Category Archives: Monetization

Why Other Blogs Make More Money and Why That’s Fine

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So, recently I was looking around at a bunch of blogs in my niche as they reported their earnings for the last month and I noticed my earnings here are very low compared to my traffic, and position in the niche, and what I realized is that it is easy to see why.

Most of the people I compete against in this niche do things that I don’t.

1.) Most make money online blogs push affiliate products.
Sure, I have promoted a few affiliate links over the course of this site’s life, but I always try to at least mark them in some way, and avoid them as much as possible. My reasons for not promoting affiliate links or products heavily is because I don’t want the meaning behind my thoughts or opinions to be misconstrued as a money making tactic.

As much as I would love to be rich, my first goal is to be honest and helpful to my readership.

2.) Most make money online blogs push text link advertisements
Text links used to be a great source of revenue, but with Google being smart and cracking down on sites that sell text links, I haven’t been in any rush to try to monetize in this way. I think text links are an unsustainable way of making revenue off of a blog, and should only be done carefully.

3.) Most make money online blogs sell services
Yes, I have a consulting page on this site, but the idea behind that was to help people with one on one training. I have had a few people ask for help but I haven’t charged anyone for consulting as of yet.

I could push harder in this respect, but I am not in a position where I need to be money greedy and can give away a fair bit of advice for free. I have been working at this a long time, and most people that contact me really just want someone to bounce ideas, thoughts, aspirations or plans off of, and I enjoy participating in such interactions.

4.) Most make money online blogs use ugly advertising systems.
I have tried them all, and there is nothing worse than going to a blog and getting an interstitial, pop-up or an in content link that is an advertisement rather than a link to another real page.

They make many bloggers a fair bit of money but feel spammy, scammy or just dirty. Most of these advertising services rely on readers not having the knowledge required to avoid them, and aren’t good for community building and the user experience. Never trade user experience for short term cash or your blog will hit a glass ceiling that is hard to go above.

Conclusion

I think too many make money online bloggers aren’t looking out for the well being of their audience. They are in it to make themselves a quick buck, no matter who suffers or sacrifices for it. The strange and scary part is that the more people they trick, and the more money they make, the more popular they become.

It is a weird snowball effect that requires duping a large number of people that are hoping to learn more about making money online into clicking an advertisement or buying a product and in doing so, it gives credence to the original author, thus bringing more interest to the blog.

I enjoy teaching, training, and helping others, and in doing so, I have built up a nice community of great readers and commenters. The hard part is to not get jealous of what others have done, and just enjoy what I am doing.

Originally posted on June 4, 2008 @ 10:53 pm

Building a Blog Network is Expensive

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Right now I am participating in two different blog networks, Grand Effect, where I am a code-monkey and co-founder and Digital Life News, where I am the owner. One is somewhat expensive on time, and the other is expensive on time and money, but the real question remains: which one is worth more to me?

With Grand Effect, I am part of a group of very exciting, very prominent blogs that talk about technology and the web. The hard part, building the sites, is basically done. The new issue for Grand Effect is to help these blogs promote themselves, and help find ways to monetize them more effectively. I am also trying to make sure I give each member some of my time, so that they can get help with anything technical, and I would love to help them all with hosting needs in the near future.

With Digital Life News, I am building blogs from scratch and paying through the nose for writers. Because I was once a blogger myself, I feel bad if I am paying my writers too little, but I also realize that this is a bad business practice, as the sites aren’t making enough to be sustainable, and the sustainable level of income versus payments is still a very long ways away. With this type of system, I am spreading myself too thin. I am working on setting up a managing editor for the network who deals with promotion, basic WordPress administration and helps manage the writers, and content produced, but this means more money, and that is something I don’t really have a lot of at this point.

With Grand Effect, I could quickly and easily make a part time income by spending four hours a day marketing the member blogs, working on advertising, and developing new features for the network site, but in order to do this, I will have to slow down on other projects.

With Digital Life News, I own a blog network, but the amount of time and money I have to put into it before it repays me is huge, and the repayment date is measured in years rather than months.

Blog networks are expensive to build, whether you are devoting just time or time and money towards building them. Never underestimate this fact, or you are doomed to frustration, if not failure.

Originally posted on June 9, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

Should You Start a New Blog, or Something Else?

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Kevin Muldoon has asked on his blog, System0 if his next project should be a blog, and while I am a full time blogger, and big fan of all things blogging, but I am leaning more towards “no”. Before you all lynch mob me, let me explain myself.

In the last three years, I have witnessed many bloggers make big bucks online, but, to me, what is even more apparent is that services can actually be easier to monetize and grow much larger than most blogs will ever strive to.

When working with Bloggy Network, a fair bit of the revenue generated was from services (though even more was spent on its constant development due to Ahmed’s quest for perfection).

