Still, when I look back for a moment, an unusual benefit sticks out. I’m talking about the gift of connection.

Maybe, it’s the busy way of modern life. Perhaps, it’s because I moved around a lot throughout my life. Or maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t say that it’s particularly easy to form meaningful connections in this day and age.

Though, I suspect I’m not alone. Consider this joke on Twitter.

I find that quite funny and relatable.

Yet, blogging has allowed me to connect with so many people over the years. Many became professional connections, several online acquaintances, but a few actually become good friends. Geography is still an issue, mind you, but the friendships are real nevertheless.

Now, I’m not telling you to start a blog or resume your existing one for the specific purpose of making friends. (Though, there would be nothing wrong with that.)

Instead, I’m suggesting friendship that goes beyond professional networking is a possible, even likely, outcome. And I consider that a great benefit for bloggers.

The key is to be approachable. Letting people know you can be reached by email or whatever channels you prefer. Respond to comments and interact with those who engage with you.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the amazing people reading your words unbeknownst to you. Over time, some may become invaluable friends.

The post An Unusual Benefit of Blogging appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Sadly, many people find themselves disappointed by the results. One of the key reasons for this is that they approach blogging monetization differently than pro bloggers do.

The difference in traffic is a huge factor of course, but the RPM (Revenue Per Mille, or per thousand page views) among pro bloggers is also much higher than your typical blogger. So all things being equal, the big guys tend to milk their traffic far more.

In this post, I’ll discuss how pro bloggers make money by doing essentially the opposite of what most bloggers do.

The wrong approach to blogging income

An overwhelming majority of bloggers who try to monetize their blogs, will take the path of least resistance and opt to simply place AdSense ads on their blogs. Doing so doesn’t take much effort and in turn, it typically leads to… not much in return. Perhaps a few dollars a month, unless they have monthly six-figure page views or they cover a very specific niche that happens to have extremely high advertising costs (and therefore payouts).

A smaller percentage will then seek higher RPM ad networks (either because of the nature of the ads or because it’s a network specific to the topic covered in their blog). This will typically improve one’s blogging income a little, but it will still be quite limited for sites that don’t receive massive amounts of traffic.

Another small percentage of bloggers will try their hands at affiliate marketing, typically with a program like Amazon Associates or eBay. Assuming they are accepted, and they do a good job reviewing or discussing specific products in their blogs, these bloggers will generally start to see some extra revenue in the form of a percentage commission of every sale generated by their referral within a given period of time (e.g., 24 hours).

Some, but not many, will seek high paying affiliate programs where the commission will be substantial (e.g., $50+) or recurring each month if the buyer remains a subscriber of whatever product/service the referral was made for. Having huge traffic becomes less necessary when a single person buying the product (e.g., a hosting package you recommend) can generate $50 or more for you.

Whether people visiting your blog have the right intention (e.g., are they looking for hosting recommendations?) and whether you are a credible source of said recommendation, become much more important factors. But of course, the more traffic the merrier still applies.

A tiny percentage of bloggers will end up creating their own product that appeals to their audience. Think an ebook for $39, for example. Those who do a good job by creating a genuinely useful product and then market it correctly to their readers, can start to see income that would take decades to accrue with AdSense at their current traffic level. Think five (and more rarely six) figure income, depending on how successful they are.

An even smaller percentage of bloggers will add a final high ticket item to their marketing funnel. This is typically an expensive course (in the $397-$1,999 price range) or some exclusive, direct mentorship offer for an equally substantial fee. The sky’s the limit here in terms of income.

The inverse pyramid of blogging income

There is an obvious correlation between the effort required, the economic reward, and how popular each approach is.

The least rewarding, AdSense, requires the least effort, produces the least amount of revenue for the blogger, and in turn is the most popular monetization method among bloggers.

The most economically rewarding option, creating your own high price items, requires the most amount of effort both in terms of creating something of so much value, and marketing it (e.g., $397 is definitely not an impulse buy for most people). But you can make scary amounts of money from it.

