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E130: Designing Your Lifestyle With John Kim

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John Kim is a published writer, speaker, life coach, and a co-founder of SHFT, an online support group which helps build your self-confidence. By combining what he learned in therapy school with life coaching, the Angry Therapist came to be. However, instead of thinking of himself as a therapist, he prefers to think of himself as a lifestyle designer.

Quotes To Remember:

“History alone is not enough to have a friendship.”

“It’s okay to have different tribes.”

“The high performance is the by-product. It’s what happens when you have authentic relationships with people who are going to push you and make you accountable.”

“If you have a growth mindset, challenge becomes education.”

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • How rebirth can set you on the right track to success
  • How to Design the Life that You Want
  • Finding the Right People
  • How to Get Back on Track When You Find Yourself Stuck in a Situation

 

Key Links From The Show:

John’s Site

 

Recommended Books:

The Angry Therapist by John Kim

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday

 

Support Breakthrough Success On Patreon

Please consider supporting Breakthrough Success on Patreon. I publish five episodes per week which I carefully prepare for, and I choose to not run ads in my podcast to enhance the listener experience.

I offer my patrons various perks, and even a donation as small as $1/mo would make a big difference for growing and maintaining Breakthrough Success.

You can support Breakthrough Success by going here.

E129: Creating A High Converting Funnel Has Never Been Simpler With Chanti Zakariasen

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Chanti Zakariasen is a copywriter and funnel strategist whose content has been featured on places like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Greatest, Cosmopolitan, and more. She focuses on sales and systems and helps her clients from a funnel’s start to finish. Her past clients include a multi-million dollar spiritual development company, nutritionists, health coaches, online business moguls, biohacking specialists, supplement companies, life coaches and more. She teaches people how to create copy that converts as well as strategies that simplify your business and your life.

 

Quotes To Remember:

“The holy grail of copywriting and content marketing is establishing a sense of trust.”

“Something that is real, valuable and authentic is so much more powerful than an email.”

“You have to first establish connection before even thinking of getting into a sales pitch.”

“Every business is different and every business has different offers in place.”

“Fear is just false evidence appearing real.”

“Always create multiple streams of income.”

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to Plan a Funnel
  • Tips on Optimizing the Copy for your Funnels
  • How to Promote Products
  • What Happens at the End of a Funnel
  • Balancing Time to Your Clients and to Yourself
  • Why You Should Hire a Coach

 

Key Links From The Show:

Chanti’s Site

Chanti’s Free Quiz Funnel Course

 

Recommended Books:

Ask Method by Ryan Levesque

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferris

Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferris

 

Support Breakthrough Success On Patreon

Please consider supporting Breakthrough Success on Patreon. I publish five episodes per week which I carefully prepare for, and I choose to not run ads in my podcast to enhance the listener experience.

I offer my patrons various perks, and even a donation as small as $1/mo would make a big difference for growing and maintaining Breakthrough Success.

You can support Breakthrough Success by going here.

The Anatomy Of An Addictive Blog Post

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Not all pieces of content are created equal. Some blog posts are easy to skip over while others are addictive. They keep us engaged and leave us craving for more.

By crafting addictive blog posts, visitors will spend more time on your blog, and the trust between you and your audience will grow as the minutes go by. Once people trust you, then they buy from you.

Addictive blog posts help you generate and build upon that trust. All addictive blog posts follow a similar structure.

 

An Addictive Headline

We’ve read many headlines in our lives. You need to be very creative with your headline to attract people to your content.

Understand now that the headline you use for each blog post wields more influence than anything else when it comes to engagement and getting people to stick around.

I have two favorite tactics for crafting an addictive headline. The first tactic is to see what everyone else is doing so you know what to steer away from.

While I still have much to learn, I am getting better at removing words like tactics, tips, and similar words from my headlines. Those words are too common in current headlines for information-based content.

I could have called this blog post “X Ways To Make Your Blog Posts More Addictive” but that uses a common style. Addictive headlines shake things up.

If you want inspiration on what to do, look at BuzzFeed. They get so much engagement from their site, and their headlines play a crucial part in that engagement.

The second tactic is to write 10 headlines for each new piece of content you create. The first few headlines will be very bad, but as you write more headlines, you’ll start coming across deeper headlines. You’ll force yourself to think beyond common headlines since you probably wrote those headlines first.

The winning headline is almost never the first one you think of.

 

Content To Back It Up

Now, what if I named this blog post “You Won’t Believe What Happened To This Iguana After It Touched A Porcupine”?

