Your Profit Path

Introduction 

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Today we’re going to dig into your path to profit.   

This going to be a visionary post.  Last week we talked about the three money mindset secrets you need to be using right now if you want to be successful.   This week we’re going to dig into your earnings path.  We’re going to dream a little this week and then next week we’re going to drill into your practical game plan. 

Allow me to take a moment to paint the backdrop of what's going to happen for you...

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Way back in 2012, when I started my tech blog, I had meager ambitions.  I wasn’t trying to be a millionaire.  I just wanted to focus on providing quality content, in my own voice, in a way that was both fun and informative.  I figured if I let my personality leak through my blog content it would differentiate me from every other tech blogger out there and give people a reason to return. 

In fact, I still remember when I made my first dollar online.   

On July 12th, 2013 I earned $1.59 in Adsense earnings! But do you know what's funny? I didn’t realize this until 7 says later on July 19th because I was so focused on churning out quality content.   

And this is something you’re going to notice when you start building your business.  The ironic magic of building an online business is when you make the problems of your audience your priority, when you focus on delivering content that really drives results, when you make it your chief concern to deliver well written, informative content that people would be proud to share with their friends (because it makes them feel good) you’ll start to notice that income will start to flow your direction. 

We’ll deal with the blog problem later, as I know most people have some trepidation about blogging (especially if you’re the non-techie type).  I also know a lot of you guys are afraid of blogging because you think it's a long-term grind.  You just don’t have the time to commit right now. 

Don’t worry, we’ll deal with all this and more in upcoming lessons.  It’s not as difficult as you think and there are smart ways to go about blogging so you don’t get burned out.  We can blog in a way that works for your unique lifestyle and your audience.  But we’ll get to that later. 

For now, I want to dig into your Profit Path!  You’ve waited long enough so here’s what we’re going to cover: 

Note: Download the FREE PDF Version of this article so you can read offline, anytime and print it for easier viewing.  As free a bonus, it includes the audio narration as an MP3 file so you can listen on the go.  Just enter your email address to get the entire thing.  It's free, instant and available now. 

The Profit Path Overview

We’re going to look at your profit path to $100 per month, $500 per month and then $1,000 per month. 

We are starting small because I want to celebrate every small success you make along the way. 

Once we start getting a few small sells under your belt, we can scale up because you’ll already have an audience who trusts you (because they purchased from you) and you’ll already have some practice selling online.  In other words, after you earn your first $100 in real cold-hard cash online, you’ll understand the process (although it will be an elementary understanding) and it will be easier to get you to the next milestone: $500 per month and eventually even $1,000 per month.  

Let me show you how this breaks down: 

Your Profit Path to $100 Per Month 

So let's take a moment to step back and address the elephant in the room: an extra hundred dollars per month isn't life changing; it's not much money at all.  You might be tempted to zone out right now and find some big blog that shows you have to make $50,000 per month or so. 

Don’t do that! 

We will eventually get to big numbers but right now I just want to show you that you can do this.  I want to show you how it’s really possible for you to make a real income online. 

Everyone has to start somewhere.  I started with $1.59 on July 12th 2013 and you’re going to start with $100 USD. 

Here’s one possible scenario: 

You start a blog sharing content about something you’re really passionate about which also happens to attract a good sized audience willing to read your content (we’ll talk about the nuts and bolts of how you can gauge the market interest in your passion BEFORE you start building your business in upcoming lessons)  

So you commit to writing high quality content (we’ll address exactly what "high quality content” means in future lessons) and after 78 days of putting in the work, you notice you start getting about a few thousand visitors per month.

In order to make this time you had to say no to Netflix and Hulu.  Had to cut back on your time at the gym and even had to sacrifice some quality time with your kids (which you feel a little guilty about doing) but after 78 days of hard work you're seeing web traffic.

In fact, Google Analytics shows you’re averaging 4,203 monthly unique visitors to your blog each and every month.  Now remember, it took you 78 days to get here (almost three months) but now you’re super motivated because you see thousands of people are actually coming to read your content. 

Awesome.

