I’ve always had trouble generating a consistent monthly income from my blog. You see, unlike the dozens of stories I’ve read from bloggers whose efforts result in a continual snow ball of income that continues to grow month after month, my blogging income has been a lot more up and down. Two steps forward, two steps back has been a common theme for me. Feast to famine.
My Blog Profit Strategy
The marketing strategy for my blog isn’t unique at all. I publish content (mostly about SEO), get traffic from search engines and trickles of visitors from social media. A small percentage of my website visitors end up signing up for a free bonus and simultaneously join my email list.
Next, email list subscribers receive exclusive content mixed with a handful of product pitches. A small percentage of subscribers end up purchasing my SEO business building product and then I make money. Nothing fancy or ground breaking going on here, but the strategy works.
Although I’ve been able to develop a profitable blog using this simple strategy the monthly profits have been up, down, and totally inconsistent. In short, I had to figure out how to make my income more predictable.
Looking at What You Sell
One critical step to getting a more consistent blogging income was to seriously sit down and access what I was selling. What did I find? The primary income generator for my blog was a one-and-done info product called the Enterprise SEO Business Package that I created myself.
The problem was I could only get paid one time per customer and that was it. I had no membership site, upsell products, nothing. You either bought my info product or you didn’t. And if you did buy the product there was no way to become a repeat customer because there was nothing else you could buy.
Not the smartest way to make money I soon discovered.
My Solution: Diversify and Recur
After realizing all my profits came from just one product, I figured it was time to start selling more stuff. This would at the very least give my visitors the opportunity to purchase more than one item from me.
I started out by looking into affiliate programs for products I already use and love like Raven SEO Tools, 800 phone number services, places to outsource design work, and even Amazon’s affiliate program for book reviews.
None of these affiliate programs alone have resulted in huge spikes in income for my website, but together they’ve started to combine into an additional income source that I don’t need to put a whole lot of effort into growing.
The second step I took toward more consistent profits was a difficult one. As stated earlier in the post, I had been making the majority of my income from a $97 one-and-done SEO business kit. In my next attempt to normalize income I would give away the product at no charge for trying out an internet marketing membership program for just $1 for the first 7 days. If the customer doesn’t cancel the program within 7 days a recurring bill of $97 per month is charged to their credit card. Obviously my customers can cancel this program at any time.
Taking this action was a huge leap of faith for me. After all, over 90% of my blogs monthly income had come from this kit. Now I would be giving it away for free with no guarantee anyone would stick with the training program. Fortunately, the membership program is extremely valuable and I have been able to get about 25% of the people that test the membership program for the trial period actually stick with it for at least a month.
Many will quit after a few months, but others will stay for even longer. Each month a user stays in the program, I get a hefty 50% commission for sending the membership website the lead.
Today, the membership website results in the majority of my blogs affiliate income and continues to pay out month after month, even if I do have an off month with few new customers entering the program.
In conclusion, if you want to create a more consistent income for your blog try doing what I did. 1.) Diversify your product offering to give website visitors more buying opportunities. 2.) Become an affiliate for a website that offers recurring and more consistent monthly payments.