Often as the day goes by I often wonder, is making money blogging healthy? Can this lifestyle kill someone? For me, I personally invest quite a bit of time into this business. It pays quite well, but that didn’t come over night and there is only a handful of people I personally know who engage into the same business that also realize this. For the rest, alluring into the business of blogging for money is thought to be easy, that it is an easy ride or a free ticket from the afflictions within their day jobs.

This unfortunately is very far from the truth. To be successful in this line of business your body that lives in a very smooth and free flowing environment has to be subjected to an ever going and continues digital environment. The Internet never sleeps, there is always something going on, there is always just one more post that can be written that will score just a little more cash.

For me, and I can’t say that I speak for others, but I do know this, I have to push myself everyday to stay on top. I have to constantly work towards maintaining many of my blogs, making sure readership, traffic, pages build and index grow. I have research and tap into sources that allow me to find breaking or newly emerging material to use for publication. The list goes on and on.

Is this a healthy business? I don’t know how to run it any other way. There is something always going on and if I don’t cover the story then someone else will. If my competing blog authors cover the story, then they get the credit, the traffic, the advertisers and the authority.

Making money blogging is very cut throat. While the personal sides of blogging are very wonderful. You can meet a lot of friends and talk to people from across the globe; one thing remains true: when it’s time to put the good old ‘Press Hat’ on it’s time for business. Blogging is like a chess game.

You can play chess with your friends; however, during game play - assuming you’re a very competitive chess player - your opponent is your competition, an enemy and you’ll do anything you can to capture the king. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing against your mom, dad, 25yr family friend, or even a sibling. When it’s game time, you play chess to win.

Making money blogging has very similar attributes. Tons of friends, tons of friendly instant messages and emails, tons of tips, tricks and advise swapping; but when it comes to publishing content; the cutting of throats begin.

If you’re knee deep into blogging, the omnipotence of blogging can quickly take a toll on your physical and mental health. The cycle of blogging is a vicious one. You’re not a character who settles for second place. Everyone with the same mentality understands that second place is nothing more than the first loser. The business of blogging for money is much like a chess game. The only problem is the compounding and ever growing competition.

Chess is played with one opponent. However, could you imagine playing the game of chess at the same time on the same board with multiple people. In the business of blogging, this is really the only visual way I can give you a comparison.

In any given niche there are only a handful of dangerous competitors. In the game of multi-player chess, the above screen shot gives you a visual reference of the niche ground in blogosphere being fought over by six competitors within that niche.

All niche blog authors are competing for the same goals. Whether that be delivering the latest news, offering the sports scores the fastest, or building up the largest number of followers on new programs that make money online. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is about. Regardless of the subject, there is competition and competition never sleeps. Consequently, nor do you.

Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging and making money blogging is a niche that follows suit. So the question remains, is making money blogging killing you? How deep are you into this business? What do you do to thwart the ill mental and physical effects of this business?

My advice to you would be to play the game smart. Just like in chess, you need to develop strategies and utilize all the elements and game pieces given to you. Most bloggers operate their business and blogs from the king piece while not using the game pieces designed to win the game.

A true gifted chess player will push all their pieces on the board while an challenged blogger will work himself to death. Many people wonder how I do so well in this business. The key to being successful in the business of blogging for money is recognizing the elements that create dead ends in your business. Things that prevent you from doing what you need to do.

In my experience here are a few of the deadfall traps that have I have crawled out of luckily with only minor injuries.

1. The choice to ignore - or in many cases, to blatantly disregard the common rules placed by organic ranking search engines. People that sell, barter or trade links for the purpose of aiding others to rank better in organic ranking search engines risk falling into a very deep and mortal trap.
2. The inability to invest time into learning how to capitalize free traffic from organic ranking search engines. Getting your content visible in the search engines is not difficult, but rather it is based off situation and a few elements of your site.

   Number of banklinks, PageRank, number of incoming hits, number of outgoing hits all play a part in how well you rank for various levels of competitive keywords.

3. Correct choice of topic. Many bloggers simply want to engage into competition with others on a topic that they have absolutely no clue about. Commonly in this niche you have hundreds of people who compete within the make money online niche.

