Blogging for Profits
ASTRID NICHOLLS
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Copyright © 2011 Astrid Nicholls
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN (ebk): 978-1-4658-5439-1
ISBN (pbk): 978-1-46993-456-3
NOTE: The material set out in this book is only for general guidance. Laws and regulations are complex and constantly changing. Readers should check the current position with the relevant authorities before making personal and/or business arrangements. The author and the publisher cannot accept any liability for loss or expenses incurred as a result of relying on any statement made in the book in particular circumstances.
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Image Credits
Cover image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Small chapter images:
Post-it blog: jaylopez / sxc.hu
Relaxed blog icon: LuMaxArt under Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Main parts images:
Introduction: Jonny Goldstein under Creative Common Attribution 2.0 Generic
Research and Development: Jonny Goldstein under Creative Common Attribution 2.0 Generic
Starting Up: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Expanding: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Contents
Develop Services Around Your Site
Connecting with readers and suppliers
Optimizing Your Business for Relationships
4.2 Develop new products and services
Buying and Selling Blogs for Profits
Blogging is more than managing blogs
Market, Market, and Market Some More
1
– Introduction
1.1 Introduction to Blogging
Nowadays a blog can be many things, and serve a wide variety of purposes. The very first blogs – before even they were called that – were personal diaries. Now, they are used by businesses to stay in touch with their customers. Some blogs are informational, usually focusing on particular subjects or themes – niche blogs. Some are purely fictional – tools for fiction writers trying to build a following for themselves. Others are collections of a particular media – such as videos or pictures. And yet others are multimedia: blogs with all kind of different content, and often viewed on different platforms too; from computers to mobile phones, laptops to PC tablets...
History of Blogging
Blogging did not appear as suddenly as what you may think. The idea of the Internet as a mean of expressing your ideas and communicating with others has always been around. Websites always were an excellent way of showing others what you are interested in, or in the case of a business, what you have to offer. And email soon became a favourite mean of communication: after all, it's free, instantaneous, and international.
People on the Internet very quickly grabbed onto the fact that the Web could allow them to make themselves heard. Even the basic web page was a way to spread your message. In the mid 90's, many people were using simple web pages and websites as personal diaries. It was a past times best reserved to those with at least some basic HTML or coding. With only little help available in the form of web designing software, it was best you knew what you were doing already. In particular if you wanted to your site to look half way decent. But just like in real life, what people really wanted to do was communicate. They wanted to both be able to read what someone thought and answer them to present their own views and ideas. This is how online communities and a little later forums started. And software evolved to allow people to write answers to previous entries – thus creating the forum threads.
The blogging revolution started with the arrival of the first dedicated blogging platforms. The very first of them was Open Diary. The site launched in October 1998 and was the first example of the now widely used hosted blog service. In less than 12 months, several other services were launched: LiveJournal started in March 1999, Blogger.com in August and Diaryland in September. With these arrivals, weblogs became accessible to all. Knowledge of HTML, although useful, was no longer necessary to keep a site.
It is also in early 1999 that the term blog first appeared. It first started as a joke when Peter Merholz transformed weblog into we blog on his own site. The term caught the eye of Evan Williams, co-founder of Pyra Labs and one of the brains behind Blogger.com. This is where the name of the platform comes from. It soon led the term to become widely used – both as a noun and a verb.
Blogging as a Business
One thing I cannot stress enough is that you should not launch into any kind of business without researching carefully. Sadly, too many people think that starting their own business is something easy enough. They then run into trouble when they realized they have no idea on how to find and secure orders. Let's try and avoid this mistake here and learn as much as we can about blogging before we launch.
The Blogging Industry
It is actually not that simple to learn anything about the statistics of blogging for profit. This is because although it is now recognized as an online industry, blogging is still mostly viewed as a tool by the business community rather than a business opportunity. The shift has only recently started and data can be hard to come by.
In 2005, Technorati reported to be tracking 14.2 million blogs. By June 2008, they had indexed over 112.8 millions blogs since their 2002 debuts. By the end of 2009, the number was 133 million and still growing. This is a pretty impressive growth of just over 835% over 4 years. True these numbers may also include abandoned and spam blogs. But this just illustrates how popular the medium is and how much it is being used.
