Over the past couple of weeks, I rolled out my latest product release on Bike198.com…the “Live the Ride” wristbands.
Backing up – awhile back (about 6 months ago), I was trying to figure out another physical product I could release that would increase brand recognition and be easy to put together. After some thought, the idea of the wristband came up so I asked our Facebook followers what they thought…and they loved the idea.
Last week, I wrote an article on Bike198 about how every single rider had to start somewhere (Never Forget We All Started Somewhere). No one just wakes up one day able to jump road gaps or magically gets the endurance and skill to win races. At some point in time, every rider started at square one with zero knowledge and probably not even a bike. All they had was the willingness to learn and the drive to make their own dream a reality, but when you see it on the outside…it appears they have always ridden like that…
In the blogging world, that same paradox exists. You see blogs that are well established and making money forgetting that they too started with an idea and a blank screen.
With my BlogWorld Expo presentation coming up, I have been thinking a lot lately about the sequence of events that got to this point. When I look back on it, it really amazes me. I was just a guy who started a blog…nothing more…nothing less. My idea started to grow with hard work and dedication to the dream to become what it is today, but…at the end of the day…I am still just a guy that started a blog.
If you are just starting out or trying to get over a plateau in your progress, it can seem like the world had it easier than you. It can seem like there was some secret that you missed out on. The reality is that every blogger (or rider like I pointed out in the biking article) has been exactly where you are sitting right now.
What separates the successful from those that aren’t is the willingness to push through the harder times and not give up. By learning from our experiences and keeping the drive to move forward, we see success and the monetary benefits that come along with that. No one…I repeat…no one wakes up one day with a “6 figure blog”. Every blogger that generates income from their efforts works hard at it day in day out to make it a success.
Nothing is free in life and everything that is worth having requires work.
You are not the first and certainly will not be the last to start a successful blog or make your blog successful by pushing through the harder times. Every blogger goes through these phases. It is how you deal with the ups and downs that determines your own personal outcome.
Successful business building and blogging does not come overnight. Everyone has to start somewhere…and it is that journey that makes the fruits of your labor so rewarding in the end. Every success has a story…what will yours be?
I have this theory…if you are not moving forward…you are moving backwards. There is no standing still and just going through the motions with business building and blogging. You are either looking forward to the future and planning for those changes or you are letting others pass you by that are making the conscious decision to get that done.
On Bike198.com, I have been looking for a way to get even more reader interaction and do so by drastically increasing my site size with product heavy, SEO gold that contains affiliate links. I want to be able to provide the same quality I have with reviews into a user experience that allows riders to review their products as well. With that idea in mind, the database of products labeled “Rider Reviews” was born. Now…I just had to build it…
Ironically enough, I tested about every single WordPress option I could find. Every single plugin seemed to be ok…but they lack a polished look or were too hard to get everything looking correctly. I started searching around for a stand alone php script to accomplish the same goal and just happened to fall upon Reviews For Joomla (not an affiliate). The layout, ease of use and basic design was exactly what I was looking for. Better yet…it installed over Joomla so I would have a very strong back-end content management system to aid with setup.
With this system, I can have the products loaded in and then my readers have an incredibly clean, easy to use layout to give ratings and reviews for products in the industry. There are even features to allow them to compare ratings and features which adds a ton of function into that portion of the site.
I installed Joomla 1.6 into a subfolder of Mountain.Bike198.com (this one will only have mountain bike products) and got to work…
Now…a section of your blog like this is only really good if it is generating income. One of my biggest nightmares with this entire project was trying to figure out how I would actually handle the affiliate linking. The idea of searching for my specific affiliate link, getting it on the right product and then making sure it wasn’t broken 24/7 seemed like an incredibly daunting task just in itself.
Ironically, a friend of mine that owns MyGolfSpy.com recently came across VigLink and started testing on his forum. What VigLink basically does is takes your links to popular stores online (ex: Amazon) and automatically handles all affiliate revenue for you. Of course, they take their cut but it takes all of the management process out for you with a simple line of code. Now I was able to get the products loaded with a link to a store and not have to worry about whether or not I am getting credit for the sale. VigLink claims to get a higher percentage commissions on sales due to their larger audience, so the cut they take should drastically reduce the difference between using them and doing it on your own. The time management side was the real payoff for me though.
If you are only building out a section of your site like this that has 12 or so products (maybe even up to 50), managing it yourself might make sense. As of right now, I have 696 total mountain bike products and bikes listed, so you can see how that can get out of control quickly.
