It’s all about the sales pitch.

Last year I was contacted by a little start up called Uptake. They had selected me (woo hoo!) to be one of their Top 100 Travel Experts. Actually I was a bit flattered at the time, especially when I saw the other names on the list. Travel gurus that I admired, friends that I had known for years, and colleagues I was proud to be listed with. Then the emails started. I was “encouraged” to add one of their buttons to my side bar. A little button that linked to them and stated I was a “travel expert”. Immediately I considered the ad revenue I would be losing… I charge for ad space on my sidebar, why would I give that away for free? Soon I got reminder emails, assuming I had forgotten to add the link and pressing me to do so now. I ignored it.

A few months later it was pointed out to me that they were scraping my RSS feed and republishing it on their site. They were getting listed in the search engines for my content! In exchange for naming me a so-called “travel expert” they thought I owed them all of my content and a link to their site. It’s a great business model for them, but absolutely worthless for me.

It’s not just the start ups.

Lonely Planet will happily use your content (and that of 11,000 other bloggers) for free. They share adsense revenue, but they don’t block the search engines from indexing your content as theirs. What does that mean? From my experience, I’ve seen certain sites rank lower in the search results than Lonely Planet — for their own content. Think about that. You’re lending your content to LP, in the hopes of getting some traffic, but there is a chance — and maybe it won’t happen to you — that your content will be moved down in Google by Lonely Plant.

Recently, I was contacted by a website started by Zen Habits, called The Daily Brainstorm, a collaboration of inspiration bloggers, hoping to drive traffic to each others sites by having an excerpt of our posts gathered together on this site (with a link back to the full post). Three months later, the marketing manager writes me:

Participating as a contributor for The Daily Brainstorm is a highly sought after affiliation, and we hope you view it as positive element in the marketing and growth of your own blog. Including the logo/link on your blog is a requirement for continued participation as a contributor.

Please post the link on your home page by Monday, November 1. We will assume that you do not wish to continue as a contributor if you choose not to post the link (or if you don’t contact us before that date).

So basically, link to me or die.  No thank you for your free content.  No happy to work with you, but could you do me a favor.  Just a simple demand.  Give me a link that is worth, maybe $25-$75/mo depending on the size of your blog, and in exchange, I’ll continue to benefit from your free content.

Three ways to woo bloggers into giving away stuff for free:

1.  Flatter them.

2.  Leverage your brand.

3.  Use the bait and switch.

At the end of the day, we all know these partnerships are not really benefiting us.  Sometimes just being asked feels so good, we’re willing to over look the blantant attempts to get something for free.

The next time this happens to you?  Just say no.  I promise you’re not missing out on a thing — except perhaps, building someone else’s business for free.

Don’t get me wrong. Text links are good money. Great money. I’ve sold text links the past. I can name many sites that still do. They still rank high in Google. They still have a good Pagerank. I won’t get into whether or not you should sell them. This post isn’t about that. But the larger issue that without text links you can’t make money is a fallacy and a line of thinking perpetually argued by those still stuck in the box.

When most people think of the phrase “think outside the box,” they imagine a big boardroom of people brainstorming the next big idea. There’s some guy at the head of the table going “Come one people, we need to think outside the box on this one” and then everyone at the table looks around nervously at each other. Well, be your own big boardroom. Think outside the box. Without creativity, you will not succeed.

For example, take a site like Zen Habits. It’s a gigantic website with over 500,000 visitors per month. But it didn’t start that way. He grew that site every day. And he has made it a point to never sell advertising on the site. But eventually, he quit his day job and now Zen Habits is his job. So how does he make living from his site then? Ebooks. He created a trusted brand and now people buy his books. He supports his whole family on his ebooks, which got him a real book deal.

In order to be successful online, you must think outside the box. You must always be trying new things. In the words of Thomas Edison: “I didn’t fail; I just tried 1,000 ways that didn’t work.” You must be willing to experiment, take risks, and lose in order to finally win. I’ve tried Facebook ads, Adwords, guest posting, using Adsense, not using Adsense, Facebook ads again, different hostel booking engines, flight engines, etc in order to see what works and what doesn’t. I’ll try new products and services. I am always testing. I’m always experimenting to find that perfect mix.

That’s the important thing. In order to succeed, you must try everything. You must think to yourself how can I reach more people? What ways can I make money? Where can I go that doesn’t have people already? What haven’t I tried? I guest blog on finance blogs not travel blogs. People on finance sites love to travel and save money so it’s a perfect match for my site. Think laterally. I’m thinking about doing iphone APPs. Gary from Everything Everywhere created a podcast. Christine is making a documentary.

