How to start an online business

How to Find a Profitable Online Business Idea (Masterclass)

Finding a profitable online business idea is the most important part of starting your online business.

It’s also the hardest part.

And it’s also the part that many marketing gurus skimp on and make it seem way too easy, without actually giving you solid frameworks to come up with your own profitable business ideas.

That’s why I constantly get a ton of questions from my readers about this topic, even though many of you have gone through $2,000+ online courses that promised to help you find your own profitable business idea but didn’t deliver.

I constantly get questions like:

“How do I choose my target audience and reach out to them?”
“How do I choose the right business idea to pursue?”
“How can I get my first paying clients for my idea?”

Having coached hundreds of entrepreneurs on starting and growing their online businesses, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding on what it actually takes to come up with a great business idea, and the reality is much different than what most gurus teach.

Today, I decided to share my thoughts on the topic with you, and walk you through the process step by step. I’m doing that because I believe that this information should be publicly available, not hidden behind another $2,000 online course.

That’s why I recorded my 65-Minute Business Idea Masterclass, which you can watch for free here:

In the masterclass, you’ll learn:

The #1 thing you have to get right when coming up with your business idea
Specific, proven strategies you can use to come up with great ideas
Analysis of 13 profitable business ideas (and why they work)
Answers to your biggest questions about business ideas, like “what do I do if I have too many ideas?”

Once you watch it, please let me know how in the comments below how you enjoyed it, and if you’d like to see me record more of these in the future.

I had a ton of fun recording this video, and I want to record more of these in the future if you guys like them, about every online business-related topic under the sun – so let me know what you think!

6 Critical Mistakes That Stop You From Growing Your Online Business

By Primoz Bozic 3 Comments

When I had my first $30,000 year with my online business, I had no idea how to scale my online business to $100,000+/year.

There was no manual. No online course I could take that would help me get there. No book I could read. No-one I could really ask for a clear roadmap of building my own 6-figure online business.

I had to figure it all out myself.

I bought all the different online courses on different elements of building an online business, from writing sales pages to creating premium online courses to developing sales funnels.

I attended conferences, events and even enrolled in $25,000 masterminds aimed at 6-figure entrepreneurs to figure out what it takes to build a 6-figure online business.

Attending a high-end business mastermind in NYC to learn about growing my online business

I eventually cracked the code to building a 6-figure online business, and made over $111,170 from a single online product in less than 10 months – and I’ve made more than 6 figures online every year since then, as my business continued to grow.

At the same time, through an intimate group coaching program I ran, I realized that one of my “superpowers” was helping 5-figure online entrepreneurs scale their online business to 6 figures and beyond.

I helped entrepreneurs go from $5,000 product launches to $75,000 product launches, from $100,000 in revenue to $300,000+ in revenue, and from selling $59 online courses to selling $997 online courses – often over the course of less than a year.

Over time, I developed a step-by-step system for starting a 6-figure online business, which you can find in my Ultimate Guide to Starting a 6-Figure Online Business:

This guide will give you a strong foundation for starting a 6-figure online business.

But when it comes to starting a 6-figure online business, there’s SO much more to say – which is why I decided to write a few more blog posts to help you scale your online business to $100,000/year and beyond.

Today, we’ll talk about 6 critical (and surprising!) mistakes I see online entrepreneurs make every day – and the exact steps you can take to avoid them.

By avoiding these mistakes, you’ll be able to break the 5-figure plateau and go from making $30,000-$50,000/year to scaling your online business to $100,000/year and beyond.

Let’s dive in!

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Mistake #1: Expanding Your Niche

Many entrepreneurs think that to start a 6-figure online business, you have to start really niche, gain some initial traction with your business, and then slowly expand your niche to reach more people.

While the first part is definitely true (and going extremely niche is one of the best ways to find a profitable online business idea today), the second part holds little water.

In most cases, expanding your niche could actually be one of the biggest mistakes you could make in your online business and could bring your online business growth to a screeching halt.

This is exactly what happened to one of my clients, Peter, a men’s stylist – who I interviewed for my Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-mail List.

Peter started an online business that quickly took off, and in hopes of reaching more people, he began writing more general style advice that would help everyone from college students to CEOs of tech companies.

As he did that, he noticed that his blog posts began getting less and less traction – and the approach of expanding his niche wasn’t working for him.

This is a pattern I’ve seen over and over again with online entrepreneurs, and it almost always ends badly.

Here are the problems that occur as you try to expand your niche:

You’ll get 10-100x more competition overnight
You won’t stand out in a crowded market any more
You’ll lose your competitive advantage
You won’t serve your clients better than everyone else
Your content will get less and less traffic
You’ll write more general, and less mouthwatering copy
Your conversion rates, from opt-in rates to sales conversion rates will drop

As you try to please everyone, you’ll begin to please no-one.

Instead of trying to expand your niche, a much better approach is to narrow down your niche to your very best clients.

While this might sound counterintuitive, it’s actually a great way to break your online business plateau.

That’s exactly what Peter did.

As we talked about who his best clients were, we realized that they were guys that worked at tech companies (either as CEOs or executives) that wanted to look good in the office, as well as on after-work dates.

We also realized that his worst clients were students that shopped at places like Uniqlo that were looking for “affordable clothes” that would rarely buy his online programs.

An example of a piece of content that attracts a low-end audience

Therefore, we switched his business positioning to focus exclusively on his best clients – we created content around problems that his best clients had, and used more premium language and focused on recommending the BEST pieces of clothing, instead of focusing so much on offering “affordable” style advice.

An example from Peter’s Business Casual Style guide that focuses on men who work in tech start ups and Finance (better clients!)

This way, we would attract more of his best clients, and hopefully help him grow his online business.

As we did that, everything became easier.

Once Peter relaunched his 1on1 styling program, he went from charging $2,000 per client to $5,000+ per client – and his new clients didn’t bat an eye at the new price point – they were happy to pay it!

Peter is a great example of why zeroing in on your best clients is a better way to increase your online business revenues than trying to expand your niche.

Now of course, there IS a caveat.

There IS a situation where expanding your niche could help you attract more of your best clients, with a subtle twist.

You should only think about expanding your niche once you feel like you really did everything in your power to serve your best clients, and you find it hard to find more of them.

In that case, it makes sense to expand your niche.

But to correctly expand your niche, you shouldn’t just try to reach “more people”.

Instead, you should attract new niche audiences to your business.

So instead of trying to serve everyone, you’re just adding on new layers of your best clients from different industries / demographics, while serving them better than anyone else and keeping your competitive advantage.

Here’s an example of someone who expanded their niche correctly – my friend Kim Nicol, a mindfulness teacher & executive coach.

Kim started her mindfulness practice ultra-niche, by focusing specifically on lawyers. Then, to expand her niche, she added on “start up houses” as the second niche.

Ultimately became the go-to mindfulness teacher in Silicon Valley, where she regularly runs mindfulness workshops at companies like Google and Dropbox:

Another great example is Renaissance Periodization – a now multi-million-dollar science-based nutrition & training company.

When I started following this company a few years ago, they simply focused on nutrition for strength athletes (primarily powerlifters and weightlifters).

Later on, they expanded their niche to serve different audiences like CrossFit athletes, endurance athletes, vegans, and even parents of teenagers that want to teach their kids to eat well, as demonstrated by their product suite:

But as they added new niches to their business, they continued to make sure they serve their existing clients and readers in the best possible way, with targeted advice that spoke to them – and not “general” diet and training advice.

So if you feel like you “squeezed the lemon” out of your niche and there’s really nothing you can do to attract more of your best clients, go ahead and expand your niche.

But do it by adding new niches to your business, rather than going more general and trying to speak to everyone.

Mistake #2: Chasing Passive Income

Whenever I hear an online entrepreneur bring up the idea of passive income, I cringe.

Not because I wouldn’t like the idea of passive income and earning money in your sleep (I too love waking up to new sales of my online programs!), but because of what typically happens when an entrepreneur begins focusing on passive income.

In most cases, they manage to generate passive income, by setting so-called “evergreen” funnels, selling recorded online courses, Facebook Ads, and other strategies that allow you to make money on autopilot.

And in most cases, this approach is a double-edged sword.

A few years ago, when I created my first online productivity course, Success Systems, I too created an “evergreen” funnel for the course, based on the conventional advice about starting an online business:

I recorded the course, created a 5-day sales sequence for it, and offered it to every new e-mail subscriber I got at a price point of $197.

The course regularly generated $2,000 every month, which is a considerable amount of steady monthly income.

But after a few months of selling the course, one thing consistently bugged me.

Once someone purchased the course from me, I never heard back from them.

When I reached out to them and asked them how everything was going (MONTHS after they went through the course), I kept getting the same responses over and over again:

“I didn’t get to it yet”
“Life got in the way”
“I’ll work on it in the future…”

And when I looked under the hood to see how much of the course my students went through, I noticed that the vast majority of my students completed only 10-20% of my course.

No wonder they weren’t getting the results I wanted them to get – they didn’t even go through the course.

I did everything right. I recorded my course, and set up an evergreen funnel… And yet, I didn’t feel good about selling my course. I lived the dream of earning passive income, and wasn’t enjoying it a single bit.

At that point, I had a choice:

I could fix my course or the way that my students go through it, and make sure my students are getting the results I promised them
Or, I would have to take my course down and stop selling it

I decided to go with the second option because I wasn’t passionate about productivity any more, and I never sold my course again.

This cost me tens of thousands of dollars over the next few years, but I’m completely ok with that – I don’t want to run an online business that doesn’t actually help people get the results I promise them.

I’m not alone.

I’ve seen countless entrepreneurs automate a large chunk of their business, and free up their time and schedule – yay! And just like they wanted it to, the revenue begins coming in, month by month – without them doing a single thing.

On the flip side, as they do this, they:

Have a success / finish rate of 1-2% with their online courses
Have only a handful of REAL results and testimonials in their online business
Have online communities that almost nobody engages in

They make money in their sleep. But their clients aren’t getting the results they promised them.

Unfortunately, some people are ok with that. Many internet marketers hide these facts and numbers, and brag about making hundreds of thousands (or millions of dollars) online with their online businesses.

They might even have a base of “star students” that get amazing results with their programs, to make it seem like everyone is successful with their programs..

But what they’ll hide from you, which you’ll discover if you join their programs or have a chance to look under the hood of their business, is that only a handful of students will actually succeed with their programs, while most of them join them but never finish them.

To me, that’s NOT OK.

It’s like inviting people to a restaurant, charging them $100 for a meal, and them only eating half an appetizer.

If that was my restaurant, I couldn’t sleep at night.

Now of course, there ARE a handful of online entrepreneurs that do it right.

For example, remember Renaissance Periodization, a nutrition company I mentioned earlier.

They sell ready-to-use diet templates that hundreds (or thousands) of their clients have successfully used to transform their bodies, as demonstrated by 3,500+ success stories on their Instagram account:

Though even there, the success rate isn’t even close to 100% or 50%, as a lot of their clients fall off track and don’t stick with the templates – but at least it’s higher than 1-2%.

I’ll also mention that these templates aren’t 100% passive income for them.

Yes, they sell them and deliver them to their clients on autopilot, and they get their clients results.

But over the past few years, I’ve seen them release 3 or 4 new iterations of their courses based on the feedback and results they collected from their clients, to further optimize them for better results and compliance rates:

An example of changes to the improved diet templates

Collecting the feedback and making the improvements takes time – and I love that they take the time to do this, rather than creating a product and never improving it.

There’s also a different approach to “passive income” that can work, which comes in the form of hiring a team of coaches that coach your clients to get them the results you promise them.

That’s what my friend Sarah Jones from Introverted Alpha does – she started out by doing dating coaching for introverted men:

Sarah started her business by herself back in 2014 as a dating coach for introverted men

Later on, as her business grew, she hired (and spent months training) a team to take over her coaching:

Sarah now has a team to help her grow her business while keeping the high-touch service

This way, she’s able to keep the high-touch service and high success rate of her clients, while automatically growing her business.

And yet, her business still isn’t 100% passive – and neither will be yours.

In fact, I challenge you to find ANY online entrepreneur who:

Has a steadily growing online business
Consistently gets their clients results
Has 100% passive income

It doesn’t happen.

Why?

Because if you want your business to continue to grow, you have to keep working on it. It doesn’t just magically grow on it’s own.

You’ll have to create new content to attract more customers, develop new products to sell, and sell them to your clients. You’ll need to do the research to create and improve those products.

Even if you hire product developers, copywriters, coaches, designers and programmers, customer support teams, project managers, a CTO and COO to run your business, as a CEO, you’ll have work to do.

You’ll have to set a vision for the company, work through the new challenges on each level of growth, have meetings with your board members…

Even if you use Facebook Ads to grow your audience, you’ll need to change and tweak them over time.

Even if you write a book to promote your business, you’ll have to promote it to reach more people with it.

And to be honest, you probably don’t even WANT to run a 100% passive business with zero involvement.

If you’re the type of entrepreneur who wants to help as many people as possible, you probably enjoy working on your business – maybe you’re even a bit obsessed with it.

Sure, you could lay on a beach in Thailand for a month, but then you’ll probably get bored and it will be harder NOT to work on your business than to work on it.

So if all that’s true, why even bother chasing passive income in the first place?

Especially if your priority is to scale your online business to 6, 7 or 8 figures a year, focusing on the evasive dream of passive income will hurt you more than help you.

Yes, you should absolutely create a lean schedule to free up more time, and you should absolutely hire a team and automate things like scheduling your client calls, but be wary of trying to automate your business too much.

Sure, you could earn some extra passive income through evergreen funnels or Facebook Ads, but will you be able to sleep at night knowing that only 1-2% of your clients are actually doing the work and receiving the resuts you promised them?

Or will you have a bitter taste in your mouth every time you see a sale come in?

Luckily, there’s a better way.

In fact, there are TWO better ways.

If you WANT to use evergreen funnels and Facebook Ads to grow your business, reach more people, free up the time from draining launches and offer your products to your customers when they’re the most likely to buy them, go for it!

But if you choose to go down that route, know that it’s your responsibility to make your clients succeed – not theirs.

If 10% of your clients aren’t succeeding, that might be on them. If 98% of your clients never finish the programs they buy from you, that’s on you.

As you develop an automated online business, you’ll be faced with a new set of challenges that you’ll have to work through one by one:

How do you make sure that your clients actually finish your online courses?
How do you engage clients that join your communities and feel “late to the party”?
How do you keep supporting your clients in the best way possible even when you’re not there?

Each of these challenges has it’s own unique solutions, and it’s your duty to develop them, just like it’s the chef’s duty to deliver an incredible meal at a michelin-star restaurant.

Do know that those challenges aren’t easy to solve though – they might actually be harder than running a business where you’re more involved.

I know plenty of 7-figure online entrepreneurs that have downright sad success and engagement rates with their online courses that they record and let their clients work through on their own.

And even if they choose to solve those challenges (which is rare), it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to solve them.

And while not solving those challenges might not hurt you in the short run, it will in the long run – because people talk.

Once they see a lot more failures than success stories with your programs, the word will spread – and no matter how good you are at selling, you’ll slowly lose your following of raving fans. You don’t want that to happen.

So yes, build all the automated funnels you want to. But make sure your clients are still getting the support and results you’re promising – it’s your responsibility to help them succeed, and not just theirs.

Alternatively, if you decide that you maybe don’t want to run an automated online business, there’s (in my opinion) an even better approach.

This is a philosophy I strongly believe in and practice with my programs, and that has played a BIG part in helping me build a 6-figure online business.

Instead of passive income, I put my clients first.

This means spending HUNDREDS of hours writing insanely detailed guides like my 447-page Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-mail List myself, without hiring copywriters that have never built e-mail lists or ran online businesses themselves to write them.

This means designing my online programs with the success of my clients in mind and giving them all the support that they need to succeed. This means delivering my online courses live, and coaching my clients through building their online businesses. Which then results in 50-90% success rates of my programs (rather than the industry standard of 2-5%).

This means focusing on truly helping people, and not just on how I can make the most money this month – because I know that earning another $10,000 or $50,000 this month won’t make me happier (I’ve been there and done that – it doesn’t).

But helping people in the best way possible and making them feel like my programs are the best investments they’ve ever made? That makes it all worth it.

