What better way to announce our new blog development section than to start with a post about how to make money from your brand new blog?

It’s been written about before, hundreds of times of course, but since we like to practice the tried and true, I figured I’d spit out some good ones geared toward sites that are new and don’t necessarily meet the traffic requirements for some of the other, higher paying programs.

Lately it just seemed that we’ve been getting lots of clients who wanted just blogs - no static pages, no sales stuff, just really well designed, easy to manage systems that they could use to make some cash with while writing about their favorite topics. Of course, once we build the site, we love to help our clients monetize!

For new sites, there are a couple good ways to start off (including some active examples!):

AdSense - The amount of money you can make from AdSense depends largely on your niche. If you’re blogging about “drug rehab” you could find yourself making a good couple dollars per click. Blog about “scrapbooking” or “weight loss” and you’re looking at just a few cents per click. But the income is related to the traffic because you need other people to do the clicking. (aff)

Traditional Affiliate Program - My personal favorite is ClickBank, though there are many others out there. Find the one that has categories of products you can promote (ie. products that match your blog’s topic), and make money whenever someone clicks through and makes a purchase! You can even track your clicks with ClickSensor V2 (aff)

Affiliate Resale Program - One of the most well known is Amazon. You can build text or image links, and now even “aStores” which result in unlimited pages of products that YOU choose to promote. Have a digital photography blog? Sell cameras, lenses, and books about photography. Are you a “foodie” blogger? Sell recipe books, kitchen gadgets, and magazine subscriptions. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination!

CafePress - Create your own items with your own works of art and sell them from your site! T-shirts, mugs, mousepads, bags, even clocks!

So there you have it - Three great ways to get started making money from your blog from day one. The good news is that using a content management system like WordPress offers plugin options to help you incorporate these things even easier! You can conceivably manage everything from your WordPress admin and a PayPal account. Check out the following monetization plugins:

AdSense Deluxe - create ad block “shortcuts” to insert Google AdSense anywhere, anytime you’re blogging.
AdSense Widget (for sidebars and widget-endabled themes)
AdSense Revenue and Earnings - Track your earnings right from your admin section!
Amazon Media Manager - a little complicated to get used to, but it’s the grand-daddy of all Amazon plugins for WP.
Now Reading @ Amazon - Allows you to use a “now reading” section and write reviews for books you’ve read.
CafePress Store Plugin - Create items like t-shirts, clocks, and mousepads and sell them right on your WP site.

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Okay, I think I’ve finally recovered enough from my trip down to Manhattan to be able to write something fairly coherent about the three days spent down there. I probably should break this up into several posts, but being that I was without a computer while there, I’m likely the last person writing up a summary. I’ll link to others I find in the end, and if I miss one, please leave it in the comments.

FOOA - As a whole
FOOA had it’s ups and downs. I was most pleased with meeting all the people I got to meet, next to that was some of the presentations. I know that Carson Systems has learned quite a bit about conferencing with this one, and I think that marketers, publishers, and the like are probably the pickiest of the bunch. (Yep, that includes myself.)

One of the main things I heard nearly everyone talk about was that they felt like they were at a big sit-down tradeshow more than at a learning conference. Presenters that had 30-45 minutes of speaking time typically filled it with “This is what we do and why you should use our product/service,” rather than explaining things in more general terms. Sure, sponsors deserved to have some exposure time (because they were lined up upstairs and few people actually went up there to see them) but an entire 30 minutes on PayPerPost just unnerved people. Most of us knew what PPP is, and have already made our firm decisions whether or not we want to use it. Same with BlogAds. Though it was kind of humorous to hear the thinly veiled insults at each other.

VideoClix
Outside of that, there were a few speakers whose services I hadn’t heard of before. VideoClix was one of them, and I thought it was a really neat idea. The concept is that you can take any video clip and highlight certain pieces (their examples were fashion shows and then a clip of Mike and Sully from Disney’s “Monsters, Inc.”) and when the user clicks on that character, dress, purse, what have you on the left hand side of the screen, a picture of that item (or a knockoff) shows up on the right hand side with a purchase option. The best part of this was the fact that once you highlighted a character or item, even if it went offscreen and came back, it was still being tracked.

The Deck
Another interesting, albeit elitist concept was The Deck. The sites that are “members” of The Deck are very simply designed, and contain NO other ads than the one single ad that’s placed there by The Deck on behalf of advertisers. There is a non-competition clause, where if say, Coca-Cola decided to place an ad on one site, there will be no ad for any other soda company on any other site in the network (currently totaling about 15 sites) that month. Plus, Coca-Cola would have the first refusal for the following month - meaning that if they wish to continue their ad in the network, any other soda company that was in the queue would have to wait again. The sites in the network boast millions of pageviews per month, and The Deck only accepts advertisements from products and services that the members of the network have paid for and/or used.

Numeric Analytics
I got to speak with Numeric Analytics upstairs as well as hear a presentation from Pete Affeld. The big thing is that many advertising clients aren’t fully aware of all impact of their advertising efforts - most only hear about the positive. But it takes knowing about the negative (or lack of) results to really fine tune any advertising campaigns properly, so that’s where Numeric Analytics comes into play. Their services are geared towards advertising clients and are made to help them get better information about their campaigns.

Darren Rowse - ProBlogger/b5media
I spent most of the time down there with Darren, and there are more pics later in the post from the meetup we had at The Speakeasy. I really loved Darren’s presentation though (despite his fighting off the flu, he was entertaining as well as informative)… it was one of the few that took a humorous approach and appealed to both publishers and advertisers. His presentation was about “dating” in advertising - meaning romancing each other (publishers and advertisers) to make the most out of the relationship. He focused on providing clear and concise statistics to potential advertisers, and valuable offers to bloggers and publishers. It was one of the few presentations that actually got a giggle from the audience from the beginning. Way to go, Darren!

On day two, Darren, Matt and myself went across the street to Pronto Pizza for lunch. The “butlered lunch” there at Gotham Hall left much to be desired… we were HUNGRY. Here are a couple shots from there, and I believe Darren has more he’ll post soon enough. I was honored to be with Darren as he tasted NYC style pizza for the first time - I even explained “the fold” quite well, I think!

Those were just a couple highlights - there was much more to it but I don’t want to bore you all! After Day One, Carson Systems set up a little “happy hour” after party at 230 5th Ave. We mixed and mingled on the rooftop, and here were some photos I took. (Don’t mind the one with me in it - I was exhausted after having been up since 3am and traveling down to the city that day!)

Saturday I met up again with Darren, and with Shai Coggins (another b5 coolie person) at Carmine’s for lunch. Carmine’s is one of my favorite places to eat in Manhattan, and since Darren loves Italian food, and Shai had never been to NYC - I figured it a perfect place to go. At one point, Darren had snagged my camera and taken a few candid shots of me yakking away - I do believe I was gushing on about one of my favorite crooners, Michael Buble at the time.

After lunch, I brought Darren and Shai to Battery Park where we checked out Lady Liberty, some street dancers, and a sculpture that was previously at the World Trade Center. After that, we hit up the meetup, (which was wonderful) and that’s all there is to say about that! *phew!*

Yes, there are even more photos…

Others who’ve posted updates:

Elaine Vigneault - LOVE HER!

Theron’s Flickr Set

Ari’s Recap (Few Guys From Work)

John Keegan’s Flickr Set

Rich Minx’s Recap

Chris Conley’s ProBlogger Meetup Recap

Behind The Buzz - Live Blogging the FOOA

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I’ve got a few more announcements to make about recent clients we’ve worked with here at Anubis Marketing. I love to brag - but moreso brag about my clients, than the work we’ve done! (You’ll see why when you see who they are!)

• Tina Dame-Zawisza - Tina’s one of the stars of the new hit reality show on ABC “The Ex-Wives Club” (her episode aired Monday, June 4th, 2007). Tina had us build her a site a while back when she was doing more of her modeling and acting work, and we decided it was time for a fresh new site because of the show.
• Lynn Jones - Lynn’s another wonderful lady I met because of Tina, who is also on the show (I’m not sure yet when her episode airs, but check out her site - I’m sure she’ll post it.)

I’ll be spending the latter half of this week at the FOOA Conference and with Darren Rowse at a meetup on Saturday night - all in Manhattan. I’ll try to post while I’m there, but conference trips are never predictable!

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made an announcement today that protects consumers making purchases via the internet, saying quite flatly, “The Internet is no longer the Wild West of commerce.” This measure defines online and Internet purchases as equivalent to catalog/mail and telephone orders when it comes to buyer protection.

From Cuomo’s website:

Last year, more than 1,000 consumer complaints were submitted to the Attorney General’s Internet Bureau regarding failure to deliver goods ordered online or other improper conduct related to online purchases. The measure affords online consumers the same protections as those who make purchases over the phone or through the mail. Those protections include:

* Orders cannot be accepted for merchandise which cannot be reasonably anticipated to be shipped within 30 days.
* All advertising and promotional materials must prominently feature: the legal name of the company, complete street address and details about what conditions in which a refund will be issued.
* If products fail to ship within 30 days, the company must clearly provide the buyer with the opportunity to cancel the order and receive a refund or receive substitute merchandise.
* Companies must maintain records of all complaints of failure to ship merchandise or provide advertised services.

As far as I’m aware, this new law applies to products only (as opposed to services), but I’m sure that’s the next step in this state. Cuomo’s been cracking down on a lot of things since taking office - this is just one more consumer-minded direction, but every single business owner who offers a product for sale on their website needs to know about this.

What confuses me just a little is that I wasn’t really aware that this was any more a problem for online business than it was for traditional mail-order business. But I suppose that there will always be people who find the legal loopholes - and this new law closes off the circle completely.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny said, “The bill would protect consumers who shop through the Internet by requiring that their purchases be delivered in a timely manner. Internet businesses will no longer be able to evade the clear intention of the law that has long applied to all other businesses.”

So - to all my clients and NY based business friends - it’s time to start tightening up the proverbial belts!

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