Checking Out the Playing Field

1.9K followers

Updated 2 years ago

My ruminations on the best approach to monetizing my blog continues. In these past few months I've gone back to basics. So far:

I've worked on sussing out my ideal audience. I've got my target peeps.
I've figured out what "niche" the posts I've done so far seem to fit in best. (The way I figured that out was by looking at the posts I've already done in my building phase and seeing what "container" would work best for them. I'm calling that my "niche"and it isn't about a product but rather about a lifestyle that makes sense to me.)
I think I have set up a better footing for making a sustainable system for writing posts by myself that enables me to continue to deliver the high-quality content I most enjoy doing. (I had already decided earlier that I don't want to outsource the writing. That's the part I like.)
I have one cool idea for encouraging more audience engagement that may be one differentiating factor for this thing I am doing (aside from it being full of philosophy and poetry and stories, of course).

It's really slow, this way of doing things.

But, the Real is that it is the way I have learned and explored all things new-to-me. More than reading, more than listening to other people's voices, watching other people's videos, and talking story with highly opinionated folks, I learn by doing something my own self and by fooling around, screwing up, and playing with stuff, trying to make something Real.

And since, for me, the writing is the most important bit in this gig, I've spent some time working on learning how to make each of my posts in my blog, LIFE-BUILT POEMS: Living Out Loud, sing and making sure that each little song can be found by all the little web-bots and all that.

(Singing beautifully is great, but when you're performing in public you also have to be able to sing loud enough so that the people in the cheap seats in the balcony can hear ya.)

As any Creative will tell you, the marketing and distribution part of making art is a whole other movie and requires skillsets that focus on the details outside and around the expressive side of artwork. The money you get is your permission to keep on keeping on.

Marketing and sales is a different kind of Making and it's also quite fascinating. (I have always been good at selling other people's stuff. It's a lot harder, I am finding, to settle down and sell my own.)

Mostly it's 'cause I know how the compromises you might have to make in order to get some sales and distribution plan to work in a scalable way could put a big crimp in the self-expression part.

It causes a lot of internal warfare, which also slows things down. (Sigh!)

So, now I've been working on sussing out the playing field. These are the ways you make money with your blog (according to the people who study such things):

advertising (selling your space and your peeps' eyes to other people)
affiliate marketing (getting paid for promoting other people's products, i.e., being a salesperson)
product creation (making your own product and selling that)
courses (putting together courses and going MOOC)
memberships (get people to buy in to getting access to your words and building a community of your peeps and/or getting folks to support you and donate money so you can keep on doing what you do)
sponsored posts (getting paid for allowing other people to present their stuff in your space to your peeps)
coaching (teaching other people one-on-one)
consulting (teaching other businesses stuff)
events (putting together events that draw in lots of people who pay to attend)

All this stuff works. Oftentimes, they work very well. They all take assorted skillsets and require beaucoup-plenty time and effort to implement. (Or you can hire people and they won't come cheap.)

So, I've been looking at existing "lifestyle" and "culture" and "human behavior" blogs and trying to figure out how the successful ones have made their bucks -- what combinations of these core strategies they use as well as any hybrid things their creators have cooked up.

It has been ve-e-e-ry interesting.

In my stumbling around, I came across FeedSpot, a media contact database that gives you access to (it says here) "250K active Bloggers, Podcasters, Youtubers, and Instagram Influencers in 1500 niche categories."

Wo!

This link will take you to a post on their blog titled, "Top 100 Lifestyle Blogs and Websites": https://blog.feedspot.com/lifestyle_blogs/

The interesting thing, though, is what you see when you click on the "Blogs Directory" button at the top left of the menu. Wo! You get an overview of a lot of the different kinds of categories and niches people are currently writing about; you get to see who is doing what.

I figured I'd come back and share this with you guys. I can see where it could spark ideas about which of this multitude of categories you might want to get into if you don't already know.

At the end of the day or night or whatever, your blog is one of two things:

It is a vehicle. If you want to scale up and make it a massive money-moving truck that you can load up with all the green, there are a scadzillion people who've already done just that.
It is territory that you've staked out and claimed on the world wide web. Again, there are ooka-piles of people who have done that one too. Some of them didn't make much money, but they sure got influential. [Ummm...maybe that's why they are called "influencers."]

The FeedSpot guys have collected all kinds of data about these guys.

I can also see where this thing could turn into a major distraction as well, so I am being really careful about limiting my time goofing around in there.

Mostly, though, I am still just walking along my road. Only way I'm going to get anywhere, I say.

Hope you guys are also having fun too.

-- Netta