Kulwant Nagi is a global traveler and an avid blogger. He has taken it as his responsibility to help novices in the industry to build their blog from the scratch and move all the way up to start earning through Affiliate Marketing.
He is also one of the panelists for the #DigitalQandA sessions on our Facebook Group Digital Marketing Questions & Answers.
This interview comes as a part of his session where I asked him about his career and lifestyle as a full-time Affiliate Marketer.
Q1. Sorav: Kulwant, you are a Rock Star in the Blogging world and it’s not an overnight success. Can you share with us how much time you dedicated in the past, how much time you dedicate now and how it is to live a laptop lifestyle?
Kulwant: First of all, I don’t feel like a Rock Star. I just do the things from the bottom of my heart with 100% dedication, commitment and being honest to myself. We all have a Rock Star hidden within us, but most of us just try to find it in other people. The day you understand that you are no more different than people who do wonders, you can unleash that Rock Star within you.
When I started in 2011, I was putting more than 14 hours a day to learn the things and decode this internet marketing code. Though I didn’t have a good internet connection when I started (I blogged on 2G mobile internet for 18 months) but still, I was putting a lot of efforts to know more about this industry and understand it till a level where I start making some money.
I was putting a lot of efforts to read other blogs, to observe what other bloggers were writing and how were they promoting their blogs. So this learning attitude made me what I am today.
At present, I spend less than 4 hours with my laptop (just to check campaigns and coordinate with my writers) to make a decent monthly income.
I am proud to say that I am living a laptop lifestyle right now. The lifestyle which I dreamt 5-6 years back, I am living that lifestyle now. I am travelling one country after another, meeting people worldwide, working with big brands and managing everything with my laptop by sitting at any corner in the world.
Even I am replying to this interview at 2:22 AM, sitting at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand right now. Life has totally changed after coming to this profession.
No boss, no headache, no deadlines and not much worries.
Every beach, every airport, restaurant, coffee shop in the world is my workstation. 🙂
I feel like I am living a dream life.
Q2.Sorav: You read a lot of books. Can you share those top 5 books that you would recommend and why?
Kulwant: This one habit made me what I am today. I was very much depressed and hopeless in 2010 when a friend of mine suggested me to start reading books.
The very first book I picked was You Can Win by Shiv Khera.
I loved that book, so later I picked Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. That one book changed my whole perspective.
Here are my top 5 books.
- ReWork
- The $100 Startup
- The E-Myth Revisited
- SmartCuts
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
Q3.Sorav: What’s your secret to becoming a successful blogger? Can you share some mantra that can inspire a lot of them to get started?
Kulwant: No secrets. Just hard work and dedication.
If you ask for the mantras, I have only one mantra for newbie bloggers.
Focus on one niche and collect as much data as you can, read as many blogs, forums, QA sites and all those channels where you can collect more data about that niche.
Let me explain this with an example.
I see most of the people enter in blogging niche by writing about technology. Even I started my very first blog on technology.
The biggest mistake they do is – they want to cover everything. Tips, trick, reviews, specification, hacks, news or whatever which seems easy to write.
I think this is the biggest mistake.
Rather than focusing on many niches, they must focus on only one niche. E.g writing only tips on their blogs, writing only reviews etc.
By doing this, they will establish themselves as a brand and many companies would be interested to work with them and they have laser focused audience on their blog.
Q4. Sorav: You travel across the world and you attend various master classes & conferences. Can you update us on the list of conferences and master classes you attended in last 2 years that changed your thoughts completely with some key takeaways from the same?
Kulwant: Yeah, I am attending worldwide conferences since 2014 when I got the invitation to attend ClickzLive Bangkok. They contacted me to ask if I was interested to attend the conference and cover the story on my blog. At first I thought why would anyone invite me to attend a conference where the entry pass is $500. Later they sent me ticket to attend the conference at FREE of cost and soon they sent invitation letter too. So I booked the flight for Bangkok, Thailand and attended very first international conference of my life.
Later I received an invitation for a conference in Singapore in 2015.
In 2016, I got more invitations to attend conference in Dubai, Malaysia, HongKong, Jakarta, and Germany.
I attended all of them and made very good connections with people worldwide.
Here is the link to see all the conferences I attended and my learning.
Attending conferences was one of the key factor that brought a change in my life, my business and everything around me. By attending conferences, I met people face to face, had parties with them, danced with them, city outing and many other activities.
This strengthened the relation with them and helped me to bring more business by tweaking the campaigns, payout bumps, special offers and many other perks which you will know only when you have good relations.
So the key takeaway is – face to face meeting brings more business rather than Skype to Skype meetings.
Q5. Sorav: What’s your take on Medium & LinkedIn as blogging platforms?
Kulwant: Both have huge audience from all segments so raising your voice on these platforms is not difficult for anyone. You just need to find a recipe which is working in your niche, type of content which people love and I am looking forward to use both of these platforms in 2018 to touch more audience.
Q6. Sorav: Would you like to share some thoughts on the importance of being prepared for seasonal affiliate marketing techniques?
Kulwant: The root of affiliate marketing is – understanding human behavior and buying psychology. Once you understand why people search something on Google, why do they visit any site, what instant solutions they are looking and how excited they are to buy a new product/service.
