Marc's Blog

4 Things To Do On Instagram Right Now

October 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Instagram is booming. With over 300 million users, Instagram has quickly emerged as “just another social network” to one of the top social networks on the web. Brands have capitalized on the opportunity and have accrued large audiences on Instagram.

However, not everyone uses Instagram for business. While Twitter and Facebook are established as great social networks for business, Instagram is usually left out. Although Instagram gets left out, it has a lot of firepower.

Instagram recently rolled out paid ads, and these ads should soon enough bring forth sensational results. Why? Facebook owns Instagram, and Facebook ads are the best type of social media ads today. You can get highly targeted likes for less than $0.01 per like.

Facebook has mastered the social media advertising game. Instagram is next. Imagine how game changing it would be if you could get highly targeted Instagram followers for as little as $0.01 per follower.

It’s going to happen, and at this stage of the game, you can grow a large Instagram audience without paying a penny. While a post on a Facebook Page is seen by a small percentage of your fans, an Instagram post will get seen by a large chunk of your audience. The average photo or video posted by an Instagram brand reaches 25-35% of that brand’s followers.

You don’t want to wait any longer. Instagram is the social network that needs your attention now. Regardless of whether you’ve been focusing on Instagram all along or Instagram for business never crossed your mind, these are the four things you must do on Instagram right now.

#1: Post Daily

Each time you post a new picture on Instagram, your audience sees your content. As you begin posting pictures more often, the people within your audience start to remember you. Some people in your audience will remember you so well that they will go to your profile for new posts.

In other words, they won’t wait for your posts to show up in their home feed. They want to see your latest Instagram posts the moment you cross their minds.

When you post every day, you become a familiar face to the people within your audience. As more people engage with your Instagram posts, there will be certain people who you also become familiar with. This is how relationships on social media are built.

The relationships you build on social media can lead to great opportunities. Some of the relationships I built on social media led to podcast interviews, guest blogging opportunities, and more.

Finally, by posting daily, you have a stronger incentive to grow on that social network. If you have thousands of pictures on Instagram, that is an incentive to make all of the work you put into your Instagram account worthwhile. That same incentive is not as powerful for a Twitter account with only five tweets.

Posting daily lets you embrace Instagram, see its potential, and grow an audience of people who appreciate your content.

#2: Use Canva To Create Awesome Pictures

One of the main reasons people don’t post on Instagram every day is because they don’t believe they have that many pictures worth sharing. There are only so many pictures within the camera roll. What do you do when you run out of awesome pictures to share?

There are two solutions.

Take another picture
Create a picture

I prefer creating my pictures and then posting them to Instagram. Canva is the best free tool on the web for creating pictures. You get numerous templates, background colors, and add-ons to choose from.

If you don’t like their add-ons, you can always upload your own pictures (or pictures from the web) to Canva’s dashboard.

#3: Consider Outsourcing The Work

The largest barrier that held me back from utilizing Instagram was time. I saw Instagram’s potential but would never have the time to get to it. With the mix of growing my Twitter audience and now focusing most of my time on Udemy, my time was spread too thin for Instagram.

Now most of my work is outsourced. All I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers because everything else has been outsourced. All of that time I once spent following people and scheduling tweets gets devoted to other parts of my business.

Now I am putting more time and effort towards Instagram. But even now, outsourcing still reigns. I hire people to create the pictures for my Instagram account and this blog. I didn’t create the picture you saw at the top of this blog post.

And I have no shame in admitting that. Outsourcing some of your Instagram activity allows you to buy back valuable time that you can repurpose into other parts of your business. Even if you don’t outsource your Instagram activity, you need to outsource something in your business immediately.

#4: Use HootSuite To Schedule Posts From Your Desktop For Free

The second largest barrier holding me back from utilizing Instagram was poor desktop compatibility. Since I do most of my work on my Mac Book Pro, and Instagram isn’t as optimized for the desktop as it is for mobile, I didn’t spend much time on Instagram.

Then HootSuite came through in the clutch (again) by making Instagram a part of the dashboard. Now it is possible to schedule Instagram posts for free straight from the HootSuite dashboard regardless of whether you are using a mobile device or a desktop.

