Back in the carefree decade known as the 90s, when I first started playing music, my primary concern was finding an outlet for my songs. I didn’t pay much attention to branding or image. However, after making some mistakes, I learned the hard way how critical branding is.
When it comes to niche blogging, particularly in the make money online niche, branding yourself as an authority is one of the most crucial aspects of your marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many people neglect this part because it’s one of the most challenging things to achieve.
Becoming an authority on a subject takes a lot of time, effort, and most importantly, trust from your readers that you are providing them with reliable information. While many people claim to be authorities, they are merely relaying information, and it takes more than that to establish oneself as an authority.
People often focus more on their stats and making quick money than branding themselves as authorities. However, if they focused their efforts on becoming an authority, they would achieve their goals much faster. By dedicating themselves to the craft of communicating and providing valuable insights instead of creating recycled e-books, they can achieve greater success.
Here are my top tips to help your brand yourself as an authority.
- Know your stuff. This seems like common sense but there are many people who claim to be an authority that have no real knowledge in the niche they are talking about. Nowhere on the web is this more obvious than in the make money online niche. Every corner of the web has some guy who claims to be the next big thing. They talk about how they will make millions from their website in the next year. They may tell you that they are going from 0 dollars to a million in a year. They may claim that they will be the next big ProBlogger within 12 months. The problem, is their website is loaded down with nothing but last years advice. And after 2 months of seeing no money, they are done. There are reasons why people read the large blogs. It is not only because they make money online, it is also because their opinion is worth hearing. Is your opinion worth hearing?
- Take time to build your readership before monetizing. Have you ever read some of the top bloggers personal story? Almost uniformly (with a few exceptions) the blogger will make some comment in their biography along the lines of ‘When I started blogging I didn’t even know you could make money at it, I just did it for fun because I had something to share.’ Too many of the newer niche bloggers completely ignore that fact. They want to immediately call themselves experts at how they will help you make money. This, of course, before they have made money themselves. I used to have this website heavily monetized until I realized that I have yet to prove myself as an authority. So I took all of my ads down. I have focused all my monetizing efforts on the websites I am profiting from and started focusing myself to really give heartfelt advice via this website. A true authority shares their opinion and when it becomes relevant, they they can monetize and profit from their worthwhile knowledge. We’d all like to feel our opinion is relevant, but only after hard work and time is that the case. In the long run, you will make much more money if you take time to build then monetize, rather than monetize from the start while you build.
- Make sure your image is solid. This is very important in branding yourself and establishing yourself as an authority. I cannot count how many times I have surfed to a blog that is sloppy looking from top to bottom. Yet, they claim they can help me make money? How can they when it is very obvious they aren’t making any money themselves? If a website is overrun with advertisements, have horrible color schemes, bad grammar, or weak articles, I will steer clear and never give it a second thought. In addition, a good domain name is also crucial in establishing authority. I don’t care how great your knowledge is, it will be very hard to establish yourself if your domain is www.ezmonies4you2day.tv.
- Don’t be boastful and show results. I posted an entire article on this part alone. It is so important to have relevant information to back up your claims. You don’t have to reveal your websites or exact tactics (I have only revealed a few of the websites I run on this website, in fact) but you need to be able to ‘show your work’ as my 6th grade math teacher used to say. Bragging is the fasted way to be branded a joke, not an authority. Maybe boasting worked for John Chow, but John Chow has been in this niche a heck of a lot longer than you, rest assured.
- Be gracious and humble. You can never under-estimate how important humility and kindness are. Just because you feel you are an expert, it takes a real human to understand they are one fish of many in a vast lake. You need to feel honored people come to your website to read your advice. You cannot expect them to. Take time to make your readers feel special.
Why do I feel I am an authority to help you brand yourself as an authority? You have to trust me. In fact, all of those tips come directly from mistakes I made in trying to establish myself in the make money online niche. It isn’t because I haven’t made money online. I have made money online. But just because I know how to do it, or have done it, doesn’t mean I can explain it well or be and authority on making money.
I am an authority, however, on making mistakes. Each mistake I have made, however, has gotten me one step closer to reaching the goals I have set out for myself.
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