In the first two lessons I explained how you don’t need as much traffic as you think you do and revealed a smarter, more advanced model of making money from a blog.
If you have not read this series from the start, I recommend you catch up here first:
- Part 1: The Myth Of “Being Everywhere” And The Smarter Path To Traffic
- Part 2: You Don’t Need As Much Traffic As You Think
Today I want to cement the formula so you can see how a small amount of highly targeted customers can lead to a six figure or more income.
While it’s great to have 10,000 email subscribers or 10,000 people a day visiting your blog, these are difficult numbers to reach. Most people never do.
It takes a ton of hard work over a long period, mixed in with great timing and luck, and you can’t stop – the traffic stops when you stop.
…And don’t forget, just because you can reach a lot of people doesn’t mean you make a lot of money. The money is not in how big your list is…
I propose that today’s intelligent blogger, especially if you are starting new entering such a competitive environment, instead focus on going deep.
To go deep means your traffic building efforts are designed to strategically attract a certain person and deliberately ignore others. You are looking for exactly the right kind of person who is perfectly placed to benefit tremendously from what you provide.
Because this target audience benefits so much from what you create, they want as much as they can get from you and are willing to pay premium prices for it.
Your traffic strategy is to attract the kind of person who will spend thousands of dollars on what you offer and benefit far beyond what they pay you for it.
It takes a strategic filtering process for this to work, but if you do it well, you can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars from just hundreds of people.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to chase big traffic numbers to make big money.
A smarter path is to create a system that can be used to earn money from your blog from DAY ONE, which filters people so you end up with a highly qualified tribe of rabid buyers.
To make this more tangible, let’s look at some numbers…
What Can 200 Visitors A Day Do For You?
Let’s start with a fairly realistic goal for most blogs: 200 visitors.
Attracting 200 people a day to your blog I am sure you agree is a much more realistic target, one that you can get excited about because it won’t take nearly as long to reach.
So what can 200 daily visitors do for you? Let’s see –
- 200 People per day visit your blog
- 10 of them per day join your strategically focused email newsletter, designed to create buyers, not just send more free information
- One out of every 10 people who join your email newsletter buy your entry level product priced at $20 (low price is important here)
- And for every paying customer you have, one of every ten become a tribe member, a repeat buyer who goes on to spend $5,000 on your higher end offers over the course of the rest of the year
Given 30 days in a month, that’s 6,000 visitors to your blog in total for the ENTIRE MONTH.
That’s 300 people who join your newsletter per month.
30 people buy your entry level product at $20.
And three people become super-fans of your business, your core tribe members, and buy everything you create, spending $5,000 over 12 months, earning you $15,000.
That’s $15,000 per month (I’m not going to count those $20 front end sales because that money is used to attract more people – you only profit on back end sales).
$15,000 per month is $180,000 per year, a very healthy income and made from only 36 people (3 repeat buyers discovering you per month, that’s 36 per year).
Are Those Numbers Accurate?
Those numbers are obviously not specific results to expect in every situation in every market.
Sometimes you will have fewer email subscribers but more buyers, or vice versa. Your traffic will fluctuate, as will your conversion rates.
Not every repeat customer will end up spending $5,000. Sometimes they might only buy your $1,000 course, while another goes on to join your $10,000 year long private coaching group.
There are too many variables to account for, but the principle remains true. You are using your blog as an entry point to filter people so you can identify and serve those who want the most from you, and spend the most.
That is how you can derive a very healthy income from a very small amount of people.
Incremental Improvement: Tweak Each Step In The Process
What is great about this strategy is you create a step-by-step process that operates “behind” your blog.
People go from your blog to your email list, to your low-priced front end offers and then your back-end higher priced offers.
You might use webinars, a series of videos, audios or a series of blog posts like you are reading now – whatever works for you. These are simply distribution tools used to educate and make offers with.
Each step can be tweaked and incrementally improved, creating a flow-on improvement across the system. It also makes it very easy to see the path forward.
Step one is to make sure you have the basic framework set up of a landing page, a blog, a newsletter sequence, and a front end product to sell.
Once the framework is there, get some traffic and run people through the process. You will learn how many people go from your blog or landing page, to join your newsletter, to read your emails/watch your webinar/videos (etc), and then buy your product.
You then have a baseline of conversion numbers to work on.
Not enough traffic? Implement techniques to get more traffic.
Not enough people going from your blog to your newsletter? Work on how you present you optin offers to improve conversion.
Not enough people going from your emails to purchase your product? Focus on how to convert more buyers.
It’s a very systematic process, once you make the decision to follow this model.
What If You Don’t Have All Those Products To Sell?
Obviously to make money with this process you have to have products to sell, ideally a range of products that go up in price for those who want more from you.
Traditionally price increases based on how much direct contact you offer. A front end ebook might cost $30, while a group coaching program costs $500, one-on-one time is $2,000 and a live weekend workshop is $5,000.
Of course you can’t offer all these if you just started because you have to create them (you can speed things up with re-purposing and rapid product creation methods, but that’s another lesson for another day).
What you can do from day one, is sell services. The simplest service is to offer phone/skype coaching, which is exactly where I would start if you are not sure about how to position your offer.
You can sell half an hour of your time for $30 to $300 from day one to help people solve one specific problem, which is your first front end offer.
The great thing about this method is you get paid to learn what your customers want.
You can then build out from there, adding more products and services as you learn more about your target market and refine your unique positioning in your marketplace.
The Only Test That Matters: Where Are Your Buyers?
Setting up this process will give you the answer to the most important test: Where are your buyers?
By making an offer from day one you find out if people buy, where they come from, what they need help with, how much they are willing to spend and how best you can help them.
How incredibly powerful is that!
Keyword research, fostering a community, building a list and of course blogging itself will NOT answer these questions.
Once you know you have a buying market, then you go out there and build the business around those people. Create the blog, build your list, and ramp things up knowing that you have a market who spends money on what you provide.
There are no guesses or assumptions, only numbers that lead to cash flow using this system.
Going Deep Fortifies Your Position In Your Market
The great thing about following this process is not only do you require much less traffic to make it work, once you establish yourself, your market positioning becomes a powerful competitive advantage.
As you build out your product funnel and get a better understanding of what your people want, you will become the default choice to solve that problem.
It will take less effort to convert a sale because your message will become stronger and more aligned to your specific target market.
You become a specialist, with a deep range of products and services serving a very specific need. You can charge premium prices because you have the trust and credibility of being one of the best in your field.
This is when you can look at increasing your traffic using new channels, because you know exactly what type of traffic to go for and you have a system to profit from it.
Imagine how much you can make if you increase the numbers from 200 visitors a day to 1,000?
Do the math and figure out for yourself…
Don’t Look At The Wrong Number
Today so many people are fixated by how many visitors they have to their blog, or how many downloads they have of their podcast, or views of their videos, or subscribers to their email list.
To focus on these numbers is a mistake. It’s a misleading sign of success because it does not correlate to income unless you are using low-leverage models like advertising or affiliate programs (which means you need unrealistic amounts of traffic to make good money).
The right numbers to look at to assess success are how many buyers you have and how much money you make per buyer.
Step one is to generate your first stream of reliable traffic and present an offer so you can get your first buyer.
To help you take this step I invite you to study my latest guide on how to attract your first 1,000 daily blog readers.
This is my next level of training on traffic. It’s not free, but for under $50, you won’t find a guide written by an online entrepreneur and blogger with as many years experience as I have (and I’ve coached over 3,000 bloggers already).
Here it is:
Blog Traffic For Beginners: A Step-By-Step System To Grow Your Blog Traffic From Zero To 1,000 Daily Readers
This guide will give you the platform of readers to present your offers to so you can begin making sales and identify your customers.
While you don’t need lots of traffic, you do need some form of audience to begin testing offers with. This guide will give you techniques to create that audience.
