How to make money out of blogging and why I failed at Linklove London

The first thing you need to do to make money out of blogging is to stop.

The second thing is to cancel all your subscriptions to the “Making money whilst blogging in your underpants” type membership sites. Then take all your ebooks and delete them, filling the hole left in your hard drive with Harlem Shake videos.

The third thing is to start doing something that is ancient, but online.

Why should you do something ancient, surely this is the new age where new, new, new is god. Where anything new is better than old.

That’s what they want you to think, because it’s easier to sell a book if what your selling is called something new.

But we know how to play that game don’t we?

Because we are all players, at least I hope to the High God of the Digerati you are.

I talked about this at my latest presentation in London at the online marketing conference called Linklove to about 300 SEO people. I tried to convince them that it was something ancient that they need to focus on instead of fannying around with Excel spreadsheets and setting up 200 domain networks on different IP numbers, filled with drecky articles.

And I think I failed at Link Love.

Because I think only a few got it.

Which is interesting.

It means that most of the seo community are on the same path, they are using the same techniques that worked 3 years ago. Which is great if you are a lumberjack. Lumberjacking has not changed in the last 3 years.

But are you that stupid to think seo has not changed?

Blogging is not dead. It’s just that it no longer gives a return on investment. And we are talking about blogging in the way that an SEO would describe it. as a means of ranking and implementing a mechanical solution.

The way to make money out of blogging is to stop blogging.

I know, it sounds nuts, but stay with me here.

Stop blogging, and start publishing.

Publisher is the new, new thing.

“Oh c’mon man, you mean I read all the way down to here and that’s it”, I hear you wail.

But that’s the thing, it really is that simple.

What do you think is happening in your brain if you tell yourself you are a publisher and not a blogger?

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of ideas, thoughts, concepts and information it is the activity of making such things available to the World. Sometimes you are the originator, sometimes others.

It sounds a lot like blogging doesn’t it.

But it’s not and in your mind there is the big difference between how you perceive a blogger and how you perceive a publisher.

You may say that you know lots of successful bloggers, what about Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Garret etc? Are not they successful bloggers?

No.

They are publishers in every definition of the word. They hire writers, produce courses, print books etc. Yes they started out as bloggers, but quickly morphed into something else. More akin to building a publishing empire.

But hardly the image of most of us have of the blogger which is someone sitting in their underpants eating a large back of chili Doritos. OK, we’ve all been there, we have all sucked the crack pipe of blogging. It worked great for a while, but that model is dead.

But if you are to make money out of blogging you need to stop thinking like a blogger and start thinking like a publisher.

And it’s the same for the seo crowd I spoke to at Link Love. Stop thinking like a content marketer and start thinking like a publisher.

Stop thinking like a link builder and start thinking like a publisher.

And I have to say this, even though it pains me. Stop thinking like a linkbaiter and start thinking like a publisher.

Very few people are teaching this right now.

I have been banging on about it for a while.

I tell clients, get a podcast out, get an iPad mag out, publish a Kindle book. They just look at me as if I am insane. “But they are not teaching that at the seo conferences I go to. And they are really expensive so they have to be good”.

Clients are frustrating.

I tell them, don’t just publish an infographic, turn it into a poster and give it away on a Facebook contest, turn it into a slide show, make it into a Youtube clip, have it printed out as a mini book.

Think like a publisher.

If you want to know how to do this, I have a coaching program you may be interested in. Linkbait Coaching is going into a new phase, the “Publishing” version. We still teach linkbait, but there is so much more you need to be doing and if you want to win. Sign up to the email notification on the page and get to know when it launches. I have not yet decided how many people to limit this one to, but if you sign up to the email list I can give you a shot at getting in early.