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- A Checklist for Choosing the Right Monetization Method
If you’ve been blogging for a while, you may already have tried a range of methods to monetize your blog. Some will have worked better than others, of course, but most mid- to long-term bloggers are continuously looking for new ways to meet our readers’ needs through products or services we can sell.
Blog products have come a long way since I started out, and that’s partially due to technology and market trends, and partially because of the creativity of bloggers themselves. We now have an endless stream of external product offerings to choose from (such as advertising and affiliate programs), plus our own creative ideas for offerings we’d like to develop ourselves.
How can you choose the right ones to try on your blog?
Obviously, there’s the question of return on investment, and it’s a critical one. But there are other issues that you’ll want to consider, too—especially if the investment (in terms of time as well as money) is large. And in any case, we can’t predict a return without doing some thinking about how relevant the offering is to our readers, along with some other considerations.
Let’s look at them now.
1. Your brand
You’ve probably spent years building your brand—which might include a look and feel, a philosophy or attitude, a tone of voice, an approach to engagement, and—you guessed it—an approach to making money.
It would be jarring, for example, to find the Zen Habits blog cluttered with busy advertising. On-site advertising is incompatible with the clear-minded philosophy of the brand; if it were used, it would dilute or undermine the strength of Zen Habits in readers’ minds.
You can probably reel off at least a few monetization techniques that probably aren’t a great fit for your brand. That’s fine, but when you’re considering a new idea—perhaps one that someone else has suggested or proposed to you—your brand might be a good place to start working out how appropriate it is for you.
2. Your goals
Take a look at your yearly (or monthly) plan and consider, even at a superficial level, whether the idea seems like it would take you closer to achieving the goals you’ve set for your blog.
I find that this can be a good way to weed out possibilities early on, because some ideas are straight-out no-gos. For those that could be plausible, more thinking will be required, but at each point in your analysis, it’s wise to keep your goals in mind.
This way, they can act sort of like a “sense check” at each point: you think, “Sure, this is looking good, but does this still make sense for my goals?” That tends to be important if you’re looking at using the product offering to help you make a change in direction or focus, or build out your audience more broadly.
3. Your audience
Your audience has preferences and expectations about your niche, and your brand. Sometimes, surprising them with something new works wonderfully, but only if that new product or service meets their needs deeply, and is a no-brainer for them to use.
Some monetization options simply will not work with your audience. For an extreme example, if I was thinking of starting a content farm as part of a monetization approach, I’d have to look for a different audience, because the vast majority of my readers would have no use for that service.
That’s a simplistic example—obviously the questions you’ll consider can get much more complex than this. I know that bloggers in some countries, and some niches, still have trouble monetizing their blogs in any way, because their readers consider that their advice and work should be available free of charge—that their blog should be a labour of love and not paid work.
Regardless of where you blog, or the niche you’re in, you have an audience. Those readers have expectations and requirements of your brand, and your niche. While those expectations may curb your monetization options, they may also open up opportunities. You’ll want to keep them in mind whenever you review a new product or service idea.
4. Fit with current offering
If you’ve got this far, the monetization idea you’re considering is probably looking pretty good! Next, look at how this new idea fits with your current offering of saleable products and services.
This idea of fit includes in a range of considerations, from choosing the best-fitting product formats (e.g. you have a practical guide in ebook form, but you might see an opportunity for a video series) to where the product fits within the audience’s learning curve (you might have products for beginners and advanced audience members, but nothing for those at an intermediate level).
Some ideas will complement your current and planned offerings; others may eat into the sales of a product you’re already selling. If you think that might take place, you’ll want to do some sums to see if that cannibalization will reduce your bottom line. Sometimes, losing sales of a lower-margin product to gain sales on a higher-margin offering will still boost your profits overall, so this is an important consideration.
5. Peer blogs’ offerings
This is a bigger consideration with some product ideas than others, but it’s always worth reviewing your peers’, or competitors’, offerings to see how your new product or service will stack up.
By looking at what others in your niche are doing, you’ll probably be able to get an idea of the monetization options that are likely acceptable to readers. You’ll also be able to see how stiff the competition will be in a certain product space you’re considering.
Finally, you might be able to glean opportunities that haven’t yet been tapped in your market—opportunities that your new idea can take advantage of.
6. Time to launch
Product development or setup time is a big consideration in ROI calculations, but it’s also an important consideration in a practical sense.
The time it would take you to create or set up your new monetization method may simply be beyond what your schedule will allow. Unless you can make some space, this product might be out of the question—for the time being, at least.
By assessing the time to launch, you can also more easily choose between competing monetization ideas, and schedule the ones you do select into your calendar.
