How to Make Money from Your Blog: 11 Powerful Case Studies

Jeff Bullas is probably one of the Best Bloggers our there. He is on the button with all Social Media and is quick of the mark with all new technologies and whats happening right Now! 


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This makes interesting reading - Jeff should know he has been blogging for several years now.

n 2005 a Greek American woman started a political blog. As the traffic grew more funding was required. This meant that in August 2006 the venture fund SoftBank Capital was called upon to invest $5 million into the site to hire more staff and to provide the resources needed to make the updates to feed the news cycle 24/7 as the site grew in popularity.

Two years later in November 2008, another $15 million was raised to maintain the momentum as the blog added more journalism resources and local reporting was ramped up across the USA.

The power of celebrity was embraced with politicians, academics and famous power brokers in all areas of business and industry contributing articles to the blog.

It was in June 2011 that the blog’s website traffic passed the doyen of traditional media, the “New York Times” for the first time.

“In just six years new media had disrupted 100 years of traditional media”

Seven years after the first post was published, it was sold to AOL for $315 million to add to its other online blog assets including Engadget, TechCrunch and MovieFone.

Today it’s website traffic is measured at over 77 million visitors per month.

That  blog is Huffington Post.

Tipping point

In the blogging world this was a watershed moment. Never before had so much money been paid for a blog.

New media is replacing and disrupting old media.

The old business model that made many media moguls billionaires and king makers was based upon the rivers of gold which were generated from classified ads. Today it is the website traffic that is creating the cash and the influence is moving online.

Huffington Post was purchased by AOL because of three key elements.

1. Its online and global influence
2. Advertising revenue
3.  Traffic

In one sense this new media is just a variation of old media except that it is online. It is still traffic, eyeballs and advertising.

It just happens to be digital.

The new media models

The new models are not so simple but multifaceted and convoluted. Making money from new media is not a singular approach but often a matrix of multiple opportunities and tactics.

Blogging has evolved rapidly because of the social web and in the past was driven by building email lists which took a lot of time. With the advent of social media their marketing and growth have been supercharged.

Global reach and influence at the speed of a tweet, a Facebook share or a viral video.

To make money from a blog in 2013 you do not have to be a Huffington Post. There are many ways to make a living out of blogging that can enhance your current business and lifestyle that are within everyone’s reach.

Let’s have a look at some of them.

1. Advertising

Just to show that the Huffington Post is not a one off, there are many blogs that generate significant revenue in then millions. One of those is Mashable.

Mashable’s model is based almost exclusively on building huge amounts of traffic that makes it an attractive platform for advertising. Current page views per month total approximately 50 million.  This also means producing a lot of content. To put that in perspective Mashable publishes dozens of articles a day to feed the content beast.

They work hard at optimizing their advertising and  have developed technology for:

• Infinite ad scrolling
• Story telling ads unit
• Content velocity algorithm

This blogging business model is becoming harder as advertising rates fall. But the rewards can be great with some reports that Peter Cashmore is worth nearly $100 Million US and the blog has been valued at over $200 million.

2. Sponsorship

Suzi Dafnis is the clever business brain behind a very successful blog that targets business women in Australia. It is called the Australian Business Women’s Network.  She must be doing something right! It has just won “Best Australian Blogs Competition” in the business Category.

Sponsorship is the main revenue source with sponsors including American Express, Optus and GoToWebinar.

3. Webinars and Seminars

Social Media Examiner was only started 4 years ago by Mike Stelzner and made its first million dollars within 12 months through paid online webinars. Mike (who by the way is one of the true gentlemen of the blogging world) has used his attention to detail, process and savvy business acumen to create a blog that is now ranked in the top 60 blogs in the world in just 48 months.

Mike knows how to shine the spotlight on others and hence they have returned the favour.

Prior to starting the Social Media Examiner blog Mike had run other blogs and businesses including one on how to “Write White Papers”. Mike has moved into producing conferences, with the recent success of the inaugural “Social Media Marketing World” in  San Diego.

