What Do You Think You’re Worth?

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If you’re happy making $5 here and $7 there, you probably won’t even read this. If you think it’s too risky to pass by that guaranteed money today in favor of investing time and effort in the hope of making far more a few weeks from now, well, you probably won’t read this, either.

In fact, if you’re one of those folks who’d rather low-ball your prices at companies like Sponsored Reviews and LinkWorth, you’re probably too busy working hard at making that whopping $10 to even have time to read this.

Which is fine, really, because it leaves more money on the table for people like me and Linc from Habitation of Justice, whose recent experience proves the point I’ve been trying to make since this blog began: if you’re grabbing $5 here and $7 there you’re selling your skills — and your PR — short. The big money comes when you’re willing to forgo the small stuff and focus on providing your readers with valuable content.

But don’t take it from me. Read what Linc has to say:

I figured with my crap traffic and crap blog, nobody was going to purchase a post or an ad from me at a higher price. I didn’t think I was really worth more than $10 a post either.

Eventually I submitted a bid for close to the maximum and it got accepted! I took my time writing a good post too, and somehow it all managed to come together.

That made me realize I was underselling myself. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t getting gobs of traffic. I’m a good writer (I think), and the quality of my writing deserves to be valued just as much, if not more so than the amount of traffic I get. I felt like I was ripping people off, but I had to abandon that thinking and give myself a little more credit.

Linc’s email brings up a rather interesting point: just how does a person decide what price to ask when bidding on a review at Sponsored Reviews or setting their ad prices at LinkWorth.

I’ve mentioned previously that there are tools to help you set your price, but many bloggers choose to disregard them in the hope that a lower bid/price will attract more advertisers. And that strategy might work… for a while.

But one thing bears emphasis here: every paid entry you do involves not only effort on your part, but also quite a bit of risk. The fact is, paid links do result in lowered (or 0) PageRank, and since advertisers continue to look at PR when deciding whether to place an ad with a blog, maintaining or improving PR is critical to your income.

What Linc learned is how to price his bids and ads to reflect that risk along with his effort and the time he’s willing to put in to improving his blog. As a result, he’s making more money while taking on less risk than someone who low balls their price.

For you folks who need visuals, look at it this way:

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As Linc explains:

It never would have happened though if I didn’t carefully choose my opps and focus my creative energy on writing a good post. I may make less money in the short term, but these things have a way of balancing themselves out.

They certainly do. In three months, Linc has out-earned many bloggers who’ve been doing lower-paying opps and meanwhile he’s now being actively solicited by advertisers who want to run ads on his site.

So, what do you think your time, effort and risk are worth? Remember: if your price doesn’t reflect your confidence that you’re delivering something of value, then no one else will believe you’re delivering it, either.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Make Money Blogging. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Tagged in: blog advertising | blogging for the money | Make Money Blogging | paid reviews

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