6 figure blogging 1

Six Figure Blogging

Six Figure Blogging Call 1 Transcript
Editor’s notes: These transcripts have been edited for accuracy and clarity. You
will notice differences between these transcripts and the audio recordings.

Intro and Overview
Andy: Welcome to our first call, for Six Figure Blogging. It’s our pilot. It’s our
first. If it was a ship, we would smash a champagne bottle against it! Thank you
so much everybody for calling in today. We have sixty-seven people on the phone.
And from all over the world. I know we’ve got people from Singapore, Australia,
South America, Europe, North America so this is truly an international effort.
Darren, I am floored. I am absolutely floored!

Darren: Tonight are we going to be talking about the why and how, blogs are
good for making money online. We are going to start off with some why’s I think
Andy, is that right?

Andy: Yes, this is our overview for today, just so that you all get the framework
for what we’re doing, today’s first part is how blogs make you money, and then
the why. Then we’re going to be talking about learning from the existing
probloggers and networks that are out there and we’re going to wind up with the
preview of next week as well as some field work for people to think about or to
even do over the next week. So take it away, Darren.

Why Blogs Make Money Online
Darren: Excellent. We’re going to start with why blogs are good for making
money online. I want to start by saying that blogs are not the only way to make
money. Just looking at the variety of people that have signed up for this course, a
lot of you have already experimented with making money through affiliate
marketing, through designing websites, through consulting, which is fantastic.
We don’t want to build up blogs as the answer to every question that you might
have for making money. A lot of people get trapped into that and build blogging
© 2005 Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. All Rights Reserved. 1
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to be something that it is not. Having said that, blogs really do, in my mind, are
ideal for making money online in a variety of ways.

Probably the main thing that I love about them is that they are very flexible, very
adaptable, and they are very easy to get into. They are a type of thing that can
grow with you. For me, that makes it ideal for someone who knew nothing about
the internet, and nothing about putting up a website, to actually be able to start a
business in quite an easy, simple way at first, in a free way is fantastic.

The other thing that is great about blogs is that they rank well in search engines.
Great. So really, blogs rank so well in search engines for a variety of reasons. Just
by the fact that they update new content on a daily or on a weekly basis. Search
engines love regularly updating and changing pages. The fact that they have a site
structure where there is a category is ideal for search engines as well. I guess in a
sense, each category on your blog becomes a separate blog, a separate page in of
itself, which is something that search engines react really well to. Blogs interlink
within a blog, which again, is another search engine optimization strategy that a
lot of the other top sites try to build it into their sites but blogs do it
automatically.

Andy: Along with a lot of traditional websites sort of shy away from being
interlinked.

Darren: That’s right. And blogs naturally link between themselves very well.
They are interactive and they attract back readers and that sort of technology
actually builds natural relevant links between websites, which is probably the
main factor about building search engine traffic. So they really work well with
search engines. As I said, they’re highly flexible and adaptable; they’re easy to set
up.

What I love about them is that the overhead that I have as a professional blogger
is very low. I have friends, who are in business, who started up businesses and
had to outlay lots of money up front to set up a business. All I had to outlay was
my time. I already had a computer. I already had internet access. I paid a little bit
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for some hosting, I paid a little bit for some design, but the overhead’s very little.
I probably paid about two or thee thousand dollars a year in overheads to bring in
a hundred times that in terms of income. So my friends are all very jealous of me
in that regard.

I think also another beauty of blogs is that they also lend themselves very well to
niches and we’re going to be talking about niches next week. I think that is
another reason that they actually do quite well in a commercial space. We know
that in business these days that small is good and tight niches and tight focuses
on topics and on expertise is doing really doing well in the wider business world
at the moment and so blogs are great in those terms. Any other factors that
you’ve come up with Andy?

Andy: I think you covered most of it, just to reiterate the tight focus and the
niche is the superstar part of it all, that the content is all geared towards a certain
focused niche instead of having this broad website that a niche would that is
focused on the website and is content focused, it really helps to grab those search
engine results and get readers interested in that particular hyper focused niche.

Darren: Yes, the other thing I would say is that blogs are bringing in and
creating community along with loyalty, brand loyalty and the fact that they do
have comments that there are a variety of tools that build community on a site.
That is amazing community to build on blogs and that is a great basis for building
an income stream as well as you build a loyal readership. There are many reasons
that blogs are suited to making money. Having said that, there are some factors
that you want to work on. It’s not just as easy as that. For instance, ranking in
search engines is not just a matter of having a blog, you can do a lot of things to
increase the chances of that which we will be covering in six weeks in our metrics
section.

Andy: Now do you want to talk about the voice that blogs are written in and that
seems to really attract readers that it is a pretty fresh, human voice in exception
to traditional websites?

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Darren: Yes, again, that it is probably a trend in large business as well that
people are actually wanting to know the people who make the products. I know in
Australia, at the moment, there a lot of businesses that are doing very well are
around personalities and around people rather than about these big anonymous
machines that sits in a big gray building and you feel like you’re in an institution.
People actually want something more personal. They go to the local shops a little
bit more here in Australia now because they want to know the person who’s
making their coffee. So there is that sort of sense in blogs as well, that people can
actually know the one who is coming up with this content. It’s not just some
nameless machine that is spitting out content. It’s actually a real person. I think
that is something that loads itself to blogging very well as well. Do you want to
move onto how blogs make money Andy?

Andy: Yes, I think we covered the whys pretty.

How Blogs Make Money
Darren: Excellent. Really, what the meat of this call is about today is looking at
introducing some of the ways people are actually using blogs to make money. I
want to run through about eleven income steams that you might want to consider
adding to your blog.

