This is the first post on this website and I’m not even going to bother with an introduction.
We’ll just crack on.
There are seven main facets of content creation we’re going to cover in this article and they are as follows:
- Content strategy
- Niche selection
- Productivity
- Blogging
- Making videos
- Monetisation
- Traffic acquistion
I like to leave traffic acquisition to the end mainly because it’s a tricky little bitch, but also because if we’re very lucky and we work very hard, if we smash the first five, traffic will just happen.
And you very well might be thinking, ‘unless your strategy is building a time machine and going back to 2012’ and you would be right to do so BUT the very first thing I want you to take away from this video is that creating a piece of content, then sharing it everywhere, then repeating that for ever and ever is not an effective strategy unless you have a lot of spare time and mental bandwidth.
My preferred method is to write a lot of content and then let it sit there by itself whilst I go off to forage for an audience.
Content strategy
A content strategy is a ever-evolving beast but there are some things that never change.
- You need to provide value. The easiest way to do that is to solve a problem. Ideally, it will be a massive problem that rich people have.
- People like to read things and watch things that they find useful and/or entertaining.
Don’t come at me with your ‘blogging is dead’ spiel. I read blog posts every single day. My Feedly feed is basically a massive magazine curated especially for me.
Our content strategy is basically going to be this:
- We are going to pick a niche
- We are going to produce a content plan
- We are going to write blog posts
- We are going to make videos (I know ! I hate it too!)
- We are going to create opt ins that will force people to give us their email addresses
- We are going to send them emails that they enjoy (and we’re going to leave them alone on Black Friday!)
- We are going to find out their problems and sell them something they need.
- Fin. Retire to the Bahamas.
And you might be like, yes, that’s what every prick selling a course has said to me over the past ten years. It’s the same thing.
No, it’s not.
Firstly, I will not try to sell you a course. Or a membership.
No shade to the people who do this, I understand you have to make money but I am TIRED.
One of my goals with this website is to host an online workshop and have people be able to just do the thing and not be sold to.
Secondly, we’re going to put a LOT of effort in upfront. Not hard work effort, but we’re reaally going to think about our niche and content plan.
Which brings me nicely onto
Niche selection
I know that you don’t want to niche down and I don’t really care.
If you’re not ready to niche down, then go for a substack or some other free platform and write a bunch of articles to see if a preference emerges.
There are so many things that I would encourage you to consider when picking a niche. Gone are the days of niche websites making bank with ads. Mine still makes a few hundred pounds a month passively through ads but it’s not stable income.
This topic requires a whole article (probably more) to really get to the nitty gritty, but here are some of the things I wish I considered when I first started blogging:
- Pick something you’re interested in and enjoy writing about.
- Pick something you can monetise with a product, digital or otherwise.
- Do NOT pick something reliant on news. It is EXHAUSTING. Some news is fine, but you want 90% of your content to be in not evergreen then at least fair long lived.
- Pick a niche that you can make your own images for. They don’t need to be photos – infographics are fine.
Productivity
The cold fact remains that most blogs don’t get any traction until you’re at around the 60 articles mark. I don’t even bother with making a Pinterest account until I’m there, because my time would be better served writing more content.
I have struggled a lot with productivity over the years. I am terrible at being consistent and awesome at beating myself up about not spending enough time on my content.
I actually think I’ve cracked it now though. You know the thing that made a weirdly big difference? Putting things like ‘wash towels’ in my calendar. ‘Clean out fridge’. ‘Change toothbrush head’.
Don’t worry, I have no inclination to get up at 5am and will not expect you to. I am naturally an early riser (because I like to go to bed at 9) but I get up at 6:20 and then spend an hour on the sofa wrapped in a duvet drinking coffee and reading my Feedly feed. All my blogging is done between the hours of 7 and 9 Monday – Thursday and occasionally on a weekend.
The real trick to blogging is knowing what you’re going to be doing and we’re going to plan all that out.
Blogging
I know that blogging isn’t cool any more. I don’t care. I think it’s an awesome way to make money writing and here’s why:
- Articles have a MUCH longer shelf life than social media posts. I make £20 a month from an article I wrote in an hour 6 years ago.
- You can keep updating and editing them SO EASILY basically forever in a way you can’t with almost any other form of media.
- There are so many ways to monetise them – ads, affiliates, sponsorships, your own products
- They lend themselves incredibly well to building an email list in a way that social media platforms don’t, because social media platforms punish you for having people leave the platform.
It can still be a pain getting traffic though. Which is why we, alas have to do
Videos
I know, I know. You’re a writer, you don’t want to do videos too. And they’re so much work!
Video is a lot of work but YouTube is an awesome discovery platform. If you can get people to sign up tp your email list then you can email them your articles.
Video also has a lot of the same upsides as blogging. Obvs you can’t edit videos after they’re uploaded like you can with articles, but you can monetise them in several ways and long form videos can pop up on people’s feeds years later.
I mean, you’re already writing the article, which is the basis for a script.
I actually really enjoy making videos now. I may be terrible at it, but I’m having fun.
Monetisation
Monetisation is where blogs really come into their own.
I can’t pretend that you can make money quickly from blogging because you likely can’t BUT you can make thousands a month from ads and affiliate. I encourage you to pick a niche that lends itself monetisation. Ebooks, digital downloads, even consulting can make you good money.
Don’t spam.
Please don’t spam.
Make something good. Something people want. Something YOU wanted when you were in the shoes of your audience.
Of course, we want to monetise our blog we need
Traffic
I’m gonna tell you this now, and you’re not going to like it.
Getting blog traffic is really hard.
Every single person that comes to your website needs to be like ‘wow, this is {useful}{entertaining}{lifechanging} and I must bookmark it/sign up to their email list.
You’ll struggle to do that with a handful of articles, which is why I tend to front load the production and go and get the traffic later.
Backlinks are still super important but if you find all that SEO stuff overwhelming, don’t worry. I wouldn’t bother thinking about backlinks until you have a decent library of articles.
Make sure you’re keeping up with the big players in your niche. Read other people’s content regularly. Get to know it and always keep half an eye out for backlink opportunities.
Pinterest is also an option but is…involved if you want to do it well. Like blogging though, a lot of the strategy work can be done upfront.
Ok, we’re up to 1400 words. We’ll leave it there for now.