If you want to blog for business, blog on a topic you are passionate about and the money will come in due time.
Does it actually work that way? May be it used to, but as far as innovation and development in technology goes, passion may get and keep you doing what you love doing but it will not make your blog a reliable source of steady passive income; a real online business. If it’s all about passion, there wouldn’t be the need to bother about search engine optimization, blog promotion strategies, learning wordpress codes (HTML, PHP etc) and other technical stuffs that are not anything close to fun for most people. The few bloggers and internet business owners that love to do the technical and analytical part of the business would do fine on such niches, but for most new bloggers who intend to turn their blogs into a business, you just have to keep learning willy-nilly.
Passion is an essential factor to start and keep building your blog. In fact, it’s an ingredient you almost cannot do without. But for the business part of blogging, it takes more than passion to achieve your business goals.
The Plan and the Details
It’s not enough to set up a blogging, then start writing and posting about the subject of your interest. With some SEO (which is more necessity-driven than passion-driven) this approach may bring readers to your blog but we already know that it takes more than traffic to make money online. A blog or website with 500 daily visitors could be making more money than one with 3000 daily visitors in the same niche. That’s practically possible considering a lot of factors.
Your Blogging environment
Being a cook is not just about preparing a delicious meal. Keeping the kitchen tidy and making the ingredients readily available also makes it a lot easier; mhmm! I can tell because I cook. -:) Does your blog design show you are serious at what you do? A blog with an untidy look and feel will have some difficulty converting prospects. If all you care about is writing and publishing (the passion) without deserved attention to the virtual business environment, you will keep losing out on a number of visitors, which will cost you some value (fans, subscribers, referrals, money, repeat customers and all).
Your Blog and Trends
Do you use the right tools and technologies? Keeping up with the latest trend in the blogging industry is a lot of work. I personally don’t stress myself over every trend (like I’m yet to sign up for Google+ and I don’t think of it as a matter of urgency). However, there are business bloggers that spend a lot of time and money keeping up with the latest technology and innovation. This can make a lot of difference for businesses that take advantage of ‘useful’ tools during its early stage in the market.
Your promotion strategy
Some bloggers will recommend you go everywhere people gather while some will recommend you choose a few sources and be the master of it. Both have sound reasons for their advice. Personally I prefer to pick one or two get the best of it and then try another. The advice of build it and they will come no longer works. And a promotion strategy that works for one blog may be a waste of time for another blogger. If you love (the passion) hanging out on Facebook, and your potential visitors hangout more on twitter, that would make a Hugh difference in the growth of your business. Some internet marketers would say they no longer bother about search engine optimization; they just write and depend on social media and viral marketing. Compare such bloggers with ones that optimize their posts for search engines and also leverage on social media, and you can draw a line between bloggers with levels of business successes. If you focus on the promotion strategy that aligns with your obsession more than one that aligns with the business, it will make a whole lot of difference on the pace your blog becomes a business.
Your Monetization Strategy
A blogger with high reader engagement that sells his own product/service is more likely to make more money than a blogger that simple writes what he thinks his readers need, then clap Adsense on the blog to make a few dollars without bothering about Adsense optimization. Also a blogger that focuses on readers’ experience, combined with healthy search engine optimized content and with ads (contextual and direct ads) could easily make more money than a blogger that promotes affiliate products readers are not interested in. The point is to study, experiment and learn the best monetization strategy for your blog. It takes more than passion to work this out, and what works for one blog may not work for the other.
Your call to action
It is said that one of the most important quality of an (internet) entrepreneur is your ability to call readers to action. A blog with 500 daily visitors with a strong and compelling call to action resulting to 20% conversion rate is likely to be more successful than a 3000 visitor’s blog with poor or no call to action – resulting to 1.5% conversion. If you do the mathematics, the first blogger (with 500 visitors) converts 100 visitors daily while the other (with 3000 visitors) converts 45.
While a some bloggers would want to shy away from the seemingly technical and analytical aspect of blogging for business, hoping to bypass to success with ‘the passion’, the above factors among several others are what makes the difference between a growing business blogger and a mouse-in-a-mill blogger.
Your Comment
What have you found to influence your achievement so far in blogging for business? Is it your passion or is there more to it? I’ll love to hear your comments on this.
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I agree that passion alone doesn’t guarantee business success. You need to sell what you’re passionate about so you still need to work things out like promoting it. 🙂
Exactly, you need to sell what you are passionate about.
Thanks for the comment Tiff.
This post is really great, Thanks a ton for sharing it 🙂
Yes You are right Iyke. Only Passion is not enough to turn your blog into business.
Sure. There is more to it.
Your post is AWESOME!!! I can’t tell you how many times I have seen and heard people talk about blogging their passion and the magic power behind the passion will make them money on the back end..I absolutely agree with you any income generating blog is way more than just a passion. I love your “Call To Action” too.. It is like doing a very good presentation and not going for the close. What good is the presentation if you are scared of closing the deal. At least go for the close without appearing all salesy and pushy.
You really have great content here. Thanks
Thanks for the beautiful comment and kind words Liz.
