After a lite breakfast…Darren Rowse opened Day 2 of Elite Retreat

Darren is one of the top bloggers in the world - his most popular blog, ProBlogger.net, is recognized by Technorati as a Top 50 blog.

Darren asks: Why Blog?

- Darren suggests that what’s most attractive about blogging is the fact that it “gives you a voice,” especially across boundaries (geographical, relationship, etc.).
- Darren has about 40,000 - 50,000 readers per day across his various blogs.
- Darren suggests blogging allows you to increase your profile. He offers an example where he wrote a post about the Lord of the Rings and a day or two later he got a call from the New York Times for an interview -he thought this was peculiar bec/ he didn’t see himself as an expert on LOTR.
- Darren talks about his high blogging profile results in numerous opportunities, including lucrative job offers, television interviews, and daily calls from reporters around the world.
- Darren talks about building a community and how blogging allows you to build a following who, in turn, become friends and supporters…even if you’ve never met the person. i.e., your readers often come to your support if someone writes a combative or negative comment or if another blogger questions your efforts.
- Darren goes intodetail about building trust through blogging. Very interesting perspective here - Darren really believes in giving his readers valuable information and over time the blog becomes a resource for the reader. FYI: Darren has garnered a reputation (much like Shoemoney.com) for offering useful information for how people can make money online, especially by monetizing blogging.

DARREN ANSWERS: HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY WITH BLOGGING?

- He talks about Direct Methods (i.e., selling ad space, CPC, CPM, Sponsorships, Text links [ex. text-link-ads / adbrite], Blog Ads, RSS Ads, affiliate programs) and Indirect Methods.
- Darren says that affiliate programs work best on niche blogs. He says keys to successful affiliate programs include relevancy (think niche), trust, and positioning.
- Darren talks about other ways of making money, including membership areas, merchandise, selling blogs, paid reviews, donations, job boards, polls).
- Darren, Aaron Wall, and Jeremy Schoemaker talk about paid reviews (i.e., ReviewMe, PayPerPost). Darren doesn’t do paid reviews but he is not against it as he believes that it is one way for bloggers to make $$$ and blog for a living or to supplement income. Aaron talks about ReviewMe and how some bloggers make as much as $10K or more per month, but most make less than that. Jeremy talks about he’s playing with the service but oesn’t want to “sell out.” Currently, you can us reviewMe to get Jeremy to write a review for $750 - the highest allowed by ReviewMe - he’s had several people wanting him to review their stuff…but he has yet to do it…He said he will disclose the paid review if he does it.

DARREN’S 11 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR BLOG STICKY

- Use a Newsletter
- Highlight key Posts / Related Posts
- Promote your RSS feed
- Be conversational (ask Q’s)
- Build community
- Make readers famous
- Give readers jobs (i.e., moderators)
- What does your blog say in the first 10 seconds?
Provide a search function
- Use polls and other interactive tools

Darren opens it up to Q & A.

Wendy from eMoms is also blogging the event and Darren and Jeremy also put out posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, Elite Retreat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.