If you’re struggling to make money from your blog, you might want to consider leveraging a service-based income model.
Instead of waiting to build a popular blog and then monetizing it by displaying ads, you take things to the next level by identifying services you can offer to others as a freelancer or consultant, and by clearly showcasing this service(s) on your website.
This approach is much more effective, perhaps the fastest way to make real money blogging, and you don’t need boatload of traffic to get results if you use it.
Two great examples to the effectiveness of this approach:
- Through a blog designed to attract clients for my services business, I started getting clients barely a month after starting it and I was making 4 figures monthly with an average of 600 visitors monthly to the blog.
- This lady is making four figures monthly with less than 100 visitors to her blog monthly, by focusing on directing her traffic to her services business.
Do I need to say more?
If your aim is to get clients to your services business through your blog, it is very important to consider the 6 tips below.
6 Tips to Consider When Building a Service-Based Blog Business
To allow you to better implement the suggestions in this article, I have prepared a checklist that you can use to audit your blog to ensure you are on the right track.
1. Be Specific
You’ve probably heard the blogging advice “choose a niche” before?
If not, this is one of the most common problems bloggers face when starting a new site or blog.
When your blog is aimed at powering your services business, this advice can’t be more invaluable!
Whether you’re offering freelancing services, consulting services or some other type of service, you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, as this will significantly increase your chances of success.
The best way to do this, is by defining your niche and ensuring you only blog about a core group of inter-related topics.
There’s always the temptation to write about a lot of different topics so as to be able to cover a lot of ground, but that’s a fallacy many bloggers easily fall into.
You have a higher chance of success, both in terms of blog growth and revenue to your services business through your blog, by focusing on a small niche.
Also, it is important to make sure this niche is connected to the service you offer, and that it is a niche your potential clients are in.
2. Clearly Outline Your Services
The next step is to make sure details about services you offer are not in any way obscure on your blog.
A lot of service professionals make this mistake; they maintain a very good blog, but there’s no reference to the services they offer or the fact that they can be hired on their blog.
Don’t make this mistake.
Create a hire me/services page outlining and detailing the various services you can offer, the benefits clients get by hiring you and various ways they can reach out to you.
Make sure this page isn’t obscure on your blog; feature it prominently in your blog navigation bar, and pay attention to point 6 in this article for a tip to further promote this page.
3. Have a Defined Content Schedule
A blog is rarely effective in achieving its goals – whether that goal is to generate traffic, get subscribers, get clients, or increase sales – if it isn’t properly updated.
Don’t expect your blog to be very effective in sending clients to your services business when you have just 2 – 4 articles on it.
That won’t work.
For guaranteed long-term results, you need to define and stick to a content schedule.
For example, you can decide you want to be updating the blog once or twice a week, but make sure you have a schedule; don’t publish 5 articles this week and then ignore the blog for the next 3 months.
This is especially important if your blog is new; define a content schedule and stick to it.
4. Identify Key Articles You Need to Regularly Create
While you’d have to write a lot of articles on your blog to grow it, you need to realize that some types of articles are more effective than others in attracting clients.
It is very important to identify these key articles, and focus on creating more of them.
Sometimes, you will publish an article and then realize that the article is very effective in getting traffic to your blog and clients to contact you.
It is important to do more of these types of articles.
I have found 3 different types of articles to be effective in getting traffic and clients, and I’ll recommend doing more of these types of articles:
- The resource article: This features a list of resources people can use right away after reading your article. They don’t need to go through any other step, do any special Google search; they can’t start using the resources in the article right away. This article featuring 110 websites that pay writers is a good example. This list of blogs accepting guest posts is another example of a resource article that has resulted in five figures in freelance income for me.
- The ultimate guide: This is aimed at being a definitive guide to something. The article basically focuses on a subject people want to learn about in your niche, and it covers it with as much details as necessary; including screenshots, visuals, relevant examples and links to other resources that complement the article. This post is an example of an ultimate guide on guest blogging.
- Case studies: This is aimed at demonstrating your expertise with a particular thing, and showing potential clients what your process involves for successfully achieving a particular task. Case studies might not end up being as popular as the other two examples above, but they have massive potential for sending clients your way. This post by Neil Patel is a very good example of a case study. This is another case study showing how I got 1,200 subscribers in 2 months, and it is quickly becoming the second most popular article on my blog in no time.
So, amongst other types of articles, try to give the above articles some attention as well; doing them on a regular basis will not only increase your traffic but will actually result in clients for your services business.
5. Ensure Your Articles Effectively Reference Your Services
After creating a services page outlining the services you can offer to potential clients, the next step is to make sure you give this page maximum exposure.
One of the best ways to consistently and effectively promote your services is by referencing it in majority of the articles on your blog.
There are two ways to do this:
- Subtly; by occasionally hinting at your services, or subtly mentioning your services, and linking to your services page inside the body of your article.
- Explicitly; by clearly including a call to action below your article telling people about the services you offer and asking them to reach out to you.
Here’s a screenshot of what explicitly referencing your services in an article looks like:
Both examples are good, and I recommend a healthy combination of both.
If you run a personal development blog and offer counseling services, for example, you can easily update an article giving people life improvement tips with a call to action below the article to use your counseling services; this is explicitly referencing your services.
If you’re a freelance writer talking about the need for quality content, and you subtly hint at hiring an expert writer to solve clients’ content needs, and you link to your services page while doing that, you’re using the subtle approach.
6. Have a Clear Outreach System
The final step, which is just as important as every other step listed approach is outreach.
Even if you have a blog that is a massive resource, you won’t achieve much through it unless people are aware of it.
There are two key ways to go about letting people know about your blogs and they are:
- Paying to advertise your blog
- Leveraging successful platforms to freely promote your blog
The first option is definitely not available for most people, and it is not really recommended unless you have a system designed to maximize every dollar spent.
I’ve found option 2, however, to be very effective.
Look for other successful blogs and publications that have the audience you want, and look for a way to get them to refer their audience to you.
A great way to do this is by offering to write high quality articles for them, in exchange for a link back to your blog in your bio.
This process is called guest blogging, and there are several great articles on Blogging Tips on guest blogging that you can get started with.
Conclusion
The above are 6 really important tips you should consider when building a service-based blog business.
What other tips have worked really well for you that you want to add?
