How to Start a Blog That Makes Money Forever

From the desk of Victor Pride
Subj: How to be a blog artist for fun and (real) profit
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Everyone wants to make money and everyone wants to be free.

Great news, you can accomplish both if you’re a successful blog artist.

I recently wrote a post called Take Off the Mask and Expose Your Inner Entrepreneur. In that post I critiqued readers’ business ideas. Quite a few of the business ideas were for blogs.

The desire to be a blog artist is there.

You’re in luck, boys, because there’s one thing I know how to do very well – write a badass blog that pays.

In this article I’m going to share with you some of my secrets about blogging and I’m going to give you a step by step guide to making money from nothing.

I’m going to show you how to be a professional blog artist.

Let me explain how I started…

I lived life, I succeeded, I wrote about success. That was my beginners formula.

As Bold and Determined has evolved the formula is still completely un-complicated – live life, succeed, write about it.

I’m not a “numbers” guy and I’m not a copycat.

I’m a gut instinct guy, I have never followed any marketing guru advice (scoundrels and liars, all of them).

I always just did what felt right. It worked out and everything I’m going to share with you is what I’ve learned from blogging successfully for four years.

Before you ask why you should listen to me, I’ll answer: I’m an expert and I comfortably make 6 figures as a blog artist. My word is as good as gold, and you can take that to the bank.

Follow my tips (tips, not rules. There are no rules) and you can do the same thing.

And remember one thing:

The how is nothing. The mindset and the will is everything.

— Victor Pride (@victor_pride) September 13, 2014

Let’s get started…

Who is a good candidate to be a successful blog artist?

You need to be a real person who lives a real life and has real answers.

Only authorities make real money. To be a real authority you have to be a real person.

You have to live what you write about. Your word means shit if you aren’t living it.

Be the man you wish to be. Don’t fake it ’til you make it, be it before you write about it.

Show proof on your blog. If you don’t live a life your blog is going to be boring, useless and eventually bankrupt.

B&D has 10,000 copycats but they won’t make it. Your blog is your heart, soul, blood and guts. That can’t be faked if you want success.

You need to expose yourself to the world.

Your blog sucks if you don’t show your face. Period.

Proof is required to be an authority. Being an authority is how you make money.

Help your readers trust you and show who you really are.

No one will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself enough to put your face, thoughts and ideas out there for public scrutiny or praise.

Do you start one blog or several niche blogs?

A niche blog is a small blog that focuses on a very specific topic and attracts a smaller, highly targeted audience. Generally a niche blog will not have more than 5-10 articles, each of those articles are thinly veiled attempts to get you to buy some product or to click on some ad.

Niche blogs are all the rage and the “experts” will tell you to start 10 niche blogs so you can diversify your income. Just one problem, the experts are liars and niche blogs are shit.

Let me explain…

A niche blog is not an authority, it’s just a bunch of articles about the same subject. A niche blog is a piece of bullshit that someone stumbles on when they want an answer to something. After they get their answer they leave and don’t come back.

On the other hand when they stumble onto an article on your blog and get their answer they can then check out all your other material and, if they like it, they’ll stay. They’ll stay because you’re clearly an authority.

Niche blogs throw away readers, blogs keep readers.

Ten niche blogs are worth less than one authority blog.

Is there a way to diversify your income if you only have one authority blog?

Yes.

Here’s the secret that no one knows:

Each great article you write is it’s own niche site.

But instead of having those articles floating around in cyber-space on a separate niche site they are connected to your main site and they’re building your authority, reputation and bank account.

If you want to make money from a blog, not just once but forever, you have to make great content that stands the test of time.

Each day, articles that I’ve written as long as three years ago still make me money.

Care should be given to each and every article. Each article should be the absolute best it can be. You want your reader to stumble on killer article after killer article.

If they find the answer to their question on a niche site where do they go from there? Away from your site.

If they find the answer to their question on your blog where do they go from there? If you’ve done a good job of internally linking all your articles and products in every article your new readers will stay on your site reading all your great material.

Don’t start niche blogs, start one blog. You can diversify your income through one blog and you don’t have to waste your time and energy running ten blogs.

Your focus should always be on one thing only.

So how do you make multiple streams of income through one blog?

Two ways:

1. Affiliate marketing
2. Satellite sites

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you indirectly sell another company’s products and they give a commission per each sale you generate. In layman’s terms, you get paid for referrals who buy.

Affiliate marketing will give you multiple sources of income (for each product that you endorse) and it can truly be passive income after you have put in the work.

Some of my older articles (3+ years) still make me 1k+ each month. Put even just a few great articles together and you’re talking real money.

Satellite sites

Satellite sites are the problem solvers answer to niche sites. Satellite sites are your own projects (ebooks, podcasts, courses, video etc.) but they are on new domains.

Example: My main site is BoldandDetermined.com, some of my satellite sites are BoldandDetermined.net  (BADNET) and 30DaysofDiscipline.com.

Satellite sites revolve around your main site, so they carry the authority of your main site but they give you the freedom to design them in other ways.

