Making Money Stuff

One of the most exciting days of my life was when we did the monthly accounts for my wife's travel blog, and realized we had earned a full time salary from it.

It had been a long and hard road, but we had started something from nothing, with the smallest of investments, and we had genuinely created a full time income from it. Every word written, every aspect of the design and every cent earned had come from the two of us, with a lot of help from the fantastic community of readers.

It's a corny phrase, but for me, it was life changing. We had proved to ourselves that ordinary people like us can start something with almost nothing, and turn it into not only a source of pleasure and pride, but a real business, with a real value, and something that puts bread on our table each day.

There's a new and very enthusiastic kid on the block who you may have met already. His name is James and he calls himself The Infopreneur. His work ethic is excellent, and he's shown how consistent posting can really drive traffic to a new site.

He's been talking about monetization for some time, and his objective is to generate enough income to stop his full time job and take up blogging as a career. I have no doubt that he will achieve it.

This morning, however, he posted some income projections that are sadly flawed. And I thought I'd use the example as a case study to prevent Mike's Life readers from falling into the same trap. You can read his post here: It will only take 8 people a day.

The mistake James has made is to assume that overall site traffic is what leads to conversions, and of course that isn't the case. In his post he suggests that five people a day will buy one of his tutorials, going on to say:

"Now 5 people a day isn't that many really about 1% of the total visitors to this site on a daily basis which I think is quite a realistic target."

I have to say that in the early days of this blog, I did a couple of paid reviews. All very up front and billed as such. I didn’t get any comments – hardly anyone was reading then! And the money was very welcome! I also once did a paid Tweet!

I haven’t done either for a long time, but inevitably I guess, I’m being offered them now.

I’m interested to know what people’s views are:

Should bloggers do paid reviews?

Are paid Tweets acceptable?

Are you doing either? Are you earning good money by doing so?

The part of the Case Study I wrote that received the most comments and questions from readers, was the section where I talked about how we set up an affiliate scheme with a car hire company who didn’t run one. My thanks to Don Power, who said “You should post about it!” So here we go:

Assume most businesses don’t understand affiliate schemes

It’s important to remember this. Although we understand the intricacies of these schemes, most businesses don’t. So plan to take time to explain the process to them.

Start with your readers

Think about what they are buying already. If you have a guitar blog, the answer might be plectrums and sheet music. If you run a fitness blog, supplements and gym membership.

We all talked about our objectives back at the start of the year. Just like we did last year. And then we all moved on.

Not this time! I’m going to hold you all to account. I want to know how you did. Not the detail, just a general feeling please.

I’ve just finished my month end accounting. I break it down into three areas:

Income

Did I hit or exceed my plan? Yes I exceeded it.

Expenses

Did I stay within the budget I set myself? Yes I did, by quite a long way.

Objectives

How did I do against all the annual objectives I wrote about? This is where I had a problem. I have 13 pretty specific objectives which relate to elements of this blog, that I want to achieve by the end of 2010. I broke them down into monthly objectives and compared those against actuals, this morning.

I failed

Of the 13 I achieved just 5. Another 4 were close, but the remaining 4 were well short of what I wanted.

I guess we’re all aware that internet marketers, generally speaking, earn a good deal more than most bloggers. Did you know that the average earnings of the top 10% of bloggers is only $19,000 a year? That’s pretty scary to me!

But when you analyze it, it actually makes no sense. As bloggers we have much, much larger audiences than most internet marketers. The difference is that we’re simply not as good as they are at selling to our large audiences.

I watched a terrific video on the subject today, from my friend David Risley, and that was what sparked these thoughts.

If you didn’t catch the start of this series, you can do so here: How to launch your first digital product

We’re in the final phase now, and today, in this last part, we’re going to cover:

• The Launch
• Post launch follow up
• Keeping the momentum going

The Launch

Continuing our series on launching your first digital product, you can start at the beginning here: Part one – How to launch your first digital product.

Today, we’re going to cover:

• Designing a sales page
• Choosing a launch date
• The Pre launch process

Designing a sales page

This is a really tough one to tackle. I’m sure we’ve all moved beyond the tacky highlighter ridden, multiple PS style sales pages of the past, but which way to go now? You could have a standard “long form” sales page, a simple short one, or even, as some people are doing now, a mini-site, which has a sales page with links to more specific information like testimonials.

Here are some examples of each:

Yesterday we talked about the first three steps in the process of launching a digital product. In case you missed it: How to launch your first digital product.

Today, we’ll move on and talk about:

• Creating marketing materials
• Selecting a sales process
• Developing an affiliate program

Creating Marketing Materials

In an ideal world, you’ll hire a superstar designer like Jana from Impact Studios, who will produce a wonderful set of cool graphics that do an amazing job of promoting your product and brand. Stuff like this:

If you are blogging with the aim of generating a long term sustainable income, then sooner or later, you’re going to want to sell some kind of digital product on-line. Selling other people’s stuff can be lucrative, but there are few things more profitable than creating something yourself, and unleashing it to the power of the internet.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In a series of posts over the next few days, I’m going to give you some pointers, ideas and a plan for your first launch. This is based on my personal experience with three launches: