How To Run Your Blog Like a Business – Part 2: Business Planning

Posted on 29. Apr, 2009 by Ashwin in Business Blogging

We had started off with an introductory post on “How to Run Your Blog Like a Business – Part 1 : An Introduction“; it’s now time to get into specifics. You can’t get started on practically anything – much less a business– without a plan. So what plans would you make for your blog? How do you get started? What must be included and what must not be? This post explores that part.

There are typically two broad aspects of your plan that must be covered: the what business part and the how to run it part.

Start with a profitable business model

A blog is just a platform and not a business by itself. So, content business — a business that sells information is a no-brainer, easy, quick and profitable form of a business model. Of course, there are other business models like running an e-commerce site but using the blog as a channel development or business development tool rather than a business by itself.but I am not getting into it right now.

Needless to say, your content distribution must have a plan of its own. Given below is a plan I had made originally before I started off on blogging and thinking of blogging as a business. I think it’s a perfect platform to start from.

You may ignore the “client” part since this mind map has been done to discuss what a professional blogger blogging for other clients was supposed to be doing. But the rest of the map sits fairly accurately with the business plan for the blog.

How do You Plan To Run This Blog Now?

If you notice the diagram clearly, you may see that the running of the blog contains two important parts : Content Development part and the “Drive Traffic” part. You may now decide on a strategy to go about this as efficiently as possible.

As an entrepreneur, you have to think of ways you can contribute and hence keep costs low, while trying to leverage you time and allow others to work on certain areas of your business. For instance, if you are good at writing great content, you could choose to do the “content development” part yourself while you invest in a Virtual Assistant to drive traffic for you.

Decide on the Niche

Plenty of information, including a post on blogging elements, already exists on how to find a profitable niche for your blog. I won’t cover anything about it except to state that posting original content on your blog is very important regardless of what niche you choose to operate in.

Take Action

All the planning in the world goes to naught if no action is taken on it. Planning looks good on paper and has these strange tendencies to screw up in reality which still isn’t a justifiable excuse not to take action on a plan you had so painstakingly deployed. So get out there and start doing. Success should come to you, sooner or later.

Share and Enjoy: