Jason Burns’ Blog

You have read all of the articles by bloggers who claim to be making tons of money. You have read all about the tips and tricks that will grow your blog from nothing to rock star in months. You have probably even seen a hundred companies online that promise to get you a massive readership and kick ass Google page rank. This blog post is a reality check for those of you with stars in your eyes thinking that you can make your way through this economic madness as a professional blogger.

Let’s start with a few things we can take as fact:

1. No matter how unique you think your subject is, there are at least a dozen blogs that already cover it.
2. Even before the economy started pulling back advertising dollars, online advertising was predicted to be only 1/10th of advertising revenue by 2011.

So what does that tell us? That you are going to be jumping in a big pool of already established bloggers that are all fighting for that same tiny slice of the pie.

There are also a few things that you should know about what is really required to run a successful blog:

1. Blogging is incredibly time consuming. Blogs that are successful have a steady stream of high quality content, build and communicate with a community of readers and are very active in the community with other sites that share their interests.
2. You need to be a good writer. If you don’t intelligently share your message, your readers won’t come back. If you can’t write with a compelling style while also using good form and grammar, you should probably reconsider.
3. Maintaining a blog requires a deep knowledge of web development. Sure you can pay someone to do the dirty work, but considering your blog is likely to make a quarter to a buck a day for quite some time, you are probably going to be your own developer.

The point here is it’s a lot of hard work and requires that you have personality, style, skill and knowledge. You can forget Wordpress.com, Blogger, Live Spaces, etc. Running a successful professional blog means learning about hosting, blog engines, feeds, subscriptions, search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, writing, proof reading, editing, image manipulation, promoting and selling your blog. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme no matter what you might have read.

Let that sink in for a minute. Why would I be telling you not to start a blog? I am not saying it because I don’t want the competition. I make a buck or two on a good day, maybe $10 on a stellar day. I don’t do this for a living and the Google checks are infrequent enough where I usually don’t even notice when I get them.

I am setting some realistic expectations for all of my friends that have looked at the possibility of job loss and said, “maybe I should start blogging, then I could work from home.”

I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that less than 1% of blogs, not counting the personal blogs on the many services, but 1% of blogs intended to make money, make more than a fry cook at McDonalds.

Now let me add a disclaimer. If you have an awesome idea, great writing talent and the time and patience to get it started and grow it, blogging is a lot of fun and can really be rewarding even if it’s not financially successful. I have made friends all over the world blogging. I enjoy communicating with my readers and enjoy writing.

The important thing is to go into it with realistic expectations and not start blogging as a way to replace a career. Blogging is something you do parallel to another career and do professionally when you realize that your blog is successful enough to support you and your family.

If you are like me, you watch your blog stats like a hawk. You probably have several sources that you use for gathering your information and you contemplate and toil over the results and calculations endlessly.
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