b5media – Climb to the Stars

*These are my notes of [Jeremy’s session](http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blog-monetization/). They might be inaccurate. I did my best. Reminder: you’re invited to [tag my photos on Flickr](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/06/20/flickr-open-up-tagging-your-photos-to-the-community-please/) if you go off to explore them.*

[b5media](http://www.b5media.com/) is a large blog network. 250 blogs. Finds people who are really passionate about their stuff (gardening, football, cats…) and help them make money with it.

Plan, invite a few random people on stage for an impromptu panel. Open source presentation.

– one person who earns money blogging
– someone who’s earning a cup of coffee a day
– someone who’s thinking about making money with blogs, but just thinking

Quick historical look at blog advertising.

2003: blog advertising was evil. Selling your soul. (It does happen, but by and large bloggers are fairly opinionated, and readers fairly astute at outing fakers.) Before [pay-per-post](http://payperpost.com/), which is [obviously evil](http://www.calacanis.com/2006/06/30/payperpost-stupid-and-evil/), btw.

Now, anybody who wants to, can make a full-time living blogging. *steph-note: I must have misunderstood that.*

There’s a lot of money in blogging. AdSense, TLA, custom campaigns… You do need to put a few months in before you get to full-time pay. You make more money consulting/speaking etc. than actually writing.

3 people:

– [Eric Nakagawa, Mr. ICanHasCheezburger](http://icanhascheezburger.com/)
– [Michelle Leder](http://footnoted.org/)
– [Julie](http://cottagedaily.com)

Q: picking a topic that will maximize monetization?

A E: we didn’t choose a topic to make money. just wanted to do funny stuff. And people came.

A M: started four years ago, early blogger (*steph-note: and what am I, then? OMG! dinosaur!*), linked to book she wrote.

A J: getting out of unemployment: program, needed an idea, chose to blog about her passion, cottaging.

Q: ??

A E: wondering what the people who visit our site would be interested in? And match up with relevant advertisers, rather than use AdSense which just scrape your content.

A M: struggling with this question right now. Google ads are not a good match for my audience.

[Lorna Dietz](http://www.radiantview.com/blog/): Philippino community site => gets huge amounts of dating sites with AdSense, annoying!

E: being a full-time blogger is really full-time, so you better really love what you’re blogging about.

JW: reducing the number of ads on a page.

[Ben Metcalfe](http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/): seems the best way to monetize your blog, going down the long tail, is not advertising but adding value with your blog to some other thing you’re going to be able to earn money from.

A M: I make a fair amount of my money through speaking, clearly more than ads.

A E: could make money selling billions of T-shirts, but do you really want to do this? We’re just trying to do this and see how long we can push it.

A J: making videos of wakeboard stuff, hoping to attract a younger demographic. Problem now is: how can I get traffic?

JW: Average traffic, average money. 10-12’000 page views a month for a personal blog won’t bring you much more than a couple 100 $ a month.

JW: Would you read your blog?

Ten tips:

– lots of valuable content
– host your blog yourself, own your domain
– AdSense is the crack of blog advertising, but don’t get hooked
– do 2-3 things really well in blog advertising
– CPA/CPL don’t work well (repeat audience)
– content syndication
– partner
– be smart about TLA (you don’t want to be exited by Google)
– don’t sell out
– if your audience supports it, blogging about stuff your paid for can work

*steph-note: going too fast, fingers hurt too much. folding up for this session.*

**Extra:**

– [Jeremy’s blog post](http://www.ensight.org/archives/2007/07/21/blog-monetization-session-wordcamp-2007/) and [powerpoint presentation](http://www.ensight.org/uploads/wordcamp.ppt)

Tag: b5media

WordPress 2007: Jeremy Wright, Im in ur blogz grabbin' ur kash! Blog Monetization [en]

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