I started a Blog, what Now?

[ians]

You have to learn to "play the game" ... a person I have never heard of played the song "dance monkeys" on a sax ... his subsrciptions ...followers and views were in the 20 k ... playing the song on youtube it took his views to 100 million ... here is the catch ... its what you do with the 100 million views that makes the difference between becoming a millionare over night of just a another youtuber with 100 million views and a badge to fit on the wall.

Just like bussiness ... you can do the bussiness plan ... pay for the advertsing ... pay for consultants to tell you what to do ... yet you still only have a less 2 % chance of still operating after 10 years ... I am still operating after all these years ... yet I dont advertise ... I choose not to advertise for a reason ... I find that the majority of the calls are more time wasters than valueable customers ... I focus on the right now customers and their customers or freinds or visitors ... I get more "valuable" customers while actually working than I do from any means of advertsing ... but there a catch ... because I choose not to grow and build the company as I did in the first 10 years ... I choose who I want to deal with ... with that comes a few challenges ... an example I got a new customer just before lockdown happened ... thank goodness I chose not to take that huge step ... it was a big project which would have involved employing staff ... I declined the offer and a month later we went into lockdown ... I would have lost everything.

you have to understand what it is you are trying to achieve before you even start ... there are billions of customers out there ... most are looking for a cheap solution/product they dont really care if it only lasts for 2 weeks ... then there are the few who are looking for a good quality long lasting solutuion (not many of them left in the society we live in at present) but specific to what you are selling ...services ... products ... selling a service to a customer is compleletely differnet to selling a product to a customer ... in this day and age ... the majority of sales will depend on price and speed of delivery ... nothing else matters you have to adapt to the now not methods used 2 years ago ... this is where a lot of people fail ... they spend more time trying to setup a way to sell ... but by the time they wipe the zeros out their eyes there is a better faster way of doing things.

Using youtube as an example ... people are getting smart ... advertising (we will go into that) ... but the smart ones learnt that the money is in the product links not only the annoying ads ... so you dont have to lie and tell everyone what a great product you promoting because someone sent it to you for free ... or bog your content up with ad breaks or promoting while trying to share your content ... no I dont feel bad that I use ad blockers.

The joke about advertising on youtube ... people comment about how you should allow ads to help the person create content people shouldnt use ad blockers etc ... what a load of shyte ... you have to waste the first 3 minutes of ads then of him/her advertising themselves their brand ... then the like and subsricbe ... then the paid promotions during the video ... now the person advertising the sponsor of the content ( but I thought the content was paid for by the advertising) ... yeah I know it confusing ... youtube was such a pleasure to watch when it was just people sharing stuff people enjoyed doing.

The bottom line ... advertsing is complicated ... get it wrong and you gonna loose.

[New Perspective studio]

Hmm I agree with you that paid advertising is complicated. - And you have chosen probably once of the worst imo as an example youtube.

I don't think that its useless, however, I think a lot of bad rep PPC is getting is because of rubbish like boosting posts - Adwords Express and all those AI-enhanced automated advertising which until now I've only ever seen destroy people budgets for little return. The picture they paint enter your credit card details and we will get you thousands of leads in a few minutes. That's just not gonna happen ...yet if ever.

People go through this process get angry they lost money and PPC is then the devil.

I've do PPC campaigns and even with a few years of experience and setting up every campaign according to a strategy - I still do a/b testing on ads.

Most of my clients with the exception of a few really lucky guys run at 2-5% conversion rates - however, I know their target cost per acquisition - I also have an idea of their LTV of clients. You can tweak your adverting to be more effective, better landing pages, offers, ad copies bid strategies, target audience, what stage of the sales funnel are you looking to get onboard on? and that will lower your cost per acquisition tremulously. You could also work on the other side of things in terms of increasing a client's LTV but for most guys when you get a decent return on investment you are not going to look back because it actually becomes easier with more data. This is not a 5min solution though.

The data provided by advertising on some platforms is also incredibly useful in other areas of yo business marketing.

I don't think advertisers are sheep(well let's say half arent). We are using platforms of third parties where all our clients are waiting - Google and Facebook employ organic ranking manipulations as youve mentioned and google promotes business directories as a way to force a small business to use ppc if they want to get seen on serps. Now I don't agree with this but it's their platform and they have the user base so they set the rules until most consumers decide to pack up and go to duck duck go or something else.

I do believe ians that we need more competition in this field and I believe the monopolies that data companies have is a part of why they can flog crappy solutions to people who have no clue of advertising without and repercussions. If we had more competition they may actually decide to roll out automated tools that are not geared towards budget mashing.

I know adverting works, I also know its not a quick setup, and yes its actually not for every niche and yes youtube is a mess (you think its bad for the consumers, you should see what the business has to deal with with).

Lastly I am also one that believe whilst advocating for PPC here, dont put al your eggs in one basket or get tunnel vision even if you are making a goog profit.

For me diversifying your marketing into a few effective methods is a must.

[sherinemuasher]

Well you need to work out on the content on how you are going to let everyone see it at the very least. One can try to at least work with the lack of details that you give out in the long run but then it is safe to say that there is still some work to improve it too. There are some others who don’t know the way it is going to be done but then a little bit of research will do the trick for you as well.

[heathermalone]

Rightly said @sherinemuasher. Also, if you don’t have any prior experience in advertising your business, it would be best to hire a specialist for that purpose.

It’s a mix actually. Using the right keywords, postings everyday, be it blogs, or social media posts and then linking the pages and the profiles together, works. Like I said earlier, if you don’t have time, it’s better to look for professional help.

[Spkin]

I don't know if this has already been suggested to you or not, but I can recommend collaborating with other bloggers and creating collaborative content. This will allow you to gain a new audience. However, do not contact major bloggers at first - you will most likely be refused. Look for someone in your niche.