This is one of those fun side projects us online addicts start from time to time just to see where it leads. A playful experiment.

Flash forward to a year ago: There are a million blogs on every subject. Look at your own efforts, and you’ll probably realize there’s a good chance nobody gives a shit about your self-hosted WordPress blog. Suddenly, a lack of amazing content, real work, and a great brand actually prohibit people from finding success. (Believe me, if you were involved with the early blog gold rush, you would find this odd too).

Fact: It’s become a lot harder to make a real career out of blogging from advertising revenue. Nearly every big profitable niche is already dominated, and the top brands (TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Engadget, HuffingtonPost,etc, etc, etc) which are becoming even more sophisticated and powerful. Ipso facto, your gadget blog probably isn’t going anywhere fast.

What next? well, good question. Right now, we have….. [DrumRoll]……. Products!

Blogging and Products

Products are on fire right now. All the blogging gurus (Darren, Chow, etc) are talking about them constantly, causing every other business blogger to blog about them. Lucky for you, I don’t think you’re too late to the party. The product formula isn’t complicated, yet it’s a lot bigger pain in the ass than the old approach to making money blogging. There’s definitely still something in this idea though, and get on your high horse before this passes you too.

The formula

• Make a blog. Blog a lot, blog well. Be kick ass. Social network. Twitter. Blog often. Be original.
• All this hard work above, give it away for free for 6 months. Don’t bombard readers with ads. Hope your savings and motivation doesn’t run out.
• Once established, make products, and sell them. Keep blogging a bit, but not as much. Leave readers hanging. Sell products. Focus on promotion.

So essentially, the new “Products” are either paid memberships or e-books that have the most niche, valuable content. Sound like a lot of work? well, it is. But this is how people are getting big now, so if you want to get big, I think this is it.

The Role Models

Art of Non Conformity‘s Chris Guillebeau has simply put on a clinic (expression) as to how to own the internet with his products approach. On paper, I would never have guessed he would’ve found success beforehand, but the guy is on fire and has a wealth of info on his blog. Chris focuses on products on traveling and making money unconventionally.

Tim Sykes

Tim Sykes is the perfect example of the membership approach with a slightly more formal, academic niche – stock trading. Before he kills me for grouping him with other financial traders and analysts he despises, he’s anything but conventional which has led to his great brand. His personality, outstanding trading performance (actual objectively great content), and pretty website make the foundation of his success. If you know nothing about him, watch his video via John Chow on making $100,000/month from memberships.

Other Niches

I’ve found some other niches that could still be up for grabs (which I won’t share, naturally). If you’re serious and up for making a career online outside of content based ad revenue, partake in some due diligence and grab a niche and maybe 6 months from now you’ll be pulling some serious cash that trumps your old $100/month Adsense revenue.

We have a lot of things we need to do – write a report, draw up a business plan, send an email, etc. Often these tasks aren’t that difficult, but for various reasons, we labor over them for hours, even days. One main culprit is excessive self-correction. It’s not a bad habit necessarily, but you’ll need to control the urge to edit or else you’ll never get anything finished. There’s a time to be critical and a time to let go.

When writing the first draft, be easy on yourself. Write down anything that comes to mind about the topic and do all the editing much later. Promising concepts will only be useful if you put them in black and white. At this time, you should just be concerned about having a large pool of ideas to draw from once you buckle down and get serious. Right now, keep your fingers away from that DELETE buttton. Remember: nobody will see this draft so it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Use this session as your chance to think about the whole project, from start to finish. See how you can bridge these two ends into one coherent piece. In effect, what you’re doing is building the foundations. It may not look pretty, but it’s strong and has plenty of support because you’ve looked at it from every angle. Once you commit all the details to paper for your first draft, give yourself a much needed break, then come back later with a fresh mind to start on the trimmings.

Being able to market to yourself and like-minded people in niches is more valuable than most people think.  Most offline businesses spend a lot on market research to find their consumers’ specific tastes.  When considering niche blogging, there is a large enough audience online that there is a profitable market based on your ownself.  Getting them to listen or find you may be difficult, but when trying to understand your market’s desires and tastes, all you need to do is look within.  Ask yourself what you’d like to read about within a niche such as travel, music, or under water basket weaving, and then just take action.

