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WHAT IS FREELANCE BLOGGING?
by Brian Scott
Blogging (short
for "web logging"), born from the Internet age, is one of the newer venues for
freelance writing. The Internet has generated a lot of news about the financial
possibilities open to bloggers: an audience of potentially millions -- along
with possible corporate sponsorship, a byline, and infinite creative control --
captures the imagination of many prospective bloggers, and makes blogging seem
like an infinitely desirable, lucrative field.
The truth is it is much
more difficult to become a successful freelance blogger. A good knowledge of
marketing, web design, and being consistent are skills you need to make a
living (or a comfortable extra income) from this new form of media.
The reason for this is the low barrier of entry. Anyone with access to web
space can start a blog. Sites like Blogger, Livejournal and even MySpace offer
free web space to anyone willing to sign up. This has resulted in millions of
blogs in existence today, many of them literate, many of them wildly popular,
and nearly all of them free to read and browse.
That variety of free
content makes it difficult to charge for access to your writing, no matter how
good it is. You could be the greatest expert on foreign policy or nutrition
known to man, and few people would be willing to pay $5 -- or $1, or one cent
-- to read a blog post by you, the expert, when there are thousands of
semi-qualified (but bright and engaging) writers giving away similar material.
So your main sources of revenue are going to come from advertising and
from whatever paid content you can fit into the site. Luckily, web advertising
is becoming less dicey than it was a year ago. Google's "AdSense" program is a
good baseline for a page, providing targeted advertising based on your content
and paying you, directly, per click-through (although the pay rate per click is
low.) You can supplement that amount with other forms of web advertising, from
the comparatively unobtrusive banner to pop-up animations that "float over" the
text.
This brings us to the "double-edged sword" problem in web
advertising. The most effective advertising is obtrusive advertising; that is,
advertising that blocks valuable content until the user clicks on it either to
make it disappear or to take you to a different website. However, obtrusive
advertising also irritates your readers, which can lead to a lower reputation
for your blog overall. On the Internet, reputation is the single best
determinant of your web traffic. Using obtrusive advertising can significantly
lower your traffic and make your blog that much less attractive to potential
advertisers.
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So
you'll need to find a happy medium between heavy advertising (and light
traffic) and little to no advertising (and high traffic, but little revenue.)
Luckily, the instant responsiveness of the Internet, along with the commenting
features available on nearly all blogging software, make it easy to ask your
readers about exactly what level of advertising they'd be willing to accept.
Reader connectivity is one of the most important features of any good blog: not
only does it allow you to fine-tune your blog over time, eliminating features
that readers find irritating or off-putting, but it also allows you to develop
personal connections with your readers, the kind of connections that build
loyal audiences.
There are other ways to make money by blogging, such
as the following:
1) It's possible to sidestep advertising
altogether by making some of your content unavailable, except to subscribers.
For example, you might only keep your most recent five or six blog entries
unlocked, and require a monthly subscription fee to read the rest of the
archives;
2) Or you might keep your current posts and your
entire regular archives active, but produce some longer or specialized entries
or other content and charge a set fee for these;
3) You could
even compile some of your best entries into a physical book, along with some
new content, and offer it for sale. Even if all the entries are available
online, you'd be surprised how many people are willing to pay to have something
they can hold in their hands;
4) Additionally, you could go the
Salon.com route -- make all of your archives available to anyone willing to
watch a short full-screen advertisement -- or you could rely on readers'
willingness to support content that they find worthwhile by asking for
donations outright.
Many prominent blogs and online content providers
have done this and found themselves able to make rent and pay all of their
bills every month on donations alone.
No matter how much advertising
or subscription services your blog has, it's all worthless if people don't want
to read you in the first place. And there are three simple rules to make your
blog popular:
1) Write on something you care about
2) Write consistently and thoughtfully on a regular schedule (daily
is best)
3) Read and comment on other blogs
People read
blogs because they provide a source of information and analysis on topics that
traditional media sources only cover sketchily and hastily, or don't cover at
all. Don't try to figure out an ideal money-making blog topic and proceed from
there. People care about blogs because blogs are about personal, in-depth
viewpoints and thoughts.
If you can provide those to your audience
regularly, and you can set up a minimally-intrusive but still worthwhile
revenue system through advertising or subscriptions, there's no reason you
can't become a successful blogger.
© B.
Scott
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Scott has been
a professional freelance writer for more than a decade. He is an active forum moderator at Writing Answers, a vibrant community of writers helping writers.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
1)
Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging by Andy
Wibbels
2)
Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) by Brad
Hill
3)
Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You
Should Care by Shel Holtz
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