Blogging for Dollars

October 1, 2005 4:59 PM

How many professional bloggers who get paid to blog fulltime are there? (Excluding political or corporate employees working in marketing, who simply changed their job description). How much can one make?
posted by growabrain to Computers & Internet (25 answers total)

How many dead links can you fit in one sentence? Just kidding :)

I know that kottke.org is bloggin full-time now. I also know that some people make alot of money, but their blogs are just full of spam and are linked to other blogs of their making to raise their page rank on google.
posted by meta87 at 5:08 PM on October 1, 2005

Well looks like you are aware of kotkke.org
posted by meta87 at 5:09 PM on October 1, 2005

Jessica Coen of Gawker makes 30k/year according to New York Magazine.
posted by k8t at 5:16 PM on October 1, 2005

Kottke gets paid to blog because he asks people to underwrite his personal blog. Jessica Coen is, I assume, a salaried employee of Nick Denton Omnimedia or whatever it's called. Seems to me there's a bit of a difference here: Kottke's blog is essentially a personal project that can turn a profit, while Coen's not the first person to write Gawker, probably won't be the last, and doesn't have full control of the direction of the blog (I assume).
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 5:48 PM on October 1, 2005

I'd say in most cases money isn't going to be the carrot for the pony.
posted by dong_resin at 5:54 PM on October 1, 2005

I think when looking at blogging as a full-time job, you have to look at it like any other business. There has to be a real revenue model. A blog is just a website that is constantly updated. When thinking about income, don't get wrapped up in the "but I'm writing a blog, and blogs are the new hotness" mentality. Meaning, don't think that you can start a blog, slap some adsense on there and be like "wheres my six figures?" You have to have REAL content (not just google-juice), you have to have high traffic, and you have to understand advertising. Although you may not want to be, you are now in the ad sales business.

So to answer your question, I don't know how many people actually make a good living off of bloggin. Bloggers that make more than 30k a year? You could probably count them on your fingers and toes. That said, that number will grow tremendously as people start to improve and perfect how to use advertising, affiliate programs, and carefully-placed tip jars.

Also, JKottke's expiriment with micropayments only worked becuase he had a huge audience that he built up over years, and it was also a novelty that got tons of linkage and press. And he's a cool guy it seems. If you are just thinking about different revenue models, put micropayments out of your head right now.

Hrm, you can also look into new blog networks like 9rules, b5 medias, and the other 36 blog networks.

One last thing, avoid black hats like adsense-secrets and stuff.

Links:
26 steps to 15k - Increase your blog traffic
Advertising Advice on problogger.net
posted by menace303 at 6:06 PM on October 1, 2005

I believe the creator of Nashville Is Talking makes between $20-$30k/yr as a professional blogger.
posted by davidmsc at 7:05 PM on October 1, 2005

Response by poster: Sorry - my original question was cut off & aborted....
posted by growabrain at 7:15 PM on October 1, 2005

Let's try that again with functioning links.

How many professional bloggers who get paid to blog fulltime are there? (Excluding political or corporate employees working in marketing, who simply changed their job description). How much can one make?

posted by Rhomboid at 7:26 PM on October 1, 2005

While it's entirely possible that fewer than 20 individuals unaffiliated with a larger operation are the only ones making a living off of blogging, the problem with trying to track this is that any blogger making dough will—and should—clam up tight about it. If you go to the AdSense forums at Webmaster World there are plenty of people claiming to make a lot of money. Some are claiming five figures a month. But they don't link to their sites or give any real substantiation, though I think once in a while someone will do a screenshot of their Google AdSense revenues page. (But, frankly, some of those folks are just the kind of scumbags who would fake a screenshot just to get cred—think of exactly the network of respect and hierarchy that warez d00dz use and then just replace them with greedy "netpreneurs" and you've got just about the same reliability.) You just can't risk spilling your information because some spammer-type will come along and steal your content, open up link farms to your site or make it look like your AdSense ads are subject to click-farming, either which will get your site booted from the ad program by Google, or any number of other stupid click-kiddie tricks that they hope will damage you or your site, even if it does nothing for their own.

In any case, there are three answers here:

—Nobody's making any dough.
—People are making dough but not talking about it.
—People are making dough and talking about it, but because the numbers are not spectacular, nobody cares so most people never hear about it.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:02 PM on October 1, 2005

I would say there are probably a lot of people making a very small sum, and a few dozen that make a fair amount. Also, Google Adsense may have some rules about what you can and can't say about the money you make. They are kind of strict about that.

Also, you would have to quantify what exactly you mean by income. There's direct income, from ads; but there's also indirect income -- you might get job offers, referrals, clients, notoriety, reputation, etc. These are not directly quantifiable, but I'm sure there are a lot of bloggers out there that do indirectly use their blog as a way to promote themselves or something they're involved with.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:10 PM on October 1, 2005

Response by poster: Thank you, Rhomboid for for fixing the linkage, (I have no idea what happened there...) -

If that is the case, that out of 18 million + bloggers, practically nobody makes real money in September 2005 (Except the infrastrcture providers and the ad agencies), it has to mean a lot about the "blogosphere" as a whole. But what?
posted by growabrain at 11:39 PM on October 1, 2005

Blogosphere is a shit term applied by people outside of the culture of it that essentially means nothing to anyone involved.
See also "A-List."
posted by dong_resin at 12:09 AM on October 2, 2005

Blogosphere is a shit term applied by people outside of the culture of it

Then what do people on the inside call it?

