In this video, I’m gonna talk to you about THE 10 BIGGEST MISTAKES THAT BLOGGERS MAKE THAT STOP THEM FROM EARNING INCOME. These are the things that if you do them, they’re gonna crush your income, but if you pay attention to what I’m about to teach you, it could skyrocket your income fast!
We’re gonna teach you those 10 mistakes, how to avoid them and how to make more money!
If you liked this video and want to learn more about how to make money as an affiliate marketer and a blogger, make sure you subscribe and click the little bell notification icon. That way you get my latest videos when they come out and you can join us live every Wednesday at 10 am right here on the channel.
So make sure you subscribe and click that bell!
For those of you don’t know me, I’m Marcus. I’ve been doing this for about 20 years now. I got into blogging in 2006 passively and then I’ve made millions of dollars with blogs since then. Before that, I made money with static HTML website.
I’ve got to tell you, what I learned from the static HTML website days is what makes me able to make money today. Those are the same skills, same everything, even the site designs are very very similar. So what you’re gonna see is these 10 tips that I’m going to show you. These 10 things that people do wrong are from years of experience in getting people to come to the site, getting people to stay on the site, getting people to do the affiliateoffers, buy the products, opt-in to the list.
All of this is based on what I learned in the early part of my career which was all about direct response advertising. DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING is all about being able to directly respond to an ad. You need to get someone to your site that can respond right then and there. They might not have to buy right away but they will need to opt-in, click a link, do something otherwise they’re going to leave.
Lots of blogs out there, lots of people that are teaching a how to do SEO and get blogs and make money that a majority of these people are getting a lot of traffic and making very little money. A lot of them are making like two dollars per thousand views or something ridiculous like that which if I made $2 per thousand views, I’d be put out on the street so we got to make sure we’re making more than that.
You could see here, this is 16,000 clicks I got to an affiliate offer which generated over $126, 000 for me just since I set up this little blog in 2015. This is just one of my blogs, I’ve gotten many of them and a lot of them make a lot more than that. But I wanted to show you this because it’s one affiliate offer, one blog, very very simple.
The reason this works is because it’s direct. Again it’s focused on direct response. We want people to respond directly to an ad.
So let’s dive right in and talk about those 10 blogging mistakes that are going to kill your profit if you don’t pay attention to them. We got a big fist of money. What’s better than a fist of money?
This is the number one thing that is going to crush you if you don’t do it right!
- They don’t focus on one niche per blog when starting out.
The thing that I see a lot of people do when they get into blogging is they don’t focus on one niche per blog and they don’t focus on something attainable.
You got a look at that and you got to say we need to refine something that we can actually do. This is a system that I call majoring in the minors. You want to start with something small that you can get that’ll get you results.
Again, here there’s not a lot of traffic. A lot of people are telling you need lots and lots of traffic to make money.
You don’t need lots and lots of traffic to make money. You need the right traffic to the right offer.
That’s it! You can make money with a couple hundred visitors a month in some markets. You can make money with a couple thousand and others. It just depends on your market and it depends on how creative you are.
So first and foremost, the biggest mistake is they don’t focus on one niche per blog when starting out. They try to be all things to all people. They try to have this blog that talks about everything from their network marketing company to how to go on rollercoasters, to what they fed their kids for breakfast, and it doesn’t make any sense and no one cares because no one’s looking for that.
People search for very selective things and until you build a massive following, they’re not going to come back to your site by their own choice so you got to get them there.
The way you’re gonna get them there is by content, directed at specific things that they can respond to, specific things that they want, specific questions that they ask the search engines.
How many calories do I need to lose 10 pounds?
How many calories does it take to gain weight?
How many sit-ups do I need to do for this?
How do I do this on my blog?
How do I put a support ticket system on my blog?
How do I integrate my blog with cut funnels?
These are all different types of search terms that you can get in and you could start to nail and chip away at and get a few visitors, get some sales, do another get some more and pretty soon before you know it you’re gonna start to skyrocket your results. You can also drive this with paid traffic but the main thing is so many people are not focusing on one selective targeted niche per blog. If you focus on one niche, that is going to be the difference between success and failure.