If you are looking for data about blogging, and how much it holds over consumers, read the State of the Blogosphere reports that Technorati publishes every year. According to State of the Blogosphere 2011, 18% of bloggers did so as a way to create an income – either to supplement their primary income, or to replace it altogether. 8% are asked to blog as part of their current job. And 13% are entrepreneurs, blogging as part of their own business operations. You are looking to join one – or more – of these segments. Technorati have also found that consumers now trust bloggers more than they do mainstream media. These numbers speak for themselves: blogging is becoming a lucrative business model for many. And competition is hotting up very quickly.
When it comes to sub-markets – or niches as bloggers call them – blogging works similarly to its parent industry, publishing. First, markets are separated by broad age groups – adults and children. Then they are separated by subjects. Unlike traditional publishing however, blogging niches can be extremely narrow. Where publishers have to target broad demographics in order to recoup their investments, bloggers can cater to very small markets because of the low overheads of running a blog. So if a publisher produces a book on how to train your dog, as a blogger you can target people looking to teach their dogs to dance.
Tip:
Although information on the blogging industry is a bit scarce, it does exist. Go to your local business agency or Chamber of Commerce, and see if they can help with your research
The Blogging Model
As you enter the blogging market, you will effectively become a publisher. A provider of information. Readers will come to you for one or more of these reasons:
they want to know more about your chosen subject;
they want to learn the latest news about that subject;
they want to know your opinion about an issue;
they are researching a product or service relating to your subject.
As a blogger – and publisher of information – you will be offering this and maybe even more. However, you are at a disadvantage to traditional publishers. Books, magazines and newspapers mostly have models where the readers pays for the information. Blogging is traditionally a free medium. And so, in order to make your business viable, you need a clearly defined strategy to bring money in.
Typically there are three ways to make money using a blog:
advertising;
affiliate marketing, and;
selling products.
We will take a closer look at these and other income generation methods in a later chapter.
Tip:
Grab pen and paper now. Keep notes as you read through this book and jot down ideas and questions as they occur to you. There is too much to remember and do when starting a business. Don't rely solely on your memory.
Blogging – Where to Start?
If you are entirely new to the world of blogging, the first thing you should do is read from the blogosphere. Just go to Google Blog Search, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Technorati, LiveJournal... and search for blogs to read. See what is out there and get a feel of what you'd like to do with your blog. You don't have to worry about choosing a theme or subject yet. You don't even need to worry about how you will make money. The aim of this exercise is simply to see what others are doing, and get a vague idea of how you will do things on your own blog.
Once you have a good idea of what your favourite style(s) are, you can decide on your platform. There are many software for you to choose from in order to create a blog. In effect, blogging software are specialized Content Management Systems or CMS allowing the author/editor/manager of a blog to easily create and edit posts and manage comments left by readers. Other useful features can be added to the core software to customize it further to your particular needs.
There are far too many possible software and services to use in order to create a blog for us to list here. So here are some of the most used:
WordPress – This is one of the major players in blogging today. It is easy to use, and is quite powerful thanks to the numerous plugins maintained by the community. What's more, it's open source, and so the actual core software is free. With WordPress, you also have the choice between the hosted and self-hosted versions.
Blogger – Just like WordPress, it is free. It also has the clout of Google behind it. Blogger is a hosted software, meaning that as soon as you register, you will be able to blog. No need to go through installing the software anywhere.
TypePad – This one is widely used by some of the major broadcasting corporations – such as the BBC, CBC and Sky News to maintain their blogs. You will have to pay a monthly fee to access the software, but hosting is included.
Movable Type – If you decide on using this software for your business, keep in mind you will need to purchase a license for the Pro version.
Drupal – This is a more general CMS than the more specialized ones cited above, but it is widely used to create blogs anyway This is only for those willing to self host their site.
Laws and Regulations
This is an area that many people choose to ignore, thinking they now very well what can and cannot be done. I suggest that you at least read through it. You will be surprised at the amount of things you may learn.
Warning:
This is only an overview of the laws you may fall under. Kepp in mind that more rules and regulations may be passed at any time. Also remember that rules differ between countries, and you should be aware that what is legal in one country is not necessarily so in another.
