Mark Penn is a familiar name. The guy was a pollster during the 2008 election. He was on the other side! His new assignment makes sense to me. Politics is war by other means. Business is politics by other means.
a new corporate strategy role reporting directly to Steve Ballmer ...... is assembling a “SWAT team” to work on thorny strategy questions ..... corporate vice president of strategic and special projects. ..... politics and technology have been my two passions since I was about 12 .... the Microsoft boss was intrigued with Mr. Penn’s comparison of the marketing challenge of Bing to pitching a political candidate ..... Penn said more consumers need to be convinced to use Bing. .... “Diehard habits can be questioned, just in the same way that people drank Coke and then realized Pepsi was just as good if not better” .... Mr. Penn said he will continue to work from Washington, D.C., though he plans to spend time in Redmond
This hire speaks to Ballmer's tenacity.
Steve Jobs had innovation nailed down. Ballmer has tenacity nailed down.
Get a blog for free at Blogger. Some people also use WordPress and quite like it. Think of Disqus and Zemanta as part of the blog creation process. You don't get extra points for those, and both are free. The same applies to Google Analytics. There is no excuse not to have it.
Blog Daily
Unless you can create good, original, regular content, you are not a blogger. Go do something else. Or blog as a hobby. Do not try to pass for a professional blogger. Maybe you have a day job.
Traffic Is Key
All revenue you generate from your blog is in direct proportion to your blog's traffic. It is almost certain you will not start with a huge traffic for your blog unless you are Oprah, and that is okay. It is not where you start, it is where you end up.
Content Creation
There is the stuff you write.
There are photos you post.
There are images - say from Zemanta - and videos - say from YouTube - that you integrate into your blog posts.
There are websites and news articles you link to.
A blogger is a writer, but also an editor. Links are not sly, they are integral to your blog posts. The stuff you write has to be the center of what you do, but stuff you write can't be the only thing you present.
Boosting Traffic
Referring Sites
Direct Traffic
Search Engines
Mark Penn, Hillary 2008 campaign manager, says in his famous Wall Street Journal article that at 100,000 unique visits per month, a blogger hits 75K in income. There is a suggestion that there is a direct correlation between how much traffic you get and how much you make as a blogger.
That comes to about 3,300 uniques per day. You might start out at 50 a day. You have to set goals. How about 200 per day? How about 300? 500? How about 1,000 uniques per day? It is very hard to move from 50 to 300. It is like a rocket taking off. A lot of fuel gets burnt during phase one. You can't give up along the way. Trying to get to 500 uniques per day is also where a lot of the learning takes place. So think of that early stage as the education part, not the income part. The money comes later, when you go up in page hits.
Seek Out Revenue Sources
You can get all the traffic in the world and still not have monetized your blog. In that case, you don't make any money. Monetization is key, it is conscious effort. And this talk should have been part of the first paragraph. Here are a few sources, there are several other good ones.
There is a reason why several of them require that you have been blogging for a while. If your blog has been up less than three months, stick to the dollars and cents from GoogleAdSense, mostly cents.
By the way, just yesterday I made about $13 each from each of these blog post ads, I worked about five minutes on each.
What is your primary passion in life? That should be the primary passion at your blog. If you are lucky, that will also end up being your blog's niche in the market. What is your niche? Google Analytics will help you determine that. What keywords do people use at the search engines to end up at your blog? Which of your blog posts have received the most traffic? Which referring sites have generated the most traffic for you?
50% of your blog posts should be about your passion/niche. 25% can be about anything and everything that you might fancy. That is how you end up with tech bloggers waxing eloquent about politics, in the same breath. 25% can be about you and can read like journal entries. Does it have to be 50-25-25? Not really. 53-26-21 would be fine too. I am just suggesting. 60-20-20 might be better, 70-15-15 might be better still.
Every time you get a blog post idea, write it down. Better still, start a blog post, write down the idea in the subject line like you are about to write a full blog post, and save it as a draft for later.
Do You Have To Blog Daily
Not really. You could put out two great blog posts per week and still do fine. There are some successful bloggers who do that. But guess what they do for many other hours? They visit other great blogs, read their posts, participate in their comments sections, make friends, network in their part of the blogosphere.
But if your goal is to become a full time professional blogger, blogging daily is not the goal, that is the minimum. Eventually you are going to have to blog several times a day. So how often you blog depends on what you want out of the blogging experience.
More On Boosting Traffic
Creating great content, boosting traffic, and seeking out revenue sources are topics you will keep learning about for as long as you keep blogging. Those are the fundamentals. At each new traffic level, your perspective changes slightly.
Starting out you have to try out anything and everything. You have to experiment a lot to find out what is right for you, what works for you.
Blogging is not for everybody, but it is for many people. I happen to think it can be a wonderful secondary career. I think of it this way. Blogging is a fundamental skill for the knowledge worker. So if you think of it as a secondary career, you are more likely to keep polishing your blogging skills, which would be a great thing for your primary career. And if you are the entrepreneur type, you better believe it that every cent counts. Google makes its billions in cents not dollars.
Mark Penn says in his famous Wall Street Journal article that at 100,000 unique visits per month, a blogger hits 75K in income. There is a suggestion that there is a direct correlation between how much traffic you get and how much you make as a blogger. So how do you go about increasing traffic for your blog?
There are three kinds of traffic:
Search Traffic
Referring Sites
Direct Traffic
If you focus solely on content creation and engage in no other marketing effort, all your traffic is going to come from search engines. If you become inactive for any length of time, you are still going to get residual traffic. Most of that likely might be search engine traffic, except if you get residual traffic of the other two kinds from your previous marketing efforts.
It is fundamental that you use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how much and what kind of traffic you are getting. The tool also tells you of the keywords people use to feed the search engines to end up at your site, and what pages they visit. This helps you discover your niche, and to create ever more content for that particular niche. For me right now that seems to be Android.
