Darren had an interesting post up last month at Problogger; maybe you caught it – Dear FaceBook Friends, I’m De-Friending Most of You [It's Not You, It's Me]. The post was his public rational as to why soon he’d be deleting all his work contacts from his Facebook account. Darren’s not the only one doing this either. Lately I’ve seen many folks creating their own Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts and other work-personalized social network accounts that allow them to specifically network with work pals and contacts vs. personal real-life friends and family.

Here’s an example; say your name is Bob and you have a blog called Fantasy Cakes. You might set up a Facebook page for Bob where you only friend actual brick and mortar pals and family. You’d set up another Facebook page for Fantasy Cakes where people can friend (or fan) you. You could do the same for Twitter, ThisNext, or any number of social networking sites. You keep your real-life pals on your name account and all work pals, PR contacts and other bloggers on the Fantasy Cake accounts.

Is this a good idea?

Personally, I think it’s the new hip idea, but as for it being a good one, well, that depends on many different factors – who you are, how well you’re know (or hope to be known), and how much free time you’ve got.

The pros of keeping your real-life separate from your work life:

• Your offline friends and family don’t get bushwhacked with a million work links that you’ve posted.
• Your online work pals and editors aren’t subjected to your offline friend’s off color or bizarre comments – you know we all have that one pal offline who can’t seem to figure out that they shouldn’t give away your weird secrets online.
• As Darren pointed out in his post, Facebook friend accounts have a limit. If you’re a popular online identity your work pals and contacts can quickly overrun your actual offline pals. It’s lame to not friend your dad because you’ve got too many work friends.
• It can look more professional if you have networking set up to reflect your work.
• It can help you brand your work. Fantasy Cakes can be it’s own brand vs. the Bob brand.

The cons of keeping your real-life separate from your work life:

• It’s time intensive – this is one of the major reasons why I don’t have many Jennifer accounts vs. work accounts. I don’t have the time. I already run a ton of Twitter, Facebook and other social network accounts for clients, along with my own. If I had to update loads of other accounts for my personal blogs I’d be 100% spent time wise. Sure you can set up instant feeds to save time, but know that it’s not enough to build a following. For example, you could Twitter feed all your personal blogs, but you won’t get as many follows if you’re not on there interacting at least some of the time.
• It seems sort of presumptuous and a little annoying. Lately because everyone I know is setting up new work related accounts I get a ton of emails saying, “You should become a fan of Bob’s Fantasy Cakes!” Frankly, it’s not that important to me to fan everyone. Maybe it’s the wording, “Fan” that’s off-putting or maybe it’s because I don’t have fan pages of my own so all these accounts end up on my Jennifer page or maybe it’s that I don’t want to wade through more links right now. In any case, I’m just not into fanning people’s sites unless I REALLY like them.
• It’s confusing to offline friends. While social networking is old hat if you’re a blogger, your family and even some co-workers who aren’t as online savvy may not get it. You’ve got your Bob page, your Fantasy Cakes page, and if you launch another blog, that page. It can get confusing for people. Which page do they leave comments on, where’s your contact info for work vs. real-life, and aren’t you the same person?
• It’s a lot of work. Creating a popular Facebook fan page, or brand page is much more work than just placing or feeding links. Building a fan page or setting up a blog on Twitter does not mean people will simply come in hordes. Promotion of this sort is practically a job in itself which brings us back to the time issue.

Who should set up separate accounts…

I don’t think everyone should. If you’re extremely popular, can hire social networking help (like a CM), or are very private with your personal life then yeah, it’s likely a good idea to keep accounts separate. If you’re just doing it to gain quick traffic (um, no) or because you read some post that says it’s a great idea, I’d think carefully about it, because it’ll require a lot of time and effort. If you don’t put that time and effort in, you’ve just created one more mess of an area that people have to wade through online.

One more thing to consider is how many of your real-life pals are actually on social networking. I have offline friends and family who are on Facebook, but not enough to make me want separate pages for my work related stuff. My offline pals just don’t use Facebook as much as my work friends. I have ZERO offline family members on Twitter. My family, and actually many of my offline friends are just not into social networking – most (read 99%) don’t even read my blogs. We hang in person or talk on the phone, but they’re just not online often so making separate pages to make them more comfortable seems excessive.

If you do keep your accounts merged…

Keep it clean. Be extra diligent about deleting comments or photos that might make you look bad. I have one real life pal who will post that lame picture of you when you had one too many at the Halloween party or flipped someone off – you DO NOT want co-workers seeing this stuff.

What, in your opinion, are the pros and cons of setting up separate social networking accounts for family vs. work?

I wouldn’t say blogging jobs are over exactly. I mean, that would be dumb considering I blog for a living. Many of my friends blog for a living. Deb posts blogging gigs daily over in writing leads. So no, blogging jobs aren’t over. I do however think that how you use your blogging skills to make money is changing big time.

You can’t just be a blogger anymore and expect to make a living. “Just a blogger” is not meant to be disrespectful either, all I mean is when you’re just blogging for clients you’re writing posts, getting paid, and that’s that. It’s still work but it’s not the same work I’m seeing available lately.

Example: When I first started blogging I was doing stuff like posting blog posts and… well, that was it. A client would hire me, give me access to some blog platform, I’d go in, write, hit publish, and get on with my day. That whole writing bit, where I’d just write and publish, didn’t last long. Now clients want more, give their bloggers more tasks, and expect more than simple writing know-how. Blogging gigs have expanded. You can find plain old gigs where all the client expects are posts but those gigs are rare and they usually pay squat.

If you’re currently in the market for a blogging job, you’re in luck, because there are plenty available. However if you don’t cultivate other skills as well, another blogger will get that gig you want. If you’re searching for a well-paying blogging gig, following are some basic skills you should already have, and if not, I suggest you get them quickly.

• Get on Twitter. Get on Facebook. Get on other social networking sites. Learn how to use them. Learn how to use many accounts at once. Over the last year every new client I’ve met has wanted to know which social networking sites I frequent and if I’m willing to use others as well.
• Become an image pro. Learn where to find images you can use for free (I’m talking legally). Learn how to find hard-to find news images (hint, connect with some good PR people). Get image editing software, learn to use it and learn how to redesign fun images – i.e. make an image collage.
• Speaking of PR folks, learn to use them to your advantage.
• Figure out how to work on more than one blog platform. WordPress is still king among most of my clients, but not all. I’ve held gigs over six or seven different platforms – some so bad I’d hardly call them blog platforms which brings me to the next skill…
• Know some HTML. It’s smart to know how to write an entire post in HTML because sometimes visual platforms aren’t an option. Also it’s not enough to know how to write and hit publish, now you really should know how to tag images, how to use custom fields, how to use SEO packs, how to build galleries and more. You should know all the ins and outs of platforms you work on frequently without having to ask the client.
• Learn how to find breaking news and hot new products.
• Learn how to review products usefully. Many clients I have LOVE blogger product reviews but not shoddy reviews.
• Learn how to run a successful blog giveaway or contest.
• Figure out how to handle forums. Most blog clients I have are crazy for forums lately. It’s forum this and forum that. Learning what it takes to use, promote, and moderate a forum are excellent skills to cultivate right now.

I have quite a few blogging gigs currently but not one of them is a gig where all I do is write. All of them include some or all of the aspects above. Since so few people make a successful living blogging, you may as well learn all the skills above to increase your own chances of success.

One additional tip – I haven’t come anywhere close to listing all the good skills you should have if you’re a blogger. Make sure you keep up with changing blogs and blogging trends by following some decent blogger-how-to blogs. I have many blogging blogs in my feeds, and while I don’t read each and every post, I do browse them daily.

Do you have any blogging jobs currently where all you do is write?

Here at Blogging For A Living we’re always saying, “Don’t flipping work for free people!“ WHY would you? There are many jobs to be had that do pay (actual money). Thankfully it seems like many of you are listening. We see plenty of our readers out there, scoring gigs and getting paid and it makes us super happy.

That said, there’s another issue surrounding working for free that’s a little harder to catch. Not all writers plan on working for free, sometimes it just slowly happens. Here’s how…

You land a gig. Let’s say that gig includes writing five posts a week, each post needs an image and you’re also contracted to tweet said posts. That’s three tasks. Let’s pretend your pay for each week is oh, how about $25 per post (or $125 per week). You sit down and figure out that it’ll take you 35 minutes to write each post, 10 minutes total to find images, and about 5 minutes per week to tweet the posts.

