Blogging For Income – Are You Doing This Backwards?
I was inspired to write this post based on a common trend I see with some of my coaching students and also beginner bloggers in general.
Too many people get into blogging with the sole purpose of making extra money, without any sort of plan, and without any real direction.
We see all these success stories of bloggers who are making full-time incomes from their websites (which is entirely possible) but I personally think this gives people the wrong motivation and message.
The main problem I see with many beginner and aspiring bloggers is that they’re blogging for income.
Now if you continue to just blog for income, your readers (if you even receive any) will be able to see right through this.
You don’t want to be a blogger who overloads their website with banner ads, Google adsense, affiliate links in almost every single post etc.
Blogging for income and using “money” as a main motivation in my opinion, will make it almost impossible to build a sustainable and thriving business.
In fact, this mindset needs to be shaken up a bit!
Now you’re probably wondering, “okay Evan, so if I’m not blogging for income what the heck is the point of starting a blog in the first place…What am I blogging for?”
Well instead I want you to switch your mindset from blogging for income to blogging for value (or blogging to create value).
Let’s jump into this in a bit more detail below.
Blogging For Value Instead
Now of course as bloggers we want to make extra money and for some of us, even turn this into our full-time incomes…
But as stated above, it’s going to be painfully hard to get there if your mindset only revolves around money, money, money!
Blogging for value or blogging to create as much value for your readers as possible is the ticket to building a sustainable business in this arena.
A blog is one of the best ways to share high-quality and helpful information in your area of expertise and should be used for that.
People who just blog for income will quickly run out of topics to write about and most likely lose their passion along the way.
Creating value provides a huge sense of purpose and a reason to keep producing quality content.
Here’s the kicker and why this type of mindset is a win-win in my opinion.
If you blog to create value rather than income, overtime the income will actually follow.
If you give, you shall receive…this saying is true with blogging too.
When you are committed to giving and producing helpful content for your readers, making money becomes a lot easier with your blog.
This is such a simple concept, yet so many people have this backwards.
Below are a few specific ways that we can begin blogging for value:
Blogging to Answer Questions
- A blog is the perfect platform to help answer questions that people may be searching for in your niche. People type in questions to Google all the time, and being able to help answer some of these positions yourself as an expert and authority figure. Not to mention, question and answer style blog posts can rank well in Google assuming you are optimizing them properly for search. If you provide a really thorough and thoughtful answer to a particular question that may be nagging at someone, you build immediate trust and credibility with that person. This can snowball upon itself (with other blog articles you write) assuming most of your content is value based, and eventually lead to a tribe of engaged fans, followers and readers.
Blogging to Solve Problems
- Solving problems ties in directly with the point we laid above and should be used in a similar approach. You need to think of yourself as a problem solver. Do your own research and see what types of issues people are running into in your niche. Craft quality and informative content based around solving these problems. Sometimes this can even provide you with a good foundation to build out a product of your own. People are willing to pay for information that addresses a particular obstacle or hurdle they may be faced with. Always be solving problems!
Blogging to Educate
- Informational articles that help educate your readers on a particular subject (without wanting anything in return), is another powerful value based approach. I know when I personally come across an article that really leaves me with a sense of “I really learned something new here“, it makes me that much more inclined to sign up for the newsletter or return to the website in the near future. Become almost like a teacher in your niche and provide practical, actionable and educational type content for your readers to indulge in.
Blogging for Relationships & Community
- Instead of blogging for income, blog to create relationships and a community that will last a life-time. Blogging is a long-term and never-ending journey. You want to build a community that will stick with you for the long-haul. As a blogger, you must always respond to comments and emails if you want to establish an engaged following and eventual customer base. Blog for the people that visit your website by making them feel welcome and supporting them with content that is useful and beneficial to their lives. Fall in love with your readers, show gratitude, invest your time in them and they will eventually invest in you.
Conclusion
Let me make clear that making an income from your blog is definitely important and should still be a goal of yours, but know that you must create value first for income to follow. I still encourage you to monetize your website, build your email list and create quality products but only if you’re providing value in the process as well. I know at first even when I started out as a blogger, I was too focused on just making money, it wasn’t until I completely changed my mindset from blogging for income to blogging for value (or blogging to create value), that things really started to take off.
I hope this post helps some of you maybe re-evaluate your current blogging strategy.
At the very least, it will be a good reminder just how important creating value in the marketplace is!
Do you fall into the trap of focusing too much on income when it comes to blogging?
How has creating value helped your blog grow?
Check out my video version of this post here!