I used the example above of what 200 daily visitors could do for you. My traffic guide is designed to help you reach 1,000 people, but as you can see, even if you fall short of that goal you can have a six-figure business if you focus on the right things.
Get started today and learn the techniques I used to grow my blog traffic.
You have reached the end of the first trilogy in my Blog Traffic Fundamentals series. I hope you enjoyed it, and I made a lasting impression on you and how you build your online business.
When you make the decision to follow this smarter model, I am here to support you. You can see the full range of programs, courses and coaching I offer at http://www.ejinsider.com.
That’s it from me for now. Talk to you soon.
Yaro
P.S. All good trilogies deserve a sequel, so I wrote a fourth article to further help in your quest to find customers online. You can find it here –
Great blog Yaro,
The figures look great on paper and I’m sure they can happen for real too. What you need to have is your own product and courses. This is the first and biggest obstacle that would deter most people from going forward. Even if you become a self-proclaimed coach and sell services, it requires great deal of knowledge, experience, and confidence.
Tradiitonally, people create a blog first, then look for an audience and build a list, however, you’ve a different way of first finding your buying market and then build a relevant buissness around it. This business or blog will definitely be more effective and successful in terms of conversions or making money, right?
I’m sure this business model works if implemented effectively and smartly. So, would you suggest first creating a product and then going ahead?
Thanks,
Harleena
Hi Harleena,
Yes you do need something to sell with this model, however I can tell you for certain that creating a product yourself, or sourcing one at wholesale if you want to sell something physical, or offering a service is a LOT less work than months and months and months of publishing free content over and over and over again with a blog to build up traffic and community.
If you are capable of writing a blog regularly, as well as interacting with people via comments and social media, then you’re already doing three times as much work as is required to create a front end product, which you can keep selling over and over again once it is created too.
My suggestion to start isn’t to create a product until you are certain about the market you are going after. I actually think it’s best to begin with a service, since there is no need for creation or delivery until you have a paying customer. Once you know you have buyers, then you can start planning a more extensive product catalogue.
If you don’t have expertise or experience or passion for a subject then I wonder how you plan to have a blog in the first place? Most bloggers know something about something before they decide to blog about it, even if they are just learning as they go. There are always people one step behind you, whom you can teach or help in some way.
Or of course, find an in demand product or make one yourself and sell that. It doesn’t have to be info products, you can sell physical goods, or software, or design services, or copywriting, or whatever matches the needs of your target audience.
It all begins with the person you are trying to help. They decide what you do first.
Yaro
Yaro, I agree with you totally. Everything you say makes sense.
Having a product may really be not as difficult. That’s great inspiration and education.
Thank you so much. 🙂
It’s not difficult at all and you don’t even need an original product. We sell plr videos and ebooks, software and so on to bloggers and people wanting to make money online, as resell products, and although a lot of this stuff exists, you can always find buyers.
To date, we don’t have a single client who has failed to earn money with plr content. The trend now, however, is leaning toward membership sites (as Yaro has discussed in other posts). Most of our clients are wanting their diet sites (e.g.) where their traffic buys products: fitness ebooks, video tutorials and so on…and none of our clients actually create these products. They are plr products we provide.
Having your own product is best by far, however, as I’m sure Yaro will agree, but plr does give you a nice start, and we’ve found that selling a lot of different plr products also provides a good clue in advance about what people are interested in and buying.
You can also set up different squeeze pages for testing, and most plr ebook packages, for example, include a landing page that you just need to tweak a little.
The main thing, imo, is to get something out there and start testing the waters.
I like to ask “how can I provide the most value to someone” versus “how can I profit from someone” which opens the door to the lifetime value. By earning trust and providing solutions to real problems. Thanks for the good reminder!
Target, target and target more Yaro. We play an energy game; the money or numbers game bit is a fallacy. As your energy rises you’ll naturally attract bigger numbers of like-minded people who’l pad your pockets, as you’ll move into specific, targeting acts. But the energy needs to improve and you need to detach from set outcomes to make the magic happen.
I gave this a thumbs up on Kingged.com.
Hi Yaro,
Very much agree that just numbers don’t matter anymore. I’ve seen many blogs getting loads of traffic, but the webmasters failing to convert that traffic into revenue!
As it is evident from the article, focusing on the existing visitor base and offering them a product is a good way to get the earning cycle started. First sell something priced low, entry level product, as you said. Make it of such good quality that they will come back for more.
And in absence of a product to sell, one can always rely on selling services instead! But that depends a lot on the skills that one has.
Good read! I found the link to this post on Kingged.
Arun
I can get 200+ visitors a day to my site but I can’t get them converted. I am not sure what the formula is for my site. I like the idea and I am looking for news was to get subscribers.
Conversion happens when you build trust and present an offer they can’t refuse. I’d look at those two things Katrina.
Yaro
A person spend $5,000 per month for one seller?? For the private coaching?
If 6,000 visitors/mo which converted into 50 buyers. Each product is around $100. One buyer spends $100 per month. Let do the math = $100 x 50 buyers = $5,000 per month. It is possible if a blog has great contents and also great products.
This is more realistic than $5,000 per person in a month.
No, a person goes on to spend $5,000 per YEAR on your various products and services, not per month. As I stated in the article, that’s not every person, that is an average. Some might spend $100 a year, and a very small select few people who really benefit from your work spend $10,000 A YEAR.
The number of people who purchase get smaller and smaller as the price goes up (as expected) but it is those few people who buy your higher priced back end products that power your business.
It’s a lot easier to find just 3 people each month who buy everything you offer over the course of a year, than it is to find 50 new customers every month who spend $100 (although if you do, then you could do amazing things on the backend).
New customers are so much harder to convert – ask anyone who has ever tried to sell something.
Yaro
WOW!
I haven’t ever looked on traffic and conversions like that. I mean it’s really amazing what you actually could achieve with a small group of people.
The things I were focusing on were increasing traffic instead of turning traffic I have into buyers.
However, I gave up Adsense and similar crap long time ago. They force you to create 20,000-30,000 monthly visitors so you can get $500-$1000.
I could earn more money just by asking people to give me $1 if I helped them with some guide or case study.
Keep rocking Yaro
I love reading these things.
Vukasin
Yaro,
I love how you break down the numbers here in terms of traffic and leads. When I first started, I tested out cheap list building strategies. That was exactly what they were. Well, also ineffective.
Great post! Buffering it now!
Andy
From experience with a blog which had around 200 visitors per day. Gaining 10 subscribers per day is a bit optimistic…
It can be Allistair, or it can be easy. It really depends on your traffic source and the offer you make to them.
This is one of those points of conversion you test. If you’re not getting enough options but you have the traffic, you work on your optin conversion. If you get good optin conversion rates, but not enough traffic, work on increasing traffic.
It’s paint by numbers problem solving once you decide to follow this model.
Yaro
Getting 10 subscribers from 200 visitors (giving your blog a 5% conversion rate) is not only achievable but could even be your benchmark.
My blog manages to achieve a 8-12% conversion rate because I have used the following things: social proof, compelling offer (lead magnet), popup and a relevant “opt-in” call to action in 95% of my blog posts.
All these CRO techniques add up to high conversion rates. I would say that your blog should strive for a minimum of 5% conversion if you are really keen on building a mailing list.
I see so many “opt-in” offers that lack creativity which would explain low conversion rates. The point is that you need to be giving something away for free that is irresistible to your target audience. Certainly not “sign up for free updates”.
Graet series of posts Yaro. Many thanks!
Outstanding article!
Hi Yaro,
Your assumptions are great. I thing thing might be helpful. Gaining 200 visitors a day is great. I will definitely try this with my blog. I know this might be helpful for me.
Thank you…. 🙂
Hi Yaro, indeed you have positioned yourself a generational eye-opener. This post is explicit! You’ve shown making money online can be an easy thing and that’s what makes you great teacher.
