Do you remember when blogging first came on the scene a few years back? For a while everyone was rushing around posting blogs about all kinds of stuff – just for fun.
Maybe you were one of them or perhaps you’ve started up your blog more recently or are considering getting one up and running soon. Either way, the chances are that you’ve pondered one big blogging question – how can you turn your blog posts into cash?
There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).
If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about this two different methodologies. If you blog for money then your business model is based on the content, by this, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.
I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.
Reporters leverage the content of the experts. As we see, in most cases, people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Because of perceived value, experts enjoy the perks of preeminence and higher conversion rates, thus, it’s easier for them to get publicity, In the other words, experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.
Most Bloggers Are Reporters
The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person can becomes an expert without doing things and learning. For new bloggers, in general case, they start their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again). There is nothing wrong with that, for many people, before you build up some expertise, it’s actually a necessity thing to do at first.
Unfortunately, when it comes to reporters and experts, the ratios are pretty skewed, there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle in order to gain attention, and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.
Don’t Replicate Your Teacher
If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a ‘guru’ (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, often time the view a student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.
The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status, it’s hard to succeed.
Even people, who enjoy marginal success, let’s say, growing an email list of 1,000 people, for example, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, but the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet Mrketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.
Do you know how many products out there that claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of internet marketing? There are lot, it’s a saturated market, when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.
If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.
Report on Your Process, Not Others
The secret to progress from reporter to expert is Not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you actualy can use the things that you learn to create your own blog.
Exampke, if you learn a technique from an expert, you should take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things by using your opinions, your stories, and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.
Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough, one day when you wake up, you may heard others call you an expert too without even realizing how it happened.
You Know You are Already an Expert
Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert anyway), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you, you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.
Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learn along your journey.
Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise. If all you ever do is to talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, then you haven’t hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.
Reporting is a Stepping Stone
If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from ‘scratch’, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.
Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases, people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.
Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others. It’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.
Finally, there are a number of great ways to create and market your blog, convert your random musings into cold hard cash. It is actually a pretty straightforward in creating a rather good income from blog writing, and surprisingly the secret is little to do with being a great author or writer. Instead it’s just a case of knowing how to start and construct your blog in a compelling way that builds readership and creates trust.
