Last night I attended the second Sway event organised by Skimlinks, a networking event aimed at bloggers and content owners. I’ve really enjoyed both of the sessions so far, with a nice relaxed vibe and highly engaged debate. Personally, I find it very refreshing to be involved with this bunch of people who are clearly incredibly passionate about what they do, whose aim isn’t to make as much money as possible but just to be able to make a living from doing what they love.
I was lucky enough to be asked to speak by the wonderful Hannah (who compered the evening superbly) and ran out of time slightly so thought I’d expand on the topic on my blog (the irony…).
So you have a content site or a blog and are looking to monetise it, what options are open to you?
CPM advertising – unless you are a high traffic site or operating in a competitive niche, you are going to struggle to secure high CPM rates
Google Adsense – in my opinion, it looks ugly and generally results in low clickthroughs
Affiliate (CPA) advertising – potential rewards are great but you only get rewarded if you are the last referrer
So what factors do you need to bear in mind when deciding how to monetise your site and are there things that you can do to affect customer behaviour?
Firstly, as many people at the event mentioned, knowing your user base is vital to deciding what levels of advertising they will put up with, what offers/merchants appeal to them and how far down the sales journey you are able to take the user on your site.
Just to examine the last point a bit more, if you are using affiliate links you only get paid if you are the last referrer. Therefore if all you are doing is creating interest in a merchant/brand/product that drives the user to find out more information then you will probably lose out to other online channels and earn nothing for a lot of sales.
Is there anything you can do about this? You can attempt to provide as much information as possible, maybe providing price comparison services for a particular product on site for example, so people don’t go elsewhere to compare. Alternatively you can approach a merchant directly to ask them with help converting your traffic. If being featured on your site will provide positive branding for the merchant, don’t be scared to ask them for a bespoke offer or discount code which incentivises customers to convert through you. For example, free delivery with Merchant X if you buy through www.mysite.com this week.
As merchants are only paying on a CPA basis it is limited risk for them, and they appreciate the “sexy” branding element of being featured on popular blogs.
So a couple of questions to ask content publishers/bloggers:
Do you understand your audience and what they will respond to?
Therefore, what is the best method for you to monetise your site?
What factors can you influence to increase the monetisation potential whilst not alienating your readers.
(If there are any bloggers/content publishers who want to do some CPA work with Orange, Next, Lovefilm, WWF then please give me a shout at matt dot bailey at i-level dot com)
