Blogging in an Ideas Economy
“How do you make any money when you are giving your advice away?”
“I really wish you wouldn’t have said that, people pay a lot for that kind of tip”
These are things people have said to me recently that have made me think about what we do. There is a spectrum of attitudes towards information. People see value in information to varying degrees, but not everyone is willing to pay for it, and some of us while valuing information highly, give it away.
As bloggers we give and give. Sometimes we ask to be paid for the information. Sometimes we get paid by advertisers.
The thing is, while good information has real value, that doesn’t mean your reader will value it in the same way. What can we do about it?
Yes bloggers do share valuable information for free. What people are willing to pay for is the in depth step by step approaches and tailored information for their specific situations.
Ideas are plentiful, never fear to share them. In fact, I find if you share ideas and tactics then you get back much more than you put out through feedback and debate. Try it.
Giving information away does not mean you do not think it is worth anything. Price is not the same as value. I see my blog posts as a free sample. If you do a good job with the free then a percentage of people will want to see what else you offer.
While not all of your readers will value your information, that does not mean you need to devalue it. Have confidence in your value and other people will too.
Sounds like you’re talking about content marketing, which I’m just now learning about and planning to implement in a new blog. One source for this is http://blog.junta42.com/. Here’s an interesting article on this phenomenon: http://www.copyblogger.com/why-affiliate-marketing/. Handing out information can build your reputation as an authority, which is a good strategy if you are a consultant or service provider. I’ve had a brochure-ware site for years, but it’s never worked very well for me. It’s not enough to show what I can do. I need to educate my customers, and help them realize what I do and why they need my services. The new blog will do that, using a webzine format. I’m really excited about it!
Yup, content works well for building trust for service providers