The Critical Mistake that Keeps Bloggers Broke | Copyblogger
Great, succinct post by Larry Brooks over at CopyBlogger that is a must read for all my students and colleagues, especially the ones who are either recently laid off from journalism or writing about how to “save journalism.”
Your blog is a strategy, a branding and marketing vehicle, a means toward an end.
Your business is the money-making model. A product or service for sale.
Your blog isn’t for sale. It may be of service, but it’s a service you’re giving away for free.
Which means, if giving out free content is all you’re doing, or if your blogging has become the core deliverable of what you believe to be a business, your strategy is upside-down.
via The Critical Mistake that Keeps Bloggers Broke | Copyblogger.
and one more passage:
David, in essence, said this: blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.
…
Your blog is the face of your business, the voice of your brand, the bait that attracts a following.
And yes, you give away as much as you can with it, selflessly and abundantly.
But until you have a product or service to sell, and until the blog connects to that enterprise in a way that actually begins to generate actual revenue in addition to pumping up your online reputation and ego, your blog is nothing other than you expelling positive energy into the universe.
words to the wise, journobloggers, words to the wise. now you know why classified ads were so important, they were the service that generated the revenue. now, think about the service facebook provides to users, and how people just share news freely on their platform.
the same holds true for all the different apps that sites are creating for iphone and blackberry. there is no need to create a desktop or platform icon that links to your content. that app should perform a service that people need.
