Column: The simple approach to making money with your blog

We have all been that blogger starting out who feels like there's a better chance of finding a unicorn than making money with our blog. To many bloggers, making money with a blog is a daunting task with what appears to be much work for little reward. They have no idea what to do and find themselves going from opportunity to opportunity just to make some extra money here and there.

Within that previous statement lie two secrets: how to fail and how to succeed.

The truth about making money with our blogs is that most people overcomplicate it. If bloggers could make money by making their plans as complicated as possible, some of them would be millionaires from their plans alone. Complicated procedures make us feel accomplished because they take a lot of effort to contemplate. Simple projects are quicker to think of, so, on the surface, they don't seem as valuable. However, the simple plans work. So if you want to make money with your blog, then keep reading.

Look for opportunities that work

My definition of an opportunity that works is an opportunity that some people have leveraged to make six- or seven-figure incomes without the golden handcuffs. Self-publishing eBooks and creating training courses are two such avenues. It's easier nowadays to find out if opportunities work because numerous people post case studies online detailing the money they make from specific opportunities.

Ride with one opportunity

This is the part of the blogging journey that breaks most bloggers and turns others into sensations. With so many possibilities readily available, it is easy to try leveraging them all, get overwhelmed and then self-combust.

A classic example of over-expansion gone wrong is social media. In an attempt to master social media, people will try to master all of the social networks at the same time. Attempting to learn Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Periscope at the same time is just like trying to learn Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and Romanian at the same time. Just as it wouldn't make sense to master those five languages at once, it wouldn't make sense to try to learn and master five social networks at the same time. I got good on social media because I focused all of my time on Twitter, mastered it and then it was easier for me to learn how to master the other social networks.

Hire freelancers

Once you decide on an opportunity, you need to hire freelancers to lighten your workload. After I mastered creating and marketing my online training courses, I went into self-publishing. When you self-publish a book, there are several things that must be done. The book must be written and formatted. There needs to be a book cover and the description needs to be appealing. Many things go into a successful book and they can take up too much of your time.

When I self-publish my books, I never worry about the formatting or creating the book cover. I have freelancers do those tasks for me. In fact, I have an army of freelancers who perform various functions within my business.

Having the army of freelancers gives you back an entrepreneur's most valuable resource: time. With extra time, you can write more books if that's what you want to do, find more time to market your books and think of out-of-the-box ways to turn your business into a success. One of the reasons people don't think out-of-the-box is because they don't have much time to do so. Hiring freelancers allows you to focus more of your time on the work that leads to the best results.

In conclusion

You may decide to create a specific product, offer a particular service or do something else. However, you must choose one opportunity and ride with it. If you decide to self-publish books, you must ask yourself how to get more sales specifically for self-published books, how to speed up the writing process and similar questions.

You must ask those types of questions for any opportunity you pursue. The opportunity you pursue will then impact the type of content that shows up on your blog and what you promote to your audience. Get clear on the one opportunity you will pursue and you will know where to allocate your time.

Marc Guberti is a senior at Fordham Preparatory School and a social media and business blogger and author. He's on Twitter @MarcGuberti and can be reached by phone at 914-722-6005 or email at Marc@MarcGuberti.com.

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