Zoe Griffin - Get Rich Blogging

Do you know what a blog is? Are you sure? Do you know what youre meant to put on a blog? These are not trick questions. Before you can expect to earn an income from any business, you need to know the fundamentals.

Ive learned from experience that making money from a blog requires a strategic approach. I have a celebrity news and gossip blog called Live Like A VIP (livelikeavip.com). Its entertaining, its gossipy and we sometimes talk about superficial subjects like fit men and cupcakes, but I didnt wake up one morning to discover a website wizard had waved his magic wand and granted me high levels of traffic. Theres no fairy dust and theres no quick fix. I worked my way up and made mistakes on the way. I may not blog about the most intellectually stimulating subject in the world but it sells!

You, too, could make a living from what you love writing about, as long as you take a businesslike approach to your blog. Growing a blog is a step-by-step process and if you set one up in haste and try to run before you can walk, its guaranteed to end in tears.

Right now, I am smiling. In fact, I am grinning like I have just won the jackpot on the EuroMillions lottery. I am lucky. After three years of full-time blogging, I am able to set my own hours. I can work from wherever I want in the world, and I can write about what I want to write about. Ive won awards that are proudly displayed on my mantelpiece such as a Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Award for Best Celebrity Blog and a London Lifestyle Award for London Personality Of The Year. I can talk about my favourite subjects all day long with like-minded people, and I make excellent money. Sometimes I get paid to write about events for which many people fight for invites, such as the London 2012 Olympics, where British Airways picked me as an influential ambassador, gave me tickets and asked me to blog about it. Sometimes I get to try revolutionary hair and beauty treatments before anyone else. I was one of the first to try the worlds most popular hair dye remover, Colour B4, and I was one of a few brave bloggers involved in testing the UKs first Garra Rufa fish pedicure treatment where fish eat the soles of your feet before it became a nationwide phenomenon. I am delighted with how it has all turned out because I made some stupid mistakes along the way.

I decided to set up an independent celebrity news and gossip website three years ago, at a time when there was nothing quite like it in the UK. Many people thought I was crazy because I had a good job at a national newspaper. The Sunday Mirror sent me around the world to interview celebrities and write about lavish showbiz events, and my face appeared at the top of a double-page column. But it was while I was on an assignment in LA that I found out more about the world of blogging. In Los Angeles, bloggers are treated like kings and queens. Publicists realise these bloggers have the power to send albums to Number One and conversely, the power to destroy entire careers with one push of the publish button. Im talking about the likes of TMZ (tmz.com), The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com), Gawker (gawker.com), Deadline Hollywood (deadlinehollywood.com) and Perez Hilton (perezhilton.com).

These bloggers are their own bosses, with no screaming editors ordering what to cover or telling them their writing isnt good enough. Theyre able to pick and choose what events they attend without justifying their decisions to a line manager. If they want to take a day off, they simply schedule a blog post to go up and head for the beach. Theres no need to put in a holiday request form or arrange cover. How amazing is that?

I set up a blog as soon as I got back to the UK. Initially I tried to run it at the same time as working for the Sunday Mirror and ended up surviving on four hours sleep a night. While I loved contributing to a national newspaper, I was working long hours and I was often trying to write my blog at 3am. The blogging suffered as I was writing when I was tired and it soon became clear that I would have to make a decision column or blog? And so I resigned.

With the benefit of hindsight, I acted in haste. I didnt know what it truly meant to be a blogger and therefore traffic growth was slow. Ultimately, I didnt have a strategy. I truly expected that if I wrote some posts about celebrity-related subjects, then readers would miraculously find me. They didnt and Id quit my job! What on earth was I going to do? If I wanted to continue blogging, Id need to learn how to do it better. If I didnt improve, I wouldnt be able to pay my mortgage, I wouldnt be able to afford cupcakes, and I certainly wouldnt be able to buy new clothes and shoes. Trauma! I needed a plan.

If you want to make money in any field, then a plan is vital. When a new company prepares to launch, they tend to draw up a five-year business plan. The company directors work out where they want the company to be in five years time and set long-term goals. With that vision in mind, they work backwards and set goals for year one and year two. If the goal after five years is a profit of 10 million, then they might plan to achieve 1 million in year one, 2 million in year two, 5 million in year three and so on. They might also jot down ways to raise that money will they achieve a revenue of 10 million through selling a product or a service, or both? How much do they need to sell to make 10 million?

If you hope to make money from your blog, you need a plan. You need to know the ways blogs generate revenue and the conditions that must be in place to generate the most money possible. Then you can set yourself targets, and work through a step-by-step process to lay down the foundations for a blog that will make you money.

This book is divided into two parts. In Part I, I talk you through the steps needed to ensure your blog becomes a profit-making business. Most chapters end with a checklist, and every time you tick off the targets on these lists, you are one step closer to getting rich from your blog. In Part II, I delve deeper into popular blogging subject areas, from fashion and beauty to business and technology, and give you some industry-specific points for your checklists. When a business starts out, often its directors will consult similar business models to copy the success stories. What they learn depends on what type of industry theyre in, so each blogging subject area gets its own chapter. Fashion bloggers will be taking a different route to tech bloggers simply pick the chapter thats most relevant to you.