Search results for: “how to turn your blog into a business”

 HOW TO TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS: PART 6 LEARNING FROM YOUR FAILURES

Six weeks have passed and it’s now time for my final instalment of ‘how to turn your blog into a business’. I love writing my tips posts and thought it would be helpful to create a little series for you, something to follow week by week, full of my detailed tips and advice on one specific topic. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, found it helpful, and learnt a little on the way? If you have any requests for future series, i’d love to hear about it?

In the meantime, here’s a little recap of everything we’ve covered so far, and today is all about learning from your failures, top tips for picking yourself up, and continuing on that journey to success. If anything it’s the most important part …

Building a Brand | Creating a Business Plan | Learning to Network | Managing your finances | How to measure success

#1 ACCEPT

Number one. Accept that failure is part of the journey, it’s normal, it’s helpful and most importantly it’s needed. Needed because it helps you adjust, grow, develop & progress. Even if you get it right the first time, nothing can last forever, you need to continue adapting to grow and build your blog & business … failures help you on that journey.

#2 ANALYSE

Most importantly, aside from accepting that failure is okay, it’s normal, it’s part of the journey, you need to learn from it. And to learn from failure you must analyse, analyse what happened, what went well, what went wrong, what needs to be improved.

The only negative outcome of failure is to give up, and to not learn, evolve & move on. And understanding and analysing what went wrong is a critical action in helping you build yourself back up and continue to grow. The analyses should be constant (remember my measurement tips), but it’s even more important when you’ve encountered some rocky situations, because it’s analysing your work, your measurement metrics & your delivery that will help you grow.

#3 ADAPT

Once you understand what’s working and importantly what’s not. You need to adapt your plan (your business plan, your tactics & probably your goals). As I mentioned back in the business plan tips post, your plan should be ever evolving and adapting based on your achievements, learnings and the market around you.

Don’t be afraid to make changes, to accept something isn’t working, or to change your focus based on something that is. This is the key to success … the ability to adapt.

#4 OPTIMISE

Much like the ability to adapt, the process of optimisation is also key! Optimising your work, your efficiencies, your process, your business set up … part of the learning curve also must be around how you run your business, how well you work, how successful your blog business is. And as I keep saying, learning to adapt, and optimise those things that are working well is key in growing your business, and ensuring continued success!

Don’t ever stop learning, failing, evolving and optimising.

#5 EMBRACE

My final word … embrace. Embrace the journey, embrace your failures and embrace your successes. You’re not super human, you’re human, and with that comes imperfection & mistakes. This is fine. This is normal. This is good. Embrace it … and embrace the incredible journey you’re going on, as an entrepreneur, turning your blog into a business. What an incredible thing to do, to achieve … embrace your failures. And embrace every success!

The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.

And with that we come to the end of my tips series, all about turning your blog into a business! For those of you on that journey already, congratulations, what an amazing thing to achieve. For those of you working towards that big step, of turning your blog into a business, GOOD LUCK! Be pragmatic, be passionate and be committed. And don’t forget to come back and tell me your successes, your failures and what you’re learning on the way!

“Wake up early. Drink coffee. Work hard. Be ambitious. Keep your priorities straight. Your mind right and your head up. Do well, live well and dress really well. Do what you love, love what you do. It is time to start living.”

. HOW TO TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS: WHAT IS SUCCESS & HOW TO MEASURE IT .

Can you believe it, today is the penultimate instalment of my 6 part series on how to turn your blog into a business. How time flies when you’re having fun! I’ve always loved sharing blogging tips, careers tips and even photography tips with you all, but creating a little series has been even better. I’ve loved having a plan of what i’ll write, being able to dig a little deeper into each topic and hopefully cover quite a broad topic in details! Have you enjoyed it?

If you’ve missed parts 1 – 4 then you can check them out here: Building a Brand | Creating a Business Plan | Learning to Network | Managing your finances … and today’s feature Measuring Success!

. IS IT WORKING? HOW TO MEASURE YOUR BLOG SUCCESS .

I’ve actually written a couple of posts previously on the very subjective and broad topic of success .. debating what is blog success, how to be a success, and also what makes a blog good or ‘successful’. But today I wanted to focus very specifically on how you measure your blog success, what are the best tools, measurement systems & stats to focus on, and a little touch on what to do when you’re not achieving what you set out to.

