We just finished covering the great part about blogging for yourself, but there are also some really big downsides, such as:
*There is no guaranteed income from it. In the first month of my personal blog, I made $0.02 from the ad income. When I told people I was “putting my two cents in” apparently I meant that literally. 😛 And since that ad revenue was coming from Google AdSense ads, and you have to reach a payout of $100 before you can receive a check for the money, that meant that at a rate of $0.02 per month, I would be able to get a payout in approximately 416 years, give or take a couple of months of course. 😉 Obviously, as your blog grows, so does your income from the ad revenue, but in the beginning, don’t bank on receiving that $100 payout any time soon, ’cause it might be a while.
*If something goes wrong, you have to fix it. Here at Families, if something happens with my blog, I can get help from the techie people. They fix whatever is wrong, and I go on my merry way. If something goes wrong with my personal blog, I either have to have the know-how to fix it myself *snort/cough/choke* or pay someone else to fix it. Speaking of money…
*It can cost money to have your own blog. Notice my choice of words: “can”. There are free blogging sites that doesn’t cost any money to use, but like with most things, you get what you pay for, and usually the free sites end up costing you money in the long run. More about all of that later.
*You have to do all of the advertising for your blog, and are responsible for getting traffic to your blog. Quick fact: Good bloggers are rarely good marketers. Unfortunately, quick fact #2: If your blog isn’t successful, there is no one else to blame for that but you. Darn. In order to succeed in writing a blog on your own site, you have to be a good blogger, and good at the technical, website-building, computer-geeky stuff that makes most people’s skin go cold, or be willing to pay someone who is good at that stuff. You also have to be good at marketing and advertising, and know how to drive audiences to your blog. It can be a tough juggling act at times, and I know I often feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day to do everything I want to.
Well, that was my take on the personal blog side of it. If any of you guys have anything you think I missed, make sure to leave it in the comment section – I want to hear all about it! In the meanwhile, we’re going to discuss the great benefits of blogging for a company!
This was part of a series on blogging. If you haven’t read the other entries in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all blogging articles. Comments and feedback are always welcome – feel free to leave them below or send me an e-mail at Hava L {at} Families dot com. Thanks for reading!