BlogHer Session: $$$ and Sense

Moderator: Elisa Camhort
Panelists:

• Toby Bloomberg
• Carolyn Elefant
• Susannah Gardner

Elisa, one of the co-mothers of Blogher is also the Queen Bee at Worker Bees, a company she founded in 2003.  She blogs on no less than 7 blogs including Health Concerns.com, a blog sponsored by eHealth Insurance, to speak about the layperson's perspective on health care and coverage.

Toby is a marketer consultant, a blog evangelist who blogs at  diva marketing.

Carolyn, a lawyer whose blog MyShingle.com brings her clients and also inspiration to other lawyers with solo or small practices. 

Susannah is co founder of Hop Studios Internet Consultant and the author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies.  At one point, she was a senior editor of the Online Journalism Review and was one of the editors responsible for the launch of the Los Angeles Times website.

Elisa
Where do you draw the line when you start thinking about money.
Are you trading credibility when you put ads on your blog?

Susannah. 
Each person has to decide whether it's worthwhile to earn coffee money.    I started my blog to publicize my book, Buzz Marketing with Bogs for Dummies and that was my primary goal.

Darrell at Problogging is making about $10,000/mo but he writes a number of blogs

Carolyn
Tip jars for lawyers make me wonder if they can run a business or whether they'll 'nickle and dime' me.

Susannah
I'd draw the line at too many ads that overwhelm the content.  Also  Businesses with tip jars are questionable unless they're non-profits.

Question to Audience
Do you consider your  personal blog your brand.  Most of them.

Elisa
I have a sponsored blog that pays me a monthly retainer.  My sponsor eHealth originally brought me in to learn about blogs.  They quickly realized they were too heavily

Evelyn Rodriguez.
My personal blog is ad free, but I'm planning a commercial blog focused on tea and all the countries where tea comes from and plan to get sponsors or ads

Audience member.  Just so it's transparent.

Question to audience
How many would take a sponsor for their ads. 
A. About half.

Toby
Her experience of creating a blog for Gourmet Station, an online company that sells  beautifully packaged food.

T. Alexander is their icon character on the website and introduces newsletters.  The blog strategy was to use the character T. Alexander as the blogger who would bring value to their customers with good information.

I blogged the experience on my blog, Diva Marketing.  It launched in April and shortly was picked up as 'faux blog' by a marketing professor.

Soon a firestorm of flames by some bloggers  who were incensed that their vision of blogosphere, of real people that talked to real people, was threatened.    Some of it was ugly and personal.  Others supported the character blog and Toby.  Even as all the traditional rules of transparency were followed including the character revealing himself in the first post.

Hugh of Gaping Void was one of the those bloggers that reacted badly but was mollified when the company responded in his comments.

The net effect on the business is unclear.  The character blog continues.  The writer of the blog still offers value-added content and engages in conversations with customers.

Q from audience. How to price it.
Sponsorships and ads are being broken up.  Sponsors depend more on time the blog writes about the sponsor.  Ads usually depend on click throughs.

Elisa.  I went to blog ads as a customer and looked at the traffic of their biggest blogs and prices from there

Susannah. Ask for as much as you could possibly get and go down from there.

Carolyn.  I use my blog to leverage new clients.  Now, I'm thinking about  tools I can sell to solo practitioners.  I offer a link to any solo practitioner and sometimes will write a post about them. 

Elisa.  This generosity of bloggers is the 'light' side of the blogosphere. 

Audience member.  I've blogged about the science experiments I created for a first grade class and put on Google ads.  I made $200/year which I'm donating to the school.  A lot easier than a bake sale.

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