One of the traps that I see with a lot of blogs is that they discover AdSense and
they never look wider than AdSense. I’ve discovered a whole group of bloggers
the other day who didn’t know anything about affiliates marketing for instance.
I’m going to run you through eleven different types of things that may suit your
blogs better then AdSense. That fact is that AdSense isn’t the answer to every blog
and really, you want to combine some of these factors together depending upon
the goals of your blogs, depending on your traffic levels and a number other
factors which we’ll examine at the end of this sort of little states.

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Income Stream #1: Blogads

Darren: The first one I want to look at is Blogads. If you go to
http://www.blogads.com, you’ll see there, a system of putting ads on your blogs
that a lot of bloggers are using quite successfully. I want to use one of my blogs as
an example here. If you go to digitalphotographyblog.com, that’s one of my older
blogs that’s on digital cameras and you’ll see that on that blog, it will lead you
through to another domain that is just easy to tell you the Digital Photography
Blog name. You look on that, on the right hand side there, in the side bar, you’ll
see at the top of the right hand side bar, a search tool and underneath that, you’ll
see a AdSense ad, and underneath that you’ll see five Blogads.

They’ve all got the same size, the picture on them, and the first one. The first one,
I’m seeing is looking to buy a camera is making money from digital photography.
There are five of them there. They are what are called Blogads. If you go to
bottom of those Blogads, it’s the fifth one down, you’ll a little thing that say, “see
your message here.” If you click on that, it will take you to Blogads. Blogads is a
system that is designed by Henry Copeland. A lot of political bloggers
traditionally use Blogads. I was looking at the Daily Kos, the other day. He’s
charging five thousand dollars per week for his premium position Blogads. Five
thousand a week and he has a number of difference spots in his blog that you can
buy, but that is the premium one. Obviously, some people are making some
serious bucks out of Blogads. They lend themselves very well to political blogs.
Traditionally that is where they are strong. If you can see the photography one,
they are starting to branch out unto other niches. There are some creative
networking things that bloggers are together on a particular topic.

Andy: And to expand on that, if youy take into account a particular blog, again, it
is a very tight focused niche whether it’s a, in the US whether it is Conservative,
or very Liberal or Progressive, the blogs have focused content for that particular
point of view, with people writing with those point of view so people with that
point of view are going to go to those blogs so the ads are working really well

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because the ads are aligned to that point of view. So you can grab that from
politics just like any other niche or brand that you can think of.

Darren: That’s right, and the beauty of Blogads is that you have the ability to
reject or accept ads. You have total control over which ads appear on your site.
You also have complete control over setting the price that people pay for your ad
which is something that AdSense, for example, doesn’t offer you. Blogads, the
downside, is that you have less ability to change the design of the ads. You have
little control over that. For instance, the size of the ads is almost out of your
control. So there are some ups and down to Blogads as on top of that.

Income Stream #2: Google AdSense

Darren: The second I want to look at is AdSense itself. AdSense is ideal for niche
topics as Blogads is. You’ll see in my digital photography that I’ve got a number of
different AdSense positions particularly on individual pages. If you open them
up, you’ll see a variety of them. We’ll be talking about AdSense in two weeks so
we’re not going to have views at this point but just want to say that there’s some
ups but there’re some also downs about AdSense. You probably would not want
to use AdSense on a site that is a political site or a religious site or a site where
you’re arguing about one side of a case.

How AdSense Works

The beauty of AdSense is that it is contextualized advertising. It looks at what is
on your page and then it serves ads according to that. Unfortunately, it’s a
computer that is looking at your page and that computer doesn’t have the ability
to tell what the tone of your piece is, it doesn’t have the ability to tell whether
you’re arguing for or against something. You can actually end up with ads that are
quite opposite of what you’re all about. So if you’re passionate about what your
writing and there’s a risk that it may misinterpreting what your writing, it may
not be the right thing for you. I’ve seen a number of different bloggers who got
frustrated with it. It was serving quite inappropriate ads to their sites. The beauty

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of AdSense is that it is very adaptable in terms of design. There are a variety of
different sizes. You can change the colors, you can change the positioning quite a
bit. Those small changes can impact your blog quite a bit. So AdSense is very
quite popular. It’s how I make most of my money. Increasingly, blogs is going for
that. So we’ll spend a whole week on that. You want to add anything to that
Andy?

Andy: Yes, I just think that going with the whole idea that the Google ads can’t
really tell your point of view. I’ve seen that with some clients who are doing
either, like one was doing ADHD work and was a counselor with people who are
ADD and was finding that the ads being picked up were for herbal remedies for
this which aren’t considered medically appropriate. So the ads that Google might
choose for your content, may not be for the tone of your blog.

Darren: That’s right. There are other contextual advertising systems out there
which we’ll mention in future weeks. For instance Yahoo! is bringing in a very
similar system at the moment and they’ll be testing that.

Income Stream #3: AdBrite

Darren: The third one I want to talk about today is, AdBrite.com and text ad
systems. Again, if you look, at my digital photography site and go down the left
hand menu, this time, you’ll see a Shutterfly button. Under that Shutterfly
button, there’s a variety of different text ads, if you go to the bottom of those
you’ll see ‘text ads for eighty cents a day.’ Click on that, it will take you to a system
call AdBrite. AdBrite is, in some ways similar to Blogads.com because it allows
you to set up a price, it allows you to set a way you want to put these ads on your
page. It allows you to accept or reject ads from advertisers who are likely to be on
your site. The text ads, generally you won’t get as much for these ads but they can
actually be quite lucrative as well depending upon the way you’ve positioned
them on your site.

