Roughly a year ago I tried to monetize Quick Sprout. My goal was to consistently make $20,000 a month to start off with and build up to $100,000 a month in revenue. As you probably can guess, things didn’t work out the way I planned.
But before I go into what I learned from trying to monetize Quick Sprout, let me break down how I was monetizing the blog.
I have been blogging for a few years now and I have built up a very loyal audience. And for that, I thank you. So roughly a year ago I decided to create a membership area on Quick Sprout in which you could get premium content for a one time fee of $197 (you are no longer able to signup).
The premium content wasn’t like the content on the blog, instead it was an 8-week training course on how to grow your business. Each week I would email you a module that would help you grow your business. And after 8 weeks, you would roughly end up with 80 pages of marketing content from me.
Here is why the program didn’t work out:
Lesson #1: Recurring revenue is the best form of income
For some reason or another I didn’t want to do a recurring subscription model. I had hundreds of signups for the Quick Sprout membership program, but the biggest problem was the revenue wasn’t recurring. If I made it recurring I may have not hit the $100,000 a month mark, but I probably would have hit the $50,000 a month mark.
If you are going to monetize your blog, it is better to create a monthly subscription program because you don’t have an infinite supply of readers. For example, I have a few thousand loyal readers. So although you can make a ton of cash in the short run if you charge a one time fee for your premium content, you’ll make a lot more in the long run if you charge a smaller reccurring monthly fee.
Lesson #2: Email marketing doesn’t work
I could have done things wrong, but the way I tried to get new members was to first send them to a free rant/whitepaper that I wrote. I was hoping that by giving you something for free at first, you were more likely to read it and then convert into a paid member.
The problem is, people who were sent to that free rant/whitepaper were 4x less likely to convert into a member. I am not 100% sure on why this was, but my thinking is that I was making you go through one extra step, which can cause conversions to reduce.
In addition to that, I have already built a relationship with you. So the rant/whitepaper may work well for new Quick Sprout readers, but it won’t work well for regular members.
Lesson #3: Price doesn’t affect sales
If you create a membership program, you will quickly realize that price doesn’t really affect purchasing decisions. Yes, some people will not like your program and they will cancel or ask for a refund.
But for the people that love your program, they’ll gladly pay $297 instead of $197. So don’t be afraid to increase your prices if you feel you are providing your members with a lot of value.
And if your program is only worth $9 of course they won’t pay $297, but if you program provides a ton of value you can easily charge in excess of $100.
Lesson #4: Don’t be afraid to change things up
Quick Sprout is a blog. When you go to www.quicksprout.com, the homepage is one that a blog would have. If I really wanted the membership program to succeed I should have made the homepage about the membership. And I should have moved the blog to www.quicksprout.com/blog or some other URL.
Instead what I did was place ads on the blog to drive you to the membership program. The ads were simple and clean, but they didn’t get a ton of clicks. I did a ton of a/b tests on the banner ad call to actions and copy… but a lot of that didn’t affect the sales. (On a side note, the call to action “Get Started Now” converted the best.)
Lesson #5: Promote your membership program
I was shy when it came to promoting my membership program to you. I never wrote a blog post on it, when I should have. Over 10,000 of you read this blog through RSS readers or email. If I wrote a blog post about the membership I think I could have made an additional 40,000 to 60,000 dollars.
Other than not making my membership reccurring, that was the second biggest mistake I made. If you aren’t willing to blog on your membership program, then you shouldn’t release it in the first place.
I didn’t write about my membership program because I wasn’t sure how good it was. I was seeing a handful of refunds and the last thing I wanted to do was market a product that was going to hurt my personal brand.
Lesson #6: You can’t assume
My membership program was a long sales letter. I learned about sales letters from some of the top email marketers out there and because they were making millions of dollars I thought that format would work for me as well.
If you look at my sales letter, you’ll notice that there aren’t any navigation options, there are testimonials to help with social proof, and I even broke down why you should become a member. Heck, at one point I even created a sense of urgency by saying that the program was going to be limited to only 100 members (which it was for a while).
Although that long sales letter worked well for other bloggers, it didn’t work well for me. If I could do it over again I would have created a Slidedeck and broke down what you would get as a member in visual format. I think this would have also helped reduce the amount of emails I received asking: “what do I get as a member”. A lot of people just don’t read long sales letters.
