Making money with blogs

Doc Searls had a great session about "Making money with blogs session at BloggerCon"

Does your phone, porch, furniture have a revenue model?

Do you write for readers or deliver content for consumers…

Are your readers an audience? Do they read you for your ads?

Do you consider yourself a brand?

Would you stop in the middle of a conversation to deliver an ad

Would you take money for talking about something you wouldn’t do

Are you delivering an experience?

How does blogging increase your mkt value outside your blog

Build tools – build value for infrastructure and the ecosystem around the impact of blogs.   Like BlogPubs.com - this is a directory for Professional Bloggers ones who are looking to make a living being a e-publisher.

Google ads, ad networks, or possibly subscription services….what’s next..possibly BlogPubs.com and BlogAds.com

Niche and focus as much as possible…

Affiliate programs and adwords,…tip jars

Do you compensate someone for commenting in your comment section – argument they are adding value and content (part of creative process).

Automotive company had put up a blog with a proported consumer section when in fact it was a bloggers paid by the company.

Dave makes hundreds of thousand of dollars… credibility is the key to his success.   Chris Nolan and Dave get into a cat fight on how to make money with blogs.

Buzz:  Blogs because he wants to know there are real people behind the company…

Pushing down the long tail…. Key is who visits the site not how much traffic the site gets.  This is the idea of BlogPubs.com

Making money from networking …like a folk festival…headliners and bunch of no names.  Blogging is e-network at its best...credibility and relevance is key.

Dave Winer comments on making money:  Do it like Michael Dell….Be a user first then do something important…innovate and compete

Dave is turning the discussion more entrepreneurial….. Doc comment:  blogging is making tipping points happen.  This is alot of fun and it creates a lot of action and invention.

Blogging about product support with blogs…there is money in that.  Start out with no credibility – a flowing river starting from zero …have to build trust reliability, earn readers, links,,, learn about trust..

Knowledge about building blog…know the audience, process, and reputation of intellectual integrity.

Ross Rader…250,000 people visit his blog and he doesn’t make any scratch…from amazon, google, or tip jar ..

Missing population in this audience is teens…. They have a market….what would a teen buy – blogtones …games??

Marc Canter is promoting:  paying people to blog…  mixed reaction to this

Where is the big idea:  offer people a credible way to grow the blogsophere…. Everyone is trying to figure out the business of blogs. 

John Furrier (me) comments: This blows my mind.  It's so simple - it's a publishing business via the internet.   So there are two ways to make money if you're in the blogging business:

Keith Teare: VC idea to create new ventures sponsored by the blog community…aggregate the amazon affiliate link

Ideas:  Distribution model for music …

Build product or tools to teach kids on how to program.. scoble..

Able to connect with people

Multimedia search not meta enabled

Discovery of sites by demographics

Overall the theme is use affliate marketing but the real money is to know the blogging process and create and invent the future by helping promote and build a new industry.  In summary be a blogger then invent the future with new tools, ideas, and infrastructure.

Great session by Doc.  I think that Doc comes across like the A-list player that he is but with passion for innovation.    I think that a syndicated directory (like BlogPubs.com) could be something of value to bloggers.  If it can protect their revenue streams and align and create a professional publishing environment then I think it can be very helpful.

1. Be a publisher - develop content and ideas blog them then attract an audience that sees value.  It's not the amount of audience but 'who'.  That's right demographics and pychographic value = Yes its about advertising.  Not your typical online advertising but a new model.

2. Be an blog infrastructure or technology innovator - develop ideas, technology and/or tools to make publishing and distributing blogs easier and more pervasive.  Basically work on the platform and non-publishing aspect of blogging.