Blogging is an art form that doesn’t get as much respect as it deserves.
An excellent writer can draw you into a well written piece that both entertains and educates you in exchange for your time.
If you follow any good bloggers, you’ll know good and well that this is a fair trade, and that the expertise and new lessons you have learned from the blog can be of tremendous value.
Has a blog ever totally transformed your way of viewing something?
Yeah, me too.
So, why aren’t you sharing your gift with others?
I supposed I’m a little bit biased since I used blog writing on multiple platforms to build my success, but I personally believe every fitness professional on this planet should have a blog. Whether you ever intend to sell anything on it or not, it’s still a really good thing to have.
The Best Way To Learn Is By Teaching
Want to hear about something weird I do?
Whenever I learn something new, I teach it to nobody out loud in my house.
I could be lecturing in the shower, I could be waiting for my chicken to finish cooking, there could be eggs in the pan, or maybe I’m driving over to Tim Horton’s.
Wherever I may be, I’ll start lecturing out loud the concept that I just learned. It’s something I’ve been doing since my late teens, and I never really let it go.
The best way I teach myself is to pretend I’m teaching others, this way I use my language and my metaphors/analogies to explain it – and when it’s packaged in this form, I “get it” now.
Blogs work in this exact same fashion.
Structuring a concept into words that make sense on a page forces you to think, analyze, and rationalize your position.
Before Create Freedom, I have been blogging on social media pages (yeah, super long post style) as well as on HockeyTraining.com and BaseballTraining.com – and a very large amount of guest blogs on other peoples websites as well.
If you look at my earlier work, it was straight up terrible in terms of both writing quality and design.
However, it was all of that terrible writing that allowed me to:
- Learn so much more about the subjects I was writing about
- Become a domain expert in health and fitness
- Become a better writer over time
- Learn what kinds of posts attracted readers, comments, and feedback
- Build a reputation through blogging about the results my clients were getting
You can read and study and make notes for yourself, but if you truly want to learn, make a lesson for somebody else.
This will improve your grip on the subject more than anything else, and when you do this, you will become an expert and be thought of one as well.
Promotional Value
A blog will have readers that are interested in what you’re writing, and people interested in what you’re writing will be interested in your services if they feel you can fit their needs.
I’m not talking about the lifestyle bloggers looking for millions of hits using buzzwords and click-bait, I’m talking about a blog where your friends, family, local gym members, and current clientele go to learn more about how to optimize their results.
It doesn’t need to be brand new, it doesn’t need to be innovative, and you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars building a website (put simply, don’t stress yourself out by making it a bigger project then it actually is).
You also don’t need more than 80-120 hits a week – don’t let any of this nonsense bother you in the beginning.
Just as importantly, don’t make the same mistake I did.
In the beginning, I was writing to try and sound intelligent to impress other coaches, but coaches weren’t my target clientele.
Duh.
I wrote dozens of amazing blogs… that nobody understood.
Don’t let this be you.
Write for your target clientele, do not write to try and impress other coaches. In other words, communicate to be effective, and not to try and sound smart.
You want your blog to be a representation of yourself, your values, and how you can help people.
Think about all the people out there who want to check you out online before actually contacting you – everybody does that these days.
Your blog should be a place where if somebody has heard of you (because you’re totally awesome), they should be able to:
- Learn more about you
- Learn more about what they want to do
- Learn more about health and fitness in general
- Become sold before they talk to you, so the sales process goes much smoother since they already know, like, and trust you
- Easily contact you
I can tell you first hand that I haven’t needed to “sell” anything in years, everybody that comes to me is already pre-sold (whether it be from a referral, blog, podcast, or video).
All I have to do is send them over the invoice and we get started – piece of cake.
Testimonials and Case Studies
Your target audience loves nothing more than to see a host of success stories that you have helped people achieve.
You can use your blog to celebrate your clients results on your site, this is a nice breath of fresh air for most people as the typical fitness professional just wants to take pictures of their butt.
Instead of shamelessly posting pictures of yourself, use this outlet to celebrate the success of your clients and not just yourself.
You’re a fitness professional, people are already expecting you to be in shape – you don’t need to prove it to them every two seconds.
