Ahmed Bilal

Collaboration between bloggers is very important when it comes to building blog networks or maintaining large, content-rich sites such like Blog Herald and Performancing. Not only do you get the benefit of sharing the load of blogging, but you have two (or more) different social and blog networks within which to promote your joint venture, which can only help your blog’s promotion efforts.

For single blogs, partnering up with other bloggers (as long as you can resolve your differences, if any) can bring you plenty of benefits, especially if your skill sets differ.

For example, I’m involved in several blogs where my role is that of advisor and manager – I advise, help monetize and promote the blog and manage the design, while the other blogger does what they know best – write about what they love. As blogging partnerships go this arrangement is one of the best ones to have (most, if not all, blog networks work this way).

In one of the early posts on Performancing Chris Garrett wrote an excellent article on Co-blogging, which I highly recommend you read. In essence, the idea is that by sharing your blogging responsibilities, you take a lot of the pressure off you that goes with blogging by yourself.

The big question before you get into a blogging partnership, however, is whether you are ready for it or not.

Undoubtedly there needs to be a match between the team – the bloggers must be able to trust each other and respect the quality of their work – but above that there is a mindset issue, where most people are just not willing to give up control on their blogs.

Several bloggers I know are extremely passionate about their work and are quite good at what they do. However, they find it hard to ’share’ their blog – even in the rare case when they allow others to write on their blog, that person never has editing access.

It sounds trivial but the mindset behind this is one of a fear of losing control, and having co-blogged on several blogs myself, I can assure you that it is a genuine fear. BUT, if you are working with the right people, if the roles are clearly defined and if the terms are fair and agreed upon from the start, there are rarely any problems that cannot be resolved.

Blogging Partnerships can help you scale your business, make your blog bigger and better and as a result, help you make more money.

The only question is whether you are willing to take the step forward and open up your mind to the possibility of sharing your blog.

If you are apprehensive, I’d advise that you break it down into smaller parts or projects and take them one at a time. Start with a small one to see how you both go, to see how you get along and to learn how to work with one another.

What do you think? How have your experiences with blogger collaboration worked out?

This article was originally written on 18 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

For a lot of people, blogging is more than just about the money. It’s about community and sharing and making a difference in peoples’ lives.

At the end of the day though, unless your bed is made of 100-dollar bills, money plays a key role in your blog’s existence.

In a previous post we’ve already talked about how you should know ‘your purpose / motivation’ for your blog before you start – however since financial considerations are always there or thereabouts whether you have a commercial venture or not, it’s crucial to understand the role money plays in your blog’s fortunes.

1. Don’t make your blog about the money
Focus your blog on people – your readers, on conversations, on building relationships, on sharing ideas and most of all, on positioning your blog at the center of the conversations in your niche (it’s a topic for a whole different discussion, but in short, talk about what matters to people in your niche now, not yesterday or tomorrow.

The money will come, as a direct outcome of your site being successful, as long as you monetize it properly.

If you are fretting about ‘making money’ from your blog then you might have things the other way around. After a certain point ‘optimizing your revenue streams’ stops improving the bottom line. You just have to make your site the most popular site in your niche (or close enough) – that’s when the big advertising dollars come in and that’s where you want to me.

Provide value to your readers and work hard at making your site popular – the money comes as a by-product.

2. If your blog makes money, treat it like a business
Lorelle preaches this in her book Blogging Tips and I assure you, this is as useful a principle to hold on to as it is simple and obvious.
For starters, you should learn the basics of making money through blogging – the different options available to you (advertising, affiliate products, direct sales) and how to evaluate what works best in a particular niche.

Then, you should master one form of revenue generation – let’s say contextual advertising – and once you optimized your blog to the hilt, it’s time to move on to the next revenue source. Optimize, then diversify.

3. Learn to pay yourself first
You need to be compensated for your time at the very least, and you deserve a good second income, so treat your blog seriously, as a business, even if it’s something you’re doing ‘on the side’.

4. More Money needs Business Growth, which needs a Scalable Business Model
A business cannot scale without more people and investment, and it certainly cannot expand if you don’t spend time working on its expansion.

In short, take your blog seriously, cover your bases and it will reward you handsomely in the future. If you take your eye off the ball in the start (or worse, right when you hit a purple patch), your blog will hog your time and not give you back the revenues you expect.

