5 Simple Tips To Turn Your Blog Into A Business
This article is guest posted by Matt S. An emerging blogger who posts frequently on his Tumblr Blog, creatively titled XeonFunk. You can network with him on Twitter, Digg and FriendFeed.
As bloggers we are all (whether we consider ourselves them or not) businesspeople. You may not realise it yet but like all businesses you probably have outgoings (to cover hosting, design etc.) and probably incomes (from advertising or donations). Though many of you reading this will be operating on a small scale at the moment it will help you enormously going forward if you get yourself into good business habits. So this is how you can learn to treat your blog as a business:
1. Go to Work.
Blogging is not such a simple life. You may believe, and this was certainly true of me when I started out in 2007, that you can sit in front of the TV with a laptop and write any old rubbish which someone is bound to like. It’s important to find a nice working environment which is quiet and distraction free so that you can fully concentrate on the task in hand. This will make you much more productive and give you more time to relax after work.
It may also be good to get out of the house. After all, it’s better for your family if you don’t mix work and home life. If you are really serious and can, rent out an office or try this. If you don’t want to, work from home but use an office space and make sure to separate this from your home life. Make sure you leave work by 6pm each evening and come home even if it is the same building.
2. Get to work on time, and then use it wisely.
If you intend to make money from your blog your will need to put in the hours. Set yourself a weekly timetable and stick to it. Within the timetable you’ll need to assign time for different things that need to be done.
GET TO BED EARLY - GET UP EARLY.
This has affected me from time to time when I wanted to do something but ended up wasting a day because I stayed up too late the night before. Even if you’re not an ‘early bird’ you should get up by 8, even if you don’t start working until 10. Here is a fantastic post regarding this issue from ZenHabits.Net: Benefits Of Rising Early
3. MIT – Most Important Tasks.
In Business deadlines must be met. If not you may face a slap on the wrist, disciplinary hearing or even get fired. The disadvantage of blogging is that you are your boss and so these things won’t motivate you to complete a task before the deadline and you’ll get lazy. If you blog with a partner or team of bloggers then discuss in the morning what you want to achieve during the day and by doing this you will subconsciously feel a bit of pressure because you don’t want them to know you have failed.
The majority of you will work alone however and you cannot get this pressure from others, you need to exert it upon yourself. Here is where MIT’s come in. As Leo of www.ZenHabits.net says, you should allocate yourself at least one MIT per day. This is not your sole aim of the day, but a task which must be completed. He also recommends
“Do your MIT’s first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. If you put them off to later, you will get busy and run out of time to do them. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy!”
I would also suggest that writing this down on a chart first thing in the morning would help keep it at the back of your mind so that you are compelled to do it.
What is an MIT?
- Write a blog post
- Post 5 thoughtful comments
- Set up a social media profile.
4. Organise your ‘Company’s’ Finances.
This may seem pointless at first but this is another way of keeping your home and work lives separate. It may help you to open a separate bank account. I have 2 bank accounts. One holds my savings and one holds a smaller amount of money which I use from day to day and also use to top up the other account from time to time. My rules are that I don’t touch my savings and that I continue to add to my current account regularly.
I would imagine that many people (especially beginners) couldn’t or wouldn’t be bothered to take the finances of their blog seriously. If you are blogging for pleasure or enjoyment and don’t wish to worry about money perhaps this is not applicable, but if you see blogging as a career or a lifestyle (even if it’s only a little earner on the side) you should invest some time in this.
For most people, this will involve nothing more than a piece of paper detailing advertising earnings and perhaps a new PayPal account. But if you adopt this habit from day one you’ll be in control and aware of your finances and you can devote more time to creating magic with your pen. For some however, such as those of you who blog at sites like these; keeping track of money may be a bit more difficult.
Final tip: Make one sheet with two columns: the left for outgoings and the right for incomes. Make sure you control what you spend on your blog by balancing the left and right sides.
5. Quality not Quantity.
I will begin this point with a metaphor. Say you went to a shop with the intention of buying strawberries; if the strawberries had were covered in mould you definitely wouldn’t buy them and you probably wouldn’t go back there looking for strawberries.
The same applies to content online. No matter how many ‘strawberries’ you offer, you’ll get no sales if they’ve gone off. So instead of concentrating on chucking content out there, slow down. Seriously consider how many blog posts you can afford to write without compromising the quality. There’s no point in writing 3 ‘knee-jerk’ posts. Instead allow yourself to mull over what you’re going to write and get your conclusion set in your mind before you start, make notes if it helps you.
But I think the most important thing is to write the post carefully. Take your time without compromising productivity. For example, I wrote this post in three one-hour sittings over three days. This gave me plenty of time to consider my thoughts before I finished the post. There were one or two occasions where I disagreed with what I’d already said but because I wrote the post over a longer period I had chance to change what I’d written. Finally and most importantly you must check over what you’re going to submit.
Why does Quality Matter? Within this post alone quality has been displayed. Not by me necessarily but by those stories I have linked to. The better, more informative and even entertaining a post is the more likely it is to get linked to and recommended and all that adds up to more traffic to your blog.
I hope you found these tips useful and would encourage you to implement them. If you have any of your own habits to share please leave them in the comments. Thanks.
Related posts:
- 10 Top Tips for A Better Blog
- Useful Tips To Organize Work Areas And Blog Better
- Do You Write Quality Blog Posts Frequently?
- Analysis Of Today’s Typical Business Hierarchies
- The Shortcomings Of Blogging As A Viable Business Model Also: Insights Into The World Of "Make Money Blogging"
Tags: blog, blogging, business, early riser, finance management, lifestyle, paypal, productivity, proof reading, quality not quantity, time management, work from home
Posted in Lifestyle and Productivity
The ideas work well for those that have been at this for a while. I can agree with most of this post, there is a small problem with those of us are trying to create another stream of income by blogging and this isn’t our only job. The posts try to come out in a thought provoking method; however, when you’re just starting you may need some content beyond the banner. There is also the problem with just getting people to read the stuff you write and driving traffic to your site. You may want to take another look at this from those of us that work into the night to come up with posts.
I think you need tip #6, i.e patience and persistent.
Making money from blog is a long term business process. Successful businesses are not built overnight. So along the way, you may encountered some failures and hiccups and keep trying until you get everything right.
These difficulties mean that I have very limited amounts of time to actually write posts, manage the blog etc…It’s all about developing a regimen that works; whilst also having flexibility and spontaneity from time to time. A fantastic comments, thanks for sharing. You are always welcome back!
People who take it slow, plan it out and execute a project well are more likely to see results and in turn, have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. People shouldn’t be phased by the people who have made it big at an early age; we should all have our own personal goals, not influenced solely by other people’s successes.
I always tell people to be a leader, not a follower and remind them that it’s not about being the next TRUMP or the next GATES…It’s about being YOU. Emulating success is good, but creating that success based upon your own plans and ideas is better. A very empowering comment, thanks so much for contributing. See you back here very soon!
[...] Professional bloggers definitely run their blog like a business. SmallFishBigMoney has a guest post with five important suggestions for you to consider. [...]
Just a comment about your layout…the fish are all leading the reader’s eye to the scroll bar. Either flip the fish on the banner or switch it to the right so it leads the reader to the text.
If you look at any newspaper you’ll see the images always face the text or the page beside it, they never “look” off the page because that encourages readers to flip the page without reading anything on it.
A Nobody: Your consideration is greatly appreciated. I apologize for any inconveniences caused - I am not using a new theme and you’ll be happy to know that the fish no longer exist, they drove up my blog’s load time and they were not really adding much, so I removed them.