Every successful entrepreneur, whether online or traditional, started from the bottom.
History of the company: Arianna Huffington had a long-term vision where she desired online magazine to be. Coming from humble beginnings, she took out a loan to start the online newspaper without complete understanding how search engines work. According to Problogger.net by Darren Rowse, Excite, Google, and YaHoO! prefer giving special preference quietly to "Evergreen content," which consist of blog posts and webpages preferably 1500 words in length and better. Arianna Huffington was just getting started in the world of blogging and content creation when she started Huffington Post as a newbie online digital publisher. After taking out a loan to start the online newspaper, she acquired priceless information through countless books so she could learn along the way about unique content creation and how to grow her online magazine from small potatoes to financial smithereens.
Because of her entrepreneurial spirit and long-term drive, she grew the newspaper to be more successful than originally hoped for. Huffington Post was started the same year as YouTube.com: 2005. At the time of starting Huffington Post in 2005, Inc.com mentions Huffington did not have the necessary funds even to start the site and experienced "employment rejection." Most entrepreneurs today who became larger-than-life in their business endeavors experienced the greatest adversities life threw. Yet, they refused to throw in the towel and continued to do the entrepreneurial business work necessary to forge ahead with transforming their dreams into
fruition.
How Huffington Post became successful: Content. Lots and lots of content. Throughout Arianna's online career as editor in chief of the Huffington Post, the books she read about digital publishing gave her broad insight how to capitalize off of creating fresh content daily and the importance of search engine optimization. She pretty much scoured the web for interesting news stories and blogged commentary on any kind of interesting news pieces she discovered on HuffPo. Huffington Post is powered by Movable Type: a SixApart.com company started by a young couple out of a one-bedroom apartment back then. Her personal feelings in blog posts on Huffington Post drew traffic from search engines and inspired people to react to what she wrote. Because readers feelings got involved, this is only part of what made the Huffington Post successful.
Her unsuccessful bid for governor in 2003 indirectly contributed to the Huffington Post launching in 2005 and its success. It wasn't until she experienced failure in running for governor of California and raising money online at the time close to $1 million that she took into consideration running a business on the Internet in the form of an online newspaper blog. She met her business partner at the unsuccessful bid according to Inc.com, where they discussed like-minded ideas of putting together a solid online business plan and making it happen without hesitation. Like minds stuck together and made things work!
Her other ploy in making the Huffington Post successful "which I totally do not agree with," was inviting fellow bloggers to voluntarily write blogs for the site without paying them. I believe Arianna at the time had some form of funding to pay these people who were volunteering upon her request. There's no such thing as free labor. Free labor at the time is also a major contributing factor in reference to volunteer bloggers posting content to the site that accelerated her online newspaper success: the use of other people's energy to drive traffic from organic indexed search engine listings.
In addition to free labor, she understood the importance of forming and sustaining online relationships with readers. Relationships are a major factor in the success or failure of any endeavor. She understood that. Her content allow people to feel her personality from a certain point of view and it formed relationships with people from all walks of life took time to read her blogs. And because of the relationships she formed with readers, this is also what helped her online newspaper achieve horizons unimagined. She didn't experience success as a blogger without encountering failure. Failure is the silent catalyst for any entrepreneur to rebound from and inspire others in bringing out the best.
Arianna used a combination of creative blogging tactics to keep readers engaged in longevity. In addition to contextual blogging, she added images, streaming web video, a sign-up box for people to register their e-mail addresses to receive e-mail newsletters of her newest blogs, and social networking share buttons for people to share her new blog posts on their favorite social networks. The exponential energy of others sharing her new blogs on their favorite social networks also catapulted the online newspaper to receive "larger-than-life web traffic," reducing the need to pay PPC "pay per click" online advertising services to drive traffic to the site. This not only help people to stay in the know about her newly published content, but also Inspired long-term word-of-mouth going about everything blogged on Huffington Post.
Revenue models that online publishers can have:
Ads by Google - This is one of the easiest ways publishers were opted into the Google AdSense program can make money. The beauty of being an AdSense publisher is having a piece of mind knowing you don't have to sell anything in order to generate commissions. Publishers create content in the form of blog posts or webpages and use that as a medium to get free traffic from search engines. Huffington Post adapted the Google AdSense model in the early stages of the site until it was temporarily frozen before being acquired by AOL and having their Google ads reappear.
