[00:00:00] Happy Friday, friends. I had an interesting conversation with an industry leader, and he asked me this week, if you had to give advice to a group of established bloggers, what is the advice that you would give those people who are feeling the pinch of The changes on Google, like what it, what would be actually said, what would be your motherly advice?

[00:00:35] And so I, I, I rambled on some crazy things, but put a lot of thought into it since we've talked and I thought I would share those five things with you today. So, these are five things that I would advise bloggers to stop doing. So, yeah, I'm answering a little different. Instead of what advice would I give, I guess the advice would be, Stop doing these things.

[00:01:06] Okay, and I think, I mean, a lot of these, they're, they're not going to be new to you. We've been talking about them for ages, and I'm going to keep talking about them until everybody who can hear me is doing all of these things, because I know it's, what's going to help you to be successful. And some of these things may strike a chord with you, might take you off.

[00:01:27] Might be, your immediate reaction might be you're smoking crack, Leslie. But what I want you to do is maybe just. Open your heart up a little bit. Think about if that's something that you're willing to make adjustments on, or if it's something that, that you're doing that maybe you don't, you don't even want to admit and consider, just consider for a second, making these adjustments.

[00:01:58] Are you ready? Here's the first one. Stop trying to fix your SEO on your blog for Google. Okay, so If you've known me, then I am so passionate about SEO. I think that it is, it's definitely the reason I've been successful with my blog over the last decade or so. It was one of the most important things that you could do.

[00:02:29] And I'm not at all suggesting that you stop looking for keywords, because as I've told you before, I think keywords are an indication of the demand that people have. It's just like, , keywords are demand in your blog and however many blogs are out there addressing the same issue. That's a supply.

[00:02:46] It's a debate demand, a supply demand model. However, if you've been doing pretty well with SEO for a while, and you felt the crunch, From the helpful content update, or the spam update, or what, , the products up, whatever it was, whichever one, you might not even know. And you've seen your traffic fall, like most of us have.

[00:03:14] There's this tendency to want to, or to think that it's you. To think that you've done something wrong, that there's this, , one or two things that you can do to tweak it and it's going to be all better. If I just can figure out that one thing, then I'm going to be back where I was. Or, , should I, do I add this author box at the bottom?

[00:03:36] Do I take out some of my ads? Do I move some of my affiliates? Do I have too many of this? Do I have too much of that? And the fact is, friend, it's not you. I mean, probably last year or two years ago, I mean, there's all, there's always things that we can all do to increase our SEO or our visibility on Google because, , we're usually one or two min shows, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not you.

[00:04:08] Google's a different animal now. They're, they're, they've morphed into something. I don't even know what, I'm not even going to go there, but what I am going to tell you is, there's not. This one thing that you need to be searching for to do. There's not this one button to push or this one lever to pull that's going to fix all the problems.

[00:04:29] It's a different world. And so you've got a morph. You've got to adapt. You've got to figure out another way to to get the revenue. And the reach that you're longing for. And this is not it. So I say, yes, definitely still use keywords because that is an indication of demand. Definitely still keep your posts updated because being on page two is better than being on page 200.

[00:05:00] But stop spinning your wheels, trying to fix a problem that we don't have any control over and move on to bigger and better things. Okay. Oh, I know it's hard to hear. I know it's hard to hear. It's hard to say. It's hard to believe. It's so hard. I have spent 15 years. Learning and mastering SEO, preaching SEO.

[00:05:33] And then I can't even believe I never would have fathomed in a thousand years that I would be on a podcast saying, stop worrying about your SEO. It is what it is. Okay. That's number one. Ready for number two. Stop relying on high SEO. RPMs. Now high RPMs are the bomb, right? I mean, sometimes it's crazy. I look at my daily revenue and one day I'll have like a lot more revenue than normal and I'll look, and the page views were less than the day before, but the revenue's higher.

[00:06:13] And I'm like, what happened? Like I wish I knew what it was that added that 10 extra dollars to my RPM that day. And I'm not suggesting that, that you start desiring low RPMs. What I am suggesting is that you spend your effort, your, your concentration, your, what's the right word? Your focus should be on a different metric.

[00:06:37] So rather than RPM, I want you to look at, RPR, Revenue Per Reader, because when we look at RPM, we focus on an ad only or ad mostly revenue model. And that's been great when Google was cooperating it has changed my family's life. It's been spectacular. But like I said, in the first item, the world is a different place now.

[00:07:08] And when we look at. RPMs, we see that they translate into a revenue per reader of one, two, three cents. I mean, you're lucky if you're going to get four cents for every reader that comes. But if you think about A different business model where your blog is not the product, but it is a marketing avenue for your business product, then you can change that.

[00:07:40] You can have RPMs that are 3, 30. That is not unheard of, but you have to be willing to take off your RPM glasses and put on your RPR glasses. in order to make that happen. And then in the end, if you're like me, you're going to be like, why the heck wasn't I thinking this way a decade ago? Because There is an opportunity for even more revenue than you're making now with the smaller reach that you have.

[00:08:22] And remember that's most likely not your fault. Okay, number three. Stop relying on social media. to sell your products or promote your affiliates. Now, notice I did not say stop using social media. I think social is a great tool to have in your arsenal for your marketing strategy. Over and over and over again, we see that email marketing is the best way to sell.

