Summary How to Start a Profitable Blog in 2024 (#1 Free Course on YouTube) (Youtube) www.youtube.com
22,350 words - YouTube video - View YouTube video
n/a Today's video is my favorite video of the year, probably the most popular 1 that I create. So this is my yearly guide on exactly how to start a blog to make money. So back in 2019, I started my blog adamenfreud.com, and it became 1 of the fastest growing blogs on the Internet. Right? So its 1st year was over 6 figures, 800 k in the 2nd year, and then over $1,000,000 in 2021, (#1, and 2023, which is still pretty crazy for me to think about.
n/a You know? And even with traffic fluctuations and dips, revenues remain steady because of recurring affiliate commissions. But I made a ton of mistakes. Right? There were things that I did in 2022 and 2023 that I definitely should have avoided.
n/a So, really, this is the video I wish I had back when I first started my blog Course things have changed. So we need really a step by step game plan to go from 0 to $10,000 a month and beyond. So this is a 100% free Course. Hopefully, 1 of the longest, most helpful, most in-depth, topics that exist on YouTube. So make sure to get your notes ready, maybe get a cup of coffee, bookmark the video.
n/a And I promise you that if you do watch it till the end, you will have a strategy to make money blogging this year. Now before I dive in, if you click the link in the description below, you can get another 80 minute free master Course (#1 the information on how you can actually work with me in the future on your own blog business. So first of all, why blogging? You know, people are asking, is blogging dead? Isn't it too saturated?
n/a Isn't AI taking over? It's getting harder. You know, not necessarily true in most of these cases. While some old ways of doing things aren't working anymore, and there certainly are niches that are overly saturated. So think things like credit cards, finance software, things that are tough.
n/a There are still opportunities everywhere. You just have to know how and where to look for them. Because all this stuff is really nuanced. And all I'm asking is that as you watch this video, temporarily remove the black and white thinking, any cynicism that this is dead, this doesn't work, I can't do it. Right?
n/a These are all self limiting beliefs. And some people might also say, you know, I'm not a good writer. I can barely put a sentence together. Well, as someone who failed out of college and English literature also, I can confidently tell you that blogging is not writing. It is assembling content in a systematic way to appease humans and search engines.
n/a It's a science, not an art form. Now when I think about the benefits of blogging this year, first, it's a great business for introverts because you never have to be on video or in a podcast. You don't even have to show your face if you don't want to. Right? 2nd, Google search is only increasing every single year.
n/a So there's over 99,000 searches every single second, which is 8,500,000,000 daily. Also, over 7% of daily searches on Google every day are brand new, meaning they've never been searched before. So that's over 600,000,000 new searches for products and information every single day that hadn't existed before, and this is where the opportunity lies. Now another good thing about blogging is that you can outsource the writing to another human being to scale your efforts. So you don't even have to do it yourself eventually.
n/a For example, I spend about 10 hours a month on my blog now, pretty much doing some keyword research for the month (#1 sending it off to some writers. So if I took my yearly profit in 2023 of almost Now, of course, there are taxes, you know, I'm not necessarily taking that money home, but you get the point. Right? I don't think that this is really possible with a lot of different other types of businesses. Another thing about blogging today is that it's a Google driven engine.
n/a So it's ranking for search phrases on Google, and then sitting there and ranking for month after month, which is actually 1 of the most passive forms of income. Although, again, I don't totally believe in passive income. Right? You have to put the work in. So it's also powerful for your personal brand.
n/a Right? So you create this website for yourself as the starting point of your online journey. You can make mistakes. You can delete content. You can find your niche over time.
n/a Right? And then you can capitalize on pretty much all possible revenue streams online. So things like ads, affiliate revenue, sponsorships, courses, coaching, even selling simple services right away for a few $1,000 a month. So I know a lot of people struggle with this. You know, I know a lot of people try and fail, and it's not a failure on their part or a lack of motivation.
n/a It's usually just a blind spot. So something they don't know that they don't know, you know, a little detail that trips them up. Course blogging is like piecing together a puzzle. No individual piece is hard to click into another (#1 there are a lot of freaking pieces, you know. Some might be hiding under the couch or under the bed.
n/a So really, I want this video to find those pieces for you to give you this complete picture, complete understanding of what it actually takes to make money with a blog. Because a lot of supposed gurus preach traffic and ads and making money overnight. Right? Get rich quick. Quick.
n/a I don't believe in that. I'd much rather have you make consistent revenue over the course of years Course that is the only type of revenue that will actually change your life. Not a flash in the pan, but something that's consistent that could pad your retirement, pay for vacations, give you back some of that time freedom. Because, you know, I'm talking about this because at the heart of this is what blogging is. Right?
n/a It's a way to fight back, you know, against the 9 to 5, the rat race society that tells you you have to work for somebody else, not even guaranteeing you enough money to afford a house and a (#1 income household. Right? So that's why I started my blog. You know, it wasn't some fun little side project. It was my way to remove these golden handcuffs of a salary that was basically just enough to afford a rented apartment, a rented car, and a retirement that would probably take me 50 years to get to.
n/a So because of vlogging, yes, my life is a lot different now. But, you know, I know where I came from. When I was 26, I was living paycheck to paycheck. You know, I was making $9 an hour working at a pizza place delivering pizza. I could barely afford my car payment and insurance.
n/a You know, I actually remember I was so broke that I went to a subway. I had a sandwich made in line. Right? I had lettuce, tomato, all that stuff. They get to the cash register.
n/a I didn't have enough money on my credit card for the $5 foot long. Right? A little embarrassing. I still remember it vividly like it was yesterday. So I'm nothing special is what I'm saying.
n/a I'm not smarter than anyone else, right, in the room. But I did, over time, finally get my career to work, only to quickly realize, though, that the American, this corporate culture of company voodoo, unlimited PTO days, yet somehow no 1 takes a day off, and a virtue signaling on LinkedIn, and all the office politics (#1 meetings. It just wasn't for me. So really, I started the blog. I made my first $5,000 a month (#1 I left.
n/a I left for good. I didn't care if I was making less money than my salary. I just did not want to go to the office ever again. And, you know, my life is very different because of blogging. You know, it was my starting point.
n/a It was how I built an initial audience and revenue, and then I wanted to diversify which then I leveraged all that audience and revenue into building a YouTube channel, hiring people, and scaling to a larger business with my business partner, Colin. So ultimately, I know we're getting losing track here, but to get to the point and my little rant here, I honestly don't care what type of business you 🎯Go. But if you can just get a little courage, build something for yourself, keep learning, build something for yourself and no 1 else, you will have a shot at a very different life than you have right now. That's all I'm saying. So enough rambling on blogging.
n/a Let's get to the actual strategy. So in this video, we're gonna cover about 5 or 6 steps. So first, how to get traffic to your blog, then finding content that you can create that actually makes money. Then we're gonna cover, search intent and what that actually means (#1 what how it helps you create content. Next is the content assembly line, which is a formula for creating monetizable content at scale.
n/a Then we're gonna cover blog monetization in-depth. (#1, of course, at the end, taking all of these steps and all of this learning, exactly what I would do if I was starting from 0 right now. So let's get into it. So first, we're gonna cover how to actually get traffic to a blog because a blog is text based content and we need people to actually find it and read it. And there's multiple ways you can find it, organic search, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, all kinds of different social media, but we're gonna cover some of the main ways here.
n/a Now we have to realize, what are we actually creating? What type of text based content are we creating? Well, there's really only 2 types of content you ever need to create. 2 types of articles, 2 types of keywords, and that is informational (#1 transactional. So that's how people search for things on Google.
n/a You as a blogger are a mediator between a Google search and a purchase. So somebody thinks of something in their head, they either want information. How do I build a shed? You know, how do I plant strawberries? Type of information.
n/a How to swing a golf club correctly? Or they're looking for product recommendations. A blogger is the product recommendation person that lives between that search and that purchase providing comparative content in the form of blog posts recommending products. So for example, every niche has these best golf clubs, best credit cards, best laptops, any of that. So there's 2 things, How to do stuff (#1 the products to do those things, and that is how you actually make money blogging.
n/a So those are the only, 2 types. So let's look at a couple examples of really blogs that are just killing it. Okay? So this is the tool, Ahrefs. It's an SEO tool.
n/a I'm looking just for this video to show you some stuff. So feel good foodie.net. They're getting 2,700,000 visitors a month to their blog, and you can see individual articles here. So 1 target keyword for (#1 article. Right?
n/a So their article on overnight oats is, according to HR, is getting 250,000 visits a month. Right? So if we look at all of these, what they do have is a lot of recipes, a lot of interesting things. So their informational content (#1 a food blog is related to recipes. Right?
n/a That's the main form of informational content there. Baked oats, cauliflower, Profitable, stew. There's literally 25 100 articles on this website. Let's take a look at another example, garage gym reviews. This is a fitness blog.
n/a They have 1,300,000 visits a month that's been going up. We can see what keywords and things they're going after. So again, the 2 types of content in a fitness blog, best products or best pre workout protein powder, work out apps, budget treadmill, adjustable dumbbells, and then also the information around it. So things like, alternatives to dead lifts, gym mats. It's a lot of actual products, but how much water to drink with caffeine.
n/a Informational stuff. How many protein shakes a day. Right? Back and shoulder workouts. So workouts and exercises are the informational intent in that niche.
n/a Here's another (#1, golfer geeks.com, a golf site, and we have, you know, the 2 types of articles. Best driver for beginners, drivers what loft is a gap wedge, how many clubs in a golf bag, so how to hit a driver. Right? So these are the 2 types of articles you create, and you can see these posts are just simple. Right?
n/a What are the most forgiving irons for beginners? This is a low authority site in the nation. It's about d r 40. And you can see blog posts are simple. It's an introduction, into the product recommendations.
n/a Right? So that's how transactional posts work. So the Internet is basically blog posts are basically lists. Everything is a list, whether it's a list of the best irons Course it's something like how to fix your golf slice. If you look at an article like that, really, it's just a series of steps.
n/a You have an introduction (#1 then first, what is a golf slice, why is it bad, and just some headings and simple stuff to go through the list. So whether it's a how to post or a transactional best of post, it's just a simple list, introduction into the content. Now an important distinction of getting traffic (#1 blogging is how much authority and expertise do you actually need to rank for this stuff? Because every niche is little bit different. So for example, if you wanna get into the health space Course talk about, you know, things like credit cards, it's you're gonna need a lot of authority.
n/a They're not gonna, Google doesn't trust a blog right away that is just brand new talking about things like credit Course. Because you can see if I put in, like, best credit cards, you are there's a risk to the consumer. Right? There's a risk to the searcher. So Google always wants to play it safe (#1 that's kinda how they rank things a lot of the times lately is just give them the safest, most authoritative site there.
n/a So if you wanna rank for, like, best credit card, for example, it's very difficult. There's NerdWallet, WalletHub, CNN, Forbes, a YouTube video, Reddit, and CNBC. Good luck. Right? So that's a niche that you don't wanna get into necessarily unless you find some super crazy, you know, best travel rewards card for babies or something.
n/a Right? Like but it's not a way to build a sustainable plan. So that can be difficult. So things that are your money, your life, things that really change a person's life based on the search, so buying things that are expensive or risky, consuming food and health related items are a little bit more difficult and challenging because you have sites like Healthline, WebMD, big finance keyword can make, the more popular it is. Typically, the more competitive it is because, the keyword can make, the more popular it is.
n/a Typically, the more competitive it is Course big sites are going after it. The more money they can make. Right? Also, the more risky it is, the more authority you need. Because it's kinda risky for a person to search for, you know, how authority you need, because it's kinda risky for a person to search for, you know, how to get over COVID 19, and then a random mom blog shows up on the first page.
n/a That's just not gonna happen anymore. So, we have to pick the keywords, accordingly based on risk and based how much money you can actually make. So when you start making videos, you can't just hit the record button and hope for the best. Right? You wanna create the right type of content that your audience actually wants to see that can also maximize things like ad revenue, sponsorship opportunities, and the potential for YouTube to share it with a larger audience.
