Type-A Mom Conference – Creative Ways to Monetize Your Blog: Thinking Outside the Widget

After a lovely breakfast this morning at the Asheville Renaissance Hotel – I had fresh pineapple and strawberries! – we’re here in one of the first morning breakout sessions – Creative Ways to Monetize Your Blog: Thinking Outside the Widget. Kim Moldofsky is moderating, with speakers Debbie Bookstaber and Angela England.

We’ll be learning to use our blog to grab freelance writing assignments, create e-books, and make money from affiliate programs.

“Yes, it’s possible to earn money on the Internet without taking your clothes off.” – Angela England

Let’s talk about freelance writing assignments. Angela has been doing freelance writing for five years now, starting out writing online then breaking into print. Find out what rights you have for the content you’re creating for other Web sites. I think Angela England is talking about Suite 101 (without saying the name) – how they retain online rights for one year, but you have the right to use your work after that. She’s sold some of these already-written articles to trade magazines. By pitching something she’d already written, she wasn’t wasting any of her very valuable time.

Debbie’s background is in Internet marketing. Even before she was a blogger, she was a freelance writer. She said it wasn’t called freelance writing, but search engine copywriting. (That’s what I do at Phenomenal Content.) SEO is a primarily male-dominated field (although I know a fair number of awesome women doing it) but there’s plenty of room for talented bloggers to break into SEO copywriting. You can find people to hire you through Copyblogger, Problogger, and at local SEO firms. You can make a very nice living writing keyword articles for SEO firms. If you do freelance writing, make sure to put that in your LinkedIn profile so your connections can find you. Give people your rates; put a number out there and don’t let them think you’re going to work for free. Whether it’s 10 cents per word or whatever, just put your name out there.

Angela will charge less for copywriting when she gets her name on it with a byline and a link back to her site. For ghostwritten material, she charges $250 per post. She wanted to put that number out there. In her tiered structure, $50 is the lowest amount she will accept. (I may need to adjust my rates…)

Angela writes most often for trade or niche magazines – massage therapy, gardening, etc. (And she confirmed that it was Suite 101 that she wrote for. I thought so!)

Debbie said that the parenting writing segment has become oversaturated and very competitive, which drives its rates down. If you add a photo to your post, you can charge more for that. She charges less for the small toy company she writes for than she does for large national companies. Check out seed.com to break into freelance writing. They pay about $50 per piece.

Topic selection. Angela says that most of us have “alteregos” from a previous life, things we used to do before we became mommy bloggers. Use this to your benefit! She’s written about “how to work as a pregnant massage therapist.” Use your life experience to find things to write about.

Now we’re going to talk about affiliate marketing.

Debbie explains that affiliate marketing is based on CPA, cost per action. You get paid for performance, making money only when your readers sign up on another Web site or buy something from an online store. Text-based affiliate links peform much better than affiliate banners. These are different from text links people try to buy from you via email – these are generally SEO firms trying to build “link juice” by having bloggers like you link back to their site. This is something that Google frowns upon, and you may get a penalty in the search engine rankings if they catch you.

As far as FTC guidelines go, Debbie says (and this should not be considered legal advice) that you do not have to disclose affiliate links because you are not receiving consideration ahead of time. (I didn’t think this was the case. My Internet marketer friends have different advice, and I like to disclose whenever I include affiliate links in my posts.)

Debbie apologies if it sounds like she’s speaking in a foreign language. She usually speaks at tech conferences for search marketing geeks who talk about this stuff all the time. I hang around with search marketing geeks, so let me know if you’d like clarification on any of this stuff.

Affiliate programs you can join:

• Amazon Associates
• Commission Junction
• Linkshare
• Share a Sale

When deciding which programs to join, think about whether or not you’d actually buy stuff from the site you want to promote. If you wouldn’t spend your money there, chances are, your readers won’t either.

Angela adds that including affiliate links for products you review – she mentions a cookbook review site – is providing a service for your readers. If you really enjoyed a certain product, you want to be able to give your readers a way to purchase that product. Otherwise, all you have is a review of a product that your readers don’t know how to buy.

Now Angela is going to talk to us about e-books. You can repurpose the content you’re already writing. You can take all of the recipes you’ve been posting on your blog and compile them into one easy location. Offer your readers an easily downloadable version of your content so they don’t have to spend the time to search out the information. You’re saving them time by providing quick access to the information they want. There will always be people who only want information for free, but there are plenty more people who equate time with money, and they’re the ones who will be grateful for the service.

Angela uses Open Office to create her e-books, using Print to File to create PDFs  to make her e-books. (You can add affiliate links to your e-books, too!) She and Kelby are working on creating a mommy e-book library – her project for 2011. This sounds great, and gives me a little more motivation to finally finish my Picky Eaters Cookbook.

From the audience:

Good Housekeeping pays $500 to reprint blog posts in their magazine. @lovethatmax knows an editor there – egolden at hearst dot com.

Question about why text link ads in your sidebar are bad. (Also, you’re getting really underpaid if you’re only making $20 a month for them. SEO firms get thousands of dollars a month to find links for their clients.) I wrote a post about this last year: Do Bloggers Even Know They’re Breaking Google’s Rules? It focuses on links in product reviews and giveaways, but it’s more directly applicable to text links in your sidebar.

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.