Blogengage Challenge: Unconventional Monetization of your Blog.
September 10, 2011 
16 Comments
I’ve actually written a couple articles about this on my blog. And recently did a MASSIVE carnival where bloggers can get TONS of information. So for the sake of this challenge I’ll share the main points and link back to the carnival so people can get more information. Here goes:
The methods bloggers think of when they ponder monetization is:
- Google Adsense.
- Banner ads
- Text links.
- Sponsored reviews.
- Affiliate products etc.
They rarely think of two things (and both look a challenge, while one isn’t really).
Your own product.
This is the BEST way to monetize your blog. Taking your expertise and setting it up in a business model. And this is the best way because it makes you the most money. No commissions… just pure profit. And with so many affiliate platform around, you are able to use the leverage of other affiliate marketers and make more money.
See how if you simply change your perspective to making money online, you could have people making money FOR YOU, instead of YOU making money for other people. Sure, you probably make 50% on the product either way (if you sold others’ products and if others sell your products), but if you OWN the product, you sell a lot more units (if you have an affiliate program).
However, with this method, there is a TON of work involved.
- Making the product.
- Building a sales funnel.
- Making connections with power affiliates.
- Paying designers.
- Setting up an autoresponder and writing an autoresponder series.
- Setting up an affiliate account having it administrated.
- Adding value.
- Creating some give-aways.
As you can see, a LOT of work goes into the above method. The next method requires a little less work. and you can still make the same amount of money because the same principle applies.
Publishing a book.
The beauty about this is that you could finish project in as a little as a week. The reason it takes so little time, is because your book is already written. What you do is what clever bloggers and publishing bloggers call ‘re-purposing your content’. The skinny of it is that you collect content for your book from your blog by placing content from your WP categories into chapters and then go through a normal self-publishing process.
And that’s it! You can catch more on this subject here.
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Hi Ivin Viljoen, this is very interesting. I am planning to set up new site that offer my own service at the same time doing some affiliate. In fact I will have an intensive one on one tutorial for the PPC. Honestly, in my previous blog I offer my own product but didn’t do any affiliate, this is because, I am not an expert with regards to affiliate or any PPC. I am so fortunate that you discuss this in your blog at least I do have a lot of encouragement now to start this. thanks a lot.
~Clariz
Thanks Ivin, this has inspired me to finish one of my books, and publish it!
Making your own product requires a different skill set than from blogging and one should play to their strengths
I am new to this blog. My site is only a little over a month old, though I have owned the URL almost two years. I completely agree that focusing on trying to monetize the site before developing a lot of great content and high traffic will just be a disappointment. But if we focus on the audience’s needs and desires, developing fresh content on a regular basis, and develop our “brands,” the traffic will eventually begin to increase, and so will the money. Thinking about the money first is exactly backward. Another thing I have been doing is avoiding the urge to put something out there every single day just because it is a new day. I should also, in my opinion, be more concerned with quality than quantity of output. If it takes two or three days to publish a post on my blog but it is really good, that is way more important than just publishing a bunch of junk every single day.
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Guest blogging can help you build authority in the blogosphere and help you gain respect from your fellow bloggers. This is how you can start making a name for yourself. Don’t miss out on these amazing marketing opportunities.
I’ve never really managed to get more than a few dollars from any blogs – but I do find them invaluable for building links with my online stores and e-shops. The blogs are really the backbone of the operation but the adsense revenue I get from them is tiny.
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Hi Ivan,
Selling your own service is indeed best, you keep 100% of the commission and are in full control.
Not sure republishing your own blog content can be done for money but you can indeed use it for lead generation.
I have been toying with the idea of a workbook so I think it’s time to start working on that!
Thanks,
Nik
Yeah, courses online and offline are a good way to make money teaching your skills you acquired.
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You have a good intentions Ivin. It really helped me a lot.
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Thanks for creating interest for affiliate marketing before I have only knowledge of Adsense.This article is a tutorial for a newbie like me.
This review tells me to have my own product to organized. It is really a great way and very inspiring to help people.
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Awesome post, my friend. I’ve done the e-book thing and am working on #2. This is a VERY cool post.
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My personal favorite is an email e-course.
You can put your product or an affiliate product in front of your readers multiple times.
Higher conversion percentage this way…:)
Mark
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Hello Mark. The challenge is to build that email list. And it doesn’t help much if that email list is not targeted. If it is a well thought our and executed autoresponder series can help potential customers into becoming regular clients.
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September 11, 2011 at 10:21 AM
This is great information that I missed before, but I do have one question. How do you make connections with power affiliates? I have a product and it would be great to get some power affiliates to help me get the word out. Another thought too – what about us fiction writers out there? What products come to mind to produce?
Great post, Ivin.
My initial thought are to produce a course to help people with the process. From brainstorming and organizing your inspiration all the way to the execution of the actual writing. It would be very valuable and awesome if you can reach newbies just before NaNoWriMo season.
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