How to Monetize Your Blog – CNBloggerCon 2008 Guangzhou

Presenters：Lucas Englehardt

BloggerInsight.com – Lucas Englehardt, CEO.  Lucas is now famous thanks to media coverage: two A-list Taiwan bloggers @thecarol and @kenworker.

What is BloggerInsight?

Gives intro in Chinese. BloggerInsight helps you make money through: User-supported donations; also ads (contextual, display, text link, affiliate links, RSS, and targeted ads).  It is about creating a personal brand: with sponsorship, paid reviews (needs to be explicit), opportunity to sell content, create branded content (eBooks, DVD) and more.  Those who can create personal brands: can create member-only content (exclusive forum, content) and even sell their blog (popular some years ago)

Show your strengths, discuss cases, get money as encouragement, more.  You might not get rich immediately, but you can make some money!

Lonnie B Hodge, Culture Fish Media:  Blogging for Yuan and Social Good.

Gives intro in Chinese.

How many of you flew in via an airplane — quite some people. presentation is about Blogging for Yuan and Social Good.  Lonnie’s been on the Net since 1978!

ZSS: Blogging for US dollars in full in China — this won’t work!

Lonnie came here thinking he knew a lot about CN culture. First lang JP, switch to CN. Transition easy? Not quite.

There is a delay in 5 minutes in distributing live video. Harmonization, we think… Lonnie goes on about SEO.

SEO pretty big in China.  Small errors that, if fixed, could make your site better.  Localize and culturally translate some of your things — that’ll get you traffic, give you more links, and make your site more powerful.  EN sites add CN — CN sites add EN.

Last thing has nothing to do with money: just do some social good. Now introducing the Library Project.  Social media did a lot to add to the Library Project. Better days to come. China donor history: Foreigners 90%, local Chinese 10%.

30% come from Tier 1 cities (BJ, SH, GZ); 70% from Tier 2 – 3 cities.  Wire transfer came through at 60%; cash 30%; credit card 10%; China Book Donation History: foreigners 5%; local Chinese 95%   Foreigners trust the Chinese so that they give the money; locals give the books. Tier 1 cities 0%; tier 2, 3 cities 100%.  The Library Project — “Lonnie Syndrome” spreading out all over China. @sioksiok mentioned.

Wikipedia discussion is now in Area B. ZSS: Do foreigners really believe in charity organizations?

Wei Wuhui （武魏挥): BlogBus; 合謀 (doing stuff together).

Defining new media. It appears that even the ad frame in the Beijing toilets are not necessarily “new media”. Hmm.   Distribution, viewers, visitors are crucial and affect ads. Showing big ad spenders on Chinese CCTV 1995-2005.   Ah. Of note. The CN New Year Gala is more like background music than “all eyes on the tube”. So is this good for ad people?   Weaknesses: not clear who’s the audience; it costs more; viewers may neglect ads altogether.

David Feng analysis: There are just about too many ads these days

“So how long will the propaganda effect still last in this Age of You?” Very thought-provoking.

What IS the new media?

Not toilet ads, but rather: blogs, SNS, search engines, IM, wikis.

What’s a blog? A personal site, many are “weak media”, but also virtual people.   Who’s a blogger? A live person.

What’s Blogmedia? “Strong media.” What’s the Blogosphere? A virtual blog community. Clarifying some blog-related misconceptions.

Blog marketing: Not only propaganda, but also communication!

Now showing pics of #cnbloggercon 2007, which was held in the Jing, “right next to me”. ;-P

Questions and answers are being taken now.