n/a So in the past, you've had to do hours of research before ever pressing that record button. But now, you can shorten the process and let AI even do some of the heavy lifting for you. And because of this, I use TubeBuddy because of its powerful analytics and video optimization tools. So, it helps me improve my thumbnails, find the right video tags, write the perfect description, and even come up with content ideas I hadn't even thought of before. So thanks to TubeBuddy for sponsoring today's video.
n/a If you wanna try them out, go to the link in the description below (#1 use the coupon, ENFROY30 to get 30% off. That's e n f r o y 30. Click that link in the description below, and thanks again to TubeBuddy for sponsoring the (#1 to find ideas for posts. Right? We can't just put in we could put knitting in.
n/a We could try (#1 then we could use something like the matching terms tool and this gives us information on all the different, keywords and articles you could create that have the word knitting in them and then other words. So knitting machine patterns, free knitting patterns, how to cast on knitting. So there's some ideas here. And there's different seed phrases based on the niche. So something like knitting could be like scarf ideas.
n/a You put in scarf ideas, and you can see there's a lot of easier stuff to rank for. So keyword difficulty like, scarf storage ideas, tie ideas, crochet scarf ideas. Literally, you could create an article on each 1 of these, except for some of them might have overlap. Right? Like scarf ideas and scarf ideas.
n/a But anyways, you can find, easy seed phrases with things like words like ideas. For example, if I'm in a interior design niche, I'm gonna go living room ideas. Right? And that 1 is pretty competitive Course, again, it's very well known and common. If you look at this keyword, we can look at, you know, the search volume every month, 55,000 searches a month.
n/a Difficult to rank for because when we look down at who's ranking, you have the spruce, good housekeeping, house, BHG, southern living, Pinterest, house beautiful. So it's tough. Right? So we have to find pockets of opportunity. But what if we just did, like, room ideas, and then we have all kinds of different rooms?
n/a So, yeah, living room, but also laundry room, room divider ideas. And if we can drop the difficulty down to see what is easier, we might be able to find some things that we actually could rank for. Minecraft room ideas, interesting. Blocksburg, I don't know what that means. Preppy room ideas, western, toddler, lots of really easy things, dog room, gun room, large living room, big living room.
n/a So you find, like, there's an endless supply of ways that people search for things online. You know, there's 8 +1000000000 people on earth (#1 more and more people in developing countries are coming online every year too. A blog, a 🎯Go, English based blog, can serve kinda the whole world of English speakers. This strategy and stuff also works in other languages. It just really depends.
n/a So that's 1 thing you can find is, like, if you're in the living room type of website, I interior design, you would use something like room or ideas as your starting point to find a bunch of informational content you can rank. And these are pretty easy. Right? If you have an article on western room ideas, you just have, like, 10 random, ideas and pictures. That's pretty much it.
n/a You just wanna look at the top 3 who's ranking and just kinda be in the ballpark. Let's go to fashion. So, like, something like fashion could be like fashion trends. And we can see, alright, there's 2023, fall fashion trends, summer trends. Again, we can drop the difficulty down.
n/a I'll do it to like 10 (#1 just see what we can find, what we write about. We can see, like, teen fashion trends, weird fashion trends, Oscar fashion trends, Spain fashion trends. What about, like, watches? So you could do, like, best watches. So luxury watches, things like Rolexes, you wanna be an affiliate Course, you know, expensive watch brand or like Bob's Watches.
n/a Some of it will be competitive. But, again, if we drop the difficulty down to, like, 5, we'll find the things that are maybe new and emerging we can rank for. Best watch is under a 1000, keyword difficulty of 3, really good search volume. Right? Every single month, this is an indication of good search volume.
n/a So, you know, thinking of the niche, this is where niche expertise can come in. Maybe you know a little bit when you're choosing your niche for a blog. And again, this is like all about how to choose your niche. Well, we're looking for the market. We're going where the fish are, where people are actually searching, how we can monetize this.
n/a Because, really, informational articles are going to be mainly to get traffic to your blog, to showcase your expertise in some way, to teach people something about how to do something or ideas or things like that, and then they can build your email list. You can eventually sell a product them down the road, whereas transactional post best watches will be for affiliate links (#1 you can monetize with affiliate marketing that way. Let's talk about babies. Little tiny infants and children. What if you're you have children, you wanna, you know, create baby content on a baby blog.
n/a There's billions of products out there related to babies. Right? Tons of opportunities there. But for informational content, think about how many people search for names. Right?
n/a Baby names. There's so many different (#1, and then you can drop the difficulty down again. And you can see, like, what are the easy ones we could do? Italian country modern baby girl names, black baby girl names, worst baby names. Funny.
n/a Western. So, like, you can see that there are actually 5,000 different ideas for articles here. So if you have a baby vlog, you'd probably be talking about, you know, how to do things with baby, you could talk about baby name ideas, get tons of traffic that way, and then also talk about all the baby products. So now let's go to workouts. If you're in fitness, you can see some of the main ones again are gonna be competitive like bench press, how to bench press, or like shoulder workouts, tricep checkout, pretty competitive because you're gonna have like bodybuilding.com and those sites in there, but the opportunity lies in things that are a little bit more random and niche.
n/a So Course example, things like cable shoulder workouts, so, cycle syncing workouts, metabolic workouts, cable ab workouts, Smith machine checkout. You get the point. The seed phrase here in fitness is workouts or you could use exercises, and then you find thousands of potential things you can rank for based on things that aren't competitive just because there's so many possible searches. There's billions of searches that even the craziest writing team at Forbes and media sites can't keep up with all of the opportunities. So ultimately, you need to think about your niche, think about what you know.
n/a Right? Not just what you're passionate about, but think about what you know, maybe what ex experiences you have in a niche, and then start trying to mess around and find, like, seed phrases. So for example, it could be ideas Course checkout or exercises or recipes or quotes, examples, trends, statistics. You just have to find your unique seed phrase for informational content based on your specific niche. Now we when we think about building a niche website, it's easier when it's just based on you, (#1 it's a personal brand.
n/a You don't have to rely on picking the perfect niche at the beginning. Because the truth is when we're all beginners, it's hard to pick the perfect niche at the beginning. If I created some very specific, like, woodworking website (#1 it just wasn't working, it wasn't woodworking, then I'd probably quit because it's not attached to my identity, I can't pivot. The domain name is stuck. It's how about woodworking.
n/a Whereas, I started my blog as a digital resume. I didn't think it was even gonna work, but I put it at my name.com. It's the domain name we know in blogging. It doesn't matter for SEO. But I put it at my name.
n/a I thought it was just gonna be a digital resume, but it ended up working (#1 I was able to pivot and adapt my content. Even in 2024, I'm able to, like I realized I was going after so many very competitive software terms that I was getting pushed down a little bit for super competitive stuff down to page 2 for, like, online course stuff and, webinar software, podcast stuff that I'm like, okay, I need to just shift and change my strategy a little bit, go for some easier informational content that I found. But because it's my name (#1 it's not something like the email marketing expert or like the e commerce guy, you I worked a lot in e commerce. I could've chosen I know a lot about e commerce. I'm gonna become the e commerce guy, and I'm gonna write about the best e commerce platform, Shopify stuff, all that.
n/a Well, it just seems weird if that doesn't work and I try to pivot to like email marketing or blogging or affiliate marketing, my domain name's weird. So the greatest way to start a business is to start a broad domain name with just your name, first last name. I don't care if it's a weird name. It doesn't matter. It sounds weird.
n/a It's hard to spell. Just do it. Or make it I could've made mine like ask adam.com oradamsadvice.com oradamstips. I think Tom's guy at the huge media site. So that's 1 thing that is a big minefield that you can cross is like choosing the wrong niche, you don't have to worry about it too much at the beginning, You just get started with your name (#1 then the good thing about that is you can find opportunities, you can eventually pivot into the content strategy that works for you, and then you can blanket in, the the topical authority of the area once you find it.
n/a So, again, we're finding opportunities here, and when it comes to informational content, like I said, it's not gonna make you affiliate revenue or anything like that. But on its own, these low risk, like, ideas articles, like, something like living room or patio ideas. Right? You can kinda talk about that without risk to the end reader compared to, you know, the best cash back credit cards or how to recover from knee pain. Right?
n/a It's a lot less risky. So, however, you know, they're gonna get some ad revenue. You can do we'll talk about that in the monetization section, but they're not going to, you know, make you 1,000,000 of dollars. Right? They're a good way to build your email list.
n/a So we need a bridge here. We need a bridge to generate more money from keywords. You know, some of these ones are not very monetizable. So if you rank for something like how to tie your shoes, and this is also gonna go into the search intent section. The person searching for how to tie their shoes, they're a random person on the Internet searching for that that probably doesn't even know how to tie their own shoes.
n/a Right? So are they gonna land on that website and buy anything? No. Are they going to purchase shoes or shoelaces through an affiliate link? No.
n/a So it goes back to the search intent of that. So some of these low value (#1, like how to tie your shoes, from an ad revenue standpoint, you're probably making like a $5 $5 for every 1,000 visitors. So if you get a 100,000 visitors to your site, you're only making $500. So we have to kinda put this in perspective and realize that traffic does not always equal revenue here. But when we're looking for keyword opportunities, we have to find this bridge and find those transactional posts that can make us affiliate revenue because that is the search intent when people are ready to buy something.
n/a So when I think about it, it kinda looks like this. There's blog posts, easy info content that you start with in your niche. And you wanna blanket this and be known for 1 thing over time and have more content than anyone else in that specific area. So there's ideas, maybe it's names, examples, trends, but then we need a bridge from that easy top of funnel consideration stage content. Right?
n/a So someone how people search online. If you're thinking about something, like, if I'm gonna buy a couch, first, I'm gonna search for living room ideas, top of the funnel. Right? I don't even know what a modular sectional is YouTube, but I search for living room ideas, I find what I like, I look around, I look at pictures, then I say, okay. I know I figured out what a modular sectional is.
n/a Now I'm gonna look up the best modular sectionals. And this is the other half of the equation that you need transactional content when people are ready to buy things. So the answer is we're going to write articles about products in your niche. And we're gonna write round up posts about them. So if you're in fitness, right, it could be best treadmills, best bikes, best whatever.
n/a Right? Best power bench machine. I don't know. If you're in software, it's like there's a million types. Right?
n/a Best project management software, AI writing software, anything like that. So we're gonna write these, but the hidden component of finding opportunities when it comes to blogging is actually timing. So think about it like Shark Tank. If you're gonna write content in the kitchen niche, are you going to write about things that are old and outdated and have been around for online for 20 plus years and already written about? So if you wanna write the article on the best refrigerators, good luck.
n/a It's probably very saturated, right? Because that product's been around forever, a bunch of big media sites probably wrote it already. But what about something newer in the kitchen? Some new type of blender Course new type of smart home device for the kitchen, or a touchless kitchen faucet, or some random strange product that is new and is emerging. Right?
n/a New things are coming on Amazon all the time (#1 new things are being created. So timing is the crucial component here. So we need new and emerging product categories to write about. (#1 certain niches have more than others. Right?
n/a Something like golf has new products every year, but the products don't really change. New categories don't come out as much. There's like golf range finders, GPS stuff, golf simulators can be a really good niche because those are expensive and pretty new. So there's some there. Every niche has new technology, and the new technology is the main driver of affiliate revenue.
n/a (#1 affiliate revenue can make you a lot more money than ads. For example, if you're making $5 for every 1,000 visitors for how to tie your shoes, you could be making 1,000 of dollars for a 1,000 visitors for certain keywords if the affiliate revenue is right. So how do we find new stuff online? Well, there's tools for this. Right?
n/a There's something like exploding topics that tells you, in the last, you know, couple years, what's the main exploding topics out there? AI logo generators, this company team you colds cold plunge tubs, AI image enhancers, and you can use a tool like this to find a lot of new rising keywords. Right? You could also use something like glimpse, which is an interesting tool that you can use Google Trends Course free. Google Trends gives you all of this information.
