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Why Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money

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Darren Rowse doesn’t make his money from Problogger . Brian Clark doesn’t make his money from Copyblogger . Chris Brogan doesn’t make his money from his blog, either. Neither does Sonia Simone . Not a single founding member of Third Tribe earns the bulk of their income from the blogs that are practically (or in Chris’ case, literally) synonymous with their names. Yes, they make some money directly from those blogs. But revenue directly from the blog doesn’t represent the bulk of their income. Not by a long shot. So why do so many bloggers equate blog success with financial success? Many, if not most, of the bloggers I see are hoping that their blogs will make them popular. They are also hoping their blogs will make them money. This isn’t exactly surprising. Fame and riches are supposed to go hand in hand, after all. But when you need a new stream of income tomorrow, you don’t write ten more blog posts. You create a new product. You launch an email campaign . You make a special offer. You network. You find a great new JV partner. You ask for referrals and check in with your current clients. Similarly, when you want to get more subscribers for your blog tomorrow, you don’t launch a product. You write better content. You get more active on social media. You guest post on other people’s blogs. You link to other good articles. You improve your SEO . Building a profitable business and creating a popular blog are two different things Related, yes. But different. The most popular blogs you know do not make most of their money simply by racking up the subscriber numbers. They make their money with products, consulting, services, and advertising. They make their money by running a successful business. The fact that they run a popular blog facilitates that business. If Brian wants to launch a product tomorrow, he has a big, engaged audience to whom he can launch it. Having a huge audience who will listen when you launch a product isn’t the profitable part, though. The profitable part is that Brian will create a product that his audience wants and needs. He’ll run an informative and compelling launch. He’ll have an affiliate program that works and a sales sequence that converts prospects into buyers . Does the large subscriber base help with that product launch? Absolutely. But the blog itself is not the thing that’s making money. If Copyblogger, with its magnificently large platform, were to launch a terrible product with a really weak campaign and only promoted it with a few blog posts to this vast audience of readers, they wouldn’t make enough money to pay my grocery bill. Having a popular blog is not enough. You still have to build the business. No, of course you shouldn’t neglect your blog There are many, many virtues to a popular blog: social proof, credibility, enhanced visibility. They’re good for forging new business contacts and partnerships. They’re good for attracting potential customers for the products you’ll make or services you’ll provide. They’re brilliant for creating relationships. I don’t know my dentist as well as I know some bloggers. And I trust my dentist with my teeth even though he comes at them with a variety of pointy things with hooks on their ends. Blogs help us make those trusting, potentially valuable connections, and for that reason alone, they’re worth pouring time and energy into. But no matter how hard you try, your subscriber numbers are never going to magically transform themselves into your bank balance. When it comes to making money, simply having a blog isn’t enough. Now you have to take all the things the blog has given you — visibility, authority , a reputation for knowing your industry, social proof — and put them to work building you a profitable business. Because it won’t happen on its own. If you want to use your blog as a jumping-off place for that business, though, Third Tribe has got you covered. The seminar you’ll want to listen to is the 4-part series on Building a Business Around a Blog, which features interviews with Sonia Simone, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, and Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. They cover a lot of ground, including: The three factors your blog must have if you want to make serious money with advertising Brogan’s two favorite ways to start bringing in revenue by using a blog The specifics about where the bulk of their income really comes from (you may be surprised) Why “blogging about blogging” isn’t the way to go How Darren uses surveys to build his business (and why Brian doesn’t) A quick creativity technique to develop the next killer idea for your business How to handle pushback if your customers respond negatively to your products I listened to all four of these interviews. And not once, in hours of discussing techniques, business-building ideas, and marketing strategy, did any of these bloggers say that the best way to make money was to get more subscribers. They’ve got a few ideas for how to do that too, though. Because blogs are valuable — just not in the way you think. You can get instant access to all four seminars (and a dozen more), as well as Q&A sessions and the web’s best networking forum for internet businesspeople, by joining the Third Tribe today . About the Author: Taylor Lindstrom is a freelance copywriter and Assistant Editor of Copyblogger . She’s taking lots of notes about how to turn sharp copywriting into a profitable business.

