by: AskPat 565 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 565 of AskPat.
A brand new week here on AskPat, and I'm so excited to mention that the audio book for my new book Will It Fly? I know you guys are into audio, because you're obviously listening to this audio right now. The audiobook for Will It Fly? is now available at WillItFlyBook.com. You'll see that on the Amazon page. Just click on the Audible option and go from there. I read it myself. I didn't hire a narrator. I did it all myself. So you'll hear this voice in that audiobook. Hours and hours and hours of great content. That is my book Will It Fly?. So again, check that out, WillItFlyBook.com.
All right, thank you again for joining me today. I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
Thanks so much, and here's today's question from Daniel.
Daniel: Hi from Berlin, Pat. This is Daniel from Trendblog.net. First of all, thank you so much for everything you've done in the past few years. I've been following SPI since 2012, and now I'm listening to every single podcast put out there, and yeah, thanks to you, I've actually discovered blogging like back then. Now I have a six-figure business and all thanks to you and some hard work put inside of it.
So, anyhow, my question is…so, my website hit the seven-figure traffic point around five months ago and since then our growth kind of stagnated compared to what we've been seeing before. So, my big question is, how would you scale a blog from one million to 10 million readers per month? Again, Pat, thank you very much, and thank you to the community for being so awesome. Cheers, man.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Daniel. Thank you so much for the question and congrats to you and your success. Seven figures of traffic already and you're hitting the six-figure mark, that's awesome, and thank you for saying that I had a little bit to do with that. Obviously, I'm just here to guide the way. You're the one that took action. And for everybody else out there, Daniel is a good example of somebody who is taking action, and now he's trying to grow even more, which is great. So from…the jump from one million to 10 million is huge. That's 10x, obviously. What I would worry about first before you get to that is, how do you double your traffic? That's what I would start with, and there's a number of different ways to do that, and once you do that, you start to see exponential growth. You start to see once you get to this level that, you know, the small things that you do can definitely increase your traffic quite a bit and—because everything just kind of grows on top of each other. But I wouldn't worry about 10 million at first. I mean, that's a very, very huge goal, and I think you should still have that goal, but I would consider, when can you double the traffic? And if you wanted to do that by the halfway mark here of this year, it's gonna be different than if you wanted to do that by the end of the year.
So, besides the quantifiable goal of traffic, you want to also consider by when, because that's gonna affect a lot of the actions that you take. Always have some sort of deadline or date that you envision, because that's gonna affect what you do and when you do all that stuff to set that up. So there's a few things that I will say—you know, I'm on your site right now, Trendblog.net. I can see why it's getting so much traffic because it has a lot of great information for tech and mobile and gadgets and stuff.
So what I would do is I would definitely make sure that you increase the number of people who sign up to your newsletter. By far, that is the one most underrated thing that people have that they can use to increase traffic, and it's not brand-new traffic that's coming back from your newsletter; it's existing traffic.
However, there's a nice cycle that happens. When you have a lot of people in your email list, and I don't know how many people you have on your email list, but I'm currently looking at your site and it says sign up for our newsletter, 100% privacy, we never spam, your name, your email, subscribe. There's no incentive at all. So I would definitely work on some incentive or some giveaway or some lead magnet to drive people in there, because what happens is when you come out with a new article, or when new articles get pushed out and it looks like from on your homepage that you have multiple articles coming out every single—oh no, it doesn't. I had expected with a site like this that you would have articles coming out every day.
So, that's another thing, actually. If you're only coming out with articles once, twice, three times a week, if you really wanted to increase your traffic, you could obviously write more content. That's one thing you can do, but I would also focus on how does that traffic convert into your email list, because when you come out with new content, either when it comes out or in a digest email like I do every week, you can send out an email to those people who have subscribed and you're just gonna get immediate traffic coming back to your site. And the cool thing that happens is when you do that, there's more chances for people to see and read those articles, and of course share those articles with people who are brand new—which are gonna come as your site—and they subscribe to your email list, and then the cycle just keeps going from there.