Blog less, Administrate more.

Blogging can be a drug and it’s hard to get yourself out of the cycle of blog, blog, blog when you’re the sole person managing everything on your blog from writing to design to promotion (which is why blogging partnerships, when done properly, rock). If you want to make money though, you’ll have to wean yourself off from your heavy blogging and take time out to promote and manage your design and revenue optimization. At the risk of repeating myself, outsource as much of your non-essential tasks as possible, whether to your readers (volunteers) or employees (paid).

Brainstorm, set goals, devise a plan and execute it.

It’s easy to say that you want to earn $3,000 per month from your blog by the end of the year, and it’s also easy to create a plan that ‘theoretically’ makes it work. What’s difficult is the execution, because that takes a lot of time, commitment and the need to reduce your blogging frequency.

This balance between the now (blogging and writing) and the future (promotion, monetization, managing assets and resources) is one that you’ll need to address constantly through the life of the blog. It gets easier when you can outsource the blogging, the promotion, and the design to someone else, but you still have to balance your time between writing and running your ‘business’.

To wrap things up, unless you are blogging for just for fun, you should make sure that your blog is geared to earn you money. However, at the end of the day, remember that money is a function of how well-known your site is, so focus on providing value to your readers and you will automatically make more money.

This article was originally written on 18 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

It’s 2am in the morning, you’re tired and you can’t even look at your blog lest you find something else wrong with it. You give up and go to bed, only to find out that you can’t sleep because sleeping over it isn’t going to make things better – the problems will still be there tomorrow morning.

So you trudge back to your laptop and get down to work, except that you’re chatting on IM instead of working – and then someone tells you how cool your blog is, and it dawns on you: You have been too harsh on yourself and your blog, and instead of finding positive solutions and working on them, all you’ve been doing is focusing on what’s wrong and letting that eat you up inside.

Moral of the story: Whenever your blog or your blogging hits a dip (whether it’s a drop in motivation or traffic), don’t go Postal on your blog and everything that you’ve worked so hard to build up. Find out the reason why you’ve spent thousands of hours working on your blog, and why you got started in the first place. And then make sure you talk to the people who regularly read your blog and get their opinion on what they think of it.

Chances are, all you need is a supporting shoulder when you’re down, and nothing works better than your own readers telling you that your blog rocks and that you shouldn’t give up.

Thank you, dear reader.

This article was written on 16 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

When planning for a new blog, you might take a few days to think over it, ask a few knowledgeable friends, research the industry, etc etc. The ‘planning’ phase for a new blog can take you time, right?

Bollocks.

I’m telling you right now that a blog launched based on 5 minutes of brainstorming will do just as well, if not better, than a blog that is started after a week’s worth of meticulous research.

How come? I say this because there is only one question you need to answer before you get to the LAUNCH phase, where you put your blog up and THEN start dealing with all the small issues that come up at the time. Sure, it’s nice to have all the answers before you start, but it’s not necessary. And if you’re already very busy with other work and have a limited period of time in which to start this new blog, you need to save time and with that, everything unnecessary (such as taking out time beforehand to answer a myriad of questions whose answers you won’t need till some time later) is a waste of time.

The ONLY question you need to answer at this point is:

Why do you want to blog?

In a previous blog post I talked about why people blog, and some might say I was cynical about it. However, that discussion brought out a variety of different views about why people blog. This is fascinating for me because for every blog that I’ve started or written at, my actions on it and surrounding it were guided by the answer to this question.

Why do you want to start this new blog? Is it:

• To make money?
• To share your knowledge?
• To change people’s lives and opinions?
• Just for fun?

Your answer – make sure it’s just one thing (if you’re split between sharing and fun, pick the one you want to do the most) – will be your guiding light for the lifetime of your blog (you’re free to change this midway, of course).

So how does knowing the answer help? Here’s a personal example:

There’s a blog that I want to start – a blog about social, economic, political and religious issues in Pakistan (it’s a given that when you’re ‘planning a new blog’, you already have a rough idea of what you want to talk about).

