Cash In Your Blog -
4 Ways to Profit From The Hidden Revenue In Your Blog
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul
Most webmasters and online business owners know
that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising,
and more traffic from search engines. Then there's the additional
benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between
you and your prospects.
But did you know that your blog itself may be
worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?
The day I learned that my blog held such hidden
treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life
such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some
of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog
audience.
In an informal poll, I found that many of the
fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free
information on my site, and felt that they'd never catch up
to reading it all.
This led to several discoveries about how I
could find a way to make the information more accessible to
them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers.
If your blog has export capabilities, you can
use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog
and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously
happy.
Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for
Future Products
As you begin to monitor which topics have the
most responses, you'll be able to see a pattern that tells you
what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes
often give you clues about what your next product could be.
For example, as I continue to cover free Google
tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I've noticed that
this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading
every entry. With that information I was able to create a free
Christmas gift for my audience that they'll be able to use as
a reference guide.
Your next best selling software idea, book or
tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if
you learn how to track audience response.
Method Two: The Subscription Model
When you're blogging daily, sometimes several
times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues
to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably
aware of this.
Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping
your fans find the information they're looking for at your site,
but you'll also find that a cross-section of them would rather
digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later
time.
Should you find this to be the case, instead
of purging your archives, you can create a "Best of"
compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic
distribution.
Or you could charge advertisers to be featured
in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and
offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium
version of your present ezine.
Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook
With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular
theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware
of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field,
expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build
on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand
for needed information.
There are a couple of tricks you'd have to learn
to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you'd
be surprised about how easy this process can be.
Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book
I know what you're thinking. "Why would
anyone pay for my blog as a book when it's free at my site?"
Under certain circumstances, you'd be surprised
to find how many people would rather have a portable collection
of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online
version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites
have been using this logic long before the web log came along
to allow users to preview their services.
For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic
generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my
informal poll as "overwhelming". It's one thing to
try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it's
not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of
your home.
Converting your blog into a yearly volume may
be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your
archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish
this that have no start-up costs.
If you're still not convinced that it's not
worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook
or printed edition, consider this.
On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding
the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure
interest. It's almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and
so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct
increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial
sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer.
Just imagine what that kind of interest could
do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on
the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats
is worth a look.
About the Author: You can learn low-cost ways
to turn your blog into an ebook or preview Tinu's 400 page Free
Traffic Tips printed edition and ebook
