5 Ways To Hedge Your Bets as a Pro Blogger

Credit: topfer

Quitting your day job and going solo as a blogger is a huge risk for a lot of people. In these tough economic times, the last thing you want is start a business without having planned for it. Even if you have a long-term plan for your blog, you can’t predict the future. Your niche could disappear or you could lose one of your major revenue sources over-night. Smart bloggers always manage their risks by taking into account those worst case scenarios. You don’t want to be too reliant on one revenue source or blog to make a living. Putting all your eggs in one basket will come back to bite you over the long run. These 5 steps can help you reduce your risks and protect your business against the unexpected:

• Start new blogs: managing multiple blogs can be very difficult, especially if you are having trouble managing your current ones. With that in mind, almost all bloggers that I know have multiple blogs. If you focus all your efforts on one blog, you are going to get hit badly if it is penalized by Google or when your niche goes away. You can think of your new blogs as a part-time gig. Once you can handle more, you can put more effort towards expanding them.
• Create your own product: every blogger needs to have a product to sell. These days, it’s not tough to create a training product or write a book. Your product can not only help your blog grow, it can give you a strong source of revenue that you can count on in tough times.
• Take advantage of new developments: writing blog posts, editing them, and posting them should not be the only things that you focus on. It never hurts to keep up with the latest technologies and developments in your niche. I am still kicking myself for not giving Twitter a try at first. Adopting and testing new communication channels never hurts.
• Build many outposts: being on Twitter and Facebook is only a start. All bloggers should take time to build as many outposts as they can handle for their blogs. That way if one of your top sources of traffic dies, you always have other sources to count on.
• Start a membership website: I am a big fan of membership websites. They not only let you make more money from your work, they also help bring a certain amount of revenue on monthly, bi-annual, or annual basis (depends on your business model). If you get enough people to join your membership site, you will be guaranteed a certain amount of revenue each month, meaning that you can focus more on creating killer content for your members.

Putting all your eggs in one basket can only lead to heartbreak and headaches. Having multiple sources of revenue and traffic never hurts