Blogging Burn Out

Comments

[this is good]
This is a very interesting post, suzinow.

Are the adult blogs a product marketing tool or taking written content or a mixture of both?

I tried to think of a way to market counted cross stitch designs many years ago but the Net hadn't been around long and eventually I had to go back to 9 to 5ing. With adult product you don't have to test anything but with CCS I would have had to test stitch each one.

Definitely a food for thought post.
Hi petermcc,
Thanks for asking. I wondered how people would react to that post :)

I belong to a number of sponsors who provide me with pictures, some text and free hosted galleries to link to. Many also provide RSS feeds so that I can make blogs 'on auto'. All the posts contain my affiliate links, so if anyone reads the post, clicks through to the sponsor and signs up, the sponsor pays me for the sign up (it's usually a reasonable amount).

However, the blogs which make me the most money are those where I write my own written posts to go with the pictures. This differentiates me from all the other bloggers trying to make money this way. It's hard work though (and not for the faint hearted or the easily offended!).

With counted cross stich designs I wouldn't have a clue. I would guess you would google the term and see what websites are selling these already and looking at how they go about it (keywords, advertising methods etc). I would also look at the adsense adverts on the right hand of the page. If there are none, or not many, then the product probably doesn't have many sponsors which could make it difficult to make money from.

In that case, you could always try setting up a blog or website, getting it a high ranking in google and promoting product suppliers for free for a while. Then, if your stats tell you that you are giving the product suppliers good hits, you could contact them and offer to continue to advertise their site for a price. I've done this with a couple of mainstream sites (local) and it is working quite well, but early days....

But with sponsors already out there, if I find a product (in adult or mainstream) I want to promote, I usually click through to the sponsor's site, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and see if there is a 'webmaster' link. If there is, I look at what the sponsor has to offer.

Hope that helps :)
Thanks for the excellent response, suzinow.

I'll have to put my thinking cap on and have another look around at the existing market.

Last time the Net was in its infancy and most folk couldn't see where I was coming from. I didn't want to be a web designer but had hoped to find someone approaching the matter as marketing my product for me, alongside theirs. Folk just wanted to sell their own stuff instead of expanding the range they had on offer with other folks product.

I thought this was pretty narrow minded and limited what they had to offer visitors to their site. You never know. Maybe someone has clued on by now.
Man thats awesome!
Goog luck petermcc.
I'll be watching for how you get on.
You never know, I have quite a few mainstream (ie. non-adult) sites, some quite general, so maybe I could give you a link or two (for free of course) when you get your marketing strategy going.
Every little link helps...
Lol!
Thanks Zack :)
I have had a look around Suzi and it's still can't see anyone offering to take a percentage of the sale to run my designs.

I'm very reluctant to start my own site because I don't want to go through the process of setting up transaction processing. It sounds expensive.

Do you have any transaction processing yourself? It sounds like you just collect on the "click through".

The original idea was to sell the cross stitch plans and deliver them electronically, to be printed on peoples own printers. If this had gotten off the ground the process would have been automatic. Deal with the queries but the rest would have been hands free. The idea beyond that was to offer freelancers the use of the system while keeping a small percentage for the privilege.

I thought this would have given arts students a chance to earn some cash while still at college and would have enhanced the site by displaying their original work. Kids today can really come up with brilliant stuff.

It could also have been marketed as a last minute birthday present for geeks who had forgotten Mum's special Day.

I still think it could grow legs but the clock is ticking as far as me getting it up and running. The missus is less than enthused.

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