The bridge has finally been connected and made free for everyone. But if you do not cross that bridge to Instagram Domination, then the bridge serves no purpose.

If you don’t have time to schedule your Instagram posts, you can easily outsource that work to someone else so you can focus on your Instagram account’s growth.

In Conclusion

Instagram is a booming social network that is only going to get bigger and better for business. If you do not utilize Instagram yet, then now is the time to start. Right now, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts about Instagram for business? How do you use Instagram? What tips do you have for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Make A Comeback With Your Blog

October 21, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

The main reason most people give up on blogging is because they don’t make money right away. These people look for a short-term way to make money, hope blogging will be the solution, and then get disappointed.

In the long-term, blogging can become very profitable, but in the short-term, blogging doesn’t make a lot of money. This realization results in many people leaving their blogs behind and leaving them in the back of the internet’s closet.

Some of these people come back to their blogs and ask themselves, “How do I start over again?”

These people want to become bloggers again and understand that although there isn’t much short-term profit, the long-term profit can be huge.

But blogging isn’t all about money. If you don’t enjoy writing blog posts, you won’t have fun and you won’t make money. The most successful bloggers also love what they write about. That shouldn’t be shocking.

If you find yourself returning to your blog for the first time in several months, or if you need to renew your blogging spirit, it’s time for you to make a comeback.

Type Away

If you consistently write over 1,000 words per day, it will quickly become a habit. Habits are easier to stick with since they eventually become encoded into our work ethic without second thought. For me, writing thousands of words per day is a habitual process because that’s how many words I write every day.

So how does typing thousands of words per day become a second-nature habit? The first step is to understand how habits are formed in the first place. If you do the same activity every day for a little over two months, that activity suddenly becomes a habit.

For two months, it was difficult for me to keep the commitment of writing 1,000 words each day. Now keeping that commitment is just as easy as keeping my commitment of eating food and drinking water. Writing thousands of words per day has become an essential part of my day.

The other step is to give yourself an incentive to continue. Give yourself a reward for staying commitment and a reason to avoid stopping. No technique works better than the Jerry Seinfeld technique. Here’s the technique in a nutshell:

Get a calendar
Put a red “X” on each day you stay true to your commitment (i.e. writing 1,000 words in a day)
Make that streak go as long as possible

Soon enough, you will be riding on a hot streak. Once you are on a hot streak, you will never want it to end. It’s one of the reasons I still play on the piano, write over 1,000 words, and do something for my Udemy courses every single day.

I have hot streaks in multiple areas. It would be a shame for me to let any of those hot streaks go back to zero.

Figure Out Why You Left Or Lost Your Enthusiasm For Blogging In The First Place

We’ve all heard of the phrase, “Don’t make the same mistakes again.” If you make a mistake the first time, it is still possible to make the same mistake a second time. Some people make the same mistakes dozens of times.

Identifying why you took a course of action that led to a mistake is one solution to not making the same mistake again. Knowing why you stopped blogging or lost your enthusiasm for it will let you know how to avoid making the same mistake.

Once you know what happened, you can then create adjustments that prevent you from making the same mistake again. Build habits that prevent you from making the mistake(s) that resulted in you losing your enthusiasm or stop blogging all together.

The Best Is Yet To Come

Each time I felt down about my business, I would always think of this saying. I’ll never forget the impact it had on me the first time I heard it. Depending on how seriously you take this advice and how you combine it with your work, these six words may become your prophecy.

When you write your blog posts and look at your stats, understand that the best is yet to come. Just because you may not be getting many visitors now does not mean that will always be the case. This saying doesn’t guarantee success, but it will inspire you to put in more work than you have ever put in before.

This was the piece of advice that made me realize I had to outsource most of my business now so I could repurpose my time towards more important goals. The more work you put in the more luck you get. Believe that the best is yet to come, and you will always have something to head towards.

In Conclusion

On some days, blogging gets challenging. For some reason, our goals seem to become the most challenging as we approach the accomplishment of those goals. During one stretch, I felt incredibly challenged with trying to grow my Twitter audience. In five years, I wanted to have 100,000 Twitter followers. It felt impossible.

