How to scale Blog Like Startup

i this article we are gonna start adapt the mindst and thinking that your blogging business is going to breath, eat, think and act like a Silicon Valley startup.

remeber that we are blogging in 2022. we are not modeling so much other bloggers. we are modeling startups. i worked in startups world and i realise that building your online influence is a hustle.. Building authority can be tough. it tkes presistence and preservence and everthing else that the startup founder goes through

previosly we have covered the blog mindet and potential pitfalls you will deal with and in this article you will know how to overcome them and how to start planing you blog like a startup business

in lesson one we’re divng in The Startup Mentality : this includes how you are the CEO of your blog, How to run your own blog like a startup content marketing team, and the difference and similarity between Startup VS blog scalling

then is lesson two , we’re covering blogging in 2010 Vs Today: this includes how blogging has changes , how the same startegies ten years ago have changed don’t apply any more and how of blogging as a business in this decate.

then in lesson three, we’re covering the concept of pivoting . so in the business world , pivoting is absolutely crusial to success. so we will cover what pivoting is, why it’s so important, how to do it effectively bses on data and real world things with your blog

then in lesson four we’re gonna cover Feedback loops and thinking like a scientist because blogging like a business is a science . it’s not an art. it’s all based on data. so we will dive into how to use feedback loops to understand what’s working on your blogging business and what’s not and how to adapt and change quickly like a startup.

Let’s dive in

The Startup Mentality

Launching a blogging business and a startup have alot of similarities that you need to understand to frame your mindset,

The lean Startupthis : the new way

this is hte new way of thinkign about business and launching a successful technology company. the idea of lean startup is minimal viable product

It’s not about having the best product or the crappiest product But Minimal Viablr Product. Your Blog Should be minimum enough to be viable to satisfy the need and demands of customers with problems. that apply to every single area of business even it’s restaurant or trying anew food, Blog, a startup, a logo business.. it doesn’t matter. This concept is so fundemently that yo may be surprised it doesn’t get dicovered 50 years ago because it make sense to every type of business model.

When you think about why it exists. it’s to midigate risks and to save time. Because if you ‘re not doing the minimal viablr product and you like going all in on something and making it a 100 percent perfect.. Puting all your team, resources, and your money behind it and … it doesnot work!! then you’r kindda scrwed. So the idea is : you’re putting enough work, get it to minimal viable product status. And then you build measure and learn. You see if it work

The pivot

this allows you to create pivot points to change where you’re going. How oes this aplly to blogging? You may think you’re not trying to build a startup BUT in reality you are.. you build the Startup of you and that Business is your blog.. you need to think like this to outsmart the competition

Don’t act like ablogger. You should behave and take actiion like a startup, you should take a smarter business deciosns . you should ask you self : ” What content am i writtiing?”. Testing out things. Seeing if works.. and pivoting based on what’s working lening in and seeing what’s successful and pushing hardwe in those areas. For example: if i only wrote about the blogging content and everything i wrote was ” Howw to start ablog , make money blogging, how to promote your blog, blogging ideas, blog post topics and the list goes on and on. what if i didn’t work. what if googe say ” No, you don’t have enough expertise in this area” . Then i would have no traffic and i wouldn’t be making any money. You should be able to find business software tools , product categories, areas of expertise.. testing what’s working and what’s not and pivot into what actually works. So it’s about opportunities and the way to do this is through the two pints we have below

1. Continuous deployment

Lean Startup method makes you able to deploy things. Not in a month or two But in aday or three. the ideas goes bak to your niche selection. when you start your blog you don’t know what is exactly the perfect subniches. So we start broad and we contanly deploy and test different things within the niche and overtime we discover what’s working and ares of success and the areas that google trust you. So it’s small batches

2. Small batches

a small batches meas that intead of writting a hundered post about one topic and focus on that. Intsead you think and batches of ten. You can do ten different types of post not in widely different areas but similrly just like atartup with a software product. we’re not gonna make totally ten different products for different people but there’s slighlt different tweaks and little subcategories and subproblems that your produt solves. Your content is no different. the lean startup methodology is about speed

