{"id":64622,"date":"2011-01-22T04:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=64622"},"modified":"2020-06-28T23:58:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T06:58:29","slug":"blogging-a-demanding-task-with-few-rewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/blogging-a-demanding-task-with-few-rewards\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging: A Demanding Task with Few Rewards?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, a reader named Matt sent me an article from <i>Chicago Business<\/i> about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagobusiness.com\/article\/20110115\/ISSUE03\/301159994\/bye-bye-bloggers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b>bloggers are quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards<\/b><\/a>. It&#8217;s a fascinating story that explores some of the problems with blogging as a money-making enterprise.<\/p>\n<p>The article suggests several reasons that blogs and bloggers fail:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blogging isn&#8217;t as lucrative as people imagine.<\/li>\n<li>Blogging takes too much time.<\/li>\n<li>Bloggers aren&#8217;t willing to share their personal lives.<\/li>\n<li>Bloggers run out of material.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s easier to reach people via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GetRichSlowly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/getrichslowly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Leaving aside Twitter and Facebook, all of these are valid concerns.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Money<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nAs part of my job, I talk to bloggers all the time. I speak to groups of bloggers at conferences, and I meet them one-on-one for lunch all year round.<\/p>\n<p>From my experience, <b>novice bloggers have <i>no idea<\/i> how much time and effort it takes to build and maintain a successful site<\/b>. Yes, you can start a blog in just an hour or two. Yes, you can run a blog as a hobby, and you can even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/more-money-5-ways-to-earn-extra-cash-in-your-spare-time\/\">make a little money<\/a> at it. But for a blog to be a full-time business it has to be, well, a full-time business. Blogging is no easy path to riches.<\/p>\n<p>Based on conversations with hundreds of bloggers, my best guess is that <b>the average blog makes <i>maybe<\/i> $50-$100 per month<\/b>. (Well, the <i>average<\/i> blog makes nothing. The average blog that&#8217;s trying to make money earns about $50 to $100 per month.) A very successful blog might make $1000 per month. And some, like Get Rich Slowly, make enough for folks to earn a full-time living.<\/p>\n<p>Blogging <i>can<\/i> be lucrative if you&#8217;re willing to invest the time and effort needed to make a go of it. But successful bloggers don&#8217;t just sit on the beach sipping <i>pi\u00f1a coladas<\/i> and eating mangoes. The full-time bloggers I know treat this just like work. Because it <i>is<\/i> work. (To be honest, the best bloggers I know are obsessive workaholics. They spend <i>too much<\/i> time on their blogs.)<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Time<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nOne reader wrote recently for advice on starting a blog. To paraphrase:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of my 2011 Resolutions was to start a blog. The blog is up and running, but it&#8217;s quite discouraging that people aren&#8217;t visiting it. Do you have any ideas on how to get people to visit the blog?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My reply? &#8220;<b>Building an audience for a blog takes <i>years<\/i>, not days.<\/b>&#8221; Blogs don&#8217;t just spring fully-formed into existence, like Athena from Zeus&#8217; head. Building a successful blog takes hundreds or thousands of hours of work.<\/p>\n<p>Even then, many things have to happen right in order for a blog to grow to the size of Get Rich Slowly.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You need to work hard.<\/li>\n<li>You need to write well.<\/li>\n<li>You need to cover a subject that interests people.<\/li>\n<li>You need to spread the word.<\/li>\n<li>You need to get lucky.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And, if you want to make money at it, you have to have a subject that can be monetized. (That is, a topic for which advertisers are willing to spend, or from which you can otherwise earn an income, like with e-books.)<\/p>\n<p>All of this takes time \u2014 and lots of it.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Details<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nBut time isn&#8217;t enough. Your blog has to be interesting, and one of the best ways to make it so is to be sure it tells a compelling story. Most blogs fail to find an audience because they&#8217;re just too generic. They&#8217;re bland. They could be written by anyone.<\/p>\n<p>The blogs I like have personality. Why do I love <a href=\"https:\/\/mimismartypants.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mimi Smartypants<\/a>? Because she&#8217;s so damn funny. What sets <a href=\"https:\/\/www.progressiveruin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Progressive Ruin<\/a> apart from other comic-book blogs? Mike makes the site personal. (He loves Swamp Thing, for goodness sake.) And what am I <i>always<\/i> telling the staff writers here at GRS? <b>Write with personality \u2014 share your life.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>A blog on <i>any<\/i> subject can be compelling if there&#8217;s a story behind it. Sure, readers come to a blog for information. But they also come to be entertained. They come to be part of a community. For these things to happen, they have to feel like they&#8217;re sharing your story. If you&#8217;re not telling a story, what is there to keep a reader around?