Live from Blog World Expo 2010: Making Money from Your Blog

This post are my notes from the live session at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas.  Please forgive me if I misspell anything or if some of the notes don’t make sense, as I am trying to gather as much information from each speaker as I can.

Quick Facts on the Session

• Topic: Making Money from Your Blog
• About: In this final session of the ProBlogger stream Darren Rowse, and Chris Garrett will present strategies for making blogs profitable through a variety of approaches. It will include time for Q&A from participants.
• Speaker: Chris Garrett & Darren Rowse

Live Notes

Ok, so we are on the last of the 4 pillars and we are talking about how to monetize your blog.  Darren starts out by showing a mind map of all of the different ways you can make money online.

Darren briefly talks about each of the different ways to make money and what you need in order to capitalize on one or all of these monetization strategies.

He askes the audience if anyone makes money through RSS advertising?  He said that he only  makes money through RSS if they talk directly with an advertiser.

One way that I thought was a very good point, is how you can find new jobs through your blog.  Many employers are going to industry leading blogs to find new talent and it can be an indirect way of making money through your blog.

Darren talks about how virtual products are more appealing currently with the economy because they are easier to create, no production costs, easily reproducible.

Someone from the audience mentioned 5 Minute Media is a video ad company that places videos on your ad and the blog owner makes money.

• Jount Ventures
• Kindle Subscriptions
• Popup ads off links

How Darren Makes Money

Darren shows a pie chart of his revenue from both of his blogs.

• Adsense 24%
• Continuity 21%
• eBooks 19%
• Affiliates 13%
• Amazon 8%
• Direct Ad Sales 6%
• Chitika 6%
• Job Board 2%

He then mentions that depending on the season or time of the year, these revenue percentages vary.

Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Blogs

• Trust is Key
• Relevancy between Product, Reader Intent, and Message
• Quality Products
• Genuine Recommendations and Personal Endorsements
• In Post Promotions
• Social Proof
• Traffic is Important
• Transparency and Disclaimers
• Track Your Results
• Multi-pong

He shows a promotion sequence for a book he promoted:

1. Reader Survey
2. Guest Posts (2)
3. Launch Post – Overview of  Product, Fast Action Special
4. Newsletter
5. Social Media Promotions
6. Interview with Product Creator
7. Newsletter Mention
8. End of Promotion Post

Tips for Selling Advertising on Blogs

• Build a Brand, Audience, and Community
• Be Contactable
• Build an Advertiser Page and/or Media Kit
• Know Your Metrics
• Be Selective in Who you Partner With
• Know How Your Ads Convert (look after your advertisers)
• Positioning of Ads is Key (ads in sidebar don’t convert well)(in the middle of a post or where a reader pauses works well)
• Offer Package Deals
• Start with Small Advertisers
• Sell in Packages with Other Bloggers

Now up is Chris Garrett…

He starts to talk about how he monetizes his site.  If you become useful in a community, they will start to send work your way because of the social proof. He doesn’t do it through ads except two small banners.  He said that he doesn’t really promote other people’s that he hasn’t tried.  He is more about promoting he own products.

He has 24,000 subscribers that was built in 3 years.  You need to be able to email your list offers.

He shows a flowchart that explains his monetization strategy:

• Offline:  Drive offline contacts to incentive content/downloads
• Online: Create content to attract most wanted prospects
• Blog:  Attract searchers demonstrate domain knowledge and expertise through blog
• Email:  Capture interested prospects on email list(s)

The key is to squeeze conversions out of your current customers, through cross-sells, up-sells and relevant promotions.

If you are looking for freelance writing to make money you can try job boards like Problogger Job Board.  The downfall is that you won’t get the best hourly rate.  The best deals are done privately.

He talks about how he was doing public blog reviews on his website.  Then people started asking him if they could pay him to do a blog review.

Make sure you tweet this post with the Hashtag #bwe10