I always try to go the extra mile for my readers and clients, and they notice:

That’s why they love reading my content, share it with others, and join my paid programs.

Because they know that I care more about their success than just making money.

And then they recommend my work to their friends – so the revenue comes as well.

If you’re not a big fan of the “passive income” philosophy, I invite you to run your business in a different way.

Put your clients first, and instead of giving them the MINIMUM amount of support they need, give them the MAXIMUM amount of support you can give them to help them succeed.

And then watch your online business grow.

Mistake #3: Charging Too Little

The vast majority of entrepreneurs I worked with to help them scale their online business to $100,000-$300,000/year come to me with a surprisingly common objection:

“My audience can’t / won’t pay more than X”.

The first thing that’s fascinating is that the ceiling is different for every person:

“My audience won’t pay more than $9/month for a membership program”
“My audience won’t pay more than $49 for an online course”
“My audience won’t pay more than $197 for an online ourse”

I’ve heard it all before.

And the second thing that’s fascinating?

This assumption is just plain wrong in 99% of the cases.

The ceiling we have in our minds around how much our audience is willing to pay is often made up in our minds, and might be influenced by:

Our prices of existing programs we’re selling
Prices of programs from our competitors
Research we did with our audience
Ideas we have in our minds

Very rarely are these assumptions based by cold-hard data, which is what we want instead.

In other words, most entrepreneurs that thought they could only sell $197 online course never actually tried selling a $997 online course – they made up the idea in their minds that they can’t charge more.

This is unfortunate because one of the BEST ways to grow your online business is to create premium products and services – so you might actively be preventing yourself from scaling your online business.

It’s interesting what happens when you put these assumptions to the test.

One of my clients, Jenni from Fuzzy and Birch who helps Etsy sellers grow their businesses, came to me with a membership program she wanted to grow.

She used to sell her program at $9/month, which she thought was a ceiling of how much her audience was willing to pay based on the research she’s done.

It wasn’t.

I helped Jenni gradually raise the price point from $9/month to $47/month, $97/month, and even $197/month – and surprise surprise, her audience was STILL willing to pay.

Jenni now charges $97/month with a minimum 6-month commitment for her Etsy Tribe

In fact, she noticed that she started attracting even better clients once she started charging more premium rates as she attracted clients who were more serious and had more skin in the game.

Of course we also constantly worked on improving her program and making it worth the investment – we focused on making it the absolute BEST membership in her industry by a large margin.

We didn’t just want people to join her membership – we wanted them to stay.

By focusing on increasing the price of her program and positioning it to a more premium audience, we tripled her business revenue in a year – she went from earning a bit more than $100,000/year to $300,000+/year.

Had she not challenged her beliefs and assumptions, raised her prices and charged what her program was really worth, her belief that her audience won’t pay more would have cost her up to $200,000/year.

Ouch.

The good news is that the solution to this “problem” is surprisingly simple.

Instead of blindly trusting your beliefs and assumptions, put them to the test and challenge them.

You can do that in two simple steps:

Develop the BEST program in your industry
Charge what the program is actually worth

(which you can do quickly and risk-free through a BETA-testing strategy I’ll share later in this article).

Time and time again, I’ve helped my clients charge 3x, 5x or 10x more than their competition, with clients that are happy to pay them.

The key of course is focusing on targeting your best, premium clients, AND developing the absolute best programs in your industry.

There’s a reason why a Ferrari is 20x more expensive than a Fiat Panda.

Ferrari focuses on creating the best cars out there, and their customers are waiting in line to spend hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on their new cars.

Just like Ferrari, you can focus on being the leader in the market.

Rather than trying to beat your competition on price, beat them on quality and results.

As you stop focusing on chasing passive income and narrow down your niche, this will become easier and easier.

You can have fun asking yourself creative questions like:

How can I create a program that’s 10x better than any other program in my industry?
How can I support my clients 10x better than anyone else?
What would I have to do to get my clients 10x better results?

And then building, developing and iterating through a program that will slowly but surely beat all other programs in your industry.

And once your program is 10x better than anything else in your industry, you can charge 10x more than everyone else as well.

That’s how Jenni charges $97-$197/month for her membership program, while her competitors still charge $9/month.

That’s how Renaissance Periodization charges $109 for a single excel spreadsheet that helped thousands of their clients transform their bodies (and upwards of $300/month for 1on1 nutrition coaching via e-mail).

That’s how my client Sam from Byte-by-Byte (who teaches programmers how to nail job interviews at companies like Google) just successfully launched a $997 online course that generated $75,000 in a single launch while his competitors still sell $47 online courses.

Put in the work. Develop the best programs out there. Then charge what they’re worth.

And watch your business grow even further.

Mistake #4: Not Testing Your Ideas

Back in 2015, I helped a handful of entrepreneurs write Ultimate Guides to grow their online businesses. They got hundreds (or even thousands) of e-mail subscribers in a matter of weeks, and I thought about creating an online product about Ultimate Guides.

I sent a message to my friend exploring the idea:

But then, I got stuck in my head and said to myself: “nah, nobody would ever pay for this”. I didn’t think I could create much more than a $27 e-book about creating Ultimate Guides.

So I never tested the idea – I just let it slide.

A few years later, I revisited the same idea, but this time I tested it, and instantly got my first few coaching clients for writing Ultimate Guides at $500 per client:

That’s when I knew I was something there. I evolved the idea and created a premium online course that generated $111,170 in less than 10 months.

I had the same idea as before. The only difference was that I actually tested it – and it took off. Had I not tested my idea and said “nah, it wouldn’t work”, I would have missed out on over $110,000. Oops.

In 2016, I had another idea for an online course on building relationships with influencers and like-minded entrepreneurs.

I called it “The Insider’s Club”.

I spent weeks developing the course and writing a long, 3-week sales funnel – expecting for the sales to pour in.

Except they didn’t.

I expected 30-60 entrepreneurs to join the program, and only 3 ended up joining.

This ended up being the single worst launch, and biggest failure, of my entire online business journey.

Why?

Because I didn’t test my idea to see if there was something there.

I ASSUMED the course would sell, didn’t do enough research, didn’t validate it in advance, and wasted weeks writing a sales funnel that didn’t resonate with my audience.

That’s what can happen if you don’t test your ideas:

You can have a great product idea, only to never make a single cent with it because you never act on it
You can act on a product idea that you think is great, but turns out not to be so great – and you end up wasting weeks or months launching a product that won’t sell

To avoid those two scenarios, there’s a simple solution – my Rapid BETA-Testing Protocol.

With this step-by-step protocol, you can quickly test your ideas to KNOW if there’s something there or not in less than a week.

Here’s how the Rapid BETA-Testing Protocol works:

Send out a survey about your product idea
Develop a BETA version of the product
Offer the BETA version to your readers to test your idea

The first step is to create a simple survey like this one I created for a program called Write More Every Day BETA to see if there’s demand for your product.

Within the survey, you can ask your readers questions about how important the problem you want to solve is for them:

You can ask them questions that help you identify their biggest problems and desires:

And you can ask your readers if they’d like to join a paid BETA program of the product you’re developing:

If the response is positive (you get tens or hundreds of responses to your survey, people enthusiastically explain why they want to solve their problem, and over 50% of the people want to join a BETA program), you know you’re on the right track.

Then, you can use all the insights you got from the survey about the problems and desires of your audience to create a simple curriculum for your program:

And finally, you can either invite your readers that were interested in joining the BETA program to a live call with you where you pitch your idea to them, OR send them an e-mail with the details about the BETA program and offer it to them.

You could work through all of the above steps in less than a week – and have a MUCH clearer idea if there’s a hidden opportunity you’re overlooking – OR if your idea is something that people just don’t care about as much.

Especially once you begin to develop more premium products that take a longer time to develop and sell, using the Rapid BETA-Testing Protocol is a great way to quickly test your ideas before you jump into development.

Using it will save you a lot of wasted time, and help you focus your time and attention on products that you KNOW will help you grow it.

Mistake #5: Selling Too Little

When you first start your online business, you’ll typically spend a few months building your audience, then you’ll develop your first product, and sell it to your e-mail subscribers.

After that, you’ll spend a few months further growing your audience, improving your program, and selling it again, once every 3-4 months.

This model will work well for a while, and you’ll likely see continuous growth of your online business, depending on how fast your audience is growing.

This way, you’ll earn $5,000 with your online business one month, then nothing for 3 months. Then you might earn $10,000, and again nothing for 3 months.

You’ll enter the famous “feast and famine cycle” – when you’re launching, things are going well, and you’re on top of the world.

When you’re not, you’re anxiously watching your earnings disappear and wondering when you might have to launch again.

As you do this, you’re fearfully waiting for your next launch – what if it DOESN’T go well? What do you do then?

What if your audience hasn’t grown enough? What if people are on vacation? What if your copy doesn’t resonate this time around?

The feast and famine cycle can turn your online business from something you love working on into a stressful, anxiety-inducing mess.

The solution to this feast and famine cycle is surprisingly simple – sell more, ideally every month (rather than every 3-4 months).

By Monetizing Every Month, you’ll earn additional revenue in your online business every single month, which will help you drastically increase your annual revenues (one of my clients 2x-ed their annual revenue just by Monetizing Every Month).

Monetizing Every Month will help you stabilize your business, earn consistent income, reduce unnecessary stress and get better at the skill of launching products.

“But I don’t want to burn out my e-mail list!”

The first objection I hear any time I even mention the idea of launching more often is the objection of list burnout.

If you launch to your audience too often, they’ll get sick of you, unsubscribe from your e-mail list, and send you hate e-mails and call you a sell-out. UGH.

It’s true – SOME of that might happen. You might get a few hate e-mails. Some people might unsubscribe.

But those people typically wouldn’t buy from you anyway.

Your buyers won’t hate you from selling to them – they’ll appreciate more opportunities to work with you.

Think about it – if your favorite restaurant came out with a new dish every month and offered it to you, would you hate them for it, or love them?

It’s the same thing with your online business – giving your audience constant opportunities to work with you will make them happier – as they’ll be able to work with you any time they’re ready (rather than constantly waiting for 3-4 months).

Now of course, the list burnout CAN happen, but contrary to conventional wisdom, it doesn’t happen just because you’d sell something to your audience every month.

It can happen IF you:

Sell the same thing every month: Yes, your audience might get bored and sick of you if you sell them the SAME product every month for years to come.
Sell too hard: If you bombard your audience with 20 sales e-mails every month, they’ll also likely complain that you’re selling all the time
Don’t add value: If you don’t focus on making your launches extremely valuable and interesting to your audience (whether they buy or not), you’ll also make your audience feel like you’re “just selling” to them

Luckily, there are simple solutions to all of the above potential problems that will help you Monetize Every Month WITHOUT burning out your e-mail list.

You can:

Rotate your products: Sell a different product or service every month (and only sell the SAME product from your product suite once every 3-4 months) – to constantly keep your audience interested
Balance your launches: Switch between softer and harder launches, and mix things up. Sell your premium programs harder, and your lower-priced programs softer. Throw in a shorter launch to mix things up. Sell a lot softer if you’re selling twice in a short period of time
Always add MASSIVE value: Make sure the first part of your launch is packed with extremely valuable information, techniques and resources that blow your readers away, whether they buy from you or not

One of my clients that used the strategy of Monetizing Every Month to double her online business in a year followed these guidelines and was surprised to discover that the mythical “list burnout” never actually happened to her.

I also never experienced it myself, or seen it happen with other 6-figure entrepreneurs I work with – as long as you follow the above guidelines.

“But what if I don’t have the time to launch something every month?”

Launching every month can definitely be intense and time consuming, and can feel very different from leisurely launching every 3-4 months.

First of all, that’s normal.

If you want to go all out on growing your online business, it SHOULD feel hard and intense and like you’re pushing yourself every month – otherwise you’re just coasting (and your revenue will likely coast too).

The good news is that over time, you’ll get used to the feeling, and it will actually become weirder NOT to launch every month.

By launching every month, you’ll also get A LOT better at launching because of all the practice you’ll be getting in.

You’ll write better sales pages and sales funnels, get to know your customers a lot better, and become a much better copywriter and entrepreneur than if you only launched every 3-4 months – you’re getting 3-4x more practice!

Second of all, you don’t actually HAVE to do a big, intense launch every month.

Instead, you can balance your launches by:

Selling different products and services: You could launch a live $997 online course one month, a recorded $197 course the other, a 1on1 coaching program, a group coaching program, a mastermind day, a BETA program for a new product… (which might take less time to develop and launch)
Selling softer and harder: You could do a simple, short 5-day launch of an existing product one month that you could put together in a few days, and then a long, 2-3 week launch the next month
Trying out different launch formats: One month, you could launch through a webinar, the next month you could launch via e-mail. You could experiment with a quick and easy 24-hour launch, or a bundle launch of existing products (a lot of these launches could be less intensive and quick to put together, but still convert well)

In other words, you don’t have to launch in the same way every month.

You can experiment with different approaches as you gradually grow your business every month and get to know your audience better and better.

The bottom line is – the more you’ll launch, the more you’ll likely make.

And over time, you’ll be able to systematize your launches to a point where launching every month doesn’t feel intense any more – it just becomes part of your regular routine.

And the best part? You’ll never have to worry about the feast and famine cycle again.

Mistake #6: Doing What You “Should” be Doing

When I first started my online business, I religiously learned from online courses and mentors that taught me how to set up an online business.

Following proven frameworks was a great way to jump-start the growth of my online business, and it helped me develop a strong system for running a profitable online business.

But at a certain point, just blindly following advice from others wasn’t working for me any more.

I got a lot of advice from everyone I talked to about growing my online business:

“You should use Facebook Ads!”
“You have to learn about SEO!”
“You should start a marketing agency”
“You have to offer $20,000 1on1 coaching packages”
“You need to get out of your current market”
…

For a while, I tried to follow the advice and do all the things I “should” be doing.

But eventually, I realized that the advice I was getting was all over the place, I felt pulled into 10 different directions, and I had no idea what to ACTUALLY do next.

Additionally, there were a lot of things I just had ZERO desire to explore (like using Facebook Ads), and working on them drained me more than it helped me.

I would spend months working on something I didn’t believe in in a half-assed way just because that was something I thought I was “supposed to be doing”, instead of wholeheartedly working on something I BELIEVED in and loved doing.

Ultimately, I realized that doing things I “should” be doing weren’t helping me grow my business – they just became a source of constant frustration.

At the same time, as I worked with tens of entrepreneurs to help them start and scale 6-figure online business, I realized that there’s no SINGLE way to build a 6-figure online business:

Some entrepreneurs successfully use Facebook Ads, while others don’t spend a single cent on them
Some entrepreneurs use YouTube to grow their audience, others use SEO, while others use partnerships and Joint Ventures
Some entrepreneurs make the bulk of their income from high-end 1on1 coaching and group coaching, while others hate the idea of working with clients 1on1 and only sell online courses

Now of course, there ARE universal strategies that can help you grow your online business (like Monetizing Every Month, developing your Flagship Program and expanding your Product Suite) which many entrepreneurs successfully use to scale their online business.

But the exact nitty-gritty strategies and tactics vary from person to person.

It’s just like getting in great shape.

You could have a great body from rock climbing, doing martial arts, or hitting the gym 3x/week. You could follow a low-carb diet, a paleo diet, or a ketogenic diet.

There’s no one way to success – the key is finding the way that works for you.

From my experience, the single best thing you can do is to find strategies that are within your Zone of Genius.

Specifically, these are growth strategies that:

Work in your industry (Demand)
You are good at (Expertise)
You enjoy doing (Excitement)

For example, people have told me that they love my ultra-long Ultimate Guides (like this one).

I enjoy writing Ultimate Guides a lot more than writing short blog posts, and based on the results I got from them, they have proven to be a great way to grow my blog audience.

That’s why, instead of worrying about growing my audience through Facebook Ads or Instagram, I simply focus on writing long-form blog posts and guides – and I’m way happier than by trying to learn Facebook Ads.

On the other hand, if you hate writing, I wouldn’t recommend you to write Ultimate Guides. Perhaps you could grow your e-mail list through your own Youtube Channel, Facebook Ads or one of the other list-building strategies.

