Author blogs: Are you blogging for the right reasons?
5 Bad Reasons for Author Blogs
1) Getting Rich Quick
Nothing infuriates me more than those books and blogs promising writers they can make a gazillion dollars of “passive income” with a blog in the next month if they take this overpriced course or buy that book of rehashed advice from 2005.
The only people making a lot of “passive income” from blogging are the people selling the overpriced courses and worthless advice. Pyramid schemes always provide “passive income” for the people at the top of the pyramid. That’s not going to be you at this point. The boom is over.
Blogging is work. Writing is work. There’s nothing “passive” about it. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying.
I used to subscribe to a couple of hype-y “how-to-blog” blogs, but I had to unsubscribe because these people are getting so desperate. One blogger now sends an email 15 minutes after you click through to read his post saying, “You’ve had enough time to read my post. Now share it to Facebook.”
Creepy!! I’d just shared his post to Twitter, but I deleted the Tweet and unsubscribed. You’re not the boss of me, dude. And I’m not responsible for your bad life choices. If you really were making the fortune you claimed to be making a decade ago, why didn’t you invest it?
Another sad truth is that Internet ads pay less than they used to. You’re not going to make more than pennies a day from ads (especially “affiliate” ads that only pay when somebody clicks through and buys something.)
Your best bet is to get a deep-pockets sponsor to bankroll you, but even so, that’s not likely to pay a lot of bills.
Medium, the popular blogging platform started a couple of years ago by Twitter and Blogger founder Evan Williams has not found a way to make money. You probably won’t either.
Author blogs are for promoting your own brand. You’re making money by not spending it advertising elsewhere, but that’s not going to buy you a house in the Hamptons.
2) Overnight Fame
The days of Julie/Julia over.
Yes, you can still raise your profile with author blogs, and I strongly recommend you use a blog as one tool for getting your name out there.
But nobody’s likely to become an overnight sensation with author blogs in these days when everybody and his grandmother has one.
When Julie Powell started her Julia Child blog in 2002, the term “blog” itself was only 3 years old. Blogging was a whole new concept.
Now, WordPress alone, with about a quarter of the market, hosts more than 76.5 million blogs.
The odds for instant fame are not on your side. I highly recommend that authors blog, but we need to be patient.
3) Exploring the Inner Workings of Your Psyche
Journaling is a great aid to mental health. It can also get your creative juices flowing. I’m a firm believer in those “morning pages” Julia Cameron talks about in The Artist’s Way. Whenever I’m going through a rough patch, I go back to morning journaling and it always helps.
But you know what I don’t do? I don’t publish the stuff. Because good journaling is by definition bad writing. It’s dumping your unresolved issues on the page so you can examine them. Not other people.
They don’t want to. That’s why shrinks charge the big bux. Other people’s unresolved issues are amazingly boring. And think what the trolls and fake news nuts could do with all that personal stuff about you if you do get famous.
This is why paper journals are still such a great boon to creatives. You might even want to get an old fashioned diary with a lock on it. Ruth Harris has some great recommendations for lovely journals in her Gifts for Writers post.
Not much of our lives is private these days, so grab what little privacy you can still hang onto.
Don’t blog your angst. Think of your reader, not your own needs.
4) Revenge
Blogging anonymously in order to dish the dirt on teachers, colleagues or even celebrities is likely to backfire unless you’re brilliantly funny. (Or you’re a clever Macedonian teenager who knows how to make money generating ridiculous disinformation for the “alt-right”.)
If you’re a brilliant humorist, why not be proud of it and use your own name?
There’s no point in being an anonymous snarkasaurus if your goal is to be a bestselling author someday.
Blogging anonymously is a waste of time, because the whole point of author blogs is to get your name out there.
Put that anger into your private journal (see above) and use it in fiction later.
5) Attracting an Agent
There may have been a time, back in the early days of the millennium, when agents perused blogs looking for clients.
I don’t think they ever looked to blogs for novels—because novels all about structure, and the structure of a blogpost shows nothing about your abilities to structure a novel. But they may have gone looking for nonfiction.
However, that was the Jurassic period in terms of Internet history.
This is the age of the e-query and agents get hundreds a day in their inboxes. They don’t need to look elsewhere for amateur writing.
The way to attract an agent is to write an outstanding professional query.
If you’ve got a popular blog you think you can turn into a book, then put together a fantastic book proposal and a query that will knock their socks off.
But don’t expect agents to wander by your blog with an offer of representation any more than you’d expect them wander into your bedroom with a six figure advance. Doesn’t happen.
Lots of blogs have been turned into bestselling books, and I think for nonfiction writers, starting your book as a blog is an excellent idea.
But don’t expect an agent to come calling without some serious effort on your part.
5 Good Reasons for Author Blogs
1) Getting Your Name on Google’s Radar
A static website gets less traffic than an active blog, so the search engine spiders don’t notice it.
The more active the site, the more likely the spiders will find it. (Spiders will begin with a popular site, index the words on its pages and follow every link found within the site.)
A blog that’s getting hits and comments will get noticed. It may take a month or two, but it will get Google’s attention, then when somebody Googles you, you’ll be on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (known as a SERP.)
Last year I did an experiment starting a new once-a-week book blog, and found it only took about 4 posts to get it on the first page of a search for “Anne R. Allen’s Books.”
Whenever you query an agent or publisher or reviewer, or you send a story to an anthology or literary magazine—pretty much every time you want to do business online—the first thing people will do is Google you.
A blog is one of the best ways to get your name on that all important SERP.
2) Establishing Yourself as a Digital Age Professional
A blog is like your own international newspaper column. Writing to deadline and coming up with a topic once or twice a week is great for building your professional writing muscles. (I don’t recommend blogging more often than that when you’re trying to build a career writing stuff other than blogposts. Some people call this “slow blogging.” I recommend it, especially for novelists.)
If you treat your blog as an aspect of your job as a writer, you can prove to people in the industry that you’re a professional. If you’re querying agents or editors, this can make all the difference in whether they decide to do business with you.
Plus writing for a blog teaches you to write for the digital age.
By checking your stats, you can see immediately what posts are getting the most traffic and learn what works for a Web based audience.
You’ll also learn to use SEO, keywords, bulleting, subheaders and white space to draw the eye through a post. This is useful for composing any kind of content for the Web.
