Why You Should Treat Your Blog As A Business And Invest

Kumar Gauraw

Investing in my future is the first thing I had to learn when I started my journey as an entrepreneur. It was an obvious but difficult habit to cultivate as I did not have a business background. I did not understand the value of investing in the beginning.

Investing In Your Blog As Business Is Important To Growth

However, with the help and support of my coach, I got over it and learnt to invest appropriately.

Long before I had this blog I learned that business owners need to think very differently than employees do. I needed to learn to think like a business owner if I intended to become one. Among many important things, relevant to this discussion, I needed to learn three important things:

  1. I needed to decide who I chose to listen to.  I had to learn to make wise choices.
  2. I needed to learn that business owners invest while employees spend.
  3. Employees look for reimbursements while business owners look for return on their investment.

Why Treat Your Blog As A Business?

Blogging is no different than any other career activity. In every field, you always have a choice. You can choose to operate an activity like a hobby or you can get serious and become good at it. If you treat blogging as a hobby you will never succeed (which you shouldn’t expect anyway). Even then you will need to invest a little bit of money and time to manage it like a hobby.

However, if you take it with a professional seriousness, this definitely has the potential to become a significant income generator for you. There are many success stories with blogging and none of them became successful without getting serious about it.

Look around today, every successful entrepreneur has a professional quality and well maintained blog that supports their business. If they did not treat their blog as a business, why should they spend their time and money to grow and maintain it?

I think that investing in your blog is an investment in your own future. You decide how much of your time and money you are willing to invest in your future.

Investments That Will Enrich Your Blogging Career

Speaking of investment choices for your blogging career, there are things that have the ability to increase your chances of success if you take them seriously. Let’s discuss some of the important investments that you should consider to make:

  1. Invest In Your Website’s Customization

If you are using one of the Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, there are thousands of pre-designed themes you can obtain and use. Many are free and many more are premium themes that you can buy.

However, no theme can represent you precisely right out of box. So, there is a need for some  customization work that gives your website the look and feel you want. Your website is your face on the Internet. It is your brand name on the Internet and you want it to be the best it can be. It is important that you invest your time and/or money in the right customizations.

  1. Invest In Building Your Website Traffic

This is a challenge for most entrepreneurs online. You may have one of the best designed websites in the world. You may have high quality ideas, products and services that you truly believe that the world needs. If no one comes to your website, you aren’t going to make any difference.

Driving traffic to your website through social media, through search engines and forums, etc. is important to your online entrepreneurship. That means you need to invest your time and/or money in building a steady stream of web traffic to your website.

Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, Twitter marketing, Search Engine Optimization work on your website are some of the most common methods of building traffic among the almost endless list of methods. All online marketers and bloggers use some or all of these methods. If you want to see success online, you should explore your options as well.

  1. Invest In Updating Your Blog Regularly

We are talking about blogging here. Business or not, if you have a blog and you wish to keep it going, your blog needs to be updated regularly. There is no need to update it daily or weekly as such. However, you need to have some kind of schedule and stick to that schedule.

You may publish new content such as announcements, educational material, interesting news, coupons, contests, etc. on your blog depending on your blogging strategy. Doing these things requires more time invested than money. This investment is important and critical to your blogging success.

  1. Invest In Networking With Other Bloggers

Passionate Entrepreneurs love networking because they know the value of networking. The same rules apply to you as a blogger. You can network with other bloggers in the following ways:

  • Comment on their blogs.
  • Share other blogger’s helpful posts on social media channels.
  • Guest blog on other blogs.
  • Participate in local blogging networking groups in your area.
  • Interview other bloggers or invite them to guest blog.

These things obviously require some time in a consistent manner. If you are in a time crunch, hire someone who is good at it to get the job done. Either way, this is a very important investment you will need to make.

  1. Invest In Tools To Empower Your Blog

If you have a job, most probably you use a lot of tools to do your work on a daily basis. Do you realize your employer owns all those tools? If you have a business, having the right tools to do the work should be a no-brainer for you.

When it comes to blogging for business growth online, here are some of the basic tools your blog needs. If you don’t have them yet, it may be time for you to begin thinking about getting them in place:

  • Your blog needs an Autoresponder to begin building your email list.
  • You need tools to manage your social media presence. You can use HootSuite or Buffer like tools.
  • If SEO isn’t your strength, you may want to save time by using the tool Scribe SEO to optimize your WordPress blog.
  • You may want to invest in a premium backup service to auto-schedule daily backups of your blog and all of its files. This is something like buying an insurance policy.

Above are just a few examples. Your blog and business may need a few additional tools. When there are needs, it is okay to invest in the right tools but you must budget for them.

Over To You For Your Thoughts

Do you invest more money or more time in your blog? What tools do you use to manage your blog and business? I’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts in short or long in the comments section. Thank you kindly!

Kumar Gauraw

Posts Twitter Facebook

Kumar Gauraw is a Personal Branding & Social Media strategist helping entrepreneurs and skilled professionals achieve personal and professional success by developing leadership and leveraging the power of the Internet, Blogging and Social Media.

14 Awesome Thoughts So Far, Add Yours Now...

  1. Hi Kumar,

    Thank you for writing another great article.

    You asked: “Do you invest more money or more time in your blog?”

    Although I have recently invested in AWeber for autoresponder service,
    I invest more time, as I seek to learn and make improvements, many of which have come from your invaluable help.

    Thank you kindly,
    Bill

    • Bill,

      Thank you for your continuous words of appreciation and encouragement. You have been a true blessing to me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

      Regards,

      Kumar

  2. ime ibanga

    Hi Kumar,

    The information provided in this article is substantially useful to me, in my quest to set up a website that will reflect my personal/professional branding and other interests. Thank uou!

    • Hello Ime,
      Good luck in your quest and by the way, if I can be of any help, please feel free to ask!
      And thank you for sharing your thoughts.
      Regards,
      Kumar

      • ime ibanga

        Thanks, Kumar! I’ll definitely seek your help as soon as I’m ready to get going on the website project.

  3. The biggest investment to do is to invest in yourself 😉

  4. Ron Williams

    Kumar,
    As always insightful, succinct and informative. You are superb at telling people what they need to know about blogging and web hosting. Only someone with actual experience could provide the extent of understanding you are laying out for your readers.

  5. Always invest is one of the powerful key to success. Great job for this article.

  6. Great Article, Keep it up! Every blogger should know about this. Thanks for sharing.

  7. Treat Your Blog Like a Business or You Will Fail. Cheerio! … I report to work like every professional in the morning and close in the evening.

  8. Hey Kumar, I made something similar on my blog.

    Take time to read on!

    BTW excellent writeup!

    ~@Khajamoin1

  9. Investment is a must if you choose blogging as your career 🙂
    Not all the free resources are gonna help you!
    Amazing post there Gaurav. Keep posting such great articles!

  10. invest is one of the powerful key to success.Every blogger should know about this.very thanx for this sharing.

  11. very well written Gauraw.You are right that its very important that business owners need to think very differently than employees do.Its very important for business owners.

Please Note: My goal is to host interesting conversations with caring, honest, and respectful people. Therefore, I reserve the right to delete comments that are snarky, offensive, or off-topic.