The real problem is that most bloggers looking to monetize their blogs tend to follow the pyramid as presented above. Many will stop at the first four steps, at best, never venturing into making their own product.

The secret to increasing blogging income is to invert the pyramid and focus your efforts and priorities accordingly.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have AdSense, but you should prioritize the high reward items, as they are the ones that are most likely to make you serious extra income – even if you only get a few thousand visitors a month to your site.

In fact, I’m reminded of Stephen Covey of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame (killer book, by the way, for personal growth). In it, he argues that if you try to place large rocks last in a jar filled with sand and pebbles, you won’t be able to. But if you prioritize the large rocks first, you’ll always be able to squeeze in the pebbles and sand. He was talking about time management and prioritizing goals and tasks, but it applies here as well.

In our analogy, your own products are the big rocks, affiliate commissions are pebbles, and ads are sand.

How serious bloggers make money

That’s how serious bloggers make money! They create what is essentially a funnel that’s laser-focused on getting readers to buy the useful product they’ve made.

They attract a lot of visitors with great free content that is relevant to their blog topic. Content that both helps people and establishes the blogger’s authority on the subject at hand. Then they will typically offer some sort of valuable freebie, like an email course or a PDF guide to turn their site’s visitors into email subscribers (this freebie is known as a lead magnet).

They’ll continue to provide value to their subscribers with great content, for free, as well as making them aware of some kind of offer related to their products (remember, people love sales). Some will even first sell the inexpensive product (e.g., a cheap ebook or course) and then upsell true believers to their more expensive products and/or services. If you are familiar with Tony Robbins, that’s what he does. But pretty much anyone raking in big bucks through digital sales adopts a similar strategy.

There is a reason for the common mantra, the money is in the list. Nothing beats having regular readers you can continue to communicate with directly. You’ll be able to provide them with useful information on a regular basis and sell them valuable products that will help them, and in turn, help you achieve your financial blogging goals in the process.

It’s worth noting that depending on the reasons that you personally blog, direct monetary gain might not be your main interest. And that’s okay. Your career itself might be the high ROI “product” in that case.

It’s important to understand that in most cases blogging is a content marketing tool for business, but it is not the business itself.

It all boils down to this. If you want to maximize your blogging income, sell a product through your blog. That product can be an ebook, course, private membership, or software, as long as it’s extremely useful and relevant to your readers.

The post The Inverted Pyramid of Blogging Income: How Pro Bloggers Make Money appeared first on Technical Blogging.

These days, however, you might find yourself thinking that blogging is dead, or that it’s, at least, dying out. You can’t be blamed for that.

You see…

• The novelty of blogging has worn off for most folks quite a while ago now and as a result, mainstream media has typically been much more focused on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat instead of blogs themselves.
• Google pretty much killed the concept of RSS subscriptions (with an exception made for the most technical of audiences). There is the distinct impression that fewer people follow blogs. Many now pay attention to blog when a random article appears in their Facebook feed.[1]
• Some of the most successful blogs today follow the BuzzFeed approach. Posts that are lists of images, clickbait titles, and questionable ads (that are often, intentionally, hard to distinguish from the actual content on that site).

Don’t get me wrong, social media has its place. It is, in fact, something that, as a blogger, you need to do to succeed at – a topic that I plan to cover more in detail in future posts. BuzzFeed then, as moronic as it might appear to be, is creating content that people want. In a fast food way, granted, but still providing something people actively seek. So there is some value behind their billion dollars valuation (whether we agree with their methods or not).

I’ll give you my take. None of this really matters. Who cares if blogging is hot or not or if doing it makes still makes you sound cool or not. Blogging remains a valuable and viable approach to making extra income online or advancing your career, projects, ideas, goals, dreams. It’s still one of the most accessible ways to continually publish new content online at little to no (financial) cost to yourself.

Blogging has matured. It’s become a serious business tool, and it has a huge host of benefits, regardless of where you are in your career.

