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My Blogging Journey and Content System Creation Process

fastlanedoll

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Maybe post links to your blog / channel and we can give advice?
 
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Phew. Sounds like a lot of time and effort. I skimmed the thread. Sounds like you’re spread thinly across a lot of blogs? Also, are you getting traction on YouTube? Why not focus on that as @Lex DeVille mentioned?

I don’t do blogging. I post a lot in this forum though. I enjoy it, AND it helps me figure out how to help people at scale. I can then create content out in the wild knowing it’s going to help people.

Check out the YouTube progress threads. They’re fascinating. The advantage of figuring out YouTube is that you’re posting to a platform that *wants* to send you eyeballs (especially if you keep those eyeballs on the platform). If I could only post content on one platform it would be YouTube.

Personally, if I wanted to build an email list then I’d run ads to a simple squeeze page. Sure, it might cost me $10/day to start with, but if it’s dialled in then I don’t spend any time trying to get people onto the list, I can focus on creating content for people ON the list.

Here’s me starting that:


Also, you had some “shut up and take my money“ moments. What did you do with those?


@Yoda likely has posts about blogging in here.
 

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nicheevolution

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I don’t know what niches your blogs are in but consider prioritizing Pinterest. Pinterest is one of the easiest ways to grow a blog (old or new). I went from only getting 10,000 page views in the first 5 months of launching my blog with only a handful of posts while barely putting in any effort to skyrocketing to over 100,000 page views in a little under 5 months later. With a good strategy in place you can do an easy 2K to 3k link clicks to your blog everyday and then refine your SEO.
Pinterest which also works like a Search Engine is synergistic with Google SEO. It’s by far the most hassle free traffic you’ll ever get if you do it right.

Oh believe me, I did give Pinterest a try but they BANNED my account for no reason.

They cited "spamming" as the reason, yet I hardly even pinned much at all on Pinterest. Everything was fine for like 2-3 months then out of nowhere I got an email saying my account was suspended. I hadn't even used the platform for 2 weeks during that time when they suspended my account.

The only explanation that I could come up with was either:

1. a competitor reported me for spamming to try and get my account suspended
2. Some SJW troll with too much time on their hands reported my pins because it didn't fit in with their thought process and narrative.

Also Pinterest seems to work really well for certain niches (stay at home moms, pets, home care, recipes, etc.) while others not so much. I didn't get much traffic off of it because my niche is catered more towards men and therefore it wasn't a huge loss in traffic for me. I would occasionally get little sprinkles of traffic here and there but not much.
 
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nicheevolution

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Phew. Sounds like a lot of time and effort. I skimmed the thread. Sounds like you’re spread thinly across a lot of blogs? Also, are you getting traction on YouTube? Why not focus on that as @Lex DeVille mentioned?

I don’t do blogging. I post a lot in this forum though. I enjoy it, AND it helps me figure out how to help people at scale. I can then create content out in the wild knowing it’s going to help people.

Check out the YouTube progress threads. They’re fascinating. The advantage of figuring out YouTube is that you’re posting to a platform that *wants* to send you eyeballs (especially if you keep those eyeballs on the platform). If I could only post content on one platform it would be YouTube.

Personally, if I wanted to build an email list then I’d run ads to a simple squeeze page. Sure, it might cost me $10/day to start with, but if it’s dialled in then I don’t spend any time trying to get people onto the list, I can focus on creating content for people ON the list.

Here’s me starting that:


Also, you had some “shut up and take my money“ moments. What did you do with those?


@Yoda likely has posts about blogging in here.

Oh for sure, going forward, most of my efforts will probably be towards Youtube and my email list.
I'm going to try and leverage Youtube to funnel people to my email list and then run the email subs through a sales funnel once I get my ebook written up. I get a lot more engagement on Youtube compared to my blog. I recently posted up an announcement asking people to complete a short 1 minute survey to tell me what sort of things they want to see me create in the future on my blog and only had 1 person fill out the survey. This tells me that I have a lot of low-quality leads and lurkers on my site, whereas on Youtube, I regularly get comments left on my videos. In fact one of my videos has over 1k likes on youtube and nearly 400k views, with a few others in the six figures and most of the rest in the 5 figure view range.

