How to turn a blog into a multi-million-dollar business with the help of Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi

My latest addiction is a podcast by Tim Ferriss called The Tim Ferriss Show. We have earlier met Tim Ferriss on this blog since I'm also addicted to his YouTube-show called The Random Show. Anyway, the latest podcast chapter featured Ramit Sethi who runs the blog I will teach you to be rich. 

It's super-important to have a popular blog because you can market your thing (product, service, or whatever you have) by writing articles and marketing by blogging is free - and marketing your thing through ads is far away from free. Here are a few lessons learned from the podcast on how Ramit Sethi and Tim Ferriss grew their respective blogs:

• Ignore haters. The people who are hanging out on the Internet mirrors the people who lives in our society. We all know that some people in our society are mentally unstable so it's natural that there will be some mentally unstable who visit your blog where they criticize you.
• Focus on quality. One good article can change your life forever.
• Don't focus on everyone all the time. You can never write an article that everyone will enjoy reading. A rule Tim Ferriss has says that an article he has written should appeal one group of his visitors once every 2 months.
• Collect your visitors e-mail. Ramit Sethi explained that one of the biggest mistakes was to not set up an e-mail list and he estimated that this mistake has costed him millions of dollars because e-mail lists generate 90 percent of his revenues. And don't forget to e-mail those who have signed up. It took Tim Ferriss seven years before he decided to use e-mail lists! 
• Don't forget to make the e-mail you send look interesting - they are not newsletters.
• Make sure your users can respond to the e-mails they get and you should read all of the replies. This will make it more personal and your users will reveal more information about themselves that you can use.
• Use data to improve. Analyze how your visitors are using your blog and how they are reading your e-mails.
• Avoid ads when you are new. The first 3 years, Ramit Sethi decided to not have ads on his blog because he didn't want people to believe he had started the blog just to make money.   

That's it! Oh, and you need to invest a few years of your life as well...