Make Money Blogging: 3 Reasons Your Blog Posts Make Great Information for Sale

Passion: If you blog, you are most likely passionate about the subject you’re blogging about. As most bloggers make nothing from their blogs, passion is the driving force behind them. And, if it isn't, the blog will likely fade away quickly.

Don’t believe me? Curious about how much (or how little) the average blogger makes? Read the article, Average Blogger makes $20 to $50 per Month for an inside look. The stats ain’t pretty folks.

The point I want to drive home here is, if you spend time blogging, money is a long ways off and passion is what gets you through the tough time.

First-hand Knowledge: Most bloggers start out with a passion for something they know about, or have an interest in learning about. So, it’s first-hand information; information that’s either discovered along the way, or expanded upon from lessons learned.

This type of information is invaluable to those researching a topic because it lessens their learning curve. Take for example my post entitled What’s the Difference between a Website and a Blog? In it, I talked about what led me to wonder about this and the process I went through to decide which one was right for my business.

If you were thinking about getting a blog or a website and/or were in the process of redesigning one, this type of information can help you make choices that could propel your business to the next level.

Built-in Audience: Most bloggers have an audience. It may be an audience of one, or one of thousands. But, an audience is there. And the longer you blog, ostensibly, the larger your audience grows.

This means you have to be doing all those things it takes to grow an audience, ie, posting good solid content, then marketing and promoting it. There are a gazillion ways to do this – article marketing, guest blogging, employing good SEO tactics, etc.

This is the hard part – because it takes reaching out to others. Setting up a blog and writing is easy. Getting others to become loyal readers is the hard part. But, it can be done over time if you have the other two components in place (ie, you are passionate about your subject and you bring a sense of first-hand knowledge to it).

I’m passionate about freelance writing; particularly about the various ways there are to make money doing it. It fascinates me because I remember a time when the possibilities didn’t seem as limitless as they are now.

Some days, I overflow with so many ideas that if I typed 200 words a minute, I’d still never be able to get all of my thoughts down on paper. I have a list of 75 ebooks I want to write, ideas for website and blog expansions, e-seminars I want to give, etc.

My point in relaying this is that when you’re excited about a subject, you literally overflow with ideas. The well never runs dry. This is the stuff good ebooks are made of.

Which brings me to the last part, ie . . .

How Do You Know When the Time is Right to Start Selling Your Blog Posts?

Three factors should be in place before you even consider starting to sell your blog posts: time, recognition and body of work.

Time: You should be blogging for some time before selling your blog posts. I don’t put a specific time on it because everyone blogs differently. Some will post 3, 4 and 5 times a day, whereas others may post 2-3 times a week.

A good ballpark measure though is 12-24 months. While that may be long, it’s not if you’re in the information selling business for the long haul. And, you must be in it for the long haul if you’re going to be selling your own information products (eg, your blog posts).

Recognition: As in, becoming viewed as somewhat of an authority in your niche. You don’t have to be a leading, rock-star type authority either. But, one with some credibility. You can easily establish this by sharing honestly and openly with your readers and via some aggressive marketing, especially in the beginning.

Body of Work: Of course, before you sell your blog posts, you must have a cache of them – a body of work, so to speak.

Using myself as an example, I’ve been blogging since February of 2005. As of this writing, I’ve written somewhere around 420 blog posts. This doesn’t include my website, which has another 300+ pages I could dig through to complement my blog posts. I have so much information I could wade through, it’s painful.

I could organize it all into one giant ebook, or go through and just pick out the posts on any number of niche topics (blogging, SEO, ebook publishing, etc.) and do a smaller ebook.

See how in the information selling businss time is on your side?

To Make Money Blogging, Which Blog Posts Should You Sell?

Micro niche: This tip assumes that you have a niche blog.

If you have a lot of information, I’d suggest breaking it down by microniche. Using the example I cited just above, if I were going to sell my blog’s info, I’d do this.

In my opinion, you provide more value for the buck this way because you delve deeply into one topic. You can also expand upon posts in the ebook in ways that you might not have in your initial post. Maybe certain things have changed in the industry that you want to reflect on, or a site no longer exists, or new sites crop up that would be of interest.

All of this can be used to expand upon a topic, providing more intrinsic value to the reader.

Most Popular Posts: Another way you could slice and dice your information for sale is to write an ebook which includes just your most popular posts – kind of a “best of” your blog. Or, you can select just one really popular post and expand upon it.

I’m doing this with the post, 8 Keys to Making Between $75,000 to $100,000/year as a Freelance SEO Writer. It garnered so much feedback and questions from readers that I have a lot more to say on the subject. So, I’m turning it into an ebook. And, I’m not the only one.

Daniel Scocco, the author of Killer Domains, got the idea from this ebook from his post The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names, which he talked about here.

Selling Information Online is the Perfect Work-from Home Career

The ways that freelance writers can develop content and sell it is limitless. Part of my mission at InkwellEditorial.com and InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com is to get freelance writers to think outside of the box about how to make money with their writing skills.

The ability to write is a gift (many of us forget this), and using it to benefit you and secure the future of your family should be tops on your lists. One of the best ways to do that is to develop and sell your own information products.

Now, writing and selling information online is not easy, as so many on the web make it seem. But, it’s not incredibly difficult either. If you have a passion for a topic, write reasonably well and learn how to market proficiently, yoou can make a very good living selling your blog posts – and any other kind of information -- online.

How to Sell Information Online Without Doing a Thing

Quick Tip for Online Information Sellers:  I recently migrated all of my ebooks (well most of them) to e-Junkie, an instant download site. Read about that here. In essence, once you upload your ebooks, you don’t have to worry about order processing. Money is automatically deposited into your account. And I can’t even begin to tell you how good that feels. 

Whether you want to sell ebooks, market affiliate products or make money blogging, instant downloading is simply the best way to sell information online.