How to Start a Blogging Business from Zero with Adam Enfroy: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like a billion dollar moves. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down how to start a blogging business from zero. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Adam and Froy into EO Fire Studios. Adam teaches 500 ,000 monthly readers how to scale their influence at startup speed. In today's foundation, we'll talk about taking your time. Blogging is a systemized search-driven business.

0:34Focus on that. And if you wanna be successful, You have to treat it like a business fire nation and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Adam and our sponsors. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts.

1:05Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world. And four-time TEDx speaker, Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Adam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Hey, John. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, Fire Nation. I've listened to the show before. I'm really happy to be here. One thing I think that you need to be successful that a lot of people might disagree with is honestly take your time.

1:47You have to be in a career and learn from a lot of smart people over time. Learn the tricks of the trade. I got really lucky being in digital marketing and having a tech career before launching my successful blog, but it took probably nine years of struggling, you know, and learning before I could actually make it work. So don't, you know, don't worry about the struggles, you know, embrace the struggle, embrace the day. And just, it's really the small daily choices that you make to get you where you need to be. And Fire Nation, that's why I talk about the compound effect by Darren Hardy and the slight edge by Jeff Olson, because it is so key to just get 1 % better and to do the 1 % that's going to gets you better every single day.

2:28And it adds up to massive compound awesomeness over time. So Adam, we're talking about how to start a blogging business literally from zero in 2021. So Fire Nation, hopefully you're listening to this fairly in this time range. So all these things will be relevant to you. And Adam, your blogging journey started pretty recently. I mean, we're talking 2019. So give us a little rundown of who you are and how you got here. Yeah, thanks, John. Again, my name is Adam Enfroy, and I started my blog in 2019. So I'm not an old school marketing guru by any means. I was lucky enough to have a career in marketing.

3:06I learned a lot living in Austin, Texas, and I dreamed of passive income. I had tried and failed many things in the past. And I feel like I finally learned enough throughout my career to make it work. So in January of 2019, I launched my blog and just made it my name. So adamenfroy.com. I didn't know exactly what it was going to be. I just kind of wanted it to be a digital resume of sorts, add a few posts, different personal development posts, some affiliate articles. I was lucky enough that I had a career. I was an affiliate manager. and I saw the other side of affiliate marketing and then I became a digital marketing director.

3:45But what I saw was that I was stuck in this rat race that I couldn't avoid. No matter how far I went in my career, my marketing career, I would pretty much always be telling a higher up some numbers in a report and it was stressing me out. Weekly business reviews. I was working for a big tech company that was pre-IPO growth phase, doing multiple jobs, stressed out, and I had kind of to escape. So I built this blog as a means to an end. And I took basically what I learned in the startup world, working for startups, and I applied it to my personal brand just as a blogger. And, you know, I didn't expect the process to work, but it really did.

4:27And within a year, I was, you know, I had a million dollar a year blog, primarily just affiliate revenue. And today, two and a half years in, approaching like 150K a month blogging. So, you know, it's a new blogging is a lot different than it was maybe five or 10 years ago. So my goal as a new guy on the block is to really teach people how to grow a website in 2021 and beyond. So not 2010, 2015, but really what they have to do to grow it today. Yeah. I remember taking courses back in 2012 when I was launching my podcast and website and I learned a lot about what the current principles were at that time and things have just changed a lot, like a lot since then.

5:15So can you share with us the latest and the greatest principles of blogging like a startup for 2021 and beyond? Absolutely. So first, what is blogging and what isn't it? You know, today it's, you know, you think about blogging and you think about updating an audience and writing kind of a journal-like setting and maybe making some money with advertising, right? Getting traffic maybe from Pinterest or Facebook and random sources. But today the game has changed. Blogging, like real true blogging businesses are search-driven businesses. Think businesses like NerdWallet. They have Super Bowl ads. Brands are entering the space of blogging.

5:53Money is made on page one of Google, right? And it's getting more competitive. So how do you compete? Well, you still can. That's the good news as an individual blogger. But today, blogging is not writing. Blogging is not writing about your passions. Blogging is scaling your efforts to compete with brands. It's assembling content so you can publish it quickly. It's working and scaling relationships so you can build links quickly. And it's really just kind of treating your blog like a business so that you can compete with these brands. So it's really more of a systematized, search-driven business today more than anything else.

