The Future of Content Monetization and Publishing

The First session I attended at Affiliate Summit featured Steve Hall, Murray Newlands, Ian Fernando, and my benefactor- John Chow. This session had these heavy hitting bloggers talking about how they make money with their blogs.

I am a bit partial to John Chow's model as I pretty much learned everything I know about blogging from him (he also payed for my Gold Pass to the conference). John reiterated his old mantra of "the money is in the list." John figures each person on his email list is worth $10. He gets 200-300 subscribers a day. Do the math!

Steve Hall has another approach. He sells ads on his B2B site- "old school" style. He actually has ad sales people selling space for him and he has advertisers approach him. He also does sponsored posts. Branded content or content that has been written by brands (ie companies that wish to sell something) is also a growing source of content on his site.

Ian's model is a bit different- he leverages his content with affiliate links and PPA programs. He wants his users to have a connection between his content and the ads/affiliate links on his site.

The main thrust of the session was to keep the monetization in context with the content. Whether it is ads, affiliate links or email capture, the monetized portion of the site should not distract from the content. It's the old journalistic dogma of "the medium is the message/the medium is the massage" at work. It's just a new way of presenting it.

Do You want to be a Sniper?

If you have any interest in making money online, there's a great article on Hot Dog! Money Online that describes a system I have used for a few years that really works. It talks about Google Sniper 2, the latest version of Google Sniper. As I said, I have been using these tactics for a few years and they definitely have worked for me.

In the article, I describe how I have used the system and how easy it is to set up.

Check it out.

Working at home

A lot of people dream about working at home. The whole idea of being able to avoid commuting and "be there" for your family without the constraints of office politics is a very modern day romantic notion. People have visions of lounging around in pajamas, tapping on a keyboard or talking on the phone until they can warmly greet their kids when they come home from school. The people in that scenario are invariably good looking, are in a spotless home (with a view), and are always smiling. The kids in the scenario seem well adjusted, happy and are always smiling. It's a dream lifestyle.

Or is it?

While it has its advantages, there are times when it can be maddening. Like when you can't get any work done because you have to shovel your driveway for the fourth time. And the kids are off from school, stuck inside-but for a raucous round of sledding after lunch- doing everything in their power to distract, annoy or otherwise undermine any semblance of tranquil work state you may be attempting at the time. Or when the hot water heater blows out on the day we all need to get showered up for an evening engagement and the water heater is buried behind boxes of Christmas ornaments, old bikes, that box of books from your wife's freshman year that she will NEVER look at again, an old bed frame and several old TV's awaiting recycle day at the town dump. Nobody is smiling in this scenario. Dad is covered in dust, swearing and in desperate need of a cold martini.

Yeah, working at home is great. At least the dog is cooperative-most of the time.

Despite my grumblings, I do enjoy working at home. My typical day involves getting up in time to get everyone off to the bus and a good, solid 4 hours to write, do SEO, build websites, investigate advertising or affiliate offerings and do some of the analytical stuff we webmasters hot dog men do from time to time. I currently have four sites "under construction" that I have to design, put out content and build links to so I can get free traffic. I try to get the stuff that requires concentration done before noon and leave the more menial tasks until after noon. That way, when the kids filter in, I won't have my concentration shattered-I'm doing something mindless anyway. By 3:30 or so every day, the whistle blows because that's when Little Miss gets home and she just won't leave me alone; six year olds are like that (they don't tell you this stuff in the "work at home" brochure).

Sometimes I will do more work at night, sometimes not; it depends what's going on. There are some nights, after Little Miss goes to bed, when it's better than the morning: quiet and with sleep ahead, not behind. There are other nights when, if the day has been productive, I slip into the comfort of the aforementioned cold martini and a movie in bed with Coach (that's Mrs. HDM). She's usually smiling.

Guest Dogger

I'm a fan of The Ben Spark blog; I have been featured there in the past and I've gotten to know Drew- the author- a bit. He's an avid photographer and he takes a Photo a Day as a feature on his site. We have been exchanging emails and when he said he was going to be in Framingham, we decided to meet at the Trolley Stop for a few dogs and some good blog talk.

I have featured the Trolley Stop on Hot Dog Stories before, so I knew the food was going to be good. Make sure you check for a new installment on the Trolley Stop on Hot Dog Stories soon.

In this super electronic day and age where everybody "tweets" and "IM's" or texts each other, it's good to get together face to face with folks (especially "internet friends") every once in a while. What better way to "ketchup" with someone than over lunch at a hot dog joint?

Drew and I shared some ideas and we may be doing more joint ventures in the future.

You can see our hot dog story in a few weeks (there's a 3-4 week backlog on the Hot Dog Stories site). In the mean time, you can be safe in knowing Drew gave the Trolley Stop TWO THUMBS UP!

Reality Check for Bloggers

I was looking at the Pro Blogger site the other day. It's one of these "blogging guru" sites where a guy named Darren Rowse, who has been blogging for quite a while and earns a nice living from it, shares his wisdom and gives advice about making money with blogs. He wrote an article that all bloggers with a thought of getting rich with a blog should read. It's called A Reality Check about Blogging for Money.

As for me, I started my blog as a lark and stumbled on a ton of “make money blogging” sites. Most of them are the same recycled junk that puts unrealistic expectations into the heads of blogging newbies. I wanted to make some extra money though, so I persevered.

The best bit of advice (spouted by numerous “pro bloggers”) was “create good content.” It’s the old “if you build it they will come” theory. Steve Pavlina wrote a great article on How to Build a High Traffic Website (or Blog) that I constantly refer to for "inspiration."