I’m starting this blog so that I can change the lives and views of people in Pakistan and build a platform through which I can build support for social projects in Pakistan. It’s a rough idea, but the key factors here are social mobilization, non-commercial and aiming to influence.
Right now these are very rough ideas in my head, but already this has given me direction in how / what I want my blog to be like.

For starters, while it’s a non-commercial project the blog has some big targets to achieve, and as such it’s a serious venture that will require a lot of personal time. Unless I have the money lying around, or I have an automated money-making solution already working for me (no to both of them), I have to either make a lot of money first so I can dedicate time to this project or (more likely) get help. For me, it’s a case of looking around in my circle of contacts and picking out those people who are passionate about this subject.

Also, we know by default who the audience is – the internet-savvy segment of the Pakistani population, especially those people who will be willing to participate in this venture. As well as taking out time to profile your audience, you should match your content to your audience’s needs and emotional triggers (if you want them to take action, you must tap their emotional wells and charge them up). In this case I can bank on personal experience but it always pays to do a good brainstorming session with one or two other friends and get your ideas clear.

But to be honest, you can ‘tune’ your content and your focus later on, once you’ve launched. As long as you have a basic idea of your audience, you are good to go.

The last point I want to raise is how important this blog is going to be to you personally and whether you can take time out for it. If you are starting a blog for fun or for sharing info, usually it’s understood that you’ll only spend your spare time on it and as a result it’s not a professional undertaking. On the other hand, if it’s a serious social project or a commercial venture, then you have to look at your time management and figure out if you have the time for it.

In most cases, the new blogs that we want to start take us away from the stuff we really should be doing – and while you might disagree, I tend to quash 90% or more of my ‘new blog’ ideas, simply because there’s not enough time for it and I’m not going to take on a new time commitment on a whimsical idea.

Sometimes though, you might have a project that you feel very passionately about, or you might be in a position where you are just starting out on pro-blogging for the first time and are going for a money-making blog. In these cases, accept that the site will only flourish if you work your ass off (Gerard explains this very well here). If you can’t do it, don’t have the time to do it or aren’t willing to commit, don’t bother starting.

What Next?
If you’re planning to start a new blog, I’d like you to take a couple of minutes out and share your answers to the following points in the comments section

• What are you blogging about?
• Why do you want to blog?
• Who’s going to read it?
• Who’s going to write it?
• Do you have the time to work on it?

It doesn’t take a lot of time to figure this out – 5 minutes at best, because the truth is that usually you have already spent some time thinking about your blog and these ideas are already floating around in your head.

My approach at this point is – once I have the answers, I move to the launch phase. Get things out of the door fast and start applying your ideas, and as a result you’ll solve those pesky unforeseen problems early, and overall, get things done today as opposed to think about doing them tomorrow.

So what are you waiting for? If you have a blog that you want to start, and you have the time to work on it, get started.

This article was originally written on 16 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

For some people, blogging is as easy (and fast) as talking. These people are rare – good conversationalists AND good bloggers (or maybe they just appear that way?).

For the rest of us though, blogging is NOT as simple as saying our ideas out loud, simply because our ideas are NOT clear enough.

Blogging, especially good blogging, can be excruciatingly painful when you just cannot transform the thoughts in your head into a post in your blog editor.

There are many reasons why this could happen – stress, whether from being over-worked or just poor health and distractions can jumble up our thoughts and leave us grasping for the thread that can unravel the mixed up thoughts and turn them into a post so we can get it over with and move on to something else.

It doesn’t work that way always, and we get even more stressed out.

The way to beat it is a ‘Duh’ method – one that you’d say is so obvious that I shouldn’t even put it in words (but if it were that obvious, why are we still struggling over what to write?).

The only way to beat Bloggers’ Block is to:

Just Start Blogging.

Don’t fret about the 40 other post ideas you have written down that you want to put up (are you nuts?), or the affiliate code that you have to add to your older posts (is it worth your time?), or that OTHER blog that you haven’t been writing on for the last two weeks and you’ve fallen way behind on your work quota… etc etc.

As a society, we think way too much. There’s a time and place for everything – but when you’re working, you should be working, not thinking about it. At the end of the day, you might take out 3-5 minutes to review and perhaps another 5 minutes to plan for the next day, but apart from that, does it really help you if you go over the same pros and cons 300,506 times?

