Chris has posted a couple of good posts on related topics over the weekend. Both focus upon bloggers adding income streams to their business through selling products and not just relying upon advertising or affiliate programs.

• Monetizing Through Packaged Content - looks at the topic of repackaging your blog’s content up into an e-boook.
• BlogCommerce – talks about selling products from your blog. It gives some of the advantages of selling electronic, subsriptions and physical products.

Both posts are worthwhile reads. As someone who has experimented with this a little in a similar way to what is described with the six figure blogging course (which has had some good sales since launching the home study version) I’d add that thinking of ways of repackaging content and adding products to your blog can be well worthwhile in terms of potential income.

However there are a number of questions I’d ask before rushing out and writing an e-book including:

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Dane from Business Opportunities Weblog has been presented with an interesting opportunity to make a few dollars from his blog by being paid by American Express to blog about a speech to be given by Richard Branson and to host a discussion afterward. Dane writes:

‘I’ve been hired, with two other veteran business bloggers (Anita Cambell of Small Business Trends, and Rob May of BusinessPundit) to be a part of the online blogging event….

Following the live event, the three of us will spend the rest of the week responding to Branson’s talk and writing about a variety of entrepreneurship topics relevant to the theme of the event. Clay Shirky, a professor and blogging pioneer, will be serving as our moderator for the online discussion.’

It’s an interesting experiment by American Express. Dane gets to post a disclaimer and gets to express his own opinions through the process. I wonder if we’ll see more of this in future?

Has anyone ever tried using Amazon Shorts as a way to sell content? I’ve heard of a couple of people recently who have been using it but don’t know how they’ve gone. Could be interesting – let me know if you’ve given it a go.

I just stumbled upon PixelPass – a method of adding an income stream to your blog where your readers pay a small monthly fee to subscribe to your content. Subscriptions are never more than $2 per month and allow readers to access your whole blog.

I’m not sure that a system like this would work for most blogs – however in some of the following circumstances it could just work out:

• if you have a committed readership on a niche topic which isn’t available elsewhere for free
• if you have an incredibly high profile and are a ‘must read’ on your topic
• if you have a premium section to your blog that offers real value

I’m sure there will be other circumstances that might make a subscription revenue stream possible – but I wouldn’t recommend it in most cases.

found via SEO Scoop

I have a question for readers who have experience with e-commerce.

What is the simplest way to set up the ability to sell a document/file from a blog?

For example if I were to have a file (pdf) that I wanted to sell to the readers of a blog for a smallish fee – how would the cheapest and most hassle free way be? I don’t want to have to set up a completely new site – or register as a credit card merchant. I do have a paypal account. I am willing to pay a service a small percentage of the income for a service that automates it.

Initially it would just be one type of document for sale – but down the track there could be others.

I’ve had limited experience with esellerate which I could use – but I’m wondering what other options there may be for a low level operation like this.

Blogging Pro’s new owner (Jacob) has written a good post (in response to this one)on some of the factors that he, as a blog buyer, takes into consideration when valuing a blog to buy. Whilst current earnings is a factor for him he writes that Traffic levels are perhaps more so. I’ll let Jacob explain:

‘The more visitors you have, the easier it is to start the website on the moneymaking track. What kind of traffic do I like? Well for me, the most appealing traffic is search engine traffic. It is a lot easier to make money off of search engine traffic. Why? Because search engine visitors(as opposed to people who have bookmarked or subscribed to your site) have never seen your ads before. This is an advantage because they are more likely not to have seen the same ads over and over and over again on the site, and therefore more likely to click it. Case in point, CSSVault does terrible on Adsense and Blog Catalog does wonderful on it. This is all simply due to the fact that most of the visitors who come to Blog Catalog have never been there before.’

He goes on to talk about Page Rank, Incoming links and income levels. It’s an interesting post, especially keeping in mind that Jacob is a serial blog buyer (he’s bought up quite a few lately if my recollection is correct). Good post mate.

A journalist yesterday asked me if anyone had ever asked to syndicate any of my blogs in any other form of media (newspapers or magazines). I answered that I’ve had a few requests from online media outlets to syndicate some of what I write (which I have allowed in some cases and disallowed in others). Apart from that I’ve only ever had one off requests for an article or essay that I’ve published on my blog to be republished in books, newsletters etc. In terms of a regular syndication I’ve never been approached.

It is something that I’ve daydreamed about though.

It’s often struck me that the content that we write as bloggers could have more than the one use that we also tend to use it for (putting it on our blogs). In fact for many of us it’s ideal for other mediums such as newspapers and magazines.

It makes sense on some levels to use the same content in more than one place, especially if their is reward (either financially or not) in both places.

I seem to have some recollection on some blogger somewhere having this approach – but their name and situation alludes me. Have you heard of anyone who has their blogging republished in a hard copy somewhere on a regular basis?

I know of journalists who blog and bloggers who write special features for magazines – but syndication is another kettle of fish (who puts fish in kettles anyway!?).

Perhaps it would be worth exploring this further – making contact with some publications that could benefit from the writing I do on various topics. I’ve often thought that much of what I write here at ProBlogger would be well suited to a ‘blog tips’ column in a tech section of a newspaper or computer magazine. Any editors out there interested?