You’re not sure how they are finding your little blog but you can’t focus on that right now.  You stick to your schedule and decide this weekend you’ll figure out Google Adsense so you can begin monetizing your work. After spending all of Saturday and Sunday trying to figure this out you finally get the gist of it.  The bad news is you didn’t get to run the errands you wanted to run this weekend or take your wife out to that comedy show downtown you guys wanted to see but you justify that it’ll pay off once you start to make more money. 

So now you've got Adsense setup, it’s live and after a few days... you can hardly believe it but a few dollars actually start trickling in. 

You’re about 104 days into your blog project and you refresh your Adsense dashboard to get your numbers. 

To your surprise you earned $134.10 last month via Adsense! 

Wow! That’s real money.  Legit.   

Think about how awesome this feels. 

Sure it’s only $134.1 but it’s more than that because it means you can do this.  It means if you stick to it you can probably grow your audience by talking to them and understanding their needs.  It means by researching what the market wants and by continuing to talk in your unabashed, shameless blogging style you can scale up your earning potential as you scale up your impact. 

With new motivation and a smile on your face you start to plan how to earn $500 per month.  

You plan to use your meager earnings to take your wife out to that comedy thing for "free" next week.

Your Profit Path to $500 Per Month 

So here’s the thing: you might be surprised to find out that jumping from $100 to $500 does not require doing 5 times the work.  We can achieve this mark because it only takes discipline and patience (and I’m here to help you along the way!) 

The other thing I want you to keep in mind is that I don’t want you to focus on earning more. 

“If you think about it, your business is NOT about you it’s about your market and their needs.  The money you earn is just a sign that you are making a difference and positively affecting the lives of those who trust their hard-earned money with you.” 

You are providing something of value to your audience.  Either you are trying to help them get a result faster or helping them remove something painful or giving them more pleasure or happiness in some way.  The point is never the money.  Please remember this.

Okay, so one of the best ways I’ve been able to keep my mind on my people’s needs is to email them and just talk with them as a friend might talk with someone he trusts. 

We will dig into the meat and potatoes of building your email list in future lessons but I wanted to bring this up now because I’ve seen too many wantraprenuers start with a focus on quality and then subtly shift to greed and self-interest as they start to earn more. 

I’m trying to guard you from this common pitfall because it will destroy you.  I’m just being honest here.  If you keep your heart hidden with your people your people will reward you for that.  You’ll make a real difference in their lives and you’ll feel good that you’re making the world a better place. 

Okay, I’m getting down from my soap box now.   

So back to the topic here: in order to earn $500 a month you realize that you need to do something with those Adsense ads.  Even though ads are driving revenue they're also driving prospects AWAY from your site. It’s almost like you’re throwing opportunity away. 

You need to figure a way to keep Adsense clickers on your site and still continue earning revenue without the Ads. 

After thinking about it for a few weekends, you hit up Google to see what the internet says and you realize you need some sort of digital product to offer. You need something you can sell that you own, that you created, that you can can make an ad creative and replace your Adsense ads with. 

Interesting. 

The problem is you’re not very techie and you’re super new with the process.  You’ve been blogging for 212 days now (that’s when you registered your .com website address with NameCheap) but you still aren’t where you want to be. 

So you start simple by investigating your Google Analytics traffic.  As you start pouring over the data you begin asking questions like:

• Which blog posts have the most engagement? 
• Which posts are getting the most social shares?
• Which posts drive the most traffic? 

You study your numbers for 3 hours and then realize there is one post in particular that is a clear winner.   

So you pop open Microsoft Word and start creating a short, two page, document with screenshots, fun pictures and text and graphics.  This document will be the next logical upgrade; the next logical path that readers of your most popular blog post would want to take. 

Let’s say your most popular blog post was this: 

“8 Internet Tools I Use To Save Time Every Day” 

Your Word document would not only lists the tools (like you do in the blog), but also show the reader how to get started using those tools and how to get immediate results.  Your blog post shared the WHAT but your Word Doc digs into the HOW. 

You spend a few weekends refining the Word Doc and to your surprise it ended up being 6 pages long! 

Awesome now what? 

You convert the document to a PDF and send an email to everyone on your email list about the PDF you’re selling for $4.97.  You also promote it on social media, your blog comments and inside the blog post itself as a link.  You also replace all the ads on your blog with a custom ad you created in Canva. 

