Podcast

Hello and welcome to ‘Money on the Grow.’ My name is Deja’ and I’m the host of this podcast.

Today we’re going to talk about niching down. When it comes to having a blog (or a platform), you want to talk about more than one thing but you need to have a central focus.

But, you want to be careful about what you choose to talk about because you’re going to be talking about it a lot.

I know this from experience because I deleted my first blog after only 10 months. And it’s not because it wasn’t doing well. It was actually doing pretty good for how long I had had it.

When I first started blogging, I went into the natural living niche. I had an organic blog called Deja Vu Organics. At first, I would research my content, my articles.

I was excited to post them, to look up pictures, and put them together. But it didn’t take long for me to get burnt out on it.

I remember one day my husband came into the living room and I’m sitting there on our little comfy couch. And he said, I looked frustrated and he asked “What’s going on?”

And I just remember feeling a little bit trapped and frustrated because here I was with this blog that was doing pretty well but if I was really honest with myself… I hated it. I felt like I was backed into a corner because I had spent some money, tons of time, we’re talking, you know, eight or 10 months or whatever. And I didn’t want to do it anymore.

I felt stuck which is a feeling I hated. And my husband said “Well, you know what… do something else.” But it didn’t seem that simple because at that time I was putting everything I had into blogging. So I said I’d stick with it. But, the longer I stuck with it the more frustrated I became and I ended up deleting it.

Choosing a Niche

So the topic you choose to blog about (or have a podcast or youtube channel… whatever it is) it needs to be something you can talk a lot about and you’re not going to get burnt out on.

Now I know some of you don’t want to choose a niche. You can have a lifestyle blog. You can go into the lifestyle arena and you can talk about everything. You can talk about fashion, recipes, food, exercise, etc.

But, it’s a lot harder to do that nowadays because there’s so much “noise” out there. There’s so many blogs and podcasts and youtube channels that if you’re known for everything, you’re kind of known for nothing.

You want to be able to choose one thing to talk about so that eventually is the one thing become known for.

For example- when I think of copywriting, I think of Ray Edwards. If I think about healthy living, I think of the Wellness Mama. When I think of natural pregnancy, I think of Healthy Mama Baby Life.

You want to be known for “your thing.”

That’s why you want to niche down because you want to be the place people go to get the information they need.

So when it comes to choosing a niche, you do want it to be something that you can talk a lot about. But you also want it to be something that you can easily monetize.

The 3 Major Categories

There’s three major categories that most things fit under- health, wealth and relationships.

If you can spin your chosen niche under one of those, you are more likely to succeed when it comes to promoting and building a following. Then under each of those categories are subcategories of niches and there are seven that are the easiest to monetize. They are:

• Beauty and Fashion
• Food Recipes
• Health and Fitness
• Making Money
• Personal Finance
• Personal Development

All those niches are pretty easy to monetize. Now, if you can go into one of those, great. If you can’t, again, try and fit whatever category you choose into one of the major ones.

Let’s say that you want to go into the golf niche. Well that’s easy to fit under health because people need to stay active to stay healthy.

Let’s see… I’m trying to think of off the wall ones. Beekeeping again, you can kind of spin that for health. Getting outside means you’re in nature, honey has multiple health benefits- it’s antibacterial and a natural sweetener. Just keep in mind that whatever niche you choose, you want it to be easy monetize.

Tips for Choosing a Domain Name

Once you’ve chosen a niche then you want to think about a domain name. When it comes to choosing a domain name I have a few tips for you.

Rule of thumb you want to try and follow these but I have seen all kinds of blogs succeed and they haven’t followed any of these rules. However, it’s easier to succeed if you try to follow a few of them. When choosing a name for your platform:

Keep it short and sweet

Use the correct spelling of the words (i.e. when it comes to something like rock, paper, scissors, nobody is going to look for ‘ROK, PAPR, SCIZZORS’)

Trying to get a.com(you can succeed if you have a.io or.net but people look for ‘.com’ by default)

Never use hyphens. If there was a money-on-the-grow.com because I would get all the traffic.

