Self Employed or Bust

Self Employed: Blogs and websites

July 13, 2008 – 1:01 pm

One method of building personal wealth and independence with the objective of firing my boss and becoming self employed will definitely involve blogs and websites. My research has shown that both are viable means of building revenue but I must warn you that the path is rarely as easy as some people make it sound.

In order to be bringing in any real money your blog needs to provide value. If the content doesn’t bring in readers, you’ll see a smattering of pennies here and there and that’s about it. With that in mind, think about what you love or have a particular talent for and base your site/blog content around that.

Next, even good content will do nothing for you if nobody comes by to read it. There are proven means for building traffic to your blog or website and we’ll discuss those in detail down the road. I don’t want to offer much in the way of explanation until I’ve had the chance to apply these methods here to see if they really pay off.

Another element is consistency. If you post a random thought now and again, you will not be rolling down the road to riches. I can’t begin to tell you how many blogs I’ve stumbled across which started strong but eventually trickled down to 1 post a week, then a couple posts a month until finally expiring entirely. Blogs with entries dated well over a year ago litter the web. If you can’t commit to consistently updating then this is not the best pursuit for you.

I myself have both a blog and a website that do not receive regular content updates (and several others which do). I created both between 9 months and 1 year ago when I first decided to experiment with this medium. Neither has earned more than a few dollars. Why? Well without regular updates, there’s no incentive for anybody to visit. Without visits, no ad clicks or views. Without ad clicks or views… NO MONEY.

Why did I give up on those sites? Because I jumped in half-baked without knowing what I was getting into (a mistake I hope we can avoid together here with future endeavors. If not, I’d rather learn the hard lessons first so you don’t have to.) I do not consider either the blog or the website failures. The website will live on with content updates growing in frequency. The blog I’ll leave dead and buried so I can focus my attention here and on the experimental blogs I’ve setup (more on that in our next post on keyword sniping). Even killing the defunct blog (or leaving it dead) still represents a success for having learned a lot from the experience. Failure is a learning opportunity. Never think of it as anything else.

Finally, there’s the simple truth of time and this is the big one. Throw up a blog and, no matter how good the content, it will not realize its potential immediately. The only sites that start strong from day one are those that already have fame built in or the benefit of publicity (such as a website for a radio show). If Angelina Jolie started selling calendars online with pictures of her in skimpy clothing, she’d probably start realizing profits from a website right away as publicity comes easy for her. Even then, though, the site would not realize its full potential until word got out through effective marketing. That takes time.

Time, time, time. That one word is why I’ve already written two posts on the importance of patience and persistence. Remember that, whatever avenues we pursue, they will be doomed to failure without commitment to the process and patience with the time it will take.

Now you’re probably wondering just how much a successful website or blog could actually bring in. Enough to quit your day job? Absolutely. One example of a successful blogger is Everton Blair who started his blog, Connected Internet in 2005. His September 2007 earnings topped $13K (for one month) with most of that coming from Google Adsense and direct ad sales. You can read it in his own words by visiting his blog earnings post. What’s important to understand is that he made this money after 2 years for a blog he originally started as a hobby. I haven’t projected out his probable earnings to 2008 but I imagine he’s bringing in considerably more than that now. If he hasn’t quit his day job yet, I suspect he will be soon.

It’s important to understand that there are far more blog failures out there than successes. As with any business, if you aren’t devoted to success, you won’t achieve it. But that blogging can represent personal financial growth is indisputable. Let’s hope we can duplicate Everton’s well deserved earnings!

Stumble it!