Does Your Make Money Online Blog Make Money?

* posts may contain affiliate links - what does that mean?

Thinking About Starting Your OWN Blog? If YOU'D like to learn how to make money blogging with affiliate marketing like I do, feel free to read my Free Blogging 101 E-Course here.


Help For Bloggers | Get Daily Pinterest Tips
Get Free Training, TWO Free Blogs, and Free Tools

Make Money Online Blogs = Annoying?

I read a great post the other day. It was talking about blogs in the make money online niche and how some of these blogs sell too much while others don’t sell enough. It was an interesting post to me – I totally enjoyed it. That is, until MY name came into the conversation!

Do Make Money Online Blogs Annoy You?

The author of the post I am referring to was talking about a blog that belongs to a friend of his. While the author really likes the person who ran the make money online blog in question, he also doesn’t approve of how his friend is running his blog.

Why?

Simply because he feels that the blog owner is trying to SELL more than he is trying to HELP.

Worse yet, according the post author, is that his friend is using every blog post as an attempt to sell something…. anything.

“How it upsets me to see how he is attempting to lure people into purchasing products that — and without any hope — falsely claim that they help people learn or perform in a way that will enable them to make money online.”

It made me stop for a moment… and made me really think about make money online blogs…

Are we “Make Money Online Bloggers” wrong for trying to make sales from our blog posts? Are we doing a disservice to those that read our blogs? On the flip side, are we (the bloggers) doing ourselves a disservice by not trying to sell enough thru our blog posts?

I think this is a very interesting topic….one that should be discussed.

Why Make Money Online Blogs Make Money…and why they don’t

After some thought, I realized that there is a balance that a make money online blog reaches. When I first started this blog, I had this concept that all I need to do is make a post about some random product and I would make sales.

Well, ya see…. that does NOT work.

But then I flipped to the extreme opposite of that a few months later – I decided I wanted each of my blog posts to help as many people as I could possibly reach. I wanted the ultimate goal of each post to be that each person who read it felt better than they did when they got here.

FEEL Better? Have I Lost My Mind?

Now WHY in the world would someone who blogs about ways to make money online have any sort of goal that relates to how someone FEELS after reading it? Shouldn’t I focus on teaching and giving away my knowledge.. and selling stuff?

Yes…and no.

Yes, I DO teach things I know…things I have learned (because you see, I was once new, too…lol). But, when you learn something, or something “clicks” in your mind, don’t you FEEL better? I know I sure do!

Sometimes, I focus completely on how I think a lot of you are feeling. Working online at home can be lonely and sometimes it can be frustrating as you are trying to get your head around things. I know from my own experience, that at times, I don’t care what knowledge someone has – I just want someone to tell me that I WILL get this… that this DOES work.

And I want that “someone” to be someone I trust.

Trust

Isn’t amazing that somehow, in this HUGE wild, wild web we work on, that we come across people from all corners of the Earth that we TRUST. People we have never met, but for some reason, we trust their knowledge, their words of encouragement, and their recommendations.

How does this happen? Seriously. It’s hard enough in the “real world” to find folks we really trust – how do we end up trusting someone we have never even looked in the eye?

Just like in the “real world”, trust is EARNED online.

If your make money online blog is NOT making money – perhaps you need to evaluate the trust your readers have in you.

Trust = More Sales?

Does having the trust of your readers mean you can sell more stuff online? Well, in my opinion, yes…and no.

How’s that for a non-answer? haha!

When your readers trust you, respect your knowledge AND respect your accomplishments, they naturally want to know what YOU know. For me, this was a huge hurdle to jump. I found that people emailed me WANTING to know the products I’ve used and read…. what I use now…what I’ve tried.

What an honor!

I make no secret of the fact that when I started all this “hi-honey-I’m-gonna-make-money-online” stuff that I was a frickin’ IDIOT. I knew nothing…made ALL the newbie mistakes and blunders. It seemed the only way I could manage to CREATE something online was to BREAK it first! (well, I’m still that way a little…. OK – a LOT….lol!!)

I’m not ashamed of that – not even a little bit. Each of you needs to hear from someone who was once a total num-nut when it came to all this stuff….and we each need to hear that it DOES get better. It CAN be done. Sorry for this next part, BUT…

You Need To Hear That You CAN Change Your Life.

And there is one little quirky woman in Atlanta Georgia who totally believes in YOU. She knows it is possible – she has done it and she wants YOU to do it, too! She knows you CAN.

I think there are some blogs you just feel good being on…and feel better when you leave. I find I feel that way on the blog I was reading the post on that I was talking about earlier.

Who Do Make Money Online Bloggers Trust?

Ever wonder, who do the make money online bloggers trust? If we’re teaching things to others, well, we better not be new. We better know what we are talking about, right? So who do WE trust?

Garry Conn is a fellow blogger that got my attention from the git-go. As most of you know, I was invited to do a guest post on his blog not too long ago.

He is not only a good guy, but does REALLY well with niche blogs and he totally kicks a$$ with AdSense earnings. The more I read of his, the more I realized that I wanted to know what he knows.

No, I NEEDED to know what he knows…now!

(And I got to learn a good-sized chunk of what he knows yesterday 🙂 I’ll tell you about that in a bit)

Garry was the one who wrote the post that brought this whole topic to my mind. What’s funny tho, is that the comments that followed his post were even MORE interesting to me.

