ProBlogger: What to Do BEFORE You Launch A Product On Your Blog

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What to Do BEFORE You Launch A Product On Your Blog Posted: 01 Dec 2014 06:59 AM PST Over the last 5 years there has been a shift in the way that many bloggers try to monetise their blogs. Rather than relying upon advertising and working with brands to make money – many have started to develop their own products to sell directly to readers (whether it be by selling virtual products or physical ones). There are many reasons why selling your own product is a good thing to do. No longer will you be sending people away from your site – but they’ll be staying with you. You can also ensure that the quality of what you’re selling is high and you end up taking 100% of the profits of sale – not just a small part of it for the traffic you send. Of course selling products on your blog takes a lot of work – more than many bloggers realise when they dream of doing so. If you’re thinking of creating your first product – get ready to get focused! For one you need to develop your product. At dPS our photography eBooks take a minimum of 3-6 months to write, edit, proof, design and launch (and we have a team working on it around the clock). But it isn’t just a matter of creating a product. There’s a lot more that you should be working on BEFORE you launch a product that will help to ensure it is profitable. The Sad Tale of a Blogger with a Great eBook and No Sales I spoke recently to an eBook author/blogger who couldn’t work out why her eBook hadn’t sold well. She’d read of the success of other eBook authors making big money with eBooks and decided to create one of her own. She worked hard for months on producing the best eBook that she could. Her problem was that she focused so much upon creating the eBook that other things too a back seat for the months it took to produce it. Rather than publishing five high-quality weekly blog posts, she slipped to being lucky to publish one mediocre one Her twitter account became a ghost town She stopped emailing her newsletter list Her Facebook page posting dropped away She stopped interacting with other bloggers in her niche On the day she launched her eBook she did so with a fantastic product but a blog with very little engagement or reader goodwill. Her eBook barely made any sales as a result. The Other Scenario I See - the other situation I’ve seen many times are people who create products and then when they’re ready to launch start researching how to find people to buy it which results in them starting a blog, email list, social media accounts the day they want to launch their product! Believe it or not I’ve had quite a few confused emails from people in this boat over the years! They end up starting out even further behind than someone with a blog that they’ve ignored to develop a product. Having a Great Product Is Only Half Of the Profitable Product Puzzle I’ve heard these kinds of story from bloggers many times in the last few years – in fact it is a challenge I faced in producing my own first eBooks (when I had to do it all myself). There’s so much work involved in producing a product like an eBook – writing, editing, designing, marketing – that it is easy to let everything else slip. The problem is that having a great product to sell is only half of the profitable product puzzle. The other half is having people ready to buy it. If the sacrifice you make to create a product is looking after your readership then your efforts will be wasted. If anything – in the lead up to launching your product you should INCREASE your efforts in serving your readership, deepening engagement and growing a positive relationship with those who could potentially buy what you’re developing. Here’s what to Focus on BEFORE you Launch a Product on your Blog Before I suggest some areas to work on before you launch a product let me say that this is always a juggle and it’s hard to get perfect. Not only are we working on creating a product, keeping a blog running and engaging readers – on top of that there’s ‘life’ (family, other work etc). It’s not easy but being prepared is so important! Other than creating the product itself, here are four things I’d be working on to help me be ready for a profitable product launch. 1. Growing a ‘Warm’ Email List By far the biggest source of sales for our eBooks have been email. Yes your blog and social media will product drive sales too – but email is likely to convert better. I’d estimate over 90% of our eBook sales come from the emails we send to our list. There’s two parts of this task. A. having people sign up to your list – promoting your email list is really important. B. keeping your list warm – don’t just email when you’ve got something to sell. Keep your list ‘warm’ by sending them regular useful information. On dPS this means we send them a weekly newsletter with all our latest tutorials every Thursday night. Regularly emailing your list with useful content grows the relationship, builds trust and gets them used to hearing from you. It’s so important! 2. Growing Your Blog Archives Most of the people who subscribe to your email list (and social media accounts) will have found you as a result of reading a post on your blog. Keep producing great content on your blog to keep them engaged. This will give you content that you can email to your list but also will help you to keep growing that list (fresh content gives people more to share on social and via word of mouth). Also use your blog to take your readers on a journey towards your product launch. For example: Telling your readers that you’re working on something for them Involving them in the journey of creating your product Using blog posts to research and test ideas in your product and building anticipation of your launch 3. Building Your Social Presence While I’ve not seen a heap of sales coming directly from social media for our eBooks I do find social media to be a great way to keep our readership engaged and to build our brand – all of which can help when it comes time to email our list and launch a product. I also love using social media to understand our readers and research products. In the lead up to a product launch I quite often ask questions that relate to our product to help me understand what our readers needs and problems are and what might trigger their interest. This is golden information when creating sales/marketing material (sales pages, emails etc). I don’t tend to sell too hard on social at the time of a product launch but do include a little messaging on our social accounts to support our emails. 