5 Ways to Get More Business from your Business Blog (Without Needing More Traffic)

Funny thing about business blogs…

They’re supposed to bring in business.

They’re supposed to attract clients.

They’re supposed to convert readers into buyers.

No matter how well your blog does at getting business, you want more.

There’s no magical barrier standing in the way of more business from the same amount of traffic you’re already getting (unless it’s in your head, of course).

There also is no “magic bullet” for this, either. I think the reason why most entrepreneurs don’t do this is because it’s so simple it just gets overlooked.

For your business to make more money, you gotta accomplish these three objectives:

• Get more qualified traffic to your site
• Convert more of that traffic into leads & sales
• Sell more product or services more often over time and at progressively higher price points

I’m not going to talk about getting more traffic in this post. I’ve written about how to get more traffic to your blog already, and so have roughly sixty-five million other bloggers. There’s no shortage of awesome information on getting more traffic. Chasing after traffic can be something of a treadmill, however.

What should really perk your ears up is ideas for making more money from the traffic you already have. How about five of ‘em?

You like? Thought so. Here they are…

1. Engage in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you sell other people’s products for a cut (usually between 30% and 50%). It’s one of the best ways to make money online, period, and it has every bit of business being included in your business. How it works is you get a special link to a product with your affiliate code in it after you sign up for a seller’s affiliate program. When someone clicks on your special link and makes a purchase from that site, you are credited as the referrer and you make a commission.

The buyer pays no more for the product than they would have already, but the seller makes less because you get your cut. This is worth it to the seller, since 50% of a sale is still more money than no sale at all.

Affiliate marketing is also pretty easy to get started on: Find an affiliate program for products which are complimentary to yours and which are highly relevant to your ideal client. Write honest reviews of these affiliate products (state the bad along with the good–don’t gush).

You will be helping your ideal clients by providing them with trusted, useful new products and making extra money at the same time. It is surprising how much money you can make with affiliate marketing. Reviewing affiliate products also gives you a new category for content on your blog, as well.

2. Improve your Products & Offers—and Raise Prices

More specifically, you should be constantly improving your products and offers. Don’t coast with the same products or services for too long. At least every six months you should examine your product offering for improvements. Maybe it’s time for a revised version of that ebook you’ve been selling. Maybe it’s time for an ebook to be turned into a membership site and include audio & video components. Perhaps it’s time to sell a physical product in addition to a digital one. There are many possibilities for improving upon what you’ve already created.

Every time you improve a product, of course, the price should go up, for several reasons:

• You’ve added to the product so it has more value and is worth a higher price.
• The cost of nearly everything goes up over time, because the cost of living goes up.
• The more your authority and audience grows over time, the more commensurate it is to charge more.

3. Create New Products & Offers

In addition to improving existing products, you will get more business from your existing traffic if you create new products constantly. Technology changes, times change, the market changes, your customers’ perceptions change… all of which means you need to keep up by offering new products. The more you interact and listen to your clients, the better you’ll become at sussing out what would be of real help to them (what they would buy, in other words).

In the realm of information products, new technology plays a huge role in this. For example, selling information products for Amazon Kindle is not something many people would have thought viable last year, but now Kindle is the number-one-selling device on Amazon and ebooks outsell physical books for the first time in history.

4. Create Cross-Sells and Upsells

When a client buys from you, it’s quite likely they’re willing to seriously consider related products or improved versions of what they already bought. For example, if you buy a suit it’s not out of line at all for the salesperson to suggest getting some shirts and ties to go with it. It would also be perfectly acceptable for the salesperson to suggest a better suit if the value were far greater than the higher price point. How many women go into a shoe store only to buy shoes and come out with both new shoes and a new bag? Have you ever bought the extended warranty for a piece of electronic gear?

These are all good examples of appropriate cross-sells and upsells. Depending on what you’re selling and what your tools are, you can automate cross- and up-selling to a high degree. But this doesn’t have to be automated. Often the best opportunities for this arise when we are in conversation with our clients. The trick in these situations is to:

• Have something worthwhile to cross-sell or upsell in the first place
• Ask for the sale

You are not in business to just leave tons of money on the table because you’re too much of a chickenshit to go for the upsell. Nobody is going to say “Oh, never mind, just forget the whole thing!” because you made an additional offer. If the offer is a no-brainer (obviously relevant and extremely beneficial) you will make tons of additional sales.

5. Create a Product Progression Arc

A what? Over the course of a client working with you, they are going to want to naturally progress from lower to higher and from beginner to advanced. A product progression arc is where you have planned out a sequence of products that grow progressively more advanced, useful and at higher price points.

This is “big picture” planning at its best. By planning this out in advance, you will make much easier work of your product launches and marketing. By providing a consistent, cohesive “product story” you encourage greater trust, because it’s obvious to your clients you know where things are going. You’re anticipating their next need in advance.

Not only do you make more money through selling products which give more value for progressively higher price points, you’re also making more money by remaining steadfast, cohesive and consistent. “Shiny Object Syndrome” is the bane of many entrepreneurs; it distracts them and dilutes their selling effectiveness because they’re all over the product “map”.

One example is to have training products in beginner, intermediate and advanced formats. Another example is to progressively have the client get more personal time and involvement from a coach or a consultant by graduating from recorded media products to live seminars or training.

The Power of Compounding

Any of the these tips done alone would boost your bottom line, but imagine if you did them all? The compound effect on your revenue would be earth-shattering! The first two are the fastest and easiest to do, so what are you waiting for? Get going and start making more money from your existing traffic.

Image attribution: PinkMoose