Why The Lifestyle Blogger Business Model Is Broken
Tons of people want to start travel sites or become the next great lifestyle blogger.
Sadly, like all of the glamorous new occupations – like being a YouTube star or fitness meme – there’s a broken business model behind the whole thing. It’s a pyramid where maybe one succeeds on the back of thousands of wannabes who fail.
Moreover, even if you can be one of those successes, it’s hard work and the rewards pale in comparison to other activities which seem to be less glamorous.
This isn’t a bitter rant or anything; in this article, I’ll show you why the lifestyle blogger business model is broken and how you can build something better. I’m like an anti-guru.
How Are You Making Your Money?
Many lifestyle gurus play the lifestyle blogger game in the same way.
They make money on affiliate sales. Maybe they’ll sell a $10 e-book about their travels. Then after a couple of years, they’ll move on to bigger and better things: like charging for online courses or seminars.
There’s nothing wrong with this model. But how many lifestyle bloggers are actually honest about this process?
The answer is “not many.”
From my patented “observational studies,” I’ve concluded that when it comes to the blogosphere, shadiness is an unnecessary norm.
Earnings are massively overinflated. Work out how many guys hit a magic number of 10k a month from ebook sales… then work out how many books you actually have to sell at a Kindle $7 royalty to get that… and then look at their sites traffic figures or their books’ sales ranks. It doesn’t add up.
… Especially when they pull out the Lamborghini. That said, the misdirection is often a lot more subtle than that. But let’s not get drawn into why guys who make $10k a month live in studio flats in 3rd world countries.
My point with this is that if you really want to make money from a venture, you should have a clue about where the money is coming from… and you should realistically research whether that’s possible. Do your research outside the lifestyle blogger sphere of influence.
If you want to write books, go and find authors and see their figures.
If you want to be an affiliate, hunt down actual affiliate marketing advice with proven data.
Or should you want to provide business-to-business services, go and find actual B2B people and not lifehackers with “buy my backlink package!” mini-sites.
Who Exactly Are Your Target Market?
If you want to sell stuff to people, you need to know who you’re going to sell your stuff to. This is the difference between a serious affiliate marketer and a guy who blogs indiscriminately about shaving cream or toothpaste or whatever in the hopes that one in a thousand viewers will click his Amazon link.
When you’re talking about lifestyle bloggers, you’ve got a very scattershot approach to your target market. It’s essentially “people who want the life I do and also want to buy the products I recommend specifically through my affiliate link.”
Getting all of those stars to align is pretty tough; much tougher than picking a specific audience and sending them to a specific product via specific traffic.
It’s even more tough when you consider that for most lifestyle bloggers, they’re not all that loaded with money (hence the studios in 3rd World countries) and neither are the people who read their blogs either.
It’s very rare that someone with deep pockets says, “Hey… I really love this guy’s blog about how to save money on the road. Better buy some of that travel soap he recommends.”
I once saw a blog article that was titled something like, “How to travel the world for $300 a month.” Entertaining as it is, I can’t imagine that that guy’s article brings him a ton of money. Maybe I’m wrong.
Again, not to beat a dead horse, but if you want business success, think about the sentence from above:
Pick a specific audience and send them to a specific product via specific traffic.
There Are Better Ideas Out There!
A few weeks back, I gave some business ideas to my email list.
(By the way, email list is suspended temporarily. I’ve been migrating everything to a new host, and haven’t had time for more totally-awesome-random-thoughts. Should be emailing again next week.)
Those business ideas were centred around travel businesses that were better than travel blogging.
With this article, I’m not saying you can’t live a fantastic life like the sales pages promise you: sun, sea, sand and more importantly tons of cash.
What I am saying is that there are better ways to go about getting that lifestyle than “fake it ‘til you make it” blogging or “let’s try and live a $500 life and hope that grows to $1000 somewhere down the road.”
With lifestyle blogging, you’re trying to sell free advice to people who aren’t looking to pay anything.
It’s really easy to read that sentence and see why you’re dealing with a bad business model. Compare that to selling broomsticks, for instance:
You’re selling a tangible product to people who need it and know they have to pay for it.
Now, broomstick salesmen aren’t lighting the world on fire with their earnings (or are they?) but the business model is a million times better.
There are countless ideas that are better than lifestyle blogging, and what they lack in glamour is made up for by the fact they actually work.
Final Thoughts
There’s no point in trying to live a particular lifestyle or start a particular business if it doesn’t work.
Trust me, if a business model is broken, there’s nothing you can do that’ll make up for that fact. Sure, you might be one out of the thousand guys that gets to the top of the lifestyle blogger pile, but ultimately you’ve built yourself to the top of a broken pyramid.
Travel for fun, blog for fun and earn blog money as a form of productive procrastination, but if you’re going to spend 80% of your time on something, make sure it’s a business model that works.