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How to Manifest Anything You Want (Dream Job)

Should you quit your day job to pursue your dream job? You read all these articles about how to manifest money, your dream job or dream life, but it seems a lot more complex than just thinking it into existence, right? That’s because it is (well, kind of).

There is action involved, too (moving in the direction of that dream, taking massive action, creating space for it, raising your vibration to match what you’re asking for, etc.)

Prefer to listen? 👇

But, if you want to hear how you can manifest your dream job successfully,  from someone else who’s done it twice, read on.

You aren’t alone in what you want. And you aren’t crazy. Manifesting what you want is real.

Can I Actually Manifest My Dream Job?

This is a question more and more people are asking themselves. And a lot of people are doing it successfully. We are in an age where a person can monetize their interests, passions, skills–their dream job!

I’m going to preface this whole blog article with this: I believe in serendipity, The Law of Attraction, manifesting, quantum energy, God, Universal Intelligence. Whatever it is you prefer to call it, it’s very real and an important ingredient of a happy, successful life. I also believe we can create whatever we want. We are creating our reality right now, every day. There are very few limitations to what we can manifest. (So be careful what you think about, and what you ask for)

According to Wallace Wattles, our minds are made up of “thinking stuff” that forms things from the formless. In other words, if you want something and truly believe it can be yours, then Universal Law states it must come in to being. Our thoughts become our actions that become things. 

How to Manifest a New Career

I’ve changed the course of my life and my career a couple of times. It’s daunting and confusing, but it’s certainly not impossible. I did this using the aforementioned “Law” and a lot of hustle. If you are already doing bits of the new career you want to transition into, it shouldn’t be as difficult. But if you have an idea and you’re starting from scratch, it may take a little longer to launch and adjust.

For me, what started off as my side hustle took center stage and became my new career. I transitioned from a full-time fashion designer to branding and marketing professional because it was what I had already been doing anyway. For several years, in tandem with design, I was doing PR, digital marketing and brand building. Sometimes shifting careers can be as easy as extracting one aspect of your current career that you’re most passionate about and just doing that one thing. Niche is good, especially in a very noisy world.

Choosing to do something else with your time is essential if you’re feeling a tug in that direction. Just know that it will take courage to start the wheels turning, and faith and patience to keep them going. The first thing to do is: just start.

What Do You Want The Most?

I think what a lot of us want is freedom. It’s what I aimed for most of my life. Up until the last decade, none of us had as much opportunity as we do right now. We are living in a very interesting and incredible time where technology, creativity, and global connectivity allows us to do things we never thought possible. We are learning spiritual practices at levels we hadn’t heard before, too.

Whatever it is you love to do when you’re not working, find a way to turn that into your business and go for it.

Whether you want to blog full time, or go freelance or be a consultant, make stuff, etc., I am going to say first and foremost: There is plenty of room for you to accomplish this. The first rule is to define what it is you want and change your mindset. Erase any limiting beliefs that separate you from anyone else out there who is making awesome shit happen. The only difference between them and you is mindset. They believe they can, and so they do. “I think, therefore, I am.”

See yourself as a superhero of whatever it is you do or plan to do. Wake up every morning or go to sleep every night with your mantra of, “I AM A MASTER AT ______.” Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches us about “becoming supernatural” in his book, Becoming Supernatural. He explains in great scientific detail how our thoughts create our reality and how we must reprogram our thoughts to change our lives.

Whatever you state, you become. This works for better or for worse. So stop saying you’re fat, ugly, broke, etc! Stop the negative self-talk TODAY. (If you want to read more on this subject, check out my previous article, What The Secret isn’t Telling You)

How I Manifested My Career

I’ll tell you a little back story about my experience.

Quitting my hamster in the wheel scenario, being financially independent and working from home (or Hawaii, or wherever I found myself at the time) was my ultimate goal two years ago. And I was on a mission to make sure I accomplished this. But many, many years before this second epiphany, I found myself in a similar place.

In my 20s, I wanted nothing more than to be a fashion designer. At a party for spiritual gurus, movers and shakers, I met an incredible woman (she was the hostess of the party). She didn’t know it, but that night she would change the way I thought forever. She taught me the valuable lesson of ‘Speak it and be it.’ 

