PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

The Stage 2 Pit Stop: A Review of Where We Are With Our Series

This installment of CBB marks the end of Stage 2 of 7 of our full progression of building up a profitable blog-based business from scratch. Before we delve into Stage 3, let’s review the overall bird’s eye view of what we’re doing here and what we’ve covered so far. This is our “pit stop” episode…

Episode #68 | Episode Date: April 1, 2015


Hello! Welcome to Episode 68 of Coffee Break Blogging!

This installment of CBB marks the end of Stage 2 of 7 of our full progression of building up a profitable blog-based business from scratch. Before we delve into Stage 3, let’s review the overall bird’s eye view of what we’re doing here and what we’ve covered so far. This is our “pit stop” episode before we delve into email list building starting in the next episode.

So today, what we are going to be doing in this episode is we are going to take a little pit stop and we are going to kind of review where we are in the podcast; kind of take a little bird’s eye view where we stand, where we are heading, kind of how the show is going… that kind of a thing.

CBB on iTunes

But before we jump into that, I want to make a quick reference to the iTunes reviews for this podcast. I realized that I have been basically dropping the ball when it comes to the iTunes reviews. Now, if you are listening to other podcasts as well, you probably know how the game works with regard to these reviews. It is pretty much standard fair for people who produce podcasts like me, to ask for your review on iTunes. And you probably heard this many, many times.

But here is the thing… I haven’t really been asking for it, I have been dropping the ball on that; it just was not really part of my checklist to be honest with you. But at the same time, it is still really, really important. There is a reason so many people ask for this iTunes reviews. It really helps get the word out about the podcast. And some guys go out there and they actually feature a review. I listen to a few podcasts where actually they go back and read one or two of the reviews on the air and I think that is kind of a cool thing. So, I wanted to do that.

I happen to check out my iTunes reviews this morning before I popped up the mic and it looks like there was one posted just 2 days ago. This is from Nialohm (I probably, completely butchered that, so I apologize) but this is just a very simple review, it says, “I have found the content in Coffee Break Blogging to be very helpful. I enjoyed listening to the entertaining dialogue and I have learned a lot about how to improve my blog site.” So thank you very much.

There are a lot of other reviews here as well and a lot of star ratings; like 5 star ratings like, 5 star ratings are off the charts which is great. But here is the thing, I would like you (if you have been listening to this for a little while and you have not reviewed the podcast) to maybe go and do that right now.

Now here is the thing… unfortunately, Apple isn’t always the best when it comes to making things simple. You know, and podcasters know this. They make great hardware, but sometimes with the software side of things they are not always the best. So unfortunately if you are using the podcast app on your device right now, if you are on iOs device, they do not have a way for you to quickly and easily review the show right from in there. So the way that you need to do that is you need to go into iTunes itself. So you need to go into iTunes, you need to go to Coffee Break Blogging in the iTunes store and then there is a button right there to post a review. So it is nice and easy if you go and search for the word “blogging” inside the iTunes store; on the pop-up I think I am in the top 3 or 4 results on that keyword. So just go and search for the word “blogging” if you can’t find me and post a quickly for me; that would be great!

Re-evaluation

One other little update here is that; I do not know if you guys have noticed, but I used to actually simultaneously record a video along with these episodes. And so I would actually turn the cameras, turn on the mic and I record a video in this podcast episode all at the same time. Now, this is the first episode on quite some time where I am actually not doing the video component. And the only reason why; this is just a quick lesson for everybody, is that we should always be re-evaluating our business from an 80/20 perspective. It is the old 80/20 Rule where we get 80% of our results from 20% of our efforts and the big thing is we want to always concentrate on those things where we get our most leverage; the most “bang for our bucks” so to speak, as to our efforts.

