Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Product Brainstorming For Your Blog

March 17, 2009 | Feature, Making Money

It is quite obvious that this blog is aimed to help turn bloggers into better and richer bloggers. My position is that you have to treat your blog like a business if you want it to be one. Well, businesses sell things. What can you sell on YOUR blog?

The way I see it, there are 3 primary types of bloggers:

  1. Those who blog just for fun.
  2. Those who want to make money blogging, but can’t really think beyond the usual means of banner ads and affiliate products. So that’s what they do.
  3. Those who sell products and/or services from their blogs, and maybe do some banners and affiliate stuff on the side.

It is those in group #3 who will make the most money. Period. End of story.

Now, when it comes to making money and selling a product, the very fact that you’re reading a blog like this one means you’re interested in this subject. It is easy to fall into the mindset that you have to be talking about how to make more money to have yourself a profitable blog. Well, that’s NOT true!

Well before this blog ever existed, I was making a full-time income from PCMech – a tech blog. I started selling my first product on that blog way back in 2001. It was simply a CD with a bunch of material from my own website, compiled into a format which was easier to digest (I thought so anyway). I sold that CD for $21.99. People bought it. I literally just bought CD-R discs, burned the discs on my own computer, stamped a label on it, stuffed it into a padded enveloped I bought at Staples, and ran it down to the post office myself.

That was my very first product. And there are two lessons here:

  1. The product need not be complicated nor involved. In my case, I was literally selling repackaged content that was written for my own site. I had a few little bonuses on the CD, too.
  2. The idea is to fill a need.

People have needs. They have problems. They want solutions quickly. There is a lot of great info out there on the Internet, but it is scattered and takes forever to find and implement. If you can make a product which is easily digestible and can market that product as a solution to their needs, they’ll buy it.

My market on PCMech was (and is) computer users. They want to have their computers running well. They want to build their own. I won’t get into a full market breakdown for you, but it is very clear that it has absolutely nothing to do with making money online.

But, that’s me. What about you? There are blogs out there on almost every subject you can think of. What product ideas can YOU come up with for your own blog? Let me throw out a few hypothetical examples:

  1. You blog about arts and crafts. Perhaps an e-book showing a bunch of different craft projects you can do with your kids.
  2. You blog about green technology and environmental friendliness. Do a product which shows the person how to save money on energy in their home and get a little more green at home without sacrificing lifestyle quality.
  3. You blog about landscape design. Do a product that teaches the theories of landscape design. Or perhaps the in’s and out’s of starting and running your own landscape design business.

Take what your blog’s market is and find out what they need and want. Run surveys if you want to. Ask them to post comments on your blog answering questions. Your blog can be excellent market research.

So, it is time to brainstorm. What product ideas can YOU come up with for your own blog or online business? Try to come up with at least 5 different ideas.

Don’t even think about the effort involved in creating a product at this point. Take all logistics out of it and simply put down ideas. You’ve got to start somewhere. You saw above that my first product was almost embarrassingly simple. So, eject all notions of work and barriers out of your mind and just come up with some product ideas.

And comment to let me know your thoughts!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. Top 10 Blog Monetization Strategies, Ranked In Order
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  3. Reality Check: A Blog Is Not A Business
  4. Starting an Online Business Despite Information Overload
  5. Should You Buy That Internet Marketing Product?

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  • thanks David.

    BTW, your work is GREAT. Thanks for doing what you do in a classy way. I feel good passing your resources and site to others. So many in this niche are tired and cheesy!

    Kudos, and keep at it.
  • Regional stuff definitely works on the Internet because it is an automatic sub-niche. Less competition.

    CafePress is OK, but expensive. So, it is good if your primary purpose is just marketing. But, if you're trying to make any money at all, Cafepress is just too expensive. Better off finding a local supplier and having them do it.
  • I am working on the development of a regional site including news, opinion/commentary, vendor reviews, and hopefully extending to a lively forum one day soon.

    I see the most potential in selling region-oriented merch. Cafe press seems a bit disgusting. Anyone doing merchandise on a small level without using CP or other site?

    Also, other ideas for things to sell? I have a few ideas... But you all are good.
  • Very good point, Rick. A lot of us who do things online every take take for granted our knowledge. There are SO many people out there who have no idea.
  • The simple to one man is the complex to the next. Make what is simple to you simple to the next and sell it to him.

    Rick
  • As well as writing a post on here, I notice it's full of typos! So again, sorry, it's been a long expensive day!
  • @portland We have a bricks and mortar real estate business, with a primary target of people looking to move to from northern Europe to our island in the sun. We started a blog as a way to "lock" people into doing business with us and to impart a load of free information about moving here (schools, sports, shopping, paperwork etc etc). After some time I pulled a lot of the info together (and added much more) and created an E-Book which sells and sells. We're about to add another. So yes, you can monetize a blog, even when it's part of a conventional business.
    @roman There's plenty to write for MMO still. As David says, drill down into the niche - are you an expert or your CMS or theme? An expert on Adsense "blending"? How did you create that cool header on your site? Can you tell other how to do that? The other area of opportunity is where people have may have already created E-books or video course that simply aren't very good. Do it better, sell it better and affiliate it better than they did and you'll make some money. Sorry - this turned into a post!
  • I do fall into the category that comes here to possibly get new ideas on how to make money online and have had a few things work out that I've tried from your site.

    While most of my sites in the past have fallen into the second category I've recently been planning on how to change a few of them over to the third category of sites on selling a service or product directly as well. I've long felt that is the only way that I'll be able to raise it from making side money online to making a living online.
  • Portland, yes, absolutely. Blogs can make awesome counterparts to a brich-and-mortar. You're big challenge is going to be aiming your content (and keywords) to be local since I assume you only do business in your local area. So, your blog title and keywords should all focus on your business and then your city.
  • Roman, are you actually making any money online? If so, talk about that. And look for a sub-niche where there may be an opening. Either that or go make some money in other niches (non-MMO) and use the experience to create stuff for you MMO audience.
  • Excellent entry again. What about blogs that run as counterparts to a brick and mortar business? Where the site functions as a sales tool, and the blog offers extra information on the business niche / products / person offering the services, while giving the business owner a chance to bring in some targeted, search based traffic? Consider offering a web-based deal for users who come to the site directly from search traffic?
  • Selling a product is a good idea. Naturally some niches are better then others for selling products. For example, my niche is the old classic, 'make money online'. The only think I can think of for this niche is an ebook. Unfortunately the competition is so high that my ebook would get lost in the heap. Charles H. Duell Commissioner U.S. Office of Patents famously stated in 1899 “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”. He ended up being wrong. But when I look around at all the ebooks for making money online, I have a feeling that all the information about MMO has been written. Unless I come up with something new, there is no point.
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