Is This The Only Sustainable Blogging Business Model?
It’s taken four articles to get here, but at last the final chapter in the series on sustainable business models that use blogs. If this is the first time you have read this series please read the articles in sequence. Here are links to the previous articles -
- 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
- Part 4: The Key Resource For A Sustainable Blogging Business
If you have stuck with me and read all the articles in this series you are probably eagerly awaiting my recommendation for professional blogging business models that ARE sustainable. I have compiled my suggestions below and I offer one main method for using blogs as the focus of a business, but the picture I paint is not an ideal business model in my opinion.
It is still very early days in the blogging world and there are not many people currently using a blog or several blogs as the main focus of their business model. Thousands of people use blogs to augment an existing business, but not many focus on blogs as the business and of course there are many successful professional bloggers, but that’s not a business as I have explained over the course of this series.
In order to become a professional blog business owner you must establish a small business model that uses blogs, but does not require you to always blog. In order for this to work for you, as I hinted in previous articles, you need to learn how to create something that is not dependent on your own input for success and adjust your preconceptions of how to build wealth.
The Blog Network
The Key Resource For A Sustainable Blogging Business
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.
Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Blogger?
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.
