7 Reasons You Should Start a New Blog with Ghost.org
I love the Ghost.org platform for blogging and email marketing. It's not perfect, but it's pretty dang close. Here's why.
I've been blogging and sending out a weekly email newsletter here at EdgeofDavid.com using the Ghost.org platform for the past year or so.
Nope, EdgeofDavid.com is not using WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace or some other random website builder.
This website and blog is using Ghost.org and I couldn't be happier with this blogging and email marketing platform.
So let me breakdown the reasons why you should consider starting your brand new blog with Ghost.org.
Honestly, I'm writing this up because I get enough emails and IG DM's of people asking me what WordPress theme I'm using here.
I'm not using WordPress!
How I discovered Ghost in the first place
My main business that pays the bills and allows me to live abroad is my "Website Creative Pro" business.
It's a video first business using YouTube as the top of the funnel, followed up by a WordPress powered blog (DavidUtke.com) using WPX Hosting (expensive host for high traffic sites) and a custom WordPress theme.
For email marketing with that business I use Convert Kit because I can build out complicated sales funnels with auto responders to drive product sales of educational courses I create using Teachable (I'm considering switching to Sam Cart - I won't bore you with the techy details as to why).
I'm always on the look out for potential content marketing tutorials to create for YouTube and that blog. Ghost.org was one such platform I found that intrigued me once I found it.
Initially I had never heard of this platform, so I gave it a month tryout as a way to see if it's any good.
In short, it's good, really good.
So much so I decided to go through the annoying process of switching EdgeofDavid.com away from WordPress and WPX Hosting and over to Ghost.org because this platform is perfect for what I'm trying to do here.
Which is to blog as a creative outlet, create YouTube videos for the same reason, send out email updates weekly, and make money from both affiliate marketing and low priced products.
So let's get to why you should start a blog with Ghost.
#1 Direct response email marketing built-in for one low price
Email marketing is how you turn content into a business fellas.
Maybe I'm old school, but I make the majority of my money from having a top of the funnel via a YouTube channel, a website, running ads and then a sales process via email.
Top of the funnel just means helpful free stuff that attracts an audience to a lead magnet, and then the paid stuff sold over email. You need a funnel if you're selling mid to high range products.
Lower ticket items like a $7 to $47 course, cheat sheet, ebook... whatever can be sold to organic traffic directly without any funnel.
But not a $997 training program.
Anyways, with Ghost.org you get a great blogging platform with email marketing built in for one low price.
For just $9 a month you can send out unlimited emails that actually hit the inbox to up to 500 people. My current open rate is anywhere from 40% to 50% and the emails look great.
You won't find a better price point for email marketing that actually hits the inbox for $9 a month if you're just getting started.
That means I don't need to rely only on the big G to send me traffic, I can create something helpful and can email it out to my audience who will actually read it.
I can also include offers for products and services in the email and make money from affiliate marketing and my own stuff.
Best of all?
The emails from Ghost hit the inbox for my subscribers. Not the promotions tab, not the spam folder. The inbox where people will actually read what you wrote.
I love the uncomplicated nature of how the emails look too.
Big readable title, branded image at the very top, good body text with the right amount of padding on the left and right to make for an enjoyable reading experience.
On top of that, all emails include links to other posts at the bottom:
Overall a very nice, subtle feature that helps make for a quality user experience and helps give off a professional branded experience for your email subscribers.
#2 Can offer paid subscriptions, donations and run Google AdSense
Alright, let's jump into some ways to make money with a Ghost.org powered website you may not be aware of.
Paid subscriptions
First off, you can setup paid subscriptions with Ghost.org easily.
All you have to do is link a Stripe account in your settings and then setup a price point for a monthly recuring subscription.
It's similar to how Substack works, except you can have a much more custom branded website with a well designed theme and custom URL (no yoursite.substack.com).
Once setup, people who visit your site can become paid subscribers for exclusive access to private, members only content that you create.
You can also offer coupon codes for your paid subscription tier as well.
Run Google AdSense
It's your website, you can do whatever you want (unlike Substack or Medium). That means if you want to run display ads on your site you can.
Google AdSense can easily be added to a Ghost powered blog as a way to make revenue of content that has no direct monetization purpose. Like my content on the best height for a man - A piece of content that I wrote that just for fun.
That's the sort of blog post that gets a lot of traffic, but there really is no specific offer to push with that sort of content, so display ads are great monetization choice.
If you do decide to use Google AdSense I recommend just allowing their "auto ads" feature to run which will optimize the placements for you automagically.
Donate
Don't want to offer a paid subscription and would instead like to just have a simple donate button or "buy me a coffee" style button?
Well with Ghost you can do that too. Once your Stripe account is setup you can then direct people to a donation page to support your work.
I suggest using the built in button feature Ghost provides and link to your donation portal page like this 👇
#3 Excellent content creation experience
Ghost provides for an excellent blogging and direct response email creation experience.
The way Ghost works is you log into your site, you go to create a new blog post, once your done with that blog post you have the option to publish it to your site, email it to your audience, or some combination of the two.
So if you want to just email your list only but not publish the blog post to your site you can.
