Saturday, March 10, 2018

Can Your Blogging Career Become a Business?

This post may contain affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Currently, Kelsie.

In the world of blogging, you’ll often find that there are two types of people. There are those that have started out with a blog kind of on a whim. They’ve created their own platform to share their stories, their ideas, or to talk about a particular topic that they love, with no real intentions. (That was pretty much me at the start, and is still a big part of why I'm here in this space!) A lot of the time, this is when blogging is a hobby. But that’s not always the case. There are also the bloggers out there that have started this as a business. They’ve started out on this blogging journey with every intention of it becoming their full-time job and even a really big business! When you fall into the latter camp, you can often wonder just how the business bloggers did it.

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Even if you’ve started a blog as a hobby, it can definitely become your business. Because that’s the beauty of blogs and websites - they can make money! Right now, you may not really know how they do it, or how they can be transformed into businesses in their own right. But that’s okay!  It’s not something that you can change overnight or put in place to start generating an income right away, but if you do want to turn your blog into a business (and a big business at that), you can. You just need to put the work in. Here's how you can do it.

See It As A Business

The very first thing you need to do is shift your mindset. Because when you’re thinking about your blog as a hobby, you’ll probably treat it as one. And when it comes to creating a business out of your blog, you have to start to see it like one. This means prioritizing the work that you need to do for your business above everything else, and even taking a more business-minded approach to your blogging process in terms of your systems and planning.

Create A Plan

Planning is a huge part of turning your blog into a business in its own right (or really doing anything, for that matter!). The first kind of plan that will help you to do that is a business plan itself. You may wonder why you need to do this, because not every blogging business has completed a business plan. But if you want to make sure that you have a sense of direction, and that you will be able to start thinking of your blog as a business, this plan will help you do it!

Consider Monetization Options

As part of your business plan, and just to be able to turn your blog into a business in general, you need to think about how you want to make money from your blog. There are tons of different ways that you can make money from your blog, and there are even monetization options for smaller blogs too. Do you want to sell ads? Write posts? Use affiliate links? The list goes on and on: you just need to look through your options and work on a plan to implement different ideas.

Increase Your Traffic

From here, you then need to think about your traffic: mainly for two reasons. The first is that the readers that are visiting your site are kind of like your first group of customers. They are the ones that read your blog, may potentially buy products from you, and will allow you to make money through avenues such as advertising and affiliate marketing. So generating more traffic is always a good idea. But secondly, you may also want to increase your traffic so that you have stats to share with advertisers and the businesses that may want to work with you on projects too.

Push Your Marketing

At the same time, you’re also going to want to think about pushing your marketing activity. Not only is this a great idea to help increase your traffic, but it’s a way to raise awareness of your blog, increase more interest in your content, and generally make sure that your business is getting the customers you want it to.

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Hire Some Help

Next, you’re going to want to think about bringing some help onboard, because you may soon find that you can’t do everything yourself. It’s a lot of work to try and run an entirely blogging business on your own. However, when you’re able to hire some help, whether that’s a virtual assistant, a marketing consultant, or a website designer, you won’t have to do everything on your own, and you’ll probably find that you’re able to generate more money as a result.

Do Your Homework

From here, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve covered most of the business paperwork that you need to do. Whether that’s applying for licenses or processing taxes, you’ll need to work out what you need to do and then get on top of things as a legitimate business.

Sell Yourself

As much as you may not be used to it, your next job is to then start selling yourself. Basically, you need to think about networking. You’ll want to start to network with potential advertisers and business customers that you can work with in the future. This is something that you can do both online and offline.

Set Up Shop

From here, you may want to think about your setup. When things start to get big, you may want to create an office or look into commercial properties that will be suitable. It’s not for everyone, but if you want your blog to feel like a business, setting up an office is a great way to do that.

Grow, Expand & Plan For The Future

Finally, you’re then going to want to start thinking ahead. This is something that not everyone is always comfortable with. But if you want to make sure that your business has a future and can continue to grow, then you need to know where you’re heading. Expanding can be fun, so definitely start to think about where you want to take things in the future.

Are you ready to bring your blog to the next level? How did you turn your blog into a business? Share your thoughts in the comments below! Go get um!

Currently,
Kelsie

2 comments:

  1. A few years ago, I was able to find a job in London as a copywriter, and it helped me to gain rich experience in the related field that helped me to become an freelance writer later.

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