Some might see it as something boring and less exciting than its micro-publishing, social media cousin, and frankly I don’t mind that either. As a software developer, I can really appreciate the value of a mature stack or platform, even if people no longer consider it to be something new and sexy.

Successful businesses that are centered around blogs spring to life every day. If you haven’t started blogging yet, I sincerely hope that you give it an honest go. It’s certainly more work than impulse publishing 140 characters on Twitter, but the rewards, as is so often the case with hard work, are far greater as well.

And that won’t ever change.

The post Is Blogging Still Worth It? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

If you’re looking for ways to make money from your blog, you should consider affiliate marketing. In a nutshell, affiliate marketing allows online publishers to earn commissions by referring customers to a merchant.

The way affiliate marketing works is that you get access to links or ads that you can add to your blog (or website, social networks, mobile apps, etc). By integrating these affiliate links alongside your content, you’re able to show your readers items that appeal to their interests. Each time one of your visitors clicks through one of your affiliate links and makes a purchase, you receive a commission.

If you’ve decided that you’d like to try affiliate marketing as a way to leverage your expertise to monetize your blog, you’re going to want to start by researching program options. There are many out there and you may choose to work with just one program, or with several. How do you determine which program will work best for you? Here are a few factors to consider.

1. Fit with your content

Making sure your blog content closely aligns with the items you’re promoting to your visitors is one of the most important components to consider when selecting an affiliate partner. For example, if your blog focuses on interior design, it would make the most sense to partner with a merchant that sells home renovation and decor products.

2. Product inventory

Another consideration that corresponds to the products you’ll be promoting is the depth of inventory. Does the merchant have a wide range of desirable items, and are they available at competitive prices? Will your visitors be enticed to buy? You’ll want to be able to provide your readers not only with the right product for their needs, but also at the right price for their wallet.

3. Reputation & trust

If a visitor clicks through your affiliate link and is met with an offer from an unknown retailer, what are the chances that they will feel comfortable enough to make a purchase? It will be easier for your visitors to make a purchase decision if they are already familiar with the site where you are sending them. Take a look at established programs like eBay Partner Network to get started.

4. Tools & creatives

Affiliate merchants and networks offer a variety of ways for you to promote their products. This could include premade creatives like web banners, or tools for you to create customizable widgets or generate text links, as well as access to product feeds or an API. Make sure you know what your prospective partner has to offer, and that the solution fits well with your goals and technical abilities.

5. Payment structure

Of course, commission rates are a very important factor to consider. Make sure you fully understand the compensation structure, such as if there are variable rates or tiers for your promotional efforts. For example, eBay’s affiliate program provides a bonus to affiliates who refer purchases from new or reactivated buyers. Also be sure to take a look at how often you’ll be paid, and how payments are delivered.

There are many more factors that go into choosing an affiliate program, but these five areas should provide you with a good start. By researching up front, you’ll be better prepared for long-term affiliate success.

The post How to Choose an Affiliate Network appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Sadness aside, what’s remarkable here is that their number of page views grew while revenue went down. That means that their RPM (Revenue Per Mille, so per thousand impressions) has gone down.

In fact, here is the motivation behind their decision:

Why would a well-known site, dearly loved by its readers and coming off a year of record page views, be sunset by its owner?

In one word, revenue. Four years ago, when I came to Dr. Dobb’s, we had healthy profits and revenue, almost all of it from advertising. Despite our excellent growth on the editorial side, our revenue declined such that today it’s barely 30% of what it was when I started. […] This is because in the last 18 months, there has been a marked shift in how vendors value website advertising. They’ve come to realize that website ads tend to be less effective than they once were. Given that I’ve never bought a single item by clicking on an ad on a website, this conclusion seems correct in the small.

