How to buy blog – intro

How to assess the value of a blog part 1

How to assess the value of a blog part 2

Finalizing the transaction and integrating the community

But these articles were written back in 2010 and we are now in 2012. It’s kind of funny as not even 18 months have passed between this series and today’s post but we are already evolving in a whole different world. You don’t believe me? Here’s a few difference between 2010 and 2012:

-          I’m not the only player in the blog acquisition field (there are several other bloggers doing it now)

-          Well known blogs have been sold for over $1M (GRS, Bargaineering, Simple Dollar, etc)

-          There are advertising brokerage services offered (contact me if you want to learn more about that)

-          We even have a conference just for financial bloggers! (Fincon12 coming in… I already have my ticket!)

As you can see, in a span of less than 2 years, the financial blogosphere has completely changed. In fact, I’m not even sure we say “blogosphere” anymore . I’m already a dinosaur in my own field! Lol!

What’s up with blog valuation?

Amongst all these changes, the thing that I am most interested about is seeing how blog valuation models have evolved. It’s very interesting as you have the story that is accessible that you can read about and the story that happens behind the scenes. Players behind the scenes want to keep their things hush hush and this is why we have 2 stories to tell. I can’t blame them, I sign a confidentiality clause for each site I buy and sell too! So, I can’t tell you how much I paid or sold my sites for, but I can tell you that the blog valuation model has evolved over the past 2 years. This is great news for me as it is an obvious sign that there is a market emerging and assessing a blog will become easier over time as we will get more information.

It’s also bad news for me since I’ll have to pay more for my next purchases! But that’s okay… since I the day I will want to sell, I’ll be able to get a lot of money for my network .

We are not talking about 12-18 months anymore

Some people claim while standing on the top of the mountain that a blog is worthless, it is attached to the author and that paying more than 18 months (or 24 months in certain cases) is being foolish. I even read in a forum that a guy would only pay 5K for a site generating 12K in income that came from private advertising… I guess this is a buyer’s speech and he doesn’t want to pay a penny.

But let’s put the situation the other way around: what if you are the seller? I you have a blog raking $1,000 a month, why in the hell would you sell it for 6 months, 12 months or even 18 months worth of income? Think about it: you have been making a steady $1,000 for the past 12 months or more but you are tired of blogging on a daily basis. At this point you have 2 options:

a)      Sell your blog

b)      Slow down your posting schedule and let the blog die slowly (which can take more than a year).

If you look at the latest option; I can tell you that if you drop your post to once a week or even twice a month you will be able to make almost as much for a very long time. The only difference is that you won’t see anymore growth and your blog will eventually be fed by Google and not by commenters. So if you can’t get more than 2 years of income, why would sell?

Because private ads are risky

Most bloggers will tell you that private ad income should not be as good as Adsense or affiliate income. I would have agreed 12 months ago but now, it’s a totally different ball game. Why? Because of the Panda updates. We have seen the power of Google last year when they decided to modify their rankings. What happen if you lose your high ranking keywords in Google? Both your Adsense and affiliate stats will go down the toilet. In reality, you will make 10 times more with search engine visitors than with your loyal readers when it comes down to Adsense and depending on the type of affiliates, your chances of making more money from SE visitors is pretty good too! I’ve seen bloggers lose more than 50% of their income in a single month after the Panda update. Do you really think this is not risky? This is why I’m giving almost the same value to private advertisers than other sources of income.

What is risky about your blog

When I look at a blog I want to buy, I’ll tell you what I find risky:

a)      Concentration in sources of income (per type)

b)      Concentration of traffic sources (Search engine, references or direct hits)

c)       Concentration of a few high ranking keywords (I’ve seen sites getting 90% of their traffic with only 5 keywords!)

Therefore, what is really risky about your blog is when you are too concentrated! It is kind of ironic that the best way to rank in search engines is to find a specific niche (such as Dividends and The Dividend Guy Blog for example) and master it. But then, you may become “too concentrated” in a few keywords or sources of income/traffic. This is why you need to find your niche and cover each aspect of it to make sure that you still get different sources of income, traffic and multiple high ranking keywords.

Once you reach this level, then you can ask for more than 24 months!

Oh shoot! I’ve said it! YOU CAN GET MORE THAN 24 MONTHS OF REVENUE FOR YOUR BLOG!

Yup… this is what the industry wants to keep hush hush . To be completely honest, I’m now only looking at sites with over 10,000 visitors/month. For smaller sites, the 18-24 month rule probably still applies for a while as there is too much volatility associated with lesser traffic. However, when you look to buy bigger sites, you can see them more like a long term investments. These sites usually have over 2 years of history and demonstrate great diversification in terms of topics, traffic, income sources and high ranking keywords.

For these sites, we are still using the same valuation model as in my previous series (start with How to buy blog – intro) but we will use a multiplier of 2 years + premiums to assess the value of a site. Depending on the site and the situation (blogs that sell at an auction gets more), our own business model allow us to pay up to 4 years the income. WAIT!!!! Don’t start thinking your site worth that much yet! I currently have a steady network generating over 100K per year and I don’t even value my blog at 4 years the income. I’m just saying that if your blog meets the following points, you should be able to get about 3 years worth of your income:

-          High RSS readers (over 2,000)

-          High traffic (over 20,000)

-          Traffic diversification (not more than 60% in a single source)

-          Revenue diversification (not more than 60% from a single source)

-          Mailing list

-          2 Years + of history (or more than 500 articles)

-          Steady income proof (for over a year)

-          Growing traffic over the past 2 years

The more you get closer (or surpass) these criteria, the more your blog will be seen as a business and not as a simple page with financial babbles on it. And the more I’ll be interested to buy it . But I can guarantee you I will start the negotiation with 2 years + premiums and not 4 years worth of income lol!

image credit

Back in 2008, we started this company because we had a lot of fun running our blogs and we wanted to take a bigger shot at making money online. The creation of our company was more to set the base of a strong partnership and not with the goal of make a killing online.

In 2009, we saw some of our sites picking up and we thought that buying blogs would accelerate our growth. This is when I remortgaged my house to invest more money into this venture. We bought our first blog and started to significantly grow our empire without having a serious plan.

In 2010, we realized a record year with $124K in gross income. While our core sites were making money on a steady basis, about half of our earnings were coming from brokered deals and the sale of a few or our sites. It was during this year that we started to have an annual meeting to setup our objectives. At the end of the year, we hired a second VA and we were ready to crush 2011.

In 2011, we were pretty serious about our projects during our annual meeting. While we went through some real successes (such as our Dividend investing eBook with more than 16,024 downloads to date and the fact that we averaged over 10K/month for the last 4 months of the year), we also experienced some failures (do I even have to talk about my Rat Race eBook??). The fact that we have 2 VA’s working for us and a team of writers relieved us from spending too much time working on the company. We were able to achieve a huge year with less than 10 hours of work per week each. This was awesome!

