Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
Blogging is easy, right? Everyone is doing it and everyone is making thousands of dollars a month. Not quite. However, with a few strategic steps you can set up a successful, and profitable, blog. You can be one of the success stories.
Tip #1 Blog about something you love.
Seriously. If you don’t enjoy discussing and learning about your blog topic it’s going to be tough. When you love your blog topic, blog post ideas come easily.
When you love your blog topic, writing posts is a pleasure. Responding to comments is fun and engaging. And you’ll be able to blog today, tomorrow and five years from now. This longevity is important because blogs are not overnight successes. It takes time to build a following. You need to love your topic enough that you’re willing to be patient.
Tip #2 Blog about something specific.
Okay, so you love dogs. Great. So do thousands of other people and they’re blogging too. However, if you love longhaired Daschunds then you have a more specific audience. There probably aren’t too many other people blogging about them. And you certainly are likely to have an audience.
The point is the more specific you are the less competition you’ll have. It’ll be easier to attract a loyal following.
Tip #3 Plan, plan and then plan some more.
Most bloggers just blog. They don’t have a niche. They don’t have a plan. They certainly don’t have a monetization model or goals. Before you launch your blog consider:
* What you want your blog to be about
* Who your audience is and how much demand there is for your topic
* How much competition you have
* What you’ll write/post about
* How you’ll make money from your blog
* What your goals are and how you’ll achieve those goals
* What your vision is for your blog. Where is it going? What will it look like/offer in five or ten years.
Tip #4 Promote your blog.
A blog without promotion will grow slowly. That’s fine if you’re not in any kind of hurry to attract readers or make money. However, if you’re blogging for the benefit of others then you may want to promote your blog. Participate in social networking and link to new posts. Be a guest blogger on other relevant blogs. Comment on other blogs and register with your blog’s URL.
Tip #5 Take it slowly.
When building your blog take it one step at a time. Don’t throw up tons of ads, affiliate links, products and services along with your content. Get a good content foundation first. Once you feel comfortable then begin to focus on another aspect of building your blog. Start driving traffic to it. Implement a monetization model. Focusing on one tactic or strategy at a time will help you make sure you’re optimizing it. It’ll ensure your attention isn’t’ divided and your blog shortchanged.
Blogging can be a great way to make a living online. You can also blog part time to simply bring in extra income. However, in order to blog successfully make sure you have a solid plan. Follow your passions and interests and enjoy your success.
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
What’s The Difference and Which One Is Right for You?
Many blog owners blog with the intention of earning money. If you intend on or hope to profit from your blog it pays to understand your options. You can chose direct monetization, indirect monetization or a combination of both.
What is Direct Monetization?
Direct monetization simply means that you directly monetize your blog. You profit directly from your blog. In most cases this means you either:
* Sell products on your blog – for example, socks or supplements.
* Sell information products on your blog – for example ebooks or online courses
* Sell services on your blog – for example, copywriting services
* Sell space for companies to advertise – the more traffic you have the more you can charge to place an ad on your blog.
* Place pay per click ads on your website and earn money each time someone clicks on an advertisement.
* Host a membership site on your blog and profit from selling memberships.
As you can see you can choose several of these profit models for a single blog. For example, you might sell information products, sell advertising space and participate in a PPC program like AdSense.
What is Indirect Monetization?
Indirect monetization is where you profit indirectly on your website. The most common type of indirect monetization may be affiliate sales. With this profit model you earn commissions on products or services that you promote. This is a very common way to profit from your blog and it integrates well with direct monetization methods.
For example, you might sell ad space on your blog as well as include affiliate links in relevant posts.
Another example of indirect monetization is to profit from your email or subscriber list. Many bloggers offer you the opportunity to sign up for other lists. In this case they’re then earning money by renting or selling your name to other relevant companies.
Finally, membership site was mentioned in the direct monetization model however you can also profit from it indirectly. You can offer a free membership but then charge companies for access to your members. A very simple example of this might be if you allowed a gamer to market their products on your gaming membership site/blog.
Through widgets and plug-ins a blog is capable of offering just about any type of online experience. You can simply provide information or you can take it to a different level and offer memberships, an ecommerce store or an online chat room.
