Building Websites, Traffic, and Income
Notes from BWE08: Making Money Online With A Blog
I guess this is a little late, but better late than never. It has been a chore trying to keep up lately and yes, I do actually have enough material for two weeks worth of posts from BWE. But a lot of these will be about new products and some will be based on sloppy but very complete notes I took at the sessions.
This was the first panel I attended at Blog World Expo and the speakers included John Chow, Brian Clark, Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, Darren Rowse and Jeremy Shoemaker. Shoemoney was a little late and Jim Kukral had all of us in attendance tweet him that he sucked. Everyone laughed and some did. Hey, when do you get a chance to tell a top blogger he sucks.
About Adsense
It was a consensus. Adsense is webmaster welfare. Just about any other way of monetizing your site will make you more money. There was a time when you could make money with Google ads. It is not now.
When John Chow noticed the money he was making from Adsense drop, he offered up the slots that had Adsense to private advertisers for more than Adsense was giving him. And every slot was quickly filled and eventually he was making a lot more from private individuals than he ever could from Adsense.
About Ads
Another consensus is that for most blogs, any type of CPM ads don’t work. CPM ads are stone age technology and those that learn this are ahead of the game.
And for those of you who are impatient, here’s a lesson. Zac Johnson had no ads on his site for 10 months and now makes $6000 a month on referrals and ads on his site. He also mentioned that the one of the biggest mistakes he sees bloggers make is wasting the space in their header. Any area above the fold in your website is prime real estate and should be used accordingly
Darren Rowse said that you should monetize from day one and get your readers used to it.
Brian Clark said he makes $100,000 a month without any ads. He sells at Teaching Sells and DIYthemes and thats how he makes his money.
About Branding and Using Your Name
Brian Clark also said that he created CopyBlogger to be an independent brand that he could walk away from. But it backfired and his name is almost inseperable from the brand. John Chow said if he could start over, he would not have used his name as his brand.
They also mentioned “social proof”. Don’t show your subscriber count until you are proud to show it. If you show that you only have 10 subscribers, you will have a hard time getting subscribers. It is much better just to hide that until you have enough subscribers that it actually helps you get more.
Use Email
Everyone on the panel stressed the importance of email. Not very many people that will visit your site will even know what an RSS feed is, let alone use a feed reader. So you must make sure you have a way they can subscribe to your blog with their email address. Feedburner offers this and Aweber offers even better features.
I learned that the most profitable internet properties don’t look visibly monetized. In other words, you don’t have to make your blog look like the side of a city bus to make money.
About Affiliate Marketing
John Chow said that his #1 money maker was direct advertising but in time, he knows that affiliate marketing commissions will bypass that. He said that most people who use affiliate marketing do so wrongly. They use PPC to get one sale from one person and never contact that person again. He said you need to build a realtionship.
Brain Clark said that one way to build a relationship is to get them to sign up for a newsletter or a series of reports. He also said that using banners to promote affiliate products will not do much for you but it will give the products owner free branding. Not a win-win situation.
And Darren Rowse added that the best way to promote an affiliate product is to hit it from multiple angles. Instead of writing one post for a products, write four or more. Write one. Interview the author of the product for one. Create a video using the product for one. If you think about it, you can come up with lots of ways to promote a product.
And Zac Johnson said not to be fearful of the affiliate network. Ask for help when you need it. That’s what the affiliate manager is there for. And when you make money, they do.
It Is Work
Blogging is not a piece of cake. Darren Rowse spends 12 hours a day blogging. If you decided to blog because you thought it was easy money, you are wrong. It takes just as much work as any other job, but it’s yours. And that’s the difference.
What They Didn’t Know
I have said that I learned just as much from the questions asked as the answers given. And here is how. I was in the room with the top money making bloggers in the world. If something stumped them, that is definitely an area investigate. Two questions did:
- Mobile Blogging
- Contextual Affiliate Programs
These are both areas I have been investigating and with no answer, I know I am going in the right direction.
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- Blog World Expo 2008 – Making Money Online with a Blog – recap
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- What do you get if you put Shoemoney, CopyBlogger, Chow, Johnson, Kukral and ProBlogger in the same Room?
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25 Responses to Notes from BWE08: Making Money Online With A Blog
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I would think that mobile blogging would be an excellent long term growth area.
In my mind, it will be tied to international growth (the Chinese seem to be nuts about SMS, ie QQ) and therefore language translation features.
Maybe not, though — my wife loves her mobile news updates, and my kids respond to text messages before they’ll pick up the phone.
Part of mobile blogging you would get automatically through your rss and email feed, I guess.
Just brainstorming, sorry about that.
I tend to stick to Google Reader now as far as blogs go, because I am never sure how the actual blog will look. But it is only a matter of time where those without a mobile version of their blog with miss out. And not everyone has an iPhone.