There are bloggers out there who want to scare you out of business and make you feel inadequate whenever they brag on their list of subscribers and daily visitors to their site.
This statement of yours is loaded with wisdom, “To focus on these numbers is a mistake. It’s a misleading sign of success because it does not correlate to income…”
Yet, like the post rightly pointed out, one cannot underestimate the need to attract great traffic…
Yaro, I’m not sure if I understood properly, but you suggest we sell courses and products that range from $1000-10000 products? would this business strategy you propose work if one just sells info products, like 20$ each? or would I have to be focused on developing a super product and selling it at a high price?
Hey Carlos,
Well you can do the math – how many $20 ebooks do you have to sell to have a $100,000 a year business? A lot!
Plus, there is only so much depth you can go into with an ebook. With a course, membership site, video training program, webinar series, live workshop, etc you can teach many more facets at different pricing structures.
So yes, this model is effective because you have a product funnel with a range of products that offer a deeper level of support and education as the price increases. Some people only want a $20 ebook, others want more, so give it to them.
If you just have the low front end product you have the same issue as using advertising or affiliate marketing – you need incredible traffic volume because you will have to sell thousands of copies of your product. Most blogs will never have the kind of traffic necessary to sell 5,000 copies of $20 ebooks in order to make $100,000 a year (I certainly don’t!).
Yaro
I enjoy your perspective and success story Yaro. For a while I’ve been thinking of ways to increase my subscriber numbers and I’ve complete work on an enticing product to encourage them to sign up.
Advice on selling your own product as opposed to someone else’s is strongly advocated by quite a few successful bloggers. It all makes sense really since you are not doing work for other people’s benefit.
Hello Yaro,
Very thought provoking articles. I’m one of the foolish few who started out thinking money could be made on advertising. Really I’m learning every day I blog.
Unfortunately I chose a topic that would rarely if ever garner return/loyal followers. Namely I blog about Bridal Showers. I can see opportunities to make money with products here but the topic itself doesn’t inspire repeat customers or people who would want/need tutorials of the nature you suggest.
I’ve read a book on the theory of outliers before so I had a sickening click the second you outlined how that relates to blogs and making money online!
Have you ever started up a business model/blog and decided the payout was not worth the continued effort? I find myself wondering if it would not be better to move to a more loyalty attracting topic after reading your articles. The piece of me that has already put in so much effort however is having a tantrum about giving it up! hehehe!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience Yaro, very good reads!
Brooke
Hi Brooke,
Bridal showers is a pretty huge topic! I think if you worked very hard producing a lot of content you could make a living from advertising. You could do better selling products though, and not need as large an audience.
Marriage ceremonies are a huge industry and best of all – a ton of money is spent. The only downside is you have a transient customer base. Once all the marriage related events are over, your customer is done. You could of course expand to the newlyweds market and continue to service the same people, but I suspect to begin with you should stick to the one market. There are enough new people getting married every year, you just need to make sure they know you exist.
Either way, I would NOT give up on this market if you like it. It has the right characteristics, you just need to find your angle – the unique offer you have to help them solve the problem.
As for my own experiences – in the past started a website about MP3 music, another one about social activism, and blogs about dating advice – all of which I gave up on. They were either too broad in scope or I really didn’t care enough about the market to take it seriously.
Good luck Brooke!
Yaro
Hi Brooke,
If I were you, I would follow Yaro’s advice and not let go… 🙂
Yaro,
Your comment shows you understand marketing (in general) as much as you understand internet marketing (in particular).. meaning A LOT. Keep up the good work!
Kyriacos
Great Post Yaro,
It’s obvious that most of the bloggers think about making money from their blog and the main thing to focus is driving traffic to their blog. There are many who try to figure out how can they get more traffic at their blog. I mean what’s the need of that. For a blogger, entrepreneur in my opinion making bonds matters a lot. Networking helps a lot by which figure count of income will increase automatically.
I always think why to worry about money? Don’t you think self satisfaction is all above that? I agree money has it’s great significance but still focusing only on money is not a good stuff to concentrate.
Thanks for the post.
~Ravi
I can actually back up Yaro’s calculations. I have a website that teaching people how to get a certain business license. The average amount of daily visitors is at around 100 people. I’m targeting very specific keywords (only three!), and get on average about 10 people to opt-in.
The biggest game changer tactic that I applied is offering the free mini-course behind a membership site. So people would first need to register, become a free member, and then be able to follow the mini-course. Members are then automatically put on my email list.
So how many people become a member per day on average? 30 or 30%. (Seen this go as high as 60%).
This method really works great in a niche and target audience that’s been to sensitized by optin in first in order to receive a free report/bonus.
Thanks for sharing some of your numbers Jay, that’s interesting stuff.
My proofreading business had about 50 customers a year, with about 100 visitors a day coming to the website mostly from Google and posters I out up.
Those 50 customers generated over $100,000 a year for the business during the peak years I owned it, so you really can do well with small numbers.
Yaro
Hi Yaro,
Great post. I’m a newbie and currently I’m planning for my blog, but can you please tell me how should i design my product for entry level, i have no idea about it.
Thank you!
Hi Chitranshu,
The answer to your question is knowing more about what your customer wants and how far away they are from having it. Your entry level product fills the gap. Without knowing about your target audience it is hard to answer this, so if you don’t feel you have an answer yet, do more research about your audience. Come up with a customer avatar, write down emotional and logical justifications, describe tangible outcomes they want in their life as a result.
The best way to learn the answers to these questions is talk to your target market in person or over the phone.
Yaro
Hi Yaro,
Thanks for the tip but i was thinking that you should teach us and train us for developing products, especially newbies, cause if i found out that what my target audience is and their need but still i don’t know to how to arrange the information or how to develop the product and how to introduce to customers.
Thank you!!
Hello,
I have a question. If I want to sell my magazine online then which type of offer should I make for my customers. Currently my blog is new and getting less traffic near about 50-60 visitors a day. But very soon they will increase you 200+
Please advice..
~Diana
What exactly are you selling in the magazine? Entertainment? A solution to a problem? What kind of motivating reason is there that would compel a person to buy it?
Answer those questions and you will be closer to the right offer Dr Diana.
I am selling in the magazine spiritual news, health related tips, relationships etc.
Every person wants relaxation in their life so I talk about common problems in my magazine for eg. stress and bedroom is a topic in my May issue.
Regards
Diana
First Diana, I wouldn’t marketing or selling a subscription to a magazine. Even if it’s digital, the layout and production cost is to high. I know to many people who have tried and failed (talking about big names).
Ask Yaro about his attempt at launching a digital magazine…
The solution is simple. Sell (if you have to) a newsletter instead. I say ‘if you have to’ because most subscription based business models income are self-liquidating. You almost always need a backend sale in place. Forget finding advertisers!
I forgot the name, but this is part of info product history. A pastor used to sell a monthly newsletter/booklet with prayers (how to pray for… when…). The way he sold it was by offering a rabbit foot as bonus (the same method with Sport Illustrated and their footballphone).
He first just sold his rabbit foot. But because the government tried to shut him down (rabbit foot came with some unfounded marketing claims) he reversed his offers. Sold the newsletter/booklet with prayers first and the rabbit foot as a bonus. 1st amendment protection.
Hi Yaro,
I am so glad I found you via Harleena Singh’s interview with you on AHA Now.
As I read through this I kept shaking my head..yes, yes, yes…. because it took me a while to figure this out.
I had a free opt in on my blog to start a list, but never turned it into anything to purchase.. only a few affiliate products.
Then I created my own. Now, when people opt in I find it is exactly the same ratio as you mentioned above. But that is only from my blog.
As I go onto my marketing campaign, I fine tuned my niche and am starting to see results. I still have a lot to learn on this journey, but I am willing to fall on my knees, brush myself off and keep going.
