Bloggers write on any number of things, but some of the most popular topics include: politics, technology, celebrity gossip, fashion, self-help, motherhood, and surprisingly—yes I would posit surprisingly—feminism/alternative female lifestyles (2008’s top 50 most powerful blogs). This got me to thinking, as a soon to be graduating English major with—as some would say—moderate delusions of grandiosity, couldn’t there be a realm of writing that wouldn’t lead me directly into the respectable, bookish, not-so-horrible-but-I-have-way-too-many-creative-ideas-to-just-settle-with-a-way-of-making-money career field?
While most people make very little if any income at all in the blogging field (personal/professional), that is not to say that it is not something that can be done.
When I first broke into the world of internet surfing, dot com’s, and the ethos of the blogosphere—no it wasn’t until the summer of ’99 that I stopped using my electric typewriter and tapping the knowledge of the Encyclopedia Britannica—I had little knowledge of what exactly it was that I was looking for or for that matter, at. I found myself in the throws of a deluge of blogs (the now defunct backwash.com, grrl.com, and the also now defunct sparkleglitter.com which featured underground pop culture, alternative lifestyles, and a load of interviews with such celebrities as Eddie Izzard and Michelle Tea). I didn’t realize that all of this unintentional immersion would lead to a realization that I wouldn’t have until March of 2010: to blog is to live, or rather, the exhibitionist-style medium of blogging could serve as a handy platform in getting my writing/music/performance art ideas out there into places other than my basement.
But, where to begin? How does one monetize their blog? What sort of things should one write about if they are looking to create a genuinely robust slew of subscribers or info-snackers? What about web hosting? Is it fine to go with a free hosting site like blogger.com or wordpress.org? Or, is that, in some way, taboo or looked down upon? Is advertising such as Google’s AdSense enough to generate a small income? What is the deal with guest blogging spots? How often should the blog be updated? How important is content really? All of these questions were at the forefront of my mind when I began to research blogging as a business in and of itself.
There are some genuinely upper crust aficionados when it comes to professional blogging and a quick search with Google will definitely reinforce that notion almost immediately (Darren Rowse’s problogger.net and Kiesha Easley’s weblogbetter.com if only to name a couple). Upon perusing these aforementioned blogs, I found such a wealth of information concerning professional blogging that it had somewhat the effect of my being blindsided and run over by a gaggle of segways—infuriating yet spectacularly prolific at the same time. Everything from which brand of camera Rowse uses to record his video blogs to which type of images to attach to blog entries to increasing revenue via affiliate sales and advertising revenue are covered on said bloggers websites. Coming from the perspective of being a blogger with a six-figure income (namely Darren Rowse), I think it is safe to say that Rowse’s guru-status effectually reigns supreme.
A simple ten-step guide could suffice, but even this process is not the golden rule platform in all of blogging. For example, in Randy Morin’s ten step guide to professional blogging, he projects a potentially novice blogger through a prescribed trajectory of one whose html learning curve is fairly low and aesthetic chops is not much higher. While he provides a great jumping off-point for disseminating the essence of the blog all over the interwebs (creating a Feedburner account in order to track how many people visit the blog and how they are accessing it, posting an entry a day, knowing what other people are writing about in your blog field, creating a del.icio.us account for bookmarking links, monetizing with AdSense, keeping up with the momentum over time, and finally refining the blog/checking the stats using such things as indexing tools for search engines—ala Google Webmaster Central—and sitemaps—Google’s being a fairly standard to work with), he does not however take into account the creative visual license that many bloggers may have—Blogger still being less sensitive to the tweaking of certain html and other code.
While Morin’s “standard” format might not appeal to all who want to begin their first money-generating blog (again, visual aesthetes, I hearken to you), it does however give considerable insight into some of the most effective methods of beginning the endeavor. That being said, here is a slightly modified ten-step-guide to starting a visually pleasing, multimedia blog:
Step One: Determine your niche. What is the blog going to be about? If piggybacking on the ideas of other bloggers is your style you may want to follow the path of such successful bloggers as the ones at Huffington Post or Perezhilton.com.
Step Two: Decide on a web host. There are various web hosts which are wildly popular such as Blogger and Wordpress.org, but the fact may remain that you want a blog which looks classy, has plenty of bandwidth, and has it’s own domain name—which is way more professional looking after all. Some of the more popular hosting sites for dot coms this year include but are not limited to: justhost.com, iPage, 1&1, webhostingpad.com, dreamhost, arvixe, inmotion, Host Gator, Host Monster, and Go Daddy.com. For many of the web hosting sites mentioned the fees are low to moderate, they offer ‘round the clock support, free setup at the onset of inception, and the free creative license to set up your very own personalized domain name. If generating code is not necessarily your forte, there is always the option of going through Worpress.org and using their pre-generated themes. There is a small fee with Wordpress.org, but it is by far one of the easiest and most widely used platforms, which even enables you to retain a personalized domain name. However, if a little bit of html does not scare you and you have a little bit of startup capital, investing in a software program which enables you to create with visual placements and source code such as Adobe Dreamweaver may be the preferred path.