Once you’re a published author, you’re going to need to know how to write guest blogposts (one of the best methods of marketing your book) as well as other Web content. Why not start practicing now?
3) Networking with Other Writers
Blogging is a form of social media, and social media is about, well, socializing. Blogging provides a great way to socialize with other writers. The writing blogosphere is generally friendly and welcoming.
Joining a writer’s blogging circle like the Insecure Writer’s Support Group or a genre blogging group can do amazing things for your career. You can find opportunities for great things like:
- Blog hops
- Anthologies
- Boxed sets
- Joint promotions
- Exchanging beta reads and critiques
- Interviews and spotlights
- Sharing information about agents, publishers, and warnings of possible scams
Blog hopping is especially useful for new writers because it gets the attention of those spiders I mentioned in #1
Besides, writing is a lonely job and while you’re writing away in your garret you may not have time to get away to the local café to hang out with IRL friends, but your blogfriends can give you moral support through those tough times of rejection and bad reviews and cyberbully attacks.
They may even help more, because they’ve probably been through it themselves.
4) Controlling your Brand
Social media comes and goes. Facebook can kick you off for imagined infractions. Goodreads can attract trolls. Nasty people can invade and turn once-friendly groups into nightmares.
But a blog is your own domain. You can kick out the troublemakers and make your own rules. If you want a politics-free zone, you can have it.
In these days of fact-free “news” stories and cyberbullying, you really want to have someplace online where you can interact with people and nobody will come barging in with fists flying, trying to pick a fight.
Blogs are good for that.
You can also create your own look and the atmosphere that will attract the kind of readers who are most likely to be interested in your work.
5) Interacting with Fans and Attracting Readers
I think author blogs are one of the best marketing tools out there. So does agent Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media.
A blog is a fantastic place to make friends with people who may later buy your books. If you’re blogging about the topic or setting of your novel or memoir, you will attract people who are familiar with the place or the situation you deal with in your book.
These connections are pure gold.
It’s not that you want to try to hard-sell your book to everybody who wanders by. But these people can become contacts who can introduce you to corners of the Internet you might never have discovered otherwise. They can also end up introducing you to agents, editors, writers’ conference directors, and other people who can make all the difference in your career.
A blog can help you make contacts all over the world. Some may buy your books and spread the word about them, some may be helpful with research and a few may even turn into personal, long-time friends.
What’s better than making friends? That is a really great reason to blog!
***
What about you, scriveners? Do you have a blog? Do you monetize it? Did you fall for any of the “get rich quick” promises of some of the blog gurus? Have you blogged and given up on it? What did you get out of blogging?
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) February 5, 2017
NOTE: We’ve already had 2 big power outages in my neighborhood this weekend and we’re expecting another massive storm, so if I don’t respond to your comments, it’s because I’m living the third world life here on the California coast. 🙂
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Third-world life on the California coast? An intriguing comment.
Re anonymous blogs: I agree. However, if you’re trying to establish multiple pen names, blogs under those names would accomplish a purpose. I can’t envision enough hours in a day to establish more than one web persona, but some authors manage it.
Kathy–I don’t recommend multiple pen names. That’s something authors used to do in the old days when publishers only allowed an author one book a year, so they had to use pen names if they wanted to write more.
But these days, an author is expected to turn out several books a year under one name as well as blog and maintain a social media presence. To do that for more than one persona is impossible for most humans who also need to eat and sleep and have family, friends and sanity. I’m a big fan of sanity. 🙂 .
Yeah, I’m waiting for the power to go out again. We’ve had at least 15 outages in the past six weeks, some for 8 hours at a time. I guess it’s mostly because the 5 year drought killed so many trees. Now that we’re getting storms with fierce rain and wind, it knocks them over and they pull down the power lines. Makes everything an adventure!
Some female authors set up male personas because they believe their work gains greater acceptance if editors think a male is behind the words.
We’ve been down to California twice during the drought. Is it over now?
Good luck with the turnabout in weather conditions. Stay safe!
Kathy–It’s infuriating that has to happen in the 21st century, but I do understand it. But if they succeed, then they probably won’t want to be writing under the other name too. Initials usually work fine. Did for J,K. Rowling.
Northern CA is out of the drought and there’s a great snowpack, so the rivers will have water for some time.. Here on the Central Coast, we’re pulling out of it with the rainiest January on record. SoCal is still hurting. I hope they get more rain with tonight’s storm.
HA! After having blogged at Wordmonger for five years or so, I enjoyed great belly laughs from #1-4 on why not to blog. Then you really got me on #5 — love the vision of agents out trolling blogs for authors, spending all that extra time they have looking for us, begging us to send them our brilliant manifestos.
Thanks for another fine post.
Charlie–You’d be amazed how many new writers still believe that if they post excerpts of their unedited first drafts on blogs, that some agent will discover them. One of those urban legends that merry-go-rounds through the Web and will not die. Sigh.
And I know the Wordmonger is putting in a swimming pool and tennis courts at Chateau Perryess as we speak, paid for by all those big bux coming in from that lucrative blogging!
Anne—Excellent! Everyone else—Play attention to Anne. She knows whereof she speaks.
Thanks Ruth! (Although of course we’re the exception. We probably shouldn’t spill the beans about how Spielberg is making a film of this blog, starring Meryl Streep and Melissa McCarthy. My lips are sealed!)
Good post. Totally agree on all counts. I’ve kept my blog much longer than I’d planned. I always said I’d stop when I got 1 million hits, and that was a while ago and I’m still there. I also like doing it because it keeps me organized and in control. I often use the blog as a reference when readers ask me questions about a series I wrote and I can’t remember off hand. Frankly, I can’t remember which books go in order in any series I’ve done, so I have the blog as a reference for that. I also keep two blogs, one main blog on blogger, and a back up on Word Press. I import from blogger, which I have to go and do right now otherwise I’ll forget 🙂
Ryan–Great to see you here! I’m glad you approve. You’ve been blogging even longer than I have.
As you know, I moved this blog from Blogger (about the time we reached 2 million hits) because we needed WordPress’s enhanced security plug-ins.
But I started up a back up book blog on Blogger just to be safe. Partly I wanted to test out my theories about starting a new blog, and partly for back-up. This blog gets attacked by hackers and pirates so often, but the little Blogger one isn’t such a big target, so it seems to be safe.
Morning pages! Wow, that brings me back. I love Julia Cameron’s books. I’ve written some serious stream-of-consciousness stuff doing those.
Great post, and I especially like the reasons FOR blogging you list, Anne. I find that one a week is about all I’ve got time for, what with writing other stuff, networking, etc. etc.
Controlling your own brand is especially critical. I recently got rid of my old Blogspot blog, and not long after, was shocked to read about Dennis Cooper, and Google wiping out his 14-year-old blog. Talk about a loss of control. Best to have your own work controlled by, uh, you.
Michael–Good to see you here! We look forward to you guest post in March!
There’s been a revival recently of “Morning Pages” journaling–I first saw people talking about it on Twitter–and I’ve gone back to the practice. I find it gets rid of a lot of the junk in my brain that comes from the news and social media and helps me get grounded.
Dennis Cooper’s experience is not unique–Amazon authors often get their work pulled for very arbitrary reasons–so there is no 100% protection from robot overlords censoring your work. One complaint can get work removed and it’s very hard to get it back.
But authors can take some precautions. 1) Backup your blog on a regular basis, 2) If you post erotic images (especially “barely legal” or “step-sibling”) or extreme violence, do consider a self hosted site that has more protections than a simple Blogger blog.
Thanks, Anne. Looking forward to it!
The backing up your blog advice sounds like good old common sense, but I can’t say I blame Dennis if he took it for granted that Google wouldn’t erase him. Must have come as quite a shock.
Great advice, as always! There is another good reason to blog–because you enjoy it! Of course you need to keep in mind all the business reasons you listed above, but if you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it–it shows in your posts. But if you enjoy it, then when your readers find your blog they will have a fun experience getting to know their newest favorite author.
Kerry–Absolutely! Blogging because it’s fun is the best reason of all. And nobody should blog if they don’t enjoy it. Readers can tell. 🙂
I started a blog to establish my platform and instead found friends who became fans and supporters. Way more than I ever imagined.
Blogging still works for those who are consistent. Shame so many are giving up and post every once in a great while. (And thank you for mentioning the IWSG. We have a lot of authors who just post once a month for the monthly Wednesday posting, but it’s enough to keep them consistent and active.)
Alex–You certainly are one of the great blogging success stories. Your blog turned into a movement!
I think it’s fine for authors to blog once a month. It’s much better to have a “slow” once a month blog than no blog at all. The trick is to blog on a certain day, so people will know when to expect you. The IWSG monthly Wednesdays are perfect for that.
Great post, Anne. 100% bang-on. Blogging pays so many returns for me. The best is “discover-ability” by raising my online profile and being noticed by influencers as well as increasing an audience for book sales. It’s hard to put a true value on blogging but there’s no doubt it’s the best return on time investment I’ve experienced. I think the key is regular posts with decent content and keeping the SEO movement up. Blog posts also forces me to commit to deadlines and tight writing. IMHO, all authors should have an active blog as part of their profile – there are far more good reasons to blog than bad.
Garry–I’ve had the same experience. I have a career because of this blog.
You’re absolutely right that the key is consistency and good content. Writing to deadlines and writing for a “drive-by” Web audience teaches you so much about how to write for a contemporary audience.
I’m glad that you stress having an “active” blog. A once a month blog is active and can help your career. An abandoned blog can hurt, because that’s what comes up in a Google Search and it doesn’t speak well of you. So authors do need to be professional about their blogs.
I totally agree with this comment, and in fact, Anne, I totally agree with everything you say in this post: Blogging once a month is enough to keep a blog “active” – I did the same after a bout of intense blogging (once a day, 6 days a week): at first, it was great, traffic grew rapidly every day, my Alexa ranking bumped up satisfyingly (even getting close to yours for a few days!) but then…I couldn’t keep it up! Too demanding really.
And then what happened next was worse: I got bored.
So that was the end of that experiment!
Now I write for Impakter and when I do, I post the beginning of my article on my blog and then ask readers to click through to read the rest on Impakter, if they’re interested of course. I think a lot do, because that approach has revived my blog and kept it alive while not intruding in my life as a journalist and senior editor for Impakter…Great mix of activities, I highly recommend it!
Claude–It sounds as if you’ve found a great way to keep your blog going without much effort, plus you’re keeping things fresh. That’s the ideal!
It’s great if an author can do exactly what you did: start big–with 3 or more posts a week (6 would drive most people insane, but you proved it can be done) That gets your stats up and you’re on everybody’s radar. Then you can afford to pull back and do “maintenance” blogging. Very nice to have another venue for your essays so you can feed it from your blog. Congrats!
I do have a blog, which is combined with my website for my books (https://lindamayeadams.com/). One of my uses is to get my rather ordinary name out there (which is also why I include my middle name, which is such an unusual spelling).
In the Gold Rush days, I disliked how fiction writers were told how to do a blog by non-fiction writers and blogging gurus. They all said things like we should use a research topic from the book and blog on it as an expert and that we would draw readers that way. I thought then and still do that was utterly silly. It assumed that 1) readers interested in that topic would buy the book. and 2) that it was the only topic you would be writing on. I remember when I was working with a cowriter, we did a Civil War thriller. Cowriter blogged on CW firearms. Not one of the people who visited the blog would have bought the book. All they wanted to know was how much their grandpappy’s CW firearm was worth.
But I think another bad reason to do a blog for a fiction writer is to portray yourself as an expert of fiction writing. This was another thing that was told to everyone in the Gold Rush days, based on small business blogging. It resulted in a lot of writers who were starting a first novel and had no experience trying to blog as experts of fiction writing, all the while accumulating rejection letters from publishers because they still had a lot to learn. I was guilty of some of this myself in those early days and am loathe to blog on anything craft other than, “Wow! I learned this and it was pretty cool! Here’s what it is!). But I’ve seen many, many of these “expert” posts published with other touting them with “praise” over their expertise and most of the information is so incredibly wrong that it does a disservice to writers who want to be successful.
Linda–Amen to all of it! We all got soooo much misinformation in those days. I came to blogging as a published author and professional editor who already had a writing column in a zine for freelance writers, so it was natural for me to blog about writing and the publishing industry.
But I looked around and saw all these total newbies were giving out writing advice they knew nothing about. Ack!
