nextMEDIA: How to Make Money and Do It Right
If you want to read more on the sessions that happened at nextMEDIA, check out BrandingDavid.com, where there is a full index of the posts surrounding the event.
Marina Mann is an independent digital Marketing consultant specializing in e-Commerce and building online businesses. Marina has 11 years experience producing and monetizing interactive, high-tech customer experiences for entertainment, retail and telco brands. In 2007, Marina led Virgin Mobile Canada’s Web marketing, strategy & operations and launched Virgin’s content (VAS) portal.
The Internet is the world’s largest marketplace, and a growing part of that is e-commerce. Affiliate marketing is a part of the e-commerce ecosystem.
The word of mouth economy is strong, and can push affiliate products quite easily. You can now reach thousands of people using Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and more.
Display advertising by itself is bad for conversion but good for branding while proper affiliate marketing integrations are stronger for conversions and result in a money making type of traffic.
“Affiliate marketing is like buying a T.V. ad, and only paying for it if it works” – Marina Mann
The presentation of course focused in on one affiliate model, and made it seem like publishers don’t really get a good deal as they work hard to drive traffic for next to no money compared to the products that they are working to make sure are sold.
Publishers should focus on finding networks that can monetize their traffic sources. eBay can monetize any traffic from around the world, which is one advantage over companies that can only monetize any one countries traffic.
WestJet grew to 850 affiliates in their first year, and generated over $20 million in sales and used Commission Junction for their programs. But they almost closed the program because they didn’t understand affiliate marketing, “if they aren’t travel agents, what are they?”
Only the top twenty percent make substantial income as an affiliate sales expert, but in an economic downturn, as we are experiencing today, Affiliate Marketing will thrive as it will offer a lower-cost way of finding customers.
The “King Of The Hill” Approach To Maintaining Authority
One strategy (intentional or not) that I’ve noticed coming out of established and powerful blogs is to speak dismissively and/or condescendingly about posts on lesser blogs.
Take this recent post from The Truth About Cars where the author takes a two pronged approach.
- He ridicules the content of the post without directly criticizing it, implying that it is riddled with fallacies, and…
- He flatters his readership by effectively saying “but I don’t need to point out the problems, because even you can…”
Now, I’m not advocating this strategy, but I did want to point out that it is effective on a psychological level. It’s the “king of the hill” approach – you stay at the top of the hill by knocking your oncoming competitors down the hill. It works on your readers because it re-affirms what they already believe in their minds: that you are smarter than the other guys.
But notice how little work it takes.
As an authority, you don’t really have to offer reasoned criticism. You leave that to your readers. And by passing the buck to your readers, you establish several things. First, you establish tribalistic triumphalism – even the lowest of us (not the leader, but even the readers) are smarter than the other guy’s leader. Second, you establish superiority as a leader by not dignifying your competitor with a reasoned response. Third, you establish trust with your readers by entrusting them with the glorious task of defeating your competitor.
So let me ask: do you think this is a good strategy or could it backfire?
Making Money Online BWE Panel Notes
BloggingBasics101 attended the recently concluded BlogWorldExpo which featured a panel on Making Money Online With A Blog. The post describes some of the advice given by Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Jeremy Shoemaker, Zac Johnson, and John Chow. One tidbit of information that I thought was interesting:
Each of the men discussing making money on your blog work up to 12 hours a day writing and maintaining their sites.
Lots and lots of hard work but as these bloggers show, the hard work can pay off. How long do you work on your own blog each day?
5 Ways To Make Money Without Ads
When you ask someone how they plan to monetize something, generally the answer has something to do with advertising. However, there are plenty of ways to make an income without ever placing an ad on your blog. This post will highlight at least 5 of those methods.
1. Make Yourself Worthy Of Being Hired - When I published on my own blog for a year, I did so as an experiment to see where the blog would take me. I didn’t have a single ad on the blog nor was I interested in monetization. However, two-thirds into the project, I received an email asking me if I would be interested in writing about WordPress on their site. The point being, my blog was a constantly updated resume with each published post. Hundreds of blogs both big and small are always looking for people to write content for them “albeit for free”. By the way, if you’re looking for a blogging job, stop by the Performancing job board where jobs are being posted on a regular basis.
