Using Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation to Succeed

When doing most of the things you do in life, you do them because you have some kind of motivation occurring. There’s a reward delivered by the actions you take. The motivations that you have can be either intrinsic or extrinsic.

Sometimes only one will be present, but at times, both can be as well – and that’s a good thing. You can use these motivations to gain the ability to succeed in whatever you’re attempting to accomplish.

Some people fight their automatic motivation to rebel against completing a task or to help them avoid something they may have a fear of, or uncertainty. But if you learn how to wield the power of this force, you’ll be empowered to put your efforts to things that provide better opportunities and more personal satisfaction in your life.

Defining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the type of motivation that comes from within you. What you gain from this type of motivation is usually a feeling of satisfaction from your actions. You’re led by what you feel.

Those who act based on an intrinsic motivation typically like the journey better than the outcome. For example, there are people who work a job, not because they make plenty of money as their motivation, but because of their passion for the type of work they do.

Sometimes an intrinsic motivation can be linked to a cause or a purpose. For example, someone who grew up with a family member who struggled with a disease may grow up to become a doctor, not for the prestige or pay, but because they want to help others in the same situation, and it makes them feel good to do so.

On the opposite end, extrinsic motivation doesn’t rely on what a person feels or is necessarily passionate about. This can be a motivation that looks for what they gain from doing something.

Instead of becoming a doctor because they want to help someone, they might choose to become a doctor because they want the money or because they want others to think highly of them – maybe even because of parental pressure to go that route.

Instead of being motivated by what’s going on within themselves, they get their motivation from what’s going on outside of themselves. One of the issues that can make it more difficult to reach success based solely on extrinsic motivation is that, because it’s an external motivation, your motivation can change based on the outside situation and there may be nothing you can do to prevent that.

An example would be someone who wanted to become a doctor for the money or for the praise of others. If you found out that you were going to need to work in a setting where there was little or no recognition and the pay wasn’t that great, then your motivation to succeed would be affected and dwindle.

Because what motivated you is gone, you wouldn’t have the same drive to succeed as you would if the motivation was coming directly from within you. You’re less likely to continue to stay in a situation where your motivation isn’t being fed.

If you’re someone who decides to be an entrepreneur because you want to be your own boss to have more time off to spend with your family, you’re more likely to stick with it and see your tasks through to a successful end.

But if you’re someone who wants to be an entrepreneur just because you want to make a lot of money, when times are hard and little or no money is coming in, you won’t have the motivation needed to keep going.

How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Impact Success

Because both of these are motivations, you might think that intrinsic and extrinsic can be used the same way to help you succeed. They can’t. They’re different because the reward system each one brings differs.

But the good thing is that, even though they aren’t the same and don’t work the same way, they can be used in turn to boost the other motivation. For example, what you want outwardly can be used to boost an inward motivation.

It’s the same with intrinsic. What you want within you can be strengthened or more deeply motivated by what goes on externally. People who find their motivation from within often feel more complete with their success goals.

They believe that they can remain motivated for the long haul because they’re not affected by what happens outside of their inner drive. But you can take any extrinsic motivation and allow that to boost your inward motivation.

For example, you might be someone who has a strong desire to help others financially. You’re always giving money or items that others need. Maybe you’re involved in your community and you’re consistently donating to food banks or helping volunteer at an organization that helps the less fortunate.

All of that come from within you. You could have an extrinsic motivation to make more money at your job. So you take steps to level up so you bring home extra in your paycheck solely because you want that additional money to go toward helping others.

That is a way of using both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation jointly to gain inner satisfaction and find the success that you want to have. There is a strong overlap in certain areas of these motivations.

They can work together to help your success, but they can also work together and become an obstacle. The doctor that lives using intrinsic motivation who gets public recognition for helping a patient or saving a life can reach the point where the extrinsic motivation becomes more desirable.

So he begins to change his core beliefs, desires and motivation. Sometimes the two motivations can work in tandem to help you create success and give you a stronger motivation than if you were relying on one or the other.

But often, the extrinsic motivation can start to overshadow intrinsic motivation. That doesn’t mean that you should stick with just one type of motivation and never try to use both at once.

Because if they are used in the right way, together, they can strengthen your will to achieve and do whatever it is you’re trying to do. The key is to know which times you should rely on intrinsic motivation and which times you need to defer to extrinsic motivation.

Which Motivation Is Best for Success?

The answer is that it depends on you. Do you go out to spend time exercising because it makes you feel happy (intrinsic) or because you want to lose weight because you worry about what others think (extrinsic)?

The reason why you want to do something can help you understand which motivation is best for your success. Sometimes, combining the two is clear. You can want to exercise because it makes you happy and because you want to lose weight.

You can want to show up at work because you love your job and because you want the money. Doing what you want to do because you’re basing your actions on an intrinsic motivation satisfies the inner person.

If you gain something external, that’s good. If you don’t, you’re still okay with that.

Extrinsic usually has a “what’s in it for me” at the end of the journey. An example of how intrinsic and extrinsic can differ in daily life is that some people lie because their intrinsic motivation is not to hurt the other person’s feelings.

It makes them happy not to cause someone pain. An extrinsic motivation to lie could be because you don’t want to get in trouble for something you did or didn’t do. People who rely on intrinsic motivation are usually the ones who find success because they have an inner “why” that they rely on to do things.

When times get tough or obstacles crop up, they look within at their why and find the will to keep on going. Those using extrinsic motivation don’t have an inner “why” to fall back on.

It’s up to you to know when and how to use either or both of these types of motivations.

You’ll find that there will be times when your success comes easier because of the intrinsic motivation that you have.

No one can take this away from you. You’re the only one who can lose the inner will to succeed. For example, you join a mastermind group because you love learning about your niche.

However, you’ll also experience days when having an extrinsic motivation makes it easier to succeed. Those who rely on intrinsic motivation can have times where they just don’t feel like doing what needs to get done.

They may have set a goal to finish by a certain time, but then end up being too tired to accomplish a task. Because they don’t rely on the same reward factors that extrinsic motivation does, it’s easier for them to let go of doing something when they don’t feel up to it.

If you’re motivated extrinsically, then you can often see or touch the motivating factor once it’s accomplished. Like smaller clothes with the lost pounds, more money in the paycheck, etc.

Combining Your Motivations for Success

You can choose to let your motivations be either intrinsic or extrinsic. But if you look at a history of successful people, they relied on both. Finding a way to bring both motivations onboard so that they help you work toward your goals is the best way to succeed.

Some people swear that intrinsic motivation is the only way to gain success. Having an inner motivation or intrinsic one pushes you to achieve. You’re not going to give up just because the circumstances or the people change.

It’s true that relying on this type of motivation allows you to be satisfied through the ups and the downs. You’re often grateful for what you have and see the good even when things aren’t going well because you look inward.

But you don’t have to be an either/or person when it comes to how you use motivation. Having an extrinsic motivation can push you to achieve because, at the end of the goal, the reason you were striving bears fruit.

You get the promotion, you get the money, you get the diploma, you buy the car, you purchase the home, etc. Though you can rely on one motivation or the other, learning how to harness the power of both can make you more successful.

The key is to find the underlying strength in both types at the same time or through the same situation and put them to work for you. If you’re someone who wants to go to college because you want to embrace learning and grow your knowledge, that’s intrinsic.

But wanting to do that because it means you can level up in your career is extrinsic. You can mesh the two together and it gives more strength to the motivation to succeed. Though some people say it’s best to focus on one or the other type of motivation, it’s not – because everyone has some type of inner motivation just like they have an external one.

It’s not important that you choose only one way of motivating yourself and stick with that. What’s important is that you know how much to let either type of motivation drive you.

You can easily get out of balance by relying solely on one or the other just like you can get out of balance if you use both but let one have more weight on the decisions that you make.

For example, if you’re someone who relies only intrinsic motivation, you might be on salary and love your job and support the business to the point that you take on too much work and spend too many hours without receiving any reward for doing so.

Or, you might have trouble saying no to a coworker who wants you to do some of their tasks, too. By balancing the intrinsic with the external, you can still love your job, but because the payoff of not earning more for spending more time isn’t there, you won’t stick around for all those extra hours because there’s nothing in it for you.

Boosting Your Motivations

There are different ways that these two types of motivation are boosted to give you maximum ability to achieve success. You’ll want to look at these ways and pick the ones that can help you the most.

Intrinsic relies more heavily on internal happiness or satisfaction. Gaining better work or relationship skills can boost your intrinsic motivation. The areas where you might find these would be in taking a class or course, going to a meeting, networking with others in your field or with others who also find satisfaction in their job or relationship.

Many intrinsic motivations are intangible. You can’t touch it, but you can feel it. That’s why it’s important for people who rely on intrinsic motivation to practice positive self-talk. Because much of their action taking is associated with the feelings they get from the tasks they accomplish.

This motivation often requires more introspect than extrinsic motivation. People who use intrinsic motivation need to be able to look within themselves and be able to acknowledge truthfully what they want.

Not being truthful causes them to get discouraged because their “why” isn’t authentic. Those who want to boost their intrinsic motivation can find success by following what feels right to them.

It may go against what everyone else is saying or what’s always been done in a traditional way. The things that can boost your extrinsic motivation are the things that matter to you as far as your life goals.

These people want to achieve for a specific purpose that usually doesn’t relate to feelings. Though some say that an extrinsic motivation is more self-centered, the truth is that it’s human nature to want rewards and recognition for what you gain or do and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Your extrinsic motivation is boosted every time you receive something related to your efforts. When you perform well at your job and get a raise, that strengthens your extrinsic motivation to push yourself to continue succeeding.

Connections with people you admire is another way that extrinsic motivation gets boosted. An example of this would be if your hard work earns you a lot of focus from others and it comes to the attention of those you consider your role models.

The reward of connecting with someone you admire solidifies your motivation. Giving yourself the rewards, intrinsically or extrinsically, that you need will help you not only to feel satisfied with your efforts but will lead to a greater chance that you’ll achieve all your goals and reach success in whatever area you’re striving in.

30 Day Traffic Blueprint – Get More Page Views

30 Day Traffic Blueprint - Get More Page Views Blog Header

Need blog traffic? Then you need the 30 Day Traffic Blueprint. If you follow these ideas, you’ll have new website visitors in 30 days or less!

30 Day Traffic Blueprint Pinterest Pin

30 Day Traffic Blueprint

One of the most frustrating things for an online entrepreneur is the fact that they possess the necessary drive and passion to lead a niche, but in spite of their eagerness to learn, end up confused or struggling to generate traffic for their site.

You can have the best products or services imaginable, and content that rivals any professional publication – but if you can’t get eyes on your site pages, your success will grow stagnant until you can figure out this all-important element.

Website traffic is a combination of pulling people to your site based on what you’ve put there and how you’ve purposefully built it – and pushing them there from offsite using strategic plans that get people clicking on your links.

They can be both free and paid measures, and once you know how to integrate a blueprint of best traffic practices, you’ll find your financial success soaring thanks to the expedited traffic tactics you’ve been using.

Below, you’ll find a 30-day implementation plan that allows you to integrate bite-sized traffic methods that both push and pull traffic to your site pages, allowing you to build a list or sell your products and services with ease.

Day 1: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Getting Your SEO in Order

Before all else, from day one, you want to adhere to a traffic-positive SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. SEO ranges from basic measures to more advanced elements, but you can start by doing simple things that help search engines correctly index your site so it’s presented to the correct audience.

This includes everything from categorizing and tagging your posts for relevancy to making sure your settings encourage search bots to visit and index your pages. You’ll want to build an interlinking structure between pages periodically and organically, too.

Even something as simple as uploading a sitemap for search engines can help them navigate your domain so that you have a higher chance of the right pages showing up for your target audience.

SEO is as much about things you shouldn’t do as it is things you should. For example, keyword stuffing is something to be avoided, as is thin content or duplicated content on your domain.

Day 2: Push Traffic to Your Site By Creating a YouTube Video

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet next to Google. If you want to get traffic flowing to your site from an outside source, creating a channel filled with videos on this social media platform is a great way to do it.

YouTube videos don’t have to be excessive and length. You typically just need to optimize your channel in each video for search engines and make sure you provide valuable and interesting content that makes people want to watch and listen.

In order to push traffic to your site through the use of YouTube videos, you want to make sure you provide a link to the page you want them to go to, along with a call to action that guides them in what to do.

You can send viewers to your lead magnet page in order to build a list, to a specific blog post that dives deeper into a topic, or even to a sales page for a product that you have launched or are an affiliate for.

Day 3: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Writing a Long-Tail Keyword Post

Today, you will be pulling traffic into your site by focusing on writing a long tail keyword post. Too many bloggers focus on broad keywords, such as diet. While these are great words to rank for, they are harder to get traction with.

Instead of starting out with broad keywords, it’s better to create a focus on long tail keywords that have less competition and are easier to rank for. A good example of this would be a keyword phrase such as diet for women over 50.

You can find long tail keywords by starting with a broad keyword using a keyword tool that is free or paid. Even if you types the word diet into Google, you will see a long tail automated result that says diet plan for weight loss.

You want to use the long tail keyword phrase in the title of your blog post, in the URL of the post, and sprinkled a couple of times within your post, along with additional similar phrases.

A similar phrase to the one above might be something such as weight loss diet plan. you don’t want to stuff the post full of keyword phrases to the point where it doesn’t make sense or it is obvious.

You should soon see traffic coming into your site after the search bots have indexed it and are presenting it to interested parties who search for that phrase on their search engine.

30 Day Traffic Blueprint Instagram

Day 4: Push Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Pin

Today you’re going to be working on pushing traffic to your site using Pinterest. Pinterest is a great viral social networking site because it allows people to search and share bookmarks to sites that have information they want.

The bookmarks are created in the form of an image, usually vertical, that includes some sort of text to entice people to pin it to their own board to save it. These pins are categorized into a relevant topic.

For instance, a user may have a board for their weight loss, home decor, parenting tips, recipes, and more. Getting your pin shared virally across many different boards for your niche is a great way to push traffic to your site.

If you aren’t familiar with how to create a Pinterest pin, you can use a tool such as Canva, which has readymade templates you can use with your own image and text before sharing it on Pinterest.

There are many marketers and entrepreneurs who collaborate in an effort to get their site more traffic. all you have to do is join a collaborative board where you will pin one or two of your pins to your site, and share several of someone else’s pins to your own board so they can do the same for you.

Day 5: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Popular Product Review

Today, you will be working on pulling traffic into your site by creating an in depth review on a popular product. Find a product that is relevant to your niche that is selling well with consumers.

Then, create an in depth product review that covers the product features, benefits, drawbacks, and any tips or hacks you have on how to use it. It’s best if you can find something that is just now taking off in popularity, rather than something that has been on the market for years.