Copyright Laws
Copyright is something that will both protect you and something you have to follow. In the UK, anything you create is copyrighted automatically to you. There's no need to register anything so long as you can prove you wrote it. You should note that it is only the actual written words that are copyrighted: ideas are not, and nothing stops a competitor from taking your idea, putting their own spin on it and publishing their own work. They just can't use your words or create a work that is too obviously taken from your own. Copyright for written work last 70 years from the death of the author.
Copyright is also something you will need to careful respect as a professional blogger. Just as you do not want people using your work without permission, most other works are protected. On the Internet, everything is copyrighted, even if people tend to forget that since it can be accessed for free.
In order to use materials – that could be posts from other bloggers, pictures, videos or other media – you have found on the Internet, or even offline, you must first find out who holds the copyright and what kind of rights are available to the work. For example, most books and ebooks are usually 'all rights reserved'. This means you cannot use the material within in any way without the permission of either the publishers of the authors, depending on who holds the rights you are looking to exploit. The best way to find out what right are available is to track down the copyright holder.
The Internet has also spread three license types that could be advantageous to you. PLR is an abbreviation for Private Label Right. The most usual definition for this license is that you can reuse the PLR work and claim it as your own without even editing it. One should be careful to read the license properly as not all PLR license gives away all rights.
The second license type to look out for is CC, or Creative Commons. CC actually host a wide variety of licenses Creative Commons is a non-profit organization based in the US. Their licenses were created to help share creative works in a legal manner. So long as the license allows the work to be used for commercial purposes, you can use it.
Finally Public Domain defines all the works with expired copyrights. As mentioned above, written works stay 70 years after the death of the author. Musical compositions are copyrighted for . The actual recordings of these compositions are copyright for 25 years after their first release.
Ecommerce Regulations
The Internet is a non-place to which each country around the world is trying to apply their own set of law. Your customers could come from every part of the world and have very different laws when it come to doing business online. These regulations make it a requirement to tell your customers that they are agreeing to the laws of your country – or at least the laws of the country your business is based.
You need to give your customers a certain number of information about your business. Your business name, address, and other contact details – such as website, email address, phone and fax numbers... should be shown. You should also have things like your VAT registration number – if any – details of the professional bodies you are a member of. If you have to report to a particular body for regulation purposes, you should also have their details somewhere on your site. These do not have to appear on every pages of your site. Most people simply put these details in their 'About Us' page, and/or in their Terms and Conditions.
If you display your prices on your site, you must indicate whether or not they include taxes and delivery costs. You should explain clearly how to fill the order form and offer your customer a way to go back and correct errors. Also you have to give your customer the opportunity to print a copy of their order for their own records. This can be either by presenting them with a page to print with a summary of their order, or by sending them an email with all the relevant details.
The Distance Selling Regulations 2000
These regulations aim to protect consumers who are not present when buying something. This is why they would apply to you. Technically, they would only apply if you sell your own products, but it is always good to check that your affiliate partners are following most of these rules. If they do not and your readers get in trouble on that site, it could harm your relationship with them.
According to this set of rules, you should have on your site, or offer during the ordering process, the following details:
details of the supplier;
terms and conditions, including how to cancel and complain, any guarantees, and customer services after the sale;
confirmation of the order;
delivery times.
Consumers are also allowed to change their mind within 7 days, starting from the day they receive what they have ordered. If you forget to write down about this in your terms and conditions, the cooling off period is automatically extended to 3 months.
Data Protection Act 1998
The Data Protection Act deals with the information you request from your customers. You can only ask for the information you truly need for delivering your products or services. If you keep a database of past customers, you must keep it up to date, and allow the people on it to access and change the data as and when they wish to do so. You obviously also have to keep these details secure, and should not give those details unless you have your customer has agreed to it or it is necessary for you to do business. If you have to transfer the data to a country outside of the European Economic Area, you must make sure the data will be stored securely in that other country as well.
Libel
There is a famous phrase in the world of publishing: 'Publish and be damned.' As soon as you hit the publish button on your blog, you will become entirely responsible for what the post says about people. And this mean you could be sued for libel: the publication of false statements with the intent to harm a person's good name and reputation.
