Initially blogging is a bad investment

Initially, blogging can definitely be a bad investment. Paying for a domain name, finding a reliable web-hosting company, and setting up WordPress can take up a large chunk of time — especially if you haven’t done it before! It also takes plenty of work to type new posts, promote your website, and slave with the installation of WordPress plugins. A high-quality customized theme can run bloggers several hundred dollars. Depending on what a blogger decides to do or purchase for their blog, starting up a blog can easily put a small dent into one’s bank account!

Time = your life & money

When first starting a blog, you can put in many hours and not get much money to compensate for your time or hard work. Initially, writing blog articles doesn’t pay squat — no matter how high their quality or how attractive their content. Put it in perspective: depending on how experienced you are with starting up blogs, the time it takes you to start up a blog could range anywhere from a few hours to a few days. There is a lot of information that new bloggers need to learn and widgets that should get installed. When I first started blogging, I had already been a frequent reader of several high-quality blogs, a few e-books, and had a general idea of what I wanted my blog to be about. I was purely interested in the concept of earning money online and felt (still feel) that through hard work and determination, I will can make it happen. Currently, I am still in the mode of building up my website traffic and website content. Writing quality content takes a chunk of time, though I have devised a system to help called, “Writing Concentrated Articles.” Realize that even after writing an article, it is wise to edit it by: adding a picture, correcting mistakes, adding an advertisement, adding links within your article, and editing the tags. This all takes time away from your life and invests it in your blog: it definitely doesn’t do you any good initially, but you must walk up the first steps on the ladder before brining yourself closer to the top.

A unique theme costs more money

I have e-mailed several theme designers and the price for a customized theme ranges from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. As far as theme design goes, you pretty much get what you pay for. I have also scoped out many free WordPress themes that looked appealing and chose the “Simple Red WordPress Theme” for Andrew Pavelski dot Com. I feel that the “Simple Red” theme definitely is nice and 100% free. It has many quality features like 125 x 125 advertising box code installed, an appealing header, RSS subscribing code installed, and looks good for a “make money online”-type site. There are also many other quality free WordPress themes across the web; you’ve just got to look around. The current theme that I recommend purchasing for a cheap price is “The Blogging Experiment” theme. I am currently selling copies for $75 dollars: check out my review of the theme to see what it can do to benefit your blog!

Advertising takes hard work

Whether you are buying links on other sites or purchasing advertisements from Google, it takes work and some research. When looking to buy advertisements, you don’t want to completely waste your money and efforts; you should definitely consider doing some keyword research. By doing some keyword research and search engine marketing, you can work up the ability to profit from your advertisement campaigns. If you are thinking about advertising on another site by purchasing a 125 x 125 advertisement, be prepared to shell out some more money. Another great way to get extra traffic from a site is to buy a paid review from someone like John Chow. It is a great idea to buy a review if your site has a large base of quality content — because you will attract many future readers. If however, you don’t have enough content or any quality content to draw in a future crowd, the review money will have been completely wasted! Either way, if you buy a review, you are initially out a few more hundred dollars. You can successfully optimize advertising campaigns and strategies to increase your site’s popularity, but they will take some work. One great way to get started with a free advertising technique is to write a guest post on another, more popular blog within your “niche.” No matter how you advertise, initially no matter what you do it will suck up your time and money.

Promotional efforts take time

Promoting your website and working to increase website traffic is much more work than just advertising. There are many great ways to promote your website. Posting in forums, commenting on other blogs, and using an Entrecard takes time and hard work. Signing up for social networking programs like StumbleUpon and Digg can be quick, but the registration process will take up your time. Even when you’re finally done signing up, you’ve got to be responsible for more account usernames and passwords, which can turn out to be quite a lot of information to remember. Registering for forums and dropping Entrecards can take up time — luckily I have posted forum evaluations for my readers to check out and I have posted a great method that will allow you to drop a huge amount of Entrecards in the shortest period of time. When promoting your website it is important to be efficient and spend the most promotional efforts on things that are the most effective. You don’t want to waste your time with Reddit if it isn’t making the cut. When starting out blogging, it takes time to learn what promotional methods work best with your individual site. What works well for your site may be an ineffective strategy for another site; and vice-versa. Once you begin to figure out what works, what doesn’t and where to focus your promotional efforts is when you begin to gain experience and build up large amounts of traffic. Don’t be discouraged by the fact that promotion can take a lot of time when starting out blogging and that it can be a bad trade-off for your initial time.

