Distinguished blogger and The Blog Herald columnist Lorelle VanFossen has a very helpful series of articles that will help both the rookie and veteran problogger alike.
In the first piece, Lorelle presents a checklist of what blog owners are looking for in bloggers. A sample:
# Quality Writing Abilities: Without a doubt, the ability to write and communicate through the written word is critical. Punctuation, spelling, grammar, creative writing ability, language comprehension, proofing, editing – bloggers must be fluent in their language skills as well as their specialization.
# Productive Production Line: Three to five posts a week is the normal blog post production requested. Typically, blog posts are 200-500 words each, though some request more indepth coverage. The average posts per month is 20, generating approximately 10,000 words per month of content.
#WordPress Experience: As more and more companies are using WordPress for their CMS and blogging program, the demand for those familiar with how WordPress works, including some WordPress Theme design and coding experience, is very high.
In the second article, she delves into the worth of blogging, bloggers’ usual job tasks, and types of blogging jobs:
In addition to the professional writing, marking, and public relations skills, along with the background expertise, a blogger rarely qualifies for benefits, insurance, revenue sharing programs, or other employee benefits. They are freelancers, thus must pay for all of these themselves. Do you add the costs of these benefits and necessary expenses into your blogging fees?
Last but not the least, Lorelle rounds out with an excellent research as to how much bloggers are paid:
At $25 a post, you’d need to write 2,400 blog posts to earn $60,000 a year. How long would that take you? Do you have 2,400 original blog posts within you?