CSI Blog 4 Business

I have been a member of the Atlanta Bloggers Meet-up group for some time, but have not been able to attend an actual meeting, until last week. Boy, I’ve been missing out! I knew it deep down, but you know how you just don’t listen to that little voice in your head that says, “Go, go go!” But, you tell yourself that you can afford to miss it?? Well, now I know that I can’t afford to miss another one.

Here are some things that I learned from this past Wednesday’s meeting:

Why are you blogging in the first place?

Simple question, but how about the answer? Why are you blogging, fun, profit, something to do? A few years ago no one even knew what a “blog” was, let alone a blogger and now it’s a way to make money, if you choose to take that route. If you are just starting out and just want to blog for fun, go right ahead, share all your thoughts, impressions and information, no one’s going to stop you. But if you are blogging for profit, there are a couple of things that you should figure out first.

1. What category does your blog fall into? You should pick one and stick to it, it’ll make it easier for you to choose directories to list in and for search engines to classify your content.
   1. News & Politics
   2. Business & Finance
   3. How to/Self Help
   4. Techie
   5. Entertainment
   6. Sports
   7. Culture & Social
   8. Niche
2. Who is your audience”
   1. Women
   2. Men
   3. Teens
   4. Specialized or Niche groups
3. How will you market your blog?
   1. Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace
   2. Buy Advertising
   3. Hire an SEO expert

1. Invest time in learning and implementing SEO tactics

1. How much time will you spend marketing your blog? How will you measure the affectiveness
2. What type of content will you create?
   1. Hire other people to write and post for you
   2. Write all the content yourself
   3. Create videos and post them
   4. Create podcasts and post them
   5. Review products or services and post the reviews
3. How will you generate revenue?

1. 1. Affiliate links
   2. Sell your products and services
   3. Lead generation
   4. Sell advertising

What’s In It For You?

It’s a little twist on the classic WIIFE (What’s in it for me) theory that resonates throughout advertising, but this time, you need to look at what you are going to get out of this, verses what you are going to put into it. Since you are looking at this blog as a business or at the minimum another income stream, you will need to look at how you will measure the effectiveness of the routes that you are taking to make money and see if they are indeed working. You will also have to come to terms with the fact that in order to make this project a success, you will have to dedicate some time to making it successful. Sure, all of us wish upon the dream that our content will magically strike the hearts of millions and they will come to our blog in droves just to see what we are up to. That could happen, but will it? Who knows? The only sure way to find out is to put your content out there and make sure that its seen by the people who are looking for it.

Finally, take a step back and imagine that you have been working on this blog and putting all these strategies in place for one year. Where do you think you will be in one year? How will your blog have blossomed and matured and what is the status of the income stream from your blog? More importantly, what are you able to do now that you couldn’t do before because of the income that you are now making from this blog?

Once you can answer these questions, you will be able to set your plan in place to make your dream a reality and create a blog that meets all your needs and helps you to achieve the lifestyle you crave.