Another System to Improve Your Blogging

For some reason my Facebook feed came up with an ad for a webinar by author Jeff Goins about how to make a blog with 1,000 followers and make $100,000 a year!  I decided to watch it and encouraged my brother to also watch it though I figured it was probably worthless.  Because what the hell, right?

Typical of these things, the first third is largely vamping to I guess pad the run time.  You know, he just keeps saying, "you'll learn this..."  So just tell me and I'll learn it already!

When he finally gets to the point, a lot of it wasn't too different from that Reader Magnets book I've blogged about in terms of build an email newsletter and offer a freebie to get followers.  Goins is actually a lot less specific because mostly this webinar is just a preview for the more involved class that you can take for the low, low one-time only price of $197!

Here are some of the other highlights:

There are five types of bloggers according to him:

1. Reporters (writing factual accounts like interviews)
2. Prophets (Grumpy Bulldogs who are dissatisfied with things)
3. Artists (you know, people who create stuff)
4. Professor (someone who focuses on data)
5. Star (someone with charisma)

So you should focus on which one of those you want to be.  For instance, my brother is a huge Transformers fan, so let's say he decides to write a Transformers blog.

1.  Reporter:  Would be writing factual articles about what's going on with Transformers currently or in the past or interviewing those involved with the toys, games, movies, shows, etc.
2.  Prophet:  Would be expressing dissatisfaction with the state of toys, games, movies, shows, etc.
3.  Artist:  Would be stories, illustrations, poems, or whatever about Transformers
4.  Professor:  Would be a more in-depth analysis of Transformers sales or rating or whatever
5.  Star:  Probably not applicable

Besides the email newsletter, you should do guest posts on blogs that are more popular than yours.  One "secret" is after you sign up for another blogger's newsletter and they send an automated message, send them a thank you note and hope that way to connect with them and then suggest down the road that you have an article to guest post.

Something Andrew Leon would not agree with:  doing favors for other bloggers.  Part of this could be interviewing other bloggers because everyone likes their ego stroked.  But don't go to people asking, "Hey, what can I do?" because that puts them on the spot.  Just say, "Hey, can I do this for you?"  That's more helpful I guess.

So after my brother sets up his Transformers blog, he can create an email newsletter with some kind of article, illustration, story, or whatever to give people.  As well, he could search for the top 5-10 Transformers blogs and eventually offer to do a guest post for those sites.

And on his blog he could interview people from those other sites.  Even if his blog doesn't have many followers (yet) they might agree to be interviewed just for the ego boost.

And then...profit.  That part seemed a little fuzzy.  For someone like me I guess it could be book sales, but if you're just normal blogging, I'm not sure why anyone would pay you for articles.  But maybe you can expand those articles into a book or something.  Of course you can also put ads on your blog with Google AdSense or something.  I put that on this blog recently and I've made a whopping nine cents. Hahaha

At the end of the webinar you get a link to a free book that's 99 cents on Amazon or free with Kindle Unlimited/Amazon Prime.

There you go, I saved you about an hour.  I really have no idea how to apply this to my blog here or my Eric Filler one.  The Eric Filler one has an email newsletter but I don't know what content I'd post there besides news on new releases.  I should go find some other similar author blogs to write guest posts for.

I did look on Amazon at some of the authors who write books like I do and went to those that had a blog.  Pretty much all of them just use their blog to announce new books like I do.  There was one that had some interviews and reviews of related movies, books, comics, etc.  I suppose I could post clips of stories or write new content.