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Blogging is an excellent way to start a business or grow your existing one. This article will get you on the path of creating and executing your own blog business plan that can help take your online presence to the next level.
The “blog business plan sample” is a step-by-step template that can help you create your own blog business plan. This article will show you how to use the template and what it entails.
The world’s most successful bloggers all have one thing in common: they recognize the value of a well-thought-out business strategy in boosting blog earnings. Your blog business plan is essentially a road map that explains why your blog exists, identifies your key goals, and lays out a step-by-step approach for achieving those objectives. Your strategy will lead you through the most essential stages of your company’s development.
Put your anxieties aside if you believe writing a business plan would be tough and complex. I’m a blogger who’s worked with other bloggers for over a decade, and you’re going to learn my shortcuts and strategies that will make the effort lot simpler than you think.
The 10 Most Important Parts of a Blog Business Plan
1. Executive Summary 2. Market & Competitor Analysis 3. Overview of the Brand Identity 4. Content Overview of the Blog 5. A Strategy for Making Money from Your Blog 6. Blog Marketing & Promotion 7. Blog Management & Operation 8. Cost & Revenues Forecast 9. Blog Performance Analysis 10. Business Exit Strategy
Download this Template for a Free Blog Business Plan to get a head start on your planning. It takes you step by step through everything you’ll need to include in your strategy. The template is totally customisable, allowing you to tailor it to your specific requirements.
Template for a Free Blog Business Plan
Now you may get the file.
The 10 Most Important Sections of a Blog Business Plan
While your business plan has ten key elements, each piece is not necessarily self-contained. This means you won’t be able to complete step one before moving on to step two and moving on to the next section—you’ll have to travel back and forth between parts as you create your strategy. This is particularly true for the Executive Summary, which contains material from previous portions of the plan that has been summarized.
Make an executive summary first.
A business plan’s Executive Summary is often regarded as the most crucial piece. This part distills your business plan down to the fundamentals of how you propose to start and run a successful company. The major purpose for creating an Executive Summary as a blogger is to ensure that you are clear and focused on your goals.
The name of your blog, a quick blog description, and summary information about your blog’s target market and ideal readership should all be included in your Executive Summary. In this area of your strategy, you should also include your blog’s mission statement and major business objectives.
On your plan, write the name of your blog.
The name of your blog may or may not be the same as the name of your company. Ruth Soukup Omnmedia, for example, owns the famous lifestyle and personal finance site Living Well Spending Less®. Soukup is a firm that combines many companies and brands into a single entity. If your blog’s name and your company’s name aren’t the same, make a note of it in this area of your business plan.
The processes involved in naming your blog are similar to those involved in naming a company. Here are a few things to consider while coming up with a name for your blog:
- Look for names that haven’t been taken yet.
- Determine if you want your name to have a serious, fun, professional, or casual tone to it.
- Choose a name that is simple to recall and spell.
- Use a blog name that you can also use as your domain name wherever feasible.
Here are a few easy name-generation strategies to get you started:
- Incorporate your blog’s target audience into the name.
- Characters from fiction or mythology might serve as a source of name ideas.
- If it’s suitable, include a place name into the name of your blog.
- Consider employing a portmanteau, which is a combination of two words that has been smushed together to form a single word (for example, breakfast + lunch = brunch).
You may discover that naming your blog is more difficult than you imagined. Let’s face it, with over 31 million active bloggers on the planet, a lot of great names have already been taken. It will take time and ingenuity on your side to come up with the right blog name and domain, but the suggestions provided above will help you along the way.
Create an overview of your blog.
A fly-over summary of what your blog is about and why it exists is called an overview. Write this from the standpoint of a company owner who wants to make money from their blog.
You don’t need a business plan if you’re beginning a blog as a hobby or passion project since your purpose isn’t to generate money. Your secondary motivation for beginning a blog may be your enthusiasm for the topic matter, but your ultimate objective is to make money. I can’t stress enough how important it is to think of your blog like a company.
Keep this area of your blog strategy between 250 and 500 words long. It’s important to remember that this is a summary, not a dissertation. The main benefit of writing a short blog description is that you may refer to it as you grow your blogging career. You’ll avoid many bumps in the road that send less business-oriented bloggers off course if you keep focused on why your blog exists and make choices based on that why.
Add a Short Description of Your Target Market & Ideal Audience
While it’s a good idea to provide a summary of your target market and audience in your Executive Summary, you can’t do so without first performing extensive research. This is what I meant when I said that writing a business plan isn’t always a step-by-step process; you may need to miss a few phases and then go back to finish the ones you skipped.
