As we have been suggesting in our previous article, blogs can be extremely profitable ventures (primarily through advertising, endorsements, mentions, etc.) provided you write the blogs the right way. Here are some important points to remember if you want to leverage blogging as a revenue-generating activity:
- If you read a couple of blogs at random (and some of them are fairly popular because they were the first ones to be launched), most of them essentially keep linking to other blogs/websites with a casual comment added (though not even that). So all these bloggers do is keep reading stuff on other websites and then just put a link. Well, you have created some value for your readers by doing the hard work of finding something interesting, but the next thing that a visitor does is to click on the link and leave your blog. So if you complain that your advertising revenue is closer to zero then it is your fault.
- Blogs are still evolving and our analysis shows that they could become essentially substitutes for some website content (not all though). In the beginning, blogs were initially online diaries (and teenagers grabbed on to them and used blogs to basically gossiping online) but that is no longer the case. While some well-written blogs are still somewhat personal, business blogs tend to be a compilation of well-written articles. Links may be added when they are valuable and relevant but these blogs do not rely on links - they create their own content. And that is the value. If you tell your readers something that they don't know and only you know, you have created value.
- Another recommendation that we have is not to mix personal posts/articles with the overall focus of your website. So for example, you want to run a successful blog on fishing. Well, then stay focused on fishing and related topics. If you go to the mall and look at some fishing gear, then it is OK to write about it but if you ate a hamburger and met some friends there is no need to mention that in your "fishing" blog. For such personal stuff or to talk about "anything" it is best to have a "personal" blog. Blog directories are emerging and they tend to characterize blogs by topics as the website directories do.
Recommended blog to see how a blog should be run as a business