Instigator Blog

Sponsorships are the best way of making money on your blog.

But how do you find them?

1. Pick a good niche. This is good advice for blogging in general, and it certainly applies to finding sponsorships. Pick a niche, preferably one you know something about, and start writing! The more narrow the niche, the easier it will be to build up high quality traffic.
2. Grow the audience. You’ll need some form of audience before sponsors are interested. Again, fairly obvious advice and applicable to all aspects of blogging. The important thing to remember is this - if you’ve got a really narrow niche, your audience doesn’t have to be big to attract sponsors that really want to target that niche. 100 prime potential customers is better than 1,000 random people to a sponsor.
3. Turn Your Audience into a Community. An audience is great, but you’ll get even more value out of your blog and sponsorships if that audience becomes a community. Encourage comments. Encourage people to contact you. Reach out to people and they’ll reach back.
4. Learn What Your Community Wants. Once you have a community, it becomes much easier to figure out what they want to see. This is true for the content of your blog, as well as for potential sponsors. What kinds of products is your community interested in? What does your community want more information about? I’ll bet they want what you want (in terms of information / product news / etc.) so try and answer the question yourself (“What do I want?”) and then extend it into the community.
5. Ask for the Sale. Every great salesperson will tell you, “you need to ask for the sale.” That means you need to let people know that sponsorships are available on your site, how they might work and who you’re interested in doing business with. Note: I haven’t followed this rule yet (but I plan to soon.) For some in the blogosphere this might seem a bit aggressive or inappropriate, but it’s not. You’ve got something that others value. They won’t know it’s available to them for sponsorship unless you tell them.
6. Target Specific Sponsors. Now it’s time for some direct sales. Create a list of companies that you feel would make great sponsors. This is going to take some research. If they’ve got a good online presence (and a blog!) then you’ll know they’re aware of online opportunities. That should make things easier. You know what your community wants, you’re openly promoting opportunities on your blog and now you’re going to contact specific companies and pitch them. Keep the initial contact short. There’s no reason to be long-winded and discuss every detail of every possible sponsorship opportunity. Tell them what you’ve got (passion, niche, community size) and open the door for further discussion. Lead them to your “sales page” on the blog where you talk about various sponsorship opportunities, etc.
7. Build Relationships with Potential Sponsors. More than likely, you’ll get a low percentage of interest initially from potential sponsors. Some won’t respond at all. Others will say, “thanks, but no thanks.” Keep in touch anyway. Ask for advice on your blog. Ask if they know anyone else that might be interested. Find ways of building relationships and they’ll pay off over time, just like they did when you built your blog community in the first place.

Who are the best possible sponsors for my blog?

Try smaller, online businesses. Big businesses might not be interested in something smaller or very niche. So it’s unlikely you’ll nab Coke, Visa, etc. as a sponsor. Even finding out how to contact them will prove difficult. But there are plenty of smaller companies who are desperate to find a way of getting their name out, and reaching their target market. I like targeting online businesses (or businesses that already do a lot of marketing online) because they get it. They’ll almost certainly understand the value of blogs, and therefore by extension the value of sponsoring them.

How else can I find sponsors for my blog?

Here are a couple more ideas:

• Ask Your Network. Talk to your network of friends, family, contacts, etc. — including your blog community — and ask them for help. Do they know a company that might be interested? Do they have a contact at such-and-such company you could reach out to? You can leverage your network and ask for help.
• If You Get Pitched, Pitch Back. As your blog grows in popularity people are going to start pitching you. Mostly product reviews. I recommend that you pitch back.

You won’t find a blog sponsor the minute you launch your blog, but over time as you do everything you can to promote your blog, grow the community and become more successful online, the opportunities will start to appear.

It takes a combination of sales, marketing, passion and patience to find blog sponsors, but I still believe they’re the best way of making money online.

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Bloggers are getting pitched more and more from companies and their public relations people who are looking to promote all sorts of goods. There’s a lot of book pitching, but no shortage of other products being pitched as well.

Lots of A-list bloggers get pitched daily. Many are getting tired of it, mostly because there’s so many crappy pitches.

Personally, I love it. For starters it’s nice to know that someone wants to promote something through Instigator Blog.

