Pro Business Tips

Advertorial Blogging

A few years ago when I worked at one major media company, there was a lot of internal debate between business development and editorial when a Volvo advertorial appeared on the network of sites. Why? The advertorial was so subtle it was indistinguishable from content, with the sole exception of a virtually invisible 7-point disclaimer buried in grey text at the footer of the piece.

These days, a more extreme example is raging in the blogging community. Several sites, including Blogsvertise, PayPerPost.com, ReviewMe, and SponsoredReviews.com are paying bloggers to review sites and products for advertisers, as well as link to their sites to increase SEO.

To many bloggers, this is a sell-out and naked shilling. But other bloggers say that as long as they maintain editorial discretion, why shouldn’t they be able to make some money through reviews.

If you can live with the ethical gray boundaries, it's another way to make cash. But you have to balance that against the integrity of your content and what sort of relationship you want to build with your users.

What do you think of advertorial blogging? Would you do it?

Marketing with Google AdWords

Google's AdWords is the default paid advertising vehicle of choice for many members of the blogosphere. I've used it pretty effectively on some other products but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error. You can certainly open an account and do some investigation but I don't recommend that you do much more than that because you can get fleeced very quickly, if you aren't sure what you are doing.

But the point to understand is that Google Adwords is part of the core tool-set of traffic building strategies many blogs use. So while we're not going to cover it detail yet, it's something you should consider once you get some traction, traffic, and revenue. 

If you are keen to dabble, I recommend that you head over to the Adwords Beginner's Guide first.

Google's AdWords is the default paid advertising vehicle of choice for many members of the blogosphere. I've used it pretty effectively on some other products but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error. You can certainly open an account and do some investigation but I don't recommend that you do much more than that because you can get fleeced very quickly, if you aren't sure what you are doing.

But the point to understand is that Google Adwords is part of the core tool-set of traffic building strategies many blogs use. So while we're not going to cover it detail yet, it's something you should consider once you get some traction, traffic, and revenue. 

If you are keen to dabble, I recommend that you head over to the Adwords Beginner's Guide first.