What does this mean for much smaller online publications like bloggers? Ads have historically been the easiest way for bloggers to earn some income from their blogs. You’d embed some code obtained from a network like Google Adsense, and collect royalties at the end of the month. [1]

Google doesn’t allow disclosure of specific numbers about their program’s RPM so that’s not a conversation we can have. Nevertheless, if you Google it (boy have we come to depend on them) you’ll find that it’s not uncommon for blogs to sit somewhere between $1–4 per impression, depending on subject matter, ad position, ad network, etc. [2]

In general you’re allowed up to three ad placements on a page, so you could in theory have an RPM per page between $3 and $12. That means that a blog achieving 100,000 page views per month could be earning between $300-$1,200 solely from a single ad network.

Now, 100,000 page views per month are far from easy, but entirely possible after a while. And $300-$1,200 is a nice amount of extra pocket change for the occasional or even dedicated blogger. That’s not however the case if blogging is your day job or if you are a larger company with staff and writers to support.

Ads are not dead as far as bloggers are concerned, but those interested in maximizing their revenue must realize that advertising on the web has its limits. They are part of a healthy meal, but not the whole meal.

The reason for that was explained by the Dr. Dobb’s quote above. Advertisers have found web ads to not be as lucrative as other options. Ask anyone who’s tried their hand at Google Adwords and they will all tell you how easy it is to lose your shirt if you are not extremely careful, and how hard it is to make a profit.

People have learned to ignore ads. Banner blindness is as real as it ever was. For technical audiences, AdBlock plugins are also something to contend with. [3] The truth is that what’s good for advertisers is good for publishers, and ads have not been serving advertisers too well. [4]

Your blog revenue strategy shouldn’t count on ads alone. Sponsorship, directly negotiated with the right companies, are already more rewarding. However, I contend that affiliate marketing, done through genuine reviews, recommendations, and mentions is far superior both in terms of revenue and service offered to advertisers. Furthermore, if the recommendations are authentic and not done just for a quick buck, they serve your audience as well. It’s a win-win-win situation all around.

You’ll also want to consider being your own advertiser. Selling your own products and services through your blog can be extremely lucrative and doesn’t generally come across as disgraceful to your audience in the way that excessive advertisement can.

Finally, remember that a lot of value can be extracted from your blog in ways that are not directly translated into a dollar figure. As I stress in my book, blogging can open the door to new job opportunities, partnerships, the ability to promote your own projects or startup, increase your authority within your field, and many other indirect benefits.

The post Don’t Count on Ads appeared first on Technical Blogging.

It is natural for bloggers who start to gather a following to consider revenue opportunities to reward their time and effort.

Google AdSense is a popular option for its plug and play nature. Sadly, it tends to be a disappointing source of income for most bloggers. The average RPM (revenue per thousand impressions of an ad) is fairly low in most niches, so you won’t get much side income from AdSense unless you have a very large audience. For example, if you average $3 RPM, you need a thousand visitors per day to pay for your daily latte (or more if you frequent Starbucks).

Bloggers who look around and explore their options a little more in-depth, may find the lucrative world of affiliate marketing. It’s a simple idea really. Imagine that I create a product and then want you to help me sell as many of it as possible. You, the affiliate, will promote the product for me through your blog. When a sale is made thanks to you (we’ll track that through a special link and browser cookies), I’ll give a portion of that sale to you. The percentage varies but it can be very high, with 50% being the norm for digital products.

If you are unscrupulous you could promote all sort of junk to make a buck, whether you honestly think it’s worth recommending or not. You could even promote products that you down right know suck, and still get your cut. And it turns out people actually do just this. As a result, affiliate marketers have a very bad reputation, despite there being nothing inherently wrong with receiving money for providing a marketing service.

Amazon Associates was one of the earliest and, currently, largest affiliate programs around. The operating margins are much smaller for Amazon, so the percentage that you get for each sale is rather small compared to that of most products online. We’re talking about 4-8.50% for most items, instead of the 50-75% you’d get from other digital products you could be promoting. Furthermore, with Amazon you don’t generally receive recurring referral revenue like you do with other digital products that charge a monthly fee and not a one-off fee.

