Standing Out With Your Online Business
The demand for products and services related to personal development has seen a massive boom in recent years. People are interested in bettering their personal lives more than ever before. Many entrepreneurs and teachers are taking advantage of this trend by starting their own business within the personal development niche. Because this is such a crowded market, it can be hard to stand out amongst the competition. While there is still a possibility to earn an income within the personal development niche, you may have to perfect your strategy.
When first starting out in this niche, many people make the mistake of taking a broad approach to the market. Although personal development may seem like a target niche, there are various sub-niches. Within the realm of personal growth and development, there is spirituality, meditation, yoga, happiness, diet, health, memory enhancement, hypnosis, and much more. Even if you're passionate about all of these areas, it is much easier to earn money from a blog that has a specific focus.
Now that the personal development market is so crowded, it is no longer enough to create products or a website that is intriguing. In order to earn money within this niche, you have to focus on a concrete and tangible topic. Many people who venture into the personal development market struggle because their focus is too generic and vague. This indistinction turns people away. In order to attract and maintain readers on a personal development blog, you'll have to find a sub-niche.
Customer Awareness Scale: Turning Visitors into Paying Customers
Once you develop a blog around a specific niche within the personal development market, you'll still have to work on turning visitors into paying customers. Even though you can make some money through visitors alone, the real income will start when these visitors pay for your services or products.
There is a concept known as the Customer Awareness Scale which outlines the transition a site visitor must undergo before turning into a paying customer. This development sees a site visitor in the most unaware phase of the scale. These individuals may have stumbled upon your site through Google. They aren't aware of any problems or solutions relevant to their life and your blog.
The next few steps in the transition see the site visitor becoming aware that there is a problem. This information, which can be promulgated via your blog posts, will encourage the readers to begin looking for a solution. This is where your site's services or products come into play. You will position these items as the best solution for the problem that was identified.
When this transition is completed effectively, you'll be able to turn visitors to your blog into paying customers. Specificity plays an incredibly important role in this scale. If you have a generic blog talking about personal development overall, visitors will be less likely to look or see any potential problems. However, having a blog in a specific niche within personal development will make it easier to present a problem and accompanying solutions.
Running a Successful Personal Development Blog
Anybody can run a personal development blog. With a domain name, a hosting provider, and content, you can have a blog up and running within minutes. It is much more difficult to run a successful personal development blog that actually generates some income. If you're investing money into starting a blog within this niche, you might as well earn some money as well. Here are a few essential factors required for any successful personal development blog:
- The site content must deal with specific problems in concrete ways.
- Each blog post should offer solutions that are real and provide readers with ideas to take away.
- Steer clear of 'filler' posts that are used to increase the amount of content on your site.
- Use headlines that contain words and phrases which potential visitors may search for on Google and other search engines.
- Constantly promote and link back to your own products or services which help to solve problems discussed in the blog.
Although you don't have to avoid emotional topics overall, it's important to have a majority of your blog's content be centered around concrete ways for readers to solve their problems. Offering random exclamations of positivity won't be able to encourage your visitors to spend their money on your site. People can get that kind of content on their social media feeds. In order to establish yourself as an expert in your specific niche, you'll have to create a site around solving specific problems.
Changing Your Perspective and Approach
When people start out in the personal development niche, they often have the wrong perspective. If you want to create a successful blog and generate some income, you have to stop referring to it as "personal development". Instead, you need to focus on identifying specific problems and offering concrete solutions. When you're able to offer a tangible solution to a specific problem, you don't have to compete in the generic space of "personal development". When you reach this point, you'll have an actual business which can generate a steady income.
Real-Life Personal Development Bloggers
It can be helpful to study personal development bloggers who have already had success in their niche. Through this understudy, you can learn some specific strategies that translate to success.
Leo Babauta's ZenHabits.net is one of the most successful personal development blogs. When you visit his site, you'll notice that the niche is more specific than "personal development". He focuses on the problem people face when starting healthy habits and stopping harmful ones. All of his blog posts focus on concrete solutions for this problem. He will consistently link to his books, training programs, and other products for further monetization.
Bloggers can also look at other verticals other than personal development to build their following and earning online income. Hobby- and passion-based blogs providing technical information can also be effective. One of the sites I found was Outdoor Movie HQ, run by Steve Scott an audio and visual expert who has reviewed a large percentage of projector technology currently on the market.