She looked at me and asked, “What do you do?” And I started with an unconvincing, “Well, I want to be a fashion design..” That’s where she cut me off and asked me to state out loud, right there, “I AM a fashion designer.” She watched me mouth the words aloud and gave me a gentle head nod as she reinforced the statement, “Speak it and be it; Speak it and become it.” She was a life-changing miracle. 

At the time, I was a 26-year-old who had only one semester of design school under my belt. And as for personal spiritual growth, I was a mere babe. I had only read In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant. My journey was just beginning and this amazing woman was light years ahead of me. But I trusted her word beyond measure because she spoke with such conviction, and had proof to back it up. She was truly a Teacher and a Guide in my life path.

Do you know what happened 2 years later? I was hired as a Fashion Designer with no college degree for a large company in Dallas. In that 2-year timeframe after I met that wonderful woman and spoke what I was to be, I designed dozens of garments and collections for some of the largest brands in the USA, and sold over a hundred dresses under my own label I had designed from my little apartment.

But before all of that came to be, I envisioned myself as a designer, worked on myself, honed my skills, put in the work, and developed some major street cred because of the commitment I made to BE a fashion designer.

I manifested my dream job!

My career didn’t end there. I went on to become one of the industry’s best female denim designers. I managed and designed for multi-million dollar lines, created hundreds of pieces, was approached by factories, Parson’s design grads, and major companies to either show them how I created my CADS or design their denim collections. 

Fast forward to 2014.

Over 10 years had passed and everything for me had totally shifted. I was no longer interested in doing corporate fashion or designing clothes. I had been juggling fashion, brand building, and social media marketing for the last several years. But now I wanted (needed) something that provided more freedom, less stress. I wanted a career that was more fluid. My current profession as a fashion designer was going to have to go to make room for the new profession I found myself in, which was helping business owners build their companies through digital marketing.

I struggled with this because so much of my life was spent in fashion design. My identity was built into it and I was having to disassemble everything and tell myself and the world a whole new story (a lesson in rebranding). Shifting gears in my late 30s-early 40s was weird.

I listened to every TedTalk and YouTube guru I could find until it finally sunk in. The overarching message behind every successful author, businesswoman/man, public speaker, motivator, etc. was this: Decide. Make yourself valuable, stick to the decision, believe in yourself 100% and be willing to go fearlessly in the direction and do the work.

I had already decided: fashion design was simply not conducive to me working from a warm beach in Hawaii or south France. It required way too many accessories (fabric, samples, rulers, mannequins, etc.) So, I got rid of everything fashion-related. I literally DECIDED, and it changed my course.

Decide: Cause to come to a resolution. To ‘cut off.’ Latin decidere ‘determine,’ from de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut.’

Decision Creates Change

“The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding; 
your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be.” -Raymond Charles Barker (Author, The Power of Decision)

After my big decision, and after I kind of went into autopilot and started purging all of the things in my life that didn’t serve or match to the end goal, my office space was now clutter-free and I no longer had the weight of dead, expensive projects hanging around my neck. With the fat trimmed, I was able to concentrate on the meat of my goal.

Nobody ever said switching tracks in your career is easy. It was scary for me, and it had plenty of ups and downs but I believed in myself enough to know I could handle it. If this is where you’re at right now, you can handle it, too. Everything is going to feel hard at first.

Everything is new and unfamiliar, until it isn’t.

Your mind is hardwired to resist change and the unknown because it wants to protect you from danger. Become aware of your thoughts obsessively. When negative self-talk comes in, remind that voice, “I’ve got this. Shove off, please.”

As soon as you get used to the change, and the more you tell your mind to fuck off, the less your mind will stop freaking out. And you will, too. So give the changes some time to adjust but KEEP MOVING FORWARD and continue with faith to starve the fears.

Feed your faith and you’ll starve your fears.

Over the course of the next few years, I repeated what I had done before. I became a practitioner of the digital space and content currency. I read every article or book I could get my hands on about digital marketing and social media, I plugged away with blogging, building WordPress websites, working with dozens of clients on various projects, creative content, and learned how to make passive income with eBooks and affiliate networks; I learned SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook advertising and got pretty darn good at social media marketing. I was now deep in the trenches of digital marketing, and earning a good living doing it! 

