I’m no pro blogger, but blogging does make up a large part of my business now. People start blogging for many numbers of reasons including mummies on maternity leave looking for an outlet. For most people, it starts as a bit of fun. You become part of an ever-growing, welcoming, supportive community. You start receiving products to review, go to amazing events, stay up until 1 am blogging as a labour of love. Then PR companies start offering to pay you. Pay you to write! Advertise and maybe expenses and you realise you can start making money, earn an income from blogging. This is when you need to decide and make a distinction between a hobby and a job. If you decide to go with a job then you really need to be wearing a proper business hat and leave the hobby behind!
- Register self-employed. This is paramount. Even if your earning are minimal it’s good practice to get into and it’s also the law. You must register self-employed 3 months after you start trading – trading can be classified as advertising and marketing even if you physically take no cash you are still trading.
- Branding. Think about your brand, how it looks, what it says about you, your business, your blog.
- Set goals. Proper grown-up goals that mean something to your business like where you want to be in 5 years, financial goals, aspirations (many bloggers dream of getting their work published on Huffington Post) but make them SMART goals. With tangible, realistic, results and not have 100 Facebook likes by mid-June.
- Be organised. Diaries events, block off writing sessions, review sessions (sometimes just finding the time to sit and make/cook/play with products is 50% of the job so put it in the diary!), networking times and family time.
- Be professional. Have an up to date about me page and also a hire me/work with me page, which details what work you can do, brands you have worked with and how companies can contact you. I also have a published articles page which links to articles in magazines, online, crowdsourced and guest blogs I’ve written. It’s a great CV for those looking to become freelance writers.
What top tips do you have for turning your blog hobby into a business? If you have enjoyed this post do follow me on Twitter.
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