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Monetizing Your Blog Archives

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In some ways, blogs are more akin to newspapers than we’d care to admit. More often than not, todays post is tomorrows fish wrapper. Our content is often very time sensitive and may only have a shelf life of a single day. Sad but true.

So what do we do about all of those posts, sometimes thousands of them serving no better purpose than to bring in a few folks via search engines, searching for obscure terms? What is it that you do?

Time Sensitive Advertising

One way is to put heavier concentrations of Adsense on your older posts. Possibly combine that with some logic pertaining to whether your visitor is a regular reader/member or not. It’s what I do on several sites, and it works very, very nicely.

I can only show you the psuedo code for doing this on the Drupal system. Im not a WordPress or MT guy. But I would love to hear of hacks or plugins that can acheive similar results on those platforms!

For me, i use a combinatin of the time the post was published, and whether a user is logged in or not. The psuedo code would go something like this:

60*60*48 && !$UserIsLoggedIn) {
show_heavy_adsense();
} else {
show_normal_adsense();
?>

You can do all kinds of logic for this, on one site i have several different positions and sizes of adsense depending on users and time. It’s not simple, but if you’re not a PHP wizz, then it may well be worth hiring one, as this could dramatically increase earnings without pissing off readers.

The Reasoning

My thoughts are this; If a user is coming in 2 days late to a post, and is not logged in, they’re most likely from a search engine referal (you could even code that logic into it pretty easily using just the USER_AGENT string) and thus, they’re far less likely to become a regular reader than someone coming in from a link from another site. Often search engine referals come in for fairly obscure phrases, and call me evil if you like, but i’d be very happy if they’d kindly click out via my adsense.

Positioning

For me, in this particular scenario, the single best adsense position is a large rectangle direcly beneath the title of the post. Blended, naturally.

How Do You Monetize Your Archives?

There, you have an idea of what I do. Now i’d like to hear about what you do to monetize your blog archives?

Blogging Mistakes: Launching an Empty Shell

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Time and time again i read a blog entry entitiled “new blog on X launches!”. This in itself is no shocker, people launch new blogs at an astonishing rate. What constantly surprises me though, is the lack of planning and forethought that often accompanies a blog launch. Announcing a new blog, when that blog has little or no content, has got to be one of the most moronic things I see in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, I see it on a regular basis…

First Impressions

So, let’s think about this from my point of view, from the point of view of one of your readers. Here’s how the story goes with a bad launch:

  • I see your post in my RSS: Im launching a blog on X
  • I click the the RSS link as i trust you. Im not subscribed for the good of my health, i trust you enough to give you a piece of my attention by subscribing to your feed. Im interested in finding out about your new blog.
  • I get to your post, and find one of two things:
    • A one liner with a link, or worse, just a link
    • A paragraph or two selling your new blog to me. Describing what i’ll find when I get there, and why i should be interested in it.
  • Now, you may have got me to to follow the link to your new blog or not at this stage. Let’s assume that i do follow the link, either because you’ve done a great job of telling me why that action would be a good investment of my time, or your reputation (or my boredome) is sufficient to overlook the unimpressive one liner
  • I get to your new blog, and what do i find?
    • A new blog chock full of great content
    • An empty shell, with little more than a welcome post
  • Do I subscribe to the feed? Well, that depends on the above doesn’t it?

Im busy, aren’t you?

I simply don’t have time read, subscribe, or devote any of my attention to something im unsure about, do you?

As a blogger, launching a new blog, you need to be aware of this, and you need to sell your idea to me at every step of the way.

Sell it to me!

Go on, give me a reason to want to do the things you’d like me to.

  • When you announce your new blog, give me a reason to care. Explain to me how excited you are about it, tell me what im going to find when I get there, why i should care, what your plans for the site are and highlight posts of interest to give me an overview of the blog before i even get there
  • When I get to your new blog, I should be able to find exactly what I expect, based on your selling of the link to me. I want to see good content, and enough of it to make me think you’re serious about this site, and that a feed subscription is a worthwhile investment.
  • Don’t stop there! Keep that good content flowing, keep me interested. I want to see regular updates in my RSS, regular content that interests me. If i see all these things, i’ll link to you, talk about you and even evangelize your new blog

Blog Launch Checklist

Ok, so i hope i’ve convinced you that launching an empty shell is not the way to do a blog launch. Now let’s run through a little checklist for launching. It’s not complete, im not dealing with tech issues here, but these are the essentials you need be aware of:

  1. Have at minimum 10 posts of serious quality on your blog before showing it to anyone
  2. Sell your blog to me. When you post about it, or email, IM about it, give me a reason to care. A one liner, or just a link, just gives me the impression that you don’t care. If you don’t care, why the hell should I?
  3. 2-3hrs after announcing your new blog, post another great item to it. Repeat for at least 3 days. Then settle into whatever posting rhythm you intend for the blog, and here’s a good tip: Tell people about the frequency of posting. Let them know what to expect.

It’s all about selling

People are busy I am, you are, he is, she is. We’re all busy people. We need to know that your new blog is a stella investment of our time.

Not just the pre-sell, we need to be assured of that pitch by finding it to be so, when we get there. And having that perception of value reinforced at every step of the way, from subsequent promotional posts on your regular blog (or emails, im’s etc), to the content you produce. Particulary in the early days.

At the end of the day, it’s all about trust, and perception of value. If i see a one liner announcing a new blog, and find an empty shell when i get there, am i going to invest in a subscription?

The hell i am…