As a solopreneur and hustler, I'm generating over 10,000 visits/month to my several blogs. A blog is the most stable passive income for me, having attempted Redbubble and Dropshipping which are hyper competitive.
The biggest problem is how to scale your blog? The first step is to come up with a system that is adaptable to changes instead of relying on a fixed mindset or system. My adaptable 3-step system involves testing random new content, scales on related content that works, and reviewing failure. Personally, I will focus only on content and not the promotions and fluffs like link building and marketing.
Why Adapt Your Blog
Google's algorithm changes are so impactful and sudden that having any system that worked in the past will only fail eventually. The biggest mistake for your blog is having a fixed mindset or system that cannot adapt to changes or evolve to your environment. Unless you have a social following, Google will be your biggest friend in bringing traffic to your blog, with over 90% of traffic from Google.
For example, people in the past build links with link directories that are not sensible and should be penalized. Also, a drop from #1 to #2 in ranking is drastic as the #1 result will receive a huge 36.4% of search traffic.
For me, the below system will work for all blogs, whether you outsourced or not, and easily remembered 3R (Random, Related, Review):
- Testing Random Content Ideas
- Scaling Related Content That works
- Reviewing Failures
Testing Random Content Ideas (Breadth-First Search)
To start scaling your blog, you need to accept a degradation in quality and focus on quantity. That could be due to hiring writers, editors, or even researchers to do your work.
Regardless if you outsourced or not, the best way to start is to scale is to test new random content ideas. What I learned is that:-
- Tools are never accurate enough (I can find tools saying search terms with zero search traffic that gave me thousands of views in reality)
- Topics that work or used to work will fail because of trends or competition
That is how journalism works too, with people trying to find content that is unique instead of rewriting what was already told hundreds of times. Creativity is limited to your brain and some ideas can be generated by
- Relooking the same thing at different angles
- Using ideas from your other interests to this topic
- Trying content that works in your other blogs into this topic
- Finding pages that work for your competition or other niches
Focus on quantity over quality at this stage. Do not overanalyze or fall into the trap of paralysis. Failing is normal at this stage. You also need to give your blog articles some time to get discovered and it could be like months before your new blog article rank. Over time, even if 5% of your content work at this stage is considered great and just enjoy the process of writing what you loved.
Scaling Related Content That Works (Depth-First Search)
Once you wrote enough articles and managed to even find 1 article that works, you should consider scaling that content up.
Scaling successful blog content
Similar to testing random ideas, you need to create related content to the topic to cover in-depth with a slight twist. For example, if "dogs in Italy" work and garnered sizeable views. You could either switch the country from Italy to Germany or switch the dogs to cats.
Doing this will let you realize more niches that might work, quite similar to testing. The main difference is that this is based on something that had work. One good habit is to interlink between what works too, but I admit I do a terrible job at.
Optimizing blog content
If you found some articles that ranked on the 1st page but not ranking well, you can consider optimizing the article with more in-depth research.
Personally, I tried to update a content to make it rank better with little success. This will be a good skill to have and you have to be careful not to optimize too early.
Outsourcing content creation
I have seen many people outsourced writing. I tried it with many successes and failures. If you wish to sell the blog eventually, you must prove that it works without you writing it. No one will buy a blog that cannot replace the blogger reliably.
Adam Enfroy, who had success scaling his blog, explained how he leveraged startup growth tactics to make blogging a full-time (and lucrative) job. He began to outsource certain components of his blog he hired a team to write first drafts and an assistant to help with link building and guest blogging.
Adam is open about his mistakes and documents them to his 35,000 email subscribers and his Facebook Group of 3,500 “Blogpreneurs” looking to follow in his footsteps.
Adam said, "I had to figure out how to scale my processes so I could spend my time in the most meaningful ways. However, bloggers fail because they don't know how to transition from writer to business owner.
Personally, I won't do link building or even buy link building services for a blog. Although I know it works generally, I think it not a scalable business model for a blog, unlike sales which have margins to put into promotion. It is also proven that things can rank even without needing link building if you find small niches that are unique enough
And as the search engine landscape gets more competitive, it may seem like it's too saturated to make money blogging today.
Reviewing Your Failure (Fail Fast)
While testing and creating related content, you will face over 90% failure eventually. That is normal.
Reviewing your failure doe not mean you look at every nitty-gritty detail because that is not scalable too. Traffic will grow and drop due to trends and not due to your content. For example, I once had my blog made $100 then $300 then back to $100 again for no reason. It is important not to over-react because optimization is harder than you think. I tried for a few years with little success.
I think the most important thing is just to review and realize things fail and stop doing it. Just focus on your success. Failing fast is an important concept and you will have to know there are more important things to work on. Trying to get 1,000 more views on a tough niche is harder than 1,000 views on one that you know have an unserved market.
Conclusion
I did not cover many details and only the overall concept of 3Rs (test randomly, create related content, reviewing failure). It is because there is no one system that works for all. It all boils down to writing great content through discovery and writing more great content in the niche that works.
That is why many people overanalyze what niche to start which is a bad idea if you don't take action to test. Only via testing, you will start this process of creating more content that targets the "niche" that will work for you blog.