The Reader Appreciation Project

Many people are doing it. Many people want to do it. And many others out there are thinking about it. The idea of making money through blogging has been around for many years. And in the world of online social networking where the actual lives of people are revolving around the online world more than ever before, the concept of making money blogging has never before gotten so much attention as it does today.

While majority of the blogs end up making absolutely no significant amount of money, the trend of hearing about famous blogs making a lot of money prompts many people to start blogging. Your entire blogging plan can change or may need changing if you introduce a plan to earn money through blogging. And in order to successfully make money through blogging, you need to figure out whether or not you wish to make money through blogging.

Today RA Project asks you to answer a question that can define the future of your blog and blogging: Do you try to make money through blogging?

5 Ways to Make Money Through Blogging

Read more…

When was the last time you picked up a paper newspaper? That question came to my mind recently when I ran into an article by Lauren Indvik on Mashable titled “5 Ways to Monetize the Future of News Media. The article tries to explain the 5 major ways the news industry is trying to make money in the online world. In one of the points, the article, whether consciously or unconsciously, uses a fallacy, or an illogical reason, as a basis for judging how The Wall Street Journal [WSJ] online model is performing today.

An illogical reason usually results from a misunderstood or a miscategorized idea that something happens for some specific reason that in reality is not true. Today we we will go through the main fallacy about The Wall Street Journal [WSJ] assumption in the specific Mashable article in question and see how such a mistake came to be. Realizing this specific mistake can help avoid the pitfall of trying to base your online business or website model on other website models, instead of coming up with a business model that helps your specific business or website.

Wall Street Journal Business Model Assumptions on Mashable

In one part, the article talks about the paid subscription model that WSJ has where it charges customers for access to many of its news articles. The article says the following:

From mashable.com:
More dangerously, other sites have avoided linking to the WSJ’s articles because it’s highly likely that their readers won’t be able to access those stories. In fact, a study published earlier this week showed that although the WSJ had more than double the number of print subscribers as The New York Times in 2009, it was not one of the most-linked-to news outlets on blogs, Twitter (Twitter) or YouTube (YouTube). Thus the company has lost, and continues to lose out on, both potential subscriber and page view-generated ad revenue.

The last highlighted sentence in that quote is a big assumption based on several fallacies. Here are a few reasons why you should realize this assumption and avoid similar kind of assumption on your blogs and writings:

• The Wall Street Journal focuses efficiently on a specific paying-customer client market. It makes money through an increasing subscriber base. Therefore, logically, we cannot assume that WSJ is losing money by not focusing on other specific client markets like Twitter or Facebook. WSJ has chosen a specific focus as part of its business model, the same way Mashable has chosen the free-content-with-advertisements focused client base as part of its business model instead of a subscription-based content model.
• WSJ does not need to depend on an incoming number of links because WSJ makes money mainly through paying customers. Thus, incoming links is of little use to WSJ. This fact is either misunderstood or ignored by Lauren in her article. In reality, it is companies like Mashable and TechCrunch that depend on incoming Twitter and Facebook links.
• Lauren does not list any sources that suggest The Wall Street Journal is losing revenue because of not being linked to from Twitter, Facebook or YouTube due to its existing business model. Thus, the above quoted final judgment about WSJ business model is simply an assumption based on a personal preference of what businesses should be like.
• The very fact that WSJ focuses on its own content and custom business model, instead of traditional online model of getting backlinks and advertising traffic, is what makes WSJ successful online compared to many other newspapers. The article incorrectly depicts this fact as a shortcoming, instead of an advantage.

Avoid fallacies when observing other business and website models

The article serves as a very important short guide for learning how different kinds of mainly offline businesses in the newspaper industry can make money in the online world. At the same time, however, the article falls victim to one of the biggest assumptions and pitfalls in any business: assuming that if one model works somewhere, it must be copied and made the standard everywhere else. Contrary to what the article says, The Wall Street Journal does not need to focus on getting incoming links from Twitter or Facebook, which is what Mashable does.

What is your opinion on this? Do you think the newspaper industry, or The Wall Street Journal, should focus on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube more? Do you think Lauren is correct in assuming that The Wall Street Journal is losing out on potential clients and should focus on getting more backlinks and attention from Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube?

Please share in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

One of the most controversial topics in the blogging world is making money online. Actually not exactly making the money, but talking about how to make it. All kind of “experts” are raising their heads from the dark, claiming they have the absolute secret to the treasure chest, and giving it away for a measly amount of $47, or $97, or $147. What’s one second, compared to the Eternity? What’s one hundred bucks, compared to the millions you’d make if you read that book, or if you joined that membership program?

