5 ways to boost your blogging income WITHOUT more traffic

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Is it possible to increase your blogging income WITHOUT increasing your pageviews? Absolutely! Here are 5 ways to boost your blogging income WITHOUT more traffic…

Whenever I ask bloggers about their goals, so often the reply I get back is ‘more traffic’, ‘increase my pageviews’, ‘get more readers’, ‘hit 50k pageviews’.

And there’s a good reason for that. There is a strong correlation between pageviews and income, especially if your site is monetized mainly via ads.

But here’s the thing… nobody really wants ‘more pageviews’!

They want more pageviews because more pageviews = more money.

After all, you can’t pay your bills with pageviews!

But increasing your pageviews is only one way of increasing your blogging income.

And I would argue, most of the time, it’s not the best one.

With blog monetization there’s always two parts to the equation:

Number of pageviews
$ you earn per pageview (more commonly referred to as your RPM – which is the $ you earn per thousand pageviews)

Your total revenue is, therefore: number of pageviews x $ you earn per pageview

So then, to increase your total revenue you can do one of two things:

Increase your pageviews
Increase your RPM

And, more often than not, it’s easier to increase your RPM than it is to increase your pageviews.

Here are 5 ways you can increase your blogging income WITHOUT increasing your traffic…

Piles of money with green shoots growing out of the top. The first pile of money is small and the piles increase in size left to right. he last one is a jam jar full of money!

1. Add another revenue stream

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that adding an extra revenue stream will increase your RPM. In fact, results from the Blogging Income Survey show that adding an additional revenue stream can significantly boost your RPM.

The survey data shows that bloggers who have only 1 revenue stream on average earn $29.79 per thousand pageviews whereas bloggers who have 5+ revenue streams on average earn $62.47 per thousand pageviews.

Adding more revenue streams can also help to future-proof your blog too.

2. Improve your affiliate marketing

Most bloggers do a pretty lousy job at affiliate marketing. They do what I call the ‘scattergun’ approach to affiliate marketing… That is, adding a link to an affiliate product every now and again whenever it occurs to them.

If you practice ‘scattergun’ affiliate marketing, you’ll most likely get a very low RPM from affiliate marketing.

If you want to boost your RPM, then you need to take a more strategic approach to affiliate marketing.

Learn how to do that in these 2 blog posts:

However, it is worth bearing in mind that, for most bloggers, affiliate marketing – even when done well – does not deliver the highest RPMs.

Affiliate marketing is, after all, just another form of advertising… And the thing about advertising is that companies only use ads if they can earn more from ads than they put in… Which means if you have ads (or affiliate links) on your site… someone else is making more money from your traffic than you are!

3. Launch a digital product

So, how do you maximize the amount you earn per pageview?

By selling your own digital product!

The most recent Blogging Income Survey showed that the bloggers who were making the most money from each pageview were those who sold their own digital products.

In fact, the survey showed that, on average, bloggers who mainly monetize via digital products earn $283.64 per thousand pageviews, whereas bloggers who mainly monetize via ads earn, on average, just $33.80 per thousand pageviews.

Average RPM based on main revenue stream X axis: Main revenue stream Y axis: Average RPM Ads $33.80 Affiliates $40.24 Sponsored Posts $51.74 Physical Products $91.69 Digital Products $283.64 Services $34.36

Ready to launch your first digital product? Learn how to do that here >>>

4. Do a better job of selling your digital product

One thing I hear quite often from bloggers is, ‘I made a digital product and it didn’t sell.’

But when I take a look at what they are doing, it becomes painfully clear what the problem is…

Typically they have a link or two to their product on their blog and maybe they mention it occasionally on their social media or in their newsletter… and that’s it.

Unfortunately that just doesn’t work for most digital products.

Hands down the best way to sell a digital product is via some kinds of ‘sales event’. This could be a launch or a flash sale, where you would typically send your email subscribers 5-10 emails over the course of about a week, showing different reasons why they need your product AND you give them some kind of deadline by which they have to buy – this could be a price increase, expiring bonuses or simply the product will be unavailable after the deadline.

But constantly running sales events like this is exhausting, it means your income is very unpredictable and, if you are always running flash sales, you will eventually devalue your product and future sales events will be less successful.

That’s why evergreen sales funnels are such a great sales tool… instead of constantly running launches and flash sales, you take all the good bits from live launches and automate it… Meaning you make consistent sales all year round ON AUTOPILOT!

Learn more here >>> How to build an evergreen sales funnel (sell more, work less!)

5. Apply the money task first principle

But maybe you are thinking ‘Yeah Eb, I know all those things would be good to do, but I just don’t have the time!’

The truth is, you probably do have the time… but right now you are not using the time you do have available to you in the most effective way.

And the reason?

It comes down to how you structure your blogging time.

Most people spend the majority of their blogging time on Low Impact Tasks, like answering emails, social media and admin. And so their high impact Money Tasks end up falling off the to do list.

The result?

You spend all your time on Low Impact Tasks and never actually get to those High Impact ‘Money Tasks’ that would really drive their business forward (like creating a digital product or building a sales funnel!)

To maximize your blogging income, you need to first identify, then prioritize, your Highest Impact Tasks – the tasks which deliver the greatest Return On Time Invested (ROTI).

This is called the ‘Money Task First Principle‘. The Money Task First Principle ensures that those high ROTI tasks get done, and if anything DOES fall off the bottom of your to do list, it’s your Low Impact Tasks – the tasks that contribute little or nothing to your bottom line.

READ MORE >>> The Money Task First Principle

Want to maximize your Return On Time Invested?

If you want maximize your blogging income and squeeze the most profit out of every hour of effort, it’s just logical that you’d spend your working hours building a successful digital product business – since digital products have the highest RPMs.

But without a solid plan, it’s easy to waste a lot of time and make a ton of mistakes.

That’s why I created the Digital Product Success Academy!

Based on my 20+ years of business, blogging and productivity experience, I’ve devised a step by step plan to help you make the most of every single hour.

The DPSA is based around a series of highly motivating challenges, each one a stepping stone along the Digital Product Success Roadmap.

The Digital Product Success Academy Roadmap

Every challenge is broken down into a structured day-by-day plan to help you achieve a specific outcome by the end of each challenge, including:

Building a high converting lead magnet
Writing an irresistible ebook
Creating a profitable tripwire offer
Creating and launching a mini course
Growing your own personal authority
Building out an evergreen sales funnel – so you make sales on autopilot!
Boosting your website traffic to get more warm leads into the top of your funnel
Launching your own affiliate program
Running a successful flash sale

This gives you a series of short and very motivating deadlines.

And a real sense of accomplishment… on a regular basis.

Which is a HUGE motivator!

Each time you achieve a challenge, you’ll know you are one step nearer your goal… you’ll get a huge sense of achievement, and you’ll be even more motivated to complete the next one.

Plus, if you do the work in the challenges, you’re going to start earning money pretty soon – and I don’t need to tell you that there’s nothing quite like seeing money land in your bank account to spur you on and motivate you to achieve even bigger and better things!

To help you get the most out of the experience, the DPSA also includes a private community where you can get support and encouragement, bounce ideas off like-minded business owners, celebrate wins and get accountability and motivation.

If that sounds like something you’d love to be a part of, head here to find out more >>> Digital Product Success Academy

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