Why Might Writers Prefer to Blog for Themselves?

I understand the lure of running your own blog. Hell, I run a lot of them. I get it. I really do. You figure it’s a better way to build exposure and branding to attract other clients. Or maybe you think you’ll “get rich” blogging for yourself but that clients will only pay you crap rates, making it unworthy of your time. Some writers I know avoid blogging for clients because they consider blogging to be a very personal thing. They’re afraid clients won’t let them be themselves.

What other things might cause you to avoid blogging for clients but choose to solely run your own blog? Give us some personal insight.

Why you Should Consider Blogging for Others

None of the reasons I gave above for blogging only for yourself are really good ones. They don’t reflect reality. The truth is that many writers can get more exposure and more money blogging for clients than they’ll ever see on their own blog. There are also many different types of blogging clients, and plenty who do want your personality to shine though. Let’s look at some of the benefits of client blogging in more depth:

• More Exposure — Let’s face it. Most bloggers who blog for themselves are never going to get “famous” doing it. Most blogs never amount to much. However, writing for a well-funded blog with a good reach in your target audience can bring you a great deal of visibility — more than you’d get going solo.

  Popular niche blogs are one of the best options for visibility (why do you think even relatively well-known bloggers are out there guest posting on them?). But don’t neglect blogs that you don’t think of as huge. You’d be surprised at the traffic levels of some blogs out there. They might seem a bit understated on the surface, but they could have an outstanding reach within the industry.

  It’s all in who you’re targeting. Those targeting professionals inside an industry are going to look very different than those blatantly trying to attract a huge, more general, audience. They might connect you to more relevant client prospects too.

• More Money — Blogging is a big money game these days, and it has a large amount of room for growth. Many companies still aren’t blogging — even big ones. Some never will. Others are just looking for the right person to guide them.

  Even small businesses are often better funded than freelancers think. The highest paying clients I work with are almost always small businesses. Pitch a blog to one of them. Maybe it’s a local business needing an online presence to be found in local search. Perhaps it’s a company in China or India that wants to expand or improve their visibility among English-speaking audiences (and yes, clients in those countries also pay very well to reach those goals).

  There is a lot of money to be made in blogging right now. No, you won’t get those gigs by only responding to job ads or turning to networks. You will get them if you go out there and pitch your blog ideas and network so you’ll hear when companies are looking for someone.

  Keep your own blog going too — it makes you visible and serves as a dynamic portfolio piece!  Here’s another tip for you: contact SEO and Internet marketing firms. They often need bloggers to help with multiple blogs. They essentially bring several clients to your doorstep at once.

• More Flexibility — If you only blog for yourself, you might think it’s the more flexible option, but you’d be wrong. Whether you realize it or not, you get into certain habits or a certain style of writing on your own blog. That’s not a bad thing. It’s about branding your blog and being something readers are comfortable with. Blogging for clients allows you much more freedom because you can diversify your gigs (like anything else I’d strongly recommend against relying too heavily on a single blogging client).

  You can write for multiple clients, meaning multiple styles. Some will be personality-driven and others might be more instructional posts for beginners in a niche. Some will be by-lined and some will be ghostwritten (giving you greater style freedom because you don’t have to worry about the writing conflicting with the style you’re already known for). It’s a very flexible job to have.

A Blogging Break-Down

Let’s look at an example to help break it down. Let’s say you’re a finance writer. You write about a broad spectrum of topics in that niche, but you prefer writing about business finance. For your own blog, you want to reach potential clients, showing them that you not only understand basic financial premises but also financial writing as the specialty area it is. So you launch a blog on finance writing.

Your Own Blog

Your blog is a great business tool. You post to it daily, Monday through Friday. It not only attracts clients wanting to learn more about what financial writers do (not to mention ranking well for related terms clients are searching for), but it also connects you to a network of other finance writers. These are people who might refer gigs to you because you’re fresh in their minds due to your blog when they get a gig offer they can’t take on. That’s great.

You also monetize your own blog directly with affiliate ads, a product of your own, and contextual ads. I’ve seen what it takes to take a blog in a similar niche to $2000 monthly in a pretty short period of time, and I know it’s doable. I also know it’s more than most bloggers make. But if we want to give blogging for yourself a fair shake in the comparison, we need to assume you’re capable of being one of the exceptions to the rule (yes, yes, I know I always say never assume you’re the exception to the rule — but we’re being hypothetical today to debunk the “blogging for yourself is the best way to get rich and famous myth”). Using that data from ProBlogger as a guide, let’s say you’re one of the 19% of bloggers earning at least $1500 per month.