A review system like this is worthless if you do not have an accurate representation of your industries products listed on the site. Let’s be honest, I do not have the time to load over 1,000 products into a website. That is a lot of busy work that I can’t even fathom doing and it is also the main reason this idea I have had for over a year is just now coming to fruition. To get some help, I enlisted the help of Chris Ducker over at Virtual Staff Finder to help me out in finding a virtual assistant. After interviewing 3 candidates, I found the perfect one for me.
After sending over one training video, I started sending Lauren (my new VA) the list of products each day and the site started expanding rapidly. My industry is a little unique as we have a ton of parts and related gear.
Now…I don’t want you to look at my site and think this isn’t possible on your site just because of the magnitude of products. In other industries…you might not have this much of an extreme workload where you need to hire someone on to help. In my case, I did and it is working out perfectly.
As you can see by visiting Rider Reviews, there are a couple of reviews already started on the site by my readers. However, like with any social interaction environment, there is going to have to be some incentive to get the ball rolling. I already have several contests lined up for my readers that are based around getting the review section populated and useful for new visitors. Once those go live, it should be great to see the new reviews come in on a platform that allows my readers to have a voice in the industry and basically runs on its own while also generating income.
As you can imagine, the SEO benefit of this section has already returned great results and it is just getting started. I am going to check back in on this project here to let you guys know how is it progressing. There are still more products to load and some design work to get completed before I start running the contests, but…from what I am already seeing, it is going to be my my largest asset on Bike198.
Check out: Rider Reviews at Bike198 | VigLink | Reviews For Joomla
An interesting article by David Risley titled, “Is Blogging Broken? Is The Future Of Blogging Paid Access?” stirred up some ideas I have had for a long time and generated some conversation sparked by DR and I on Twitter and Facebook. The reality is that this is not a new idea by any means. Several large bloggers including Gary Vaynerchuk have already said it is coming and there are premium, paid sections of many popular sites that produce exclusive content for a price.
The question becomes…can the blogger use this same model and apply it to blog content?
As we move forward with online publishing, the line between blog and online magazine is continuing to get blurred even more than in the past. Magazines are starting to look towards digital delivery and online publishing as their only way to expand business and bloggers are looking outside of traditional blogging to add more value for their readers. I wouldn’t consider Bike198 a blog in the truest definition of the word…it has really become a free online magazine.
Even my favorite magazine, Bike, is delivered to my iPad via Zinio…so where does the line cross between magazines and blogs these days anyway? One side is getting a fee for their content while the other is giving away everything for free.
Bloggers learned a long time ago that by giving away the farm for free, you are able to grow your audience faster. With more traffic, pageviews and subscribers…you were able to command more money via direct advertising and generate more money with affiliate sales. It is the simple law of numbers…with more targeted eyes you get more money.
However, this has created one big problem within blogging…everything is free.
With the over saturation of bloggers all trying to compete for the same eyes and the readers looking for quality content but hit with an extreme amount of free content, eBooks and other free online hooks…readers have very little in the way of distinction between quality and quantity in their search for online content. In my opinion, bloggers take the “give away the farm” mentality a little bit too much to heart, so with more bloggers entering the market on a daily basis…there is a massive over saturation of content.
You become a hamster in a wheel generating massive amount of content and products for free without seeing any real return. You are told it takes a lot of work and to be patient, but the competition out there is so much harder these days that you could literally spend years giving away everything for nothing. Eventually, you give up and look to other forms of income generation as that one obviously didn’t pan out.
So when do you draw the line and jump ship to a paid content model?
Before we jump straight into what I think…lets take a look at a couple of reactions on the web yesterday when I posted the question to Facebook and David and I hit up Twitter.
My Facebook Comment to People Outside of Blogging:
“There have been some interesting rumblings around the blogging world about going to more “magazine style” formats. ie. subscription models. What do you think about monthly, paid subscription models to online content?”
Some of the better responses:
I’ve been wondering when blogs are going to take on a more magazine look/feel as well. I’d be more than happy to pay for content, if its good and does one of two things. Entertains me or makes me some money! Just my two cents.
Nothing personal, but I don’t think I’d pay for blog content. While many (including yours) are very informative for some things, a lot of the content may not apply to me. I think blogs are less viable as a subscription service, as now they are competing with magazines, books, etc, that have a lot more resources to provide content.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I’m not a huge blog reader (only 5-10 that I routinely read).