Below are 5 different tools or measurements you should be considering when looking at your blog success … what you’re measuring should link directly and feed from your business plan you created in step 2 (check out my tips on creating a business plan here). Your business plan defined what you wanted to achieve, what you needed to do to get there, and therefore what success looks like (money, page views, social following, content qaulity or quantity etc). So today is all about how you go about monitoring and measuring.

#1 GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google analytics should always be one of your first points of call when you’re looking at measuring your blogs traffic, reach, engagement etc. The tool effectively and efficiently allows you to look at anything from the number of unique people coming to your blog, the number of times they visit & the number of pages they view, to where your traffic is coming from (regionally, audience wise & even from which device), beyond this it allows you to monitor and evaluate engagement with your site … bounce rates, content traction, repeat visits etc.

You should use google analytics to monitor your growth, your specific goals & also to help you monitor and optimise your content based on what’s gaining you the most traction. It can even help you identify areas to focus your efforts in terms of distributing and sharing your content, where you receive the most content from & where people find you!

#2 ENGAGEMENT

It’s really easy to focus solely on the volume of page or unique views you get each month … but whilst monitoring your reach is great (and a really good way of monitoring your success), it has to go beyond just views. There’s minimal value in tons of views, if people are staying for 1 second and you have a bounce rate of 99% …. engagement with your blog, your content & your social channels is a real indicator of your true value and influence to brands, and a really important thing to consider when monitoring your success.

You should look at things like site duration, likes, followers, shares, or comments to help you get a good idea of your engagement levels. Google analytics can help with this, but also consider monitoring your social pages & your bloglovin likes etc too!

#3 CONTENT

Surely a key success metric for any blogger is producing content, in fact producing great content. And so while monitoring blog traffic and content engagement is a great way of monitoring what your readers think of your site, you also need to review how YOU as content producer are performing. Are you hitting your target volume of content, is your content of a quality you’re happy with, have you been active on your social channels …

And how is this content performing! Is it driving traffic & engagement? Is it delivering social traction …

#4 SOCIAL TRACTION

Social traction is a complicated way of explaining social engagement. Social engagement is important as it’s the place most people go to find content, engage in conversation & to find and discover new things. Your social pages in many ways are now of the same (if not more in some cases) importance as your blog itself … it’s undeniable how huge and influential instagram is to a blog, it’s business and it’s success.

Monitoring your social traction – followers, likes, comments, shares, regrams, retweets etc, is another key way of getting a really holisitic view of your blogs success! Not to mention, it’s another element of your business where you can drive financial income, so this is another thing to consider.

#5 FINANCE

Finally, and potentially the most obvious way of monitoring your blog success (blog success as a business that is), is the income you’re receiving. Are you earning the money required to sustain your business, do you have a regular clientèle portfolio, have you won any great projects, are you converting through affiliates etc. Ultimately if you’re turning your blog into a business, then financial success and profit does become a hard bottom line success measure to monitor!

My final point on the topic is to say, don’t worry if at first you don’t succeed … success is subjective and definitely a work in progress, that’s why monitoring and optimising your business plan is so important. Tweak as you go, if one thing didn’t work, try another. And most importantly embrace the journey and have some fun along the way.

Have you found this post successful? I’d love to here the things you measure to monitor your success?

. HOW TO TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS: GETTING A GRIP ON FINANCES .

Turning your blog into a business isn’t quite as simple as just doing what you love for a living, naturally blogging for business also means you have to deal with the business side too, and with that comes finances. Whether it’s setting up your business, managing your accounts or working with partners, there’s definitely a financial side that needs good management if you want to succeed.

Today I wanted to share 5 financial things you need to consider and some tips on how to manage the commercial and financial side of a business blog.

. 5 FINANCIAL THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN BLOGGING FULL TIME .

#1 SET UP COSTS

First of all, whilst most of us bloggers run our blogs as a hobby, there’s no denying there are a lot of costs attributed to running a blog. Whether that’s the finance required to set up your blog from a web design & hosting part of view, or the cost of your kit from a laptop to camera, or even the cost spent on developing the content to write about (clothes, products, etc).

Before embarking on blogging full time, be sure to consider your regular AND irregular outgoings and set up costs. They probably come to a lot more than you might think.

#2 SAVINGS

To that vain, it’s pretty important to have some back up before taking your blog full time, some savings in your back pocket for quiet or slow months, to cover your living costs & rent and to make sure you’re keeping everything balanced cost wise. Blogging full time sometimes can be very fruitful, but as with most freelance & self employed businesses, there can be months where income is very low, if not non existent, so you need to be prepared & have some savings to call on in these moments.

