Hey friends, we're continuing our series through the seven stages of blogging and today we're starting stage five. Now there are three parts to stage five just like the others, so we're just going to talk about part one today. So in the membership we call the stage five the mountaineers stage because this is where you're really scaling new heights in your blogging business by beginning to work with partners or brands or however whatever you call it in your niche. The first step in stage five is branding yourself and building a media kit and probably if you've been you know blogging any length of time you already have a media kit but here are the things I want you to consider when you're putting it together and that is your positioning. What is it about you that makes you different that makes you unique? So let me tell you the goal of positioning for brands that you want to work with is not to put lip service to why you're different or why you're special but to actually articulate how you stand out from everybody else because the goal is to reduce your number of direct competitors. If all you are is you know a food blog or a vegan food blog or a travel blogger or a you know international travel blogger you are going to have a lot of competitors but if you can narrow that down so a narrowing with you with your niche but b narrowing with what your special sauce is what makes you unique what makes you different that's how you reduce the number of people that you're actually competing against it's how you stand out in this very very crowded market and the reason you do this is twofold number one you get a sales advantage and number two you can command a premium price why well because you're no longer just a commodity vendor you are the expert you are someone special you are someone that they're going to have to work with if their goal is to reach the people that you promise and can deliver on in your positioning statement and that really needs to come through in your media kit and in the case studies that you put together the next thing you're going to want to do in this step of stage five is to establish a fixed set of branding packages so based on what you deliver and let me give you an example of this a lot of times bloggers are kind of waiting for these brand partnerships to tell them what they should what the deliverables should be and i'm going to encourage you to step out of that commodity mindset and step into an expert mindset you know you know friend exactly what works in your blogging business you know which types of deliverables bring the best results for the people that you work with you know what your readers are looking for you know what's too little and what's too much you already know this so set the standard put a fixed set of packages together i recommend three packages media or i should say the the middle package would be the ideal price point that you want to get with any particular client then you can have a lower price point which is where probably people who are new to working with you will want to come in and a higher price point for people who really get you and need your audience and what you put in those packages is um is based on what you know works what resonates with your readers what converts so when someone comes to you and they say they want to work with you you can say fantastic we know what works here are the three packages what would you be interested in it's a very very different mindset but it's another thing that sets you apart prevents you from being a commodity and set you up as the expert okay so those are the action items you have for this step in stage five building that media kit and case studies that really highlight what's special about you what's your positioning and then building a fixed set of brand packages that reflect that expertise okay friends the next time we talk we'll be talking about part two and brands and email lists