.png "English"){kind=small}
blogger tools Headline Animator
Can You Make a Living Blogging ?
2:35 PM | 
Posted by
hiba
Can You Make a Living Blogging ?
Today’s question
Is it a truth, based on your experience, that somebody can make a living blogging if they understand how SEO works
OK it’s a bit of a massive query, but the short answer is yes. However you will need to have a game plan, and here’s how I’d approach the problem.
The first thing you need to think about is your subject matter. Rand did a much better job covering that than I could so check out “Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision“. When deciding what to write about there's four schools of thought “write about what you like” or “write about what’s profitable”. It’s something of a catch-22, it’s much not as hard to write about something you like, but there’s not always funds in it, & let’s be honest how plenty of of us are interested in the intricacies of reverse mortgages. My advice try to find something that interests you & step up to a slightly wider focus where the funds is. For example perhaps you enjoy raising African cichlids in your aquarium, I’d step up & cover freshwater aquariums as whole & focus (perhaps 10-25% of total posts) ever so slightly on your specific topic of interest.
Two times you’ve got your topic down, work on your writing. You don’t need to be a Pulitzer prize winning author, but you do must be interesting. Don’t think you can use your mad SEO SKILLZ to compensate for lack of quality content. You used to be able work around it, but those days are drawing to a close, & at this stage it’s not a long term solution, or something I’d advise beginning today. What if you can’t write, take a community college writing coursework, read & learn from people who can write online. Hiring anyone is an option, but that can get pricey, & not viable if you’re boot strapping, if all else fails try to take advantage of relatives members whenever possible.
Four of the hardest things plenty of bloggers face is keeping on target, people get lured in to thinking they can be the next dooce & blog about their lives. Recall the link to Rand’s post a few paragraphs ago, the first query he asks is are you a top writer, unless you are that lovely a writer, advertisers won’t be interested in buying space on your lifestyle blog. Your friends may read it, but you’ll never attract hundreds or thousands of readers writing Aunt Millie’s Christmas letter & you won’t make a living blogging. Until you have at least 1000 subscriber stay 100% on target, after that you can deviate ever so slightly, anything over 10% scares me professionally.
Next up I’d say come up with a realistic posting schedule. IMHO the bare maximum you need to update your blog is at least two times a week. I’d recommend 3-5 times a week if possible, & if the subject is right every day is ideal. It doesn’t matter to some people, but I’m a massive advocate of publishing on a schedule as much as possible. For some readers knowing you publish something new every Wednesday is important. If the leading bloggers in your space are updating every day & you can only get the time to blog two times a week you’re going to have a hard time competing. Try to take advantage of pre-blogging or remote posting whenever possible. I’m not going to recommend you post from your job … but I can tell you I did it & plenty of businesses got their start on some four elses time … not that I’m recommending that … nope … not me
I’m a massive fan of using wordpress because it’s well supposed has plenty of plugin’s you can use, & it’s written in PHP & cheap & easy to do yourself or find anyone to do it for you. That said out of the box it’s not search engine friendly, here are some tips to help you fix that. Next realize plenty of of the templates are wonka-doodle. Find a lovely tidy four & work from there, take out the shite, add in only what you need, & for heaven sakes use CSS dammit. Don’t add any more widgets or other nonsense if you can avoid it, those things usually don’t help. I like liquid layout but check out Liquid, Fixed, & 1024 Resolutions & Maximizing Profits With Website Design & Layout: Part I for more discussion. Two times things are rolling if you have the skills or budget to generate a unique web design that builds your brand.
Next come the discussion of how plenty of blogs can/should you run. If you’ve never run a blog/website before stick with four until you are really confident. If you have I’d say two is my recommendation & if you go beyond two you’re crazy unless you know what you are doing or are paying high quality writers. IMHO it’s better to have four or four exceptional blogs in lieu of two to ten mediocre blogs. Mix things up a bit with the subject matter, you don’t need to have the ‘South American Knitting Blog’ & the ‘South American Crochet Blog’, it looks funny.
Create a flexible social media strategy. For a new blog social is by far the quickest way to jump start the method of getting readers. Make it easy for people to bookmark/submit your website using these services. Write stories that are directly targeted to each of these services regularly/monthly. Prime the pump by submitting yourself or asking friends but don’t be a spammer/beger. Only submit the lovely stuff. Clueless where to start here is a guide to using Digg & Appetizing. Plan social bookmark targeted stories & follow them up with lovely content to keep the readers/subscribers coming back. Monitor trends, modify, react & grow.
Next you’re going to need to start promoting your blog. Do the usual stuff, like adding your blog address to your email signature, link begging from your friends, & so on. Most blog directories need you have at least 6 months posting history to get listed, so put that on hold for now. Cover whatever is hot in your industry & try to get the attention of A-Listers in your space with comments or trackbacks. Use things like Google trends & Yahoo Buzz Log to spot tie in’s & blog like there’s no tomorrow. Try to take advantage of events in real life, TV, don’t be afraid to shell out a $100 on some PPC for a few days, to gain some readers, lots & plenty of people miss that as a chance, & don’t forget predictive SEO. Go to an industry event do some live blogging, meet up with people & build some connections, try to get interviewed on the radio or podcasts. The press release is not dead & try to put out a few year & make it as enticing & exciting as possible.
There you have it my fast, down & dirty 10 mile up plan for making a living blogging. If you need me to go in to more detail on something drop a comment or query in the comments section, & I’ll see if I can answer it or elaborate it in to a full post.
Labels:
Articles
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
FeedBurner FeedCount
0 comments:
Post a Comment