Put your main topic first in your domain name. When it comes to SEO dogwalker.com will outrank walkingdogs.com because subject is dogs not walking,

You can use your name but if it’s a very common name, you might have to use a nickname, a middle name, or a middle initial.

Also, if it’s hard to spell, people might have a hard time remembering it. For example, I have DejaCronley.com but I only use it to send people from Money on the Grow or Blogging Enthusiast. I would not advertise DejaCronley.com because there’s a million ways to spell Deja.

Avoid niche specific terms that only those already within the niche would know about. For example- Crossfit. If someone wants to get into Crossfitting, they’re not going to go to WODdaily.com. People outside of the Crossfit niche are not going to know what WOD stands for (‘workout of the day’ by the way). Go with something everybody’s going to be familiar with

Today’s episode is going to be kind of be short, sweet, and to the point, but I wanted to get this out there. As always, if you have any questions, you can contact me at MoneyontheGrow.com or reply to any of my emails if you’re on my email list.

Next time we are going to talk about, ummm… let’s see. Sorry. I’m looking at my notes here and I have lost it, but it’s going to be the next step in growing your blog or your platform. Okay. So I will chat with you soon until then. Take care!

Hello and welcome to ‘Money on the Grow.’

My name is Deja’ Cronley and since this is the first episode of the money on the growth podcast today we are going to discuss two things.

One, what is Money on the Grow and, two, who am I?

So the short answer for what Money on the Grow is? It’s a system that I am going to try and change the startup blogging world. I want new bloggers to focus on making money first and building their blog second.

We’re going to get into the longer answer in a couple of minutes here, but let’s talk about who I am first.

Who Am I & How Did ‘Money on the Grow’ Come to Be?

As I said, my name is Deja’ and about two years ago after my husband and I went through a rough patch financially due to a series of unfortunate events. So I decided to get into blogging for some extra cash.

When I first started off with blogging, I knew nothing about blogging so I had to do a deep dive to learn everything. The technical aspects, how to write in a way that people want to read it, how to promote my blog. The fact that you should spend about 80% of your time promoting and only 20% creating content once you’ve built your blog. Things like that.

I started off with an organic blog and it wasn’t too long before I realized that even though I like to live like a healthy, natural, organic lifestyle… I don’t like to write about it. What I did enjoy was learning about blogging. And this all came to a head when the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit* by Ultimate Bundles came out that year.

*The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit, it’s a big package of blogging courses, resources, eBooks and tools that people contribute to for free. Then it’s offered at an an insane discount. I think this year it was worth $5,300.
They’re able to offer all the resources for $97 and they’re are able to do that because all the contributors now get people on their email list. So everybody wins.

When the Toolkit came out that year I noticed was there were a lot of new bloggers who now had thousands of dollars worth of information and no idea what to do with it.

What they needed was a map or a game plan of how to use this information. So one night, on a whim, I did a major brain dump. I think it was a 4,000 word article on the most logical way to go through all the courses.

Once I started circulating the post people started asking me questions and I formed a Facebook group. I found that I enjoyed doing that- helping new bloggers- more than I enjoyed blogging about natural living.

And Then There Was Blogging Enthusiast

From there, I started Blogging Enthusiast, which was about helping people with the technical parts of starting a blog. You know, there’s a million how to start a blog, websites, how to do blogging blogs out there. And so I wanted to just focus on the technical aspects of it.

I would write posts with screenshots of how to set up your blog, how to do SEO, and all the little technical aspects that can be hard for new bloggers to learn.

After about eight to ten months of doing that I wanted to try something new to grow my blog. I was getting good Pinterest traffic. I had a product in the Genius Blogger Toolkit and I was getting good traffic from that. I was trying to think of other ways that I could get traffic.

At this point I came across the One Funnel Away Challenge that Clickfunnels was offering which was like nothing else I’d ever seen before. It was $100 which was more than I would normally spend but I decided to try it and I’m glad I did.