The point here is if you limit the online game to text links and banner ads, you will fail. That blogger is right. You won’t make any money. Even with over 100,000 visitors a month, I still have trouble attracting banner ads. The ad space just isn’t there yet.

Be beyond ads. Maybe ebooks are right. Maybe affiliate ads. Maybe Adsense. Maybe selling someone else’s books. A membership site. Consulting. You won’t know until you try but if you never try, you already failed. Don’t box yourself in. Look at the lifecaster iJustine. All she does is video blog her life. She didn’t just start a website and think “text ads.” No, she thought what is something different I could. She thought outside the box.

There are many ways to make it online. Those who have made it have done it by bucking conventional wisdom and thinking outside the box. They got creative. If you want to make it, you must do that too. Narrow thinking won’t help you last on the internet. Be bold. Be daring. Be successful.

1.  List posts are not evil. They’re not the solution either, but it’s an easy shorthand for communicating information.  I used to be a purist about such things… no more.

2.  Network laterally. The people I became closest with, as a blogger, were the people who started at the same time as me.  We moved up the ranks together.  We’ve seen stuff, man.  Listen, as much as you want Darren Rowse from Problogger to be your BFF, the truth is, he can’t help you.  It’s the people on your level, dealing with the same things as you that will be your greatest allies.

3.  There is no such thing as a king-maker. Even a link from the NY Times won’t make your blog popular.  It won’t sell your product and it won’t influence people –unless, you have the goods to do it without them.  If you’re already bringing it, then a little push can be a game changer.  However, everyone I know made it the old-fashioned way — through hard work and time.

4.  Don’t let emotions cloud your thinking. People who accuse successful brands of being “lucky” (as opposed to deserving their success) are suffering from a case of sour grapes.  Don’t let yourself fall into this trap of thinking you can’t make it because some magical lucky star hasn’t fallen in your path.  The people who make it do so because they are better than you.  You might not like what they’re good at (say marketing as opposed to writing) but they still have talent of some sort.  Respect it, get your head down and move on.

5.  Consistency is over-rated. Writing five posts a week is stupid if you write crap.  End of story.  In the beginning, I would feel so much pressure to get something out  there that I’d stick a pic or video up.  Big mistake.  Strong content always wins, even if it’s once a month.  Trust me, no one is wondering why you haven’t updated.  They only remember your site when there’s new content.  Better make it good.

6.  Not all traffic is the same. I always ask people, “Would you rather sell 100 units of your product or have 100,000 people buy nothing?”  A site with massive traffic but zero conversion is a sign that you’re not reaching your core audience.  Of course, if your only goal is high numbers, regardless of relevancy, influence or conversion, then rock on.  But for the rest of us, we have some other goal for blogging, whether it’s building a community or speaking gigs or money or selling some product or getting  a book deal.  If you want those things, you need an audience that is interested in what you do — not just a wave of people who visit once and never return.

7.  Don’t check your stats more than once a month. Seriously, I know that just made you suck in wind and hold your stomach.  You’ll be okay.  The truth is, we check stats for daily affirmation, but really it’s a very unreliable indicator of success.  Certain posts will do better than others.  If you write for your stats, you’ll end up with a very different site than if you write for a long term goal.  You’ll have vapor content — things that do well initially but fizzle out.  You should check stats, but don’t let them rule your life.

8.  Twitter, Facebook, commenting on blogs etc are not your job. Sometimes, as a blogger, we get really caught up in a bunch of stuff that’s not really part of being a blogger.  We promote first, write second.  I think the people who do the best are spending more time thinking about their content strategy than they are about getting more followers on the latest social media tool.  Of course you have to do both: a blog without promotion is like a tree falling in the woods… no one hears it.  But if your day is leaning more towards social media than heads down writing, something is amiss.

9.  Big Fat Events are important. If you want to take your blog to the next level, eventually you have to run an event.  You might do a contest or a meetup or a give folks a free ebook, but eventually, you either show up to the dance or you don’t.  I’m not sure why this is… I ran a writing event in 2008 and had no idea it would do anything for me personally.  Suddenly I was recognized as a resource for that niche and things began to change.  If you look around to your peers and beyond, you’ll see the same trend.  Stepping out as a leader means people believe you’re one.  From there you can grow even further.  (Caveat: unless your event is a Big Fat Bomb, which is worse than not doing anything at all).

10.  We don’t do this for the money. Honestly.  I have turned down more things in my online career than I have accepted.  I had to draw lines.  My instincts may not be the same as yours, but eventually everyone carves out a set of boundaries they live by.  In some ways, in order to grow, you have to limit your focus.  It’s the only way.