Did you know that one of the easiest ways to start making money from your blog is to offer coaching services?
There are many services stay-at-home moms can offer, but coaching is the simplest and easiest method to generating income in the shortest period of time.
But, I know what you’re thinking, what the heck can I coach? or I have no experience coaching other people.
Can I tell you a secret?
None of that matters. Any stay-at-home mom that has a blog and generates under 1,000 visitors a day – uh, that’s most of us mommy bloggers right?? – can be a coach AND generate income.
And if you can show your expertise in an area, you can charge a premium for your coaching services.
And what’s great is that it really doesn’t matter what niche you’re in either. Beauty blogger? Why not coach brides how to DIY a professional makeup look?
Lifestyle blogger? Lifestyle coaching (self-development, performance etc…) is a HUGE industry! Fortunte 100 CEO’s hire lifestyle coaches to help them work smarter and have a more balanced life. You can coach moms on proven time saving strategies or organizational strategies.
The list can go on.
I coach new freelance writers with starting a successful business.
So, you see, if you are a mommy blogger, you can offer coaching services no problem.
But, how do you begin and most, importantly, how do you convey your authority in your niche? I’ll tackle that, but first we’ll go into what you do as a coach.
Side note: you don’t have to call yourself a coach. You can be a mentor or a consultant if that sounds better to you!
What Do You Do As a Coach?
Okay, so you’ve decided coaching is something you can offer. But, what do you do as a coach? How is this different from a person talking to a friend about their issues?
The biggest thing I can tell you is that a coach offers concrete advice, tips and strategies and together you form a plan of action.
You can tackle one area or one problem at a time. I wouldn’t tackle client acquisition, work-life balance, and lead generation in one coaching session. I would space that over two calls.
Since my coaching calls are 30 minutes, I let my clients know that the best way to make use of our time is to focus on one area they need help with.
This is also a good strategy to encourage recurring coaching sessions. Set a minimum of $200 a month and let the client know how many sessions that makes up and how you many times you will touch base with them.
Ideally, you’re helping people that are on the same path as you, but just not as experienced as you (like how you were a year or two ago).
You can create a plan and draft it up for them, or you can create a private Faebook community where your clients can meet and help each other out. Find a system that works for you.
To get you and your blog ready for offering a coaching service, follow these four steps (they’re the same ones I took).
1. Create Useful Content
Okay, let’s get honest here?
When you look at your blog posts, are they:
- Personal and Inspirational? This means when readers come to your post and read it, they are only inspired by it and nothing more. They don’t learn anything new, they don’t take away any tips and they come away with knowing more about you, the mommy blogger. An example of an inspirational post might be, My Disneyland Trip With My Yong Children.
- Informational and helpful? When a reader stops by and reads your post, do they come away with some actionable advice they can use? Are your posts filled with tips and strategies? For the Disneyland post to be informational, you can phrase your post like this: How To Go to Disneyland and Keep Your Young Kids Happy and You Sane. Just reading that post tells me exactly what I’ll be learning – a low-stress trip to Disneyland (every mom’s dream!).
One thing you want to start doing is auditing your blog posts and seeing how many inspirational posts your have versus how many informational posts you have.
Because if you want to eventually offer a coaching service, you need to create content your “potential clients” find useful.
And this means providing more informational and action-packed posts and less inspirational type posts.
As an example, if you want to offer time saving and organizational coaching sessions, your blog should focus on content that helps moms with saving time and being more organized.
Over on my freelance writing blog, most posts focus on the new freelance writer and giving them tips to help them succeed.
On this blog, while I’m not sure if I’ll offer coaching, I do want to eventually create a digital product, so I’m working on providing highly useful posts for momnpreneur’s in the making and keeping my “twin life” posts to a minimum.
Don’t feel you have to nix all your inspirational posts; keep them around because they help humanize you and make you more approachable!
2. Develop a Strong Value Position
This might be difficult. Try to answer this question,
Why would someone choose YOU as a coach over someone else?
And you can also reverse this and ask, why would anyone want a coach? Let’s look at the second question first.
People are craving to learn new skills. That’s why the online course industry is totally booming. People are searching online for answers and they ultimately want to improve their skills in certain areas.
People want to improve:
- Client acquisition
- Blog traffic
- Running a business
- Meal planning
- Productivity
- Time magagment
People also want to learn how to:
- Scale their business
- Make more sales
- Grow their social media presence
- Manage their blog
- Style their wardrobe
All of these things fit nicely packaged up as a coaching service.
Now, let’s turn the tables and see how you can develop a value position so that readers come to you and hire you for your coaching or mentoring.