n/a Or you could look at something, go down to, like, you know, technology. Let's look at home automation. What's new there? Well, there's things like electric lint removers, single dose grinder, smart air purifiers, smart door handles, robot cat litter, nano foamers. I don't know what these things are.
n/a I don't have a very exciting paid plan on this, but again, there are ways that you can find and the the traffic growth and the keyword growth Course the truth is what happens with keywords and finding these opportunities when it comes to blogging is the keyword exists, people understand it, they find about it, someone on the content team at Forbes or Rolling Stone finds out about it, then they write it. Right? They're not geniuses, but things things that are new and emerging, it's almost a game of who can get there first Course I've found that the keyword difficulty is low on keywords until it's not. So the more competition comes in, but timing Course published date, the date that you published it is really important. There's articles on my blog that I would stand at no chance of ranking for now that I ranked for 4 years ago because I wrote it early on.
n/a I wrote (#1 on podcast hosting, the difficulty was like 30 at the time, now it's like 90 something. So it's about timing, it's about finding new and emerging product categories. Now these are even easier to find with Ahrefs. So you put in the word best plus the term, and we'll get into search intent and how why best is the word to YouTube. But you think about best laptop.
n/a If we look at best laptop, this is gonna be competitive. It's gonna have sites like CNET ratings, Tom's Guide, New York Times Best Buy, and all of that. Right? Very hard. But again, we just have to know how to find opportunities cause there's millions of them out there.
n/a If we drop the difficulty down to under 5, we can see best laptop for graphic design, best battery life laptop, best laptop for writers. And then if we look at who's actually ranking for that, it's probably not like Best Buy and stuff. There's some in there, but then there's also a site like authors tech 🎯Go domain rating of 17 very low Course this (#1 the the luhai.com Domain or anything of 6, probably no backlinks to this site really. So we just look for these clues. So when we're looking for them, we just have to know what to look for.
n/a Even something like software, for example, is gonna look really competitive Course there's things like best video editing, antivirus software. Look at all these really red things that have been around forever and everyone was writing about. But again, if we can drop this difficulty down, we can see maybe there are some software things we can write. Beat making software, music production, recording, photo organization, podcast, I bet you there's a lot of AI stuff. So you drop the difficulty down, there's things like AI trading software, AI SEO, AI video upscaling, AI novel writing.
n/a Right? So you have to stay on the cutting edge. It makes more sense to write about AI photo photo software than it does to write an article about web hosting. Course web hosting has been around forever, it's impossible to rank. And then there are a lot of super easy niches, I would say.
n/a Things that aren't competitive. I I'd say, does it pass the Forbes test? Would Forbes write about it? Forbes writes about technology, software, gadgets, business, and finance. I probably missed something in there, but, what about like outdoor and hobby stuff like kayak?
n/a You can look at kayaks, inflatable kayaks, fishing kayaks, fish finders for kayaks, beginner kayaks. There's literally thousands of articles you can write that are easy to rank Course. Recommending kayaks (#1 you join affiliate programs if (#1 costs $1,000, you have a 10% commission, you make a $100 on every sale for a kayak, and it's not that difficult with these numbers. Sometimes a little niche experience comes into. Let's say, I wanted to find things to write about about power tools Course some I can't really just put in, like, power tools if I I don't really know what the power tools are.
n/a Right? There might be a few a few articles I could write, but I need to know what the actual thing is sometimes. So something like a pole saw. Right? It's a long chainsaw on a pole.
n/a Right? I have to actually know what that thing is. So it's I found the easy opportunity. Right? There's pole saw, electric, battery powered gas.
n/a I could write probably 5 good articles on different types of pole saws. The (#1 best pole saws of 2024, 2025, here's the list. Right? But I have to kinda know a little bit. That's where some of the niche experience can come in and help you Course to spot new and emerging trends, you often need to stay ahead of the curve in the niche and understand it a little bit better than the average.
n/a But you start to, like, think differently when it comes to blogging. You start to realize just how many opportunities and products there are. So I put in like best fishing. You think about like, I I used to fish a lot when I was in Florida and it's just the number of products you have is pretty crazy. There's again fishing kayaks but then there's like rods, sunglasses, gear, reels, rod and reel combos, right, tackle boxes, ocean stuff, river stuff, trout things, you know, polarized sunglasses.
n/a It just gives you the you realize, like, holy crap, tele telescopic phishing rods. Like like like something I don't really know much about but I was gonna get was like a telescope. I knew nothing about it but like look at how many types there are. Best to see planets, best for astrophotography. Even if I put in a certain type of telescope.
n/a A dobsonian telescope. Right? There's different articles that could be written on individual ones here that you could make a lot of money on. Best 10 inch dobsonian, 8 inch, 12 inch. Right?
n/a Different sizes. So when you look at this stuff, it's really simple. You find the seed phrase for informational content, you use the word best, which signifies buyer intent for these comparative articles for transactional content, and then you make a list of opportunities. So in a spreadsheet, you just create a list of, say, 30 ideas. So what's the ratio?
n/a Well, the truth is this year, you can't have too many just straight up best of articles. Right? You can't have all just best, best, best, best, all affiliate articles. It doesn't really Google doesn't like it, and it's because you're not providing value in the form of informational content either. So if I only have like best golf drivers, irons, putters, sand wedges, range finders, and I have nothing about how to swing a golf club or like golf courses or anything like that.
n/a It looks weird. Right? I look like kind of a spammy affiliate site, and you don't want that. You wanna look like an expert. So the ratio typically now, and this changes over time, so don't you know, you'd have to be pivotable and adaptable when it comes to this stuff.
n/a It's pretty much like 80% informational at least, 20% transactional at the highest. So out of 10 articles you write, 8 of them should be, like, informational in nature, and a couple of them should be these transactional best of. So the goal with a blog, the thing is, to make consistent revenue with content, you need a lot of content. Right? And there's different levels, we'll get to that in monetization.
n/a So before we get into the content monetization plan, let's talk about something that's often overlooked, but is vitally important, it's almost the first rung of the ladder when it comes to creating content (#1 what to actually put in these articles. So let's say you have 30 ideas, some are informational articles in your niche, you know, best, beekeeping stuff, how to do beekeeping. You have, like, you know, every niche. Right? So you have 30 ideas.
n/a So what do we actually put in them? Well, we to know what search intent is. So when we think about the psychology of search, people are literally thinking of things in their brain and typing them in to search engines. Right? And then based on what Google is showing, we can know what is working, what Google is rewarding, what people are actually liking.
n/a Right? Right? So there's ways where, like, if you wanted to write an article on a certain keyword, but you did it the wrong way, you'll never rank because you missed the search intent. 1 example I like is how to lose weight. Right?
n/a So how to lose weight. We can see, Google is rewarding, National Institute of Health type of UK site. I don't know. Some government site, Mayo Clinic Health Line. Right?
n/a Because, again, this is a health issue. Discussions and forums, Center For Disease Control, WebMD, Harvard University. What's interesting is, 2 years ago, this was not the case. This was dominated by blogs. This was all blogs.
n/a There was, like, this site was up here. Health line was probably somewhere on page 1, but it was mainly blogs. Now Google is rewarding this authority and expertise. So that's why it's like sometimes it's good to avoid these are super competitive health and finance related niches. But, anyways, let's look at the blogs.
n/a We can see 25 tips for weight loss that actually work, how to lose weight fast, 9 scientific ways to lose weight. We get into how to lose weight fast according to experts, lose weight naturally backed by science, how to jump start weight safely. So we're looking at the titles here. Successful weight loss 10 tips. What's interesting to (#1, and I did this a couple of years ago (#1 I look at it and it's kinda interesting is when you think about the psychology behind the search, people wanna lose weight.
n/a Well, what do they wanna read about? Right? What do I put in this article and how how do I order it correctly? It's not rocket science. People wanna lose late weight fast and probably discreetly.
n/a If your title of the article is how to lose weight slowly and in front of everybody, right, people aren't gonna like that. You have to kinda think of the broadest possible appeal for your article to match the title. Now the the title here, we'll get into the content plan and how to actually create the content, but the keyword is how to lose weight. You're gonna see pretty much most of these have how to lose weight in the title. It doesn't always need to be there exactly, but I recommend that you have the target keyword in the title.
n/a And then there's extra room for stuff. So I call these search intent trigger words. These are like what gets people to click. So you can look at the top 10, the top (#1, and you can say, okay. For this given keyword, I've seen the word fast in here 3 times.
n/a I've seen experts a couple times. So I probably have a title that would be something like how to lose weight fast with minimal effort. Right? According to scientists. Right?
n/a That wouldn't all fit, but it would be something to the that nature. And you wouldn't have in the article and in the content plan, the search intent of it is wouldn't be something like how to lose weight, the history of weight loss. Right? What is weight loss? How does weight loss work?
n/a Like, how does the cell how does the fat cell get removed from the body? And then you go into the history like, that's SEO from probably 10 years ago. Right? The history of it, this big, giant, long guide because you wanna create the longest possible guide to rank. People now in the TikTok era have no attention span, so you need to get to the point immediately.
n/a So you need, like, the top not 50 ways, like, top (#1 ways to lose weight fast Course to experts. Intro of, like, 2 paragraphs, boom, number 1. And then you think about it, I'd be like, well, I don't wanna say just do a calorie deficit because that would be people don't wanna hear that, but it would be like something specific that's easy and attainable and fast. Right? And get right into the list.
n/a So that's a little bit of search intent on that 1. We also have to take Google into account when we look at this stuff. So Course example, Google will put different the most helpful content. That's what they're trying to do. That's their whole goal is the most helpful possible information and content right away.
n/a So I put in how to build a shed. Now what you'll see here is this is kinda dominated by videos first. Right? And then we get Home Depot, there's some blogs, shed plans, family handyman, which is a big, handyman site, Reddit, family handyman, again, wikiHow Garage Journal. But you see videos are first.
n/a That's because, like, if I wanna learn how to build a shed, it probably makes more sense in a video format than in text based Course. Because the text form would have to show me kinda like, you know, 1 of those manuals when you're building something, like, all the, instructions, this thing, that thing. It's kinda hard to create in the form of a text based blog where if you just shoot a video, it's much more manageable and easy to understand. So sometimes, videos do actually make more sense for a keyword than blog posts do and it really just depends on each individual search. When we do a different search like 40th birthday party ideas, we see it's different.
n/a It's just dominated by like, Google's trying to give some sources across the web here, in this search box, but then we have all blogs. Right? PureWow, the bash, groovy guy, gifts, some products for it, and more blogs related to it. Right? That's ebend.com40ideas to celebrate 40th birthday because you're really just reading a list of ideas.
n/a Right? It doesn't need to be a video. I wouldn't talk about here's my ideas for the best 40th birthday. Like, people just wanna see it in a list. Right?
n/a So text makes more sense in this cage case, which Google is rewarding more. Now we have to make 1 more really, really important distinction when it comes to transactional content and search intent. There's a big difference between the search laptop and best laptop, and this goes down, back to the psychology of search. When you think of just (#1 laptop, what do we see? Well, we see sponsored, you know, Google PPC ads.
n/a The first organic result is Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, (#1 New York Times. There's (#1 media site. Brands, different things, more pictures. Best Buy, Buy, Best Buy, there, Dell, Wikipedia. So we see mainly the brand selling them, right, when I do that.
n/a Best, because laptop by itself is probably I just wanna go to a product page. I'm just looking for a laptop, send me the best buy category page for laptops. I'm just gonna look at them and check it out. Best is the word that signifies comparative content. What are the best laptops?
n/a What are they? What are the best ones? Some human tell me. Give me the top 10. Give me the differentiations (#1 what are the best.
n/a So when we search that, yes, we still have Google's PPC sponsored Google Shopping ads, but we're gonna see, media sites. So, like, CNET is a, website, ratings, Tech Radar, New York Times, Verge, then Best Buy. So, you know, usually if it's just the term itself, it's like at least (#1% ecommerce brand selling the thing. If you add in the word best, it's pretty much 70 percent media sites and blogs about the thing. So again, it's about spotting the opportunity.
