Focusing On A Sound Business Model Will Make You Rich!
So who are the folks who make money blogging?
Well, ahem, without bragging I confess I do, but in the spirit of true honesty I must also confess that I am making pittance with this internet business blog compared to what some of my fellow bloggers make on a monthly basis with theirs!
Having said that, I really shouldn’t complain too much because I still make four figures from this blog but I am fully aware that if I had applied the knowledge I know now back when I started I am certain that I would be pulling in five figures with this blog easy! Well by the way my rankings are rapidly improving that shouldn’t be too difficult!
But enough of me and now some of you!
I am going to show and explain to you how and why the bloggers who pull in the serious bucks do so while the rest of us have to make do with scraps, albeit some very juicy scraps. Serious bucks in this case is in reference to those bloggers who rake in more than $10,000 per month from their blogging. So without further ado let’s get down to business. To that end I am first going to present you with two documented case scenarios involving viral marketing which resulted in a fantastic influx of traffic for both of the blogs involved but surprisingly different financial outcomes.
CASE 1: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.
With a catchy byline that read: “Dude, I invented the frigging iphone. Have you heard of it?” The Secret Diary Of Steve Jobs blog was an instant hit moreso because it apparently was the online penchild of a well known billionaire! Hmmmm…or was it really? Therein lay the true strength of this blog’s magnetic appeal. Nobody was really sure if it was the real Steve Jobs of Apple Computer penning out his angst and frustrations at the irrationalities of a PC world and its simple folk, or whether it was just some wannabe online hack.
The fact that the blog was associated with the Forbes.com website certainly tipped the scales in favor of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog belonging to the actual Apple founder. But honestly can you see anybody in their right mind (other than some starry-eyed female teenager) titling their blog as “The Secret Diary of blah-di-blah?”
The mystery enshrouding the true identity of the blogger behind the blog consumed the web like a flame lapping up a pool of gasoline! Forums spread far and wide across the internet were rife with speculation and in lieu of a face the moniker Fake Steve Jobs was readily and popularly embraced (though legion felt it was a great dishonor to call the one and only true god…ahem…I mean Steve Jobs, a fake).
Whatever the case, Fake Steve (or Real Steve depending on your beliefs) enjoyed the kind of notoriety that ensured lot’s of web traffic and and an ever expanding army of the faithful. Even the real Steve Jobs as well as Bill Gates confessed to dropping by from time to time to lap up the acerbic commentary and wit of Fake Steve (I’m sure it must have come as a great relief to Bill when Fake Steve was finally outed, and that the artistry of penmanship apparently exhibited by Steve wasn’t really Steve’s after all).
But as always happens, all that is good must come to end, that which is done in dark must come to light…need I go on? Yup! Fake Steve certainly had a good run until his true identity was revealed by The New York Times.
Up until then the hunt to out Fake Steve Jobs had attained fever-pitch proportions with the more singular focused and obsessed cyberunters (cyber sleuths) narrowing down his blogging proclivities to one likely zip code. Ultimately it was resources-on-hand that trumped the sheer will of obsession which would explain The New York Times’ spectacular but unsurprising first place finish in this race.
Thus after more than a year of derisive, often divisive, always polarizing but highly entertaining blogging , the true identity of Fake Steve became public knowledge. Fake Steve Jobs turned out to be Daniel Lyons, a senior editor for Forbes Magazine!
500,000 Visitors In One Day Converted To A Measly $100 In Adsense!
The outing of his true identity coincided nicely with his migration from editor at Forbes Magazine to editor at Newsweek Magazine and Daniel Lyons’ (aka Fake Steve Jobs) first order of business was to bring to us, the humble public, the painful but bitter reality on how it was virtually impossible to make money blogging!
You see the day his true identity was revealed in The New York Times, Daniel Lyons’ blog (ooops, sorry I mean Fake Steve’s blog) was flooded with over 500,000 visitors! Yah, you read right, the blog was swarming with over half a million curious folk who found it a more rewarding pastime than attending to their jobs!
What was even more curious than the curiosity of those half million visitors was how Fake Steve was barely able to scrape together a distinctly unimpressive and downright measly $100 from Google Adsense! For the remainder of that august month (uh-huh, not sorry about the pun) despite getting in excess of 1.5 million visitors Fake Steve only managed to cobble together $1039.81 dollars!
Wow! Those figures are truly frightening! What kind of message do they send to the rest of us bloggers who barely get a fraction of that traffic and haven’t even gotten round to dreaming about it?
Anyway it seems that any hopes of striking it rich from blogging certainly died that day for Fake Steve Jobs and with heavy heart he felt compelled to reveal the ugly and bitter truth to the rest of us poor blogging suckers out there who still dreamed of striking it rich by blogging!
CASE 2: The Hooker Who Made Over $1000,000 From Downloads Following A Scandal!
The Dream…Become A Star! The Reality…Became A Hooker! Today...Livin’ The Dream!
Before she became an overnight sensation (a la Paris Hilton style) for precipitating The Fall in The Rise And Fall of Eliot Spitzer, the former Governor of New York State, Ashley Alexandra Dupre stormed New York in 2004 with grand visions of securing a record deal and becoming a star! Like many before her with such ambitions she kept her dreams alive by waitressing and actively participating in the nightlife scene. Despite cashing in $800 every night from being a waitress Ashley Dupre felt that destiny just wasn’t chugging along quite fast enough!.
A chance meeting in Ganesvoort Hotel with the self-proclaimed King OF All Pimps, Jason Itzler secured her destiny as a high priced escort (the more genteel term for prostitute…don’t wanna destroy the client’s illusion that they ain’t paying for it now do we?). Jason asked did she wanna…and she cooed yes please! The rest as they say is history!
By the time the house of madams came tumbling down Ashley Alexandra Dupre was a bona fide $4300/hour hooker…with a very healthy cocaine habit to support (this became public knowledge courtesy of her friends…what are friends for after all…if not to air your dirty laundry just when you’re trying to appear as squeaky clean as possible in a world knee deep in filth).
Despite an initial media blitz that portrayed her as the unfortunate victim of a broken home who tried to make good but went astray, it now appears Ashley–who purveyed her services in The World’s Oldest Profession under the name Kristen–was a wild child destined and set on her given path.
But anyway cutting a long tawdry (but fascinating) tale short, Ashley was savvy enough to leverage her notoriety into a huge financial windfall. While publicly displaying the image of scared deer caught in the beam of car headlights she was busy uploading new songs to her site in the wee hours of the morning as the media jockeyed and snapped outside her apartment building in Manhattan like a pack of ravenous jackals.
At 98 cents a download, within a few days the retired call girl had reeled in more than $200,000 (that was awhile back), which thanks to an immunity deal she’ll be able to happily spend (unless she gets nabbed snorting snowwhite with or without the seven dwarves…but she’s a celeb now so she’d probably get off with a slap on the wrist). With offers from Hustler Magazine, Penthouse and multiple TV networks hoping to showcase her assets (bare or otherwise), it seems that this was just the break that Ashley Alexandra Dupre was looking for…and surely there has to be a book and film in the works too!
Let’s just hope though that Ashley’s writing (and acting if she does go that route) is not quite as lame as her singing. But to give her credit, her music is no better nor any worse than a lot of the stuff out there by established artists. And if it is any consolation her effort is as good (or as bad) as Paris Hilton’s warbling attempts! Interestingly enough Ashley and Paris have other striking similarities most notably the fact that it was a public sex scandal that launched both their careers!
Personally I cannot in all honesty agree with the rapper who quipped that she had pipes measurable to Mariah Carey’s, and perhaps senior vice president for programming at Z100, Tom Poleman, hit the nail on the head when he stated: “It’s not a bad song.” True! Very True Tom…but it’s not a good song either! But it’s good to know that there is hope for the rest of us mere mortals to cash in with our very own filler-fluff tunes thanks to the internet and viral marketing!
Article on how to blog written by Ba Kiwanuka
