A common mistake made among bloggers is in not exploring alternative publishing options for their blogs. Your blog could explode beyond that of a web page if you’d only take the time to check out the choices available. As much as we’d like to think we have a loyal community who visits our blogs each day, the truth is, we’d have even more readers, beyond that of physical traffic, if we’d think beyond our URLs.
We bloggers like to think everyone is like us, that they’re online all the time and have time to read blogs all day. Truthfully, very few people have that kind of time. However, we can offer them the convenience of reading our blogs via less traditional methods so they can enjoy our posts during their commutes, trips to the beach, or afternoons by the pool.
Below are the various publishing options available. Some add a new revenue source, some will drive traffic and some will simply bring convenience to readers.
10 Publishing Options for Your Blog
- Kindle: Did you know that you can subscribe to blogs to read on your Kindle? Yes, it costs money, but many readers agree it’s worth the convenience. After you sign up for a publishing account, you and Amazon will split the profit from subscribers and Kindle owners can read your blog without having to stoke up their machines. Here’s Kommein’s Kindle page.( Credit where it’s due: The inspiration for this entire post was Denise Wakeman’s post on publishing your blog on Kindle. Thanks, Denise!)
- Smart Phone Apps: I read blogs, newspapers and sometimes ebooks using my Droid. It’s not my favorite way to read, to be honest, because my aging eyes like a big space. However, it works like a charm when I’m a plane or train, or waitng in line somewhere. There are a variety of ways to have create smart phone apps. Many bloggers will contact developers, but this can get pricey – up to thousands of dollars. You can also use a free service such as MotherApp. The MotherApp team will create your smart phone app and split any revenue from ads.
- iPad: I didn’t find too many tried and true ways to publish a blog for iPad. In researching how to publish a blog to iPad, I came across Publisha, a service allowing writers and bloggers to publish blogs to Facebook, and create iPhone and iPad apps. I don’t know much about Publisha or how it works. However, if you have experience with this service or any other iPad app or blog publisher, I do hope you’ll share in the comments. I’ll probably test it out myself and offer up a review. Also, Kindle has an app for the iPad so iPad users with this app can view still view your blog.
- RSS: Through owning a blog network I learned that most of my blog’s readers read via their RSS readers and not by physically landing on my blog. In fact, a good chunk of my revenue came from Adsense on my Feedburner account. Just before I sold, I had between 3000 & 4000 daily visitors to the network and almost 11,000 readers via the feed.
- Traditional book: More and more bloggers are turning their blogs into books or “blooks.” Some repurpose or create brand new content, while others package up all their blog posts. You can bypass the traditional publishing “find an agent and shop it around” route by self publishing.
- Newsletter: A weekly newsletter will enable readers to receive news and updates in their mailbox to read at their convenience. I used AWeber for my former blog and it converted many newsletter readers to blog readers. It’s a paying service but well worth it. You’ll also find many free services if you choose to go the newsletter route. The beautiful thing about newsletters is that they also grow your mailing list so if you have something to promote such as a book, you already have a list of people to contact.
- Facebook: I was a Facebook late bloomer. It’s not that I didn’t like or trust it, but that I didn’t want to get sucked into another social network. Guess what? Facebook turned out to be an amazing tool. For my last blog, I had over 3,000 Facebook subscribers who I interacted with each day. Also, subscribers were able to receive updates via their Face book statuses. If they didn’t want to come to the blog to comment, they could stay on Facebook and comment on the page. The Facebook fan page sent up to a few hundred readers directly to the blog each day. Hopefully I can achieve the same results with Kommein’s Facebook page.
- Ebook: If you have a large blog with many pages, you can repurpose the best of your content into an ebook. Many new readers don’t have time to go through an entire blog but would enjoy the convenience of an entire book of posts to read at their leisure. There are many types of ebook publishing programs and affiliate programs so others can sell your books as well. Plus, interested parties can buy the ebooks to upload to their Kindles and iPads to read offline.
- Email subscription: Many of your readers might prefer to receive updates via email to read on thier smart phones, laptops or to print out for later. If you don’t have an email subscription option available already, get thee to Feedburner or newsletter program and make plans for a daily mailing.
- Traditional blog platform: Don’t forget to encourage folks to visit your blog anyway. It’s through your blog that they become a community as they chat about the issues and topics. This is also how they’ll support your advertisers and the best way to interact with you. Advertisers and potential buyers care most about your physical traffic, so don’t neglect the actual blog while building communities elsewhere.
Do you know of other ways to publish a blog? Will you be checking out any of these tips? Please share in the comments.