When it’s a new product that is coming out and consumers are showing a lot of interest in it, you will be able to capitalize on the buzz surrounding the product by having one of the first or only blog posts that details everything about it before the customer spends money.

You can use a mixture of generic keyword phrases, such as best digital camera for beginners, and specific brand keyword phrases, such as Canon EOS Rebel SL3 review. This will allow you to pull in people who don’t yet know what to buy as well as those who just need reassurance that what they’re about to purchase is the right decision.

If you are able to pull in traffic using product reviews, you may want to have a lead magnet in the form of a buyer’s guide. That way, if they land on your site to read one product review, you can get them on your list by providing a comprehensive and helpful downloadable guide.

Day 6: Push Traffic to Your Site By Sharing Links on Facebook

Today’s traffic push will be built by linking to your content on Facebook. There are three different ways you can generate traffic using this social media site. First, you can use your own personal profile.

This may or may not be effective depending on who you have friended on the site. However, you can also use a Facebook page that you have created for your brand. If you are consistently sharing content on your page and keeping consumers interested, this could be a great way to share links to your blog posts, products or lead magnets whenever you have something new.

Another place you can share links to your site on Facebook is in groups that you have created. You may also be able to share in groups that someone else created, but you will need to check the rules and make sure that you abide by them.

If you are sharing from a group that you created, it’s often better to keep the group public. That way, whenever someone in your group enjoys the content, they can share your post in the group with their own followers and increase the traffic to your site.

Day 7: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Offering a Free Niche Report

Everyone likes to get something for nothing. You can create a free niche report that you either offer in a blog post or on a lead magnet page that address is a pressing concern for your target audience.

You can create a PDF that your target audience can download whenever they visit your site that can help them learn a new skill, solve a problem, or achieve a goal that they have been pursuing.

If you create a blog post about this free nature report, you can use certain keywords such as free weight loss plan, for example. Then, you can explain in the blog post what is in the report and how they can download it by signing up to your list.

Day 8: Push Traffic to Your Site By Using Instagram’s Link in Bio

Instagram is a site that is based on a certain aesthetic that you provide to your target audience. It is where you can create an account primarily fueled by images that are paired with text, along with short videos.

Instagram allows you to include a link in your bio, so you should strategically choose where you send your followers. Ideally, you will be pushing them to a place on your domain that allows you to build a list.

You may also want to send them to a specific blog post that it helps you earn money through the promotion of your products or those of someone else using an affiliate link, but make sure you always reference the opt in offer.

Whenever you create an effective Instagram post, not only will you want to tag it with the most relevant hashtags, but you will also want to remember to include your call to action that has readers navigate to your “link in bio.”

Day 9: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Writing a Pillar Blog Post

If there’s one great way to pull traffic into your site, it’s by spending a day thoughtfully developing a pillar blog post. these are long blog posts that are not only optimized for search engines, but written specifically to dive deep into a topic for your target audience.

This is a place where you will showcase the level of your expertise and influence within a niche. You want to make sure that your pillar blog post has a goal in mind, such as cementing your brand message, helping you build a list, or make sales.

These are called pillar blog post because they are supposed to be created as a foundation for your blog that can support the rest of your content and goals. This should be one of the most interesting posts that you have created to date.

Make sure you are not simply regurgitating a bunch of facts and numbers in this post, but instead engaging your audience and even using a multimedia approach that combines text, images, and video.

Day 10: Push Traffic to Your Site By Creating TikTok Snippets

Pushing traffic to your site does not have to be a task that takes a long time. In fact, there are video snippets on social media apps like TikTok that are only 15 seconds long, yet have the potential to generate traffic to your site.

You can go viral on this app by using trends, songs and sounds that puts you on the for you page of your target audience. You want to make sure that you have a link back to your site in your profile’s bio and use a short call to action to get viewers there.

Day 11: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Post About a Competitor

The competition in your niche is made up of individuals who keep a close eye on what is being said about them. Savvy entrepreneurs know that they need to keep an eye on the messaging that is presented to the target audience about their brand, products, and services.

 You can pull traffic to your website by creating a blog post about a competitor in your niche. This should be a positive blog post, not one where you are bashing the other person. When you do this, the competition will be aware of your post and share it with their email subscribers, social media followers, and customers.

Anything that elevates their status as a niche leader will be something worthy of a promotion to your domain. Don’t worry about speaking positively about someone who is your competition.

You are putting yourself in a position to form joint ventures with this person and capture the names and email addresses of their audience, which should be the same as yours, so it’s w in-win situation for all.

Day 12: Push Traffic to Your Site By Offering to Guest Blog for Others

Guest blogging is a tactic that many marketers used for years as a way to get backlinks. However, in addition to the SEO benefits it provides, it’s also a great traffic generator. Other online bloggers will welcome the break they receive from allowing you to blog in their place for a day.

There’s not one entrepreneur alive who doesn’t have a mile long list of tasks they need to handle. The key is to find a blogger whose audience is a close match for your own, and then create a blog post that showcases your worth as a niche leader.

You want to make sure you have it in your agreement that the blog post will link back to your own site, where you will hopefully send them to a lead magnet page so you can capture their contact information and market to them in the future.

Day 13: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Mentioning an Influencer

Influencers are in great demand these days for the promotion of products. But they also need to position themselves well in order to get those promotion opportunities that pay well.

Therefore, you can leverage their name in one of your blog posts about them in a positive light to generate targeted traffic to your pages. For example, if you are in the weight loss niche and you know of an influencer who has a large following, you can create a post about their niche knowledge and influence in the community and how much you admire their passion for it.

Make sure they are made aware of the post by sending them a link, and you will often find that they then share the link to your blog with their fans and followers because it’s something that shows them in a good light as a leader.

Influencers aren’t necessarily product creators or even affiliates. They often start out organically simply sharing their passion or interest in a topic with others. Then relevant brands take notice of their ability to sway others and offer them money in exchange for a promo on their social channel.

Day 14: Push Traffic to Your Site By Using Paid Ads

There are many marketers who will advise you to stay away from using paid advertisements to generate traffic for your site. However, anyone can get a boost for their site without risk if they simply set a budget for their ad campaigns that does not go above and beyond what they can afford.

You might want to consider learning the ropes for paid ads on sites like Facebook and apps like Instagram and TikTok. You never want to go into it blindly until you take a course or watch videos on how to succeed with paid ads.

You can also put a little money into traffic generation using solo ads, which are emails that are sent out to another marketers list, where you have paid for a specific message to be sent on your behalf.

Day 15: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Interviewing an Expert

If you are an individual who has an interest or need to know something in a particular niche, you will often look for experts to guide you. As a niche blogger, you can pull your target audience into your site by showcasing your interview skills and the knowledge of another expert.

Many niche experts enjoy being asked to conduct an interview, because it heightens their position as a leader. For your interview, you can conduct it via text, video, or audio, depending on what you and the expert you’ll be interviewing most comfortable with.

Similar to guest blogging and influencer traffic, expert interviews have the same ego boosting effect, where the other person is likely to showcase the interview on your site to their own followers and subscribers.

Before you conduct your interview, you want to make sure you spend a little time adequately understanding what this particular person believes and is known for so that you can tailor your questions for them, rather than simply asking broad niche questions.

Day 16: Push Traffic to Your Site By Sending Out an Email

Today, you are going to push some traffic to your site by simply sending out an email to your subscribers. This is something many marketers forget to do, believe it or not. They go through the effort of creating a lead magnet and building their list, but only email them when there is something they want to sell or promote.

In addition to making money from your email subscribers, you also want to get them used to visiting your blog posts to absorb the information you’ve provided. They will often use the social sharing buttons you’ve enabled to help your content go viral.

Day 17: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Creating Content Based on Site Statistics

Today’s traffic generating task will be to focus on the statistics your site provide you with and do more of what is getting you noticed. You can go into your cPanel and see which keywords and phrases are pulling in traffic at this time.

This will give you some insight into what people are interested in enough to click through a link and go to your domain. You can either take that particular keyword phrase and put a spin on it so that it is slightly different for more traffic or do something related to the same topic.

You might be able to look at other statistics and gather information that will help you as well. For example, if you notice a certain geographic location or demographic that is visiting your site and consuming your information more, you can hone in on that data and tailor your content for them.

Day 18: Push Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Blog-Hosted Paid Product

Today is a traffic task that will require a little more effort than some others. When you have a blog, you have the option to create posts that are public or password protected. Most people simply use the public option.

However, you can create a simple product that is hosted on your blog and send buyers there to login and access the information they have paid for. For example, you might create a 30 day weight loss challenge, where each day includes a tip and motivation behind a password protected blog post.

Even though they are password protected, Google and other search engines can still index the page to some degree. It will simply show up as a protected page, but the title of the post will still be visible to whoever is searching for the information.

So for instance, you might title your blog post: 30-Day Weight Loss Challenge Day 1. when visitors land on your site and see that they need a password, they can use your contact form to get in touch about how they can access the information.

Not only does this help you get sales, but it’s always a good idea to have your customers revisiting your blog on a regular basis where they can see your most current blog post in the sidebar as well as the engagement you are getting, if you are using those widgets.

Day 19: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Response Blog Post

Blogging is not just about coming up with your own ideas to pull in traffic. Another good way to generate interest in your site is to respond to someone else on your blog. This is frequently done on video social sites such as YouTube.

Someone will make a video, and another person will make a video response to the original video. You can do the same with blog posts. If another site or blogger has published content that you want to expand on or that you disagree with, you can create a response blog and link back to the original blogger.

That way, both posts are ranking in social media and you are able to siphon off some of the people who are searching for that information, yet still being ethical enough to link back to the original content.

Day 20: Push Traffic to Your Site By Using News Aggregators

As a site owner, one way that you can push traffic to your domain is to make sure it’s available for news aggregators. People will subscribe to a feed based on keywords or certain publications, so that they don’t miss anything.

You can submit your site to news or content aggregators such as Feedly, Panda, GetPocket, Google News or Flipboard. For most news aggregators, you’ll create a publisher account and enter a description of the content with an RSS feed.

Day 21: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Capitalizing on Trends and News

One great way to bring traffic into your site is to pay attention to what is going on in your niche on a regular basis. You want to be the first one blogging about certain trends or news that is hitting the online airwaves.

We just talked about submitting your own site to news aggregators, but you also want to be subscribed to those that will alert you to breaking news and information about your niche.

You can also log in daily to find something on a consumer or trade site, but you also want to pay attention to press releases and news outlets that will be discussing what’s happening in your niche that you can discuss in a way that helps you bring new visitors to your domain.

For example, if you have a diet blog, you might search for that word on Google, go to the news tab, and see an article about a study that says a plant based or Mediterranean style diet adds 10 years to your lifespan.

This would be a good opportunity for you to showcase the news that has just come out by giving your opinion about this idea or by sharing tips on how people can adopt that specific diet with ease.

Day 22: Push Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Press Release

Press releases put out by companies and brands in your niche are a great way to get a jump start on traffic when you watch for news coming out. But you can also be the one creating press releases for your own brand and business to gain the attention of others.

You can create a press release for a new site, project or product you have launching and submit it to PR sites like Newswire. There are templates you can find for press releases so that it will be easy for you to write one, since they’re written more like a news release than a blog article.

Day 23: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Curating with Links

Curation is a fantastic form of information sharing that allows you to pull in traffic from other source’s content. This is not a situation where you are plagiarizing other sites, but instead gathering short snippets of information from their content to quote or share and contribute to them with an active link.

You can create something like a blog post that showcases a dozen experts in your niche. You can quote each of the sites or bloggers that you curate from and then add your own commentary about what you’ve shared from them.

For example, if you curate from one expert who shares a great tip about mindful eating and listening to your hunger cues, you can add your own thoughts about how initially, the audience may end up throwing away food, but eventually, they’ll learn to plate less.

Bloggers pay attention to incoming links, so when your blog post contributes the share to them, they’ll see it, and usually share the blog post with their followers as a way to highlight their expertise.

You can curate many forms of information – from text quotes to images, video and audio. You never want to curate anything fully, like an entire article or podcast. Instead, take a small, bite-sized taste of what they have to offer, share it with the link to the full original one, and add your $0.02.

Day 24: Push Traffic to Your Site By Self-Publishing on Amazon

Becoming a published author is a great way to increase branding and exposure in your niche. Self-publishing on Amazon in digital format is a quick and easy way to drive traffic to your site.

There are step-by-step instructions on Kindle showing you how to go through the technical steps, and you can create a publication that’s a short read (as little as 15 minutes) or a full-length book if you want to.

You’re able to link to your site and social accounts within your Kindle book. Make sure your topic is something that will be in-demand. If you want to, you can also put the item on other self-publishing platforms, too.

Day 25: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Outperforming Top Ranking Blog Posts

Right now, pick a topic in your niche and search for it on Google. You want to look at one of the top performing blog posts on that topic and dissect the post to see what they’re doing so that you can not only emulate their success, but overpower it.

For example, let’s say you typed in “how to make money as an influencer.” You can see several blogs in the top search results page and you want to reverse engineer how they did it.

You’ll be able to look at certain elements, such as the title (and what keywords are used in it), keyword phrases used throughout, the tone and style of the writing, what elements they’re using such as a table of contents, what inter-site links they are using, the length of the post, any examples and images they’re sharing, and more.

You want to create a checklist of sorts that allows you to do all of the same things in terms of keywords, length, and widgets or plugins. But you want to also notice what’s missing – what they haven’t done – so that you can add to your post to make it out-perform the competition.

Day 26: Push Traffic to Your Site By Networking with the Right People

Networking is very important to the traffic success of a site. You can push people to your posts by simply getting to know the right people. These are the niche leaders who are good at sharing with their audience.

They’re the ones who know how to find great content, tag the right people and highlight the best of what you have. You don’t want to network with people and spam or tag them to the point they block you – but be strategic about networking and share your content organically in your feed on social media so they’ll pick up on it and help you generate more traffic.

Day 27: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Repurposing Your Existing Content

Repurposing content is one of the easiest ways to increase traffic for your site. It’s all about turning one piece that you created into multi media formats. So let’s start with a text blog post.

You can use it as a transcript and record an audio podcast episode to embed on your blog. You can do the same with video, and either be on the screen or use a slide presentation to highlight the bulletpoints.

You can even use content as an image, in the form of infographics paired with summary text that help bring more traffic to your blog. You can, of course, do the opposite with all of these – start with a video you made and turn it into a text blog, and so on.

Day 28: Push Traffic to Your Site By Using Podcasts

Podcasts are growing in popularity, and you can easily drive traffic to your blog by creating a marketing plan for your show. You need to have interesting topics and guests to build an audience.