If you want an insight into how he made his blog such a success I would recommend you read his book “Launch – How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition”

4. Speaking

Blogs can be the platform that makes you visible. This includes being invited to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars. Guy Kawasaki uses his blog as an online platform to promote his speaking and his books. 

Guy understands the importance of an online platform for building credibility and marketing his personal brand. He also understands the power of social media and has nearly 1.3 million Twitter followers

5. Books

Tim Ferriss is the author of  the New York Times best seller “The Four Hour Work Week”, which was about creating a success lifestyle in a web world. He has used his blog to launch not just one but three books after the huge success of his first book.

Tim uses his blog as his promotion platform for his books and for engaging and sharing his inspiration for experiments in lifestyle design.

6. Affiliate

Affiliate marketing  is the art of either selling other people’s products on your blog or getting affiliates to sell your products.  Brendon Burchard is one of many who have perfected this art and science.

One of the the key secrets to succeeding in this is building promotional partnerships with powerful online influencers and other bloggers who have significant followings online. Some of the pioneers in this space include Frank Kerns and Jeff Walker.

It can supercharge your revenue. For a further insight into how Brendon achieved success his book “Millionaire Messenger” is worth a read.

Another blogger and podcaster that understands how to use affiliate marketing to create revenue and is worth checking out is Pat Flynn, who is the force behind the blog “Smart Passive Income”

7. Consulting

Mark Schaefer is the force behind the awesome blog “Grow“. He uses his blog as his front door and shingle to his consulting, educating and training business that helps businesses grow by tapping into the marketing power of social media.

He is also the author of  several books including  ”Return on Influence” and “The Tao of Twitter”

8. Online Courses

Amy Porterfield is a blogger and a professional Facebook expert who has created and developed online training which is her main revenue stream. Her flagship course is Facebook  Training 101 – FB Influence. 

She understood the importance of her blog as the online portal to her online courses.

9. eBooks

Darren Rowse is the genius behind Problogger. Not only has he made that blog a business success but also started a Photography Blog called “Digital Photography School” with over 1 million subscribers . His eBooks on “blogging” and “photography” have become his main source of income

Darren makes money from his blog in 12 different ways. So making money from your blog is not just limited to one revenue stream. The challenge is working out how you can monetize with multiple channel sources.

10. Premium content – Paid Membership

Timothy Sykes blog is about how to make money on the stock market and his main source of revenue is by selling premium content which is accessed through paying to be a member on his site.

Premium content that is only accessible via monthly membership is a proven model and another one worth checking out is Psd.Tutsplus.com which is a resource and learning site for those who want to learn photoshop.

11. Sell Products

Tucker Max is a blog and brand that is memorable but maybe for all the wrong reasons. If hedonism is your thing then Tucker Max is is your man. He makes money from the blog in a variety of ways. The main source of income is selling his products on Amazon.

It highlights that even a bad image can be monetised. The creativity is up to you!

What about you?

As we have seen, blogging can  be both a business and an online portal to to express yourself. The challenge is deciding what you want it to be and how can you make it into a business and lifestyle that works for you.

So how do you make money from your blog? What types of revenue models attract you?

Look forward to hearing your stories in the comments below.

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/05/14/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog-11-powerful-case-studies/#yo7T2VjHbuHuV6wu.99 

These Women Are Making Waves in Tech's Emerging Markets

Another Great Story from Mashable - Ladies you need to take on the challenge, there should be more women at CEO level.  


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A recent Startup Village event in Moscow organized by the skolkovo Foundation celebrated and showcased Russian innovation, positioning Moscow as an emerging tech hub.

The event rolled into Moscow after visiting 16 cities across Russia, clocking more than 13,000 miles in the process. While that was unusual, even more striking at the show was the sheer number of smart and entrepreneurial women involved.

The dearth of women in Silicon Valley is one of the fails hidden behind the success story of the world’s greatest tech hub. It’s great that Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer and other high-profile women are pushing through the glass ceiling, but on the shop floor, things are rather different.