   You have people that are bluffing their way into the circle, you have others who pretend to be only kids or teens who are successful. Then you have others that are so transparent, it actually serves as corrective lenses and improves your vision.

   The point is this. Failing to choose a topic to write about that comes free flowing is a death sentence. You need to choose a topic that can easily allow you to write from the cuff and allows you to freely write without having to invest a lot of time into research.

   Granted, research is totally needed; however, in choosing a topic that your knowledgeable in, you’ll have a lot of the research already stored in your brain.

4. Failure to understand how traffic flows. When you’re in line to ride a roller coaster, you’re directed by following the line. The line is enforced by aisles. There is only one way into the line and only one way out.

   Designing a web site similar in fashion is the key. When a visitors visits your site how do you direct that individual? Where can that visitor go? What are the visitors options?

   If you leave the visitors able to wonder around aimlessly, you’re wasting his time, your bandwidth and you’re losing money.

5. Failure to promote and market your content. This is huge. Many bogglers fall into a trap of thinking that what they write is no good because their server logs indicate that no one is reading what they wrote. Some people also feel that lack of interaction with readers indicates poorly written content.

   The trap is when bloggers quickly jump the gun and rush to produce a new article to bury the old. The thought process is that if the previously written article didn’t get any traffic then it’s just not good enough and something else - something better - needs to be written and fast.

   This is not true. The problem is more likely NOT in the quality of your content. The problem is more likely to be in your lack or inability to promote or market what you just wrote and published. The simply fact alone that people are not reading what you wrote should indicate this.

   Don’t assume that you’re content is poor in quality until you have had a few thousand people read it. From there, if the desired action wasn’t reaches, then you can consider whether the level of quality or level of interest was good or not.

   Instead of getting self-conscious and writing yet another article, give the current one a chance to be exposed to people. Advertise your article in places such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, Sphinn.com and Propeller.com.

   It isn’t too good of a behavior to submit your own content, so ask a friend to do it for you. If you don’t have a friend who will do this for you, then find one.

   If you’re too lazy to ask someone, then stop reading and get a job a Wal-mart or collect unemployment as you’re obviously in the wrong business here.

   If you have multiple blogs that you publish content to, then cross promote your content. You can easily use another blog to promote the content on another. Simply write a lead in paragraph or two about the article you want exposed and invite readers from one blog to visit the content on another.

Is making money blogging killing you? I think it is if you’re not playing your cards correctly. If you’re working hard but not smart, then you can easily be blogging yourself into the grave. If you play your cards smart and closely utilize your strengths and build on converting your weaknesses into superior powers, then you’re way ahead of the game.

Some competitors are blind, simply for the fact that many of the leading competitors either had their authority handed to them by a previous venture or action.

Working from the ground up and competing with a high ranking competitive and authoritative power can be difficult if you go about it the wrong way. However, if you find weaknesses in your competitor and exploit them and turn them into your own strengths, you’ll quickly climb the ladder.

A great way to see the weakness in a competitor is by reading the interactions they have with the general public. People who comment on blogs speak their mind. They say things that they normally wouldn’t say in real life situations.

In real world situations, people commonly don’t speak what they feel. They will lie and tell you one thing while believing something else. In the world of blogging, things are much different. In the blogging world, you can have people become very fond of you and call you a god, on the flipside you can have people totally disagree with everything you say and they’ll heavily voice their opinion about that.

The point is this, if you want to discover the weakness in a blogger, troll around in the comment sections and see what the common perception of the blogger may be. Find out what the general public likes about this individual and the things they hate about this person.

And remember, blogging for money or competition in being number one in your niche is nothing more than a multi-player chess game. Utilize all the elements that are given to you, hide your weaknesses from others and exploit the weaknesses of others. And remember, you need to set plenty of time aside to take your ‘press hat’ off and just be a normal human being.

Tags: A-List Bloggers, blog competition, Blog Life, Blog Tips, blogging ethics, Blogging Tips, Business Blogging, competitive niche blogging, Make Money Blogging, Make Money Online, Niche Blogging, niche marketing, social networking tips

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