This Blogging Business

I found an interesting article on blogging in this week’s edition of The Economist that must surely offer hope to those of us who would like to see a return on our online missives.

Actually, I should point out that I succumbed to an invite for: ‘12 issues for £12’ and am not as pretentious as that intro made me sound! That said, I’ve been delightfully impressed by the magazine; and the last time I read it was as a student! You also get full access to their website and that has already proven a useful research tool.

Anyway, the magazine tells us that the majority of the 57 million blogs out there are simply diaries that happen to be online and make no effort to earn money from blogging. Only 7% of bloggers actually say they want to earn anything from their efforts.

The article explains that to date the blogs that are capturing any significant revenue are really niche magazines that use a blog to publish their material and have sufficient visitors to sustain advertising and consequently can afford to employ staff.

However, they have identified a new blogging phenomenon the ‘mom and pop blogs’ where those original diaries have actually provided the foundation for a successful business model.

The primary example is a blogger in Utah; Heather Armstrong blogs about her life in Salt Lake City and in the space of a year has attracted a readership in excess of 1 million and has elevated her to primary bread winner – who works seven hours a day admittedly – but her blog is now a successful small business!

Incidentally, the Google Adsense adverts that appear on this blog have already generated a meagre few pennies, as have the Amazon adverts that appeared a couple of days ago. So it does work!