How to run a successful and profitable blog in under one hour a week
Despite what many people would have you believe it is absolutely possible to run a successful, and in many cases highly profitable, blog in less than sixty minutes each week. There’s no magic and no tricks. The system depends on simple tried and tested absolutes that underpin the blogosphere.
And, because I already have proof that all of this is possible I’m going to use an example blog to demonstrate how and why this method works.
To begin, pick a niche. Any niche will do as long as it interests you.
Next, you will need a new domain name for your blog. This method works best on new blogs since it is much easier to allocate one hour of time every week to a new project and it is always best when building a niche blog to keep everything highly focussed. You could, if you really wanted to, employ this technique on an existing blog, perhaps under a dedicated category, but the system works far better and is far easier to manage when it has its own domain.
You domain name should be in the following format, somethingswhoblog.com or somethingbloggers.com, or similar. For example, if your niche is musicians then musicianswhoblog.com would be ideal, if it wasn’t already being used by a certain blogging musician who you make have heard of. If your niche is fountain pens then perhaps fountainpenbloggers.com would work well. Star Trek, startrekbloggers.com, Comic book authors, comicbookauthorswhoblog. And so on.
Now choose a Wordpress theme that will allow you to make your content very prominent. A bold one column theme like Voluptua is ideal.
We are now going to get the two things that are most important to any blogger. Content and backlinks.
Search, using Google Blog Search or Technorati, whichever you prefer, and make a list, a simple hand written list, of bloggers who write about your niche. Visit these blogs and take screenshots of their current designs. Now, for your first blog post, write a short review of one of the blogs on your list and include the screenshot that you took of the design. Be sure to include a few links to individual blog posts to create trackback and pingback links. Add tags to your blog post that include the name of the blogger you are writing about along with any other tags that you feel will help identify the review. Once your first post is written and published send an email to the person you have written about telling them that you have featured their blog on your new blog.
Write one blog post, in the form of a blog review, each week on the same day, following up your post with email notification to the blogger whose blog you have reviewed. Even if you find it difficult to write a detailed review you can still make this method work by copying and pasting biography information from the blog that you are reviewing.
The blogger who you are linking to gets a link from you, and you get links back from them, both in the form of trackback and pingback links and, probably, if you ask nicely enough, a mention on their blog.
Rinse and repeat.
Add a simple and unobtrusive advertisement for an affiliate of your choice along with links to any projects that you wish to promote and you will have a growing source of blogging traffic and income.
You will be surprised how quickly your traffic grows. Musicians Who Blog has only been online for two weeks and only has two blog posts. In that time it has generated $230 in income and yesterday attracted 196 unique visitors. Both of these figures will grow steadily and organically over time.
There are several reasons why this system, when used correctly, cannot fail. Bloggers like being mentioned on other blogs and will happily link back to you. Your blog then becomes more and more popular over time as the links grow. But, even if they don’t link back it doesn’t matter since the usefulness and search engine presence of your blog will still grow. Furthermore, as your popularity increases you will find that bloggers in your niche email you asking to be featured. As a successful showcase blogger you become a must visit destination for anyone interested in your niche.
Whether you want to simply make some money with a low maintenance blog or if you want your own independent source of traffic to help fuel your other blogs and projects, running a showcase blog is simple, effective and virtually guaranteed to work.
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Ashley Morgan is a UK jazz trumpet player and owner of independent record label 447 Records.
Ashley Morgan is the trumpet player with Enormous.
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snap. that’s neat.
This is friggin’ genius. Simplicity itself. When I read this post I immediately thought of 4 different areas I could do this in and struggled for about a second deciding which I would do, when it hit me: Do them all, one each day. And domain .coms that followed your formula were available for all 5 (thought of another as I was getting the domains). Since all 5 are actually peripherally related to what I do for a living, doing them all doesn’t come off as fake, and isn’t too much of a stretch. And they’ll certainly help build my credibility as an expert in my work.
And these blogs–by their very nature–set me up as someone who gives to the community because the whole point is to put the spotlight on others in the community.
There is absolutely no downside to this that I can see.
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing this terrific idea!
Brilliant idea.
Just thinking about a niche, I have a couple in mind.
This could be a real goer, I think.
I’m gonna try what you said. It is really a good way to get back links by blog reviews. Haven’t tried that yet. Thanks for the info!
I’ve got my first one setup – we’ll see how it goes!
http://www.photojournalistswhoblog.com/
Question though – how crucial is launching a post on the same day? Is that for your subscribers benefit?
Well, how timely. I’m in the middle of setting up a showcase blog for my niche, writing. I’ll report back when it’s up and running.
I can imagine that some people will really like this method, although I believe that building one strong blog and dedicating a lot more time is a better method for me. I prefer building larger sites and making proper businesses out of them.
But still, this method seems pretty solid and I may even start a new blog on the side to try it out.
Great post!
Oh, and you reported that you made $230 in two weeks from Musicians Who Blog. Is that revenue only from promoting the AN Hosting affiliate program? Or is there anything else you did to generate that revenue?
Isn’t this something somewhere between plagiarism and prostitution or – brought to the point – a perversion of the idea behind blogging?
End of the third day live and I have 65 Visits, 57 Absolute Unique Visitors, 117 Pageviews for my site: http://www.photojournalistswhoblog.com/ A big majority of those are coming from trackbacks from the first blog I wrote about. I only have one post (but have a year’s worth of content bookmarked and ready to write about). No income yet.
And while at first I felt a little like I was “somewhere between plagiarism and prostitution” I think that my blog will actually be of great service to photojournalists out there. I’ve already found some great blogs (and popular) to blog about. It should be a great resource once I have more than 1 post!
I have a list of blogs that I can start. I feel that as long as useful reviews and information is provided, then the blogs can become a valuable resource for those in the niche.
If this works it will be one of the best things that can happen to a startup site like mine. Cheers.
Two month report on my blog (that I started b/c of this post)
http://www.photojournalistswhoblog.com/
* 379 Absolute Unique Visitors
* 918 Pageviews
I’ve spent about 3 hours setting the whole thing up and getting it how I liked. I’ve spent about 5 hours tweaking it since then. And I’ve spent about 30-45 min./week writing one post per week. Oh, and I’ve commented on a few blogs (potential posts) that has also generated some pretty good traffic.
No $$ yet though :( I am using the AN Hosting affiliate as my sole source of income on this blog. But I am also promoting another blog I have (http://www.mamelodistories.org/), that is non-profit and it’s gotten some pretty good traffic from PJWB.
I think that blogging traffic is like money – once you have a good bit, it it’s a lot easier to make even more. And of course, more traffic means more money, and more money means even more money. Not that we’re all in it for the $$ ;) !