In 2012, this will be a pass or fail year

Why is it going to be such a critical year for us? This is when we will know if we have the potential of running a real company or keep it as just an awesome sideline.

Why so serious?

Because we have been investing some serious money in the past 12 months and continue to do so in 2012.

Because we are growing this company without taking real income and we wish to eventually reap benefits from it.

Because we are making a lot of money from our regular day jobs so we need this company to produce over 300K/year to think of quitting our jobs.

Because we think, we act and we have the structure of a business for 2012. So it will be crucial to see if it will work as we think it will!

1^st Goal: Launch my Dividend Growth eBook by April and sell 300+ copies

It’s funny how I set a goal to sell 100 copies of my first eBook and I failed yet now I’m aiming for more than 300 copies, right? But this is because I’ve learned from my experience. I still believe the book I’ve wrote last year is great but there are some obvious flaws in its marketing:

- The book is not big enough (shy of 100 pages)

- The book was offered as an electronic version only

- The book range is too wide (general personal finance), there is too much competition

- I didn’t test my market before launching (I was convinced that people wanted to know how I got from 30K to 100K/year in 6 years… but I guess it’s not catchy enough).

- The book launch was messy (poor sales pages, wrong links in the newsletter, wrong pricing)

Since I’ve learned from these mistakes and I’m going in the right direction:

- With a very specific product (it won’t be about dividend investing, it will be about Canadian Dividend Investing and US Dividend Investing (2 books!))

- I’ve tested the market (I have over 16,024 downloads in 6 months with my first free eBook on the same topic!)

- The book will be bigger and sell for less

- I want to offer both electronic and hard cover copies

- My investing newsletter is 3 times bigger than my TFB mailing list (we have over 4,000 subscribers throughout our investing mailing list).

2^nd Goal: Reach over $15,000/month in online income by the end of the year

As our past 4 months were showing a steady income over 10K/month, I want to increase our average month by 50% and reach 15K/month for at least 3 consecutive months in 2012. This is a very tough objective that can be done through:

- Increasing our traffic and reaching an average of 3,5K/month with Adsense (currently at 2,3K)

- Growing our niche websites and make 2K/month (currently, we make about $500/month with them)

- Keeping our private advertising income at 6K/month (this is about an average month for us with peaks at 8K)

- Growing our advertising management service to income of 2K/month (we are currently making about $600-$1000 per month with it)

- Growing our affiliate sales to a steady 2K/month (this varies greatly from month to month right now)

- Selling our Dividend Growth eBook (hopefully make over 3K in sales for 2012)

- Buying 1 or 2 websites and generate 1K/month from them (we are currently hunting, so let us know if you want to sell yours!)

If we achieve this long list of tasks, we should be making over 15K/month on a steady basis. Let’s hope it’s feasible!

3^rd Goal: Successfully launch a new site of major importance

We currently have 5 pillar sites in our business:

The Financial Blogger

The Dividend Guy Blog

Intelligent Speculator

Experiments in Finance

Green Panda Treehouse

While we have several other good sites that contributes to our income such as

Do Not Wait

What is Dividend

Canadian Dividend Stock

Home Security System Canada (believe it or not!)

We are looking to build another pillar site in 2012. We currently have 3 projects in the creation process and my goal in 2012 is to see 1 of those sites to become a pillar site. What do I mean by pillar site? I mean a site that:

Gets over 5,000 visits per month (ideally 10K+)

Makes over $500/month by itself (ideally 1K+)

Is a reference in its niche

In order to achieve this goal, we have stayed in our main niche (finance!) but we worked on projects that are way different than blogs or static niche sites. We have a launch date at the end of Q1, Q2 and Q3 for the 3 projects. As both my partner and I are expecting children in 2012, this will be a very busy year! This is why we want to launch 1 project per quarter instead of going crazy and launch all of them with a messy strategy!

Keep our expenses at the same level

Another point, while not being a real goal, will be to achieve our goals without exceeding a 6K/month spending structure. For the past 4 months, our monthly expenses have dropped down to roughly 4K/month since one of our VAs is on maternity leave. While spending has never been an issue for us (we believe in investing in our business), we have reached a point where it would be nice to control our cost while providing additional growth.

So this is why I say that 2012 is a pass or fail year as we will see if we are able create more value than ever, now that we have a respectable size. From what I see, most bloggers get to an income plateau where it’s pretty hard to reach another level. By the creation of new sites, 2 eBooks and more, we will see if we can manage a product launch or if we are just good at managing blogs and making money out of it. In the worst case scenario, we will have an awesome sideline and in the best case scenario, we will unleash a beast creating hundreds of thousands of dollar a year!

David Bakke runs an online reselling business out of his home in Atlanta and contributes his thoughts and analysis on small business, entrepreneurship, and money management on Money Crashers.

I’m currently in the process of transitioning out of my day job and into full-time self-employment. I have always wanted to own a small business, and through hard work, my venture now generates enough income to replace my full-time job.

There are many advantages to self-employment, but this endeavor also presents a whole new set of challenges. To make the transition as smooth as possible, carefully weigh the pros and cons of self-employment before you quit your full-time job.

Pros & Cons of Self-Employment

Advantages

1. You Can Set Your Own Schedule
Once you take the leap, you can say goodbye to the nine-to-five grind. You can work the hours you want and follow your own schedule. Having such a flexible schedule particularly benefits Internet-based small businesses, as you can get much accomplished during non-traditional working hours.

2. You Have More Time to Spend With Family
This was the top reason why I wanted to become self-employed. While working a full-time job, I feel as though my son is growing up without me. As a divorced father, the time I get to spend with my son is precious, and working 40-plus hours a week, Monday through Friday, severely limits my quality time with my son. As I transition into full-time self-employment, I plan to spend as much time as possible with my son.

3. You’re the Boss
As a small business owner, you decide how to run your company. You report to no one, and have complete control of your company’s direction, success, and growth. With a little confidence, an organized business plan, and a willingness to take risks, your business can thrive under your leadership.

4. Income Potential Is Unlimited
Spending a lifetime climbing the corporate ladder chasing the almighty dollar works for many people, but this limits the amount of income you can earn.

By running your own small business, you have unlimited opportunities to generate income. Sure, you will have to work extremely hard in the beginning and your business may grow slowly, but if you stick to it and remain passionate about your endeavor, good things will happen. Once you have gained experience and established your business, the growth of your venture can be exponential.

5. You Have More Freedom and Flexibility
Without a boss to answer to, you have increased freedom and flexibility with your work schedule. If you are self-employed, you do not have to request time off for a doctor’s appointment or for your children’s events. Instead, you simply rearrange your schedule. If you create a work schedule for yourself and stay on top of all engagements, you can easily balance your professional and personal responsibilities.

