Archive: October 2008

Monetize Me!

In my last entry I gave an overview of content and traffic - two things you’ll need to monetize your blog. Now you can make money!

Monetizing a blog falls into three categories: paid advertising, sponsorship or paid writing, sale of products or services.

Advertising

Banners are the most popular form of web advertising and take the form of graphic images. Pricing is based on the size and location of the placement, the number of placements on the page, traffic to the site and more advanced features such as “no follow” attributes and banner rotations. You can negotiate deals on your own or leverage one of the many services. Pricing can be per view, per click through, or a revenue share model. A related type of advertising is text link advertising where a text link rather than graphic is used to drive traffic to the advertiser’s site.

Contextual ad programs provides targeting advertising on blogs based on the content of the blog or blog article. Services like Google’s Adsense automate the process between advertisers and bloggers – and are free to the bloggers. Contextual advertising can be banners or text links.

Working more directly with businesses, you might opt to participate in an affiliate program like the one offered by Amazon. In a nut shell, business reward affiliates for customers that come from their site. These programs can be traffic based or transaction based.

RSS Advertising is growing in interest and leverages the popularity of RSS readers like Google Reader. These tools aggregate content you are interested as it is published, brings it to one location and saves you the step of visiting each site. Since RSS feeds don’t access the blogs, themselves, these programs deliver ads within the RSS feed.

Sponsorship or Paid Writing

Sponsorship and paid blogging arguably crosses the line between “editorial” and “advertising”. Still, many bloggers are finding great success and making a living with this method. Sponsorship can range from finding a corporate partner for your entire site or someone to sponsor specific posts. Alternatively, some people are paid to write blogs as if they were writing articles for a newspaper. www.bloggersforhire.com is one site that aggregate bloggers to help companies with their social networking activity.

Sale of Products and Services

Some bloggers have built a brand out of their blog and have begun selling gear with their mark – typically through a third party like Zazzle or Café Press. You set up your “wares” through these companies, direct traffic to them and you get a cut every time they sell a tshirt, mug or hat to one of your readers.

Other bloggers have discovered their calling through their blogs and built non-web revenue sources. Case and point is the duo at http://www.rookiemoms.com who have since published “The Rookie Mom’s Handbook”. Another approach to blogging is using your blog to sell your services by providing relevant information.

Some people establish themselves (or their company) as experts in their field through their blogs, leading to other consulting work, publishing opportunities or speaking engagements. The SolutionSet blog that you are reading now is positioned to do just that. Another example is http://www.sancarlosblog.com where a local realtor blogs about real estate-related topics. The goal with these types of blogs is to extend the relationship with existing clients and reach out to potential customers and communicate the breadth of the offering.

And a few more ideas…

In the category of, “it never hurts to ask,” some blogs have generated revenue simple by asking for donations.

Think you have great domain for a blog? Built a readership but ready to move on? There may be a market for “flipping” your blog or selling your domain.

Yes indeed, there are about a million ways to make money from a blog – and probably a million more yet to be discovered. Do you have something we have overlooked? Add it to the comments section!

As more and more snore-inducing cellphones get traded in for bombastic iPhones, Blackberries, and other smartphones, marketers must consider what people see when opening up their email on the go. Emails that look great on laptops may be a disaster on smartphones.

So how can you design and write emails that work in both channels? Loren McDonald of Silverpop recently wrote a terrific article on MarketingProfs about 11 tips for making your email marketing smartphone compatible. From the source:

“Design for the preview pane and initial mobile screen. Use your most valuable real estate, the top 2-3 inches of your message, for your most important content.

Alt text. Use descriptive alt text (HTML text that displays when images do not render) with all images, as the text will show in some email environments when images are blocked.

Use fixed-width tables. This ensures that your email won’t expand when images are blocked. Also, make sure you specify image height and width.

Keep emails to less than 600 pixels wide. This eliminates the need for users to scroll and ensures that your email won’t have ads overlaid on your content from email services such as Gmail.

Use text links, not image links. Image-based links will create a mess in most mobile environments and will not render when images are blocked in a PC environment.”

For those out there rocking smartphones, have you seen emails come through that worked well with your screen? Any that didn’t work?

Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth. Dr. Richard Kimble searched for the one-armed man. And we have been searching for a dependable source of email marketing expertise.

Found it.

