by Phoenix Desertsong, The Prose Machine

Blogging is a highly competitive game - that’s for sure! But if you think you have something new or unique to bring to the table, it’s never too late (or early) to start! It doesn’t matter how young or old you are! I see bloggers as young as 12 (and there may be even younger, especially on YouTube.) Then I see bloggers well into their 60’s, 70’s and even 80’s! As long as you’re a competent writer and have something useful to share, then blogging is well worth a shot!


Starting Young as a Blogger

When you’re younger, you obviously have not only time on your side to build your blog and your personal brand… you have youth itself on your side! This is both good and bad. There are those that will think it’s “cute” or “adorable” that you’re starting so young! It may be hard for some of your audience to take you seriously.

But for those of us who have been in the game for a bit, we have a deep respect for young bloggers. This is because it takes a lot of time and dedication to build a successful blog. And yes, many kids have more free time than most of us adults, but there’s more to it than just time and energy.

You have to have a certain maturity to be a successful blogger - something many adults don’t even have - to be brutally honest. You have to have a plan and know how to take the steps to execute it. Having a blog, even if it doesn’t do particularly well, is a great learning experience.

At the very least, blogging can make you connections, and these connections can prove quite valuable! We’re more than happy as bloggers to build up the younger members of the community, as you guys are the future of our industry! Sounds corny, but it’s true!


Starting Older as a Blogger

Somewhat interestingly, the advantages of time that you have when you’re younger can be the same advantage when you’re an older blogger. I’ve seen so many retirees pour all of the time they would have used in their day to day jobs into their new blogs. The effort really shows and some of them make a decent side hustle from it!

The other advantage older bloggers have is that they tend to have a fairly substantial network of friends, family, and former colleagues to get the word out  about their new endeavors. Also, life experience is a huge advantage when it comes to content. While most of us younger bloggers are still learning how to put the pieces of our lives together, retired bloggers can give us perspectives and stories we can only dream of one day sharing.

It really is never too late to start blogging, and it’s so easy nowadays to get started! Also, it’s an awesome hobby, even if you don’t care about actually making money from it. We really love the elder members of the blogging community and we’re always happy to welcome more to our ranks.


For Those of Us Bloggers in the Middle

A lot of us bloggers are twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings trying to make blogging our primary work. Many of us have regular 40-hour or more a week jobs on top of the dozens of hours we dump into networking, promoting, and the blogging itself. Younger and older bloggers definitely have an advantage when it comes to time.

But for those of us in the middle that are turning to making blogging our primary gig, it’s important to realize that blogging is a full-time job in and of itself. If you’re looking to get into the blogging game, realize it’s going to be a 40-hour a week commitment, and often more. And most of that commitment needs to be about building one another up, young, old, and in between.


Whether you are looking into blogging full-time, part-time, or just as a hobby, it’s all worth it. But as with anything, you get back what you put into it. Think of blogging as starting your own business. It takes the same blood, sweat, and tears. Even if you aren’t doing it as a business, you still have to treat it like one, even if it’s not-for-profit. In the long run, you may not get rich, but you can definitely make a living from it.

It’s never too early or too late to start blogging!

This post has also appeared at The Prose Machine.

byLyn Lomasi,Write W.A.V.E. Media Staff

Do you like trying new products or reading new books? Want to make money or earn free samples for it? Here’s how to start a review blog.

Choose a Platform For Your Review Blog

The first step in starting a review blog for books or other products is choosing the platform you will use. There are many to choose from, such as Weebly, Blogger, and WordPress. I personally recommend Weebly because of the versatility and the fact that beginners can jump right in. If you’re also a pro, not to worry. You can edit the CSS if you want to, but the default drag and drop options make it simple and fun for everyone. In addition to hosting, if you want a dot com domain, you will also need a domain manager. I recommend rcomexpress.com. However, there are lots to choose from.

Build Your Blog

Once you’ve chosen your platform, it’s time to build your blog. This is relatively quick and simple if you’ve chosen one of the more easy platforms. You can choose your template/theme, colors, and so on. You should also be able to choose which pages you’d like and customize each page with the text, images, and anything else you need to. If you’re going to be reviewing products, you’ll want sections for ads on each page. This will help you earn revenue.

