I love the name of Joseph Ratliff’s blog — The Profitable Business Edge.

He recently wrote a post, 5 Reasons Why Blogging is the New Internet Marketing Tool. He’s got 4 out of 5 things right in my opinion.

He writes:

Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

I suppose it depends on the context, but it’s not entirely clear. If he’s talking about putting advertising on blogs…perhaps you could find some people willing to do that for free. Certainly bloggers will link to your content for free, of their own volition, if the content is good and suits their own communities.

But the act of blogging isn’t free.

The infrastructure costs are very low (i.e. hosting, blog setup, etc.) but you can’t devalue the time it takes to write. If you write daily, expect to spend at least 30-60 minutes/day. And, as soon as you realize how important it is to read other blogs (and participate in the greater blogosphere community) you’ll be spending even more time.

That time will be well worth it.

But it’s not free. So it’s important to do a few things when you get into business blogging:

1. Have a Plan. You need a plan for how often you’ll post, and for what you’ll write about. Ideally, if you can always plan a week or more worth of posts ahead of time, you’ll save a lot of time in the long run.
2. Track Your Time. Knowing how much time you spend doing things is always a good idea. Even if you think you know, I bet you’ll be surprised once you really start looking at it. Tracking your blog-related time is a good way to start honing in on an ROI.
3. Have Very Clear Goals. The blogosphere can suck you in if you’re not careful. Actually, that’s really how the Internet works overall, not just blogs. It’s so easy to get lost on the Web, spending hours reading, checking out new videos, etc. Without clear goals there’s a good chance you’ll waste a ton of time. The goals help you decide, “Is what I’m doing right now going to deliver the results I want? It’s not all work and no play, but too much play won’t help either…

I may have misread Joseph’s intentions when he wrote that bit about “blogging is free” and hopefully he’ll respond and we can start a good discussion on the topic!

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