Oh boy! You’ve placed another affiliate product on your blog, had a couple click-throughs, even got people to the checkout page but alas, you didn’t convert the sale. Welp, there goes another chance to make money with your blog – guess you’ll move onto the next product and start the process all over again.
How many times have you tried to make money with your blog only to be stuck staring at your reports that show nothing in return. It sucks; we all know it, we want to change it but why aren’t we making money with our blogs dammit!
Let me clue you into one simple explanation: The biggest reason why you’re not making money with your blog is that you’re chasing the wrong market.
But wait, “I have tons of traffic, comments and a loyal subscriber base” you’re probably saying. Well, that’s good and all but unless you’re converting traffic into customers all you’re really doing is giving away information – and everyone does that.
Why 99% of bloggers fail to make the sale
Am I your customer? I comment on your blog, help promote your content online and even send you a few emails from time to time but are you really expecting me to buy one of your products? Think again.
I’m not trying to be harsh or belittle the work you’ve invested toward creating your ebook, video series or..whatever. No,no, the reason why I’ll never buy from you is that I don’t need to.
Again: The single biggest reason why I won’t buy from you is that I don’t need to.
Regardless of how flashy you make your product. Regardless of all the information and bonuses you attach to the offer. Regardless of how well you write your sales copy – I’m not going to buy your product.
But why is this? Why even bother telling you this information. It’s not to discourage you to wake you up. It’s tough love.
I am a geek; I love to find information on my own. I know my way around the net. I spend hours learning the same methods you’re trying to sell me – in essence, I don’t need your product because I can easily find the same information online for free.
Nearly every bit of information bloggers place into their products can be found freely available online. For a geeky person such as myself, I don’t mind taking the time to find this information even if it means I have to sort through hundreds (even thousands) of web pages.
You see where I’m going with this? I’m not your market because I am technically skilled enough to find the same information on my own.
The real way to make money with your blog
Don’t kick yourself because you’re targeting the wrong audience; it happens to the each and every one of us.
By now, you’re wondering how you’re going to use your knowledge to make money with your blog. Good for you! That’s the spirit!
Below, I’m going to give you the two most fundamental ways you can create a sale with your blog – in a completely non BS manner.
1. Going after a hungry market
You want rabid people; foaming at the mouth, 28 days later style hordes of people coming to your website ready to rip into any product you have to offer.
The key to making money with your blog is to find a hungry market and fulfill what’s missing – fill in the gaps.
You don’t want your blogger friends to buy; you want people that are new to blogging, people that don’t have time, people that don’t want to learn a new skill, people that are inexperienced, people that are hungry.
There’s one mindset that you have comprehend: you’re selling to the inexperienced.
No, they’re not dumb. I’ve always hated when I hear business people say their customers are dumb – they aren’t, they just don’t care enough about a particular product as much as you do (or have to do).
In reality, we’re all new to experiences – that’s why we go to school. A teacher wouldn’t be considered predatory because they are selling their knowledge; that’s how business works – you sell your knowledge to those that are hungry enough to buy it.
What you need to do is idenfity your target audience.
2. Benefits, not features
Most bloggers that create products try to push the features – it uses 1,000 link build strategies, the software is optimized, you can customize the hell out of it. Well, this isn’t why people buy.
The biggest factors why people buy is that it solves a problem: time, money, pain, etc.
In most cases, people don’t want to waste thousands of hours learning a new skill – they just want a system that works. You’ve probably based your own product around the fact that it has x,y,z features but what people want is a clear-cut way to the finish line.
Sell them on how much time they’ll save, how much money they’ll save, the headaches they can avoid while researching, the end result of being successful.
Final Thoughts
I hope I didn’t come across as harsh to anyone reading this but at the same time I hope it was a good enough kick in the ass to make you wake up and realize you’re most likely targeting the wrong market.
You could be in the perfect niche with your blog; you could be writing amazing articles but you don’t sit around trying to appeal to fellow bloggers and the geeky-type and expect to make money by selling to this market.
Right now you have to get active. Survey your readers to see what they want to learn. Run a few analytics reports to find your target audience. Browse forums to learn what the average person needs to know; find this, fulfill it and you’ll begin making money from your blog.