When creating section two of your blog business plan-—the Market & Competitor Analysis section-—you’ll conduct in-depth research and provide considerably more detail about your target market and audience. That detailed information will help you create the abbreviated content you add to this section of your Executive Summary.
Make a mission statement.
A mission statement is a brief summary of what you do, who you do it for, and how your site is different. A mission statement’s objective is to keep everyone who works on your blog focused on your company’s goals and beliefs.
Answer the following questions while drafting your mission statement:
- Who is the blog’s target audience?
- What will the blog do for them; in other words, what is its purpose?
- What will the blog do to achieve this? (This is where being different from your competition will help you stand out.)
A concise and appealing mission statement is essential. Simple, jargon-free, and plain mission statements are the finest. They’re also motivating. Your goal statement should motivate both you and people who contribute to your blog.
Template for a Blog Mission Statement
At [blog name], we have a purpose. for [the person you’re doing it for] that [what you achieve]
An example of a fictional travel blog’s mission statement
Travel Morocco Now’s purpose is to give exceptional experiences for travel fans all over the globe that provide a real look at all this fascinating nation has to offer.
Make a list of the most important goals for your blog’s success.
Once again, you may need to refer to other sections in the plan before entering this information on your Executive Summary. For example, you may want to set goals around the types of monetization strategies you plan to pursue (which is discussed in-depth in your Blog Monetization Plan) or set goals for your promotional investments (which you outline in the Blog Marketing & Promotion section).
In your top objectives list, include four to seven goals. Check out this collection of 10 SMART goal examples if you’re not sure how to establish business objectives. Goals might range from selling 1,000 $19 e-books in the first six months to getting 30,000 monthly average page views in order to join a high-paying advertising network like MediaVine.
2. Market & Competitor Analysis
Before starting a blog company, many bloggers do at least some specialty market research. If you’ve already done so, kudos to you; you’re ahead of the game. Don’t worry if you haven’t begun yet; you can still begin your in-depth analysis of your blog’s niche market as well as the top rivals in your field of expertise.
Create a market analysis for your niche.
It’s better to concentrate on a specialty rather than a wide market when beginning a blog with the intention of generating money. To be honest, it’s just too difficult for a single writer to generate momentum for a blog that attempts to cover too many topics (the exception being lifestyle blogs, which often cover a wider range of topics but from a single point of view).
After your blog has been up and running for a time, you may always extend or limit its emphasis. However, before you do so, have a look at your blog’s performance statistics to determine whether a change in content scope is necessary.
You’ll need to undertake extensive market research to construct this component of your strategy. It’s time to summarize your results in the Market Analysis portion of your blog business plan after you’ve figured out your specialty.
Here are some crucial points to include in your plan:
- What are the themes that prospective consumers are looking for on Google?
- Is there any indication that the market is expanding or contracting?
- What are the characteristics of your ideal customer?
- Is there anything in the market that you can’t control that might jeopardize or improve your chances of success?
It’s important to remember that your business plan isn’t a static document. Market circumstances and demand vary over time, so you’ll need to examine your blogging strategy on a regular basis to ensure you’re keeping up with the ever-changing landscape. This is particularly true when it comes to market and competitive studies for your blog.
To examine rivals in your domain, you may want to consider utilizing a competition analysis mapping tool like edraw by Wondershare. edrawsoft.com is the source for this image.
Create a comprehensive competitor analysis.
Getting a clear understanding of who your blog rivals are is crucial to your success—like “you won’t have a chance of success if you don’t get this right” crucial. A comprehensive competition research is likely to disclose a plethora of chances you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
Here are some key things to consider in this area of your strategy:
- Who are the main rivals of my blog?
- What are the methods via which those rivals make money from their blogs?
- What are the themes that my rivals write about on their blogs?
- What do they excel at?
- What is it that they aren’t doing so well?
- What are the “gaps” in their tactics (i.e., chances to address issues that rivals aren’t)?
- What is the size of their social media follower base?
- What is the average amount of traffic each competitor receives? (Tip: acquire this information from Alexa.)
Make sure you spend some time on your rivals’ blogs to get the complete experience. Pay attention to the site’s design, general feel, usage of graphics and videos, and other things that have a positive (or negative) impact on you. It’s sometimes the little things that add up to make a site stand out from the others.
3. Overview of the Brand Identity
Depending on where you are in your blog creation process, the amount of information you provide in this area of your blog business plan will vary. If you’re just starting out with your blog, you may not have figured out your full brand identity yet.