Lesson #7: Actions speak louder than words
Before I created the membership program I asked people if it was a good idea. Almost everyone said yes and they expressed interest on how they wanted to sign up.
When I launched the program I emailed most of the people I surveyed and most of them didn’t sign up. I am not trying to knock them down, or you down, but it taught me that you can’t just rely on survey. From the get go you shouldn’t expect everyone to signup.
Now I am not saying that surveying people isn’t a smart thing to do, but you should take into account that all of the positive responses may have some bias.
Conclusion
Like anything else, monetizing your blog isn’t easy. Yes you can throw up some ads and make some good money, but the best way to make a ton of money is through a membership program that is reccurring.
Do have any lessons to share when it comes to monetizing your blog or website?
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
Great dissection of many marketing and conversion issues, Neil!
It seems like you could give it another great crack with these learnings
Just wait a few months.
Hey Neil, psyched to see your next product. I love your blog and these are some great lessons.
I just started my own blog but it’s always good to learn what not to do when thinking about this stuff =)
Great! Hopefully it helps… do keep me updated with how it goes.
Now this is what I call a marketing lesson. Thank you Neil for pointing us your mistakes so we can learn from them. I am not surprised at all that all those people that responded positive to the survey didn’t showed up after all. People say a lot of things but when they take action they are totally different.
Excellent comment, John. I worked for a company that built a website in response to some comments made by Forest Service and timber industry folks. What they didn’t take into account was whether those folks would really put $$$ into advertising. They kept telling me that these folks would spend their budget $$$ in a blink because it wasn’t their money anyway, it was government money. Not so. Someone saying that they need a service isn’t the same as someone being willing to pay for the service.
I really depends on what people want at the end of the day.
I know you’ll make more mistakes, we all do, especially me, but the point it to understand others to decrease the amount you make.
With practice everyone becomes perfect, which means that this example would give you great lessons and would allow you to implement something better in the next project.
Right, very true. Over time, if you’ve gone through enough experience, you’ll have the ability to do some impactful work.
So are you going to create a membership site?
Already had one… but I am going to create another one and try to do it right this time.
I’m excited to see the new and improved membership site you’re going to launch
Thanks Maren, looking forward to your thoughts.
Hey Neil,
Over the last few years I have slowly been making the transition from SEO to IM. One of the largest lessons I have learned is you need to split test everything! Once you think you have things dialed in then test some more!
So it may not actually be the case that email does not work but possibly since your list was already “warmed” and you already have a relationship with your readership you may not need to send an ethical bribe to them like you would a fresh list with whom you are trying to build credibility.
As an web designer I used to think build it and they will come. As an SEO I believed all I needed to do was get a large enough volume of visitors. Now that I am doing more IM work it is all about what do I do with the visitor and how do I convert them to take action once they arrive to my site.
Well there you go, clearly you understand the benefit it trial and error. Every failure is 1 step closer to success. Most people “test” and stop rather continuing to experiment.
Yeahs.. Thanks for the information
Rob, yours is the most vibrant blog I’ve ever come across! Damn colorful.
The video on paying a girl to punch her boyfriend was pretty funny.
Hey Neil,
I have the same question as Hunt!
#2 is bit tricky. As you say, I too can’t understand why email would fail. I have always heard/read that it is one of the techniques that get you more personal with your reader. May be you could write a blog post on analyzing your techniques on email marketing.
Jane.
Good idea. I think it failed because I did it wrong. I still have a lot to learn about email marketing.
And lesson #1 applies to many business models. Reoccurring revenue is the easiest to maintain, plus it offers a built in marketing channel based on referrals from those already sold on your product/service.
Yes very true… it’s a great way to expand your business.. repeat and referral.
I am always agree with your Neil..
Hi Neil,
I have tried Email marketing its worked for 1 months but then it couldn’t,i am unable to figure out the problem,what would be the reason can you suggest me any thing regarding this issue
Thanks
To be honest, I don’t know. By no means am I an expert in email marketing.
Sorry.
