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Many bloggers make the mistake of focusing their blogs either too narrow, or on the wrong things, and they end up hitting a glass ceiling. No matter how hard they work, they just can’t seem to break through to the next income level – and often their limited income isn’t enough to live off.
As a result, they end up running more than one blog just to get by – and instead of working eight hours per day for a boss, they end up working 14 hours a day for themselves – for the same amount of money…
But how do you prevent that from happening? After all, so many gurus are advocating “low hanging fruit”, and that requires absolute focus, right?
Not quite. There are only so many people looking for (just an example) a WordPress plugin that can do “X, Y, Z, A, E and K’. If you are the only one with a blog offering that solution, it may sound great – but if only 50 people per month are looking for that solution, you will make just a few sales per month, no matter what you do.
There are, however, two ways of working past it:
Firstly, loosen up on your focus. Instead of making your blog all about “product X”, make your blog about the typical problems faced by people who could benefit from buying “product X”, even if they don’t know it yet. Then, in your follow-up email sequence, you can make them aware of the problem they didn’t know they have, and present them with the solution (“product X”).
Doing this will allow you to not only attract a lot more visitors to your blog, but it will also open the door to changing your product focus at any given time, while still allowing you to offer a range of related products which could benefit your visitors.
Think of it as having a cheese shop in a small town (limited number of potential customers). If you ONLY offer cheese, you will attract only people who definitely want cheese. However, if you offer say, salty crackers along with that, some of the people coming in to buy the salty crackers will want to combine it with cheese.
And then you sell more cheese – to the same number of people in the town – because you offered something related to it.
(keep in mind that you can still offer specific products related to any blog post inside the post, while your “front end product” remains the same)
The bottom line – be sure to allow yourself more possibilities. With more possibilities come more interested people, which in turn means a higher potential turnover.
Secondly, if you really want to keep your focus very narrow, ascertain if there is potential for higher ticket items that can be tied to the initial offer.
For instance – let’s say you are a therapist selling a product aimed at helping people overcome a specific, unusual phobia. “Unusual” means “not too many customers”, but it also means “not too many solutions available”.
So, you can sell the ebook, you can sell a video course, you can sell one on one therapy sessions (even if they are online), you can sell access to workshops, and you can sell access to events where those who have overcome their phobia can put it to the test by challenging themselves.
The ebook can sell for let’s say, $37, while the live events can sell for a few hundred dollars per person. So even if you only have like 30 new customers per month, which gives you roughly $1,000 after processing costs, you will also be getting say, ten of those people who also get the online course at $97, giving you another $950 after costs, and 5 who choose the one on one coaching at $200 per month. Let’s say the average person takes roughly three months to overcome his or her phobia, and that adds a total of $3,000 per month to your potential income (after it accumulated for three months).
On top of that, you will be holding a workshop and a live “challenge” event every three months, each of which can attract say, 20 people at $300 each. That’s another $6,000 per event, $12,000 in total. That comes back to an additional $4,000 per month.
So – instead of making $1,000 from ebook sales, you are now up to about $9,000 per month.
And then you haven’t even started on the back end of related products. You can sell – for instance – high ticket items relating to self improvement, self esteem, self confidence, and goal setting. All of these can add a hundred or more dollars per sale.
Let’s say that people looking for a solution to this problem are pretty desperate in general – and in order to make your 30 sales for the ebook, you only got 300 people on your mailing list for the month.
If you can make just one (affiliate) back end sale per 100 people per mailing, and you send out two mailings per week, which comes to an additional 24 sales per month which, depending on the pricing, can give you anything from another $2,000 to 3,000 dollars per month per 300 subscribers.
If those subscribers remain on your list for an average of only three months, that will mean it will build up to $6,000 to $9,000 per month, bringing your total income to roughly $15,000 to $18,000 per month.
Now, if you were still only selling that $37 ebook…
You get the picture.
Disclaimer: All of these figures are merely illustrative – but they do prove a point.
Lastly, there are limitations on the amount of traffic you can attract by means of personal effort – but if you have either or both of the above in place, it will be worth your while to pay for high quality traffic to expand your business.
In conclusion
In some cases, “fishing in a small pond” is inevitable – but it doesn’t mean that you have to settle for making less money. If you cannot find a way to increase the income (even if it takes time) through more options or through high ticket items, you need to take a serious look at whether the effort versus reward ratio is working for you.