Hi friend,
What coffee do you drink today? Mine is a hot Americano.
By the way, it’s day 5 of the course already. From you have learned from the previous lessons, you should already have:
- A solid blogging mindset, which you learned on day 1 and day 2
- A live blog, which you learned on day 3
- The ability to write blog post as well as editorial calendar, which you learned on day 4
As I mentioned yesterday, today is a big day as you will learn how to add value to your blog.
“What is value, Aliko?”
Friend, throughout my blogging career, which has been lasting for over a decade, I have tried nearly all methods to get more traffic to my blog. Including running paid ads on Facebook.
Every time I run a paid campaign on Facebook, I got absolutely nothing but my money being gone away and burned out.
No result. At all.
You know why?
Because I had no value to offer. I hoped that by running a paid campaign I would get a ton of traffic to my blog.
That’s what I wanted to highlight.
To get traffic is not your goal when running a paid campaign (or any other campaign). Your goal is to get conversion.
The question is, what type of conversion do you want to get?
Remember what I said in the welcome email?
I said that this course would teach you how to create a blog to sell affiliate products, but by not relying on SEO. Instead, you would use email marketing.
I also said that the email list is the biggest asset you need to have as a blogger and online business owner.
From the above premise, the conversion you need to go after when running a campaign is getting email subscribers.
Another question is. How to get email subscribers if you have nothing to offer? There you go!
You need something to offer your prospective subscribers to hook them. You need to offer value.
“But what value, Aliko?”
Read on, my friend!
Develop a Framework to Offer Value
I said that this course would teach you how to create a blog to sell affiliate products. But I haven’t shown you which affiliate products you should promote yet.
I haven’t even shown you which affiliate programs you should join yet.
Here is why, my friend.
As I said on day 1 of the course. Most blogging courses that teach SEO-based blogging approach will teach you how to write listicles and how to get them on the first page of Google SERP.
If you follow the approach, you will end up joining hundreds of affiliate programs, which is ridiculous.
Also, there is no guarantee that your listicles — or other post types — will show up on the first page of Google SERP.
Here is an example of a blogger who started her blog the wrong way:
Instead of writing a ton of listicles and relying on SEO, you can build a framework to offer value.
“What the hell is a framework, Aliko?”
On my landing page, I promise you to get your first $10,000 from your blog in just 3 months. This is the value I want to offer.
Value is the end result you can offer your prospective subscribers. This should be crystal clear and realistic.
Then after you enter your email address, I show you how to achieve the goal via a 7-day email course. Each day, via an email, I explain the detailed steps you need to make to achieve your goal. This is the framework you can use to achieve the goal (to get your first $10,000).
Framework is the step-by-step guide to follow to achieve the goal (value) that you offer.
In my case, the framework I provide to achieve the value I offer consists of the following steps, which I deliver via an email course, the one you are currently accessing.
- Step 1: Build the right blogging mindset, which I deliver via day 1 and day 2 of the course
- Step 2: Set up a blog, which I deliver via day 3 of the course
- Step 3: Develop a content strategy, which I deliver via day 4 of the course
- Step 4: Create an offer to promote, which I deliver via day 5 of the course
- Step 5: Promote the offer, which I deliver via day 6 and day 7 of the course
As you can see, on day 3 of the course (step 2 of the framework), I explained how to create a blog with WordPress. Right there, I recommended which hosting service as well which theme you should use on your blog.
If you use the products I recommended, then I will get the minimum of $194.5 affiliate commissions, with the following details:
- Rocket.net: $150
- Elegant Themes: $44.5
I will also get affiliate commissions from other affiliate products I plug into my course content, including:
- Amazon (from the books I recommend)
- MailerLite
- Hover
In total, there are about $200 affiliate commissions I will get for every course student taking action after completing my course. And I only need to promote a single content to get multiple affiliate commissions at once like this: the landing page.
Yes, I just need to promote a landing page. The rest (the course lesson delivery via email) is fully automated (will be covered shortly).
The best part of the concept is that when the affiliate programs you joined close your account (although this rarely happens), you can simply replace them with similar programs to them.
For instance, you can replace Rocket.net with Pressable, replace Divi with Avada, etc. This way, you have no dependence on a certain affiliate program. You have full control over your business.
Now you may be asking.
“How can I create the framework, Aliko?”
You don’t need to create a new framework. Instead, you can replicate my framework. I even grant you permission to use all the texts in this whole course. I will even give you the raw format (DOCX) of the texts by the end of the course.
You can edit them and replace my affiliate links with yours. You can edit them to tailor the content based on your niche.
A crucial thing to note if you want to use my texts: make sure to set your own value. In my case, the value is how to get $10,000 from a blog in 3 months.
You can set the value according to the audience you plan to target. Ideally, you set the value according to your expertise area aka your niche.
Some examples of values you can use are:
- How to quit your job and make $10,000 per month blogging (for blogging niche)
- How to make $5,000 with your iPhone taking photos (for photography niche)
- How to share your recipe and make $5,000 per month (for cooking niche)
- How to write movie reviews and make $10,000 per month (for movie niche)
- Etc.
In the future, once your audience grows bigger, you can build and sell your own products. For now, you can use the above framework as the launchpad to jumpstart your online business kingdom.
What if you want to create your own framework?
That’s cool, of course.
Say you want to promote an email marketing software (e.g., MailerLite), you can offer a value like “How to Become a Better Sales Email Writer in 7 Days”. Then, you can break the steps down into a framework and write the details on each step on your framework.
The detail on each step is what you want to send to your prospective students as a course lesson. You can plug affiliate products into your lessons just like what I did in this course.
Running the Framework (aka the Course)
You need an email automation tool to turn your framework into an email course. The tool you can use for this is MailerLite.
MailerLite is an email marketing tool that comes with an automation feature, which you can use to create an email sequence to run your course.
Here is the link for the detailed instructions.
But before you even run the course, it’s necessary to set up a professional email address account beforehand. Something like yourname@yourdomain.com.
Why?
Because you are a professional now. No one will trust you are a professional if you send a professional email using a free email (e.g., yourname@gmail.com).
Here is the link for detailed instructions to set up a professional email account.
That’s it for today’s lesson, friend. Tomorrow, you will learn how to promote the value you have created.
P.S. If you still have some doubt to take action aka to start your blog, feel free to shout me on Threads. You can ask me anything.