6:29And one thing that I'm pretty known for saying is niche till it hurts, niche your face off. I mean, I'm passionate about that. I'm convinced that's why Entrepreneurs on Fire was a success because back in 2012, it was super, super niche. It was the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. So talk to us about niche selection. Talk to us about the power brands you, when you brand yourself, when you can actually take that power and be the brand of you, what do those two things look like? The most common question I get from new entrepreneurs and new bloggers, new website owners is what should my niche be, right?

7:11Should I go, you want to make a lot of money? Should I talk about how to make money online, finance, VPNs, you know, Anything can be a niche. But the problem, there's a lot of problem with, I think, traditional niche site advice. It starts super niche. Try it out and see if it works. I could create a very small niche site. But there's still a problem with this niche selection process because 99 % of blogs are still failing. And I see, why is that? Well, I think with niche selection, what I've found that works is starting a little bit broad, not super broad, but knowing what your main niche is, your overall niche.

7:51So instead of saying smart home devices, maybe it's just home. Or instead of saying I'm going to write about email marketing software, maybe it's just software or technology. So you start broad because the problem is a lot of people, the goal is to not quit. That's ultimately the goal. And if you start to narrow, you pigeonhole yourself as a business owner. And the one thing that business owners can't do is pigeonhole themselves and not give themselves the freedom to pivot. So I always say within 2021 and beyond for niche selection, try not to go like hyper niche with your domain name. So you can always kind of, you know, that's why, you know, what I saw success with a personal brand in my own name or something like EO Fire works really well because you can really adapt and cover all kinds of entrepreneurial content in a broad way.

8:40It's not like howtopodcast.com or podcastfire.com. You can cover a ton of different things and you find what works over time. That's the key, I think, to niche selection is you don't need the perfect niche at first. What you need is to start with something, something connected to your identity, your expertise, any leverage that you have. And then you really find your niche over time. And that's based on data. I think a niche is really a living, breathing thing. Much like a blog is an update of personal experiences and life is personal changing, adapting experiences, niche is changed too. So here's a quick example is in any blogging niche, whether it's, you know, let's say you want to make money with affiliate revenue, we're talking about furniture, indoor camping, web hosting, VPNs, any type of product related niche that we want to write about.

9:38There's always going to be things that have been written already. Right. So let's say we want to write about let's say we started a kitchen blog. We're really passionate about kitchen stuff and cooking and all that, right? Well, if we want to make money with affiliate revenue, we can't rank for like best refrigerator, best microwave, best dishwasher. That stuff's coming on. That's like starting a blog and pretending that you're Sears, right? Those articles, a lot of those articles and keywords have been written about for 15 years. But there's always new niches that you can find. So maybe it's not best dishwashers that you want to write about or how to use certain things in the kitchen.

10:21But maybe it's best touchless kitchen faucet, best Japanese steak knives. There's always new and emerging products in any niche. So what you need to do is really ride the wave in your niche. Niche and timing is a crucial component to me, and I've found that. There's articles that I wrote two years ago that if I tried to write them today, I would never rank today. today because timing plays a crucial role. So it's really all about finding emerging trends in your niche. And that's really where like the brand of you comes in and the power of you, because if you have expertise in a niche, you're going to be able to spot those opportunities before other people.

11:00So it's not just keyword research, but it's also a lot of it is timing, riding waves, starting broad and using data to hone in on that niche over time. Fire Nation, powerful stuff. And you know what's awesome? When you do it this way, it's not overwhelming. You're not trying to be everything to everyone. You're saying, hey, I'm going to identify a real emerging niche. I'm going to identify a real problem that I can become the best solution to and dominate as a result. And we have some amazing things we'll be talking about, including a content and link building machine when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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14:07You might be thinking a TEDx talk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. Adam, we're back and let's be honest with Fire Nation.

14:43Is internet search still relevant in 2021? That's a great question, John. Yeah. And it really is. The internet is only, and search is only growing. In fact, it's growing faster than most other platforms. Google searches are rising every year. People are looking for both more information and products online. I mean, when you think about looking just for products and people using Amazon and product reviews and people purchasing, e-commerce is on the rise, search is on the rise, and search is still where you make the most money blogging. So let's talk right now about your specific content and link building machine.

15:23I mean, you've developed this over time and over the success that you shared earlier. Share it with Fire Nation. When we think about blogging in 2021 and beyond, we really have to think about what wins today, what ranks today. Because what you have to do to make money blogging today is basically write articles that can make money. Not every blog post will make you money. It depends on the intent behind the search. I could write an article that says how to tie your shoes. How am I going to, you know, and I could show them fancy pictures and shoelaces, but are they going to buy a product for me about tying shoes?