Once you’ve secured those, make sure you include a mention of the site in the beginning and end of your episode, and place a live hyperlink in the show notes so people can find their way to your blog to learn more.

Day 29: Pull Traffic to Your Site By Creating a Case Study or Series

If you want to make your site more sticky and get more eyes on your posts, you might want to consider creating a series or case study to share. Blogs are often informative and educational, but a series or case study keeps people coming back.

You can buy a course and implement it, sharing your results in a case study format. Or, simply create a numbered series, such as 14-day series that they can follow along with as you teach.

This gives you the opportunity to interlink on your site because you’ll be linking to the previous and next parts of the case study or series on each blog post. Plus, they can sign up to your list to get notifications of when the next part is ready.

Day 30: Push Traffic to Your Site By Participating in Forums

Forums are often overlooked by marketers. But it’s where the average person goes to feel safe discussing issues with others who have the same problems and concerns. That’s where an expert like you can step up and serve the audience, providing thoughtful replies to their posts.

Traffic will come from your signature file, which is a text or image-based hyperlink back to your site that shows up under every comment or post that you make. Make a plan to show up once a day or a couple of times per week.

Generating traffic to your site, or pulling it in organically, is a task that simply requires a commitment of time and creativity. You can’t do any step once and expect it to pay off for months and years to come.

You may even want to outsource some of these ideas to others, such as having a freelance service provider write and submit a press release about your blog or products to certain sites – or having them repurpose your content for you to free up some of your time.

A Marketer’s Guide to Persuasion Profits

When you’re working to build an online empire as a marketer, you have many skills to learn – from technical steps to strategic ones. When it comes to technical issues, there’s little, if any wriggle room on how to do things.

But with strategy, you’ll find a wide range of views on what works best to do things like build a list, get someone to click a buy button, or follow through on some other call to action you desire.

One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that you need to master the art of persuasion. Whether you’re trying to convince someone to hand over their contact information in exchange for a free gift – or urging a consumer to buy your product before the price goes up, persuasion is what will make the endeavor a success or failure.

There are five primary things you need to understand when working on your ability to persuade your audience. Once you’re capable of grasping these issues, you’ll be able to put forth a formidable campaign that easily and quickly helps you convert your visitor with a specific action step.

Persuasion Starts with Credibility of the Source

The foundation of your ability to convince a stranger to do something with your online business lies in their opinion of the presence you have established on the Internet. If you have failed to create a brand, your visitor may not want to take the risk of spending money or investing in any way with you – even spending their time with you or giving their contact information to you.

If you have done the bare minimum to convince people of your niche expertise, they may decide to go with another leader who shows more commitment and dedication to their needs.

But if you have laid a strong foundation where you have showcased your knowledge, it will be easier for you to persuade your audience in whatever you want them to do. Consumers are always looking for credibility when they are considering spending money with someone.

Your credibility will be built with the things that you share in terms of content. But it’s also made up of other criteria. For example, the accuracy of the information you put out has to be high.

If you are guessing about things or slapping up content that is erroneous, your visitors will flee to another site because they won’t be able to trust your recommendations and advice.

Another thing they will be looking for is whether or not you are honest with them. There are many online marketers who engage in everything from telling little white lies to those who turn out to be complete scammers.

If you are creating a product or working as an affiliate marketer, it’s imperative that you learn how to persuade people without having to lie. Consumers can see through most lies and hype, and it will almost always backfire on you in the long run to be anything less than honest and ethical.

Another thing they will be looking for when trying to determine whether or not you are a credible resource is how well liked you are in the community. While it’s not a popularity contest, social proof gives consumers the peace of mind they need to go through with an action step that supports you.

Convert Visitors with a Targeted Message

One way you can connect with your visitors and persuade them to take action is to have a clear and concise message. Most of you who are reading this report have landed on a website or blog that was confusing, disorganized, and left you bewildered as to what you were supposed to do next.

Whether you are selling your own product or promoting something as an affiliate, you always want to start by conveying the benefits of the product or strategy before you cover the features.

People are almost always in a mindset of, “What’s in it for me?” They are focused on their own needs, and there is nothing wrong with that. So you want to paint the picture of how their life will improve if they take your advice.

When you get to the facts and key points to be made, you want to list them in order of importance to your prospective audience – like an inverted pyramid, with the biggest ones first.

You may even need to casually repeat certain main points that you want them to absorb to make sure the point gets across. If you’re writing sales copy, don’t focus on how long it needs to be, but rather what information your audience needs to know, which will be a mixture of details about a product and the emotional impact it will have on their life.

You always want to tap into the emotional response they will be focused on from the past, present, or future. You can convey empathy with them based on the emotions they have experienced that may include anger, frustration, sadness, confusion, fear, etc., but also where they are right in that moment – the split in the road where they get to possibly carve out a better future

When you are painting a picture for your audience, you want to ensure that you have a mixture of showcasing the pain you know they’re going through and what they will gain if they take your advice and follow through on the next step.

Keep in mind that many consumers can pick up on the tone that you are using in your content, whether it’s a blog post or sales copy. Make sure that your tone matches the goal that you have to persuade them to do something.

For example, if you want them to trust you and feel comfortable enough handing over their contact details to get on your list and be nurtured in their niche, then you don’t want to have a harsh and brutal tone that intimidates them.

There are some instances where a brutal and blunt tone of voice does work well. There are many people who want someone to not coddle them and instead push them toward their goals, such as weight loss.

You always want your content to come across as if you are writing to a friend, the reader. They should never feel that the content is for everyone, even though logically they know that it is.

Consumers Are Often Swayed By One Type of Medium

Persuasion is a strategic tool you can use in a variety of ways. In order to reach your audience, you have to be able to speak their language. In this case, it means conveying your message in a media format that they feel most comfortable with.

Different niche markets and demographics have different preferences, as do individuals within those groups. For example, people who have a short attention span often prefer to watch videos that are under three or 10 minutes in length.

There are some people who hate video, and instead prefer to read text so that they can skim at their own pace. You will also have those who prefer to see messages distilled in a single image, such as an infographic.

And others will turn to audio, such as a podcast or audiobook to hear the message without having to be focused on it visually at that time. Many people like to use audio to absorb information if they are multitasking, such as exercising, cleaning, commuting, or even relaxing in a bath.

Make sure that you take time to investigate the most common media formats for your niche. Not only will the niche itself often reflect a particular preference for video, text, images or audio, but you may find these preferences depend on where they are being placed.

For example, you may find that your target audience prefers and is more easily persuaded by text based content on your blog or on social media, but on sales pages, they convert higher with a video sales letter, or at least a hybrid version that includes text.

You’re going to need to analyze more than just the media format itself. For example, don’t just automatically assume that you can make a 20 minute video sales letter and have it convert as well as a text based sales letter.

It may turn out that your audience only responds positively to the persuasive efforts when the video is no more than 3 minutes total. If you are using text, many things can affect those conversions as well, including the font style that’s used, the size of the font and spacing, the length of your sentences and paragraphs, and more.

Positioning of Your Content Is Key to Conversions

The ability that you have to persuade people may depend on where you are trying to do it. For example, many people don’t like being persuaded to buy something directly in their email inbox.

They see it as spam in some cases. However, they may respond more positively if your email to them directs them to your blog, which is then shown to be a valuable piece of content that ultimately directs them to something for sale.

You’ll want to test the waters and see how your audience responds to your efforts of persuasion in many different places. For example, you’ll want to start by determining which social networking sites house your target audience.

You may find that you are able to create a thriving group on Facebook, and easily convince people on that site to take action on your advice. But when you go to Instagram and try to get the same reaction, it falls flat.

Persuasive content is used everywhere that you will be communicating with your audience online. You can start by practicing on your blog posts. Get in the habit of making sure you have generated a targeted message, as we previously discussed, and end each post with a call to action.

That doesn’t mean you have to be selling something in every blog post. But consumers like it when they walk away with a purpose after reading content that has inspired and motivated them to make changes.

Another place you can go to persuade your audience is on social sites and forums. Both of these platforms allow you to use relevant wording and connect with the audience in an emotional and factual manner.

It also allows you to enjoy what’s known as social proof. If you’re strictly trying to persuade people via email, there is no social proof that they can see that tells them others are following your leadership.

But on social media platforms, you will see like buttons, share buttons, and comments that all work to prove to your audience that others are taking your insight and advice seriously.

Leveling Up with an Analysis of Your Persuasive Efforts

As you begin methodically investing in your ability to persuade your target audience to take action, you want to make sure that you don’t ignore the results or assume you know the outcome.

You want to consistently tweak and alter what you are doing to see if you can improve your persuasion abilities. You may find that initially, everything you tried had a lackluster response.

But by split testing certain styles and strategies, you are able to begin gaining traction and getting the results that you want. You can do this with every aspect of your online communication.

From where you post to the tone of your content, the media format you choose and your own ability to grow your brand as a credible source – all of it will have a direct impact on whether your visitor walks away unimpressed or takes a leap of faith and engages with you as you requested.

You will find some things didn’t work at all, while others had a small, positive effect. You may have to abandon certain strategies, and take those that performed a little and tweak them until they are hitting it out of the ballpark for you.

You will have to track a variety of statistics, including bounce rates or heat maps of where your visitors are exiting your content so that you know what part of your sales copy or site is causing readers to abandon you.

Make sure you are always keeping an eye out for what your competitors are doing in the niche. You may find that some of them are utilizing a strategy, tone or slant that you had not considered yet.

That doesn’t mean you go and copy them. But it does give you insight into understanding what it is your target audience responds better to so that you can craft your own approach that is competitive in the marketplace.

Learning how to persuade people is something that may feel intimidating to newer online marketers. You may feel like an impostor trying to present yourself as a leading expert if you are just getting started.

However, unless you can muster up the confidence to put yourself out there as a competitive brand, and take the action steps needed to strategically improve your efforts, you will be unable to get the results that you want and need.

How to Persevere Through Setbacks as an Online Entrepreneur

All successful online entrepreneurs face setbacks. If you haven’t had one yet, it’s coming. The people who you discover once had an online business but quit after something negative happened, didn’t learn the power of perseverance.

You don’t have to be the entrepreneur with the most talent or knowledge. You just have to be someone who knows how to hang in there when setbacks hit. Being able to overcome obstacles, learn from mistakes and keep pursuing your dream is what will set you apart from those who fail.

Every Setback Can Become a Motivating Force

The problem with setbacks isn’t the situation itself. It’s how you respond to the situation. That’s why you’ll have some people who will endure many hard knocks when they start an online business and they go on to be wildly successful.

They learned to take that setback and allow it to motivate them. This goes back to the importance of a formidable mindset. If you think that a setback that occurs will stop you, then it will.

That’s because when many people have a setback, they just quit. They feel overwhelmed, don’t know what to try next or how to solve the problem. They might even feel shame or think the problem is insurmountable.

There’s no such thing as a problem that can’t be solved. It might not be solved the way you’d hoped it would, but it will reach a conclusion. But as an online entrepreneur, what you have to guard against is the fear.

As soon as a setback occurs a lot of people get scared. The fear sets in and they stop trying. Maybe they had a great idea for a product launch. So they went all in and set up the launch and were so excited when the day arrived that the product went live.

Then nothing happened. The product didn’t do well. Or, it got negative feedback. Maybe they announced their online business and were eagerly waiting for the hordes of people who would sign up for their list.

But when they checked the stats, they discovered that only one person signed up – and it was a relative or a friend. Or worse – not even family or friends signed up. That can make any entrepreneur feel like a failure.

If it happened to you, that setback can become your mountain. You suddenly don’t feel good enough. You feel like you can’t cross the street successfully, much less reach the top of this mountain that’s landed in the center of all your hopes as an entrepreneur.

There’s a reason why some roads in mountainous areas are tunneled through the mountain. It’s because there’s no way around the mountain, so the highway department went through it.

The mountain, which was the setback to travel progress, didn’t move – just the determination of the highway department did. The mountain motivated the people to find another way.

That’s how you need to look at every setback. So what if one setback happened and the idea or project didn’t work? Find another way. It’s okay if you don’t know what that way is right now.

You just need to forge ahead and concentrate on finding that other path instead of quitting. If you quit, you will never know how successful you could have been if you hadn’t.

Let the Setback Become Your Mentor

A setback never just happens. They’re not magically willed into existence and it’s not a matter of whether or not you were unlucky. There’s always a reason it occurs. As an entrepreneur, it’s up to you to find out why the setback happened.

When setbacks land in your lap and threaten to derail your progress, it’s due to an cumulative effect. For example, a project launch that flops isn’t because you launched on a Friday versus a Tuesday.

People still buy on Fridays. But if you were too busy to properly market the project then that could be the first step that headed toward a setback. Then if the designer, writer or ad manager you hired did a poor job working on or advertising the launch and it didn’t resonate well with the audience, that’s your second step.

If you throw in the towel because a setback happened, you need to take a hard look at your actions. You might feel that you did the best that you could. But did you really?

Examine the situation to see if you took shortcuts.

Did you accept that the product was good enough instead of doing your very best? Look to see if you actually knew what audience to gear the product launch toward. Setbacks aren’t your enemy.

They can become your mentor if you allow them to be. They can teach you to always have a plan B. If you’ve had a setback and it’s taught you how to be ready with another idea, another launch, another project, then the setback will have shown you that when one way doesn’t work, you adjust and move on.

When you experience a setback, it stings. It can feel awful. Setbacks can make you question your skills, your knowledge and your future as an entrepreneur. But they can also teach you that you will get through the emotions attached to a setback and be able to overcome the moment.

So the next time something goes wrong, you’ll be able to choose a path based on experience and you won’t be caught up in the emotional struggle. You’ll be able to look back and know that a setback doesn’t have to be the end.

Entrepreneurs will often associate failure with who they are personally but setbacks, when overcome, can show you how strong you are. They can test your level of determination, your motivation and your ability to think through hard things.

When you have a setback it can become a mentor that holds you accountable. They force you to look at every step to see what happened – what you shouldn’t have done as well as what you should have.

All of this helps you to be able to grow your business leadership. Setbacks help you learn to not make excuses when they happen, but to become the best leader that you can be. So allow yourself to learn from them.

Setbacks Make You a Better Entrepreneur

If you’re like most people, the thought of having to deal with a setback isn’t appealing in the least. That’s because no one likes trouble. Going through disappointment, failure and the stress it brings isn’t the number one item on anyone’s bucket list.

Once you let a setback be your mentor, a surprising thing will happen. It changes your character. You might have been someone who was always quick to hunt for reasons why a setback happened.

The reason you were searching was probably because you didn’t want to blame yourself. Avoiding the blame can allow you to have a pity party where you’re the guest of honor.

