Business of Blogging

My post about the business side of being a PSO generated some interesting conversations and questions, so I thought I'd reveal some similar information about the blog.

I've been running this blog since Aug 15 (86 days). I've posted 162 posts, which is a little less than two / day.

The only ways to find the blog are: my NiteFlirt listing (over 90% of my traffic), stumbling into the blog from a search result related to one of my posts (less than 1% of my traffic), or Twitter (I tweet about blog posts from @GalianaChance where almost all my followers are PSOs, and then @FlirtBlogs automatically tweets when I have a new blog post).

There are lots of ways to drive traffic to a web site that I'm not doing. I don't advertise the blog. I don't strategically post comments on high-traffic sites. I don't run contests. I don't do anything to improve my search engine optimization other than label / tag my posts.

I usually get 150-200 page views per day, so it's not a high-traffic site by any normal web definition, but I'm really happy with it. It feels like a great start. I kind of like that it's still small enough for me to be able to tell when someone goes on a binge and reads my whole blog. I think about half my readers are potential callers, and the other half are phone sex operators -- that's a gut-level guess based on comments and emails. I know at least 20 callers who read regularly.

I've had Google ads enabled most of the time I've had the blog, and so far I have $1.44 from people clicking ads on my blog. I suspect all those clicks are from one reader who is being supportive (P.S. never click an ad unless you're actually interested -- honest advertisers deserve honest clicks).

Not $1.44 per day -- $1.44 total, which is a little less than 1.5 cents per day. 

So. Why do I keep up with the blog at this crazy pace when it's not even making enough to pay for Starbucks once per quarter?

I blog for me: I like having a place to store favorite memories. And I like having a place to "think out loud" about concepts which are gnawing at me; writing often helps me un-stick thoughts that are feel stuck. And I didn't want to lose the early impressions, the questions which will become answers, which will become assumptions, which are good to remember and question now and then. And, at its most practical, blogging between calls helps me stay in the right head-space more than any other between-call activity. 

I blog for you: You've told me you like the blog, and I like interacting with you around stuff I've written. It sometimes gives us fresh things to talk about when you call. When I'm puzzling over an idea, like when I was struggling with the word "whore", readers piped in with their perspectives on calls, and the interaction helped me. When a new caller says he's read my blog, I feel more confident that we're going to get along well, and I can almost guarantee it will be a fun call.

(Haven't called yet? Try not to be intimidated by that last sentence - the people who ask, "Was that boring / weird / unoriginal?" are usually the ones I have found the most fascinating and creative. Your fantasy may feel unoriginal to you because you've thought about it a lot, but chances are, there's some original twist in there somewhere. Also, if you're not in the mood to shoot for originality, you can always pick some toys and guide me to masturbate with them - I love those calls a lot. Oops. Now I'm totally off topic.)

Back to the interactions. I love putting something naughty in the blog and having a caller toss it back at me later, to use in their own play. I find it deeply gratifying when someone takes something they've learned about me and incorporates it into a fantasy. And I'm endlessly amused when callers tease me about getting in the blog:

Question: When are you going to put me in the blog?
Answer: I have no idea. My urge to write has a life of its own without a logical pattern. It feels like when I write fiction, and characters suddenly become insistent about their story lines. I write the ideas and stories that don't leave me alone. If I could predict that, I'd be a much better writer, that's for sure.
Joking Response: I'm not calling again until you put me in the blog!
Brat Counter-Response:  /giggle

My husband and I tried to figure out a way to monetize callers' urges to get in the blog, but all our ideas were stuff that would annoy us if someone else did it, so I didn't do any of them. I have some ideas of how to get more reader interaction, purely for my entertainment, but nothing bankable. I'll do them some day.

So, in conclusion: blogging can be very profitable, but not the way I do it. If you want a profitable blog, work on making your blog profitable, instead of using it to entertain yourself.