Business

You’ve probably heard the saying “content is king.” And sure, content is essential in our informational age. But your content can be absolutely outstanding and attract tons of people. However, if you don´t have a high converting website that turns your visitors into subscribers or costumers, you are missing out on money and your tribe. 

That’s why, as a blogger, you also need to focus on designing a high converting website. 

Since designing a website from scratch as a complete blogger/entrepreneur newbie can be very confusing and overwhelming (been there, done that ^^’), I decided to give you some advice I wish I had had in the beginning. 

How I started out 

Alright, first, let’s indulge in a little storytime. When I started my business, I was completely lost. 

I knew nothing about opt-in incentives, e-mail lists, traffic, lead magnets, sales funnels, conversions, and the million other things that are to know in online entrepreneurship. 

That’s why I was incredibly thankful that the team from Affiliate Marketing Mastery set up my website with the most essential plugins and the theme I had chosen. 

Now, I believe it would not have been that difficult after all to set it all up on my own. Especially since it would have forced me to do some more research and learn what exactly a theme is, instead of just choosing one I thought looked good. 

Anyways, I was happy to have a Blog up and running and now started to upload weekly Blog posts. 

But of course, I didn’t just want to upload my content. I wanted to make my Blog look a certain way. 

At first, I tinkered around as far as I could without any coding knowledge, but I didn’t get to the results that I wanted to have. 

And as I started doing more and more research, I learned that there are plugins that can create a post grid. Happy to finally have found a solution for my problem, I downloaded and activated the free Post Grid plugin and got it all set up. 

After that, I only had a few minor problems with my Blog design for the next few months, but generally, I was content. 

Fast forward 7-8 months, and I finally start to learn more about SEO, e-mail lists, traffic, conversions, and opt-in forms. 

And as I finally got the courage to create an opt-in e-mail form on my homepage, what did I have to realize? My theme gave me only minimal and rubbish looking options. 

AGAIN … my over $100 costing theme let me down -_- 

I saw all those other websites like projectlifemaster.com, melyssagriffin.com or neilpatel.com, and I kept wondering, “How do they make a gorgeous website like that???? Do they hire expensive developers or something??? I can’t afford that right now …” 

Entry: Elementor

While I was trying to figure out how to make my website work for me (mind you, I was, of course, still posting content once a week and was by then also doing marketing on Pinterest to generate traffic to my Blog), I did a lot of research. 

And over and over again did I stumble over Elementor. 

Elementor as a tool and the functions it promises looks stunning … but then again, so do many tools, and I can’t throw my money at every shiny object out there. 

So I thought “pfff, no, I am not going to invest in that. I’ve already spent so much money on my business, and I have no income. Maybe I´ll do it once some money has come back to me.”

But as I got more serious and determined to build a converting website and an e-mail list Elementor became more and more attractive. 

And then, shortly before the New Year, they offered a 50% discount. And I just was like, screw it … I’m not broke, so of course, I invest $25 into a fantastic tool like that! 

And let me tell you that it was one of the best decisions to end 2019 with! 

The longer I use Elementor, the more I learn about all the features and realize just how incredibly valuable Elementor really is. 

And it is so, so, so, so, sooooooooooooooooooooo cheap!!! 

Seriously, that tool is absolutely overdelivering on the price-value-spectrum! Having to pay only $50 a year for Elementor is like an offer send from heaven! It doesn’t get much better than that!

Sometimes I can pretty much feel my mouth watering when I see what I have just been able to create with Elementor. It makes me feel so damn proud of myself, although, with this theme builder, it is incredibly easy. 

Elementor has honestly solved all my website problems and granted all my design wishes. 

I can now do the most gorgeous opt-in forms, highly customizable and moveable sidebars, AMAZING popups and bars and so so so much more! 

Oh! Did I mention the many amazing templates to choose from? 

Anyway, I think you get the point. Elementor has all those functions I could have dreamed of. 

Now, I am not going to give you a step-by-step manual on how to use all the different Elementor functions. 

That would be quite frankly a waste of both yours and my time since the Elementor team has already perfect explanatory videos on pretty much all of their functions. 

And of course, those videos are going to be much more up to date than whatever I could replicate. 

So, if you want to check out the different functions and how to use Elementor before you start building your website, go to their YouTube Channel and browse through the videos. 

Or, if you are more like me and like to dive in headfirst and learn as you go, you can simply google your question once it arises and then find the corresponding YouTube video. 

That’s how I’ve figured out more and more functions (although a more systematic approach would have been probably wiser ^^’). Should you not be able to find the video that answers your question, try playing around with different terminologies. 

For example, instead of “opening popup” you might want to search for “triggering popup”. Those are just terms that you learn as you go. 

Elementor And/Or Theme?

But before I get into some of the parts of a high converting website, let’s talk about the whole Elementor and/or WordPress theme topic. 

Because that has been something that has confused me a ton and kept me from purchasing Elementor sooner. 

