As the Head Lemur reminded me yesterday, not everyone can handle both creating content and marketing it.
We are all artists in one sense or other. As bloggers, some of us are pundit/commentators who entertain as well as enlighten. Just as artists wrestle with the issues of "being commercially successful" so do most bloggers. Do we stay "pure" or will we become probloggers?
We will only achieve financial viability when we discover that we are producing a needed and wanted product through feedback from our readers and we package it in a way that we generate cashflow without diluting our message.
Getting an exchange is a matter of deciding whether readers will pay for reading us or advertisers will pay for space on our weblogs.
One of my young blogging friends, Jane Chin, has found a way to repurpose her posts on several sites which carry ads.
Jane is already making significant income from her blogs. She is a multitalented professional with many papers to her name and and is now leveraging the blogosphere to launch a new form of paid publishing.
I think it bodes well for the future of bloggers with something to say. We don’t have to write whole books anymore, we write post-sized fragments and generate income by placing them in online collections on ad-supported sites.
For example, the Head Lemur’s collection of excellent remodeling posts would make a fine "Remodeling Tips" site and would be a natural site for ads about tools, construction firms, remodeling services, etc. His dry humor would distinguish his site from the "commodity" remodeling sites.
If you have so much original content and good advice that you stand out from the crowd, it is just a matter of time before you have so much material accumulated that you come up with a way of packaging it for ease of access and getting advertiser support.
If you choose the advertisers as in the case of Blogads or direct rental of adspace, you have a potential source of income related to any new sites you generate.
If your main site covers many different areas of interest, you may not see an easy or aesthetic way to incorporate ads. The solution may be to put ads only on your special-purpose sites.
If you want to see a truly amazing progression from quiet church blogger to "A" list problogger visit Darren Rouse and his many blogs. I have watched his progress from his early posts on LivingRoom to his current eminence as a problogger and he has set an example which almost anyone can follow.
On the other hand, most bloggers will look at these examples and set their own course for an entirely different destination.
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