The 2020s have not been kind to the “”regular person’s” finances.
Inflation, rising costs, price gouging, mortgage rates soaring. In a phrase:
Everything sucks, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better anytime soon.
More and more people every day look at their paychecks, then look at their grocery bills and can’t make heads or tails of the discrepancy.
People want to make more money, but their W-2 jobs just can’t keep up – so where do they go from there?
Here.
A “simple little website” can change your life.
A small little blog, written carefully, about something you love, can be the 1 thing that stands between you and total financial freedom.
The details of how you build one, what goes into it, how much it costs, etc. are so often shrouded in mystery.
Online Guru’s telling you to pay thousands of dollars to gain access to their ‘exclusive course’ where they tell you generalities is far too common.
This page – the very one your on right now – aims to fix that problem.
Here, you’ll find several thousand words. Detail upon detail, step by step instructions and guidance on how to build a blog, optimize it, and monetize it.
The method used here is called D.R.E.A.M. and stands for:
- Defining your niche
- Researching your keywords and competition
- Earning a spot in the mix
- Attacking your competition’s gaps
- Monetizing your blog
I’ve used this process for hundreds of clients over my 15 year marketing career – as well as myself, generating millions of dollars in revenue, many times over.
It works, it’s repeatable, and it’s simple, even for someone who’s never done anything like this before.
Go ahead, print this page – lay it next to your keyboard, and get to work.
It’s all right here, 100% free.
Your journey to making money online can start with a simple, $12 domain purchase, and it can change your life forever.
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Blogging is the best medium to monetize
While there are hundreds (thousands?) of different ways to make some extra cash, blogging reigns supreme.
- It’s inexpensive
- It’s customizable
- There are tons of free tools to help you build/design it
- It can generate “organic” traffic (i.e. free search engine traffic)
There are 2 sides of the blogging coin that need individualized attention.
Getting traffic to the blog
Ultimately, this guide is going to talk and teach the acquisition of organic traffic.
This is defined as “the number of visitors to a website that come from unpaid search results”.
This requires individual pages on the blog to gain rankings on the Search Engine Results Pages (i.e. SERP), when someone Googles (or, uh, “Bings”) a keyword.
When they do so, and see your link and click it, that’s a totally free, organic visit – the best kind.
Monetizing that traffic
Once you acquire some traffic, you’ll then need to monetize it.
Similar to traffic, there are many ways you could do this, including:
- Placing ads (i.e. placing ads on your site)
- Selling courses
- Offering info products (ebooks, etc.)
- Community access
- etc.
This guide is going to lean most heavily into info products and community building.
Both cost $0 (think, free Canva and Facebook groups) to get started, and each have unlimited earning potential.
Ultimately, we’re looking to make something with as little to no expenses as possible so revenue=profit.
Define your niche
You’ll never be everything to all people – it goes with abbreviated Robert Greene quote “a jack of all trades is a master of none”.
Think about who you follow online. It’s not 1 know-it-all, right?
You have someone you follow for nutrition, another for book recommendations, another for entrepreneurship and so on.
You value their DEEP expertise in that 1 topic.
(See where we’re going here?)
Choosing your niche is critical because as you publish content and gain traffic, you’ll be relied on to provide consistent and quality information on [that] topic, 99% of the time.
How to define your niche
What do you do?
No really, on weekends, after work, when you wake up.
What do you do – that you truly, undeniably enjoy?
Reading? Fishing? Cocktail mixologist-ing? Ride bikes? Paint? [insert the remainder of a massive ‘trying to cover all examples’ list]?
That idea of “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” REALLY applies here.
You’re about to choose a topic to devote a ton of time, effort and research to – it should really be something you enjoy.
For me, it was training for races, Ironman, marathons, etc. The first website I ever helped someone else with was about golf (specifically strength training for it – talk about niche).
What is it for you?
That thing, that topic, area, etc. is going to be your niche.
Now, before you go all negative on me here and say something like “yeah but there are already hundreds of blogs and YouTube channels about [my thing], I have to do something different”.
