If you establish a brand of authority and gather a loyal following, you could lose all your other business assets and still pick back up tomorrow and make money by giving your following what they want. That kind of business equity is truly lasting.

Jay
Co-Host, Internet Business Mastery Podcast

@Janna – Thanks

@Joanna – Yeah, links might be a *symptom* of authority but it is a bit unhelpful naming convention on their part

@Simonne – If you read through RSS you don’t see them but on the other hand how many blogs have the scale he has? Sure you can have whatever advertising you like but every small element adds up to create or damage your result. Too many blogs go overboard with the ugly in your face adsense and such and though I love his content I think his is one of them.

@Jen – I think we all prefer reading authority blogs

@Matt – Just think how much easier it would have been when you could have chosen *any* niche But yes, smaller niches have traffic they never had years ago and focus is always preferable

@Colbs – Authority Blogs are perfect for business, which involves selling via a strong and valuable relationship. You can sell, have ads, all of that, just put the audience and relationship over ad clicks.

I’m still finding my way round all this but I’d say some of the machinery of blogging clouds the picture – like technorati references to ‘authority’ which only in fact only derives from the numbers of links, however they might have been earned.

Joanna

I totally agree with what you are saying. I am like many people, that when I go to a site to learn about things…the more ads I see, the less authority I give to that blog. I think that it does take time & a lot of effort to build your traffic…but you have created a great place to do that. Thanx for doing what you do. Great area to learn.

On another point – I was just over at Technorati – and I noticed your picture seems a little … how shall we say…squished? That or you have changed quite a bit since that picture or the one you have here was taken.

@Slade – I might have coined the phrase, although someone has also likely used it before me. I think it works though right?

@Steve – Ads I don’t mind, in fact ads can be quite attractive such as those on copyblogger and techcrunch. Adsense just winds me up the wrong way though. It makes bloggers choose between what is good for coin and good for readers. Many come down on the side of coin

@Bill – Darren is one of the best bloggers at not letting the dollar signs distort his work. Without mentioning names I can think of some *far* worse

I personally don’t mind the ads unless the site is cluttered with them to the point you don’t know what the site does or you don’t know where the ads stop and the site begins.

After reading your post I made an “executive decision” to not put ads on my blog site. Just a simple text link to my ebook site.

Thanks for the term “authority” blog.

I benefit from a similar, full-time, but definitely indirect income from my blogging. I’ve been calling it a “Subscriber-based” Marketing Plan, adapted from more old-school email newsletter list-building tactics.

Site Stickiness and Reader Loyalty are basically incompatible with “high-traffic / adblock” blog business models.

Thanks again for naming this — “authority” blogging — or at least exposing me to the label.

Totally agree that balancing the cultivation of authority with the need to respect you readers’ sensibilities and desire for a “cleaner” experience is a tough challenge , but I don’t necessarily believe they are mutually exclusive goals.

A great example of this is personal development guru, Steve Pavlina’s blog. He is, hands down, the dominant player in self-development blogging with a massive, loyal audience that he built with exceedingly long (2-5,000 word), highly-authoritative articles. But, he aslo includes a healthy mix of Adsense and affiliate links and ads throughout the site that reportedly generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $40K a month.

Steve monetized his site after about 5-months of clean traffic building and reported that he took a little flack, but his content was so authoritative (and isanely long from blogging standards) and delivered so much value, the shakeout was little more than a blip on his traffic radar.

So, totally agree that it is hard and may even require a level of uniqueness, knowledge and writing abilities that is rare, but I believe building an authority-based blog that also integrates substantial monetization is doable.

Thanks, again, for the great, thought-provoking post!

Jonathan Fields