We all blog for different combinations of reasons, but one thing all bloggers have in common is we are all volunteers because it takes time before any financial rewards are gained. That makes blogging a matter of inspiration. I’ve read and written “why do you blog” posts before but it always seems like those posts barely scratch the surface of why most people actually blog.

Everyone needs help getting inspired from time to time, so here is my best shot at it.

1. Blogging keeps your brain sharp. Blogging uses so many different skills you will find it keeps your brain on the ball. I’m sure that all the reading and creativity involved in both marketing and writing means bloggers have bigger than average egos brains.
2. Blogging time is alone time and some alone time is good for you. Keeping some sort of journal is often recommended by psychotherapists because it is a therapeutic activity where you have time to remember who you are and not get carried away with whatever is happening in the outside world. I consider it a very healthy hobby/job in that sense.
3. The uniqueness of blogging for a living. Blogging is not something anyone I know in person does and has become part of my identity.
4. The idea of going through life never having been employed or having a boss is very attractive.
5. Blogging produces something tangible that you can be proud of. School never did that for me. There was nothing special about getting an “A grade”. A zillion other people had them. A great blog is unique and much more special than a grade someone else gave you on a piece paper.
6. Blogging is a gateway to the best profession - entrepreneurship! What could be better than starting something from scratch and turning it into a wonderful money-making cash cow?
7. Blogging gives you a dream. Forgive me for sounding like a cheesy 1980s American film but everyone needs a dream to chase or an ultimate ambition of sorts. The Internet is like the wild-west at the moment where anyone can “make-it-big”, which is a strong motivator for innovation.

Those are 7 reasons why blogging is fantastic and they all inspire me to blog. I look forward to reading your own in the comments.

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It is commonly thought that search engine traffic is very high quality and easy to monetize. This is because the searchers are looking for something specific, as I outlined in this article about types of blog content. But does that mean it means your blog is more valuable if most of your visitors come from search engines or is a more diverse mix of traffic better? Search engine traffic generally is one of the most stable types of traffic and so at first glance a single stable source is surely better than multiple sources of varying quality, because more money will be made from the site with a higher percentage of quality traffic. Unfortunately it is not that simple.

From A Buyers Point Of View

Lets say you are looking to invest and buy a blog that receives 1000 unique visitors per month, which is a pretty small amount.

Option 1
90% of those 1000 visitors find their way to the site via the search engines and are not repeat visitors.

Option 2
30% of the traffic is from search engines, 50% are from referring sites and 20% are repeat visitors.

These traffic differences tell you a massive amount about the quality of the site and how much time it will take to maintain. Humans are the best judge of content quality (quality meaning useful/informative/entertaining) which means it is likely the second site which has a community of repeat visitors is of higher quality. A site with a community also has potential for faster growth, be it virally from the visitors spreading the word or from the them providing links to it. However, a community takes resources to manage and with humans being the best judge, if you mess up and fail to keep providing content that 20% may shrink rapidly to 0% and that’s not because the other traffic sources increased!

With option 1 what comes to mind is a more “passive income site”, which in some cases is an MFA (made-for-adsense) site. The site sits in the search engines and the owner occasionally adds content to it at too slower rate for a community to build up, but saves resources by adding content less regularly.

Which Set Of Traffic Sources Is Worth The Most?

Positives For High Search Traffic:
Some of these are direct advantages, others are indirect.

• Traffic is highly targeted and as a result highly monetizable
• Needs less fresh content than a site with a community
• Search engines take longer to react than people, even if when they do act it can be very sudden. If the traffic has been stable for 3 months there is little reason to believe it is about to be lowered.

The big disadvantage for a site with lots of high quality search engine traffic and little other traffic is that if the site is penalized by the search engines the traffic is massively reduced. There is no diversity.

Positives For Mixed Traffic Sources

• Overall traffic is more stable. The traffic is more likely to decrease a small amount but less likely to be completely reduced.
• Is a sign of a site that is kept up-to-date. Often on a dead Website or blog all the traffic sources dry up apart from some of the search traffic.
• Quicker to grow traffic. Search engine traffic takes time to accumulate, if a site is receiving a sizable percentage of traffic from referring sites that percentage is more likely to be able to increase more quickly.
• Community could create content themselves with the right model

The big disadvantage for having a mix of traffic sources which vary in quality is that the traffic is not as well targeted and so not as profitable. This isn’t because of the mix of traffic, but because there are few other traffic sources that match up to the profitability of search traffic.

Size Matters

To take it to the next level, the budget and overall plan of a buyer makes a big difference. If I were buying a site with just 1000 visitors per month, its purpose would be to be part of a passive income network, where the low cost of maintenance would be a big factor which puts the high search trafficked site in the lead. Having a large number of small sites in a passive income network negates the riskiness of having most of the traffic coming from just one source.

However, for a larger site with perhaps 10,000 monthly unique visitors per month (at the very least) I would be looking for a very high quality site with a community. Not only for the money but if I was going to spend large amounts of my time working on that site it would need to be enjoyable and community sites are much more fun! Also on a larger site it is much easier to take advantage of the viral aspect, because there may already be enough evangelistic repeat visitors to spread the sites popularity across the net with little paid promotion.

Conclusion

This is somewhat theoretical, but for a small site where the plan is to have lots of them then sites with high search engine traffic are a good choice. For a larger site repeat visitors and referring sites is a positive attribute.

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This is the second part of a two part series discussing the most profitable type of blog content.

