Blogging is About Publishing

The road from blogs to riches leads to Google because the money that bloggers expect to get comes from the one who holds the largest purse filled with advertising revenue. And that is Google. For the aspiring blogger, it is imperative that he/she understands why Google will pay bloggers to blog. In answering "What's in it for Google?", we find important clues to the puzzle.

So, what is Google's business anyway? How exactly does Google make money? Simple answer: Google is in the publishing business and it earns the bulk of its income from publishing advertisements. Everyday, thousands of companies and individuals pay to advertise in a Google-led syndicate of advertising-laden publications. A website (or a blog), by applying for a Google AdSense account, essentially becomes an advertising space for Google. It becomes a part of the Google-led syndicate of publications. Then, Google pays a fraction of the advertising revenue to its syndication partners.

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So far, the business of Google is easy enough to understand. What makes the entire idea of blogging difficult is that bloggers do not understand fully the business of publishing. A blogger is only a writer if he/she is content with a readership of one. However, the moment a blogger develops an ambition for earnings and readership, he/she must learn the first lesson in blogging: a blogger is a publisher. And being successful as a publisher is largely dictated by the economics of the publishing industry.

So, what does it mean to be a publisher anyway? To be a publisher, a blogger must learn the second lesson in blogging: a blogger should solve publishing problems. If you worry about how you are going to get paid, you are solving a non-problem. However, if you worry about how to fill a space with some specific piece of writing with a specific wordcount and how to do this regularly, you are beginning to think like a publisher. While publishers think about getting paid, they do not fixate on getting paid for only one article. They manage their revenue stream by publishing enough to earn their target income. They know what to publish.

So, what should a publisher publish? We now come to the penultimate third lesson in blogging: a blogger is publishing for specific readers. You are not blogging for yourself or a readership of one. You want to write for a specific class of readers and present information that will interest that class of readers. Another way to put this is to realize that you are being paid to worry for your readers and their problems. Come up with solutions to your reader's problems and your money problems will take care of itself. Or more precisely, Google will make sure you get paid.

Accepting the insights of these lessons demands a positive decision. At this point, a blogger without the technical expertise to navigate web technologies need not condemn himself/herself to a life of a low-paid writer. It is not necessary to choose a low-paying career when the economic opportunities for a publisher is also available to the individual blogger. Conclusion: a blogger can choose to be a financially-rewarded publisher.

From here on, the course of action is obvious and a bit business-like. Bloggers should organize just like any publisher. They should blog in groups to scale up publishing activities and share resources much like lawyers do when establishing a practice. My personal recommendation is for bloggers to enter into a partnership with other bloggers and the partnership acquires a separate identity. A blogging partnership is a good vehicle by which bloggers can scale up their publishing activities.

Social networking sites where bloggers congregate is not synonymous with the idea of a partnership of bloggers. Technically, these sites are blogging platforms similar to Google's blogging service. They offer free blogging services to attract writers and then, these sites make money from various sources including advertising.

What I'm trying to impart in this article is my overall premise in becoming a blogger: blogging all the way to the bank is a "publishing" problem. Only bloggers who embrace the idea that they are publishers will loosen the string of Google's purse for their rightful share of advertising money.