The Right Blog at the Right Time

A zig-zagging winded road viewed from above.
My blogging journey has been long and winded by now. I feel like looking back and analyzing. It may also help you to find out when it is the right time to start a blog.

I started this blog here back in summer of 2007. At that time I had the energy, inspiration and support to start a topic on revolutionary search engine optimization.

Despite the glorious past I often ask myself – especially after the initial success of this blog subsided – whether I made the right decisions along the way.

  • Was it worth it?
  • Am I where I expected to be?
  • Did I reach my goals?
  • Does blogging make sense for business?
  • Did blogging fulfill me on a personal level?

Certainly SEO 2.0 was the right blog at the right time. SEO 2.0 was in the air! Change in the search industry was overdue.

You could smell it. Someone needed to make it public, make it known. Obviously it was me. Here I am. I still remember the joy of having my

  • first 100 subscribers
  • first 25 friends on social media (now I have hundreds of friends and even more fans)
  • first posts shared by others.
  • first popular post on a niche community (that one was really hard!)
  • first banned social media account ;-)

As I have turned my back on Google, I was so tired (and still am) of SEO 1.0 that I did not optimize SEO 2.0 much at all.

The biggest difference is my posting frequency. In the first 6 weeks I posted 3 times as often as now. On the other hand my posts were far less valuable then.

The number one reason to blog is probably to feel at home on the Web.

Ironically not the homepage is your home online but your blog. I really feel at home on the Web now. In a way “I live in the blogosphere“.

I mean I don’t feel like this is only a screen I stare at the whole day and a random array of billions of pages. The contrary is the case!

Blogging is like having a house in the hills at the coast and people can see you from afar. Am I getting poetic again? ;-)

A blog can make your working environment more friendly. This is of course a double-edged sword.

The more time you spend online the less time you have to meet real people etc. You know the deal. Let’s lay aside the emotional chatter though.

OK, you want the hard facts instead? You want the ROI (Return on Investment)? You want to see the money?

Tad Chef is not John Chow, I won’t show you earnings. I do have blog related earnings though. Direct and indirect.

Direct blog earnings include:

  • Ad revenue
  • Guest blogging
  • Regular paid blogger jobs

Indirect blog earnings are

  • Opportunities I have as blogger (people send me books for example)
  • Clients I got via the blog
  • Clients I got due to my blog readers and social media friends

Here you already notice the ROI of blogging which is not always measurable in  “dollars and cents” or other numbers.

I have been invited to conferences like the well known SES due to my blogging and social media activity.

I could convince a prospective client of mine to set up a blog and I have been writing daily for it.

One big client was referred to me another blogger “I met” virtually during my blogging and social media engagement.

In fact I found out that the SEO/social media/meta-blogging community is the single friendliest, most helpful, tolerant and cosmopolitan crowd whatsoever.

What did not work?

  • Being friends with everybody, some people you have to refuse to have ties with
  • Earning money with affiliate banners and text ads there were almost no affiliate sales
  • Getting thousands of visitors regularly or even only hundreds
  • Becoming independent from Google completely

What would I do differently if I would start a new blog today?

  1. I would choose a different topic. SEO is a too small niche and even if you call it 2.0 many people will still assume that you do evil SEO spam.
  2. I’d aim at having 70/30 traffic or even 50/50 social media and other sources vs Google traffic.
  3. I’d sell something related to the blog topic.

Selling advertising or affiliate products on a blog which isn’t highly popular which nonetheless is a high quality blog is difficult:

it’s too good for Adsense (Adsense gets only clicked if your content is crap) and not important enough to get the big advertisers. Other bloggers sell

  • WordPress themes
  • ebooks
  • consulting services

(OK, I do too in a way) or they offer paid reviews.

Yes, now that I have your attention I want to sell you something! Indeed my blogging and social media proved to be as much fun as expected.

Thus I want to do even more blogging and social media. I can’t do more than what I do now without getting paid more directly for it though.

I want to offer to my readers what they really need:

  • Links and traffic
  • Know How
  • Guidance
  • Training

There are a few proven online business models to offer just that:

  1. Web directories
  2. Ebooks
  3. Premium content
  4. Webinars

What do you need and which medium would you prefer to get it?

Last updated: June 1st, 2018.