But do emerging tech hubs offer opportunities for women that Silicon Valley failed to deliver in recent decades? Can hubs such as Moscow, London, New York and even Nairobi offer women a level playing field of opportunities?

A report released in June from Dell, The Gender Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), would suggest that the West still leads the way. Out of 17 countries, monitored, it showed that the U.S. was the best place for female entrepreneurs, followed by Australia, France, Germany and Mexico. But that's not to say women aren't making an impression.

Helen Keegan (@technokitten on Twitter) has 25 years of experience of working in and around London, and she's the founder of Heroes of Mobile. She sees things changing slowly, but believes there is still work to be done.

“The good news is there are lots of women working in London’s tech industry. The bad news is there aren't enough of us. We’re almost invisible at board level, and the new girls on the block coming up from school aren't interested in having a career in tech, yet will quite happily use it, day in and day out."

What has changed, she says, is that now we're talking about it. Women in Wireless in London and Women in telecoms & technology both have a mentoring scheme. Women 2.0mentors female tech founders and has regular Founder Friday meetups across the globe." Keegan says that 50 years ago, there weren't any female toilets at the University of London for students. "We have come a long way, but we still have a little further to go,” she says.

Keegan’s view is backed up by Kathryn Parsons, founder of Decoded, a company with offices in London and New York that practices "digital enlightenment" through an understanding of code. Parsons is passionate about women learning about technology and is confident that those who do will prosper.

“There is an appetite for women to opt-in to tech, learn to code and become digitally literate," say Parsons, adding that Decoded has a nearly 50:50 male-to-female ratio.

“And I know about a swathe of exciting networking events in New York and London about to launch that are set up by female founders and CEOs. The kind of events that are not subsidiary to the main event; they are going to be center stage and the place where lots of fun and business will happen,” says Parsons.

But perhaps we should look away from Europe and North America to Africa, perhaps the last frontier making huge strides in the tech space — but one where women are represented at the highest level.

“Women in tech hubs like iHub Nairobi are not only part and parcel of its history, but have led with outstanding ideas," says Parsons. She cites two women in particular, whom she's seen grow in the tech space — Linda Kamau, co-founder of Akirachix and Jamilla Abbas, co-founder of M-Farm. "They are excelling and paving the way for technologists of the future here in Kenya," says Parsons.

Juliette Zoe Wanyiri

Perhaps the next frontier in tech is the Maker space, which blurs the line between software and hardware. "Juliette Wanyiri, who is part of the iHub Network, is an amazing inspiration with engineering cred who is not just a participant, but an active leader” in the field, says Juliana Rotich, executive director of Ushahidi, the Kenyan company behind the innovative BRCKproduct.

Over in India where 'new' cities such as Pune are building from the example of Bangalore and emerging as hubs in their own right, women are also making their mark.

“With emerging hubs such as Pune or other Indian metro cities, there has been a massive growth in technology and a lot of women are taking big jobs," says Aakriti Kaushik, Indian tech specialist and founder at PR Buddy. "However, a lot more needs to be done in training and development with technology — education is especially needed."

Kaushik says that though women are leading the IT departments of major corporations, "their level of education in tech would not be as deep as it would in cities such as London and New York."

It may be some time, as the women in this article have pointed out, before the gender equality in technology is reached, but the women in London, New York, Nairobi and Pune are watching ... as is the whole world.

Image via iStockphoto, audioundwerbung

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http://mashable.com/2013/06/06/women-tech-hubs/

The 15 Success Principles You’ll Never Want To Forget

Some great advice from Joel @ Addicted2Success

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You can’t assure success, but you can increase the chances of it happening. After all, opportunity favors the prepared. With the following 15 success principles, you can dramatically increase the chances of success in your life.

Success Principles
 1 – Prepare

The first success principle is preparation. It’s the foundation of success. With preparation you create your own opportunities. Once you have all the different elements lined up, it only takes a small opening to realize your goal. At the same time, taking advantage of big opportunities without enough preparation means risking your success, as you’re building without a well-laid foundation.

