The Blog of Lisa Morosky

Whatever niche you’re in, chances are you can do some consulting on the side as a way of monetizing your blog. A lot of people get into consulting, then realize they don’t like doing consulting (because they don’t like people or having clients or whatever), so make sure you’re okay with the fact that you’ll have people to email and respond to every day, and sometimes it might be a headache.

I’m going to give you a quick step-by-step on how to start offering consulting services on your blog, using all free tools. Chances are, if this becomes a big earner for you, you’re going to want to upgrade your tools to some that cost money, but for now we’ll stick with the freebies.

The Planning Stage

Before you launch any sort of product or service willy-nilly, you should take some time to plan it out.

• Think about the amount of time you can dedicate to consulting, and therefore what you’ll need to be paid to make it worth your while (and worth their while).
• Set some goals. They can be monetary goals (how much you’d like to earn a month). They can be quantitative goals (how many new clients a month you’d like to see). Have some system in place to measure your progress.
• Figure out how you’re going to offer your consulting services. Will you do it based on packages (so many sessions for a certain price)? Will you do it per hour? What will and won’t you do, talk about, and share with clients? Will you record sessions for clients?

Getting the Tools in Order

So if you’re testing the consulting waters, I don’t think you need to spring for more expensive services (like GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar) quite yet – figure out what your clients want first.

Here are two free tools you can start off with:

• For telephone-only consulting, go with FreeConferenceCall.com. It’s free (obviously), and you can even record your calls for free. Not a bad deal.
• For video consulting, or consulting where you need to share your computer screen, good ole Skype will work. I’ve started doing exactly this for personal blog training. I wish I could find a free app to share with you that allows you to record the screen and the conversation while you’re in Skype – but I haven’t found anything free that works well (and I actually haven’t found anything not free that works real well for Skype recording). If you have, please share it with me.

Getting Your Blog Set Up to Offer Consulting Services

There are two big things you need to do:

• Add a “Work With Me” or a “Services” or a “Consulting” page to your blog. Describe your services. Add some testimonials. Make working with you so appealing that they just can’t refuse.
• Set up an automatic way to pay. Trust me – if you make it easy for people to pay you, more people will pay you. Add PayPal buttons, or shopping cart buttons. When I switched over to doing this versus just saying “contact me for information”, business increased dramatically.

If you want to go the extra mile, you could also:

• Add a little advertisement below your blog posts that says something like “Work With Me” with a link to your consulting page. Sticking advertisements below your posts, but before comments, is a spectacular place to put them. Don’t give Google AdSense that spot – give you that spot.
• Add a little advertisement to your blog sidebar. Can’t hurt, right?
• If you have a blog newsletter template you use, build in a little advertisement there.

Publicize Your Services

Okay, so you’re all set up now. Now it’s time to let people know that you offer consulting services. Here are some ideas:

• Twitter is your friend. Schedule a tweet to go out once a week that says something like, “FYI – I offer such-and-such services nowadays. Read more about it here: <link>.” Once a week isn’t overwhelming, and if you schedule the tweets ahead of time you don’t have to worry about remembering to post something.
• Run a promotion when you’re just starting out to get your first batch of clients and testimonials. Offer your services at a discount at first so you can get that first batch of interested people.
• Add a message to your autoresponder sequence about your services. Another thing that’s automatically done for you.
• Use this as a call-to-action in your blog posts. You know how at the end of your blog posts there should be some sort of call-to-action (leave me a comment, tweet this, check out this product, etc)? Use your new services as your call-to-action.
• Go back and look through some old blog posts and update them with a link to your services. These posts are (hopefully) indexed in search engines, so it can’t hurt, right?

We talk so much about advertising and affiliate marketing and creating products, that I think we forget that a lot of people start off by monetizing their blogs with services. And it can be a good living (with little to no upfront costs). So if you’re struggling with how to monetize your blog, consider offering consulting services.

I came across a few new posts this week about how to approach other bloggers, and how to approach online advertisers, and how to email your blogging idols, and how to talk to people on Twitter, and yada, yada, yada.

Am I missing something here? Did online etiquette suddenly become so complicated that it warrants several hundred words to explain? Did online etiquette suddenly become different than “real life” etiquette?

Here’s the only thing I think you need to know: treat others as you’d like to be treated. There’s a reason it’s called the “Golden Rule”. If you base your online connections, as well as all other connections in your life, on this rule, you’ll get it right damn near every time.

Unless you enjoy meeting people then immediately having them ask you for a favor, having pitch after pitch after pitch thrown in your face, being treated like just another blogger, being treated like a rockstar and having your every little move picked apart, and being spammed all over the place – don’t do that to other people.

Whatever situation you face in your online endeavors (contacting a potential advertiser, sending an email to your idol, contacting someone on Twitter or on Facebook, asking someone for something, whatever it is), reverse your outlook and approach it as the other person.