But I gave out some bad advice too. I believed the people who said you needed a niche. But as you say, that only pertains to *business* blogging, not author blogging. Authors can blog about anything that will interest their readers. Nobody puts Baby in a niche. 🙂
I learned a lot by visiting Alex Cavanaugh’s blog. He blogged about anything of interest to scifi readers, and that’s a lot. And his blog sure took off!
More pearls of wisdom Anne! So much incorrect advice out there! What better place than to communicate with the world than on a blog? I can still remember the first comment I got from the orient – so exciting!
Barb–Since you’re the author blog expert that’s high praise! Thanks! I felt that way too. When my first little posts were getting comments from around the world, it was so exhilarating. Then I got a comment from a literary agent on about my fifth post. Wow! I had arrived. 🙂
It’s amazing how simple things are so amazing. When I was writing a blog post a couple of months ago about blog stats I realized that the majority of the audience is from India for one of my sites. I have no idea when that happened, but so excited about sharing with readers on the other side of the world.
I think your post is spot-on. Too many ‘insecure’ writers fall for pitches from so-called editors who charge big dollars and deliver garbage (one of my on-line writing buddies paid $7000 to an editor for his 100K-word thriller, and received a finished product filled with grammatical errors, poor punctuation, dangling participles, and incorrect spelling). A couple of my writing buddies and I share services with each other: we beta-read each others WIPs, copy-edit for each other, and critique cover designs. And it doesn’t cost us a penny.
Phyllis–Authors who think they’re going to get rich quick are sitting ducks for con artists and unscrupulous and incompetent service providers. $7000 for a bad edit! That’s outrageous!
Funny you should mention beta read exchanges! That’s the subject of next week’s post! I think they’re a fabulous way to save money and keep new writers out of the clutches of people like that.
Now here’s a thoroughly enjoyable post, Anne- as you know I just love blogging and I think it’s helped me a lot as a writer. It’s part of that “everything you write” rule, the permanent record you create as an author, more pages people could land on and find out about you.
I think my experience has included a hopefully-positive inversion of your #3 “Don’t”, about journaling and dumping thoughts in the proper place. No, not my most sordid confessions and fears, but one of the first things I set up on my blog was a compendium of information about my epic fantasy world. Freely available links, which I’ve been steadily filling in over time. Kind of like journaling, I find I can do Compendium material even when I’m “dry” on the writing. And of course I can point to that resource as I make other mentions, responses to posts etc. “talking shop”.
I’m only guessing but I think it helps with most of the “Do” side of blogging you identified here. Deepening the world without inflicting the world-building on the text of my WiP has helped. Plus the other series I developed, I really love them- they’ve helped me create talks for libraries and cons too. I’m ashamed how long my blog has been in hibernation but I’m resolved to get back to it soon!
Will–Blogs can be playgrounds for authors. They can be used for so many things! When I warned against “journaling” I was talking about the author’s personal issues–which are best dealt with in private.
Now your character’s issues–that’s something else. You can profile each one of your characters in depth. You can do detailed world building that doesn’t fit into the novels themselves. You can talk about the historical period–real or imagined. All of that stuff is perfect for blogging.
In fact a blog is a great receptacle for any kind of research. Last year I started doing some research on poison for my WIP and it blossomed into a whole series on Poisoning People for Fun and Profit. I think I’ll be turning it into a book of its own.
I didn’t mean this to be a comprehensive post on blogging. That’s going to take a whole book, too. Now if I could just find the time to write it. 🙂
Your first point, not having a blog expecting to ‘get rich quick’ really hits home. Lately I’ve been seeing this same sort of desperation on Twitter with getting followers. I’m followed by 3-6 people (or more) per day that want to tell me how to get 1,000 followers a day or get 5,000 or 10,000 new followers quickly just like they do and all for a ‘low’ fee. If you click through and look at the profiles of any of these people, they typically have far, far less followers than they’re saying is easy to get. Not very good marketing on their part…
Anne–Those Twitter “people” are mostly robots from some third world “click farm.” They sell fake Twitter followers that are other robots.
Business bloggers do this too. They sell fake “hits” to your blog in the 1000s for a hefty fee.
All of these purchased numbers are supposed to impress advertisers, who will then think an ad on your site will get in front of a lot of eyeballs. But since they are robot eyeballs and robots don’t buy stuff, advertisers are mostly not impressed anymore. This is why the price of blog advertising is so far down. So many people have gamed the system that there’s no ROI. Advertisers go elsewhere.
Hi, Anne, your post reminded me I need to get back to my little slow Good Reads blog. It’s really going at turtle speed now–about one post every two months. I’ve had a lot to contend with this past year but I have a new book out, as you know, and want to give readers a bit of background on “Equality” and how the anthology came to be. There’s so much to agree with in this post I have to keep scrolling back and forth to find all the gems. I agree with the importance of writing author guest posts on blogs to connect with readers, talk about your books, and your writing process, and especially book proposals. I had a 40+ page nonfiction book proposal for “Equality” with a short intro, contributor bios, list of contributor awards and honors, target audience and a short market analysis on books already out there that touch on the book’s concept. They’re not always great fun to write and take up a lot of time, but they pay off in the long run. Thanks so much, Anne, for another great Sunday post chock full of great information. Paul
Paul–I think an author needs to blog at least once a month to keep on the radar of fans and blog readers. News about the new anthology would certainly be of interest to your fiction readers, so that sounds like a good topic. .
Will do, Anne. I’m on it. Hopefully tomorrow. 🙂
Paul–Don’t push yourself. A major health crisis takes precedence.
Thank you for another wonderful post, Anne.
I started blogging last year with the idea of beginning to build my online platform (well before I needed it). I post twice a week and so far haven’t missed a post, which has been great for my writing discipline. I’ve found I enjoy blog post writing, which is quite different to my fiction writing, but the best thing is all the wonderful friends I’ve made through blogging. I know for a fact I would never have met many of them if I hadn’t started, and if that’s the extent of what I get out of it then it will be worth it.
Thankfully I read around a lot (and critically) before I started blogging, including this blog, so I didn’t fall for any of the terrible schemes you mention.
A. S.–It sounds as if you’re doing everything right. Starting to build a platform “before you need it” is the best way to do it, because when you need it (when you have a book contract or you’re about to self-publish) you’re going to have way too much on your plate.
