Joining Alexa on this week’s episode is a musician, university professor, and founder of Creative SEO. She manages her own music studio and helps musicians to create their own paid opportunities to live the life that they deserve. Dr Tonya Lawson is on Singing Teachers Talk to tell you how you can improve your SEO and earn passive income.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are a lot of people that think that passive income means sitting on the beach with a cocktail, just relaxing. That’s not how it works. Passive income is where you put a lot of work in on the front end, but then it continues to pay out over time.
- Tonya is earning money every week from Amazon off of articles that she wrote two to three years ago. The articles are already written, and she is continuing to earn money from affiliate sales. She has courses that were a lot of work to build, but now that they’re built, Tonya is earning income passively from them as new people sign up.
- You need to think of passive income as compound interest. It starts out with a little, but over time it grows more and more as your website and presence grow and the volume of work you have increased.
- If you’ve never done any sort of SEO implementation, you need to give yourself 12 months to start seeing real growth happening.
- Many of the websites we use and recommend to our students use affiliate links. These are essentially referrals that you can set up where when someone signs up from your link, you get a small commission.
- SEO is really important in order to get your website to rank. If your website is not ranking in Google, if nobody’s finding you online, then you’re not going to earn money from it.
- SEO stands for search engine optimisation. In plain terms, it’s how you get your website found on Google or any of the other search engines. To get the best results, you need to focus your content around a targeted keyword.
- Google looks for something called EAT in your content. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. And with the rise in AI writers, they’ve added a fourth letter, a second E for Experience, because they want to know that you know what you’re talking about.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Now I don’t worry when I have a student cancel. Instead, I’m like, hey, I have extra time in my day now’
‘Passive income takes time. There is no get rich quick’
‘You have to do what feels intuitive to you, what feels natural to you. If you’ve always enjoyed writing, do that. If you feel really comfortable on camera, then courses’
‘A lot of creatives, they’ve heard about SEO, but they don’t even know what it is’
EPISODE RESOURCES
Guest Website:
SEO Membership:
Social Media:
- Instagram: @dr.tonyalawson
- Youtube: youtube.com/@dr.tonyalawson
Relevant Links & Mentions:
- Amazon Associates: affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk
- Sheet Music Plus Affiliate Program: https://affiliates.sheetmusicplus.com/affiliates
- Blog – The Best Clarinet Mouthpiece for Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced Players: tonyalawson.com/best-clarinet-mouthpiece
- Jasper AI: jasper.ai
- Grammarly: grammarly.com
- John Mueller Twitter: twitter.com/johnmu
- Yoast: yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAiJSeBhCCARIsAHnAzT_xoowZ9e3QH5e_OfWTV1PK8EpY9_3svgqWzfdy6wdBMzSKx3kj4NYaArXoEALw_wcB
- Search Engine Journal: searchenginejournal.com
- Search Engine Roundtable: seroundtable.com
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr Tonya Lawson is a professional clarinettist turned SEO specialist who specialises in helping freelance creatives build out passive income streams so they can live the life they deserve.
Not only is Dr Lawson a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, but she also maintains a large private studio, runs two niche websites, and creates digital courses that provide musicians with the knowledge they need in order to have sustainable and profitable businesses.
Link to podcast presenter’s bios