But more importantly, I pitch back.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been pitched a few times. A couple of those weren’t good fits. I replied quickly to the pitches (I don’t get millions of emails, so I can still respond to everyone!) and left it at that. Some of the pitches were good fits and I engaged in some conversations with the pitchers about what they wanted out of me. One was a book. The PR person sent me the book (I have yet to read it, but I plan to.) It’s a book on entrepreneurship, so it makes perfect sense for me to read it and review it here.

I also pitched the PR person back. Something along the lines of, “Would you like to run a contest on the blog? Or maybe do some advertising? Are there other products you’re promoting that would be a good fit?”

There wasn’t a good fit in terms of doing any blog sponsorship but it was great to create and build the relationship beyond the PR person just pitching me.

Pitch the pitchers. It’s a legitimate and great way to find new opportunities for making money on your blog.

With all the hoopla going on about companies like ReviewMe, it’s absolutely essential that you maintain the integrity of your blog and keep separate what you do for money and what you do voluntarily. TechCrunch calls pay-per-post stuff a virus, and while I think that’s harsh (and easy for an A-list blogger to say), I do think it’s important to maintain integrity and be open to what you’re doing for money (or not.) To-date I haven’t written any pay-per-post material, whatsoever. If I did, I’d tell you.

If I write a review of the book that I was pitched it will be an honest review. Simple as that. PR people have to realize that when they make a pitch. Certainly if you write a bad review they’re unlikely to pitch you again, but that’s their problem, not yours. If I further engage that PR company to do any advertising or sponsorship for money it will have to be completely separate from any writing I do voluntarily. It’s a fine line, but it’s manageable.

The best way to make money on a blog is through sponsorship and when you’re pitched think of it as an opportunity to create and extend the relationship and find sponsorship opportunities.

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Picture by bd2000.

I’m a big fan of blog carnivals as a way of finding great content and promoting your own blog.

Yesterday, one of my posts — What a Poop-Covered Toddler Can Teach You About Business — appeared in the Carnival of Success at SuccessJolt.

SuccessJolt’s tagline is: “Your daily kick in the pants!”

You gotta love it. Everyone needs a kick in the pants once in awhile…

The Carnival of Success doesn’t focus solely on business - you’ll find posts on personal development, life, family, health and more.

Some of my favorites included:

• How To Find What You Love To Do by Brian Kim
• Declutter, declutter, declutter! by Henrik Edberg
• What To Do When You Make Mistakes by Ririan

Since it’s almost impossible to kick yourself in your own pants unless you’re a Cirque de Soleil acrobat, let others like SuccessJolt, Brian Kim, Henrik Edberg and Ririan help. I’ll kick you too, if you like…

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Your blog doesn’t get a ton of traffic.

Your blog doesn’t display great contextual ads. Or maybe you don’t want to use contextual ads because you feel it devalues the overall quality of your blog.

Now what?

Click to continue →

I just finished reading What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Ted Demopoulos, which he graciously sent me.

Ted stole my book idea.

If I was going to write an introductory guide to the benefits of blogging and podcasting, I would have written Ted’s book. Ok, so technically Ted didn’t steal anything from me, he just beat me to the punch.

Although I was already a strong believer in blogging and podcasting, I still found a ton of great examples in Ted’s book about how people in a variety of industries are using blogging and podcasting successfully. Real estate? Sure! Small business? Absolutely! Sploggers in Russia getting drunk on vodka? Sign me up!

Ted takes a humble approach, which is smart. Blogging isn’t going to revolutionize the world. It’s not going to save starving children or cure any disease. It’s not even about replacing other forms of communication, throwing websites into the Internet trash heap or eliminating the need for traditional PR. Blogging and podcasting are evolutions of what marketers, salespeople, CEOs, small business owners and entrepreneurs have been doing for years. It’s a great evolution, one that’s way more accessible to a wider audience, but too many evangelists do get carried away. Ted doesn’t. He uses real world examples, admits that no one is an uber-expert and lets the people he interviews express themselves openly.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about blogging/podcasting or has just started. I’d also recommend this book to any experienced bloggers that feel burnt out, or feel like they’re starting to lose their focus. What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting is a quick read, an easy read and inspirational.