How to Profit from Being One of the Pack

After you’ve been blogging for awhile, you’ll probably start to gain a fair-sized audience. You’ll have people who come around and comment regularly. You might even have picked up a couple of fans.

That’s all great. You might still be a loner, though.

Bloggers tend to forget about the many ways they can interact with the online community. Sometimes that forgetfulness ends up being the detriment of what the bloggers are trying to accomplish. It’s hard to achieve the popularity and acclaim of big-name bloggers you admire if they don’t even know who you are. It’s even harder to get clients from your blogging if you don’t know much about who they are or your competition.

Being a lone wolf sounds appealing – you want to make it on your own, after all, and show you’re independent. You want to climb the latter and not ride on anyone’s coattails. Or maybe you’re just shy, or feel like you shouldn’t ask anyone for anything.

But that lone wolf mentality may not be so attractive after you consider what being part of the pack can do for you. Check out these possibilities:

Get More Clients by Offering More Services

Let’s say your blog offers consulting services. You’ve been consulting for awhile, and you realize that the vast majority of your clients come to you with certain other needs as well. If you do business consulting, for example, it’s pretty likely that nearly all your clients need an accountant. If you’re into marketing, most of your clients will need some design work at some point.

Now, you probably don’t offer those extra-request services, and you don’t have to. What you might consider doing is looking around for another blogger whose work you enjoy, and who offers the services you need.

You know what your clients’ usual price range may be. You know what they need. And you know they’ll want to work with someone they like. If they like you, they’ll probably like the people you like as well. By combining your services with that of another blogger, both of you increase your potential clients – and probably your sales, too.

Get More Eyes on Your Blog with a Joint Venture

There are lots of bloggers with bigger audiences than yours. They enjoy popularity, they get invited to conferences, and they make more money than you do. They’re still just people.

And because they’re busy people, they don’t have a lot of time on their hands to come up with and develop new projects. If you can suggest a joint venture that fits in perfectly with their objectives, it’s very likely that they’ll take you up on it.

What does that do for you? It means that suddenly their audience is your audience.

Those people that hang on this popular blogger’s every word and offer are going to start paying attention to you and your blog. They’re probably going to assume you’re pretty cool, or else this popular blogger wouldn’t be doing a joint venture with you. And they’ll probably look at what you have, because they might want some of it.

They’ll check out your blog. They’ll check out the stuff you have for sale. They’ll check out the services you offer. And if they like what they see, they’ll take you up on it.

Increase Your Visibility as a Guest Blogger

You’ve probably heard that a good way to get more visitors to your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. That’s absolutely true. The trouble with commenting on blogs is that the people who see you are just other commentators. They scroll down to comment and happen to catch what you have to say and click the link to your blog.

A lot of people don’t comment on blogs, though, especially not the bigger ones. Consider that one well-known blog has over a million readers but that any given blog post has only about a hundred commentators. That’s an awful lot of people who are reading and who aren’t commenting!

Start guest posting. A guest post means that hundreds, thousands or even millions of readers read what you have to say. If they like it, they’ll go over to your blog for more of it. How to you get a guest post gig? Ask around. Even the big blogs need good writers to fill in the gaps. They’ll probably ask to see the post first and won’t promise to use it, but that’s a small risk for a very large return on potential new readers.

So there you have three great reasons to stop being a lone wolf and start making blogging friends online. Pick one that suits what you’re looking to accomplish and get going!

About the Author: For more great wolf-pack tips that work, check out James’ blog at Men with Pens. We don’t bite – promise.

James Chartrand is the Top Ten Blog pro writing great articles that teach you everything he knows about blogging. Check out his work over at Men with Pens, or be risqué and grab the Men with Pens RSS feed.