Why Do So Few Bloggers Sell Their Own Products?
Over the last two days I attended a workshop run by Andrew and Daryl Grant on the topic of joint ventures (JVs).
The workshop was valuable and covered a topic that is rarely given an entire two days worth of focus. JVs are the best way to drive quality traffic today and while they are not always easy to negotiate, they can make or break a business.
The people in attendance at the event were Andrew and Daryl’s membership site partners – people who are launching membership sites online in all kinds of niches in partnership with the Grants. The Grants provide the training and the technology, the partners provide the content and marketing.
Compare Blogging To Internet Business
As I’ve mentioned before I sit in a unique position in that my preeminence comes from being a well known blogger, but I do so in the Internet marketing industry. Internet marketers often view blogs as marketing tools, but nothing more. They use blogs to drive traffic and augment their information selling business. For bloggers, the blog is the business.
Listening to some of the membership site concepts floating around at the workshop it was clear that the focus for these people is to get a product out the door as quickly as possible and then market it using intelligent, high leverage methods, like joint ventures.
The mindset really is powerful and focused on the business of doing business. Create product, then find ways to sell it.
This is very different to bloggers. Bloggers pour their energy into content and resource creation, giving all of it away for free. The strategy is to create a blog of value, build traffic and then monetize with advertising and maybe, for those few bloggers who are business minded, to produce products and sell them.
You can’t really say one method is better than another, but it did raise the questions in my head about whether bloggers give away too much for free and wait too long to sell their information.