To take a quick time out, if someone has that headline and an actual video, I’m curious myself.

Headlines like this make us want to learn more. However, you need the content to back up the headline.

If you come to this blog post expecting a video of an iguana touching a porcupine, you were very disappointed. However, if a blog post by the same title existed, and the iguana didn’t touch the porcupine, you’d also be very disappointed.

Addictive headlines without substance behind the content are nothing more than clickbait. Sure, you’ll get visitors, but they won’t stick around. Some will very publicly denounce your content if you use clickbait.

I know that you’re far beyond using clickbait. But it needs to be said. Make sure your content backs up the headline.

To flip from a negative like clickbait to a positive, the more you back up the headline, the more addictive your blog post becomes. I could have written three sentences for this blog post.

If I did that, it wouldn’t have captured the same value that you’re getting now. Some things can be said in three sentences. This is something that can be said in three sentences but much better said with several sections and paragraphs.  

 

Easy To Read

Notice how my paragraphs are very short? Technically, a paragraph needs to be at least four lines.

Did you see how I started one of my sentences with but when talking about clickbait? Grammatically, I should have made it a conjunction and turned those two sentences into one sentence. But that would result in a long sentence.

Long sentences and paragraphs are hard to read.

Most of your visitors will be skimmers. You need to make it as easy as possible for visitors to glean the highlights. If your blog post is really good, you might get some skimmers to slow down their pace.

You can also use bullet points and bold font. I don’t always utilize these features. But I aim to use them when I can.

To make up for that, I have clearly laid out sections in each blog post. If you don’t like a particular section (i.e. the one you’re reading now), you can just skip to the next one. Speaking about the next section…

 

Beyond The Written Word

Blogging is a writer’s dream. While writing content about a topic you enjoy is very fun, you need to incorporate multiple media formats into each blog post.

Most people only use the written word in their blog posts. Some people add a picture at the top of their blog posts and that’s about it.

That’s not enough. Nowhere near enough. At least, if you want an addictive blog post.

You need a new piece of media approximately every 300 words. That ensures your visitors aren’t just looking through a wall of text.

And notice how I said new piece of media and not just a new picture. There’s nothing wrong with including videos within your blog posts. If you include enough videos, you can turn each of your blog posts into mini training courses.

Depending on the videos you choose (engagement, total minutes, etc.), some of your videos may spend more than 20 minutes on a single blog post.

I also recommend choosing YouTube videos because YouTube is good at getting people to continue watching videos. They offer tailored suggestions which would then be offered on your blog.

Some of your visitors may watch more of the videos YouTube suggested all while on your blog. That’s a lot of time to spend on one place, and that’s how trust builds at a rapid pace.

 

In Conclusion

Addictive blog posts are meant to keep people on your blog for as long as possible. The only way people will stick around is if you give them multiple reasons to do so. You can provide a legendary experience, massive value, and a stream of additional content.

We need to advance beyond creating valuable content. Valuable content is important, but we all know that creating valuable content is important. We need to think more about the experience and optimizing our content for minutes viewed.

Long form content is better optimized for a boost in minutes. But if you include engaging videos within your content, you’ll reach the next level in engagement.

What are your thoughts on the anatomy of addictive blog posts? Do you have any advice to share about making blog posts more addictive? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

March 2018 Performance Report

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This was a month of reconnection after a stomach virus took up a week of February. Sometimes, I believe we can feel alone as we create content for our audiences. I know you and others will read this Performance Report and consume more of my content.

However, when I’m typing this Performance Report or creating any other piece of content, it’s just me. Then I get comments (which I will catch up on) and realize that there are people consuming my content.

I reconnected with the fact that I’m providing the content to real people who go beyond grouping terms like content creators and entrepreneurs. Hosting webinars this month helped me grasp this concept under a new light. I’ll talk more about that later.

iCalendar For Productivity

Now that I learned how to use iCalendar productively, I honestly don’t think I need another productivity tool.

One piece of advice I frequently came across in books was to schedule tasks into your day or else they won’t get done.

That’s why I wrote out different tasks and when I would do them on a sheet of paper. However, that took up time, and those pieces of paper got messy when I needed to make adjustments.

Enter iCalendar (or Google Calendar or your equivalent). I now schedule my entire day on iCalendar so I know what I have to do and when.

Here’s an example of what a day can look like on iCalendar (I could only get part of it in the shot).

I can look at this day and see what’s scheduled and when I have to do everything. I can also see how long each activity is supposed to last. This results in mini deadlines within my day.