More specifically "donut android" and "cupcake android." For those two phrases my blog for now shows up on the first page of Google search results. That is prime real estate. The reason I have to hone in that niche makes sense at many levels to me.
When I write new blog posts on Android, content creation and marketing are not two different activities. They are one and the same.
Android is no cottage industry. It is not some sub sub sub topic. It just might end up being the top technology news for this year.
Android so totally fits into my IC vision and my startup. The more I learn about Android, the better for me. I don't mind getting paid to learn. (Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures) I plot every day to go back to working on my startup full time. Android is fundamental to the IC vision. The ground - operating system - itself has to move for the vision to become reality.
I feel lucky that the topic in technology that I find most fascinating right now is also my blog's prime niche according to Google Analytics. And I got told of that niche right after my first Android blog post. I find that amazing. My respect for Google's algorithms grew. And when Google gave me the number two spot after my first Donut Android blog post, my respect for the search engine really grew. (Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android)
Search engine traffic I think is the best kind, but working on the other two does not take away from your search engine traffic, quite the opposite, so don't ignore the other two either.
If I am a tech blogger, it makes sense that I visit TechCrunch, for example, or Mashable. And if I am going to visit anyways, why not participate in the comments sections? It takes but a few seconds. And because your name gets hyperlinked to your blog, those comments sections start sending a little traffic your way. What is there to complain?
Contrary to the stereotype, blogging is a social activity. You have to belong to blogging and online communities around your interests. You have to forge friendships in the blogosphere. And forging friendships with bloggers who are not so big name increases your chances of them putting you on their blogrolls. After traffic, those backlinks are what jack up your google rank. Those backlinks are key. And content creation alone will not do the work for you, especially during the early stages when you are still wondering how you hit 1,000 page hits a day.
Twitter is micro-blogging. And there is another: that would be the comments sections of other blogs. Got to participate.
Twitter is another great place to socialize. Don't just have a list of people you follow and followers. Got to make some time and visit their profile pages and respond to some of their tweets. These are real living, breathing people. Get to know some of them, or many of them if possible.
And there is direct traffic. Feedburner lets you put a box at your blog that gives visitors the option to subscribe to your blog with their email addresses. Seth Godin claims that mailing list is how he gets most of his traffic. But he probably became a star blogger first. But before you become famous and other people know you, when you are a small fish blogger, there are people you know. Once in a while it is okay to send out emails to people you know sharing a blog post or two with them. Look Ma, no hands!
Focus on great content creation.
Find your niche, and create great content for that particular niche, but also constantly be diversifying. You don't want to go out of business when one rainy day Google revised its algorithms and your blog ended up in Siberia.
Blogging is a social activity. Be in a habit of visiting other blogs and participating in their comments sections in meaningful ways.
Strive to generate a band of loyal visitors, people who want to lap up every blog post you put out because, oh, you are just so wonderful.
America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for HireMark Penn, Hillary 2008's top guy ... more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers ... blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults. ... a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income ... one percent of the nation, or three million people, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change ... The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. ... Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated ... It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. ... Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. ... Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. ... Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. ... bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction ... There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession. ... hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. ... a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living. ...
This guy Dave Winer has an ugly looking blog, and he runs no ads, but he makes millions blogging. How?
To get excited about blogging is to "get" 2.0. And if you have been missing out on 2.0, it is not possible you are on the cutting edge.
(1) Value
The market rewards value. Are you meeting some kind of market need? Your blog adds to your value. It helps your marketing efforts. It is real intimate talk with your most important clients. Like A VC says, if you read his blog, and that of his five partners, it is like you sit with them in their office every day: that intimate.
(2) StartUp/Corporate
If you are a tech startup person, you breathe blogging. That rectangle on the screen is your office. And the blogosphere is a big chunk of it. Blogging becomes that fundamental, indispensable skill. It is like, can you type? Can you do that keyboard thing? If you can't, I think you are still beautiful, but how are you going to get any work done? Blogging is what typing was. Are you blogging literate? That is a fair question these days. (3) Lifelong Education
Blogging is to the brain what jogging is to your thighs. If you are an active blogger, chances are you keep up with the news in your chosen field. You think about the hot issues of the day. You are alert. You can still type as of today.
(4) Living Life To The Full Zappos says somewhere that because he tweets, he lives life more fully. Blogging makes you more alive as a person. You are more likely to squeeze that last drop out of each moment.
(5) Plenty Of Money
Write great content, regularly, jack up your traffic, and let the ads do their work.
If you are a big believer in social media, and have an active blog, that blog perhaps is your resume gone alive. If resumes could have stories! People stay in touch with you through your blog. Like Larry Page said about a piece of code he wrote early on, it is not like you can answer a million phone calls, but you can respond to a million queries. You blog once, and it gets read about by many.
And here are some revenue streams, while you are at it.
If you absolutely have to write, if you have that urge, that fix, blogging is for you. But blogging is so much more than that. Hillary 2008's campaign manager Mark Penn wrote an elaborate article in the Wall Street Journal calling blogging "America's newest profession."
America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire Mark Penn, Hillary 2008's top guy ... more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers ... blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults. ... a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income ... one percent of the nation, or three million people, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change ... The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. ... Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated ... It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. ... Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. ... Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. ... Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. ... bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction ... There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession. ... hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. ... a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living. ...
So if blogging is more than hobby to you, revenue talk is important. Write good content, jack up your traffic, and let the ad streams take care of the rest is a decent strategy. But in one of my near future posts I am going to argue the big money is not in blogging but in how blogging helps enhance your workspace which better be 2.0 rich in this day and age.
So if your blog is integral to your work, your career, your latest blog post is what your resume looks like today.
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