Make Money from Reality TV

Love it or hate it, reality television takes up a huge chunk of the schedules and just when you think you have heard the last of the latest batch of brain-dead half-wits, a new show begins showcasing the next wave of talentless wannabes.

As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Even though it is drivel and chewing gum for the eyes in it’s worst possible form, reality television “stars” are searched for in their thousands online. This article looks at how you can make money from reality tv and the contestants very limited talent and shelf life.

The key is to create a blog for an individual contestant on a show such as Big Brother and register a domain name which includes their name for further search engine optimisation. I recommend you use free blog software such as Wordpress because not only is it loved by the search engines, but there is a fantastic plugin which allows you to easily add videos from the main websites such as Youtube, Daily Motion etc., which will form the basis of your blog’s content.

Updating it is a painless process. Search on Youtube for Big Brother videos featuring your chosen contestant and add them to your blog daily with a short write up. In effect, you are creating a video diary of the time they spend in the house. There are numerous show fanatics who post hundreds of videos on Youtube, so finding new material to blog about, sometimes hours after the show ends, is an easy task.

My Reality TV Experience

I myself ran several Big Brother 7 contestant blogs two years ago and then a few for Big Brother 8 last year with varying degrees of success. I found it was very easy to rank for individual contestant’s names in Google because of course they are “new” in terms of fame and there are very few, if any, competing web pages. Indeed, I remember when Big Brother 7 contestant Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace was introduced, there were just three competing web pages for the search term Aisleyne, there are now over 500,000!

You will be amazed by just how much traffic these wannabes generate. Within a matter of days your blogs can attract several thousand unique visitors per day, all coming from free search engine traffic! To maximise your earnings for the time involved in building and maintaining the blogs I recommend creating them for just the younger “sexy” female contestants.

This is because the girls get a lot of searches from typical “lads mag” readers: male, aged between 16-34, who has plenty of disposable income and is just the sort of demographic you want to target! The girls will often do photoshoots (take your pick from practically any of the half-attractive ones such as Imogen, Aisleyene, Orlaith, the Twins, Emily the Racist etc.) and some will attempt a singing career (Shabnam, Chanelle and the Twins) when they leave the Big Brother house, thus extending their longevity in the public eye and your earning potential with your blog.

How to Exploit the Exploited

Despite getting an almost limitless flow of free web traffic during the contestants 15 minutes of fame, it is harder to make money from your blog than you may expect. Visitors seemingly want a quick “perve” at the latest videos or photos and then leave without buying anything. With this in mind, I have enjoyed the most success monetising the blogs via Google Adsense because at least if the visitor is keen to make a hasty exit from your site, they may as well click on an advert to do so and you get paid for it!

The types of adverts served on the blogs are not very high-paying, usually just a couple of cents per click but two years ago, at the peak of my success with Big Brother 7, I was making around £1,000 per month from Adsense across just a handful of blogs. However, last year I found it a lot more difficult to make even half of that amount, even though my traffic had increased substantially.

I tried to monetise the websites in other areas without any real success. I attempted to promote the “adult” videos featuring both Imogen and Lea during Big Brother 7 as an affiliate but amazingly did not make a single sale. I made a few hundred dollars promoting the Adult Friend Finder affiliate programme across a few blogs last year but failed to make any serious sales with movie download or “how to seduce women” type affiliate products.

If anyone has any success promoting a certain product on a reality television blog then I would love to hear from you!

An Ideal Opportunity for a Beginner

Hopefully I am not painting too bleak a picture because that is not the intention. I haven’t bothered dipping my toes into this year’s Big Brother because I am involved in far more lucrative projects and simply do not have the time to keep another five or six blogs updated on a daily basis.

That said, I still believe it is a fantastic online business opportunity for a new marketer to “cut their teeth” in this industry because there are only positives to take from it - fast ranking in the search engines, thousands of free, targeted visitors and you will make money with Adsense and other affiliate programmes.

There is also the option to sell the blogs for a juicy profit and you should especially do this for the average performers and contestants who are not going to make you a long term income. The blog must be sold when the traffic levels are still strong because it has to appear attractive to a potential buyer. Take screenshots of your traffic and earnings and advertise the blogs on webmaster forums such as DigitalPoint or Sitepoint. You should be able to command a price of a few hundred pounds per blog at least which will give you a nice lump sum to invest in an even bigger and better online project!

Why Stop at Big Brother?

With the television scheduler’s almost instatiable appetite for “making a star” out of ordinary members of the public, there seems to be a never ending barrage of reality television and talent shows. Pretty much any prime-time show which has some sort of viewer’s phone vote can be turned into a successful blog. Here are a few other shows you could monetise:

Britain’s Got Talent
This show has a short run so it’s best to think like Simon Cowell and pick out the contestants you can exploit long term. Singers are a good bet, because they are likely to release CDs and DVDs and if they are genuinely talented, you could make money from your blog for years to come. There is still time to create blogs for teen singers Andrew and Faryl and classical group Escala, who are set to land recording contracts. You could potentially make a good income promoting their single and album releases as an affiliate of Amazon or other online retailer. Of course, you can also promote tickets for the Britain’s Got Talent live tour while you await the crazed demand for their single and subsequent album releases.

The X Factor
Following on from what I just wrote about singers, it’s not surprising Simon Cowell is worth millions because there are usually 12 or so contestants that reach the finals of the X Factor. Several go on to release records regardless of whether or not they win the show so it’s worth creating blogs for all but the most dreadful of finalists. Even if a singer vanishes without trace upon their elimination, you will have made some Adsense money along the way and you don’t want to miss out on a potentially big affiliate payday when when the eventual winner releases the number one Christmas single and follow up album. See also American Idol to tap into the lucrative USA market with your blogs.

Celebrity Reality TV Shows
Shows such as I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Hell’s Kitchen usually feature a relative unknown “celebrity”, who is also more ofthen than not a piece of eye candy. Think of I’m a Celeb’s Gemma Atkinson, a minor actor on teen soap Hollyoaks or Abby Clancy, a footballer’s girlfriend and aspiring lingerie model on Hell’s Kitchen. While they are not complete unknowns, they do not have much of a web presence so it is a good chance for you to get in early and create a fan blog about them because their profile will only rise after their stint on the show.

Musical Talent Shows
We’ve had talent shows for Joseph, The Sound of Music, Oliver on the BBC and of course Grease on ITV. A general blog for these shows as a whole is a better option than individual contestant blogs because they do not have the same level of following as the other talent shows mentioned. The winner will usually release an album, as Joseph winner Lee Mead did last Christmas and you can promote tickets for the musical the winner will be performing in when the show eventually reaches a conclusion.

Get Blogging!

That should be enough to get your minds racing and start thinking about ways you can make money from reality tv. While your blogs are unlikely to make you rich, they are a source of at least some income and decent enough traffic levels to enable you to sell them on at a profit at a later date.

No longer will a newbie marketer be short of cash to invest in new projects and who knows, you may actually start to enjoy brain-rotting television!