@anitha subscribe to some big name marketers lists and watch what they do. By closely watching the masters who can make 6 figures from a successful email campaign you can get an idea of what works.
Yes, you’d be surprised at some of the tactics that actually work and the ones that don’t.
What? Email marketing doesn’t work?
It works well if you have a loyal customer base (those who have bought from you and who will likely buy from you again) and you can entice them with a “great deal” on something.
It probably works well for sites like Amazon. And even some membership sites.
But for some reason it didn’t convert well for me. It could be because I didn’t build a list before the program launched.
I had no idea you had premium content, would’ve gladly signed up. You should write a post on it.
lol, yes very true
Well, you’ll hear about the new and improved version shortly.
Interesting thoughts on monetisation strategy. Especially the fact that the email marketing didn’t work… Did you split test your stuff (emails and sales pages?)
I did. I tried a lot of different tests.
You had a membership feature on the blog?
Wow, you should have blogged about it, because I never knew about it, till now! And I have been a subscriber of the blog for past couple of years or so (as far as I can remember)!
Btw how about adding ads to the blog, you don’t have any at the moment and I am sure, they will create a side income without much reoccurring effort from you, apart from the usual blogging that you do.
There’s ad on the top right from legal zoom
“Reoccurring revenue is the best form of income”… agreed; and a bit far afield from your post but I often wonder how so many iphone app-only companies are able to sustain their businesses since apps are one-off purchases
They are short lived…
First of all, I’m really sorry for not joining your Quicksprout membership Neil. About your question regarding to monetizing my blog, I also do a lot of mistakes.
Yes, I do have a lot of loyal readers (maybe?.. uh huh) but at the same time I also scared to sell something to them. Even if the product was good enough to benefit them in many ways.
After reading your post, I really admire your action where you do a lot of try and error through Quicksprout. Even it is not profitable as you want, but from my perspective, you have done a great job Neil.
So, what else I can say? Good luck for monetizing Quicksprout in the future.
I suggest you do a survey… ask your readers, how much would you pay for something like “x”. Or would you pay for “x”.
Neil – I’m with you on the long sales letter. I’m sure they work, and I’ve seen them work for people I respect, but they just look … scammy.
Bu there’s people who are doing it without them. For one, check out Chris Guillebeau’s page: http://www.unconventionalguides.com/freelance.htm I like how its broken down into different sections!
It varies for people… I have buddy that does PPC membership and he doesn’t have a lengthy sales letter either.
The point regarding price not affecting purchase is something I both know, but need to remind myself of constantly in my product creation efforts. Some years ago I created a product that sold for $500 a copy. There was a 50 copy cap and I sold out in 10 days…I would never have made this much even if I sold double the copies at half the price. Focusing on quality product creation is the key…crank out something worth the price tag and you will have no problem demanding a higher price.
Yes… quality is what matters because the web is full of crap.
Hi Neil – This is great information and thank you for sharing it! We have been running a blog at Meylah for the past year helping creative professionals learn how to build their businesses and sell their work online. Although we haven’t monetized our blog, we did build a unique online platform for our community members to create their own personalized blog with an integrated storefront making it easier for them to sell their products.
I’m not sure if we will monetize our blog, but your insight has given me a great lessons to learn from for our future. Thanks, Jason
That’s great and if you think it’s worth it, you totally should. Share with me your feedback when and if you decide to do it.
I think this is great information but lacks the most important part of – eyeballs. How did you originally grow traffic to your site? Organically by writing searchable content? Were you starting out your blog at the inception of twitter? Were paid ad’s the best results for you?
Yea, I grew it through content. I wrote detailed blog posts and they naturally started spreading through the social web (Twitter, Facebook, Digg…). That’s what caused Quick Sprout to be somewhat popular.
I think it grew mainly because it was featured on TechCrunch sidebar for lot of time
, that’s where I came to know about you and your great blog
A lot of people found it from there, but it really comes down to the quality of content.
Neil,
This is a great post. I’m currently in the process of figuring out how to monetize my blog, so this is a big help.
Related to the long sales letter, I’m not sure how they work for email marketers because I never read long sales letters. Never. That format change should help a lot.
Joseph
It’s sometimes very surprising to not people that actually do, but they do, and it works.