So, definitely work on your email list. I would work on some sort of big lead magnet, or something that your audience needs. And perhaps a survey is in order for what it is that you could do better. What's working? And so you could do more of that. That's kind of the second point I wanted to make. Which is, where is all that traffic going into right now? Is it a particular kind of post or particular subject matter that people are—seem to be most interested in? Also, see what most people are sharing, if possible. You might want to check out a tool called BuzzSumo to see what it is on your site that's getting the most shares and the most interaction and all that sorta stuff.
Again, it's hard to grow if you don't know what's working. So figure out what's working, and do more of that. But by far, that's the easiest thing to do. But like I said, that newsletter is a very important thing.
Also, you might also want to run a promo or contest, and this is more of a proactive way of growing your email list in a short period of time. So, doing some sort of giveaway around a contest. Rafflecopter, I think, is a website that you could use. Let me just double check that. Rafflecopter. That's a giveaway and sweepstakes promotion tool that you could use on your website that can definitely help you grow. It helps you manage a giveaway for any brand, any website as much as you want. It's actually really cool. So, since you have some tech stuff on your site, it might be cool to invest a little bit in some sort of giveaway or a package. Maybe something with five to ten prizes with a grand prize and it involves sharing, it involves subscribing, it involves, you know, all those things so that it can grow your traffic.
I don't know how well also you're using social media, but I would see if there was any way that you better have people share what it is that you're putting out there. Because you're putting out a lot of great stuff, it looks like…And I'm trying to see if it's easy to share these things. And I'm on your site right now and it doesn't—oh I see a thing on the side bar here for sharing. Let me click on that and see what happens. @trendblognets is your Twitter handle. Let me put that into Google because I want to see how well your stuff is going here.
So you have 2,268 followers. I mean if you wanted to grow your social media following with a million page views a month, you should definitely be able to have, or you should have a lot more followers. And plus you have a lot of tweets going out. You have 172,000 tweets. That's way more tweets than I have. But you only have 2,268 followers. So, I'm looking at your feed here, it looks like they're just simply links. I don't see any interaction, I don't see any personality. It's just links out to your stuff and I'm guessing that a lot of that isn't actually getting clicked on very much. Part of it's because you don't have a large following, but also because there's no interaction. It just seems like one of those accounts that you look at and you're like, “Oh, it's just automated. Nobody's there.”
The last thing I would mention is Instagram. I think Instagram would be a great tool for you. I would recommend following Nathan Chan over at Foundr.com or Foundrmagazine.com. He's been using Instagram quite a bit to grow his following and build his list.
There's an article that I just published on Smart Passive Income which is actually a repost of an article that's on his site, Foundr Magazine. That's all about using Instagram and growing that particular brand and it's had a massive impact on his growth and his traffic and down the road his earnings, of course.
So, I think those are some things that you could do, and I would definitely work on one thing at a time. You don't want to do all of them at once. Pick the one that seems most interesting to you after you figure out how you can optimize what's already working…And that's gonna help you get to that 2 million level, and then from there 4 million, and 8 million, and then just 10 million will happen after that. But again, you have to be a little bit more proactive about that…And I think social media and the email lists are a big, big underutilized part of your brand right now. Because that's where people are at, right?
So, Daniel, thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it, and I wish you all the best. We're gonna send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.
And I want to thank everybody else out there who is asking questions, because your questions are what make this show exist. I mean, the show wouldn't exist without your questions. So if you have a question, head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page.
And finally as a reminder, my new book Will It Fly?, a Wall Street Journal best selling book, is now available on Audible. I highly recommend you check it out. Just go to Willitflybook.com and that'll direct you to the Amazon page where you can check that out and get it set up there … And … man. I hope you guys enjoy it. I have put a lot of time and effort and heart into it, actually. I actually went into the studio to re-record some stuff that I wasn't happy with that I felt I could do better, so. I know you're gonna enjoy it. Again, Willitflybook.com. Check it out.
I appreciate you, and I'll see you guys in the next episode of AskPat. And as always, I like to end with a quote, and here's a quote from Jim Rohn—Jim Ryun, excuse me. He said, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” So, hopefully you're creating a good habit of listening to these shows, and until next time, keep pushing forward. And again, Willitflybook.com to get access to the Will It Fly? audiobook. Read by yours truly. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.