Then, I hit a breakthrough and now have over 250,000 Twitter followers. In my original plan, I still wouldn’t be past 100,000 Twitter followers.

Maybe the reason why you feel uncomfortably challenged is because you are about to hit a breakthrough.

4 Step Formula To Always Living Your Ideal Day

October 19, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Prepare to get surprised. Living your ideal day each day is not as difficult as it sounds. It all starts with a decision to be a better you and then knowing and implementing the rest of the steps (don’t worry if you don’t know what those steps are. That’s what this blog post is all about).

Living your ideal day every day comes down to a four step formula that gets easier to implement over time. The best part about this four step formula is that you can always utilize it to live a more ideal day even when you reach your goal of the ideal day.

#1: Craft It

You can’t reach your destination if you don’t know where you are going. The first step of this formula is to simply identify what your ideal day is. For some people, this involves thinking outside of the box. Imagine if there was just one day when you didn’t have to do any work except for the work that you chose to do.

If you choose an ideal day filled with no work whatsoever and a day filled with watching TV, then this blog post isn’t for you. However, if you choose an ideal day where you are only addressing your most important work, then this blog post is for you.

My ideal day has slight variations based on my business’ path. Here are the main things I would like to do every day:

Write some blog posts
Do some videos for my Udemy courses
Do some videos for my YouTube channel
Play the piano
Run
Engage with my social media followers
Do one Periscope broadcast

Some of these activities get split up and I manage to do them every other day. However, this is a general idea of what type of work I am doing on my ideal day. What does this mean?

Everything else is a distraction.

Bold, italics, and underlined—the whole package. I’ve never done that on my blog before, but I made an exception because this is such an important point. That brings us into the second step.

#2: Outsource Anything That Doesn’t Fit

Just a few months ago, scheduling tweets and following people on Twitter would have been on that list.

No longer. They were distractions that I outsourced a few weeks ago. Although they are important for the growth of my Twitter account, they were distractions nevertheless. Now my Twitter audience grows like normal, but I get a few hours back every week.

That’s how Udemy course creation found its way on the list. I also have more time to expand my audience on Pinterest and sending pins every day. My bad. I meant to say I outsource all of that Pinterest activity. If I had to spend hours growing my Pinterest audience and sending dozens of pins each day, I wouldn’t have as much time to live my ideal day.

So I’m outsourcing a lot of my activity to other people. Does that make me a lazy entrepreneur? It makes me lazy in the same sense as a billionaire. My guess is that most billionaires have outsourced 99% of their businesses. Billionaires still do a lot for their businesses, but no billionaire is a solopreneur of any kind. Their employees do most of the work.

It is easy to perceive someone who outsources most of his/her business as a lazy entrepreneur, but it’s quite the opposite. Many of these people are more productive than anyone else with their time.

Remember, your ideal day is super important. Anything that stands in the way is an obstacle that stands in the way of your ideal day.

#3: Turn Each Activity In Your Ideal Day Into A Habit

I can write blog posts with my eyes closed (but I don’t. That’s no fun). Writing thousands of blog posts across numerous blogs and writing over a dozen books allowed me to memorize the entire keyboard.

That’s what happens when you do the same activity every day for a long period of time.

One activity I listed in my ideal day that may shock people was playing the piano. It’s something I started recently, so I haven’t had much time to talk about it in my blog posts. According to science, it takes a little more than two months to turn something into a habit.

After playing the piano for over two months, it has now become a habit. I never go to bed now unless I play the piano (on vacations, I make an exception). On some days, I am only playing the piano for five minutes. On other days, I am playing on the piano for well over two hours.

What inspired me to play the piano was a reawakening of my passion for music. What inspired me to play it every day was a powerful case study of a girl who dances for 365 days straight. If you haven’t watched the video yet, leave this blog and watch it now. You’ll be glad you did, and the content will still be here.

#4: Always Anticipate Having Less Time

No matter how much I outsource my business, I always feel as if I have less time than I need. No, I’m not spoiled or unproductive with me time. Rather, this feeling makes me more productive. There are two types of people in the world:

Person #1: “I have all of the time in the world.”