If you’re worried about what people may think of your offer, I think it’s pretty easy to just sell it via beta mode to less people to get feedback from what they think of it and then go from there.
I launched my first product last month and it sold better than I expected and the refunds tend to hover around 10% which I hear is typical for a Clickbank product.
I’d agree that the best way you could truly make wayyyyy more money is if you switched your website over to more of a landing page for your membership site with a blog set up at a different location.
Since a good portion of the traffic is from the in pages anyway, it only makes sense.
I was wondering what happened to your membership program. For the record, I really liked your sales page and I remember trying to find it about a month later to bookmark it as a good example of a sales page. It’s nice to know how to make it even better. As always, thank you for sharing your mistakes. I learn a lot from them.
No problem Nick, glad you liked it. Hopefully you’ll be more intrigued by the next one.
You could make a membership site and charge 97 a month for 6 months. Or a one time fee of 497 (discounted). That way you get reccouring, but more importantly you get more people to pay for a high priced product. Also have an affiliate program, and let the world know about it.
Recouring is difficult because it’s hard to justify membership after a period of time…like online dating. So if you could figure out a way to make it worth while like the problogger.com forum or something then it could be a big hit. Like anything else keep it as simple as possible!
I’m also with Chris on this, have a separate site for the membership site. Have a few options. For example when I release a course, I will link to it via my site, but I will also create a separate site for affiliates to drive traffic too. Kind of like what Chris at the art of non conformity does with each product having a landing page of its own that he links to from his site AND having an online store with all his products.
Very true, problogger has a very good example of how to create a successful membership site.
Yep, until reading this post I didn’t know that you offered a membership “area” but I was aware about Darren’s…
Good lessons learned post Neil. I think email marketing works – but its only as good as the list you market to, so as you mentioned above you didn’t spend too much time building a good list before marketing to it. That being said it sounds like you did a lot of other things right, so its just about figuring out which platform works best since having a list isn’t a prerequisite, but it certainly helps.
Yes, it’s a lot of testing and analyzing which will help you make the right decisions.
Some great insights here on monetizing a blog. We kind of went the reversed route. The business was there (monetizing) and we added a blogger (me) to build a blog around (content).
Here’s an example of what the 2 processes look like:
1) Search Marketing > Lands On Website > Buys
2) Interesting Blog > Reads Some Content > Lands On Website > Buys
In your case you were monetizing a blog. In our case we were adding a blog to a business. Still an awesome blog post, hope you can hit that $20k/month goal in a few months
Cheers,
Kate
Thanks Kate, I’ll let you know how it works out.
I have different point of views regarding some of your lessons. First, I think that email marketing does work but I guess it wasn’t a good idea to send free content first. Second, the price does matter, as you said it must be related to the value of the content / resources that you sell but you can’t ask for $100 membership when what are you selling is $9.
Oh completely agree with you. The quality is what determines it’s worth.
Monetizing a blog is hard. I am surprised that I never noticed you had a membership program. You were right you should have wrote a post about it. I am also surprised it didn’t work out. You are one of the smartest people I have followed. It is good to know the people you look up to still make mistakes. I am looking forward to seeing you try this again and how it will play out.
I’m just like everyone else, 1 pant leg at a time
Let’s see what happens with the next one that comes out.
It’s interesting that #7 also applies to software testing. Some testers will love telling you what you should do to change your product. If you take all those suggestions to heart, you will find yourself making changes for people who wouldn’t buy your software anyway!
The moral of the story in both cases is to accept the comments and suggestions graciously, but gauge the accuracy and value before taking action!
I agree with you on that point. It is necessary to get feedback but maybe if he had a different pool of people to test it. He may have got different information.
It’s always best to make little changes at a time so you know what works and doesn’t.
Very true, you can please some people some of the time but not all the people all of the time.
Neil, so what happened in the end? Obviously you’re not offering that membership package anymore, but revenue-wise did the money come in and then taper off? (hence the big over-all lesson of reoccurring revenue)
It just didn’t have the growth potential it could have. Making some dramatic adjustments though.
Hi Neil,
Some real ‘from the heart’ lessons there and absolutely no doubt you will reach your targets next time. What struck me most though was that you actually did it – you took big action, and now you’ve learnt from it (and stayed postitive about it!).
