Yes, making money from your blog is pretty simple.
I could teach you the basics of affiliate marketing, launching courses, etc, in about 20 minutes.
But putting it into practice and actually seeing success??
That’s–tougher ????
Luckily, we have people like Alex Nerney (Create and Go) to help us out.
Aside from having 2 blogs that produce over a million dollars a year at this point (#jealous), he’s also an incredible teacher!
And today, we’re talking blog monetization.
- Marketing funnels (sounds fancy–but what does that mean for me??)
- How to tell your story (so people listen)
- Why that’s important for making money 🙂
- and way more.
Here are my personal notes from this episode!
1 – Qualify people.
Whether you’re selling your own courses, hoping to attract folks to your membership site, or just selling affiliate products…
It’s vital you be attracting the “right” sort of people in the first place.
Think of this as your “top of funnel” activities.
- The content you produce
- The way your blog looks
- The freebies you offer
- The channels you reach people on
Are you attracting people who are already good fits for your products?
2 – Tell your story
Building trust is key to making money on the oversaturated internet.
People don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people!
–Somebody trying to sell you a sales course
One of the best (and quickest) ways to build trust is to tell YOUR story.
(Just make sure to be intentional about what you tell–it should serve to build trust and authority with your audience).
I have an entire post on how to tell marketing stories. Enjoy 😉
3 – Optimize the “when” and “how.”
Ahhhh yes. The hard part.
Let’s break this into a few parts.
Optimize = “figuring things out” and making things better.
You can’t/won’t hit home runs every time, and you don’t need to.
What you DO need to do is keep at it–trying to intentionally analyze what is working (and what isn’t)–and keep making things better.
Optimization is a process.
When do you do *what* in your funnel?
How much time do new (cold) leads need?
- In order to buy?
- In order to book a call?
- In order to do the next step in the funnel?
Same day? 3-4 months?
Obviously everybody is slightly different, but you’ll need to test/analyze some different timeframes for pushing people down your funnel.
- How much is the product?
- How quickly are new subscribers getting to know you (and trust you?)
- B2B or B2C? (B2B sales generally takes less time, but are more expensive from an acquisition standpoint).
Etc.
How do you sell your product to your audience?
The million-dollar question.
Do you need another step between a freebie–and an online course?
- webinar?
- phone call?
- etc?
Can you get away with slapping up some sales emails?
Do you need to get on video to build trust faster?
Do you need long-form sales pages? Product demos?
How do you sell your thing?
(Again, there’s no right answer anybody can tell you–it’s something you have to figure out and optimize for yourself).
4 – Learn how to sell
It’s super easy–you just create really great products.
(yeah no ????♂️)
- Copywriting
- Persuasion
- Testimonials (you’ll probably need some)
You don’t need to get a job selling encyclopedias to get better at this–you just need to dedicate time and brainwidth to figuring out…
- What your audience wants, desperately.
- What are the problems/challenges they have trying to get that?
- How you can show them your product helps them get there.
Sweet. I just saved you $1,500 in copywriting courses and books!
#joking.
Learning how to sell things is yet another process that’ll take a while–but it’s worth it 🙂
More here: How to Get People to Want What You Sell (via Copywriting & Persuasion)
Did you enjoy this chat w/ Alex from Create and Go?
What was your biggest takeaway from all this funnel chat?
Drop me a comment below!
