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Welcome to the next article in my series on blogging as a sustainable business model. In part one of this series you learned about the staple monetization strategy that most probloggers use - creating content to bring in traffic and increase income.

Using the example of Darren Rowse in article two, I concluded that despite the fact that a few top bloggers earn a full time income blogging, and even more money in the case of Darren and bloggers like him, it is still not a sustainable business model when so much responsibility for output rests on one person. In the previous article before this one I listed some of the advantages that many top bloggers enjoy, which the average person does not.

If you have not read the first three parts in this series please do so before continuing with this article.

• Part 1: Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?
• Part 2: Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
• Part 3: The Advantages Top Bloggers Have That You Don’t

Points of Leverage

The problem with the current model for professional blogging is the lack of a strategy that actually leverages the content = traffic = money equation in a non-linear way. Most professional bloggers apply the time = money formula directly to the content = traffic = money formula, placing a big limitation on the total output possible. This as I mentioned is self employment applied to blogging. Blogging is not a bad job, but it is still a job - and you may not want a job forever if you share my belief that happiness comes from freedom.

What we need to do is create a model that doesn’t restrict content = traffic = money, but instead exponentially multiplies it, and to do this we need to finds way to leverage our resources.

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Notice: This post has my affiliate link.

I’ve been so busy writing my series on professional blogging that I haven’t kept up with this launch, but I know many people who read my blog have closely kept an eye on the Pipeline Profits launch.

I wrote about the start of the launch in this article -

Pipeline Profits - A Million Dollar Internet Business With No SEO, No PPC And No Affiliates?

Today is launch day for the product and since I’m so late you only have about two hours left to buy. You can view the sales page here -

http://videos.pipeline-profits.com/

If you want to buy the product you better get in quick since there are only a couple of hours left as I write this, but I think (hope) the free videos are remaining online longer since I want to finish watching them myself.

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The first article in this series on professional blogging as a business model, I introduced you to the core formula behind how most bloggers attempt to make money - content = traffic = money. In the second part I concluded that professional blogging is NOT a sustainable business model after taking a close look behind the success of the professional blogger Darren Rowse.

Be sure to read the first two parts in this series before continuing to read this article.

• Part 1: Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?
• Part 2: Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?

No One Can Do It On Their Own Forever

Darren Rowse is the best example of a blogger who can make blogging work as a business, afterall he is one of the highest earning bloggers and makes most of his money from blogs he built himself.

Darren, despite his super-human blogging powers, cannot sustain his output forever and more importantly, I don’t think many other bloggers want to replicate Darren’s work ethic. We may want to replicate his results but most of us don’t have the motivation to do so - nor would I recommend you attempt to be as prolific as Darren because the odds are that you will end up disappointed and bitter, or just plain tired.

Another problem is the blogging marketplace isn’t as small as it used to be and like any industry that is maturing, there is increased competition, which demands a higher quality of output from bloggers if they want to compete. Niches that already have key bloggers dominating or many bloggers vying for traffic, are very difficult to enter with any success - it’s hard to beat the incumbents.

The “luck” Darren enjoyed when he first started out is hard to replicate because of the amount of bloggers in the blogosphere, and of course we can’t replicate Darren’s good timing, although it is possible to find “new” good timing if you start doing something early before everyone else catches on - as long as it does catch on.

The traditional sequence of content = traffic = money may hold true as a formula for a monetization model using blogs, but the main problem is bloggers treat blogging like a job, and not a business. The result of this is self-employment, which as glorious as it may sound for people who currently work for others, as entrepreneurs know it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

The stresses of operating in a situation where your direct output is the key ingredient for success, makes for a harrowing work environment. This is exactly what a professional blogger does. They create a situation where their business lives and dies by their output.

The key to breaking out of self employment and into business ownership as a professional blogger, is to realize that you can’t do what you do by yourself forever - you must learn how to come to rely on the input of others.

How Do Top Bloggers Do It?

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In the first part of this series on professional blogging as a business model I explained the content = traffic = money equation as the root formula for nearly all currently successful professional bloggers and those who are working to replicate their success.

If you have not done so already, please read the opening article here -

Is Professional Blogging A Sustainable Business Model?

Darren Rowse, A Leading Professional Blogger

I first came across Darren Rowse in 2004, and his Problogger.net blog appeared to be well put together and intriguing, but at the time I was beginning my research into blogging and was far from making any money from my own blog - in fact I didn’t have any intentions of doing so. If it wasn’t for one unique thing, that Darren was an Aussie from Melbourne and I am from Australia too, I would not have spent nearly as much time studying Darren and his blog as I did.

Darren has a lot to answer to in the professional blogging world. It’s partly his fault that so many people currently do or are attempting to make money from blogging. If it wasn’t for events like this slashdot news post in July 05 about Darren earning between $10,000 and $20,000 per month from blogging, and the countless articles, blog posts and offline newspaper features on Darren’s success (he’s probably seen cheques and payments at double or triple his 2005 monthly income average since then - Darren?), not quite as many would know that this whole professional blogging thing was possible.

If it wasn’t Darren then no doubt some other professional blogger would have risen to spread awareness of the potential of blogging for income. No matter who did it, the outcome was always going to be the same - professional blogging rising in popularity as a new hit online occupation available to the average person with a computer and net access.

What Does Darren Have That You Don’t?

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This is part one of a series of articles on professional blogging as a business model. We begin with a discussion of what is wrong with the strategies most bloggers implement when they first decide to become a professional blogger.

The Professional Blogosphere Today

There’s a good chance that if you are reading this you make money online or want to. There’s also a very good chance you are a blogger and you currently make money from blogging. Unfortunately most of you who blog and make money from it, do not make much money.

The sad truth is most bloggers, even those who incessantly work on monetization strategies, end up sitting around the few dollars a day mark and find it difficult to rise above this level.

Looking at the on the surface cause for this predicament, the natural conclusion is lack of traffic. More traffic leads to more income - that’s a fact in nearly all cases.

You don’t need super amounts of traffic to generate reasonable income and small amounts of quality traffic can bring in the bucks, but let’s face the facts - those true professional bloggers who make a full time income from blogging, do so with a readership in the multiple thousands.

Even five hundred visitors a day, a difficult amount for most bloggers to reach, is not enough to push you into the illustrious category of full time income from professional blogging, which I consider to be around $2000 a month.

There are probably a handful of bloggers who could prove me wrong, but I expect the number is well below one percent of the total blogosphere, or even of the sample of bloggers who aim to make money from blogs.

I trust most bloggers reading this have also come to the same conclusion and thus aim to one day have a readership in the thousands to become a true professional blogger.

Studying the wisdom of successful bloggers reinforces the assumption that traffic is the key ingredient for big money and more often than not the advice given to solve the traffic problem is produce more content that people love. Producing content makes sense on many levels and you won’t find many true professional bloggers who haven’t risen to the top thanks to their ability to dish out the goods on a regular basis.

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