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Just a short post to alert whoever it is that cares that I haven’t been blogging very much because I have been KO with Bronchitis. I’ve been off work for 4 working days tomorrow but am off to the doctor yet again because I am not better.

I am fast losing faith in the medical profession.

Lately I’ve been thinking alot about monetizing blogs.

There are obvious solutions to try and generate revenue from a blog such as Traffic Synergy and Google Ads.

But I honestly think that there is more valuable to be had than simple clickthrough earnings.

There are a few things that are important to consider

Are you even trying to generate revenue from your blog?
Some people just love writing whether it is coherent or not, they just like to write and have no intention of earning any money from there blogs. If this is you then you don’t really have to worry about implementation of various methods to earn money. Throw on some Google ads in strategic position and hope for the best.

Do you have a well established brand?
If you do then this is your biggest value proposition. Using SA Rocks as an example. It is a valuable brand that can aid a products public image merely by association. In this case it’s important to find sponsorships and build relationships with the advertisers on your site. They will gain value from brand association. Think outside of the box here, what you offer isn’t merely clicks or immediate feedback, it’s having their brand present on your site. This is value that deserves recognition and pay.

Your business only operates online
You probably need to monetize your blog quickly. But if you aren’t desperate and have other projects in the online sphere your blog might prove to be a valuable place to talk about your projects and rally support for them. This can indirectly translate in to profit or revenue. This can actually be interpreted as revenue generated from your blog.

Your business is online and in the “real world”
This is possibly where your blog-brand can extend your profits the most in my mind. It’s here where I think bloggers need to start extending themselves and pushing their brands in to real results. A great example of someone who puts himself out there and has seen the results is Mail & Guardian Blogger Michael Trapido. Traps is a fantastic mind with lots to say and a firm and educated opinion on a variety of topics. He blogs on Thought Leader and Sports Leader and has turned online blogging in to an offline growth of his core business. Fantastic news and the way that online personalities and specialists need to start migrating.

Another great example is the Girl With A One Track Mind blog. This used to be an anonymous blog that generated huge visits and pageviews. Then the author was outed by a journalist and Zoe Margolis was born. This has possibly been one of the best things that happened to her blog (see this interview by Paul Carr). She could become the face of her brand and take her thoughts in to the real world. This allowed her to generate more and different kinds of revenue from her blog.

You blog to build a reputation
This can be one of the most valuable blogging currencies. If you are careful and smart about your blog you can gain a very strong following and a very good reputation in a relatively short period of time. This can be converted in to many different revenue streams.

How do you or have you earned money from blogging? Let me know.

I’m noticing a strange trend. It’s in my writing and it’s becoming more noticeable in the writing of many, many bloggers that I read. What am I talking about? Incoherent blog posts.

These have become the bane of my reading online. I am seeing it everywhere. People are posting short thoughts of larger principles, concepts and ideas that could be fantastic blog posts but turn out to be incoherent cyber-babble.

Let me elaborate before I appear to be a stark raving lunatic.

For me a post is simple (not always executed in such a manner but I always try) and consists of basic things to make it a readable blog post.

Cement an idea or concept in your mind and think it through. Pitch it to your reader in the first paragraph and then present more analytical opinion, fact or information that can substantiate your initial premise.

This could all happen in the space of 3 paragraphs, three sentences or three thousand words, but for crying in a bucket be sure to have an opinion, be conclusive, state things, back them up, do a tiny bit of a research and just pop in a link. You don’t have to rehash things that other people might already have explained, it’s the nature of the internet, hyperlink it.

On top of that, we are in South Africa in case you hadn’t notice, there are a fair amount of blogs that are probably going to be writing or have written about (in some manner or another) what you have written about so see what they had to say and reference them, pull their posts to shreds or applaud their logic, whatever you like, but use their writings to draw them in to your writing. This will entice debate and create a buzz around your writing or blog.

Tyler Reed did it a while back when he broke a story about Amatomu launching. It got him attention and launched him on to the local scene. If you hadn’t had screenshots, and opinion, a review of some sorts people would’ve picked up the story, done their own research and bettered the post. It can be done and has been done.

A couple of examples that I’ve found in the last few days:

Today Paul Slade blogged about social media experts carving their way in to the market and in fact, carving the market. I loved the idea of the post, it had so much potential but flaked out in to a very bland post.

Paul pitched a Pros and Cons kind of post but really wasn’t very decisive in the pros or cons. I would’ve loved to see a list, everyone loves lists. The cons were brief and could well have been expanded on to make for a really gripping post that would’ve done well everywhere. Same goes for the pros. My immediate suggestion would have been to get Mike to list his own pros and cons on the subject and then for Paul to develop what he thinks the pros and cons are or could be. Look I’m being picky on this article because I really think it was a good article but could’ve been great with a bit more care and research. I am sure there are lots of resources that Paul could have made use of and linked to.

The next example really set me on this blog post: “How Muti has successfully built a self-sustainable community“.

This blog post had all the potential to be a sterling analysis of what Muti is, was and might become. It could have been an in-depth look at the community of Muti and how it is self-sustaining. Instead I read two examples supplied in the post one of down voting on Muti and the other was the Afrigator/Regator debacle. Neither told me anything about the Muti community or it’s self-sustaining nature directly. By inference, maybe, but no statements.

The first summed up:

Whether Down-Voting should be brought back or not , but surely there seems to coexist amongst the users , a sense that the overall outcome should act in the best possible interests of the community.

The second in a nutshell:

Along came Regator — which in my opinion looks pretty much similar (but not so supreme) to Afrigator. The community was outraged to an extent that seven posts were seating at the top of muti expressing their disgust towards Regator … But as to whom emerged triumphant? Im not entirely sure.

The only mention of the Afrigator/Regator issue in relation to Muti is above. “Seven posts were seating at the top of muti,” and from that I must deduce how Muti has managed to establish a self-sustaining community?

All that I am saying is that when you write a fantastic headline like How Muti has successfully built a self-sustainable community and have a great idea, have the insight to follow it through. Yasser had the right idea, the right concept but lacked follow through. That’s all.

At the end of the day what you want to avoid is people reading your article and leaving your site while mumbling: “Hmmm that could’ve been a great read”.

Thanks to twitter I have managed to amass a large scope of online payment options.

Here’s the list:

• Virtual Card Services
• 2CheckOut
• MyGate
• Setcom
• PayGate
• Bango

I can’t write a more detailed description of these offerings as I haven’t delved in to them yet. As soon as I have made a choice and the system has been put in place I’ll blog about my choice.

Thanks to Jason, Simone, Luke, Charl, Andrew and Workhomeparents for tweeting suggestions.

Doritos has been everywhere lately, all over the radio, a few other ads here and there. Basically they have been punting their Facebook page.

I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.

My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half - the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.

Why I think this is campaign was a flop?

Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their “Moment of boldness” A few years ago I can’t believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.

At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that’s a bit of a flop.

Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign

Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.

But let’s look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.

To analyse these in a bit more detail:

Wall
313 posts

Discussion Board
Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 people
Topic 2: 29 posts by 25 people

Videos
12 fan videos

Photos
44 photos
5 albums

Events
Event 1 - 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall posts
Event 2 - 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall posts

Notes
7 notes
144 comments

Looking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should’ve been the saving grace but alas, it wasn’t.

What Doritos could have done differently

Expanded their “moment of boldness” campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and “fake events” that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.

I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the “bold” factor.

Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it’s their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.

Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.

Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.

I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I’d love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?