n/a If I put in best dishwashers, super common product. New York Times, Consumer Reports, Forbes, Best Buy. Right? Like, we're not gonna rank for this. It's just not worth pursuing.
n/a We're not gonna waste our time when Good Housekeeping, Home Depot, and YouTube, and Consumer Reports (#1 Lowe's are there. It's just not gonna happen for individual blogger. But if we add a few words in, like best dishwashers that use less water, find the long tail version of this, and you can see, yes, there's USA Day, there's Best Buy, then look in here, there's like of houses and trees.com, earth (#1, just small blogs ranking on page (#1. For dishwashers, just a different kind. Right?
n/a So we see of houses and trees, 5 most, energy efficient dishwashers. Very simple. Introduction, a few headings, and then right into the product list with links to Home Depot for the actual things. And you can see these are affiliate links because it says redirect.biglink.com. So again, this is gonna be a long video because every single detail of this is important, and it's like YouTube) to know this stuff.
n/a And so a blog lives in this world of informational content and transactional comparative content to recommend products. Right? So to master search intent, your informational content should come from your experience. Right? We don't just wanna spam things that already exist online or use an AI tool to come up with the thing.
n/a Right? We wanna have it come from experience (#1 then we optimize on page SEO with a tool like Surfer SEO, which we'll get to. And it's really a volume game. So there's different ways. So when it comes to information content, we wanna have a lot of it because topical authority is really important.
n/a So having a (#1 articles on party ideas shows Google that you know what the heck you're talking about instead of having just 3. Right? Right? So this stuff does take some time, but you see, you know, exponential more rewards at the end the longer you stick with it. Is it about, you know, if it's lose weight, is it fast?
n/a How do I lay this out in a quick and easy to digest best for human beings format? So informational content can be a little bit more nuanced than like, how am I gonna order this thing? But it is just, again, a list intro right into right into the topic. But the 1 that can't be fake is ending the search journey, which means somebody googled the thing, they found your blog, they clicked on it, they read your article, and they did not go back and click another 1 Course Google can tell when that happens. If they click your article, read it, go back, find another 1, and end on there that article, that is a signal that that other article is better than yours because it ended the search journey.
n/a So to end the search journey for transactional content like best laptops under $1,000 or best golf drivers, it's easy for transactional. You add search intent trigger words to the title that makes sense. You know, if it's beginner related, it could be the best golf drivers for beginners in 2024. And then you cover your bases. So to cover your bases with the content, we'll get into the content planning.
n/a You just have to think about who's gonna read this (#1 then provide every option for every possible person. So Course example, if I'm talking about the best golf drivers, I would talk about the best for righties, lefties, the best for beginners, the best for pros, the best expensive luxury option, the best cheap option. Right? And just whatever that is, you can find those clues (#1 other sites that are already ranking for stuff. But the idea is if you cover all the bases and it's comprehensive enough, the reader's gonna gonna be like, okay.
n/a They've covered everything. They know what they're talking about. I don't need to go back. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. So when it comes to search intent, this is kinda heart of where the content plan starts Course you can have a keyword, but if you don't put the right stuff in that blog post in the right order, it's not gonna rank.
n/a And it's really easy. You just find clues from what's already ranking on Google, what Google is rewarding and format it accordingly with your own human experience. So we've covered finding opportunities and we've covered search intent. It's time to cover the content assembly line. So this is kind of our fancy wording for the way to create content at scale.
n/a Like Henry Ford created an assembly line. Right? And it dropped the time to create a car from, like, 10 hours to an hour and a half, and it was a systematic way to create a product. And we can do a similar approach with content. We know we kinda have to Course this year, it's not like we can just write (#1 blog post and hope to make money.
n/a Right? We need a systematic way to do it. And we know also we just don't really know in a data driven way. We're not sure what's gonna rank on Google. We're not sure what's gonna work.
n/a So we can assume that not every article is going to rank, so we shouldn't spend, you know, 10 hours writing this perfect masterclass for no all this effort for no reward when we're not quite sure if it's even gonna rank because there's no way of knowing. We can look at the keyword difficult Course, the search volume, all of that. There's no real way of knowing. So we wanna create content in a systematic way. Now blogging is, again, a science, not an art.
n/a We can look at some article examples here to see what I mean. So when we look at formatting, like, here's (#1 best infant car seats. So there's this is a best transactional post. This I would say is a more advanced version of a best transactional post Course we have an intro, but then we have this fancy looking column thing. Right?
n/a They kinda coded this thing (#1. There's 5 columns. It's really it's got a rating system, all kinds of crazy stuff there. It's really cool and in-depth, but I wouldn't know how to do this necessarily. I wouldn't wanna do this, you know.
n/a You can do it with, WordPress (#1 with Gutenberg editor (#1 or Cadence Blocks, things like that. Like, there's options to make similar types of stuff, but again, it's a little bit more advanced. But when we look at it, it's intro into kind of the ratings, and then we get into the products themselves. So this is we're gonna get into on page SEO, how to actually optimize and create this article in a data driven way. So here's a product.
n/a Again, very fancy. A lot of these, you know, isn't even text. This is like reasons to buy, reasons to avoid, so pros and cons, system. Here's the actual text, a couple sentences. Right?
n/a And then back into that. So that's like a super advanced example. We should look at a simpler example. This is 1 from hmdtrucking.com, the best truck GPS. So we have an introduction, how GPS for trucking works, how to choose the best truck GPS, screen size, easy, special features, installation, storage space, and then it gets the actual products.
n/a Right? Heading, here's the product. This is an Amazon affiliate link. It's got some pros, it's got some cons, it's got a couple sentences, that's it. Next product.
n/a Right? Pros, Course, sentences. Pros, cons, sentences. So we realize that once we have product (#1, we have the format down, then we copy that exact format formula for product 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, however many you have. In the content assembly line, we don't wanna have, like, 30 best GPS's at the very beginning.
n/a Right? We would wanna maybe look at the word count, use Course SEO (#1 make it what we call a minimum viable post. What's a really high quality post that we can create in less time, but it's not like perfect (#1, like, 10,000 words, right, when we don't need it to be. We're trying to make the most efficient use of our time because a lot of us have, you know, kids, work responsibilities, hobbies, making dinner, all kinds of stuff. So how can we make the most, progress in the least amount of time?
n/a It's with the content assembly line reeling that, realizing that a post has an introduction. The best of post I'm talking about has an introduction, product (#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, summary. That's it. Right? So that's on page SEO in a nutshell for Course, transactional posts.
n/a I'll cover it more in-depth here in a second, but we'll go do a couple informational ones. So here's, like, (#1 thoughtful 50th birthday gift ideas. There's a featured image. There's an intro, and then there's, some interesting little things here, but that's just not related to the article. And then again, much like products are in a list format, ideas, and these things are in a list format.
n/a Number 1, paint and set, pottery classes. So it's just text. You can do Microsoft Word and you can add text in with some internal links and pictures. That's all all it is. And then there's probably a summary somewhere at the end.
n/a Maybe. There might not even be. No. No. I guess so.
n/a Yeah. There's like (#1 sent in summary. Another 1 would be this (#1 on how to fix a leaky faucet. Informational handyman type of search. Fix a dripping faucet.
n/a You can see there's ads here. Introduction. (#1 it says tools required. Screwdriver, Allen wrench, pliers, pliers. Material required.
n/a A little bit of information step by step. Step (#1, you don't have to have these fancy things. You just write in step 1. Right? Step 2, loosen the Allen screw.
n/a Step 3, remove the cap. And on and on. Right? Series of steps. Very simple.
n/a So we have to realize that content is simple, simple to create and right. We have to know how to use, how to rank. What is Google looking for when we're actually creating content? So let's cover on page SEO step by step. So we have a target keyword, what are we gonna do with it?
n/a Well, we're gonna add it into the title. So mine was best podcast hosting. It doesn't have to be at the very very beginning. The title format that works is if it's for transactional post like a number, and I don't really use all that but I was trying it. This actually is kinda like a TripAdvisor looking thing, that's how they always say, the best things to do in whatever city.
n/a So you have it in the title, in the URL of the blog post. So your target keyword should just be the URL. The URL of this article should not be slash the dash 14 dash all of those words. Right? Because the URL is the only thing that can't change Course think about it.
n/a You might get some links to this article. You might send some internal links to the article, you can always redirect it later, but when it comes to blogging, you can change everything. You can change the title, the images, the featured image, all the text, everything in the article. You just wanna keep the URL the same which should just be the target keyword which for here is podcast hosting. So it's in the title.
n/a There's some interesting trigger words here. I added platforms and then ranked for 2024. I used the Moz Title Tag Explorer because you can actually see and preview what it looks like. You don't want it to be too long. I think over a 160 characters and it gets cut off.
n/a So you don't want that. You want it to fit so that people can see it in the Google search results. But then we'll see here, there's a featured image that's not totally required but most themes in word press have them. Intro. Okay?
n/a Introduction. Now, when we talk about an introduction, it should be shortened to the point. There's things about my site that I actually don't like right now. I'm doing a redesign. The font style is too hard to read, in my opinion.
n/a It's a little bit small and narrow, thin from a weight's perspective. So but you wanna have like 4 to 5 intro paragraphs max. This could be a little bit long, but, very simple. You wanna just kinda hook people in, get them right here. People skim articles, they're not gonna read them.
n/a Right now, this is an h 1 heading. Title Course article is an h (#1, and we are always gonna be referring to WordPress here. We're not talking about Wix Course Squarespace or any of those things because they don't work as well. We'll get into press more. This is an h 1.
n/a There's only 1 h 1 heading in the entire article (#1 that is the title of the article. Google needs to understand what is the title. There's the date that was updated, my author thing. These things all kind of go into a theme that auto it's pretty automatic. I have a table of contents that is sticky over here.
n/a But what we have here, if we're just looking at text based content, what's important is introduction in paragraph text that's shortened to the point followed by an h 2 heading. So h two's are really important when it comes to SEO. There's (#1 h 1 for the title. There can be a number of h 2 headings, but there shouldn't be that many (#1 these are the really This is how the exact format that Google wants to see. So what is the plus your target keyword with a in the form of a question.
n/a Now this could also be an h 2 that just says the best, the 14 best podcast hosting sites or platforms. Not too much of a difference there but you want the target keyword in your h 2 heading (#1 the form of a question makes it look good, right? Because Google understands that and I have a sense here here are my top picks for the best ones. Now the company itself, the first 1 is an h 3 heading. So this is important.
n/a H (#1 the title, h 2 is the main heading content. H 3 is the secondary content. So whenever you're doing a transactional post, h 2 is the main (#1, h 3 is the list item. Right? So all of the list items, buzzsprout, and I have this I kinda had my developer create this fancy looking thing here, rating system, but it's if you look at it, it's just text and images.
n/a Key features, user experience, pricing, what I like this like. A little bit long winded, honestly. It doesn't have as many cool pros and cons and interesting charts and stuff, but it ranks for 4 years really well and made me you know, I'll show you the revenue here in a minute, but it was pretty high every single month. Then we get number 2, another h 3 heading. So, basically, an article consists of the h 1 title with the the target keyword, the URL, (#1 intro, and you wanna have the target keyword somewhere in the intro.
n/a You don't have to overstuff these things. We want it in the intro and in the h 2 heading. Now if we go down the list, we can see all of these different things and then I kinda have way down after I list everything. You can have secondary content below the the main list for these transactional posts. You have like an FAQ, is it worth it, where do I do it, blah blah blah, wrapping up summary, and all of that.
n/a So it's a pretty simple format. So here's another example of using Surfer SEO. So this is a tool that I definitely recommend when you're creating your blog posts because it literally tells you everything you need to do and all the random keywords that you should add in there. So this is 1 that I did, for best web hosting services. So I was foolish.
n/a I created this article in 2020 or 2019 maybe. It actually did get to page 1 for best web hosting for like a couple months. Didn't make a whole lot of money, but, super competitive, very hard to rank for. I was getting links to it and everything and it was just tough. But anyways, Surfer SEO.