I want to add a short disclaimer here. I am still far from being an expert in the whole WordPress/website/design arena. And I still haven’t understood the WordPress theme/framework subject entirely yet, but this is what I have figured out through research: 

So basically, you don’t need a theme with Elementor. You could use your absolutely naked WordPress site, and Elementor would provide you with everything you need. 

On the other hand, if you do have a theme, like me, you don’t need to worry either. When you design a page or post, Elementor gives you the option to choose the layout “Elementor canvas”. 

Once you select that, your page/post is just a naked white page. As if you didn’t have a theme at all. 

Now, that makes one wonder, why do people still use such limited WordPress themes then? 

Ok, first of all, I think it is worth mentioning that Elementor launched in 2016. So it’s a pretty young company. 

Now, I haven’t done any research on their competitors. Still, if we consider the age of the internet and that WordPress itself was launched in 2003, I believe it makes sense to say that such highly customizable website builders are still a pretty new tool. 

And if you look at Elementor’s development, you’ll discover some of their newer features are the theme builder and the popup builder. So I believe those WordPress premium themes will become more and more useless as tools like Elementor grow stronger. 

The one thing you might still need a premium WordPress theme for, as I read online, are online shops. 

Now, I still know next to nothing about that since I am not at a point yet where I have anything to sell online. But apparently, you might need a theme for doing eCommerce. Although Elementor does have eCommerce widgets …

If you want to do that, please do your own research. Again, I am no expert on this. I just wanted to make you aware of the one “but” I found during my research. 

But now, let’s finally get to the juice!!! 

The ingredients of a high converting website

So, what are the components of a high converting website? 

Of course, you want your website to be full of great content and look pretty and not too overwhelming. But those are very personal design choices. 

I want to talk to you about some essential parts of a high converting website I wasn’t aware of when I started my Blog. 

Blog Posts 

Let’s start with the gateway to your website most visitors will take: Your Blog Posts. 

Your blog posts are highly crucial for your conversion because they attract most of your visitors (especially if you are still just a blogger and haven’t added any tools or courses to your website).

Your readers want the solution to one of their problems, and only your content gives them that. Your homepage is of no interest to them at that point. 

So how can you capture the addresses of your Blog post readers or sell them something? 

1. Sidebar 

Sidebars are an incredibly common and powerful way to grab your page viewers’ attention for the things you want them to see.  

These can include: 

•  displaying ads/affiliate marketing (always remember proper disclaimers!)
• opt-in incentives  
• related content 
• social media buttons 

2. Below your post

Another area where you can put a lot of these elements is below your post. 

That’s also the place to put a comment section in. 

3. On top of your page 

At the very top of your page, you could display a banner with an opt-in incentive or an ad. 

4. Inside of your text 

And lastly, inside of your writing is, of course, an eyecatching spot for ads or incentives. 

Home Page 

Next is your homepage. 

Your homepage represents your business and Blog, and it is very likely one of your most visited pages. 

The first questions you should ask yourself when designing your homepage are the following: What do you want your visitors to do on your website? Where should they click? What should they see/read? 

Naturally, you want them to read your content. But why wait for them to read your content and then click on the incentives/ads etc. you’ve placed there? Why not immediately catch their e-mail addresses? 

That’s why you want to have an immediate opt-in incentive straight as the first thing they’ll see on your website. Look at these websites, for example: 

Blog Pages 

Design-wise Blog pages can look pretty much the same as your Blog post designs. 

You could use the same side bar and the same below the post incentives. But if you want to design something entirely different, it’s of course up to you. 

Your Blog should at least have the following pages: 

• Blog page (with your content, maybe different pages for each category) 
• about page 
• contact page 
• affiliate disclosure 
• Privacy Policy 
• Free resource library (this is where you can store all of the Freebies you’ve created for your opt-in incentives – again, Elementor makes it pretty easy to design. (1) You need to create a media gallery, (2) choose one pinnable image for your Freebie, (3) link that image to the pdf or in the case of an e-mail course to a popup form) 

Popups 

And lastly, a feature that can’t be missing in a high converting website: Popups. 

And again (I know I’m probably boring you by now), Elementor has stunning options for this. 

For my first popups, I’ve used Mailerlite, whose free version I used to start my e-mail list. 

Those popups were fine and all, but not very jaw-dropping. But Elementor HAS.IT.ALL! 

They have pretty much every possible kind of popup you can imagine to offer. Most of these popup places literally never even crossed my mind ^^’ 

Bonus: What to keep in mind

Phew, that was a long post! But there are a few last vital reminders I want to give you on the way to sum it all up:  

1. What do you want visitors to do? 

When designing your website, always keep in mind what you want your visitors to do. Where do you want to lead them? How can you get them to give you their e-mail address or click on an ad? 

2. Direct but don’t distract 

Directing your readers towards your end-goal destination through clear incentives. 

Create big buttons, use bold writing, eye-catching colors or movements, and enticing sentences. 

