The Green Marketing Coach

The course Online Profits gives a good explanation of several different marketing models. One of these is the Niche Model, often presented in the form of a blog. I'm fairly new to marketing models, but I've read a good amount recently and I hope my explanation makes sense. Feel free to add or correct in this thread.

Niches are characterized by interested visitors who are engaged in the topic, but not necessarily seeking to purchase anything. While they might find a blog through seeking to answer a question or solve a problem they will come back to read because they are interested in the niche/topic.

A blog in a given niche, say parenting, might support a lot of readers without producing any income for the owner. Since we are all in business to make money, and need to be to justify the time we spend on what we do, this is bad for the blogger.

There are several recognized routes to monetizing a blog and some that just don't work.

Monetization Models That Don't Work for the Niche Model and Why

Start writing, put up some links to Amazon.com and some Google ads and rely on them for income. In order to make money using just Google Ads and links to low-percentage affiliate programs like Amazon.com you'd need to have a wildly successful blog with tons of traffic. If you do the math it's pretty easy to see this. In something like a technology niche, where you're writing about items which cost hundreds of dollars, you'd get something like $12 when someone buys a $300 item. Add up how many of these you'd need to sell in a week or month and decide if that would be a good income, and a realistic one, based on your writing abilities and niche.

Recognized Routes to Monetizing in the Niche Model

• Own Product Model - Offer a tier of your own products, starting with free offerings and working up to expensive ones, like training courses or speaking engagements. Build trust with your readers by providing good, useful, reliable information so that they want to keep working with you and to buy your products because they bring value to them and they know they'll be good. This model is less dependent on having a large amount of traffic than others. It can also allow you to have a nice, clean blog. An example of this model is http://IttyBiz.com. This model is commonly referred to as using the Sales Funnel.
  
  
• Sponsorship Model - take paid ads on your blog and/or take sponsorship for doing reviews. You can also take sponsorship for posts - an advertiser pays to have a link at the bottom of one post per week for example. For paid ads and post sponsorship you need to be able to show advertisers that you are attracting the kind of traffic they want to get their name in front of. For sponsored reviews you need to have a pool of businesses producing products which you'd be happy with reviewing and promoting. An example of this model is http://Scribbit.blogspot.com Sponsorship can include a Classifieds type ad offering, like the job board at Problogger.
  
  
• Mixed Model - mix affiliate programs with or without your own products and sponsorship. Blogs like http://problogger.net use a mixture of revenue sources and offer a variety of products and services. Darren writes about products from other people and when a reader purchases he is paid a size-able affiliate commission. It's not uncommon to see 30-50% of the sale price going to the affiliate. There are a variety of E-books available to sell as an affiliate too and commission percentages on these are reasonable (much more than the 4% you'd get from Amazon.com - usually around 40%). Sponsorship, Google ads, and low-commission affiliate links can be added to the mix. The biggest pitfalls with this model are that you can end up with a highly cluttered blog which is bombarding your readers with ways to support you.

Are you using, or intending to use, the Niche Model through a Blog? Which monetization model do you like? Do you have some great examples to share of niche model blogs with a green slant?

Great article, Alison, thanks.

Lol, the slap amazon and google adsense on the blog is the model I started out with. Five years on, and I still haven't reached my second $10 threshold for amazon. I had a little more through google adsense, but removed them because they made no business sense (your reader leaves the blog, more often than not, for a 2 cent click), and I had little control over what they displayed. The last thing I want is to facilitate unnecessary consumption.

Micro affiliation, or whatever you want to call this model, and sponsorship is definitely a numbers game, and one which is getting more difficult now on a crowded web. It is much better to sell your own products, whether an ebook, training or physical goods, or higher value affiliate products which you are happy to promote. That is the model I now pursue, together with the membership site model.

I think the membership site model will become more popular, as the internet becomes more crowded and people are getting information overload. It is already going that way. It is a way to find a more private space, filtered information and a more personal experience. Humans are tribal and band together into groups of a comfortable size, and of similar interest. It is not a blogging model as such, but I add it here, as it can be combined with a blog.

Forums have been around for a long time, but what is happening more these days is that they combine information design (or should that be designed information?) with conversation in a way that neither blogs nor traditional forums do alone. Forums alone have random input, and the community on a blog can only have a conversations in reaction to a post. It does focus the discussion, but all the work and responsibility is the blogger's, which can get overwhelming for some.

There is no right or wrong model. Everyone has their favorite one, and one which suits their temperament. There are plenty of bloggers who love to write, and for them blogging would be more suitable. For those who love to lead by following, the forum model is ideal. What I mean by "lead by following" is that you have a core idea which creates the framework (you lead), but your strength is in being reactive, maybe reacting to a problem or being analytical and presenting an alternative view (you follow [on from]).

"There are plenty of bloggers who love to write, and for them blogging would be more suitable. For those who love to lead by following, the forum model is ideal."

Judy, I think this is a great way to put it. Personally I enjoy writing and also the sense of community which comes from a forum, or membership site. I may want to combine them both in my marketing model at some point.

I'm seeing more membership sites popping up as revenue sources among A-List bloggers. Yes, I think they are becoming more popular.

For anyone interested in the Mixed Model of income from blogging, you can download a case study of how one blogger grew mixed income and their blog from zero to a full-time income in one year

I'm not sure how this would work for a blog with a green focus - this particular blog is a travel/tourist blog - but it might spark some ideas. One thing that's obvious is how hard this blogger works, posting an average of 4 posts per day.

Here's the link: http://mikeslife.org/content/case_study which takes you to a page where you can sign up for a newsletter and get access to a 20 page E-book.