5 Tips for Starting a Successful Side Hustle

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Do you know that starting a successful side hustle is not rocket science? Although there are many variables at play but what matters the most is the entrepreneurial spirit in you to succeed. Obviously, there are challenges and obstacles which you’ll face if you’re holding down a full-time day job and running a side hustle business concurrently; but the benefits that will accrue to you in terms of time and financial freedom are immeasurable in the long run.

 

I’m going to walk you through my top 5 tips and secrets which you’ve to consider if you hope to start a side hustle business and earn money online. You’ve to treat these points as sacrosanct if your goal is to solve problems and pain points in the marketplace while making money online as an entrepreneur.

 

Tip #1: Be an Expert on Something

 

Without mincing words, I want you to know that majority of people always want to identify with an expert to lead them on a topic they are interested in. Are you in personal development or personal finance niches? Then become a go-to expert in your niche and you’ll have followers, fans base or list members who will be interested in what you are doing.

 

The only time any group of people may remotely identify with a novice or newbie on any topic is when he is doing a case study that will benefit his followers as well. In this case, his followers may want to see the outcome of starting a business or anything similar and possibly learn from it.

 

Personally, I love business case studies because it teaches a lot about what to do and what not to succeed. My first major task before pursuing any specific niche market is to always work on my expertise status. I’ll immerse myself on the subject matter by reading books, taking online courses or enrolling in coaching programs related to my field.

 

The idea is to learn, know enough and be able to demonstrate reasonable knowledge on a topic above mediocrity which will invariably help me to shine as a thought leader who people will be willing to follow.

 

As soon as you conduct market research on your target topic to confirm the feasibility of your side hustle idea, your next step should be on how to become an expert on the topic which you’re interested in. The easiest way to get started is to create a blog around a niche and start publishing content for your target audience to engage with while digging deep by constant reading and learning.

 

By engaging with your blog readers, you’ll be able to draw patterns and conclusions from your interactions with them and their responses. And from the comments and questions they will be asking, you can gauge their expectations therefrom. It will also help you to know what topic ideas to focus on when writing blog posts. This will give you a sense of direction.

 

Tip #2: Build an Audience

 

Your target audience is the set of people who are continually interested in your topic and are willing to engage with you through your publications. If you don’t have a raving audience to bank on, it means you don’t have reliable and profitable niche market to start a side hustle business in the first place. Or you’ve not built an expert status strong enough to grab people’s attention in your target niche market.

 

Like I mentioned earlier, the best ways to build an audience around a topic is to start a blog and build an email list of subscribers. If you can get 100 subscribers on your list, you can be confident that you’ll be able to scale up over time. You cannot be an expert or authority on a subject without followers to toot your horn. This is why you cannot underrate this point if you’re striving to start a successful side hustle business.

 

Tip #3: Be Generous with Content

 

Starting a side hustle is mainly about solving pain points in the marketplace by providing solutions as applicable. There are many ways to use content in this regard. You can create videos, write ebooks, publish high-quality blog posts on a subject, and so on.

 

If you’re a side hustler, what is important to you is to make a compelling first impression before your readers cum solution seekers as the go-to guy or gal in your field. You may not be the very best but you’ve to be among the best in the target niche market. By being generous with superior and unique content, you can draw in your prospects and leads into your sales funnel and then take it up from there.

 

For example, if you’ve a premium side hustle guide on how to make money online, you can create a free ebook on this topic and give it away to your readers to download. In the free PDF ebook, you’ll have the best opportunity to include links to the landing page of a premium course you want to promote and sell to your target market.

 

As a matter of fact, there is nothing complicated about starting a successful side hustle if you’re an expert on a subject and you’re able to create content consistently to wow your readers, solve their pain points and also build credibility and trust with them.

 

You’re aware that people buy from who they know, like and trust. The only way for you to quickly achieve this goal is to engage with your audience through content as a proof of your worth on the subject matter before selling any product or service to them.