I'm currently subscribed to your google ads thread already. I'm wondering though, do you get a lot of bad leads through that method and what do you do about it?

With my lead magnet, I'm starting to notice a lot of low quality leads. I just had someone use a temporarily email address (20 minute mail) to sub to my email list to download my freebie and then never opened any of my following emails. I also have a good chunk of email lists that never open any of my emails which I am going to prune and delete off of my mailing list later this week.

Regarding that take my money moment, its only been 2 guys so far. I didn't have an ebook yet so I couldn't sell it to him, however he's what I would call a "superfan", he's highly engaged and emails me regularly. I had another guy ask me about whether or not I had a video or audio product for sell and also asked me about consulting. I redirected him to a pre-launch landing page for my upcoming ebook which he signed up for, and he said he would be in touch once he had read more of my content on my site to schedule a paid coaching call with me. I haven't heard back from him since though. I love these "superfans" but I don't have enough of them.

I don't have 100% confirmation of this but I think one of the problems is my niche in general. The leads are just low quality and people are just looking for free content and don't want to spend money.

I had one guy send me a message on my facebook group asking me to give him one on one coaching because he said that he loved my content yet when I mentioned that it is paid and not free, I never heard back from him again.

I also had another guy send me emails and we had a back and forth email exchange with me giving him advice yet when I asked him if he was interested in writing a guest post for me, I never received a reply back. Not even a THANK YOU! Talk about rude.

And he isn't the only case that I have witnessed like this, countless other people in the past have emailed me and when I replied back with advice, most of the time, they don't even have the courtesy to respond back with a simple thank you.

I used to also get a lot of emails from guys asking me to show them around or coach them because they are coming over to my neck of the woods which by the tone of their email sounded like they were implying free coaching from me.

On my email welcome series, I ask the people to join my facebook group or to hit reply back and ask me a question or tell me about themselves yet I have only had 1 person do this (my superfan), and so far have had no one sub to the facebook group.

So I'm a bit lost as to what to do with all of these people. Should I just get rid of all of them since they all just seem to be sucking value from me and just taking taking and taking some more?

I thought if you give a lot of value, you should be receiving value back from people, but it seems most of these people that visit my site just want to suck value as much as possible without giving anything in return, not even helping you fill out a simple survey that will help me produce content for them, or following me on social media. All of this takes like a minute or less too.

One of my friends told me to turn the site into a membership site to get rid of all of these value leeches but I am not sure if this is the right approach.

I'm going to make an announcement later this week about my upcoming ebook launch and ask them to sub to my pre-launch landing page. I'm curious to see how many subs I will get.

If I get anything less than 20-30 opt-ins, I think I will maybe post up an announcement at the end of the month telling people that because no one bothered to even have the decency to fill out a short 5 question survey to help give me ideas to create content that they love to read then I won't bother creating anymore content on the site anymore because this tells me that people don't really care to read the content and that it's not important to them and that I'm going to be shifting my focus somewhere else from now on. I'm curious to see what the reaction is like.
 
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Odysseus M Jones

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One of my friends told me to turn the site into a membership site to get rid of all of these value leeches but I am not sure if this is the right approach
Sort the wheat from the chaff.

Could you think of a way to turn your superfan into an evangelist? Spread the word.
 

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Oh for sure, going forward, most of my efforts will probably be towards Youtube and my email list.
I'm going to try and leverage Youtube to funnel people to my email list and then run the email subs through a sales funnel once I get my ebook written up. I get a lot more engagement on Youtube compared to my blog. I recently posted up an announcement asking people to complete a short 1 minute survey to tell me what sort of things they want to see me create in the future on my blog and only had 1 person fill out the survey. This tells me that I have a lot of low-quality leads and lurkers on my site, whereas on Youtube, I regularly get comments left on my videos. In fact one of my videos has over 1k likes on youtube and nearly 400k views, with a few others in the six figures and most of the rest in the 5 figure view range.

I'm currently subscribed to your google ads thread already. I'm wondering though, do you get a lot of bad leads through that method and what do you do about it?

With my lead magnet, I'm starting to notice a lot of low quality leads. I just had someone use a temporarily email address (20 minute mail) to sub to my email list to download my freebie and then never opened any of my following emails. I also have a good chunk of email lists that never open any of my emails which I am going to prune and delete off of my mailing list later this week.