The Power of ‘I AM’

You see, what you want and who you want to be, or the life you want to live isn’t about asking and hoping your wish will be granted, nor is it about negotiation; It’s about YOU being the ultimate CREATOR of YOUR life and story. Doesn’t that just sound and feel awesome and limitless?

Good, because that’s exactly what it is! Don’t overthink it. Creation begins with a statement of “I AM ______ (fill in the blank with whatever it is you want to be/do).

So, my  ‘I am’ in 2016 was this, “I am earning $5,000 per month and earning $100K per year by the end of 2017.” 

When I said this, I honestly had no idea how, I just knew I would. And I hoped it would be from my own digital marketing business. In fact, I was pretty sure it would be. It was my BIG GOAL, after all. And a Digital Marketer is who I said I was, so the rest had to follow, right? Of course, it did. Just as it had decades prior.

Define Your Big Goal 

So you have THE BIG GOAL, which is to travel, be financially independent and earning $20,000 per month (or whatever your BIG GOAL is.) Once you define THE BIG GOAL, all of the little goal steps you make along the way will be in alignment with THE BIG GOAL. Or at least, they should be. If you are faced with a decision about something, ask yourself, “Is this in alignment with where I want to go”? If it isn’t, throw it out. Stay the course!

Your Actions MUST Match Your End Goal

For example, if you want to take a direct trip to Los Angeles, California, you wouldn’t take a highway up to Montreal, Canada, would you? The same is true with your end goal. Once you’ve made your mind up for what THAT is, all decisions, actions, goals should match with your end result. Once you tell your brain where you want to go, it (and the universe) will help you in getting there. When we decide to be or do something, our brain not only sets us up to go in that direction, but we find we are accomplishing every goal along the way that leads to the big goal. Call it an energetic occurrence or whatever, but it seems to be a universal law. If you find yourself all over the place, it’s most likely because your goals and thoughts are all over the place. Remember, wherever your thoughts go, energy flows. If you keep changing up the story, the road trip is gonna be a long one before you finally get to LA. 

What do you want to experience?

If you find yourself changing your course often, ask yourself not what you want to do, but what it is you want to feel or experience. Many times, we may find ourselves floundering because we are lacking something deeper and more emotional. Perhaps we are looking to address an emotional need and we do this by trying to replace it with tangible stuff or projects.

Ask yourself this question when it comes to your job or current business model: Does it serve my end goal?

The 6 key steps to manifesting what you want:

1. Deciding what you want – Decision is a powerful action. Do it without hesitation. Get clear on what it is you want.

2. Using thought and imagination to see it – visualize and see yourself in the end with whatever it is you desire.

3. Speaking it into creation – Don’t allow for negotiation on who or what you want to do, or be. Speak it. It is yours.

4. Committing to that goal 100% – This means staying focused; commit yourself to become valuable in whatever it is you want to do or be. Hone your skills, learn everything you need to learn. Honing your skills is your “side hustle.”

5. Knowing it is yours and staying the course – It may be scary or tiresome sometimes, but you have to keep pushing forward, knowing it’s coming, knowing it’s working itself out. HAVE FAITH.

6. Maintaining a positive energy field through kindness, happiness, joy, giving freely, gratitude! Be careful of what you put into your body. Healthy, high vibe foods are best. Maintain a positive circle of friends and be careful not to watch too much TV (violence, drama, or whatever feels negative or bothers your psyche)

Get out there and be fearless, write the story of your life. ❤️

P.S. If for a moment you think you can’t do what I did, drop me an email. I will get you back on track!  😉

What is the cost of social media marketing?

What’s the Cost of Social Media Marketing?

How much does social media marketing cost?
This seems to be a burning question everyone is asking.

Well, the short of the long of it is this: A minimum of $2,500-$5,000 on average per month, depending on where your target audience is and what you want to achieve. Don’t be alarmed, I will tell you why the costs are as such

(P.S. If you are a Digital Marketer, please feel free to share this with potential employers who aren’t ‘getting’ the cost of your rates.)

Sometimes, you have to pay extra for PR or blog content writing. A lot of those $2,500K-$5K prices may or may not be all-inclusive deals.  And it’s not unusual to find many agencies who charge $10,000 per month for social media marketing & management.

