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Cash In Your Blog - 4 Ways to Profit From The Hidden Revenue In Your Blog


Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there's the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects.

But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?

The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience.

In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they'd never catch up to reading it all.

This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers.

If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy.

Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products

As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you'll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be.

For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I've noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they'll be able to use as a reference guide.

Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response.

Method Two: The Subscription Model

When you're blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this.

Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they're looking for at your site, but you'll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time.

Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a "Best of" compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution. Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine.

Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook

With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information.

There are a couple of tricks you'd have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you'd be surprised about how easy this process can be.

Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book

I know what you're thinking. "Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it's free at my site?"

Under certain circumstances, you'd be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services.

For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as "overwhelming". It's one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it's not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home.

Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs.

If you're still not convinced that it's not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this.

On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It's almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer.

Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look.

You can learn low-cost ways to turn your blog into an ebook or preview Tinu's 400 page Free Traffic Tips printed edition and ebook at FreeTrafficTip.com .


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Blogging & RSS Information Even though I've had several personal blogs for years, I've only been officially business blogging since 2003. So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when I realized that my overall business costs were down about 19%. What saved me so much money? Surprisingly, blogging. How can you save money with your blog? It's pretty simple, so I'll be brief. Attract search engine traffic without paying the big bucks If you want Google, Yahoo and MSN to pay attention to you, blog. It doesn't have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free. And you can find out most basic blog information online for free (really, sometimes just typing your question into Google will do it.) by people who've actually done it. For less than $100, you can build a small library of blog tips and secrets, written by successful business bloggers. Instead of buying links, get one-way links from blog search engines and directories, as well as getting your RSS feed content displayed at other sites. Linking is a great way to get search engine attention and click traffic. Some people get links by trading; others by including their links at the end of freely distributed articles. Others pay to be listed, or to get linked. In each of these scenarios, some type of trade takes place, money, free content, or a link back. When you blog, you'll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won't need to link back - you'll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself. If 90 or more of these free, legitimate links back to your site is worth your time, then get you blog in motion. Not only that, if you update frequently, other sites may want to display your RSS feed content on their sites. To encourage them to do so, put a link on your page with instructions on how to do so. Ever since I put one on the front of my site, various feeds from my main site have turned up in the most unexpected places. Cheaper way to study your audience. As your blog gets more popular, you may start to find that on any given day, you have a representative cross-section of prospects and clients at your site. If you have a question for them, you can just... ask. True, you can post a link to a survey in your newsletter or on your site, but these are not as interactive as the ability for your audience to comment. They will comment, and you can reply to ask them to expand, or clarify. Conversation gets going and before you know it, a bond is formed, a much stronger bond than occurs in a one-way conversation. Cheaper (and faster) way to start a resource or authority site. Measure the Influence of Blogs Measure and monitor what bloggers are saying about your business. Download Free Research Reports. www.cymfony.com Professional Blogging Services Expert blogging services for promoting business and increasing site traffic. www.bpwebdesign.com Business Blog Webinar Does your business need a blog? Free from Digitalgrit – Register now. www.digitalgrit.com Business Blogging Stop fooling with so-called CRM. Create real customer relationships. Your customers and competitors are charging ahead with business blogs; are you playing catch-up? www.cerado.com Blog Business Summit Blogs. Learn from top bloggers such as Robert Scoble how to make blogs work for your business at the Blog Business Summit. www.blogbusinesssummit.com Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don't work as well with Google Tap.) Now, if you want to be the expert, you want to start a blog. If you're blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices. As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you. 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