The dreaded three letter word that marketers wrestle with each month in their reports, the same three letters that advertisers are shying away from and of course those in social media are shouting from the mountain tops–ROI.  Better known as return on investment.  There are variations of ROI, but for the most part it means for every dollar I spend, how much comes back to me in revenue?  Revenue in this particular post means money, or sales or whatever you use to measure your success in business, but for the most part we all like to make money.  I don’t intend this to be a discussion about what the return is or what the investment is or what the dollars are, I want to keep it simple.  When you pay me, you usually pay in money, and that is what you want the number to include when I tell you what to expect for ROI.

I was spurred to write this post today because of a post written by Jay Baer over at Convince & Convert called “Calculate Your Blogging ROI in 9 Steps“.  This is an awesome post and I suggest you bookmark it if you are looking for reasons to implement a blog into your social media campaign.  If you are a CMO, you may want to add this as a line item in your reporting to the CEO and the Board.  I am not going to go over the entire 9 steps that Jay has covered, but I want to concentrate on the first step and that being the expense of the blog or what he refers to as the “Blogging Expense Calculation”.

“Creating and sustaining a good blog for yourself or your company is a highly labor-intensive proposition. The people (maybe you) working on the blog could be doing something else that helps the company make money, save money, or both.” ~ Jay Bear

Jay sets forth a calculation of 3 blog posts a week and for the numbers he uses,  and makes the time of completion at 3 hours.  This is pretty long I think for a blog post, but for some good research, good links and a decent image, it may take about that long to complete the task. He also adds tracking and some other things into the mix, but I think for the most part Jay has written enough blog posts to know what he is talking about in this instance.  His number for the labor costs are what I want to highlight for our purposes.  he shows the final cost to be $2037 by paying your existing employees to complete a month of blogging.  The costs of blogging can be larger or smaller based on the amount of posts and the length of the post and other factors.  These numbers however are fixed, and we know the costs associated.  It is up to you or your social media manager to come up with the benefits and the revenue derived from the blog itself, but Jay offers his own example. Our number does not include benefits, therefore you can assume our number to be lower which should increase your ROI percentage.

We want to help you with your fixed costs here at Bloggers For Hire.  We have been successful because we offer an alternative to the costs you see by having your own employees perform all of the blogging duties associated with a properly run company blog.  We put a professional blogger in that role.  We are a fixed cost each month and that can lend you the sense of security needed to weigh that against the benefits of the blog itself.  I talk a number of times all over the country about how blogs increase the sales funnel, help with SEO and drive traffic to a company website among other benefits.  I can discuss those with you as well and help you with your needs.  Reduce your costs going in to business blogging and then you can decide for yourself if blogging can help you with your ROI.  I think Jay makes a good case and I know I can make a good case for you having your own blog.  Get started as soon as today.

I have heard a number of companies that start blogs and they go very well the first few weeks of the life of the blog.  You can see the passion and you can see the excitement behind those early posts, and then it starts to wane and they start to fall off in number and even the posts that come out on the published side are not much more than going through the motions.  The problem is the honeymoon is over the the real meat of why they began the blog has left.  So in the immortal words of the Wendy’s lady, “Where’s the beef?”

Mark Thompson has a post over at Search Engine Journal on “10 tips to Supercharge Your Blog’s Content“.  It has some really good points in it especially the one about hiring a blogger.  A blogger can be a great asset to your company when if comes time when the honeymoon is over and the blog begins to lack real content or staying with the analogy, the meat.

The Bloggers For Hire portion of his post states:

For some blogs this may be out of the question. If you simply do not have the funds to pay for professional bloggers, you can probably skip this section. Many of the best bloggers out there are the best for a reason and in return, require you to pay them for their services. However professional bloggers typically have a lot of experience in the industry, so they can add valuable content to your blog that will many times gain a lot of industry recognition.

My advice would be to maybe not find the most influential blogger in the industry, but to find someone with a few years experience that has written for a number of other blogs. You can probably hire these bloggers for $25-$50/post and it can be of very good quality. Also keep in mind the reach they may have socially. Usually these bloggers will promote their content on other sites as well, in turn getting you lots of additional traffic.

