If you haven’t “made it” online yet, then 2012 is going to be the year you achieve your dreams.
And in this blog post I’m going to reveal an action plan you can follow to create a $250+ per day passive income.
Start on January 2nd (January 1st can be hangover day!) and work your way through this plan throughout the year.
Here it is…
The Set-Up
1. Pick a topic that you can blog about.
For example, gadgets, photography, men’s health, women’s health, beauty, fitness, gardening, money, home improvement, dogs, cats, food and drink, real estate, travel, stocks, self-improvement, gaming, business etc.
You could even pick a target market rather than a topic – for example a blog for men, or a blog for women, or a blog for teenagers, or for OAPs.
Pick a topic that you enjoy, or know a lot about.
2. Set up a WordPress blog on a memorable domain name and configure it to be optimized for the search engines.
Have a theme designed or download an existing WordPress theme – either free or paid. A Google Search will provide you lots of different WordPress themes.
Customize the design and install social sharing buttons. I use ShareThis.
Get an autoresponder account, such as Aweber, and place an opt-in form in a prominent position on your blog. Perhaps have a pop over form, too. (A pop over converts really well). I’ve also found that giving away a free report increases conversions monumentally but you can do this later on.
Add some form of monetization to your blog – such as Google Adsense or some Amazon affiliate links.
Now you have a nicely designed, well optimized, blog ready to generate traffic and revenue.
Daily Tasks
1. Using the Google Keyword Tool, find a search term that gets 500+ searches per month based on the topic or target market of your blog. Write a high quality blog post that targets this keyphrase. Include monetization within the post by perhaps linking to a relevant Amazon product.
Everything we do for the rest of the day is designed to drive traffic back to our blog or blog post and increase its search engine ranking.
2. Send your email subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans to read your article. Obviously for the first few posts you won’t have any of these but as your blog grows so will your following.
3. Write AT LEAST one article per day that you can use to publish on someone else’s blog. This is known as guest blogging and is one of the most effective link building and traffic strategies available. Within the article, link back to the blog post you published earlier in the day. This will ensure every post you publish gets link love.
Read this article on how I find guest blogging opportunities and approach fellow bloggers to publish my content.
4. Turn your published blog post into a video and publish it to YouTube. Link back to your blog in the description and encourage viewers to visit your blog.
5. Once your blog post has been indexed on your own blog, submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com and link back to your blog.
6. Leave a few comments on some of the most popular blogs in your market and include a link back to your blog or a specific blog post.
7. Participate in forums related to your blog leaving a link back to your blog in the signature.
The above seven strategies are nothing new. You’ve definitely heard of them all before – but if you apply yourself every day and complete each task, your blog will grow and grow and grow at a faster and faster rate.
For example, if you have one guest post published per day that sends just 5 clicks each per day to your blog, then after 100 days you’ll be getting 500 visitors per day from just your guest blogging opportunities. Plus, each backlink will move you up a few places in the search engines.
You’ll also have 100 YouTube videos sending you traffic, you’ll have 100 articles published on article directories sending you traffic and backlinks, you’ll have hundreds of blog comments sending you a trickle of traffic and you’ll have hundreds of forum posts sending you traffic.
You’ll also be building a bigger email subscriber database, bigger Twitter following and a bigger Facebook following meaning every email, Tweet or post you publish will result in more traffic to your blog.
Plus, as your traffic increases, so will the number of people who share your content on social networks like Twitter and Facebook which will have a positive impact on your search engine ranking. Plus, the more traffic you get, the more chance of a rival blogger reading your content and deciding to link to you from their blog increasing your ranking and traffic.
This is a simple business model that, if you follow, will generate you passive traffic and earn you passive advertising revenue and affiliate commissions.
And the best thing of all – it’s really, really easy to get somebody else to do this all for you so you can simply sit back and watch your traffic and your income grow.
Sidenote: Download this 155 page guide called Outsourcing Blitzkrieg that reveals how you can outsource pretty much any task really, really cheaply.
Bonus Tips
1. Each month, create one premium piece of content that is designed to get talked about, get linked to and get shared on social networking sites. These pieces of content can take longer to create, but a well created, well executed piece is capable of getting 10,000+ visitors within 24 hours and providing an incredible long term positive impact.
This guide called Trophy Pigeon reveals how Chris Munch created a piece of content that generated over 100,000 unique visitors and an insane number of powerful backlinks.
2. Add more monetization to your blog. Optimize your Adsense placement, create posts like “Top 10 Gifts For…” and link to affiliate products, create an “Offer of the Month” page and link to a special offer, create your own products and sell them to your subscribers and blog readers, promote affiliate products with your email list and much, much more.
