David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

So You Want to Make Money? Syndication, Monetization and Affiliate Programs for your Blog #beabloggers

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bea bloggersA bunch of panelists in this session, all moderated by Scott Fox of clickmillionaires.com. Lots of ideas on how to monetize a blog in this session. Here are some highlights:

Ron Hogan, founder of beatrice.com

He gave the “Big picture”

won’t make a lot doing a bloom blog. You can make “beer money” – small amounts of money.

Thinks that most categories are already covered, and people gravitate towards established blogs

Rita Arens – senior editor of blogher.com

charge for reading time – at blogger book club, they pay for reviews. There are over 250,000 books published each year, and all those authors are looking for attention.

Have to use disclosures – say if someone sent you the book.

Thea James – co-founder of The Book Smugglers

sweat the small stuff: they use the blogads network for ads. Mostly book ads that are tailored to their content.

also use affiliate programs like Amazon Affiliates.

Sarah Pitre – founder of Forever Young Adult

build community through social media to drive visitors and page views.

started a store – tshirts, stickers – made them a decent amount of money.

Also found a company that sponsors them. They get server space and help them build a community.

Amazon Affiliates – people feel comfortable with Amazon, and have probably used them – so it’s an accepted link. An independent bookstore like Powell’s isn’t as well known, so people might not feel as comfortable clicking that link.

Other thoughts (don’t remember who said what here):

They don’t use Google Adsense for the most part

claim that you don’t have control over content

claim that you don’t have design control

me – none of those were correct … but whatever 🙂

another panelist corrected that (thanks!)

No one’s making money through syndication (no one on stage, anyway).

If you blog for someone else (i.e., Huffington Post) – you are building an audience for someone else. If you quite and start blogging somewhere else, you won’t necessarily ba able to take that audience with you.

Attracting traffic:

Stumbleupon – can work well. Try to stand out.

Blogging Today: What do you need to know and what’s next #BEABloggers

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bea bloggersQ&A discussion session

Relationship between publishers and bloggers:

  • feels that publishers know what blogs are and what book bloggers do
  • what kinds of arrangements can publishers help with for book bloggers

Ethics of the relationship

  • expectation – getting a book for free

Does book blogging actually influence book sales?

  • they write about things they love – so their review or share is seen as authentic
  • a way to show the book is gathering interest before it’s publishers (advanced copies)
  • Goodreads guy – thinks yes, they do
  • it’s the beginnings of a grassroots campaign
  • bloggers tend to drive word-of-mouth, which drives traditional media to mention it, which then drives book sales

Do you use social media?

  • Facebook. One person thinks it reaches more people but is less effective
  • Twitter is the key for another person – it drives a lot of traffic, as does Stumbleupon

How to engage community?

  • write for a reader who doesn’t always read book blogs
  • i.e., if there’s a blog with a ton of polls and contests and etc and then an occasional post on-topic, the blog looks like it’s for someone involved in the community

Facebook – very image-focused. Don’t just do a post – add an image to it (more people will click)

How to engage a community that you already have?

  • only post when you feel inspired
  • another person has a rhythm to her blog (certain types of posts on certain days)

How did you develop your own voice on a blog?

  • one panelist was an earlier blogger
  • Just be yourself – you WILL have your own voice

How are ebooks changing what you do?

  • people don’t really care – a book’s a book. It depends…
  • harder for one blog blogger to review an ebook – harder to flip back and forth, etc.
  • much more convenient for travel
  • not the same experience

Anonymity and ebook reading:

  • you can download something and read it, and no one knows what you’re reading

Blogging code of conduct?

  • has more problems on Facebook Page rather than her blog
  • has problems with plagiarism … some bloggers really don’t understand plagiarism, citations, and fair use (me talking)

Making a living from blogging?

  • the blog goes along with the career – one helps the other
  • gets a lot of contacts from the blog

Do blogs have a lifespan?

  • depends.

Goodreads for Publishers, Booksellers & Librarians #BEA

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BEASo this morning, I was hopping around between the BEA Bloggers Conference and the BookExpo America (BEA) conference. I will be crazy like that all week – because Blogworld Expo is in the same building. I’ll plan on tagging my posts #BEA, #BEABloggers, and #Blogworld.

First off, I listened to Patrick Brown, Community Manager & Author Program Manager at Goodreads, talk about Goodreads for librarians, publishers, and booksellers. My library uses Goodreads, so this should be interesting!

Goodreads: largest site for readers and book recommendations in the world. Think of it as social networking around a love of books. 9 million readers! It includes recommendations, reviews, shelves, and book clubs.

They get 21 million monthly unique visitors, and 140 million page views a month.

Wow – goodreads users have added 315 million books to their shelves so far.

Goodreads’ mission is Discovery – help people find books they love and share them with friends.