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Andy: Darren, are there traffic requirements that you have to prove before you
can be in these two programs?

Darren: No, I don’t think so. On some of the others that I’ll talk about there are,
but the beauty of them is that, especially with AdSense, AdSense allows you to
put ads on your site when you’re very small. You only got a few pages of content
and very small traffic. You do have to have some, but not much.

Participant: Darren, could you give us the site again. What I’m seeing, what I
put up is not what you’re describing.

Darren: OK, digitalphotographyblog.com.

Income Stream #4: Impression-Based Ads

Darren: Number four we’ll look at is impression based ads. Impression based
ads make money, not by people clicking on your ads and not by what you set the
AdBrite ads at but by having people look at your ad by the page impression, by
the page views that you have. There are systems like Fast Click or Tribal Fusion.
These programs will require you to have some traffic to your site and they are
probably best suited for highly traffic sites. I ran a blog last year with another
blogger on the Olympic games. We had two million visitors in a couple of weeks
to that site. The impression based ads, outperformed the AdSense ones quite
considerably there because of the high levels of traffic there. The downside of
Fast Click in particular is that the ads you might get served can be a little
annoying and animated, they can be for really junky type products. If you don’t
mind about that, they can be actually be earning you quite a bit of money. You
wouldn’t want to put it on a site that you’re proud of, you know, wanting to be
tackling a serious subject perhaps. I would keep it away from those. The
lighthearted blogs, it may be helpful.

Andy: So just to reiterate, the first couple of programs were about being paid
from clicks versus being paid from just impressions? That is like a rental model
right, where they’re renting your ‘inventory.’

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Darren: Yes, like a sponsorship model.

Income Stream #5: Affiliate Programs

Darren: The fifth thing we’re going to talk about is affiliate programs. A lot of
you will be familiar with that because you’re running them on your blogs already
or you’ve been trying to sell this course to others using affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs are where someone pays for your commissions for selling their
products for you. So if you sell this course for someone, we’ll give you fifty
percent of what the income for that is for yourself. That is a fairly large affiliate
program. You can make a lot of money by selling two or three of these courses.
There’s also a lot of programs that are more on a micro level. The best example I
can give you is the Amazon affilliate program and its online bookshop. If you go
to associates.amazon.com, you can sign up for their affiliate program there. If you
recommend a book, if you recommend a camera, if you recommend a DVD and
on your blog, and someone buys that, then you’ll earn, I think, between four and
up to ten per cent of the profit for that.

Andy: Yes and they’ve expanded it to hardware too.

Darren: Yes. It’s great. You’ll see they’ve got cameras there. If you go to
individual pages on my blog, you’ll often see a little link at the bottom things
saying, “Get the latest price on these camera”, which is an affiliate link. So
cameras can be two or three thousand dollars so you can actually earn a little bit
of money through that. I don’t find I earn as much as some of the other things but
it’s a nice side earner as well, especially at Christmas time, it could be quite good.

Income Stream #6: Tip Jars and Donations

Darren: Number six, we are going to look at is donation buttons and tip jars. I
have never really made any money through these. But there are a variety of
bloggers who make good money in this. I think his name is Jason, I can’t
remember his surname. Is it Kottke?

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Andy: Yes, it’s Jason Kottke, over at www.kottke.org. Right.

Darren: He, at the start of this year decided to go full time blogger through
donations. He quit his job and asked his readers for donation. I think he’s rakes
enough to live this year just purely from donation. He didn’t really want to go
down the advertising route.

Andy: Also a journalist, Andrew Sullivan at www.andrewsullivan.com. I think he
still has a tip jar. He was able to make quite a pot of money with the tip jar in his
blog.

Darren: Exactly. Really, the characteristic that got those guys that success is
that they had very high levels of traffic and a very high loyalty in their readership
with their blog. So people were donating not to his blogs but to him because they
believed in him and they liked him and are wanting to support him. So if you’ve
got a blog with not much traffic or if you got a blog with search engine traffic,
people coming in and not coming back to your blog, it’s probably not the best way
to go. If you’ve got a real community and people believe in you, as a person, then
it is definitely worth investigating the tip jar (in PayPal’s Donations or
Amazon.com’s Honor System).

Andy: It’s that cult of personality we were talking about earlier.

Darren: Exactly.

Income Stream #7: Merchandising

Darren: Now seven, merchandising. I tried recently to sell some T-shirts on my
blog. It was a bit of a failure. I think we sold less than ten of the things in over a
couple of months. I know some bloggers who are making some reasonable money
from selling t-shirts, and caps, and stickers through the organization Cafepress.
There are other variety of merchandising options also. I guess add to that,
ebooks. Now if you’ve got some expertise in some area and you want to sell and
ebook or a course, that is another way of doing it, through your blog.

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Income Stream #8: Consulting

Darren: Number eight we are going to be looking at is consulting. It’s not
something we are really going to be talking about over this course, but it is worth
mentioning here is that if you have some expertise in an area and that could take
time to build up than to be at a sell your time to a reader, it would actually be a
legitimate way of making money from your blog. It’s probably making money as a
result of your blog rather than making money directly through it. So that is why
we might not be covering it as much here. It’s something I’ve been doing a bit
more recently with some blog consulting. It can be quite worthwhile.

Income Stream #9: Sponsorship

Darren: Number nine, we’re on the home stretch now, is sponsorship. It
overlaps with some of the other things we’ve already talked about but quite a few
bloggers are making money now by selling ad space or sponsorship privately and
directly to advertisers. For instance, on the digital camera site, that just started a
campaign with Adobe over the next couple of weeks. It will be a two-week
campaign in which I give them some space on my blog and I give them some
space in my newsletter. So people are selling space directly to advertisers. The
beauty of it is, you are cutting out the middleman. You don’t give out fifty per
cent, or whatever it is, to Google to find the advertisers for you. The downside is
that it takes a lot of work and to actually find advertisers can take quite a bit of
time and to build the logistics of it all to set it up on your site.