However, always make sure it won’t distract them from the value they were actually looking for. 

3. Provide value 

That leads us to the importance of delivering value. People will be much more willing to sign up for something if they trust you and are grateful for the value you provided them with. 

So always try to overdeliver on what they expect. You might not be able to do that with every one of your posts and especially at the beginning of your blogging career, but don’t worry. 

Simply provide as much value as you can. And later on, you can always go back and tweak your old posts to make them even more valuable! 

4. Know your audience; desktop or mobile? 

You NEED to know your audience! Creating a high converting website for desktop users is an entirely different matter than mobile users. 

Since I was always working on my Blog with my laptop, I put all my focus on the desktop version. Only to realize after months that over 3/4 of my traffic came from mobile devices! And some of my designs weren’t working out at all in that format! In my eyes, that was an embarrassing tragedy. 

It doesn’t have to be difficult though to cover both of them! That’s another of the endless reasons I love Elementor. This tool makes it incredibly easy for you to design a high converting website for desktop, tablet, and mobile users. 

5. Have a coherent theme 

Other than that, you should create a cohesive theme on your website. Let the design speak for itself and tell people what brand it is. 

Optimally, you want to be able to show someone an excerpt from your website, and they should immediately be able to tell which brand it is from. 

If every page looks completely different, that will be a difficult task to accomplish. 

6. There is no perfect website. 

And lastly, a reminder to all those perfectionists out there: There is no such thing as a “perfect website.” 

Of course, there will always be things to improve on your design. But quite frankly, you are wasting a lot of time if you overanalyze your design. 

When create a high converting website design, set yourself a deadline to finish the project, and then leave it at that for a few months before making any significant changes. 

As important as a high converting website is, marketing, creating content and products are much more critical. 

You should focus the majority of your time on the core of your business and not just the pretty wrapping. 

With that being said, I wish you much success in designing your own high converting website! I recommend you give Elementor a shot instead of frustrating over your unflexible theme as I did for months. 

I’ll write to you again soon. 

Sophie 

If you are trying to produce traffic by marketing your content on Pinterest, you probably want millions of Pinterest impressions to greet you when you open your account. 

You might have already seen some Pinterest accounts with one, five, or even ten MILLION monthly Pinterest views. 

If you are wondering how they reached such incredible high amounts of impressions on their pins, this article is for you! 

A word of warning! 

Having tons of impressions is terrific, yes. The more impressions you have, the more link clicks and saves your pins can get. 

But careful! The keyword here is CAN! 

Impressions do NOT equal traffic!!! That was one of the mistakes I made in the beginning. 

I got all excited about my 2m monthly Pinterest views but then wondered why I only had around 20 daily website visitors. 

That’s why, nowadays, I focus more on creating traffic than on having a ton of impressions. 

The main difference for me lies in the pins that I pin. Now, I really try to pin only those pins that attract my link clicking target audience. 

You can read more about this here: The 5 Biggest Pinterest Mistakes I Made In The Beginning

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This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

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1. Setting up a business account 

Alright, first things first, you want to set up a business account. This enables you to see statistics like your monthly impressions, link clicks, and saves. 

Most of you will already have done this. Therefore I won’t go into detail on it. 

For those of you who haven’t…

You can get started HERE. 

2. Setting up rich pins 

Enabling rich pins adds extra information to your own pins, which will make them more appealing to your audience and help your overall performance. 

You can set it up HERE. 

3. Pinning daily 

Alright, now that we got the basics out of the way, let’s talk about the pinning strategy. 

To reach millions of monthly impressions, you have to pin regularly. And I don’t mean 10 pins every week. 

No, I am talking about 20-30 pins a day. 

Please don’t get the idea that the more you pin, the better your performance will be. 

If you pin too much, your account might get shut down because of spamming. 

Stick to 20-30 pins a day. You don’t need more to reach millions of monthly views. 

4. Scheduling with Tailwind 

To maximize the results your pins will get, you need to pin them at the strategically best time for the audience you are trying to attract. 

If you want to do this manually, there are two problems: 

1. You need to figure out when those times are, and quite frankly, I can’t think of another way other than experimenting. And a busy fempreneur like you won’t have time for that. 
2. Even if you did figure out those perfect times, you’d actually need to pin in those moments. And for me at least, that would mean pinning half of my pins at night because that’s when my American target audience is awake. 

So, yeah, solely relying on manual pinning is a no go for me. 

The solution send from heaven is … drumroll, please … TAILWIND!!!! 

Tailwind is an amazing scheduling tool that lets you not only schedule your pins weeks in advance but also posts them automatically at the strategically best time. 

AND it has a web browser extension that makes scheduling pins so unbelievably effortless and quick. 

AND it gives you a ton of additional data. 

AND it provides you with Tailwind Tribes, which are groups of Tailwind users all pinning each other’s quality content. 

I honestly LOVE Tailwind. And I pretty much didn’t have to put in much work at all to reach 2m monthly Pinterest impressions. With Tailwind, it almost happens on autopilot. 

