If you’re a writer and a creative worth his or her salt, you’ve had thoughts like this.

The idea that everyone around you has some “shortcut” or hack that is propelling them further along this creative and entrepreneurial journey than you crops up as you:

• Take two steps forward and one step back…
• Stop to smell the roses…
• Realize you’ve been walking in place for months when you thought you were sprinting forward…

Comparing your creative journey with the hundreds of creatives around you can make your head spin. Why are they having all of the breakthroughs and you’re still stuck in limbo?

I truly believe that the culmination of success isn’t contingent on “direct, calculated, and mindful” decisions alone.

Much of the creative pursuit requires “figuring it out as you go” and “firing by the hip” snap-decisions.

I like to illustrate the different mindsets creative people have:

There are the cartographers:

They are in the planning room. They are drawing maps, forecasting, and trying to make the perfect launch of any endeavor.

There are the explorers:

They are on the ground floor of creative pursuits. They are using their machete and constantly creating work — regardless of the outcome. They learn the land, and experience the trails and tribulations of being a creative.

Sometimes the trials and tribulations are exactly what we need in order to actualize the success we see in our head.

To remind us that working toward a goal is typically more awkward than elegant, here are seven — seemingly unpleasant — signs of progress.

In this article, we’re going to go over the 7 signs that may be present in your life that can foreshadow you’re right on the cusp of your next breakthrough.

1. Someone tells you “no” right before a breakthrough

It could be a content creator who doesn’t respond to your collaboration request or a site that rejects your guest post idea.

The first time I sent a guest post pitch to The Startup, The Writing Cooperative, and The Ascent, I didn’t hear back from the team (No hard feelings, fam).

But that “no” was an indicator that I was trying something new, and it helped me focus on doing some serious and meaningful work.

I had to look inward and examine what the worth of my work actually was. That self examination required me to get into creative spaces that were new and expanded the quality of work that I was putting out.

After some time had passed and rework was submitted, I now write for all of these publications.

Those original “no’s” were all a part of the creative growth.

2. Someone doesn’t like your work right before your breakthrough

Sometimes, when someone tells you “no” it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like you.

Perhaps it’s not the right time or the content just doesn’t fit with the overall mission.

Sometimes, you’re right on the verge of a breakthrough…

You cannot take “no” personally.

Other times, however, people will actually dislike your work — you cannot take that personally either.

If everyone in your audience shares the same view, it’s probably not that rich of an audience.

In fact, you should celebrate when you receive some pushback with your audience — you might just be on to something.

The first time I received negative feedback with my work, it crushed me. I thought, “Who the hell is this jabroni? What do they know about this?”I fired back at them and it resulted in wasted time and wasted energy.

It’s going to happen — this is the internet after all…

When you ruffle a few feathers, know you’re on the verge of a breakthrough.

3. You turn down a client

It might feel uneasy at first, but you can return the “no” favor as well.

Sometimes the people that you’re working with might be taking away more from you than you are getting.

• The energy being spent on frustrating clients isn’t worth the effort.
• Your clients aren’t paying you what you believe you are worth or the work is worth.
• You don’t have the available bandwidth after taking on more valuable clients.

Again, as your notoriety as a professional grows, so will the clients.

If you’re worried about financial responsibilities, many writers have other jobs that have nothing to do with writing while they also work on their craft.

Having that type of balance in your life gives you peace of mind. Your monetary obligations will be met, and your writing and marketing sessions will be focused and passionate.

It’s smart to assess how you want to spend your energy, so that you make the most of your time.

Turning down a client who isn’t right for you is a turning point in your career.

4. You’ve “wasted time” on a client

After you’ve outgrown a client and ended a contract with them, you may feel like you wasted time doing unsatisfying work.

This is but another fallacy trying to cloud your judgement.

Remember when you didn’t even have a client (for some of you reading this, it’s now — when you are able to write purely for love, remember this) and it was all about gaining experience? Then you gained the experience and locked down your first commission. Then you learned from them — they helped build on your experience as well.

Now they aren’t as valuable as some other clients — big waste of time, right?

Past clients weren’t a waste of time; they were a part of building your business. They were a part of building you as a professional.

5. You wasted time on research

Investing time on researching your own marketing efforts might not always yield an immediate payoff — but it’s never for naught. When you are on the verge of a breakthrough, you tend to research more than taking action.

Writers who make their own continuing education a priority are attractive to clients.

A need to learn and discover new frontiers will always take you farther than a know-it-all.

I remember my first paying client was for a real estate dot-com. They sold a product to real estate agents.

I was in charge of developing their blog content. Their rate was fantastic, the contact — brilliant. Only problem…

I didn’t know shit about real estate!

That couldn’t stop me though…

The perseverance to learn and research took me to new understandings about an industry I knew nothing about and helped develop my craft and confidence with writing.

Research can also help you get a head start on future work.

Professionals get comfortable with that. They prefer to make decisions and get momentum, rather than wait for their idea or action to be “perfect.”

6. You’ve “wasted time” on a draft

You know what helps me get up in the morning?

The pursuit of trying something new.

I know… it might sound a bit cheesy, but it’s true.

Every time I’m able to open up this laptop and get to typing — even the days I experience dreadful writer’s-block — I’m invigorated to see what my brain-to-finger synergy can produce.

Every day is an opportunity to practice the things you care about. It could be gratitude, listening, communicating clearly, or writing.

Any time you spend writing a draft is an excellent practice session.

7. You’re uncomfortable before a breakthrough

Probably the least desirable sign of progress, yet the most profound.

Think about the comfort-zone for a moment…

When you are comfortable, you are probably strong in that arena. Moreover, you showcase your strengths when you’re comfortable.

When you’re uncomfortable, you’re in unfamiliar waters. When in unfamiliar waters, you have the profound ability to learn at an exponential rate.

If a Major League pitcher only works only on his strength — his fastball, his competition will be able to outsmart his pitching before too long. Sure, the knuckleball is the elusive skill to be mastered by even the most adept pitchers, when practiced and worked on, it can make said pitcher unstoppable.

• Taking on that first paying client is uncomfortable — capture the opportunity with haste!
• Writing about a new niche is uncomfortable — go forth a educate yourself in this new territory.
• Sharing your work with the world is unbelievably uncomfortable — look the devil in the eyes and go forth! The reception of your work far outweighs the uncertainty.

All of these signs, while frustrating at times, always help lead to the creator’s “Promised Land.”

“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”
― Seth Godin

It’s going to be hard — that’s a fact.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of people that are trying to do the same thing you’re doing — that’s also a fact.

Most of those people will give up when they reach any one of the 7 signs illustrated above.

But you know a breakthrough is right on the other side.

If you’re not one of those quitters, the competitive field shrinks.

And with the next obstacle, it shrinks some more.

Never be one of those quitters and success will come…

That’s also a fact.

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The post 7 Surprising Signs You’re On The Verge of a Creative Breakthrough first appeared on tribeloyal.

This game we play is full of its ebbs and flows.