So the next time you’re stuck and don’t know what to say, open up a notepad file or something and start writing. Take action – put yourself under a deadline and force yourself to get things done before that deadline comes.

We all need to kick ourselves in the backside now and then – it’s good practice, I assure you.

This article was originally written on 13 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

Why do people blog?

In my view (you may wish to add to the list), there are 3 main reasons why people blog:

To get attention, to make money and to influence others.

BLOGGING FOR ATTENTION

Blogging is an attention-seeking platform by nature. It is positive and negative – just as you seek attention for positive causes (raising money for charity), you can also seek attention for negative causes (as an extreme, attacking a religion).

If you’re a new blogger, attracting attention may seem like your first (and most important) step but it can’t be your end goal. All that attention is useless unless you have the means to convert it to your advantage, whether you are looking to make money or to change people.

BLOGGING FOR MONEY

Blogs are publishing platforms, and information publishing and networks are always a good source of income if you have mindshare and a profitable business plan.

We have talked a lot about making money and attracting attention here at Performancing – see the Blog Monetization and Blog Promotion sections in the Best of Performancing section.

Mind you, as Ryan said earlier, that blogging doesn’t scale well as a source of income unless you outsource it and focus your time on management.

BLOGGING FOR INFLUENCE

Attracting attention and making money off your blog is, in comparison, simple. Influencing public opinion, whether you are trying to change the views of an industry or of a society, is a different game.

While attracting attention and making money are themes that are often discussed in blogging, we don’t often talk about acquiring the power to influence others. Simply put, very few people / bloggers have the means to influence a mass audience, and it starts with the most basic of things – getting attention and holding peoples’ interest.

So tell me – why do you blog?

This article was originally written on 7 Aug 2007 for Performancing.com.

In the ‘Ask Your Blogging Questions Here‘ thread, franky asks:

How do you really start a new (niche) blog? Many times the ‘10 articles’ and ‘establish yourself as an authority’ is managed, but what pace to set during the first period?

There are two established strategies to successfully launch your blog – the big bang model or the bootstrapping model – and these differ in terms of resources available to the blog owner.

THE BIG BANG APPROACH

If you have any one of these two:

• a lot of money
• plenty of good contacts in the industry

This is the ideal way to go. You can write a lot of quality content in advance (around 30-50 articles), and around launch time either spend big or network big and get the word out as quickly and as widely as possible.

Lots of good content + a lot of eyeballs generally translates into a good, successful launch, but there are two factors that you have to cater for.

One, make sure you’re working in a profitable niche.

Two, make sure you have a ‘phase 2′ – a plan for what to do and how to manage your blog after the launch. It won’t be possible to maintain the same blogging rhythm as during launch, and you’ll have to find a solution that scales and not just eats up your time.

BOOTSTRAPPING APPROACH

Best if you don’t have much time or money. Simply start blogging, putting out 1-2 articles per day and posting them on your blog. Promote your blog but at this stage focus on the key activities – attracting attention of the top blogs, writing linkbait, getting links from trusted sources, etc.

The key here is to focus on what you can do with the resources available to you – so if you’re the only blogger and you can’t churn out 5 articles a day, don’t go down that road, it’s not sustainable or scalable. If you can’t spend 4 hours a day promoting your blog, ruthlessly eliminate all but the most important of promotion activities and spend just 1 hour.

Cut down using the 80/20 rule and focus on what’s really important – quality content, picking a good niche and promoting through the right channels.

A 7-STEP CHECKLIST TO LAUNCHING A NEW BLOG

This checklist is based on the strategies I used to launch my own blog, Soccerlens (see the DBT face off here).

1. Provide resources that can be linked to, downloaded, read, discussed, etc. Do this at the start, and if possible prepare them in advance.
2. Get initial links from high-PR, high-trust blogs such as Performancing and ProBlogger by participating in blogging contests and writing articles about your own blogging experiences. I’d add Marketing Pilgrim, Blog Herald and Daily Blog Tips to the list while Chris Garrett and Mark Ghosh do roundups as well. There are probably more that I’m missing – bottom-line, pro blogging sites are a good source of links.
   Think of all the people who’ve removed ‘no-follow’ from their blogs’ comments!

