How to Make Money Without Selling Out

photo of origami from on a bed of coinsIn web marketing, you either monetize or you don’t.

It’s dramatic when you consider the extremes between the two camps:

  • Some one-trick ponies monetizers are simply after your money and will stop at nothing to sell you out for their personal gain. They offer zero value, have no dignity and are largely anonymous.
  • The “purists” of the web can’t cross the line from free expression to market value. Instead of making money, they complain about those who do while obsessing over words like ”genuine”, “authentic” and “transparent.” [Confession: this was once me.]

So, dear reader, how do you make money without selling out? Here are 5 ideas to get you started: [Read more...]

Where Content Marketing Meets Branding

museum After years of gawking over web design, flash animation, scripting languages and relational databases, I think we can now safely agree the internet is made of and for content (it’s King alright). It’s the impetus for nearly all innovation on the web.

But if you’re a content specialist like me, the career path feels a lot like the Wild West: opportunistic (make thousands a day from home with Google!), risky (do I blow my next paycheck on the latest and greatest blogging course?) and discouraging (out of work writers/journalists/editors).

Thankfully a few qualified content specialist genres exist. Let’s briefly examine them: [Read more...]