Ground Report

A common New Year’s resolution for individuals and businesses alike is to start a blog. When you consider the fact that four percent of bloggers make more than $10,000 a year, primarily from passive income streams, it’s a pretty enticing business plan.

According to expert predictions, there’s no better time than the present to enter the blogging scene. Blogging is expected to be bigger than ever in 2017.

The Expanding Blogosphere

The predictive success of blogging is best understood when looking at the statistics surrounding the practice. In 2016, there were nearly 320 million published blogs on the internet. This is a significant jump from 2011 when there were only 17.5 million published blogs.

Additionally, evolving standards demand higher quality. A few years ago, blog resources would have been considered untrustworthy in academic conversations and works, but times are changing. Blog content is now considered the fifth most trustworthy resource on the internet.

Every year, marketers in B2B and B2C organizations say they’ll produce more content in the upcoming year because blogging works. As mentioned previously, there are currently 320 million published blogs and based on trends, that number will be at 450 million by 2020.

Ad Revenue Will Advance in Blogging

One of the primary pulls of blogging, particularly for the individual, is passive ad income. Through advertisements, bloggers can earn money in their sleep. After they’ve published a quality blog post, interactions with ads will generate the majority of their earnings.

A huge trend for the future of blogging, however, are the changes in ad spending. In the past, bloggers could do virtually nothing while still making thousands through ads. Generating passive income through ad revenue alone will become more challenging as time goes on.

“No matter how seductive this view may seem to the uninitiated, passive income is not ‘raking in the cash, while you sip margaritas on some beach in the Bahamas,” says Income Store. “In other words, there is no legal, ethical, or legitimate way to make money, either online or off, without some form of upfront investment, be it money, time, and/or effort.”

The time and effort mentioned indicates changes of strategy that reflect the most current trends.  Research shows that only about 30 percent of people engage with ads on a blog post, and though that still leads to revenue, these numbers are much lower than in the past. Bloggers will be required to make different initial investments and develop new ad strategies to stay competitive.

Blogging Strategies for 2017

Staying competitive in the blogosphere mean more than just defining a passive ad income strategy. You’ll want to make significant monetary and time contributions to some of the following blogging trends.

• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Google and Twitter created this program to generate much faster mobile pages for responsive web design. It’s a stripped down version of HTML that offers a complete mobile page at twice the speed. All the competitive bloggers will use AMP in 2017.
• Use of Voice Search: Voice search accounts for about 20 percent of all mobile queries according to Search Engine Land, and that percentage is on an upward slope. It’s a feature blog readers have come to expect, and it can have a strong impact on your user experience.
• Reduced Spam for Google’s Penguin 4.0 Update: The fourth version of the Penguin update mandates that all blog pages have reduced spam. It’s a difficult one to get past in the age of push advertising, but it’s important for blog ranking factors.
• Live Streaming: Recorded video hasn’t lost its standing, but live video has grown in popularity, largely thanks to Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Consider ways you can include this form of video in your blogging strategy.
• Story Telling: Blogs today can’t just be about facts. Consumers watch for blogs that tell interesting stories. Simply blogging for the sake of blogging won’t cut it in the future.
• Native Advertising: Push advertising has been the standard the last few years, but native advertising will likely assume the top spot. Thanks to ad blockers and a general disinterest in online advertising, push advertising will evolve into something that’s a little more subtle and much more effective in 2017.