Smart Finance Tips for Bloggers

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Just like any other online entrepreneur, bloggers need to be aware of their finances to be successful. This is true even if your primarily freelance: in that case, your business is simply yourself. A strong financial plan is an important component of succeeding as an independent business person. Whether your just getting started or you’ve been at it for a while, you can follow these smart finance tips for bloggers to make sure you’re on top of your game. [Read more…]

3 Great New Ways Of Generating Money With Content Online

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Editor’s note: This post was written by Christopher Latter, co-founder of Trendii. He’s a digital marketer and entrepreneur. The majority of his experience is based in SEO and social media, and he also performs a range of other digital marketing techniques. He is a keen writer and enjoys bringing all his experiences together in an interesting way. He’s currently helping to launch a new social network as part of a new start-up incubator program called Start Tank, run by PayPal & Braintree. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Writers, artists, musicians, all us hopeless dreamers seem to have one thing in common. We like to sit back from our keyboards, easels and keyboards (the other kind of keyboards), and think, “if only I could make some money doing this”. Which we probably could if we spent less time fantasising and more time actually working on our art, because it turns out there are ways to make money from it. As always, whether you’re looking to promote your art, start a business or misinform the public about vaccines, the internet is here. [Read more…]

Is Twitter considering charging business users?

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Twitter’s ongoing search for ways to monetise the service and generate an income may include charging corporate users for the privilege of sending out their tweets.

That’s according to co-founder Biz Stone, speaking recently to Marketing magazine. “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts,” he said.

A small sample of companies au fait with Twitter gave mixed feedback to the proposal. While LoveFilm said that it would depend on “price, demand and what else is around”, MD of We Are Social, Robin Grant, said that Twitter could charge for display ads or to access customer information for marketing purposes, while the VP of Dell, Bob Pearson, suggested that the company would look elsewhere if things became “complicated and costly”. [Read more…]

Are Blog Comments a Source of Referral Traffic?

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Here’s a question. If blog comments are mini-resumes, which comments are bringing the most traffic to your blog?

When you leave a comment on a blog, there are three things at work.

  1. Your desire to participate in the blog conversation and topic.
  2. Your desire to increase your link credits through blog comments.
  3. Your desire to encourage traffic from your comment to your blog.

A lot of pro bloggers cover the first two, but I want to explore the last one. If you really want to drive traffic to your blog through comments on other blogs, is it working for you?

Have you been paying attention to your blog referrals and incoming traffic to see where your traffic is coming from in relationship to your blog comments? It’s a very good question because we blog and comment on the premise that blog interaction helps drive traffic.
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Blogging Jobs: How Much Are Bloggers Paid to Blog?

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Blogging Jobs by Lorelle VanFossenAs we continue with this series on blogging jobs, it’s time to look at the income a blogger can make by blogging for pay.

The skills and qualities a company or blog owner is looking for from a blogger are extensive, far beyond just writing abilities. As with any freelance job, determining how to put a value on the time it really takes, and the costs associated with the time and production, is really hard when the real cost is in time, not materials. Bloggers should be paid for the time as well as their expertise and abilities. Are they? This is a problem that has been around for a very long time. How much is your time worth?

For many decades, professional editorial writers found a compromise on the time/value issue with payment by the word with a restriction on word count. I often was told, “We’ll pay you a dollar a word up to 1,000 words maximum.”

This meant the magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or other print publication had space for one thousand words that needed to be filled. Going over meant changing their magazine or newspaper design structure. Giving them less meant I’d be paid less, but somewhere in the middle was a compromise for both of us, usually in the form of me setting a minimum fee I was to be paid, no matter the word count, such as “I want $500 minimum for 700 words and a dollar a word thereafter.” If the article came it at 400 words, I would still be paid my minimum. If it crossed the 700 word mark, at which point I should have been paid $700 for a dollar a word, that’s when they have to start paying me the dollar a word rate. It wasn’t the best, but the companies felt like they were getting a deal and for the most part, I covered the minimum I needed to pay my rent and eat.

Here is a chart for the various traditional writer’s pay scale based upon a dollar amount per word. The more experience and expertise, the higher the fee per word.
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Blogging Jobs: How Much is Blogging Worth?

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Blogging Jobs by Lorelle VanFossenIn “Blogger Jobs: What Are They Looking For?” we talked about what jobs are out there and what blog owners and companies are looking for when they hire a blogger. Blogger Jobs: How to Apply For a Blogger Job? covered how to apply for a job as a blogger, with some good tips on what to do – and not to do. Today, I want to look at a very serious issue: How much are they paying bloggers to blog?

The issue of the blogging pay scale is very important, not just because I’m one of the workers in this new industry who expects to be able to pay the rent or meet a mortgage, but also because I represent the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people who want to make money blogging.

In a NY Times article on the blogging sweatshops by Matt Richtel (Print Version) the description of people of one of the hottest jobs in the world has writers churning out mass volumes of content working around-the-clock to make enough money to survive. It’s called blogging.
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Don’t Miss this Free Blog Monetization Teleseminar Call

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Denise from The Blog Squad emailed me to let me know about a free live interview with Darren Rowse and I wanted to share the news with you.

The Blog Squad is pleased to have snagged busy pro-blogger Darren Rowse for an interview about what makes his blog so successful with nearly 48,000 subscribers!

Darren of course is Mr ProBlogger (and my partner in crime on the ProBlogger Book) and what he doesn’t know about blog monetization isn’t worth knowing.

The call is free (registration required) and takes place Thursday, June 26 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Not sure if there will be a recording made available for anyone who misses it.

More details and registration are here.

Submit Stories and Get Money with Glamorati

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Glamorati is having a headline writing contest, announced in the News from the Glamorati blog. In June, all you have to do is submit stories to Glamorati, and you’ll receive $5 for each published story. Here’s how it works:

Participants will receive $5 for each published submission and the grand prize is $500 which goes to the contestant with the most number of points (published submissions = 10 points and comments on the site = 1 point)

So what you need to do is find a funny, interesting, or weird pop culture story to submit, which shouldn’t be so hard since pop culture is all that by itself. You’ll need a Glamorati account, but that’s no biggie.

So that’s it? Find a story, submit, it gets published, you get $5 and the chance of the $500 grand prize? Ryan Caldwell of Glamorati, won’t this be expensive?

Yes, but probably not as expensive as developing the site in the first place. ;-)

Ouch. Or not. On a more serious note, Ryan explained:

Since headline writing is so important to blogging, I thought this contest would be a natural fit for the blogging community.

Good luck on the contest, Ryan. Be sure to check out Glamorati and the contest post in the News from the Glamorati blog.

Disclosure: I did the Glamorati design.

Groundbreaking Blog Viral Marketing: Obsidian Blackout Event

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JC Hutchins, 7th Son Obsidian podiobook anthologyJC Hutchins has been breaking rules even before he started his blog in an attempt to give away his science fiction novel, 7th Son, which publishers didn’t want, as a free podiobook, one of the first audio books published as a weekly series of podcasts. He has come up with a variety of interesting viral campaigns to promote his book, blog, podcasts, and writings, turning his unpublished book into the most popular podiobook series in history, and becoming a specialist in the true sense of social networking and marketing. His innovative online self-marketing techniques attracted St. Martin’s Press, and his book will finally be published in 2009.

Tapping the creativity of his fan-base, Hutchins is breaking rules again by asking people to become victims and make history.
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