4. Grow Your Network and Affiliate Relationships Your readership, list and social network is probably where most of your sales will come from but there’s also potential to go beyond that if you have relationships with other influencers. This might simply be friendship type relationships (another blogger who simply wants to support you) or commercial relationships (where you offer commissions to those who sign up as your affiliates). Either approach works best if those relationships are warm and engaging ones. Think about when you would promote what another blogger is doing? If you’re like me you’re more likely to promote then if they are engaging, friendly and communicating regularly with you. So keep interacting with other bloggers in your niche in natural ways (don’t overwhelm them). This might simply be by engaging on social media but it could also be private industry groups on Facebook or LinkedIn. Also consider promoting what they are doing to help grow trust and relationships. Find win/win ways to benefit from supporting each other. How to Get your Dreams Into Reality Again – I understand the juggle it takes to create a product without letting your blog suffer. It isn’t easy but let me finish with two pieces of advice from my own personal experience. 1. Take Action I’ve lost count of the times I’ve met bloggers with a dream to create a product that they’ve not actioned. Get that dream out of your head! I spoke at World Domination Summit on how to do this (the video is below) but the #1 thing you need to do is ‘take action’ – even small actions. I put off creating my first eBooks for over two years because I couldn’t see how I could keep my blogs running AND create those products. I was juggling a lot (we were also starting a family and newborns/sleep deprivation didn’t help). So for over two years I took no action on my dream and in doing so missed out on two years of a new income stream and learning. When I finally did take action and launched my product my first feeling was one of regret that I didn’t find a way to do it earlier. Don’t allow yourself to be paralysed – you need to take action, even if it is very small steps. Which leads me to my next point. 2. Take Your Time: Small Steps Can Still Get You There Telling your to ‘take your time’ might seem at odds with my last point of ‘taking action’ but I think it can co-exist. Let me explain. If creating product means you need to sacrifice the relationship with your readers – don’t do it. Find a way to take action that doesn’t cost you that relationship. After two years of taking no action on my dream of creating my first eBooks I decided I needed to do something – anything – or give up the dream. The only way I could do it was to get up 15 minutes a day earlier every day and get it done. 15 minutes a day isn’t much (although when you’ve been up settling babies in the night it feels like a sacrifice) but it is more than 0 minutes a day. Over time it adds up – 15 minutes a day over a month is 7.5 hours (an extra work day a month) and over 3-4 months you’ll be amazed what you can achieve! In 15 minutes a day I took small but steady steps toward my goal of launching an eBook. I initially spent it on writing, then on editing, then on design, then on researching and setting up shopping carts, then on writing sales copy etc. It took me months to get there but in 15 minutes a day steps I launched that first product WITHOUT sacrificing the relationship I had with my readers. In fact I grew the relationship I had with my readers even stronger – so when those first eBooks launched (here on ProBlogger with 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and on dPS with a Portrait eBook) they blew my mind with the sales that they achieved. You don’t need to make a choice between creating a product and looking after your readers! Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger What to Do BEFORE You Launch A Product On Your Blog

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ProBlogger: Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top

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Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top Posted: 30 Nov 2014 06:44 AM PST Image via Flickr user Spondle. This is a guest contribution from author and freelance writer Steff Green. Like that sparkly rhinestone jacket you purchased last year but suddenly realise is actually kind of hideous, blogging trends change with the seasons. What was once the mark of a high-quality blog now screams of incompetence. Readers are fickle and changing, apt to desert you at a moments notice when something new and shiny and rhinestone-encrusted comes along. But could blogging actually be dying? Many sources confirm that it is. The Guardian points to statistics showing the amount of blogs started by teens has halved since 2006, and massively declined among millennial. Jason Kottke, writer of one of the longest-running blogs on the web, states that the blog’s demise came about because the fundamental purpose of blogging was no being fulfilled with other media. In her Atlantic piece titled 2013: The Year “The Stream” Crested, Alexis C. Madrigal discusses the idea that content online is now organised by preference and importance, rather than chronology, rendering the format of the blog obsolete. “Today, teens are about as likely to start a blog (over instagramming or snapchatting) as they are to buy a music CD. Blogs are for 40-somethings with kids.” – Jason Kottke. With social media platforms becoming the online communication too du jour, and with smartphones and other devices becoming for many the preferred platform, blogs have fallen to the wayside in favour of shorter, punchier messages specifically tailored to hit a reader’s buttons. So what does this mean for you, the blogger? Are you scared? I’m not. And here’s why. I know that whatever changes come about, there are always people out there who need to know things, or need to be entertained. I know things, and I’m mildly amusing, so as long as I’m creating content, it will find an audience, even if that audience – and the way they find and digest that information – may change. Here are some changes I’ve noticed, and some ideas for how you can stave off your blog’s untimely death: People are less interested in following blogs I’ve found that subscriber numbers are way down on all the blogs I manage. The use of feeds has diminished since Google Reader was laid to rest, and I think when Gmail and other clients started filtering promotional material away from the “Primary Inbox”, blog updates via email became less important. With dwindling subscriber lists, what do you do to keep your readership intact? What you can do about it: Just because people aren’t subscribing, doesn’t mean they aren’t reading. People are more likely to follow your blog on social media – clicking through to your links when you post them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Take advantage of this