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The Foolproof Cure for Weak Content: 4 Ways to Get Some Perspective

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When I was fifteen, I wrote a novel. I thought it was pretty good, and daydreamt about literary stardom. Fast forward ten years. I recently found my old notebooks and read that novel over again. And … let’s just say it wasn’t as good as I remembered, and leave it at that. It’s amazing what a difference perspective makes. Usually, you’re not going to be revisiting work from a decade ago. You’re going to be busy trying to get that new website copy done, or that sales page written, or that ebook finished. Problem is, when you’re writing, you’re working at a zoomed-in level. You’re so deeply into the words that you can’t get a grasp on the whole piece. You’re emotionally attached to your work, and even if it doesn’t seem perfect, you simply can’t see any way to change or improve it. Here’s how to zoom back out and get the big picture. 1. Let it rest Ever since I started writing as a teen, I’ve heard this piece of advice. Put your first draft aside for a few days (or at least 24 hours ). Leave it alone. Yes, it’s hard; you’re itching to get your piece finished . You’ll need to plan ahead: give yourself a few days in the middle of a project to take a break. Your unconscious mind will carry on mulling over that project while you’re away from it. When you pick it up again, you’ll come to it afresh. You’ll have new insights. You’ll see different possibilities. Mistakes will jump off the page at you. How long should you put your work aside for? I’d say, the longer the piece, the longer you let it rest. For a blog post, leaving it for a day is probably enough. For a novel, give it at least a couple of weeks — preferably a month. 2. Read as a reader When you pick up your piece again after a break, try to get into the mindset of a reader. Imagine it’s the first time you’ve read this. It helps to make a clear physical break between your writing mode and reading mode. Depending on your project and how you like to work, that might mean: Printing out the whole thing and reading it in a coffee shop Turning it from a word document into a PDF so that you can’t keep changing the text as you read Creating a “real book” version of your manuscript on Lulu Reading through the whole thing in one session While you’re reading, watch out for: Anything vague. Have you assumed knowledge which your real readers might not have? Anything extraneous. It might be interesting to you, but if you can cut it out without losing any meaning from the piece, it should go. In fiction, I ask myself “Is this part of the story?” Anything redundant. When you’re working on a project over a long period of time, you’ll often end up with two similar sections, or very similar phrase or word choices close together. Next to impossible to spot when you’re writing, glaringly obvious to readers. 3. Ask for feedback However great your imagination, you can never truly put yourself in the position of a first-time reader. You know your writing and your topic too well. There’s an easy solution, however: Find some actual readers Ideally, pick people in your target audience. You could try: A writing circle — either a group that meets in real life, or an online one Regular commenters on your blog Participants in a forum or membership site which you belong to (I’m sending out my ebook draft to some fellow Third Tribers this coming weekend) Unless she happens to be a writer too, or typical of your readership, your mom is not the best person to ask for feedback. Ditto for your spouse. They’re likely to be kind rather than constructively critical. When you ask for feedback, be clear about what you want If this is a first draft, you’re not primarily concerned with typos or the occasional clunky sentence. You want to know if whole sections should be cut, or whether your angle works, or if your call to action is clear. I always give my guinea-pig readers a free copy of the finished piece, if appropriate. It’s also nice to offer to reciprocate if they ever want feedback on a writing project. 4. Proofread Once you’re past the revisions stage and into the final version, you’ll need to proofread. Although you can get away with the occasional typo, spelling mistake or grammatical slip in most blog posts, you’ll want to avoid any embarrassing mistakes in your shiny new ebook or your slick sales page. I find that I’m great at finding typos in other people’s work … and awful at spotting them in my own. Usually, I find a long suffering friend to proof-read for me, but if I’m proofreading my own material, this is what helps: Proofread on paper For some reason, it’s easier to spot mistakes on paper than on the screen. Perhaps it’s because we’re more prone to skimming on the screen, or because our eyes glide over any mistakes which the spellchecker hasn’t picked up. Regardless of why , it works. Print out your piece, and go through it slowly with a red pen in hand. Proofread backwards When we read, we rarely take in every word. Uur brain fills in what it expects to see — even if that’s not quite what’s there. (Ever mis-read a headline? Or a billboard?) Reading your work backwards deals with this. You’re forced to look at every single word. It’s a slow and tortuous process, but if you have a piece of work which absolutely must be error-free, it’s the best way to do it. How about you? Do you find it hard to get perspective on your writing? What methods work for you? And have you ever written something which you thought was perfect … until you looked at it again a few months later? Let us know about it in the comments. About the Author: Ali Hale writes about productivity with perspective alongside Thursday Bram on their newly-launched blog Constructively Productive: you can grab the RSS feed here .