Hey Stephan,
Thanks for attending and writing up this excellent break down. I hope to meet up with you at another conference soon!
- Zac
Thanks for coming by Zac. I will make sure to find you. Not sure where I will be next. Might not be until BWE09.
Very interesting reading. I have seen some of the blogs that are mentioned here. I tend to think they are a little cheesy with all of the pandering they do. It funny that the still make money, though. Not sure if my site will ever draw that kind of money, but it is a totally different niche…
Thanks for posting the information.
I never made any money from blogs.the post is interesting will try to use the idea from other successful blogs.
Good information.
I do make some money from blogs, mainly using the link juice from the blog to pump up a catalog of products in the backend, similar to a BANS site, but with real content and affiliate products with higher commission instead of eBay and Amazon’s pocket change.
You really DO take good notes! This ones a keeper for me.
I have no qualms telling an A lister they suck…just do it so ya don’t get sued
I don’t believe in information overload. I just force my brain to absorb however I can.
Didn’t you have a subscribe to comments plugin here? if not, could you?
Yes, but this theme has issues. Both the CommentLuv and Subscribe to Comments plugins are active. You can see the javascript in the source of the page. But nothing shows. Just one of those issues I think may be simple, but in the end may take me an hour to track down and fix. And right now, I can’t get to it, but it is on my list. Sorry about that.
seems like you could learn a ton of things at these blog expos, I’ve never attended one yet but I do follow the blogs of some of the headliners you mentioned. I totally agree about the ineffectiveness of Adsense, something I learned early on, there’s no point doing all the work of generating traffic only to send away a visitor for a buck or two when you can do so much more to build relationships and/or make more money from them.
NP, just please don’t get upset if I don’t return to check for replies…I often forget without that checkbox
Is your WP upgraded? I know the new CL plugin needs it.
Thought i would pay you a visit, as i had to find out who was behind the avatar on my G34 Media blog.
I see your face there alot. Are you a subscriber? If so, glad to meet you.
Thanxs for visiting me. As for BWE i have never attended, but would like to one day.
It is the premier bloggers expo. I’m rather shy, so not sure how i would get on, but it does sound like a good time. Not too mention the exposure one gets, by simply attending.
Nice blog. Glad to learn more about you.
P.S. Oh, i almost forgot. I find your “day job” interesting, and checked out the doors blog. Is the local shop you work for, in a small town? Or not. Just curious, as i have been doing some SEO for my familys restaurant (which is in a small town), and i think i’ve gone far as i can go with it.
Would love to hear more about this.
@Freelance Adsense was good once. I made $700/month at the peak. But from the same site, I was making $3000/month from affiliate programs.
@Dennis Nah, I won’t get mad. Most people don’t come back to check to tell you the truth. I will get this installation figured out here sometime. My next post should explain why some things are left up in the air for a bit here and other places.
@Missy Actually the shop is in Kansas City and currently I would estimate we are #1 in what we do online in our niche. But when it started, there was no one online. And I just took quite a bit further.
I am shy also. Most likely no one from BWE can even place me. But I am fighting it. I will actually be giving a presentation here to 100 people in less than a month. I realized I couldn’t hide behind a personality that can change if I want it to. So I said yes before I could say no and forced myself into the situation. And it will be at least a foot in the right direction to better things.
Hi,
Very interesting reading. I have seen some of the blogs that are mentioned here. I tend to think they are a little cheesy with all of the pandering they do. It funny that the still make money, though. Not sure if my site will ever draw that kind of money, but it is a totally different niche…
A lot of make money blogs can really only make money from newbies. Those in the know usually already know.
Blogging is hard work, there is no doubt about it. I have been affiliate marketing for sometime now and I have never thought about what Brian Clark said about banners before. It really is free branding for the product owner. Contextual links are probably most effective.
I think in this recession era, it might be a little hard to just focus on affiliate marketing. Which is why most webmasters and blog owner still rely on their adsense CPM. But as time goes by, we still need to build a good relationship with our buyer
Hello Stephan.
Thanks for your post. Although our site is purely for information to our clients I do write from time to time some marketing thoughts.
Now we have never had any ads of any sort but recently I was considering it.
The problem I have is how much it will influence our credibility.
Would appreciate a little advice if you have time to take a look.
Cheers. The Baldchemist
I would put no ads other than for services that you would recommend to your clients that you yourself do not cover in-house. That would add value without being obtrusive or unrelated or detracting from your brand. Adsense and any other system that does ad-picking for you, definitely a no.
The is a subject that has as many questions as it has answers.
I think the best way to handle it is to find what works for you and build from it. Whether it be adsense, PPC or affiliate links….
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