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Let me be honest – Things can get a little complicated at the early stages of becoming a blogger.
Every pro blogger knows that, yet nobody really talks about it.
However,
Things can also get super simple with the correct approach.
For years, beginners have been struggling with the baby steps for years and stopped chasing their dreams before they even got a chance to truly look behind the stage of the world of blogging for money.
Fortunately, you came along this article… and hopefully, I’ll be able to help to make sure that you won’t be one of those “lost” beginners.
How?
You can simply use my blogging method for beginners that is guaranteed to help you jump-start your blogging career.
It is super simple, yet, super-efficient and especially great for beginners.
It can be used by beginners and is always used by pro bloggers as well.
This simple strategy makes a huge world of internet seem small, calms it down and helps to organize things just to show you how simple things can really get.
This method is called – The cookbook method.
This method, along with other important information, tips, tricks etc. is part of my free blogging course for beginners. Make sure to join that course for free.
Let’s break it all down in the simple steps:
- The Cookbook Method
- Logic behind it
- How Using The Cookbook Method Is A Guarantee Of The Success
- Steps
- “The Blog”/”The Idol”
- Essential Tools For Using The Method
- How To Decode And Analyze
- How To Build A Plan Based On The Results
Let’s start with the first one:
The first thing that probably comes to your mind is – why the “cookbook”?
Actually, the name itself is giving away all of the information about this method, but I understand that it’s not really clear right away.
Let me answer that question.
Why is it called “the cookbook method”?
Because it teaches you to look at the internet like a book full of tasty recipes.
And just like any cook, you have the ability to diversify a good one from a bad one.
The whole idea behind this cookbook is – To plan your blog in advance by following the “recipe” of a similar, already-existing, well-established website.
There are millions of websites. Some of them are good, while some of them are bad.
Some of them make millions and others don’t even intend to monetize at all.
There are so many of them.
You probably have a couple of favorite ones that you wish were your blogs.
You might like their content or be sure that they make a lot of money.
Imagine if you could ask every owner questions about their blog and how can you do the same thing.
How much do they earn, how they promote it, how they monetize….
All of the answers to these questions would make your job so much easier.
They would just give you their recipe and you could follow it step by step in order to achieve the same result.
Then you would just collect all of that information, compare to each other and pick the one you like the most.
All you have to do is to just follow that plan based on some facts.
Let’s get back to the real world though – You probably won’t be able to ask all of the blogs about their plan or they will not answer even if you do.
Which brings us to the sad truth – for most bloggers, blogging is really complicated and full of obstacles.
It is hard to launch a blog, try a lot of things and be unsure about the outcome.
It takes time, it takes resources and it might not work…
But…
Yeap, you probably already understand what’s coming on that “but…”.
The cookbook method solves that exact problem.
It gives you an opportunity to dig into any blogs’ plan and business model, understand it and use whatever you like for your blog.
All of the “recipes” you need and want to try are easily available.
The whole internet is “decoded”.
In other words, all of the recipes are presented in one place.
That’s why it’s called “the cookbook”.
Book of recipes, in from of you. Choose what like from the menu.
By learning this method, you will skip all of that disappointment and waste of time.
This method changes everything!
Your business model will be simple:
- Search
- Find
- Decode
- Integrate
And don’t get me wrong. We are not talking about stealing anything (You should never, ever steal content from anybody!). We want to know what has the highest probability and invest in that.
It is about the basics of marketing, it is about being smart, it is about what “works”.
It’s about an experienced, successful person who tried a lot of things throughout the career, failed a lot along the way, learned from it and finally got on the right track, guiding your way all along.
Even though it is amazing, the cookbook method does nothing more than just research the market and help you to correctly integrate the findings into your plan.
It is about putting things in a way that bright out the vision.
It is about being a pro right away.
I get it, you want predictions. You want the guarantees of your success…
While we can easily state that there is absolutely nothing guaranteed in this world, the closest thing you can count on is the statistics.
Times change but numbers stay the same. After it’s all said and done, numbers sum everything up.
