Monetise Your Knowledge And Services, Leverage Your Ads And Affiliate Referrals Options

[iamlost]

Monetising one's knowledge or services is becoming commonplace beit Jakob Neilsen's useit.com displaying the value of his paid whitepapers or consulting services, Aaron Wall's seobook.com and the eBook of the same name, or Rand Fishkin with SEOmoz.com and a premium services offering.

The act is not new. Dr. Neilsen has been doing it for for many years as have Jupiter Research et al. The lowering of the threshold is what is interesting. One person or a small company duplicating a large organisation revenue model; it is the shrinking scale, both of the service provider and the end customer that is recent.

This behaviour is not unique to our domain developer industry, it is happening across the human knowledge base; leveraging that the web does not differentiate by who or what might be behind the curtain but by that which is available on site; that within even the largest competitor there may be few, even no one, with your skills and ability. And lack of overhead. Many niche web developers could add something similar to their revenue stream.

But what if you do not have sufficient expertise to sell in a compilation? What if your site is not a free taste of some secret sauce? What if all your niche(s) information is readily available elsewhere though perhaps not as well organised nor presented with your unique though regrettably unsaleable commentary? Can freely available content be monetised beyond the pennies of typical (yes, I am aware of atypical returns) ads and affiliate referrals or perhaps the ads-affs can be leveraged?

I gave a prior serial progression leverage example. What follows is another possibility.

Welcome to multimedia.
1. The podcast.
Learn from radio. Especially radio BTV (before television). Some ad placements were obvious, i.e. this program brought to you by..., others were less obvious but built into the commentary, i.e. 'Crying softly, Annie pedaled slowly down the road on her green BrandName bicycle...'.

2. The video.
Learn from sports and the movies. Product placement. Give your niche topic talk wearing a sponsors t-shirt, drinking from a sponsors cup. If you are mixing up a cake, don't just cook on a gas stove but on a BrandName gas stove, mention how pretty and functional your BrandName mixing bowls, how superior the BrandName utensils, and always get the ingredients from their BrandName package (unless the ingredient is not subsidised in which case already measured in a clear glass bowl/cup works well )...

In either media find reasons to interview employees of 'supportive' companies. There is no reason to be all lovey-dovey positive - indeed some of the best reputation salvaging is accomplished by 'hard' interviewing of company officers such that concerns are aired and addressed with logos, brands, and products, audibly or visibly present.

But what if you don't yet have the traffic to entice 'branding' type ads. What if you are lucky to get a few AdSense and Amazon clicks?

Welcome to multimedia reprised.
Do podcast and/or video niche appropriate book reviews. Build up a library. Cross link between content, text review, multimedia review and pre-sell pages, Amazon affiliate links.
Use some imagination.
Note: high priced coffee table books can be moved well this way.

Do a funny SEO take-off (I like the one with the sub, the target, the torpedo, and the mushroom cloud...) that incorporates Aaron's eBook (get an affiliate agreement first, OK?), and your landing page, and post it on YouTube. Then post several other SEO hysterical videos on your site for further bait. Naturally you would replace 'SEO' and 'Aaron's book' with your niche equivalents...but you knew that, right?

Is it really that simple?
Yes and no.
That is the gist of it, the executive summary.

If the lightbulb comes on for you (GREAT!) develop what works for you and that niche market. Try variations, push an occasional envelope, extrapolate until something fails, backoff a bit and try another course.

Take those cold hard facts that reside on your pages as text and make them live. Add a touch of humour and your personality (if none, get a pretty girl - or a buff guy without a shirt - depending on demographics ) and draw people in. And hold them. And encourage them to mention your site. And come back.

The web is no more just black, white, and static. Read accounts of what happened when people first saw 'moving pictures' or when those motion pictures first got sound and colour. We stand upon a cusp and the interaction of people, information, products, ads, sales, and reputation will never be the same again.

The 'talkies' (opt-in only please) are knocking at the door.
Opportunity awaits.
>>Open door. Y/N?

[IrishWonder]

leveraging that the web does not differentiate by who or what might be behind the curtain but by that which is available on site

My cat runs a regular podcast - nobody even guesses he's a cat

2. The video.

Call me old fashioned but for some reason I hate videos. Every time somebody posts something in the form of a video rather than text, I need a really really good reason not to just skip it. Reading is easier - maybe cause you can always just skim through it instead of being forced to look at something you might not exactly need explained in a lot of detail like to a preschool kid.

Other than this personal comment, nice ideas. But once you start charging for whatever content you provide you need to be really responsible about the quality and consistency of your information.

[EGOL]

I think that most podcasts are REALLY BORING.

Most videos are poorly done. And without a lot of text on the page they don't a lot of search traffic.

If you are going this route, I would go for the video but sink enough money and time into it to do it right. And, whoever you get to do the talking, they need to have enthusiasm in their voice and sparkle in their eye because a person who sounds and acts like they have a bad cold will not make your video fly.

Personally, I am sticking with text and trying to pair it with extra nice images. I'll go to video when the technology is a little better.

[A.N.Onym]

Well, if you:
- don't know how valuable your knowledge and skills are for your customers
- don't share something uniquely useful with your potential customers online for free

you pretty much won't monetize anything, no matter how hard you try. It still takes work to build authority online. Now, would your suggested videos and podcasts do that? I'd hope you would be building an authentic online image of what you are and target your audience better.

And I'll 3d the text preferrence. Small and useful videos are fine, but long and boring videos are lost minutes of my life. There may be exceptions, such as a 1hr video of Guy Kawasaki talking about 10 rules of innovation.

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Feb 12 2008, 10:42 PM

[iamlost]

...but sink enough money and time into it to do it right. And, whoever you get to do the talking, they need to have enthusiasm in their voice and sparkle in their eye because a person who sounds and acts like they have a bad cold will not make your video fly.

What, you have something against shaky cameras, dim lighting, jerky zoom, and a monotone drone?

Personally, I am sticking with text and trying to pair it with extra nice images.

I am looking at podcasts and video (on-demand) as enhancements for certain areas. The text and the images need to right first. Absolutely agree with you there.

To clarify a bit. I move a lot of books. One thing I noticed is that the local library does a big business in audio books and on asking the patrons learned that (1) older couples often like to listen together, (2) some commuters and travellers like to listen to books rather than news or music while driving, and (3) many hard of sight people find it easier than reading.

So to enhance my already optimised book referrals I added podcast niche book reviews. 3-5-minutes about the book itself, the author, the genre, similar or complimentary titles, etc. all in a light and occasionally humourous fashion, ending with a 'promo' code needing to be input on the site (can't have them going direct ) I use local amateur thespians to say my script - matching the gender of the speaker to that of the author. Uptake (or download) has been close to doubling each month. An option, not a requirement, that is certainly a good ROI.

Videos are still much more of an experimental format but I am seeing some interesting potential. And there are local high school and college multimedia/video/drama courses with co-op potential...

[iamlost]

Small and useful videos are fine, but long and boring videos are lost minutes of my life.

Agreed.

I am not advocating replacing text and images. I am suggesting that podcasts and/or multimedia (am testing some rather cool animation...built from an old games engine) can be offered as an option and an enhancement - for those that want it.

Podcasts especially, are ads that they can take with them (I am seeing more young people locally sharing TV ads as well as YouTube videos on their handhelds). And an increasing number are happy to do so.

The trick of course is to make them interesting and informative. No hard sell. Softly, softly, catchee monkey.