Find the Midway Point Between a Hard Sell and Being Deeply Afraid to Sell

This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.

Some bloggers adopt a hard sell approach. Fear courses through their veins; they need a sale! After one, two, then three calls to action made within a single blog post, most readers feel their fear masked as desperation or greed and leave their blog, never to return. Blogging hard sellers feel like a sleezy used car salesman hellbent on making a sale with little concern for actually meeting the needs of their readers.

Some bloggers deeply fear selling anything. Fear courses through their veins; they do not want to annoy, upset or turn off anyone! 5 years into their blogging career, readers email fear-filled blogging sellers asking what products and services the bloggers offer because said bloggers bury their premium offerings under layers. You are in deep trouble if long term readers are unaware that you even run a blogging business.

Finding the midway point between a hard sell and being deeply afraid to sell seems to be the blogging sweet spot for boosting your profits. Fear sits at opposing ends of the selling spectrum. Desperate or greedy bloggers employ a hard sell approach due to the fear of missing out on sales. But bloggers who fear selling emit an equally powerful fear for any number of reasons. Find the halfway point between cramming your offerings down reader’s throats and hiding your offerings under layers of pages and mental blocks.

Increase your blogging profits …

By maintaining a posturing midway point between aggressive selling and ashamed hiding.

True; some bloggers go pro never mentioning their products and services save the odd note here and there. But said bloggers are few and far between. I know of a small pro blogger collection who employs such a passive system of almost complete surrender. However, most bloggers never mention their premium offerings from energies of:

shame
embarrassment
a general lack of clarity
a lack of confidence
self-doubt
a fear of criticism
a fear of being outed as a fraud

I know. I faced, felt and released each fear intimately during my professional blogger journey. Following this path built my blogging posture.

I mention one of my eBooks via every:

blog post
guest post
podcast

I publish. But I simply do so at the conclusion of the blog post in 2-3 clear sentences. I feel posturing in so doing. I never feel pushy, desperate or greedy in promoting my eBook because I just share helpful content for a money exchange. Hey; it’s just money.

I had to promote my eBooks freely to overcome the fear of promoting my products and services.

Old blogging me …

seemed to be a serial hider.

I hid my premium offerings from my readers because I feared:

being criticized
being outed as a fraud
being not good enough to attract return clients and customers
nobody would buy my stuff or hire me anyway

Deciding to promote one eBook via every piece of content I created forced me to face, feel and release these fears in order to increase my blogging profits.

I never made the mistake of pushing a hard sell on readers because I felt thoroughly agitated by bloggers who employed such an approach.

Ultimately, only you know what works best for you.

Trust your intuition.

Remember that you are a professional blogger – or aspiring professional blogger – who has every right to sell your products and services.

No blogger needs to remind readers to buy their stuff 3 or 4 times via a single blog post. Selling overkill almost always suggests a deep fear manifest as desperation or greed.

Find the midway point between a hard sell and fearing to sell to increase your blogging income.