In part one I showed that blogs can be seen to educate, inform or entertain the readership and I outlined the various advantages that come with monetizing news and resource blogs, which inform and educate.

Monetization Problems For Entertainment Blogs

A blog like this has a problem with monetization because the readership is so broad and un-targeted it can be hard to sell any certain product and AdSense clicks aren’t a good alternative as they would yield a low click through ratio and low earnings per click. Generally people who are bored go to entertainment blogs to kill time without a specific purpose, or if they do have a purpose is it to read/watch the blog and not to go shopping.

The Solution To Monetizing Entertainment Blogs

Entertainment blogs have a big advantage that they attract traffic like bees and so a great form of revenue is CPM ads, which pay by a rate per 1000 impressions and don’t require clicks. One of the best CPM ads are are full page Ads from Adbrite, which pay very well, sometimes up to $5 per 1000 impressions.

An example of a site that uses a combination of gossip and weird news stories to attract to attract a large mainstream readership is CitiJournalist.com. CitiJournalist takes the traffic advantages of news blogs, such as having a never ending supply of stories as well as the ability to use linkbaiting tactics more easily; and combines them with entertainment very successfully.

Conclusion

Profitability of blog content is all about the traffic to value of visitor ratio. With resource blogs an individual visitor is often more valuable but harder to attract, whereas on news and entertainment blogs an individual visitor is often less valuable but less costly to attract. Therefore all types of blog content can be highly profitable and ultimately it comes down to the quality of the content and how well it is marketed.

This is the first part of a two part series discussing the most profitable type of blog content.

Some blogs are very much resources, they contain useful information to help people perform a certain task. Other blogs are news blogs, while others exist purely for the entertainment of their readers. In other words the blogs are there to educate, inform or entertain, but which content model makes the most money?

Deciding the answer to this question means understanding how money is made online, which is a very simple equation. Profit from a blog is equivalent to traffic multiplied by the value of that traffic, minus the costs of running the blog. Note I am simplifying here to help you decide which type of blog to start in the future, but looking at the different blog monetization strategies available for each type of blog can help reveal their profitability.

These blogs are all what can be considered different types of “Flagship” blog, as opposed to niche blogs.

Monetization Advantages For Resource Blogs

Resource blogs are filled with useful information, such as how-to guides and longer blog posts. They are there to educate. Examples are Zen Habits and Dosh Dosh. Their advantages for monetization include:

• Brand trust. Due to the authority of a resource blogs publications if they recommend a product a high conversion ratio is achieved, selling more items.
• Targeted readership. People read them to find out how to do something. Products can be sold by them to help the readers achieve their goal. With a news or entertainment blog the readers don’t have such a well defined purpose.
• Sensible launching platform for in-house products. Higher profit margins can be achieved by selling your own product, rather than simply selling others as an affiliate. On a resource blog with a strong brand and a targeted readership it is the perfect site to expand into selling your own products.

Monetization Advantages For News Blogs

There are mainstream news blogs and those that focus on a specific niche, but both have these monetization advantages:

• Big brand ad deals for big money with companies like Federated Media
• Long term sponsorships. It is not uncommon for there to be long 6 month contracts sponsorships, sometimes for a particular category of news. News blogs often run on sponsorships and due to the longevity of those deals their earnings are often more stable, making them sell for a higher multiple. However, there is a disadvantage that because of the 6 month contact the blog cannot increase the cost for that period even if it increases in popularity. That is why finding sponsors for different categories of the news blog and attaining them at different times is a good idea.

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These businesses all build on your Internet marketing/blogging/MMO blog. As long as your blog has an online presence it can be used as a platform for launching other related businesses from, which have the potential to earn far more than the blog itself due to their scalability and cutting edge principles.

1. SEO, social media and blogging consultancy. Consultancies are often launched by bloggers when their expertise and reputation have reached a certain threshold. Examples of bloggers who are also consultants include Patrick Altoft, Chrisg and Glen Allsopp. Setting up a basic consultancy is extremely easy to do (finding clients is another), by simply creating a new page on your blog with details about your services and previous experience you can get started with this.

2. Mentoring membership site. These are slightly more complicated to set up and so have a higher barrier of entry resulting in fewer being created. Examples in the blogging niche include Blog Mastermind from Yaro Starak and Teaching Sells from Brian Clark.

3. E-Book selling. Giving away an e-Book for free in order to build an email list is one thing, but publishing e-Books (not just selling then as an affiliate) that can be sold is another beast entirely. The barrier for entry here varies as there are different strategies available for selling the e-Book (such as using affiliate networks or selling it yourself). E-Book selling is a revenue stream many bloggers have not explored because the natural progression is to start a blog, then build an email list using a free offering. The abundance of free e-Books means a paid for one has to be exceptionally good.

4. Launching a clone of a popular social site for a specific niche. For example BloggingZoom is one of the more popular pligg sites for bloggers. Launched by Courtney Tuttle and Blogger Unleashed. An example of this in another niche is Health Ranker which was launched by Israel from FatManUnleashed.

5. Email courses. These are very easy to set up with Aweber and a paypal account. However, these are also quite rare because it isn’t hard to make the extra leap to a full membership site which unlike an email course can more easily can be sold at a later date.

Conclusion

All those options have been, or are currently in existence. There are plenty of other expansion options such as creating a blog network or adding a forum, but they are just different sections to the same Website.

The only other option is to innovate!

What other business opportunities do you see for blogs?

Photo by susanica