Thanks for posting this
Cathy
Yep, it’s always about taking action and then learning from your mistakes and moving forward.
Great discussion points Neil. #7 is a killer. I’ve seen this over the years at every level of business. Everyone is interested until they have to write a check or open a wallet. Don’t get discouraged, just build in some discounting of future survery results.
Howard
Yes, it’s all a learning experience if anything.
Great information. I think split testing is very important in what you do. Also, i suggest you could have advertised your membership program on your main page. Someone like me will suscribe even if its expensive…because of trust.
It is very important because it allows you to realize the impact of small changes.
Neil, I had no idea you had premium content, I would have gladly signed up too. However; email marketing does help, though.
My site mailing list has over 6500 subscribers and I’ve been at it since 2004. I’m about to monetize, finally. Would you:
1) charge $24 USD a year for access to the archived content
OR
2) sell (2) ads on newsletter and (2-4) ads on the website sidebar.
Very curious… Ciao from Italy, Neil!
Good idea. I’ll have to try it out.
Neil,
Your sales letter would most likely have converted much better if you employed a hybrid video-text sales letter. Given the familiarity of your audience with you, your video could have served the purpose of delivering the highlights (for those who will not read long sales letters).
Thanks for a great post.
hmm, interesting idea, thanks for letting me know. I don’t do to well with video though.
Neil,
You don’t necessarily even have to use video. I suspect a screencast would work better for your already pre-sold and “bonded/engaged” audience.
Gogo
Good idea.
@Gabe the way the iPhone app only companies make money by the ad revenue from the ads that play on the apps. It’s really a great stream of income for anyone who might have a cool idea for an app and with outsourcing it wouldn’t be that hard to excute the idea depending on the complexity of it.
Right, they are totally hit or miss.
Hi Neil, Why you are not at all interested in Google Adsense? I never saw them on your pages. Just a curious question…
Don’t like the way it looks and it won’t make that much, even over time.
I am not sure about the price tip. Every time you raise the price you deny a group of people the chance to buy the membership. I love the long term aspect though. I also hate sales pages you are right when you say that breaking it down and showing people what they get visually is the best way to go.
Lesson #1: Reoccurring revenue is the best form of income
Agreed. But you should also offer a range of upsells and downsells. People that go into your membership program (I would create a forum with content inside that) will be highly receptive to any offer you make. As a well known blogger people already want to buy from you, you just need to let them.
Lesson #2: Email marketing doesn’t work
For this to work there is a need to build a strong auto responder sequence to further develop the relationship and offer the person multiple chances to buy. Attention is very limited and getting in peoples inbox is a big help.
Lesson #3: Price doesn’t affect sales
Agreed. Inside your membership area include extra added value things that weren’t included in the sales letter and include a bonus for being a member for over 2 months. This will help reduce refund rates.
Lesson #4: Don’t be afraid to change things up
If I was you I would keep it on Quick Sprout and remove the answers section. Then I would get forum topics from the members area and make these visible to the public in the same way seobook.com does.
Lesson #5: Promote your membership program
Agreed, the only barrier here was your own beliefs. I never bought the program but based on your content I can only assume it was great. This no doubt followed through into you not doing JV deals etc. Refunds are normal even for the best products.
Lesson #6: You can’t assume
Sales letters do work although not in all markets I would of looked at getting a copywriter to do a different version and compare results. I think you are possibly hinting at the correct problem, people were unsure what they would get. People love certainty. Make sure the link is there for people as to why they have to be a member, how it will help them etc. The testimonials were all from massive websites, this would be great if I owned a massive website but an ordinary person may struggle to make the link between how you helped Techcrunch etc and how you will help them.
I would just make it simply your voice panning through slides that are simple text of what you are saying to cover both people that are visual and those that are more receptive to audio.
People want to know they are going to be hanging out with other people with similar to themselves. So if you are going to have a membership forum make sure your target market is defined and this is included in your sales video/letter/auto responder.
Lesson #7: Actions speak louder than words
Agreed a survey isn’t a good indicator of people parting with money. I would of resurveyed them after launch and asked why they don’t want to buy yet. Then addressed those reasons in the sales letter.
