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Guy Kawasaki: It’s Hard to Make Money Blogging

First off, if you aren’t a regular reader of Guy Kawasaki, head on over. There’s a reason why he rose to stardom in his first few months of blogging.

Now, Guy is sort of an outside/n00b in terms of webmastering, and he brings a fresh perspective on issues we old hats have beaten to death since 2001.

His recent post The First 100 Days: Observations of a Nouveau Blogger, is a succinct but accurate collection of truisms. In particular:

10. It’s hard to make money blogging. The advertising revenues don’t add up to much, but there are other significant rewards like helping people change the world..

Amen to that. One of the major themes of Performancing is that of making money from blogging. But the truth is that the vast majority of people do not make much money from their blogs… and even if they do make a decent bit, if you amortize it over the hours they put, it’s still likely they’re effectively earning less than minimum wage while blogging. (There are exceptions of course, but they are outliers.)

I think all of us in this space are driven, in part at least, by something besides money. (Well, except for me and Rich.)

What motivates everyone to blog? Are you mostly in it for the money (or something that could bring money, like if your blog gives you exposure that leads to a job offer)? Or do you do it for fun? A passion? A hobby? A part time job? A bit of all of the above?

(I’ll go first… I’m in it 90% for the money… 10% as a hobby…)

Pride, the 6th Deadly Sin of Blogging

Nick told me last night about a debate that is raging over a company displaying and critiquing customer support emails. I don’t want to stir things up any more than has already happened but suffice to say a lot of their customers feel they are being disrespected. I am 100% sure the company in question, darling of web2.0 that it is, will recover from this and be even stronger but it did get me thinking. My last “blogging sins” post, Sloth, the 7th Deadly Sin of Blogging wasn’t really meant to be a series but I think this leads me neatly into another blogging sin; pride.

When we begin to receive the first signs we are on the right track and a little of the rewards of success it can easy to start believing we have all the answers. After all, things are going so well we must have done the right things which means of course we are “good at this stuff”.

Problem is that might not be so near to the truth as we think. Yes we might have made some right moves but also there is a great deal of luck involved as much as preparation, skill and intelligence.

We are all learning about blogging, it doesn’t matter how long you have been at it we can all learn something new every day. In fact I have learned more about blogging from questions asked here on the forums and PM system than I knew before we started.

Is there a possibility the guys I mention above have bought into their own hype and believe they know better than their customers about what their customers need? Are they so confident of their own worth that they don’t need feedback?

It seems in my experience that the phrase “pride comes before a fall” usually is very true. The best bloggers seem to retain a level of humility. Companies and bloggers who get more arrogant the more successful they become are usually due a kicking and inevitably get knocked down off their pedistals.

OK, I might be mixing up my definitions here, let’s dig out the dictionary:

“A desire to be more important or attractive to others“

I think most bloggers can recognise that. One motivation for blogging is to have our voices heard. While it’s important to serve your audience it is a temptation to make it all about the popularity contest and less about putting out good content.

There is a difference between aiming to please and playing to the crowd but it is not always easy to see where that line is. How do you avoid this? I guess deciding your own opinions, sticking to your guns, knowing when to change your mind or apologise? Be true to yourself? And don’t chase the approval of the A-List.

“failing to give credit due others“

We have all seen this one play out over and over. You see another blogger quote your content with no attribution or wholesale copy your work. Another is where you just know someone got their story from your blog but you don’t get a link or when someone thanks someone else for your story. Not much you can do about it as the victim but we can all make sure we link accurately and generously. Another reason to not use no-follow too.

“Vanity and narcissism“

Not much to say about this that hasn’t already been discussed here, hah.

“love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor“

Perhaps this is a cause of all the back biting and sniping going on. When some people see others doing well they want to pull them down to elevate their own standing? The best way we can counteract this is by applauding good work by others and helping others get more visible. We do this in a small way by promoting good posts to our homepage for example.  Another thing that we can do is to stand up to bullies when we spot them.