May be it’s just five posts in one area and you start seeing success there or you trying different subcategories within your niche and one takes off. the truth is You don’t need everything to take off You just need a few wins. that’s true for many blogs, you start with broader content in your main niche and holly shit this area is working and i’m gonna focus on that and the only way to do that is not all go in wirth a hundered posts and spending all your time in one area but it’s with continuous deployment and small batches of content to see wht6 actually works and that’s inovative

Constant batches

Startups are constanly doing innovasions. If your blog isn’t innovating and better than the competetion then you’re not avble to get anywhere.. innovation is everywhere. you’re not trying making a new type of content or post, but your finding innovation within your niche like Upcoming trends ..upcomming products.. upcomming places to get links . you’re always being innovative and if you’re thinking like a startup. you will think about innovative tactics ans strategies ( i’m gonna teach you that). But you are thinking the old school way of blogging .You’re not gonna had any space

remember.. this is a blogging business and it’s abvois that constant innovation creates radically successful busniesses. you have to innovate and adapt to what works . You can’t keep going the same way all the time

Startup success can be engineered by following the right process which means it can be learned which means it can be taught

― Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

So it’s very similar to blogging , there’s a system to success like any business

How Startup content teams Scale

Learn from startups not bloggers

when you think of a blog, ther’s individual blogggers and ther’s startups, business, Ecoommerce brands that are also running blogs

I worked for some startups in the tech space and i get to watch how a company with an unlimited budget would create a blog and how they would scale their content team. it was interesting. So here you’re learning startup tactics, this is what content teams do.. this how you can compete in a higher level because again we’re going up against some brands.. we can outsmart them with better strtegies. with that you’re gonna build your personal brand like a startup. so i took the tactics i learnt from startups and apply the same strategies to a personal brands and that’s exactly what i am teaching you here.

And the biggest differences .. this is not conventional because typically people model someone who appear

Good enough, move on mentality

Make progress instaaed of perfectionism. is the post is good enough .. move on. that’s true for your content. your link building and your different sartegies on your blog. you may be scared to publish your first articles but overtime you will get it published. her’s the exact formula: Publish posts, No one is gonna see it.. Get links to it.. updtae, change , adapt to search intent.. rank on google, first page .. make money. So your post is’t good enough , move on. you may spend ten hours writting this blog post and then you publish it . you feel good about it. But not all your blog post are gonna work. so you just wasted ten hours.

Outsourcing

We will get to the exact strategies how to scale and outsource at very cheap price.But how to spend 30 minuta to 1 hours at the same post or create outlines, send them and outsource and scal your conetnt effort not content writing, You’re not. you’re not a writrt, you’re a business owner, Right? Right. and this will save you a ton of time doing this. but the mentality is good enough move on. Why would you spend 10 hours in some articles and they will now work. What if we spend one hour each on ten and one of them actually worked.

Jobs and responsibilities

When you start your blog , ?You find yourself doing all jobs. You’re the one who ic the CEO, The Leader, The contwent director of what’s going on. then you have to manage the blog content in pieces. may e you’re getting outsource and getting editor and here you are the manager. Sometimes you are also the specialist. you are the one who are writing posts. You can do all of these things hat a startup are doing by yourself

1. Director Level : there’s SEO director that manage the SEO and Keyword startegy and thse technical stuff. there’s the Editor ( The content director). Those things you can’t outsource because that’s really you. You don’t want to outsource your keywords research and your startegy. You need at least do that part. You need to manage your own brand voice. So it’s not low quality content. you get to the mangment and you start becomming yeah > Outsourcing to writers for example . i need to manage the outline and get the content back. You can outsource the lower level specilaist roles.. the time consuming work that you don’t want to do if you have a full time job. So specialists may be writing first drafts.. Could be managing the email list collection for link building. As the buisness owner , you’re the highest level strategist
2. Manager
3. Specialists