Thank you so much for the informative response. It seems as we think on the same frequency
. You’ll many of those changes within a month or so.
I guess it depends on what you are trying to do with email marketing. My business plan is to get them back to my website to play more games. So if I get 1000 people back to my website I consider that success.
But I have never tried selling anything yet in email marketing. But see you are working on a subscription plan. Pretty cool man!
Right, it depends on your action. Getting 1,000 people to go back to a website is easier then getting 1,000 people to pay $47 for something on your website. If you had a good list, I’d consider experimenting too.
Hey Neil,
Great post, I will be building my membership programme soon. Can’t wait to get it going and your tips are going to definitely help me.
Thanks
Simon
Sounds good, do let me know your progression.
Talk about being shy man… Gotta step up to the plate. I know I tend to be the same way man.. Not sure why you did not promote it to much. But lets see what you come up with next time.
Great Read Neil! I hope to reach such heights with my blog some day on the African blogosphere. Wish me luck
PS/If you get some time, check out this article i did on ‘SEO is Dead!’ http://bit.ly/9eUA43. I’d appreciate your comments.
Thanks for sharing that bud, I’ll check it out and let you know.
Lesson 2 – Email marketing does work, as long as you send it to the right people
Yes it does work but definitely requires a lot of work with trial and error on your part.
I’ve been a regular reader of yours for a while now and I agree with you, it’s difficult to monetize. I am writing an ebook now and will hope to release it soon for my members, as a precursor for a membership program which I hope to launch. Both of them will be in various format (book is text, membership program is video).
That’s awesome… yeah when i comes to conversion, there is a lot involved.
I don’t find it surprising that surveys don’t match sales – Surveys are free to take part in whereas sales cost money. People find it very easy to participate in something they care (e.g. your blog) if its free and give opinions on stuff they will buy as long as there are no commitments for it
Right when taking a survey would you buy and actually buying is a big difference.
Your lesson always helpful practical tutorial for us. as other suggested why don’t you create one WEBSITE to promote your membership program, offcourse you enough clever but being your reader i only shared thought for you. hope you don’t mind.
It’s a work in progress
okay… hope to see it soon
I totally agree that monetization isn’t easy!
But I also feel that among many bloggers that e.g Adsense is not really accepted. I think Adsense is great for monetization but I don’t use it on my own blog. I’ve got other websites that make decent money with it though.
What’s your take on Adsense?
It varies… depends on where it’s placed, # of hits you have and how relevant the ads are. You just kind of gotta play with it.
Your 7 lesson taught me a lot. When I start monetizing my blog I think I lag in two areas mentioned over here. Confusion about pricing & more belief about Email marketing. Now I am clear. Thanks Neil.
Perfect… that way you can make lessor mistakes and hopefully begin to profit a lot quicker.
Thanks for sharing this, I think you will get it ‘right’ next time. Can’t add too much to what the others have written. There is some good advice here. However, what is your end game – do you have one. You cant sell QuickSprout, because you ARE QuickSprout, and if you create a membership site around ‘you’ and ‘your brand’ you cant sell it. Create something that is a bit more independent of the QuickSprout/Neil brand and you can sell for big bucks down the road.
I have a membership coming out shortly that everyone will be very excited about. Should be fun!
@netpaths.net thanks for your comment,sure will try it out
Good move.
Hi Neil I have some comments and of course some questions
First a comment. Like you I have found that people don’t have any trouble paying for a yearly membership upfront. What is shocking to me that folks will pay for something and half will not use it for whatever reason. After mastering wall street I decided to tackle teaching others how to beat the stock market. What is the best way to monetize the”free portion” of the website in your opinion. Anyone else who can help I would appreciate it
How did you master wall street?
I also want to know how did you master wall street and why gave up…
I guess you’ll have to read his blog to find out
A powerful blog like yours, shouldn’t have any problem in monetizing it. But, six figure income is a little high target to reach in shortest period of time. I’m not saying it is not possible but it may also effect your reader’s count. Your loyal readers might unsubscribe. This is common where more ads comes, less readers will flow or stay. There are a lot of advertising opportunities you can give a try. I like the idea of monthly subscription as I make my blog advertisement sales to monthly subscription too which helps me rank in some income. I’m sure you will find ways to get your blog reach six figure income monthly soon. All the best!!
