For a number of reasons, blogging has become the de facto marketing platform for businesses serious about online marketing. Search engines love blog content when it is well-written because it keeps websites stocked with fresh, original content. The more often a blog is written to, the more often search engines return to crawl a website. This has created a rich opportunity for serious freelancers to capture residual income by managing commercial blogs.
Most business owners either don’t have time to write their blogs or have no interest, but they understand the importance of a blog for branding and marketing purposes. That’s why they will pay you a monthly fee to write their blogs, manage their comments, delete spam, and essentially keep them on good terms with the search engines.
The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with the necessary blogging tools. These include but are not limited to:
- Web hosting
- WordPress (the premier open source free blogging software)
- Keyword research tools
- Social promotion tools
- Search engine optimization best practices
Once you are familiar with these tools and learn how to use them, which you can do in a matter of days or weeks, you can start marketing yourself as a freelance blog manager.
How To Find Customers And Grow Your Blogging Business
Your first task is to set up your own blog. After all, why would anyone trust you to manage their blog if you don’t have one?
Next, sign up for accounts at freelance websites such as Guru.com and Elance.com, then find other blogs where you can write information-based guest articles. Your articles will be published with your bio containing back links to your blog. Be careful, however, that your articles aren’t self-promotional. Finally, promote yourself through social networks by building relationships with your target audience.
Self-employed blog ghostwriters can make $300 to $900 per month per blog, depending on where you live and your skill level. But there is a limit to how many blogs you can write yourself. After you reach your limit, you can hire entry-level writers and train them to help you write blogs. While you can make decent money as a blog writer, you can make better money as an editor because you’ll make money on other people’s production.
It’s YOUR Reputation, Manage It Well
Managing a blog ghostwriting service requires attention to detail and attentiveness to several reputations – yours and your clients’. You can best protect your reputation by having your writers send you their work before your clients see it. Be a relentless editor. You’ll also want to protect yourself by not allowing writers and clients to contact each other.
Do not hire third world writers. Respectable businesses want to know that their content is in good hands. You can only guarantee that if you stick with people whose first language is English. Be relentless in your hiring practices.
Changing writers on a blog may cause problems, but I’ve always managed to make clients happy by explaining that sometimes writers move on to better opportunities or find other work. Business owners understand those things happen.
Go Forth And Conquer The Blogging World
There can never be too many blog ghostwriters. Every day, more businesses pop up online. Some of these are brick and mortar businesses. Many more are online businesses. They all need a blog for one simple reason: Search engines love blog content.
If you want to take your freelance writing career to another level, learn to write blogs and build a residual income managing commercial blogs.
Allen Taylor has been managing commercial blogs for seven years and is the author of the e-course Blog Marketing for Writers. He is currently in the process of reinventing himself as a servant to independent authors and publishers through his website Taylored Content. He is the publisher/owner at Garden Gnome Publications.