I know I have a limited amount of time to pursue a task. If I go beyond that limited time, my schedule will soon become a mess due to the way I squeeze tasks throughout each day.

I’ll also print out each day from iCalendar so I can cross out each task with my pen upon completion. Crossing out your goal or using a checkmark with a pen is very different from just deleting it from iCalendar once you’ve completed the goal.

 

Webinars Are A Big Part Of My Future

I finally hosted my first webinar of 2018. While that one had no audio, my second webinar had audio and had a big impact on some of the attendees. With Twitter’s big changes having a significant impact on my traffic, I am now looking for new ways to drive traffic to my brand.

Webinars combined with ads will open the doors to more traffic, and more importantly, conversions.

I’ve already hosted a webinar for the Content Marketing Success Summit All-Access Pass. I plan on promoting Virtual Summit Blueprint next and working my way up to promoting the Content Marketing Plaza which is my flagship course.

For my first webinar (I’m referencing the webinar with audio), I got an EPC (earnings per conversion) of $1.38

That’s a small margin for error when using CPC (cost per conversion) ads to drive traffic to the webinar.

That’s why I’m promoting the Virtual Summit Blueprint at $197 in some of my future webinars. That way, I have more room with the EPC assuming everything else remains equal. In the everything being equal scenario, the webinar featuring my Blueprint would have a whooping $5.79 CPC.

That’s more than enough room for an ad.

The only challenge I have is that the first webinar I did was in-house. Everyone in the audience already knew me. Most of the people I get from ads may not know who I am which would affect the conversion rate.

 

CMSS II

One of my greatest successes in 2017 was the Content Marketing Success Summit. Over 50 speakers gathered together to share their insights and give attendees an incredible experience.

Now we’re in 2018, and I’m eager to run another virtual summit. I love the model, but I made two big mistakes last year.

The first big mistake was doing most of the work by myself. With the exception of video editing, I literally did everything by myself. I created the webpages while playing my part as customer service and the affiliate manager.

If you think that’s stressful enough, add the fact that I got excited and launched the Productivity Virtual Summit less than three months after CMSS. I was essentially working on two virtual summits at the same time. I believe this is possible with more preparation, but I definitely overdid it.

That’s why I’m only doing one virtual summit this year. My codename for it is CMSS II which will feature all past interviews and a bunch of new ones. The goal, which is very doable based on how many people I know and interview for my podcast, is to have a total of 70-80 speakers for CMSS II. It will be the same landing page and everything with a few minor tweaks.

Right now, the launch is slated for some time in November. I haven’t finalized dates yet since I want to see what other affiliate promotions are happening in November, but it is slated for November.

That gives me 7 months to prepare instead of the 3 months I got to prepare for the previous summit (while preparing for another one at the same time). I have more time to recruit affiliates and land top level speakers for the summit.

 

Books I Read

I didn’t keep track of this the way I should have. I read the books that I re-read each day, but I need to strengthen my reading habit for April.

I have 10 audiobooks that I haven’t read yet. The reason is that lately the bike has been bothering me, and that’s when I listen to most of my audiobooks. I also need to start biking again, so I’ll do more of a stretch beforehand to get on the bike and listen to more audiobooks.

I also need to read more paperbacks and hardcovers as well.

At the same time, I want to ensure that I’m reading books but taking action as well. This is the juggling act many of us face, and a focus on audiobooks will help me on the action taking part.

 

Review Of March 2018 Goals

#1: Run FB Ads For The Content Marketing Success Summit: While I do not have FB ads running for CMSS, I have hosted multiple webinars. Once I have a high converting webinar (likely in April), I will use Facebook ads to get more attendees.

#2: Get Involved With 4 Cross Promotions: This didn’t happen but I have reached out to several YouTubers about collaboration series. I’m excited about putting out daily content on YouTube soon and hope to collab with a bunch of awesome people.

#3: Plan Out A CMP Promotion: I have a vague idea of when I’ll promote CMP again. I know it will be after CMSS II, but I’ll run some webinars for it beforehand to get the conversions solid.

#4: Write The Draft For My Next Book: I made progress but not enough progress. I still have a decent way to go but can get it done in April.

#5: Delegate More Tasks: I either stayed the same or slightly improved.

 

April 2018 Goals

#1: Run A Webinar On FB Ads With A $3 NEPC: I intend on making a net profit of $3 for every opt-in to my webinar. I’ll test it first and then run FB ads right after. EPC stands for earnings per conversion, and I added the N for net. That’s why NEPC is there.

