5 Ways Your Blog Can Make Money

There's been a lot of stink lately about bloggers bowing out. In the most publicized example, reporter Dan Lyons decided to call it quits. The refrain: "We just can't make any money."

I won't want to be too confrontational, but: Bull pucky.

There's more than one way to skim dollars off your blog. Here are some serious, and some not-so-serious, techniques, and my experience with each.

 

Sell Ads

The only way to make money by selling ads on your blog is to be rich or famous first, and then write about how you became rich or famous.

Before you say "But what about...?", yeah, I know there are a few exceptions. A few. And most have 4-5 writers working in sweatshop conditions to crank out posts so fast their fingerprints have melted off. The others have names like Darren Rowse, and I'm so jealous of them I can't even mention them here.

But, that won't stop you from trying. So go ahead. Take your blog that gets 5,000 visitors per month and stick some Adsense ads up there, or even better, try to sell ads direct.

My attempt. I have Adsense ads, plus I sell direct.

My earnings. My best month ever? $200. That's with an average of 35,000 visitors per month. Told ya.

 

Go Affiliate

You can also hawk other people's wares. Sell enough Acai Berry for Frank's Supplements Emporium and you can make a bundle. Sell a few really high-priced items and you can make some nice change, too. Use Market Leverage or someone similar and you get great, helpful people to help you pick the best possible offers, too.

Affiliate marketing isn't a bad racket, actually. I've done OK, earning enough to keep my wife from snickering at me when I take an hour to blog instead of snuggling in front of the TV (she snickers affectionately).

But you need to pick products you can stand behind, and pick your affiliate network carefully. When I started out, I got ripped off, and I still occasionally run into situations where I don't get paid for, oh, 4-5 months.

My attempt. I sell MarketingSherpa's excellent guides, books via Amazon and the occasional event on this blog. I also sell everything from chocolate to books on a number of others.

My earnings. Great compared to advertising: $300-700/month. Pathetic when you consider the hours I put into writing.

 

Steal & Cheat

OK, I'm being a little harsh. If you want to Stick It To The Man, figure out 30 ways to fool folks into clicking on hidden Adwords ads, steal other people's content and risk their fiery wrath, or sell your e-mail list to the highest bidder (for $.03/e-mail).

OK, maybe I'm not being harsh.

The internet is still young, and there are plenty of ways to wring cash out of advertisers or the unsuspecting via your blog. Just don't ask me how.

My attempt. None. I have enough bad karma from times I've snapped at my kids for no reason or went 50 in a 40 zone.

My earnings. Zero. And proud of it.

 

Create Your Own Product

Create your own training course, e-book, book or other product and sell the crap out of it.
On the plus side, you control your own destiny. Create something great and it just might stand out from the 999,999 other training courses, e-books and other self-created products that every other blogger is hawking non-stop.

On the down side, there are 999,999 other training courses, e-books and other self-created products. Plus writing, producing and launching an entire training course may lead to permanent nervous ticks.

My attempt(s). I wrote Conversation Marketing, the book, as well as the UnScary, Real-World Guide to SEO Copywriting. I've sold a total of maybe 500 copies. Ever. In my life. Plus I have another horrifyingly late e-book on analytics due out, and a Dummies book due out in about 4 weeks.

My earnings. Not a hell of a lot. Still, it's fun, and I love to write. I'll probably keep beating my head against the wall on this one.

 

Use Your Blog To Build Your Business

A 100% guaranteed route to success, if you're willing to put in the effort, is to use your blog to build your business. You do that by:

• Demonstrating your expertise.
• Building your SEO leverage with great, link-worthy content.
• Creating a history and a tone to which you can introduce prospective clients.
• Building a body of knowledge that establishes you as an expert.
• Generally building your presence among potential customers.
• Inviting others to come read your latest creation.

It's not easy. It takes a long time. But it works, beautifully. I have yet to see someone who writes insightful, thoughtful stuff 1-2 times a week fail at it.

My attempt. You're reading it.

My earnings. If I only count clients who have found me and my company directly via this blog, $200,000 per year, average, over the last 3 years. If I count all the potential clients who I sent to the blog to further sell myself and my company, closer to $400,000 per year.