#3 REGULAR INCOME

That leads me to my third point, a regular income. Working for yourself means a monthly salary is pretty much non existent, your salary will come from affiliates, client collaborations & advertising, but there’s no guarantee month by month that what you earn will be enough to cover your living. So being proactive in managing your finances, securing regular clientèle (or being fortunate enough to have an agency backing) and ensuring your monitoring your projects and project flow is really key.

#4 TAXES

Don’t forget taxes. I’m not going to go into the details of this in too much detail, it probably warrants a whole post on it’s own. But don’t forget to keep track of your income, accommodate taxes in your project rates & be ready for the tax man each year!

#5 EXPENSES

And finally, as well as tracking all your income, be sure to keep note of all your business outgoings too, don’t forget that some costs are tax deductible, and therefore should be tracked in your balance sheets too. Income, minus outgoings, equals profit. The profit of your business is what you’ll be taxed on, so make sure you keep track of this. Whether it’s a train ticket to a business meeting, lunch with a client or repairs on your camera, these are all things which contribute to the running of your business and therefore should be deducted from your overall income sheet.

The finance side of running your own business is clearly complicated, and I’ve only briefly touched on some key elements to consider here. It’s really worth exploring each of these more thoroughly if you’re thinking about going full time, to ensure you fully understand what’s required of you. You can read a few more of my tips here, all about what to consider before blogging full time.

Are you finding my blogging for business tips series helpful? I’d love to get your feedback?

. HOW TO TURN YOUR BLOG INTO A BUSINESS: NETWORKING 101 .

So today is part three of my ‘turn your blog into a business’ tips series and part three happens to be the one area that I think these days has such a big importance but it’s also the one that becomes a little more difficult when your juggling work and blog. It’s networking.

Networking to me is a skill of nature and less nurture, of course you can put best practice into action (and I’ll share my top tips shortly) but in my opinion networking should be natural, never forced and as much as possible an organic relationship building process (no cold calls etc).

Turning your blog into a business requires a strong network, not only a steady enough network of followers and readers, but also of clients, PR relationships, and of course fellow bloggers. After all it’s these people that will make your business succeed or fail. Successful networking really is a skill, and knowing the best opportunities to network is a big part of that.

When it comes to networking I think there are 5 key things to consider, work on & focus your efforts on.

. 5 TIPS TO HELP YOU NETWORK .

#1 PR & CLIENTS

As I mentioned, when you take your business full time you’re relying on income to keep you afloat, and in the majority of cases that income will come from partnerships with brands and PR’s.

There’s tons of opportunities to meet PR’s and brands, whether that’s through press days or blog events or even through other projects your working on. The key is to attend as many as possible, to meet as many people as possible and get to know the people around you. This sounds easy of course, but time needs to be on your side here!

I’m not one for contacting a company first or out of the blue, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t as long as your polite and start things off slowly – perhaps introducing yourself, your blog and sharing any features you’ve previously done featuring the brand. Some brands I’ve met love the concept of proactive bloggers introducing themselves and its a way of broadening your net of potential opportunities.

I actually wrote a little feature on building relationships and a network which you can read here too.

#2 COLLABORATIONS

Collaborations are my favourite way to work with a brand, taking a brief and developing a bespoke editorial for a client. I love the focus on content opposed to simply clicks and if quality content is your niche then there are great opportunities to work with brands in this way.

Collaborations can come from a variety of places, client direct, advertising agencies through the likes of an agent (I’m signed to the WaR network), PR’s or even other bloggers. Regardless of where the business comes from you must remember that a paid collaboration is work, so manners, timely responses & full delivery on the brief is essential.

#3 MEDIA PACK

When it comes to networking, especially online, it’s really helpful to have a media pack readily available to share with brands or businesses who are looking to work with you. It provides them with all the information they need in one professional looking place.

I’ve been meaning to create my own media pack for ages now, but I know how important it is so its next on my to do list.

When you’re pulling together your media pack be sure to share the key information a brand would require from you: your manifesto & what you do, previous clients you’ve worked with, your key stats and of course basic rates.

#4 CONTACT & COLLABORATIONS

As well as having a chic little media pack in your back pocket, it’s also worth making sure information to contact you is also easily found and that you’re providing potential clients with as much information as possible before they even contact you.

