Making career in Blogging

Many do not realize that there are two types of blogging: Blogging as a hobby, and blogging as a career. Aside from sharing the same name, these two types of blogging are quite different. They each require different skillsets and different mindsets. Unfortunately, many bloggers have the mentality that if they blog for fun then they can make blogging their career. While this is very true in many cases, this decision could go very wrong, very quickly.

Being a great writer and having experience writing for a blog is absolutely the foundation when hoping to start a career as a blogger. This, however, is not always enough. Maintaining a profitable blog is difficult work and requires constant upkeep. Below are some of the things that will change when you go from blogging for fun to blogging for a profit:

Top 5 Changes a Blogger Needs to Make When Flipping a Blog for Profit

1.    You are no longer writing for only yourself, so your focus/topics may change.

I think that many people who blog for fun enjoy putting out their own opinions. They want to see what others have to say and they want to get out all of their thoughts. In a sense, this is exactly where blogging started. Unfortunately, your opinions don’t always sell. This is a great way to spend your time blogging, but it won’t necessary make you any money. If you really want to profit from your blog and make blogging your career, you are going to have to do research and identify your target audience. You will want to make sure your blog has a clear focus and the random rambling is kept to a minimum. Some blogs with content all over the place are profitable, but not many.

2.    You will need to guest post on other sites.

You want to make sure that your blog has a high Google PageRank (PR) so you can attract investors and more experienced writers and readers. In most cases, the higher the PR the higher you will appear on a Google search engine page; thus driving more traffic to your site. One of the ways to make this happen is to guest post on other blogs and then link back to your blog. This sounds simply enough, but many bloggers quickly realize that this is a lot of extra work and the results come to you slowly. You will also need to follow the guidelines and topic categories for the site where you’re hoping to guest post, and this can be difficult for bloggers who are used to writing whatever they want.

3.     You will need to edit and accept guest posts

This is not completely necessary, but it is extremely beneficial so most bloggers want to take advantage. Accepting guest posts on your blog gives you more time to guest post on other blogs and brings in a new audience. Chances are your guest writer will share his/her article through social media and give your blog some great publicity. Nonetheless, this is more work than most anticipate when they decide they’re going to try and make money from blogging.

4.    You will need to find and speak with potential advertisers

This is something that is usually foreign to those who have a blog for fun. You will need to prepare facts and statistics to try and sell your blog to these potential advertisers. It’s a world of rejection and frustration, and the process is very slow. You must have an authoritative blog (high PR) before a good advertiser will even want to speak with you. It is important to realize that this is where you make your money. This means that you will have to work very hard to create something and then you will be able to make your money.

5.    Social media will be more important

Most bloggers are fairly social media fluent. The only difference when you’re trying to earn a profit is the idea that you will have to connect with powerful people. This will improve the credibility of your blog. In many cases, bloggers create separate social media accounts for their now profitable blog. This is, therefore, twice as much social media work than before.

When deciding if you should try and be a full-time professional blogger, being passionate about blogging is one of the driving factors.  However, it’s important that you realize some of the challenges that full-time bloggers have in front of them before quitting your day job.