How to Monetize your Blog: Make it “License friendly” (Part 2)

The blogger’s online business toolkit seems to grow daily:  advertising, affiliate sales, sponsored posts, selling products and services, consulting, speaking, selling books, and more.

Whether you do ALL of those things — or NONE of those things — there’s one more revenue opportunity that is often overlooked. Make your original online content license friendly.

Let’s first look at some of the common alternatives.

How to Monetize Your Blog: Give Content Away for Free?

Some blog writers give their content away for free-no permission required to reuse it, no strings attached to how it is reused.

That’s certainly one philosophy, and there are bloggers who do this quite successfully — like Leo Babauta, of the blog, Zen Habits.

His belief is that the free reuse of his content generates more opportunity than requiring permission ever could. His “uncopyright” philosophy is summed up here.

Offering free content works well for many content creators who use it as a gateway to to sell other products and services.

But, don’t overlook the market value of your excellent content as a source of revenue, too.

Creative Commons and Other Partial Solutions

Some bloggers are outraged at having their work reused without permission, and take a pragmatic approach: define the terms for content reuse, and go after infringers using plagiarism detection tools.

Many in this group allow noncommercial reuses of their content using a Creative Commons license, and combine this with a plagiarism detection tool to track down misuse of content.

To this group, we’d say:  Why just limit the downside (misuse of your content) with none of the upside?  Why not allow legal reuse of content up front, with a proper license, and, potentially, revenue?  You’ll have fewer infringers to chase down later!

Instant Licensing: A Business Model Benefitting Both Content Creators and Readers

What’s the next logical step in your blog’s evolution?  We suggest becoming a license friendly blog:

• Continue to distribute and republish content widely
• Ensure that permission to reuse your content is granted properly and easily
• When it makes sense to the reader, license content automatically with the click of a mouse
• Build in the detection of content misuse (piracy), seamlessly.

iCopyright’s Toolbar and patented licensing service gives you the power to do all of these things, instantly and inexpensively, a win-win for content creator and reader alike.

Watch a quick video, to learn how installing the iCopyright Toolbar can help you protect, monetize, syndicate, and license your content!

It all comes down to choice.

In Part 1 of this series on blog monetization, we explored the various stages that blogs go through as they grow, and the most common tools used by entrepreneurial bloggers to create a profitable online business model.

In this post, we suggest equipping your blog with the means to present your content in a licensing friendly form.

It all comes down to choice.  Just as you give readers the choice to buy a carefully vetted affiliate product, or the choice to click on the ads on your page, you can let others choose to republish or reuse what you create at fees that you set.

Of course, readers can continue sharing links to your site for free.  But for those who want to actually republish your content on their site, and pay you for the right to do so, why not have that option?

At this point in your blog’s evolution, it’s another option worth considering.  Add a licensing tool … you may be pleasantly surprised.