In total, you’re working about 3 hours and 10 mins per week for this client. Your end wages per week actually turn out to be pretty darn excellent – about $41 per hour. That’s very decent pay for blogging.

Here’s where the sneaky stuff comes in…

You write for this client for a few months and all of a sudden the client starts saying stuff like…

• “Could you also add each post to Facebook?”
• “Make sure you’re stumbling and or using DIGG on each post!”
• “I think each post needs two images instead of one. OH and each images needs to be exactly 500 x 350 AND if you can’t find an image that works with that size you’ll need to search the web until you find one.” Later… “Hmmm, maybe we should add galleries with 4 images each since people will click on them more; can you do that?”
  
• “Can you go in and re-write this post because I wanted you to use such and such links instead.”
• “I’ve installed a brand new SEO package – make sure you fill it out each time you write a post!”

This is a problem. While none of these tasks seem very large or tedious, they all do take time. Super strict image requirements by clients is actually my number one time drain. It’s very hard to find images that all meet strict size requirements and it limits what you can write about – especially at a product based blog. Plus you’ll be spending a ton of time using your image editor to edit said images.

When you add up all the tasks above you’re adding at least 30 minutes to each post you write. More if you have to re-write often. I’m not talking re-writing because you messed up either, I’m talking re-writing because some client changes their mind about what they wanted in the first place. Anyhow, if you add 30 minutes+ to each post you write for this client, your time spent flies up to about 5.5 hours a week and your wages plummet down to about $22 per post.

The job you thought you signed up for turns out to be more trouble for less pay than you originally calculated.

It may not be that the client is being sneaky – they might just have figured out how blogs work. Yes, images, galleries, SEO packs, and Facebook all  help boost traffic. Good for them for figuring that out. However, it’s not your fault they figured it out late. You already signed a contract for a specific set amount of tasks and you shouldn’t do more without a pay increase because all those traffic boosters the client wants you to do puts more money in the client’s pocket. If they don’t pay you to do it you are working for free.

How to avoid this:

DON’T sign impossible contracts – by impossible I mean contracts from clients who talk about high traffic numbers but don’t have the know-how to pull it off. For example, I’ve talked with potential clients who say things like, “Wow, once my blog launches it should take about three months to get to 100,000 visitors” and then they’ve got zero social networking in place. It won’t happen and in my experience guess who they’ll blame – you. It’ll be on you because they’ll think, “You’re not writing good enough posts!” No, they’re not networking. I don’t usually work with pie-in-the-sky dreamy clients OR I’ll tell them up front that they should work in some social networking.

If clients add too many tasks ask for a pay increase – If a client asks me to add a link to Facebook I might do it. It’s fast. If a client asks for more and more stuff I usually say, “Well, all these extra tasks add a lot of work time to my week so I can one, write fewer posts per week, write shorter posts per week, or you can up the pay rate.” This is reasonable. Time is money in freelancing. If you started out making $41 per hour, then that’s what you should continue to make.

Ask for a new position - If a client is continually asking you to do more and more social networking tell them a good idea would be to hire a social networking manager – someone to do all those little social networking tasks that add up. Then, offer to be that someone. Say, “For an extra $250 a month, I’ll spend 10-15 minutes a day networking my little heart out.”

Look for another gig – if a client is becoming impossible start job hunting. Some clients don’t get that social networking, images, SEO, and so fourth take time. Many clients in fact, have less blog experience than you and no matter what you say, they just won’t ever get it. In this case it’s time to quit. Figure out if a gig is worth keeping.

Have you had clients who add on more and more tasks over time? How did you deal with the situation?

Dear Deb,

I came by looking for a post called “WAHMs: Make Sure the Ends Justifies the Means” that you wrote last summer about residual writers. I know it was there and now it’s gone. Several posts in that same discussion are gone too. I think what everyone says about you, that you change your tune to suit your sponsors is true. I don’t respect you anymore. Only people with something to hide delete blog posts.

I dare you to post this.

Signed some anonymous emailer

So I’m not posting this email because I was dared to, I’m posting it because this isn’t the first time I was asked about the “WAHM” post. I also deleted other blog posts having to do with that discussion. I didn’t delete them because of my affiliation with Demand Studios, though, and I didn’t delete them because I changed my mind. I deleted them because I hurt people’s feelings and I feel bad about it.

