‘guru based’ and people look at how the ‘guru’s’ are making money and try to copy them. But the thing you have to realise is that the reason they reached the income levels they are now at – is because they were unique – AND FOUND WHAT WORKED FOR THEM!
• Because They Are Lazy
  Some times I think that people think that all you need to do to start blogging for money is grab a Clickbank account and sign up for the 2 or 3 most popular products related to your niche. Now while this may work for some people – the fact that they are the most popular usually means that the majority of people who are going to buy it already know about it. So your chances of making any decent money from these unless you have a highly responsive email list is quite minimal!
• Because They Don’t Know Any Better
  Now I don’t want to imply that the majority of you are lazy sheep because the truth is that a lot of bloggers just don’t know any better. When you start blogging, there is no course that everyone takes to teach you how to make money from your blog – you need to learn for yourself. And since most of the successful (with income as the criteria for successful) bloggers don’t want to give away their secrets (because that means more competition) – it means you have to try and work it out yourself!

So How Do We Break Away From The Crowd?

So if following the crowd is not going to have us making money, then how do you break away from the crowd?

• Find New Products To Promote!
  Look outside of Clickbank (only about 5% of my monthly income) and find products that no one else in your niche is promoting. And before you tell me that you can’t find any, I personally spent a couple of hours today looking through all the offers on Commission Junction and found about 5 new affiliate programs (that I didn’t even know existed) that I am now looking to fit into my blogs/email lists. There are plenty of products with affiliate programs and some great affiliate networks that have a heap of fantastic products to promote – so spend some time researching.
• Look For Complimentary Products
  I think that the reason that most people promote the same products is because they only look at directly related products. For example, if your blog is about blogging – you only promote blogging products. However, most bloggers want to learn how to master Google – so what about something SEO related? Or something that will help them save time? (because we all know that the majority of all bloggers are shocking at time management!!)
• Focus On Products & Services
  Now I can only speak from my personal experience, but recently 99% (I’d say 100% but I could have forgotten something) of all my online income comes from affiliate commissions as a direct result of products or services that I have recommended. Now I do have ad’s on my blogs for information products – but for me personally, they don’t seem to convert! (On a side note – it is always best to recommend products that you use, because it gives you much more credibility).

2. They Sound Desperate

Since most bloggers are following the crowd and promoting the same thing that everyone else trying to promote – they start to worry when they are not making any sales. And that is when they start to appear desperate!

Have you ever visited a blog and it has just felt like every single article was a desperate attempt to make the blogger money? One overly positive product review after another, each just a rework of the products sales page…

Now I doubt that these bloggers start out with the intention of creating a spammy blog that adds no value to the ‘blogosphere’ but when people try so hard to make something work and they don’t see any results – they get desperate!

The Best Way NOT To Sound Desperate!

The easiest way to make sure that you don’t start to sound desperate is to keep your credibility. There is nothing wrong with promoting products or services but don’t do it at the expense of your readers.

Only promote reputable products – and if you are wondering how you know if a product is reputable, the easiest way to tell is to experience it yourself! Other than that, scour the internet for reviews (both good and bad) and see what actual users are actually saying about it.  Don’t trade quick returns for your long-term credibility as a blogger!

3. They Focus On The Unimportant

Do blog ad’s really work that well? I always look at the 125 ads in John Chows sidebar and wonder who would be stupid enough to pay $500/month to advertise there. Now, to be honest they may be converting incredibly well, but from the ads that I can track – none of my sidebar advertisements actually convert to sales (currently trying to work out what to replace them with!).

So why do most bloggers put so much emphasis on their sidebar ads?

Once again, it comes back to the ‘sheep mentality’. Bloggers see all the probloggers with their sidebar full of those 125 boxes and think that since they are making a full-time income blogging  – obviously I need to do the same as them!

The 80/20 Rule – And How It Will Make You Money

One of the biggest things that I learnt from the Four Hour Work Week was the Parento Principle (or the 80/20 rule), which simply put states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes. So 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.

I took this principle and looked at my blogging, and more importantly my blogging income and found that this was definitely true. 80% of my income was coming from less than 20% of my sources. So then the goal was to optimise the 20% that was working for me – and removing the 80% that was just taking up my time (the unimportant!).

What is the unimportant in your blog, and what can you cut out?

4. They Are Not Strategic

A lot of bloggers fail to plan and that is why they fail.

Sure going with the flow is great, but you need to have a direction otherwise the ‘flow’ could take you in the complete opposite direction from where you want to be!

Be strategic with your blog and your writing. Know what you want and how you are going to deliver it.

Since I know that the majority of my blogging income comes from links inside of posts – I now have made the strategic decision to try and talk about my personal experiences in my posts, and how a product or service has helped me in that area. Now obviously when you are using personal experiences, you must actually own or use the thing that you are recommending – but that is what I prefer.

How I Am Being Strategic With WebsiteBuildr

Now I know WebsiteBuildr (my latest project) is not a blog (but a product), but the process can easily be transferred to the blogging platform.

The initial product is a video course for small business owners who are looking to create their own website, but yesterday I was planning out the autoresponder series – and looking for other products that I could promote that I believe these small business owners would benefit from.

Here Is A Short List Of Affiliate Programs I Found:

• Intuit Websites – Simple online based website creator (In case they struggle through my course)
• Market Samurai – In case they are interested in SEO traffic!
• Aweber – So they can start building an email list for their business.
• Vista Print – Because if they are interested in a website, they may be open to other promotional products.
• Hotels Combined – Because business owners need accommodation when they travel for business (and holidays)

Notice how none of them expect Intuit have anything to do with website design? That is because if my course is teaching them how to design a website, then why would I be promoting other website courses?

That is why I find it funny that a lot of blogs that talk about blogging are promoting ‘how to start blogging’ products (shouldn’t they be learning this from your blog?). Now don’t think I am having a go at anyone, if you scroll up and check out my sidebar you will find a couple of blogging products there (which is probably why they are not converting) – but as I said, now I know that they are not working for me, it is time to find something that does. It is all about being strategic, doing the research and watching what works and what doesn’t.

Look for complimentary products (yes, focus on products), break away from the crowd and find out what is working for YOU personally – and run with that! Be strategic with the way you promote and you will find that you don’t need to be writing desperate review posts – instead you will write honest reviews (and most likely get a better response!).

And That Is How You Can Make Money Blogging -When Most People Fail!

Why I Didn’t Discuss List Building…

A lot of you might be wondering why I didn’t add list building as a method of making money from your blog – since that is what all the ‘probloggers’ are now trying to sell us as the new ‘golden ticket’.

Well, the reason is the exactly what I have just written about.

Just because the ‘probloggers’ recommend it, doesn’t make it right for you!

Now I do build lists with the majority of my blogs – and yes, I was one of the first people to start using Popup Domination (which I still use on a few of my non-MMO niches) – but does that mean that you need to be building a list to make money from blogging? NOT AT ALL!

Once again, my online income bucks the trend – and comes mainly from search engine traffic to older posts in my archive (because of my strategic planning, and sometimes luck!). There are plenty of different methods to make money from a blog (and maybe I will tackle that in another post), but the purpose of this post was to challenge a mindset that is holding you back from making money. A mindset – not a method!

So What Is Holding You Back? And What Are You Going To Do About It?