Thank you so much for explaining the truth about how things do work. There are not many people who are as ethical as you!
-Donna
Yes, Yaro … that’s exactly how I built my business. Reading your super clear and eloquent writing here is like watching my process reverse-engineered.
And it sure seemed like every time I went for “more traffic,” business suffered. What honestly worked better was using a little tough love with my audience. This prompted those who were serious about transformation to step up to the plate. And as I began giving my attention mostly to those who were giving back to me financially … people started to respect my time more and I could charge premium rates.
It’s kinda paradoxical but it has really worked for me. Especially because I really value simplicity. There are people making lots more money than I am and with lots more traffic, but I wouldn’t want their life. Too complicated.
Really beautiful clear writing here 🙂
Hey Yaro,
Quick question on your post, how do you get 5% of your daily visitors to signup to your email list? I have a blog that has been going now for 16 months. Each month is better than the previous month and I finished April with with 10,856 views but I only have 400+ people that have signed up to my email list. My website is http://www.ratracegrad.com. Would appreciate any suggestion you have for me to take to increase my email list. Thanks.
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer,
Are you using an exit popup or any kind of popup? I get the majority of my optins from those on my blog. It depends on your niche and your offer too. I suggest if you are not using a popup begin using one and split test offers to increase conversion.
Also I would not count “views” – it’s “unique visitors” that matter since they are human beings and only one human being can optin. If you are counting pageviews and you get 2 or 3 pageviews per visitor then you have to divide your view count in half or even more to get the actual unique human beings you are reaching.
Yaro
Thanks. Is there a popup you would recommend?
I used to recommend PopUp Domination, although I am not sure if they are still in business.
https://yaro.blog/8720/popup-domination-review/
Today I am using OptinMonster –
https://optinmonster.com/
Yaro
This is very good, eye-opening information! I believe this is just what I needed to see in order to start on the right track with generating online income.
I do have a question about optin offers. Should I just have people subscribe to my mailing list for free or would it be better to use my front end product as a way of gaining an email list of buyers? The information you’ve provided strikes home for me as I have been blogging for only a short time now and I’ve learned so far that I need to gain traffic first, then advertise. I prefer your blogging model though because I’m aiming to attract the people that actually want to buy from me.
What would you suggest in this situation?
Hi Brianna,
Here’s the ideal optin flow
1. You offer something of value on your optin page and also optin boxes on your blog
2. Person enters their email to optin
3. They are immediately taken to a video that teaches (delivers on the value you promised) and also sells a front end product
4. They are also added to an email sequence that continues to provide more education and sells the same product (if they did not buy from the video)
5. As soon as they buy they are taken off that list and moved on to a customer list
6. If after a few weeks to a few months they do not buy, you move them on to a “house list”, which is like you general newsletter for all prospects
7. Then you can segment them back on to another sequence based on what they show interest in (click on in newsletters)
That’s a broad overview, but if you get this right you can start making money as soon as you start getting optins. You can also target your information sequences so much better this way, giving people specific answers to specific problems based on what they do.
Yaro
Hey Yaro,
This post has blown my mind. I am not focusing on CONVERSIONS instead of traffic.
Quick question – when the prospect moves from the prospect list to the customer list, should they still go through an email auto-responder sequence? I currently have an email auto-responder set up for my prospect list, but not my customer list. Just curious how you do it?
Best,
Tim
Hi Tim,
Customers should go through a product engagement email sequence, which is designed to make sure they use what they paid for. After that you market to them the next level product offer (the back-end).
Yaro
Hey Yaro,
Thank you for your response. That makes a lot of sense.
One follow-up question if you have a second… If the prospect doesn’t buy the front-end offer, do you continue to try to sell them only that front end offer? Or do you move on to some of your back-end offers?
I’m just thinking in case the front-end offer isn’t a good fit for a certain prospect at a certain time but maybe a back-end offer is. What’s the best practice?
Thanks again for your response. It is much appreciated.
Tim
If they don’t buy the front end product they move on to your “house list”, which is your general newsletter. If they do something to join another front end email sequence, then they move off the house list and on to that sequence until they purchase a front end product.
It’s very rare to sell a backend product more than a front end product given the pricing structure. Chances are if you do then you should have a front end product that better leads into that back end product, then you will sell a lot more of the front end, and thus more of the back end. Of course this does mean you have well developed product suite, which most people do not, so they just go straight to back end offers.
Yaro
Yaro,
I have just joined your mailing lit, and I feel lucky that I have taken this step. I am new to blogging, so my my blog is therefore I am having no idea how to increase my mailing lists?
Do you have any preferred WP Plug-ins in mind?
I am a Web Designer by profession, so what will be the best thing I could offer to my readers?
Thanks for your help 🙂
Cheers,
Hamza
I’m a big fan of OptinMonster at the moment Hamza, that is what I use here on EJ to invite people to join my newsletters.
Yaro
Great article! You can make a lot of money with just 200 visitors a day. Definitely focus on traffic related to your niche instead of any kind of traffic.
Comprehensive and useful information as always. My email list goes up and down over the years, but is definitely not where I would want it. I’m putting this information to good use with the hope of building traffic. Thanks!
Hi Yaro,
You have seriously got me thinking as I am realising that chasing traffic is not the answer to anything.
In your article you talk specifically about selling a service and selling your own expertise. However I blog about kids style (non-mainstream clothes, toys, nursery decor etc) and wondering why you have focused on services only. Would a shop selling physical things work too? That is the direction I am thinking of taking rather than selling a service.
Would appreciate your thoughts.
Many thanks for this great series of articles.
Nomita
I tend to focus on services because they are a gateway to information products, the area I focus on.
By all means though, you can sell physical goods too. Whatever your audience wants, that is what you sell!
Yaro
Yaro,
You couldn’t be more right and sadly, by focusing 100% on traffic, I burnt myself out and lost my spirit to write and photograph. At one point, my photoblog of NYC, had over 3000 readers per day. I was cited in the New York Times. My photos and stories were used in Gothamist and other media. The Villager offered to buy my photos. I sold several thousand dollars in photos. National Geographic used one. I was approached to teach a class at a large English language school in Manhattan because the director was so enthused about my work.
But I was obsessed with building traffic for ad revenue which never happened. I had millions of visitors over 7 years, but “only” 2000 people per day. Yet, I was meeting people in NYC that heard of my blog. But, I was hearing of people with 10,000 or 100,000 people per day.
At one point my instinct was to start exploiting the readership I had, but I remained obsessed with traffic. I was even used to host an indie film documentary based on my writing. I could have done customized tours or offered other services. People had begun even approaching me. I was called by a New Zealand company to act a scout for them to show them the unusual places in NYC to film.
My blog became more story driven as I wove personal experiences in and made the titles and subjects seem unrelated. I was applauded by many writers at my efforts, including a personal email from an editor at the New York Times.
But sadly, after 2000 stories, some taking days or weeks to make, and continued focus on traffic (which at 2000 visits per day I considered a failure) I just lost incentive. Now I am looking to create a legacy site in Tumblr or something like that to “mine” the content I created. My best stories are buried in archives – my most recent work is the weakest, evidence of my declining spirit and creative energy. Wish I had thought along your lines, Yaro 🙁
Brian Dube
Oh Brian, I am sorry to hear about the loss of spirit!
It sounds like you have an amazing blog that created all kinds of amazing opportunities. Is it not possible to keep going with it, but change your focus to something less traffic focused and more about the audience you already have?
Yaro
Yaro,
When I started NewYorkDailyPhoto.com, it was based on Paris Daily Photo – a slice of daily life in a city. A photo and a comment. It eventually evolved to become my personal vision and experience of NYC. The content became story driven for each posting and not time dependent.
