Successful, Profitable Blogging Is Not Rocket Science [mapped]

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.

Captured My Quality Leads…Now What?

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!