This article is part of a 4 part series on generating more traffic and revenue with your blog. 

Part I: How to Build Blog Traffic: Smart People Use These 3 Strategies While Everyone Else Struggles

Part II: How To Turn Blog Readers into Customers Step by Step (you are here)

Part III: Multiple Streams of Blog Income: Because One Just Won’t Do 

Part IV: How to Scale Your Blog Business

Do you have a strategy (preferably automated) to turn your blog readers into customers?

If you answered no or you have a system that just doesn’t work well, then this post is for you so keep reading.

If your goal is monetization you should have a plan in place not only to attract readers but to turn your blog readers into customers.

This should be one of your primary goals and how well you perform in this area should be a key metric as you grow your blog business.

When you turn your readers into customers, it gives you full control over how fast or how slow your business grows, in addition to not being dependent on other companies, brands or agencies for the revenue you create.

How We Learned To Turn Blog Readers Into Customers

Early on, most of the money we generated from our primary website BlackandMarriedwithKids.com came from ad revenue. Brands and the agencies that represented them wanted to advertise on our site in order to reach the African-American families that we had access to.

But, we quickly found out that we were at the mercy of these agencies AND the budgets they maintained from month to month, year to year and quarter to quarter.

If they wouldn’t have more money to spend with us until the new budget year rolled around, it affected our business.

If they shifted from targeting African American families to Hispanic families it affected our business.

If our contact left or was fired and we no longer had an advocate at the company it affected our business.

There were all types of scenarios that ended with fluctuations in our bank balances.

Playing with my money is not cool! #RealTalk #TrafficSalesProfit

Then it hit us.

Everything we were doing on our site was geared towards what worked best for the brands. Not what worked best for us.

All of our content was catered to what the agencies and brands waned to see.

The more we turned towards the agencies and the brands, the more we turned our backs on the people that mattered the most… our readers.

Our readers were important because they were the reason we started the site in the first place.

We were passionate about helping our audience but we were neglecting their needs.

So we shifted our focus.

Instead of serving the brands, we focused on serving our readers, and not just with content.

We made a conscious effort to turn those readers into customers. And what we realized was that by turning those readers into customers we were doing a better job of serving them.

Now, not only were we providing content but we were providing answers to their problems.

We discovered what their challenges were, what they needed and how we could help them create transformations in their lives.

We wanted to help them move from where they were to where they wanted to be.

That’s the real reason for turning readers into customers.

Not to get rich quick, but to find out what their challenges are and then create solutions to their problems.

Three Steps To Turn Blog Readers to Customers

Now let’s jump right in!

There are three steps to turning your readers into customers.

• Step I:    Attract traffic to your website.
• Step II:  Capture the readers information.
• Step III: Convert the readers into paying customers.

Attract

In my how to build blog traffic article, we talked about the 3B’s that you can use to grow blog traffic.

They were

• build traffic
• borrowing traffic
• and buying traffic.

We use all three components and I’d like for you to take time and think about how you can do the same.

Attracting readers will be one of your most important responsibilities.

If you don’t have enough readers going into the top of your blog sales funnel, you won’t have enough profit coming out of the bottom.

To achieve this you have to be practical, intentional and always working to build and attract traffic to your website.

Capture

You not only need to attract readers to your site but you have to capture their information when they come so that you are able to nurture them throughout the sales process.

I like to use lead magnets to capture traffic. A lead magnet is something of value you give to the reader, in exchange for their contact information.

I always stick to asking for their first name and email address. The more information you ask for, the higher the risk that you’ll lower your conversion rates for capturing their contact information.

If you’re not sure what a lead magnet is, they can range from ebooks, audio, short video, checklists, whitepapers and other offerings that will provide the customer with value from the very beginning of your relationship.

Where should you place the opt-in offer for your lead magnet? I’ll outline my favorite spots  below.

The first is  in your sidebar towards the top of the page. People are more prone to overlook items in the sidebar if they’re not placed high enough. Remember prime real estate always performs better.

The second place is directly beneath your articles. People are trained to automatically bypass sidebars, so it’s a good backup to place a lead magnet right below the content they’re reading.

The third spot to place a lead magnet is in a top of page opt-in bar. This bar would be located at the very top of your page and could even scroll down with you as you go.

Lastly, popups are great to use for lead magnets because they make your opt-in offer the focal point of the page until they are closed. Are you ready to get 1,375% more subscribers?

Now many of you are probably thinking of how much you hate popups when you’re online but as you build your blog business with the strategies in this series, you’ll discover that most of the people that opt-in to your offer will do so via popups.

Just in case you didn’t get the memo above, if you want to supercharge your email lists, popups are the way to go.

Tip: My favorite program (and what I use on this site) to implement popups is Thrive Leads.

Convert

There are two things I want you to focus on as a profitable blogger.

#1) The reason people are coming to your blog site.

#2) What is the biggest challenge that your readers are facing?

Figuring out the reason people are coming to your blog and discovering what their biggest challenge is, will make you a profitable blogger.

To discover why they are coming, take a look at your analytics. If you don’t have statistics get Google Analytics on your site immediately.

You’ll find out information like what posts received the most comments, what was shared the most and what the peak times of day are when people come to your site. Your analytics will tell all you need to know on why people are coming to your blog from a technical aspect.

But once you know why people are coming to your site, you’ll be able to generate content around the areas they’re interested in.

Now you need to figure out what their biggest challenge is.

The easiest way to gather this information is to ask your readers.

You can send out a survey, ask them on social media, send an email, whatever works best for the size of your audience.

You want to just directly ask them, what is your biggest challenge? Then listen to their responses.

By doing this exercise you’ll discover the major challenges that your readers are facing. Once you have this information, you’ll do two things.

#1) You’ll create products and services that solve that challenge. It’s the reason they come to your site. They want you to help them make the transition from where they are today to where they want to be.

#2) Next, you’ll implement their language into your products. A major issue many companies face is that they are unable to sell their products and services to consumers because they don’t use their audience’s language.

When we consulted organizations that did marriage work we ran into this issue. Their materials used language that focused on terms like Healthy Marriage.

Guess what? Couples don’t say we’re getting a divorce because they don’t have a healthy marriage. They say we’re getting a divorce because he/she cheated and there’s no trust.

Couples rarely say they have intimacy challenges but they will say we don’t have sex anymore.

Leaders and experts in the field may use technical terms to explain the problem but the consumers don’t speak that way. You have to use language they’re familiar with and connect to.

Now that you know how to attract, capture and convert readers into customers, we’ll advance to the next level. The next article in our series will focus on multiple streams of blog income and you don’t want to miss it.

If this helped you with a new idea or clarity on converting readers into customrs please drop a comment below letting me know it hit the spot.

Also make sure you join our FREE Facebook group called Traffic, Sales & Profit with Lamar Tyler.

See you soon!

-Lamar