A few weeks later you figure out how to add a pop-up on your site that shows the benefits of the PDF to your audience. You notice the pop-up pisses off a few people and your traffic numbers drop a little but you’re starting to get sales. 

In fact, despite the slight fall off in traffic because of the pop-up, blog traffic is averaging 7,405 unique monthly visitors!  And after 2 months, Google Analytics is telling you 97 people per month are buying your $4.97 PDF! 

You quickly bust out your calculator...

You just earned $482.09, without Adsense, selling your own product! 

Amazing! 

Now you’re starting to get the hang of this. 

It took you almost a year to earn about $500 online (you actually kept count: exactly 301 days since you started your blog) 

And now you are getting the hang of this. 

The year is almost over, Christmas is in the air and next year you plan to chart your path to your first $1,000 per month. 

Your Profit Path to $1,000 Per Month 

It’s a new year and a new you! Haha I sound like Oprah which is weird. 

Anyway, you sit down and study how you can scale up to $1,000 per month. 

Since you're naturally very cautious and methodical in the way you do things, you allocate two entire months to researching everything you can about how you can earn more money so you can serve more people. 

Your head is hurting by this point as you’ve listened to every podcast you can think of.  You’ve got Pat Flynn, Entrepreneur On Fire, Amy Porterfield, Rick Mulready and The Side Hustle podcasts burned into your brain! 

It’s hurting! 

But you also have a plan.  After starting your business one year and 2 months ago, you realize you need a higher value offering.  You also realize this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to work twice as hard you just need to be twice as SMART. 

You start an outline for a mini-course centered around your most popular blog post. 

You build an introduction, three short videos that address three questions you keep hearing about your topic and then you record a short conclusion video. 

The videos are only 7 minutes in length and don’t even have you on camera.  It’s just your voice narrating PowerPoint slides.  The course isn't boring though because you don't care about sounding perfect as much as you do about delivering real life-changing value.

After another month of solid work, you edit all the videos (you figured that out by Googling around like a madman, yes it was exhausting).  You upload all the videos to a digital course product and then shoot an email to your email list of 534 subscribers.  

In the email you simply announce you have a new product that can help them get even more value out of the 8 tools you recommended in that blog post. 

You decide to sell the online course at $97.  Yes, it made you gulp because it seems like a lot to ask for... and honestly you feel a little weird asking for that much money, but you’re already making between $400 and $550 every month based on your e-Book sales so if no one buys it’s not really a big deal. 

You’re just using this as a learning opportunity anyway.   

Well it turns out, about half the people on your email list open the email. (which by the way, is an amazing open rate percentage) And of that half, 261, half of those people click your “Buy Now” link. 

And of the 131 people who clicked “Buy Now”, only 20%, 26, ended up on the checkout page.  And of that amount only 5 people actually brought the product. 

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

It was only five people but you just earned $485! That means for this month you now have only a few dollars less than $1,000 in earnings! 

Amazing. 

As the months pass along you learn more strategies for marketing your product using Facebook, Joint Venture Launches with other bloggers in your niche. 

Now It’s Your Turn 

The scenario I offered above is fictional but it is based on proven tactics that can help you earn $100, $500 and even $1,000 dollars per month. 

The proven secret is simple: 

• Build a Blog (90 days) 
• Identify Popular Posts 
• Create a Low Cost Paid Content Upgrade related to each popular post. 
• Invest Earnings From That Low Cost Front End Product into software like Podia, Teachable, New Kajabi or Ontraport, that lets you create a mini-course you can host online and sell at $97 

So now it’s your turn. 

Based on the content in this post, I want you to sit down and chart the practical steps to how you can make $100 online.  Then expand it a bit and write the bullets on how you can earn $500 and even $1,000. 

• What content are you super passionate about that you think also corresponds to market demand?  
• What would an outline for your mini-online course look like?  

Take a few minutes this weekend to brainstorm your niche and your online course content.  Don’t worry about getting this perfect.  We’re going to dive into the details of market selection and course creation in upcoming lessons.  I just want to start getting your gears turning! 

Alright... that's all for today.

I'll see you next week when we'll dig into your Game Plan!