According to some data findings, the cost to create and establish just a new Twitter account with targeted Followers and a little bit of content is anywhere from $2K-$7,500.

So I guess the average $2,500-$5,000 isn’t so bad when you consider the fact that some agencies charge $5,000 – just to manage your Facebook account. Nothing else —just Facebook. Add on Instagram and/or Pinterest and you can double that fee.

$5,000 per month for a Social Media Marketer seems “high” because we spend so much time online, doing just that: interacting socially and participating in social media.  Our perception of social media is “fun time”,  it hasn’t registered to us that this is THE advertising platform for all businesses, it is something to take seriously and no, not everyone or an intern can just do it. Not effectively, of course.

A great social media and digital marketer is worth his/her weight in GOLD.

Wherever the audience is, advertising follows. Once it was Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, TV.  Now, it’s online through our news and blogger channels and our Social Media feeds.

If we can look at it from a media platform we are used to, such as Magazines, we can truly see the value and the difference: We have magazine readers, and we have magazine creators.

We don’t see all of the behind-the-scenes magic that happens to make that content available and in our face. That is what advertising is, and what Social Media Marketing is all about.

Ok. But “Why so much?” you ask

Let’s break it down:

  • Graphics and Social Media Ad Creatives  The cost of social media graphics and ad creatives – this includes a professional graphic designer with marketing knowledge to create visual ads that deliver results.  There is a psychology behind an ad creative that works. This isn’t the job for just any Joe Schmo Photoshop Pro when it comes to creating a fine-tuned ad creative. The average salary of a Graphic Designer is anywhere from $45-$60K per year, with some earning as much as $75K.
  • Video Creative. A business online without video is missing a huge opportunity. If you aren’t on YouYube or have great video collections on Facebook, you might as well be invisible. Video consumption is the #1 way to reach your audience, and creators who plan, write, shoot and edit your videos are not cheap. Sorry to say this but a quality video is important. Sure, you can shoot something with an iPhone, but make sure the content is valuable and sound is 100%. A simple video can cost around $500 per video to start. If you’re super creative or resourceful, you can find options in the $100 range.
  • Market research  This is a very important aspect of advertising.  You have to zero in on your target audience. It makes no sense to shoot your product out into the universe if it’s not aimed at the right audience.  Market research answers: Who is your audience, what do they want, what are they buying, what do they respond to, where do they hang out and who are your competitors?
  • Ad rates The costs of promoting you or your business. Ad rates are generally included in a market budget, and an average and conservative cost can be anywhere from $250-$500 a month for Twitter and Facebook Ads alone.
  • PR Writing and crafting the perfect pitches, reaching out to Bloggers, Editors, Magazines, Influencers, and even celebrities.  This aspect is HARD WORK. A lot of PR agents I know charge $5K per month, just for PR.  Nothing else.
  • Creating Marketing Campaigns, Calendars + Strategies. Sometimes creating a marketing campaign can take days (or even weeks) to not only research and plan but to write it out. (One simple 3-month marketing campaign I created a few weeks ago took me over 16 hours to research, create and write.) This takes a lot of time, but executed well, it pays off.
  • Writing Press Releases – GOOD Copywriters can charge anywhere from $350-$1500 per article.
  • Writing Blog Posts – Rich content blog posts are worth their weight in gold to the tune of saving you about $250,000 in Google Adwords costs. A well-written blog post with organic traffic can harness as much, if not more traffic, as an expensive Google Adwords campaign. One single blog post I wrote in 2011 has generated 256,000 hits for my blog so far.  If I would have paid the average $1 CPC (Cost-per-Click) with Google Adwords, it would have cost me $256,000! ?
    Blog writers know their stuff when it comes to SEO, and they craft their posts to maximize search results.  According to ClicktoTweet and HubSpot, “Articles with a word count between 2,250 and 2,500 earn the most organic traffic”.  A good blog writer will charge around .45 cents per word on average, so a 1,000-word post is $450. For example, this post you’re reading right now is 1,326 words (or about $600).
  • Social Media Manager A full time (daily) social media manager to monitor your accounts, create engaging posts, interact, respond to positive (and negative) feedback across all channels.  I’m talking about a dedicated person who not only knows the ins and outs of social media, but one who works on all your social media accounts all day (Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), and knows how to track and analyze the data.  This is a full-time job and if you were to pay him or her a salary, it would probably cost you a minimum of $45K/yr. ($3,750/mo) with most being in the $55K to $65K per year bracket.