“a prideful person believes him/herself to be in complete control of things“

I think this is where the company mentioned in the intro are at. They look at their sales figures and feel vindicated in everything they do without realising there are such things as “reputation equity” and “lifetime value”. Sometimes the publicity from a negative story can give a short term lift but the long term damage to public opinion can ruin the company. There are many examples of companies who did well in their “honeymoon period” then suffered in the backlash.

Bloggers can often believe their “following” have inpenetrable loyalty but in fact human beings are fickle. Any one of us can find we have limits to our loyalty when we see someone do things we disagree with. The best bloggers listen to their feedback early and comprehensively so the damage is minimal and short term, the most prideful end up falling on their swords.

So what to do?

I know we at Performancing, while often giving out advice, never feel like we have all the answers as we are constantly being shown that we don’t. You guys do not let us get too full of ourselves, hah. That has got to be the answer, listen to those around you who keep you grounded and be careful if you seem to have a cheering squad. It’s nice to constantly receive congratulatory feedback but it’s also essential to have balance, to know where you are going wrong. If you are not hearing it perhaps ask for it? If you think you have all the answers perhaps you are asking the wrong questions?

Being Three-Dimensional

In Nicks The 80/20 Rule of Focus post he recommends against too many off topic posts

bloggers start off very focused on their core topic. But as they run dry of things to say, usually at around the same time that their subscriber base starts to really get into interesting figures, they start to wander wildly off-topic.

I want to talk about the other side of the coin, the problem where all your posts stick too rigidly to the main topic. Contradictory? Not really.

While I quite agree that we should stick to the theme most of the time, as in Nicks post where he suggests it is ok for one out of five posts to stray off topic I would suggest every now and then you talk about something other than your main subject. My preference would be something that provides some insight into you.

This thought came this morning as I was catching up on my news feeds. When I am away I do not read the majority of my feeds, I have a dislike of web based news readers plus if I am away it is for a reason and that reason is very unlikely to include reading blogs. When I got back from this trip I have been programming a couple of small things for Performancing (one of which will be revealed soon). Subsequently I had a couple of weeks backlog waiting for me this morning.

When you read a lot of blog posts all at once you start seeing patterns. It has been a source of a couple of my posts in the past. The pattern I saw this morning made me realise something I knew before but it really hit home. My favourite bloggers and blogs tend to be the ones where the blogger makes an effort to be three-dimensional.

What do I mean by that?

Well I don’t mean that all they post about is themselves. Although having said that one of my favourite bloggers perhaps over-shares (even down to posting pictures of her new hairstyles, complete with Flickr gallery of same). I mean colouring in the lines so the blogger comes across as human. Small details, back story, likes and dislikes. Stuff that is happening to them.

It is not necessary to devote entire posts to personal updates, in fact I think it works best when this stuff is dropped in as support for an idea.

As an example, if you are a gadget blogger you might talk about not just the gadget you are reviewing or previewing but about what you might use it for, what context in your life might it be just the thing you need. It doesn’t need to be over personal either. One of my blogs is on Photography so when we are planning to go away we talk about what we are buying in preparation and when we are on trips we tend to post about how our equipment performed on location.

It’s easy to forget that bloggers and blog readers are first and foremost people. Blogs are about people communicating, some times we focus too much on the communication aspect and forget the people aspect.

There is a delicate balance to strike between showing that you are a real person and opening up too much. I would not recommend providing too many details about where you live, your spouse, children and your movements for example, that opens you up to dangerous situations with strangers appearing on your doorstep like happened to Darren. Also do not turn your blog into a journal if it is not meant to be, people subscribe for the content they expect not pictures of your cat.

I think though if you do manage to share just a little bit of a picture of who you are your readers will feel closer to you, will be more likely to take on board what you say and be more inclined to return for more.

