Monetize and Analyze 

Earlier this week, I promised to offer up five useful things that I learned at the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, but I only gave you three. I’m such a tease. Really, it’s all part of my cunning plan to keep you coming back to the blog. Looks like it worked.  Anyway, here are numbers four and five of the five things.

4. There are 7 1/2 ways to monetize your blog

i. Run contextual ads—You know, like from Yahoo! Publisher Network and RightMedia’s DMX.

ii. Sell physical goods—Branded merchandise, such as T-shirts, mugs, ball-point pens and so forth. There are many vendors out there who can help you do this at a minimal cost. This is only worthwhile once you have established a broad audience.

iii. Solicit user donations—Your blog can be partly or wholly user-supported, like PBS or NPR. PayPal offers a donation button that you can install on your site in seconds. Do you blog on a political or scientific topic? There are scientific institutions and political think-tanks out there with money to burn. It won’t hurt to hit them up for a donation. What’s the worst that could happen?

iv. Join an affiliate ad network—Affiliate networks offer text and display advertising for hundreds of vendors in a wide range of categories, from automobiles to vacation rentals. Affiliate network publishers are paid a percentage of each sale. Most BlogWorld-goers that I talked to agreed that text links embedded in your content tend to work better than banners. And remember, there are many ancillary goods that can be offered. People who like high-end jewelry, for example, may also be apt to buy expensive handbags. For more affiliate tips, click here. 

v. Negotiate direct ad sales—Do you have highly targeted content that caters to a niche audience? Have you developed, or are you in the process of developing, a significant audience? Don’t be afraid to contact advertisers directly and propose a deal. The worst thing they can do is say no. You’ll find that once you have one deal going, competitors in that niche may be more likely to get onboard. Some advertisers may be happy to place a display ad on your site for branding purposes if your audience is targeted correctly. 

vi. Explore pay-per-post—You may have heard of the controversial concept of advertisers paying bloggers to blog about their products. But if done ethically and with genuine interest in the product niche, you may be able to earn extra income and help expand your reader base.

vii. Offer subscriptions—If you have high-value content to offer, users will pay you for it. Consider developing tiers of content, some free, some via paid subscription.

vii ½. Make your blog into a book—This crosses the line between selling physical goods and offering subscriber content. The fact is, people like having physical books around. Who doesn’t enjoy the smell of fresh ink? You can also offer unique content in a book and arrange your content and illustrations to be both informative and attractive. There are many on-the-fly publishers who can help turn your blog into a book.

5. Analytics are your friend
Advertisers, partners and affiliates like to know things, such as how much traffic you’re getting, how many of your users are repeats, what your “bounce rate” is, where your traffic is coming from, how long your visitors stay, and so forth. You want to know where people are clicking, which pages they’re lingering on, and which they’re staying away from, so that you can adjust your content and revenue-earning strategies accordingly. There are many analytics packages available.

I also made quite a few new friends and professional contacts at the show. In the coming weeks, you’ll see some valuable new contributions by some of the many industry experts whom I met at BlogWorld.

In the meantime, here’s a brief round-up of BlogWorld coverage:

Turns out that despite all the hoopla, not everyone in Vegas knows what a blog is, as Fox News discovered.

There’s more to corporate blogging than just begging your CEO to let you set one up.

Here’s a great list of video interviews by our friends over at Build a Better Blog.

Zac Jonhson blogs Marc Cuban’s keynote speech.

Debbie Weil listens to BlogWorld impresario, Dave Taylor, opine.

Steven Van Yoder teaches you how to get slightly famous.

For Flickr photos streams, click here and here.

—Michael Bloggeratus