Challenges of Running a Successful Blog

Blogging is a business. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but it is true. Along with podcasting, speaking and every other form of training and education, blogging is a business. Sometimes a really big business. And businesses take work to manage and grow.

It is easy to forget that those friendly bloggers you communicate with work some serious hours to bring you information and perhaps a laugh or two. Most people don’t realize bloggers are sweating it out at the keyboard in the wee hours of the morning to get a post out on schedule. 

And then there is the invisible work. It seems like blogging is about the cheapest hobby going until you realize that every part of the platform demands a fee and usually loads of time. And that is where this blogger enters.

I originally planned a detailed post of the coming collapse of China when the IRS released another 249 pages of regulations on Section 199A. The ink wasn’t dry before the calls flooded in for a brief post on the IRS release. The good news is we finally have a definition for a trade or business as it applies to 199A. The bad news is those 249 pages contained a lot of material and one simple post wasn’t going to cut it. A series was in process before the next hammer fell.

 

Time to Get Social

If I’m going to put in all this work I may as well bust tail to acquire a few readers. You see, people don’t magically find my glistening prose. (Yeah, I know. Surprises the heck outta me too.) I’ve done all the obligatory stuff: auto-posting, email list, attend conferences, remind everyone I see I have a blog. And traffic has been good for a tax blog with heavy doses of personal finance mixed in. 

But more is always better, I heard, so I purchased a few courses to hone my skills. First I attended a course on Pinterest and saw my Pinterest traffic go from nothing to several hundred page views per day and still climbing.

Then I cracked open my wallet for a very in depth Facebook marketing course called Moolah. (Hint: Rachel is one awesome lady when it comes to Facebook. She knows her stuff.) Here is an example of some of the free stuff she offers from her course, banned words on Facebook, for example. The free Facebook group alone will send your traffic higher. 

The Moolah course is an intense 10 week program. (You have access to the videos and other materials for at least a year afterwards and there is a special Facebook group for graduates to keep pushing their traffic and sales to the moon.) While in the course I was informed I wasn’t handling ads correctly. I used Google ads, of course, and another platform called IMS. It was a small, yet steady stream of income to cover blog costs. With my traffic levels I was informed I needed to move to a more robust platform like Mediavine. So I took the plunge.

As this was happening another serious request came into the Facebook private group. (Y’all are invited to join our august group and The Wealthy Accountant business page. It is a great place to meet like-minded people and learn how to cut your taxes and manage your money for greater returns.) A reader asked about stock options, the kind granted by an employer, and that wasn’t a simple answer.

So, the China post was on hold even though this reporter has inside information about China that will shock most readers. I will post on this soon due to the serious financial consequences. The 199A post is also delayed due to the imminent incentive stock option issue. 

And now all those posts are on hold as I just spent 30 hours of my weekend before the approaching tax season ripping code from this blog. Why? It seems Mediavine is a vibrant platform requiring all old code removed before they go live. Well, once the process was started my other ad revenue was reduced to zero as the transfer took place. What was supposed to be a quick flick of the switch turned into a detailed review of all 454 published posts to pull out rouge ad code and other issues from the early days of the blog. This became priority if I wanted this blog to stay viable.

The good news is I did it. It is Sunday night as I type and I think I got all the problems fixed. I’ll find out tomorrow morning (probably as you read this). If you don’t see an ad anywhere on the blog you will know I’m still toast. Now I have to sweat it out as Mediavine is an automated system; I have no idea how they will display ads. I demand it is tasteful and useful to my readers. Time will tell.

 

Writing Shtick

The best news is that publishing posts from now on will be faster and easier. This weekend opened more of my time in the future with the improvements. (As long as I live long enough to reach the time break point.) 

But publishing a post is not the most time sensitive part of the process: research is. Tax issues take time to unravel. Answering a client question is faster because I only deal with one facet of the issue facing the client. When writing I must take into consideration all other possibilities a reader might encounter. This is more challenging than it sounds.

The China post requires a modest amount of research. I already have the links built. However, I need to pull from multiple sources, including a source inside China, to complete the post. Still, there wasn’t enough time to do it justice.

The 199A issues are so massive and time consuming I don’t know when I’ll be able to tackle the issue for the blog, but I am committed to a short series before tax season gets too far along. This is important for readers! The weekend workload just didn’t offer anywhere near the time I needed to get a quality post out on 199A.

The same applies to the incentive stock option post.

So, if time didn’t cooperate, offering me the chance to write a detailed financial or tax post, what was I to do? Well, you’re reading it. A post outlining some of the back office headaches of running a blog is easy to write because I can just tell the story of my weekend. Other bloggers should find value in this post while non-bloggers will gain a greater understanding of what it takes to keep a web page up and vibrant.

 

Whether You Believe it or Not

And if all the stuff above isn’t enough, we get some wonderful Wisconsin weather. The forecast has a foot of snow in it for this evening with plenty of blowing to make it as miserable as possible. Then temperatures will dip colder than -20 F. Wednesday’s high is forecast at -12 F. Yes, that is the high for the day. Welcome to the backwoods of Wisconsin.

None of this is meant as whining. I should have known better things wouldn’t transfer to Mediavine as smoothly as predicted. It’s still an excellent learning experience which should increase ad revenue by a significant margin and save time posting from now on. 

As for the weather, there was a hint the weekend would end with snow so I brought plenty of work home with me Friday. Technology today allows me to work from home and it’s as if I’m sitting at my desk. The bad news is I don’t know if any employee will make it in tomorrow. Everything is closed tomorrow: every school, program and every business I checked. 

And good thing. I can’t get the tractor running tonight so I need to get up early if I’m going to get snow moved so I can get out my driveway. Ah, when it rains, but it pours. Snows, I mean

Actually, I had a great and productive time last week and this weekend I killed it. Things were looking ugly for a while when I found some crazy code from the legacy platform when this blog was set up. But I broke through to the other side. It looks like the code is clean now.

Technology also bails me out. Twenty years ago a snowstorm would devastate my schedule. Today I log in from the living room couch and get more work done than if I was at work because there are no interruptions. 

By noon or so things should be clearing out as the plows get the roads open. I’ll break down and wander into the office if possible. 

I just wanted you, kind readers, to understand why I didn’t provide a tax post as tax season bares down on us. There is plenty of powerful stuff in the queue, but those golden nuggets take work to produce. Frequently it is required I call experts to dig deeper into issues these days. It’s almost like journalism for advanced tax strategies. 

Before I sign out I want to whet your appetite with a few more items from the queue: investing in conservation easements for massive tax deductions (special handling required to avoid problems), Medicare complaint annuities (the one annuity members of the community I run in will want to own), the wealth gap, income inequality, Form 3115 (for cost segregation studies), and more. My guess is I’ll need to live to 135 to get all these things published. 

One thing is certain; I enjoy tackling the difficult issues. And for good reason. The stuff regurgitated ad nauseam in the traditional press doesn’t really help you. I want to provide the power tools you need to control your taxes and financial life. It’s a lot of work and worth every bit of effort. 

Before I sign out, can I ask a favor? I busted tail this weekend (and a lot more) working on this blog. The upgrades make it easier and more user friendly to share posts on social media. Would you be so kind as to help out an old wayward accountant by sharing a post or three on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media. I need the ego boost. Thanks.

Now I need to get back to the tractor. The snow isn’t going to move itself.

 

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