Don’t be bummed.

If you already have an established Twitter or Facebook account, it could be a little more cost effective, because you won’t have to start from scratch and what you’ll need is a social media manager to maintain and manage your accounts: (i.e. keep them flowing, interact, grow your followers, establish relationships, and build brand awareness).  So, If you were to hire someone full time to manage your one account, not create contests, promotions or ads, it would most likely cost a minimum of $40K per year, which is a salary of $3,300/mo.

Snapchat
$750,000  = This is how much Snapchat costs were per ‘Brand Story’ ad, which is a branded post that appears within the app’s ‘Stories’ feed.

(update: 12/2015 The minimum budget for advertising on Snapchat recently dropped from $700,000+ to $100,000)

snapchat advertising costs

Advertising has always been costly but it’s vital to business growth.
And sometimes, businesses just aren’t ready yet.

People scratch their heads in confusion when things aren’t selling, or when customers aren’t responding.  I’ve been there before.  I’d think, “I’m doing everything right!” when the truth is, I was just not giving enough to my marketing budget or plan.

We all want to see fantastic results, but what we don’t see is the costs associated with the results we want.  And it can be overwhelming at first, but once the momentum starts, it all starts working pretty harmoniously.  Better budget for advertising = more sales = more advertising budget = even more sales, etc.

“It’s nearly impossible to do PR and Social Media Marketing on your own, unless you have tons of time, are super-savvy (creatively), and have a team to help out. Make sure you budget anywhere from 15-20% of your annual income for marketing, because a funny thing happens when you don’t do it: Nothing.   Meanwhile, you see competitors with the same products as you doing it and going global.  If you want to succeed, there is no other choice. It needs to be a financial priority in your business plan and must be factored in as a cost to doing business”.

In the quick moving digital world we now live in, we simply can’t wait for our audience and business to come to us. Digital and social media is where all of the attention is these days. We stream Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon. We are plugged into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This is where the audience of the world is today, and if you aren’t finding a way to reach them through these channels, you’re kind of on another planet.  If you take your business seriously, find a way to either amp up your social media marketing time per day or hire a professional to help you grow your business.  You honestly can’t afford not to.

How to Make Money as a Blogger

Nobody believes anyone can make money as a blogger, let alone $1 Million a year. If you ask most people, they will say, “Don’t quit your day job”, or “That’s just a pipe dream.”, or my favorite:

“Blogging?  That’s not a “real” job, it’s a hobby, right?” 

I don’t know, just ask Aimee Song, The Man Repeller or the Chiara Ferragni of the Blonde Salad, who by the way, pulled in a reported $8 Million in 2015.  And those are the top fashion bloggers right now.  Think about even the successful bottom tier bloggers and what they are making.  According to research, the average blogger with 40,000+ page views per month is pulling in anything from $5,000 to  $40,000+ per month.  Yep, you read that correctly.

Still think you can’t make money blogging? 

how to make money as a travel fashion blogger

First of all, Bloggers Sell Their Expertise

My Tween Fashion Blog makes a good chunk of change per year and has over 45,000 visitors per month. And I don’t really feel like I do anything. Or, at least all I could be doing, or as much as some bloggers do.

How?

I’ll be happy to tell you. First of all, most of the advice you’ll read out there is crap or outdated.  All of that “AdSense monetizing your blog” info is complete nonsense. Monetizing your blog with AdWords does nothing for you except clutter up your content with annoying ads. The money you get in return is pennies —literally.

For example, do you see any giant ads on this site?

Not really.  There’s a reason why.

I am a Fashion Designer, Branding and Digital Marketing gal.  My blogs are my platforms to offer my expert opinions, reviews, advice and sometimes products. I have been designing professionally since 2003, and I have been marketing and selling online since 1999. In fact, I began my fashion career in similar ways as Sophia Amoruso, Founder of Nasty Gal. 

Long before blogs, there were other ways to sell expert advice.