Another thing I learned along the way is just “building it” isn’t enough. You need eyeballs-lots of them- and you need to convert the eyeballs to regular readers. I did all the SEO stuff I could figure out and I’ve managed to make anywhere from $750-$1000 per month for the past 6 months or so.

I am not getting rich, but I paid for my kid’s braces, some daycare expenses, a bunch of domain names, an attorney’s bill, some Christmas presents and a new memory card for my computer. And I still have money rolling in every month. This site is paying for a trip to Las Vegas in April!

It sure beats having a part time job and it’s a lot of fun.

Would I like to make $250,000 a year blogging? HELL YES, sign me up. Maybe someday I will. In the meantime, I’ll continue having some fun and having a chunk of extra cash around every month. If you want to make money blogging, remember one thing: it IS WORK-nothing comes easy, but it can be done!

Make Money Online with Payloadz.com

If you've ever thought of selling stuff online, you probably know that downloadable files like ebooks, music and videos are easy to sell because you don't have to stock a physical product. All you need is a good service provider to help you with your transactions. PayLoadz Downloable Goods eCommerce services will fit the bill for both the beginning AND experienced e-marketer.

Payloadz offers a FREE PREMIUM ACCOUNT for one month (try before you buy), secure file storage on their servers, digital delivery and full scale affiliate tracking. They use Google Checkout for their transactions and Payloadz will even let you demo an account for free.

The PayLoadz Downloable Goods eCommerce service is so good, they'll give you 150% of your money back if you aren't satisfied. They'll help you sell your product because if you don't succeed, they don't either.

Here's their Press Release about the new service:

New York, NY December 18, 2007 -- PayLoadz.com, a leading self-service digital content ecommerce platform, has released a new version of its content storage and fulfillment system to deliver downloadable content such as ebooks, music, videos, software, crafts, or any other file. This new platform provides unlimited file storage for sellers using its services without any increase in cost.

"I am very excited about latest version of our file delivery system," says Shannon Sofield, founder of PayLoadz. "Because of the repeat and impulse buying nature related to selling digital goods, the more products sellers have available, means more sales and revenue for our sellers. By providing them with as much storage as they need for their downloadable goods without increased cost, they can create more valuable content offerings."

The PayLoadz.com service now has a key competitive advantage with this new release as other companies attempting to enter this market niche are bound by their limited product inventory and file storage capabilities. The PayLoadz Free, Basic Service, gets a file storage increase from just 50MB to 1,000MB representing a twenty-fold increase. Higher level accounts feature Unlimited File Storage.


About PayLoadz
A New York, NY based company, PayLoadz is a long standing leader in the digital content and delivery sector. The privately-held company has over 60,000 registered users selling over 280,000 downloadable goods.

Linkworth

I just signed on with Linkworth in an effort to squeeze a few more bucks out of this site. LinkWorth is one of the web's largest and most innovative marketing portals that caters to both Advertisers and Partners. They have a multitude of products and services to fill your every online marketing need. Products consist of text link ads, paid blog reviews, in-text links, in-content pay per click ads, rotating text ads, hosted content pages, article submission, directory submission and many more. If you want some variety to the advertising on your site, want to earn some extra dough from advertising or you want a good way to market your site, give Linkworth a look.

Making ends meet

At the end of every month there is a scramble to pay the mortgage, insurance, and all the other bills. I'd like to be able to get the best car insurance rates and one of those cheap mortgages so I could save a few extra bucks!

Most of us are one or two "bad months" away from fiscal crisis. When something goes wrong with a job or a business, it is easy to fall behind on bills. And you can't keep getting loans to get back on track.

It's a good idea to have at least 6 months living expenses socked away for a rainy day in case bad luck befalls you. I have found the "passive income" from my blog to be a nice little cushion each month against potential financial setbacks.

Blogging for Business

When I started this site, I thought I'd be blogging for business; business for my Hot Dog Truck that is. While I have had some customers who've found me from my site, most of my business is repeat word of mouth business or folks "just passing by." My Hot Dog Truck has had a good year, and so has my site.

When I started this site, I read everything I could about monetizing my blog and driving traffic to it. While I'm not amazon.com quite yet, I'm doing OK considering I knew nothing about SEO 8 months ago. Considering I started with zero cash, I'd say the whole blogging endeavor has been a resounding success! I have also had a lot of fun and met a bunch of new people while doing it.

The success of this site has led me to explore some other projects which I plan to focus on in the winter months when I plan to shut down the Hot Dog Truck. I have also been exploring developing some other products which I'd like to market online. We're also looking into selling some specialty computer items online as well.

When you get into product sales online, an SEO company may be an expiditious way of getting the word out to the internet search engines so product phrases will be linked to my site. While this can be done alone, as I've done with the Hot Dog Truck, it takes a lot of time. An SEO firm can speed things up considerably and this is especially important when you are sitting on product in a crowded marketplace. Getting people who are looking for info on a specific product to convert to buyers of the product is an important step. They have to want what you have, find you, be convince your product is the one they want and then buy it! Whether you want to sell relish or specialty computer mouses, doing a good job on the SEO for your site is tantamount for success.

If all goes well, I can spend a lot of time in Florida in the winter months running my websites and keeping away from the crummy New England winters. My folks live outside of Tampa and I could stay with them and run my sites in the sunshine. A little SEO Tampa Bay and my laptop and I'll be good to go!