I’m quite overwhelmed by the response to my post asking for Help in finding a business model for ProBlogger. There are 29 comments there already from some bloggers that I really admire and respect the opinion of. Thanks to those of you who have left your opinion and who have messaged or emailed your thoughts also. Feel free to continue the discussion (its a useful one to have for more than just my own situation).
Let me re-emphasize that I the issue is not about me making more money. Whilst I’m not opposed to the idea of a higher income from this blog the purpose of what I’m doing here is genuinely about helping the blogging community. The issue at hand is not about my own greed for more cash – rather it is about how I sustain what I do whilst still helping as many people as possible in relevant and effective ways.
I’m now going to spend a little time thinking through my response to the issue with your many comments in mind. I am leaning towards writing a book (the question over whether it should be an e-book or an actual physical book is a question I need to ponder – your opinions would be valued on this too) and would like to further explore the possibility of both forums (although the work involved in maintaining them worries me) and some sort of course/tele-seminar.
In the short term I’m not going to change my approach over consulting – if its basic advice (that won’t take long) you’re after and IF I have the time I’ll attempt to help out where I can – if its more comprehensive than that I’ll probably either simply explain that I’m too busy or that I need to find some way of making a little money for the time I put into it. I’m not going to force anyone to give me a link for my services – but would appreciate this if you feel this blog and the advice I give are worthy of it (It probably won’t hurt your case if you do – but its not a prerequisite).
Thanks again for your support – now lets get back to some blogging!
I would prefer an ebook over a book.
Go for the actual physical book that will give you nice chunk of extra credibility. The timing is also right, blogging is still on the verge to go mainstream, so you have a sizeable audience around the world.
It might not be very lucrative but from that base you can extend your visibility by churning ebooks etc. Im thinking something like Blogging for dummies, but not quite :)
I know some people at Thomson Learning in Taiwan, but obviously that is of no help here. I suggest you to go for a small publisher (that kind of publisher where you are able to talk to the manager) and just drop kick the book to the market. Foreign countries you can then do by co-publishing.
Short term financial benefits might be greater if you just do an ebook and sell it via Commission Junction or similar network. Price, you have to make it mass market product keep it under 20 USD and it will become that blogging bible, everybody wants to have.
Here is other chance to go real world by catching an eye of a publisher. Has happened before, you must know the examples. However, most ebooks just dont appeal to publishers, they like to think that they know what goes to the audience and therefore shun the market. Also, if you already sold your book on the net, there are some difficulties in determening the royalties and other immaterial rights.
It could be 30% chances to get a deal this way. If you get it GREAT, if not, you have your ebook sales.
Forgot to say (or did I) that if you dont find a publisher for that real book, you can always go ebook with it, so only little work is wasted.
I think I truly robust FAQ would work wonders. The problems with most FAQs is that they are either too trite to be useful or too dense to be any more useful than a boring and voluminous book. The problem I usually have is that the question in my head rarely matches the questions as formatted in the FAQ. Simply phrasing the questions several different ways would work wonders. Terminology is also a problem… I can’t find the question because I don’t have the “right” terms to search on. A decent glossary would help a lot.
The Wikipedia articles related to blogging need a lot of work as well, but obviously they shouldn’t be larded up with details related to specific products or commercial services or even simple “how-to”.
I would vote for an e-book in Wikipedia format, especially since blogging is a rapidly evolving domain.
— Jack Krupansky
Sorry for the comment spam and typos, but just had to mention this one thing.
I havent really followed the technical side of the blogging (for me it is just a hobby – ah, maybe that blog about log homes is going to drag on to infinity) but what annoys me tremendously is the poor comment management, there is very little done in Blogger to help managing the discussion.
I know that there are some interesting stuff going on in that initial Find a business model post, but I just dont want to bother myself to go there. However, if all the comments would go to a one discussion board, I could easily follow all the conversations simultaneously. Also it would work as a nice platform to the actual blog posts and it could be expanded to topics outside your blog.
Darren Blog Posts
all the posts have their own topic/title
business model II
adsense changes
(all the posts up here, would also appear in the corresponding blog post)
(all the posts down here would be on board only)
Other categories
Help with the site
Adsense + Blog
Graphics
Now, this would be great way to facilitate the discussion make it easier for us to have a genuine discussion, now it tends to forget it self as you keep on posting faster than we discuss. Event horizon in blogs is terribly short, I rarely bother to find out what you have posted earlier, if I happen to miss couple of days. Oh, my reader just wants to explode if I dont manage it constantly, so if I slip, I have hundreds of unread posts waiting for me, in that situation I just dump all of the unread stuff and wait for brand new posts.
So are there this kind of solutions? Two-way integrated blog-discussion boards. Ive seen some that gather single comments on one page like http://multiply.com/ but it is not doing enough. If you know some, please let me know too :)
I’d vote for “real” book. More credibility, hasn’t been done to death for your topic, and greater chance for spin-off earnings (Oprah?).
So have you proven the worst subject to blog about professionally is blogging…kind of ironic but it makes sense, most of your readers are either ad-immune or already know about everything that your ads point to.
I guess your site is a victim of the limitations of AdSense. AdSense is good for making an obvious connection between content and ads but for a site like this one there needs to be another layer of intelligence in the ads that would detect not the direct products indicated by the page, but the indirect or sub products that would be useful the page viewers.
If your site, rather than having endless for blogs (irrelevant to your readers – despite the obvious connection), would have ads for RSS-Aggregators, collaboration tools, online business tools, web hosting, etc, I think that you would fair much better.
In a way Adsense hasn’t caught up with this type of Blog. Just my 2 cents.
I’d vote for “real” book. More credibility, hasn’t been done to death for your topic, and greater chance for spin-off earnings (Oprah?).
So have you proven the worst subject to blog about professionally is blogging…kind of ironic but it makes sense, most of your readers are either ad-immune or already know about everything that your ads point to.
I guess your site is a victim of the limitations of AdSense. AdSense is good for making an obvious connection between content and ads but for a site like this one there needs to be another layer of intelligence in the ads that would detect not the direct products indicated by the page, but the indirect or sub products that would be useful the page viewers.
If your site, rather than having endless for blogs (irrelevant to your readers – despite the obvious connection), would have ads for RSS-Aggregators, collaboration tools, online business tools, web hosting, etc, I think that you would fair much better.
In a way Adsense hasn’t caught up with this type of Blog. Just my 2 cents.
I think you should make it a public feature – every week (or more often) you choose a question to answer, or a blog to review, and post your thoughts here. That way you’re helping the whole audience instead of just one person.
Inevitably, many people won’t want their questions answered publicly – especially the “what’s wrong with my site” ones – but those you can handle (or ignore) as you said above.
I really, truly am glad I found this site. It has answered so many questions for me. I will be back. Thank You