Regarding that take my money moment, its only been 2 guys so far. I didn't have an ebook yet so I couldn't sell it to him, however he's what I would call a "superfan", he's highly engaged and emails me regularly. I had another guy ask me about whether or not I had a video or audio product for sell and also asked me about consulting. I redirected him to a pre-launch landing page for my upcoming ebook which he signed up for, and he said he would be in touch once he had read more of my content on my site to schedule a paid coaching call with me. I haven't heard back from him since though. I love these "superfans" but I don't have enough of them.

I don't have 100% confirmation of this but I think one of the problems is my niche in general. The leads are just low quality and people are just looking for free content and don't want to spend money.

I had one guy send me a message on my facebook group asking me to give him one on one coaching because he said that he loved my content yet when I mentioned that it is paid and not free, I never heard back from him again.

I also had another guy send me emails and we had a back and forth email exchange with me giving him advice yet when I asked him if he was interested in writing a guest post for me, I never received a reply back. Not even a THANK YOU! Talk about rude.

And he isn't the only case that I have witnessed like this, countless other people in the past have emailed me and when I replied back with advice, most of the time, they don't even have the courtesy to respond back with a simple thank you.

I used to also get a lot of emails from guys asking me to show them around or coach them because they are coming over to my neck of the woods which by the tone of their email sounded like they were implying free coaching from me.

On my email welcome series, I ask the people to join my facebook group or to hit reply back and ask me a question or tell me about themselves yet I have only had 1 person do this (my superfan), and so far have had no one sub to the facebook group.

So I'm a bit lost as to what to do with all of these people. Should I just get rid of all of them since they all just seem to be sucking value from me and just taking taking and taking some more?

I thought if you give a lot of value, you should be receiving value back from people, but it seems most of these people that visit my site just want to suck value as much as possible without giving anything in return, not even helping you fill out a simple survey that will help me produce content for them, or following me on social media. All of this takes like a minute or less too.

One of my friends told me to turn the site into a membership site to get rid of all of these value leeches but I am not sure if this is the right approach.

I'm going to make an announcement later this week about my upcoming ebook launch and ask them to sub to my pre-launch landing page. I'm curious to see how many subs I will get.

If I get anything less than 20-30 opt-ins, I think I will maybe post up an announcement at the end of the month telling people that because no one bothered to even have the decency to fill out a short 5 question survey to help give me ideas to create content that they love to read then I won't bother creating anymore content on the site anymore because this tells me that people don't really care to read the content and that it's not important to them and that I'm going to be shifting my focus somewhere else from now on. I'm curious to see what the reaction is like.
I'm still figuring this out, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt.


I'd like there to be a value exchange with the free people on my list.
  • I'll send them an email with free tip, and I'd like something from them in return.
  • I won't put the tip in the email, I'll explain what the tip is and the benefits, and then I'll link to the video where they can learn the tip.
  • I think getting views, comments, likes, and maybe shares of videos each new YouTube video is a fair value exchange.

Then I'd like to get people onto a low priced paid email newsletter (I've a progress thread about that too).
  • Even if it's $3/mth or $5/mth then it's sorting the wheat from the chaff as @Odysseus M Jones said above. "Sales is a screening process." (Blaise Brosnan).
  • I'd send emails to the paid subscribers that link to unlisted YouTube videos, and I'd also send other stuff. (See how it still all revolves around YouTube?)
I'm trying to set it up so I can put ad spend behind the videos on YouTube itself, and for that to get more people onto the email list too.



In my case, if people want more courses then they can go to the platform I've setup that is $150 every three months.

I have productised service clients paying $500/mth too, and consulting clients paying higher.


Here's the tiers I have in mind:
  1. FREE. Get emails linking to YouTube videos. The win-win is that I ideally get views, likes, comments, and shares on videos that I'd like YouTube to take notice of. I also get social proof if other people see those videos.
  2. $5/mth. Paid email newsletter.
  3. $50/mth. Courses (charged every 3 months currently to stop the smash and grabs).
  4. $500/mth. Productised service clients.
  5. Higher. Consulting clients. I aim to get rid of this tier.