You develop something, grow your user base, and monetize it. Once developed, the content added to Blog Flux was generated more by users than by the owners, and unlike paying bloggers to write for you, most of the content is generated freely. They add their sites to the services, and talk on the forums, all the while building up a service site that someone else gets to make money from.

With blogs, it is a hard, long road to real monetization through content development. Sure, there are the “over night successes”, but I see just as many, if not more, from the online services world.

If Kevin had asked me this question three years ago, I probably would have told him wholeheartedly to add new blogs, as it was a slightly newer market then, but with the fierce competition today, and the growing difficultly to stand out in the crowd, growing a blog from nothing into something large enough to make money versus just losing money is one of the hardest things you can do online.

Yes, I know this flies in the face of my own efforts as I continue to launch a few blogs here and there, but that is mostly due to the start up costs associated with each type of site. Starting a blog is cheap, while building an easy to use, effective service is expensive, and I just don’t have the capital to put such a site up right now.

Also, considering the niches that Kevin wants to get into is Tech and Humour, I really wouldn’t suggest starting up “just another blog” at this point, not unless he has an amazing hook for each site that will quickly separate them from the millions of others he would be competing against.

Now for another caveat, stay away from turnkey sites. Those are sites built on mass produced scripts where the only differentiating factor is the owner and the domain. Building your own idea, and capitalizing on its uniqueness, no matter how small, is the better business approach in my mind.

Originally posted on April 17, 2008 @ 1:45 pm

nextMEDIA: Trends and Tools for Monetizing Digital Media

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This is continuing coverage of the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto. To find all the posts related to nextMEDIA, check out Splashpress’ Blog

The fourth session at nextMEDIA was entitled, “Trends and Tools for Monetizing Digital Media”. It seemed to focus much more on the trends, rather than anything else.

Duncan Steward, Director at Deloitte Research, had way too much text on his slides, and that reduced my ability to really figure out the root ideas of his presentation, but he did still bring up some great points.

Duncan mentioned that content producers should not repurpose content for other platforms. It seems easy enough to do sometimes, but by doing so, you are compromising the benefit you could be giving to your user.

He also spent a fair bit of time talking about traditional media, saying that while we are multitasking and television has become background noise for many people, only recently has there been a shift in attention away from television, where people are spending more time on the Internet than watching TV.

Duncan also noted that the majority of the Canadian population still reads magazines (as high as 72%). I found that shocking in one sense, as I continue to hope for the demise of the traditional published work, but I do understand the need for people to hold the magazine in their hands.

He also made an interesting statement that I don’t agree with and that is that “generations are different, but not extremely so”.

Deloitte also puts out predictions every year, and Duncan gave us a look at their 2008 list which includes:

  • HD Content is past the tipping point
  • Traditional media starts tapping the online world more
  • Millennials getting bored of digital (18-25 hitting a digital saturation point).

A very statistic oriented session, but another one that makes the online world look better and better to the advertisers that were both sitting in the audience and the ones online reading articles such as this.

Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 12:49 am

Sale Fever: First Blogging Fingers, Now One Man’s Goal

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Of course now that Google’s PageRank update is over, everyone that can flip their site for a good profit, is taking the opportunity. Blogging Fingers recently sold for $6000, and now One Man’s Goal is on Sitepoint with a current bid of $6400. It is very interesting to see so many great sites sell long before they have shared the full breadth of their knowledge. Had Darren Rowse given up on Problogger.net and just sold it, I doubt we would all be talking about him so much today.

Here is some of the text from the sale:

After much thought, I’ve decided to sell my high-profile blog OneMansGoal.Com.

This blog is a true gem, and it is already causing quite a splash at only 4 months old. I’ll get into the traffic and the revenue a little later, but I want you to know how truly magnificent this blog is.

After only 4 months of blogging (I was completely new to the blog scene), I’ve managed to earn a PR4 and quite a few high quality backlinks. These backlinks include some of the biggest blogs in the make money online niche such as Problogger.Net and Entrepreneurs-Journey.Com (among many others).

I am selling the blog because I have a new project in mind that I believe will be a big earner for me. Rather than neglecting One Man’s Goal and it’s family of loyal readers, I’d rather sell it to someone who can give it the attention it needs.

I might be persuaded to stay on as a paid blogger if you would like. Also, if you need me to, I will stay on for a period of two weeks until you get settled and running smoothly (free of charge).

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues. The good news is that most sites, once they are sold, even if the author stays on for a while, the transition usually creates a drop in traffic. That drop, in my experience, can be as much as half, so that makes my work in rising up the ranks of this niche that much easier.

Originally posted on November 3, 2007 @ 10:01 pm