Biggest Decisions Bloggers Must Make

Aspirations.  As bloggers, and people that are in a competitive, but potentially equally rewarding field, we all have them.  During the process of trying to maximize our potentials, there are huge decisions that we must wager in order to meet our personal goals.

These choices either make or break a blog, have major impacts on the success of it, or result in a severe drop-off of page views and readership.  Personal desires are the main causes for wanting to succeed, while other people want to be able to produce the best content for their readers.

Image Credit: [O*] ‘BharaT

Many of these verdicts that bloggers make may not even be based off of their own opinion, but the “influential” bloggers that have tried and true tactics for surviving in this seemingly demanding career.

While many of the points listed below may pertain to certain parts of a blog’s life, others may last the whole span of the blog and therefore inhibit either success or failure.  It is all in the eyes of the blog owners - whether his or her tactics will truly lead to prosperity.

Monetization/Profitability Aspect

1. No Ads or Ads - This has to be the largest factor that divides web content today.  The average web user would rather have everything free and see non-diluted content, while web publishers would like to take advantage of opportunities to supplement or fulfill their incomes.
2. Established Advertising Networks or Private Ad Sales - Depending on the background of a blogger including the past success/failures with each type, a blogger can either choose to take the “easy road” by smacking AdSense on their site or develop trusted advertising partners.
3. How Many Ads to Place - The growth of the “paid blogging” venture by many new, inexperienced people immediately led to the thought that more ads are better, which in most cases, isn’t necessarily true.  This factor is determined largely by a blog’s growth and subscriber count, as well as smaller indicators such as Page Rank, Alexa/Compete, Technorati, and overall blog value.
4. Types of Ads - Text links, paid reviews, banner ads (of varying sizes), feed ads, and so on are all forms of advertisements that blogs can integrate.  The most successful blogs are known to lean towards one type as their main source of income, but it is more important to spread potential revenue through several streams of ads.
5. Tactics to Make Money - To see faster income growth, some bloggers tend to want to deceive guests and long-time subscribers by only presenting one side of services or fooling them into clicking on revenue generators.

Post Quality/Frequency

1. Post Frequency - Have you made the decision to post frequently - several posts per day or went in the direction of only a few per week?  Blog growth and the way people access your content can be largely attributed by your posting habits.
2. Time and Date Habits - Another aspect of post frequency is the time of day or week/time interval between posts.
3. Post Length - Even though you should think about varying post length, readers become accustomed and attuned to a style that they enjoy.
4. Details - As a blog grows, this is an element that will likely gradually change, to meet the particular needs of your site/visitor demands.  In your posts, do you include important details that will let readers make an educated decision based on what you present them or do they have to do the research for themselves?
5. Revision - Only a few blogs exist solely because their visitors don’t care about their spelling and grammatical errors.  Spend a few minutes after writing each post to hit the spell check or revise sentences that simply don’t make sense.
6. Consistency -  In this area, have you made the most use of your style sheets to style all posts, graphics, and post styling the same?  If not, you are lacking an important factor which prevents your blog from standing apart from the rest.

Site Appearance/Theme

1. Theme Changes - There comes a time when everything needs a makeover.  At what point, have you thought about changing your theme or adjusting small areas to create a more dramatic/pleasing look for your visitors?
2. Connection - Be sure that your design fits the purpose of your site.  If not, your readers will not be able to connect and you won’t be able to expand on services that could potentially grow your site.
3. Premium or Free Route - Premium/purchased themes generally draw in more visitors due to their unique and personalized feel, while most free themes can be easily customized.  How much money are you willing to spend to see a return?
4. Organization - Spend time organizing content.  In the long run, it’ll pay off with more easily accessible content and more traffic from visitors navigating through past content.  In the same topic, clean up your sidebars.
5. Additional Social Networking Widgets - What types of ways to you share/plan on sharing content?  Have you thought about adding widgets for blog networks?  Evaluate each widget for their value and read opinions from others which have taken advantage of the service.

Stats/Analytics

1. Deep Analyzer or None at all- Stats are able to provide insight into whether you need to work on developing your site or are taking it in the right direction.  Some bloggers swear by analyzing each and every visitors while others don’t use a single service but instead rely on larger services such as Compete and Alexa.
2. Types of Services - In respect to analyzing traffic, the decision as to whether you will use a service for tracking where users click (heat maps) or simply Google Analytics for a wide-scoping amount of details.
3. Regret or Change - When you sense that your blog isn’t going in the direction that you predicted it would, you, like many others, should realize that something needs to be changed.  However, in many cases, you feel ashamed that it isn’t turning out right and slow down posting, stop updating, and eventually, never open up a blog editor again.

Growth Models and Expansion

1. Blog Networks - Once you have established a netowk of several smaller blogs, you can grow a blog network, similar to what Splashpress Media and b5Media have done.  It doesn’t have to be on the same scale as those, but even a few sites linked together will provide visitors a sense of reliability and you will see respect grow.
2. Guest Posters/Writers - Keeping up with continually changing news stories or developing engaging content can be a challenge especially when your subscribers expect a fair amount of posts per day.  Hiring writers or allowing guest posters will permit the growth of your blog, while allowing you to take occasional breaks from posting.
3. Paid (or free) Services - Introducing paid services, after growing your blog’s prestige, will further exhibit your skills in a particular niche.  This can be a good source of money if you take the approach of premium services or member-only areas.
4. Determined or Conservative Expansion - Do you live life with a determined approach to outstretch your limits?  When blogging, you might find that you want to constantly create new blogs to fill other niches you’re interested in.  Others will find that they are happy exactly where they are and will only accept new growth as “expected”.

Schedule/Family Life

1. Impact on Personal Life - If you feel that your family won’t accept you for your new-found hoppy or goals, blogging probably won’t go over with them well, either.  Contemplate the consequences of each action and determine whether blogging is your best alternative to another hobby.
2. Metal, Physical, Social Health - While the tolls on your body from blogging may be no different than any other job, they are more obvious if you work a full-time job and blog on the side.  This issue approached mainstream news with the report that “Writers Blog Till They Drop“.
3. Schedule - As a blogger covering news or maintaining some sort of consistency between posts, will you be able to develop around a potentially already busy schedule?  As a general rule, are you able to devote a minimum of 1-2 hours for writing a new post or updating/changing your blog?
4. Communication - Now that your family accepts your hobby turned full-time job, can you communicate to them about how your blog is growing?  Tell them about the process involved, and perhaps they’ll start their own blog.
5. Off-line Life - A note on maintaining good health: Follow all safety procedures from your computer manufacturer about taking breaks, exercising, and eating a balanced diet after being on a computer for a long time.

By no means is this a complete list of challenges bloggers face.  Alternatively, it is an outline of the main decisions bloggers must face on a constant, daily basis.  What decisions have you made today while blogging?  Have you thought about the decisions above, or were you forced to make a few of them as a result of failures?