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(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
First, a disclaimer. I’m not trying, in any way, to dictate what your blog is/will be about! If you have an idea, a vision, something you want to write about, by all means, do so! This part isn’t about nullifying your choices, but about giving you new ones.
This may be useful, though, if you haven’t decided yet what will be the theme of your new blog, and you really want it to be successful. Or maybe you already have a blog, but want to start a new one in parallel, possibly to expand your horizons, and also earn a little money.
I can’t choose the subject for you. What I can do, however, is give a few tips:
- To be successful – and profitable -, a blog will require regular posting. Not a couple of times a week. You should aim for 2-3 posts a day. They don’t have to be long ones, and they don’t have to be “works of art” – sometimes (depending on the subject) a link to a new, related article, plus a couple of paragraphs with your opinion, are more than enough. But what makes people come back is regular posting (I’ll talk more about this in part 9 – Quantity). Are you ready to commit yourself to this? Yes, this includes weekends. Unless this is fun to you, it will feel like work. Even then, it can be one of the most interesting “jobs” out there… but don’t fool yourself, it does require commitment.
- If money is one of your goals, it will require a lot of patience. While you’ll probably get your first check in less than 6 months, it will take a year of more (of regular posting – see above) before you are earning more than $50-$75 a month. To quit your job (assuming you’re not filthy rich or have other sources of money), it will take 2 years or more. Blogging can earn you a lot of money, but trust me: it is not a “get rich quick” scheme. It’s not “quick”, and it’s, in a way, hard work – though it can be a lot of fun at the same time. It will take a lot of time and effort before you can buy a house from blogging.
- Finally, the blog’s subject. You thought I forgot? First, it should really be something you care about. Don’t think something like “blogs about digital cameras make a lot of money, so I’ll create a blog about them, even though I couldn’t care less about cameras or photography”. Remember, there are already a lot of blogs about digital cameras, and most of them will be maintained by people with a passion for digital cameras. You can’t really compete with those. Your passion is a requirement. One of them.
- Be prepared to read and research a lot. No matter what your blog is about, you can’t succeed without subscribing to at least a dozen of related blogs, plus a couple of search feeds. And those are to be checked, and read, daily. If you have a job and kids, it will be very hard to find the time to do it every day.
- Your blog should have a topic, and stick to it most of the time. Don’t try to make a blog about everything and the kitchen sink – it won’t work, unless you’re already a celebrity.
- Ideally, that topic should be something with a high demand and a low supply. Such a theme is getting increasingly hard to find, but it’s still possible.
- Is there enough… well, “action” in this theme that you can write something new about it every day? For instance, a blog about some band that split up in 1986 (and remained split) may exhaust its subject in a month or two…
- Finally, think about whether you’ll still want to do it after your initial enthusiasm has worn off. A lot of bloggers post a lot at the beginning, but after a while they slow down, lose enthusiasm… and then they wonder why less and less people visit their blog.
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I agree with most of those arguments, except for one. The quantity. It’s not the quantity that makes users come back, it’s quality. Of course, if we’re talking about 1 post per week, people will loose interest, but if that one post is relevant and well written, it’s as good as writting 4 posts a day.
I’m saying this not as a blogger (which i’m not a successful one, nor do i aim to be a celebrity) but as an user. I subscribe to lots of blogs which don’t have that quantity but still manage to make effective and interesting posts. To me, that big ammount (4 a day?) is a huge turn off as a reader. Specially when most of them are reblogging or linking. Links should have their place in a blog — on the side — , not in their main stream of thought.
But hey, these are just my 2 cents.
It depends, I guess, on what you want to do with the blog – just write a bit when you feel like, or really be successful and earn some money. It also depends on the type of blog.
But I admit, 4 a day may be overdoing it for some kinds of blogs. Oddly enough, I wrote “2-3″ in a similar post on my personal blog. But people are lazy: if I say 2-3, they’ll write 0-1, so I thought that by saying 4, they’d write 2 a day. See, I care.
I’ll edit the article and change it to “2-3″, it’s more reasonable.
Indeed. I believe each blog is a different blog. So the authors are the ones who should decide the frequency. ANd yes, if you want to increave revenue, more posts mean more visits, more pageviews, more ad-clicks. I just don’t think that’s what makes a blog great — at least, not that alone. I think Asterisk ( http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/ ) is an exception. A good frequency with high quality contents.
This all comes down to the existential question for bloggers… “are you a thinker, or are you a linker?” It’s very hard to make well-thought posts every day, let alone more than one. Like you said, it should be fun, if itsn’t, you better think if you want to have a blog in the first place. If you become a slave of your blog, then there’s no point in having one, now is there?
I think you’re thinking (what a phrase) in terms of “writing a lot of garbage so Technorati and stuff show the blog as “recently updated” more often, so more visitors come”. But that’s not what I mean at all (though I’m sure some people do it).
Sure, a personal blog with 4 articles a day will run out of things to say pretty soon – and it’ll degenerate into “I went to the bathroom. Then I came back. Now I’m bored again.” stuff. We all know those.
But, say, a blog about digital cameras, or mobile phones, or just a particular kind of mobile phones, or games for a certain platform, or local (really local, as in “the neighborhood”) news, or simply a blog with several co-authors… suddenly, 4 posts a day aren’t too much, there is probably enough to say about the subject, without posts being just links (though well-commented links are good) to related articles.
If you really like to write, however, there may come a time when it’s a good idea to create another blog, instead of flooding your blog with 10 posts a day. Besides, blogs, to be successful, should be mostly specialized. But that’s a subject for another series part…
Well, kind of. I’m thinking about people who simply post links to to other articles, sometimes just quoting the original article and not add anything of value to the discussion.
But you’re right, engadget is an example of that. High frequency and quality, multiple authors (i think). There are so many types of blogs that it’s unfair to generalize. I just made the mistake to think inside my sandbox… lol.
[...] It’s something I’ve also mentioned before: blogging for money is not a “get rich quick” scheme. It’s hard work, and takes dedication, talent, a bit of luck… and, above all, time. In this particular case, I don’t mean “time” as in a lot of hours a day, but in the sense of “been doing it regularly for years”. Because: [...]