Article by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd
Make Money Blogging seems, on the surface, to be the path to easy money. However, ask anyone who is blogging and paying the bills by those efforts and you’ll quickly see this is not a “sit back, write a post, collect a check” type of business.
The name of the game in BLOGGING FOR DOLLARS is traffic and LOTS of it.
Micheal Arrington launched TechCrunch in 2005. He has successfully parlayed his blog’s success into a business with nice cash flow (estimated to be above 0K per month). However, he has done this by working obsessively (16 hour days, 7 days a week) to get the blog launched. He has since hired a staff of 10 to share the duties he once performed alone.
His blog has over 500,000 RSS subscribers. A recent call for entries received 72,000 entries. Because TechCrunch has captured so many “eyeballs”, supporting the site through advertising is a natural.
Michael Arrington isn’t the only one who is making money by blogging. More and more people are discovering how to make money blogging.
If you think you’d like to try to make money blogging, keep in mind that the name of the game in Make Money Blogging is traffic and LOTS of it.
Traffic is an essential ingredient if you want to make money blogging. Most full time bloggers are supported by advertising and those advertisers are paying for exposure of their marketing message. Advertisers will judge the success or failure of a campaign by measuring the click throughs (or how many visitors visit the advertiser’s site). The advertising rates charged by professional blogger is also determined by the amount of traffic a blog gets.
Click through rates for successful online advertising campaigns run in the 1-3 % range. That means, for every 100 visitors, a wildly successful ad on a blog will send 1-3 visitors to the advertiser’s site. That means, you need to have TENS OF THOUSANDS of visitors to your blog in order to deliver “results” for your advertisers.
That’s why the name of the game in Make Money Blogging is traffic and LOTS of it.
Some professional bloggers maintain up to 15 blogs to achieve the kind of traffic you need to make a living blogging.
Take a good hard look at your personality and your life before you begin your quest to Make Money Blogging.
1. Where do you spend your time now, when you’re not blogging professionally?
If you answered, “I’m constantly writing”…. then that is a good start. However, blogging for dollars is more than just mere writing. Blogging for dollars involves researching, reading and reporting and most importantly, connecting with other bloggers.
2.Do you find yourself frequently “ahead of the pack”.
Without exception, professional bloggers are breaking the news, not following it. Do you find yourself discovering and embracing trends LONG before they go mainstream? Then you may have what it takes to start Make Money Blogging!
3.Are you comfortable with running your own business?
The final question to ask to determine if the Make Money Blogging path is for you is, “Are you comfortable with running your own business?”
When you start blogging for dollars, you are launching a business. Your writing duties, if you’re lucky, will take up about 40% of your time. The other 60% of your work time will include research, learning, linking, marketing, promoting, doing paperwork, doing research and most importantly, lining up advertisers and finding other ways to “monetize” your blog.
Michael Arrington launched the superblog Tech Crunch in 2005 (which is one of the top 10 blogs online right now). He reports that he worked 16 hour days, 7 days a week getting it started.
Interestingly enough, his goal was NOT to create a blog with over a half a million RSS subscribers…but rather he launched the blog as a way to research the then emerging Web 2.0 phenomenon. Once he had a large audience, it became a natural progression to start selling advertising on his blog and the rest is history.
Today, the Tech Crunch blog grosses over 0K each month and employs 10.
READ THAT AGAIN!
Not the amount of money the blog is bringing in… but rather the fact that he now employs 10 people to do what he once did alone.
Making Money Blogging is just like making money in any other business. It take hard work, a bit of luck and a fair amount of patience. However, it is one business you can launch from the comfort of your own home with a minimal investment of cash.
About the Author
Kathy Hendershot-Hurd is the COE (Chief of Everything) at Virtual Impax http://virtualimpax.com and author of Beyond the Niche http://beyondnichemarketing.com.
Got a blog? Pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch at Make My Blog Successful http://makemyblogsuccessful.com to learn how to power launch your blog in just 8 short weeks!