Step Three: Create a Feedburner account. It is totally important to know how many people are reading your blog and how they are accessing it. There are several avenues that could be taken in this process, but the most standard is to go with an RSS format as opposed to say, the new rivaling Atom feeds. These subscription feeds keep readers linked to your blog even if they are not directly accessing the physical site. With the amalgamation of such feeds, readers can directly access new posts via aggregators such as Google Reader, RSS Reader, and Feed Demon, which compile all of the reader’s favorite websites into one concentrated location.
Step Four: Write one blog entry a day. This is a mantra I had adopted before I even considered starting my own blog. It seems simple enough: the more often the material is updated, the more traffic you will generate. Maybe this comes from a musical background of practicing everyday for at least 30 minutes a day, but I kid you not, practice does make perfect—well, pretty good anyway. Also, tagging each entry with a few keywords wouldn’t hurt in directing readers to the site who wouldn’t regularly find themselves there in the first place (I once tagged a photo I took of an Andy Warhol-ified Paris Hilton painting with some coincidentally relevant thing Paris Hilton had said that week and I saw my stats soar from some pretty bare bones numbers to thousands of hits per day).
Step Five: Read similar blogs. While it is important to retain a unique voice while blogging, it is also fairly essential to know what your blogging competition looks like. What sorts of stats are other blogs looking at and what types of posts are gaining the highest amounts of readership? Also, another easier way to keep in touch with this information can be done through RSS feeds. Google Reader, Great News, and RMail are all advanced bookmarking systems, which send any new news from your favorite sites straight to your email. A pretty handy tool which eliminates the sometimes-arduous task of flitting from one site to another in search of new, pertinent information.
Step Six: Going along with the idea of tagging interesting links as previously mentioned, setting up a del.icio.us account would certainly be a wise idea as well. The logic in so being that, when you are posting links to other bloggers posts, writer’s articles, and various other websites, the creators of that content will more than likely find out about it and decide to see what it is you wrote about them or referenced them for. If those individuals like how they were represented in the post or the general content of the post for that matter, they are likely to become a subscriber, regular reader, or other such patron.
Step Seven: Leave one or more comments a day on similar blogs. It might seem like a trivial thing to do, but if the comment is meaningful and creates a discourse that is either eye-opening, thoughtful, or just plain chock full of horse sense; it could generate a buzz for your blog. Leaving a signature link back to your personal blog at the end tag of every comment generated could very quickly transmute the blog into a household name. While Randy Morin posits that leaving a few mundane comments a day smattered amongst the clever ones is all right, I would have to disagree with that. If wit is essential to the continuity of the blog—as I have decided mine is—then it is only wit that may be dished out.
Step Eight: Monetize, monetize, monetize. There are a number of advertising methods that can be utilized: the most standard and simple method being the inclusion of Google’s AdSense. It is important to remember that AdSense can only be added if there has been considerable activity going on with the blog. Morin suggests a couple of weeks, but if the blog seems like it could use a bit more bulk, don’t rush too quickly into the ads. Another method of advertising is to create your own ads. With a little knowledge of software programs like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, the creation of an ad/branding/logo doesn’t have to be too daunting of a task. Start blazoning your blog across the World Wide Web!
Step Nine: Keep at it. Gaining blogging momentum is like gaining a following of fans for a musical group. It takes a lot of time, effort, and earnest moments. If the content holds a draw, it will do just that: draw. “If you build it they will come,” but be willing to wait a little while for everyone to file in the door to the blog party.
Step Ten: Keep people reading. Google Webmaster helps keep track of your blog’s statistics, indexed sites, pages that are similar to your blog, and pages that link to your blog’s front page. This is a great tool to simultaneously keep tabs on the progress of your blog as well as improve the future progress of the blog. Some web hosting services are already equipped with this tool (wordpress.com for example), but just as with wordpress.com, there is no option for the monetization of the blog, which could be a fairly large hindrance if professional blogging is an end goal. Also, another application that Google employs which is good for indexing purposes is Google Sitemaps, which can be accessed via Google Webmaster.
So, now fully equipped with the gainful knowledge of beginning a blog, the only postscript step left is to actually execute the creation of the blog. Keep in mind however, all logistics aside, one of the most important things in maintaining a blog is to have a constant influx of new material for every post. I would recommend having an immense backlog of material for future posts in case the creative wells run dry at any point. But no, for shame, that would never happen to a vegetating young writer such as you! Right?
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