n/a So I pasted it in here, and Surfer SEO will give you the content score. So it says, you know, out of a (#1, how much how SEO optimized is your article? So here it's the word count's right Course it's in the right range. It's between (#1 and 7,000 words pretty dang long. Right?
n/a Which that's another reason to stay away from some of its more difficult and challenging competitive niches Course some of the content has to be kinda long versus some easier 1. Headings count, I could use more headings. Paragraphs, I have a lot of them. Images, I have like none, but that's not true because I have might as pasted this in. The most important thing in Surfer here is we know what the target keyword should be in the title and throughout the copy, but how many times do we actually use it?
n/a Right? We don't wanna throw best web hosting in here like a thousand times and try to trick Google. Right? We don't wanna do that. So what we can do is we see what Surfer SEO does is it takes the top I don't know if it's 20 or 30 or 50 sites that are ranking for this term (#1 then it averages out all of these different data points.
n/a So in an article on best web hosting, they're typically, you know, between 6,207,200 words, and they use the word best web hosting between (#1 and 31 times. So I could use it a few more times, but these are just little details. Typically, with Surfer SEO, they give you 80 semantic keywords. So semantic keywords are all of these. So for example, a human being, it'd be really hard to come up with this stuff on your own.
n/a This is using, like, natural language processing, machine learning, and just scanning these articles. But for something like this, like, for example, I don't know if I could come up with something like, you know, hosting packages or VPS hosting, reseller hosting, shared hosting, dedicated website builder. These random things that Google would expect a robust and helpful article to have because Google is getting smarter. Their machine learning is saying understanding the contextual relationships of words as they scan your content. They're basically organizing the world's information, and as they do that, their natural language processing is getting smarter.
n/a So if you don't have any of these words in your article, Google's probably gonna reward the ones that do a little bit more because that seems like semantically related words in the English language that make sense for this keyword. So really all you can do is add them in certain amounts. You don't have to add every single 1. You don't wanna over optimize your articles and have, like, all 80 of these in here and have it overly optimized and they're all green. That's too optimized.
n/a Right? I would say now you've over optimization worked like 3, 4 years ago where you could just get this to, like, 90 and it rank really well. Now with Google's helpful content update, more like human experience stuff, this isn't as important. I would aim to get your score to like 70 ish, 65, and just move on. So you don't wanna overdo it.
n/a You don't wanna have too many keywords in here. But I mainly use this for the semantic keywords and understanding generally how long the article should be. Next, you can use a free tool like Grammarly to fix everything. Right? If we're not great writers, we put a sentence in.
n/a Well, it can fix things for us. It can find errors, punctuations, spelling mistakes, uses of passive voice, and random stuff like that. I put in (#1 here that best pre workouts article from Garage Gym Reviews. It was really well done, and I found that was interesting is it's not a perfect score. There's still a 177 issues with grammar, punctuation in here.
n/a And, you know, a year ago, I was, like, making this a 9 readable. So I think this is a good thing to just kinda help your writing. You can, aim for a score in the eighties, don't over optimize and fix everything necessarily. Some of the things that'll pick up don't make sense either. So like, it's saying, you know, this is an error.
n/a 3rd party tested. What's it's saying it should be testing. Doesn't really matter. Right? So some of the errors aren't really true, but I think over optimization is a thing that worked 3 years ago, but it doesn't anymore.
n/a So Grammarly can really help your writing though. The more that you use it, you'll find that, like, oh, I can reword this sentence, it sounds really good (#1 more readable. So aim to use it, paste your content in there. There's also Chrome extensions and things for Surfer and Grammarly to show up right in WordPress, but it's really good to help your, you know, make sure there's not a lot of errors and your writing is better. Another important thing in the content assembly line is thinking about who's gonna write the article.
n/a So is it just gonna be you writing everything yourself? Are you gonna use an AI tool at all? So, you know, Surfer has a really good AI tool, Surfer AI. You do a 1 click thing and it gives you a completed article with like usually a 70 Surfer score. You know, I still recommend that you write everything yourself, perfect your craft before either outsourcing it to another person Course trying to like use chat g p t or some AI tool and then editing it a ton.
n/a It just makes it more difficult when you're doing that, and we wanna future proof our blog. I'm not saying AI content's getting penalized right now, but it might in the future. Right? So we don't wanna write a (#1 articles with chat gpt that are kinda not helpful, not from a human experience, and then maybe we get a little bit of traffic right now, but then it goes down in a year (#1 we get nothing. Right?
n/a So we don't wanna take these shortcuts, we wanna really build a real brand around this thing. And also think about like, if you're gonna write it all, you wanna master it a little bit. So what I tend to do is, like, start in the middle of the article. If you're writing a transactional 1, start with the first company, put in the name of the company, right, Course, screenshot of the home page, start writing about the features, start writing about your experience, all of that stuff, and then focus on creating the middle of the article first, intro and conclusion last. Because a lot of times that the intro can be the hardest part to write because you're like thinking about how to write a good hook.
n/a So when you're thinking about on page SEO and like writing for human beings also, there's a lot to consider. So when we're writing for human beings, we wanna have things that are from our own experience. So we can say, like, I like this about the product Course when my team reviewed this thing, we thought that this. We like this, but we didn't like this. A lot of the times, too many articles just say, this is great.
n/a That's great. This is great. But nothing is actually bad. Right? Differentiation is important.
n/a Pictures of yourself with the product. I get this question a lot too. Do I need to buy every product I recommend and review on my blog? No, because it would be impossible. Most sites never did that in the past.
n/a They're writing about if you have a like some of these big media sites have a 1,000 let's say they have a 1,000 they definitely have more than this. A 1,000 transactional articles each with 10 products. That's 10,000 products to buy, review, and look at. Like, it's just not possible. But 2, 3 years ago, what you could do blogging is just take the keyword, look at the website about what it's about, look at other blogs writing about this thing, and then give your own spin on it, making it up a little bit, saying I like this about it.
n/a I didn't like this. When I was doing it in software, I could actually, like, do a free trial. Look at the actual free trial, take screenshots of the trial with arrows and things to make unique images (#1 all of those things based on human experience. But I didn't have to buy every single software, much like you don't have to buy every single thing, which is a good good thing about blogging, and it's not YouTube. If I'm looking at the best fishing kayaks on YouTube, I'm not gonna expect a guy just sitting in an office with no kayaks, right?
n/a I'd probably wanna see somebody actually using them. Whereas with the blog, you're just expecting an image of the kayak from the site or whatever (#1 then text underneath. So, however, with the helpful content update and with human experience coming to be more important, there's little ways and tricks you can do. So using a lot of I words, adding quotes within the thing. So within a product review you write, you know, I've done this with a few articles but you can write like, you know, if there's somebody else maybe you know as an expert, you could use them or yourself and add a quote.
n/a Like, I really like this about it says so and so, the CEO of this business. I thought that this part was blah blah blah, something specific. So adding quotes in, adding how you test and validated your offer, adding author pages to your site, showcasing a lot of, you know, your methodology. So Course example, the Garage Gym review site, they have things on, you know, our process and how we do this, how we come up with reviews in this 3 point system. Right?
n/a So disclaimers, disclosures, we can cover that too, but ultimately, it's about creating human based content. So what you can do, like if you're writing about hot tubs or pools or something, no, you're not gonna buy us 10 swimming pools in your back yard and line them up in a row. That could be pretty cool. But what you can do is, like, go to a hot tub showcase, take pictures of yourself with the thing. There's a reason that Garage Gym Reviews took, like, 40 pictures of different people using pre workout.
n/a It's because it's very in-depth and makes it seem like they really know what they're talking about which they do. Right? It's a very impressive article. So when we think about writing blog content in a nutshell, we have to first think about optimizing for a keyword. We don't wanna just write random stuff typically.
n/a So target keyword, we put it in the places that I told you, then we optimize with Surfer to get it to a decent level with the right semantic keywords we format it with the right headings, and then we add our own human elements to it that can be pictures of you that can be eye statements that can be quotes that can be things from your own experience that really make it stand out because we are entering this world of AI (#1, like, I can ask chat gpt what's the best laptop (#1 it'll give me some stuff, but it is outdated. People want human based experience to tell them how they did things. That's also why Google's rewarding Reddit with a ton more traffic because people are interested in people's take and they trust people. So we've made it pretty far so far. We've talked about a lot (#1 if you've made it this far, thank you (#1 there's plenty of more value to come Course we've already covered finding keyword opportunities, search intent, and writing content.
n/a So now it's the fun 🎯Go, let's get into blog monetization. (#1, the truth about this is, you notice that I haven't talked anything about like creating a website yet or a blog, because that's kinda lazy and that's what everyone wants to do for affiliate revenue, but there's all these things you have to understand before you even think about that Course you have to understand monetization at the beginning if you wanna be successful. It's hard to do keyword research, big picture of how monetization works across different niches and what the revenue streams actually even are and which ones you wanna do and are fun for you. So there's an order to monetization. So Course example, you have blog posts and there's transactional and informational content.
n/a Right? (#1, let's say, is transactional 80% informational, and there's affiliate revenue and ad revenue. So affiliate revenue has higher ROI than ads return on investment, it makes more money, and it's algorithm based meaning you have to rank for stuff to make money. Right? Ad revenue, lower return on investment, but it's also algorithm based.
n/a There's also other revenue streams though. There's sponsorships, there's Course sales, there's services, there's lots of other things. Right? Because we're in this attention and monetization economy where there's 4 main things here. There's getting attention to your blog post, getting traffic, getting views, views, getting affiliate revenue, ad revenue, course revenue, sponsorships, but there's an order to blog monetization.
n/a There's a reason we don't launch a course Sunday 1. We don't have an audience yet. There's also a reason we can't have sponsors yet. We don't have any traffic to articles to get or care about a sponsor. We build a content plan with affiliate and ad revenue in mind, but we have to go after the right revenue streams in the right order.
n/a And on this slide, we can see some interesting distinctions here. So like, there's all these different assets on the left. These are unowned assets that aren't related to a blog like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest. These are secondary unknown assets. Right?
n/a They're they have algorithms. You don't own it. You don't own your content on it. If it's Facebook, right, you don't own that content. They do.
n/a If they go down, everything goes down. So the good thing about blogging is you own your website, you own the web hosting. Now the thing is though, we have to go from attention to monetization. We have to go from this algorithm based thing that we have to understand. Right?
n/a The Google algorithm, the TikTok algorithm, the Pinterest algorithm into an owned asset that we actually can control which is an email. Getting somebody from the algorithm, finding your blog to an email list is how you get your own sales through courses and sponsorships. So that comes down the line. But the main things to think about when it comes to blogging is affiliate revenue, ad revenue. You can run just with that.
n/a That's just a content. You can be a ghost. You can hide behind your site (#1 just run with that, but you can also add in sponsorships, core sales, and services to it as well. Now there is a personal brand path to 7 figures as well. Everyone starts with a blog.
n/a They create some affiliate articles, some saying transactional best of posts. Then they have ads. They have informational content and transactional content. You can stay here. Right?
n/a And this you should stay here for at least 6 months really mastering the process, but then you could launch a course. Right? All of your informational content about in your niche could eventually become a video course that you sell. Now you're not making 10% affiliate commission or whatever it is. You're making a 100% because you own an actual product.
n/a Right? Then once your systems are in place, you're making money, you hire a writer. That at that point, you could have an ad, (#1 writer, 1 video editor, then you have you're making blog revenue with affiliate marketing (#1 ads, courses, and then you can start making videos to kinda match what you're doing in your blog with the informational content, to then get people to click the link in the description. I've been doing all this for years now. Right?
n/a It's very lucrative, but you have both, a blog and a YouTube channel, and then you just do everything. Right? You have blog and YouTube, and then you have unlimited revenue streams, affiliate marketing ads, sponsorships, courses, coaching. So I wanted to give you the big picture on this first because the blog is the entry point, it's the first thing to do, the first action to take for all of these revenue streams. There's a reason I started my blog first in a website because I knew how to do that, ultimately, but also I didn't even wanna do YouTube.
n/a Like, I wanted to stay behind the scenes and not do anything. And you can just stop right here. Right? Blog affiliate marketing and ads. You never have to show your face.