Whenever you decide to do something in your online business, ask yourself if you’re doing it because you “SHOULD” do it, or because you WANT to do it.

Choose things in your Zone of Genius that genuinely excite you so you can do them in a wholehearted way and give it your 110%, rather than being frustrated with something you don’t enjoy doing or don’t want to do and doing it in a half-assed way.

There are many ways to scale your online business to 6 figures and beyond. Pick ones that work for you!

Summary

In this post, I went over 6 classic mistakes that I see online entrepreneurs make over and over again that prevent them from scaling their online business to 6 figures and beyond.

Here’s a quick summary of how you can avoid these mistakes:

Instead of expanding your niche, narrow down to serving your best clients
Instead of chasing passive income, chase success of your clients
Instead of charging too little, experiment with charging premium rates
Instead of not testing your ideas, always use the Rapid BETA-Testing Protocol
Instead of selling too little, Monetize Every Month
Instead of doing what you “should” be doing, do things in your Zone of Genius

If you want to move beyond these mistakes and dive deeper into building a 6-figure online business, you should also read my Ultimate Guide to Starting a 6-Figure Online Business.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

How I went from earning $7/h as a programmer to earning 6 figures with my blog 4+ years in a row
How to start a profitable online business and earn your first $10,000 online in 6 easy steps
How to scale your online business to $100,000/year and beyond with my 6 proven and tested growth strategies

You can download the guide through the box below:

What Will YOU Do?

Now that you know about 6 mistakes you should avoid to scale your online business to 6 figures and beyond, I’d love to hear from you:

Which of these mistakes are YOU going to fix? Which of them surprised you? Is there a mistake you’ve made that I didn’t list but I should have? Do you disagree with me on any of them?

I’d love to hear what you think – leave a comment below and let me know!

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a 6-Figure Online Business

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

Over the last 4 years, I made more than 6 figures with my online business every single year through selling online courses and coaching services:

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how I did it, step-by-step, and give you a system that you can use to start your own profitable online business and grow it to 6 figures and beyond.

This guide is split into three parts.

In Part 1, I’ll tell you my full story of how I went from earning $7/h as a programmer to making 6 figures online while traveling the world.

By telling you my story, I’ll show you exactly how I built a 6-figure online business over the past few years against all odds, and hopefully show you that if I can do it, you can do it too.

In Part 2, I’ll share my 6-step system for starting a profitable online business with you, that will help you go from making your first $1,000 or $10,000 online, to earning $30,000-$50,000/year.

In Part 3, we’ll cover 6 advanced strategies that will help you scale your online business from $30,000-$50,000/year to $100,000/year and beyond.

I used these exact systems with my private online business coaching clients to help them scale their online businesses to 6 figures and beyond – over and over again.

Let’s dive in!

Download the PDF of this 102-page Guide!

Since this is a long guide, you might want to grab a PDF and read it on the go:

This way, you can print it out, take notes, mark the key sections, or save it on your computer for future reference.

PART 1: How I went from earning $7/h as a programmer to making 6 figures online while traveling the world

A few years, nobody would guess I’d ever start a 6-figure online business.

Not even me.

I felt like all the odds were against me. I had no rich parents, formal education, business knowledge, investors, connections, or anything else that would help me build an online business.

Plus, I lived in Slovenia – where nobody knew online businesses even existed at the time!

I finished high-school with not-so-glaring grades (even though I was considered a “smart kid”). I did okay as a computer science student and passed most of my exams without too much effort, but wasn’t a great programmer by any means.

This was me – quite a few years ago, living a clueless, comfortable life

I got myself a summer job as a programmer where I earned $7/h, which I was more than happy with at a time. Since I still lived with my parents, earning $1,000/month of “spending money” was plenty for me.

I mostly enjoyed my work on a daily basis, though I couldn’t really say I was making any sort of a difference coding anti-virus programs in my cubicle for 10 hours a day.

Deep down, I knew I wanted something more. I just didn’t know what that was at a time.

Then, one day, I had a conversation with one of my co-workers that changed my life forever.

I was talking to a senior programmer at the company over lunch, and he told me about his story.

He joined the company 20 years ago when he was a young programmer, fresh out of university. He was one of the first Slovenians to create their own video game.

When he joined the company, he worked on exciting projects, was paid well, and really enjoyed working at the company.

But as the company grew from a handful to 500+ people, things changed. Slowly but surely, he was working on less and less exciting projects. He began to enjoy his work less and less, but because he had a wife, kids, and bills to pay, he was too afraid to change anything. He settled for what he had.

20 years later, he was working in the same room as I was. He was working on the same boring project.

And the worst part? He was earning less than I was, and I just joined the company a few month ago.

Hearing that made my heart drop, but also gave me a reality check.

At that point, I knew I didn’t want to work at a 9-5 until the end of my life. I wanted to something more.

I wanted to be in control of my life, my income, and how I spend my time.

And it was at that point that I decided I would start my own business.

I had no idea HOW I would do it, but I was determined to make it happen.

I became obsessed with starting my own business.

I started reading every book and blog I could find online on starting my own business.

I even spent $1,000 on an online course that taught me how to freelance (and was one of the best investments I’ve ever made).

For the first time ever, I found something so exciting that I could spend hours and hours immersed in it – even when I was tired after work and university classes.

I learned about how to find a profitable business idea, how to find your first clients, what to charge, how to stand out from your competition…

I left no stone unturned.

How I made $0 in my first 7 months of starting a business

As I started learning about starting my own business, I was eager to put what I learned into action.

I connected with other entrepreneurs in Slovenia and tried to get their support with starting my business, which wasn’t that useful as I didn’t know anyone that could teach me how to start my own freelancing business.

I eventually teamed up with 2 other students that wanted to start their own business to start our own website development company.

They would take care of coding, and I’d take care of the marketing side of the business.

We developed our master plans over long evening meetings for how we’d work with amazing clients and build websites for them.

We started reaching out to potential clients, had many meetings with them, but there was just one problem:

We never got any paying clients.

There are many reasons why our idea didn’t work out.

We didn’t work well together as a team. We didn’t have a clear gap in the market. We didn’t know how to build trust and credibility as university students. We didn’t even officially have our own company!

After 3-4 months of working on an idea that felt like an uphill battle, I had enough.

I was burned out from putting hours and hours into the business every day and receiving nothing back, and I was bored of endless meetings that didn’t really change much.

I decided to leave the team and take a break from starting my own business.

If at first you don’t succeed…

In the meanwhile, I became obsessed with the topic of productivity.

Because I had to juggle working in a 9-5 job, attending university AND starting my own business, I had to learn how to become more productive.

I devoured all the productivity books I could find, and applied them to my own life. I was excited to discover a whole new world of self-development books that was hidden to me as a college student who only knew textbooks and fiction books.

Eventually, I got the idea to become a productivity coach for a video game company in Slovenia that I really liked. My idea was to help their employees become more productive, so they can meet deadlines more easily.

I did my research, visited the company, met the CEO, negotiated for weeks, and was set to start working with the company within two weeks…

…until they lost funding they were supposed to receive, and couldn’t hire me.

I called them a few more times over the next few weeks, but when I saw that things weren’t going to change, I decided to move on.

Third time is the charm: How I made my first $50 online

One spring morning at 6am, I woke up in my room in my parents’ apartment. It was still dark outside.

I had a crazy idea on my mind – I could teach online poker players how to become more productive, so they could make more money.

Throughout my high-school and university years, I played some online poker to make a side-income, and I knew that the more focused you stayed for the longer period of time, the more you would make.

Since I’ve now spent 6+ months immersed in the world of productivity, I felt like I definitely knew more than an average joe about productivity – and I knew I could help other people become more productive.

In my head, this seemed like a perfect idea.

Now I needed to find out if other people felt the same way too.

I turned on my computer and visited an online community I used to be active in, and started writing “The Ultimate Guide to Skyrocketing Your Poker Productivity”:

My idea was to simply start sharing some of my knowledge online and see if people liked it.

Still early in the morning, I cranked out a few chapters of the guide where I talked about basic self-development concepts like writing your vision statement and setting measurable goals:

Happy with what I’ve written, I went back to sleep and wake up a few hours later, at 11am. I was eager and anxious to check if anyone liked what I wrote.

I was surprised to see a flood of positive comments and feedback on what I wrote:

Which gave me the momentum to keep writing more and more. I wrote about everything that came to my mind, from exercising to nutrition to taking breaks, and added new chapters to the guide every 1-3 days:

And in the meanwhile, I listened to the feedback from my readers and wrote chapters that answered their specific questions:

I kept writing the guide, and more and more people kept reading it and sharing it with their friends.

Eventually, over 223,000 people read the guide:

And the readers liked the guide so much that they translated it to 7 other languages to share in other communities (like the German community of the same website):

I started writing this guide just to share my knowledge online – little did I know it would become an overnight sensation in the world of online poker.

Within a few weeks of publishing the first few chapters of my guide, something surprising happened:

Poker players that read the guide started reaching out to me, asking me to coach them 1on1.

They read the guide and liked it, and wondered if I could help them answer their questions about productivity and answer their specific questions.

Naturally, I said yes, and picked a starting hourly rate of 50eur/hour, which seemed high enough to be exciting to me, but was still at the bottom range of what online poker players typically paid for poker coaches.

Soon, I got my first paying client:

How I went from my first $50 to $38,000 in a year

Seeing the response on my guide and the demand for productivity coaching, I decided to write to the administrators of the website where I published the guide and offered to find ways to work together.

Since they had a poker school on their website where they published educational videos, I suggested that I create a few videos and live classes and see how their readers would like them.

I ended up recording over 40 videos on various topics which received tens of thousands of views:

And I also delivered some live classes where I coached poker players on how to become more productive live.

I was paid around $50/hour for coaching and $200 for each video I created, which helped me consistently earn $500-$1,000/month:

On top of the videos I recorded for the poker school, I took on up to 13 private coaching clients at a time, and gradually increased my 1on1 coaching rates from $50/h to $100/h, $200/h and even $400/h.

Eventually, I turned $50 coaching contracts into $5,000 contracts:

Which is how I was able to earn more than $38,000 within the very first year of starting my online business.

Then, I did something radical.

Why I moved on from poker productivity into a completely different niche

As a poker productivity coach, I was consistently earning $2,000-$3,000/month (sometimes more), which was 2-3x more than what I was making as a programmer before.

I had more free time than before, worked on my own schedule, and did things I loved doing.

I could do anything I wanted to, from traveling, to eating out at fancy restaurants, to eventually moving into my own apartment with a friend of mine.

Still, deep down, I didn’t feel as happy and fulfilled as I wanted to.

Yes, the money was good. Yes, I had the freedom to do what I wanted to.

But I didn’t really feel like I was making a difference in the world.

Every time someone asked me what I did for a living, I was ashamed to talk about what I did.

They would instantly say I’m a “gambler”, and I also knew that I wasn’t really changing the world in any way – I was just helping good poker players take more money from gamblers.

As I learned more about growing my business and started attending business events and conferences all over the United States, I was introduced to a whole new world of entrepreneurship:

I went on a VIP tour of the Metropolitan Museum when I visited my first conference in NYC

I met entrepreneurs that I felt were actually making a difference and helped thousands of people live better lives.

I wanted that too.

I wanted to build a business I would be proud and happy to talk about with anyone I met.

I wanted to build a business where I could help millions of people all over the world.

I wanted to build a business where I could speak at conferences in front of hundreds of people and write a book about in the future.

The poker industry just wasn’t going to cut it, and I wanted to start something else.

I stopped focusing on growing my poker business and taking on new clients, and decided to start a brand new business.

$500, 6 months, and hundreds of hours went down the drain

Starting a brand new online business wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

With my poker productivity business, I was able to tap into an existing community of hundreds of thousands of poker players, attracted by the poker school.

This meant that I didn’t have to do much to promote my content or my coaching services – I simply wrote guides about productivity, motivation, nutrition, and other topics, the readers in the forums liked them, and many of them reached out to work with me.

When I first started playing with the idea to create a new online business about productivity for “everyone” (I didn’t have a clear audience in mind), I wanted to set up my own website that I would be in control of.

I had no clue how to go about setting up a website at that time, so I spent $500 on a custom website design:

And since I had no idea how to run an online business on my own, I just started writing short blog posts about things I thought were interesting:

Now while this approach MIGHT have worked well in the poker industry where nobody was writing about topics like getting out of your comfort zone, it didn’t work on my own blog.

I spent over 6 months writing articles, endlessly tweaking my website, and sharing my posts on social media, but nothing really happened.

Over the course of 6 months, I got barely any website traffic, about 46 e-mail subscribers, and earned less than $3 through affiliate sales of books I reviewed.

Even though my first online business was a wild success, things just weren’t working out with this new online business model. I just couldn’t crack the code to make it work.

I was on the verge of giving up on my new idea and focusing on my poker productivity until…

I learned how to start an online business the RIGHT way, and my new business took off

One of my mentors that taught me how to build a freelance business invited me to join a secret BETA online program to help me develop my online business, because I expressed my interest for doing that at a conference he hosted.

Over the course of 8 weeks, I learned the ins and outs of building an online business, and was determined to make it work this time around.

I gave myself a month to build a website and get some initial traction with my new website that would focus on teaching entrepreneurs and executives how to become more productive.

This time, I set up a simple website over just a few days:

I started writing blog posts that my audience would enjoy reading:

As well as Ultimate Guides which worked really well in my previous online business:

And I created a free e-book (lead magnet) that would help me build my e-mail list and later sell online courses and coaching services:

This is when things started to work.

Largely through the help of my Ultimate Guides and lead magnets, I was able to build an e-mail list of 500 e-mail subscribers within the first month of starting my website, and had days when I got tens of new e-mail subscribers in a single day:

And my e-mail list continued to grow through the remarkable content I developed to over 2,200 e-mail subscribers within the first year of starting my online business.

As my e-mail list grew, I learned how to create and sell online courses that would become my new method for growing my online business.

I started out by creating a short course about productivity, Success Systems, that I sold for $49 to my e-mail list of 500 e-mail subscribers:

7 of my readers bought my course, which would help me earn my first $350 with my new online business idea:

It wasn’t much compared to what I was earning with my poker productivity coaching business, but it was enough to see that this business could take off.

After my first launch, I created a second tier of the product. I added a few master classes with my entrepreneurial friends and charged $99 for the premium tier. I also focused on growing my email list so I could launch to a bigger audience.

A few months later, I launched my updated product again to a list of 1200 subscribers. This time I earned $1600.

I later increased the price of my product from $49/$99 to $99/$199 for different tiers. I launched the product again to a list of 1700 subscribers and earned $4000.

To celebrate the exponential growth of my online business, I decided to travel around Thailand for a month, where I recorded a new online course:

This course (I called it Limitless Life) was about overcoming mental barriers in your life, and it generated a few thousand dollars.

Over the next few months, I focused on selling these two courses, and my business slowly but steadily grew. This was the time when I decided to completely let go of my poker productivity coaching business and focus on my new business full time.

Next year, my business grew on a whole new level.

I developed my first semi-premium online program, Skyrocket Your Side Business, and sold it to an e-mail list of 3,500 e-mail subscribers at $497.

This program generated over $20,000 in sales, making it my first 5-figure launch, and a 5x bigger launch than any of my previous launches:

I couldn’t believe it – and saw endless possibilities to continue to grow my online business.

Then, I did something radical (and crazy) once again.

I put my business on hold, just as it was about to grow to a whole new level.

Why I put my business on hold and worked with Ramit Sethi for 2 years

To fully understand what happened next, I’d like to introduce you to my first online business mentor, Ramit Sethi.

I first learned about Ramit when I dove into the world of personal development and started learning about how to manage my money better.

I was blown away by his book I Will Teach You To Be Rich which opened my eyes about how saving, investing and handling money in general.

I liked his “no-bs” approach to life and that he said things as they were, and resonated with his philosophy that “there’s a limited amount of money you can save, but an unlimited amount of money you can earn”.

I joined a few of Ramit’s online courses and used them to learn about freelancing and creating online courses, which helped me successfully start my own online businesses and earn thousands of dollars every month.

I soaked in all the knowledge I could from Ramit, and flew to the United States multiple times to different conferences he hosted just so I could learn as much from him as possible.

