I’ve started a blogging business.
Why am I telling you this? Well, John has often written about blogging as a business , so when I started my own blog I asked if I could write a guest post about it. He suggested that, rather than just write one post, I write a series charting the progress of my blog. This of course presents me with a problem: what if my blog doesn’t get anywhere? John’s attitude to this was straightforward: I’d better make sure it does get somewhere! Here then, is the first of these posts.
The blog is entitled Chess Material, and you can find it at http://www.ChessMaterial.com. As you’ve probably guessed, the topic is the game of Chess. If the title looks odd and/or artificial, please take a look at the “about” page for an explanation of the title.
Motivation
I am an enthusiastic chess player. I play at club level and in weekend tournaments. Recently I decided to take active steps to improve my play, and one of the known best methods of doing this is to go back through your own games, find the mistakes, figure out what you could have done better, and make notes. Basically, a debriefing process, almost exactly the same as is used on software development projects (and projects in many other fields of interest). Anyway, rather than just keep my notes in my own files, why not blog them on the web, I thought – that way, hopefully, other people will get involved too, and we can all learn.
This may make the site sound more like a hobby than a business, but I put it to you that the best businesses are the ones that (a) are fun, and (b) have passion behind them. This is as true of blogs as it is of any other type of business. Note, in passing, that a business does not have to be a full time venture – although doing this full time would be my dream come true!
Business Model
Onto the business side of things. Here I want to discuss two things: how the blog is marketed, and how it makes money. In both cases the approach is typical of pretty much any blog. Note that one of the great things about starting a blogging business is that the startup costs are so small. For a blog like this one, the main investment is your time - you will need to commit about an hour (sometimes two) a day to writing posts (and hopefully replying to peoples’ comments). If the blog takes off, so may well need to devote more time to it. From the purely financial point of view you might as well give it a try - i.e. you don’t need a demonstrable business case like you do for more traditional businesses - because the costs are so small.
Here’s what you will need:
- Web hosting and a domain name, which you can get for about 30 GBP/year in the UK. I recommend Heart Internet, but there are many, many options. Some are much cheaper, but (in my experience) you get what you pay for - particularly when you need support!
- Blogging software, which there is no need to pay for. The most popular is WordPress which is free. Note that if you’re hosting is with Heart Internet, installing WordPress is as easy as clicking on a link
- An authoring and publishing tool, such as BlogDesk - again, free. This provides a word processor rich enough for writing web based articles, and a facility to publish them directly to WordPress bases blogs (I think it can also handle some alternatives, but I’m a WordPress user, so I haven’t looked what they are)
- An account with a provider of PPC ads, such as Google’s Adsense. When I set up my company’s Adsense account it was free, but I don’t know if that is still true (but even if not, I can’t imagine the cost will be prohibitive)
Here are the steps I’ve taken (or will be taking imminently) to publicise the blog:
- Simply email all the chess players I know who have email addresses. Also just tell people about it
- I’ve put up a PPC advert using Google Adwords – this has brought very little traffic to the site, but it does give me specific information about which search phrases produce page impressions
- Get it linked to from other sites – I’ve put a link on my chess club’s web site, this article contains a link, and I’ll be contacting as many others as I can
- I’ll be emailing the editor of my local chess league newsletter (which is also published on the local chess association web site – i.e. visible to web spiders). Also I’ll seek out, and do the same thing with, other regional newsletters
Here are the ways the site makes money, or I plan to use to make money:
- Google Adsense – currently the only revenue generation on the site at the moment (it’s currently still early days)
- Book (affiliate) sales – once there’s plenty of material on the site I’ll contact Amazon applying for an affiliation (past experience suggests it’s best to wait until the site is more plentiful than it is at the moment), thus making money from book sales. Note that I think for books, Amazon is really the only outlet that makes sense
- Affiliate sales of chess sets etc. - there are several mail order chess suppliers who offer affiliate schemes
The Story So Far….
I started the blog in the last week in April. So far this month it has attracted forty unique visitors and four comments. I have also managed at least one post per day – essential for a successful blog, you must keep up the momentum!
The comments I have received (on and off the blog) have been very positive - people have said what a good idea the site is, and they hope I keep it up. Also, looking at the chess blogs I can find on Google, mine seems to be filling a gap - there are many blogs talking about what’s happening on the international chess scene, but not many about a club player’s attempts to improve!
I’ll keep you posted.
About Me
My name is Mark Radford and I live with my family in the Birmingham (UK). I’ve been playing chess at club and tournament level for seventeen years, with several tournament wins behind me. By day, I work in software development.
This was a guest post by Mark Radford a friend of mine who I’ve worked with a number of times.
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
Sorry Mark, I don’t think you have a business here.
You’re trying to turn a hobby into a business and there simply are not enough people interested in the subject. And those that are, don’t spend enough money.
To prove my point:
First, Amazon has only one chess book in the top 10,000 best sellers. It’s probably only selling about 10 copies a week. Your commission is going to be in pennies if you even sell any.
Second, Google is showing AdSense ads on your site that can be bought for a few pence and I doubt you will ever have the traffic or the click-thru rate to make that pay. In fact I doubt you will even make the minimum payment level for Google to send you the money.
By all means prove me wrong, but I doubt that you will. You’re too far down the long tail with this and nobody make money that far down.
I’d have to disagree with you on that Simon. Sure it’s not the best niche to pick if Mark’s goal is simply to make the most money possible. However I do believe he can make a profit.
Well John, the only way to find out who is right and who is wrong, is for Mark to come back in a few months and tell us all how it’s going.
Good Luck Mark.
I hope you can make it work.
Cheers, Simon.
There you are Mark, some added pressure - make it work or you make me look daft!
Note that in the motivation section of my article, I mentioned that analysing one’s(chess) games, figuring out what you did wrong and what you could have done better, is a known method players use to improve their play. Possibly I did not make it sufficiently clear that this is something I would have done anyway, except that I decided to blog about it instead of keeping my notes private. My point is that I would be doing most of the work anyway, so why not take the extra step and try it as a business!