Tips to keep your blog in the black in 2009

2009 may see a rise in blogging, but it’s also going to be the hardest year in the history of blogs financially. News broke earlier today that Weblogs Inc is cutting blogs (and bloggers), b5media has gone through cuts, and web advertising across the board is heading south.

Professional blogs, for the sake of this post, blogs that earn money and sustain part or full time employment, are better placed to survive the recession than heritage media, but that doesn’t mean many of us won’t be doing it tough.

There are things you can do to better place your blog going forward.

Cut costs

Writers
If you’re sustaining a multi-person blog, the sad reality is that altruism doesn’t pay the bills. Gawker Media led the pack with broadscale blogger layoffs last year, and many are now following. From experience, there’s nothing worse than having to layoff people, but likewise, the longer you hold off making the decision to reduce your head count, the worse the overall situation can be. Cutting some now to save others, unfortunate as it may be, is a sensible business decision, even in the usually friendly space of blogging.

Servers
As companies go out of business, hosting providers have more inventory on hand, and we’re already seeing early signs of price drops. This is a buyers market for servers, if you can save money, it’s worth a look. That comes with one proviso though: do your homework. Sometimes paying top dollar if it means reliability, service and speed it’s worth it. When we went through our last upgrade (and a big price increase) the realization I made was that although I’m paying a lot more upfront, the site loads quicker and has less issues, so it’s helped us with growing traffic, and most importantly retaining it.

Advertising

Scale
The number one tip to counter a drop in advertising is to drive more traffic. Even at lower advertising returns, you still have the power to bring in money relative to extra traffic. Yes, it hurts when that extra traffic only brings in 50c CPM or less, but it’s extra money to fill the void of the premium advertising that has been lost.

Diversify ad providers

In good times, it’s easy to rely on one or two ad networks to sell your ads, but these aren’t good times. See our post on trends in blog advertising for some ideas. On top of that we’ve also experimented with affiliate ads, and even multiple display advertising networks trying to find the best returns on our inventory. It can be annoying from a management perspective, but if you can get even an extra 10-20c CPM through experimentation with different networks, it can and does count.

Expand

Hire
On the one hand you could be cutting writers, but if you have a little leeway, it’s also never been a better time to bring on new writers, particularly if it helps drive traffic and extra ad revenue. The sad truth is that the glut of cuts, and downward returns on ads has seen in increase in supply of available writers, and downward pressure on pay rates. At the extreme, you could find a way to go down the Huffington Post path, which is to not pay your bloggers at all, but we’re not all that clever (well, I’m not).

Top sites are paying around the $2,000-$2,500 mark at the moment for f/t writers, with some significantly more for name talent. Part time gigs at the same level are around the $700-$1500 mark, give or take.

For sites under 1 million page views, rates for part time writers are around $250-$500, although only at the top of the band.

I’ve heard that it’s near on impossible to pick up a $500 gig at the moment from numerous sources. There are sometimes hundreds of applicants for each position.

I’ve not confirmed this directly, but I’ve heard of some sites expecting p/t equivalent loads at around the $100 mark (by p/t I mean 3-4 short- to mid sized posts/ day). That when the jobs come with a set rate. Revenue sharing is back in vogue with a number of new sites I’ve been following offering only that. That can work sometimes for reasonable pay rates, but usually not for the majority; still, better than nothing if you’re looking for a writing gig.

Proviso here: there is always a degree of you get what you pay for. The more you offer, the better quality candidate you’ll have apply, but even then, in this market, there is some amazing writing talent begging for work at any rate. Also bringing on a new writer should always be considered in returns; no point burning money on extra writing staff if there’s no additional traffic, or not enough return to cover the pay of the writer.

Diversify content

With or without an extra writer, one strategy that may help growth is diversifying your content, either as part of your existing blog, or in a subsidiary blog or new outright blog. If the aim of the game is traffic, then going wider may help.

Conclusion

Strangely looking back at this post, much of this advice isn’t really new; similar ideas that have applied to all businesses for over a century. These are hard times, but making some hard decisions, and even taking the odd risk can set you up to ride our the worst of it, and if you’re really lucky you may even thrive; your competition is under just as much stress as you are.