Experience is Profitable.

I began buying and re-selling clothes on eBay in 1999.  I would visit my local thrift stores and find used, designer and vintage clothes to resell through my eBay store.  By 2001, I had worked my way up to buying and reselling in large quantities and importing stock lots from factories overseas.  In fact, one month I made $60,000 in sales. 

After only one year in business, I had sourced and collected literally hundreds of businesses across the USA who were wholesale apparel sellers, liquidators, outlets and resources for B2B sales.  And then I realized there were thousands of new eBay sellers every day begging for information that I had.  I realized I was sitting on very valuable information. I compiled my first Wholesale Apparel eBook and sold it online through my first e-commerce site I built with Dreamweaver. I sold a lot of these at $49 each.  A lot.

Bloggers are Value-Adders

You see, Bloggers don’t make most of their money selling ad space or earning dimes for clicks. Bloggers are essentially teachers adding value, and fashion and/or travel bloggers are a branded platform.  

What they sell are their ideas, a feeling, expertise, experiences, info, and eventually products. Fashion Bloggers are the experts and trendsetters in their field. They start with rich, relevant content to target their audience and work their way into building up that audience to — you guessed it: sell their product, or sell other people’s products.

Chiara Ferragni started off as a Look of the Day gal in 2009, but she now has her own collection and a few million per year with The Chiara Ferragni collection. THAT is where her money comes from my darlings.

How You Can Make Money as a Blogger

If you are reading this, you have probably dug into every piece of information you could get your hands on about quitting your job and making a living blogging.  But the truth is until you figure out how to sell what you know,  you probably aren’t going to make money blogging. Building up your readership is key. And you can’t build up that readership if you aren’t providing information that’s useful or relevant.

People want information. Information sells. Stories are great, but stories don’t make bloggers wealthy–unless they turn the story into a tangible product (a book, or movie).  

Above all else: Work on the quality of your content first. You won’t make money right away. The first year or so is going to be a personal investment. 

For me, my blog provides info on the best brands, the best stores, what’s trending, what’s awesome and what sucks.  And my niche happens to be the Tween, Girls and Juniors market. Yours may be completely different, but that’s up to you to decide and refine.

Fashion provides a steady, constant moving stream of information.  People want to know what boots are hot this season, what dress to wear to the holiday party, what to wear, how they should style their hair, etc. This is where the fashion blogger comes in.

Monetize Your Expertise

My head is full of useful information. I have been involved with the fashion industry for 16 years.  I have taken my knowledge and skills and transferred that energy into teaching what I know.  

Your head is full of useful information, too. Stick to what you know.
And don’t worry if it’s just a niche market, either. Just ask this guy: Gary Vaynerchuk. His niche was wine.

If you take some of what I learned and apply it to your blog, it’ll pay off for you.

Because here’s the thing: You can make money blogging.  

A million bloggers and Vloggers out there can’t be wrong.  What everyone wants is information.  All the time.  And of course, you can be the person they come to for that information.  

How to Make Money as a Blogger

So, here’s the beginning to what you need to know to get started making money as a blogger.

PRO-TIP  RULE #1: Before you get started as a serious blogger looking to turn your blog into real money, invest in your blog. Don’t use a freebie blog site. Self-host a WordPress site from the beginning! Read Why a Self-Hosted site with WordPress is critical  If you are already on a Blogger or free version of WordPress.com, it’s no biggie, you can easily transfer over.

Lesson #1:  You’re Not “Just a Fashion Blogger” or a “Travel Blogger” or “Food Blogger”

You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor. Your blog is simply a springboard for all of those things. Perhaps you can offer more than just daily posts, right?

You have a bigger goal, a bigger vision, it’s just not incubated long enough.  But it will.  Keep your head and your eye on the bigger picture.

Look around, and you’ll find nearly all fashion bloggers who make a decent income have an active Instagram account full of fantastic product and lifestyle shots, fashion show attendance, product endorsements, their own fashion collections, books, a consulting or trend forecasting business, side gigs etc. 

THAT is how they make money.