Andy: Do they demand any proof of your traffic stats as part of the engagement?

Darren: They do, so that’s part of the work. In fact, I’ve knocked back some
advertising on some of my sites, just because so that the logistics of getting it up
would have taken me three or four days to sell if full time work to get the thing, to
put a proposal together and prove all that sort of stuff. You want to pick and
choose that a little bit. There are increasingly a variety of systems that you can
now use to rotate ads for your site which is quite good. It’s not just about selling

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ad banners either. Text ads, mentioned in newsletters, actually having sponsored
posts on your site, I know a number of bloggers who sell a particular post to
advertisers. As long as you’re clear and transparent that what you are actually
doing is actually for money than that is a good way to go.

Income Stream #10: Paid Membership

Darren: Number ten is one that a lot of bloggers have been trying but I don’t
really see too much success with yet, is actually charging for your content.
Charging your readers to read your blog. There is a number of people who have
tried this. Some try to have a premium area of their blog where they give the best
stuff to their readers. Others have tried to sell ad free versions of their sites, so
pay twenty dollars and you don’t have to look at all my ads. Other have tried to
sell their content on a post by post basis saying, “If you want to read the rest of
this blog…”

Andy: Really?

Darren: I’ve seen a lot of people trying these things, really to be honest, they
haven’t worked. In fact, a few people have probably made it work, where they
have vary unique and exclusive information and that cannot be bought anywhere
else. It’s probably the only way, I think, you can make it work. Your content
would have to be something that people couldn’t find anywhere free which is very
rare on the internet if you think about it today. Everything has free information
on the internet. It’s something you may want to consider if you’re brilliant, if
you’ve got exclusive information but it may not work for you.

Income Stream #11: RSS Advertising

Lastly we’ve got our RSS advertising. This is something that is a little bit new and
the tools around it are just beginning to be developed but if those of you, who can
help me, who have success, is that most blogs, these days have the ability to have
your content go to people without them coming to your blog, which is a great
technology, but the downside of it is if they don’t come to your blog, they don’t
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see your ads, they don’t see your affiliate programs. I would say RSS advertising
is one way of getting around that. Programs like AdSense actually allow you to,
these days, to put their ad in your RSS and there’s a variety of others around as
well. I’ve personally haven’t had too much success with that. I’ve noticed a little
bit of improvement recently if they get their tools right.

Summary of Income Streams and Q & A

Darren: So there are eleven different ways. I’m sure there are others. I’m sure as
we open up for questions that other people would suggest other ways that they
have done it. What I want to recommend is that you, before you just jump into
one of these methods is that you think about the goal of your blog. You actually
work out, “What am I actually trying to achieve with this blog?” Is it appropriate
for these types of things? Because they suit different goals. They suit different
traffic levels or suit differently types of readers and different demographics of
readers like age, location. You wouldn’t want to sign up with the Amazon affiliate
program if you’re readership is all from Australia where you’re not getting
American readers. The Amazon program is an American product. I cannot,
people cannot buy from Australia from Amazon for digital cameras. They can buy
books, but they can’t buy the hardware products.

Andy: That’s crazy.

Darren: It may not be appropriate to sign up for that program. It may be
appropriate to find, in Australia an affiliate program. So really the demographics
and the readership and I guess, lastly, the topic of your blog will determine which
of these methods that you might want to use. Do you want to open up for
questions Andy?

Andy: Yes. I am totally floored. You totally took us beyond the banner ad that it
is awesome. There’s no such thing as a dumb question. So you just dive on in. If
you have any questions that we’ve just talked about, go for it.

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Pat: Going to your Digital Photography Blog and on the right side, there is a
picture that says, “Looking to buy a camera, making money from digit
photography”, which one of those was that under, was that Blogads.com?

Darren: Blogads.com.

Pat: OK, thank you.

Darren: No problem.

Blending Blog Style and Design with Ad Look and Feel

Andy: Yes, something I noticed that you’re doing is your blending the actual
interface like the navigation among the ads. So some of the styling is the same. If
you’re readers are seeing the ads in the context of the interface, then the
navigation. On the right side Blogads, those together are ads. On the left side,
they are more embedded into the interface, then the navigation.

Darren: That’s right. I think there’s a lot of people are recommending that type
of approach. Traditionally people have said that on AdSense, that is how you do
that but that has been extended out to other types of ads to actually have a more
integrated design. They do perform better when they’re integrated within and not
standing out screaming, “I’m an ad, I’m an ad!”

How Do Impression-Based Ads Work?

Andy: Another other question?

Julieanne: Yes, it’s Julianne here. The impression-based ads, can you explain
them a little bit more or do you have an example of an impression-based ads on
your site?

Darren: Not on that site but me just let me look up one. Let me look at what I’ve
seen or have some.

Julieanne: Thanks.
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Darren: The basis of them is that you get a small amount of money for each
impression. With AdSense, you might get anything from two or three cents up to
two or three dollar for an ad per click. Impressions based ads are like a micro or a
hundredth of a cent per ad. The site I’m looking at seems to remove their
impression ads. I have a feeling that some of the ads you see on blogs like
Engadget are FastClick, some of their banner ads, some of them would be
sponsored fields, but some of them are definitely impression-based ads. Because
they are doing such massive traffic, they could make impression-based ads work
quite well. So you may have seen ads around with those annoying bouncy smiley
faces -they are impression-based ads through the fast click system.

