Wow, starting a blog is always so damn hard! I always forget that starting is the hardest part, and I've started a few blogs in the last few years, most of which have been abandoned since.

The idea for this blog came to me a few months ago when I was being interviewed for the Finnish magazine Mainostaja (translates to Advertiser). During the interview I talked about blogs and marketing, and actually said some pretty radical things which were mercifully left out by the journalist so I haven't been forced to explain my outrageous claims.

So I'll just blurt them out here instead and get flamed by the blogging community:

• It shouldn't be that hard to make money by blogging
• It shouldn't be that hard to get 100.000 unique visitors for your blog. Each week. Building from scratch in one year.

I do remember after the interview hoping that the journalist wouldn't hang on my hundred-thousand-visitors-a-week -idea, as I did doubt it a little later. But hey, now I'm going to give it a shot!

Unleashing the new product: this blog!

Yep, that's it in a nutshell. To make money, you need a product or a service (and I ain't servicing nobody!), and this blog is the product (hence the name of the blog). Starting now, for at least the next twelve months, I will try to raise revenue with this blog, and get as many visitors as possible to see how close to the 100K mark I get.

To be realistic, I'm not expecting to reach 100K, not even close. And of course there's the possibility that I get bored, delete the blog and deny that it ever existed.

About the content

First off, this is not going to be one of those "how to make money with your blog" -blogs which compare different affiliate networks and Google AdSense ad formats. I really have no interest in those, as the revenue from them is so small unless the user volumes are huge.

I aim to focus more on online business models, bragging about my own knowledge (which isn't much to brag about) of the internet, and the development of this blog in general.

Getting the visitors

As I stated in the interview, to monetize on blogs, you should treat it like any other online media, and advertise it. The thing is, I don't have any interest in blowing money on paid advertising (although I might pour a few euros to Google AdWords), so I need to work a bit harder:

1. The content of this blog needs to be really interesting, so people come back
2. Focus on word-of-mouth: make sharing to social networks easy (note the buttons at the end of this post)
3. Be active on Twitter, Facebook etc. to drive traffic from there

To tackle #3, there's a Twitter account set up for this blog. If you follow the account, I'll follow you back, promise! And I'll try to actually use the account to post bits and pieces of relevant info that aren't quite big enough for a blog post.

Generating revenue

At this point, I see three options for generating revenue:

1. Advertisements
2. Partnership with another media (providing content to some other site)
3. Selling the blog

Advertising is probably the easiest, as long as the blog gets enough visitors. I will probably start with affiliate programs and/or Google AdSense, but the long-term goal is to try to get advertisment deals directly (or through a sales broker).

If the content of the blog turns out to be excellent and interesting, one option would be to offer content to other media's, by providing the blog as a part of the site. This could provide a steady source of income, but in this case any advertising revenue would go to the media.

Last, but not least, is the exit strategy. Make the blog so popular, that it might be in someone's interest to buy it. It's pretty closely related to #2, but I intentionally posted them as separate options, as I see #3 as an option where someone else takes over the blog totally, whereas in option #2 I still would provide the content.

About me

My name is Tuomas Rinta, I'm a thirtyish web-junkie from Finland. I've been tinkering with the web since around 1996 and founded Vuodatus.net, a Finnish blogging service, in 2004. In 2008, Vuodatus.net was aquired by the Finnish media company Alma Media which now employes me under the title Development Manager.

To clarify, I don't have a marketing degree. I don't have a business degree. Hell, the only diploma I have is a high school graduation diploma. So for your business and market analysis needs, go elsewhere. I'm a programmer. I make websites and think about what makes people go Oh! in the Web 2.0.

I did write a chapter in an internet marketing book called Klikkaa tästä (translates to Click here). So if you know Finnish, off you go to order it!

So this was the hard part. The blog has now lost it's e-virginity. Now, go ahead and give me a kickstart by following my Twitter account blogproduct, and tweet about this post!

Please?