SEO firms know that with good quality content comes better SEO results.

Mark is right on the money with the idea behind hiring a blogger.  He has a pretty good handle on the budget and the concepts.  Mark is in the SEO world and those are the companies that understand beefy content most.  SEO firms know that with good quality content comes better SEO results.

Hiring a quality blogger that can take your blog over and give it the attention it needs is crucial.  If you want to talk to us about getting a blogger to take the mundane out of your social media marketing plan, contacts us.  We can help and we know the process and the importance of good quality content.  Consider us your blogging butcher!  We can show you the meat.

Many companies are out there looking for bloggers.  This is a prime example and these come into us here at Bloggers For Hire on a weekly basis. 

Jason Calacanis is looking for a blogger at This Week In Startups and describes the listing:

"…looking for someone to do a blog post every day or two"

"…looking for someone to do a blog post every day or two for the www.thisweekinstartups.com blog to "keep the conversation moving" between shows. For example, we now have 40 or so companies that have been on the show, I’d like to cover them in between episodes in a wrap up post (i.e. LocalBacon did this, WordPress announced this, etc). Also, maybe a pre-post about an upcoming guests (i.e. Sky Dayton preview)."

I’m curious how Jason will interview for this position and would love to talk to him about what he is looking for in a blogger.  Every company that approaches us has a laundry list of what they think makes a good blogger.  What characteristics do you think makes the perfect blogger?  Companies have a different philosophy than of course the bloggers themselves. I think I will follow this up with some of the things companies have asked in the past and what they describe as their needs and wants, which should give bloggers a better idea about what companies want.  Pay and salary for a blogger is the next biggest discrepancy.

Tags: Bloggers, Professional Bloggers, Blogging Help Wanted, Blog Jobs, This Week In Startups, Jason Calacanis, Bloggers For Hire

I wanted to just chime in on a post I was reading by Peter Kim and instead of hijacking his comment section I thought I would just jot down the thought I had when his post entitled "Should you be paid to participate in social media?" made me shout, "YES!"

"I would venture to guess that with 250 million people on Facebook there might be a few people talking about their jobs and where they work."

I know Peter was talking about your employees, but in our case we provide the person to handle your social media needs and therefore, we like to get paid.  It’s part of our business plan right under what we do.  This does make me think about social media as a service.  Many employees are doing what we outsource.  This is probably not a good post to be jotting down now that I think about it, but I wonder how many employees are participating in social media yet are not only not getting paid for it, but their employees have no idea that it is even taking place?  I have been saying this is the year of listening and I wonder how many employers are out there listening and stumble upon one of their own out and about evangelizing for the company? I would venture to guess that with 250 million people on Facebook there might be a few people talking about their jobs and where they work.  Is that on the clock time?  This is what spurred me to think of this post.  We get paid to post on various social networking sites on behalf of companies as their social media evangelist.  They may be getting this service free from their own.  How about your employees are they talking about you?  This appears to be another sub-heading in the year of listening thesis I seem to be writing in my head.

Tags: Peter Kim, Social Media, Pay For Blogging, Social Media Salary

It seems that there are many bloggers out there that believe that to be a professional blogger you only have to have a domain name a few extra moments in the day and the ability to put two sentences together.  I am afraid that this is not nearly enough.  If that were the case, I would have been John Elway.  That is the metaphor for me being a professional football player. I played football I wore number 6, and could throw the ball 60 yards with ease. I was not on the shortlist for the Broncos however. 

This job and career of blogging takes a talent.  I spoke earlier about wearing hats and other job descriptions and that is all part of the fabric of being a professional blogger, but it takes more than handing over a business card that says, "Professional Blogger."

"…it takes more than handing over a business card that says, "Professional Blogger."’

If you already have a successful blog, you know what I am talking about.  People like Brian Clark and Darren Rowse are not successful because they had cool URL’s to put up a blog and some adsense ads.  They had a talent, they worked really hard and put in their time.  I don’t want to scare anyone off and say, "you don’t have a chance," (just look at me for an instance as the anomaly) because that would not be the case.  I will tell you that when I go to look at you as a candidate to represent a company as its evangelist or social media maven, community manager or whatever the title may be, I look to see how successful you are in your own niche or in your own backyard. 