Julianne: I know what you mean now. It’s every time they come to your screen,
you get paid a little tiny bit.

Andy: Right, every time they click [and see it].

Julieanne: Right. OK. Thanks. Actually I’ve got another question here for you.
The Digital Photography Blog, do you host that on the WordPress or is that on
your own hosting system?

Darren: That one is hosted, the platform behind that is Movable Type, which is
quite similar to word press. That is hosted on a private hosting system. A friend
of mine hosted that for me.

Julieanne: OK. Thanks.

Darren: No problem. Any more questions?

Does Google AdSense Require a Lot of Custom Coding?

Steve: Darren I have one. This is Steve Murphy. I’m looking at your digital photo
blog and do you find that you have to do a lot of custom coding to get all the
different ad information into each post and to maintain, like the Google AdSense
in terms of service?

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Darren: It’s not actually too bad. The beauty of blogs, and this is probably one of
the things I should have said in that introduction is that really it’s just a matter of
changing the template so you’re not actually having to build each ad into your
post. You’re just building them into a template. When you do that, it comes up
that way on every page on your site. If you’re on that page at the moment, if you
click on the first post there, you’ll see there, that’s the Olympic one, you’ll see
there on the left, at the top of the post, some ads by Google for ads, the rectangle
type things, that is just an ad which I simply included in one piece to code in my
individual page template. That just comes up automatically on every page on my
site as a result of that. If I wanted to move it over to the right, it is just as simple
as making one small change in that code and rebuilding that site and the will be
transferred over to the site. So it is quite low maintenance. Affiliate programs can
be a little more fiddly. You’ll see on that particular post that say, “Get the latest
price on this camera.” Later, I’d have to hard code it into every post. I haven’t
found out a system yet that really does that for me really well automatically. So
there is some work in some of the tough spots and less in others.

Steve: OK great. Being with WordPress now though automatically puts AdSense
ads in a few things, some hacks but I’m curious because you have so much on
each page that builds out.

Darren: Yes. There are some automatic things in WordPress that I find just
using a template does it just as well.

Steve: Great. Thank you.

Darren: No problem.

Contextual Ads Automatically Align With Content

Andy: And just to reiterate with the contextual advertising, Darren’s not having
to choose for this particular post these ads are going to be Olympus cameras ads.
Google is going to be able to scan that page and say, “You know, I think this is
page looks like it’s about this camera so I’m going to throw up any of the ads that

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are for this camera.” So again, Darren’s not having to find the ad per post, he’s
just saying ads go here and Google takes care of the rest with contextual
advertising.

Darren: That’s right, and there’s ways to actually help AdSense out and tell
AdSense what your post is about. But really, it does a pretty good job, I find. Any
more questions?

Geographically Targeted Ads

Participant: Yes, I’ve got another question. I’m from Australia, as you can tell.
We use Google AdSense, can they tell what IP address I’m on and in Australia. Is
that why Australian ads come up all the time for me?

Darren: Yes, you’ve got a spot on there that’s geographically targeted so the ads
that Andy will be seeing on that page are quite different to ones that you and I are
seeing on that page at the moment. I am seeing some Australian ads and that’s
got some advantages. Obviously that increases the relevancy of your ads but also
means that if you want to block ads for instance because AdSense allows you to
block ads from a particular URL so it’s difficult to know which ones to block
because you can’t read what is being seen on your site in other places of the
world. Whereas, a system like Blogads, you have complete control over which
ads. With AdSense it is out of your control.

Participant: Thank you.

Darren: No problem.

How Much Do You Charge For a Link On Your Site?

Alex: Hello Darren?

Darren: Yes.

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Alex: Hi, this is Alex from Nova Scotia and I‘ve got a question for you. I had
someone email me about a week ago offering to purchase a link off my website for
two months. I think he offered, I think it was twenty dollars a month. How do I
know what a text link off my website actually worked?

Darren: That’s the eternal question. I guess, I don’t have a way of working that
out. I personally try to get a feel for where they are at. Part of me says that twenty
dollars is a better than nothing.

Alex: I agree.

Darren: So that is good. But over time, you’ll get an experience, an idea for that.
You may want to look at other sites. One good way maybe is to look at AdBrite.
With AdBrite, you can go through their different sites and actually see what
they’re charging and so you may find a sight that is on a similar topic to yours,
that has got similar traffic levels to yours that may give you a gauge as to what
people are paying. I say that twenty dollars a month isn’t massive, but I guess if
you have ten of those, it would actually be OK. Another way to do it is if you had
AdSense on your site and you’re going to have to get rid of those ads to put in
another one then often, I would work out what the AdSense ads are paying in
addition and then charge that. If that makes sense. That is really about
experimenting so I’d probably say give it a go, maybe try and bump it up a little
bit, give it a go, and over time, you’ll work out what they are worth.

Alex: OK. Thanks.

Darren: No problem. Shall we move on Andy to the network?

Creating a Blog Network
Andy: Yes. Alright, the next topic that we want to cover is to really about what
happens when you get this whole blog thing going and you have successes with
one blog and you decide to move into a network of blogs. What we’re going to be
looking at now is a couple of existing blog, networks or empires that are out

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there. One of the reasons you might consider building a blog network is because
you can build a cloud of traffic around a different topic or a different niche. So if
you’ve got any additional cameras over here, you might have additional printers
or other related products on different blogs so that way the blogs are able to trade
traffic back and forth and you are able to keep those visitors within your network
of blogs and also be able to host across the entire network. So you can talk to
advertisers and say, “I’m not just going to put your ad on this blog, but your ad is
relevant to these other blogs that I have on my network.”