If I can figure out how to get people daily onto the FREE Email "Newsletter" and then the Paid Email "Newsletter" then I can go to different subjects/niches that I don't know anything about. This is why I'm not focused on creating a personal brand (as explained in my signature). But I have to get one of them working first before I try and repeat it.

I hope that made sense. It seems simple in my mind, and maybe I'm not explaining it well.
 
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nicheevolution

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Sort the wheat from the chaff.

Could you think of a way to turn your superfan into an evangelist? Spread the word.

I'm still trying to figure this out.

I'm considering asking every person from this point on that emails me to write me a testimonial that can be used to build trust and market future products to.

Anyone that doesn't send me a testimonial as a thank you will not be given any future replies from me again.
 

nicheevolution

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I'm still figuring this out, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt.


I'd like there to be a value exchange with the free people on my list.
  • I'll send them an email with free tip, and I'd like something from them in return.
  • I won't put the tip in the email, I'll explain what the tip is and the benefits, and then I'll link to the video where they can learn the tip.
  • I think getting views, comments, likes, and maybe shares of videos each new YouTube video is a fair value exchange.

Then I'd like to get people onto a low priced paid email newsletter (I've a progress thread about that too).
  • Even if it's $3/mth or $5/mth then it's sorting the wheat from the chaff as @Odysseus M Jones said above. "Sales is a screening process." (Blaise Brosnan).
  • I'd send emails to the paid subscribers that link to unlisted YouTube videos, and I'd also send other stuff. (See how it still all revolves around YouTube?)
I'm trying to set it up so I can put ad spend behind the videos on YouTube itself, and for that to get more people onto the email list too.



In my case, if people want more courses then they can go to the platform I've setup that is $150 every three months.

I have productised service clients paying $500/mth too, and consulting clients paying higher.


Here's the tiers I have in mind:
  1. FREE. Get emails linking to YouTube videos. The win-win is that I ideally get views, likes, comments, and shares on videos that I'd like YouTube to take notice of. I also get social proof if other people see those videos.
  2. $5/mth. Paid email newsletter.
  3. $50/mth. Courses (charged every 3 months currently to stop the smash and grabs).
  4. $500/mth. Productised service clients.
  5. Higher. Consulting clients. I aim to get rid of this tier.

If I can figure out how to get people daily onto the FREE Email "Newsletter" and then the Paid Email "Newsletter" then I can go to different subjects/niches that I don't know anything about. This is why I'm not focused on creating a personal brand (as explained in my signature). But I have to get one of them working first before I try and repeat it.

I hope that made sense. It seems simple in my mind, and maybe I'm not explaining it well.

I think I get a bit of what you are trying to do.

I have contemplated the idea of making certain articles and even future articles on a subscription basis like $60-120 a year for an annual membership or $15 bucks a month but I'm not sure if people are willing to pay for it and if I only get like 5 people that signup, I feel like I've alienated the rest of my audience.

I'd like there to be a fair value exchange and not just me giving away value all the time.

I'm not opposed to spending money on ads to get people to my email list but right now I don't even have a product to sell to them so it doesn't make sense from a cost perspective to spend money on ads.

Let me know what you think about this:

This what I have in mind for long term revenue streams in addition to my current ones:

1. $5-10 monthly membership to read premium articles on my site that is charged annually. I will charge more if they are paying monthly. A have seen a distance competitor do this with his site. (I may make some of my current ones paid, not sure how this will affect SEO though from google's point of view).

2. $30 eBook products ( I will create at least 3)

3. Multiple video courses costing between $80-150 (maybe more).

4. Consulting and coaching $50-100 an hour

5. Long term coaching packages $500 and upwards

6. There's also patreon for my YT channel where I can charge $5-30 a month for extra video content. Although at this point, I would feel like I'm spreading myself too thin and doing too much.

I'm still new to the whole email marketing arena and feel I don't quite have the chops yet to be charging people money for my emails. I get about average open rates and average engagements on those emails. There's still a lot of room for improving my emails as well. I would consider myself decent with writing blog posts but this doesn't seem to translate quite as well for emails.

Of course once I have this all setup, setting up the email sequence will be a lot easier and I can either downsell or upsell people.

On my recent lead magnets, I started to put a CTA to advertise myself for coaching services and also for joining my FB group and other social media accounts. Whether or not it will be effective, is yet to be seen.

