Thewonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2006has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some ofthe ways that bloggers are currently making money through blogs.
Income Streams for Bloggers
AdvertisingPrograms - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months havebeen with the addition of a variety of viable <br/>
advertising options for bloggers. No longer are bloggers only presentedwith the Adsense and/or BlogAds choice - instead they now have amassive array to choose from. Getting the most publicity recently havebeen Chitika’s eMiniMalls of course but there are just so many ot
Adgenta, CrispAds, Text Link Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion, Adbrite,
Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, Bidvertiser, Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey (to name just some ofthe options - I’m sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbordof options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPNboth in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising systemcurrently in development (so I hear).
RSS Advertising - The past12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet tohear of any bloggers making big dollars through it to this point - butas improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m surewe’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.
Sponsorship- In addition to the array of advertising programs that are availableto join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value andopportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’mhearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately tohave a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one withAdobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for anew digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolatedcases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship withadvertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the yearahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with somebloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either inone off or a regular fashion.
AffiliatePrograms - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands ofothers from the large to the very small.
Digital Assets -Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digitalassets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this Imean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminarsbeing run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first seriesof the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks agoand have just released the study version of. This type of activity willonly increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examplesof bloggers running courses.
BlogNetwork Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks -bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an incomefrom their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might bedifficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - thereare plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who arewilling to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While thereare distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for anestablished network who will handle a lot of the setup/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and morebloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs withtaking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.
BusinessBlog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as amedium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of thesecompanies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but anincreasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on andrun their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past monthor two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers forHire if you’re looking for this type of work.
Non BloggingWriting Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers beinghired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of acolumn in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggersare increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazinesand other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers aspublished book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spokewith this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggersthan they knew who didn’t have a book deal!
Donations - Tip Jarsand donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now butthis last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fundraisingdrives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke ofkottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able toquit his job and become a full time blogger.
Flipping Blogs -Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - orselling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (Ican think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a networklevel (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Incto AOL).
Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell branded T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an exampleof how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a fewextra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products throughprograms like Cafepress (although I have to say they’ve lost one of myown orders and are being quite unresponsive to my requests to follow itup at present). While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising- quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especiallyblogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details -but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over Indian Rupee 80, 000 inmerchandise for the calendar year of 2005.
Consulting andSpeaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to addblogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with noconsulting background earning money by charging readers for their timein consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs havebuilt them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts onniche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert.I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise wassomething that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through hisblog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in hisindustry.
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