Weblogs, Inc.

Darren: That is right. That is what the network is like at Weblogs, Inc. They are
doing really well in particularly as is the Gawker network. They are cross
promoting their blogs which is fantastic.

Andy: If you want to take a look at the Weblogs, Inc. empire, that’s at
www.weblogsinc.com. This is a pretty broad network of, I’d say over a hundred
blogs and the guy that runs it, his name is Jason Calcanis and he hires bloggers
on different topics and some of them are experts, some of them are normal
people that are obsessed with a certain topic and they get paid per post, I think,
and they have to do maybe five posts a day. The focus is a broad base of topics
around a whole network of different topics. You’ll find that the network bloggers
are a little bit grownup than other networks out there like Gawker. With Weblogs,
Inc., it’s really about creating different clouds around technology or consumer
interests. There is a whole wireless section of blogs. There’s one just on video
games, on different platforms of video games, he’s got one on life sciences, like
blogs with people who have cancer or diabetes, as well as a whole section on
media entertainment. That’s over at www.weblogsinc.com. If you go to that front
page, you’ll see on the right side is a list of all those blogs. He’s got one for
advertising, there’s one on hacking, there’s one just for web designers, there’s one
just of Microsoft Office users. So again, it’s that tight super focused niche. It
really allows this network to command ad revenue that is going to get people to

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that content and people interested in that content to see ads related to that
content.

Darren: I guess it is one of the ultimate examples. It’s one of a large scale of
networks that are out there. Personally, when I look at it, I think, I could never do
something that big as I think you’ve said, he’s got over a hundred people working
for him on that thing. It’s making significant amounts of money. I think he is on
track for a million dollars this year in the next twelve months from AdSense
alone. So it’s big bucks. It’s big business. The beauty of what he’s doing there is
that it is actually a model that you can do on a smaller level. You can have two
blogs that link to each other that has the same sort of benefit to what he is doing
there. There is an increasing amount of networks that are out there beginning to
do that. The other thing I would suggest is to actually write for networks. That is
actually an option. I would recommend some people consider doing this
especially when they are just getting into blogging, you can learn a lot by signing
up as one of their offers. Their payments may not be huge. I think they are paying
between four and five dollars per post but the experience and exposure that you
can get through that may be beneficial, it maybe worth it…

Gawker Media

Andy: Right and then another one of the networks that is popular is the Gawker
Media Empire. Which is at www.gawker.com. Gawker started off as I think really
as a New York City type of blog and they’ve since grown. If you’ve heard of blogs
like Wonkette which is on American politics, Defamer, which is on Hollywood,
Gizmodo… You’ll find each empire to have at least one gadget blog. There’s one
just on, if people are just interested in Japanese animation culture. There’s one
for pornography (fleshbot.com). So again, this is a different approach where the
guy who runs this empire is Nick Denton.

I remember him talking about that he really got a trisector of his main group is
young men and that are using that online. So it is really youth culture and the
trifecta here is porn, gadgets and video games that that is really where his money

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is being made because he is able to attract these consumers that are young men
that advertisers everywhere are trying to reach because this demographics
doesn’t watch TV as much as they use to so again he has created this empire
focused, really on getting advertisers and match up with young men who are
consumers. Again that is at gawker.com.

About.com

Andy: A third empire that really didn’t start out as a blog empire but they
leveraged in there. If you remember About.com, back in the internet boom, I
remember they had all these editors, guest editors and everybody has a certain
topic and a certain way to write about things and then they have this whole back
log of archived of past content. But now they’ve added blogs to each of their
channels. If you go to www.about.com and on the left side, you’ll see a huge list of
channels on many different topics. Each one has a content editor or moderator or
a head honcho in charge of that topic and each channel also has a blog. So now do
only have this past content that is accumulating but you also have a blog format
which helps to keep it live, keep it more intimate, you get to know the person in
charge of that particular topic. So again, it is that human connection where it is
not just about.com but it is this particular person who has a passion about this
particular topic and has a blog and its about.com.

Darren: That right and About.com sold to the New York time in the last few
month for four hundred and ten million dollars. So it’s a really amazing story
there that they got this new type of software that runs their blogs so really what
they are doing is no different to what you and I are doing it’s just doing it in an
automatic style.

Andy: Right and they are running, if not a couple of hundred, at least five
hundred of these a day so there are a ton of different channels. So it’s another
example of, in this case you may not know that these are blogs when you go to
About.com. It’s just updated news, updated stuff, so you don’t always have to call

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a blog a blog. As long as it is current and is being mentionable tool, I guess it is a
blog. People don’t have to always know that it is just a blog.

Competition Is Not Just with Other Blogs

Darren: That’s right. I think a lot of bloggers get trapped into thinking that they
only are competing with other blogs and that is a trap. You are competing, in your
topic, with hundreds of websites and a lot of them aren’t blog. So to go out there
and say, “I’m a blog. I’m a blog.” It may not be beneficial. There are times to do
that but to differentiate yourself from the crowd but think beyond than just
blogging.

Andy: Yes and as I think that blogs become sort of less sexy and cool and from
the media standpoint, it will be sort of old habit, “Of course it’s a blog. I know
what it looks like.” The first one is going to say, “Well this company has a blog,
we’re not going to pay attention on that.” Or “GM is blogging.” Or “Nike has blogs
now.” I think that is going to die away soon because the hype is just crazy. But
again, to reiterate, these networks all have staff of bloggers and administrators,
designers and marketing, a sales department and this is kind of might be the end
goal for you maybe in a year or at least a few months.