 

For a lot of niche markets, I’ve been able to neatly repackage pieces of content which I’ve already published online on a topic for free, add more value and then sell it for tidy sum of money. What I did was to add new content, subtopics and repackage it for its money’s worth.

 

Your prospects don’t really care about repackaged free content being sold to them if what you’re selling will solve their problems in one place instead of dissipating valuable time gleaning pieces of information here and there on the internet. Gone are the days when you can deceive your readers with incomplete information and coercing them to click a link to learn more.

 

Tip #4: Own an Online Platform

 

While it’s good to use Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, to create online presence using a combination of SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing tactics, owning an online platform such as building a website or creating a blog is better. It will help you in personal branding drive as well as building credibility and trust with your target audience over time.

 

The smartest thing you can do is to create YouTube channel, post or publish content on LinkedIn or create a Facebook page and use these media to funnel targeted traffic to your blog for lead nurturing. This way, you’ll be able to control what happens in your business and not be at the mercy of third-party algorithms.

 

But you’ve to understand that creating an online platform of your own will involve time and money investments. Also, you’ve to develop digital skills to manage your website effectively. Otherwise, you’ll be spending lots of money to hire freelancers by outsourcing tasks which you cannot execute.

 

Tip #5: Create a System for Consistent Online Marketing

 

If you want to be top of mind to your target customers or clients, you’ve to integrate a system that will allow you to consistently promote your brand, product or service to your target audience through online marketing.

 

You can achieve this feat by using two-pronged strategies of blogging and content marketing.

 

You can also take it a step further by integrating automation tools such as email marketing software that will help you to build a list of highly targeted leads and customers. If you’ve been online for any length of time, you’ll agree with me that the World Wide Web is a marketplace of survival of the fittest.

 

And the only way you can really survive as an online business owner or entrepreneur is by being ahead of the crowd in thought leadership, digital marketing strategies, content marketing and email marketing.

 

Do you want to start a successful side hustle with ease and make money online. You can download my side hustle playbook for free to discover strategies, tactics, methods, secrets and tips to build an email list of subscribers, start a blog and make money. It’s a complete lowdown of what it takes to quit your day job, start a side hustle business and achieve financial freedom in record time.   

Writing Your First Blog Post Tips and Ideas to Help You to Rank

 

 

At this level of your newfound blogging career, I assume you’ve completed the following tasks already:

 

1. Registered a domain name to start your blog,
2. Bought website hosting services to host your blog,
3. Installed WordPress blog on your domain, and
4. Optimized your blog for SEO.

 

But if you’re still researching information on how to start a blog and make money blogging online, you should consider downloading and reading my complete blogging guide. But the free PDF ebook is only available to our readers who have used our partnership link to sign up for HostGator web hosting services from this link. The blogging ebook explains everything you need to know about blogging for money without breaking a sweat.  It’s a no brainer blogging blueprint to say the least!

 

Today’s blog article is focusing on tips for writing your first blog post and I’ll be giving you some examples where necessary. For you to become a successful blogger on the internet, you need a system and a plan to follow to a Tee. This will become your roadmap for writing and publishing content that resonates with your target audience all the time.

 

As a matter of fact, your first blog post is the foundation and pillar of your online business success and content strategy. In line with this, there is a lot of housekeeping details you’ve to consider and adhere to in order to create a great blog post that constantly draw in free targeted traffic from search engines especially the big Google.com.

 

Personally, my first blog post usually targets the most popular and competitive keyword or search query in my niche market. For example, if I’m in the “work from home” niche market, I’ll be very comfortable creating and publishing an SEO article targeting “work from home” or “working from home” keyword phrases. And this keyword will be the exact URL or slug of the post which I want Google to crawl and index for me ultimately.

 

Yes, I may never rank for this search term in the SERP (search engine results page) but I’ll be happy having a web page on my blog indexed for my target search query. However, I believe in the nearest future and with the right marketing strategy and back linking my first blog post will be indexed and optimally primed for ranking.

 

This means that as the authority of my blog increases with time, you’ll discover that the work from home post will begin to rank as well. Yes, from the analytics, you may be surprised that your blog post for that target search term will be ranking on page one of SERP in some countries depending on the web surfer’s choice of search queries contained in your published blog article.

 

But you must make sure that your article is a long-form blog post of about 3,000 words or more. Also, you’ve to include LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords in order to be sure you’ve covered all the bases as far as keyword optimization is concerned.

 

But you must make sure that your content fills the gap omitted on the same topic or the questions which were not answered by other bloggers who are ranking on pages one and two of Google search results or other search engines.  

 

With that said, let’s dive in to the anatomy of your first blog post.

 

1. Keyword research
2. Selection of keyword to target in your blog post
3. Blog topic content research
4. Note taking of content ideas
5. Create your content outline
6. Craft the blog title
7. Write the introduction
8. Create the body of the blog post
9. Write the conclusion

 

Let’s go through the above steps one by one.

 

Step #1: Conduct Keyword Research

 

Your knowledge and ability to conduct comprehensive keyword research is the foundation of writing a great and compelling content that is searchable and findable on the internet. Web surfers, online shoppers and information seekers usually make use of search engines to find products to buy, services to subscribe to, find specific information for learning or purely for entertainment.

 

You can also do this by typing a search query that best describes your intention into the search field of a search engine like Google.com and go through the results that will be returned to you. For example, I can go to Google and type “how to make money online for beginners.”

 

Now, knowing how to dig deep and conduct keyword research to discover these search queries will help you to focus on the relevant and helpful content to create when writing your first blog post.  First, you’ve to select a seed keyword and enter it into keyword software like Google Keyword Planner tool.

 

From the keyword ideas, you can tentatively select a list of some of these search queries to target that best describe your products and services.

 

Step #2: Select a Keyword to Target in Your Blog Post 

 

In this step, you’ve to evaluate the best keyword to write your first blog post from the list of keyword phrases which you’ve selected in step #1 above.  You should base your keyword selection on the average monthly search volume, relevance of a search term to your target readers and its difficulty for ranking.

 

For possible SERP ranking preferably on page one of search engines, you’ve to choose a long tail keyword phrase with high search volume, high keyword relevance but low difficulty. For you to complete this task seamlessly especially to determine the ranking difficulty of a keyword, you may have to use paid keyword research tools such as Ahrefs.com or Semrush.com.

 

The easiest way to rank on page one of Google is to pursue long tail keyword phrases with low competition. These are search terns with 3 or more words which will be relevant to your readers and website visitors if you write content about them.

 

One of the best writing your first blog post tips which I learned a long time ago was to target transactional keywords especially when I’m building niche websites.

 

Step #3: Content Research

 

As soon as you’ve concluded your keyword evaluation step, it’s time to do content research in order to learn what information and topics to include in your blog post and information gaps to fill. Your goal is to write your first blog post that will attract targeted website visitors in droves.

 

You’ve to take down notes when reading published content by other webmasters or bloggers who are actively targeting the same keyword you hope to pursue. The websites and blogs actively targeting the keyword will certainly have it on the blog title, Meta description, introduction, body of content, and conclusion of the blog article.

 

If you’re making use of WordPress blog and you’ve installed and activated SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, you’ll have the opportunity to type the search query in the focus keyword field available at the bottom of every blog post editor.

 

Step #4: Create Blog Post Outline

 

When you’ve gathered sufficient information to flesh out your article writing assignment, you need to create a blog post outline to guide you as your roadmap as you type your content on your computer or laptop. You want to capture all the ideas and points to include and discuss in your first blog post.