Disadvantages

1. Personal Health Can Be Difficult to Maintain
You don’t want to ignore your personal health when you start your small business. I currently get plenty of exercise at my job just doing my day-to-day activities. However, once I make the transition into self-employment, I know that I will need to create and maintain a scheduled exercise regimen to stay physically fit. This will involve a time commitment, which I have to factor into my new work schedule.

2. Time Management Is Challenging
If you thought managing your time while juggling a full-time day job and running a side business was tough, wait until you become self-employed.

First, you must figure out how to schedule vacations for yourself without letting your business suffer. This is especially challenging if you don’t have a business partner.

Next, you will quickly learn that you cannot work seven days a week for a long period of time. This is counter-intuitive to the benefits of self-employment, so you’ll need to manage your time in a way that allows for days off. In the beginning, you may have to work long hours and you may have to work on the weekends. But remember, this is only temporary. Once your business gets off the ground you can begin taking time off.

3. No Steady Paycheck
Along with saying goodbye to the daily nine-to-five grind, you can also forget about that steady paycheck. You may experience inconsistent revenue streams, especially when you first become self-employed.

Have a backup plan in place for the instances when you don’t generate enough income. Save money wherever you can, and if you have to temporarily suspend retirement savings or other investment contributions, commit to getting back on track within a scheduled time frame.

4. Responsibilities Greatly Increase
Being your own boss is a benefit of becoming self-employed, but it also comes with certain risks. You will be personally and financially responsible for all decisions made, and one wrong move could cost you your business.

However, most small business owners have an entrepreneurial spirit and a willingness to take risks. With hard work and a surplus of self-confidence, you can overcome the challenges of being the boss.

5. There Are No Health or Investment Benefits
I had a number of concerns about health insurance for my son and myself, as well as concerns about maintaining retirement and college savings investments when I began to consider leaving my job.

I found plenty of health insurance options for the self-employed, but it took careful research to find the best coverage plan. Many options also exist for retirement savings plans, but this requires additional financial oversight to ensure that you adequately prepare for an enjoyable post-work life.

6. You Must Cut Personal Expenses
Once you make the transition to full-time self-employment, saving money will help you achieve your business goals. This involves cutting back on personal spending and finding new ways to save money every day.

Once you have established your business and you achieve more consistent revenue streams, you can begin increasing your personal expenditures. But plan to have some frugal times when you first become self-employed.

Final Thoughts

If you have a passion for it, I highly recommend starting your own small business in the hopes of someday walking away from your day job. There is an entrepreneur inside all of us – it is only a matter of uncovering one of your talents and deducing how you can turn it into a money-making opportunity. The benefits of full-time small business ownership far outweigh the drawbacks, and it can lead to a much more rewarding life for you and your family.

What are your thoughts on walking away from your day job? Do you have any tips for starting your own business and adapting to the new lifestyle?

While I crushed my 2011 financial goals, I can’t say that I have crushed all of my blogging goals! The sad part is I don’t know how to feel about 2011 when I think of my business:

-          I attended the FINCON11 and made tons of friends (while consolidating existing relationships)

-          I increased my monthly income to an average of $9K/month

-          I have built a solid team of VAs and writers

-          I achieved several projects this year and have more in the pipeline for 2012

So if I stop right here; I’ve done an amazing job! Unfortunately, I:

-          Sucked so much while launching my own product

-          Sucked at growing my newsletter to where I wanted it

-          Sucked at the creation of high quality niche websites (the first ones anyways!)

-          Sucked at increasing my affiliate income

In 2011, I had 5 goals. 2 of them that sucked:

Create my first product (ebook) and sell 100 copies

You know about my eBook The Rat Race; One Year From Now, Will You Still Be A Rat?. While I worked a lot, I failed miserably at selling 100 copies (read the full story here). This is my biggest failure in the past 3 years. To be honest, I would have preferred being punched in the face!

Create 10 niche websites and make a minimum of $100 per month with each of them

We experienced several challenges in the creation process at 2 levels:

a)      Finding profitable niches with a reasonable amount of traffic (plus ranking for those keywords).

b)      Finding enough time and resources to create these niche sites.

These challenges won’t be different in 2012 but at least we know we won’t be growing at the pace we thought we could. We also know what to expect in terms of cost if we want to deploy larger niche sites (such as Canadian Dividend Stock that will have over 200 pages of content once finished).

The good news is that 7 niche sites are created:

Secondhand Saddles

Home Security System Canada

Covered Call ETFs

Smart Financial Analyst

Taxes for Expats

What is Dividend

Canadian Dividend Stock

This is pretty good news although they are not at the level we wanted them to be, they are live and their history is being established in Google. Since most of the visits have to come from search engines, this is pretty good news. It leaves us more time to focus on promotion and link building in 2012.

The second good news is that some of them are making some decent money already. But I’m far from 10 sites earning $100/month each. So far this year, I’m closer to earning an average of $200/month for all my sites. At least, this is true passive income as I have never looked back at any of my sites since they were “launched”. We will obviously tweak them in 2012 in order to earn a lot more money from them .

For 2012, we have a different type of website that will be developed. It will be mid-way between a blog and a niche site. Basically, it will look like a niche site but with a lot more info and these sites will be updated on a weekly basis. We currently have 2 sites under construction and a third one that is scheduled for mid 2012 (wow… I do sound like I run a company now ;-0 lol!).

At least, I don’t suck all the time

My 3 other goals for 2011 were:

- Get over 250,000 visits per month with my blog network

- Write a free eBook and generate 500 downloads

- Switch The Financial Blogger’s direction to PF & Online income blog

After being hit by the Panda in April, I thought that my first goal would go down the toilet. However, I’ve worked very hard during the summer to bring the number of visits back up and after the recent Panda update II in October, I’m back to 247,000 visitors last month. So I can say “mission accomplished!”.

The free eBook, Dividend Investing, was my biggest success in 2011. I reached 15,180 downloads as of December 14^th and made over $2,000 directly or indirectly from it. It has also helped me build a 1727 member newsletter and it keeps increasing by 10 to 20 a day! So if I have one piece of advice for all of you: start with a free eBook and offer it to your newsletter subscribers!

My third goal was to switch TFB’s direction without losing much traction. I am well aware that a lot of readers were following me for my controversial view of personal finance and didn’t care too much about my online company and how to become an entrepreneur. On the other hand, I was getting more and more questions & email regarding this side of the blog. This is why I have decided to make a clear switch this year. If you look at my RSS feed, it’s bigger than the beginning of the year! So while I have lost a few readers while providing more insight on making money online, I have gained more new readers in the end.

A change in time management – introducing the « Q Priority System »

This is a big change in our way of working. We have decided to establish Quarterly objectives while we were on the plane back from the Fincon11 (this conference was definitely a huge moment for our company!).