When you’re just starting out, you are firing off articles at the speed of light. You are tapped into the cosmic writer-sphere (if that’s not a word…I’m creating it…) and your drive cannot be stopped.

Time passes, however…

And before you know it, you’re months into this scanning the confines of your idea-box for any scrap of something that resonates.

But nothing comes to fruition…

Crickets…

But what if you haven’t considered a practice that most Top Bloggers employ when the idea well begins to run dry — a practice that is just simply advantageous regardless?

Instead of going forward, what if you went backwards?

Republish Your Old Posts

Instead of struggling to come up with brand new ideas, look at the ones you’ve already had.

Are there posts buried in your archives that new readers would find helpful?

This is a great opportunity to update and republish your posts to get them in front of a fresh audience (or remind long-term readers they still exist).

I’m going to take you through the hows and whys of republishing old posts.

But before we get too far, you might be asking yourself this question:

“Will readers complain if I republish an old post?”

No. In fact, they may well thank you. New readers probably haven’t dug into your archives and found some of your best posts. And old readers may have forgotten them.

Even readers who keep returning a favorite post over and over again will be thrilled you’ve updated it (I even had a friend of mine, Joren van Schaik, recommend that I republish an old post of mine a few weeks ago):

So what do you think I did with this advice?

You better bet your ass that I republished the post and got a better reception for its publishing than I did the first time!How To Earn Your First Dollar (And More) BloggingStep By Step Walkthrough for Smart Bloggers…medium.com

So let’s get into this advantage of republishing…

How to Decide Which Posts to Update and Republish

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you might have dozens — even hundreds — of posts in your archives.

How do you figure out which ones are worth updating and republishing?

There’s no right answer to this question.

But a good place to start is with posts that brought the most positive response when you published them the first time, especially if they’re relatively old.

They could probably do with updating (so first-time readers get the best possible impression). And chances are they’re about popular topics, so republishing them will help your existing readers.

The updates could include making sure the content us up-to-date considering certain regulatory factors (if you write about marketing for instance — has the introduction of GDPR changed the article’s content at all?).

Any Top Blogger worth her salt knows that you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. There’s no use in banking on a post that didn’t get much reception in the past transform itself into an ultra-viral post with this republish…

Republish the content that showed signs of strength when it first went live.

How Much Should You Change When Republishing a Post?

Again, no steadfast rules here.

Do as Bruce Lee did and,

“Be like water…”

Be able to take what once was and make it fit for today.

When you’re preparing a post for republication, you should:

• Read it carefully. Did you miss any typos the first time round? Are there any factual errors? Do you need to tweak any clumsy or confusing sentences?
• Update the post to fit with what’s happening today (Like stated above — particularly if you write about software, social media, or any other area that changes rapidly). For instance, if you posted about setting up a Medium page, you might need to take new screenshots and make sure your step-by-step instructions are still accurate.
• Consider adding more detail. Are any areas of your original post a bit sparse? Flesh them out. This is your chance to take your first crack at something that was good and make it great.
• Check all links. Even if a link is working, you may need to point it to a more recent resource.
• Link to some of your (recent) posts. If you wrote your post two years ago, you’ve almost certainly written something since that relates to it. Add a link at an appropriate point.
• Spend the time to make it more attractive. One of the great things about republishing is you save a lot of writing time, which means you can put extra effort into sourcing images, laying out your post, and so on.

Case Study: How to Generate Viral Blog Traffic

I first created “How to Generate Viral Blog Traffic: 11 Step guidebook to generate viral traffic, build your email list and turn any site into a passive income business” back in 2017.

Although it wasn’t called that at first. My first crack at the ebook was “Zero to One Million In Three Months” and in my second attempt I mustered up a shoddy, “Take What’s Yours.”

Both of these titles were confusing and vague. They didn’t offer a glimpse into the value that was present with the actual content.

Even though the product was selling, I knew I could republish the product with increased value and content — which I did, 2 full times.

So much of the added value came from content that I had published in the past couple of years of writing articles!

Even if you don’t have a similar series to use, you might want to think about how you could recycle old posts into new formats. For instance:

• You could record yourself reading a blog post and use it as a podcast episode.
• You could take excerpts from a long blog post and use them in your newsletter.
• You could collate dozens of your best blog posts, add some extra supporting material, and turn them into an ebook or even an ecourse.

There really is no limit to what can be created when you republish your work…

So really dig deep into the archives of what you’ve created.

Don’t be scared that people might recognize that you’ve already published that piece — if you’ve taken notes from what I outlined, the republished work will already be valuable and should contain a bit of extra value.

Consistently pushing out valuable content will help put you in front of the eyes of the people looking for your work.

Republishing will help do it quicker…

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The post Why The Success of Your Blog Might Hinge On This One Simple Practice first appeared on tribeloyal.

In starting this post, I’m going to get straight to the point:

If you continue to do the wrong things in blogging, you are never going to make money.

This is the plain and simple truth.

Many bright-eyed & bushy-tailed novice bloggers get wrapped up in the grandiose thoughts of flipping “the bird” to their boss, traveling the world, eating lavish meals in various hotels and seeing their bank account increase passively every time they open up their banking app.

While this is possible feat to achieve — it sure does take a considerable amount of determination, hard work and strategy in order to get there. Your blog isn’t a money printing machine; rather, it’s a tool used for reaching the world with your valuable products/services… and possibly making money in the process. Of course, it takes a lot of work. You must be willing to go through the process patiently, and if you do, success will surely come.

In this post, I will reveal to you the reasons why you will never make money blogging. Furthermore, I’ll also show you how you can reverse this and build a money-making blog right now.

You don’t have a solid business model (or any business model…)

A business model is necessary with any endeavor looking to turn a profit (hello…. a blog becomes a business…).

It’s unbelievably important to have a system and model in place that requires you to make the necessary decisions and pivots with your blog in order to progress through the different trails and tribulations that will ultimately surface.

If you don’t have this — you will eventually lose interest in your passion and your blog will also perish.

So what is a business model?

A business model can be defined as:

“an abstract representation of a business, be it conceptual, textual, and/or graphical, of all core interrelated architectural, co-operational, and financial arrangements designed and developed by an organization presently and in the future, as well as all core products and/or services the organization offers, or will offer, based on these arrangements that are needed to achieve its strategic goals and objectives.”

It’s a bit wordy, no?

In other words — a business model is a plan or design for the successful operation of a business, the intended customer base, the identified revenue sources, products, and sources of financing.

One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make with the idea of a business model is by thinking it simply means — “I just want to make money.”

Money shouldn’t be the main focus when starting out as a blogger…

Let me repeat that,

Money shouldn’t be the main focus when starting out as a blogger…

This probably isn’t computing too much for you considering the title of this article. Let me elaborate a bit…

The focus should be on creating systems; that includes creating significant and valuable content that takes a reader from where they are to where they ought to be.