Amazon’s operating agreement also requires you to be above-board when it comes to the way you go about promoting their products. Other affiliate programs online may gladly close one eye on your techniques if you are moving sales and making them money.

To further make Amazon less appealing to some affiliates, the referral cookie only lasts 24 hours, versus 30 or 60 days, which is common for online sales of digital products. This means that if you refer someone to Amazon.com today, and they were to buy a product three days from now, you won’t be getting anything at all. With more common affiliate relationships, you’d be getting a cut even if the user were to make a purchasing decision a month and a half after the first visit you generated (assuming that they didn’t clear their cookies, that is).

As a result, Amazon Associates is often ignored or berated by large affiliates. In fact it’s even a much underrated revenue option among bloggers. Amazon, and not AdSense, should be the first go-to option for bloggers looking to earn some money from their blogs. Amazon Associates is, and has been for years now, my number one source of blogging income.

To make this case, below I list a series of reasons why I recommend giving Amazon Associates a serious shot, despite its shortcomings.

Reason #1: Amazon Associates is straightforward and dependable

Once you sign up and provide the details of how you’d like to be paid (cheque, direct deposit, or gift certificate) you’ll receive your payments once you’ve reached or crossed the pre-established threshold limit (e.g., $100, with a two month delay for the payment). If you move enough sales, after two months, you’ll be receiving a steady monthly paycheck from them.

Other affiliate programs can make you jump through hoops to sign up and get approved, or may require certain conditions to be met before issuing payments (e.g., ClickBank’s requirement for five different credit card purchases before releasing the funds, which progressively reduces the amount that you’re owed over time until you get those five separate credit card payments).

Reason #2: Amazon’s cookie has site-wide coverage, and is not just limited to a specific product

Yes, you only get a 24-hour window, but in that timeframe you’ll get a cut of anything a referred visitor buys, not just the product you pointed out to them. I’ve had visitors buy all sorts of expensive and odd items when they left my site to check out a $10 book on Amazon. And trust me, pink vibrators can add up quickly.

Reason #3: Amazon has a humongous inventory of extremely reputable products

You don’t have to promote “belly fat secrets” on your blog to make a buck. Their huge selection of high-quality books and other products, means that you can be selective and only recommend or point out items you truly believe are worth your readers’ time and investment. You can select books that are entirely relevant to your topic of expertise, and review products you have actually read/tried/consumed.

Reason #4: People trust Amazon

Being such a well established household name implies that most of your visitors won’t think twice about putting a purchase through on Amazon. Many will have accounts already, and perhaps even have their credit card stored on the site for quick checkouts. This in turn means that more people will buy instead of second guessing whether it’s safe to use the shopping cart.

Reason #5: Amazon is a master at converting visitors into customers

Amazon spends millions of dollars in research to optimize the amount of sales they squeeze out of new and existing customers. All you really need to do is send people to Amazon and they’ll do a good job themselves for the most part. Of course, if you are considered a trustworthy expert in your field and you send people to Amazon to check out a specific item, your conversion rate will be even higher.

Reason #6: The percentage of your cut raises in a given month, as you sell more items

The more products you sell, the greater the percentage of your total sales will be awarded to you. You start at a very low 4%, but can reach the 8% range in a relatively short amount of time (if your sales are good).

I strongly encourage you to give Amazon Associates a go.

Update: Several people wrote me asking for further details on how to make money with the Amazon Associates program. I’ll repeat here what I suggested privately via email:

1. In my book on technical blogging, I go in-depth about techniques that can help ensure that you get most out of this program (including statistics about my income, if you need further guidance to maximize your own earnings).
2. The Easy Azon plugin is super-handy and a time saver if you plan to feature Amazon links in your WordPress-based blog or site.

The post 6 Reasons Why the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program Is Highly Underrated appeared first on Technical Blogging.

The catch is that virtually anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort, and blogging is not an exception to this statement. So before committing your energy to such an endeavor, you may rightfully stop and wonder what’s in it for you. Is blogging really worth it?