n/a If you do that, you can make $10,000 a month, maybe 20, maybe more if you do this really well. But to get to 7 figures, a $100,000 a month or more, that is possible. It's very possible, but you will need to have your own product and you will need to spend time building an audience. And just real quick, there's like another model here. There's a newsletter model where instead of YouTube, you don't wanna do YouTube?
n/a Okay. You can do more text based content. You build a business around a newsletter where you're doing that through Twitter, LinkedIn posts, building that, you know, free newsletter, and then selling sponsorships in a newsletter. That's another business model that just starts. So what what's really great about blogging again is that it's the first thing you do.
n/a You can infinitely pivot and adapt your content when it's a personal brand. If you have a YouTube channel, you still need a website to send people to an opt in page on. Right? You can do click funnels, but it's a little spammy. If you are doing Instagram, it's good to match it to an actual website.
n/a So website is always first. It's it's really important to think about the big picture that the the opportunity is a lot bigger than you think. It's not just I'm gonna create a tiny niche site and make $2 a month. It's if I do this right and I build a personal brand in the background of my life for the next (#1 to 5 years (#1 I don't quit, I can really build something big (#1 I can be known for something and I can have my influence in the space and I can teach and I can make 100 of 1,000 of dollars a month if you put in the right amount of work. Now with all of that said, we have to go back to basics and start with the blog and our content plan.
n/a So we need to understand the numbers behind revenue, and blog monetization is a numbers game. It's based on traffic (#1 then it's based on the commissions that you're getting either through affiliate marketing or ads or whatever. So Course example, let's do an example of getting a lot of traffic for low value keywords for ad revenue. So something like how to tie your shoes or random post like that. So let's say you're getting a 100,000 visitors to a blog post or an average of blog posts.
n/a Assuming a $4 RPM revenue per 1,000 visitors, you would be making $400. So $400 for a 100,000 visits for random low value ad network revenue. Right? Which is crazy, because you would need a 1,000,000 visits to make $4 a month. Way too much.
n/a Right? We don't wanna just rely on super easy random keywords that don't mean anything and have no search in, you know, value. Now we can do another example. So high traffic ad revenue for something a little bit better. So I was in, you know, 1 where I was in a media an ad network, but I was making money, maybe I think it was a $20 RPM.
n/a It was (#1, $30 RPM. So for every 1,000 visitors, when I was in Mediavine, I was making like, let's just say (#1. Let's assume it was 20. I think it was higher, 🎯Go now, if I get a 100,000 visits to things that are in a slightly different niche, maybe like business ideas posts or software related posts (#1 I have ads put on them. Right?
n/a Banner ads we're talking about at the bottom inside, whatever wherever they are throughout the content. That could be a $20 RPM, which would mean for a 100,000 visits, I still only make $2,000 a month. So I'm like, that's still not that good. Right? Like, getting it's kinda similar to, like, getting a 100,000 views on YouTube and having no product.
n/a You're making a couple grand. The competition is fierce though, and that's kinda how the ad networks work when it comes to blogging or YouTube. Like, the more specific (#1 niche you are in a certain thing that's valuable, the more your RPMs or revenue will be because advertisers want to be on certain sites for certain things. So if I have an article on web hosting, brands like Bluehost or WPX will be more interested in putting a banner out there than they would on how to tie your shoes. Right?
n/a Because it's like it all works out that way. So, however, that's ad ad revenue. So, yes, you can do ad revenue by itself. You can just put banner ads on your site, but you just know that you'll need a shitload of traffic to make a real substantial income. Think like a 1,000,000 visits a month or more and that takes a lot of content and a lot of work.
n/a You can do it with simple and for like, you know, party ideas, birthday party ideas, this party idea, that party idea, it'll just take a lot of content. Alright, so let's talk about the power of affiliate marketing. So affiliate marketing, you just make more money because people are clicking things and you're making commissions that typically dwarf anything that you're making through an ad network. So let's say that you're getting 10,000 visits a month to a blog post or an average of blog post for best of transactional stuff (#1 through that, you know, the product price is generally (#1 $100 for what you're recommending. Now, what we realize is when people land on an article, about 30% of them will click an affiliate link.
n/a Not every single visitor is gonna click on an affiliate link, right? So 30% click an affiliate link, that's 3,000 affiliate link clicks. Now what happens with affiliate marketing is you can control, like, the clicks and the traffic that you're getting. But once you say, like, here's the best hiking boots and they click that link to REI, it's now on REI to convert that traffic into a sale (#1 they have to convert it into a sale typically for you to make money. You're not gonna get paid for sending clicks to any affiliate brands that you're promoting.
n/a Right? So at that point, the typical ecommerce conversion rate is 2%. So a visitor's visiting a product page, you can assume that 2% of them will actually buy the thing. So 10,000 visits to a blog, 3,000 affiliate link clicks at 30%, bear with me, a 2% conversion rate on those 3,000 clicks would be 60 sales. So you're generating 60 sales for the brand.
n/a If the product costs (#1 $100 and you have 60 sales, that's $6,000 in sales to the brand. So let's say that's, you know, a $100 hiking boots. You made 60 sales of 60 hiking boots, $6,000 in sales to REI. You have a 10% commission. You've made $600.
n/a Okay. It's not bad. Right? You're Course 10,000 visits to get $600, that's a $60 RPM, so it's triple what you're making from the ads at 20. Right?
n/a It's a little better, but and of Course, there's, like, there might be some more affiliate link clicks, that's why you optimize positions 2345 down the list, but you're not making substantially more in that instance. But let's look at 1 little tweak that can make more affiliate revenue. So same example, 10,000 visits to an article Course of articles. The average product though is now $1,000. So $1,000 instead, you've made 60 sales on a $1,000 products.
n/a So that that is, $60,000 in sales. Now Course 10% commission is $6,000 that month. Now you're at a $600 RPM. So now we're talking. So higher priced affiliate products in the (#1 to a $1,000 range.
n/a If you're getting the same, you know, amount of traffic to those types of articles, you could literally be making a (#1 to a 150 times as much money from that traffic than you are for something like how to tie your shoes. Right? So 10,000 visitors to how to tie your shoes, you might be making $40, 10,000 visitors to a high priced affiliate articles, you might be making $6,000. So there's a huge range of different blog monetization amounts, right, depending all on the keywords that you pick. So again, it goes back to if things are expensive and they're searched for a lot, it's gonna be more competitive, it's gonna be harder to rank for.
n/a So you have to find the pocket of opportunity. The hidden factor here is timing. So Course example, in partner stack, you can see that I've made, $1,100,000 in this 1 affiliate network. Right? And this is since November of 2020, I've been making consistently (#1 say, March, then you might not get paid till April or May depending on the brand.
n/a So you'll see like this is not paid yet, This will actually go back up to here because this is just 1 of the brands that locks 2 months later. So anyways, what I'm saying is you can make a substantial income, but timing was a com a component here. This is pretty much a couple of different articles. This is like 2 articles that I wrote back then that I would have no chance of ranking for now, but I'm not even ranking for that well now. I was ranking for online course platforms for 4 years (#1 like the between positions (#1.
n/a Then what happened is all the course platforms started writing the articles, Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi, big media sites and stuff (#1 others, and it just got a little bit more competitive. Reddit came up, you know, forums, a few videos, and I pushed to page 2. So traffic went down a lot. However, revenue, that was back in, you know, around middle of last year, so you can see revenue still (#1, 30, 30, 25, 32, 26. So and this might again increase because these are locked.
n/a So the power is timing and it's finding opportunities that can make you a lot of money. So that was an example in a competitive recurring affiliate commissions and software. So Course example, software can pay you every month for as long as a customer remains a customer. If someone signs up through my affiliate link, for example, for podcast hosting, I will get a I think it was a 20 or 30% commission, on that customer. Now it's a small amount.
n/a Right? But there's power in this compounding effect. For example, if you're making 20% recurring commissions on, a company, maybe it starts out slow (#1 it's 300, but this math works where by the end of 12 months, if you're just adding some customers and assuming a 5% churn rate, you can be making $34100. If you can bump that to 30% commission, you could be making 5,000. So if we look at my Buzzsprout account, for example, this has been going on forever since April of (#1, 19.
n/a I wrote the article. I started generating some money. $14 my 1st month. (#1 110, 2 (#1, 4126 32, a 1000, 14, 18, 22, 27, 30. And it got up to its peak (#1 then actually interestingly in sometime in, like, July or August, I was at (#1, but I talked to the affiliate manager at Buzzsprout, and I was able to negotiate a $5,000 a month flat fee deal for the remaining of time up until it passed 5,000 (#1 then it went here.
n/a So all of these months from May 2020 down to, like, I think it was September of (#1. It was actually 5,000 a month. (#1 that was the power of ranking on Google. I was ranking number 1 for podcast hosting. It was less competitive then.
n/a Now it's more competitive. But you can see, this is this goes on, 2022. This is monthly revenue for (#1 article. So it's kinda crazy to look at Course I was making less than this when I started my career, full time working 40 hours a week, and this is just 1 article making it. So as you can see here, it's going up.
n/a It's gone down slightly in the last 4 months. It's lost, like it peaked, looks like sometime around December of 22. And then, yeah, my ranking for this has gone down, but you can see from just this 1 article, like, I'm still making 1,000 of dollars every single month with this. So I have to revamp it. I have to make some updates to it, but that's the power of recurring commissions.
n/a However, recurring is very competitive. Software is very competitive. If you're just starting a new blog, I work don't do it. Right? There are little bit of opportunities in AI, but it's tough.
n/a So on 1 hand, recurring commissions can grow a sustainable business. It's the most stable for a blog. However, it's the hardest to actually make work from an affiliate perspective. The other 2, when it comes to affiliate marketing and really understanding your niche and what niche you're gonna choose is there's 2 other ones. So like high ticket, you're making more for every sale.
n/a So think like golf simulators Course like luxury watches or things like that. So if you're making a $100 or more for for every commission, so like a $10,000 golf simulator, if you're getting a 5% commission on that, you're making $500 every time somebody buys a golf simulator simulator through your site. That's like how I would consider high ticket. At that point, you only need a handful of these articles to rank and work. Sometimes though they can be more competitive.
n/a And then the 3rd type, and this is the most common and the most kinda easy for beginners is the volume game. So think smaller commissions per sale, so average of $50 or less per sale. Think things like pet products. So like dogs and cats. Right?
n/a There's pet food, there's pet kennels, leashes, all kinds of different products, but they're not all expensive, most of them. Right? The average of the cost is pretty low. Yes. There's like electronic fences and invisible fences, GPS things.
n/a But for the majority of products, they're not that expensive. So what you need in these types of niches is volume. You need to rank lots of articles, lots of easy ones for revenue. So that's things like, you know, a lot of outdoor goods too, like we talked about fishing or kayaking or camping or hiking or winter sports or boating or, you know, whatever it is, like, you just need a volume of articles. So the more you know, if you can get to $500 per article every month, then you're looking at, well, I need 10 of those to rank well and do that, and then I'm at 5 $1,000 a month.
n/a So those are the 3 main types of revenue when it comes to blog monetization. Recurring, which is through, like, software, high ticket, luxury goods, and then the most common is just a volume game. You just need more articles, more things ranking. So to get started with affiliate marketing, you create your content, you write it, you publish it, and then you wanna see how you're ranking. So you install Google Analytics, Google Search Console, all that, and then I don't say, like, don't join affiliate programs right away, that's a common mistake a lot of people make is they wanna join them immediately.
n/a It's like, I wanna get those affiliate links (#1. Just doesn't make sense. Blogs aren't gonna blow up immediately. Right? Like they're not just gonna get tons of traffic out of the gate.
n/a It's a slow grind to increasing your traffic. And looking at the numbers game, like, if you're getting 50 visits to an article (#1 you're getting 30 affiliate link clicks or 20 affiliate link clicks, maybe you might make 1 sale on that and then depending on your commission, maybe you're making like $5. So it's just not worth to spend your time, effort, and energy in joining a bunch of affiliate programs when you could be spending that time writing more content. So but how it works is pretty simple. You sign up for affiliate programs, you Google, you know, the name of the company plus affiliate program, or you can find it in the footer oftentimes of their website.