This is where you have to make sure that everything you write is actually true. If you are reporting on rumours, you should check carefully whether this could be true and word your post carefully. Even the use of words like rumour, alleged, and supposed, will not stop people from suing you if they think they have a case.
TO DO
Read blogs.
Read some more blogs.
Keep track of every ideas and questions that occurs to you.
Research the laws involved carefully, to be sure you understand what you let yourself into.
1.2 Is this right for you?
You now have a better idea of what may be involve in owning your own blogging business. The questions you have to ask yourself now is: can you actually work for yourself? And if you can, is blogging the right business for you?
The Entrepreneur Mindset
Before you actually go any further, you should really sit down and work out if you are cut out to be an entrepreneur. If I were to ask, you would probably tell me that you are attracted to the lifestyle: being your own boss, working your own hours, the potential of earning millions as your business takes off, more times to spend with your family and enjoying life...
The problem is that this view of the self employed life is for those who have been in business for years and have manage to make a real success of their business. Starting up is a lot of hard work. It will take you a lot of time. To start a successful business, you will need a set of skills – both personal and business-related. Some of them can be taught. Others are more difficult to acquire if you don't have them already.
Your personal skills should include:
motivation;
organization;
multi-tasking;
evaluating situations, and;
making decisions.
Those are the skills difficult to acquire if you do not naturally own them. That does not mean you cannot train yourself to become all of those things.
Motivation is probably the best tool in your arsenal when starting your own business. Here is a painful statistic for you: it takes an average of 3 years to establish a business, and most fail within the first 12 to 18 months. You will need to stay motivated through these difficult few months. There are many reasons to start a business. Surprisingly, making money is not usually high on the list.
Most people hope for a better lifestyle – a better family-work balance. Others just want to be their own boss and have no one to answer to. Some have simply always dreamed of starting their own business. In our current economy, people who have been made redundant and those who can't find full-time jobs take this step as a way to get back to work and earn a living. Just find your motivation and keep it in mind through the rough times.
People tend to start a blogging business because it is easy enough. As most online businesses, it can established from home without any trouble. It also allows to start part-time if necessary, working around your primary job.
Organizational skills are needed by anyone in business. There are a lot of things you need to keep track in a business: work deadlines, stocks, sales, payments dues and received, customers problems, taxes... And if you forget some of them, you could very well get in trouble. Some people are naturally more organized than others. But anyone can learn to work more efficiently. Make good use of the features most phones now boost: calendars, alarms, and memos to help you remember everything you need to do.
Blogging add to this the needs to research your subjects, write and edit your posts, and keep up with the news in your chosen subject(s). As your business grow, you may also nee to find freelancers, and keep track of the work they do for you, its quality, and the payments you make to them.
Multi-tasking is an off-shoot of your organizational skills that will need to be developed fairly quickly. Most of the time you will be working on different jobs at the same time. And you will probably need to accomplish all of them to strict deadlines. Blogging in itself is simple enough. The problems really start when you have two or more sites to update every day or so. If you want to create enough posts to update your site(s) regularly, you will need to research several articles at the same time. You will also need to market your business and your sites continuously in order to keep bringing traffic in. If you are building a list alongside your site, you will also need to create and sent your newsletter regularly to keep the attention of your readers.
The last two skills we have listed previously – evaluating situations and making decisions – are probably the most important skills for your to develop. Everyone uses these skills in everyday life. You find that your favourite shoes have a split across the sole. You need to buy a new pair, so you check how much you can afford to spend. You look for a new pair of shoes and find several you like. Finally you decide on the best pair according size, style, colour, and price.
This example may be silly, but you established what your problem was, its solution, then worked your way to that solution. You need to apply those same skills in your everyday business life. You must be able to see the threats to and opportunities for your business before your competition. You should then plan how best to overcome difficulties and take advantage of circumstances as they occur. This is where market research really comes in handy, as it can help you to identify threats and opportunities before they affect your business too much.
Personal skills as good habits
Do not despair if you find that you possess only one or two of these personal skills. Look at it this way: personal skills are only good habits to be taken and consistently applied to your life. To be organized, you only need to make use of all the tools available to keep your work load compartmentalized. Calendars, diaries, memos, reminders on your phone, project management software... All of this can be used to help you.
