Rob and Melissa, from the Flea Market Flipper, almost didn’t have a blog.
After a few months of documenting their flipping lifestyle (they made over $80,000 flipping items last year) and trying to sell an online course, they quit.
For months.
They didn’t see immediate results, lost focus, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
Luckily–for them and us–they did return to their blog and have managed to build a budding flipping empire!
Want to listen to my chat with the Flea Market Flippers?
or listen on Apple Podcasts \\ Google PodcastsReally quick, lemme hit you with my 2 huge takeaways from this chat with Flea Market Flipper:
1 – How much free content do you give away–before charging?
There are two types of thinking about this:
- Give away as much as humanly possible for FREE. It’s great marketing for you.
- Give away a lot for free, but some/most of your content deserves to be behind a paywall.
What do you think?
Where’s the line?
Note: I don’t have an answer for YOU here. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself!
Here’s something important to keep in mind though.
When people pay for things–they are “enrolling.”
I.e. voluntarily committing, to themselves and sometimes others, that they will use your product.
A payment is a commitment.
When you charge for your content (via courses or otherwise), your students who DO end up in front of the content–are far more likely to take action based on what they’ve learned.
This helps both parties.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
Drop me a comment below?
Is there a great way to KNOW when you’ve given away too much for free?
2 – What’s the “right order” to build your monetized blog?
Should you monetize your blog in month one?
Should you build an audience first and foremost before even THINKING about selling courses, etc?
Sadly, there’s no “right” answer for all of us…
but…
95% of bloggers should seek to grow an audience that knows and trusts them–before monetizing *heavily,* especially with their own products.
Note the word “heavily.”
Ads and affiliate marketing can and should be utilized as soon as you can reasonably expect to get some views and click-throughs.
*opinion alert.
But in order to really get a high-ROI from your time, I’d personally recommend waiting to launch your flagship courses, books, products, etc, until you have an audience!
It simply won’t be worth your time until then.
?
One more secret to the success of Flea Market Flipper, specifically…
They are DOERS.
You want have an awesome website helping people in the kitchen? Get good at cooking.
You wanna teach people how to start side hustles selling furniture on Craigslist? Go flip some furniture.
They LIVE the life that they teach others how to do.
Honestly–Rob was a master flipper before they started this brand. This is actually a big takeaway for building “authority.”
- Do things
- Show how you did them
That’s an incredible recipe for a successful blog. Kudos to the Flea Market Flippers for, ya know–actually flipping stuff.
That’s obvious, but powerful.
What do you think? Drop us a comment below!
Is there a good way to tell when you’re ready to start monetizing? Launching courses? Switch to meta-blogging?
