Will blogging produce millionaires? Can blogging financially provide people with a full time earning capacity? Will we see more and more professional bloggers? Can and should blogs earn money?
Blogging For Dollars takes a look at the increasing trend for bloggers to try to earn a little bit on the side.
It considers:
- Advertising
- Adsense
- Amazon Associates
- Business Blogging
- Tip Jars
It also makes a few predictions, observations and a warning or two.
Interaction encouraged.
Article comments
1 - Jonathan
Blogging can also be a good way to promote like a writing career, no? I mean you get people who check everyday to see your thoughts, they'd probably buy a book written by you too.
2 - TDavid
Blogging as a direct, sole source of income? Don't think so for the vast majority. Blogging as a supplementary source? Sure. Is it possible for a millionaire blogger to emerge? Sure.
3 - jadester
but, like with other forms of writing, i doubt it'll make alot of millionaires...
4 - Mac Diva
Oops, I must agree with a Diva hater, again.
The people who are profiting because Big Media bought their blogs, most notably Glenn Reynolds, already had a complete product when blogging became noticeable. That is why they are profitable, not because of their content or the bloggers' writing skills.
The people who believe they can build a writing career based on blogging will learn they can't. As someone who has been a published writer since the age of 15, I can assure you that publishers need more proof of writing ability and sellability than the much too amateurish and much too repetitive material that appears on most blogs.
I also believe 'blogging for profit' can make a blogger worse than he would be otherwise. There is an ex-con in Oregon who believes he is going to become a successful writer in middle-age by blogging. He has built a large blogroll by continually harassing people via email to add him to their rolls. His other maneuver is to join any attack on popular bloggers and go further than anyone else will, currying favor with other attackers. (For example, in his attack on me, I became white and a sufferer of whatever disease he chose to name on a given day.) That kind of behavior is more likely to get a person sued than to transform him into a successful writer.
5 - Tom Johnson
(sigh) It would be nice if people did things solely because they enjoy doing them, and leave the "money making" to less personal ventures. Some - a very few - are lucky enough to have a hobby that they can parlay into a career, but more often than not the career destroys the enjoyment of a hobby and it just goes back to being a job. Then what do you have? Maybe some can resist the temptation, and sometimes the need, to write something only with the intention to garner them hits and therefore money, but I doubt that's very many people.
6 - Mac Diva
I believe the 'make money from it' viewpoint may be inevitable, Tom. Obsession with $$$ has penetrated our society so thoroughly.
7 - TDavid
Re #5: Cheers to that concept, Tom :) I have always written because I enjoyed and have a passion for writing. Would I like to have every serious work that I've ever written published? Sure! But the reality is that not every serious work and often with the most popular published writers the majority of their serious work is not publishable either.
It's a business which is highly competitive and driven by what can sell.
But it doesn't matter, IMHO, if a writer is having a good time and enjoys what he/she is doing. When I retire, writing will be my sole profession whether it makes me zero or millions. I might even pay to market and/or publish some of my own work in The Trunk, something I vowed never to do during my earning years. The yearning years are an entirely different story though ;)
8 - TDavid
I don't "hate" you, or anybody else here for that matter, Mac Diva.
Oops, I must agree with a Diva hater, again.
I will admit that I'm not so sure about people who refer to themselves in the third person (why do you do that?). I suppose since "Mac Diva" is a monniker, it might be in a roundabout way appropriate, but when you refer to yourself in third person as in "the Diva thinks" ... why not just say "I think"? Or is this because you aren't really anything like Mac Diva? She is just a character, a mask? In that case it is a charade and, well, then at least this makes sense and I'll stop applying a sense of seriousness to anything "Mac Diva" says.
Past commenting will show that in the comment section that frequently you have put your foot in your mouth, have a big ego and are too often rude and ill-mannered when disagreeing with others. Applying unsubstantiated labels to people you know very little about is asking for trouble. It's the one thing that you constantly accuse others of and yet can't seem to see yourself doing it to them. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
It is possible to make a point without being a jerk. And it is also possible to correct somebody nicely. I am trying to do this in this post because I don't think you are a bad person and in fact I think you are a skilled writer (I've said that several times). My thoughts of you haven't changed from what I wrote here.
I would gladly thank you or anybody else here who corrects me nicely or respectfully or at least factually without throwing out cheap shots at my intelligence (referring to me as an "empty suit" recently, for instance). Also recently, another person disagreed with something I said and went into this long hysterical and confusing rant about the size of my privates. Yeah, that's a solid way to make an argument :-)
So please, just drop the "extra" personal attack crap that is sprinkled in with your often decent points and you won't be eaten by the wolves so often. Prune the fat. Like editors would tell you to do with your published work.
Yeah, you might get a few less clicks to your website, but then for a long while you didn't even have the right URL to your website listed, so I don't think your mean way of commenting was designed for marketing, it was just you being overzealous and passionate.
But "hate", well, "hate" is a very strong word and I would reserve hate for bad, bad people. I don't think you are bad, just in need of some servicing of your people skills.
Huge difference.
You are a writer so you have no excuse not to know that words are everything.
9 - Matthew Milam
As long as there is technology to put out the written word, there will always be ways of making money from it.
10 - Christopher Rose
Come back, Darren!
11 - Somnath Mitra
Agree with Matthew Milam though my perspective is slightly different. Talent makes everything possible. Words in the right hands get to be magical and when one is trained to use internet as a power user, nothing seems to be impossible. Why we already have a few Darren Rowses who has proved this perception.