Then, one day, I got an unexpected opportunity to work together with Ramit – IF I put the growth of my online business on hold.

To help more of his students succeed in building an online business, Ramit decided to start an online coaching program called “Accelerator”, and was looking for a coach to run the program.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that, as I knew that it was a full-time position that would require me to put the growth of my rapidly-growing online business on hold.

On the other hand, I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work together with someone who successfully built a 7-figure online business, which could be priceless in the long run.

Since I didn’t want to miss out on this opportunity, I took a leap of faith and said yes.

How I turned Accelerator into a 7-figure online program

As I came on-board of Accelerator, my role was to:

Coach hundreds of online entrepreneurs on how to start and grow their online businesses as an online business coach
Continue to grow and scale the program to increase the monthly and yearly revenues as the product manager

To do that, I had countless resources at my disposal.

I could learn directly from Ramit about how he ran his company throughout the team calls, I attended annual in-person strategy retreats with his company, and got his personal support with growing the program.

I tackled the opportunity head-on and spent 2 years developing and improving the program, from changing how the program works, to writing new sales pages for the program, running webinars to sell it, and tweaking pricing and sales strategy.

I later brought on a copywriting coach and a community manager to the team, and we soon scaled the program to well beyond 7 figures in revenue.

This was a priceless experience as I:

Learned the “behind the scenes” of how Ramit ran his 7-figure online business with a team of 30+ employees
Learned how to run a 7-figure online program (and manage my own team) myself
Worked with 1,000+ online entrepreneurs to help them start and grow their online businesses

While I worked on Accelerator, I gained a deep understanding about how to run and grow my online business, and I was ready to take what I learned and put it into action in my own business.

After 2 years and one week, my Accelerator adventure came to an end. I felt like I gave the program everything I could, saw the program rapidly grow to 7 figures and beyond, and soaked all the knowledge I could out of my work with Ramit.

But deep down, I knew I wanted to go back to running my own online business, and after handing off the program to my previous team-mates, I did just that.

How I finally hit the $100,000/year mark with my own online business

Even before I went back to running my own business full time, I technically had a 6-figure online business (I made more than 6 figures a year through my contract and the online courses I sold through my own website).

But once I switched back to running my own online business in 2017, I finally made more than $100,000 in a year by selling my own online courses and coaching services – and finally felt like a 6-figure entrepreneur.

As I came back to running my own online business, I felt completely different than 2 years ago.

First, I no longer had the desire to talk about productivity. That was a topic that I had been talking about for years now, and I had no desire to continue talking about it.

Instead, I decided to test out a completely different idea – helping online entrepreneurs write Ultimate Guides.

I came up with that idea because I noticed that even while I wasn’t focusing on growing my online business, my e-mail list continued to grow by thousands of e-mail subscribers every year:

When I looked through my numbers to find out why that happened, I’ve found a simple common denominator – my Ultimate Guides.

By writing Ultimate Guides like this one, I attracted thousands of visitors to my website every month, and converted them into e-mail subscribers and raving fans.

I noticed that other established entrepreneurs were using Ultimate Guides to grow their online businesses as well (my mentor Ramit Sethi used them, SEO expert Neil Patel used them, companies like Leadpages used them…), so I knew they didn’t just work for me.

And since a lot of my readers have told me that they loved reading my Ultimate Guides, and writing them came easy to me, I decided to see if I could teach other entrepreneurs how to grow their online businesses through Ultimate Guides as well.

I talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs about writing Ultimate Guides, got a few 1on1 coaching clients for creating them, and wrote an in-depth e-book about how to write them to raise awareness around this method of growing an online business.

This put me in a perfect position to develop an online program about creating Ultimate Guides.

The second thing that was different than 2 years ago was that I was no longer interested in creating $47 or $197 online courses.

Doing that didn’t feel like a challenge any more, and I didn’t feel like recorded online courses were the best way to help people (as the follow-through rate of recorded online courses was only a few %).

I decided it was time to develop my very first “flagship program” – a premium online program for creating Ultimate Guides that I would price at $997.

I created the program as a “live” program where I coached my students how to write their Ultimate Guides over the course of 14 weeks, and the program was a huge success.

The vast majority of the students that joined the program successfully finished it, and got hundreds (if not thousands) of new e-mail subscribers through the Ultimate Guides they wrote.

Many of them got new coaching clients or freelance clients through their guides as well, even far before they were finished. One specific client managed to get over $100,000 worth of consulting work within less than a year of writing and publishing his guide.

On the other side of the business, Ultimate Guide System was a huge hit as well – it generated $111,170 in a single year through 3 big product launches ranging between $30,000 and $42,000, making it my first “true” 6-figure year in my online business.

How I continued to earn 6 figures with my online business every year

Over the next few years, I continued to test and create new online programs, and evolved my online business in a direction that helped me help more and more people with the things I did best.

I developed a 12-week online program called Write More Every Day which helps online entrepreneurs consistently create remarkable content every week.

I created a 6-month premium online coaching program called 6-Figure Accelerator (previously called The Top Performer Club) where I work with 5-6 figure entrepreneurs to help them scale their online businesses to 6 figures and beyond through weekly live coaching calls.

I evolved Ultimate Guide System into List-Building Accelerator, a hands-on coaching program where I help online entrepreneurs rapidly grow their e-mail lists over the course of 8 weeks.

This, combined with my Ultimate Guides (that help me attract new visitors to my website month after month), has helped me run a 6-figure online business every year for the past few years.

And that’s where my story ends (at least for now).

Now you know how I built my own 6-figure online business, and in the second part of this guide, I’m excited to show you how you can do the same.

PART 2: How to start a profitable online business, and make your first $10k, $30k or $50k online

In the first part of this guide, I shared how I started my own online business over the past few years.

However, I realize that just knowing how I did it won’t help you do the same – as you can’t just copy all the steps I took to get there.

Your journey to building a 6-figure online business will be different than mine, and you’ll need a different set of steps to get there.

Luckily, throughout the past few years, I “cracked the code” to starting a 6-figure online business FOR you, and I’m excited to share the complete system for starting a 6-figure online business with you in this guide.

To write this guide, I gathered data from:

My personal experiences of building a 6-figure online business, and major tipping points I experienced along the way
Coaching 1,000+ entrepreneurs on how to start an online business through Accelerator, and seeing exactly what separated entrepreneurs that succeeded from ones that didn’t
Helping multiple entrepreneurs scale their online businesses from $20,000-$30,000/year to $100,000-$300,000+/year through Top Performer Club, my intimate coaching program

I condensed all of the insights and methods that I’ve seen work over and over again into a simple, bulletproof system that you can follow step-by-step to start and grow your online business to 6 figures and beyond.

You can use this system if you’re just starting out from scratch, or if you’re already making $30,000 (or even $100,000) a year to scale your online business to the next level.

The basic system for starting a profitable online business includes the following elements

Your Gap in The Market is the foundation of your online business, as it makes people care about what you do.
Your High-Converting Website allows you to capture website visitors and turn them into paying customers.
Your Remarkable Content helps you attract more visitors to your website.
Your E-mail List helps you sell your paid products and services.
Your Paid Products and Services help you monetize your online business and make a living with it.

In this guide, we’ll work our way through these elements to build an online business layer by layer.

We’ll build a strong foundation first, then add additional layers to develop your own bulletproof system for earning money with your online business.

Step #1: Find Your Gap in The Market

If there’s one thing that can “seal your fate” and make or break your business idea, it’s finding a Gap in The Market.

If you haven’t found a Gap in The Market, working on your business will feel like an uphill battle.

You’ll struggle with generating the initial traction, attracting traffic to your website, growing your e-mail list and getting clients for your online courses and coaching programs.

When you find a Gap in The Market, everything becomes 100x easier.

Your potential customers will instantly want to talk to you, read and share your content, recommend your website to their friends, and wait in line to work with you.

You could follow all the remaining steps in this guide step by step, but if you don’t have a clear Gap in The Market, they “won’t work”, and you won’t see the traction you’ll want to see with your online business.

So what is the “Gap in The Market”, and what are the signs that you’ve found one?

In it’s very basic form, the Gap in The Market is the gap between demand and what’s already out there:

In my very first business (productivity coaching for online poker players), the Gap in The Market was simple.

While there were already a lot of books and blog posts about productivity out there, there weren’t any specific resources (or coaches) that would be tailored to online poker players.

After testing my idea, I also noticed that the demand was there (since a lot of people loved my Ultimate Guide and wanted me to write more chapters of it).

Every 6-figure entrepreneur I ever talked to has a clear Gap in The Market.

It could be:

Helping coders ace Google interviews
Helping Etsy sellers grow their Etsy shops
Helping Upwork freelancers get more clients

You can find 12 more examples of Gaps in The Market here.

Once you find your Gap in The Market, you can then continue to create both free content (blog posts, YouTube videos, guides,…) and paid content (online courses, coaching programs,…) to “fill the gap”.

To find your Gap in The Market, you can read my in-depth guides on finding and validating your online business idea…

…or watch my in-depth masterclasses on finding your profitable business idea:

and validating your business idea:

Then, once you’ve seen enough traction with your idea, you can move to the next step of this guide.

Step #2: Create a High-Converting Website

Once you’ve found your Gap in The Market and generated some initial traction, it’s time to set up your High-Converting Website.

Your website will become the physical foundation of your online business.

It’s where you’ll host your blog, create content to attract new readers, collect e-mail subscribers, and host and sell your online courses and coaching programs.

You’ll want to create a website that fills the gap in the market, is simple and easy to navigate, and helps you collect e-mail addresses of potential customers, so you can later sell to them.

By “high-converting”, I mean that your website should be optimized to help you build an e-mail list for your online business, which will become the key channel for selling your online courses and coaching program.

I made the mistake of not creating a high-converting website when I first started a productivity blog and got 46 e-mail subscribers over the course of 6 months (and $3 worth of affiliate revenue).

If you want to avoid that mistake and start earning hundreds or thousands of dollars with your online business within a few weeks or months, you’ll want to get your website right.

To help you create your own high-converting website, you can use the following step-by-step guides:

As you set up your website, you’ll probably wonder “what should I put on it?”.

On your website, you’ll want to publish your Lead Magnet, set up opt-in forms, write opt-in copy and start creating remarkable content to begin attracting new visitors to your website.

Ideally, you’d have all of these (including at least one piece of remarkable content) set up before you share your website with the world.

Then, once you have all the pieces set up, you can focus on creating more remarkable content and growing your e-mail list to continue attracting new potential customers to your online business.

Here’s a simple checklist you can refer to to know exactly when you’ve finished creating your high-converting website:

Again, here are the resources that will help you work through all of the above steps:

Once you have all of the above elements in place, you should be ready to move on to the next layers of the pyramid – consistently creating remarkable content and growing your e-mail list.

Step #3: Consistently Create and Promote Remarkable Content

So you have a website… but how will your potential customers find it?

The answer is simple – through Remarkable Content.

The next layer of your website is your free content that helps you spread your ideas and build trust with your potential customers, typically in the form of blog posts or YouTube videos.

With your Remarkable Content, you’ll fill the Gap in The Market and give your potential customers what they want – solutions to their Problems Worth Solving.

With every piece of Remarkable Content you create, you’ll add an additional stream of visitors to your website that might become your customers down the line.

The more Remarkable Content you create, the more streams you’ll have, and the more potential customers you’ll have.

When it comes to creating Remarkable Convent, it’s important that you:

Create content that is truly remarkable (to stand out from everyone else in your industry, create content that’s useful to your audience, and so your readers share it with others)
Create Remarkable Content consistently (so you keep attracting new potential customers to your online business every week and keep your existing readers engaged)
Promote your Remarkable Content (so you can spread the word about it and reach more readers with it)
Create your Content Strategy (so you can attract more of the RIGHT customers to your business for years to come through different Content Seasons)

Content Creation is a key skill for consistently growing your online business, and you can use the resources linked above to master it.

Step #4: Build Your E-mail List

Your Remarkable Content will help you attract new visitors to your website every week.

Your High-Converting Website will help you “capture” those new readers and turn them into e-mail subscribers, so you can stay in touch with them, send them every new piece of content you create, and sell your future products and services to them.

Before you start thinking about selling your first product or service online, it’s wise to get at least 500-1,000 e-mail subscribers.

If you diligently followed the previous steps from this guide, the combination of a High-Converting Website and consistent creation of Remarkable Content will already help you gradually grow your e-mail list – woohoo!

But since growing your e-mail list is too complex of a topic to cover in this guide, I wrote a separate, 447-page (!) guide exclusively on building your e-mail list to (tens of) thousands of e-mail subscribers.

You can read my Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-mail List here (it’s free, just like this guide).

Reading the guide above will give you all the information you need to grow your e-mail list ro 1,000+ e-mail subscribers (and beyond).

Both Creating Remarkable Content and Growing Your E-mail List are key activities that will help you grow your e-mail list from 0-$10,000, but also to $50,000, $100,000 and beyond.

It’s important that you continue to focus on these 2 key growth strategies, even while you’re developing and selling your paid products or services.

Step #5: Create and launch your first online product (or service)

Once you build an e-mail list of 500-1,000 e-mail subscribers, you’ll have enough potential customers to successfully develop or launch your first online products or service and get your first 5-10 paying customers.

When you’re just starting out with your online business, I recommend you to start with a lower-priced offer.

If you want to go down the product route, you could develop an online course, a workshop or a live course and price it somewhere between $47 and $97.

If you want to go down the service route, you could sell 1on1 coaching for $50-$100/h.

I recommend starting low (and not diving right into $497 or $997 online courses or $3000-$5000 coaching packages) because:

You want to get as many clients as possible in the beginning, to get raving testimonials and case studies that you can use later in your business
You don’t want to spend hours and hours developing a product or service that gets 0 sales
You have to learn the skill of selling or “launching” online – and that’s easier to do with lower price points

Increasing the price of your offerings is one of the easiest things you can do – while decreasing the price is a lot trickier.

I don’t recommend selling a product or service below $50 (like a $7 e-book) because you’ll likely attract lower quality customers, and the math just isn’t there to help you create a meaningful amount of revenue.

Once you successfully launch your first product or service, you can choose to:

Improve your existing product or service and/or increase the price next time you launch it
Create a new, more premium version of your product or service

Once you see that your business “works” and you’re getting your first few sales, you can gradually increase the prices of your paid offerings to scale up your revenue.

To develop your first online product or service, you can:

Choose a major problem of your audience (ideally a problem nobody else is solving well)
Think about how you can BEST solve that problem and get the best results for your clients
Develop a curriculum for your online course or coaching program based on your ideas

You can then choose to either fully develop the program BEFORE you sell it (if you’ll feel more comfortable that way), or you can develop it AFTER you sell it “on the go”, and use the feedback from your customers to improve your program as you create it.

I know this is a lot – and I’ll write an in-depth guide to developing paid products and services in the near future.

In the meanwhile, you can read this article from Foundr to help you get started with creating your first online course!

Step #6: Launch your product or service to your e-mail subscribers

Once you’ve successfully developed your first online product and service, there’s just one final step between you and earning your first dollars with your online business – offering it to your e-mail subscribers.

You’ll typically do that through a so-called “sales sequence” or “sales funnel”.

There are multiple different ways to sell your products and services – from phone sales to webinar sales to e-mail funnels.

If you’d like to sell your products or services via phone, I can highly recommend the book Prosperous Coach from Rich Litvin, and if you’d like to sell via webinars, I can recommend The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide from Lewis Howes.

I’ve used both of these resources in the past, and they’ll give you a good foundational framework and exact steps to get started.

In this guide, I’ll instead focus on a basic 5-day sales funnel and a simple sales page that you can use to successfully sell your first product or service.

To create your sales page, you can read my in-depth article about creating a $111,170 sales page, where you’ll learn:

The exact strategies I used to develop and sell a $1,997 online course from scratch
A detailed walkthrough of how I wrote my $111,170 sales page in 8 simple steps
How YOU can create a high-converting sales page for your e-book, online course or coaching program

Then, to create your the 5-day sales funnel, you can read this in-depth guide from Teachable.

Finally, if you’d like to see what it takes to make $36,381 with a single product launch, you can read my in-depth guest post on Growthlab to learn exactly how I did it.

