I subscribe to problogger, like I imagine most bloggers do, and I came across this article this morning about full time blogging being a process.  In the article it referenced (I am academic what can I say) the article from Get Rich Slowly about finding the guts to follow your dreams.  Now, I am reading the E-Myth Revisted by Michael Gerber at the moment and I think he would have something to say about becoming a ‘full time blogger’.  Gerber identifies three roles of the business person:  The Entrepreneur (visionary), The Manager and The technician.  The manager runs the business whilst the Entrepreneur focuses on it’s creative growth when the technician is performing the duties required to get the work done.   A friend of mine says it this way.  There is the pioneer who blazes the trail and then there’s other people who support that work by being ‘administrators’ and keeping the work going.

One of the great revelations for me in reading the E-Myth was the realisation that it’s okay to be an entrepreneur.   I am totally the person who see’s the vision and knows what needs to be done and so forth.  I am a very bad manager however and an even worse technician.  If you are like that, then you will find management work to be boring, heart wrenching and difficult to do.    Judging by experience so far and what I read in the blogosphere, full time blogging really is not an entrepreneurial pursuit.  It’s another job.   So what’s the difference?

Work versus Entrepreneurship

Work is routine ‘technican’ work.  Blogging, even though it’s a creative pursuit is largely work.  Why?  There is a creative marketing element for sure.  You have to write articles that attract visitors, put advertising in sidebars and in posts and so on.   Blogging is a ‘technical’ skill that you become good at like most forms of writing over time.  Say my dream is to be a fireman and my friends dream is to be a blogger.  As a blogger he is self-employed and most people would say ‘entrepreneur’.  I would say my blogger friend is just using his skill to make money the same way as a fireman does.  There is no difference.  Two technicians in different application fields.

Entrepreneurship is based on creativity and growth work isn’t

Now you will use your creative abilities in your job as a fireman, for example but this does not mean you are reinventing the practice of fire fighting.  The fire fighter who reinvents and continually improves firefighting is the entrepreneurial fire fighter.  The blogger who reinvents the job of blogging continually to find new streams of income is an entrepreneurial blogger.   Why?  Entrepreneurship is not simply going out on your own and making a new business.  There is a pioneering element to entrepreneurship where a vision for something is put together.   I meet people who I would consider to be entrepreneurial academics.  These are people reinventing things and using creativity and vision to bring forth pioneering change into their lives.  Clearly, blogging can be entrepreneurial but in most cases this isn’t so.

What makes me realise this is just how hard it appears to be to make a living as a blogger.   Some people I have read about find it very difficult and metaphors are drawn between blogging and hand to hand combat.   A case in point is the Problogger versus Shoemoney interview.  Have a look at the amount of time Darren Rowse puts into blogging!  That’s a full time job.  Two hours of writing versus how many hours of routine, technican like work?  I rest my case.   Work is hard, routine and after all BORING to the entrepreneur.  I therefore submit that whilst blogging can be entrepreneurial, it most cases it’s just another type of job.

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Okay so I am fairly new at this blogging thing. So for my very first blogging advice post I wanted to share with you what I learned about build a niche. When I started this I was thinking to myself how do I convert what I know in my academic pursuits to the world of blogging. After all I am a problem solving expert apparently. In the beginning I really didn’t know what I wanted to say or what I wanted to communicate so I actually just started posting stuff that was on my heart. Stuff that I felt was important to me. What was the net result of that? Well this article on the wiki way of thinking was the most popular one I have written. Followed closely to that one was some insights I have about strategic thinking. The third one that was most popular was this one about the art of presenting. Rounding out the top four was 8 things I have learned about success. So these are the four most viewed articles so far. Given that last month (October) I had 950 odd unique visitors I can begin to speculate about what people want to see from me. I should also say that I have relied on keywords and blog carnivals at this stage from traffic. I haven’t yet had the time to do more networking but over summer I should see significantly more traffic increases as the time to do this becomes available.

