Right now I am working on developing a blog in the Fashion niche called The “IT” Fashion. This isn’t something I am particularly familiar with, but one of my writers was interested in fashion, and so I want to help her focus on that passion and turn it into a blog. I am paying her a fair bit of money, and I don’t yet understand how I will promote it, monetize it or really make it great.

The issue is that I’ve never taken on too many blogs that were totally outside the gadget, geek mindset that I have. I am not fashionable, nor have I ever tried to be. I don’t even know colours, beyond the ones you learn as a child in school, but here I am trying to run a blog focusing on fashion.

For the most part, many of the things I have done before I will be repeating, except that I will be looking for things related to the topic at hand. Something like Digg probably wouldn’t work for promoting such stories, but maybe Sk*rt would be.

I won’t be signing up for geeky advertisements, instead looking at places where celebrity and fashion are more important as those are the new groups of people I am going to be trying to appeal to, and draw into the site.

Thankfully, I am not working on the content, as I know it would be dreadful, so I owe a lot to the wonderful writer I have working on the site. Thanks Michelle!

If you have any tips on promoting blogs outside your normal comfort zome, please let me know as transitioning from something I live each day, to building something that is like voodoo to me might just be one of the more difficult things I have done recently. Check out The IT Fashion if you want to watch my progress and are interested in the fashion world.

Originally posted on April 9, 2008 @ 7:59 am

One of the things I am dealing with currently is building some new blogs, and while I sometimes wonder if there aren’t already too many blogs on the Internet, I still feel like I could make more of a business from blogging than I already do.

The biggest concern currently is money. It costs money to register a domain, pay for hosting, designing a WordPress theme, and developing a brand and logo. It also costs money to get a great writer to spend their time in producing content for the site.

The other thing it costs is time. I have been spending so much time developing the site, working on WordPress, integrating plugins, finding the right themes to use as a basis until I can hire someone to do a better job that by the end of the day, I feel completely exhausted.

I have given up on blogs in the past, either because my financial situation has changed, I have run out of time, or I haven’t seen the results I was expecting, and while I don’t think there should be a hard line that helps people decide if their blogging efforts should continue, I do think that there are a few indicators that it might be time to give up on a blog that you are trying to build into a business.

If by the third month, you aren’t getting more than five hundred unique visitors a month, it is probably time to move on.

If by six months, you haven’t earned back ten percent of what you have put into the site, it might be time to call it quits before you invest too much more into the site.

This means that if you haven’t found a way to monetize it that it earns ten percent on the money you are putting into it, you are probably not going to be able to get the blog to the point where it pays for itself.

If you are paying $500 a month on writers and other blog related expenses, and the blog isn’t earning $50 each month by its sixth month. Then this should be a huge concern for you.

If by the sixth month the blog is providing you with more stress than reward, then take a break from it, and shut it down. It isn’t worth pouring your heart into a project that isn’t rewarding you how you hoped. The reward could be RSS subscribers, advertisers, traffic growth or just a good feeling that you get when someone “gets” your idea.

My Current Situation

Currently, I am running three blogs, not including this one, that are using up upwards of $800 a month of my financial resources. These blogs have until October to get to the point where they are paying for upwards of thirty percent of my monthly expenditures or I will have to shut them down or sell them off.

This is the goal I have set for myself partially because of the upcoming addition of a new family member in November, and also because at that point, all of the blogs will be past their six month mark.

I truly believe that a blogs potential or lack there of can be seen long before the six month mark, but giving it half a year to mature will really tell me if it is something worth pursuing.

Originally posted on April 10, 2008 @ 8:43 am

I have started working on building up two new blogs. I have tried to build a network of blogs before, but failed miserably. Read my post on my failed blog network to find out why. This time, I am going to take it really slowly and use everything I have learned over the last three years in hopes of making them a success.

Money

One issue I have always had is that I pay my writers too much. While it might not be as much as I make currently, it is more per post than I made when I started, and when you work it out, they are making well over minimum wage for their time and effort currently.

Sure, it is nice to be able to pay writers, but the less I pay them now, the more likely I will be able to run these blogs long term, as they won’t cut too far into the money I need to make to pay my own bills. I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination, so I have to be careful how much I pay a writer, but balance that with the quality I will expect from the writer.

That means, I can’t expect pieces of art for pennies, but at the same time, I won’t be able to afford many pieces of art if the site is making nothing, and I am spending a lot.

Finding the balance is very difficult, but very important.

Time

I don’t have much time in my days, as I spend most of my time working on Splashpress Media blogs. A fair bit of my day involves writing back and forth to people, and really helping connect them with the Splashpress brand. This doesn’t always leave much time for creative writing, promotion and other things that are needed in today’s market to make new blogs successful.

This is another reason I am taking things slow. Last time I created my own network of blogs, I wrote on all of them, I designed them all, I pretty much did everything, though with a little help from a friend of mine, Nick.

I tried to do too much too fast, and without any free time available, and that is another reason why I have failed in the past. Currently, I am only working on developing two new blogs that I won’t be writing on often. One of them is Solar Hype and the other is Tablet Watch. Two subjects that I am passionate about, and have found writers for.

I am going to build them up the best that I can, and then start fleshing out with a few more blogs. I want to stay in the black when it comes to the network’s profit, and I will be investing the money that eXtra for Every Publisher makes into these sites to start them off.

Originally posted on March 18, 2008 @ 5:17 pm