Being successful does not mean that you are holding up a check with your six figure earnings either.  That would probably mean you are not applying to be a representative of a company, and I might be asking you for the job.  I mean that you interact with your community.  Don’t have a community?  I’ll wait while you have you AHA moment.  You don’t need to be a hall of fame quarterback, but be able to run a huddle.  Sorry, I tend to speak in sports metaphors. 

Photo via Examiner.com

Tags: Professional Blogger, Blogging Jobs, Blogging Careers, Social Media Managers, Community

One of the things that we are seeing in the news and in blogs and across every other medium is the fact that "old media" is dead and "new media" is taking over.  One of the things that is discussed is the fact that old media is dying because their revenue is going away.  Where is it going?  It is headed towards the next big thing, online media, which we refer to now as "new".  So how is the news changing?  It is changing not so much in the items being reported, but it is taking a whole new shape in how and where.  So why is new media being successful?  I have to think that one of the reasons is–costs.

An average journalist according to the graph I found at Payscale is as follows:

Now multiply that by say a staff of an average of perhaps 20 writers.  Now factor in the brick and mortar place they show up for work, and all of the departments that support that and you have quite a large infrastructure of "costs." 

When blogging fist took hold in the laste 90′s and the early part of this century, it was new and exciting and many were learning their craft at how to be a citizen reporter.  We all saw new talent rise to the top like in any business.  They learned how to monetize their talents to some degree, and we saw businesses popping up all over trying to leverage this talent and "new media".

Old Media is taking that large champagne taste and trying to fit it into a beer budget.

Today we have seen the emergence of companies like Weblogs, Inc., and b5Media and others that have taken those talented bloggers and turned them into their counterparts.  This is the new "old media" model.  The difference is in all of this is perhaps they are not charging the inordinate amount of money for advertising for one and the payment of bloggers is another issue.  Bloggers in my experience are not making near the salaries that we see above. If they are they are working at some of the places like TechCrunch and Gizmodo or other large high trafficked sites.

Deb Ng mentioned over at the Blog World Expo Blog her own take on the issues related to Old Versus New in the media realm.  She sees the difference and I make a note of it here:

In case you haven’t been at this “media” thing as long as me, here are a few comparisons:

Old Media: Pay a freelance writer $1 per word to research, interview and write up an expert article. Publish and pay six months to a year later.

New Media: Pay freelance blogger $1 per post to Google and rewrite someone else’s researched, expert article. Publish and pay on the same day.

The problem for old media companies is they are trying to put their square peg in a round hole.  Old Media is taking that large champagne taste and trying to fit it into a beer budget.  There is no way they can compete.  I wish now that bloggers would have stepped up and asked for the money that journalists were getting in their field.  It would certainly have leveled the playing field for old media.  Now we clamor for the ability to demand new salaries and more money as bloggers.  We have set the bar a little low.

Tags: New Media, Old Media, Mainstream Media, Bloggers, Blogger Pay, Blogger Salaries, Professional Blloggers, Journalists

I have been wondering about time lately.  Where do I get it and how can I make more of it.  It seems as though this is the gold standard in my business this days.  I wake up early go to bed late and never seem to leave the keyboard yet I never seem to be in the cockpit of this craziness long enough.  Part of the problem is I love the world of social media and always feel like I need to have a hand in it.  I often joke about the idea of having a USB port installed in my forehead to stay connected longer and more focused.  I didn’t see that chapter in Tim Ferris’ book about the 4 hour work week.  I try to work the four hour work week into an hour time slot into my already 80 hour week.