Taking it a step further, a good business model will let you:

• Identify who your target audience is.
• Identify revenue sources.
• Figure out how to get your voice out to the masses on a viral and global scale.
• Figure out how to serve your customers. (With text, videos, audios, infographics, etc.?)
• Identify products to create that will further educate your audience on what you currently teach them via your blog posts. (Example: You can create and sell an eBook.)
• Identify where will you get funds and how will you continue to invest in your business to stay relevant in the marketplace.
• Find the best promotional strategies to get your business out there.

These are just a few facets to consider. This is a very important step when starting out as a blogger. You must give it maximum attention.

You aren’t concerned about value creation

Like I stated above — if you are solely focused on just making money in this game, you are doomed to fail.

While the ability to make money is possible (trust me — as someone who isn’t the TITANS of blogging — I have been able to construct a great income), it doesn’t come overnight. I’ve been on the internet blogging for years now.

It took me just over a year to make my first $15.

Through all of the people I’ve met and collaborated with, I’ve never seen someone buy a domain, write a few articles, turn on the publish button and see the floodgates of financial reward come cascading in.

It just doesn’t happen.

Forget all of the Youtube advertisements and Instagram sponsored posts promising you that you can make all of your wildest dreams come true in a matter of days or weeks.

If that actually worked — everyone would be doing it.

On the flip side, here’s what you need to remember:

If you want to make real money in the real world, you need to solve real problems.

If you’re serious about making money, learn to shift focus on wanting to be a quick and overnight success to providing a lot of value to your readers. Value is what sells you and your products, and it is what ultimately helps you to achieve your money-making goals.

According to Copyblogger,

“If you don’t offer customers something they dearly want, whether it’s to gain some great pleasure or escape some great pain, you’re not going to make any money.”

Further resource:

– How To Write A Blog Post That Makes Your Readers Gasp

You don’t have the right mindset

I’ve said it in plenty other articles that I’ve written recent — it deeply saddens me how often I see new and energetic writers and bloggers come onto the fold, guns-a-blazing.

They’re writing compelling and engaging pieces and then they wither out to a mere nothingness along the airwaves.

I think this is due to a misconstrued mindset that people adopt early on in their blogging career:

They think that if they don’t go viral — they aren’t going to make it.

We see people go viral all the time with the help of today’s modern technology tools: Youtube, Facebook and Instagram.

Bloggers often think that they only way to become successful in this game through viral content.

“Shit — if Justin Bieber and 6ix9ine can do it, why not me?”

If you’re playing the viral game — you’re doomed to fail.

When I lost everything, I made a promise to myself that I was going to write everyday, regardless of the outcome.How Writing Everyday For The Past Year Drastically Changed My LifeUnlikely lessons I learned in finding success with writing so you don’t have to.writingcooperative.com

New avenues opened up as a result of it.

While I did end up going viral (many times) with my articles — it took over a year to get a bump in my views (A lot of that was due to not having my business model in place, and strategy in my providing value).

A hard truth to understand with blogging is — No one cares until you prove to them you’re here for the long haul.

Further resource:

– THE VIRAL WRITING PLAYBOOK: Your Unfair Advantage To Building An Audience, Perfecting Your Brand, And Building a Financial Income

How To Make Your Blog A Success

If you take the time to really read through this post, reverse the inefficiencies and implement the strategies into your own blogging career — you will definitely go from making nothing to making a substantial income as a blogger.

So many people are already doing it, and there’s no reason you can’t be doing it too. You can offer the world your own unique spin on the same topic that people have found to be unbelievably popular and profitable.

You just need to make sure you’re doing the right things.

Don’t fall into the “make money online” trap that thousands have fallen for.

Nothing can replace hard work and dedication.

When people can see that you care about what you do, they’ll learn to respect and trust you as an authority in your niche.

When that happens, the money will start rolling in.

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The post Why You Will Never Make Money Blogging — EVER first appeared on tribeloyal.

Blogging as an industry seems to keep growing and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. According to Statista, there were 28.3 million bloggers in 2015 and the industry is expected to grow to 31.7 million by 2020. Now one might think that as an industry keeps growing, it will cause overcrowding. With the overcrowding, one might think that there isn’t any room to build their own market.

Well, I have news for you — if you think that, you’re probably right.

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right”

— Henry Ford

The naysayers will always have their opinions regarding building an online business or any type of pursuit that involves chasing after one’s dreams.

If that’s you, great!

But I’ll stop you right now, this article isn’t for you.

• This article is for the believer.
• This article is for the dreamer.
• This article is for the doer.

In this article, we’re going to go over what the headline states we’ll go over:

1. How to generate more traffic with your blog
2. How to capture more subscribers for your blog
3. How to produce more money you receive for your blog

These three facets for your blog and online business are foundational pieces for the foundational trifecta that allow you to leave your 9–5, travel the world (if you so desire), live life on your own schedule, and pursue your entrepreneurial passion.

So let’s get into it.

The Cornerstone: Building the Right Mindset

I want to first provide an underlying mindset shift we’re going to need for this article.

Most people don’t believe in themselves. Maybe they think they do, but the truth is they don’t. A recent study indicates that 85% of the World’s population is affected by low self-esteem. It’s likely that you’re one of the 85%.

This should be a sign of optimism for you, however. Why? Because that means there are roughly 5.95 billion people that feel similar to you. That is, people that don’t necessarily believe in themselves the way they should.

That means it’s lonely at the top:

“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.”

― Tim Ferriss

The cornerstone to building a self-sustaining and monetized blog is by first building yourself into a resilient force among the rest of the population. The cosmic joke here is everyone is scared and insecure about themselves too, so just go out and create!

Phase 1: How to Generate More Traffic for Your Blog

Picture this:

You have just invented the cure to cancer.

You’ve worked for months with a team of the best doctors and researchers on the planet.

You’ve also cut deals with pharmaceutical manufacturers so you can produce the cure at scale and offer it for a reasonable price for the consumer.

The vast majority of your marketing budget has been pushed aside in lieu of R&D and leveraging your manufacturing so you cannot pay for advertising.

You build a website in order to sell the cure.

You spend a few days and finally you set the website to live.

What happens?

You get crickets.

Not a single visitor to your site, therefore no one is buying the cure, therefore no one is getting cured of this sickness that has taken millions of lives. In an instant, you went from one of the most world-altering companies to just another invisible website on the internet.

Okay. All hyperbole aside, if a cure for cancer was generated, it would get the traffic, but hopefully you get my point — that you need traffic in order to have a viable business blog.

Moreover, as a starting out blogger, you are probably strapped for cash — meaning you don’t have hundreds (if not thousands) to spend on paid traffic tools.

So as a serious blogger how do you generate free and organic traffic to get eyes (and potential buyers) on your products and services?

In this section, we’re going to go over three free ways to generate traffic for your blog:

1.1 Medium

Medium is a great way to generate free traffic for your blog.

What is Medium?

Taken directly from their site:

Medium taps into the brains of the world’s most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers to bring you the smartest takes on topics that matter. So whatever your interest, you can always find fresh thinking and unique perspectives.

Medium is a place where you can find readers who are looking for exactly the things you are writing about — and ultimately selling.

