Almost 2 1/2 years ago I had a series of posts on Sundays called the Sunday Question. In April 2010 one of the posts I wrote was titled Why Do You Blog. On that post, I described my reasons for blogging, and as I looked back on it I realized that my reasoning hasn’t really changed all that much since then; obviously, since I’ve added two more blogs. 🙂
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Yet, since last Sunday I’ve been thinking about something that one of my co-hosts on our Sunday’s Hot Blog Tips Hangout crew, Sheryl Loch, said during one of our topic discussions. She said that blogging, blogging rank, comments and the like don’t mean anything if your intention is to make money and you’re not making any. During the conversation I wanted to debate with her, but later on as I was thinking about it I knew that she was right in that regard.
I’ve never really ever said that my purpose in blogging was to make money. I have said that I hoped to spread my influence because that would give me a better opportunity to make money but that’s not quite the same thing. I have 5 blogs and I have one that makes money, and that’s really the only blog I have where I had hopes that the blog would make money. That it makes money in a way I never anticipated is a nice bonus, and yet I know it could be much better.
In November 2011 I wrote a post telling people the reality about making money by blogging. Almost no one really does it. Those that do look at it in two different ways. One, they see it as only a business and nothing else. Two, they don’t care how much traffic they get or whether they get comments; they care only about targeted traffic that wants what they have to sell.
I know this because over and over you see these posts by people you know are making money and then you look at their rankings and they’re often worse than yours or mine. In the other direction are people with great rankings and traffic that are making very little money, or at least aren’t making enough money to live on. A good example of that, and I appreciate her honesty, is Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Cafe; take a look at this link and see how much she made in October, then compare her traffic to yours.
So then, how are people making money if blogging won’t get it done? They’re finding ways of doing other things outside of blogging to help them along. I’ve always said that if you’re hoping to make money blogging that you have to look at it in a much different way. If you have a monetary consideration, blogs are there to highlight what you do, show your potential customers you know what you’re talking about, and responding to their queries and comments because that’s what customer service is all about. You can even advertise your wares.
After that, depending on what you do, you have to get out there and find your customers. You can use your blog to drive your customers if you’re going to promote yourself online. You can do traditional marketing but use your blog and blog posts to help you along the way. If you’re a writer you can use your blog to show off your skills. Of course blogging is great for SEO and that might help drive people to your website.
In other words, if you’re looking to make money and it includes blogging, think outside the box and figure out a symbiotic relationship between the two. Don’t be held back by convention, and don’t be scared to take chances. By the way, I’m going to be working on that myself with my main business blog. I figure after more than 7 years it’s probably time to push things a bit. What am I going to do? Not sure yet.
This blog’s focus probably won’t change much. After all, I still have too much I want to share. 😉