Stop – no you don’t.
There are 331,000,000 internet users in the US alone. Those ‘other’ sites you’re worried about have a share of that, sure.
But it’s not 99% (even all combined).
You only need a fraction of 1% of that number to care about what YOU, the individual, have to say – and you’ve made it.
Quick math here:
- Total internet user population: 331 million
- .5% of that is 1,655,000 people
- If 2% of them care about your offer, that’s 33,100
- If only 2/3 of them buy something ever (say $50)
- You’ve got a $1,000,000 business
Not too bad right?
How to identify gaps in your niche
It’s one thing to say:
“I love working out, I’m going to make fitness my niche!”
Ok, cool, except that’s not a nice – that’s a category – and a category is too big.
Here are a few examples of how to break that category into a nice, and then validate if it is in fact, a market gap.
List out all the fitness sub categories you care about
- Cardio
- Mobility
- Recovery
- Strength training
- etc.
Ok, getting closer – now choose one of those, let’s say cardio, and break that down further
- Cycling
- Running
- Swimming
Same thing, break it down more, let’s choose running:
- Casual running
- Competitive running
- Marathon running
And again, Marathon running becomes:
- Training for your first marathon
- Training for a sub 4 hour marathon
- Training for a marathon in 6 months
- Couch to marathon training
And there we are.
We went from “I like working out” to “I can help people learn to train for their very first marathon, in under a 4 hour time cap, in 6 months”.
That’s a [bleeping] niche.
And no – it’s not too specific either.
There are still 4,400 people every single month (according to Google Keyword Tool) that search for “beginner marathon training plan” – and thousands more that search for other close variants.
“The riches are in the niches” – you can much more easily dominate a very specific subset of a category, and really own it, in a way that rakes in the cash.
Identifying and validating niche gaps and opportunities
Using the example above – you need to get a quick sense of your competition/what’s out there (this is covered in more detail below).
Start searching for terms related to your niche, and opening every link that looks directly related.
There will be plenty – don’t get scared about the ‘competition’ yet.
Your goal here is to see how those other sites present solutions to the problem you’re aiming to solve.
Note it all down, and find the space between it, or the polarizing perspective contrary to theirs.
THAT, becomes your voice, your perspective, your tone, and the way in which you’ll take the competition down.
Growing beyond your niche’s volume constraints
Ok – let’s say you [bleeping] kill it, and want to scale.
Niches, by their nature, have smaller total volume potential – and that’s ok.
Because what they are, are fantastic stepping stones towards owning a category.
Using the beginner marathon training example above – dominating that specific sub category, makes it easier to then go and attack ‘marathon training’, and ‘5k, 10k, half marathon training’, etc.
You can continue to add niches to your repertoire, scaling by going wider – after having gone very deep into a single niche.
So ok, great, you’ve got a niche now (or at least know how to pick one) – it’s time to create the space by which to share your knowledge.
The website.
Now it’s time to build the website itself
Building a blog, or really any website, generally requires 2 things:
- A domain (i.e. a URL)
- Hosting (think, renting a spot online for that URL to live)
Buying a domain (URL)
Head to Cloudflare and sign up for the “Free” plan.
Once inside, click “Domain Registration” and “Register a new domain”.
Then, start searching for domains you like (ideally with a .com).
You’re going to find that most of the domains you initially search for are taken. That’s just a product of the internet being around for a long time.
So as you’re searching – here are a few things to consider when choosing a domain name:
- Avoid hyphens
- Get a .com (not a .net, org, etc.)
- Spell it correctly
- Make sure if you said it to someone out loud, they’d know exactly how to type it in without asking
You could choose your name, something relating to a hobby, anything really – but once you make your choice, it’s yours. There’s no going back and changing it.
Hosting your website
Once you’ve chosen your domain name, buy it, and then head over to WPEngine.
Here you’ll be signing up for the “Startup” plan ($20/mo at the time of this writing).