2. Consultation - If you have become a pro within your niche, consider allowing people to purchase billable hours from you in exchange for consultation. Often times, if you provide the results, word of mouth will do the advertising for you. On the side, maintain a blog which continues to discuss your niche. The blog will also serve as a funnel for new clients.
3. Sell A Product/Service - Instead of placing 200 ads on your blog, why not create a product or service that is in demand, then sell it. You could sell memberships to a specialized website with premium content, some sort of SEO on Steroids service which would give bloggers all the information they would need to know to rank higher in the search engines, etc. These are just examples but the premise is to sell a product. One more benefit to think about, you keep 100% of the profit.
Other Examples: Selling Merchandise, Selling Guest Blog Posting Services
4. Do Something That Creates Other Opportunities - Use your blog as a platform. A great example is Frank Warren’s PostSecrets blog which publishes 20 postcards each week showcasing secrets people have told him on postcards. What started out as an art project has landed Frank numerous opportunities to chat with mainstream media, has given him the chance to speak at numerous colleges across the country, and has given him the opportunity to network with people all across the world. PostSecrets is a blog which gains in popularity quarter after quarter. Despite the blogs popularity, Frank continues to keep the blog ad free and has turned down numerous advertising deals, some of which have been rather lucrative.
5. Write/Sell A Book – Chris Anderson showed us with The Long Tail, that becoming a successful book author is easy when you have a blog with thousands of readers/contributors to market to. Chris Anderson used the blog as a way of sharing thoughts and ideas that were going to appear in the book. Thanks to the contributions and discussions offered by fans of the blog, this helped to reshape the book before being published. These loyal fans also received copies of the book before it was published, giving them the opportunity to spread the word before the books initial release.
Don’t want to write a book? Think about it this way. If you write about a specific niche long enough, you could easily take all of those blog posts and turn them into a book. Thus, each blog post represents one page or perhaps an entire chapter within a book. Other great examples include Lorelle Van Fossen’s “Blogging Tips – What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging” and Darren Rowse with co author Chris Garret’s “ProBlogger – Secrets To Blogging Your Way To A Six-Figure Income“.
Conclusion:
These are just a handful of ways in which you can monetize without displaying a single ad on your blog. If you get creative, I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with more which I invite you to share with us in the comments.
Photo by yomanimus under Creative Commons 2.0
The Weekly Buzz: 100th Hive Member, Writer’s Block, and Money Makers
The Hive, a Performancing project, was created to provide a community for those looking to increase the performance of their blog and network with the pro’s. Well, the professionals are buzzing around, and even I am learning stuff from the other members. The Hive still continues to grow, and there are many great things being discussed within.
Here is a glimpse into what has happened recently:
Hive’s 100th Member
I would like to congratulate “woodpecker34″ on being the 100th member to join Performancing Hive. All our members are in good company with the likes of Matt Craven, David Peralty, Hartley Singer, Deborah Ng, Jesse Nachtigal, and other successful bloggers. As the Hive grows, the information and feedback continually improves, and you are missing out on great opportunities if you are not a member.
Dealing with Writer’s Block
Only two days ago I was dealing with writer’s block—thankfully, I rarely have to deal with it. But it was only after seeing the suggestion by Chris Garrett to try the “rubber ducking” technique that led to me being cured. Unfortunately, I opted to talk with my friends instead, but the original concept probably would have worked just as well… I think.
Money Makers
There are many members in the Hive that have been willing to share their money making strategies with the other members. It is nice to know, and if you have trouble making money on your blog, perhaps members of the Hive could help. Performancing’s own Ryan Caldwell recently reached personal records with advertising revenue numbers from Google AdSense. Congrats to Ryan.