3. Establish and settle into a blogging rhythm as quickly as possible. Don’t fret about writing 20 articles in advance – just start writing them one by and one and put them on your blog.
4. Apply to be editor in Dmoz and BOTW Blog Directory for your niche’s category. If you’re accepted, build up those sections and add your site too. JoeAnt accepts applications automatically, so consider signing up there as well.
5. Make a list of the top bloggers in your niche and collect as much info as you can about them. Read their blogs daily and understand what type of stories interest them and what they link to. Then for each author, tie in their interest in a couple of your articles and ping them the URLs (without asking for anything in return). Your goal is to get them to be regular readers, links will come by themselves.
6. Remove all obstacles that prevent your readers from subscribing to your feed, from commenting on your blog, from sharing it with others, from linking to it and from finding things on your blog. This means not asking for ‘registration’ before commenting, showing your RSS feed (and email subscription box) above the fold, a prominent search box, a clear listing of site categories, social bookmarking icons (done subtly they look really good), etc.
7. Have fun and be yourself – without these two things, your best work will come across as ‘forced’ and ‘unnatural’. If your readers don’t see your passion in your writing, how are they going to respond? In kind, by not getting excited about what you’re writing and drifting away.
   Thanks Liz for teaching me this.

• Bonus Tip: I used the thought of beating my competition as motivation to work harder. Fretting about stats isn’t an ideal habit but if it helps you make your blog better then it does have some value.

It’s ok to start slow and build things up, but it’s important not to lose momentum once you’ve built it up – nothing is worse than taking your site to the top and then getting lazy and allowing it to fall back down in rankings, earnings and readership.

If you have any questions related to search marketing, blog promotion, WordPress or blogging in general, ask me here.

This article was originally written on 24 Jul 2007 for Performancing.com.

In the last hour or so I’ve been scribbling notes for what would make an ideal WordPress theme. It occured to me that any successful theme would have to meet 2 main objectives: proper structure, and focus towards a particular audience.

By structure I’m talking about the basic building blocks of themes (or even websites):

• Code must validate – adherence to web standards
• Cross-browser compatibility
• Should follow basic usability guidelines / requirements
• Uses modular, easy-to-customise code
• A focused channel for theme support and upgrades
• Follows WordPress coding standards

A website will be limited by the imperfections in its foundation – so if you’re building a theme that will be as popular as Cutline or K2 (or even more popular), then you must lay the proper foundations.

The second condition is focus – and knowing which audience you are designing the theme for.

Designing a general-purpose theme is hard than one focused towards a specific audience. It’s easier to plan the layout of a theme for a photoblog or a car blog than it is to plan the layout of a theme that could be used in a thousand different ways. You have to allow for the design to be immensely flexible and at the same time include the basic elements that would be needed by and be useful to everyone who takes your theme for a spin.

For the sake of discussion, let’s work on building a general-purpose theme.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different decisions to make when doing a layout of a theme. Most of these though, are personal preferences, using the 80/20 principle and focusing on the core factors, I ended up with the following list:

• Banner + horizontal menu at the top
  Personally I’m not happy with restricting a theme to this option but the thing is, this setup works well for a majority of blogs

• Multiple options for columns
  Instead of restricting the theme to a single column pattern (2 column right-sidebar), I think it’s a better idea to go Semiologic’s way and build a system in which the blog owner can easily change the number and alignment of columns through the WP Admin area

• Extended footer
  the 2 or 3 column footers seen on several WP themes are an excellent means of organising information – while the theme may appear bottom-heavy if there’s no banner at the top or if there’s not enough content in one post, the multi-column footer technique can work well and should be used.

• Advertising
  Some basic concerns when building a theme with advertising in mind – 3-column versions of the theme should have a content area wide enough to show the 300px AdSense block / 468px AdSense banner, and the 2-column versions should have a sidebar that’s at least 270 px wide to accomodate 2 columns of graphical ads

• Navigation / above the fold elements
  A reader lands on a random page of your website – how does he orient himself and what does he do there? Another reader lands on your blog’s main page – how do you provide them direction through your blog and how can they, in a few seconds, find all the key areas / functions of your blog?