But, you’re ability to get other people in shape is something you can demonstrate as often as you want.
Celebrate your clients success, they will love it and so will your prospects who haven’t pulled the trigger yet on contacting you.
These stories/case studies/testimonials are great for promotion but also act as excellent client retention tools because they feel like a “success story” and that they are now the “poster boy for your coaching”
Affiliate Offers
As many of you already know, if someone you follow has you click on a link in their blog to go buy something from someone else, or has a coupon code for you to use to save 10% at the checkout page from someone else… they are making commission off of you.
Don’t let that upset you though, if you’re following someone with integrity they will only ever recommend you something that they truly know, like, and trust.
Meaning, sure, they might make a couple bucks off of you – but the product you are getting is still excellent, so why not throw your favorite content creator a few bucks for helping you get a discount or for always providing awesome free content for you?
This is how I want you to view your blog, don’t be afraid to do some affiliate marketing if it’s something you truly believe in and would recommend anyways (if you’re already recommending it, why not make some money off of sending someone else your traffic?).
If it’s a digital product you’re recommending, you can expect 75% or more in commission payments (for those of you new to the game, that is not a typo. Oftentimes is 90-100% for reasons we can talk about in the future).
If it’s a physical product, you’re typically going to get 10-25% — usually this is in the exercise equipment or supplement game.
You have a big opportunity here, your readers essentially see you as “the voice” – and they are way more likely to buy products you recommend rather than listening to some advertisement.
Pretty much every major health and fitness company in the world has an affiliate program these days, and there is big money in this game.
But, don’t ever get carried away with this.
I couldn’t emphasize any more clearly that you must believe-in and love the products you are recommending, it’s so important that your readers trust your recommendations and that you don’t just become a profit-margin snake oil salesman.
In any case, when you start a blog (I say when now, because I believe I have you convinced if you have read up to this point, but there’s more), affiliate marketing is definitely another way you can add easy cash into your business.
Advertising
When you have guaranteed traffic coming in, you can sell advertising on your page as another way to bring in passive income that you don’t have to really do anything for.
Google ads is a common option here, but if you have enough traffic you will get emails from companies who want to pay monthly or yearly to have a banner ad or links embedded onto your page.
If you have a successful YouTube channel, you can also very easily turn on “monetize” for your popular videos and start getting paid by YouTube.
Popular YouTuber’s make multiple six-figures per year just from YouTube alone, without selling any products at all. We’ll talk about YouTube another time, but it’s the same idea there as it is for your blog.
Don’t forget your integrity though, you’ll eventually lose your audience if you cloud your space up with a bunch of annoying ads.
Professional Writing
Once you get better at writing, you will have the opportunity to write for pay.
There are a ton of websites out there that are simply content machines, meaning, all they do is post guest articles on a super high-frequency basis.
But, their guest articles are awesome so they can sell advertisement on their site.
The business model then, to put it simply, is to have professionals consistently submit awesome articles for a flat-fee and then since these articles drive traffic to their site they can continue to make a ton of money on advertising.
Magazines and major websites are the main ones who do this, and once you become good at writing and have enough of a following to where people will listen to you, you can consider professional writing as an avenue for more revenue being thrown your way.
I remember the first time I got paid to write (directly, that is), and it felt really cool.
I technically became a professional writer in that moment, it’s something I won’t forget, even though it wasn’t much money.
There are literally hundreds of online websites that do this, so identify some possible websites that match your target audience and pitch them ideas on what you could write for them.
In the end, you might just get paid to write and then pick up some new clients at the same time.
Final Thoughts
Like I originally said, I’m a little biased here since I personally built the majority of my reputation and success on the back of hosting my multiple blogs on different sites.
But, shouldn’t that in a way be proof of this concept, rather than proof of bias?
I definitely think so, and I encourage you to start a blog immediately while keeping all of the above tips, tricks, and money making tools in mind.
Most importantly, in the beginning, don’t do it for anybody else but yourself.
You will learn better, and your words will have a “soul” to them that isn’t apparent when you’re trying to write in a format akin to your essay writing days in high school.
Have fun with this, build your business up to new heights, and never lose your integrity along the way.
Dan Garner