Affiliated banner ads from affiliate marketing companies (AffiliateWindow.com, CJ.com, LinkShare, or ShareaSale.com) - Any blogger or website owner can sign up as an affiliate marketer with the aforementioned affiliate marketing companies. Upon approval as a new publisher, affiliates can select merchants relevant to the niche topic of their blog or website and Graham affiliated banner ads after being approved as a new affiliate in the affiliate program of choice they apply to. This is a great revenue model for online publishers to generate income because if a blogger has niche content on their site concerning weight loss, politics, or anything deemed worthwhile reading, these topics alone have the potential to drive huge traffic from search engines and earn nice publisher commissions. This can be the perfect business model for working from home in their spare time or working online full-time while increasing the potential to become an Internet millionaire.
In-line text ads (double underlined words) - This is virtually looked at as the "cousin or sister" to the Google AdSense contextual advertising program. The Google AdSense program displays contextual ads or graphic ads alongside blog posts or webpages. In-line text ads from digital contextual advertising companies such as Kontera.com, VibrantMedia, IndustryBrains.com, or InfoLinks.com allow publishers to install a small snippet of JavaScript code into the template of their blogs or websites and display double underlined colored links hyperlinked to certain keywords. When site readers hover their computer mouse over double underlined keywords, a small bubble-sized advertisement appears in the form of a contextual ad or small video ad. When the site reader clicks the bubble sized text ad or video ad, the publisher earns a commission without selling anything. This is why in-line text ads are the [cousin or sister] to the Google AdSense program, because it is not against AdSense TOS to have these ads running alongside them and increases the probability of the publisher diversifying their income successfully to the point of having "multiple streams of online income." Blogger Joel Comm, co-creator of YaHoO! Games discusses this topic in detail.
Permission based e-mail marketing with ads in e-mail newsletters - Permission based e-mail marketing continues to be a stable means of publishers earning good money from anything marketed through an e-mail newsletter. Forbes.com uses permission-based e-mail marketing as a means of promoting the Ken Fisher investment program. When promoting the Fisher investment program through Forbes e-mail newsletters, the company discusses the importance of making wise investment choices. They use a ploy of stressing the importance of investing long-term in addition to placing graphic banner ads in certain positions throughout the content. Studies have shown when publishers place ads in the header, center, and footer of any content whether it be a blog post, e-mail newsletter, or webpage, increases the probability of publishers securing income from simple conversions, because simple conversions come from making ads easily accessible for readers to click on and quietly entice them to make a purchase. Permission-based e-mail marketing also allows publishers to keep readers updated on the newest things published "in most cases without promoting ads in newsletters and just focused on keeping site viewers retained to keep coming back for more."
Pop-up ads - This is a revenue stream publishers can have but quite annoying. This was a popular revenue form for publishers to make easy money from as it required no selling. Pop up ads ran rampant like girls gone wild in early 2000's. After gaining wide spread web reputation as an advertising annoyance, savvy web publishers sought alternative sophisticated avenues to generate income without solely relying on directly selling something such as relying 100% on affiliated banner ads to make money. Savvy web publishers ditched pop-up ads and resorted to selling ad space on blogs and websites as a means of guaranteed monthly income alongside having Google ads on their sites. Huffington Post allegedly adapted this business model as it resorted to employee of diverse methods to generate income from advertisements as the site grew in content and traffic.
Video impression ads (publishers get paid for automated streaming video "impressions" that site visitors don't have to click on: just watch) - Huffington Post understood the importance of having video combined with contextual content and images. They understood the importance of streaming Web video inside blog posts on the Huffington Post to entice people to keep coming back and share content on social networks. They understood the importance of having video in blogs because streaming Web video keeps eyeballs on blogs and websites longer than just having contextual content. Huffington Post combined video and content as a means of growing the site and diversifying their income. It added "Sweet income" to their diverse strategy of gaining and retaining multiple streams of online income. Streaming online video continues to be a secure means of Huffington Post earning good money today as well as traditional bloggers using streaming online video as a means of gaining and retaining their target blog reader audience. 5Min.com is one of thge companies they partner with for video content that continues to be a stable revenue model for HuffPo.
If you want to be successful in blogging like Arianna Huffington, now is the time to put your thoughts and faith into action and get moving by taking the first step toward getting your business blog online so you can get a piece of the billion dollar internet money pie.
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