I have a contact, press and collaborations page on my blog which allows prospect partners to see some of the work I’ve done & the ways in which I work. These pages don’t need to be flash (although I wish I’d collected all my press coverage so I could show that in a pretty way too) but just share some examples of what you do & what a brand might get if they work with you.

#5 INTEGRITY

My final tip when it comes to networking, and I’ve eluded to it throughout, is having integrity. Don’t force relationships or conversations, just be yourself and let them build even if that does take time. After all it’s you they’re buying into, so it’s always best to be the true you.

And that goes for your work too, once you’ve built your network and you’re getting paid work coming in, be sure to keep your integrity with this too. I’m sure it’s tempting to accept every offer made to you for paid collaborations, but if it’s not you, or in keeping with your blog style or tone, your readers will notice and it’ll look disingenuous.

I’m very selective about who I work with, what I write about and how I create my content. And in my opinion I think that’s really important, a blog is only good when it has integrity, when it’s true to you and your passions, so don’t sacrifice that for the sake of a bit of dollar!!

. MAKE YOUR BLOG A BUSINESS: PART 2 .

Last week I kicked off my new blogging tips series, all about turning your blog into a business, and everything you need to know and prepare for on that journey.

I started off with defining your brand, knowing what your product is, and letting your consumers know in turn. You can check out part 1 in the series here. But today it’s onto the slightly less fluffy task of creating a business plan. To turn your blog into a business you must have a plan … A plan of what you need to achieve and how you will get there. The plan will include big things, like hitting financial goals, to small tactics like networking and sharing your content.

Today i wanted to share my advice on how to  create your own business plan, and things to be thinking about as part of developing it.

. HOW TO CREATE A BUSINESS PLAN FOR YOUR BLOG .

A business plan shouldn’t be created and left to gather dust, it should be ever evolving and adapting based on the journey your blog is taking. Having a monthly check in and update is a good idea to keep pushing yourself forward … But to get started here’s what you need to do;

#1 SET OBJECTIVES

First things first is you need to have something that you’re working toward, what is it that you want to achieve. You may have a few objectives that you’re keen on achieving, but as with anything don’t overload yourself. Your objectives should push you hard, but still be achievable.

An objective could be anything from giving yourself a financial target to a blog traffic growth figure or even something like content quality and frequency.

Aim to have around 3 objectives. These should be the big things that you need to deliver on for your business to succeed.

#2 BREAK IT DOWN INTO GOALS

Naturally those lofty objectives may feel a little scary and far away, so it’s important that you break them each down into little goals, for example breaking down an annual salary target into a monthly revenue you need to try and hit to sustain living. Or if your objective is about content, perhaps your goals define how many times a week you’ll post, what sort of features you want to write (at a top line level).

Think of it as the 4 or 5 smaller goals you need to deliver on, to overall help you hit that big end objective.

#3 CREATE SOME TACTICS

Taking it one step further, for each objective and each goal you set yourself, you then should set some tactics for what you’ll do to achieve them. These are the more everyday actions that will help you deliver on your goals.

For example, posting regularly on instagram to build your following, sharing your blog features across X, Y, Z channels each day, sending a PR email each week, creating a media pack, developing a weekly blog schedule, planning shoots etc.

These are the ‘small’ actions you can act on everyday, or every week to help deliver on your overall ambition & plans … everything should ladder back up to your overall objectives you’ve set!

#4 DEFINE YOUR SUCCESS MEASURES

How will you know if you’re succeeding? You must measure your work, your success and your progress. For every objective or goal you set, think SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely), and ensure that every goal has a clear KPI for you to measure against.

And don’t forget to think outside the box … you can measure anything from income & collaborations, to traffic, bounce rate and shares to sentiment, engagement & comments. Utilise google analytics, your own blog interface and don’t forget to consider your social channels too. These are all part of your overall brand.

But most importantly, agree up front what you’ll be measuring, how you’ll measure it, when you’ll be reviewing progress & what overall timings you’ll be working to. Be as specific as possible.

#5 KEEP INNOVATING

And don’t forget to use your insights & learnings to keep improving things moving forward.

On a monthly basis, review your progress, monitor the successes and failures and adapt your business plan accordingly. Make changes, learn from mistakes, maximise the tactics that work the hardest for you, continuously pushing & building your progression plan is key.

The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.

And one last thought for you: Live less out of habit and more out of intent.

I’d love to know if you found part 2 helpful? If you like my tips posts then make sure you check out my other blog & career tips here, and my photography tutorials here.