I’ve been blogging continuously for about 10 months now, and my online money-making efforts have started to pay off. While my AdSense earnings aren’t exactly fantastic yet, my Text Link Ads, Sponsored Reviews and LinkWorth accounts are now positively picking up.
But recently, blogging has provided me with more than just immediate financial results. A much more valuable return are the business opportunities that have arrived at my doorstep these past few months.
Yesterday alone, I was approached by two different parties for I.T.-related projects. One is an outsourcing firm whose CEO chanced upon my IT talks! blog. The other is a Japanese software development company. The latter’s general manager was slated to visit Davao and so Googled the word for “Davao” in Japanese, hoping to find out more about the city before his trip. He told me later on that my Japanese-language blog, which translates to Maru’s Space, came out in the first page of the search results.
Both of these opportunities have a potentially huge impact on my career as an I.T. consultant. And they could have a domino effect — they could proceed to further engagements. All thanks to blogging.
In light of this, I’d like to reiterate what I’ve said earlier about blogging best practices: Keep it focused. I wrote that back in February 2007 when I was completing the Davao Blogspace and was endeavoring to contribute a practical document to newbie bloggers.
Being focused means two things: first, that you commit to your blog(s); second, that you narrow down your content to a particular topic. The latter doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about anything else anymore. What I’m saying is, if you want to blog about, say, food and also about architecture, do so in two separate blogs.
Another tip: be visible. If you’d like to generate business leads via your blog, remaining anonymous isn’t the way to go. If I’d turned off profile availability in my Japanese-language blog (which runs on Blogger), that Japanese businessman wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with me easily. On WordPress blogs, it’s absolutely advisable to keep an updated ‘About’ page.
A final thought before I end this post. Your blog can carry your reputation. Ergo, strive to constantly improve your blogging. Leveling up the skills involved in your blog’s upkeep will surely reflect on how other people perceive your blog site.
Beyond Google PR and other blog popularity metrics, what ultimately matters is whether or not your blogging activities are having an affirmative effect on the community and on your own life.
11:14 am on 1 Nov 2007
wow very well said, your blog can carry your reputation…
I guess that is also the reason why I’m improving my site now creating it as like a blog but still its very difficult to maintain a website i.e. via updating you have to use FTP and stuff unlike Blog you can just add up or update the contents very fast
anyway, hope you also visit this another blog squidoo its very new to me… nice too…but I still like wordpress and blogspot more.
http://www.squidoo.com/Bloggeraice/
Take care and More Power