Kalkan, Turkey
Does your blog give off a teaching or selling vibe?
Look at it closely.
Take off your blinders.
Do you use it mainly to teach a specific reader with detailed blog posts?
Do you use it mainly to get money by pushing a hard sell?
Successful bloggers usually teach via their practical content.
Struggling bloggers usually sell by offering as little content as possible to add heavy calls to action to each blog post, through their sidebar ads and in many other pieces of precious blogging real estate.
Point blank; pinpointing struggles gets easier if you remove your blinders to look carefully at your blog vibe. Stare at it. Feel it. See if you mainly teach or mainly sell to carefully observe your results.
Why Not Both?
I hear you.
Some ask: why not have both?
Why not teach and sell? Why not have your cake and eat it too?
Teaching is one function. Selling is another function. The underscoring vibe of your blog cannot really emit both because either you help someone or try to get something from them. Either your blog is a teaching vehicle to empower people or a selling vehicle to get money from people. Make no mistake. Blogs emanate one vibe or the other. Anyone willing to look can see it. Either one is generous and confident or stingy and doubtful. The blog gives off these truths quite readily.
However, teaching leads to selling. Earn trust. Gain credibility. Drive sales. Being truly helpful leads the way to profiting. On the flip-side, selling never leads to teaching because if you try to get money from someone you cannot give them anything simultaneously. I mean from a dominant vibe. When someone tries to get you to buy something they do not give you anything teach-worthy, in the same breath, do they? Perhaps bloggers precede the buy-ask with helpful content but a sell is a sell. That’s just micro, though. On a macro level, bloggers either give off a teaching or selling vibe. One gives. The other tries to get.
Teach
Teaching blogs go heavy on detailed, targeted content.
Teachers profit because the resource that is their blog convinces people to:
- buy
- drive referral traffic
based on the merit of the content. It is that good. It is that effective as a teaching vehicle.
Resource-style blogs teach via 100’s of detailed, practical blog posts. One quick glance reveals this. Consider any blog you could easily browse for hours, digesting and using practical blog posts for your benefit. Teachers publish such blogs.
Sell
Selling blogs give off a vibe of: “Buy this now.”
Consider a general feel of running a gauntlet through a used car dealership. Salesmen want to close the deal. No one wants to help you with no strings attached. Everyone wants the bottom line. Never perceive this tendency as being wrong. Everyone needs to make a living. But never confuse it with teaching. Selling bloggers go heavy on the bottom line.
One issue arises: busying yourself with trying to get money from people robs you of the opportunity to consistently teach with content. You want to get money from people. You have no genuine interest in giving content for 1000’s of hours spanning years.
Unfortunately for selling bloggers, free, detailed content drives heavy organic traffic and consistent blogging income by boosting skills, credibility and exposure. No content means no skills, credibility, exposure, traffic and blogging income. A little content with lots of selling means a little bit of each. Most seller blogs fall within this category.
Why?
Why do you teach or sell?
Do some soul searching. Look within. Find your reason why. Most teachers want to help from their heart. Most sellers want to get from their ego. Teachers make blogging bigger than themselves. Sellers seem hellbent on meeting their individual survival needs.
Change Your Intent
Drive organic traffic and income by making blogging bigger than yourself.
Think expansively. Use your blog to teach targeted readers with detailed, practical content to lay a strong foundation for your online business. Content drive traffic and income. Publish blog posts consistently to precede your long term success.
Be a teacher.
Change Your Results
Exponential business growth follows a consistent array of detailed, targeted, practical content.
Successful blogging results follow success-minded, abundant bloggers who patiently teach via a dizzying volume of detailed content published over years.
Conclusion
Your blogging homework today: determine if your blog predominantly gives off a teaching or selling vibe.
Adjust accordingly.