2 – Do something you love

You have to work very hard whatever it is you choose to do. Your work or your project will dominate much of your time and your life. Therefore, find something that you enjoy doing and do that.

3 – Get started

You have to start somewhere. Today is as good a day as any to start. Get into action today and start moving in the direction you want. Putting it off can only lead to failure, whereas if you start and see an early setback, at least you conquered that setback early on.

4 – Move in the right direction

Keep everything moving in the direction you want. It doesn't matter if things go slowly initially. As long as the overall direction is favorable, you’ll get where you want to go eventually.

5 – Use the power of dreams and your imagination

What you dream and visualize today will become true tomorrow. You just have to work on turning it into reality. Just as your dreams can only influence your life if you let them, the cities you build in your imagination can only become real if you build them.

6 – Think big

If you set your aim a bit too high you might fall short. If you set your aim too low you might achieve your goal… and miss out on the other opportunities. By thinking bigger, the only limit is what is possible. You’re no longer limited by what you think is possible.

7 – Focus on growth

Seemingly impossible challenges are just cleverly disguised opportunities for growth. If you take those challenges and, in solving them, improve yourself, you’ll find yourself continually moving in the right direction.

8 – Maintain your determination

With enough determination, you can succeed through almost any odds. Enough determination means you’ll find a way no matter the situation.

9 – Set a clear vision

Think through where you’ll want to go. Develop a clear sense of what your final goal is, and keep this with you. By knowing the destination you want to reach, you can continually look at your current path and decide if it’s a route that will help you get where you want to go.

10 – Set goals along the way

A final goal isn’t enough. You need intermediate goals that set the path. These goals should be specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, and timely. These intermediate goals define the steps that you need to take to get to the final one.

11 - Work out plans of action for your work

For each goal, it helps to have plans to reach them. Your plan describes how you can reach each step from where you are, or where you will be. Keep in mind that the future is never certain. Things rarely work out exactly how you plan. Therefore, see these plans as showing one or more possible routes, not necessarily the route you’ll end up taking.

Still, knowing the plan means you can avoid long detours that might compromise your chances of reaching a goal on time — or at all.

12 - Commit to taking action

Once you start going, keep going. Never, never, never give up. If you find an obstacle in your way, chip away at it or go around it. The only way to really fail is to give up. If you keep going you’ll succeed. If you hit the limits of what’s possible, you can regroup and find another way.

13 - Use affirmations

Affirmations are just short, positive, and above all direct phrases in present tense. Things like “I’m getting more and more successful.” The idea is that they reinforce a positive world view. With affirmations, you are defining your own reality. By transmitting a positive world view to your mind, it adopts this view. As your mind adopts this view, it helps shape the world around you to fit it, which means it helps make the world around you one that reflects a reality of you getting more successful every day.

14 - Get rid of negative influences

Avoid harmful influences around you that might shake you from your goal. Keep people and ideas around you that support your success and your belief in yourself.

15 - Be grateful and appreciate what you have

The final success principle is to appreciate what you have already. Realize that — by sheer virtue of the fact that you can be reasonably certain you’ll live from one day to the next — you already have enough. Enjoy it! Appreciate what you've achieved so far, and see that what you want, where you’re going, is not what you need or what you must do. Rather, these are things and actions that will make your situation even better.

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http://addicted2success.com/success-advice/the-15-success-principles-youll-never-want-to-forget/

How Thinking Positive Thoughts Attracts Success

You know yourself if you think positively, positive things happen around you. The secret is staying positive "sometimes difficult" But keep a Positive mindset must be beneficial to body & soul 


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Think Positive Thoughts and attract positive things. What does it take to find real success in life? What is a positive attitude?

For most people finding success is difficult. There’s one KEY that can bring success to your front door and that’s the power of positive thinking.  But it’s not all about upbeat thoughts and a rosey outlook. It’s a mixture of thoughts, beliefs and attitudes that brews up the most amazing mindset to magnetise whatever you want in life.

