The Catch-22’s of Monetizing Your Blog
Posted in Social Commentary on September 19th, 2007 by Erin DietrichIn recent months I have become increasingly aware of some seeming catch-22’s in the world of blogging. The more I read, the more it appears many people start blogging to make money, yet often much of what is written does not offer a lot of value. The catch is often what it takes to create valuable content goes against all the best advice for generating traffic and monetizing a blog.
Posting frequency and consistency
Posting frequently and consistently is a highly advised to increase traffic. Traffic generates money. However, what happens when the post you are working on is not flowing and you do not have anything else ready for tomorrow’s deadline? Do you not post for that day or do you put up an okay post? At this point you are faced with a decision as to what matters more, creating content of value or maintaining a consistent posting schedule - both of which impact your ultimate chances of success. This is something that has been a topic of much debate between Jenny and I, resulting in us twice not posting anything at all.
Maintaining your personality and voice
As your popularity grows you get to know your readers, their interests and their buttons. It is very difficult to find the balance between maintaining yourself, while continuing to satisfy your readers. If you are labeled as a self development site, for instance, you may hesitate to write about weird science. Further, in attempts to avoid hurting or alienating your readers as you get to know them you may feel inclined to self-censor, which ultimately causes you to run the risk of losing the voice and the edge that originally drew people to you.
Creating community and relationships
This is one of my favorite aspects of having a blog. Through blogging I have found people I care about, who challenge my thinking and whose thinking I challenge. These are relationships I want to maintain. Part of growing an relationship is being thoughtful, taking time to get to know one another, to engage in dialog and occasionally spirited debate. Unfortunately there is only so much of that time and energy to go around. If you are trying to monetize your blog, authentically maintaining dozens of relationships may become problematic.
Generating traffic
Let’s face it, generating traffic takes a lot of time. Traffic does not just appear because you have great content, you have to let people know you exist. It takes energy to generate traffic from places such as Google, carnivals or social networking sites. As you become further identified with a particular niche or key words and see corresponding spikes in your traffic it becomes easy to start thinking in terms of “hits” or traffic rather than visitors. I’m not so sure this is a good view in the long term.
So what does one do?
Ultimately it comes down to a fairly simple question. Why should I read your blog or you read mine? If your answer is “so I can make money” it is not enough. If that was my answer, I would not expect you to return. I certainly applaud both the desire and the person who manages to earn money from their blog and wonder if Jenny and I could possibly juggle this as well. But to earn any money there has to be more genuine motivation than cash.
If you are anything like Jenny and I you care, you want your words to matter, to have a voice and want to read and support others who do the same. This is what I aspire to. Bottom line – I don’t want to do or write anything that doesn’t challenge or otherwise impact me, otherwise it becomes just another way to waste our time. Oh, but what to do about all those darn catch-22’s…
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:49 am
Erin, thank you for this post! It is of great worth especially to a newbie like me.
Connecting through the Internet is ultimately the most satisfactory when you feel you really share an interest, when your interest is sparked, when your vision is broadened, when you are motivated and inspired … even by a tiny thing that might never have occurred to you had you not encountered it in a blog.
Often what attracts me to a blog is the sense of coming to a standstill when I read it, of the incessant spinning and haste of life being put on hold so that my awareness is suddenly heightened. Almost like suspended motion, when things acquire clarity and sense. Simply because someone took the time to ponder life and share their thoughts on it.
This is what makes life rich and fulfilling to me, and why I read blogs. I absolutely agree that making money is not a solid enough reason to run a blog. You have to want to share something that has an impact, either on your readers, or on you yourself as writer.
You and Jenny succeed so well! You make an impression on me (as I know you do on lots of others). That’s why I keep coming back.
Love,
Pippa
September 19th, 2007 at 3:56 am
I wonder how important posting frequency is these days when technologies such as RSS make it so incredibly simple be notified when a site is updated. One of the reasons that posting frequency and consistency is important is because a lack of updates may put off readers who return to the site day after day only to find the content hasn’t changed. RSS feeds render checking a blog unnecessary.