My thinking has been first and foremost to redesign the site to be more democratic about my stories and encourage the visitor to explore rather than just focus on the most recent story and leave. A resource for reading and browsing rather thank something temporal like a newspaper or typical blog. Like Seinfeld rather that the daily paper. Then, I would be more encouraged to add new content, but not on a particular timetable.
I am looking for a designer with ideas on how to best present my content.
That sounds like a good plan in terms of keeping you motivated Brian. What about the business outcome though, what would you like this website to do for you in terms of making money? Do you want to sell a product or service? Perhaps yourself as a photographer? Or maybe create photography books and sell them?
I think it’s important, at least if you plan to have a profitable business, that you tie in changes like this to some kind of strategy, which then can help guide your decisions on what to change.
I like how you focus on targeting the right people in this post. I also like that you are talking about manageable numbers like 200 visitors.
Is a 5% conversion rate for email signups and a 10% conversion from email to buy realistic numbers?
Hi George,
The term “realistic” is very subjective to the niche you go into, how you source your traffic and how you present offers.
I can tell you that for my market, no 5% on email signups and 10% buyers is not what I do. If I look at my engaged audience I have about 5,000 people who open my emails, and about 2,000 click links. I have about 700 customers who have bought from me in the last 12 months. My blog gets 100,000 visitors a month, and 50 to 100 optins a day.
I just spoke to someone who has a much smaller list than me, but almost 50% of their subscribers buy, which is incredible!
Andre Chaperon also gets similar results with his lists. He might promote a product to only 1300 people in a small segment of his newsletter and convert more than half on a $97 product, however he has very good targeting and has buyers on his list.
My own goals this year are in fact to not get more traffic just for the sake of it, but tighten up on whom I attract. I’d rather have 10 newsletter optins a day if I know two of them are going to buy.
You can break down the numbers in so many ways, from overall traffic, then how many optin to each pathway you have for them to sign up, then how many open each email, how many click the links in each email, how many land on the sales page for a product and then how many buy.
Each point in this process has a conversion rate. Your job is to make the numbers work. Whether 5% or 10% optin conversion or buyer conversion is good enough is not the important number – return on investment is. If 1% conversion is good enough for ROI, then you have a business.
Yaro
Good points, Yaro. I appreciate your response 🙂
Hi Yaro,
mate this is really great news, especially to me. I’ve been thinking for ages that I needed to attract loads more traffic before I could make a meaningful level of income with my core blog, which has only about 7,000 unique visitors per/month (almost 18,000 page views).
This post really gives me hope as well as a clear focus about how to convert what I already have into, potentially, a good income.
thanks again,
Matt
Hi Yaro ~
I apologize, perhaps someone already asked this question. Are your numbers here based on 200 and 1,000 “unique visitors” per day?
Thanks,
~Ron
200 human beings visiting your blog, so unique visitors – don’t get too caught up that number though, I’m just using it as an example of how to derive a lot from a little (classic 80/20 Rule).
Yaro
Arh Yaro…getting all “mathematical” on us.. Good to see, mate!
My 2 cents worth…
We need the “holly trinity” to get paid…Traffic + conversions + pricing = money. Or as your mate Perry would say: Traffic + conversions + economics.
Those three pillars can – and should be -“worked on over and over again – everyday”. If any one of the three is weak, money is being left on the table and business potential is not being realized.
Perry Marshall’s 80/20 is an excellent book to get one’s brain ticking over when it comes to maximizing ones business.
Blog post idea for Yaro…
You have a heap of success stories (recent podcasts I have listened to) from students that are making good livings from modest amounts of traffic (because they have the “holy trinity” dialed in). Maybe a post summarizing a few of these “stand outs” would be timely. People love real life numbers and success stories.
Cheers,
Anthony
Here’s such a post I did awhile ago Anthony, there are a few more people I could add since then –
https://yaro.blog/8714/how-to-make-money-with-your-blog/
Yaro
Inspiring post! I’ve just started ramping up my traffic to about 50 – 150 regular visits per day, and about 5 – 10 subscribers per day. I’m going to take advantage of your suggestions and see what I can do 🙂
Thanks a bunch!
Brad
Yaro,
I really appreciate the care and time you put into not only your blog posts but your comment responses too.
This post was a major eye-opener for me. I have a tech blog that’s just under a year old and is getting about 12k unique visitors per day. Initially, I thought this was huge but it really isn’t because from a financial perspective, I’m only making about $20/day in Adsense revenue.
After reading this post and learning that I could make $100k/yr with only 200UVs I started to seriously consider what I could make with the traffic I have. Could I be sitting on a gold mine here?
The problem is that I’ve spent so much time writing posts that I haven’t stopped to consider how to monetize my site. I just threw up a few ads and then frowned because my adsense revenue sucked.
Eventually I tossed up a newsletter but I haven’t done anything with it and I only get about 1 new member per day. It sucks, but then I realized something: why does it suck? why are my numbers so crappy? I realized three things:
1. The newsletter is boring, the offering is lame (free tips to your inbox) and it’s kind of hard to find. If I had a pop-up on entry and exit and a real high value offering such as a special 60 minute video for signing up that might work.
2. I have no product and like you said my ad rev is linked to my posts. When I don’t post my traffic slumps and when my traffic slumps my ad rev drops. If I devoted an hour per day creating a tech ebook and then sold it through the Amazon Publisher’s platform or something I could reward my opt-iners with a high-quality book at a discount from the amazon price. Maybe $19.99 instead of $25.00
3. Traffic is pointless if you can’t convert. It doesn’t matter that my site is getting loads of traffic if it doesn’t translate into revenue. I’ll be the first to admit that I have zero business sense (that’s why i love your site because it helps me a lot) – I’m a tech guy so I’m not very business smart but I’m learning now that I seriously might be sitting on a Gold mine here.
I can use Google Helpouts to do specialized one-on-one sessions – I can then offer a seminar or something on the weekend – but I’m still wondering will anyone really pay me $5k for a seminar? I write a lot and know a lot about my industry but $5k? Seriously? I want to believe this but I’m having some difficulty.
Maybe you can help me understand?
Thanks again for all your wisdom and help. Your blog is a Godsend
-Vonnie
Hi Vonnie,
You’re having some great awareness doors opening here. You already have a platform, all you need to do is re-jig the strategy.
I wouldn’t get concerned right now with $5000 courses or what you can sell later. Your first job is to just get some kind paying customers NOW so you can learn what people are willing to buy. As you learn more about your customers you can determine what kind of products or services to offer based on what they tell you.
I’d start with a $30 or less front end product, or do a survey or offer phone coaching. Then set it up so your entire blog and email strategy is an education-selling process specifically for that product/survey.
You don’t want to guess – make an offer and see how people respond. Once you find the sweet spot build out around serving those people.
Yaro
Oh also Vonnie, given your niche, you could consider a service, not phone coaching, but something specific to the reason people come to your blog already. Basically you sell freelancing to your own audience as a way to start learning about them.
Thank you, Yaro! I really appreciate the fact that you make the effort to engage with your readers, unlike others in your industry who have automated every communication. And of course, I love the true Aussie spirit of keeping everything real that comes through your writing!!
I try Bhakti – it’s hard to keep up with everything going on inside a blog that is ten years old, but certainly these popular new posts I’m really enjoying engaging with you guys.
Yaro
Seriously its an inspiring post.Most of the people think that they need lo of traffic to make lot of money. But i understood that smart work is also very important
Hi Yaro –
But what happens when those people who make up your tribe start getting bored with you, or their interests change, or their income changes? I follow what you’re saying, but it sounds kinda like putting most of your eggs in one basket. That would concern me.
Hi Laura,
It’s not as rigid as you are thinking. A person’s level of interest and purchasing decisions fluctuate as their situations change. New people join your tribe, some leave. Change is fundamental.
However, remember the core tenant of a tribe – they are RAVING FANS. You serve these people so well that your rate of attrition is by definition going to be far less than other business models.
