Monetizing the Blog That Refuses to Monetize: Using Your Rankings, Not Your Readers
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After reading this post on insidecrm, I began thinking about my own blog, and some new ideas to monetize it. I’ve been having an issue with this, for a variety of reasons. First off, I myself don’t like the ad setup I have. I think there’s too many, and I dislike the placement. Secondly, my reader base is a tough cookie to crack. They are [largely] intelligent and experienced, so they’ve heard of most services, and are almost adsense blind. In addition, many are blackhats. And for those who don’t know, blackhats really rarely buy ANYTHING.
So this was the result of my brainstorm. I’m not sure how soon it will be implemented, but I like the idea, so I suspect it will be coming soon.
Who Is This For?
This is for anyone like me, who has an educated reader base, and hence has more problems monetizing than would a standard “make money online” newbie blog. If your readers don’t click much(or buy even less), give this a try. Perhaps you’ll be surprised.
An All-Important Prequisite - Before I say anything else, I’ll say this: Be honest. Something I’ve been trying to do whenever I’m reviewing a service is to review the service, THEN find an affiliate program. It helps to create reviews of the software/product that are honest, and leave the user to their own decision. As soon as you completely whore a product, without mentioning any of the cons, your readerbase starts to lose trust in you, then you have nothing at all to work with.
There’s a reason we only have 3 banner ads rotating on this blog. I use them all before I promote them. This ensures there’s some quality standards, and increases trust. Sure, I could promote Google Payload, or TheRichSchoolBoy, but everything I’ve heard, and everything in my gut tells me that they’re absolutely, 100% full of shit.
The Idea - Monetize Your Ranking, Not Your Audience
This requires considerable skill, but pretty much the idea is that your product reviews(with affiliate programs of course) never actually hit your main blog feed. Instead, they’re fed into a sub-section that never hits the front page.
How Do I Get Money if I Don’t Market to My Readers?
First off, you probably will get a fair amount of user-based traffic. Use a CSS drop down menu of reviews. That way the reader knows what they’re getting, and doesn’t think you’re trying to con them out of anything. That kind of traffic is worth a LOT.
But most money won’t come from your audience. Most money will come from the ranking you can get from your readers. Look at it like this. Your readers link to your blog relatively frequently. So simply on the basis that your review is ON your site, and linked to somewhere from the home page, you can rank quite highly for their product name. So you are using(in a good way) your readers for the inlinks to your quality articles, to promote your other pages.
Beyond that, if you write about something related to a product you reviewed, feel free to link to it in the post. You’ll get proper anchor text, and possibly a few interested parties.
Why Would the Searcher Click on Me, Instead of The Real Product Site?
If you properly indicate that this is a review of the product, you’ll be surprised. What sane person, who is about to spit out cash for a program or service, would not want to read a review first? If you can swing a #2 ranking, right in behind the publisher itself, it is entirely possible to get more traffic than the product itself gets for that search.
Can I Really Rank Off of Nothing But Internal Links?
Unless your name happens to be Matt Cutts(in which case, Hi Matt!), probably not. Which is why you promote your review. Pump it on social news sites, a few reliable link drops, it probably doesn’t take too much if your site itself has decent link juice going into it.
Another nice tip. Try and get the owner of whatever product you’re promoting to link to your review. Of course, you have to link to them too, but by cloaking or no-following the link you give to them, you get an absolutely extraordinary bump.
So this was an honest to God brainstorm. I haven’t tested the concept yet, but I get a good feeling about it.
Any input?
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I too have been looking into some different opportunities to monetize my blog. You seem to have brainstormed this idea quite a bit and the thought of even ranking in the top 5 would be a damn interesting project to try. I know I would click on a review first.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:03 am
“Try and get the owner of whatever product you’re promoting to link to your review. Of course, you have to link to them too, but by cloaking or no-following the link you give to them, you get an absolutely extraordinary bump.”
I would think the best way to do this, especially if you’re not going to give them any link juice, is to say something like, “I’ll give you a discount on the paid review if you link to me.”
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“What sane person, who is about to spit out cash for a program or service, would not want to read a review first?”
Especially if the title of the review is “(Product) is a scam!” That’s what all them folks who push those garbage Clickbank ebooks like to do with Adwords. Then they set out to convince you why it’s actually not a scam.
December 24th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Heh this is true. Although, calling something a scam is not the best way to sell it..perhaps pump a competitor in the post…
December 24th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Cold call some SEO firms and sell ad space on your site. You will make bank.
December 24th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Heh sure. Why not.
Any suggestions on how much to ask for?
Selling ad space is not my bag normally. I’m more of an affiliate guy.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I am an inexperianced newbie myself and have bought numerous Get RICH QUICK books. That being said. I had always looked for reviews about whatever I wanted to Buy before I bought it.
December 28th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Monetizing a blog for blackhats actually seems pretty formulaic. Just offer access to a link-building tool and say the access to it has to be capped. Charge monthly. Didn’t Eli get around 250 subscribers duing his first month. And Rob does this too (with databases). Basically you have to offer a service they can’t find for free somewhere. It doesn’t have to be a tool; it can just be a service like Jon’s trust rank report. This seems to be the best way to monetize bh readers.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:33 am
“And for those who don’t know, blackhats really rarely buy ANYTHING.”
That’s a bit ironic. Consider this: John Chow says his blog averages $17,000 a month. Eli made $25,000 the first month he offered services on his blog because he had 250 users each paying $100 a month. So Eli’s blackhat blog surpassed the income of the more heavily trafficked and whitehat (or empty hat?) Chow blog.
We don’t know how much Jon mad from his TR report, but I’m sure he cleaned up. What if the premise was actually flipped on its head? Bh blogs are easier to monetize than wh ones….
January 8th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Blackhats may invest in services, but don’t buy products. Maybe I should have worded that better.
And there are always exceptions.
Like take the syndk8 crowd(where I am more than WF). THEY rarely buy anything.
WFers meanwhile(More Eli’s crowd), seem a lot more likely. Still trying to figure out why.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:08 am
@Shady: Is that not because BHs are generally good coders, and as such can make services / tools for them to do their job and don’t need to buy them.
I’d never consider buying something I could write myself. Why would they?
January 18th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Yup, this is very true. Which is why you rarely will see me try to monetize this blog too much. If you DO see a post promoting something, it is probably to get myself a ranking for the product name later on.
Although if someone wants to buy from the blog, of course that is welcome.
Actually, I’m in the process of reviewing blackhat product which is looking to be pretty nice…