Scalling a startup VS Scalling a Blog

Startup Scaling	Blog Scaling
Fundraising	Content
Product Market Fit	Links
Employees	freelancers
Product Development	Content and links
Marketing	Content and links
And a TON more	Content and links

There are only two areas to scale are CONTENT AND LINKS and more Content and more links. these two word are very important. when you start your blog , it’s not about the startegies and hacks and low balls that people tell you about the SEO plugin affiliate world. Content ank link are what matters: Getting conent live .. getting Links to support that conent. Once you have more conent and links than the competition.. that’s the path for menotization

Blogging in 2010 vs Today

Bogging has changed since ten years m

the history of blogging

1994 – the first blog of links.net and “weblogs”

1999 – blogging platforms ( blogger, LiveJournal )

2002 – monetization and AdSense

2003 – creation of WordPress

the rise of Google and social media

the evolution of blogging

how blogging is only getting bigger

Blogging has changed so much today.

Blogging was actually a form of entertainment in the past. people would read blogs to entertain themselves. Now, that’s completely shifted to Social Media ( youtube , instagram, facebook, tiktok) . if they want to entertain themselves they won’t read the bog. there’s a plenty of youtubers outthere i like that i am not gonna read their blog. it’s just not ehat it was anymore. Social media now is more interactive. However, blogging has changed with the rise of Google search and information

. So entrertainment shifted to social media. And information and menotization Stayed on google and only got bigger and bigger. More people came online around the world. More people are searching and buying products online.

So what happened? Blog shifted from update based diary form to update audience just focusing on the audiece and writting posts and keep them up-to-date to an evergreen way to rank on google overtime and acquire new people to your blog. This is the biggest shift.

Because the rise of google. Google started in every single month is favouring more and more and more- transicational.. Exact answer matching search intent type type of post than ever before. the just random idea post that rank for no reason.. getting traffic from google randomly. that doesn’t happen anymore. And that is every year..

Every update that comes out of google is optimising away from that in torue transactional exact match searhc intent which means that still content still exist the meduim has just changed. If you think abou it, Comedians now are big huge now in the podcasting space. But personal brand like jore rojan or the big podcast like tim ferris, they’re not bloggers updating what about their breakfast. they are persnal brands. they’re doing what all old school bloggers used to do but they have really adapted with the new meduim. this is the big difference when peole thin “ Oh ya! i’m a blogger , i have ablog” But what you have on it ? You Breakfast updates?.. That what twitter is for. that what instagrm stories is for. this place are not having different home. it’ds kondda geat for me because peole can have the idea in their head that blogging is like updating my fammily and what i’m doing .. puting alittle tumbler and little thing on the internet. Asome , You keep think of that , We’ll just steel an hundered dollar bill lsnding on he floor. Because ther’s all these opportunities there. ther’s alot of people are turining blind eyes.

Blogging is a google-driven engine .. and we take about search engines. we’re taking about ranking and keyword and making money just passively. and ther’s google algorithm updates. google is getting smarter overtime. Good conrent and good linking has always been a thing. they are a shift. the shift is .. ther’s more serch traffic then ever. ther’s more serches on ggole than ever and it’s just multiplying every year. iformation is bing searched for on ggole. How-to do things. Product reviews that you wanna read. ther’s things that you can easily menotize. it’s an inbound form of marketing. when people are finding you in a passive way.

The evolution of blogging

Blogging in the past

Regular Updates and journaling

Short articles and thin content

Back in 2010 , You can write a 500-word article and you can rank. MAy be you could create a bbn , Create thin content and it worked. Well taht doesn’t really apply anymore

Longer articles helps matche reader search intent and proving information works.

In the past it was abvuisly easeir. there wasn’t many people online. there wasn’t as many blog. Ther’s billion of bloggs not millions and it was less competetive, with lot searches. ther’s less money to be made. ther’s more money to be made in blogging now today than ever before.

