Let's say you have a pizza business. You want to make $50,000 a month with this business and let's say there are no expenses for simplicity stake.

Will you do the math on what it takes to make that $50,000 a month or will you say "hmmm, I'm not sure how I can make that money!"

Hopefully, you do the math. Let's say the average order is $20. That means you need to do ($50,000 / $20) 2,500 orders a month.

Now you know what you need to hit. 2,500 / 30 equals 84 orders a day. Now you know another number you need to aim for. The math on any business is the easy part. That's the 20% that everyone should be able to knock out.

This is why I think you need to have Magic Numbers.

When you get ready to start a blog do you say "hmm, it would be great to make somewhere around $3,000"? If so you're making it harder on yourself.

What if you did this:

  1. You told yourself that you're going to make money with ads and affiliate marketing to start off.
  2. You know to get into Mediavine you need 25,000 sessions in 30 days and Mediavine is the ad network you want to use for ads. That means you have a Magic Number related to traffic.
  3. You need a revenue Magic Number as well. In this case, you've decided it is $3,000 because that will help you quit your job.

So you know you want to make $3,000 a month through ads and affiliate marketing. Ads you can kind of estimate how much traffic you need if you assume the RPM (revenue per thousand pageviews) is $10. That means for every 1,000 pageviews you get $10. So to reach $3,000 with ads alone you will need 300,000 pageviews.

I'm not saying this is exact but it's a good number ($10) to start with. Odds are over time with some tweaks you'll have a higher RPM so you will need fewer pageviews.

On some of my sites I write list posts, tutorials, and other popular forms of content. I'll have someone email me AT LEAST once a week saying they don't want to write that type of content which is fine. Why do I write it? Because if I have a goal of getting to 25,000 sessions as quickly as possible, maybe in that niche that's the strategy to use.

When I was learning Pinterest I had no problem experimenting with everything because I needed to see what worked as quickly as possible. I don't have time to ask around about the smallest things on Pinterest when I can just test them out myself.

Also, my workflow only involved things that helped me reach my first Magic Number (in this case 25,000). If I caught myself spending time on something that didn't pertain to that Magic Number then I would stop doing it.

This is why having Magic Numbers is so important. You need those mile markers on your journey. If you've decided that you want to make $30,000 a month in your niche then you better have a long-term strategy on how to make that happen.

That strategy might change over time but you'd be surprised how many bloggers enter a niche because they like it and then when I ask them how they are going to reach their goals they kind of just shrug their shoulders and say they aren't sure.

It's maddening.

And please don't tell me you don't know how to make money with an online business. There are so many free resources out there that tell you these things, plus, YOU CAN LOOK AT ANY WEBSITE FOR FREE.

It's all out there for you. Almost every single business you can think of is already out there for you to study.

Please don't do this, but if you gave me your niche, I bet you I could find a way to make $20,000 a month in it.

  • Ads
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Digital products
  • Physical products
  • Online courses
  • Offline classes
  • Consulting
  • Coaching
  • Services
  • Meetups
  • Conferences
  • Webinars

Have you ever seen those weird YouTube channels where adults + kids just open up toys? You haven't? Well take a look at this shit!.

This ADULT opening children's toys is easily doing over 6 figures a month. Remember when we were talking about niches and that your best bet is they fall under either health, wealth, or love?

Well this doesn't fall under any of them. You could say it's in the Irrationally Passionate category but then what about the Instagrammers that make serious coin just for pictures of them in exotic locations?

That's when you start to fall into the your brand is your niche type of stuff. That's why I say you can give me your niche and I can lay out a gameplan to make $20,000 a month. That doesn't mean it will be doing stuff you want to do but it's possible.

Think about the access to the audience you have with the Internet. Literally, thousands upon thousands are in the tiniest of niches and millions upon millions in the bigger ones.

Kylie Jenner is worth over $900 MILLION because of Instagram. She's 20 years old and sells makeup.

If one of your Magic Numbers is $900 million then wouldn't a good gameplan be to build up an audience of 100 million people?

The beauty of starting an online business is that you have so much flexibility. In fact, it's probably too much for some people but some people become so rigid with their thinking that they end up going nowhere.

People that make good money online aren't smarter than you. They're probably more willing to try different things and also see a path that will allow them to hit their magic numbers.

If you're telling me that you only want to make money by selling books then you better find or create a niche that works well with just books.

If your niche is visual then maybe you need to explore more visual mediums to reach an audience. If your niche thrives on text then maybe you need to use the tools that will help you with that.

The hard thing is (and I don't say this sarcastically or to be an asshole) that you have to think for yourself. If you can't do that you're screwed. I can't help you, nobody can.

So yeah. I'll just end this email there. Figure out your Magic Numbers and the different paths you can take to reach them. That will help you lay out a gameplan. Remember, it doesn't have to be permanent but it should be something that you believe (with your current knowledge) will work. You'll find out later if you need to adjust it.

- Scrivs