Working on Blog is a Waste of Time?

move into paid trafficNO doubt.

Starting a blog is great! It's not only about the money. Don't you sometimes just want a place to talk to people and share your experiences on your own personal site? haha...that's how I feel at least.

I think if you've ever had a passion for writing and publishing work, then making a blog is great. You get to share with the world who you are and what you do. It's more personal.

I find a blog a nice outlet, but an incredibly indirect way to get customers.
Ever since I've taken a more direct approach, ie: list building, I've never looked back.

It takes a long time to make a blog successful, you need to create lots of outstanding content for free and get tons of traffic before it begins to pay off.

Also a lot of your traffic will come from search engines while people are in research mode, not buying mode.

The easiest way for a beginner to start out is to set up a squeeze page, build a list then monetize it. Paid traffic is the way to go.

i will give you my advice on this.

i will also preface it by saying that i have read that same article about mike gears that you did and came to viewing business in the way he described it (and the way you now see it).

before i say anything else, let me just say that i REALLY wish i had known this stuff when i first began 2 years ago.

for the past 2 years, i have spent a lot of time doing what everyone else says to do... creating killer content, starting a blog, having a killer youtube channel, etc. it has been great, dont get me wrong. i have built several killer blogs that had 20+ high quality blogposts that were keyword-oriented. in other words, it wasnt just my musings on life that had 0 comments. it was great content specifically designed to target highly searched keywords, 5,000 - 80,000/month. my goal was to rank it high on google and funnel free traffic to optin and buy my ebook.

with that said, i was able to average about 30,000-40,000 unique visitors a month after about a year of doing it (i was smart about it).

i was also very smart about building a list from day 1 with a video squeeze above the content, a sidebar optin in the side for people to download the first chapter of my ebook for free (many of those people bought after sampling it). hell, i even had a popup optin.

with all of these tactics, i have built a list of over 7,000 people in the past 2 years (some of them also came from google adwords and msn adcenter but maybe just a third of them at most)

with all that said, the amount of money i have made from that blog and from the "content" route has been very far from what i wanted. maybe 1500-2000 a month tops. dont get me wrong, i have an AMAZING following, they are super loyal and they love all the stuff i put out. yes, tehy buy stuff, but ultimately, it did not get me to where i want to be in terms of income.

if you want to earn money from your business, treat it like a business and get it down to a science with paid traffic and a killer affiliate program for other BUSINESSES to promote. this way, its YOURS.

i have lost the majority of my rankings after the google panda and penguin update and many of my sites are nowhere to be found on the 1st three pages. the content on those pages still ranks #1 for those keywrods in youtube so im getting some good traffic from there but they are nowhere to be found on google and i have no frekaing idea why because i basically mastered SEO prior to this and was killing it with over 20 keywrods in the top 5 positions.

all in all, if you want this to provide you with the lifestyle you really want, treat it like a business and follow what mike did. sure, you can create a blog still and give content (its infinitably valuable for building a following, seeing what people like, engaging community, etc). itll all help when you create your product. however, it is a bit of an ass backwards approach because you will be struggling and fighting for a long time.

its been about 2 to 2.5 years and im still fighting to turn this into a business that liberates me financially. it has replaced my need to have a day job, which for most is great, but its inconsistent, unreliable, and nowhere near close to what you need to live comfortably in all the ways you really want to live. now i am focusing on this like a real business by launching a lucrative affiliate program, ramping up my paid traffic and really viewing this as a pathway to financial freedom, rather than a hobbyist with a blog deluding himself into thinking hes running a business. was i making income? yes. was it scalable? not really.

i know this is long but hopefully this was helpful because i have gone the other road and done it very successfully (i think) and found that it is not enough and i have to diversify it and treat it like an enterprise to really do the numbers. i am currently a guy with an amazing following that people look up to and buy from but i am nowhere near doing the numbers that i could be doing. i really wish i had someone to write this post to me to tell me to set it up like a business from day one and make it scalable. do i regret doing it my way? no, i learned a lot by doing it this way first. however, i kept beating my head against the wall wondering why the hell i was never making the money all the gurus are saying you can make. i dont know if paid traffic and an affiliate program is really all it takes to get there but its definitely a big part that i did not have in place. the affiliate program, not at all. and paid traffic, only $300/month. had i known then what i know now, i believe i'd be making a lot more money right now.

moving forward, just model what you know works...

paid traffic => sales video => upsell page #1 => upsell page #2 (ideally continuity)

for the longest time, i just sent people to a plain sales page for a $47 front end product and no upsell whatsoever and no continuity and wondered why i wasnt making any real $ online.

if youre buying traffic, youll make very little $ on the front end. gotta have the backend built out in order to really do the numbers.

painful freakin way of learning all this stuff but i guess itll all be worth if this new shift in direction will lead to the serious bucks.

kevin

yep.. I totally agree with Mick.. btw.. Mick is the MAIN MAN about copy writing

people amaze me how much time they waste on blog, seo, backlinks, tricks, plugins, etc.. all to HOPE someone signs up to a list..

The moment I stopped wasting all that time and money and investing in pure list building was the time things started to take off for me.

Thank you to everybody who replied.
Every single one of your posts here has been helpful and insightful for me.

I've heard a lot of good things about building up a blog and writing a bunch of articles and so forth from the warriors on this forum but it always seemed like you'd spend a whole bunch of time doing that. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's incredibly important to spend a lot of time building the business. But I figured that if I spent that time learning how to work with paid traffic (PPC and media buying and so forth) and building up my business in a way where I'd be able to get a bunch of affiliates, then I'd be doing something infinitely more useful. Because in time, the business will be a LOT more hands-off and it'll be much, much easier to scale up (just buy more traffic/ads!). So with a focus on paid traffic, you move toward a point where the business is totally hands-off AND making a lot of income and still able to be scaled up to more and more income.

Anyway, going forward, I'll do that and keep the blog as just something I do for fun and if I have a really cool idea that I just can't keep to myself and HAVE to share with others, then I can put it there. But I'll avoid using the blog as a major source of traffic.

Thanks again, everybody, for the insightful words!

Share experiences can also sell something, I think it's not contradict

Select a subject and a part of interest that you simply have a passion for. If you're blogging for business, decide what sort of new content you'll be able to give.Remember blogging remains a Social Media activity. you wish to grant worth to the community initial before you'll be able to profit in come. give free recommendation, information or analysis that may profit the gang.Blogging may be wiped out how that has eternal worth.
What are my motives for blogging?
Am I finding my identity in blogging, or in Christ?
How much time am I spending at the computer?
Who i'm writing for?