Chapter 11
Building Your Audience
I hope you are getting excited about your new business. You are now going to begin to build an audience.
Building an audience takes time, patience, and persistence. But this ‘front end effort’ is necessary to be able to build an on-line business that can generate an income that can eventually replace your current job. Or simply be a source of additional income for you.
But you must persist because once your list grows to a certain size than you reach a tipping point. This is the point when you can start making money and spend LESS time growing your audience, even though it still grows.
Once you have at least one product for sale I will show you how to build your list even larger in much less time. Think of this ‘front end effort’ as the ‘price’ you must pay to run a successful business. (I will talk about how to build a product or service in the next lesson).
There are some internet businesses with 100,000 names or more on their lists. And all of them have the same thing in common with you. At one point they had no one on their list. Everyone starts somewhere.
The fact that you are even at a point where you can begin building a list puts you head and shoulders above the majority of people. Because most people will not even take the first step towards changing their lives. Fears, doubts and limiting beliefs hold them back. But not you!
Getting started
The first thing to do is send an email to all your friends and contacts and let them know that you have started a new website and/or blog. Tell them briefly about your topic and why you are passionate about it. (You are passionate about your topic, right?)
And then send them your website address and invite them to check it out. Since these are people you know it is alright to ask them for assistance. Ask them to please forward your email to all their friends and contacts and just ask them to check it out.
Also, if you are on Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media sites, you may want to mention it and encourage people to visit your new site.
One word of caution: If you don’t want your current employer (or potential future employer) to know what you are up to, do not post this information on your social media site.
At this stage, you do not need social media to grow your business.
Sending out an announcement will get you started. It will be interesting to see how many visitors to your site will opt-in to your ‘lead magnet’. It’s exciting because each time someone signs up, your auto-responder service will send you an email notification. It’s fun to watch your list grow.
Doing guest posts
It’s now time to start doing some guest posts to drive traffic to your site and increase the size of your list.
Go back to the list of blogs you saved. (From Chapter 8) Look over the ones that attract your target audience but are not in competition with you. These are the ones that you will contact to see if they will accept guest posts. Some will and some won’t.
Often bloggers want to engage their audiences every day and it is hard to create that much content day in and day out. As a result, they welcome guest bloggers. But, it has to be something of interest or value for their audience.
Here is how you prepare: Carefully look over their site and read several of their blogs. (If you followed my advice from Lesson 8 you should be familiar with their site already).
You will get a sense of what messages they have for their readers. See if there is something related to your topic that would be of interest to their readers, that you could write about.
Sometimes it takes a little creativity to relate your message to that audience.
If you believe you could write a valuable post for their audience, create a compelling headline and ONLY write a brief overview of your proposed post. (No sense writing the entire post that is specific to that audience unless they agree to post it.)
Send them an email asking them if they accept guest posts.
Here is a suggestion to put in the subject line of your email: “Do you think your readers would enjoy this?”
In the body of the email I would write something that included the following:
Dear Ms. Blogger,
I have been following your blog for several (weeks/months) and I really enjoy it. I particularly like (comment on something you read on their blog, their ‘lead magnet’, an eBook, or real book that they have published. You MUST be sincere. If you don’t like anything they do, pick another blog that resonates with you.)
I was wondering if you accept guest posts. I have written an article called, “Your Title.” It is about (brief summary). It hasn’t been published anywhere and I was wondering if you think this may be of interest to your readers.
If so, please let me know and I will send you the article for your review. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Your Name
When you are requesting guest posts, always be respectful and always think about value for their readers. Because that’s what they are thinking about.
Continue your search for appropriate guest blog opportunities and keep sending out as many email requests as your time allows. This is a numbers game. You will get more people saying no then yes.
This is to be expected. You can’t let this discourage you. There will be dozens and dozens of blogs in a variety of categories that would be valuable to you. You can only fail to grow your audience if you give up.
If someone says that they will take a look at and/or accept your post, they will probably email you their requirements on how to present it. They will most likely expect you to prepare a short bio which will include a link to your website. In other words, the last line of your bio would read something like this:
You can learn more about Ron by visiting www.5steps2abundance.com
That’s how you get visitors to your site. So the more interesting and valuable your post is, the more people will click on your link and visit your site. And the more valuable your ‘lead magnet’ the more people will become a subscriber. And that’s how you build your list. (Once you have a product to sell there are other ways to build your list and I will cover that in another lesson).
When do I start to sell a product?
I once attended a seminar with a very successful on-line marketer who suggested that you spend the time and effort to build up your audience (list) to 1,000 subscribers before you attempt to make money from your blog.
I strongly disagree and have seen plenty of proof to back this up.
Your goal is to get to 100 subscribers.
That is all you need. Once you get to that number I will show you how to develop products and/or services that your audience wants. And once you have a product or service that your audience wants, it will be much easier to continue to build your list; and build it faster. Plus, you will be making money while you do it.
So, work as hard and as long as necessary to reach that magic number; success is just around the corner.
There are ways to pay to drive traffic to your website. However, those methods can be complex and are not advised for beginners because you can very easily waste a lot of money doing that. Even experienced internet marketers can’t always pick a profitable way to pay for traffic.
Developing a product will be the subject of the next lesson.
You are welcome to start thinking about producing a product or service that may benefit your future audience if you like. But I caution you in spending too much time doing that at this point. The reason is this:
What you think your audience will buy and what they will actually buy are not always the same.
In the next lesson I will show you how to determine exactly what your audience wants and what they are willing to pay for long before you put any time into producing a product. This is why it is essential to get at least 100 subscribers on your email list. You need an audience that size to really determine this.