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Whose Blog IS This? Posted: 25 Jun 2008 09:04 PM CDT Today Lightening talks us through the process of deciding whether to monetize her blog and how she involved her readers in that process. I recently went through the process of deciding whether or not to monetize my personal blog Lightening Online. Personal Blogs seem to be a whole different ball game when it comes to monetization. Some people have VERY strong views about the ethics of earning money from a personal blog. Blogs on various “how to” type topics very clearly offer the reader some kind of benefit. The question is, do personal blogs offer enough to be considered “worthy” of making the blog writer some kind of income? Is entertainment enough? If you truly consider your blog readers to be friends, is there an ethical consideration to earning money this way? Now we all know how precious and important blog readers are. Without them a blog is very little more than a wind chime tinkling in the breeze with no-one around to hear its melodic sound. Upsetting, and possibly losing, the small blog readership I had painstakingly and carefully built up was one of my biggest concerns when it came to monetizing my blog. Losing the credibility of my voice was another. Plus of course the worry that people might perceive my motivation for blogging as something akin to personal gain. So I made what I considered to be a wise move and gave my readers both a say and a vote in whether or not they thought monetization of my blog was a good idea. During my training to become a Child Care worker, we were taught a very valuable lesson when it came to asking questions. You should NEVER ask a child a question if you are not prepared for a negative answer. For instance, if you want a child to come to lunch, you don’t say to them “would you like to come to lunch”, you say “it’s time to come to lunch now”. By phrasing it in the former way, you are leaving opportunity for them to respond with a “no”. It’s quite simple really. If you don’t want a “no” for an answer, don’t ask a “yes or no” question. It’s a pity I didn’t consider employing this wisdom when it came to asking my blog readers whether or not they thought I should monetize my blog. By asking my readers opinions I was giving them the opportunity to vote “no” to monetizing my blog. Was I really prepared to accept “no” as an answer? While on the whole my readers were supportive of my desire to monetize my blog, some were quite vocal in their dissent. This led me to feel rather uncomfortable about proceeding with monetization. I felt that if I did I would be blatantly doing so against their wishes. Those of you who are parents will understand that there is a big difference between a child who accidentally stumbles into wrongdoing (okay, maybe not accidentally…) and one who wilfully goes against something you have told them not to do. I guess in some ways, I felt like the child in this blogging relationship rather than the parent. If I went ahead and monetized my blog, I did so KNOWING that it would upset those readers. If I went ahead, was I committing some mortal blogging sin that would be the death knoll for my precious baby - my blog? I’m not for a minute suggesting that either myself OR my blog readers are children. I’m just using this analogy to illustrate a balance of power. As a parent, I get to make the decisions that I feel are best for my child. I might take their views into consideration, but ultimately, the balance of power lies with me. Inadvertently, I had shifted the balance of power in my blog. Instead of ME making the decisions, I had mentally allowed my readers to have the power over those decisions. Partially by offering them the chance to vocally object but also by my own reaction to their opinions. I needed to remind myself that this is MY blog. I’m the one who gets to make the decisions. I’m all for reader input, considering the readers views and so forth. As I’ve already said, a blog can be a rather lonely and empty place without it’s readers. BUT, your readers come to hear what YOU have to say. I realised that I needed to TRUST myself more. To believe in myself. Something had attracted those readers to my blog. That something was ME. If I believed that a small amount of monetization would benefit me without harming my blog then I could follow that belief confidently, trusting that whatever had attracted my readers to my blog in the first place, would encourage them to stick around regardless. After all, it is MY blog! :) Lightening’s personal blog, Lightening Online, is a place where she shares her laughter and tears as she journeys through life. She also has a more recent blog discussing blogs and issues related to blogging at Lightening’s Blogworld. Share This

Having a Lack of Original Content on Your Blog - How to Let Your Blog Go #8 Posted: 25 Jun 2008 09:04 AM CDT This week we’ve been looking at a variety of ways that bloggers let their blogs degenerate. Today I want to talk about something that has the potential to kill a blog very quickly - the lack of original content or ideas. This is a mistake that many bloggers fall into to numerous degrees. At one extreme we see bloggers simply scraping and republishing the feeds of others and slapping ads on them (splogs) - however there are a lot more subtle ways of falling into this trap that are easy to fall into. I chatted to one blogger recently who told me that he’d just realized that without knowing it his blog had become of devoid of originality. Here’s a paragraph from an email that he wrote me (shared with permission but with a request of anonymity - edited slightly to keep the blog and niche not identifiable): “My blog used to contain daily posts of me sharing my ideas about my niche. I would research topics and the news and their share my own views on the developments happening. But slowly over time I let things slip. It started slowly with me writing a few posts taking quotes from others in my niche and then adding a few thoughts of my own. These posts were actually good and I don’t regret them - but after a while I got lazy and began to add less of my own thoughts and more and more of the thoughts of others. Now I look at my blog and on any given week my readers are lucky to hear any of my own views on our niche. They might as well simply subscribe to the 10 blogs that I quote, they’d get as much value if they did.” Wow, what an honest and powerful self critique. This blogger has gone on to reinvent their blog. While they still point readers to what others are writing in their niche they do it in a sidebar section on the blog and have started writing 2-3 original opinion pieces on their industry per week as the main focus of their blog. The problem with having no originality on a blog: This topic is a little tricky because I know how many bloggers fall into the ‘trap’ of simply reposting the ideas of others on their blogs. To complicate things further different types of blogs can get away with it more than others (for example some of the biggest blogs going around like Engadget and Gizmodo are largely reporting stories that break elsewhere). However - in general, if you want people to find your blog and keep coming back to it for more you need to have something unique and original on your blog in terms of content. This is particularly true for new blogs (perhaps some of the big ones get away with it because they were early to their niches) who face hundreds and even thousands of competitors in many niches. If you don’t have something unique to say then it’s unlikely that people will choose your blog to use as their source of information on your topic. Solution: As with all of the ’solutions’ to the problems that we’re tackling this week - today’s is pretty obvious, but somewhat difficult to actually do. The solution is to strive to produce unique and original content for your blog. This ‘uniqueness’ can happen in a number of ways including: The topics you cover - finding new and interesting aspects of your niche or industry that others are not covering can set you apart from the rest. The stance you take - one way of being unique on a story that everyone is covering is to take a different stance/opinion on it. The voice that you write in - lastly it’s sometimes good to actually write the post in a different style or voice. For example if everyone else is looking at a story from a serious analytical angle - write about it in a humorous way. If everyone is taking one side of an argument play devils advocate and explore the flip side of the coin. Tips for Bloggers Attempting to Add Originality to their Blog: In a previous post titled ‘how to add to blogging conversations‘ I give the following 11 pointers on how to add value to conversations that are happening in the blogosphere without simply replicating what everyone else is saying (I’ve included just the headings of each point below - check out the post for more details on each one): what did they say well? what did they miss? answer questions what are others saying? how does it apply to you? look forward look backward extend ideas take the ‘opposite’ tac ask what if? play devil’s advocate Another quick tip on adding originality to your blog - share an opinion. Blogs that go beyond pointing out breaking news and that share opinions on their topic tend to generate discussion, get the attention of other bloggers and build readership. People want to know what you think and feel about your topic - so tell them. Further Reading How to Eliminate the Echo Chamber and Add New Dimensions to Your Blog How to Make Your Blog Posts Stand Out from the Rest - Lessons from the MacBook Air Share This

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