Your Blog. Your Brand.
- Posted on: September 15, 2007
- Those Who Had Their Say: 9
My previous post was about keeping your time profitable, and I talked about how my blog is currently not in that category. I got a few great comments that made me realize that I unintentionally put blogging under the wrong light. It wasn’t my intention to imply that blogs aren’t profitable, so let’s get into the short-term and long-term profitability of a blog.
Short-Term
This part of the story starts out very slowly for most. Being a new blogger is tough.This is just something that you will have to come to terms with. With small amounts of traffic and not many connections, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle.
If you are thinking that you can make a solid income from your blog within 6 months, you have fallen prey to fanciful thinking. DISCLAIMER: It has been done, but don’t bet your blog on it.
There are a lot of people that choose to make the fast dollar and decide to employ CPC accounts and private advertising right out of the gate. Would I recommend it? No, to be honest. Unless you are receiving hundreds of visitors daily, avoid cpc advertising. John Chow is making less than 1k/month with adsense from his blog, so I wouldn’t recommend that you attempt to support yourself from a single advertising income stream.
The main short-term goal of anyone who is looking to make money online and runs a personal blog should be to build you brand NOW, to reap the benefits LATER. Your brand needs to be nurtured and grown to be effective when you would like to harvest your market influence. Don’t confuse yourself by setting a short-term goal of blog income.
Credibility Counts
In fact, as I’ve said in the past, credibility counts. When you’re starting your blogging journey, it’s less important to earn profit than it is to build a loyal readership. Period.
What kind of brand are you projecting, when you are new to the blogosphere and you’re already trying to push products and advertising on people? Where is the fine line between a useful, credible blog and an advertising landing page? Longevity, quality content, loyal readers… they will draw the line for you.
Long-Term
This is the strong argument as to why the penniless hours spent initially on your blog are very worth it. If you have set yourself up a strong brand that has widespread authority within your niche… you’re “sittin’ pretty” to say the least.
BRANDING, BRANDING, BRANDING! This phrase should be ringing in your head when you are setting long term profiteering goals. How will my brand (short-term goal) affect my ability to monetize my blog (long-term goal)?
Imagine you are six months and 1000 RSS subscribers into the future. Ask yourself these questions:
- At this point, can I decree to my readership that this product or advertisement that I am peddling is within my world-view and brand?
- What kind of products and services can I provide to my readers/advocates?
- How can I leverage all of this penniless time and branding in my favor?
As the floodgates of profiteering open at this point, how you best take hold of the opportunity rides solely on your ability to bring your brand, your readers, and a great product or advertising opportunity together.
Best of luck and may you persevere. ^_^
Josh Mullineaux
Nate Whitehill
Well said. When I started out, I knew that I shouldn’t bother with advertising because I wasn’t likely to make much from it at the time, so I cut corners and slapped a Google Ad on there. Eventually I tried out affiliate links and Amazon. After a week or 2 I realised that I didn’t even care about the few dollars that I had made.
I’ve stripped the real ads from my blog altogether now, and am toying with the idea of removing the last (Amazon) as well. Branding and readership is much more important for me.
Yeah I agree. Put simply ads just make your site look slutty.
Plain and simple. Its important that when you do hold a strong readership(and do want to make money) to balance content with sluttiness.
Creating quality, valuable content is far more important. The money will come if you truly help your visitors. They will come back again and again, and will send their friends too! Targeting your niche with laser vision is critical. Staying “on point” and “on topic” for each and every post. One valuable post is more valuable than 25 little ones.
That’s my “2 cents” anyways
I think its’ true that attempting to monetize a new blog with adsense and stuff like that probably never works out. But sometimes blogs are not meant to be long term.
Mine personally has been up for just about two years (not always as a blog) and never had adsense. But I started a blog that I intended to sell later on and included adsense and direct advertising right off the bat. I looked at it as a way not to sell out what traffic it was getting when the time came to sell. You never know what the next owner will do and people would rather a site always have ads then drop them instead of the vise versa.
Having a blog is the best way to promote our selves in industry,
sharing ideas, views and thoughts will create very good relationship with the blog readers and might be converted in to business relationships.
Many SEO Experts are known from their Blogs only, Like a company needs brand name in business which is into, just like a person needs his brand name in his specific profession.
Hi Matt,
I’ve been blogging for less than 2 months…I find your blog informative… I just got approved at Payperpost yesterday…but haven’t try any paid opportunities….I like the quality of your posts - simple, direct to the point…What sites could I apply for paid opportunities? i need some pointers from great blogger like you….My blog is just like my personal diary, my favorite topic is “Family and Friends.” I’ll be visiting your site as often as I can…Keep it up!
Hi! is it ok if if we’ll exchange links?
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