Turning your blog into a profit center. It sound like a dream, right?

We’ll continue to talk more about these things here on SocialMouths, hopefully you can benefit from them.

In this post we’ll take a closer look at what I call a perfect setup for your online income powerhouse, in other words, the tools you need to run your blog as a business.

Notice that I don’t include advertising or affiliate programs as ways of blog revenue, it’s because I talk about blogging as part of a marketing strategy for business rather than becoming a full-time blogger.

One thing I will mention before diving into the list is that while none of these applications are free, they are very affordable. And since we’re already in the subject, I will also say that I do love the whole “Free” concept BUT (uuuh… the big “but”!), when we’re talking about our business, and I will assume we want to be successful at it, we should be open to invest.

So I’ll include the cost of each service and at the end of the post we’ll add it to see how much we need to spend in order to turn your blog into a true profit center.

Disclosure: None of these companies has asked me or pay me to review their products or services. It would be nice… but they didn’t.

1. MailChimp

Let me put it this way, an email list is a list of people that have said “Yes, I like you and want to know about your updates, events or products”. My preference at the moment is Mailchimp but there are also other products like Aweber, MyEmma and others.

When you’re shopping around for a system to handle your email marketing, you need to consider things like how it integrates with your blogging platform, what kind of metrics it offers, if you can connect to Google Analytics, etc.

Cost: With Mailchimp you can manage lists of up to 1,000 subscribers for $15/month

2. SalesForce

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is not always necessary, let me explain. If you sell a quick check out product such as an ebook for $24.99, people come to the site and pay for it then maybe you don’t need to capture any data other than what you get on an email subscription.

Now, if you provide services as a freelancer, let’s say web design, copy writing or life coaching, then it is important to establish a stronger connection with your prospect or client. This requires more information than a name and an email.

SalesForce can capture those leads right from your site.

Cost: The “Group” package which includes basic sales and marketing for up to 5 user costs $25/month per user.

3. Paypal

Not much to say about Paypal other than you MUST have it, like it or not. It’s been a while since Paypal became an online standard for payment processing, even if you had your own merchant account, Paypal should not be ignored.

Cost: Since you pay a percentage for each transaction you run, I’m not adding a monthly charge here. We’ll leave it open.

4. E-Junkie

E-Junkie is one of those “behind the scenes” kind of application. Some of you might not even know it. What it does is help you sell stuff online. It is an excellent tool if you are selling digital (downloads) products such as an ebook or an mp3 recording. It protects your file by being downloaded multiple times and it hides your url so it is not visible to the user.

You can also use it to redirect traffic to your own page if you want to host the file to download. E-Junkie also works for tangible products.

2 more things, it’s very cool that it makes Paypal part of its ordering process and lastly, you can manage affiliate programs for your products.

Cost: If you have 10 available products, e-junkie will cost you only $5/month including 50 MB of storage and 100 daily checkouts. You gotta be kidding me!

5. Flowtown

Email lists are usually very limited since we usually capture a simple name and email address. Flowtown takes that information and pulls all the social profiles affiliated with that address.

Don’t take this lightly, in my opinion this is pretty powerful, you just went from having an email address to a full profile that allows you to search and filter subscribers by different criteria. AND, having the opportunity to connect on different social networks with that person that just gave you his/her email address, that’s building community right there.

Two more cool things about Flowtown, first, if you manage your email lists with Mailchimp, you can now integrate Flowtown to add muscle to your plain mailing database. And second, the integration of Klout in their system so you can actually tell how influential your contacts are.

Cost: Flowtown packages start at $17/month and you have to add 4.5¢ per import OR, you can “pay-as-you-go” 5¢ per import, 250 emails/month, which means you’ll be paying $12.50/month. This is just ridiculous…

6. SurveyMonkey

You might be thinking what do surveys have to do with turning my blog into a profit powerhouse. Remember how for the last couple of years we’ve been talking about how social media is a 2-way channel? a dialogue rather than a monologue? Well, bloggers are changing dramatically and are becoming more and more engaging with their audiences. Technology also allows us to push the envelope and get more creative.

The concept of crowsourcing is huge, your community is now telling you what they want, with detail. We just have to listen. Tools such as SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo make it very easy and affordable to take those conversations with your reader and kick it up a notch, now you can ask questions directly and the best part of all is… your reader, prospect or existing customer loves being asked!

Cost: For $16.67/month, SurveyMonkey gives you an unlimited account, that means you can setup as many surveys as you want with as many questions as you want.

7. Unbounce

Pretty cool stuff here. Unbounce helps you build landing pages, track your traffic and conversion, run A/B tests and set up your own domains. They also have some pretty kick-ass templates that you can just grab to customize or you can create your own from scratch. You can run several campaigns at the same time.

This is a great tool for lead generation.

Cost: You can check it out by using the Free package which offers 200 visits/month, after that, the Basic package offers 500 visits for $25/month and it doesn’t show any Unbounce branding on your pages.

