Devious ways bloggers make money
Thu 29 Mar 07 02:35 | Tags: Blogging, Profit
Since I started RGR on a whim almost two months ago, I've been reading a lot of other blogs as well; many more than I ever did before. A feed reader and web feeds makes this possible. I read a lot of tech and computer blogs, to be sure, but I read just as many (if not more) blogs about web site promotion and how to make money online. I'm hoping to make a little pocket money from this thing, after all.
It turns out there's quite a few ways to make money blogging. Some are obvious, such as the AdSense and AuctionAds blocks I have littering my own site; some are a bit more… well, somewhere between "subtle" and "nefarious;" your favorite blogger may be profiting from you without you even knowing it. If you're more interested in reading blogs than writing them, here's some of the more sneaky ways bloggers make money that you should watch out for as a reader. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll also explain how I am using (or why I am not using) these methods to try to line my own pockets.
Referrals and affiliate programs
What it is: Sometimes a blogger will enter into agreement with a company to promote that company and link to them using a special link. When you click that link, the company can recognize that you came from the blogger's site. If you "convert" -- that is, you do a certain action desirable by the company, such as buy a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, or so on -- the company will pay the blogger. This payment might be a flat fee per capita (one dollar for everyone that signs up for the newsletter) or a percentage of sales (five percent of your purchase cost).
Sometimes bloggers will disclose that they are linking to something as part of an affiliate program, either in the sentences surrounding the link or by placing something like "(aff)" or "(ref)" after the link. Sometimes you can also tell by the link's address. Compare these two addresses; can you guess which one is likely an affiliate or referral link?
http://shopping.xyz/?product=82
http://shopping.xyz/?product=82&aff=38122
Referral links may not always be that easy to discern, though. However, it's a fallacy to assume that any commercial enterprise that a blogger links to is paying off the blogger; perhaps the blogger just likes the company and is happy with their service even if they're not getting paid to say so.
Ethically, in my opinion, a blogger should only participate in a referral or affiliate program with reputable companies that the blogger would have no qualms patronizing even if it were nothing in it for them. Disclosure that they are being paid for promoting the product or service is a good thing to do as well.
How I use it: You see the link in the sidebar that says "RGR is hosted by asmallorange?" That is a referral link. Check out the address:
http://asmallorange.com/services/hosting/?refer=raygunrobot.com
If you click that link and then "convert" by buying a web hosting plan, I will be credited the equivalent of one month payment for the plan you ordered. So if you order the $20 a month plan, I will get a $20 credit towards my next hosting bill. As I mentioned when I moved RGR to asmallorange, it's not the most lucrative web hosting referral deal around, but it's better than nothing.
In addition, I've recently signed up to Amazon.com's Associates program which lets me link to products in Amazon.com's catalog with a special link. If you click that link and buy the product, Amazon will send a small fraction of your purchase price my way. I haven't used it yet, but… Heck, why not do it now? I think Japanese Groupsound! looks like a cool album; it's Japanese bands covering the '50s hip-swingin' mod style. Dig some of the audio samples on that page. There, see? With full disclosure to the reader and when linking to products and services that are genuinely cool, referral and affiliate links aren't too bad for anyone involved.
Paid posting
What it is: A blogger is paid flat-out for posting about, and linking to, another website. It doesn't have to be as bad as that sounds, though.
There are a few companies which link up bloggers and advertisers for paid posts. The most notorious is PayPerPost. (Note that PayPerPost and the other paid posting companies I will link to in this section may have their own referral programs, but as I am not an active member of any of them, they will not be referral links.) Bloggers create an account at PayPerPost, then search through "opportunities" by advertisers. These opportunities will list various specifications an advertiser is looking for in their post, such as word count, linked keywords, addresses to link to, and so on, as well as how much they are willing to pay for the post. Bloggers can select an opportunity, then create a post that matches the specifications and submits it to the advertiser. The advertiser can either reject the post because it does not meet specifications, has a negative tone, or for pretty much any other reason; or they can approve it, at which point the blogger posts it on their blog. The company gets forward-facing links and positive copy that may entice blog readers to visit their site, but even if no readers do, they still have one more link pointing towards their site for search engines to count. And the blogger gets paid.