Include the following information in your Brand Identity Overview at a minimum:
- A personality description for your brand, such as serious, informal, warm, or cutting-edge.
- When people think of your blog’s brand, this is what you want them to think of.
- How will your brand identity represent your blog’s basic beliefs and mission?
Include, if at all possible:
- All brand marks and your logo
- Your brand’s typeface is unique.
- Colors associated with the brand
- Taglines for brands
- Icons and other important visuals
Remember, a plan isn’t something you make and then forget about. If you don’t have all of your brand identification components ready to put in your plan right now, you may do so later.
Storenvy.com provides an example of a brand identity board. storenvy.com is the source for this information.
4. Content Overview of the Blog
Your blog requires not only a general business plan, but also a blog content strategy plan. You’ll provide an overview of your content strategy in the Blog Material Overview, noting not just the sorts of content that will be published, but also how you plan to maintain the quality high.
Here are some fundamentals to include in your Blog Content Overview:
- List the primary subject areas that will be addressed in your site as core blog categories. Three to five categories are suggested for beginner blogs. You may also want to put the first ten blog entries you write under each of these headings.
- Most blogs employ a number of blog styles, such as how-to pieces, interviews, reviews, case studies, tutorials, opinion posts, and behind-the-scenes entries, among others.
- How you’ll generate 10X content: You want to wow your reader, so now is your opportunity to describe how you’ll create material that’s ten times better than the competition.
- How do you want to create your authority, credibility, and trust (EAT): Only if Google believes your blog entries fulfill its quality standards will they show in the top search results.
- Create a schedule for how often you’ll publish depending on your available time and resources.
Two of the most common errors made by beginning bloggers are creating inconsistent material and developing blog articles that are unrelated to the site’s target audience. Consistency aids in the growth of your following as well as the authority of your brand. Creating content that is solely focused on the demands of your niche gives your audience a trustworthy experience while also demonstrating to Google that you are an authority in your field.
5. A Strategy for Making Money from Your Blog
You’ll need a solid money-making strategy if you want to transform your blog into a viable company. There are a variety of strategies to monetise a blog, but some are more effective than others.
Selling digital items and services via affiliate marketing The finest methods to earn money blogging are at the top of the list. You may start using affiliate marketing on your site right now.
Digital items, such as e-books and online courses, may take longer to develop, but the benefits include keeping 100% of the proceeds. Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, Pat Flynn, and Brian Clark, all seven-figure bloggers, gained the majority of their fortunes through self-produced goods and courses.
Other methods of monetization include:
- Ads may be sold directly or via ad networks.
- Posts that have been sponsored
- Private memberships are available.
- Retreats and Events
- Forums for members only
- Products in the physical realm
- Downloads in digital format (e.g., checklists,templates, and planners)
- Apps
- Offering services such as coaching, consulting, or freelancing
Some monetization methods are just unsuitable for new blogs. For example, if your blog has very little traffic, you won’t be able to generate any money from advertising. That’s why many bloggers’ business plans include two separate revenue tactics. The first is a monetization strategy for a startup. The second is a “next-step” monetization strategy that kicks in as blog traffic increases.
Include specific techniques you want to explore in the Blog Monetization part of your strategy. Set targets for when you’ll begin each technique, as well as how much money you intend to make from each.
Affiliate marketing is the most common way for high-earning bloggers to generate money, according to a Growth badger survey. growthbadger.com is the source for this information.
6. Blog Marketing & Promotion Strategies
You may design the finest blog on the earth, but if no one knows about it, your results will be terrible. Another essential to your long-term success is to have an excellent blog marketing and promotion plan.
While there are several strategies to advertise your blog, you should concentrate on the ones that will have the most impact, such as a good launch plan, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and email marketing. You could also wish to investigate sponsored advertising if your budget permits it.
Launching a Business
What’s your plan for getting the word out about your blog when it’s brand-new? It’s wise to create a blog Launching a Business much like you would develop a product Launching a Business.
During the debut period of your blog, you should engage in the following marketing and promotional activities:
- Inform your contacts about your new blog and request that they share it with their contacts.
- Participate in popular podcasts as a guest.
- Guest write on other blogs (where your blog will get exposure)
- Create sponsored advertising on social media networks or on Google that are highly targeted.
- Make contact with influencers in your field.
The debut phase of any new blog is the most difficult. You may find it tough to get traction at first, but persevere in your attempts to publicize your blog; your perseverance will be rewarded.