I’ve never been able to get into blogs- either reading or following. This is just a random thought, but I wonder if that applies to a great percentage of people who went through most of their formative years without internet/email. I was a senior in college before I had an email acct, and it was infrequently used at best. (Maybe we were behind the times, but we’re talking early 90′s.) I still prefer a hard copy, old-school magazine for lots of things. Okay, I’m definitely old.
More randomness: I subscribe to two photography websites that have everything from forums to mini-blogs. I use them mostly for the interaction with other photogs from all over the world. I doubt I’d continue to pay for them if they went to a strictly blog format with no forums and classifieds and stuff. Maybe future generations will pay for blogs without giving it a second thought…?
if they incorporated rich media and it was well organized and flashy like the magazines I would pay for specific ones
I think there’s already a ton of this out there that is similar. For example ESPN has the Insider and many newspapers have online content that is subscriber only. Almost all major magazines deliver substantial free content and many of them put their printed content online for free after awhile.
I think for it to work, the user would have to feel like they are getting some very exclusive, well developed content. It would have to go far beyond the “expert with an opinion” content that most blogs deliver. Even then, I am skeptical that it would work well. I know that I wouldn’t do it. There is too much free content to choose from and that’s not going to change any time soon.
The magazines don’t seem to be doing a terribly good job at it with falling subscriptions and struggles with finding an online model that works. I don’t see loan bloggers who typically put out less than a magazines worth of content a month can take a broken model and find success with it. Where there is a will there is a way I suppose.
Mine and David’s line on Twitter (inside the blogging world):
“Question: What would your reaction be to a high quality blog that switched from free to paid content? (2 to 3 bucks a month)”
@gracejudson: It completely depend on the *relevance* of the content – not just the quality. If I was consistently using the content – maybe.
@ericabiz: You’re way undervaluing it at $2-3/month. I wouldn’t subscribe because I would assume the info isn’t valuable…(when asked if 9-10 dollars would be enough) At least. I pay $30/mo for Doberman Dan’s. And he stopped blogging to do that, too
@Murlu: I think when people quite literally tell you they’d pay for what you just publish – you’re on to something
@nhangen: they would be a goner.
@christiantjr: my initial question would be “can I get the same quality elsewhere for free?”
As you can see by the responses, they vary all over the map from basically a “hell no” to you are not even charging enough.
For a long time, the law of numbers has played a drastic affect on blog income. The more numbers you have, the more money you made. However, what if I were to tell you that you could cut your traffic and subscribers down to a 1/4 of what they are now and you will make 5 times the income? My bet…99% of you would not do it because you are conditioned to the free/high traffic model.
When you are looking at going to a paid subscription model, you are basically doing just that. As much as you would like to think that all of your readers are grasping onto your words like the gospel…that just isn’t the truth. If you were to hit the switch to a paid content model today, my guess is that 10 – 25% of your readership would participate and you would lose the rest, but if your income went up 5 fold…it would be worth it. That is when bloggers think like bloggers and not business owners. They would rather keep the large numbers at lower income than lower numbers at higher income.
The scary part…you have to hit the switch on the whole idea before you will know if it will work or not. It takes that leap of faith and testing.
The reality of your situation when you are looking at moving to a paid subscription format is that you are going to have to compete with bloggers that are still giving away quality content for free. That is not going to change, so how do you battle this fierce competition?
It all comes down to the perceived value of the deliverable.
Readers are already paying for content on a daily basis. From eBooks to members only sections of websites, readers are not only paying for content…but they are paying more than you would charge as a subscription! Why is this? The perceived value of eBook content is higher than that of a blog. Every day, I sell eBooks that contain content not found on my blog that helps my readers achieve their goals. Whether it is becoming a better mountain biker or getting in free stuff to review on your blog, that content sells consistently and provides value to my customers.
Switching to a paid subscription model would be no different…except…you would have to change the delivery method. I do not think…at this time…just access to your blog can be a paid for commodity. You would have to change the deliverable of your content to something that is email driven or a PDF magazine that contains your content plus a better design that online publishing can not provide. This way you are giving more value to your customers outside of just hitting the publish button several times a week.
Just like with ESPN and other newspaper websites, you would still need to provide regular, free content on your blog to attract new readers, but the meat and potatoes would be delivered off site to your paid subscribers.
Blogging for free…even if you enjoy the hell out of it…can not live for forever. Eventually life gets in the way and you will have to cut down on your online time unless it is providing a specific value (in this case…money). As blogging continues to grow and adapt, it will have to find a way to generate income outside of the law of numbers game.