I talk to many businesses and they all seem to have the same problem.  The business owner or person leading the charge  always feels as though there is never enough time in the day to get all of it done.  Part of my problem is my infrastructure.  I have myself and that is about it when it comes to the "organization".  Yes I have an assistant that can help with some of the small stuff but my core business runs on me, myself and I.  This can be a problem.  I tried yesterday to get some reading done on blogs, RSS and other social networks and go back to writing and doing some of the things that I have ignored over the last few weeks since I have been traveling and I really enjoyed that luxury.  The problem with having that luxury is you have to pay for it somewhere.  I look today over my calendar after doing that and I had to jam my schedule with phone calls and other areas that need to catch now that I spent the day hooked into my network.  Obviously, time plays a big part in how you lay out a plan for your social media program.  I see social media as a commitment to doing it day in and day out.  Not something that can be done just now and then (please do  not look  at me when I preach this – do as I say not as I do).

The best way is to balance all of the activity and prioritize.  Yes, that is like telling my kids to clean their room.  It all works well in theory, but when it comes down to execution that is another thing entirely.  I try to help businesses with their social media plans and how they can work it into their already tough to crack schedules.  I need to take a page out of my own book.  Perhaps I need to hire my own social media manager.  Anyone need a low paying high intensity job for little to no praise with little to no guidance?  I have the job waiting here for you.

Photo via Leo Reynolds

I have been trying to explain to myself, perhaps even come up with excuses about why I haven’t updated my own personal blog, why I am a professional blogger and my own blogs are completely suffering from lack of attention.  It has to do with professional blogging versus personal blogging.  I started out as a personal blogger.  The personal hobby as it started then became a passion.  I love it.  Then I found a way to take my passion and make into a way I could earn money doing it.  That to me was a bonus.  As is with everything it seems I took that to the next level and then the next and so on until finally now I am a business owner doing it as a career.  This is where I forget about the old days and talk about how hard this fun passionate thing has become.

We all have heard me say I am like the saw about the cobbler’s son not having shoes and that is more of an excuse than I care to admit to, but on this occasion it is true.  I must first sit down and pound out a blog post for a client and by the time I get done with the blogging for the pay, the blogging for the fun seems not so fun anymore.  I had that same experience as a ski patrolman here in Colorado.  I loved to ski.  I then made it a job and it was not so fun anymore.  We always talk about doing what we love.  But what happens when your love becomes a job?  I am still wondering about this myself as I sit here and finally put my thought down here at a blog that has been completely neglected.  It seems that most of my epiphanies and all gone to client posts and this one gets the leftovers.  I guess if nothing else, a little whining now and then is easy to write about too.

Tags: Blogging, Professional Bloggers, Pro Blogging, Jobs

Perhaps Thord Daniel Hedengren of the Blog Herald has said it best:  Blogging probably is America’s Newest Profession, and it shows.

Over at The Wall Street Journal’s Busines website, Mark Penn states that there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers.

There are, of course, those who disagree with this statement, but I am not one of those.  I think Penn is correct.

Here is the Wall Street Journal article.  What do you think of it?  Is Penn’s view of paid bloggers accurate?  Please.  Give us YOUR take on this! Let the comments commence:

In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.

The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That’s almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click — whether on their site or someone else’s. And that’s nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: “It’s my work he’d say, I do it for pay.”

This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.

What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry — and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.

All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.

Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as “spokesbloggers” — paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around — but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.

The barriers to entry couldn’t be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.

Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours — 50 to 60 hours a week.

As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.

Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.

The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an “absolutely brilliant” idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.

As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn’t seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.

The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.

For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America’s Newest Profession.

It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can’t be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking — but those venues don’t offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.

And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the “Wild West” eventually became just the “West.”

Mark Penn Responds:

People have raised questions about the calculations on the numbers of bloggers for hire. First, I was surprised at how few studies there are on this and I believe there definitely should be more. So perhaps in the future I will do some original research, but for this piece we took the best we could find and referenced every number so people would know where they came from.

There is no question that the blogosphere, fast-growing as it is, has yet to nail down one way to measure itself or gauge its activity. But the most comprehensive sources we could find, conducted by reputable professionals, say there are over 22 million bloggers out there; and that 2% of bloggers are making their living blogging. Do the math, and you get roughly 450,000. It’s a fast-growing group and we ignore their needs, and influence, at our peril.

As far as the $75,000, the Technorati report says that of those bloggers who had 100,000 or more unique visitors, the average income is $75,000. True, it’s not the median, but it is the average. We can quibble about how easy it is to make this kind of money — but the point is, the huge potential is there.