Blogging today

Evergreen readers via Google rankings

Mediating purchase decisions. we wanna be a mediaor. this is something i want to give my attention.Being a mediator is wha makes the busniness of blogging so powerful. You’re not selling a product. You’re not trying to persuade someone to make a decision. You’re not having to develop a product. what you’re doing is you’re acting like a mediator. Somone has a product they need. a problem solve. they search on google .. find you. you’re not twisting their arm , you’re just providing them options and resources in the other companies that you’re recommending and take about in your blog of you get anice profit if the top. Bring a mediator is like people are comming to you. they are serching for something transactional. that’s how blogs make money. transcactional articles. ther’re searching for something like aproduct like : Best laptops, best credit cards, Best camping supplies, best anthing that thery’re looking for. they want a blog to provide them this information. And this blog is simply funneling to the best products and making money. No sales, No shipping No dropshipping, no any of that. it’s mediating purchase decisions, And it’s just sets there in google and it’s the most passive form of income. and this comes down to the search intent mastery

Search intent mastery

Google gets smarter, it always rewards sites answering the search quiries and the questions. Alof has changed, What hasn’t changed is Good content and link building is the winner in the situation.

Remember. You’re competing against businesses, not just blogs.. and that’s huge

Competing vs business not just blogs

the sites i comptet are public compnies that has multiple sites, some of these sites literlay have teams of dozons and dozons and dozons of content creators.. dozons of people building links. i’m also competing with startups and other meida companies with a hundereds of employees. And the crazy part is.. You can compete and win because all you have to do is masetering a handful of things ( search intent, the content, the links). bloogging has changed, business and rands figured this out and realise that value, Forexample. When you see forbes, with affiliate links in their posts. that’s a till tale sign that thiere is clearly ahuge business in affilite marketing, content marketing and blogging not just writing updates and making youtube stuff and podcast but actually search driven post conetn that can give a commisions from other products

Every article on your blog will need a sttrategy. it’s not about like writting, this’s about creating a business that’s gonna make you money. and ther’s keyword for that in every single niche. i will give you the exact tools to spot these opportunities. trending product categoires. things that migh not be as competeive. things that could be competetive but you can rank for one day. So blogging today is a business. it’s asystem, it’s not about start writting about things in your passion! No! this is not a hobby. it’s an online business and it’s my favourite form because it’s an infogrmation business that doesn’t require product or customers or teams.

How to make money blogging today

1. Ranking for transactional Keywords.

When we get into blog monetization. Like you can qrite about anything in the world. you can write about How to tire you shoes.. How to wal correctly.. you may rank for that with amzing volume.. but you have to think of it like a business Startup.. What’s having to ties a shoe. Ther’s no tool, just your hand. what’s the prson actually want. the differences when you rank for transactional keywords. that’s product focus, they usually include the word “ Best”.lke: best camping gear, best kitchen gadjets, best firniture, best outdoor gas grills. Any niche has this. the differences with product focus ones. it’s affiliate arketing where you can making high commsissions so you’re making more from every vistors than you get because in how to tie a show. if you rank for that. you have to resort ad revenue which is a very low qulaity tactic. it’s the last resort of monitization. So ranking for transactional keywprk is a higher ROI you can use. affiliate marketing is anumber one that the biggest blogs make money

1. Mastering Search intent

Mastering search intent is testing, tweaking, edorating and trating your blog like a startup. it’s analysing the competetion. it’s taking steps back and see when smebody search for this on google , what are they actually looking for? you take it a layer deeper. you could think of something like: someone is searching : how to loose weight and you start to think about : what is the kind of content did they want? did they want to lose weight slowly and infront of public? or would they rather lose it fast and efficiently? and this dectate some of your content strategy and how you layout content? how wauickly you need to get to the answer.. people attention span . what are they looking for? How do you diiferentiate between items in the list so your reader feels they understand everything? You can do that and mastering it.

