Every blogger should read this eBook by Hunter Nuttall, The Zen of Blogging (PDF).  Whether you’re just getting started or you are an experienced blogger looking for a new perspective to kick-start your motivation, I think you’ll enjoy this thoroughly.

Via:  ProBlogger

HigherTrustMarketing asks, “How much selling should you do from your blog?”.  As with everything, I think the answer varies quite a bit on the type of community you have.  They offer some good tips, such as making sure the type of thing or service you’re pushing is actually of interest to your readers.  Otherwise, you run the significant risk of upsetting your members and driving them away from your site.  The best approach in many cases is to make your users feel like they are gaining something by reading your blog full of product links.  For example, through in depth product reviews, links to coupons/discounts, new product announcements, etc. are all great ways to serve your community without making them feel like you’re shoving product down their throats.

On all my communities, I take a “passive” approach and try not to force-feed products on my users.  I’ll provide thoughts, comments, and the occasional link to specific products here and there, but I’ve found that engaging in a conversation with my members as opposed to simply broadcasting deals to them generates many more return visitors, and buyers!

Link:  Selling On Your Blog - Should You Do It?  (HigherTrustMarketing.com)

Here’s a great article with solid tips for pushing your affiliate products successfully.  The concept of focus helps in building strong communities too.  If your site covers a wide variety of topics, your users may get distracted.  You can help this by narrowing down your focus to a smaller subset of those topics, at least in the beginning while you are establishing your site.  Then, once you have some momentum, carefully add new topics to your menu based on a market analysis and what your community members are asking for.

Promoting Affiliate Products - Entrepreneur.com

If you haven’t joined the Zazzle (aff) affiliate program yet, now is a good time. They’re offering a 2 day 15% off sale on Feb 13-14th, and you can pass the savings along to your readers as added incentive! Just use coupon code SHARETHELOVE at checkout for your discount. More details on joining their affiliate program are available at www.Zazzle.com.

Today I’ll talk about another way encourage a community to develop on your web site; give your community an “identity” and a “mission”.

A community identity helps your members feel like they’re part of an exclusive club.  A mission gives the group a purpose and helps members feel like they’re part of a greater cause.  Both are excellent ways to build and retain membership.

For example, the Ante Up poker blog identifies its readers and podcast listeners as the “Ante Up Nation.”  Members are encouraged to learn less popular varieties of poker (in addition to the over-popular Texas Hold’em) and to help spread the word.  Community members frequently call in to their podcast or post on their forums to describe their experience of playing these games online or at a local casino and finding other members of the “nation” in the wild.

Strong communities give members a satisfying sense of reward for their membership and participation.  Some people will feel rewarded by contributing to the community, and others will simply be happy to have an association with the group.

As an added bonus, you can monetize your community by selling items through online stores like CafePress (aff) and Zazzle (aff) with your community’s name, slogan, mission statement, etc.

Got a prosperous web community with an identity and a mission?  Leave us comments to showcase it!

Now that portable MP3 players are common in just about every tech-saavy household, podcasts are a great way to get your message out to folks who might not otherwise take the time to read every blog entry.  You might be amazed by the number of people who listen to their iPod at the gym or on their way to work.

Starting a podcast for your site can be a daunting task.  You need audio equipment and editing software, a voice for radio, time, and optionally sponsors.  Then you have to find a place to host your feed and hope that the downloads don’t push you above your web hosting account’s monthly bandwidth limits.  But relax, there’s an easier solution! 

Talkr.com provides a (currently) free service that automatically converts your RSS feed into speech in mp3 format.  The audio files are quite understanable (text-to-speech technology has come a LONG way in recent years).  Talkr will also optionally insert contextual advertisments into your feed to help you monetize your site.  We’re trying ads for now on our new podcast feed, but please leave comments to let us know if that works for you or not.

Just after posting the previous article, I ran across this well articulated post from Lunarpages Webhosting, and I think the author nails it spot-on…

“Passion first, then monetize your website…”

Niche market communtiy websites usually start with one or more people who are highly passionate about a particular topic.  They start a blog or simple website offering content (photos, articles, audio, etc.) highly focused on that topic.  As other people interested in the topic learn about the site, they start to contribute, blog about it, recommend it to their friends, etc.  Once that ball starts rolling, you’d be surprised how quickly it can go!

Consider sites like mp3car.com.  This community started out as a niche subculture of people who liked to discuss building MP3 players into the dashboards of their cars.  Users posted photos and how-to guides showing off their own work.  Newbies flocked to the site as the idea spread and the long-time members suddenly found themselves in the role of “micro star”.  Now, the site has venture backing and even offers a line of commercially produced “carputers” and software to run on them.  All because a few people had passion and created a website to foster it.

In upcoming posts, I’ll go into more depth on the topic of starting a niche website based on your hobby or passion, how to stand out from other similar websites, and of course, tips for how to foster a strong online community.  Stay tuned!

The web’s all abuzz today with news of Craigslist chief exec, Jim Buckmaster, confusing folks on Wall Street by saying he has no interest in “monetizing” the popular classified ads site.  According to an article at NYTimes.com, although Craigslist is doubling in size each year by count of page hits & listings, they will not be adding advertisements such as Google AdSense to pages since users have not expressed an interest in seeing ads.

This brings up a few points worth discussing.  First, you can have a wildly successful community website without monetizing it.  In fact, it will probably help you focus on your niche a bit while you build up your site’s content and user base.  Once you have loyal regular readers, you can start to consider monetizing.  This approach may even be required in some cases as many affiliate programs won’t approve your applications until your site reaches a certain level of “street cred” as reflected in page hits and user base.

Second, you might be thinking “Why would users want to view ads?”  After all, isn’t the point of technologies like Tivo and popup blockers to help people avoid seeing ads?  Consider however that users visiting a niche website are highly likely to be interested in a) getting the opinion and feedback of the community on products they’re considering purchasing and b) finding the best deal possible.  In this respect, monetizing a website with affiliate links makes a lot of sense for you and your users!

Craigslist, on the other hand, is a whole different game.  The whole appeal of the website is its community-driven nature and ultra-simple design.  It reminds me of the “good old days” of the web when every page was rendered in Times New Roman fonts with a default grey background.  While browsing Craigslist, you don’t get distracted by flashing “click the monkey” banner ads or see the page struggling to autolayout while the ad images are downloaded from overloaded servers.  Simplicity works.

So hats off to Mr. Buckmaster for standing his ground and holding on to the true culture of his site!

ProBlogger.net has an interview today with Jim Krukal, creator of BlogKits.  If you’ve never heard of BlogKits, they’re a new kind of advertising network aimed at helping casual bloggers with monetizing their sites.  The premise is very similar to Google Adsense and they claim to be more effective.  I’ve signed up with their program myself today and will experiment with their ads on this site to see if they can put their money where their mouth is.  From what I can see by looking around their site, they seem to offer much more in the line of customization than Adsense and they even offer a set of web services for advanced users!

Have you tried BlogKits yet?  Is it working for you?