Make Sure You Have These Important Pages

At the very least, in my experience, every review blog should have a homepage, a blog page, an about/contact page, and a review policy page. By law, you will need to have a review policy and disclose when you receive products or cash in exchange for reviews. All of the pages and policies mentioned will help your audience have a positive experience with your blog.

Monetize Your Blog For Revenue

Join affiliate programs, such as Amazon Associates, Rakuten LinkShare, CJ.com, and Google AdSense in order to generate revenue. This will allow you to earn revenue with ads that are aligned with the products you review. Sometimes you can align an exact product this way for the best results. Be careful to read the terms of each company and make sure you are following their guidelines if you join. Some may require your blog to be a certain age or have a certain number of posts first.

Start Writing Posts

Once you have made all of your pages, done what you can to monetize, and have something to review, start making posts. The more active your blog is, the better chance you have of people seeing it. At first, it might seem you are talking to yourself. Don’t worry. People will come if you keep writing. Be sure to learn some whitehat SEO techniques to help that along.

Market Your Blog To Companies

Once you have some posts up, you can market your review blog to companies via proper SEO, social media, and by sending pitches out to those who share your interests. It may take some time to build a steady following and you may need to at first review products and books you already own. But in no time, you will start getting more requests than you can handle if you do it right.

Happy blogging! If you have any questions, please comment below or Contact Us and we will do our best to assist.

by Richard Rowell, Write W.A.V.E. Media Staff

Why do you want to blog? Are you doing it just to have an outlet, or are you trying to make money from it? Is it possible to blog for pleasure and blog for business at the same time? It's completely possible. You just have to ask yourself: What does blogging do for me?

You just have to make it worth your time. As someone who's done both blogging for business and for pleasure, I know it's possible.

Blog When it Feels Right

The trap that so many bloggers, myself included, fall into is having to blog just for the sake of blogging. One great suggestion that some people give is to give shout outs to others by curating content that is worth reading. This is fine and all. But really, if you want to really succeed in blogging, just blog when it feels right.

Blog when you feel like you really need to say something. Curating is fine and writing about a trending topic can be OK, too, but you really need to be feeling it? When you’re feeling it, then it will show in your writing.

Blog Because It Feels Good

Sometimes you just have to get something off of your chest. The thing to do with that is to be constructive about it. Sure, go to town absolutely cussing your brains out in your first draft. But then, see if there’s anything good that others might connect with. I don’t really advocate cursing in blog posts, but done correctly, especially on personal blogs, I’ve seen it work. Then again, advertisers don’t really care for that and Not-Safe-for-Work (NSFW) content isn’t for everyone.

But really, you should blog because it feels good. Don’t turn into something that you have to do just for the sake of making some pennies. Yeah, sometimes that might be all you get. Believe me, I’ve done the homework and I know that most successful bloggers live off of a handful of blog posts. Whatever the rest happens to earn is just gravy.

The idea is to show passion in your blogging, because otherwise, it looks like you’re just making a money grab. Believe me, I’ve fallen short in this category way too many times. That’s why I’m writing this bit in the first place! You have to keep up the passion or it just won’t work anymore.


Blog Because You Can Make a Difference

You should ask yourself when you sit down to blog: how can what I write make a difference? You may be surprised just how much one article or blog post can do in someone’s life. A lot of people Google things just to see if someone else out there is thinking about something that they are. Chances are with the billions of people online today, you’re not alone in what you’re thinking. This is a good thing. People talk about how unoriginal most bloggers have become. It’s true. So you have to stand out. Blog because you can make a difference in some way just by putting your thoughts out there. Keeping them inside your head doesn’t really do you a lot of good if something useful and constructive can come out of them. If you happen to make a little money along the way, that’s good, but it should never be the end goal - despite what a lot of people say.

In the end, don’t blog for business, even if you’re blogging for a business. Blog for pleasure, but also blog when it feels right, because it feels good, and because you can make a difference.

So my fellow blogger friends, do you prefer to blog for pleasure, blog for business, or a little of both? Why do you blog? How you do think you could blog better?

"Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." – Isaac Asimov

Have you ever found yourself not sure what to write for your blog? There may be days when you sit by yourself and brainstorm a few things that you’ll probably write about later. Likely you won't use everything that you wrote, but you may find something that you were thinking about could make a useful blog post.