I don’t change my tune about how I feel about residual sites. Someone working for one month and only earning a quarter doesn’t sit right with me. However, I posted some forum entries and made a few judgment calls and that wasn’t very professional or nice.  After reading blog posts and comments about the now famous “WAHM” post, I felt bad.I mentioned some time ago that.  I mentioned it in another blog post but no one said anything so I didn’t think it was that major a point.

That’s what happens whenever I react in anger.  I write things I regret. Yes, I delete blog posts. I delete them not because I changed my mind or way of thinking, but because I feel bad about how they made other people feel. It’s those blog posts and the reaction to them that made me take my vow of positivity for 2010.

You know what, though?

I meet a lot of people who remember that blog post. They didn’t see it as me helping them to understand a better way, they saw it as me talking down to them and posting parts of their forum discussion here for all to see. It wasn’t appreciated. I regret making them feel that way.

I have many blogging regrets and each one of them has to do with my reacting in anger at one thing or another.

I realize there are people who don’t respect me for this and a variety of other reasons. It is what it is. I don’t think it’s wrong to delete content. What’s wrong is to react in anger and treat people unfairly. So I’m making  a conscious effort to not do that anymore.

Do you have any regrets as a blogger? Have you ever deleted a blog post? If so why? Have you ever regretted a blog post? Tell us about it.

If you’re not reading this through a feed reader it’s safe to assume the person who posted this is a content thief who is too unoriginal and untalented to come up with his/her own ideas. Feel free to report this slimy splogger to freelancewritinggigs(at)gmail(dot)com.

I used to run a heaping handful of blog contests at my client’s blogs. Contests and giveaways can be fun, improve traffic stats, connect you nicely with companies and draw in and encourage new readers, but I’ve come to realize that contests and giveaways are not worth it at every blog you write for.

When it’s not worth it:

If they take too much time. Hosting a decent two week giveaway at a blog requires extra time. For example, you’ll have more comments to moderate, PR reps (or the company) hosting the giveaway to deal with, and time spent making sure the winner/s get the prize/s. For every successful and easy giveaway I’ve ran at a blog, I can name another contest that didn’t go so well. Companies ‘forget’ to send winners prizes; upset winners email you over and over; and sometimes winners don’t respond at all which pushes the giveaway into massive overtime. And we haven’t even covered the time you’ll spend securing prizes for a giveaway.

Before you run a contest you need to calculate your personal wage rate and figure out if you’re actually being paid enough to deal with a contest because trust me; 80% of them are time consuming.

If your client is sketchy. If you have a gut feeling that your blogging gig is not secure I’d think real hard before holding a giveaway. The last thing you need is to start a giveaway then get fired midway through. Plus, if a client is sketchy, why go above and beyond? Do your job of course (i.e. meet your quota) but giveaways, in my opinion are really only beneficial for the client unless you’re paid partially by revenue.

If it’s going to be too complicated. Some blog themes show comment numbers. Some don’t. Comment numbering is a must if you hold giveaways because if comments are sans numbers you’re going to need to count those comments up freestyle which is 100% obnoxious. If your client won’t install a theme or plugin that numbers comments, I’d skip holding giveaways.

If giveaways don’t work for your blog. Some blogs benefit from giveaways. Some benefit from very specific giveaways. Some blogs don’t gain anything from giveaways. Find out what sort of blog you write for and only hold a giveaway that you estimate will be a success. This means a bit of trial and error, but it’s worth it. For example, at one blog I used to write for baby clothing and beauty care prizes would yield 100s of contest entries which is beneficial because that’s a nice traffic bump. At that same blog you couldn’t pay people to enter a contest for pet supplies or books. End result – don’t hold contests for books or pet gear.

When contests may be worth it:

• If part of your job is actually to run giveaways.
• If you’re paid partially or in whole by revenue.
• If you write for a money saving type blog – in my experience you can give away almost anything at a “thrifty” type blog and traffic will come in hoards.
• If you want to get in good with a company – companies really adore bloggers who can run a decent giveaway.
• If you want to do something nice for your readers. Standing members of your blog community sometimes just deserve a fun giveaway.
• If you’re interested in a non-spammy way to promote your client’s blog.