My blog page will be more or less shown with no ads, just my main page will talk about the new service. It “should* be easier for me, but you never know.
Hi Neil, do you need to pay tax on this?
Any money I make, I pay taxes on.
But a premium membership program is not an option for everyone. Neil, do you mind shedding some light on making money from regular content.
There are too many variations, check out a johnchow.com website for ways to monetize.
Price not affecting sales is a rather important point that you have picked up. I have always seen that most successful membership programs end up charging ludicrous fees. But then most people go on and join anyway.
I think on the whole, charging higher will get you more profits.
For many instances, yeah that’s true.
love to hear that your story.. you always speak the truth dont you.. and when it comes to explaining your story you still follow the same.. can we get a list of companies that you have invested in.. so we could do a study of ur companies
I wish I could share the list of companies that I have invested in, but I like to keep some things private.
Sorry
Neil,
Another great article. One thing that I noticed you consistently do with your blog posts is make them easy to read for people like myself that first skim the article to see if it’s worth reading, and then go back up to the top and read from the beginning.
I found myself just quickly skimming through this post, but after seeing how much I could learn from it, I started back at the beginning.
So, other than the advertisement sponsor spot on the sidebar of your blog, how exactly do you monetize on site? Are there any additional revenue sources that you have from your blog outside of your opt-in email list?
I don’t monetize it any other way
I just enjoy blogging!
Neil,
Just wanted to point out your spelling mistake on reoccurring which should be recurring.
Great article by the way!
Thank’s Scott, I’ll get that fixed.
Have to start a reoccurring membership to pay my bills! I do not see any other way!
Make it happen and let me know how it works out for you.
Neil:
Very well done article!
If you had all of this to do over again would you:
1. Make the blog on Quicksprout a separate area from the landing page on Quicksprout (but same domain name), or
2. Would have another site (landing page and sales driven) with a different domain name entirely from the Quicksprout blog domain name?
Thanks again for the great article.
Patrick
I would do number 1.
“Actions speak louder than words” a Real truth.And monetizing blogs can be easy with ads..but you won’t even get your electricity bill in turn with that program.
By the way Neil, I love the simplicity of your writing, it really makes the reader feel easy while reading.Good Luck.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
you are superb Neil, i do believe from my presonal experiences that Email marketing doesn’t work, thanks for clearing all my doubts
For some people it may, but for me it didn’t
This post reminded me of Shoemoney.
If you notice his way of monetizing his blog is not only by ads, but by the membership service.
You sign up to an email subscription and every few days, I would get an email from Shoemoney packed full of good info, but he didn’t have a link to a salespage or anything. After a few weeks, he would send out the Shoemoney link to buy the subscription for the membership. Since the readers trust and feel Shoemoney has good info, they decide to sign up to the membership.
Yeah and Shoemoney is one of the best internet marketers out there. He has a plethora of knowledge that you can make a lot of money from.
He always has good and interesting things to say.
Shoemoney also learned a lot more about the industry than most people.
Neil – You live in Seattle?
Yeah he has, he’s definitively a pioneer. Yes, I do live in Seattle.
You have learned some quick things with quick sprout. I hope this will make you more knowledge of monetize website.
I tried monetizing so many times, but it just doesn’t work as planned so I’m just going to leave it as is .
QuickSprout has a big userbase. You should gather emails using popup domination to build a bigger email list using the ebook you were providing for free earlier.
Thanks Dan, I appreciate your suggestions.
I’ve heard that you can make money from affiliate Marketing. Is it worth pursuing? Is it the same as blogging? What is the best way to make money and how much can you make per month.Thanks
It is worth pursuing so long as you find the right niche market to get started in.
Interest that you say that email marketing doesn’t work. I was thinking of buying some email marketing software but I don’t think I will now.
yeah, probably not necessary as it depends on the quality of your list etc. What kind of software were you looking into?
Hi Neil
I believe in a membership program that has recurring income. In fact I pay a monthly fee towards a membership site I belong to.
My mentor is taking me by the hand-learning all this Internet Marketing stuff. Its a new world for me and enjoy very much because of the passion I have in building relationships.
