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How The Smart Passive Income Blog Grew
Smart Passive Income blog and podcast for online entrepreneurs, now owned by Liz Wilcox
How did The Smart Passive Income Blog grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
The Smart Passive Income Blog grew through a combination of strategies including regular blog posts to improve SEO, active email marketing with engagement through comments and feedback, and building an online community. Additionally, the blog expanded its reach via podcasting featuring interviews and co-hosted shows, as well as maintaining a presence on multiple social media platforms to drive traffic back to the site.
Channels
31 channels · grouped by how The Smart Passive Income Blog grows
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Organic social media
· 15 mentions · 15 sources“She tried the contact form on his website three or four times, but says, 'I’m pretty sure it went through gatekeepers.' ... she joined Pat’s subscription service SPI Pro, through which she learned that he uses a social media platform for creators called Circle. She sent him a DM with a blurb abou...”
highShow 14 more quotes
“I share how I created Green Exam Academy, which is that LEED exam site. What I was doing to increase sales, what I thought I could do better, what I thought I should have in the beginning that I didn’t do. Just sharing everything I can so that people who want to do something similar can do it and...”
high“To drive traffic to his challenge opt-in form, he mentions the URL on his podcast, blog, YouTube, and social media, creating “an automated machine that can help push these products out.””
medium“The best thing I’ve done for my businesses is give away as much free information as possible. I find that the more quality information I give away, the more I get back in return.”
high“So I was like, you know what? I think I want to start a YouTube channel and I think I could provide some help up to this space and hopefully lead by example and just kind of inspire people in some way.”
high“Instead, we need to convert as many of them as possible into email list subscribers before bowing out. Listen in on today's AskLiz session because the strategies I share apply to anyone looking to move fans from social media to an email list.”
medium“We had always excelled in education, offering valuable online courses, but we wanted to be more than just that. We aimed to create an integrated learning environment and a true ecosystem, not just a provider of individual courses or knowledge products.”
medium“Six projects with one partner started because he saw LinkedIn content and wanted to be on the podcast.”
high“Podcast interviews can be repurposed into short video clips, social media content, and speaker reel footage.”
medium“Co-hosts Pat Flynn and Liz Wilcox reveal all of their online business and blogging strategies, income sources and killer marketing tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve with your online business.”
medium“He’s been podcasting since 2008 and has built a massive personal brand around health and wellness.”
medium“And even though it was the host of the podcast still, it was bringing the community members on and featuring them, just like how you're featuring us. And then no longer it became about me. Yes, I was the host, but I sort of saw myself as now the team captain, right?... I like we're in FIFA World ...”
medium“Pat strongly recommends all websites to be on all social media platforms to generate the most links back to their website and have multiple ways to generate traffic back to their site.”
medium“Pat Flynn from The Smart Passive Income Blog reveals all of his online business and blogging strategies, income sources and killer marketing tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve with your online business or blog.”
medium“Building and maintaining an engaged community doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, you don't need to do much to get the ball rolling with your people. The first strategy I share is to ask simple yes-or-no questions in your emails or social posts to activate your readers.”
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Podcasting
· 8 mentions · 8 sources“Podcasting has led us to multi six-figures in projects. Here's 7 reasons to start one of your own... Six projects with one partner started because he saw LinkedIn content and wanted to be on the podcast. One conversation turned into work across the entire UK. The barrier to entry is lower than pe...”
highShow 7 more quotes
“He actually also has a top 10 podcast in the iTunes business category.”
medium“Flynn has two podcasts—Smart Passive Income and AskPat.”
medium“I wish I had done it sooner, because I’m seeing loads of brand new, targeted traffic coming from this untapped resource. Since July, I’ve had over 250,000 downloads and was featured as a top podcast in the overall business category...”
high“It’s a mix of interviews with special guests, along with co-hosts shows from Pat and Liz you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.”
medium“Ben Gioia is a book coach and founder of Influence With A Heart who helps coaches and consultants publish in five weeks. His method turns a book into a client-attraction engine that generates revenue, speaking engagements, and partnerships for years.”
medium“Why you need to book podcasts months ahead... How to pitch the biggest podcasts... Which podcasts actually sell books...”
medium“Pat Flynn operates at the intersection of online business education and high-stakes hobbyist collecting. Known as the host of the Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast, he utilizes a crash-test-dummy approach to digital marketing by publicly testing strategies and reporting ou...”