With your first product launch, you’ll earn your first few hundred (or thousand) dollars online.

Then, it’s “rinse and repeat”:

You’ll create and promote Remarkable Content to grow your e-mail list
You’ll relaunch your existing product (or service) once every few months

Over time, you might start thinking about developing new online products or services, you might increase the price of your existing products (while making them more valuable), or you might learn how to sell your products better.

All of these will contribute to steady growth of your online business, and as long as you’re successfully attracting more e-mail subscribers every month, your online business will continue to grow.

But at a certain point, you’ll hit a plateau where growth of your online business will slow down – and you’ll want to go faster.

Maybe that will be at $10k/year, $30k/year, or $50k/year.

At that point, you’ll benefit from the final part of this Ultimate Guide.

PART 3: How to scale your online business to $100,000/year (and beyond)

What does it take to scale your online business from $30k/year or $50k/year to 6 figures and beyond?

Is it just a matter of growing your audience or getting more clients?
Should you focus on selling more of your existing products and services, or developing new ones?
Do you need to hire a big team to get there?

Here’s the good news:

If you’re already making 20k, 30k or 50k a year with your online business, you’re already doing something very right.

You’ve found your profitable business idea.

You’ve built an audience around it. You’ve successfully sold one or more products or services. You have a growing base of customers, testimonials and success stories.

You’re making money, and know that you can take this business to 6 figures and beyond.

Here’s the not-so-good news:

Your business might be a mess.

You have cycles of “feast and famine” where you make $5,000 or $10,000 one month when you launch your product or land that big proposal and feel on top of the world… only to make $1,000 or $2,000 next month, which is barely enough to pay the bills. It’s a constant roller coaster.

You try a lot of different things and just work on whatever “feels good” in the moment but don’t have a clear strategy for the future. You feel scattered, unfocused, and even though you’re putting in the work, you’re not sure if what you’re working on is the BEST use of your time.

Deep down, you know that what got you here won’t get you there.

Hustling every day and just putting in the work was enough to get to 5 figures, but you know that you’ll need to change something to get to 6 figures (and beyond).

The question is: What?

I feel you. I’ve seen it (and done it) all before. The feast and famine. The lack of clarity. The throwing spaghetti at a wall approach.

It’s fun when the money is coming in and things are working, and a lot less fun when they’re not.

But after successfully running my own 6-figure online business year after year, and helping many online entrepreneurs scale from $20k/year to $100,000/year (and even $300,000+/year), I cracked the code to what really matters, and what doesn’t.

In this final part of the guide, I’ll cover the 5 advanced strategies that you can use to scale your online business to 6 figures and beyond.

Strategy #1: Layers on new list-building strategies

Once you start seeing a plateau with your audience / e-mail list growth, you need to develop new “layers” of your list-building system.

For example, if you primarily used a YouTube channel to grow your e-mail list, you might want to add a new channel like Ultimate Guides, Pinterest, or partnerships.

You can master and layer on one strategy at a time, while systematizing and delegating parts of your existing list-building strategies to make time for these new layers.

Growing your audience exponentially is a great way to get closer and closer to the 6-figure mark, and a key element you’ll always want to focus on if you want your business to keep growing.

To learn how to create new layers of your e-mail list growth, you can read my in-depth guide on advanced list-building strategies.

Strategy #2: Create your premium, flagship program

A lot of people these days recommend creating “tripwire” products, “downsells” and other types of products that you can sell at a low price point to get more customers.

However, I believe that instead of creating low priced products that might bring in a few thousand dollars, a much better approach to building a 6-7 figure online business is to focus on developing premium, flagship programs and charging $500, $1,000 or $2,000 for them.

The reasons why I’m not a huge fan of creating cheap products are:

They don’t add a whole lot to your bottom line
They usually don’t create incredible success stories
A lot of people buy them, but never use them
They attract more of your WORST customers, rather than BEST customers
Dealing with bad customers is a huge time suck

Instead, I recommend focusing on creating the absolute BEST online program in your industry around a certain topic (and then charging what the program is worth).

This won’t just help you add tens (or potentially hundreds) of dollars to your bottom line. It will allow you to give your full attention to your best customers, make a bigger difference in their lives, and a bigger impact in the world (that you just can’t make with a $17 e-book).

In my business, creating my first $1,000 online program was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (and helped me earn $111,170 in less than 10 months).

So if you’re running a 5-figure online business and aren’t thinking about creating a premium product (or a service) yet, I really encourage you to start thinking about it.

A great example of how powerful developing your flagship program comes from one of my private coaching clients.

When we started working together, they offered a combination of a $59 online course and 1on1 coaching to earn $26k over the course of 5 months with their online business. Not bad, but not quite 6 figures yet.

Later on, we developed a $997 flagship program together, and they launched it for more than $75,000 in a SINGLE launch. That’s 3x more than they earned in 5 months beforehand.

If you want to continue growing your online business, creating better, more premium products is a great way to do it.

Strategy #3: Expand Your Product Suite

Most online entrepreneurs that run 7-8 figure online businesses (with a handful of exceptions) don’t just sell one online product. They sell a product suite of different products on different topics, at different price points.

There are a few reasons why they do that:

They can earn additional revenue with their business every month without selling the same online program over and over again
They can attract new customers that they weren’t reaching with their old products
They can add more value to their existing customers who are hungry to learn (any buy!) more from them

If you’re selling just one core product to your audience over and over again and have an email list of thousands of email subscribers, creating your own product suite will not just help you earn more every month.

It might even lead to your biggest launch to date since your existing happy clients can’t wait to continue working with you.

You can create your own product suite through the following 3 stages:

Rapid Research Cycle: Find new product ideas worth pursuing
BETA Testing Cycle: Test and validate your ideas with your audience
Product Development Cycle: Iterate to create world-class products

The simplest way to find new product ideas is to talk to your existing customers and discover what challenges they’re having so you can create new products or services that solve those problems for them. I call this the Rapid Research Cycle.

For example, over the last two weeks, I spoke to 20 of my existing clients to see which challenges they’re facing that I can solve for them.

I suggest going through the research cycle rather than fast (I do this by batching the customer research into 1-2 weeks), so you can continue with testing your ideas (just as fast).

Once you know which new products you want to create, the next step is to rapidly test your ideas through a BETA Testing Cycle.

Instead of spending 6 months creating a new product before releasing it to the world, I’ve found that a much better approach is to test your ideas at a less refined stage through BETA tests.

By launching a BETA version of your program at a slightly lower price point, you can instantly test and validate your product idea to see whether there’s demand for it or not – and then develop a world class product.

The reason why BETA tests work so well is that instead of developing a program in a vacuum, you can get real feedback on it from actual customers – AND you can get testimonials and success stories through the program that help you launch it successfully at the full price.

Once you run your product through the BETA Testing Cycle, and you’re happy with the results of the program, you can transition into the Product Development Cycle.

In this last cycle, you can buckle down, work through the feedback from your BETA program, and design a truly world class program that becomes the best online program in the industry around a certain topic.

Once the program is designed, you can then launch it, and add it to your suite of online programs that you can continue offering to your audience for years to come.

With my private clients that already have e-mail lists of thousands of e-mail subscribers, expanding their product suite always results in more revenue and growth – it’s a strategy that can’t really fail.

Strategy #4: Monetize Every Month

The solution to the “feast and famine” cycle is incredibly simple and has worked wonders for my business.

In the past, I used to launch my programs only once every 3-4 months. This meant I would make $5k, $10k, or even $30k one month and then try to survive over the next few months as I burned through the money until I had to launch the program again.

This wasn’t fun at all. I spent a lot of time worrying what will happen if my next launch fails, and that extra stress didn’t exactly put me in the best mental space to run my online business.

Then I had this conversation with a mentor of mine and they gave me this profound insight:

“I think that if most online entrepreneurs just focused on monetizing their business every month, they’d never have money issues”.

I thought about it for a second and instantly realized how right they were.

The reality was that no matter how much I WANTED my business to grow if I only launched ONE program every 3-4 months and never gave my audience a chance to work with me in-between… They couldn’t work with me. And my business wouldn’t grow.

On the other hand, if I launched just one program every month, I’d be pretty much guaranteed to grow my business, even if not all of them are a huge success right off the bat. Plus, I’d all of a sudden have a much more stable online business as new revenue was coming in every month.

I felt a little bit stupid that I didn’t realize that myself (especially as most of the top online entrepreneurs monetize their business every month), and then focused on applying the lesson to my business.

One month, I launched an online course on creating Ultimate Guides. Another month, I launched a 1on1 coaching program. Another month, I launched a group coaching program.

All of a sudden, my business was growing faster than ever. I’ve made almost the same amount of revenue with my business over the course of 3 months than I did in the 9 months before that. It feels surreal how simple this was.

So if you want to grow your business from 5 to 6 figures, just giving your potential customers the opportunity to buy from you every month can make a HUGE difference in your business, diversify your income and help you escape the “feast and famine” cycle.

Just to be clear, monetizing every month doesn’t mean that you have to create a new online program every month – I wouldn’t recommend that.

Instead, you could:

Launch a new online program, or relaunch an existing program
Offer a 1on1 or group coaching program
Create a mastermind, a retreat or a live workshop

The options are limitless here – the most important thing is that you’re creating new valuable ways to help your audience, which will result in more revenue, more success stories, and more happy clients.

Strategy #5: Hire a Team

As you can imagine, developing new list-building strategies, product and services, AND launching every month takes a lot of time and energy.

At a certain point when you’re earning $30-$50k/year with your online business, you’ll likely start feeling the pain, burnout and frustration.

There will be so much you’ll want to do, but way too little time and energy to make it all happen.

Not to mention all the admin work you’ll have to do in your business that takes time away from actually working on things that matter most, like developing or launching new programs:

Scheduling and rescheduling coaching or customer research calls
Answering customer support questions and e-mails
Organizing research notes
Formatting blog posts
Uploading coaching call recordings to your membership area
Designing powerpoint presentations for your online cousres
Editing YouTube videos
…

When you begin to feel like you’re being pulled in 10 different directions and you spend way too much time on low-impact work that isn’t growing your online business or worth your time, you should start thinking about hiring a team.

Specifically, I recommend you to first hire a Virtual Assistant at $20-$25/h to help you with all the admin work in your business (from scheduling calls to handling your e-mail and uploading course materials for you).

To get started with hiring your Virtual Assistant, you can read this in-depth guide from Frank Magnotti.

Later on, you can start thinking about hiring a video editor, product developer or a copywriter, depending on how quickly and aggressively you want to free up your time and scale your online business – but that shouldn’t be necessary to reach 6 figures.

Strategy #6: Create a Lean Schedule

Finally, you’ll also want to reorganize your schedule to make sure you’re spending your time where it matters most in your online business.

To develop new programs, write sales copy or create new content, you’ll need big blocks of uninterrupted time, and you’ll need to remove yourself from the increasing amount of requests for your time from your clients, readers (and even team-members).

To help you get the most out of your time for your business, finish work early and enjoy guilt-free afternoons, I encourage you to create a Lean Schedule.

This way, your online business will grow faster, while you actually spend less work on it every day.

This is another strategy that I’ve used with my 6-figure clients that makes a night-and-day difference in how fast their business grows (and helps them regain control over their rapidly growing business).

Summary

In this guide, I:

Told you my story of how I built my 6-figure online business from scratch
Shared with you my step-by-step system for starting a profitable online business
Gave you 6 advanced strategies for scaling your online business to $100,000+/year

And I also shared with you plenty of extra guides and resources that you can use to put the principles and strategies from this guide into action.

Now of course, building a 6-figure online business doesn’t happen overnight – and you’ll likely need a few years to go through this process.

Still, you now have a clear roadmap in front of you, so you know exactly which steps to take next, and you can revisit guide whenever you lose a sense of direction.

If you’re hungry for more strategies for scaling your online business to 6 figures and beyond, you should definitely read my blog post about 6 Critical Mistakes That Stop You From Starting a 6-Figure Online Business.

Quick Favor (Before You Go)

One last thing.

I’ve spent tens of hours writing this guide and years putting together the strategies that I shared with you (which I typically only share with my private coaching clients).

I decided to give this guide away for free because I really want to help more people turn their hobbies into full-time online businesses, and I did my best to make it the most detailed guide out there on starting a 6-figure online business.

If you enjoyed reading this guide, would you mind sharing it on your Facebook wall, e-mailing it to an entrepreneurial friend, or sharing it in a community of entrepreneurs who want to grow their online businesses?

It would mean the world to me if you helped me spread the word about this guide.

To share the guide, you can simply share this page with them.

Thank you so much, and I hope to hear about your successes soon!

-Primoz

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Content That Sticks

By Primoz Bozic 9 Comments

Did you ever wonder why…

Some blog posts get read hundreds of thousands of times, while others quickly get forgotten?
Some books become New York Times best-sellers, while others never make it to the shelves in Barnes and Noble?
Some online courses have hundreds of raving fans, while others only get a handful of sales?

There’s one key thing that almost EVERY successful YouTube video, blog post, online course or book has in common.

It’s the one thing that content that gets forgotten often lacks (even if you put a lot of work into creating it).

It’s the one thing that the top experts in your industry get remembered by, write books about, and deliver speeches about in front of thousands of listeners.

What’s the one thing?

Sticky ideas.

In this guide, I’ll talk about exactly what sticky ideas are, and how to spot them in the world.

I’ll share with you 20 examples of sticky ideas from established experts, authors and entrepreneurs, and explain why they work so well.

I’ll also teach you how to come up with your own sticky ideas so that you can create content that your audience will love, devour, and talk about to their friends for years to come.

Let’s dive in!

Download the PDF Version of This 16,000+ Word Guide!

As you can see, this is a LONG guide. You can download the FULL PDF version of this 16,000+ word guide (including the BONUS Sticky Idea Checklist) here to print it out, save it on your computer or read it on your Kindle:


  
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What are Sticky Ideas?

It was a hot summer afternoon, and I was sitting in the apartment from one of my mentors, Derek Halpern in Manhattan.

We were having a conversation about how to create content that will attract more visitors to my website that people will spread the word about.

“Primoz, the one thing you’re not doing right now that you have to start doing is come up with more sticky ideas.”

“Sticky ideas?”

“Yeah, big ideas like my 80/20 promotion rule that people will remember you by. People still talk and link to that rule to this day, even though I wrote a blog post about it years ago.”

As soon as he shared that with me, something clicked in my brain.

I remembered all of my favorite experts, authors and entrepreneurs, and their sticky ideas quickly came to mind:

My mentor Ramit Sethi became known by his Briefcase Technique for negotiating your salary, a YouTube video that got over 100,000 views
Entrepreneur Ryan Levesque became known for his ASK Method, a concept he wrote a best-selling book about, spoke about at countless conferences, and built a whole business around
Author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (whose name you might not remember), became known for Flow, an idea he wrote his best-selling book about

If you think about your favorite expert, author or entrepreneur, they’re probably known for a sticky idea as well.

When Derek told me about sticky ideas it all made sense. There was just one problem.

How to Come Up With Sticky Ideas

I was never “good” at coming up with stick ideas that people would remember me by. It just wasn’t natural to me and I had no idea how to even get started with coming up with sticky ideas.

What makes a sticky idea? How do I come up with one? Do I just pull it out of thin air?

My brain HURT when I thought about the idea of sticky ideas.

“So Derek, how do I do that? How do I come up with sticky ideas?”

“Read this book. It will help. Then it’s all practice”.

He handed me the book Made to Stick from Chip and Dan Heath, and I devoured it in a few days.

The 6 Principles of Sticky Ideas (From Made to Stick)

What makes a sticky idea?

That’s a question that Chip & Dan Heath spent years learning about, researching and answering, that they discuss at length in the book.

Their definition of a sticky idea is “an idea that is understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior”.

They say that sticky ideas are one or more of the following:

Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories

Principle #1: Simplicity

By simple, they mean that the closer you can get to the core of the idea, the stickier the idea will be.

A great example of a simple sticky idea is Flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – whenever we hear about a state of “flow”, we can instantly visualize what it means.

Principle #2: Unexpectedness

By unexpected, they mean that the ideas that have a counterintuitive twist will be stickier than the ones that don’t.