We used to have several project scheduled for the year (they are determined at our annual meeting) but we didn’t have any priorities among them or a timetable. So now, we have gathered all these projects on a list and we each pick 2 to 3 per quarter. This means that we leave all our other projects on the table and don’t even think about them. We concentrate on our quarterly objectives to make sure we have a great focus on a few value added activities. For example, my objectives for Q4 were:

a-      Increase my newsletter subscribers by 300 (so 100 per month) for both The Financial Blogger and The Dividend Guy Blog.

b-      Focus on writing my 2^nd dividend investing eBook (I have over 70 pages written so far)

c-       Launch Canadian Dividend Stock and add new sections each week

This has truly improved our productivity as things are getting done in a timely manner. We already have our objectives for Q1 and have a pretty good idea of what will happen in Q2 as well. I’ll be gathering my thoughts in the weeks to come and share them with you with my 2012 financial and blogging goals during the Holidays .

Cheers,

Oh man.

I’m upset.

I’m sooooo upset!

Last week was somewhat of a disaster for my company. Not a real disaster but it’s rare that things go wrong and this time, several things went sideways.

First things first, we had a major server problem, so you might end-up getting my “Epic Shiz of the Week” from November 25^th as my latest post on the homepage for a good 2 weeks. Which also means that you have missed several great posts such as my record online monthly income, my plan to make 10k/month from my online company and 6 tips for financial advisors. The worst part is that I was stuck in an annual meeting for 2 days so I was completely useless and unable to solve this problem, thx to my partner who handled everything ;-D

And… we have our iPad 2 winner from our TFB 5^th Anniversary giveaway: Dick! Thx Dick, the email has been sent to you!

Then, what annoyed me the most was losing a deal. I lost a great auction on Flippa (thx to Sustainable Personal Finance for sending me the auction link in the first place!).

The Auction on Flippa

The good thing about Flippa is that it’s public, so I can comment on the site auction as I wish . The site for sale was 20smoney.com (you can read the full listing here).

I was pretty excited about this site for sale as it had several components that I research before buying a blog:

- High PR (PR5)

- High volume of search engine visitors (about 60-70% of its traffic)

- Cool topics (make money online, investments and money for the 20s crowd)

- A lot of room for improvement (nah, I won’t share these secrets today, that would take an entire book!)

- A blog that is slowly dying (the guy was posting about once or twice a month for a while)

- Poor marketing on the auction (which will discourage buyers from bidding ;-D ).

What Happened

The cool thing about Flippa, from a buyer’s perspective, is that you can follow the auction you want via email once you put it on your “watch list” or once you have made a qualified bid. So last Thursday, when the auction was supposed to end in 5 days, I got an email saying that the sale had closed for $14K!?!  What the…. ????

So here’s what happened; the guy got an offer that he liked (probably through a PM) and a few minutes after the bid went public, the offer was accepted and the auction was closed. There wasn’t any “buy it now” on this auction at anytime. Therefore, the guy simply closed the auction before knowing if anybody would pay more for his site.

The site valuation

If you have been following my series on how to buy a blog, you will get a pretty good idea of how much this site could be worth on the market. The site was averaging between $800 to $1,000 (most likely to make $1,000 per month) for the past 12 months. The traffic wasn’t hit by the Panda updates and the PR was impressive for a financial blog (most sites have a PR 3 or PR 4). The only downside is that the biggest chunk of income was coming from private advertisers which is always debatable when you consider the value of the blog.

However, if you want to follow the industry’s standards; you would be tempted to value this blog anywhere between $14,400 and $24,000. Why? Because you should consider 18 to 24 months for such type of blog and 18 * $800 is the $14,4K while 24 * $1,000 is the $24K. In any case, selling at 14,4K was probably the lowest valuation possible for this site. Up to $24K, I would have been comfortable bidding on this site. With a solid plan, I would have been able to generate a net profit of minimum $400 per month, which corresponds to a 20% net return on my investment with no time involved (as I would be hiring someone to manage the blog from A to Z).

Unfortunately, the guy accepted the offer way too fast, I lost the deal and he potentially lost 10K. That’s a very sad story! But at least, you can learn a few things from this story. So if you are considering selling your site on Flippa, here are a few tips:

#1 Never End The Auction Before The Closing Time

I’ve seen several sites have their bids increasing dramatically in the last few hours of the bidding process. One thing you might not know is that when you are about to reach the auction time limit and you make a bid 5 minutes before it ends, the auction extends for an additional 4 hours to let other potential bidders respond. So if you close the auction before the end, you are almost sure to leave money on the table. On the other hand, there is no advantage im closing the auction early; once a bid is accepted, it stays valid until the end of the auction.

#2 Share as Many Details as Possible

When you put your site for sale, it’s not the time to be shy about it. It’s the time to give all your info away to make sure that you motivate a maximum number of buyers. For example, don’t be shy to share 12 months of Google Analytics stats. 1 or 2 months is not enough in my opinion.

The same thing applies when we talk about income. Show as much proof as possible and prepare documents for the buyers (like link expiration and complete advertising stats and contacts). Mention that you have these documents ready once the site is sold. When you can provide a monthly average of each source of income, you’ll have better chances in attracting advanced buyers (who have the most cash by the way ).

#3 Describe Expenses

Most people forget to disclose how much it costs to run the site. If you have no costs and run everything by yourself, just share this info. But if you are paying for proms or writers, it is also important to mention it during the auction.

#4 Be specific

When you post info, be specific. We are in a numbers game and we need clear answer. If buyers have to ask 10 questions because there is not enough info on the listing, it will feel like you have something to hide. And nobody wants to buy from someone who’s hiding things, right?

#5 Explain your Reserve or Buying Price

Before you put the site for sale, you need to establish a minimum price where you want to let it go. You can use this number as a basis for negotiation and explain your own valuation of the site. When I make a private offer on a site, I usually outline the strengths and weaknesses I’ve found in order to explain my valuation model. When you sell, you should explain where the value of your site is and how much it worth.

#6 Things to Avoid Saying

Don’t say your site has potential… blah blah blah! If you have so much potential, how come you haven’t developed it? This is like saying; I could make a fortune from my site but would rather see someone else do it for me. It’s up to the buyer to see potential or not, but it doesn’t bring anything on the table when it comes from the seller!

If you don’t have a great reason for selling your site, forget about the “I have more important ventures to take care of”. We know it’s not true most of the time. While you should obviously avoid saying that you are bored to death and can’t keep up with blogging anymore, you can simply mention that it is time for you to cash in your efforts.

#7 Never Close The Auction Before It Ends

Oh yeah… wait… that was the #1 tip, right? Well if you remember the first thing and the last thing from this article, you will remember the most important thing: don’t end the auction before it closes! Oh well, now, I’ve got to hunt for another site to buy, anyone interested in selling?