Medium has often been referred to as, “The YouTube for writers and bloggers.”

What does Medium help with?

• Medium helps with the branding of your name and site.
• Medium helps with the testing of ideas and blog articles.
• Medium helps with directing traffic over to your site (more on that later).
• Medium helps with networking with other writers/bloggers in your niche.
• Medium helps provide expertise credibility through its “Top Writer” categorization.
• Medium helps with generating a modest income through your writing efforts (through the Medium Partner Program).

And most importantly, Medium helps with the generation of traffic. It does so by allowing you to post articles within your niche and tagging them in specific categories. So if you’re a personal finance blogger, you can tag your stories with the tags: “finance”, “entrepreneurship”, “money”, “leadership”, “startup” (you get a maximum of five tags per story).

All of these views are generated (for free) just by using your laptop, brain, and account on Medium. What do you do with all of these views? Well that is going to come a bit later.

For now, let’s go onto the second method for generating free traffic to your blog.

1.2 Quora

If you aren’t familiar with Quora — you should be.

Quora is a “Question” or “Answer” community that brings millions of people from around the world to share information pertaining to thousands of different subjects. In fact, research notes that there are 300 million active monthly users of the site. That’s almost the size of the United States population using the site every month!

Quora is a platform that allows you to:

• Pose a question if you are having trouble solving something
• Answer a question if you have expertise in solving or offering guidance on a topic

A key benefit that can be exploited with the idea of taking all the questions that are included in your niche. What I mean to say is, if you were to look up “tech” as a niche (topic) in Quora, you would be presented with thousands of questions pertaining to tech.

Let me say that again, thousands of questions pertaining to tech. Or, one could read that as thousands of writing prompts pertaining to tech.

Quora gives a blogger the ability to write and create articles that are specifically addressing an audiences’ pains and needs.

When you can help solve these pains for an audience, it will result in traffic for you and your blog.

Again, similar to the previous method of generating traffic, while you are creating traffic for your business, you are also branding your name and abilities for countless eyes to see.

One of the biggest battles in online content writing, blogging, and creating your online business is through just getting eyes on your work. It’s hard enough to get readers redirected to your website, let alone get your work noticed — this is a great way to get that first step out of the way.

When I first started on Quora, I made it a goal that I would respond to two questions in my niche a day. That may seem like a lot of work for a lot of people and I’ll be honest with you, it was (and still is).

But like all good things — anything worth doing is going to be hard. If it weren’t hard, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t pay off.

I made it a thought in my mind that all the articles would be created in the name of practice. It didn’t matter if the articles were going to be good or bad. In fact, I didn’t have too much say over whether they are good or bad — that’s in the eyes of the audience.

But I knew that if I ultimately wanted to generate traffic, subscribers, and money with my blog, I would need to practice and hone my skills as a writer. This was my ticket and can be yours too!

“The first draft of anything is shit.” — Ernest Hemingway

So after the hours of practice that turned into days, that turned into weeks that turned into months and years finally started to pay off with generating views.

All of this is in the name of branding and view generation.

Everyone starts out as an amateur. You aren’t born a successful blogger, business person, writer etc. Everything takes time and practice.

Over time, if you show up every day, you’ll begin to see how the chain of creation builds and compounds into something bigger.

There is a fallacy that plagues this space: The idea of the “Overnight Celebrity.” Maybe we have Justin Bieber to blame, but too many people think that that one article will help change their life, that one client will take them to the next level or that one book will give them the answers.

They’re wrong.

So far, everything that you’ve learned in this article is to generate buzz for your work and to get practice.

The views and traffic will start following.

We have one more traffic generation strategy to go over before we show how exactly we leverage all these views into traffic for your specific website.

So let’s do it.

1.3 Pinterest

Many people are familiar with Pinterest.

Few know the power of Pinterest for business, however.

First, let’s talk about what Pinterest is. Many people have the false idea that Pinterest is a social media site. Perhaps it is, but just like Google and YouTube, Pinterest is also a search engine. Think about Pinterest as the visual search engine where YouTube is video and Google, text.

This is an unbelievable tool for any blogger, marketer and online business owner for exposure.

Pinterest reported that it had 291 million monthly users on its platform in 2019. Furthermore, 55% of Pinterest users log on specifically to find products. This results in Pinterest being four times more effective at generating sales than other digital campaigns.

Again, if we’re taking the direction of generating traffic and brand awareness away from this stage, it’s important to note that Half of Pinterest users said in a survey they buy something after seeing a promoted Pin, and 78% say content from brands is useful.

Getting your blog, business and articles in front of the millions of users on Pinterest is unbelievably valuable.

Unlike the two previously mentioned traffic generating techniques listed above, with Pinterest, you’re not using the platform to generate new articles. Here, you’re leveraging the articles that you made using the first two strategies for more viewership.

Pinterest is set up by placing Pins on the platform for other users to see. You can create Pins in many different ways, I like to use Canva. Canva is a free service that allows anyone with little design experience to create Pinterest-ready-Pins with ease. They even have templates for you to use that are to the dimensional requirements Pinterest seeks.

For an example of one of the Pins that I created, see below:

When you sign up for a business account with Pinterest, you create pins such as the one displayed here and hyperlink them to your site. They are essentially the headline of your article and when a user of Pinterest clicks the picture, they are sent over to your site (yes, we are finally getting to a place where we’re redirecting traffic over to your site — we have a little more to go before we finally jump in, however).

Now setting up your pins and posting them every day can seem kind of exhausting. There are scheduling apps that take a lot of that work off your shoulders. They are scheduling apps like Tailwind and others. I won’t go too far into the ins and outs of these apps because this article isn’t calling for it. However, a quick Google search for “Pinterest scheduling apps” or checking out Tailwind will help you with this element.

Once you get your footing and start regularly posting/scheduling your Pins, you will start to see and increase in traffic:

This all about getting the work that you created with the previous two traffic generating tools in front of a different audience all with the intent that this audience will click on the Pins.

Why?

Because a click will redirect them back to your site. And when someone comes back to your site, this is where the magic begins to happen…

Phase 2: How to Generate More Email Subscribers for Your Blog

It’s commonly noted that you have an online blogging business if you have an email list.

Why?

Because when you have an email list (even just one subscriber) you have a direct connection with a potential customer to communicate with. Now it’s not a guarantee that the person will open the email. The average email open rate hovers around 15–25% so it’s advantageous to have as many True Fan email subscribers as possible.

When you have the ability to communicate with an audience — on your terms — you have the ability to act as the expert in your field as well as guide your subscribers through your expertise. When you can effectively and ethically guide your subscribers, you open up the opportunity for selling courses that help your subscribers progress to their goals. These progressions could be through:

• A weight loss program
• A course to help people make healthy recipes
• A book on how to travel the world on a dime

All of these ways of generating income through a subscriber list fall under the eLearning industry. According to Orbis research, the global eLearning market worldwide is set to surpass $275 billion value by 2022.

We’ll dive more into this in Phase 3.

