Buy Me a Beer: Why the “Donate” Button is Dead… Almost
photo credit: Caveman Chuck Coker
Have you ever seen one of those “buy me a beer” buttons that allow you to donate to the blogger? They used to be everywhere.
In fact, I know a few bloggers who would rake in four figures a year just from their donate button. Pretty amazing right?
So where did these buttons go? Why aren’t we all using them? And why is the donate button almost dead?
How did the donate button work
The donate button was a pretty simple invention. Using Paypal’s donate feature you could add a snippet of code to the sidebar of your blog and take money from generous people.
Most of the time the blogger would add the catchy “Buy Me a Beer” phrase to the top of the button to make it seem more casual and friendly.
Other times people would have a little bit of text explaining how the money would be used; server costs, time writing more posts, etc.
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On Controversy, Risk and Lost Subscribers
A few days ago I published an article about selling. Some people thought it was about a con man. Perhaps they were right.
Either way, the article resulted in me losing quite a few of my much-loved subscribers – some of them sending me nasty messages about how unethical I was.
So, at the encouragement of my good friend over at Lion5 I decided to write a short follow up post about controversy, risk and lost subscribers. The last paragraph contains a statement I want you all to help me with.
Oh, and Scott, I’m waiting for you analysis of this photo.
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The Man Who Sold The Brooklyn Bridge Twice a Week for 30 Years
photo credit: See-ming Lee
“Hello, sir. Would you like to buy this lovely bridge here? Its on sale for today only. Think of all the money you could make from tolls.”
“Are you sure its for sale mate?” replied the confused old man.
“Why else would it have a ‘For Sale’ sticker on it?!” came the reply.
George C. Parker was the greatest con man in American history managing to sell landmark items like Madison Square Gardens, the Statue of Liberty and, you guessed it, the Brooklyn Bridge.
In fact, he sold the Brooklyn Bridge at least twice a week, one time for as much as $50,000. Sometimes the police would have to stop the “new owners” from setting up toll booths in the middle of the bridge.
So what can we learn from this great con man? Well, for starters, I learned that my girlfriend wasn’t impressed when she found out I’d be studying con-artists until 8pm at night, skipping dinner.
But there is also a lot more we can learn – and its not unethical. So let’s dive in. Oh, and stick around to see what happened to ol’ George in the end.
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Deathly Silence: What’s Your Off-site Blog Marketing Strategy?
photo credit: Bob Jagendorf
So you’ve got a blog, written some amazing content and now you’re delving into the seedy world of increasing conversions and blog optimization. And its working. Subscribers are increasing, comment counts are at Blog Tyrant levels and you’re getting more followers on your social media accounts.
But what about off-site marketing? What are you doing there? Anything…?
Off-site marketing is something that, when brought to your attention, seems like an absolute given. But it really seems to have fallen to the wayside in recent blogging history. In this post I want to give you a few ideas about promoting your blog off-site.
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The Secret Ingredient for Creating Hyper-Loyal Blog Readers
photo credit: pasukaru76 (away on vacation)
That title could be quite funny with a misplaced comma or two… hyper, loyal blog readers. I’m looking at you Jen.
If you’ve been reading Blog Tyrant for a while now you will know that I have been lucky enough to own (and then sell) quite a few successful blogs in a variety of different niches. Some of them were very tricky, competitive niches.
And I seem to have tapped into the extremely over-crowded blogging niche without too much difficulty. But enough self aggrandizement – let’s talk about how it is done. What is the secret ingredient for creating hyper-loyal blog readers?
Its all in the words.
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