You’ll be amazed how thinking positive thoughts positively improves your life. Let’s try it now. I want you to think something negative. Anything negative. Hold it in your mind. Keep the negative thought in your mind for two minutes. Dwell deeply on that negative thought. That’s good. That’s really good. Now tell me, how do you feel in your body? Many times negative thoughts create stress and anxiety within our bodies. Your jaw clenches and your stomach muscle become tight. Or you could feel nauseous, get a headache or just feel absolutely miserable, sad, angry, and so on.

Now, let’s flick those thoughts as you would a light switch. Imagine the negative thought and then change it to something positive. Thinking positive thoughts. Creating a positive attitude. Hold that positive mindset for a few minutes. Thinking about all the different layers of that thought pattern that make you happy. Does it make you smile and feel lighter? Do you feel happier? A positive mindset makes you feel good.

Think about it. You feel good thinking positive thoughts. How do you think others will feel around you when you feel happy and satisfied? And if you build on that positive feeling you start to magnetise what you desire…… and in this positive mindset you have the power to create your dreams and goals… to create what you want to be successful in life.

Why You Need to be Positive

Climbing the ladder to success has a lot of pitfalls and setbacks. It’s a huge challenge to go from nothing to real success, but it can be done.  To be successful you must be very focused and determined to reach your dreams and goals. For instance, if you want to own a business and work for yourself you would need the motivation to do some inner journey work to discover what sort of business would suit your personality and values, align your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes towards your overall goal and create a positive mindset of success. And then you would be eager and ready to do some outer work to expand your knowledge of business regulations, licences, expenses and so on is needed to start-up your specific business. You need to be focused on every step along the way.

If you look at successful people in business they all work very hard at what they do. They are focused and don’t back down. If they come up to a brick wall, stumbling block or something that’s stopping them from being successful they figure a way around it by asking colleagues, taking a course, doing their own research, and so on. They don’t stop until they are running a successful business.

To create success you must be focused, but you must also have a positive mindset because this is the only way to get beyond the challenges that come up.  For example, if you make a bad business deal what good does it do to dwell on this deal for months on end?  What is a positive attitude going to do for you in this instance? You need to accept that you made a mistake and you have to move past the mistake to push your business forward. Thinking positive thoughts. If you were to think negatively and fold your business you would be making a huge mistake based upon negative emotions.

If you were to learn from your mistake and pinpoint exactly what went wrong you could learn from the mistake and turn it into a positive learning experience. No one is going to be perfect and we all make mistakes in our life, but this is how we grow. If you dwell on mistakes then you surround yourself with negative energy and you will have a difficult time pushing and struggling towards success. The power of positive thinking changes your overall energy, focus, motivation and you gain the ability to think ‘outside the box’ and seek new possibilities and opportunities.

Being Positive Will Open Doors

When you are positive and feel energetic and passionate you will find many doors of opportunity opening up for you. Suppose you were positive and full of energy at work. Your boss would see this and you might get promoted or be given a special assignment. People want to be around positive, energetic people and when you are this way it can pay off in a big way. Focus on the positive things, remain focused and motivated towards your overall goal in life and you will find doors opening up for you.

Success is Attracted to You

If you can focus all your energies in a positive light you will magnetise positive events, situations and people to you.  Surround yourself with people who support, respect, understand and appreciate you.

Thinking positive thoughts definitely attracts success to you. The way you think and act has a big influence on the success you can find in life. When you say “I will succeed“  you will, but if you focus on the “I never will” then you are going to struggle. Can you imagine thinking to yourself “Change is difficult, it’s nearly impossible” and then actually trying to generate the change you desire. NO. It doesn’t work that way. Change your thoughts so they align to what you want in life. If you want change make sure your thoughts are focused on “Change is easy for me” or something similar.  You need to put a positive spin on everything you do because being positive magnetises success right to you. That’s the power of positive thinking. And that’s how a positive mindset attracts success.

http://www.personaldevelopmentinsights.com/blog/how-thinking-positive-thoughts-attracts-success