7. Time to run
There are very few set-and-forget monetization options, especially for those who have been blogging for a long time. The longer your blog has been around, the more likely that you’ll have explored all of the lower maintenance monetization possibilities.
This means that taking on a new product or service will eat into your time—probably significantly. Once you launch the new offering, you’ll need to promote it in an ongoing way. Each new product takes an extra commitment. Are you wiling to make it?
Again, considering the time it’ll take you to run a product after its launch—to deal with affiliates, say, or write guest posts, do interviews, and do any day-to-day maintenance—can help you to decide between different monetization possibilities. It can also help you decide whether you’re prepared to commit the necessary time to the make the new product a success in the longer term.
8. Scalability
This is more than a current entrepreneurial buzzword—scalability directly affects our abilities to boost our blogs’ bottom lines. Is it as easy to deliver 100—or 100,000—units of this product or service offering as it is to deliver one? Is there some sales level at which you’ll need to invest more time to continue to make—or grow—sales?
The more scalable the product or service idea you’re considering, the more value you’re likely to be able to get out of it. The easier it is for you to ramp up service capacity, or product sales, the more lucrative that product will probably be.
When you’re considering scalability, look at your product and how you can potentially reuse or repurpose it, as well as at the support services or systems you’ll use to run and manage it.
This can help you to understand another element of risk involved in developing a new product or service idea. The more time and money you spend on it, the more easily scalable you may want the product to be—especially if that larger investment requires, from the outset, that you make large numbers of sales.
Is this monetization method for you?
Your experience as a blogger, and your understanding of your audience and niche, will probably make some of these considerations no-brainers. Over time, we all begin to develop that gut feel that tells us if a possible product or service will work for us.
But sometimes, the choices (or our reasons) aren’t that clear-cut, and it’s those times when working through this checklist might be helpful. Of course, you might need to add to or adapt this basic list to reflect certain extra considerations for your blog, brand, niche, or audience. If you can share your ideas for assessing new products with us in the comments, I’m sure we’d all find that helpful!
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
A Checklist for Choosing the Right Monetization Method
Переслать - Guest Post Hosting: the Surprising Traffic Driver
This guest post is by Shari Lopatin of ShariLopatin.com.
We've all heard how writing guest posts for other blogs can increase exposure and drive traffic to your site. But what about hosting guest bloggers as a way to increase traffic?
New concept, huh?
Before we move on, I want you to stop right here and clear your mind. Then, repeat after me: "Inviting others to my site will not help my competitors. Inviting others to my site will not help my competitors."
Benefits of hosting guest bloggers
Several months ago, I was experiencing a major lull in my blog, "Shari Lopatin: Rogue Writer." Literally, I averaged 15 visits a day. Then, I invited another published writer and teacher to craft a guest post. The day she published … bingo!
My blog's views soared from 15 to 200—in less than two hours. And it only climbed from there.
After inviting others to guest post in the coming weeks, I started seeing a trend. Every time I hosted a guest blogger, my page views more than doubled. Sometimes, they quadrupled. And this was good traffic, too. People commented. They followed me on Twitter. And, some even subscribed to my blog.
How to drive traffic with guest bloggers
Here's the key: you can't invite just anyone to write for your site. You have to find the "influencers" within your niche. If you want to be successful, here are the steps I recommend following. They haven't failed me yet!
1. Find potential influencers
Start by using Twitter's search feature, or other social media search tools, such as SocialMention.com or Topsy.com. Use terms that correlate to your blog's niche, such as "social media" or "photography."
2. Identify the true influencers
These are the people whose followings are not only large, but engaged. Some points to look for: consistent blog comments, regular (but not necessarily frequent) blog posts, more Twitter followers than they are following, and consistent responses to Facebook comments.
3. Be reasonable in choosing your influencers
I say this because if you're a lesser-known writer, you cannot expect Seth Rogen to guest post on your blog. Even another writer with 2,000 Twitter followers could be a great pick.
4. Court your influencers
Like them on Facebook, subscribe to their blog (and then comment), follow them on Twitter. Get to know their writing style and understand how they interact with their readers.
5. Reach out and invite them to guest post
If you courted your influencers correctly, they may already know your name by now. So email them, or send a direct message on Twitter. Ask them to write a guest post for your blog … and tell them why you're asking (i.e. do they generate great discussions, or perhaps their composition blows you away?).
6. Cross-promote!
This is vital. The whole reason your blog will benefit from hosting a guest, is because of cross-promotion. On the day you publish, ask your guest to:
- post a few links to Twitter
- promote their post on Facebook
- run a teaser on their blog, driving traffic to your site
- and don't forget: you do the same to promote them!