If you find your motivation fails you from time to time, keep yourself motivated. Write down exactly why your are starting your blogging business and display this prominently on your work space. Look at this list when you feel down and remind yourself why you're working so hard.
When it comes to evaluation and decision making, your best bet is to look at what other entrepreneurs are doing. Look for news from the past few years and see how different businesses reacted to the same piece of news in their industry. Work out what you would have done and if it would have been successful. Talk to other local entrepreneurs and see what they are doing in response to their own threats and problems. Help them if you can, and they might help you in return.
Business Skills
All of these can be learned at your local college or at home with the help of books or the Internet. Following are the very basic skills you should acquire if you don't already have them:
The best way to learn about selling is to get a job in sales. It is unlikely – although not impossible – that your local college will have a course focusing on selling. A broader business course will probably teach you the basics, if you are willing to spend longer on studying. Alternatively, you could try to pick the brains of a few friends and acquaintances working in sales. Learning from books is also an option. Whatever your way of learning, remember to monitor your results. This will help you to establish the best techniques for your business.
What you need to remember is that you rarely get a second chance to sell with blogging. If you don't grab your readers attention from the start, they are likely to go off and never come back. And if you do manage to transform them into recurring readers – or even better, subscribers – they will only read your posts once. You need to make sure that every single of your selling tools – whether they are reviews, banner ads, or even the design of your site – are optimized to ensure sales.
The one good thing is that your readers will be somewhat interested in what you're selling, so long as it is relevant to your subject. There remains the problem of directing interested people to your blog, but we will discussed this in more details later. Having interested people on your site, you simply need to convince them that a particular product may be the solution to their problem.
In the world of blogging, negotiation skills are probably not used as much as in some other businesses. Most of online transaction do not allow for bartering. This is particularly true as you are starting your online venture. However, as your blogging business grows, you may find you need to negotiate contracts with freelancers. If you grow large enough, and know your suppliers face-to-face, you may also want to negotiate with them to get better discounts, commissions, and/or prices for the services they provide you.
As with selling skills, customer service skills are better experienced than taught. There is nothing better to prepare you to deal with a difficult customer than facing one. Dealing with customers through your blog will be quite different than having one on the phone. Most complaints will come in the forms of comments or emails.
Never reply to a bad comment or email in anger. People are entitled to their opinions and more often than not it will be very different from what you think. Even if the comment is really rude, take a day or so to think up a polite reply explaining your point of view, or describing the useful features of a particular product.
Book-keeping is one business skill you really should invest in. It is a legal requirement for you to keep records of every transactions made by your business. This is also important to work out your accounts. Some people prefer not to get involve in this and leave it all to their accountant. Others will pay for a book-keeper to go through the trouble of putting all the records in shape, ready for the accountant to prepare the accounts.
I say book-keeping is too important a job to leave it to another, in particular at the beginning of your business. Through book-keeping, you will always know how much your business is spending on what and when. You will also know how much money you have in your account and whether or not you can afford that marketing campaign you are thinking about.
Blogging Skills
Blogging does not require much more than the skills we have discussed previously. For the sake of completeness, here are the skills that are particular to blogging.
an understanding of computer technologies;
researching;
writing, and;
editing.
As we have already noted, blogging has been made very easy with the arrival of dedicated software. However, you still need to know the basics behind using a computer, and web hosting. You will need to learn to use your chosen blogging software, and how to design your site around it. Without these understandings, starting a blogging business could be a lot harder for you. If you are not already familiar with computers, a course at your local college is probably the best thing for you.
When it comes to web hosting, the best place to start is the Internet. There are plenty of places offering free hosting. This will allow you familiarize yourself with what will be require to work your business. I can recommend Byet Host as a place to get free hosting. Their free hosting will not be suitable for your business, but it's a good place to learn about web hosting.
We have already had a look at several software to power your blog. Once you have chosen yours, set a training blog up for yourself. This will allow you to work out exactly how the system works and if it is really for you. Most blogging software have a community of users willing to help new comers who run into trouble. Once you have chosen you blogging platform, you can learn to design around the software. Or look for ready-made themes fitting your subject.