It’s a complete funnel where a normal reader flow from one state to another and finally becomes a buyer.
So I would strongly recommend to read more about human buying psychology if someone is looking forward to make money with affiliate marketing.
Q7. Sorav: Secret Question: How much do you make every month through blogging? (This is the most interesting question that all my readers would love to learn from you)
Kulwant: I cannot reveal exact figures, but yeah, I make a decent 5-figure USD every month from blogging and various paid marketing activities.
Last year we filed an ITR of 6.80 Lakh.
Q8. Sorav: SEO is Dead. Your thoughts?
Kulwant: I’ve been hearing this for the last 4-5 years. When I started blogging in 2012, there were Panda updates, soon Penguin updates and many more updates.
Everyone was saying that SEO is dead. But 4-5 years down the line, we are still doing SEO and making money with it.
It’s technology, which will keep on changing and adjusting itself to the latest technological trends. As soon as the technology changes, you must observe what new things are working now.
It’s like educating yourself every single day to keep you aligned with the technology and algorithms.
If you are still using the methods which were working before Panda and Penguin, you are a fool. Sorry to say that, but yeah, if you are still relying on those methods, SEO is dead for you.
But people who change themselves as per the technologies, understand the game, observe the changes and take actions, they will always win.
SEO will keep changing it’s forms but it will never be dead.
Q9. Sorav: What are your conversion goals on your blogging platform?
Kulwant: My conversion goals are people who are interested to learn blogging at a deeper level. So I have launched a course which I am selling in just 3999 INR. My goal is to give blogging education to newbies who cannot afford costly courses which ask $500 or $1000 to teach the basic stuff.
In my course Blogging Blueprint 2.0, I have explained all the methods and tricks which I have used in last 5 years to become a successful blogger.
So my funnel goes like this..
Step 1: People visit my blog.
Step 2: They join my FREE 7 days blogging training series.
Step 3: They start reading my blog articles.
Step 4: They buy my course if they are willing to take blogging to the next level.
Q10. Sorav: Can you share the link of those 5 blog posts that fetch you maximum traffic and conversions?
Kulwant: Here are those 5 posts.
The Complete Guide On How To Start Blogging in 2018
How To Make Money With A Blog [10 Working Methods]
Top 15 Website To Make Money Online By Doing Micro Jobs
10 Websites Which Provide Freelance Writing Jobs For Beginners
Top 17 Websites to Buy Backlinks For Your Niche Site
Q11. Sorav: Which tools do you make use to convert visitors into subscribers?
Kulwant: I am big fan of ThriveArchitect and Thrive Leads. These 2 plugins have saved my life and gave my freedom to enhance the functionality of my blog. I cannot imagine blogging without these 2 plugins.
I am using ConvertKit (Read my ConvertKit Review here) to collect email subscribers in my database.
They have specially designed this email marketing service for bloggers, which makes it super special and a must to use service for collecting email subscribers.
Earlier I used Aweber for 3-4 years, but my switch to ConvertKit made my life much easier.
Q12. Sorav: 10 WordPress plugins that you would recommend every blogger and why?
Kulwant: Here are the top 10 plugins I recommend everyone to use.
- Yoast SEO – Best plugin to do on-page SEO and optimize your site for various SEO factors.
- Broken Link Checker – A must have plugin to see all the broken links on your blog. More broken links on your blog can send negative signal to Google, which ultimately lower your ranking.
- Pretty Links Lite: An awesome plugin to cloak affiliate links.
- Rel Nofollow Checkbox – A tiny plugin to add rel=”nofollow” tag to external links.
- Thrive Leads – This one plugin just changed my life. An ultimate and powerful plugin to create stunning popups, sidebar widget, after posts optin forms and many lead collecting options.
- Wordfence Security – Keep your blog safe from hackers.
- WordPress Zero Spam – A much better alternative for Akismet. This saves your blog from comment spammers.
- Contact Form 7 – An easy and awesome plugin to add contact us forms on your blog.
- Shortcodes Ultimate – My one stop destination to add stunning features (notes, boxes, text highlight, columns, buttons and many more) on my blog.
- WordPress Ping Optimizer – It will save your blog from auto pings and pings from spammers.
Q13. Sorav: Do you guest blog and allow guest blog posts? If yes, what kind of blogs excite you?
Kulwant: I keep doing guest posts on various blogs.
Here are my recent guest posts.
SEO Trends in 2018-What Should You Focus On to Stay in the Game
10 Black Hat SEO Techniques to Kill Your Search Engine Visibility
I love to write for blogs or sites which have targeted audience and more reach.
I have personally stopped accepting guest posts on my blog. I accept posts only and only if the author’s profile is highly authoritative and article adds value at my blog.
Here are the latest guest posts at my blog.
A Full Guide To Do a Perfect Blogger Outreach For Authority Backlinks
How to Find a Great Niche? (Hint: It’s Not As Difficult as You Think)
Q14. Sorav: Which are the top 3 affiliate marketing programs that give you the maximum benefit?
Kulwant: That varies niche to niche. In Internet marketing niche, hosting is the top affiliate marketing program. In health, weight loss is the top niche and it will vary from niche to niche.
So I cannot say it generic that this is the top affiliate or that is the top affiliate.
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