Archive | November, 2011

Options Other Than Ads To Monetize Your Online Presence

13 Nov
I’m at the International Food Bloggers Conference where I spoke yesterday on creating compelling content about wine for food bloggers. (It went well! Lots of people have come up to me to say how inspiring it was!)
This morning I had a choice of these two sessions
  • Session Option 1: Eating on a Budget with Kimberly Morales (Food)
    It’s a common goal to save and spend money more wisely. And as a food blogger, it’s natural to want to try all the latest products and prepare a slew of different and expensive dinners. Hear from savvy, budget-conscious bloggers about how they mastered clipping coupons and embraced canning, preserving, and buying in bulk. You’ll learn how to feed your family and yourself while spending less, and how to keep food blogging from breaking your bank account.
  • Session Option 2: Monetizing Your Blog with Barnaby Dorfman, Melissa Lanz, and Andie Mitchell (Writing & Technology)
    Here you’ll learn the ins and outs of monetization- everything from partnering with ad networks and affiliate programs to publishing your work in print and online media.

I’m sitting in on the second session where I posted the following nuggets on twitter (this is reverse chronological order–ie, the tweet at the end is the first one on the topic, the tweet at the top is the last one). You can check out what others had to say by checking out the hashtag on twitter #ifbc:

  • @melissalanz last word of advice: get reader emails to add to your list.
  • Control yr message, offer online & live events, consider charity partnerships to build yr brand, be good for business. Think globally! #ifbc
  • consult, coach, teach, speak are all ways you can grow your brand, get more valuable, turn into $$ says @melissalanz #ifbc
  • be honest about your affiliate partners & talk about their products that you use & love in an authentic way says @melisslanz #ifbc
  • what do you know? what can you teach? you can teach & sell classes online building from your online content #ifbc
  • you can make a simple app w/o spending thousands of $$ & get it up & running in your blog #ifbc (really? how? cool!)
  • Kindle feed your blog on amazon –love that as a passive way to monetize your blog & let your readers support what you give online #ifbc
Melissa Lanz has promised to share her slides with us –with the joke that this will be the one and only time she ever offers something of this much value for free!
Speaking of free and of value, yesterday I attended  Rand Fishkin’s session that focused on SEO for Food Bloggers and you can check out his slideshow “SEO for Food Bloggers” for yourself.

Alley to Speak at Bloggers Conference

12 Nov

This afternoon I am speaking at the International Food Blogger’s Conference in Santa Monica; I’m on a panel about integrating wine into a food blog and my specific topic is to share some ideas on how to create compelling content about wine and food. I was invited because I am considered an influential wine blogger who frequently includes food in my wine reviews and because I am a writing teacher and coach.

As I reflected on what I wanted to share, I realized that creating compelling content is the same no matter what the topic. This seems obvious now and it took me down a much more productive path in terms of my preparing to contribute to what I think will be a valuable session.

The key points I will be offering are:

1) Go for the jugular.
2) Tell stories.
3) Be specific.
4) Experiment.

You can read more about it over at my Wine Predator blog. I’ll be posting notes from my presentation there as well as here.

PS Today is my son’s birthday! He is 8 years old today.

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