I suspect after reading the headline of this article one of the first things that crossed your mind is how can I possibly distinguish the difference between an author, blogger and Internet marketer?
Nowadays most published authors have blogs, and bloggers use Internet marketing techniques and write books too. Internet marketers also publish books and use blogs, so how can we determine the difference?
In this case rather than look at the person, who can easily encompass all three of the personas we are talking about, let’s look instead at the different mediums themselves and how effective they are as money making techniques.
In other words, can you make more money publishing a book, or writing a blog or selling things online as an Internet marketer?
Why Ask This Question?
I was thinking today while reading an article – a good article – on a blog how the ideas within the content where also present in two other mediums – inside a popular print book and a course I studied, which was a recording of a live event by an Internet marketer.
The blog article was given away for free. The print book probably costs about $10 now since it’s not new, while the live event cost $10,000 to attend and the recordings I studied were at least $2,000.
The blogger in this situation was basically summarizing and filtering some information he read in the book. The author is an expert on the subject who had no doubt spent years accumulating the knowledge and experience to produce the title. The Internet marketer who ran the event had read the book too, and included the most important points, again filtered for his audience, in the live event.
Three different people, all using the same information and getting paid vastly different amounts for it. This prompted me to wonder, which person would I rather be – the blogger, the author or the Internet marketer?
Let’s Focus On The Money
To make this discussion as clear as possible I want to eliminate all the other considerations as to why you undertake any of these activities.
Many people write a book just for the sake of being published or expressing themselves. Most bloggers don’t write their blog to profit from it, instead they use the medium as a form of creative expression or as a place to vent. Internet marketing is perhaps the only activity you can say is purely about profit, though if we looked at marketing as a field of study other considerations such as “influence” or “branding” might come into the discussion that don’t directly equate to dollar signs.
For the sake of this article we’re discarding other factors. I want to focus solely on the money. It’s all about how you can use these mediums to make cash – and quickly.
All the intrinsic considerations are of importance too whenever you consider these activities, but it’s pretty clear whether you can profit from what you are doing, as well as how quickly you can make money and how much can be generated, are right at the top of the list when it comes to deciding what you do with your content.
How To Leverage Your Content For Cash
Many moons ago I wrote an article that explained how most bloggers are leaving copious amounts of money on the table because of how poorly they translate their content production efforts into cash using Internet marketing techniques like email marketing. You can read the article here -
Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?
This situation hasn’t changed much since I wrote that article. I’d like to think that I’m partly responsible, along with many of my very successful and wealthy blogging peers (the exceptions – a minority for sure), for opening the eyes of bloggers to the potential their blog gives them, if they only learn how to do things like build email lists and sell their own information products.
Lots of bloggers give away amazing ideas on their blogs, and this is a good thing – moving the freeline is important if you want dominate your market – but understand this is only the first step.
The Same Content, Presented In Three Different Ways
Let’s break down the scenarios…
1. The Author
Print books usually contain lots of words. Lots and lots of words. As a result, unless you are leveraging some clever outsourcing strategies, sitting down and writing a book yourself is not something you get done in a week or three or even a month. We’re talking three months to even multiple years to finish writing a book, so if you are going to profit, it won’t be quickly.
Chances are once you publish your book you’re not going to make much money, if any at all. Except for best sellers, which make up a teeny tiny percentage of overall books published each year, most authors are not retiring on book sales.
As a result the typical strategy for an author is to leverage the credibility and exposure that a book brings you. Once you become published you get to wear a special badge that gives you instant street cred. Unfortunately unless you work out a back-end business model behind your book, you’re not making money as a published author.
Of the three mediums we are discussing, books generally speaking have the best information in them. Due to the length and the amount of research put into a good book, you’re going to find the most comprehensive and high quality level of information, compared to what you might find in a blog post or in Internet marketing products like recorded seminars, or video presentations, or even ebooks, which are usually shorter than physical books.
That’s not to say books are better, sometimes less is more and in most cases you only really need a tiny bit of information from what’s in a book, so you have to go trawling the pages to find what you want. However, some of the most successful people I know are that way because they know a lot about a lot, and usually get this way by reading lots of books.
Books offer specialized information from experts who put whole lifetimes of experience into their written creations, knowing very well that a book represents in many ways, a piece of themselves.