Yesterday, I published my monthly income report showing a 3^rd consecutive month over 10K from my online business. So far, my monthly average online income has been reported as $9,372 per month compared to $6,237 in 2010 for the same period (after I take off some non-recurring income). If I take my analysis even further, you will notice that my income has been growing pretty fast according to the following chart:

Over the years, we have been diversifying our business and decided to spend in order to grow. Some people put more time and energy into their business, yet this is something we can’t afford to do right now. This is why we are spending so much! On the other hand, our cost structure is now pretty stable while our current business structure can now support growth. I figure I can increase my monthly income up to $15K-$20K per month before I have to spend more money than I do right now.

Looking ahead to 2012, I know that my income progression should not be as phenomenal as the previous years (I have multiplied my monthly income by 10 since I started this business). However, I need a solid plan to crack the $10,000 bar each month. Here’s are my thoughts so far:

Diversification = $500

I started to look for diversification the very same day I founded this company with my friend. While several bloggers concentrate their energy on one site, I’ve decided to take a different approach and buy multiple blogs.

This year, I also started my journey into niche site building. This is nothing very original but it is a true way to diversify my income. With my most recent site; Canadian Dividend Stock, I went one step further by creating a mailing list 100% dedicated to the Canadian stock market. After a month, we have 60 subscribers and an opening rate (% of readers opening your newsletter) over 100% (e.g. people open it more than once). I’ll be using the newsletter to update my readers on new developments (since the site is continuously adding content at the moment) and eventually monetize it through a product (which will be discussed later on in this post).

I expect my niche site business to bring a steady $500 per month by the end of 2012. This year: I show a monthly income average of $220 from my niche sites. I expect to more than double this number due to a better understanding of the niche site business.

Expansion = $1000

We are currently exploring the idea of buying another site. We have nothing on the radar yet but we are getting ready. We need to establish our priorities and decide exactly what we are looking for as a web property. The most important factor in our decision will be the number of visitors from search engines. I’ll be looking for a minimum of 10,000 visits per month for my next purchase. Below this range, I assume that I can create a similar site by my own means (e.g. paying for content, design and promotion).

I’m expecting to increase our monthly income by $1,000 with a new acquisition. We usually have the ability to generate over $1,000 per site we buy so it should not be any different for a new acquisition.

Creation = $1000

Besides blogs and niche websites, we are currently working on 3 other sites that will be totally different from our current business. While they will still be related to finance, we are developing 3 new approaches for different needs. I can’t tell you more about it right now but what I can say is that each project has the potential of generating in excess of $1,000 per month each.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t expect to reach this level in 2012 (it is also very important to set realistic goals). However, with our current network, I’m pretty convinced that the 3 projects together will generate a monthly income of $1,000 by the end of 2012.

Products = $500

After I failed to successfully launch my first book, I’ve gone back to my laptop to work on something that has brought me so much success: Dividend Investing! To date, this book has a total of 14,792 downloads and over $2,000 in income (while the book was free). I can now say that I’m actually making money from this book after factoring the time spent writing it. It has also become a tremendous tool to gain newsletter subscribers on The Dividend Guy Blog.

I am now halfway through my second book about dividend investing. This one will be huge (I already have over 70 pages of unedited word document). I expect this book to generate roughly $6,000 in 2012 (so $500/month).  I have a whole marketing strategy with upselling later on the same year (linked to my other projects) so the book will only be a door to more profit in my evil plan… mwhahaha!

Broker deals = $1000

My Ad management service has shown some serious success over the very first few months. I hope this will continue next year so I can count on an additional $1,000 per month. The great thing with such business is that the more deals you do, the more visibility you have and the more you have the chance to close even more deals!

Adsense = + $500

It has been a love/hate relationship with Adsense this year. After starting the year with record months (over $3,000), we have dropped down to $1,500. November’s payout will be roughly $2,300. I expect 2012 to be more stable as we went through 2 Panda updates this year .

This is how I’ll be adding $4,500/month to ensure I’ll be making 10K on a steady basis

I assume that my core business should generate roughly $8K to $10K per month. By making all these modifications, I should not only be able to maintain my income over $10K but I may be able to aim for another 50% increase and reach $15,000/month by the end of the year.

What do you think? Is there anything missing in my plan?

And this is what I want to talk about today.

There is a reason why he failed with his eBook launch and I made the very same mistake with my own eBook 2 months ago.

This is funny (bizarre) as I was discussing the very same topic with my mother who is about to launch her business too. Hey Mom! (she reads my blog ). We debated this point for a good half hour and yet didn’t come to an agreement. She didn’t agree as you probably won’t either. So I’m either a lunatic or cynic .

I guess that you are really wondering what I’m talking about right now. So what did Martin and I do wrong with our eBooks?

We are passionate (check)

We are motivated (check)

We know what we are talking about (check)

We have an audience and connections with other bloggers (check)

We have a website to launch our product + mailing lists (check)

We researched before launching our product (check)

We thought about it for several hours, wrote a launch plan and setup affiliates (check)

We are offering a great product (check)

At first glance, we have everything on our side to become successful writers. EVERYTHING is checked to become the next online mogul…

So What the F&*/ Went Wrong????

“Vision without execution is hallucination” – Thomas Edison

I know where I failed and when I look at Martin’s product, I know he made the same mistake. I took several hours crafting a great product, several hours reading about how to set it up and more to launch the product. I had a great vision…

But my execution SUCKED!!!

I know all these concepts, I can teach numerous techniques but I am just as lazy as anybody else when it comes down to do it. I just suck! I suck at it because it wasn’t my idea, my technique. Since launching a product is not naturally encoded in my veins (as being overly productive is definitely part of my DNA code), I had to read and assimilate theory before doing it. So I know everything that needs to be known but I’m just too f*%&ing lazy to do it properly.

Instead I dreamed about the day that I opened my laptop and generated 200 sales in the last hour. I would rather dream of the result of my calculations and think of all the money I’ll make if I only convert 3% of my readers.  I dreamed about the life I will have once I can quit my job and become rich by working 4 hours a day on my online company. I would rather dream that I traveled the world with my family and laptop in my backpack while others are creeping around in their 9 to 5 job. I dreamed about all of this with a nice bottle of wine instead of getting back down to basics, putting my dreams in the garbage can and hustling.

You can’t go anywhere without a vision, but if you don’t have a clear and defined process for your execution, you will suck and so did I!

So I would rather buy a dream

The problem is deeper than having people selling the dream and you ending-up wasting money on them. And I’m not going to defend these “Pro-bloggers” as some of them are great wizards of making money online while others are just as creepy as an old alcoholic car salesman. However, there is one thing so true about them; they are selling a dream because this is what you want to buy!