This will have everything you need for a brand new website – including access to a few starting themes (i.e. website designs) to jump-start your journey.
From here, you’ll simply be following set-up wizard instructions to get your site installed, and live.
For reference, this website is currently using the Authority theme that comes with WPEngine – I downloaded the child theme and just started editing content.
Perfectly well designed site – but my content.
Later below in the ‘Earn” section, we’ll talk more about site settings, plugins, etc. that will help get your site the attention it deserves.
Research your market and find your keyword opportunities
After self-identifying your niche, you now need to gain an understanding of who’s there, and where your opportunity to slot it lives.
You’re going to be looking at competitors in the market from 2 angles:
- Competitors you’re aware of, and know you’ll go up against
- “Search competitors” who may not be directly relevant to your niche/idea, but who show up in search for keywords surrounding your niche
The 3rd, and most important piece to your research is going to be, the understanding of the user, their expectations, and the content that currently exists.
“Do you believe that it does, or does not, meet their expectations” is going to be an important lens by which to view all of this.
Identifying your audience, their needs, and expectations
First, you’re going to start with some assumptions.
Who do you THINK you’re targeting? And what do you THINK they want.
Using our marathon training example from above, when you think “beginner marathon training plan” – it’s easy to picture:
- A non-runner
- An athlete, but not an endurance athlete
- An “I want to do this by the time I’m X years old”
- Someone looking to go from unfit->fit and use running as a medium
The motivations of those 4 examples are going to be quite different from one another. The key in getting started is to really lean into 1, before expanding into others.
If you take the “Someone looking to go from unfit->fit and use running as a medium” person, you will need to do research on:
- What motivates someone to get in shape
- Benefits of running to a non-runner
- Correlations between ‘starting running’ and emotional triggers (breakups, addictions, children/grandchildren being born, etc.)
Those become angles and tones by which you write and create perspective around your content.
Doing some searches and reading as if you ARE that person – will help put you in their shoes and write in the way that they need to read your content.
Validating your audience is accurate (enough)
You won’t be perfect – especially not right away – but you should be closer to perfect than you are “wild guessing”.
Here is a smattering of ways that you can get some initial validation against your audience before going full bore on the website:
- Engage and ask in communities (reddit, Twitter, etc.)
- Read research papers (if applicable) and note the demographics used in the study
- DM influencers in the space and literally ask (most will ignore you, but some wont)
- Go out into the real world and TALK to who you believe your market is
Once you have a good sense, and some validation of who the audience is within the niche you want to target – it’s time to switch the research from the person, to the keyword.
How to do keyword research for your blog’s niche
There are lots of keyword research tools available, but aiming to stick with the “what is free and pretty damn good” theme of this site, we’re going to talk about 1 in particular.
Google Keyword Planner (GKP).
Straight from the search giant’s proverbial mouth, GKP is a brilliant tool to use to get started.
Using Google keyword planner to find your target keywords
Upon logging in, you’ll see the below – and want to select “Discover new keywords”
After which, you’ll be presented with this form:
In the highlighted blue box – start typing.
A bunch of different things YOU would search, if you were looking for your own product, and click ‘get results’.
You’ll then see something like the below. The items in the first section are the keywords you literally typed in – those in the 2nd section are other related ideas.
There are 3 key things to look at here:
- Avg. monthly searches – the (rounded) number of times users in the US (or your noted local country) search for that exact keyword
- Three month change – the 3 month over 3 month % change view for that number of searches
- YoY change – The year over year % change view for that number of searches
For the ‘change’ metrics, the higher the percentage the better. You want keywords and phrases that are growing in volume – as you’re attempting to hop on board the moving train.
If they’re going in the opposite direction, they may be keywords (or niches entirely if they’re all negative) to avoid.
How to choose good, attainable keywords to target
“Generally speaking” the higher the avg. monthly searches, the better. Certainly you’ll get more volume and traffic by having rankings for keywords with large search volume.
However, I put that in quotes because, the higher the number, the more competitive it is, and the harder it will be to rank for.
