Thoughts on Blogging Part 21
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
Hot takes, “ambulance chasing” and generally attempting to move from bandwagon to bandwagon may well find you an audience and possibly a line of revenue. But it strikes me as a soulless and empty way to write. I much prefer to write about what interests me, although I recognise that some of that is going to be extremely niche specific. However, some subjects can prove quite popular and can gain traffic. I find that film reviews and essays can gain traction and have the advantage of longevity. Writing detailed guides, FAQs and tips for specific subjects can also prove fruitful. It is harder to gain an audience by being a raconteur but some writers do maintain an audience through their personality or reputation. Remember that blogs are very personal things and your personality is a factor whether you realise it or not.
Assuming you have an online presence with a big enough audience to seriously consider monetisation, the next stage is to decide exactly what method you wish to adopt. Personally I don’t consider advertising to be viable anymore. The halcyon days of having banner ads on your blog are gone mainly because ad blockers are ubiquitous and broadly speaking people find advertising pervasive and annoying. For it to work you need a lot of traffic before you see a red cent, so I really don’t think it is a solution for many bloggers. Plus there are ethical concerns as you may not necessarily have any control over what advertising is shown to your readership. Hence, the most logical business model to pursue is one of reader patronage, where they can subscribe to show support and access an additional source of exclusive content. Patreon or something similar.
If you pursue reader patronage then you have to produce extra content to justify their support. This will require either having exclusive material on a third party site or having a members area on your existing website. Naturally it will entail extra work and you can argue that the moment you embark upon a process of monetisation you have fundamentally changed the nature of your writing. You now have an obligation to serve the needs of your customers. At the very least the commercial nature of your blog may impact upon what you choose to write about. Alternatively, you can simply add a donation facility to your site which is less transactional. However, it may not yield a reliable source of revenue and a lot of bloggers just find this approach uncomfortable. All of which are good reasons for bloggers to think long and hard about the ramifications of monetisation.
Many bloggers are content to just write as and when they like and do not have any plans beyond that. That is a very healthy mindset, providing very comfortable parameters to work within. But some bloggers, myself included, have an itch to see if they can grow their blog. To try and increase their reach. If one writes publicly, then there is some aspiration that someone will read it. However, this is not an easy thing to achieve. The “blogosphere” is not a meritocracy, seeming more often like a race to the bottom. You may often find what you consider to be your best work is ignored and something you deem inconsequential gains traction. There are no definitive paths to success. But if you already have a blog and have been maintaining it for a while, you are already ahead of those who have stopped and those who elevate procrastination into an artform. As with most things in life, it’s important to maintain forward momentum while you’re trying to figure the details out.
