Excuses of Non-Famous Bloggers

I used to be sitting in your chair, dreaming of becoming a famous blogger who had an audience in the thousands and plenty of money coming in each month. Bleary eyed and with the latest stack of printed guides on my desk, I worked into the wee hours shifting through the crap that so many internet marketers put in front of me. Over time I came to realize that many of the presumptions I had made during my time as a new blogger were completely wrong.

[box type=”note”]These, excuses if you’d like to call them that, were terribly incorrect misjudgements about what would lead me to becoming a famous blogger.[/box]

Think about famous bloggers in your niche. How did they get so famous? Did they just get lucky? Perhaps, but the primary reason that they’re at the top of their class is that they went through the steps necessary to go from a nobody to a somebody. In this post I’m going to go through the various emotions and excuses you might be feeling as a non-famous blogger which are probably holding you back from becoming a famous one. Remember, I used to fervently believe in these excuses, so much so that it seriously effected my business in a negative way. These excuses stunted my growth and prevented a faster climb to the top of my previous niche.

I need to be big to make big money

Wrong! You can earn top dollar servicing your small audience. I know bloggers who do SEO consulting, website design, business coaching, etc. for top dollar. Why? Because your audience, regardless of size, are in love with you and your services. That gives you the unique opportunity to provide your audience with goods and services that they will pay big money for. Even with an audience of less than one hundred subscribers, you could easily sell five $50-$100 hour long coaching sessions in whatever subject you specialize in. No matter what niche you’re in, you can give advice and provide live coaching services for your audience. What’s more, you can record these meetings and either give out the information for free or sell it as its own product. I was able to coach people and earn $25 per hour, but eventually I transformed the coaching sessions into audio lessons for one of my products. These lessons brought the value of my product up almost two fold and I was able to keep my many more buyers happy for the long term.

I feel too small to compete with the famous bloggers

You have the wrong verb in there. It should not be “compete,” but rather “complete.” Regardless of your size, you can still come up with a small product that brings something new to the table. You can compliment the products of others which in turn allows you to transform your competition into your affiliates. How great would it be to convert those big famous bloggers from being your top competitors into your top sellers? As I probed the big guns in my niche looking for joint ventures, it was only after I built products that complimented their currents ones that I was able to turn them into affiliates. Otherwise they had to agree to sell products which directly competed with their normal ones!

I keep working on my site, but nothing good is happening

You could spend ten years building the world’s greatest looking website and yet no one would visit it. Why? Because your potential audience is not on your site! They are visiting forums, socializing on social media, reading other blogs, listening to podcasts and basically actively engaging in every location other than your own website. You  need to start getting the word out that you exist through writing guest posts, leaving comments, guest hosting on podcasts, and all in all making a name for yourself. Even if your website sucks, you can still get your message out and bring traffic back to it. With every niche I enter I start off with a crappy out-of-the-box site in order to ensure that I can make money on my message alone.

You can do the same regardless of what you blog about. In fact, I took a blog that looked like garbage from 2,000 to 10,000 subscribers in just six months because I engaged new potential audiences through guest posts and forum threads.

I can’t find people to work with

In the golden age of social media, if you can’t find partners and other websites to collaborate with then you aren’t using social media correctly. A simple search on twitter can lead to finding a dozen people to get in touch with. All you need to do is start engaging people, especially on a one on one basis. I know it seems counter intuitive to try earning followers one at a time, but that’s the best way to do it! Make someone feel welcome and important enough and they will always come back to see what you have to say the next day. If you made a great first impression then maybe they’ll tell their friends to check you out as well. In short: don’t write just for your handful of followers, but rather, enter into social circles outside of your own. Ask questions, answer questions and be interesting. I cannot tell you how many people I’ve managed to befriend and enter into joint ventures with because of the opportunities which only social media engagement can provide. Everyone from podcasters to other bloggers can be found on twitter and could easily become potential opportunities for growing your website (and your fame!).

These are some of the most common misconceptions I dealt with on my own that have also resurfaced time and again while training bloggers to earn big money online. Not everyone is going to become famous online, but we can all make big money regardless. Now no more excuses… get to work!

I encourage everyone here to check out both my blog and forum for new and old bloggers alike looking to drive traffic, build relationships and earn big money online.

Chris The Traffic Blogger