Plenty of small businesses use blogging as a way to promote services or build a community around their brand. But blogging can actually be a business in and of itself.
More and more individuals are beginning to take advantage of all the different opportunities out there to monetize blogging.
From gaining paid sponsorship or working with brands on promotional campaigns to developing digital products or e-books, the possibilities for bloggers are plentiful. But in order to build a blog from a hobby into a business, it helps to have a community of like-minded people behind you. Blogger Babes is one of those communities.
Heidi Nazarudin and Ponn Sabra started Blogger Babes in an effort to share resources with other female bloggers.
The network is aimed specifically at female bloggers who focus on lifestyle categories like fashion, beauty, food, travel and DIY. With this niche, the group is able to offer resources that are likely to be actually relevant to members of the community.
Sabra said in an email to Small Business Trends, “While there are hundreds of blogger networks out there, the vast majority of them offer brand-to-blogger paid review campaigns, networking events, and virtual and live conferences. And, they all perform these tasks extremely well.”
“However, no one offers ongoing e-books, kindle e-books, do-it-yourself e-courses, and blogger-specific educational materials written for women bloggers by women bloggers. Heidi and I saw this void in our market and decided to fill it.”
Before starting Blogger Babes, Nazarudin was the CEO of a tech company and Sabra was an author, publisher, and public health official. But both enjoyed running their own blogs and wanted to be able to make a living doing that instead.
“Heidi and I are fortunate to make our own schedules, travel the world, and live our lives on our own terms, because we built our blogs into a business that affords this lifestyle,” Sabra said in her email. “And, we believe if someone is interested enough to start a blog, then she, most likely, is searching for this flexible lifestyle too—which we warmly call the ‘blogger lifestyle’.”
Of course, there are plenty of bloggers that run perfectly acceptable blogs as hobbies. However, as Sabra points out, once bloggers are able to make some money blogging, they’re often able to spend more time improving their blogs. And that often leads to higher quality content.
Sabra said in the email, “Once a blogger consciously and actively decides to explore the opportunities to make money from her efforts blogging, only then will she enter the mindset of a pro blogger. This is the mindset Heidi and I teach, promote and advocate to all our members.”
The platform is free to join. That free membership includes a weekly newsletter full of upcoming events and blogger campaign opportunities, as well as a listing in Blogger Babes’s Member Directory, which brands can browse to find bloggers to work with on their promotional campaigns.
There are also paid subscriptions, which include things like eKits, which offer further information and training related to the site’s monthly blogging topics. And then there’s the Ultimate Blogging Binder, a free digital resource guide for Blogger Babes looking to learn more about building a business around their blogs.
Images: Blogger Babes
[“source-smallbiztrends”]