But you don’t want to hear about the past, you want to know the future.
I brought up statistics for a reason… Let’s go back to the start then:
What is the best indicator of the future?
There’s only one answer and it is – the past!
Like we said, times change but statistics rarely change, at least – a lot.
Which means that we can learn from the past in order to succeed in the future.
But how can we learn from the past? Isn’t it what all experience is about?
Yes, that’s exactly what it is all about.
But, like we said, the cookbook method is all about what “actually works”.
By finding a site that has successfully existed for a while, you know that it is going to work in the future as well.
In other words, all you have to do is to find a successful “competitors”, analyze their recipes and integrate findings in your plan.
It’s all about the simple logic:
If it works for them it will work for you as well.
You don’t need to overthink it… just do like “they” do because it works!
The key (One of the most important ones for beginners) is that you don’t need to understand why they do or don’t do some things on their website.
They tried things, found out what works for their targeted audience and came down to that specific model of their blog.
You might realize why/how it works later on or won’t find it out at all.
But the simple fact is that it works for them.
And again – If it works for them it will work for you as well.
If the world of marketing is a game, you want to bet on something that has the highest chance or the highest probability of being successful!
The cookbook method helps you to do that and predict the outcome!
Let’s be honest now – You must be feeling excited about this method.
It promises everything you hoped for and it all makes sense right now as well, right?
Well, most of the time hype is not real but fortunately for you, this one is not that case.
All your hopes will transform in reality once you master this technique.
But there’s a simple question which requires a simple answer:
Why is this method a guarantee of your success?
Because it is based on the basics of marketing and the universal indicator of future– stats.
Just like the logic behind the method stating that if it worked for other blogs, it will work for you as well, this method worked for me and all of my students and it will work for you!
Remember – It’s all about stats. You always want to be on the side of the highest probability.
Every blog that you like is telling you something useful businesswise…
You don’t need any teachers or colleagues.
You already have them!
It’s like the whole world is your teacher, colleague, influencer, and advisor, helping you with your blog.
That’s where this method will bring you!
Since we already talked about the benefits and promises, it’s time to switch to the actual method.
The method is pretty simple:
You need to analyze blogs and suck in all of that experience to use for your own blog.
The steps are:
- Find “THE Blog” A.K.A. “The Idol”
- Analyze
- Decode
- Integrate
These steps are not numbered because they don’t need to be followed in that particular order.
There will be times when you will want to pay attention to a blog because of its promotional activities rather than it’s monetization scheme. Or you might like its content in the first place.
It’s all up to you. Once you master the steps, you can follow them just as you want.
One of the most important steps is to find blogs that will influence what you do on your blog. In other words, the blogs you want to imitate or better so, learn from.
We call them “idols”.
There are a couple of ways you may find those blogs.
- Through the niche
- Through their promotional campaign
- Monetization method
- Their income
Let’s break all of these down:
Through The Niche
You might like a fitness niche or have some truly valuable information about it which you think is going to get you some income.
That’s when your search for a site starts from a pre-picked niche.
Through The Promotional Campaign
Sometimes you stumble upon some campaign of a blog on Facebook, think it is probably really effective and get inspired by it.
You might think that Facebook campaigns like that are really fun and simple enough to try to run a similar blog with some similar campaigns.
Through The Monetization Method
Let’s say you like the idea to sell some products from Amazon.
What do you do? You simply search for websites that sell from Amazon.
Through The Their Income
Sometimes you just hear that some blog is making some amount of money that really inspires you. You may also check out the websites which are up for sale at flippa.com. You will be able to see a lot of valid digits as their real income is their major sale-point.
No matter how you found out about their income you want to earn that much.
No problem, you have a cookbook method which means you already know how to do that.
Filter
As you probably understood, in most cases the research should contain more than one site.
You have to remember that it’s business, It’s now wise to pick a blog without examining it. You are searching for the best ones that will give you the most valuable information that you can use for your blog.
Therefore, you got to collect a couple of similar blogs and then start to filter them out.
