How to Monetize Tumblr – 11 Proven Tips

by | May 4, 2015 | Monetization

Tumblr monetization has its own rules and best practices.

Like any other platform, it has its own do’s and don’ts. For instance, as Pinterest users recently discovered, affiliate links are no longer a viable option for the popular image-based network.

So what are your monetization options on the popular micro-blogging network, Tumblr?

This article offers 11 of the top Tumblr monetization tips that you can start using today.

To begin with, you’ll need to cover your marketing bases:

1. Base #1: Traffic

Traffic is essential to making money. If no one visits your blog, you won’t be able to earn clicks, sales, or income. To generate traffic, you can focus on two sources: Tumblr itself and the outside world.

Tumblr itself is probably the best place to start. Here are a few ways to do that:

  • Follow other bloggers who share your interests. Keep following more of them every week. They’ll follow you and – if you share good content – they’ll promote your content and your blog.
  • Make sure you hashtag your posts. And include plenty of keywords in your post content so that they’ll show up in searches.
  • Comment on other Tumblr blogs to draw attention back to your own.

2. Base #2: Turn Visitors into Customers

Convert visitors into customers. That is, develop relationships with people who visit your site. Use time-tested techniques such as distributing free content, acquiring email addresses, and so on.

Like WordPress, Tumblr has plugins of its own. MailChimp, for instance, has a plugin that allows you to subscribe people to your newsletter.

Which brings us to the next point…

3. Base #3: Supplement Your Tumblr Monetization

Other marketing efforts should always go with any blog you own, whether that blog is a Tumblr blog, a WordPress blog, or a self-hosted solution.

Your online content network should be a full-fledged brand – at least, if you want to make the most money from your efforts. The best way to build relationships with customers – and get money from them – is to build a brand that delivers valuable content across multiple channels.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a staple of any marketing strategy. Unlike Pinterest, Tumblr hasn’t chosen to ban affiliate links. So you’re free to monetize your blog by posting relevant affiliate links throughout your content.

As long as you keep your content valuable and non-spammy, you shouldn’t run into any problems.

5. Advertising

There are plenty of ad networks to choose from. Google AdSense is one of the easiest go-to ad networks to try, but there are plenty of others that can earn you cash for every click.

6. Content Locking

Content locking networks – also called pay-per-download networks – are networks that allow you to place a file or other digital content behind a “locked” hyperlink.

To access the content, users complete an action, such as filling out a survey. Each time they do, you earn cash.

7. Sell Products and Services

If you sell your own products and services, then you know how lucrative this monetization strategy can be. In this case, the Tumblr blog would become more like a gateway to your business.

Using your Tumblr blog as the central hub for your brand, your products, and your services may be a good idea if you really like the platform. Or if your audience is made up mostly of millennials.

8. Meme-ify and Promote

And since Tumblr caters to the younger generation: meme-ify. Just take a look at how brands are using Tumblr to reach younger audiences.

Animate gifs, be creative, be fun, and develop blog posts that are likely to go viral.

9. Target Gamers

Gamers are another demographic that flock to Tumblr. If your content appeals to that audience, all the better. So develop content, memes, and blog posts that would appeal to that demographic.

 

10. Create the Right Content

Given the fact that most of the Tumblr audience is made up of millennials, gamers, geeks, and other meme-loving segments, don’t be too serious with your content.

As any marketer knows, targeting is critical to the success of any sales message. So if you try selling irrelevant content to the Tumblr demographic, your monetization efforts might not be very successful.

11. Expanding to Mobile

Like other social networks, Tumblr users are mobile-heavy. Over half create posts with mobile apps.

To monetize the mobile market, focus your monetization strategy on mobile users:

  • For best results, make sure your affiliate links and ads lead to mobile-friendly content. Otherwise conversions and commissions will suffer.
  • As mentioned above, don’t make content too detailed or serious. Short and concise is best. Viral, short-attention-span posts can go a long way.
  • Tumblr is experimenting with new ad formats – from video to app install ads – that are geared towards mobile devices. If you have an advertising budget and appropriate content, test them out and see if they’ll work for you.

 

Like other social networks and blogging platforms, Tumblr offers up its own monetization opportunities. But it does require some effort. Start by building your audience, focusing on a niche, and experimenting to see what your customers want.

LinkedIn Monetization: Learn How to Make Money via Your Personal Brand or Business

by | Apr 20, 2015 | Marketing, Monetization

LinkedIn monetization is less about content monetization and more about smart networking.

Other forms of content monetization focus on affiliate marketing, advertising, information products, and so on. While LinkedIn does have a publishing platform, it’s more about professional networking. And though it’s more difficult to make money with affiliate links – and impossible with advertising – there are ways to monetize LinkedIn.

Understanding LinkedIn Channels

As you probably know, LinkedIn is a professional network. And there are several features that allow you to connect with others, promote yourself, promote products, publish content, and so forth.

Each “publication outlet” offers different possibilities in terms of monetization.

Here are the major features to be aware of:

LinkedIn Profiles – Profiles are the place to showcase yourself, your company, your products, and your services. You can link to websites and promote whatever you wish.

Long-Form Publishing – You can publish long-form blog posts on LinkedIn, just like you can on a blog. These posts are a great way to promote whatever you wish. And they can be a great tool to build your thought leadership.

Groups – LinkedIn Groups are forums. People can create, moderate, join, and participate in groups as they wish. Some are open to the public, others are private, but all are excellent opportunities to connect with others.

Advertising – LinkedIn allows targeted advertising to anyone within the network. You can target your ads based on a number of factors, including job title, company title, industry, and so on.

Using LinkedIn Channels for Monetization

There are several standard types of ways to monetize content online:

  • Placing ads in your content that earn you money
  • Using affiliate links to earn commissions
  • Selling your own products and services

There are plenty of other derivations of these models, but these three are the most common.