Start Small

Andy: We’re starting small with the one blog. We wanted to show examples of
where people have taken this idea of not just being the content author, but also
maybe being the producer of the entire media channel or the entire group of
blogs, an entire media empire. I’m guessing that eventually you’re going to see
groups like Weblogs, Inc., who have archives and archives of content, will start
publishing books that cough up that content into a book format. I’m guessing that
is going to be their second generation is to move from strictly on line publishing
to going to books because they have these experts that have been creating these
content for probably for a couple of years.

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Darren: That’s right and they are building in expertise. So Peter, from Engadget,
he is now a world wide expert on gadgets through blogging. So if he writes a book
on gadgets, it would sell big time. If he does speaking tours on gadgets, he would
do really well. There’s benefits of not only making money through the blogs but
down the track, it actually opens up all kinds of doors for you to actually become
an expert in a field.

Andy: Darren, you’ve had companies send you cameras to test right?

Darren: Yes, I’m regularly getting…a camera arrived yesterday and I didn’t even
know it was coming. I have two to three weeks to test out. As you build your
reputation, people will seek you out and will submit things for you to put on to
your blog.

Andy: So again, because Darren is able to have this tightly focused audience that
is just about digital photography, he is able to get that. People want that access to
those consumers. Other networks to look at are Weblog Empire. This one is still
in the growth stages. There’s a couple of different channels they have and
different topics. That is another example of an emerging web blog empire. As well
as Shiny Media, which is an empire that is strictly done on TypePad.

Darren: That is right. It’s a UK-based enterprise and I met the guys there last
year and they are quite interesting. They are going for the female market. They
are almost doing the flip side of what Gawker is doing for young guys. They are
actually going for young women. They are doing fashion blogs, and gadgets for
girl type blogs. So they are focusing in on a wider nation than doing sub-niche
blogs in the midst of that.

Andy: How about another one that is in the works, it’s Shoe Blogs. There is a
blog per shoe brand. It’s the idea on the internet: There is always someone crazy
about a topic and if you can find those people they’ll buy anything related to that
topic because they are obsessed with shoes or Prada. Again that’s at
shoeblogs.com, I think.

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Darren: Yes, that’s a guy, The Manolo who’s doing quite well out of it.

Andy: So those of examples of kind of taking this to a macro level. Again, we’re
going to zoom back on down next week to a micro level.

Fieldwork for Week One
Andy: Darren, I was going to get into the fieldwork. Did you have anything else
to cover before we talk about what we’re going to leave people to think about for
the coming week?

Establish Goals

Darren: I guess leading to it, thinking through goals. That is one of the things
we want people to think through this week is to actually think about what is it
that you want to achieve with your blogging? Is it about making money or is it
some goal over along side that? If it’s about making money, how do you want to
do that? Do you want to do that through [elevating] your profile? I guess that is
where we are headed through our fieldwork. It’s really crucial especially through
the beginning on the course like this and to be clear about what you’re doing.
Those are eleven different ways of money through your blogs do fit differently
depending on what your goals are. It is really clear to put that up front. I’m really
interested to see what people’s goals are in the ecampus. So share some of those
goals with us so that we keep them around and we can talk about what might suit
you better and actually discover some of that stuff together.

Andy: Yes, I think it is important to define that success that you’re trying to
achieve so when you achieve it, you know that you’re there. You may not be
wanting to build an entire blog during this six-week course. I know some of
people just sort of like to sit back through a course and absorb it all and try it out
later or you might want to try it all tonight and say, “Where’s week two, I want to
get to it now.” Decide what you’re learning style is going to be for this course,
whether your going to sit back and absorb it and have the osmosis thing, or if
you’re really going to try and get in there and practice this thing every week and

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really build that out because the content is going to be here when you come back
to it.

Peruse Existing Blog Networks

So these are some of the things we want you to think about along with you
successes and your goals and all that good stuff is start looking at these networks
that are out there and see on Weblogs, Inc., what are some blogs that are related
by certain topic or niche? Where are these clouds of consumers and these clouds
of content coming from? As well, do these networks have outliers or orphan blogs
that don’t really relate to the rest of the network and how might those be
maximized by adding other blogs around that outlier blog so it may start to create
more interest around itself.

Take a look at how ads are being host across different networks, across different
blogs in general. See if you can start to figure out, because it is this size, because it
say this at the bottom and because it’s the structure of the ads like this. Over here,
this is a Google ad because it says it’s an ad by Google but there’s different ad
structures within the Google stuff as well as with AdBrite and different other
networks. So start to be conscious of how people are blending the ads into the
content so it may be on the interface yet, that is an ad, I can tell it’s an ad because
of the way it is styled. Over here, these of kind of sneaky ads because they’re right
next to navigation in the same font style and color as the navigation. Take a look
and see how are the blogs are being interlinked. How obvious is the connections
these different blogs are in the same network. Again, these question will be in the
ecampus so don’t freak our about trying to write them all down.

What are some common interface and design elements? Do all blogs in the
networks have the same in general look and feel with maybe a different banner or
a different set of colors. Is this making the network appear more unified or is it
kind of causing interface blindness where people click from one blog to another
and they all look the same so they are not really registering where the ads are
popping out. As well are these networks using a full domain as oppose as a sub

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domain. Is it something like Weblogs, Inc. or does each blog have it’s own unique
particular domain? Those are some things to think about as we look at some of
the macro level of blog networks that are out there. They maybe in your future or
not. Again, you can certainly be in awe from all these networks and sort of get a
handle on how they work and how they work with their writers. As well, use them
as inspirations and say, “You know what, I’m just going to be a blog author, I
want to be a producer and get a whole set of content channels together.” Again,
those are some of the things to think about over the coming week. Then, next
week, I know we’re taking about hardcore niche and there’s a tone of niche of
stuff on niche to talk about. Do you have anything to add Darren?