Searching for the best options
But wait, how can you find those blogs? Especially a couple of them.
There’s a tremendous candy shop that you might have heard of. It is called – Google!
Yeap. First results that show up as Google search results are probably high-quality blogs. There might be some bad ones, but the rule of thumb says that odds that happening are really low.
Which blogs should you pay attention to?
As we mentioned, Google’s first page results are great but you still need to filter them out as well.
The best method to do so is to judge by a couple of factors:
- Age – Think about it, youngsters are rarely experienced while the adults are way more trustworthy. And since we are looking for a blog with consistent results, older ones are a way better option.
- Traffic – since we already know that they existed for some time, it’s wise to check their traffic. If it is consistently fine, it means that this blog is consistent itself and therefore interesting influencer for you.
Age
There are two great ways to examine the age of a blog.
- www.whois.com – just enter the URL in the search bar and click whois. You should see the details about this blog.
- Even if you didn’t “whois” it, you can check the date of the first article published.
Don’t worry, of course, I will teach you how to check the traffic as well in the next section.
If these two factors are in favor of a blog, that means that you’ve already filtered out your findings to high-quality ones.
You might be thinking that you need to use a lot of tools for the cookbook method.
Probably think that you need to invest the money as well.
Actually, you don’t need that much.
This method is not about using tools, it is about the approach.
And your approach is to analyze websites.
You don’t need a lot of tools to do that. Back when I just began using this method, I used a lot of tools but realized that I could limit my efforts and get the same result anyway.
The “tools” you need are:
- This guide (and preferably the essential information in my free eCourse for beginners);
- Attention;
- www.similarweb.com;
That’s it!
These two tools (not counting attention) will give you all of the information you need.
Similarweb
Similarweb.com is a partially free tool that gives you all the information about any site.
It is not exact and is an estimate, but it’s pretty damn accurate in most cases.
Definitely accurate enough for basic research.
There’s a free extension for the Chrome browser that I highly recommend. It makes the job so much easier.
Similarweb can show you a lot of things, but the most useful ones which we will use for the cookbook method are:
- Total Traffic
- Traffic Source
These two things are something that are not visible without the usage of extra tools and represent a really high value.
Fortunately, this tool will help us with that!
There are a lot of extra tools that you can use in order to get more advanced information, but that’s all up to you.
Honestly, you don’t really need any of them right away. They might even mess up your basic research process.
But once you advance don’t be afraid to try out extra tools as well!
Now since we know all the tools needed to implement the method, it’s time to learn how to use them.
How To Decode And Analyze
Once you find a couple of blogs, you need to analyze them in order to understand their initial plan and outcome.
Even though all of the steps are important, this one is what will help you create a plan for inevitable success.
Similarweb will help you to get half of the raw information and the blog itself will dictate the rest of the way.
Traffic
The first thing that Similarweb is demonstrating is the traffic of a blog:
You are getting the estimates for the last 6 months which is just enough to decide if that blog has an amount of traffic which is good.
The logic behind this step is simple:
In case the traffic of a blog is consistently high, it means:
- It is consistent = It is working
- It is working = Blog has a solid plan (content, monetization, promotion)
- Has a solid plan = Will work in future as well
So, now you understand the true importance of consistent traffic.
After that step filters out the list, you are left with only high-quality blogs that are all worthy.
Now it’s a matter of details which should meet your personal requirements.
As you already know, it is all about the most important pieces of a plan – Content, Promotion/Advertisement and Monetization.
Since you already know which blog is worthy, now it’s time to dig deep.
Content
You don’t really need extra tools for content because it is all visible without them. All you need is attention to details.
You should go to a blog are interested in and pay attention to the following details:
- Design
- Keywords used in articles
- The number of articles
- Characteristics of articles
I’ll keep it simple.
Examine and pay attention to those details and…
Now you know what is working for that niche.
All you need is the similar content.
Promotion/Advertisement
This one is huge!
Knowing how a blog is getting the traffic is really important.
Fortunately, that’s one of the (and in my opinion the best one) feature that Similarweb is presenting.