n/a And every program is run by the brand itself and has different terms and commission rates and things like that. So Course example, like Dick's Sporting Goods has an affiliate program that they set their own commission rates, so they say, we will pay 5% commissions. You sign up through that. You get your unique affiliate link, right, just for you that signifies that's when somebody visited through your link, and that's pretty much it. You add your links into your content.
n/a So then you can use something like thirsty affiliates which is a WordPress plugin that you just add your links in, name it, and it cloaks them, it gives them it looks nice and it organizes them. So every time you're gonna post, you just have to click a little button (#1 you can add your affiliate links in. Once you better them in, then all you do is you view your dashboard. It shows you how many clicks and conversions YouTube generated for the brand (#1 then there's always a payment section (#1 you can add a bank account or typically PayPal account into it. It's pretty much it.
n/a You look at the dashboard like you saw with the buzzsprout looks a lot different. This is partner stack. This is an affiliate network. So you can see in an affiliate network, there's ones like Impact, 🎯Go stack is pretty much software, there's ShareASale, and CJ. Those are like the main (#1.
n/a I'm probably missing a bunch, but those are the main (#1. And like, network is interesting because it houses a number of different affiliate programs in (#1 place, So you can see like, recruitee, you get 20% of every sale in year 1. I don't really like that Course by the end of year 1, you're not making anything. Right? Some people do that.
n/a So earn, SaneBox 30% recurring commission on all sales, AI email productivity tool. Very interesting. So you can see this. You, click this and you join it. You add some information (#1.
n/a So you join programs in a number of different ways. If you're interested in learning more, I would look at, like, Impact, PartnerStack, CJ, and ShareASale. And when it comes to affiliate marketing, there's a lot of nuance here too because I was an affiliate manager working for an ecommerce platform when I worked in Austin, Texas. So I saw all these bloggers and people making a ton of money, and that's what kinda hit the light bulb going. Because I was managing them.
n/a I was helping them promote our software. So the goal here is though, you you wanna find like the top, you know, the most the 5 most popular companies in your niche because what tends to convert the best is the most popular mid priced products in your niche, because we don't know what actually makes money until we add the links and see how it converts. There's plenty of things I did rank for that just didn't make money. For a while, I was ranking for like, best streaming software. I'm like, oh, that seems really good.
n/a The affiliate programs weren't really there and wasn't making much money, whereas other things I didn't think would make money did. So, again, as an affiliate, you control clicks, affiliate link clicks traffic, you get the traffic to the company that you're promoting. The benefit here is you don't have to have your own product, right, you're reviewing others, but then it's on the conversion rate of them. So typically the popular companies convert the best. So if you're in hiking and outdoor stuff, look at REI, look at really well known brands that people trust, and you can always start with Amazon.
n/a Although the Amazon Associates affiliate program gets a lot of heat because their commission rates suck, it's true. Sometimes it's 2%, 3%. Right? You're not making a ton of money. It's a good catch all at the beginning if you wanna just join once you're getting traffic so at least you're making a little bit of money until you join the main (#1.
n/a So, like, let's say you're ranking for best basketball hoops, join Amazon first, add some in, add your Amazon affiliate links in, and then you can worry about joining like the Dick's Sporting Goods program or, like, doing research on which ones have higher commission rates. Because you can usually get higher commission rates typically outside of Amazon. So if you have a content plan, you understand your keywords that you're gonna go after, then create a simple, you know, Course creating another tab in your spreadsheet. (#1 is the keywords that you wanna write. (#1 is the affiliate programs you wanna join.
n/a So just don't join them yet. Just add, you know, links to the opt in page. So you can sign in. You just need a name, email. Sometimes it's very good to not just use a Gmail email address when you're signing up for an affiliate program.
n/a Use a branded, like, domain (#1. Just use, like, Google Workspace and create (#1 with your domain, sign up that way, and then you can start joining affiliate programs. So affiliate marketing is a little Course complicated than ads. Ads, you know, you join an ad network. So let's say you get traffic to 10,000 a month, you join an ad network like Mediavine, Ezoic, or AdThrive.
n/a I recommend you stay away from AdSense. I tried it, you know, I was excited. I was getting, like, 500 to a 1000 visitors a month when I first started. I joined AdSense (#1 I made, like, a dollar or 2 or something, and it was like a ton of work that I just did for nothing. So some of these have traffic requirements.
n/a I can't remember which (#1, but just look into it. Some don't, but you just join an ad network, you pretty much add a word press plugin to your site, it adds the banner ads in, and then you get paid. So you don't have to like do anything. You don't have to add affiliate links in or talk to an affiliate manager or anything like that. So affiliate marketing and ads is kind of the core of the strategy when you're just starting out because it dictates your content plan like what content you're actually creating.
n/a If you understand monetization and the numbers behind it, do some back of the napkin math to understand that I need this much traffic Course this specific keyword. The products are cost of this much. I'm making a 10% commission. What could I actually make in this, right, every month if I'm ranking in the top 10? So it's you don't have to know.
n/a It's really hard math equation. You're not gonna know the exact answer, but it's pretty obvious that, like, ranking for something recurring like VPNs that's super valuable Course something really high priced like luxury watches is gonna make you more than a pair of socks. Right? It's just understanding that behind your niche. So finding the new technology, finding the new opportunities.
n/a So let's talk about some other blog monetization strategies. So 1 that I really like is selling services. So this is could be called the agency model, the consulting model, the service model, whatever you wanna call it. But this is 1 that I actually started with when I started back in 2019. The benefits here are you don't need any traffic to your blog.
n/a You can do this with a sales approach just on email and Linkedin and you can close clients a lot faster. You don't even need traffic, you can just build this little mini agency as you're starting and charge a few $1,000 per client or whatever you can. So we do teach this in some of our content and Course, we're seeing a lot of students find success with this. And it's because, you know, if you don't have traffic and you're waiting on the algorithm, you're waiting on affiliate marketing and ads (#1 it's just taking a while, why don't you just take some control into your own hands? Take what you learned going through, like, blog growth engine, our course, being in the community, working with other students, taking any Course, just learning about SEO, take the Google Analytics exam, take the Google AdWords exam.
n/a Right? Figure out some digital marketing thing you wanna offer, find your vertical market, your audience. I have another, you know, full video on this. Can't cover it all. But you find your audience, could be local SEO for dentists.
n/a Right? (#1 then you charge them 2 to $500 to manage their Google My Business or do simple SEO for them. Now with this model, you're kind of a freelancer that's actually you're getting (#1 step closer to time freedom because you're not tied to a job. You can make 1,000 of dollars faster with consulting. And it's what I did when I first started.
n/a I was doing simple SEO services for some software companies, and I made, you know, I was making between $510,000 a month with that before I had any affiliate revenue yet. But with that, it was the accelerant my blog needed to scale. So you build this little agency model, (#1 with that, I had money now. So the business was making money because every business needs money, and the quickest way to get money right away is to do services. Right?
n/a Because if you're starting a blog and you have no traffic, there's other blogs that do have traffic or other local businesses that need more traffic. So instead of doing just content for your own self, why don't you do some for another brand too while you're building this up? Then you make 1,000 of dollars doing consulting, you hire your first writer, and now you actually have a single team member that can write stuff for your clients and write articles for your own blog once you've mastered that. So it's an accelerant. It's a way that we teach to scale things a lot faster.
n/a If you just wanna make money online, just start selling services and coaching and do outreach. Don't wait for people to find you. Reach out to them. So it's an interesting 1 that you can do. You know, there's people that say, you're an expert on filmmaking or or book writing.
n/a You know, you might get traffic (#1 then it's like book call with me on Calendly. Here's a link, $500 an hour. Boom. Get 10 of those a month, there's $5,000 a month. So there's a lot of ways you can do services.
n/a There's another 1, sponsorships. So sponsorships is another way to monetize your blog. It's a really interesting 1. You know, you need some traffic first, so we don't cover it too much when you're just starting out, but I did I did this. So, like, instead of having an affiliate link in the first position, why not just have a company pay you directly every month to be in that first position?
n/a And when you're ranking for these transactional keywords in their product categories, like, I was ranking for, like, best LMS, learning management systems. I had a learning management company pay me $60,000. Boom. (#1 payment for the year to be number 1 in that article. And honestly, I think I was on page 2 for it.
n/a It. So it's pretty nuts, but, you can sell sponsorship placements, so that's like, I'm a put you in position 1 in this article, for this. And again, that's the unfortunate reality of how the Internet works. It's not always the best recommendations that get put in the top spots. It's what makes the most money, but I didn't make those rules.
n/a And you can also just do sponsored articles. So like, yes, I'll write a review on you, it's $1500 Course something like that. Right? So sponsorships are interesting, kinda like YouTube sponsorships, but you're placing people into blog posts brands. And of course, there is courses and coaching, and again, we don't do this 1 right away because this takes a real audience to sell to.
n/a So all of your info content though can be helpful and teach something. So, So, you know, my blog, I have articles on how to make money blogging, how to start a blog, how to make money online, random stuff like that. Right? Every single 1 of those can have an exit intent pop up with a lead magnet to a free guide, free master Course going into a sales funnel. Right?
n/a So, courses is kind of where you wanna aim to be, where you can get. It just takes a solid year or 2. I don't mean to scare you off, but it can take you a little while if you're doing blogging to do that. So if you wanted to accelerate way faster, you know, and you don't like the idea of vlogging at all, then you can just do courses through YouTube. If you just wanna do courses, starting with YouTube probably the answer.
n/a We still need a website. So there are still options for courses for introverts. So people don't wanna be on video. Well, there's some like people have courses on Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, right? It's Just screen share stuff Course drawing, right?
n/a It's just a hand or even crypto. Maybe you're just in a little corner talking about stuff. What's interesting about course content, it's it's video based content and it's usually the the editing and the style, it's not as expected to be as good as like YouTube. People expect flashy, perfect editing on YouTube, whereas in a Course, it's just slower, methodical, you don't need to keep people, you know, engaged all the time, you're just talking going through a step by step process. So for example, if I was a woodworker, what I would have is articles on my blog on woodworking, you know, the best woodworking tools, all of that stuff.
n/a Exit intent pop up. Get my free 10 essential woodworking tools checklist. Sign up here with your email. Boom. Now you're in the email list.
n/a Automatically, it would be sent the woodworking essentials, you know, the 10 tools. And then through that, over the next week, get an email every day about woodworking, and then slowly, why you really need the best woodworking course. I have everything. Alright. 10, (#1 hours of, you know, how to be an expert woodworker and every single detail you need, and it's, you know, maybe $500 or something.
n/a So pricing, of course, is another whole thing. I have videos on that too, but it's another interesting revenue stream. So to sum that up, to sum up blog monetization, it has to start by selecting your niche based on kinda understanding how all of this works, focusing first on ad revenue and affiliate revenue, and knowing down the line, courses is where you need to go. You need to be teaching something that eventually can become your own product, an informational product, because education is changing. College is not gonna be able to know all the stuff that I'm even talking about in this video.
n/a Right? You're You're not gonna learn this from a professor. So there's individual people can become experts on a number of different things, and it doesn't matter what it is. It could be guitar, piano, woodworking, gardening, knitting, crocheting, anything. Right?
n/a Fishing, all kinds of stuff can have courses that teach people how to do things. Fitness has a ton. Right? So, it takes time, though. It takes time to do that.
n/a So the goal here at the end is just seeing how big the pitch big the picture and big the opportunity really is Course once you hire a writer and you maybe you get a video editor, then you can go multi platform. You can have a blog and a YouTube channel and you can batch your time on YouTube where, yes, I'm shooting this super long ass video and I'm losing a little bit of steam as I do it and my ears a little bit plugged so I can hear myself in my brain, but I'm not losing my mind yet (#1 you're still here if you're still here, I mean, that's amazing. But what was I talking about? Things. Other things.