- They don’t make the purpose of the content to lead people to what makes them money.
Content is just content that leads people to your site. The more content you have doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna get more traffic.
TARGETED CONTENT IS WHAT WORKS.
I’m gonna take it a step further and instead of using just content or just targeted content, we’re gonna make targeted content with a purpose.
We’re gonna make targeted content that is designed with a specific thing in mind. So if I go out there and I’m like okay, I want to make content and I want to sell web hosting, which by the way this is from selling web hosting, and I’m like, I know the word web hosting is too competitive and I don’t know what to do so I can write some content about web hosting, but instead what I do is let’s find something that I know people will eventually need web hosting. Maybe something like “How do I buy my own domain name for my blog?” or maybe something like “How do I install WordPress? How do I get a WordPress site? How do I make a site for my gym?
Something very simple that we can use or even how to make a secure socket layer thing for your website. If you don’t know how to do this stuff, don’t worry, you don’t need to be in a technical niche but we can go through and I can say, “I’m gonna make content based on this. How do you change a domain name from one WordPress to another? Well here’s how you do it.”
By the way, the best way to do it is clicking here to get web hosting which actually does it for you. So we could do that. You’ll notice how I take them and I’m like the purpose of my content is to get people to do something that makes them money. So the purpose of this, the purpose of me coming on today and showing you the ten major blogging mistakes that’ll kill your profit is to say, hey look, I know about blogging, I’m going to teach you about blogging because if you join my Marcusmentor.me, you’re gonna learn about blog and get my plugins and all these tools, and everything like that.
That’s the purpose of the content.
Same thing with your blog. Every article you write, every video you put up, everything you do on your blog must have a purpose. When you sit down to write content, you’re just not talking to a guy about too many dry sodas will make you have headaches or whatever it is you’re going through.
You’re like, okay I want to write this thing about diet soda so that I can get people into this other product. Does that make sense to everyone? Does everyone get that? If you do, type something in the box. Give us some hearts and some thumbs up. Share this on your timelines and in your groups and everything like that.
But that’s the deal! A lot of people don’t make the purpose so they don’t sit down and say, this is what this content is for and there’s several main ways or main reasons you would create content.
- Number one, you would want to sell something.
So if I’m making content, I’m like how to get rid of error message. Then I write that and the purpose of that would be to sell whatever program solves that error. The next way is to provide user experience and to make goodwill in the marketplace. I could provide a video like this. You might buy right away. You might buy tomorrow. You might buy in 10 minutes, who knows?
But what I’m doing is saying, hey look I’m here, I’m sharing this stuff with you and the more I share stuff with you, the more you’re gonna say, hey guys pretty cool, I should probably buy some stuff from him because if it’s free stuff is that good, imagine what the paid stuff’s like.
That’s kind of the idea. That would be under bonding with your market and everything like that.
- You can also use all these in conjunction like I can take the one I made for bonding and I can sell it in two or I could send it out to my mailing list.
- The third way to create content is to get people to opt-in.
You could make content solely for the purpose of getting people to put their name and email into your mailing list so that you can get them into your marketing funnel, send them more stuff, get them more content and get them back to you. That’s because let’s face it, the majority of the people who come to your blog for the first time are not going to come back unless you give them a reason. They’re not just gonna be like, I remember that guy who told me how to put the bolt on my Toyota, I’m gonna go see him again. They’re not gonna do that. They don’t care. Your market doesn’t care about your site as much as you do until you make them.
No one wants to listen until you tell them why to listen. That’s what our content needs to do.
In addition, we need to focus on it and say we need to make the content so that they either buy something, so that they either like me and click further and check out another video and binge watch something, or maybe get them to opt-in, or join a subscriber list or something like that. We have to have a selective reason for them to be looking at the content.
You have to ask yourself, “Why am I sitting to make this content?” every single time you make content.
- They focus too much on a fancy design.
How many times a week do people come to me and tell me that my websites are ugly?