Originally I was going to monetize all of the freeloaders and value leeches through ads, however, the recent google algorithm updates have rendered this strategy useless as you need volume to make that work and it was making my site slow and I believe affecting my SERP rankings as well, so I removed it. I went from making around $60 a month from ads to only making $13-15 a month and didn't see as it worthwhile to ruin the user experience and also affect my SEO scores.
 
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Timmy C

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So you have many channels to build an audience first.

Youtube
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter etc

I would focus on one platform and one only.

Make your page/business focused on a niche, but keep it broad enough that you can pivot and turn when you want to.

For example someone was running a vegan page but it was vegan food/success/personal development.

I told him to get the success stuff out as it doesn't fit in with his audience.

Instead of vegan food just say you help vegans with vegan stuff.

That could be clothes/recipes/food etc anything related to it he can pivot into and the page still makes sense because it is broad.

By focusing on building your following on one platform, once you have a large enough following their. Start up your other social media page and let your existing audience know with a post.

Something like '' Hi guys feel free to check out our instagram''

People diss affiliate marketing but i think @Lex DeVille is spot on when he says to take advantage of affiliate income. As long as you have the fastlane principles of CONTROL in mind you can mitigate the risks with these business models issues easy enough.

CENTS.
 
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nicheevolution

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So you have many channels to build an audience first.

Youtube
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter etc

I would focus on one platform and one only.

Make your page/business focused on a niche, but keep it broad enough that you can pivot and turn when you want to.

For example someone was running a vegan page but it was vegan food/success/personal development.

I told him to get the success stuff out as it doesn't fit in with his audience.

Instead of vegan food just say you help vegans with vegan stuff.

That could be clothes/recipes/food etc anything related to it he can pivot into and the page still makes sense because it is broad.

By focusing on building your following on one platform, once you have a large enough following their start up your other social media page and let your existing audience know with a post.

Something like '' Hi guys feel free to check out our instagram''

People diss affiliate marketing but i think @Lex DeVille is spot on when he says to take advantage of affiliate income. As long as you have the fastlane principles of CONTROL in mind you can mitigate the risks with these business models issues easy enough.

CENTS.

I'm going full steam ahead with the Youtube channel soon. I think I'm gonna take a break from blogging. I mean if they won't signup for my ebook pre-launch list then what's the point of having these people on my site anymore?

They won't engage, they don't share my stuff, don't join my social media accounts, don't send me feedback, etc.

I might as well just switch platforms to youtube which I am getting an insane amount of engagement.
 

nicheevolution

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Mini Update:

Ok guys I need your advice here.

I posted an announcement on my blog yesterday and today I sent out an email broadcast about my ebook to validate whether or not it's feasible to write the book and as I expected, opt-ins was abysmal.

Some of these people were even highly engaged with my emails too, opening up at least 50-60% of my emails that offered free info but when it came time to click on my landing page link, only around 4% clicked.

All in total, I think I only have about 10 people that opted in, which is quite disappointing. Now I haven't utilized my youtube channel yet which is getting closer to 7k. I did post up an announcement in the community tab and got 1 opt-in.

Now I know it's only been a few hours since I sent out that email but damn...

I'm gonna start working on targeting my youtube channel subs instead from now on.

I just had a couple more freeloaders in these past 2 days that signed up to my email list and then unsubbed either immediately or after getting my second email. A good chunk of them never even opened any of the emails except the first one with the lead magnet.

So based on this data, it appears that the traffic that google is sending me is garbage. Freeloaders, cheapskates, value leeches, you name it or people that don't value this information highly (not-relevant traffic).

Basically a good chunk of my readers is only interested in getting free stuff.

For the past 2-3 days I have been pondering the thought of implementing the idea of turning the site into a membership site soon, thanks to Odysseus M Jones and Andy Black who provided the ideas (sort the wheat from the chaff and getting people on a low-cost membership plan).

I looked up several membership plugins for Wordpress and I think I will go with Paid memberships pro. I will most likely need to get their paid upgrade because I plan on limiting the amount of articles that these freeloaders can read on my site and forcing them to either subscribe or piss off. There's also a bunch of extras that I feel are needed such as redirecting people from trying to access files that hidden in your directory if they were to scan your site.