This ability to ‘just market to yourself’  online is  why blogging as a business for driven individuals is easy, cheap, and profitable. If you understand your own tastes and desires, you understand thousands of others’ tastes. So choose a topic, self reflect, and ACT.

(If you want to find out the things you like according to ‘big business’ and academia, take the VALS interest survey as Marketing classes praise and pay $50 for a report on what you like).  I think my point has been made.

First point: it has taken hundreds of hours of development time to get this site up and running smoothly.

Second point: the site is simple to use and makes it easy to find exactly the product the user is shopping for

So, sometimes it takes a lot of work to make a simple product that’s effective for it’s user. Sometimes, the hard part of doing things right is making things simple.

Well, I can finally offer this report: I am now employing 2 full time employees (car freaks) on the site. Both employees receive a nice salary plus profit sharing. Plus, the site is ranking for some solid terms like: how to break into a car or 2009 Nissan Skyline GTR.

Moral of the story: quality publishing, by niche experts…works. It’s that simple.

1. Make your blog posts count.
It is not important whether you can update daily or maybe twice a week. What’s important is that your blog posts makes a difference. Posts that are original and are well made are likely to be read than posts that are badly constructed.

2. Take some time off.
Take a long road trip, watch a movie, go to a concert or do anything that don’t involve being in front of the computer. Disconnect yourself from the Internet for a day or two. A long weekend will benefit you and your sanity. This time out will take your mind out of blogging for a while. When you come back after, you’ll feel recharged and full of ideas.

3. When a good idea strikes, jot it down.
Everyone must make this a habit. Keep a list of ideas that comes in your brain. You can use it later when you can’t think of anything to write about.

4. Keep a blogging schedule but make it flexible.
Schedule your blogging time but keep it realistic. Blogging isn’t everything. Don’t be upset when you missed writing a blog because something came up. You must have time to relax as well.

5. Don’t force yourself to write.
When your creative juices are not flowing, procrastinate. Never force yourself to write. It will only result in a poorly written article. Take a break first. You’ll know when the time’s right to blog.

6. Write to please yourself.
Writing should be about you and not about what others think. Your work will be refreshing and original by writing in your own voice.

7. Rid of other sources of stress.
Maybe it’s not blogging that’s stressing you out. Find out what’s really bothering you. Low morale can burn you out and can suck your energy out.

If you think you’re slowing losing the fire in you, it’s a sign that something is wrong. Your body’s subconsciously telling you to fix something. The main thing here is focus. If you’re focused on maintaining a healthy blogging environment then you won’t have to worry about burnouts.

So how do you deal with burnouts?

1. Making your readers register before they could comment.
The registration process will become a barrier between your company and your potential customers. This adds another hurdle for your readers to overcome. Focus on stricter comment moderation instead.

2. Using an irrelevant blog title.
“The dumpsite” is not good business blog name is it? Your business blog name must reflect your company and its products or services. This also pertains to post entries’ titles.

3. Links that generate a 404 Error.
Getting a 404 error is very frustrating. You must make sure that your blog links to real pages. Double-check your links as to not commit any 404 errors.

4. Your “Contact Us” page does not contain any information.
Readers sometimes want to personally talk to someone in your company. By not giving them a way to communicate with you will make them think your company’s illegitimate. You must provide them with at least an email address and a telephone number. This way doubts will be erased in your customers’ minds.

5. There is no “About Us” page.
Users will want to know whom they are dealing with. It’s just a matter of trust. Your readers need to know something about you and the company that you’re representing.

6. Your blog does not provide subscription.
RSS and email feeds keep your readers updated. This is something that you must implement in your business blog. This makes it easier for your readers to know if something new is posted in it.

7. Writing in all caps.
A sentence in all caps must be avoided. Users are put off with that practice. It appears that the writer is shouting at them. Plus, it reduces the speed-reading by at least 10%.

8. Irregular posting frequency.
You must update your business blog regularly or else you might lose loyal readers. There’s a saying that absence makes the heart fonder but this is inappropriate in blogging.

9. Your blog is losing its focus.
At the start you might be blogging about your products and how it benefits others. As time goes by, you might be starting to stray away from that. You might begin blogging about your new interests. While this might bring in new visitors to your blog, this might turn off your faithful readers.

10. Not having your own domain name.
Using a free blog provider might be budget friendly but it might give the impression that your company is not in it for the long run.

So which of these mistakes are you guilty of?