Creating Multiple Blogs for Profit in 30 Day Cycles

The Flagship Blog Project: Working in 30 Day Cycles to Build Assets

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Create one flagship blog on the first day of every month and spend all 30 days developing and optimizing it. By the end of the month, the blog should be fully operational and only maintenance is needed: which means that you’ll only need to create content regularly while promoting the site.

When the first day of the next month arrives, repeat the whole process again by building and creating another new blog within the time frame of 30 days.

At the end of a year, you should have 12 flagship blogs and all of them should be fairly established with their core audience and regular readers. Depending on the niche and the blog’s popularity, each will bring in some steady revenue.

Put simply, this project involves the repeated use of 30 day blog production cycles to develop multiple flagship sites. The ultimate goal is to eventually set up a collection of blogs and make them into profitable assets.

Apart from multiple income sources, setting up multiple blogs allows you to experiment with a lot of things, in terms of marketing/promotion or monetization.

Playing around with each flagship blog will also give you experience-based knowledge, the type you cannot easily obtain through observation or a single blog.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can set up your 30 day blog development cycle.

Breaking the Schedule Down: Developing a Weekly Action Plan

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Having an overall idea of what you want to achieve is important because it allows you to set intermediate markers (daily pageviews/No. of subscribers etc.) which track progress towards these goals. Apart from having a list of attainable numbers, it is also important to create a time-based work routine: a weekly action plan.

The goal of an action plan is to divide your limited resource (time) into smaller chunks, thereby allowing you to spend a proportionate amount of attention on the tasks involved in developing a blog. For example, let’s break down the development of a flagship blog into a progressive four-week sequence:

Week 1: Setting up the Blog

• Research your intended niche and check out the competition
• Choose a domain name that is easily brandable.
• Pay for a good web host and set up Wordpress
• Hire a skilled designer or customize a free Wordpress theme
• Install all the necessary Wordpress plugins or addons
• Develop consistent branding (tagline, usernames, logos etc.)
• Optimize the website for visitors and search engines
• Write your first blog post.

Week 2: Developing a Strategy

• Develop a content development strategy.
• Start writing down content ideas and file them for future use.
• Create the necessary pages (Set up a great About page etc.)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed of news sources and notable blogs in your niche.
• Create an email marketing folder with contacts of blogs in your niche
• Create a list of social media channels that are relevant to the blog.
• Put up an ad looking for writers and monitor their applications.
• Write a few more posts for the blog.

Week 3: Marketing the Blog

• Create new + consistent social media/networking profiles (optional)
• Spend a few days creating one spectacular link bait.
• Promote the link bait by emailing popular blogs or use social media.
• Set up an actionable prospect list and start reaching out to other bloggers.
• Spend some time everyday networking with other bloggers
• Learn to use cost-free methods of marketing such as guest blogging.
• Purchase ads on relevant sites promoting your blog.
• Hire a few good writers and tell them your requirements.

Week 4: Maintenance and Transition

• Ensure that hired writers write a few posts. Give feedback.
• Create a regular posting schedule for yourself or your writers.
• Develop a second link bait and release it on social media channels.
• Reduce the amount of time spent on the blog by 50%
• Make preparations to allocate time for the next cycle.

The points mentioned above are not comprehensive and there are a lot more things you can do within each phase. These are just examples of tasks that could be done within the time frame of a single week.

You should set up a schedule that fits your resources, availability and skills. For example, if you have money to spare you could outsource a big portion of the work and focus on networking and strategy development instead.

Monetization Options and Marketing Strategies

Try to cross-market topically related blogs as it will help to increase readership, especially if one blog grows faster than the others.This tactic could be done in the form of contextual interlinking or display ads.

Team marketing is also a viable option to consider. A strong and active network will help a lot in the early stages of your site. Working with others will also motivate you and will give you ideas when you are unsure of how to best market your blog.

If you set up blogs in related niches, you can monetize them by selling ad spots across all of them as a whole. Networked ads will provide additional exposure for advertisers and make it easier for you to price your ads at a higher rate.

Another revenue-generating strategy is to sell the blogs off once they are reasonably developed. In the internet marketing niche, blogs with an audience, some reputation and revenue can get a sale price of over $10K. Even smaller blogs with less than 200 subscribers are sold for thousands of dollars.

Blogs are fast becoming lucrative resale assets, much like cars or houses.

How Can You Find Time to Create and Promote Content for Multiple Blogs?

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This is probably the number one question on your mind right now. It is also the biggest problem that anyone who owns multiple blogs will face.

It is difficult to create and promote content for many flagship blogs. The easiest way to do so is to get other people to do the work. You can hire ghost writers and staff/guest bloggers and get them to create content on a daily basis.

Alternatively, turn the blog into a team blog, whereby each member will blog on your site in return for exposure or revenue-share. Key point to note: You don’t have to be the blogger in the limelight. You could always play CEO behind a multi-author setup.

Think of blogs as media businesses, and not just platforms for personal expression.

Indeed, outsourcing seems to be the only viable solution because the more blogs you set up, the greater your content deficit. The articles you publish are incredibly important for a new blog because it determines if you’ll attract a core audience that’ll subscribe, read or link to you regularly.

Active promotion of your content is essential. If your websites are profitable, you could hire a marketer to work on a profit sharing basis. This could even be a fellow blogger or friend. You don’t need to hire a professional company. Blogs are really easy to market, once you know what results to expect and what to do.

Social media marketing is an example of a blog-friendly, DIY promotional method that works well and is relatively easy to implement.

Is the 30 Day Blog Development Cycle Really Sustainable?

The costs involved in hiring writers and designers needs to be carefully monitored because you don’t want to overspend. Ideally, you want to break even for each blog within 3 months, which is possible if you are skilled in growing it.

Perhaps this schedule will work best for bloggers or entrepreneurs who already own websites which generate revenue. Take a portion of your existing revenue and use it to fund your new blogs. The startup process will always be a little bumpy but the payoffs will come, especially if your site provides great value and is well marketed.

Development Cycles are Important Because They Drive You to Act

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Procrastination and laziness are obstacles to success. If you have the skills and ambition, all you need to make money is to stop hesitating and start doing it. You can learn all you want, draft up the most detailed plans and network till everyone says they love you but it all doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t take action.

If you love blogging and want to make money from it, go right ahead and set up a blog. Some people will tell you its hard to make money blogging. I say ignore them. It’s possible. It’s not a pipe dream. And you can do it, if you really want to.

Experts are only people like you and me. They talk about what they know or have experienced. For every 100 unsuccessful blogs they see or come across, there a thousand more that are successful. Don’t let statistics determine your future.

It’s really all up to you. All it takes is a serious desire to succeed and a willingness to learn. Keep an open mind and experiment as much as possible. You’ll find out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to blogging and making money.