The important concept to grasp is that you are creating a system that relies on smaller numbers because you have deeper relationships. Deeper relationships are financially more lucrative. People may come and go, but that’s after they have gone through a lengthy experience with you and spent a lot more money on average.
Yaro
Reminds me of that “The Things We Think and Do Not Say” piece from Jerry Magire – fewer clients, fewer dollars, deeper and more meaningful relationships!
That was great as an informative post on the traffic you are already getting and converting that traffic to real revenue. Yaro, I think you could write a post on developing that back end product that could net you the $5,000 from select individuals while still providing value.
Dwight Anthony
Financially Elite Blog.com
All in good time Dwight, there’s a lot to do on the front end first!
I am glad you enjoyed my article and thanks for your comment.
Yaro
I like this article. I’m just starting out with my own blog and am trying to create my own strategy for success.
The tip about offering a skype/phone service initially I like very much, I’m going to see how I can incorporate this into my own business.
Thanks.
Yaro, thank you very much for answering that “What if I don’t have any products yet?” question. It’s one that’s always plagues me when it comes to blogging.
Yet setting up a chat / coaching session stirs up a few fears of its own. Don’t I need training, accreditation, all those sorts of things before I can start coaching people in a subject? How do I pitch the coaching sessions on my web log?
Still, it feels good having the questions to ask!
It depends what you are teaching Rob. If you have experience in most subjects, that’s enough.
Remember too that you don’t have to coach. You could offer done for you services. For example instead of coaching how to blog, I could offer a blog setup or writing service.
Yaro
Well, Paid to Play is an interview podcast where I chat with folks who’ve turned hobbies and passions into sources of income about how they did it, plus a supporting blog. That invites the ideas:
– helping folks who want to start working on that process themselves; sort of a consultant / sounding board / source of encouragement
– helping folks make their own podcast
– helping folks write a blog
The first is the most tempting of the lot, although it’s something I’m still in the progress of myself! I like the idea of chatting with people about what tey really enjoy, which is what the podcast is about in the first place!
Yaro, thank you for this blog post! I have learned much about traffic through your emails, and I am grateful for that.
My view of how I should operate my online business has shifted, and it is a great feeling. Reading your words makes me know that one day I will be able to live the good lifestyle.
-Mick
I’m happy to hear I have motivated you Mick!
Good luck with your projects.
Yaro
Hi YARO,
A very good calculative example. I doubt, whether it will work. Thanks for sharing
It already works for many people Shounak. This is not me speculating, this is a strategy that has already proven effective over and over again.
Yaro
Hi Yaro
very nicely and clearly explain that how only 200 visitor in a day can give us a lot .First on your blog i get to learn this strategy of sales and it huge outcome .First time i came on your blog and found a lot of new strategy and techniques .Feeling happy and fortunate after landing on your blog .
Thanks a lot and keep Doing to explore yourself !!!
Hi Yaro this is the first part I found in this series. I can’t wait to finish reading the first two!
Naomi
Hi Yaro,
I can’t just argue this further. Huge number of visitors doesn’t guaranteed a huge success rather the end justify the means.
I still don’t believe Nigerians can make $300,000 from blogging.
Great part 3 of a really interesting series.
I’m relieved to discover that I’m on the right road because I’m just putting the finishing touches to my own product. It’s slow going, because of my other commitments, but I’m not far away now.
Thanks for the motivation to give the creation process that last extra finishing touch.
Joy
Hi Yaro,
Amazing long post
You are correct, number of traffic is not important.I realized this, after reading your post.
It depends upon a blogger to convert his blog into revenue. He has to sell quality products that give something value to his visitors, this will enable him to convert his blog into revenue.
Thank you
Well suffice to say it Yaro, you have done it again. I have read this series twice and have just read most of the comments as well to learn what I can from others. I love how simple this approach is! There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
As I said in a comment last night, “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got”. By next week end my fortnight of re-education will be put into action launching my blog following what I have learned from your blog and resources over the last week of reading (and I am sure I will learn more in the next week).
This sabbatical from spinning my wheels in on-line efforts to re-assess what I am doing has been the best decision I have made to change my on-line efforts from website and blog development to business development. I am set for a patient path of dedication and consistent solid work. but armed with these new tools and information I am confident it will produce much more impressive results than previous efforts. Rest assured all these free information has worked just as you say it does you have a successful conversion and happy customer 😉
Hi Yaro
Glad to find your website. I’m enjoying this article.
By the way, why aussie people really good at internet industry? I found so many good internet marketing, beautiful wordpress themes and plugins, impressive website service come from aussie people. Is there any specific metworking you guys build or maybe govt support?
Yudha
Another super article Yaro. I loved the idea of just starting with a service even if its just $30/- per half an hour to get the ball rolling.
You are an inspiration!!!
Absolutely true Yaro!
I personally learnt this the hard way. I was once told that ‘You need to right 1 article a day’ not that its bad but for a beginner, this is a one way ticket to self destruction. Reason being that as a beginner you will so much focus on quantity as opposed to quality which a bad way to start out.
Focus on quality and even if you are focusing on quantity, never compromise on quality!
Relationships matter! Especially in the legal industry. If I cannot instill trust in those that may retain me for my legal services there are many other options. Being a lawyer that works with the public involves many “sales” skills. Thanks for your great piece. Your content is always wonderful.
When it comes to advertising revenue, 200 visitors a day won’t add up to much. You should focus on monetizing in many ways. And many ways still require a large amount of visitors.
Hi Shawna,
That was the point of this traffic series – to show you how a small number of customers buying your products is a much more realistic goal then trying to get enough traffic to earn money from advertising.
Yaro
I think this posts series are the best articles that I had read in my life.
However I just think your example is very very optimistic. I think that getting 200 visitors per day is not so hard. But I don’t believe that one out of every 10 subscribers will purchase something. This is a 10% conversion rate, which is super hard to get. Anything above 5% is not realistic.
Plus what is the kind of high priced products that someone could sell? Products worth thousand dollars should be something super mega exceptional. And I don’t think that one of every ten paying customer will purchase any product on the range of 4 figures. Maybe one of every twenty or thirty.
In the other site, selling your own products is much more profitable than using the “publishing” formula based on selling ads to make money.
I’m glad you are enjoying the series Cleber. Remember when we are talking about making a sale here it’s over an entire year.
It’s also about selling more to people who already bought from you. So they may start with a $10 product, then six months later purchase a $500 course when you launch, then maybe at the end of the year purchase a $2,000 ticket to a live event you are running.
There are countless options, but what matters here is the principle – it’s about nurturing a small tribe of customers who love to buy what you offer, and getting at least 100 people per year to spend a total of $1,000 over the year.
Do you think it’s reasonable to get 100 customers in a year if you get 200 visitors to your blog each day?
Yaro
I got your point and it makes sense.
Instead of trying to get new customers that costs money, it’s better to build trust and sell more to existent ones, right?
Just one question if you don’t mind helping me: I’m not a newbie nor an expert. I have some good knowledge, but I always failed to make money because always used failed formulas like publishing content and trying to profit with ads.
Now I’m planning to build a blog with absolute zero ads, and with the main focus to capture emails. But i plan to setup email follow ups just to promote a product, not giving unlimited free info and so on.
Just emails with some good tips but in the end always promoting my product.
Is the a good path?
Some people say that first you need to build trust and weeks or months later promote products. However I think that people tend to forgot why they subscribed and will end not purchasing anything.
I’ll promote a $49 product in the IM niche.
Cleber I think you are asking the wrong question here. What really matters is how can you deliver real value to your audience.
When you give people genuine value and help them meet their goals, they will be eager to purchase from you.
How many emails you send, or whether you have ads or no ads, or whether you sell any products is secondary to whether you actually help people with what you offer. If you don’t understand what your audience actually wants now, then spend time learning about your audience first, then build the online platform to serve them.