Give it a try, and I promise you'll see results. If it works, I'd love to hear your success stories (I might even blog about them), so find me at the virtual hubs below and let me know. If you’ve already used this technique to boost traffic to your blog, let us know your story in the comments.
Shari Lopatin is an award-winning professional writer, journalist, and media strategist who’s been published regionally, and nationally. Find her on Twitter @ShariLopatin, follow her on Facebook, or visit her at "Shari Lopatin: Rogue Writer," where she blogs every other Thursday about writing tips, funny stories, industry news, and media strategies.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Guest Post Hosting: the Surprising Traffic Driver
Переслать - 5 Tips to Convince Editors to Say "Yes" to Your Guest Posts
This guest post is by Alexis Grant of AlexisGrant.com.
You know all the benefits of guest posting on popular blogs. And you’ve decided to start guest posting today. So you want to do your best to crank out awesome content.
But smart ideas are only half the battle. The difference between pitching a thought-provoking post and pitching a thought-provoking post that gets accepted is making it easy for your editor to say “yes.” In other words, go beyond providing awesome, unique content and make accepting your post a no-brainer.
As editor of Brazen Life, I see aspiring contributors make the same mistakes again and again—mistakes that make me groan and delete. Here's what you've got to remember: the editor you're pitching is a person with a job to do, just like you. And the easier you make their job, the more likely they are to publish your post.
Here are five steps you can take that will make it easy for editors to say “yes” to your guest posts.
1. Write in the "you" voice, not the "I" voice
Readers want to feel like you're talking to them, offering helpful advice and ideas—not like you're talking about yourself. While the occasional anecdote can be effective, your best bet is to start out your post by talking to the reader, and writing about how what you're about to share will change their life. Then delve into your personal anecdote.
Here's an example of what I mean. Writing in the "I" voice might turn out a post that begins like this:
“I've always had trouble paying back my student loans.”
Writing in the "you" voice would look more like this:
“Having trouble paying back your student loans?”
The “you” there is only implied—"[Are you] having trouble paying back your student loans?"—but it's still there. Here's another option:
“Lots of students are having trouble paying back student loans. If you fall into this camp, listen up.”
That's not the catchiest intro, but you get the idea—it's written with “you”s rather than “I”s. This concept is essential throughout your piece, but most important in your introduction.
2. Don't bury the lede
The biggest problem I see with guest posts is that they fail to have a focused introduction that tells the reader what they're about to get—and tells them right away. In journalism, we call this "burying the lede."
You only have a few seconds to catch and keep the attention of your reader. That means you can't spend two paragraphs getting to the meat of your idea. Instead, you've got to get a running start, at least hinting at your main point from the very beginning.
If you're having a hard time with this, see what happens if you chop off the first graph or two. Is it possible the piece would actually be stronger if you started with the second or third paragraph?
Even writers who offer fabulous ideas throughout their piece often have a weak introduction. Give your first few paragraphs extra care; they'll make or break your post. And your editor will be particularly happy if s/he doesn't have to rewrite your intro.
3. Write a great headline—even if you don't have to
You may not be required to write a headline for your post, but guess what? It makes your editor's job easier. The headline can be the hardest part; it's got to be catchy, relevant and SEO-optimized. And it should match the voice of the other headlines on the site.
That means it will probably take some time to come up with a good one. But rather than completing your post and pitching it straight away, consider the extra effort it takes to create a fabulous headline part of the assignment.
There's an added bonus here, too: if your headline is great, more readers will read, share and comment on your post. You'll get more clicks on the link in your byline and more return for your investment. If you leave the headline up to the editor, there's a chance they'll come up with one that will serve you well, but if you take the time to do it yourself, you know you've done all you can to maximize eyes on the post.
Of course, it's always the editor's prerogative to change the headline, but that shouldn't keep you from giving it your best shot. And take it from me—your editor will appreciate it!
4. Follow the publication's link policy from the get-go
Each publication has its own policy about including links within the post¸ So either look for those requirements within the publication's guest post guidelines, or ask the editor ahead of time.
At Brazen Life, we love to see links within the post so long as they're relevant and helpful to our readers; in fact, we don't run posts without links. But some publications have different preferences, often asking, for example, that the writer not link to his or her own blog. Getting this right the first time will make your editor's day that much easier.
5. When in doubt, create a list
Having trouble getting your ideas across succinctly? Lots of us do, and lists can be a great help with that.
Here's the good news: lists are popular with readers, too. Most posts with "5 Tips" or "5 Pieces of Advice" or "5 Reasons" get lots of clicks, which means if you're good at writing list posts, you should do it.
I hate to advise this initially, because it's so refreshing when a writer offers an awesome post that's not written as a list or in bullet format. But bullets do make posts easy to read online. And if you're struggling to write a helpful post, bullets can make it easier for you to convey your main ideas.
