Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
How do you know when your blog is successful? What do you want your blog to accomplish? What is your vision for your blog? These are all important questions to consider – preferably before you launch your blog. Let’s take a look at each question individually.
How Do You Know When Your Blog is Successful?
The best way to know what your blog is accomplishing in terms of numbers is to use analytics. A simple program like Google Analytics is free and it’s easy to install the code snippet on your blog. You then receive a daily or weekly report on how many visitors your blog has. Analytics are also rich with other important data points like how readers found your blog and how long they stayed on your site.
But what if numbers aren’t how you define success? You might also look at your subscriber base. Is it growing? If your subscribers continue to grow, that is a sign that your blog is successful. Finally, if you’re blogging with the goal of earning money, are you earning what you want? Your blog is successful if you’re regularly reaching your income goals.
What Do You Want Your Blog to Accomplish?
Many people blog to boost their business. You might also blog for profits. You might blog for awareness and fame. Finally, you might blog simply to connect with others or to have a positive impact on someone’s life. If you already have a blog, what did you envision for that blog when you started it? Has it met your expectations? Why or why not?
If you’ve yet to start a blog, think about what you want your blog to accomplish. What is the purpose for your blog? What are your goals?
What is Your Vision for your Blog?
Once you have your blog up and running and you’re meeting your goals, consider where you want your blog to grow. What will your blog look like in five years? What will it look like? Will you offer more value? Will you sell products or services? Will you have more guest bloggers? Consider your vision for your blog. How will you hold true to that vision and continue to grow and offer value?
People blog for a variety of reasons. There is no right or wrong reason to blog. However, it is important to have a goal and a vision. It’s important to know what blogging success means to you and to create goals and measurements so you know when you’ve succeeded. The more consistent your goals and your actions are, the more success you’ll achieve.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
Many of us self-employed parents who blog dream of earning money from our blogs. There are many stories of bloggers earning the “big bucks” and we would like to be one of those ‘stories’. You can earn money by blogging, if you are dedicated to doing so.
According to Technorati, the average American blogger earns $6,000 per year. The top 1% earn $200,000 or more.
Blogging requires long hours and a lot of work. Make sure you pick a subject you are passionate about. For me, it’s all about helping parents work from home so they can be home with their children. Find a subject that ‘ignites your fire within’. You are less likely to get burned out and more likely to stick with it if you do.
If you pick a topic like celebrity gossip, politics, photography or gadgets, the competition is fierce and it will be difficult to get yourself established. Select something else and remember…make sure you are passionate about it.
If you want to earn money from your blog there are several ‘musts’:
- your blog must be well-written
- your blog must not contain any spelling error
- your blog must not contain any grammatical errors
Here are some of the best ways to earn money from your blog.
- Advertising. The most obvious way to make money from your blog is with advertising. Advertisers pay a few cents when an ad is clicked. They may pay a certain rate per 1,000 page views. The most popular advertising program is Google AdSense. It places ads within context of your blog on your site. Regardless of the traffic level on your site, you can register for Google AdSense. There are other advertising methods, such as BidVertiser, AdBrite and AdGenta. If you are well know and have a large readership, you can contact advertisers on your own. To make money from ads on your site, you need thousands of visitors each month.
- Affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are similar to advertising. You can place a button/banner ad or text ad on your site. You can also place hyperlinks within your posts. For affiliate links to pay, the person who clicks on them usually has to make a purchase…you then get a percentage of that purchase.
- Pay-per-post. Some companies will pay you to write about their products or services. You will need some blogging time under your belt before you can get involved in pay-per-post programs. Be cautious, though. Your readers are reading your blog because they are interested in what you have to say. If you are getting paid to write about a product, be sure you tell your readers that. Full disclosure is important and your readers will respect that.
- Sponsorship. You may be able to get a corporate sponsor. However, your site will then carry only the sponsor’s branding and there will be less of your own ‘personality’ coming through.
- Employment. Many businesses have their own blogs. They use the blogs to stay in touch with their customers. You may find work by being a paid blogger for a company. This takes a lot of dedication. You have to show companies that you are worth hiring. This means you have to be well established and have posts with no errors. If you are really well known, businesses may come looking for you. More than likely, you will have to seek them out. Remember to treat this like any other job interview.
There are many ways you can earn money by blogging. It does take considerable time and dedication. Most bloggers earn a little bit to supplement their main source of income. If make a lot of money by blogging is your goal, dedicate yourself to the process and you will reap the rewards.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
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