[00:09:02] So, I just want to remind you, though, that sending a newsletter once to a group of people and complaining that nothing sold does not qualify as email not working. What that is to me is You're not working. I want you to have a system in place that automates, nurture emails for the people who come to your blog and sign up for your lead magnet.

[00:09:32] I want you to have quarterly campaigns that go out to your entire list, promoting different things , every quarter of the year based on what the season is. I want you to realize the 40 to 42 percent ROI that most traditional businesses have when it comes to email marketing. And I understand that when we were relying on RPMs that it wasn't for everyone, but we're not in that world anymore.

[00:10:06] So it's time to dust off your email list. Work on consistency and build some sales funnels that you can put on autopilot. Calendar in some campaigns, one every quarter, ideally. And again, I do want you to fold social into your sales plan, but I just don't want you to depend on it. Because studies tell us repeatedly that social doesn't sell as well.

[00:10:41] Doesn't convert as well as email marketing. Okay. I know that's the one that's going to hack some people off. I'm okay with that. The next one, stop trying to serve everyone in your niche. So I'm hoping that you've been listening to me long enough that you've decided to focus on a niche, a narrow niche.

[00:11:05] Your niche is not travel or recipes or parenting. It's got to be something much. Okay. much more specific than that. And I had a recent podcast episode where I talked to you guys about how to how to work on narrowing it or how to know if it's narrow enough or if it's too narrow, which usually isn't the case, but people worry about it.

[00:11:28] So go listen to that. If you still need to work on narrowing it. When we try to serve everyone, we serve no one. I know that sounds like a cliche. It probably is a cliche. It is also true. So narrow down your, your niche. Focus on a target audience. And then take that target audience and divide them up even further to five, six, seven groups of people who have similar.

[00:11:59] Problems, similar desires that you can help them with. And when you have those narrowed down and what those problems are, then creating a product a lot easier, building a marketing message a lot easier, knowing what to publish a lot easier, knowing what to ha and what to talk about on social media or in your newsletter so much easier, your world is going to get easier.

[00:12:27] It's easier because creating content for them becomes a no brainer and creating products easy as pie when you figure out what their real problem or pain point or desire is. And it becomes easier to sell because the people that you are talking to feel like they are seen and they are heard. And that they're not just thrown into a big group of people where you're maybe you're talking to them.

[00:12:56] Maybe you're not it's kind of like Reading the newspaper and listening, reading your horoscope where you read it You're like, oh, yeah that I could see where like where that would fit for me And also all the eight billion other people in the world You don't want that you want somebody to read your blog read your newsletter.

[00:13:13] Look at your social Evaluate your product and go that is me I need this. So stop trying to please everybody and go for a specific audience. Okay. Here's the last one. Stop chasing all the ideas. A lot of bloggers that I talk with are kind of in panic mode now, especially if you're like many of my friends and myself, where, , this, this blog, blogging business is revenue for my husband and me, and we supporting our kids with this.

[00:14:00] with this business. So when, , I'm like, Oh my, when am I going to have to go flip some McDonald's hamburgers? But I don't, I want that to be a I want you to use that energy to direct yourself on a very clear and focused. So just like pulling levers and pushing buttons on all the SEO on your site is not going to.

[00:14:28] Make it, , run at 20, 22 numbers , coming up with 52 ideas and moving between them rapidly is not going to make you a living. You're going to have to pick one or two. ideas that you feel good about that are solid ideas and you're going to have to move forward with those. And that means you're going to have to be okay being a beginner again because likely you're starting from scratch.

[00:15:00] If you've never had a product, you're starting from scratch. If you haven't had an email list, you're starting from scratch. If you, , if you have only been selling on social, you're starting from scratch. You're going to have to be okay being a beginner. And you're going to have to give it a little bit of time to percolate, as my mom would say, to begin to make money.

[00:15:26] Your audience is not going to be used to seeing this from you if it's new. You're going to not have all the answers right away. You might not know what should go in that Nurture series to sell your product. You might have to test and try different marketing messages until you get the right copywriting language that resonates with your audience.

[00:15:50] It doesn't mean your product's bad. Most of the time, your product isn't bad. It's that your marketing message hasn't been nailed down yet, and you give up. Before you nail it down. And it's frustrating because you're like, yeah, I was making this much money last. I was making five figures a month last year, and I'm making four figures a month this year.

[00:16:15] I mean, that's frustrating. And you want something to work right away. And you feel like you've been working at this blogging business for so long. You're like, this isn't fair. It isn't fair. And why am I going back to square one? And I hear you. I feel that way sometimes too. Give your ideas some time, pick one or two, focus on those, put the blood, sweat, and tears into those and stop looking up and looking around at all the other possibilities.

[00:16:54] Any of those possibilities work. They can't make them all work. So you're going to need to pick one or two, and focus, and be okay with a little bit of time. Failure at first. Be okay with being a beginner again.

[00:17:13] That's what I struggled with. I was like, oh my gosh, I hate being a beginner. I hate being a beginner. But you have to start somewhere. So, just put that focus in and stop trying to choose all the things and thinking that one of them's going to work overnight. Because if the revenue comes that quickly, it's gonna go that quickly.

[00:17:35] And that's not what we're after. Okay, friends. Those are my five pieces of, as he said, motherly advice. Five things that I would stop doing. Shoot me an email, write me a comment, let me know what you think about these, if any of them resonated with you, which one resonated with you the most, who did I tick off, and I love you to the moon and back, guys.