There are many routes to the goal of being a problogger. To me a problogger is someone that can pay his way in the world from his efforts in blogging. Under this definition, I am a problogger. I work for Bloggy Network doing various things including blogging, though that has become less and less part of my daily job.

What I wanted to point out with this article though are some failures on the part of people that want to be probloggers.

Don’t Undervalue Your Time

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is that they don’t put enough value in their time. Writing articles takes time, especially if you want to create quality content. Especially, when you are going to be working for anyone else, you will want to figure out what your per hour wage is going to be. If you are doing twenty-one posts a month for twenty-one dollars, and each post takes you twenty minutes. You will be making three dollars an hour.

You can’t think of your per hour rates when you are working on building up your own blog or blogs, but you still have to find value in your time. You can’t just give all of yourself to your writing without getting something back in return.

Currently, with this site, my return on investment is traffic. If I hit certain goals in my traffic, I feel as though writing here is time well spent.

Realistic Goals

So many bloggers think that if they set up a blog that it will only take them a few months before they are earning a full time wage off their blog, and while this has happened to some people, it is the exception, not the rule. Most bloggers that get to the full time income level are able to leverage something else. Maybe they had a fair bit of celebrity, money, or a product, but there is something that set them apart from the rest of the blogosphere, but for every success, there are thousands of failures.

I have witnessed many blogs that I thought were amazing in concept, dry up and disappear only half a year later, as the writer wasn’t getting the kind of income he expected for his efforts.

You have to set realistic goals, and the only way you can do that is to research the business behind blogging, which brings me to my next point.

Lack of Research

So many bloggers throw up a site, not checking to see if there is any major competition in their niche, or how much competition they will have to fight against. Most don’t even research the blogging tools they will use. They settle on Blogger, WordPress, or Typepad. They have no idea what it takes to really make a business from blogging.

I have seen bloggers amazed at a blog that gets twenty unique visitors a day because they don’t understand how much traffic a blog needs to be successful.

Take your time, check out all the great resources online about making money from blogging. Also, making sure to listen and learn before you leap into such a huge community, will help you get off on the right foot.

Some sites I have been part of took two months to organize, research and prepare before launching the blog, and you would be amazed to see how fast and high its traffic continued to double.

Conclusion

With a little common sense, preparation, research and realistic goals, I do believe that anyone can get to the point where their blogging is making them enough income that they can live off their efforts. When it comes to blogging, it is better to do it right the first time, or else you will be lost in the noise that is your competition.

Originally posted on September 10, 2007 @ 7:08 pm