Writing for Your Wealth

At last count there are 7,384,837,283.3 blogs on the web.

Okay, I made that number up, but there are a lot. And a huge percentage of those blogs have been abandoned.

Why does this matter to you? Because, as I mentioned in my “Writing for Your Wealth 101″ e-course, the blog is the cornerstone for turning your words into long-term cash-generating assets. (If you haven’t read the course yet, you can get it for free by signing up for the newsletter.)

Whether you want to make money writing books, creating information products, marketing affiliate products, or running advertising on your site, the blog is the cheapest and most efficient way to attract visitors who are a part of your target audience. And an abandoned blog isn’t nearly as effective as one that is being updated regularly!

So, how do you avoid “blogger burnout”?

Here are some tips I’ve learned over the years:

1. Pick a broad enough niche

When I look back at the blogs that I’ve abandoned (yes, I’ve quit my fair share, so don’t feel bad if you have too!) versus the ones I’ve stuck with, the major difference is often the niche size.

When I got started with Adsense (the first program I made money from), the prevailing advice was to build a site that focused on a narrow niche, so you could more easily make it to #1 in the search engine rankings. For example, instead of creating a blog on fitness (where there are already tons of large, authority sites), you might focus on home gyms, or even the Bowflex.

This approach, often referred to as the “Long Tail” method, can work well for small sites that may never have more than 100 articles. But for a blog that needs to be continually updated with new content, it can be death.

You may run out of topics you haven’t covered ad nauseam. You may get tired of the subject. You may lose the log-in password to your blog dashboard and secretly be glad you have an excuse not to update the site any more (this has never happened to me of course).

Even if none of those things derail your blog, you may find the goal to be #1 in Google limiting.

I’ve had sites reach #1 in the search rankings for certain niches only to find there is a limit to how many people are searching for information in that small niche each day. Sometimes it’s worth going after a broader market. Even if you don’t get anywhere near #1, there may be so many people looking for information each day, that you’ll end up getting more visitors in the long run.

2. Choose a posting schedule you can sustain

Believe it or not, you don’t have to post to your blog every day. You want to post regularly, but regular doesn’t have to mean daily.

If you’ve followed this blog for very long, you’ve noticed I only update it once or twice a week. That’s because my posts here tend to be in the 1,000 word range and take me quite a while to construct. I’d soon dread working on this blog if I forced myself to write that much every day (a 300+ page novel is only 100,000 words, and I’m not trying to write Moby Dick here!).

On the other hand, the blog I write for daily features posts that are around 150-200 words and usually describe products. Most of the time, it takes 15 minutes or less to write a post like that, so it’s easy to add a couple of new entries each day.

If you’re looking to avoid blogger burnout down the road, choose a posting schedule you can maintain. I’ll often advocate working on your blog each day, if only to keep up your forward momentum (you don’t want to get out of the habit of posting), but that might very well mean taking three days to put together a post.

Don’t feel that your readers will abandon you if you don’t post every day. Chances are they have lives and don’t have the time to read a book by you each day anyway. Just shoot for contributing to your blog on a regular basis, and you’ll do fine.

3. Choose a blog style that suits your personality

Are you a rambler with a lot to say? Or do you like to write short posts on a lot of different topics?

You’ll do best if you format your blog in a way that suits your writing personality. There aren’t any rules when it comes to lengths of posts.

Short posts could offer quick tips, lists, blurbs on products or new ideas in your niche. Longer posts are great if you are trying to teach a new concept with each entry, but you can teach with short posts and do lists with long ones. It’s your blog, and there are no rules!

Isn’t it great working for yourself?

4. Read, read, read!

A lot of blogs die because their authors run out of ideas.

Ideas aren’t created in a vacuum though. They are inspired by the world around you.

Surround yourself by lots of interesting new information, and you’ll constantly be coming up with new ideas. The only problem you’ll have is finding the time to sit down and get them all out.

When you’re choosing reading material, make sure it’s quality stuff too. As a blogger, it’s easy to get into the habit of looking to other blogs for inspiration. This can be a huge time sink and isn’t always the most effective way for coming up with fresh ideas. While there are some quality blogs out there, there are a lot of people covering the same topics. (You’ve probably seen the “blog echo chamber” in action: an interesting story will break somewhere, and soon 100 different bloggers have covered it, so you end up seeing the same blurb everywhere you visit.)

When I was in an online workshop for fantasy & science fiction, you could always tell which writers had only read in their own genres. All the fantasy novels read like Dungeons & Dragons books (which of course all read like Lord of the Rings knockoffs). The authors who created rich and fascinating worlds were the ones reading history books and science journals in their spare time.

For great ideas, read quality stuff, online and offline, and read outside of your niche.

These are my suggestions for avoiding “blogger burnout.” Do you have any you’d like to share?