But here’s the thing about setbacks – they force you to make a decision. They make you discover what you’re made of. They disrupt your plans and shake you up. This is the fork in the road.

One way leads to giving up. The other way leads to digging in your heels, rolling up your sleeves and pushing back. You might think that this pushback is against the setback, but it’s not.

This fighting spirit that you discover during the hard situations is actually a refining process that’s building character. Every time a setback hits, you might not realize it, but you’re going through entrepreneurial growing pains.

These pains given to you by setbacks turn you into a better entrepreneur than you would have been without them. For example, an entrepreneur who’s never had to struggle with a lack of funding or income won’t know how to be as creative to get the job done as the person who has gone through that.

The entrepreneur who experienced a setback and didn’t get anyone to sign up for their list will take that failure and once they learn what went wrong, can go on to build a huge list of loyal customers who can hardly wait for the next launch.

You can’t prevent setbacks. That’s because there are no perfectly prepared entrepreneurs and there are no 100% foolproof business plans, ideas or launches. But it’s not the setback that gets in the way.

It’s your perspective on that setback. If you think that it’s the end of your online business, then it will be. The setback won’t argue with you. If, however, you have the right perspective, that setback can change the course of your business for the better.

For example, one launch flops. So you learn what went wrong, go back to the drawing board, make a new product and launch that. Because you applied the information you learned from the setback of the first launch, the second one is hugely successful.

So welcome the setbacks when they happen. Use them to improve going forward. This is often known as failing forward, in entrepreneurial circles. It’s a normal thing to fail, and nothing you should be ashamed of as long as you keep getting up to fight for your success.

Harness the Fear a Setback Brings

It’s perfectly normal for fear to develop when you have a setback. You put yourself out there and it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. Maybe your setback hit you hard financially.

Your online business is teetering on the edge of financial rock bottom. That can be scary – especially if you’ve poured every bit of your savings into it or if you left a good paying job to become your own boss.

When you’re fearful about money, the pressure starts to mount. It’s hard to think clearly and know what to do next. You may be afraid to take a new step because you’re scared that you’ll fail with that, too.

That’s the power of fear. It can bind you securely just like someone wrapped your body in ropes. You can’t move in any direction, and you just feel stuck. When this happens to some entrepreneurs, they hang in there, but they don’t take chances that could lead to success.

So they end up preventing their business from growing just because they’re afraid. Sometimes an entrepreneur will come up with an idea and they’ll spend a lot of time and effort turning that idea into a project or a resource.

But then a problem happens, and they start to doubt that their idea was any good to begin with. The setback has made them question whether they’re on the right track. Look at setbacks like this as opportunities to improve your idea.

If you quit on your idea because of a setback, there’s a good chance that later on, you might see someone with a similar idea who ends up becoming a success. A setback can hurt your self-esteem – make you question everything about yourself.

It can make you fearful that you don’t have what it takes. Harness that fear. Every time a setback occurs, find the strength in it. There’s always a strength in a setback. The problem itself isn’t the strength.

It’s the possibility of what it can do for you that contains the strength. Throughout history, there are countless people who harnessed the power of a setback. They’re in all walks of life – from sports to business ventures to people in the entertainment industry.

They’re not any better than you are. The only difference is when a setback happened, they turned fear into opportunity and used it to their advantage. The thing about a setback creating failure is that over time, you develop a tougher skin.

A setback becomes something that you’re able to shake off and the third or tenth or fiftieth time it happens, you’ve toughened up enough that you understand it’s just part of business and you no longer fear it.

Use Your Setback in a Positive Way for Your Business

When a setback happens, the first thing nearly everyone does is to focus on the negative. It becomes this big, sometimes life-altering thing that drags their emotions through the mud and leaves them wondering what to do now.

Rather than quitting when you’re faced with a setback, figure out how you’re going to make it a positive. This might be something that’s internal, such as it helps you with personal growth or it might be something that’s external – such as helping you make your business better.

Take the lessons that you learn from the setback and hold onto those. Let go of the negative side of a setback. You know the one. That nagging little voice that loves to say, “You failed” and instead switch that to, “Here’s something else I can try.”

Whenever a setback happens, it knocks your plan down temporarily, but what you might not realize is that it could very well be the exact thing that you need to change now so that your business is successful going forward.

For example, maybe the setback came along to teach you the power of not making excuses when things go wrong because in the future, it helps you to be a better leader. You may become someone who can accept responsibility and because of that, your entire team of employees knows how to not make excuses and instead, quickly corrects mistakes.

Setbacks can teach you to be honest. They force an entrepreneur to accept self-criticism or critiques about their business and not lie to themselves about their ability, knowledge or any of their efforts.

Before a setback happened, you may have been someone who made rash decisions – or you decided moves based on how you felt about something without knowing all the facts.

For example, some entrepreneurs hire family or friends just because of that relationship, even though the person may not be helpful for the business. A setback can teach you how to not make emotional choices, but instead to make choices that are determined by facts and to weigh the responsibility of those choices, so you do what’s best for your business.

Sometimes, a setback occurs because of a lacking talent or skill with the entrepreneur. For example, if you’re someone who’s terrible at record keeping and meeting deadlines, as an entrepreneur, that shortcoming can lead to disorganization and failure to meet launch deadlines.

You’ll get a reputation among your clients or customers as someone who can’t manage the business or as someone who can’t be relied on to deliver a product to market when you say you’re going to.

The setback in a situation like that can be used to teach you to keep better records and meet deadlines or to outsource that part of the business to someone else. Whatever setbacks occur in your business, learn to hang on through them no matter how difficult they might be.

They won’t last forever and you will come out on the other side a stronger, wiser entrepreneur. If it helps, take time to read the backstory of many famous entrepreneurs. You’ll usually find a pattern where they discuss the obstacles that almost held them back, but which they persevered through to their amazing success.

11 Ways to Make Money in the Metaverse

The Metaverse provides a way to bring virtual reality into socialization, gaming, and businesses around the world. Even though it’s fairly new, curiosity has driven more and more people into the many distinctive and entertaining aspects of the Metaverse.

Whether you love gaming, shopping, exploring, or creating, there is something for everyone to enjoy. As its popularity grows, the Metaverse has opened up new opportunities to make money from home.

Remote work is essential for many people, and there are many different paths to take in order to make a living from the Metaverse. You can make the most of your Metaverse experience by becoming a freelancer or entrepreneur in the virtual world.

Make Money as a Virtual Freelancer

The best part about freelancing is that your work is done on your time. With virtual reality added in, you can do your best work in the comfort of your own home. Since the Metaverse is constantly growing and expanding with new projects and ideas, you can rest assured knowing that there will always be a job for you to find.

Here are some of the most common freelance jobs that you’ll find in the Metaverse:

  • Coders

A world that is always expanding paves the way for an endless supply of coding jobs. If coding is easy for you to understand and you don’t mind completing hours of it, then there will always be a new job waiting for you.

The ability to code covers a smaller demographic of those involved in the Metaverse, so your knowledge and expertise will be needed by many people who need help, but don’t want to bring a fulltime employee onboard.

  • Graphic artists

As other entrepreneurs are creating Metaverse games and customizing their shops and advertisements, they will need graphic artists full of creativity and new ideas to make their virtual business stand out.

  • Interior designers

Virtual buildings and shops are being built and bought in the Metaverse, and these entrepreneurs may not have the time or the creativity to make their space look amazing. As a virtual interior designer, you can give them the ideas and a solid layout without even having to create props or build furniture yourself.

  • Architects

Virtual construction companies are getting involved in the creation of new buildings and terrains in the Metaverse. If you are an architect, you can guide them along the way and help businesses come up with unique ideas for the structure of their properties.

  • Writers

On any platform of social media on the Internet, content needs to be written. Information is supplied everywhere, and writers know how to shape sentences in order to make the content look the most appealing and have the greatest effect on their audience.

There are rules, subtitles, ads, articles, transcriptions, and ideas that all need to be edited or added into the Metaverse. For freelance writers, these smaller jobs are a great place to start.

  • Community managers

To keep things organized, community managers are always sought after. Their job is to engage with users, create events, engage with NFT communities to drive business, and create content for social media platforms that will drive users to the business or group that you work for.

Gain Money Gaming

Play to Earn (P2E) games give gamers the potential to make a living out of their time spent playing games in the Metaverse. The idea is simple: the more you play, the more you can earn.

In the Metaverse, gamers can embark on new quests or battles, find new treasures, and work together to fix any problems or issues that arise in the game. All of these different tasks can be rewarded with tokens that can be exchanged for real world money.

In the gaming section of the Metaverse, players have asset ownership, meaning they gain ownership over the unique collective items that they find or create in game. They can then coin these rare items as NFTs and exchange them for cryptocurrencies.

This allows the player to make a business out of collectibles and items they find along the quests or battles that they play. You can also earn money by investing in different guilds or general games with cryptocurrency.

These guilds will allow you to have access to rare and unique items found in gameplay that other people may have a more difficult time finding. If you are in the market to resell, this may be the route you want to take.

Spending time gaming is a fun way to make money, since gaming is already a hobby for many people in younger generations. But in order to make the most and be the most successful, you have to build a level of skill. In order to become a unique player and grow quickly in rank, you have to be the best of the best, which takes practice and time.

Generate Revenue Selling Art NFTs

As an artist, it can be a challenge to find ways to display and sell your art. It can be costly to get your artwork into different galleries and consignment shops, and you may not be able to make enough money in order to rely solely on your art as income.

In the Metaverse, you can create your own art gallery, and sell your artwork as NFTs. When you sell your artwork as an NFT, that person who digitally bought it becomes the sole owner of the digital piece.

If, over time, you become a well-known artist, the value of the digital piece you sold to that buyer will increase, almost as if they were an investor. And since the market for investors is always expanding, the idea of selling digital artwork has become popular throughout the Metaverse.

Since all of your art in the Metaverse would be digitally bought, you will be able to focus solely on graphic design and digital creation. This is also a great way to make a considerable amount of money through commissions.

Make a Profit Testing Products for the Metaverse

With so many new creators and entrepreneurs flooding into the Metaverse, there are beta versions that need to be tested consistently. Becoming a product or game tester in the Metaverse as a way to make money will be an interesting way to profit.

You won’t be as likely to get bored on the job, since you will constantly be testing new products and ideas. This also gives you an exclusive path into the Metaverse. You will know about new ideas and places before they officially go live, and you will be able to say that you were one of the first people to test things out.

Many different brands and businesses are testing out different ways to showcase their products and advertise their brand. You can supply your services as a pair of fresh eyes that can rate each appearance or advertisement.

Make Money Flipping Virtual Meta Real Estate

One of the fastest ways to make a larger sum of money is to flip virtual real estate. This method means that you purchase plots of virtual land and properties, and resell those plots at a higher price, or to the highest bidder.

Setting up an auction for the land you have acquired will help you accumulate the highest amount. If you want to hold on to your properties in the hopes that the market rises, you can consider renting out those properties to businesses or entrepreneurs in order to bring in a steady income.

And if you can become skilled and knowledgeable over the whole process of flipping virtual real estate, you will be able to get other companies and businesses to pay you to do the same thing for them, where you will get a percentage of the sale every time.

This is also a great method for those who are not willing to put as much money into the process. As a real estate broker, you can give out advice and tips to others who are looking to flip virtual real estate on their own.

Generate Revenue Creating Advertisements in the Metaverse

If you have already created a game or shop that does well in the Metaverse, different brands will pay well to have advertisements for their company displayed in your game or building.

The more popular your content is, the more you will be able to make. This is a great way to reap the benefits of your successful work by adding on an extra income. This is similar to how bloggers earn with ad revenue on their site.

You can also be an ad creator for other people. There will be all kinds of advertisements, from virtual billboards to interactive ads where the consumer is immersed in a situation with the brand and more.

Make Money Creating Virtual Clothing for Avatars

If you consider yourself a creative person and have an interest in fashion, creating virtual clothing is the job for you. You don’t have to have previous knowledge on sewing machines or knitting – you just have to have the ability to turn your ideas into virtual products.

You can make clothing for different games in the Metaverse, so that players can buy them from you as NFTs, and then customize their players in game. With so many different types of games in the Metaverse, you could fill your shop with themed outfits to match each game.

If you want to push for a more stylish approach, you could create fashionable items of clothing that you think would do well in the real world with today’s current trends. If they do well in your own personal store, you could try to sell them to bigger fashion companies and corporations that would test your clothing virtually.

This may lead to them creating the clothing in the real world and selling it, giving you a direct gateway into the fashion industry. The Metaverse holds many opportunities for creative individuals!

Earn a Living as a Virtual Tour Guide

You can earn money by helping businesses and entrepreneurs establish a virtual presence in the Metaverse. With a 360 camera, you can create virtual tours of different businesses and locations and share them in the Metaverse.

This will give people an immersive experience of different real world businesses before they decide to go to them. Different shops will pay you to take 360 photos and videos of their stores so that they can showcase their products in virtual reality.

Some businesses may own property in the Metaverse and want to create a shop in the area that they own or rent. If they want an exact replica of their real world shop, they will pay you to create a virtual tour using your camera, so that they can use it as their existing shop in the Metaverse.

If you are looking to branch away from promoting other businesses, you can take your 360 camera to different parks or landmarks, so that people can virtually embark on the same adventures as you.

You could even include advertisements (as mentioned earlier) in your virtual tours as another way to generate revenue.

Make Money Creating Games

In the Metaverse, there is a high demand for new games. As people burn through the smaller games and look toward more arcade-like ways to spend their time, the demand only grows.

The more interactive you can make the game, the more it will succeed. The Metaverse allows people from across the world to join together, so multiplayer games are often searched for as well.

Many gamers search for world building games that they can heavily invest their time in. Players like to immerse themselves into a game, almost as if they are a part of a completely different universe.

Gaining traction for your game requires advertisements and a community. People want to feel as though they are a part of something special, so try to build your game around a certain audience that is large enough to bring a wide variety of players in.

Gain Money Investing in Stock From a Specific Metaverse

You can invest in different stocks involved in the Metaverse. As always, this market can be unpredictable. Never invest more than what you are willing to lose. Here are some of the companies that are directly involved in worldbuilding in the Metaverse:

  • Microsoft

Microsoft’s goal is to link the professional world with the Metaverse. The company plans to release a version of their popular Microsoft Teams that includes lifelike avatars, so that you can meet virtually in a three dimensional setup.

  • Roblox

Roblox is a multiplayer Metaverse platform that has been online for years. Players of all ages can join a virtual reality world with a customized avatar. From pet simulators to arcade mini games, Roblox aims to “bring the world together through play” in the Metaverse.

  • Meta Platforms, Inc.

