If you read my last post, I didn’t just give you information on how you could earn decent residual income from your own blog. I promised to launch a 3 month challenge where I’ll do just that. I’ll start a new blog and spend no money on it other than to register the domain name (and use existing hosting, which many of you will already have if you host your professional site).
Today is the first day of that challenge, and I’ve chosen a niche and just registered a domain name (I actually registered two, in order to set up a second passive income stream, but we’ll just focus on the one).
My Niche
As mentioned in my last post, I won’t be sharing the domain name here. To do so would be unfair. I know many writers don’t have existing sites they could throw behind a new launch (for example, if I linked to it from this site it would very quickly be indexed and getting traffic). I will, however, share the niche. The niche I chose is public relations writing.
I chose PR writing as my niche for a few reasons:
- It’s a specialty area of mine, so I know a lot about the topic to begin with.
- I know from keyword research that various terms in that niche are heavily searched.
- I also know from keyword / ad research (and from past experience in the niche) that this niche tends to do well with monetization, even without a lot of traffic.
That’s precisely the kind of information you should research before ever starting a blog specifically as an income stream.
Today’s Work
In addition to registering the domain name, I’ll be setting up the site (installing WordPress on the domain). I’ll also be choosing a free theme to use from JungleJar.com since I promised to stick to free resources. Either that or I’ll use one of the free themes (also from Chris Hennis) that I’ve released over at QueryFreeFreelancer.com. I’ll basically have the blog set up so that I can start adding some content tomorrow.
I’ll try to remember to post daily updates as often as possible. While I can’t show you the actual site here until after the challenge, I’ll be sharing what I do each day (and I’m sure there will be some days where I don’t do anything at all — I’ll try to note those days too, just so you can see that you don’t have to torture yourself churning out content or excessively marketing your blog every single day).
EDIT: I’ve now also gone in and set up my initial ad placements, made some template tweaks, set the settings on WordPress to what I want for the blog moving forward, and have installed and activated any plugins I plan to use. I think that’s enough for the day.
EDIT 2: I guess that wasn’t enough for the day after all. I went back in and took care of the About page and wrote up a first post. I set my categories up and my links / blogroll. I even started promoting casually, mentioning it on two sites where I network regularly (Twitter and a forum I’m active in). I’ll mention it on another social network a use a bit more privately tonight as well. So here we go! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to start viewing stats and such. I don’t expect to see any ad revenue in the extremely near future, but the moment there is some, I’ll be sure to tell you. And since I’m about on par with the folks who just set up sites in my 30 day marketing bootcamp for freelance writers over at The Query-Free Freelancer, I’m thinking I might just let my bootcamp series control how I market and update the new blog until these 30 days are up. It should keep things on track.
Now obviously I have a slight edge in starting a blog because I’ve done it so many times before. I can sit down in a couple of hours and have everything set up, content on the site, and be ready to start promoting. But don’t worry about it too much if you’re new. You can get just as far in no more than a few days (and the bootcamp series on QFF actually walks you through the process!). :)
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Krysha Thayer
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Lucy Smith
Hi Jennifer,
Very cool concept. I’ve got a blog idea I’ve been planning on getting going for months, but just haven’t made the time to do it. I think your challenge will be just the motivation I need to really kick the project into high gear.
I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next!
Thanks. I hope it does inspire at least a few folks to go out there and get away from crap residual sites in favor of their own blogs for residual income. We’ll see how it goes I guess! :) Now I just have to hope I chose a decent niche for the example. :)
Alright, now this is exciting. I can not turn a frickin’ penny on any of my sites. I’ve lost soooo much money on Freelance Writerville (mostly because I pay my regular contributors and have contests with prizes)I would just really like to see it break even.
An intriguing project! I’ll definitely keep my eye on it-I wonder how you’ll market differently from me. (And whatever tips I can pick up, wink wink!) Okay, okay, I know that a big part of marketing is putting in the time, and I do that whenever I can now. (I’ve promoted links on YouTube and Facebook, I participate in forums…things like that.) Well, all the same, I look forward to how things turn out.
I think you might actually be surprised by how little time I spend marketing my sites. It’s not about big time investments. It’s about not falling for fad marketing tactics, and focusing on narrower channels that will really work. Keep an eye on long-term growth through marketing rather than a quick fix and you’ll come out on top every time.
If anyone tries to tell you how to market a blog or website without focusing on the fundamentals – run. That’s all that matters in the end. There are no tricks or quick fixes.
Is that right? Color me even more interested now. Now I really can’t wait to see your marketing tactics in action.
Definitely right. I proved to you a few days ago that I’m right about networking for getting gigs. :P So give it a chance. I’ll be using some of the easiest and most straight-forward blog marketing and link-building tactics in this experiment – things absolutely any reader here should be able to do. :)
Will do!
Just wanted to wish you luck with the challenge, although I’m sure it won’t be needed! Rest assured I shall be following your progress with interest!
You mentioned that you are promoting your new site through other areas – what kind of following do you have on places like Twitter and will that have an impact on our launches – in your opinion?
Also, you mentioned ad revenue – what type of ad revenue are you aiming to get?
I’m not the Twitter whore type who follows tons of people in the hopes of getting follow-backs or who aggressively promotes her Twitter account. I let it grow slowly and naturally instead. The current followers there on the account I’m primarily using (and the only one where the site was mentioned) has just a few hundred followers. It’s not going to make a big impact on traffic.
That said, every single writer who’s currently freelancing should already be well-networked somewhere. For me that covers Twitter, forums, and a social network where I connect w/ more personal contacts. For others those will be other things (like LinkedIn, Facebook, different forums, networking groups, etc.). So while they might not have a bunch of blogs to lend some juice to a new launch (why I’m not using mine for that), they should all have something to use or somewhere to make some initial announcements.
To give you a better idea, only about 25 people have seen the site so far, so it’s not like it’s getting massive traffic from these initial announcements. But there will be a few other mentions in these networking locales as I go along to keep things fresh in the mind of my network, so hopefully they’ll eventually check it out and help spread the word. The real traffic will start up through more subtle things like linking out, commenting elsewhere, etc. (things that I started working on yesterday)
Hello to everyone!!!!!!!
i am writing for different website as a freelancer for the last 3 years. now i am looking for any blog i can write and earn some extra money. is it possible? Please help me. many many thanks.
Regards,
Malik