 

The template of your blog article outline should be similar to the one below:

 

• Blog title
• Introduction
• Body of article
• Conclusion

 

Blog Post Title

 

This is the headline of your article. This is what will be indexed by search engines along side with the information you have filled out for your Meta description before publishing your blog post. Blog title should be catchy and tersely conveying the major benefit for the potential reader to be compelled to click on it to visit your web page and read your content in full.

 

If you’re relying heavily on free website visitors from search engines, you’ve to learn and master the art and science of crafting irresistible headlines. This will help you to have a high CTR (click through rate) to your blog web page.

 

As much as your title is expected to include your target keyword, it should be readable by your website visitors.

 

Introduction

 

Your blog post introductory paragraph has to ignite the interest of your reader for him to continue perusing your content. In addition, you’ve to find a way to make use of your search query in the first few sentences of your blog post.

 

However, I’ve seen some of my blog posts ranking even if the first paragraph did not mention my target keyword phrases. The corollary of this is that creating stellar content is paramount to your web page ranking as you target a long tail keyword phrase.

 

As a blogger, you must understand that you’re writing blog post to serve two fronts, namely to appeal to human readers and search engines bots. Although keyword stuffing is no-go area, you still have to find a way to naturally weave it into your content so that the search engines bots will understand the topic of your post.

 

Body of Article

 

The body of your blog post is where the full course meal is expected to be served for your website visitors and readers. Here, you’ve to appropriately make use of relevant search terms, images, screenshots, bullet points, number list, references, quotes, and so on. 

 

Depending on the type of blog post (how to, step by step, ultimate guide, etc), you’ve to explain and discuss your topic in detail in order to demonstrate your expertise. If you’re doing email marketing as well, you need to go extra mile to please your prospects or leads who may eventually become your subscribers. 

 

Conclusion

 

The conclusion of your blog post is the last paragraph or section which will summarize and round up your content. If you’ve not done so before now, this is where you’ve to use clickable CTA (call to action) link to direct your blog readers to more information on another web page on your blog or to an external website.

 

In blogging, this is the best place to ask your readers some questions and encourage comments from them. It helps to ignite discussion among the blog owner and followers and I see this section as a perfect conversation starter.

 

In conclusion, there is lots of writing your first blog post tips to share here which include:

 

• Know your target readers and write your blog post to address their needs, solve their problems and answer their questions accordingly.
• You can import content from Google Documents, MS Word, notepad or type directly in the WordPress editor.
• Be original and conversational in your writing.
• Let your writing style, tone and voice resonate with your ideal audience.
• Make use of the right vocabulary, lexicon, jargons, etc which your readers will understand without scratching their heads for meaning and interpretation.
• Let your content meet the EAT (expertise, authority and trust) criteria.
• Write for your target readers without leaving any stone unturned.
• Write for search engines too because of SEO (search engine optimization) factor.
• Write in short sentences, paragraphs, and use bullet points for easy reading and scanning.
• Edit your permalink for the blog post to reflect your keyword target.
• Include keywords in your post both primary and secondary keywords.
• Include images with alt text where necessary.
• Size your images for speed loading on your blog website.
• Assign as many tags as possible for each blog post. Tags represent relevant keywords associated with your blog article.
• Create a category for your blog post. Categories group your similar blog posts in their related folders.
• Make relevant quotes, references, links, etc, where appropriate.
• Tell your story to educate, inform and entertain your readers.
• Hyperlink texts for both internal and external web pages and websites.
• Use CTA (call to action) to help you drive home your points and direct your readers to other places on the web for further reading and action taking.
• Build an email list to get the most from your published content.
• Ask questions to encourage conversation for your blog article.
• Ask your readers to comment on your blog post, make contributions, add their own ideas, etc, so as to make your active.
• Ask your readers to share the link to your post on social media with share buttons.
• Your blog post story line should be able to move your readers to CTA or solution you’re recommending.
• Preview your blog post before you finally hit the publish button.
• Publish your blog post.
• Promote your blog post.
• If there is any major update or revision you want to make in your article, simply revert to draft, edit and republish your blog post.