Secondly, with the huge number of blogs out there frankly I’m happy when someone doesn’t update in a while. It gives me time to catch up on other blogs. If most people read a lot of blogs, it’s likely they’d feel the same.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Actually, Mark, I have to say that posting frequency IS important, because if I have a blog on my RSS reader that hasn’t had a new post for a couple weeks, I usually remove it. So even with RSS, it’s important to have new content on a regular basis.
Now to the actual article:
I have also read that frequency and consistency is important… but I’m not sure I agree with what is said. While it IS important to make sure that you have new posts regularly, I’m not certain how much importance there is to maintaining the same frequency (ie consistency). I really don’t care that much, as long as there’s a new article at least once or twice a week, since RSS lets me not have to check manually. Having new content once or twice a week is important, though, because it lets people know that you’re still working on your blog.
Maintaining your own voice is important, but I don’t think it’s that hard to maintain balance. People came to your site and became readers because of your voice… changing it just to suit your more vocal readers is silly. Listening to suggestions for articles people would like to read is great, but they became readers because of YOUR voice, not because you are a good parrot… so just write the way you feel like writing. Now a disclaimer… I do semi-censor myself for my blog, in that I don’t write much in the way of tech articles, even though I think about it, but it’s because I don’t want the blog to lose its focus. If I write about too wide an array of topics on the one site, it becomes confusing to new readers. I may, at some point, start another blog for my tech stuff, but I really feel it’s better to keep them separate.
When it comes to the relationships formed, I totally agree with you. People who are focused on making money and/or building traffic often only interact in the “right” format, making it very artificial, like official company communications. By the way, focusing on making money and building traffic is not necessarily the same thing… I care a little about traffic, and almost nothing about money (though my dream IS to make a living through my writing, it doesn’t have to be through my blog, and I would write, and in fact am now writing, even if I made nothing or almost nothing). That’s because traffic shows that people are actually reading my articles, that my writing is getting seen.
I agree with your bottom line… if the reason you write is to make money, it usually becomes apparent fairly quickly, and unless you are extraordinarily gifted, is likely to make me uninterested in reading more of your content.
PS - Erin, you and Jenny should look into writing a few “extra” posts when you have spare time that you can keep around for those days when you want to post something but the inspiration is lacking… your blogging software might allow you to do so, but if not, you can always just write it in any word processor and save it. I haven’t actually felt the need to do this myself yet, but the next time I’m in the mood to write a lot, I may write and save the posts beyond two, instead of posting three or four in one day.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Its useful to understand energy flows and alignment when you desire something. Many people have heard of the idea that you have to give in order to receive, by they don’t necessarily grasp the underlying concept. Sending positive thoughts and altrusitic behavior out into the Universe can indeed invite those things back toward you, but you don’t control the pace of the feedback loop. It pays to realize that hoping for something and simultaneously fearing you won’t get it can cancel each other out.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Pippa, you put it so eloquently - yes, I agree, you know you have found a great blog when times and distractions seem to stand still. Thank you for the wonderful comment.
You know Mark, I agree with you about frequency. Sometimes I find myself cringing when I open my RSS subscriptions and see SOOO many new things to read. Fewer posts can be attractive. What is the number of posts per week you like best? Jason alludes to a one every couple of weeks as too few (I agree), but what is too many? Can there be too many? Does anyone else want to weigh in on this?
Jason and Mark, you both raise interesting points with how RSS has changed the need for frequency. I remember pre-RSS I would get frustrated checking and rechecking blogs for something new (especially when I used to work in a cubicle and it was my only form of enjoyment). I wonder how many readers out there have not yet discovered the joy of RSS. Jason, maybe you should think about writing a post on the “how to’s”. It may be helpful for some.
Oh yes, and the idea of a few “extra” posts is nothing new to Jenny and I. However, we just can’t seem to catch up. As soon as we know we have some “extras” we relax and have to use them the following week. It’s almost humorous.