A great example is the LCHF diet or Paleo Diet: “You can eat as much bacon as you want and still lose weight”. We instantly want to know more about the idea.

Principle #3: Concreteness

By concrete, they mean that the more concrete the idea, the better. If people can attach it to something familiar they can envision, it’s more likely to stick.

A great example is the idea of the Briefcase Technique by Ramit Sethi – an interview negotiation technique where you bring research you’ve done on a company with you in a briefcase.

Principle #4: Credibility

By credible, they mean that attaching your idea to a credible source / research / authority / story, it will be more sticky and believable.

Some great examples are the ideas of Grit by Angela Duckworth, Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck, or Deep Work by Cal Newport, which are all ideas that are heavily backed by research.

Principle #5: Emotion

By emotional, they mean that your ideas should make people care and envoke emotions in them through stories and appealing to self-interests and identities.

A great example is the Alter Ego idea from Todd Herman – envisioning yourself moving through your day as your favorite superhero makes you feel excited to use the idea in your life.

Principle #6: Stories

By stories, they mean that using stories with your sticky ideas will get people to act as it will inspire them to improve their lives.

A great example is the Grief Casserole idea from Kate Schutt, where she uses a personal story of how she supported her mother through cancer to influence others to act.

4 BONUS Principles of Sticky Ideas For Online Entrepreneurs

As I analyzed 20 different Sticky Ideas (you’ll find the full analysis below, in the second part of this blog post), I’ve found that Sticky Ideas have 4 additional principles that Chip & Dan didn’t directly cover in the book, but you’ll want to pay attention to when you come up with your own Sticky Ideas:

Principle #7: Results

The majority of Sticky Ideas work really well and will get you visible results, which helps the ideas spread like fire.

For example, the Slow-Carb Diet became so popular because of how many lost a lot of weight with it (so they talked about it with their friends, family, etc.).

When you’re coming up with a Sticky Idea, it makes sense to start with the advice, frameworks or techniques you use that bring your clients the best results, and build your Sticky Ideas around that.

Principle #8: Accessibility

Many of the ideas are extremely accessible (almost anyone can do them), which makes it as easy as possible for as many people as possible to understand, use and spread the ideas.

For example, anyone can bring a Mac’n’Cheese Grief Casserole to a friend that’s grieving, heartbroken, or in a bad mood.

When you’re coming up with your Sticky Ideas, make sure they’re extremely easy to implement without any real “requirements”. The more people that can use the idea, the more people can spread it for you.

Principle #9: Alternatives

Some of the ideas provide an alternative, “better” way for achieving the same result:

Derek Halpern’s 80/20 Promotion Rule helps bloggers grow their blog audience without writing 24/7
The Paleo Diet helps dieters lose weight while still being able to eat as much bacon as they want to
The 1,000 True Fans idea from Kevin Kelly helps you build a business without having to attract hundreds of thousands of potential customers

They usually help people avoid something they hate / don’t enjoy doing (write a lot, give up bacon, feel like they need to attract hundreds of thousands of people to their business if they want to live off of it).

When you’re coming up with your Sticky Ideas, think about any alternative methods you have for achieving the results that they want that they might find more enjoyable than other methods currently available to them.

Principle #10: Problems

If you want your sticky ideas to spread and help your business, they should solve a problem that many people have (ideally it would be a problem that few people are solving for them).

If you pay close attention to powerful ideas in the entrepreneurship space, you’ll notice that every sticky idea is really just a solution to the problem that the audience of the expert is having, and it’s designed to be sticky.

The more people that have the problem, the more can benefit from an idea, and the more people you can reach with it.

On the flip side, Sticky Ideas that don’t solve any problems might fall flat, because people won’t really understand why/when they should use them.

Whenever you come up with your Sticky Idea Candidates, make sure they solve a problem. The more painful, the bigger, and the more common problem they solve, the more likely they are to stick.

20 Sticky Idea Examples From Experts, Authors and Entrepreneurs

To better understand these principles and see them in action, I collected 20 examples of Sticky Ideas from experts, entrepreneurs and authors I follow.

As you’ll see, each of these ideas have different qualities (some provide an exciting alternative, some are more emotional than others, and some have an unexpected twist to them(, though you’ll notice that most of them are simple and concrete.

You can read through these ideas, check them out in more detail through the relevant links, or simply skim through them and stop on ones that you find the most interesting (it’s quite a list!).

1.The Briefcase Technique (Ramit Sethi)

Click here to watch The Briefcase Technique

I first heard about The Briefcase Technique years ago when I was on a mission to learn everything I could from Ramit Sethi (one of my long-time mentors). Even though I wasn’t looking for a job, I devoured all of his content so I could soak up all of his knowledge that I possibly could.

When I read his content about finding your dream job, I came across his “Briefcase Technique”, which I instantly remembered and recommended to many of my friends that were preparing for job interviews. When I think of Ramit and sticky ideas, this is easily the most memorable idea that comes to mind.

What is The Briefcase Technique?

Imagine you’re attending a job interview. Rather than just “swinging” the interview, Ramit recommends doing research on the company up-front and preparing a detailed plan on how you can help it up-front.

Instead of just talking about the plan, he recommends printing it out on paper and bringing it with you in a briefcase to impress the interviewer. You can see where the name comes from :).

Why it’s sticky:

Results: The concept works really well (a lot of people have successfully used it to negotiate a better salary), so a lot of people talk about it and link to it
Accessibility & Concreteness: It’s very tangible and familiar (you can tell a friend to do some research and bring it to an interview on a piece of paper – anyone can do it)
Emotional: You are excited about the idea of being able to negotiate your salary using this technique

2. 80/20 Content Promotion Rule (Derek Halpern)

Click here to read about the 80/20 Content Promotion Rule

I heard about the 80/20 Content Promotion Rule from Derek Halpern through Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch online course a few years ago, when I first learned about content creation and promotion.

This “rule” has since then been referenced in hundreds of articles all over the internet, and when Derek Halpern later became my mentor, he explained that people talk about it and link to it from their content to this day.

He also shared a bit of context behind why he thought this rule took off. He said that he noticed that a lot of people hated the idea of writing 24/7 to grow their blog audience, and this concept gave them permission and a way to grow their blog without having to do something they didn’t enjoy. That’s how the 80/20 Content Promotion Rule was born.

What is The 80/20 Content Promotion Rule?

The idea is simple: Instead of writing new blog posts every day (or every week), Derek recommends spending more time writing content that’s better than anything else out there.

But then, instead of just writing a ton of content, he recommends spending 4x the amount of time promoting your content to make sure it gets into the hands of people who need to read it (“you should spend 20% of the time creating content and 80% of the time promoting it”).

This then helps you build a blog audience without having to write all the time.

Why it’s sticky:

Results: It works well (which is why a lot of people mention it and talk about it to their friends)
Alternative: It gives people who hate writing an easier alternative to growing their blog audience
Concrete: It references the “80/20 rule”, a concept that many of us are already familiar with

3. First, Ten (Seth Godin)

Read about Seth Godin’s First, Ten here

I don’t remember when I first heard about Seth Godin’s First, Ten idea, but I do remember that I only had to hear it once to remember it for life.

If you’ve ever read any of Seth’s thousands of blog posts, you’ll know that he’s a master of expressing ideas clearly and with few words. As far as sticky ideas go, he has a whole mountain of them under his belt, and it’s worth studying how he creates them.

What is the First, Ten idea?

The idea is that whenever you have a new idea for a product, a concept, (or a sticky idea!), you can share it with 10 of your ideal customers. If they love it, they’ll share it with 10 more people (or more), and you’ll know that it’s an idea worth pursuing. If not, it isn’t.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: It’s very easy to imagine,remember, or explain to a friend (want to test an idea? Just share it with 10 ideal customers!)
Accessibility: It’s very doable and easy to try out (you likely know 10 people that you could share an idea with)
Alternative: It’s an alternative approach to testing your product ideas to other approaches that can take MONTHS to do

4. 1,000 True Fans (Kevin Kelly)

You can read about 1,000 True Fans here

The idea of 1,000 True Fans is so sticky it made it’s was into Tim Ferris’s Tools of Titans (which, by the way, is a book full of sticky ideas worth studying).

I first heard about the idea years ago and still keep it in the back of my mind whenever I think about how to run my business, write new content, and develop new products and services, as it serves as a great guiding point for nurturing relationships with my clients (and attracting new ones).

Who are The 1,000 True Fans?

The idea, as summarized by Kevin himself in his essay, is this:

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”

This idea applies to running an online business as well, as there are plenty of online entrepreneurs making a great living with audiences of 1,000 people or less.

Why it’s sticky:

Emotional: It’s easy and exciting to visualize an army of 1,000 True Fans knocking on your door and waiting to work with you (or at least that’s how I visualize it)
Concrete: It makes running a successful business feel a lot more tangible and achievable (“I just need 1,000 true fans – then I can make a living with my business”)
Alternative: It makes it easy for you to focus just on one goal in your business, rather than on 100 different things you “should be doing”

5. Skyscraper Technique (Brian Dean)

Read about The Skyscraper Technique here

While I’ve never been a fan of “link building” and other techniques from internet marketers (as a lot of them feel spammy to me), I do have to say that Brian Dean came up with an amazing concept called The Skyscraper Technique.

It’s a concept I heard about when Brian first published it, and I remember that everyone in the online business space was talking about it and telling me that “I have to read this article”. It was a hot idea at a time that still gets mentioned and referenced to this day.

What is The Skyscraper Technique?

Brian makes a point that “nobody cares about the 11th tallest building in the world”, but everyone is attracted to the absolute tallest one. He says that it’s similar with your content, and helps you create content that has a strong base with 20 additional floors, making it the “tallest skyscraper out there”, which everyone talks about.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: Everyone knows what a skyscraper is, so it’s very easy to remember. The analogy between a skyscraper and content creation is easy to understand and correlate (each layer that you add to your content is a floor in a skyscraper)
Credibility: Brian shares how this technique “helped him increase his search traffic by 110% in 14 days” to back up his idea with proof
Alternative: You can use the Skyscraper Technique instead of just creating endless content to make sure your content gets read by as many people as possible

6. The Lean Review (Primoz Bozic)

You can read about The Lean Review here

I used to be horrible at coming up with sticky ideas, and just never even thought about doing it for my online business (which is why I have practically no sticky ideas in some of my earlier content).

However, as I studied top online entrepreneurs and authors and learned more about sticky ideas, I started sprinkling sticky ideas all over my blog posts, online courses and coaching calls (so that my advice helps and reaches more people).

One such example was The Lean Review, which is the most read blog post on my website (so far) in 2019, and an idea that many of my clients and readers implemented and told me about it afterwards.

What is The Lean Review?

The idea behind The Lean Review is to avoid doing a 20-hour annual review (if you don’t have the time for it or just don’t want to do it), and instead plan out your whole year in under 20 minutes, with the leanest possible approach.

Why it’s sticky:

Alternative: A lot of people love the idea of doing an effective annual review without spending hours and hours on it
Concrete: You can visualize something (or someone) being lean, and instantly understand what the idea is about
Accessible: It’s an actual system with a spreadsheet that you can just “plug and play”, which makes it very sharable and useful

7. The Paleo Diet (Loren Cordain)

You can read about The Paleo Diet here

If you work out a lot or ever followed Crossfit, you might have heard of the “Paleo Diet” which was popularized by Loren Cordain.

If you’ve heard about it, you might not have thought about it as a “sticky idea”, but it’s just that – a diet that was named and heavily spread throughout the Crossfit community as one of the go-to diets for the sport.

You can probably think of some other sticky diets as well (like the low carb diet, the LCHF diet, the Atkins diet, Intermittent Fasting, and the “slow carb” diet which we’ll analyze below).

What is The Paleo Diet?

The simple idea behind The Paleo Diet is to eat like our ancestors ate in the Paleolithic age (which is why some people also refer to it as “The Caveman Diet”) and to avoid eating foods like grains, bread and refined sugars which weren’t available back then.

Why it’s sticky:

Alternative & Unexpected: You can lose weight AND eat all the Bacon you want to.
Emotional: It’s easy, exciting and “hardcore” to visualize yourself as a caveman feasting on a wild boar (or just eating a lot of eggs, meat and vegetables)
Concrete & Accessible: It’s easy to know what to eat / what not to eat in a diet like this “if a caveman didn’t have access to it, I can’t eat it”

8. The Slow-Carb Diet (Tim Ferriss)

Click here to read about The Slow Carb Diet

While less main-stream than The Paleo Diet, The Slow Carb Diet is a sticky idea worth mentioning that went extremely viral among Tim Ferris’s readers after being mentioned in his 4 Hour Body book (as you can see by the 7,221 comments on his blog post about the diet).

What is The Slow Carb Diet?

The Slow Carb Diet is a diet that is focused on eating mostly carbohydrates that get absorbed into your body “slowly”, such as legumes and vegetables. It also includes a weekly “cheat day” where you can more or less go crazy and eat all the foods you’ve been craving the week before.

Why it’s sticky:

Results: It’s super effective (can you notice a trend in most of the sticky ideas?). There are hundreds of success stories from the diet, which help it spread.
Concrete: It sounds very similar to the “low carb diet” which many people are already familiar with, but has an interesting twist that people can easily understand and remember (the “slow” part).
Emotional: A lot of people are excited to be on this diet because of the crazy weekly cheat days, which also helps with spreading the idea.

9. The Mindless Margin (Brian Wansink)

Click here to read more about The Mindless Margin

One of the best books I’ve read this year was the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. It’s a book about the psychology of eating (and why some people effortlessly lose weight, while others slowly gain weight for no apparent reason).

It’s a phenomenally written book full of interesting stories, research, and sticky ideas, with The Mindless Margin being one of them.

What is The Mindless Margin?

The idea behind The Mindless Margin is that small choices (like eating from bigger vs smaller plates, or buying a bigger vs smaller box of cereal) can invisibly help us lose or gain weight.

By making more of the “right” small choices within the mindless margin, we can effortlessly lose weight without feeling deprived as we would by going on a very restrictive diet. This way, we can slowly but steadily lose weight in the long run.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: The “mindless eating” is a sticky idea in itself (as it’s a new, unique way to look at eating), and the “mindless margin” is an evolution of it
Alternative: The idea of the mindless margin gets us excited so that we can “automatically” lose weight, without going on a diet
Accessibility: There are a lot of opportunities to see the mindless margin in our everyday lives, so we can reinforce the idea in our minds over and over again

10. Alter Ego (Todd Herman)

You can learn more about Todd’s Alter Ego idea here

I first met Todd at a mastermind event in NYC a few years ago and had the pleasure of spending a few hours talking to him over dinner.

That’s when he shared with me his idea of the Alter Ego and the stories behind it, which I instantly fell in love with. Later on, he wrote a book about the idea that made a big bang, got a lot of media coverage and became a bestseller.

What is an Alter Ego?

Todd’s idea is that world’s top sportsmen and performers use an “Alter Ego” that allows them to channel their inner “superheroes” to perform at their best during their matches and important events in their life.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: We’re already familiar with the idea of an Alter Ego (just not in this context)
Emotional: We love the idea of channeling our inner superheroes and unlocking a new version of ourselves
Accessible: The idea is easy to visualize and remember (we can easily envision ourselves putting on a superman’s cape when we get to work)

11. 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman)

You can learn more about the 5 love languages here

I heard about the 5 love languages book from a friend when I asked them how to improve my relationships with people that were important to me.

When I read the book, I loved the framework of “the 5 love languages” – it was memorable, it made sense, and helped me see the world in a different way.

What are The 5 Love Languages?

Just as we speak different languages, we also have different “love languages” in which we express love and feel loved (like giving gifts, physical touch or words of affirmation). If we communicate in the same language, we get along well – if we don’t, we might feel misunderstood.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: We’re already familiar with the idea of languages and how we can understand (or misunderstand) each other if we communicate in the same or different languages
Unexpected: The concept of languages is paired with a new topic (love), which is unexpected and memorable
Accessible: The idea helps us compartmentalize our day-to-day communications into 5 different ways (so we see the world in a different way)

12. A Grief Casserole (Kate Schutt)

You can listen to Kate’s speech about A Grief Casserole here

I remember having a conversation with my friend Kate in a small bar in NYC about being there for people when they’re sad. “What do you say to someone when they’re feeling sad and you want to be there for them”? A grief casserole was her answer.

