Strategies of making money blogging by looking at strategies used in the Magazine world.
Magazines have been a medium to contend with for years because of their influence over readers, large subscription bases, and their power to generate big advertising dollars. By maximizing these 3 advertising strategies you’ll begin the profitable transformation of weblog into web property;
Seek Featured Advertisers
Strategy: Think of it as a one advertiser to rule them all type of deal. A featured advertiser should be one main company or brand that can get their message across effectively through every opportunity available on your site. This includes; a written featured article about the company, its products and services, a 1-on-1 interview to coincide with the article, a product or service review, and banner ads across high traffic areas of your site. Essentially you’ll come out from behind the desk as a blogger and into the arena of journalism and entrepreneurship. It’ll take some work, a little networking, and some sales tactics, but once you land that first account it’s all money from there.
Why is it a win for you? You’re able to charge a premium advertising fee depending on your site’s traffic, your online social status, and how much targeted content you can generate for the advertiser.
Why is it a win for the advertiser? It’s simple, less competition for your readers’ attention on your site = more traffic and profitability for them.
Note: Create different advertising packages with different price points. Depending on what the advertiser spends will depend on how much, content coverage, he or she receives. (Don’t go overboard with the pricing, if you’re a new blogger then you probably haven’t built up a large enough audience to entice big dollars from a major advertiser. Be strategic!)
Tools: When you write the featured article, use tools such as twitter search (real-time conversations) and yelp.com (community reviews) to find out what others are saying (only the good comments) about your featured advertiser. Also, try out Blogtalkradio.com (internet radio show hosting) for conducting your interviews, and possibly shooting video for the product or service review. The more dynamic the content the more engaged your readers will be which = an epic win for your advertiser.
Get Sponsors for Featured Content
Strategy: When I say featured content I don’t mean your life tips or opinion piece typed articles. The post has have a certain level of marketability. Something that will resonate with readers and be a perfect fit for a sponsor. For example; Black Enterprise’s Top 100 Entrepreneurs under 40 Sponsored by Bank of America. Or, 50 Greatest Gadgets of all time Sponsored by Microsoft. Get it? This featured content becomes less of an article and more of a multimedia presentation as you should incorporate video, audio, and written pieces to drive your main points of view home. It’s a more targeted piece of content than that of the first tip. Where as the latter is kind of spread around with a focus on the advertiser, here, the advertiser focuses on a particular topic.
Why is it a win for you? When you have a Featured advertiser as mentioned above, they will take up all the attention of your readers. However, having sponsors for your featured content easily allows you to sign as many advertisers as you would like since they’ll be attached to specific pieces of content on your blog. Say it with me together kids, MONEY!
Why is it a win for the advertiser/sponsor? The first thing sponsoring featured content does is; it gets the advertiser closer to their target market. Trust me; Pepsi’s not going to sponsor a list of the 50 Greatest Kool-Aid Flavors of All Time. The second thing it does is; it positions the advertiser’s brand as a participant in their market. It shows market engagement and a form of connection to who they want to buy their products or services.
Note: Brainstorm and come up with lists or featured stories that would resonate within your blog community. Select a few companies (online or off) who target the same kind of market, put together sponsorship proposals, and be persistent in pursing them. It might also be a good idea to partner with different bloggers and come together for a huge collaborative feature and seek sponsors together. The greater the market basket for a potential sponsor, the easier it is to seal the deal for the sponsor seeker.
Create a classified Ads Section
Strategy: Every magazine I flipped through had a classifieds section toward the back of their books. It listed every company under the sun that offered just about every kind of opportunity, service, or product. No doubt, this was the last line of offense for generating revenue for a magazine. Why can’t it work for bloggers as well if it’s done in a tasteful way?
Note: Keep your ads specific towards a certain market and you’ll attract more relevant advertisers. That means if you’re running a Christian blog then there shouldn’t be any Viagra ads on your site. Consider having a free classifieds section and run ad sense or other affiliate ads of your own for traffic generating money. Also, as mentioned above, you might pool your resources with other bloggers and split the costs, workload, and revenue of this marketing technique.
These are just a few examples that magazines give us as bloggers on effective advertising for our blogs. While ad sense, affiliate links, and text links are great ways to generate income, these techniques will take your blog to new heights. I would love to hear your feedback on this topic in the comments below.