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Email List Growth
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“You have 50,000 subscribers. I’m one of them so I can speak from firsthand experience. You ask questions in these emails that you send out to us. You ask us very poignant questions, you ask for us to respond...I have this constant stream of emails telling me what exactly I should be writing a pos...”
highShow 5 more quotes
“That companion course converts a whopping 35% to 40% of his readers into email subscribers.”
high“Karen Whooley, whose question I'm answering today, is ready to leave Instagram. She's doubling down on the top driver of sales for her crochet brand. That, of course, is her newsletter! But I don't want her just losing Instagram followers. Instead, we need to convert as many of them as possible i...”
medium“James shares his insights on ... how he built an email list of over 4 million subscribers.”
medium“On the Smart Passive Income Blog they give away their ebook titled "eBooks The Smart Way" completely for free. ... This is actually the way I first found the SPI blog and got hooked on reading the blog.”
medium“Karen Whooley, whose question I'm answering today, is ready to leave Instagram. She's doubling down on the top driver of sales for her crochet brand. That, of course, is her newsletter! But I don't want her just losing Instagram followers. Instead, we need to convert as many of them as possible i...”
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Online Community
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“And this is why like in my challenge videos, like sometimes I fail the challenges and people love to see that they fail, not just because, you know, that they wanna see somebody fail, but because, you know, that's relatable, that's relatable. But that failure makes it when I win or complete those...”
highShow 5 more quotes
“Now that podcasts have grown from cottage industry to big business, there are services that connect hosts with guests and vice versa. For example, PodMatch and PodBooker. 'I use all of them: I go on every day looking for interesting people — and for shows I can guest on as well,' Sarah says.”
high“That desire for a private community fueled the creation of SPI Pro, their application-based membership community that runs on Circle. ... it’s a private group of bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and course creators who receive top-shelf education and networking opportunities in exchange for a mon...”
medium“We aimed to create an integrated learning environment and a true ecosystem, not just a provider of individual courses or knowledge products. We developed a community product ahead of the pandemic, which we planned to launch in the summer of 2022. This became the All Access Pass, the fuller manife...”
medium“A part of this was marketing for the community that we were building. In 2019, before COVID, I had hosted a live event in San Diego. We had planned to do another event in San Diego again in 2020, but of course, COVID happened. And we said, you know what? We got to keep this energy going of bringi...”
high“Liz Wilcox, the Fresh Princess of Email Marketing, has built a multi-six-figure business from a $9 offer — without ads — and brings her no-nonsense expertise in email marketing, community building, and authentic audience connection to every episode.”
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Email marketing
· 6 mentions · 6 sources“A challenge usually lasts for a few days and is automated to send an email each day with some small action for the subscriber to take... Flynn put a lot of work into creating the challenge and launched it live (it wasn’t automated at first). But once he saw the success of it, he was able to reuse...”
highShow 5 more quotes
“To sell the new offering, we had to adjust our funnels, including a complete rebuild of our email ecosystem.”
medium“Liz Wilcox, the Fresh Princess of Email Marketing, has built a multi-six-figure business from a $9 offer — without ads — and brings her no-nonsense expertise in email marketing, community building, and authentic audience connection to every episode.”
medium“How he does this is through the comments section on each of his blog articles, his email marketing (where he often asks for feedback or asks other questions) and by challenging his readers to take part in contests and challenges.”
medium“you'll learn about building authority online, email marketing, building a team and outsourcing, content marketing, podcasting, search engine optimization, niche sites, social media strategies, how to get more traffic, creating online courses, affiliate marketing, and productivity tips so that you...”
medium“Liz Wilcox, the Fresh Princess of Email Marketing, has built a multi-six-figure business from a $9 offer — without ads — and brings her no-nonsense expertise in email marketing, community building, and authentic audience connection to every episode. You'll learn about building authority online, e...”
