How to AutoPilot Your Blog to Enjoy Your Vacations To The Fullest.
No way! I wish it was like that though it's the other way around. Blogging is generally a platform that lets you launch other passive income opportunities, though the core of blogging, that is the pouring in audience towards your income streams never gets fully on Auto Pilot mode.
I recently came back from a month long off season from the blog and it was first of it's kind. I decided to stay away from the blog apart from managing the advertisers and emails. Though later into the vacations, I become lazy in that department too.
Their was a purpose behind the off season and I'll let you know in a bit. I learned a lot.
You, reading this at the moment might be running your blog's on any form of online business or you might be one of those friends who are looking forward to setup their blogs and haven't yet come up with an idea of your dreams. We're all on the same boat.
Today, I'll talk more about how can we equip our blogs on auto pilot so that we can take advantage of vacations and spend more time with our family.
Before we proceed, I'd take a moment so that we know what to expect from a blog that is on autopilot and why not to over expect.
What to Expect from the term "Blog on Auto Pilot"?
A blog on Autopilot doesn't mean you would never have to work on it again and it would keep giving you fruits till eternity.
That's not possible. As a founder of the blog, you have to keep a keen eye on the blog even if you have fellows to assist you along the way in content creation and other managing and financing stuff.
How to Achieve a Blog on Auto Pilot Mode?
#1 Content Workflow
To keep visitors flowing in to your blog, you need to have a consistent flow of posts being published to your blog. No matter how popular your blog's name is online, the core relationship between you and your audience is fresh content for which they come by every day.The moment you take of few days of your blog, you'll notice a serious drop in traffic. It's not about posting daily, it's just to stick by what ever your posting frequency have been since you started the blog and to serve your audience as to what they expect.
Though surely the more quality stuff you'll post, the faster your traffic will rise and it all depends upon how much time you're willing to put into your content strategy.
To put your blog on auto pilot, you could either pre-schedule blog posts before going on vacations or another off season, or manage the guest writers so that they keep deliver content in your absence.
Absence from content is not an option and you've to find a way around for that. You could also hire some quality content writers so to fill in your gap.
#2 Email Marketing & Relation Building - All on Autopilot
Thanks to some of the powerful email marketing tools out there like Aweber, that I use personally too for building a relationship with my audience, you can be stress free and manage your email list fully on autopilot.
A clear question here is, "How would an email marketing tool help in putting your blog on auto pilot"?
Well, it actually plays a major role in setting up your blog on auto mode. As a blogger, you have binding upon you to maintain a strong relationship with your readers.
You should know their problems, their personal progress, where they are lacking and what not. The more the better.
With Email marketing tools like Aweber (there are bunch of such tools though Aweber is hands down the best in the Industry for it's power and simplicity. Read these 6 Reasons to Get Started With Aweber - You'd Be Foolish Otherwise.)
Aweber would help you to capture email leads while you're off the vacations and collect your visitors into subscribers list at the back end. This would ensure that the visitors and audience that search engines throw at your blog is not wasted and you actually tend to convert those one time visitors into long term fans.
This is the power of email marketing.
You could then set automatic follow up messages that you can set easily in Aweber which would further strengthen your relationship with the subscribers.
For the first email that I sent to my email subscriber, I would introduce my self in depth and let him know how I got started and How we both are on the same journey.
That makes the subscriber more comfortable and he/she then looks up to more content from your end.
Which is great and what we want at the end of the day. This all happens automatically without you having to put a single second into while you're on vacations.
In case you're already using Google's Feed burner as an email delivery source, trust me you're loosing a lot. You can read out this guide to switch over easily: How to Migrate from Feedburner to Aweber Seamlessly
#3 Income Funnel
Income is the major aspect and the reason behind me writing this post. You need to find a way to make your blog's income stream on auto pilot so that you don't have to worry about money being flowing into your bank account while you're on vacations.
It is totally possible but requires a concrete base of your well established blog.
While I was away for a month as you know, the blog wasn't compromised on the income part and I'll let you know why in a bit.
As BloggingeHow's major source of income is now it's email list followed by the banner ads via BuySellAds marketplace, the income was only effected to some extent and that was due to drop in search traffic via Google.
Though as other income streams were stable enough, the blog didn't got a set back while I was off.
So to lay down your blog's auto pilot strategy, first consider what income streams have you explored yet. What are your major sources of income via your blog.
Is it banner ads, is it a product that you sell, is it an affiliate product etc.
Setting Products Sale on AutoPilot
Having to sell products online is the best way to make your income streams on autopilot. Electronic products like eBooks, CDs, Videos or any tool that is downloadable after purchase can be easily integrated with email marketing tools like Aweber.
Once the visitor buys the product via a cart based cashout system, your bank account or PayPal (What ever you have set), gets loaded with the sale, and on the other hand, the customer gets his product via email or is redirected to a downloadable copy of your product.
That's amazing and doesn't require you to be their online to overlook the sale to take place.
Selling Affiliate Products
Quite a while back I wrote a comprehensive guide that helps people make their PayPal accounts in the unsupported states. Also, they get to make a free Payoneer account.
The post made up to first page of Google then and made me a decent amount of affiliate sales for the Payoneer card. That's great and is totally on auto pilot.
Visitors apply for a Payoneer account and I get paid 25$ for each card that reaches it's first 100$ mark. Though very few people reach that mark, still one ends up making quite a bit knowing that the post was on fire for being on the first page of Google then.
Next up, as I promote Bluehost's hosting, I get paid affiliate commission for each time someone gets an hosting account via my affiliate link.
That's all on autopilot.
The person wants to start a blog, he buys hosting for his WordPress blog, I get paid. Win-Win situation it is and doesn't require me to be online at that moment.
Selling Banner Ads
Selling banners ads had never been quite easy before the launch of a popular Marketplace named BuySellAds.
You're able to create Ad Slots on BuySellAds that you wish to put on sale. Advertisers come by BSA marketplace and buys an AdSlot.
All you need to do is to accept the offer via email while you're on vacations. That's pretty much it.
There is no need to manage the Adcode by the advertisers, no need to upload the Banner Ad images and other time wasting stuff.
It's all on Auto pilot, expect having to give a green light to the Ad Offer via email. Read more about strategies to attract more Advertisers on BuySellAds.
There are couple of WordPress plugins to manage online cart systems that you can checkout in the list below:
#4 Social Media Scheduling
Lastly, while you're off on vacations, you need to be relaxed about your content being pushed to social media profiles on auto pilot to drive the most traffic you could towards your blog.
How you could do that?
Well, there are tools like HootSuite to pre-schedule your posts on social media where you can set particular time for the post to get live on these platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
Though, you might be wondering, how come you could pre-schedule a post on social media which hasn't been published yet on the blog.
You've a way around for that too. You can push your blog posts to social media once they are published on the blog. This post would help out in setting it up in WordPress. There are tons of resources online that teaches how to do that on Blogspot or third party blogs too.
Read more: 3 Steps To Use HootSuite To Increase Blog's Social Media Traffic
Final Words & a Question
A blog can never be fully passive income nature. That is you have to consistently put in more effort into it to drive more attention and keep the process of innovation alive.
Your readers deserve more content and they are thirsty for it. Make sure you keep providing them literally for ever.
These Autopilot techniques are meant to give you a short break of the work so that you can spend sometime with your family if you feel over stressed.
I easily took off a month and I'm even more fresh than ever. My productivity level has increased and it feel like I'll accomplish stuff that have been pending on my To-do list since for ever now.
I hope the guide helped you out. Do share your blog in the comment section below and one way you look forward to make your blog on auto pilot in the future.
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