They’re like, “Your websites are ugly,” “You know you should probably have some flashy thing, you should have those things sliding in and big images” and everything like that. Then I’m like, well you know I’ve been doing this 20 years, and I know what converts. What converts is a simple design. Far too many designs get complicated.
Notice my designs. These designs are all using themes that you can get in your Marcus mentor members area. You can go to marcusmentor.me. We can give you these themes if I can talk right today and we give you everything to make this work. It’s very simple. The themes look like this.
I have a little header there which leads into the content and then they opt-in. Very simple. We have some other pages where they can learn about us, watch videos and opt-in. We have other pages where they could go through, look at some of the profitable sites I’ve done. Again, the entire idea is to get them to opt-in. Now notice how my designs are designed at getting the reaction I want. What do I want someone to do? Here, I want them to opt-in. Here, I want them to sign up for a product. I lead them into that product. Very simple. Now I also have blog posts which we have various other content on which I’ll show you here.
They’re also gonna see the ads and everything but the eyes focus where we want them to go. So when you see people touting, hey you got to have a fancy design or this fancy theme or whatever, that’s not true. You need to have something that leads the customer to what is going to make you money. If you don’t, it’s very simple you’re not going to make money!
You got to do that. You got to focus on that. You got to make it work. So number three is they focus too much on a fancy design.
Guys you can use some of the themes that we give away for free. There’s a theme out there called simple blog theme that you get at simpleblogtheme.com. You literally change two images. You have a custom theme and these are themes that convert. These are ones that are bare-bones that are fast and they convert. They get visitors back to you which is cool.
- Forget that it’s all about answering the question of why your visitor is there in the first place.
Why did the visitor come to your site?
This is the biggest question that you always need to ask yourself.
Did they come to your site looking for entertainment?
Did they come to your site looking for an answer to a question?
Did they come to your site looking for something to download?
Did they look for a calculator, a report?
What are they looking for?
Now with the reason they came there, you need to have it up front. Within three seconds, they need to be able to find it or they’re not going to stay there.
A lot of people forget about this and the bounce rates of the majority of large blogs are making pennies compared to what they could make because they’re not focusing on this. They’re not looking at it and saying why would the person be there? What is it they want? What can I take them from and get them to based on what they want? How can I flip the market? How can I take someone that’s looking for an excel mortgage calculator and flip them into like a refinance lead so I get $100? How can I do that?
Well you got to do that in a very specific way and you got to focus on why they’re there. Why are they there? What they’re there for the excel? Why in the world would anyone want an excel file that’s gonna help them calculate their mortgage? Probably cuz they’re gonna refi. So if you frame it, in the terms of hey use this calculator but also get this refi so you could plug in the new rate that you get and see how much you can save.
You gotta get them in there. You gotta remember why they’re there. You’ve got to give them the answer to what they’re looking for. You can give it to them in a roundabout way. You could say, hey join my mailing list and I’ll give you the full answer or you could say download this thing and get the full answer or whatever it is to get them in there but you cannot forget that it’s all about answering the question of why your visitors are there in the first place.
Did they come from a Facebook video?
If I get people that are on a Facebook video or a Facebook ad and they come to my site, why are they there?
What did they click on?
If a guy clicks on an image that says learn to make $100 a day or a guy clicks on an image that says get free blog plugins, if I send them to the same blog post, it’s gonna confuse them. They’ll be like, oh wait a minute which one do I want?
So we got to send them exactly where they need to go and we got to structure it and focus the right way. Very very important.
- Waffle when it comes time to sell.
The fifth biggest issue we see when it comes to blogging and people who blog and make mistakes and make no money is they waffle when it comes time to sell.
A lot of people hate sales. Type in the box, do you hate sales? Like a lot of people think sales is bad and they picture like this slimy car salesman guy who’s like gonna slap you in the face and make you buy something you don’t want. But that’s not actually what sales is at all. That’s a bad segment. That’s like a bad apple in the sales industry but actually sales IS the ability to help people. My job as a salesman is to help you. If I’m a realtor I want to help you find the house that you want or I want to help you sell your house for the best price. If I’m selling cars, I want to get you something that if you want something for your family to be safe, I want to give you the best one. Not just the one that gets me the best commission but the best one for you. Your job as an affiliate marketer and a blogger is to give the right tips to people and selling will come naturally.