Your goal (publishers, authors): get reviews, especially early in the life of your book.

  • it helps new readers discover your book
  • help readers decide if they want to read it
  • spread beyond Goodreads (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, syndication to Powell’s, Google Books, USA Today)

Publishers can place ad campaigns in Goodreads.

Erica Barmash, Harper Perennial – explanation of an ad campaign for a book.

  • banner ad on the homepage and throughout the site
  • total impressions – 4.7 million, 10,315 actual clicks. Goodreads got them more clicks that People or Entertainment Weekly.
  • Cost per click as about $1.12
  • she felt they got the best ad value with Goodreads – Goodreads gives stats on how many people added the book to their shelves and marked the book “to read.”
  • did a video chat with the author (had hundreds of viewers).

Back to Patrick:

42,000 Goodreads authors. Benefits:

  • build your community online with an author profile
  • find new readers with giveaways and text ads
  • connect with fans

Advance giveaways generate pre-release buzz

  • 35,000 people enter giveaways each day
  • average giveaway gets 850 entries.
  • it shows at least some engagement, and an interesting way to get interest
  • give more books in a giveaway – helps get more reviews (so like 25 books to give away)

You can also purchase text ads (around $50) to drive readers to a giveaway

Goodreads Groups:

  • 20,000+ book clubs on Goodreads
  • create a masthead (use this for branding), add prominent links to videos
  • add your events and invite friends
  • host an author chat in advance of your event

Use your staff picks to good use!

Salt Lake City Public Library (or maybe Salt Lake County Library System – he sorta mixed both libraries up a bit) group case study:

  • librarians act as moderators to control group content
  • use challenges and polls for easy participation (i.e, read 5 short stories in May, then post about it)
  • Some groups use Google Plus hangouts, Skype, etc to get more interaction happening

Tips for a successful group:

  • book clubs around a single title are stifling
  • reading challenges let people choose
  • don’t ignore the long tail reader
  • anticipate conflict and plan ahead (set up ground rules in advance)
  • let all users join in – more fun that way.

Lots of Blog Posts Headed Your Way!

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BookExpo AmericaJust a head’s up about next week for y’all. On Monday-Thursday, I will be frantically attending three concurrent conferences in New York City:

BEA Bloggers ConferenceAnd if you can believe it, I’ll attempt to blog the whole thing! Well, my view of the whole thing, anyway. So – look for a bunch of session notes type blog posts next week about anything from ebooks and publishers to how to improve a podcast. Maybe even a video or two.

My posts will be heavy on the Blogworld side of things, but there are some really interesting-sounding ebooks/publishers/libraries talks going on too, and I think both you and I will find those interesting!

Yessirree, I will be in geek heaven. Just sayin 🙂

Blogworld Expo

Communicating with Our Customers

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new catalog signageDuring my library’s ILS (library catalog) migration project, we wanted to make sure our customers knew about it. It’s not usually a good thing to have your customers show up the day after we go live, thinking “what in the world happened here?”

Communicating with 170,000 people is no easy task! Here’s what we did:

Signs in the building: We had signs everywhere in the building (check out my Flickr set to see some of our signs), including:

  • huge banner in our entryway
  • images pointing out the new catalog was coming on our digital signs
  • small stand-up signs on tables and at the service desks
  • signs on all the catalog-only computers
  • a HUGE sign at the circulation desk

digital branch signageSigns on our digital branch: if you visited our website in the past month, you knew about our ILS migration! We used one of our big ads on the main page of our website to point to an article and video about the change. People actually read the article (judging by our Google Analytics numbers) and we received 38 comments on the article (some from me, answering questions).

We actually used that article and the big front-page ad as a countdown of sorts, too. Every day, we updated the ad (i.e., 3,2,1, it’s here! type stuff) and updated the article with a “tip of the day” for the new catalog.

Social Media: We shared about the project widely via social media. For us, that meant pointing to the article and answering questions about the project using Twitter and Facebook. We also made a video about the project, and dumped it into Youtube and on our website.

Traditional Media: we have a good relationship with local media, so we were able to tell customers about the new library catalog via a local TV station (they do a “Library Tuesdays” segment during their 4pm news show) and through an article in our local newspaper.

And now, the big question – did all that communication work? I think so. While I’m sure there are people showing up at the library or at our website, thinking “what the heck? Why does this look different all of the sudden?” I also know that customers knew about our project. Why? Because they told us. I had more than one person come up to me, find out I worked at the library, and said “how’s that new library catalog project coming along? We love the library!” Other staff told me they had a similar experience.

That says to me that our customers, for the most part, got the message. So – mischief managed!

Have you ever had to communicate with a large group of customers about a project? Did you do something I didn’t list? Let me know in the comments!