This section is dedicated specifically to strategies and tools you need in order to take the millions of views of your content you generated in the previous section and convert that traffic into email subscribers.

So let’s get into it.

2.1 How to redirect your readers into subscribers

It isn’t enough to just get people to read your work.

In fact, if this is your goal, you’re doomed to fail. People don’t come back to your site that often. They also probably won’t read your article in its entirety as the average time spent reading a blog article is 37 seconds (you’re a small minority if you’ve gotten this far).

When a reader comes to your site through all the hard traffic generation you’ve done, it’s important to get them to become an email subscriber so you can keep an open form of communication with them going into the future (that is unless you abuse the relationship and they unsubscribe).

As it pertains to the first two traffic generating strategies, it’s important that you optimize your bio in your profile. By optimizing the profile, you are inviting your readers to redirect to your site. This gets them off the site where they are reading your work and it gives them an opportunity to explore what you have to offer on a more comprehensive scale.

In your bio, you should include:

• Who you are
• What you are an expert in/working on
• A link to your website
• A promise of what you can help with (ideally with a link)

The last two points are very important. In your bio, what can you offer the reader? Can you provide them with a weight loss diet plan? A way to budget on minimum wage and travel the world? These low-level problem-solving offers will help with our next step.

Here are two examples from both Medium and Quora of how to include actionable links in your bio:

There is a one-two punch necessary in order to get your reader and convert them into an email subscriber. Let’s take a look at that combination.

2.2 Offer in exchange for email

Think about all the emails you get from vendors, bloggers, and businesses on a daily basis.

What do all of those have in common that convinced you to join their email list?

They made you an offer you couldn’t refuse

What do I mean by that? Well, the business or blogger made an offer to you, once you got on their site that convinced you to hand over your email address in exchange for whatever they were giving away.

According to the Best Selling author and leading expert on influential marketing Robert Cialdini, reciprocity is a governing rule in persuasion, “[…] people are obliged to give back to others the form of a behavior, gift, or service that they have received first.”

The blogger or online business gave you something in return for your email address. You may not think that your email address is that valuable to anyone but you’re wrong. Email has been around for 30 odd years and it has remained one of the best and most consistent marketing tools around because of its ability to reach potential buyers.

Below I have two examples of how this is done. One is from one of the biggest retailers in the world. The other is from a small-business entrepreneur who used it to create a job-quitting blog.

The reason I use these two examples is to show that the Titans of Industry use it for their business and someone like you can use it as well in order to build your blog into a 9–5 quitting business.

If it can work at the grandest scale, it can also work at your smaller scale as long as you are reaching an engaged audience and offering up tools to solve their problems.

This is one of the most important points, actually. You must be solving a problem for your audience. Ideally, this is a low-level problem. Like the retailer giant, the problem is giving exclusive access to deals and new products as they enter the space. The other is a free guide of recipes that can help you enter into the paleo lifestyle.

This is an important element of your site. Without it, your readers have no guidance to opt-in to your list and they have no incentive to do so.

In our next step, we’re going to look into the tools that help you build your list.

2.3 Email list building tools

Unless you’re a backend programmer that can implement your own email list builder into your site, you’re going to need some help. Once you have the idea of the offer you’re going to be making to your readers in exchange for their email address, you’re going to need a place to store all the emails as well as send email blasts and campaigns when you’re building your list and selling your products.

There are two email service providers (ESP) that I’m going to include here. I’ve used both of them and recommend them for different reasons.

The first is Mailchimp.

Why Mailchimp? Because Mailchimp is a free ESP up to 2,000 subscribers that you can use and experiment with up. After your first 2,000 subscribers, you will have to go and opt for their paid membership. I like Mailchimp because you don’t need to put any financial skin in the game when you are just testing out how to effectively use an ESP.

Mailchimp has all of the basic offerings that you need for an ESP:

• A list to store all of your email subscribers
• A landing page builder where you can drive your traffic for your opt-in offer
• A shortcode generator so you don’t need to build entire pages (landing page) and can just add the email and name fields into a specific page on your site

I highly recommend checking out Mailchimp if you aren’t well versed in email building and need a place to start.

The second one that I recommend trying out is Convertkit (affiliate link).

Convertkit is what I currently use for all of my list building needs. I like it because it has the same utilities as Mailchimp and more. One drastic disadvantage that Mailchimp has is its lack of customer service. It’s very difficult to get ahold of someone at Mailchimp and once your list starts growing, you may have questions.

I also believe that campaigns (whether welcome series emails or product launches) are easier and more intuitive. Convertkit does require a membership fee even if you have zero subscribers. So again, my recommendation would be to practice and test with Mailchimp and then transfer over your subscribers to a paid service once you get going.

The transferring of your subscribers is relatively easy (and free). All you need to do is export the list from one in a .csv file and upload it to the other. There are copious FAQs on this for both providers.

As the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for.”

So you will probably find the paid services as the better option when your needs call for it.

After you start building your list, it’s important to keep consistent channels of communication open with your list in order to build trust.

We’re going to go over that now.

2.4 Email welcome series, campaigns, and broadcasts

Once people start building their email list, they get super excited and super scared at the same time.

Why?

Because they know they’re very blessed and privileged to have gained someone’s email address and they don’t want to do anything that will cause the subscriber to unsubscribe.

Let me get something out of the way really quickly here.

People are always going to unsubscribe. This is an inevitable part of the game. Many people will subscribe, get their free offering, and unsubscribe never to be heard of again. However, your goal should be really to reach the people who want to be reached.

“No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest.”
― James Altucher

It’s your job to reach the 30% of people that are looking for your content. These are people that have subscribed to your list and are looking for guidance on how they can remedy the issues that have been plaguing them.

The only real wrong thing to do with your broadcasts (emails that go out consistently with intent to contact your subscriber base) is to make everything about yourself.

• You shouldn’t be always telling your audience how good you’re doing with your business
• You shouldn’t always be preaching what you’re up to
• You shouldn’t be making it all about you

Your subscribers are subscribers because they felt as if you were going to help them get somewhere. Remember the offer you gave your subscribers? It was a tool that they can use that helps them solve a problem they’re dealing with. Now that you have them as a subscriber, it is your duty to keep helping them! You cannot pull the old bait n’ switch here on them — you’ll lose their trust!

Keep them informed on new tools, developments, articles, strategies, tricks, recipes, budgets, products etc that can help them in the niche that you’ve been working so hard in.

It is also important that you don’t always sell. This isn’t your opportunity to constantly be pushing products down peoples’ throats. That will turn people off fast and cause an onslaught of unsubscribes.

People don’t like to be sold ad infinitum:

“How to sell matters. What your process is matters. But how your customers feel when they engage with you matters more.”

— Tiffany Bova

Make your broadcasts engaging.

• Make your broadcasts mysterious
• Make your broadcasts informative
• Make your broadcasts funny

It’s important to pursue an emotional response when communicating with your audience. People can be irrational. We used to believe in the rational consumer ,

“[…] individuals know what they want and seek to make the most of the available opportunities given the scarcity constraints they face.”