8. Google Analytics

Don’t you feel like it does matter what we’re talking about, Analytics is always mentioned? Well, the application is pretty powerful and we probably use only a small fraction of it. When you’re running a profit center, besides measuring your visits, your bounce rate and all that stuff, you also want to track conversion.

The good thing about Analytics is that you can seamlessly integrate it with other platforms, for example, you can connect it to e-junkie to know each time a person bought your ebook or, you can track ROI on all your Mailchimp email pieces going out.

The truth is that Analytics is pretty powerful and you should commit to learn more about it no matter what you do online. Cost: AND… it’s Free!

So how much is your profit center?

Let’s see, we have…

• Email list management and marketing for $15
• Customer Relationship Management for $25
• Payment processing (open)
• Ordering process and downloadable files for $5
• Subscriber visibility, demographics, location and social profiles for $12.50
• Online surveys for some kick-ass, crowdsourcing product development for $16.67
• Landing Pages for $25
• And web analytics of all kinds for $0

Our monthly cost to handle business online like true ninjas is $97.17!!!

Ok, so you’re not very impressed… let me share this with you, about 7 years ago I spent $70k on a web-based CRM that is now obsolete, around the same time I purchased a $60k phone system that is now worth $2k, if I wanted to hear my prospects opinions I would have to organize a focus group for a couple of thousands to get bullshit results, I paid around $20k for a static website that the only interactivity it had was the contact form and, believe or not, I never got to know any of my customers, hell! I barely had their location!

Let’s just leave it there, you don’t want to get me started with mailing lists… what is this water coming out of my eyes?

Your Turn…

What are your thoughts? are you using any of these tools or maybe different ones? What are your suggestions if you already have some experience or what are your questions if you are barely jumping in the water?

Happy profiting!

Are you feeling like you are the only one that doesn’t get any results from social media? Are you getting nothing but frustration while everybody else and their grandmas are talking about monetizing, getting prospects and all kinds of success stories?

Questioning your strategy is a good start. Here is a list of items that might be damaging your personal brand or preventing you from achieving those hard to get goals…

1. Your Content Is Self Centered

I said it before and it doesn’t sound very nice but nobody cares about you or your product. People care about how your product can provide a benefit or cover their needs. Turn it around and think about others. How you can be of help and provide value to your potential prospect. A good exercise to get started is to not allow yourself to write in first person.

2. You Don’t Come Out To Play

You are so focused on creating content and making your blog better that you forget about getting out and interacting with people in other platforms. If you don’t come out and play, when you finally decide to go to the park the other kids don’t even know who you are. A great way is to visit other blogs and comment, but don’t just say “Good Job”, have an opinion. Stay in your field, after all, you know what you’re talking about.

3. You Are All Strategy

If you are so attached to a strategy that you’re not even allowing yourself to experiment a little, you need to let go. I don’t care if you read it from a Social Media superstar. Test different things, allow yourself to make mistakes. When Gary Vaynerchuck was asked (on CNN) what was his strategy, he responded that there is no strategy but to follow your heart. I’m not against having one but leave enough room to be spontaneous. You don’t want to be a robot…

4. You Are Only Promoting Yourself

You’re suffering from the “me me me” syndrome. Nothing wrong with promoting yourself, the problem is when you become a broadcaster of your own message. This is different than any other media, in traditional media you wouldn’t run an ad promoting somebody else. Find content that you thing would be useful or interesting to your prospects and share it with them, I don’t care if it’s your own competitor. If you haven’t noticed, competition has a whole new meaning today, but that’s another post.

5. You Are In The Wrong Place

You might be hanging out in the wrong network. Most likely you know your target market, all you need to do is identify where the hangout is. I’ll use myself as an example (sorry…), I get no love from Linkedin members. Why? Because I’m talking to people, entrepreneurs and independents, not to companies. When I used to own a skateshop, my hangout was MySpace. Eliminate any networks that you feel are not right for your kind of product or service and focus on fewer ones.

6. You Are Not Engaging

I’m sure you heard this a lot and I’m sorry to tell you that if you don’t start conversations with real human beings, nobody is going to notice you’re there. Engage everywhere, not just when people comment on your blog. You can also engage in existing conversations, provide help or answer questions every chance you get. Also, make sure you always interact with the intention to help others, not yourself.

7. Your Content Is Not Being Shared

Make sure your blog is providing visitors with the necessary tools to share your content. Use tools such as Tweetmeme or Digg buttons or sharing systems like ShareThis. Make it easy for them, some people will share your content anyways if it’s worth it but don’t expect anybody to go the extra mile for you.

8. Your Blog Is Not Converting

If you are driving traffic to your site but you are not converting, you should probably take a hard look at it. In my previous post “12 Things To Consider Before Launching Your Blog“, I talk about different aspects you need to consider to have your blog work for you and help you reach your objectives. Are your messages clear? Are you using calls to action? Do you have too much clutter? Take some time to question everything about it and pay attention to successful people in your niche.

9. You Are Focused On Closing Sales

There are no direct sales here, you better forget about it. “Cold-Calling” is dead. You need to focus on building relationships instead and have the patience to let your prospects come to you. If you are used to pushing sales, think of a new concept: PULL instead of PUSH. A hardcore salesman gets no love on social media.

