AP 0047: Monetization Isn’t Working—Any Ideas?

AskPat 47 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey hey what's up everybody Pat Flynn here and this is Episode 47 of AskPat, I'm here for you! I'm here to help answer your online business questions five days a week.

Today I want to mention a resource, actually this is a recent podcast episode on my other podcast, SmartPassiveIncome.com, that is Episode 100, Session 100. It was a great episode I was able to bring Jeremy Frandsen and Jason Van Orden from Internet Business Mastery on the show who are really big influencers of myself when I first started. So the link to that is SmartPassiveIncome.com/session100 and they have a great program over there, Internet Business Mastery, and also their academy as well for premium training. So let's get into today's question which is from Lauren and this is about, specifically, her travel site and monetization. Let's hear it.

Lauren: Hey Pat, my name is Lauren and I have a travel website called North West Trip Finder it's at NWTripFinder.com and it's loaded with content to help you plan your trips in the Pacific Northwest. My question is about monetization and I would like for you to think outside the box a bit for this. I've been at this since early 2008 and I'm not really making any money. Here's what I've got going for me: My site has good authority on some key topics, I have decent traffic, about 50,000 page views a month, so pretty decent, and I have an email newsletter that goes out to about 1,000 people. The problem is I don't make much money, I barely break even and the monetization tactics that I have tried have not really worked. Let's see, I have an ebook on Amazon and I have modest affiliate income for things like camping gear so do you have any outside-of-the-box ideas for monetizing a travel website that's focused on a niche, in my case The Pacific Northwest? Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Bye!

Pat Flynn: Hi Lauren, thank you so much for your question and even though people listening out there might not have a travel blog or maybe even if they do that's not specific to the region that you're targeting, I think my answer here is going at least help people understand how you can be creative with how you sell or monetize because you've obviously been doing this a while, since 2008, and you are monetizing, you said you are breaking even which leads me to believe that you're doing a lot of small things to earn from your website. Like you said, affiliate marketing, you have an ebook which is great, those are all great things to help build your authority and like you said you have amazing authority. Now it's time to take that authority to the next level.

So here's a couple of ideas that I have. Actually, this reminds me of an issue that I had with somebody, I didn't have an issue with this person, but they had the same issue in my 1-Day Business Breakthrough event that I hold with Chris Ducker every once and while, whenever he flies to the US. We had somebody who had a travel site but it was specific to Tibet. And we had an amazing idea because what happens is, we usually get together before this 1-Day Business Breakthrough and we look at everyone's businesses and we ask everyone beforehand, “What's your biggest struggle, what do you want.” This person was looking for ways to monetize her site about Tibet and travel. And we had this great idea to actually bring—I mean she had a ton of authority, like you said you do, and our idea was to create an event, a live event. Put together a travel package for people, fly them to Tibet, meet up because there was a community building on this site, and how awesome would it be for people who are interested in Tibet, communicating with each other on a Tibetan website to fly to Tibet together and just experience Tibet in the most amazing way possible, there live in person. And that was our idea and it was a huge hit! Unfortunately she sort of shot it down right away because there are some issues with travel and the Embassy's and all that stuff like, it wasn't going to be easy and that was, obviously, international travel but I feel there is any opportunity for you to do this.

Think about it, you have 50,000 visitors a month to your website which is huge. That is more than my security guard training niche site which is getting 32,000 a month and is making about $2,000 – $3,000 a month. But I feel you can make way more by just having a very high-end package for people, a travel package, people going to the Pacific Northwest and you could even do this twice a year, maybe once a year, just make it a big huge event where people get together, people who are a part of your community, and you can make a little bit of money off the top in addition to what the cost might be for hotel, travel and site seeing, anything that would go on when people come together. I really feel like there's a huge opportunity there and when you think about it: 50,000 people coming to your website, you might only need ten people. Ten people to pay $5,000 for example. That's $50,000 and have a week long, amazing excursion and you would easily be able to profit from that.

It would be sort of like how Chris just recently put on the Tropical Think Tank event, which was a week-long event in the Philippines. People were paying thousands of dollars to come and visit and yes that was more of a conference type of feel, but people were going there, obviously, because it's a destination area as well, and I feel that if people are on your site and they are raving fans of you there's going to be a small percentage, but you wouldn't need very many people, who would take that opportunity to go and see you and see everybody else and just connect with everybody and just experience everything there is to experience there.

So that's one idea. That's a big thing, I know it's huge, it might sound scary, but, you know, a lot of people do this, a lot of internet marketers that I know in the past, that are making millions, they charge fifty-grand, a hundred-grand for people to come and fly and hang out with them in their home town. So why can't people pay you a good amount of money to experience what your site is exactly about, and not just read about what you are talking about but actually experience it? And imagine when you do that, you document it, and you share that on your blog for the people who weren't able to make it: The next time you do it you are going to get more people excited and you are going to make even more money and I don't think there's any better way to monetize. The online thing, yeah, it's working a little bit for you but how about taking it offline? Even if it's just once or twice a year, I really think you could profit from that.

Now if that's a little scary and maybe you want to something in-between, you could do webinars into a travel package. So you could have done, for you packages, where you could take something off of the top. You wouldn't necessarily have to go in-person every time someone gets this package but it could be a package you set up and you get deals with hotels and airlines and gear perhaps, and you make some money off the top from selling these packages. I think that would be a really interesting way to go about it as well. Again, just some creative ideas, sort of offline thinking. I think the travel packages would work because it's more automated, you'd have these things set up, “For $2,500 you could spend a week, here's the place you would stay at, it's available these weeks.” You're almost acting like an Airbnb I guess you could say. If you don't know what Airbnb is you can go to Airbnb.com and check that out, but you're sort of acting as a mediator or the liaison between a person who is interested in this area and the people who are in that area who want to provide services to people who are interested in that area.

So I hope that makes sense, and the reason I mention webinars is that would be a great way for people who are in your audience, for free, to show them what they'll do and what's available. You might even get people who you connect with in these areas hotels, site-seeing areas, things like that, to come on the webinar with you and talk about what they would see if they go. Get that real life one-on-one experience and interaction with your audience.

So hopefully that helps Lauren, just thinking out of the box there and for those of you listening you know, you might want to take things offline every once and while. It's been working really well for myself and Chris Ducker, obviously, who just held Tropical Think Tank, like I said, and there's nothing like meeting people in person. And everybody who was there was so excited to be in the Philippines and I'm more of raving fan of Chris Ducker now and I'm sure people who were there, because they had an amazing experience, they're even more of a raving fan as well. Not only that but we have been talking about it like mad and showing photo's on the web and stuff and it's going to be even better the next time around.

So Lauren hopefully that helps you and thank you so much for your question. Again, the resource of the day here is Episode 100 of the Smart Passive Income podcast which you can find find at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session100 and this quote is directly related to those of you who have tried and tried and tried and things may not be working out: You just got to keep trying. So this is a quote and I may have said this before but it's a great quote. I have to mention it again if I did. It's from Thomas Edison and he said, “I have not failed ten thousand times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those ten thousand ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” So Lauren, you have tried these others things and it's not working out for you, why don't you try these? Maybe just one time, give it a test run, validate it and if it works, maybe this is your thing.

Lauren, thank you so much and for those of you out there who have a question, head on over to AskPat.com and I hope to hear from you there. Thanks so much, see you in the next episode.