Blog Monetization Overview – My Presentation (And Slides) From Blogworld New York

I’ve been to Blogworld many, many times now. Pretty much ever since I knew it existed, I’ve never missed a conference. And for 3 events now, I’ve been the “track leader” for monetization.

In all the Blogworlds I’ve gone to, the 2012 event in New York City is one of the best I’ve attended. For me, this event stood out for a couple of reasons:

1. I personally did more speaking (rather than just organizing the speakers). I did a solo presentation on monetizaion (see below) as well as participated on a panel about community building, where I talked mostly about my experience with my tech site.
2. The networking crushed. It was truly awesome to connect more in-depth with many of my friends in the industry.

So, I thought I would do a quick overview post on this. Plus, I also promised that I would post my presentation to the blog for those who were there who want the slides… as well as those who were unable to attend.

My Presentation at Blogworld

My presentation at BWE went quite well and I had a pretty full house (as seen above). I actually spoke right after my buddy, Pat Flynn. Pat has a pretty full room – and I expected him to. Pat always puts a lot of work into his speaking gigs and it shows. After he spoke, however, I halfway expected half the room to clear out before I began speaking. Much to my surprise – that didn’t happen. 🙂

I took a ton of questions… but one of them I was unprepared for. She asked, “Are these slides going to be available for download?”

A simple question, but one I had no good answer for. Doh! So, I promised that I would post the entire presentation to my blog. And here we are. 🙂

My track was recorded for the “virtual ticket”, but I don’t have that audio yet. So, what I did was record one of my own, private run-through’s of the presentation before I actually went to New York.

What you’ll see in this presentation is the exact same material as I delivered in New York, but it was recorded separately.

I cover a core concept of “monetization”, then I launch right into 11 different monetization models for blog owners.

And here are the slides, from SlideShare.

A Few Comments About Blogworld

As I said above, I thought this New York conference was one of the better ones I’ve been to – at least for me personally. I’ll offer a few comments about the show:

1. There were less sessions going on simultaneously and it was a huge improvement. In LA, there were over 20 tracks. In NYC, we had 12, I believe. If anything, it could be trimmed down even further. But, definite improvement.
2. I like New York City as much as the next person, but I think there is a STRONG case to be made for taking the conference elsewhere. Expenses are through the roof in NYC – and that affects both Blogworld as a company but also the cost of attendance for attendees and sponsors. For example, sponsors not only need to deal with booth costs, but also the cost of bringing their team to New York. And it is hard to find a halfway decent room for any less than around $300/night. Also, unions at the Javits Center. Ugh. Enough said.
3. Wifi sucked, but not because Blogworld dropped the ball. Blogworld put a TON of work behind the scenes on having solid wifi. The truth is… Javits Center completely dropped the ball. Yet another reason to go somewhere else.

So, we’ll see where Blogworld East ends up next time around.

Or, I should say… the New Media Expo. Because the conference will no longer be called Blogworld. 🙂