If there’s a fundamental reason why bloggers have trouble monetizing their blog it’s because they treat their blog like a product instead of a platform.
The TED Talk
I came across a TED talk recently from Adam Baker. The talk focused on financial freedom, and how he and his family became free of debt by selling all their crap to pay down their debt, so much so that all their possessions could fit in a backpack. They then backpacked around the world.
Here is the TED talk I watched.
After watching the video I researched Adam a bit more and found out he has a website called Man vs. Debt. On the site he is incredibly transparent about his finances, and how his blog is his family’s primary income source.
Why No Ads, Adam?
You might think that with a popular blog like his Adam would make his living selling ads, but that isn’t the case. Instead, he created a series of premium guides to help people get out of debt. The guides include videos, audio downloads, worksheets, templates and access to a members forum.
Adam has done a fantastic job of creating a digital product which he sells through his blog.
He is treating the blog as a platform for selling his course, instead of trying to monetize the content directly.
If you want to be rich and famous, you need to build something. Look at Google and Facebook. They aren’t monetizing their content, they each built a tool to monetize other people’s content – ours, sadly. If you want to live in this world, you have to believe that your content exists only to reach and influence people. It’s your platform.
You need a product, whether it’s a physical book you can sell like Seth Godin, or it’s a digital course you can sell like Adam Baker.
Adam Monetizes His Influence
I don’t know Adam from Adam, but I’m talking him up today, because he is doing EXACTLY what I wrote about in my last post… He is monetizing his influence.
- Adam tried something unusual (He sold all his crap and bought financial freedom)
- That experience gave him knowledge
- He shared that knowledge on his blog
- His blog gave him creditability, allowing him to speak at TEDx
- His TEDx talk brought him more influence, so much so that I sought out his blog, and his course
Notice that the Man vs. Debt blog doesn’t have a call to action at the end of every post saying, “Buy my course today!”. He is not directly selling his product on his blog. He is exchanging his content for influence which he later monetizes through his own product. Since he’s monetizing his influence, not his content, he could easily endorse another product he believes in, and get compensation for that as well.
Influence provides multiple revenue stream opportunities, where content provides only one.
Take Action
Like Adam, I’m not in the business of selling my content or pushing a product on readers. What I really desire is an opportunity to influence you.
I want to share my experiences with you. The things I’ve learned over the last 10 years of online marketing.
If you’ll let me, I would like to invite you into my tribe. My tribe is a small group of less than 100 people who I share my knowledge with every day. It’s an informal micro-community, a master mind group of sorts, where we talk about how bloggers can be successful online.
A tribe is a powerful thing. In fact, the only reason you’re reading this is because somebody from one of my tribes shared it with you. #TrueStory
Here you go. Check out the tribe.