Hello! Welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging!

As we continue with our ongoing step-by-step series to building up a blog-based business, we’re now going to launch into the first step.

What MOST people do is get a bright idea then immediately go out and buy a domain and hosting.

But, let’s slow down… Because, if you want your blog to be PROFITABLE, there’s a wrong way and a right way to start.

So let’s continue on our series to starting up a blog based information business online.

Today we are going to talk a little bit about the very first step that you need to take in order to start a profitable blog. It’s a little bit different than what many people do because we have to ask ourselves…

“What is the first thing that most people do when they want to start up a profitable blog?”

What most people do is they ask that question but they take off the word “profitable”. They want to make money, but really what they are thinking is, “What is the first step to starting up a blog” so what do they typically do? Well, most are going to immediately launch into setting up the blog itself.

But they are going to figure out what they are interested in personally. And because you are so interested in it, you are going to assume that other people are, as well. And a lot of us we have done this before… we get really excited about the idea; we think “Oh, this is a really cool idea” and then we immediately launch into going and signing up for a hosting account, getting the domain name and the whole nine yards. We start up the blog and then inevitably, what a lot of us do is we get stuck into this endless cycle of tweaking the blog and constantly preparing for this ‘launch’ day that kind of is out there in the future but it just keeps getting pushed off because we are afraid to fail or whatever it might be. That’s the typical pathway that many people take.

They start off at just launching into it without any verification as to whether it is actually going to be a solid market. But the thing is, if we inject that word “profitable” back into that original question that we ask: What is the first thing that we need to do to start up a “profitable” blog… Then we need to think a little bit differently. We need to do a little bit of a counter-intuitive of what other people typically do.

So, let’s back it up. Let’s go back to the last episode in this series where we talked about The Mindset Difference Between A Blogger And A Business Owner.

Now, that mindset difference between a business owner and a blogger is pretty stark and it is basically that a blogger wants to “talk” about things whereas a business owner “wants to solve people’s problems”. And when we solve business problems, we do that via a product or service that we are going to sell. And that business owner; believe me, is going to be very interested in selling that thing to you. They are very focused on making that sale.

So it is a pretty stark difference here. Especially if you look at a lot of bloggers out there; they are straight up afraid to make any sales or straight up afraid to market anything which is just sad, actually.

But if you want to make a profitable blog, you need to not be afraid of such things.

A Business Solves Problems

So, the business owner is looking to solve people’s problems. A business solves problems. Every business on the face of the earth solves somebody’s problems or fulfills a need or a want of the market. They do it via something that they are going to sell.

So that is the mindset you need to have. You need to not be thinking about this as a blogger and just launch in the going and getting hosting and all that stuff. Let’s do the preliminary foundation of the work first.

And the very first step that we need to do is you need to look for where you can help people solve problems. That is first and foremost. And you actually need to think about that regardless of what your personal passions are. Just look at what your skillsets are. What are the things you are good at that you think you can actually provide value in other people in their lives based on what you know.

Look for where people are driven in a certain direction and how you can enable them to do it. That is an important thing because you really need to understand the people that you are going to help solve problems; but the best thing to do is to actually look at where their natural inclinations are. What are the things that they are naturally looking to do? And then you jump in on that and help them enable them to do it. That is really what we need to be doing.

Now, if we look at: What are the big markets on the internet? What are the FOUR really popular ones? And when I tell them to you, you are going to be like, “Yeah, of course, that’s a huge market”. 😉

The 4 Big Markets

1. Being healthy. The health market is huge. That would include losing weight, handling various health issues; a definitely huge market. But why is it such a huge market? Well, we all have bodies. 😀 But it’s also a natural inclination. It is something that we are all interested in because it goes right into our fundamental survival. So therefore, it will always remain a huge market.
2. Making more money. And that comes in lots of forms. We know the “Make Money Online” space is humongous but it also can go into investing, into real estate. Anything that is actually going to result in more wealth, people will always be interested in that.
3. The idea of being “Hot”. Dating… Being sexy. 🙂 Because that is a need that people have always had and always will have.
4. The idea of saving time and increasing convenience. We look at that as way of solving problems because in today’s society we have got so many things to do and there are so many things vying for our attention that it definitely is a strong area that people want to work on. But the thing is you don’t want to tackle that one necessarily as a generic saving time type of a thing. It’s usually going to be mixed up with something else. But it’s solving a particular problem and doing it in a more convenient way.

Now, the reason why these four markets work really well is because they are evergreen. They will never die because they are natural inclinations of people. They will always be there.

And so what you need to be looking at is not necessarily “How am I going to fit into these four popular markets?” because it is not a necessity. These just happen to be four really big ones. But you need to be looking at what are the inclinations of other people that you can jump in on and enable, based on your skillsets.

You can base it based on what you are personally interested in but actually, that is a secondary priority to how you can solve their problems. You don’t really need to be passionate about it. You need to have the skill set to solve their problems and be willing to do it. That is the really important part.

So, the very first step; backing up to the beginning, of starting up a profitable blog, is to slow down and figure out your niche first before you go out and worry about domain names and stuff. And you want to do this not so much on the basis of talking about something which is the way most bloggers do it; but on how you can enable people to accomplish something that they are already looking to do. And that is a very, very important point.

And especially if you are following along with me, you are just starting out here or let’s say let’s say you already got a blog set up and you didn’t really nail down this niche properly on the outset, then it really comes down to “we need to nail it down” because it is going to shape everything that you do, moving forward.

If you have already secured the hosting for your blog; totally fine. If you already bought a domain name, whatever… It will only cost you about ten bucks to get another one if you decide to switch gears; but you really need to nail down your niche, but base it on the people on the other end. Not so much on what you are looking to do or what you are looking to talk about or what you are personally interested in but the people of the other end of the internet from you and what they are looking to do or what they are out there looking for and what their natural human inclinations are that you can help them do something about.

And I encourage you, at least at this stage in our series; not to so much worry about whether it’s a big market or not. I don’t want you to get stuck in this idea that… “Oh, there are so many people doing this so how can I possibly compete?” That’s a scarcity mindset and you are putting problems there before they really exist for you.

The truth is that those are big markets because there are so many people interested in it. So they are actually really good markets. I don’t want you to unnecessarily steer clear of them because you think that you are just not going to standout. That is a separate matter. It’s a definitely separate matter and also when we come up later in our series we will be talking a little bit about how to standout in those types of markets.

So look at the “How you could provide value in other people’s lives and how you can enable them to accomplish things or solve problems.”

Now, I’m going to leave you with this:

Over at the Blog Marketing Academy at BlogMarketingAcademy.com, I actually have a course called “Finding Your Niche” and it does exactly that. 😉 It will help you find your niche. And I do it a little bit differently because obviously this involves things like keyword research and that thing but there are also some bigger picture things that one need to consider that is a little different than some other people talk about. And I talk about it inside that course “Finding Your Niche”. Now, here is the thing… if you want to take this course, it is actually part of the VIP Program over at the Blog Marketing Academy.