Well, I happen to look and the video version of this podcast wasn’t doing all that much. And the thing is, I also was not particularly proud of the videos because quite frankly, it was just a talking head, my head just sitting there, saying the exact same things I am saying to you right now and that is a little boring, I got to be honest with you. I would not want to watch something like that. And I think the beauty of a podcast is that we can listen to it on the go. And the video isn’t inherently not the kind of thing we that we can do that. So at least as of now, I might change it unless I can do something unique with those videos. I am going to probably go ahead and drop the videos for a little while and just continue with the audio only podcast because this is where the actions are happening, okay? So if you did watch those things then you might notice that they are missing.

Where We’re At 😉

Okay so let us jump right in to the nature of today’s episode which is our Pit Stop. It is reviewing where we are at.

Now, if you have come in to Coffee Break Blogging a little bit more recently, then I want to quickly explain to you what we are doing here with Coffee Break Blogging.

Coffee Break Blogging as a show; used to be called The Blog Program. So if you go back to Episode 1, it was called The Blog Program. And it was not nearly a routine as Coffee Break Blogging is. The episodes were a little all over the board in terms of subject matter and it went that way up to Episode 30 or so. Now as right around that time that the podcast basically died off because I just got really, really irregular about it, but it was around then that I decided I need to bring this back and I need to do it right. And I went ahead and re-branded it at that point to Coffee Break Blogging.

So at that point, starting around Episode 31 and really getting in to Episode 35, what we do here with Coffee Break Blogging is that everything goes in a particular order. And the order is a progression of starting an online business from absolute scratch and building enough to full profitability. And I have a big infographic that you can find over the homepage at blogmarketingacademy.com.

Anyway, the 7-Stages of Building an Online Business… the infographic is available on blogmarketingacademy.com; if you just scroll down the homepage and you will see a link there to the 7-Stages.

Now, it starts at Stage 1 which is “Foundation” which is the things like identifying our niche and identifying our avatar; and our solution that we are going to bring to the marketplace and things like that; the real foundational stuff. And we got into that starting with Episode 35 of Coffee Break Blogging. And the Episodes from 35 all the way up into 45. Episode 45 was my last Pit stop Episode. So everything to 35 to 45 was all about Stage 1 of the foundation of our business. Whereas, Episode 36 was Brainstorming Your Target Market; 37 was all about evaluating your potential niche, right on to verifying your business ideas in Episode 40. In 42 we talked about your transformation map; a very important concept, because we really are building these businesses around delivering a transformation of some kind. We talked about the reader avatar in Episode 44 but then we came up with Episode 45 where we did a pit stop and looked at where things were with our series before diving into Stage 2.

Now Stage 2 is our “Platform.” This is all about setting up the blog itself in the right way; setting up our core pages, setting up our pillar posts, things like that. So starting with Episode 46 we talked about choosing the right web host for our blog, we talked about your domain name in Episode 48, we did a lot of stuff on the design of our blogs and getting it set up right starting with Episode 49. Episode 50 was about design mistakes that people often make with their blogs. Episode 52 was about SEO of your blog post. We talked about the blog sidebar in 53 and it just keeps on going. In Episode 56 we talked about how to reduce your bounce rate. 59 we talked about how to User Test your own blog and it just goes right on through with various aspects of content creation and stuff like that. So starting with Episode 46 of Coffee Break Blogging all the way up to today with Episode 68, we were all talking about Stage 2 of this entire progression where we were just talking about our platform and getting our content set up in the right way.

So this is a 7-Stage process and as we sit today, we are at the tail-end of Stage 2. Now does that mean we touched on every potential topic in between? No. Even after we get through all stages there are still going to be stuff and we are going to go back and fill in those gaps.

The Succeeding Stages

Today, we are going to mark the beginning of Stage 3.

So starting with the next episode; in 69 we are going to go into Stage 3 of the overall building of our online business and this is going to have to do with our “Email List”. We are going to be talking about Lead Magnets, we are going to be talking about setting up lead funnels and squeeze pages, autoresponder sequences and all that stuff.

