From Blog to Small Business

Deb’s note: I started writing this post on the plane to Las Vegas (and BlogWorld) last week. Since then I’ve seen Darren Rowse’s post at ProBlogger called, “The #1 One Reason My Blogging Grew into a Business.” Check it out if you can, it’s a must -read for anyone who wants to blog for a living.

FWJ began four years ago as a blog filled with leads for work at home moms like me. As you know, it’s evolved quite a bit over the past few years. Something happened this past spring that caused me to change my outlook about FWJ. Instead of a simple blog or network of blogs, I treated it like a business. Don’t get me wrong, I was always business-like in my dealings and accounting, but in June, I took it to a whole new level.

When I lost my full time job, I decided I wasn’t going to look for another. Instead, I wanted to work harder on making this network more profitable, and more beneficial to those reading it. Instead of looking for a job, I was going to make FWJ my full time job. It made a difference.  Instead of simply posting and building traffic, I’ve also been:

• Meeting with accountants to find out my next course of action as a small business owner.
• Negotiating with advertisers
• Researching advertising, traffic, SEO and other blog building techniques
• Working hard on branding
• Working hard on FWJ’s (and Deb Ng’s) social media presence
• Forming lucrative partnerships which will enable this network to keep going
• Doing some heavy analysis into the demographics of this community and other freelance writing communities
• Networking, not only with other freelancers, but with other people and businesses to form mutually beneficial relationships

Some of the things I learned at this time:

• You can’t please everyone
• You have to spend money to make money
• Networking totally rocks
• If you focus on one thing, instead of multitasking, you’ll have better results
• Sometimes you just have to go for it

Some of the changes I noticed since devoting my full time attention to FWJ:

• Traffic has seen a significant increase
• Advertisers have been coming to FWJ, instead of the other way around
• Ad revenue beyond private sales (Adsense, etc.) has increased to the point where it’s a full time income
• A major online brand inquired about purchasing FWJ
• Lots of Tweets and ReTweets featuring FWJ links
• Community growth
• A whooooole lot of email
• More links to blog posts at FWJ
• Major brands have taken notice

This is only a few months worth of work and effort. Can you imagine if I had put this much time and energy into FWJ since day one? Of course, that wasn’t possible because I needed to help provide for my family. However, being patient and persistant and not giving up over 4 1/2 years enabled met build FWJ and see it to its potential.

Luck vs Hard Work

Someone once told me I was lucky. This has nothing to do with luck. I worked hard to build this network. It became a huge part of my life. I focus attention to it every day. It’s kept me up late, and caused me to rise very early. It’s been the subject of blog wars and forum spats. It’s my life, not luck. I have to tell you, it’s not easy to come up with content every single day for 4 1/2 years.

Is it Worth it?

You bet it’s worth it. I’m not going to claim to be some expert, guru, A-list problogger, but I managed to find something that I love – something that works. It’s been worth all the time and effort I put into it. As Darren Rowse said in his post about blogging as a business, when I stopped treated my blog as a hobby and more as a business, it began to work for me.

If you want to make your blog work for you, know that it’s not easy. It’s not as simple as opening up a blog, stocking it with keywords and slapping on some ads. There’s a lot of research, promoting and networking involved.

Tell us the story of your blog. Is it a business? Can it become a business? What are you doing to ensure its success, and what are some of the results you’ve seen since beginning?

Monetizing Blogs: Know Your Readers

If there’s one thing I learned in four years of FWJ, it’s that if you don’t know a thing about your community’s habits, you won’t be able to monetize your blogs. For instance, most of the freelance writing community are “clickers” not “buyers”. Putting up affiliate ads for products and services doesn’t work. However, many pay per click ads work or job search tools that pay me for each sign up also do OK. Truth be told, the bulk of FWJ’s income comes from Google Adsense. That doesn’t mean Adsense is the best source of revenue for you, however.

I didn’t learn all this right away, however. It took years of trial and error. I tried to sell books, writing products, magazine subscriptions and other items of interest of writers but no one was buying. Now I use a combination of job affiliates, pay per click and text link sales.

Sell Products on Product-Oriented Blogs Only

If you’re wishing to monetize your blog, your going to have to research your demographics and your community’s habits. For instance, if you have a food blog, folks might be ok with affiliate products for cooking stuff. If you have tech blog, selling gadgets may work well in your favor. A poetry or history blog might not do so well with product sales though.

Analyze Your Traffic

Many times bloggers will start a blog and immediately put up ads only to wonder why no one is buying. Give it some time and use your stats to analyze your traffic first. After traffic is flowing, figure out where folks are coming from. Learn what they’re talking about and what their interests are. Engage them in conversation. Learn which posts get the most comments, back links and traffic. Once you know your readers’ habits, you’re ready to monetize your blog.

It Takes Time

Finally, know that it takes time for a blog to bring in income. If I use FWJ as a case in point, I earned pennies at first. After several months, I was earning between $20 and $50 per month. It took two years of steady traffic building for me to earn $100 or more each month in revenue. Now, four years later, I’m earning over $1,000 a month. Of course, much of that goes to the maintenance and content for this blog, but that’s for another post. My point is, many bloggers make the same mistake. They start a blog, throw up a few random ads, and throw in the towel a few months later when the money isn’t flowing. Taking the time to do it right makes all the difference in the world.

An Adsense Cautionary Tale

Many people ask me why I still use Adsense at FWJ. I tell them it’s because, for some reason, this blog network is hard to monetize. I get the best results from Adsense, plain and simple. It makes up for about 74% of the revenue earned here. We’ve tried other forms of advertising but this is the one that brings in the most money here. That’s why when I had my Adsense revoked for FWJ it hit us very hard.

I couldn’t figure out why this would happen. We don’t ask for clicks nor do we run ads from a competing networks. So you can imagine my surprise when Adsense all but disappeared from FWJ. The reason? It was the “Support our Sponsors” box at the top of the sidebar.

I have since removed the offending heading and hope to be reinstated. In the meantime, I offer this cautionary tale to you. Even something innocent such as encouraging your readers to support their generous benefactors can be enough for you to lose your Adsense income.