Whatdidyoufndout: Whos Making Money

This guest post is by Brandon Connell of brandonconnell.com

When I first started a blog that I took seriously, it was to promote an ebook that I had published on Amazon’s Digital Text platform. Initially, I wanted the blog to be my “author’s headquarters,” but soon after, I realized what I really wanted to do with my blog. It was far from my initial goal, and I wish I’d made the right decision from the beginning, rather than reversing course.

The problems

Changing your blogging type after you start the blog causes problems. Those problems include, but are not limited to:

losing readers and subscribers that had expectations

confusing the search engines due to content changes

wasting time marketing your blog on the wrong sites.

Readers walk

When you change your blog style or niche, it’s common sense that your readers will most likely walk. Think about it. They came to your blog because they came across some content that intrigued them. Now that you’ve decided to change your content, what reason do they have to stick around?

It’s important to choose your blog style ahead of time, and think about it carefully. You can literally waste hours of your time approaching the wrong reader audience. You can also end up being bad-mouthed by another blogger who’s angry with your switch.

Search engines get confused

It is a search engine’s job to make sure it indexes and ranks relevant content. Let’s say you start a blog about your golf hobby, but then you switch course, writing a stock tips business blog. Search engines may have already given you good rankings for golf. If you change your content, you’ll lose those rankings. You may even end up being penalized by the search engines.

When you first publish your blog, unless you’re blog hopping and guest posting, search engines are likely to be the first ones to read your content. Make sure they leave as happy customers. How? Be consistent. Your niche and blogging style should never change once you start.

You waste time

Should you have done your research on blog marketing, you’ll know that blog commenting and article marketing are excellent ways to promote your blog and build backlinks to it. If you change your style or niche, you have to consider the fact that you wasted all that time writing irrelevant articles that don’t match your newly chosen niche. The audiences for those article sites, backlinks, and guest posts will no longer be interested in what your blog has to say. When they click through to your site, they’ll be disappointed.

Another wasted effort would be the fact that you now have to delete your mailing list that you may have built up, since your subscribers didn’t sign up for information on your new topic. They subscribed because they had an interest in your previous topic.

Style vs. niche

Your blog style is not your niche: a blog style reflects your reasons for starting the blog in the first place:

Did you want to make money?

Did you want to influence a certain type of group?

Did you just want to blog about your interests?

When choosing a blogging style, you need to think about what you intentions may be in the long term. There are many bloggers who simply want to make money—they heard that blogging can make that happen for them. There are others who don’t believe or care about making money blogging: they simply want to write about what they love. The influential blogger is a writer who wishes to have his or her readers care about what s/he says, and take action because of what s/he said.

A niche, on the other hand, is a topic that you’re writing about. You can fit your blog into any niche using any of the three blogging styles I just mentioned. My niche topic is making money blogging, and I write regularly about this topic. You could say that this niche reflects my target keyword—the topic that I want to be known for.

As we saw with the golf and stocks example above, it’s important not to change your niche after you start blogging. Most of the time, your niche is connected to your style. When one changes, so does the other in most cases.

Let’s look more closely at these blogging styles.

The influential blogger

The influential type wants more than anything to have control over the actions that people take. We can take medical marijuana as an example niche in which the influential blogger style might be applied. This blogger will either want to oppose medical marijuana laws, or support them. Whichever route they choose, they want to be able to get people on board to support their cause. Their cause may be a call to action: for example, to contact a congressman with a specific message that will generate support for the blogger’s desired law.

Influential bloggers are usually heavyweights because they touch on sensitive topics that gain a lot of attraction. An influential blog doesn’t usually have a lot of advertising, and although the blogger may ask for donations to support their cause, that’s usually the extent of their money0making agenda. This does not make them a cash-seeking blogger.

The hobby blogger

I love the hobby blogger because they don’t care about anything other than sharing their passion with others. They care about what they do for fun, and they want you to have fun reading about it.

Hobby bloggers are quick to gain followers because they’re not concerned about advertising on their blog. They love the idea of publishing their articles and having like-minded people comment on them.

The cash blogger

I would say that I am a mix between a cash blogger and a hobby blogger. My entire niche and style is to teach others and make money doing it. I have done well in my style and niche, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The reason why I consider it a hobby is because I love what I am writing about, and I love sharing it all with others. It just so happens that I make money doing it.