Liara, the pace of the feedback loop is tough, isn’t it? I have also been spending a lot of time thinking about how none of it is very linear either. It’s sometimes hard to stay engaged when their isn’t direct and clear feedback. I guess it just comes to faith. As far as hope and fear canceling each other out - you hit the nail on the head (although I have tried my darnedest to pretend like this isn’t the case).
September 20th, 2007 at 1:25 am
Jason, that’s good to know. I only remove a blog from my RSS reader if the content no longer interests me. I set up my reader to only show new posts so if there are none I don’t see anything.
Erin, the number of posts per week I like varies with the poster, and the content. There are some blogs I read as soon as I see a new post, including this one. Others I might skim through on a weekly basis. Some content is short and light, so five or more posts a day is no problem. Others require time to think and respond, so five a day would drive me nuts (I’d feel bad that I couldn’t do them justice in my replies). So ultimately it’s not something that’s easy to quantify. It depends on how interesting the posts are, how long they take to read, how keen I am to reply to them, and how much time I have to read and respond.
Consistency is not a problem for me. For example, if you and Jenny posted five times a day two days in a row, then went back to about once a day for the next couple of weeks, that would be fine. It would probably take me those two weeks to reply to all of them, but since I can read a bunch at a time, flag the ones I want to respond to, then in my own time respond one by one, consistency of timing is irrelevant. Consistency of quality is another matter (but not one you need to worry about :))
But as you said, others may not be aware of the tools available, let alone using them the way I do. So it’s quite possible the need for frequency and consistency is current.
It seems reasonable to me to expect most people to be happy with one post per day if they’re short and not too intellectually taxing. Or one per week if they’re in-depth and require more consideration. And anywhere along that scale if the depth of the content is somewhere in between. Phil over at http://dirtsimple.org/ posts roughly bi-monthly now. But they’re usually long and always engaging. The lack of frequent posting is no big deal for me and it seems to be working for him.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Erin, you asked about how many readers have not yet discovered the joys of RSS…
Here’s one reader who doesn’t subscribe by RSS. I guess I am an old-fashioned girl, because I *like* manually visiting blogs/sites. I have subscribed to some email updates in the past, but it just doesn’t have the same sense of adventure and discovery to simply receive something in your inbox. This is what my bookmarks are for. I bookmark any favourite sites and I visit them regularly.
Perhaps I should add that I keep it simple. I know life can become very cluttered when you start to feel you “have to” visit a gazillion places every day to stay up to date. There is a fine line between being nourished by friends online, and being nourished by the life force you can only feel when actually *living*.
As to posting frequency, I like places that are updated every day but even every third day is still OK. Less regularly than that and my interest starts waning.
In the end I guess it is a very personal thing, both for readers and writers, which means, as always in life: do what makes *you* happy! Make your blog a place where *you* would like to visit.
Love,
Pippa
September 20th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Interesting discussion. I think my biggest concern personally with frequency of posting both on this site and others is that I really enjoy reading what others have to say and on a couple of sites love the conversations that take place in the comments. I learn a lot through those conversations. The problem for me is that the pace never slows down and since I’m a person who tends to get “stuck” on ideas I end up feeling like I am not doing the conversations (or my own mind) justice when I get too many thoughts running in my head. So often I instead end up stopping my participation in conversations mid-way so that I can kind of keep up with the total of what I’m reading/thinking about. I don’t like that feeling.
I guess for me the bottom line is I’d much rather read and aspire to write things that are thoughtful and beg conversation/discussion. Unless what I’m reading is funny and then I don’t care much about thinking or posting frequency because I love being made to laugh!
I, like Pippa, enjoy visiting sites instead of using an RSS feed and up until a week ago visited through bookmarks. Last Sunday I decided to take the plunge and signed up for RSS feeds to most of the sites I visit regularly including you Mark, Jason, and Liara.
It’s actually pretty nice.