I don't have a blog now, but back when I did, the term "blogosphere" worked as well as anything else. In fact, I intentionally didn't use the term "blogosphere" around non-bloggers (people outside of the culture of it), since they had no idea what I was talking about. Maybe it's not the best word, and maybe it comes across as the totally contrived word that it is, but when you use it, people tend to know what you mean.
posted by Alt F4 at 3:14 AM on October 2, 2005

My dull blog makes about $2000 a year. I don't get many visitors, I don't post anything particularly interesting, and I let AdSense take the strain.. almost pays for the dedicated server all my sites are on though :)
posted by wackybrit at 3:59 AM on October 2, 2005

I think that the amount of bloggers making significant money from blogs is bigger than most people would expect.

I know of at least 10 bloggers who have hit the six figures mark (over a 12 month period) and another 40 or so who are in the five figure mark per year.

The reason most of us don't talk it up is that most bloggers are protecting their topic from other bloggers.

Having said this - an increasing amount of bloggers are talking about the money that they earn so we'll see more and more going public no doubt.

Under the five figure level there must be hundreds and possibly thousands making 4 figures a year and many tens of thousands just paying their hosting and ISP costs.
posted by oziii at 7:07 AM on October 2, 2005

I have made $1.97 from Google AdSense on my cooking blog.

Don't quit your day job yet.
posted by briank at 8:15 AM on October 2, 2005

I am the blogger behind Nashville is Talking and I make $35,000/yr. plus full benefits. Next year they bump me to $38,000.

I can't complain.
posted by brittney at 8:47 AM on October 2, 2005

I know this might not be what you have in mind, but there are a number of political bloggers who blog for a living for whom I would not say they are simply changing their job title.

Some examples: Tim Tagaris, Matt Singer, and Matt Stoller.

Many of these people (and certainly the firs two I mention by name) are aboslutely bloggers first and foremost and would not likely be emplyed by their repsective campaigns otherwise.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 9:28 AM on October 2, 2005

- when you use it [Blogosphere], people tend to know what you mean.

Well that's the problem- I don't know what you mean. There are thousands of blogs and everyone pays attention to their own slice. The Blogosphere? Do you mean the popular blogs? The political blogs? The ones in English? Just Boing Boing, Kottke and Kos? The blogs covered by the big media? It's a dumb, non-specific term thrown about by people who want to try to prorate these things and make old media out of new.
For example, Ariana Huffington has a very clear idea of what the blogosphere is, and she seems fairly certain she's ground zero.
posted by dong_resin at 10:34 AM on October 2, 2005

Mod note: fixed links in original post
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:19 AM on October 2, 2005

A certain Matt Haughey wrote an interesting piece on earning Google AdSense dollars with a niche weblog - it seems that a well-targeted site that's first on the block can earn you a fair bit of cash.

To look at it another way, in the past few months I've made a fair few quid from my weblog, indirectly - I've been comissioned to write reviews, paid to give a talk and paid to contribute to two research projects, all by people contacting me directly via my weblog's contact form (one of whom had never seen my journalism in print). I imagine that kind of tangential income is a much bigger deal for folk making (relatively small amounts of) money from their weblogs, though it doesn't quite fit the 'full time weblogger' criteria of this question.
posted by jack_mo at 11:47 AM on October 2, 2005

For example, Ariana Huffington has a very clear idea of what the blogosphere is, and she seems fairly certain she's ground zero.

Heh.

Part of my job blogging for a television station is dealing with consultants. As someone who has been blogging for six years it is hard for me to stomach the term "blogosphere." The consultant who created my job (and to whom I will be forever grateful) uses it all the time. He blogs about blogging. It is all very self-referential and post-modern. To me a blog is merely a tool, nothing more.

I guess all I mean to say is that it seems one can come up with a better way to classify blogs as a whole than simply "blogosphere." I'm with dong_resin, that term is wholely meaningless to me. And it just sounds so fucking stupid.
posted by brittney at 3:30 PM on October 2, 2005

Re: "blogosphere": It's a dumb, non-specific term thrown about by people who want to try to prorate these things and make old media out of new.

I don't disagree with any of that. But you still haven't proposed a new term. Until there's something better to describe blogs as a collective singular, people will be looking for some term to use.

Really. Propose something. Maybe it'll stick.
posted by Alt F4 at 4:30 AM on October 3, 2005

Here's my proposal: ignore anyone who lumps disparate points of view and subject matter into a collective singular. They're full of shit.
posted by dong_resin at 4:26 PM on October 3, 2005