How A Blogger Made $10,449 Per Hour

24 | Posted In Marketing by David

As a reader of my site, you know that I am quite open about this fact:

Blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money. And businesses sell things.

Seems pretty simple, but most bloggers just fail to comprehend this one. They’ll chase the Adsense fairy for any loose change.

To illustrate the alternative, and the truth to my statement above, I want to tell you how I made $10,449 per hour back in January with this blog. And you may notice there isn’t a single banner ad on this site. How did I do that?

How I Did It

Many of you may remember that I was doing a product launch in January. A relaunch of Blog Masters Club. And many of you may remember that I did a webinar.

This webinar was a culmination of a week-long prelaunch campaign where I was releasing free videos and generally building goodwill with my audience. The evening before the official launch date, I hosted this webinar.

I had about 450 people on the call. The call was about half content, then half information about Blog Masters Club. Then, inevitably, a pitch. I ended up essentially launching the Club early by providing a webinar-only discount to sign up.

Between the end of that call and the official launch time the next day, I brought in $20,898. The call itself took only 2 hours of my time. So, do the math. :)

Make An Offer, And Not On Your Blog

So, what did I do to make this work? What is the “secret” to it?

Well, as you can probably see, there is no secret (there rarely is). In reality, all I did was make an offer. And I did it in a format OTHER THAN my blog.

See, blogs are great for building a reputation and for building an audience. They are a great way to build up the “know, like and trust” thing with your audience. That’s super important. But, when it is time to make a conversion, get them off your blog.

Blogs are a distraction when you need a yes/no decision from a prospect.

Now, it just so happens that webinars are VERY powerful as conversion tools. They hold a user’s attention quite well. With the right content and the right offer, combined with some scarcity and a valid reason why, webinars make killer sales vehicles.

I could get into the format for a well-done webinar, but I think I’ll save that for another time. ;) [teaser!]

How Can YOU Use This?

If you are still chasing the Adsense fairy, your first step is to knock it off and start thinking like a real business. Even if you’re not using Adsense, if banner revenue is your primary mode of monetization, you’re really missing out.

Next, come up with some offers. Ideally, you’ll have your own product. If you can’t come up with anything to create, then you can use some affiliate offers.

Next, conduct a live event. Live webinars are awesome in a number of ways. Even if you don’t sell anything, you still want some kind of call to action. You can use webinars as a fast way to build a list, too. I would recommend GotoWebinar, but I’ve heard many people recommend DimDim, too. I even once did a live broadcast on Ustream (completely free) and make a quick $700 from it. It is just a matter of being in front of your audience and making an event out of it.

If you can’t see yourself doing this, then I’ve got to ask – why not?

And if you have any experience with this yourself, how did it work out for you?

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  • http://www.functionality.net/ Brent

    I was in on the uStream broadcast and it was very informative and effective. I think that is how I signed up for the 3Day money course.

  • http://website-in-a-weekend.net/ Dave Doolin

    David, very effective way to drive traffic into this article!

    Very curious how you're going to set up your next membership program.

  • http://erica.biz ericabiz

    I'm interested in your webinar thingy. And also promoting it as an affiliate. (This time hopefully I won't be sick! :)

    Also, GoToWebinar has an affiliate program through Commission Junction. ;)

    -Erica

  • MarketingWIthRick

    I know that in order to take my business to the next level I need to start doing webinars. However, I am still working on being comfortable on video. My thought is baby steps but at some point I am going to have to take that leap in order to be more successful.

    I look forward to your future post about webinar formats.

  • ivan_msb

    Thanks for the insight David. Could you make an estimate of the number of hours you had to put in the pre-launch? I was told pre-launches are very time-consuming and quite stressful. Is that correct?

  • http://www.tellusfuture.com/ Fredrik Wallinder

    The title is somewhat misleading, since the webinar was just an optin to a product that you put a lot of hours in, right? I've now experience from gotowebinar both from Laura Roeder and Frank Kern. The audio stops working now and then, which is very frustrating. And the UI was designed in the 80s. If you've any tips as regards setting up a membership site on WP, let me know.

  • http://www.madd0g.org/ Mo "Mad Dog" Stoneskin

    Dude I'm new here, only stopped by a couple of times and, well, I LOVE the sound of what you do. I'm a humour blogger and well, if you didn't mind, I'd rather save my monetisation plans for email discussion etc., just 'cos they are just budding, but I would love to know how you think this kind of thing could apply to my kind of blog. Having said that, just visiting would probably not help you answer my question so tell you what, I'll probably mail you!