Here are some further details on the sources and calculations:

The Technorati Poll — The methodology stipulates that in order to qualify for the survey, Technorati “state of the blogosphere” respondents needed to be bloggers over 18 years old. The survey was hosted by Decipher Inc., was in the field from July 28, 2008 through August 4, 2008, and received 1,290 completed responses from 66 countries. Survey design and analysis was conducted by Dr. Michele Madansky and Polly Arenberg. Dr. Michele Madansky runs a media and market research consultancy specializing in online media and Internet startups. From 2003 to 2007, Michele was vice president of global market research for Yahoo! Polly Arenberg is a marketing strategist with more than 20 years of experience; her clients include Yahoo!, Microsoft and Flickr, as well as numerous start-ups.

The 2% of bloggers making a living comes straight from the Technorati Poll. The total number of bloggers–22.6 million–is supported by a research report from eMarketer (2% of 22,6 million is 452,000). This report was written in May 2008 by Paul Verna, a senior analyst there: “The Blogosphere report aggregates the latest data from marketing and communications researchers with eMarketer analysis to provide the information you need to make smart, accurate business decisions.”

The question of how much traffic it takes to make a living also comes from the Technorati report. We say it takes “about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year” and Technorati states those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors the average income is $75,000

Today has been a typical Monday for me.  I have had a few companies that were on board with blogging for their businesses, pull back and cancel contracts. Yes, I have now had the “it’s not you… it’s me” speech given to me twice in as many days.  This is not good news for a small company like mine, and especially for the bloggers that I have contracts with it means for a tough holiday season.  I always hated breaking up, especially when they were breaking up with me!

I can see a pattern to something that is beginning to make me think that the economy is hitting even the professional blogging industry.  In some respects there has been an increase in companies seeking ways to help reduce their marketing, advertising and other online marketing budgets through the use of outsourcing bloggers.  This helps them reduce the spending they have in those areas yet increase their productivity.  This has kept my phone and email smoking of late from those companies in that camp. In other areas, like for instance in the larger companies with larger budgets, I’m seeing the opposite.  It’s time to shed the ballast is their minds.  What is considered ballast?  Anything that is not nailed down.   Employees and departments that were once hiring professional bloggers in the field are tightening their belts and putting their noses to the grindstone. It is time to protect them and their own.  Department heads are having to do with 10 what they used to do with 15 people.  What was once considered a luxury of having money to pay someone to blog, department heads are now having to do for themselves, or worse yet, not at all.

Businesses in this economy are going back to what has worked for them in the past. Blogging is too young to pass that test.

It is the “not at all” that most concerns me in the immediate future.  Businesses in this economy are going back to what has worked for them in the past. Blogging is too young to pass that test.  Those things that have garnered them the attention online, and something that has shown a definite return on investment are what they are doing.  Why?  In their minds blogging is still too early to give credit to and until they can show its benefit it will be put on the shelf.  They are going back to what was working when they had to have it, what was needed to survive, what they cold prove was a benefit.  When times are tough, we always fall back on what worked before.  We go back to the well that was producing.  In this case, we are going to see a bump in the areas of pay-per-click campaigns or those things that have “metrics”.  Google will be where people go for their marketing and advertising.  Their last Adsense campaign seemed to increase their revenues, and when they were questioned by the powers above they could show hard numbers on conversions as click-thrus and those crunching the numbers were able to give it value.  Blogging is too much like business voodoo when it comes to showing the CFO why you are spending that precious dollar on a blog post.  They cannot see what possible benefit can come from someone reading about your mission statement, or about your company’s latest cool news item.  They want to see a pie chart for every dollar spent.  Blogging is just not the right fit for that type of thinking.  SEO professionals will again be relied upon to work their tricks, but as some have revealed, that wand may also be out of magic.  It is too early to tell what will happen in the professional blogging industry.  As I stated before, business is still good and many companies are still looking to hire bloggers to do the work they themselves cannot.  I for one hope that is the continuing trend, otherwise I need to get that Twitterers For Hire URL nailed down.