Now, while $12,000 is mere pennies to some, it’s a good, part-time job for others. The whole point of this blog post is the following, “if you want to make money blogging, you have to treat it like a business.” And, the earlier you do so, the better.
This mean thinking about revenues, ad outlets, advertising budgets, etc. In short, everything you would put in a marketing plan for a brick-and-mortar business, for example, needs to be part of your blog marketing plan as well.
Here, we will take a look at some specifics of a blog marketing plan. The idea is to get you to start thinking bout how you’re going to make money from your blog, and how much you’re going to need to spend to reach your financial goals.
How Much Do You Want to Make from Your Blog?
You may be thinking, “As much as I can.” And while that’s lofty, it’s not specific. One of the first things you need to do when you’re devising a blog marketing plan is to set a specific financial goal – known as an income projection in business plan speak.
Let’s start with a round number, $12,000 ($1,000/month) – within the next year. That’s $33.33/day ($1,000/30 days in a month). When you break it down like this, not only does it start to seem more manageable, you start to see ways you can actually make it happen.
Which Marketing Method Works Best for Promoting Blogs?
Now that you know you need to make $33.33 per day, you have to figure out just how you’re going to do it. There are two ways to make money online – paying for ads/traffic or using free methods to do so.
Following is a rundown of the most popular paid and free online methods for marketing a blog.
Paid Blog Marketing Methods
Pay-per-click Campaigns: This is perhaps the number one online, paid marketing method. It can cost as much or as little as you want, as you get to set your ad spend when you run a pay-per-click campaign.
Ads on individual sites: If you decide to go this route, make sure it is a highly trafficked site – in your niche. This is more risky because it puts all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. However, it can be highly effective, depending on the product/service you’re promoting, and how long the ad runs for.
Free Blog Marketing Methods
Article Marketing: This is one of my favorite free marketing methods. It takes a while to work, but well worth the effort if you have little money, but lots of time.
Guest Posting: One of the best free ways to get the word out about your blog, product, service, etc. Target popular blogs in your niche, send them a post and ask for nothing but a byline.
Blog owners are business people and they are always looking for quality posts. Not only does it introduce you to their audience, but as you’ll likely link from your blog to theirs, it introduces them to your audience as well. A match made in heaven.
Press Releases: Much like article marketing, you can write and submit press releases to free online outlets like PRLog.com. If you’re lucky, you may get a write up in a newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa, for example. Or, you may strike gold and get a call from a national media outlet.
The reason is, reporters use these outlets to track down newsworthy stories, to find “experts” to quote for a story they’re working on, to highlight online businesses, etc.
Social Bookmarking and Networking: This is one of the fastest, free ways to build a blog audience. Via traffic from mega sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon, you can easily begin to build a loyal following that can number in the thousands.
Updating Your Own Blog: Of course, this is obvious, but I didn’t want to leave it off the list. The best way to market your blog is to update it with interesting content on a regular basis.
This starts to build your hard core fans — your loyal audience. If you’re in it for the long haul and you build up a sizeable community of these, you could literally make most of your money from them — for they will buy from you, as well as spread the word about you.
Other Blog Marketing Strategies
If you have other blog marketing strategies I’ve left off the list, feel free to send them in!
Tomorrow’s Post: Now that we’ve laid out the major blog marketing strategies, in tomorrow’s post, I’ll outline some guidelines for choosing which methods to use to reach your financial goals as quickly as possible.
When I blogged at bloggin-ads, I only made an average of about $10-15/day. I personally think that if you create 1 blog a year and just sell it, you would make more than the $12,000/year mark. Some may create more than one blog at once, but it would be more difficult to market.
-Mike
It seems like managing multiple blogs at once would get way to cluttered. At least if you are planning on creating enough cash flow to make a substantial living on. $12,000 seems very reasonable for blogging. Thanks for the tips! I'm looking forward to tomorrows post.
@Mike: While it's true you can make substantially more building up and selling a blog, it's the "building up" part that takes the wind out of the sails of so many would-be blog entreprneeurs. It's not easy. And, once you start making money, it's kind of addictive — so why not grow it for yourself. Especially if it's subject matter you enjoy — which is kind of a prerequisite for growing a successful blog.
@Funny Karaoke News: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed this post, and hope you get the same satisfaction from today's post as well.