Startup Sunday
It's one of the great unanswered questions of our time: how to make money blogging.
In search of enlightenment, I turned to a man who seems to have figured one version of the answer, Ramit Sethi, founder of iwillteachyoutoberich.com and author of the New York Times bestselling book by the same name.
He boasts an email list of over 75,000 people, and every month, over 100,000 unique visitors come to his site for help on personal finance and entrepreneurship, according to Compete.com. In under six years, Sethi took an idea that began over college cafeteria tables, and built it into a multichannel information business, complete with blog, Web site, book, courses and e-books.
Find Your Voice and Your Audience
To Sethi, making money blogging begins with having a unique perspective. Plenty of personal finance experts tell people to stop buying coffee at work and splurging on designer clothes. But Sethi doesn't want to give up those luxuries; instead, he breaks down the lavish goal into individual steps. For instance, instead of telling people to have a simple wedding in their backyard to cut costs -- when the average U.S. wedding costs $28,000 -- he calculated how much you'd need to save each month to afford that dream wedding, depending on your starting age.
Next, understand your audience. Not everyone is going to like Sethi's approach to personal finance. That's okay with him -- and in fact, he doesn't want to reach people who are extreme misers. "I tell people who are interested in saving money on everything to go away. They're not going to get value from my site," he said in an interview. "If you want to be successful with growing an audience, you have to know who you're focusing on just as much as who you're not focusing on. That's critical."
Finally, you should understand social media, email marketing and the latest online technology -- but don't go overboard. "A lot of times people want to know the latest and greatest trick. Should I use Facebook pages, Twitter, fan pages?" Sethi said. "That stuff is important, maybe when you have a million visitors a month, but for any beginner, at least 75 to 80 percent of success is you writing really great stuff and then telling the right people about it."
Understand Media Outreach and Self-Promotion
That brings us to the next key factor in Sethi's success. You're not going to make money blogging if you write fabulous material but nobody reads it. You have to get it out there. When Sethi was just starting out, fresh out of graduate school, he spent about half his time on media outreach and self-promotion. That's 50 percent of his time pitching reporters, sending emails to other bloggers who might be interested in a new post, inviting influential people to lunch and similar networking.
Remember that wedding post? He promoted it to wedding bloggers and Web sites and reached an entirely new audience than the personal finance junkies who had come to know his site. That single blog post attracted 241 comments before he closed it to new comments.
But media outreach isn't just about self-promotion, Sethi said. Sure, you want to pitch journalists story ideas that would feature you or use you as an expert. But you also want to serve them in other ways -- by giving them other story ideas you run across, even when there's no direct benefit to you. Indeed, one of the first times I spoke with Sethi -- years ago -- he ended our interview with an invitation to reach out if I ever were in a bind for a source, because he knows a lot of people. Any reporter who's had to come up with a quote on deadline appreciates that kind of offer!
Outsource Tasks, Whether for Cash or for Free
To make money blogging, you have to recognize the tasks you excel at (such as writing) and those you should outsource. About three years after he started iwillteachyoutoberich.com, Sethi had enough traffic that he decided to launch advertising on the site. But since he knew nothing about ad optimization, he found someone for that task. He also hired a researcher when writing his book and for some posts on the site.
Indeed, he has found possibly the best source of outsourcing labor: volunteers. "There were hundreds of people who wanted to work for me for free. That was great and I took them up on it," Sethi said. "Virtually everyone who has worked for me for free, I have sent then thousands of dollars of business later." One person started working for Sethi for free and last month he made over $12,000 from the site, Sethi said.
To other writers who want to make money blogging, Sethi recommends sticking to your goals even in the face of opposition or criticism. In 2007, he launched his first paid product, an e-book, for $4.95 because he was afraid of charging too much. The most recent course sold out in one hour, even priced at $3,000 per head.
"Most entrepreneurs like me, we don't like to not be liked," he said, but you can't let that rule you. "Earning more money is not bad; building a better relationship with your audience is not bad; but as you grow some of the people who came with you will not be comfortable, and that's okay. You have to look at a larger goal of serving the people you want to serve."
You can download my entire interview with Ramit Sethi: Download Ramit-Sethi-Interview-7-13-10
Public domain photo by BlatantNews.com via Flickr
Headshot courtesy of Ramit Sethi
Thanks, Katherine. I found this article very interesting and instructive. I have not had a chance to listen to the interview yet, but look forward to doing so.
Posted by: Paul Morin | Sunday, August 01, 2010 at 11:59 PM
its about having a presence being seen everywhere
my site has all kinds of helpful content to help you get more followers traffic or whatever you need to get ahead
http://www.scrillawill.blogspot.com
Posted by: Scrillawill | Monday, August 02, 2010 at 12:01 AM