  • http://twitter.com/bluepop13 Eric

    I've never done any live webinars myself. In fact, I'm not yet selling anything and currently thinking of what I could come up with to create and sell. Ideas are out there, obviously.

    Always down to earth good information here David.

  • http://www.thegreenfamilia.co.uk Brenda Cuby

    I need to get comfortable with video before I can think of webinars. Congratulations on the success of your Blog Masters Club.

  • http://hotblogtips.com/ Keith Bloemendaal

    The title is very appealing, but I know you actually spent many more hours to make that money. Add in the time for making the material for the course, the time for making the material for the webinar ( which I attended, very good stuff!), the time you spent building that list, the time you spent building authority, etc…. the list could go on. My point is, hard work went into it, and I don't need to tell you that, you put in the work to make it happen.

    I understand your point too, I have a site that sold $20k in the last 10days with only a few emails and phone calls (I only make 15-25%) and I love it! But a lot of work goes in behind the scenes to make that happen…

    I 100% agree with you about the adsense fairy, I do have some ads on a few sites I have, but the income is minimal compared to products I sell.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Wishlist Member, most likely. :-)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Yeah, just do it. Nobody else knows what you have in mind, so the nervousness is really only known by you. You can also just be up front about it – people understand. :-)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Yeah, they are. Not sure on the count of hours, though. Wasn't keeping track.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Check out Wishlist Member. I wish I had my affiliate link handy, but either way, that's the easiest solution.

    And, yeah, of course the title is a bit provocative, but I had lead-up work into that webinar. No doubt.

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Only one way to get comfortable at it. Do it. :-)

  • http://davidrisley.com David Risley

    Yeah. As many would agree, it takes a lot of work to become an “overnight success”. ;-)

  • http://dwaynehuggins.com Dwayne Huggins

    Hey David

    You make some great points here.
    Get in front of the audience.

    Webinars seem to be the topic of the moment as everyone is starting to do them and now I can see why.

    Thank David

  • http://www.Trainwithshane.com/ Deborah Shane

    When you make a commitment to be successful, you have to become a student of the best and most successfull in whatever field you are in. Then, do and practice, and monitor and measure. I have been setting up the tools and tech needed to succeed and trying stuff. There are way too many “wannas” disguised as experts, so do your homework on authentic and track record over time. Thanks for your common sense, no nonsense approach and for being so generous and accessible.

  • http://www.get-my-ex-back-quick.com/ Sammy

    Is it bad to make an offer on your blog? Why?
    Does the conversion rate fall drastically?

    After all the person maintaining the blog is the same person doing the webinar.

  • sam

    Hello, sounds really get but I usually don’t trust such things. Most of the money makers saying such things. How I made $20000 within a hours and even within a min. Maybe I couldn’t able to track down the ways you’re gaining and that’s really interest me “how money makers gaining such big amounts” or showing only figure to gaining more traffic, impressions and making some bucks or long term plan and later to start selling affiliates or engaging campaign with visitors.

    You looks little bit different but I’ve read a lot ebooks — the objective books to “make money online”, the writers of the books or author start to discuss about the process and start to rounding how they made $50000 or $20000 or $10000 but they simply elaborate the topics without showing the right way to make money … such BIG amount. Actually, they even don’t know how to make money, they simply trying to figure it out using ebooks, affiliates different strategy — if that’s possible to make millions of dollar ?

    Where is the confusion, what should I do, what shouldn’t I do in web to make money? The entire money making web authors confusing the visitors and even giving hundreds, thousands (say, problogger.net => thousands of tips already they shared, do you think a person should or can maintain or follow all the rules”) TIPS. Even and beginner will start to add affiliates on the websites (because of thinking he will make millions of dollar from his/her websites) but he/she is not thinking why people will buy or refer them to buy some products? Without concerning millions of blogger doing lots of steps, following tips, affiliates, adsense (using to make money) — all companies are completing their task using blogger, except paying attention to the bloggers hard jobs. So, Don’t you think money makers are playing with Bloggers and killing valuable time of Bloggers?

  • http://www.Escapingthe9to5.com/ Maren Kate

    I took a lot away from this especially “make an offer, just not on your blog” this is great advice because it helps keep your blog more 'pure' in some ways (or at least seems so to me)

  • http://evengrounds.com/blog Julius

    I agree that creating webinars is indeed an inexpensive but effective way to improve your business. It also helps you make a more personal relationship with your customers.

  • http://twitter.com/EvanCarmichael Evan Carmichael

    Great post as usual David! Looking forward to the webinar breakdown post!

  • http://twitter.com/EvanCarmichael Evan Carmichael

    Great post as usual David! Looking forward to the webinar breakdown post!