The Blog Business Funnel

Setting Yourself Up for Business

Introduction - Why Aren’t Bloggers Filthy Rich?

It’s hard to keep up with all the advice being written about how bloggers can make money online. The success stories are hard to miss. The opportunities are, appar­ently, limitless. There’s even a booming industry of bloggers who get paid to tell people how much they get paid. Confusing, isn’t it? The steps are, on the surface, pretty clear. Create a blog, get lots of traffic, sell ads and affiliate products and voila—you’re rich!

But most bloggers know it’s not so easy.

Affiliate products always sell best in niches where people spend money to make money (internet marketing, SEO and blogging are the big three). But what about niches where people are not constantly looking for their next big payday? Affiliate products are scarce in these niches, and often, so are the sales.

Even in niches frequented by entrepreneurial types, the competition is so fierce that only the famous bloggers make serious money.

But the difficulty of affiliate marketing to earn a living is not the only problem. If you’ve ever tried to earn good money by selling advertising on your blog, you know how frustrating that can be. With earnings per thousand impressions as low as 20 cents, most bloggers end up making small change.

Yes, there are some great success stories—but most of these people truly enjoy working with advertising and affiliate programs. They spend hours each day tweak­ing AdSense, marketing affiliate products, measuring stats and writing for search engines.

Put simply, while this is perfect for some people, it’s not everyone’s idea of rewarding daily work. I feel uneasy putting on the hard sell. When I delve too deep into the world of internet marketing and make money online schemes, I’m overcome by a mysterious urge to take a shower.

I have used ads to make some extra pocket-money, but I could never base my work around it. I define myself by what I do, and I don’t want to be defined by advertising and selling other people’s stuff.

Maybe you feel the same way?

I want to make a living online—but not like that. If you want to make a living online, you can be forgiven for thinking that ads and affiliates are the only way to do it. But that’s simply not true. There are thousands of people earning their livelihood with skills you already have, or could learn with a bit of effort. And they’re not just making a living—they’re making a killing.

A recent Freelance Switch survey of 3,700 freelancers revealed that across ten differ­ent industries the lowest average hourly rate was $41 (all prices in USD). The aver­age rate across all industries combined was a whopping $53 an hour!

That’s $53 an hour to do things like write, draw, design, make websites and take photographs—things that many people would be happy to do just for fun, let alone for serious money.

But despite how it might sound, freelancing is not easy. You need a skill that is in demand, and you need clients who demand you over the competition. It’s not a get rich quick method, and it’s not for people who want to do as little work as possible.

In fact, it’s the opposite. Selling your skills is the perfect way to earn a living online for anybody who fundamentally enjoys the act of creating. If I had to work only four hours a week and spend the rest of my time eating, sleeping and watching TV, I would very quickly go insane.

You will not make a million dollars a year freelancing. While you could make six figures—and many are doing so right now—good money is a boon, but not the core appeal of the freelance lifestyle. Choosing to freelance is about choosing to do work that makes you happy. Work that allows you to create. Work that you can be proud of. And that’s not all…

I’m no self-help guru, so I can’t give advice on how to forgive easily and lead an active social life—two of the key recommendations from a University of Pennsylvania study on what makes people happy. But I do know a lot about flow.

‘Flow’ (see Wikipedia page) is a psychological phenomenon. It’s how you feel when performing a task that absorbs 100% of your focus. Time seems to run faster while in a flow state—hours can zoom by without notice because you are too focused to care about the passing of time. You’re truly living in the now.

To enter a flow state while performing a task, the following criteria need to be met:

You must be challenged, but not too much. It would be tough to enter a flow state as a beginner guitarist trying to learn Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’—a work of guitar mastery. Simply eeking out each note, let alone arranging them in the correct rhythm, would be extremely difficult and frustrating. You’d quickly want to bail out and try learning ‘Ode to Joy’ instead. Distracted by your frustration and thoughts of quit­ting, you’d never enter flow. Nor is a talented guitarist going to enter a flow state playing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’. There’s no challenge in it, so her mind is likely to wander and not achieve the 100% focus required for flow.

You must be doing creative mental work. This includes problem solving, strategic thinking and thinking ‘on your feet’.

You must see great value in the work. I find my monthly accounts challenging but not too challenging to do, but this doesn’t mean I enjoy them! To find flow, the task you’re doing must have personal value to you.
The University of Pennsylvania study I mentioned just a moment ago identified that, more than most other factors, regularly experiencing flow states is a fundamental ingredient of happiness.
If you stop to think about it, I’m sure you can come up with one activity that makes you feel this way, whether it’s writing a blog post, web design, drawing or developing new business ideas.
For many people in the world, these things are all bankable skills.
By selling your skills, you can earn a living doing work that makes you happy. Your work can make money and make happiness at the same time.
Yet many people are desperately searching for ways to be rich while working as little as possible. To earn $100,000 a year with a four-hour workweek, you’d need to earn over $480 for every hour that you work!
And why do people set themselves this near impossible task?

So they can find more time to do activities that put them into flow.
They never realize that work, flow, wealth and happiness are much easier to find when they come in a single package.

Getting paid to achieve
Best-selling psychology writer Malcolm Gladwell argues that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.

10,000 hours of practice would make you really good—an achievement you could be proud of for the rest of your life.
Let’s say you practice a skill 5 hours each week as a hobby. In roughly 38 and a half years, you will have achieved expert status.