Person #2: “I am running out of time. It’s literally like sand slipping through my fingers.”

Person #1 has no urgency to act and achieve. Person #2 on the other hand has a larger incentive. If I believe it will take me six hours to accomplish one of my goals, I only give myself four hours to accomplish that same goal. More action is taken, and I discover ways to streamline the process much quicker than if I were to have those extra two hours.

The less time you have, the more urgent something becomes. Urgency creates effective action.

In Conclusion

Living your ideal day is important. We know that, but living the ideal day every day is not a fantasy. It is quite possible with a mix of direction and effort. This four step formula is the direction you need. Now it’s just a matter of putting in the work.

Right now, I want to hear from you. Which step in this formula do you think is the most important? How do you see this four step formula happening in your life? How close are you to living your ideal day? Sound off in the comments section below!

The Two Hidden Barriers To A Full-Time Income

October 16, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

We all want to become successful. And most of us define success as making a full-time income. We don’t celebrate the income itself, but instead we celebrate the possibilities created by that income.

People get inspired to become successful and make a full-time income by thinking about the possibilities and reading the case studies. I’ll never forget when I first read Jeremy Schoemaker’s case study of going from broke to making eight figures with his blog. That case study lit the fire and made me realize it was possible for me as well.

In my journey, I encountered several obstacles. The largest obstacle I encountered in the beginning was my age. It’s easy to write off a 13-year-old who recently became an entrepreneur. It’s harder to write me off now. People won’t believe you in the beginning, so you have to rise above that.

The big barriers I am talking about don’t focus on the motivational side of success. You need to be motivated to become successful, but these two barriers can even hold back the most motivated people who strive to become successful.

These two barriers held me back until a few months ago. The interesting thing about these barriers was that I didn’t know they were barriers until I made it on the other side. Yes, the grass is actually greener on the side I’m on. These are the two invisible barriers:

#1: Time

In my opinion, I believe people know a lack of time is a barrier, but few people don’t understand the full scope of that. Just because you are productive for eight hours per day and never avoid burnout doesn’t mean you will be successful.

I normally compare busy work to productive work and say that busy work is just a waste of time. But nay, I’ve realized that being productive isn’t enough either.

That’s because we define our productivity. For me, following hundreds of people every day to grow my Twitter audience was me being productive. I gained anywhere from 300-500 followers per day, but by calling it productive, I couldn’t have been fooling myself more than I had.

Then I became a CEO. The simple version: I started hiring people.

Never again will you find me manually following hundreds of people in a given day. I have outsourced all of that work to a trustworthy employee. Never again will I create a picture for one of my blog posts. I hired someone who creates pictures that are better than my pictures.

I thought I was productive by following all of those people and creating pictures. I only saw how wrong I was when I jumped over to the other side. After jumping to the other side, I immediately questioned my productivity as a whole.

Was it productive for me to schedule tweets every day? Was it productive for me to edit all of those videos? Was it productive for me to schedule my blog posts? Was it productive to send pins and grow my Pinterest audience?

NO! None of those activities were productive. I understand if those four things don’t happen, critical parts of my business become obsolete. If no more blog posts get scheduled on this blog, then it’s only a matter of time before search engines stop ranking this blog high. If my videos don’t get edited, I can’t create Udemy courses.

I decided to change my definition of productivity. Productivity isn’t putting a lot of work on your shoulders–even if all of that work is vital for the growth and survival of your business. Productivity is identifying what you (and only you) can do and then outsourcing everything else to other people.

Here is the current list of things that only I can do for my business:

Write blog posts (no ghost writers or contributions. I’ve written all of these blog posts since Day #1)
Create videos (I can sort of outsource that when I create courses with other people. I’ll talk more about that later)
Create slides for my presentations (I should know and create my entire battle plan for every video I do)
Engage with my social media audience (that’s too important for me to outsource)
Look at results (I only do this once a day just so I see what is working and what isn’t working)

The list looks like a decently sized list, but think about all of the things that did not make the list. This gives me more time to explore new opportunities and leverage what works for me. Once I created this list, I set my boundaries.

