The best way to make money: Sell something

by Jason Preston on March 16, 2009

The internet tends to make us all forget that the economy works because people actually buy stuff. With a few notable exceptions like Amazon and eBay, a lot of “online business” is based on ad-supported media and services. But on the internet, selling ad space isn’t going to make you anywhere near the kind of money you could make selling things.

In 2008, the high-profile blog Copyblogger edited by Brian Clark removed all third party ads from the site. Why did Brian do that? In his own words:

Whether you want to call it a blog or not, social media content production results in an influence platform, not a passive advertising doormat. I’m not saying you can’t make money from sticking 125×125 ads in your sidebar, I’m just saying you’re walking away from the lion’s share of revenue and ignoring the bigger picture.

This jives with my experience as well. I’ve had a couple of Google ads on Eat Sleep Publish since I launched the site last June, and to date they’ve earned me $62.80. That’s not much to live off of.

Early in the blogging game—around 2004, when my company launched the Blog Business Summit conference—we did a lot of exploring in terms of building a business model around blogging.

It turned out that most people could make a lot more money keeping an ad-free blog and selling T-shirts than they could trying to earn high CPMs in their spare time. That’s one reason why none of our company blogs carry ads, it’s not worth the clutter.

Becoming TechCrunch is not an easy task. There’s a reason only a few bloggers get to that level, and most of them got in the door early.

Additionally, selling something removes some of the pressure to cater to high-traffic topics or tailor editorial to the best search terms, even when they’re not completely relevant.

Many newspapers are already selling merchandise through their sites. I think they should expand the operation, making it one-click easy to buy prints of great news photos, or simple to order mugs, send gifts, or become a member.

Think I’m smart? Stay tuned to test your hypothesis by subscribing to my RSS feed.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 virtual real estate mediation 03.16.09 at 11:35 pm

I agree if you wont sell , nobody is going to send $$ to you.

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>