What is the goal of your blog? It’s a simple question really, just not one that is easy to answer at times. You may have many goals for your blog. Do you want to have lots of readers, have a place to express yourself, or do you want to earn money from it?

When you have an idea of what you want from your blog, you’ll have a clearer plan.

My goals have changed over time, and in the course of the change, I’ve had to change my path. When I first started writing my blogs, I wrote them for me. I really didn’t care if I had readers, I wanted to be able to have a voice and express myself. Over time, I started to enjoy when readers would comment, and I realized I liked that extra traffic. The question became do I change my voice or my path? Was I now writing for my readers, or writing for myself?  I chose to stay in the voice that I was comfortable with, but also add in some questions so people had something to respond to. It led to more interaction.

What about making money? Many people blog with the intention of selling ad space, or blogging for bucks. That’s all well and good, but if you lose that voice that people enjoy, you may lose your readers. Without readers, there isn’t much monetization going on. Traffic brings bucks and advertisers, and readers want something good to read or chew on.

It’s a fine balance between doing both. Be sure to put personality even in those $$ posts, so that the reader gets something out of the mix.

If you write for pleasure and for advertising, how do you find your own personal balance?

What do you get when you work with paid blogging services, besides extra money? There are other benefits that you may not have thought of.

Networking is an added bonus. Some of the paid blogging companies offer blogs, message boards or links to check out some of the blogs they offer. Working to network with other bloggers is always to your advantage. Find blogs that are similar in topic to your own and link into each other. See what other bloggers are doing to i

You may find an increase in traffic. As more people get to know you and your writing, they may frequent your blog more often. This all ties back into the networking. You may also find that you’re anchor and keyword targeted article is showing up well in search engines, which may in turn bring you more traffic.

With some companies, the more work you do with them, the more they know they can rely on you. You may get extra work, when they know you work in a timely manner, and write strong posts for them. Also work to go above and beyond what is asked of you, and you may find extra work in that inbox.

The more you write, the more comfortable you get writing. You may find yourself writing stronger pieces than you had before you started. On the other hand, this can backfire if you choose to get lazy. Think of your long term goal for your blog, and keep strength in mind.

 What do you get when you have 1 blog and you’re using multiple paid blogging companies? You get a lot of different rules and terms of services. Each company sets their own rules on how we write, what we say, and what goes before and after our posts. Whether we agree with those rules or not, it’s up to the individual company to set their own rules. As a blogger we have choices to make. We can agree with those rules and abide by them, or we can stop writing for some of those companies.

Keeping your voice relevant is key and deciding what goal and purpose you want your blog to have is important. Where is your blog headed, and do you see your blog improving, declining or staying stagnant? Do you find your blog has changed over the process of using paid blogging services?

One of the things I do every few months is go in a cycle. I have multiple blogs and I’m more passionate and particular what I put on some blogs versus others. That makes me question myself at times. Why do I care more about one blog than another? Is it the type of content, is it the work involved, or is it that I’ve got a higher standard on one blog over another? When you are honest with yourself, you’ll find room for improvement.

If you aren’t sure if you’re sticking to your higher standards for your blog, ask one of your friends or regular readers if they think the quality of your blog is the same they’ve come to expect. Has it changed since you’ve started adding money to the mix, are your posts still relevant?

I’ve made changes, because I’ve been doing this for awhile now. I examined what I was writing, how often I was writing, and looked at what was working and what wasn’t working for me. I decided what I wanted out of each blog, and the path I wanted it to follow. Each blog has it’s own path to follow. Everyone has their own ideals of what they would like to accomplish, and how they’d like to get there. Envision where you’d like to see your blog next year or two years from now, and ask yourself what you would do differently to grow it or help it improve.

I’ll be back to review another company next week. This week, this particular topic is a hot spot on some forums. Heated discussions bring about ideas, different opinions and weaknesses. Rather than walking away from a heated discussion exhausted, confused or frustrated, ask yourself what you can get out of the discussion.

My response was to ask myself what I want from my blogs, and am I headed in the right direction.

paid blogging, paid blogging companies, blogging, blogs

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball, and yesterday was one of those days. My husband took part of the day off yesterday, and we ended up going out for most of the day. It was a nice break, but before I knew it, Wednesday had passed! So here I am on Thursday morning posting the next review about another paid blogging company!

We’ve previously looked at paid blogging companies: PayPerPost, Blogitive, Blogsvertise, Sponsored Reviews and Loud Launch. Today, we’re going to look at ReviewMe.

ReviewMe is based on a directory search. People can go in and request a review from a particular blog. Your blogs are rated based on rank, traffic and other factors. If an advertiser is interested in a review from you, you’ll be notified via email that there is an offer available. You can then choose to accept or decline the offer. Again, each post has it’s own set of rules, so be sure to read what is required of you before you accept the job of writing the post.

One of the things I like about ReviewMe is that you can adjust the pricing on your blogs. You decide how much you want to be paid for a post. Remember that they will take 50% commission, so if you set your price to $60, you’ll see $30, and the other $30 goes to Review Me.

Another thing ReviewMe has started is offering jobs in a marketplace. Sometimes advertisers will choose to place their opportunities in the marketplace. These jobs pay a flat $5 fee to the person writing the post.

One nice aspect of ReviewMe is they have a tag cloud on the left side of the page, so you can see what topics are hot if you’re an advertiser. You can then look at some of the top blog offerings in that topic and make a decision easier. If I click on the tag “Business”, a list of blogs come up that meet that tag. They show me the price range they are offering, along with blogs ranking in their system. With 36 pages of blogs to choose from with all different styles and price ranges, the advertiser is bound to find the perfect fit for their job. Of course, if you are looking for this topic feel free to keep my own business blog BizMark Tech in mind!

If your an advertiser, “ReviewMe” also offer custom proposals, which may help you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Happy Blogging! Deb

Welcome back to the Paid Blogging series, I hope you’ve been following the blog; some great information has been added regarding plug-ins, great blogs to check out, CSS information, traffic and more. So far we’ve looked at four different companies that offer paid blogging options. Today we’re going to look more close at Loud Launch. Loud Launch works a little differently than the others, but has the same goal and purpose, to create buzz and promote information, services and products.

When you sign into Loud Launch, you’ll go to the “Live Campaign” section of your dashboard. You’ll then see the list of current jobs available. Loud Launch uses icons on the right hand side of each campaign offer letting you know whether the campaign is still active, if the campaign is running low on funds, or if the campaign has stopped.

When you select a campaign that interests you, in a center column, you can click on blog offers. What this does is show you how much you’ll be paid to blog about this particular campaign. If you have multiple blogs registered, you’ll see each price based on your page ranking. I have a few blogs listed with them, and each one has a different price. I choose which blog and price I want to work with. With Loud Launch, jobs are not assigned, you choose what you’d like to write about.

One of the unique things about Loud Launch is sometimes they will ask you to include a press release link at the bottom of the post. Sometimes when you click to get the link, it tells you it isn’t including one. Each campaign is different, so make sure you follow along as you go.

When you select a campaign, it will tell you what key word or phrase they would like you to use as the anchor, and what link they would like you to link to. They also list the word count they want, and sometimes may even request a specific title, though only some do that. Read each job carefully before starting.

Loud Launch accepts blogs after they are 60 days old, and as long as they are written to regularly by someone over 18, and are written in English.

Join me next week as I review another site.

Happy Blogging! Deb