Achieving Success with Blogs Part 1 – Blogging and Business

By editor3 on January 03rd, 2010

Can you make money blogging? Can blogging be a career by itself? Is it true that there are successful blogs that make real money? These are questions that cloud the minds of people who may not be sure about the whole idea of making money online with blogs. Blogging is a process that takes time to grow and bear fruit – there are no short-cuts to the process. The best that one can do is to make use of the time completely and do the best so that the blog becomes a success.

Many blogs disappear half-way through or they fail to produce the desired results because the blogger might have lost focus after going along with it, or he might have lost track of the process of making a complete success with blogs, or the blogger might have got pissed off with the time it takes for a blog successful. In any case, the fact is that unless blogs are given the time that they deserve to grow, the entire blogging venture may go waste without giving the expected returns. In this series of posts, I’ll take you through the complete Blogging Process, show how Blogging is like any other business and why anyone who can handle this business properly can make money online, indulging in professional blogging.

The whole blogging business has a lot of similarity with business, marketing and brand building and has to be seen from the larger perspective. For those who have not got hold of the principles behind success with blogs, it may help to have a larger perspective of blogging. There are thousands of bloggers who haven’t got track of how to make money blogging. If you are one among them, you need to adjust your timeframe within which you see things. And you need to realise that what you are doing is nothing short of running your own business and actively marketing your product, your brainchild.

Why is Blogging Similar to Business? The answer is simple – blog is a product and blogging is the process of making that product saleable. When you have a product, it makes sense only when you derive value out of it – which is, making money with it. You cannot really expect to have a product conceived and make money out of it, without having any takers for it. To conceive a product idea, to work on the details, the nitty-gritty’s and practicalities of making the product a consumable proposition, to convince the consumer that there is value in the product and to deliver it to the consumer so that he realises the value of the product is the story of marketing. If you could replace the word “product” with “Blog”, you have hit the nail right on the head.

Like any product that you may find in your favourite supermarket, blogs are products that are for sale – and something that people buy. If you are surprised about the fact that people actually “buy” your blog, I’m not talking of mighty ideas such as domain-name sales or transferring ownership of blogs et al. I shall return to the point of how the consumer, or in this case, your reader, “buys” your blog, later, when we get to the finances of the transaction. As of now, you can be sure that your blog is a product that is for sale.

Investment for Business: Now, let’s get on with the investment part of it. What do you invest when you start a business? You need to invest money, and that too, a handsome amount, if you are to start a manufacturing concern. You need to buy a site, you have to build a plant, purchase the equipment needed, buy your raw materials and you need people who would work on the product to churn out output. Without these, you cannot possibly think of starting your own manufacturing firm. And more importantly, you should decide which business you want to start and what the product that is, which you would start manufacturing.

In the case of blogging, you are already gifted with most of what you would have to invest on. The site for your manufacturing facility is virtual, the internet; the manufacturing plant is available at your disposal, which would be your Blogging Service provider – WordPress or Blogger. The equipment part is done, if you have a computer or a laptop, equipped with an internet connection. And your raw materials are your own brain power, where you would process information to churn output in the form of blog posts. In effect, you have all the materials ready to start off on your new business venture.

Do you get the idea? If you thought blogging was just about creating a log-in id in your favourite blog site or about purchasing domain name and posting some content out there, you need to realise what you are actually doing. You have to look at things from the larger perspective – only when you have the broader view of what you are doing would you have your expectations set right. And when you know what you are doing, you are well on the way to making a success out of your venture in blogs. Making money online is not magic – it is plain business and something that you can very well practise, if only you knew what you are up to and what you are up against.

In the next post, we shall see how blogging is business and how you should go about your blog.