In this article, I briefly illustrate some of the main benefits that directly derive from running a technical blog.

1. Blogging can improve your communication skills

Communication and writing, much like programming, are skills honed through countless hours of practice. As you work hard at articulating your thoughts into words, you’ll find that the process ends up improving your ability to express yourself. And communication is key, almost regardless of your profession.

Over time, you’ll become a faster and better technical writer, who’s able to come up with an insightful essay or tutorial in just an hour or two.

Even better, you’ll be able to concisely formulate confusing or undefined thoughts into exact words. Vague thoughts that you considered in your head will either prove to be valid and gain strength throughout the process of formalizing them into words, or quickly fall apart as flawed ideas once you see them on the screen.

This habit will make you not only a better communicator, but also a better, clearer thinker.

2. Blogging can improve your technical skills

One of the most successful learning technique I know is to try to teach what you’re currently learning yourself to other people.

The process of explaining something to others quickly solidifies your knowledge and outlines its shortcomings, exposing your own doubts about the material you’re studying. This is why writing down and paraphrasing a book, something bright student often do, is a powerful technique that helps retain and clarify your understanding of the information you’re gathering.

As a blogger, you are likely to improve your technical skills because you are forced to research further topics in order to properly share them with the public. You might be corrected by commenters who know more about the subject than you do, and learn a lot from them in the process. As well you may learn more as others expand on what you had to say within their blogs, or perhaps force you to answer more questions about the topic than you thought about in the first place.

As I mentioned in my book, blogging is just as much as teaching as it is about starting a conversation. These conversations will often help increase your expertise and well-roundedness.

The collaborative power of blogging was truly highlighted and pushed to the limit by the Fields medalist Professor Timothy Gowers with his Polymath Project, in which his blog and commenting section was used to figure out unsolved mathematical problems collaboratively.

3. Blogging can provide you with a repository for your knowledge

Some people like to use personal wikis for this purpose, but blogging can be an excellent way to keep track of information you intend to retrieve at a later stage. For example many programmers use their own old posts to find particular snippets of code, the exact steps to configure a server, or a given URL for a useful service they blogged about.

At times you’ll find that googling for a given problem will bring up an article from your own blog that you may very well have forgotten about. (And if that post doesn’t solve your problem, you can curse your past self for not providing more details back when you wrote it.)

Looking back at your old posts is also a great way to keep track of progress, and have access to a timeline of what you were dealing with, thinking, and doing at a given moment in the past. It’s fun to look back once in a while and introspect about how far you’ve come. This can often provide you with glimpses of insight about where your career and professional interests are headed.

4. Blogging can help make powerful connections

Technical blogging injects you into an online community of fellow professionals who are passionate about the topic they are writing about. If you are contributing valuable information and insight, and link to others, you’ll likely end up on the radar of these people, and ultimately connect with other world class players in your field.

Blogging is certainly cheaper than flying across the world non-stop to meet all these folks at expensive conferences (though blogging is not a substitute for in-person human interaction).

Society functions through people interacting, connecting, and networking. How you use this opportunity is up to you, but it can definitely be a boost for your career, business, or even life in general to be in touch with other experts in the field of your choice.

5. Blogging can help you make friends

Even better than powerful acquaintances are friends. As a prominent blogger you’ll get to meet and interact with a wealth of people online. If you’re social and available to others, you’ll end up making friends (influential and less influential ones alike) online.

I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve come to know thanks to my technical blogs.

Sometimes it’s a case of someone who comments often and you get to know them better through this route. Other times it is a fellow blogger. Often, it’s someone who noticed you through your blog and gets in touch via email. If you are fairly popular in your field, you may even get the occasional ego boosting, “Oh, I follow your blog” when introducing yourself at meetups or trade conferences.

6. Blogging can provide you with a second income

Most bloggers live under the false assumption that you can’t make serious money from running a blog on the side. They understand that if you dedicate yourself full-time, there is money to be made, but they severely underestimate how much revenue you can generate with just a couple of hours of your time per week. They’ve tried or heard horror stories from people making mere pennies with AdSense, and assume that they can’t monetize their own blog unless they’re really famous.