you want to be the last click. id somebody is searching for something like best car accessories . Google is smart. they can tell when somebody clicks the first result .. goes back.. clicks the second website , goes back.. clicks the third website.. goes back again.. clicks the fourth website and they don’t go back, they read the article and stayn in it for afew minutes and don’t gog back. that ended the search journey. that’s the goal. that’s mastering search intent. google is getting smarter, you can fake it anymore

1. Beating the competition with link building

contetn and licks .. i will say it again.. content and links is what wins . so you can’t just write the perfect article, you need to have links pointing to it. link buildind is as simple as like being the site as source or a research paper. the more time the people mention you, the more authorive that you seem. Google needs to see not just good content . But also the people are pointing achor text to it. the twp things ( words on the page and links to the page ). Beating the competetion with link building is taking an active approch to link building . we’re not just setting and waiting, You’re putting yourself out there. actively persuing and getting links from other real people in the world so that they link to your articles. you show google that “ i have ten links to this article. not the person with five. that really helps . and you can’t fake that. you cant jus create a great article and hope that it ranks. you need to actually be the best one. there’s not a quick fix around this authorities hacking system.

1. tricking google SEO tools

google is scanning words. they crawl ever article, every link form page to page from link to link and scan content. they can read images. they can read videos. there’s natural language processing and machine learning. if i write an article about california beaches forexample. is california beaches in the title ? well it should be. it itin some headings ? yes. may be ggogle wants to see some words like sand, ocean, beach umberella, top beaches, best beaches all these different kwyword . so you use seo tools .. you kinda hack your way around this

well how do i rank for this , well you need this keyword and this place and this many times . and you want to write for people too.

ther’s tricks and tools yoy can use

1. Creating a systematized , Consistent process for all of the thongs above

it’s really simple . By trating it like a business. Not being as awriter. ther’s some writing involved, don’t get me wrong. but yoy want to mak rpgress while you’re sleeping. we wanna make progess while we are working . we wanna make progress 24/7 and blogging is one of the the only businesses you can do that. ther’s is two bats, content startegy and links. content strategy is your blog. how are you gonna maximize getting a good content published on your blog for transational thongs that can make you money. and the link building side . how to scale, outreach and partener ships so that you’re getting links. they are two easy discipliners but there’s a system . and you kind of directing the sysatem behind both. so you’re treating it like a business. you’re doing the right keywords at the right time

Pivoting

What‘s pivoting?

Pivoting is basically Quickly Changing direction, like changing the product you offer, the contetn you’re creating, the ways you approach things.

But Why would you need to pivot?

it’s being fluid, it’s not being attached to that rigid way of what you do , what you believe or what you write about. pivoting is a startup tactics. it’s not being on the titanic and slowly turning the well towards the ice Berge. Quickly changing direction is important Because we wanna make quick business decisions based on what’s working. Fluid strategies. If you stayed in one strategy and you just go all in in this strategy. you’re putting all the eggs in one basket and you might fail.

Pivoting is a ways to avoid fialure and puch yourself towrds success. pivoting makes blogging 10 times easier.

Here’s an example of a small pivot:

if you wrote a post about podcast Hosting, and it ranks on the first page of google for podcast Hosting and makes money. Then you make a scientific business decison to try video conferencing Software. And based on the data you find yourself rank on the eight page, Here you say : “it’s early ! i should buid links to that article to rank on the first page . I can do it and I can climb that hill!”.

And you start building links to that article, then you realised that Wow you have sent more than 5000 links to that article and you just stuck in page five. Oka, PIVOT. stop sending links to that article, focus on what’s working.I’m not telling you to completely change to another completly different nicheNot only how you survive, but how you thrive. Fluid strategy based on what’s working.

How businesses actually survive in this Age

the timing of the pivot matters. Business have to pivot literlay to survive

Pivots are based on data and feedback

Pivoting in blogging – content and links

pivoting comes down to your willingness to accept all the opportunities that come to you . Not to say ” I’m only gonna write about this.” or “ i’m only gonna focus on these partnerships.”

