PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Pit Stop: A Review Of Where We Are With Our Series

This episode is a “pit stop” episode, as we end off on stage 3 of our business-building roadmap and move into Stage 4. In this episode: – An overview of the 7 stages to building an online business. – A review of Stage 3 (Email Marketing) – A look at what’s coming up with Coffee…

Episode #86 | Episode Date: June 3, 2015


This episode is a “pit stop” episode, as we end off on stage 3 of our business-building roadmap and move into Stage 4.

In this episode:

  • An overview of the 7 stages to building an online business.
  • A review of Stage 3 (Email Marketing)
  • A look at what’s coming up with Coffee Break Blogging
  • A few awesome iTunes reviews. 🙂

In the next episode, we’ll get started on Stage 4 which is TRAFFIC BUILDING.

Like I said, we’re going to do a pit stop today. So let’s get going! 😉

Now, the pit stop episode are ones that we do periodically because this is a 7-Stage Process that we are going through with Coffee Break Blogging. I have said that this is not just a standard podcast. This is actually a course, we just happen to do it on a podcast format. And at the outset here; the first many episodes of Coffee Break Blogging, we are going through a 7 Stage Process of building an online business. And we are starting it from scratch and we are building it up to profitability. And we are doing this based around blogging because that is what we do at the Blog Marketing Academy; I focus on blog monetization.

So let us do a quick review of where we stand with the whole pit stop because we are about to end off Stage 3 and move into Stage 4.

Backing Up

Now if you back up to Stage 1 of this 7 Stage Process, you’ll see that is the Foundation. And with the foundation that was where we were talking about the niche that we are going to be operating in, our customer avatar, identifying the solution… It really comes down to identifying that product market fit that you will find on the Blog Monetization Model that we use over at the Blog Marketing Academy. So that is what we do at Stage 1. And there were many episodes back in the beginning of Coffee Break Blogging where we cover all the Stage 1 material.

Then we went into Stage 2 which was about Platform. This is where we actually talked about setting up the blog, choosing proper web hosting, getting pillar content created, setting up landing pages; things like that. Basically we were talking about the actual set up of your blog and setting it up in the right structure. And also these are ways to get deeper with that; we have an Action Plan over inside the Blog Monetization Lab, by the way; but we have an Action Plan in there called the Perfect Blog Blueprint. And the entire purpose of that Action Plan is to walk you through, component by component; your various blog pieces. And we were talking about things like categories, your sidebar, your header, things like that and how to structure them in the ideal way, from a conversion perspective. And that is in the Perfect Blog Blueprint and you’ll find that for members of the Blog Monetization Lab.

From Stage 2, we went into Stage 3 which is the one we are wrapping up right now. And that was all about your Email List and Email Marketing.

And then in the last many episodes we talked about various pieces of email marketing. We have gone back to… We got started in Episode 69 of this podcast; that was where we started it. And we went to how to get your email list hosting right and stuff like that. And then we went into Creating The Perfect Lead Magnet with Episode 70 and part 2 of it in Episode 71. In Episode 72 we went into How To Get More Opt-ins To Your Email List. And then we went into How To Do Opt-In Forms Inside Your Blog Post and How to Create Squeeze Pages with Episode 74. We went into Creating Blog Opt-in Forms and the Tools For Creating Squeeze Pages. That one was in Episode 76.

Then we talked about The Perfect Opt-in Confirmation Page. And then we went into Creating Autoresponder Sequence Emails and that was in Episode 78 and we went into that also in 79. And it goes right on through; Episode 80 we talked about One-Blog, One-List Strategy and whether that really works or not. We went into How To Find Good Material To Send To Your Email Subscribers and we did that in Episode 81. And then we just go through the How To Use Webinars To Build A List; we talked about that in 83. The last one; 85 we talked about The Death Of The Email Blast and really got in to the idea that we live in a world where we need to segment our email list and we did talk about list segmentation.

And that brings us up to Episode 86 which where we are at today where we are about to end off this particular phase concentrating on email marketing and move in to Stage 4 which is going to be about Traffic Building.

Moving Forward

Stage 5 is going to be about Delivery. That comes down into areas like actually making things to sell, setting up your sales funnels, creating products; things like that. This is where the real monetization is going to come in; is in Stage 5. And then Stage 6 is Growth. This is where we take what we already have; something that we have a proven concept at this point, and we are just tweaking it and we are increasing conversions and we might be doing some split testing, maybe, things like that. That will be in Stage 6 and then Stage 7 will be Expansion. This is how we move it beyond ourselves, get in to joint ventures, things like that.

Now what comes after the 7 Stage Process when it comes to this podcast? Well, as of now I am not planning on stopping the podcast after we get through all the 7 Stages because believe me there is a lot of stuff in this business we can talk about. So I think the course will just continue at that point and it just might not be all aligned to the 7 Stages.

So that is kind of what we are doing here with the podcast and so far it is going pretty well.

Awesome Reviews 😉

I have got a few iTunes review that have come in recently and I thought I’m going to mention it because we do not talk too much about iTunes reviews here; I probably should do it more but…

Going back to Corina; she says…

“Easy to listen and David goes right into the point. The content is very helpful and I have learned things I have always wanted to. Can’t stop listening to his ideas and advice. Thank you so much, David.”

