The Bass-Ackwards Method of Starting a Business from Your Blog

Most of you are probably not seeing enough money from your blog to feel that it’s become a business. That’s okay. That is the experience of most people who start a blog and hope to earn money from it. You’re not alone in this, and you’re not some loser while everyone else is just laughing to the bank.

The “pro blogger” or monetized blog model is a perfectly fine path–look at the success of Darren Rowse who is the problogger. Darren is very careful to say that overnight riches will not happen, and that it takes time and hard work. Realistically, most of you aren’t going to make it with the monetized blog model. It’s not because of who you are as a person, it’s because that model doesn’t work very well for most people. What does? Keep reading and you’ll see.

I’m going to tell you about another way to make money from blogging that dovetails nicely with current trends in online marketing. Instead of thinking of yourself as a pro blogger in the monetized blog sense, consider becoming a pro blogger along the lines of a professional writer who is paid to write blogs by clients. Darren has earned his place in the blogosphere as the most well-known problogger there is for a monetized blog, so I think it would be better to avoid that word and use another.

Consider identifying yourself as a Freelance Blogger. There are freelance blogging job boards where companies are specifically looking to hire paid bloggers.

That will get you started.

As a freelance blogger, you will need to be able to prove that you understand blogging and social media, and that you can get results for your clients. If you get results, you can charge much more than the jobs pay that you see advertised on job boards.

Before you float away with cartoon dollar signs in your eyes, you have to prepare yourself for a mighty transition:

• You need to define your audience and your offering–this is crucial.
• You have to learn how to run a freelance business, which is no easy task.
• You need to know how to market your freelance business through your blog so that you land paying clients.
• You need help from others in your community.
• You need access to resources tailored just for your situation.
• You must stand out from the other freelancers in your area.
• You will need to redesign and overhaul your blog or start a new one.
• You need to dramatically shorten the learning curve for all of this.

How the hell are you going to accomplish all of that in a reasonable amount of time without making tons of mistakes? Let’s take a look at learning from blogs vs. another method.

Freelancer and Writing Blogs are not Enough

Some of my friends run freelancer blogs, home business resources blogs, fiction and web content writing blogs, and copywriting blogs. Their blogs are fantastic, they are some of the best. They have much to offer. But you cannot learn how to build a successful business from just a blog… any blog, including mine.

Why?

Because we need to learn a new subject by covering topics in the right order from beginning to intermediate to advanced.

And, frankly, blogs suck at that.

Categories and tags are not good enough. Popular posts in the sidebar are not good enough. The occasional series of posts is not good enough. You feel like you’re jumping all over the place, missing vital puzzle pieces. Why do you think ebooks still do well?

Most blog search capability is deplorable (mine included–working on it for the next version of Remarkablogger). And just reading stuff or watching a video does not offer a high retention rate, so you’re not really learning the material as well as you could.

A Place Dedicated to Teaching, Learning, and Getting Results

Is there any place online where you can go to actually learn how to grow a business “bass-ackwards” out of your blog? Right now, there isn’t… but it’s coming.

It’s called Gateway Blogging, and it’s going to be the web’s first combination business school and blog marketing school. Turn your blog into a real business by selling services and making real money, instead of just selling advertising and making only a coupla bucks a month.

If you sign up at our About page, you will receive special charter membership pricing for life when the site launches.