That being said, please keep in mind my previous warning. Getting impressions is rather easy, making them convert into traffic is the hard part. 

5. Using keywords 

… pretty much EVERYWHERE! 

Keywords are, as the word says, KEY to traffic generation. Search engines like Google and Pinterest have their algorithms search for keywords to determine the ranking your content gets. 

Therefore you want to use a lot of keywords (without overstuffing, of course). You should use them in your pin titles, alt-tags, pin descriptions, board titles, board descriptions, section names, profile title, and profile description. 

To search for keywords, simply go to the Pinterest search bar and type in your primary keyword. Pinterest will go on and suggest many more to you. 

Another less known way, to find keywords is the following: 

Click on Ads -> Create ad in the top left corner of the page. 

Then on the left-hand side, click on Targeting. 

Scrolling down, you will come to the Keywords section. There you can type in any keyword (although sometimes I don’t get results for keywords … don’t know why), and it will show you additional ideas and their monthly search volume. 

I sometimes find it reassuring to see an actual number behind a keyword instead of picking them just out of the search bar results. 

Anyway, wherever you get your keywords from, try to use moderately popular ones. 

You don’t want to compete with too many big fish for a keyword, but you also want to have a big audience. So choose not the most or least prominent ones. 

Oh, and you can use hashtags, though I wouldn’t use too much of them and instead place my keywords inside my texts or titles. The hashtags might help your performance, but not many people actually search for hashtags on Pinterest. 

6. Have patience 

I know, I know, you don’t want to hear this. 

But Pinterest is a search engine, just like Google. Results don’t happen overnight in search engines. So you need patience until you see results. 

Melyssa Griffin recommends waiting at least 3 months to analyze your results. And I have made similar experiences. It takes a while to build momentum. 

With that, I wish you much success and happy pinning! ^^

It´s time to get rid of your Pinterest mistakes! If you are reading this, I am assuming you have already discovered what an amazing and unique tool for traffic Pinterest is. 

So did I a few months ago as I excitedly jumped on the easy and fun opportunity to create traffic to my blog. Within the past few months, I’ve come a long way and have stepped up my Pinterest game significantly. 

This post is all about the biggest Pinterest mistakes I made along the way. Errors that, if I had avoided them, would have given me more traffic way faster. 

I hope you learn out of my Pinterest mistakes and go on and step up your pinning game! 

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This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

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1. Pinterest Mistake: Believing impressions and monthly views matter 

When you open your Pinterest business account, two of the very first analytic stats that come to the eye are your monthly viewers and your monthly impressions. 

Now, of course, you are aiming to get them as high as possible. However, there can be a big difference between your impressions and your traffic. 

That’s what I had to learn at the end of last year, as I celebrated reaching 2 million monthly Pinterest viewers, yet only 20 daily website visitors. 

Out of freaking 2 MILLION monthly viewers, only 20 a day, meaning 620 a month, converted to my website! That’s almost nothing. 

That’s when I knew I had to change something. So I purchased Pinfinite Growth by Melyssa Griffin and focused on growing my traffic instead of my impressions. 

And out of that first lesson came the following lessons. 

2. Pinterest Mistake: Pinning without my target audience in mind 

Now, the first and most important thing you have to get into your head is this: People are not interested in you and your interests (yet). 

So you might like those vegan recipes and pin them like crazy to one of your boards. But if your blog is about training dogs or dancing, then you won’t be able to pin your own content to that vegan recipes board. 

The result: Your Pinterest account get’s a ton of impressions and followers, who love vegan recipes, but barely anyone clicks on your links to visit your blog. And when they do, they are probably disappointed not to find vegan content. 

Now, this was, of course, an obvious example. I dare say most (not all, though) people figure this out on their own. 

Now, I fell into a different yet similar trap. For a few years now, I’ve been obsessed with motivational and inspirational quotes! I love them! 

And I knew that my content would also be motivating and inspiring. Furthermore, many people like quotes images, and they are incredibly easy to create. 

So what did I do? I created two quotes boards and pinned a ton of quotes images to them, some I created myself. 

And the people loved those boards. My impressions soared upwards, and those boards were in all my analytic categories the best ones. And my quotes pins also had way more impressions and saves than my blog post pins. 

So, don´t make this mistake and always have your target audience in mind. Very often, you want to attract people that are eager to learn something. They are hoping your content solves a problem or answers a question they have. What kind of Pinterest Pins are those people clicking on? 

Read also: 8 Things To Consider About Gender Targeting Your Audience

3. Pinterest Mistake: Pinning other peoples content 

Another mistake that originated from me unconsciously solely focusing on impressions was the ratio of my and other people’s content I pinned. 

In the beginning, I read somewhere that 30 pins a day are the right amount to pin. So I did that by scheduling all kinds of pins with Tailwind. And when I had some of my own content, I would schedule that. 

