Here’s the truth, short and sweet. You will have to put in a bit of work before you make passive income. Yes, you can make loads of passive income, but first you must get started. Here’s how.
Birthing your blog
• What is your focus pertaining to your blog? You must first have an idea of the direction, brand, or topic of focus for the blog you want to create. Discover your passion because a passionate focus will drive you harder.
• Think long and hard, research ideas, look at other blogs, and then pin down your idea according to your main focus.
• Create your blog and register a domain. This will come at a small cost, but it will be worth it.
• Choose a domain that is targeted to your specific market. This helps people find your blog easier when searching about things similar to your blog’s theme.
Create content
• Create content that is both informative and enticing. Try to balance these to formulate content that will make them want to return.
• Focus more on creating quality content instead of quantity of content. Yes, it’s good to have loads of content on your blog, but if this content is flat, it can turn people away. Less content, but content of great value is much more important.
• Take your time, but do not procrastinate. It’s a fine balance.
• If you cannot create compelling content, then outsource your content to freelance writers.
• Use plugins to change your content into a pdf file. This allows readers to save your content to read at a later time.
Driving traffic
Now that you’re creating content and have a handle on what your audience appreciates, it’s time to build a larger following.
Mailing list
• Setting up an autopilot subscription process will make creating your mailing list much easier. Programs like Optimonster.com, for instance, can do this for you. Research this plugin to understand how it works.
• Set up your welcome letter for those who subscribe to your email.
• Offer incentives for joining your mailing list, such as free offers, downloads, and special tips. This works more often than you think, especially if you lead them to the subscription through a couple paragraphs of interesting content.
• Offer discounts to those who join your mailing list. People love discounted products.
• Always over-deliver on the things you’re offering. You want your audience to like you, not see you as just trying to sell them something or trap them.
• Offer freebies and valuable items using autoresponder. This plugin will automatically send out offers at pre-set times.
Powerful patterns
• About 2-3 days after you send out the welcome email, send out a letter with information about your niche. This helps personalize your relationship with your audience.
• A week later, send out an offer. This conditions them to open future emails.
• In 7-12 days, start selling your products or services, but not in a pushy way. You can passively sell by offering tools and resources that can change lives.
• If it takes a while to get the ball rolling, don’t be afraid to go the distance. It may seem like you’re taking a step backward if you’re not immediately selling, but you’re only building momentum.<
Earn respect
• Pay close attention to your reader’s response to different aspects of your blog. Keep an eye on your blog’s statistics. Give your audience more of what they spend the most time reading or purchasing.
• Fine tune your content to your audience. This makes them realize you care about their interests.
Monetization
It’s important to decide which form of monetization works best for your blog. This can be a tricky process.
• Decide if your blog will be a lead generation model, when making money with your blog. Will you be providing useful content for your audience with the objective of turning them into leads?
Affiliate marketing
• If you don’t like selling your own products, you can create content around established businesses.
• Locate businesses that offer affiliate marketing programs. This will draw attention to your blog and their business as well.
• Before creating product rich content, choose from hundreds of money-making products. Choose some of the best sellers as they will being the most attention.
• Examining these best-selling products will give you ideas about products you can sell on your own if you change directions. This minimizes failure and maximizes sales success.
Note: This only works if you’re using affiliate marketing with physical products. If you’re a service provider, you will need to be offering services from the beginning and not only through affiliate programs.
Sell High!
• Don’t make the mistake of thinking you should sell cheap affiliate products to be successful. This is a mistake. Sell higher priced products through affiliate marketing to make the most of your time.
• Review blogs are good options for selling high priced items. In fact, you’re not really selling, you’re providing useful information that leads to sales, thus also leads to a good stream of passive income.
• The only instance where selling low-priced products is if you have high-priced backend selling products. With the cheaper options, you entice the buyer to check out the high-priced items. You can try this option after you have a well-established blog foundation.
Additional Knowledge
• Take your time when choosing an affiliate network to work with. One of the best options is Chitika.com. You can also try the Amazon Affiliate network, as this is a popular way of monetizing blogs.
• Creating amazing content centered around the products in your affiliate network. If you have a small income, focus on content.
• As mentioned before, write killer content. This content should be engaging and exciting, making sure you keep the attention of your audience. Good content and affiliate marketing can create quite a large passive income over time.
• As you researched before creating your blog, if you decide to use affiliate marketing, you should research again. This time, take thorough notes about likes, comments, and popularity of the blogs, like review blogs, that you encounter.
• When crafting your content with proper SEO tactics, look for popularity with less competition. This is the spot you want to take.
• Mix up your affiliate content. Sometimes write blog posts, other times, create videos. All the time, support your affiliate program’s products.
Engage your audience
In conclusion, you want to create a blog that stands out. The last but not least thing you should remember is to just be a person and communicate with your audience.
Use social media platforms to engage with your audience outside your blog. Communicating with your followers creates a feeling of substance. It shows you are truly interested in the quality of what you offer with your blog and how the audience can benefit from these aspects.
Create ad campaigns to keep your audience stimulated and ready to experience something new from your blog.
Take feedback from your audience seriously. When you receive tips or critique, use this to learn and grow. Show your audience you appreciate the feedback by responding positively, or at least in a neutral manner.
Use forums and other communities to communicate with your audience. Be open but be professional in this setting.
Don’t panic and push things
Do not think you must have hundreds of followers to be able to make money
Research, research, and then research some more. The more you know and understand, the easier it will be making loads of money with your blog.