How To Make Money Blogging

Posted on March 4, 2008
Filed Under What's New |

What is the relationship between that headline and an apathetic press?

It’s the kind of headline that’s had me dragging my sorry eyes around the netherworld of the web the last few days.

There seems to be a huge list of people who think they know how to do it - my own little insight into their secret (Kathy says we need more insights) is that the majority of these sites that make money, make money by luring people like me to read about how to make money blogging. It’s one of those distortions of the web that means actually more than 50% of it is a sham, as is a huge chunk of the blogosphere.

Yesterday I checked out five possible names for a new blog, on blogger. In four cases the name existed but the blog was idle and had never really got going. I mean, it wasn’t even spamblog territory.

I’ve said before I think huge areas of the web are kind of sorry places and when we pick all this apart we’re going to see of the fabled 80 million, not more than a very small percentage means much. That realisation hit the newspaper world a while back. There’s not that much to be afraid of.

Ok, if you are a CNET or Ziff Davis then a techcrunch is scary. And if you are a Guardian you can afford to lose £20 million a year on a lengthy look see. But by and large newspapers have created an illusion of crisis.

We’re gravitating towards a model where newspapers are run by editors and deputy editors. Writers will not be employed. They are part of the big drift out here in the cold. Magazines already run this model. I write for one who employ an editor, a production editor and an art director. Writers don’t exist except for the off Euro 300 assignment. Blogs are providing the excuse for papers to gravitate that way.

Television - writers are hit hard too. And why? Because of a crisis? No, because independent production companies have to make a profit. In the pre-blog days there was only one profit centre and now there are hundreds. What was a creative sector is now a production sector, getting programmes made.

What are the consequences? Can journalists do what Kathy Foley felt bloggers might do - be insightful, provocative and telling?

Few can afford the time even to research an article properly and the same goes for programme makers. We have an economic model that has turned us into churners. There is no prize for innovative journalism and it pays only to be on the same page as each editor who’ll give you work.

Now how do you make money blogging?

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