15:59Are they going to purchase my book about how to tie a shoe? No, they're just kind of looking for that passive information that maybe that would be where ads come in and that's the last resort, right? So with the content and link building machine, you have to remember that the goal is ranking on Google, getting people to click on your articles and then making money either with ads or with affiliate marketing. And to do that, what wins? Well, the websites that win have the best content and the most links. It's kind of that simple. If you look at SEO ranking factors and articles about Google ranking factors, there could be 200 or 300 and all these different things, site speed, optimization, semantic keywords, all these things.

16:40But what it ultimately comes down to is content and link building. So how do we scale those? Well, on one side, there's content. So that's what is actually on your website. Well, the good news is you don't have to be a great writer to be a blogger. You know, when I first started, I wasn't a great writer by any means. And I'm still all right. I'm getting better. But I'm now Ernest Hemingway. I struggle with a blank page as much as anyone else. But the good news is that when you think about making money with a blog, we are assembling content, not writing it. So when you think about assembling content, I think back to an assembly line.

17:16So Henry Ford created the assembly line. And obviously, that's for automobiles, you know, creating each individual person, creating and managing a different component of the process until it's completed. Now, that is still in use today. And it also applies to your content efforts. Now, when you think about a vehicle assembly line, maybe Ford, it doesn't mean that it's low quality. I mean, a Ford F-150 is a great truck, right? And they're selling a lot more of them than, say, a Ferrari, a perfectly written Ferrari. However, the Ford F-150 is quite efficient. You can pump out a lot of those and get them done.

17:55And the content assembly line is similar to that. So we're assembling content, not writing. There's ways that you can, that I talk about in my course, and there's ways that you can really, you know, how do you do it? Well, there's stages to it. First is, you know, a quick outline, outsource to a writer, giving them exactly what to write. And again, the good news with blogging is the world is a list. All blog posts are basically lists. Whether it's how to do something, it's a list of steps. or the best products of a certain kind for affiliate revenue. That is also a list of steps. So it's really easy to outsource based on templates, finding cheap writers that are effective, giving them what they need, getting a Google Doc, putting that into WordPress, getting the final things published, and publishing quickly because you want to get it done and publish quickly.

18:48The average blog post might take somebody, if it's 2 ,000, 3 ,000 words, that could take five or six hours or more. But if you can condense that process as a business owner down to 30 minutes, 20 minutes, then you begin to make strides. And that's really what the entire point of my blog is about. It's like we're all working full-time jobs mostly while we're building up businesses. So what can we do to make the most effective use of our time? Whether you're a blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, it's all about treating it like a business and effectively getting help when you need it. And that's not saying to outsource and spend thousands and thousands of dollars, but there's ways to effectively do it when you're ready to.

19:30So on the content assembly line, on one hand, you're really just creating content that is both optimized for SEO, optimized for human readers, and is published quickly. Then the other side of that is the link building machine. So there's a couple elements of link building that I want to cover real quickly. So one is you don't need links. And that's simply not true. I see some articles saying link building or guest blogging is dead. You don't need links. And let me tell you, I built about 3 ,000 to 4 ,000 backlinks in my blog's first year, year and a half. Grew my Ahrefs domain rating from 0 to 78.

20:12and I can tell you that if you want to rank for things that make money, yes, you still need links. You might be able to rank for some ancillary things without any links, but links are important and there's also the myth of passive link building. So traditional advice might say, write it and they will come. Just write great content. Fill it with infographics and images and statistics and if you make great content, then you'll get the ultimate form of link building, which is passive links, people just randomly finding you and linking to you. Now, while that is the holy grail and it's great to focus on quality content to get links, it doesn't work for new bloggers.

20:53New bloggers, people starting a website from zero today, absolutely have to do their own link building efforts in order to get a boost, get up there so that Google sees you. That's the whole goal, right? Good content and links pointing to the content equals Google rankings. So in the link building machine, I consider this, there's really a backend machine behind it. Now, without getting too complicated or technical, what you need, link building is really a value exchange in my mind. Maybe you've seen people asking for guest posts or email outreach and things like that. And it's usually a one-sided affair.