What is a Grief Casserole?

Whenever someone is feeling sad or grieving, even if you don’t know what to say to them, you can always make them a big casserole of mac’n’cheese and bring it to them. Nobody will ever get mad at you for bringing them comfort food, and you’ll always make them feel better.

Why it’s sticky:

Accessible: It’s practical, easy to do and implement (anyone can do it)
Emotional: It creates an image of comfort in our minds (bringing someone a big casserole of mac’n’cheese)
Unexpected: It’s attached to a counterintuitive reframe (“don’t say anything – bring a casserole instead”)

13. FAST Method (Sam Gavis-Hughson)

Sam is one of my private coaching clients, and when I interviewed him for a guide I’m writing about growing your email list, he shared one sticky idea that caught my attention – the FAST method.

Sam said that he tries to build in one core sticky idea into everything he does, from his e-books to online courses – and the FAST method is a great example of that.

What is the FAST Method?

The FAST method is a method for solving dynamic programming questions in coding interviews:

First solution
Analyze the first solution
Identify the Subproblems
Turn the solution around

Why it’s sticky:

Emotional: You can imagine this method help you get a job at a top tech company like Google, Apple, or Facebook
Concrete: The play on words is interesting (it implies that you can solve dynamic programming interview questions FAST with this method)
Alternative & Results: The method is different from all other methods out there and works really well (which is what helped the idea spread)

14. Deep work: Cal Newport

You can read more about Deep Work here

I’ve been a big fan of Cal Newport’s work ever since I read his books So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work.

Not only are the books amazingly well researched, written and useful, they’re also filled with sticky ideas like Deep Work.

What is Deep Work?

In his book, Cal talks about the concepts of “Deep Work” and “Shallow Work”. Deep work is working on activities that require deep concentration (like writing), while shallow work is work that doesn’t require deep concentration (like browsing social media).

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: We’re already familiar with the concept of “shallow” and “deep”. We can connect the Deep Work with “deep concentration”, and instantly understand what the concept is about
Credibility: The concept of Deep Work is heavily backed by research, examples and stories from Cal and other top performers he interviewed for his book
Accessible: We can use the idea of Deep Work every day and pay attention to how much of it we get done to measure how productive we were

15. Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck)

You can learn more about Growth Mindset here

I spent a large chunk of last year working on my mental game. I wanted to understand how top performers in all walks of life think differently than everyone else, and find ways to improve my own mindset.

One of the books on the subject I loved the most was Mindset by Carol Dweck. The book is built around the core concepts of Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset, which are great examples of sticky ideas.

What is Growth Mindset?

Growth mindset simply means that we think that our traits, qualities and skills are not set in stone, and that we can work on them to improve them (like our intelligence, our social skills, our discipline and work ethic, sports talent, etc.). The opposite of that is Fixed mindset, which means we believe that these qualities are set in stone.

Why it’s sticky:

Emotional: The term “Growth Mindset” implies that we’re growing when we think in the Growth mindset, which is exciting to the readers of her book
Simple & Concrete: Both “Growth Mindset” and “Fixed Mindset” are easy to understand and visualize
Credible: The idea is heavily backed by research, stories and examples from different industries

16. Conference Commando (Keith Ferrazzi)

Click here to learn more about becoming a Conference Commando

Never Eat Alone from Keith Ferrazzi was the first book I read about connecting with influencers and finding mentors, long before I met Keith at a party at his house in the Hollywood Hills. In the book, one idea stood out to me that I remembered for years – the idea of becoming “The Conference Commando”.

What is a Conference Commando?

In his book, Keith advises against just “attending” a conference. Instead, you should attend the conference like you’re “on a mission”, host intimate dinners with other attendees you want to meet within a conference, strategically connect with speakers, and make sure you get the most out of a conference that way.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: We’re already familiar with the concept of a “commando”
Emotional: We can visualize ourselves “being a commando on a mission” within a conference
Unexpected: The unusual combination of two seemingly unrelated terms (conference and commando) is memorable

17. Hell Yeah / Hell No (Rich Litvin)

I read Rich Litvin’s book Prosperous Coach when Rich noticed me in an online community and reached out to work with me, as part of my research and preparation. Little did I know that his book would be one of the most impactful books I would ever read about coaching, that I would give to any of my clients that asked me about growing their coaching business.

Within the book, the idea of a “Hell Yeah / Hell No” stood out as the most memorable idea that I still use to make decisions in my life to this day.

What is a Hell Yeah / Hell No?

To make it easier to decide which clients to work with (or what to work on in your business), Rich recommends polarizing your decisions to only two choices – “Hell Yeah”, “Hell No”. This helps you avoid being stuck with clients that you don’t love working with, or doing things you don’t love doing.

Why it’s sticky:

Simple & Concrete: We can instantly understand what the concept means and remember it by reading about it once
Alternative: It’s a strong polarizing idea that helps us eliminate a lot of decisions, and is the alternative to “figuring out if we want to do this”, creating a list of pros and cons, etc.
Accessible: We can use the idea over and over again in our daily lives

18. ABCDE Framework (Martin Seligman)

You can learn more about the ABCDE Framework here

I read Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism when I decided I wanted to stop complaining so much, think more optimistically and recover from setbacks faster. From the whole book, the ABCDE framework was the stickiest idea, which I use to this day.

What is the ABCDE Framework?

Any time you catch yourself thiking negatively or pessimistically, you can work through:

Adversity (the situation that triggered your response)
Beliefs (our thoughts / interpretations of the event)
Conscequences (the way we feel or behave)
Disputation (arguing and disputing our beliefs)
Energisation (outcome of effects from redirecting your thoughts to actions)

This framework helps you “flip” negative thoughts and actions into positive ones.

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: “ABCDE” is a memorable combination of letters, and the “elements” of the idea are fairly easy to remember (ok, I have these thoughts, what happened, what are my beliefs about them, what are the consequences, how can I dispute them…)
Alternative & Results: This method provides a practical alternative to just “hoping we’ll feel better soon” and actually helps us feel better sooner
Accessible: The idea is a practical framework of steps we can go through and practice over and over again

19. Time Management Matrix (Stephen Covey)

7 Habits of HIghly Effective People was the first personal development book I ever read, and opened my eyes to the world of improving myself and becoming the best version of myself. There were a lot of great ideas in the book, but the Time Management Matrix is the one idea I still use to mentally organize the work I want to do.

What is The Time Management Matrix?

The Time Management helps us organize all of our tasks by how urgent and important they are, into 4 categories:

Urgent and Important (the tasks that need to get done ASAP, like a launch email we want to send out today)
Not Urgent and Important (tasks that are important, but without a deadline, like strategic work on our business)
Urgent and Not Important (emails, interruptions, phone calls…)
Not Urgent and Not Important (browsing internet, scrolling social media, wasting time, etc.)

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: It allows us to organize all of our work that we have in our head into 4 different categories, and it’s usually instantly clear if something is important or urgent (or not)
Accessible: We can use the idea every day in our lives
Alternative: It’s an alternative to just looking at all of our work as one long, never-ending TO-DO list

20. Don’t Criticize, Condemn, or Complain (Dale Carnegie)

You can read more about this idea here

Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People is one of my favorite books of all time, and it taught me so much about how to show up in the world as a nice person that people like hanging out with. One of my favorite “rules” from the book that I still remember from the book is “Don’t Criticize, Condemn or Complain”.

What does “Don’t Criticize, Condemn or Complain” mean?

This principle teaches us how to treat people kindly and with respect:

Don’t Criticize someone that has a different opinion than you, even if you disagree with them
Don’t Condemn someone that made a mistake (as it won’t do any good)
Don’t Complain about problems – instead work on solving them

Why it’s sticky:

Concrete: There’s something about the sound of this principle that makes it sticky and easy to remember
Accessible: It’s very easy to implement in everyday life (every time someone makes a mistake, you have an opportunity not to condemn them)
Emotional: Using the idea in action makes you FEEL good about yourself, which means you’ll likely use it over and over again

7 Steps for Coming up With Sticky Ideas

Ok, we went over what Sticky Ideas are, we looked at 10 principles of Sticky Ideas, as well as over 20 examples of real Sticky Ideas from experts, authors, and entrepreneurs.

By now, you should have a pretty good idea how to spot sticky ideas in the world and understand why they’re sticky.

I’m excited for you because I know you’ll now see the world in a different way than before, even if you do nothing else after reading this guide.

You’ll see the world of “sticky ideas” all around you – in books, podcast interviews, ads, everywhere.

But since I know that you’re here because you want to come up with your own sticky ideas that you can use in your blog posts, e-books, online courses, books and public speeches, let’s talk about the final piece of the puzzle – coming up with your own sticky ideas.

You can do that by going through the following steps:

Step #1: Develop Sticky Idea Thinking
Step #2: Find Your Sticky Idea Candidates
Step #3: Use The Sticky Idea Checklist
Step #4: Run Sticky Idea Experiments
Step #5: Create your Sticky Idea Bank
Step #6: Spread The Word
Step #7: Rinse And Repeat

Let’s look at them step by step.

Step #1: Develop Sticky Idea Thinking

Now that you have a solid understanding of what sticky ideas are, you’ll automatically start seeing Sticky Ideas in every book or blog post you read, as well as every podcast episode, online course or speech you listen to.

Next, you’ll want to apply the Sticky Idea Thinking to your own business as well.

Whenever you sit down to write a blog post, record an online course video or write an e-book, ask yourself “what Sticky Idea can I talk about today?”.

You want to stop thinking in terms of “creating content” and start thinking in “creating and sharing Sticky Ideas”. Your content is merely the vehicle for sharing those ideas with the world.

You can get started by creating one Sticky Idea per every piece of content you create, and you’ll instantly start putting more ideas into the world.

Step #2: Find Your Sticky Idea Candidates

Now you’re probably wondering “well what should I create my Sticky Ideas about?”

The best place to start is to think about your most effective strategies, frameworks, techniques, mindset shifts, concepts, stories and ideas that bring you or your clients the best results.

For example, I shared my Lean Review and Lean Schedule ideas because the Lean Review System was something that worked really well for me, and the Lean Schedule strategy was something that worked really well for a lot of my clients, so I decided to write blog posts about these ideas.

Coming up with your most impactful ideas and turning them into Sticky Ideas will give you the highest chances of success (as you’ll automatically follow the results principle with your ideas).

Step #3: Use The Sticky Idea Checklist

Once you have a list of at least a few Sticky Idea Candidates, it’s time to repackage them to make them sticky.

You can do that by following the Sticky Idea Principles that I shared above, and applying at least a few of the principles to your ideas.

To make your life easier, I put together a Sticky Idea Checklist for you that you can follow step by step and make your ideas, with exact questions you can ask yourself and examples you can use for inspiration.

You can download your Sticky Idea Checklist here, together with the FULL PDF version of this 16,000+ Word Guide:


  
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Step #4: Test Your Ideas

Once you have a list of your first few Sticky Ideas, you can go and test them in the world to see which of them stick.

Try to test your ideas everywhere you can:

In blog posts, e-books, and guides you’re writing
In online course videos you’re creating
In coaching and casual conversations with your clients and readers
In emails and comments, whenever you’re giving advice to someone
In YouTube videos, speeches, webinars…

You get the idea – you should take any chance you have to experiment by testing your ideas in the world.

Here’s a quick and easy way to do that:

Instead of saying “you should do this”, you can say “I call this the [STICKY IDEA]. This is how it works…”.

That’s it.

You can also start coming up with Sticky Ideas “on the spot”:

Every time you’re trying to explain something to one of your clients and it feels a bit slunky, see if you can find an analogy for them (and turn that analogy into a sticky idea in the spot)
Every time you’re writing a blog post and you’re trying to explain something, think about how you could explain it through a Sticky Idea
Every time you’re creating a presentation for your online course, think about a sticky idea you could create that would be the core of the presentation

As you have the conversation, publish the blog post, or deliver the presentation, pay attention to what happens in the following days / weeks (as you keep mentioning the idea).

Do people remember it and repeat it back you you without you mentioning it, as Seth Godin says in his First, Ten article?

Or do people have a hard time remembering the name of the idea, even when you bring it up to them?

If it’s the former, you have a sticky idea. If it’s the latter, you don’t.

As you’re testing your ideas, many (or most of them) might not stick, and that’s ok.

With the ones that do, move on to Step #5.

With the ones that don’t, you can stop talking about them, and tweak the ideas (you could simplify them, make them more concrete, change their name, etc.).

Step #5: Create Your Sticky Idea Portfolio

Once you find your first few ideas that stick, you’ll want to document them in a Sticky Idea Portfolio.

It doesn’t matter if you put them in a spreadsheet, write them down in a notepad, or into a Google Document. Just make sure you keep track of them so you don’t forget them.

It’s useful to keep these ideas on hand so you can spread the word about them more easily (and reference them in any new content you create).

The last thing you want to do is spend hours developing an idea that you end up completely forgetting about.

Step #6: Spread The Word

Once you discover your Sticky Ideas, it’s time to put the pedal to the medal and spread the word about them as much as you can:

You can create a blog post and/or a YouTube video around your idea that people can link to and share with others
You can create a social media post that links to your blog post or YouTube video
You can reference your blog post / video within all the future content you create
You can mention your idea in guest posts, publicity opportunities and podcast interviews
You can expand on the idea in a presentation or a master class in your online course
You can create a public speech, a TED talk, or even write a whole book around your idea

This will help you spread your idea with others, and giving them them the opportunity to share it with their clients and friends.

Step #7: Rinse and Repeat

If you look closely, you’ll notice that every expert you follow has a lot more eticky ideas up their sleeves, even if they’re known for just 1-2 signature ideas.

For example, one of my mentors Ramit Sethi has a lot of Sticky Ideas, like Conscious Spending, The Seagull Strategy, Immersion Strategy, You are The CEO of Your Business (and plenty more).

As you start reading their books and blog posts or going through their online courses, you’ll see that they think and talk in Sticky Ideas. They use Sticky Ideas every chance they have to make their ideas and content stickier and more shareable.

And yet, there will only be a handful of signature Sticky they are remembered by.

Then, there are a handful of other ideas that they’ll build their online courses about or write books / e-books about (you’ll notice that most big pieces of content are built around 1-3 core ideas).

Then, there are even Sticky Ideas that will be sprinkled throughout their content. They might not serve the purpose to reach hundreds of thousands of people, but they’ll make ideas and frameworks more memorable and easier to understand and reference for their audience.

Over time, you can add more and more ideas to your Sticky Idea Portfolio – and just like with stocks, some will take off while others will tank. But sooner or later, you’ll unlock a few signature ideas that you’ll become known for for years to come.

Keep coming up with Sticky Ideas. Keep testing them. Keep mentioning them. Mention the ones that stick, ditch the ones that don’t. And always come up with new ones whenever you create new e-books, blog posts or online courses.

BONUS: Your Sticky Idea Checklist

Woah, this was a long guide, right?

Well done on reading all the way until the end!

Since you’re already here, I know you’ll want to do more than just read a guide – you’ll want to put everything you’ve learned into action.

To make that as easy as possible for you, I’ve put together the BONUS Sticky Idea Checklist for you.

In this checklist, you’ll learn about:

Part 1: The 4 Stages of Creating Your Sticky Idea – How to go from an idea to a finished piece of content.
Part 2: The 10-Step Checklist For Developing Your Sticky Idea – How to run your idea through the 10 Sticky Idea Principles and make it stickier, with examples and questions to guide you along the way
Part 3: The Checklist In Action – Watch me apply the Sticky Idea Checklist to one of my own Sticky Idea Candidates

It includes exact questions you can ask yourself to make your ideas sticky using the Sticky Idea Principles, as well as examples you can use for inspiration when coming up with your Sticky Ideas.

You can download the Sticky Idea Checklist through the orange box below – enjoy!

And if you enjoyed reading this guide, I’d love for you to share it with a fellow entrepreneur that would love to read it.

Your Turn: What is one Sticky Idea YOU love that I didn’t include in this guide (and why do you love it)? Share it with us in the comments below!