Jason, while I agree that traffic and monetization are not the same thing there are certainly quite interrelated. You’d have to have some incredible product to not need significant traffic to monetize your blog. As far as extra posts go…well Erin was being very sweet. We don’t have tons of extra posts hanging around in large part because I just can’t seem to make that happen on my end - I repeat what I said above. I tend to get just as caught up on what‘s happening on other blogs as well as ours and sometimes (a lot of times…) spend the time I should spend doing things like writing posts for the future thinking, doing supplemental reading and writing responses at other sites. Maybe it’s a sickness… Erin nearly always has something ready and waiting though and has covered for me numerous times. (thanks E!)
It’s funny though as far as relationships go I can’t even express how much I enjoy you guys and would really feel the absence if any of you - Mark, Jason or Liara either quit stopping by or stopped writing on your own blog. Who would’ve figured I’d have felt that way even six months ago? Not me! And Pippa, I look forward to getting to know you better also! I really like the feeling of your site and will stop by rather than sign up for an RSS feed at your site just because…
On a sad note one of my favorite bloggers Dan decided to take a sabbatical (close his site) this past week. I think it was partially due to the drain of too much relationship building as he mentioned feeling owned by his blog rather than owning it. He personally responded to every single comment and commented on every single commenter’s site. Some of his posts had 200-300 hundred comments! It was a good warning for me though.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:00 am
That’s what friends are for Jenny!
September 20th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Ahh, I’m blessed with the best of them all
September 20th, 2007 at 9:17 am
I was going more along the other line with the traffic thing, Jenny… that you can want traffic without caring about money. You can’t make much money without traffic, but you can certainly want traffic without caring about money (I know, because I do :P). I would love for my traffic to go up and up and up, because that means my content is getting out there to more people. I would love to make my living from my writing, too, but that’s not why I do it… it’s just a dream I have
I can’t even imagine having 200 comments on one article, by the way. Sheesh!
September 20th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Hi all,
I love all the comments and wanted to share my thoughts on “monetizing” a blog. I LOVE to write. I also love sharing my story of how I healed myself because it is so important for me to get the word out there to the masses that the mind/body connection is real and works. I want the feel of my blog to be like one of my closest friend’s Angela said it was to her “It’s like you are talking to me on one of our walks Jenny”. To be selling something would diminish that in my eyes somehow. But I am so anti-salesmen and that’s an issue I’ll have to deal with letting go of another time! What I have been told over and over again is that if you BELIEVE in the product — you are not selling — you are sharing with someone as you would a new movie or book you loved. I still couldn’t deal with the idea of ads all over my blog. I had a similar site that I used to promote healing products that I believe in. Now on my blog I have a link there called healing products and one for book recommendations. That way people have the option of going there if they want to buy something to aide in the healing process or they can just relax on my blog and read away with nothing blinking, telling them to buy now. My main goal is getting my word out there — in a relaxed and comfortable environment. Yes, I want tons of traffic but honestly 100 people enjoying my writing is more important than 1 sale to me.
As for frequency of posts…. I am a beginner blogger but do know that some weeks are great for me to write and I can churn out 3 articles and other times life gets busy and I would feel overwhelmed if I forced myself to write something. I would not let myself go weeks without a post but at the same time I would rather post only 1 article in that week than be stressing myself out about articles I need to write. If a person hadn’t written in a week or so I would probably assume it was because of something else going on in their life. If they disappeared for a month or so without a note — it might be time for me to delete them from my RS feed. Just some quick thoughts in my rambling way! : )
September 20th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Great topic. I have two blogs and post only once a week on each of them because I like to visit other blogs and comment. I want to connect with other people on topics I care about, and often writing comments feeds my soul as much as posting on my own site does.
About RSS–I subscribe to blogs by e-mail, but more and more I’m using Technorati to see what’s new on my favorite blogs. And here’s my plea for help! I once had a button people could push to sign up for an RSS feed, but I somehow lost it. How do I put it in again? I’m using WordPress. I’d really appreciate some help on this. I know it’s simple, but it would take me a lot of time to figure it out. And I’d rather spend that time interacting with fellow bloggers.