In reality you might have to run several blogs to earn that much per month, but you’re a super star. You do it with one. Not too bad, right? If you truly are one of the few bloggers who’s going to earn a full-time income at it alongside great visibility, is there any benefit at all in still blogging for clients? You betcha!

Client Blogging

Now let’s say you also do some finance blogging for clients. For clients you charge around $75 per post (this is very achievable and actually on the very low end of the massive amount of private gigs out there right now). That assumes you’ll receive a by-line. You charge a premium if the client wants something ghostwritten because you won’t get the exposure. For those you charge $100 (also a very achievable rate for professional blogging for other companies).

Your own blog does its job and attracts new clients. You decide to blog for them too. You pick up four regular blogging gigs (and if you can’t get at least four regular gigs at your current rates, you’re not marketing yourself effectively — you really can do it). Here are those gigs:

• You write a weekly by-lined column for client A on business credit issues. (At four weeks per month that’s $300 per month for four posts.)
• You write a 10 posts per month (by-lined) for a financial firm’s blog, connecting them to their own customers or clients. (That’s $750 per month.)
• You ghostwrite three posts per week for a personal finance blog managed by a debt consolidation company. Normally you focus on business finance, but since it’s ghostwritten you don’t mind being more flexible. (At four weeks per month that’s $1200.)
• Another client likes the tone and style on your own blog, so they hire you to write by-lined opinion pieces twice per week (they want to get a piece of your authority status in the niche credited to their site). This is a large small business blog. They have you post twice per week by taking news stories and posting your opinions / feedback on them. (At four weeks per month that’s $600 per month.)

Much of this kind of blogging work you can do in an hour per post or less. They don’t involve conducting interviews. They don’t involve getting extensive background from the company itself (like if you were managing a PR-driven blog for image maintenance and more in-depth audience interaction).

Let’s see what it all works out to. Over the course of the month you earn $1500 from your own blog, posting 20 posts per month (one per day, M-F, figuring a flat four weeks per month).  During that same time frame you earn $2850 from your four blogging clients, writing a total of 34 posts per month.

That means you basically earn $75 per post on average when you blog for yourself. You earn $83.82 per post on average when you blog for other people.

Delving Deeper Into Blogging Income

I know what you’re probably thinking — “That’s not a big difference, so why wouldn’t I only blog for myself and ignore all of the deadlines that come with client work?”  Because those numbers don’t tell the entire truth.

Yes, your own blog might pay you $75 per post if you’re one of those rare bloggers who can monetize their own blog fairly effectively (and consistently). However, you need to break it down into hourly rates. When you blog for yourself, you have to factor in all of the administrative work (design changes and development, upgrades, problem-solving, managing and responding to comments, etc.) and all of the marketing time that goes into the blog (commenting elsewhere to get links, evaluating stats so you can improve your position, guest posting elsewhere, taking part in social media to get the word out about the blog, etc.).

Your hourly rate for managing your blog would likely go way down. Yes, you can outsource some of these tasks. In that case you have to decrease earnings by the corresponding expenses to see what you’re really earning from your blog. It still would go way down.

But don’t you have to do some of these things for client blogs too? Perhaps. Here’s the big difference though. You should be getting paid for all of the “extras” you do for client blogs. It’s one thing to be paid to write. If they want you managing all comments, promoting the blog via social media, etc., then you can negotiate a fixed monthly rate for those services on top of your writing rates.

Many clients don’t require that of their writers at all — they prefer to handle it themselves or they have other contractors dealing with some elements of it, like social media promotion. Yes, there’s also some administrative time involved. But I’ve found that private blogging clients ask for edits almost never — definitely less than things like content networks — and the time you’ll take getting post topics approved or dealing with a few clients via email or calls probably won’t come close to the time you’ll put into administering and marketing your own blog. You come out ahead.

Here’s another consideration. While you might be able to get to the $1500 per month point, that does not mean you’ll be able to double that income on a single blog within a reasonable amount of time (depending on how big your niche is, and what types of monetization streams are available to you, it might be nearly impossible to turn that business blog of yours into a $3k+ per month money-maker). So don’t assume that single blog could make up the difference between a lack of client work.

Some people might think “well, that’s okay, I’ll just start other blogs!” You can. In fact I find diversifying (within reasonable limits so you don’t spread yourself too thin) can lead to more blogging income than a single blog ever could. Once you’ve learned how to successfully manage a high-earning blog, you have the ability to take those skills and experiences and apply them to other niches you know will monetize well. However, with every new blog comes more administrative and marketing time, and during the first few months you’ll probably sink in a lot of time and / or money with little return while it gets off the ground.

I gave blogging for yourself every chance here to compete with a modest client schedule. I used low rates for the client projects (based on professional blogging rates in related niches) and if anything I overestimated the earning potential of someone’s individual blog since most won’t ever hit that $1500 per month level. In the end, client blogging has the potential to pay significantly more for the time invested. If you target medium to high profile clients about launching or maintaining their blogs, you also have more exposure potential than most bloggers will hit with their own blogs. It’s a good deal all around.

By all means I’m not suggesting that anyone quit their own blogs, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t launch blogs of your own. I’m a huge fan of running your own blogs. I know how lucrative they can be from experience. And I know how fun they can be to manage and write for. I also know they can do a great job of attracting new freelance writing clients. All I’m saying is this — if some of those clients it attracts want you to blog for them, don’t dismiss the idea just because you think you’ll get “rich and famous” blogging for yourself and just be another worker bee for someone else. That’s short-sighted, and it’s downright wrong.

The blog has started to see its first trickle of pay-per-click (PPC) ad revenue. It’s a good thing, but the overall amount is absolutely nothing to get excited about. If anything I’m starting to doubt that this site will reach the goal of a three figure income during its third month. I’ve been way too hands-off with it. As of today that will change, and I’ll salvage whatever I can out of it.

That said, there is some good news here. The ad revenue so far, while miniscule, is backing up the market assumption I made based on my past experience and keyword research before launching. This is going to be a great PPC site in the long haul. I picked the right niche and am putting up the right keyword-targeted (while still highly informational) content. Clicks are paying at over a dollar each on average right now (in line with other sites I’ve run in the general niche).

I want to put more emphasis on the affiliate programs though. One or two good affiliate sales is enough to reach the earnings goal for the month while I wait for PPC ad revenue to pick up as traffic slowly grows.

That’s where it stands now. I need to get my butt in gear with posting and doing a bit of marketing over the next couple of weeks, and with a little bit of luck an whole lot of effort who knows? Maybe we’ll still see the goal met after all.

The good news is that an affiliate program application (the only truly relevant one in the niche) was finally approved — I applied back when blog launched about a month ago. Now that there’s something I can more directly promote and try to monetize, that should help.

During the rest of October my focus will be on a post series related to press release writing, where I’ll be releasing some tips and templates (popular topic with the niche audience I’m trying to appeal to). I’m hoping to see traffic pick up as I promote those posts.

I’ll admit it’s weird to not be able to use my other sites to my advantage at this point, but things are still progressing nicely. I’m hoping that by the end of month two we’ll hit the breaking point and see the income streams developing. I’ll keep you updated as things move along.

1. I’m currently using some Commission Junction affiliate ads on the site. I don’t care for them though. Their tracking is clunky and their advertisers pay ridiculously slow compared to most other options out there (they’re so worried about advertisers that they really don’t seem to care much about publishers — silly of course since without plenty of quality publishers, the advertisers would have no reason to use them anyway — but I digress). I checked out the Google Affiliate Network this morning and was really disappointed. The offerings there were slim, and many of the advertisers were ones I’d never allow my sites. On top of the poor selection, they were also organized badly (VistaPrint in Domain registrations and Web hosting? Um, no.). So I’ll leave the CJ ads alone for right now, but I’ll also keep on looking over the rest of this week. Ideally I’d like to use ClickBank for any affiliates, but I’ll have to dig a bit. The chances of me finding things there in my niche (and that don’t royally suck) are pretty slim.
2. Still debating whether or not to put up an ad for my own e-book. I did originally, but then removed it because there’s no easy way to track that sales actually came from that site. I mean, it wouldn’t be that difficult to check out sale times and who sent the traffic to my e-book site then in the site stats (not a high traffic site where there’s a lot to dig through), but I don’t know. I’ll decide one way or the other on that one today I think.
3. I’ll be writing a new post for the blog today. As per the 30 day marketing bootcamp exercises there, I’ll try to stick to three posts per week for now (to get in the habit of posting and to get the site populated with some content).
4. I’ll also be following today’s bootcamp excercise (in short I’ll be using blog linking and blog commenting to bring the new site to the attention of others in my niche audience).

That’s the plan. Coming along nicely so far.

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!). :)

My Background in Blogging

I’m not at the point where I would call myself a “professional blogger” just yet (although I hope to be in the foreseeable future — EDIT: as of early 2009 I do blog “professionally,” earning a full-time income blogging both for myself and for clients). Even so, I’ve done fairly well with my blogs, bringing my “big three” to decent income levels at various times ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. I’m working to bring them all back to those levels (including some newer ones – around a dozen blogs in all). The key (and where I sometimes struggle) is consistency.What I’ve found personally is that your consistency in your blogging can have more of an impact on your earnings than your SEO or even monetization streams (although I’ll readily admit this can vary depending on the type of blog you’re running – mine were all launched with the intention of creating so-called “authority sites,” so repeat traffic is my most valuable asset).