 

Go ahead and do so if you have any questions to ask or comments to make. You can also share the link to this blog post in your social media circles.

 

Simplified Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Did you know that one of the best ways to build and establish relationship, trust and credibility with your target audience is by integrating email marketing strategy into your digital marketing mix? Besides this, it is also an online marketing system which will provide you with ample opportunities to demonstrate your expertise in a specific subject matter and ultimately make it easy to recommend and sell products and services to your subscribers.

 

I must tell you that you’ll be making a grievous mistake in your small business if you’re not building a mailing list of subscribers either as a webmaster, blogger, internet marketer, ebook author, online business owner or digital marketer.

 

So, in this guide on email marketing tips for small businesses, you’ll discover how to set up a successful campaign and have higher ROI (return on investment) more than what you should have gained using any other digital marketing strategies.

 

But first, you need to have a website of your own to be able to effectively build an email list of subscribers from scratch and have control over your list members. And with WordPress CMS blog platform, it’s now a breeze to build a website and integrate a sign up form on it to collect names and email addresses of your prospects.

 

Creating a blog on self-hosted WordPress blog is free but you’ve to buy web hosting from a company that supports WordPress hosting. If you’ve not gotten a web host yet, you can purchase website hosting services from HostGator because they are relatively cheap and reliable compared to other web hosting providers.

 

The best part is that you’ll get a free domain name registration offer from HostGator hosting company if you sign up with them as a first time customer from this link.   

 

Our next online marketing tool which you should have in your arsenal is an ESP (email service provider). ESP is the company that will provide you with an email marketing software or autoresponder to set up your web form and seamlessly organize your list building campaigns as you like it. ESPs are a dime a dozen on the World Wide Web but you’ve to be careful with the reputation of the company you sign up with.

 

However, in this tutorial, I’ll recommend GetResponse autoresponder because they are reliable, cheap and have excellent customer support. In addition, GetResponse 30-day free trial will allow you to learn the ropes of email marketing before you dive in with both feet.

 

GetResponse pricing is quite affordable and user friendly for any beginner or small business owner to get started and make money online. With as low as $15 per month, you can start email marketing campaigns in any niche market and be rest assured that you’re on the path of business growth.

 

Click here to learn about GetResponse pricing from their official website

 

Thirdly, you need a valuable lead magnet to entice your prospects and blog readers who will give you their email IDs in exchange for your free gift offer. You can create any type of content and give it away for free in the form of PDF ebook, audio, video, podcast, webinar, infographic, etc.

 

But you’ve to make sure it’s a valuable content that your subscribers are frantically seeking for and cannot be found elsewhere gratis. And the best way to create relevant content is to simply answer some of the questions your target audience is asking. You can make use of good keyword research tool and question and answer sites like Quora.com or AnswerThePublic.com to discover these questions to answer for your potential readers.

 

Don’t forget that you’ve to create series of email messages for every specific campaign you’re working on. This will include welcome email message and series of autoresponder content which will be delivered on predefined days to your subscribers at a date set apart by you.

 

Depending on your email marketing strategy and promotional tactics, your content should always be a mix of transactional, navigational and informational materials. Promotional emails have to tie in with the type of content you’ve delivered. But you should not send blatant promotions to your subscribers simply because you want to sell and make money at all cost.

 

Fourthly, create a blog, optimize your blog, publish blog posts regularly that target keyword phrases and set up opt-in mailing list form on a page on your blog.

 

With that said, let’s dive into my top 20 email marketing tips for small business to get you started right away.

 

Tip #1: Be an Avid Reader and Learner

 

As an email marketer and online business owner, constantly creating value in the marketplace is non-negotiable if you don’t want to continually record high unsubscribe rate from your mailing list. But even as an expert, you can never know enough. And for you to become a guru or thought leader in your industry, you’ve to continuously be a student of learning. As the saying goes, “Learning never ends.”

