In early December, I developed a Q1 marketing plan in order to keep me on track to my goals. While I conduct a review of my goals almost daily, I decided to share where I’m at in terms of performing against this plan. First, for those who are not bloggers, I think this method can be applied to life in general. I would setup a quarterly plan for how to get to your life goals and review that plan as often as you can.
Focusing on High ROI activities:
I identified 3 activities that I felt gave me the highest ROI: guest posts, comments, and interviews. I’ve followed through on 2-4 guest posts a week and even setup ongoing relationships to guest post at certain blogs. In January I wrote 8 guest posts. I’ve also started looking at traffic differently. The most important metric that I look at is time spent. I value quality over quantity. If see a certain blog is providing me visitors who spend alot of time on my blog, I’ve made a point to comment on that blog on a regular basis and as a result I’ve seen some great growth. The interview series has evolved into a life of its own and has been the driving force behind a new project called BlogcastFM.com. I’ll be telling you more about it on Wednesday of this week.
Achieve Substantial Growth:
Obviously high ROI activities are a catalyst for substantial growth. I set a goal of getting to 1000 RSS readers by the end of Q1. As of the end of January I broke the 500 reader mark. While the I haven’t exactly mapped out how to get to the next 500 readers, I plan on making adjustments to my strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. For example, the guys at under30CEO.com have been instrumental in driving my growth and it’s likely I“ll aim for contributing more articles to their site. The point here is that by setting a goal and aiming to get there, even if you fall slightly short if you will still make substantial progress.
Development of monetization methods:
Of the 3 monetization methods (consulting, product launches, and affiliate marketing), I’ve focused my efforts on consulting. I think if you are a blogger with roughly 500 RSS readers and your traffic wavers between 150-200 visitors a day the other two monetization methods have a less likely change of getting you where you want to go. I recently wrote a post at Under30CEO about How to monetize a blog without advertising, selling affiliate products, or any other products. The focus of it was largely on how to find consulting opportunities on craigslist. To date, this method has resulted in a client that has me on retainer for 500 dollars a month, and some clients who I build blogs for. All in all it’s given me about an additional 600 dollars a month in income.
Overall I’m performing according to plan. But, looking at it I realize that I should aim to outperform this plan which would require stepping it up in a few areas and scaling back in others. As you make progress towards each goal, you really need to continually adjust in order to take the right action at the right time. If you have any ideas on a marketing plan and growth, I’d love to hear them.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Great read. I am also heading towards monetizing my blog. Don’t know how yet, but it’ll be a mix of things. I don’t really need the money, so that relieves me from having to find work or selling stuff. It always helps.
But nonetheless, it can be fun to hunt from time to time
Henri @ Wake Up Cloud´s last blog ..How to Use Article Marketing to Increase Your Blog Subscribers
@Henri: I’m glad not to be dependent on my blog anymore for money. But, the irony of that is now that I’m not, those opportunities are arising. Perhaps it’s just a shift in to a more abundant mindset. Thanks for your continued support.
Srini,
You’ve made a marketing plan and adjusting as needed.
Although it’s not the growth you liked to have seen, you made some major progress especially in the consulting side.
I’m happy for you and good luck!
I like the approach with consulting, you have to figure that even with your following, consulting would prove to be more efficient. There is an abundance of monetized blogs but we can assume that their is a shortage of experienced consultants like yourself.
Brian Cox´s last blog ..Invictus
Great market plan report. I think the best thing you can do to your market plan is adjust when its needed. I like how you are not limiting yourself to your original plan and recognize you can go beyond what you expected once you reach your original goal.
Tony Ruiz´s last blog ..Entrepreneur and System Tips with Jun Loayza
@Ken: While it’s not exactly on point, as you said adjustments have occurred because you have to expect the unexpected. For example, the launch of Blogcastfm.com was something completely unplanned and a new venture that will likely change things for the better.
@Brian: I think the key was figuring out where I was going to be able to provide the most value and where I would get the most return. I knew that monetizing the blog itself would not really get me there. The other thing I realized is that cluttering my site with ads would not really help.
@Tony: The market plan is something I review pretty regularly and I’m really glad that I actually put it together. Your comments are making me think maybe I should do an updated version of the plan.
I first heard about this from my mentor, but he didn’t update me on his plan or exactly what it was, so it was difficult for me to develop my own. Thanks for sharing with us so we know what to shoot for! This is great; good luck with your goals.
Jen´s last blog ..FMM: Super Bowl!
Srini,
Nice to see the marketing plan concept in action. If you can’t measure you can’t manager (as they say). Curious as to your thoughts on the time spent metric. Do you have any insight as to what is a target to shoot for? I am averaging 4-8 mins and unsure if that is great or terrible. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Marc
Marc Winitz´s last blog ..Mind Pushups – Understanding Focus
@Jen: I think you’ll find that having a plan is going to help you tremendously.
@Marc: I try to base my target on how much time I spend on a person’s blog. 4-8 mins is great. If you considering the fact that we all have acute form’s of ADHD and are overloaded with information that’s a really long time for someone to spend on your blog. Look at the referral sources and start making a name for yourself in that community and even contact the author for guest posting opportunities.
What I like most about your performance plan approach is that you don’t get caught up in a bunch of pointless metrics. You’ve identified what matters most to you, and have done a good job diagnosing your status as a result. In the future, I suspect you’ll continue to get better at mapping out specific strategy for attacking your goals. Good stuff Srini!
Ryan Stephens´s last blog ..Why You Can’t Work at Work
@Ryan: I think that the curse of many bloggers, especially in the early stage is getting caught up in metrics. When I conduct my weekly traffic analysis, I only look for two things
1) Referral Sources
2) How much time people from those sources spent on my blog
AT the end of the the 20 or so people that read your blog every single day add way more value and help you much more than the 150 who end up there. That’s why I’ve stopped focusing so much on the actual visitor #. Every now and then (like when I wrote this plan) I feel like my MBA was a worthwhile expense
Haha!
I’m a horrible business man. I don’t worry about who/what/why. I just comment on blogs that I think are cool. As much as I can. If I’m not around, it’s because I’m crushed under something. Not worried about ROI, whatever.
So, yeah, I comment here because I think you’re cool, you surf, or whatever. And I don’t worry about it quid pro quo… stop by on Saturday to get my thoughts on that.
Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Pre-Writing Is Your Friend – With Benefits (Part 1)