I whipped this up quickly, so please excuse the spelling and grammar errors…

I’ve been watching blogs and blog networks for going on 5 years now and have come to the conclusion that they’re woefully under monetized. Most out there strive to get traffic and send it out through ads, for pennies per click, action or impression. They’re practically giving away the traffic and eyeballs for nothing… compared to what they could be getting if they got a little more creative.

All you have to do is look at some of the products in the AdSense ads that are getting the best conversions - consistently showing up in the top ad spots on these blogs.

I know, the conversion rates from clickthrough to purchase on some of these sites is around 1%, but lets do some math:

Blog visitor clicks on an AdSense ad and the blogger makes $0.10 for the click. If the blog sends 100 people through that ad, the blogger makes a grand total of $10.00.

On the advertiser’s site, one of those 100 clicks converts to a paying customer, who just purchased a $35.00 ebook, whitepaper or special report where the advertiser ‘profits’ $20.00 from the sale, after paying overhead and ad costs.

Essentially, the blogger just lost $20.00. If they had written and offered their own $35.00 ebook they would have profited $30 instead of $10 if you set aside $5 for overhead and processing fees, etc.

Very general and not all blogs would benefit from what I outlined above. However, some blogs, especially ones where premium content on the subject matter (paid ebooks and reorts) is in high demand, could certainly do well with this model.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that most of the A-List blogs out there don’t collect email addresses or send out email newsletters. Balk at this if you will, but email marketing is still alive and well in a lot of mass appeal niches and industries.

Blog reader Ben knows nothing about RSS feeds or Bloglines. He doesn’t even realize he’s reading a blog, but, he knows email. Ben is the type of guy who’ll consume almost any content he knows how to consume.

Ben signs up for that blog’s email newsletter. It can be summaries of the blog content where ne clicks and revisits the blog to finish up an article, or a weekly newsletter containing unique content not found on the blog. In both examples, Ben is exposed to that blog’s content in a format he’s familiar with… and that content contains an ad or two, for the bloggers own product.

In the past I’ve been too close to the blogging industry to see these things objectively. I’ve even spoken out against them. But now that I’ve been out of the game, but still watching closely with an unclouded mind, I see opportunities where I thought none existed before.

Blogging is all about content, sharing content, discussing that content and the overlying or underlying issues… and if you’re into it to make money, it’s about monetizing that content.

Why not get creative and offer premium paid content as well?

We’re opening the TalkNewMedia.com forum to new members. It’ll be a BETA mode for about two weeks so we can slowly roll out some features we’re working on, like a main blog, miniblogs for each member, various syndication tools, interaction between the site and several social networking & publishing platforms via API, etc.

TNM (TalkNewMedia) will be my main project site for quite a while from now on. Anything tech, new media or Web 2.0 related that I have to say will be said there and this blog will revert back to being my personal blog.

Drop by, sign up and say Hi!

Slashdot has a blurb up about how ISPs are selling their user’s online behaviour (their clicks and other data) for millions to companies who parse the data trying to figure out what you’re likely to do/buy next. My thoughts:

1. Companies will find that internet users are a bunch of freakin perverts. Just look at any list of the most searched for words/terms on the internet.

2. They’ll never get it right since there’s no right answer. The data miners may gain some insight and may see a minor breakthrough or two, but no matter how the data is sliced, diced or mashed, it’ll never reveal all it’s secrets.

These companies use math and analytics to try and predict what we want or what we will spend our next disposable dollar on. Math is an absolute science, with a few oddities to keep the geeks guessing. Look at Einstein’s E=MC2 and read the following quote from a plaque that hung on the wall of his office at Princeton:

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Oh, the irony.

Ok, I couldn’t wait any longer.

You can read more about TalkNewMedia.com here.

I’m really excited about this one folks. We (My company and I) are launching our first new site of the new year on Monday, March 12th.

I can’t give away too much info right now, but I will say that this new site will be a New Media Community centered around a forum, along with some other cool user interaction and productivity features.

For the first few days the site will be in ALPHA mode where there’ll only be about a half dozen users testing out the software.

Then, probably on Friday, March 16th we’ll go into Invite-Only BETA mode until the first week in April. During that phase, you’ll be able to see a limited version of the main page, unless you’re one of the chosen few who has an invitation

After that, it’ll be fully public and free to join.