The Email Experience Council is erupting with the latest and greatest from the industry, written in a fashion very untypical of stodgy professional organizations. The EEC maintains a pair of blogs (Email Experience Blog and The Retail Email Blog) that will keep interested readers, well, interested. Here is a sampling of their fine work:

• Email takes on the economy

• Double Dog Dare: Start your email program over from scratch

• CTAs get some action

• Know the lingo—Email anatomy from head to footer

Here at SolutionSet, we pride ourselves on honesty.  But I’m about to reveal the one lie we tell everyday.

Almost anyone who has met us has heard our boast that we’ve built one of the fastest growing companies in the US and have done so without a sales force.  But much like the KISS army, our sales force is massive and fanatical about what they do.

So, are we liars?  No, technically our claim is absolutely true.

Let me explain.

At almost every service company, there is a classic tension between sales and delivery.  It goes like this.

The salesperson promises the world, with impossible timeframes, often at cheap (BS) budgets.  In that model, signoff on the contract is the last happy moment. Post-signoff, the project gets thrown over the fence to a “delivery” group.  The delivery team either faces the ugly choice of

a) under-delivering to the client but staying within budget, or

b) delivering the work but with the addition of surprise “change orders.”

I’ve lived in that world before, and I’d rather work the return counter at a Home Depot than go back.

SolutionSet uses a very different model with sales driven by 3 different parties:

1. The Partners (of which I’m one) are responsible for both selling and delivering and are measured on a broad set of metrics (revenue, margin, budgeting accuracy, and client satisfaction.)  I have no incentive to sell bad work since I’m also responsible for delivering.  This means clients get honest, accurate project plans… and I never get paid for playing golf.
2. Our delivery team spends time with the Client during the sales process.  We believe this benefits all parties.  Clients become more personally invested in the vendor selection process.  And our delivery team gets to deeply internalize the project goals while sanity checking the estimates.  Lastly, our team is damn good.  I’m talking “best cooler in the South” good.  Having the client meet our team only helps the cause.
3. Our clients, past and present, are the final and most important leg of our sales team.  We’ve learned that client retention is cheaper than client acquisition.  So we work really hard to make every project successful, and so that our clients become a valuable source of referral and new business.

The model has served both SolutionSet, our clients, and our employees well.  More importantly, with every successful project our “salesforce” grows.

• Rich shoppers forgo pampering, get their luxury items online

• Developing a rash on your ear? Put down the cellphone.

• Is your laser printer spying on you? How to check for those fabled forensic dots.

• “Bedroom secrets you need to know”…learn to write headlines at the grocery checkout

The current drop in consumer spending coupled with dismal holiday shopping projections has created an environment ripe for email marketing campaigns. As we get deeper and deeper into Q4, expect inboxes to pile up with aggressive offers from retailers like never before.

From a recent Associated Press article on the state of email marketing:

“Kurt Peters, editor-in-chief of trade publication Internet Retailer, noted that stores can easily react to a sharp sales slowdown in a matter of hours by sending out email blasts, which is faster and more cost-effective than redoing a mailer to consumers. Julie M. Katz, another Forrester analyst, estimates that it costs about $2 for every thousand emails sent. The Direct Marketers Association estimates that marketers reap $45.06 in return on investment for every dollar they spend on email campaigns. That compares with $7.28 for catalogs and $15.55 for direct mail pieces”

The article provides further detail on the increasing number of retailers using this quick, nimble, and cost-effective medium:

“Internet Retailer’s recent survey of 174 Web retailers, including those that operate stores, found that nearly half have increased the number of monthly emails they send compared to a year ago. Chad White, director of retail insights for the Email Experience Council, the email marketing arm of the DMA, reports an 8 percent increase in the number of emails stores have sent for the week ended Oct. 17, compared to the same week a year earlier.”

So how are your campaigns supposed to stand out in this holiday blitz? By delivering the right content at the right time, you can shift your email from an interruption to a welcomed message. Marketers that pay attention to individual’s transactional data and communicate back products and promotions understand the value of behavioral targeting and will be rightfully rewarded.

For more on email coupon trends, check out our post Coupon clipper drops scissors, runs to computer.

So you’re walking down the street thinking about your extensive garden gnome collection, when all of a sudden your Bluetooth lights up with a 2-for-1 offer from Sven’s Gnome Emporium. Enter the latest in location-based services (LBS)—Bluetooth proximity marketing.

Here’s how it works: Link your Bluetooth-enabled device up with LBS providers such as Puca or Bluemedia, and businesses with a proximity marketing station set up can send you exclusive offers.

