On your climb to 6 figures or more, you first need to hit 5 figures.
So today what I am going to layout is a plan for you to achieve a website that will bring you in at least $1,000 or more per month.
Now that I have your attention let’s get right into today’s lesson to help you achieve some powerful results.
Step 1: Your Niche
The first thing you need to think about is what niche market you want to tackle. But, I want you to think larger rather than smaller. I know I teach people to aim lower while they are learning but the larger cash comes from larger niche markets (generally). It’s true I have taken some insanely small niche markets and made thousands per month from them but the absolute truth is the larger markets have more people in them, which for you means a larger audience.
Pick a niche market that has 10,000 or more exact searches per month. Even if you never rank in the search engines for your main keywords, that’s O.K. because you’ll be able to rank individual pages within your site for long tailed keywords.
Step 2: Plan Your Niche
Don’t over plan, but plan. While doing your keyword research, gather a list of keywords that you can create posts about. Long tailed keywords work great for this.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to use Market Samurai . The reason is because Market Samurai allows you to export entire lists of long tailed keywords to your computer and helps you research everything you need to know about each keyword. It doesn’t get much easier and it’ll save you countless hours.
If you plan it right you should easily have a few months of starting keywords to which you can build content around. Only plan the first couple of months of posts out, this way if anything changes in your niche you don’t have to re-assess the entire niche.
Step 3: Investigate Before Writing
Before you start writing content, investigate other websites in your niche. Figure out the following:
What are other people writing about in your market?
Take notes and write about similar topics or improve upon their topics.
Are they missing details that you can take advantage of? If yes, write down the keywords and just write about the same topic but include the details they left out. In essence, write better.
Is their writing boring? If their writing is boring, simply looks cookie-cutter like or even outsourced you’ll have the upper-hand here.
Are they really trying to help someone or make a quick buck? It’s often apparent if they are simply trying to please the search engine and make a buck. Usually these type of posts are short, void of any emotion at all (which sucks!) and they don’t really explain anything, help the audience or even entertain them.
If someone is doing this then all you need to do is, again, write better by including some spice and emotion into your writing and include things that will actually HELP your audience.
If you need help spicing up your content or becoming a better writer check out my post on spicing up your content here.
Step 4: Schedule Your Content On YOUR Timeframe
If you have limited time, schedule your posts. If you have a long day to get things done but usually have a series of shorter work days thereafter where you’re busy with life in general or another job this will be really helpful for you.
On the longer days that you have get as much writing done as possible. Then, instead of posting your content immediately, schedule them to go out on specified dates and times inside your dashboard. This will also allow you more free time to promote your writing to your audience or do link building to it as well.
Step 5: Write For People 1st, Search 2nd
I’ll be honest I rarely write anything to please the search engines anymore. I still do keyword research but I always make sure that the writing is geared for the audience much more than the search engines. Yes, you need to be both but this will happen naturally if you’re focusing on what your audience actually wants rather than trying to manipulate the search engines.
This also inspires people to share your stuff on Facebook or email it to their friends. If your work is really effective your audience will love it and share it. This in itself will make your work easier!
Step 6: Build An Audience Outside Of Search
Think: Facebook, Twitter and Email, Youtube. These places bring traffic and sales to you website and if you’re not using them you’re missing out on more income. Facebook is easy to build an audience if you have a couple of bucks to spend. My buddy Justin Lewis has a great presentation here on that subject.
To grow your Twitter audience you can simply start following people who are following leaders in your industry and many times they’ll follow you back. You can automate it too as I show you how to do that in my ignore the search engine post.
Every new post you create, promote it out to your Facebook and Twitter audiences and watch your traffic and sales grow.
If have entire niche markets I am building in right now where I am not even attempting to rank anything via search. The entire audience is from social media only and its working beautifully.
Each media outlet that you build up an audience at is just another outlet for people to come to your website and buy and more importantly, interact. Allowing interactivity with you can sometimes be the difference between 10 sales and 100 sales. People like to know there is a real person behind the computer and trust me it makes a huge difference.
I often hear people complain that it’s either too hard or too time consuming to get into social media. Trust me, it’s not. Dedicate about 20 minutes per day to answer questions on social media and promote your content to them and watch what happens.
As far as Youtube goes, just get stuff out there. Whether you’re teaching, sharing or entertaining, do it! I honestly do not do enough on Youtube (that is going to change) but there is so much traffic there that you want to connect with. Youtube is also great if you’re building review style videos to promote a review site.
As your video count goes up and your viewership goes up, so will visit to your website.
Step 7: Monetize Last
Sometimes it’s easy to get wrapped in how fast you can make money instead of being good at what you do. Instead of worrying so much about how much money you’ll make and how fast think like this:
What can I discuss with my audience that will…
Help them do (whatever your niche is)?
Solve a problem of theirs?
Entertain them (if you’re in an entertainment niche rather than a teaching niche i.e. videos games, movies, comedy, etc)?
Once you build a small audience (100 visitors per month is fine to start with) then monetize. But, instead of tossing banners everywhere consider using minimalistic advertising in the side bars and focus more on promotional within your content. This will do 2 things for you. It will force you to be a better writer and you’ll quickly make more money. Cool concept eh? Worry less about the money and more about what your audience wants and you make more. That is the best of both worlds and will help you create fans/friends that love your stuff.
As your audience and traffic grows, so will your income.
Closing Advice
Finally, I’ll close with a few words that you need to read and read again if needed. PRACTICE! I don’t expect that you’ll go out the first time and get all of this right. Even if you’re following an awesome plan like www.nicheblitzkrieg.net you’re going to need to practice.
The best inventors like Leonardo da Vinci and amazing artists like Michelangelo didn’t get everything right the first time they tried something. They practiced and honed their craft.
Heck, da Vinci’s supposed dying words were: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”
I have no way to know if this is actually true that he said that and this could be a clever fake Internet quote.
If he did utter words – wow. That’s about all I can say for a man who achieved so much in his lifetime but, yet somehow, felt like he was never good enough in his works. He seemed as though no matter what he achieved he wanted to constantly improve and be better.
I don’t know about you but I haven’t achieved anything close to what Leonardo da Vinci was able to accomplish and I probably never will. But, that type of dedication and devotion should spark something in us all.
Learn, practice, focus on doing what you’ve learned, keep practicing and continue to grow.
Your thoughts?