Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

I’ve been contacted by several people asking questions like:

How do I start a blog network?
How do I make money from a blog network?
How do I hire bloggers?
Where do I find bloggers to hire?

And the list goes on. To all those that have asked me and who I haven’t responded to, I’m super sorry. Saying I’m rather busy isn’t a good excuse. However, since I’ve been asked many of the same questions regarding blog networks.

I’ll start by telling you a little gem, that really isn’t all that secret. However, if you’re like me, even though a million people tell you the same thing, or you read the same thing a million times, chances are you’re probably not going to follow the advice. There’s just something about learning for yourself that entrigues most people.

If you are limited on money and time, which most non-probloggers are, then let me tell you to take this advice and think about it everytime you make a decision regarding your blog network. If you had all the money to pay enough people to create more time in the day you wouldn’t really need this advice, if not then, The advice is to…

Start with Focus!!!

Simple enough to read, but to stick to it is tough. If you look at the big networks out there, the older Weblogs, Inc., B5 Media, and other blog networks out there, they all have or had one or two main blogs, focused on a pretty narrow topic (Think Engadget, and Blogging) and gained an audience for those blogs, built their position in search engines, focused on building links, and built them as a true source of content for their particular niche.

Once that was in place, they had well established blogs, both in the human eye, and in the search engine world, which is prime.

From the human side of things you get a person that goes and looks at engadget, they see a link to a few of the other blogs in your network, and then they look around, spread the word, it builds and builds, people talk, soon your generic cancer blog is primo too.

Then on the computer side, search engines love links, they love content, become an expert in one niche, you can slowly branch from there until your gadget blog builds PR and essentially search engine ranking for that obscure sewing blog in your blog network.

But the key factor here is that unless you have a ton of money to pay bloggers in the beginning, you need to focus your time on one or two blogs covering a smaller niche and build all the links you can, and get traffic to it. Trust me it works. Exchange links, build readers, and then expand.

I worked backwards. I started several blogs at first and then went to a more focused approach and his helping by leaps and bounds. I’m refocusing on my Hawaii blog which I hope to use as a spring board for the other blogs, that already have a ton of content.

If I had to do it again I would focus all my efforts on the Hawaii blog for 6 months and then expand.

Take my advice. Don’t expand early. I’m nowhere near where I could be had I focused on one or two blogs and then built out.

No, I haven’t left the blogging game, just been super busy trying to manage everything I get myself into. This includes new hosting, revamping sites, managing bloggers, patents, domain names, working full-time, planning wedding, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah blah.

Servers
First up, servers. I’ve decided to test out some new servers that can withstand more traffic, and more bandwidth. This means transferring blogs and making sure everything is set-up properly, time CONSUMING!

I needed these new servers because my traffic was growing steadily and I was consuming too much bandwidth for a shared hosting account. Aloha Update was dugg three times to the front page and the site was down for hours at a time until all my sites were pulled from the shared server and put on a super slow, “you’re being punished” server.

I estimated the loss in traffic from the week long ordeal at just under 15,000 unique visitors. For me that’s a lot of uniques.

So I took the plunge and am testing a server setup that costs me 10 times what I was paying previously. Eeek! But not too worry, the increase in traffic that I’ve seen from the diggtastic craziness will hopefully help offset this new cost.

Aloha Update
After chatting with Yaro a few weeks back I’ve decided to make some adjustments to Blogtown Press. One of those adjustments is a revamp of Aloha Update. I’ve been working feverishly into the night on a new layout and format that I hope to have ready for prime time in the next week. (We’ll see how the evenings treat me here in Tucson.)

Moving Forward
Although I’m not making the cover of Business 2.0 or finding myself in wikipedia yet, I like to think that I’m moving in a solid forward direction, no matter how slow it is. I’ll continue to keep you all updated with progress, without letting the cat out of the bag early, but not keeping you in the dark either.

I don’t want to be one of those black magic internet entrepreneurs. The ones where you’re never quite sure if they’re really making money or just BS’ing their way to making money. I’ll tell you when I fail (if) and when I succeed.