What was once known as Facebook Incorporated has now transformed into Meta Platforms. Since this complete rebranding, Meta Platforms has released a virtual reality Metaverse called Horizon Worlds, along with a new VR headset that has had a boost in sales recently.

  • Boeing

Boeing is planning on bridging the gap between humans and robots when it comes to communication in the workplace. They want to build airplanes in the virtual world, and bring innovation and ideas into a 3D atmosphere.

  • Autodesk Inc.

Autodesk covers the architectural side of the Metaverse. This company is coming up with new structures and concepts for buildings and businesses throughout the Metaverse.

Generate Revenue Streaming Your Metaverse Adventures

Content creation (especially if you already have a social media following) will be a great way to make money in the Metaverse. People are curious about the Metaverse, but a lot of them are unsure about what it is and how to participate in it.

As a content creator, you can provide a gateway for your viewers who are not quite ready to dive into the Metaverse. Here are a few ideas for topics that would draw viewers in:

  • Gaming

If you already have a gaming channel on Twitch or YouTube, then this is the route to take. You will be able to provide brand new content to your subscribers, and play new games with fun commentary.

There are plenty of unique games to try in the Metaverse, and each game will provide you with plenty of content for your live streams or uploads. If you are just getting started with gaming on social media, playing in the Metaverse will help you accumulate new views and subscribers quickly, since it is a new idea that many people are curious about.

  • Shopping

There are many different shops to explore, and you could tailor your content around the fashion industry in the Metaverse. You can try on fun clothing for your avatar, and create styling content to show off your creative fashion sense.

  • Traveling

There are many sights to see in the Metaverse. You can use your channel to show viewers some of the unique and incredible places to venture into. You can act as a sort of tour guide by giving highlights and locations for new users to find in the Metaverse.

  • Exploring Real Estate

Since there is an abundance of places for sale on the virtual real estate market, you can take your subscribers on a journey throughout the many buildings and businesses that the Metaverse has to offer.

You can build an audience of potential virtual real estate buyers this way. And many of your viewers will just be window shoppers who love to see what kind of real estate is out there.

The Metaverse, while exploding in popularity, is still in its infancy and is not yet a household name where everyone is familiar with it. This is the perfect time for you to pinpoint one or more ways you can earn from this platform and position yourself before it’s flooded with competitors.

You can even create info product courses that teach people how to use the Metaverse for fun, for profits as a business, or for educational purposes. You’ll have a hungry audience eager to learn, and you can put your course out in text or video format, or as a hybrid course that teaches people in multiple media formats.

Take time to get familiar with the Metaverse and find a niche service or product that best aligns with your skills and passions and you shouldn’t have any problem building a lucrative business there.

Using Audio Social Media Apps in Your Online Business

As more and more people turn towards social media to socialize with others, popularity over the idea of sharing ideas and building a platform online has only grown. Socialization on the Internet started out with text based chats, and then grew when multimedia platforms like Facebook were launched.

People would share photos and captions that showcased their lives and personal thoughts about the world. Then, video creation grew in popularity and became a main form of content creation throughout many social media apps.

Each social site would adapt and come up with new features that focused on shorter video production. As more and more people begin to focus on becoming creators and entrepreneurs in the online world, they’ll have to learn how to evolve with content trends.

Audio social media sites enable people to take in new content and ideas while working on the things that they need to focus on, completing two tasks at once. This opens up a completely new world for content creators.

These audio sites have been bringing in a huge increase in traffic, which gives businesses and entrepreneurs a new platform to take on. While other niche marketers are still stuck on Facebook, you can position yourself as a top leader on audio socials that have a hungry target audience.

Use Social Audio to Conduct Market Research

When you join an audio social media app, you gain the opportunity to conduct market research in order to learn more about your target audience. You don’t even have to participate in the discussions.

Just join different rooms or groups that are talking about topics that pertain to your business and career. This is a free way to gather information about your audience, and to learn how to become as approachable and as efficient as you can be.

Taking advantage of the opportunities that audio social media apps produce will be rewarding for your business as an entrepreneur. Listen in on real time live conversations with those who fit your audience.

Take notes on their desires and dislikes, so that you can build your business into something that makes a majority of your target audience happy. Focus on what problems they have with products or ideas that are a part of your business, and work to cater to their needs.

This method requires patience. You may hear things you don’t want to hear, and it can be challenging to accept negative opinions about your own business or the niche that your content fits.

But the importance of this method is to observe and listen, and make sure your followers’ opinions are heard. You can ask questions, but spend some time gather information instead of entering an audio room just to hear yourself speak.

Build a Rapport with Your Audience

Building a solid rapport with your audience is essential when searching for a loyal audience that will always support you and your entrepreneurial endeavors. There are a few methods you can try in order to establish a relationship with your audience.

Personalize your brand. Your business and brand needs a human presence behind it, so that people can feel more connected to your goals and overall mission. Putting a voice out there and talking about your passions and goals will draw people in.

Everyone loves to see someone succeed when they have worked hard to get to where they are. Allow your viewers to see the full picture of why you do what you do. You can be transparent and share your previous struggles to show vulnerability and how strong you are now.

Build a bond with your followers. Interact with your followers to let them know that you care about what they think, so that they feel as if the relationship goes both ways. And if you show genuine kindness and support towards the people who support you, it will be a strong bond that won’t ever become one-sided.

It doesn’t hurt to become friends with those who want you to succeed, and you may find some people who can help you along the way that you wouldn’t have had by your side without the effort coming from you.

Share personal advice and experiences. If you have been working on your business and career for awhile, you will have insight on getting started and mistakes to avoid along the way.

You can share your journey with others and the things you have learned, which will likely inspire others and bring in an audience that admires you. You can earn other people’s respect when you show your credibility as a creator.

You can also use audio social media sites as a place to share experiences and advice with other creators in a type of collaboration. This is a great way to network for cross-promotion opportunities, guest blogging and even product partnerships.

Interact with your audience to answer their concerns. People will always have questions, and some may be skeptical about supporting a business or creator that they don’t know enough about.

When you work to answer your audience’s questions truthfully and informatively, it will give them more of a reason to give you their full support and attention. With audio social apps, it’s a live interaction, so you can have a back-and-forth conversation that really helps your listener.

Build a close-knit community. Establishing a type of exclusivity with your audience will make other people want to join in. Using live rooms to build unique experiences can make other members want to tune in so they don’t end up hearing how they “should have been there” to hear the funny jokes and interesting stories that you shared.

Make your audience feel like they are special and show them your appreciation so that they can feel as if they are a part of something incredible. Make your schedule known so people can set aside time to attend an audio event you’ve set up.

How to Use Clubhouse to Your Advantage

Clubhouse is an app that offers a space to discuss a wide variety of topics with people around the world, with only one major rule: you can only use your voice. With no camera or text option, you are left to improve your speech and communicate your thoughts and opinions as you would with in-person conversations.

This walkthrough will help you get things started so that you can make the most of social audio. First, get set up. You need to sign up as a creator through the app (which can be found for both Android and iOS) with your full name and phone number.

Customize your personal profile. In order to draw others in and grow your engagement, it’s recommended that you create a bio and include a friendly profile photo that will make you seem more personable.

Create a club. When you create your own club, you can begin to market and build on your brand. Make sure that you fully customize your club to show everything that your business or brand is about, so that the niche your business fits will be shown.

Once you’re set up, you’ll start using the app. Invite people to join your club that you’ve created. If you know of any members who may be interested in your business, or even have some friends or colleagues who are willing to join and set a base following for you, make sure to invite them.

Finding an initial following may be challenging at first. Set up your first meetup or show. Setting up a meetup will allow members to converse with you about your business and the topic of your creator niche.

This could be helpful with building a community and answering any frequently asked questions that may come up along the way. Setting up a show is a great way to build a following by talking about your product and giving members as much information on that topic as possible.

You will be able to host a show that will be informative and draw people into your business. Host more events, meetups, and shows over time. Don’t make it a one time occurrence.

Your members and guests will have something to look forward to when you schedule new events, meetups, and shows for them to attend and it gives them time to think of questions.

You can talk about products or different topics that go along with your business, so that you can reach a wider audience. You also need to consider strategies for the marketing aspect of Clubhouse.

Attend other events and join other creator’s clubs. This will allow you to market with other creators that may have similar businesses and goals in mind. You may be able to talk to other creators and learn strategies or helpful tips, and it could bring some valuable friendships or partnerships into your life.

As you communicate with others in the same industry, you’ll be able to gain a larger audience as well. Collaborate with other creators. If you join a room and get along well with the creator who has a business similar to yours, you may want to consider co-hosting some events or meetings.

This method will be beneficial for both of you, since you will be able to join your audiences together. Make sure you know and trust the other individual because you don’t want to be associated with someone consumers find untrustworthy.

Spotify’s Greenroom Isn’t Just for Musicians

Spotify’s Greenroom is another social media app that utilizes live audio feeds to bring people together based on their interests. Besides niche leader, this app is also targeted towards musicians who can use this addition of Spotify to connect with fans.

There was an app called Locker Room that focused more on sports, but Spotify bought it and used the original coding to develop Greenroom. This walkthrough will take you through the steps of getting set up, and reaping the full benefits of this audio social media app.

Get set up by connecting your Spotify account. If you have a Spotify account, you can easily login and continue on. Greenroom utilizes Spotify’s personalization strategies, so content you see will be chosen for you based on your history and interests.

Create an account. If you don’t have a Spotify account, that’s okay! You can simply sign up for a new account on the Greenroom app. Create a room. Anyone can create a room, and all you’ll need is a title and topic.

Once you’ve picked a topic, you will be able to go live and allow other people to join. Make sure to go with a topic that goes along with your content or business. Keep the recording.

Spotify records each room session for moderation purposes, but you can use that for your own benefit. You’re able to save the recording and edit it, and turn it into a podcast. This will give you more content for your other social media platforms.

Strategize your marketing of Spotify’s Greenroom. Select featured topics. Greenroom enables you to select specific topics to get notifications and updates about, so you can always stay educated about news in your niche or specific target audience.

These topics will also help creators listen in on other creators and work together by sharing ideas. If you can remain constant in some groups with specific creators, you may be able to work together to produce content for both of your businesses.

Fuel a Growing Audience with a Fireside Chat

Fireside Chat is an exclusive audio social media app that requires an invite in order for you to talk live. There is also an option to apply, and you will answer some questions to see if you qualify for now.

Mark Cuban’s podcasting platform is designed to showcase notable people and the stories and ideas that they have to share. Getting set up requires you to request access first.

In order to become a creator on this app, you have to fill out a questionnaire with some personal information and state your business on the app. Once you have been accepted, you can go forward to creating your profile and customizing your content space.

When you’ve been accepted and gained access to Fireside Chat, the rest of the journey is easy. You’ll just need to set up a fully customized profile, and then you’re ready to go. Start by picking a topic.

Select a topic that fits the industry you are involved in, get ready, and then go live. If you can schedule out a later date for your talk, you can build anticipation and future views by sharing it on other social media platforms and encouraging your followers to tune in.

Strategize your marketing and business building aspect of Fireside Chat by selling tickets to events. This app allows you to sell tickets for your live events to generate extra revenue.

If you can build a crowd of fans that anticipate your live shows and talks, then this will be a great way to make more money for your business. Stream your show to other platforms.

Fireside Chat enables the live stream to stream on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. This allows you to reach a wider variety in audience, and expand your platform. Insert ad breaks to generate revenue.

If you’re looking to make some extra money to support your business, inserting ad breaks after you’ve gained a solid following will help you out. Embrace the app’s reputation.

Fireside Chat boasts about their drive for only quality content, so users are drawn to the app to listen. Since the app has less creators than others, your platform will appear more exclusive, which will draw in an audience.

Share Audio Snippets on Racket

Racket is an audio social media site that allows short micro podcasts that can last up to 99 seconds. This will keep viewers engaged and open up the opportunity to explore content from many different creators in one sitting.

The following walkthrough will give you an idea of what to expect from Racket, and how to make the most out of this option. Get set up by signing up first. You’ll have to come up with your own username and password, but getting signed up is simple.

Once you’ve signed up, you can customize and edit your profile. Creating a post that’s 99 seconds (early versions of the app gave you up to 9 minutes). Once you’ve created an audio file that you want to post, you just have to supply a cover photo and title, and then you can post it.

The whole process can be completed in less than a minute. Utilize tags. Like many other social media apps, tags are important in order to send yourself onto other people’s explore pages.

As long as you choose tags that fit your topics and industry, the right audience will find you. Strategize for the business building aspect of Racket. Much like TikTok, this app explores the idea of an algorithm that enables members to find many different unique content creators, by bringing the creators’ content to them.

You do have shorter times for content. By limiting the length of audio podcasting, users will be able to take in more content by different creators, instead of listening to an hour long podcast that is by one singular creator. This also makes the editing process simpler, which means you will be able to release more content that focuses over a wider variety of topics.

10 Tips for Online Coaching Success

The business model of coaching isn’t reserved for famous experts or those who have a PhD and can tout decades of experience and endless publications. Any niche leader who wants to utilize the Internet as their platform for working with groups and individuals can create and sell coaching programs.

It’s really not very different from putting out a digital info product, except in the way it can be delivered (and even then, sometimes there may be no difference). Don’t let the concept of becoming a coach intimidate you.

In order to thrive with this business model, though, you need to understand what decisions you’ll need to make, such as pricing and delivery – and learn what makes this a wonderful experience for your client so that they’ll continue buying coaching sessions from you and spread the word of your coaching to others.

Decide on Your Online Teaching Method

The first thing you want to do when planning your online coaching business is to select a teaching method that works best for you. There are a few different aspects to this decision.

First, you need to decide what type of coaching you will offer in terms of the number of participants. You can choose to have a one on one coaching arrangement with each client, or offer group coaching if the topic allows for it.

Next, you will need to decide how you want the coaching to proceed. You can develop coaching programs that are dripped out to your customers in a way where they are prerecorded or prewritten.

Or, you can choose to have a live coaching session with your client or group. If you choose to deliver your coaching advice in a live setting, then you can decide what kind of tool you would like to use to connect you with your customer.

There are a number of different types of tools, including Zoom, Skype, and more. Some of them are free and some of them have paid tiers. You may not need more than the free version – but if you do, make sure that the one you are paying for has all of the features that you require.

Set Up Your Coaching Workspace

Whether you are recording the coaching or conducting it live, you’ll want to have a workspace that not only reflects professionalism to your client in terms of background, but also gives you the proper surroundings to work free of clutter.

When you’re in a messy workspace, it serves as a distraction for both you and your client. You want to choose a space where you’ll be comfortable physically. Make sure you have ergonomic furniture and good lighting so that you don’t strain your eyes.