Their blog and their Instagram account is just the platform where they introduce themselves, give away cool stuff or talk about the things that spark interest to attract followers, customers or clients. Their interesting ideas and perspective, coupled with rich content = Followers, which equals audience. And as we all know, audience = influence = $$$

Lesson #2: Don’t Rely on Selling Advertising

Selling ads can be attractive, because it’s income that generates without really doing anything (passive income), but it’s generally minimal unless it’s ad space bought by a big brand, OR you have a million followers and you are using a platform like liketoknow.it or  RewardStyle.me to sell OPP – Other People’s Products. If your blog gets a ton of traffic, you will do OK with just impressions.

So, unless your ad space is purchased from someone like Gucci or Prada, say “nada”.


Why push someone else’s product for pennies, if you can make 5-10 x more money using that same “ad space” to sell your own products or services?  At the very least, promote an affiliate product that is either cohesive with your blog theme (i.e. health and wellness, fitness, high fashion, etc.) or a brand that you love -and one that will make you a significant profit per month. 

For example, try signing up with shareasale.com or Rakuten Marketing.  Some fashion brands will pay up to 20% commissions in sales.

When I first started out, I signed up for big brands for the names, but they barely paid 3% commissions and although I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth,  it just didn’t add up. 

I discovered after my first year that I had been pushing their brand and watching their sales increase based on my efforts, and I was literally getting a few dollars in return. In the first year as an affiliate, I generated 1.3 million impressions and $17,200 in sales.

My commission for that year was peanuts ($605).

how affiliate marketing works

Example of Affiliate Program Sales

What I realized was if I applied that same effort to my own products, I could make what they were making.  Viola!  Do you see how it works?

People were coming in for my content, but spending dollarinos elsewhere.

If you do choose to go with affiliate marketing (until you get your own product, of course), set your baseline commission standards to at least 15% or don’t waste your time.  Your time is extremely valuable. Crafting awesome posts takes you hours, and pushing a brand for pennies is just not worth it.

After all, your goal is to make $50,000 per month right? Right!

Stop working for free.

Now, If you consider the possibility of a $25,000 month of sales for all of your affiliates combined, and your baseline is 15%  Your monthly commission is $3,750.  Makes a bit of difference, doesn’t it?

I reiterate you CAN make money as a blogger.

On my blog, I mostly promote my own brand, products, and services now, but I am also in the process of writing a book about How to Market Your Brand.  The bottom line: Think bigger than ad space or paid reviews. Sure, you may get free stuff and that’s totally fine if you’re going for that. Free stuff is fun but it’s not going to allow you to quit your day job and really earn a living blogging, or send you and your family on vacation. So if your goal is to earn a 6-figure income blogging, set your standards high.

CONTENT IS THE NEW SOCIAL CURRENCY

Lesson #3:  Build Your Content

You’re an expert, give the world your expert knowledge.  Don’t hammer your readers with sales pitches, or too many ‘buy me, buy me’ posts.  Your whole point for being here is to offer valuable information.  The good, the bad, the ugly – Not a car salesman pitch at every turn. Be polite. It’s much better to build relationships and trust by giving readers some valuable content before you begin talking about or pushing your products and services. Yes, you might make less money in the short term, but the long-term profits are so worth it.  

In the blogger world, photos are everything.  So, make sure you partner with a good photographer who can work with you often to create the overall look and mood of the clothes you may be presenting.  Reach out to stylists and brands to collaborate.  I cannot stress enough the need to collaborate.  It is vital, especially if you are going for stylistic shoots, and highlighting products.

Lesson #4: Don’t Be The “Bottleneck”

Time is your biggest obstacle as a blogger. There just isn’t enough of it.  Not only are we expected to publish a continuous stream of photos on Instagram and publish content on our blogs, but we also have to make time to create creative assets, giveaways, and promotions, schedule styling shoots – if you do that sort of thing, deal with technical issues, read books and articles about the industry, design, create new products to sell (I certainly do, anyhow) and answer questions from readers. 

Did I mention social media management also?  The list really goes on and on for days.  It is more than a full-time job, and you have to be prepared to put in the work.

Many days, my job as a Designer and managing my business starts at 6:30 AM and doesn’t end until about 8 PM.  I have found myself literally doing

E V E R Y T H I N G.

But you will learn quickly, and maybe you already have, that you CAN’T do everything.

You just can’t. And you shouldn’t if you want to succeed as a fashion blogger.

