Blogging for Blenza

Blogging is a great way to showcase your mind. It allows you to express your thoughts and passions in ways that the strictures of life may not always allow. It's like an online diary of sorts or rather an idea journal, allowing you to vent and birth your intellectual property toward some objective. The aims of blogging can be expressed as a continuum with extremes characterised by self-expression and the greater good to some external goal or objective with a selfish reward, e.g. money.

Very few people have been successful thus far in bringing that continuum full circle where they are getting paid for blogging on issues or personal passion.

Here are some ways I believe one can make your blog a business:

1. Take citizen journalism to the next level and submit your blog as a legitimate member of the press to cover events or issues within your area of interest. Eventually people will acknowledge you if you are worth your salt and have the readership/ followership to prove it.

2. Use your blog to pitch your business' products or services to potential customers. This requires a clear strategy for your offline business which can then be echoed through the web log/ blog. It also requires a clear understanding of who, where and how to reach your customer.

3. Set out to blog regularly and emphatically. Regularly does not necessarily require having an editorial schedule of topics and days for blogging unless you are sufficiently disciplined. I personally prefer to blog on what I feel keen about at a given point in time, within the context of web 2.0 communications.

Emphatically meaning that you have to have certain goals or outcomes in mind - to drive sales, to garner new business, to gather research from your target market, to manage your reputation 2.0, to have a strong online presence within your marketing mix with which to engage your customer, etc.

Making money or blenza as some Barbadians would say, will only come about as far as I'm concerned when you get these basics right. When you do, you will be able to make money. Problogger.net suggests the following ways to get paid through your blog:

1. Sell advertising space on your blog.

2. Have salable by-products such as research data that you can then offer to your readership and general target market.

3. Building up your brand to the extent that someone is willing to acquire it is also another option.

4. Merchandising or selling branded materials through your blog is another way that revenue can be generated.

5. Last but certainly not the least, is using your blog to promote your availability as a consultant or a speaker/ authority on a particular topic. Some speaking engagements include payment for travel and accommodation as well as a speaker's fee, while others may only cover your accommodation forcing you to make money through selling your books or other products at the event and seeking sponsorship to cover your remaining expenses.

One exception would be google adsense or adwords, where you can sign up and accrue payment if and when readers visit your site and click on certain paid links. I personally think that that does not necessarily equate to being paid to blog, although people visiting your site and being able to click may be a direct consequence of your blogging and being searchable or however they find your blog site.

While it sounds great albeit farfetched or unrealistic to some, it is a trend worth following or event attempting to ride at this time. My only caution is that the web is, in this web 2.0 environment, still on an anti-marketing marketing gradient, forcing all bloggers to have to give somethings away. More on that later!

I'd be glad to hear your comments below!

Follow this blog for regular updates on Lyrical Lava's perspectives on marketing and public relations in Barbados.

Further Reading

Use Your Blog to Land Paid Writing Gigs: 9 Practical Tips