Last weekend, I gave a session at PodCamp Montreal 2010 where I talked about blog monetization. I highlighted several advertising options, other than banners, that bloggers can offer on their blog or via Twitter.

The session was designed for bloggers who wish to take their blog to the next level and turn it into a business. Still, I made an effort to give options that part-time bloggers could use. The topics include a talk on what is content and what is advertising, the need to maintain your credibility and ethics, the ABC of pricing, and why you need to deal with media buyers instead of PR if you wish to monetize your blog. Media buyers and PR people have different roles, objectives and budgets. Melanie of Mel of All Trades wrote a summary of the things what she thought was important.

I plan to revisit all these questions on this blog over the future months. Each issue has enough ramifications to be the subject of a post or two. In the meantime, you can watch the session. I am sorry if you do not hear some questions; not everyone had access to a microphone (this happens at unconferences).

+ Click here for more recorded sessions at PodCamp Montreal 2010
+ photo by Montreal Tech Watch

I founded Media Sidekick because I believe that the future of blog monetization is not in banner ads. Brands and agencies are looking for something else. And influential bloggers can charge more if they can differentiate themselves with added services instead of depending on their number of page views to make money. Over the last two years, I saw many initiatives driven by women, design and lifestyle bloggers.

On September 11th, 2010 at 13:30, I will show you good examples of what is happening right now. This session will explore ethical monetization trends from no nonsense ideas to recent techniques that popped out across Canada and the United States. I invite you to join me. PodCamp Montreal 2010 changed venue this year. It will be held for the first time at the UQAM’s Cœur des sciences located in downtown Montreal.

If you have not registered yet for PodCamp Montreal, you still have time. It costs only $20 to attend. The topics are diverse from Life after journalism by Bruno Guglielminetti (in French) to How an artist and gallery owner makes the most of blogging, Facebook, and Twitter with my friend Bettina Forget up to Julien Smith who will speak about Trust Agents and some sessions targeting businesses. For example, Diane Bourque will talk about the possibilities that WordPress offers to businesses.

+ PodCamp Montreal 2010’s official schedule
+ Register now for PodCamp Montreal

A trend that I predict since 2008 has been validated by Sysomos: women blog more than men, even it is by a tiny margin. And it  is similar to the gender spread in the overall population. I have been advocating that the Web will be populated more and more by women and that fact will change the nature of the Web. The rise in women participation online is due to the advent of social media and a wide access to easy to use publishing tools.

Let’s look at the statistics from an analysis of more than 100 million blog posts done by Sysomos.com for a study published June 2010. We can get a better grasp of the current state of the blogosphere by noting that:

• Bloggers aged between 21 to 35 years old account for 53.3% of the total blogging population
• 50.9% of bloggers are women
• Almost 30% of bloggers are from the USA, 6.75% live in UK, 4.9% are in Japan and Canada arrived fifth with 3.9%
• The study confirmed what I already knew, looking at my regional statistics. California is the US state with most bloggers (14%), followed by New York at 7% and Ontario ranked third (5.6%) before Colorado and Texas.
• More than half of the tweets come from U.S. Twitter users, while only a third of blog posts are from the USA. Find more data about Twitter demographics around the World (January 2010).

+ Get all the details at Inside Blog Demographics by Sysomos

Having a clear editorial line will save you time and headaches in determining what is right for your blog. And your content will be more cohesive once you set a clear direction.

As a bonus, doing this exercise can refine or fill holes in your niche since you will need to analyze what you do from different angles. The editorial line has impacts internally and externally. Therefore, it should cover your relationships with all parties. You will need to clearly define:

1. Who is your targeted audience. I put the targeted audience before the topics because your targeted audience will influence the forms of content that you will produce. Otherwise, you will not serve your audience properly.

2. What are the topics that you will cover and which forms your content will take. You must be thorough. Address the philosophy and the big picture, but also name specific topics, talk about the tone and the types of articles that you will produce.

Specify the length of your articles, the format (text, photos, videos), the frequency. If you have writers, what are the approval process for articles. Make sure to give a written copy of your editorial policy to your columnists.

3. How to manage your relationships with marketers and PR professionals. Do you accept samples or to attend events? Which samples will you accept? Do you always write about the samples you received or do you write only about the ones you like? Etc…

You should publish your policies regarding samples and invitations on your blog. This way, your readers and marketers are aware of how you work.

4. How to deal with advertisers. What is acceptable to you, and your readers? How do you protect your editorial from advertising? What form of advertisements are you looking for? How many ads per page will not undervalue your content? Do you accept contests and giveaways? Etc..

5. How do you fit Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare into the mix. Which content do you tweet or put on your Facebook page? What complementary content will you share? Under which circumstances do you tweet about a media event? Etc…

Your challenge will be to set clear and simple rules that are easy to understand and to follow. Then, each time that you write a story, that receive an invitation to a media event, or that you get a pitch, you simply check if they fit within your editorial line to take a decision.

Even if that news is a few weeks old, I want to make sure that you did not miss it. The reason is that it is a good news for serious bloggers and for media planners. Before this announcement, small publishers did not install the tagging system of comScore due to their excessive costs.

Typically, small publishers who sell direct can only afford to supply Google Analytics data or data from concurrents of comScore who were already offering free measurement reports. Some may argue that not having comScore data further put at a disadvantage small publishers who want to attract big advertisers since big publishers typically supply that data. I cannot tell you the validity of this assumption but one thing is sure: this news could level a level field of measurement.  I would need to get access to my comScore before I can tell you if it adds value for me, as a blogger.

How it works?

Tagging your pages enables comScore to compute a more accurate reading of your traffic. This is why it is a good news that comScore announced at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in New York City that it will provide for free tagging to all sites. comScore tagging means you put a code in each page of your site to track your traffic. Plus, start ups with less than 1 million unique visitors per month will get access to basic reporting features.

The free tagging program is in beta in the US right now.  It will launch globally this summer. The tagging setup cost used to be $5000, which is too much for most SMB and bloggers.

I read a good analysis of this news on eConsultancy.