Slaving with plugins (you happen to be in luck…)

You’re very lucky to be a reader of Andrew Pavelski dot Com — especially if you’re fairly new to blogging. Why? I have compiled a list of recommended plugins that you all should check out. I explain what each plugin does — this way you can determine whether or not it is right for you. There are also several other great lists of plugins floating around the WordPress website and on various popular blogs and e-books. Taking time with finding the right plugins for your blog can really be a pain and take some time and experimentation. I have tried many plugins based on recommendations, ratings, and out of curiosity. You will have to do some searching to find beneficial plugins, but once you install the necessary plugins — everything becomes easier. Realize that finding and installing plugins is an investment of more time. Setting up plugins doesn’t only require uploading them to your WP-plugins folder — each individual plugin requires it’s own configuration and settings adjustment. Be prepared to deal with a couple of days searching for and working with plugins to be sure they are installed correctly and working properly. After all of your basic initial plugins are installed, you will feel accomplished, relieved, and motivated to finally start writing blog content!

Editing code (yeah… about that…)

I’m going to be completely honest with you, I don’t know much about editing code — that’s not what I’m here to blog about. I am, however, going to learn as much about coding when necessary. In my personal experience with editing my theme’s scripts, I ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask a coding guru or someone on a WordPress or theme support website for help. I have learned how to edit various parts of my theme by experimenting in the “stylesheet.css.” Learning code takes time and you may find yourself getting completely lost in the “html” language. Even when asking for help — trying to fix coding or edit coding can sometimes feel like an obstacle. The nice thing is that WordPress has done a great job with plugins and widgets to make your life easier by minimizing the amount of coding! Adding code from various advertising programs to your widgets / sidebar / or header can definitely be annoying. Eventually, if you keep learning about plugins and coding and want to succeed, things become a lot easier!

Signing up for advertising programs

Registering for advertisement programs like Ad-Sense, Text-Link-Ads, Kontera, and Bidvertiser takes time. Yes, registering for advertising networks is usually a one-time deal, so once you’ve completed the application process you are “good to go!” It is definitely wise to register for many different advertising programs — never put “all your eggs in one basket” with advertising companies. If you bank on only Google Ad-sense and their payout decreases or a bad trend sets in w/ Ad-Sense you are going to be out of luck. Always try to get involved with many different networks. Back to the initial point: not only is the “registration” and “confirmation of registration” process time-consuming, but figuring out which advertisements work best for financing your blog can burn up even more hours. Factors such as: advertisement size, ad position, and advertisement company all need to be taken into account. Configuring and making adjustments with advertisement programs takes a little longer than snapping your fingers…

Signing up for affiliate programs

Working with and signing up for affiliate programs can take just as much, if not more time than registering for advertising programs. My personal experience with affiliate programs is that many like to contact you by phone and have a small conversation with you about your registration decision with their company. Just like advertisement programs, affiliate programs will not work well without much blog traffic. I don’t recommend placing affiliate programs on your website until you’ve got plenty of quality content and your blog has been around for awhile. If you currently have a relatively “new blog on the block,” putting up affiliate programs is probably a waste of time and advertising space. If you have affiliate programs installed in your 125 x 125 boxes, chances are good that if your site is new, no one will buy the product from your site. Instead, what I recommend for newer sites: put a pay-per-click advertisement in those boxes, leave the boxes open for another site to purchase advertising, or use the boxes for a contest winners to advertise on your blog. Though I’ve signed up for affiliate programs, I don’t recommend them for new bloggers — it is yet another registration process that takes a healthy chunk of time out of your schedule.

Why blogging will pay off in the long run

There are many good reasons as to why you may want to run a or start a blog. Obviously the reasons that blogging is initially a bad investment, dealt with mostly the loss of time and money. If you are serious about blogging, you probably already realize that there will be plenty of benefits resulting from your initial “bad investment.” The long-term potential to earn money and build up a blogging community is phenomenal. Below, I’ve highlighted several reasons as to why blogging will pay-off in the long-term.