Choose your goals and then create a monetization plan to achieve them. Keep in mind, while planning your profit strategy that your visitors are ultimately who you want to consider first. Offer them value and benefit and the profits will come.
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
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
One of the reasons to choose a blog over a traditional website is the ability to interact with visitors via comments. However, you don’t have to activate comments. In fact, sometimes it’s a good idea to turn your commenting feature off.
What are the Benefits of Commenting?
Many people judge the success of their blog by the number of comments they receive. And it’s true that an active blog does tend to draw more numbers. The more visitors and subscribers you have the more potential there is for profit. And an active blog is a fun blog.
However, commenting doesn’t always mean success you can have a very successful blog that doesn’t receive many comments at all.
What Are the Options?
You can turn off comments – Many blog owners decide to turn off the comments completely. The goal for them isn’t to generate interaction but rather to establish credibility or to simply provide information.
You can turn them off, for now – Some other blog owners decide to turn off comments until the blog has a certain number of subscribers. Then they make commenting a possibility. This strategy can prevent the image of the lonely blogger and instead let you focus on simply providing quality content.
You can turn on the comments – Most bloggers enable comments. If you choose this option then consider:
* Installing a spam filter like Askimet
* Requiring people to register before they can comment
* Giving them the ability to link to their blog or website during the registration process
* Allowing an avatar or a photo
* How much time you have to reply to comments. It’s important if you allow commenting on your website to make it an interactive process. You want to respond to their comment or at least thank them for it.
* Creating content that motivates a discussion. Ask readers for their opinion. Say something controversial and start a discussion. Ask for experience or advice.
* Give CommentLuv. Consider using a plug-in that tracks and displays comments from others. It can really get the comment section of your blog active. In fact, this little plug-in can motivate more comments.
* Policies – Do you have a language or content policy? For example, do your commenters have to keep their comments PG for approval? If so, you will want to display your comment policy on your blog.
How does commenting play into your goals, purpose and vision? Make your decisions based on how you can provide the best blog possible. If comments aren’t a part of your user experience then turn them off. No one says you have to enable comments on your blog. It’s your decision.
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 Spotlights
Founder of The Next Big Zing. Dhana’s company finds and promotes inventors of new products! It’s a win for consumers…they get to see and purchase the latest new products! It’s a win for the inventors as they get their product promoted! Read on to learn about Dhana, what she’s learned and her vision for her company.
1. Tell us about your business and the service that you provide:
The Next Big Zing is an innovative way to shop online. Through video reviews, consumers will have the opportunity to watch, engage in a product or two they love, and then purchase. Inventors, on the other hand, have an amazing opportunity to get their products seen and heard through a third party endorsed video review…plus given a grass roots marketing program.
2. How did you decide to get started?
I have always had great ideas, developed products and always stopped short…I came up with the idea to promote other inventors and said video is the way of the future!
3. What kind of background of expertise do you have in your field?
My background is advertising and marketing…but from the old school of traditional media.
4. What trends do you see in your current industry?
Wow. That could take all day! Video for sure is the way to go to promote your business. No one wants to see a stagnant web page. I also see the changing face of retail. Traditional retailing is tougher now to get into…you must be creative!
5. What things do you find to be most demanding about your job?
That I don’t have enough time in my day to get everything finished and that I don’t have a staff to help.
6. What do you find to be the most rewarding about your job and your day to day routine?
I love finding those unique products and helping them get noticed!
7. What advice would you give to someone else who is interested in starting a business like yours?
It takes a ton of time and money and little to no pay for a long time! Be prepared for working harder than you ever had for someone else, because it truly is one of your babies!
8. What are you most proud of as a parent-preneur?
Proud that my kids want to be involved. In fact, my 14 year old son said today, “Mom, you need to tell me what meetings you are going to since I am the Vice-President.”
9. How have you been able to manage your time between work and your family?
It’s tough. I want them to be proud so I do work a lot, and since I run my business out of my home, I tend to work while they are around.
10. What has been the most effective way for you to promote yourself?
Through social media, networking and strategic partners.
Finally: What does your “Milk Money” provide for you and your family?
Not much yet…but I will say that I know in the future it will provide so much!
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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