Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there’s the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects.
But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?
The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience.
In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they’d never catch up to reading it all.
This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers.
If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy.
Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products
As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you’ll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be.
For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I’ve noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they’ll be able to use as a reference guide.
Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response.
Method Two: The Subscription Model
When you’re blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this.
Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they’re looking for at your site, but you’ll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time.
Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a “Best of” compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution. Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine.
Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook
With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information.
There are a couple of tricks you’d have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you’d be surprised about how easy this process can be.
Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book
I know what you’re thinking. “Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it’s free at my site?”
Under certain circumstances, you’d be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services.
For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as “overwhelming”. It’s one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it’s not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home.
Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs.
If you’re still not convinced that it’s not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this.
On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It’s almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer.
Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site – and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look.