2. The Blogger
Authority bloggers write in-depth content in article-sized chunks, which they distribute on a weekly or even daily basis. In this case we’re going to focus more on the educational, Pillar Article style content as opposed to the short news updates style blog posts. This is about teaching people how to do things, build credibility as an expert and slowly establish an audience.
Blogs can make great money, but it does take a while to get going since most bloggers choose only to monetize what they do with advertising. Since advertising tends to pay out more based on increased page impressions, unless you have a huge amount of traffic, just leveraging advertising is not enough to become financially free. Once again, you need the back-end business selling products and/or services behind the blog to start really profiting.
3. Internet Marketers
Internet marketers, the good ones, are a clever bunch when it comes to making money. They look for the best profit models and go after the key variables straight away. They know profit comes from email lists with high conversion rates, followed up with back-end product funnels. They look for 80/20 methods of making money, they leverage their time and charge lots of money for what they provide.
Internet marketers can provide quality information because they -
A) Read all those books published by authors, and…
B) Take massive action focused on maximizing profits, hence have lots of experience and case studies of the kind of success most people only dream about.
And I’m not just talking about the Internet marketers who sell Internet marketing products. I’m talking about Internet marketers who sell weight loss products, real estate products, sports products, food and nutrition products, music products, education products, and the list goes…
These people know how to get the most out of what they provide. They sell information products like ebooks, video courses, DVDs, home study courses, live events, audio downloads and loads more. They charge a range of prices and target very specific markets with very specific products. If you looked at the value per word they publish and sell, this group is the richest.
So, You Should Focus On Internet Marketing Right?
I feel confident saying if you want to make money quickly, following an Internet marketing focused model is the answer.
What I mean by this, in a nutshell, is that you should focus on filling your email list full of targeted prospects as fast as you can, selling them a front end product you have someone else create for you, then sell higher priced back-end products until you get rich. Test everything along the way, focus only on conversion as your most important metric, and away you go.
This is a sound strategy, especially if you are entering a completely new market and you have no existing assets you can leverage besides some money ready to be spent on getting websites set up and to buy traffic.
That’s the simple answer, and it’s easy for me to say this when you exclude some important variables, like…
- Do you care about the market you are in?
- How long do you want to stay in the market?
- Is your personal brand important to you?
- Do you want to focus on one niche, or many?
- Do you want recognition for your work, or just money?
- Are you already established in an industry offline?
- How far do you want to take the business?
There are many other things to consider beyond this list. The reason I mention this is because the answer isn’t simple. I’m trying to make it simple because everyone new to Internet marketing wants money and they want it today.
People look for the quickest path to success because instant gratification and immediate relief from your current situation is a strong motivational driver. Unfortunately for these people, the realization will set in that there are no quick fixes, and while Internet marketing is the best profit-focused strategy, it’s really just a part of the puzzle.
The Real Answer
The real answer to this puzzle is “all of the above”.
The blogger needs to learn how to add Internet marketing to the mix so they can leverage more from what they already produce. It’s okay to sell some of your content and not give everything away for free. It’s smart to focus on more than just advertising as a monetization method and you should build an email list. Think about building a business and not just writing a blog as a job.
Internet marketers need to be business builders too, and using credibility enhancing tools like a book and a blog gives you significant points of leverage to position yourself ahead of the competition, sell more product and charge more for what you do.
Although Internet marketers have the best tools and science for making money, often they lack long term planning and focus too much on a quick buck and not on relationships with their audience and customers. The result from this is burn-out and only short term gain, as competition, natural market fluctuations and customer backlash erode your profit because you don’t have a solid platform under your business, which can sustain you long term.
Authors need to plan to make money beyond just book sales. Using a blog as a companion platform to a book is a great strategy to enhance your front-end marketing efforts and further establish your brand. Leveraging Internet marketing completes the puzzle, allowing you to profit extensively from your efforts publishing a book and maintaining a blog.
All of this takes time to develop and everyone begins from a different space. Your circumstances dictate where you start.
Having a book and a popular blog and a back-end money making machine based on sound Internet marketing principles is a great big picture goal to aim for, especially if you’re looking to build a business around your expertise. Creating all of these assets is not something you do overnight. Knowing what to do next is the first question to answer.
If you are starting from scratch, the best advice I can give you now is to fill in the knowledge gaps you are missing. Education and creating awareness of what you need to know that you don’t know is the first step. After that you can begin the practical implementation steps that take you towards your goals.
Yaro Starak
Internet Marketing Blogger (soon to be author)
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