Markets: Who Will Read Your Blogged Book?

 

On to the next proposal section included under the “Introduction” heading: Markets. As I mentioned in my last post, you now need to make sure you are wearing your business person hat. No writer’s hats allowed.

It’s time to meet your readers or to discover how many readers your blog might be able to gain. In general, discovering your readers represents an exercise in researching if your blog has a market.

Again, even though you are blogging a book, you need to know this information for two reasons: First, since you will be the one primarily responsible for promoting your blog, you’ll want to know in what markets to place your promotional efforts. In other words, you want to promote to the right readers—the right markets. Thus, you must take time to find out who those readers are. Second, and more importantly, you must find out if you even have readers. If no market exists for your blog, you’ll be lucky to garner even a few readers for your blog. (If this is the case, forget about your blog getting “found” by an agent and published as a physical book.)

Knowing if you have a market for your blogged book helps you discern if a reason exists to bother writing and publishing your work. Is there anybody out there that will read your work? Since you are blogging a book, you want to ask, “Is there anyone out there in cyberspace who will subscribe to my blog or come back every few days to see if I’ve published a new post?” In blogging or website terms, you want to know if you can build up a large number of unique visitors (those that come back more than once—hopefully repeatedly).

To discover if you have a market, start with this step: Describe the audience for your blogged book. Who is your average blog reader? Who would be interested in your topic? Who will subscribe to your blog?  Include demographic information if you can. (Do your research!)

Now describe large groups of people (actual markets) that will subscribe to your blog. (Again…do your research! Go out on the Internet and find statistics and information on the size of these groups.) Don’t be lazy. Answer the question, “Who is the market for my blog?”  (Wrong answer: People like me. People who like cats. Right answer: The 1.3 million cat owners in the U.S. The 80,000 veterinarians licensed in the U.S. today.)

Once you’ve done this, you will know if you have a market or not. If you have a large numbers of people who potentially could be interested in your blog, great! Your blog gets the green light. If you can’t think of any markets, or if your markets are very small, you might want to reconsider your topic or re-angle it to target a bigger market.

Of course, nothing stops you from blogging your book for your own enjoyment. You might find one or two readers show up. You can always tell your friends and family to come read your blog. Without a real market, however, you won’t gain many unique visitors, subscribers or readers.

<<Previous Post   Next Post>>