Siliconrepublic.com sums it up best in this article:

“In a marketing context, the technology’s short range (around 10m) means brands can deliver location-specific content. A download at a particular site might be a voucher at a convenience store, a music video at a concert, movie trailers at a cinema, match footage at a sports stadium or tourist information at a bus stop. Early findings suggest it’s best paired with a traditional ad format such as a billboard or poster with a call to action.”

Global awareness of Bluetooth technology is at an all-time high. And with 583 million Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones projected to be sold in 2009, even a monkey can tell you this medium is set for exponential growth.

But there is some healthy competition for Bluetooth in the LBS realm, which we recently wrote about here. For the direct marketer seeking new ways to connect with a large audience on a 1:1 level, the Bluetooth bandwagon just might be the ticket.

Hedge fund manager, founder of Stockpickr, and nationally ranked chess master James Altucher has made a populist move that could disrupt the advertising agency model: Jungle Smash.

The Jungle Smash challenge? Go all out making the most original, clever, Crest toothpaste video you can think of.

The reward? $2000

The ever-inspiring Freakonomics blog breaks it down:

“JungleSmash is a bit of a mashup of everything that’s come before. James picked a random brand, Crest toothpaste, and is offering $2,000 to whoever makes and posts to YouTube the best video about Crest.

It is an experiment to see if the buying public, when properly incentivized, can create advertising that’s as compelling as what firms and ad agencies create (on much, much, much larger budgets).”

Doritos, Dove, Chevy, Converse, and others have put CGA to use, but could it ever grab a significant slice of the agency work pie? Our friends over at Marketprofs enlisted CGA-evangelist Neil Perry of XLNTads to write about how marketers can make CGA work best. From Mr. Perry:

“They’ve [marketers] recognized that, with CGA properly executed, they can generate quality, consumer-relevant content at a fraction of the cost of conventional agency productions. And these commercials break through the clutter with their “real” feel and relevant messaging.”

Let us know what you think about marketers getting (essentially) free advertising from consumers. Oh, and if you decide to make a video for Jungle Smash, share it and we’ll post it up. Mmmm, minty.

THIS JUST IN…Microsoft has enlisted the public to upload homemade “I’m a PC” commercials to this site with the hopes of being shown on a digital billboard in Times Square.

The term “direct marketing”? The magazine subscription card? The toll-free 1-800 number? These are just a few of the contributions Lester Wunderman has made to the world of advertising. So when we came across this recent interview where he reflected on the importance of being direct and his company’s 50th anniversary, how could we not share?

Here’s what the man, the myth, the legend, had to say when asked “what do you attribute success to?

“It’s [successful advertising] not just about awareness anymore. Advertising that creates awareness is not the advertising that wins. Advertising that creates commitment is going to win. General agencies have never practiced this. They have been in the stage of emotional acceptance and the image-making business … Or does a more pointed message work, one that is relevant to each consumer?”

Or this one about the kind of opportunities a lousy economy creates:

“I think everyone is starting to cut back, looking for the most economical way to shop. That is going to create new selling propositions. Companies that know how to market will create satisfaction and confidence in the process of the product and transaction. They will do well. It happened during the Depression. Ice cream on a stick (Good Humor) was created then because people were looking for inexpensive rewards. As for now, it’s going to be an interesting game. The market will change, brand awareness will change.”

For more pearls of wisdom, read the ClickZ interview in its entirety.

What is in a number?  A whole lot of interviewing for one. This month we have surpassed the 100 employee mark along with increasing our ranking on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies from 95 in 2007 to 23 in 2008.  Rapid growth for a professional services company is a challenge in and of itself and then add the variable of being a technology company in Silicon Valley competing for the best and the brightest against Google, Apple, eBay, and more. Not only is it a competitive market it is critical for us to find candidates who embrace our project, design and development methodologies. The core to the success of our company is our people.  Corny as it may sound this truly is the cornerstone of our business.

During an interview follow up last week I was asked by a candidate if our employees are really as happy as they came across during the interview.  I had to chuckle. Our work at SolutionSet is exciting, challenging, and thought provoking. Our team is made of people with diverse professional and personal backgrounds. Some come from traditional agencies, some have working inside large organizations while others were entrepreneurs. Each project benefits greatly from this diverse experience.  It enables us to be agile and meet the ever evolving demands of our clients.

I am proud to be surrounded by such a talented and dedicated team.