People are lazy.

You are lazy.

I am lazy.

How many times have you started a project and cut corners?

I do it all the time.

It’s too complicated. It’s too long. It is just too boring. This is why I just cut and to get to the final results right away. Because I’m more interested in dreaming than working.

So am I going to buy something that will ask me to work meticulously and be incredibly patient? Man, I would rather buy something that will have me live the good life. But I didn’t read the fine print: The 2 products are probably identical but sold differently. Both require crazy amounts of work before succeeding. And this is why you quit thinking you’ve been sold an impossible dream. Well this is what you wanted, dumbass! I know it because this is what I wanted too!

And some of you may think “that might be true for you Mike, but I know I’m hustling like a dog and I will succeed”.

Reality check: you ain’t working enough… you read it right: YOU AIN’T WORKING ENOUGH!

Or working the right way

Or both of them!

And then you are going to tell me that you are. And we can go on and on about it but I’ll tell you one thing that will shut down any argument you can bring to the table:

Reality check: If you are so good, working so hard and doing everything so right: WHERE IS THE MONEY?

Don’t tell me it’s coming.

Don’t tell me you’re close.

You are darn far away.

If you are not making it NOW, how can you have the guts that you will be making it one day??? Stop drinking your own Koolaid. It’s time to get back to work. The real one.

I’ve failed because I didn’t work properly and I didn’t work enough

I’m not making a living from my online company yet for the VERY SAME REASON

And this will be the case for most of us.

One Last Thing About This Incredible Dream of Living From Your Online Work

Last week, MD made it sound like living from your blog was mission impossible. That only a few gurus can do it and they do it because they tell you how to make money online. We all know that great question about what came first between the chicken and the egg. In my opinion, you should make a difference between your dream and reality. However, reality can become your dream.

If you have read my latest income report, you will notice that I had another month with over $11,000 in income. If I consider all my expenses look at the hours I work on my online business; I made $218/hour. I think this is definitely better than most jobs, right? The funniest part is that I didn’t make a penny from telling someone how to make money online! So the dream is achievable but you need to stop dreaming to make it happen!

Now, it’s not the time to jump up and yell that you will make it. Come on! You know you won’t! I know I won’t… unless I shut my mouth, start thinking and working seriously. I always tell my son that words don’t count… only one’s actions matter.

I bet you were at the FINCON11 or attended another great conference in your life. You might have taken a few notes and went back home smiling because you had a good time. You probably spent a lot of time thinking about the crazy things you will do and how great your life will be in a few months.

I’ll ask you the same question Martin did: what have you done since then? Don’t you think it’s time to take some real action?

 image credit

So here we go again for the 3^rd post of this series on how to create a media kit and sell to advertisers.

The first part was about knowing your site

The second part is about building your media kit

This part is about making money without working your ass off!

Who told you that you need to work to make money? Not me . But if you don’t want to work, you had better be smart! If you look at my blog income reports, I’ve made $44,606.34 in 9 months this year for an average of $4,956.26 per month from private advertising (trust me, this average is going up with September’s income report that will be published next week!). So I’m making a little bit more than half of my online income from private advertising while not working more than 10 hours per week on my company. Therefore, I can’t spend much time on dealing with advertisers and following-up with ad renewals (I need to spend some time to write during these 10 hours, right?).

Since managing our advertisers is a very “personal” part of our business (we are talking about giving access to our paypal and company bank accounts), I want to keep control of it. I know that some of you might be exhausted just at the thought of the time required to manage your ads.  This is why I want to share my deepest secrets on how to manage so many ads in so little time .

#1 Create Templates!

The first thing you need to do to save time is to build templates. The first one you need is to “answer email”. Each time I get an advertiser request, I copy/paste the very same answer:

“Hello NAME,

Thank you for your interest in advertising with us. We currently manage several high quality financial websites. Please find enclosed our media kit along with our rate sheet.

We can do special deals if you take more than 3 links.

Best regards,”

It’s quick, simple and it goes directly to the point. Once you have a great media kit built, you don’t need to say much. You need to “automate” your answer so you can save as much time as possible while keeping your potential advertisers interested.

The second template you need is an advertiser manager Excel spreadsheet. I have 2 templates per site:

Template #1

Advertiser Type	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total	Percentage
Google Adsense													$0	#DIV/0!
Azoogle Ads													$0	#DIV/0!
Amazon													$0	#DIV/0!
QuestTrade													$0	#DIV/0!
Commission Junction													$0	#DIV/0!
Mint (in article)													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #1													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #2													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #3													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #4													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #5													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #6													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #7													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #8													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #9													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #10													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #11													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #12													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #13													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #14													$0	#DIV/0!
Private Link #15													$0	#DIV/0!
Ad Block													$0	#DIV/0!
Banner 125X125 #1													$0	#DIV/0!
Banner 125X125 #2													$0	#DIV/0!
Banner 125X125 #3													$0	#DIV/0!
Banner 125X125 #4													$0	#DIV/0!
Banner 125X125 #5													$0	#DIV/0!
Dedicated Page#1													$0	#DIV/0!
Rate Widget													$0	#DIV/0!
Adbean Widet													$0	#DIV/0!
Total	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	#DIV/0!
Martin
Craig
Net Profit	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0

The first template tells me how much I make each month for each ad. I can track all my sources of income and know exactly which one is going up or down and which one is the most important. This has 3 major advantages:

a)      I know where my money comes from and how I can optimize each site.

b)      This is high value information if you ever want to sell your site!

c)       I know how many private ads I’ve sold so far (I tend to limit my sites to a specific numbers of ads).

Template #2

Slot	Code	Price	Freq	Exp Date	Contact	Paypal	Combo
Friends of The Dividend Guy
Private Link #1
Private Link #2
Private Link #3
Private Link #4
Private Link #5
Private Link #6
Private Link #7
Private Link #8
Private Link #9
Private Link #10
Private Link #11
Private Link #12
Private Link #13
Private Link #14
Private Link #15
Investment links
Ad block
The Dividend Guy Sponsors
125X125 #1
125X125 #2
125X125 #3
125X125 #4
125X125 #5
Widgets
National Average Mortgage Rates
Adbean

My second template is used to follow-up on each ad. Once a month, I check out this sheet for each site and I know which ads are up for renewal for the month. This tells me how much the advertiser is paying me, what is the code used and also to know if I offered a package deal with other sites (the combo section). This helps me to requests more ads from the same client upon renewal.

This leads me to my 3^rd template: my renewal follow-up email:

“Hey NAME,

There were two ads to renew on DATE on SITE.

Here are the two links:

Link 1:
Anchor:

URL: 

Link 2:
Anchor:

URL:

We would renew for the same terms and price, which is PRICE each link for a 6 month period.

Please let me know your intention as soon as possible.