So, what’s the answer?

Your job as a fashion blogger is a lot like the manufacturing process. If one machine is down or working slower than others in a factory, it can literally cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. If something slips up and a batch of tees get dyed the wrong color because someone was overworked, it will cost another several hundred thousand dollars. 

To make sure snags don’t happen, manufacturers and brands have Product Developers and Production Managers,  Why?  Because they are worth every penny of their $100K+ per year salary, and they eliminate these snags or “bottlenecks”.

The same is true for us, except the solutions are a little different.  We will want to focus on the area(s) where we are the most bottlenecked and find a solution to free up that valuable time.  We might sign up for a service or purchase new software tools that automate some of our social media workflow, or we might hire an assistant. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile if it saves you time. Because you can then dedicate that extra time to higher value activities that yield better ROI.

Lesson #5:  Time is Money

Put a price on high-value activities.  What are “high-value activities”?

Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase your blog traffic, then start measuring the ‘visitors per hour invested’.

For example, if you invest three hours in writing a post or shooting a post for Instagram and it brings you, 100 visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post (or collaborating with another Instagrammer) which brings you, 500 visitors, the first post has an hourly rate of 33 visitors per hour. The second post has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per hour. Guest posting and/or collaborating with an established blogger, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog (in the beginning).

Anticipation builds momentum.

Consider the possibility of building up your content and following before launching your blog.  The last thing you want to do is post regular content if nobody is reading.  Get your visitors and followers ready with a ‘coming soon’ page and collect emails for the next 30, 60 or 90 days while you build out your blog, take photos, create content and make connections with other bloggers as a Guest Contributor.  I took this strategy with my Berry Jane website and the response was astounding.  I had a ‘coming soon’ page up for three months before launching and I was able to grow my email list to nearly 1,000 in no time flat.

Lesson #6:  Facebook, Twitter, Google+ may be a waste of valuable resources

Wait, does this mean having followers in those places is useless?  No. Facebook is OK because you can reach your followers there (if that’s where they spend the majority of their time) and utilize Facebook Ads. Facebook is still the #1 platform in the world, but Instagram is quickly gaining the #1 spot. Google+ (which is now obsolete as of 3/24/2019) may help boost your search engine rankings. Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be at the top of your priority list.

In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at all until you hit 10,000 followers/subscribers, and then you can outsource the social media management to someone else. Use your time more efficiently in other places, such as Instagram, YouTube, Stylish Shots, Product Reviews and Writing Longer Content.

Why longer content?

Longer content gets much more traffic and is more SEO friendly than shorter content.  The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post (This post, for example, is appx. 3,070 words).

Lesson #7:  Promote, Promote, Promote!

Promote the heck out of your content.  I’m not talking about just sharing your posts to your Followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I’m talking about blogger outreach. Build relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.

It comes back to TIME.  When your blog is new, the most efficient uses of your time is: building relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating content worth linking to and selling your products and services. I have worked with a broad range of brands and companies from Target to Simon and Schuster, Pac Sun and even Dollar Shave Club. 

If you follow just those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic (organically) without doing anything.

Lesson #8: Build Your Email List.  

(It’s More Important Than You Realize)

In my experience, your email list is the most accurate predictor of how much money you’ll make blogging.

A successful Blogger makes around $3 per subscriber per month. If you’re new to this, I would aim for $1 per subscriber per month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers would result in $10,000 per month and so on.

The more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Of course, your relationships, quality of content and products are key to success.

Sell “You”

Don’t just turn your blog into a big sales pitch. I see that with so many bloggers and it gets annoying fast, plus it’s just not very personal.  And “personal” is what got a lot of these fashion bloggers where they are today.  They created content that made followers feel connected.  I see this with Aimee Song.  We love to see her photos on Instagram, but her blog and Instagram account is basically a show and tell platform to sell what she’s wearing.

Be real and personable. Sell your knowledge and ideas, but don’t become just a machine for selling. Nobody likes that.

Remember to keep offering something your audience wants and needs. I’m interested to hear your comments on this subject and see what has worked for you, and what hasn’t!  If you’re just starting out, keep plugging away.  Starfruit takes time to ripen.  

You’ve got this. ❤️

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