For example, you may want to rank for ‘marathon training plan’, but without a substantial number of rankings within the more specific keywords noted below that – there’s almost no chance it happens.
So how do you pick and prioritize keywords worth targeting where they are both:
- Relevant and contain search volume
- With a brand new site, have an opportunity to rank for them
That’s where we pay special attention to a very important ratio:
‘intitle’ volume to ‘search’ volume.
‘Intitle’ refers to the number of pages in Google’s index that use the exact keyword you’re referencing in something called the ‘meta title’.
This is the text that shows up in your browser tab. It also happens to be one of the first pieces of information Google looks at to determine what your page is about.
If an exact target keyword exists in a websites title – you can ‘assume’ that they’re actively targeting that keyword in the same way you want to.
It’s a good way to understand what your true competition is.
The way to determine that ratio is to:
- Note the avg. monthly searches from GKP
- Do a Google search that looks like this:
- intitle:”[your keyword]”
- Scroll down until Google stops scrolling and you see a message like the image below:
In the example of “beginner marathon training plan” – we see 4,400 searches on GKP, and ’30’ in the message on Google, for a ratio of 0.0068, or 0.68%.
Compare that to “marathon training plan”, with avg. monthly searches of 40,500, and a noted total number of results of 50,000, a ratio of 1.11 or 111%.
When you’re performing this activity, the lower the number, the better.
Start with long tail keywords
After you’ve made a big spreadsheet outlining keywords, avg. monthly searches, and title/volume ratios – it’s then time to choose which ones to start with.
I could say “lowest ratio first”, but those aren’t always the most compelling topics – so here’s another way to identify which keywords to start with.
Find low volume, highly specific, and long tail (meaning more than 5-6 words in a ‘keyword’) keywords.
Things like “how long does it take to train for your first marathon”.
GKP may note little to no monthly searches – but surely someone will look for that specific piece of information.
It’s also highly attractive that there are 0 results for an intitle query.
That effectively means, if you write a single good piece you can immediately be the #1 and only result for that term.
Not a bad ROI on your time, eh?
Find some of those long tail keywords with search volumes between 10-50, and intitles between 0-10.
Those are golden places to start.
They’re easy to rank for, very specific (so easy to write for), and can help build a solid base of content – that will allow you to go after more competitive terms in the future.
Earn your Spot on the SERP
First, SERP stands for “Search Engine Results Page” – and it’s the page you see immediately after doing a search on Google/Bing. The page where the results are laid out, and you choose which to click.
That’s our target here.
How do we get as many of our pages to show on a SERP for as many queries as possible.
The more pages we have ranking for a wide variety of keywords, the more traffic the site can pull in.
The more traffic you have – the higher the chance of selling into and converting that traffic into revenue.
The set of activities required to gain these rankings, fall into a strategy called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
That’s what you’ll be learning here.
The 3 types of SEO
- On page
- Off page
- Technical
- BONUS: AI generated
On-Page SEO
When you think of SEO – typically, you think of ‘on-page’.
On-page SEO defines activities that happen on the portion of the website that is user facing.
Copy, words, hyperlinks, images, etc.
Things people can see, read, interact with – all fall under the category of on-page SEO.
Search engines pay particular attention to the on-page portion of a website, and they do so in the following order:
- URL
- Meta title/description
- Headlines/headline structure
- Body copy, anchor text, links
- Schema markup (technically not on-page, so this will be covered in ‘technical’)
SEO friendly URLs
The URL is the first place search engines go to understand what a page is, and what it’s all about.
As such, it’s important that your URLs make sense.
For example, www.40hourfreedom.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-make-money-online, while long – is better than www.40hourfreedom.com/post-456.
One can clearly tell a user what the page is about – without ever needing to see the page. The other? Well.. doesn’t.
Meta titles and descriptions
Meta data shows up in 2 common places.
The title is the text that lives in the tab on your browser, and is the blue hyperlink text on Google/Bing when you see a listing.