We also have the following sites you might be interested in advertising on:

SITE

SITE

Thank you and hope you have a great day!”

As you can see, upon each renewal, I’m plugging 2-3 of my sites and offer a package deal. Most advertisers want to renew at a lower rate (since they have been good clients). I don’t do that unless they get more links from our network. It usually works pretty well and I’m able to fill the space of less occupied websites.

#2 Follow-up once a month

As just mentioned, I’m follow up on my renewals only once a month. This means that I’ll have to email some people 30 days in advance and others at the very last minute. I’m okay to let an ad expire on my site and contact the advertiser a few days after rather than exclusively prior to expiring. I do that in the name of efficiency.

If I have an “unpaid” ad on my site for a few days or even a week, it is still better than checking my ad manager weekly and spending 30 minutes to 1 hour per week to send email and check out my stats. I now spend about 1 hour per month sending all my email and I take off the expired links at that time. It usually pays off as some advertisers are real slackers . It gives them the time to answer me back and they are happy since their link was still on. If they renew, I start the expiry date as the renewal date so they don’t get a free ride. If they don’t renew, well, they got at max 3 weeks of free links. It’s not a big issue for me but I save a lot of time managing it this way!

#3 Do them in bulk

This is one thing Adam Smith learned during the industrial age: doing the same specific task over and over again makes you way more productive. This is why I do all my ad follow-ups and ad requests in bulk. I can open my template, copy/paste and send them in one shot. I am way more efficient than if I send an email here and there.

#4 Label everything

I use several gmail accounts for my sites. Each of them has a specific utility. But I label everything. Therefore, it makes my life much easier when it’s time to manage any requests. It also helps me keeping my inbox clean as everything is filed if I need it. A clean inbox is a clear brain. It’s easier to think when you don’t have 56 emails in your mailbox!

Anything else you want to know?

This last part of this series was obviously more directed toward running one or more blogs than a regular business. However, you can use the template tip for anything that includes an email answer or reporting issues. I’m continuing this series with more hindsight specific to my online company in my newsletter (this is not a trick to get you signed up, it’s only that I don’t want to bore people that are not too much into building an online empire ). So if you have any questions, please let me know. So far, here’s what I want to cover in my newsletter:

-          How to manage Pricing

-          I’m giving a media kit and template for free

-          How you can make more money with multiple blogs with limited time

Anything else? I’m all ears!

image credit

Following up on yesterday’s post on how to build a Media Kit, I’m going a little bit deeper with you and will look at the details that any entrepreneur should look at before talking to any potential advertiser/client. Here again, I’m taking my online business as an example but you can definitely apply any of these tips to other businesses or side lines. In fact, you can also apply what you learn here to yourself and prepare to get a better salary raise at work! This is not a “how to build a media kit for blogs” article but more “how to build a promotional kit for anything… including how to sell yourself!”.

Get Proof

The very first thing you want to establish in your media kit is credibility. This can be quite easy to earn if you have some proof to show your advertisers. In the blogging world, here are some questions you can answer upfront in your media kit that will help you gain credibility:

How long have you been blogging?

What is your monthly traffic?

Are you on an up trend in terms of stats?

Are you part of any groups? (like the Yakezie, Seeking Alpha certified, etc.)

What are your RSS readers, twitter followers or Facebook fan stats?

Have you been mentioned on any important blogs, magazines, newspapers or major sites?

You can also put together some stats that will tell your advertisers that you have a good blog (Page Rank by Google or Alexa Rank by Alexa)

If you want to go a little bit deeper and look more professional, you can also add demographics. You can easily get free stats from Alexa, Quantcast and Google Analytics.

As you can see, the first page of your media kit should include your unique selling proposition and some facts to back it up. This increases your chances of having the best advertiser-blog fit. Mind you, sometimes you will get great offers from clients that don’t fit your audience. It’s up to you to accept them or not. Personally, I don’t do sponsored posts for this reason, however, I don’t mind having links or banners since they are in specific sections of my sites.

The same reasoning applies to any other type of business or if you want to market yourself and get a better job (your first page of your resume should include most of what has been discuss in the first page of a media kit!).

Position Yourself

Here’s the good news; if you have followed step #1, you are halfway done with positioning! You know what you have to offer and have facts to back up your sales pitch. Now it’s time to know what you want and don’t want.

You can play the Nascar blogger or you can be very selective with the type and number of ads. As you can see, I’m trying to slowly diminish the number of Ads on TFB (I’ve already taken off Adsense within posts and took off all ads above the fold). This is because I want my readers to:

a)      Read my articles without being distracted by an ad (and worse, clicking on it to leave my page!)

b)      Subscribe to my newsletter or RSS feed

I think it is more valuable to keep my readers for a while instead of making a quick buck off them. Mind you, I don’t manage all my sites this way. Some others are made so I can optimize short term money from them. These are all questions you need to ask yourself in order to position your site and yourself as an author or entrepreneur.

Does it mean that you endorse everything you publish on your blog? This is a well debated topic as there are ethical questions to ask yourself. In my opinion, if you publish private ads in your sidebar, your readers should be smart enough to know that these are not your products and not your companies. Therefore, they should know that this is advertising. However, whatever you write about, you should tell them if it’s paid or not. This is where I draw the ethical line on my sites.

Make Yourself Visible

You want to make money advertising? Well duh, let them know that you exist! As opposed to many other companies, marketing your blog can be pretty cheap. All you need is usually an advertising page along with a contact form. Make sure that both pages are visible and on the top of your site. This is usually where advertisers will look to contact the blogger.

Okay, now is the time for you to laugh at me! If you look at the TFB Advertising page, I can tell you that I see 2 big problems with it:

- It’s very bad (not much info, short and no incentive for advertisers to do business with me)

- It’s very old (I don’t do reviews any more, my PR is 4, my RSS and traffic stats are outdated… man I really need to update this!)

So what’s to learn from a page like this? When it’s been a while that you have been in business, you forget some important stuff. But since you have been there for a while, you still get clients anyways! Lol! I’ll update my page soon!

However, I don’t always do bad things Here’s my The Dividend Guy Blog Advertising page.  This one is very professional and includes packages that advertisers can pick without me talking to them (if they fill in the form, I get the money via Paypal and the link info at the same time). I usually get one request a day from this page. But because I charge a lot, most advertisers drop the ball as they want me to publish their ads for nothing… This is when we get to the last point…

Negotiation or The Art of Making Money!

If you don’t like negotiating, don’t get into business… or have someone do this part for you! However, there are some tricks to overcome time consuming negotiating and get to an agreement much faster: craft your unique selling proposition and have a solid media kit. I can see my ad management evolving into 3 stages over time:

Stage #1: Take everything – the Nascar approach

At first, all I wanted to do is make money out of my blog (I bet you are like me ). I accepted almost any type of advertising (sponsored posts, reviews, banners, links, etc) and at any price (basically anything I could get from the advertiser with a minimum of negotiation). This was great as I was making money but I was losing in quality and opportunities at the same time.

