Can You Charge For Your Blog's Content?

Scott at Blog Herald recently talked about the viability of Paid Content Business Model for blogs. In other words, blog readers have to pay to access to the content of the blog.

Scott has also pointed out a few blogs that qualified themselves to charge for a premium:
All you have to do is look at the top blogs to see examples of blogs that might be able to charge for their content, e.g., Engadget, Gizmodo, GigaOm, TechCrunch, Problogger, Seth Godin, TMZ, Ars Technica, PaidContent. (I am purposely not mentioning The Blog Herald to avoid a conflict of interest.)

In this case, Darren at ProBlogger.net thinks it is possible for blogs to start charging, observing some obstacles as well as the likely reasons for readers to pay.

Most blogs mentioned above have an edge in their industry. They are either very committed to produce quality content, particularly enlightening, or they are always the first to discuss on something. This makes them popular. Should they hide away the content and only paid members can access, the impact of their blog will no longer be there.

Instead of charging for blog content, bloggers can create a training course which only paid members have access to. In this case, say Darren can create a blogging course, teaching his secrets more deeply, giving more insightful content than his blog. This can work.

Some of the models I can think of:
1) Create a membership site focusing on discussion and consultation (monthly fee)
2) Create a course teaching and sharing deeper knowledge (monthly fee)
3) Create an ebook, audio or video course (one time sale)
4) Personal coaching programs

The main problem with charging for content is there are too many free content on the internet. People will search for them, until they give up. Internet is also a competitive landscape. Most internet marketers will offer something others do not have in order to gain an edge over the others.

Say on a topic, there are 5 secrets. Internet marketer #1 will offer secret 1 for free, just to get some leads. Internet marketer #2, in order to be different, offers secret 2. If there are more than 5 internet marketers in that niches, you can almost find any information for free.

It is not surprising to buy a course or ebook just to realize you already possess the knowledge.

The only thing people can charge on the internet is personal experience. You can no longer sell information. Information is everywhere for free. Google is improving everyday to ease people searching for information. But you are lucky, you can still sell experience.

What if Darren decides to let you join him for a day, so you can observe how he do research, what RSS he reads, how he reply to emails, how he talks in phones, how he network with other bloggers, how he manage to come up with thoughtful posts, would you pay? I will.

I am not as big as Darren. I am a behind-the-scene, small and little blogger who manage to make some money off my blog. Best part is, I am sharing my limited experience in Ultimate Blogging Master Blueprint, a blueprint that teaches you how to setup a blog to make $500 a month, step-by-step. If I can, you can too.

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Keyword Research For Your Blog

Keyword research is critical to a blog's success. If you are just blogging casually, you don't really have to care about keywords. However, if you are serious about making money out of your blog, you need to master keyword very well. Your skill on targeting the right keyword determines the success of your blog.

Most of us know what keyword research is. Here are some of the tools that you can use to do keyword research. They are all free:
1) Overture's Keyword Research Tool
2) WordTracker's Free Version
3) Keyword Discovery's Free Version
4) Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Four of them give you different set of results when you search for a keyword. It depends on whether you are doing keyword research for site structure or article.

Using four of them can give you a comprehensive list of all possible keywords that you can target for your blog. Targeting the right keyword can bring you good traffic.

Other than those 4 tools, there are more that I share in my Ultimate Blogging Master Blueprint.
I also talk about how to research the keyword, laterally and in-depth. I also share with you how to create a blog-structure based on the keywords, using "dog training" as case study.

If you want your blog post to rank well, you must make sure:

1) The main keyword appear in the URL

2) The main keyword is in the Title

3) The main keyword is in the Heading tag

4) The main keyword is in the first sentence of the first paragraph and ending paragraph

5) The main keyword is in the meta keyword and description tag

6) The main keyword appear at least once in every paragraph.

7) Keyword density of 3% is natural.

8) You must use keyword stemming, like: keyword researching, researched keyword...for the main keyword: keyword research.

9) You must also use highly related keywords, like: Keyword finding, keyword generation, keyword list, root word, synonyms, seo... for the main keyword: Keyword research.

10) You must have a link-out like this: Keyword Research anchored on your main keyword.

If you do keyword research but do not implement the above 10 steps, throw away your keyword list. They are useless to you.

The purpose of doing keyword research is to understand how search engines find content and how you can help the search engines to understand your content. Help them, and they will help you.

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