I was thinking about implementing the paid premium content option as follows:

  • Charge them $5 a month if they paid all at once ($60/year) or $10 a month if they are paying monthly.
  • They get access to premium articles (4 new articles a month drip fed).
  • Some tools that they can use and apply such as checklists, cheat sheets, worksheets, templates, etc.
  • Maybe adding in podcasts as well (I will need to see if there are free options or at the most an inexpensive plan)
  • Maybe add in videos but once again I will need to see if there are free options or inexpensive plans. I checked out Vimeo which was the cheapest and apparently they don't allow content from my niche. Others like Wistia charge like $100+ dollars a month which is ridiculous. Another alternative is to use Youtube and unlist the videos and only share them via a link, but that can get leaked. Also, I read somewhere online yesterday that google doesn't allow this and will ban your account if they find out, but I am not 100% sure about this. I think if you only send like around 50-100 viewers there it might be ok.
  • Some other additional items like guides and whatnot to add in extra value
I already have 5 articles that I have written and I could probably whip out another 3-4 within a week.
I can create 2-4 podcasts within a weeks time as well.

I have a couple of questions:

Question #1


Should I just ignore the ebook and put it on the back burner for now and just turn my site into a membership site right now or should I try to create more videos on YT and pitch the ebook to them before starting the membership site?

I already posted up an announcement about the ebook yesterday so I feel like I'm becoming too salesy.

Question #2

I had an email subscriber today reach out to me and ask me when I expected to have my ebook done? I was thinking about telling how that I wasn't sure yet as I will need to look at the demand and when a sufficient demand has been met then I can proceed further with the ebook.

I was thinking about pitching him the idea of rather than waiting for my ebook that he can instead subscribe to my premium membership and outline all of the benefits he would get and also highlight that the price is only a measly $5 a month.

What do you guys think? Is it a good idea to pitch him the membership site idea?

Question #3

If I am going to proceed with the membership site, should I post up a couple of value articles first to not seem like I am going full on sales with my site? Do I even need to announce it or should I just slowly implement it without telling anyone?
 

Odysseus M Jones

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Mini Update:

Ok guys I need your advice here.

I posted an announcement on my blog yesterday and today I sent out an email broadcast about my ebook to validate whether or not it's feasible to write the book and as I expected, opt-ins was abysmal.

Some of these people were even highly engaged with my emails too, opening up at least 50-60% of my emails that offered free info but when it came time to click on my landing page link, only around 4% clicked.

All in total, I think I only have about 10 people that opted in, which is quite disappointing. Now I haven't utilized my youtube channel yet which is getting closer to 7k. I did post up an announcement in the community tab and got 1 opt-in.

Now I know it's only been a few hours since I sent out that email but damn...

I'm gonna start working on targeting my youtube channel subs instead from now on.

I just had a couple more freeloaders in these past 2 days that signed up to my email list and then unsubbed either immediately or after getting my second email. A good chunk of them never even opened any of the emails except the first one with the lead magnet.

So based on this data, it appears that the traffic that google is sending me is garbage. Freeloaders, cheapskates, value leeches, you name it or people that don't value this information highly (not-relevant traffic).

Basically a good chunk of my readers is only interested in getting free stuff.

For the past 2-3 days I have been pondering the thought of implementing the idea of turning the site into a membership site soon, thanks to Odysseus M Jones and Andy Black who provided the ideas (sort the wheat from the chaff and getting people on a low-cost membership plan).

I looked up several membership plugins for Wordpress and I think I will go with Paid memberships pro. I will most likely need to get their paid upgrade because I plan on limiting the amount of articles that these freeloaders can read on my site and forcing them to either subscribe or piss off. There's also a bunch of extras that I feel are needed such as redirecting people from trying to access files that hidden in your directory if they were to scan your site.