Truly correct Ikenna. Only Passion is not enough to maintain a blog. 🙂
Hi Ikenna,
I feel if you are passionate enough, you attract all the right tools, people and circumstances to help you become a wildly successful blogger.
So having an unbridled passion to blog for business is a starting point, helping you attract the mental tools, plans and people you need to monetize your blog. Dream, do, and tweak 😉
Thanks for sharing your insight!
RB
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the comment.
I agree that with undying Passion you attract… But I still think two separate things are involved: The passion to do what you love and the desire to succeed at what you do. The latter provokes more willingness to adapt.
I appreciate your feedback.
Madness is enough to maintain a blog. 😀
I wish I could understand better.
Osho, do you mean to say, we need to be mad in blogging and must forget the world we have besides blogging? :p
I think Osho has a good point.. Maybe it’s part madness, part passion, part necessity.. Or maybe madness is passion set ablaze due to the pressures of necessity?
Well, we can debate semantics all day. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of counter statements about the whole “all you need is passion” debate. For some, passion may replaced with love of money or themselves.. but that’s still the same theme: passion, a razor-sharp, unbreakable focus, keeps you persistent regardless of what happens.
Now, with that out of the way…
I agree that you need to have a plan.. At the very least, if you are blogging as a business and planning to fully monetize efforts, you have to consider a good revenue model and be realistic.
As you and I both know, usually people start off with AdSense because it’s an easy way to get residual income.. But they pay chump change (maybe a decent residual, supplemental income if you’re lucky) unless your blog is truly authoritative and gets more traffic than Washington DC streets during rush hour (chances are you can’t beat that unless you are part of the blogging elite).
Some bloggers jump in with unrealistic expectations so it’s good to find something like this.. You’re not dismissing the potential everyone has but you’re urging everyone to plan and prepare. Anything can happen, after all!
So, what are some of your favorite ways to promote your online content? I’m a big fan of StumbleUpon myself.. Feel free to add me – I got by Yogizilla on StumbleUpon and Twitter!
Thanks for sharing this on the “interwebz”. Very useful info and I’m sure the newbies will have some eye-opening “AHA!” moments. 8)
Hey Yomar,
Quite an interesting piece you shared. To say that I almost fell for “Madness is enough to maintain a blog”. I like the part of being realistic among other things. Understanding that the world won’t come to you, you go for it.
I have an account on StumbleUpon but not sure I had visited it in months. For blog promotion, SEO has been my lot with a mix of facebook (more of) and twitter.
Thanks for stopping by to comment. It’s good to have such insightful comments that adds up.
Yep, passion gets you started and helps keep you going but running a business goes beyond passion. It’s a tough balance for sure. SEO and other business basics aren’t always the fun parts of working online. Thanks for the outline on how to implement both, Ikenna!
You’re right Sherrie. The balance between passion and business necessities can be a tough one to impose. One just have to be dynamic and rebellious enough to keep on.
Quite an interesting post on The Rebel business owners over at your blog.
Thanks for the comment.
Wow! Definitely agree with you on this one. It’s definitely passion which drives to continue doing what we love and do actually do it with a smile in our faces. It’s something we will do without being told to. Great post my friend! Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog! 😀
You’re welcome Pj. It was nice finding your post from Google search.
Passion gives some support but this element is not only to get success, because there are mixture of things involves in every success, great post.
Blogging can help a lot in business and they can be used for marketing too…
nice post Ikenna!
I’ve been struggling to determine what niche am I passionate about without sounding too self-centered. This is one aspect that prompted me to delete more than one personal blog before. However, the personal touch contributes to making a blog post authentic, if not sincere. It’s true that passion can help things going, however irrational it can get from time to time.
The Internet seems to be an infinite wilderness. It would really take more than illogical passion to navigate it successfully and survive in the process.
Thanks for writing a great post, Ikenna.
Hi Leann,
I can relate to your story. I also had to start and delete more blogs than I finally retained. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s more like a journey to self discovery. You keeping trying different things until you find one that appeals to you the most. It sure beats sitting and waiting for one perfect hit.
Finding a passionate niche and balancing personality with readers interest seems to be something most bloggers have to struggle with in the early stage of blogging. But you did put it rightly, “the personal touch contributes to making a blog post authentic, if not sincere”.
Just like in our daily lives, it’s one thing to do what we have passion for. It’s another thing to desire to achieve success doing it.
Thanks for coming by friend. I appreciate all your comments.
Thanks for replying to my comment, Ikenna. It’s quite unfortunate (and challenging) that most people (including me) experience a clash between what they passionately do and doing what they can “to achieve success doing it”. Many times people also have to let go of that passion (or their dreams and interests) to deal with the cruel reality of survival. Why I say cruel? Simply because the kind of economic system which fellow humans have developed and spread has made it difficult for millions of people to live a decent and comfortable life.
The online realm is just an extension of that reality. Those who have the means to create and sustain technology in a seemingly imperialistic or hegemonic fashion make it such a struggle for people who are not privileged enough to compete with their humble resources.
