Archive for Audience
What you most Certainly Do NOT Know about your fellow Bloggers
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If you’ve dipped so much as a toe into today’s marketing world, you’ve heard about blogs. Actually, if you’ve been on the internet at all lately, you’ve probably seen that blogs are a pretty commonplace occurrence. You probably are not aware of how truly easy it is to advertise on the blogs of bloggers.”
What is this thing called a “blog?” What is it for? When did people across the unverse first hear about it? How can you make it work for you in today’s competitive marketplace, especially when you have very little money to spend on your marketing?
The term “weblog” was coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, editor of RobotWisdom.com, one of the oldest blogs out there. The shortened term “blog” came about in 1999, offered up by one Peter Merholz, editor and author of Peterme.com, a very well-established blog about his life, the web in general, and about everything else under the sun. By July 2006, statistics show that there were 12 million bloggers in the US alone (we’d venture to say there are many times that amount now), and that more than 39% of the US population reads blogs. Again, chances are that now, with the unemployment rate rising and Internet costs getting less expensive, that number is much higher. From the perspective of someone who wants to advertise on blogs, this is a good sign. Statistics also show that by February of 2009 there were 1.5 billion Internet users worldwide. Read More→
Regular as Blog Work
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I have a guilty secret. I’m not proud of it, I hardly even remember when I started doing it, but now I’m hooked.
Sure, I could give up if I wanted to – I just don’t want to. What is it? Failblog.org
It’s a silly website dedicated to videos and photos depicting epic fails of all sorts. Before I check the news headlines, before I check my emails, hell, before I even check on my kids I have to have my daily fix of fail. Read More→
Blog like there’s nobody reading
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You know how the saying goes, dance like there’s no one watching, sing like there’s no one listening. I think the same is true for blogging.
A close friend of mine stared blogging many years ago. She was a pioneer, sharing her innermost thoughts with the world. Oh she got all the feedback about, “why share your diary with strangers?”, “what will your colleagues think?”, “Aren’t you scared of stalkers?” but she took sensible privacy precautions and opened her heart.
In the early days her blogs were a touch guarded and I could tell that she was holding stuff back in case a parent or family member was reading, but as time progressed and her style became more confident she would share more and more intimate details with her readers.
The results were self-evident, as she shared more, her audience became involved. A crisis at home, a fragile relationship with a friend or even a personal health “life-changer” moved from being an abstract concept to something affecting a “virtual friend”.
What had changed was the style, a style that started talking from the heart. Read More→
From Citizen Journalist to Blogployment
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The website Technorati, has produced an annual ‘State of the Blogosphere ’ report since 2004 following the growths and trends across the blogging community. The recently released 2009 report confirms that while “more bloggers than ever are making money from blogs” the actual methods by which they do it appear to be as varied as the topics that they blog about.
According to Lijit, between 2008 and 2009 there has been a 68% increase in the number blogs with ad tags installed. This indicates that monetizing blogs is high on the priority list of most publishers. However advertising is only part of the story.
Across the groups who make money from blogging, being a speaker at an industry event or contributing to print media is likely to contribute more to the bottom line than the monthly cheque from Google.
So if highly paid jobs in the “traditional” print media are become scarcer and few bloggers are getting rich on advertising revenues – where’s the money? Read More→
How To Make Money From Telling People About Your Crappy Day
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Wouldn’t it be nice? You sit down from a crappy day at work and type up your troubles into your blog where millions of readers await the latest update on your uneventful, tragic existence. Every wild and crazy story about your annoyance at noisy traffic and your frustration at the government for taxing people will be applauded by hungry readers around the world. Imagine the response. Okay, so maybe you can overlook my sarcasm, but the point is this- there are millions of confessional blogs written as a kind of therapy that make no money at all. So this begs the question- why should your personal blog make any money?
The key to money on the internet is traffic. If no one reads your blog then you have to be pretty inventive to make any cash. Actually I’ll be frank- NO TRAFFIC MEANS NO MONEY. How do you get traffic to your blog? Well, I won’t lie, sex blogs tend to due pretty well. Take Tucker Max and The Pussy Ranch. These have a cult following and have generated cash and fame for both authors. But it is important to look past the sex and see that these blogs tell great stories. Taking your readers on an emotional journey is the value you offer. Personal blogs must tell a great story. Read More→
To Be Or Not To Be? – That Is The Comment
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Image courtesy of King ChimpIf you scroll down the page on most blogs you’ll see them. Sometimes they’re full of acroynms and angry people, sometimes they’re advertising a new grill or some great new porn, and occasionally they have something useful in them. These things are a plague and a blessing to blogs, and choosing whether or not you engage in them will have a big impact on how you and your readers interact with your blog.
There’s a lot of hype about Web 2.0 and the global community. We’re all supposed to be one big happy family, browsing along and celebrating Thanksgiving with style. But there are some unwelcome guests at the table. Some people don’t care about the conversation and just want to sell you stuff.
“Can you pass the gravy?”
“Would you like to save $150 on car insurance?”
“Err… no, you can just pass the gravy thanks.” Read More→