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The Insider Guide to Creating An Audience of Raving Fans

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There’s a scene in the animated series Futurama that cracks me up every time I think about it. The show’s characters are at the horse track of the future, but there’s controversy when a race ends very, very closely — so closely that the race officials need a powerful electron microscope to judge the “photo finish.” The track loudspeaker eventually announces, “And the winner is … Number Three, in a quantum finish!” And Professor Farnsworth, who had bet on the other horse, tears up his tickets in a rage and yells, “No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!” Didn’t get the joke? Don’t worry, neither did most of the viewers. I’m quite sure that the writers laughed out loud when writing that scene. They were a bunch of nerds, and thought that applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to horse racing was the height of hilarity. But 99% of the viewers probably didn’t find it the height of hilarity. I’d guess that 75% didn’t even know that the line was a joke. So why did the writers include the gag? Because the remaining 1% who did get it became fans for life. How to lay eggs (like a platypus … they don’t do much, you know) I call hidden gems like this “Easter eggs” — a video game term referring to hidden areas, rooms, or events that developers add to games to amuse themselves. Animated humor shows like Futurama , The Simpsons , and many others are absolutely stuffed with Easter eggs, and they’re an important part of building the massive cult followings these shows enjoy. When I recognized Farnsworth’s line for what it was, I felt like I was part of an exclusive club. In fact, I felt like that joke had been placed there for me and me alone . I could immediately imagine hanging out with those writers. That Easter egg made me feel like we were buddies, that we had so much in common. I became hooked on Futurama . I never missed an episode. I told all of my friends to watch it. I bought all of the DVDs. Then, when I realized how effective those obscure little jokes had been on me, I started including them in my own writing. If something amused me, I didn’t worry about the people who wouldn’t get it, unless not understanding it would ruin the reading experience. So I let those oddball references fly … and I credit them with a lot of my recent growth. Here are two examples of Easter eggs I’ve placed recently here on Copyblogger: In a recent Copyblogger wrap-up , I made passing reference to “ruling the tri-state area,” “setting fire to the sun,” and “big laundry.” All three were lines said by Heinz Doofenschmirtz, the ridiculous villain of the children’s animated series Phineas and Ferb. In an earlier wrap-up , while recapping a story about how overcoming purchase paralysis is like saving people from a burning building, I mentioned hanging from the arm of Kurt Russell while he says, “You go, we go!” in a heroic fashion. That’s a line and scene from the firefighter movie Backdraft . Luckily, Brian is in that small group of people who finds most of my Easter eggs, and he lets me continue to hide them. And when I wanted to be replaced by Johnny Marr , his comment was, “It doesn’t matter if anyone else gets it. I think it’s hilarious.” I thought it was hilarious too. A small group of people who read it thought it was hilarious, and proceeded to swap Smiths and Johnny Marr references in the comments. If you’re thinking, “I don’t want only 1-5% of people who read my writing to appreciate it!” I have a clarification to add: As long as your post works without the Easter egg, people will still read you and like you even if they don’t get your hidden gags. This is an important point, so I’ll make it one more time. The post has to stand alone. It has to work even if they don’t get the Easter egg. That Johnny Marr post on Copyblogger? While a small group got the gag and joined in on it, a much larger group read the wrap-up the way they would read any post, and clicked through my teasers to read the full posts. The post did what it was supposed to do, whether or not you know (or care) who Johnny Marr is. If you place your Easter eggs well, you’ll get a cloud of people who read your stuff the way they would read anything else they were interested in. But at the center of that cloud will be your core fans . Your insiders. Your “club of you.” I love my club. The people who truly “get” me with all my oddities and foibles are like old friends. I bond with them. They bond with me. We interact in my comments and on Twitter. But they also want to read more of what I write, wherever and whenever I write it. They spread the word, tell their friends, become ambassadors and raving fans … and often buy everything I sell (as well as taking advantage of my free offers, for that matter, like my current free blog setup promotion .) The smaller the group who takes something from your writing, the more exclusive those people feel. You don’t have to settle for a small audience, but there’s a lot of value in having a nucleus of core fans surrounded by what I might call an “interested horde.” You can build both the nucleus and the horde at the same time. Here’s how. Six rules for hiding Easter eggs 1. Don’t confine yourself to humor I’m an animation geek and have always liked humor in most forms, so the Easter eggs I hide tend to be jokes or references that are meant to make the reader chuckle. But anything obscure will work. If you’re an alternative music fan, you might observe how Darren Rowse looks a little like Moby . If you’re a Starbucks barista, you might mention that tech skills need constant adjustment and sharpening — just like a burr grinder that processes a lot of low-quality beans. 