Why did you start a blog? Should I?

Just because you sell physical products doesn't mean you can't make money with your blog. You can easily add affiliate products, there's nothing stopping you. You can also make money with adsense too.

Most people start blogs just to make money and fill it with a bunch of ads and low quality content but since you enjoy writing and helping people I think you would actually do pretty good.

I make money with CPA through my blogs

Yea, I mean I could sell physical products, but I probably would not run CPA offers through my blog, as I wouldn't want my readers having to deal with those B.O offers.

Many reasons.

Here we go:

On a personal level, voicing what you do, helping others and keeping an online diary can be a great help to improving on your business. (One post a day isn't too much to do anyway)

A lot of the top bloggers use CPA Network affiliate links to recruit people into CPA networks. Over-time, through providing users with great CPA guides you could have a huge portion of affiliates join networks through your affiliate link.

I'm sure you have hosting or could recommend a host you like? That's another affiliate link. If people are going to get web-hosting anyway why not from your link?

any products that you personally use? if you're going to show people what you do, then I'm pretty sure they are going to want to know where they can get it.

Blogs don't have to be made for profit, but do become profitable over-time because your user-base increases. Once you start to receive a substantial amount of unique visitors per day it would be dumb not to monetize this, even if its only with things that you personally use.

I think blogs should be started as a form of helping others, expressing ones-self and improving business by setting goals and being pressured by public postings.

The monetization should come after because eventually there is enough traffic to do so. Atleast that is what I gather from others who are known as huge bloggers.

You can make money with your blog by thousands and thousands of ways. You haven't mentioned direct advertising. You can attract advertisers for your site and bank in some big cash especially if you have a lot of of traffic or just rank for competitive keywords on google.

Building a bit on Jason's first point...

Just because you're not an affiliate or running a blog covered with AdSense doesn't mean that you can't make money from it. If your blog is full of solid information, a unique perspective, and easy-to-read content, people will start to see you as a real authority in your niche. After all, how many of your competitors are willing to take the time to share their expertise AND update it on a regular basis?

If people think of you as a go-to expert with a blog that gets updated once a day, once a week, once a month (whatever, as long as it's frequent and consistent), you'll be at the forefront of their minds. And, if you're at the forefront of their minds, they're going to think of you when they need to spend money.

Steve, you don't necessarily have to start a blog with the intentions of making money with it. I'm like you, I don't touch the IM niche with a 100 foot pole... however I started a blog a while ago just for fun. I barely update it, only when I feel like it... but it's just a fun little project for me. I am not monetizing it one bit right now, except for building a list, which I am not even monetizing... I just send out informative e-mails every so often.

You can start a blog just for fun and build a user-base... maybe do something with it down the road if you want to... or just let it be.

You may start a blog for tons of reasons.
1.Have fun
2.Daily journal
3.Make money
4.Say hello to the world

The question should be "Why on earth someone would not like to own a blog?"

I agree with Nicole, in my opinion I use a blog to share my thoughts with people, provide value to the reader and position myself more in the readers mind. Providing value to your readers and potential customers should be your first thought, i.e. how can help these people make an informed decision.

The advantage with blogging is that there is so many ways to earn money from it. You can always blog for fun but Im pretty sure you want to blog for money. Monetizing a blog can be done by a tons of ways, it can also be pretty fun.

Cause its in your blood. If its not than don't waste your time.

But, if it does, you will enjoy it and eventually you will make connections or other things that will make you money.

Don't start it for the money cause it won't work, unless you have a whole strategy behind it, I'd advice you for the money to go for something more effective. But, if its in your blood, you'll get much more than money and much more money

I started a blog, to keep updated content on my website. If I had more time I would love to start one just to write, but for me being a single mom, there are not enough hours in the day for me. I believe you just have to be creative, and search your competitors with your same tangible products and see how they are incorporating it with their blogs.

**********

There are lots of reasons, many are already explained here. If you don't have the time then don't do it. If you are already busy doing your thing, the main reason would be to get your brand out there... once you do, since you are already successful at what you do, people will be asking you constantly the 5 w's.

You have 520+ sites and counting, and you still need to know why blogs are worth the effort?

Why did I start my blog?

1. I love writing, and blogging gave me an outlet

2. SEO benefits for my content

3. It was new (when I started in 2003) and I love trying out stuff

4. Quick indexing and easier authority than with content sites (my opinion)


Why should YOU start a blog?

To showcase the AMAZING content you've shared on this forum - for others
to discover and benefit from.

That alone is a worthy goal for blogging - making a repository for your
shared content which others can find and consume conveniently.

My 2 cents

Let me know if you want to read it, and I'll send you my "33 Blog Profit
Ideas" ebook as well as my super-article on 'How to Blog'

All success
Dr.Mani

it will help in getting better ranking, you will get more pages indexed for your site,

use more tags during publishing posts, each unique tag == new indexed page for your site

This is for long term traffic that build up slowly...Once your content is on the blog, even new visitor are able to read your previous content...A blog can also build up the communication between you and your reader..