Generally speaking, “monetizing content” simply means using that content as a sales vehicle. You may be selling someone else’s products or services or your own. But to make money, you need to sell something.

Here’s how to use LinkedIn’s publication channels to make money:

Promote yourself, your business, your own products, or your own services. This is by far the most common way to monetize LinkedIn. After all, that’s what the site is designed for – professional networking. So this should become the core of your LinkedIn monetization strategy.

Everything you promote and publish on the site should help build your brand and your authority. And it should all help promote your business, your products, and your services.

Promote affiliate products through your profile page, through groups, and in long-form posts. Affiliate links can be placed in most places throughout the site. Some groups, however, may prohibit affiliate links – or any links at all. But you are allowed to place links in long-form posts, in your profile, and in groups that allow links.

Bear in mind, however, that many people may find affiliate links distasteful if used improperly…or too often. Another drawback to using affiliate links is the fact that your posts won’t get that much traffic.

A website can generate thousands of visitors per month, week, or day. But it is highly unlikely your affiliate links will see that much traffic on this network.

Use LinkedIn advertising to grow your brand or your business. You can’t really make money by placing ads on LinkedIn, like you can with a website. But you can use the network’s built-in ad service to focus on highly targeted audiences.

The best way to use LinkedIn advertising – and the network in general – is as part of a larger marketing and monetization plan. Develop a strategy that focuses on a standalone brand with a standalone website, then use LinkedIn as a tool to build that brand and website.

If, for instance, you are creating a website that caters to a crowd of targeted professionals, then LinkedIn is the perfect tool to help you build a following.

Create email lists from your contacts and market to those prospects. It’s possible to download your email list from LinkedIn, import those contacts into an email marketing program, and market directly to those prospects. Be careful with this technique, however, because misuse of this tactic can irritate people and cost you some connections.

But when used properly, you can generate an email list directly from your LinkedIn contacts. And you can then market to them via email, which offers more direct monetization potential in terms of advertising, affiliate marketing, product sales, and so on.

Summary

LinkedIn is best used as a tool to support your business, which should have its own core profit structure. Monetizing content on LinkedIn publication channels – groups, long-form publishing, profiles, etc. – just doesn’t earn as much traffic as a website might.

However, when you use LinkedIn as a professional networking platform – which is what it was designed for – then you can build an audience, a reputation, an email list, and enhance your existing monetization efforts. 

Data Monetization: A Few Quick Tips for Making More From Your App or Software

by | Mar 18, 2015 | Monetization

Data is the new currency of the information age, which means that if you’re a developer, you can use data monetization to earn more from your app. Advertisers, marketers, and data analytics companies are prime customers for any developer who has data to offer.

And if you don’t have any to offer, simply integrate some tracking tools into your app or add some code to monitor and collect data.

Data Monetization: What to Collect and Monetize

For best results, collect as much as you can: the more connections you can make between data and customers, the better.

Here are just a few types of data you can collect and then sell to third parties.

Demographic Data – Age, economic status, educational background, ethnic background, gender, and location are some examples of demographic data that is critical to effective marketing and advertising. The more you can collect, the more valuable it will be for your marketing efforts.

Interests – With the rise of social networks such as Facebook, it has become easier and easier to find out what interests individuals and groups of people. Previously, much of this information was gleaned through controlled studies, surveys, and indirect inferences. Today, “likes,” search behavior, surfing behavior, and app usage behavior can provide detailed information that is very useful to marketers.

Geo-Location Data – While a person’s address, region, and city of residence may be considered demographic data, smartphones and GPS allow apps to track specific movements. Apps such as Foursquare, for instance, can provide detailed information about people’s movements and physical locations, which can also be used to inform advertising and marketing programs.

Health Data – Smartwatches such as the Apple Watch are invaluable tools for advertisers, because many are being designed with the capability to track physical movement, such as the amount of time spent sitting, walking, or working out. Fitness apps, therefore, can potentially earn a steady stream of income by providing this data to marketers and advertisers.

App Usage Data – How people use your app can also be useful for marketers. The type of data, how useful it is, and who you sell it to, though, would depend greatly on the nature of the app.

Turning Data into Information

What’s the difference between data and information?

Data is discrete, disconnected numbers or facts, while information forms the connections between those numbers that allows us to act.

For instance, we can receive data that tells us individual test scores for a group of students. We can turn that data into information by averaging test results to find out how well the class does as a whole. And we can take that further and generate actionable results from that information, by evaluating the students’ progress, the study materials, or the teacher’s methods.

When you look at it this way, you should be able to figure out which data your potential customers would find useful.

Figure out what your customers are looking for in order to provide them with the right data. Data, by itself, is useless. By finding out the information and results that you target customers want to glean from their data, you’ll know what data you should be gathering and providing.

Provide information instead of raw data. If you do your customer’s job for them, you can make yourself that much more valuable. For instance, let’s say that you have designed a diet app: if your customer is a marketing company that wants to find out how many people over a certain age are eating certain types of popular diets, you could provide them with raw data about the foods they eat, or you could do the legwork for them and provide them with information about eating habits.

Design your product around a data monetization strategy. If you decide to use data monetization as your primary monetization strategy for a product, you may benefit from designing your product with this strategy in mind. In other words, take a look at your niche industry, your target customers, and the target audience, then design an app that collects data and solves the end user’s problem.

 

We live in an information economy. And despite all the hype around big data, it’s really the information that’s important. Data technology and big data are simply tools we use to help us generate that information.

While advertising is certainly one of the most popular monetization strategies – because it works – data monetization is also a good way to add another income stream. With a little creativity and research, you’ll be able to find the right customers for your data.