However, Daniel Kahneman’s work that outlined the opposite,

“[…] decision-making under uncertainty, where he has demonstrated how human decisions may systematically depart from those predicted by standard economic theory.”

And his studies won him the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.

You want to develop an emotional connection with your audience because that emotional connection will build trust.

You do this through regular informative communication that makes the narrative about them and the journey they are embarking on/currently on.

All of this should be considered when they are brought onboard the email list (welcome sequence), and broadcast, and any campaign (series of broadcasts that go out automatically scheduled over a given set of days).

Think about the ways you can emotionally connect with your list and then do that consistently. Again, alluding to Robert Cialdini, another key component of persuasion is to have your audience make consistent commitments towards an objective.

Once you lay the groundwork of communication and start to build trust in your audience, you open the doors to selling products that help your audience reach their goals.

This is where it starts to get really good…

Phase 3: Generate More Money for Your Blog

Phase three is what it’s all about.

Unless you’re specifically building a hobbyist blog (which is totally fine, by the way) you’re in this to help build an online business that can help you leave your dreadful 9–5 job.

And you should strive for that.

It’s about time you believe in yourself! Because you are enough and what you’re creating for the world is enough.

Let’s just make a quick recap and see where we’re at. The two previous phases are of the utmost importance if we’re going to formulate this blog into a money-making, passive-income machine.

Phase 1: Generating traffic

Through the help of Medium, Pinterest and Quora you have been consistently putting out content within your niche to help out a potential audience.

You’ve used questions on Quora as guidance of “pain points” that a community is looking to resolve.

You’ve collaborated and networked with other writers on Medium.

And you’ve set up automated Pins that will help you generate traffic and redirection to your site.

Phase 2: Generating an email list

Once you’ve generated consistent traffic and put in tools that help pivot your readers and entice them to visit your site, it’s time to start generating an email list.

You need an email list to keep consistent, actionable and honest conversation open with your audience. You do this through:

• Broadcasts
• Welcome series emails
• Campaigns

Your mission here is to inform your audience on a consistent basis and keep them up to date with relevant and actionable content.

Once you’ve been able to show your audience that you’re a leader in your niche and all the hard work and expertise that you’ve put in can help them accomplish their goals, you’re ready to start making some job-quitting money.

While for many, this can be the most rewarding phase, it is also the most challenging phase.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with dust and sweat; who strives valiantly, who errs and may fall again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

This is this where you build something and put a real-world, monetized value on something.

You are literally taking something from your mind: a game plan, learning module, master course, exercise plan etc for someone else that they can use to help change their life and learn new skills.

It’s something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. This is something that some will pay their hard-earned money for in hopes of leveling up.

You are putting your money where your mouth is.

I don’t say all of this to frighten you — I say this to motivate you.

Again, think of the passage earlier in this article—the average person only spends 37 seconds reading an article.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re better than average. So when you start building your products and services for your audience, there are two sets of people whose lives will change:

• Your audience’s lives because you have learned what others won’t in order to positively level up their lives
• Your life will change because when you offer extreme value to the world, you will be rewarded with a monetized business

So without further adieu, if you’re still with me — let’s get into the life changing portion of the article.

3.1 What product should you create?

This is always a challenging step. What product should you create when creating your first product?

It’s important in your broadcasts to your audience to get a sense of what is paining them in their current situation.

It’s advised that at the end of every broadcast email you send your audience members a question and invite them to respond to the question.

Picture for a moment that you’re a fitness blogger. At the end of your broadcast email, you can ask your audience something like,

“P.S. What types of hurdles are you experiencing in your workouts. I know for me, it was losing the weight around my midsection. For some of my other clients with was building a Greek-God physique. What are you dealing with now? Hit “reply” and let me know!”

With those questions, you will get responses. With the responses, you will know what difficulties your audience is dealing with. With the difficulties, you can formulate a product (“6 Month Workout Gauntlet to Build a Greek-God Physique” I’m just spitballing here…)

If we take a moment and recall the growth of the eLearning industry, you can probably see where I’m going in the formation of the product. You’re going to be creating video learning modules for your audience.

In the information age, packaging information that will help solve peoples’ problems is a gold mine.

That’s right, you’re going to be filming both yourself and what you’re doing (if it’s something digital) with your product.

Many people get hung up here — they find it strange to film themselves:

• They hate the way they look
• They hate the way their voice sounds
• They don’t think what they’ve created is any good

Think back to Phase 1 when you started creating content. You probably felt weird, right?

But that weirdness started to dissipate. The same is going to happen here. You’re going to get over the way you look. You’re going to get over the way you sound. You’re going to have faith that the work you’re creating is of quality.

The format of your educational video series is going to look different depending on what niche you’re in.

• For instance, if you’re in fitness, you’re going to have either yourself doing exercises or a model.
• If you’re in food health it’ll be you cooking.
• If you’re in technology or finance it might be screen/voice recording of the work you’re doing on your computer.

I cannot fully prescribe exactly how the training module will look for you. This is where you blend your own artist and craftsman abilities.

What I can tell you is what utilities to use in order to build these products.

3.2 How to build your products

Again, the specifics of how your product will be constructed is up to you. What exact journey you are going to take your audience on is your responsibility.

What tool you will use to create this product is where I can help. Below are some of the best eLearning product building tools in the marketplace. I have used them and recommend them.

Teachable

Teachable is probably the most popular platform to build online courses for your audience. With its ease of use and customer service, it’s a great place to start.

They do offer a free plan as well to get started to you can test out how to build your product, offer it to your audience and get going.

If you investigate this tool for the creation of your product, I got a bit of a laugh when I loaded the site to include the link — take note of the opt-in offer they use for their site to get you on their email list!

Teachable has a very intuitive platform that seamlessly lets you upload your videos and construct them into a sequence that will help bring value to your audience.

Their payment system is easy to configure so you can get to creating and selling your product in no-time

Thrive Apprentice

Similar to the email list building phase, wherein I started with one platform and as I grew I began to switch over to another; the same is true for product building.

Whereas I started with Teachable (and loved using them), I now use Thrive Apprentice. I do so for a few reasons:

• One, I use Thrive for my opt-ins as well as the theme of my site
• I like how it’s a plugin rather than a third-party site
• The cost of the plan fits into my marketing budget (i.e. I get all the other utilities that I use for a single price)

Teachable is great, and because of the free version, when starting out — I definitely recommend the service.

What I don’t like, however, is having my audience be redirected to another third-party site for all of their educational needs. My site is being built into an all-encompassing University. I prefer that if someone needs a resource, whether paid or otherwise, they don’t need to bounce around to find what they are looking for.

This is my own personal preference and you’ll find what works best for you when you begin to build your own products.

Now let’s go over the final step…

3.3 How to sell your product

This is the Moment of Truth for you and your business.

We’re finally going to sell the product(s) you created.

Now, many people take the “shotgun approach.” They send a bunch of emails to their audience in hopes that they get a few bites.

