Blogging is hardly a business at all, but you should have one anyways
As Clay Collins would put it “being a professional blogger who makes more than 40k a year is like being a professional basketball player, it’s not very likely that’ll be you.”
Now there’s a whole world of internet marketers and MLM gurus out there who want you to build sales pages, affiliate market and so much more but in the end they can come off like that sleazy car salesman down at the 70′s era auto lot. We don’t want to be them.
So how do you feel like you’re not cheating a person out of their money and still make money online?
Create a business that adds value to the world in something that you are passionate about.
As Hugh MacLeod so elegantly puts it:
Before you waste your life on making the most money in the shortest amount of time (isn’t that what we’re trying to escape?) or wasting hours or years blogging waiting for the money to come flooding in… determine what will get you to jump out of bed everyday excited to create that people want.
Then build a business around it. Whether it is a service business like consulting, a product business that delivers objects, or a performance business that delivers entertainment – start from the mindset that it is a business and needs to be self-sustaining.
This will most likely involve learning sound marketing and small business principles, of which there are many excellent resources on the web and in your local bookstore to learn from. If you want, let me google that for you.
It will most assuredly involve work.
Then Build A Blog.
Or better yet, integrate a blog into your businesses website.
Your blog is a tool to share your value with the world. It is a platform to speak from and rouse your tribe from the faceless masses. It puts a face on your business, show authenticity and establish authority. It’s a way to connect with people and show them that you’re a real person who wants to help solve a problem and create something meaningful in the world.
So before you go tramping off to create a blog and wait to hit it big, just like musicians used to wait for their big record deal or actors for their big movie break, take a moment, breathe and realize that you need a business model before you need a blog.