<\/p>\n<p>Last July, I spoke to a group of deal-bloggers. I was dismayed at how lifeless their sites were. &#8220;To set yourself apart, you have to let your readers identify with you,&#8221; I told them. But a lot of people are scared to share too much on the internet. That makes it tough for a blog to succeed.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Material<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nOne final challenge bloggers face is a lack of material. If you&#8217;re writing a personal blog, this isn&#8217;t an issue. I mean, I can write about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jdroth.com\/words\/category\/cats\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cats<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jdroth.com\/words\/category\/comic-books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">comic books<\/a> for a hundred years and never run out of stories. But there are only so many people who want to read about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jdroth.com\/words\/category\/fitness\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how much weight I lifted at the gym<\/a> this morning or look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jdroth.com\/words\/category\/av\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the latest video I found on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to keep an audience, you have to write about a specific topic. And once you&#8217;ve narrowed your focus to just one topic, you&#8217;ve limited your pool of potential posts. Unless you only write once a week or don&#8217;t mind repeating yourself, this is a problem.<\/p>\n<div class=\"highlight\"><i><b>Note:<\/b><\/i> I recently spoke with a big-name personal finance columnist. Somehow, we started discussing the problems with writing about money. &#8220;It&#8217;s tough,&#8221; the columnist told me. &#8220;There are really only about a dozen topics we cover. But nobody wants to read the same thing all the time. Our job is to find new ways to make these dozen stories interesting.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>To maintain a successful blog, you need to provide a constant flow of new and interesting material.<\/b> This is much more difficult than you might think. In fact, I&#8217;d argue that it&#8217;s the fundamental problem that bloggers have to solve. How do you keep covering your subject&#8217;s core material without sounding like a broken record?<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Solving the Problem<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nYou know what? I&#8217;ve faced <i>all<\/i> of the problems outlined in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagobusiness.com\/article\/20110115\/ISSUE03\/301159994\/bye-bye-bloggers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Chicago Business<\/i><\/a> article. But instead of quitting, whenever I&#8217;ve faced a challenge, I&#8217;ve looked for a way to solve the problem. As a result, Get Rich Slowly is not the same blog it was when it started nearly five years ago. This site has evolved, and will continue to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the changes have been obvious. Get Rich Slowly is now a multi-author blog, for example. Plus, there&#8217;s a team of social-media elves who take care of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/getrichslowly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GetRichSlowly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a> so I can focus on my strength \u2014 which is writing.<\/p>\n<p>Other changes are less obvious because they&#8217;re behind the scenes. (I&#8217;ve taken steps to smooth the business side of things, for example. And I switched offices. And GRS may switch publishing platforms. And so on.)<\/p>\n<p><b>Not every change at Get Rich Slowly pleases every reader. That&#8217;s fine. But the bottom line is I have to look out for myself, too.<\/b> I have to strike a balance between providing what readers want and getting what <i>I<\/i> need. It&#8217;s only by achieving this balance that Get Rich Slowly will survive going forward.<\/p>\n<p>When this balance is achieved, something magical happens. Blogging remains a demanding task, it&#8217;s true, but you know what? It&#8217;s a demanding task with abundant rewards for <i>everyone<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, a reader named Matt sent me an article from <i>Chicago Business<\/i> about how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagobusiness.com\/article\/20110115\/ISSUE03\/301159994\/bye-bye-bloggers\"><b>bloggers are quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards<\/b><\/a>. It&#8217;s a fascinating story that explores some of the problems with blogging as a money-making enterprise.<\/p>\n<p>The article suggests several reasons that blogs and bloggers fail:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Blogging isn&#8217;t as lucrative as people imagine.<\/li>\n<li>Blogging takes too much time.<\/li>\n<li>Bloggers aren&#8217;t willing to share their personal lives.<\/li>\n<li>Bloggers run out of material.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s easier to reach people via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/GetRichSlowly\">Facebook<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/getrichslowly\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Leaving aside Twitter and Facebook, all of these are valid concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[480],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}