First serious attempt at monetizing Wordpress blog

Hi WarriorForum,

I'm not new to internet marketing - I've been dabbling as an amateur for years. But I've never succeeded in getting one of my pet projects to take off.

That said, I learned a lot through my failures. Now I seem to have a project with decent demand, which I've learned is the foundation. Things are getting complicated, and I want to start documenting what I'm doing. Both for my own reference, and to share with the world, and get feedback.

I figured the WarriorForum is the best place for that. I have a lot of respect for this place.

OK, intro done, here we go into the meat.

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My blog is at koanicsoul dot com. The theme is my personal meditation / inner game system for introverts.

When it started in Nov 2011, I was getting 3-3.5k visits per month, according to Wordpress stats. It was sort of a relaunch of an older blog that I let die, which had run for a couple of years. However, after the relaunch I let my writing drift off into several narrow tangents, and that dropped my monthly visitors to a low of 1.2k. Then in April 2011 it picked up again to 2.4k, as I basically completed the underlying product and started going mainstream. In May I've averaged 310 visits per day so far, as I've begun marketing guest posts to major content magnet sites in the Manosphere.

Visitors tells one side of the story, but it's irrelevant without knowing the engagement numbers. I've created a private, by-application-only forum, where several people are adopting my system. Total forum membership is 8-9 people currently. There's usually at least one post per day.

So this is very different than my other failed projects, for several reasons:
1. The product is truly finished and works now.
2. Demand (measured by visitor #s) is highly responsive to marketing effort
3. Demand (measured by engagement) is strong. Users are deeply hooking and changing their lives, becoming loyal adopters, and giving detailed feedback, thus enabling continued product improvement. I continue to get new applications.

I've figured out how to goose traffic. I've figured out how to churn out a basic product - I created several series of YouTube videos, which I released for free. I've figured out how to make a semi-attractive basic Wordpress layout using free stuff.

Next I need to figure out how to create a basic email optin structure where people have to give their email in order to view my free multimedia content. Then I need to build my email list and optimize my funnel. Then I need to cultivate the list and build a tested autoresponder series that funnels people into the free beta.

Then I need to create a premium version of the product and start charging for it. It will need to have a lot of much shorter videos, intermixed with text and maybe graphics.

So I'm looking at probably three different wordpress installations:
1. The public blog
2. The email optin "free content" area
3. The premium members zone

Plus, an email autoresponder sales funnel, and a regular newsletter, which can just be duplication of my blog posts.

OK, I'll dive into detail about what I've learned, and then talk about my current efforts.

I. Traffic

This is pretty easy to get in the Game niche. Lotta novelty-hungry readers. By far the biggest traffic source is getting listed on Delusion Damage's RSS aggregator feed. After that, guest posts to In Mala Fide work well. After that, commenting on some of the bigger blogs, and writing guest blogs to other posts. That's all I've figured out so far.

I'm keenly aware that I need to target and hook a certain audience - introverts. They only comprise 20% of the population. So raw visit counts don't matter much to me. But I've seen an increase in enrollment concurrent with article marketing, so I'm convinced the overall strategy is sound.

I should probably get on Twitter at some point. Not keen on Facebook - this is for introverts, after all.

II. Decent-ish layout

Here are the tricks I've learned so far for layout and general Wordpress configuration.

First of all I'm using the Clear Line free theme, which gives me the style and configurability I want. Took me a long time to find it.

Here's a list of activated plugins:
Admin Collapse Subpages - easier page management
Advanced Excerpt - Make excerpts on index page not look retarded
Akismet - spam
Analytics360 - analytics in dashboard
Collapsing Links - efficient categorized blogroll
Collapsing Pages - efficient page structure nav in sidebar
Contextual Related Posts - deep links
Google Analytics for Wordpress - analytics
Hierarchical Pages - shows nearby pages in hierchical page structure
IntenseDebate - smarter comment moderation
Jetpack by Wordpress - analytics, mostly
Newsletter Sign-up - basic newsletter signup. not effective.
Post-type Switcher - switch a post to page or vice versa
Quick Page/Post Redirect DEV - if you want a page/post to redirect to an external link
Redirection - automatically keeps internal links from breaking when you change URLs. very handy.
Role Scoper - permits admin to view "private" pages on index page menus. very handy for my workflow.
Smart Youtube PRO - easy vid embeds
ViperBar - ineffective but simple email collection
W3 Total Cache - site speed
Wordpress Database Backup - fig leaf of protection
WSIWYG Widgets - flexible sidebar widget creation

I'm a non-coder so I have to stick with free, pre-packaged solutions. I don't really have a desire to learn coding - I want to focus on what I'm good at.

