I have been writing the website Things about Transylvania for many years.
I never spent time thinking about what could increase my profits, because I loved the writing aspect to this website, I loved building relationships with many of my readers- money is great and was secondary. However, no matter how great my writing is, there is a problem, and that is the law of the Internet.
To me, this law is stated as: One website with great content, will lose money if this website is not marketed correctly to the correct people and at the correct time. It is all about thinking about your market and growing it. It is about working with the people you need to have hear about your website, and then want to come back. It's great you can have a lot of content, and maybe some SEO knowledge but in a niche market you need to know a lot more about whom and where the reader are.
No writer likes to have to redo a blog post they think is "perfect", and they have every right to feel this way, but there comes a time when you have to take a long look at not only content, but everything else that comes with a business where you earn money. It is important to draw people in
and make them love what you publish. It's a lot of learning and re-learning the aspects you think you know about Transylvania. This is true if you want to earn income with your blog or website which has a niche focus- such as Romania.
A good example of an aspect no one likes to talk about is bounce rate, which can make or break a website when it comes to readers and visitors.
Bounce rate is simple for most website: the more people stay on the site the more likely that they will find a value of the writing and the facts you are giving to them about Romania or Transylvania. Income is earned and you have to prove it every time you pick up a pen and write about Transylvania. This being said, writing can only take you so far. How others view your work is far more important than any other factor you can think of. This is true when the discussion centres on a place that people can look up and check for facts and figures.
It is more important to draw people in to your blog with fantastic commentary, and views. Readers are the ones who earn you income and more readership. What makes me earn income, is learning what works and what doesn't work on a niche website when it's about a topic such as Transylvania.
What works is following the marketing rules correctly, what doesn't work is thinking only one thing will work. There are always rule changes, and there are always rules that will change due to the nature of the Internet. No one is immune to big changes, and many a website has challenges, a good example is found in the book ProBlogger
, where Darren Rowe tells of his own experiences with challenges of the search engines. The key to success in any market is never panic, and if your work is good, stay the course. This holds true with a niche website like this one.
This means you will need to work with some heavy numbers and figures to see if the business plan is one that will work. Some people do make income on many niche websites, but the reality is that not many will- if they don't want to work hard at it. The ones who do, understand marketing to the point of working with a reader. It is not about them. As much as the people who don't earn passive income think that there are tricks to increasing income, there really isn't anything. Transylvania, for example is reliant on its tourism industry to keep it moving, just like a website needs to keep moving.
1) Going on to Google in all of its types and styles, and doing research based on what you are being told:
This is one of the most time consuming aspects to building a successful website people want to spend time reading. One of the first things you will see on the Analytics website is visitor numbers. But that doesn't even begin to tell the story- if the numbers are low, chances are there isn't much you are telling people about Transylvania. Next is the learning process: what you are looking for to begin with is "bounce rate" "time on site" and "number of page views." These three pieces of information will tell you more of the health of the website as a whole. I focus on bounce rate and what it does based on each blog post I publish. However, if I focus only on bounce rate I miss how long people stay to read, but don't comment or share their point of view.
2) Going and seeing what others have done:
Not only going and commenting on their work, but rather going to several of the lenses which more "bigger" websites on Transylvania have published, and going back and seeing what can and should be done with your own. The one thing I have noticed with them is that they have good interactions with their followers, and the readers can "take away" things- commentary on politics of Romania, or about the history or modern views on Dracula. For example, I might not know much about the current mayor of the city of Bucharest, but there is always someone who does, and has a commentary about them. The current mayor of Bucharest is Sorin Oprescu.
3) Going and fixing up your older blog posts and your website in general:
This is a time consuming area since some of the blog posts are older and it means that you have to improve your writing on them or tighten them up with information that works for you. This doesn't mean that you will make income for your site, but it does mean that you will have more to offer to your potential reader not only about the politics or history or simply your own point of view but you can learn a lot more about Romania, and the place it has in Europe.
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