Blogs fall somewhere between shameless and classy when earning money. If you care about your creation then please, in the words of Mr Burgundy “Stay Classy”.
It’s easy to spot the shameless ugly blogs they are covered in google ads, top to bottom. There will be inline links, pop-unders, pop-overs, flash animations all over the place, you’ll leave checking for your wallet.
TL;DR No Google Ads, no animation and less is definitely more
The next level of shameless blog is the commercial blog, like problogger the right sidebar is covered top to bottom with ads of all shapes and sizes, all sorts of products are promoted. Every article will have a few ad blocks inline with the content incase you manage to ignore the abomination to your right. This blog probably provides truncated RSS feeds and paginates it’s articles to get more page-views. Don’t be surprised if there are Javascript popups trying to get your email address. It’s only slightly better than the content farms, they have original content, controversial articles and plenty of link-bait. Sure they make money, but at what cost to their integrity?
The final step in blog advertising is the Mac grade advertising. Discrete, classy and more often than not useful. This type of blog has an owner that cares, well written content and an engaged readership that appreciates the hard work. There will be one advert on the page, and it will be highly relevant to the audience. This is the type of blog you want to be. It’s no surprise that Mac tech bloggers love this style, it doesn’t distract from your site or your content.
How To Stay Classy
We’ve decided that it needs to be a classy site, you want to make money, but don’t want to be associated with auto blogs and content farms. Here’s a guide to the classy methods, like all advertising they probably won’t work unless you have enough readers.
RSS Sponsorship
Sell a weekly RSS sponsorship slot. A simple item each week thanking the sponsor, detailing their product, and a link is enough. This is commonly followed up with a thank you post later in the week. Its not uncommon to have a quick thank you in the side bar too.
Normally the webmaster own the relationship directly with the sponsors rather than handing it off to a third party. This is harder work than simply buying in RSS sponsorship, but it’s better for you and the advertiser. These are bigger buck placements and you want to own those relationships, you need to build a list of contacts. Keep an eye on previous advertisers, make a note when they have a new product or are gearing up for a launch as you’ll want to remind them gently of the fantastic response they had during their previous sponsorship.
It’s a good idea to set the price upfront for one to three months and display availability to your potential advertisers. This gives you a chance to adjust pricing as your readership and influence grows.
Single Advert
By far the classiest advertising method ever. It all started with The Deck from Coudal Partners. One static image, 80 words of text, very selective about products allowed to advertise. In return on each page in the advertising network there is only one advert. To join the Deck you have to be something big and probably design orientated, like most of the similar networks it’s invite only. I often find myself visiting Fusion Ads to check for new blogs they advertise on for great content and who this months advertisers are in case there is a must have tool I’ve missed.
Don’t despair if this is the way you want to go but can’t get invited. Sign up to buysellads.com and create just the one ad spot. You can have multiple ads rotating through the slot to increase revenue. But remember people visit your site for the great prose, witty reposts and gorgeous design not for offensive flash animated ads. Keep the ads to a static image and don’t feel bad about asking for a new ad version if it’s appalling. Remember you are doing the advertiser a favour by sending them traffic.
Affiliate Links
Affiliate links are for some reason contentious I’m not to sure why. I don’t have a problem with someone recommending a product and taking a very small fee for it I consider it like a thank you tip. So you might feel more comfortable, or be legally obliged to make it clear that you use affiliate links, or provide a non affiliate link at the same time. A note on your about page should suffice.
As with the content that you post, products are exactly the same, recommend genuinely useful products and if in doubt remember that less is more. That is all.
Amazon is a good place to start as most products seem to somehow find their way onto the store. iTunes also has an affiliate program, that can be useful if you are reviewing apps or music, it currently offers 5% referral fee.
Amazon Store
Taking the Amazon thing one step further, set up an Amazon store with all the products that you have recommended. Occasionally remind readers that all reviewed products are available to buy directly from your Amazon store. This can be useful around Christmas if you pick a range of products for the archetypal visitor to your site. Again with the affiliate stuff it’s fairly obvious that you’re going to make money from it. If people are really against it, then fine they can use two browsers or delete all their cookies.
Site Membership
Shawn Blanc was the first writer I followed to set this up and has since been followed by several other bloggers. It seems to be a simple and sustainable revenue model.
Set up a Paypal monthly subscription, Shawn’s runs at $3 per month. Invite users to join. Shawn Blanc provides no real features for members, there is occasionally a members only raffle for software licenses and a daily two to four minute podcast.
If you are producing quality work, people do appreciate it, people are willing to give money to support something that they use on a daily basis. All you have to do is politely ask them, and offer them a token of your appreciation, early access or free stuff is usually enough because at $3 people don’t feel too entitled.
Donate Button
So maybe you are not to comfortable with asking for a membership fee each month. Maybe you don’t post too often, maybe only have one or two high profile posts that sill get traffic. You should just quietly put a “Donate” button on your site. Again people value their time, if you have written a great tutorial or some other compelling content then politely ask for a donation. Paypal can sort all of this out for you, just don’t use the default Paypal button please.
Kindle Shorts
Amazon to the rescue again, and this time with a great idea. Stop selling eBooks start repackaging your best content into Kindle Singles. The Guardian, Ars Technica and other large publishing houses are starting to re-release content for a fee through the Kindle Singles program. It was originally designed for indie writer to self publish short novels between 10000 and 30000 words. So every blog item you publish as a Kindle Short isn’t going to cut the mustard. Collecting and releasing a series of interviews probably will be compelling enough to stand alone. To get started sign into Amazon Direct Publishing.
Why bother, it’s all on the site already? This isn’t targeted to stalwarts but to new readers. By collecting your best writing or a series of posts and offering it as a stand alone package, for a small fee, you are helping the reader to enjoy it without having to sift through the web site. A Kindle or Kindle app is a much more enjoyable reading experience then the common browser.
The Product/Flash Sale
Posters and T-shirts are the usual culprits for a flash sale. Commission or DIY a t-shirt or poster design to sell to your readers. If you have members offer them a discount or early access to limited print runs. Ideally get the design done, share it with readers and take pre orders for two to four weeks so you have no leftover stock or costly storage. I’m sure there are plenty of other things that you could design and sell, cafepress.com offers plenty of ideas.
Just recently The Loop switched from the classic “news” style blog, lots of ads, lots of mess, to a super clean, super simple design that is focused on the reader, part of that rebrand involved a new revenue model. The loop are currently using RSS sponsorship, single sidebar ads, and membership. Members get non-truncated news feeds which is a nice incentive to sign up for only $3 a month. I’m guessing they are using the iTunes referral program too, I’ve bothered not checking because it’s not important to me.
So there you have some options for being classy and making money. Yeah it’s harder then just copying and pasting some Adwords code on your site, and you’ll probably need some decent traffic to get going. Not actually running a site with advertising limits my knowledge of how much you can earn somewhat. From gleaning bits here and there I’m guessing you’ll want to blend these strategies together to get a stable income. Products and sales are great for adding periodical bank account injections. The laws of supply and demand also apply, if selling is easy and you have 3 months worth of sponsorship booked, it’s probably too expensive and vice-versa.