The Simple Theory Of Making Money Online

When I used to work in advertising, before developing a campaign, we always used to depict our target audience: we attached a persona to it, we gave that persona a name, a face, needs, desires… weaknesses… it was almost like we became friends. The dialog got much easier after we knew who we were talking to. Our campaigns were selling like crazy, the clients were happy, so that seemed to be a good formula for success. Was it really?

Since the summer of 2006 I’m playing with blogs. I like it. Whenever I manage to reach the top position in Google for some competitive keyword, I’m happy like a child who’s just got a new toy. However, in the beginning of this year, I’ve started a make money online project which was supposed to go on like this: write some beautiful posts to resonate with people willing to make money online, then create products (namely ebooks) which those people would either buy from me, or get them for free but stuffed with affiliate links all over the place.

How To Apply The Theory When Readers Are Looking Into Your Eyes?

My first ebook is almost ready. I’ve written it a couple of months ago. It is a decent read, but I’ll never release it to my readers. To make you understand what made me feel this way, I’m going to give you a quote from Grizzly, not the bear, but a guy who teaches people how to make money online, and who put this feeling into words I wouldn’t be able to express better myself:

Somewhere along the line I got sidetracked. I quite unexpectedly started getting readers – real people asking me questions. This threw me off a bit. It’s one thing for the conscience to slap up a page of links and collect commissions off of a nameless click. It’s another thing to make money off of “Bob” who has sent me an email asking for my opinion on the product I am flogging. At least to me it is. It turns out that Bob is down to his last dime, out of work, heard you can make money online and is willing to buy the product on my page if I say it’s a good deal. He trusts me. Oh man…

Please follow the above link and read the whole post: you’ll discover what reader appreciation really means. Reader appreciation means to be able to look your readers in the eyes. Readers are more than figures on a daily chart. Readers are those Bobs, and Johns and Janes whom you’ve just impersonated for your next marketing campaign.

Always impersonate your target. Then re-evaluate your ways. You might find a better one.

P.S.: my money making project has turned into a resources consuming one, but I’m feeling much better and so does Diana, my partner in this enterprise.

Blogs. Sidebars. Fashions. Uniforms. The 125×125 ads displayed in the sidebar of probably 80% of all blogs.

Despite their extremely poor conversion rate (very few people are clicking, and even fewer buy), the little cute squares are bloggers’ favorites when it comes to selling advertising (or at least to filling them with affiliate banners, forever waiting for the day when the advertisers’ requests will start flooding their inbox). That section is most of the times clearly labeled as Advertising, or Sponsors, so it is clear the sole purpose of those ads is money.

Keeping this in mind, do you believe that displaying those ads in the sidebar implies that the respective blogger also endorses those products or services? I never thought that readers may think I’m endorsing those things I get paid for displaying in my sidebar, as long as I label them as advertising.

Although assuming is not the wisest thing of all, I assume that some of you will say that it is a sort of endorsement. Some others would probably say that a blog’s sidebar is just like the advertising pages in printed magazines: pure advertising. No magazine endorses the products which are advertised inside. It’s just advertising, everybody knows and accepts the convention.

Why then would you buy something from a banner in my sidebar? Or, would you?

I don’t know about you, but every time one of my readers wants to write something on my site, be it a comment or a guest post, I’m glad. And if any of my readers would express the wish to advertise in my sidebar for free, I’d accept that happily (probably for the first 4-5 requesters only, in order not to scare away the other readers). I would consider that an honour, a sign of appreciation of my blog.

These being said, a few days ago I started to play with Entrecard, to see what’s this all about. I played for about 30 minutes, jumping from blog to blog, dropping cards, then I got back to more serious things. After a while, I noticed in my inbox a message that somebody wants to advertise on my Entrecard. I accepted that, and then I started to place requests for advertising on other blogs. I was shocked to see that there were people who rejected my ad, because they didn’t find it appropriate for their blog. Maybe they cared so much for their readers that they wanted to put only the best in front of their eyes. Maybe.

Then I noticed that for each blog page on Entrecard, there is a message saying:

37.33% of advert requests rejected

Higher percentages suggest a more discerning site owner, applicants should check their advert is likely to fit with the blog topic and format.

The percentage is different for each blog. Never mind the percentage. Don’t you smell some smart manipulation from Entrecard’s side? Are people flocking towards such affirmations, in their wish to appear more discerning, or more sophisticated, or wiser? Yes, it seems that humans and birds have the same origin, and our ancestral need to flock comes to the surface every time a bait is shown to us.

What do you think? Is Entrecard manipulating bloggers with that statement?

By the way, there was one blogger who wrote me a thank you message after I booked an advertising spot on his blog.