 

Personally, I’ve come to discover that the more you read and learn from others, the more you realize the little you know even when you think you’re an expert.

 

So, connecting and networking with who’s who in your industry will be a great asset to you in the long run and it will also allow you to gain insights on better ways and means to run and grow your online business by leaps and bounds.

 

You can sign up for email newsletters of some of these subject matter experts (SMEs) in your industry and observe how they professionally pre-sell, promote and close sales for their products or affiliate products.

 

Tip #2: Become an Expert or Thought Leader

 

Majority of aspiring internet entrepreneurs misses the mark when it comes to how to make money online. To be honest with you, online shoppers, information seekers or web surfers are very wary and they’re not comfortable at all when dealing with a mediocre in any niche market with regard to his product recommendation or content published on his blog.

 

Even if you’re not a subject matter expert at the beginning, you’ve to strive by all means to become one sooner or later. The fastest way to do this is to pick the brains of others as you grow your business as I explained in tip number one above. It will help you to build a mailing list fast and sell more products and services that you decide to promote to your subscribers.

 

A thought leader should have more than the basic business or job experience to solve problems and pain points of his target market. He must have sharp presence of mind and adaptable.  You’ve to be abreast of industry news, technologies, emerging trends, and the like.

 

Starting a blog on Blogger was an idea I picked up from an expert who built a blog on Blogspot and later sold it for thousands of dollars. And as digital marketing coach and trainer, I decided to use his strategy to start a free blog on Blogger with a custom domain name.

 

If I’m able to manage and grow this blog to make $1,000 per month online, it will become a case study to teach my coaching students who are on a tight budget but have at least $10 to buy a domain name to start a business. This is how to read, study, learn and possibly become a maven in your focus market.  

 

Tip #3: Hone Email Copywriting Skills

 

If you ask me, starting a successful email marketing campaign is a Herculean task and not just a child’s play. It involves a lot of steep learning curve, work load upfront, digital skills, subject matter expertise and consistency. Little wonder why a lot of online marketers fall by the way side and give up completely with email marketing systems.  

 

The best thing to do is to hone email copy writing skills to navigate and succeed with your list building campaigns. You should carefully craft every copy that delivers the goods without being overly sounding “salesy” or promotional.

 

Your landing pages and lead magnet page must emphasize on benefits over features with bullet points, clear CTA (call to action), money back guarantee, and so forth. There is a lot to learn when it comes to copywriting but you can hire a freelance copywriter if you like.

 

By simply following industry experts via their email newsletters, you can learn how to write great subject lines and preview text to get high open rates. Using text and images in your email copy with brevity can be of immense value as well.

 

Tip #4: Include Social Share Buttons on Your Blog

 

As a small business owner, email marketing is crucial to your growth. The fastest way to reach out to your target audience is through social media marketing. And if you own a blog especially WordPress blog, there is social media plugins you can install and activate to get social shares.

 

Using social share buttons on your blog is one of the best email marketing tips for small businesses which I’ve received during my blogging career. The other side of the equation is creating high quality content that will resonate with your target audience. I call these pieces as content worth sharing and linking to.

 

Tip #5: Use Storytelling to Build Your Mailing List

 

If you want to excel in your email marketing campaigns, the best antidote is to create high-impact content that tells your own stories and experiences as well as that of your customers. It doesn’t have to be a palatable story anyway. It could be mistakes you’ve made, sacrifices you made, lessons you learned, and so on.

 

Telling stories about your business move the potential customer through the buyer’s journey with conviction. I’ve used stories to sell products and services of every description. For example, I use HostGator website hosting to get online, build websites and create blogs.

 

What I did was to take my readers and digital marketing training students through my sign up process and show them my HostGator billing dashboard.

 

 

This singular action tripled the number of subscribers signing up for my list. All in all, email marketing tips for small businesses is really about being creative with ideas that will benefit you and your customers. What can you do differently that is unique and acceptable to your ideal audience?