In 2008, Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive Income (SPI), lost his job. He was another victim of the financial crisis. Yet, the very same year, he monetized his blog by selling study notes. He went from despair to grossing about $7000 in a month. Fourteen years later, his businesses are worth millions.
In this article, we’ll be looking at 10 blogs that started small but now enjoy a substantial following and giving you tips to do the same. One of the biggest drivers of eCommerce sessions in retail is organic traffic.
Data from Statista shows that this source generated 32% of eCommerce sessions, almost at par with paid search, which generated 33%.
How did users initiate eCommerce sessions?
| Organic Search | Paid Search | Direct | Social | |
| 32% | 33% | 12% | 9% | 8% |
Data source: Statista
These ten eCommerce blogs below maximized organic traffic by:
- Blogging consistently
- Appreciating their audience with free valuable gifts
- Targeting beginners with suitable content
- Prioritizing quality content over quantity
- Varying their content
Let’s look at how they implemented these strategies and what you can learn from them.
“…Over the last 3 years, there has been more than 300 posters developed, first aid signs and visual guides, which has attracted more than 80,000 pages views.” – Monique Welsh, Alsco
Tip 1: Blogs Grow by Posting Consistently
Blog 1: Nerd Fitness
Source: Nerd Fitness
Steve Kamb’s business is based on providing practical fitness solutions for the average joe. He doesn’t do affiliate marketing or allow guest posts. He grew his 150,000 subscribers by posting practical content at least once a month
Blog 2: Apartment Therapy
When Maxwell Ryan first started his blog in 2001, he sent out a weekly newsletter. Twenty years later, he has a team that puts out 125 pieces of content weekly, garnering millions of views for their videos and 4 million followers on their social platforms.
What do we mean by consistent?
First, make a schedule and stick to it. Choose to post daily, weekly, biweekly, or even monthly. Map out the kind of content you want to publish in advance. Create a content calendar to help keep you posting regularly and provide one platform for team collaboration
Second, maintain the quality of writing. Make sure the content of your article delivers the promise of the title. Otherwise, you end up with clickbait, which is deceptive and leads your readers away from your website.
This post about determining the Return on Investment (ROI) on content marketing explains the concept of ROI, outlines the variable, and walks you through the steps. Imagine clicking on an article with a similar title, and all you see is a list of popular businesses enjoying a return on content marketing but not explaining how to calculate it—you’d click away instantly
How do you decide how often to post?
That depends on your niche and your audience. Experiment and see what works best for your readers and check what the competition is doing.
Tip 2: Appreciate New Visitors With a Valuable Gift
Blog 3: Rainbow Plant Life
Source: Rainbow Plant Life
This vegan food blog is ideal for anyone switching to a plant-based diet. The blog’s founder, Nisha, uses a free ebook to entice new subscribers.
Sharing a few recipes for free gives her audience a chance to try them out and see if they want more from the creator. If they like the recipes, their trust in her grows. When they feel this way, they’ll likely buy ingredients from her website.
Blog 4: Nomadic Matt
Source: Nomadic Matt
Nomadic Matt makes a living as a travel writer. His travel tips promise to save the reader time and money by consolidating all the information—as he does in this post on where he gets the best travel deals. This post contains a list of websites that offer the best flight deals, cruise deals, accommodation, and insurance. Think of the time you can save by finding all this information on one page.
What is your gift going to be?
Your gift has to solve a problem your customer is facing. In the screenshots above, Nisha offers an ebook with several vegan recipes, while Matt offers money-saving travel tips. In both cases, the website offers to consolidate useful information for the reader, saving them a lot of time.
Research your audience. Find out what bothers them most in your niche. Use:
- Social media polls
- E-mail surveys
- The comment section of your posts
- Forums such as Reddit and Quora
Let this guide you to the type of content that can reel in your audience.
Tip 3: Prioritize Readability and Quality Content
Blog 5: The Penny Hoarder
Source: The Penny Hoarder
The Penny Hoarder is a blog that deals with financial literacy for everyday people. In this post, notice how she keeps readers engaged:
- The sentences are short.
- The author gets straight to the point. Immediately after the topic heading, they go straight to the first money-making tip. No fluff.
- The author uses short paragraphs.
- The language is casual and friendly to suit the reader.
Blog 6: College Info Geek
Source: College Info Geek
Thomas Frank created College Info Geek for college students. In this post, he goes into great detail on how to build a personal website as an alternative to a simple resume.
Two ways Thomas keeps his readers engaged are:
- Use of short paragraphs
- Use of screenshots to explain a process
He also begins the post by highlighting that the guide is up to date:
“I keep this guide very up-to-date, and it’s current for January 2022.”— Thomas Frank
Expert Tip: Updating your posts is an effective SEO tool. Professional bloggers will often tweak a post to ensure the material is still relevant. More importantly, Google will consider an updated post as more relevant than an old post, leading to higher ranking.
Blog 7: Eartheasy
Source: Eartheasy
Eartheasy encourages readers to implement low-energy natural solutions to conserve the environment we live in. They sell a wide range of products, from raised garden beds to reusable produce bags.
In this post about garden preparation, they use beautiful images to break up the text, giving your eyes a rest as they make their way to the end of the article.
According to a study by the University of California, San Diego, images invoke a stronger emotional response than words. That emotional response is more likely to influence an action, based on your content, than if you relied on words alone.
Tip 4: Mix Up the Content
Blog 8: Smart Passive Income
Source: Smart Passive Income
Pat Flynn started his blog in 2007 while studying to take his architectural exams. In 2008, he lost his job and decided to monetize his blog and his study notes. By the time he was out of work, he had grossed over $7000 that first month. In 2009, he started his podcast. Fast forward 13 years, his online businesses are worth more than 3 million dollars.
According to research, 49% of people aged between 12–34 years listened to a podcast within a month of being surveyed in 2020. If that’s your target age group, you can see why adding a different medium makes sense for your business.
Blog 9: A Better Lemonade Stand
Source: A Better Lemonade Stand
A Better Lemonade Stand is a blog dedicated to helping people like you build their e-commerce businesses. They feature a variety of resources on their site, including:
- Training videos
- Blog articles
- How-to guides
By providing videos in addition to their usual blog articles, they appeal to a wider audience. The best part is many of the videos and articles contain the same material. So, for every piece of research, you can publish multiple types of content.
Blog 10: Neil Patel
Neil Patel started out as a blogger but has invested heavily in producing videographic content. His videos are simple but informative.
If you go to the comment section of this video, you’ll find that his description is as long as a blog post.
Source: Neil Patel
Don’t Give Up on Your Business Blog
“We work in an industry that is difficult to understand by someone not within the industry. I tasked CopySmiths will not only coming up with article ideas but also writing these articles. The team at CopySmiths did an amazing job of pointing out areas where we had content gaps on our website and then produced several well-written articles to fill those needs. I look forward to working with CopySmiths in the near future.” – John Z. SanitaryFittings
Your blog offers a unique opportunity to engage with a larger audience. Regularly producing high-quality content can seem daunting. You already have so many business-related activities to worry about; it’s easy to abandon content generation. That’s where CopySmiths comes in.
We have a team of trained writers ready to create quality content for your readers. Our process ensures what gets published on your page isn’t just factually accurate but engaging and informative. We can do the publishing for you as well.
Talk to us, and we’ll help you talk to the world.
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