There's also ReviewMe and recently-launched workalike SponsoredReviews.com. With these services, advertisers typically find bloggers instead of the other way around. The advertisers hire a blogger to link to and review their site. They may specify a word count limit and suggest certain things to write about or pages to link to, but once an advertiser accepts a blogger's offer, they have no editorial control over the content of the resulting post. This means that occasionally posts written by these bloggers will be outright negative. It may not be in the blogger's best interest too write posts that are too negative, though; advertisers may not wish to hire a blogger that they believe will write a negative review of their site. So if the blogger thinks that they would review the site negatively, they may decline the advertiser's offer, or they may accept it, but "pad" the shock of their negative reviews with lots of suggestions for improvement.
Suggestions for improvement from users are quite valuable for many web sites, though. Buying posts through ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews.com will usually be more expensive than PayPerPost (sometimes costing into the hundreds or even over a thousand dollars), but they're also usually longer and, since they do not allow the advertiser to have editorial control as is the case with PayPerPost, they also will garner more respect and attention from savvy readers who know better than to take a PayPerPost post seriously. And whether positive or negative, the site gets an incoming link for search engines to find; an incoming link from a site with a high PageRank may be worth the cost alone.
ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews.com require, as part of their terms of service, "full disclosure;" that is, bloggers that write a review after taking an offer through their service must disclose that they have done such. PayPerPost used to not require such disclosures from bloggers for their posts, but, after taking a lot of flak about their seeming encouragement of bloggers to spam their own blogs without disclosing that they're doing such, they have since changed their terms and now require disclosure as well.
Besides offering filthy lucre, paid posting services also provide bloggers literally with something to blog about; a way to break through treacherous "blogger's block" and make a few bucks at the same time.
How I use it: I don't. When SponsoredReviews.com first became available to the public, I applied to write reviews on RGR, but I was denied because, according to the "standard" metrics such as Alexa rank (which I'm not a big fan of, Technorati rank, and the aforementioned PageRank, RGR gets less traffic than a North Korean highway. I may try reapplying again after some time has passed and my stats have improved. Should I be accepted, I will, of course, disclose that any paid posts I make are such, and I will be honest in my reviews.
Same Robot time, same Robot channel
There's a thing or two more I want to write about, but I'm going to wrap this up for today. Please check back tomorrow for at least one more sneaky way that bloggers are profiting from you.
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#1 | Josh | 29 Mar 07 13:45
why come back tomorrow, you put it right there:
"Please check back tomorrow for at least one more sneaky way that bloggers are profiting from you."
multiple page articles and enticements to return another day = more page view = more banner ad revenue ;)
sneaky sneaky bastage.
#3 | Steve James | 29 Mar 07 15:30
Well Garret, that's 50 cents more than I have made :-). I've been blogging about my affiliate and advertising attempts lately as well. I have been successful on other monetizing other people's sites, but never on my own. We'll see how it goes.
Congrats on getting your blog review by Chris Garrett!
#4 | Steve James | 29 Mar 07 15:31
Garrett>Sorry about the typo in your name in the last comment.
#5 | Garrett Albright | 29 Mar 07 21:06
Man, if I went around worrying about the many times and ways people have gotten my name wrong (Garret, Garett, Garet, Garit, Garitt, etc), I wouldn't have time for anything else. No worries.
#2 | Garrett Albright | 29 Mar 07 13:48
Heh… Yeah, I guess that could count as a sneaky reason, but it's not the one I had in mind. :) Really, though, breaking up the article has more to do with giving my poor wrists a rest and not scaring off readers with overly-long articles than anything else.
I've so far earned less than fifty cents in ad revenue, actually…