Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Blogging businesses generate passive income.
Build it intelligently. Be posturing. Be patient.
Eventually, money flows to you passively. Perhaps you notice passive income while you sleep. Maybe you observe a sale while you walk around town.
This is the point guys: a genuine blogging business makes money for you when you step away from it.
One glaring warning sign suggests that you do not run a blogging business but basically work a job, instead.
1 Red Flag
Bloggers sometimes:
- tell me what I’m doing poorly with my blog
- offer their business services to improve my blog
Each offering comes from:
- cold emails
- cold social media messages and/or comments
By saying “cold”, I mean that the individuals are strangers. Strangers make a first point of contact without:
- helping me out with no strings attached to earn my trust
- casually chatting with me about traveling, blogging or some element of my life
- buying my courses, buying my eBooks or increasing my referral business
Strangers cold pitching me their business do not run a genuine business for flashing one serious red flag:
If your blogging income depends 100% on your personal effort and time executed through channels you do not own then you have a job not a blogging business.
This is a warning sign.
Businesses generate passive income.
Business owners either sell businesses or generate passive business income around the clock because successful entrepreneurs build successful, standalone, passive business models.
For example, when Google, or your guest posts, or your blog comments, or your blogger friend network sends traffic and income to your blog around the clock whatever you happen to be doing online and offline, then you have a genuine blogging business. Of course you worked diligently to build the passive business. But you no longer trade time for money.
You also do not depend on non-targeted emails sent to strangers claiming what they may be doing poorly to be the sole source of your income. Never mind the fact that you do not own the email, meaning that you have no content, no recurring passive income generator, via a cold pitch email.
Think about it guys.
Trading Time for Money
Trading time for money is a job not a business.
“Pitching” bloggers trade their time for money. Working hours pitching strangers yields the return of one client.
Trading 12 hours of your time today to land one client means trading 12 hours of work for a 1 time payment based on an extra hour of of client work. Imagine spending 13 hours to get paid for one hour? This is called working a job and a poor-paying job at that.
No Ownership
Stop spending your blogging work day on websites that you do not own.
Blogging business is in ownership.
If you spend 12 hours today pitching potential clients through Gmail you do not own Gmail, or the emails, or the content within the emails. Where does that leave you as far as business potential? Nowhere, really, in terms of long term business growth.
Think it through, guys. Spending 12 hours on Gmail asking for business grows nothing lasting, permanent and exponentially increasing as far as blogging business because none of those emails you write and pitch earn you passive income day after day for the entirety of your blogging career. Each email is a single-use paper towel sheet; after one use you throw it in the trash.
Does it make sense to throw your blogging work day into the trash one email at a time? How can you build a real business if your strategy has no shelf-life?
No Passive Business
Pitching potential clients depends 100% on your active efforts.
If a business depends fully on your active efforts then you generate no passive business.
If a business depends fully on your active efforts then you have a job not a business.
Of course, a building or work phase goes into growing a thriving passive business. Every blogger needs to work to lay a strong foundation for their venture. But each action should be a passive income builder, not an active job to generate a single, one-time sale or to attract a one-time client.
How to Build a Passive Blogging Business
First off, give most:
- attention
- energy
- work
to your blog.
You own your self-hosted blog. WordPress Dot Org blogs generate passive business for diligent blog owners who stock the blogs with targeted, detailed, long form blog posts.
For example, I write and publish 1-2 long form, targeted blog posts on Blogging From Paradise these days as the building phase continues. I stock this blog with helpful, thorough blogging tips daily. Some posts generate passive traffic and passive business through Google. Other posts generate passive traffic and passive business organically through various online channels.
After I ask blogging questions I send some posts to bloggers who share their struggles with me; having rich blogging guides to send to potential readers, customers and clients is a form of passive traffic and business. Even though I actively engage readers and send the blog posts each thorough guide does the traffic-driving and business-building for me passively after I send ’em out.
Optimize blog posts for SEO. Even if Google does not pick up these posts each gains passive traffic organically through:
- your email list
- guest posts
- blog comments
Open passive income channels. Create and sell online courses. Write and self-publish eBooks.
Think passive traffic and passive income to create a business that you can step away from.
Entrepreneurs often discuss the myth of passive business but that claim is bullshit. If it were not bullshit, bloggers like Pat Flynn could not generate substantial passive income.
Of course Pat works his tail off. But he generates passive income around the clock because his business model consists of leveraging content, connections and income channels to drive passive blogging income whether he works, sleeps, vacations or runs errands.
Focus Heavily on the Building Phase….and Do Not Panic!
I need to remind you guys of this building phase to remind myself to focus heavily on the building phase….in order not to panic.
Yep; I am not beyond the urge to panic, bail and quit on the building phase of my current blogging business model.
Basically guys, I would build like clockwork for a week or month or 6 months then panic, bail and quit on the blogging passive income model building phase for not appearing to see enough passive income based on writing and publishing long-form, targeted content quite frequently.
I once heard of a blogger who earned millions of dollars through his blog. During the first year of his blogging campaign he wrote and published two long form blog posts daily. He earned $600 after the first year. You and I know that almost all of us would quit publishing two long form, in-depth, targeted posts daily at that point, or, even three weeks into the building phase, let alone one year.
He did not quit. He did not panic. He did not bail. Eventually, he made millions of dollars through blogging because he trusted himself and his blog, not his results, during that building phase of publishing two posts daily and seeing almost zero income for 365 days.
Trust yourself. Trust your blog.
Run a genuine blogging business by building something lasting, passive and exponentially-growing over the long haul.
Conclusion
Create a blogging vision.
Stop thinking like a blogging employee.
Start thinking like an entrepreneur who blogs.
Build a passive blogging business to enjoy the freedoms of living the internet lifestyle.