Somewhere else, I read that 20 % of your pins should be your own content and 80 % other people’s content. Now, in the beginning, that’s hard to accomplish when you don’t have much content yet, but you try to pin 30 times a day. 

However, by now, I know you should instead aim for 80% of your own content and only 20% other content. After all, you want people to click on your pins, so they shouldn’t drown between different people’s content. 

So what I recommend you to do is this: 

When you start out and don’t have much of your own content to pin yet, don’t worry at all about how much you pin a day. 

Pin so much that you can maintain that 80/20 ratio. So out of 10 pins, 8 should lead to your website. Out of 5 pins, it should be 4. Get it? 

Then as you create more content, you can also increase the number of images you pin daily. At most, I would aim for 25 – 30 a day. 

4. Pinterest Mistake: Worrying too much about viral pins 

Viral pins aka that one pin that takes off and skyrockets your traffic into unimaginable heights. We all want that. And apparently, some people manage to do this. 

So, over the months, I found myself experimenting with my image designs over and over again, trying to make them eye-catching so they could go viral. 

I even tried to implement some statistics that said stuff like “warmer colors and red colors get ?? % more clicks and saves”. 

Typical me, I completely obsessed over a more or less unimportant detail. 

Please don’t understand me wrong, your pin design should be eyecatching so that people want to save it and click on it out of all the other pins. 

But if you look at successful pinners like Melyssa Griffin, House of Brazen, or Anastasia Blogger, who all have their own Pinterest courses. Their pins don’t look very extraordinary. 

Or an even better example. Type in any keyword relevant for your niche and look at the top pins. You probably could create more gorgeous and eyecatching ones, right? 

But what I had to learn is that it is far less about the aesthetics and much more about keywords in your pin description, alt-tag, and title. 

So, please don’t get a headache over the whole viral pin topic. Instead, focus on steadily increasing the clicks and saves of your pins through keyword, board, and profile optimization. 

5. Pinterest Mistake: Trying to succeed without a professional course 

Now, this thought was not entirely wrong. I still believe I could have succeeded without purchasing Pinfinite Growth. But ladies, it would have taken time! 

Time, frustration, insecurity, and confusion. 

Why bother with that when I can have a Pinterest guru teach me proven methods that get results fast? And I have lifetime access to her course. So if something significant on Pinterest changes, Melyssa, who is in contact with the Pinterest team, will know about it and update it. 

I won’t have to worry about being confused or having to figure out a new strategy. Instead, I can enjoy comfortable and fun traffic to my website and, therefore, a steady flow of income into my pocket that has paid me back tenfold what I had to pay for Pinfinite Growth. 

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I hope this will help you grow your traffic and income through Pinterest. They might not seem like big mistakes, but they can genuinely make all the difference. 

Other than that, I wish you a happy pinning! ^^

Sophie

Building a business is a daunting but exciting task. It promises an amount of financial freedom, influence, and passion most of us have never experienced before. 

And living in our on demand-society, we naturally can’t wait for our business to start producing income finally. 

Of course, there are all those success stories out there of people who claim that they started earning 5.000 € a month within 3 months of starting their business. Or 1.000 € within their first month. 

That gives us hope, and our goals shoot high up. On the other hand, however, if it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone had started to try it by now? And why are there still a lot of people who do try it but give up along the way? 

What does that mean for us? How long will it take until the first few hundred dollars start to roll in? 

As I am getting closer and closer to the first anniversary of having started my business, I believe I’ve figured out some of the main factors that determine how long we will have to wait. 

Read also: 9 Reasons Why You Should Start Your Own Business

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This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

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1. Your experience and skills 

Now, this might be obvious, but I only recently realized how true it actually is. I am sure that if I would start a different blog now, it would take me at most half the time it took me for this blog to become profitable. 

You get that feeling for success and can then repeat it easily. 

I am not talking about pure knowledge accumulation. You can have all the strategies written out on paper in front of you. It will still take you longer as if when you actually already practiced them. 

There is just something about doing stuff vs. studying it. We learn better by doing than by mindless memorizing. That’s what all those “how-to-study-effectively” – gurus tell you. 

It is a different thing if you’ve memorized the best textbook on selling or if you’ve gone out and sold a few dozen products. 

The latter will benefit you so much more. 

And the younger you are, the less of those practical experiences you will have. I, for example, had none. Simple as that. 

I’ve never written a blog post, designed a website, created pins or posts, tried to market or sell something. 

I was a complete newbie. And looking back, I am incredibly proud of how much experience and skills I’ve gained in under a year!

2. How much you are willing to/capable of investing in courses and tools 

Although you do not need to have tons of money to start a business, there are specific tools and courses you probably will have to invest in if you want to get the results as fast and effortless as possible. 

In fact, those courses are very likely going to save you money in the long term. Because the longer it takes you to make your business profitable, the more money it will take. For example, your domain name and hosting platform, which are two musts, usually have annual fees. 

