The New York Times published an article that analyzes why bloggers get into the business. More bloggers are using their sites to earn revenue from advertising links, promote their products and services, and gain authority in their fields of interest. As the economy stumbles, bloggers face a variety of choices. Should they concentrate on their regular jobs and abandon their blogs? Should they leap full-time into the blogosphere and try to make a living from the web?
One thing’s for sure: few bloggers really do a reasonable income from their blogs. It is possible to make a living from blogging, although it can take years to build enough readers and advertisers to generate sustainable revenue streams. I mentioned Perez Hilton on 20 March 2008. His income has increased quite a bit over the last year, although keeps getting sued in court over his blog’s content, according to this Wikipedia article.
BoingBoing grows
BoingBoing’s four co-editors each have paying writing jobs that they promote heavily on BoingBoing. For years, the web site has posted weird news items focused on technology and the Internet. Over time, the blog became one of the most popular sites of its kind on the Internet. According to an article on Wikipedia, BoingBoing added a business manager in 2004 to administer the site’s operations.
Advertising was added to the site and its RSS feeds soon afterwards, to defray the site’s bandwidth charges. Popular web sites can rack up a large bill for their Internet connection. Adding ads to the site’s pages and overall design is a key success factor.
In the last few months, BoingBoing’s web site has been redesigned to include discussion threads and a subsidiary blog focused on electronic gadgets. The core writers still post articles every day, but they have brought in more people to administer the site and run the site’s discussion forums. Honda has signed on as a sponsor. There’s also a video site, although BoingBoing’s writers seem stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. Perhaps they will get better over time, as they build an independent media empire from their quirky web site.
A uniform approach
Paul Lukas’ Uni Watch is a good example of how to build income from a blog. Paul is a freelance journalist who has appeared in the New York times. His blog is an obsessive study of sports uniforms. Paul posts one article each day, with a long trail of links and miscellaneous items. By the end of the day, users have posted at least a hundred comments as they debate the topics of the day.
The blog had been funded by advertising links and user memberships. A basic membership included a uniform-themed wallet card, while more expensive packages included a custom designed logo and an interview posted to the blog.
A few days ago, Paul announced that ESPN had picked him up as a regular contributor. Paul had been writing freelance articles for ESPN’s Page 2 web site. He had already hired an intern a few months ago to manage the discussion boards and post articles on the weekends. Paul has decided he can scale back the blog membership program to the basic level, now that ESPN is supporting him. After almost 2 years of blogging, he can take a vacation or two without shutting down the blog completely.