Good luck.
Murray,
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one. The information is always out there for free if people want it and want to spend the time going after it.
Success is absolutely finding the right audience for your message and letting them know how you are going to make their lives shiny, sparkly and GOOD.
It’s like chasing the dragon Steve.
Our intentions are always great when we start a blog but then we corner ourselves into a marketplace that doesn’t really pay off – of course, if you just want to do it for fun that’s perfectly fine.
I’m sure you have the similar thought: Run a flagship blog that is great for branding but also use your time to work on side projects which will bring home the bacon.
For us bloggers, we already have the skill of writing content that drives traffic – we could do freelance writing, create niche sites, start another blog, pull up freelance clients, develop software.
You’re doing a great job with your own blog Steve; really brandable and it certainly shows that it stands out
Murray,
So true – the problem is too many go straight into the markets which are over saturated and that’s never going to get anywhere.
I’ve recently launched my first niche site, so will see how that goes.
Awesome news Mark! I’m not going to ask you which niche since we all know how competition can be but I’d love to hear what kind of strategies you’re going to use from what you know about blogging to take to the niche site.
Murray,
You really nailed the problem 99 percent of the bloggers face….No matter the niche….
Chasing the wrong market is indeed a waste of time…But the only way to find out if it is the right market is to chase it long enough…with passion…Who is going to buy from you if you are not passionate about what you do…?
Some bloggers might be in the right market but they don’t chase it long enough to see the outcome….Many give up too easy…
Like you mentioned in your post…Being able to provide benefits instead of the features is very important….Success can only come if one can create products/info that solve people’s problems..
Really enjoyed your post Murray…
Agreed Adam.
It’s still possible to finally break through in an over-saturated market but you’re really going to have to wait it out for a very long time to show a lot of results – as you said, that’s what discourages people into quitting.
It’s much better to go after those markets that will show a return financially. Additionally, you can then use the brand you’ve built and money you’ve earned to go into other markets even ones that are over-saturated because you have backing power!
Nice article Murlu. And I partly agree. I mean there is no point in chasing a market that is not going to help you make money anyway. I still believe that you can make money through experienced Internet marketers, don’t you think? I mean take a look at Pat’s blog (Smartpassiveincome.com). He is certainly offering information for more experienced internet marketers. And he is able to pull in a nice amount of money through the blog. What do you think? So what’s the market you are chasing with Murlu.com?!
Hey Julius,
Pat is a really awesome guy (I’ve been talking with him and should receive an interview sometime in the near future so heads up hehe). Pat has made it really big with his other projects which has set him in the authoritative position on passive income. Which reminds me too – you have to claim authority sometimes which Pat has accurately done because whenever you think ‘passive income’ (at least in my mind) you’d think Pat.
Going after an experienced market does have its benefits because you know they are in the big leagues and ready to spend to improve their craft but you have to hammer home the point with social proof, ya know?
As for here on Murlu, I’ve been having some difficulty lately because of the lack of focus. I sat for a few hours debating the purpose of Murlu and where to take it but I think, in the end, it comes back to just giving good information even if it doesn’t have kickbacks – that’s what the side projects are for
.
You rise some great points and that post is probably also going to be an awesome wake up call for lots of bloggers
Highlighting benefits instead of features is a nice tip. I actually already knew it but I had completely forgotten about it – I’ll try to remember it better this time so I can use it next time I have to try and sell something.
It works really well in regular blog posts too – instead of just going into “here’s how you do X” you can bridge it with “here’s how you do X and save a ton of time and effort” – added effect, very subliminal, always effective!
Great post Murray!
I think the biggest problem is that bloggers, and online marketers don’t ever test, grow, learn etc.
We do this in the real world – we find what is working and what is not and we tweak. But online its simply follow the leader, and if the leader says jump you say ‘how much’
Enjoyed reading that mate, cheers
another great article murry, i follow your articles with relish on a daily basis now. Keep it up
Thanks for the support Jared
If you don’t have traffic,then don’t think of money. Trafic means quality traffic not just the Stumble upon traffic or some random digg homepage traffic. If you want to earn then you need to have steady traffic from search engines
Indeed Bishwajeet; traffic is the goal of any website – the more you have the more chances you get at trying to convert. Of course, it does come down to targeted traffic because you could send a million visitors to your site and if they aren’t interested in what you have they won’t convert.