Direct, referrals, search, social, mail, display. All of the percentages are easily decodable.
You are getting a possibility to understand where is this blog it’s decent traffic from.
And you can dig even deeper and get the exact sources and their percentages.
All of this information is saving you weeks, months and maybe even years. And it’s all there…
Just as if the owner of this blog gave you access to Google analytics.
Two of these can be broken down even further.
You can examine the search results by digging deep into their on-site s.e.o. by reading the content and off site s.e.o. by using the online platform called – MOZ for backlinks.
To research the social media activities, you can visit the social media site, search for the content of this blog.
- You already knew details about their content.
- Now you know what it takes to get that amount of traffic you already researched.
Once you do that, you know what to do next, right? The same thing they did. Because it works!
What else do you need? You need to examine the way they monetize.
Monetization
In case you are not sure about the ways that blogs can use for monetization, you can go through my article about that.
Go to the blog you are researching once again and look for the ways they monetize.
You need to find the following information:
- Which method is used
- How many methods are used
- Prices
Now since you already know the amount of traffic this blog is receiving, you can count the range of estimated income.
Let me give you some numbers:
Average Conversion around the web – 0.1 – 1.2 %
It means that 0.1-1.2% of people visiting the blog will eventually become a source of income for the blog.
So your final formula for counting the income will look like:
A. Amount of Traffic
B. Average Conversion
C. Average Income Per Conversion
A x B x C = Income
Note that this income doesn’t include the income from ads.
For example:
Traffic = 100 000
Average Conversion = 0.2%
Average Price = 50$
100 000 x 0.002 x 50 = 10 000$
Just like that, you know how to earn 10 000$ per month.
Thanks to the cookbook method you know the exact ingredients to make it happen.
But you want to stay in a “comfort zone”.
Well… You have a lot of options and recipes. Filter them wisely to meet your requirements!
At last, once again don’t forget – If it works for them, it will work for you!
How To Build A Plan Based On The Results
Now it’s time to sum up and learn how to build a plan based on the results of the research.
In case you are a reader of this blog, you already know, In order to build a plan you need 3 things:
- Niche
- C.A.M. (Content, Advertisement, Monetization)
- Resources (Time, Human resources)
All of them come with a lot of questions that need to be answered in order to put together a decent working plan which will work – inevitably!
After running the cookbook analysis and research, you are left with all of the answers to your questions.
Now you know everything about successfully and profitably-working blogs in your niche.
Most importantly, you know:
- Which keywords work the best
- How you should architect your blog (structure, branding, design etc.)
- Preferable menu/categories
- Quantity of articles (per week, month…)
- Advertisement/promotional channels to be used (And how)
- Which monetization methods are often used by most of the “idols”
How did you get all of that information?
By researching the blogs which work in your niche!
And since “if it works for them, it will work for you as well” now you already know how to put together a plan which will work.
The Process
The process goes like:
- Choose A Niche( In case of a new blog)
- Find “Idols”
- Filter “Idols”
- Identify Their Working Plans
- Decode
- Filter Down To Your “Comfort zone”
- Create A Plan For Your Blog
It all became so simple now, didn’t it?
Just like I promised! You might think that it is too simple to be true, but hey… that’s how real marketing works.
All you need is the knowledge-based on some experience.
You still need to do a lot of work, but you just got a step by step guide for putting together a great working plan which can be used every time you decide to launch a blog.
And you will know for sure that it will be profitable.
Just remember to keep it simple, follow a plan and deliver good quality.
That’s it! Just that simple, yet powerful. Just like I promised!
As I said in the beginning, this approach is used by pro bloggers around the world, all the time.
I mean, why not, right?
You might be surprised to hear that, but, in a lot of cases, content created based on the “cookbook method” is just enough.
Are you ready to start a blog?
Take the next step and go through my guide about starting a blog.
What do you think about this method?
Did it make everything look simple now?
Are you going to use it?
Share your thoughts in the comment section below, or come chat with me and other bloggers in our Facebook group where people ask questions, communicate and share their knowledge.
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