Tips on turning your passion into making money
Mandi Strimling, founder of the blog site Rave Review, used clever marketing tactics to create money from her passion. This is how you can too.
It’s one thing to have a blog or online space to air your ideas, opinions and work; it’s another thing getting that blog to earn money through advertising. Mandi Strimling has been able to achieve this on her blog, Rave Review. She’s been so successful that she’s now a full-time entrepreneur. These are her tips for getting your online marketing right.
Create fans
“I knew I was on the right track for Rave Review before I even started the business. I’d spend a lot of time online, and if I saw something I liked, I’d then email it to my friends and family. Pretty soon people were responding to me asking for gift ideas and recommendations. So, I formalised things a bit more and launched a blog that had a Sex and the City style of writing. It covered things I was interested in from beauty to travel, sports, food, gadgets and products.”
Tap into topics that interest you and you’ll reach like-minded people. Provide good content and they’ll keep coming back. When you have a big enough following, you’ll be able to leverage off your audience to grow your business. As Strimling’s blog attracted more followers, she invested more, setting up a professional website and registering her business.
Get the site earning you money
“At the time of launching my business back in 2010, online media was only just starting to create a buzz, so I knew it would be a while before I started generating an income — in fact, it took 365 days to the day before I landed my first advertiser.”
Strimling realised that a new site wasn’t going to be enough to secure advertising from large brands, and it would take a while to get there. Her solution was to court smaller advertisers and offer free advertising:
“No one can sell your business like you. My first advertiser was for Park Village Auctions. I’d been pursuing them for some time without success, and then I made a deal with them: I’d advertise one of their car auctions on the site to prove I had a following of wealthy corporate women who enjoyed investing in properties and the like. After one week, they saw a noticeable spike in their traffic, and it came down to my banner ads. They’ve been a consistent advertiser ever since.”
Setting your sights on smaller, more manageable and achievable streams of income will help you gain momentum and set you up for the bigger paydays later.
Learning what your readers want
It’s one thing starting a site based on things that interest you, but once there are advertisers and readers involved, it’s critical to respond to your readers’ needs and wants.
“When I launched the site, I had subjects that were of interest to me, for example, sports. I soon realised that women weren’t interested in sports like I was, and after I did some digging, I discovered it was because many readers didn’t understand the rules… I also learnt that readers were very supportive of each other, had created a kind of community and wanted to meet in person. This was my cue to start setting up social events like make-up test days, book reviews and so on.”
Be flexible in your approach and adapt to your environment. If you don’t offer your readers what they’d like or respond to changes in their preferences, they could lose interest, affecting your audience size and your opportunity to make money.
Adding value wherever you can
“What’s worked really well for me is ensuring there are always goodie bags when hosting events and that there are prizes up for grabs on the site. The brand is responsible for delivering the winner their prize, but in return, they get the details of the winner for their database, and of course, readers keep coming back for the chance to win more."
A value add makes your site more memorable, and providing that little bit extra means your audience feels important and more likely to engage with your brand.
Top tips for getting online businesses right
- Look around you: you probably already have what you need to launch a business.
- Be realistic: it’s going to take time to build a following and lure in advertisers.
- Win over small advertisers before going for the big guns: your track record with smaller companies will provide credibility with bigger brands.
- Passion always comes first, then money: do pro bono work to build a following and credibility.
- Allow your readership to grow at its own pace: it’s better to have a smaller but engaged database than a large one of disengaged readers.
- Keep your content consistent and engaging: your readers must always come first.
- Sacrifice in the short term for long-term gain: if you need to give free advertising, do it.