#2: Finish The First Draft Of My Next Book: I have two rounds for my book. The first round is me getting to 30,000 words and laying out all of the topics. The second round is more focused on storytelling and incorporating examples throughout the book.

#3: Confirm CMSS II Dates: This is something I can do in less than an hour, but I need to go back to last year’s launch and analyze what worked before I determine how long the launch will be and when it will take place. I also need to make sure my launch doesn’t conflict with another launch in my niche.

#4: Start Uploading Daily YouTube Videos: I am very excited about this goal. I’ve always wanted to hit 100K subscribers on YouTube, and while I am a long way from that goal (I’m about to break 3K), I am excited to be back in action. You’ll see daily videos from me soon enough.

#5: Get Traffic From Twitter Again: Twitter’s new rule about no evergreen tweets in a repeating cycle threw my traffic off towards the end of the month. My goal will be to regain traffic that I lost by using Twitter in new ways. I believe these changes are better for Twitter overall but will be a pain for marketers in the short-term.

In Conclusion

The biggest win, without question, was getting back in the webinar game. I see so much potential now that I’m taking webinars seriously.

The revenue I generate from the webinars will help pay off current expenses while expanding my horizons…all while boosting my profit (reminder: that’s different from revenue).

What are your thoughts on this Performance Report? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How to Write Content That Resonates With Your Audience

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Related image

This is a guest contribution from Anna Rud.

You wrote an exceptional article hoping for shares, likes, and exposure but it seems like nobody noticed your post. There could be a number of reasons for this failure: from silly typo at the beginning of the article to bad SEO. But maybe the real reason is even simpler: you’re not on the same page with your readers.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating content in different niches. Every particular niche has its particular audience, and you have to figure it out before embarking on writing.

In this post, I’m going to describe my way to finding niche patterns and features by exploring top blogs and niche questions.

 

Competitor analysis method

How to figure out your audience? It would take years to find patterns and understand preferences of your readers as all you can is to test different approaches and listen carefully to the reactions.

Well, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel as soon as you can benefit from your competitors by the analysis of their audience. Unless you’re a genius that found completely unique idea (or a weirdo that writes about something no one cares about) you do have competitors in your niche! So let’s find and analyze them!

#1 Find top blogs in your niche

Here I can suggest 2 simple yet effective ways to quickly find best blogs in your niche:

Google it!

The first thing you can do is to type your primary keywords into the Google search. For instance, if you’re running digital marketing blog, type “seo guide” into the search box and explore SERP top-10.

Note, that your query should concern a fundamental issue every ambitious blog definitely have written about. It’s clear that every SEO blog strives to write the most comprehensive SEO guide that will rank high. Thus, this query will give you the list of leading blogs.

Here you’ll find Moz, Kissmetrics, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Quicksprout, Wordstream, Neil Patel’s blogs. These results show that this simple method works well as we all know that these blogs are leaders in the digital marketing niche.

Find a listing

Another way, which is even simpler than the previous one, is to find a list of best {your keyword} blogs:

All work is done for you! You’ll find compilation of the established blogs, but you shouldn’t trust it entirely. Note, that leading blogs has:

  • Traffic about 500K — 1M and more (you can check it with SimilarWeb);
  • Social activity: likes, shares, comments;
  • Regular publications.

Select up to 10 top blogs and proceed to the next step.

#2: Find and analyze their most shared content

Now our task is to find out what type of content and what topics people in our niche like the most. Here I’ll use BuzzSumo tool that finds most shared content (for keyword or domain):

As you see, you can sort the results by FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest shares. Also, it allows choosing a date, content type, language, country, and even word count.

Here is where easy part ends. Now you should read a ton of competitor’s articles. I suggest choosing top 10 articles from each site we’ve selected earlier. Read all of them (ok, you can just glance through it) and analyze the niche. This research will give you a great insight into what people want to see on your blog:

  • What topics are they interested in the most?
  • How long should my post be (how many words)?
  • What writing style should I choose?
  • What type of content to post?
  • How many images should be in the post?
  • And more!

I suggest creating a spreadsheet to collect all information together in one place. Here is what it looks like for me:

Of course, columns in the spreadsheet may differ depending on your goals. You can analyze every single detail or estimate blog in general, as you wish. Our goal remains the same: learn from your opponents and find the niche patterns.