Once my brand becomes viral, perhaps I can start up a membership site appealing to the masses.
Thanks again for easy understood posts. A wealth of knowledge acquired for my own choice deciding factors on the pathway to success.
Thanks for reading
I appreciate it
Excellent! These are good lessons and I’ve learned at lot from this post. I agree with the whole thing, and also I never expect to get money easily with blog monetization.
Glad you found the blog useful, thanks for reading !
Hi Neil
I’m just going over your posts again to comment on different aspects I have missed out. My blog has the action words:’Get started”. I seem to be getting a lot of viewers on my blog because of this and the occasional sign ups to my squeeze page.
It really works.
A couple of days ago I discovered another learning curve for me in creating a lightbox squeeze page from aweber. If you click on my name, you will see the light box pop up on my blog. Sorry,Just something I wanted to share with you. I get bursts of energy when I discover something different with this IM stuff.
What do you think about a lightbox? I read a blog from John Chow and he recommends to have 3 squeeze pages on your blog to capture the email addresses, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
I have already commented on the positives of a membership programme and the honesty of working with marketing Gurus who are willing to help me succeed in this business. The time here in New Zealand is 3.44am. This is a typical day in my life I get up and get into marketing my blog and websites. I seem to be an automatic dynamo spinning into 1st, 2nd and third gear learning everything I can to make a mark in Cyberspace.
Thats why I feel its a privelege to make comments on your posts Neil because you do provide tremendous value and I just seem to keep writing as many comments as possible on your post, and of course you always reply back. Thats what keeps me coming back, so I appreciate your endless time to replying back to my comments. I feel appreciated. I suppose thats why you are successful. I salute to you.
I certainly believe in monthly subscriptions which do have continuous value. People will always come back reading quality content and I believe you are right on the price. People will pay top dollar on on valuable content.
Will Neil Thanks a million again
Have a great day
Richard
Richard,
Thanks again. You are a top contributor for sure. I value reading your comments, always!
Hello Neil, I started my blog a week before and when I saw KissMetrics, iam interested to join it.
What are the charges for it
Email me directly at neil@neilpatel.com or go to the Kissmetrics website. We can figure things out from there
A recurring source of income has been my goal for quite a while, but I soon learned its easier said than done. Nevertheless, I’m focused on soaking up all the information you have to offer to try to piece together something that will allow me to decrease my reliance on my business, and start getting money from a recurring source.
Awesome, just keep working at it and everything will fall into place!
Hi Neil
You have done a good job. This will help me to grow my business. Keep updating.
Thanks
Andrew
Thanks, glad you found it helpful!
Now this is what I call a marketing lesson. Thank you Neil for pointing us your mistakes so we can learn from them. I am not surprised at all that all those people that responded positive to the survey didn’t showed up after all. People say a lot of things but when they take action they are totally different.
Definitely,
I know it is beneficial to learn from mistakes. This way you can learn from the ones I have made so far, that way you can try to avoid it yourself.
Rather then learn first hand. You are right some people are all talk, it happens.
My experience says monetizing a website or a blog is not so easy until you have a decent amount of regular visitors. But never-mind we can definitely learn from the past mistakes and hope not to repeat them again.
Yep, that is all we can do really. Learn from the past and better prepare for the future.
Hi Neil,
I wasn’t a subscriber when you wrote this and I wish I was. I am focusing on How to monetize our website as my target market for the information we serve is located globally.
Early last year I made mistakes which led to at least 4 of the lessons u share here.
Right now I was planning on going out to ask the market if they would buy a product from me but reading your last point I will be a little cautious and plan better.
Thanks for sharing this.
David
Sounds like you have learned the hard way like I have. Definitely make sure before you do anything to have a well planned approach to it.
Best of luck.
so what happened to the membership program then? why not bring that back with a monthly subscription?
hey neil,
“Lesson #7: Actions speak louder than words”,it’s an excellent approach indeed.
and yeah monetizing a blog is not an easy work, you must have lots of regular visitors. this post is awesome.
Thanks.
Matt
Now that I am doing more IM work it is all about what do I do with the visitor and how do I convert them to take action once they arrive to my site.