Recently, I asked a blogger what his goals were for 2013. He told me he wanted to double his blog’s income.
Image courtesy 401(K)2013, licensed under Creative Commons
We began to brainstorm some possibilities for creating that kind of increase in profit. We came up with quite a few ideas, but the main recurring themes seemed to be around three things:
- Increase traffic to his blog.
- Increase conversions of first-time visitors into subscribers of his email list.
- Increase sales conversions (he sells ebooks).
Now, these areas will vary from blog to blog. For example, those who monetize with advertising rather than with products might replace #3 in that list with increasing the performance of AdSense ads or landing extra sponsors.
But at the time, it struck me that to double his income, he could double any single one of the above areas—although 100% increases in any of these areas is a big ask.
However, smaller increases in each of them adds up—and it’s a lot more achievable. For example, a 30% increase in each of the above areas takes him well past a 100% income increase overall.
Of course even 30% increases in these areas can be daunting—but it’s a lot more achievable than 100% in any one!
As we talked this through, he became really energized and began to devise strategies for each of the three areas. In each, he came up with four or five small but important things he could do that would contribute to a 30% increase in that area.
Much of what he came up with was stuff he knew he should be doing but hadn’t gotten around to, or had put on the “one day” list. Most of it was low-hanging fruit that had potential to lead to significant rewards.
Let’s look at some examples.
Increase traffic
He decided to:
- increase his posting rate from twice a week to three times a week
- expand his use of social media—he had been focusing soley upon Twitter and decided to start engaging more on Facebook and to experiment with Pinterest
- write and pitch two guest posts per month to other blogs in his niche
- install an SEO plugin to help him optimize his blog for search engines.
Increase conversions in subscribers
In this case, the blogger came up with a series of tests that he wanted to run. These included split-testing his subscriber forms on his blog to see if he could increase the percentage of visitors who signed up.
He also wanted to test offering a free report for subscribers.
Increase sales conversions
In this case, the blogger:
- realized that his sales pages could do with some updating and testing—some A/B testing to optimize them would almost certainly see an increase in the percentage of people buying his ebooks
- recognized that he wasn’t doing any kind of upselling when a person bought an ebook—as a result he was probably missing out on some sales from people who would buy a second or third if they had opportunity to do so
- admitted he hadn’t developed any kind of autoresponder sequence for his subscribers that offered them deals on his ebooks.
I’m pretty confident that if he did actually implement all of the above tactics, he’d see small but significant increases in profit over the year ahead—in fact there’s potential there for him to more than double his profit!
How could you double your profit in 2013?
All of us probably have items on our “one day” list. Could any of these help you move toward doubling your profit in 2013? Let us know your plans in the comments.
