The Second Best Way to Make Money With a Blog

Posted on August 10, 2007
Filed Under Business Management |

Seth Godin advances the two best ways to make money with your blog, the first being to build rep and parlay it into access. This is basically getting by on your blag, and it’s what the blog is best known for, the simple leverage of forging degrees of connection out of prior separation.

His second best way is one I admire immensely: you set your blog up as your shop. Seth Godin links straight to a new article, the most useful guide to doing this I’ve ever seen, Blogs as Stores: A Comprehensive Overview of Ecommerce Solutions for Bloggers, by John T. Unger, at TypePad Hacks.

John Unger is an artist who successfully channels all his marketing through his blogs. His extensive reference article is defiitely a keeper to bookmark and study both for inspiration and practical benchmarks.

After an introduction to the benefits of integrating blogs and stores, and a description of his ideal configuration, John Unger goes into the details of direct payment options such as PayPal, Google Checkout, and others. He then covers hosted storefront options such as Etsy and Zazzle, reviewing them all in workmanlike detail as they apply to the TypePad platform.

The article continues with a look at Affiliate stores such as Amazon. (The field of affiliate marketing is a huge one in its own right of course, and those interested should look beyond this cursory glance for advice.) I like his inclusion of shopping widgets:

The following are social bookmarking sites organized around shopping. You can pick products from anywhere on the web and create widgets that link to pages where the item can be purchased. This is potentially a great way to market your work, but it also has the advantage of being an easy way to create catalogs of items to embed on your blog.

He finishes by reviewing various hacks and hybrids, both on TypePad and with other platforms. Then after all this work, he shows his quality as a blogger by responding generously to the comments, so don’t stop at the end of the article. Nice one, John Unger.

Etsy was once a great favorite of my friend Emily Goodwin, an artist in Crete whose footsteps seem to be following the path trod by John Unger. Her photography, hotlinked directly from Zazzle, graces this post. I admire her fledgling operation, and the advances she’s made over time.

I wrote this for Emily, and we will watch her over the years follow John’s advice, and her own diligence, and prosper.

I like the idea of this second-best method of making money from a blog. It feels like being a shopkeeper, and living above the shop. I come from a nation of shopkeepers: it always struck me as a fine way to live.

Everyone should inhabit their vocation, totally immersed in their plan, big as all their life. Or else why bother?

Comments

One Response to “The Second Best Way to Make Money With a Blog”

  1. PlugIM.com on August 10th, 2007 11:32 pm

    The Second Best Way to Make Money With a Blog…

    Seth Godin advances the two best ways to make money with your blog, the first being to build rep and parlay it into access. His second best way comes with a how-to guide: you set up shop inside your blog….

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