Your Choice

What strategy do you want to try? It's your choice. Just go in with open eyes and a long-term plan, and the worst that happens is you work your way through until you find a strategy that works.

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Six ways Twitter can make money

A web 2.0-sized boatload of buzz has surrounded Twitter, the addictive service that allows its users to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The service has made appearances in everything from your friend's blog to the New York Times, and everyone seems jazzed about how fun tweeting is. While we're all having a good time, however, its creators, Obvious, keep hinting at how many practical uses they have up their sleeve for Twitter. Even though they haven't revealed any of their cards just yet, the rest of us are left wondering: how is such a seemingly frivolous service going to make money?

As a user who has taken the Twitter pill hook, line and sinker, I've been mulling this question for some time now. I came up with a few strategies, but then I figured: why not run them by the Twitter crew themselves? The least they could say was 'no comment,' but fortunately Evan Williams, one of Obvious and Twitter's founders, responded with a few of his own. Read on for my attempts at making Twitter some money (I'm waiting for my job offer Ev), as well as some choice words and ideas of his own from Evan.

• Twitter Pro - This is one obvious move. Twitter Pro could be a paid service that offers more features, unlimited tweets vs. a 'standard' account that receive a daily/weekly limit. It could also include a mobile phone/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry client with more robust tweeting/following tools that use the web to transmit tweets, avoiding those nasty SMS charges. It could also allow tweeting pics and videos from around the web with a Tumblr-like K.I.S.S. philosophy.
• Merchandise - A while back (though I admittedly can't find a link right now), Evan said merch was a big revenue generator for Blogger, and Twitter has worlds more buzz surrounding it right now. Heck, they even rolled out a small batch of shirts for SXSW, over which users seemed to be pretty excited. As ready as we may be to plunk down some cash for the privilege of using a t-shirt to tell people where we waste most of our time, Ev directly replied to this one: "RE: merchandise - It was, at one time, a noticeable part of Blogger's revenue, but that's when Blogger was just me, scraping by; my guess is it wouldn't make a blip in Twitter's costs today. Unless we figured out how to be a trendy new apparel brand." Sorry everyone, but it sounds like apparel isn't exactly on their list of features to roll out in the next update.
• Twitter for Business a lá Google Apps - Customized, secure software that businesses can run on their own intranet. BlackBerry and WinMo clients are a more apparent option here. Obviously, this could become tremendously useful if Twitter built in some hooks that work like Stikkit and Google Calendar, allowing employees to easily tweet appointments and tasks to a centralized PIM system, and automatically be subscribed to their team's tweets without any extra effort on their part.
• Twitter Forums, ad-supported - Finally, an innovation brought to the aging discussion forum format. Sort of a Twitter approach to Yahoo! Answers, allowing users to post questions and follow threads they're interested in, with the Twitter format forcing everyone to keep things simple and on-topic. Instead of ads, this could also possibly be just for Pro customers. One of the catches here is that Twitter users only see tweets from people they are following. When submitting a question to a Twitter Forum, you would be able to see all replies to the question, even the ones from users you've never met and aren't following.

Evan didn't let me have all the fun with brainstorming, however, and he offered two of his own ideas which I would assume are a good bet the company is working on, since he shared them with this lowly blogger:

Two more-straightforward ideas: 1) Ads on the site. We have a little AdSense on there now, but we haven't really tried. As the traffic grows, some tasteful sponsorships might be sellable. 2) Charging companies who are using it for marketing or other commercial purposes. If an organization finds Twitter to be a valuable communication tool with their customers/constituents/etc -- especially if we're sending lots of SMS's for them, which cost us money -- it seems viable to make an offering around that.

So there you have it: six ways Twitter can make money, two of which are straight from the lion's mouth. Judging from the sheer magnitude of buzz surrounding the recently-incorporated company, I wouldn't be surprised if these six are but a drop in the bucket. There's good news for those who fear change, however: no matter which way Twitter decides to start paying their exponentially growing bandwidth bills, Evan assured me that: "Our top concern when it comes to monetization will be to do so in a way that does not negatively impact users." Good show guys; your users will appreciate being able to spend their time tweeting about how they're spending their time, with the least amount of distraction.

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