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2008 predictions and how they can affect bloggers

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This is my first post for the year 2008. I decided to start it with predictions and major trends that will take place in 2008. While there are good news like online advertisement will grow by 29% in 2008, there are also not so great news like dollar will further weaken in 2008, and US mortgage crisis will continue to worsen for the next few years.

Sow how these things affect you as a blogger? Some of them might affect you directly and some might not affect you at all. Nevertheless, it’s good to be aware of them and be ready for any challenges.

Online advertising will grow

eMarketer predicts that online advertising will grow by 29% this year (2008). Search advertising, it predicts, will grow over the next three years just a bit faster than the market as a whole. But advertising on Web video and mobile phones will more than triple in that time period. (Source: New York Times)

How it affects you? If you are a blogger, then obviously it’s a good news for you. Hopefully you will get some slice from this 29% increase in online advertising. So keep blogging! ;)

But as you can see, advertising on online videos will triple during the next three years. What does that say to you? Right, maybe you should start creating your own YouTube videos.

Dollar will weaken further

Billionaires like Warren Buffet are buying stocks in companies that earn money in other currencies than US dollar. Greg Salvaggio, vice president of capital markets in Washington at currency-trading company Tempus Consulting. said “The U.S. economy will be pushed close to the recession level. There will be further dollar weakness in early 2008.” (Source: Bloomberg)

How it affects you? If you are international blogger who gets paid in US dollars, then you will be getting lesser income. That means, the more you hold your money in PayPal and US Bank accounts the more your money will loose its value.

If you are US citizen and have considerable amount of money in your savings account. You might want to invest them in something more stable (consider gold). Because the book “Dollar Crisis” predicts that it’s just a matter of time before the dollar collapses totally. If countries like China shift from US dollar to Euro or Gold, then this prediction might actually come very close to becoming true.

Social Marketing becomes more popular

With more and more social marketing sites popping up every month and with facebook growing by 125% a year, in 2008, Social Marketing will see continued strong growth.

According to Nielsen, in 12 months, facebook added more than 10 million new users (source). That’s a lot of users for any site!

How it affects you? As a blogger, if you want to advertise and promote your blog effectively. You should be aware of the developments in social marketing field. Blogs like DoshDosh have great articles on social marketing and effective advertising strategies on social marketing sites.

Blogs about “blogging” and “making money online” will slow down

You can only write about blogging and making money online so much. Blogs like ProBlogger.net have covered almost all topics that are related to blogging. As you can see, ProBlogger is already taking a different direction, concentrating more on member generated content and short news type posts.

There is also less enthusiasm now among the bloggers, not like in the beginning, when everybody was going crazy about JohnChow.com’s monthly earnings. I guess now it also became far-fetched (unrealistic) to majority of the bloggers to earn 20K+ like John Chow.

I think there will be less new blogs coming up about blogging and making money online in 2008, compared to 2007. And I think more and more blogs will be closed down and sold off during the year. So in that sense, it will be a tough year for the bloggers, even though it will be more financially rewarding than 2007.

How it affects you? That means you need to be more creative and more competitive to stay alive and to stay ahead of your competition. I think if you can blog through 2008 with great success, you will become one of the top and influential bloggers in the coming years. So it will be a year that separates the amateur bloggers from pro-bloggers. Good luck!

These are my predictions for the year 2008. What else do you think might happen in 2008? What are your predictions? Share with us, it would be interesting to know different people’s predictions.

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