Many of the bloggers I get to talk with ask me if they want to make money should they leave their personal blog where they blog for fun and start another one with the idea of monetizing the niche? I don’t have the supreme truth on that matter but I will tell you what I think.

Passion in blogs gets you money

If you are starting a blog so that you have your own space for your thoughts then it’s obvious you’re not thinking of cash from the start. From my point of view this seems to be the best way to make money online. Take as an example, someone that has a passion for every machine that can fly. He starts his blog thinking that he will post his thoughts and someone will comment them, which means he needs to have a dialog with someone that has the same hobby. If he is a good writer and manages to create a community of devoted readers, will address to advertising, sooner or later. I have a passion for gadgets and I own a blog with technology news products. I write because I like writing about it. It is monetized (minimum) but I don’t expect it to earn that much money right now. I am much more pleased to see a 20% increase in RSS subscribers rather than earning a few bucks more that day.

How about blogging only for money?

Many of us/you should understand that blogging for money is not some kind of a felony. If someone won’t like your blog they will leave. No one should accuse a blogger doing it only for money, of anything. Not even someone that starts a new blog with the idea of making money from it, in the near future (or not). It’s the blogger’s choice and if you don’t like that stop reading it. So those of you that start a new blog just to cash in, think that you may get penalized by your readers if they find out you’re only interested in what your blog earn, and not what your readers do.

Making money online is governed by the same rules that making money offline is. For example the business plan that you create before you start where you need to include and forecast all the expenses and revenue, research the niche you are going to work in and of course you need to set objectives and goals.

Why should you set goals?

Recently I had a talk with a friend and he told me 6 years ago his goal was to get into a great position within a big company. He did it and he is now production director. Great I can say, but he’s in this position for 2 and a half years now and he has no future goals for now. He needs to get motivated again, and this is what setting goals get you  motivated.

What goals should I have?

I advise to have a goal both for making money online and for you personal life be it on a 2 days, two weeks or two years time frame. Set goals for your weight, set goals for getting into a position, set goals for everything that you desire but make sure you set up an attainable goal otherwise failing, will make you lose concentration and self confidence. In regard with the making money online business I can tell you a few goals that you may want to set: monthly pageviews, rss subscribers, branding your website/name, exposure or revenue. There are others of course, but I think these are the most important.

Here is a very cool idea on how to really blog for your audience. Considering that you have launched your blog/website and have optimized it, then you should be getting some search engine traffic. You are happy I can bet, but what if you could write articles targeted better and better to what they are looking for?

I advise you to use some sort of tracking methods like Google Analytics, Awstats or any other plugins that you like and see what are the keywords your visitors search for when they land on your site. I had a very good example on one of my blogs about fashion and house gadgets, where we’ve seen there might be interest in do-it-yourself products, so we started adding them. Without doing anything the next day someone Stumbled us, and the site went up.

So what we did? Identified what people wanted and wrote good articles about it. Works!

We all know that men like what women usually say “size doesn’t matter” but we also know that we never believe it and feel frustrated (well, some of us). Having this funny quote in mind, it makes me think : does size matter when you are blogging? Yes.

If you ever need to write a researched article where you need to get references and explain people what you are talking over there, of course you are forced for a big essay. However if it’s too big, your audience may not be that patient to read it all. Therefore bigger articles should be really well structured and concise.

What about those small articles with only 1-2-3 lines? I wouldn’t advise, unless you need to ring the bell with something new and you are waiting content through comments. For example a small article with a link to an article on which you expect your audience to bring in their thoughts might be good from time to time.

I need to apologize for not being able to update the blog for the last three days but I had two days away: one at the seaside and the other one for a barbecue. When I got home I was struck. How should my next blog post be: funny, neutral or controversial?

Being funny

Girls always like funny guys (and I guess boys like funny girls, too) so if you plan to write an article where people just enjoy a good joke and relax on it, go ahead. There’s nothing wrong to be funny from time to time.

Getting controversial

It’s the easiest way to get you traffic but think if you just want a few spikes or people that are really interested to read your content on a regular basis. However if you have arguments for your idea don’t hesitate to be you. It’s what makes it really personal.

Being neutral means being sleepy?

I don’t think you should always takes sides just so that you choose something. It’s like voting. If you don’t like Britney Spears or Janet Jackson, say it. Don’t take sides just because it’s trendy and everyone does.

If you are a blogger I am sure sometimes is hard for you to write your stories. If you are not blogging about politics sports or other niches that can get you daily content, sometimes you need something fresh. I told you that the best way to market a new blog is by it’s content. Indeed but where to get the fresh content your readers enjoy everyday?

Use an agenda

Spare time is one of the best sources for your blog’s articles. Yesterday I was going 100km away from town with my cousin. I was so relaxed just looking at the trees, at the green wheat in the right and things like this. Then it hit me. Why not think of what I should write here on socialpacks.com today, and I got it. I will write about getting ideas during spare time. However if yo have a good imagination and can get ideas easily make sure you write them down, because even a very resourceful person forgets them. It happened to me many times to forget a great idea that I wanted to write about.

If you have everything on paper it’s very easy to read the title and start writing about it if it’s in your niche already. Why start a new quest of a few hours to get a title. You already have it. It’s good to increase your computer productivity.

It happened to me at least two times. I didn’t knew if I spent enough time to develop the idea or if the idea was the right one. So I started asking people around me, what they thought. I got so many answers that I was even more in the clouds. Everybody had their sayings, everyone thought different. What a mistake. If I believed in it, I should have made it without asking people around, because once someone else did it, and the other time I was discouraged and didn’t went through.

Shoemoney wrote an excelent article on do it or lose it and his conclusion is that:

I have ALWAYS learned more from my failures then from my successes. In fact many times I think that early success is the worst thing that can ever happen to you because you settle for it and you take it for granted.

I told you guys about having John Chow downgraded from the 1st position on “make money online” on US IPs. It looks like he’s back on top. It was just a rearrangement of their information I guess.

Either Google is testing their new algorithms or they just took a 4 days break

Tonight I’ve watched a football (soccer) match and I remembered the Uefa 2005 semi-final between Steaua Bucharest and Middlesbroug. First Steaua was in Heaven scoring 2 goals and then the English managed to score exactly as many as they needed: 4. You may wonder what is this guy all talking here, but I assure you it’s related.

I am thinking now at my own experiences. I am going to tell you one that you should learn from. Two years ago I was running a PPC (pay-per-click) search engine and I had publishers. I managed to grow the business at such a level that I was already seeing myself in a few years blogging from Bahamas and the checks to fly there, that I neglected it. I thought if it’s going that good right now, I can take breaks. I did. The business started to go down and again I thought, so what? 10% down is not a big deal, but in the next 8 weeks the website was making only 30% of the top revenues I was having. I never managed to get it back to where I wished, so I had to let it go in the end.

What does that relate to football? Steaua Bucharest was leading 2 goals and had another 1 ahead of Middlesbrough from the previous match, so who would have ever thought that in 50 minutes one team will score exactly four goals to go into the finals? Not the Romanian players, I bet. So they relaxed, already seeing themselves in the final, but the match wasn’t over. It ended like I said. The English scored what they needed and went further.

If you ever think like you have managed to grow your online business so far that it’s enough, PLEASE keep in mind that rough times can come and that you can lose it all in just a few minutes. If you were a climber in the top of Himalaya would you relax and expect someone to take you back home? Of course not, you need to focus and concentrate on the biggest challenge, staying alive which in business means to keep growing it.