Juile Faherty writes an article in today’s New York Times about BloggerCon II. The article focuses on the business potential of blogs and advertising again rises to the number one position for revenue generation.
There is too much emphasis on advertising and blogs. I realize that Adwords and BlogAds have created the possibility of instant micropublishing. I realize that when mainstream media reports on our corner of the world that they are going to report from their perspective – newspapers and magazines create content and then sell advertising. I also realize that people are finding success and that makes a good story.
Let me offer another perspective.
- My blog gives me credibility. It has allowed me to pursue projects that would not have been possible without it.
- My project with KaosPilots has been moderately successful. We have sold a dozen $42 books in about the same number of days. Here we built off the PR from Fast Company, bought a couple of Adwords, and took advantage of the fact that Google likes weblogs.
- I have landed a gig where I am developing and providing content for a company’s external weblog. I’ll post more on that soon. Bottom line: I am getting paid to blog!
There are lots of way to make money blogging. I would not say any of my methods are particularly novel, but I just wanted to show some alternatives.
Just re-reading Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin and he talks about how important powerful (as well as promiscuous, or “paid”) sneezers (a.k.a influencers) are to marketing products and services. I think many bloggers fall in the “powerful sneezer” category which are critical people to anyone selling a product or service. How to maintain credibility while being paid is a fine balancing act that I am still grappling with.
My blog is too new to contribute in any way to revenue. (From purely P&L view, I lose $14 per month from my blog now.) I am also working on an client’s customer-facing corporate blog, but they were looking for general strategic marketing expertise and weren’t even aware I had my own blog! Of course, I can do a better job with their “conversational marketing” efforts having first-hand knowledge of the blogosphere.