2009 will mark even more growth as more people seek alternative revenue sources as the number of unemployed around the world grows in the midst of growing economic turmoil. As a blogger, your job is more secure than many other professions, although you still need to know what do and when.

There will be some changes in the way that we have to blog in order to be successful, and that may mean that you have to cut down on the amount of time that you spend at your computer doing “non-blog” related stuff.

A Few of the Major Changes + What You Need to Do

1. Major sites that distribute advertisements (revenue for bloggers) will become affected by the decline in spending. But, wait. I thought advertising was increasing on the web?! In fact, it still is, but more businesses have to cut down on the amount they spend on advertising, focusing on creating better value. Therefore, some of the revenue will be directed away from the smaller bloggers and go to where they can get more value from each click – perhaps focusing on search advertisements where all details can be configured, as in the case of Google AdWords.
2. With the steady increase in people online and blogging, more people will resort to “tutorial-based” sites that help them learn how to do something, in which they will learn how to do something (i.e. blogging). This won’t have a profound impact, but has to be noted, as with a need, there must be a resource to fill that demand. 
3. You will need to make cuts in terms of how you will spend time blogging. Rather than socializing with others through Twitter and other social services, you will need to create less downtime between posts, ensuring that you meet your goals, especially from blog networks that you may be working for. People new to the blogging scene may start with blog networks (with more possibly popping up) as a way to generate a small side-income.
4. It will become increasingly important to expand your network of sites. Even if you only have a personal blog and another blog that you use to promote a certain hobby of yours, you should think about expanding your small “network.” You might not think of it as important, but you need to realize that as you increase the number of total visitors to your sites, revenue and readership will also increase. Time will have to be spent more wisely, but you should be able to overcome this factor through the earned revenue. 
5. Start Your Own Business. While most people who start blogs are considered owners of the blog/business, you should focus more on blogging seriously. If not, you will never have the drive and motivation to continue blogging for profit. Get off Blogger and purchase your own domain and hosting. Within a month or two, provided you did have a small base of readers and traffic, you will see a resurgence in traffic and revenue as people who wouldn’t normally purchase or click on ads through a Blogger-hosted blog would now that you have your own domain.
6. Focus on off-line services. With your blogging skills, write a book about something you enjoy. It isn’t always easy to pitch an idea to a publishing company, but once you have a solid idea, you can go anywhere. It is increasingly easy to write a book, especially if you don’t go through one of the leading publishers. Secondly, you might want to consider off-line services that teach other people how to blog. It might be a somewhat crowded niche, but there will certainly be someone who needs help getting their ideas online or wants to create a web presence. You need to be an expert, but the term is rather loose, and you could extend some of your knowledge onto people that truly want to learn how to do it.
7. Focus on on-line services (other than the main blog). Thee are several ways to extend your reach online. Several of them include newsletters, on-line services, eBooks, membership services, and other products that could generate income or provide value to your readers (which translates into revenue if you went to sell your blog). As in most ventures online, you have to be sure that you launch the product(s) properly or they will end up being a complete flop.
8. Be a risk taker. If you’ve started a blog and have some type of revenue and daily readers, you have taken some risks that others have not been able take – thus, they don’t have as many readers as you. The more risks you take, the more you have to gain. People who don’t take risks aren’t going to win – they are going to remain where they are, and have no chance of ever seeing the future, what gains might be had if they had ventured off the main road.
9. Fail. You will need to have some major failures during the year to ensure that you have some reference points as to how successful you’ve become. Without failure, you won’t be abel to have success. It’s as simple as that.
10. Don’t follow trends. People who follow trends will end up in the same position in the end as everyone else who jumped on the bandwagon. In lieu of what is happening in the world, you shouldn’t be on that bandwagon right now or any time soon. See what works and what doesn’t, then make a decision based off what does. Constantly improve on that and you will surely come out the leader.
11. Brand yourself. If you aren’t able to create a strong demand for what you have to offer, people won’t return, nor will they seek out your products/services. Become a master at the powerful social networking tools available to distribute your brand/name/sites across the web. The key is remembering that the more references to your sites/name, the more opportunities you have of winning new customers, commenters, or income (based on your goals).
12. People will be spending less time online. Due to dire situations in the market, some people that normally spent hours each week online will try other methods of earning (if blogging/Internet work wasn’t working), so you will need to ensure that all your content is visible from the start. Some people will wholeheartedly reject this idea, but more people will want content that is just there - no loops to jump through to get to the content, no pop-ups or fly-over ads that obstruct their view from what they demand – your knowledge, skills, and/or services.
13. If possible, leave. If things aren’t working for you, it might be time to consider resorting to other options, apart from your main efforts, that are still related to blogging, but more along the lines of freelance work that doesn’t involve running a blog yourself. This way, you’ll be able to focus more on creating content than all the admin aspects of blogging.

My Goals

These are a few of my main goals in terms of what I want to accomplish in the upcoming year and beyond. I’ve kept it quite general to give you an overview of my main focuses.

• Continue growing this blog and all other properties online.
• Focus more on what is most important, including creating a network of sites that readers value and provide resources that can’t be found on the web elsewhere.
• Grow subscribers and increase revenue to have more freedom.
• Learn more skills to produce better-quality posts and blogs – from the CSS/XHTML perspective and beyond.
• Consolidate services to become more productive and cut down on time spent trying to use multiple services for things that could be accomplished using one.
• Write more frequently on all blogs and diversify the subjects of the content.

Conclusion

What are some of your goals, if you have created them? How will you maximize your potential in the new year, and how will you take advantage of new opportunities as they arise?

• Will you change any of your previous bad habits? 
• How will you rebrand yourself in the upcoming year to distribute your band more effectively?
• How will you speed up the brainstorming to publishing aspect of writing new posts/content?
• Can you still remain an effective blogger when you have to run multiple blogs?