Fool’s Wealth

Writing a blog is a great way to practice your writing skills for creating your own information products

If you want to create your own information products such as an e-book, a teaching series or maybe even a seminar then you will need some practice writing so that you can create a product people are going to like and buy. I wrote a post of the advantages of creating your own products here.

When starting your own business, especially online, you are constantly refining your business to make it run better. You find out what works and what doesn’t work and you continually improve so that you increase your earnings. A great way to improve before (or even after) you release your first products is to write a blog. A blog is a website that is continually updated with new material, most often showing the most recent material at the top of the page and the older material down the bottom.

People love blogs. Blogs are interactive and informative, you write to people and then people leave comments about your post. When you write a blog you want it to be interactive but informative. You want to give people the information they are searching for but you also want to create a trusting relationship between you and your readers and also a community in which everyone can learn from and interact with each other. A blog is a great way to practice your writing skills before you go ahead and create your own products. Here is why:

1. See what people respond to – With the ability to receive comments on your blog you can hear from readers what they think about your material. You will learn to discover what people like and what people don’t like. What people respond to and what they don’t respond to. This is great because when it comes to writing your material for your product you will know what people like and what they respond to and you will be able to give them what they want.

2. Find your niche – A niche is simply a fancy word for a specific topic focus. For example a blog could focus on the topic dogs, however a niche of dogs would be a blog just on sausage dogs or just on Labradors. A niche is specific and targeted.
Having a blog is a great way to find out what niche you want to target. You may start out with a few things in mind of what you want to write about (I know I started with money, wisdom, leadership, relationships, Christianity and sexuality) and after you spend time writing and developing your blog you can find out which niche suits you and which one you want to really go for. (For me I discovered that finances was my niche and now I am going for it)

3. Find your writing style – Blogs are full of content, that is their attraction. They offer lots of content for people to read, watch or listen to. By writing a blog you will discover your writing style. You might have a writing style that is more informative, or maybe your writing style is more relational. A blog is a great way to discover this and then when it comes to writing to create your own products you know your writing style and you can focus on doing that writing style well.

4. Interact with other writers – We as humans are designed to learn from other people. Blogging allows you to continually interact with other writers in your niche area and you can both learn off each other. You will find that as you teach you will learn, and as you ask questions you will learn also. So interacting with other writers can really fast track your writing ability.

5. Continually improve – A blog gives you the opportunity to continually improve. By utilising all the benefits listed above you can continually improve in all areas of your writing style .Everyday you have is an opportunity to write and an opportunity to improve. This is fantastic for anyone wanting to create their own products. A willingness to learn and be teachable is so important.

6. Create a customer base – While you are learning and while you are improving you can create a customer base through the readers of your blog. Then once you have finally created your product you have a targeted market to which you can sell your products and your customers will thankyou for the vital information.

7. Create Some Early Cash flow – Obviously in creating your own products you will be expecting to sell them and then create some cash flow from those sales. However, until your products are built, marketed and then finally sold you have had $0 in cash flow. A blog can provide you with cash flow through advertising (try Google Adsense), or through selling affiliate programs (other people’s programs). So blogs can be a great way to earn a little cash flow even though your products aren’t ready yet