Writers who are starting out to earn a living by publishing a blog today often include merchandising as a key part of their monetization plans and count less on contextual advertising than even 2 years ago.

Darren Rowse, the successful Australian blogger who publishes Problogger.net and the co-author with Chris Garrett of the book, ProBlogger, Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income, talked Friday about the upcoming re-release of his book and the changes in the industry since it was released in 2008.

Social media is more important as a promotion vehicle and as a monetization mechanism, Darren told the audience at South By Southwest in Austin. In addition to Problogger.net, Darren runs two sites, Digital Photography School and TwiTip – Twitter Tips

He and Garrett published their book in 2008 -  mostly because they had written a lot about how to make money blogging. “Blogging about blogging is a little bit sad” Rowse joked. “We’d written a lot, but still had people coming asking how do you do it.”

The new edition of the book coming out next month will cover social media in depth and will add a case study based on the successful strategies Rowse used to build Digital Photography School into a business.

The first 2 years when he started Digital Photography School were spent building content. During that time, he learned the value of the most basic, beginner level content for a site. An article “how to hold a digital camera” which he was almost too embarassed to publish because it seemed to simple, turned out to be one of his most successful pieces.

Publishing tips:

• Quantity of content – It’s about quality AND it is about quantity. Instead of 1 post a week, if you write 2 posts a day, at the end of a year, you will have 700 pages that searchers can find, and your community can share.
• Promotion – Use all of the Web sites available to promote your content, don’t expect it to be found. “I promoted my content with 2 questions in mind: Who is the reader I want? Where are they gathering already? Rowse then started to participate in existing photography communities and established his credibility.
• Building Community, and using the community to create content. Rowse started “Reader Workshops” in which his readers were asked to help with a Selected question. The content from those has become more popular than some of his blog content. The community also takes ownership and helps with such things as acquiring sponsors and advertisers.
• Provide e-mail subscriptions. Rowse said his e-mail subscriptions are 3 times more popular than RSS subscriptions and in the book he covers how the emails are used to monetize his site.
• Today, Rowse combines ad networks with direct advertising sales, affiliate commissions, merchandising, and with premium content such as e-books – his own and some for others – which provide a high profit margin.

A lot of things he tried when growing his blog into a publishing business did not work. “My philosophy is try as many things as you can, then build on what works.”