A great advice I’ve heard while attending a video broadcast by one of my new friends Alejandro Reyes about three weeks ago. While I’m loosely interpreting the words (yeah, I failed to write them down ) meaning still remain the same - if the activity doesn’t generate you income, don’t do it!

Time and effort are two precious things that once wasted - never coming back. And while the content that prompted quote above was a bit different, Alejandro was talking about controversy, basic idea still remains in place. Which brings us to the main question: Do You Know What Makes You Money?

We get so wrapped up in daily activities, problems, needs that quite often we loose the sight of the goals that made us start online business. Yes, I said online business!

Because that is what I hope you treat your blog as. If you are trying to make money with your blog, and it doesn’t mean it has to cover “make money blogging” topic, it should be treated as business! But what perhaps is even more important is the ultimate goal that prompted you to start.

This one can be quite different for each and everyone of us and range from making extra hundred bucks a month to help with family expenses or just get some extra cash to become fully financially independent and provide for your family. But whatever it is, you have to define…

How Are You Going To Achieve You Goal?

If you can’t answer in EXACT steps what you have to do right now to achieve your personal goal - your blog is Not A Business but a hobby. And just as many hobbies it will cost you more than it will generate income. Plain and simple. And there is no magic button you can push that will do it for you!

It is Your Responsibility To Define The Goal and Steps To Achieve It!

And while your steps can be quite different, depending on the goal, perhaps I can assist with defining a small guidelines. These guidelines are based on simple facts:

• You have blog that answers someone’s needs and provides solutions
• You have blog filled with unique a quality content
• You have blog that is setup for monetization without annoying you visitors
• Your blog is failing to deliver on expectations…

As you can see this post is not to teach you how to write for your blog or how to properly monetize but rather “other steps” you need to take to get closer to that ultimate goal. If you need the basics covered I can only recommend you have a look at Expert WordPress system I have just released with my partner Dmitriy.

Steps To Blogging Success

• Don’t Do Anything That Doesn’t Make You Money. Yep, I’m back to the headline because it is extremely important to eliminate from your daily activities everything that fails to bring you closer to your goal. Prioritize your actions for the day and once you have finished all the tasks that generate you income - feel free to engage in other activities.
• Create Optimized Content. While all other steps are extremely important, Content Is The King. Your blog will be alive and prospering only as long as you produce quality content your visitors expect to see. But there is a bit more to it. I have stated - OPTIMIZED for a reason. You have to write your posts or pages to address 2 different types of visitors equally - human readers and Search Engine bots. Be sure to remember what keywords your post need to be optimized for and before you hit that Publish button, sprinkle them into your content.
• Build a list. I know many bloggers hate the thought of doing this but is a MUST if you are planning to achieve your goals. You list doesn’t have to be anything more elaborate that a Digest of Your blog posts on weekly bases like I do on this blog and occasional “relevant” offer. In fact blog and mailing list work quite nicely and help feed one another - blog provides quality content for the list and a subscription option and mailing list provides people with convenience to get the content they liked on your blog delivered directly to their mailbox plus other information related to the topic. It is a win-win situation and failure to build list is one that too many bloggers make. I use and recommend aweber due to the exceptional options they provide and integrated blog broadcast to simplify eZine delivery for you.
• Drive traffic to your blog. This step if extremely important once you have other options stated above covered. Your quality content needs readers and while doing SEO on your posts will help you get visitors from Search Engines on keywords you have optimized (if you do it right) - in my experience it only covers about 45-50% of the total visitors. Don’t forget the importance Social Marketing plays to get you traffic. And I’m not talking about spamming social networks and web 2.0 sites but rather sharing your relevant content with people who are searching for it using those sites and networks. An important distinction.
• Create a product! This second to last step in your blogging for money evolution and one that 99.9% of the bloggers never take. Don’t look at this step as a step away from your blog but rather as an extension of it. You are the expert in your niche, you know your topic inside out, otherwise why would you write about it, right? So it is only natural you create an Info Product (an ebook, report, audio training, video recording, screencast recording, options are many and not limited to anything!) and offer it to your visitors. Important step here is curve out your own, even if very small, sub-niche that NEED a solution to the problem and PROVIDE that solution! Creating a product is not about making another one “me too learning to make money blogging” eBook but rather answer the need of your readers and customers! I will cover more on the topic in other posts.
• Create a symbiotic relationship. And by this I simply mean one thing.. or rather a few things: use blog to establish your authority, build a list and sell your product; use list to drive traffic back to your blog and sell the product; use product to drive traffic back to your blog, build list and sell itself. All the steps are intervened and should be used as a complex and not separate activity. They make perfect sense when used properly and only help each other.

List above is only a suggestion I make and one I follow for myself quite successfully and you will have to determine for yourself what works and what not. But whatever you do for your online business - always remember:

Don’t Do Anything That Doesn’t Make You Money.

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