If you want to make money with your blog, it’s important that you understand how other bloggers are able to make money with their blog.
Who are these people handing their money over to these bloggers?
Being able to make money writing about your passion(s) can seem impossible.
People know that bloggers make money, they’ve seen the income reports, but they don’t understand how those people are able to make money.
You can follow all of the right steps on how to make money with a blog and still discover that you aren’t making any money.
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You might tell yourself that you’ve done everything right. You’ve set up affiliate links, wrote an e-book, and even offer a number of different services, and yet you aren’t making any money with your blog.
Why?
Well, you need to ask why are other bloggers able to make money because if you can’t answer that question, then you’ll never make any good amount of money.
What is good money? For the sake of this blog post let’s say $5,000+ a month.
Now, this is entirely possible to do with ads, and if your whole plan is to only make money with ads, then you might not need this blog post.
However, to get up to $5,000 in ads you probably need to get over 400,000 page views a month and if you’re going to generate that much traffic, you might as well look for alternative methods of revenue generation.
Why Are Bloggers Able to Make Money?
To understand why bloggers make money you have to think about the customer. This isn’t as hard as you would think because you are a customer for a lot of different brands.
You simply need to ask what makes you open up your wallet?
You might think that you decide to spend money when you like something and that is true sometimes but the majority of the time, when you’re spending money, it’s because you have a problem.
The act of spending money is supposed to help you acquire a solution.
Hungry? Buy a candy bar.
Cold? Buy a jacket.
Bloggers that make money understand that they are solving problems. Everything a blogger does needs to revolve around the fact that they are providing a solution to a problem a person has.
Have you heard the advice of niching down? Some bloggers will tell you to niche down so you can find your audience and while that is partly true, the reality is that when you niche down, it allows you to hone in on a specific problem.
Let’s pretend that you run a blog on pets.
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You write about all types of pets and how to take care of them. Traffic is good because people love their pets and since you cover so many you have a chance to cast a wide net.
But the only money you are making is on ads and some affiliate links to Amazon.
In contrast, there is another blogger that only writes about cats. That’s it.
They write so much about cats that they then become an authority on cats. They make money with ads and affiliate links as well. Not as much as you because you get more traffic; however, they make more money with their blog than you do with yours.
Why?
Because they have an e-book that teaches people how to train their cats to use the toilet.
Sounds dumb, right?
Well, a big problem that cat owners face is having to change the litter box constantly. What if there was a magical way that allowed you to avoid having to change the litter box ever again, would you be interested?
Of course, you would be!
You could offer the same e-book on your pets blog, but your audience is so diverse that most of them won’t care about it. Even with the ones that love cats, there would only be a small percentage that would consider purchasing.
Because the cat blog focuses on cats, it becomes a lot easier to focus on cat-specific problems.
Cat owners read these blog posts, nod their heads, and then decide they need a solution as well, and that solution just so happens to be the toilet-training e-book.
Successful bloggers understand that you make money by understanding the problems of your audience.
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How to Find Your Audience’s Problems
Your audience might have a lot of problems, but the goal is to focus on the big one.
How do you find it?
You listen.
The best thing that you can do is talk to your audience. You don’t have to call them up or meet them at a coffee shop.
You can do all of your talking over email which makes things a lot easier for people.
If you have a mailing list then inside of your welcome email ask the person to tell you about themselves. When they do that you can find a way to ask more questions that will lead you to answers.
When you understand what big problem the person is facing, then take the time to write it down.
Then talk to more people.
Over time you’ll start to notice a trend where the same problem continues to pop up.
There is your opportunity to make a product around that problem. It could be an e-book or a service that you offer. Because you listened to your audience, you don’t need to hope that whatever you do makes money.
Recommendation: Make sure you check out the course Making Sense of Sponsored Posts, where course creators Alexis and Michelle Schroeder share exactly what they do to make thousands of dollars per month from sponsored posts. I think you’ll find it really helpful.
Educating Your Audience
The fact of the matter is that this isn’t everything that you need to do.
Life would be great if all you needed to do was listen to your audience, find a problem, and then create a product around it, and while that is a lot of what needs to be done, it’s not the end.
You still need to educate your audience about the problem, and that is why blogging is such a powerful way to make money.
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Salespeople understand that the more touch points they have with a lead, the better chance they have of making a sale.
It’s why when you walk into a car dealership they spend more time getting to know you than they do showing you a car.
Bloggers don’t have to actively do that because their blog posts do it for them.
When you’re able to walk people through the problems you’ve faced and how you found the solution for them that becomes a sales pitch.
Landing pages and email sequences help you make money, but it all begins with blog posts.
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Each blog post is your chance to educate your audience. This lets some people know that they are facing the problem and that there is a solution out there.
This lets other people know that you’re the one they should trust.
Without you even knowing it, your blog is walking people through the full sales cycle without you having to sit by their side.
This is the power of blogs.
So when you ask yourself why bloggers make money don’t take a look at what a blog is and assume it’s that simple.
Bloggers make money because they are able to build trust with their audience through education. This education leads to their audience understanding that they need a solution and since the blogger has been the one helping them, they turn to them to purchase the solution.
This is why blogging is so powerful, and it is how bloggers make money.
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