21:36But what tends to work is link building is a value exchange. So what is valuable in that? Can I provide links to others? Can I send a link to eofire.com or Smart Passive Income and get on that podcast? Can I do a bunch of guest posts and send these links to other people? Can I build real relationships? Because that's what it comes down to. So with the link building machine, the way that you get a lot of links in 2021 and beyond today is you build up a lot of solid relationships in your niche. You build up a backlog of guest posts. So that's articles that you want to write for other websites. And then you just build these relationships and trade links and do different exchanges and build, you know, build these link building relationships to expand your presence.

22:25So, you know, there's templates, email outreach templates you can do this with. There's all kinds of different things. But ultimately, without getting too in the weeds, when you think about content and link building, you really just need to create a systematized approach so that you can just spend maybe 30 minutes or an hour and get the most progress done in the shortest time frame possible. Because ultimately, again, blogs that make money are the ones that have the best content or sometimes the most content and the most links. Fire Nation, don't overcomplicate things. Most content, most links.

23:02It is what's relevant in 2021. So what exactly is the deal with affiliate marketing for bloggers? I mean, earlier in the interview, you were sharing how you generated seven figures in a year and now as much as up to 150K per month with affiliate marketing. Give us a quick breakdown on that. Not super in depth, but just like what is the deal with affiliate marketing specifically in the blogging world? Yeah, absolutely. And I was very lucky to be an affiliate manager for about a year. So I was actually on the product side, and I was helping other bloggers promote our software. So I saw all these bloggers making a lot of money.

23:42I was like, hey, I think I could probably try this myself. And affiliate marketing, first, it's the most ROI, so return on investment positive form of revenue you can make for your blog. When you think about making money blogging, there's all kinds of things, right? You could sell courses. You can put ads on your blog. You can do affiliate marketing, digital products, speaking, coaching, consulting. A blog, you can even sell products, physical products, right? But affiliate marketing is an interesting one because technically it's the most passive for the most part because once you're ranking and getting money that way from other brands, there's not much to do.

24:25So it's the most passive and it's the most ROI positive. So ads, when you think about ads, they're pretty random, right? You see banner ads are kind of random things on the side when you're browsing the internet. Affiliate marketing is all about matching the offer to what people searched for. So when you think about affiliate marketing today, it's really, you know, think about when you're looking and how you search Google. So maybe you search for the best suitcase, like you're traveling abroad and you want to find the best suitcase. Or maybe you search for the best camping tents or backpacking tents.

24:58Maybe you're looking for the best credit card or the best laptops of 2020. Blogs are mediators. Blogs are mediators between somebody's mind, somebody's search, and a purchase. So a blog lives in between Google and the purchase. So how affiliate works is, for example, today I rank really well for a lot of different terms in the software. space. So maybe something like email marketing software. You Google that, you'll find my website on page one. You search email marketing software. Now you're looking for a list, right? So I have joined individual affiliate programs and promoted them. So maybe number one, ActiveCampaign.

25:41I join their individual affiliate program. Every time somebody clicks that and purchases ActiveCampaign, I get a commission on that. Beautiful thing about software commissions is that they're typically paid on a recurring basis as long as somebody remains a customer. So affiliate marketing, there's actually, when I think about it, there's no magic bullet to start making money. I've seen a lot of new bloggers say, how do I join all these affiliate programs and push these offers out? Key is you need to build the audience first. You need to work on that content and link building machine first before you start doing affiliate marketing because affiliate marketing is really just a byproduct of ranking and getting traffic and clicks for certain keywords.

26:23So it goes in with keyword research. It works in with search intent. But really, once you start ranking for these product category posts, so think like best laptops, best VPNs, email marketing software, camping supplies, best golf clubs, best anything, blogs all have two types of content, how to do stuff and product reviews. So think about like a golfing blog, for example. You're going to see two types of articles, how to swing, how to chip, how to putt, how to do anything on the golf course, informational articles to build the audience. And the other ones are product reviews, best driver, best iron, best putter.

27:01Those are where affiliate lives in that transactional best of list post. Those are what's searched a lot. That's in the marketing funnel where Google searchers are looking not just to go right to a product page, but to find a blog. For example, I'll wrap it up. If you search for best laptops, you're not going to necessarily always see Dell or Walmart.com or Best Buy going right to laptops. You're mainly going to see tech blogs because people want that information. They want that mediated information. And when they do it and they get to your blog and they click that affiliate link, that's when you make a sale.