swing towards social media use by ramping up for social presence. One thing I like to do is post an article link a couple of times over the week, to increase the chances of people seeing it. I also frequently post links to older articles from my archives. Look at new ways to boost subscriber rates by offering something different. Many bloggers are transitioning into “media hubs” – a place where many different stories and opinions and ideas and media are collected and disseminated. Offer content that can be shared on social media with ease and keep people coming back by giving them a whole lot more of what they want. Rebrand your blog so it’s not a “blog”. Instead of a blog tab in your navigation bar, call it “Steff’s Thoughts” or “Helpful Tips” or “Articles” – recreate yourself, move away from the title of “blogger” and start thinking of your website as a media business. Guest Blogging Isn’t As Valuable As it once Was I’ve been finding my recent guest blogging aren’t yielding the results I’ve come to expect. Whereas a post written for a A-grade blog in 2012 might generate 300 hits to my site, these days it might only generate 30. People are paying less and less attention to the bio links in posts, and Google is, too. Host blogs, hounded constantly by advertisers looking for low-cost linkbacks, have tightened their submission guidelines to the point that getting in is almost as strenuous as a job application at Google. Yet, despite the changes in the guest-blogging space, many bloggers are still citing this technique as one of the core methods of building a following. So, what do you do to improve your guest blogging results? What you can do about it: Don’t write off guest-blogging altogether – it still has its place. You just have to be more strategic about it. Instead of randomly choosing 20 sites to target for guest blogs, focus on building ongoing relationships with 1-3 popular sites. Become a regular contributor. Allow that audience to get to know you through regular posts. This is how you get them to start following you. Choose topics that require specific examples from your own sites and businesses. This way you can talk about your personal experience and, as you describe yourself as a case studies, readers are more likely to be interested in your work and click through. Pull together resources with other bloggers to create awesome products like free webinars or documents. “Free” is still a great way to attract new readers to the top of your funnel. For example, the team at First Site Guide created this incredible Start a Blog guide with advice from some of the best bloggers in the business. It was a real team effort and has provided a free resource that I personally find incredibly useful. People Interact on Social Media, Not Your Sites So how many blog comments do you get, huh? Is it anything like the number you had four years ago? I doubt it very much. Practically every blogger I’ve talked to has said comments are on the decline. Why? Two words: social media. Readers are not only using social media to find your content, they are also using their favourite platforms to interact with it, and you. A reader is more likely to share your post on Facebook and leave a comment there than write something on the blog itself. If your readers are flocking to social media to discuss your posts, what can you do to steer them back to your site? What You Can Do About It? First of all, I think you should let your readers take the lead with how and where they want to discuss your posts. If discussion is moving on to social media, than I say, “embrace it!” Delete the comment function of your blog altogether, or at least hide the number of comments on a post, so readers aren’t always seeing a big “0 comments” after the post title. Focus on building and engaging with your audience on one or two of your favourite social media platforms. Discuss topics, ask questions, post interesting links and get them to talk with you throughout the day, not just when you post an article. Don’t try to be everywhere at once, but use the platforms you enjoy to build your audience. At the end of your blog posts, invite readers to share and discuss your content on Facebook. Post content on your social media you don’t post on your blog. I like to share funny links and music videos throughout the day on my Facebook page. Monetization of Sites Readers have started to get smart to the methods of blog advertising – they might avoid affiliate links, scoff at “sponsored content” and glance over your sidebar ads without a single click. Google is punishing the selling of text links and other types of sponsored content. It seems that selling advertising is no longer a way to create a viable income stream. And it’s not just advertising. With the advent of the kindle and readers coming to expect ebooks for $2.99, revenue from ebook sales on blogs have dwindled. Or is it? Here’s what you can do to jump-start monetization on your blog: What can you do about it? Bloggers are getting truly entrepreneurial and thinking about monetization from outside of the context of their blogs. For example, Elsie and Emma from A Beautiful Mess – a simple DIY blog – created an app allowing users to add doodles and words on top of their images. The app became one of the most popular. Other bloggers are stepping out from behind the keyboard and building branded content in a live setting. The three bloggers behind The Blogcademy, for example, are running live workshops all around the world. Chunky advertorial posts just won’t cut the mustard any more. Blog readers want something more authentic. Brands are still working with bloggers but many are looking for sophisticated content partnerships. Other writers are using their blog as a platform to launch creative projects that might not necessarily have much to do with the topic of their site. For example, I am writing and publishing dark fantasy fiction, and my site is a music website, but I’m using it as my platform as many music fans also enjoy dark fantasy. I’ve been blogging since 2008, and I’ve seen many different trends rise and fall. It can be hard when something we’ve come to rely on no longer works, but I think it’s important to see every setback as an opportunity in disguise – allowing us as bloggers to shift focus, re-evaluate, change things up and take risks. Steff Green is a writer, blogger and heavy metal maiden living off-grid in rural New Zealand with her cantankerous drummer husband, a menagerie of animals and their medieval sword collection. Check out her dark fantasy novel, The Sunken, or subscribe to her blog for updates and free books. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Is Blogging Dead? How Blogs are changing and How You Can Stay on Top

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