Yesterday I commented on the futility of trying to beg your way to riches via your blog. I was pooh-poohing. Bastard. Today I’m going to accentuate the positive and run down five business models I believe can work for (sex) blogs and we’ll see in increasing numbers this year.
Charged Archives
What is it?: Placing blog archives in a member’s area where people have to pay for access to old content.
Who’s it good for?: Sex podcasters could do very well with this. The difference between their content and the stuff that’s traditionally used to fuel a pay-site is minimal. By keeping new shows free via RSS, the marketing for the locked archives is built in. It doesn’t hurt regular readers, your content remains free to anyone who grabs it when it’s new.
A softened version of this idea involves putting out a ‘decaf’ version of your content and then keeping the ‘caffeinated’ version for members only. It’s a far weaker implementation and not the version I’d recommend. I can’t see written content having enough appeal to make this work either (with a couple of rare exceptions).
Product Placement
What is it?: Advertisers pay bloggers to include product names, images and references in their posts.
Who’s it good for?: Big mainstream blogs mostly. It’s a very low-return form of advertising, and only works for companies prepared to invest a lot in a brand. The downside is that being discovered doing this will make you appear ’sneaky’ in the eyes of many (don’t worry, they’ll be making less money than you.) This is happening already in a couple of blogs and, reading their comments, it’s clear the readers don’t know it’s happening. Are you sure that blogger you read really likes that record and isn’t just being paid to mention it in their sidebar? Couldn’t you go for a cool, refreshing Coke right now?
Offsite Advertising
What is it?: Making money from selling ads on a website that’s not your blog. Your blog links to a network ‘hub’ that carries ads, you get a slice of the ad-revenue equivalent to the amount of traffic you send. Your blog stays ad-free, you get paid and you can sell ads you wouldn’t want seen on your blog.
Who’s it good for?: Almost everyone. The appeal of having an ‘ad-free’ blog and still making money from advertising is huge. It’s very easy to set up, and because a network of blogs can send more people to an ad than one blog alone, the bigger the network of sites involved, the more profitable the network becomes. Who said Sugasm? What!? Oh… that’s an idea…
Ad-extortion
What is it?: You place ads on your blog, and then offer people the opportunity not to see them if they pay for a ‘clean’ version.
Who’s it good for?: Bloggers with large audiences but who aren’t successfully selling advertising. This model doesn’t use ads to sell, they’re placed as an annoyance and the more annoying they are, the more likely someone will pay to turn them off (assuming your content’s worth sticking around for). Porn consumers are generally prepared to put up with a lot, but I won’t be surprised to see one of the bigger adult-magazine-style blogs take a crack at this. Salon and IMDB have been doing this for years and if your content’s ‘essential’ it can work, particularly If you throw in a couple of enhanced features.
See, no pooh-poohing today, all positively (and yes - I am going to be rolling out a couple of blogs using these approaches myself). Now where’s that Coke?