For instance, doing this small research, I got few important things about digital marketing blogs:

  • You always should be up-to-date! I found at least one article about Google/Facebook update at the top of each blog. Such posts often go viral!
  • Bring the value and prove everything you say. I see this pattern over and over again when reading guest post guidelines on different blogs. Small sites point that you can use 1 link per post / can’t use links in the body of the article at all. Large platforms are not afraid of links as far as they are relevant and bring value to the reader. So always refer to studies, investigations, influencers’ articles to prove your point.

To find content that is interesting to your audience at this very moment, choose “past month” filter. Check these blogs, conduct the analysis and come up with best topics for your blog posts.

As I said earlier, every particular niche has its particular audience. At the same time, even every particular blog has a particular audience. You can’t entirely rely on your competitors or leaders. Anyway, your audiences are similar, so this analysis could save you from some mistakes and give you an idea about your niche as a whole.

#3: Niche question research

I found out that there is much buzz around content marketing and SMM strategies these days. Also, there are a lot of articles about snippets update. I decided to write about content marketing. But what sides of this topic should I cover in my post?

This is where niche question research comes in handy.

Quora

Question-and-answer platforms can provide you with some specific ideas to cover in the post. Type your primary keyword into the search box, choose “last month” filter, and explore the results. Here are some interesting questions I found here:

Note that it should be a question that hasn’t been answered in full yet. Choose some exciting question and be the first one to create a comprehensive post concerning this issue.

Also, you can use a summary of your post as an answer to this question on Quora. Of course, you can leave a link to your post here as well!

SEO tool

Another way to find exciting questions in your niche is to use the SEO tool like Serpstat. It has “search questions” feature that finds question people frequently ask on Google, YouTube, and Amazon. All questions are asked by real people in real time. Here are some interesting things I found:

Quick tip: it sorts queries in the ascending order by the number of words in the phrase. Thus, the most interesting and specific questions are at the end of the report.

#4: Create an article!

Finally, we can focus on the fun part: writing! Let’s sum up the process:

  • Find trending topics analyzing top blogs in your niche. You can read their most shared articles or most recent ones that seem to be successful. It doesn’t mean that you should steal their ideas. Instead of it, you can figure out the trend, find something they’ve missed, and write content that stands out.
  • Look at these topics from a new perspective and get an insight into what people want to know on this topic by searching for questions people ask on the Internet. Sure, there’s nothing unique or special left in the world. That said, there are so many aspects of every topic. Niche questions help to find these aspects.
  • Turn question (that is related to the trending topic you’ve chosen) from Quora into the heading of your article. Now use questions from Serpstat as subheadings. These questions are LSI keywords, so you’re killing two marketing birds with one stone: since questions are asked by real people, we can assume that audience want to find an answer, at the same time, you’re using more keywords and getting more traffic as well!

The only thing left to do is to write an exceptional content, and this is where I leave you. This method will help you to find topics, ideas, and writing style that resonates with your audience. You, in turn, should take the responsibility for writing, listening to your readers’ reactions, and improving your content strategy according to them. And I wish you to be on the same page with your audience!

 

In Conclusion

As content creators, we need to show appreciation to our audience by creating content that will highly resonate with them. Before you publish a post, ask yourself if your target audience would care about what you are going to publish. If not, you might have to change your perspective, research more, and write content that is specific to what your readers want to know.

Have you already figured out your target audience? Are you writing content that resonates with them? Share your thoughts in comments!

 

Anna Rud is a Content Marketer in an IT company. She’s often writing useful pieces on how to rank higher, how to write for the Web, how to carry out PPC campaign and so on. Obsessed with the constant learning.

 

How To Host A Profitable Podcast

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Podcasts present an extraordinary opportunity to feed several birds with one scone. I can go on and on about why podcasting is so powerful, but here’s a brief list:

  • Content production
  • Connections
  • Self-education
  • Environment (surrounding yourself with likeminded people)
  • Exposure when guests share their respective episodes

While podcasting is incredible, it’s just a hobby if you can’t profit from it. Some people are quicker to label an unprofitable blog as a hobby than an unprofitable podcast. These people believe that the relationship building and all of the benefits I listed above outweigh the expenses of hosting your own podcast.

What happens when you have to pay for your team, living expenses, and anything else? How much does an unprofitable podcast contribute? An unprofitable podcast would actually hurt your ability to make those payments.

If times get tough, you’ll shut down the podcast. That will open up more revenue you can use to make payments and grow your business.

It’s essential to make your podcast profitable. By the end of this blog post, you will have clarity on some of the actions you can take to make your podcast profitable.

