One month after my blog went live, I received my first $15,000 ghostwriting project as a direct result. That was the moment I understood what a blog could do for a service business.
The Blogging Years
I think most blogging advice is written for the wrong people. It’s aimed at hobbyists chasing page views and ad pennies, and it steers anyone with a real service toward traffic numbers that never pay a bill. A service business needs a blog that speaks to the few readers who might hire you and ignores almost everyone else, and I wish somebody had told me that at the start.
I began blogging back in 2000. Before that, I had websites where I hand-coded over 5,000 HTML pages. For more, see author interview with richard lowe. I had a weekly column on Suite 101, and one of those articles was published in their book “Real People, Real Stories. For more, see from tech executive to professional ghostwriter.”
I started blogging because my wife was very ill with COPD and lung disease. I had to stay home to watch over her and be her caregiver. I needed something I could do from home, so I started working on my blogs.
After I retired from Trader Joe’s, where I spent two decades as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services, I relaunched my blog to focus on writing. My blog at thewritingking.com focuses on writing subjects, including my books.
The blog doesn’t get massive traffic, but what it does get is highly qualified leads that convert into paying projects.
What would Richard Lowe do differently when starting a blog?
I’d focus the blog more tightly from the start.
When I started writing in 2013, I wrote about everything including the kitchen sink. That doesn’t work for attracting search engines. I’ve been working to reorganize the blog to focus on writing, ghostwriting, and book coaching, moving off-topic content to other blogs or deleting it entirely.
Deleting my own articles wasn’t fun, and some of those posts took real work. A post about something my readers will never hire me for drags down the whole site anyway, and search engines don’t hand out credit for effort.
I’ve got no sympathy for the keyword stuffers who got buried when Google changed the rules.
That reorganization has been working to attract traffic, get articles shared, and convert visitors into clients. But it’s much more difficult doing this on a live blog than it would have been to design it that way from the beginning.
The Biggest Challenge
Learning the new rules for SEO. When I started in the 2000s, SEO was simple: pile on the keywords. That changed completely. Now the focus is on quality of content.
I’ve always written quality content, but Google raised the bar so the content must be exceptional to rank well. That worked out for the best because high-quality content converts to paying customers better than low-quality content ever did.
I’ve got no sympathy for the keyword stuffers who got buried when Google changed the rules. They wrote for a machine and treated the person reading as an afterthought, and every reader who landed on one of their pages lost a few minutes finding that out.
The other challenge was learning the differences between WordPress and hand-coded HTML. WordPress is more wasteful of bandwidth and space. On my hand-coded sites, I made sure everything was as light as possible.
How Does a Blog Generate Revenue?
Clients find my blog and purchase my ghostwriting and book coaching services. You can find current ghostwriting pricing on the ghostwriting page. I’ve completed 54+ ghostwriting projects and published 113+ books.
Most of my inbound queries come from prospects who need a book written. The blog establishes credibility before the first conversation happens. Prospects arrive having already read my content. That means they’re pre-qualified and serious.
You can find current writing coaching pricing on the writing coaching page.
The Strategy That Generates the Most Leads
Content that ranks for what my prospects are searching for. When someone searches for ghostwriting services, ghostwriting pricing, or how to hire a ghostwriter, my articles show up. The prospect reads the article, sees the expertise behind it, and contacts me through the site.
I treat the blog as a sales tool, and every post has to justify its place. Every article either serves my ghostwriting prospects or my book coaching clients. Articles that don’t serve one of those audiences get deleted.
My take
Blogs built to sell a service pay off faster than most owners expect. My first ghostwriting project came one month after my blog went live. Write for the prospects you want, on the questions they’re searching, and delete anything that doesn’t serve them. Forget keyword stuffing, because Google buried those sites and they earned it. Make every post justify its place.
What advice does Richard Lowe give someone starting a blog?
| Lesson | What I learned |
|---|---|
| Focus from the start | Writing about everything doesn’t attract search engines; reorganizing later is harder. |
| Write for prospects | Rank for what prospects search, like ghostwriting pricing or hiring a ghostwriter. |
| Make every post earn its place | Articles that serve neither ghostwriting prospects nor coaching clients get deleted. |
| Quality beats keywords | Google raised the bar, and high quality content converts better. |
| Avoid shortcuts | Bought links and spun articles leave a site search engines distrust. |
| Expect it to take time | Not overnight, not a month or six months; do the work daily. |
| Sell a real service | Banner ads won’t make you a living; a blog builds credibility before the first call. |
It’s not an overnight process. Not even something you can do in a month or six months. A blog, its promotion, and a reputation with people and search engines all take time and effort.
You have to be willing to put in the work day after day, make it high quality, and ignore all the so-called shortcuts. Just do the work, learn from the experts, avoid anything that even remotely sounds like a shortcut, and you’ll be fine.
I don’t have a kind word for the people selling blogging shortcuts. Bought links, spun articles and courses that promise overnight traffic make money for the seller, and the buyer ends up with a site search engines distrust and months of cleanup work.
J.C. Penney found this out in public. In February 2011, The New York Times reported that the retailer had sat at or near the top of Google for months, through the holiday season, on searches like “dresses,” “bedding” and “area rugs.” Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media, who dug into it for the paper, traced much of that ranking to thousands of links planted on unrelated and mostly abandoned websites.
Google took manual action, and the drop was fast. According to the Times, J.C. Penney ranked first for “Samsonite carry on luggage” one evening and 71st two hours later. The company said it hadn’t authorized the links and fired its search firm, SearchDex.
If a retailer with more than 1,100 stores couldn’t keep links like that from blowing up in its face, a small service business shouldn’t go near them. The traffic can vanish in an evening, and the cleanup falls on the site owner.
Make sure your blog is focused and you have a product or service that works in a blogging environment. Banner ads aren’t going to make you a living.
If you’ve got real expertise and a service people pay for, I think a focused blog is one of the smartest things you can build, and it’s a shame how many professionals pour their hours into social posts that disappear in a day. An article that answers a prospect’s question can keep working for years after you write it.
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your book project.
Blogs still build an audience, and search has changed shape. The Day Your Website Died is my book on optimizing for AI search, from someone who spent years ranking websites.
Frequently Asked Questions
- J.C. Penney caught gaming Google, Network World
- How JC Penney gamed Google, Digital Trends
- 90 Days Later, Google Lets J.C. Penney Out Of Timeout, Search Engine Land