What To Do When You Can’t Blog

Ever since I put out my hat as a professional blogger last summer, I’ve been more fatigued on a regular basis than with any other career. Problogging is hard work. This no doubt also comes from poor eating and sleeping habits while I surf the net researching for future  posts. Well things came to a head when, just over a week ago, I got hit hard with flu. I was so sick that I slept from the Sunday night that I got sick to Tuesday morning. All my plans for writing blog entries and boosting my traffic were delayed more than a week. But what I found was that my break from blogging didn’t affect my traffic all that much, or so my forecasting charts seem to prove.

Now how is this possible? While my traffic is still steadily climbing, it’s low enough that any sharp spikes will be noticeable and significant. But it appears that I’ve reached a high enough level of regular daily traffic that my collection of articles can sustain itself. In fact, while my traffic during last week didn’t set any new records, it stayed close to my current watermark. What’s more, my 7-day rolling total ad clicks did fairly well, almost hitting previous highs. This was also reflected in my 7-day rolling total revenue.

Because I am an informational blogger for the most part, much of my traffic is search engine-based. I don’t yet have a lot of regular readers, mainly because I don’t spend enough time daily on a single blog to cultivate regulars. Eventually, I’ll need to do something about this, because repeat visitors are a primary source of high daily traffic, and thus advertising income. The key will be to focus on a small handful of blogs, then write for them daily/ regularly, instead of spreading my efforts all over the place and only posting new content weekly on any given blog.

But in the interim, I’ve managed to build up traffic with a small collection of several hundred informational posts covering several topics.  It’s hard work, but it can be done. Had I stuck with a single topic, I’d probably not have achieved current traffic levels – some of my topics are obscure. I’ve managed to stay diversified, however.

It means a lot more work and a lot of research to write clearly about several topics instead of just one. This diversification is probably a longer-term way to becoming a successful blogger. But traffic growth is organic and thus likely more stable. Income growth is slow but steady. This just means that you can take some time off without seriously affecting your current levels of traffic or income.

I’m interested in knowing what contingency plans other bloggers have in place. Do you still blog daily? Or have you realized that blogging, like any career, requires you to take some time for yourself? Maybe you’re a machine, and you can blog daily without fail. What do you plan to do when you get sick? Do you see blogging as only a short-term venture, something you’ll stop doing after a few years? Or do you think of it as a long-term career?

If you’re wondering whether blogging is worth the effort, I might be able to help. I can’t always tell you if your topic is lucrative. However, as I’ll discuss in a later post here soon, you can use a few simple mathematical formulas and some graphs to forecast your blog traffic and income, both short-term and long-term. Once you see the forecasts, it’s easier to tell yourself that you’re achieving some successes, however small.

Help Us Test New Metrics Template Code

By now WordPress users will have seen Richards Metrics Hacks but I thought today I would show some Metrics template code tweaks you can implement for Blogger, WordPress and Drupal blogs.

The main gripe people have had with the template code is how it needs to differentiate between posts and the homepage. My solution for Blogger users follows.

Index or Post Logic

Blogger







This relies on Blogger template logic that decides which block of code to show depending on if it is an archive page or a post. Blogger also allows you to show the page title or post title. In the metrics code if the Z_ variables are not filled in it uses the page title as a default so you only really need the post title necessarily.

Many blog platforms have equivelant tags, in Drupal you can check to see if the $main or $page PHP variables are set as true (homepage or individual post), Textpattern has a “if_individual_article” tag. WordPress is more complete than most, having “is_home()”, “is_single()”, “is_category()”.

Don’t Track Yourself

A much requested feature is to filter out your own visits. This can be most easily acheived by not showing the tracking script when a registered user is viewing or more specifically you are logged in. Some blogs have a feature that allows roles so you could have ordinary members still tracked but admins not.

In WordPress you can check $userdata. If it is set there is user information available, you can also drill into the username, user ID or user level. This allows you to check for “Bob” or not show for users with permissions over a certain level.

WordPress User Logic

user_login != "Bob") print "