Yaro
Ok, very helpful answer.
Thanks.
First of all thanks Yaro for putting this blog together – I read it every once and a while whenever I have more time available. Yes it’s good to switch from 200 daily visitors to 1000, which I did for one of my blogs, but unfortunately my income that is mainly from google adsense is still pretty symbolic…yeah I will be putting an ebook, that I’ve been writing for quite some time, plus I have been trying to find some advertisers to place banners on my blog – but so far no success…my last resort would be to try some affiliate ebooks (as there aren’t really products for that niche), but really what else I can do to monetize my blog – having achieved over 25k of unique visitors a month?
A quick advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks again Yaro, and good luck with your online endeavors!
Great advice, I’m sure I could provide both high and low end products for my niche topic and target audience.
Hi Yaro.
I absolutely love this post. I’ve wanted to start a blog for about 5years now but always thought that the ideas I had have been exhausted. After reading this post I have decided to start a “forex trading journey” blog as I am a beginner and have never traded before but I have a friend who has offered to train me as he says he has developed a system that he is sure works but needs a guinea pig to try it. How can I convert any traffic to my blog into sales from his training?
Thanks
Liz
Your post really has clicked with me and I have tried to start offering workshops and low cost front end offers, but still no convertion. I even do a free monthly giveaway to subscribers but it only results in a few new members a month. I run a lifestyle blog and talk about topics focused towards millenials offering advice and positivity for managing life. Some posts are funny, some deep. I think I need to better focus the blog perhaps I am too broadly focused, but I don’t want to limit myself either!!! Help!
I suggest you think about the number one problem your audience has Emily, really zero in on it, and then focus your product and lead-in information about just that subject. However you should make sure it’s actually a problem people have and work to solve, don’t guess – go out there and find out.
Yaro
I do not understand your calculation – specifically the 36 super customers that will spend $5,000 in 12 months. This seems to only makes sense starting from the first month. The 3 super customers, for example, in the 12 month have only 1 month to spend $5,000 according to your calculation.
I don’t understand what you mean by only one month to spend $5000 – what are they doing during the other 11 months?
Yea Yaro your calculation really is not correct. I think AS is correct.
Sorry guys, if you don’t detail your numbers I have no idea what your calculations are.
You’re also missing the point of this. The strategy is to focus on a small amount of rabid buyers to make $100,000 a year. That might be ten people who buy a $10,000 year long mentoring program, or it might be a mix of people spending a range of money, from $30 to $1,000, but still only have a very small core customer group (which is how my business works).
It’s a contrast to the idea that you need tens of thousands of blog visitors a day to make a few pennies from advertising or affiliate income.
Yaro
Great post! Not really sure if we want to focus on monetizing the site since we gained a FB following quickly. It’s good to know that if the fans decided not to flock to the new blog, we will be able to have the option to monetize to a small group.
Creating a product priced $5000 require some investment I guess. What confuses me is that how different information inside membership site, course , book and actual blog? In other words, if you reveal all in a blog how you can provide value on $5000?
Yaro, motivating post.
However, 200 visitors a day and $15,000 per month sounds too sweet.
Sorry to sound non-motivating in this respect, but realilstically it’s worth expecting $0.01-0.02. Really good if you can make $0.1-0.2 per visitor.
Thus, 200 visotrs per day makes 6,000 visitors per month and the expected income would be $60-600 per month.
Getting $15K means you get $2.5 per visitor which is tens of time less than many successsful bloggers make.
For example Pat Flynn, MatthewWoodward makes 10 times less than that.
Many other popular bloggers make even less (here are the data based on their income reports – researchasahobby.com/how-much-money-can-earn-blogging-per-visitor/).
If a blogger can make as much as $15K with 200 visitors per pay, he/she is expeptionally good marketer.
100 customers paying $1,000 per year on products and services you sell.
Do you think you can find 100 customers PER YEAR, if you get 200 people PER DAY visiting your website?
Remember the visitor value on selling your own products and services is a lot higher than ads and affiliates products.
Yaro
I see your point Yaro.
Indeed, creating your own product is the most profitable way to monetize your blog.
However, finding 100 customers per year who pay you $1000 per year from the traffic 200 visitors per day is not typical.
And what is more important, the poduct quality for this price should be really worth it. It should be not just marketing or whatever for newbies. People with some knowledge know what the real price for all this stuff.
Even guys with big targeted traffic who create their own products have hundreds of times more than 200 visitors pay day earn tens times less than your numbers.
Who thinks that they are not smart enough not to offer products like that and become tens times richer?
I belive they are smart enough not to do so, because otherwise they will lose their respect in their audience that they have earned with their very hard work for many years.
Anyway, getting such big income is very hard to achieve for a beginner. I’d say statistically it’s impossible.
Again, I don’t say there are no products that are worth $1K per year. I say that newbies can’t (in 99.9999% or so cases) create such products and earn real respect. Under real respect I mean the respect outside of your ‘gang’ (or ‘inner circle’ how they call it), the respect among the people who understand the real price of the things.
It might serve you more to change your mindset about this and look for examples that prove the point, rather than tell yourself it’s not true.
What you believe is what you will experience, and I’d rather believe it’s possible and look for all the examples from other people that show it is.
The fact is that $1,000 from 100 people a year is a real possibility because thousands of people already do something like it online. Of course the numbers are not going to be strictly the same for everyone. Some people find 10 customers a year who pay $10,000 a year, others sell memberships at $29/month and have thousands of members.
Some, like myself, have a range of products and services, just as I teach in the Blog Sales Funnel, and take things further to make multiple six figures to even millions a year.
Yes we all start as beginners, but that’s like saying you can’t become an adult because you are a born a baby. It’s a process you can choose to go through and if you desire the outcome.
Yaro
And just to add, if your main idea is to focus on a small amount of rabid buyers, then in order to find those buyers you need to attract tens of times more visitors just to filter them out.
You can’t simply say, hey guys, I want only rapid buyers to visit my site.
Also, I don’t say it’s not possible, I say it’s very much not typical.
Man, I do receive 300-500 uniques/day and my traffic is increasing (ggod traffic not bought) but I never ever made more than 1 USD/day with my site. I wish i could earn 15K/month from my actual traffic. Site is good, visitors are college students, but I to receive one subscbriber is very difficult if not impossible.
This is something totally impressive. Making $100,000 yearly sounds like getting 100,000 monthly visitors to a 2 day old blog. Not to say that it’s not achievable or too difficult to achieve but it just doesn’t look like what living bloggers should do. Let me do my math publicly.
I have a front-end product that costs $24.99 that one needs to purchase before being able to purchase the back-end product that costs $75.01. That is to say that I aim to make $100 from my most loyal buyers as often as they wish. I get roughly 400 visitors a day and out of that, converting just 5 of them isn’t such a miracle.
And so, that make me roughly $120 to $500 daily, which results to $3,600 to $15,000 a month and eventually $43,200 to $180,000 yearly. Yay! But unfortunately, that’s a dream.
I have both the blog and the product ready for buyers and potential buyers
… Behind locks of trafficlessness. This is a challenge that faces every new blog and some times, people may resolve to crude means of getting traffic. I need to reach that 400 visitors per day target in 3 months and I have an idea on how to do this and this great idea is simple: nothing. I have nothing to spend to get me there (literally nothing) and I don’t see the search engines working out to well for me, though I use some of the top SEO plugins to make sure my posts are search engine optimized and my brain to brew some quality.
Yaro, is there anything you can tell me? I need that traffic… That little traffic more than anything and I don’t know how to do this. What can you say to this?
In case you detect any kind of rudeness, forgive me. I criticize for a living and I confuse chickens for dogs and both creatures beat me up for this.
What are you doing to get traffic right now?
If traffic is the problem, which sounds like it is in your case, then you’re clearly not doing what you need to do to get traffic.