I was thinking about implementing the paid premium content option as follows:

  • Charge them $5 a month if they paid all at once ($60/year) or $10 a month if they are paying monthly.
  • They get access to premium articles (4 new articles a month drip fed).
  • Some tools that they can use and apply such as checklists, cheat sheets, worksheets, templates, etc.
  • Maybe adding in podcasts as well (I will need to see if there are free options or at the most an inexpensive plan)
  • Maybe add in videos but once again I will need to see if there are free options or inexpensive plans. I checked out Vimeo which was the cheapest and apparently they don't allow content from my niche. Others like Wistia charge like $100+ dollars a month which is ridiculous. Another alternative is to use Youtube and unlist the videos and only share them via a link, but that can get leaked. Also, I read somewhere online yesterday that google doesn't allow this and will ban your account if they find out, but I am not 100% sure about this. I think if you only send like around 50-100 viewers there it might be ok.
  • Some other additional items like guides and whatnot to add in extra value
I already have 5 articles that I have written and I could probably whip out another 3-4 within a week.
I can create 2-4 podcasts within a weeks time as well.

I have a couple of questions:

Question #1


Should I just ignore the ebook and put it on the back burner for now and just turn my site into a membership site right now or should I try to create more videos on YT and pitch the ebook to them before starting the membership site?

I already posted up an announcement about the ebook yesterday so I feel like I'm becoming too salesy.

Question #2

I had an email subscriber today reach out to me and ask me when I expected to have my ebook done? I was thinking about telling how that I wasn't sure yet as I will need to look at the demand and when a sufficient demand has been met then I can proceed further with the ebook.

I was thinking about pitching him the idea of rather than waiting for my ebook that he can instead subscribe to my premium membership and outline all of the benefits he would get and also highlight that the price is only a measly $5 a month.

What do you guys think? Is it a good idea to pitch him the membership site idea?

Question #3

If I am going to proceed with the membership site, should I post up a couple of value articles first to not seem like I am going full on sales with my site? Do I even need to announce it or should I just slowly implement it without telling anyone?
Are the challenges you face indicative of your niche or affiliate blogging/content marketing in general?

As I understand, the goal is to derive an income from click-through sales.

How do your email lists, ebooks, proposed memberships, YouTube channel etc form part of your plan?

Have you seen this thread?
 
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nicheevolution

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Are the challenges you face indicative of your niche or affiliate blogging/content marketing in general?

As I understand, the goal is to derive an income from click-through sales.

How do your email lists, ebooks, proposed memberships, YouTube channel etc form part of your plan?

Have you seen this thread?

I believe this is due to my niche. In a distance competitor's site who is a huge authority, he also had to implement monthly subscription article plan that limited the amount of articles you can read a month unless you signed up for a subscription plan.

He also released 2 ebooks, and now has a video course and paid coaching.


If people aren't clicking through and making purchases then they are of no use to me. I don't want people that are just here for free information as they aren't looking to make purchases.

One of the biggest challenges in my niche is "buyer intent keywords". It's all mainly informational search queries.

People aren't searching for an actual product buy information.

eg. how do I do x, how do I get to y

If they want help to solve their problems, then that's fine. I try to help them through my articles and answering their questions but if they aren't even willing to take that small first step then I can't build that relationship with them.

I just had a look at that article that you linked to that thread.

His strategy is basically exactly what I am doing.

  1. Create awesome content that provides tremendous value for people
  2. Optimize the articles for SEO so that google sends me traffic
  3. Create a lead magnet to get them on my mailing list to build even more of a relationship with them (I do admit though, I didn't really focus on this up to until a few months ago)
  4. Interact with my readers and do market research to find out what sort of problems/issues they have and then try to solve them.
  5. Try to build relationships with my audience
  6. Create and market the products that they want to buy based on their feedback (ebook, courses, etc.)

Although I am finding that I am having huge issues at #4. I ask questions via emails when conversing with my readers. I asked them to help me fill out a survey with what they would like to see (although I only got 1 ppl to do it though), I observe and take a mental note of the types of questions and problems I get asked by my readers, I answer almost all comments, I ask my members what types of products they would be interested in, I even sent out an email to my cold subscribers telling them that they could pick my brain by shooting me an email and got zero replies back!

The problem seems to be engagement and also not getting enough of the right people in front of my material (highly relevant, people who are willing to pay for it!).

When I do hit the right people though, it seems like I don't even need to try, as evident by that "superfan" who was already emailing me yesterday after only announcing the ebook pre-launch the day before. He was basically saying take my money, but unfortunately, I don't have a product yet to sell him nor enough of these people :(

Hopefully by pivoting back to YT this will help solve this problem. We'll have to wait and see and I've noticed since my time away from YT 2-3 other copycats have emerged in my niche.
 
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