Is Blogging A Business?

Is Blogging A Business?

Yesterday, I wrote about starting a marketing funnel/sales funnel.

Today, I jumped on my Twitter and had a bit of a Twitter chat with Rob from 30 Days To X.

Seeing as that conversation turned out pretty interesting, I thought I’d merge the two to talk about the topic of the day: Is Blogging A Business?

Is Blogging A Business?

The shortest answer I could give you is “no.”

A slightly longer answer is “not really.”

Recall back to yesterday’s post, and think about the fact that every business is a set of funnels. Whatever your product or service, your business follows the formula below:

Uninterested member of public > Potential Reader/Viewer Of Your Company>Aware Of Your Company> Interested In Product > Converted Buyer Of Product> (Hopefully Transferred To Lifetime Buyer.

My argument for answering “no” to “Is blogging a business?” is that it doesn’t do the above in most cases.

A blog on its own could conceivably achieve all those aims, I suppose. As Phil Hawksworth states on Twitter:

A blog can technically get readers from search engines, keep them by being interesting and sell to them via affiliate links. The formula would look like this:

Get readers (SEO) > Keep Readers (Engaging Content) > Convert Readers To Buyers (By reviews, sales letters and force of will?)>Sell  to them (With sales letters, reviews, affiliate links)>Convert them to lifetime readers (By consistently providing good content.)

Following that, I’ll have to concede that blogging could be a business.

*With a caveat: With just a blog – especially a written blog with no other channels attached – you are going to have a really hard time converting people up that funnel (especially the underlined part.) Generally, getting readers with a blog is tough enough. Getting readers who are used to free content to pay is another world of difficulty entirely. Then converting them to lifelong customers is really difficult because you’ve got no upsell, other than more content… which they’re getting for free.

But mostly, blogs aren’t businesses because they don’t have that process. It’s just free content, free content, free content. Plus the additional affiliate sale, but you have to have a massive blog to make big money via affiliate sales.

So, it can be done.

Mostly it isn’t done.

There’s another question though:

“Should you start a blog as a business?”

Is Blogging A GOOD Business?

This is a more interesting question, because it’s shades of grey instead of a yes/no answer.

My answer is “not really.”

If your business plan is to start a blog and make money from affiliate sales, then good luck. I’m not going to say it’s impossible, because we’ve already proved above that it is possible.

But…

Load up your favourite blog. Load up the blogs that you read (i.e. you’re “in the funnel”) and see what they have in common.

Before you do anything else, I want you to see how many of those blogs you’ve actually given money to. Honestly. If you’ve used an affiliate link, note it down. If you’ve bought a product, note it down. If you’ve used a service of theirs, note it down.

ONLY if you came to their blog first. If you bought their service and then realised that they have a blog too, that doesn’t count.

Alright, so you’ve got a list of your favourite blogs.

You’ve crossed out all the ones that have never made any money out of you in any way.

How big was that jump?

Probably pretty big.

You might read fifty blogs on a monthly basis. (If it’s more, where does your time come from?)

Only a fraction of those probably sell products or services.

Even less of them will have made any money from you in affiliate terms.

I read some blogs religiously… it doesn’t mean I’m interested in the products they sell. I’m not going to buy some weird $50 info product because a guy who writes funny blog posts plugs it. Business doesn’t work like that. Think about (if you’re a guy or girl) how many models you know the names of.  How many of their perfume or lingerie collections have you bought? (I don’t really want to know this.)

Alright. Step Two.

Get rid of everyone who sells a product. If they make money from you due to selling a product, they’re in the product business. If your end sale is a product, then the blog is just a step on the funnel.

After that, you’ll have gone from a list of blogs you read; to blogs you’ve given money to in some way, to blogs that have made money from you just by being a blog. The list is probably going to be really small now. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)

If you want to take it a step further, then go to the various affiliate programs you’ve bought an affiliates product through. Work out how much they’ve actually made from you and your value to them as a lifetime customer.

That’s probably going to be really low.

For instance, I read maybe ten blogs regularly. I’ve bought products from a couple of them, and maybe there’re two I’ve ever used an affiliate link from.  Bear in mind the following: I try to buy from affiliate links if I like the blogger to help them out. I’ll even add stuff to my order and get it in one go if it’s from Amazon. Most readers won’t do this.

Say I’ve bought a few boxes of shopping and Christmas presents. Say that figure totals $100 a year. (It doesn’t.) An Amazon affiliate gets 8% for the higher affiliate threshold. Let’s assume a blogger actually hits that threshold (most don’t.)

My lifetime value to a blog I read regularly is $8 a year.

If you had a thousand regular readers who operate in the same way I do, you’d make $8000 a year.

That’s not all that great, to put it lightly.

Why’s That Different From Any Other Business?

The blog is an inefficient model for making money at every point in the funnel.

To get 1000 readers, you can buy readers and have them in a day.

To get them to subscribe, offer them something free that takes an hour to write (versus months of blogging to pick up steam.)

To get more than $8 per customer, you can offer them a product that they actually need.

To retain the customer, you generally need a more personal relationship than “free reader.”

Also, there’s the argument that people that read blogs simply aren’t ever going to be customers anyway as they’re not a buying market. But this article is a little long in the tooth already.

So, You Shouldn’t Blog?

I’d be a hypocrite for saying that… what with having a blog.

I think a blog is a good thing for a lot of reasons. I don’t think it’s an all-in-one business though. I think it’s part of a strategy.

The other day, Robert posted this image to his Twitter feed:

It’s an image from Agora. You’re probably familiar with it if you’re into copywriting/sales.

Essentially, that web comprises all the different possible online sales methods you can use to get people into your funnel.

Those things are all means to an end. If you have a brick and mortar business, you could send out flyers… you wouldn’t be in the flyer business though.

If you have online customers, you can have a weekly newsletter. Your business isn’t weekly newsletters though.

If you write a blog, you can get readers who’ll convert into customers for your business at a later stage, but you shouldn’t think of blogging as your business for the same reason as those above.

A blog has its place in business, and it can be a business. But ultimately if you think of it as a business itself, then you’re probably being inefficient and you could be doing much better.

P.S.

I’ve completely run out of steam on this topic.

You’re free to disagree if you like. Drop a comment in if you do and let me know why!