 |
Can independent blogging turn into… a real job?
Meet Adam (made up name).
He’s a smart individual with a general interest for life and all that stems from it. He likes to voice his own views and knows how to word them efficiently. He’s computer-savvy and knows his way around with such open source superstars as PHP, MySQL and WordPress.
He has this plan of getting quality information “out to the world” so he buys up a good domain name, sets up his own hosting account (or home server, whichever), installs the WordPress blogging script and launches his very first independent blog.
The word -independent- is very important, here. It means that Adam, our “example buddy”, will be able to manage his blog in any way he pleases.
He’ll be able to tweak his blog with any plug-in he wishes and will also be able to integrate pay-per-click advertising alone or alongside with more “traditional” banner placements (ideally bringing in a monthly revenue).
So Adam publishes his first 25 posts and already, some Google users are starting to notice his high-quality work. Let me insist on -quality- because without true uniqueness and added value, end-users will not waste time coming back to Adam’s blog, let alone bookmark it.
Like in all other aspects of life, sustained quality drives long term revenue.
Fortunately, Adam believes in his blog enough to continue investing time in it, even if the advertising revenue isn’t quite that spectacular, yet. At least, it’s not enough to live by. At this point, maybe Google AdSense brings in around $100 per month for pay-per-click “contextual” ads and the banners ads (let’s say there are 4 at $100 each) bring in another $400. It’s a good start but more work needs to be done.
Adam therefore continues to blog about what he loves but mostly, about what his users are looking for.
In a perfect world, a blogger should seek to either provide uniquely valuable information or, more to the point, solve one or many problems, for the end users. Doing that will built up a “reputation” for the blog as being “useful”. It will also significantly drive the traffic up.
Since good blogs usually have at least a 10% click-thru rate for the pay-per-click ads and that each of these ads pay out (an average of) 20 cents, if Adam’s blog gets 1,000 visitors daily, it can safely be assumed that it will generate around $20 a day, which translates into about $600 per month. Add that amount to the banner revenues which, at this point, may have doubled to $800 and you rise up to $1,400 in monthly revenue.
While that’s not enough to book that two week trip to Bali, it’s significant enough to be able to make ends meet — for a while, at least.
Now that Adam, our fictional blogger, has probably gone from a PR0 to a PR3 within roughly one month of hard work, his goal will probably be to reach (and stay at) the PR5 level, within a few more months.
To achieve this, Adam can simply leave “educated comments” in other blogs which happen to be well-regarded by both the end-users and the search engines. This will -naturally- enhance his own blog’s visibility, at no cost (other than his own time). Also, other smart people could, in turn, notice Adam’s blog (for the first time) and be compelled to leave a comment, too. These comments have the power to greatly enhance Adam’s blog value, for all further visitors who will see the post as having more depth… and influence.
From this point on, it should be fairly straightforward for Adam who simply needs to keep adding quality posts to his own blog -and- highly valuable comments into other blogosphere properties.
As the number of visitors crosses the 10,000 mark, on a daily basis, Adam can pretty much bank on a $200 a day revenue stream from his Google AdSense pay-per-click ads (for about $6,000 monthly) coupled with perhaps 12 banners generating $1,200 per month for a total of $7,200… month after month.
It goes without saying that Adam, our typical yet imaginary blogger, enjoys a nice life, financially speaking but also from a professional standpoint as he’ll likely be doing what he likes best, from home and on his own terms.
As time goes by, Adam may hook up with many other quality bloggers, advertisers and other “movers and shakers” who will keep turning out “new unforeseen opportunities” for him to better his blog.
This “fantasy blogging” scenario is made to follow real life metrics so it’s pretty clear that if you follow in Adam’s footsteps, you too could end up being able to make a (good) living off blogging.
As long as you focus on uniqueness, true value and long term revenue generation approaches, things should turn out just as you’d expect them to — akin to what happened to Adam.
Tags: make money with your own blog, blogs, bloggers, blogging, revenue generating blog, blogging as a career, blog job, working from home, working on your own terms, working without a boss, value-added blogging, quality blog posts, unique blog posts, online revenue, google adsense, banner advertising, monthly revenue, pay-per-click revenue, ppc advertising
 |
