Build Audience First or Monetize Right Away?

Check Out What Missy Ward Advises

[martinibuster]

For those who don't know about her, Missy Ward is an affiliate marketing authority, a thought leader and one of the founders of the Affiliate Summit conference. I was pleasantly surprised by Missy Ward's blog post about whether to build audience first or monetize right away [missyward.com]. Maybe I shouldn't have been because what she advises makes a lot of sense! I always felt that building links first then monetizing makes sense because you'll get more links that way. But check out what Missy Ward advises and let me know what you think.

Bloggers always ask me my opinion on whether they build their audience first and then monetize their blog, or monetize from the start. Build Your Blog's Audience First or Monetize From The Start

While you may get different answers based on the reason why the blog was built, for me, the answer has always been clear...

Please read the blog post [missyward.com] first, I assure you it's very good and worth reading. Then I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

[RhinoFish]

She's right! From the number of people I've helped and mentored in this specific area, I can attest, it's a common (and tragic) mistake to go the other way. I once was chatting with such a person, they had two projects, a political forum where people bickered all day (and bought nothing) and dreams of growing a BBQ blog (person was a master griller) - found it easy to get traffic to the political blog, so had focused on it for years. I suggested burning the forum down, and spending all their time on the BBQ site (for Missy's fundamental reason). Been years, I forget who the person even was, wondering today if they're still toiling with ways to get people to buy Obama tshirts or hate Obama bumper stickers... yuck, what a slog that must be!