The comments start off with another wonderful blogger, Mark Mason , making a comment fearing that Garry was talking about HIS blog (gee Mark, got a guilty complex? LOL!)

Garry comes back in his reply comment and reveals that no, it was NOT Mark’s blog he was referring to in the post. In fact, the blog in question was actually owned by a WOMAN.

OMG! Oh $#%%^$, a WOMAN?!?!?!?! Was Garry talking about MY blog here at PotPieGirl.com????

(Gee, Jen, got a guilty complex? hahahahahhahahaha!)

Was PotPieGirl.com The Offending Blog?

But then I kept reading Garrys follow-up comment. No, he wasn’t talking about me – nor did he reveal the offending blog in question – but….. my name DID get mentioned.

Y’all….just read what he said about lil’ ol PotPieGirl:

“I’d like to take this moment to direct people to Jennifer’s site, PotPieGirl.com. Now, in my opinion, this lady has class. Jennifer (aka PotPieGirl) in my strong opinion is someone who I would personally recommend that anyone follow who wants to clearly start from the ground up and learn the true and honest business, of INTERNET MARKETING.

She breaks barriers in this business and has also proven that Internet marketing can and should be a business that is based and founded on a trust relationship among followers and readers. She is a lot like me — in female form of course. The line of difference between her and myself is that she is more into Internet marketing, while I am more into building my own internal private network of niche sites.

Earlier, when I published her guest post here on my blog it generated explosive results in sales. It also allowed our two separate networks to fuse a connection. Many of my readers were able to connect with her readers and vice versa. That one guest post on my blog, I believe created quite a few new friendships among the community. And in my opinion, that’s what it’s all about.”

I can’t begin to tell you how absolutely blown away I was. Speechless…. tears… the whole she-bang. I know, I know… I’m such a GIRL! haha!

Getting Traffic TO Your Make Money Online Blog Via Trust

Ya know, someone recently asked in a forum what the BEST traffic was to get online. There were answers of social networks and organic traffic and all the other standard stuff.

My answer was the same answer I had while in business in the “real world”… The absolute best traffic to get is traffic generated by word of mouth.

Online… Offline… it’s still all about people. Behind every forum thread, every blog post, every comment and every email is a real, live PERSON. Once you begin to focus on the people and helping them… earning their trust because you are trustworthy… they naturally give you permission to market to them. No, not any ol’ latest-and-greatest guru product, but the things YOU use – the things YOU know – the things YOU genuinely recommend. The money is just a natural side-effect of this trust relationship.

I Want To Thank Garry Conn

Yes, I want to stand up tall here on my little soap box and thank Garry Conn for such genuine and touching words about ME.

But… I need to thank him TWICE. Remember how I said that he was one of those bloggers that I wanted….no, I NEEDED to know what HE knows? Yeah, well he let loose with some of it yesterday.

Garry makes niche blogs – and not only does he do that VERY well, he also teaches others how to do it very well and very unselfishly. I have the utmost respect for that.

So, yesterday when he popped off with the fact that he made a 60-minute video that lets you literally watch over his shoulder as he makes one of his special niche blogs with WordPress, well buddy, I was ALLLLLL over it. I didn’t hesitate for even a second.

Now, I make a LOT of niche blogs with WordPress. I think my current count is somewhere around 70 or so individual niche blogs. I also teach others for free how to get started using WordPress to build their own niche blogs at 6StepNicheSites.com. But I jumped on that video like I’d jump on a brownie if it was anywhere in my proximity =)

It was AWESOME. One of the best things I have bought online video-wise. In fact, I spent an hour or two building one of these niche blogs today….and I have 4 more lined up to build tomorrow.

How To Build a Niche Blog

If you are even a little bit into building niche sites with WordPress, I strongly recommend this video from Garry Conn. He takes you from start to finish…literally. From watching him pick a domain name, editing his theme, how he monetizes….the whole thing.

If I had to stop everything and pick just ONE business model to make money online – I would pick niche blogs. Owning your own websites is the key to long-term passive and residual income. My goal is to get as many of my readers to owning their own sites as possible. Yes, many of us will start off with One Week Marketing because if you are like I was – no money in the cookie jar to pay for domain names and stuff AND I didn’t know ANYTHING about making money online- but One Week Marketing will get you to where you CAN afford to do that and to where you DO know plenty to get you to owning and building your own sites.

If you’re already there and creating niche blogs- watch Garry’s video. There is a free 10-minute intro video that will help you decide if this is something you want to learn or not.

As Garry says in the video, if you don’t want it, no hard feelings. We are sharing and offering knowledge. that’s all – And yes, he will prove how much he makes with these niche blogs, too =)

Check out Garry’s video here.

Ok, that’s PLENTY out of me tonight. I can’t believe I just typed ANOTHER 2000+ word post. Thankfully, niche blogs do NOT require this much rambling….lol!

No Ratings Yet

Whatcha Think?

20 Comments

    • PotPieGirl
  1. Nate
  2. PotPieGirl
  3. Wendy Little-Yohe
  4. PotPieGirl
  5. Denton
  6. Leatha Nish

Need a Better Pinterest Strategy? ===>> Try This!