And you’ve discovered the real #1 reason for blogging, which I put at the end of the post: making friends. The people you meet now can introduce you to your agent, your reviewers, your publisher and/or help you celebrate your successes and setbacks. They can make all the difference in your career.
When I publish an excerpt, or serialize a novel, or publish a story on my blog, I have no intention of submitting that to an agent or publisher. That’s purely a bid for readers, nothing more. In order to get a $100 cheque from Google for your blog, that would be a minimum of a million page-views, click-throughs don’t pay much either. I set up an affiliate link on one blog, and never earned a penny over the course of some years. The trouble with a writing blog and something like AdSense is that all the ads are of the ‘so you want to write a book?’ type, and most of your readers are a little more sophisticated than that.
Louis–You have found the sad truth that affiliate links and AdSense are not worth the hassle. And their ads can seriously diminish your brand. Even if you can sell ads for upscale products your readers want, it’s still not going to make more than pennies a day. I tried it for a year and it was just not worth it.
Posting excerpts and freebies on your blog for your fans is a great way to keep your fans coming back. I don’t recommend that unpublished newbies post unedited material on blogs because it can have the opposite effect. We need to be aware of what stage we’ve reached on the professionalism scale.
For the book I’m writing now, I haven’t published a word, I haven’t mentioned the title. But that book is specifically for submission. I really don’t know what stage I’m at.
Louis–If you’re a published author with a series, freebie extras on your blog or in a newsletter are a big draw. If you don’t have fans yet, I suggest keeping that stuff under wraps until later, when it can be useful for getting signups for your blog or newsletter.
If this is new material–do consider selling it to magazines. Depending of course on your blog readership. If you’re getting more hits than the average litmag, then it’s better to put it on the blog. But generally people read blogs for information and they only read fiction if they know the author or if the fiction has been vetted.
The fiction can be used in litmags to build your cred and make money. The blog can be more fun stuff for drive-by quick reads.
I may be the only person answering this whose blog gets no hits. I keep it up mainly because sometimes I want to go on record as saying something, and to post reviews of books that really struck me. I created it when I got an agent and was told I had to have a platform, but so far as I can tell having a platform has done nothing for me at all.
Still, it’s fun to mess around with widgets and web design every now and then. I’ve learned a lot about interesting stuff like responsive coding, css, bootstrap, and so on; which I would have been nervous about playing with, if anybody had been watching. 😉
Browneps–I remember that feeling when I first started blogging, “Oh, I can do whatever because nobody will read it.” But then people started showing up. 🙂
Obviously it was a whole lot easier to get hits 7 years ago than it is now, but there may be some simple fixes you can do to get some traffic. You might want to check out my two posts on getting more traffic on an author blog https://selfpublishingsites.com/blog-traffic-7-tips-authors/
Keep at it. Blogging will pay off in the long run.
bowneps, why not include a link to your blog when you post in blogs so people can find it.
Mark C, Because I didn’t think of it! Thanks for pointing it out. It’s at http://raosyth.com/blog/.
Good advice, Anne. I write a once-a-month newsletter through Writerspace which brings more people to my author website than anything I’ve done so far. They run monthly contests and it has generated traffic for me. It was suggested to me by a well-known publicist and I’m happy with them.
Patricia–I think one of the reasons newsletters have become so popular is the confusion between an author blog and a business blog. An author blog can be exactly like a newsletter, except it’s open to the public, so it can attract new readers, not just engage ones you already have.
So you can run contests or whatever either from a blog or newsletter, and the blog can arrive whole in an inbox just like a newsletter. But it’s interactive instead of static, like a standard website. I think a well-run blog is better than a newsletter, because it attracts new readers, but I know I’m in the minority.
Had to laugh about the reasons not to blog. I started blogging to have a good social network platform, which I accomplished. Now I write as a contract writer for one company and am no longer looking for work or to write fiction because I don’t have time. So I don’t really need the platform. But my blog helps many writers in the children’s publishing industry find an agent So for now, that is a good reason to blog. To be of service to others even though it is a lot of work.
Natalie–Sorry–your reply came through as a separate comment down there. 🙂
Natalie–You and Casey provide such an amazing service to the writing community with Literary Rambles. It is the best site around for finding in depth information about agents who rep children’s literature.
Like us, you two have kind of become “victims” of your own blogging success. 🙂 We know we’re providing a service and people depend on us, but it is volunteer work that takes a big chunk out of our work time.
But for the sake of the community, I’m glad you’ve been able to keep it up all these years!
Anne, what do you think about the value of websites as opposed to blogs? It seems a lot less stress to slowly build up a website where people can more easily find your articles. Blog articles tend to disappear as newer ones are written.
Mark–A blog is a website that can be set up any way you like. A WordPress blog can have a static front page if you like, and you can put the blog in the menu rather than front and center.
But if you have more than 10 posts on the front page the way we do, it tends to get awfully busy. We do have an “Archives” page where people can find all our most popular posts. (Click on “Home” to see what our front page looks like.)
The main reason I prefer a blog to a static website is that it’s interactive. This means there’s a lot more activity, so search engines notice it. That raises your profile a whole lot more than a static website where people can’t comment.
Also, a Blogger blog or simple WP blog is free. Websites cost money. I figure authors should save money when they’re starting out. Once you’re on the bestseller list, you may want a bigger, fancier site, but it can still be a blog.
Great article. Again. I deliberately avoided monetizing my blog. For the very reason, that I saw no point in bombarding my friends, and the very people I am trying to reach with junk ads. Particularly as a writer of (primarily) Christian Non-Fiction. I have seen a great many posts from “christian” writers, whose sites are bedecked with salacious, gossipy alarmist click bait. So I don’t have the time to run my own ad agency and manage all that as well as write. What you say is so correct, the idea is to promote your own work, not somebody else’s.
Leo–I thought that monetizing was a bad idea from the beginning, for exactly that reason. We want to keep control of our brand, and those ads can be so awful. Sometimes they border on criminal.
But a couple of years ago, when pirates kept stealing our content and spoofing the blog to sell ads, I succumbed and tried to do the monetizing thing for a year. Not the awful AdSense things, but trying the “ad agency” thing. What a silly mess. No money. Huge amount of work. Never again!!