In my Free Resource Library, I’ve also listed every tool, product, or course I’ve purchased and loved, so if you are interested in a broader overview of my investments, you should check it out. 

But to give you a few examples, these have been the most important investments I’ve made for my business:

Bluehost

Again, domain name and web hosting are unavoidable if you want to start a blog. 

Affiliate Marketing Mastery

An admittedly costly course (I had to do a very painful leap out of my comfort zone in purchasing it), which has helped me immensely.

Other than the general information about how to start a Blog/YouTube Channel and earn affiliate commissions you get inside this very in-depth course, it also improves your mindset. And as you will see in the next point, that’s a big part of success.

But what I loved most about it is that they set up my website, installed the most necessary plugins, told me how to build an e-mail list, and what you need to look out for legally when earning affiliate commissions.

But I have to say, for it to be worth the price you should really be a beginner because it does focus a lot on the basics.

Grammarly

A fantastic spelling and grammar tool that, in my opinion, is necessary for every blogger, English speaking or not. In fact, I am still looking for the German equivalent of Grammarly, because Microsoft Word has really been letting me down recently -_-

Tailwind

I keep it simple. If you take Pinterest marketing serious – and in my opinion, it might be the easiest and most straight forward traffic source that will benefit you in the long run – you need to use Tailwind.

It’s most important function is that it schedules and auto posts your pins at the strategically best time so that you can reach the biggest audience possible.

But it also offers many more functions, and most importantly, Tailwind is approved by Pinterest. So it’s not going to get banned tomorrow, and it is prepared for updates of the Pinterest system. 

Pinfinite Growth

Now, I’ve waited quite a few months between purchasing Tailwind (aka taking my Pinterest traffic game seriously) and finally reinvesting (even though I’ve already spent a lot for a student without income by then) in a course that can truly make me succeed.

The thing was, I did notice my traffic improve through Tailwind, but it was going slowly. And I knew, I could be succeeding so much faster with significantly less experimenting and worrying if I just followed the advice of an expert that even works together with Pinterest! So, yeah, don’t wait as long as I did with this one ^^’ 

3. Your mindset 

Yes, I know you’ve heard and read it a million times before, but I am going to repeat it. 

Only 20 % of success is the strategy, but striking 80 % is your mindset!!! 

An excellent example of that is those staggering statistics of how many lottery winners go broke. Why is that? Because they received all that money while they still were living with a poor mindset. So unsurprisingly, they lost the money and, within a few years, we’re back to living the life suitable for their mindset. 

Read also: 9 Mindsets That Are Keeping You Poor

Now, if you start a business, you most likely won’t have the entrepreneurial mindset of say Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk. 

And that’s ok. But because of that, you also don’t have to expect to build the next Amazon within a year. 

Developing an empowering and abundant mindset and overcoming limiting beliefs takes time. And doing it without a coach will probably take a bit longer than with professional help. 

However, it is very much possible to create that success mindset by journaling, using affirmations, being aware of your mindset, and consuming a ton of content catering towards a better mindset. 

In fact, because the mindset is such an essential component of success, and I’ve overcome my own fair share of limiting beliefs. I wanted to create an E-Mail course where I can share with you common limiting beliefs and my thoughts and experiences on overcoming them. 

It’s a 30-Day free course that will prepare you for your first successful business. Go ahead and try it out! 

4. Your passion 

Now, this has been a big thing that had been holding me back. You most likely heard that you should build your business around a passion of yours. 

And that’s great to hear and all, but can you name a passion of yours around which you’d like to build a business? 

I couldn’t. I knew I wanted to start a blog, but I didn’t really know what niche I should be in. Without any unique talents or strong passions, I settled for the next best thing: interest and joy. 

And that was fine and all. I got started, which is the most essential part. And with time, I discovered what niche I really wanted to be in, developed my business, and now I am getting more and more passionate about it. 

But now, I also have a much better view of how different it is to be passionate while building a business compared to “kinda enjoying it.” 

Read also: 4 Things You Need To Know About Finding Your Passion

Back in the beginning, I struggled with creating content. Not only did I have issues finding topics to write about, but the writing process took me quite long and wasn’t much fun. 

And today?

Even though I am not yet at the “passion level,” I am aiming for, writing posts like these are actually fun and happen sooooooo much faster and more effortless than in those first few months. 

It’s a striking difference that I’ve only noticed recently. And I think that makes it very clear on how much energy, time, and effort you will put in if you have that passion. And as a result, your business will grow faster. 

But don’t be discouraged if you haven’t found that passion yet. After all, I hadn’t either. 

In the end, the most crucial part is to get started. The time will pass anyway, so you might as well not care how long it will take until you earn that first 100 €. 

If you’d had started last week, you would already have a week’s worth of experience and skills by now and be a week closer to that profitable business of your dreams. 

So what are you waiting for? 

Start now! 

Have you ever thougt about gender targeting your business? By now, you probably know that you should specifically target your audience with your product, service, and content. To do that, you should know which niche your business is in.