But more often than not, it’s likely that you find yourself uninspired by your notes. Other times, you won’t have any notes to go off of at all for blog ideas. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to make sure that you always have something to write about. A lot of it is just letting your blog post topics come naturally.

How Do You Let Blog Posts Come Naturally?

Consider this simple exercise. Towards the end of your day, jot down some of the challenges you faced during the day. Then, tell how you succeeded, or didn’t succeed, in solving them. You'd be surprised how little solutions can make for a short, but sweet post that your audience would find interesting. You may not want to post about your failures right now, but if you take note of them and find solutions later, including those makes for an interesting narrative

Showing dedication to the little things is pretty important to people. It makes you more human to those that read your blog. Blogging effectively involves connecting with your audience on an emotional level. You want people to be delighted by what they read, and be able to connect to these “little things” sorts of posts. Over time, the little things add up. Before you know it, you can have a vibrant and interesting blog. Not every blog post is going to be a hit. But, just three or four little successes can go a long way.

Should I Write About Challenges I Haven't Solved?

What about the challenges you haven’t solved? Are you still working towards solutions? It's fine to let people know what you're working on to better improve yourself and whatever it is you do. Being natural is paramount to blogging effectively. In any case, be as positive as you can, even when dealing with bad days. Keep a bright outlook on things and your blog readers will thank you for it.

You may also want to write down any missteps you took during the day. Now, it would seem that missteps are not the best sort of thing to write about. On a blog you typically want to be as positive and helpful as possible. But, there is a way to spin such mistakes, especially if you find a solution to prevent such a mistake from happening again. You may want to write about what you do to prevent those sorts of mistakes in the future. Draw attention not to the failure, but instead to solutions.

How Do I Get Readers to Emotionally Connect to My Blog Posts?

People love success stories. Most people want to see others succeed. Admit how you’ve overcome certain challenges. It's easy to be inspired by reading about others overcoming difficulties and challenges. You can create those if you just let your successes, failures, and solutions flow naturally throughout your blog posts.

If you're ever stuck for a blog topic, just brainstorm and let the ideas come naturally. Don't self-edit until you're actually about to write the post. Just let the events of each day unfold in your mind. Recount what struggles and successes you had and the little (or big) victories of the day. You might be surprised with what you find even from little victories. What's little to you may be huge to someone else. This way, when you have dull, uninteresting days, you can still write a blog post to inspire both yourself and everyone who reads your blog.

One of the hardest things about blogging is getting people to come back for more. You can build up a huge initial audience. But, over time, even if you keep up with continuous content creation, that doesn’t mean that people will come back and interact.

You can provide the greatest information in the world. It could even be exclusive. But with this strategy, most of the time, you’ll get an overwhelming majority of “hit-and-run” visitors. Yes, they may click on an ad. They may check out a product or two that you are promoting or selling. But very rarely do you convert this traffic into actual revenue.

Curiosity is great, but it doesn’t make you a living. In fact, big page view numbers can lead to little more than frustration.

There is hope, however. You just have to ask yourself a deceptively simple question.


What’s In It For the Readers?

Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketing once published an article about how he and his team built up a blog from zero to $6 million in sales in only a year. The website is called SurvivalLife.com, and it’s about survival and preparedness. Yes, it does promote products but in a passive way.

Survival Life has become a huge resource in the survival and preparedness market. It’s not just because they have a network of blog contributors and a team of blogger experts. Each article offers something beyond just the article.

Having ad networks and even affiliate programs like Amazon Associates is nice, but they don’t work for everyone. But having a mix of affiliate and in-house offers is better if they’re well-targeted, unlike a lot of those pay-per-click ads.

Ryan says that becoming an authority is so much better than being an “ordinary” blogger for a number of reasons. One of the reasons, he says, is this:

“You don’t need a product, sales copy or even an idea… you just need to have a passion in a market where great content and fascinating experts already exist.” – Ryan Deiss (http://www.digitalmarketer.com/6-million/)

It’s all about the passion. There’s more to it than that, obviously. You have to really dedicate the time and energy to become the sort of “insider” that he talks about. But, in fact, he says you don’t even have to be a writer to become an authority.  What's that mean?

