A 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.