Researching is important. After all, you will not know everything about your subject and will at least need to stay up to date with the latest developments and news in your chosen subject. However, research should not stop at what to write news story or review next.
You should always keep an eye on your readers as well. See where they come from, if they subscribe to your blog and how. If you can, find out about their demographics – age, gender, where they're from, education level, marital status... All of this will allow you to tailor both your writing and your marketing efforts to reach as many people fitting this profile as possible.
Obviously writing is a very important skill for a blogging entrepreneur. You need to develop your own peculiar style. This will be an additional hook, that will hopefully get your readers to come back regularly to read your newest posts. The better you write and the more unique your style, the greater the chances to transform occasional readers into subscribers.
Remember that you will also need to sell products and services through your blog posts. In order to do so successfully, you need to convince your readers that buying whatever it is you are promoting is a good idea. With that in mind, it might also be a good idea to invest in a book to teach you the basic of copywriting – the art of writing advertising and promotional copy.
Editing is also a good skill – or rather set of skills – to have. Of course, most of us now use word processors with built-in spellcheckers. And many blogging platforms have also a spell-checking feature included. However, these generally don't account for grammar: they don't make a difference between its and it's, there and their... It's all good to a spellchecker so long as the word is in their database.
It's true that writing style is generally informal on blogs. But bad grammar, and glaring mistakes will turn off even the most relaxed readers. Always take the time to proofread your post after letting it lie for an hour or two. It can only improve your writing.
Experience or Not?
Actually, this is the one thing you do not need to start a blogging business. So long as you have a good grasp of writing, and are eager to learn everything you can about your chosen subject, you can blog. There are no course for you to take in order to fulfil a legal requirement. All you really need is good writing and good ideas for posts.
There are plenty of people online who have started with no previous business experience. They learned on the job, so to speak. You can do exactly the same thing. There's little doubt you will make mistakes, but so have others before you. It's just how you will learn.
Obviously, any kind of experience will allow you to start better and quicker. Any professional writing experience will give you confidence for researching, writing and editing your posts. Any customer service experience will help you to handle your readers and harsh critics.
And if you want that experience, you can still go and get it. Go to your local newspaper and see if they would allow you in their office to see how things work. Talk with journalists and see if they can give you some tips. Go to your local charity shop and volunteer for a few hours. This will give you some hands on experience of dealing with customers. Ask your local Business Link office or Chamber of Commerce if there are seminars or events you could attend in your area. Contact other blogging entrepreneurs and ask for their advice. Although busy, most will recognize themselves in you and might be willing to help.
The Money Problem
This is probably the one thing that stop most people from starting a business. It can be very expensive. Blogging is probably one of the cheapest way to set up a business. But it will still require a good amount of money from you before you start breaking even – not even mentioning making a profit.
No business can start without a solid amount of money in the bank to deal with all the costs associated with starting and running a business. After all you will need a computer, access to the Internet, a printer for the paperwork, a desk to put all on, and a locking filing cabinet to keep all your records safely in, and a small budget for marketing purposes. And that's before you look into stock, product creation, promotional items, accountant fees, training costs...
You need to keep in mind that for the few months at least – maybe for as long as the first 3 years – you will not earn enough to live off your earning. All the money will have to be ploughed back into your business Even when you finally reach the break-even point, most of your profits will have to be put back into the business in order to make it grow. All this means that you will not be able to make a living from your business. As such, you need to make sure you either have enough savings to live off or have access to another source of income.
TO DO
Evaluate your personal skills. Can you cut it in the business world, or should you re-think your decision to start working for yourself?
Take a serious look at your current business and blogging skills and evaluate where you fail to meet the basic requirements.
Find training opportunities. How much it would cost you to brush up your skills, or learn new one?
2
– Research and Development 
2.1 Business Basics
Now that you know a bit more about blogging in general, let's see what it takes to start a business. There are a few things you need to know and some decisions for you to make.
Legal Structure
There are four basic business structures to choose from in the UK:
Sole trader
Partnership
Limited company
Limited liability partnership
Most bloggers remain sole traders – or the foreign equivalent – quite simply because it is the easiest way to set up and run a business. You only need to let HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) know that you have started your own business so they can update their records and send you your Tax Return and your National Insurance contribution bills.