www.kevindohertyonline.com

You have landed on this page because you’re looking for ways to monetize your blog and you’ve probably already discovered that money does not magically show up in your bank account just by getting set up on WordPress.  Most bloggers struggle to generate substantial income from their blog, mainly because they are not completely aware of the principle I am about to share with you.  Hopefully this tip will shave years off of your learning curve and help you to avoid the heaps of frustration that seem to plague so many information entrepreneurs.

The fruition of a successful blogging career is well worth it.. so hang in there and commit to mastering this principle and you should be able to monetize your blog very well.

If you want to monetize your blog, you need to overcome this primary obstacle..

The biggest obstacle that most bloggers face is that their blog is predominantly set up based on one of two approaches:

1. the marketing approach2. the information sharing (teaching) approach

There are a lot of amazing bloggers who have vast amounts of valuable content to share, but who make very little money from their blog. On the flip side, there are a lot of marketing bloggers whose content is, well, pretty much all marketing with little real value. Most of these bloggers are struggling as well, unless they are tremendously skilled at direct response marketing (which is increasingly necessitating good value being offered as well).

So, are you more of a marketer or teacher?  Do you go into blogging with the main intention to make money or to share good information and teach people cool stuff?

Like I said, most of us are naturally geared toward one approach or the other.  This imposes asevere limitation on your ability to monetize your blog effectively, as either extreme will set you up for failure (if you want your blog to be your business).

The Principle You Need to Master to Monetize Your Blog is to…

combine these 2 approaches so that you are 50% marketer, 50% teacher.

I have spent a lot of time analyzing the approaches of the top bloggers I respect and admire, such as Yaro Starak, Gideon Shalwick, Pat Flynn, and Timothy Ferriss.

Each of these top bloggers has mastered the art of merging their inner teacher and entrepreneur, to the point where they probably would not even view these roles as separate, because the integration comes so naturally to them.  This integration comes from years of personal development, freeing limiting beliefs, working with coaches who can chisel away all of the clutter until we see the real value we offer, and developing the skill of selling without selling.

So, in order to monetize your blog, you need to do an audit of your current blogging platform and marketing funnel to determine if you are:

a.  not offering enough unique and compelling value

b.  offering great value without a clear process you take someone through to generate income from their interest

If you’re feeling frustrated by the income your blog is generating, it’s virtually guaranteed that one or both of these factors is directly undermining your success.

So, how do you change this pattern?

Here are 6 tips to monetize your blog:1.  Look inside ~ Many bloggers get locked into

set patterns in how they want to do things.  Just being willing to experiment and shift things up is a huge step in the right direction.  The first step is always to shift your belief system so that you can accommodate outer success without any inner hang ups.  If you’re not monetizing your blog as well as you’d like, take a close look at your financial blueprint and honestly assess if you need to clear out limiting beliefs around money and the value you offer to others.  We often resist marketing because we have not clarified the true value we have to offer.  Therefore, we feel guilty or uncomfortable receiving money for the content we have to share.  Many ‘teaching bloggers’ are stuck in this pattern.  Ironically, they have the most content to offer, but they make very little money from it.

2.  Bookmark the blogs of those you respect and who are successful ~ Pay close attention to how these bloggers merge marketing with teaching.  You can learn a tremendous amount just by closely observing how the top bloggers structure their blog and set up their marketing funnel.  Notice how these bloggers generate traffic to their blog.  Write down every single detail that you notice.  Are they relying on social media, video marketing, PPC, SEO?  What seems to be their main way to get people to their content?  The key is to closely model what the leaders in your industry are doing, then find your own voice and position yourself in the same way.

3.  Focus on refining your marketing funnel ~ Regardless of your blogging niche, your main goal should be building your email list, as this truly is the main asset you have as an online entrepreneur.  Make sure you have a highly valuable free offer on your blog that is positioned to generate as many leads as possible.  A special report, e-book, or video series can all work great.  Then, make sure you have at least a 2 month autoresponder series that engages and shares value with your readers.  The more trust you build through good content, the more people will be inclined to buy from you.  If you want to monetize your blog through passive income streams, then having an excellent autoresponder series is a key piece of the puzzle.

4.  Sell without selling ~ I prefer this method over the ‘in your face’ style of marketing that many online entrepreneurs seem to favor.  Instead of pounding your email list with offer after offer, instead you focus on sharing great content, then have links to your ‘money pages’ interspersed in your blog posts, Facebook page, and so on.  Always precede making offers with sharing great content.  Especially for conscious entrepreneurs, this approach works much better than directly going for the sale over and over.

5.  Create Your Own Products ~ I consider this to be essential for any blogger who is serious about generating a full-time blogging income.  If you have a pretty established blog, you may even be able to repurpose a lot of your content into an e-book.  You could outsource this on elance and you might even be able to have it ready in the next week.  If you don’t have a lot of content yet, just focus on the product that would be the easiest and fastest to create ( the marketer in you loves speed.. the teacher in you loves perfection.  In this case, trust the marketer!!)

6.  Implement Video Marketing ~ Video is the most powerful way to build trust, persuade, and build a loyal following.  Pretty much all of the top bloggers in any niche are utilizing video marketing as part of their marketing repertoire.  If you love sharing good information, video is one of the best ways to do it.  At the very least, get a Youtube channel and set up one 2-4 minute video per week that you embed into your blog posts.  You can learn more about viral video marketing here.

The honest truth is that most bloggers are poor (just like artists, healers, coaches, and other service-based professions).  There are, however, a handful of people in any industry who are making an exceptional living doing work that they love.  The key is to fully develop your ability to think like both a marketer and teacher.  Get passionate about both ends of the spectrum until your blogging platform evolves into an integrated (and very powerful) business model.

If you want to monetize your blog and enjoy a sustainable and profitable online business for years to come, this is undoubtedly one of the most important areas you need to focus on.

www.kevindohertyonline.com