Blogging for most writers begins as a passion. However, in the current market, blogging is a business that can generate revenue out of this world. A savvy blogger can corner a niche market and be self-sufficient for the rest of his or her life. However, there are some things that no one tells writers about running a revenue generating blog. Read ahead to find what these important tips are:
You Must Own Your Site
It is unbelievably easy nowadays to start a blog and make money off it. Platforms like WordPress make it incredibly easy and cheap to design an attractive website and create payment portals. However, there is a downside to the ease and convenience of using a third-party company to host your blog. Your site will completely subjected to the limits, restrictions and the privacy policy of the mother site.
Consider this harrowing example: There were once a blogger, who wrote about premium pet accessories and sold some from his blog, which hosted by someone else. Then, a problem with a product led to a complaint to the parent site. Soon, his entire blog was taken down. The lesson here is that if you do not own your site, your business will be at the mercy of the interests of some other company. Therefore, find yourself a regional web host. For example, if you are a blogger in Australia, get your site published through an exclusive web hosting Australia service – www.hostingaustralia.com.au to avoid a disaster like the one mentioned above.
Do Worry about Intellectual Property
When you were writing about your favourite pop star on your MySpace page back in the day, you probably had the freedom to use as many photos of the said pop star without running into legal trouble. However, when your blog becomes a business, you should start worrying about intellectual property law. Namely, if you use photos, videos, songs or content originally published elsewhere, you must first make sure that publishing such content does not violate Australian or international copyright laws. Most bloggers run into copyright violations with photos. If you are publishing photos, which not personally taken by you, double check the copyright license. The photo should be authorised for commercial use without permission from the owner. When in doubt, you should consult an expert in the field. Remember that if you violate copyright law, even unintentionally, it could cost you dearly in fines.
Bandwidth Matters
As a writer, you could probably care less about technical things like bandwidth. However, as a business owner, you cannot afford not to. Bandwidth affects how fast your blog loads. If you have a standard blog with only a small amount of pictures and video, the average, and often free, bandwidth offered by web servers is enough. However, when you have a blog with many pictures, videos, plugins and widgets in addition to a payment portal, the starter bandwidth might not be enough. If your blog takes a long time to load, it will drive away traffic. According to market research, online businesses lose a significant percentage of customers if the website takes more than 2 seconds to load. So you may need to check your website development and web design approach. Also, you should upgrade to a higher bandwidth package that can support the increasing number of features and traffic demands of your blog when the time comes.
When you run a revenue generating blog, you should start thinking like a business owner and not limit your ideas to being just a content creator. Consider the above tips carefully, and try to be as efficient as possible.