• Make it fully customizable
  I’d prefer a theme that can be completely customised and turned inside-out using the same building blocks

• Static home page
  What is the main purpose of your blog’s front page? What is the main purpose of any category archives page on your blog? Chances are, the two answers are different, so why would you keep your front page looking the same as a category’s archives? A static front page helps you plan and implement a proper landing page for prospects and direct readers to different sections of your blog

Questions

1. What color scheme should be used?
2. Which plugins should have built-in support?
3. What changes would you make to the structure discussed above?

Comments are welcome – let me know what you guys think.

This article was originally written on 23 Jul 2007 for Performancing.com.

How do you put a price on a blog?

The free valuation tools commonly available suck – you cannot place a value on your blog by counting links and PageRank and at the same time not considering actual revenues, site traffic and a dozen other factors that are relevant to blog valuation.

To be honest – there’s no perfect formula for blog valuation. What I can do is share the factors that I consider important (these may change depending on specific cases or on the buyer’s goals) and discuss one way of calculating the value of a blog. Feel free to jump in and share your own views here.

VALUATION FACTORS TO CONSIDER

Niche Potential
Used to evaluate if a blog is making less or more than the average in that niche for a blog with that amount of traffic. If a blog is under-monetized then it gives the buyer leverage in the buying process. On the other hand, if the blog owner knows that his blog is under-monetized he can then focus on attracting advertisers and adding different revenue streams to his blog prior to putting it up for sale. Fatten the cow, so to speak.

If a blog is in a highly profitable niche this will have some impact on blog valuation, but this is only in relation to whether the site under-monetized or not.

Expenses
What does it cost to run the blog? Hosting, blogger time, promotion, administration – take everything into account.

Revenue Analysis
How much is that site earning?

How much did it earn in the last 6 months (month-by-month breakdown)? Take the average and that is a more realistic revenue estimate for the blog.

What are the major revenue sources? If it’s just one, it’s a risky proposition and the buyer invariably has an advantage in negotiations. On the other hand, if you have 3-4 or more sources of revenue and they all earn reasonably well, you have a very business and the price invariably goes up.

Traffic Sources
Does the blog have high search engine rankings?

How many feed subscribers?

Is there a mailing list / newsletter?

Is the comments section active or passive, and is there any value in the discussion (or are people just saying ‘this sucks’ and ‘that rocks’)?

Does the blog get mentioned regularly on other websites? Does this bring in traffic?

Premium
What is the site design worth?

What would the domain name alone be worth (think of branding, established reputation, etc)?

What is the content worth, if anything (search engine rankings and traffic matter here)?

Social Reputation
Some niches are more easily polarised than others (for example: pop culture and sports) and it’s easier to offend segments of the audience through them.

Is the blog recognised in its niche as a leading blog? Do fellow niche bloggers read the blog (a big, big positive)? Does the blog enjoy a negative reputation for past actions?

Anything positive is just bonus, but if the blog has a negative reputation it may become difficult to make it grow beyond a certain point.

On the flip side, how big a brand is this blog in its niche? Does it have media recognition? Is it recognised in non-niche circles as the leading blog in its niche (as Danny’s SearchEngineLand is)?

Blog Branding
Is the blog attached to the personal brand of the lead blogger or is it all about the content?

TechCrunch and MarketingPilgrim are two examples of blogs that were built on the personal reputation of their lead bloggers but have successfully moved away from personal branding and towards building the blog as a standalone brand.

If the blog relies strongly on the main blogger to relate to the community, it becomes difficult for new owners to run it with the same amount of success and as a result the price can go down.

HOW DO YOU VALUE A BLOG

What are we going to do with these factors? I use a simplified valuation formula that works like this:

Blog Value = Premium + ((Monthly Revenue – Monthly Costs) x Multiplier)

The Premium is established based on the value of the content, site age, design, established rankings, community, etc. Revenue – Costs is a straightforward calculation.

The key difference where people have issues is the multiplier.

As Andy Hagans has discussed here, there’s a wide discrepancy between offline businesses and online blogs – whereas blogs often go for 1x or 2x their yearly profit, real-world businesses often go for 10x on yearly profit (plus premium).

The challenge here is to build defensible traffic, to have multiple monetization methods, to build a great brand, to have an active community and to make your blog indispensible to your niche.

The better you are at all of the above, the higher you can push that multiplier.

