So You Want To Be Deal Blogger?

Not a week goes by where I don’t receive a few email asking for help with beginning a blog. Most of the folks have been reading Coupons, Deals and More, learned how to coupon, and now want to blog themselves.

This either means they think I am doing a crappy job and they can do a lot better, or they feel that the field is not super saturated and there is room for their voice.

I am going to go with the latter as it makes me feel better.

If you want to deal blog (or coupon blog if you prefer) to make money, forget it. Do not under any circumstance start any type of blog if you are not doing so to share – be it share your experiences, your expertise, your stories about Aunt Thelma and Cousin Bob – whatever it is, it needs to be about giving some part of you away for free. If money is your primary motivation, don’t even start.

Why, you may ask? Simple. Most bloggers, even deal bloggers, never make a dime of profit. When I started blogging after many, many years on forums, I had an affiliate background. There is so much to learn on how to make money, that it is a good year or so before most bloggers can figure out the “how” of making a buck on a blog. I started making money less than six months in, and that is difficult for most bloggers to do. And by “making money” I mean covering all costs except my time. By year two I was making minimum wage on 40 hours a week – too bad I was working 60-70 hours a week.

If you caught that last sentence, you will notice I wrote “working 60-70 hours a week”. When you start up blogging, like any new start up company, you are the boss. And the sole employee. That means long hours for little monetary reward. If you look at “bigger bloggers” (I consider myself medium sized), they usually have large staffs and seldom write up the deals themselves. They choose a corporate route and basically parlayed their blog name into a company. Do not compare yourself to a “bigger blogger”, and do not expect the same monetary rewards they took years to build to come to you immediately.

It takes years to do what the “bigger bloggers” do, a specific mindset, a willingness to forgo your “voice”, a good PR firm in many cases, excellent SEO and a few other things. If you expect to start blogging tomorrow and get rich next week (or next year), readjust your thinking.

Circling back to why most deal bloggers do not make money – most people do not last six months blogging. It is a lot of work and time. If you have five kids at home, work full time, home school, etc., you quickly realize that, while you would sincerely like to help others, the time spent away from your family is not worth the effort. Your family must come first. So, most blogs do not survive the first six months. And most blogs do not make money before the first year. Since A + B = C, if most blogs begin to make money at year one, and most blogs do not last six months, most blogs do not make money. Please notice the “most”. Nothing is absolute, and it is possible you may buck that trend.

This post is not meant to stop you from blogging or deal blogging – it is meant to make you realize that blogging is a ton of work, not a get-rich-scheme, and not something you quit your day job to begin. Begin blogging because you love to write and want to help folks. If that is a success, then you can transition to professional blogging and all its rewards.

Tomorrow I will give you an idea of the mechanics of beginning to blog, what you need and how you can proceed.

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