Much as I want to pay for my own domain and web hosting (as what you’ve advised in your other posts), I couldn’t do so yet because I still lack the means to support such move. And the rules, which are supposed to keep things in order, are essentially made to protect the turf of the privileged or to preserve the status quo.
Bottomline? As long as people struggle to survive, the passion to do things that we want, including to blog about personal interests, dissipates. Some would say “Money can’t buy happiness.” True. Yet, people have given such inanimate object so much value and power over most, if not all, aspects of life.
A good friend who happens to be an SEO expert like you advised me to produce “evergreen” articles. I’ve been trying to do so that’s why I came up with a product review site. Thing is, it’s a struggle for me to discipline myself and write for survival’s sake. It’s best to write and not worry about money, but only a few have experienced (or will experience) such a feat as long as we have a greed-friendly economic system.
Quite an intriguing analysis you’ve put up Leanne.
It’s really unfortunate when people have to let go their dreams and aspiration to face the outside world ‘REALITY’ (though, personally, I think the idea of reality can be misleading sometimes- more on that below). The economic system (in most countries), having been design to control human resources, almost totally influence the life outcome of a higher percentage of its citizenry. For one to really achieve the success s/he craves for, the option is to go against the norm. Trying to change the system would likely result to a lifetime of misery. Accepting and following the system as is (the REALITY) will get him hooked up with the system (resulting in the rat race).
Another alternate? Create your own system, that’s the hardest part. I know I may sound weird but that’s how I think about this and here is how it worked for me.
As a university graduate with a degree in Petroleum Engineering, I spend my 1st three years after school loyal to a system that wasn’t working for me (one year waiting doing petty hustling and one year compulsory national youth service), then one year searching for a job, while also trying out my hand on finding legit ways to earn money online. I soon realized how the system has been in control of my life all the while, and then decided to quit job hunting and focus on blogging and minor side hustle. That was the most miserable time of my life and I appeared like the insane loser in town (but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for my decision). The crazy part was that I didn’t have a desktop computer (let alone a laptop). At least I had my Nokia 3230 phone. At this point I needed more than passion to get my blog where it will become profitable to get me a better life. Blogging with my phone ended up buying me a laptop and earning a comfortable monthly income with other child offline projects.
I’m not telling this story to sound like a genius, or to take a superior stance, NOT AT ALL, but to explain my point of going the extra step to achieve desired goals, regardless of how impossible the system has made it to work for you.
The advice from your SEO friend is a good one but you still have to mix it with trending posts for some in vogue traffic. Also, It seems you are building several blogs at the same time. There’s no rule to it but I highly recommend you focus on building one blog first. It will help me build more energy into it.
So what are you planning to do next? -;)
You used a mobile phone to launch your blog? Wow. That’s cool. I know it isn’t impossible, but just imagining how you managed to construct one using such device is a huge challenge to one’s creativity, determination, and patience. So, kudos to you. Hope there will be people without a laptop and Internet connection for the meantime who’d be inspired by what you did.
Now, with regard to my long angsty response to your earlier reply, I have to admit that I have this “like”-hate relationship with money simply because society or the privileged class has given it so much power, enough to dictate or influence the mobility and capacity to survive of the billions of others who don’t belong to their group.
With the recent news about Steve Jobs’ death, I couldn’t help but feel how sadder. Why? Not because Jobs is no longer around (I’d like to think people like him who’ve endured ill health for quite awhile are now “happy” that their physical suffering is done and over with), but because – as I watch the news – famous people like him get so much media attention when there are maybe one or two billion people who have no idea who Jobs is and what precious technology he’s helped produce for the benefit and convenience of those who can afford to buy an Apple because they are “busy” worrying about where to get food to eat in the next hour or so to survive another day. And when any of these people die, would it matter the way the “world” right now mourns Jobs’ death? Even in death, the rich and famous – whether they are a genius like Jobs or not – managed to secure a piece of public consciousness and praise.
I have mentioned in Stella’s blog (that’s where I found your site’s link) that I am thankful to Google just the same for giving people like me (us) an opportunity to earn online, however little amount that is. But how many people have access and can afford an Internet connection, much less a computer or a laptop or even a mobile phone or even know how to use these gadgets? Does it matter to Google if there are many struggling online humans who have been negatively affected by its Panda attacks? I very much want to go against the system, as what you’ve said or to defy dogma and pursue a dream (as what Jobs expressed in one of his speeches), but I have a tendency to give up whenever I lack the resources, even the moral support to keep on going. Nevertheless, I continue to hope that things will be okay in the end, even if I may sound negative or angsty in my online blog posts, including my replies here, most of the time.
My next move? Honestly, Ikenna, I am ambivalent about thinking what to do next because there have been many times when my plans have crashed in spite of my efforts. Still, I’d like to fulfill all my online and offline writing work, including writing new posts for my four blogsites even though I am spreading myself too thinly with them.
I will try to heed your advice about focusing on one of my sites first. Hopefully, I won’t get easily discouraged when things seem to go south.
Thanks for corresponding with me, Ikenna.
Have a good weekend.