This is a Guest Post written by Sharron Field. If you would like to write for EAB, then check out this page - Write For Us. We bloggers are a pretty dedicated bunch on the whole. We work hard at making our blogs look nice, read well, feature as high as we can get in the search-engine listings. We impart valuable information to do with our specialized subject in our chosen niche, much of the time without charge to any readers.
All in all we put a heck of a load of work into producing what is often some pretty good quality material, and to some extent our efforts are a reward in themselves. But it’s nice to get a little financial reward too, don’t you agree? – so many of us set about commercializing our blogs, not necessarily are we after making a fortune, though that would be very nice indeed thank you, but we’d just to make at least a little something to show that our efforts are appreciated if nothing else. Usually though, try as we might, it seems that no matter what we do, we just don’t seem to be able to make even a pittance.
All in all we put a heck of a load of work into producing what is often some pretty good quality material, and to some extent our efforts are a reward in themselves. But it’s nice to get a little financial reward too, don’t you agree? – so many of us set about commercializing our blogs, not necessarily are we after making a fortune, though that would be very nice indeed thank you, but we’d just to make at least a little something to show that our efforts are appreciated if nothing else. Usually though, try as we might, it seems that no matter what we do, we just don’t seem to be able to make even a pittance.
So, we step back and take a look at ourselves: Maybe we’re not posting enough? – So, we post more. Maybe we’re not reading enough other blogs to gain sufficient enlightenment to write the quality of material that we’d like to. – So, we read more of other people’s blogs, then we spend ages search-engine-optimizing our blogs in the hope of a higher ranking. Just to make sure that the message about our blog-posts and the topic of our blog is getting out there - we post to social-media more, and we write more and post more…
Ultimate Result: Burnout, and no money. We’ve used up all our spare-time to get a few more readers and stay broke. Really frustrating!!! Isn't it???
This is something that a friend and colleague of mine, himself a professional blogger – making an income large-enough to comfortably support himself, his wife, and their two children from being so – calls “The Blogger Hamster Wheel of Doom”: When you’re on the Blogger Hamster Wheel of Doom; no matter how fast you go and no matter how much work you put in, you get nowhere. Even if we light up our blog like Times Square with banner-ads hardly anything changes Why is this? Something somewhere must be wrong – but what?
Imagine if you were in an offline scenario and you just published a new magazine that doesn’t seem to be selling. In parallel to it, we add more content and read other niche publications for inspiration. We mail all retail and social premises, ensuring they’ve heard about the magazine, and we advertise more and we increase the content again, adding many more glossy ads…
Will that make more people buy the magazine? No!!! All that'll do is just increase our workload. Why? Because we have the wrong mindset in both cases. Let me make that a little clear: If you want to write a blog, you need to think like a writer. If you want to sell a product, you need to think like a businessperson, a marketer. If you want to run a blog that sells product and make money from doing so, then you’ve got to think like both a writer and a marketer: You’ve got to become a complete package. Either be complete package or you stay on the Blogger Hamster Wheel of Doom.
To know more about Blogger Hamster Wheel of Doom, just check out the article here : “Most Internet Marketers/Bloggers are Broke”.