Any work I do for my business that does not make this list is unproductive. With this new definition, scheduling tweets is unproductive. So is scheduling blog posts. I don’t remember the last time I edited one of my videos. Someone else does that for me.

#2: Not Being In An Inner Circle

This invisible barrier is a barrier few people recognize. Part of that is because of the way we define an inner circle. To be clear, role models aren’t good enough. Role models create inspiration, but an inner circle is more valuable than that.

An inner circle that helps you thrive fits the following parameters:

The people within the inner circle are doing what you want to do.
They are more successful than you and/or possess expertise that you don’t have.
You actively engage with these people and they actively engage with you back. You both get to know each other on a more personal level.
You are giving back and providing value too. Let these people know what works for you and work together on some of the projects.

For some of you, school may have been a long time ago. Think about creating a diorama. The most successful diorama is usually created by the group with the most skilled students working together to achieve the same goal. They both bring different skills and work to the table, but both of them put in a lot of effort.

Then when they get the A, those students become best friends afterwards. They go on to create numerous dioramas throughout the year that make the teacher marvel.

That’s how the inner circle works in a nutshell.

Creating courses on Udemy taught me the power of the inner circle. I’ll never forget when my friend Jerry Banfield sent an email encouraging other instructors to make a course with him. At the time, I didn’t know him well on a personal level. I knew he was crushing it on Udemy (he makes over $1,000 a day from it), so I decided to create a course with him and see what I could learn.

We each approached the course with different skills. It was a course about how we write thousands of words every day. I personally prefer to type away, so I created videos that focus on the typing aspect. Jerry prefers using a dictation tool that lets him speak/write over 10,000 words in an hour.

Working together allowed us to create a valuable course that targeted multiple writing styles. Jerry provided insights that I wouldn’t have included and vice-versa.

I learned his approach to creating successful Udemy courses and saw how he promoted my course in an email blast. I got to see some of the methods that worked for him and how it impacted our course sales in the long-term.

After co-creating a course with Jerry, I decided to turn course co-creation into an integral part of my business. I saw that Jerry partnered up with other instructors. I decided to contact some of these instructors asking them if they wanted to create courses with me.

Joe Parys, another highly successful Udemy instructor, got back to me. I got to learn from him as we created a course on social media time management. We brought different expertise to the table which resulted in a better course.

The important thing to note is that creating the courses with Jerry and Joe wasn’t the end. We continue talking with each other to this day and thinking of different courses we can create together. Jerry and Joe gave my Udemy strategy a new level of accountability.

You need to have a group of people who raise you to the next level and have the proper expertise to do it. That’s what an inner circle is all about.

In Conclusion

We see the visible barriers to success. We see that motivation is essential and that taking action is just as vital. However, we make barriers like these seem so big that we let the invisible (but often larger) barriers go unattended.

What are your thoughts on these invisible barriers? Do you think there are other barriers that we don’t give much attention to? Sound off in the comments section below.

My Outsourcing Case Study

October 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

A common theme on my blog lately has been outsourcing. The reason I have mentioned outsourcing in many of my blog posts is because of the following

I recently started outsourcing most of my work
Writing about outsourcing inspires me to outsource more of my work
Time is valuable, and we all need more of it

Some entrepreneurs go as far as saying that if you aren’t outsourcing any part of your business, then you are not a real entrepreneur. Ouch!

When I first discovered people said that, I thought to myself, “I’m an entrepreneur if I don’t outsource.”

If you don’t outsource, then you are still an entrepreneur. However, you aren’t as good as you could be. If Tim Cook had to worry about responding to all customer emails and pitching iPhones in the Apple Store every day, he wouldn’t have any time to lead the company to success.

You can’t do it all by yourself. I only discovered this when I decided to outsource some of my workload. Since then, I have outsourced various areas of my business. Here are three notable things I outsourced in August 2015:

All Pinterest activity (except comments)
All Twitter activity (except interaction)
All intro pictures for my blog posts

When you put the three together, it takes an hour of my time every day. Now I’ve got that hour back. I feel like a more productive entrepreneur, as I should. That hour now goes into creating additional videos for my training courses.

