I have been making money blogging. A lot of money blogging. In the last 5 years I have calculated that I have earned above 70,000 USD in blogging alone. And I have managed to do so very easily and without marketing or any other related costs. The money was guaranteed every month and I got free editing and proofing services.
Here is my simple secret.
I have made Blogging a part of my job description. In the last 5 years I have been working for an open source company with only 20 employees, and for the one of the biggest and most profitable hi-tech companies in the world, with more than 80,000 employees worldwide. And they both paid me to blog as part of my job.
And you can do it too:
Why should your employer pay you to blog?
1) Pre-sale and lead generation – if you blog about your product or service your company is providing (in a honest and positive way) it could generates leads and bring costumers
2) Market credibility – blogging around the general topic of your company. For example, blogging about web-security for an security consultant company could really demonstrate knowledge and even market leadership
3) Better visibility of the company site in search engines – building relevant content and generating organic links to your site as part of blogging will raise the company page rank and visibility in search engines
4) Workers motivation and growth – from my experience, blogging raises motivation and enables personal growth
Why should you Blog for your company
1) You get visibility inside your company as a technical/business authority
2) You get market visibility as an expert in your field
3) You gain experience as a blogger
4) You get paid to blog and blogging is fun ๐
Tips around professional blogging
1) Write only about professional topics – at least at the beginning of the process nobody wants to hear about you, or the new ergonomic mouse you got from the employee shop.
2) Ask for reviews and editing – 90% of all my blog posts are reviewed and edited by friends/boss/marketing/wife before publishing
3) Try to release your professional blogs under Creative Commons licence. This way there are no IP issues over your blog post.
4) Think hard about every post – remember you are representing a company and not just yourself รขโฌโ if in doubt go to tip #2 and do a review with your boss/mentor.
Conclusion
Professional blogging, if done right, is clearly a win-win situation for both employers and employees.
CC image.
BTW, Spacebug is not related to the mentioned companies and I enjoy making money from spacebug in the “traditional way” from Google ads