John Q. Public had this great widget he wants to sell. He rents a nice store front and puts his widgets in the store front waiting for someone to come along and buy it. Money is a bit tight so he buys just a small ad and only runs it once. As rent becomes due for the second month money gets tighter because he made no money the first month selling his widgets. He reduces advertising and is forced to use his time to find a part time job to support his store. In a desperate attempt he agrees to allow Jack Spratt to use some of his store space for his gadgets in return for a commission on any gadgets sold. At the end of 6 months he has sold one widget, earned no commissions, is now working full time and considerably in debt. He has no choice but to close his store. What did he do wrong? The short answer is John Q. Public jumped the gun without knowing his market. He invested time and money on an idea that might have no potential and he failed to advertise it. Very few people even know his business exists because in addition to not advertising he failed to network. Then because he went too big to fast he didn't have the means to fund his project so the project failed. As a business owner he failed to recognize one of the fundamental principles of business - it takes a lot of hard work! Finally he failed to realize that success does not happen over night.
The example can be extrapolated to blogging. The widget represents your blog and the store front represents your blog host. A surprising number of bloggers are paying for their blog hosting site and domain. Advertising in both cases is advertising and can be free or paid advertising in both. Ideally it should be a combination of both. Blog advertising in more than one format needs to be done on a continuous basis. The gadget space represents advertising on your blog that will bring you revenue. You are giving up some of your blog real estate with the expectation you will be compensated for it through commissions.
In the real world the average business takes 3 years just to turn a profit. During that time the business owner will need some type of alternative income to support their lifestyle as well as diverting some of that income into their business. Once a business starts making a profit is can easily be a few more years before it can support the business owner's lifestyle to the point he or she can quite their other income source. In the blogging world, the average blog lasts 3 months before the blogger abandons it. A three month period is not long enough to establish good traffic that would bring in any substantial amount of money from advertising affiliates or even paid posts and/or reviews. If the blogger continues with the blog, constantly tweaking and promoting as well as adding regular new content then the earning potential goes up. Unless you have a blog such as Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia who took her year long blogging experience then turned it into a lucrative career, it is not a reasonable expectation to be able to make enough money from your blog(s) to support your lifestyle. It is a reasonable expectation that you can make enough money to cover the cost of your ISP, domain and any paid advertising used to promote your blog. It is also reasonable to expect that providing you do all the hard work of writing and promoting your blog as it ages the earning potential of your blog will increase. In the meantime, have fun blogging, forget the get rich quick from blogging hype and keep you day job.
Garden Gnome
©2009-2010
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