Marketing Plan for Social Media
Successful bloggers understand the power of using social media for driving both blog traffic and blog profits. The trick is to identify the best social media channels for your blog—that means developing your presence where your ideal audience can be found. Your Marketing Plan for Social Media summary should identify which social channels you plan to use, how you plan to use them, and what your top goals are for those efforts.
The allure of social media is hard to resist. However, I must caution you that the trendy world of social networking has a bad side, and you may find yourself drained of time and money with little to no return on your investment.
Posting pretty pictures and clever sayings alone won’t build your blog business. You need to develop a smart Marketing Plan for Social Media. Done right, a solid social plan can catapult your business to success. Done wrong, you could end up on the dark side that I just described.
My best piece of advice is to avoid attempting to be present on all social media platforms at the same time. Choose one or two social media networks to concentrate on until you have the time and resources to grow while being successful.
My second success suggestion is to not place too much emphasis on your overall number of followers. The amount of followers or fans you have is not always a measure of your success. The activities taken by those followers—such as visiting your site, subscribing to your email list, or purchasing from you—are considerably more effective success indicators. 
Look at the Template
Strategy for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you want to rank higher on Google—and believe me, you want, since Google is a major source of traffic for most bloggers—you’ll need to understand SEO and how to apply it to your site. Start by reading SEO for Bloggers if you don’t already know much about SEO. You’ll be able to construct an overview of your SEO plan after you have a better understanding of SEO.
Make sure to include both on-page and off-page SEO objectives in your company strategy when outlining your SEO goals. Using relevant keywords and offering quality material for your viewers are examples of on-page SEO. Other elements that affect page rank are included in off-page SEO, the most essential of which is obtaining highly trustworthy sites to link to your blog.
According to ahrefs, a search engine optimization company, 90.63 percent of web sites get no organic traffic from Google. ahrefs.com is the source for this information.
Strategy for Email Marketing
If you’re serious about your blog business—and if you’ve read this far, I know you are—then you’ll want to get serious about building relationships with your blog audience. You can’t depend on them to come back to your blog again and again, much less make a purchase from you, without a little prompting on your part. That’s why every money-making blog needs a sound Strategy for Email Marketing.
Include the following in your email marketing strategy summary in your company plan:
- Provider of email marketing services
- Campaigns to collect email addresses are in the works.
- a schedule for sending emails
- Goals for email collection in terms of volume and conversion rates
Some bloggers make the mistake of failing to collect emails on their blogs, which may be a costly error. You must know who your target audience is and have a way to contact them. You need an email marketing strategy in addition to social media.
Email marketing is an effective strategy to increase blog traffic. pioneermarketers.biz is the source for this information.
Strategy for Paid Advertising
Although many prominent bloggers incorporate sponsored advertising in their marketing mix, not all bloggers employ it. Successful bloggers are lured to sponsored advertisements on social media networks, but they use them carefully.
When you initially start out, you may want to invest in sponsored advertisements to drive traffic to your site. Over time, however, the ideal use of sponsored advertisements is to develop leads for goods you want to sell, such as e-books, online courses, and coaching or consulting services.
If you want to employ paid advertising in your firm, be sure to include a description of your strategy and objectives in your business plan, as well as the expenses and sales predictions for those advertisements.
The Average Cost of Advertising on Social Media by Platform
7. Blog Management & Operations
The Blog Management & Operations section of your business plan outlines how different tasks will be managed and executed. Here is where you describe who’s responsible for which tasks. You’ll also list key resources you plan to use in managing and operating your business.
Make sure to address the following while writing your summary for this section:
- Blog platform: Specify the blog platform you want to use, as well as your hosting provider and any other important tools and resources you’ll need to create your blog.
- Include a description of your arrangement in your technical and design plan if you’re working with an outside developer or designer.
- Planning and creating blog content: Decide who will create material for your website, how it will be proofed, and how new content will be introduced. You’ll probably be doing the most of the work, but if it’s appropriate, mention your freelancing or outsourcing plans.
- Accounting plan: Every company need a system for tracking costs and income. Describe how you’ll carry out these actions, including the software you’ll use and any additional external resources or people you’ll hire.
The goal of the Blog Management and Operations portion of your business plan is to get you thinking about not just what you want to accomplish with your blog, but also how you want to run your company day to day. This will assist you in avoiding the missing steps that bloggers who do not prepare ahead face on a regular basis.
8. Blog Costs & Revenues Forecast
Blogs may be developed on a shoestring budget or a large budget, but one thing remains constant: if you don’t know how much you’re spending, you won’t know whether you’re making money. You’ll detail estimated expenditures and income forecasts in this portion of your blog strategy.
