There are two sides to a blogger's brain- the creative side that loves to write, and the business side that makes you money. Most bloggers don't have the business development skills to turn a profit from their writing efforts...until now!

This session will cover:

Understanding your traffic stats in Google Analytics

Press Kit development

Sales pitches for advertising

How to think like a business owner/entrepreneur

Various forms of income ebooks, events, and more

One of the biggest monetization problems is that bloggers try to put the cart before the horse, attempting to monetize right away.

This never works.

You will be frustrated and give up if you start like this out of the gate.

Focus first on your writing, community growth, and networking.

On average, it takes a blogger 1-2 years to establish their blog as a credible advertising platform, or for a readership to grow enough to trusted as a resource.

Most bloggers quit after 3-6 months.

You need this - no question. But you will need multiple analytical tools because there are gaps in what Google can do for you.

You don't need to be obsessive, but you do need to look at your stats and analyze them every month.

These are the most important stats that advertisers will wan to know:

1. Pageviews
2. Visits
3. Unique Visits
3. Demographics
4. Social Followers

Sometimes small businesses won't understand these numbers and won't care. Sometimes they are more interested in being associated with your brand.

Pageviews count how many times people have hit different pages within your blog.

In advertising terms, this can also be interpreted as impressions if you host ads on every page in your site and don't rotate.

By default, a visit is counted after 30 minutes. This setting cane be changed within Google Analytics.

When a visitor, say Bob, arrives on your site, Analytics starts counting from that moment. If 30 minutes pass without any kind of interaction from Bob, the visit ends. However, every time Bob interacts with an element (like an event, social interaction, or opens a new page), Google Analytics resets the expiration time by adding on an additional 30 minutes from the time of that interaction.

Unique Visitors is the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.

You'll see this number increase with viral content - you're reaching new people!

This number also is impacted by your SEO efforts. The better the SEO, the higher your unique visits.

HOWEVER - you want a balanced number between unique and returning visits. If you have a really high unique visit count, it may mean that nobody is sticking around to read your blog.

Determining the demographics of your readership not only helps you sell your blog - but it helps you write the content that they want to read.

You can find demographic info on Google Analytics - it's a new function!

You can also add code and plugins from Quantcast.com to measure your blog demographics.

Keep track of how much your social readership is growing each month, as well as your reach in Facebook Insights.

Google Analytics has recently updated to include social media referral tracking.

Bit.ly will measure your social media click-rates. It's a great tool to see how many people are actually clicking through on your posts!

If you plan on selling ads directly on your blog, or even if you plan on forming media partnerships - you're going to need a press kit.

Occasionally marketing companies may contact you to write product reviews in exchange for product samples. Sometimes they will ask for press kits, usually they won't, because you're doing them a service of free advertising.

Direct sales are always a lot more successful than ad words and publishing management companies like Federated Media.

Why?

Because bloggers are in the relationship building business!

There are two ways to get paid by ads: direct sales with a flat rate or pay-per-click (or impression).

Unless you have high-volume traffic, similar to nationally recognized blogs like the Oatmeal, or Dooce, you will get paid cents a month.

Yes, cents. That's it. With a 1-4% click-thru rate on ads and banners, you can expect to see anywhere between 10-15 clicks per month.

Feasting Fort Collins made $25 in eight months. It wasn't worth it.

This is the part that bloggers hate the most.

Listen - you are not a car salesman. And you don't have to be.

But if you want to make money, and not chump change, you should to do sales. Usually money just doesn't fall into you lap like magic.

Write up a pitch email. Keep it short and sweet - you want to get to the point within a paragraph.

And pitch with purpose. If you pitch businesses that are out of your reader demographic, you are wasting their time and yours!

And be prepared to be rejected. A lot. But remember your follow-ups 6-12 months later. Sometimes it takes time for them to see you as a valuable resource.

You don't have to put all of your eggs in the ad basket. In fact, it's not ideal to only rely on advertising income!

It's very easy for bloggers to turn their content into ebooks!

You have the posts all set, all you need to do is edit and format.

Check out Colorado Independent Publishers Association for tips and guidance.

Much like this weekend seminar, you can create an event of value and sell tickets.

Brown Paper Tickets charges the least for processing fees and connects to your Paypal account.

Eventbright is popular, but charges more for processing.

Events are actually a smart way to rely on your readers for financial support.

Professional Bloggers are entrepreneurs. You are building a microbusiness with ad sales, ebook sales, ticketing sales, and more.

To be a successful, profitable blogger, you need to think like a business owner. You are essentially working as a social media/marketing manager for yourself and your brand.

You need to be familiar with:

Profit and loss reports

Marketing budgets

Sales and overhead costs

Projected sales growth