Nice post by Chris again over at Performancing – Maximise Your Income With Common Sense:
‘Answer this, what is the basic unit of blogging? The blog post. Each post is like an individual worker in your workforce. Some posts might work harder than others. Some attract more attention than others. Each earns you a little revenue, together they are your means of gaining income. So common sense point number one; it makes sense that if you grow your work force, your body of work within your blog, that your income potential will grow.’
I love the ‘posts as workers’ analogy – very cool.
I was talking to someone recently about this very same topic and I used the analogy of each post being like a small deposit into the bank.
When I was a kid my parents would give me 20 cents each week to take up to the teller in the bank (back when banks had humans to serve you) to put into my savings account. They taught me the power of investing from a young age because my 20 cent pieces added up over the years and with the help of some interest and a few gifts from Nana Rowse saved up for that cool dragster bike I’d dreamt of.
20 cents by itself doesn’t get you much but consistent deposits can add up to something quite significant.
The same is true with blogging. Each post by itself might not have much impact in terms of traffic, ad revenue, incoming links (or any other way that you might measure it’s success) but write a few posts a day for a year and you’ll find yourself building something with a higher chance of ‘success’.
I agree with the premise. I wish Adsense made it easier on you to report on revenue by post. Channels work ok, but aren’t feasible for tracking posts if you post frequently. I posted some suggestions for Adsense that I think would make this much easier.
A record of which ads were profitable would be the best solution imho.
That analogy is very good. I use a similar one with my daughter and her sharbuilder account. I tell her every dollar she saves and puts into her account is like an employee of her own company. It works to make her more money.
Very good and timely post.
Regards
Inspirational posts like this always worked the best for me Darren, thanks for injecting another dose of blog-adrenaline into my blood :P
A.H
Perfect, when I am goofing off, i NOW have something to get me back to posting! Don’t get sloppy on your posts, everyone is out there to do a job for you! Give the employee the tools to put money in your pocket. NICE!
Good analogy but we should also remember that the more workers the higher costs.
Darren this is a great way to put it. I tell myself this and slowly it all grows. Slowly but steadily. I did see a big jump when I switched away from adsense to YPN.
I tell myself each post is worth $1… hmm.. I am sure it is worth more, but this is what I say. Of coruse this is the more immediate money and what is really fun is in the long run when you have 10,000 posts or so, the money has multplied greatly!
Over the last few weeks I posted a few entries that I had really hoped to see some good traffic from — but actually found pretty disappointing (traffic/revenue wise). I kept at it and tried not to worry, figuring they were in the archive and might see some more visitors in the future.
When my site was listed on digg.com, del.icio.us/popular, and lifehacker earlier this week those older posts were discovered as well — and THEY in turn spent some time on the del.icio.us/popular list.
If you see a sudden spike in traffic to your site, you’ll be a lot better off the more you’ve invested in your archive.
I think the best words of wisdom that I’ve read in a long while .. is by JARO … Well said!
Good analogy but we should also remember that the more workers the higher costs
‘Aint that the truth! (cost=time, relationships & sanity)
Thanks for the encouragement. I am about two months into the blog that I hope will (someday) produce revenue and have been getting discouraged. I guess you could say I am big on instant gratification.
You post reminds me of why I got into this blogging thing in the first place. I love to write. I didn’t start my first blog to make money, just to through my little message bottles out to the world.
So you’ve put me back on track. Yes I want to someday support myself in with this keyboard, but that is down the road.
Charles Brown
Wow! I love such inspirational posts. I am a relatively new blogger and love the concept of ‘posts’ as workers. More the posts, more your workers. Cool !!!
Cheers
big4guy
I have never really thought about it that way, but I think you have an excellent point. Each one of these ‘workers’ really does put in the overtime for you.
Hi Darren,
I read that post on Performancing and it was useful to me as a motivation to go ahead. I’m a very beginner blogger and each 20 cent post seems worth nothing. Now I see that posting is like saving a small amount of money in a bank account: patience and time passing will eventually increase the blog success and (maybe) profitability.
Best regards.
captweb
Hey Darren,
The only way to save is to put your money in the bank.
The only way to grow is to invest.
I consider my archives a bank I can borrow from without any penalties.
Good post.
Joe
“I love the ‘posts as workers’ analogy – very cool.” Agreed.
[…] For bloggers more content means more posts. Write as much as you can. Make two or three posts per day on your blogs each well written and focused post works like an individual work unit, these work units will work for you 24 hours eachday and will help you earn more money online. Remember that may be some of these posts wouldn’t add much to your earnings but together they would significantly increase your revenue. […]
[…] More Content + More Visitors = More ads served For bloggers more content means more posts. Write as much as you can. Make two or three posts per day on your blogs each well written and focused post works like an individual work unit, these work units will work for you 24 hours eachday and will help you earn more money online. Remember that may be some of these posts wouldn’t add much to your earnings but together they would significantly increase your revenue. […]