What distinguishes an amateur blog from a business?
The answer is very simple.
An amateur blog is a project characterized by occasionality and the generation of a low income with revenues often sufficient only to repay the costs of hosting and the domain.
A business, on the other hand, generates profits over time and is characterized by revenues, costs, investments.
I have no updated statistics but I am sure that the Internet, even today, has a clear predominance of content created by enthusiasts.
The reasons are many, but basically for many writing is a passion.
Many disseminators, therefore, when they create a blog, do not think about creating something structured as a business.
They just want to help others and are happy with the size they operate in.
They don’t seek fame.
If you add that today managing the various aspects of a blog is very complex and difficult for a single subject, you understand why many sooner or later give up while others always remain in an amateur environment where they can continue to work alone.
And if on the one hand, working alone, you don’t have to share anything with anyone, on the other hand, it becomes really difficult to take the leap forward and get out of the situation you are in.
Creating content today means reading up, writing, promoting yourself, investing in advertising, communicating on social networks …
It is not easy for a person to have all these skills.
In short, it is by no means trivial and the professional competition of teams or structured companies is always lurking.
It’s a bit of my story.
Today Comediventarericco.com is little more than an amateur site and even if it generates some revenue, it certainly cannot be considered a business project.
I have been producing content for the web independently since 2008, but I don’t do it professionally and from an entrepreneurial point of view.
Of course, I am always looking for new forms of monetization, but only recently have I created my editorial plan, I refocused the site on clear themes and I work to make it known.
I have seen “competitors” who in much less time have proposed themselves to their readers and have begun to earn and churn out top-notch content, working to expand their readership base.
In less than 12 months you can go from having a niche site to working seriously on the web …
Let’s see what it is for?
In this article
- # 1 – Produce quality content
- # 2 – Be consistent
- # 3 – Know your audience
- # 4 – Think from a business perspective
- # 5 – Monetize
- # 6 – Advertise and rank on the engines
- Conclusions
# 1 – Produce quality content
The first aspect to focus on is the production of quality content.
What does it mean?
For me it means sharing knowledge with readers, letting them discover something new, allowing them to save, earn and invest profitably and prudently.
Producing valuable content allows you to be able to create an audience of people who are grateful to you for what you do.
Do you know that, as Kevin Kelly says, it takes 1,000 real fan readers to be able to turn a blog into a profitable business?
A fan reader is someone willing to share every article you do, to like you, to buy your book, and maybe even your course.
Just be able to secure an income of 5 euros a month from each reader and boom … 5,000 euros a month.
A decent salary right?
Producing quality content also means:
- write posts of at least 1,000 words, but often up to 2,000;
- deepen the concepts also with links to external resources ;
- not to be taken for granted and not to copy around, but to produce original content;
- discussing with other authors with whom to share projects and ideas.
It means giving content to their readers and entering their lives and their conversations with friends.
# 2 – Be consistent
Constance means having an editorial plan.
In practice, you have to communicate to your readers which topics you will address, how often, and with what level of accuracy and depth.
It means don’t leave your readers waiting for weeks, not even at Christmas.
It involves the opening of a dialogue in all the media they frequent Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Medium …
Presence and consistency are the keys, obviously without forgetting the quality of what is shared.
# 3 – Know your audience
All successful sites have one thing in common: they know their audience very well and have an open dialogue with their readers.
To understand the demographic characteristics of your readers you can simply check the google analytics data and know their age, gender, interests, country, city, …
But if you want to get to know your audience, you will have to talk to them, talk to them, respond to emails, comments, …
You will have to stimulate the debate and maybe even meet some readers to deepen their topics of interest.
# 4 – Think from a business perspective
Doing business means thinking in terms of costs and revenues.
Many think that turning their blog into an income statement is demeaning or wrong.
I am sure that your work is something much more important than a number and that ultimately the content is the main aspect of your business.
However, I am sure that working on the internet means looking at the income statement of your business.
Reinvesting profits, keeping an eye on costs, looking for collaborators are the basis of every business and if you want to create content you can’t help but do it too.
Growth must be your goal.
The delegation of the activities you don’t know how to do or don’t want to do must be the tool that allows you to grow.
You cannot escape from the economic logic.
Business is business.
# 5 – Monetize
I have written various topics on the subject of monetization and also on the individual tools that can help you to bring revenues thanks to the traffic on the site.
Starting with Adsense, which is the easiest tool to start and insert advertising on your pages, passing through affiliate programs.
Monetizing as a professional means increasing your sources of income tenfold and always looking for new ones.
You can’t rely on a single source.
Your main source of income may fail at any time.
That’s why you need to be ready to replace it and always look for a better one than what you have.
I don’t use Adsense, because it doesn’t give me control over what is published and precludes me from many other possibilities to promote services that I believe in.
Monetizing as a pro, however, means creating courses, paid content, podcasts, obtaining consultations, giving speeches, giving conferences and courses.
# 6 – Advertise and rank on the engines
Transforming a blog from passion to business involves expanding your readership base and to do it quickly you cannot fail to do so also with advertising and good positioning on engines.
Advertising means Adsense, Facebook Ads.
It can also mean publishing guest posts, which are articles on blogs similar to yours, asking your 1000 fans to share their post or take specific actions to spread your content.
As in all businesses, word of mouth is the best advertisement for a site.
Internet advertising allows you maximum profiling of your potential readers and usually gives excellent results to be measured in terms of cost/performance.
The positioning on the engines and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another way to be found and known, in general free.
Conclusions
When I read the advice of other bloggers on how to transform your blog from an amateur project to a successful business project, I learn about miraculous hosting services that guarantee the maximum speed and a dizzying increase in visits.
Usually, the recommended hosting is Siteground, the WordPress platform and the recommended themes vary, but they are recommended as a guarantee of positioning for your articles from an SEO perspective.
Here I am in this post I have voluntarily left out these issues.
I read blogs from professionals like JohnnyFD or Francesco Narmenni who use cheap Blogspot and hosting.
While these are issues to focus on, to start building a business, it’s much more important to choose a niche where you don’t have stiff competition and where you can value your readers.
The mentality is much more important than the tools.
I don’t want to say that SEO, graphics, site speed are not important topics, but in the end, it is the content that makes the difference.
An intelligent reader wants to read above all something he needs.
If you want to build a business around what you can do, you need to know your audience, attract them to your pages, retain them, pamper them and monetize them before you even have a beautiful and performing site.
Only if you win your first 1000 true fans will you go from being a passionate beginner to being a web entrepreneur.
Good luck!