n/a So for example, going multi platform, it can take time. It it might take a year to get there, but you could do blogging plus YouTube. You could do Pinterest and Instagram plus blogging. It just really depends on what you're in. You have to know where your audience is also before go on YouTube.
n/a If you're talking about homesteading for moms, it's Pinterest and Instagram with your blog. Right? So you have to kinda know where your audience lives. If it's about business stuff, LinkedIn. Right?
n/a So going multiplatform, building a true personal brand typically requires more things. You'll notice I didn't really talk too much about Pinterest because it's pretty freaking simple. You create pins, you link your pins to your articles, that's it. You try to go viral with them. Same thing with Twitter and LinkedIn.
n/a You write posts based on text in a certain format, link to your stuff, create a newsletter, whatever. But it's really important to focus on Google and YouTube, mainly Google, what we're talking about here with blogging Course that's where people buy stuff. They Google things, they look at blogs (#1 they buy through those affiliate links. It's less likely that they're gonna scroll passively through Instagram, find you (#1 buy through an affiliate link. They have to make like 7 clicks to do that.
n/a They have to click in your thing and click your bio, click the little link tree thing, click another link, then get to the product page, then buy something on their phone whether not logged in on Safari. Probably not gonna happen versus searching something on Google like the best laptops under a 1,000, boom, bam, buy it. So Google is the important factor here. So when it comes to setting blog monetization mile stones, we really wanna focus just on the inputs and not the outputs. So we can't say, I'm gonna make $5,000 a month within 90 days.
n/a You can say that. You should if you're really aggressive and you wanna go the agency route and sell services. Yes. But also, it's good to focus on the input. So things not like, I need to get to this traffic level.
n/a It's more like, I need to publish this many articles this month. I need to do some outreach and meet people in the space, do this. So it's the actions that you take to get you there. So with all of that said, here is exactly what I would do this year if I was starting from 0. I would do keyword research, find my niche.
n/a So first, when you find your niche, we use something in growth engine called the authority flywheel and there's 4 aspects of this. There's you, your expertise, the market, and advantages. So you first have a unique identity. Only YouTube you, no 1 else is you. So what do you know about?
n/a What do you like? If your face was on a homepage of a website, what would you be saying? What would you be teaching? What message do you wanna share with the world? Then there's your expertise.
n/a So, no. You don't have to be an expert. In fact, you could be an 18 year old with no college and no formal job experience, but you have some level of expertise somewhere. You don't have to be an expert. It's often interesting sometimes to learn from people who are beginners and are learning as they go when you're writing the content.
n/a So think about what you know though though, in your career and your hobbies and things like that. Then you think about the market. So you go back to the keyword research and you look at what things could I rank Course? What things have low competition and, you know, good search volume. And when I think about that, look for things with keyword difficulty under 5, if you're just starting and wanna rank for stuff.
n/a Look for a low Doctor domain rating site that is on the top 10 results with a Doctor of under like 40 that shows that a new site can rank (#1 then look for search volume. You know, these tools aren't always accurate, so you can look for search volume over a (#1. 1000 is a lot. Right? I didn't even get into how Google clusters topics together (#1 how a keyword might say a (#1, but you're getting thousands of visits to it.
n/a So do your keyword research on your niche, think about the market. And then in the authority flower, there's also any advantages. So think about it. Like, do you have any advantages? Is your brother like a CEO of a company?
n/a Do you have a bunch of travel photography gear already that you could use for reviews? So think about your starting line. Everyone has a different starting line. My starting line was being a middle manager living in Austin, Texas at a tech company. My main advantage was I knew I worked with the SEO team and I knew affiliate marketing really well, so I knew how to do this thing better than most people did, blogging.
n/a Right? Because I wouldn't have made 1,000,000 of dollars from a single website, you know, if I didn't know how to do it. So that was my advantage. I didn't have money, but I had some experience with SEO and affiliate marketing, and I realized agency route was masterclass I was able to scale faster by making 5,000 hiring a writer faster and then it's accelerating the content planning. But think about your advantages.
n/a So when you do this, you write all these things down, you think about what you wanna cover, and it has to be something that you can talk about for years to come. So you don't go too narrow. You don't say, like, I wanna only talk about travel, a travel nurse in Europe. It's a little bit too narrow. Right?
n/a Because there's not enough content. Your your revenue ceiling is too low. You can start with travel nursing (#1 then go to nursing in general. Right? Or if you really like iPhone accessories, maybe you don't just do iPhone accessories.
n/a You start with phones in general. You talk about smartphones and informational content there. So what we call it is living in the middle. So you're not you can't go too wide when you're picking your niche. You can't do like gardening and also software.
n/a You can't do, you know, woodworking and best credit cards. Doesn't work. Google gets confused. You have to stay within 1 broad category, but what you can do in a broad category is narrow it down. So for example, if you wanna talk about saunas, right?
n/a You can talk about how to clean them, infrared, wet saunas, whatever. You can do 20 articles there and you can expand out to, like, things that are related, maybe pools, maybe hot tubs, maybe things that are like and then you become known as this expert in 1 area. Right? So you don't wanna go too wide because the wider you go, if you start talking about all kinds of different things, you need a lot more authority. For example, Forbes can talk about computers and technology software business, credit cards, travel, blenders even, you know, whatever they do Course they have thousands and thousands of articles, (#1 or thousands, I don't know how many employees, and a domain rating of 90 something, so they're super authoritative.
n/a But if you start doing that, you don't stand a chance. So building topical authority in (#1 niche is the answer. But the thing is the good thing is you can take a little bit of pressure off yourself because you don't need to know the perfect niche at the beginning, but you should narrow it down to at least saying, I'm gonna do, you know, indoor home goods, or I'm gonna do outdoor adventure stuff. You know, maybe I start with camping, or I'm gonna do painting Course like art. Right?
n/a That way, if you start going down a path of, like, I'm only talking about crocheting, it's just not working, I don't like it anymore, then you can pivot, especially when the domain name is your name.com. So you pivot, you adapt, you overcome by pivoting and changing your strategy over time, because the truth is, you could be passionate about a lot of things. Like, I'm passionate about, you know, fantasy football or running or astronomy or, you know, whatever. Lots of different stuff. But if I have to write about that thing for years, I'm not gonna really be passionate about it anymore.
n/a Doing the thing and writing thing are 2 different things, and then my interests might change. So, like, I've been talking about blogging on YouTube for a couple of years now, at least. I would love to talk more about what I'm doing on YouTube, how I'm creating these videos, how I'm selling courses. The thing is, though, people on my channel, they love blogging. Right?
n/a They don't click the videos about YouTube. So I'm kinda creating this thing and I've pigeonholed myself a little bit there, but I could if I wanted to expand to other things. We're gonna start teaching the agency model and YouTube and all of it, right? Because there's so many ways you can build businesses, but being able to pivot is 1 of the most important business principles. So with all of that said, you have to choose your niche.
n/a Then, you do your keyword research, come up with like 30 keywords, I would say, you know, 80 (#1, so 80%, informational, 20% transactional. You could even do a few random thought leadership ones that have no SEO value. So Google is also saying, don't do all these things just for SEO. Write a couple of random really good articles just from your experience that have, you know, just really, really good articles from you. Okay.
n/a So you create a website. WordPress is the best 1. You use Cadence as the theme. You use WPX as your web host. The fastest 1, easy to use, I use them, really simple.
n/a You sign up to them, you get into the WordPress dashboard, you can use a theme like Cadence, which is free, you know, Course the main expense when you're starting a blog is just hosting hosting your files. Right? Having your website. Cadence is free. You can have a free theme, make it look nice.
n/a You know? Yeah. We have, tutorials on that as well. Blog growth engine, like step by step, click by click. I can't do it all on this video.
n/a I might pass out. But you do that. You create a WordPress website. You then learn how to upload your content. So that's adding posts in, creating content in WordPress, start your content assembly line.
n/a So really it's just about learning and, like, getting acclimated with it with, you know, having a process. It's gonna take you a lot longer to write your Course blog post that will, than it will write your 10th. Right? So over time, you just get faster and faster and more efficient and then when you're really efficient, then you create a standard standard operating procedure and you train a writer to do it for you (#1 you use things like Slack, Loom videos, constant training, just help people. You need to clone yourself to get them as good as you are.
n/a So you create your contacts, assembly line, making sure human experience, shines through, picture with products. Don't have to buy them, but, you know, the more human experience it is, the better. If you're writing the affiliate articles, make sure to cover your bases, cover everything. Join affiliate programs. Don't worry if you join don't join them at first.
n/a Just focus on traffic. Install Google Analytics (#1 Google Search Console. You need Google Search Console for Google to index your site. So that's really important you do that at the very beginning. You're telling Google you exist.
n/a You create a site map with something like rank math or Yoast as a plugin. After that, you join some affiliate programs (#1 you start getting some traffic. Add the (#1 in your spreadsheet first so you know what you're doing. Then it's just a consistent process of running a blog. Do some outreach for link building, you know, do some HARO.
n/a You could just answer HARO requests in that regard. Reach out for some guest posts. I have videos on that, but it's just a game of content. Keep creating content. You know, there's what I realized is, like, there's big media sites that are writing 10, 20, 30 articles a day on random things.
n/a So, like, if you can write a couple articles a week, that's good to start. Good enough to start. Right? But you need to be consistent. Ultimately, you need to identify market sweet spots, knowing what you can rank for, creating a content assembly line, (#1 following the 4 stages of monetization.
n/a So with all of that said, the long winded way of saying, if you're interested in starting a blog, click the link in the description below. 80 minute free training, goes over different stuff I might not have talked about here. You will have access if you wanna work with me further through the series of emails, but you don't have to do anything. Everything's free. The masterclass 80 minute master class is free, but we will be offering things to you in the email, but you don't have to do anything if you don't want to.
n/a But if you do wanna take your blog to the next level, definitely sign up for that because we'll keep you abreast of what's going on in the world of blogging and we'll give you more updates than we do on YouTube. So, that was a really long video. So let me know what you think. I hope you liked it. If you made it this far, I'm sorry Course you've made through the, I don't know how long of boredom to get here, but it's really important.
n/a Like, if you made it this far, at least hopefully, you realize either, yes, I can do this. I have a niche. That's actually simple. You can you know, cost money. It's like $99 a month, kind of expensive to do all that keyword research stuff.
n/a You can do it for free with Google keyword planner a little bit here and there. You can do a free trial of exploding topics SEO is like the first thing and that's usually $49 (#1 month, I think. That's like the SEO is like the first thing (#1 that's usually $49 a month I think, that's like the only expense, 49 a month plus your hosting Course a while, you can do email marketing for free with ConvertKit, you can get Convertbox, a lot of these plugins are really good like WP Rocket, you could pay for for $50 a year, $50 once. So it's really cheap, it's, you know, you can get profit margins of 90 plus percent. But again, we want people you have to realize this is a business.
n/a If you wanna make money with it, you gotta treat it like a business. So you can't be like, I'm gonna do this completely for free. I'm gonna get questions and comments in here. Can I do this for free? Can I use Wix?
n/a Can I use wordpress.com? Can I just use medium Course something? It's like no. If you wanna run a business, you have to treat it like a business. There's no inventory, there's no employees, there's no rent, There's just web hosting and maybe Surfer SEO when you start writing.
n/a And you can track that as losses on your personal taxes Course I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole in this video. But anyways, I hope you, just for the sake of length, I hope you enjoyed it. Please like it and comment anything just for the algorithm Course I'm about to fall asleep by making a video this long. But, you know, I think it's hopefully the best free blogging video on YouTube. Like, I don't think there's a better 1.
n/a I hope there's not, and I have to make a 3 hour video next. So, a like means a lot. It means that you you watched it, and you know, if you did watch it all the way through and you're still here, comment with the word hamster (#1 I'll know you actually made it through. And if you don't comment hamster and you give me a stupid question, I may or may not answer. I'm just kidding, of course I always answer.
n/a But make a nice comment of hamster if you've made it this far. And, you know, check out other videos on my channel. Lots of different stuff to talk about in the world of making money online. So I hope you enjoyed it (#1 I'll see you in the next video.