I don’t even edit the videos anymore. I hired someone for that too 🙂

Right now, I am saving close to 10 hours of my time every week because of outsourcing. Put those hours together and I save 520 hours every year. Outsourcing those four parts of my business allowed me to get 21 days back.

We feel great when we get an hour back, so getting 21 days back put me on cloud nine. My goal is to get 60 days back by the end of the year.

The Beginning

Once I realized I needed to start outsourcing my work, my first step was figuring out how to actually outsource the work. I tried using Fiverr to get assistants but I didn’t have a good experience.

Some research led me to UpWork (formerly Odesk). I decided to post my job and see what would happen. The first job I posted got seven applicants. The second job I posted got 27 applicants. The great thing about UpWork is that you don’t have to worry about people seeing the job you posted. You’ll get applicants if your job description is good.

After getting the applicants, I narrowed my list down based on price and value. It’s easy to find someone on UpWork who is willing to work for less than $5/hr. It’s a great option for entrepreneurs who feel tied to a shoestring budget.

The First Struggle And Lessons Learned

The first time I experienced difficulty with outsourcing was in the very beginning. There was some miscommunication between me and the virtual assistant I hired. Since this was the first assistant I hired, I thought outsourcing wasn’t worth it.

Luckily I stuck with it.

The key to success on UpWork is to outsource the people with a mix of price and value, and then create detailed videos showing them what you do.

I didn’t take any chances with my Twitter activity. I created a video showing my assistant exactly how to follow and unfollow people so I could continue growing my Twitter audience without putting in any of the work. All I do on Twitter nowadays is interact with my audience.

Still Not Convinced?

I heard about two things for many years before I actually implemented. I wish I started them earlier. The first thing I wish I did earlier was build an email list.

The second one was outsourcing my work. Yes, outsourcing my work is right up there with building an email list late in the game.

For a long time, I shunned outsourcing and thought it was a solution for people who didn’t like to work. Seeing books like The 4-Hour Workweek didn’t please me because I saw it as people trying to escape their work all together. Why not work 40 hours every week if you love what you do?

I wasn’t a workaholic, but I was close.

Then it hit me. People are outsourcing most of their work so they can work on the most important parts of the business. No one can write my blog posts or do my videos. With the proper guidance, anyone can follow and unfollow people on Twitter.

But this was the main reason it took me so long.

Why would I pay someone to do something I already know how to do?

I knew how to unfollow and follow people on Twitter. I knew how to edit my videos. I knew how to do everything that I outsourced. Why hand it to someone else and pay them when I could do it myself?

The answer is outsourcing opens up more time. New time makes it possible to develop new skills and explore new opportunities. On a typical school day, I used to go home and do the following (for the sake of this list, homework isn’t included)

Grow my Twitter audiences (20-30 minutes)
Create a picture for one of my blog posts (10 minutes)
Create videos (30 minutes if I was lucky. This activity was skipped on most days)

Here’s what my after school (and post-practice) schedule looks like now (again, excluding the homework):

Create videos (30-60 minutes)
Play the piano (30-60 minutes)
Explore other opportunities

Fewer tasks stand between me and creating videos. That makes it possible for me to create more training courses, YouTube videos, and Periscope broadcasts. I save 30-40 minutes per day. I could have done those two tasks on my own, but now I have a lot of extra time to play with.

In Conclusion

Entrepreneurs love to self-assess themselves. They like to see how they have grown or stayed the same. Most entrepreneurs stay the same and don’t do much growing. This is where the frustration sets in.

Remember that the frustration is part of the journey. However, the frustration and stagnation may be a result of an inefficient amount of time. Outsourcing your time will open up more time which can potentially skyrocket your entrepreneurial success.

Think about the business person you admire. If you’ve been an entrepreneur long enough, you admire some of the top entrepreneurs around. For me, Seth Godin quickly comes to mind.

Here’s the interesting thing. All of these entrepreneurs are outsourcing some of the work. Seth Godin (and most of the top authors) has an editor. When Squidoo was around, he hired people to respond to bug reports and interact with the community.

