Saturday, September 20, 2008

Top Affiliates Share Their Money Making Secrets at BlogWorld


One of the kick-off panels at BlogWorld Expo today in Las Vegas comprised of some of the blogosphere's top affliate bloggers -- Jim Kukral (moderator), Darren Rowse (Problogger), Zac Johnson (zacjohnson.com), John Chow (JohnChow.com), Brian Clark (CopyBlogger.com) and Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney.com). Pictured are (l-r) Rowse, Kukal, Johnson and Matt Hulett, CEO of WidgetBucks.

With many bloggers turning to veterans such as these to find out strategies for making blog money, the group provided points of view across various topics of revenue. Here were some of the topics and trends they are seeing:

What is their greatest source of revenue? Here's a collection of their viewpoints: 1) direct ad sales, 2) affiliate promotions, 3) ad networks and 4) Google AdSense, call the webmaster welfare by one of the panelists. The point was made that direct sales take a lot of time and the pure profit may be worth it, however, you need to have a reasonable amount of traffic and following to attract advertisers -- this is where ad networks make it easy. Affiliate promotions can be incredibly profitable, but you need the trust and following to make those work as well.

In spreading the word, RSS or email newsletter? While RSS is a growing in popularity, Darren Rowse made the point that people like what's familiar, and that's email. But putting the email newsletter signup isn't necessarily enough. John Chow recommended creating a free offer to give people incentive to subscribe, such as a free e-book or t-shirt. There are services that automatically distribute a collection of your recent blogs last number of stories (a figure you determine).

Should my personal brand represent my site? It depends. Where do you want to take it in the future. For example, Darren Rowse after admittedly messing up domains in the past, chose Problogger.net because it is representative of what he does. Copyblogger.com, which helps people with content creation is also descriptive. JimKukral.com and Zacjohnson.com are in a different position where the site IS their brand and can have huge benefits if you are working toward consulting and services, but potentially more challenging when it comes to be acquired down the road (if that happens to be a goal).

For another summary, check out this recap of Zac Johnson.

3 comments:

ThaBiGGDoGG said...

Very good article. Blogs are taking over for the new way to earn money online from.

Unknown said...

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Anonymous said...

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