For all the talk about how individual blogs have been growing for the past years, it seems that only bloggers with massive amounts of traffic have been able to make any serious coin from their blogging. Perhaps both bloggers and advertisers should instead be looking to monetize their influence, and not their traffic?
First of all, let me state up front that I make no money from advertising on my blog, and have turned down repeated offers to place ads there. This is mainly because it likely wouldn’t make me very much money, and I fear it would be a nuisance to my readers. Jason Falls recently redesigned his blog, Social Media Explorer, and as part of the redesign, he took all advertising off his blog:
“We’ve also stripped out the advertisements. After doing some research on Doc Searls’ Because Effect and thinking more about Chris Anderson’s Economy of Free philosophy, not to mention the whopping $1.45 I’ve made in something like nine months from AdSense, it’s easy to see that neither you nor I need them here.”
This is where I think the problem lies. With the basic AdSense model, bloggers that are getting less than several thousand readers a day (which is 99% of bloggers), aren’t going to be making much more than nickels, and the ads themselves will likely distract from the content the bloggers are trying to monetize.
Now I have no idea what type of traffic Jason is getting to his blog(he does have a Feedburner widget currently displaying 436 readers). But I can look at it and see that his blog is popular, based on the number of comments he is getting, and he has well over 600 followers on Twitter.
So Jason has influence. He has hundreds of people following him on Twitter, and he has hundreds of people reading his blog feed everyday.
So it seems to me that there is an opportunity for companies to reach out to bloggers such as Jason with some sort of sponsorship on their blog. For example, take the companies that a blogger evangelizes on their blog, and have them do short-term sponsorships with the blog. Say one-month in length. This is perfect as it gives both the company and the blogger a chance to ‘test’ the sponsorship waters, without a long-term commitment. And there could even be a way to involve the readers in the sponsorship, like giving the readers a special code for a percentage off for a limited time, or picking a reader at random to win a prize that the sponsor provides.
Now I know that some will go apeshit at even the thought of bloggers monetizing their work. But the fact remains that many bloggers are trying to make money off their blogging by putting ads up on their blogs. And in many cases, these ads probably aren’t making the blogger much money, and probably aren’t doing much for the reader either. If there’s going to be bloggers trying to monetize their efforts, why not attempt to improve the process? I think if bloggers and potential sponsors both put their heads together, there’s probably a way to work together so that the blogger, the sponsor, and the readers can all benefit.
If you blog, think of some of the brands that you have praised on your blog. What if one of them wanted to sponsor your blog for a month, would you go for it?
Mack, I love the idea of sponsorship and believe that we are long overdue for a new revenue model. Adsense has never been a perfect system and as you pointed out has only proven successful for a small subset of bloggers.
By any other name, it’s still advertising.
There are ways to monetize a blog. I’ve found that those with strong niche audiences are able to take advantage of special relationships with corporate sponsors – especially if they can band together with similar blogs in a mini-network. Sadly though, while the revenue I’ve seen is far greater than anything AdSense will generate, it’s still not a livable wage.
Mack – I feel like you’re trying to sell sponsorship on my blog … cool.
If approached, I probably wouldn’t at this point, but if I did, I would simply tell my audience what was happening. Transparency would be key. Because there is an ultimate end benefit for me (clients hiring me/my agency) when folks read my blog, though, I’d hesitate. If my attitude was that it was ultimately a side income and I wanted to primarily make money from it, though, I don’t think my audience would have issues with it so long as I told them up front.
Thanks for using me as an example. If anyone wants to talk to me about sponsorship dollars for SME, I’m easy to find and would certainly listen.
Mack – In principle I have nothing against it. I wonder how this meshes with your perception the sponsored posts through PayPerPost. What are your thoughts?
Mack — This is a great post and a good continuation of a long-running conversation amongst bloggers. Personally, it comes down to value to the readers for me. Advertising in the traditional (AdSense, etc.) sense adds no value what so ever. If anything it simply clutters up the presentation of my thinking and slows down the page load.
Sponsorship could do the same thing, but I think it has the potential to do more. If the sponsor was committed to the community, looked at their needs and desires and would offer a model that could add some real value I would be completely open to listening. Heck, I’d even offer solutions to them so that they would get more out of it. No AdSense advertiser would get that level of integration on any site.
This is the difference, however, in treating this as an ad buy vs. becoming a member of the community. Smart marketers are learning the difference quickly and are cornering the market.
