Blogging as a Small Business
In an article Going pro in the Economist, the writer makes an argument that more people are quitting their day jobs and blogging as a living.
Blogging has become a new trend and I wanted to find out how many blogs are actually out there and can people really support themselves from posting daily?
We can break up blogs into two categories: the personal, daily recollections of an individuals life and the second being mainstream media developing niche topics to attract a younger audience to their product.
Is there a chance for a third category now? Blogging as a business?
The article uses Heather Armstrong's blog called Dooce, which chronicles her life from her pregnancy, to becoming a mom and suffering from postpartum depression. She quit her job and now blogs every day. Her site brings in about one million visitors per month.
How can a blog attract such a huge number of visitors?
The reason why blogging can work as a small business is because there is an emerging market that would support it.
In a traditional marketing sense, attracting audience to a product, for example a magazine or newspaper, was in the hundreds. You needed an advertising campaign, an ad agency that would execute the idea and hope you covered all your basis and got the audience you wanted. In the case of a blog, the cost of building a readership for a blog is practically nothing.
But, it's not easy to build an audience. It doesn't happen over night. Technorati, tracked over 34.5 million weblogs with 75,000 new blogs being created every day. That's a lot to choose from.
Technorati does help in exposing your blog with ping configuration. So, that's the first step. Making sure your blog comes up in web searches.
What about advertising? You can't exactly sell advertising on your blogs. Google's AdSense, which places text advertisements on blogs help generate a few cents per mouse click. That might bring in spare change.
Then you update daily, grow your audience and when your business gets large enough, hire a staff. Or how about signing up with Weblogs, Inc., and letting them connect you with the advertising and the audience.
If all fails, you can always search The Problogger Job Board and work for a company that needs people with opinions.
Blogging has become a new trend and I wanted to find out how many blogs are actually out there and can people really support themselves from posting daily?
We can break up blogs into two categories: the personal, daily recollections of an individuals life and the second being mainstream media developing niche topics to attract a younger audience to their product.
Is there a chance for a third category now? Blogging as a business?
The article uses Heather Armstrong's blog called Dooce, which chronicles her life from her pregnancy, to becoming a mom and suffering from postpartum depression. She quit her job and now blogs every day. Her site brings in about one million visitors per month.
How can a blog attract such a huge number of visitors?
The reason why blogging can work as a small business is because there is an emerging market that would support it.
In a traditional marketing sense, attracting audience to a product, for example a magazine or newspaper, was in the hundreds. You needed an advertising campaign, an ad agency that would execute the idea and hope you covered all your basis and got the audience you wanted. In the case of a blog, the cost of building a readership for a blog is practically nothing.
But, it's not easy to build an audience. It doesn't happen over night. Technorati, tracked over 34.5 million weblogs with 75,000 new blogs being created every day. That's a lot to choose from.
Technorati does help in exposing your blog with ping configuration. So, that's the first step. Making sure your blog comes up in web searches.
What about advertising? You can't exactly sell advertising on your blogs. Google's AdSense, which places text advertisements on blogs help generate a few cents per mouse click. That might bring in spare change.
Then you update daily, grow your audience and when your business gets large enough, hire a staff. Or how about signing up with Weblogs, Inc., and letting them connect you with the advertising and the audience.
If all fails, you can always search The Problogger Job Board and work for a company that needs people with opinions.
posted by Anna Kat at 12:45 PM
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