When you share and you help people, selling comes naturally. It’s very simple. If I give someone a good meal and afterward they’re like, wow you know what’s the recipe for that, I just sold them without selling them. Why? It’s because I gave them the good meal. I gave them the information first and I said here is what this is about and you could do the same thing with selling.
Now kevin says, luck in sales is described at a collision between opportunity and preparedness. It’s very much like the opportunity is everywhere because people are searching for things and there’s so many people who don’t understand that you can circumvent. You can get involved where other people aren’t at. There’s people out there that are promoting programs that everyone’s promoting the same way and it seems competitive but there’s also subtle backdoors to it. There’s subtle backdoors like if you want to go into the refinance market, I don’t go for the word refinance. I’m not gonna make my blog about refinance but I can make my blog about FHA Refinance limits, FHA Refinance credit score requirements. Those words are completely uncompetitive and it’s easier to sell.
Very simple and so many people waffle it and they sell from their heels. I think it really stems from they don’t believe in what they’re selling or they don’t have confidence in their information. It’s time to have confidence in your information and have confidence in what you’re selling and say, hey look you know what I can help these people save money. I can help these people live a better life. I can help these people make more or feel better or exercise better. If you have that and you’re not selling it, that’s a disservice to all the people who want that, or you’re doing a disservice by not pushing it hard.
- Swim against stream rather than naturally letting the profits in.
Did you know that most people are so focused on making money that they forget the actual way to make money is very simple?
All you got to do is make your blog natural.
Make it natural. If you’re having a lottery tool bar, put a drop-down box. Hey you want to find the latest lottery numbers? Choose the date of your lottery ticket. You want a mortgage quote? Put your zip code in the box. You want to search for tattoos? Search in this box.
Do something that’s natural for the visitor that makes sense. Like when I go to Google and I was like okay I’m gonna go to Google tomorrow and tomorrow there was like banner ads up here and then there was like a drop-down box that was like do you want to search the web, do you want to search YouTube, do you want to search this. Then over here there was like a big slider image thing that has the top news, I probably wouldn’t search Google. I’d be like wow this is way confusing. I’m not interested in this. This doesn’t matter. But because Google has just a search box, that’s why they’re the biggest search engine in the world, it’s because they just have a search box, that’s it! It’s simple.
One of the most successful websites on the Internet is this simple. I hope that sinks in.
If this sinks in, give me some thumbs up and some hearts and say, yeah I get it I’ve been making this way too Complicated. If I want people to like search for mortgage, maybe I could put a search box on my site that says put your zip code here You could literally guide people to what you want them to do if you focus the right way. So they’re swimming against stream like Yahoo right now.
A lot of people are swimming against the grain and they’re like I want to just make this site, have all the things on it in case they want everything. They don’t want everything. They want what they looked for and they tell you. Internet marketing is so simple because they tell you what they want. I’ve actually done campaigns where we ask people stuff. Then we make that a sales letter with the questions and answers and they buy it.
It’s not that hard to do but so many people forget about it because they think blogging is this like creative art form. I mean maybe writing is an art form but really it’s about communicating.
- Ask people to join their newsletter.
This might sound counterintuitive but here’s the deal. Again, remember what I talked about with streaming upstream. No one cares about your newsletter. You got to give them a reason to join your newsletter or your mailing list.
Far too often, you see that little box on the blog header and it says join my mailing, let’s subscribe here but it doesn’t tell them why should I join your Facebook group. You should join my Facebook group because we have videos and we give you value, cool downloads and stuff like that. What if you put something like, download a free affiliate marketing toolbar, put your name and email in the box or maybe something like how to become a super affiliate, check out all these sites that made me money.
These are the things that are going to get people on your newsletter. It’s got to be juicy. It’s got to be good. It’s got to be something they want and guess what it’s got to be based on why they’re there in the first place. So adding a thing that says, join my newsletter is not going to cut it you got to have something. You got to have a reason.