The final say:

In most cases now, I don’t consider running blog contests for clients a good use of my time. I run them for clients who pay me well to do so – such as at gigs where I’m a community manager not only a blogger and I think blog contests are beneficial at my personal blogs, however, I’ve found that for my pure blog writing gigs my time is better spent writing or spending some time promoting the blog via social networking.

What do you think? Are blog giveaways for clients worth it or too much of a pain?

I don’t post gigs much here anymore – honestly, I’m not sure how useful it was, what with Deb posting them at the main Writing Leads page. However, I adore green so here you go…

The BlogHer Green Team is back this year and they’ve opened up a handful of new positions for BlogHer ’10.

Here’s what they’re looking for in a committee member:

• Passion: You do not have to be a “green blogger,” but should be passionate and knowledgeable about green issues
• Practical Ideas: Can you tell us not just what isn’t green, but also help us find our way to what would be greener?
• Time Commitment: This committee is scheduled to meet by conference call, once a month, for no longer than one hour. That’s a minimum commitment of only four hours. If you choose to lead a project or initiative, you can determine how much extra time you are willing to give toward this great cause!

It sounds like a cool gig. This call for bloggers closes on March 15th. To learn more and to apply visit the announcement post at BlogHer.

Bounce rate is a measure of how many people visit your blog and continue on to the different pages. For example, if your stats show visitors land on your site and leave without hitting any blog posts beyond the entry page, your bounce rate will be relatively high. If visitors stick around and visit several pages before moving on, your bounce rate will be on the low end. The lower the better. Different blogs and websites have different purposes and therefore will experience differences in bounce rates.

In essence bounce rate is the equivalent of walking into a store.  A low bounce rate means the customer is looking around at the different departments and, perhaps buying. A high bounce rate means that a customer might walk in, glance around and leave without further investigation or purchase.

Why is Bounce Rate Important?

Bounce rate is important because you want your readers to stick around and up those page views. You want them to read the current blog posts and more. You might also want them to look around, check out the affiliate links and maybe click on an ad or two. This doesn’t happen if your readers don’t like what they see at first glance. A high bounce rate means folks aren’t liking what they find or finding what they like.  If a bounce rate is 30% it means 30% of the people visiting your blog leave right away. A 70% bounce rate means 70% of the people visiting your blog aren’t sticking around. Always shoot for lower.

How to Measure Bounce Rate

A good stats program will measure bounce rate. As mentioned in previous posts, I use both Performancing Metrics and Google Analytics. Each provide current bounce rate and will also compare a day’s bounce rate to previous days, weeks and months. If you notice a downward trend, this is a good thing. Now use your stats to check to the content and see what people are reading. Find the popular pages and use this to gauge your readers preferences.

Is There an Average Bounce Rate?

From what I can gather most blogs experience between 50% and 70%.  Also, from what I gather from my research, anything about 50% requires further analysis. Above 70%  means folks can’t get away quick enough. (Incidentally, the Freelance Writing Jobs network enjoys a 30% to 40% bounce rate.)

How to Lower Your Bounce Rate

Again, the lower the bounce rate the better. If you want people to stay on your blog, you have to give them a good reason. The best reason for anyone to visit any blog is for the content. Too many bloggers write content around keywords to bring in traffic and this can be a mistake. Don’t write for keywords, write for your community. A mixture of informative content, images, fun stuff,  and humor is bound to keep them around. Don’t write content for content’s sake. Make sure it has value. How to’s are the best kind of content. Read your stats, your email and your comments. Combined they will tell you how and why people are coming to your blog. Also, even though you want to write for your community, make sure the content is relevant to the keywords.  If readers discovered your blog using a particular search term, but they leave within seconds, it probably means the content wasn’t relative to the search and you need to do some tweaking.

Another way to up your pageviews is do some heavy linking among your articles and offer related reading at the bottom of the post. You can use plugins to recommend posts or add your own. The more your visitors have to read and click on, the better.

Bounce Rate is Important

While it’s not talked about as much as RSS or search traffic numbers, don’t discount bounce rate as a very important metric. Mere numbers aren’t enough. You want to know why people come to your blog, why they stay, and why they go. If readers are only staying for a couple of seconds and leaving, you’ll need to analyze why and take measures to correct it.