If you don’t feel as if your background is clean or nice enough looking, you can always buy a screen or room divider on a site like Amazon that has the look you want. Worst case scenario, just record or hold your session in front of a blank wall.

You may want to get a whiteboard with markers that you can hang on the wall and be able to jot things down for your coaching client, or draw something to showcase an idea or concept.

Position Yourself as a Go to Expert

When you are going to launch a coaching program where you recruit clients, you have to be confident enough to position yourself as an authority figure in your niche. You can’t be shy about your expertise.

It doesn’t matter if there are dozens of other leaders in that niche. You have to be willing and able to add your name to that list so that your prospective client has a choice about who they hire as an online coach.

You don’t have to go so far as to say you are the absolute best in the business. What you can do is be transparent with your site visitors about why you chose to be a coach, what you can do for them, etc.

Branding will be a benefit to you online because it gives you the opportunity to set yourself apart for what you want to be known for. You can develop a unique selling proposition (USP) that helps people differentiate you from what other coaches have to offer.

Price Your Offer Competitively and Professionally

Pricing is one sticking point that many online entrepreneurs struggle with, regardless of which business model they choose. You will have to put a number on your coaching sessions, no matter how intimidating the process seems.

Keep in mind that coaching, whether it is one on one or in a group setting, is a step above simply purchasing a digital info product and being left on your own to implement it.

With coaching, the client is able to have a little more handholding and feedback on what they should do as well as what they may be doing wrong. So it should be priced at more than what an info product would cost.

You can scout out coaching programs from your competitors and see what the going rate is in your niche. You have to make sure that the coaching is comparable. For example, if they are offering half an hour, and you plan to offer an hour, then that will affect the pricing plan.

If you are just starting out, you’ll want to be competitive with your pricing, yet still choose a professional number. Underpricing your coaching program doesn’t always impress the prospective client.

It may make them see you as a lesser coach. Sometimes, people are willing to pay a little more for someone who values their skill and talent. They may not want the bottom of the barrel, yet they still want a good deal.

Put Your Client at Ease Before Their Session

When you do have clients who have signed up for coaching, you will want to put them at ease before their session. For many of your customers, this will be their first experience in hiring a coach of any kind.

The first thing they need to know is that coaching with you will be conducted in confidentiality. They need to feel reassured that you will not create videos and discuss their problems and personal issues with the general public.

Another thing you need to do is make sure that you understand their expectations. Be sure and talk to them before they sign up for coaching about what they hope to see from your guidance.

That way, you’ll be able to meet their needs without having to guess at what they want to achieve. In most cases, coaching will be a hybrid of established lessons, mixed with those that are tailored for each individual.

You need to discuss with your coaching client the things they need to do ahead of time, before each session in order to be prepared. What do they need to show up with, or what do they need to be thinking about?

They don’t want to sit and waste a bunch of time brainstorming while on the coaching call. If they have these preliminary requirements mapped out, they will be able to show up and immediately begin discussing them with you without hesitation.

You also want to make sure that you, as a coach, are prepared before each session. Time is valuable for everyone, not just you. They need to know that they can get on a coaching call with you and you will not be searching for supplies or scripts that you want to work from.

Show Your Clients That You’re Present for Their Needs

Whenever someone signs up for coaching, it’s usually because they don’t want to take a journey alone. They need that extra handholding and guidance that comes from hiring a coach to tailor their mission for them.

You want to prove to your clients that you are there for them and that you are tuned into their needs. That means that there are moments where you will focus on listening to what they have to say, rather than speaking over them or interrupting them.

You don’t want to be multitasking during the coaching session. If you are constantly looking away from the camera at your computer to do something else, or otherwise not focused on them during the session, they will feel as if your attention is being misdirected and they aren’t getting their money’s worth.

Have Positive Energy That Motivates Your Client

The people who are hiring you to conduct coaching sessions with them may be coming to you in a state where they lack confidence or the right mindset to succeed with their goals.

It is imperative that you show up ready to serve them with an attitude that supports them when they are feeling down or unsure of themselves. Even if you have had a rough day, you should show up to your coaching sessions with an abundance of positive energy.

If you come to the coaching session feeling unsure of yourself as a coach or burdened by negativity, it will be visible and apparent to your client. They will be more apt to purchase additional coaching sessions from you if they leave feeling as if they are uplifted and ready to tackle the world.

Each of your coaching sessions should end on a good note. You want to boost their mood before they hang up with you so that they are armed with enough confidence and positivity to carry out the action steps that will put them closer to their goals.

Supplement Text with Images, Audios and Video Components

Regardless of whether you conduct live video coaching sessions or you create the coaching programs ahead of time, you want to use a variety of media formats. Using live video interaction does not replace supplemental learning materials.

You can use a mixture of image, audio, and video components to help explain a certain concept or simply give them something they can see, watch or listen to after the coaching session is over to reinforce the lesson.

You can use infographics, slide presentations, screen capture videos, podcast episodes and more to add additional elements to your coaching program. It’s really not very different from someone who signs up for a class where a professor teaches a lesson, but the student also has additional materials such as a textbook or workbook.

Sell More Sessions

When you attract a client to your coaching program, you don’t want to simply sell one coaching session. You want to have repeated business with each client or group. In order to achieve that, you have to have some way of enticing them to purchase more.

You can start by developing package deals for your coaching program. Instead of just charging $100 for a single coaching session, you could have a package deal where they get $50 off if they purchase five sessions.

You can have different tiers for this, too. For example, if you wanted to, you could have an even steeper discount if the client purchased a package of 10 coaching sessions. Or, you can have a deal where if they purchase a certain number of sessions, they get one free.

Another thing you can do in regards to increasing your profits in your coaching business is to develop certain upgrades for your coaching program. For example, you might have a coaching program where you help someone through the process of launching their own digital info product.

An upgrade idea for that might be for you to personally evaluate their product thoroughly and give feedback on what they could do different or better. You might be able to throw in certain services, such as copywriting or graphics for their site.

Prepare for Coaching Interruptions

Make sure that when you are getting ready for your coaching business, you’re also preparing for things that can get in the way of it. If you are writing an info product, interruptions aren’t as damaging.

But if you are on a live coaching call with one or more individuals, interruptions and delays can make it appear unprofessional. There are some things that you may not be able to avoid.

For example, if the Internet happens to go out in your area, you may not have a way around that. But if there’s anything you can do, such as getting on your smartphone and using data, you should do it to avoid missing a coaching call.

Some things, such as interruptions by family that lives with you or even pets, can be handled ahead of time so that you don’t have to deal with them in the middle of a call. You need to make sure that everyone understands the boundaries and that you have done everything possible, such as feeding or taking the dog out before your call so that they are not whining while you are on with a client.

Illness is another thing that can interrupt your coaching business. It’s inevitable that everyone will suffer from a minor or major illness at some time. If you are not feeling well, or need to take off for some reason, make sure you notify your client as soon as possible and make up the session with them.

A Senior Marketer’s Guide to Hosting a Challenge

In the world of online marketing, there are products and there are challenges. A challenge, in this regard, is not a negative thing such as an obstacle is. Instead, a challenge is an event where you are able to push yourself in order to achieve a goal.

For some people, having others lead them in a challenge where they can build camaraderie with others is very motivating. As a senior online marketer, you can use a challenge to your benefit in two different ways.

First, you can host a challenge in order to get more subscribers and to showcase your expertise. Second, you can host a paid challenge where you charge for entry and guidance.

One of the great things about hosting a challenge is that your lessons do not necessarily have to be completed ahead of time. So you could start today and work on the challenge as you go.

Challenges can have daily or even weekly content for participants to absorb. You can give them how-to tutorials, motivational tips and inspiration, and have check-ins to gauge how participants are coming along.

Challenges Increase Engagement and Excitement

When you are the host of a challenge event, it excites your core audience because it’s an opportunity for them to achieve something they’ve been struggling with. They know they won’t be alone and they know they will have an expert helping them along the way.

If you’re using this event to build a list, then you may want to host a free challenge so that you get more subscribers onboard to test out your leadership and knowledge. Your reputation will only grow as participants in the challenge exchange comments and share their successes and struggles.

In these moments, you will either have social proof that what you are teaching is working or the opportunity to help get a subscriber on the right track for all to see. This is a good way for nervous senior online entrepreneurs to build confidence in their ability to lead, too.

You can host your challenge publicly or privately. If you host it privately, others will not be able to see the engagement. However, it makes it more exclusive. It gives people a reason to get on your list to have access.

And just like a marathon where the streets are lined with others cheering them on, your participants will enjoy receiving the support of others who have joined in to have access to your guidance so they can meet their goals.

Get Them to Declare Their Goals and Hold Them Accountable

One thing you never want to do is leave a challenge wide open to where participants have no set finish line. You want them to have a measurable goal that can be attained through your leadership in this event.

Otherwise, they may not achieve the milestones they need to complete their goal, leaving them feeling disappointed in the challenge – and in you. Early on in the event, after you explain what the process will be and how it will work, you want to have each participant declare a specific goal.

They can do this publicly or privately with you, but you need to be able to see where they want to go so that you can help them get there. You’ll also be able to see if their goal is unrealistic or too easy.

Don’t let them set a vague goal. It need to be specific, like the completion of a 50-page eBook, the loss of 20 pounds, or 100 sales of their first fiction publication. It needs to be detailed.

Some will need you to help them set their goals for the timeframe within which they’ll be working. For example, if you are hosting a weight loss challenge, and they need to lose 100 pounds total, you would help them set a mini goal for the 60 day challenge.

Your challenge can be any length that you want. It can be a set number of days or a certain number of lessons. It can also be to achieve one specific goal without a timeframe, such as writing and publishing the first fiction novel.

They can always go at their own pace. Different participants will have different time available to devote to the challenge, so it’s best not to force them to stay on a certain timeline to complete the challenge lessons.

Once the reader has set their goal and conveyed it to you, you’ll need to hold them accountable as time goes on. This does not mean you routinely scold them to the point where they feel shame and guilt.

It simply means you are able to motivate them and remind them of what they want to achieve, and why. Knowing why they have set their goals is important for you to be able to tap in to the emotions that will help drive them.

Periodically within your challenge, you might have everyone check in with their current milestones to see who is struggling and who is ahead of the curve. Often, you will be able to use the participants who are succeeding as examples and even fellow leaders who can assist you with the needs of those who are being left behind.

Your challenge group will be like a community for them, rather than an individual journey. The camaraderie they will enjoy is part of what will make your blog feel like “home” to them online.

Showcase Your Expertise By Providing Guidance Throughout

As the challenge host, it will be your job to help them achieve a goal that they otherwise couldn’t do on their own. They may have taken courses, read books, and tested things that just didn’t work out.

They’ll be looking to you for the right information that holds the key to their success. Therefore, before you even get started with your challenge, you need to have your lesson plans mapped out.

You can create a course of your own for this challenge, curate lessons from other individuals who have given good advice to the public, or use a hybrid model of the two. Always make sure that you are giving credit to other leaders if you are pulling their advice (not their content) into your challenge.

This does not negate your own leadership and expertise. It merely shows that you are good at sourcing the best information for their needs. One thing you don’t want to do in a challenge situation is throw too much at your audience at once.

Your lessons should be bite sized and easy to implement. Because these people have struggled with their goal in the past, they will already have a mindset of defeat. You want to give them baby steps to absorb so that they accumulate many small successes along the way.

This will boost their confidence and allow them to reach the finish line easier. So for instance, if you were hosting a challenge about how to publish your first info product, you wouldn’t just have lessons for product creation, sales copy, affiliate recruitment, etc.

Each one of those topics would be broken down into miniature lessons for your participants. For info product creation, you would have one lesson on idea brainstorming.

You might even have multiple lessons on that if you have different methods of brainstorming, so they’re not all grouped into one. You would have another lesson on outlining your product.

Another lesson could talk about how to format the book or course. If there are multiple ways to do something, then you would split those ideas up into separate lessons rather than present a buffet of choices all at once.

You never want them to end a day in your challenge feeling overwhelmed and confused. Each lesson should be clear and concise. Don’t worry if the lesson seems short.

This is more doable for your audience than if you presented them with hour long lessons every day that they would find hard to work into their schedule. Every time your audience reaches out to you through the group or in a one on one email, you want to take account of what it is they’re asking for help with.

At times, you will realize that your lesson has missed the mark in some way. Maybe it wasn’t clear, or a question went left unanswered. These are opportunities for you to create additional bonus lessons to share with your audience.

This is one reason why it works to create your challenge as you go. If you did a lesson on brainstorming your info product, and received several questions about that topic, you would be able to create an additional lesson to send out the following day, rather than moving onto the next topic.

Then, after the challenge is complete, future participants would find everything laid out in a logical order. After the initial challenge is complete, you can bring on a second wave of participants, or leave it open for people to join at any time.

Make a Big Deal Out of the Winners and Participants

Whenever people sign up to participate in any event, they like to be recognized for their hard work. Even those who are shy and take a back seat to public engagement usually like to be acknowledged by the host.

Consider it like a dinner party where you would greet every guest upon arrival and thank them for coming at the end. It’s no different when hosting a challenge. You want to welcome everyone and individually get to know your participants so that you can offer personalized assistance.

Be sure to keep the confidentiality of each of your participants during the challenge. There will be some who feel more than comfortable sharing everything with the group. There will also be those who privately communicate with you because they are shy or simply don’t want their information put out there.

If someone asks a personal question they need help with via email, either ask them if it’s okay to share with the group – or, if the question needs to be turned into a complete lesson, make sure you do it anonymously.

Anytime a participant helps a fellow participant or answers a question that you feel is beneficial for the group, make sure you give them credit and thank them publicly for stepping in to lift up those who are struggling.

They will be the ones who are making your challenge that much more special. They will be cultivating the feeling of community that you want your challenge participants to experience.

At the end of the challenge, you may have people who have achieves their goals or won a competition, if you set your challenge up to have a leaderboard of some sort. Sometimes, having winners wouldn’t be feasible.

But other times, it might help push your audience to perform. For example, you could do one for the most pounds lost, the most sales for an info product creation, etc. But if you are in a niche like relationships, there’s no measurable goals you can use to determine who has won ahead of others.

You want to make a big deal out of those who win. You can have prizes, recognition, etc. If you’re teaching your participants how to publish their first fiction book, then you might pay for them to have some promotional graphics made or simply write a review blog post about their upcoming release.

It doesn’t have to be a monetary prize. Recognition and acknowledgment can go a long way, too. While you want to highlight those who have succeeded with your advice and pushed themselves to achieve their goals, you always want to make sure that others who failed in the task do not feel ashamed or left behind.