 

Look At Your Expenses

Few people like to look at where their money is going. It’s very ironic since money is the lifeline of your brand, but most people lose track.

The idea goes like this: As long as I continue making payments and don’t lose my way of living, I’m doing fine.

This is how expenses mount and businesses break even but never make a profit. The profit, if any, is just enough to keep things going.

When I looked at my expenses, I noticed something astonishing. Ever since I boosted the frequency of my episodes, I spent over $1,000/mo maintaining the podcast.

The kicker? My podcast wasn’t making me a penny.

Think about how this pattern becomes more significant as we think in years. Here I was with a $12,000/yr money eater. All five of those benefits listed above don’t seem so shiny now.

Most of the expenses came from my team. I hired an editor and show notes writer so I’d just focus on prepping for and conducting the interviews. Libsyn only cost $40/mo, and that’s just because I published five episodes every week (now daily).

Having a team behind your podcast is critical for getting the episodes out. I couldn’t have started Breakthrough Success without my team behind me, but when I saw how much this was costing me each month, I knew I needed to make a change.

I previously hired employees on UpWork where I could find potential hires anywhere in the world. While some people on UpWork charge $3/hr, others charge well over that for their work.

After interviewing many experts on my show, I came across John Jonas, the founder of onlinejobs.ph. On this site, I came across Filipino workers happy to work for $3-6/hr. While I was skeptical (I had heard the phrase “you get what you pay for”, I was amazed by their work. They over delivered and help me to this day.

Paying more attention to my expenses allowed me to cut them by more than half. With any part of your business, there are two ways to make more money. The first way is to boost your revenue. The rest of this blog post will focus on that.

However, the second way to make more money from your business is by reducing expenses. If you cut your expenses by $500/mo, that’s an extra $500/mo you get to keep or reinvest into more things.

 

Grow Your Audience

The size of your audience determines how much revenue you make from your podcast. If you get 10,000 downloads from each episode, you’ll have more clout to contact potential sponsors. Some sponsors may even seek you out.

Sponsor opportunities can become very lucrative as your listenership grows. In her book Entrepreneurial You, Dorie Clark shares that many podcasts get around $20-$35 for each thousand listeners when the episode is sponsored. Some podcast hosts make slightly less while others make much more than that for every thousand downloads.

If you get 10,000 downloads for each episode, we’re talking about $200-$350 for every episode. If you run a daily show, that’s $6,000 to $10,500 every month.

To grow your audience, you need a strategy for promoting every episode. Tell your social media audience, communicate with your list, and tell the guest when their episode comes out. That way, not only will you promote the episode, but your guest will also promote the episode.

Depending on how well you know some of your guests and the overall topic of the interview, you can recommend some of your other episodes. If one of my guests enjoys reading Seth Godin’s books, I’ll mention the episode when I interviewed Seth Godin.

 

Leverage The Post-Interview

The end of any Breakthrough Success interview never represents how the conversation truly ends. I thank the guest for being on the show and we have a quick conversation. I tell them they can share or not share. I never want to put pressure on my guests to share their episodes.

During the post-interview, I will also ask guests if they know anyone who would be a great fit for the show. This makes it easier for me to attract great guests on my show, and more guests typically means more exposure.

The post-interview is important for strengthening the relationship and inviting guests to share your episode when it  comes out. Some of your guests will share the episode months and even years after it has been published.

 

Craft A Monetization Plan

Getting sponsors onboard is one way to generate revenue for your podcast. In the beginning, you won’t have a line of sponsors approaching you. Instead, you may decide to promote brands as an affiliate.

You’ll hear me promote Audible and other resources in future episodes. These are resources I have promoted before without the incentive, but now I am more actively promoting them to boost my podcasting profits.

You need a plan for monetizing your podcast with each promotion and throughout the conversation. I mention Audible when I ask guests to share their three favorite books. At the end of episodes, I mention one of my offers. All of that can change as I get approached by sponsors interested in getting featured on my show.

Know where in the episode you’ll mention sponsors and which questions will lead into offers. You can also use your outro to promote offers and/or sponsors, but never your intro. If you promote an offer or sponsor in the intro, that’s the first impression new listeners will have of you…and that’s a very bad first impression.

 

In Conclusion

Podcasting is a great opportunity, but to continue exploring and growing with this opportunity, you need to make a profit from your efforts. Become more conscious of your expenses and how much money you’re leaving behind by not crafting a monetization plan.

How do you make your podcast profitable? What have you seen that works very well? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.