I want to talk a little bit about the obstacles that many people have to overcome that are preventing them from even trying to succeed with building their own successful blog around their passion.
1. “I don’t have a clue how to start and have no experience.”
The temptation for many people who are thinking about getting started online is to read, read, and read some more. Many people spend way too much time analyzing everything, procrastinating, and never getting anything done. They think that they need to have that whole “building a blog” thing figured out BEFORE they take any action.
Guess what, with the wealth of resources that are out there, three years from now they’ll still be reading. Nothing will happen until you take action.
Unless you TAKE ACTION, three years from now you will still have NO EXPERIENCE and be scratching your head where to start.
You can truly make your dreams come true and create passive income on the Internet doing something that you love, but you have to get started NOW. Even if you don’t have the perfect plan, or you’re not sure exactly how it’s going to work out. The best way to learn is to learn by doing, and this is especially true with the Internet.
Think about it this way – everybody who is successful online was once in your position–they had to build that first page, write their first article, or ebook. Nobody is born to be successful online – you need to work hard, make mistakes, and learn from these experiences.
The truth is that at first a lot of this stuff may seem complicated, a lot of the terminology may sound foreign. But that’s normal because it’s new! With time, you’ll get better, and if you work with persistence – you can become really successful! It’s really just a matter of following the steps one by one, and also giving yourself enough time to absorb new material, and pretty soon it will all become very familiar to you.
Truth is, you can have your blog set up today by following my step-by-step blog setup tutorial. So, stop what you’re doing, and put everything on hold for about 30 minutes while you create your first blog.
2. “There are too many people on the Internet already, too many websites, too much information, too much competition…”
Yes, it’s true that there are millions of websites out there already, and millions of people online trying to sell something. However, there are EVEN MORE AND MORE people getting online every day searching for products and information they need.
The beauty of the internet is that it allows to SHARE IDEAS and PROVIDE SOLUTIONS to specific problems. I believe everyone has some unique gifts/knowledge/passions to share with the world, and by doing that we are all making the world a better place.
While there is certainly nothing wrong with creating web pages just to sell products or affiliate offers – I have done that myself in the past and know people who are very successful financially doing that – I believe that the biggest value – and satisfaction – comes from doing what you really love.
There is never too much knowledge, never too much valuable information and products. If you can provide VALUE, you don’t need to worry about competition.
3. “I don’t know what skills or information I have that I could use for profit on my own website. I have no idea what I could do online or what I could sell.”
What you need to do first is to look at your current knowledge, interests, experience, and strengths. Everybody has a passion–it may be related to your current profession or business, or something completely different, something that you are really interested in that you know more about than people around you.
Everyone has something that they can contribute to the world in a unique way. For some people, it will be by creating original content themselves. For others, it will be simply by sharing their passion and experience about a particular topic. For others, it will be to simply act as a ‘journalist’ and find other people with great information to contribute to your website.
You may be an expert in that field, have a degree or certification, or not. Even if you are not an expert on your topic of interest and don’t have credentials, you probably know more than 99% of people out there, and you have something valuable to offer, something that comes from your own experience. What you need is to find a way to add value to other people’s lives.
The question you should be asking yourself:
“What Can I Do To Help Make Someone’s Life Better?”
You can write ebooks, provide coaching, consulting or training.
When people go to your site, and join your mailing list, they’ll want to get value in exchange for handing you their name and e-mail address. To be successful, you have to contribute to their lives in a meaningful way.
4. “I’m not a computer geek, don’t know HTML or any programming language, and could not write a line of code to save my life”
You certainly do NOT need to know any programming to build a successful website. With technologies and tools available today, you can set up a professionally looking website in just about 30 minutes (or a few hours, if you want to take it really slow and easy) WITHOUT writing a single line of code! Yes, it does require some computer skills, but if you can write an email or type a letter on a computer, you can create a website – you just need to know what steps to take and what tools to use.
5. “It just costs too much to build a website. I don’t want to invest a lot of money into something that does not guarantee results.”
It really does not cost a lot of money to set up a website. Let’s look at the basic costs of building your own website:
- Domain Name. This is essential. About $9 per year.
- Hosting. About $50-$100 per year.
- Setting up the Blog/Website. You can easily build a site yourself by following my step-by-step tutorial and buy a professionally designed theme for under $100. Custom graphic design is not essential, but if you want something special, look at spending around $300 in design.
- Mailing List/Autoresponder. The cost is around $30 per month or $300 per year (paid in advance).
So up to this point you are looking at a startup cost of around $500, which doesn’t have to be paid all at once. You may want some extras, but that’s your initial costs for setting up a basic online business, for an ENTIRE YEAR.
If you compare these costs to other kinds of business ventures, it actually is the CHEAPEST way to start your business. For example, opening a restaurant costs at least $100,000 in startup capital, buying a franchise costs at least $50,000, and starting a mail order business – at least $30,000.
So in addition to the expenses above, you also have to add an important expense, perhaps the most important of all, which is:
- Education — you need to have a step-by-step approach that you can use to build your online business. You need the right education. And then you need to continue your education on an ongoing basis. You should plan for this to be a larger expense than all of the expenses I put above, and consider it the MOST IMPORTANT expense of all.
Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you may end up spending a whole lot more money. And worse, you may not make any money, so you’ll waste your time as well.
6. “How could I get traffic to my website? I know nothing about search engine optimization and don’t have any money to spend on advertising and promotion.”
There are many ways you can promote your website for FREE on the Internet: by commenting on popular blogs, guest posting on other sites, participating in forums, participating in social media, writing articles and posting them on free article websites; making videos and posting them on video sites, such as Youtube.com, and many others. Sure, you can spend lots of money on Pay per Click advertising and promotion– but there is no need for that if you don’t want to do it!
And let’s not forget about the power of promotion in the offline world – like sending articles and press releases to your local newspapers. I’ll be sharing with you my top ways of getting traffic, and most of them don’t cost you any money!
7. “I don’t have time to do it.”
Yes, it does take time to build a successful blog, but probably a lot less than you think.
I recommend that you block some time in your calendar to get your website started. By blocking one or two days in your calendar to do the work, you can get a whole lot more done than by trying to do a little bit at a time. You will be focused on the task and know exactly what to do next. This will help you gain momentum — and momentum is everything.
Once you have your blog set up, plan to work on it regularly to add content, promote it, and provide value to your audience. The more time you can spend, the better – you’ll be able to see results that much faster. Use my step-by-step tutorial to set up your blog, and start blogging!
Now, I’m NOT saying that creating a successful blog (and/or profitable online business – if that’s your ambition) is quick and easy, because it’s NOT. But if you work hard, a year from now you can have a popular blog and/or profitable business online bringing you a steady stream income.
To set up a blog in 30 minutes or less , go to this page.
You may think that building a website is way too complicated, time consuming or expensive. What you may not realize is that with the new generation of web tools you can easily create professionally looking websites very quickly and inexpensively. My goal is to empower you to get your first site up and running in just a few days – it’s really not that hard!