There are also plenty of other discussions going on about alternative advertising services. However, if you are all for doing things on your own, you definitely want to be a member to find out how to properly approach advertising the right way.
Join the Hive
For $10 a month, you can become a member with over a hundred others which have already joined. This has only been a small teaser of what is going on. You will have the opportunity to see how bloggers really operate behind the scenes, and you’ll have some of the blogosphere’s best answering your questions. Finally, it is a great way to network with the pro’s, and that is an invaluable situation in its own right.
Update: I forgot to mention that the first Social Media Bootcamp will be occuring on June 11th. This is a great opportunity to listen in and/or actively participate in a discussion about social media. If you want to make it to the top, knowledge about social media is a great way to help you get there. We will be talking about it, and only Hive members can listen in.
Alexa Rankings Go Through Major Shift
Anyone else notice that Alexa rankings shifted around BIG TIME?
I did. And you know what? I think the new algorithm they are using does a much better job of capturing actual traffic volume across niches.
Whereas in the past Alexa has been heavily weighted towards Tech and Internet niches (making many sites in these niches look more popular than they really are), I think the new algorithm actually allows for comparative analysis across niches.
That’s a major breakthrough and one more reason I’ll keep on keeping my eye on the Alexa graph for my sites as evidence of progress.
Make Money from Free Content
You might have seen on my blog I give away a free ebook. A few people have asked me lately why I continue to give away free information when I could be selling it.
The fact is without free information nobody would know me to buy paid information.
We have to separate out the ideas of free content versus paid content and instead think of our free content as sampling for the paid stuff. Give people a taste to get them juiced up for the full thing. Also remember that your free blog articles allow you to cast out a wide search engine net to trawl back juicy new visitors.
When you give something of value away you do run the risk of being taken advantage of, of devaluing yourself, etc, but they key thing to know is you are taking the risk out of the exchange in the hope the prospect will be impressed and delighted enough to take the next step.
The secret is to not give everything away, hold something back. Give away the concepts but retain the step by step process. Give the sizzle but keep back the sausage 
The New Economy of Digg Blackmail
Let me paint the picture for you. You spent the last 8 hours perfecting a killer linkbait. You’re proud of your work. You think it’s going to do well on Digg, it collects some votes…
…a few hours later, you receive an email from someone claiming that he’ll get your account deleted and your article removed from Digg if you don’t pay him $1000.
Well, not having $1000 to spend, and not believing for a second that this is for real, you ignore it…
…and then bang, your story’s gone, your account has been deleted.
Welcome to the brave new world of Digg blackmail. Where sophisticated online users earn a living by abusing the Digg abuse reporting system. It’ a reality. I’d heard about it, but I’ve now seen it happen…and you should prepare for it to happen to you too.
So, you want to try your hand at Digg blackmail?
Here’s how you do it.
Step one, monitor the lower portion of the right hand column of this URL:
http://digg.com/all/upcoming
Step two, for each story, visit the link, and then find a contact e-mail.
Step three, construct and send the message from an account that won’t give away your identity: “Hi. I notice that you have an article that’s doing well at Digg. I have the ability to get your article removed from Digg and would like you to pay me X dollars to help your article make the front page, rather than get it removed. Please let me know if you’re interested.”
Step four, if the person responds within [define your limit, e.g. 1 hour], then good. If not, then A) Put your bury brigade network into action and B) Contact Digg at the following email address: abuse@digg.com with a message like the following: “Hi. The people behind this article are using email spam to get dugg. I received a copy of this spam, which you can see below:”
Why it works
Digg blackmail works because Digg’s abuse team has it’s finger on the trigger. It’s sort of like the modern prison system, or Guantanamo Bay… penalize as many candidate abusers as possible, and even if you’re accuracy rate is below 10%, you’re still improving the quality of the product (in one case Digg, in the other case society).
Whether you agree with Digg’s abuse policies or not does not matter. What matters is that people are now making money through Digg blackmail. It’s a very interesting phenomenon, and I’ll be interested to see what Digg does about it.
