Picking your Blog Topic

Blogging should not be a chore.

Unlike a website, you have to update your blog regularly (and not just a few words here and there). Most blogs will take about 4-6 months before they start to show a profit. If you post 2 times a week, that means you will need to blog about your topic somewhere between 30 and 50 times before you see any income.

Read that again - 30 to 50 blog articles before you would expect to see one dime!

So what is the bottom line - before you start typing, pick your topic. Make sure that the topic you choose is something that interests you. Forget keyword positioning, Adsense revenue and Affiliate products (for now) and blog about something you are passionate about.

For example, I blog about fitness and Mixed Martial Arts on 2 other blogs. Combined these 2 blogs get about 500-1000 hits per day (it can vary - I had 2500 hits on my MMA blog after the last UFC) and earn between 25-50 dollars a day. It's not a fortune, but I am still starting out (a mature blog is about 2-3 years old with 1000s of posts).

So if you are considering blogging for a living, start today by brainstorming 1 blog topic and your first 20 articles. You don't have to write them out in full yet (I prefer to work from an outline and let the words flow naturally), but you should know what you want to say and have ideas that flow naturally from one to another.

Next post - how to structure each blog post.

Of course if you can't wait, sign up for Rob Benwell's Blogging to the Bank 2.0 free newsletter.