You don’t want all your projects to be stuck with one design. On the other hand you don’t want all your work disconnected and discombobulated.

You want everything connected, even if they have different domain names they should still be branded under your reputation and authority.

I call my business world BADWORLD. Everything I do revolves around Bold and Determined like Phobos and Deimos revolve around Mars (the God of War) – connected but still separate.

Pictured: BADWORLD. Not drawn by Victor Pride.

You want multiple sources of income but not multiple sources of focus.

Diversify the income stream, keep the focus on one thing.

Don’t throw away your energy on building multiple projects because you’ll spread yourself thin.

Build one, finish it completely, then move on to the next one. But make sure to keep your focus on one thing – your authority blog.

How to write articles that pay every day

They say the money is in the list but that’s absolute bullshit. The money is in the reputation. The list just facilitates your business needs.

Email marketing is not the best strategy for making money from a blog.

The best strategy to make money from a blog is:

Writing timeless content that can live on for eternity on your blog.

Each article you write is it’s own little niche site. But those articles are connected to something much larger – your blog.

Blogging vs email marketing

When I write a blog article it’s online forever. When I write an email it has a timeline of realistically one hour. After one hour the clicks drop rapidly.

Good blog articles will make you money daily without any further involvement from you. Emails, on the other hand, will make you money in the hour after you send them and then nothing else.

So if you rely on email marketing to make money what do you have to do to keep sales up? You have to keep sending emails.

Articles, on the other hand, receive traffic day in and day out and you only publish articles one time.

Here are two examples of niche articles on Bold and Determined:

• 10 Reasons to Stop Using Internet Porn
• The #1 Legal Muscle Building Supplement That Actually Works (and will probably be banned soon)

I could send those two articles out as emails and they’d be forgotten in 24 hours. As blog articles they’ve been read by millions of people and they’re still read by thousands every day.

Internet marketing vs content creation

I have zero respect for internet marketers because they’re lazy and stupid.

Their goal is to have a successful product launch and make a lot of money once and then move on to the next product launch. That’s literally what they do.

They’re take the money and run hucksters. When the money runs out they come crawling back with another launch.

Their products don’t last because they don’t make timeless content, they only put effort into the launch.

The launch makes them money for a limited period of time, then the money runs out and they have to do the same thing over and over.

The launch model is a dumb business model. Instead of making money every day of the week they make money over the course of the launch and then they basically make nothing until they launch another product. They may as well rely on a paycheck.

On the other hand I make money every day from books I wrote 3-4 years ago because the content is timeless. I never pushed a big launch, I never cared about a launch.

Marketing for the pros 101

What’s the secret to making money from seemingly nothing?

Non-invasive marketing

The non-invasive marketing strategy is simple: place links to your products in your articles. Don’t sell them in the articles, just say “these are available“.

It’s the simplest strategy in the world but it works wonders.

Don’t harass your readers with constant emails or nasty pop-ups offering them a free guide to learn how to breathe better just so you can add another email address to your list of prospects.

Offer value and they’ll buy, it’s really that simple.

Hidden-in-plain-sight promotion

Nearly all of my articles promote one of my books or one of my associates.

But they are subtle. They aren’t “hard sales”.

They aren’t thrown in your face but they are a call to action.

Soft sales

The non-invasive marketing strategy can also be called the “soft sale”.

Save the hard sale for the sales page. When you mention your products in an article the soft sell will convert better than the hard sale.

People don’t want to be sold, they want a solution to their problem.

Try to push sales on people and they’re just going to run from you. Offer them a solution and they’ll come running to you with handfuls of money.

Make it rain 

Your business is like a tree, keep feeding it water and it will grow big and strong. When your tree grows big and strong it will bear fruit for you (money and freedom). Stop feeding your tree and it will wither and die.

Plan for growth. Your blog starts out as a little root, you need to water it to make it grow into a big tree.

That means, yes, you have to work.

You work now so that in the future you can work less.

Anyone can understand the make it rain plan…

Pictured: The tree of wealth and freedom

How to start a blog that pays

Start your blog with BADNET

BADNET is my satellite site that sets up WordPress blogs for those who don’t know how or don’t want to. Doesn’t matter if you’re a tech guy or not, it’ll be taken care of for you for free and it isn’t outsourced to India or the Philippines.

My right hand admin does it all and does it with perfection. We take care to do it right. We also go above and beyond and set up the must use plugins and give you four extra reports about how to make money blogging. If you want to start a blog it’s a no-brainer.

Start writing

BADNET will plant your tree but you actually have to write the articles. Just write about what you know. You need an audience and you need quality articles. Put those two things together and you can make money. Quality articles are the rain that grows your tree of wealth and freedom.

Sell something

You don’t make money without selling something. You can sell ad space, you can affiliate market products or you can make your own products. It’s easier to put in affiliate links to products you currently use and enjoy but it’s best to make your own products and stay in complete control of your money.

Don’t quit

Don’t stop building. Don’t stop feeding your tree of wealth or it will die. Like Tom Waits once said, “you got to make it rain“.

If you want your own tree of wealth you got to make it rain.

Until next time.

Your man,