From Corporate America to Professional Blogging – Becoming a Hired Blogger

Last week Jackie Willey (from Discover Walking and Amore Travel) left a comment on one of my posts as follows:

‘I own and market two blogs. As a result of my writing for these two blogs I was hired to write for two other blogs. In one case I bartered for services and in the other I was paid. There are opportunities out there once you can demonstrate your writing abilities.’

While this blog is about the broad topic of making money from blogs I’m aware that I tend to gravitate towards advertising and affiliate programs as this is how I make the majority of my own money blogging. I know that this is only one approach and that many others, like Jackie, are professional bloggers in other ways.

As a result I emailed Jackie and asked if she’d be interested in writing a post to share her experiences of becoming a hired blogger. Jackie went above and beyond my request for a short post on the topic and has put together the following guide on the topic which shares some of her own experiences of becoming a hired blogger.

From Corporate America to Professional Blogging

My career has been a magnet for corporate layoffs from mergers, consolidations and business closings. You would think that being an executive with Fortune 500 companies such as Citibank, Prudential and Digital Equipment would be a safe haven.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case. In key corporate finance and project management positions, my only saving grace is that I am usually one of the last employees out the door.

The good news, I can state from vast experience that the overwhelming majority of displaced co-workers found better jobs. In fact, many of my friends have taken the opportunity to find their dream jobs.

This last corporate layoff, I decided it was time to design my own dream job. After researching web-based businesses, blogs appeared to be an opportunity I could not resist. ProBlogger has been an enormous help getting me started. Reading the articles and comments became part of my “how to” guide.

My first step was to create one website to feed my traveling passion and another website to encourage people to walk. Both are subjects I enjoy writing about and having two subjects added diversity to my income stream.

Listening to the advice on Problogger, I added AdSense, Chitika, and Amazon links to my site. So far, AdSense provides my biggest return.

Problogger realistically cautions that blog sites usually start slow and grow over time. The first month my blogs paid for a good meal. The next month they paid the cable bill. The next month part of the house payment.

My blogs have been doubling in traffic and revenue each month. The trend is encouraging but it will take time before I replace my salary earned as a corporate executive.

To generate another income stream, I wrote two tips booklets. “118 Travel Tips From a Seasoned Traveler – Enjoying Your Trip” and “92 Travel Tips From A Seasoned Traveler – Planning and Packing.” Now I am a legitimate published author complete with ISBN numbers and copyrights to my name. Booklets were low cost products to produce, look impressive, advertise my web-site, cemented my writing credentials and will give me the opportunity to attract income from non-web business sources.

Writing opportunities came to me after friends and former business associates saw my blogs and booklets. With a published booklet and a blog to showcase my writing skills, in a few short months I was surprisingly considered not only a blog expert but a web marketing expert to business associates.

I didn’t realize how many web owners want blogs but don’t have the time to do the research that will optimize their site and write key phrase rich articles as search engine doorways. Many website owners may be able to maintain a blog but need expert help to get over the initial hurdles. This is where the opportunity comes for experienced bloggers.

To survive as an entrepreneur, you must have multiple income streams. While my own blog sites are building momentum, income from ghost writing for other blogs and websites provide a way to pay the bills. Plus I learn from interactions with other web owners. We help each other succeed.

So how can you become a professional blog writer? Here are some tips to make your own blog a showcase:

1. Create a visually appealing blog with professional layout and a logo that cements your recognition
2. Invest in a digital camera and take professional looking pictures to add to your blog. Pictures add to the visual appeal and help you stand out in the sea of other blogs
3. Learn all you can about optimizing websites for search engines and design your site to be search engine friendly with fast displays of your pictures for visitors with only modem access
4. Build your link popularity by writing articles and posting them in article databases
5. Help other struggling entrepreneurs, you may be helping the next Bill Gates who may need your writing skills for his next venture
6. Surround yourself with people who will encourage and help you
7. Let everyone know that you are a professional blog writer, your opportunities will often come from unexpected sources
8. Monitor Google news on your topic by subscribing to phrases you want to track. Google will email you with news on your phrases
9. Watch the log statistics on your site. Determine which articles are popular and give your visitors content on popular topics
10. Enlist friends and family to write and take pictures for your blog. They will add new life to your blog with fresh content.

And once you are hired as a professional blog writer, here are ways to make your time worthwhile and keep your customers satisfied:

1. Optimize Your Articles for Key Phrases. Your clients want to drive business to their websites and the way to do that is to write and optimize for topics that people search for on the web.
2. Write about topics which expand your knowledge. While my expertise is corporate finance, project planning, and travel, I have done ghost writing on diverse subjects such as alternative health, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, recipes, organic farming, supplements, gourmet beef and saunas. My non-expert status on these subjects helps my writing connect with the average web visitor.
3. Focus on what your client pays for you to write. In my case, people do not pay me for my opinion so I do the research and my client adds their opinion if they desire.
4. Make sure you are comfortable with the topic, never compromise your values
5. Writing speed will improve. It takes awhile to get the hang of it, but once you have researched and written for a couple of blogs you get to the point where you can write quickly. The quicker you write, the more income you can produce per hour since you usually will get paid by the article.
6. Follow copyright rules and don’t plagiarize. It is easy to determine if an article has been plagiarized.
7. Protect yourself by negotiating up front. Clarify how you expect to be compensated, the average length of each article and negotiate the price.
8. Meet your deadlines. Determine the time you need for researching, writing and revising the articles by your promised completion date. Don’t over commit.
9. Write only on topics that you can research quickly.
10. Make your research time worthwhile. Each of my clients purchased 20 articles or more. Having a commitment for a minimum of 20 articles, lowered the customer’s cost per article since it was easier to research and focus on several articles in each niche. Clients had a good base for the search engines and were able to show consistent postings to their visitors. A win – win for all.
11. Give your client a sample after you have written one or two entries so you stay on the right track. If you are developing the titles, give your client a list of all the article titles you plan to write. You don’t want to finish 20+ articles and not meet your customer’s expectations.
12. Consider affiliations with hosting services, logo designers, programmers, printing companies and advertisers which have helped you succeed. Referrals to products and services which have been helpful to you can be an excellent passive income stream and will benefit your customer.

Hopefully, what I have learned can be of help to other bloggers. Good Luck and Happy Blogging!