Should I start a clock?
@JasonFalls let’s be honest, it’s damned difficult for a marketing/social media blogger to develop a huge traffic base, simply because of the subject matter. It’s still freakin’ marketing, and that’s always going to be boring to the masses when placed next to Britney gossip.
But many of these bloggers, such as yourself, have devoted communities of readers. That is powerful, and a big reason why I think monetization built around influence rather than traffic works best for everyone.
To me there’s two issues involved, making sure you disclose everything with your readers, as you say, and make sure that the sponsorship benefits your community in SOME way. It could be directly as in they get something, or in allowing you to produce better content and give them a better experience.
But I think sponsorships are the way to go, if they are carefully planned out so that the wants and needs of everyone are considered and addressed.
@cambeck With PayPerPost, the blogger is getting the benefit of mo money. I think if a sponsorship is SMARTLY done, so that the reader is considered as well, that it could work. An example, I am constantly getting pitches to receive a copy of an upcoming book from a blogger. From now on, I am going to tell the author that I need a minimum of two copies so I can give the extra one off to a reader.
I’m not saying that sponsorships are the answer, but for many of us, models like AdSense doesn’t really work for the blogger or readers. I think with careful planning, a sponsorship could work, and honestly I think the push should be coming from the company that’s smart enough to identify its blogging evangelists and reach out to them.
@mattdickman Bingo! This is why I think it works best if the company initiates the discussion. The readers know which brands a blogger evangelizes, and if those brands are willing to reach out to the blogger for a sponsorship, my bet is that the readers will view it as an incredibly smart move on the brand’s part.
Now there’s still the execution part, and the blogger IMO should consider how his/her readers will be affected by the sponsorship. But I think the potential is there to offer a better solution for everyone.
Ike, perfect example, if Blockbuster had reached out to you, I think your readers would have seen it as a VERY smart move by the company. Instead, you were evangelizing them on your blog and BEGGING them to respond, to the point of adding a clock on the sidebar showing how many days of NO contact from Blockbuster.
The implementation is still a prime concern, but the willingness to respond is most important, IMO.
Mack – You’ve established a long history of credibility and integrity, and I would not fault you one bit if you chose to monetize your blog with advertising, a sponsorship, even a payperpost, without giving something so concrete to your readers as a book (although your example was a good one).
It’s important for you to be able to exact a value from your contribution that you believe is fair — or else I cannot expect you to continue making that contribution.
I’m not saying there is no wrong way to do it, but rather that I trust your character enough to believe you will do it right, or if you don’t initially, you possess the judgment to make it right in short order.
That’s what credibility allows.
For my part, he people I meet through blogging (and commenting, and twittering, etc.) make it all worthwhile, and my love for the relationships I’ve formed constantly drive me to improve my output so that they can also profit by reading it.
Cam thanks for the kind words, and let me again say that I am not looking for sponsorships on my blog, and probably never will have a sponsor for my blog.
But at the same time, I understand that many bloggers are currently trying to make money from their blogging, or would like to. My main point was, since this IS happening, shouldn’t we talk about making the process better and more efficient so that everyone can win? I think so.
It’s a tricky business, but I think there’s enough really smart people here and in the blogosphere that we can put our heads together and find a better way.
Sponsorship is a better deal than ads, and has the potential to be far more lucrative – but once you actually get the chance to do it, it’s much harder, both on your ethics and your sense of writing.
And it usually does little for the sponsor.
I’ve bought (for clients) and done sponsorship myself, and I’d be careful going down this road. It’s not much money (even if you’re getting several thousand for it), and it has the potential for big backlash.
If you’re really, really niche – and you get a company that gets social media, it works well.
But how many times does that situation come up?
“I’ve bought (for clients) and done sponsorship myself, and I’d be careful going down this road. It’s not much money (even if you’re getting several thousand for it), and it has the potential for big backlash.
If you’re really, really niche – and you get a company that gets social media, it works well.
But how many times does that situation come up? ”
Not often, but I would bet most bloggers only make dollars if not pennies from their current ads on their blogs.
And I think if there were more examples of smart implementations with sponsorships, we’d see more bloggers and companies exploring the possibilities.
I’ve had ads on my blog, like this blog has, through Blogads for years.
My advertisers have decent clickthru rates when they have good creative. WHen they try to re-purpose traditional advertising, they always fail.