Finally Barb of Bakerview Consulting came to my rescue and said what I’d suspected all along “an author blog should not be monetized.” She’s so right. Do check out her books on book promotion and platform building!
Anne, I’m curious about why you don’t think it’s a good idea to monetize an author blog. I totally understand not wanting a load of irritating ads, but what about selling your own books?
That’s exactly what I hope to do on the website I’m building for my fiction. I plan to have a sales page selling my books–eventually I’d like to make them available directly from my site (and not just a link to Amazon etc).
For nonfiction, I think there are more opportunities to monetize with courses, affiliate programs, direct advertising and/or site sponsorship, as long as it’s helpful to your readers, and not too much in the face.
Mark–By “monetize” I mean selling ads for other people’s products. As I said in the post, your author blog should be about selling YOUR books, not other people’s.
If you are qualified to teach courses in a useful subject, great. If you’re listening to the people who teach courses in how to make a gazillion $$ blogging by teaching courses in how to make a gazillion $$ blogging, then you’re part of a pyramid scheme that’s past its sell-by date. Don’t go there.
Thank you, Anne.
“treat your blog as an aspect of your job as a writer”. That hit home. I market through social media as part of my job as a writer. I need to step up my blog habit.
Thanks!
Cheryl–Blogging is a social medium, although people forget that. A blog needs to be social and interactive. The problem is that the “Make billions blogging” people have taken over and given blogging a bad name. Author blogs are such a different animal they almost need a different name. Maybe we should call them “author interactive websites.”
Great post, Anne. I have heard many fiction authors say that blogging serves little purpose, but I agree with all your comments on the advantages. I enjoy blogging – to me it’s another form of writing practice. I blog on any subject I think will interest my target readers, but mostly try to relate it to books or reading and I enjoy the opportunity to let my personality and my humour shine through. I also figure that if people read my blog posts and like them, they are more likely to download my free book to become a subscriber, or go to Amazon and buy my books. I can only manage posting once a month, but I figure a good quality monthly blog is better than four average posts.
Robin–That is exactly the right way to blog! (Do what I say, not what I do. 🙂 ) Good content once a month that’s fun and entertaining is way more useful than some weekly or daily slog. Be real, and talk about anything that will be of interest to your readers and have fun. That’s what an author blog is all about!
I spent so much time setting up a website that I ignored my blog for almost three years. Other than the occasional post updating my status, it just sat there.
But I’ve been keeping up with it on a posting schedule. Can’t say I get much traffic other than the blog group I’m in on facebook, but I will have to check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.
I don’t monetize my site or blog. I can’t stand it when I see ads on other pages, and if it’s annoying to me, then I won’t put it on my site. Like you said, it’s the one place I can control.
Christina–I think the only ads that are worthwhile are for your books and those of your guests Unless you have HUGE traffic, the ads only pay pennies a month. Why give up control of your site for the price of a cup of coffee?
I’ve been blogging for what will be 10 years this coming May. I don’t monetize (although I did give it the old college try back in ’08). When I’d first started blogging, it was primarily a place where I could speak without being trolled, censored or threatened, and where I could polish/practice my writing.
Stupidly, about 4 years ago, I switched gears and started a new blog and in the process probably lost about 99% of my subscriber base (had at one point almost 150 subscribers). Last year, I converted one of my Tumblr blogs to a warped serialized writing blog (theme is writing and the posts are like one very long serialized novel) and turned my current blog into a commenting blog for my Tumblr blog (Tumblr makes it virtually impossible to comment) with the occasional snippet thrown in for good measure (burn out is the bane of any bloggers existence, and that is what I currently have).
It’s a living, so to speak, but it’s something that I still enjoy doing.
GB–You’ve been blogging even longer than I have! I remember back in the early days, we were all hoping to get to that point when we had enough hits to have AdSense want us. Then I did, and realized I didn’t want them. 🙂 In those days the writing related ads were all for bogus Literary Agencies and my most popular posts were warnings about bogus Literary Agencies. 🙂
I don’t know anything about Tumblr, so thanks for the heads-up. I think commenting is one of the most important aspects of blogging, so that wouldn’t work for a lot of authors.
When we moved from Blogger to WP, we lost a LOT of subscribers, so I know what you’re talking about. People should weigh a move very carefully. A whole lot of people followed us in Blogger’s rss feed (over 2000) and we lost most of them. Moving a blog is a huge amount of work, and only a tiny fraction has to do with the tech.
Another great post, Anne. I like how you tell it like it is. You’re absolutely right when you talk about static websites and how Google’s spiders look for more dynamic websites and to have one you need to blog. Blogging can be hard work but I still believe in it, of course. I wouldn’t have a website without one.
Frances–I’m so glad you agree! That means a lot, since you’re one of THE book marketing experts. Blogging isn’t for everyone, and it does take time. But I think it has huge benefits.
I think so many writers started a blog because we were ‘told’ to do so. Only after I was a few years into it did I understand what it could be used for. For me it’s all about networking.
Susan–I see that everywhere. I think a lot of the agents who tell their authors to blog don’t know how to blog either so there’s a huge amount of pointless blogging going on.
But you’ve hit in the most important thing: Blogging is social media. Social media is social. It’s for making friends. It’s a way of having a seat at the table–your club membership.
Oh, wow. People actually do stream-of-consciousness blogging? I’m not even brave enough to write that stuff down in a private journal. “What if someone finds it if I get famous?”
I’m hoping that my blog serves all 5 of those good reasons. Why pick just one? I can only interact with fans/readers OR get my name on Google? That’s why I like blogging so much. A tweet only has enough room for 140 characters, and Facebook is more of a pain than I’d like. WordPress is perfect, in my opinion.
Sarah–I didn’t mean that you should choose just one from the list! In fact, that’s just a partial list–skimming the surface. Blogging has many benefits beyond what fits into one blogpost. There are many blogging platforms and they all have their benefits. But whether you blog on WP, Blogger, SquareSpace or on your own self-hosted website, the point is that you have an interactive site on the web where you have control and people can find you.
Sorry, I should have made the joke more clear. Too bad there isn’t a sarcasm font 🙁
I only have experience with WP so I can’t speak for any of the others. I wouldn’t mind something self-hosted some time in the future, but because I’m still a newbie, I think self-hosting is an unnecessary expense until I get more books out there.
