How to Treat Your Blog As A Business

Written by Mk Akan

Darren Rowse of Problogger once said that, it was

only when he started treating his blog and his blogging as a business that he started making money online.

So the big question is:

How can one treat his or her blog or blogging as a business?

Getting the answer to this question is very important as far as making money online is concerned.
So let’s get back to it;

How can one treat a blog or blogging as a business?

Let’s attempt to answer it.
The most important term in the question above is the word “business”.

So what is business?

You can read up the definition of business but the summary of the important concepts in the definition of a business is this:

It is the creation, provision or sale of goods, products and services that people pay for.

Now that we understand what a business is, how can we add it to our blogs?

How can we take our blogs as a business?

Let me rephrase the question?
How can we take our blogs as the creation of goods, products and services that people pay for that brings you or the company profits?
That may not really make sense, but you get the picture.

How Offline Businesses Make Money

If we take a look offline at how businesses make money, we can learn a thing or two from them and see how we can do same to our blogs.
These are what offline businesses do in their businesses to generate money.

They Have A Product Or Service

Think about all the offline businesses that you know. I bet you that they have a product(s) or service that they offer to you.
Take a look at the super market where you buy groceries. Look at the bar where you take a drink(s) with friends or your date?
Look at the local laundry shop. They all have something in common:
They provide products and services that people pay for.
So if your blog does not offer a product or service for people to pay for, you are not treating it as a business.
This is why Darren talked about the importance of having a product to sell and David Risley said poor bloggers focus too much on blog post

2. They Solve A Problem By Creating Value

Think about this, if you had no super market in your town how would you feel. If you had to travel 2 hours before you could buy cereal for breakfast, how would you love it?
You see, the businesses in your town are solving your problem. They are creating value for you and that is why you patronize them.
They are saving you the trouble of going out of town or to the factory before you can buy stuff.
If they provide a product or service that is not wanted, they will go bankrupt like Enron.
So if your blog offers products and services that is not valued or needed by people (solving problems they don’t have), then you are not treating your blog as a business.

3. Time And Schedule

The offline business in your town has an opening and closing time. Some run overnight but whatever the case, they have a time schedule. This is when the run their business.
On the internet, this may be quite different and works more in our favour. Your blog is open 247 to any one in the world. But the time schedule here refers to when you are working on your business.
When you are creating, launching, writing, promoting and doing all the other things businesses do to grow.
If you don’t have this kind of schedule, you are not treating your blog as a business. It can be as simple as planning 2 hours a day, 6 hours a day etc. if you can be specific, better.

4.They Invest/Reinvest In Their Businesses

Offline businesses invest in a lot of things to grow. They invest in their rents, their branding, their services, their employees, adverts and promotion etc.
They do this by spending money and time. They even reinvest their profits. They might even get bank loans to finance these investments. They do it because it will ultimately grow their businesses.
On the internet and on your blog, the investments you can make maybe a bit different but your blog needs investments in order to be seen as a business.
Here are a few things you will have to invest in other to treat blogging as a business.

Your domain name
Your hosting
premium WordPress themes
Your Knowledge
Premium WordPress plug ins
Your branding(logo and favicons)
Software to automate your online activities
Paid web services
Paid products (e-books, online courses etc)
Outsourced work
Product creation
Website design/graphic work
Email marketing services
Your time(very important resource)

The list goes on.
All these things cost money and are very important. If you have a problem with investing in any of these products and services, you are not treating your blog as a business.

5.Get Paid

If a business man sets up a supermarket and allows people to pick whatever they want without paying, is he running a business?
No, he is a philanthropist which is very commendable. But the fact still remains that he is a not a business man (as far as that supermarket is concerned).
Only when he starts charging money or gets paid in another way, that he makes money and can be considered to be a business man.
Okay, I know sometimes offline businesses act like philanthropist during bonanzas, discount sales and other activities. But these are all marketing activities that still help in growing the business. And they don’t usually do it forever.
On the internet and on your blog, this also holds true.
I know giving out free products and information is important for growth of the blog(I do it a lot too). It is cool to give out free reports and e-books. It is good to teach people stuff for free (it is highly recommended and I know, teaching sells). But just teaching without having something to get paid for does not earn you jack (or Jill).
If you do it to build and e-mail list or to grow your blog, it is fine but until you find a way to charge for something or get paid for something, you are also a philanthropist (which is still fine).
And what you get paid for doesn’t have to be your product, supermarket don’t sell their products, they sell products made by manufacturers (call it offline affiliate marketing if you like) on your blog you can do the same.
Affiliate marketing works even better online, so if you don’t have your own products, get paid by selling other people’s products (like the supermarkets)

6.They Market Their Businesses

Businesses offline do a lot of marketing to succeed. They use the print and electronic media to advertise their businesses.
They use the internet too.
If you want to treat your blog as a business, you need to do this too.
But internet marketing may be different from what is obtained offline but whatever the case you need it to grow your blog and business.
So learn internet marketing and use it. It is how to treat your blog as a business.

7.Get Help ,Outsource ,Employ Others

Offline businesses usually have workers or employees. These people help to run the business and makes sure things go according to plan.
A business where the owner tries to do everything on his own doesn’t grow well and is usually inefficient.
Online many people think of business and blogging as a one man show. This is possible, you can handle many things but to really treat your blog as a business you need people who can do stuff much better than you.
Entrepreneurs don’t try to do everything and you can’t really do every thing. For example, if I have an idea for a WordPress plug-in, I wouldn’t try to make it myself because the only thing I know about coding is “NOTHING”.
I would rather outsource it.

8.They Own Assets

Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” defines an Asset as
“Anything that brings in money to your pocket”
In addition to that, I would say “an asset is also anything that has the potential of bringing in money to your pocket in the future”.
An asset can also be anything you can sell off at a higher price (it brings in money)
Many offline businesses own assets. Their business first of all is an asset. They can sell it off as a single entity. They own other types of assets like their brand (intangible assets), real estate property (if they have one), and others.
If you want to treat your blog as a business, you need to also own assets. So what can of asset can your blog have or can bring in money to your pocket.

Your domain name
Your branding
Your products
Your list
Your service
Your website or blog(it must be making before you can call it an asset, or has the potential of doing so)

9.Take Risks

If there is anything I know about business, it is the fact that you are taking a risk and you need to take a risk to succeed.
Offline businesses take a lot of risks in order to succeed.
They risk includes:

Wasting your time
Losing money
Incurring debt
Failure

If you want to treat your blog as a business, you need to also take some risks.
You need to take bold steps, you need to try new things, and you need to try ideas, you need to risk failure.
I am not advocating that you just take a sure fail risk, I mean calculated risks but like we know even calculated risk do fail. All the analysis and research and due diligence can only be confirmed when we actually go out and try our ideas.
And they may fail because nothing really goes according to plan.
Summary:
To treat your blog as a business you need:

To have products ad services sold on your blog
You need to solve a problem by creating value
Have a time and schedule
Invest in yourself and your blog
Get paid for something
Market and promote your blog
Get help, employ others
Assets

Are there other ways to treat you business as a blog?

If you have noticed,on this blog right now,i am not practicing all what this article says…There are so many things i am not doing yet and right…for some blogs you need to grow an audience before you can actually practice these things and trust me ..they work . I am practicing some of this on my other niche blogs i will make a major change on this blog very soon so stay tuned…thank you

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Recommended Resources Mentioned In This Post

1.definition of business

2.importance of having a product to sell

3. poor bloggers focus too much on blog post

4.Your hosting