It was the best course or workshop or challenge or anything out of all of them.

It’s my favorite because for that 30 days they have three amazing coaches that teach and encourage you to take massive action every day. There’s something to do and learn every day.

You’re constantly growing, pushing yourself, and stepping outside the box. I’m pretty dang good at blogging but I’ve never heard of a lot of things they mentioned. It really opened my horizons and one of the things that they talked about was finding a way to stand out in your niche.

It dawned on me that the one thing I was constantly complaining about to my accountability group was how long it takes to get to the money when you start to blog.

You spend months setting up your blog and about 90% of blogs fail within the first three months. From the 10% that do manage to hang on, the majority of those still take about six months to a year to see any kind of significant income.

I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen people in blogging groups excited that they made 40 cents on Amazon. And I’m not trying to insult or belittle their experience because it is exciting when you finally see some kind of payoff for all your hard work. You have to celebrate the little wins. I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

What I am saying is it would amazing to earn $100 within two weeks.

And I’m not talking being spammy, I’m not talking about scamming people, I’m saying legitimately help others and offer an amazing product and get paid in the process.

During the One Funnel Away Challenge, I had a lightbulb-on moment about how I could help bloggers do just that.

I know so much about blogging but I’ve also learned a lot much about email marketing and affiliate marketing which is something I can help people do.

That is where Money on the Grow comes in.

How ‘Money on the Grow’ Works

Money on the Grow is based in affiliate marketing but it’s not the affiliate marketing where you just place a few links throughout your posts.

It’s a very specific way to get people on your list. Then make them an offer so that, if you’re paying for any kind of ads, those ads end up paying for themselves.

That way you break even within the first email sequence somewhere.

And then once those people are on your list, you continue to promote different products to them.

I don’t know if you’ve heard it yet but the money really is in the list aka people are 40 times more likely to buy from an email list than they are just running across something on Facebook, Google, or Pinterest.

That’s why people love to have a big list.

With Money on the Grow, my goal is to teach people how to do affiliate marketing through email marketing and have that be their first income source so that they can make money to reinvest in their blog (or to help your family out or whatever it is you need to do with that money).

But to see that money right away, to have that big win, within the first month can keep you motivated to keep going.

And the Best Part… I Can Still Help Bloggers Grow Their Blogs!

Since I have blogging experience I can then still help you grow your blog.

I even have access to every single theme on Studiopress.com. So if you need a professional parent-child theme that’s one of the benefits of buying through my links- simply tell me the email you used to sign up with and I will give you a new professional theme.

I also have a library of videos I’ve recorded on how to start a blog that shows you how to, buy a domain, set up WordPress, upload your parent and child theme, explain what a parent and child theme, design a beautiful blog, create consistent branding, niche down so you know exactly who your dream client is, develop yourself as an attractive character so that people know who you are.

These are all things that are important and that you need to do but you don’t need to focus on them until after you’ve already established that first income stream.

But If I’m Going to Niche Down Should I Sell What You’re Offering?

Now, I know when some people first go through my workshop their first thought is going to be that they don’t want to promote this particular offer… and you don’t have to promote just that one thing.

As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t just promote what I am suggesting because as a blogger you want to have multiple income streams.

You should also have different email lists- one for bloggers and one for your specialty niche.

You’ll have different income streams. You’ll get income from email marketing, your own digital products, ads on your site, sponsored posts, etc and each one of those is going to be a different income streams.

The Money on the Grow Workshop is a shortcut to get you started. That’s what Money on the Grow is about.

The Next Episode

What we’re going to do in the next episode is to discuss how to choose a niche.

When it comes to blogging you can be successful talking about almost anything however you’re going to be successful much quicker if you can go into one of three main areas. We’re going to discuss what those three areas are in the next podcast.

In the meantime, checking out my free email workshop that’s going to take you through a plug and go system on how to get set up with email marketing, get you set up with your funnel, and get you some quick traffic and that big win (aka your first sales).

So I will talk to you in the next podcast and that’s it for today. Have a good one!