Following these tips—and making your editor's job easy—won't just help you land one guest post. If you abide by these suggestions, write a clean post and offer thought-provoking content, they'll want you to write for them again down the line. And that means lots more guest posts in your future.
Do you have any tips you can add to this list? We’d love to hear them in the comments. And if you’re looking for other ways to use guest posts to attract new readers, stick around—later today, we’ll see how accepting guest posts on your blog can boost your traffic levels.
Alexis Grant is managing editor of Brazen Careerist's blog, Brazen Life.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
5 Tips to Convince Editors to Say “Yes” to Your Guest Posts
Переслать - Why You Should Start Guest Posting … Today
This guest post is by Jaime of USBundles.com.
When they’re done correctly, guest posts can be a true “meeting of the minds”—a way for both the guest blogger and the host website to benefit from association. However, many bloggers may resist the opportunity for various reasons.
Let's examine some of the most common reasons why a blogger might be reluctant to guest post—and see why these aren't really issues after all.
Tone is a ubiquitous conundrum. Or should I have said "tone is always a sticky wicket"?
Exactly. You already know the significant challenges that come with writing for your own goals—you need to understand how to engage an audience, and develop your style so that it is both natural and effective in context. When you're a guest poster, you need to take into consideration a potentially unfamiliar site and audience—an extra barrier that must be overcome.
Why this isn't really an issue: you're there precisely because you bring something extra to the table. Some unique combination of style and expertise got you the gig in the first place. Don't waste your time and their time by being overly self-conscious and diluting the qualities that make you valuable.
On the other hand, square pegs don't fit into round holes, and opposites only attract in the movies
If you tend to use short, witty, casual blog posts to get your point across, a guest blog on a site that involves serious analysis and research is going to seem like a bad fit. What happens when readers accustomed to a 400-word top-ten list get thrown a 1,500-word in-depth discussion with charts and graphs (or vice versa)?
Why this isn't really an issue: you can maintain your tone and style while respecting the host's expectations. Examine the layout and structure of the existing posts. How do they use bullet points, paragraphs, block quotes, and other structural elements? How do they use photos, tables, graphs, and captions? Flex your writerly muscles by attempting to communicate in a format that will be familiar to the readership, and be prepared to go into more or less depth than you're accustomed to. You'll only become more flexible and knowledgeable, and therefore more valuable overall.
Who does this really benefit? You're giving away precious words, and directing potential readers toward another site!
You can't help but wonder if both of you might be better off concentrating on building your own audience and optimizing your own traffic. It's hard enough getting people to come and stay—surely it can't be a good idea to give people a reason to go somewhere else?
Why this isn't really an issue: what's true in Real Life is even more true on the internet—networking is a basic key to success. A major part of SEO strategy is to develop a fertile web of connections between sites; a healthy combination of quality content and link traffic (in that order!) is the single best way to improve your search results. But even more than that, exposing content to a wider audience can only be a good thing for the visibility, reputation, and connections on both sides of the equation.
You're an outsider. The regulars will say "who the heck is this person?" and you'll say "I don't belong, so I don't care"
You are a potentially disruptive influence upon a community of readers who feel comfortably empowered to engage with the content. Even if you hit all the right notes as far as tone and structure, you're likely to address some different topics and different points of view. And you're at risk of maintaining your outsider status by refusing to engage with the community.
Why it's not really an issue: you really wouldn't have been considered for guest posting in the first place if you and the host (and therefore the host's community) didn't share a relevant interest. Even the narrowest niche has a wide range of thematic connections (call it the blogging version of “six degrees of Kevin Bacon!”), so don't worry too much if your topic strays a bit from the usual subject matter. We're not talking about some sort of free-form aggregate web site here—guests bring their quality and expertise on a specific topic, and both sides get the benefit of spicing up their “routine” with a different angle.
And call me sneaky, but it's a perfect way to introduce a little controversy (and therefore conversation and attention, which benefits everyone!). Be as respectful and ethical as possible, of course, but don't be afraid to ruffle some feathers—both you and the host will be able to distance yourselves from a negative reaction, if necessary.
Later today we’ll look at two key aspects of guest posting to help you get ahead in this competitive field. First, we’ll present tips to help you get your post accepted so you can build your profile with others’ audiences. Then, we’ll see how accepting guests on your own blog can boost your traffic levels.
But for now, tell us: have you ever guest posted? Are you facing the challenges mentioned here? Share your experiences of guest posting in the comments.
Jaime is an avid hiker and skier who loves to write in her spare time for USBundles.com—home of USBundles.com.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Why You Should Start Guest Posting … Today
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