“By itself a blog is not a business,” writes Steve Pavlina. “A blog is merely a self-publishing tool. If you want to blog for income… then you must learn to think like an entrepreneur, not just a blogger.” Great content isn’t enough; Pavlina says he only spends about 20 percent of his time actually writing material for his site. The rest of his time is spent connecting with peers, evaluating potential subject matter, and optimizing the site for visitors… along with, tucked away at the bottom of the list, writing a book.
“The book will be titled Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth,” he reports. “It’s still many months from release due to lead times in brick-and-mortar publishing. I’d probably make more money if I self-published the book, but I think it will sell significantly more copies by working with a publisher. In this case I’d rather see these ideas spread as far and wide as possible and not worry about extracting every dollar.”
Pavlina says he got “a substantial advance” for the book; his publisher, Hay House, seems particularly excited that his site gets more than 2 million visitors a month, and who wouldn’t be? It should be noted that most of Pavlina’s advice applies when the blog is the foundation of one’s business, but I think there’s some relevance for those of you who consider yourself book writers first and foremost and want a blog to promote yourself to an online audience. The two most important principles to remember: You have to go into blogging with a clear goal for what you want to accomplish, and you can’t abandon that goal to cater to readers who expect you to deliver free entertainment to them over and over again.
Heck, that’s probably not a bad thing for publishers wanting to promote their books online to remember, either…