III. Engagement

I created a Google Groups forum. To form the initial group I announced it on my blog page, invited longtime commenters directly, and posted an application page for people who wanted to join. I made a big deal out of it being private and invitation only. Since this is a sensitive, emotional, private topic, keeping the thing private was best, plus it added a cachet of exclusivity. All of that worked.

The group's been great - creating it was crucial to getting the feedback necessary to create a product that people could implement. That was a major missing element in previous failures.

Also, I made sure I didn't excessively dominate the dialogue in the group. That's another way I killed some of my projects in early stages. Now I defer to my audience as much as possible. Treat your fans like gold, and your haters like dirt.

IV. Content

I'm a high volume writer, so producing enough content isn't a problem. I do find that I need to space it out, and be careful about my tone.

I use the scheduling function to give myself a "cooling off" period and space out content. It's pointless to make multiple posts on the same day. You want to space it out to always have something fresh. This also gives me an opportunity to give stuff a second look and improve my first drafts.

As far as guest posting, I've found that it pays to make them insanely good, and then edit them again to make them insanely better. Not just text, but rich multimedia. You really want to hit those out of the park. Otherwise you'll be kicking yourself over the 5% extra work you could've done to get 50% more results.

I reserve stuff that's tangential to my main theme and well suited for general audiences for guest posts.

Also, always give very specific instructions when sending in a guest post. Otherwise they may not use the correct byline or publish things at the wrong time, etc. Don't assume the guy knows how to handle a guest post.

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Ok, that's pretty much everything I've done "right" so far. Now let's talk about what I'm still trying to figure out.

I. Email collection!

I have NEVER gotten this right. I THINK I know why, but I won't be convinced until I see a big happy list.

Basically, ye olde "optin to my email newsletter for no reason at all" offer doesn't work. You need to dangle something juicy to activate their instant-gratification greed. Otherwise they just don't care. More information is essentially worthless, and not worth the hassle of filling out the form and getting more email that may possibly suck.

So I have to figure out the technical details of creating attractive email optin boxes tied to free multimedia incentives. It doesn't seem incredibly easy to do without spending money or coding.

Right now I've got ViperBar running, plus a vanilla "email newsletter signup" box on my sidebar. Both generate ZERO submits. Pathetic.

So my plan is to move all the currently free videos onto an "email optin" zone, on a separate wordpress install. I forward them to that destination once they've subscribed to my list. Hopefully that will work.

I want to have email optins everywhere. Different offers on the sidebar. Offers at the bottom of every post. Special posts that you have to optin to finish reading. I probably can't get any more sophisticated than that without going premium.

Also, I'd like to setup a "welcome page" that people see one time when they first visit my site. And get split testing going with Google A/B testing.

I'm still trying to figure out what plugins will let me do all this. Here's what I'm currently looking at:

wp email capture - can forward optins to reward page
welcomegate - first-time visitors see special page
total feedback - small polls

On the rewards area wordpress install, I need some special theme that looks like a members' area. And I need the home page to be a squeeze page, so I need a template for that.

Whew, lot of work ahead!

II. Premium product creation, sale and delivery

I have some clue about how to do the product creation part. Much shorter videos, small chunked into lessons with text and graphics. Address all the sticking points that come up. That's just a question of writing, shooting, editing and organization. I can manage the writing in ConnectedText and the editing in Windows Movie Maker.

As for sale and delivery, I have no idea. Literally. Haven't even looked at the problem yet.

III. Retire in style

I'm still not sure what kind of jet to buy. Are F15's try-hard? What do you fly?

UPDATE: I figured out how to build the "free gift area". Details are in the thread titled, "How do you build a free-gift email optin funnel on a Wordpress blog using free themes/plugins?" Can't link to it yet.