This is so essential that it is one of the first things courses like Affiliate Marketing Mastery and Pinfinite Growth teach.

If you are in the makeup niche, you most likely will target makeup interested women.

If you are in the grooming niche, you will target men who want or have a beard.

As you can see, your niche helps you to define your target audience. However, it is not always as easy as this. Let’s say you can’t decide on a small niche and instead want to build your business around a broader one. For example, Personal Development, Entrepreneurship, Fitness, or Finances.

In that context, you might not need to do gender targeting, but aim at any person who needs help in those topics.

The primary underlying problem was that from the very beginning, I wasn’t exactly sure what niche I wanted my business to be in. I didn’t feel experienced or talented enough on any topic. So I just went with Personal Development, in which I was interested in and had somewhat of competence because I was regularly learning more about it.

After 9 months and working a lot on growing my barely existing traffic, I was at a point where I had a deep passion for the whole “how to start your business” niche, and I also accumulated quite some knowledge that I felt comfortable teaching.

At the same time, I realized that the Personal Development part I was mostly interested in and had some talent for, was the mindset part.

And one topic I had grown extremely passionate about in 2019 was the whole boss babe/being in your feminine energy niche of Monica Yates and Women Love Power.
However, I didn’t have that much knowledge yet on that topic.

So, answering the questions in Melyssa’s workbook, I realized that you could actually combine the whole “starting a successful business,” “mindset” and “living in your full feminine potential” into a boss lady, boss babe or girl boss niche or however you want to call it.

But that’s where suddenly massive resistance appeared towards the whole gender targeting topic. As I might not be the only one with this issue, I thought I give you an overview of my thought process, which led me to finally targeting specifically women.

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1. You are cutting your potential audience at least in half, but …

This was my most significant reason for desperately wanting a gender-neutral audience. It felt like I was limiting my success if I only focused on women.

But that is so NOT true! The fact is, there are a ton of men and women out there who are having immense success with a gender-targeted business. I just want to name Monica Yates, Kimberley Wenya, and Alpha M. Of course, there are many, many more.

Furthermore, we have over 7 billion people on this planet. So trust me, even if you target just one gender, there are more than enough possible customers/fans for you out there.

2. You can create raving fans more easily

The more targeted your audience is, the easier it is for you to connect with them on a deeper level.

Chances are it will be easier for you to connect with women, if you are a woman yourself, or with men, if you are a man. It merely comes more natural to you because you are similarly wired.

Of course, this is just a rule of thumb and doesn’t apply to everyone. But you can very quickly do a test …

3. Whose content/products are you consuming?

The test is simple. Whose content or products are you consuming? Who are the people you are following most online?

For me, I realized that the vast majority of the content I consume comes from women. Sure, I am also interested in the content of men like Stefan James, Ryan Daniel Moran, or Tony Robbins. But without realizing it, I automatically followed women more often than men.

By the way, I also have male friends, so it’s not like I anyway just surround myself with women. And I also asked my brother, and he follows men primarily. So I see a pattern here.

So, don’t feel afraid of targeting your own gender. Very likely, you would have attracted them anyways.

4. Who is already consuming your content?

This is another test you can make. Who do you imagine is consuming your content?

Although I hadn’t tried to target women, I realized that the content I was creating, the pictures I was using, and the pins I uploaded onto Pinterest probably attracted many more women than men.

According to my Pinterest Analytics, 67.1% of my audience is female. And the 27.3% male audience probably only consumed those Pinterest boards that were less targeted to my niche.

So what about your audience? Who do you think they are?

5. How does the thought of targeting every gender feel?

This is a question that requires you to analyze your feelings carefully. Imagine what you would do with your blog or business if you’d specifically targeted also the other genders. What content would you create? What brand colors would you choose?

Now, how do you feel thinking about those things? Personally, I felt like I needed to hold back. Like I wouldn’t be able to be absolutely authentically me, because I tried to appeal to everyone.

6. How does the thought of targeting that one specific gender feel?

On the contrary, the thought of finally targeting just women, in that boss babe way, made me feel excited and free!

If I listened carefully, it was so evident that my intuition wanted to target women.

What does your intuition say?

7. This doesn’t have to be your only business

Still, I don’t feel content, thinking that I will only provide value to women for the rest of my life. That thought makes me feel kinda small.

But here’s the great thing about being an entrepreneur: You have freedom! Who says you will only have this one business for the rest of your life?

You might as well start other businesses, too, that will also help different genders. I, for example, would LOVE to have some kind of technology business someday. Maybe I could invest in research that will help to stop climate change! Who knows?

You also have the freedom to develop your brand. For example, Monica Yates, who is a Period and Women’s life coach, has also started doing some Podcasts for men only. And Tatjana James, who sells waist trainers, has created a line of waist trainers for men.

Everything is possible! You are not restricted in your business. You can do whatever you want. But at the very beginning of your business journey, it might be beneficial for you to really target a small and specific niche.