But what if you practice a skill 35 hours a week? Imagine if it was your job—say, web design. You’re paid $50 an hour to practice this skill.

In roughly five and a half years, you’re an expert with industry-leading skills.
And you’ve earned $500,000 in the process.

This is worth repeating. You will have earned half-a-million dollars to achieve what many people would consider a lifelong goal.

Introducing The Blog Business Funnel
The name of this little book is The Blog Business Funnel. It’s a system I stumbled across in 2007 when I began to take a few small freelance writing gigs through my blog. Of course, that’s only how it started…
I enjoyed writing and was good at it, so that became the service I offered. Since I came to be viewed as an expert on blogging, I started to do consulting work as well. By January 2008 I was earning a modest full-time income freelancing—and I was not working full-time hours. I couldn’t. At the time I was also studying full-time and working part-time at a bakery (though the bakery job, which I had been working for four years to support myself through university, didn’t last much longer!)

By July 2008 I was studying full-time and freelancing part-time as a writer, copy­writer and consultant. In that month, I earned more than $8,000 through my own Blog Business Funnel. Every single cent was earned through jobs that came through my blog.

Was I a veteran freelancer? Nope. I took my first ever client in September 2007, only eleven months earlier—a freelance blogging job. I figured I would start with what I knew!

When I added up my earnings and stared in shock at the final figure, I knew I had stumbled across something incredible.

If I’d known then what I know now, I’m confident I could have cracked the $10,000 mark that month.
It may seem like there was something ‘special’ about my freelance business, but there wasn’t. I was good at some things, but poor at others—with strengths and weak­nesses just like any other freelancer.

I’m not half bad at writing, but I’m more than half bad at meeting deadlines. I have a life-long habit of leaving things to the last minute. As for copywriting, clients like my work and it gets results—but I learned almost everything I know on the job, and have never been formally trained. As a consultant I never once had a phonecall or Skype meeting with a client. I’ll admit—I’m not a phone person, and I don’t like get­ting up long before dawn make US business hours, as I live in Australia. I created written reports in my own time instead—though clients did enjoy being able to refer back to them later.

In short, I did a lot of things the freelancing experts would call ‘wrong’, but the Blog Business Funnel doesn’t care whether or not you’re the world’s greatest freelancer. It just works.

Here’s how it works
Use skills you already have or could quickly learn as the basis for one service you will offer. As you grow more confident, you’ll expand your services to match your rising skill level.

If your industry peers read your blog, it makes you look like an industry leader. This enhances your credibility and the perceived value of what you give. It puts you a step above the competition, since they are looking to you for advice.

If the target market for your services is reading your blog—for example, if you’re a blog designer writing for bloggers—your content will naturally draw prospects and leads into your business.

Over time, you can increase the number of prospects coming into your blog by add­ing more content and refining your approach to SEO (Search-engine optimization) and social media.

You can tweak your blog so that it’s more effective at funneling this traffic to your portfolio and Services pages.
You can use basic copywriting principles to put your conversion rates on steroids.

You can tap into tried and tested internet marketing tactics like email lists and launch processes to constantly land a flood of clients.
You can tap into passive income streams to supplement your hands-on income.
You can create an imposing personal brand that will help your influence to spread.
And when you find yourself so popular you have to turn away jobs, you can raise your rates to better strike a balance between peak workload and peak rates.

Ideally, you’ll only have to look for work when you want to, and you’ll never have to take on work that you aren’t excited about doing.

Since the system is based on trust, not just traffic, you don’t even need a huge audi­ence to succeed. Surprisingly, most clients are not looking for the best—they’re look­ing for someone they feel they can trust. A modest audience of people who trust you is enough to keep your business profitable.

Still, it’s time for a reality check.
Creating a Blog Business Funnel is not something you can do easily, or without practice and effort. It requires skill in blogging, the correct strategy and the right approach. But like any skill, it can be learned with the right resources and a good mentor.
The mission statement of this little book is to teach freelancers how to use the Blog Business Funnel system to create a freelance business that literally lives up to its billing.

Inside the pages of this book you will find everything you need to create your own perfect freelance business model. You’ll learn how to build a blog that naturally attracts clients and funnels them into your business. You’ll also learn how to be per­ceived as a leader in your industry and be famous in your niche. Most importantly, you’ll find out how to make plenty of money doing what you’re best at.

So—now you know how it works, let me show you how it’s done!

Chapter 1- Setting Yourself Up for Business

If you’ve never freelanced before you don’t need to worry. Even if you know very little about freelancing, you don’t need to worry. I’ll explain everything you need to get started.
Freelance services are almost always skills based, and usually creative. Here is a list of the most common skills that freelancers sell:

• Writing – journalism, blogging, ghostwriting, copywriting, editing and proofreading, fiction writing, translation.
• Consulting – coaching, mentoring, training, advice, teaching, planning, speaking, presenting, coordinating.
• Design – web design, graphic design, ad design, user interface design, print design, logo design, Flash design.
• Coding – web development (various coding languages), software programming, game design.
• Video – motion graphics, special effects, video editing.
• Audio – production, composition, mixing, mastering, performance.
• Art – illustration, photography, concept art, 3D modeling, animation, texturing, art direction, fine art.
• Marketing – SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, biz dev, sales, Public Relations, viral