The benefits of blogging are soft and fuzzy, typical thinking goes, but the cost is clear: you're committing to posting something a few times a few times a week on an ongoing basis.
That kind of thinking is dead wrong.
The benefit of publishing a blog post is crystal clear and measurable: Each time you publish a blog post, you're purchasing an annuity.
Every time you write a blog article, you get an ongoing cash flow over the lifetime of your blog -- except instead getting cash each month, you get valuable search traffic.
Confused? Let's look at a real-life example from this blog.
For the past three months, a post I wrote back in November about inbound marketing has been getting about 300 visits a month from people searching for the term " inbound marketing ."
HubSpot's keyword tracking tool estimates that we would have to pay $2.41 to get each of those visits via paid search traffic. That means that each month that post is producing about $730 worth of traffic from search engines.
Now think about what that means going forward. Assume that page holds similar traffic for the next two years. With an interest rate of 5%, that traffic is currently worth about $10,000 to HubSpot.
Not every article is going to get that kind of traffic, so you should think of your blog as a portfolio of blog posts. Just like a venture capitalist or movie executive, you will have a handful of blockbusters that pay for the rest. If an above-average article is worth $10,000, an average article might be worth $4,000 or $5,000, which is still a lot.
Bottom line? If you're focusing only on the cost of a blog, you're missing its enormous financial value.
What do you think? Do you look at your blog as an annuity? Why or why not?
Webinar: Blogging for Business
|
Want to learn more about publishing a blog on your business website?
Download the free webinar to learn how to create a thriving inbound marketing blog. |
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
JC Cameron 10:31 AM on April 27, 2009
Rick, this is absolutely 100% on target and something for the "doubting thomas" to review.
Nearly every quality blog can exhibit this kind of lifetime windfall if the effort is put into creating unique content. Thanks for the reminder and clear financial example of the value of blogging.
Stuart Foster 10:42 AM on April 27, 2009
Nicely played. I definitely like the use of the word "annuity" to describe a blog post. I think the more correlation between financial terms and social media marketing efforts the better. Can only help our bottom line :).
Chris Brummund 11:34 AM on April 27, 2009
Annuity sounds like a better way to describe it. When I meet with my boss every other week, I would use a metaphor involving land mines.
Needless to say, some of my presentations to him were kind of dark and morbid.
Tim Atkinson, author of Writing Therapy 3:21 PM on April 27, 2009
"...we would have to pay $2.41 to get each of those visits via paid search traffic" sounds fantastic. But how do we bloggers get to reap those rewards?
Rick Burnes 4:21 PM on April 27, 2009
Tim, great question.
Business bloggers reap the rewards by gaining new traffic (which they presumably monetize), without having to pay for it.
For example, at HubSpot, we take that traffic and turn it into leads, a certain percentage of which turns into paying customers.
peter caputa 7:11 PM on April 27, 2009
Great post, Rick.
I have an old drafted post that tries to spell out a bunch of analogies between internet marketing and financial terms.
It was too long and winded to publish.
But, while I'm thinking about it, what should we call:
- keywords that are ranking?
- links that are sending traffic?
- an opt in email list?
- social media connections?
There's got to be some more good analogies here? Or maybe even a complete financial model?
Sam | Real Online Money Making Strategies 6:41 PM on April 28, 2009
I haven't really thought about my blog post like that. However I see that I have gotten organic traffic from blog post I wrote a month ago. Now that I have read this post I will certainly look at the free traffic I receive as such :)
Marissa Pendleton 9:47 PM on April 29, 2009
This is absolutely true. Some articles we have posted have recieved an insane amount of traffic while others have not. However it did not cost us any money to post any of them which makes it all worthwile! Another strategy we have started using is from our analytics software. Many times someone will end up on our blog by searching for a particular phrase which is related to something we posted but not entirely, but that phrase/topic would also make a great article, so what do we do? We research the material regarding that topic and we write an article about it. We already know it is searched for because people have landed on our blog looking for it. Now we have made it even that much easier because we are answering questions being asked through searches.
bkind 4:16 PM on May 17, 2009
What a great article web marketing to day is getting more and more difficult, however this company that I have found has great web marketing service