Bloggers Obsessed with Paid Postings: Alternatives to Increasing Your Blog Revenue

OK I'll have to admit that over a year ago I jumped into this paid blogging thing; initially I had my doubts, because blogging wasn't paying that much to begin with and I figured that I did not stand to loose face because few individuals were reading my blog to begin with. I started out with one of the more popular paid blogging outfits and took some assignments that only required that I mention the product within a post of a certain length and the requirements for them to do business with me is that my blog had to have been in existence for a while and already contain a good number of posts to begin with. I had been blogging for a few years by this point, so I met those criteria, now all that was required of me was to keep those paid posts that I was writing up for a bit, and then, given that the posts still met the initial criteria, I would receive payment for my work.

At first the money didn't amount to much, but I went back repeatedly throughout the day and looked for new opportunities to write about, which I almost always did, and, as they had originally stated, after that given time period the money was deposited into my account. Life was good, there was always work available to me, and I could always rely on my assignments to assist me with making a nice amount of money each week. Time passed on, the work began to disappear and the requirements started to change and I began to realize that of the overwhelming majority of the assignments out there, my blog rarely qualified for any of them. This was good for the marketing outfit, I would imagine, but not so good for me, or other bloggers were caught up in this thing and began to expect that a certain amount of ad revenue would be theirs for the taking through assignments where marketers were willing to pay up front for promotion, in exchange for the exposure that a blogger could bring to them.

This is the cruel reality of the paid blogging game; bloggers should take the following into consideration (those of you still standing that haven't been sucked into this void as of yet) before surrendering their blogs to marketers and the market forces that are behind advertising in general, if they want to take advantage of this unique opportunity that paid blogging offers, without compromising their relationship with either the advertisers or their target audience.

• Bloggers still need to diversify and offer a unique mix of banner advertising, text advertising, contextual links, paid blogging and utilize any other forms of marketing they can implement, such as advertising their blog or word of mouth to create a nice amount of steady revenue, rather than rely on one form of revenue to address their needs. One should keep in mind that paid blogging is extra money, and shouldn't be relied upon as a steady source of revenue as bloggers are basically taking up temporary assignments and are not creating long term relationships with the companies involved. The only relationship the blogger has is with the marketing firm itself, not the companies themselves, and the payments are disseminated to bloggers by the "middleman". Take the same precautions and represent yourself with the same amount of professionalism as you would if you were a temporary worker out in the workplace dealing with an employment agency; you may receive a permanent position, you may not, but you should always be prepared to take advantage of one if it ever comes about. There is nothing wrong with paid blogging; advertisers need to reach customers and you need exposure for your site, but unless you have hundreds or thousands of hits a day, you're wasting both you and the marketer's time and energy, and you may not receive the job anyway; focus on unique ways to increase your sites traffic that do not involve utilizing or relying upon the marketing agency.
• People still do want to read your blog for what bloggers do best, disseminate opinions, serve as a taste maker that represents the ethos of the audience and focus in what you are truly passionate about. Many bloggers are excellent writers, and could be hired if it weren't for the unorthodox nature of the opinions that they represent; yet there is a market there, and some of the most popular blogs have taken advantage of that and used it to realize their full potential. Those same blogs are not represented by individuals that relied on one or two revenue sources, however, so study what those publishers are doing, and implement those same solutions in your own blog. A clean, professional looking website site remains at the end of the day, and is an accomplishment that can be referred back to and referenced long after the traffic has left and moved elsewhere, a messy site, that only required a modicum of work and the desire to be heard, is forgotten quickly, and isn't taken seriously when its all said and done.
• Bloggers should remain focused as to what their blog was originally about and what purpose it initially served, and may want to consider using different blogs to cater to different audiences, if making money is their sole objective, until they can build the traffic for the one blog that they do have up to the point where marketers are comfortable working with them.
• There are always more opportunities that are made available to bloggers, or freelance writers in general, when they take a neutral stand on issues. There are a few exceptions, politics, for example, but if a blogger is interested in using their site to talk about fashion or photography or similar interests where commercial products and services are involved they may want to take a centrist position to keep from alienating potential customers.

Initially, your traffic will see a remarkable increase due to your paid blogging, because marketers have done their homework, and of course these are topics that people would like to have more information on. But if your blog simply serves as the face of the client's interests, and your own voice is lost and your opinions aren't heard, no one is going to read your blog anyway. In the inevitable event that may happen, either because you couldn't leave well enough alone or you're simply all out of ideas, your traffic decreases, and you can't take advantage of what paid blogging has to offer. You may find out that if you had taken advantage of whatever opportunities that had existed to take your blog to that next level before you were being paid to blog you would have actually end up in a better position to leverage it so that you could have been compensated for your efforts with that blog anyway, so if you have that intuition, work on doing that before taking up paid assignments. The days of blogs existing as a financially bankrupt yet alternative source of articles to get away from the mainstream media are behind us; it's time that bloggers realized the true worth of the relationships that they have created with their audience, as well as the potential to exert that influence over the disaffected ...