Paid subscription models might be the answer, but we will not know until the switch is hit. At that time, will the paid models be able to withstand the competition of free? My personal opinion is that question really comes down to the quality of branding, content and perceived value.
What do you think?
So I was just sitting back the other day thinking about what actually makes a blog successful from a monetary standpoint. There are a lot of blogs that have traffic, subscribers and plenty of Facebook fans, but they barely make enough to cover the bills because they are expecting the money to come from non-monetized resources (or at least ones that do not monetize well).
I created this mind map to show you exactly how I look at my blogs from a monetary and business view. It basically starts from the bottom and works up, so let’s run through it.
As with any business, your leads are your most valuable asset. When you funnel quality, qualified leads into your blog, you are creating an asset that has the ability make money on a higher percentage than the shotgun affect of trying to get as many as you can at once. This is done by utilizing several sources, and it is up to your testing to see which one works out best for you. By creating quality, relevant content on and off your blog, you attract readers (leads) to your site. You also bring them in from various social media outlets as you continue to try to grow your blog.
The biggest problem I see with most blogs looking to make a dime online is they stop there. They expect this traffic to make money on its own and continue to spin their wheels trying to make ends meet.
It is up to you, as the blogger to capture these quality leads in a format that is conducive to generating income. As you can see from the green area of the mindmap, there are several ways to capture these quality leads that come onto your blog. A lot of bloggers try to strictly rely on rss through feed reader and email to satisfy their lead capture needs, but from personal experience in multiple niches, I can tell you that the #1 converter for quality leads is a newsletter (I use Aweber) and a lightbox hover like PopUp Domination to capture those leads.
Again, you are not done once you hit this stage in the process. A large number of quality leads is great, but if you do nothing with them…they are just costing you money and you are still spinning your wheels.
By providing quality products, recommending quality products and implementing other monetization techniques…you can keep the quality high on your blog and generate revenue off of it at the same time.
There is no right or wrong answer to this part of the equation, but I can tell you from experience that the monetization methods that the most effort typically yeild the biggest returns. When you take the time to create a product or membership site that your readers actually need to solve their problem, you are going to see higher revenues off of lower quantities. If you create an in-depth product review with pictures, video and text and post it on your blog and email it to your newsletter subscribers, you will get higher sales conversions. If you plan on throwing up Google Adsense and affiliate banners, you can guess which way that is going to go….pennies…
As you can see, this is not rocket science. It is up to you as the blogger to provide quality that attracts leads to your blog, capture those leads and then convert them to dollars.
You can click on the image above and share it with whoever you would like, just don’t edit the image at all. We are all in this together!
This post on avoiding blogger burnout was written by Steve Roy of Ending The Grind.
To the untrained eye, blogging seems to be a relatively easy job. Hell, anyone can just sit around at Starbucks all day and play on the Internet, right? Not quite.
Actually, there are very few successful bloggers, if any, who have the time to just sit around. Blogging is work, lots of work. I’m not saying it’s especially hard work, but the sheer amount of to-do items on a bloggers checklist can be staggering.
The vast majority of us are not successful bloggers however, but are aspiring to become one. We are full-time employees and part-time bloggers with the goal of becoming full-time bloggers and no-time employees. Millions of people have the dream of becoming an online success story and living the fabled “Internet lifestyle” that we hear so much about.
If you are one of these people, then you know all too well how time consuming trying to build your blogging empire can be. You (hopefully) realize that creating outstanding content, building significant traffic, understanding and helping your readers, and properly marketing your blog are all vital to your success.
Since all of these things are very important and also very time consuming, where are we supposed to find the time to do them all? If you’re like me and have a full-time job, you know that trying to write good articles, network on Twitter and Facebook, promote your brand, and build a list, are all major time suckers.
Well, if you’re anything like me and want to get out of your day job as fast as humanly possible, that means forgoing those late nights out with friends, watching mindless tv shows, or playing video games. If we are ever going to be successful in the realm of blogging, then our time needs to be spent building our business.
We simply cannot waste any time not working on building our sites and our dreams.
With that being said, many of us are burning the candle at both ends. Our sleep is suffering, our family time is suffering, and we have become almost obsessed with blogging and all it entails. We need to realize that this lifestyle is not sustainable (or our heads might implode) and we need to figure out a solution.
As our days get longer and our nights get shorter, it’s easy to start feeling overwhelmed. We are pouring our hearts into our blogs and many of us new bloggers are receiving few, if any, signs that we are on the right path. For most of us, the rewards of our hard work will take months or even years to show up.
