Now that you know HOW you are going to make money blogging, we are going to continue to work backwards.

In this lesson we are going to figure out what lead magnet you can offer that relates to your plan to profit.

A Lead Magnet, (freqently called an Email Opt In, Freebie or Signup Incentive) gives people something of VALUE in exchange for their email address.

As an added bonus, it gives you something more to promote over social media than just your products or services. It builds trust with potential buyers, so the can get to know you and your style. Hopefully, making them more comfortable to buy your product.

With so much noise online now, "Sign up for my Newsletter" isn't really cutting it anymore. You need to give a very good reason to signup.

Since we want to come up with a lead magnet that works with our profit plan, here are some questions to ask yourself to come up with the perfect lead magnet.

What is the first step before someone uses your product or service?

I'm just going to be obvious here...this free course is the prep work for my paid Effective Content Creation course. You will not be successful in my paid course if you don't have a blog yet and don't have a plan for that blog.

By offering this free course, I am teaching students what they can expect from me in the paid course. This course has a lot of VALUE in it so you can expect my paid course to be the same if not better.

Can you provide a “big picture” overview?

Similar to the above, instead of teaching the first 10%, another option is to provide a broad overview. For example, instead of a course, I could have provided maybe a check list of all of the steps I am reviewing in the course. Enough to be helpful but not enough that someone wouldn't need more information.

What Questions do you Always get?

What part of your course or product is most confusion or gets a lot of questions? Can you expand on those questions and make a worksheet or tutorial?

Are there any Challenges to purchase you can overcome?

Like the above, you might find there are certain challenges common to your target audience. What hesitations would they have before purchasing your product or service? For example, maybe someone wanted to purchase my Effective Content Creation Course but doesn't have a blog yet. Therefore, I taught them how to start a blog in this free course.

Now that I have your gears turning with topic ideas, here are some format options.

• EBooks
• Worksheets
• Checklists
• Workbooks
• Guides
• Top Tips
• Resources Lists
• Ideas and Inspiration Lists
• Printables and Planners
• Templates
• Resource Library
• Challenge
• Cleanse or Detox
• Email Course
• Webinar, Workshop or Online Training
• Video Library
• Private Online Community
• Exclusive Regular Content
• Discounts or Special Offers
• Or Mix & Match 1 or 2 of the above

Homework:

1.) Pick the lead magnet you are going to make first. This should be the one that will take the least amount of time and effort. Now, that does not mean it should not give VALUE!

What I mean is a printable or worksheet will take a lot less time than creating a course like this one.

Here is a tip! When I created this course each day's worksheet or video was it's own lead magnet until all of the lessons were completed and then housed in this course. I then removed the download this free worksheet and replaced it with join my free course!

Breaking it down made it easy. I was then just including the course creation in my regular blog work. I didn't have to allot hours of extra time to make the course.

My lead magnets were doing double duty. First as stand alone lead magnets that were then repurposed into a coure. This is the sort of stuff I teach in the Effective Content Creation Course.

Sorry, lets get back to the homework...

2.) Setup your email provider to start collecting emails. 80% of the revenue generated through online business is a direct result of having a healthy and active email list. You need a list!!! Setup your email provider to send at least the immediate response that provides the lead magnet for download. Not sure how to do this? Go to the resources section.

3.) Replace your coming soon page with the landing page for your lead magnet. If you are not sure how to do all of this, I explain it all in the resources section.

4.) Create four pinnable images to drive traffic to your lead magnet. Again,if you are not sure how to do all of this, I explain it all in the resources section.

I know this seems like a like a lot of work. BUT, by setting your blog to "launch" this way it gives you time to create your first blog posts. Having your opt in up and collecting emails starts to build buzz for when you are ready to pull the curtains back and launch the full blog.

It also starts building your list immediately and your list is the most important thing when is comes to making money. Remember, 80% of the revenue generated through online businesses comes from email marketing.

Doing this work upfront, saves you in the long run!