A good working definition of a blog is simply a journal or newsletter that is frequently updated and intended for timely reading. It often provides opportunities for unfiltered and immediate feedback, sports an informal or even partisan attitude, and is written in a more personal style than traditional press outlets.
Blogs come in all shapes and subjects, from the maunderings of troubled teen souls to displays of classical photography to breaking news and commentary. They can be online journals, locked with a password shared by a few trusted friends, or they can be page after page of source code, sharing useful and free computer programs with the world. A blog may be an online journal tangential to a company’s main business, where users of a company’s products give feedback and ask for help. Blogs can be hosted by single individuals, shared by teams, or produced by entire companies. They may be hosted on a dedicated blog server using fancy templates or lovingly hand-crafted in HTML on a page that resembles a bulletin board.
But a blog is not simply a syndicated column or a newspaper that's been thrown online. Many news outlets feature their content online and even allow readers to respond to stories. However, the newspaper’s business doesn't change just because it has a new medium. Editors and writers still do the same jobs they did before the advent of online distribution; the newspaper doesn't view itself as any different from what it always was.
And perhaps therein lies the difference: attitude. The newspaper sees itself as presenting all the news that’s fit to print, written by objective professionals, while the blogger sees her/himself as presenting a piece of her/his own world and her/his own expertise from her own perspective. As blogs become more popular (if that's possible), more columnists are becoming bloggers and more bloggers are becoming professional in what they write. Perhaps in a few years, the distinction between the Old Media and the New will be irrelevant in the mind of writers; for many readers today, it already is.
The Blog As A Business
Most blogs are small potatoes. The vast majority are online journals where teenagers talk about their lives to a readership made up of their closest friends. A growing minority, however, are businesses in and of themselves. They balance costs and income; they purposely seek out content providers, advertisers, and paying customers. They make a profit. They are, in fact, Blog Empires, ruling over a reader-defined section of the blogosphere as the go-to site for millions who come to get the news, buy promotional merchandise, and donate money to keep their favorite bloggers fed and happy.
That’s where you come in. You can draw millions of readers, because what you have to say is important. You can accumulate advertisers, because they'll pay to reach your readers. In short, you can build your own blog empire, and it’s easier than you think.
It'll take a lot of work (what worthwhile thing doesn’t?) but you may find that being a blogger, and building a blog empire of your own is the most fulfilling work you’ve ever done.
The Components Of Your Blog Empire Business
A blog empire, like any other business, is made up of three major components: a supplier, buyers, and the products for sale. But a blog in many cases differs from the average business because you're bringing together two sets of customers and delivering two sets of products. And you’re not even selling the main item you produce.
Sound confusing? It’s really not. Let’s take a look at the component parts and illustrate just how simple it is.
The first component is a supplier. That’s you.
It's your words, your opinion, your research, and your art which can bring thousands or even millions of readers to your blog. You'll be the attraction, the broker, and the king/queen of your blog empire. If it weren’t for you, the blog wouldn’t exist. Because of who you are, what you know, and what you do, it can thrive.
The second component is a buyer, a customer.
While the vast majority of your customers will be your readers, other customers will include companies that pay you to feature their links and advertisements on your blog. “Traffic” (those millions of readers out there who care about what you say) is the lifeline of your site: you’ve got to find them and bring them in. Once they're there, your advertising customers will pay for access to your reading customers, and your reading customers will pay for your information and merchandise.
The final component is a product.
Like all businesses, yours can’t exist without a product to sell. But what do you sell when you’re giving your opinion away for free on a blog?
The first product you sell is yourself: your opinions and your expertise. Without selling yourself to your readers, you'll have no customers. They may not always pay you directly (though we’ll see that in many cases they will) but if they don’t buy what you’re saying, they won't buy anything else.
The second product you sell is your space. You lease it to advertisers who'll pay you to put information in front of your millions and millions of readers. Whether text links or flashing popup banner ads, your advertisers will pay you for a small part of your readers’ attention.
The final product you sell is your merchandise. With a properly-branded name and a reputation for excellence, your readers will purchase coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers… anything you can imagine.
In your blog empire, your reader is a customer and a product, and the more customers you have, the more products you can sell and the more profit you can pocket. You can turn your labor of love into a digital cash cow by building a blog empire business that brings customers and buyers together. The rest of this post will show you how to do just that.