If your blog gets traffic exclusively from Yahoo, only earns from AdSense and is unknown outside your niche, it’s not going to get more than a 1x multiplier.

On the other hand, if your blog is the ProBlogger of its niche, you could name your asking price and easily charge a 5x or 10x multiplier.

A Few Problems
The problem with establishing a Premium and a Multiplier is that these decisions are subjective and as such the valuations of two experiences domainers will almost always differ. Because of this it’s always a good idea to have 2-3 people independently value a blog – whether you’re selling yours or looking to buy one.

Putting a price on your blog (and developing a blog exit strategy) is always a good idea no matter at what stage you are with your blog.
Have you valued your blog? If so, please share your methodology and what factors you considered most important.

This article was originally written on 20 Jul 2007 for Performancing.com.

Currently I’m in discussion with bloggers for starting four different blogs – and in each case, the author was stumped when I asked him the following question:

Where do you see yourself and your blog in 2 years?

This isn’t about setting goals for yourself – it’s about knowing what you want to achieve with your blog, and planning for your exit if circumstances require you to do so.

WHY YOU SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGY:

• You might lose interest in the subject
• You may need the extra cash
• You could get a dream gig at another blog
• You might start a new blog / business that needs more of your time
• The niche / blog is peaking and you’d want to strike gold while the the iron’s hot (apologies for mixing metaphors there)
• You’ve fallen ill and can’t blog at the same pace / volume any more

Your reasons for leaving / ending a blog could be positive or negative – the idea is to be prepared so when the time arrives, you are prepared to hand the blog over to someone else, sell it off or further ‘automate’ it so that it takes less of your time.

Done right, you could stand to make good money from your blog in a couple of years.

7 COMPONENTS TO A BLOG EXIT STRATEGY

Don’t plan to quit
A contradiction – but the fact is that to make a blog successful you need to work smart and put maximum effort where it’s needed. If your heart’s not in it and you’re doing this with the big payday as your goal, you’re not going to get the desired results.

Get other bloggers on board as soon as possible
Whether you have to hire them, find like-minded friends or bribe them with fame and fortune, aim to turn your blog into a multi-author blog (or one with substantial guest contributions) asap, preferably as soon as you start.

This way the blog doesn’t become over-dependent on the voice of one person, and it is a lot easier to transition to new owners.

Multiple Monetization Methods
This is sound business advice as well as a must if you want to be able to sell your blog in the future – having a business reliant on just one source of revenue (such as AdSense) is risky. Find affiliate programs, sell advertising, sell products / services if possible and find alternatives to AdSense (TLA, Chitika, Intellitxt, Auction Ads, Amazon, etc).

Know your costs
There are many hidden costs of running a blog that bloggers often ignore. The biggest one is the cost of the blogger’s time – if a new owner was to come in and hire someone to blog regularly, how much would they pay them?

Other costs include hosting costs (if you are hosting multiple blogs on one server then your personal costs are averaged out but it might not be the case for a new owner), cost of paying your guest bloggers (even if they blog for free now) and the value of time / actual money spent in promotion / administration.

If you subtract all your costs from your revenues and you realise that you’re turning in a loss instead of a profit, it’s time to rethink your business strategy.

Treat your blog as a business
You’re here to make money, so don’t kid yourself – get serious and focus on those activities that will bring in advertising dollars.

And remember that without quality content and a strong community, advertising won’t come to your blog.

Build a strong community
Internet marketers are fond of saying that ‘the money is in the list’. The parallel in blogging is that a strong, active community around your blog is a monetizable audience and as such is very valuable.

Start a newsletter. Provide free reports to capture email addresses. Develop a community and establish multiple lines of communication with them.

Diverse Traffic Sources
If you have a sizeable audience then you are not reliant on search engines.

But are you reliant *just* on the community?

Having regular readers, search engine traffic, constant referrals from other websites – all are important components of building site traffic and you shouldn’t ignore any one of them.

The beauty of preparing for exit is that once it focuses you to develop a business model that is efficient, has optimal monetization and is capable of running without you being involved in day-to-day decisions.

While preparing for your exit, you’ll also have built a hands-off, self-reliant, stable and automated business.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

This article was originally written on 19 Jul 2007 for Performancing.com.