Ensight - Jeremy Wright’s Personal Blog

Blog Monetization Session @ WordCamp 2007

by Jeremy Wright on July 21st, 2007

Ooh look, real content ;-)

I just finished my session on Blog Monetization at WordCamp 2007. I decided going in that I had no desire to:

• Talk about b5media too much
• Talk AT the audience for an hour
• Bash Google too too much (heh, more on that later)

So I decided not to do a talk. I decided not to do a bunch of case studies. I decided to use a format I’ve tried a few times in the past and which has gone over really, really well each time. Basically I opened with some thoughts on blog advertising. Then got 3 random folk from the audience (one was the I Can Has Cheezeburger dude (well, the cheezeburger one, heh), which rocked). The first was a person who does this for a living, the second was someone who’s been playing with blog monetization and the third was someone who was just thinking about it.

The format was basically ask a question, get 4 answers. We covered a lot of ground, got a LOT of audience feedback, I stuck my foot in my mouth at least a dozen times (which is below average, heh).

The session itself went fantastically well (in my opinion). It was a huge honour to BE at WordCamp, and an even hugerer one to be presenting. So thanks to Matt. Dude, thank you thank you thank you!

Anyways, here’s the PowerPoint deck.

The session ended with some random thoughts and tidbits. Going in, I’d chatted with Matt Cutts and so knew he’d be around.

Now, in previous sessions I’ve railed against AdSense and Google. At SES. At Yahoo (that went over well, heh). At Intel (also went over well). So knowing Matt would be there, I decided to be a guy of integrity and say to his face what I’d said previously. I wasn’t overly rude (well, okay, calling AdSense “crack” might be a little rude, but it was all in jest).

I was also very fair in saying that for smaller blogs AdSense is actually one of the few ways to make actual money, gave credit where it’s due, etc. But, I’m a firm believer in blogs evolving BEYOND AdSense. Hence the crack comment - know when to quit.

Anyways, so far WordCamp’s been great. Met Lorelle (who rocks). Some folk from MediaTemple. Some old friends. Some new friends (hey Kris!).

Good times :-)

Update: Thanks so, so, so much to all the feedback: Daniel, Stephanie (awesome live-blogging notes, thanks SO MUCH!), James (shorthand liveblogging, heh) and Tris!

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POSTED IN: Blogging, Business, Ensight News, b5media