All Entries Tagged With: "conversions"

When Should You Hire A Blog Ghostwriter?

There comes a time when you should think about hiring a ghostwriter for your blog. But when?

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a ghostwriter when:

• You’ve realized that you don’t have the time to write any more
• You need a professional approach to blogging
• You want well-optimized content that delivers traffic to your important landing pages
• Your blog isn’t performing as well as you think it should be
• You are not confident of your own writing ability
• The competition is beating your socks off

I know what you’re thinking. A blog ghostwriter will cost me money. Yes, you’ll have to pay for the service, but if you get a decent ROI on the expense, would it be worth it? Let’s say that you pay out $300 per month for a ghostwriter and you get 1 lead each month from that. The cost of your lead is $300. Is that more or less than what you are paying now per lead acquisition?

Even if the cost of acquisition per lead is less than you’d normally pay, you still need to close the sale. Right?

Well, if closing one sale means an additional $1,000 in your pocket and you know you can close one of out every three leads, your ROI is $100. You have a positive ROI, correct?

But let’s say you only close one out of every four leads and you have $1,000 coming in out of a $1,200 expense on ghostwriting services. Are you losing money? Not necessarily. Your blog could be sending you one lead per month, but it is also building up new content and building links to your website, which pushes up your search engine rankings. Let’s say it takes you two years to capture the top spot in Google for your key search term and once you do then you realize a 500% increase in traffic.

If your traffic count from organic listings was 1,000 unique visitors and you start getting 5,000 unique visitors per month knowing that you can close 1% of those, your sales conversions go up from 1 per month to 5 per month on organic listings. Your income will also increase from $1,000 per month to $5,000 per month based on the $1,000 per sale. Two years of spending $300 per month on blog ghostwriting services equates to a total expense of $7,200. You’ll make that up in two months after you hit the top spot in Google. How’s your ROI now?

I’m not guaranteeing you a top spot in Google for blog ghostwriting services. We’ve accomplished that feat for customers in the past and I believe we can do it again. But the illustration does show that ROI is not as cut and dry as measuring the sales developed from your blog alone. There’s more to ghostwriting than mere dimes and nickels.

How Should You Monetize Your Company Blog?

One question that often pops up is “How can I monetize my business blog?” First, you have to understand what a blog is for and how best to use it. You are not trying to create a publishing platform where you sell advertising or pop on AdSense so that you earn five cents per click. If you are then you are looking at the wrong type of blog for the company blog model. It’s not that the publishing platform type of blog isn’t a good model. It is. But you can’t mix and match the concepts.

A good company blog doesn’t necessarily need a monetization plan of its own if it is done properly. That’s not to say you can’t make money with it.

First and foremost, your company blog is a marketing tool for your business. The idea is to drive traffic to your website and increase your search engine standing through optimized quality content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to achieve those two simultaneous goals.

To measure your blog ROI, follow the traffic patterns. Are you getting traffic to your static site from the blog. If so, is it converting? If not, why not? Perhaps you nee more in-text links. Or maybe you need fewer. Maybe those links need the proper anchor text. Or maybe the problem isn’t with the blog at all.

The most common problem with websites that don’t convert is with the content on the website itself. If you’re getting traffic to your website from your blog, but you aren’t closing sales then it’s the website, not the blog. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

We’re firm believers in first things first. Get your website to where it will convert traffic to sales. Then use a blog to promote it. You can use other methods of promotion as well. Don’t just stick with one way (ever hear of not putting your eggs in one basket?). But realize that not every visitor to your site will buy something and not every visitor to your blog will visit your website. What do you do with that traffic that leaves?

Here are a few ideas for you:

• Sign them up for your newsletter
• Hit them with an exit “pop-up” window and sell them something; like, maybe an e-book
• Get them to subscribe to your RSS feed
• Sell them an affiliate product with a link in the sidebar
• Send to them a sister site

One important concept too many business owners ignore is the value of contact information, which can lead to future sales. Get the e-mail address, at least. Use your company blog as more than a repository for your “throwaway” content.