It’s obvious that if you give up on blogging because it’s too difficult or too frustrating then you will fail. However, I’ve heard from multiple blogging pros that pushing through when things seems pointless is when people begin to make it. Yaro Starak, a highly successful blogger, has said that if you follow the right steps, the only way to fail is by quitting.
If we know that we will only fail if we quit, then why do so many fail? I think one of the main causes is getting burned out. We write and write, spend tons of time trying to make our blogs the absolute best they can be, and nobody comes…
Many of us can only do this for so long before despair sets in and we take a break from our blogs. When we take a break, we tend to forget about it. When we forget about it, we start to lose interest and focus.
Three days turns into three weeks and we still haven’t looked at our blog. I can speak from experience here and this is exactly what happens. We get excited about our blog, we write a ton of content, we try to build traffic, and then we are disappointed with the results.
We do this over and over and we get burned out. Believe me, burnout can spell the end of a blog. Don’t allow yourself to fall victim to this trap.
Here are a few tips on avoiding blogger burnout:
If you love blogging as much as I do and are doing it for a meaningful reason, then you are probably going to be busting your ass day and night to build your business. That’s awesome, keep it up! Just remember that too much of a good thing is not always good.
Steve Roy is a blogger with a passion for helping people who are looking to build an online business, quit their day job, and live life on their own terms. His blog can be found at EndingTheGrind.com
This past week, I made a mistake that cost me money. The funny thing is that it was not a huge mistake by any means…just a small oversight that was caused by not taking that extra couple of seconds to make sure everything was in line and ready to go.
This story starts with Black Friday. Like I pointed out in an earlier post, I take great care in timing my Black Friday promotions so that my cookie will be recorded within affiliate programs when my readers start buying their products online (read how I do this here). By planning ahead and timing my articles correctly along with timing an email to my newsletter subscribers through Aweber, I am able to capitalize on large buying days and sales throughout the year. That is…of course…minus this one mistake.
Just before Black Friday, I wanted an email to go out to my newsletter subscribers on Bike198.com that they were already used to that provided value and contained my affiliate links to setup for Black Friday. I had timed everything perfectly so that a blog broadcast email was going to hit on Thanksgiving morning just in time to record the Amazon cookie for the next 24 hour period of buying.
The blog broadcast feature in Aweber is the source of my highest traffic days and those emails see the best open rates out of anything I send out. It was the perfect way to promote my articles and Black Friday deals. I used a method that I have previously outlined on this blog (article: Are you leaving serious money on the table?) and edited above and below my blog broadcast feature through Aweber to include reminders to check out the Black Friday deals on Amazon and the largest online bike retailer JensonUSA as you can see below.
As you can see by the screenshot above, everything was set and ready to go. However, I only linked my affiliate account to the links you see underlined and left the brand names of the online retailers untouched and unlinked. Not giving it a second thought, everything looked good to go at first glance and I set the email to blast out to my newsletter subscribers.
As the email when out, I started tracking clicks, open rates and responses on the blog just as I would with any other broadcast email. When I went into my email inbox to delete all of the “out of office” responses and check for any reader responses, I noticed something strange.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the Amazon and JensonUSA links are linked to the online sites, but they are not linked via my affiliate link…they are linked to the respective homepages! Worse yet…they are the first two links in the email!
What I forgot as I was drafting up my email for release was that most email applications will automatically link anything with a .com, .net or .org within the email body. This means that anything you put with an ending will not give you credit for the referral and subsequently not give you any affiliate sales. My readers clicked on those links, bought items from the online stores and I did not receive commission all because I put the .com ending on the brand names in the email without linking them up with my affiliate link.
So…like I alluded to earlier…stupid small mistake that ended up costing me a large sum of money. Did readers still click on the other links and purchase? Of course, but the amount of income I brought in during this 48 hour period would have been higher if I would have taken one more step and made sure everything was in line.
I write this article hoping that it helps other bloggers out there but it is also done for a self reminder to slow down to dot my eyes and cross my t’s. Is it the end of the world? Absolutely not…what I learned from this little mistake has me better setup for the future and hopefully my experience can help you guys not make the same mistake.
So as Miles Davis says…”Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” We learn from our experiences and apply that knowledge to the future.
Products Mentioned: Aweber and I use PopUpDomination to grow my newsletter subscriber list.
New dad. Blogger. Business owner. My life and journey through all of these while trying to keep my obsessions in check. Read more
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