Thank you Corina. 😉

Another one, the username here is “thebobspeakman”. Hey, Bob! He says…

“Love it. 50’s awesome tips when you have the time. Love the quality over quantity approach.”

And yeah, in terms of quantity, I don’t know how often some of the other podcasts that you might listen to come out, but Coffee Break Blogging does come out twice a week, almost always on Wednesdays and Saturdays. And each one is maybe 15 minutes at length, tops. Sometimes they go a little bit over, generally they come less than that, actually. But I am not doing this in order to come out with just a bunch of link. The whole idea here is keep it very tactical, very on-point and come out twice a week. That is kind of like my shtick here.

Next is “K1lab” but whatever your real name is, thank you very much. She says…

“This is basically an entire course plus more.”

And yeah, that is the exact point. When I started up this podcast I didn’t want to just be another podcast. I mean, most podcasts out there just do nothing but interviews. And then periodically the host will come in and they will do something instructional. But most of their episodes are just interviews. And that is great, but the thing is, there are other ways to do a podcast and this is one of them. I wanted to do something that wasn’t just another podcast that will just blend into the scenery. I wanted to actually do something that has more structure to it and that is why Coffee Break Blogging really is a course; the full course on building an online business. We just happen to do it twice a week and via the podcast medium.

Also I want to send out a Thank You to Jennifer Weiner. She says…

“I have been in and out of the blogging space for several years now and I always keep up with David Risley. This podcast is amazing for quick things you can do right now to improve your business. I listened to several episodes today and finally got a few ideas for a lead magnet.” (Yey, that’s awesome) “I’m preparing a new blog website for launch and finding these ideas has been a huge pain point for me. Thanks David for all the awesome info.”

Great! I am really happy now with that.

Now, Jennifer, she does say…

“I’m preparing a new blog website for launch”…

My only comment there will be: Don’t get stuck in the loop of preparation because I’ve seen a lot of people, they are constantly preparing to launch their blog and just realized; like my grandfather used to tell me when I was a kid, “The only surefire way not to catch a fish is not to have your hook in the water”. So do not get too worked up over the preparing part and let’s just get that blog out there. Because we also got to keep in mind that at the outset, really, not very many people, if any, are going to see that blog. So let us get it out in the internet, let’s start working on that content and let us not get stuck in the loop of constantly preparing, okay? So thank you very much for that review, Jennifer.

Wrapping Up

So to wrap this up, like I say, we are ending Stage 3 in our overall process and we are going to be moving in to Stage 4 which is going to be Traffic Building. Now, we are going to be talking about how to build traffic to our blogs and we are going to be talking about it from the perspective of what works today, which means, unlike a lot of blog training out there that concentrates primarily on syndication, on guest blogging and stuff like that; now we are going to be talking about that stuff but we are also going to be talking about things like retargeting and a little bit of paid traffic here because at this day and age, I believe that you need to be running some paid traffic to amplify your organic traffic. It is really is a two-front thing and it is really going to be difficult for a lot of bloggers to really grow their sites without taking a really, really long time unless they are set up in such a way to be able to do paid traffic. So we are going to be talking about some paid traffic as well as some “free” traffic generation methods and we will be doing that on the next many, many episodes here of Coffee Break Blogging coming up.

Now about that point that I just made with regard to “you need to be able to run some paid traffic” I’ll end off with this: I am going to give you a call to action at the end of this webinar; good marketing, right?

So I want to direct you over to a webinar that I am delivering now. It is about blog monetization. And you can find it at blogmonetizationwebinar. What we are going to be talking about on that webinar is how to structure your blog in such a way that you can actually grow it and generate revenue as things sits today. And one big part of that is the ability to be able to run paid traffic.

A lot of people come into this with an instinct that “I can’t possibly do paid traffic. I am not making any money yet so how can I possibly afford that.” Or… “That seems complicated to me, I would rather just tweet all these.” You know, whatever you might be thinking… Here’s the thing… in this day and age, as I just said, you need to be able to run paid traffic in order to be competitive, in order to reliably and sustainably be able to grow your business.

And the only way to be able to do that without losing money is to have your blog structured in the right way so that you can do paid traffic, at the very least, at break-even. Ideally, you will be making money on that traffic. So if you spent $1 on that traffic, you want to make back at least $1. If you make back more than a buck, even better, right? So, that structure is exactly what we are going to be talking about on that webinar; blogmonetizationwebinar.com. So I highly encourage you to reserve a seat if you haven’t been on that webinar yet, and chances are you haven’t because this is a new webinar that I just started delivering. And I look forward to having you on that webinar.

The last one I did was last Thursday; I have several people from that podcast, right here from Coffee Break Blogging that were on that webinar. So if you were there, thanks so much for coming, I hope you found that valuable. And for everybody else, if you have not been on that webinar yet, I encourage you to jump on board. It is totally free training, okay?

I hope you enjoyed this little pit stop episode as we transition in Stage 4 of Traffic Building. I will see you on the next episode where we will get started doing just that! See you soon! 😉