Stage #2: Negotiate every single deal

After a year or so, I realized that I could negotiate better deal with my advertisers by offering them long term deals (I give a rebate for 6 month or 12 month deals) or by offering ad space on more than one blog (the advantage of running a multiple blog business). However, I was negotiating every single deal, going back and forth a few times and trying to earn the most for my efforts every time. While I was making a lot more money than with the Nascar approach, I was spending a lot of time on my email.

Stage #3: Act like a businessman

Now, I don’t spend much time on negotiating or finding advertisers. I actually give them my rate sheet along with my media kit and tell them that if they want a rebate, they just have to take a long term deal or sign for more than 3 links. No negotiation if you only want 1 link on a monthly basis. This saves me a lot of time and I’m making even more money. Serious advertisers will recognize professionalism and appreciate the long history of my blogs. They know that I’ll be around next year to renew their commitment and that the quality of the blog will remain intact. If they think I’m too expensive, then I know it’s not the right client for me. This is true for any business: once you have positioned yourself, don’t bargain away your soul. If you are a Rolex, you can’t get Wal-Mart’s clients (or very few of them!).

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be sharing with you my rate sheet and media kit through my newsletter. I’ll also discuss how to price your blog (with real $ you can make and not some “I ask $100 per month” BS). Anything else you want me to include in this future newsletter article?

image source

Following up on several of your requests after my blog income report, I decided to create this series to show you how I manage my private advertising on all of my sites. I’m not going to address publishing text links or not, nor how sponsored posts can be perceived by your audience. Nor if writing paid reviews is a cool thing or will they just upset your readers. I’ll leave these debates for others. In this series, I’ll only focus on how to make as much money as possible with your blog. How cool is that?

Quick note:

For those who are not interested in selling private advertisements, don’t worry, what I write on this blog can be applied to any business model. In fact, this will be a great help for any of you who want to build your business (regardless if it’s online or not).  You can also learn from this series if you want to present your side business, a product or service to any clients. The same principles will apply. Plus, I’ll be providing more “technical” stuff to newsletter subscribers to not bore the rest of you on this blog ;-D.

So, if you know that you want to attract private advertisers and make money out of it, here’s what you will learn in this series:

- Make serious money with private advertisers

- Build your media kit that will earn you thousands of dollars

- Save time by managing your links properly

- Run multiple blogs with very low fees (newsletter subscribers only)

- Get the very same media kit template I use (newsletter subscribers only)

So the first step before you sell your first ad space is to know what you have to offer, right? You can’t simply go “all-in” and build a media kit in a hurry. Sorry folks, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

What Are You Offering?

This is a simple question that usually comes with a quick answer. However, the answer is often wrong as we don’t take enough time to consider what our blog/company/service really is. If you don’t agree with the word “wrong” as you think you are “right”, let’s use “a good answer but often not enough to impress your public”. If you had to explain what you are offering in 2 lines, would you be able to do it? Here’s mine for The Financial Blogger:

My blog is about how to work less and make more money

That relates to my tag line “working 4 days a week, making 6 figure income”. This is what I offer on TFB. This is what we call a Unique Selling Proposition. I won’t go into the concept of USP (Corbett Barr already did it better than I can right here) but the point is to tell the world, in 2 lines max, what is so different from your blog/company/service.

Here are some examples that are not too great:

I’m providing great content on blah blah blah (we all think we provide great content and there are tons of blogs writing about so and so).

I’m THE reference in this topic (you are probably not and even if you are, what makes you so unique, maybe I can claim the same thing on my blog and that will make 2 experts in the same niche!).

I tell people how to … save money/live frugal/invest wisely/etc. etc. etc. (there are tons of “how to” blogs… not really original, right?).

So What Makes You Original? (hint, the answer is in the question )

You got it: YOU! You are unique, you are different and you are the writer on your blog, the manager of your company and the inventor of your product. Now, you have to find a way to describe you and what you do in 2 lines… ooops getting more complicated!

I came up with my tag line (working 4 days a week, making 6 figure income) because it combines 2 of my biggest strengths as an individual, as an employee and as an entrepreneur:

1)      I’m damn efficient

2)      I’m good at making more money

In my opinion, this is what I do best and this is why I share my thoughts about these topics on this blog. Most people in the PF blogging world know TFB as “the guy who runs all those PF sites”.  I decided to keep this tag and go toward that direction.

So what defines YOU?

If you want to have something very original to offer, start by defining your strengths and how you transfer them into your blog/company.

Second question: who you want to deal with?

Once you have defined what your blog is, you need to define what your audience is. Not the one you have right now but the one you want to have. There is a fatal truth about any blog or company: you can’t reach everybody. Some people will like you, others will hate you and a wide majority will ignore you (because they just don’t care about what you have to say). What you need to do is to concentrate on people that will like you; this is your real audience.

Your audience will follow you because they like what you do and what you have to say. This is the same thing if you are looking for a niche market for your business: be VERY specific. Know exactly who you want to reach and forget about the rest (they will ignore you anyways ).

I want the TFB audience to be people interested in working hard, being creative, making more money in order to have more free time. Age and sex doesn’t really matter. I’ve realized that most people reading this blog are male, between 25 and 45 which makes sense since I’m a 30 year old dude. However, I also attract older readers and women too. This is because I focus more about what I like as opposed to what I am. If you like working less and making more money at the same time, we already have 2 things in common .

This is the same thing with potential advertisers? Do you want to advertise payday loans? Do you care about the products/services sold by the advertisers? Or are you just like me and think that your readers are smart enough to judge the difference between a good product and a bad one.  You can just publish advertising without endorsing it (this is why I don’t publish sponsored posts and I don’t write reviews anymore; because I offer advertising space, not endorsement possibilities). I’ve created specific sections on my blogs where I offer advertising space. Both the advertiser and the reader know that this is not stuff coming from TFB but stuff that is being advertised. It’s always important to be clear about that too .

What’s next?

Knowing what you want to offer and how you define it is only the first step. Once you have found it, it is important to take action and make sure your site/company reflects the image you want to portray. This is why I changed my header, added my tag line, took off my adsense block within posts and put my newsletter in the “above the fold” section while lowering my advertising sections. More recently (since the beginning of October), I’ve changed the length of my posts (more like 1,000 words now) and I’m trying to write more “useful” stuff for you. I hope it shows and that you like the recent changes on TFB!

Have you looked at your blog recently? Does it reflect what you want? Does it clearly display your message, your Unique Selling Proposition? If not, this is the very first step you need to accomplish before going further.

If you have recently made changes, or are about to do so, let me know. I want to know if your actions create results.

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