Revenue Streams for Bloggers

Speaking of revenue streams (how you can actually monetize your blog), here are some common examples that can be used or combined into an overall monetization strategy:

1. Network ads (Google Adsense, Chitika, etc.)
2. Private ads (selling text links, banners, etc. on your blog)
3. Sponsored posts (sold privately or through pay-per-post programs)
4. Affiliate ads (Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.)
5. Donations (through Paypal or similar services)
6. RSS feed ads (through Feedburner or other services)
7. Digital Products (e-books, reports, software related to your blog niche, etc.)
8. Teaching / Services (paid webinars, offering services related to your blog niche, etc.)

The Reality of High Income Blogging

Plenty of people make far more money than I do blogging. Plenty of people also make far less (and almost nothing). Pro blogger Darren Rowse did an interesting casual study in 2007 on what real bloggers are earning (many simply aren’t). (Read his findings.) Should you be discouraged by the fact that a lot of people make next to no money from their blogs? I don’t think so. Here’s why:

1. Not all bloggers are really “in it for the money.” Earning may just be an added benefit, so many bloggers may simply not be optimizing their revenue streams (because they simply don’t care).
2. A lot of bloggers are new, and still learning the ropes of monetizing their blogs. Like in any kind of business model, it can take time (one of my blogs became my highest earner in just three months, while another wasn’t earning significantly for over a year, as an example).
3. Frankly, not all bloggers know how to effectively market their sites. If they can’t market the blog, or offer something people really want to read, they’re not likely going to make money.

Ingredients of a High Income Blog

On that note, there are a few key elements that, while they won’t guarantee you’ll earn real money, will make earning a blogging income easier (assuming you’re looking for a long-term strategy, and not a “post crap content, load it up with ads, SEO the hell out of it, and earn until Google penalizes you” strategy):

1. Niche – Your blog’s niche is the topic it covers. You’ll have an easier time earning money from a blog niche that lends itself to ads, products that you can sell as an affiliate, or products and services you can offer to that audience. You’ll also have an easier time if you go with a niche that not only has a decent-sized audience (preferably one that you don’t expect to disappear in the near future), but that also isn’t already over-saturated with other blogs that would make it difficult for you to reach your target readers.
2. Expertise – Do you have to be an expert in your niche? No, but it certainly helps. That’s because when you know the niche topic well, and you have credentials, it’s easy to build trust with an audience. When your blog audience trusts you, they’ll take more kindly to certain types of monetization (such as affiliate links to products that you’re reviewing, because they’ll trust your reviews more).
3. Quality Content – It’s not usually too difficult to tell the difference between a blog written by a true expert giving quality advice and information and a blog where the “blogger” simply hired a bunch of cheap ghostwriters to put together keyword-rich posts for ad revenue. While the not-so-”elite” content can serve a purpose (and even make money for a while), quality content carries far more long-term income-generating potential. Why? Again, people will learn to trust it. When people trust your content, they not only keep coming back, but they start to spread the word about your site (including by giving you unsolicited backlinks). High quality content offers other benefits as well. For example, you may be able to get media exposure if you become recognized as an expert in the niche. When others spread the word for you, your blog’s (and income’s) fate doesn’t rely solely on traffic from search engines (so you don’t have to panic if you get penalized for some reason). Quality content makes that easier.
4. Marketing Ability – You have to promote your blog in some way to get traffic. Without traffic, you have no visitors (no one to monetize through ads, sales, etc.). Many bloggers don’t excel at marketing… they just follow the same “been there, done that” tactics that everyone else uses, instead of really paying attention to their market and how they would best be reached. Marketing encompasses everything from your search engine optimization (SEO) to get higher search rankings to advertising to networking with others in your niche (such as by commenting on their own blogs).
5. Consistency – It’s important that your readers have at least a vague idea of when you’ll be updating if you want to keep those regular readers exposed to your income streams. Depending on you and your niche, that may mean posting once per month, once per week, daily, or any other schedule for that matter. (This is what I mentioned previously as being one of my own biggest struggles in blogging.) In my own experience at least, when I blog consistently, income climbs quickly; when I stop for a while or get too irregular in posting, income drops respectively.

Making money from your blog might not be an easy task, but it can really be done. If you treat your blog like a business, and don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll instantly make a lot of money, you’ll improve your chance and rise above the ever-growing blogger crowd. Take your blog seriously. Take yourself seriously. And most importantly, never give up. Anyone can start a blog, but you need to be persistent to really make it work as a business.

Do you have additional monetization tips to share? Would you like to share your own successes or struggles with making money blogging? If so, leave a comment.