Blogging Businesses: What Are the Advantages of Managing a Blogging Network?

If a single blog can make someone a decent living, then surely a network of blogs is a tempting business prospect? Though there aren’t many businesses or companies that specialise in managing an entire blogging network, it’s certainly possible. Armed with in-house and freelance writers, design experts and public relation managers, it’s possible to create a business that focuses entirely on creating excellent blog content.

What’s a Blogging Network?

Simply put, a blogging network refers to a collection of different blogs. They don’t have to be related and it’s generally acceptable to have your blogs cover different subjects because it widens your audience, but it’s never a bad idea to link between blogs whenever possible to bring in more readers to each of your blogs.

A blogging network can have anywhere from just two to a dozen blogs, and your business will be managing all of them. For a single person it’s a lot to manage, but for a company with dedicated staff members, managing it becomes a breeze. In-house writers and editors can specialise in their assigned blogs, but they can always work as guest writers for other blogs so create interaction between the different subjects. For example, you could run a gaming blog and a technology blog in your network. While they cover different things, gaming is tech related so you’ll always have a good excuse to link viewers from one blog to another.

Where’s the Income?

Naturally, a successful blog makes money based on the number of followers and viewers it gets. With the resources and advertising power of a business, it’s possible to gather a lot of readers in a short amount of time with strategic planning and marketing campaigns.

Because you’ll have a much larger following than running a solo blog, it opens up more opportunities for revenue. Affiliate marketing will be a major source of income thanks to the number of people reading and sharing your blog posts, and ad revenue will shoot through the roof if you choose to include advertisements.

You can also offer your readers advantages through Patreon or by setting up your own subscription service. You can promise your readers early access to blog posts, discounts on merchandise, or even offer them insight into your blogging process by allowing them to view early ideas and drafts. You can set up a separate subscription service for each of your blogs, but also offer a complete subscription to all of the blogs in your network at a greatly reduced price.

In addition to the regular blogging income streams, you’ll also have the power and reach to sell merchandise and reach out to sponsors that can provide you with review copies and products, or even offer you money to give them reviews for their services. There are a lot of opportunities waiting to be explored because it’s a dynamic market.

Don’t Neglect Basic Business Principles

You might be running a mega-blog, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be treating your blogging network any less like a business. What this means is that you should be taking into consideration things like salaries, bonuses, benefits and even health and safety.

Some employee roles in your business can be outsourced, such as accounting, and you should also contact health and safety outsourcing services that will teach you and your employees some basic safety measures. An office that focuses on blogging doesn’t have many immediate dangers, but it’s never a bad idea to brush up your knowledge about health and safety.

You should also remember to hire accountants and lawyers. With multiple revenue streams on several different blogs, it can be a lot for a single person to manage. An accountant can usually handle a lot of numbers, but you could always upgrade your accounting department if it becomes too much work for a single person.

Lawyers are also incredibly important because bloggers are prone to coming under fire from disgruntled photographers or other writers who are accusing your writers of plagiarism. In cases like this, it’s best to have a legal team ready to defend your business, but also to deter people who are trying to rob you of your hard earned money by making up wild claims and trying to get media attention.

Connect With Specialised Freelancers

Outsourcing your blog writing is one way of getting cheap content to post on your blogs, but you have to ensure that they are free of plagiarism, spelling errors and that the content is truthful (or the opinion is within reason). With that being said, you can hire editors that specialise in those particular fields. For example, if you hire an editor to manage a blog about cars, then that editor has to be passionate about cars because they need to understand the lingo, trends and keep up with the latest news.

Photographers are also a great source of original pictures and content that can be used in your blogs. If you use an imagine without permissions, you could end up being sued and paying for lots of fees and charges that you didn’t expect, and not even your lawyers will be able to help you remedy the problem. To prevent this from happening in the first place, you can hire photographers or buy specific pictures from them to use in your posts.

Graphics design artists are also in high demand for a blogging network. They can specialise in creating flyers, banners, logos or even designing websites that fit the theme and subject of each individual blog. Their costs can vary depending on experience, but this is a great opportunity to adopt budding freelance artists that are looking for a big break. The most popular blogging designs now are minimalistic designs with muted complimentary colours—a design that most amateur artists can achieve with little training.

Whatever freelancers you decide to employ, make sure you keep in touch with them and perhaps consider hiring them for work on a regular basis—especially the writers. The main concern of a freelancer is job security and getting enough jobs to sustain their living costs, and they will usually be more than happy to work for a regular client.

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