They may be suffering from guilt or frustration at their lack of being able to succeed when everyone else around them seems to have achieved their goal. Make sure you acknowledge the advances they have made toward their goal, and offer to stay in touch and help them until they reach the finish line.

Have an Ending That Leads to More Great Things

As your first challenge, and subsequent challenges come to an end, you want to snowball your success into something more. If you have hosted a free challenge, then you can parlay this expertise you have shared freely into sales of your paid, and more advanced courses.

This is one reason why it’s so important to share extreme value in your free gifts and free challenges. If you are willing to give a lot of value at no cost, customers will trust you and be willing to send you money for a paid product.

You now have a list of subscribers who have participated in your challenge. You can turn these into profits in the future by recommending courses and tools that others have put on the marketplace as well.

As an affiliate marketer, they will be able to trust your advice and want to spend money on things you recommend because you have stayed above the board throughout your challenge in guiding them previously.

Always make sure that you never stray from giving good advice, even after the challenge is complete. You don’t want to ruin your reputation after you have worked so hard to prove your worth to your target audience.

One thing you can do is continue rolling out more courses that are created as challenges. You don’t have to simply sell video modules or eBook courses for them to consume on their own.

Many people will love and appreciate the challenge format, where they are drip fed lessons along the way, and have the opportunity to engage with you and others who are on the same journey.

If this format works well for you, then you might want to leave your first challenge as a free option, and subsequent ones as paid challenges. You can even have tiers of challenge participants if you would like to.

For example, a top-tier entry into your challenge, which costs a little more, might include a phone or zoom consultation once a week. Instead of having winners who were acknowledged, you might offer some perks to different tiers.

For example, an upper tier participant who completed his or her goal might receive a set of five customized blog posts they can use, or a review of their product in its finished form.

What you don’t want to do is complete your hosted challenge, only to disappear into the background of your niche when it’s over. You want to stay at the forefront as a leader, always developing new lessons to help guide your audience.

You don’t have to do another challenge. You can create eBooks, courses, offer both individual and group coaching, and more. Keep the momentum going and you will develop a loyal fanbase who is eager to consume everything you put out.

Try to have a game plan for your follow up monetization strategy before you even create your first challenge. This first one can be used for list building and branding. But subsequent ones should deliver a monetary reward for you.

This can snowball into more online income if you create an entire line of challenges. Make sure you emphasize the personal care and consideration they will receive when they sign up, because this is one area often lacking in a consumer’s journey of learning how to do something.

10 Reasons Senior Marketers Fail at Blogging for Profit

10 Reasons Senior Marketers Fail at Blogging for Profit

If you have ever asked how to make money blogging, can you make money blogging, or how do you make money blogging – consider this a cautionary tale. In this post, we cover 10 reasons senior marketers FAIL at blogging for profit!

10 Reasons Senior Marketers Fail to Profit From Blogging

Blogging is one of the easiest online businesses that a senior entrepreneur can start. Not only is it affordable, with a simple dot com domain and hosting plan, but you can install WordPress by just entering some basic administrative information and clicking a button so the system can do all the work.

Unfortunately, many online entrepreneurs fail to earn a living with their blog because they make mistakes that get in the way of their profits. These are strategic blunders that may seem small, but which repel your audience or render their visit to your blog useless.

If you want to earn a living being a blogger on the Internet, you have to know how to run your blog in a way that adheres to the technical elements needed, but also meets the needs of your target audience.

There are 10 things you may be doing wrong that have stood in the way of you earning money from your blog until now. Once you are aware of them, it will be easy to turn things around and open yourself up to more profit opportunities.

You Failed to Make Navigation for Bots and Humans Easy

The first thing you need to do in order to succeed with your blog as a profitable venture is to start off on the right foot in terms of the setup and navigation of your site. Blogs are structural entities that have posts, pages, categories, and tags.

Not only will your human visitors be using your system to navigate your blog the information they need, but search engine bots will be dispatched to your blog to crawl it and identify the topic and relevancy of your content so that it can rank you for their users.

While setting up simple navigation is smart and will help people find the posts they’re looking for, which will in turn increase your profits, you don’t want to get bogged down in uploading too many automated tools on your blog that will slow it down or cause glitches along the way.

You want to have some simple navigation at the top of your blog which directs people to an About page, where they can learn a little about you. You should have a contact form so that they can reach out to you if they have a question or comment.

If you have products or services, you will want pages for those, too. Your sidebar can be a great source of navigation as well. You can have a list of your most recent blog posts as well as the most recent comments, which is a great show of social proof that others are turning to you as a niche leader.

Your Blog Posts Are All Over the Place and Many Irrelevant

Another thing that can harm you in terms of online profits with your blog is if you are scatterbrained with your content. Many people treat their blog almost like a diary or social networking profile, where they talk about anything and everything going on in their life.

A niche blog that is being built for profit purposes is not meant to be all over the place with your topics. You need to have a main slant for your blog and keep everything that is posted there related to it in some way.

Every time you write a new post, ask yourself if it is tide into the original topic in some way, shape, or form. If it is not, then you may want to take that piece of content and share it on your personal social media profile instead.

You’re the Kind of Blogger Who Ignores Engagement

Some bloggers fail to succeed with their site because they are unable to form a bond with their blog readers. Part of what makes bloggers successful is the community that is built around the content.

The community thrives when your audience engages with your post in the comments section, and yourself and others reply back. There are many bloggers who simply never check to see if someone has left a comment or question.

This makes the reader feel as if you don’t care about them. You want to set your blog up so that you get notifications to approve every comment that comes through on your blog. This gives you a great opportunity to reply and form a friendship with your reader.

You Never Promoted It But Expected a Following

Many senior marketers start out with blogging and become frustrated at the fact that no one is visiting. Instead of trying to pinpoint the reason why, they simply abandon the site and try a different niche topic, where the same thing happens all over again.

Instead of walking away, learn how to properly promote your blog so that it does pique the interest of your target audience and make them want to click through to your content.

It is your responsibility to generate traffic to your blog. Some of it will be pulled in organically through the use of strategic keyword phrases and valuable content that a search bot will use to rank your site and send targeted visitors to you.

But you will also want to socialize your blog by sharing the links to specific posts on sites like Facebook. You can also link to your blog home page in your profile on sites like Instagram and Tik Tok.

You’re Either Too Informative or Lack Substance

Another reason many people fail to earn a living with their blog in their senior years is that they perform on one end of an extreme spectrum. Some of them are so informative that they exhaust every bit of information in one blog post, which goes on and on and eventually bores the reader.

Your blog is not the place to thoroughly cover every bit of information on a single topic in one post. You can break that concept up into a series of blog posts that are shorter and easy to devour.

At the same time, you don’t want to be so brief that the reader walks away feeling as if they learned nothing from you. They have to gain substance from your message or they will turn to someone else in the marketplace who does a better job of leading them.

Every niche is different and every individual in your target audience will have personal preferences about how much information they want to consume in one sitting. Over time, you will learn what your audience prefers.

Keep an eye on the statistics for your engagement, which can be both comments as well as social media shares and likes. If your audience proves to prefer blog posts that are more in depth, then you will know what the sweet spot is to satisfy their needs.

You Don’t Stand for Anything in Particular

Readers who financially support bloggers by purchasing their products or taking the recommendations that they made as an affiliate marketer tend to prefer being loyal to those who take a stand on a topic.

There are some online entrepreneurs who will promote and back anyone and any product. As long as they are receiving some sort of monetary perk, they’re willing to sell out their audience.

It’s not only about the money, though. Readers like it when you have a solid opinion that will help them sort out their own confusion or inability to make a decision. If you are wishy washy about where you stand on an issue or strategy, you will leave them feeling alone and just as last as they were before they found you.

This doesn’t mean that you have to publish a bunch of rants or target your competitors online. In fact, that can backfire on you quickly. Just make sure that if there is anything where people have strong opinions, you take a side or at least fairly examine both sides.

You’re Easily Distracted and Abandon Your Readers

If you are a senior blogger who continually abandons your readers because you grow bored with your topic or can’t figure out what to say, only to return months later to try again, you will be destroying your ability to earn profits.

When consumers become loyal to a blogger, they expect to hear from them consistently and frequently. They are relying on you to help them get through their struggles and succeed with whatever problem you promised to help them with initially.

Look at your track record to date. If you have blogged before, write down the dates of the blog posts that you have published in the past and see if there are large gaps in time.

For example, if you blogged for three weeks in January, then quit for eight weeks, and came back to sporadically post every once in awhile, you will never achieve the level of success that dedicated bloggers have.

This is not just a human issue. While your target audience will be annoyed that you tend to disappear, it’s also assigned to search engine bots that you are not committed to keeping fresh content on your site, so they will bury you in the search engine results pages.

You Say a Lot But Never Monetize a Thing

Have you ever looked back at your blog to see if you have even tried to earn a living from it? It’s a serious question. It may seem silly, but go back and look at the various blog posts that you have published and see if you can spot a method of monetization in them.

There are many people, seniors and otherwise, who start a blog and consistently publish valuable information on it. They are confused when money does not begin to flow from their efforts.

However, if you go back and look at their posts, they may be lacking any links that would send visitors to products or recommendations that would help them earn money from their content.

There are different ways you can monetize your blog. First and foremost, you can link to the various digital info products that you have created for your niche readers. Another way you can profit from your content is by linking out as an affiliate to tangible and digital products that you recommend.

Some bloggers like to install a heavy amount of advertising, such as banner ads on their blog. You can do this, but you may be earning pennies compared to the type of money you would be making if you sent them to a sales page for a digital info product.

If you are an affiliate marketer, ask other vendors to send you a review copy of their product so that you can create a blog series where you implement it and conduct a case study about the product.

You Never Have Anything New to Say

One problem many bloggers have, especially after a certain amount of time, is that they fail to have anything new to say to their audience. If you are constantly repeating yourself, your audience will dwindle and your profits will dry up if they ever started at all.

If you’re struggling to find new content ideas, start by using a reliable keyword research tool that can tell you specifically what your audience is looking for online. You can also go to other web sites, such as news sites (depending on your niche), forums, etc., and see what trending topics are being discussed there that you can report on.

If you have older content, that you would like to discuss again, make sure that you put a new slant on it. There are many ways you can freshen up existing topics, such as creating a post that has alternate opinions about the topic, or new facts that back up your position on it.

You can subscribe to both consumer and trade magazines about your niche topic, stay on top of newly published YouTube videos, and join social media groups that continually discuss your niche blog topic.

Your Blog Is Boring to the Eyes

The last reason your blog may fail to turn a profit is if it is simply based on boring text. Today’s blog reader is interested in more than just the written word. While it is equally important, you also want to cater to those who prefer a multimedia approach.

Within the blocks of content of your blog post, make sure you are adding images that will break up long bits of text. You can also add video elements to your blog. If you put yourself on camera, it gives your visitors a chance to know you on a more personal level, but that’s not a necessity if you prefer to use a slide screen presentation.

The main thing you want to remember when trying to build a profitable blog platform is that you are serving the needs of your target audience. They need you to show up consistently, be interesting, and provide value to them and this, in turn, will help you monetize your content with ease.

30 Day Content Marketing Blueprint

Regardless of which niche you’re in, or which business model, there’s a high chance that content will be the foundation of how you brand yourself, generate traffic and convert visitors into sales.

The volume of content you need to succeed is enormous, ranging from lead magnets to info products, email autoresponders and more. While many of your competitors are struggling to figure out what to say, and what to do with their content, you want to have a plan in place so that your content marketing is strategic and effective.

Very little thought goes into most marketers’ content. They might look for a keyword phrase, but that’s about all they do. If you take 30 days to set up a systematic approach to your content creation and usage, you’ll be outperforming your competitors right out of the gate.

The following tasks include a mix of action-oriented steps and tactical decisions that will help you attract the lion’s share of audience attention in your niche. It will also speed up the implementation of your content creation and usage so that you’re leading the way in terms of consistency and creativity.

Day 1: Have a Customer Avatar in Mind for Your Content Marketing Strategy

One of the most important things you can do before creating content is to think about who you are writing or recording it for. Many marketers make the mistake of coming up with an idea and writing it for their own point of view.

But as a niche marketing leader, you may have a different viewpoint than that of the person following you. For example, you may be coming at a topic from a position of experience and expertise, while your reader is uninformed about the topic and needs more clarification.

One thing that can help you create content with your reader in mind is to come up with an avatar of the individuals who will be consuming your written and recorded words. There are many things you can consider when you begin developing this avatar.

For example you can take into consideration their gender, age, financial status, marital status, geographic location, interests, and more. You can even factor in specific things such as pain points or successes that they may have experienced in the past.

Once you have this avatar, or multiple avatars in place, it will help you create content that is more targeted to your readers, rather than just spoken from a position of authority in the niche. Your audience will feel as if you “get them” more than if you simply stated facts or shared ideas from your sole perspective.

Day 2: Create a Content Marketing Schedule You Can Work With

When it comes to creating a viable content marketing strategy, consistency will be your biggest blunder if you neglect to include it in your planning stages. Whether you are looking to cater to search bots or human visitors, both will want to see frequent content coming from the leaders they respect and listen to.

Don’t feel as if you have to publish dozens of pieces of content each and every day. Daily content is definitely a goal to aim for, but even if you can’t publish content that frequently, putting yourself on a consistent schedule, such as three days per week to publish blog posts, it will go far in establishing your commitment to guide your audience.

It’s better for you to devote yourself to a schedule that has fewer days, but allows you to thoughtfully and thoroughly create content that your audience appreciates than it is to force the process to be so rushed that you are frantically slapping up subpar content just to stick to a schedule.

Day 3: Analyze Your Content Creation Skills in Four Media Formats

On this day, you need to see where you truly stand when it comes to your content creation skills. There is no shame in admitting that you don’t have what it takes at this time to write well, create videos that appeal to your audience, churn out images, or record audio files.

All of these skills can be learned and improved upon, as long as you know where you’re starting and what needs to be worked on. A good way to examine this is to have an honest critique provided to you from friends or acquaintances who are willing to be blunt.

The last thing you want is for someone to tell you that your content is good, when inside they are really cringing. If you don’t know anyone personally who can do this, you may want to ask a wider audience in a marketing forum to provide you with constructive criticism for a sample that you upload.

With your written content, it will need to be conversational for an online audience, yet polished enough that it looks professional at the same time. For audio files, it needs to be free and clear of any impediments that will irritate a listening audience, such as too many “um” pauses or sounds such as sipping your coffee.

With images and graphics, the only thing that can really hold you back here is whether or not your finished work looks like an amateur created it. There are templates online that can help you learn how to create and work with graphics.