September 20th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Do you use feedburner? If you do, I can help send you some code that you can copy and paste to do both RSS feeds and email subscriptions. It’s HTML, not WordPress, but I’m assuming that there is somewhere in WordPress that you can enter pure HTML.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I currently have 2 blogs. One is my personal blog and the other blog is the blog I’m trying to reach to a massive audience. Currently, I’m not monetizing my second blog, but I’m having the same problems that you mentioned. I actually enjoy writing my personal blog more because I am more relaxed about the things I write. But for the blog I’m trying to get massive audience, it just feels like a job and I don’t get the type of enjoyment out of it. So currently, I’m trying to detach my feelings of needing massive amount of traffic, and just concentrate on writing.
September 20th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jason,
I’d be happy to try feedburner if you could send me the code. I went on your site to see if I could find your e-mail address, but couldn’t. Could you send it to jbrowman@aol.com? Thank you so much.
PS Thanks also for telling me how you look at the subconscious. After reading some of the posts on your blog, I can see why that works for you.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Ahh yes, Pippa and Jenny, I can understand the appeal of the experience of reading a website, whatever that experience might mean for you.
For me the experience is in the reading and the discussion, and that’s also where I experience a sense adventure and discovery.
Jenny, poor Dan! Steve wrote about that experience quite a while ago, and about having to turn off the comments because he felt that wasn’t the best way for him to use his time to provide value for the greatest number of people. I would be overjoyed to be in a position have to make that tough decision!
Jean, I use wordpress too so if you need any help in getting Jason’s HTML in the right place, let me know
September 21st, 2007 at 1:12 am
You can find my address by clicking my name on my website, under any of the articles. As far as how to use Feedburner, just go to www.feedburner.com and follow the simple instructions. Once you have your feed set up on there, tell me what it is, and I’ll give you some code.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Jason, Jenny and I use Feedburner as well. Do you ever get emails from Feedburner telling you “Everything’s okay again!” What? Does that mean that at some point it wasn’t? I emailed them and got a response full of jargon (or at least for me). Have you experienced these “reassuring” emails?
September 21st, 2007 at 12:47 pm
No, I haven’t gotten those, but if you forward me one, I’ll read it and translate it to normal English for you.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Okay, I’ll see if I can find one. It may take me a day or two (I have a few emails that need to be sorted through.
) I know, I know, personal effectiveness and clutter…it ebbs and flows.
September 21st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hey Mark,
I remember reading that article by Steve but not really understanding it. Seeing everything in a new light…
September 21st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Hi Jennifer, thanks so much for commenting.
Jean and JC consider me impressed! Two blogs, where do you two find the time??
Jason,
Ah, gotcha on the traffic and monetizing.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for the offer, Mike. Jason sent me the code, with my feed in the part for the RSS feed. That seems to work fine, and I’m grateful.
The e-mail part doesn’t work right yet, because I haven’t figured out what to change so it points to my account instead of his. Which means I’m having to pester him some more. That part isn’t serious…I’m using Feedblitz right now and it works. It’s just that it will be neater when I use Feedburner for everything.
One question…what RSS version do you use? And do you let Feedburner handle your comments, too? Again, thanks.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Jenny,
I only post once a week on each blog. That’s more than enough!
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
I have FeedBurner up and running now, thanks to Jason. His version looks a lot classier than FeedBurner’s, so I’m glad I didn’t do it before. Thanks, Jason!
September 24th, 2007 at 11:17 am
You’re welcome… and I think that someone else might have used my code as well. Time to ask and find out!
PS - I don’t mind if people do, though I would appreciate letting me know (it’s not required or anything, just nice to know someone found it useful).
September 26th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Ha, now I have to eat my words: thanks to an explosion in the discovery of absolutely spell-binding blogs, I can’t keep up with visiting them manually anymore. So … I start subscribing now, with a smile! There are just too many things out there I don’t want to miss.
Love,
Pippa