Yaro
Hi Yaro, I’ve read a lot of your stuff and admire you greatly. But I have to say I disagree with everything here. And I’m speaking as someone who does make $100,000 a year from a low traffic blog (less than 20,000 sessions a month, with an email list of over 10,000).
This model, for me, is flawed for a great many reasons.
1.) Case studies. Is there any evidence of this working for someone?
2.) You’re focussing on selling products (e-books, video courses, etc.) from one platform and one platform alone. You’re turning your back on a lot of income sources here and you’ll never sell that many with such low traffic, even if it’s the best product line in the world. Video courses can also be sold on platforms like Udemy, Skillshare and now Amazon Video Direct. You’ve already got the products why not sell them elsewhere? It doesn’t take any time and you can guarantee sales by syphoning off some of your email list to buy on the platforms which will ensure organic sales later on. E-books should also be sold on Kindle. Both e-books and video courses can be bundled with other products on deals sites such as Dealfuel and Stacksocial. Even better, traffic and email signups will follow you from these sites to your blog and list. This will help you get closer to that $100,000/year.
3.) The money is really mostly in the list. As I alluded to above, a list is even essential to start you selling on other platforms and selling on your own. You hardly ever get organic sales from a product on a blog. But you do get them for a special offer to an email list. But 1 sale of a $20 e-book from each 10 subscribers? Really??? Have you ever had conversions like that, Yaro? Do you even have 1 straightaway per 50 now? Honestly?
4.) “strategically attract a certain person and deliberately ignore others. You are looking for exactly the right kind of person who is perfectly placed to benefit tremendously from what you provide.” I really hate this guru advice. Yaro doesn’t do this, but you should! 🙂 OK niche down to a tiny group of people, create products for them and then what? You’ve shot your load. You’ve got nothing more to sell! Plus most people who are reading this don’t even know what that tiny niche should be. “Getting paid to find out your audience and what they want” yes, I agree with that. But the two things are slightly incongruent. People should cover a variety of subjects in their blog to find out what works for them and what works for the audience. You simply don’t know enough to niche down in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th year.
I publish profit reports every quarter which show how I make $70,000 pa from product sales with another $30,000 pa coming from active income – working with clients. I agree with Yaro on a lot of points but I thought I’d offer some alternatives here which may be of help to some of you.
Love,
Rob x
1. Take a look at https://yaro.blog/success-stories/ (not all of them are relevant for the numbers we talk about here because they are further along, making millions of dollars from a few thousand customers, but the ratio is still similar – big money from small amounts of people)
2. Rob you are of course right, but when you say things like this you overwhelm a lot of my audience. The idea of having to work on your blog + amazon kindle + Udemy + Skillshare + Amazon – not to mention YouTube, affiliate platforms, and so on. I’m preaching a simple idea, grow a blog, build a list, sell a product. You can expand into all these other areas if you want to later if you want more channels, but frankly most people new to this struggle with just one channel.
3. Totally agree. I personally get 50-100 email signups a day purely from my blog and make $30,000 to $70,000 from that from a lot of different products. Back when I got 10-20 signups a day from the early days of my blog and I sold just one product, I made about $10,000 a month. Most people who subscribe don’t buy, some quickly leave my email list, but I had a few hundred who stuck around to buy my stuff. This is the goal I set for my audience too. Keep it simple.
4. I don’t understand why you don’t think I do this. The only people who buy from me feel a strong resonance with the unique message I deliver, and there are only a few hundred of them choosing to buy from me for the first time each year (a very small group). They could go with Jon Morrow or just read Darren Rowse, or Pat Flynn, or Derek Halpern or countless other people who teach exactly the same as I teach, but they choose me because they are uniquely suited to my message. This is the same positioning strategy all my graduates use – it’s basically the same strategy all bloggers use. Find your tribe who love what you do.
Rob I don’t know you, but I expect you are dedicated to helping people just as I am. If you’ve been coaching and teaching for a long time you know there are many ways to do things, but sometimes what is more important than anything for your students is to keep things simple, which is what I am preaching with this article series.
Yaro
I’m sorry if I offended you, Yaro, you’re right, I don’t know you and I was perhaps a bit short in my earlier comment. I just thought the numbers and the model are a bit out and would put people on the wrong course and give them false expectations. But, so what? Good if it does, now I think of it. I want people to start blogging and creating content. I think it still makes sense in 2016.
I don’t want this to go on but can I respond back to your points? You probably won’t reply back anyway because you’re a busy man but just to clarify what I was saying and establish common ground.
1. If these people have achieved these numbers with the above model then I retract what I said. The only one I know is Joanna Penn (who has sold 450,000 books and has a successful long-running podcast)
2. OK. Yes, got to keep things simple at the start. But the beauty of platforms like Udemy and Skillfeed is that they don’t take hardly any extra time. You just have to duplicate what you have on their – the email list is essential here though. Honestly, I made $2.5k plus last month from StackSocial and it didn’t take me 5 minutes of work because of the beauty of cloud storage!
3. “One out of every 10 people who join your email newsletter buy your entry level product priced at $20” when I read that I thought you meant straightaway.
4. “strategically attract a certain person and deliberately ignore others. You are looking for exactly the right kind of person who is perfectly placed to benefit tremendously from what you provide.” sounded to me like you’re advising people to niche down in terms of content. Finding people “uniquely suited to my message” I agree with. You can talk about the same subjects that Jon Morrow, Darren Rowse, Pat Flynn, or Derek Halpern or countless others talk about – and more! But people will engage and buy from you because they resonate with *you*. That I agree with.
But I still think you need to do more than blog. Yes, it can’t all be done in a day. It can’t all be done in a year. But I’d have nothing like the income I have if I just stuck to the blog and ignored the platforms.
Yes. I like to keep things simple.
Thank you for allowing me to rant on your blog, Yaro.
Rob 🙂
Thank Yaro, This post is very helpful for me, I’m a new blogger and don’t know how to monetize my blog, then I found something I need in your blog.
Hi Yaro,
As usual, everything that you write is excellent and of great value to everybody on net.
I am using few techniques that you taught me long ago and everything works as you said it will.
Thank you again and I wish you all the best in the future.
Thank you indeed Yaro, I completely agree with what you said in this amazing blog post. I think the good marketer is the one who can target the right person in the right time. This way you ensure you will gain $$$.
this is a vert good article …. but can this possible 100k A year with google adsense only ?
I just started to get serious with blogging and switched to a self-hosting website. Last few weeks of July when I got a self-hosting, I only had 500 views for that month. So I tried to monitor my views monthly. In August 2016, 7000 views. Sep 2016, 8000 views. October 2016, 10,000 views. Is it good? I am not selling anything yet on my blog. I am using Google Adsense only.
Everything you said make sense. But the hard part is i think to have a Product to Offer for the visitors . I agree that you have options to go all unique content or get someone do that for you.
Smart article. Your point about debunking the blogging traffic myths we all hear makes sense and also cents 🙂 Sorry could not resist the pun. After reading your article I plan to ignore lots of people and go deep instead of wide to speak to my target audience and find my tribe. What first steps do you recommend to bloggers to build traffic? Thanks for all your time and talents shared so generously.
Hi Yaro
Am so glad to have come across your post
It’s an eye opener indeed
I’m an upcoming blogger and a little bit anxious about the whole blogging process
I’ll appreciate if you could advise further
Beatrice
Comprehensive and useful information as always. My email list goes up and down over the years, but is definitely not where I would want it. I’m putting this information to good use with the hope of building traffic. Thanks!
Yaro – God Of Blogging
You deserve more than that name, I came to discover about blogging and the only technique bloggers in my country succeed in was on the magazine model – get high traffic, get paid by advertiser for views.
But, you yaro starak blog masterminder taught me the expert model that has really change my whole blogging career.
I am grateful!
I am always on your list.
You are indeed an epitome of success.
Love you too much.