A few hundred dollars a month from your blog is absolutely within the reach of any professional out there. If you do everything right, and put in the work required, your blog can even make you thousands of dollars, both directly and indirectly.

My technical blogs make me a few thousand dollars every month, and I often end up not touching them for weeks at the time. Blogging is not passive income, but if you know what you are doing, all the content you produce compounds and ends up providing you with a substantial income – even when you neglect the blog for a few weeks or months at a time.

Blogging can provide you with some serious extra income that you can then use to finance your hobby, buy gadgets, pay off debt, or do whatever else you desire. It’s a really nice feeling to receive a few extra checks each month, and it will further motivate you to continue blogging.

In my book I cover in great detail how I go about monetizing my blogs, but I’ll also talk more about this subject on this site (subscribe via feed or email if you’d like to be notified of such future articles).

7. Blogging can score you freebies

Publishers and PR firms have become aware of the influence bloggers have on targeted audiences. Even as a mildly successful blogger, you can expect to be contacted by a multitude of people offering you freebies. Depending on your niche and field, these offers will typically be for books, but it’s not uncommon to receive offers for other items, including tickets for conferences, gadgets, software, etc.

As long as you disclose your affiliation (in a way that makes the FTC happy), it’s actually very nice to routinely receive freebies of this kind. If you like what you receive, you can then blog about that product and review it for your readers.

Often, if you establish good relationships with publishers and PR firms, you can even organize giveaway contests which benefit your readers, not just yourself.

8. Blogging can advance your career

A few of the previous benefits I mentioned have already revealed how blogging can have a positive impact in your career. However, I’d like to stress just how much blogging can open certain doors for you. Every post you make is a new opportunity to get people to notice you on a professional level.

Because of my blogs, but primarily my programming one, I’ve received countless job offers over the years, including some from a selection of the largest and most sought after companies in the world. Some offered me generous relocation packages to the US, and a few went so far as to offer me the job, no questions asked (e.g., they didn’t even require a formal interview, they had sized me up enough through my blog writing).

I got my job at IBM in Canada mainly thanks to my blog (at the time I was still in Europe).

Whether blogging allows you to find a new job, customers, partners, investors, publishers who are interested in having you authoring a book, or something else entirely, it is certainly a great career booster.

In fact, my number one piece of advice for new professionals who are interested in building their careers is to start blogging today.

9. Blogging can make you popular in your field

Most professionals work hard because they want to be successful and gain recogniztion in their field. Blogging aides with that and can make small celebrities out of regular professionals. For those in the tech world, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Names like Joel Spolsky, Derek Sivers, Steve Yegge, and Scott Hanselman come to mind.

I’m reminded of Joey Roth’s “Charlatan, Martyr, Hustler” poster. If you do incredible work but nobody knows about it you are a martyr. If you accomplish nothing and do no work, but talk a sweet talk, you are a charlatan. If you can walk the walk, and talk the talk, then you are a hustler.

Blogging helps you ensure that you can talk the talk and reach the right audience, once you have walked the walk.

10. Blogging can help you reach and teach a wide audience

The number one reason to blog for many people, is the desire to share their knowledge and teach others.

For some, even in the technical realm, it’s a matter of politics. For example, an Agile development professional may actually want to influence the community and advocate his theories and ideas about the process of developing software, so that they (potentially) become widespread.

Others, may use this teaching tool to promote their technical projects. An example, also from the software development world, is blogging to help people become aware, loyal, and eventually proficient in an open source tool that you created.

As you can imagine, these are just some of the many benefits of blogging. As you begin creating your own blog posts, you’ll likely find that some of them fall into place organically, whereas you need to work at others. All however, stand to enrich your career and life, and help inspire you to keep blogging for years to come.

The post Why Every Professional Should Consider Blogging appeared first on Technical Blogging.