When I first started my blog in November of 2007 I did so with a few goals in mind:

1. Promote myself to the masses.

2. To acquire new contacts for personal and professional use.

3. Build traffic that could then be used as a stepping stone to other revenue generating projects.

In just 3 months time I have managed to do a lot of both goals #1 and #2. As far as traffic, no traffic is ever enough. My traffic is growing at a good clip and with a few tweaks I hope will begin to spike even further. Most notably I think that as long as I add valuable content the readers will continue to come and come back.

Now one thing I have learned since joining the blogging community is that a blog in itself can be a very good source of supplementary income. It is not nesessary to build a seperate revenue generating site off of the blog. By building solid traffic and doing a few other advertising related things, you can make a lot of extra cash. Its not easy cash by any means, you have to put work into it. But once you have a system in place and rolling along it can mean more money with less effort than would be necessary to earn that money outside of your blog.

If you browse the web you will come accross a lot of “success” stories that make you think “I can do that”. Probably the most successful, money making blogger is John Chow (johnchow.com). These blogs are built on generating traffic by posting about how they have successfully managed to turn their blogs into full-time jobs. The content is, beleive it or not, good. It is also free. The revenue is generated by relevant ads served up by companies like Google and a few other advertising means. The more traffic, the more click throughs. Also the more traffic, the higher the advertising rates for banners. Lastly, the better the content, the better the traffic.

Now with the arrival of my son, time is tight. My ability to develop and devote time to other projects is tight. Because of this, and the fact I have learned about the ability to monetize a blog, I am going to go the route of trying to monetize my blog. I am going to continiue writing about my industry content but will also be adding posts that describe what I am doing to monetize my blog and its results. The goal is that as traffic and monetization grows, you will be with me every step of the way. Learning from my successes and failures.