3. Publish a press release to promote some of your more unusual or interesting blog posts. This is often free and can get you lots of backlinks and traffic.
4. Keep learning blog promotion strategies and implement new methods to promote your blog and your blog posts.
5. Encourage experts in your market to submit guest posts on your blog. This will enable you to get completely free content, take no time on your part and you’ll often find your guest authors will promote your content to their audience giving you more traffic and greater exposure.
Eventually, you may be able to reach a point whereby:
- You have so many people wanting to guest post on your blog that you have a constant stream of new content that you don’t have to create or pay for.
- Google loves you so much that every new post you publish is indexed instantly and put on the first page of Google for the target keywords.
- And you have such a big email list, Twitter and Facebook following that you just need to notify them of a new blog post to get a huge instant surge of readers.
ProBlogger.net has reached that point.
90% of blog posts published there are from guest authors. It has over 160,000 email subscribers, 33,000 Facebook fans and 150,000 Twitter followers. Every time a new post is published, each of these subscribers, fans and followers is notified – that’s nearly 350,000 people. Plus, Google loves it and ranks ProBlogger content at the top of the search engines.
It requires minimal upkeep and pulls in an incredible amount of traffic and revenue.
And there’s nothing to stop you doing the same in 2012.
This may be my last contact before Christmas. I’m going back up to London on the 22nd until approximately the 30th to see my parents, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins for the first time in over 2 months and I can’t wait.
I don’t intend on doing any work so, if you celebrate Christmas, I’d love to wish you a very happy one, a fantastic New Year – and I can’t wait to help your business grow in 2012.
Thanks,
James Penn
P.S. If you enjoyed this post and you’d like to give me an early Christmas present, then a Tweet or a Facebook share would be more than enough 
Leave a Reply
12/20/2011
I will be implementing this in my business for 2012 and beyond! Thanks James this stuff is great for sure! I bought your great how to build an email list thing earlier this year and it was great! Also I +1 and tweeted you
Merry Christmas!
Hi James
Have a lovely time with your family. I have enjoyed following your posts. Thank you for all the information.
Dee
Thanks James for this great post… sometimes we need to be reminded that it is the simple things which are actually the most effective, we just need to apply them regularly and consistently
You are correct when you say there is nothing new here (at least for those that have been doing this for a while) but it’s great to be reminded… Also I am going to aim to produce a piece of “premium content” as you suggest and see what happens!
Have a good Christmas
Hi James,
Another fantastic blog post to end the year with. I love it! A complete system that other marketers would probably charge $27 for and you give it to us for free – awesome!
Wishing you and your family a very merry xmas and a happy, healthy and wealthy new year.
Take care,
Nick.
Awesome dude,
Lots of great info. Have a fantastic well deserved break. See ya next year!
Hi James,
Maybe I’m a bit dense but how do you turn articles into videos??
That one has me stumped.
Thanks.
Nancy
Hi Nancy
Good question. Take a look at this example that I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPBrHd51Ys
James
Hey James,
Great strategy! I have seen you do this many times and I’ve also done it myself and showed some students how to do it as well.
People often think making consistent money online is hard or complex and it’s really simple when you can break it down into sections and tasks like you have done here.
One more thing that I like to do is also take my articles and turn them into PDFs and submit them to the document sharing sites for even more traffic
Happy Holidays James!
Cheers,
Coby Wright
Thank you James, this is a great post with a simple to understand timeline. Even without doing all that you outline (a guest post everyday!), one would still bring get great results.
Enjoy your holiday with your family, I’m sure they will all be happy to see you!
Fran
Like the best ideas – simple and easy to follow. Couple it with following a few Google Alerts, some blog commenting and a little bit of social bookmarking and it’s a complete blogging business in a box that will ramp up traffic very quickly. Great post and liking your blog lots – keep it coming!
Hi James,
(Just kidding)
An excellent article!
I’d bet that most of the readers are going to think it was a no sweat, just inspired writing.
I also hope you’ll get all the appreciation you deserve.
Best wishes and Merry Christmas,
PT
Thanks James, for the awesome content.
Its all about systems and…..FOCUS
Follow
One
Course
Until
Successful….
My main goal next year…..stay on track on one
project until successful…
Have a great Christmas, enjoy the break…..
My main goal will be to have an extra income from
my online efforts….wasted too much time.
And i will have one main email for my solid gold
contacts…..of course, with your good self included.
Cheers
Shaun
Dublin