This is a very, very important topic because it really does form the foundation of how our businesses operate; it is the Email Lists. We are not going to dig deeper into this today but that is exactly where we are going to be heading. And then let us pop a little bit further and let you know what is coming up…

Stage 4 we are going to be talking about Traffic; how to build up traffic on your site. Stage 5 we are going to be talking about what I call “Delivery.” But this is delivery of the transformation. So our means of doing that is going to be making sales and selling products. It is going to be all about product creation, making offers, and designing sales funnels; stuff like that. Stage 5 is where we are going to get into the real monetization stuff. It is going to be a lot of fun. And then Stage 6 and 7 is; you already have got a business by that point. It is going to be about growing the business, tweaking it, increasing your conversion rates and systematizing things and that is stuff that we will get to when we get to that point in Coffee Break Blogging.

The Whole Idea

These things all go in order. The whole idea of Coffee Break Blogging is that each episode is fairly short; 10 to 15 minutes long, we hit a topic in the particular stage that we are in and then we go on to the next one and they go in order. So if you have not been listening to this podcast the entire time, you can keep up with me in real time. At the same time, I would recommend that you probably go back to at least Episode 35 and start listening in a chronological order up into today and then just kind of keep up with me. We release these things, two in a week. It is a lot easier for me to do that because they are not as long and as of now they are coming out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

But of course if you are a subscriber to Coffee Break Blogging then you are going get it auto downloaded to your device every single day. So I would certainly hope that most of you guys have already subscribed by now. If you happen to be listening to this somewhere else or you just came in to the podcast or maybe you are listening to it over on SoundCloud; then I would encourage you to get subscribed and make sure to get these episodes when it come out the gate right away.

A Full Course via Podcast

I want to end off this episode with one quick thing and another thing that I have been realizing that I have been dropping the ball on; and that is  letting you guys know what is going on with the business and how you can take further action beyond what we are talking about on these episodes….

Here is the thing, when you put all of the Coffee Break Blogging together; it is really going to add up to…  a Course. It is a full online course in podcast format. It is just going to go over a long period of time and not only that, it is kind of a one way thing because you are just listening, that kind of thing. You do not have that two-way interaction.

The Lab

But over at the Blog Marketing Academy, that is where I really dive in on all these details and we really have the support behind them. So I want to tell you about The Blog Monetization Lab. This is the primary membership over at Blog Marketing Academy. This is the community where we are all oriented around monetizing our blog in the right way. And it really comes down to also growing your blog in the right way because when you monetize properly, it actually allows you to engage in real traffic generation.

And we are not talking about SEO and going out and sharing your stuff in Twitter and all these things; I am talking about what works today in 2015 which is paid traffic. If your blog and your business is not set up in the right way to allow you to do things like Facebook advertising and YouTube advertising and Twitter promoted posts, all these things; if you can’t do that and if you see all of these things and you automatically thing in the pit of your stomach because you are just, “Ah, that’s a waste of money, I can’t afford that” then you are doing it wrong.

Your monetization, the proper set up of the blog profit funnel and the business machine behind your blog; it goes right to the core if you are being able to build up your business without taking years to do it, it is what is really important. It is not just how you are going to get money out of all these. It is literally your ticket to traffic as well. So it is one big package and we cover all these and how all it all works and how to build it for yourself inside The Blog Monetization Lab. And you can find that over at blogmonetizationlab.com; that will redirect you right into a page on the Academy site where you can learn a lot more about The Blog Monetization Lab. It is all about training and formula to show you how to monetize your blog effectively, but we also have the support and the community to ensure that you actually get there.

So with that, I want to thank you for listening to this kind of overview in our pit stop episode with Coffee Break Blogging and again, a quick reminder, head on over to iTunes and post that review and let me know how I’m doing. I want to start making a little bigger deal out of those iTunes reviews and with that… I will see you on the next episode, Episode 69 where we are going to jump right in to Stage 3 talking about building our Email List.

See you in a few days! 😉