A couple of weeks ago, I was asked a question regarding the Reader Discussion Sessions by two different people. One person asked why I hadn’t done one in a while and the other asked why I bothered trying to get input from readers. Naturally, I’m hoping to kill answer two questions with one stone post.
No matter how long I’ve been reading blogs, it always impresses me when a bunch of readers get together and make a truly amazing thread of comments that’s more valuable than the post they are discussion. I think this has happened a couple of times here on this blog and things like ProBlogger’s community workshop or Shoemoney’s question and answer sessions are good examples of the phenomenon as well. While Blogging Experiment has quite a bit of growing left to do in many areas, I think we already have a large number of very knowledgeable readers and it would be incredibly foolish of me to not try and tap into that wealth of information.
As for why I hadn’t initiated one of these sessions in a while, it was simply an oversight on my part. To remedy that situation, I’d like to open up the discussion today with a short but far from simple question.
What are your long term goals for your blog?
Image Credit: richardrood
So, I ask again, what are your long term goals for blogging and your blog?
Author: Ben
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Interesting post, great read of the day I might say. Keep up the good work!
-Mike
Good post and great picture! And, I’m thrilled to see the image credit. Photographers and graphic artists don’t like their work being used without credit and/or permission any more than writer/bloggers do. Nice move!
I have one blog that I am trying to establish as an authority blog over the next few years.
My long term goals for my blog are at least three fold. One, I plan to eventually put some modest level of advertising on targeted pages in order to create one revenue stream. Another goal is to sell products or services of my own through the blog, at the very least in the form of an eBook or two (which I am already doing, although a bit slowly right now). A third long term goal is to use the blog as a springboard for a possible book deal some day in the future. A fourth goal is to use the blog as a resume to possibly land a job writing for a professional blog someday. A fifth possibility is to integrate the blog with a physical business in the real world that I might eventually start some day.
Thanks for the topic.
I ask myself all the time. I got serious about building my blog about two months ago, with no defined long-term goal. Now, after building a decent audience, I think I’ve concluded two things:
First, chasing dollars via blogging is by no means an easy task. Even some great blogs (like DevLounge and NorthXEast) have attempted or completed sales this year for amounts that probably pale to the hours involved (plus they weren’t even making that much in advertising according to their sale proposition docs). Sure a few bloggers make really good money, but honestly, if you have design/development/writing skills and your goal is money, it may be wiser to start your own business other than a blog.
Second, although blogs may not be a big earner for you (again, compared to time involved), blogs are great opportunity creators. Depending on the niche (I’m in the freelance/web space), you can get job offers, establish yourself as an expert, write better, have articles published elsewhere, gain rapport with industry leaders, and overall, increase your future potential exponentially. Plus your helping others and creating community — something that can be lost if you focus on the “chasing money” part. So this is what I see as the goal of my blog — and hey, if it can pay for my broadband and dedicated host, then that’s just icing…
@ Moms, yeah yeah, I hear ya
@ Patrick, that sounds very reasonable and I think the bit about selling your own products is something that many bloggers don’t think about. However, it really is a very profitable monetization method and one that just about any blogger can do.
@ Samuel, keep in mind that you don’t have to chase dollars to have a profitable blog. In fact, I would submit that the “make money online” niche might be one of the toughest to make money in, so this blog is a bit of an anomaly in that respect.
Your second point though is spot on and again, I think job offers or clients/contracts are another overlooked possibility when bloggers plan out their monetization methods.
Great comments so far! I look forward to hearing what other readers have to say as well.
I guess “chasing dollars” is a bit of a unkind phrase
What I mean is that there is (often) a lot of hours involved in building and upkeeping a blog, and although making a few hundred a month is considered successful in the blogosphere, is the actual hourly rate and lost opportunity cost worth it? Could you have started a better business? Could you have freelanced those hours and done much better? These type of questions have me conclude that people should primarily blog because you enjoy it…
@ Samuel,
Ok, I’m with ya now. I think to a large degree you’re probably right. I mean I could probably have free lanced the time I spend blogging out to an SEO client and have made more per month. In fact, I know I could have because I was before I started this blog. However, there are different types of “work” and to me, blogging is the kind I would rather do. Also, there’s a much higher potential ceiling in blogging than most free lancers. I mean yeah, you could probably turn your freelancing into a business and hire people etc but you look at all the possibilities out there with blogging and it’s not surprising a lot of people choose this route.
This is a great question that anyone remotely serious about blogging asks themselves often. Initially I started my personal blog just to keep my friends and family updated on my adventures and for the most part that is how it has remained though i have somehow gotten a regular readership outside of that for some reason. The blog has grown and I have been able to work on my other great passion of writing about other things that interest me.
The second site I run SOCOM Sales really was a spin off and I spend a lot more time trying to lay a clear path on where I want this to go. I keep a notepad with all of my ideas and I test them out to see what sticks.
Now you have me doing more thinking about this topic.
Ah…long term goals. Well too many to list, but here are a few.
I know that you can earn much more by doing other things online than from blogging. So, a couple of years down the line, I’d like to launch a tech deals site and a site for gamers and use my current blog as a springboard.
I also want to get my feet wet in affiliate marketing safely. Again, I’ll be using my blog’s income to fund it.
Ofcourse I’ll also be selling some ebooks and maybe other products through my blog.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Most of them are very long term goals though, at least 3-4 years down the line…
I started a blog for my cartoons (http://toonrefugee.com/toonblog/) just because I had so many sitting around. Once I started posting them, I realized how much I enjoyed doing them and how much I’d missed doing them over the past few years. So right now, the blog is more of a motivation tool for me to keep doing cartoons and illustrations. It’s a hard way to make a living so most of my bucks come from web design and development. Still, I’m at the point in life where I can afford to explore some new (or revived old) possibilities.
But mostly, it’s just fun!