As productive as people like Seth Godin are, they can’t do it by themselves. Neither can you, and it’s okay to admit that. Outsourcing parts of your business will open the door to hours upon hours of extra time.

Do you outsource parts of your business? If not, are you willing to give it a try? Sound off in the comments section below!

My Stance On Blogging and Social Media

October 12, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media and blogging are my jam. I have over 300,000 social media followers and get hundreds of thousands of annual blog visitors. I’m also getting a lot better with Facebook ads. In less than a month, my Facebook Page went from 300 likes to over 10,000 likes. And I average $0.01 per like.

But social media and blogging are just two slices of a much larger pie. They are critical pieces of the pie, but if you exclusively rely on blogging and social media, you will be disappointed.

Two years ago, I aspired to surpass 100,000 Twitter followers. I eventually surpassed that milestone, but my income didn’t skyrocket in the same sense. I quickly went from 1,667 Twitter followers to over 100,000, but the changes in my income were minuscule at best.

Getting all of those Twitter followers resulted in a big increase in my blog’s traffic. Social media is the main reason this blog became successful, and seeing that social proof every day boosted my confidence.

So I was successful on social media and getting a ton of blog traffic. Why was my income at the same level?

I didn’t look at the rest of the pie. I was missing out on some great opportunities. And yes, I’ll say it. Many others already have.

I SHOULD HAVE FOCUSED ON MY EMAIL LIST EARLIER!!

I was getting traffic, but I wasn’t getting sticky traffic. I wasn’t building strong enough relationships with my audience. Creating an email list is the best way to strengthen the relationship between you and your visitors. Some email lists are also highly profitable.

When I focused on my email list, I started getting better results. Each of my product launches was more successful than the last because my audience continued to grow. So far, my most profitable months on Udemy were because of email blasts.

But I’m about to turn the tables and flip the world upside down.

Your email list isn’t enough either!

You need to make money. More specifically, you need to make money by creating your own products. Affiliate marketing is an option, but if you rely on affiliate marketing, then your income depends on other people creating products and giving you good rates.

Most of the money I make comes from my books and training courses. The best part is that this is passive income. I create the product, market it, and then people buy it. I make money in my sleep.

Blogging and social media get the ball rolling—you can grow a large audience. Your email list and products allow the ball to roll in the right direction—you build the relationship and promote your products.

The best part with this strategy is that you can scale up. That’s why each of my product launches has been more successful than the last. My audience continues growing each day. Across all of my social networks, I gain over 1,000 new followers per day. This growth leads to more subscribers and more revenue for each of my product launches.

Since we are on the topic of product launches, I want to discuss one important thing about product creation. It is tempting to look at the most recognized entrepreneurs in the world promoting one product for a long period of time. They may go on numerous podcasts promoting this one product for many months before finally launching it.

For these entrepreneurs, it’s a great strategy for getting a massive amount of sales. Some of these entrepreneurs are also authors who use this strategy to turn their books into bestsellers.

However, I don’t recommend that approach (unless you are one of those entrepreneurs with millions of subscribers. Then go for it). The reason is that if you only create one product and focus on it, it either makes or breaks you.

I focused on one product for six months. I didn’t spend any of my time creating other products. That one product broke me. Luckily I didn’t lose money, but I lost a lot of time.

Now I create four Udemy courses each month. Not all of my Udemy courses become successful, but some of them bring in a bulk of my income. I get to learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Creating more products also makes it mathematically easier to reach income goals. Let’s say you want to make $1,000 per month from Udemy training courses. If you have 10 courses, then each course needs to make $100. If you only have one course, then that one course must make the entire $1,000 per month.

I’m not saying to trade quality for quantity. However, you don’t want to gamble your success on one product launch.

In Conclusion

Social media and blogging allow you to grow a large audience. It takes a lot of time and effort to accumulate that large audience. That’s why you want to make sure you pay attention to the other slices of the pie. While having hundreds of thousands of social media followers and blog visitors helps, you must also build your email list and create products.

What is your stance on blogging and social media? What other slices of the pie do you take seriously? Sound off in the comments section below.