Photo by gadl

Your online income begins with one thing: attention.

Whether you’re advertising freelance services, starting a website to sell a product or becoming a virtual assistant, you won’t find work if nobody is paying attention to you.

If you can start to think of an active blog as a source of attention you can leverage, it becomes apparent that even a moderately successful blog is an incredible resource for anyone working to earn an income online.

How can we tap into our blog’s attention reserves when it really counts? In this post I’ll be sharing everything I’ve learned about using a blog to boost your efforts when working online.

My story

Every cent of the income I’ve generated online has come about as a result of my first blog, Skelliewag.org. Most of my income is earned through paid blog post writing — jobs which I got as a result of the profile I’d built at my own blog and through guest-posting.

With the launch of Anywired I’ve been able to add another income stream (through advertisers), but without the ability to leverage Skelliewag.org it would have taken months to convert this blog into attractive web real-estate for advertisers.

In a few weeks I’ll be adding another income stream which has come about as a result of my blogging (though I can’t share details on that yet). Once that new stream is in place, I’ll be earning an income of about $1,000 a week online — an average full-time income in Australia.

It won’t make me a millionare (or even a six-figure-onaire), but it’s the fulfillment of my dream to earn a full-time income online in a way that allows me to work when I want, where I want. With the help of a blog, I’ve been able to achieve this dream in six months.

I don’t share my story to boast — I stumbled into a lot of these opportunities by accident and am certainly not the most business savvy person out there. Instead, I want to take this post out of the abstract and show you how having access to the reserves of attention a blog provides has changed one person’s life.

Building a thriving blog

I know many Anywired readers are also Skelliewag.org readers but, for those who aren’t, if you don’t run a thriving blog Skelliewag.org contains over a hundred articles on how to get started.

Your blog doesn’t need to have thousands of subscribers and visitors to add tremendous potential to your ability to earn an income online. A small group of passionate readers can be enough to give you a very useful leg-up.

Using your attention

Blog readers who’re passionate about your writing give you something incredibly valuable: attention. They take an interest in where you go and what you do. When you’re starting a new project that depends on attention to succeed, your existing blog can provide the fuel it needs to get off the ground.

Here’s how:

If you’re a web freelancer, a prominent hire-me page on your blog can send you a steady trickle of job offers with no effort required on your part (other than writing the ‘hire me’ page).

If you want paid blogging gigs, write the kind of articles you’d like to write elsewhere — on your own blog. Potential clients will know exactly what you’re capable of bringing them. If your posts tend to be popular, it’s a fantastic advertisement for your work.

If you’re trying to earn an income through blog advertising, having two blogs can effectively double your income. If you can leverage your first blog, you’ll save months of work you would have spent establishing blog #2.

If you’re starting a website you want to sell a product from, you can use your blog to give it free advertising and direct your reader’s attention towards it.

If you’re hoping to start an eBay business, your blog readers may be potential buyers for the things you sell.

If you offer online consulting, blog readers may be potential clients.

You can write and sell an eBook using your blog’s audience as a buyer-base.

You can start a paid-membership only forum and connect it to your blog.

If you’re selling another blog, website or business, you can advertise the sale to your blog’s audience to interest more potential buyers.

As a web freelancer, being a successful blogger gives you an element of notoriety and allows you to charge premium prices for work.

Your blog is a portable asset. It adds value to your business anywhere in the world (and allows you to avoid “I’m big in Japan” syndrome when you try to find work internationally.)

A blog can function as an emergency cushion for your other ventures. If times get tough, you can sell a successful blog for several thousand dollars (sometimes more). Of course, this option should only be pursued as an absolute last resort.

And more…

There are a thousand ways you can use a store of attention to your benefit, and I’ve only listed a small portion above. My overall contention is that a blog is a worthwhile asset for anyone who wants to earn an income through the web. Making it successful is hard work, but attention is valuable, and it’s the currency you’ll be paid in. Attention can be converted into income with a bit of ingenuity — and self-belief.