How Can I Attract Couples to My Niche Wedding Blog?

 “Thank you very much for sharing some great info and wonderful advice.

“My daughter got married last year, and while planning for it, I realized as a American-Muslim community, we don’t have much in the way of planning, it was all through word of mouth. Besides the blog we have spent a lot of effort on social media, but building the site up organically has been tough.

“I have just downloaded your report so will digest it 🙂  To build community we are offering the service for free to vendors, but it has been an uphill struggle.

“We are a wedding business, but one level higher than the vendors, so we are not selling any services, so  until we have a large enough reader base, advertising has not made sense to me. However, the end customer are still brides (and their moms).

“How can we get the word out about our website?”

– Javed, Perfect Muslim Wedding

Answer: Promote the heck out of your great resources to attract brides and grooms; then sell advertising with ease.

It’s very challenging to monetize a wedding blog.  However, it can be done!

Some questions to answer:

• How much competition do you have?  Are there other blogs serving this community?
• How big is your audience of weddings?  How much money does this market represent?
• How many wedding businesses specialize in serving this market?  Is this number large enough to support your income goals with advertising sales?

Jeff and I ran a local wedding blog and sold advertising to wedding businesses.  Through targeted blogging (5 posts per week) and social media sharing, we got it up to 15,000 visitors per month.  We were able to sell advertising and hire out the writing and blog administration.

I can tell you from experience how much work running a successful wedding blog is!  We ended up realizing that we really didn’t like writing about weddings or selling advertising, so we gave it up.  It just didn’t make enough to make it worth our time and energy.

I suspect that the Muslim wedding market may be profitable, but I strongly recommend that you investigate this with an open mind before going further.

How to Attract Money Making Blog Traffic

1. Spend at least 5 hours on market research answering the questions above.  Collect the websites of your competition and potential advertisers that you run across.
2. Create a free giveaway report with containing valuable information to attract your target audience of couples.  For example, “10 Things Couples Don’t Know About Planning a Muslim Wedding.”  (You can probably think of something more compelling.)  Make this available on your website.  Promote it all over the place: Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, etc.
3. Create a blog editorial calendar with blog topics to publish at least 3 posts per week.  The fastest “free” way to get website traffic is with original blog posts that attract brides, and you’ll need a lot of it to get to Page 1 of Google.
4. Hire writers and/or guest bloggers to help you create this content.  Do featured vendor interviews of businesses that will be potential advertisers; they’ll promote your posts and spread the word to the Muslim community because you’re making them look good.
5. Write guest blog posts for other wedding businesses that serve this community.  This will put your website in front of their audiences.
6. Get active on social media building relationships with businesses and professionals in the Muslim wedding market.  Promote them and they will promote you.

The key is to make your blog the #1 resource for Muslim American couples planning a wedding.  It has to be so good that every couple in this market will want to be a part of it, which will attract advertisers who are willing to pay.

The secret to a flood of blog traffic?  GREAT CONTENT.

There’s a lot involved when learning how to create a wedding blog that attracts real leads and makes money.  Make sure you do a good job with #1 and everything else will be much more effective.

I understand your reluctance to spend money on advertising until you’re actually bringing in money, but without traffic, no one is going to pay you.  It’s going to take an investment of time and money creating and promoting content to make that happen.

What works to get blog traffic for you?  Leave a comment and share your tips!

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