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SEO
· 5 mentions · 5 sources“Apparently, my website was ranking very high in Google for relevant search terms, and I didn’t even know it. It was at that point that I decided to have a go at doing business online, and so naturally I added some Adsense to my blog and immediately saw results.”
highShow 4 more quotes
“people found me on Google because Google loved all the stuff that I was typing in, and then I was posting and I was writing about relevant things that people were searching for. So I already had thousands of people coming to the site every day”
high“These in-depth how-to guides continue to pay off for years to come, because the content is evergreen and ranks well in search engines results.”
high“Pat strongly recommends that a website should try to post a blog once a week, or even more if they can as more pages means more rankings. More rankings means more traffic.”
medium“you'll learn about building authority online, email marketing, building a team and outsourcing, content marketing, podcasting, search engine optimization, niche sites, social media strategies, how to get more traffic, creating online courses, affiliate marketing, and productivity tips so that you...”
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Affiliate program
· 5 mentions · 5 sources“before even getting into brand deals i would start i would recommend affiliate marketing because you can even promote those items and and share affiliate links uh even from day one right even with zero views uh under your belt because those are things that can then be found later and then those b...”
highShow 4 more quotes
“Because I show people that I’ve used these tools, people are more than happy to go through my affiliate links, which means that if they go through those affiliate links and make a purchase, I get a commission. So I don’t even have a product to sell on the Smart Passive Income Blog, but I’m genera...”
high“Flynn has mastered affiliate marketing, with 63% of his December 2017 income coming from this category.”
high“Lately, my affiliate income has matched and surpassed that amount, although I am currently working on some more products of my own.”
high“While his original work established him as a leader in affiliate marketing and podcasting...”
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Video content
· 4 mentions · 4 sources“Podcasting and YouTube videos. I have this sort of strategy, which is sort of what my book is about. I call it my “be everywhere” strategy. Not just on the blog or not just on the website. I’m everywhere. I’m on a podcast and I’m on YouTube. By doing that, I can reach out to people who would’ve n...”
highShow 3 more quotes
“Flynn creates demonstration videos for his affiliate products, such as this one on ConvertKit...Uploading these videos to YouTube has a couple of benefits: They get organic traffic from YouTube search.”
high“He's generating $40,000, $50,000 per month from just ads on YouTube and then on top of that are all the brand deals and sponsorships he has. He is a wealth of knowledge about how to start a successful YouTube channel and he gets on and just unloads a ton of information and a ton of tips about wha...”
medium“Layla built her business to 150,000 YouTube subscribers teaching small business owners how to systemize their operations.”
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Flea market sales
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Underneath that, I think 15% was links from other blogs, and then it was Google and Facebook and Twitter.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“Generally, traffic comes from ranking high in search engines results for certain keywords.”
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Newsletter
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Pat regularly shares insights and updates about what we're testing and learning within our community in his newsletter, the Unstuck Newsletter. I highly recommend subscribing to it at smartpassiveincome.com/unstuck.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“Why your newsletter is the only channel you own... Building a newsletter that sounds like you... Teasing your book in your newsletter”
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Partnerships
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“his recent venture into the collectible space with the Deep Pocket Monster series demonstrates his ability to apply business principles to the niche world of vintage Pokémon card investing. This expansion into the consumer-facing hobby market provides a contrast to his B2B roots, offering brands ...”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“His method turns a book into a client-attraction engine that generates revenue, speaking engagements, and partnerships for years.”
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Webinars
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Eventually, he’ll be adding a live webinar once a month to promote his courses. He’s already seen success with his webinar experiments: For his course 1-2-3 Affiliate Marketing, Flynn hosted two webinars that resulted in $50,000 in sales each.”
highShow 1 more quote
“Sam shares the exact strategies she uses to consistently achieve massive success with her webinars and online courses, proving that these methods are far from "dead" in today's creator economy.”