Darren: All I want to say is the way I’ve learned most of what I learnt about
blogging is by observing what others do. Don’t be ashamed about doing some
analysis on another blog. I try and find a new commercial, pro blog, a type blog
each week and I’ll spend an hour or two just looking over it, just looking the
statistics, their public statistics, finding out where their traffic comes from,
looking at their design, looking at how they use their ads, looking at what sort of
systems they use. It maybe that you discover a system of advertisers that you
could use that would be suited to your blog. It is about doing research and
looking into it. Just with any business, you wouldn’t just rush into a business at
just set up a shop without thinking about what is around you and what
competition you’ve got. So do that ground work and share what you find with us.
I’m really fascinated to see what you observed about the networks because I’m
sure you’re going to come up with something I never notice about them also

Andy: Right, what I think you talk about is the big point of the second generation
of bloggers where to set up a blog is so easy and fast that it is so easy to forget the
strategy behind it. So were are trying to do this on purpose so that that way this
success happens instead of just , “Well I’ve had the blog up and I’ve had it up for
six weeks, but it’s not doing anything and I really didn’t have any strategy but I
am publishing.” We really want to be mindful of that as we set up

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Topic: ‘Ransom’ Income Model

Participant: I have a question. I heard some people talking about ransom
software saying, “I won’t release it to the public until I get some dollars donated.”
What do you think about that idea?

Andy: I’ve heard of programmers doing that with software too. I haven’t heard of
people doing that with blogs, have you Darren?

Darren: I’ve heard of a couple people who’ve tried it but not …again, like I said
before, I think if you are an expert, if you’re the only person writing that content
and they cannot get it anywhere else, you probably could do it. But I wouldn’t
think normal bloggers would be able to get that. I wouldn’t be doing that.

What Blog Platform to Choose?

Bill: I have a question, it’s Bill. In the development of our blog, can we continue
to use TypePad or should we be looking at something else?

Andy: We’re probably, in the end, going to recommend that people sell posts
eventually but you can definitely do most of the stuff we’re talking about during
this course with TypePad. Darren, did you have an input on that.

Darren: I’ve seen some bloggers use TypePad really well. They’ve done
significant blogs and made significant money through it but I think most of the
big ones out there on other systems like WordPress or Movable Type or those
types of systems. So if you’re looking the for future of a flexible system then
probably type pads isn’t the most flexible. It’s a great starting place though. I
would consider moving toward something a little bit more flexible than that.

William: This is William. Are we going to be talking about moving our sites to a
like a community traffic versus a search engine traffic. I’m interested in that.

Andy: What do you mean about a community traffic?

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William: People coming back to the community traffic versus search engine
traffic specifically.

Darren: That is something that we can probably fit in through the weeks. It is
important so I’ll make note that we cover that.

Paul: Is there a location that have a large listing of URLs that have fairly popular
blogs that we could look at?

Andy: You can go to Technorati. You can see the top blogs there as well as
Feedster as well also has a top list.

Participant: And if you’re looking for political blogs, truthlalidbear.com also
has a great list.

Andy: Yes, Truth Laid Bear and that is bear as in the animal bear correct?

Darren: It’s wider than political there. I know a lot of my blogs are being listed
there. I’m not political. I think they started with the political kind of niche and
but are getting wider as well which is quite handy.

Andy: Again, these links will be in your notes. If you didn’t get them tonight,
we’ll have them for you. We are a little bit over, so we’ll go a head and signoff.
Everybody, that you for joining use tonight and we’ll get the recording and
transcript up and everybody have a fantastic evening.

Thank you, bye.

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Six Figure Blogging Call 1
Worksheets
Questions and Considerations
1. Why do I want to make money from my blogs?

2. Why do I think I can make money from my blogs?

3. What are my expectations about making money from my blogs? What are my
short-term and long terms goals?

• Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual money goals

• Lifestyle money goals

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Methods of Making Money from Blogs
Considerations My Blog

Goals: What are the goals and objectives of my blog?

Traffic Levels: What are my traffic levels and are they sufficient
to reach my goals and objectives?

Reader Demographics: How do reader profiles influence my
traffic / readership?

Topic: Does my topic lend itself to creating blog income?

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Examples of Each Method

Method Example

Traditional Advertising Blogads
Adsense

Text Ad Systems AdBrite

Impression Based Ads Fastclick, Tribal Fusion

Affiliate Programs Amazon

Donation Buttons/Tip Jars Jason Kottke’s; Andrew Sullivan’s blog

Sell Merchandise Cafe Press

Consulting

Sponsorship

Charge for content

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Applying These Methods to My Own Blog
What methods of making money do I want to use with my blogs?

How can I apply each of these possibilities to my blog?

Method How Can I Apply this Method?

Traditional Advertising

Text Ad Systems

Impression Based Ads

Affiliate Programs

Donation Buttons/Tip Jars

Sell Merchandise

Consulting

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Sponsorship

Charge for Content

Comparing Blog Networks

What blogs in a network are related by topic or niche?

What networks have ‘outlier’ or ‘orphan’ blogs that don’t
appear related to the rest of the network?

How are ads hosted similarly across a network versus blog-
to-blog?

How obvious is the connection between the different blogs
of a network?

What interface/design elements are common across a
particular network? Do contribute to a networks ‘unity’ or
cause interface ‘blindness’?

Which networks use a full unique domain for each blog
versus a subdomain?

What other blog networks do you find?

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