Thanks for the response.
Sarah–I totally agree! Wouldn’t it be great to have a sarcasm font. Or at least a keyboard icon? Sorry I didn’t get it.
I’m 100% with you on using a free blogging platform when you’re starting out. That’s why I recommend Blogger and WordPress.com (as opposed to .org) for new writers. It’s usually all you need. Some people say YA authors should use Tumblr, which is also free, but GB Miller said here today that commenting is difficult, so that doesn’t sound good to me.
Some authors are using Medium as their only blogging platform these days, but I think you have less control there, since you need to be in one of their “publications” to get the most exposure. But It is free and has the cachet of being more cutting-edge and Millennium-generation oriented.
But personally, I think a free WP site is what I’d choose if I were starting out now.
Great post, Anne! I’ll be pointing my students to this one. Blogging is the top way I keep in touch with my readers. I announce my new books and gigs on there, between comedy posts. It’s a classy way to keep in touch, and you aren’t spamming readers all the time.
Melodie–Thanks for sharing! I’m glad to hear that blogging works for a bestselling author and college instructor as well as for a beginning writer.
I feel exactly the same way about blogs. I would rather keep in touch with a blog because it feels less spammy than a newsletter. It’s “classy” 🙂
These are the things I try to do with my blog. (How come I’m not rich yet?) 🙂
Steve–Haha. Same reason I’m going off to buy groceries right now at the Grocery Outlet. Oh, the glamorous life of a writer! 🙂
So how do you answer your friends who want you to be like them? Every day I get this offer or that scolding about how important it is to own your own place. I know (I’ve read it 3 times!) that you have tried both and have not realized an improvement; in fact have suffered great losses, due to listening to the voices I now encounter. You can speak with authority (heh heh) on the subject because you’ve been there, done that, nearly wrote the book….
I desire not only to be an author, but to further complicate that, I hope to write self-help books, which spring from all the written help I’ve given people through the years I have kept a blog (since ’09.) I have a small tribe, around 1700 followers if you count facebook, et al. I know the answer should be obvious: who needs the expense?!
But I keep hearing about how owning the site (Really, I’m paying rent if I self-host, right?) will give me more control, make me immune to take-down, (although wide open to hackers, right?) and allow me to sell stuff (although my understanding is that wp.com allows me to sell my own things, right?)
I see you doing a LOT of what might be called counseling or advising, here. A lot. I am sure your old site was quite similar in that respect. I’m failing to see their point.
But also so unsure. I could make lead traps, dragnets, lead-funnels for souls, and that would be better, right? I could flash folks with irritating interruptions, to force them to part with their money, right? Idk. Maybe I know the answer and just needed to “journal” it here?
I suppose if I’d felt as helpless as you did during a huge switch, I’d be lots firmer.
I’ve actually thought, as explained somewhere above, that blog posts could be more like a letter and could be called a letter, addressed as a letter, and be far more personal and believeable, which would draw counselees in to trusting and benefiting more. I know, it sounds as if I’ve answered my own question, here. But how do I frame it to those who’ve drunk the koolaid? How do you respond when someone say, “You really ought to…” or, “It’s time you moved out of the housing projects”?
Thanks.
Homeschool–I’m so glad you asked! And yes, I AM writing the book. So pretty soon you will have a book you can show these pushy people. They are giving advice they’ve heard from the make-a-gazillion-$$-a day with your blog pyramid-scheme people.
If you’re blogging as an author of BOOKS, not a online business person, you don’t have to do any of that #%&*.
We need a new name for an author blog. It’s an entirely different animal from a business blog. A business blog is for selling stuff–and yes, that’s when you need to own the property so you can sell stuff like courses and webinars and mugs and T-shirts and all those annoying ads.
But if all you want to sell is books, there are some nifty places that do that for you, who deal with all the credit card stuff and hassles (which are huge) They have names like Amazon and iTunes and B&N and Kobo and Google Play. They do their jobs very well. For a much smaller fee than it will cost you to host your own domain and pay somebody to handle all that credit card stuff and everything else. Believe me. I’ve talked to authors who have tried it.
You can’t sell from WP.com. You have to have WP.org. We have WP.org because we moved here for the extra security when we were under attack. But very few blogs are likely to be in that position. And, even so, I think the piracy wasn’t as bad as the move, which was horrific. I would never wish it on anybody. It literally nearly killed me.
Stay where you are. Lots of very successful bloggers are on Blogger and WP.com. Uberblogger Nathan Bransford is one. So are many, many literary agents. Tell those idiots they don’t know what they’re talking about and that you’re an author and publishing industry professional, not a T-shirt seller, and to shut the #%&* up. 🙂 Very nicely of course.
Haha! Yes, very nicely! Some are very nice people! 😀 Thanks so much for this amazing answer!
So, I cannot sell things, because it is unsafe? I think I have permission to do so, though? Like wp won’t shut me down if I do? Is it not the advertising for other people that is forbidden?
And is a self-hosted site really more secure than wp.com? Do we know that? I have a lot of friends who are self hosted and who are always crying about losing content to some cyber-emergency…I never hear of that with wp.com…
Have I not been paying attention?
Home–You can’t sell stuff on a WP.com site because there’s no tech for a secure credit card or paypal plug-in. No place to put it. Advertising your own stuff that’s sold elsewhere is just fine. Everybody does it.
It’s a toss-up about the security thing. If you have a freebie blog, most hackers aren’t going to be interested in you, but if you have a self-hosted site, they figure you’re a business, so they may target you.
That’s what happens to us all the time. Hackers try to break in and hold the blog for ransom. Luckily our host has really good security and shuts down the blog when we’re under a “brute force” attack.
But would we be under a brute force attack if we were a freebie blog? Probably not.
Unfortunately we also have a really high profile, so pirates were stealing our stuff like mad from Blogger and actually shut me out and hijacked my blog to some Brazilian site. Not a nice thing. That’s why we moved. But very few author blogs are going to have our numbers.
HI Anne and Home’s Cool – I wanted to jump in and respond to your comment about hacking. Hacking is mostly a crime of opportunity. You don’t need to be well known or famous, you just have to have a weak point. Hackers take advantage of these weak points – poor passwords or out of date technology for the most part. With WordPress.com, they will keep the technology up to date, but if the site can still has a weak password hackers can and will get in.