8. Targeting A doesn’t mean you won’t attract B

Just because I now target women, doesn’t mean I won’t also attract men or other genders. If my content seems appealing to them, then they will consume it no matter if I say it’s for women.

And that’s awesome! I am so excited to have all kinds of people part of my community! The key is that they like the way you express yourself and your brand. That they like your authentic self.

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Conclusion

The lesson I want to convey with this article is this:

You do you!

Depending on your niche, it is very much possible to target both genders. But if it feels more aligned with you to target one specific gender, than go for it!

The key to success is less what you do, but more how you do it. There are no rules set in stone for who your target audience should be. You could be in the niche of makeup and target men or in the niche of grooming and target women.
It might be a bit more complicated, but I am pretty sure you could pull it off.

The important part is to feel comfortable and aligned with doing it!

I hope this helped you. This topic had given me quite some headache in 2019 because my head said one thing and my heart silently something else.

But once I actually found a balance between the two of them, I suddenly felt so comfortable and so incredibly aligned with my brand. I am 100% sure this was part of the reason my business finally flourished.

Until next time.

Sophie

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This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

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1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, according to their website. They have a paid version with a ton of amazing features that help you to get a high SEO score.

With as SEO becoming more and more complex and continually changing, it can lift a significant burden of an online business owner to have a reliable tool that makes SEO almost effortless.

However, you don’t have to purchase the paid version to get this kind of help. Yoast SEO Free gives you keyword optimization, checks your text for readability, checks for duplicate content, and more!

2. Post Grid

Now, this is a tool that saved me early on in my blogging journey. Shortly after I had my blog set up by the Affiliate Marketing Mastery Team, I discovered that the Genesis Essence Pro theme I chose did not offer any grid layout on regular pages.

How was I supposed to show all my different blog posts on my pages?! After some research, I figured out that there are quite a few grid layout plugins out there. Of course, many of them are not free.

Again, this was a topic, where I figured I could wait with investing until my blog became profitable. So, Post Grid was my solution.

With its free version, you can create good looking and functional post grid layouts.

If you merely want to create a grid for blog posts, this will do. However, if you’re going to create a grid for e. g. online courses or a free resource library, you might want to purchase something more advanced.

3. Mailerlite

Now, this tool I am still very grateful for!

As my business progressed, it got time for me to create an email list. Easier said than done because you not only need an email service provider where you can manage your subscribers and email campaigns. No, you also need a tool for opt-in forms and pop-ups on your website.

Now, each of these tools often costs at least $100 a year. There are also fantastic tools like Convertkit, which combines these two functions. However, with $290 billed annually, I really, really, really didn’t feel comfortable to invest in that while I am still not having many pageviews.

Lucky me, I discovered Mailerlite! Mailerlite lets you manage your subscribers, campaigns, pop-ups, landing pages for FREE up to 1,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails a month.

For me, this was the absolutely perfect tool to start my email list painlessly.

4. Canva + Over

You’ve probably already heard others recommend Canva. It’s an amazing and easy to use graphic design tool with a ton of templates.

With Canva, you can create all kinds of Social Media posts, worksheets, ebook covers, presentations, logos, and whatnot.

In other words, an absolute MUST for any online entrepreneur.

Over is similar, and it’s the app I used in the beginning. However, as far as I know, it is only available as a mobile app and not online as Canva.

5. Unsplash

Six words: Gorgeous.High quality.Free Stock Images.

I LOVE Unsplash. It’s an online entrepreneurs’ dream. But for those of you who don’t already know it. Unsplash has a massive library of high-quality images that you can use without having to worry about copyright rules and for completely free.

Once your business starts to make more money, you might want to upgrade and purchase stock images that are more unique and make your brand stand out more. But for the time being, you won’t have any complaints with free stock images.

Read also: 46 Websites For Free Stock Images You Should Know About

6. Planoly

For those of you, who want to market your business on Instagram. Planoly is a scheduling tool that allows you to schedule and auto post 30 images and their descriptions a month in its free version. They also have a function for Insta stories.

Before you jump ahead and put a lot of time into scheduling and creating Instagram posts, please consider whether it will really be worth it.

I half-heartedly posted content on Instagram for months and spend a lot of time creating quotes images. When in reality, it did have very little of an impact on my business. So I decided to drop it for the time being and instead invest that time into Pinterest with Tailwind.

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I hope some of these tools will help you as much as they helped me in my first year of growing my online business.

I know how tempting it is to invest in all those shiny and amazing tools. Still, especially in the beginning, whe you don’t make any income yet, you should carefully consider your options.

Only invest that money into things that will make a significant impact on your business. Pinfinite Growth and Tailwind were two of those investments I made, even though I had already spent a lot of money for a student without an income. But they were absolutely worth every single penny! Without them, I don´t know how long it would have taken me to build a profitable business.

I wish you all the best with your business!

Until next time

Sophie