Your Plan to Go from Hobby Blog to Business

If you have a blog and are looking for a plan to turn your hobby into a business then you are in the right place.

When I first started my blog, I desperately wanted someone to just tell me what to do.

I spent hours scouring the Internet trying to figure out how I could earn money and found myself always chasing the next shiny object. 

I constantly felt stuck and wasn’t sure what I should work on and never understood how bloggers were making enough money to quit their jobs or support their family. 

I was working a ridiculous amount of hours but never felt like I was making progress. 

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I literally tried everything… ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored content, digital products, mastermind groups. You name it, and I tried to make it work with my blog, Frugal Fanatic.

This is why I created this plan for you.

I want to show you exactly how you can transform your hobby blog into a business, so you can stop wasting time on busywork and start getting results today.

This plan will walk you through step-by-step what you need to do to start generating revenue with your blog.

Your Plan: Hobby Blog to Business

Step #1 - Define WHO

Before you can even think about monetizing your blog you need to start with your target audience.

Who will you serve?

What are they struggling with?

You can’t serve everyone, so it’s important that you get REALLY specific with who you will be attracting to your blog.

• How old are they?

• What are their interests and hobbies?

• What do they do for a living?

• Household income?

• Children?

• What are their goals?

I recommend creating a target audience profile so that you can really paint a picture of the exact person you are trying to attract and serve with your blog.

I even go as far as naming that person. Doing this allows me to visualize the exact person I want to attract. Then, when I am planning content or thinking of ideas for a new project, I picture that exact person to figure out if it would be a good fit for my blog.

One of the mistakes I made was trying to attract everyone to my blog. I never got specific with who I wanted to serve. 

I thought the more people I had landing on my blog the more money I would make.

I wasted so much time trying to increase monthly pageviews that I never thought to care about who the people actually were and what they were interested in. 

This meant, they weren't signing up for my email list and they weren’t interested in my content or what I had to offer.

It will be so much easier for you to attract more people to your blog once you know who you are targeting. 

If you need help narrowing down your target audience, check out this post on how to find out what your audience needs.

Step #2 - Provide value

The second step in the plan to turn your hobby blog into a business is to provide your audience with value.

The content you put out needs to be providing your audience with a solution that they told you they are currently experiencing. It is there to educate or even entertain your target audience.

It doesn’t matter what type of content you prefer to distribute - blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, etc. you need to focus on putting out A-MAZING content that will provide your audience with a ton of value.

This doesn’t mean slapping up a blog post just because you feel like you needed to post something this week. It is focusing on the quality of a post so that your audience will learn something new or get an immediate takeaway from your content.

Think about how you can fix the problem they are experiencing. 

Share your own personal stories of how you overcame that same problem and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Doing this will allow your audience to start to know, like and trust you.

Once they see how awesome you are through your content they will want to sign up for your email list.

Step #3 - Sell a solution

Once you know who you are targeting and you are creating content that provides immense value to those people, you need to sell them a solution.

The solution is your offer.

This could be a product, service, digital download, or anything else you will sell to your audience that will solve the problem they are experiencing.

For example, on my site, Frugal Fanatic, my audience comes to my site because they are having trouble saving money and want to know how to budget. I created digital budgeting spreadsheets to help them easily create a monthly budget that I sell on my site.

You have to be selling something to be able to turn your hobby into a business.

All of the content you create should be leading your audience to this solution. 

Think about your blog right now:

• What types of income streams do you have?

• Are you helping your audience by selling them a solution?

If not, figure out how you can serve your audience by creating an offer. 

Step #4 - Grow

The last step in the plan for turning your blog into a business is to grow, grow, grow.

Once you know who you are targeting, you will start attracting those people through your amazing content and then selling them a solution. 

This can be a repeatable process where you are constantly driving targeted traffic to your content sources, having them sign up for your email list and then selling them the solution to their problem. 

I personally love to use Pinterest to grow both of my online businesses because it allows me to grow on autopilot. 

Read more about How to Grow Your Business with Pinterest

But, you can use whatever platform works best for you.

The important part, is having a system in place to continue to grow your blog into a business. 

For me, this means I create new content for a specific audience, promote it on Pinterest, lead people to the content so they can opt-in for my email list and then put them through an email funnel that will sell them the solution to a problem they are experiencing. 

Once you have the system in place, you can spend your time growing your target audience and reaching more people so that you can help them with your blog. 

Your time can then be spent on creating valuable content and then promoting that content to attract more people to your blog. 

Each step is here to ensure that you are staying focused on what is most important to help you take your blog to the next level. 

There will definitely be distractions that come up and other opportunities you want to pursue, but as long as you stay focused on this plan you will be able to build a business from your blog.

Comment below and share with us what you did to turn your hobby blog into a business.