10 Quick & Easy Ways to Get More Blog Readers You’re Probably Not Using Right Now

By Primoz Bozic 12 Comments

You know you want to drive more traffic to your blog.

You’ve spent hours and hours writing blog posts for your readers. But after the initial bump in traffic, even your best blog posts slowly get forgotten. They get buried on the 5th page of your blog section where only the most dedicated readers find them.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if these blog posts that you spent hours and hours writing…

Actually got the attention they deserved?

The good news is: They can!

In fact, there are 10 quick and easy ways in which you can drive more traffic to your best blog posts in a matter of minutes…

…and you only have to set them up once.

I’ll be sharing these 10 ways with you in the post below.

They’ll help you get more traffic to your blog, improve the SEO ranking of your website, and turn more first-time readers into loyal fans.

I’ll also show you, step-by-step, how to take advantage of them TODAY.

Let’s dig in!

Before we start: Create a list of your 5 best blog posts

There are two ways to think about what your “best blog posts” are.

First, you can think about your most popular blog posts.

These are the blog posts that already get the most traffic on your website.

You’ll want to use every opportunity you can get to get more people to read, like and share them.

You can find those by installing the Jetpack or a Google Analytics plug-in on your website. Either is fine.

TECH TIP: If you need help with installing WordPress plug-ins like these, you can read this quick tutorial on how to do that.

Once you have your analytics plug-in installed, you can look at the website stats to find the most popular blog posts on your website.

Second, you can think about blog posts that “should” be popular, but aren’t.

These are the blog posts that you’ve spent hours and hours writing, but way too few people find them or read them.

You know which blog posts these are.

They’re the ones that make you feel physical pain when you think about them and think “these are so good, more people should really read them!”.

You’ll want to find ways to put these blog posts in front of more people, so they can get access to some of your best advice.

Before we get started, I recommend you to create a list of 5 best blog posts that you want to drive more traffic to.

You’ll be able to plug these into the strategies below right away.

Traffic Opportunity #1: Website Sidebar

Your website sidebar is one of the most visible places on your website. Every reader that reads a blog post from you will see it.

It’s also the perfect place to include your best blog posts and drive more traffic to them.

So if you’re not using your sidebar to drive more traffic to your best blog posts, you should be!

Sidebar Example: Peter Nguyen, The Essential Man

Here’s an example from one of my friends, Peter from The Essential Man:

Peter uses his sidebar to link to his most popular posts and Ultimate Guides, which helped him double his website traffic.

You can do the same by linking to your best blog posts in your sidebar.

How to customize your sidebar

If you’re using WordPress, you can use a plug-in like WordPress Popular Posts to link to your blog posts in your sidebar.

Then, you can either use the “popular posts” feature to automatically display the top blog posts on your website…

…Or you can link to a custom list of posts, so you can give your under-appreciated content some love too.

You can use the WordPress Text Widget to link to custom posts.

Traffic Opportunity #2: Navigational Menu

Another highly visible place on your website is your navigational menu.

That’s the menu that’s on top of your website, with your blog page, about page, etc.:

The navigational menu is one of the first places that your readers will check out, and another great place to link to your best blog posts.

You can add a “Free Guides” section there, a HUB page (explained below), a free resources section and more.

Navigational Menu Example: Derek Halpern, Social Triggers

Derek Halpern from Social Triggers does a great job at linking to his best blog posts through his navigational menu:

You’ll notice that he links to his HUB pages that include links to the best blog posts on his website:

How to customize your navigational menu

Customizing your navigational menu is super easy.

Once you log into WordPress and visit any page on your website, you’ll see this “customize” button on the top of your screen:

You can click that button to enter the WordPress Customizer. From there, you can click on Menus:

And you can just click on the “add items” to add new links, pages, and more.

Using the WordPress customizer is very intuitive and you can drag and drop, reorganize and rename your menu items very easily.

Traffic Opportunity #3: HUB Pages

You can think of HUB pages as a central train station that links to all other stations, except that the HUB pages link to your blog posts:

Once you create tens (or hundreds) of blog posts on your website, HUB pages can be a great way to continue bringing more readers to your best ones.

As you start talking about more than one topic on your website, you can create multiple HUB pages for each of the topics you talk about, as you’ll see in the examples below.

HUB Pages Example: Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You to Be Rich has been using HUB pages like this one for years to drive more traffic to his popular blog posts:

He links to his HUB pages from a menu that pops up his blog:

And has different HUB pages for personal finance advice, career advice and more.

How to create your own HUB page

Creating a HUB page is fairly easy as well.

All you need to do is create a new page on your website.

Then, on your page, provide some context on why your readers are here:

And link to your best blog posts:

NOTE: Your HUB page doesn’t need to have fancy design, especially if you’re just starting out. You can create a simple page without any widgets like I did recently for my blog posts around growing your online audience.

Traffic Opportunity #4: Homepage

What’s always going to be one of the most read pages on your website?

Your homepage.

Your homepage is the first page many of your new readers will visit.

It’s also a great opportunity for showing your new readers your best blog posts and turning them into loyal fans.

Homepage Example: Jill & Josh Stanton, Screw The Nine to Five

I love the homepage from Jill & Josh Stanton from Screw The Nine to Five.

They link to their latest guides right then and there:

This way, their new readers can check out some of the best content right away.

How to customize your homepage

This depends on the website theme you’re using.

I’ve used a lot of website themes from Studiopress which offers detailed instructions on how to change a homepage of each theme:

When you purchased your theme, you likely got access to a set of tutorials for customizing your theme. The homepage tutorial should be one of them.

In most cases, you can customize your homepage by adding widgets to your homepage just like you would add them to your sidebar.

You can do that by going to the Appearance -> Widgets section in your WordPress Admin Dashboard:

And then dragging a text or a popular posts widget into the “Front page” or “Homepage” area:

Opportunity #5: Welcome Email Sequence

If you’re using an email list to retain your blog readers (which you should), you can send your new email subscribers a series of welcome emails.

In this email series, you can link them to your best blog posts. This will help them get to know you better, learn more from you, and get more results from your advice. All of which will help you convert them into paying customers down the line.

HOW you do this isn’t as important as actually doing it.

You could create a series of 5 daily emails that each link to a different blog post. Or, you could send an email every 2-3 few days.

They could be about the same topic (and just go deeper and deeper), or they could be about different topics.

You could link to one blog post per email, or you could link to multiple related resources like you would in a HUB page.

Don’t overthink this step. You can set up the sequence, run it for a few weeks, then change it if necessary.

Welcome Email Sequence Example: Mark Manson

I recently read a blog post about happiness from Mark Manson. I’ve found the article through his Best Articles HUB page.

After reading the blog post, I subscribed to his email list to download his e-book on happiness.

Afterward, I received a series of emails from him related to happiness (most of which are automatically sent to every new reader):

In his emails, Mark linked me to more of his blog posts related to happiness:

As that happened, I felt like I was being served a tasting menu, one delicious course at a time. I could read more of his best blog posts (related to the topic I was interested in), without having to spend hours browsing his website.

This isn’t just great for me as a reader – it also helps Mark drive more traffic to his old great blog posts.

How to create your own Welcome Email Sequence

This is slightly different for each email provider.

Here’s how you can do it in the most common email providers:

ConvertKit: Create a new email sequence (instructions)
Mailchimp: Create a new automation sequence (instructions)
Aweber: Create a new welcome campaign (instructions)

If your email provider isn’t listed above, you can usually find the instructions by Googling “[EMAIL PROVIDER NAME] welcome sequence”.

Opportunity #6: Thank You Page

After someone subscribes to your email list, you’ll likely redirect them to a “thank you page”.

The thank you page thanks them for their attention and instructs them what to do next to make sure they get the free gift you offered to them.

The thank you page is also a great opportunity to send your new email subscribers a few more blog posts that they’ll love reading while they wait for their free gift to arrive in their inbox.

Thank You Page Example: Groove HQ

Groove HQ, a help desk company, links their new email subscribers to their most popular posts:

You could do the same (and score bonus points with your readers if you send content to them that’s directly related to the problem they wanted to solve by subscribing to your email list).

For example, if you offered a “paleo diet recipe book” to your readers, you could link them to 5 more great recipes on the blog through your thank you page.

How to create your own Thank You Page

First, you’ll want to create your own thank you page and link to your best blog posts from it.

You can do that by either creating a new page on your website, or by using software like Leadpages to create a nicer-looking page.

Again, don’t overthink this step – sharing your blog posts with your readers is more important than the fancy design of your thank you page.

Once you create your thank you page, you’ll want to update your default thank you pages for your opt-in forms with the new custom pages.

The process for changing thank you pages will likely differ from one email provider to another.

Here are the instructions for the most common email providers:

ConvertKit: Add a redirect page in form settings (instructions)
Mailchimp: Create a new thank you page (instructions)
Aweber: Change your thank you page (instructions)

If your email provider isn’t listed above, you can usually find the instructions by Googling “[EMAIL PROVIDER NAME] thank you page”.

Opportunity #7: Blog Posts

Another great way of sharing your best blog posts with more readers is to link to them in the other relevant blog posts you’ve written.

For example, if you’ve written a blog post about how to wake up early, you might want to link to other articles that you’ve written on similar topics:

Why waking up early is important
Morning routines of the world’s richest people
Why we struggle with going to bed early
…

By doing this, you’re giving your readers opportunities to deepen their understanding of the problem they’re trying to solve, or solutions to related problems.

You’re also allowing your readers to go and explore your website like they’d explore a castle in a video game, which they’ll love.

Blog Posts Example: Neil Patel, Quicksprout

Neil Patel from Quicksprout does a phenomenal job with constantly showcasing his best content.

Open any of the articles on his Quicksprout blog, and you’ll instantly find a few links to relevant blog posts:

This helps his readers not just read one blog post on his website, but 2, 3, 4 or even 10.

Just imagine what this does to his website traffic!

How to cross-link your blog posts

You can take advantage of this opportunity in two ways.

You can link to your old blog posts as you’re creating new content.

You can always think about any relevant blog posts you’ve written in the past and how they fit in with the message you’re trying to communicate.

For example, I’ve recently written an article about SEO for Ultimate Guides, and I know I’ll be linking to that article when I write about Ultimate Guides in the future.

You can also go back and update your old posts with new links.

If you’ve written a lot of blog posts in the past but haven’t done a great job with linking to other blog posts, you can go update those.

If you’ve written new blog posts that might be relevant to those old blog posts, you can also link to those.

For example, I could link to Neil Patel’s tips for writing Ultimate Guides and SEO tips for writing Ultimate Guides in my Ultimate Guide Checklist, my free e-book on writing Ultimate Guides.

I’ve written these articles after writing the e-book, but I know they’ll be relevant to the e-book readers. As this e-book gets a lot of downloads, I can point those new readers to more relevant articles on my website.

As you update your content, you should start by updating the blog posts that are getting the most traffic, as that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

Opportunity #8: Facebook Groups

If you have a free (or paid) Facebook group wth a lot of members, that’s another great place to showcase your best blog posts.

You could include them in:

Welcome post / pinned post
Group description
Posts that you write in the group
The “files” section
…and any other place that comes to mind

This will help you put your best blog posts in front of more readers that are already interested in hearing from you.

Example: Jill & Josh Stanton’s Screw The Nine to Five Community

Jill & Josh Stanton (who we met earlier) do this really well in their Screw The Nine to Five Community.

For example, they recently created an announcement post, where they link to one of their latest blog posts:

How to use your Facebook group to drive more traffic to your blog posts

There are a lot of opportunities to link your blog posts up in your Facebook group.

When you do that, you just want to make sure your blog posts are relevant.

For example, if you run a Facebook group that helps entrepreneurs with productivity…

…it’s a perfect fit to link up your Ultimate Guide to Productivity in the group description as a must-read for every member.

Linking a post about parenting instead? Not as relevant.

The one thing you should do in your community is to get creative with linking your block posts.

You should always be on a lookout for more opportunities to share your blog posts, and when the opportunity comes, take it!

Opportunity #9: Social Media Profiles

If you have a decent social media following, you can use that to your advantage.

Places like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can be great places to turn your social media followers into avid blog readers.

Besides sharing your blog posts through social media, you can also link them in your social media profiles.

Those are some of the first things your new followers will check out, and great opportunities for showcasing your best blog posts.

Especially Instagram seems to be big these days, and you’ll see a lot of established entrepreneurs linking to their blog posts from it.

Instagram Profile Example: Kamila Gornia, Heart Behind Hustle

Kamila Gornia from Heart Behind Hustle links to some of her best blog posts right from her Instagram profile.

She includes a link in her profile:

After clicking on the link, her readers can click through to some of her best content:

How to link to your blog posts from your Instagram profile

The simplest thing you could do is to just link to one of your blog posts or HUB pages from your Instagram profile.

But if you want to take it a step further, there are some great tools available that allow you to link to more than just one blog post or resource on your blog.

I’ve seen two tools being used a lot:

Either of these will help you get more traffic to your best blog posts from your Instagram profile.

Opportunity #10: Guest Posts, Podcasts and Media Opportunities

If you’re using guest posting, podcasting, or writing for big publications to drive more traffic to your blog, you’ll have some great opportunities to get more traffic to your blog posts.

By providing extra blog posts for your new readers and listeners, you’re giving them extra opportunities to come to your website and deepen their understanding of the subject you’re talking about.

Media Opportunity Example: Selena Soo

My friend Selena Soo is an expert in getting more publicity for her business (and making the most out of it).

When she got featured in an article about conversation starters from Business Insider, she linked to one of her best blog posts:

Guest Post Example: Zack Arnold from Optimize Yourself

Zack Arnold from Optimize Yourself recently wrote a guest post for Growthlab. At the end of his post, in his bio box, he includes one of his best blog posts:

Podcast Example: Gretchen Rubin on The Tim Ferriss Show

When Gretchen Rubin was a guest on The Tim Ferriss Show, she referenced a lot of her books, blog posts, talks and podcast episodes.

All of these were included in the show notes and helped her spread the word about her best content:

How to use podcasts, guest posts and media opportunities to drive more traffic to your blog

Here’s how you can use each of these mediums to drive more traffic to your blog posts:

Podcasts: Make a mental list of blog posts and resources you can mention in the podcasts. Mention these whenever relevant. Then, after the interview, send the host a list of resources you talked about in the show for their show notes.
Guest posts: If you can, link to your relevant blog posts throughout the guest post. If that’s not possible, make sure you include your best blog post in the “bio box” at the end of your post to make sure the guest post readers find your website.
Media publications: You can share relevant resources with editors that are writing the articles about you. Or, if you’re writing the articles yourself, you can link to other blog posts you’ve written.

Honorable mentions

Beyond these 10 quick & easy ways to drive more traffic to your blog posts, here are some additional tactics that you can use:

Facebook LIVEs: Mention your blog posts in the description or comments section of Facebook LIVEs (either as a guest or as a host)
Instagram LIVEs: Same as with Facebook LIVEs, you can experiment with mentioning your blog posts in Instagram LIVEs
Email Signature: You can link to some of your best blog post in the email signature that you use to communicate with your target audience
Online Courses: You can add additional resources to your online course worksheets and notes where relevant
Public Speeches: You can mention interesting blog posts you’ve written on the subjects related to your speeches

Beyond tactics: How to write great blog posts that your readers will love, read and share

While I’m a big fan of quick wins and low hanging fruit, I’m also a big fan of creating incredible blog posts in the first place.

If you create great blog posts, using the tactics above will be like pouring gasoline on the fire. If you fail to do so, you’ll likely feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle when you try to drive more traffic to your blog posts.

To make sure that never happens to you, I’ve created a resource that will help you create blog posts that are 100x better than anything else in your industry.

It’s called the Ultimate Guide Checklist – and it will help you create Ultimate Guides – the most detailed and comprehensive blog posts that will absolutely blow your readers away.

You’ll learn:

How I created an Ultimate Guide that got over 250,964 views.
How to use Ultimate Guides to drive more traffic, email subscribers and paying customers to your blog
My bulletproof 9-step process for writing Ultimate Guides (that you can start using TODAY)

To download my free e-book, just leave your name and email in the box below!

-Primoz

Which of these tactics will you implement in your business today?