How to solve the Biggest Problem for blog owners
Posted by Tammy Kahn Fennell · 10 Comments
Have you removed the tumbleweed from your site, but now struggle to have it make you money?
Are you banging your head against the wall trying to figure out whether monetizing a blog is even possible??
I’ve now posted 3 entries that I’ve received a lot of kind words about – 7 Superior Alternatives to Google Adwords, 7 ways to convince people you’re an expert even your mother should know, and 5 Sites that are generating so much buzz they will shame you into action…
I got to thinking though.
There’s a lot of information out there telling you how to promote yourself, and of course that is very very important, but the burning question in any business owner’s mind is, ‘how the heck am I going to make some actual money???’
So, that’s where my latest list of 7… hmm… I see a trend.
Maybe when I have enough of these I’ll put them in a book, which actually brings me to point one.
1. Have something to sell.
It sounds obvious, but it’s not always so clear.
For example, I deal in antiques and collectibles, but lately I’ve gone on a kick of writing these fun posts. It would be a lot of buzz wasted if I didn’t have something to offer people who are nice enough to read my words.
But I do – getmevideo.com.
I hope that any one of you who are looking to launch video campaigns will come to me first. But it doesn’t have to be a whole site – it could be as simple as a book.
I do some short videos calling people to my collectibles site – I give free information about prices, but then I encourage people to buy my price guides. Of course, the added bonus is that someone might have that dynamite collection they’re looking to consign, but if that’s all I was after I’d be wasting a lot of perfectly good traffic.
Lets say you sell dental supplies… well not everyone will want to place a business-sized order so maybe you could have a small guide or a price comparison list. Anything that gets people to get our their wallets and buy something.
2. Give a call to action.
Now this works particularly well with video, but it also works on mini-sites very effectively. I’m working on a campaign right now for a local italian restaurant, and at the end of the video he says “If you come into Cinelli’s and tell me you’ve seen this video, I’ll give you a glass of wine on the house.” This is fantastic because it gets people in the door, and they will ultimately buy a meal. You can easily do this with an online presence…. Enter this coupon code and get 10% off on your next order, etc.
3. Create a paid member site.
This is more advanced and I’m not really the girl to ask about it since I’ve not done one myself, but my friends over at buzzprofits have it down to a science. They are able to take their passion for buzz marketing and have people pay money each month to be part of their exclusive club. There’s a new site out there called ‘ning.com’ which allows you to custom build a network – and most of the tools are already there for you – it’s not anything like starting from scratch.
4. Google Adsense.
Now, I want to be very clear – this does not make huge sums of money unless you get tremendous traffic, but it isn’t a bad thing to have. It’s adsense.google.com. I make $30-$50 a month – but i really don’t push it hard because I do not want to detract from what I offer on my own sites. If your site has a lot of free info and not a lot for sale, it’s a good way to at least get some revenue.
5. Get a sponsor.
Advertising makes the world go round, and with your own site, you can control it.
If your site is highly popular, why not get someone in your field to sponsor you?
If you sell restaurant supplies, and you have done a great job generating buzz, maybe you could get a manufacturer to pay for a coveted spot on your site. I’m helping one business owner do a series of videos promoting his sponsors items and they are paying him to do them and embed them into his website. Some companies will give you a large discount if you feature them, so there’s a lot of ways to work it.
I personally have sponsors for CollectiblesCornerTV. Each show features a sponsor. And by the way, the show is still very new so sponsorship spots are available and because we’re new, it’s really not too expensive. Inquire here.
6. Have a classified section.
This is similar to a sponsor, but it’s a bit different – it’s not a flagship spot – it’s a page, designated to small text advertisements, maybe a few pictures, in your industry.
This doesn’t work for every type of industry, but it does for most.
Going back to dental supplies, maybe there are some actual dentists that want to pay for a spot on your site. If you focus on mail order maybe there is a shipping supply company that might be interested in letting your customers know that they supply your boxes and can do so for their business too.
We have a garage sale guide that we mail out for free, and we have advertising on the back – plumbers, gardeners, professional organizers, window treatment specialists, anything to do with a house because if someone is having a garage sale, chances are they may be doing other things with their house.
Think about how you could make your niche desirable to the most advertisers.
7. Affiliate marketing.
Now this is really a list unto itself, but it is a great way to monetize a site.
Go to clickbank.com or shareasale.com and search for any product in your industry that doesn’t directly compete with you – something that compliments you. For me, it might be a price guide for something I haven’t already written one for. Then apply to become an affiliate, and you actually get a portion of their sale.
You can also promote your items by offering other people a piece of the sale to sell for you, which is definitely worth looking into, but for the purpose of this list I’m going to stick with the being an affiliate idea.
It is limitless, and more and more sites are now offering affiliate programs, even social networking sites!
I recently did a video campaign for vegassocialclub.com and they will pay anyone who signs up a friend $20.00.
That’s pretty cool.
Imagine if you had a travel agency site and you signed up 10 people a week for that site? The money would really start to add up. There’s also recurring ones where you will get paid every month, week or year the person stays as a customer. If you haven’t played around on clickbank prepare for your brain to melt a little with the sheer volume of marketable products out there!
JUST STARTED A NEW SITE: ONEBLOGONEDREAM.COM THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT IN BUZZ AND AFFILIATE MARKETING 🙂
I get asked this a lot so I thought I’d address it here:
Feel free to use this information on your own sites, but please keep all my links intact and link back to this original post 🙂
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