My blog used to look like this for a short while.
Did you get excited?
Well, you should… because by the end of this article you will know how to build a $200K blog like I did… only faster than me, not a lot of people would share this (if any at all).
I’m not going to lie to you, it took me a little over two years to get a $200K offer for this blog (did not sell it… today, I wouldn’t sell it for a half a mill ), but I had no idea what I was doing back then, and I did not know what I’m about to share with you.
If I started this blog today, it would take me about a year (maybe less) to turn it into a $200K real estate, I don’t have the time to build a new blog, but I’ll tell you how you can do it if you want to.
I will link to a few badass resources you will need, but don’t be like:
“you wrote the article to promote things”
…you know I only publish for you (I also enjoy making money, but I’ll be happier to see you build a $200k blog), you can buy them or not, your choice, just know that you will have the hardest time building a huge blog without them…
…believe me, I wish I did not know that, I had to waste a lot of time and money to find out.
Anyway, you are smart enough (I know cause you are reading my blog) to get what I’m saying and buy (or not) whatever I recommend, let’s get to the meat.
The first thing you need is solid hosting, and by that I don’t mean private servers or anything like that.
You can use shared hosting and still build a high traffic site, but you have to use WP Engine (they take care of everything for you: speed, optimization, security etc. and their servers are pretty much the best you can get on the market)…
…hostgator, hostmonster, bluehost or shit like that won’t do it, and yes they are all shit… these (and about most of the rest like hostmonster etc) are all owned by one company and they all suck really, really bad… and while we are on the subject, Arvixe suck too.
I don’t want you to believe me, you can find out on your own if you want, but I doubt you want all the trouble. I can write about 5 pages how many problems I had with Hostgator and Arvixe but don’t want to bore you with that.
You have another option and it is to find a smaller company that cares about their customers, either way you will be fine.
A lot of people underestimate the importance of Hosting (I did too) and pay the price (I did too LOL) … of course, I’ll tell you what I mean and why choosing the right hosting provider is the first and most important thing when building a blog you’d want to be killer.
Reason 1: Slow pages don’t rank high, anything above 2 seconds is slow.
Reason 2: Cheap hosting equals poor uptime, and there are no exceptions.
Once a year passes and the problems occur, they (shitty hosting providers) will try to slip you the old:
“well, if you want reliable hosting, get a VPS”
…even if you have the same traffic (yeah that happened to me a few times).
I don’t think it is necessary to talk about the importance of your site always being online.
Reason 3: People wait about 2 seconds for a page to load and then leave.
Anything more than 2 results in higher bounce rates and traffic loss… which is why I said you should go for 2 seconds or less.
Reason 4: If you don’t use Wp Engine, you have to optimize the crap out of your site (.htaccess files, browser caching, CSS, HTML, Images and tons of other not so fun stuff), and Wp engine manage all that for you.
There are a lot more reasons, yet I know you get what I’m saying already… so I’ll move on with the next step to building a $200K blog.
Once you host your blog at the right place, you need to design it right (if you can’t sell your blog for more than $50K right as we speak, then you haven’t designed it very well).
Let me tell you what I did to quadruple my leads, make the blog fly and increase the time spent on the site (and a lot more which you will see when you tweak your design).
I have tried a lot of looks for the 7 years this blog has been online, have tested a lot of themes, have hired a few designers to code and since I installed the Genesis framework, I haven’t looked back and never will.
It is perfection.
I even have my own themes (that are quite beautiful and with more features) and still recommend Genesis for a simple, yet powerful, design with the sales psychology built into it.
There is a difference between beautiful design (you know, sliders, one page beautiful sites etc.) and selling design.
This does not mean you have to make your blog ugly, I know you got me, but just to be clear – you need to build a clear structured blog that is good for selling and is also as fast as possible.
When it comes to selling design, simple is better (and I personally think simple is always better).
Powerful hosting and killer designed site with a simple and clear code are the first two things to do to build a $200k blog.
You will see what to do next to get boat loads of traffic and money after you enter your email in the form down below. I’ll be sending you a lot of next level shit people usually charge for.
Let me know if you liked this article and stay awesome.
Vladi