What are you gonna give them? Why should they join your newsletter? Why should they be watching this? Why should they be following you?
The seventh biggest mistake that bloggers make is they just ask people to join their newsletter and they don’t tell them why or for what reason or anything. It’s just like join my newsletter because I know I’m supposed to have a newsletter and that’s pretty much it.
- Neglect stats.
I got to tell you one of the most important things as a blogger is the stats that you get. I pay a lot of money for some of my stats. You can get some of my stats for free but a lot of the stats I pay a lot of money for because of fact that the devil is in the details.
If I find out there’s a blog post that’s getting a lot of traffic and I found out that traffic comes from a keyword that I inadvertently got and it’s driving traffic then what I want to do, is I want to revamp that content, for something to sell for the keyword that they are coming in from, not the one I originally went for. Or if I have a blog post that’s doing okay and I notice that it’s ranking on the search engine but a lot of people are coming from top ten ways instead of top ways then I put the number 10 in there and boom I skyrocket to the top. I get a lot more traffic.
These are the kind of things that we teach you over at Marcusmentor.me. We even have some stats plugins that you can use as part of your subscription and everything like that which is really cool but don’t neglect your stats. Watch what people do. I have a live tracker on my site and I always watch it.
The cool thing about the tracker is you can see where they come from. I could see like this guy here came from Google. This guy here came from MSN. This guy’s comes from YouTube. So you could see all kinds of things that’s going on, on your site and knowing that is what’s gonna separate the people who make the money from the people who don’t make the money. It’s very important that you focus on it because if you don’t, you’re just gonna be like wasting money.
I started making like a thousand dollars a day on it and I didn’t really change all that much. I didn’t get any new traffic. I just looked at the stats and changed something.
- Not focusing on one traffic source for each piece of content.
Far too many people try to do too many things.
They say I’m gonna make this video and it’s gonna be for my subscribers. It’s gonna be for YouTube. I’m gonna put it on Facebook. I’m gonna put it everywhere and I hope it ranks in the search engines and I hope that the nightly news picks it up and puts me on the news. If your aim is to get on the nightly news, you need to film something that would be on the nightly news. If your aim is to rank on YouTube, you need to make something that’s going to rank on YouTube. If your aim is to get search engine traffic from Google or Yahoo or MSN you need to make your content for that purpose.
I actually take this a step further and I make a blog for each purpose and I’m like okay this blog is designed to get search engine traffic, that’s what I want to do, that’s all I’m gonna do on that one. This one is for my social media and all the social media people go there. This one is for my YouTube and I segment it.
Refine, focus, go for what you know you can get. Major in the minors first and you’re gonna grow and grow and grow as you build. Go for a keyword.
This is how I’ve taken YouTube channels same thing major in the minors. Don’t go out there if you want to do funny videos. You don’t try to rank for the word funny video right? You go for something simple like horse ticks apple off of a tree and guy laughs or whatever. Go for something you know you can get go for something specific. It’ll work. Trust me.
It doesn’t even take that long if you focus. You can get traffic today for free. You could get traffic today by paying for it. Traffic is not the hard part of internet marketing. The hard part is learning to convert the traffic. You could get traffic all day. There’s traffic out there. You could buy it all day long and if you know how to convert it, that’s the game. That’s your struggle.
You want traffic, I’ll sell it to you all day long. You go buy it all day long It’s everywhere. People don’t know how to make money. There’s youtubers that are like making videos and they don’t make anything. There’s bloggers that are starving and they get tons of traffic. They get times the traffic I get and they’re not making anything. Why? Because they don’t know the secret of conversion.
If you know the secret of conversion you can go buy their traffic for pennies on the dollar. You can make a bunch of money that’s the key that’s what you got to focus on.
- They settle for low numbers.
This is a big one so many bloggers settle for low numbers. They try to get new traffic and they don’t get that much and I’m sitting here and I’m like you’re only making few bucks because you’re not focusing on the traffic. The average person makes so little on their traffic. Why? Because they’re not focusing on these 10 things and if you focus on these 10 things, you can start turning things around, start getting a lot of traffic, and start making a lot more money!