You may think it’s a bit premature to plan ahead before you even created your blog…
But it’s better to have a good idea of where you’re going before you get started. Unless, of course, you enjoy the idea of going nowhere slowly. Some people do – although not many bloggers do.
Firstly, decide for yourself whether this project will be for fun or for profit. Will you be doing this as a hobby project, or as a business designed to generate substantial income?
If you want to do your blog for fun, then go have some fun. You can skip this part. However, if you want to create a blog that makes you money, continue reading.
The aim of any business – logically speaking – is to grow it as big as possible, while keeping it as profitable as possible – and still having enough time left to have a life along the way.
Think of it like this:
Where do you see your blog in two or three years from now?
Do you still see yourself making $500 per month from it, or do you envision having a really successful blog that make you a five or six figure income? If you want your blog to go somewhere, you may want to see if the destination is worthwhile or not.
If you keep on blogging as regularly as you can, and you keep working at improved social media exposure, building a list, etc, for a period of three years, a few things happen:
a. Your consistency pays off – you will establish yourself as a brand online.
b. As your blog grows bigger and bigger, Google starts seeing your blog as an authority site, and as such gives you even better rankings and more traffic.
c. Depending on your niche, more and more of your stuff will be shared – purely due to the public perception of your being an authority figure.
d. Because of the perception of you being an authority figure, you’ll be in a position to do things other people can’t – like offering coaching, speaking at events, etc.
So – what will you do with this position of credibility and authority?
For maximum benefit, you should leverage it – or at least scale it as big as you can.
Here are a few options to consider:
a. You can create your own products (you can outsource it if you want to), and get affiliates to market them for you. That way, you can scale it as big as your affiliate army allows. Depending on the growth of your operation, you may even want to consider appointing an affiliate manager who recruits new ones, and motivate the existing ones.
b. Offer coaching – not online video courses, but live coaching. This is incredibly lucrative, and depending on your niche, a live course can cost as much as $10,000 per person for a period of six months. Imagine having just ten students at a time, and two sessions per year – that’s $200,000 per year. Not too bad for working on your laptop a few hours per day…
c. Innovate – and offer something for which there is a need, but no solution is available at present. Even if it is a free resource, it can still attract a boatload of new visitors to your blog. An example that comes to mind is Dave Chesson’s Kindle Income Calculator (according to book ranking) which has brought him many, many new visitors and subscribers. Of course, others copied him – but he already established his position, and remains at the top of Google for it.
https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-kdp-sales-rank-calculator/
d. Create a membership area – with your own ebooks, videos, training materials, tools, etc. The free section will help to build your list, while the paid section can provide you with a growing monthly income.
e. Use your blog to really launch yourself as an authority – by using it as a launch pad for a book (paper or Kindle), and then (depending on your niche) for seminars, workshops, and eventually high ticket one on one coaching.
