Are you blogging naked right now?

Naked blogging is anytime you give all of your very best information away for free. If you want to make money blogging, it’s not a good thing to do.

If you were to survey your regular readers they would tell you they value your blog. They appreciate the time you take to create entertaining, thoughtful, informative posts. They would tell you they look forward to your content.

That’s why they read your blog.

But if you want to make money blogging you need another element. You need those readers to spend money. You need them to click on an ad and buy one of your advertisers’ products. You need them to check out an affiliate site you recommend and buy something so you can earn a commission.

There are many ways to get that done.

You can put up ads and hope someone clicks on them. That’s called passive marketing. It does work, just not very well.

But there is a better way. You can ask your visitors directly to check out an affiliate link or visit an advertiser.

That’s called active marketing and it is very effective.

Active marketing in action can be broken down like this:

A person visits your blog. You give them some reason to sign up for your RSS or email list. They sign up. Over time you show them your expertise and they begin to trust you and see you as a friend. Once you have their trust you then ask them to buy a product or service. Because they trust you, they do.

And then you make money.

Think about how a woman seduces a man by showing a little hint of cleavage or a slightly too short hemline. It’s a hint of better things to come. Fortunately my wife is a good “hinter.”

If you are going to make money blogging you need to start looking at your blogging as a sort of “tease”—you give solid information openly on your posts, but you offer the best and most complete information to those who sign up for your list. It’s still at no cost, but they have to make more of a commitment than simply being a bystander.

That’s called leadblogging.

Here are some examples of leadblogging:

• Offering a free resource to your visitors who sign up for your list
• Doing a post with 3 parts and providing the last two parts via a downloadable report to your subscribers
• Referring to a more detailed report in a post that is only available to subscribers
• Creating a signature line offering a compellingly titled eBook where downloaders are first asked to subscribe
• Creating a free viral resource that encourages readers to subscribe to your list
• Having a FeedaPALOOZA
• Referring to a great free resource in comments on other blogs where the visitor is encouraged to subscribe before grabbing the resource
• Password protecting a post that only your subscribers can read

At this point you might be tempted to think you aren’t being fair to your readers by withholding some information from them. But the exact opposite is happening: By giving them all of your information without expecting anything–even an RSS subscription–in return, you are telling them your content is worthless.

Requiring a commitment on their part shows them your content has real value. Try leadblogging–you’re worth it!

Art by Lorianne O’Grady

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