6 Reasons Blogging is a Good First Business

This is a guest post by Jacqueline Boss. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The dream of becoming self-employed is the fuel that takes so many bloggers from the first few months of scraping for followers to the successful later years of making a comfortable income. But what is it about blogging in particular that makes it such a great option for first-time entrepreneurs?

1. There is a wealth of information about blogging

What entrepreneurs of big businesses do is search for an unfulfilled need in the market, and fill it, often with a fancy new product. This is a great money making strategy, but an extremely risky one because there is so little data for them to base their businesses on. Even if they are entering a market that is saturated with competition, it is unlikely that their competitors will want to share any insider information. And market research is expensive and time consuming.

Not so with blogging. You can find free, online, step-by step guides for almost any blog-related topic under the sun, from SEO and drawing traffic to which WordPress plugin to use to run contests and how to leverage your blog to get free products and services. Blogs are in the business of giving away free information. Unlike Coca-Cola which feverishly guards its secret formula, bloggers happily give theirs away for free.

2. Everything can be measured

Bloggers love their stats. Every blogger knows how many unique visitors he gets each month, his AdSense revenue, his bounce rate- you name it. These are all great things to know if you want grow your blog. But what I really love about the numbers is that it gives me constant validation and shows my progression toward my goals. 10% more subscribers. 50% more revenue. 1000 new visitors. Entering into many other types of businesses can be extremely discouraging for first-time entrepreneurs. Unless you are able to sell quickly, the only number you will know for a while is zero. Zero sales, zero profit, zero clients.

With blogging, you can see your numbers grow immediately after you take action. They may grow very slowly, but the increase is measurable and therefore encouraging. When my blog was getting twenty visitors a day, I was excited because it was more than zero. When I got my first AdSense click, I was excited to see a dollar in revenue.

3. You can start a blog while you transition out of your 9-5 job

One of the main reasons so many people aspire to be entrepreneurs but so few people actually become entrepreneurs is the fear and the risk associated with quitting a job. And sure, that can be very scary. But you can maintain and build a blog, as so many of the big guns have, while you are still employed full-time. You can ease your way into entrepreneurship, slowly building your income from blogging until you feel safe and confident enough to quit your job and blog full-time. Being a blogger doesn’t mean you suddenly have to fend for yourself and your family in the unfamiliar world of making money online- you have all the time in the world to make it work, but do yourself a favor and start right now.

4. There are almost no start-up costs

This pretty much speaks for itself, but compared to almost every other business you could ever dream of starting, blogging will probably cost you the least in up-front cash. You can get by, as I have, by paying for nothing but a domain name and hosting. Sure there are little “upgrades” like a premium site theme and cool WordPress plugins, but you certainly don’t need these. Blogging doesn’t break the bank.

5. You can write about what you are interested in

At the job you have now, or in another business you might start, you’ll probably have to focus all of your attention on one topic. Ideally you’ll love that topic, but that isn’t always the case. If you start a blog, it is your blog. You have the power. You can pick any topic under the sun to write about (of course it certainly helps if you know a lot about it and other people want to know). When you write about what you are interested in, it shows. You posts will naturally be more engaging and your readers will appreciate that.

6. You get tons of feedback

Feedback comes in two ways- from numbers and from people.

What is great about blog statistics is that you can access them instantaneously and use them to continuously tweak and improve your blog. For example, if you run a contest on Twitter, you know how many new subscribers you get almost as quickly as they can subscribe. You will quickly find out how many of those subscribers stick around to become loyal readers once your contest ends. You can use this information to help you create a more successful contest in the future. Can you think of many other businesses that get such instantaneous and thorough feedback?

As for the feedback from your readers and others- that could be a post in itself. It is incredibly rewarding to read positive comments left by people who were truly moved by a post you wrote or who were able to solve a problem because of the information you provided.

So if you’ve been on the fence about blogging, I’d say go for it. It could pay your bills one day, and if nothing else you’ll learn a lot and have a fun new hobby.

What do you think the benefits of blogging are for a first-time entrepreneur?

About the Author: Jacqueline Boss is a traveling entrepreneur and writes at Escape Normal, where you can gather inspiration and resources to become self-employed and travel, starting with 8 Reasons to Quit Your Job to Enjoy Life and the World.