Be generous with your knowledge, people are going to ask you questions and you need to see this as the perfect opportunity to knock their socks off. Now they’ll remember you!

10. You Are Not Familiar With The Etiquette

I’m not saying you need to become a pro but at least get the basics to make sure you’re using the different networks properly. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are not the same thing. There are different ways to communicate, to approach people or to share content. Making mistakes is only human and asking is also allowed, making the same mistakes over and over again will damage your personal brand.

A good example is when you’re sharing content, learn how to properly credit the source or how to use short URL’s.

Final Thought…

Question everything. Test new things. Do your homework. The Internet is like putting things on paper, so make sure you represent yourself honestly.

Feel free to add your thoughts to this post…

Photo Credit: len-k-a

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Nomee has just released its 2.0 version to the public and I thought it would be a good idea to review some of its features. To start, I’ll say that there is a concept behind this application that caught my attention, it seems to me that you are connecting with people instead of websites.

The other important aspect, is that it could simplify your social media activity by managing all your networks from only one place, and I’m always chasing simplicity. So let’s get to it…

I guess first things first, this is an Adobe Air application so it lives on your desktop. It’s not web-based.

Every Network You Can Think Of…

Besides updating your Facebook status and your tweets, Nomee connects to 120 websites and feeds, which is quite impressive because most of the time applications connect to a few networks only.

Connecting With People Instead Of Websites

Nomee allows the user to import those connections that really matter, but what’s really cool is that from there you can follow those people wherever they are and bring it all in one place, in other words, you don’t have to chase people to different platforms.

Regain Control Of What You Share

Nomee has a feature called “Cards”, which is a profile you create in order to share information with your network. You can easily manage what you want to share with family or co-workers by setting up public or private Cards.

You can also take your Card and embed as a widget into your own website or blog.

Organization

Another cool feature that will help you simplify your social media activity is group aggregation. You can organize your network into groups and configure filters so you eliminate the clutter and receive only the information you want. With the just released version 2.0, you can now import and manage your Twitter Lists.

One of the things that are most important in social media is sharing and generating valuable content to your network, Nomee will be a great tool to simplify this task. Get all your information already filtered and classified in groups and share to all from one location. Priceless…

Final Thought…

Nomee looks like more than just a pretty dashboard, if you take the time to configure your settings it can really do a lot of the heavy lifting that comes with social media and handling different networks. But the app has many other features such as accessing YouTube videos right from your dashboard so you should visit the site and decide if you want to give it a try… it’s free btw.

Google to display search results based on Tweets, Bing to display Facebook and Twitter status, Facebook Fan Page and Twitter are now connected… And now, you can connect your LinkedIn to your Twitter. Is it all going to become one big network one day? I don’t know but it sure looks like we are more connected than ever.

Today, we’ll look at how to connect your LinkedIn profile to your Twitter and some of the reasons why you should or not enjoy “the peanut butter and the chocolate together”, as Biz Stone and Reid Hoffman said in their video last week (which I’m including in this post).

So let’s get to it in a step-by-step fashion as we always do:

Step 1: Go To Your LinkedInProfile

Login to your Linkedin account and go to your profile (edit). Click on the “Add Twitter account” link right below the “Websites” section.

Step 2: Let Them Do Their Thing

LinkedIn will connect to Twitter to get access to your account. Click “Allow” and just wait to get redirected back to your LinkedIn profile.

Step 3: What Kind Of Tweets Do You Want On Your Profile

You can either tell LinkedIn to display all your tweets or you have the option to use the Hashtag #in in your tweets when you want it to go to your profile. Save your settings.

Step 4: Check Your Status

Check your status to see if it’s working, if you don’t see it updated, go to Twitter and post a tweet. Go back to your LinkedIn profile, you should see it now.

That’s it if all you want is to update your LinkedIn status with your tweets. Now, if you want to bring Twitter into LinkedIn as an application, follow the next steps…

Step 5: Setup The “Tweets” Application

On the left menu, click on “Applications”, on the drop-down menu click on “Tweets”. In the next page click on the “Add Application” button.

Step 6: What Tweets To Display

Again you are asked to display all tweets or only the ones with the #in or #li Hashtags.

Step 7: You Can Now Operate Your Twitter From LinkedIn

You are set. You can view all tweets or you can view only yours. Also you can now tweet from your LinkedIn application.

But Why Should I Do This?, You Ask…

What is the point of connecting these two platforms with such different formats? Because makes sense to the future of social media and personal branding. Every day we move more towards making a living off our talents and passions, people and companies want to know what kind of work you have out there, what kind of influence, if you are a leader.

Even book deals are being signed based on what kind of follow an individual has. People are now more important.

Resumes are becoming obsolete, who you are is now in front of everybody. LinkedIn is a public resume and, I’m sorry but at least in my case, I care more about what you have to say than all those corporate titles.

The Interview

Reid Hoffman (Co-Founder of LinkedIn) and Biz Stone (Co-Founder of Twitter).

It’s A Wrap!

Let us know what you think in the comments section…