Most of the time, with this approach, you’ll just get crickets.

You won’t get much of anything because you aren’t positioning yourself as a credible person that can help your audience.

You need a proper email sales sequence.

Below you will an example email sequence you can use to sell to your audience.

Email 1: The Good News

When you’re pitching your product, if you are contacting your existing audience with a new product, you need to let them know what you’ve been working on.

Just because you built it, it doesn’t mean people will know about it. Let them know it exists!

Tell people about how you’ve received many responses to what problems people have been dealing with and that you’ve created something that will help solve those problems (cough cough Greek-God Bod etc).

If you created the product and want new subscribers to be aware of the product, make sure to include this news in a welcome email as well.

Email 2: The Social Proof

Did you know that people buy things when it’s recommended by another human? In fact, studies from Nielsen note that 70% of people are willing to trust a testimonial from someone they’ve never met.

In the next email, promote the people who have used the product already and have garnered positive results.

For many people starting out with their first product, they may not have any testimonials. I ran into this too.

When I was starting out, I had some True Fans that were engaged with me and my mission from day one. I rewarded those fans and subscribers with a free beta of the product in exchange for feedback (on how I could make it better) and an honest testimonial of the product.

Sure, I wasn’t getting actual dollars to start, but I was further building trust with my audience and getting the needed testimonials to place on my site.

Email 3: The Tease

Once you’ve shown how other people have benefited from the product, it’s time to give your potential customer a tease of what they can expect.

Perhaps you can put in a hyperlink that gives them two free modules (Teachable does this).

Or you can simply lay out in an email everything they expect to get with the product:

• Timelines
• How many modules
• Weekly Q&A calls
• The results they can expect
• Etc

It’s important to be as thorough and transparent as possible without giving away the whole prize.

Email 4: The emotional tug

Like I previously mentioned, people make their decisions on emotional impulses.

In this email, draft up a story of where your reader is right now.

• What they have
• What they don’t have
• How you’ve been there before (maybe before and after photos of your body)
• What their future will look like if they don’t make a change
• What their future will look like if they take a chance on themselves and invest

If you’ve created a product of value that can really truly help people out, you should share how that will happen for them.

Email 5: FAQ

At this point, you will get analytics back of the people who have opened every email up to this point.

From the first to the fifth, it has probably gone down. That’s okay, you want the people who are serious about making change because that will help positively impact the community you are growing.

Here you will list out all of the Frequently Asked Questions for your audience:

• Is this for beginners in the field or experts?
• Is there a money-back guarantee?
• How long should one expect to see results?
• How many hours a day/week should a person put into the program?

Think of every question you would ask if you were taking a chance on the product, add them and add an answer to the question. This helps offer empathy for the person who is going to invest in themselves and further illustrate that you’ve done your homework on a product that will help make a positive change for this person.

• This is the last email where you’ll put a link to the sales page.

The people who you have built trust with over the days, weeks or months will either make an emotional decision to invest in themselves and therefore invest in you or they won’t — what’s important to take note is to understand that you’ve done everything within your power to create a valuable product that will bring value to your audience.

Give yourself a pat on the back.

By this point, you’ve done what millions of others don’t have the guts to do.

First off, you’ve finished reading a 7,000 word article — kudos.

Second, if you’ve taken this all with honest consideration and acted upon all the strategies involved, you’ve created a product that might be at a side-hustle level right now.

But keep building on that. Take your first product and ask people for feedback.

• What did they like with the product?
• What did they hate with the product (sometimes a hard pill to swallow)?
• Where can it improve?
• Would they recommend it to their friends/colleagues?

Keep asking your audience about the struggles they’re dealing with.

As we move forward as a human species, technology is going to help us solve more problems and, more importantly, identify problems we didn’t yet know existed.

This is your opportunity. To stay on the cutting edge of helping people solve their problems.

That’s what a true entrepreneur is.

“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.”

— Roy Ash

That’s what you are now.

Congratulations.

Pin me

The post How To Generate More Traffic, Subscribers, and Job-Quitting Money With Your Blog first appeared on tribeloyal.

I’m no blogger like Jeff Goins [yet].

I don’t have 100k followers that are waiting for and heeding my next article [yet].

I haven’t locked up 6 figure advance book deals by pitching an outline for the next best sellers [yet].

There are a plethora of characteristics that you wouldn’t be able to tie to my name and put me in the same bucket as characters like Goins, Morrow, Ferriss, Holiday, and Altucher.

There is one characteristic I have that I confidently will say puts me at a similar level to him — my ability to research the f*ck out of what it takes to be successful in a given field.

I love doing research.

I love discovering why certain people are making strides over others — especially in writing and blogging.

I take all of this information and of course apply it to my own efforts.

“Learning from great people makes you great; you learn a lot and it also gives you the experience and confidence to move on with your own career.”

— Nas

Plain and simple, in order to be a great blogger, you need to learn from and see the successes of the bloggers out there who have already done so.

Throughout my research, I have found a number of elements these successful bloggers — Tim Ferriss, Jeff Goins, James Altucher, and Jon Morrow (just to name a few) are practicing.

1. Great bloggers are experts at creating compelling headlines and copy

When I first learned this facet of successful blogging I felt a bit dirty and perhaps a bit like a snake oil salesman.

I downloaded, read and researched the art of a captivating headline and how important it was in building your audience and success as a writer.

Headlines are everything.

You could have the absolute best article ever written, but if you don’t incentivize an audience to actually click on the article and begin reading, your work will be lost to the endless caverns of internet waste.

I saw an interview recently with Ryan Holiday. The interview was referring to his book, Obstacle Is The Way, a Best Seller (one of his many). He was recalling how when finishing the title of his book, his publishers were pushing him to call the book simply, The Way. Holiday argued that this wasn’t really enough to compel people and to generate curiosity to open up the pages and experience the content inside — we all have obstacles, now’s our opportunity to use them as a tool for our life.

Who’s to say what would have become of that best seller if the title wasn’t so compelling?

This holds true with your articles.

When I first started out, I was very “artsy” and vague with my titles. I thought the more esoteric and poetic they were, the better they would be received.

I quickly realized this was only causing confusion and resistance from potential readers.

Headlines are 99% of the weight of your article going viral or not.

Let’s breakdown what a proper headline should entail:

• A good headline focuses on solving a problem (i.e. avoiding belly fat)
• A good headline uses numbers (i.e. 10 ways to avoid belly fat)
• The more numbers, generally the more compelling (i.e. 5 ways to rid yourself of belly fat in 5 weeks or less)
• Bold promises are even more drawing (i.e. The science is in! 5 ways to rid yourself of belly fat once and for all in 5 weeks or less)
• Great headlines either adhere to one of two emotions: aspiration or fear (i.e. 10 ways to get 10k blog followers in just 10 weeks [aspiration] or Most people are unaware of these 10 tricks banks are playing on you with your own money [fear])

*Now let me be clear, some of the examples I have are perhaps a bit hyperbolic — this is so I can drive in the point of the specificity needed in order to produce a compelling and drawing headline. What ever you promise in the headline, you better be able to deliver in the content of your article.People can smell a fraud a mile away.