So the short answer to “are WordPress.com blogs more secure than WordPress.org or self hosted WordPress” is no. A WordPress.org (self-hosted) site can actually be more secure by making use of some security functionality that doesn’t exist for WordPress.com
I look after about 75 (mostly) WordPress.org sites on a regular basis. I take that responsibility seriously and ‘my’ sites are looked after. I’m sometimes the one called in when something goes wrong. I am continually amazed at the authors who get busy writing and forget to keep their site up to date, or have ‘ABcDE” as a password. Having a site is like having a car – it’s a responsibility. Like a car needs gas to run, a website needs maintenance to run properly.
You last question – can you sell things on WP.com? Yes – it’s called ecommerce and you will pay a premium to do so (currently about $300/year). It is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to set up ecommerce on WP.org. But…putting in buy links to books is NOT ecommerce. Selling baby clothes or tshirts or tires is ecommerce.
Hope this helps 🙂
Yes, Barb, your reply has helped me a lot. Thanks so much! Not sure why the staff at wp cannot explain it as clearly. However, I feel both you and Ruth have completed my sketchy understanding of many facets of the blog world.
Now to finish making decisions an get on with my plans! 🙂
Barb–Thanks so much for clearing that up! I thought hackers only went where they thought they could get something of value, but I guess I was overestimating the hacker brain. Haha!
And I didn’t know you could buy the stuff necessary to sell on WP.com. Thanks for setting me straight.
I always say that if someone WANTS to get into your site, they likely will – ie. SONY. Most of the hacking these days is pretty random, either trying to “guess” passwords, the denial of service attacks that can take down a site because it’s overwhelmed with traffic, or scooting in an unlocked door of opportunity.
The WP.com ecommerce is a new thing – and not well publicized…they used to just have an a la carte type of paid options. Now they have yearly packages of functionality that you can purchase. Same rules need to be followed, though…
Oh dear. I cannot believe what I just found, buried in the WP support pages: https://en.support.wordpress.com/monetize-your-site/
Does this change everything? I am numb.
Home–I’m working on a deadline, so I don’t have time to read the whole page, but it seems to be a helpful guide for people who want to monetize a WP site. Most people do monetize their websites. WP hosts over 1/4 of all websites in the world. My advice to authors not to monetize is just specific to authors, not other types of bloggers.
Great points! Blogging is a pointless exercise if you do it for the wrong reasons. I’m using my blog to a) build a set of content so I don’t seem like such a beginner when my next book is released, b) plug into a cause that I hold dear, c) increase my personal visibility, and d) ever-so-softly market my stuff.
I’ll let you know if it works. 🙂
Chris–Those are all excellent reasons to blog! Best of luck!
Hi Anne. An author friend of mine shared your blog post about blogs. I rarely comment on anything I read but felt compelled to say ‘Bravo!’ I’ve been blogging for a few years on and off without too much consistency and am about to resurrect a monthly blog, now that I have finished the first draft of my first novel. So much of your post rang true, although I am pleased to say I’ve managed to avoid most of the 5 Bad Reasons. I find blogging a great way to build my brand, and especially at this stage whilst I’m rewriting and editing the novel, I will be focussing on growing my audience. Will be following yours with great interest now that I have found you.
Nikki–Welcome! It sounds as if you’re blogging the right way for all the right reasons. I’ll be coming out with a book on blogging for authors later this year. So much of the information out there doesn’t apply to authors at all. Happy Blogging!
I’ve just a few tentative attempts at blogging with the publication of my 4th ebook in which I posted a short excerpt from it with a discussion of what I was trying to do in that scene along with the creative process it took to get it all down in a coherent form. I did this to try and generate some real interest in my alternate history novel while hopefully getting some honest feedback. Plan to do this once a week, figuring it would be a good way to connect with interested readers, while not having to spend too much time away from my current wip writing a blog.
Fred–I don’t recommend blogging to get feedback. There are some great places to do that, like Wattpad. Blogging needs to be more professional–a storefront rather than a classroom. If you want feedback on a WIP, I highly recommend Wattpad, which is set up for that. You can start to get followers there and maybe bring them to your blog later.
You’re unlikely to get free critiques on a blog. Better to blog about your research or the history or your world building. Also excerpts from an unpublished novel can lead to copyright problems down the road. Check out my post on What Should an Author Blog About? https://selfpublishingsites.com/social-media-secrets-part-iii-wha/
Update: I may have steered you wrong on this. One of the reasons I recommend WattPad is it’s not considered “publishing” while posting on a blog is–or it used to be. That meant a WIP that’s published, even in part, on your blog, won’t be considered by an agent or publisher. But now an agent says she considers anything that’s been on WattPad to be “previously published” too, and recommends only using closed critique groups for feedback. http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2017/02/10/what-counts-as-previously-published/
Excellent posting on blogging. It really got me interested in blogging the right way!
Thomas–Great! Blogging is so much less work than people make it out to be. And it’s a lot more fun! 🙂
This describes my blogging experience exactly. You totally nailed it. This is everything I learned after the fact, all neatly summarized for me to share. So I did. Thanks!
Michael–You’re not alone. Most bloggers start out with those misconceptions, since the business bloggers make a lot more noise than author bloggers. I almost wish author-blogging had a different name altogether, so people don’t get them confused. Thanks for sharing and spreading the word!
Who needs networking and all that stuff? Everyone knows: write a book; become an instant millionaire.
Rmac–Absolutely! That’s why I drive a 22 yr-old Honda Civic and buy my wine at the Grocery Outlet!
Great post. I just begun my own blogging adventure and really needed this reality check, lol.
Since lets be honest here, I was already seeing millions coming.
You mentioned communities of bloggers in specific niches, I blog about my fantasy writing journey, so how can I find those communities in my niche. Any suggestions?
Melihas–Congrats on starting your author blog. I have lots of advice for bloggers here, so just put “blog” in the search window for more info.
Alas, I’m not a fantasy reader, so I don’t know of any communities offhand. But at the Insecure Writers Support Group, you can find helpful writers in all genres. If you stop by this blog on Sundays when we update, we have a regular commenter, Will Hahn, who is a successful author of high fantasy. You could check out his blog and meet some of his colleagues.
Thanks Anne, it was really helpful of you. 🙂