Ability to generate passive income

As blog growth continues, the opportunity to make a living from your blog becomes more of a possibility. I consider blogging to have the ability to generate passive income. By passive income I mean that you are able to earn money even when you aren’t working. A couple things that can generate passive income are: advertisements — readers click on them and you earn money. It doesn’t matter where you are at; you could be sleeping while making a few hundred dollars from Ad-Sense clicks… Affiliate programs work the same way: put up a product link, get a reader to buy the product and you earn a commission. Set up the affiliate link, make sure it works, and your in business to make some cash-money. I don’t mean that absolutely no work is required When you gain the ability to continuously publish, unique quality content on a consistent basis and attract readers, then you can probably consider taking the plunge to become a full-time blogger. Until then, it is not recommended to quit your day job ;)…

Your readership and community grows

The great thing about continuing to update a blog is that over a period of time, readership grows and RSS subscriber numbers increase. Seeing an increase in readers is definitely a huge self-esteem booster for a blogger because they feel accomplished and fulfillment! It does take work though, nobody can expect to have John Chow’s, Shoemoney’s or Problogger’s RSS subscriber count numbers after only 1 month blogging; these guys have circumnavigated the blogosphere a few times and know that it takes some content, credibility, and time to build-up a loyal reader base. It is important to realize that readership will increase over time as you keep promoting your website and learning new ways to boost traffic.

Earning potential grows: ($>$$>$$$>$$$$)

When first starting to blog, earnings are usually fairly low. Monetizing a new blog or website will help you make a few extra bucks each month, but you must first build up traffic and a loyal base of readers before expecting to make plenty of money. When your blog earnings grow, you have the potential to keep boosting traffic and earnings. It is a repetitive cycle: traffic = earnings, earnings = more advertising opportunities, more advertising opportunities = more traffic. The saying “it takes money to make more money” definitely applies to the blogging world. As your earnings grow, you may then actually be able to consider taking the plunge and quitting your day job. After awhile, affiliate programs and advertisements begin to serve their purpose.

After a year or so online, a blog has the ability to make a lot of progress. People are much more likely to buy a recommended product from someone who has been online and is running a successful blog rather than a new blog just starting out. Think about it, you wouldn’t buy from a new blog on the block over a popular blog — why would anyone else? When you’ve reached Problogger status and have worked your way to the top of the blog-chain, good affiliate programs will earn you a lot of money.

Just like affiliate programs, your advertisements will begin to get a large number of clicks. It is when you have a large number of readers frequently checking out your blog that you can begin to earn big checks from Google Ad-Sense. More traffic = more clicks on advertisements, which = more money made. Putting up pay-per-click ads can definitely contribute to a large amount of a popular blog’s earnings. Time definitely facilitates growth in the potential of advertising programs.

Blog popularity grows

Any blog can become popular at any time, however, it does help to have had your blog on the internet for awhile. More people find out about your blog when it is on the web for a year than one month… obviously. Just by taking part in steady-promotion, your blog popularity and RSS subscribers will boost after time. At any moment your blog could become one of the most popular places to visit on the web. Don’t give up and keep reading AndrewPavelski.Com to learn how to boost your blog’s popularity!

Better results from Google (and other search engines)

It is true that the longer your website has been on the net, the better relationship you have with search engines. The great thing is that Google likes sites that have been around for awhile. Google (and other search engines) will give veteran blogs much better search engine rankings and an advantage over newer blogs when compared. This is why it is recommended to renew your domain name and not constantly start up new “replacement domains” when you could just renew. Don’t lose hope if you aren’t currently getting massive amounts of search engine traffic. Instead, realize that your search engine results will improve with time.

Building up credibility in the blogosphere

Want to build credibility? Constantly publish helpful articles everyday for 1 year. Can you do it? This would definitely be a big challenge, but from the looks of things, it may make your blog more successful than the rest. When you can be considered a veteran blogger — you definitely gain credibility. I consider veteran bloggers to be dedicated bloggers that have been around for a few years. Starting out, people will realize your message and what your blog has to offer, but you’ve got to be consistent and in it for the long-term. Sure people like to check out new blogs initially just to see what they look like, but after a period of time if the content is not there, you will not build credibility. Veteran bloggers have an advantage in the sense that they are much more likely to have more blogging colleagues, backlinks, and traffic. Communicating and working with other bloggers is definitely a great way to build up credibility. In the end, having your blog be active on the internet for several years will move you up to veteran status.

