In the former years of building blogs and niche sites, it seems like I wanted to learn the latest and the greatest information when it came to creating successful niche blogs. I’d spend hours consuming case studies and then play testing on my own blogs to my heart’s content.
But in the last few years of building my blogs, I came to a serious realization.
I realized the super secret sauce of creating successful blogs and niche sites. But to truly understand this secret sauce, you should read everything in order.
Skillsets Required to Growing Blogs From 0 -> 2,000 Clicks/Day ($0 -> $5,000+/m)
Let’s have a frank discussion on what it takes to not just grow one blog but five fucking blogs without losing your sanity.
Now that I have at least three of my blogs doing well, I had some time to sit and think about how I grew these blogs. Here’s a fair warning: this is a long email but I believe it holds a valuable message if you read the whole thing.
First, I want to discuss the skillsets required for you to grow your blog from nothing to thousands of visitors a month and generate affiliate revenue. Here we go:
Stage 1: How to Grow a Blog 0 -> 200 Clicks/Day ($0->$1,000/month)
This is the most exciting part as a blogger.
Everything smells new.
The blog is new, the niche might be new.
Including the excitement.
In this phase, you’ll:
- Register your domain name
- Register and claim social media accounts to use in the future
- Setup the WP blog
- Setup a theme
- Learns lots of SEO stuff and your brain will go in circles from sheer excitement
- Publish About, Home, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Affiliate Disclaimer, and Contact pages
- Do tons of keyword research
- Plan topic clusters
- Publish 100-200 articles
- Implement basic monetization methods
- Struggle with consistency
- Google will make your gut flutter with indexing issues and rank your blog like poo dung
- Start an email list but you’ll suck at it and that’s okay
You may feel like a failure on and off… but once you take a pause, you’ll feel proud once things take off in a year or so and you start seeing the fruits of your labour roll in.
Congratulations!
You learned a lot, you succeeded at setting up a blog and actually publishing content, and you felt frustrated a lot.
This is just the start 😉
Stage 2: How to Grow a Blog 200 -> 1000 Clicks/Day ($1,000 -> $3,000/month)
Congratulations! You’ve tasted something most humans haven’t and never will: making a nice, part-time income from a blog and affiliate products and now you want more.
Welcome to one of the best addiction in the world. Let’s see what awaits you in stage 2:
- Conduct a technical SEO audit (and fix big issues)
- Make sure you have a solid internal linking silo structure in place
- Refine the About, Home, and Contact pages
- Create a social media plan since now you have plenty of content to share and plenty of time to grow it
- Continue keyword research and topical map research
- Continue learning on-page SEO
- Continue publishing the next 100-200 articles
- Make sure Google is indexing your content
- Refine your email list offer and keep working at it
Stage 3: How to Grow a Blog 1000 -> 5000 Clicks/Day ($3,000 -> $7,000/month)
Holy shit! Congratulations again!
Now that you’re making around $3,000/month, there’s no turning back. You know there’s no going back. You want to grow this blog to its fullest potential:
- Conduct a technical SEO audit (and fix big issues)
- Keep refining the About, Home, and Contact pages
- Invest in growing 1-2 social media accounts (organically or paid ads)
- Get super serious about growing that email list because you’ll realize that you can make more than one sale/visitor happen over time
- Do a content audit (on-page SEO, information update/edit, image optimization, internal and external linking; may take months or you can choose to incorporate it into a weekly plan along with new content)
- Find content/topic gaps and make them more complete
- Make sure keyword clusters are sexy and on-point
- Make decisions about adding another writer or editor
- Plan your next 100-200 articles
- Make sure internal linking silo structure is lit af
- Test conversions of product tables
- Refine theme
- Reach out to affiliate vendors personally and start building relationships and see if you can set something up with higher commission rates
Sooo, Why’re You Now Repeating Yourself, Moon?
Mind you, please call me the Phoenix. Here’s the answer: In each iteration of expanding and growing your blog, it’s not that you’re necessarily learning anything “new”.
It’s more likely your understanding of each component will become deeper as you refine your skills.
Much, much deeper.
Refining your skillset is where the great money is.
It’s not in something “new” but to understand the fundamentals on a much deeper level and how everything on your site connects to result in search traffic beyond your dreams.
That’s the super secret sauce!
By the way, this isn’t a step-by-step blog growth plan for every blogger; publishing 100-200 pieces of good content is a lot and can take a year or more for beginner and intermediate level bloggers. Set proper expectations based on your current skill level 🙂
In Conclusion
Stop chasing “new” this and “new” that.
Understand that the fundamentals is how serious digital assets are built.
That’s how real online businesses like blogs are built.
Commit to learning and re-learning the fundamentals and applying them on a massive scale over the years and there’s no way you won’t be successful.
Good luck and make sure to drop by the AP FB Community where I answer questions daily!