What wasn’t popular? Hard to tell after only four months but these are the emergent ‘stinkers’ reader wise: What to say when there is nothing to say, My SEO attempt, The problem of perspectives, Knowing the real you.

When I was reflecting on this I noticed a pattern emerge:

1. My shorter more specific articles gained more attention.

2. The articles about simpler things got more attention

3. The articles aimed at head stuff got less attention

4. The stuff about everyday problems got a lot of attention

In short, I learned that in blogging less is more and quality is important. In information design we always stress the information that’s presented the best is read the most. I would express it this way for blogging: less complex content + higher quality post (razor specific) = more viewable content. The four least popular articles I have written were promoted in much the same way. However, people aren’t stupid. As Russell Ackoff says, ‘there is always a rationality behind action.’ So skip the crap, focus on what you know and take it from there. So what did I learn about my niche?

People don’t want head stuff necessarily. I know, there are a lot of people who do well with the head stuff (i.e. Steve Pavlina). What I learned about my niche is that I need to focus down on the issues of life. Life stuff! I didn’t learn this by guessing it. I learned it by posting about 70 articles and fishing around to see what people wanted to read. People want real stuff that’s helpful from me, not head stuff. I am not too bad at the head stuff (i.e. my reality post) but people don’t want that. At least not from me. The long tail used the Pareto principle to establish the idea that niche markets drive 80% of business.  To my understanding at least I think the ‘long tail’ idea is suggesting something more akin to human behaviour that anything actually surprising. We have always been called to ‘niche’ markets. Take the (western) church as a case in point. Just how many denominational branches are there?  There would be 80% of Christians in most of the fringe dominations?  I don’t think so.  I think 20% of Christians would make up the niches and 80% belong to the popular ‘mainstream’ varieties.   I think the smaller markets account for the bigger markets just in a different way.  The long tail stuff sort of suggests that the 20 makes is covered by the 80.  What I am saying is that 80 (the mainstream) is reflected in part by the 20 (smaller grooves in the market).

An alternative movie gains an audience because it grows in conjunction with the mainstream.  Mainstream doesn’t account for alternative movies necessarily but alternative movies reflect a substrata of the mainstream and hence grow a following.  They may not have the same values but in essence it’s the same thing just targeted at ‘groups’ of people who have placed a demand in smaller numbers.  It’s popular… just a different kind of popular.  The stuff that’s unpopular is really a marginal product.  It’s non-existent.  Academic writing is marginal.  It’s not popular.  In the last census it was found that less than 1% of Australians were interested in academic content.   Are you interested in academic content?  Probably not!  You are interested in being helped and finding practical advice… so that’s the direction I am going to take.

In the case of this blog, the content that’s the most popular is popular in real life.  No surprises there.  The head stuff wasn’t popular to the readers because a lot of it is not interesting, applicable or relevant to everyday life.  Popular stuff is that way because large groups of people find it relevant.  Niche content on a blog I think has to be a subset of a popular idea if the readership is to grow.  Granted 950 uniques last month isn’t a huge amount of traffic by any means but mark my words… as I narrow down to the content streams people want, this blog will grow.   Yes it will!
What about going to a mall?  In Queen street I see a stack of shops carrying a variety of niche content. It’s only the big places like Kmart or Myer that have these huge scattergun approaches. Even then, they have niche categories. For the 20% of high selling products the niche products carry the rest.  In my case I noticed that these articles were highly viewed and others weren’t even though the same groups of people had the same opportunity to see them (roughly speaking).   Taking all this into consideration I have decided that this blog will now focus less on head stuff and more on the practical issues of life, work and the web.  In particular I am focusing on everyday things because that’s what my readers have indicated they want.  More specifics, higher quality and less head stuff.  I learned this ‘niche’ by testing out different ideas and so on.  Hence, I have changed my name to the Life Problems blog.  That is what this will be about and that is the niche I am farming in to coin an agricultural metaphor.

Earnings I hear you say?  Well I will post on that soon (when I have something to post about!).  I am still growing and learning about this blogging thing.  I have learned something though… if it’s popular offline chances are it will be online too.  Funny that!

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