To be honest, it’s a lot simpler to anticipate expenses than it is to forecast income. Still, you’ll need a starting point, which is why a basic description of predicted expenditures and revenues should be included in your original business plan. As your blog company expands, you’ll be able to refine your strategy based on more accurate performance statistics.
Give an estimate of how much your blog will cost.
Consider how much money you intend to put into your site. Some investments may demand a one-time payment, while others will require an annual payment, and still others will require a monthly payment.
Most new bloggers, especially those on a limited budget, start with the basics and gradually add more tools and resources as their companies expand. The following is a list of possible expenses.
Costs of Starting a New Blog
It’s a good idea to separate your costs summary into two categories: startup costs for one-time charges and operational costs for recurring expenses. Figures for both should be included in your blog strategy.
Define your revenue projections.
Revenue predictions are included in every company strategy. To do so, write down the monetization tactics you want to use, when those ways will begin to generate income, and how much revenue you estimate to generate. Be aware that most bloggers make little to no money in their first few months, but don’t let this deter you. It is necessary for everyone to begin somewhere.
Revenue Projection Examples
In the case above, the blogger estimates a first-year income of $50,216. Earnings in the first year are often low, but if your organization is successful, revenues may expand virtually tenfold over time.
While the blogger in this case aims to employ six different monetization tactics, coaching services are projected to account for the majority of her revenue. It’s not unusual for one approach to be the primary source of revenue for a blog. However, I don’t advocate placing all of your eggs in one basket. To grow their companies, the most successful bloggers use a variety of revenue strategies.
Be aware of your break-even point.
The point at which your entire revenues minus your total expenses equals zero is known as your break-even point. That’s the moment at which you’re not earning any money but also not losing any. In the Blogs and Revenues part of your business plan, provide your expected break-even point.
Your projected profits should be included in your business plan.
You may calculate your profit projection and include it in your company strategy after you know your predicted expenditures and sales. To calculate your profit prediction, just subtract all expenditures from all receipts.
Most blogs begin slowly, with income gradually increasing but fluctuating over time | Take a look at the Create and Go Blog Income Report for one example. createandgo.com is the source of this information.
9. Blog Performance Tracking & Analysis Plan
As a company owner, you must be able to distinguish between efforts that produce results and those that fall short of expectations. That’s why your entire blog business plan will contain a section on performance monitoring and analysis.
To begin, make a list of the tools you’ll use to monitor and evaluate your blog’s performance, including Google Analytics and Google Search Console, as well as social media management and analytics platforms like Keyhole and Hootsuite.
Next, consider the key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive your blog’s overall performance. Include a list of KPIs you plan to monitor regularly in the Blog Performance Tracking & Analysis section of your business plan.
KPIs that may help you better analyze blog performance include:
- Total number of visitors to the blog
- The most popular blog articles
- Backlinks to the whole site and backlinks to specific articles
- Total number of page views
- Visitors’ average number of page visits
- Bounce rate on a blog
- Views on the whole post
- Likes, followers, and engagement numbers on social media
- Stats on social media by social channel
- The quantity of sales leads
- Subscriber pricing for email lists
- On a site and page level, conversion rates
- Acquisition of leads source
The more money you generate in your company, the better you are at identifying and reproducing results-producing activities on your blog. Simply simply, performance monitoring and analytics should not be overlooked. Having a solid strategy in place from the start will result in more earnings in the long term.
10. Exit Strategy for Your Blog
Unfortunately, abandoning is today’s principal departure strategy for most blogs. Because most bloggers do not regard their blogs like a company, this is the case. That isn’t you at all. You recognize the value of pursuing your blog with a well-thought-out business-building plan. That implies you have a wider range of alternatives.
You don’t have to operate a blog for the rest of your life just because you’re excited about beginning one today. When the time comes to move on, you have three options: 1) quit the project, 2) give it away, or 3) sell it. If you want to sell your blog at some point, now is the time to lay down the foundations of your money-making exit strategy.
Conclusion
I understand what it’s like to fantasize about starting your own blog company; it’s both thrilling and terrifying. I can tell you that putting up the effort to develop a sound business strategy for your blog will offer you a competitive edge that other bloggers lack.
Use the template given at the top of this page to construct your own plan right now. The more solid your strategy, the more likely you are to build a successful company.
The “how to make a blog business plan” is a step-by-step template that will help you create your own blog business plan. The template includes all the necessary information needed for running a successful blog.
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