These are some really great points. One way around the problem of selling information that’s freely available is to find something that’s not. For example, I used to be a coin dealer and I have a lot of information that I found out the hard way. Much of the business is still done with paper and phone calls. I actually had someone email me and ask me a few questions about it, and I decided the info was so valuable I wouldn’t open my mouth without a consulting fee. If I thought there would be enough demand, I would write an ebook on it.
That’s a really smart way of going about things Jennifer; everyone can learn from this.
The information you put out there in you free time can be free but when it comes down to a one-on-one you could go into consulting because you’re now trading your time. You can do this for free but consider that your time is now being used by someone else which diverts you from working on your projects.
In fact, you could even use a lot of the information to create a perpetual sales funnel because now you have questions that real people are asking which can be translated into blog posts which, in turn, drives more people for consultation!
GREAT POST Murray! I see this everywhere, that people think they are doing something wrong because they have a decent following, lots of comments – but no money!
To get around the ‘information is everywhere’ argument, personally I almost solely promote ‘products’ and not information. And personally I find that search engine traffic is more likely to buy – so while I love the community I have built around my blog, I know they are usually not going to be my target market.
Hey Thomas,
Thanks for adding to the comments.
I agree about the search engine traffic; most people just want to find helpful information through search engines which generally equates to people that want free stuff. Although you can make money through organic search it’s much easier when you have a very targeted market and you set up negative modifiers which weed out people that never intend to buy.
I’ve heard this recently on PPC talk where even adding the price within the Adwords can help deter people that are just looking for information – they see that it’s an item for sale and avoid clicking your link; this not only helps you save money but will only bring you qualified leads
I think personally it is down to people not selling and enticing the reader to go all the way.
Simple as that really.
I rag on John Chow a lot but he has the right idea as he gains a lot of conversions.
You really do need to find a hungry market. This is the reason my wife and I are creating a cookbook for her food blog. Thanks for the great post.
That sounds fantastic Dustin!
Ya know, just kicking around ideas and such, I bet since the food blog’s readers already know your wife fairly well through the blog that you could really add a lot of personal touch to the cookbook with actual photos in the kitchen and such. It would be that “hey, that’s the blogger!” moment.
I wouldn’t consider it harsh, more so truthful. You also hit on the underlying theme that a lot of people miss. People will buy something if it solves one of their problems. If you can answer real questions and solve problems on your blog, you will be golden.
Well said Brian!
Not to become distracted but that just happened to me recently. On a whim I wanted to pick up some office supplies and was ready to turn into the store but then it hit me – I might as well just use the digital tools that I already have.
In relation to go after the underlying themes, there was a huge disconnect as I drew upon my logical side. I know it’s a boring topic but I think that even office supply businesses can still use emotional response in their marketing; maybe I would have made the purchase but alas, it didn’t happen. Time for them to step up their game heh.
true …new comers and beginners are usually a better market.i like you ,would rather dig for information for hours..i guess almost everyone is a nerd now a days
I guess it shows that niche marketing is quite powerful overall because although I personally wouldn’t buy many infoproducts, I do see myself going after other things like themes and software now. Not so much that I couldn’t create a theme myself or do the same thing the software does but my time is very precious; I’m just very picky on what I use it for hehe.
You have to really drill down and find those people that truly need the information and not just something to read in their free time, ya know?
Couldn’t be more true. People have to want something and then you have to give it to them. Not create something in hopes of people wanting it.
What I call living, or in the blogging world, looking at things backwards and hoping for the best with little to no results.
Agreed, just because we think we have the best product or idea in the world (which it quite possibly be); if people don’t want it, it won’t move.
That’s not to say in a few years it won’t become popular but you have to work in the now to get results today.
Another great article Murray. Good solid advice for anyone trying to make money online.