I just recently saw an article from Jon Morrow titled, How to Become a Highly Sought-After Writer and I immediately said to myself, “Hell yes!” and clicked the article without question.

Needless to say, he fulfilled on his promise and the article was ripe with extremely valuable content I will take forward with me on my mission.

What if he didn’t take inventory of his title, however?

What if he tried to be fancy and artsy?

Morrow laid out clearly what problem I would be able to solve should I click and give him a chance on this article.

This is the art of making superb headlines.

Great bloggers while very analytical and informative, they also tell great stories about themselves

Photo by Phil Coffman on Unsplash

To further illustrate my point with this, let’s continue with Morrow’s previously mentioned article. To quote a few passages from this article:

“I need to tell you something about my past…

When I was twelve, my mother and I hit a rough spot where we couldn’t even afford to buy food. We used to go to churches to get meals, because otherwise, we would’ve gone hungry.

But I had an idea.

I took a plastic bucket and put a sign on it that said, “Please help. We need money.” Too embarrassed to let anyone see me with it, I put it next to the road and looked out the window, hoping people who went by would drop money in it.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. Even worse, my mother saw it, and it punched a hole in her heart.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “We’ll make it somehow.”

But I couldn’t do nothing. The feeling of powerlessness was killing me.

A few days later, I noticed a Girl Scout going door-to-door, selling cookies. By the time she got to the end of the street, all her cookies were gone, and she had a wad of money in her hand.

That’s when I learned one of the most important lessons of my life…

You can’t just wait for people to put money in a bucket. You have to give them something in exchange. You also have to go to them, not expect them to come to you.

But what could I give them? We didn’t even have enough food for ourselves, much less supplies to bake cookies.

I looked around and found a poem I’d written for my mother. It was all I could afford to give her for Mother’s Day.

“That’s it,” I thought. “I’ll sell poems.”

Over the next few days, I wrote a dozen or so poems. Each of them less than a page.

And then I made little frames for them out of popsicle sticks.

When I was done, I went to every house on the street. My neighbors opened their doors and found a skinny little kid in a wheelchair sitting outside, selling poems for three dollars apiece.

What do you think happened?

You guessed it, I sold every single one of those poems. Not a single person said no.

I made $36 from my writing that day. Later, we went to the store, and little Jon Morrow, a 12-year-old kid in a wheelchair, bought his family’s groceries for the first time. Still brings tears to my eyes, just thinking about it.

A week later, my mother found work, and I stopped going door-to-door, pestering the neighbors, but I was never quite the same after that. I got rid of a demon that’s plagued writers for centuries:

Shame.

What does Morrow do here that so many other bloggers don’t?

He has invited you into his life on a very vulnerable and intimate level. Instead of just rambling on on how you can become a “sought-after writer” he first introduces you into a compelling moment of his past.

He touches on an emotion that a lot of writers deal with on a daily basis — shame. This makes him just like you and me.

I know one of my most successful articles (10k views) did just that when I recounted how blogging for the past year drastically changed my life.

How Writing Everyday For The Past Year Drastically Changed My LifeUnlikely lessons I learned in finding success with writing so you don’t have to.writingcooperative.com

Human readers aren’t robots (not yet at least…).

We require a connection with what we’re reading. We want to know a bit about the person who wrote the article. We want to feel something and experience it in its entirety.

The great and viral articles will generally have this ingrained into their content.

Great bloggers aren’t afraid to share their secrets

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Great bloggers understand that for them to succeed, the people around them also need to succeed.

Are you familiar with the Abundance vs. Scarcity Mindset?

If not, it’s a fascinating concept. Taken from projectlifemastery.com the definition is as follows:

A person with an abundance mindset believes that there is always more of everything in life, whether that’s money, relationships, resources, opportunities, etc. Alternatively, someone with a scarcity mentality lives in fear that they are going to lose their time or money.

Great bloggers understand that there is an abundance of opportunity for themselves and everyone around them.

I recently wrote an article where I offer up the tricks, techniques and hacks I used in order to supplement my income by selling my created digital products through my blog:

The Beginner-Blogger’s Guide To Selling Their First Ebook.Tips and strategies that if applied correctly can translate to your own success making $$$ through writingmedium.com

There’s an overwhelming amount of information I used in order to make money blogging.

One might think straight away that I am giving away information that could result in a competing blogger might use to sabotage my efforts.

Perhaps…

I like to think the opposite however. I want and believe that that only way I can prosper is for other people who are hustling to prosper as well.

Furthermore, Jon Morrow gained an extraordinary amount of exposure and views by sharing all of his valuable information for successful blogging for free.

His whole site — Smartblogger.com which has generated $50 million in total revenue is based on giving away valuable, industry relevant information for free.

If you want to be great, it starts with the community you build. Your voice is contingent on your audience — without an audience, you don’t have much of anything (hold for journalistic writing).

The way to grow and foster your audience is through sharing your valuable content for free.

Conclusion

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”

— Dwayne Johnson

If you want to be a great blogger, there are no secrets left on how to get there.

It’s a simple formula really.

• You need to be consistent and you need to work your ass off.

Within that consistency and hard work there are strategies that can play into your hand and offer up insurmountable advantages that lead to your success as a blogger.

These strategies include:

1. Becoming a headline ninja

If you cannot get your readers to actually click into your article and read the valuable content, you aren’t going to have a chance of getting your name out there.

Things move unbelievably fast in today’s age. If you cannot create buzz in the first few days of your article being live, it will be lost to the pits of the internet.

How do you create buzz?

You need to draw people in and compel them beyond their skepticism by writing superb headlines.

• You need to focus on the emotional responses of the reader: fear vs ambition
• Using lists works very well in creating intrigue with the reader.
• Be specific — you want to help solve a specific problem for the reader.

2. You need to pull at the emotional heart-strings and tell about yourself

For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have told one another stories.

These stories have been rooted in mythology, drama, and humor.

We have used stories as a means to make sense of ourselves and the ultimate question of “why am I here?”

This hasn’t changed in the digital and information age.

To truly supplant your dominance and success and have your voice flourish, you are going to need to let people in.

• Tell a story of struggle or triumph.
• What are the fears you have been dealing with?
• Find ways to be vulnerable in your writing.

To really be remembered, you need to invoke emotion.

3. You have the abundance mindset

If you want to be great, you need to share with the world all the information you have deep within your mind.

Nothing is sacred anymore.

If you stumble upon a new trick, hack, technique or skill; sharing it with your community will help supplant you as a thought leader.

Everyone has a problem — shit… most of us have more than one.

If you know a way to help solve said problem, share it with the world. Your audience will recognize this compassion and return the favor 100X.

Perhaps the world doesn’t see it just yet — you are a great blogger.

Maybe you just haven’t been using the right tools to get there.

My goal is that these tools help.

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The post 3 Writing Hacks Bad Bloggers Just Don’t Know About first appeared on tribeloyal.