2. The post has to work even if they don’t get the reference I know we already said this. It’s important. The Farnsworth line in Futurama wouldn’t have worked if the rest of the episode had revolved around the intricacies of why quantum uncertainty had foiled Farnsworth’s horse bet. It worked because it was a throw-away line. You either caught it or you didn’t. Either way, the action marched on. 3. Don’t be a pretentious jerk A few Easter eggs are fun. A diet of Easter eggs will give your readers heartburn. If you stuff your writing full of references and jokes that are so obscure that nobody will get them, you’ll just come off as pretentious. (An example of someone who doesn’t listen to this rule: former comedian Dennis Miller. Yeah, he used to be funny.) 4. Don’t over-explain If you have to explain it, it’s not an Easter egg, it’s just a joke that fell flat. You’ll have to walk a fine line to balance clarity with inside jokiness. Sometimes you’ll need to add a few clues, but don’t overdo it. 5. Make it natural I’ve failed here if all of a sudden, we see a rash of blog posts into which writers have used a crowbar to insert obscure references and inside jokes. Don’t think of them as something you add; think of them as something you allow to remain. It should feel natural. Write what comes to you — and then stop yourself from editing all of the gems out. 6. Amuse yourself first I use Easter eggs because I love finding them myself. It’s a game. If something doesn’t make you chuckle or smile or think when you write it, don’t include it. Some things are meant to be edited out because they simply don’t work. Let those go; no one likes a bad Easter egg. The name of the game is connection, and like so many other pieces of advice in the blogosphere, much of this boils down to finding your right people . Using Easter eggs is kind of like when a punk fan wears a shirt with a certain band’s logo on it. Other punk fans will see it and will say, “I know what that logo is!” And if those two people strike up a conversation, there’s likely to be instant rapport. Think of your Easter eggs as a way of creating specialized rapport. Great content builds a wider audience. But leave in a couple of Easter eggs, to build your “club of you,” too. About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is setting up self-hosted WordPress blogs for free until July 23rd . Learn more about Johnny at his blog, JohnnyBTruant.com .

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Is Spiritual Business a Contradiction in Terms?

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With all the beads, prayers, affirmations, “laws of abundance,” and other woo-woo business accoutrements flying around these days, you’d think there’s some fire sale promotion going on spirituality. Maybe it’s the rough economy, or the unsettling pace of change. Business seems to be getting more and more difficult, and support is hard to come by. When you’re struggling, the idea of having the unseen realms backing you is pretty appealing. But can getting more spiritual really help your business? For some of us, spirituality is everyday stuff. It’s how you relate to the world, in business just as in all other things. It’s what’s for lunch. As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi said, it’s “Nothing special.” For others, spirituality in the realm of business can seem profane, inappropriate, or just plain bizarre. So which is it? Is spirituality the missing leverage point in business — or is it just plain wrong to use spirituality to get what you want? What the Heaven is spirituality? Spirituality is one of those words that can be tricky to define. The Oxford American Dictionary defines it as: … of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to the material or physical things. I would define spirituality as any connection we feel to a greater purpose, existence, or reality than ourselves. It means there is a core Oneness that everything comes from and everything returns to. Ever been in love? You know what I’m talking about. Things spirituality doesn’t really work for On a power trip? Spirituality is not going to get you world domination. If you want to manipulate people into doing something that’s not in their best interest, your connection to love and all-that-is ain’t gonna help you. Because spirituality isn’t a tool or technique, you can’t “use” it like that. When people describe their spiritual experiences, they tend to use words like: “awe-inspiring” “humbling” “connected to everything” “full of love” “deep trust and peacefulness” If you’re trying to trick people into spending money on something worthless, it’s pretty doubtful those words describe your state of mind. But hold on … something seems familiar here. Copywriting, business, and