The description is the explanatory text on those same SERP listings.
Once a search engine validates that your URL is worthy of reading, it’ll look next at the meta data to understand, in more detail, what your page is about.
Headlines and headline structure
After passing the meta data test, search engines want to understand the outline of your content.
As such, it’ll skim the headlines, and in doing so looks for 2 things:
- Are they ordered correctly (i.e. your first headline is an H1, subsequent ones are H2s with H3s/4s nested inside)
- Does the context of the piece make sense/provide value
Regarding ordering, headlines operate like folders.
An “H1” is the main title of the page, and there is only ever 1 H1 per URL.
All sub-categories start with H2s, and if they break down further can reference H3, 4, 5 and finally H6 as the final category.
For example a page heading structure may look like this:
- H1
- H2
- H3
- H2
- H3
- H2
- H2
- H2
- H3
- H4
- H4
- H5
- H6
- H5
- H3
- H2
- H2
See how they nest neatly but always return to H2’s as the start of a new section?
That’s the key to headline organization.
STILL TO COME….
SEO optimized, high quality page content
– Creating high-quality, engaging content
– Image optimization and internal linking
– Compressing images for faster load times
– Utilizing anchor text for internal linking
– URL structure and site architecture
– Creating SEO-friendly URLs
– Organizing content with categories and tags
B. Off-Page SEO
– Backlink building strategies
– Guest posting, outreach, and relationship building
– Analyzing competitor backlink profiles
– Social signals and their impact
– Leveraging social media platforms for engagement
– Encouraging shares, likes, and comments
C. Technical SEO
– Website speed and mobile optimization
– Optimizing images, scripts, and caching
– Ensuring responsive design and mobile-friendly layouts
– XML sitemaps and robots.txt
– Generating and submitting sitemaps to search engines
– Configuring robots.txt for proper indexing
– HTTPS and website security
– Implementing SSL certificates
– Protecting against malware and cyber threats
D. Content Strategy
– Creating a content calendar
– Planning topics, formats, and publishing schedules
– Incorporating keyword research into content planning
– Importance of fresh and updated content
– Updating existing content for relevancy and accuracy
– Publishing timely and trending topics
– Types of content that attract and retain readers
– Blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts
– Interactive content and user-generated content
V. A. Attack your Competition by Doing 1% Better
- Analyzing competitors’ content and strategies
- Identifying gaps in content quality and depth
- Benchmarking against industry leaders and innovators
- Improving on competitors’ content
- Enhancing user experience with better design and navigation
- Incorporating multimedia elements for engagement
- Engaging with audience feedback and comments
- Encouraging user-generated content and discussions
- Responding to comments and addressing concerns
VI. M. Monetize the Traffic by Selling an Informational Product
A. Creating an Informational Product
– Identifying audience needs and pain points
– Conducting surveys, interviews, and market research
– Validating product ideas through audience feedback
– Choosing the right format for your product
– Creating eBooks, online courses, webinars, and workshops
– Developing high-quality, valuable content
B. Marketing and Selling Your Product
– Building an email list and nurturing leads
– Creating lead magnets and opt-in incentives
– Segmenting email lists for targeted marketing
– Promoting your product through content marketing
– Writing persuasive sales copy and landing pages
– Leveraging social media, PPC, and affiliate marketing
C. Optimizing Monetization Strategies
– Affiliate marketing and sponsored content
– Identifying and partnering with relevant brands and products
– Integrating affiliate links and sponsored posts naturally
– Ad placement and optimization
– Choosing the right ad networks and placements
– A/B testing ad formats, sizes, and locations
– Diversifying income streams
– Exploring other monetization methods like memberships and donations
– Adapting to market trends and opportunities
VII. Conclusion
- Recap of the DREAM framework and its importance
- Encouragement for readers to take action and start their blogging journey
VIII. Additional Resources
- Recommended tools and plugins for WordPress/WPengine
- Further reading, courses, and workshops on blogging, SEO, and monetization