The great thing about creating a personal brand is that when you start creating and testing , statisticsly speaking word will work and opportunities will rise that you’ll never thought would happen. it’s jsut tru. beacuse you consitently put yourself out there as you. So it may be like “ may be i’m not an expert in that yet but i could rank for that keyword now. because something similar works. i’m gonna jump in that area that i don’t know it’s even exixsts , i’m gonna try this. i’m not thaT THING THAT i think i was it first like may be i started my blog just wanted to think “ alright . i want to create this fast gowning blog . but you know. your home page changes . YOUR UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION in your blog can change. Your message changes . You monitization strategy changes . i started with affiliate because it’s the quickes pat to passive income . but i may shift to making courses in the future and doing other things . And opportunities will rise by having a digital presence . they key is just to beopen to this opportunities and move to them.be fluid, bout be stuck goiung in a certain direction . be fluid like ariver , when you see N OOPORTUNITY , go through it

How successful startups are never pigeonholed in one area

pigeonholling is the death of blogging and it’s always frustrating , that you have your arms behind your back and you don’t have rally any options. your backs against the wall. and you don’t ever have to be in that place . if and only if you’re open to pivoting . because every single personal brand blog has a pivot ponit built in

Her’s Exactly what you should do :

1. Do everything yourself for the first 3 months (basically zero cost)
   Write all the articles. Do all the link building outreach just by yourself
2. Learn and master everything yourself before outsourcing anything (this is key)
   Maybe you’re writting one article a month or one article a week when yoou start
3. Hire one writer by month three
   This will grow your blog slightly and incremently overtime
4. Hire outreach specialist by month six
   By month six your blog will make enough money where you can hire your first outreach specialist (link building assistant) who can help you with off-page link building side of things

These two Hires took you all the way to $60k a month in profit

Some common Misconceptions on how to scale so quickly

You don’t:

1. Spend a dime of PR, Guest posts, or Link building… You shouldn’t either

You should do:

1. aggressively work +30 hours a week out side your full time job, then hired strategically based on profit.
2. Sell SEO consulting Service at the beginning to scale faster
3. You should only sped money on poeple and software. Never pay for guest posts, PR or links at the begining. You can’t outsource that part. You have to build that yourself and you can do it with real work.

If sites want money for guest posts, you probably reaching out to the wrong types of site

Content

What you need in writer:

1. Speed : If you him an outline and content brief, we want that back in relatively quick time frame. We don’t want to wait two weeks and our puplishing slows down
2. Good SEO: he need to understand how to read SEO reports and implement that into the content. they need to have quality writting
3. Quality writting
4. The ability to follow directiions
5. Written examples on the web
6. The ability to protorize you

How to find a writer?

1. Don’t go cheap… Say no to fiverr
2. Aim for $.08 to $.1 per word = $150 per 1500-word article
3. Should be based on talent and speed not geography

How to vet and hire your first writer:

1. Post ajon on the ProBlogger job board
2. What do you put in the job ad?
3. You will get tons of applications
4. Stress test 3 writers with three artcles

Training your first writer

• If they don’t do well. Only you are to blame
• Create a blog post template so that every post is the same
• Do keyword research and provide the content brief ( Target keyword, Title, Surfer report, H2 and H3Headings)
• Use tools to dectate the article quality
  Srfer seo: +80
  Grammarly : +98
• Providing feedback : the power of loom

Link building

What you need in link building assistant

1. Great communication skills
2. Project mangement skills
3. Understanding of writting
4. Alittle bit of seo knowledge
5. The key : The ability to learn

How to find your link building assistant?

1. post a regular job ad on indeed for an outreach specialist.
2. this should be a quality hire
3. Pay them at least $20 per hour
4. Go through the typical job interview process
5. Total cost: $20 per hour, or $400 a week ( $1600 per month)

If you have any question about the startup mentality when it comes to blogging and scaling your online influence. Please leave a comment with your question.