spirituality Here are a couple of key themes about copywriting and sales that you’re probably familiar with if you’re a regular Copyblogger reader: You’ve got to believe in yourself and your product . You need an attitude of service . Rather than talking endlessly about yourself, you have to listen to your readers and engage them in conversation . You have to care about your audience . Great salespeople and marketers, the ones you feel good about and look up to instead of feeling slimed by, have this combination of confidence and humility, caring and willingness to deliver on their promises. Are you starting to see what I’m seeing? Maybe this spirituality thing could be helpful after all I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an amazing way to spend my time. To be awe-inspired by the presence of the people you are wanting to help, to be humble and not distracted by trying to be something or someone you’re not, to feel connected to everything and full of love. And to have it all grounded in deep trust and peacefulness. If your blog posts, tweets, products, content, conversations, and connections reflected that sort of approach, what would that do for your business? Or for that matter, for your life? Spiritual teacher soup Listen, I may have been designated as a master teacher in my spiritual lineage. I may have years of spiritual practice behind me. But let me tell you, all I need is a bunch of cool people to launch cool things while I’m sitting on the sidelines and all my internal voices get going. I’m an incompetent booby. I’ll never catch up with those guys. Maybe what I do doesn’t matter anyway. I get worried and upset and angry. The usual things that I’m tempted to do in moments like that (work harder, be brilliant, eat too much ice cream) tend to be completely ineffective. In fact, they leave me feeling even worse. Maybe you’re the same. You end up doing crazy things. Like buying yet another high-priced program when you already know what to do. Or launching a sales page that feels like it was written by a sleazy car salesman. Or retreating into a corner, too paralyzed and overwhelmed to do anything at all. That’s one of the very useful things about spiritual practice. My practice allows me to drop all of those thoughts very quickly, saving me from acting on those impulses, from sabotaging myself or scaring off our clients. It allows my heart to drink the love, peace and groundedness it thirsts for. That’s the real payoff. The side effect? I’m more on-point with what I’m doing. Efficient, effective, connected. Mother Teresa — you know, that once-unknown little nun who mobilized tens of thousands of people to care for the poorest of the poor, and trotted the globe bringing in millions of dollars and creating a legacy that has lasted far past her death? She insisted that everyone associated with her Missionaries of Charity spend precious hours in spiritual practice every day, even when there was the pressing need of dying and starving people all around. Why? Because getting stuff done simply wasn’t enough. Ticking items off a to-do list is draining. But understanding that what you do and who you are into the world is an expression of profound love and caring — that’s when miracles happen. It worked for her. It works for my business and our clients. It can work for you, too. Have your spirit call my spirit, they’ll do lunch As the great Sufi sheikh Ibn al Arabi said, All streams lead to the Ocean. There are a million ways to connect to spirit. Some are organized, some are eclectic. Some are communal, some personal. All, hopefully, are grounded in love and service. I share my Sufism with two poets you may have heard of, Rumi and Hafiz . Sufis talk about Remembrance as a spiritual practice. That this connection with spirit is not something to cross off a to-do list or a technique to be mastered, but an essential part of who you are that is simply to be Remembered. What if you were to stop in the middle of your busy day, right in the middle of your never-ending task list, right in the middle of the sales page copy or blog post you’ve been pushing uphill, and took time to speak to your heart and ask it to remember? To remember that love and connection are essential to your business. To remember that you aren’t alone, and that you don’t need to be anyone other than who you are. To remember that it’s okay to be humble and in service, and that you are cared for deeply. No one has to watch you do this. If you want help, I did a short audio to guide folks, Ack! Where’s My Heart? Stop working so hard. Use all of that tremendous will power and individual force that you’ve been given to ease off the gas pedal and just stop. Stop. Breathe. Remember love. When you step on the gas again, you just might find it easier to do whatever you were struggling with before, and making bigger ripples once it’s out there. Who, after all, can resist love? About the Author: Mark Silver helps entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to make a difference, but also need to make a profit. Check out his website and blog at Heart of Business , follow him on Twitter , or take the free Remembrance Challenge .

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Is Spiritual Business a Contradiction in Terms?