1 Write about getting rich blogging. There are dozens of successful blogs about blogging. Sites such as ProBlogger and Make Money Online are full of get-rich-quick schemes and elaborate tips for ad placement and site tweaks.2 Get a book deal. Better still, a film deal. Numerous writers have gone from idea to blog to book deal without attracting any readers at all. Recently video blogger Ze Frank secured a Hollywood agent, abandoned his daily web TV show and moved to LA to pursue a film deal.
3 Get a job. If you’re looking for a great job, the first page of Google search results for your name are at least as important as your CV. Your blog won’t earn you any money directly, but it might get you a nice job. Mine certainly did.
4 Find a real niche. There was a time, not that long ago, when a chap could say “I like my Tivo. I’ll start a Tivo blog, and get all the Tivo advertising.” That chap (Matt Haughey) has already got rich, so you can’t. Blog niches are getting smaller every day. Want to start a blog about squid? Don’t bother, there are three already.
5 Get sued. A graph of Perez Hilton’s traffic would show a spike in November 2006. That’s when he was sued by a paparazzi agency for stealing its photos and scrawling “Mess” across them. The agency asked for $7.5 million. He got lots of new readers.
6 Get sacked. In 2002, Heather B. Armstrong was sacked for blogging about the debauched antics of the LA design company where she worked. In 2007, her site, Dooce, is still the only blog in the top 100 aimed specifically at women.
7 Keep your costs down. Even though he’s probably the most famous blogger in the world, with an alleged six-figure income, Perez Hilton’s office is a corner table at the Coffee Bean café on Sunset Boulevard. He’s there every day, from opening time to closing time, buying the occasional latte and tapping away at his laptop.
8 Break a big story. Old-fashioned scoops work for all blogs, whether it’s the Drudge Report telling the world about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky or giant squid caught on camera for Squidblog. Breaking stories bring links from other blogs, and with them traffic. A big story can see a small blog leap from 2,000 to 100,000 readers in a day.
9 Get bought out. In October 2005, Jason Calcanis sold his roster of blogs to AOL for about $25 million. His arch rival Nick Denton, a former FT journalist, has a hugely successful stable of blogs that is literally priceless, because Denton says it’s not for sale.
10 Write lots of lists. It’s a common cliché that people don’t like to read many words online. It’s also not true. Lots of people read tens of thousands of words a day online, but it’s all broken up into tiny chunks – e-mails, headlines, odd sentences from news stories. Lists work in the same way.
Source: Tom Whitwell, from The Times
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