Create engaging, entertaining and educational content and they’re sure to sticks around.

What is your blog’s bounce rate – and why do you suppose that is?

No matter if you run your own blog or write a blog for a client, your blog comments at other blogs are a good way to network. I myself will click on the name of someone who leaves a good comment and have found some of my favorite reads this way. That said, your comments can also work against you; it all depends on how you play it.

What kind of comments may entice people to click your link…

• Comments that contain personality. I usually click on comment links if the comment makes me laugh because I assume that person’s blog might make me laugh too.
• Comments that stay on topic.
• Comments that are nice. Nope, nice is not a weak work IMO.
• Comments that offer up a debate in some sensible way. I.e., “I don’t agree and here’s why…” I tend to go check out links related to smart debate comments simply to see what that blogger is up to and maybe learn something new.
• Comments that flatter the blogger – NOT kiss ass comments, but genuine interest-driven flattery. Most bloggers I know can’t resist someone who appears to like them especially if that person also left a well-thought out, smart comment.

Not every comment you leave should be left to inspire someone to click on your link though. Some comments are purely to set you up as a helpful member of that specific blog community. Comments like this include…

• Questions that relate to the topic at hand.
• Responses to other comments.
• Responses to a question posed in the post.

While the sort of comment noted above may not get you a click right away they do set you up as useful and non-annoying plus gets your name and link out there. Basically these comment show that you’re into blogs because you genuinely enjoy them, not just because you think you might get a click.

Will bad comments get you noticed?

You can go the other way. You can leave the world’s worst comments and see what happens or you can take it from me, nothing will happen. Nothing useful anyhow. If you leave lame comments no one will click your link and you may have your comment deleted. Worse you may end up banned entirely from a blog or you might even get to be known as that, “stupid; mean; spammy; pain in the butt” reader.

Still if you’d like to leave bad comments here’s a primer:

Be as mean as humanly possible – “You are the dumbest blogger ever because… [words that make no sense and don't back up said argument that I am indeed the dumbest blogger ever].” If you’re gonna be rude, back up that attitude with some substance. If you’re just mean, and have zero back-up people will assume you’re a troll – and guess what, you are.

Go off topic – Even better tell me you’re going off topic it makes my job of deleting your comment easy. For example, I get a lot of these, “Hey Jennifer, I know this doesn’t relate at all but you should read this… http://www.linkthatdoesnotrelateatall.com” – you lost me and everyone else at “doesn’t relate” and made it worse by leaving a lame link.

Try to hide your spammy link – So many spammy people leave comments like this, “Wow what a cool idea about solar panels! I totally agree with this. My favorite solar panels are actually http://myspammysolarpanels.com!” You can dress up spam with niceness but bloggers aren’t stupid. You’re still spammy and you’ll still be deleted. Your link MAY survive if beyond nice you left some actual useful information that totally relates to the post at hand, but otherwise you’re toast.

Leave a novel in the making – Bonus points if you don’t press enter. I have left some really long comments at times, but only if I’m really into the topic and I try to limit myself; as in one long comment per post. I don’t keep going back to leave more and more until I take the post over. Some people will come back and leave the world’s longest comments, not once, not twice, but well over many times on the same post. It may not get you deleted but the blogger and other blog readers will probably start to sigh when they see your name, due to how obnoxious you are.

Of course there are all sorts of lame comments you can leave if you try hard enough. Above are just a few of the most annoying.

There is a right way and a wrong way to leave comments and although in the grand scheme of things comments may seem small, they can make a difference in how and if other people click your link.

I pay careful attention to blog traffic. I religiously read my stats and keep a close eye on the search terms and keywords bringing folks to the Freelance Writing Jobs blog network. While we have been enjoying a steady rise for years, a few weeks ago we experienced a brief dip in traffic. At first I was concerned; what could be causing folks to stay away? After a careful analysis of my stats, I realized people weren’t staying away. In fact, more people than ever were reading blog posts from this network.

So why the drop in blog traffic?

Because more readers are choosing alternative methods of viewing this blog.