One of the biggest things you can do is create content around your potential clients and. We already tackled that in step one so let’s move on!
The next thing you want to do is show your expertise in other areas. This might mean guest posting, collaborating on roundup posts, doing webinars or creating ultimate guides on your blog.
Before I offered coaching services, I showed my expertise not only with the content I shared but also with my freelance writing client list and my guest posts.
And this totally made it easy to land coaching clients. When I opened shop I landed three coaching clients (two of them recurring) and my list kept growing month after month. I had to scale back on my coaching earlier this year since I had to focus on my new course for writers.
All you need are a few recurring clients and you can score yourself an extra $300-500 depending on your rate.
When you’ve done most of the legwork, you’re going to want to set up a page for your coaching. It doesn’t matter if it’s a separate page or part of your services page. But it’s just an area to explain what you do.
Copywriter Jamie Jensen of Your Hot Copy offers consulting for small businesses. She helps with their brand message and offers strategies for scaling their business.
It’s up to you whether or not you want to list your prices or keep them private. On my coaching page I list my prices and terms. It just makes it easier and I don’t have to waste time with people who are just thinking about getting extra support.
In either case, just slap a coaching page up and transform your blog into a legit business! Mompreneur here I come!
3. Create a Form
A great way to vet a potential client and gather some information is to ask some preliminary questions.
This will save you time in the long run and you’ll easily be able to tell if your coaching can help them out or not. If you have a WordPress blog, you can use the Contact Form 7 plugin to create a form with a series of questions.
No all sections need to have one answer. You can leave some open-ended if you want. On my form I have a spot for “anything specific you need help with.” Since I coach new freelance writers, there are a ton of different issues I could tackle.
4. Set Up a Calendar Booking System
On top of managing your home and business, you’ll soon discover that Google calendar or your notepad just wont cut it anymore.
It’s time to invest in a calendar booking system. One that I’m considering is Calendly.
You can link to your Calendly system on your coaching page or email the link directly and have your clients book a time with you.
Basically Calendly lets you create an event – your coaching service.
You then can choose the hours you’re available for coaching.
After you figure out the days and times, you’re given a link and when a client clicks on it they see your schedule:
From here they click on a day and book a time to speak with you.
It’s free to use for 14 days so I’m testing this out and seeing if it’s really worth the investment. So far, I’m loving it!
If time and management aren’t big concerns for you, opt for free tools like Google calendar. When you’re new this is probably the beset way to go, but if you find yourself getting inquiries regularly, consider using a calendar booking system that you set up and automate.
Marketing Your Coaching Services
Now that you have a page up and your content has shifted to more actionable advice, how do you let the masses know you are available for coaching?
Offer a Free Coaching Session
An easy way to drum up business is to free a coaching session. You might book up fast, but this is a classic way to turn a visitor into a client.
Many will feel indebted to you after you take the time to sit down with them over a phone call, Skype or Google Hangouts, talk with them for 30 minutes and then draft up a report. They will feel obligated to sign up for your coaching package – as long as they view your free advice as HIGHLY valuable and useful to them.
I personally haven’t done this, but I know it’s a popular thing with small businesses.
Tell Your List
You have an email list right? If not, start one pronto! I typically let my subscribers know that I offer coaching when I have spots open.
I add a “P.S.” at the end of my newsletter and casually let them now I’m offering coaching again! This totally works when you limit the number of coaching clients you can take.
Link to Your Coaching Page in Your Posts
An easy way to let new people know you offer coaching is to link it up in your posts. It’s not entirely effective but it’s just another way to promote your services.
Mention It in Your Author Bio (And Link to It)
If you have an author bio at the end of your posts (which I think you should and is a huge pet peeve of mine. I go to your post, read the awesomeness you have and then have no clue who wrote it! Grr…then I have to hunt down your name and sometimes even your About page doesn’t tell me your name!!) link your service page there.
Here is my author bio for my freelance writing blog:
Pin It on Your Twitter and Facebook Wall
Share it on social media by pinning your coaching service page on your Twitter and Facebook wall. It will be the first thing people see when they go to your profile.
If you feel that’s too promotional, then pin a post that talks about your coaching services or links to it.
Try Out Coaching Today!
What are you waiting for mama bloggers?
Offering a coaching service is an easy way to start thinking of your blog as a business is. You don’t even need experience consulting and it doesn’t take a lot to set up.
Provide value-rich content on your blog that helps people’s problems. This will show readers you are knowledgeable and an expert in your niche.
Set up a page and form on your blog and have some sort of calendar booking system for when the time comes.
Finally use your marketing savvy and promote the hell out of your service!
Over to you – are you thinking about offering a coaching service? Share your idea here!