What’s Your Blog Business Model?

Is your blog built around a real business? In other words, stripped of writing posts, what are you offering that generates income?

Businessdictionary.com defines a business as:

Economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money, on the basis of their perceived worth.  Every business requires some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis.

A business has customers.   To make money blogging something has to be sold. The sooner you identify your primary business offering and model, the easier it will be to turn a profit with your blog.

By knowing this, you can make better decisions on how you spend your time and resources when it comes to blogging.

From what I’ve gathered, the three primary business models for blogging for money are:

Advertising Model

The advertising model involves people/companies paying you to display and market their ads to your blog audience.  Google Adsense, affiliate marketing and banner ads fall into this category.

If this is your business model, you’re the middleman.

You have nothing to sell directly. Initially, the bulk of your time is best spent driving traffic and increasing search engine rank for your blog to get the advertisements in front of people.

Information Marketing Model

Membership sites and e-books (that you own) are two of the most popular options from this model.

In the beginning, it’s best to spend time on developing products of value that people are willing to buy.

Prepare before you promote. What good is it to spend all your time driving traffic to a product that’s not finished?

It’s important to keep in mind that the product is the ultimate money-maker- not the traffic alone.

Services/Consulting Model

While not as passive as the other methods, it’s usually easier to earn cash fast through providing services.  

Here your blog’s primary goal is to market YOU!  So you want to avoid marketing and monetization efforts that will cause distractions.

For example, Google Adsense on your website is a distraction.  If you’re selling website design for hundreds of dollars, the last thing you want is to lose a potential customer for a few pennies from Adsense.

Advertising, information marketing, and providing services are all proven business models.  A tour through your favorite blogs is likely to show all models in place at the same time. To increase your blog profits,  focus on mastering one model first before adding others to the mix.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…