For example, during the time of our traffic dip we experienced a huge jump in RSS subscribers. At almost 9500 subscribers, I’m not too worried that no one is reading our blogs. Also, we have a ton of sign ups to the weekly newsletter. Many of them click through to read our articles after viewing the excerpts in the newsletter. Plus, our Facebook Fan page will hit 900  fans soon and our Facebook networked blogs page isn’t doing so shabby either. Readership isn’t down, it’s way, way up.

So many bloggers obsess over their blog’s traffic, when that should only be one measure of success. Other factors should include:

• Comments - Is there a lot of community participation? Do people keep coming back to take part in the discussion? Your comments are a very good indication of how your most important community members – the regulars – feel about what you do.
• Bounce Rate – We’re going to discuss this more in depth soon in another post, but bounce rate measures how long folks stick around. Generally, the higher the bounce rate, the less time folks are spending on the site. From what I can tell by my research 60% is about average for most blogs. FWJ’s bounce rate is between 30% and 40% which means when people drop by, they tend to stick around and read a few pages. Even more important than having a ton of visitors who don’t stick around is having a few who are so interested they read for an hour.
• RSS and Email Subscribers - Did you know most of the people who read your content aren’t visiting your blog? They’re reading it through RSS or email feeds. My stats program allows me to see not only how many of my subscribers view my feeds each day, but also how many click through to participate in the comments or have a look around. So in addition to several thousand physical visitors each day, we also have several thousand subscriber views. It’s a beautiful thing.
• Searches – I’m kind of an SEO Idiot, but I can figure out a few things. For example, my stats tell me how I’m doing with the searches and my best performing keywords. It tells me each day which terms visitors are using to find my blog and how those same search terms compare to the day before. Because I’m not an SEO expert, I’m kind of proud of what we achieved here. Ranking #1 for several key search terms is the goal of most bloggers.

If your blog traffic is down it can mean several different things. Of course it could mean you lost readers, and if that’s the case you’ll have to analyze why. It can also mean you’re gaining readers in different ways. Before you panic, check your stats. The results might be a very pleasant surprise.

Here’s a recent email question from a Blogging For A Living reader…

I’m currently blogging for free for a startup business. I’ve been writing for about 6 months for this site. I think now I should at least get something for each article posting, having proven myself a valuable commodity to bring in regular traffic. What is the average fee for writing one blog article? Is $25 – $50 reasonable? Thank you for your help.

I’ll break it into parts.

1) Six months, in my opinion, is far too long to write for the same client for free. Technically I’m leery to even call this set-up a client since no pay is involved and I’m not on board with working for free in general; but I digress. IF you’re a decent blogger then yes, you should be getting paid.  Actually let me rephrase that, if you’re blogging for someone for six months NO matter if you’re a decent blogger or not you should be getting paid. If they didn’t like you they could tell you to quit blogging for them and find someone they do like. The fact that they haven’t locked you out of the blog says they want you to blog.

2) The question states, “I should at least get something for each article posting, having proven myself a valuable commodity to bring in regular traffic.” Traffic is a moot point when it comes to pay for a start up.For one thing, traffic is not a fast deal. It can take a long time to build up traffic. Yes, a good blogger should work on writing traffic worthy posts, but since there’s likely no contract here stipulating that you have to spend time networking or using smart SEO, then the traffic issue is secondary. What you should be getting paid for is the time you spend blogging.

3) As for pay, without knowing the client or the scope of the work I can’t state an “average” pay rate. There are people who make $1 per post, people who make $10-20 per post, and people who make $50+ per post. Some bloggers are paid a flat fee and some are paid traffic only, while other bloggers are paid a mix of the two. Additionally, as shown from this email there are also people who work for free. There is no set average.

What I suggest: Every blogger should sit down and calculate their own personal going rate. It’ll vary for everyone based on goals, lifestyle, type of work and time available. After figuring out your rate you’ll need to decide if a client who pays less than your rate is worth keeping.

In the end how much you make as a blogger is far more up to you then the client. You don’t ever have to work for free or for low wages unless you want to – it’s a choice you’re making.

Overall: While I do think it’s up to the blogger to ask for decent pay and not work for free I do think a situation like this sounds super sketchy. Without knowing the full scope of this situation above, I do think that anyone who has accepted free work from someone for too long without offering pay (minus very specific situations) is probably sort of lame and you likely shouldn’t be working with them anyhow.

Learn how to ask for a raise – or as in this case some pay.