Personally, I think running ads, and rejecting those that are not appropriate for your readers, is more straightforward than sponsorships. You know an ad is paid for, you don’t know what deal a blogger has with a sponsor.
That’s what makes pay per post so specious to me.
I do make money on google ads, but i certainly won’t get rich from them.
For those who don’t want to see bloggers make money – that’s your choice. Don’t run ads on your blogs. :>)
“You know an ad is paid for, you don’t know what deal a blogger has with a sponsor.”
BL – Is that the ONLY issue you have against PayPerPost?
In other words, if posts were clearly marked as sponsored content, would that make them less specious, in your eyes?
Jim – I’ve always been partial to the way GeekBrief.TV has done their sponsorships. They are very selective about who sponsors them so that the content has relevance and it’s something they could support.
Not sure how that works for blogs versus podcasts, but it’s worth consideration.
Participants of blogs, namely marketing blogs, are no different than the average consumer.
As we all know, there’s been a backlash against blatant advertising over the last few years. It seems the more advertising people are exposed to, the more they tune out! In its place, we’re seeing more subtle, product/business placement type advertising on television lately.
My feeling is if you must use a blog as a revenue vehicle, go the sponsorship route; keeping in mind that a blog should be an objective forum, where bloggers should be able to express their ideas freely without the worry of offending the sponsor(s).
I’ve gotten a book through my blog. But the book sounded like something I’d be interested in. Plus I spoke with the author and knew she’d actually read my work at least once. (That and if the author wanted to make sure it got buzz, they would have looked at my Technorati rating and seen that I don’t get much traffic.) The author even reads the Daily Fix.
I didn’t agree to review the book or that I’d even post about it, but if it’s good I’ll post about it–with disclosure. The thought of reviewing it and not mentioning I didn’t pay for it never crossed my mind.
I’m not a big fan of corporate advertising on blogs, and feel sponsorships that are clearly defined and disclosed don’t have to be a conflict of interest. I’m thinking of The Consumerist which has many posts sponsored by Toyota. I haven’t seen any posts about Toyota (good or bad), but the sponsorship banner seems to appear in a set interval of posts.
I’ve gotten a book through my blog. But the book sounded like something I’d be interested in. Plus I spoke with the author and knew she’d actually read my work at least once. (That and if the author wanted to make sure it got buzz, they would have looked at my Technorati rating and seen that I don’t get much traffic.) The author even reads the Daily Fix.
I didn’t agree to review the book or that I’d even post about it, but if it’s good I’ll post about it–with disclosure. The thought of reviewing it and not mentioning I didn’t pay for it never crossed my mind.
I’m not a big fan of corporate advertising on blogs, and feel sponsorships that are clearly defined and disclosed don’t have to be a conflict of interest. I’m thinking of The Consumerist which has many posts sponsored by Toyota. I haven’t seen any posts about Toyota (good or bad), but the sponsorship banner seems to appear in a set interval of posts.
I think there is room for both models to thrive. Sponsorship and AdSense could accommodate each other quite well.
Cam — I’m with BL on this one. What I don’t like about PayPerPost is the fact that it muddies content with advertising. It seems to me that, even when it’s clearly ID’d as a sponsored post, it’s still icky. It still whittles away at the credibility of the blogger.
Honestly, whenever I see a blog with PayPerPost, I trust the blogger a little less.
Running advertising that’s clearly an ad, as via Blogads or whatever, seems far more straightforward to me.
Yeap, there will not be much difference between internet and TV on long term. Who gets most sponsors to their TV shows? The best authors. Who will get the most sponsors to their internet content? The best authors.
And what do these best authors need on long-term? A system that deals with sponsors and other business related stuff (bills, taxes, HR, marketing, branding). A media house.
“Lonely riders” (bloggers that do all this by themselves) can exist at the moment in the internet. Yet in long-term they will become “part” (employees) of some media house and take the benefits from that cooperation.
I might be wrong.
I feel a better way to offer branding on blogs that benefits everyone is in the form of articles.
Offer brands that you support to write an article about a new product launch, or a change in manufacturing, a new advertising idea, etc., and let your readers interact based on the article’s content.
In this way brands get their message out. No one is interrupted, and it can lead to valuable insight for the brands.
I agree that transparency is a must. Be upfront as to what you are doing, and why.
This way everyone benefits, and it also promotes quality conversation.
Its all magic and fairies to me. I did make .25 from my Amazon affiliates program. .25 cents in 3 months, thats good, right?
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