Blogging gets easier as you journey

Like anything you do, blogging gets easier the more you do it. When I started blogging, I wasn’t exactly sure what to write about or how to generate new ideas for my posts. Now I find myself literally thinking of several new ideas everyday for new posts. My brain cycles and usually seems to find something interesting for me to write about. It really feels like someone installed an idea-generator inside of my mind for blog articles. I really feel that the more you push yourself to become a great blogger, the easier it becomes. As you gain writing experience, advertising experience, and learn where to place an affiliate program link to gain the maximum amount of visitor sign-ups, everything gets easier. Things may seem tough at the beginning of your career, but anyone can develop the necessary skills if they work at it.

You learn a lot of valuable information

I am learning something new pretty much every day from blogging. Participating in other blogging communities provides me with valuable information that I may have never learned, which is why I always follow other blogs. During most of my first month blogging, I didn’t know much about WordPress, didn’t know how to place Ad-Sense code in my posts, what a WordPress plugin was, or how I was going to possibly install one. Eventually I mastered the installation of WordPress plugins and figured out how to use them. In general, everything seemed to get easier as I continued reading more information about blogging and focused my efforts to make my blog successful. Things definitely took a lot of tough, initial work and experimentation, but I was willing to take the plunge and learn about blogging — a topic that seemed interesting to me (still does) and seemed like a great way to make money (still does). I did find out quickly that making money online wasn’t as easy as I expected, but after learning what it takes to make a healthy online living, I was (and still am) willing to rise to the occasion. I am also going to be introducing a new section to this blog that will include 5 things I learned each month from my blogging experience thus far. Look out for that new segment to start at the end of this month.

Blogging is like investing in stocks

In essence, the art of investing in a blog is like investing in the stock market: a quality investment + time = your money grows. As a matter of fact, with time and concentrated efforts, every aspect of your blog will grow: readers, pageviews, profits, you name it! If you want to help your small amount of petty blogging stock build up to the value of 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway, you had better be willing to invest the necessary time and effort towards making it happen; making smart moves in the blogosphere. Realize that your blog will grow the same way as a powerful stock does if you keep pushing your limits! Anything can happen — who knows, you may even surpass John Chow’s stats in a few years with dedication and the right content.

Ask yourself: “Are you passionate?”

Whatever your blogging goals are, realize that the journey to reaching those goals stems from being passionate. Are you blogging out of enjoyment and due to the fact that you love what you are doing? Or are you only blogging for the fame and fortune? You’ve got to know what you are all about. If you are unsure, test out blogging for awhile and see if it was meant to be. I am currently extremely passionate about earning money online and am definitely working hard to achieve my goal. I want to make money online, share my progress with readers, and provide helpful tips that will allow readers to virtually duplicate my success! Make the art of blogging your medium — or way of conveying your message to other people online. The thing you’ve got to ask yourself: “Is blogging right for me?” Blogging is not right for everyone and some may think that it is an easy way to cash into a fortune — those people are sadly mistaken and they will find out soon enough…

Why are you blogging?

In the end, it all boils down to the question: “Why are you blogging?” Are you passionate about blogging or a certain topic that you feel should be shared with others across the web? If you are blogging and don’t feel like blogging is right for your life — don’t be afraid to take the plunge away from cyberspace and into the “real world” — find something more enjoyable. After all, if you are not passionate about your topic or blogging — you are wasting your time, efforts, and your life: go do something else with it! If you are passionate about your blogging journey: awesome, keep up your efforts! I hope you feel that this article provided you with valuable blogging information and helped you re-evaluate your current blogging efforts. People must realize that initially, blogging is actually a terrible investment: it sucks away time, money, and efforts. People must also realize that if done correctly, blogging can prove to be a phenomenal long-term payout!

Andrew Pavelski

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