How to Almost Live on Blogging
Wired News: How to Almost Live on Blogging: "author of two books on Google, operator of a blog called Googleplex and longtime user of Google's keyword advertising program, Davis is among the more hard-core followers of the popular search site.In his new book, Google Advertising Tools, Davis addresses the company's keyword advertising program, concentrating on how bloggers can manipulate it to their benefit.
In a recent interview with Wired News, Davis shared some tips for aspiring online publishers.
Wired News: Can a blogger realistically expect to make a living from blogging?
Harold Davis: There are people who make a living blogging, but if you're going to do it on your own, you darn well better have a ton of traffic. There are 10 million lonely bloggers and people probably only read a few thousand. If you're going to make serious money off this, it's a serious time commitment.
WN: What amount of time and money are we talking about?
Davis: Well, I spend an hour or two a day, but I have a lot of content already from the books I write.
As for money, people who are really in the business of making a living off content pages say they average about $10 a page per year. That would be a pretty good average. Usually, it's not enough to make a living on, but it's a good supplement.
WN: What do you need to start a profitable blog?
Davis: You should have at least 100 pages of high-quality content in the can. Blogs are good because they keep content fresh, but that's just a small part of it. Good reference material really draws traffic. On a photography site I run, for example, one piece I wrote on how to convert raw digital photos draws more traffic than 99 percent of my other photo pages."
In a related article about Jason Calacanis -- the founder of Weblogs, who subscribes to the theory that more blogs would validate the medium and attract even more ad dollars for everyone.
Wired News: Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?: "Calacanis employs 120 bloggers and publishes 90 blogs -- including Engadget (which covers consumer electronics) and Blog Maverick, typed by billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban -- with his writers making anywhere from $200 to $3,000 a month. (One presumes Cuban doesn't do it for the money.) On average, Weblog salaries are about a quarter to half what a mid-level editorial job would pay, without the daily office commute.
'Not to mention (bloggers) get to write about the topic they are most passionate about,' said Calacanis, who claims to be on track to collect more than $1 million in Google AdSense payments over the next year. 'So, for our folks, it is like they are making money off their hobby. Think a scuba diver or video-game player making $500 to $1,500 a month writing about scuba diving or video games.'..
What do you have to do to earn $500? Publish 125 entries a month, monitor comments, respond to readers and delete offensive comments -- all for about $4 a post. At least, according to a contract leaked to the internet last month...
..Whether you are Calacanis, Denton or Hauslaib, to create a profitable blog requires much more than a keyboard, an internet connection and too much caffeine. You need a talented writer entertaining enough to hold an audience, a consistent publishing schedule, content worth linking to by other bloggers and worthy of press coverage, marketing savvy to sell advertising or enlist third-party networks and, as a culmination of all of this, plenty of traffic..."
How much does Denton pay his bloggers? "The amount floating around the internet is $2,500 a month per blogger plus traffic bonuses, courtesy of a talk Lockhart Steele, Gawker Media managing editor, gave at New York University last spring."
Or go for voluntary contributions instead of advertising to montise your blog......Wired News: Quit Your Job to Blog, Blog, Blog: "Quit Your Job to Blog, Blog, Blog...Ali doesn't believe voluntary contributions will ever come close to surpassing ads as a revenue stream for bloggers as a whole. He estimates that as much as 80 percent of the blogging world's revenues will probably come from advertising. This, he notes, isn't too different from the business model of the modern media industry, which is primarily supported by advertising"
posted by Jen @ 9:35 AM
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