Earlier on in that same article, he mentions Oprah. Everyone knows who she is. She has built an empire by simply associating with experts in multiple fields. She makes big time revenues off of those affiliations. How? It's because those are real sales that she’s generating by the interest in those experts because of the trust that she has built over the years.

So What Can You Offer Your Readers?

Sharing other content is great, especially when it’s by other experts that I trust. However, I don’t necessarily subscribe to Ryan’s idea of “The World Doesn’t Need More Information.” Then again, I do agree that if the information already exists, and is already well-written and presented, then you should share it with the world. You don’t even have to rewrite it “in your own words” as they say. “Spinning” isn’t really necessary if the information is already worth promoting.

This doesn’t mean you can’t still be part of it. You can still share personal experience. What it does mean is that you have to always bring it back to making it about what your audience is looking for when they come to you. Offer up other authoritative content that you love, no matter where it comes from. This sounds counter-intuitive, but people will remember where they heard something from if it’s valuable enough.

Why do people go back to major media outlets or remain loyal to brands? It’s because people create emotional attachments to things that provide them with what they’re looking for if it delivers on a consistent basis. It doesn’t all have to come from your own mouth. You just have to keep the good content coming, no matter what the source.

Sometimes, it turns out that the best approach really is to become an expert by showing how you learned to become an expert in that field. By doing so and showing the process, you teach others how to become an expert in their own field, niche, or area of expertise. The idea is to lead by example, even if you’re not the greatest writer in the world. It’s about sharing and caring, as silly as that sounds.

As it has so often been said, it doesn’t matter so much what you give someone. Rather, it's how you made them feel in doing so. Once you have the emotional connection and you continue to deliver on that connection, you’ve made a fan for life. It doesn’t matter how many of those you get as long as they’re genuine. They will be the ones that not only will grow your blog or business, but also be friends for life.

For those about to blog, I salute you. However, don’t simply blog for the sake of blogging. Yes, a great many people are currently doing it. More than a handful are doing it well, albeit often with some outside help. But before you begin blogging, you need to ask yourself: "Do I have time to blog?"

It's true. The most important thing to consider when creating a blog is just how much time you can devote to a blog. It’s simply unrealistic to think that blogging is something you can do for even a half-hour every week. Sure, sometimes you may be able to do it. But you want to make sure that you have plenty of content waiting in the wings for when you get writer’s block. The last thing you want to happen is to simply put it off.

Or, Should You Have Someone Blog For You?

If you’re running your own website, posting weekly to your blog is fine. However, most experts will tell you that you should blog at least three times a week. This is a good idea, as it keeps your content consistently fresh. A website that is updated every 48 hours definitely looks good to the search engine crawler bots. But, do you have time to blog that much?

Whatever you do, make sure you’re putting out only quality content on your blog. If that is only possible once per week, that is fine. Still, you should shoot towards at least having a decent short post to accompany it. Whether that's earlier and/or later in the week is up to you.

While it's not for everyone, you could consider guest bloggers. It's good to have a group of good writers that can produce content for you on a regular basis. This way if you fall behind, you have some good content still going up on the website. It also can benefit your guest writers with backlinks and exposure for their work.

Don't Abandon Your Blog!

The trick is to not simply start a blog, post a whole bunch of content to it, and then leave the site abandoned for months at a time. This happens far too often; it's sad to say. Sometimes, those blogs sit there for years with nothing new posted.

Keep in mind that things will come up. Suddenly, you could find yourself not having posted on the blog in three or four months. That not only looks bad in the search engine rankings, but it also looks bad to visitors. Blog inactivity makes it look like you gave up. That's a terrible thing in the eyes of online visitors.

So, yes, make sure you are making time to blog before you start blogging. Sometimes, if you can only write a few words, go ahead and write them. They may bbe the basis for an entire post later. And, yes, you can always hire outside help to put your ideas into action. There are plenty of writers out there to help you do it.


Whatever you decide, make sure you’re posting genuinely valuable content. If you don’t have the time to blog right now, find someone to manage it for you, whether it’s in-house or contracted outside.

If you want to start a blog, don’t put it off. The later you start, the longer it takes to get results. So, post early and often and only the best quality posts. Whether you find the time for your blog yourself, or have someone help you keep your blog active, eventually, you’re sure to get results.