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Content marketing
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“You'll learn about building authority online, email marketing, building a team and outsourcing, content marketing, podcasting, search engine optimization, niche sites, social media strategies, how to get more traffic, creating online courses, affiliate marketing, and productivity tips so that you...”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“Focus on evergreen content. Rather than being limited by time-sensitive content, create content that can last for months and years. A large part of Flynn’s strategy is continuing to reuse and repurpose content he’s already created. By doing so, he’s able to still earn income from podcast episodes...”
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Social media mentions
· 1 mention“Use it to build relationships, get on podcasts, and send books to key people. Then your bestseller launch has an audience already in your corner.”
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Community marketing
· 1 mention“community, bringing people together, using the content to show that relatability. And this is why like in my challenge videos, ... And we have already sold over a thousand tickets. I've not spent a dime on marketing. And most of the top creators in the Pokemon space who I've connected with or bui...”
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Lead magnets
· 1 mention“Sam’s genius email list strategy that keeps her audience engaged and growing”
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Podcast advertising
· 1 mention“31:00 The Impact of Podcasting on Business Growth”
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Advertising on social media
· 1 mention“Step 1: Drive traffic to the funnel with Facebook ads. This is the first time Flynn started experimenting with ads in his business. Previously, he’d been relying on organic traffic and his email list.”
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Checklist Content
· 1 mention“Those beta students could later provide great testimonials for marketing materials.”
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Handwritten notes
· 1 mention“I’ve actually started a collection of people who have sent me handwritten letters of thanks and praise. ... I use that as motivation for me to do even more of that. I’m selfish in the way where I want more thank you notes, and the only way I could do that is to just keep providing a ton of value ...”
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Speaking at conferences
· 1 mention“What happened was a couple of years later when I started going to these conferences to speak at BlogWorld Expo and at Financial Bloggers Conference, people would come up to me and they already knew who I was...”
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Leveraging existing platforms
· 1 mention“Now he’s able to make monthly recurring revenue from his Smart Podcast Player licenses, bringing in anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 a month.”
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Interview Blog Content
· 1 mention“These posts don’t directly promote a product; instead, he uses these posts as an opportunity to teach readers about a particular topic.”
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Product Page
· 1 mention“Another way Flynn automates affiliate income is through his blog’s resource page. “This is, by far, the easiest thing that any brand can do,” he says. A resource page is a list of all of your favorite products that you recommend to your audience.”
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Building in public
· 1 mention“So for that reason, it's important to share these things because you can also have people sort of help create the thing with you. That's what the SwitchPod did. ... It was basically marketing built into the research process and they were all rooting for it to succeed. So all those people shared i...”
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Brand collaborations and giveaways
· 1 mention“yeah brand deals are are great it's another way to monetize beyond ads and i wouldn't just focus on one um stream of income ads you know your videos can be demonetized something can happen whatever uh brand deals are are another way to generate revenue from your videos and you know you need some ...”
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Kickstarter
· 1 mention“The Kickstarter campaign goes live on June 18th, and one of the rewards will be tickets to his first in-person event in San Diego in 2019.”
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Demo in-store
· 1 mention“Using a live event to launch a book”
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Brand partnerships
· 1 mention“why creator partnerships are the number one source of growth in the creator economy”
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Crowdfunding
· 1 mention“Don't buy into the myth that you need a massive audience to start earning revenue through sponsorships! With brands willing to pay a premium for targeted reach, your niche following could be a big asset! But you can't just wait for offers to come your way. The truth is you're unlikely to be disco...”
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Personal network
· 1 mention“Network through your guests...every person who comes on your show can introduce you to other future guests. Booking just one person can open you up to a large network of others. If they have their own show or regularly guest on other podcasts, they’re probably used to this and happy to help.”
high
How 3,066 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
The Smart Passive Income Blog’s highlighted.
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Referral/Word-of-mouth66% ◀
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Social media64% ◀
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Search/SEO58% ◀
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Email48% ◀
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Community37% ◀
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Content/Inbound35% ◀
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Partnerships33% ◀
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Events25% ◀
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Paid ads24%
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Outbound/Sales19% ◀
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Press/PR18%
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Marketplaces/App stores12% ◀
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Podcasting4% ◀
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Building in public3% ◀