My niche isn’t a necessary one, and it’s flooded with new blogs every day. You can monetize a hobby blog in any niche. I would say that there are a lot of hobby bloggers who have unintentionally turned into cash bloggers too, just because they realized at some point that money can be made with their traffic. If you’re thinking “but that’s changing your blogging style!” you’re right … in part. It’s a sort of merging of the two, rather than a clear switch. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re selling out if you go down this path.

Which choice is right for you?

No matter what style or niche you choose, you need to take the decision seriously. The last thing you want to do is change course once you’ve made your decision. There are too many negative side-effects of changing your style halfway through the mission.

Look at your decision as a life choice. You wouldn’t just pick up and move from Chicago to Iceland, would you? The choice you make today will impact your life years down the road. Make sure it is a decision you can live with, and choose a style and niche that you love without a doubt.

How did you choose your blogging style and your blog niche?

Brandon Connell is a full-time blogger, web designer, and internet marketer in Illinois. Visit http://www.brandonconnell.com, where Brandon teaches you how to make money blogging.

I knew you guys hated him, but not until I saw the results of this weekend’s Hot Air mega-poll did I realize how much. Out of 17 presidential candidates named, he finished … 15th, just eight votes ahead of Rick Santorum and 10 votes ahead of, er, Donald Trump. Palin won the poll with 1181 votes and Chris Christie came second with 745. Huckabee’s total take: 32. Dude?

The word on the primaries lately from everyone from Palin to Rove is that competition is wunderbar, that the more candidates we have battling for the nomination, the better served voters are by having more options, etc. Just wondering: Does that logic apply to Huck too? Think carefully before you answer, because if there’s anyone who’s poised to hurt Palin by peeling off social cons, blue-collar voters, and women (yes, really), it’s him.

“I just don’t understand how it is that a person can read these polls day after day and the narrative is constantly everybody but me,” he told POLITICO. “Whether I do it or not, the fact is that if one looks at the overall body of information that’s available, nobody would be in a better position to take it all the way to November.”…

“For me, later is better,” he said, suggesting that he’d ruled out making a decision in the first quarter of next year. Advisers differ on how late he could jump in, but Vander Plaats said he’d advise Huckabee to wait until extremely late — after the August Iowa GOP straw poll — to survey the lay of the land and make up his mind…

Yet he gets only a fraction of the attention Palin enjoys — something that plainly chafes him.

“She’s brought an enormous amount of energy to the party. As to why she seemingly draws ten times the attention, I don’t know,” he said, touting recent book signings of his that had drawn up to 1,400 people, with no note in the media.

“You’re never going to read that. I’m never going to be breaking news because I made a comment on Twitter and Facebook. Why is that? I don’t know,” he said.

It’s not a done deal that he’s running. He had to scrounge for funds to keep his campaign going two years ago and he just took out a huge mortgage to build his new home in Florida, so unless he’s got evangelical leaders ready to help him pass the collection plate around, money is a major issue. Even so, if Palin decides not to run and Mitt looks like a prohibitive frontrunner early, does anyone seriously think he won’t jump in? Social conservative votes will be there for the taking, and you know he’s just itching to vanquish that pointy-headed white-collar Romney who went to all the right schools ‘n stuff. If Palin does run then his decision is tougher, since the longer he waits, the more time she’ll have to solidify her support among the same constituencies he’s targeting. Of course, jumping in early might not help against her either. Huck acknowledged a few weeks ago that she could run away with the whole thing, and I’m guessing he wouldn’t be thrilled with an outcome whereby he and she enable a Romney victory by splitting base voters.

Here’s a fascinating possibility, though. What if Palin jumps out to a big early lead in the polls and Mitt is struggling to gain traction? In that case, establishment Republicans will quickly turn desperate looking for someone who can stop her in the primary and stand a chance of beating Obama in the general. I mentioned Mike Pence as a guy who might fit that bill in a post last week, but Pence is potentially a tough sell because his name recognition is low even among Republicans. Huckabee’s is much higher so he could bounce into contention right away even after a Thompson-esque late entry. Which raises the question: Would Beltway insiders grit their teeth and back Huck if it looked like he was the only candidate available who could beat Sarahcuda? Imagine the magic that a Rove/Huckabee partnership would make, my friends. Imagine it.

Just as I’m writing this, PPP is out with a new poll of the crucial swing state of Missouri. Huckabee 27, Palin 25, Gingrich 15, Romney 14. How can Huck say no? Exit question: Seriously, guys, 32 votes?

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Whos Making Money

The problems

Readers walk

Search engines get confused

You waste time

Style vs. niche

The influential blogger

The hobby blogger

The cash blogger

Which choice is right for you?

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