Do you want to know the secret to creating a profitable blog?

Today I’m going to share with you the exact framework that brought me $766,000 in my first two years as a blogger.

I think you're going to be really surprised by just how easy this is.

My Story…

Let's go back to 2014 and I'll paint the picture for you.

I was a photographer and I had my photo studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Back then, things were going really well. I even had employees. We were doing like five to ten photoshoots a week. The business was totally thriving.

But if you know anything about me, you know that although I like photography, I love business!

So I found myself at a point where I just couldn't figure out a way to grow the business further because I didn't have any more time to give.

At the time I was doing everything. I was growing the business, doing the marketing, managing the employees, and most importantly doing all of the photo shoots.

At the same time, this is when blogs were really getting their big start.

And I was seeing a lot of bloggers around the internet make a full-time living with blogging. I was seeing recipe blogs, travel blogs, and educational blogs.

And so I kind of put all these three things together:

-I really want to grow my business more, but I don't have more time.

-Other photographers want to learn how I'm getting all of these bookings. They want to learn my marketing secrets.

-And I'm seeing all these people making all this money with blogging.

Back then, it was really common for photographers to share their top photos on their blogs and tell a story about their clients.

It's just really good marketing—to do blogging as a photographer.

And so I thought, what if I created a separate blog just for photographers where I could share all of these educational tips with the masses?

So even though I was super busy, I saw these bloggers being really successful. And I knew that this was going to be worth my time.

I carved out just a few hours a week to put out one to two blog posts every single week.

At this point, you're probably wondering,

“I don't understand how writing some blogs is going to make you multiple six figures per year.”

And you might be thinking you need tons and tons and tons of traffic to run these little ads on your blog or get sponsors.

But trust me, you do not need to do any of that!

I'm going to share with you my three-part framework that works great for blogging. But it also works for any other social platform too!

So again, I started blogging one to two times per week and I started sharing stories about what was happening at the studio, things that were working, things that weren't working, funny client stories...

I just really focused on storytelling with elements of education that would actually get my readers results. And that's key!

In my first year as a blogger, I made $254,000. And within my first two years as a blogger, I made $766,000!

So let's jump into the framework so I can show you step-by-step exactly how I did this.

My Three-Part Framework

If you’re a blogger, an Instagrammer, or a YouTuber. This framework will work for any content platform that you want to be on.

1. Choose a social platform to grow an audience on.

The first step is to choose a social platform on which you will build an audience and share useful information.

So for me, I chose to blog back in 2014. And right now, if you couldn't tell, I have chosen YouTube!

So it doesn't matter what platform you choose.

But I would recommend a long-form platform, something like Blogging, YouTube, or Podcasting because then you're able to more easily distribute that content onto different channels.

And because the content is long-form, it allows you to go deeper with your audience, which is really important as well.

2. Grow your following and build your email list.

After choosing a platform, then what you want to do is create what's called a—freebie.

This is where someone puts in their name and email address to join your email list in exchange for you emailing them with something for free.

This could be:

-a free helpful PDF

-a free audio file

-a free video

-a free Canva template

It should be something that aligns with your audience and will get them a quick win.

3. Create a digital product to solve a painful problem for your audience.

Once you have your following, you can now start to survey your audience, listen to your audience, talk to your audience, and find out what their number one pain point is.

You can now create digital products based on that pain point.

These digital products will not be given out for free!

Those are digital products for which you will charge a fee in exchange for solving a painful problem for them. And if they follow this digital product step by step, ideally they would get an amazing result!

So how did I use this three-part strategy to earn $766, 000 as a blogger in my first two years?

What I did was I blogged one to two times per week with really helpful free content and within that blog post I had different call-to-action buttons to download my different freebies.

I created about two to four different freebies that would match up with the different content pillars that I was talking about.

So for example, if I had a blog post about posing for photographers, then I would make sure that I had a freebie with more poses.

That way it's related!

I know that if someone's going to read the blog post about that certain subject, then they're really highly likely to want to download a freebie that has to do with that subject as well.

I kept blogging consistently one to two times per week. And as I drove more traffic and as I grew my blog followers, my email list grew more and more and more.

What I did next was I really listened to my audience. I sent them surveys. I talked to them. I had beta Zoom groups where I really listened and learned about the painful problems that they were specifically having.

And over and over and over, I had my audience telling me that:

-they needed more bookings

-they needed more clients

-they wanted to make more money

Then I knew exactly what their painful problem was! And I obviously knew how to solve it because I had already done it for my photo studio.

Then I decided to create a step-by-step ebook.

The ebook was called—Model Call.

In this ebook, I shared my number one marketing strategy step by step.

We're talking screenshots of exactly what to do, scripts of exactly what to say, where to post, step by step, everything to do it!

It’s in a PDF format where I put everything to get somebody a result as quickly as possible.

Trust me, people will not pay more money because you made your ebook longer.

In fact, they will pay more for that ebook if you can get them the result in a shorter amount of time and as easily as possible.

One thing that I did with my blog was, I waited to create a digital product until I had 5,000 email subscribers.

Now I would not recommend this.

I would highly recommend creating and selling a digital product as soon as you can!

That way you're following knows that you're a business and you have things for sale.

If you're not sure which digital product to create. I created a free PDF with 54 Different Types of Digital Products that you can download here, so that you can find your digital product idea and start creating!

So once I had my digital product created, I put it for sale via a sales page or checkout page.

For creating a sales page or checkout page, I personally recommend the software that I personally use—Systeme.io.

With this software, you can create a free account and start creating your own sales page and checkout pages so that you can sell your digital product to your followers.

And what I did was I focused on building my following moving them to email subscribers and then using an automated series of emails to sell my digital products on autopilot.

And I know this is where everyone talks about passive sales, sales in your sleep, sales while on vacation.

Well, it's true! Once you have this setup, you can definitely do that.

It is work upfront, but once you have it set up and you have your content working for you, you're building your following, you're building your email subscribers, you will start to get sales automatically.

And that’s how I was able to make $766,000 in my first two years as a blogger!

Final Thoughts

That concludes my exact framework for making $766k in my first 2 years as a blogger!

It’s just pretty simple, right?

Choose a platform to grow your following, then create a freebie to move your following to email subscribers.

And then figure out what their number one pain point is so you can create a paid digital product to solve that pain point for them!

Let me know which digital product you have in mind that you want to create!