If you just want to publish a blog post but not email it to your list you can.
If you want to both publish to your site and email your list you can.
I love this flexibility. Here are some additional under-rated features of Ghost you'll find helpful.
Private email content
With Ghost you can create blog posts the have publicly available content when read on your site and then content that is only readable for your email subscriber.
This is a great way to add value to your content and is a selling point for why people who visit your site should become subscribers in the first place.
Email call to action
The next block (or card I guess?) is the email call to action block. This block allows you to promote a specific offer in a well designed block that will only be readable in email.
Perfect for selling your own products of to push an affiliate offer in a well designed, high converting way.
Private, subscriber only blog posts
With Ghost, you can have publicly available blog posts that go after a specific keyword and rank in Google as well as create private, subscriber only blog posts to incentivise email sign-ups and paying subscribers.
If you're offering a paid subscription with your website then you can have blog posts that are free and publicly available, available to email subscribers only, or available to paid subscribers.
The choice is yours.
GIFS
Not much to say here, but you can add in GIFS at the click of a button like:
Useful? Eh.
Fun and creative? You bet.
Adding in GIFs is helpful for making your content more fun and engaging for your audience, and it's much quicker than creating and uploading images.
So you can mix up the content in each blog post with embeded YouTube videos, GIFS and images.
Banner/Announcement Bar
Ghost has a banner ad feature you can turn on whenever you have a specific offer you want to push.
Maybe you're offering a discount on your paid subscription or perhaps you created a digital product you want to sell.
With the banner add you can direct your audiences attention as needed. The end user can also click the "X" button to get rid of the banner too.
#4 Blog posts that rank
Unlike Medium or Substack, your blog posts can rank organically and get search traffic day after day.
Take a look:
My search traffic just keeps grinding up month over month. With impressions, average position and clicks on an upward trend.
While I do get most of my email subscribers from linking to this blog from YouTube, Google does send me hundreds of visitors a day which convert into email subscribers.
So, if you're looking to build an audience that you can directly email then Ghost is an excellent platform.
#5 Meet like minded people
In our average daily life it can be very hard to meet people who share the same views and goals. Many people can go all of their life without actually meeting like-minded friends.
With the great power of a good blog people like, you can transmit your ideas to the entire world and everybody who shares the same views as you or is inspired by you can reach out to you.
I can go to any country in the world and a reader will reach out to me and offer assistance or companionship. Any country in the world. South Africa, Thailand, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea.
I have friends and followers in every country of the world and it is precisely because I spread my ideas for free on this very blog.
The people who resonate with my ideas can find me, no longer are they forced to simply interact with people on their block or in their city, the whole world opens up to you when you open up to the whole world.
A good blog that people find value in is how you open up to the whole world to yourself.
#6 Make money and be useful
I could spend all of my money in my bank accounts today and I would be fine tomorrow.
Do you know why?
Because with a blog and a YouTube channel I make money every single day.
Yes, every single day money comes in. I do not have to worry about money the same way anymore. Even if I go broke today, tomorrow I will be fine.
This is the power of a blog + YouTube + email list: daily income. Every single time I make a course sale I get the money immediately.
I not only get paid every day, about 10 times a day or more. Imagine getting paid 10 times per day.
Imagine the worries and stress that will go away when you have money coming in even when you're sleeping.
Forget about trying to budget your bi-weekly paychecks, get paid every day and eliminate the worry of money.
I have not worried about paying bills in years, I know the money will be there. (This didn't happen overnight, it happened from me planting seeds of success years ago and reaping those rewards today.)
Not only can a blog give you daily income, a great blog can make you a fortune.
With a blog you can write your own paycheck.
It was a dream of mine to own a website that made thousands of dollars. How incredible would that be to build something that paid you to own it?
Well I did it.
When your blog is fully in harmony with your soul, a real tidal wave of money comes rushing in.
Imagine making ten thousand dollars per month from the internet. What kind of freedom would that buy you?
How great would you feel never worrying about bills again? To not have to be stuck in any one place? To move to greener pastures if where you're from kinda sucks.
Would it be worth a few years of hard work and struggle to eventually be able to make 10k or more per month or more?
#7 Excellent addition to a YouTube channel
Finally, because Ghost has email marketing built in, it is a nice addition for content marketing purposes to a YouTube channel.
Create YouTube videos, create a simple landing page for people to subscribe to your email list with your Ghost website. Grow your audience and be useful.
With YouTube, people have more of a connection to you because they can see and hear you. So it's fairly easy to get people to move over from YouTube to your email list and blog because they feel like they know you.
Then, it becomes easy to monetize what you're doing as you're building an audience of people who like and support you.
This helps you grow both an audience on YouTube, blog readers and product sales through being useful and inspiring your audience in your own unique way.
Experience teaches you, words do not.
To learn how to make money from a blog, YouTube channel and email marketing there is only one true way: start blogging, start making video content, build out an email list and do great work.
Then you're on the way you to learning how to get paid.
The reality is this if I'm to be honest: Building a content marketing business has nothing to do with blogging (or vlogging) and everything to do with your own transformation.
Until next time.
Your man,
-David