Video is one of the most consumed media formats in this day and age. You have to get the timing right, the lighting, the sound, and the message itself to a place where your audience responds well to it.

Day 4: Use Content to Help Your Site Rank in the SERPs

One way you want to use your content strategically is to help you boost your website in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines are definitely looking for consistency with how often you publish, but they also want relevancy and quality.

Many marketers make the mistake of shooting for a certain word count, and focus more on how often their keyword phrases are used then they do the actual value of the content piece.

Your reader is never going to absorb a well written and valuable article that is 300 words and scoff add it because you didn’t add 500 more words of fluff and filler. However, it is important that you commit to providing your readers with enough information that they can walk away feeling fulfilled.

It is important to learn how to set up your content for SEO purposes. And that will include utilizing keyword phrases strategically so that search engines know who to present your content to.

But you never want to focus on the technical aspect alone. In fact, when you adhere to a content strategy that includes ensuring a level of quality is met for your readers, it can help you rise in the SERPs because your content will be shared and have backlinks pointing to it that are organic due to an impressed audience.

Day 5: Create Content That Proves Your Worth to Your Audience

Quality is an issue that can be different things to different people. Some people may be content with very little value, but that’s not the audience that you want to cater to. Your goal is to overdeliver to your visitors so that even the hardest to please individuals walk away satisfied.

A good piece of content not only provides facts and data to your readers, but it also weaves personality throughout and addresses the visitors’ needs, whether emotional or otherwise.

There are many people in the online universe who are competing for the attention of your site visitors. When you sit down to create a piece of content for them, you have to understand how you can keep eyes on your content when others are vying for the same thing.

Good content not only educates and informs an audience, but it inspires and motivates them to take action on what you have just shared. If you can do that with each and every piece you deliver, you will be changing lives and helping people achieve their goals.

Day 6: Develop a Content Piece Worth Signing Up to Your List For

One of the most important pieces of content that you will create for your business is that of a lead magnet or opt in freebie offer. This is a tempting report or series of articles or videos that you create in an effort to build your email subscriber list.

There are not many things that people feel interested in that to hand over their name and email address. Most are sick of spammers and the way in which their contact details are handled.

You have to make sure that the lead magnet you create is of high caliber content and a slant that makes the risk worth it for them. Spend some time investigating their most harrowing problems and present a targeted solution as your enticement offer.

Day 7: Let Content Marketing Turn a Profit for You

Whenever you are developing your content, part of your marketing strategy should be to always look at how it can be monetized. For some odd reason, many marketers create tons of content for their blogs, emails, and social media profiles, only to fail at making sure it has some sort of profit generator attached to it.

Whether it drives people back to your site for a product review for which you are an affiliate, adds them to a subscriber list so that you can earn from them overtime, helps you earn ad revenue, or sends them directly to a product that you created, you want to create and publish your content with the intent to earn money from it.

It doesn’t have to be a direct or instant sale. You can monetize content by creating a series of engaging pieces that build trust and loyalty with your audience, allowing them to spend money with you in the near future.

Day 8: Learn How to Write a Proper Review Piece

One of the best ways to monetize your content is to review products. These can be digital or tangible products, but you have to know the right way to review a product in order to help the reader lower their defenses and convince them to buy.

Every consumer has a wall up that needs to be broken through in an effort to sway them into a purchase. You need to find out what the reservations are and address them individually.

Sometimes, it’s not just about the benefits of a product, but the hesitation they feel about making sure they are spending their money on the right product. It might be a price point, brand or vendor, or even a personal recommendation that tips them over the edge and allows them to open up their wallet.

Day 9: Create a Swipe File of Effective Content Headlines

Because you will be developing content on an ongoing basis for many different areas of your business, it’s important that you figure out ways to hasten the process. One of those strategies is to create a swipe file that you can pull from and tweak whenever you need effective headlines that will convert.

You can pull swipe files together based on content that you have seen online from your competitors, using list of action or power words, or even by brainstorming words, phrases, and sentences based on knowledge you gained by studying how to be an effective copywriter.

Day 10: Use Low Content Publishing in Your Marketing Efforts

Content that you publish online is not always long. You may be used to developing long blog posts in an effort to appease the search engines, or even to thoroughly educate and inform your readers.

But not all content has to be lengthy. There are many effective low content pieces that you can publish online for your audience that will help them achieve their goals. These may include things like checklists, cheat sheets, journals, and other printables that they can download and use to track or change things.

Day 11: Find Ways to Educate, Motivate or Entertain Your Readers

When you create new content for your audience, you want to do one of three things. Educating and informing them about your niche topic is important for you to do as a leading expert.

They will be turning to you for ideas and insight because they feel they can’t trust other sources. Facts alone are not enough to help them. You will need to motivate and inspire them to take action on the information you provide to them.

This is how they will actually make changes in their life and succeed with their goals. It’s also important that you entertain your readers. That doesn’t mean you have to become a comedian and make them laugh.

Entertainment can be more than just laughter. It’s a way for the audience to bond with you and feel as if they know you on a different level. Just make sure you have plenty of your own personality woven into your content so that whether they are reading an email from you or watching a video that you have created, they feel as if the content was made just for them on some level.

Day 12: Make Sure Your Content Marketing Includes Social Sharing Options

Content marketing is about more than just the creation of the content itself. You can create hundreds or even thousands of pages of articles, but if you don’t know how to use them strategically, they will not benefit your business.

One of the most effective strategies online is to create content that gets shared by your audience with others. Not only does the content have to be valuable and amazing enough that it makes people want to share it, but you have to make sure you provide them with a strategy to do it easily.

If you have a blog that you are using for content marketing, you want to install a plug in that enables social sharing buttons for sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other places.

You can place the social sharing buttons above and below your blog post. You can even have them floating with the reader as they scroll down through your post. Just make sure you remind them to share your content with those who may enjoy it, because the call to action you deliver maybe the reminder they need to take action.

Day 13: Get Good at Storytelling for Increased Content Appeal

Storytelling is an important art that you need to master for your content marketing strategy. This is not a strategy where you have to make up stories out of thin air. For most nonfiction niches, it’s about sharing your own experiences and connecting them with those of your audience.

Not only are you able to paint a picture of what they are going through to show that you can empathize or sympathize with them, but you are also able to help them envision what their life will be like if they can achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves with your help.

Day 14: Set a Goal for Each Piece of Content You Create

Just as your audience has a goal in mind when they turn to you, you should have a goal for every piece of content that you create. It’s not enough to simply assume everything you create will help you gain exposure.

Instead, you want to have a specific goal about whether you want to use this piece of content as a way to elevate your expertise, help you build a list of subscribers, or convince someone to purchase something through your link.

If you have a goal in mind before you begin creating the content, it helps you with your outlining process and in allowing the information to unfold in the best way possible. Sometimes, you may have more than one goal associated with your content, and that is okay, too.

Day 15: Tips for Sharing Your Content on Facebook

When you create content, you can either create it on your blog or elsewhere and then share it on social media, or you can create it directly on social media itself. Facebook is still one of the most popular social media sites for niche content.

When you create content and share it on this social site, make sure you pair it with an image so that it stands out in everyone’s feed better. You can also format the text so that it has bold or italic lettering if you want to.

Don’t go crazy with tagging people, but if there is someone who it makes sense to tag because they are mentioned in the content, for example, that’s okay. You can share your content on this site on your personal profile, your page, or in a group that you create or that has allowed others to post in it.

Day 16: How to Make the Most of Hashtags for Content Marketing

When you create content, part of your strategy needs to be to help it get found by the right audience. Online, that is often done with keywords and hashtags when you are using sites such as social media.

A hashtag is simply a # sign followed by a keyword or phrase that you want people to use when searching for your content. For example, if you wrote a blog post about the keto diet, you might use the following hashtags: #ketodiet, #ketodiettips, #ketodietsuccess, etc.

On most of the social media platforms, you can search for popular hashtags that are being used for your niche. Make a list of what is included and then pick and choose each one that can be used in every piece of content that you create.

Day 17: Set a Budget for Content Marketing Elements You’re Not Good At

When you are developing your own systems and strategies for any part of your business, part of what you want to do is set aside a budget for things you may need to outsource or acquire tools for.

With content creation, you may want to invest in certain tools that can help you in the editing and polishing your written work, such as Pro Writing Aid. Or, you may want a tool such as Camtasia to help you create amazing videos.

There are tools for audio as well as images. Many of these tools have free options, but in order to fully utilize them, you will have to pay a minimal monthly or annual fee. If you don’t want to do the work yourself, then you can set aside a budget to outsource the work to a freelance individual.

Day 18: Learn How to Utilize Free and Paid Online Content Creation Tools

if you don’t have the ability to save up for tools yet, you want to start with some free versions that can help you improve and quicken your content creation. Grammarly is a free writing tool that can help you with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

When and if you want to level up, you can consider a premium or business account that will help you with more advanced writing issues. Canva is another tool that has both a free and paid option.

Using this tool, you can create graphics that you need for your content such as blog images, social media images, eCovers for your lead magnets and info products, and more.

If you can’t afford Camtasia yet, you can start with the freeware version called CamStudio. using this, you can edit and perfect your videos, whether you are using screen capture or on camera methods.

If you are creating audio content, you will want to use a tool like Audacity. This is a free tool that you can use to edit, add special effects, and improve sound quality for your audio files.

Day 19: Pay Attention to Success Metrics for Content

The creation of your content is not the sole indicator of whether or not your content strategy is successful. You can’t just look at the volume of content that you are putting out.

You have to look at the metrics it generates to see whether or not the content you are creating is performing to the best of its ability. If it’s not, you will be able to tweak your efforts until it does.

You will be looking for things such as whether or not your audience engaged with your content, how often and how many people shared it with others, and what the comments and feedback were about your pieces.

When you start seeing an analysis of all of the little details, such as where your readers bounced from your site while reading your blog post, or where they exited a video that you created, it will help you understand more about the kind of content they respond best to.

You will be able to see whether they like longer or shorter pieces of content in terms of word count, what time length they are willing to sit through to absorb information, what color patterns they notice more in a feed so that they can engage with your social media content, etc.

Day 20: Develop an Editorial Plan for Your Content

In order to achieve your goals for consistency with content creation, you will need to put yourself on an editorial schedule. This will not only dictate what days your content is published, but also on what platform it will be placed on.

You can organize your content publishing schedule so that topics are rotated to keep things fresh for your audience, and then type of slant or media format is also strategically placed within your calendar to mix things up.

Day 21: Polish Your Content to Perfection

It’s good to have tools that you can use to perfect your content, but some of what you will be doing in terms of polishing it to perfection will be up to you during the creation process.

For example, you can’t just absorb information in regurgitate it back to your audience. It’s your responsibility to do some fact checking to ensure that the information you are conveying is accurate.

Another thing you need to do is proofread your work and notate any sources or citations where it makes sense to do so. It’s okay for an expert to have outside sources that they utilize for their audience, so don’t feel like you have to cover that up.

Day 22: Curate Content Instead of Plagiarizing It

One way that you can leverage the expertise of others is to curate content from around the web. Curation is a way of pulling in snippets of content from other producers, making sure to give them credit, and then expanding on everything that you have created with commentary of your own.

This is much better than what many online marketers do, simply lifting content from other people’s websites and sharing it as their own. There’s no excuse for stealing from others when curation is a viable option for you.

Day 23: Make Sure Your Content Marketing Strategy Includes Personality

Personality is one of the most important things you can inject into your content to really make it take off. We spoke of using it in the form of entertainment previously, but whether or not you are entertaining or simply informing and enlightening your audience, a personality must shine through in order to help you form a bond with your target audience.

Some ways you can do this are by weaving your own personal stories into the content to show that you understand what they are going through, cheering the members of your community on publicly with their permission, and utilizing multimedia format content so that they can get to know you in terms of the way you look, your voice, your mannerisms, and your tone.

Day 24: Split Test Your Content Creations

When you create content online, if you have time (and you should make time), you should begin the process of split testing certain pieces to see which strategies or elements work better than others.

Split testing is simply pitting two different things against one another to see which one emerges as a top performer. You only want to alter one thing at a time so that you can pinpoint the exact changes that make a difference.

Day 25: Weed Out What’s Not Working for Your Content Marketing Strategy

Increasing the churn out of content that is working well for you is only part of the equation. You also need to weed out what’s not working with your content strategy. You might find that your audience does not respond well on certain channels or platforms.

It’s better to focus your efforts on places where they do hang out and are likely to notice your content. Another thing you may notice is that certain media formats are not engaging for your audience, such as a preference for video over text or vice versa.

You may also start to gain a better understanding about what types of slants and what tone your content should take for your target audience. Even with something like personal development, you can have a slant that is coddling when it motivates or one that kicks their butt into gear.

Day 26: Engaging Your Audience for Increased Content Success

Part of your content marketing strategy will be to maximize the engagement with your audience. This is a two way street. Many marketers believe they can simply sit back and watch comments, shares, and other forms of engagement take place without participating.

But ideally, you are helping to form those bonds with your audience by responding to their comments whenever possible. This is easier when you are just starting out and have a smaller audience, but you should do it as long as you can and periodically engage with several people in the comments section even once they grow to an enormous number because this shows that you still care about their opinions.

Day 27: Use PLR as a Content Marketing Springboard

If you are trying to publish an enormous amount of content for one or more niches, you may want to utilize private label rights (PLR) as a tool that can help you. This is pre-written content that is sold to more than one buyer.

When you buy PLR, which comes in many different formats including text, video, audio, and images, you usually have the right to put your name on the content as if you created it and edit it to your liking.

Day 28: Take Content You’ve Created and Repurpose It

Another great way to improve your content marketing strategy is to simply repurpose what you have already created. For example, if you wrote a blog post that is getting great engagement from your audience, you can take that and use it as a transcript to create a video or video series as well as a podcast.

You can also take the content and summarize it in the form of an infographic that can be shared on sites like Instagram or Pinterest. You can also repurpose video, graphics, and audio and turn them into text based content pieces as well.

This allows you to capture the interest of a wider audience. While you may have many loyal blog readers who are content with the written word, you may be missing out on a larger audience that is logged into YouTube and searching for video content instead.

Day 29: Make Sure Your Content Is Mobile-Friendly

While you are making sure that your content is perfectly polished, well written, and valuable to your audience, you also want to ensure that they are able to access it adequately.

This means making sure that your content shows up correctly for mobile users. If you are using a blog theme that you selected, make sure it is responsive for mobile readers and all browsers.

Day 30: Measure the Success of Your Content

Every so often, you want to stop and spend a day taking stock of all of the content that you have been publishing to see which direction you need to take next. You may need to continue on the same path, or your content may need to take a new direction, such as different topics, improved media, or even more in depth than what you had been serving to them before.